Haunted Shadows 1: Sickness Behind Young Eyes (6 page)

11

The girl was called Emily Jenkins,
and her parents were Peter and Sharon Jenkins. Their home was outside of town,
far enough away that at night it was swamped in pure darkness. Luckily we had
decided to visit during the day.

“Now remember,” said Jeremiah as we
took brisk strides up the gravel path, “When we get in there I talk – “

“You talk, I listen. How could I
forget.”

It was a cottage that looked like it
had weathered several centuries. It seemed a lonely place, as though it had
been banished from the village and forced to stand in solitude. Ivy spread over
the face of the building like spores and the garden was full of weeds that
strained out of the mud like hands digging for freedom. Beyond the house and in
the distance were the woods. They were a mile away, but from the angle we stood
they wrapped around the sides of the house as though they were about to choke
it. There was a sign planted in the mud that read ‘For sale.’

“Maybe we should pretend to be
buyers,” I said.

“Maybe you should talk less and
listen more,” said Jeremiah.

He reached out and gave three sharp
knocks on the door. The doorframe rattled as if it were shaking from the
physical contact. Footsteps tapped toward us and the door opened with a creak.
A man stood in the doorway with a questioning look on his face.

His skin was smooth but it was
coloured as grey as his sparse hair. His eyes were large but seemed vacant,
like glass eyes floating in water. It was as if different parts of his body
aged at different speeds. He was a man who had turned old well before  his
time.

“Yes?” he said. There was no warmth
to his voice, but nor was it cold. It just was.

More footsteps walked toward us and a
woman joined him at the doorway.

“Who is it, Pete?”

The woman’s forehead was creased and
her skin bore lines of age, though she had done her best to plaster over them.
At first glance she seemed to be much older than the man, but I realised it was
because of how she was dressed. She wore a cardigan that trailed down her arms
and spilled onto her hands, and her blouse looked like it came from the over
sixties section in Marks and Spencer’s. It was her eyes that gave her away.
There was a youth in them that seemed to fight against the tide of age, as
though they were rocks that the sea of time couldn’t move.

Pete looked at his wife. Again, no
warmth in his eyes.

“Don’t know, they haven’t said a word
yet.”

“Sorry to bother you,” said Jeremiah.
“Wondered if we could use  your toilet?”

Peter jerked his head back. “What?”

“We saw the sign,” I said, and jerked
my thumb back to the ‘for sale’ sign. “We’re thinking of buying in this area
and wondered if we could take a look around.”

The woman scratched behind her ears.
“We’re not really ready for visitors…”

Peter gave his wife a sharp look. “If
they’re interested in buying let them have a look.”

His tone was urgent, as if to say ‘
they
might buy this hovel from
us’. There was desperation in his face.

Sharon and Peter stepped away from
the doorway. Peter gave a smile that didn’t sit true on his face, and staring
at it made me feel uneasy. I avoided looking at him as I squeezed passed him
and walked into the house.

The air in the house was stale. It
smelt sweaty and damp, like a towel left in a gym bag. Things were neat and
seemed to be in their place, but little things betrayed a mess that hid under
the surface. A cobweb hung from a smoke detector and drifted in the breeze. A
fly lay dead on the windowsill. A circular red stain was ingrained in the
carpet. It stuck out underneath a chair that had obviously been moved to hide
it.

We sat on the Jenkins’s sofa. Pete
went into the kitchen to make us a cup of tea while Sharon sat in front of us,
her lips pursed as if she thought of what to say. I had some questions of my
own. The death register named the girl as Emily Jenkins, and her parents were
Peter and Sharon Jenkins. This couple had called each other by those names, so
there was no doubt we were in the right house. But as I looked around me, I
didn’t see anything that betrayed the existence of their child. No drawings
from school, no photos to remember her by. 

Maybe it had just been too painful.
Sometimes your brain flinches at the things it sees, and bad memories, no
matter how many years you put behind them, still prick you. Get enough of these
and it’s like death by a thousand cuts, your brain bleeds away and you become
hollow. Maybe this was the only way the Jenkins family could cope with their
tragedy. I wondered what the hell Jeremiah and I were doing. Intruding on their
grief just seemed wrong.

“So you two are buying around here?”
said Sharon.

Jeremiah gave a slight nod. From the
grumpy look on his face it was obvious he hated having to play along with the
pretence I had made. Perhaps it was because he hadn’t thought of it himself.
Tough
luck
, I thought.

“We are,” I said.

“How nice. And are you two…”

My head tipped back and nearly rolled
off my neck. “Hell no,” I said.

“She’s my daughter,” said Jeremiah.
“And she’s a little brat.”

Sharon gave a smile, the smallest one
her pursed lips could carry.

The kitchen door across from us
opened and Peter walked out with a tray. There were four cups, and in the
centre steam rose from the spout of a teapot. It twisted into the air like
cigarette smoke and then vanished against the ceiling.

Despite the inviting look of the tray
of tea, there was something about the house that made me feel uneasy. I felt
like I had to be constantly on my guard, as if things crawled behind me, shapes
that sat in the darkest corners they could find and watched us.

“Take your coat off if you like,”
said Peter.

“I would but I’ve got a cold.”

Peter leant forward. His eyebrows
arched at an angle. “Are you saying our house is cold?”

Sharon put her hand on his arm. “The
girl’s sick,” she said. “This man here is her father.”

Peter picked up the tea pot and
poured steaming golden liquid into each cup. He pushed one toward me. I picked
it up and looked inside, and I saw tiny molecules of dirt smeared into the
china, like someone had done half a job washing the cups.

Peter leant back and folded his arms.
“You’re nothing alike.”

“She wasn’t blessed with my looks,”
said Jeremiah.

He looked at Sharon, having marked
her as the most responsive of the pair.

“Do you have children?” he asked.

The words seemed to cut into the air
and then drop right out of it, as though hands had stretched out and knocked
them away. A silence pressed over the room. The windows were only single-glazed
and looked like a gust of wind could break them, but the sounds of the
countryside didn’t break though. It was as though the chirps of the birds and
bleating of the sheep didn’t want to enter this house. It was a place where
emotions were smothered and happy thoughts died.

I thought that Jeremiah had gone in
too heavy. He could have come up with something subtler to say, words that
wouldn’t hang like a bad smell. I guessed that after their tragedy, the Jenkins
family had spent countless hours being bombarded with questions about their
daughter and how they coped without her. It was a wound that was still raw, and
every time it started to heal someone else would come along and rip off the
scab.

Peter leant forward and swallowed.
His face was the colour of elephant hide, and his hair looked brittle enough to
fall out of his scalp.

“We never had children,” he said.

12

Peter led us up carpeted stairs so
narrow that it felt like one false step would send us all toppling down them.
The further up we got, the more the damp smell grew. It was like there was a
room up here full of sodden clothes and wet walls, a place that never really
dried. I looked at the walls and saw framed paintings of the bleak countryside,
the same style as the one in my room at the pub. The guy was definitely a local
artist. From his paintings, I got the impression that what he saw in the village
haunted him.

“Bathroom’s through here. No shower,
but you could get someone to put one in.”

He pointed to his right. The bathroom
was cramped, with barely enough room for the dirty bath and sink. There were
wet footprints on the carpet. I was glad we weren’t really looking, because
there was no way in hell I would buy this house. Just walking through it made
me want to put on more layers and pull my hood over my face. It felt like
someone watched me as I walked.

“Two bedrooms. We use the one on the
end. There’s a walk-in wardrobe, but we don’t bother with it.”

“What about the other room?” asked
Jeremiah.

Peter gave his wife a strange look.
It lasted less than a second, short enough that I wondered if I had actually
seen it. Jeremiah prodded my side with his finger. I looked at him, and he
arched his eyebrows toward the other bedroom.

“Could we take a look at the spare
room?” I said.

Peter stopped. “Don’t you want to see
the master bedroom?”

“Well the spare room would be mine,
so I’m more interested in that. Plus sometimes my … cousin will come up to
stay, so I want to see if it would be big enough for us to share.”

Wow, I could really bullshit when I
put my mind to it.

Sharon stood against a dresser next
to the landing wall. She leant back and knocked a vase. It tipped and
threatened to fall, but she reached out and steadied it.

“How old’s your cousin?” she said.

I knew what I had to say, but I
didn’t want to say it. The couple obviously had a reason for hiding their
truth. Jeremiah prodded me again, this time so hard his finger dug in my side.
I winced and stepped back.

“Watch it,” I said.

“Sorry love,” said Jeremiah. He
smiled at Sharon. “I’m a clumsy bastard.”

I looked at Sharon. “My cousin is
seven,” I said.

There was a silence in the landing.
The only sound was the whistling of the wind as it blew through the attic above
us. It sounded like an enormous cavity that sucked in the wind and threw it
around. I looked at the ceiling and saw the entryway, but it had been boarded
up and painted over, as if someone had tried to hide it.

Pete followed my eyes and saw what I
looked at. He flinched, and then his face straightened.

“This house is no place for
children,” he said.

“What do you mean by that?” said
Jeremiah.

Peter’s face looked stern, and his
cheeks flushed red. Sharon answered for him.

“It’s not really big enough” she
said, her words not sounding completely true.

I coughed, and the back of my throat
burned. “Not to intrude, but do we think we could take a look round on our own?
Get a feel for the place?”

Sharon looked at Peter as if asking
permission to accept. He looked up and his eyes glazed in thought. He grabbed
his wife’s arm and pointed her toward the stairs.

“We’ll be downstairs,” he said. Then,
trying to add warmth to his tone but failing, he added: “We’ll be waiting.”

They turned and walked down the
stairs. As their footsteps trailed away and then sounded on the carpet
downstairs, Jeremiah walked to the spare room doorway. I stopped before
following him. For some reason, I wanted to delay for every second before
entering the room.

“Did you see the attic hatch?” I
said, and pointed at the ceiling.

He looked up. “Of course. Did you
think you saw something I didn’t?”

“Jesus. Do you ever get tired of
this?”

If he heard me speak, he didn’t show
it. “Someone’s done a rough job covering it up.”

With that he pushed open the spare
room door and stepped inside. I stayed in the landing. The room was dark and
looked featureless from here, and the doorway seemed like an enormous wide-open
mouth. I felt a sensation in my chest, as if something were pushing me away. It
felt like my body was telling me not to enter the room.

Pull yourself together,
I thought.

I followed Jeremiah into the room. As
soon as I stepped inside I felt a deep chill, as if my bones were freezing and
would start to crack if I stayed too long. The walls and ceiling were cloaked
in shadow, and it was so chilly that I thought I saw icicles hanging from the
roof. It was an all-consuming cold, like the onset of winter.

Jeremiah walked over to the window,
reached for it and pulled it shut.

“Not ones for home comforts, are
they?” he said.

I put my hand on the wall next to the
door and felt for the light switch. I pressed it in, but the lightbulb above
stayed dead. It swung softly from a cord that stretched out from the ceiling.

This was a room I shouldn’t be in, I
decided. I knew instantly it had been the girl’s room, and it felt like I was
intruding on something private. I walked over to the window and looked out.
From here I could see the terrible woods. It gave me an unspoiled view of the
darkened tree trunks and spindly branches that hid their secrets within.

How far into the woods had the
witches been hanged, I wondered? Would the townsfolk want to venture too far
into the labyrinth? This house must have been here when the witch trials
happened. Had the occupants back then heard the women’s screams as they were
murdered?

“Let’s get to work,” said Jeremiah.

He opened a wardrobe and poked around
in it.

“What exactly are we looking for?” I
said.

He turned his head toward me. “I
honestly don’t know. Something. Anything that might belong to the girl. They’re
hiding something from us.”

“Maybe they have a right to do that.
It’s not for us to poke around.”

“Just check the bed. Try and pull it
away, something might be behind it.”

I walked over to the bed. It was a
single-sized frame, certainly small enough for a kid to sleep in. I took hold
of the headboard and pulled it back, but I couldn’t see anything in the crevice
between the bed and the wall. With every step I took and everything I touched
in this room, a feeling of dread built up in my chest. The back of my neck
itched as if eyes burnt holes in my skin.

Jeremiah rifled through the wardrobe.
I heard the clang of metal as he pushed back coat hangers, and a thud as he
lifted a shelf and let it drop.
We shouldn’t be here
, I thought. I
lifted the mattress, my arms straining with the weight. When I didn’t see
anything underneath, I let it fall. I had the feeling that something was hidden
in the room, but I didn’t know which direction to look. It was like my body was
a compass drawn to whatever it was, but something span the dial so that the
reading changed constantly.

Footsteps sounded on the floorboards
as someone walked into the room. I span round and felt my face go red like a
naughty school child. Peter stood in the doorway, his arms crossed. He looked
at Jeremiah with his head in the open wardrobe, and grimaced.

“I think it’s time you left,” he
said.

Peter walked down the stairway first,
his angry steps pounding on the carpet. Jeremiah walked behind me, and he
leaned toward me and whispered into my ear.

“Did you find anything?” he said.

“No,” I replied. “But I’m sure
something is there. I could feel it.”

Jeremiah moved his head away from me.
We reached the bottom of the stairs. Sharon stood across the hallway in the
living room with both feet behind the threshold of the doorway. It was if she
were a vampire who wasn’t invited to step over the line.

“I like the place,” said Jeremiah, in
as affable a tone as he could manage. “And I’d be interest to talk to your
estate agents. Think I could take one last look around?”

“I think you’ve seen enough,” said
Peter.

“I really won’t consider putting in
an offer unless I get another viewing.”

Peter leaned in, his forehead creased
and eyebrows arched. “I don’t give a feck if you put in an offer or not, I’ll
never sell to you.”

Sharon shrank into the doorway, as if
the harsh tone of her husband's words had pushed her back. I felt my heart
beat. As much as being in the house made my skin itch, I knew something was up
there. The key to it all was in that room, the one that I was sure the girl had
inhabited. If we left now, we would never get another chance.

Jeremiah looked to me, eyes wide as
if he was telling me to do something. But what? Peter obviously didn’t believe
our story, and he’d just caught us snooping in the spare room. He had his
reasons for lying to us, and he didn’t look like the kind of man to spill them.

I put my hand to my mouth. I puffed
up my cheeks and bent over a little.

“Jesus, I’m going to be sick,” I
said, and bent over even more for effect. I looked up at Peter, and I hoped my
face was pale. “Can I use your bathroom?”

“I want you to leave.”

“Oh my god, I’m going to spew.”

I made a gagging sound as if vomit
was building in my throat.

“For Christ sake, use the bathroom
and then get out.”

I sprinted passed him and up the
stairs with such urgency  that I almost convinced myself that I was sick. I got
to the landing, took a left and ran into the spare room. My pulse fired and a
shiver ran through me. I stood in the centre of the room and the feeling of
dread took hold of me again. It felt like I shouldn’t be here, but I couldn’t
turn back. There was something here, but where was it?

I walked to the wardrobe, but that
didn’t feel right. I took strides over toward the bed, but the feeling
lessened. Then I looked at the floorboards, and my heart leapt. In the centre
of the room, one of the floorboards looked an centimetre out of place.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs. They
were the heavy treads of Pete’s boots, and he pounded up them with urgency. My
heart rate spiked. I bent to the floor and gripped the floorboard. It looked
sturdy enough, but it came away with the slightest of tugs and revealed a
cavity underneath.

In the darkness under the floorboards
were dust and cobwebs,  but there was also a shape. I reached in, expecting
something in the depths to tug at my hand and drag me down. I closed my eyes
and dug further, and my hand closed on a square object. I pulled it out and
looked at it in the pale light that filtered through the window. It was a book.
Written on the front, in writing that looked too  adult, were the words
‘Emily’s Diary’.