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But why?
‘Bye, Nan,’ I smiled, kissing her on her wrinkled cheek. We were exactly the same size these days. She was shrinking as fast as I was growing, and we were now passing each other as our heights headed in opposite directions.
‘What?’ She looked at me, her eyes narrowed, her voice a suspicious hiss.
‘Urn…I just said ‘bye’.’
‘Who are you?’ she demanded, fiercely. ‘I don’t know you. Where’s Albert? What have you done with my Albert?’
Nan spoke about Albert lots when she was confused. Not even Mum knew who he was. The best she could figure out was that Albert must have been some childhood friend of Nan’s, but there was no way of knowing for sure. When Nan was her normal self she had no idea who Albert was, either.
‘Come on,’ said Mum, gently, as she guided Nan out of the house and into the chill darkness of the December night. ‘Time we were getting you back.’
‘Back where? What are you doing?’ Nan spat, struggling against Mum’s grip. ‘Albert! Albert!’
No matter how many times I’d seen Nan have one of her episodes, it still shook me up. Mum’s face was grey, her lips pursed together, as she tried to guide her mother towards the car.
‘Come on, Mum,’ she urged, forcing a smile.
‘Right you are, love,’ Nan replied. The smile was back on her face. Her eyes had their old twinkle again. As quickly as it had come on, the confusion had passed. She turned to me and gave a little wave. ‘Merry Christmas, sweetheart,’ she beamed.
‘Merry Christmas, Nan.’
‘Oh, and Kyle, be careful,’ she said. ‘There’s a storm coming.’
‘I think it’s passed,’ I said, gently. The winds had been howling and the rain battering down for days in the lead up to Christmas, but now it was calm – cold and frosty, but calm.
‘Oh, but they come back,’ warned Nan. Her face had taken on a strange, sombre expression. ‘They always come back.’
‘OK,’ I said, humouring her. ‘Bye.’
She gave me a nod and turned to Mum. ‘Can I bring the sherry?’
‘I think you’ve had quite enough for now,’ Mum said, releasing her grip on Nan’s arm. ‘The nurses are going to kill me when they see the state of you!’
Nan cackled and gave me a theatrical wink. Without a word she turned and wandered off, swaying slightly in the chill evening gloom.
‘Least it didn’t last long this time. She’s been pretty good, considering,’ Mum whispered to me. ‘You sure you’ll be OK on your own? You can always come with us.’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘OK, well, I shouldn’t be more than an hour. I’ll just get her in and let the nurses put her to bed.’
‘Can’t she just stay here?’ I asked.
‘The doctors don’t like it if she’s gone overnight,’ Mum said. I could tell from her face she felt bad about it. ‘We’ll play a board game or something when I get back, OK?’
‘OK, but really, there’s no rush,’ I assured her. ‘I’ll be fine here on my own.’
She leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. She was halfway to the gate when a thought struck her.
‘Do me a favour while I’m out, will you?’
‘Sure,’ I nodded.
‘There’s a mousetrap in the cupboard under the sink. Stick it in the attic for me?’
Despite the tingling terror which crept over me, I nodded. I stood there, long after the door was closed, telling myself there was nothing to worry about. Telling myself not to be so stupid. After all, the scratching I’d heard was just a harmless little mouse.
Wasn’t it?
Chapter Three GHOSTS OF THE PAST (#ulink_37af8705-6da8-5550-ab56-efabb0e86c63)
My breath formed faint clouds in the musty air as I pulled myself up into the confines of the attic. My fingers left ten little ovals in the thin covering of dust on the ladder, and I studied them for a few moments, pretending to myself they were the most interesting things in the world. Truth be told, I was just delaying the moment I’d have to step further into the loft.
The torch I carried was near powerless against the sheer depth of the darkness, like trying to slay a dragon with a teaspoon. The beam wobbled and shook in my hand, sending twisted shadows stretching across the planks and beams.
‘There’s nothing here,’ I whispered, trying to reassure myself. ‘There’s nothing here except me and a mouse.’
I let the torch’s beam fall on to the floor as I looked around for somewhere to put the mousetrap. It was tempting to just drop the thing and run, but the instructions had said to set it near a wall, and the last thing I wanted was to have to come back up and do all this over again.
The floorboards creaked in protest as I shuffled forwards, fixing my eyes on the point the roof met the floor. I would set the trap and then get out of there as quickly as I could. I’d be back downstairs in less than a minute. I just had to keep my nerve until then. Sixty seconds of bravery, that was all.
I set the torch on top of a dusty cardboard box and fumbled with the trap. Stupidly I’d left the instructions in the kitchen, thinking it would just be a case of pulling back a spring and sticking a bit of cheese on to a spike. That’s how they always work in cartoons, anyway.
Around three minutes later, with my heart still thudding against the inside of my chest, I finally figured out how the trap operated. Hurriedly, I sat it down on the floorboards and gently pushed it against the wall, being careful not to bring it snapping down on my fingers. Since it didn’t seem to be required, I decided just to eat the little cube of cheese I’d brought up with me.
Mission accomplished, I leapt to my feet. My head thumped against a thick roof beam and I cried out in pain. I rubbed the back of my skull and looked at my hands. They were clean, so I wasn’t bleeding. That didn’t stop it hurting, though.
I reached down to pick up the torch, then stopped. A piece of paper lay next to it on top of the box. I hadn’t noticed it there when I’d walked over, but there it was, large as life. As I picked it up, the sheet felt oddly warm against my fingertips.
Angling the paper into the torchlight, I studied the crudely drawn crayon picture. Thick bands of black and brown covered most of the page, stretching down from the top of the paper to the bottom. Here and there the lines were broken by clumsy sketches of spiders skulking in their webs.
Two figures stood at opposite ends of the page. On the right-hand side a stick figure of a boy had been drawn, a tiny bow clutched in his pudgy round hands. Leading up and to the left were a dozen or so arrows, each with a bright red rubber suction cup stuck on to the end. They were all arching through the air in the direction of the other figure – a darkly dressed man.
My eyes followed the arrow trail and fell on the only other patch of red on the page. A demented fountain of blood sprayed out from the man’s chest, where an arrow had embedded itself. His mouth – not surprisingly given the circumstances – was pulled into an upside down letter U. Clearly he was not happy with this turn of events.
I stared closely at this larger figure. There was something about him which intrigued me. He seemed to be drawn in a different style. He was darker, bolder, as if the crayons had been pressed harder against the page. He was also dressed strangely, with a long grey overcoat pulled up to his ears, and a black hat pulled down almost to meet it.
The image stirred some long dormant memories. That hat. That coat. It was all familiar but unfamiliar at the same time, like the memory of a dream I couldn’t hold on to. Was this my imaginary friend?
Absent-mindedly, my gaze shifted across the page. There was something familiar about those vertical stripes, too. Were they bars? No, they were too thick for that. They looked solid, though. Solid; brown; evenly spaced. I’d seen them somewhere recently, but where?
The realisation hit me like an electric shock. I spun to face the attic wall. The lines in the picture weren’t bars. They were beams. Wooden roof beams, like the kind I was standing next to. The picture was of right here in the attic!
A movement off to my left broke my concentration and I gasped with fright. Dropping the page I staggered back, knocking the box with my leg. My stomach lurched as the beam of the torch swung down. I grabbed for it too late. As the torch bulb smashed the attic was plunged into absolute darkness.
‘Wh-who’s there?’ I stammered. With the light gone I couldn’t even see the clouds of breath in front of my face any more. I held my breath and listened, but the only reply was the hissing and bubbling of the hot water boiler.
I tried to tell myself I’d imagined it, but if truth be told I don’t have that good an imagination. Something had moved. Something was there in the attic with me, and unless mice were growing up to be a lot bigger these days, it was definitely no rodent.
A stack of boxes toppled over as I stumbled blindly through the dark, my hands flailing wildly in front of me. Unsure of which direction I should be heading, I blundered towards where I guessed the hatch should be. My foot caught on some scattered junk and I felt the floor rise up to meet me.
Moving on their own and fuelled by panic, my legs kicked wildly against the debris from the boxes, struggling to find a foothold. My hands thrust forwards, fingers scrabbling on the floorboards as I desperately tried to pull myself towards the dim glow of the hatch.
A splinter stabbed into my palm and I cried out in shock. My eyes were growing more accustomed to the dark now, and I saw something on the floor by my hand which chilled me to the bone. A series of claw marks had scored deep grooves in the wood.
An elastic band of fear tightened around my stomach. I wasn’t sure what could make marks like that in solid timber, but one thing was for sure, no mousetrap on Earth would hold it.
Hot tears streaked my face as I scrambled to the hatch. Kicking, crawling, dragging myself on, I finally made it to the ladder. Without hesitating, I hauled myself over the edge, tumbled head first through the hole, and landed hard on the floor.
Ignoring the sharp pain in my shoulder I leapt back to my feet and shoved the ladder up into the loft. With the steps down there was no way of closing the hatch, and with the hatch open there was nothing to stop whatever was up there following me out.
The ceiling shook when I slammed the hatch closed. My fingers refused to behave as I struggled to fasten the latch, and it took me a full thirty seconds to secure it. I stood there for what felt like forever, my hands pressed against the gloss-painted wood, listening for…something. Anything.
Slowly, my heart rate took its foot off the accelerator and began to return to normal. My breathing – though still heavy was becoming less and less panicked, too. I plucked up the courage to take my hands off the hatch. Nothing happened. No wild animals came crashing through. No monsters smashed the wood and yanked me back up. Nothing.
To be on the safe side I went into my bedroom and rummaged under the bed until I found what I was looking for. The baseball bat wasn’t full-sized, but it would still be big and heavy enough to do serious damage if swung right. Even as I clutched it to me, though, I was beginning to feel like an idiot.
I flopped down on to my bed and ran back over the last few minutes. What had I actually seen? A vague movement out of the corner of my eye, that was all. A shadow, maybe; probably even my own, projected by the beam of the torch. I had been standing right in front of the light, after all.
The more I thought about it the more stupid I felt. Those scratches could have been there for decades. A heavy wooden box or piece of furniture being dragged across the floor could have made them. I closed my eyes and sighed. What a fool.
I forced out a chuckle, trying to laugh the last traces of my fear away. It had seemed easy when Mum was there, but lying on my bed on my own it was a lot harder to do. Instead I kept my eyes closed, rested my hands behind my head, and focused my attention on the breathing of the wind outside.
I don’t know how long I slept for, but I know what woke me. I froze, too scared to sit up, as the ripping and rending of wood scratched at me through the ceiling.
The sound was far more frenzied and frantic than before, and each scrape seemed to bring whatever was up there that bit closer to breaking through. I tried not to picture the hands which could tear solid wood with such ease. I tried, but failed, and a detailed image of my own gory death leapt uninvited into my head.
I swung my legs down off the bed. As my feet hit the floor the sound stopped. I sat there, unmoving, wishing I’d gone with Mum. Wishing I was anywhere but in that room.
Seconds flowed into minutes as I perched there on the bed, barely daring to breathe until I was sure the scratching was over. Part of me wanted to run, but another part decided that would only draw the attention of the thing in the attic, which would be a very bad idea.
In the end I settled for a compromise, and slowly inched my way up off the bed, being careful not to let the mattress creak. When I was back on my feet I stood and listened. There was not a sound in the house. Carefully, I crept my way over to the bedroom door, the baseball bat held firmly in both hands.
Suddenly a noise from behind sent me spiralling into whole new depths of terror. I let out a shrill scream and lunged for the door, not daring to look back.
Someone was knocking on my bedroom window.
Chapter Four THE RETURN (#ulink_f5472f67-0445-5a4b-91a2-511b82f46a5b)
The stairs flew by beneath me in groups of three. By the time I was halfway to the bottom, whoever – or whatever – was outside had stopped hammering on my window. As I leapt the last few steps an eerie silence fell over the house.
For a moment I hesitated, both hands tightly gripping the baseball bat. I stood there, balanced on the balls of my feet, listening for any unexpected sound. A strong wind wailed against the stone-clad walls and whistled anxiously through invisible gaps. The front gate clack-clacked as it swung on its hinges, the steady beat of a solemn death march. Probably mine.
Nan had been right. The storm was building again. Maybe going outside would be the wrong thing to do, I figured. The sensible thing would be to stay where I was and pray to anyone who’d listen for the ordeal to be over. I could barricade myself in and wait for help to arrive. It’d be —
A fork of lightning split the night sky, filling the room with its electric glow. As the flash faded the house was once more cast into near total darkness, with only the street lights outside to ease the gloom. The electricity had gone off again. All of a sudden sticking around didn’t seem like a very tempting option.
I ran for the front door, not sure where I was going, but certain I had to get out. Outside I could make it to the safety of a neighbour’s house. Inside I was a sitting duck in the dark. Not even stopping to snatch up my coat, I reached for the door handle.
Just as my fingers wrapped round the cool metal a shape stepped up to the door, as if it had been standing out there just waiting to make a move. Its shadow passed across the frosted glass, blurred and impossible to make out clearly.
My shoulder slammed hard against the wood, sending a jolt of pain along my spine and making me drop the baseball bat. Gripped by panic, I pushed my weight against the door, holding it closed. The lock, which I’d used thousands of times before, was awkward and stiff in my trembling fingers, and it took all my effort to work the catch. With a concentrated effort, I finally got it to click into position as – just a few centimetres from my face – sharp knuckles rapped slowly on the door’s small window pane.
‘Go away!’ I cried, my voice shaking as badly as my hands. I backed away from the door, not daring to take my eyes off the outline of the figure lurking outside. ‘My mum’s going to be home in two minutes, so you’d better get out of here!’ I lied. Mum would probably still be at the home, still trying to get Nan to go with the nurses, still trying to get away. I was on my own, with someone or something standing right outside the front door!
Which left the back door clear, I realised. Whoever was outside was at the front of the house. And unless you go in through the living room and out through the kitchen, the only way to get to the back garden from the front is by going round the whole house. It’s a twenty-second sprint in good conditions, so in the dark, and with the wind and rain, it’d take at least double that.
That meant I’d have a forty-second head start to get out the back and across to the next row of houses over the road. Forty seconds to get away. I almost cried with relief. I’d get out of this yet.
The rhythmic rapping stopped as I sped through to the kitchen, catching the side of the door frame and swinging myself through for extra speed. My feet found a puddle of cooking oil and I skidded and slipped my way to the back door, arms outstretched and flailing wildly to keep me from falling on my face.
Rat-a-tat-tat.
My stomach almost ejected my entire Christmas dinner as I realised I was too late.
They were already at the back door.
But nothing could have made it round that fast. It was impossible. There had to be two of them out there, that was it. Nothing supernatural about it. Just two people messing around. That’s what I told myself, but whether I believed it or not is a different matter.
The key wasn’t in the lock. There wasn’t time to look for it, so I scrambled unsteadily over to the table and snatched up a chair. Thank God we’d taken them back through from the living room after dinner.
Struggling to stay upright on the slippery floor surface, I wedged the back of the wooden chair tight against the door handle, jamming the door tightly closed. It probably wouldn’t hold them off for long, but at least it’d buy me some time to…
To what? I had no idea what I was going to do next. I’d been working on sheer adrenaline for the past five minutes, and hadn’t really expected to make it this far. There’d been no time to think ahead, and now my escape routes were blocked. There was no way out of the house. I was trapped!
The steady knocking on the back door was driving me crazy. It might have had something to do with the shape of the kitchen, or the number of wooden cabinets mounted on the walls, but the knocking seemed to echo more in here, making the sound even louder.
I couldn’t stand listening to it for another second. Stopping only to shove the table up against the chair for extra support, I left the kitchen and pulled the door closed behind me. Maybe the door blocked out the sound, or perhaps the knocking stopped right at that second. Either way I couldn’t hear it any more.
Back in the living room, I risked a glance at the front door. The silhouette no longer filled the little window. From here the way looked clear, but for all I knew whoever was doing this was standing just outside, waiting to grab me as soon as I stepped out into the night. That was a chance I wasn’t about to take.
In the gloom, my hands searched the sideboard for the phone. This was too big to handle on my own now. I’d call Mum. Or the police. The army, maybe. Anyone who could help me. Please, I thought. Someone help me!
The handset wasn’t in its cradle. Stupid portable phone, I cursed, looking around for any sign of the slim silver telephone. My eyes proved almost useless in the dim light, and I was forced to carry out a fingertip search of the couch, the coffee table, and every other likely hiding place.
Before I could even properly begin searching, a sharp rap of knuckles sounded on the living-room window. Frantically I hunted for the handset, too terrified to look towards the source of the sound. I was babbling incoherently, tears staining my cheeks, barely able to think. I found myself searching the same places over and over again; moving the same cushions, lifting the same pieces of scrunched and torn wrapping paper. Where was it?!
Another bolt of lightning tore the sky, briefly freeze-framing everything in the room. Through the window, the electric-blue light cast a long, looming shadow on the wall across from the window.
The shadow of a man in a wide-brimmed hat.
In the flash I spotted the phone sitting on top of the TV. I’d seen it in the dark, but assumed it was the remote control. A vague memory of Nan trying to switch on the telly with it earlier popped into my head, before being pushed back down again by sheer, choking terror.
Mum always forgot to put the handset back on charge and the little battery symbol was blinking at me in a way that seemed far too cheerful, given the circumstances. ‘Please,’ I begged it. ‘Enough for one call!’
It was nearly ten miles to the care home. The police station would be much closer. If I was lucky there’d be someone at the local one, otherwise they’d have to send someone from town. Why did I have to live in such a backwater?
