I smiled. “No problem. I’ve got a single bed in the spare bedroom. Someone will have to make do with the sofa I’m afraid.”
“That’s fine.” Ashley yawned. “I could sleep like a baby on that stone floor.”
“I’ll just switch on the immersion heater,” I told them. “Then you can have hot baths.”
“A hot bath.” Dianne looked at Ashley with a delight that was near child-like. “Would you be able to manage a bath?”
“I think so.” Again he spoke in a voice that was as watery as it was hesitant.
I walked through into the kitchen and switched on the immersion heater. They were a peculiar couple. I shook my head. It takes all sorts, I thought.
I plugged in the cappuccino coffee maker that the office bought me for a leaving present (they’d also surprised me with a box of chocolates, an REM CD, and a video entitled Speak Welsh the Easy Way—ha, ha, thanks lads and lasses of Messrs. Dyson & Clarke, Solicitors of Manchester). My finger hovered over the mains’ switch.
Best not risk it if the electric immersion heater’s on, I told myself. The mains’ fuses had repeatedly blown when the electric oven had been used. The cottage’s dicky old wiring just couldn’t cope with too much juice running through it.
I filled the kettle and put it on the gas hob to boil.
On my memo sheet, magnetted to the refrigerator door, I jotted down: Call out electrician. Then I scratched out: Thursday—W Motors to collect car for MOT.
It was a few seconds before I realised that Ashley and Dianne were whispering to each other. I think it must have been the tone and way they were whispering that caught my attention. They whispered the words urgently to each other, as if they’d been given a sixty-second deadline to solve a problem. Ashley’s voice had a tremulous quality to it. The man was scared out of his wits.
I spooned coffee into the cups, poured milk into the jug. Their problem was no business of mine. I tried not to hear individual words—believe me, I’m no eavesdropper—but some part of my mind picked up that these people were discussing a subject of vital importance.
“Leaves, Dianne … there were so many leaves.”
“Don’t think about it, Ashley.”
“Don’t think about it? How can I stop?”
“What about Michael?”
“What can we do to help him now?”
“Maybe find him again?”
“How? There’s thousands up there.”
“He was… bringing in… too dark. Far too dark. I think…”
The sound of the kettle coming to boil was enough to drown out most of their whispering. What I had heard made little sense to me anyway. As the kettle began to whistle I turned off the gas.
I could hear the whispering again. “It started down there. He could feel it start down there, I tell you.”
“Ashley. We’ll get you to a doctor.”
“A doctor will believe me?”
“They’ll believe all right when they see it with their own eyes.”
“I’m frightened Dianne. What if it hurts?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll see you get help.”
I poured the hot water into the cups, put them onto a tray with the milk and a plateful of biscuits, and carried them through. I noticed they’d switched on the lights—all the lights!—even though it was only just dusk.
Immediately they were silent. Dianne forced herself to smile. “We were just saying… lovely cottage.”
“Thanks. I’ve only just moved in, so even I’m not sure which room is which.”
Dianne gave a polite laugh. Ashley looked preoccupied with his own worries.
Whatever those were.
“Would you like some apple tart?”
“No !”
Ashley flushed and looked confused, clearly embarrassed that he’d shouted the No! in such a panic stricken way.
He swallowed, recovering his composure. “Eh… no… thank you. No apple tart.”
Then the man visibly shivered one of those someone-just walked–over–my–grave–shivers. I realised Ashley was hiding a terrible secret. Curiouser and curiouser.
“Eh, not for me either, Stephen. I’ll take a biscuit, thank you.” Dianne nibbled a digestive. All the time she shot Ashley little anxious glances like a mother worrying over a feverish baby.
Ashley sat quietly. He sipped his coffee; stared at the table lamp, his eyes slipping into a faraway gaze as he turned some problem over in his mind.
Dianne forced herself to make small talk. She liked the cottage, she told me. How old was it? Did I like Wales? Did I work locally? You’ve just retired from working in a solicitor’s office? You’re too young to retire. You can’t be more than thirty-five. Oh, a joke. So you’re taking a sabbatical? Self-employed? As a proof-reader for publishers of law books… and so on for the next hour.
She seemed livelier for eating the meal—the wine and coffee probably helped, too. I found myself enjoying her company. After losing Anne I had promised myself a moratorium on women for a while. But I had begun to wonder lately if I would end up being lonely up here in the cottage—after all, it was slap bang deep in the heart of nowhere.
I finished eating my biscuit, then said, “The water should be hot enough now. I’ve left out clean towels.”
“You first, Ashley,” she said.
Meekly, he obeyed.
After he’d gone upstairs, I asked Dianne if she’d like a gin and tonic. She accepted gratefully. Her face had flushed pink now, and the smile seemed more genuine. I’d just unscrewed the top from the Gordon’s and began to pour when, bang! the fuse blew again.
Instantly the cottage lights went out.
The scream that followed turned my blood to ice. The shock caused me to hold my breath. Dimly I realised I was pouring gin all over the table top. But that scream. It had been driven out of the man’s mouth by sheer terror.
* * *
I slotted the ceramic fuse holder back into the fuse box.
Click!
The lights came on, killing the darkness. The fridge shuddered into life.
I found my hands were still clammy with sweat. The scream had disturbed me more than I could adequately describe. If a man realised he was about to have his throat cut, he’d probably scream in the same way—an outpouring of shock, despair, and absolute horror. Ashley must have a clinical phobia of the dark.
I returned to the living room. All the lights had been switched on again as if to compensate for the three minutes or so of darkness. “Is he all right?”
Dianne looked up at me, her face pale. “Fine. You’ll have the bath now, Ashley?”
He looked up at her, his eyes wide. “When the light went out… they moved. They moved.”
She shot me a look as if to say, “Please don’t listen to what he’s saying. It means nothing.”
“In the dark,” Ashley murmured, as if he’d finally understood some terrible truth. “In the dark, Michael had said. In the dark.”
I stood there, cold shivers running from head to foot. There was such a charge in that room. A charge of cold, blue fear.
* * *
I was in bed by eleven on that April night. The wind blew down along the valley. It moaned round the chimney pots, drawing forth strange, musical notes that sounded like a surreal composition for pan pipes—a song for souls lost in darkness and achingly alone. The wind carried a flurry of hail to rattle against the windows. In the next room slept Dianne Johnson. Ashley May had the sofa downstairs. As I came back from the bathroom I’d peeped over the bannister down into the living room. All I could see of him beneath the blanket was an expanse of glistening forehead. He was sleeping with the table lamp on. It must be terrible to be afraid of the dark.
Shaking my head, I returned to bed, then switched out the light. Burning out of the darkness were the red numerals on the clock radio. They read 11:04.
* * *
Disaster struck. I sat up blinking in the darkness; my heart pounded. I didn’t know what had woken me.
I didn’t know what had happened.
But something had. I sensed it: an oppressive sense of dread seemed to push down at me from the darkness. I looked to the clock radio for the time. I could see nothing.
There was only the dark.
Then I sensed movement at the foot of the bed.
Hell, someone was in here with me. A figure moved through that all-encompassing darkness.
Crash.
That was the chest of drawers at the foot of my bed being struck heavily.
A weight thumped across my legs.
I thought: You’re being attacked! Fight back!
I swung my fist.
Nothing. I’d swiped at fresh air. But still that weight stopped me from moving my legs.
Next I grabbed. A head. My fingers closed round long hair.
“Please!”
“Dianne?”
“Please help me.”
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s Ashley… The lights went out.”
I looked back at the clock radio. Damn, damn, Stephen, I told myself. You forgot to switch the immersion heater off; now it’s only gone and blown the fuse again.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ve got a torch… there…”
Dianne’s face suddenly appeared in the blaze of torchlight. Her hair was wild; deep dread lanced through her brown eyes. “The lights went out. Now I can’t find Ashley.”
“You can’t find him?”
“He’s gone. Like Michael.”
“Michael? Who’s Michael?”
“He was on the camping trip with us. He went first, but… look, please, can we just try and find Ashley? I’ll tell you everything when we find him.”
My head was spinning. I remembered Ashley’s terrified scream when the light went out earlier in the evening. He had a phobia about the darkness. At least that’s what I surmised. Had that phobia driven him to run wildly from the cottage?
If he had, I might not be able to find him. I still didn’t know the area. Beyond the cottage garden and the orchard there were woods and fields running for miles in the direction of the hills of the Lleyn Peninsula. You could hide entire armies out there.
“Dianne. You looked in all the rooms?”
“I tried. I found a box of matches. As far as I could see he’s not in the cottage.”
“Damn.”
“God, I’m sorry… I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll find him. Take this torch; I’ve a spare in the kitchen.”
First I replaced the blown fuse with the standby ceramic fuse holder. The lights came on. The fridge gave that wobbly shudder as the compressor fired up again.
I pulled on my boots, and slipped a wax jacket over my pyjamas. Dianne had already dressed. She followed me outside and we walked across the lawn calling his name.
“Ashley? Ashley?”
The torch lights splashed across grass being blasted into flurries of ripples by the wind. The discordant pan pipe notes boomed as the wind caught the chimneys—that serenade for lost souls was as dismal as ever.
“Ashley?”
We followed the garden wall until we reached a gate.
“Where does this lead?” called Dianne above the wind.
“The orchard.” I followed her as she hurried through the gate.
The wind whistled through the branches of the apple trees. I watched as Dianne walked slowly along the lines of fruit trees, carefully shining the torch into the whipping mass of branches as if she expected to find her friend clinging to them monkey-like—his face twisted into a mask of sheer terror.
After an hour searching the wood and surrounding fields we returned to the garden. Again Dianne shone the light into the fruit trees. I followed suit, half expecting to see Ashley’s frightened face peering out from the mass of branches.
Suddenly she asked, “How many trees are there?”
It seemed a bizarrely inappropriate question. “I don’t know,” I said. “Actually, it’s the first time I’ve been in…”
She suddenly turned and walked back to the cottage.
Once inside she quickly stripped off her jacket. “Stephen. I want to tell you something.” She spoke briskly. “It’s too late for Ashley. We won’t find him.”
“This fear of the dark. Has it happened before?”
“It’s nothing to do with being afraid of the dark. Sit down please.” She sat down and patted the sofa cushion beside her.
I sat down, puzzled. Earlier she had been so concerned for her friend: now she seemed to dismiss him from her thoughts.
I said, “I think it’s best if I walk down to the farm and phone for help.”
“No.”
“We should telephone the police. Ashley might be hurt.”
“No. Please just listen to what I have to say first. It’s too late for Ashley. It might also be too late for me.”
“For you? Look, just give me half an hour. I can run down to the farm at—”
“Please, Stephen.” She squeezed my hand. “I want to—no—I need to tell you what happened to us.”
The pan pipe notes boomed discordantly down the chimney—the mournful song for lost souls becoming that bit more desperate.
“I was camping with Ashley and our friend Michael. We’d all been to college together. It was still a tradition that we’d go on holiday as a threesome. This year Ashley had been given the commission to paint the landscapes. So we decided to go camping in North Wales.” She gave a little smile. “I imagine you noticed we weren’t very well equipped—or experienced.
“Anyway,” she continued. “There we were, camping miles from anywhere. Ashley painted. Michael and I explored the valley. The weather was awful. Every morning you’d see the clouds come racing across the sky. We had hail, rain, even snow. The wind blew out the stove all the time.” She sighed. “On the Monday afternoon, the three of us went for a walk. And there, deep in a wood, Michael found an apple tree growing amongst the oaks. He was really delighted with the find. He picked one of the apples, and—”
“Just a minute,” I said, puzzled. “This is April. You wouldn’t find fruit on an apple tree at this time of year.”
“This had. Even though it hadn’t any leaves yet. The apples were red—as red as strawberries. Michael cut slices with his penknife and we all ate a piece.” She frowned as she remembered. “They were very sweet, but they had a sort of perfumed flavour to them; you know, like the taste of Earl Grey tea. It was only as I was eating that I noticed the apple didn’t have a core with pips. It was simply apple flesh all the way through. Then, do you know what I found?”
I shook my head. I wasn’t going to like the outcome of what she was telling me.
She tilted her head to one side, her eyes far away. “I found the seeds. They were just under the skin of the apple. And they were white and soft like tomato seeds.”
“Just under the skin? Then it can’t have been an apple.”
She shrugged, her eyes faraway. “It looked like an apple.”
“These apples. They had something to do with what happened to Michael and Ashley?”
“Yes.” She pushed her long hair back from her face. “We must have swallowed the seeds.” Suddenly she lifted her sweatshirt to show me her exposed midriff. “You can feel them under my skin.”
“Your skin? Feel what under your skin?” It was if a series of electric shocks had just tingled across my own skin. “Dianne, what can you feel?”
“Touch.” She grasped my hand and pressed my fingers against her stomach. “Hot isn’t it? Michael and Ashley started like that and…” She shrugged. “And now you can feel them growing under my skin.” I looked at her, my eyes wide. “You can feel the roots,” she said.
I could feel nothing but skin and firm stomach muscle beneath.
“Dianne,” I began, as calmly as I could, “don’t you think—”
“And there.” She pointed to a dark growth on her side, just above the hip. “That’s where one of the buds is already forcing it
s way through. It doesn’t hurt. But I’m conscious of them pressing out through my flesh. It makes it very sensitive. All the time I’m aware of my clothes against my skin. To slow down the growth I should take off my clothes and sit beneath bright lights. That seems the only way to retard it. In darkness they grow at an explosive rate. That’s why Ashley was so afraid of the dark. And that’s why Ashley disappeared when the lights failed. He would have felt the branches bursting through his skin; the pricking of the roots as they wormed out through the soles of his feet. He would have felt an overwhelming compulsion to run from the house…”
“Dianne—”
“If you count the trees in the orchard in the morning, you’ll find there will be one more than yesterday.”
“Dianne. I think I really do need to make a phone call. Will you be all right here by yourself?”
She’s mentally ill.
The revelation had perhaps been too long coming. But I realised the truth now. She and Ashley had absconded from a hospital somewhere. No, probably it wasn’t even that dramatic. This so-called “Care in the Community” policy for people suffering mental illness put the onus of care on the patient themselves. Perhaps, for some reason, she and Ashley had stopped taking their medication.
“Stephen, why don’t you believe me? Look at my stomach. You can see the bud there, breaking through the skin.”
“It’s not a bud. It’s a mole; just a mole, Dianne. Now—”
“Touch it.”
“No.”
“You’re afraid aren’t you, Stephen? Press your finger against it.”
“Dianne—”
“Press hard, Stephen.”
“Dianne, please—”
“Press. You can hear the bud casing crack.”
“It’s a mole.”
“Just a mole?”
“Yes.”
“Here, watch closely, Stephen.”
“It’s a mole.”
“Watch as I scratch the top off it.”
“Dianne, don’t—”
“When I scratch the top off you’ll see the green leaf all curled up tight as a parcel inside.”