Darker

  The pain came back so fiercely she would have screamed if she could, but all she heard was a gurgle in the back of her throat. Now it felt as if some mad stoker had dumped a shovel full of smouldering coal on her chest.

  At last Rosemary Snow realized what was happening to her. She was slowly waking.

  The dreams were different, too. Now, instead of being pursued across the dark countryside by something that shattered houses and trees like they were made out of polystyrene, she dreamed she lived in the attic of a strange house. An attic full of the kind of junk that clutters anyone’s attic – old furniture, boxes of books, old toys, suitcases, Christmas decorations. And then there was the mirror. When she looked into it she saw the reflection of the stranger who drove the white BMW.

  She had no control over her movements; sometimes she would feel as if she were carried like a child to look out of the attic window.

  She saw brilliant sunshine. A large garden. Patio. Plastic table and chairs. A blue and white striped parasol; a child’s bike; a toy buggy containing two dolls. Beyond a hedge stretched a meadow. There was a pond. And then she saw a man with two children. They were looking intently at something on the ground. A moment later white smoke spurted from the object; they tilted their heads upwards watching something fly straight up into the sky, leaving behind a long tail of smoke.

  As she watched it hit her. The first powerful emotion since she’d arrived in the hospital. Her flesh tingled at the force of it. Dread. She looked down at the family in the meadow and she felt dread for them. It came in powerful waves; the same feeling a parent must have when they see their young child standing on the edge of a sheer cliff. Imagination intensifies that feeling of dread. Hundred-foot cliff. The child takes one step forward and —

  But, no. She felt a swirl of confusion. Why did she feel dread? What danger did that man and the two young children face? She watched them running through long grass carrying their toy. They were laughing happily. And she wanted to shout …

  She wanted to shout what, for Christ sakes? What was it she wanted to warn them about? What did it matter to her? A stupid dream, dreamed by a stupid girl lying mangled in a stupid hospital bed.

  Why did she want to shout … the words were there, somewhere trapped deep inside her head. But why was it so important to cry out, ‘For … For?’

  ‘FOR GODSAKES! THERE’S A MADMAN INSIDE YOUR HOUSE.’

  A second hypodermic needle jabbed into the back of her hand, but the jerk in her respiration had nothing to do with that. In that back alley way of her brain the conscious fragment of Rosemary Snow knew the truth. Somehow she was looking through the stranger’s eyes. The madman who had left her to die in the field. He was inside the family’s house, hiding in the loft and they didn’t know a thing about it.

  Oh, whistle, and I’ll come to you, my lad.

  She remembered the old ghost story. A man finds a whistle in a ruined church. He blows it like you whistle to bring a dog to you, only that whistle summons a ghost. A vicious ghost that will eat your heart.

  She looked out of the window. Now it was dark. She saw the white table and chairs gleaming almost brightly against the dark lawn. For a moment she thought the garden was deserted. But then on the grass she saw a man and a woman. They were naked. At first she thought they were fighting. Then she realized they were making love with such passion that they rolled over and over on the grass.

  Oh, whistle, and I’ll come to you, my lad.

  The title came to her again. And she remembered what happened when the man left her in the field. How something invisible approached, crushing the house and tree and fences and very nearly her.

  Was the man with neatly brushed hair and smiling face even now whistling that thing, her destroyer? Would it come rolling across that meadow, splintering trees, churning through the pond, flattening grass and hedges and fences until it bore down on the naked man as he made love to the naked woman? Would the woman feel her lover press down on to her – and into her – harder than he’d ever done before? Impossibly hard, until she screamed as their skin and bone were literally pressed together and they became a mash of blood and bone and semen.

  Oh, whistle, and I’ll come to you, my lad.

  She could almost hear the madman whistling his pet as it circled the house somewhere out in the night sky, like some terrible bird of prey.

  She saw the two naked people caress one another, too wrapped up in each other to notice anything beyond the sweated heat of their bodies.

  Oh, whistle, and I’ll come to you, my lad.

  Desperately she wanted to shout a warning to the two lovers down there on the grass. She strained her throat muscles and willed herself to beat the glass. Look out! Look out! There’s a madman in your house. Get your children. Run! Run! Run!

  But no sound came from her throat. She couldn’t move so much as a finger of the body she looked out of.

  She had to warn them, she told herself. She had to find a way.

  Chapter 12

  Dead of Night

  Amy Young sat up in bed. For a while she wasn’t sure whether she was asleep or awake. She could see nothing. She moved her hands around in little circles in front of her face. Then she understood what the problem was.

  ‘Dark,’ she murmured. That meant it was still night-time. Everyone would be asleep in bed. Sometimes if she awoke this late she could do what she wanted. Mum and Dad lay with their eyes shut and didn’t know she was tiptoeing around their bedroom. Once she’d even gone into Mark’s bedroom and eaten his chocolate that he’d left by his computer. He’d been right there. In bed. With his face pointing at her. But it was like magic. She could stand in front of him and eat his chocolate and he couldn’t say or do a thing.

  She clapped her hands. Even this small soft sound seemed loud at night.

  She pulled up her quilt. The Boys must have pulled it off her. Normally the Boys did what she told them to do, but sometimes they could misbehave. Then she would have to shout at them. Sometimes when she was tired she couldn’t make them do a single thing and they’d do naughty things like pull her hair or threaten to wee in her toy box. Then she’d have to go and ask Mum or Dad to help get them under control. She never asked Mark, though, because he’d say, all grumpy, ‘What boys? I can’t see any boys. Go away, Amy, I’m watching television.’

  Now she could see dim outlines of furniture around her and the pale oblong of the curtained window. The Boys were running along her shelves, jumping from piles of boxes to the top of dolls’ heads then down on to her fairy-story cassettes.

  ‘Stop that, Boys.’

  She saw that they stopped and watched her, their blue faces all expectant as if they thought this was the start of a game.

  Amy yawned, tired. ‘Go away, Boys.’

  The Boys vanished. Sometimes the Boys vanished for days until she forgot all about them. Deep down she suspected that as she grew older they would one day vanish for good. Just now, though, the Boys seemed real enough, and they made convenient playmates when other flesh and blood four-year-olds weren’t around.

  Amy lay down to try and sleep again. But that huge cup of milk Mark had poured her at suppertime had worked its way through.

  She wriggled from under the quilt, tiptoed quickly across the landing to the bathroom. After she’d finished she returned to her bedroom tucking in her pyjama top as she did so.

  But halfway across the landing something made her stop and look up.

  The hatchway cover to the attic had been moved aside. Looking down out of the darkness were two glittering eyes. Then she saw the eyes belonged to a face with a wide smiling mouth. The man smiled down at Amy and said, ‘What’s the matter, Amy? Monkey nicked your tongue?’

  Chapter 13

  Eyescape

  In the dream it happened again. Rosemary Snow ran across the field. Behind her the house lay in ruins, its window glass eyes torn out. Then her Destroyer crushed the tree. It followed her, closing the gap.

  Panting, she ran o
n, saliva crackling in her throat.

  Above Rosemary shone the bright eye of the moon; the eyes of scurrying animals glinted; her own eyes watered.

  Eyes. Why eyes? That word buffeted persistently against her skull like a moth trying to reach a light.

  EYE. EYE. EYE.

  Why had she become obsessed with eyes? The invisible thing that pursued her, why did she associate that with eyes?

  Her feet rustled through the ankle-high grass, and ahead of her stretched a carpet of dandelions glowing like yellow stars across the turf. Her toe caps clicked against the yellow dandelion heads as she ran. Something about those flowers, she thought feeling a confusion well up inside of her. Something about flowers … and eyes … the man in the BMW … and the family in the meadow … and the little girl.

  What’s she called, Rosemary? Is she called EYE? No, don’t be ridiculous. Annie? Haley? No … Amy! Yes, that’s the name. AMY.

  But why should she think of that?

  Dreams are funny things, Rosemary Snow.

  Just look at what’s become of this field.

  Look how strange it’s become.

  As she ran she looked down. An eye lay there, unblinking, in the grass. It looked like a ball of glass the size of an apple, but she saw the pupil and blue iris, and the network of fine red blood vessels, and the optic nerve that rooted into the soil.

  She ran faster. Behind her the thing grew closer, crunching grass and thistles.

  Now she saw that, instead of yellow dandelion flowers, living eyes budded on the end of the fleshy stalks. All around her was a field full of eyes. They grew from the ground on plant stalks; from the branches of a bush eyes hung like heavy fruit. Rosemary shuddered. The eyes were wet, and juicy, and they all watched her running by.

  Her running feet no longer clipped the heads of dandelions; eyes cracked against the toes of her boots, bursting in a crystal spray of jelly and tears.

  The dream turned cancerous inside her mind. This was her universe now, a world of fruiting eyes. Red eyes, blue eyes, green eyes, brown eyes, wet eyes, dry eyes; they popped like sweet grapes beneath her feet; if she slipped, she’d slither face down through a sea of cold staring eyes.

  But as she ran a conviction took shape inside of her. This world of eyes couldn’t hurt her; they were the fruit of her dreams. What was real was that she knew there was a family in danger. In real danger from the madman who had destroyed her own life. She knew, too, that she was the only person who could warn them.

  And she couldn’t do that lying dreaming mad dreams in a hospital bed.

  She stopped dead in the field of eyes, clenched her fists, turned to the invisible thing that cut through the thousands of eyes like a speedboat through water and she shouted: ‘I’m not taking this any more! I’m waking up! I’m waking up!’

  Chapter 14

  Sunday

  ‘Dad. There’s a man in our attic. What’s he doing up there?’

  Amy, dressed in a lime-green T-shirt and matching shorts, rode her three-wheeler bike round and around the barbecue on the patio.

  ‘Amy, don’t ride too near the barbecue,’ Richard warned. ‘I’ll be lighting it soon.’

  ‘But what about the man in the attic?’

  ‘What man in the attic?’

  ‘The one I was talking to last night.’

  ‘You were up in the attic talking to the man?’ Richard was speaking on autopilot as he piled the charcoal on to the metal barbecue tray. He’d developed the autopilot talking trick when Mark had been Amy’s age. Both his children seemed to have inherited a gene that allowed them to talk non-stop from the moment they woke to the moment they went to bed.

  ‘I wasn’t up in the attic.’ Amy said thoughtfully. ‘I went to the toilet in the middle of the night. He was looking down at me through the door in the roof.’

  ‘Oh, the attic hatchway?’

  ‘Yes. He smiled at me and talked a lot.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘The Boys. He wanted to know all about the Boys. What they did, and he asked me if I told them to do stuff.’

  ‘Well, you do tell them to do stuff. You boss the Boys about all the time, don’t you?’

  ‘Have to,’ she agreed. ‘They’re naughty.’

  Richard squirted barbecue lighter on to the charcoal. ‘Stand back, Amy, I’m going to light it now. Do you want me to cook you a sausage or a burger first?’

  She looked at the barbecue and wrinkled her nose. ‘I want a cheese sandwich.’

  ‘What, no faith in my cooking? I bet the man in our attic’d like my burgers.’

  ‘I’ll go ask him,’ Amy said and turned her bike down the pathway.

  ‘Only joking, Amy. He’s probably asleep by now, anyway.’

  ‘Who is he, then?’

  Richard smiled. ‘Uhm …’ He put his finger on his lips pretending to think hard. ‘I know. Maybe it’s Santa Claus. Maybe he got stuck up there in our attic last Christmas Eve.’

  ‘Nah. Didn’t look like him. No white hair and no white beard.’

  ‘Search me, then.’

  ‘He said his name was Michael,’ Amy said with a suddenness that made Richard pause. ‘And that he lived in a place called Chickens.’

  ‘Chickens? Funny-sounding place.’ Richard smiled and shrugged. For a moment he’d almost believed in Amy’s mysterious man in the attic story. He guessed now that Michael from Chicken land was some second cousin to the Boys. As he held the match to the fuel dripping down between the lumps of charcoal he watched Amy as she circled round telling him about Michael from the land of Chickens, where there was a wall around the city and a big cathedral that wasn’t a cathedral any more and it was called after a girl she knew at school.

  ‘Bugger!’

  He blew on his hand where the barbecue lighter had flared and scorched his skin.

  Amy stopped and looked at him quenching the sting with beer from his can. She said eagerly, ‘Is it burnt? Can I see?’

  Smiling, he licked the beer from his hand. ‘No. Fortunately. It just shows, though, you have to be very careful with fires.’

  ‘Richard, can you move the table into the shade for me?’ Christine walked down the path toward them. She carried a tray with plates covered with foil and kitchen tissue.

  Richard slid the table into the shade of the tree.

  ‘I hate it when the sun gets on the cheese and it starts to sweat.’

  Richard pulled a face. ‘Sweaty cheese? I think I just lost my appetite.’

  ‘Knowing you it’ll come back … although as far as the cheese goes no one’s going to be porking out on that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, sweet hubby, that someone’s had their mitts on it.’

  ‘Not guilty.’

  ‘I bought a pound of Cheshire on Friday and it’s nearly all gone.’

  ‘That’ll be Mark. He’s the one with the cheese fetish.’

  ‘Well, he seems to have lost his own appetite and found an elephant’s. Food’s been disappearing from the kitchen like it’s sprouted wings. Half the tomatoes have gone, biscuit tin’s nearly empty again and I could swear that we had some ham left from supper on Friday. Oh well, if he’s eating he’s not sickening for anything.’ Christine took the beer can from Richard and had a hefty swig. ‘Mmm, I needed that.’

  ‘Where is the son and heir, then?’

  ‘Packing for his camping trip. Do you think the Abrahams know what they’re letting themselves in for?’

  Richard grinned. ‘With four sons of their own? They’ll cope.’

  Christine straightened Amy’s cap. ‘Do you want to get yourself a drink?’

  ‘Right-oh.’ She pedalled off down the path like lightning and shouted at the top of her voice, ‘Super power!’

  As Christine handed Richard back the can she kissed him on the nose. ‘How’s lover boy bearing up, then.’

  ‘Surviving.’ He smiled. ‘Although if you keep me going as hard as last night you’re going to wear me out.?
??

  ‘No worries. I’ll trade you in for a younger model.’

  ‘That has put my mind at rest,’ he laughed. ‘Right, I think I’ll risk a couple of sausages.’ He began laying a line of pale sausages out on the grill. ‘Is the steak still in the kitchen?’

  Smiling, she said, ‘It’s where you left it, in the fridge. Do you think steak soaked in red wine and coated in Parmesan will actually be edible?’

  ‘Well, if you’re going to ride life’s highway with me, sweetheart,’ he said, impersonating Humphrey Bogart very badly, ‘you have to be ready for excitement and danger.’

  ‘If your barbecuing’s anything to go by we’re in for one hell of a white-knuckle ride.’

  * * *

  Amy bounced through the kitchen door. ‘Super power!’

  ‘Amy! You scared me to death!’ Mark began mopping the fruit juice he’d just spilt on the worktop. ‘Don’t go shocking people like that.’

  ‘Will you open me a carton?’ she asked sweetly.

  ‘Open your own, I’m busy packing.’

  ‘Please.’ Then she added shrewdly. ‘I’ll tell Mum you spilt.’

  ‘Oh, all right then. Orange or strawberry?’

  ‘Strawberry, please. Mark, did you know there’s a man living in our attic?’

  ‘Is there, now?’ He spoke without so much as a shred of interest. ‘I’m going up to finish getting my stuff together. I’m going camping.’

  ‘He said his name’s Michael. And he says he comes from a place called Chickens.’

  ‘Can’t do. There’s no such place as Chickens.’

  Amy frowned, then her face brightened. ‘No. Stupid me! He didn’t say Chickens, he said Turkey!’

  Tomatoes, lettuce, olives, fetta cheese tossed in olive oil sat gleaming in bowls on the table. Alongside them, more bowls full of crisps, coleslaw, potato salad and Waldorf salad. Richard was on his second beer, turning sausages that were singing like mad as the fat bubbled out of them and he felt … he searched for a word. Good? Fine? OK? Chipper? Funky as a monkey? The professional writer in him rooted through this vocabulary, looking for something distinctive to describe the pleased, warm feelings oozing syrup sweet from the top of his curly head to his toenails.