Dark Tides (10 page)

I’d been back to the Caine mansion before, but only in my nightmares. The same cruel dream had plagued me for years. In the dream, I found myself walking the upstairs corridors alone. The windows were thrown wide open into the night, curtains billowing inwards. I was bare-footed, dressed in my nightie, and the moonlit air was frosty and chilled.

To begin with, I had no idea why I was there. Then, slowly, the awful truth would rush in at me and I’d come to understand that I was prowling the vast interior searching for Mum. My hunt was hopeless and never-ending. The corridors went on and on. Every door I tried was locked. Occasionally, I’d find a staircase, but regardless of whether I climbed up or down, I’d always be returned to the same ceaseless corridor, like a doomed character in an Escher illustration.

True, it was only a dream, but it scared me as I thought about it tonight because I knew for a fact that the Caine mansion really was haunted – not by ghosts or dead spirits – but by the absence of my vanished mother. I knew that stepping inside, without her being there, would unravel me more than I could say.

The house wasn’t a long walk from the pub, which explained why David had insisted on meeting there. Gone eleven o’clock at night and the streets were close to deserted. It was too late for little kids to be out singing for sweets. Too late for people to open their doors to strangers.

There was a bus shelter ahead of us and we congregated inside it while Mark freed a black nylon backpack from his shoulders and removed a set of masks. All six masks were identical. They were white and very plain, with simple eye-holes, a moulded nose and a horizontal slot for a mouth.

I put my mask on, then looked at the others through the narrow slits, my eyelashes brushing plastic. It felt like I was being stared at by a team of androids.

‘You’ll need to wear these, too.’

Mark passed each of us a pair of thin plastic gloves. They were also white, lined with a dusting of talcum powder.

‘Couple of rules.’ Mark was busy removing a black rubber torch from his backpack as we snapped the gloves over our hands. ‘We don’t want to get caught, so no fooling around.’ He pointed the torch at Scott. The beam wasn’t on but it might as well have been. ‘This place is going to be empty, but that doesn’t mean there’s no risk. We could be seen. If we make too much noise, we could be overheard. I don’t want that to happen. None of us do.’

‘Fine, we get it.’ Scott sounded chastened, which was good. If anyone could screw this up, it was him. ‘What else?’

‘Second rule is we’re all in this together. We go in as a group. We come out the same way. Nobody gets left behind. Most important of all, nobody goes mouthing off about it afterwards. We keep this between ourselves. Agreed?’

Five robot heads nodded back at Mark.

‘Good. Final rule.’ He jabbed his thumb towards his chest. ‘I’m in charge. If I tell you to do something, you do it. No questions. No debate. Understood?’

‘Absolutely.’ Callum rubbed his hands together. ‘You’ve only been caught, what, twice? Why wouldn’t we listen to you?’

Mark tipped his masked head on an angle. His breath rasped through the moulded plastic. He didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to.

‘I’m joking. Lighten up.’

‘I’ll lighten up when this is over. This is about more than just a dare.’

‘That’s right.’ David wrapped an arm around my shoulder and crushed me in a hug. ‘This is for you, Claire. It’s for your mum.’

I squirmed, and not just because of what he’d said – which was crass and needless – but also because he was lying. This wasn’t just about me. It was also about David. It was a way for him to prove his devotion to me.

I felt like the hug was about more, too. It was a statement of ownership. There’d been times when he’d accused me of being attracted to Mark. There’d been times when we’d argued about it. And now Mark had used his dare to do something for me. He was in command. We were all looking to him for guidance. And David didn’t like it.

None of which would have been a problem, I guess, if David didn’t have some grounds for concern. Two weeks before I’d left for university, Mark and I had slept together. I hadn’t planned on anything happening between us. I’m pretty sure Mark hadn’t, either. Blame it on George Clooney. I’d wanted to catch
Good Night, and Good Luck
before it came to the end of its run at the Palace cinema. David had already cancelled on me a couple of times, and when he had to back out of the final afternoon matinee because of a flight crisis caused by fog at the airport, he suggested that Mark go with me instead. It was a little awkward at first, but we had a fun time, and after the movie finished, we went for a drink in a pub on the promenade, where I finally allowed myself to admit, for just a little while, that I was attracted to him. Always had been.

David was so sensible and safe. So together. He never let himself go. Never acted on impulse. He often talked about the travelling he’d done and the places he’d backpacked with Callum, but somehow it didn’t feel as if he’d ever really
lived
. It was different with Mark. His life was just as big a mess as my own. He knew something of the pain I’d experienced. He was estranged from his dad, rarely spoke with his mum. And he liked me. I could tell. It was there in the way his mouth kept curling into a reluctant grin, eyes crinkling but downcast, as if he was trying his very hardest
not
to connect with me. So in that one perfect moment, when the drink had kicked in enough to dampen my inhibitions but before I became too talkative or analytical or just plain silly, I leaned over and kissed him – a spur-of-the-moment thing – and it had felt, well, unbelievable.

We hadn’t talked much after that. He’d just taken my hand and led me back to his place, where we’d made love on the unmade mattress in the corner of his damp-smelling room. And then I’d got up and left and I hadn’t stopped thinking about it since. Neither had Mark, I knew, because he’d phoned me at university and asked me what we were going to do about it. I’d listened to the broken quality in his voice, the sad longing I recognised in myself, and then I’d told him that nothing could ever come of it. David was my boyfriend. His friend. We couldn’t hurt him like that.

So now we were back to pretending nothing had happened, even though everything had happened, and was – truth be told, and despite my best attempts to deny it – still playing over and over in my mind.

‘We’ll go in through the back.’ Mark fed his arms back through the rucksack straps. ‘We’ll cut across the church grounds next to the house. I found a gap in the fence when I was scouting things out.’

The church was located just along from the bus shelter. It was a modern brick building with a big iron cross on the side and a noticeboard out front that often featured Christian slogans –
JESUS LOVES YOU
.
ALL IS FORGIVEN
– that kind of thing. The latest slogan read:
A MIND FIXED ON GOD HAS NO ROOM FOR EVIL THOUGHTS
.

Too late, I figured, as we hurried towards the manicured grass verge outside the church and across the empty car park. Much, much too late.

The gap in the fence didn’t look as if it had been there very long. The splintered wood was jagged and pale. I was pretty sure Mark was responsible for the destruction. Not that I cared. I was too busy scrambling after him on my elbows and knees, pushing myself up into a crouch behind a thick border of shrubs and tangled undergrowth that smelled of damp and decay.

Ahead of us, a vast patio area bordered a sloping lawn. A collection of marble statues were dotted around the patio, all of them female nudes that were speckled with lichen and dirt. The statues looked bereft and forlorn, with downcast eyes and sombre expressions, hands covering mouths or cupping breasts and genitals.

The nude closest to us had suffered some kind of accident. Her nose had been chipped clean off, leaving behind a powdery stub, and she was missing two fingers on her left hand. The mutilated hand was raised in our direction, as if warding us away. I could see that some of the other statues had suffered similar injuries.

‘Wow.’ Callum dusted off his gloves as he emerged from the hole in the fence behind me. ‘It’s like a zombie army.’

Mark pointed through a rhododendron bush towards the one-storey wing of the house nearest to us.

‘We’re going in through the pool room. There’s a security light but because of the church nobody overlooks this side of the house.’

‘What about an alarm?’ Rachel asked, keeping low.

‘I’ve taken a good look around. I couldn’t see anything.’

‘He won’t have one,’ I said. ‘An alarm costs money and he doesn’t like to spend it.’

I could remember that from Mum. She was always complaining that the Caine mansion was in need of refurbishment but that Mr Caine was unwilling to pay for it.

Scott was the last one through the fence. He wiped his gloves clean on the back of my duffel coat. ‘Not a lot of point being a millionaire if you’re not going to spend all your cash.’

‘He’s a strange man.’ I swatted him away. ‘I remember some parts of the house used to be really cold because he wouldn’t heat it all.’

‘Fun guy.’

‘Trust me. You have no idea.’

I thought of Morgan, then, of his stunted childhood and how he hadn’t been allowed to play with other kids. Yes, he’d been given expensive toys. He’d had his own private swimming pool and a generous lawn to run around on. But he’d had nobody to share it with.

I was burdened by my own particular guilt about that. Truth was I’d never made any attempt to respond to the card he’d delivered to me. Mostly that was because of my fear of his father and my belief that he was somehow responsible for whatever had happened to Mum. But to my shame, part of my motivation had been bitterness and cruelty. I’d been left on my own, cast adrift by the tragedy that had befallen my family, but rather than reach out to another child in the same predicament, I’d taken dark comfort in confining him to greater isolation, stuck in this cavernous mansion, with a grieving father even more remote than my own.

‘Come on.’

Mark burst out through the bushes and hurdled the low wall that surrounded the patio, triggering the security light. The lamp blazed fiercely into the murky black, and I blinked so hard against the sudden glare that his movements took on a jerky, strobe-like quality. The shrubs rustled around me as the others darted out and ran after him, and I followed with my arms raised to shield my eyes from the dazzle, my shoes thudding over damp lawn and hard concrete.

Mark slid to a halt and hunkered down in front of a glazed patio door with his backpack by his feet. Scott and Callum crowded over his shoulders and I stooped next to Rachel and David, flattening myself against the stippled grey render on the exterior wall.

I’m not sure quite what I expected Mark to remove from his backpack. Maybe an extensive set of lock picks in a soft suede case. Maybe a miniature toolbox or a specialised glass cutter. But he surprised me by pulling out a hammer.

The hammer had a clawed metal head and a tapered wooden handle and looked heavy enough to do some serious damage. He swung it back behind his shoulder, then whipped it forwards very fast, striking the glass panel just above the door handle. The pane smashed instantly. Several large shards fell inwards and exploded off the floor. The rest of the jagged fragments rained down on his gloved hand.

‘Quite the craftsman,’ Callum whispered.

Mark growled at him, then dropped the hammer into his backpack and reached through the hole he’d created, turning the lock from the inside. He withdrew his arm and eased down on the handle.

No alarm sounded.

He relaxed his shoulders, but only for an instant. Scott clapped him hard on the back.

‘Dude, that was loud. Now we know how you got caught before.’

‘Shut up,’ Mark hissed.

‘Oh, right. Because the problem is that
we’re
the ones making too much noise.’

Mark spun round and surged up very fast, snatching Scott by the throat and lifting him on to his toes. Scott clawed at Mark’s fingers, a choked, garbled croak coming from behind his mask.

‘One sudden noise is OK,’ Mark told him, in a voice hovering just above a whisper. ‘But any kind of conversation after it is a bad thing. Get it?’

Scott nodded, his mask flaring in the light from the security lamp.

Mark held him a moment more, then released his grip and turned to creep in through the doorway all in one fluid movement. Glass crumpled under his feet as the scent of chlorine wafted out at us.

Scott swallowed hard and reached up to touch his throat.

‘You OK?’ Rachel whispered.

‘Think so. Guy’s a psycho.’

The rest of us looked at one another – at our identical masked faces. Nobody was giving anything away. But nobody was moving, either.

I balled my hands into fists and stepped out from behind Rachel and approached the busted door. Was I really going to do this?

The next step was the big one. Forget my nightmares. This was truly scary. Because what if I ventured inside, what if I walked these corridors for real, and found no sense of Mum lingering here at all? What if, finally, I had to face up to the idea that she was lost to me for good?

The humid air inside the pool room condensed on my face and hands. A padded blue cover floated on the surface of the pool, water lapping beneath it.

I stumbled forwards, overcome by a strange sensation of weightlessness.

Footsteps behind me. The others had shuffled inside, too.

The floor was laid with ridged beige tiles that smelled of bleach. There was a set of metal steps on my left and two plastic sun loungers on my right. I didn’t get the impression that the pool was used very often. It was hard to imagine Edward Caine stripping down to a pair of Speedos, easing his lean, wrinkled form into the water and gliding through a few lengths.

The external security lamp tripped off and darkness slammed in. I stood very still for a long moment, listening to the hum and slurp of the pool filter until I saw torchlight up ahead. It flared and bounced against a doorway in the far wall, then swung round and down, framing Mark in dark relief.

‘There’s nobody here.’ He beckoned at us with the torch. ‘Hurry up.’

‘Yeah, let’s get this over with,’ David whispered. ‘I don’t think we should stay here any longer than we need to.’

‘Me either.’ Rachel touched my arm. ‘This place is freaking me out.’

I lurched into movement again, following Mark out of the pool room and along a narrow corridor lined with fake houseplants in raised planters. My face was hot and clammy under my mask. The gloves were irritating my skin. I thought about tearing them off but I didn’t want to be the only one to reveal myself or risk leaving prints behind.

We passed a number of closed doors, all of them carved out of solid dark timber with brass door furniture, and then the corridor opened up into the main entrance hall. We fanned out and stood in silence as Mark cast his torch beam around. I turned on my heels, experiencing the queasy familiarity of a space that matched my childhood memories so exactly it felt as if it couldn’t possibly be real.

It was all just as I remembered: the fancy wooden panelling; the dusty candelabras and wall sconces; the highly polished floorboards; the red-and-black Persian rug; the crossed muskets on the wall; the stuffed and mounted stag’s head with its calcified antlers and sightless glass eyes.

And the staircase. That most of all. The blood-red carpet was still there, running up the curved treads and sweeping left and right at the top, continuing along the galleried balcony with its burnished handrail, over which Morgan’s tragic mother had toppled and fallen to her death.

I glanced down at the spot where I’d always imagined her body must have struck the ground. Then I knelt and peeled back a corner of the rug. Mark centred the torchlight on the floorboards beneath. But there was nothing to indicate the impact. No compressions or gouges or scuffs. No ingrained bloody stain.

A short distance away behind the stairs was the blackened hollow where Morgan had lurked to hear me sing, and for a fleeting second I had to fight the urge to snatch the torch from Mark and convince myself he wasn’t there. But there was no way he could be. He was in London with his father and the house was filled with the unmistakable vacuum silence, the stale, suspended air, of a space that had been undisturbed for hours.

‘A-mazing,’ Rachel said, in a breathless hush. She was turning slowly, her arms spread wide, as if it were all too much for her to take in.

Callum whistled. ‘This fella is
rich
.’

‘Proper rich,’ Scott said, his voice hoarse and distorted. ‘It’s like a haunted house.’

‘Idiot.’ David shook his head, the fixed white expression of his mask seeming impossibly sad. ‘OK, Claire?’

I swallowed dryly and pointed across the foyer. ‘Study’s that way.’

I walked ahead of them, the disc of light from Mark’s torch chasing my feet across the wooden floor. I made sure I didn’t look to my right as I entered the room. Mum’s office had been back there, a cramped annexe adjoining the study that Mr Caine would sometimes burst into, clutching a piece of paper, only to be confounded when he found me sitting alone on the floor, reading a comic or sucking a lollipop.

The study had been freshened up since I’d been here last. The walls were lined with the same sturdy bookcases and dusty tomes that I remembered, the elaborate ceiling mouldings and gaudy chandelier hadn’t changed, but a luxurious beige carpet had been laid over the warped parquet flooring, two striped fabric armchairs now complemented the cherry-leather chesterfield, and there was a strikingly modern office chair behind the antique desk.

The fireplace in the middle of the facing wall was substantial. The mantelpiece was close to shoulder height and had been sculpted from the same darkly veined marble as the surround. The hood was chipped and ancient. The grate was big enough to burn several large logs. There was a brass coal scuttle to the left and a set of pokers and brushes to the right.

But there was a problem.

‘No ash,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry. We’ve got it covered.’

Mark swung his backpack down from his shoulder and handed David the torch. David aimed the beam into the backpack as Mark lifted out a weighted plastic sandwich bag. It was half-filled with very fine ash.

‘Wow.’ Rachel clapped her hands in giddy appreciation. ‘You guys really did think of everything.’

‘Should we smash some stuff?’

David turned with the torch to find Scott standing by the desk, holding a cut-glass decanter. Scott removed the stopper and sniffed at the syrupy liquor inside, then reared back and encouraged Callum to do the same.

‘Put it down,’ David hissed. ‘It’ll look better if it’s just the footprint.’

‘Yeah.’ Rachel was nodding. ‘It’s more freaky that way.’

‘Claire, hold this.’

Mark handed me the bag of ash. He slipped his backpack on again and propped an elbow on my shoulder as he set about untying the laces of his left training shoe. My face burned beneath my mask. Any physical contact with Mark was a strange experience for me now. I was very aware of the heat of his touch and the shape of his body beneath his clothes – of the way it had felt to be held in his arms.

He stepped clear with his shoe in his hand. The shoe was black with three white stripes on either side. The Adidas motif was branded on the tongue and the heel.

He was tilted a little to his left, placing his weight on his stockinged foot. He must have realised it looked a bit odd from the way we were all staring at him.

‘What? I don’t want to tread ash on the carpet on our way out of here. A single footprint carries more impact.’

David aimed the torch beam at the tiled hearth. ‘Let’s do this.’

I moved across and tipped the ash out of the bag in a neat pile, smoothing it flat with the side of my hand. Mark limped over and crouched next to me. He rotated the shoe until the toe was pointing towards the doorway. The treads were still a little damp from the dewed grass outside. He set the shoe down in the ash and leaned his weight on it. He rocked it front to back, side to side. Then he lifted the shoe away very delicately, a light dusting of ash sprinkling down.

He’d formed a near-perfect footprint. The ash had merged in a few areas, mostly towards the heel. But the impression was unmistakable.

‘Cool,’ Rachel breathed.

‘Nice,’ Scott echoed.

And that’s when I heard an unexpected noise.

It was a distinct
crunch-crack
, coming from behind me. I spun round just as David jerked the torch beam towards the doorway, lighting up the monster from my childhood nightmares.

Edward Caine.

In that first instant, as my mind juddered and stalled, I almost believed I was seeing some kind of stress-induced delusion.

But no.

He was real and he was here.

He had on a Japanese silk dressing gown, hanging open over blue cotton pyjamas. He was wearing a pair of leather slippers on his feet and he held a pump-action shotgun crossways across his chest. One finger was curled around the trigger, the other supported the weight of the long barrel. His feet were planted shoulder-width apart.

He flipped a wall switch with the muzzle of the shotgun and the bulbs in the chandelier hummed and burned, flooding the room with a startling white light.

‘The police have been called. They’ll be here any moment.’

Callum swore under his breath. I looked at the others. Five white masks stared back at me. Their fixed expressions gave nothing away but the eyes behind them did. They were wide with panic. Assessing. Reassessing. Everybody was looking at everyone else for some clue as to what we should do. Rachel opened her hands and spread her gloved fingers down by her waist, appealing for a decision.

‘I’ll shoot any one of you who moves,’ Edward said. ‘None of you are going anywhere.’

‘Crap.’ Scott was still holding the decanter. ‘What do we do, guys?’

‘You wait right where you are. You don’t move until the police arrive.’

I stared at Edward, transfixed. He’d aged, though not dramatically. Maybe the fleshy folds beneath his chin were drooping a little more. Maybe his hair was a touch thinner. But he was just as tall and thin as I remembered, and his aqueous eyes still bulged from their sockets as if someone much younger and angrier were locked inside his body, fighting to get out.

‘Who are you?’ His jaw shook with rage. ‘Take off those ridiculous masks so I can see you.’

‘We’re leaving.’ Mark’s voice was calm and considered. He was still clutching his shoe in his hands. ‘He won’t shoot.’

‘Don’t bet on that, young man.’

Edward swung the shotgun around and held it down by his hip. He leaned to one side and considered the sooty footprint that had appeared on his hearth. He looked puzzled. Conflicted, almost.

‘He’s bluffing,’ Mark said. ‘Let’s go.’

‘I think we should stay,’ David muttered.

‘Nuh-uh. No way.’

‘Somebody make a decision,’ I hissed.

Edward tilted his head very slightly. He seemed to peer extra hard at me, his awful eyes swelling, pupils pulsating. He swivelled at the hips, the shotgun barrel moving with him. The muzzle settled over my chest.

A ball of heat built inside me. My skin prickled and itched.

I raised my hands in the air and took a half-step back, and that was when Mark shouldered David aside and burst forwards very fast.

He had the width of the room to cover, but he was quick, and Edward was slow. Maybe Edward couldn’t really believe that Mark was charging him. Maybe he was reluctant to shoot. But his hesitation was crucial. It saved my life.

The shotgun was loaded. It was no bluff. But by the time Edward had braced his body and resolved to squeeze the trigger, Mark had dived at him.

Edward got a shot off. The report was very loud. I felt the percussion deep in my gut. But he’d fired over my head, into the ceiling. The chandelier exploded. The light bulbs extinguished and glass and plaster rained down in the sudden violet dim. I ducked and covered my head. Debris hammered against my hands and shoulders.

‘Run,’ Mark yelled. ‘Get out of here.’

I squinted through the haze of dust and grit and saw Mark tussling with Edward down on the floor. Mark was yanking on the shotgun, trying to rip it free. His mask had been shunted around to the side of his face. His jaw and nose and one eye were exposed.

‘Run,’ he shouted again.

There was a blur of movement all around me. The decanter smashed. An armchair was shoved to one side. The torch beam whirled and dipped.

The others scrambled from the room, pushing and jostling, fleeing into the dark.

But I didn’t move. I couldn’t, somehow. I watched Mark wrench the shotgun free from Edward’s grip, then lift it high above his head. He was kneeling on top of Edward now. He was pinning him with his knees.

He paused and looked over at me. He held my gaze for several long seconds. Then he turned the shotgun in his hands and I saw the glint of the blued finish in the moonlight coming in through the arched windows, and he stabbed down hard and fast and mean.

I heard the awful crack of the stock hitting bone. Watched Mark raise the shotgun back up and pound it down again.

Edward’s body slackened, his arms splayed at his sides. He’d twisted to the left, turning at the hip, instinct telling him to fold himself into the foetal position.

Mark exhaled through his teeth and tossed the shotgun away across the room. He wiped his half-exposed mouth with the back of his wrist, contemplating the bloody mush he’d made of Edward’s face.

He looked at me again, his chest heaving, his breaths coming fast and shallow. I didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

He nodded at me, as if acknowledging some unspoken signal, then he sprang up on to his toes, swung back his right foot and kicked very hard at the base of Edward’s spine. There was a noise like someone stomping on a box of eggs. Mark’s foot ratcheted back again. He lashed out once more. The impact was fierce. It was uncompromising. Edward’s body rocked with the force. I heard a clogged whine trapped deep in his broken nose.

And still I didn’t move. I just watched as Mark kept kicking him, kept punching him, the portion of his face that I could see contorted into something savage and hateful, unknown to me before.

He kicked Edward multiple times. Many more than I could count. And he was just pausing for breath, fists raised, legs primed for another attack, when David rushed back into the room.

David must have sensed something of my blank-eyed wonder from the way I was swaying at the knees because he swore before he turned the beam on what Mark had done. He groaned feebly, a strange echo of the last sound Edward had made.

That’s when I heard the sirens, approaching fast from outside the front of the house. They were piercing in the whirling silence. Dissonant and strangely warped.

David jumped over Edward’s prone body and grabbed Mark by his backpack and yanked him away. He shoved him out of the room. Then he lurched for me and grasped my wrist and pushed me towards the door. I could see Mark running for the corridor leading to the pool room. I was just about to follow when I heard David shout out in alarm.

I turned. Edward had grabbed David by the leg of his jeans. There was a lot of blood in Edward’s eyes. I didn’t think he could see clearly. He seemed to be holding on by instinct.