Lurker (3 page)

It was Harry, but not her husband as she’d ever imagined him. He was on all fours, and trailing behind a number of other beings, the first attached to his rear by tiny hands, the rest fastened to the one in front in the same way, so that the whole formed a facsimile insect, wriggling down the tunnel like some hellish conga. Even though her husband shocked her with his grin, as the procession grew closer, those small figures in his wake frightened her more. Each was animated by whatever malevolent force Harry had clearly imbued them with, their half-formed legs pumping blindly and misshapen heads bobbing with idiot obedience.

They were all
dead babies
.

Meg awoke, crying and sweating. By the time she’d pulled herself free from a maelstrom of sheets, she could hardly remember what she’d imagined in her sleep. Something about that tunnel nearby, she thought…a long, shimmering entity emerging from its throat…But the more she attempted to chase the thoughts, the less coherent they grew, like a chunk of coal she was squeezing, which disintegrated in one hand.

She got up, dressed and then set about tidying her new home. She’d kept the place impeccably clean, but even so, she spent a good hour making sure everything was in its right place, with no dust or debris marring the new furniture, electric equipment, carpets and curtains…After lunch, she began preparing a meal for Harry’s return later in the evening. Her husband was fond of pasta and so she put together a lasagna from their well-stocked cupboards. Harry also liked trifle, and it was a simple task dissolving gelatine in hot water and then microwaving to get it hot enough to set. Midway through this process, however, something went wrong, with the microwave protesting about the new bowl she’d used to hold the jelly. After removing it, Meg realized it had a metal rim, that this had caused sparks to fly, which had even affected the glutinous liquid inside. She looked at this shimmering substance for a long time, imagining it much thicker and attached to—no, firmer than that—imagining it
constituting
a vicious creature that was yards long, crackling with organic power as it emerged from a pit, its multiple limbs scrabbling idiotically against mud and clay…

But then she put a stop to these thoughts. Too many half-baked impressions had gathered in her mind, demanding a coherent form she was unable to process right now. She simply pushed it all aside and continued with her dutiful chores.

After Harry had texted to say he’d be home at about seven p.m., Meg went back out into the garden, to catch what remained of the day’s sunlight. It was as chill as yesterday, but with an undeniable hint of rain in the air. Nevertheless, she was able to prune some wilting roses as well as prize more weeds from the soil. At about four o’clock, schoolchildren appeared, either walking home from today’s lessons or playing out before dark. Meg could see only the faces of four or five boys bobbing above the hedge that demarcated her land. To her irrepressibly fretful mind, this resembled a single, multi-headed entity lurking beyond the vegetation…but she was able to thrust this aside, too. With a sense of urgency perilously close to maternal, she hoped none of the children was in uniform, because the dirt they appeared to be throwing around would surely mar their clothing.

Despite their penchant for mud-slinging, at least the boys here, unlike their city-dwelling counterparts, seemed well-behaved. A little rowdy perhaps, but that was expected from a gender with elevated levels of testosterone. Her husband was similar, ever restless and always in need of some adventure. More recently, Meg had grown out of such desires, preferring simple acts like reading and gardening. She wondered whether this now rendered her and Harry fundamentally incompatible, whether they’d grown apart…but she suppressed these concerns, too, and then stepped around to the back garden.

There were manic handprints all over the cottage’s rear wall.

She saw them first at a distance, after returning her tools to the shed. There were about ten or fifteen, each stenciled onto the brick with indistinct pressure. She paced hurriedly forward, her heart a solid presence in her chest. Close up, she observed that all the prints were clustered around her bedroom window, behind which she’d slept the night. Many were underneath the sill, several alongside the uprights, and none above the lintel…But then Meg realized this was untrue. There
was
a print above the window—just one, a firmer handprint near the roof, inches below the building’s eaves.

The insubstantial nature of most of the prints had led Meg to assume that children with devilment in mind had committed this minor vandalism, their hands filthy from dirt fights. Some of the impressions of palms and fingers barely suggested much flesh at all, just strips of bone and tatters of skin. That was only an effect of the way the earth had failed to stick to the wall, of course, but what to make of the one at the top, surely far higher than any child could reach? Had this impish boy sat on a friend’s shoulders? He must have had a solid base to impose such a complete-looking print on the wall.

It was so big it could belong to an adult human.

4

When Harry eventually arrived home, an hour later than he’d promised and with no call to explain, Meg served up their meal and asked him why he seemed so tetchy.

This was certainly true. As soon as he’d entered the cottage, the atmosphere had assumed an edginess Meg was unable to ascribe to all she’d experienced these past few days. Her bad dream overnight was largely forgotten and she’d scrubbed off those weird prints from the back of the property before dark had encroached upon Sandsend. And so what else could this tension be but her husband’s sour mood?

It wasn’t detectable in anything he did; rather, in what he didn’t do. He hadn’t given her his usual hug; he hadn’t inquired about what she’d been up to today, let alone noticed improvements she’d made to their previously messy garden. The building had a security lamp that bathed the place in light whenever anyone stepped up close after a seasonably variable time. There was no way Harry could have failed to notice all the deadheading she’d done, not to mention the weeding.

But he’d said nothing much, just a brief hello before retreating to the bedroom and changing into night attire. Reappearing five minutes later, he’d looked a little less fraught, but it was only after pouring a few fingers of scotch from their drinks cabinet in the dining room and then settling in front of his favorite dish that he seemed relaxed enough to speak without potential friction.

During their marriage, Meg had often appealed to his appetites, first regular sexual advances, when they were young enough to be preoccupied by that, and later, as they moved inexorably toward middle age, with food and drink. Despite his up-and-down personality, he wasn’t a complex man; input always led reliably to output, like a semi-trained dog. She watched him devour his lasagna as if he’d worked up a hunger through physical activity, but how can that be when he simply ran an office?

It was only when he’d nearly finished his main course that Meg said anything other than, “Here you are,” and “Hope you enjoy it.” On this occasion, she asked, “Have you had a hard few days?”

“Oh, you know, just work,” he replied, after consuming a last mouthful of mince and tomato, and then licking sauce from his lips.

The lascivious way he stared made her feel uncomfortable, as if the scotch and food had enlivened him, leaving him eager for even more satiation. But it was too early for that…or perhaps Meg meant it was too late. At any rate, focusing on his words rather than how he’d delivered them, she went on.

“Are you still dealing with all those terrible redundancies? I imagine it’s difficult letting certain people go.”

When he responded, his eyes sparkled, as if this was the least of his anxieties right now. “Oh, no. Frankly, with a lot of them, it’s a case of good riddance to bad rubbish. They’ve never cut the mustard, to be honest, and our cost-cutting exercise has been a great opportunity to get shut.”

He made it sound like personnel were just baggage, sacks full of debris to be consigned to a tip. She imagined her husband mining deep in the business, scooping out bad materials and tossing them aside with gleeful abandon, as if the process gave him pleasure…Maybe it did, but that struck Meg as rather sadistic. Surely nothing was more important in life than people. Had seeing their child at peace in its hospital crib done nothing for his sense of perspective? It had changed her forever.

Later, when they were in the lounge and side-by-side on the couch, Meg tried to revive their conversation, as if trying to seek reassurance that their marriage still had energy and that their move out here, alone together on the coast, was unlikely to develop into an ill-advised disaster.

“Do you have any conferences or seminars to attend before Christmas?” she asked, hoping to settle her mind in advance of the festive period. The season was indelibly associated with children, and it would be the first to endure since
it
had happened. She’d need as much support as possible, and if that included Harry staying home as often as he could, was that such an unreasonable expectation?

But all her husband said was, “That reminds me. I’ve a bunch of expenses to reclaim from my trip to Edinburgh last month. There’s about two hundred quid to come.”

“Two hundred?” she asked, astonished at the sum, her suspicious mind running like a ground-penetrating drill. “How on earth did you manage to run up that much?”

He laughed, sipping more of the scotch—his fourth this evening; Meg had counted—and then switched over the TV with the remote control, settling on a movie with more noise than even their city lives had possessed. “Well, they’re not
all
genuine,” he explained, his eyes tracking a monster cavorting across the screen. “These things never are. It’s the way things work. Everybody knows it; everybody does it. It’s no big deal. Nobody cares.”

Except those losing their jobs
, she thought, recalling how her own stressful days in business had involved similar paper-based subterfuge. She’d never resorted to such tricks herself, however; she hadn’t seen the point. She’d always had everything she’d needed…well,
almost
everything.

Something stirred nearby, from outside their window maybe, but the bestial grunt she’d detected must have come from the TV, the sound thrown across the room by its stereo speakers. Indeed, if anyone had come prowling around the cottage—more of those mud-slinging boys perhaps, out later than children should be, even in such a relatively safe area—the motion-sensor lamp would be activated, lighting up the square of curtains. And there was nothing there, just the dimness of the room animated by flashes of Hollywood gunfire.

In the absence of further engagement from Harry, Meg turned to watch the film, which appeared to be concerned with an ancient creature roused from a pit during a moon-based mining operation. This feature was science fiction, the special effects convincing, but the beast was far less disturbing than what Meg felt she might entertain if she allowed herself to. All she needed was to push her mind a little further. She pictured hands at the ends of squirming tentacles, too many heads elevated high above a tenuous barrier…But then she put an end to such nonsense by declaring herself ready for sleep…or any rate, bed.

“I’ll come with you,” Harry replied, in the way he always had when eager for the kind of favors delivered in the late, unlit hours.

Once they were in bed together, Meg listened to the night at work beyond the curtained window. She wanted to discuss what had happened between them—maybe, in his own way, Harry was also grieving—but didn’t know how to begin. The move here had been planned as a fresh start, but she knew from experience that people carried more than possessions from one place to another. They took memories, too, each packed and placed in storage, in the hope none would escape to burden them further. But of course they always did; trying to have it any other way was destined for failure and possibly even corrosive horror.

She said, “Do you want to talk about it yet, Harry? About our…about our child?”

By this time, her husband had already shuffled onto her side, his breath stinking of whiskey. “No, not yet. I just need…physical attention. It’s the only thing that helps. Words are just words.”

Contrary to cliché-mongers and so many trite self-help guides, they’d made love more often since the tragic episode than before it. In their mid- to late-thirties, their sexual encounters had gone from once a week to once a fortnight and then to once a month maybe. But after that horrifying trip to the hospital one cruel spring night, their loving acts had, following a brief period of chastity on her part, returned to the frequency of their twenties, when they’d both been strong and—yes, it was true—very different people.

On this occasion, however, Meg felt less enamored of his obvious advances. She remained rigid in his arms, as if the scent of him, and not just the booze he’d consumed, was now distasteful to her. He smelled like earth, she thought—like the stuff she’d scraped from the side of the cottage and had yet to tell him about.

As he slid up her nightgown, she asked, “Are you still glad we moved out here, Harry?”

“It’s only been a few months.”

“Do you mean you might one day change your mind?”