Moonlight (17 page)

The female was at the window, the one Winnie had recently cleaned. The tip of her nose was pressed against it as she screamed through the glass at Winnie.
“Let us in! You must let us in!”

With her hands over her ears, Wi
nnie made her way to the window.
She quickly made sure it was locked,
then
pulled
the curtains shut over the beautiful white face that glared in at her.

“Thaddeus!”
Winnie screamed until her throat felt raw
. T
he sound of her cries seemed to excite those outside, as they began banging on the windows.

“Let us in!”
they screeched.

The lounge was now in darkness as Winnie tripped and stumbled towards the hallway. The little voice inside of her was scr
eaming for her to get help.
F
rom where?
Winnie knew she was miles from anywhere, and the only person who did know she was in the house was Thaddeus.

Do you have any family?
She heard Thaddeus whisper in her ear, as she thought of their first meeting and
how he had questioned her. T
he
sudden realisation that perhaps he had somehow deceived her
,
made Winnie want to vomit. Doubting that she could rely on Thaddeus to come and save her, she desperately tried to think of how she was going to get away from those who screeched and bang
ed on the windows outside. E
ven if Thaddeus could somehow know the danger she was now in, he was hundreds of miles away in London.

My publisher telephoned this morning
...Winnie heard him say.

“Tel
ephone!”
Winnie cried out. S
he couldn’t remember seeing one anywhere si
nce arriving at the house. T
here must be one, Winnie’s frantic mind tried to reason. She hadn’t noticed Thaddeus in possession of a mobile phone, eithe
r. T
here must be a phone somewhere – how did he take the call from his publisher?

In the dark, and with the sound of the strangers outside banging against the door and the windows, Winnie raced into the dining room. With her hands outstretched before her, she searched for a telephone in the dark. With her heart slamming in her chest, and fighting hard to draw breath, she went back to the hall and climbed the stairs, passing the pictures that sat silently staring at each other. Winnie staggered along the landing, trying the handle of
each door that she passed. A
ll of them were locked. Then from above she heard a scratching noise, as if those people had somehow managed to climb up the side of the house and were now scrambling across the roof. Winnie shoulder-barged into each of the locked doors until the pain in her arm became too much too bear.

With the sound of scratching and clawing from above, Winnie raced along the landing to her room. Pushing open the door, she fell onto the floor in a heap. She cried out. Then the banging came again, and she looked up to see the female, Michelle, perched on the window ledge just outside her room. With her thick, blue hair billowing out behind her like a fan, Michelle tapped on the window with a set of long, black fingernails.

“Invite me in,” she whispered against the window.
“Go on, you know you want to.”

“Leave me alone!” Winnie cried out, dragging herself to her feet and pulling the curtains shut.

Even though Winnie could no longer see her, she knew the woman was still there. Winnie knew they were all out there by the sounds of their tapping against the window, and the noise of them scrambling overhead. On her hands and knees, Winnie crawled over to her bed, where she pulled herself up onto it. As if to make
herself
as small as possible, Winnie drew her knees up to her chest. She pulled the hood of the coat over her head, and shut her eyes. Rocking slowly back and forth, she tried to block out the sounds of those strangers with the pale faces knocking at the window,
screaming to be invited in.

Winnie had no idea how long she lay in the dark, trying to block out the sounds of those strangers
outside
. With her eyes shut tight, and cradling herself in the foetal position on the bed, Winnie prayed for them to go away. How had they got up to her bedroom window? How could they possibly be scampering over the roof? Perhaps t
hey had climbed up the wild iv
y that covered the front of the house? She tried to reason with herself, but the little voice i
nside of her doubted that. J
ust like everything else in life that seemed inexplicable, people always tried to find an explanation.

A
nd when would Thaddeus be back? S
he wanted him to return. In her head, fused with the screeching and banging coming from outside in the dark, Winnie could hear Nate’s voice. She remembered him screeching that ‘HE’ had murdered Frances. Was ‘HE’ Thaddeus? She feared it to be true
. T
haddeus had told her Frances had died almost a year ago of cancer. If
Frances truly had died that way
, why, then, had Nate been screaming that he would not rest until h
e had avenged her death? A
s sh
e rocked back and forth in fear, i
t was only then, as she fought to try and make sense of everything she had seen and heard, that she realised the tapping at the windows and scrambling sounds from above had stopped.

Winnie lay dead still. She dared not to even blink. Perhaps they had gone away – given up, realising that she would never let them in. With her eyes still closed, she listened for the slightest sound, the smallest of movements, but all she could hear was the sound of her heart racing and the wind blowing about the eaves. Again, she did not know how long she stayed there like that, focusing on the slightest creak, on the whispering of the leaves of the trees outside as they rustled in the wind. Eventually, believing that perhaps they had indeed gone – for now at least – Winnie pulled the hood from over her head, opened her eyes, and peered into the darkness of her room. Slices of moonlight shone from around the edges of the curtains covering her window, and she could just make out the shape of the dressing table and closets in the corner. Taking small, shallow breaths, Winnie climbed from her bed. She stood like a statue in the middle of her room, again listening for the slightest of sounds. When she was satisfied that she couldn’t hear the strangers, she crept slowly towards the window.

With her body shaking and trembling
, Winnie slowly reached out and gripped the edge of the curtain. She waited, making sure that she couldn’t hear them, but th
e only noise came from
the groaning
wind outside. Then, very slowly, Winnie peeled back the edge of the curtain, like a nurse carefully removing the dressing from an infected wound. With her eye pressed close to the gap she had made, she peered out into the night. The moon shone high above her, casting its milky-blue rays over everything in its sight. Winnie dared to glance down, and then left and
right, but she couldn’t see any sign of the strangers. She let the curtain fall slowly back into place.

Standing alone in the middle of her room, the temptation to bolt down the stairs, throw open the door, and run for
her life was overwhelming. D
are she risk it? Her scrambled mind tried to reason this. What if they were still out there? Winnie knew she was miles from town, from the nearest house – from anyone who might be able to help her. Wouldn’t it be safer to stay locked in the house? They couldn’t get in or they already wou
ld have, she told herself. W
as she really going to wait for Thaddeus to arrive home? The little voice in her spoke up. What if he was a part of all of this somehow? What if he really had murdered Frances? Then she thought of the bedroom Thaddeus had discovered her in, the room with the sewing machine, the narrow bed, and the boarded-up windows. Why had he boarded them over? Was Frances’s body hidden in there somewhere, perhaps beneath the bed, bloated, and being eaten by maggots?

With that terrifying image seesawing before her, Winnie raced across her room and yanked open the door, just wanting to be free of the house – of Thaddeus.  Almost blind with fear and the darkness on the landing outside her room, Winnie ran towards the top of the wide staircase. Her legs felt like she was wading through the sea aga
in.
Each step slow and sluggish.
Winnie stumbled past the room with the boarded-up windows, and the sight of those photographs of the ancient lady flashed before her mind.

“...was she your grandmother?”
she heard herself ask Thaddeus.

“...yes,”
he had smiled at her.

And as Winnie stared at the door, the sound of her breathing now more like a shallow rasp as her chest rose up and down, she remembered the n
ight she had first met Thaddeus. H
e had said he didn’t have any family. Thaddeus had told her he was all alone.

But not anymore
, the little voice inside Winnie was now screaming.

“
Thaddeus isn’t alone anymore, Winnie, because he has you
,” the little voice said. T
his time the little voice didn’t sound as if it had come from within her...but behind her.

With her eyes wide open with fear, Winnie slowly turned her head and looked back into the darkness behind her. She had left her door open and a stream of moonlight poured out onto the landing. With arms and legs shaking beyond control, and streams of tears running the length of her face, Winnie looked at the little girl standing in the moonlight. Her red coat almost glistened as much as the stream of vomit, which snaked from the corner of her mouth.

“Ruby?”
Winnie sobbed.

“Why haven’t you been listening to me?” Ruby whispered. “I’ve been trying to tell you that you are in danger. Why haven’t you been listening to that little voice inside of you?”

“But you died...” Winnie choked on her tears, feeling as if she were going to suffocate. “You shouldn’t be here...”

“Run! Run! RUN!”
the little girl standing in the moonlight screamed at Winnie. 

Spinning around, Winnie did what she had always done, and ran. At the top of the stairs, Winnie looked back over her shoulder, but there was no sign of the pool of moonlight, or her friend, Ruby Little. Feeling as if she were somehow going insane, Winnie turned and raced down the stairs and into the hallway. In her fear and desperation to get away, she threw open the front door and screamed.

“Please invite us in,” Nate grinned, his mouth stretching across his face.

Winnie slammed the door shut with such force, it rattled in its frame. She pressed her back against it.  At once, the strangers outside began to pound against the door with their fists
. T
here was another sound, too, which Winnie could now hear. It sounded like claws being dragged down the windowpane in the lounge. It was ear-splitting and Winnie threw her hands over her ears.

“Leave me alone!”
she scream
ed,
hot tears blinding her
.

The desperation and sheer terror in her voice excited the strangers outside, and they threw themselves against the door. Winnie rocked forward under the weight of them crashing against
it
. 

“This could all be over,
” one of them hissed
, “
You know what you have to do.”

“Never!”
Winnie sobbed, crawling away from the door on her stomach, sliding like a snake into the lounge. Looking up, she could see the silhouette of one them dragging their fingernails down the length of the window.

“Please,” the silhouette hissed.

Winnie recognised the voice to be that of the woman, Michelle.

When Michelle got no answer from Winnie, she began to tap lightly on the glass, as if teasing her somehow. “It’s not you we want,” Michelle
said from outside, her voice sounding softer now. “We just want Thaddeus.”

“He’s not here,” Winnie cried out.

“You lie!”
came
the voice of Nate from behind the front door.
“And I will
burn
you for it.”

“
He’s not here!”
Winnie screamed.

“
Let us
take a look for
ourselves.” T
his time it was the voice of Claude she could hear, as if coming from above her – the roof, perhaps.

“No,” Winnie sobbed into the balls of her hands. “No, I can’t let you in.”

“Yes, you can,” Michelle said, her voice soothing now, like an older sister trying to offer some understanding and comfort. “We won’t hurt you. It’s Thaddeus we want.”

With the sound of Michelle’s fingernails tapping against the window quickening, and the banging on the door growing louder again, Winnie felt as if she were being mentally tortured. She felt as if her
mind was being chipped away at, a
nd bit by bit, her resolve, her strength to defy the strangers outside was being broken down.