Psychopathia: A Horror Suspense Novel (32 page)

Which left the boy. Matt. He of the wonderful blue-grey eyes fringed in those long dark lashes. How he’d enjoy that one bucking under him as he played the knife across his skin. How he’d love putting his mouth to the pierced skin on belly, shoulder, thigh. His eyes closed and he groaned, just thinking about it.

Something tickled at the back of his mind, and he raised his eyebrows, going after the sensation. It was the boy. Toby. He poked at him, enjoying the sense of the boy cringing away, not that the kid had any idea what was going on. He was trapped in Tobias’ memories, and not the good ones either. Oh no, not the good ones at all. Smiling, he shoved Toby back into the icy bath water.

Tully couldn’t sleep. Even in the darkness, her eyes were wide open, staring up at the ceiling, watching the shadows from the window waver back and forth. Her fingers plucked at the blanket, but she didn’t even notice she was doing it.

The fact was, she was scared. Not because her brother was schizophrenic – she’d done enough reading on the subject, and spoken to the doctor enough to know that it was an illness that could be dealt with, that the majority of schizophrenics weren’t violent, and could function well if they took their meds, and had a lot of support.

Toby had support. He had his mental health support team, his doctors and social workers, and he had her. His sister. Everything should have been fine. They were getting through it. He had been well enough to get discharged from the hospital, and that was good. Excellent.

So why was she so worried? Blinking, she stared at the ceiling some more and rephrased that.

‘Why am I so frightened?’ she asked instead.

Because she was afraid. And talking to Matt today hadn’t helped, but made it worse. She shook her head. Toby wasn’t gay – wasn’t even bisexual. He liked girls, even if he hadn’t been seeing anyone when he got sick.
His last girlfriend had been nice, and even when they broke up, she hadn’t had anything that bad to say about Toby, except that he was a bit moody and hard to reach sometimes. And smoked too much. But a bit of pot didn’t give you schizophrenia, and schizophrenia didn’t change your sexual orientation.

Rolling over onto her side, she hugged her pillow and tried to listen for movement in the room beside hers. Nothing, but she didn’t expect to hear anything. Toby often got up and paced around the house at night, sometimes even went out, but she’d been listening hard, and could swear his bedroom door had stayed closed with him on the inside. She sucked in a long breath that smelled of pillow and sheet and closed her eyes tight. She had to get over this dreadful feeling that something was wrong. Something was wrong other than her brother was sick.

And what had been the deal tonight when he’d got home absolutely soaking wet? It was like he’d been for a swim with his clothes on or something. Ridiculous. Toby would hardly go for a late night surf in his clothes in the middle of winter.

He’d smelled funny too. She lay in the bed and thought about it, trying to place the scent, but even as she chased it around her head, she couldn’t think what it was. It had been dank, metallic almost. Just where had he been?

Tully watched the dawn seep in between the curtains and got out of bed, shivering as her bare feet touched the floorboards. She felt around for her thick socks and pulled them on. She’d make a cup of tea, though that would be no cure for her gritty eyes. All night she’d lain in bed, maybe dozing, but it didn’t feel like it.

There was a creaking from outside her room, and she froze, eyes wide in the gloom. What was that? She sat rigid on the bed, dressing gown half around her, but the noise wasn’t repeated. Toby couldn’t be up and going out again already? He usually slept in late, in fact, it seemed like the only time he did sleep was the early morning.

But the noise had spooked her, and she pressed her lips together. All she needed was another appearance by the spirit that had haunted them before Toby got sick. They should never have gone up to the asylum that night. All their troubles stemmed from that night.

Except that wasn’t true. Doctor Stebbins had helped her see that Toby’s symptoms had come on slow over the months before the night she’d been forced to call the emergency mental health team. Still, to her it seemed like it had been one bad thing after another since that night something – a spirit – had chased them from the woods in the ground of the asylum.

Asylum. Tully opened her door as slow as possible, trying not to make any noise. The house was still, and she tiptoed over to Toby’s bedroom door, pressing her ear against it, trying to hear over the thumping of her own heart.

He was snoring, and she leaned her forehead against the wood, letting out a long, slow breath in relief. After a moment, she turned and made for the kitchen, her thoughts hopping back onto their loop. Toby. Toby. Toby.

And the asylum. Was there any link there? They’d gone ghost hunting in the grounds of an old asylum, actually managed to bring a spirit back with them, attached to them, and then Toby got sick, ended up in a psychiatric hospital. Which was what they called mental asylums, these days.

She shook her head and checked there was water in the jug, switched it on. No. It was too far-fetched. And the doctor had made it obvious the signs were there in Toby before the night at Seacliff. It wasn’t possible.

What wasn’t possible? What was she actually thinking? The spirit had been banished. It had passed over, gone to the light, moved on, whatever you wanted to call it. What was she thinking?

The jug boiled, and Tully realised she’d been standing at the kitchen counter staring into an empty cup. She reached for the teabags and fumbled one out of the box. What was she thinking?

Nothing. Shaking her head. She wasn’t thinking anything. It was absurd. Nonsense. Things like that didn’t happen. Things like what? Nothing. Things like nothing at all.

It was half past eight. By the time she was washed and dressed, it might not be too early. Quickly, she dumped the teabag in the mug and poured hot water over it. She took the mug with her back to the bathroom and turned the shower on, hoping it wouldn’t wake Toby.

Or Tobias, as he liked to be called now.

She washed her hair on auto-pilot, soaped herself down, rinsed off, and got out of the shower with no memory of it. Her thoughts were elsewhere. Padding down the hallway to her room, mug of tea in her hand, she stopped again at Toby’s door. He was still snoring. Good. Maybe if she was quick, she could be out and back before he woke up.

Wishing that Matt was still here, that she still shared a house with him and Lara, Tully got dressed, not paying any attention to the clothes she threw on. It would feel better not to be alone in the house with Toby.

Her thoughts ping-ponged around her head. She was being silly. Worse – she was the crazy one now. Toby was her brother, for god’s sake. What was she thinking? How could she be scared of him, when he’d been with her through everything since before they were even born?

She pulled the front door closed, clutching the car keys in one hand, her phone in the other. She’d already looked up the address –it hadn’t been hard to find, the names were hardly common ones. But that was all she’d done, deciding not to call ahead, but to just turn up instead. Just in case they didn’t want to talk to her. It was harder to get rid of someone standing on your front doorstep than it was to hang up the phone on her.

The heater in the car was broken, and shivering and distracted, she almost hit another car turning out onto the main road. Foot slammed on the brake, she sat there at the intersection, trying to remember how to breathe. Something about in and out. The traffic cleared and she made the turn.

She hit the morning traffic rush, heading into the city for another day of earning a crust. At least it wasn’t raining. Tully found herself longing for the summer again, for those few weeks they’d had at the cabin on the estuary, when everything had been good.

Her handbag warbled. Groping for her phone, she kept her eyes on the red light, wondering who could possibly be calling her. Toby? Was he up, wondering where she was? She’d never been out before while he was at home. Maybe he needed her.

She knew even before she looked at the screen on her phone that it wouldn’t be her brother. Toby barely noticed her existence these days, he wouldn’t do anything close to freak out if he got up and she wasn’t home, and she was kidding herself if she thought otherwise.

It was Matt. She touched the screen and held the phone to her ear, hoping there weren’t any cops watching.

‘Matt, what is it?’

His voice was strained. ‘Tully, have you seen
Lara?’

Tully blinked out at the snake of cars waiting at the light. ‘What?’

‘
Lara. Have you seen her? She didn’t come home last night.’

Little furrows dug themselves between Tully’s brows. ‘Matt, I haven’t seen
Lara for over six months. What’s going on?’

She could hear Matt drawing in a deep breath. ‘I don’t know. It’s just that she’s not here.’

‘Maybe she stayed at a friend’s place?’

‘I’ve called all her friends. She went out yesterday to do some shopping – she was supposed to bring home some groceries, but she never came home at all.’ He was pacing back and forth, Tully could hear his steps.

Her teeth went to worry at her lip and the light changed. ‘Look, I’m driving at the moment, and I don’t have my hands free. Can I call you back?’

‘No,’ Matt sighed. ‘It’s all right. Just…just can you ask Toby if he’s seen her?’

Tully stared one-handed. ‘Toby? Why? I don’t understand.’

‘Nor do
I. It’s just a feeling, okay?’

Pulling out of the traffic to the side of the road, Tully sat with the phone pressed to her ear. ‘No, it’s not okay. Tell me what you mean.’

‘Look, I don’t know, all right? It’s just that Toby was acting weird the other day, and Lara was really put out that he didn’t seem interested in her.’ A deep breath. ‘Oh Christ, that he was interested in me, is what I really mean.’

‘But Toby’s at home in bed. He’s asleep. What are you suggesting?’

‘Nothing. I’m not suggesting anything. I just think that Lara might have been keen to catch up with him yesterday.’ A pause. ‘You know how she is if she doesn’t get the attention she thinks she deserves. And Toby was out yesterday.’

Tully’s
head swam. ‘But even if they did meet up when they were out, that doesn’t mean he has anything to do with why she’s not home. I mean, he is. He’s at home. They didn’t run off together.’

There was silence on the other end. ‘Tully, there’s something creepy about Toby.
The way he was looking at me was weird enough, but whenever he turned his eyes on Lara, there was something in his look – I don’t know. Like a predator looks at their food. Shit, he doesn’t even want to be called Toby anymore. He might have talked Lara into doing something stupid, I don’t know.’

‘Stupid? Like what? You mean killing herself?’

‘No, no I don’t mean that. Lara would never kill herself, not in a million years. Fuck, I don’t know what I mean. It’s just if he saw her yesterday, he might know where she was going. That’s all. Forget I said anything else.’

She was chewing on a fingernail. ‘You think he’s done something to her, don’t you?’

The silence stretched out before Matt finally answered. ‘No. I’m just really confused. Anyway, I gotta go. She might be trying to call.’

The call went dead and Tully sat in the car staring through the window and not seeing a thing. Matt hadn’t made any sense. What had he been thinking – that Toby would do something to
Lara? Something like what?

It was impossible. Outrageous. Matt was deranged. First he said that Toby had come on to him, and now it was that Toby was involved in
Lara’ disappearance. Except it wasn’t even a disappearance yet, she just hadn’t come home. She could be anywhere, doing anything, doing any
one.

Tully leaned her head against the steering wheel and wondered what she was doing. Insane. It was all insane. Her hand went to the gear stick and hesitated. Should she just go home? She should. What she’d been thinking was insane.

Shaking her head, Tully turned the car around and headed home. It was stupid to leap to insane conclusions. You had to have evidence. That was what she was lacking – hard evidence.

The house was as she left it, dark and quiet. If Toby – or Tobias – followed his usual habit, he wouldn’t be up until early afternoon. She made her decision as she put her key in the lock and let herself quietly into the house.

She was sitting at the kitchen table, flipping through a magazine, when he finally made an appearance. Looking at him, she hoped her smile wasn’t as shaky as it felt.

‘Morning,’ she said, though it was afternoon.

‘Aren’t you working today?’

‘Yeah, I am. Starting a bit later though.’ She made a production of checking the time on her phone. ‘In an hour.’

Toby grunted, and pressed a hand against his jaw, wincing.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, tilting her head to look at his face. ‘Your jaw is all swollen.’