Psychopathia: A Horror Suspense Novel (33 page)

He grunted again and turned to make himself a cup of tea. ‘Bad tooth, I guess.’

It was an automatic reaction to get up from the table and insist on having a closer look, but she forced herself to stay seated. She didn’t want to get that close to her brother.

‘Should I make a dentist appointment for you?’ His jaw was swollen on both sides. More than one bad tooth. Funny, he hadn’t complained of any dental issues.

Toby shook his head. ‘It’ll be fine in a little while.’ He poured hot water on a teabag.

‘But it must be pretty bad if your face is all swelled up like that.’

‘I said I don’t want to go to the dentist.’ He slammed the jug down on the counter and she jumped. ‘Mind your own business for once.’ In a moment, he was out of the room, and she heard his bedroom door slam.

It took several long minutes for her heart to stop jumping around in her chest. She bent over the magazine and took a few deep breaths. Toby was definitely not his old self, even without Matt’s startling information. Picking up her phone, she wondered if Lara was home yet. She scrolled through her contacts list and found Lara’ number, pressed call.

It rang for a long time before the voicemail kicked in, and Tully winced at the familiar voice.
You’ve reached me, now do what has to be done.

She had been going to hang up. ‘
Lara? It’s me. Tully. I know it’s been a while, but I really want to talk to you, okay? Call me back when you get this – please.’ She ended the call and sighed.

It was going to be cold outside. Not raining though, that was lucky. She pulled on her sturdiest boots, and wrapped a scarf around her neck before grabbing her warmest coat and hat. And gloves; her hands were already freezing, even shaking so much, they were cold. She took a deep breath and walked up to Toby’s door.

‘Hey Toby, I’m going to work now, okay? Call me if you need anything.’

There was a park over the road, rimmed with flax bushes and a few trees. Enough cover to hide in, anyway. Crossing the road, she walked down towards town a short way, then ducked in behind a mammoth flax bush, and checked that she could still see her house. She could. Now it was just a matter of waiting. She pulled her hat down further over her forehead, wishing it wasn’t quite so cold.

The gamble paid off. Toby came striding down the road half an hour later, wearing the greatcoat he’d bought himself at some stage. It made him look different, a pretend Toby. The Toby she knew dressed like a skater, this one, hunched inside his heavy coat…She shook her head. She barely recognised him. She didn’t recognise the hat on his head either. It certainly wasn’t the beanie he’d worn all last winter and the one before. This was a proper hat. She had no idea what it was called, but it reminded her of old movies with Humphrey Bogart or someone in them. Blinking, she stared at him.

He wasn’t strolling, either, but walking at a clipped pace, hands dug deep in pockets,
mouth pursed, whistling. Biting at her lip and not even knowing she was doing it, Tully stepped out of her hiding place and onto the path, turning in the same direction as her brother. She kept her head down, looking up every now and then to make sure he was still in sight, and followed him into what passed as a small town centre. When he stopped at one of the shops, she ducked into a doorway, heart pounding.

He came out, a packet of tobacco in his hand, and looked all around. Tully wondered what he was looking for. Not her, surely? No, of course not. As far as he knew, she was at work. He hadn’t seen her, she would swear to it.

Toby turned to his right and started walking again, Tully following along behind him, keeping back, almost losing sight of him a few times, but she thought she couldn’t be cautious enough. She and Toby had always had an uncanny knack of knowing when the other was near, she didn’t want that to kick in now.

But it was hard to keep track of him once he’d left town and struck out onto the residential roads. He turned once, suddenly, and looked straight at her. Blood thundering between her ears, she turned up the nearest path and made for the house as though she belonged there, hoping he wouldn’t recognise her in her nondescript black coat and hat. When she dared scuttle back down the path, he was gone.

Where? She stood on the street looking around in dismay. There were only a couple of houses, then the road dead-ended. Had he gone into one of the houses? She took a couple steps up the road, hands clenched, wondering what to do now.

There was no choice. She’d come this far, she had to keep looking. If she walked the rest of the road, she might see something, might see him through a window or something. Of course, he might see her too, but too bad. If he had a problem with that, she’d just say she was worried about him. Because he’d been acting so weird lately. Because he had been acting weird lately. That’s what this was all about. And she didn’t think it was just schizophrenic weird, either. She wished it was.

Two houses. That’s how many there were. Both of them showed blank faces to her, the rooms behind the glass dark. She turned in a circle, wondering where the hell he’d gone. There was nothing behind the houses except scrubby grassland and a smattering of trees. Sniffing, and feeling the dank chill wind its way under her collar, Tully stared out past the road.

There was a track there.
It was overgrown, and she walked toward it, looked closer. Some of the grass was bent, and in the soft soil, wet from the rain the day before, were a jumble of footprints. Someone had come this way, and more than once. Toby. It must be him.

Tully stepped over the puddle and followed the track, which climbed over a hill and dipped down again. She strained her ears for any hint that Toby was walking back down towards her. She wasn’t quite sure why, but she had a bad feeling about this, and didn’t want to meet Toby coming the other way. Stopping, she swallowed, and looked around. She could hear the wind in the trees, and in the distance, the grey harbour heaved back and forth. It would be better to step off the track. Walk parallel to it. She looked down at her feet, made a
decision, turned and pushed through the long grass, grimacing at it wrapped itself wetly around her wrists as though begging her to stay.

But she felt better when she was off the track. He’d probably see her anyway, even if she did drop to the ground when she heard him coming, but at least she wasn’t so exposed here.

The track led into the straggling edge of a forest, and she moved from one tree to the next, stepping over deadfall and hoping the twigs wouldn’t crack under her feet. A house loomed up out of the trees and she stopped dead, staring at it.

This was where Toby was, she was positive of it. What she didn’t know was why.

It was old, how old, she had no idea, and it didn’t matter. The roof was caved in over one half, but even so, she knew Toby was in there. He’d found himself somewhere private; all she wanted to know now, was why? Why did he need a dilapidated hideout? Why did he spend his days lurking out here in the dirt and gloom of this old place?

Her throat was dry and she wished she’d thought to bring something to drink. She couldn’t have eaten anything if she’d tried, her stomach was churning too much, but water would have been good.

There was no movement from the house, but Tully couldn’t shake the certainty that Toby was there anyway. Crouching, she moved around the building until she could see the door, then knelt down behind a tree to wait. This time, when Toby came out, she wasn’t going to follow him. She was going to wait until he was out of sight, and then she was going into the house, see if she could discover what he was doing in there.

A rustling in the undergrowth and Tully froze. She’d been sitting there for hours, the dampness seeping through every layer of clothing, and now she blinked, on edge, groggy, afraid to move. Had she fallen asleep? Was Toby still there?

A hedgehog wandered out from under a fern and sniffed at her boot before
strolling off across the grass towards the house. She watched it go for a moment, then moved her attention to the windows. Some of the glass was still intact, but she couldn’t make out anything behind it. Maybe if she’d spent half an hour scouring off the dirt first, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of watching, cramped and cold from behind the trees.

Toby appeared in the doorway, holding a jumble of items. Tully squinted at him, heart hammering. She pressed a hand to her breastbone, then moved it to cover her mouth when she realised what he had in his arms.

Clothes. And going from the colours, not men’s clothes. Definitely not Toby’s clothes. He walked around the side of the house and vanished and Tully crouched where she was, unmoving, her brain stuttering. Why was he holding clothes? Women’s clothes? Why was he carrying them into the bush?

She tried to stand up, and it hurt, her joints stiff with the cold. From tree to tree she moved,
cringing at every step, convinced she was making a racket, but the only thing she could hear was the mad rush of her own blood. She edged around until she could see the other side of the house, where Toby had gone, but there was no sign of him. He’d walked into the forest. Into the forest holding an armful of women’s clothing.

There were an infinity of dragging minutes
until he came back, and Tully’s mouth was flooded with the coppery tang of blood. She’d opened up her lip again.

His arms were empty. Toby brushed his hands together as she watched, then wiped them on his pants. He’d left off the heavy coat, but the hat was still perched on his head. She scuttled back into the undergrowth
like a frightened animal as he went back to the door of the house and inside.

More waiting, but Tully had no concept of
time anymore. She’d turned her phone off, afraid that it would ring, and Toby would hear, and she’d have her cover blown. A snort of humourless laughter. Cover blown. What did she think she was? Some sort of undercover agent? Blood suffused her cheeks; there wasn’t anyone around, but she was still embarrassed at herself.

‘Fuck,’ she whispered, barely more than a breath. This was serious.
It was no time to be worrying about how she was presenting herself to the world.

Toby ducked out of the doorway, turned, and tugged a warped door most of the way closed. He was whistling, and even from a distance, Tully could see the smug satisfaction on his face. It made her blood run cold, turn to ice in her veins, and she didn’t blink until he was out of sight back down the track towards town.

She counted to five hundred before she got up, knees cracking and making her wince at the noise. The house wavered, far away, spots in front of her eyes, and for a moment, she thought she was going to faint, a hand pressed against the wet trunk of a tree holding her up. She moved before her vision cleared and it was only a few steps to the door, and the damp scent of the earth was replaced with rot and mildew.

The door
scraped across the floor when she pushed it open, and she stepped into a dim kitchen, faded linoleum cracked and buckled under her feet. There was a chair in the middle of the room, and an old saucer, with three cigarette butts on it. She wrinkled her nose, but it wasn’t cigarette smoke she could smell now over the mould. It was something else. What, she didn’t know, but it clogged in her throat like a physical thing, coating her mouth. She wanted to spit.

She searched the house, but t
he kitchen was the only room Toby had used. Frowning, Tully looked around it. The other rooms were untouched, dust and grime coating the floor, no footsteps marring the decay. Besides, that smell was stronger in the kitchen. She opened the pantry door, and discovered it wasn’t a pantry. It was also dark, steps leading down into the ground.

Whatever was down there, it was the source of the smell. Her stomach twisted, threatened to upend itself, and she covered her mouth and nose with a gloved hand, staring down into the dark. There was a lantern on a shelf, and when she picked it up something sloshed inside it. She’d seen these before, in antique shops, the odd junk shop, and she picked up the box of matches on the shelf next to it and lit one, holding it to the wick. In a moment,
she had enough light to see down the steps, and shadows waved at her from the bottom. Something wet touched her face, and she wiped it away, only to realise it was a tear.

She didn’t want to go down the steps. Really, she wanted to turn around, put out the light, and retrace her steps, back to the road, back to town, back to the small house she rented, to the safety of her own bedroom where she could pull the covers over her head and if she never smelled blood again it would be too soon.

The floor was red. There were Rorschach patterns over the walls. Violent, vibrant smears of a red too vivid to be anything but…

Blood. Something tightened Tully’s throat so that her breath whistled in and out, hitched in her chest, and she pressed a hand to her throat, to her mouth, to her chest, bursting for a breath, and she clawed at the air, opening her mouth wide, straining for
one last breath before she passed out.

It would have been a mercy to pass out. To collapse in an untidy heap, just an empty pile of clothing, a coat, scarf, hat and gloves, to not have to see any of this anymore, standing there, shaky limbs, stuttering heart, eyes so wide, so
horrified.

But the darkness was a half-drawn blind, tint
ed red with a bloody sunset, and it wouldn’t come any further, and she caught at a breath, gulped it in, hesitated over a scream, then clamped a gloved hand over her mouth and the cry, when it came, was a muffled howl, tapering off into a whimper, and then she was moving, running, stumbling up the steps, lantern in her hand, the wildly swinging light making the walls move, the bloody streaks reaching for her, grasping at her and then she was in the kitchen, the lantern was on the counter, where it wobbled a moment, steadied, and she was out the door, on her knees in the dirt, sobbing, face wet with wild tears.