Singled Out (13 page)

Booked in: Woman-power horror from author Cass Leigh. Don’t we all sometimes want to do just what the heroine did to her unfaithful lover in
Nocturnally Yours?
It’s just a pity she had to die before she took her revenge!’

Surprise! Magazine

I stood in thick, tangible, muffling darkness, but far away at the end of the corridor a half-open door spilled a beckoning buttery pool of light on to the stone flags.

Half-open: or half-shut?

But sanctuary whichever it was, and my only hope of escape, though even as I started to run towards it I knew what would happen: every step forward instead sent me tumbling backwards like an acrobat into the waiting darkness.

Neat, slow and triangular, the somersaults always finished with an agile twist landing me face to face with the other door. The dark door. The door I really
didn’t
want to open.

This time was no different, and I stood helpless as my shaking hand was drawn inexorably to the handle, the bones lit from inside the skin like an X-ray.

Some dark, rancid fluid began to gather and ooze from the keyhole, dripping with echoing loudness on to the stone flags before reaching a viscous tentacle towards my bare feet …

‘Cassandra!’ shrilled a voice. ‘Cassandra!’

The octopus tentacle of filth jerked galvanically then started to retract – and suddenly I was free, cartwheeling away, round and dizzyingly round, until I finally fell into a gasping heap and opened my eyes to the safe, warm, golden light.

A light bearing a striking resemblance to my bedside light: a happy glass sun with a smiley face.

Another face hovered over me, equally fair but far from sunny, and so incongruous that I knew I must still be asleep.

‘Jane?’ I muttered. ‘Were you in the cupboard? Scary!’

But sort of a relief too, because Jane’s a monster I can deal with. Turning over, I let my heavy eyelids close, the worst past, the demons all let out.

A skeletal hand banded with gold shook my shoulder.

‘Ouch!’ I screwed my eyes tighter shut. ‘Go away, Jane. You can’t frighten me, now I know it’s only you in the cupboard.’

‘Will you wake up, Cassandra?’ Jane snapped, and with a click the room was illuminated by the bright ceiling light.

‘Jane?’

My sister hovered over me, her fair Madonna face distorted by a weasel snarl of exasperation unfamiliar to her many admirers, including probably her husband. I recognised it, though.

‘What on earth are you doing here?’ I sat up, feeling disorientated. ‘And how did you get in?’

‘If you
will
leave the spare key in such an obvious hiding place,’ she said scathingly. ‘I did ring, but obviously you were asleep. You seemed to be having a bad dream.’

‘I was somersaulting backwards.’

‘Still? I thought you’d have grown out of all that by now. Lots of children get put in cupboards for being naughty and they don’t grow up warped. Get over it.’

‘I thought
you
were the awful thing in the cupboard.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Maybe you really are, and this is still part of the bad dream?’ I suggested hopefully, closing and opening my eyes. But no, unfortunately she was still there, Fair, but set for Squally Weather. ‘What
are
you doing here?’

‘There wasn’t anywhere else,’ she said simply, and with a sinking feeling I noticed a suitcase big enough to hold three bodies parked by the door.

… slowly she bent and undid the heavy metal clasps securing the huge trunk, the dust of centuries thick and soft under her fingertips.

Yet something living and desperate bumped and whimpered against the lid, with the imperative, irresistible cries of a small child.

*   *   *

Needless to say, my sleep was even more disturbed after that, and I got up late and bleary-eyed.

There was no sign of Jane other than a beige cashmere coat tossed on to a chair, and a pale pink pashmina, neatly folded, on the window seat. I threw them both behind the sofa (out of sight, out of mind) and hoped that they, and Jane with them, would magically vanish all on their own.

I had lots of post. This little row of houses is out on a limb – literally a dead end, the occupants of the graveyard not receiving much in the way of snail mail – so the postman frequently doesn’t bother to deliver our letters for two or three days. Then we get a bundle, wadded together with elastic bands.

I opened the one with the foreign stamp first. It looked more exciting than the gas bill, but it wasn’t really, since it was just from my brother Jamie.

Dear Sis

Hope you liked the little present I sent you from out East.

We are still here on manoeuvres. Boz and Foxy and me went on shore yesterday and got absolutely slewed, and Boz fell in the harbour, which believe me is not the healthiest water around here to fall in! Hope his hepatitis shots are up to date. (Ha! ha!)

Had a message from Pa the other day. I knew he’d come round eventually after I got the chaplain to tell him I wasn’t a harlot! He’s saying Jane’s going to burn in hell now, so the poor old thing’s definitely losing his marbles. We all know
you’re
the one lined up for the eternal fire. Pa said your feller’s wife finally shuffled off too, but even marriage to the adulterer wouldn’t keep you from the fiery pit. Still, maybe when you’re a respectable married woman they’ll come round a bit.

Boz just came into a bit of money, and he says we could leave the navy early and set up a chicken farm, because at least there’s no Mad Chicken disease, so everyone will buy poultry. Foxy says geese would be better – I don’t know why. Still, might give it a go before too long!

See you next leave,

xxx Jamie.

I do not fancy the chances of a poultry farm run by the likes of Boz, Foxy and Jamie, because intellectually the chickens will run rings around them.

Still, at least Jamie’s letter explained that battered parcel I had with the pink silk Chinese slippers. Trust my brother Jamie to get the size wrong
and
I hate pink.

Fortunately, Alice’s Alternative Clothes Emporium in town, where. I purchase most of my rather alternative clothing, had some very similar green ones in stock in my size, and took mine in part exchange.

I don’t suppose Jamie will notice the change of colour when he pays one of his flying visits on his way up to make a duty call on Ma and Pa.

You wouldn’t think from his letter that he was an officer in the navy, although he’s never going to get to the top of the naval tree like George, who not only has a brain but is also deadly serious. He’s something in the Admiralty now, married to the runt of a titled family, while Jamie is eternally mentally fifteen.

I suppose it did help that George was sort of semi-adopted by a rich relative when he was eight, because he had all the right connections when he needed them.

I have four brothers. George is the oldest, then Jamie, Francis and Edward. The sea and the church are in the family blood, which probably accounts for George and Jamie’s interest in the navy. Eddie, too, ran away to sea at sixteen, and was next heard of via a postcard from Jamaica, which explains his long-standing ganja habit, although he is a New Age traveller now.

None of them have embraced religion, probably due to seeing Pa take it to extremes. He might have gone a long way if it hadn’t been for the brandy and going off at a tangent, since he is exceedingly charismatic when sober. Come to that, he’s pretty compelling even when not sober, in a hell and damnation sort of way.

Pa went to the USA as a young man, thinking he was some sort of reverse Billy Graham; but instead he converted to the Charismatic Church of God sect and brought that back here, eventually setting up his little community in Scotland. Several American members of the sect joined him there, all, strangely enough, wealthy widows.

I don’t know where he picked the brandy habit up, or how he squares that with his God, since he is very strongly against all alcohol in his preaching. In the family, if referred to at all, it was as ‘Pa’s medicine’, so clearly it conveniently transmutes in his mind into something other than spirits.

Francis and I are both sports, I suppose: he climbs things, and has a little shop up in the Highlands that stocks the sort of serious stuff climbers need, and indeed is usually full of craggy, weathered, serious climbers, some wearing plaster casts. He is generally in mild favour with Pa, since they rarely see him and so have not sussed that his climbing and business partner, Robbie, is female.

Eddie and Francis are my favourite brothers, even if they did think up most of the pranks that got us into trouble when we were children, mostly because Jane always snitched on us.

Eddie is Ma’s favourite too, and probably the only thing Ma’s ever stood up to Pa about in all their marriage. She believes he was called to his wandering way of life because he is touched by God.

Frankly, between you and me, Eddie is just touched. He’s as cracked as Pa in his own way, like a pleasantly glazed old piece of pot.

When Pa made it clear that my relationship with Max would mean eviction from the family circle (as well as eternal damnation) I thought: ‘Big deal, I never felt I was in it anyway,’ though I suppose the hope of one day winning their respect, if not love, never quite died.

But the boys all keep in contact like nothing ever happened, and pop in to see me if they can, except George: his idea of keeping in touch with anyone, including family, not useful to his career or social life, is to send an annual pre-printed Christmas card.

There was a postcard of the Cairngorms hidden underneath Jamie’s letter. It read:

Dear Sis,

Am on Channel 5 programme Friday at 6.45: ‘Impossible Climbs’,

Love, Francis

Friday was today.

I’d just set a video to record it in case I forgot later, when Jane wandered in yawning, with her golden hair falling becomingly over her silk-clad shoulders. Mine felt like a bird’s nest, and though the balding violet chenille robe I was wearing was a much-mended favourite, it could hardly be described as flattering.

Still, I learned the lesson when very young that there is no point in competing with Jane, because the race is fixed: angelic blue-eyed blondes win every time.

Just call me Maggie Tulliver. Now
there
was a girl with a dark side!

‘Post? Anything for me?’ she asked, pouring a cup of coffee and reaching for my pile of letters.

‘How on earth would anyone know you were here?’ I pointed out, snatching them back, but not before she’d got hold of Jamie’s epistle.

‘How come you got a present, when he hardly ever writes even a postcard to me?’ she complained indignantly.

‘Because he doesn’t like you, Jane. None of the boys like you, you’re a snitch. When we were little you told on us all the time just to make yourself look good and you’ve never stopped. How else would Ma and Pa know already about Max’s wife? You’re a little sneak and
I
don’t like you either.’

‘George’s wife likes me,’ she pointed out complacently. ‘Philadelphia often invites me to stay.’

‘Phily’s a genetic mutation, that’s why she ended up marrying George. He was the only one desperate enough to propose to her.’

‘She does look a bit inbred. Just as well they never had any children, or they might have had to keep them in London Z— ‘she broke off suddenly, staring down at Jamie’s letter.

‘Oh God! Did you see what Pa said about
me?
That bastard Gerald must have told him about—’ She stopped dead, frowning.

‘About what? Fallen off your pedestal, have you? Is this why you’ve deigned to grace my spare bedroom with your presence?’

‘Call that hell-hole with a campbed a spare room?’ she said scathingly.

‘Please yourself, I didn’t invite you.
And
it didn’t seem to bother you on all those weekends you so kindly spent keeping me company while Max was away,’ I said pointedly.

‘What?’ Her jaw dropped and she went all Snow White with just a touch of Dopey. ‘How on earth did you know about that?’

‘Gerald came to see me.’

‘Gerald? And you told him I hadn’t been staying with you? No wonder he’s—’

‘No, of course I didn’t,’ I interrupted coldly. ‘Just because you’re a little sneak it doesn’t mean everyone else is! Anyway, I thought he’d probably got the wrong end of the stick. Now, spill the beans!’

‘I’m in love,’ she said dramatically.

‘Yeah, with yourself. I already knew that.’

‘No, with a man.’

‘Strange, I thought that’s what Gerald was?’

‘Yes, and I’m very fond of Gerald,’ she said earnestly. ‘But I married too young. I didn’t realise what love was until I met Clint Atwood when he was Painter in Residence at the university last year. He wants me to leave Gerald and go and live with him in Cornwall. He’s years younger than I am and so impulsive.’

I stared at her, wondering if I was dreaming that my sister was having a relationship with someone called
Clint.

‘That’s who Gerald suspected – and I told him he was mad!’ It seemed very untidy and unstructured for Jane. Her perfect image wouldn’t be just tarnished but blown to pieces; and did she realise just how much satisfaction her friends would gain from rocking her pedestal?

‘So Gerald’s suspicions have been confirmed?’

‘He searched my desk!’ she exclaimed, aggrievedly. ‘And when he found Clint’s letters he went ballistic. And he simply wouldn’t believe me when I explained that poor Clint had fallen hard for me without the least encouragement, and how I was just trying to let him down lightly. It was a little difficult, because Clint does get a bit carried away in his letters … but Gerald was absolutely horrible, and said the most wounding things to me.’

‘So you and Clint
were
having it off, then?’

‘Really, Cassandra!’

‘You were, weren’t you? All those weekends you were supposed to be here with me. And there was I thinking you were the nearest thing to a married virgin possible!’