The Night of the Mosquito (2 page)

BOOK: The Night of the Mosquito
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Chapter 2

 

Hilltop Cottage, Churchend. 8:12 a.m.

 

Michael Anderson carried a silver breakfast tray, laden with toast, marmalade, and coffee through the open French doors and onto the timber patio deck. He checked the position of the sun, and satisfied the shadow he cast was conducive to glare-free reading, he put the tray on the open slats of the hexagonal table and went back inside to collect his latest reading material.

 

He thought about his trip to Brighton, wandering the lanes as he’d so often done with Margot.
Did I really go there yesterday?
If it wasn’t for the book, the whole thing could have been a dream. He’d browsed as if she were still with him, peering into stores that held no interest for him out of a habit that hadn’t existed in years. He did a double-take as he walked past the front of a second-hand bookstore called Fortunes. Intrigued, he entered the store. The shop had been decorated in gipsy themes, the centrepiece an old vardo. At the base of the steps to the caravan, he’d spotted a bargain bucket. Anderson wasn’t usually given to rummaging for cut-price deals, but a book, its title poking out from one side, caught his attention.
Problem Child
, by Stella Bird. The author wasn’t anyone familiar to him. He extracted it from the piled-up contents of the wicker basket and purchased it on a whim without looking at the pitch on the back cover.

 

It was after nine o’clock when he arrived home, the evening all but gone. Stuck in traffic, he’d chewed on mints to stave off hunger, and now that he’d made a cheese sandwich, it tasted of cardboard. After two bites, he threw what was left in the bin and climbed the stairs to run a bath. He turned the taps on and then stood by the washbasin while it filled, staring at his reflection in the mirrored cabinet. A familiar debate started inside his head.
You’re tired. You don’t need those.
But I sleep so much better when I’ve had them.
He opened the cabinet, took out a box of Nytol, and automatically popped two of them through the foil. He no longer took the pills to help him sleep; he’d acquired a psychological dependency on them. He swallowed them and then got undressed. He lowered himself into the water.

 

Half an hour later, already in the grip of the pills he’d taken, his initial glance at the back-page pitch stirred long-forgotten memories. The author stated that the book was a tribute to a psychiatrist who hadn’t been afraid to experiment with new ideas. That she’d assembled the book based on the notes and diaries of Dr Ryan.
My old friend Ryan? Couldn’t be.
A sense of jubilance had risen in him. How right he’d been to purchase the book! Stella Bird’s introduction ran to several pages. She apologised for not using his Christian name and explained that she’d only learned it after his death. Out of respect, she’d refer to him by his surname, the way he’d preferred in life.

Ryan, he mused, such a character. Although a friend, he never knew his first name either. Once, when Anderson had asked him for it, he’d said, “Just call me Ryan. Shall I call you Mick?”

Anderson’s smile broadened, lifting his spirits as he recalled his answer. ‘No, call me Michael.’

Ryan never did address him by his first name.

 

Anderson retrieved the book from the coffee table in the conservatory. He relished the idea of reading for a couple of hours with nothing to disturb him but chirping birds and the lazy buzz of fat bumblebees. He strode through the house and returned outside with the book tucked under his arm.

The chair’s legs juddered as he dragged it back, preparing to sit. The desktop magnifying glass and book set down, he sat and shuffled himself into position, arranging the magnifier to straddle the page he’d bookmarked the night before.

After spreading jam on a piece of toast, he poured himself a coffee. A final adjustment to the layout of the book, and he lifted his cup and sipped before taking a bite, savouring the taste. He leant forwards and peered through the convex glass.

With no clear recollection of what he’d already read, beyond a fuzzy memory, Anderson flicked through the book and realised he’d only completed two pages. Beginning again, he skipped through the author introduction until he reached the section’s last page. His eyes locked momentarily on her justification for releasing the book.

“I was with Dr Ryan in his last hours and he’d been remarkably lucid. Although I was only a secretary, he’d treated me like a confidante for much of the time I worked for him. He told me of his great interest in the supernatural, and how he’d hoped to one day use his notes to write a book, something he never got around to doing. He had no children. His wife had died some years before. I’m not sure why, but he decided to bequeath me his personal notes and files. I believe his hope was that I’d find a way to publish them.” Stella concluded with the legend, ‘Patients’ names have been changed to protect their identities.’

Will I recognise any of them? How long ago did Ryan and I part company?
Anderson sat back in his chair and squinted at the walls of the house made brilliant by the sun, as if caught in a spell. His mind rolled back through the many milestones carved from joy and pain.
Thirty-five years.
His life as it was then danced before him. He smiled wistfully. Finally, he blinked and turned away.

He resumed reading.

 

When I was a young doctor working in Ireland in the late sixties, I met a girl who would change the course of my life. She was little more than fifteen. I had attended her following a report from her aunt that she was sick. Her family doctor could not be summoned. I was his stand-in. From the moment she told me, “Doctor David’s not coming,” and then whispered, word for word, the contents of a note later found with David’s body, I knew she was something special. How had she known? I’d already begun to develop an interest in the paranormal, and here I was in the presence of a child who, without doubt, had been blessed with powers of clairvoyance. I wanted to study her further, an opportunity that was to be denied, but she triggered an interest that became a lifetime obsession. If I’d never met her, would I have become a child psychiatrist? Would I have tried alternative treatments where conventional methods had failed? If it hadn’t been for her, I’d have never dreamed of it. And I certainly wouldn’t have become involved with some of the most interesting events imaginable.

 

Fully engrossed, and with Ryan’s voice in his head like he’d last heard it yesterday, Anderson didn’t notice the shadow encroaching on his peripheral vision. Instead, a strange sensation drew his focus. Numbed pain. Dull and insistent, at the soft corner of his left eyelid.
What the?
He cuffed himself as he swatted the thing away.
Some kind of insect.

Anderson drew a finger across the affected area; a bump was already forming.
Leave it alone, or it’ll start to itch.
If it did, he’d call in at the chemist and buy some antihistamines.
Damned mosquitoes.
He’d never been bitten there before. He swivelled his eyeballs left. The swelling, a skin-coloured blur, irritated him like a smear on a pair of reading glasses.
Damn.
He pushed back in his chair and as he stood, he glanced through the magnifier at the page beneath.
What the hell?
Peering closer, against the background of a two-line break – between scenes, apparently dead, lay the biggest and blackest mosquito he’d ever seen. The magnified image held him fascinated.

The creature had come to rest on its side. In profile, it looked like a grotesque parody of an ostrich. Attached to a tiny head, the petrol-tank body was fuelled by means of an enormous proboscis. The hind legs, disproportionate in size, intrigued him. Designed for walking?
No, more like landing gear.

His eyelid began to itch.

The irritation too much, he decided he’d find some lotion to relieve it temporarily. He turned away, got up, and went inside.

 

 

 

 

Chapter 3

 

St. Michael’s Church. 8:21 a.m.

 

A silent scream parting his lips, Timothy Salter jolted upright in bed and pitched himself forwards, eyes wide, hands outstretched, snatching at empty air; his first thought, always his sister. Crushed by nightmares as surely as Sarah had been under the wheels of the train, his shoulders slumped. He fell backwards onto the dishevelled bedding.

Arrows of light beamed through the boarded-up slats of the presbytery window and stabbed at the darkness of the squalid room. His eyes adjusted. On top of the bushel crate he’d turned onto its end to use as a makeshift bedside table, was a photograph of him and Sarah taken by his father in the garden of their home. It was a tenuous link to the only happiness he’d ever known. His gaze lingered over her. Only ten, wisdom beyond her years already apparent on a face now faded by exposure to daylight. She stood with one hand on his shoulder and a wan smile at her lips. Her hair was swept from her face by the breeze blowing that day. Blonder than he was, she seemed to be staring right back at him. For an instant, he saw through his father’s eyes, saw himself dressed in a black and white cowboy outfit, wearing a too-big Stetson, sat astride a tricycle, aiming a toy gun at his dad, while Sarah, grinning at his antics, looked straight ahead. He imagined the touch of her hand on his shoulder. He always thought of her hands. They seemed too big for a little girl. He remembered his mother’s words. “Smile for the camera, my lovely angels.”

He smiled.

A flashbulb went off in his mind.

Long lost voices came back to him. His mother and father. He’d already been alive longer than they had lived.

 

‘Are you sure it’ll be all right to leave the children with your sister, Russ?’ His mother saw him watching, and she moved with his father out of earshot. Though he couldn’t hear them, Timothy read their lips, a talent he’d picked up from a deaf boy at the nursery. ‘She isn’t really old enough.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ his father replied. ‘She’s eighteen next month, and she’s lived with us long enough to know what’s what.’

‘I know. I just worry Jane isn’t mature enough to look after them without us around.’ She sighed. ‘I wish Mum and Dad hadn’t gone to live in Australia.’

‘And I wish mine weren’t dead. Look, it’s just for the weekend,’ his father said, embracing her. ‘Don’t worry. They’ll be fine. We’ll have fun.’

 

Timothy lifted the photograph and began the ritual he repeated every day. He scrutinised the shiny surfaces in the background of the picture. A dark garage window had caught the shadowy image of his parents, their faces obscured behind the brilliant star-shaped flash from the camera.
What happened to you?
Even today, he didn’t know for sure. He knew they’d been killed, but there had been some reluctance on the part of the authorities to explain exactly how. On the day his parents were due home, the police arrived with a man and woman he didn’t know. Social workers. Despite Jane’s protests – ‘I’ll call Nan and Grandad,’ she’d yelled – he and Sarah had been taken away and placed into care.

If Sarah had only known their grandparents had left Australia almost straight away, to come for them, she might have been able to hang on.
No, she wouldn’t – we ran because she wanted to save me.

After the accident, he’d been returned to the home. The same night, the men came and took him out of the dormitory to another room. He shook his head violently, but the experience remained. The men were fascinated by his apparent refusal to cry out. They drank, laughed and took photographs.

When it was over, and he’d been returned to bed, the caretaker came. ‘Come on, boy. I’m getting you out of here.’ Snatches of what the man had said in the car journey came back to him. ‘One day, Timothy, you’ll see what I did was right. I’m taking you to a woman I know. She couldn’t have a kid of her own. She’ll see you right. Her people are rough and ready, but they’ll not allow any harm to come your way.’

He lived with the woman among travelling people for twelve years, always moving. There wasn’t a part of the country he hadn’t seen. They’d accepted his refusal to speak, assuming he was mute. He learned to work the land using only basic tools, earning his keep doing odd jobs; he became a skilled gardener.

One night, sitting around the fire somewhere in the wilds outside Scotland, a wandering woman came by the camp. She stayed for just one night. He listened enthralled as she told stories, but one in particular struck him. The woman’s eyes burned into him as she related the tale. It was his story. The story of him and Sarah, right down to what happened with the train. The old woman concluded by saying the little girl’s ghost would find no rest until her brother returned to the lanes she haunted.

 

As soon as he had the chance, he returned to Churchend. The orphanage had been closed for years. The old priest had accepted his offer to work on the grounds; he’d seen how destitute the boy appeared.

‘Where are you staying?’ the priest asked.

Timothy took a pad from his pocket, scribbled on it with a pencil, and held it out.

Father Raymond took it. ‘I’ll not see you sleeping under the stars – not while there’s room under God’s roof.’ The old man had never discovered Timothy’s true identity. Over the years, he revealed snippets of information to his guest, usually when in drink. ‘My predecessor, he knew what was going on. How could he not have?’ He’d scrutinised Timothy. ‘If that’s what you’re thinking, you’d be right. The drunken pervert kept a diary. I found it over there.’ His hand indicated the altar. ‘There, of all places. Brazen. No shame. Died of a heart attack when he heard the caretaker had gone to the police. And then the whole sorry tale came out.’ The priest took a sip of his whisky, swilled it around the glass and then drained the last of it. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘It took a while for the authorities to close the place down. They never found the little boy. His grandparents had come all the way from Australia to apply for adoption. Heartbroken, they were. That family was cursed, I tell you. The caretaker stood before the courts and testified, but I think he knew more about what had happened with the children than he let on. With the men involved convicted and jailed, it didn’t take long for the stain to spread over the church. People began to stay away.’ He stood and swayed, gripping the edge of the table. ‘Pass me the bottle, would you?’

Timothy obliged.

Father Raymond poured himself another and offered the open neck to his guest. Timothy shook his head.

The priest lowered his voice, and holding the back of his hand to his mouth, spoke with theatrical discretion. ‘You’ll probably think I’m crazy, but I swear I’ve seen a little girl running among the graves.’ Distracted by his recollections, he failed to see Timothy sit up, more attentive. ‘I always think there’s more to ghosts than we can fathom. You know, there’s a reason for everything on God’s Earth. Life has a way of negating evil things. Did you ever wonder why you always find a dock plant among nettles? The cure for our ills is never far away if you know where to look for it.’ After that conversation, Timothy took to walking the lanes, the tracks, the graveyard, endlessly searching. But he never saw Sarah.

 

His reverie over, he picked up the tear-off calendar. August 9. The words of wisdom beneath the date were attributed to Abraham Lincoln: “The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.”

Twenty-seven years had passed exactly like that, but nothing had changed. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror on the wall. Gaunt. Deep-set eyes stared back at him. He saw nothing in them other than a bleak wilderness and ever-lasting guilt. He touched them, expecting to feel pain. He’d lost weight. He had to eat. If his death was judged self-inflicted, that would be suicide, and he’d be consigned to purgatory, never to see his loved ones again. He hesitated, and then, ripping the page clear, crumpled it into a ball and placed the calendar back by his bed.

He got dressed, slipped his Bible into the top pocket of his boiler suit and prepared for what he had to do.

BOOK: The Night of the Mosquito
5.61Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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