The Vanishment (20 page)

"Has she gone this time?" I asked.

Again she shook her head. And again we waited.

The sound was not clear at first. More like a dull ache somewhere in the back of the mind, coming to consciousness only by degrees.

"Can you hear something?" I asked Rachel.

She nodded.

I strained my ears, desperate to make out what it was. Through the thin partition wall, I could make out what seemed to be the sound of someone moving restlessly on a bed. The creaking of the bedsprings was unmistakable. It was not the rhythmic sound of a couple making love. There would be a rustling noise, then the sound of springs, then silence for a few moments until it began again.

I do not know how long it continued. But there came a point when I knew I could not bear listening to it any longer. I had to do something.

Taking Rachel with me, I went to the door and opened it. The corridor was full of light. We stepped outside and crept to the door of the next room. I could feel my heart beating frantically. It took all my courage to put my hand on the handle and turn it.

The room was in darkness. But the sound of someone tossing and turning was clearer than ever. With a shaking hand, I switched on the light.

The bed was covered with a mass of tangled sheets, as though someone had been sleeping there and had just gotten up. Except that the sound had not stopped. It went on, though the bed was quite still, as if sight and sound existed in different places or different times.

And then, to my horror, I noticed that the bed was not quite still after all. As I watched I saw that something was slowly taking shape beneath the sheets. They had begun to move in a deliberate, revolting fashion, as though something unspeakable was writhing beneath them. I could not take my eyes off the bed. The shape continued to grow and to define itself, always writhing, always twisting. And with it the sound of a body tossing on springs. It was then that it started to lift what seemed to be a head, and I knew it was about to sit up in the bed. At the thought of it sitting there, staring at me, my nerve broke. I snatched Rachel up in my arms and ran headlong from the room.

At that instant all the lights in the house went out. In my nervousness on leaving the bedroom, I had forgotten to bring the flashlight with me. It was pitch-dark. And in the pitch darkness, I could hear the sound of soft feet—or something like feet—on the floor of the bedroom we had just been in. A door slammed on the floor above us.

I froze for a moment, not knowing which way to turn. If I went back into my own bedroom, it might take an eternity to find and switch on my flashlight. And I no longer knew what I might find there waiting for me. The footsteps were approaching. Perhaps it was just my imagination, but something about them sounded wet. Slippery. Not at all human. It was freezing cold.

I picked Rachel up again and ran for the stairs. This time I did not hesitate. I continued to run down, then along the hall to the front door. The next moment I had opened the door and dashed out into the night. The car keys were in my trouser pocket. That seemed the longest moment, fumbling with them while, at my back, I could hear footsteps on the stairs.

I pushed Rachel inside, then followed her and started the engine. I did not stop driving until we reached the road. We spent the night in a rest area with the engine running to keep us warm. I did not sleep.

We returned to the house about an hour after dawn. Neither of us wanted to be there, but I knew that if we left, matters would never be brought to a head. Rachel was very tired, but she seemed less affected by the events of the previous night than I.

"I'm hungry," she said. "Can we have breakfast?"

"Of course. Two breakfasts coming up." I was starving, too.

In the clear light of day, the terrors of the night seemed nebulous. What had there been, after all? Just some sounds, what may have been a figure in a doorway, crumpled sheets moving on a bed. Surely nothing threatening or dangerous in any of that. And yet I was still nervous, and every so often caught myself looking over my shoulder.

The smell of bacon and eggs filled the kitchen. There was something so frankly normal about the smell and the appearance of the food on our plates that I felt the shadows lifting. After all, I reasoned, was this not why I had returned to Petherick House in the first place, to confront whatever unease lay at the heart of these hauntings and, if possible, put it to rest? I decided that we would spend that day searching for the remains of Catherine Trevorrow. They were here somewhere, of that I was certain. It was only a matter of finding them. I had an idea that Rachel might be drawn to them somehow, that that was what Susannah wanted.

To add to the sense of normality, I switched on the radio I had brought with me. Light music had its uses, I thought. Rachel seemed to know half the singers and half the songs. The deejay's voice could not have been more out of place or more welcome. I opened the backdoor. Rachel went into the garden to play; I gave her strict instructions not to stray from my sight.

There was a news broadcast at nine o'clock. The usual things: loud exchanges on the floor of the House of Commons, some trouble concerning the Falkland Islands, a scandal involving an MP. Toward the end, there was a short piece of more immediate interest.

"A search is still continuing for novelist Peter Clare and a four-year-old girl he is thought to have abducted, Rachel Wigram. Mr. Clare, the author of seven novels and two collections of short stories, is understood to have taken Rachel from the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, where the child's parents had been taken following a car crash on Monday. The couple, Tim and Susan Wigram of Brondesbury in London, both died later in hospital. In the meantime, Mr. Clare, who is said to have been a friend of the family, had made arrangements to return with the child to London, where he has a flat.

"Rachel's grandparents, who had been on holiday in Spain, returned to England yesterday. On trying to make contact with their granddaughter, they found that both she and Mr. Clare had vanished.

"There are now fears that Rachel has been abducted. The Metropolitan Police revealed last night that Clare, aged forty-six, was convicted of manslaughter in 1970 following the violent death of his daughter, Catherine. He spent five years in prison. In an interview yesterday, Clare's sister-in-law, Lorna Trevor, suggested that he may be suffering from severe depression following the death of his wife, Sarah, who was drowned in an accident in Cornwall earlier this year.

"Clare is five foot ten with receding gray hair, slimly built, and clean-shaven. Rachel Wigram is four years old and has short blond hair and brown eyes. Anyone seeing them is requested to contact the nearest police station."

I looked up. Rachel was still in the garden playing unself-consciously with a ball. I made a bowl of cornflakes for her and sprinkled them with white sugar. We would need fresh milk later in the day. It was a nuisance, Tim's parents turning up like that. I had been banking on a couple of weeks at least. It need not make a real difference, of course. I should just have to be circumspect, that was all. Leaving Rachel alone in the house was unthinkable, naturally. If we went shopping, we would just have to go together and take the risk of being spotted. Or perhaps I could leave her in the car briefly while I raced around a supermarket, stocking up on imperishables. Dried milk, cans, pasta, and dried cereal. I had brought plenty of cash with me. There would be no need for visits to banks. But perhaps none of that would be necessary anyway. It might all be over in a day or two, one way or another.

There was a Safeway just outside Penzance. I left Rachel in the car while I made enough purchases for a fortnight, reasoning that I could always take them back to London with me when this was all over. For good measure, I put about a dozen flashlights and a heap of batteries into my trolley. As far as I could tell, no one paid any particular notice to me as I walked around the shop. Why should they have? They would have been on the lookout for a man with a little girl. That's the way ordinary people's minds work. But who in Penzance would think for a moment that I would turn up on their doorstep?

There was a newspaper stand at the supermarket entrance. I tossed a few papers into my trolley, intending to read them afterward at my leisure. Only
The Sun
had me on the front page. A rare honor for a serious novelist. It was my most recent publicity photograph: not a very good likeness, I thought. I wondered who had given it to them.

I had bought treats for Rachel. How easy it is to please some children. The whiskey I justified to myself not as a treat, but as pure necessity. How could I stay in that awful place without it?

Rachel wanted to see the sea. We drove along, chanting the words in a silly singsong: "We're off to see the sea, we're off to see the sea." Out of season, the beaches at St. Ives were wet and deserted. I was able to take Rachel along with me, with little fear of discovery. She ran on the sand, picking up seaweed and throwing it into the wind. Out at sea, high waves crested and fell, crested and fell. And a white boat passed near the horizon and vanished into a gray fret. Inland, I could see the slope of the little cemetery in which Susannah Trevorrow had been buried. Buried, but not laid to rest. It was not far from there to Zawn Quoits. A short walk would have taken Rachel and me there, but there was no pathway along the sea's edge.

The morning passed easily. By lunchtime, Rachel was starving again. I would have preferred to eat in a hotel or restaurant, anything rather than go back to Petherick House so soon, but that, of course, was out of the question. We drove back, growing silent as we came within sight of the place. In a few hours it would start to grow dark. Another night would begin.

After lunch, there was children's television. The electricity was working perfectly again, as though nothing had happened the night before. I checked the fuse box, but all seemed in order. And tonight I would not let go of my flashlight for anything.

While Rachel laughed at the antics of Duckula I sat in the corner reading. My life had been laid out in the tabloids for the whole country to read. Some of it was flattering, much of it quite the opposite. Not even
The Guardian
or
The Independent
had a high opinion of my books. The literary Mafia had their claws out as usual.

Clare's first novel,
Day of Wrath
, [wrote
The Guardian
] was written in prison and published shortly after his release in 1975. It was an attempt to exorcise the inner demons that had led to the brutal killing of his child under the influence of drink. The book made a powerful impact on publication, and Clare became a minor celebrity for a short time. Like John McVicar, he was lionized as an ex-convict turned literary wunderkind. His second book,
The House of Dark Visions
, did not fulfill the promise of the first, however. In the end, Clare's middle-class origins betrayed him. To many readers, he seemed more a self-indulgent brat who had engineered his own misfortunes and gone on to make literary capital from them, than a hardened criminal from the streets redeemed by education and the imaginative life. His later novels plowed much the same furrow as the first. Dead children, dead wives, guilt, remorse, the torment of the damned condemned to repeat their crimes.

I had a pretty good idea who'd written that little put-down. He'd been at one of my launches and stuffed himself with canapes without even bothering to pass the time of day with me or my publicity people.

I put down the last paper, clenching and unclenching my fists. A good thing I'd bought the whiskey—I needed a stiff drink to banish the taste of all that crap from my mouth. Rachel was still watching cartoons. I looked out the window. The mist that we had watched at sea earlier was now moving steadily inland. Petherick House would soon be cut off by more than the dark.

About four o'clock, we retired to the kitchen. I had put on all the lights by then and restocked the meter with coins. In each of the ground-floor rooms, I had placed a flashlight within easy reach, and I carried two around with me. Rachel had one of her own.

We laid the table for tea. I had bought
tarte tatin
, a French apple and caramel pie, that morning. We had it with cream. It was the first time Rachel had ever tasted it: she thought it was the most delicious thing she had ever eaten. There was milk for her and Gunpowder Green tea for me. The house was utterly quiet. Outside, it was pitch-dark.

“When is Christmas coming?" Rachel asked.

"Soon," I said, "very soon. You'll have to write a list for Father Christmas."

"Will we be here for Christmas?"

I shook my head.

"I don't think so," I answered.

"I want to go home for Christmas, otherwise Santa won't know where to find me. And Mummy and Daddy, too."

"We'll be home, I promise."

I looked around almost guiltily. What right had I to make promises in this place?

Suddenly I looked up. I could hear something. Had it begun? But as I listened the sound quickly resolved itself into something quite mundane, though nonetheless unsettling. It was the sound of a car coming down the drive.

We waited. The car drew to a halt outside the house. A door banged shut. Moments later someone knocked at the front door. I could not believe it. Had I been spotted after all? Had someone from Tredannack noticed that someone was living at Petherick House, and put two and two together?

I told Rachel to stay in the kitchen.

"Stay quiet," I told her.

"Who is it?"

"I don't know," I answered. But I was fairly sure it was the police. There was a louder knock at the door.

I crept into the study, from which I was able to get a clear view of the front without being seen. It was unpleasant, moving through that dark room, unable to light a flashlight. I looked through the window,

A car with a light on its roof was sitting outside with its engine running. My heart sank until I realized that it was not a police car but a taxi. I felt tremendous relief, followed by renewed anxiety. Who else knew there was someone here? The caller knocked heavily for about ten seconds.