The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (3 page)

I’d been pleased by the invitation. The party was in early October. David and I had booked a room in an inn on Dartmoor, and looked forward to a relaxing weekend away, with a couple of leg-stretching, mind-clearing rambles on Dartmoor book-ending the Saturday night festivities. And yet, although I looked forward to it, there was also a faint uneasiness in my mind attached to the idea of seeing Michael again, back in our old haunts; an uneasiness I did not so much as hint at to David because I could not explain it. It was irrational and unfair, I thought. My first marriage had not worked out, but both of us, or neither, were responsible for that, and that failure had been come to terms with and was long in the past. There was no unfinished business between us.

When the weekend of the party arrived, David was ill. It was probably only a twenty-four-hour bug (it was going around, according to our next-door neighbor, a teacher) but it meant he couldn’t consider going anywhere farther than the bathroom.

I should have stayed home and tended to him, like a good wife—that is what I wish I had done. But he insisted I go. The Wheaton-Bakers were my friends. They would be sorry not to see me. We wouldn’t get our money back for the hotel room—that had been an Internet bargain. And he didn’t need to be tended. He intended to sleep as much as possible, just lie in bed and sweat it out.

So I went. And I did enjoy myself. It was a lovely party; the Wheaton-Bakers were just as nice as I remembered, and they introduced me to other friendly, interesting people, so I never felt lonely or out of place for a moment. Michael was there, but he’d been seated at a different table, and struck up conversations with a different set of people, so although we’d exchanged greetings, we’d hardly done more than that. It was only as I was preparing to leave that he cornered me.

“Hey, you’re not leaving!”

“ ’fraid so.”

“But we’ve hardly spoken! You’re driving back to Bristol tonight?”

“No, of course not.” I told him where I was staying.

“Mm, very posh! I’m just up the road, nylon sheets and a plastic shower stall. Want to meet and have lunch somewhere tomorrow?”

I was happy to agree. We exchanged phone numbers, and he offered to pick me up at my hotel at ten. “If that’s not too early? It’ll give us time to drive around a bit, see how much the scenery has changed, before deciding what we want to do.”

There was a familiar glint in his eye, and I was suddenly certain he meant to take me back to look at our old house, and maybe one or two other significant sites from our marriage. I didn’t know why he felt the need to revisit the past like that—the past was over and done with, as far as I was concerned—but I didn’t say anything. If he needed to go back and see with his own eyes how much time had passed, to understand that we were no longer the people who had fallen in love with each other, then perhaps I owed him my supportive, uncomplaining companionship.

Anyway, I thought it would be more fun than going for a walk by myself or driving straight back home.

The next morning, I checked out, and left my car in the car park. There was no question that we’d go in his: I remembered too well that he’d always disliked being a passenger. His car was better, anyway: a silver Audi with that new-car smell inside, soft leather seats and an impressive Sat-Nav system. Something by Mozart issued softly from hidden speakers as we he headed down the A386 before leaving the moor for the sunken lanes I remembered, winding deep into a leaf-shadowed coomb.

“Remember this?” he asked, as the car raced silently along. It was a smoother ride than in the old days.

“I’m glad they haven’t dug up all the hedgerows,” I said. “I was afraid Devon might have changed a lot more.”

He frowned, dissatisfied with my answer. “Didn’t you click on that link I sent you?”

“Yes, I did. I saw our old house—didn’t I send a reply?”

He shrugged that off. “I thought you might have explored a bit more widely. Not just the village, not just the street view, but moving up and out, looking at the satellite pictures.”

“It’s a busy time of the year for us, with Christmas coming. I don’t have much time to play around on the Internet. Although I’m sure it’s very interesting.”

“It’s more than just ‘interesting.’ You can see things that aren’t on other maps. The aerial shots—do you remember how we had to go up to the top of the hill to see it?”

I understood. “You’re not talking about our house.”

“You know what I’m talking about.” He touched the screen of his navigation system and a calm, clear female voice said, “You are approaching a crossroads. Prepare to turn right.”

“You found it?” I asked him, amazed. “How?”

“Turn right. Follow the road.”

“Satellite view on Google. I zoomed in as much as I could—it wasn’t easy to get a fix on it. Street View’s no good—it’s not on a road. But it’s there all right; maybe not in exactly the place we kept looking for it. Anyway, I have the coordinates now, and I’ve put them into my system here, and—it will take us there.” He grinned like a proud, clever child.

“How, if it’s not on a road?”

“Prepare to turn left. Turn left.”

“It will take us as close as it can. After that we’ll walk. Those are good, sturdy boots you have on.”

“Take the first turning to the right.”

“Well done, Sherlock,” I said. “Just fancy if we’d had GPS back in those days—we’d have found it, and . . . do you think they’d have accepted our offer?”

“Bear left. At the next crossroads, turn right.”

Despite the smoothness of the ride, as we turned and turned again—sometimes forced to stop and back up in a
pas-de-deux
with another Sunday driver—I began to feel queasy, like in the old days, and then another sort of unease crept in.

“Haven’t we been along here already? We must be going in circles,” I said.

“And when did you develop a sense of direction?”

“Prepare to turn right. Turn right.”

The last turn was the sharpest, and took us off the road entirely, through an opening in a hedge so narrow that I flinched at the unpleasant noise of cut branches scraping the car, and then we were in a field.

There was no road or path ahead of us, not even a track, just the faint indication of old ruts where at some point a tractor or other farm vehicle might have gone, and even they soon ended.

“Make a U-turn when possible. Return to a marked road.”

Michael stopped the car. “So that’s as far as she’ll take us. We’ll have to rely on my own internal GPS the rest of the way.”

We got out. He changed his brown loafers for a pair of brilliant white sports shoes that looked as if they’d never been worn, took an OS map out of the glove-box, and showed me the red X he had marked on an otherwise blank spot. “And this is where we are now.”

“Why isn’t it on the map?”

He shrugged. I persisted. “You must have thought about it.”

He shrugged again and sighed. “Well, you know, there are places considered too sensitive, of military importance, something to do with national security, that you’re not allowed to take pictures or even write about. There’s an airfield in Norfolk, and a whole village on Salisbury Plain—”

“They’re not on maps?”

“Not on any maps. And those are just the two examples I happen to know. There must be more. Maybe this house, or the entire coomb, was used for covert ops in the war, or is owned by MI5, used as a safe house or something.”

My skin prickled with unease. “Maybe we shouldn’t go there.”

“Are you kidding? You’re not going to wimp out on me now!”

“If it’s so secret that it’s against the law—”

“Do you see any ‘No Trespassing’ signs?” He waved his arms at the empty field around us. “It’s a free country; we can walk where we like.”

I took a deep breath, and thought about that airfield in Norfolk. I was pretty sure I knew the place he meant; it was surrounded by barbed wire fences, decorated with signs prohibiting parking and picture-taking on the grounds of national security. It was about as secret as the Post Office Tower. I nodded my agreement.

It was a good day for walking, dry and with a fresh, invigorating breeze countering the warmth of the sun. For about fifteen minutes we just walked, not speaking, and I was feeling very relaxed when I heard him say, “There it is.”

Just ahead of us, the land dropped away unexpectedly steeply, and we stopped and stood gazing down into a deep, narrow, wooded valley. Amid the turning leaves the golden brown of the thatched roof blended in, and shadows dappled the whitewashed walls below with natural camouflage. If we hadn’t been looking for it, we might not have seen it, but now, as I stared, it seemed to gain in clarity, as if someone had turned up the resolution on a screen. I saw a wisp of smoke rise from the chimney, and caught the faint, sweet fragrance of burning wood.

Michael was moving about in an agitated way, and it took me a few moments to realize he was searching for the best route down. “This way,” he called. “Give me your hand; it’s a bit tricky at first, but I then I think it should be easier.”

I was suddenly nervous. “I don’t think we should. There’s someone there.”

“So? They’ll invite us in. We’ll ask how long they’ve had the place and if they’d consider selling.”

I saw that the notion of an MI5 safe house was far from his mind, if he had ever believed it. He wasn’t even slightly afraid, and struggled to comprehend my reason for wanting to turn back.

“Look, if you want to wait for me here . . . ”

I couldn’t let him go by himself. I checked that my phone was on, and safely zipped into my pocket, and then I let him help me down to the first ledge, and the one after that. Then it got easier, although there was never anything as clear as a path, and on my own I’m certain I would have been lost, since my instinct, every time, was to go in a direction different from his. He really could hold a map in his head. At last we emerged from a surprisingly dense wood into a clearing from which we could see a windowless side wall.

I fell back and followed him around towards the front. Pebbles rolled and crunched gently underfoot on the path to the front door. I wondered if he had a plan, and what he would say to whoever answered the door: was he really going to pretend we were interested in buying?

Then I looked up and as I took in the full frontal view, I knew I had been here before. It was the strongest wave of
déjà vu
I’d ever felt, a sickening collision between two types of knowledge: I knew it was impossible, yet I remembered this visit.

The memory was unclear, but frightening. Somehow, I had come here before. When my knock at the door had gone unanswered, I’d peeked through that window on the right, and saw something that made me run away in terror.

I could not remember anything of what I had seen; only the fear it had inspired was still powerful.

Michael knocked on the door, then glanced over his shoulder, impatient with me for hanging back.

I wanted to warn him, but of what? What could I say? I was in the grip of a fear I knew to be irrational. I managed to move a little closer to Michael and the door, telling myself that nothing could compel me to look through that window.

We waited a little while, but even after Michael knocked again, more loudly, almost pounding, there was no reply. I relaxed a little, thinking we were going to get away with it, but when I spoke of leaving, he insisted, “Not until I find out who lives here, what it’s all about. There is someone here—I can see a light—look, through that window—”

I moved back; I wouldn’t look.

“I think I can smell cooking. They’re probably in the kitchen. Maybe a bit deaf. I’m going to try the back door. You coming? Suit yourself.”

I didn’t want to stay, but wanted even less to follow him around the back, so I waited, wrapping my arms around myself, feeling a chill. The sun didn’t strike so warmly in this leafy hollow. I checked my phone for the time and was startled to see how much of the afternoon was gone. I wondered if I should call David to warn him I’d be late, but decided to wait for Michael.

I didn’t like to keep checking the time because it made me more nervous, but at least five minutes had passed when I felt I had no choice but to walk around to the back of the house to look for him.

I had no sense of
déjà vu
there; I was certain I’d never seen the peeling black paint that covered the solidly shut back door, or the small windows screened by yellowish, faded curtains that made it impossible to see inside.

“Michael?” I didn’t like the weak, wavering sound of my voice, and made myself call out more loudly, firmly, but there was no reply. Nothing happened. I knocked as hard as I could on the back door, dislodging a few flakes of old paint, and as I waited I listened to the sound of leaves rustling in the wind; every once in awhile one would fall. I felt like screaming, but that would have been bloody stupid. Either he had heard me or he hadn’t. Either he was capable of reply—could he be hiding just to tease me?—or he wasn’t. And what was I going to do about it?

As I walked back around to the front of the house I was assailed by the memory of what I had seen when I looked through the window the last time I was here—if that had ever happened. I’d seen a man’s foot and leg—I’d seen that there was someone inside the house, just sitting, not answering my knock, and the sight of some stranger’s foot had frightened me so badly that I’d run away, and then repressed the memory of the entire incident.

Now I realized it must have been a dream that I recalled. It had that pointless, sinister atmosphere of a bad dream. Unfortunately, it now seemed like a precognitive dream.

Nothing had changed in front of the house. I got out my phone and entered the number Michael had given me. As I heard it ringing in my ear, I heard the familiar notes from
The William Tell Overture
sounding from inside the house. I clenched my teeth and waited. When the call went to his voicemail, I ended it and hit re-dial. Muffled by distance, the same tinny, pounding ringtone played inside the house, small but growing in volume until, once again, it was cut off by the voicemail program.