Thieving Fear (29 page)

The busy clicking reappeared as he groped over the upholstery, and the carriage established its presence around him. Having located the mobile, he clenched his fist on it as he saw that there had indeed been a call. He couldn't read the number, which resembled digits less than random blackened scratches, as if somebody had tried to claw their way up through the miniature screen. Rory jabbed the key to ring the number back and clapped the mobile to his ear. A bell that sounded shrivelled by distance had barely repeated its note before it seemed to recede into silence. 'Who's there?' Rory said or shouted, he couldn't judge which.

In a moment he had an answer of sorts, though the voice was so muffled or so remote that it might as well have been buried. He couldn't make out any of the trinity of syllables, let alone the identity of the speaker. 'What did you say?' he demanded, which brought a repetition of the answer. It was just as incomprehensible, but perhaps distance wasn't the problem; perhaps the voice was whispering close to his ear. 'Speak up,' Rory urged and strained to grasp the response. It seemed to be playing at remoteness again, and as he strove to hear he felt as if he were being drawn into whatever depths it might inhabit. No doubt the narrowing of his vision aggravated the effect. He was so anxious to identify the name he kept being told that he only belatedly noticed how much of the city had vanished.

He stared in dismay through the window beside him and then across the aisle. He could see no more than a few hundred yards in either direction, and even the visible buildings looked perfunctory, little more than outlines nobody had bothered to fill in. Behind them there appeared to be nothingness, not so much as a hint of the sky. As he peered past them, desperate to make out whatever was there, another lurid line of buildings was erased. He turned his reluctant head to see a street merge with the advancing blankness on the far side of the carriage. Was he merely observing it, or attracting it somehow? He was distracted by the slowing of the train. Presumably the fog, or a medium that improved on fog, was closing in ahead as well, but he was suddenly afraid that it was designed to halt the train – to prevent him from finding Hugh or Ellen or Charlotte.

That was worse than stupid. He was letting his thoughts trap him in his skull. The train had reached a station, that was all. Admittedly so had the surrounding blankness. As the walls of the suburban station blocked his view of the city he saw the opaque medium creeping up a ramp towards the platform. He couldn't discern even a hint of the city beyond the enclosed ramp, but at least someone was approaching up the slope. As the carriage passed it Rory saw a man emerge from the blank mass that filled the lower half of the passage. The man's face did not, however.

Rory just had time to see that nothingness was trailing the figure up the tunnel before the entrance coasted out of sight, by no means far enough. The next moment the train stopped, and all the doors sprang open as though welcoming the traveller. As Rory's head lolled against the upholstery he saw the figure stalk fast out of the passage. It was little more than a ragged silhouette, scrawny and blackened. If he'd been capable of gratitude Rory would have felt glad of his inability to distinguish much above its neck, where the jagged outline suggested a collapsed cavity rather than a face. Nevertheless the figure was advancing at speed, and so was the vast absence at its back. Rory's fists clenched, or did their shaky best to do so, reminding him that he was still clutching the phone. Was it attracting the intruder? Perhaps, because at last he heard the name that the whisper had been repeating. It belonged to the figure that leapt into the carriage and so, he thought too late, did the all-encompassing blur that followed. As he saw his companion clearly at last, he was almost glad when the nothingness claimed him.

As Charlotte backed away from the impossible aperture in the earth, a mass of blackness reared up in pursuit. It was a shadow dragged out of the depths by the flashlight beam, but she couldn't be reassured while she was so aware of walking over a roof. She was still gripping the handle of the spade, and as her retreat pulled it out of the earth, the unsteadily illuminated patch of ground around the skylight and the entire dim common stirred as if the buried house were preparing to slough its concealment. She mustn't think she'd roused the house or anything within it. All she was seeing was wind in the grass, but the knowledge didn't help much. She could hardly think for yearning to be off the hidden roof and as far as an uninterrupted run would take her from the house.

She believed at last, which made her realise how desperately she'd been hoping not to have to do so. The possibility of different explanations for her cousins' states and her own had fled as she wished she could. So the house was indeed beneath Thurstaston Mound, but not in the sense they'd assumed. Had the mound collapsed simply from erosion, or could it have been somehow encouraged to collapse? Certainly it appeared to have trapped the occupant of the house in his own worst nightmare. Charlotte had no doubt that he'd been buried along with the house.

The idea was enough to send her several paces backwards. What had she imagined she could do here? For that matter, what had Hugh and Ellen done? She ought to try to locate them, but the prospect of calling out so close to the open skylight didn't appeal to her. Using her mobile was a problem too, even once she'd dealt with the spade by leaning it against her rather than risk digging it into the earth that covered the roof. She hung her bag on the handle and trained the flashlight beam on the hole in the ground, and then she peered at the mobile to key the call one-handed. All at once she was afraid to hear Hugh's or Ellen's ringtone in the depths below the skylight, and she re-called the hospital instead.

'Putting you through,' the receptionist said as the edges of the hole grew restless. In a few seconds Charlotte heard not just her own unquiet heart but the sister on the ward. 'Sorry to bother you,' Charlotte said, which seemed grotesquely remote from her situation. 'I was wondering if there's been any change with Rory Lucas.'

'Rory Lucas?' Presumably the sister was questioning a nurse, but the audible reply came from Annie, who called 'He's not moved since she left him.'

'Nothing yet, I'm afraid. We've got your number, haven't we?'

'You have, thanks,' Charlotte said, already envisaging a situation where she might prefer it not to ring. She ended the call, and her finger wavered over the keys until she became furiously impatient with herself. She jabbed the key to display the list of names and selected Hugh's. A breathless silence followed, and a heartbeat, and then an imitation bell began to shrill in her ear. Her heart had time to thump again before the call belatedly triggered the theme from
Sesame Street
. While it was muffled, she couldn't doubt that it was somewhere beneath her.

She felt as if she wouldn't be able to move until it was answered, and quite possibly not then. It might depend who spoke. As the jolly theme jingled on, it sounded increasingly like a mockery of childhood. The melody fell silent halfway through a jaunty rising phrase, and a voice spoke in Charlotte's ear.

She had to take a disoriented moment to recognise why it wasn't audible beyond the skylight as well. It was the automated message, responding from somewhere that seemed hardly to exist. 'Hugh, are you there?' Charlotte pleaded. 'Can you hear me? Answer me, Hugh.'

Nobody did. She terminated the call and managed not to yield to the temptation to repeat some or all of the words at the top of her voice. She brought up the list again and thumbed Ellen's number. 'Be somewhere up here,' she prayed under her breath. She hadn't finished whispering when the title song from
Oklahoma
commenced its crescendo in the depths of the house.

Like Hugh's tune, it sounded several floors deep. The protracted cry suggested an attempt to rise above a nightmare. When it arrived at the rest of the verse, Charlotte was assailed by an image of Ellen prancing helplessly at the behest of the music in the dark. Ellen might be too frail or too distressed to offer much resistance. The unwelcome fancy made Charlotte shout her cousin's name before the song was cut off by the familiar message. 'What are you both doing down there?' she could hardly wait to plead. 'Can't either of you answer?'

The question seemed to grow more ominous as it left her mouth. 'Someone speak to me,' she called loud enough to be heard without the phone, an appeal that raised nobody as far as she could tell. She dropped the mobile in her bag and clenched her fist on the handle of the spade. She knew where she had to go now if she could.

The mouth of the house worked, eager to swallow her, as the grass around the hole trembled in the wind while the flashlight beam magnified her nervousness. She did her best to lose her temper with that and to hold onto her anger as she followed the shivering beam to the hole, which was far too reminiscent of an open grave. The resemblance wasn't entirely dispelled when the beam plunged into the dark.

It crept across the floorboards and spilled over the brink of the trapdoor to grow dimmer on the stairs. 'Hugh,' Charlotte called down. 'Ellen.' She didn't know whether she was more afraid to find out why they didn't answer or to descend into the house. She succeeded in recapturing some of her anger as she clung to the spade, which she wasn't about to leave behind when it was the nearest thing she had to a weapon. She lowered it through the skylight at arm's length and let it fall with a thud that resounded through more levels of the house than she could judge. Without going after it she wouldn't have a weapon. She slipped the strap of her bag over her shoulder and nestled the bag under her arm, and turned to set foot on the ladder.

Beyond the cliff and the foreshortened river the Welsh coast glittered as if to communicate a message she had neither the time nor the ability to decipher. Perhaps it was simply reminding her how much light she was leaving behind. Under her foot the topmost rung felt treacherous with rust. She mustn't take these as excuses not to proceed, and a flare of anger was enough to send her onto the next crumbling rung and the ones beneath, taking her up to her waist in the lightless house. The flashlight beam shrank from the edge of the cliff as she groped for the next rung with a foot, and she was aware of the gaping space beneath her and closing in at her back. She gripped the highest rung with her free hand, and as scales of rust scraped together under her fingers she brought the flashlight to waist level. Darkness flooded across the common, blotching her vision, so that when the flashlight beam jerked downwards with her uncertain descent she wasn't sure how many shadows were fluttering around her among the rafters. She planted both feet on a rung and closed her fist on another while she aimed the light at the floor. The beam wobbled across the boards until it encountered a shape that had been lying low. The light seemed to rouse the thin twisted limbs as the object glared at her with its solitary orb.

It was a telescope. Either its stand had collapsed or, to judge by its position, it had been toppled from blocking the trapdoor. Suppose it had been dislodged from beneath? Charlotte clutched at the ladder and swung the light around the space under the roof. Shadows started out of the corners and sank back, but apart from the telescope and the spade and a scattering of earth, the attic was bare. Nevertheless she was feeling more than reluctant to step down into it, never mind the rest of the house, when she heard a noise beyond the trapdoor.

Despite its faintness, she couldn't mistake it. It was a groan, and although it was muffled by distance or some other cause, she recognised the voice. 'Ellen,' she called, scrambling so hastily down the ladder that the shadows of the rafters appeared to collapse the roof. She must be too concerned for Ellen to have time for claustrophobia, but she retrieved the spade in a bid to feel less vulnerable on her way to the trapdoor. 'Ellen,' she called down into the house.

There was no reply, and no movement apart from the uncontrollable roving of the flashlight beam, which had found the second ladder. It was wedged between the frame of the trapdoor and the verge of the stairs, and looked all the more precarious for the unstable light. Other than the stairs that led down from a landing to an enclosed windowless bend, nothing else met her eye. How many of her burdens was she going to cart through the house? She transferred the mobile to a hip pocket and dropped her handbag through the opening, followed by the spade. She was certainly announcing her presence, but what might it sound like? 'Ellen, it's me,' she felt forced to call as she turned to descend the ladder.

It wasn't just the sight of the telescope that halted her, although for a moment she thought it was crawling with insects. They were symbols etched on the barrel. The wavering beam had lent them movement, and she shouldn't linger to examine them. She was more concerned with the tracks that led from the trapdoor, tracing how the heavy telescope had been dragged or shoved across the loft to clear the way down. Ellen must have shifted it, but if she'd managed that in her condition, how desperate had she been to hide? The thought sent Charlotte downwards as fast as she dared clamber, into the house that smelled oppressively of earth.

The wooden ladder wasn't staggering towards the edge of the stairs. She couldn't really feel the movement – at least, not as much as the antics of the flashlight beam encouraged her to see. All the same, the vibrations came close to paralysing her until she sprinted down the last few rungs to sidle none too confidently onto the floor. She was glad to let go of the ladder, which had felt surreptitiously moist, but the carpet yielded like soft earth, as if the floor it covered were no more solid. That wasn't as unsettling as the sight ahead.

She was facing a bedroom. The door was wide open, framing the dim bulk of a capacious four-poster bed. She grabbed the spade before she sent the flashlight beam into the room. A dark ill-defined shape scrambled backwards across the discoloured quilt and obese greyish pillows to its lair beneath the sagging canopy, but it was just the shadow of the humped bedclothes. Although they were rumpled enough to be outlining worse than uneasy sleep, the bed was empty. None of this was why she found it hard to breathe. With the heavy velvet curtains open, as they were now, the occupant of the bed would have seen a panorama of the Welsh coast and mountains beyond the large window, but the view consisted of brownish clay packed against the glass.

She felt as if her claustrophobia were poised to engulf her. Indeed, she didn't understand why it was holding back. Glancing up in search of reassurance, she saw a fitful star beyond the portion of skylight visible through the trapdoor. What else had she glimpsed? She lifted the flashlight and was managing to ignore the blackness that rushed at her out of the bedroom when she saw the marks around the trapdoor.

They were scratches. However old they were, age hadn't faded their desperation. The small dull oval object lodged in the deepest scratch might very well be a fingernail. Only its shadow made it appear to be trying to work free of the ceiling. Charlotte was drawing a breath to prove she still could when it almost blotted out another sound. It was Ellen, distressed beyond words.

Was she further down the house or in one of the rooms off the landing? There was another open door to Charlotte's right and two of them shut at her back. 'Ellen,' she repeated.

At first she wasn't sure that the response was a word, if it was even a response. She was so anxious to locate it, still more when she failed, that she only belatedly recognised it. 'No,' Ellen had said – groaned, rather.

Did she want to keep Charlotte away or to deny her own identity? 'Yes, I'm here,' Charlotte told her. 'I've come to help. Don't make me wander about in here. Say where you are. And where's Hugh?'

She was talking so much in the hope of provoking an answer, but she hushed for fear of covering one up. There was no sound other than the abortive flattened echo of her voice in the open rooms and down the staircase. 'Ellen,' she persisted as she crossed the spongy carpet to the second room.

It was crowded with objects standing still in the dark. She saw the shadows of their heads first, swelling across the carpet towards another buried window. They were orreries, six of them, and it took her some moments to realise why there needed to be more than one: they didn't represent the familiar solar system. Two of the stars orbited by planets were so black that the flashlight seemed unable to illuminate them, while another was encircled by nothing more than jagged fragments of itself. Quite a few of the planets were misshapen to a degree that Charlotte could hardly believe was cosmically possible. The orrery closest to the window suggested not just a diagram of a planetary system but, in the relationships of its thirteen globes and less globular bodies, some larger and more ominous meaning. She imagined the owner of the house gazing from the window at night or through the telescope until he discerned all these vagaries of the universe, and then she had the disconcerting notion that he'd constructed them as a means of sending forth the visions they portrayed. 'Ellen,' she urged, struggling to disengage her mind from the thoughts that had invaded it, and sent the flashlight beam around the room. There was nowhere for Ellen to hide among the sluggish dance of shadows, and she hadn't made another sound. Charlotte swung around to stride across the landing and, before her apprehension could prevent her, grasped the icy scalloped brass doorknob to open the third room.

It was empty, which should have been all that she needed to see. Nevertheless as her gaze was drawn to the circle of marks on the floor, the flashlight beam sank away from the heavy black curtains that covered the window. The circle encompassed perhaps half the square floor, and she suspected that its centre was precisely at the midpoint of the square. It consisted of symbols and ideograms that looked unnervingly alive, as if besides trembling on the edge of growing comprehensible they only awaited a signal to start crawling after one another. Indeed, the restless light seemed capable of rousing them. They were carved out of the floorboards, whereas the marks that filled the circle were less defined, though not too faint to suggest a series of frantic attempts to escape. Charlotte was forming the impression that the prisoner had been large and very leggy; in fact, she could think that it had been scrabbling at the limits of its prison with an unnecessary number of legs. Was the circle entirely deserted? Was that a stain on the floor in the middle, or a small dark lump? Perhaps it wasn't even as small as it had seemed at first glance, but her uncertainty about its size might be due to the tendrils it was extending across the boards. Surely only the movement of the light made it appear to flex them – and then she wondered if her own attention could be letting it take shape. The thought was enough to drive her out of the room with a slam of the door. 'Ellen,' she repeated to no avail, and so she had to twist the greenish brass knob to push the next door wide.