House of Fear, Page 3

  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 a while 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 voice-mail, 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 voice mail programme.

  I knew what I would see if I looked through the window, so I didn’t look. I wanted to run away, but I didn’t know where to go. It would be dark soon. I had to do something.

  The front door opened easily. Tense, I darted my gaze about, fearful of ambush, although the place felt empty. To my right, I could see into a small, dark sitting room where an old man sat, or slumped, in an armchair.

  He was a very, very old man, almost hairless, his skin like yellowed parchment, and appeared to have been dead for some time. It would have been his foot I would have seen if I’d looked through the window: his feet in brand new, brilliantly white sports shoes. But even as I recognized the rest of the clothes – polo shirt, jeans, soft grey hooded jacket, even the phone and car-keys in his pockets – I clung to the notion of a vicious trick, that someone had stolen Michael’s clothes to dress an old man’s corpse. How could the vigorous fifty-eight-year-old that I’d seen a few minutes ago have aged and died so rapidly?

  I know now that it is what’s left of Michael, and that there is no one else here.

  I am not able to leave. I can open the door, but as soon as I step through, I find myself entering again. I don’t know how many times I did that, before giving up. I don’t know how long I have been here; it seems like a few days, at most, but when I look in the mirror I can tell by my hair that it must be two months or more.

  There’s plenty of food in the kitchen, no problems with plumbing or electricity, and for entertainment, besides all the books, there’s an old video-player, and stacks of videos, as well as an old phonograph and a good collection of music. I say ‘good collection’ because it might have been planned to please Michael and me, at least as we were in the ’80s.

  Having found a ream of paper in the bottom drawer of the desk in the other parlour (the room where Michael isn’t) I decided to write down what has happened, just in case someone comes here someday, and finds my body as I found his. It gives me something to do, even though I fear it is a pointless exercise.

  While exploring the house earlier – yesterday, or the day before – I found evidence of mice – fortunately, only in one place, in the other sitting room. There were droppings there, and a nest made of nibbled paper, as if the mouse had devoted all its energy to the destruction of a single stack of paper. One piece was left just large enough for me to read a few words in faded ink, and recognize Michael’s handwriting, but there was not enough for me to make sense of whatever he was trying to say.

  PIED-À-TERRE

  Stephen Volk

  Stephen Volk does ghosts like nobody’s business. He is, after all, the writer behind the legendary TV ‘hoax’ Ghostwatch, the drama series Afterlife and the forthcoming film The Awakening. Here Stephen presents us with a story that is a cry for justice, a common theme in tales of revenants, but ‘Pied-à-terre’ isn’t so much a call for vengeance from beyond the grave, as a deeply affecting story whose ghost continues to call to us long after the tale is done.

  She put her sunglasses on and raised them onto her head as she consulted the Google Maps print-out diligently folded and tucked between pages ninety-eight and ninety-nine of her A-Z. Leaving the Underground, she turned right into Fulham Road and followed the blue arrows, the print-out clutched in her hand. She hurried past Pizza Express, Nando’s and the Nat West, mentally ticking off the landmarks, then took a right into North End Road before crossing to the other side of the street. On the Tube map it hadn’t looked far from Hammersmith where she’d parked the car in a multi-storey just outside the congestion zone – clever girl! – but she hadn’t made allowance for the delay at Earl’s Court, and now she was concerned about being late for her appointment.

  Typical, she could hear Rollo saying when she told him.

  Not typical, actually, Miriam thought, as if answering him back, which she never did. I’m never typically late, Rollo. You know that. I’m always really punctual, you know that. She felt a little rash heating her neck as she even thought it, and felt foolish and annoyed at herself for feeling foolish and annoyed.

  She knew why she was feeling like this – on edge, twitchy. It was because, just before driving to London, she and Rollo had had a row. Not a major one. Not a really major one, but a row nevertheless. It had always been the plan they’d do this together. But when it came to it, Rollo was on his laptop. You go and look, I’m busy, he’d said, not taking his eyes from the illuminated screen. I’ll see it later. I don’t care. You
make the decision. You can make a decision, can’t you?

  Yes. But that wasn’t the point. She’d wanted to do it together. They were husband and wife. That’s what husbands and wives did. Look at houses together. Make the decision – together.

  But now she started to think she was being unfair. Why was she always so unfair? He was probably back there, still on his computer, still working. And she’d done the two-hour drive to London – of course, why not her? She had nothing else to do. And he probably wanted to get it done today so that they could spend a nice Sunday together relaxing in the garden with a jug of Pimm’s and the Sunday papers littered around them on the grass. That’s probably what he was thinking. He was probably thinking of her.

  The sun blinked behind red brick chimney stacks and black slate roofs, back-lighting television aerials and satellite dishes.

  The street, as she walked along it, gave her a faint pang of nostalgia, unremarkable and unspectacular though it was. Certainly not salubrious. Just the kind of street of Victorian (or was it Edwardian?) houses you found all over London, with bay windows on the ground and second floors, and a plain, square, attic window above that. She could already picture the attic room; she had been brought up in a house not dissimilar in Tottenham, near Black Boy Lane, equidistant between Spurs and the MFI her parents used to frequent every weekend in their devotion to DIY. She recognised the type of apologetic yard they had in front of them cordoned by squat brick walls, barely big enough to house your wheelie bin – presumably now their sole purpose other than collecting weeds and straggly, dying plants. As if dying plants were some sort of design feature and envious neighbours peeked between net curtains deciding they had to have them to keep up with the Joneses.

  37 Shorrold’s Road, SW6...

  Miriam read the address on the information from the estate agent.

  37...

  She raised her sunglasses again and squinted at the numbers on the doors or in cheap plastic decals on the gates. But there was no reason to, now she could see ahead of her a ‘For Sale’ sign, and since it was the only one in the street, made a bee-line for it.

  For a moment she felt slightly woozy and lowered her shades back onto the bridge of her nose. Perhaps she’d inadvertently stared right into the sun or something – that was it, probably – because she was suddenly aware of a pain just above her right eye, a tooth-achy pain that she got sometimes when her sinuses were blocked, or, perhaps now, when there was a lot of pollen in the air. Was there a lot of pollen in the air?

  She wanted to get inside. Indoors. Rest her eyes. Dry eyes. Itchy eyes, now. Get rid of this damned headache. Where had it come from all of a sudden?

  She saw no doorbell, so she rapped the knocker. To her surprise, the door opened an inch under the ever-so-slight force. It had been left on the snib, as her mum used to say. On the snib? Did anyone even use that expression any more? On the snib.

  “Hello?”

  She prodded it ajar and stepped gingerly into the narrow hallway, feeling a refreshing coolness spreading over her back where the sun used to be.

  “Hi.”

  A cheery face popped out from the doorway of what was obviously the sitting room. Nice face. Nice smile, Miriam thought instantly.

  “I’m Suzy, from the estate agent’s.” A hand extended to shake hers. Young hand. Perfect fingernails. Soft.

  “Hi. I’m Miriam Lehr. Did we speak on the phone?”

  “Did we...?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “Oh...”

  “I think it was a man.”

  “Oh, then you’re right. It wasn’t me!” Suzy from the estate agent’s chuckled. Miriam did the same, as best she could.

  She liked the sound of the girl’s laughter, though. It said, I’m a bit flaky but I’m all right, you can trust me. She didn’t think it was a ploy. It was just the way the girl was. There was no ‘side’ to her – another of her mum’s expressions that Miriam wasn’t entirely sure wasn’t past its sell-by date.

  “You don’t mind, do you?”

  “No,” Miriam said. “No. Why should I mind?”

  “Good.” Suzy from the estate agent’s had the ring of her car keys round one finger, jangling like jewellery when she moved, hugging the house specifications to her chest. Miriam fleetingly saw something else clutched there – a greeting card still in its cellophane wrapper. She could make out the words ‘Mum’ and ‘50’ on it above the estate agent’s cuff. “Right, then. Do you have any questions up front, or do you want to look around in your own time?”

  “I’d like to look around in my own time, if that’s all right.”

  “Be my guest. And anything you want to know, please fire away. That’s what I’m here for.” Suzy smiled and the smile was as nice to see as her laughter was to listen to.

  “It’s warm, isn’t it?” Miriam fanned herself with the A-Z.

  “Yes. I love it.”

  “It’s a bit too much for me, actually.”

  “Is it? I love it. I’m a bit of a sun bod, I’m afraid.” Suzy made a face, like it was a character fault of hers. A nice air of self-deprecating charm, there, under the confidence – both things Miriam envied. Deeply.

  “I can tell.” Miriam had noticed the other woman’s tan as soon as she’d seen her. “Have you been abroad?”

  “No. I had a great day this weekend windsurfing. Got myself a new sail!”

  Miriam would have liked to hate her for saying that, and for slightly miming the action, but it was said in a completely un-showy manner, with almost childish glee. A guilty secret she wanted to share. And who could be mean-spirited enough to begrudge her that? In all honesty, with her perfect teeth and lipstick, Miriam thought, the young woman beside her had everything going for her. She was trim. Fit. Beautiful. Possibly still full of memories of the beach – the sport, the swim suits, yellow sand on wet skin, the sound of crashing waves, the boyfriend – wine (sparkling wine?), kisses... Obviously something blissfully romantic...

  She pretended to be taking in the room but she was really taking in Suzy out of the corner of her eye, in her smart dry-cleaned business suit and shirt, top button undone, healthy tan and glowing good looks, her sun-loving glow, lush nut-brown hair swept from that side parting, draped over one eyebrow. It made her think how sickeningly pale she herself was, with her too-long body and too-short legs stuck in ugly running shoes instead of the polished high heels Suzy wore, showing off her shapely calves.

  “How long has this house been on the market?”

  “A week.”

  “Has there been any interest?”

  “A bit.” Suzy grinned cheekily. The grin said: I’m bound to say that, aren’t I? I’m not going to tell you nobody else is interested, am I? I’m doing my job. You know the game.

  Miriam had started to give her surroundings the once over and wasn’t impressed. Everything was dark. Dark wood, dark carpets. Never the taste of anybody born since 1970, she thought. Perhaps it was an old person’s house. An Asian family. She didn’t know why she thought that, but there was the smell of cooking in the air, curry perhaps, from next door even, or was it the long ingrained smell of dog? Wet dog?

  A nail stuck out of the wall where a painting once hung. What kind of painting? And where was it now? Sold? Sold so that someone could eat? So that a mother could feed her children? She wondered what else had been removed. Where were the owners anyway? Where were the signs of them? There should be children playing, toys, something. Even the absence was an absence...

  Miriam rubbed her arms, eager to move on. “Right.”

  “Right, Mrs Lehr... Upstairs? It is Mrs Lehr?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Hadn’t she noticed her wedding ring? Women usually did. It was the first thing they noticed. But then, that’s no guarantee you want to be called Mrs, is it? There were plenty of married women who wanted to be called Ms. There were plenty who retained their maiden name, too. Probably thinking they were hanging on to their beloved ‘
independence,’ but to Miriam it sounded non-committal, like clinging onto their old name was an escape plan, a glider in the attic.

  She climbed the stairs behind the estate agent, noticing her calves again. Perfect. Muscular. Not rugger-player’s legs like hers, as her husband called them. Miriam was mesmerised for a few minutes by the way her ankles rose out of the high heels, leaving a little gap as she went from step to step, and by the way her slim hips jutted gently from side to side.

  “This is the master bedroom. Nice size, again,” Suzy said. “How long have you been married, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Not long. Only six months.” Miriam followed her into a room with heavy net curtains over two large windows. The filtered sunlight fell on a large double bed with cheap, ungenerous pillows and a hideously drab duvet which Miriam tried to blank out of her consciousness. She wondered how long ago the bed had been made. That morning? Had the man lain sweating against the pillow? Had they made love? Perhaps – ghastly thought – the stains were still under there, drying...

  “Oh. That’s nice. So you’re still quite newly-fangled?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Newly-fangled. With each other?”

  “Oh, no. Not really. We’ve known each other for a while. About four years, in fact. We know each other well. He used to live in a flat with some other blokes and I used to live with my mum and dad.”

  “So this is your first home together? Lovely.”

  “No, I won’t be staying here. Not a lot. Maybe occasionally, if we come up for the theatre and we can’t get a late train back, sort of thing. But mainly it’s for my husband, you see...”

  “Lovely.”

  Miriam looked at the flowers on the bedside table and felt sure they were the work of the estate agent in a vain attempt to brighten up the place. It didn’t quite work, but it was a gesture. Suzy was good at her job, and she cared, that was obvious. Miriam wondered if she did those little touches in her own home. Wondered if she had a husband or boyfriend – windsurfer – tanned, successful, waiting for her when she got home from work and kicked off those high heels and rested those perfect calves.