Haunted (27 page)

Despite his unsightly appearance, Simon was smiling pleasantly.

For no other reason than utter shock, Ash hurled the bag at the figure at the top of the stairway, the sudden movement provoking the dog behind him into launching itself forward.

Ash heard the scuffling of its paws, the altered pitch of its snarling, and did not waste time in turning towards the charge. He slid over the balustrade, grabbing the rail as his body began to fall. He clung there, feet kicking space, until Seeker’s jaws appeared above him, its teeth snapping air. Ash’s hold loosened and he plunged, clutching momentarily at the lip of the balcony, but unable to sustain the grip. He fell to the floor, landing heavily and gasping at the jarring pain in his ankle.

He lay there on his back, struggling for breath, his whole body numbed by the fall. As the numbness matured to an aching tenderness, he became conscious of the wisps of smoke curling in the air. He listened to the distant crackle of fire and felt – although it might have been imagined – heat against his face.

Now he heard padding footsteps on the stairs.

Ash rolled to a kneeling position, pushing himself upright, the pain in his ankle severe. He glimpsed Seeker as it rounded the post at the foot of the stairs, skidding on the unswept floor, but quickly regaining its balance and bounding forwards.

Ash hobbled away, knowing his only chance was to put a barrier between himself and the rushing animal. The kitchen was too far along the hall – he would never make it. He pushed open the nearest door. The cellar door.

A wall of blinding flame sent him staggering backwards, his arms raised to protect his face.

But he had already caught sight of something moving in the fire below. A figure had been climbing the cellar steps, rising slowly as if oblivious of the heat. Ash parted his arms so that he could look again, bewildered, not believing what he had seen.

The figure had nearly reached the top step and it was ablaze, a person totally engulfed in bleached, billowing flame. And yet its countenance, the reddened, boiling mess that was its face, was familiar.

The human torch that emerged from the cellar was Robert Mariell.

Seeker stopped, twin fiery images dancing in its liquid eyes as though the man burned inside the dog’s own skull. It cowered and began to shiver; from its slathering jaws there now came piteous whining.

Ash waited no longer. He limped from the furnace that was the cellar, away from the flaming, blistering figure and its stench of roasting.

The dog shook itself, aware that its quarry was escaping. It warily skirted the enflamed man, head hung low until it was past, then gave chase once more.

Ash paused only to throw a hall chair at his pursuer. The missile bounced in front of Seeker, momentarily interrupting the dog’s flight. Simon Mariell was now at the foot of the stairs, his grotesqueness lit by the incineration of his elder brother, his derisory laughter hissing through a strangulated throat.

Ash dodged into the kitchen, twisting to swing the door shut behind him. It was almost closed when Seeker’s jaws appeared and its teeth locked onto the sleeve of his coat.

He tried to pull his arm free, keeping pressure on the door, pushing it hard against the animal’s muzzle. Ash yelled when he finally tore his arm away, the dog toppling backwards into the hall with scraps of material in its mouth. Ash slammed the door shut and stood back as Seeker launched itself at the other side, the timber screeching in its frame, but mercifully holding. There followed a frantic scratching against the wood.

Through the squalid and littered kitchen hurried Ash, his injured ankle jarring at every step. He reached the back door and wrenched it open.

Cold morning air rushed at him as if welcoming him to freedom. Ash limped outside, glorying in the light rain on his face, sucking in pure air, cleansing his lungs of Edbrook’s malodour. He had broken out and the liberation pumped energy into his system. He wanted to scream with the pure relief.

It was not until he was at the edge of the terrace that he dared look back at the house. In the rain its stone was even darker, windows even blacker. Still, it was just a house, bricks, timber and glass, a man-made place and nothing more than that. An old building that appeared weary with its own age, made sinister to him only because
he
knew of the aberration within its walls. He wiped raindrops from his eyes. It was all impossible, all unreal; yet he was not dreaming.

But the very real nightmare continued when the glass of a lower window shattered outwards and the demon-shape of Seeker hurtled through.

Ash hobbled down the steps from the terrace into the gardens and loped along the flagstone path, realizing he would never outdistance the pursuing dog. He looked back over his shoulder and saw that Seeker had reached the top of the steps. The dog began an unhurried descent, as if aware its prey could not escape. Its mouth was wet with white-flecked spittle, its coat shiny with rain; it slunk along the path, head hunched into shoulders that quivered with pent-up force, jaws opening in a deep snarling.

Ash confronted the stalking beast, backing away as he had before, having no choice but to play the cruel cat and mouse game, for he was too afraid to run. The beast would maul him badly, there was no doubting that; the question was whether it was savage – or powerful – enough to kill him. The rain failed to cool the clammy heat of Ash’s body.

Seeker was only yards away, the distance between them quickly narrowing. Ash half-crouched, continuing to move backwards, frightened but angry, too, that he should be so intimidated by a dog. An obscenity formed on his lips, a useless but defiant oath to hurl at the creature. Before he could scream it though, his heel touched something solid. He could move no further: the low wall of the stagnant pond was behind him. Seeker tensed its muscles, ready to attack.

The water behind Ash erupted.

He stumbled round, the animal forgotten. Rising over him was a vision so terrifying that he collapsed to his knees.

What was left of her hair trailed to her shoulders in sodden, tousled strands. The long, bedraggled gown she wore was stained with slime from the pond, much of the material hanging in scorched tatters around her, slithering green vegetation clinging to her body as though it had attached itself while she lay dormant beneath the water’s surface.

Seeker howled and sank its belly against the path.

She clutched the edge of the wall with scummy, shrunken hands, one of them only blackened gristle, her rictus grin fixed on Ash. Almost half her body was burned raw, much of it charred brittle. As it had the night before, one huge, exposed eye stared unblinkingly at him.

She dragged herself from the pond, water draining from her to create a puddle around her scarred feet. He had fallen away as she emerged, and now she loomed over and reached out her arms towards him, slick, thin weeds draped like bracelets from her wrists.

Ash shuffled his body away in abhorrence and what was left of her rotted lips curled back: the scratchy intonation that came from them might have been his name.

She screeched as her darkened side abruptly burst into flame.

A whiteness, a total banishment of thought, caused by the shock wiped his mind. Sheer reaction drove him to his feet. Ash ran from the writhing figure, the agonized shrieks accompanying him as though inside his head, just behind that screen of whiteness. And as he drew away, the blankness started to disintegrate, her cries becoming louder as they pushed through the fading barrier; yet there was also laughter, a distant mocking sound, no more than an echo.

He slipped on the damp grass, pain shooting up from his ankle to his groin. He picked himself up, the searing spasm of little consequence, and stumbled across neglected flower beds, through bushes, making for the trees, seeking shelter, the screams and the laughter now gone from his head, left behind in the gardens to diminish, though never quite to fade.

The rain began to fall more heavily, making his journey treacherous. His hands were held before him to brush away leafy branches as he entered the woodland. They guided him around trees, his vision blurred by the rain and perhaps his own tears. He was sure there were others in the woods with him, for he could hear snickering, their soft derisive calls; occasionally he caught sight of their flitting forms as they kept pace with him, though at a distance, among the trees.

He had no idea where he was running to except that it was away from the estate. Once he reached a road he would make his way to the village somehow, back to the world of order, to sweet, mundane normality. A rustling of bushes sent him veering off to the left. An unclear shape in the shadows beneath a tree caused him to run to his right. Mocking laughter from behind increased his laboured pace.

Soon he came to a clearing, one with which he was familiar. He stumbled, dropping to his hands and knees so that the rain, unimpeded by the canopy of trees, beat against his back. Ash realized where he was, for before him, so solid that it appeared to have risen up from the earth itself, was the stone monument of the Mariells’ family tomb.

He gasped in deep lungfuls of drenched air, his shoulders heaving, his hair matted against his skull. Rain pounded against the grey slabs of the mausoleum, its force causing a shimmering halo. The stone was slowly being cleansed of its mud and grime, lichen between cracks taking on a deeper hue, grass at its base bent under the pressure. As he watched, dirt was washed from the deeply etched inscription by the side of the entrance.

He could not help but read the names as they were slowly unveiled:

Ash blinked rain from his eyes as sediment ingrained in the lettering began to flow more freely, joining with the surrounding dirt in a falling wash of sludge. His lips moved like an infant’s as he silently read the rest of the chiselled inscription, and fresh horror compounded that which already rooted him there.

The last date, the year of death, became enlarged in his mind, as though it had grown in the stone.

From the tomb’s dingy interior came the hollow giggle of a young child.