Psychopathia: A Horror Suspense Novel (10 page)

His bag thumped down onto the bare floorboards with a smack of dust. There was a single bed against the wall, and a chest of drawers with a bum leg. He knew it had a bum leg because he’d carted it out to the garage here a few years ago, finally sick of the way it rocked to and fro every time he put his socks and undies away. After that he’d kept his clothes in a basket and it worked out much better because he never had to put anything away. They just went from clean basket to dirty and rotated from there.

Realising finally that he’d been staring into space for the last few minutes, Toby shook his head, rubbed at his gritty eyes and got to work. The light first. It dangled from the unfinished roof, strung along a convenient beam, and hung down unshaded into the room. Unshaded was good though.

Toby unzipped his bag and pulled out one of the
light bulbs he’d picked up at the supermarket on their way home. Tully had raised an eyebrow at the stock of bulbs he put on the conveyer, but she was too pissed at having to go back home to ask him about them. She’d just turned back to her own frowning thoughts.

He had to drag the bed out from the wall and stand on it to change the light bulb. The one already in there was sticky with dust and gunk. He wiped his fingers on his pants and screwed in the new bulb, nodding to himself with satisfaction. 200 watts. The brightest he could find. Wouldn’t be many shadows with this baby blasting from the middle of the room.

The dust tickled his nose, but he wasn’t done yet. Besides, he didn’t give a shit about a bit of dust. If this was Tully’s room, she’d be complaining how their dad hadn’t even bothered to clean it or make the bed, but Toby really didn’t mind. He didn’t want anyone to come in, for starters. He wanted to be able to organise things just the way he wanted it. But girls were different, he supposed. Sometimes though, everyone seemed different. Or maybe it was just him.

The extension cords were new too. He’d ducked into the hardware store while Tully waited for him in the car. Said he’d need a few things if he was going to live above the garage until
uni started again. She’d just shrugged, still brooding about Lara and Matt leaving the cabin, even though they’d given them the car. But Toby was glad to be out of the cabin. Things had been getting worse there, and Tully knew it too. She just hadn’t liked calling up their dad to say they had to come back home. It felt like failure to her, he knew, and Tully wasn’t good with failure.

Hammer and nails, Toby had found downstairs. Standing on the bed again, he pounded a nail into the beam in the corner of the ceiling, and draped one of the extension cords over it. He’d plugged a light fitting into the end of it, and now he screwed another bulb into it. That worked. No shadows in that corner of the room.

By late afternoon, all the corners were strung with bulbs and when he flicked all the switches, the room filled with a broad swath of white light from one end to another. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and sighed in relief. It was good. It was going to work.

Except for under the bed. Under the bed was still going to be dark. His gaze wavered on the dark rectangle under the bed base and
he shuddered. If he set one of the bright bulbs under there, it would probably work, but it might also singe the bottom of the bed. He leapt forward and tugged the mattress from the base. It flopped down onto the floor, and he nodded again, then upended the base and dragged it to the door. There couldn’t be any shadows under the bed if the bed was on the floor. He opened the door and shoved it out. It could be hauled down to the garage later.

His stepmother had given him a washing basket of sheets, blankets and pillow. The sheets were still in cellophane wrappers. Brand new. They were grey
. He would have preferred bright white, but maybe he could get white ones some time. These would do for now. The blankets were okay. A duvet with a cover to match the sheets, but he didn’t put the cover on. The duvet was better without it, a nice, clean white. He made the bed. It would be fine. Everything would be fine.

But then there was the chest of drawers. Toby tipped it on its side and unscrewed the legs, but when he put it up the right away again, it wasn’t right, even though it sat flush on
the ground now. There were no shadows lurking under it, but he didn’t even have to look to know the drawers were full of them. He touched the wood, fingers tentatively on the knob, then withdrew, tucked his hand under his arm. The chest of drawers joined the bed base back downstairs in the garage.

Toby eyed the stairs up to his room. They were littered with shadows. He flicked on the garage light, but that just made it worse. The shadows flitted to the corners and lurked there, looking out at him. He sniffed and chewed on a ragged thumbnail. Maybe if he rigged another light above the stairs it would be okay. But he was out of extension cords, and he’d only bought four of the fittings – one for each corner of the room. He didn’t have enough for the stairs as well.

He’d have to take his chances. Hope none of the shadows grabbed him as he ran up there. If he was fast enough, it should be okay.

The door opened behind him and he startled.

‘Still jumpy, eh? Me too.’ Tully looked around the garage. ‘Aren’t the bed and drawers for your room?’

‘I didn’t need them,’ he said.

‘Oh. Well, anyway. It’s dinner time. And the baby’s crying again.’

Toby shrugged. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘What for?’ Tully looked genuinely surprised.

He worried at the thumb
nail again. ‘For suggesting we go up to Seacliff.’

Tully’s face fell and she stepped forward and lo
oped her arms around him, rested her head on his shoulder. ‘It’s not your fault, Toby,’ she said. ‘I was the one wanting to do the stupid ghost hunting.’

He let her hold him like that for a
moment, then shrugged her off, uncomfortable, wanting to go back upstairs where it was nice and light. ‘I guess we ought to go in for dinner.’

‘Yeah.’ She opened the garage door, then stopped and looked back at him. ‘It’s really not your fault. But the sooner we find a flat for the year, the better, right?’

He nodded, and fought down the urge to push her through the doorway. The shadows were pressing up behind him. He could feel them, and somewhere amongst them, was one with a pair of milky blue eyes. He cleared his throat.

‘We’re still flatting with
Lara and Matt, right?’

Tully’s shoulders drooped. ‘I don’t know. I guess so, but I haven’t been brave enough to ask her.
She’s been weird, hasn’t even called me – I’ve only seen her at work.’

Whatever. They’d sort it out. Right now, Toby just wanted to get out of the garage. ‘Dinner?’ he asked.

‘Yeah. Dinner.’ Tully stepped through the doorway, finally, and Toby hustled after her, not looking back, not wanting to see what was looking at him.

Tully tried not to think it was a big deal. They were living at home again, that was all, and her stepmother cooked for them every day, though Tully made sure she did her own laundry. It would have been embarrassing to have someone else pawing through her clothes.

She put the baby monitor down on the coffee table and sighed. Her night off and she’d let her father guilt her into babysitting. At least the kid was asleep. At last. Two hours it had taken, lugging the baby around, pacing from one end of the house to the other. Bouncing it up and down, hell, she’d even tried singing. The baby had leaned back and looked at her then,
eyes wide like it didn’t know what was going on, then shock and horror, she’d tucked her little head against Tully and closed her eyes.

Dropping down on the couch, Tully picked up the remote and flicked the television on. Saturday night, there might be a decent movie to watch. She shoul
d rightly be out at the pub, on a date, even. Having a drink, grabbing a bite to eat, making out in a movie theatre. But it had been ages since she’d been on a date. Another thing not worth thinking about. There were too many of those.

Usually she’d call
Lara, and she’d come round, armed with popcorn and a couple DVD’s, even if she dragged Matt with her. The four of them would lie around watching horror movies where everyone went down into the dark cellar no matter how you yelled at them not to.

But
Lara had had enough of horror movies. Even getting a bunch of weird stuff on camera had been too much after a week of it. She and Matt moved out of the beach house and forced Tully to do the same. She and Toby didn’t have enough money to pay the rent. Before the trip to Seacliff, they’d even been talking about staying in the house all year, instead of flatting in town. Now that plan was screwed, and Lara was suddenly busy all the time.

The baby monitor squawked, then whimpered. Tully held her breath, and
surreptitiously crossed her fingers.

‘Please don’t wake up again,’ she whispered. If this was how much hard work was involved in having a kid, then Tully was opting out of motherhood. No thank you, no way. She liked her sleep. And her spare time.

The monitor hushed, and Tully breathed a sigh of relief. She switched channels on the TV again, searching for something that looked half-decent. There was a romantic comedy on and she settled for that, making herself comfortable against the cushions and dragging a wispy sort of throw rug over her knees. She wondered what Toby was up to, realising she’d hardly seen him lately, but she was too comfortable to go see, it was too warm and snug in her little nest on the couch and even though she didn’t know what the movie was about, she giggled at it before her eyes slid closed and sleep snuggled up with her.

The baby monitor woke her, and she sprang upright, disoriented. She’d been dreaming about being back at
uni, buying her books, wishing the accounting textbooks weren’t so heavy, and dropping them, but it had been okay because the guy who picked them up for her was real cute.

Her mouth was dry, and she blinked, wondering why it was dark. Had her father and stepmother come home? They must have, and turned the television off, and the lights.

The monitor gave a mechanical squeal and she batted a hand around for it, landing on its plastic shell and giving it a little shake. Her dad can’t have come home – Mary, her stepmother would have picked up the monitor and taken it to their room with her. She rubbed at her eyes and put the monitor back down. She listened to see if the baby was awake.

But then
came the whispering sound of hushed conversation. Tully sat on the couch and looked at the monitor, her body frozen in place. The row of lights that came on when the baby cried were flickering on and off. Something was in there with the baby, and it was whispering. Icy fingers of dread walked up and down her spine.

She leaned closer to the little plastic transmitter.
Whispering, definitely whispering coming from it. Trying to make out the words, Tully picked the monitor up and brought it to her ear, eyes glued on the darkness around her, ear pressed to the plastic.

It was indecipherable. Sibilant whispering, that was all, someone speaking under their breath, rapid bursts of words, brief silences. Tully clenched her hand around the monitor, and unfolded her legs from the couch. She had to go and see what was in the baby’s room. Had to make sure the kid was safe – what was the spirit doing in the baby’s room?

In fact, what was it doing here at all?

Tully was light-headed, peering ahead in the dark, monitor still
attached to one hand, and the whispering was louder now, spewing forth faster, the speaker getting worked up, shrill.

The baby screamed. The sound hit Tully like a shot of adrenaline to the heart. Another scream, high, terrified, and Tully took the stairs two at a time, pushed the door to the baby’s room open without even a fortifying breath and launched herself forward.

The whispering stopped, cut dead. There was a squeal of interference from the monitor beside the baby’s cot, and then they fell silent. Tully huffed out a breath and leaned over the cot, where the child stared back up at her, eyes wide, hands making little starfishes. She dropped the monitor and picked the baby up, pressed her against her chest, and took, finally, a moment to look around.

Light. She needed to turn the light on. A flick of the switch and the room flooded with blessed light. Both she and the child squinted against it and she shushed the baby, patting the little girl’s back.

‘Shh, Hannah,’ she said. ‘It’s all right now.’ But she looked around the room, wary, bending slightly to peer under the cot, even though she knew that was ridiculous. She wasn’t looking for a real person, someone who would be hiding under the bed, behind the curtains, in the wardrobe. She shivered. It was cold in the room, and her breath misted white in front of her.

‘Leave the baby alone,’ she said out loud, and it upset her how her voice was thin and wavering. She tried again. ‘The baby is out of bounds.’ It was a ridiculous thing to say, but that was how she felt. Her baby sister wasn’t fair game. ‘She’s jus
t a baby. You have a problem, bring it to me.’

A breeze, chill, pushed her hair back from her face. On the table beside the cot, the baby monitor lit up, then fell dark again, and the breeze was gone. The room warmed. Tully stood petrified, arms and legs locked in place.
It had touched her. The spirit had reached out and touched her.