Fear No Evil (17 page)

‘Get your coats – you’ve pulled,’ I said.

Chapter 19

Tish drove us over to Hart House. She’s scary behind the wheel at the best of times, and cramming all three of us into a two-seater Mazda MX-5 made the journey even more fun. I’d been enjoying getting up close and personal with Dan a few minutes earlier, but sitting on his lap with my knees shoved under my chin and my face two inches from the windscreen wasn’t quite what I had in mind.

Tish screeched to a halt outside the building, the car’s left-side tyres squelching into the lawn as she jolted us all forward with a sudden slam of the brakes. Dan kindly grabbed hold of my shoulders to stop my head flying into the glass, and I muttered my thanks as I ungracefully clambered out, forced to shove my arse in his face as I went.

Will Deerborne was already there, standing outside the double doors with a bald-headed security guard in his sixties. He was the proud owner of several chins, and all of them were quivering nervously.

Justin and Betty arrived a minute or two after us, despite their hotel being a lot closer. Betty was carrying a large black velvet bag draped over her shoulder. Maybe it was to keep their superhero costumes in.

I made the introductions, and I have to hand it to Will – not a single double-take, even though he was clearly surprised at seeing Tish there. He must have gone to one of those posh schools that teach you to look unperturbed even when your moustache is on fire and axe-wielding hobbits are hacking away at your ankles.

‘What exactly has been happening?’ asked Dan, taking charge straight away. I had no objections – when it came to the spooky stuff, he was most definitely the boss. The guard flicked a twitchy look at Will, who nodded his encouragement.

‘Well, it started about nine, I’d say. Mr D here had asked me to keep a special eye on things, and when I was doing my, er, patrol round the grounds’ – fag break, in other words – ‘I noticed the lights. In that room. The one’s supposed to be empty, like. Going on and off, they were. I stopped some of the kids coming out, asked if they knew anything. Sometimes they lark about, you know, where they shouldn’t. Harmless enough. But since that thing happened last term – you know, with the girl, God rest her soul – nobody’s wanted to go near that place. It’s always a bit cold up there as well…’

He drifted away, staring up at the window in question. The lights were still flicking on and off, on and off, over and over again in a strange rhythm. The window looked well and truly shut, though, and at least nobody was flying out of it.

‘Could it just be some kind of electrical fault?’ asked Tish, echoing my own thoughts. I think they call it ‘grasping at straws’.

‘Not with that kind of regularity,’ answered Justin, surprising me by actually using his vocal chords. Maybe he only spoke on matters relating to gas pipes and circuitry. The Handyman from Hell, dressed in his black leathers and covered in tats.

‘It’s Morse code,’ said Will, firmly, and we all turned to stare at him. ‘The lights. Look at them. Three quick flashes, three longer ones, three more short ones. Over and over. It’s Morse code.’

He looked a little embarrassed and added: ‘Navy cadets. It’s SOS. Someone up there is using those lights to flash for help.’

Dan and Justin locked eyes, possibly exchanged some kind of Telepath Action Man message, and both ran for the door. Betty, Tish, myself and Will dashed off after them, and there was a bit of a logjam as we all tried to get in at once. Will, ever the gentleman, immediately stopped and held the door open for the ladies, and all three of us trooped in. I made it up the stairs first. Tish was banjaxed by the five-inch platforms; Will was too polite to push past me, and as for Betty, well, I was clearly a bit fitter than her, even if she did look like an Amazonian goddess. No situation is ever so serious that you can’t allow yourself a small, silent, ‘ner-ner-ner-ner-ner’ moment.

Dan and Justin were pushing at the door, to no avail. The whole staircase was absolutely bloody freezing. Tish, who was wearing barely any clothes anyway, immediately started shaking, the rattling sound of her chattering teeth echoing off the walls. The security guard emerged from the lift, waving a bunch of keys big enough to sink the Titanic.

We moved apart to let him closer to the door, and his jittering hand eventually inserted the right key into the lock. It took him longer than it had me the other day with a pick, and even then he couldn’t turn it.

‘Something’s jamming it, from the other side,’ he said, frowning and dropping the keys with a thud on the carpet. He looked around him and suddenly seemed to notice the chill factor, his barrel-like torso shaking despite the patches of sweat spreading in a moist semi-circle from the armpit of his white uniform shirt.

‘This isn’t right,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t like this before! What’s going on? Should I call the police, Mr D? Dear God, what should I do?’ His voice was so high-pitched by the end of the sentence, I feared for the light bulbs.

Betty stepped forward, gave him a heart-stopping smile, stroked his arm and spoke to him so quietly he had to lean forward to hear her.

‘Don’t worry about a thing. What’s your name?’

‘Arthur. Arthur Bevan,’ he said, gazing into her deep brown eyes.

‘Okay, Arthur, listen to me. It’s all okay. You’ve done everything you can. Now it’s time for you to go back downstairs and carry on with your duties. In fact, I think it’s time for a tea break, isn’t it, Mr D?’

Mr D caught on immediately, and chipped in: ‘Yes. Good man, Arthur. Go and get the kettle on. Watch the TV for a few minutes.’

‘We’ll be down soon,’ Betty added, propelling him gently towards the top step. ‘Make sure you get enough mugs ready! Two sugars for me!’

Arthur nodded and started off down the steps, eyes glazed, apparently hypnotized by Betty’s silken tones. That must be her special gift. I’d better watch out, I didn’t want to wake up squawking like a funky chicken or shouting ‘Hitler!’ at inappropriate moments.

The temperature had dropped even lower, now so cold our breath steamed from our mouths in iced clouds. Justin’s goatee even looked like it had a touch of frost developing at its black point.

We could see the lights still flashing under the door, then a banging started. Like someone throwing books around, hefting them at the walls. Screaming – several people at once, men and women and children, a soulless shrieking that made us all wince and clasp our hands to our ears. Then the smashing of glass, maybe a mirror being shattered, a vase hitting the floor, or… a window being broken open.

‘Get us in there!’ I yelled, and Dan nodded in agreement. He reared back and kicked at the door, just beneath the handle. Over and over again, until his bones must have ached, and the wood finally splintered. Justin shoulder-charged it and ran into the room, his leather coat flapping round his heels.

I ran through, expecting chaos. A maelstrom of destruction. Carnage, waste, dead bodies. A bit of a mess at the very least.

Instead, the room was exactly as I’d last seen it – neat, dusty, and empty. Apart from the young woman in front of us, sitting in the window seat with a child on her lap.

They were both looking at ‘Dissection of the Dog’, poring over a disgusting colour diagram of canine intestine as though it was Enid Blyton.

The woman looked up at us and smiled. Her eyes were wide, staring, blank. No pupils. Just discs of shining pale blue, so pale it was almost white, luminous, staring out at us blindly. The child was dressed in tattered grey rags, and was trying to hide her face behind long, tangled dark hair.

‘Where are your manners, Sarah?’ said the woman, pushing her off her lap and standing up. When the little girl tried to stammer a few half-formed words, she was slapped, vicious and hard, with such force she sprawled onto the floor and started to cry. I dashed forward to help her, was grabbed by Dan, his fingers biting so hard into my arm I knew they’d bruise.

‘Wait. This isn’t right,’ he said. ‘Listen.’

In the background there was a chattering, almost a chant, of children playing, their sing-song voices rising and falling in the cadence of a nursery rhyme. Getting louder. The sounds of games: of skipping ropes whispering through the air in a giant loop; of dice hitting pavements; of balls bouncing from end-of-terrace walls.

I whirled round, looking for the other children. Scrambled to open the wardrobe doors, pushed my way into the bathroom, desperate to find them. Nothing. Just the tired swinging of wire coat hangers and the drip of a tap into a dusty tub.

The singing descended into giggling. It should have been a happy sound. Instead, it made me want to run. Far, far away.

‘They’re playing hide and seek with you!’ said the woman with the blind, shining eyes. ‘And you won’t like it if we find you – then you have to be
it
!’

She leaned down, whispered in the girl’s ear. She was curled up in a defensive ball, protecting herself with her skinny arms in a pose I’d seen adopted by the long-term abused before. When she didn’t move, the woman kicked her hard in her scrawny ribs, and again I strained to move forward. Again I was held back by Dan.

‘Let me go!’ I said, trying to writhe out of his now-painful grip. ‘We can’t stand here and let her do that!’

‘She’s already dead,’ said Dan. ‘And this is all part of the game.’

The woman whipped her head up, looked at Dan with what can only be called greed.

‘Yes. That’s right. This is our game, and we don’t need Sarah any more.’

The child unfurled, climbed to small, bare feet, and ran, sobbing. Straight through the wall.

‘Fuck!’ I heard Tish say. I agreed wholeheartedly.

In the background, Betty and Justin had started to mutter. I couldn’t understand them – it might have been Greek or Latin, or bloody Oompah Loompah for all I knew, but even the sound of it, mixed in with the giggles of the invisible children, terrified me. That’s what you get when you grow up watching ‘The Omen’ on the old movie channel.

‘Pray!’ Dan instructed us, moving forward towards the woman. ‘Just pray, and do it now, and mean it!’

This wasn’t a time to argue. It also wasn’t a time for subtlety, so both me and Tish immediately launched into the Lord’s Prayer. It came automatically after our years of schooling. Will joined in; deliver us from evil in triplicate. I saw he’d dropped to his knees and held his hands together in supplication.

The woman with the blank blue eyes walked – almost skipped – over to Dan, faced him head on. She had long, straight brown hair, and tilted her face up at him in a way that was stomach-churningly flirtatious.

‘Oooh. How delicious you are,’ she said, her voice taking on the soft, lisping tones of a child. She reached out to caress the side of his face. I’d have jumped a mile, but Dan stood strong, not even recoiling. Maybe this kind of thing went on a lot in the Lake District.

Tish paused in her praying, and I glanced over. She’d overcome her terror enough to pull out the tiny digicam she carries everywhere with her, in case she needs to turn into Paparazzi Sally. She held it up, hands shaking as she pointed at the creature in front of us.

The girl noticed, struck a pose, and laughed.

‘Oh, you naughty thing – if I’d known you were going to do that, I’d have worn my party dress!’

She flicked her finger in Tish’s direction, like she was splashing her with water. Tish screeched and threw her arm in front of her face, dropping the camera to the floor, where it smashed with far more force than it should have.

‘Don’t be mean to me,’ snapped the girl. ‘My friends won’t like it.’

The background giggling rose in volume, echoing round the room in a dizzying circle of sound. It was everywhere and nowhere; dozens of tiny voices mocking us and laughing at our fear. My eyes were darting from corner to corner, seeing nothing but an intangible swirling in the texture of the light. I could feel tiny fingers prodding into me, and didn’t know if it was real, or my imagination in overdrive.

It was so cold now I couldn’t feel my hands. My toes had gone a long time ago. I was praying – on to a Hail Mary now – and jumping up and down at the same time, trying to keep my circulation pumping. Will grabbed up a blanket off the bed, threw it round my shoulders, jogging on the spot while he starting reciting the words to ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’ – he’d obviously run out of prayers and was using whatever he could remember.

‘We knew you’d come. You two were here a few days ago. You took so long to come back and visit – I had to play that little game with the lights just to get your attention, didn’t I? We’re glad you’re here. We get lonely. And bored. It’s not good for us to get bored.’

As she spoke the final word, the light bulb exploded, the filament sizzling and dozens of tiny glass splinters shooting out into the air. I held my hands over my head instinctively, trying to shrug into myself. She laughed delightedly, clapping her hands together.

The room was dark, apart from fingers of orange neon light spilling through the window from the street lights, casting a fluorescent glow onto the smooth skin of her face, reflecting from the glassy discs of her eyes.

‘Who are you?’ said Dan. ‘In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to tell me your name.’

‘Don’t be so bossy! We’re in charge here, and we don’t like it when people tell us what to do!’ she said, pouting up at Dan. I saw him take a staggering step forwards, and guessed he’d been shoved by those same tiny hands that had been pinching and poking me for the last few minutes. It was like being attacked by a dozen ice-capped police batons.

‘And you two – shut up!’ she shouted, stamping her foot like a petulant birthday girl who got the wrong coloured cake. She turned her face in the direction of Betty and Justin, who were holding hands and still chanting. They didn’t waver; if anything, their voices grew stronger.

‘Tell me your name,’ repeated Dan, taking a step closer. She tossed her hair, like a coquettish teenager, and started to undo the buttons of her blouse.

‘Your name, demon!’ he yelled, apparently oblivious to the slutty Satanic striptease.