From Dark Places (14 page)

“Alexandra,” she said and he introduced himself.

When the inevitable question came, he hesitated. Relief flooded him when no perceivable change in behaviour accompanied his answer.

“I’m going to write a book,” she said.

“Oh? What about?”

“I’m going to write a high-end literary novel. Not looking for commercial success, I don’t need the money, but critical acclaim.”

“Oh.”

“I run an investment firm.” She took a sip of white wine. “I’ve blocked off a week in August. I’m going to my house in France to write.”

“A whole week?” He failed to keep the sarcasm from his voice. It didn’t seem to penetrate the confident bubble around her.

“What do you write? Have you won any awards?”

“Science-fiction. I was nominated for the…” he trailed off, seeing the curl in her lip.

“Oh, I don’t read that.”

The bell rang.

He was growing fond of the sound.

He sat back and took in more of the room, filing the awful experience away for later use.

A blonde sat down, dimples complimenting a bright smile. He took in her round face and cheerful eyes, liking her immediately, despite himself.

“I’m Annie.”

“Tony.”

“What do you do, Tony?”

He paused. “I’m—I’m an office manager.”

IN THE BAG

She sipped the wine, enjoying the quality and savouring the cool touch of the crystal on her lips. The fire roared in a stone fireplace on her left, large enough for her to stand up in, and rain lashed at the huge windows on the right. She smiled at her host, taking in his dark eyes and wide cheekbones. There was something of the eastern European about his features and she liked the way he smiled back.

“I’m going to miss coming here every day,” she said, swapping the glass for her dessert spoon. “I can’t believe it’s over.”

“I’ll miss having you here.” His words rang sincere.

She tilted her head, looked up at him through her lashes and said, “Really? Most people are glad to see the back of a film crew.”

He shrugged. “It was nice to have the old house filled with people again.” He regarded her over the rim of his glass. “And it gave me the chance to meet you.”

She looked down at the chocolate dessert, enjoying the warm rush of his obvious infatuation pumping through her chest. She’d indulge just this one evening.

Tomorrow it was back to London and this place would fade in her memory, along with the latest crush on the leading man and these weeks of flirtation with the venue owner. Tonight though, she still glowed with the thrill of the final cut.

“It’s entirely mutual,” she purred back. “You’re so lucky to get to stay alive! Has the house been in your family for a long time?”

He nodded. “Several generations.”

She waited, scraping up the last of the chocolate pudding. Experience taught her rich men inundated her with information on their family estates with only the slightest prompting. But when nothing more came from him she said, “Funny to think after all these weeks of seeing each other every day, this is the first time we’ve been alone together.”

“Yes.” He smiled, never taking his eyes off her. “I’m glad you stayed behind. I wanted to talk to you about something.”

She swallowed the last of the pudding and dabbed at the corners of her mouth.

What would it be this time, a gift to remember him by? A marriage proposal? Yet another desperate plea for company on an upcoming yacht trip to the Mediterranean? They were all so tediously alike.

“It’s something very important,” he continued, leaning forward a little. “And something I would never say to anyone without a great deal of consideration.”

Ah, a marriage proposal, she thought. This will be number… six?

“Oh?”

She kept her green eyes large and round, the way men like him found attractive, just in case she was wrong and he was about to offer something she wouldn’t be able to refuse.

“I know this is the right thing to do, that you’re the one.”

The intensity of his gaze made it difficult to look away. He stood, folded his napkin over the back of his chair and walked the length of the table to her. He held out his hand and she slipped hers into his, blushing at the discrepancy between his earnest ardour and her interior world.

“Michael, I –”

“Rosalind,” he said softly, each syllable resonating in her chest, as he pulled her gently to her feet. “I want you to stay here, with me. All of this can be yours too.” He stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers, looking down into her eyes, pulling her closer. “You are so beautiful. You should always stay this way. If you stay here with me, you will have your youth, always.”

It was the strangest marriage proposal she’d received yet. Even though she wasn’t interested in being with him beyond tomorrow, she found herself swept up in the moment, unable to interrupt him.

Something about the intensity of his offer made a giggle slip from her tight throat. Maybe she was in trouble here? Maybe he was a madman, and—oh God—the rest of the crew were twenty miles away by now at least.

“Is this—are you asking me to marry you?” she said clumsily, taking a step back.

He frowned. “I’m not, but if you married me, it would be even more perfect.”

“Um, what exactly are you talking about?” She tried to extricate her hand but his grasp tightened.

“I’m talking about you and me living here, forever. Never growing old, Rosalind, never being lonely…”

She snatched her hand away. “You’re getting a bit intense,” she said nervously, watching a frown form. “I—I don’t quite know what to make of this.”

His frown melted into a smile.

“I know it must seem like a strange offer, but I assure you, it’s no trick, and I’m not mad.” She followed his eyes as they glanced briefly at a large sack in the corner of the room, tucked behind the chaise lounge. She hadn’t noticed it before, and the sight of it extinguished the last of that excited glow she’d had only moments before. “And I’m not going to hurt you, far from it. I want to take care of you. Treat you like a princess. Give you everything you deserve, and more.” The distance closed between them and he swept up her hand to touch it with his lips. “You were made to be taken care of; the world is too harsh for someone as lovely as you.”

The evening took on the flavour of a bad film, one she hadn’t signed up to star in. A trip to the bathroom would break the tension, then it was time to get her bag and go, before he got any more insistent.

“Could I –”

Loud pounding from the hallway cut off her question. The doorbell rang, once, twice, then the pounding continued.

Oh thank God, she thought, one of the crew has forgotten something.

“Damn,” Michael muttered and stormed out into the hallway. She knew he’d given the staff the night off and followed, eager to catch the eye of who ever it was.

Michael unlocked the door and a man staggered into the hallway, carried forwards by the momentum of his fist in mid pound. She recognised him, one of the sparks in the lighting crew, but he looked very different to when she’d waved them all off earlier in the evening. He stood dripping water onto the beautifully polished floorboards, thick mud caking his boots. Blood from a cut above his left eye mingled with the rain water running in streams down his ashen face. It frightened her to look at him.

“What happened?” she gasped, as Michael pushed the door shut against the driving gale.

“I need to use your phone. Christ, something… Christ!”

Michael propelled him into the dining room to stand in front of the fire, grabbing a dry coat from the coat stand to drape around the drenched man’s shoulders.

“It’s—er—Bob, isn’t it?” Rosalind asked.

He shook his head. “Rob, I’m Rob, one of the trainee sparks, Miss Wilder.”

“What happened? Where are the others?” She grabbed her napkin and gave it to him to staunch the bleeding, but he just held it in his hand, shaking.

“There was an accident. The bridge… there was a flood and the bridge—and the rig crashed, the coach went into it and—oh Christ.”

Rosalind looked at Michael. “We need to call the police! Our phones don’t have any signal out here.”

Michael nodded and hurried back into the hallway. Rosalind took the napkin and with a trembling hand dabbed ineffectually at the wound.

“That’s not—not all of it,” Rob stammered, teeth chattering. “The people—oh Christ, they got up again.”

Rosalind frowned. “That’s good, that means –”

“No. You don’t understand. The dead ones got back up again!”

“Is this some sort of sick joke?”

“The lines are down,” Michael announced grimly, striding in.

“Are you joking?” Rob winced and snatched the napkin from Rosalind’s hand.

“It’s not unusual when it’s stormy. We are in the middle of nowhere as your producer was so fond of saying.”

“Should we go and try to help?” Rosalind asked.

“No!” Rob exclaimed. “I told you, the dead got back up again, like some bloody zombie movie.”

“You must have made a mistake. You’re in shock, Rob.” He shook his head. “Look, if this is some sort of ‘end of shoot’ joke it’s not funny. Right, Michael?”

She turned to see his face, but he was hurrying to the window to look out at the storm. His glance toward that sack didn’t escape her notice. He pulled back the curtain and pressed his nose to the glass, cupping his hands around his eyes to block out the glare from the room behind him.

“It’s filthy weather out there, no wonder the phone lines are down.”

“This isn’t a trick,” Rob said in a shaking voice. “I saw –”

A loud thunk against the window stopped him short and they both turned to see a man the colour of china clay pressed against the window, head lolling at a nauseating angle. He banged on the window, then drew back, hurling himself through the glass and into the room.

Wind blasted in with him stealing Rosalind’s screams. He rose unsteadily from where he’d landed and launched himself at Michael.

 They slammed to the floor and Michael yelled, “The sack!” The attacker’s hands clawed at his face and throat. “Open the sack!”

Rosalind couldn’t move, watching it all through the two small windows of her eyes as though her brain had disconnected from her body.

Rob sprang into action, scrabbling across the table, grabbing the large candelabra from the middle as he went. He walloped the attacker and as his head was snapped back, Rosalind realised the slavering, grey-skinned man was the Don, Director of Photography.

Rob hauled him off Michael. The room filled with the wind’s howl, the guttural moaning of the enraged assailant and Rosalind’s screams. Michael struggled to his feet and staggered to the sack.

Rosalind felt a hand seize her wrist, took a breath to scream some more, but realised it was Michael pulling her out of the room with him, sack in his other hand.

She was half-dragged, half-escorted up the stairs, her flimsy high heels inadequate for their hasty flight. When she slipped for the third time, Michael hefted her into a fireman’s lift. Her head bobbed next to the sack slung over his other shoulder. It smelt musty and cold radiated from it, like she hung next to an open fridge.

Rob screamed for help, but before she could gather her thoughts to beg Michael to help him, she was on the second-floor staircase, moving towards the top floor of the mansion, three stairs at a time. Michael ran the length of the corridor, which formed the spine of the house, the moans and splintering of glass temporarily muffled by the levels between, and planted her, teetering, on the floor.

He hadn’t switched on any of the lights, and barely able to see her hand in front of her face, Rosalind clung to him, feeling his body stretching upwards. A loud creak reverberated in the darkness and he moved her aside to pull down a loft ladder. He ushered her up it and followed with the sack still over his shoulder, hoisting the ladder up behind them, gathering the cord so it wasn’t exposed below. For a few moments their panting was the only audible sound.

“Is there a light?” she whispered.

“Yes, but we should leave it off.”

“They won’t see it in the attic, will they? Please, please turn it on.”

A long pause followed and she heard him move about. A click ushered in the glow of a single bulb hanging from the rafters. The attic space had been converted into an extra room with stud board walls, all covered with newspaper clippings, movie posters and pictures. Every single one featured either her name in the headline or her photo, most had both.

He stood beneath the naked bulb, blushing, the sack still gripped tightly but now by his side.

“I don’t know what to say—I’m your number one fan.”

“It’s okay,” she lied, feeling none of this was even remotely okay. But the last thing she wanted to do was antagonise a stalker with a zombie problem, whilst the only other sane person in the place was being –

“Oh my God! We left Rob behind!”

He shook his head. “We can’t go back down there. More of them came in.”

“What are we going to do?” She tried so hard not to look at the pictures, or him, or the creepy sack. She resorted to staring at the loft hatch, the ladder folded beside it.

He didn’t answer immediately, but sat down next to her and put his arm around her. She wanted to push him away, but care and tact were required. He was obviously insane. All of this was insane.

She had to hold it together.

“I meant what I said downstairs, before all this happened,” he whispered, curling a lock of her long blonde hair around his finger.

A horrible burning rose up from her stomach.

“I don’t even understand what has happened. Don looked—like his neck was broken.” She felt him nod, but kept her eyes fixed on the hatch. “Rob was right, it is like a zombie film. It can’t be real, surely. They must all be down there right now, having a drink and laughing their asses off. Right?”

He turned to look at her, his expression showed he clearly didn’t agree. “I think I know what’s happening.”

He looked down at the sack and she remembered the initial attack. “Why did you want the sack to be opened? It’s a weird thing to yell, you know, when—you know.” When he didn’t reply, she came out with it. “What’s in the sack, Michael?”