Leave This Place (5 page)

She passed the old man’s chair, trying her best not to look at the infernal thing, and crossed to the window, opening the curtains to a view that, while an improvement on the previous day, had certainly nixed her plan to go bike riding.

On the positive side - she had to keep reminding herself to always look on the positive side - there was actually a view this time, given that there was no fog for a change, just a blanket of low mist coming off the dales. But the sky was angry and low, dark storm clouds warning of a day stuck inside the cottage.

Her stomach rolled over at the thought. What would she do all day?

Go slowly insane, that’s what.
Then she reprimanded herself.
Not very positive, Oona.

She turned, passing the chair in the corner, and it wasn’t until it was out of sight that she realized something was very wrong.

She whirled, her heart in her throat.

The chair was facing the bed.

“Silas…?”

He grunted from beneath a sheet wrapped tight around his head.

“I asked you to turn the chair around last night.”

“Huh?”

“I specifically asked you. Remember?”

“Yeah,” he said groggily.

“Well, did you?”

“Huh?”

“Did you turn the chair?”

“Um…”

He was always a bit of a zombie in the mornings, but it didn’t matter. She didn’t need an answer, anyway.

“Thanks, Silas. Thanks a lot.”

She felt a surge of anger that he had ignored her request, but she suppressed it.
Wouldn’t be a very positive start to the day to begin it with an argument.

She turned toward the bed and jumped, shrieking with shock.

Silas was sitting up, eyes wide, staring at the chair.

“I did,” he said, his stare unwavering.

“You did what?”

“I… turned the chair.”

A shudder bolted through her, goosebumps rippling her arms. He was mistaken, surely. He had to be. He was still half asleep, after all.

“The evidence suggests otherwise,” she said, trying to remain calm.

Silas leapt from the bed and marched over to the chair, his mouth agape. “Oona…” He spoke slowly and precisely. “I turned the chair. It was the last thing I did before I went to sleep.”

“Look, if this another one of your jokes…”

Silas looked from the chair to Oona and her legs turned to jelly. There was genuine fear in his eyes.

But she refused to panic just yet. “You only think you turned it. You’re tired. Confused…”

“No. I remember, I grabbed it by the armrests and…” He stopped. There was a long pause. He looked up. “Wait— hang on…” A smile surfaced. “Nice one.”

“What?”

“Well played.” He laughed. “You got me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re getting back at me, right? For yesterday.”

“No…”

They stared at each other for a long moment. His smile gradually faded, his eyes narrowing.

As the truth dawned, Oona’s stomach lurched, and she thought she was going to vomit.

9

“Y
ou did turn the chair last night, didn’t you?” Oona said, her voice full of panic, her eyes unblinking. “You turned it to face the wall.”

What was he supposed to say to that?
Yes dear, I did. And the ghost of the old man turned it back again.

It was clear from the naked terror in her eyes that she was a whisper away from a breakdown, and he had to do something. But he was struck dumb with fear, and his mind was unable to muster, in that moment, a happy little lie to make everything okay again.

In his head he replayed the moment that he turned the chair around.

Let’s see how the old bastard likes this view.

Turns out he didn’t care for it much.

Oona’s face crumpled, and it broke his heart. Her hands flew to her mouth as if stifling a scream, but the only sound that escaped was a dry rasp, as if the air was being strangled out of her. She stumbled, the backs of her knees striking the bed and folding her into a neat sitting position on the mattress.

“Oona…”

He dropped onto the bed and put an arm around her, as much for his own support as hers. He peered over at the chair.

Say something.

“It was me.”

Oona’s breathing slowed. She looked up. “What?”

“It had to be, right? I mean, I definitely turned the chair around last night, and now it’s facing the bed again.”

“So?”

“So, there has to be a logical explanation. I mean, it wasn’t a ghost, right?” He added a little chuckle at the end to make it believable. “Did you think it was the old man? You think he climbed out of the picture and turned it himself?”

“I don’t know…”

“Of course not. I must have, I don’t know, turned the chair in my sleep.”

“Sleepwalking?”

“Why not? You know that I’ve been having really disturbed nights lately. Seriously, what’s more likely? That a ghost did it, or that I’ve started sleepwalking?”

“But you’ve never done anything like that before.”

“I’ve never been stressed out of my gourd before. I’m telling you, the mind does strange things when it can’t cope.”

“I guess.”

“Now come on, this is our holiday. We’re supposed to be relaxing. Let’s have a chilled day, okay?”

She nodded. “You’re gonna start freaking me out at night with your sleepwalking, aren’t you? I’ll wake up to find you standing over me.”

“I hope not.”

Oona climbed off the bed. He watched as she left the room.

He turned his head slowly toward the chair, a cold terror encasing his heart.

***

Half an hour later, Silas came downstairs to find Oona holding the cat.

He knew it was
the
cat because he recognized its sad eyes, white ringed paws and malnourished body.

“Look who I found,” Oona said, lifting up the animal.

It hung there staring at him, with what seemed to Silas like an accusing
you never fed me
look in its eyes.

“Oons, why did you let it in?”

“I didn’t.”

“What do you mean, you didn’t? I sure as hell didn’t.”

“She was already here when I came down this morning. Curled up in the armchair.”

Silas tried to compute this information. “How?”

“I don’t know. She must have sneaked in when one of us opened the door yesterday.”

“We would have noticed, surely?”

Oona rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine. Maybe she’s a magic cat. Or maybe she has her own set of keys. Or maybe she came down the chimney.”

“Like Santa Paws?”

She fixed him with a deadpan stare. It was one of Silas’s regrets in life that he had never found a woman who appreciated his bad puns.

“Or maybe,” Oona said, “you let her in on one of your sleepwalking jaunts. The point is, we need to find out where she lives.”

“She?”

“It’s a she.”

“It’s an
it
.”

“Anyway, she can’t stay here, and somebody’s probably missing her. She must be Aggie’s, don’t you think?”

Silas shrugged. “I guess. I mean, she is the nearest… human.”

“Right. Okay then, I won’t be long.”

He watched as Oona grabbed her coat from the hook by the door. A bolt of fear shot through him as he realized what was about to happen. “Wait. What?”

“I’m taking her back.”

“I’ll go.”

“No, it’s fine. It won’t take long.”

“I’ll be quicker. I’ve got a… wider stride.” He rushed over to grab his coat.

“Silas, stop!”

“What?”

“Just wait. I’m going, okay? I can’t be left alone here.”

“Oh. Right, right.”

“Sorry. I just wouldn’t feel safe. You know, alone in this place.”

“Oh, but you’ll feel perfectly safe on the moors? There are lunatics out there, remember? Staring at us through the windows.”

“Silas, please. Just let me go.”

He stepped back, raising his palms in surrender. “Sure. Fine. No problem.”

“I mean… as long as you’re okay with being left alone here?”

He snorted. “Oh, I think I can cope.”

“Okay, good. Well, I’ll see you soon.”

“Yep. Bye, bye.”

Oona stepped out and closed the door.

Silas dashed across the kitchen, leaned over the sink and peered through the window. He waited until Oona appeared, following the track, and watched as the shape of her grew smaller and smaller, until she passed over the brow of the hill and was gone.

A wave of nausea washed over him. Now he was truly alone.

10

A
s she unlocked the low picket gate, passing under an arch of scented climbers and white, all-weather roses, Oona tried to imagine how spectacular this place must have looked in the summer months.

The cat purred in her arms as she headed up the garden path, flanked by immaculately manicured lawns. She rapped on the heavy oak door and saw someone coming through the semicircular window of stained glass above the knocker.

Aggie opened the door, greeting Oona with her familiar beaming smile. “Why, hello dear!” she exclaimed in a gentle Scottish brogue, and it was only then that Oona noticed her uncanny resemblance to Mrs Doubtfire.

“Hi, Aggie.”

“And how are you?”

“Good, thanks.” She motioned to the cat. “We had a little visitor overnight. I thought I’d better return her.”

Aggie’s smile froze. “Oh. Well, that’s sweet of you, but it’s not mine, I’m afraid.”

“It’s not?”

“No, dear.”

“Any idea whose it is?”

“There are lots of wildcats roaming the moors. Looks to me like it could be one of those.”

Oona stiffened and slowly looked down at the creature in her arms. It stared up at her.

“If I were you,” Aggie whispered, “I’d play it safe. Best not to even touch the thing.”

Oona gasped, dropping the cat. It landed on its feet and ran off down the garden path. She shuddered, wiping herself down.

“So,” Aggie said, “how are you enjoying your stay?”

Oona was distracted, watching the cat as it dashed through the gate and disappeared onto the moors. She turned back. “Oh, lovely, thank you. Yes, just…”
 

(just the dirt and the smell and the isolation and the creepiness and the horrendously uncomfortable bed, but apart from that…)

“Just lovely.”

“Well, if there’s ever anything you need, you just give me a holler.”

“Actually,” she said, grimacing a little, “there is one thing.”

“Oh?”

“What’s the story behind the photo?”

Aggie raised her eyebrows.

“On the wall in the bedroom. The old man.”

Aggie laughed. “Old Mister Weddup? He’s a delightful ray of sunshine, don’t you think?”

Oona chuckled along. “Yes, oh yes.” Aggie laughed again, and Oona did, too. “So… who is he?”

Aggie’s face fell, the twinkle in her eyes no longer there, and suddenly Oona wished she’d never asked. “You’re not the easily spooked type, are you?”

Me? Never!
A gang of hungry moths started eating at her stomach lining. “No, why?”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to say the wrong thing. Put you off your stay. Especially as you’re both having such a nice time.”

Oona wanted to turn and run, but her curiosity kept her rooted to the spot. “Oh no, no. Not at all.”

“Well in that case,” Aggie said, opening the door wide, “I’ve just put the kettle on. Why don’t you come in and I’ll tell you all about it.”

“When we first moved down from Scotland,” Aggie said, pouring tea into two porcelain cups, “we bought the farmhouse and the barn and the two-hundred acres of land. But Cairn Cottage was owned by the Weddups - that is, the old man and his wife - and they refused to sell. That was how it stayed for a good many years, until poor Mrs Weddup popped her clogs, God rest her soul, leaving old man Weddup there on his own. Here you go, dear.”

Oona took the cup and saucer. “Thanks.”

She envied Aggie her traditional country kitchen, a bright, spacious room decorated in creams and browns. With its brass pitchers, pots and soup tureens, it looked like the set of a daytime cookery show.

She studied a sign on the wall - a picture of a pink cupcake, and beneath it:
Aggie’s Kitchen. Cake Exchanged For Gossip.

“And of course,” Aggie continued, “being the soft touch that I am, I felt sorry for the miserable bugger. I took it upon myself to stop by and check on him every once in a while, but he would never, ever let me in. We had brief conversations through a closed door. I’d ask him things and he would just say, ‘yes, flower,’ or ‘no, flower.’ He wasn’t one for visitors, see. Milk?”

“Yes, please.”

“I mean, he still left the cottage once in a while, don’t get me wrong. He was independent. We’d often see him ambling across the moors, through the mist. It gave me a start, sometimes, gazing out of the window and having him suddenly appear, as if from nowhere. As you’ve seen, he was a, shall we say,
striking
fellow.”

“Striking’s a word for it.”

“Anyhoo, time ravaged the old fella, as it does to all of us eventually, and we stopped seeing him out and about. It got to the point where, quite frankly, he was too old to be living on his own. I did his weekly shopping for him and left it on his doorstep. He was good about it, you know. He’d always leave payment. Then one day I brought his shopping as usual, and last week’s groceries were still out there.”

“Uh-oh…”

“Oh dear, I thought, poor chap. It must be his time. After all, he would have been well into his nineties by this point. So anyhoo, I called Arthur off the fields and he came and he broke the door down. I think when we went inside we were both expecting that long dead smell, you know?”

“Right, right.”
Maybe that’s what I smell,
Oona thought.
Whenever I enter the place.

“Well, it was a terrible mess in there. Just terrible. I was thinking about the clean-up, and how we could probably buy the place at auction, and we went upstairs to the master bedroom and there he was. Just sitting there, in his chair in the corner of the room, looking back at us.”

“Whoa.”

“It was a shock, I can tell you. So I gathered myself and I said, ‘oh, hello Mr Weddup.’ And he fixed me with a stare, because he had these scary sunken eyes, you know, and he grumbled something. I asked what he said and he repeated it. Sugar?”