Lurker (7 page)

“That…
goth,
as you condescendingly refer to her,” she began, realizing now how little compassion Harry had ever boasted, let alone had developed after the death of their child. It pitied her to think that maybe she’d once also been so uncaring, making as much money as possible at work, using advertising to render empty lives even emptier. Perhaps the stress of this task had turned against her; maybe bad business had reached out and killed her baby, the way that insidious creature underground had risen up to assault miners centuries ago…But she was growing distracted again; she should focus on what she had to say. She looked at her husband with fierce eyes, and then, realizing without question he was having an affair, added, “That goth is somebody’s
child
.”

But Harry only laughed. “She’s a grown woman, Meg. Fully capable of taking care of herself. If she was unable to cope with life and has chucked herself off the cliff, well, that’s one less person for the rest of us to support.”

“Like…
me
, you mean?” She pictured Amanda’s unpainted fingernails raking down her husband’s back during hotel sex, the act he might even enjoy if he fled this evening and found the woman staying nearby. Did Harry even know his lover was in the area? Had she come to investigate his domestic territory, seeing whether the reason he’d given for not leaving his wife—she was so
ill
at the moment—was genuine? Then Meg repeated, “Are you suggesting
I’m
in need of such undeserving support?”

“Undeserving? Hey, that was your word, not mine.”

Mine
, thought Meg, and just then, detected a movement outside, as if something large had shuffled up close to one exterior wall, its multiple limbs scratching at the surface.

“How long has it been going on?” she asked, swooping down upon her husband with razor-sharp fingernails. She’d been neglecting herself lately, and had failed to cut them for weeks. In the throes of her motion, the less-than-eccentric booklet about Sandsend mining operations in previous eras flew off the coffee table. “
She
came to see me last night, pretending she was lost and needed direction. Didn’t she mention that to you, Harry? Oh, poor innocent Amanda!”

“What are you…what are you
talking
about?” he replied, flinching away from her tentaclelike swipes. She felt like a manic child, with adult hands at the ends of her arms and an adult’s mouth to speak with.

“You heartless
bastard
,” she spat out, like the venom of a beast born of another world. “Did…did the affair start before or after my breakdown? Weren’t you getting enough attention at home? Didn’t the…
fucking
accounts
balance in your mind?”

Perceiving her seriousness, Harry seemed to relent slightly. In a calmer voice, he said, “Darling, you’re…you’re not well. I think maybe we should return to the doctor’s, see what can be done. You might need medication or…or at least more counseling.”

She responded by lashing her nails across his face, drawing blood from his cheeks in several vibrant runnels.

He stood at once and knocked her backward, sending her flailing across the room. Then he pushed his hands into his trouser pockets, first removing his mobile and next his car keys.

“I’m not staying to listen to this bullshit,” he said, as if losing patience at a meeting attended by dolefully attentive juniors, the kind he could easily push about. “I’ve tried to help you, Meg, but…
this
is beyond the pale.”

His final phrase made her think of creatures lurking in space, seeking access to earth once a millennia. One had already descended, getting trapped under the planet as great geological changes occurred, burying it deep, deep, deep. Then, foolishly and unwittingly, somebody had dug it up…

What followed, now as it had in the past, was a great rushing of beasts away from detection. Meg observed none of this, because she remained prostrate on the floor. After getting up, however, she hurried to the front door, which Harry had left wide open, and saw two vast shapes scuttle down the moonlit road that led to their home.

One was her husband’s car, its driver hoisting his mobile, presumably to ask his unsuspected follower where in the area she was staying.

The other was less perceptible, clinging to the ground as it moved. The roar of Harry’s frustrated engine overruled its moist, electric hissing sound as multiple limbs scrabbled and others ducked down to enhance streamlined pursuit.

Meg shuddered, standing at the entrance to her safe, warm property. But now she had another task to complete. Remembering where Amanda’s accommodation was located, she realized she might take a shortcut along the Sandsend Trail.

9

If Meg even suspected she was losing her mind, a nighttime walk amid such creepy territory was probably ill-advised.

She hurried along the path that led between tall trees and soon found herself in sight of the old quarry area, where shadows lurked with sentient menace and objects stirred all around. Maybe it was just wind this evening bending vegetation back and forth. There was a pungent scent like rotting bark, the smell of inexorable decay.

After reaching the broad, flat area giving onto the coastline, she could at least observe any encroaching threat. Moonlight rendered the alum shale a featureless plane. If anything was lurking beyond the lip of the coastline, its sound failed to penetrate above the roar of the sea, thumping against rocks beyond the drop like hands inflicting pain.

But that interpretation did her resolution little good at all. She was determined to reach Amanda’s accommodation, the place temporarily occupied by the woman who’d visited Meg last night, in a perverse act of reconnaissance. How little had Harry told his lover about his personal circumstances? Did Amanda work somewhere other than the insurance company that employed Meg’s husband? Was that why the woman had found evidence hard to come by, being forced to seek it out herself? And where had they both met—during a conference somewhere around the world, when Harry had run up yet more expenses unrelated to his occupational role?

No wonder he’d acted sheepish when Meg had quizzed him recently about his expenditures. She wasn’t sure how she’d figured out the truth, but realized that during their argument earlier, a cluster of nebulous thoughts and impressions had coalesced in her mind, prompting Harry to write a confession on the spot. She knew him well; fifteen years of marriage had furnished her with intuitive certainty. And his flippant behavior and uncaring attitude had pushed her over the edge.

Meg came perilously close to doing this herself, nearly falling off the cliff side, as she raced away from the quarry area and toward the pitch-black tunnel. While moving, she heard stealthy sounds from her left. That was where hedges and bushes were located, in which she’d spotted small mammals scavenging the other day. But this latest noise—if anything other than a restless wind—belonged to something considerably larger than any of them. It appeared to force itself toward Meg, shoving aside hip-high grass and wilting plants. She imagined this flora being crushed and dissolved beneath the thing’s multiple feet, as poison leaked from its moist, jellylike frame…But that was fanciful. She should try to get her thoughts under control. Fresh air had now cleared her mind, and the disorderly fugue she’d experienced earlier, inside the house with Harry, had finally dwindled to raw memories.

After reaching the imposing railway tunnel, she halted momentarily, looking at the gaping hole above that excluding wall. It resembled a darker patch within the blackness of night, pledging to invade her skull if she continued looking. Eventually, she glanced away, toward the zigzagging staircase she’d noticed during her previous visit. Too many objects—pale, wriggly, shorn of flesh—stirred in her peripheral gaze as she headed for these steps, but she ignored them all. Just illusions caused by sweat-marred vision and her mind in a mild state of shock while processing it. She’d gone through so much lately, and this was surely its culmination.

After climbing rickety wooden risers, she reached the top of the flight and then found herself in a flat, broad field. A muddy path ran along one side, and Meg realized the property she sought was located that way. She began pacing, her arms snapping at her sides, as if her hands had become heavier and conducted the movement like pendulum heads…But that was another thought she pushed aside.

When she reached the end of the country route, a stile hindered her progress. She wrestled her shivering body through its framework and then stepped into a new area. This was a narrow lane with no curbs; unfailing moonlight lent its tarmac a glaze like ice. Meg began marching along it, her footsteps clunking with crisp reverberations. She pictured a car venturing here recently, its hot tires headed for the only destination up ahead: the secluded cottage Amanda had mentioned last night, and to which Meg had offered clear directions. She imagined the woman repeating these simple instructions to the man who’d called her earlier by mobile, someone who hadn’t known she was in the region, but who was nonetheless as guilty as sin.

As well as loved ones, Harry had also cheated his business. The thing from another world and underground wasn’t fond of such anti-corporate behavior and had a tendency to sever hands and heads in uncompromising protest…But surely
that
was ludicrous. Yes, now Meg’s mind had cleared again, she understood this was true.

Which was why, when she spotted the lengthy, whitish shape writhing on the roof of the building up ahead, the image shocked her to the core.

But then the thing was gone, just as quickly as it had appeared, like a wedge of moonlight scraped from the roof by some fleeting cosmic hand.

Nevertheless, while advancing toward the property’s driveway more urgently now, Meg heard unpleasant noises, as if something had forced entry and not in a conventional manner. Even the sight of her husband’s company car parked in front of the cottage—Meg had known it would be there—did little to upset her perception of a maniac being unwilling to relent, tearing aside slate and wood, brick and plaster…Then she was right up close to the building, her fingers clenched tightly in sticky palms, each greased despite the chill of night.

She was now ready to confront more truths than she felt she could willingly assimilate.

10

The front door was locked. This was Meg’s first realization. She hadn’t wasted time holding back to consider the implications of her actions or lapse into any other behavior that befitted a middle-England woman who’d been brought up well by honorable parents and had worked in an ostensibly respectable job. Instead, she’d simply advanced on the cottage, ignoring more crunching sounds from inside, and, after thumping firmly at the door and receiving no answer, tried turning the cold metal handle.

It had refused to budge. Amanda had clearly let her lover inside and closed out any potential interference. Did the woman want to talk to Harry, letting him know her true feelings and maybe even giving him an ultimatum? Why else would she have traveled so far to the coast? Their relationship must be serious, with Amanda wondering why the man she loved refused to leave his wife. And had she figured out the reason the previous evening? Had she perceived the heartbreak in Meg, lurking behind a cheerful façade? For a brief period after the tragic event, Meg hadn’t wanted sex and had been unaffectionate with her husband, while also letting the house go to seed. But she’d had a good excuse, hadn’t she?
Of
course
she had
. None of this negligence, which had lasted only weeks, justified her husband going off with another woman. Meg had lost her baby, for Christ’s sake. Her
baby
.

“Harry!” she screamed, battering knotlike fists against the door again until the flesh ran red. “Harry, come out of there, you coward! You dishonest bastard! You…you heartless fucker!”

There was no reply, the cottage remaining in silence, but…was that actually true? Once all the breath had escaped Meg, causing her to gasp in the cool air, she thought she heard a noise from inside, though one that sounded anything but of human origin.

It was like a heavy mobilization of moist flesh. Meg imagined some vast species of sea life prizing through a gap too narrow to accommodate its bulk. It was fortunate the thing had so many insectlike limbs to propel its relentless motion, gripping door frames with many borrowed fingers and seeking its quarry with inherited intelligence.

Then Meg paced backward, certain the figure beyond the door—a bulky, glutinous figure that crackled with subdued electricity, like sparks flying from water-doused gadgets—had been moving to the right…toward the rear of the building, where the bedroom would be located, presently occupied by two furtive paramours.

Roof tiles were scattered to and fro on the flagged path leading around the back. No regulated property owner would have left the cottage in such a shabby state of disrepair, and so Meg must assume the damage had been caused since its current tenant’s arrival: today.