No One Gets Out Alive (41 page)

Number 82 had pulled her back inside itself; yanked her out of comfort and back between the dim brownish walls, close to the relics the house had reluctantly given up after her escape.

The house had been demolished; every trace of the building to its black foundations had been removed and covered with cement, poured deep and wide. There was no number 82 any more. Between
numbers 80 and 84 there was a smooth concrete surface that Birmingham City Council swept twice a week. And in the middle of the concrete plane stood a simple memorial, upon which fresh flowers were
still thrown over floral tributes that had withered and blackened.

But the house had maintained a second life inside her mind for three years; in a quiet back street of her memories, 82 Edgehill Road had been rebuilt, brick by brick. And Amber had just called
again upon a house that was still full of voices and footsteps and the cries of women and fierce white faces contorted into snarls that spat and shouted . . .

. . . and they rose inside their plastic shrouds . . .

. . . and round the table in the black room they still peered at the ceiling in ecstasy . . .

. . . around their hidden feet
she
uncoiled heavily and . . .

. . . opened white eyes.

‘No!’

Amber wanted to slip her fingers inside her mind and pluck out, from the moist black roots, the returned images of the slim female bones, browned by age and carelessly abandoned inside silty
polythene wrappers. And she wanted to scrape out the photographed faces with their freckles and smiles and braces and mousy hair faded by time and the sunlight’s bleach. Because they were all
inside her mind again and jostling for attention. Pleading for release and for salvation. Like they had when she’d lain shivering in the old beds of those strange rooms.

But Amber had told them they must stay on the walls and outside of her heart; that was the deal. And not pour through her mind like screaming children released from the iron doors of some
terrible school, every time she looked at their faces.

As she moved away from the study on unsteady legs, the spiteful words and hurtful looks of those who’d investigated and interviewed her also flickered alive, and loudly broadcast their
voices from her mind’s memory tracks, all on repeat with no fade. They were interspersed with looped flashes of interview rooms, courtrooms, ante chambers, and so many other municipal rooms
that she had lost count of; plain rooms she had sat inside, on plastic chairs, to repeat her story, and repeat her story, and repeat her story . . .

You mutilated him. You burned the genitals off his body with acid.

You cut his tongue in half with your dirty fingernails.

You cut his throat with broken glass.

You stamped on his face while he was in agony.

You threw acid in a man’s face.

Disproportionate response . . . disproportionate response . . . what were you thinking? . . . You expect us to believe that you saw ghosts?

‘No! No! Piss off! I am not a liar!’

Inside her own mind she could return to
that house
at any time, just like she had done every day for the first year in custody.

The police had tried to grind the truth out of her with their raised voices in their plain rooms; the very same truth that she had uttered within three hours of being carried out of
that
place
on a stretcher.

Too much. Too hasty.

One thing at a time. She had been careless. Was drunk. Hadn’t paid attention to how many of those spicy rums had been slipping down her throat so easily, unlocking inner doors like
gatecrashing oafs at a house party; doors that should only be opened one by one, day by day, week by week, and not too many at once. Time could rewind quicker than she could think.

In the corridor outside her study, Amber stopped moving until her vision and balance were partially, but not wholly, restored. Applying more effort than dignity was ever comfortable with, she
carefully moved to her bedroom.

She turned on all of the first floor lights as she made uneasy progress through the farmhouse, including all of the lights in her room, before she undressed and climbed into her bed.

They were patting their hands against the walls of the house.

Outside the building in the total darkness of a rural night, the thumps of poorly coordinated arms, that sought and eventually found the windows and doors, carried up to where she lay in
bed.

Amidst the bumps and scrapings there came whispers from voices either dreary and muffled with sleep, or sharpened at the foothills of a private panic.

‘What is my name? . . . before here . . . that time . . . nowhere . . . to where the other . . . the cold . . . is my name? . . .’

Amber shivered in the cold and tried to remember where she was. She could not understand why the room around her was so dark. Instinctively, she knew it should not be like this.

Someone below the window was talking. Maybe not to her, though she could not be sure. ‘And then you said . . . I said . . . I wouldn’t . . . unreasonable . . . but who was I . . .
you, you told me . . . you swore . . . it was . . . meant something . . . a sign . . . frightened, the more I . . . and now I know . . .’

The first one to get inside the building began to speak from the hall downstairs. ‘. . . involved . . . you are . . . you said . . . not that simple . . . must understand . . .’

Bare feet scuffled upon the stairs, supported by further evidence of movement: a fumbling out there in the darkness, as if someone aged and blind was determined to find her. The tone of the
voice from the stairs was stiff with accusation. ‘Not going . . . refuse. I said it. I said it . . . wouldn’t stop . . . and look . . . what happened . . . the lights . . . even
listening?’

The first visitor to rise from the foot of Amber’s bed came off the floor quickly. She could not see who it was, but she heard the trespasser sigh as it reached full height. Thick
polythene crinkled as the limbs flexed within their coverings.

‘What is the time?’

But it was not terror or shock that knocked Amber out of sleep. The smell of an old, dirty house from a past life, and the scent of those who had walked its corridors and cried out from behind
so many walls and doors, gathered like a heavy black smoke and sank down to where she lay. And it was the stench of these things that choked her awake.

Amber sat in the kitchen and watched the sun rise over the trees at the end of the garden.

She had been drunk. A half empty bottle of rum, dehydration and a feeling of seasickness was sufficient evidence of excess. And she had immersed herself too quickly and too deeply in the faces
and the stories that were shut inside the study. So many familiar eyes, smiling out of the old photographs beside yellowing headlines, all but forgotten in the world beyond her doors, had made the
recollections materialize beyond the reach of her control.

That is all it was.

No one who came close to understanding what she had suffered, and what she knew, would hold her to account over a nightmare endured at any time for the remainder of her life. And since
post-production on the feature film had finished, she had not examined the story of 82 Edgehill Road, and her leading role within it, in any way similar to last night’s scrutiny.
Post-production was a year distant. So the cause of her recent relapse was obvious. And when you are alone, as she knew so well, it just takes longer to calm down.

She turned on the radio, tuned it to a local station. She half listened to a joyous report of fecundity in parts of South Devon: the size of the soft fruits, tomatoes, potatoes, wheat, the
market gardens in bloom like never before, the best harvest in decades. She watched the same headlines every night on the local television. The cheery news made her feel better. This was a good
time, this was a good sign. She was in a place of beauty, of growth; she would be healed by nature, by the sea air, the sun . . .

But how could she lay to rest this uneasy suggestion, the one she’d failed to dispel, that the nightmare she had suffered was distinctly different to those she had experienced during the
first two years that followed her escape from
that place
? And, in both intensity and clarity, the nightmare was an exception to the dreams she’d endured while at sea. Those dreams
had been nonsensical, old fragments reviving and blending with current situations: Knacker capering around the ship’s decks, dressed like a teenager and trying to sell drugs to wealthy
octogenarians; Fergal captaining a ship in dress whites, his gingery face grinning from beneath a peaked cap; The Friends of Light holding a séance at an adjoining table in a restaurant.

The scars of her experience had manifested in curious ways. The ruffle and rustle of plastic would never be mere background noise again; polythene had lost its utilitarian innocence three years
ago. She would be unable to live anywhere within view of a late Victorian house; the very design of certain houses made her shudder inwardly when passing them in the street. She had run from rooms
to prove her aversion to the smell of Paco Rabanne aftershave, which brought on anxiety attacks. Her first sighting of cut hair on the tiled floor of a hairdresser’s salon, where she had her
own long hair cut off and the remainder dyed black, had made her nauseous. Dust was something she could not abide on the floor of any room she crossed. She would never again sleep in a room that
contained a fireplace; they had all been removed and the chimney flues filled before she took possession of the farmhouse.

Most of her more recent dreams she only half remembered after she’d awoken, their traces mere lingering discomforts that ceased unsettling her when their obvious absurdity was consciously
confronted in daylight. Some dreams still made her call out and cry in her sleep, but there were fewer and fewer of those now. The shock of the surreal scenarios had lessened as time flowed behind
the new course she had set in her life; as greater distances moved her away from
that place
.

The dream last night had been different. It had possessed textures that dreams should not emit: scents, temperatures, sounds and voices too loud and clear to be produced from the muddle of an
unconscious mind.

She had been inside the farmhouse, she was sure of that, but it was transformed into another building, and one she had also once dreamed inside and in just such a vivid way; she had experienced
things inside that other place that were also impossible, as doctors and therapists and counsellors had told her patiently, in reasonable voices, and in so many soothing rooms.

The dream had come too easily, as if provoked by the mere act of thinking about the house and the dead girls, by letting her heart reach out.

What did I do?

Amber watched the clock on the microwave. As soon as it was fully light she would go out and . . .
do something
. . . drive. Drive anywhere. Maybe visit a nearby town or seafront, go to
an aquarium, a zoo, ride on a steam train, idle along a beach, eat a cream tea, because she no longer wanted to be alone in her new home.

The motivation to leave the house made her angry.

Already?

She felt tricked by the farmhouse, as if it had retaught her contentment, but used the promise of happiness as bait.

Intent on a shower and change of clothes, she paused at the foot of the staircase and looked up at the smooth walls and rosewood banisters. Her stomach clenched on coffee and residues of rum.
Her neck and shoulders tensed. She was apprehensive about climbing these stairs and walking deeper inside her beautiful home. Up there, inside the study, were the mementoes that would make her
dream of terrible things, over and over again, in a place she wanted to be at peace.

It’ll never end because
you
won’t let it end.

Burn the fucking lot!

Fingers spread wide on her cheeks, she closed her eyes. At least one year had passed since she had felt like this; since she had felt this bad. She’d almost forgotten how bad it could
be.

Was you finking you could just walk away, girl? That we wouldn’t find you, yeah? You is taking the piss, girl.

Yeah. Yeah. You owe us three years’ rent on that room. Ho, ho, ho.

Was you finking you could take McGuires for cunts?

Stop! Stop!

She opened her eyes.

Don’t let them back in. Not their voices.
Never again.
Because when she heard the squeaking of the rats that she’d put down in that shit-tip of a house, she would see the
two cruel and bony faces in her mind again. She would open a dialogue, a discourse she had endured most every day for a year after she’d escaped them, as they chattered and cajoled and
manipulated and twisted her mind. It had taken one year of cognitive behavioural therapy to silence their voices.

Amber climbed the stairs.

Halfway up she saw the dust: a large tuft of sooty dross lying insolently on a middle step.

A memory of her driving instructor saying, ‘Who are you signalling to?’ irritated Amber and she switched the indicator off.

She’d passed her driving test two months before embarking on the first ocean cruise and now instinctively indicated every time she turned the Lexus, irrespective of whether there were any
cars on the road. But anything that made you a bit safer was good; you could never have enough safety in your life.

She applied the handbrake and reached for the key fob on the key ring that hung from the ignition. As soon as she depressed the button in the middle of the fob, a shiver passed through the metal
bars of the gate at the top of the drive. The locks disengaged and the barrier began to open.

Back to the compound: home.

At the beginning, and now at the end of her first week she’d seen the same white car on the lane outside her home. She knew it belonged to the nearest neighbour, so was nothing to be
afraid of. She’d never seen any other cars pass the house. Few motorists used the road anyway, which was fortunate because the tarmac was barely wide enough for one vehicle.