Nyctophobia (32 page)

I stood in my moon-shadow at the centre of the lawn, and breathed deep. I could smell pine, lavender, night-scented stock. The night sky was sprinkled with sharp spikes of cold starlight. Out here it felt as if normal life could be continued. I didn’t understand how or why, but my nyctophobia had lifted.

I slowly turned and looked back at the house, glimmers of candlelight showing from the rear rooms through the open front door. The main windows –
our
windows - were heavily draped now. At the top of the house Rosita’s bedroom light was on.

So we were to hand the house over to the tragedy-haunted Condemaines and live in their home like tenants. Even Mateo was no longer denying that we had been trapped here by the house’s ancestors. The living and the dead existing side by side… it was as if some kind of collective madness had fallen upon us.

Looking back at the house once more, I reached a decision. I took one final deep breath of the cool night air and headed back inside, where I found my husband still seated on the striped sofa.

‘We can’t stay here any longer, Mateo,’ I said, sitting beside him and taking his hand. Bobbie was perched primly on her chair, watching me. ‘I won’t be lied to anymore. I’m not giving up either of you and I’m not giving up the light. Mateo, you must be honest and explain to me exactly what’s been going on. Then we’ll sell up and go somewhere else, for the sake of our sanity and our family.’

Mateo’s face fell. ‘The house has done everything it can to bring you joy, Callie. Why can’t you just accept that? Out there the world is unknowable. There’s no way of guaranteeing your happiness. In here, your life is always good.’

‘Why would I want that? Happiness lies in overcoming your problems, not pretending they don’t exist. So I can stay here and never feel pain again, is that it, so long as I share my world with the dead?’

‘We’re always linked to the dead, right from the moment we’re born. The link should be respected. Why can’t you just accept that this is how things are, and make the best of it?’

‘Because I’m not like you, Mateo. You’re so kind and gentle. You never seem to have a bad word for anyone. I spent years hating my life. Then you came along, and all that bitterness drained away. You saved my life, baby.’

‘Don’t say that, please,’ he begged. ‘Please, Callie.’

I took his face in mine. ‘Why not? It’s true. I’m alive because of you.’

‘You are alive,’ he said, a tear sliding down his cheek. ‘And I want you to have a long and happy life.’

‘Then let me do this one thing,’ I said, rising. ‘I have to know the truth.’

‘Please – don’t.’

‘I want to see Elena one last time.’

‘No, darling, I beg you.’

Bobbie rose and went to her father, to be at his side, and the pair of them watched me leave the room. I was struck with a terrible moment of
déjà vu
, from a time soon after we had moved into Hyperion House, when the pair of them had studied me carefully to see what I would do. Back then, my only intention had been to please them. Now, I was acting against their wishes.

I walked away, then stepped into the mirror-drawing room and looked for Elena Condemaine. I knew exactly where I would find her; where she always sat, in the high-backed chair beside the empty fireplace.
Our
chair this time.

As I approached, she slowly came into view; the bony fingers resting on the arm, the unkempt hair, the ragged clothes.

Once again, I found myself looking at someone who was not a ghost but flesh and blood, although grey and wasted and reeking with the terrible sickness of neglect. As always, her head was lowered so that her dank grey locks hung over the straps of the smiling china face.

‘Don’t be frightened, Elena,’ I said. ‘I just want to talk to you. I need to understand. Is that alright?’

A faint gasp of breath came from her, starting deep inside her infected chest.

I moved closer. ‘Why are you still here?’

There was still no answer, just a terrible wheeze of air as she fought to speak.

‘What is it that keeps you in this house?’

Slowly, she raised her right hand and pointed at me.

‘
I
keep you here? But how is that possible?’

She lifted both hands and fumbled with the leather straps that held the doll mask in place, trying to loosen them. Anxious to help her, I reached around her thin neck and unclasped the buckles, trying not to let the leather bite any deeper into her damaged flesh. ‘Why must you always wear this?’ I asked – but then I realised that I already knew the answer.

She wears it from choice. She wears it to look happy even when she is heartbroken. She wears it to look like me, the woman she envies so desperately.

I took the edge of the unbuckled mask in my grip and slowly lifted it aside. And for the first time, I truly saw her.

No-one had lied.

There were no ghosts here at Hyperion House. Francesco and Elena Condemaine, Augustin, Farriol and Maria were all long dead and gone.

Instead I found myself looking into the heart of Hyperion, and the truth.

She tried to speak.

‘I am not Elena Condemaine,’ she said. ‘I am you.’

I looked, knowing that I had seen her ravaged face before and would see it again, or at least a version of it, every time I stared into a mirror.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

The Two Sides

M
ATEO TOOK MY
hand and led me to the kitchen where Bobbie and Rosita sat waiting patiently, with a great tray of
jamon
and tomato bread between them. The room was filled with warm candlelight. Mateo held out my chair, and waited until I was seated before sitting down, always the perfect gentleman.

‘Here,’ he said, pouring me a brandy. ‘You’re shaking like a leaf. Try and drink it straight down.’

I did as I was told, and coughed violently.

‘Part of you always knew,’ he said. ‘It was the one thing none of us ever lied about. Francesco got what he wanted, at a price.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Hyperion House creates – shadows.’

‘Mateo, I don’t understand.’

‘A mirror-family that lives in the dark side of the house. When anything bad happens, it happens to them. They take all the pain. That’s what the shadows are for.’

‘I don’t – I can’t –’

‘When Francesco was killed, his image lived on in the sunlit side. His children stayed healthy and Elena remained in perfect bliss, while the real tragedy was lived out by their counterparts.’

‘Something made her suspicious –’

‘She disobeyed her husband’s instructions. She entered the other side of the house and saw the truth. In the dark, that was where the real tragedy of her life continued. That’s when she became afraid, after she realised how her life had turned out. Her husband dead, her children brought to starvation and murdered out of mercy – her own descent into insanity. What she’d believed was true was just a sunlit dream. If she hadn’t doubted her happiness and questioned it, she’d have remained here peacefully until she died.’

‘Living inside a dream version of her life,’ I said angrily.

‘No, her life as it
should
have been, as it deserved to be. If her husband hadn’t gone to fight for another country, leaving her destitute. If her children hadn’t faced starvation. Every day we make decisions that alter our destiny, Callie. The house gave her the best possible future, the way things should have turned out.’

‘People take drugs to wipe out the tragedy of their daily lives, Mateo. Is that what you wanted for me, to live in a state of ignorance for the rest of
my
life?’

‘If that’s what it took to make you happy, yes,’ said Mateo.

‘My God – you knew about Hyperion House.’

‘I’d heard stories about it when I was a child. We all had. And I knew about the difficulties you’d had in the past. Your mother made sure of that.’

‘Does she have to hear the rest?’ asked Bobbie gently, touching Mateo’s arm.

‘Listen to me, Callie. What you saw in the garden that day was real. You tried to save my life, but I died. You moved my body into the shadows, and Jerardo buried it. But I lived on for you, so long as you stayed in the light. What you saw in the darkened rooms was
us
. It was better for you to believe it was the Condemaines.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘That’s not possible, there were too many of them –’

‘No, Callie, think about it. You never saw more than three at one time. You wanted so badly to believe they were the Condemaines that you allowed yourself to be fooled.’

‘I won’t hear any more of this.’

‘Your mother – Anne – she came to break us apart, so we took her away to the cemetery in the garden. We took her life as gently as we could. Celestia got even closer to the truth, so we had to act again.’

‘We did it all for you, Mummy,’ said Bobbie.

She had never called me that before. I looked over at Mateo’s daughter, sitting there quite unconcerned, carefully separating pieces of scarlet
jamon
with her fork.

‘After my death you lost your senses and neglected her,’ said Mateo. ‘She wasted away, and fell into a sleep from which she never awoke. She felt no pain. Did you, love?’

‘Nope.’ Bobbie kept her eyes on her plate.

‘But then you started to neglect yourself. And that shows. Which is why we want you to eat.’

The revelation overwhelmed me. I started to shake, fighting back the sourness rising in my stomach. ‘I failed to save you and I let Bobbie starve, and you took care of anyone who could have hurt me,’ I whispered. ‘What’s next? Am I destined to go mad and kill myself, just like my predecessor?’

‘Don’t you see, it wouldn’t happen to you,’ said Mateo, ‘it would happen to
her
. The other Callie the house created for you. We couldn’t come with you to town because we no longer exist outside of this house. And we didn’t want you spending too much time away because when you’re away from Hyperion its power starts to fade.’

‘So the phone calls, the flights, the “meetings” in other towns, none of them ever happened? They couldn’t, because you couldn’t be there, could you? Once you died, you were tied to the house. It was you who put the postcards in the mailbox. Bobbie could never really go to school somewhere else because she doesn’t exist outside of Hyperion.’ I shook my head at him. ‘You’re a fool. Francesco Condemaine was wrong. Tragedy always finds a way out. Did you honestly think you could keep hiding the truth forever?’

Mateo and Bobbie looked at each other and then at me. They had no easy answers, and nothing more to say.

‘I have one question,’ I said, trying to sound in control of my emotions. ‘This feels real.
I
feel real. Which side is real and which is the dream? Does the true world belong to those things in there, or to us, in here?’

Bobby put down her fork and raised her index finger, slowly pointing back through the wall behind her, to the dark side where there was only insanity and death.

‘To them,’ she said.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

The End

I
STOOD ON
the balls of my bare feet, balancing in the doorway that connected two worlds; living and dead, real and false, sane and mad, light and dark. In one side my husband and step-daughter sat quietly and happily at a table, finishing their dinner, thinking of dessert and games to play, discussing the next day, and the day after that. In the other there was nothing but loss and sickness and insanity. Francesco had known that the two worlds would have to be kept separate. And he knew they could only exist here in the house. It was the flaw in his plan, and he had no way of resolving it.

But the worst part of all was knowing which side was real.

Rosita stepped forward and tugged at the hem of my T-shirt. ‘Please, Senora, you must forget all of this. You can live as before, like the others. You can still be happy here.’

I turned to her. ‘You knew, Rosita. You always knew, just as your mother and grandmother did before you. Just as Jerardo knew. Someone had to take care of the house.’

‘You must see it as we see it,’ she said, ‘as a force for good. I was always honest with you. I always told you there were no ghosts here. There is only what happens in life, to everyone.’

‘And what happens to most of us is tragedy, is that it? Well I don’t believe you. I don’t believe that we must always lose more than we gain. If we thought that there would be no point in going on, would there?’

‘Tell me, Senora, is it better to know everything, or to be happy?’

I had no answer for that. All I knew was that it could not continue.

I balanced in the doorway and raised the yellow canister, and unscrewed the lid, filling the house with the scent of kerosene.

‘Listen to me, Callie,’ Mateo pleaded. ‘If you do this, you’ll lose me forever.’

‘I already lost you,’ I replied, and began to pour.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

The Beginning

T
HE ROOM IS
blessedly cold. The icy air pumps through the slotted steel ventilation panel in the ceiling. I hate air-conditioned rooms. It’s very white. I must still be in Spain; the light outside is dazzling. There is a huge picture window and the blind is half down, diagonally dividing the room into light and shade. How appropriate. The bed is sliced into two equal pieces.

I’m not sure which half I’m in.

I hear the squeak of trainers on rubber tiles and turn my head to see a nurse, overweight and jolly enough to quickly become annoying. She moves to the side of the bed and adjusts something – a saline drip. The tube goes into the back of my right hand, held in place with a rectangle of pink tape. My other arm is sore with what feels like a bad burn, and is bandaged from the wrist to just above the elbow.

‘Well now, look who’s awake. I bet you’re ready for your din-dins.’

Fucking hell, she’s from Kent. What’s she doing here? That awful Estuarine accent, smug and condescending. I decide not to answer her.