Psychopathia: A Horror Suspense Novel (20 page)

The
cabin. Tully didn’t relish going back there, the hills of Seacliff with the ruined foundations of the old asylum at their back, and the memories of all that had happened there. But where else was there to go?

Besides. The spirit had been moved on. It had passed over. Delilah and Patty – that decidedly odd couple, had come over and come through. The
y’d banished the spirit, sent it to the next world, where hopefully it would be a lot happier, and would not even think of popping back to drown a bunch of sheets in a bathtub filled with piss.

Sheets. Toby.
Forcing herself into action, Tully plucked a tissue from the box on her dresser and blew her nose. She dropped it into the waste paper basket, and went to the closet, pulled out her suitcases. It wouldn’t take long to pack. Once she was out of the house – even if she was just going to the room over the garage – she didn’t want to come back in. She’d get Toby up, pile him and his gear into the car and they’d go straight out to the cabin. Toby could even wait till they got there to take a leak. There was no way she was going to give her father the opportunity to have a go at him as well.

The hangers clattered as she yanked her clothes from them. Not even bothering to fold them, Tully shoved them into her bag, then prowled around the room picking up all the other bits and pieces that formed the entire sum of her worldly goods. It filled three bags and made a pathetic pile by the door.
With her blanket and pillow though, it was still more than she could manage in one trip.

A quiet knock at the door and Tully squelched the impulse to leap across and lean her shoulder to the door so it couldn’t be opened. She folded up her blankets instead.

The door swung open enough for her stepmother to peer through. ‘Can I come in?’ she asked.

Tully shrugged. Whatever.

Mary took the silence as permission and stepped into the room, wringing her hands together. ‘I’m sorry about this,’ she said. ‘I tried to change his mind…’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Tully broke in. ‘
It happens all the time, you know.’

‘What happens?’

A shrug that tried to be casual. ‘Guy gets married again, doesn’t want original family around.’

‘Tully.’ Her stepmother moved towards her, hands outstretched, but Tully shook her head.

‘Please don’t touch me.’

‘But Tully, you must know that’s not true.’

‘Maybe not for you,’ Tully said, setting her pillow on the folded blanket, squaring the edges. ‘But definitely for him.’

Mary’s shoulders drooped. ‘If there’s anything you need, you can call me, okay?’

Tully allowed herself a glance at her stepmother. Mary wasn’t too bad. Just spineless. She nodded. ‘Thanks. Is it okay if I say goodbye to Hannah?’

Her stepmother’s face crumpled. ‘Of course.’

There was a lump in Tully’s throat, but she swallowed it down and moved past her stepmother, across the hallway into her little sister’s room. Step-sister’s room. Just when she was kinda growing fond of the kid.

The baby was in her cot, sleeping, arms thrown up above her head, tiny red lips puckered as she snored. Tully leaned over and stroked the baby’s fine hair.

‘Seeya kiddo,’ she whispered, and made for the door.

Mary helped her carry her gear to the car, and they did it in one trip. She didn’t see her father anywhere, and was glad. There were tears in Mary’s eyes when she turned to take the bags from her. Mary pressed something into Tully’s hand.

‘In case you need it,’ she said.

A glance told her it was money, a small wad of fifties. She wanted to give it back, refuse it on principal, but she hesitated. They’d probably need it. Neither earned much from their jobs, and damn, Toby had quit. He’d have to go in there and ask for his job back.

‘Thanks,’ she said.

Mary patted her on the shoulder but managed to resist pulling her into a hug. She
probably knew Tully would duck out of it.

‘I have to go tell Toby the good news,’ she said, feeling the moment stretch out into awkwardness.

Mary nodded. ‘You don’t have to leave today,’ she said. ‘Do you even have anywhere to go?’

‘Back to the
cabin,’ Tully told her. ‘We still have a week left on the lease. Which is lucky. It’ll give me enough time to sort out another flat.’ She glanced towards Toby’s room above the garage. ‘But I think we do have to leave today.’

‘Okay. But stay in touch, you have my phone number.’ She tried to smile. ‘If you ever need anything.’

‘Yes.’ Tully wanted the woman to leave her now. Mary was nice, but she should have been inside telling her husband he was an arsehole, rather than out here secretly pressing money into Tully’s hand.

She must have guessed some of Tully’s thoughts because Mary gave one more, reflexive smile, then turned and hurried for the house. Tully watched her go with a bit of sadness that she wasn’t going to be able to be a big sister anymore. Even if she had hated babysitting.

It didn’t matter. She had Toby to think of, and he definitely needed a big sister right now.

Toby was snoring. His head flung back so that she could see his Adam’s apple vibrate with each breath. Tully dropped to her knees on the floor beside his mattress and hovered over him, biting her lip. She touched a tentative hand to his shoulder and gave him a gentle shake.

‘Toby? You have to wake up.’

He jerked under her touch and choked on his own snore. Eyes flying open, he twisted away from her as though electrocuted, then found he couldn’t move properly, the sheets still wound tight around his body. She saw panic flood into his eyes.

‘Toby, it’s all right!’ she cried. ‘You’re just tangled up.’ She tugged at the sheets.

Thrashing about, Toby was no help, and his mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, although no words came out.

‘Shh,’ she said anyway. ‘Let me help.’ She couldn’t find the end of the sheet, couldn’t fathom how he’d got himself so well and truly twisted up in them. At last though, she got her fingers under and edge and tugged it loose. He unravelled like thread from a spool.

He was in boxers and shirt – she’d dragged his jeans from him last night, a chore she’d actually performed more than once, and nothing to do with anything her father had insinuated. Now he drew up his knees, hunched over them and looked at her with glassy eyes.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked. ‘What are you doing?’ A glance over to the corner of the room, and he flinched, she saw him. ‘Why are the lights off?’

‘Because it’s morning,’ Tully said. ‘Sorry Toby, I had to wake you up.’ She didn’t know how to break the news to him, so just said it straight. ‘Dad’s throwing us out.’

He looked at her, blinked.

‘I got into an argument with him. You know what he can be like.’ She sniffed, rubbed at her arms. ‘Anyway, he said some awful things, and I called him on it, and next thing we’re being ordered from the house.’

‘Where are we going to go?’

Tully bit at her lip. ‘Back to the
cabin – just until I can find us a flat. We’ve still got a week paid for there.’

She was rewarded with a slow nod. ‘Can I take my lights?’

‘What?’

Toby leaned forward onto his knees and looked at her. ‘My lights,’ he repeated. ‘I bought these light bulbs myself. I want to take them.’

‘Oh. Of course you can take the light bulbs. Fuck Dad, right? You paid for them, you take them. Why should we give him anything?’

A nod in reply, and Tully got up, found a pair of jeans and threw them at her brother. ‘I’m all packed already. Get dressed and we’ll leave. You don’t have much stuff. We can be away without going back inside.’ She turned to see Toby buckling up his pants and nodded.
‘Mary gave me some money. Guilt money. We’ll stop at McDonalds and get some breakfast. Go to the supermarket, stock up on food to take with us. Thank god neither of us are working today.’ She shoved some stray clothes into Toby’s bag. He hadn’t bothered to take most of them out. And the rest of his gear was still in a couple of cardboard boxes.

She glanced at him again, but he was fiddling with his extension cords and light bulbs, unplugging everything.

‘How are you feeling?’ she asked, making sure her voice was even, casual, unthreatening. ‘You were pretty wild last night.’

‘I don’t remember last night,’ he said, and dropped a coiled length of white extension cord on his bed.

‘Not any of it?’ She watched him frown.

‘I remember going to the pub.’

‘What about going outside for a smoke?’ The frown deepened, and she was struck by how pale he was. Pale and skinny. His hipbones jutted out above his jeans.

‘Yeah, maybe.
Lara was coming out with me.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s it.’ He glanced at the corner of the room again and Tully swung round to see what he was looking at. There was nothing there.

‘You don’t remember anything after that?’

‘I just said I didn’t. What? You don’t believe me?’

‘Of course I believe you. In fact, I’m not even surprised.’

A suspicious look. ‘Why? What happened?’

Tully found a smile and shrugged. ‘We can talk about that later. Let’s get out of here, what do you say?’

‘I say I never wanted to come here in the first place.’

‘And we never will again.’ She picked up his bag of clothes, and grabbed his pillow on the way past to the door. ‘I’ll put these in the car.’

Five minutes later, his boxes were in the back seat, and his blankets, plus the extension cords and a nest of light bulbs. They were all two hundred watts. No wonder she’d been nearly blinded the other night.

‘What about shoes?’ she asked, key poised above the ignition.

‘What?’

‘Shoes.’ She gestured towards his feet. ‘You forgot your shoes.’

He looked down at his bare feet like he didn’t know what she was talking about. Maybe he was still feeling the effects of the night before.

‘Right. I’ll go put them on.’
He clambered out of the car and went back to his room. In a few moments he was back, sandshoes on over bare feet and she breathed a silent sigh of relief.

‘
What say you we get out of here?’

‘I say sure. I
gotta take a leak.’

‘We’ll go straight to McDonalds, I promise.’

It wasn’t as bad at the
cabin as she’d thought it might be. Though, much as she hated to admit it, she missed Lara. Even missed the noisy sex Lara and Matt had in the mornings while Tully tried to eat her breakfast. It wasn’t the same without them. She kept looking at her phone, expecting Lara to call and apologise, or at least suggest meeting up, but the screen stayed blank and not even a text message came in.

Something else that wasn’t going well – Toby had refused to ask for his job back. She’d tried to talk some sense into him, but he wouldn’t listen. They needed the money for rent and bond for a new flat, but he didn’t seem to care. Just refused to go back to work.

In fact, she hadn’t seen much of him in the few days they’d been back. He was usually still asleep when she left for work, even at one in the afternoon, and when she got home, he’d slouch out, make himself a cup of coffee, or grab a Coke out of the fridge, mutter a hello when she greeted him, then disappear back into his room.

She’d been forced to hand over his tobacco, but had drawn the line at the dope.

‘It made you flip your lid,’ she said. He’d stared at her.

‘But it’s good stuff. I paid a fortune for it.’

‘No. It’s not good stuff.’ She took a deep breath. ‘You know why we haven’t seen Lara and Matt lately?’

He looked surprised, like he hadn’t even noticed.

‘Because you smoked some of this stuff and made a pass at her.’ She shook her head. ‘In fact,
made a pass
is too generous. According to her, you practically clawed your way up her and chewed her face off.’ Well, maybe Lara hadn’t described it like that, but Tully was damned if she was going to repeat the word her former best friend had used. It’d kill Toby.

‘I did not!’

‘Yeah Toby, I’m sorry but you did.’

He shook his head. ‘No. I would have remembered that.’

‘The fact is that you said a lot of stuff that night, and only about five percent of it made any sense. So I’m not giving you your weed back, not if it does that to you.’

They’d argued about it on and off the whole day, but Tully had stuck to her guns. She couldn’t have handed it over anyway, even if he had managed to get her to change her mind – she’d stopped on the side of the road and tipped it out into the dirt and u
ndergrowth. Right now there was probably a family of very stoned hedgehogs out there.

But Toby had given in. On the condition that she pick him up a bottle of bourbon on her next trip into town. It seemed an okay compromise. There was decent quality control at the Jack Daniels factory, at least.

She slumped down onto the couch with her own drink, and a big sigh to go with it. The restaurant had been weirdly busy for a Wednesday night, and her feet hurt. She slipped off her shoes and rubbed them, wanting to go run a bath, sink low into a tub full of comforting bubbles, and just wallow there for an hour, but bathtubs were just no longer her thing. Not since she’d had to drag a whole bunch of knotted and twisted sheets out of a charming mix of frigid water and urine. Her nose wrinkled at the memory.