The Ghosts of Sleath (20 page)

‘Leave him!’
Her words were drawn out, a wail of despair.

Untouched, the thermometer that had been standing on the sink suddenly shot across the room to crack against the dark windowpane before falling to the linoleum floor. Almost immediately, the bathroom cabinet dropped from the wall and burst open in the sink beneath it, its contents spilling out, pill bottles and cardboard containers falling onto the floor to be caught up in Ellen Preddle’s mad dance.

Ash rushed forward, catching the frenzied woman. But she turned on him, clawed fingers reaching for his face, his eyes. He caught her wrists and held her hands away from him.

‘Stop!’ he shouted at her. ‘Calm down!’

Her eyes showed no recognition: they were blind with a rage so fierce he knew she would try to harm him. Spittle flew into his face and he turned his head aside, the strain of holding her there causing his arms to shake, his neck muscles to tighten.

And as he turned he saw the turbulence in the bath. He saw the faint form beneath the murky, frothing waters. He saw the face of a child, its mouth open, its eyes wide.

And the boy’s filth-smeared hand broke through the scum that floated on the surface and his fingers were spread and trembling as if reaching for Ash, reaching for life itself.

T
HERE WERE FEW LIGHTS
on in the village. Most people were deep in sleep; it was the others, the insomniacs, who felt the sudden coolness in the night air - an unexpected shiver, a stiffness in their bones, goosebumps on their flesh, made them aware. These unfortunates quickly hurried to their beds or, if already there, wrapped bedclothes tightly around themselves.

The main street and the small lanes leading off it were all empty. Even the bats that inhabited the community hall’s various roofs had not ventured out on their usual nocturnal forage. And even the disturbance inside the little terraced cottage in the lane leading up to the church was tightly contained within its own walls. All was very quiet.

A partial moon revealed the stocks and whipping post that stood on the dulled village green, but the blackish fluid that oozed from the tiny fissures in the post’s aged wood would have been imperceptible to any observer who might have been abroad that night. The pond nearby was still and impenetrable, a brooding mass that reflected nothing.

Yet now something did move across this bleak landscape. A small, lone creature glided through the grass, its pointed snout held high every few yards to sniff at the air. It was a cautious beast, mindful of the loathing it generated, and its stiffened fur bristled with tension. It reached the water’s edge and it became
immobile, as if mesmerized. Its sharp little eyes glazed.

With a thin squeal of alarm the rat jerked away from the water, spinning as it did so, its long tail flicking the filmy surface and causing sluggish ripples that quickly settled as they spread. It streaked through the grass and back across the road, a swift shadow among still shadows. In an instant it was gone - gone to join fellow creatures skulking in the cellars of the old inn.

Nothing else stirred. The village slept. But the dreams of the villagers were not peaceful.

Tom Ginty jerked awake. His senses took a few seconds to follow.

He lay there in the bed, blinking, his wife Rosemary snoring beside him. What had awoken him? His beefy hand slid from beneath the sheets and touched the numbness of his right cheek. That was it! It had felt like someone had slapped him while he slept! He raised his head from the pillow and looked at Rosemary.

She was just an inert lump lying next to him. A big lump and not quite so inert: the sheets swelled and fell in rhythm with her breathing. She snuffled halfway through a snore and he resisted the urge to slap her in return, even though the slap she’d dealt him had obviously been an accident. She’d probably bashed him as she’d turned over in her sleep. Hold on though - she was facing away from him, and her fat arms were under the bedsheets. She couldn’t have hit him. Unless she’d been tossing and turning. Silly bloody cow. Obviously she’d had a nightcap before she’d come up to bed, a drop of port. Or two. And bet she’d had a snack, bet she’d noshed some cheese. By Christ, cheese and port! No wonder she was restless.

Something brushed against the thin strands of hair plastered down over his scalp.

He shot up in bed, raising a hand to his head as he did so.
What was that?
The bedsheets slid over his belly onto his
lap. With a speed unusual for such a big man he plunged for the bedside lamp. A moment of fumbling before the light snapped on.

‘Who’s there?’ he said aloud.

But he could see for himself: there was
no one
there.

He turned to his wife again and pulled a face when her continued snores assured him she had not been disturbed. About to prod her, he became aware of how cold it was in the bedroom and he pulled the sheets up to his bare, breasty chest, holding them there as a maiden aunt in fear of losing her virginity to a night prowler might. He looked about the room, searching the shadowy corners.

‘Ridiculous,’ he informed himself. Apart from Rose and himself the room was empty. He glanced up at the ceiling almost expecting to find a spider at the end of a silken thread hovering over him, as shocked as he at their contact. There wasn’t one there, of course, and even if a spider had run across the top of his head it could hardly have slapped his face! He smoothed down his hair with the palm of his hand, making sure there was nothing playing among the sparse strands. Must have been a dream. Nobody had touched him. His hair? A draught, nothing more than that. The inn was full of sneaky draughts. Yet his cheek still felt numb. And he couldn’t feel any draughts now, even though the room was chilly.

The end of the bedstead began to vibrate. Not much, quite gently.

He watched it quiver, incomprehension lodged on his broad face, and it was a few moments before he murmured, ‘Oh my Lord, there’s someone under the bed.’

He leapt out and two fast steps took him over to the cedar tallboy standing against the wall. One hand held it for support while the other clutched at his pyjama bottoms to keep them up.

‘Rosemary!’
he hissed. His wife snored on.

He stared into the shadow between the overhanging bedsheet and the carpeted floor.
Was
there someone underneath?
Impossible. How could anyone get into the bedroom? There was only one guest staying at the inn at present and as far as Ginty knew he hadn’t returned that evening. An odd chap all right, and an acquaintance of the vicar, which made him even odder. But he couldn’t have got into the room anyway, because the bedroom door was locked from the inside, a habit of many landlords who didn’t trust strangers under their roofs.

The bedstead stopped quivering.

Ginty doubled up, bending as low as he could - an awkward position for someone of his build - to peer into the darkness beneath the bed. He still couldn’t see anything. He got down on his hands and knees and inched closer, his nose almost touching the floor. He could smell the dust in the carpet, the mustiness that wafted out from under the bed. It was too gloomy there to make out anything at all.

He crawled even closer and with a hand that shook just a little he grasped the loose sheet. With a sharp intake of air he whipped the sheet upwards. As he did so, the whole bed began to rock violently.

Rosemary woke with a start. And when she realized what was happening to the bed she let out a shriek. And when she saw her husband’s disembodied head, half of it in shadow, peering over the edge of the bed at her, his eyes and mouth wide with fright, her shriek waxed into a scream.

In a split second she was out of the bed and across the other side of the room where she wrapped the window drapes around herself as if for protection. Her husband rose from the floor and rapidly backed away from the oscillating bed. They both stared in disbelief at it and Rosemary wailed: ‘What’s happening, Tom? Why’s it doing that?’

But Ginty had no answer. Nor did he intend to find out. He edged around the tallboy, making for the door, never once taking his eyes off the phenomenon in the centre of the room.

‘Tom!’

Rosemary’s hairnet had somehow snagged against the thick curtain material so that locks of unnaturally blonde hair fell over
her pencilled eyebrows. Her eyes were daring her husband to leave her alone in that room with the crazed bed and when she realized that was precisely what he intended to do, the daring switched to pleading. He was by the door now, his fingers fumbling behind his back for the key in the lock.

He found it, gripped it, and was about to twist, when the tallboy to his left leaned away from the wall. It balanced there impossibly, unsupported, neither standing nor falling. Only when Rosemary screamed again did it topple. The two drawers slid forward as the chest struck the bed, the first one shedding its contents so that socks and handkerchiefs jigged on the sheets. Both pieces of furniture shook and quivered, their movements becoming more elaborate by the moment, more excessive, the legs of the bedstead practically leaving the floor. Their thumping sounds almost drowned out Rosemary’s moaning.

Ginty wheeled round and turned the key. He pulled open the door and as Rosemary screamed at him not to leave her, the wardrobe, which stood facing the end of the bed, joined the frenzy. Its door sprung open, clothing tumbled out.

The landlord thought he saw moving shadows outside in the gloomy corridor, but when he blinked they stabilized, became normal shadows.

From behind him came a strangulated
‘Tom!’

With an expression of misery mixed with panic, he rushed out into the corridor and slammed the door behind him. But as he held on to the handle, pulling the door tight, everything became quiet once again. In fact, the silence was so immediate and so absolute it was almost as scary as the noise itself.

A muted sobbing came to him through the wood as he waited shivering in the cold corridor. Tentatively - and shamefacedly - he opened the door again and peeked inside.

The bed was still, and so was the tallboy leaning against it. The wardrobe was motionless although at an angle to the wall; fallen clothes jammed its door open. Nothing moved in the
bedroom. Nothing except Rosemary’s plump shoulders as she wept against the curtains.

The millwheel creaked. For the first time in many years it protested at the pull of the river even though the current was sluggish. And then it groaned, a sonorous complaint that disturbed the stillness of the night. If anyone had been about in Sleath’s High Street at that hour, or on the nearby bridge that served as portal to the village, then they might have thought they had heard the moaning of someone in deep pain; but no one was, so no one heard.

The wheel shifted, perhaps a millimetre, certainly no more than that, and the cog-wheels inside the millhouse stirred. They, too, creaked and groaned and strained against the shackles of grime and rot that had bound them for so very long. Cobwebs draped from rafters moved as a chill breeze passed through the old disused building, and dust drifted in the air to settle long after the sounds had died away and everything was still again.

Dr Robert Stapley had never been a good sleeper. Even as a student doctor nearly fifty years ago, his brain and his energy had been too restless, his enthusiasm too rampant, to accommodate the calmness conducive to contented slumber. And decline, that ineludible moderator of all excesses, while dulling the restlessness and enthusiasm, had merely become an ally to insomnia; perhaps the habit was too well established for old age and its detriments to have any worthy influence. Indeed, during the past ten years he doubted he would have managed any sleep at all without the help of a half-tablet of nitrazepam taken with warm milk and a stiff shot of Grouse just before he turned in each night. Even then sleep came gradually,
weariness - ever present these days - slowly succumbing to exhaustion, exhaustion eventually capitulating to oblivion. Perhaps guilt was the culprit in these latter years, memories the spur. So many things to forget … why didn’t age and diminishing brain cells play their part in that too?

His rheumy eyes stared at the open book over spectacles that had slipped to the end of his nose and to him the words were just neat lines of tiny creatures marching in unison across the page with no purpose and no import.

He remembered. He remembered those he had allowed to die. Not deliberately, not intentionally - neglect was mostly a matter of carelessness rather than design. He remembered their names and in his mind’s eye he saw their faces. One by one they paraded before him, accusation in their sad, staring eyes, pointing their fingers as if he alone were responsible and God was merely the bystander.
Not his fault, not his fault
. How could any physician be held accountable for lives that had come to their natural or inevitable end? How could every single diagnosis or response be impeccable? Doctors were human, they made mistakes like anyone else.
But there were different kinds of mistakes
, a small, tormenting voice told him.
There were blunders and misjudgements, there were confusions and lapses. But there was also disregard and failure, wasn’t there? Well, wasn’t there? And of course, there was murder
.

The book slipped from his lap and he let it lie there at his feet.
Yes, yes
, he replied to the tormentor that was his own guilt,
there were all these things. But murder? Could he admit to that? Could he
deny
it?
He twisted in the armchair, reaching for the Grouse bottle on the little round occasional table by his side. He poured himself another measure and contemplated the other, smaller, bottle on the table. The other half of the sleeping pill? Should he take it? It would make him so drowsy the next day if he did. But did that really matter? He slumped back in the seat. Yes, it mattered. How could he function properly if his mind was in a daze and his reactions lethargic? But other pills could take care of that. As they had in the past. As they
had only too regularly. What was it they said about living in a sweet shop? You soon lost your taste for sweet things. If only that were true of the medical profession where the analogy might be apt - for sweets substitute drugs - but in truth, where availability so often led to dependency.

Leave it for now. Give it another twenty minutes or so. If he wasn’t sleepy by then, what the hell, take the other half of nitrazepam. And another shot of scotch. Find oblivion, that elusive anaesthetic. No more thoughts then, no more tired remembrances to haunt the present.

He lifted the tumbler and sipped the scotch.
My, how your hand shivers, dear Doctor. How the glass rim blurs and the golden liquid agitates in your grip. Is it the coldness of the night or the bleakness in your soul that causes the trembling? Who could know the truth? Only you
.

He took another drink, throwing his head back and swallowing hard, hoping the alcohol would warm him, praying it would smother his unease. It
was
chilly in his room. He glanced towards the window to see if he had left it open: the darkness outside pressed against the windowpanes as if eager to gain entry. So dark out there, so very black. The clock on the mantel told him it was twelve minutes past one.