The Vanishment (17 page)

"Shouldn't she be in hospital?"

"That's being considered. But for the moment we want her at home. Apart from the fits, she's perfectly all right."

I was there in twenty minutes. It was still early, and I spent over an hour playing with Rachel. As Tim had said, she seemed fine, except for some bruises, which he said she had received in the course of the fits. When she had been put to bed, Tim switched off the television and made us both drinks.

"She looks better than I feared," I said.

"Yes, she's bearing up well. But the attacks are having their effect. She gets less sleep than is good for her. Susan makes sure she has a nap in the day, but it's not the same."

"Don't the fits happen then?"

Tim shook his head.

"Just at night. She goes to sleep, wakes screaming, and then it starts. The medication only makes her drowsy the next day, otherwise it does nothing. It's starting to wear her out. If we don't find an answer soon . . ."

"Aren't the doctors doing anything?"

"She was given a brain scan last week. Nothing. Absolutely nothing."

"Have you thought of trying something else? A homeopath, a cranial osteopath— I don't know."

"We've talked about it. Yes, if the hospital doesn't get anywhere. But these attacks are so violent."

We drank and talked for a long time. It was like old times. Except for an unfamiliar tension between us. No, not quite unfamiliar, but stale, dredged up from a past we had both put behind us. Every so often Tim would glance at the ceiling, as though bracing himself for what might be about to come. But nothing happened. The house remained still. I looked at the clock. It was well after midnight.

"I think she's going to have a quiet night," said Tim. "Let's go to bed."

I slept in my old room. Tim had made hot water bottles for us both, and I luxuriated in the unaccustomed warmth of my bed. I soon fell asleep. I do not recall now if I dreamed or not. But at some point—it must have been about 3:00 a.m.—I remember struggling out of sleep to strange noises. Muffled screams were coming from Rachel's bedroom. A moment later they stopped, to be replaced almost at once by a quick, frenzied banging, then a sound of smashing glass.

I leapt out of bed and dashed into the corridor. Tim was already there, at the door of Rachel’s room. He flung the door open and rushed in, switching on the light as he did so. I hurried after him.

The bedclothes had been torn back and hurled to the ground. Rachel lay on crumpled sheets, her back arched, her arms thrown out stiffly at her sides. The room was freezing cold. As I came through the door a row of books in the shelf to the left of the bed came flying out one by one, landing in a heap at the foot of the wall opposite. The light that hung from the center of the ceiling was spinning around and around like a flail.

Tim was at Rachel's side, trying to quiet her. The next moment she seemed to take off. Her body stiffened and jerked away from Tim. I looked on in horror as she was lifted, thrown onto the mattress, and lifted again, as though someone had her by the ankles and was shaking her. There was a loud explosion as the window burst into fragments, showering the curtains with glass. Toys were hurled with terrible force in all directions, sometimes striking Tim or myself. There was a ripping sound as the carpet pulled away from the tacks holding it to the floor. On the bed, Rachel was in convulsions, her entire body rippling as though an electrical current was being passed through it.

I rushed to the bedside to help Tim hold her down. The moment I touched her she went limp and fell to the bed. All the objects that had been flying through the air of the room fell to the ground. There was an intense silence. Rachel lay as though unconscious.

Suddenly, from nowhere in particular, we both heard a voice. It was a woman's voice, the same voice I had heard months earlier in Petherick House. "Catherine. Wait for me, Catherine."

The next moment Rachel opened her eyes. "Mummy," she cried. "Where are you, Mummy?" And then she looked at Tim and myself, realized where she was, and burst into tears.

Rachel slept late while Tim and I both sat with her. When she finally awoke toward noon, she had forgotten everything about the night before. Tim had not called the doctor. After what he had seen, he no longer saw any point in fooling himself that medicine could be of the slightest help.

"How long is it going to continue?" he asked, again and again. I had no answer for him. But I thought I could begin to see my way toward one, however imperfectly.
When Susannah Trevorrow finds her daughter again
was what I thought, though I said nothing to Tim.

I went back home that afternoon. Susan would be returning before long, and Tim did not want her to find me there. A small package was waiting for me. It bore a Helmsley postmark. Inside I found a letter and a small clothbound book.

The letter was signed
Susannah Adderstone
. I read it quickly.

Dear Mr. Clare,

I hope you will forgive my writing like this. Father is very ill. The doctor says he may not have much longer to live. He does not say so, but it is since your visit that he has gone into this decline. I do not say this to blame you. But I thought you should know.

He wants me to send you the enclosed book. It's a sort of journal kept by my great-aunt, Agnes Trevorrow. He has asked me not to read it, and I have not done so. He says you will understand what is in it, and hopes it will be of some help to you.

He has told me about your tragedy. I confess that I do not understand in what way it concerns my family, other than through the coincidence of your having been living at Petherick House when your wife disappeared. But I am not stupid. I know Father has kept a great deal back from me. Perhaps when he is dead, someone will let me into his great secret. I think you know a lot about it.

There is something I must tell you, though I do not find it easy. After you left, I reread those of your novels I had in the house. I also ordered copies of the early stories from the little bookshop here. I have read them all now. Shall I tell Father what is in them, or shall you? You know what I mean, of course. I wonder how you live with yourself, knowing the things you have written.

There is another thing you should know. Since you were here, I have been plagued by dreams. They are all variants of the same dream. There is a young woman and a child and, somewhere out of sight, another person. The young woman is Susannah Trevorrow, I recognize her from the photograph I carry. She seems to want something from me. I cannot tell Father, it would upset him. Is there anything you know, anything you can tell me? It is terrible waking in the middle of winter with those sounds in my ears. You cannot guess the silence here and how terrible it is when broken.

Yours faithfully, Susannah Adderstone

I knew what she meant about my early novels. Anyone who has read them will understand. It was cruel of her to remind me like that.

I was loath to touch the journal, knowing whose hand had written it. I left it on my desk all the rest of that day. At times, I was tempted to do with it what I had done to the doll she had sent to Rachel. But I needed to know all I could about her. What had been in her mind, what hopes, dreams, and fears she had had, what she had known about herself.

The following morning it was still lying there, as though waiting for me. I tried not to look at it, but it seemed to call me to itself, and in the end I succumbed. I began to read.

There were no dates, neither days of the week nor numbers of the years. Just thoughts set down at random over time. How long? I could not guess. A year, perhaps. And maybe much longer. Over sixty years.

Every night now, and some days without cease. It is worse when the wind is up. It seems to drive her to the house. Sometimes I hear her laughing; that is the worst of all. God forgive me, I could kill her again then.

Three nights in a row, then silence. There are times I think the silence is worse than anything. I sit waiting for it to change. And when it does, when she comes again, I wish it would return. But I will not give her what she wants, however much she sits and stares, however plaintively the child cries.

I was at the cliff last night. In the dark you can pretend there is no distance between yourself and the water. A step would set me free. Or imprison me here forever.

Sometimes I go from room to room in search of her; but she is never there, and I go out, slamming the doors behind me. And then I come here to bed and lie awake, going from room to room in my mind. And in my mind I go through the house again, slamming more doors.

Woken at 3:00 a.m. last night by her screaming. I will not go up. That is what she wants, but I will not go.

The Reverend Sowerby died yesterday. He leaves his wife and four children. The funeral takes place on Friday, but I am not expected. I spent yesterday in tears. She did not leave me once all night.

My week in Truro was quiet, but I could not stay. At Petherick, I can hate her, I can almost justify what I did. But in Truro, I am alone with my conscience, and it will not give me rest. In its way, it is the greater torment. She has Petherick House for her playground, but my conscience has the world.

I heard the child passing my room last night several times. Why can she not keep still?

I have thought of burying the child with her mother, but I do not think I have the strength. And it would give her what she wants, it would give her peace. She does not deserve peace, for I have had none, and all on her account. If I hold out long enough, I shall have beaten her, I shall have beaten all of them.

The sea was high last night. I could hear the waves pounding the cliff wall. She sat in her room and screamed, but I pretended I could not hear her. Will winter never end?

By the end I almost pitied her. Trapped with her ghosts in a house she could not sell, her already small income diminishing visibly each year, the thought of those long winter nights constantly in her mind. She had not been welcome in the village, no locals would come to work for her, the only help she had was a woman from St. Ives who came once a fortnight to do a little cleaning. Her solicitors told her she could sell the house in Truro for a reasonable sum, but she refused to sell, regarding it as her only bolt hole, cherishing the dream that one day she might after all break free of her past and go there to live.

I was about to put the packaging in which the journal had come into the bin when I noticed that there was another enclosure. Fishing inside, I drew out a small brown envelope, the sort sometimes used to hold cash for the bank. It contained three keys and a short note.

Dear Mr. Clare,

I have asked my daughter to place these in the packet she is going to post to you. I think you will know what to do with them. I do not have the courage to tell Susannah all I know. But after I am gone, the house will be hers. Perhaps you will find some way to warn her. I think it will be for the best to have the place destroyed. Destroyed and, if possible, cleansed in some way. Do as you think best.

Richard Adderstone

I took the keys one at a time and laid them on my desk. I recognized them without prompting. They were the keys to Petherick House.

The weather grew steadily worse. There were fierce storms several nights in a row. Snow fell in Scotland and started to come south. In Cornwall, high seas rose over the walls of the harbors and sank fishing boats.

Rachel's condition grew worse. She was taken on a round of specialists, all of whom professed themselves perplexed. New drugs were tried, none to the least avail. The strain of the fits and loss of sleep was showing on her. She had lost weight, showed a perpetual pallor, and was growing sulky and irritable. Tim and Susan were frightened and desperate. I knew what had to be done, but I could not do it. Not yet, not while they were there. Susan would have stopped me, and that would have been the end for all of us. I bided my time. Every day I wrote three thousand words.

* * * 

I heard of the accident while having lunch on the tenth of December. The radio was on in the background. It was during the final item on the news bulletin that I heard Tim and Susan's names mentioned.

"A couple were seriously injured today when their car overturned on the A40 between Oxford and Wheatley. No other vehicles were involved in the accident, which took place shortly after ten o'clock this morning. The car, a Ford Sierra, left the roadway without warning and overturned in a field, trapping the occupants. The names of the driver and passengers have now been released. They are Tim and Susan Wigram and their four-year-old daughter, Rachel, who was traveling in the rear. Mr. and Mrs. Wigram have been taken to the Radcliffe Infirmary, where they are in intensive care. Their daughter, who escaped unhurt, is also at the infirmary."

I drove straight to Oxford. By the time I got there, Tim had come out of intensive care and was under observation in a separate room. He had been badly smashed up. His bed was surrounded by a battery of machines, and he was hooked up to a battery of drips and feeds. Susan was in a coma. They told me Tim was still too ill to receive visitors, but they let me in to see Rachel.

She was being looked after by a nurse in a room off the main children's ward. When I came in, she burst into tears and clung to me tightly. When she was able to speak, I asked her what had happened.

"We were at the hospital," she said. "To see another doctor. I didn't like him. He was rough. And he had cold hands."

"What hospital was this, Rachel?"