Tormentor (10 page)

The e-mails were to my friends down south, thanking them for the Christmas invitations, but turning them down with a vague promise to meet up in the coming year. It was a promise I had little intention of keeping, for the house had its hold on me—the house, and Beth.

Our conversations were getting longer—at least on my side of them. I’d stand at the easel, ostensibly busy painting, with nary a brushstroke made in an hour as I called back to mind a trip to her favorite pizza place, or a night spent by the riverside watching the lights of the city twinkle on the Thames. She didn’t reply, but I was coming to think I could hear a whisper, just at the edge of hearing, soft and sibilant, like her breathing in my ear.

I began to hear the beat everywhere—in the tapping of the sparrows on the windows, in the drumming of rain against the roof, in the lap of waves on the shore. At nights before sleeping, I’d listen to my heart pound in my ears and imagine it matching the rhythm my fingers drummed out on the sheets.

When Christmas Eve came round, I rang up Alan, intending to plead illness and cancel—I felt like I would be abandoning Beth. But he would hear none of it.

“Listen, I’m not taking the flak from my mother—she’ll have been slaving away in the kitchen all day today. And if you don’t turn up, she’ll just make me eat even more. It could get messy. There could be an explosion. We’ll see you at one. Don’t be late. Okay?”

Even then I almost didn’t leave the next morning—partly because of the house, and partly through embarrassment that I had totally failed to buy a present. In a moment of madness, I took the abstract painting off the easel, wrapped it up in some brown paper I had kept from the move, and took it with me across the island.

The wheel noise on the wet road surface kept time with my fingers drumming on the steering wheel.

No limbs, no limbs, no head, no head, left arm gone, left leg gone, no legs, no head.

* * *

The family thanked me for the painting—Alan’s mum was most effusive about the gift, at least until it was unwrapped. Several things showed in their expressions when they saw the work—confusion mainly, and also just a hint of disgust. They were too polite to mention it but I had a feeling the fruits of my autumn spent painting was destined for the back of a cupboard never to be spoken of again.

Fortunately that was the only sour note in what turned out to be a Christmas as good as any I remembered from my childhood. Alan’s mum did us all proud with a feast fit for the chiefs of Dunvegan, while his dad kept our glasses topped up with fine local ales and some heady Australian wine. I was quite relaxed by the time we left the table, and even put up with a game of charades where I did not know half of the shows or personalities Alan’s parents played out.

Alan surprised me by taking to the piano and belting out some standards before leading us in carols that even I knew the words to sing along to. Then we did indeed have a snooze while a Bond movie played on the television, before heading out into a cold night for the shindig at the George Hotel.

The promised dance turned out to be more of a full-scale party to which it seemed everyone in town had been invited. Local lasses whirled Alan and I around the floor, songs were sung, games were played and everybody had a high old time.

Somewhere around midnight, I went outside for some air. I spotted the old woman and her son immediately. They stood in the corner of the car park, as if they had been there all along, waiting for me.

I walked, rather more unsteadily than I would have wished, towards them.

“You’re drunk,” the man said.

“Yes, and you’re ugly, but I’ll be sober in the morning.”

The ancient joke went completely over his head. The old woman didn’t seem too amused either. She stared into my eyes, then took my left hand in both of hers. My fingers twitched, seemingly eager to beat the rhythm. She dropped my hand as if she’d been burned.

“You’ve left it too late,” she said, her eyes sad. “Much too late.”

The man led her away.

“Hey, wait,” I shouted, but they seemed to scuttle off, like fleeing sparrows, leaving me alone in the corner of the square.

As I walked back towards the hotel entrance, it started to snow.

* * *

I woke the next morning—or more accurately, afternoon—to Alan banging about in his kitchen singing “White Christmas” at the top of his voice. I was vaguely aware that the party had gone on long into the night, and I remembered our footprints in fresh snow on the short walk from the hotel to Alan’s flat, but beyond that, most of the time after midnight was little more than a blur.

I remembered the old woman’s words well enough though.

“You’ve left it too late.”

“Breakfast?” Alan shouted.

“Just some toast and coffee—lots of coffee,” I replied, and groaned as I tried to get out of the sofa that had taken a death grip on my back and neck.

“I could make a full fry-up?” he said, but the thought of all that oily food made my stomach roil. I stumbled to the bathroom, had a shower and felt almost human again.

Three cups of coffee and some toast got the engine running, but it almost stalled when Alan suggested a hair of the dog.

“The George will be open,” he said. “Fancy a pint or three?”

Actually, I did, but I also knew that if I started, I wouldn’t get home that day, and the house had been calling me since I woke up.

“Maybe at the New Year,” I said. “I’ve got to get back.”

Alan pointed out the window. I noticed, for the first time, that it was still snowing—not heavy, but persistent.

“You might not make it—the council won’t be out today—it’s a holiday for them too—and the roads won’t have been gritted. It might be best to stay here a wee bit longer?”

“Stay and get pissed again? I’m not sure my liver would stand it.”

“Mum’s got a fridge full of leftovers too—we could take on plenty of ballast?”

I laughed.

“Don’t tempt me—but I need to get back. There’s some folks down south I need to talk to online—and I said I’d phone Beth’s parents.”

That little lie made me uncomfortable—Beth’s parents and I hadn’t spoken since the funeral, and we both liked the situation just fine—but Alan didn’t know that. He relented, and let me off with the promise that we’d meet up at some point for the New Year festivities.

I went out into a snow-covered landscape.

* * *

Portree was eerily quiet, considering it was already two o’ clock in the afternoon. An old man walked a wheezing dog, and said something to me as he passed, but his accent was so broad I didn’t catch it, and I just muttered something in reply, hoping I hadn’t been rude.

As I got to the car park, I checked the far corner, half expecting the woman and her son to be standing there, watching me—but there was only a stretch of unbroken snow leading up the incline away from the town center.

I had to brush snow from the windshield, and my hands felt like blocks of ice by the time I finally got in and started the car up. At least it started on cue, although the wheels spun rather alarmingly as I pulled out, and I almost didn’t make it up the incline that led to the Edinbane and Dunvegan road, sliding left and right and struggling for traction all the way.

I was on the verge of turning back and throwing myself on Alan’s ample hospitality when I crested the hill and the snow thinned enough for the wheels to get a better grip. I was still doing little more than fifteen miles an hour, but at least I was making progress, so I pressed on.

I quickly regretted that decision. The snow fell harder, testing the limits of my wipers, and I crawled forward, peering into a white emptiness. There was no other traffic on the road—the locals weren’t that stupid, and I was starting to have thoughts of being stranded out here for the day, to be found, dead and frozen, once everyone else had stopped partying.

As if in reply to my pessimism, my left hand drummed out the repeating beat on the steering wheel. The engine took up the beat, wheels alternately gripping then sliding on the road surface in an almost balletic bump and grind. By the time we went through Edinbane, the wipers had joined in, and I was singing at the top of my voice, a nonsense scat vocal, but one that perfectly stayed in time. The snow came in waves, on beat, against the windshield and we danced all the way home.

I was quite exhausted by the time I pulled into the barn. It was getting dim—the forty-five minutes it normally took me had stretched and elongated into almost two hours in the snow, but I had a smile on my face as I got out of the car and turned towards the house.

There was somebody waiting for me, out on the shore, obscured in the midst of a whirling funnel of snow and spray, standing right where the old crofter’s cottage used to be.

Beth?

I ran across the snow-covered yard, noticing, despite my haste, that mine were the only footprints.

Beth?

I could almost touch her. She had her back to me, and wore a long cloak that reached from neck to ankles. Her hair was up, in a tight bun pinned by a single piece of what looked like white bone, and she seemed shorter somehow, more stocky.

But who else could it be?

I reached forward, arms wide, eager for an embrace.

A wind got up off the loch, whipping spray and sleet into my face. I brushed it away with my sleeve and blinked.

I was alone on the shore, standing on the fresh rubble above the filled-in root cellar.

* * *

I spent the next hour standing at the French windows, looking out over the shore. All I saw was snow and spray, but I stood there until the light went out of the sky completely. The snow turned to sleet that washed down the windows, turning everything into a soft-focus blur. I finally turned away when rain started beating the repeating pattern on the window.

That night, I heard the pattern everywhere; in the rushing water when I ran the tap, in the hum of the microwave as I heated a pizza, in the crackle and hiss as damp logs burned in the fireplace, and in the constant drumming of sleety rain against the windows. My fingers beat against the arm of the sofa in sympathetic rhythm.

No limbs, no limbs, no head, no head, left arm gone, left leg gone, no legs, no head.

When I realized that I was now also tapping my foot in time, I made a conscious effort to take control. I fetched a beer from the fridge and set off a movie on the laptop—a big, overblown and bombastic Hollywood mind-number.

The explosions kept time with the beat.

When the movie finished, the laptop, without any intervention on my part, started up my program, but only playing the eight repeater parts. I switched off the machine and pulled the power cord from the socket.

I went to bed with the beat thudding in my chest and ears.

I couldn’t sleep. The storm ramped up outside. Snow spattered against the bedroom window and a gale howled, strong enough to cause the hatchway in the ceiling above my bed to rattle.

No limbs, no limbs, no head, no head, left arm gone, left leg gone, no legs, no head.

I drifted in a half-awake, half-asleep doze, scarcely aware that my fingers were drumming on the bedclothes, my legs twitching. I was lost in a dance, and this time I was not going to be able to escape for air.

No limbs, no limbs, no head, no head, left arm gone, left leg gone, no legs, no head.

Shadows capered and swirled on the ceiling, impossible shadows, for there was no moonlight to cast them, just snow and wind and the waters of the loch that now splashed in step on the rocks of the shore. A light went on in the main living area, dim, flickering and diffuse. The laptop program started up, beeping the beats in an impossibly loud chorus far beyond the range of the machine’s speakers. The whole house shook and rattled.

No limbs, no limbs, no head, no head, left arm gone, left leg gone, no legs, no head.

The bed bounced in time. Above the cacophony, I heard the quietest of creaks in the doorway and turned my head.

She stood there, silhouetted against the flickering from the laptop, a dim, almost smoky figure, her cape draped around her.

I stretched out my arms.

She came to me.

5

The next morning dawned crisp and clear. I woke when the sparrows started tapping on the bedroom window. I felt groggy, decidedly hungover, and confused. I could still feel her against my body, the weight and heft of reality; I smelled her hair, tasted the salt on the skin at her neck. It hadn’t been Beth—it was sex, pure, simple, fantasy sex, and I felt as if I’d just betrayed Beth’s memory.

It was only a dream.

I staggered into the living area. The laptop was switched off, the cord still unplugged from the wall—never mind that I knew for a fact I’d already erased the beeping program. Outside the French windows the snow lay, several inches thick now, the only tracks in it the small scribbling left by the sparrows’ dances. I half expected to see her standing there over the rubble of the cottage cellar, but there was just the flat, cold, calm loch, a fine mist wafting across it like a thin veil.