Urban Myth (5 page)

S
omething woke me from a deep, dreamless sleep. I had no idea what it was, but I was immediately alert and apprehensive. I felt utterly disoriented and it took a few seconds for me to realize where I was. I stared up at the dark mass that was the ceiling, only just able to make out the shape of the overhead fanlight.

I felt hot and sweaty. Dilated vessels pounded inside my skull and my eyes were stiff and heavy. I lifted my head and looked around the room, dim outlines of furniture giving some relief to the oppressive darkness. And then I heard something; muffled sounds coming from outside the bedroom. I felt my forehead tighten into a frown.

I strained my ears to listen, but at first I was only aware of Nicole’s shallow breathing next to me, still lost in the comfort of sleep.

Then it came again and I felt an icy chill in my gut. Voices. Downstairs. Not loud enough to discern individual words, but loud enough to know that a conversation was taking place. Right below us.

I sat bolt upright and was gripped by a sudden bout of trembling. It was enough to wake Nicole. She stirred beside me and grunted
something
unintelligible.

‘Shussh,’ I whispered, touching her bare shoulder. ‘Be quiet.’

I felt the duvet move as I held my breath and tried to make sense of what was happening. Was I dreaming? Were the voices part of that dream? I shook my head from side to side, took a deep breath and quickly concluded that it wasn’t a dream. I was awake and the voices were real. They were coming up through the ceiling. Shit.

‘What’s up?’ Nicole said sleepily.

‘I think there’s someone downstairs,’ I said in a hushed tone. ‘I can hear people talking.’

Nicole sat up and put a warm hand on my arm. As we both sat there listening I felt the hand start to shake.

After a moment, she said, ‘Are you sure you didn’t leave the
television
on?’

It was the obvious question and it hadn’t even occurred to me. But now that I thought about it I distinctly remembered switching the TV off along with the lights.

‘I’m sure,’ I said.

‘So maybe it switched itself on again. Could be on a timer or
something
. Like an alarm.’

I didn’t think so, but of course I couldn’t be certain. There was only one way to find out and that was by going downstairs. I threw back the duvet and flung my feet onto the floor. Nicole squeezed my arm and said, ‘What are you doing?’

‘I have to check it out.’

‘But what if they’re burglars? They might be armed.’

‘Burglars wouldn’t make such a racket. Besides, we can’t ignore it and go back to sleep.’

‘Oh, Jack, I don’t like it. I’m scared.’

‘Don’t be. I won’t let anything happen to you or the kids.’

‘Shall I switch on the light?’

‘Best leave it off for now. I can just about see.’

I managed to quickly pull on my jeans which I’d dropped over the chair next to the bed.

I could still hear the oddly muted voices as I tiptoed across the room to the door. They seemed to fluctuate from a murmur to a whisper. I gripped the handle in a sweat-soaked hand and eased the door open as quietly as possible. The voices at once became slightly louder and I felt a jolt of fear, a shot of adrenaline, as I stepped out onto the landing.

I was pretty sure the voices belonged to at least two people. I couldn’t tell if the speakers were male or female. In fact even as I shuffled along the landing to the stairs I still couldn’t decipher what was being said. They were talking quietly and maybe even in a foreign language.

I stood at the top of the stairs and looked down into the darkness below. I felt vulnerable suddenly and realized that I should have armed myself with a weapon of some kind, not that there was likely to
be anything I could use in any of the bedrooms. So maybe the only thing I had going for me was the element of surprise. Perhaps that would be enough to scare the intruders into fleeing from the house.

I wasn’t sure what to do next but I knew that I had to do something. Waiting for whoever was downstairs to come up and confront us was not an option. My heart was thumping loudly in my ears and sinuses, almost drowning out the sound of the voices. I came to a decision: I would switch on the light, then rush downstairs and try to make it into the kitchen before they realized what was happening. There I would grab a knife and do whatever was necessary to protect my family.

I knew roughly where the light switch was so I groped for it. My heart clenched as I flicked it on and braced myself for action. But nothing happened. The lights failed to come on. The bastards must have switched the electricity off at the mains.

Just then I heard a floorboard creak behind me and I almost jumped out of my skin.

‘It’s only me,’ Nicole whispered nervously. ‘Are you all right?’

I momentarily lost the power of speech so I couldn’t respond. My chest started to hurt. It was tight and hot and I couldn’t catch my breath.

‘Take this,’ she said. ‘They’re my scissors.’

She thrust them into my hand and I experienced a tremendous sense of relief that I now had a weapon. They were large hair-dressing scissors that Nicole always kept in her toiletry bag. They gave me the confidence to press ahead even though I didn’t know what to expect. The intruders must have known by now that they had woken us. They were probably watching me from the shadows, waiting to pounce as soon as I ventured down. But what choice did I have? Our phones were down there and so too was our only means of escape.

A rush of anger propelled me forward down the stairs. I had to tread carefully because even though my eyes had adjusted to the dark I still couldn’t see that far ahead.

Fear gave me courage. I held the scissors out in front of me and started shouting in the hope that it would spook our unwanted visitors.

‘Whoever you are you’d better leave this house right now before you get hurt. I’ve got a fucking knife here and I’m going to use it.’

As threats go it wasn’t very convincing. But it did psych me up so that by the time I got to the bottom of the stairs I was ready to take on
the world. But I didn’t have to, because nothing happened. I stopped in the hallway and searched the darkness, but there was nobody waiting to jump on me. The voices continued, though, and it became immediately obvious that they were coming from the living room.

I walked, weak-kneed, towards the living room door, which was open. Had I closed it last night? For the life of me I couldn’t remember. I’d been that tired. When I reached the door I went straight in without hesitating, waving the scissors in front of me in a fierce defensive arc. I halted just inside the door, arm outstretched, heart thumping, wondering why I hadn’t been attacked. I noticed straight away that the television was not on. That came as no surprise. What did surprise me was the fact that the room appeared at first glance to be empty.

And yet I could still hear the voices. They seemed to be coming from all around me, but at the same time they were distant and distorted. How the hell could that be happening?

‘Where are you?’ I shouted. ‘Show yourselves, you fucking cowards.’

And that’s when the voices suddenly stopped. Just like that. One moment the muted chatter of incoherent conversation, the next a profound silence. As I stood there feeling totally freaked out my gut tightened another notch. The silence that pressed against my ears seemed strangely watchful, filling me with a deep sense of dread. After a few moments I heard Nicole coming down the stairs. She called out to me but I was still too wary and confused to respond
immediately
. Instead, I turned my full attention to the shapes and shadows in the living room. I squinted into the dark, trying to see if there was something I’d missed when I entered the room.

And that’s when I became aware of the figure in the armchair. A small black shape outlined against the light fabric of the furniture. Someone – or something – was sitting not six feet away from me. Motionless. Featureless. And yet terrifyingly real.

A cold prickle of fear swept through me. I tried to say something, anything, but the words wouldn’t form in my throat. So I continued to stare at the eerie apparition, feeling sick and shaky and wondering what the hell was going to happen next. But I didn’t have to wait long to find out because the lights suddenly came on and behind me Nicole let out an ear-splitting scream.

T
he figure in the chair was not an intruder. Or a ghost.

It was Michael.

And that was why Nicole screamed. It was an instinctive reaction to the shock of seeing her son like that and thinking he was dead. I thought so too at first. He was slumped back in the chair in his pyjamas with his head tilted back and his mouth wide open. It wasn’t until I rushed over to him and grabbed him by the shoulders that I realized he was alive and unharmed and in a deep sleep.

‘He’s OK,’ I quickly reassured Nicole. ‘He’s breathing. He’s fine.’

She knelt on the floor in front of him and took his hands in hers.

‘Michael, wake up,’ she said. ‘It’s Mommy.’

I stood up and rubbed knuckles into my eyes. It was surreal. Michael sitting there unconscious when he should have been in bed. The voices that had woken us up and had carried on even though there was nobody in the room. What the hell was I to make of it all?

‘Did you switch on the light when you came in here?’ I asked Nicole.

‘Yes, of course,’ she said without looking round.

While Nicole tried to wake her son I went into the hall. Sure enough the light was on. I looked around for the fuse box, found it high up on the wall next to the front door. All the switches were in the ON
position
. So why had the upstairs light not come on?

I hurried around the house checking doors and windows. They were all closed. And locked. It seemed as though nothing had been disturbed. I even went outside. The night was black and still and there were myriad bright stars in the sky. A soft wind blew, chilling the air. I saw nothing unusual. No signs of life, no lights and no unnatural shapes in the dark. Back in the house I checked all the cupboards and
wardrobes. Tina, bless her, was still fast asleep in her room,
undisturbed
by the events of the night. In the living room I checked the television to make sure that the sound hadn’t come on without the pictures, which might have accounted for the voices. But even the standby button was off. I then looked to see if there were any radios or CD recorders in the room, but there weren’t.

I told Nicole that I was satisfied there was nobody else in the house.

‘Are you absolutely sure?’

‘I’m positive,’ I said. ‘The place is secure. And both the front and back doors were locked from the inside. I can’t see how anyone could have got in.’

So who had those voices belonged to? And if intruders had indeed been in the house then where were they now? They couldn’t have just vanished into thin air.

Not unless …

No, I didn’t want to entertain the notion that what we had heard and experienced had something to do with the supernatural. I’d never believed in ghosts or poltergeists or any of that mumbo jumbo. It’s all bullshit. I’ve always been convinced of it. Which means there had to be an earthly explanation for everything that happened.

So what had happened in this house on this night? Who the fuck had been having a conversation in the living room and why hadn’t I been able to see them?

‘It must have been Michael,’ Nicole said.

I looked down at her and wondered if she was serious. Michael had opened his eyes and Nicole was stroking his forehead.

‘What do you mean?’ I said.

‘Well you know how restless he is at night. He often talks in his sleep and there was that time about a year ago when he went through that sleepwalking phase. Don’t you remember? He woke us up one night and said he was late for school.’

‘But there’s no way it was Michael. There was more than one voice and they belonged to adults.’

‘But you’ve said that nobody could have got in. We can’t even be sure what we heard. I mean, it was all a bit muffled and we couldn’t make out what was being said.’

I stared at her, slack-jawed, unable to accept that the explanation
was that simple. Surely I would have known if it was Michael who’d been speaking.

‘We were both confused and disoriented, Jack,’ Nicole said. ‘Maybe we just thought we heard more than one voice.’

I wasn’t sure if she really believed what she was suggesting or if it was her way of dealing with something she couldn’t explain. Like me, Nicole had never believed in the paranormal or the supernatural or whatever people chose to call it, so she’d be anxious to come up with a down-to-earth explanation, however unlikely it seemed.

Michael groaned and suddenly seemed to become aware of his surroundings.

‘Hi, sweetheart,’ Nicole said. ‘Are you all right?’

He looked around, licked his lips, scratched his nose.

‘I want to go to bed.’

‘You were in bed,’ Nicole said. ‘Why did you come downstairs?’

He stared at her, perplexed. ‘I don’t know. I had a bad dream.’

‘What about?’ Nicole pressed him. ‘What did you dream about?’

He sat up straighter, said he was thirsty, so I went into the kitchen and brought him back a glass of water.

After he’d gulped some down Nicole repeated the question.

Michael furrowed his brow, said, ‘I’m not sure. I remember being scared, though.’

‘What was there to be scared of?’ Nicole asked.

‘It was dark and there was a man leaning over me and I felt him lift me up. At least I think it was a man.’

‘What did this man look like?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. It might not have been a man. He had something over his face. That’s why I was scared. I thought it was a ghost. So I shut my eyes and he went away.’

The boy was clearly confused by the remnants of his nightmare. And who could blame him? It sounded pretty scary.

‘It was just a dream,’ Nicole reassured him. ‘There’s no man in the house and there’re no such things as ghosts.’

But Michael wasn’t listening. In fact he could barely keep his eyes open.

‘We should put him back in bed,’ Nicole said, standing up. ‘He’s still half asleep.’

I carried him upstairs and by the time we tucked him under his duvet he was out cold.

‘What time is it?’ Nicole asked.

I was still wearing my watch so I held it up for her to see. It was 3 a.m.

‘I’m going to have a cup of tea,’ she said. ‘You want to join me?’

I opted for something stronger than tea – a large, neat whisky, compliments of our landlord. I felt I needed it. My thoughts were still burning like a fuse and I couldn’t shift the unease in the pit of my stomach. Nicole sat at the kitchen table. She was pale and glassy-eyed, but she did not seem as troubled as I was.

‘Try to relax, Jack,’ she said. ‘Michael is OK and so are we. I’m a hundred per cent convinced that he was talking in his sleep having wandered downstairs. And because he was rambling on about nothing it sounded to us like there was more than one voice.’

‘You reckon that’s all it was?’ I said, incredulous.

She nodded. ‘Think about it for a minute, Jack. We know now that nobody has broken in. The house is all locked up. We also know we’re all suffering from jet lag and that’s bound to affect our sleep patterns. Plus, you and I had a fair amount to drink before we went to bed. We polished off a bottle of champagne between us.’

‘I suppose you could be right,’ I said.

‘Of course I am. I can’t in all honesty see that there can be any other explanation – unless we’re prepared to accept that the house is haunted and we’ve experienced some paranormal event.’

‘Do you think that’s possible?’

A tight smile twisted on her lips. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’ll take more than one weird night to change my views on that particular subject.’

I fired down the whisky and felt it bite into the back of my throat. Nicole was probably right, I decided. In any case, there was no point staying up for the rest of the night fretting over it. In the morning the whole episode would no doubt seem far less alarming.

So we finished our drinks and I did one more tour of the house before we went upstairs. We got into bed. I kissed Nicole and turned off the light. Then I listened hard for any signs of life downstairs. But there were no voices or faint vibrations. And no sense of any other presence in the house.

Nicole was asleep within minutes, but it took much longer for me to drop off. My mind was awash with all the strange things that had happened to us since that morning. The snake. The doors. The lights. The voices. Michael’s curious dream.

And once again I found myself asking that same, disturbing
question
:
Could these events somehow be connected?