Mean Spirit

VIII

She was still lying on top of the bed, and the heating had gone off and she was freezing, hands and legs numb, and all she could think about was the dormitory in the private school somewhere in the south Midlands, the night the big window exploded, all the girls screaming. Paranormal things happened around Persephone Callard, Queen of the Unseen.

But this was just one scream. It came from downstairs. It was a real scream. Grayle went into foetal position for warmth, rubbing her shins, and the next thought she had was:

Scam. Persephone Callard faking some psychic-shock drama.

Don’t respond. Don’t do the obvious.

What time was it? She couldn’t see her watch, only the pinprick red light of the mobile phone charging up at a power point in a corner. It didn’t matter what time it was; this had to be a scam, aimed at Grayle to scare her. Why else had Callard wanted her to stay the night? She was a manipulator, a conjurer, a stager of effects.

Grayle lay there for maybe half a minute, trying to rationalize it, to will away the fear. But fear was what screaming was all about and when it started again it was instantly contagious.

She heard, ‘Get the fuck-’

Callard.

Those were the only intelligible words — Callard’s voice, rising, then cut off, muffled into a squeal of outrage. Oh Jesus. Grayle was rolling off the bed, pulling on her skirt, feeling for her shoes, seeing a beam of light bounce from the window frame.

She stumbled over there, barefoot on pine boards, recalling that the bedroom overlooked the rear of the lodge and the woodland. A light from the woods? A poacher, a lamper of hares?

The bedroom seemed to be directly above the kitchen, this window right over the back door. Through which she saw someone entering Mysleton Lodge, following a flashlight, its beam like pale grey tubing in the night mist.

Someone coming into the lodge. Someone big. A man.

Grayle reeled from the window, hand at her mouth.

JUSTIN, JUSTIN, JUSTIN.

The name going on and off like a neon sign in her head. Hadn’t she picked up all along that he was a bad guy, a small-time psycho on the prowl? If he was back, she was scared, sure, but — damn it — angry, too. That bastard.

She located her shoes, squirmed into them, moved quietly in the darkness to the bedroom door, turning the handle slowly, holding her breath. Because Justin would have no idea that she was still here. Justin would think she was in a hotel in Stroud.

Justin would think that Persephone Callard was here alone.

He’d come after her?

Struts around Stroud in her fancy clothes and her nose in the air … nothing worse than coloured girls when they reckon they’re a cut above … You know what her mother was, don’t you?

He’d broken in. Callard had heard him and gone downstairs and-

Grayle stood at the top of the narrow stairs, discovering she was panting. Discovering that she did not want to go down. Flattening herself against the wall, beside a small landing window, through which she could see nothing but dark mist.

And so cold. Jesus, help me.

Calm down. Go back upstairs, find the cellphone and call the cops. Right. That makes sense. That makes sense.

Unless, of course, there is a reasonable explanation for all this and you just had a bad dream after an uncomfortable night following a stressful day.

Fuck it. Check it out.

Vague scufflings from downstairs, but no more screams. Grayle went down one step.

Clack.

No carpet; she’d forgotten that. She sat down on the topmost stair, pulled off her shoes. From below, she heard, mmmm, mmmm, mmmm, and what sounded like the skidding of a chair across a hard floor. Grayle stood up slowly and began to edge down the stairs, her back to the wall. Wishing there was some kind of weapon to hand, but all she had was her shoes with two-inch wooden heels. She gripped one by its toe, raising it over her shoulder like an axe.

The stairs came out directly into the parlour with its low ceiling, its blue window — curtains pulled back now — and its sour aroma of old alcohol.

There was no movement in here. No glimmer from the remains of the fire. What she ought to have done was bring the phone with her — damn all use plugged into the wall up in the bedroom.

Grayle stepped into the room.

Noises to the right. A closed door. The kitchen. A line of yellow light appeared underneath the door. Behind it, a man said, ‘I don’t want to hurt you. Can you hear me? Are you listening to me, you slag?’

Grayle froze up. Oh … my … God!

It was not Justin’s voice.

Which drained away the anger, leaving the fear. Grayle felt a trembling in her bowels. Justin was scary and repulsive, but at least he was a known danger. She sucked in a lot of air, went back hard against the wall …

… the one with all the rustic implements on it, and her shoulder hit the bowsaw, pushing it into the wall with — oh no, oh no … this loud shivering twang.

And another of the tools was dislodged and it fell against the bowsaw and she tried to catch it and failed, and then there was, in the silence of the lodge, this huge, strident clash of collapsing metal.

No place to go. Grayle just shrank into the wall.

In dreams, in nightmares, there was usually an inevitability about a situation. It would descend into ultimate blackness and then you would wake up. Some part of your subconscious knew there was a fail-safe, a trip mechanism, and so you’d find yourself kind of beckoning the blackness: come on, come on, let’s get this over.

In reality, you knew there would be no awakening, so you always held out that hope, right up to the end, that it was going to be all right. That there was something you didn’t know — like, in this case, that Callard had an ex-husband or an estranged partner, and what was happening here was some overblown domestic incident, loud and emotional but just between the two of them, and that when they saw you standing there they’d just be embarrassed as hell.

The kitchen door was opened. Not flung open; it was done without hurry, real casual.

Two men came in with the yellow light.

For a moment, they were standing together in the doorway, looking at her in silence. And these two men, they were wearing kind of army camouflage trousers and dark green army jerseys and their hands were in these tight, black leather gloves and their heads in these dark woollen hoods with eyeholes.

Grayle was frozen to the wall, the final hope shrivelling like a burst balloon in her stomach. She couldn’t speak.

When one of the men moved into the parlour, she could see Persephone Callard on her knees, on the kitchen floor, and she was bleeding, great gouts of bright red blood splashed all over her long white nightdress.

‘Oh God,’ Grayle finally said, the words gulped out, up and down on the breath, like vomit.

Callard’s hands were taped up behind her back. A strip of black, shiny tape across her mouth reminded Grayle of Justin’s big black moustache.

‘What …’ Grayle’s jaw trembling. ‘What have you …?’

And stopped. The big red blotches were not blood, just the pattern on the nightdress.

But the tape was still tape, Callard still trussed and gagged.

‘Jus … Justin?’

Because, one of these guys, she hadn’t heard him talk, and so — the final, final hope — it might still be him. Might be Justin. That is, one of them might be basically human.

Neither of them spoke. Callard stared up at Grayle, her eyes hot and wild.

Why?

Why were they here? There was nothing of value to take, anybody could see that. Maybe in the big house there was plenty, but they hadn’t broken into the big house. These were not small-time local felons come to steal your TV and your VCR for drug money. These were men with no faces. Men with no fingerprints. Fit-looking men in army clothes. Serious men.

They didn’t even ask who she was.

Because it didn’t matter. She was here and she’d walked into what they were doing, and that was enough.

‘OK,’ Grayle said, ‘you get out of here. You get …’ her voice rising higher and higher ‘… the fuck out of here. You hear me?’

They glanced at one another just once and then they both looked back at Grayle and began to move slowly towards her, their arms hanging away from their bodies. One of them … his fingers in the black, tight gloves … his fingers were beginning to flex.

The thing was, she had no recollection of taking it down, only finding it was there in her right hand: the hedging tool that was like a butcher’s knife. The hacker.

It was even heavier than it looked. Finally she had to lift it with both hands, stepping away from the rural museum wall, the rustic armoury wall, and swinging it hard back.

And it must still have been real sharp because when it went into the guy’s face it was like slicing a green pepper. Until it made it through to the bone.