Chapter 39
THIRTY-NINE
HAYAMI
PRESENT
I bolt upright, sleep slipping from me as a sharp sound fills the air, the vibrations of the noise having caused an avalanche through my body.
We’ve been in this house for eleven days now, and I thought I’d got used to the creaks, the groans, and the other strange noises, but this was too loud for the house to be settling, too profound for the pipes to be complaining.
It was deafening, like a fucking gun going off.
“What the fuck was that?”
Fenrir is on his feet, gun drawn, with the only light coming from a small gap in the curtains.
I’ve no idea how long I’ve been asleep.
Two seconds?
Two minutes?
Two hours?
I also have no idea what that fucking noise was.
“I don’t know.” His voice doesn’t betray him. He’s the pillar of composure, poised, gun aimed at the door. “Stay here,” he says.
“Fuck no.” I flip the covers back and fling my legs out of the bed. “I’ve seen those films where the murderer distracts the guy by luring him out of the room, leaving the defenceless woman on her own, ready to be slaughtered. No, thanks.”
He fires me a warning look, then seems to be having some internal wrangling until he says, “Stay behind me. Stay quiet.”
Carefully, I tiptoe across the room and position myself behind him. He signals for me to press myself against the wall. We edge along the plaster like searchlights until we reach the door.
Fenrir flattens himself and pulls his gun up so it’s pointing at the ceiling.
“You wait until I tell you it’s clear, do you understand?” he whispers.
I nod, not wanting to disobey his rule of keeping quiet.
He looks like he’s counting in his head.
One. Two.
On three, he opens the door slowly, pointing the gun out before him.
Like I’ve seen the police do on so many TV shows and films, Fenrir checks the landing by aiming his gun at all areas before signalling for me to follow.
We make our way down the stairs, me staying behind him, Fenrir holding the gun out in front of us.
He checks the library first, but all we find are empty chairs, resting books, and a darkness that feels settled.
The sitting room and large living room are just as we left them, not a few hours ago.
It’s when we reach the kitchen that I feel it—the charge in the atmosphere, as if someone has just been here and disturbed the air.
As Fenrir steps further into the room, the moonlight illuminates the table, glinting off the surface.
Flipping on the light, we stare.
All the drawers are open, pulled right out until they’ve reached the end of their runners, and all the utensils have been placed on the table in a neat line.
No, not all the utensils.
Knives. Cleavers. Scissors.
All the sharp things.
“What the fuck?” I hiss through my teeth.
Fenrir is still checking the room, pointing his gun at the walls, the window, the lights.
I take a step towards the table.
“Don’t,” he warns as if it could be a trap.
“What the hell is this?” I stare at the open drawers. “Have you been down here since I fell asleep?”
“No. I stayed in your room the whole time.”
“I don’t understand. How has this happened?” I certainly don’t remember doing this. And Fenrir is running on fumes, not having slept properly for days.
Did he do this? Is this a product of a lack of sleep, his overtired brain operating on its own?
I can’t say he’s been acting rational these past few days.
The other night, I woke to find him standing over me, convinced there was something in my room.
Then, earlier today, he shot at a wall. These are not the actions of a level-headed man.
But then I recall the night I woke, having had a bad dream, and not remembering getting out of bed.
I wonder at what point I consciously decided to mount Fenrir when he was next to me on the bed.
Maybe neither of us is sane right now.
I run my hand through my hair as Fenrir steps towards the table and picks up one of the knives.
“There has to be a rational explanation,” I begin, treading carefully. “There are only two people in this house: you and me.”
He glares, picking up on my accusation that this must have been him because I know it wasn’t me. And if it’d been me who’d done this whilst I was asleep, then surely Fenrir would have seen me and stopped me, unless he also nodded off.
I’m going around in circles until he gathers all the utensils and shoves them back into the drawers.
“Come on, let’s check the cameras,” he says as he slams the drawers shut.
We cram into the small room under the stairs, and Fenrir works quickly, rewinding the camera footage from the kitchen. Surely it will show either him or me going into the kitchen and setting up this stunt. I’m not sure what I fear most: seeing myself or Fenrir on the camera.
He stops the recording at the right time and hits Play, and we see the kitchen, still, silent, smothered in darkness.
Then there’s a blip, a moment where all we see is a blank screen for one second before it flicks back to life.
The drawers are open, and the knives and scissors are all lined up on the table.
“Fuck.” I rub my eyes. I can’t explain what I’m seeing.
Fenrir plays it back several times. I check the timestamp when the blip occurs, and there’s no shift in time.
The blip lasts two seconds before the kitchen returns, the drawers open and the knives having been placed on the table, not enough time for a person to have done this. Then what? It doesn’t make any sense.
“There has to be a rational explanation,” I repeat, more to myself than to Fenrir, who I know must be as stumped as I am.
Fenrir stares at the screen, playing it back again before moving on to the footage from my room. He rewinds the tape and plays it sped up. I watch myself sleep, turning over occasionally as Fenrir remains seated in the corner, engrossed in a book, looking up now and then to check on me.
And then I sit up as he springs from the small sofa and draws his gun. We must have heard the noise.
“Three o’clock,” he says, pointing out the timestamp in the bottom corner of the screen.
Fenrir goes back to the tape of the kitchen and finds the moment when the screen goes black. He pauses it and checks the time.
Three o’clock.
It wasn’t me or Fenrir.
So, who was it?
What was it?
“This can only mean one thing,” I say, with less conviction than I’d hoped for. “Someone else has been here.”
Fenrir doesn’t answer. He checks all the other tapes to see if anything else has been picked up on any of the other cameras, but there’s nothing. All the other areas of the house remain undisturbed.
“There’s nothing on any of the other cameras,” he says. “The snow is deep enough now to ensure that no one is getting up this mountain. And even if, somehow, they did manage to get up here and break in, why would they set this up? For what purpose?”
“To scare us?” I suggest.
He lifts an eyebrow because, yeah, it sounds stupid. Why would anyone want to do this? If it was someone working for the Castros, then why didn’t they just come to my room and put a bullet in Fenrir’s head and then one in mine? Why would they sneak into the kitchen to set up some freaky scene?
I wrap my arms around myself, wishing I’d grabbed my hoodie as goose bumps erupt over my skin.
“What the fuck is going on here?” I ask more sternly, hoping Fenrir will dignify me with an answer instead of his stony silence.
“I don’t know,” he says as he turns in the chair to look at me. “I don’t fucking know.”
There’s a beat of silence before I say, “What do we know?”
As if answering me, Fenrir gets up and heads into the kitchen. I follow. He opens the cupboard and grabs the whisky and two glasses.
I shiver, the coldness hanging in the air like the aftermath of a horrible incident. “I’m not staying in here,” I tell him.
“Neither am I,” he says as he exits the room.
I follow him upstairs and back into my bedroom. He flips on the light and sets the bottle down on the tall drawers.
“Here.” He hands me a glass.
“I’m going to be an alcoholic by the time we get out of this house,” I quip.
“You and me both.”
Sitting on the bed, I curl my feet under my legs and cradle the glass. Fenrir returns to the sofa, his glass held precariously by the tips of his fingers.
I take a sip and wince, still not used to the taste. I wonder how my mum tolerates this stuff. Then a thought occurs. “Hey, do you think it was this house that turned my mum to drink?” I ask.
He swallows hard before answering. “Who knows? I’d have thought being married to your father would be reason enough.”
“You can say that again.” I tut. “I often wonder why she stays with him, how she’s lasted all these years, but then I suppose that I must be the reason.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“That and the fact that no one can ever leave my father. Not really. Only he decides that. But it doesn’t stop me from wanting to get away from him. I’d give anything not to be a Devall.”
“We have no control over the family we’re born into, and I’m sure you aren’t the only person who wishes they had a different family,” Fenrir says.
He’s right, again. I’m sure there isn’t a day that goes by that Fenrir doesn’t wish he’d been born into a family who weren’t involved with a gang.
He wouldn’t have had to throw his sister over a balcony.
He wouldn’t have lost his mum and dad, and eventually his sister, who he tried so desperately to save.
He wouldn’t have to carry this with him every day.
He wouldn’t have to be reminded of what he endured every time he looks in the mirror.
He might have stood a chance of having a normal life, where he could walk down the street without being stared at, without having blood on his conscience, without having to deal out the retribution he felt he had to.
He could have been someone else entirely.
I glance at him, and it’s in this moment that I wish I could give him that: a different life, one where he can be anyone he wants to be, where he doesn’t have to carry the shit he’s carried for so long.
“You should sleep,” he says after downing his whisky.
“I’m not sure I can.” I swill the liquid around the glass, then neck the lot, the burn working its way down my throat and into my stomach.
“Do you believe it’s haunted?” I ask, immediately feeling foolish for even suggesting it.
“Haunted?”
“The house. Do you think it’s haunted?” I repeat.
“You don’t believe in ghosts,” he reminds me.
“I don’t.” I place the glass on the bedside table. It doesn’t escape me that he hasn’t answered my question, but I won’t push. “You’ll stay?”
“If you want me to.”
“Fuck, there’s no way I’m going to be able to go back to sleep.” I sigh, trying to shuffle under the covers.
“Here, let me help.” He stands and makes his way over to the bed. I shuffle up when it becomes clear he’s going to climb in next to me.
The frame creaks as he sits.
“Close your eyes,” he tells me, and I do. Then I feel his fingers stroke the side of my face. “My mother used to stroke my face when I couldn’t sleep. She also used to sing to me, but I won’t make you endure my singing voice. But it never failed to get me to sleep.”
I’m shocked at how soft his touch is, how gentle his fingers are for someone so large, so brutal. There’s a tingling between my legs, and there’s no fucking way I’m sleeping now as the touch of his hand smooths over my skin, igniting all sorts of fires within me.
It isn’t the first time his hands have been upon me, but they’ve never been this careful, this light. It’s like being stroked with a feather—the delicacy, the intimacy. It makes me want to grab him and kiss him.
Instead, I just lie here and let him stroke me, let him touch me, because this is what I’ve wanted all along. To be touched. To be caressed. To be wanted.
And I drift into a blissful sleep. The house, its ghosts, all of it forgotten.