Chapter 15
The downpour starts just as we’re getting back to the farmhouse.
Sheets of silvery needles fall from the sky, making the ground soft and treacherous.
Despite my protests, Andrew insists I wear the pillowcase over my head as we walk back, and I wonder what it is he is so keen to hide from me.
The rain sticks the cotton hood to my skin, turning it into a cold membrane.
It’s cold in the cellar. Damp and cloying.
Andrew removes the hood in silence, his face so close to mine that we could lean in and kiss.
His teeth are yellowing, but small and evenly spaced except for that gap at the front.
He looks weary, and I wonder if he is sick.
I hope so. I hope he drops dead right in front of me.
“I’ve put some more food in your bag. If you eat it all at once, you’ll go hungry, so space it out. I’ll empty the bucket before I go. Keep the towel on it or you’ll draw flies. That bedding is anti-ligature, so if you try anything stupid, you’ll just hurt yourself.”
“When will you be back?”
He ignores me. His cold fingers against my neck as he works to free the tubing looped there.
My eyes are helplessly drawn back to those desperate scratches on the window—Diana, leaving her mark on the world.
I can’t get the image of those graves out of my head.
Dark earth knotted with roots and mycelia, fine as lacework.
The gray, anonymous boulders that marked their dirt beds.
I try to imagine Diana, a woman just like me.
Short and dark haired with a set, serious face.
A small silver stud high in her ear. Etching her name so that she is remembered, so that the next woman down here can see.
Is someone out there missing her? I hope so.
“Weather looks bad these next few days.” He pulls a wool hat over his head. “I brought as many of your clothes as I could carry, so put ’em on if the temperature drops.”
Dark hair clings wetly to the nape of his neck.
The twists and curls of it are strange sigils against his pale skin.
Andrew nods and walks away, round the corner and out of sight.
Thud, thud. His footsteps move slowly, keys jingling.
I hear the clunk of the lock, the rattle of a padlock.
A bolt sliding. The floorboards creak as he crosses overhead. Then he is gone, and I am alone.
I hope.
Rain patters against the window. The voice of the wind sounds almost tidal.
I feel my stiff muscles soften, little by little.
I don’t relax, not completely, but I manage to sift through the holdall Andrew has brought, pulling out the thick woolen jumper Joe bought in Cornwall two winters ago.
As I unfold it, I notice a stiffness to the fabric, as if something is caught inside.
I reach in and find a wire coat hanger tangled in the wool.
Andrew must have just grabbed handfuls of stuff from my wardrobe and shoved it into the bag without noticing.
Immediately my mind goes back to the house on Beeker Street, Abigail bent down by the front door, with a bent bobby pin in her hands. I’d been posted as lookout at the end of the path in case someone happened to walk by and see us breaking in. My heart had been running like an engine.
“You nearly done?”
“Nearly!” her voice had floated back. “This is a very delicate operation.”
Suzie wasn’t there, of course. She’d walked away from Beeker Street, claiming she wanted no part in it.
She’d tell you it was because breaking in was illegal and trespassing and that sometimes people get put in prison for it, but we all knew she was just scared.
Suzie didn’t like the stories about Beeker Street or the man who lived here. She was a baby.
“Holy fuck, Hazel, it worked! Look!”
She’d turned to look at me. It is the last clear memory I have of her smiling. After that day, Abigail smiled a whole lot less, and they were never happy smiles. They were grimaces that lifted the corners of her mouth and never reached her eyes.
“Are you going in?”
“Of course!” She’d stood there a minute longer, her hair so long it reached her waist. That day she was wearing beads in it, all kinds of different colors. She said it took her mum hours to do. She’d grinned at me, unafraid.
“See you on the other side, Hazel-Mazel.”
I look again at the coat hanger. Could it work? Maybe. You just need a piece of bent wire, that’s what Abigail had said. If I can pick the lock, then maybe I can get out of here before Andrew comes back. Get into the woods and find a route to town. There must be one, I just need to head downhill.
I start untwisting the hooked end of the hanger, trying not to think too much about how Abigail had looked when they dragged her out of that house with her braids smoking and the front of her legs mottled like raw meat.
I don’t want to remember how I could smell her skin cooking, how it had made saliva squirt into my mouth like I was going to be sick, but it wasn’t nausea, it was something else.
Right at the back of my mind, where the darkest thoughts bloat and rise to the surface, eyes bulging.
That smell had made me feel hungry, as if I had an appetite for barbecue.
Abigail had looked at me, her eyes round and glassy, smile so wide her teeth chattered, voice shrill. “She had no face! She had no FACE!”
I remember Abigail crawling away from the flames. She was screaming your name.
My head jolts up. The voice is louder now—no, not louder. Clearer. Yesterday it had sounded as though it were talking through gauze, muffled and almost indecipherable. Now the timbre resonates like a shimmer in the air.
“I am a rational woman. I do not allow—”
I blocked her path. She thought I was the devil.
I put my hands over my ears. Something I haven’t done since I was a kid, afraid of the woods creeping down the hillside, afraid of the open window and the way the curtains that hung over it billowed like lungs when the breeze blew. But she is still talking. I still hear her.
I was there when the house burned. I could taste your excitement. Like electricity. White heat.
“I am a rational woman—”
Look at me.
“I am a rational—”
Look at me.
I open my eyes and there is something huddled in the corner.
Filthy looking, like a quivering mound of hair.
I have to get out of here. I snatch up the coat hanger, telling myself that I’ve barely slept more than three hours and I’ve eaten nothing but fucking cereal bars since Friday. I’m sick. I’m tired.
Would you like to feel that way again? Would you like to see death up close?
I think of apophenia, in which the brain perceives patterns in objects or hidden messages in music. Visions of God in the clouds, symbols in tea leaves, the devil in a corner. I tell myself all of this, and as I run past I see the gleam of an oily yellow eye within some shivering, half-formed mass.
Up, up the stairs. My feet thudding loud as my heartbeat. I look back, certain I am being followed, but there is only the black throat of the stairwell, garlanded with cobwebs. I start working on the coat hanger, untwisting it at the neck to straighten it out.
I just need my medication, that’s all.
That’s all.
It takes nearly twenty minutes to pick the lock on the cellar door, and by the time I hear the heavy clunk of the tumblers falling, I’m sweating.
I stare at it in amazement, as if it will swing open right in front of me.
Then I think of the other sounds I’d heard when Andrew had left—the padlock clicking into place, the bolt sliding home, and I could cry with frustration.
I push the door. It shudders, and a band of daylight briefly appears around the frame.
I hit it harder, using my shoulder and twisting into it, and an immediate pain jars my neck.
I cry out. It looks so easy in the films. I try again, bracing myself to hit it side-on with my hip and succeeding only in making the padlock rattle applause.
Here at the top of the stairs, there is no space for a run-up, but I can use the handrails to lift my weight onto, kicking at the door with both feet like a mule.
I use all my strength to batter my feet against the wood, breath hard and shallow, teeth gritted, cords standing out on my neck with the effort.
There is a sound like a whip cracking as something splinters, and the door actually appears to bulge outward.
I am convinced I am going to make it and my adrenaline soars. But the door holds. It holds.
“Fuck!”
I collapse forward. I imagine my sister’s voice saying, Ah, wise up, Hazel, for fuck’s sake. What’ll happen if you break a bone and you’re stuck down here for days?
I slowly slide to the floor. She’s right, I know.
I close my eyes and let my hands fall to my sides.
I breathe good and deep, trying not to cry.
It isn’t easy. I’m wrung out, exhausted.
My neck is throbbing, collarbone building a slow, dull heat that I think I’ll feel for a long time.
I sit that way as the sweat cools on my skin, hearing the creak and shudder of the old house settling around me.
Briefly, I imagine I hear a girl’s voice singing, tinny and off-key.
Maybe Andrew left a radio on. Maybe it is ghosts.
My chin sinks onto my chest, my breathing deepens.
Slumped that way, despondent, I fall asleep. My tears dry on my cheeks.
I don’t sleep. Not quite. My consciousness is tidal, restless.
I wake pressed against the cellar door, a cold draft slicing beneath it.
I have a desperate urge to pee, so I massage a little feeling back into my legs as I try to stand up.
The coat hanger falls from my lap, and as I bend to retrieve it, I discover something.
A piece of paper has been slid under the door.
I stare at it for a long time before picking it up, all sorts of thoughts racing through my mind—Andrew left it there it’s a trick it’s a death warrant—but when I open it, I find only a single word written there in waxy red crayon.
hello