Chapter 46
I wiped the dust from my face, looked about, then leant back against the wall to bolster myself. It took me a moment to realise where I was.
Why is she sleeping in the basement? I thought.
Then I noticed the slanting ceiling and the window set into it. My head spun.
I was in her bedroom.
Upstairs.
I looked through the hole in the wall, then back at the room. Somehow, I had got from my basement to the first floor of 1a.
I stepped away from the hole, feeling as if the floor could disappear beneath me at any moment.
Besides the slanted roof and the window, the room couldn’t be any more different to my own.
It was lusciously decorated. Sheer curtains dotted with little golden stars enveloped a bed layered in sumptuous fabrics; a thick feather duvet in deep burgundy sateen sheets, a tactile chenille throw, and a creamy fur tossed casually over the bottom.
A dozen pillows were piled around a padded headboard shaped like a shell.
A string of warm fairy lights lit the bed with a gentle halo.
Sweet, little tealights in yellow patterned glasses were dotted atop a walnut bedside table and dressing table, sending flickering candlelight around the room.
A wardrobe door hung open as if casually reclining, revealing ruffles and velvets and silks and wools.
Draped over the door, a perfumed scarf—still body-warm—scented the air with a heady, floral aroma.
It was the same tartan scarf I’d tied onto her door handle yesterday.
My neighbour had been here recently. Maybe I could find out more about her, a clue, a weakness, a key to making her stop.
I edged along the wall, not wanting to touch anything, being careful to step over a pristine sheepskin rug—which somehow looked much softer than mine.
So soft and inviting I wanted to dig my fingers into it.
I searched the counter tops, littered with glittering necklaces, elegant eye liners and sleek tubes of lipstick.
I tiptoed round to the other side of the bed, carefully listening out for movement elsewhere in the house.
My eyes caught on something tucked under the bed covers.
A pair of silver lacy knickers, the kind that hug and sculpt, and a matching bra, fine and shining as if made from spiderweb.
Under the perfume there was another smell, of warm bodies and sweat and hair. Rich and animal.
I felt the heat rise in my cheeks.
Stay on task, I told myself.
I backed into the space of the window, burying myself in the heavy damask drapes. I had an overwhelming urge to air the animal smell out. I pulled back the curtains and reached for the latch, then stopped.
The world outside was gone. It was as if the panes had been painted over with black gloss. I leaned against the glass so I could peer outside.
My cheek cooled on the window and my breath fogged the view ahead. That’s when I realised what I was looking at.
Soil.
Dark, packed earth pressed up against the glass.
I gasped and flinched back.
I was underground. But I’d come out on the top floor. That didn’t make sense. How was I inside the hill?
Hollow hill. Fairy hill.
I thought of all the earth pressing against the walls.
The image came to me again of that creeping darkness, edging up and over my toes.
Oh God! I was being buried alive and this was my coffin.
Six feet under, alone in the dark, cut off from everyone and everything forever. I started to hyperventilate.
What the hell is this house?
A voice came from behind me.
“What about the house?”
I spun round, axe raised ready for attack.
It was Fergus, looking down at me, unblinking, grinning, like the Big Bad Wolf.
He was standing behind the counter at the hardware and supplies shop.
I looked around. I was stood in the aisles again.
There were the hoses, the bird feeders, the decorative planters, the tool display at the back where Rowan had picked out my axe for me.
It even smelled of sawdust and rabbit food.
“How am I—?”
Fergus huffed a little air out of his nose.
“Okay,” he said, leaning onto the counter, lowering his voice, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
I’d been here. I remembered this. I remembered this all too well. That awful moment at the store. Why was I back here? How was I back here?
“I knew a kid at school here. He moved to the area for a brief time when I was about nine, ten?”
No, I wasn’t doing this again.
“I know,” I said. “He lived in my house. Had a port wine birthmark on his face. Here to”—I traced a line on my cheek and Fergus did the exact same thing at the exact same time—“here.”
Fergus stared at me. I swallowed hard. I felt a little like I was about to be eaten.
“Did I ruin the joke or something?” I eyed the empty aisles nervously. “Ha ha ha, the tourist fell for a stupid made-up story.”
“Oh, I didn’t make it up,” Fergus said, expressionless, eyes unmoving.
This was new. Was that good or bad?
“I really did know a kid who lived in your house. He was my best friend. He wasn’t unflappable though. I made that bit up. He had this haunted look about him, always looking over his shoulders, like he was being hunted. Him and his mum.”
I was pretty sure new was bad.
“That morning when I came to school and found him on the steps, that was true. And everything he told me that had happened that weekend. About his mum in the bathroom and down in the living room. And about him escaping out the window. I made up the bit about him going with his mum peacefully at the end of school, though. He screamed and yelled that he wanted to come stay with me. That the woman who’d come to collect him wasn’t his mum.
No one believed him. He’d been so jumpy, so nervy.
Everyone was fed up of him flinching at shadows and crickets and milkmen.
The teachers thought he needed a good shake.
Everyone hated that kid. They thought his mum was a snooty whore and him a broken weirdo.
They made him go with her. And then I never saw him again.
Folk thought the kid and his mum had driven each other mad.
The police didn’t look too hard into it.
Just thought they were a wrong sort and wrote them off. ”
I hugged the axe closer to me. I tried to turn my head slightly while keeping him in my eyeline. There was no one else in the shop. It was so quiet. I managed a glance back at the front windows. They were packed with dark soil as well. Just like the bedroom windows before.
“I made up the bit about seeing him again.” Fergus stepped round from behind the counter.
“About running away. And then I made up that it was all a story. Because I wanted him to be alright, or to come back, even if it meant he was different, not quite him. Because I wanted it to be a story. Because it’s scary, your house. Only it’s not your house, is it?”
The fluorescent light over the till reflected off the beads of sweat gathering at his hairline. He still wasn’t blinking. His eyes continued to stare at me, his smile still a Big Bad Wolf-hungry grin.
I felt that old familiar buzz growing in my head. A hive, rattling around in my skull and my veins. Only this time it wasn’t that white hot rage. It was fear. My eyes locked onto the large industrial stapler on the desk, his hand laid close by. The buzzing in my ears growing and growing.
Fergus broke eye contact. His gaze slowly drifted down, following my focus to the industrial stapler behind him on the desk.
“Oh, this thing?” He slowly picked it up. “I remember the way you stared at it.”
His eyes flicked back to me. I shook my head.
No no no no.
“You wanted to press it to my hand, didn’t you?” He put his hand onto the counter and pushed the head of the stapler against it. “And do this.”
With one smooth, squeeze of his trigger finger he fired the stapler and there was a loud, wet sch-unk.