Chapter 27
ALEX
Alex slept only fitfully that night. The house sighed and whispered and she tried to ignore it. But the sounds crept into her dreams, twisting them into moans of pleasure, and that damned laughter, until she woke up sheened with sweat and breathless, staring into the darkness.
She had the distinct impression that the darkness stared back at her, smiling like a wolf. She was dreaming. She had to be. This was not real. Just another nightmare.
The bed dipped. The voice was barely there. The faintest whisper, but close now, too close, like someone was leaning close to her ear.
‘Do you not remember what I can do, my Alexandra?’
Alex sat up abruptly, lashing out and meeting nothing in the dark. As she fumbled with the switch of the bedside light, phantom fingertips brushed the back of her hand and she bit back a gasp.
That soft chuckle of laughter came again.
‘Stop it,’ she hissed at her own imagination, as she finally clicked the switch. The light was a warm glow, a blessed relief.
And the shadow at the foot of the bed faded with another barely heard laugh.
She had been dreaming. That had to be it. A nightmare. That was all. Another bloody nightmare.
She sat there for some time forcing her breath to calm and her heartbeat to slow again before getting up, wrapping the dressing gown around her, grabbing her phone and padding downstairs in search of a cup of tea. Because she wasn’t going to go back to sleep for some time. She knew that much.
It was 3 a.m. Nick’s bedroom door stood open and Alex couldn’t help but glance inside.
It was empty, the bed still neatly made.
Was he still up? Unless he’d taken himself off up to the old servants’ quarters on the top floor, in among the eaves, far away from her.
But no, they were attics, not bedrooms. She’d looked at them early on, so chock-full of the junk of generations piled on top of itself that she’d just shut the door and walked away.
Or maybe Nick preferred to camp out in the forest, she thought with a half grin, like the wild man she had first taken him to be.
She took the old servants’ stairs, a quicker and more direct route down to the kitchen from her room.
They were plainly decorated in comparison to the main stairs, simple stone steps and a solid curving rail.
Every so often there were paintings, mostly landscapes but a few portraits as well.
She glanced at the faces as she passed and tried to shake the thought that they were looking back, their eyes following her.
Like she was an interloper in this place. Perhaps she was. It was their home, not hers. Or their prison if Nick was to be believed. She could definitely sense their judgement. Like she was somehow failing them, the constant disappointment.
It was starting to get irritating.
The sense of being watched was everywhere.
The mirrors and the windows with darkness pressed close outside were the worst. She caught flickers of movement out of the corner of her eye and pressed on, telling herself it was just her reflection caught in glass and polished surfaces.
By the time she reached the kitchens, she was trembling, and not just from the cold.
But it was cold down here. It was like walking into a fridge.
Her breath misted in front of her mouth and nose.
Old buildings had no insulation, she reminded herself.
It was the middle of the night. And the weather had been all over the place since she had arrived here.
No wonder it was cold. She pulled her dressing gown closer as she busied herself putting on the kettle and getting out a tea bag and milk.
Noises behind her, in the darkness. Laughter, murmurs, a distinct sigh, a gasp of pleasure… or pain…
She ignored them religiously. She had to. They couldn’t be real. Not unless she captured them on a recorder. On several recorders to rule out errors. Not until she had real, solid evidence. She refused to believe anything until then.
‘Alexandra.’
That voice again, soft and dark with promise, amused at her defiance.
The noise of the kettle boiling filled the room, drowning out anything else again, and she gritted her teeth. Her head swam and she felt sick, like she was about to faint or throw up and it would be anyone’s guess which happened first.
A psychic drain, Daphne would say, nodding sagely but sympathetically. But there was no such thing. Not really. A blood sugar crash was more likely. Or any number of things. A reaction to stress. Post traumatic stress disorder, even.
Or something more ominous.
Perhaps she should see a doctor, a specialist of some kind. Call Dr Neary again at least. Perhaps…
‘My Alexandra…’
She froze, leaning on the counter, staring at the mug.
She couldn’t seem to move. Like the other day in the study, when she’d seen that black cloud of nothingness rise to tangle itself around her.
Right before Nick had arrived. She couldn’t move.
She could barely breathe. And yet that tell-tale heat was sweeping through her again, that ache…
A hand slid up the side of her leg. Just for a moment. As real and solid as anything around her. Teasing. Questing. Determined.
‘No!’ she said as firmly as she could, and twisted aside. The sensation vanished. Not real, she reminded herself. This was not real. Her voice shook. ‘You can’t do this. None of this is real.’
Then why was she talking to it? Whatever it was.
The kettle clicked off, and the noise made her jump. She was alone in the dark cold kitchen. She busied herself making her tea.
This was no good. She couldn’t go on like this.
She was hearing voices, seeing things. She needed help.
Maybe she was having a breakdown. Coming back here had been a terrible idea.
She had always hated this place. She associated it with the worst things to ever happen to her. With nightmares and horrors.
Theo should have known better than to come back. So should she. Had her brother gone through this as well? Had he told anyone? He and Nick had been close. He and Nick’s wife Sally too. He must have confided in them.
Wildewood was cursed. It always had been. From time out of mind. Everyone said it. Her mother had drilled it into the two of them for as long as she could remember, while her stepfather had tried to make soothing noises and preached rationality. He’d been her anchor in the chaos of the past.
It had taken her dad. It had taken Theo.
There was no one else left. Just as it had said. Just her.
The last of the de Wildes, Nick had called her. And he said whatever had cursed this place, it wanted her too.
The women of the de Wildes were never safe here. Her grandfather had said that. She didn’t know when but she remembered the words clearly. His voice rising in anger. But why the women?
Alex closed her eyes as the memory grew like a bubble. She’d blocked it out in the days that followed her dad’s death. But she let it come to her now. They had argued, the two of them. Argued about her.
‘—just thankful I never had a daughter. What were you thinking bringing her back here? You must have known that he would sense her and start to rise.’
‘Not this nonsense again. There was no one else to mind her. Susan’s working. And she wanted to come, begged me.’
Her grandfather slammed his hand down on the desk with a fearsome bang. ‘Because they beguile her. Don’t you see it? She’s almost a woman now. Chambers will be on her like a hound on a hare.’
‘That’s enough!’ Dad yelled, furious.
‘Omnes contra omnes, quos amabant, convertam, et meam, corpus et animam, faciam,’ her grandfather retorted. ‘Is that what you want, Edward? Really? She needs a guardian.’
At the bottom of the stairs, Alex had sat alone, listening. And the dark man had wrapped her in his arms and whispered that they lied, they didn’t understand, they never would. Only he would…
The memory was so vivid she might have been watching it unfold for the first time.
Blaise Chambers had held her in his arms and comforted her, whispered promises and lies and she… she had let him.
The same man who had promised to corrupt and destroy every last member of her family line.
‘You do not need a guardian,’ that voice had murmured, as if trying to seduce her. It sounded like it was teasing her too. ‘You are a woman grown now, my Alexandra. Let me show you what that means…’
A woman grown? She’d only been sixteen! The wave of revulsion at the memory brought tears to her eyes. She should never have come back. She should leave. She should get the hell out of here and just let it fall into ruin. Or burn it down to ashes.
But those who tried to destroy the house died. Or got taken by the woods, which amounted to the same thing.
The phone rang, so loud she almost screamed in shock.
The tune was a bright, jangly rendition of ‘Shiny Happy People’, which Daphne had set up for herself as a laugh on a particularly long and uneventful case in West Virginia.
An old photo of her friend’s smiling face came up on the screen as well and Alex answered at once, eager to hear a friendly voice, to make contact with the real world again.
What was it, about 7 p.m. there? Daphne had probably forgotten about the time difference again. She never got it right.
‘Daphne, it’s three in the morning,’ Alex started without waiting to hear what it was about, a laugh in her voice. She was awake anyway, after all.
But when Daphne spoke, she was neither shiny nor happy. She sounded frantic.
‘Alex! Thank goodness I got you. You have to get out. You can’t stay there.
Not even with your guardian. He can’t help you this time.
The walker in the woods isn’t enough and I think he’s already half lost himself.
There’s a darkness. It’s old and it’s hungry, and so powerful.
Not just the man in the portrait. Something so much worse.
It isn’t going to let you go. Not again. ’
‘Daphne—’ But her friend raced on.