The Patchwork House Page 13

  I entered the kitchen. My torch beam swept over the counter to find it still completely clear of debris. I had to assume my stuff was still missing from the drawing room too, which sucked because I still didn’t have my mobile phone.

  I did have a torch, a candle, matches and spare batteries, so at least I wasn’t about to find myself in the dark.

  One with a light, one with a stick, and one with the shivers.

  Make that just one, all alone with the shivers.

  I tried singing to myself. The tune of Ode to Joy sounded ragged and breathless.

  “Oh God please I am so sorry,

  “That I don’t believe in you.”

  I stepped gingerly into the hallway, aware that the staircase loomed to my right as I headed for the front door.

  I didn’t look back. Instead I sang the next line so I wouldn’t think about the stairs.

  “If you get me out of here,

  “Then maybe I’ll believe you’re true…”

  It seemed to take forever to reach the door, but as soon as I did I flipped the latch, grasped the handle and pulled.

  It wouldn’t open. Perhaps I’d gone back in time to a point before we had unlocked it. But Beth and I had entered the house while it was still light, so why was it dark outside?

  I ducked into the drawing room and shone my light around. Dust covers still on, no sign of our equipment. The room appeared just as it was when we first arrived. So what time was it now? Why wasn’t I running into myself and the others?

  And then it hit me. I’d been assuming the entity was shifting us around in time during the same night. Why should that be the case? Right now could be last night, in relation to when we arrived. It could be last week! If I really had gone back to a time before we arrived, then it made sense that the kitchen was tidy and the drawing room was missing all our stuff. Hell, I could have travelled a year into the past for all I knew.

  So that’s why we couldn’t find Chloe! She’d moved to a night when we weren’t even here yet. So she really was all on her own in the house. And now so was I. It was unlikely I was here on the same night as Chloe. There was little hope of finding her if I went looking. At least, that’s how I rationalized my decision to get out of the house by any means necessary. I didn’t care if I ended up in the 1980s, I just needed to get out.

  I returned to the hall and stood at the foot of the staircase. Upstairs was so dark my torchlight barely illuminated anything.

  I was shaking again, so badly I couldn’t keep the torch steady. As I ascended I quietly continued my ridiculous ditty.

  “Why the hell would I go up here?

  “I must be a lunatic…”

  On the third step up, I paused. I was heading to the library to see if I could climb out of the window broken by the flying bookcase. But of course, that had happened on the night we arrived, not tonight. If I was in the past, the bookcase would still be standing opposite the shelves along the wall and the window would still be intact. No way out. I wanted to look anyway but the impenetrable darkness upstairs made me falter. No amount of silly lyrics to Beethoven tunes would muster the courage to go further. So I went back downstairs again. It was still dark as all hell down here, but at least it was a little more open concept and there were fewer places for things to be lying in wait for me.

  I stepped back into the hall, wondering where in this wretched place was safest for me to hole up and wait for dawn, if it ever arrived. The answer was nowhere. I still had to get out. I could feel panic rising now, my breathing becoming ragged and urgent again. The hopelessness of my situation tore chunks from my resolve.

  “I need to get out of here,

  “Before I spray the walls with sick…”

  I hurried to the living room and closed the door behind me. I checked that the door to the dining room was also closed and that there was nothing in the room with me. Then I moved to the nearest window and threw open the shutters. Of course, I couldn’t see a thing outside, but it wasn’t the view I was interested in. I examined the window frame in the torchlight, hoping it was made of wood, preferably rotten. The windows comprised of three tall panes anchored in stone. The glass itself looked tough to break. No way out here.

  Each part of the house had different architecture. Surely the window frames would be different in other rooms.

  Steeling myself, I opened the door to the dining room and entered cautiously. Again I checked the doors and then moved to the windows. The frames here were wooden but unfortunately in good condition. However, the individual panes in the huge windows were much larger and the glass was less thick. I tried to size one of them up, wondering if my body could fit through. I decided it was worth a try so I stepped down from the recessed window sill and chose the biggest, heaviest chair I could find. It was the only dining chair that had arms, which added considerable weight to the solid oak piece. I placed the torch on the table, pointing at the window. Then I picked up the heavy chair. I got a good swing going, once, twice, three times, all without connecting with the glass. On the fourth swing, I’d built up some velocity and managed to crash the chair into the window with some force.

  The sound was like a gunshot and made my ears ring again. The glass did not shatter, but the chair might not stand up to a second blow. Still, there were plenty of chairs and I had to keep trying.

  So I swung the chair again. This time the glass gave way and blew outwards, followed by bits of exploded furniture. I was left holding a severed chair leg in each hand. I used them to clear out the remaining shards of glass still stuck in the frame. It wouldn’t be smart to slice myself open and bleed out before I reached the lodge. I tossed the chair legs outside.

  I was halfway out the window when I heard the voice.

  It was unmistakably Derek. He sounded desperate, perhaps even in pain. I paused, one leg out of the window and one leg still in. For a moment I considered running anyway. Most likely I was hearing the ghost play yet another trick. If it had just been Derek I was abandoning, I probably would have kept on going and not looked back. The miserable bastard seemed to have nothing but contempt for me, as if I was somehow responsible for his sucky existence and the crappy choices he made.

  But the problem was, as far as I knew, Beth was still with Derek.

  And I couldn’t leave her.

  “Please! Oh God help me,” cried Derek’s voice again. It was definitely coming from upstairs.

  This was a trick. I knew it was a trick. But if there was the slightest possibility Beth was genuinely upstairs and in trouble, then I couldn’t leave her, could I? Surely if the entity was trying to trick me, I’d be hearing Beth’s voice call to me. No?

  In that moment, I am ashamed to say, I very nearly left the house. My scrambled brain tried to justify my cowardice by telling me if I couldn’t hear Beth, I had no reason to believe she was still with Derek. I decided I could live with myself if I left him behind, but not if I failed to check in case Beth was with him.

  Reluctantly I climbed back into the room. Thumps and bangs came from the ceiling now. As I entered the living room, I noticed the chandelier swayed dramatically. I had no desire to know what was going on upstairs. I only wanted to run and keep running. The instinct for self-preservation was so strong it was almost overwhelming.

  Yet I found myself once again at the foot of the stairs, peering upwards, using my torch beam to try to see into the gloom.

  There was a bang so loud, so damn loud, I jumped and started whimpering. I shrank down against the wall at the bottom of the stairs, almost sobbing with terror.

  But it was about to get so much worse.

  Something small, something solid, was rolling down the stairs towards me. It bounced on each step.

  Bounce bounce bounce.

  It rolled past me and came to rest against the far wall opposite the staircase.

  It was a torch. It was switched off. I couldn’t tell if it was Derek’s or Beth’s.

  I had to hand it to the entity, this was a nice touch. Comp
elling.

  I stood up, mustering courage I didn’t possess and forcing down the urge to throw up. Somehow the inclusion of a solid object to entice me into going upstairs felt like an insult, like I was being toyed with. I was angry about it, and the anger bolstered my resolve. I wanted to yell at something, so I did.

  “Very convincing,” I said, directing my anger up the stairs. “I like the torch. Bit over the top though.”

  I wasn’t trying to antagonize it, or make it reveal itself. I had absolutely no desire to see the fucker ever again. The outburst helped suppress the urgent desire to run away. Also I wanted to know if Derek was really up there or not.

  “Jim? Is that you? Please. Help me.”

  I went over and picked up the torch. I wasn’t going to let it disappear on me as soon as I left the hall.

  “Is Beth with you?” I called up.

  “What? Jesus Christ, Jim! What difference does it make? Fucking help me!”

  I didn’t move a step.

  “Is Beth with you?”

  “Yes! Oh Christ, yes, she’s here. It’s got her. Help me!”

  I ascended the stairs in about five seconds.

  At the top, my torch showed me the corridor in both directions, but didn’t stretch far enough to reveal the far end.

  “Where are you?” I called.

  Silence.

  Definitely a trick. There was no question now. Derek and Beth weren’t up here. The fucker could pretend to be any one of us. I wondered if it was luring Beth to a terrible fate right now by pretending to be me, calling out to her. I wondered if it threw a torch at her too.

  I let my anger boil over. I allowed myself to be enraged at this manipulative bastard son-of-a-bitch. I wanted it dead, or even more dead. I wanted to find out exactly what it was and I wanted to hurt it. Maybe there was someone it loved while it was alive and I could hurt them. Either way, I would make it pay.

  “Why are you doing this?” I called into the darkness.

  Again no response.

  I’d had enough. I was more angry than scared right now. I had a chance to walk down those stairs and leave via the dining room window. I didn’t take it. I was so angry about that. If I’d still just been scared I might have done the sensible thing, gone back downstairs and escaped through the window.

  Instead I switched on the dropped torch. Now two beams sliced through the darkness, clear and strong. Neither was on the verge of cutting out. Neither was dimming. Neither was about to switch itself off mysteriously. And if one did, I had the other. It gave me strength. It gave me determination to do something about this. For the first time in my life, I didn’t feel like a coward. This was my chance to prove I had some balls, to myself, to my girlfriend, to the old schoolmate who had lost all respect for me, and to the entity that sought to make my life hell.

  I advanced down the corridor. I didn’t look in any rooms. I was heading for the library. Always the damn library. When I reached it, I pushed the door open and shone one of the torches inside. The other I directed down the corridor.

  There was nothing odd about the library. The window was intact, the bookshelf was back in its original position, my laptop and tripod were nowhere to be seen, and the furniture was still covered.

  I moved on. I kept going until I reached the door to Percy’s room, the bedroom right at the end of the corridor. Ahead was the games room. I must have been standing directly above the ballroom now.

  I heard a noise behind me.

  I turned, my false courage evaporating like warm breath on a winter’s morning. I aimed both my torches down the long corridor, back the way I had come. They picked out nothing.

  The lights came on.

  The brightness was so intense I couldn’t stand it. I cried out, my arms flying up to cover my face. The electric lights had come on, all the way down the corridor. It lasted for maybe a second, but the impact on my vision was crippling.

  I cried out and dropped to my knees, dropping both torches as my hands came up instinctively to protect my eyes. The lights had gone out yet fireworks flashed across my vision. My optic nerves burned. I scrambled for either torch, searching blindly, desperately in the darkness. I couldn’t see anything, even if the torches were still on. My hand grasped one of them, the other lay somewhere to my left. One was enough. I stood up and shone the light down the corridor again. I blinked, trying to focus. Slowly, my eyesight returned to something near normal, even though tears streaked down my face. I blinked a few more times, trying to work out in the gloom if I had suffered permanent damage.

  Boom, it happened again. The whole length of the corridor lit up. For a split second I could see every door, every picture hanging on the wall, the stairs at the far end, and something else before I was plunged back into the dark. My assaulted eyes struggled to adjust back to torchlight.

  It didn’t hurt so much this time, but it still left me disoriented. Every hair on my body stood on end. I was rooted to the spot, utterly incapable of processing what I’d seen.

  Standing at the top of the stairs.

  Not standing.

  Just there.

  It. The thing. The entity. Black as night, absorbing light like a black hole. Staring at me. A face distorted beyond recognition. Suggestions of limbs, rolling like thunder clouds in the mass that shouldn’t have existed at all. I aimed my torch at it but the beam didn’t even reach the stairs.

  Footsteps now, booming, coming towards me. I felt panic rising. It was coming. It was coming for me.

  The electric lights flickered on and off again, several times, showing me a stop motion image of the thing coming closer and closer, moving with impossible speed… at the library door, next to the wall of the apartment, just three doors away from me.

  I screamed and hurled myself sideways, pushing into Percy’s room in panicked desperation. It was instinct more than anything. I don’t remember making the decision. I slammed the door behind me and just a second later felt a bang as something collided with the other side of it. I stumbled forward at the impact, trying to regain my balance as the door came open. I threw myself backwards, my back slamming into the wood and forcing it closed, knocking all the wind out my lungs and sending a jolt of pain though my spine.

  Bang. Against the door again, nearly pitching me forward into the room.

  Oh God, why didn’t I leave this fucking house when I had the chance? What the fuck was I trying to prove? That I’m brave? That I’m somehow a big man who can cope in the face of terrifying opposition? I was an idiot.

  I braced myself for the next assault but it didn’t come. I shone the torch to one side and saw a chair, just three feet away from me.

  Taking a deep breath I lunged at the chair, moving away from the door for a precious couple of seconds. I grabbed the heavy wingback and dragged it, using my body to brace the door again. Gasping for air and trying to think straight I took a moment to think, listen and recover. Then I spun around and rammed the chair up under the door handle.

  Checking that it was secure, I retreated a few steps into the room and stood watching the door, ready to leap forward and brace it again if the chair didn’t hold.

  There was no sound from outside the room. Had it given up?

  I was breathing so heavily, I can’t imagine it couldn’t hear me. My heart pounded and my eyes stung with tears. I did not for one moment think I was safe. I knew it would come back. It was toying with me, seeing how much I could take. I knew at that moment that there was no way this thing was going to let me leave. Even if I had not advanced down the corridor, even if I had run back down the stairs to the hall, it would have slammed the door to the living room and sealed me in. I just knew with a sense of crushing dread that my last chance to escape had been when I was halfway out of that window. From the moment both feet landed back inside I was toast.

  But I wasn’t defeated, not yet. Maybe I could get the window open in this room and escape across the roof?

  I shone the torch further around the room and jumped with
fright, crying out in shock.

  A man was sitting on the bed.

  CHAPTER 10

  I had no idea who he was. He was staring at me, clear as day, his eyes blinking in the light of the torch. He’d just been sitting here in the fucking dark this entire time.

  He was old, clearly, with white hair and a heavily lined face. He was clean shaven and wore neatly pressed white clothes.

  I retreated, standing up against the wall right next to the door. I kept the torch trained on him, wondering what the hell he was going to do to me.

  He simply put a finger to his lips and said, “Shhhhhh.”

  That was about as much as I could take. I started whimpering again, making odd noises I wasn’t in control of. I wanted so badly to pee I was surprised I’d not pissed myself already. I broke out in a cold sweat and felt dizzy. I think my body was shutting down from the stress.

  “Shhhh,” the man said again.

  He pressed his wrists together and held up both fists, like his hands were bound together. One hand dropped and the other held up four fingers. Without a word, he pointed to his nightstand and vanished.

  The nightstand popped open, unlocked.

  I was completely alone in the room. The only sound was my urgent breathing and a soft, sobbing sound I realized was also coming from me.

  I tried focusing on making sense of what I had seen. Four fingers? Four what? What did that mean? Number four… Four four four. The significance eluded me. I wondered if it wasn’t conveying the number at all but was instead some obscure message in sign language.

  My curiousity was helping to calm my fear. The old man’s disappearance had weirdly cancelled out some of my panic. Clearly he’d been trying to tell me something, and by focusing on the puzzle I was able to gain some sanity back. I risked leaving the door and went over to the nightstand. Carefully I pulled open the drawer. There were a few odds and ends inside, but my eyes were drawn to a journal with a rubber band around it.