The Patchwork House Read online

  I put my foot on the bottom step and squinted upwards towards the crying. The stairs turned around a bend half way up, so even if there had been light I wouldn’t have been able to see the source of the sobbing. I hesitated, not wanting to go further. The entity had tricked me several times now, I was not about to be tricked again.

  “Beth?” I whispered. The crying continued. “Beth,” I said a little louder.

  The person at the top of the stairs held back their crying for a moment.

  “Jim?”

  Oh my God, it was Beth.

  “Beth, it’s me, I’m here.” I started moving up the stairs, still hesitant. How good an impression of Beth could the entity make? Was she real? Did I dare hope?

  “Oh God, Jim.” I heard her rise, start coming down the stairs towards me. We crashed into each other half way up. It was her! It was really her! I held her tightly in the darkness. Her long hair felt so soft beneath my fingers as I stroked it. We sought out each other’s mouths and kissed desperately.

  We parted, breathless. I was crying. I reached out to touch her face, feeling her cheeks beneath my fingers. They were wet with tears, just like mine.

  “I thought I’d lost you,” I said, holding her close again.

  “Jim, where did you go?”

  “We got parted. I let you get ahead of me and I was taken to another time. I was all alone. I thought I’d never see you again.”

  “Oh Christ, Jim, I’ve been all alone too!”

  “Where’s Derek? Did he leave you?”

  “Yes. He said he heard Chloe and he ran ahead. Then he disappeared just like you did!”

  I vowed to punch Derek hard in the face if I ever saw him again. Leaving Beth was unforgivable. Right now though, I didn’t intend to spend one more second in this house than was absolutely necessary.

  “Where’s your torch?” Beth asked, panic in her voice.

  “I gave it up to get back to you,” I explained.

  “What? Why? What were you thinking? You mean we’re stuck in the dark?” The questions came faster than I could answer them. She sounded like she was about to lose her sanity. “I’ve been alone for hours, Jim. Please tell me you have a candle or something, please!”

  “I don’t, I’m sorry. Where’s your torch?”

  “It was ripped out of my hands hours ago. I’ve been searching for it ever since.”

  “And your cell phone?”

  “Battery’s dead.”

  “Shit. Why were you up in the apartment?”

  As Beth answered, we descended carefully, still clutching hold of each other for fear of something pulling us apart and sending us tumbling through time.

  “The ghost has been taunting me with voices. I heard you, I heard Derek, but whenever I moved towards the voice there was nothing.”

  We emerged into the kitchen. My plan was to return to the living room and try to break a window again. Unless…

  “Beth, do you have the keys?”

  “No, Derek had them.”

  “Okay well never mind. We can break a window. I did it earlier, I was going to escape.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Because I couldn’t leave you!” It felt good to tell her that, especially because it was true. I couldn’t believe I had even contemplated leaving without her. She would still be here, sitting on the stairs crying, waiting for rescue, and I would be hiding out in the lodge, feeling guilty. Despite everything, I was glad I was here right now. I was glad she was here too.

  She held me a little tighter. She didn’t have to say thanks, her body pressed tightly against mine showed her appreciation. She kissed me and I felt like ripping off her clothes and fucking her right there in the kitchen. The stress and terror of this night culminating in a passionate release of two bodies in the dark.

  But that could wait for later. Right now we had to get out of here.

  I think she felt the same way. She didn’t move away from me, didn’t stop leaning in and keeping me as close as possible. Maybe she just didn’t want any chance she might lose me again. She seemed to have forgotten her previous animosity towards me. Nothing like a night of terror in a haunted house to settle a domestic dispute.

  “Did it hurt you?” I asked as we stumbled through the kitchen in the dark.

  “Yeah, it pushed me down the stairs. I don’t think anything’s broken but it fucking hurt.” I held her a little tighter. “And my eyes hurt from all the crying. I’m such a flake.”

  “No, God no. It sounds like you were alone even longer than I was. I think I’d have gone insane.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the dining room. It’s got the largest window panes. I should be able to break one with a chair.”

  “You said you broke one already though.”

  “Yeah I did, and when I came back it was fixed.”

  “The ghost moved the room through time?”

  “Or me, who knows? Remember Arthur talking about the broken window?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well there you go, that was me. I’m the vandal.”

  Beth didn’t respond to that, but given all she’d been through I hardly expected her to appreciate an ironic aside. We had just entered the living room, going entirely by memory because it was still pitch black of course. I stumbled over a chair I swore wasn’t there before, but then the last time I was in here might have been a week ago for all I knew. It was too awkward to hold each other close as we passed through doorways so we simply held hands, but tightly so we didn’t accidentally slip apart. I turned and crashed into another chair, bruising my leg.

  “Fuck! What happened in here?”

  “Derek and I were trying to escape the… ghost. We made a mess.”

  Finally, with much crashing and stumbling, we made it into the dining room.

  “The window is to our left,” I said. The heaviest chair fell apart, but I should be able to use one of the others.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now listen, you have to trust me. I have to let go of you now or I won’t be able to break the window.”

  “No, don’t leave me!”

  “I’m not leaving you. Just stay right here.” I led her over to the table, feeling the polished wood with my free hand. I guided her over so that she could feel the surface too. “Now as long as you keep your hand on the table right here, we’ll be fine.”

  “But what if the ghost separates us again?”

  “It can’t. It can only move us around if we’re in different parts of the house. This room is in the oldest part of the house. I think the entity can move pieces of the house around in time like a giant Rubik’s cube, but it can’t split the rooms themselves. If one of us leaves the dining room to go to the conservatory, we’re walking into a different section of the house, a newer part. Then we could get separated. Okay?”

  “Okay, if you say so. My head still hurts and I can’t stop crying.”

  “Once we’re outside, we’ll head to the lodge. There might be more candles we missed, you never know. Or we can just wait it out until dawn. It has to come eventually.”

  “All right, my hand is on the table. I’m letting go of you, okay?”

  We let go. I hurried around the table looking for the nearest chair, not wanting to be apart from Beth for any longer than necessary. Oddly, there were no chairs on the side of the dining table furthest from the window. I moved around to the head of the table, feeling my way. No chairs here either. Now to the window side.

  “Where the fuck are all the chairs?” I said, widening my search away from the table now in the hopes that someone had pushed the chairs up against the walls.

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Beth said. I stopped in the darkness, turning towards the sound of her voice. “They’re all in the living room. They got moved.”

  “Moved?” I asked. “Who moved them?”

  “Well I helped.”

  An icy chill slowly crawled up my spine.

  “Why would you do that?”


  “I don’t know,” Beth replied. “I’m a bit confused. Must be the bump to my head.”

  “Who did you help?”

  “Derek and I moved all the chairs.”

  A terrible feeling came over me then.

  “Don’t you want to escape?” I asked, moving very quietly towards her.

  “Of course.”

  “Then why move the chairs, Beth? Why take the heaviest chairs in the house out of the one room with window panes big enough for us to climb through?

  I reached her now. I took her hand in mine again and put my other hand up to her face and hair. Her cheeks were still wet with tears.

  “Let me see what’s wrong with your eyes,” I told her soothingly.

  “But we can’t see anything,” Beth replied.

  “Just keep still.” I raised my fingers, tracing a damp path from her cheek to her lower eyelid. My hand trembled as I placed my index finger on the surface of her eye. And felt nothing. With mounting horror, I gently moved my finger forward. It met no resistance. Her eye wasn’t there.

  Suddenly a torch snapped on. Beth’s face was illuminated. The dampness was not tears, it was blood. Both her eyes were missing, empty sockets gaping at me in the sudden burst of light. I closed my eyes against the glare and recoiled, smashing into the table and sprawling to the ground.

  When I stood up, Beth was still bathed in a pool of torchlight. Sickened, I stared first at my girlfriend’s ruined face and then back to the source of the light, blinking furiously as my eyes adjusted to the glare.

  “What the fuck? What happened to Beth? Jesus, what the fuck happened to her?”

  “She fell down the stairs,” Derek explained. “She was pushed.”

  “Did you push her?”

  “What? God no! Not as such.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I didn’t push her.”

  I turned my horrified gaze back to Beth’s beautiful face. “Baby?” I said. “Your eyes…”

  “What’s wrong with them?” she asked.

  Oh God, she thought she was still in the dark.

  “Beth.” I stepped forward and took her hands in mine, staring directly into the black pits in her skull.

  “There’s no sense trying to tell her,” Derek said, coldly.

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s dead.”

  “What?”

  “She banged her head halfway down the apartment stairs. The ghost pushed her so hard she died when her head slammed into the wall.”

  I still held her hands in mine. She seemed so innocent somehow. The kind of innocence that comes with lack of understanding. An ebbing away of her intelligence, like her brain was shutting down.

  I stepped away from her.

  “Jim? Where are you?” she implored, breaking my heart just a little bit more with each word.

  “You’re very calm about this,” I accused Derek. “She’s dead and yet she’s still walking around.”

  “I’m guessing she’s possessed by the ghost. Jim, I’m sorry—I really am. She’s been tormenting me for hours. I kind of got used to the idea that she’s dead. Sorry if that sounds callous.”

  I rounded on him. I still couldn’t see his face behind the torch, but I hoped he could see how incensed I was.

  “Sounds callous? She’s fucking dead, Derek!” Hot tears coursed down my cheeks. I felt my legs weaken and I had to reach out to the table for support. “She’s dead and now she’s a fucking puppet.”

  Derek stepped forward and stood the torch upright on the table. The light diffused throughout the room, casting everything in an eerie gloom.

  “I’m sorry, Jim, I don’t know what else to say. She’s been following me around since she died, like she expects me to protect her. I had to lie to her about losing my torch to explain why she couldn’t see anything. If I sound indifferent about it, well I’m trying to stay sane while a corpse traipses after me in a dark, haunted house in the middle of the night, when I’m the only living person left in the whole building.”

  “Don’t call her that.”

  “What? A corpse? She is, Jim, she’s a corpse. She’s gone. She’s not in there anymore.”

  I propped myself up on the table to prevent myself from falling. The movement caused the torch to roll off and clatter onto the hardwood floor. The light flickered for a moment but didn’t go out.

  My stomach was heaving like I was going to throw up. Somehow I managed to keep it in check.

  “Then why is she talking like Beth?” I managed to say between gasps.

  “I think the ghost is just providing the power. Her brain is still connected and sort of working, so you know, turn the handle and the music comes out.”

  “Why are you saying I’m dead?” Beth asked. “I’m not dead! Jim! Tell him I’m not dead!”

  “Sorry, Beth,” said Derek. “You’re very very dead. I checked your pulse after you fell and you didn’t have one. When you stood up, once I got the courage to come anywhere near you, I checked it again and you still didn’t have one.”

  I went around the table, pushed past Derek and grabbed the torch. Then I returned to Beth and moved around her, shining the light at the back of her head. I saw a tangled mass of hair near the top of her skull at the back, and the clear protrusion of skull bone.

  She really was dead.

  “And her eyes?”

  “Huh?” said Derek.

  I spoke very quietly, almost too softly for him to hear. Beth may have been dead, but I didn’t want to alarm what was left of her. “What happened to her eyes?”

  “Oh, I did that.”

  I felt like I’d been kicked in the throat. All the breath escaped my body and I couldn’t draw any new air in. I just stared at him open mouthed. Eventually I managed to say something. “You did this to her? Why?”

  “Every time my light shone on her I saw those dead eyes staring at me. I went a bit crazy after the fifth straight hour, or at least that’s what it felt like. Hard to tell, but it was a long time. She wouldn’t leave me alone so in the end I put her eyes out with a kitchen knife.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Amazingly, Derek was still talking. “Think of it this way. You get to do what most people don’t when they lose a loved one. You can ask her all the questions you always wanted to, and she’ll answer. All those things you wish you’d asked when she was alive and you never did.”

  I threw myself at him, launching myself across the table and slamming into him. I swung a punch at his face but it was wild and he dodged it easily.

  “You defiled her,” I screamed, lashing out at him uncontrollably.

  He threw me off and stood up. Even in the gloom I could see him backing away, his hands held out to try and placate me.

  “Hey, Jim, look I know how it sounds but you’ve got to understand, I was alone in the dark with a fucking corpse following me around. I couldn’t get rid of her. She kept staring at me, it was driving me crazy. I had to do something!”

  “You could have covered her head or something. You didn’t need to ruin her eyes!”

  “She would have taken off anything I tried to put on her. I tried shutting her in a room but she managed to get out, and then she stared at me like I’d betrayed her. I couldn’t take it anymore.”

  I lay on the floor where he had thrown me. All the fight had gone. I started sobbing.

  “Don’t cry, Jim,” said Beth. “It’ll all be okay.”

  Somehow that just made it worse.

  Weird trivial shit went through my head then. How was I going to get her body back to the US for burial if she wouldn’t lie down and stop moving? When her brother died, her parents had insisted on an open casket. That was going to be tough to do for Beth’s wake. And oh God, the police! How the hell was I going to explain this to them? Could I blame it on Derek?

  Shit, none of that mattered. The woman I loved was dead, yet she was still walking about the place. It was beyond sick. It was beyond wrong.

 
I wished she wasn’t dead. I wished I could have done something to save her. But what could I have done, trapped in a different time?

  Derek picked up the torch and put it back on the table standing up. The light it cast upon Beth’s face caused her eye sockets to resemble yawning mouths, the shadows extending the size of the pits. She still looked beautiful but in a twisted way. Derek was right about one thing. I did have the chance to ask her stuff I’d always wanted to.

  “Beth,” I said, trying to be brave and taking her hands in mine again.

  “Hi honey,” she said. “I’m cold.”

  “I know. I’ll get you a blanket in a minute. Beth, I have a question for you.”

  “Okay, go ahead. Ask me.”

  “Beth, I love you more than any other woman I’ve ever known.”

  “Do you want me to leave the room?” Derek asked.

  “Yes,” I snapped. Then I hastily corrected myself. “No! Don’t fucking go anywhere. I don’t want to be alone again.”

  I turned back to Beth, trying hard to pretend her beautiful brown eyes were still gazing at me.

  “Beth, will you marry me?”

  She giggled and gripped my hands so tightly.

  “Oh God, oh wow. Yes! Yes I’ll marry you. Oh Jim!”

  She threw herself at me, her arms around my neck. For just a moment I felt that her death wasn’t real. For just a moment I believed she was still alive.

  And then I pulled away from her.

  “I’m sorry, my love, but you’re dead. You died on the stairs.”

  “Why are you saying these things?”

  “Because it’s true, hon.” I stroked the hair beside her face. Fresh tears rolled down my face. I didn’t want to let her go, but I had to.

  “I thought we were going to get married.”

  “Yes, hon, of course we’ll get married. We’ll get married in the States, yeah? When we go back? You’ll look lovely in white.”

  I picked up the torch and shone it at her one last time. She really would have looked lovely on our wedding day.

  “Stay there please, Love. Derek and I are just going to the next room for a moment. We’ll be right back, okay?”