The Patchwork House Read online

  But Chloe, giggly housewife Chloe, turned out to be the strongest of all of us because she had something in her life she could not afford to lose.

  “He was a good man,” Chloe insisted, as if reading my thoughts. “He could have run when I got pregnant but he didn’t. I knew he didn’t want to stay but he did stay. Putting your family before your own happiness, that’s the measure of a good man.”

  She was quiet for a time. Then she added, “When all this is over, I never want to see you again.”

  I didn’t argue. She helped me up but then let go of me. She made no attempt to help me walk but she didn’t rush on ahead either. I struggled to keep up but we arrived at the back door together.

  She didn’t have to like me to see this through. She did need to work with me.

  CHAPTER 19

  The house was silent when we entered. I led Chloe through the door into the conservatory, and then into the ballroom.

  Nothing leapt out at us. We didn’t hear so much as a creaky floorboard. The atmosphere was thick and musty. At least I wasn’t shivering now.

  We passed through into the corridor to the right of the stage and then through the door to the wine cellar. I almost fell down the stairs but made it to the bottom alive.

  The lid of the clock was closed. The first four faces were active, hands telling the same time and moving in unison. The upper clock face had stopped.

  Was that a good sign?

  “So?” said Chloe. “Did we win?”

  “No, you didn’t win.”

  I turned to the corner by the wine racks, raising my lamp. Chloe did the same.

  Derek leant against an empty shelf.

  “I was supposed to be number five,” Derek’s ghost lamented. He moved across the cellar, his image literally ghosting as he did so. He left traces of himself in the air as he moved. The door at the top of the stairs slammed shut. Chloe’s lamp went out. “What you’ve taken from me… I was supposed to be in control of everything.”

  “Derek, we had to do it,” I said, trying to guard my lamp, our only source of light, from his approach.

  “Of course you did. I wish I’d split your skull open when I had the power to do so. Now, thanks to you, my strength is very limited. But I can do this.”

  My lamp died.

  I panicked for a moment. It had been some time since I’d been in total darkness. Having the light denied to me again, it was nearly too much for me to take. But then I remembered I had a backup. I dropped the lamp and reached into my pocket, pulling out my torch. I clicked it on.

  Derek’s face was an inch away from mine.

  I screamed and leapt backwards, nearly dropping the torch.

  Chloe had clicked on her light now.

  “Look at the clock, Jim.”

  I pointed my torch at the fifth face of the clock. It was turning backwards rapidly.

  “Oh shit.”

  Derek chuckled. “Yeah, so I feel it’s only fair to warn you that while you effectively changed history by releasing the priest and putting me in the fourth slot, there’s an entity in the future and the past that still exists. Don’t ask me to explain it. I’m just an idiot who failed A-level physics. Either way, when it gets here… When I get here, I’m going to be really mad at you, Jim. And that skull splitting thing I mentioned.” Derek drew close to me again, hissing in my ear. “You’re going to beg for that.”

  I collapsed to the floor. Chloe charged up the stairs and started tugging at the door handle but it wouldn’t open.

  “Help,” she screamed. I had no idea who she was calling to.

  While Chloe lost her mind loudly, I lost mine in silence.

  The fight went out of me. Every bruise and cracked bone in my body throbbed in pain. My head swam and my vision blurred.

  It didn’t matter if we changed its past. It was still in control. It could move time around as much as it wanted. It could rewrite history if it chose to. It could force itself to remain in existence. I had no idea how time travel really worked or how history could change, or how the entity could still exist.

  It didn’t matter.

  I’d never felt such utter defeat. I sat there on the floor, my body broken, my mind numb, my spirit shattered.

  I had nothing left to fight with. No ideas, no tools, no strength. The entity would be here soon, and when it arrived I was going to die, probably in even more agony than I was already in.

  Derek had defeated me.

  After all this, after this long, long night, after losing Beth, after all this fucking effort, I was going to die in a basement.

  The entity formed in the corner of the room. I didn’t have the energy to point my torch at it, but from the staircase, Chloe was lighting it up for all to see. Its black malevolence seemed even more intense than before. It whipped up the dust on the floor in a tornado. I could feel the waves of resentment and hatred pouring from it. The noise was unbelievable. The smell of something burning filled my nostrils. It was the only thing keeping me conscious.

  Derek, newly dead-Derek, was laughing and laughing. When he spoke I could hear him even though he wasn’t raising his voice.

  “I don’t think I’m supposed to be here at the same time as myself, you know? Hell, the other me probably shouldn’t exist at all. But when you can rewrite reality, the rules don’t really matter anymore.”

  The entity advanced on us. Chloe retreated further up the steps.

  “Jim,” she yelled over the violent cacophony. “Do something!”

  But what could I do?

  I simply stayed where I was, closed my eyes, tried to shut out the din, and waited for the inevitable.

  The noise was incredible, loud enough to rattle every nerve in my body. But there was something else I could hear now. Something familiar. At first I assumed it was the clock ticking, that arrhythmic, jarring, annoying-as-all-fuck tick-tock-tick-tock-tock that seemed designed to keep me on edge. But it wasn’t. It was keeping a regular beat. I strained to isolate the sound from the cacophony. There was tune behind it! A familiar melody.

  Was that… Ode to Joy?

  I laughed. I laughed right in Derek’s face. Dead or not he seemed taken aback by my outburst. He stopped, confused. He almost looked worried..

  It was a message. Ode to Joy was a message. Maybe it was calling to me. Maybe I should answer.

  So I did. As ridiculous as it sounds, I stood there in front of a dead man and his future malevolent entity-self from beyond the grave and I hummed along. Usually I’d make up some dumb lyrics, but I was too tired, too broken, too terrified to do that. So I just hummed. I hummed as loudly as I could, trying to rise above the noise and the roar, but I couldn’t hear myself.

  Something new was forming in the room, in the opposite corner to the Derek-entity. I stared at it, my mind too tired to comprehend what it might be. It seemed to be struggling to find form, a much weaker manifestation than the Derek-entity across the room.

  On instinct, I switched from humming to singing, “La la la.” To my surprise, the new entity seemed to respond to each la. I sang louder, my throat aching with the strain. In response, the new cloud of smoke circled like a whirlwind growing more solid by the second. Ode to Joy chorused from the cloud as if played by some ethereal orchestra from beyond the grave. I was confused, delighted and scared in equal measure. So clearly was it responding to my caterwauling, it encouraged me to try adding some words.

  “La la la, I want to go home,

  “Please come save me, la lala.”

  The whirlwind became a tornado, just like the Derek-entity. But, instead of a dark, swirling storm, this new entity was a brilliant white, like clouds on a summer’s day. Something about it seemed familiar. My heart swelled with desperate hope.

  The darker entity had now solidified into the recognizable shape of Derek. It was advancing on Chloe, who stood petrified on the stairs. She cried out. I couldn’t help her, but maybe I didn’t have to.

  Recently-dead-Derek was staring at the new tornado w
ith growing panic. He backed towards his future-self, and the two beings merged into one with a weird, reality-bending pop.

  By now, the white entity was almost solid. I could see its fingers first, reaching out to me from the tumult, and then a whole arm. The mass of rolling smoke was forming into the figure of a person. I felt such peace as I stared into the maelstrom. My injuries no longer bothered me. The noise no longer hurt my ears, the crippling terror abated, ebbing away from me as I gazed upon that face. I was still humming along, but now I trailed off. It was no longer necessary.

  The Derek entity seemed to notice the newcomer for the first time. It turned away from Chloe, rounding on the new arrival, mustering every ounce of malevolence it could find. I could feel the hatred flowing from it in waves.

  But the white figure was not serene either. While it provided me with comfort, it was by no means passive. Neither was it silent. It turned from me to face the dark storm on the other side of the room, screaming with fury and anger. It darkened, rolling and spitting with rage.

  Suddenly, the two entities hurled themselves together, colliding in the centre of the room. They twisted and turned about one another until they became indistinguishable. The hands on all five clock faces spun in random directions as the titanic battle exploded above the antique timepiece.

  I stared in stunned disbelief. The serenity I had felt evaporated as these two entities struggled for dominance. Perhaps this was my opportunity to run, but I could not move. I was transfixed. I had no idea if Chloe was still watching too.

  Something was changing. One of the entities seemed to be gaining the upper hand. It was hard to tell, they looked and sounded so similar. I hardly dared hope.

  And then, in the blink of an eye, one entity swallowed the other. The noise disappeared in an instant, leaving my ears ringing in the sudden silence. The remaining entity crackled and rolled in darkness for a few heart-stopping moments. And then it calmed and turned white. Moments later, the figure of a woman formed.

  Just before I passed out, I realized that she had won.

  My Beth was in control, and she had come back from tomorrow to save me.

  CHAPTER 20

  When I woke up I was still in the wine cellar. The lamps were working again so the room was reasonably well lit. The aches and pains in my body and my hideously swollen left eye told me I was still alive. Chloe was sitting next to me and stood up when she saw me moving.

  “We have a visitor,” she said.

  I raised my heavy head and gazed at the far corner of the room.

  There she was, like she had never gone away.

  Beth.

  I tried to stand but I couldn’t. Chloe put a hand on my shoulder to get me to relax. Beth just smiled. She seemed so real, so normal and so alive. There was nothing ethereal or ghostly about her, but to me she looked like an angel.

  “What the hell happened?” I croaked.

  “I figured you needed some help,” Beth said. She sounded just like herself. I wanted to hug her but I couldn’t get up. I would not have touched her anyway, for fear that she might vanish.

  “Thank you,” I said weakly. The platitude didn’t even begin to cover it.

  “What’s it like?” Chloe asked.

  “Oh it’s weird, very weird. I can feel every part of the house, all its history, all its potential. I know everything that ever happened here and everything that ever will. I can move pieces of this house around like I would play the piano. It’s all instinctual. And I can feel the other four spirits. One of them, number four, is really pissed.”

  “Derek?” I guessed.

  “Who else?”

  “What time is it?” I asked Chloe.

  “It’s dawn,” she replied. “I looked outside before you woke up. The sun is already nice and warm.”

  I struggled to sit up. “I have to see,” I said.

  Somehow I managed to stand, with Chloe’s help. I stumbled and tripped and fell a couple of times but I made it up the stairs. We emerged from the side door, opposite the garage. The light was blinding but the feel of the sun on my skin was like the gates of Heaven opening up.

  I drank in the light and the warmth. I felt like I’d been in the dark for years. It gave me strength; it helped alleviate some of the pain.

  Chloe smiled at me.

  “I still never want to see you again,” she said.

  “You won’t, don’t worry.”

  Beth couldn’t follow us outside. So we went back in.

  ***

  We sat at the kitchen table, the three of us. Again, Beth didn’t look ghostly at all. She was so solid I had to keep fighting the temptation to embrace her and never let go. Chloe and I ate from mini cereal packets. We had no milk but we were so hungry it didn’t matter. We drank coffee Chloe brewed on a camping stove and we didn’t talk much. We were just enjoying the peace.

  An idea was taking shape in my head. I turned to Beth.

  “Can you take me back to her—to you? When you were alive?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea, do you?”

  “I think it’s an excellent idea,” I said. “Why not? You can control time. Take me back so I can get her away from this house before she… before you ever set foot through the door.”

  “I’d love to, but I think the only reason I was able to beat Derek was because he was weakened when the priest escaped. From then on, he was ghost number four and no longer in control. It took time for the change to catch up with him, but eventually I became the last one in. If you stop me from ever coming here in the first place, you’ll weaken me too and the whole thing might unravel.”

  “It will unravel, and then I’ll be free.”

  Chloe and I whirled around to see who had spoken. Derek stood in the doorway. At first I thought we were in serious trouble but Beth didn’t seem bothered at all.

  “Relax,” she said. “I’m in control, remember?”

  Derek approached the table. He was ghosting again, not quite all there.

  He sat down on a chair, or at least appeared to sit. He watched us, his expression unreadable.

  Initially, Chloe reacted with confusion and shock at seeing her dead husband sit down next to her. But she took control of her emotions and stared into her coffee instead. “Here we are then,” she said. “We made it through the night.”

  “Half of us made it,” Derek said coldly.

  “So what happens next?” I asked.

  “I release the other spirits and myself from the clock,” Beth said. “I usher us into the next world, wherever that is.”

  “I don’t want to go,” said Derek.

  “Well you can’t stay here,” Chloe said, a tear rolling down one cheek. “You need to move on.”

  We sat silently for a little while.

  “I’m sorry about your face,” Derek said, indicating my horribly swollen cheek and eye.

  “I’ll live,” I said. In retrospect this was not the most sensitive thing to say…

  “So, this has been really awkward,” Beth said, rising to her feet. “But if you don’t mind, we’ll be shuffling off now.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Don’t go yet.”

  “What is it, Jim?”

  “I need your help first, before you go.”

  ***

  After I had cleared all our equipment from the area, Beth sent Derek’s corpse, the stairs, the hall and the drawing room forward in time by two months. Then I asked her to find her eyeless body and move that to the same day as she had placed Derek’s corpse. She did this without me having to see her corpse again, for which I was very grateful. I assumed she had stopped moving after last night, but I didn’t want to check to find out.

  I explained to Chloe my game plan. We would have to clean up the house before we left, and we’d have to make sure our stories were consistent, but if we got it right there was no reason why the police would come after us when inevitably they discovered the bodies. I didn’t relish explaining how a violent entity had caused the deaths of C
hloe’s husband and my girlfriend.

  Then Beth and I left Derek and Chloe to spend our last few minutes alone in the drawing room. It was more awkward than I had expected. I wanted to kiss and hug her, but it didn’t seem appropriate now she was dead.

  “I heard you, by the way,” she said. “I heard you singing. I held onto your voice and it guided me. It brought me to you.”

  “I felt it, I knew it was something I had to do.”

  Silence. I stared at her face. I already knew it so well, but I realized this would be my last time seeing her.

  “I was going to ask you to marry me, you know?”

  “Liar,” she said with a laugh. “You were never going to ask me.”

  “Did you want me to ask you?”

  “Of course. But don’t worry, I would have asked you first.”

  I chuckled at that. I was lucky in a way. How many people who’ve lost a loved one get another chance to say goodbye?

  “Will you stay in the States?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I mean, I have to for a little while but maybe I’ll come back here. Maybe I’ll find a way to survive over there without you. We’ll see.”

  “I love you, Jim.”

  “I love you too, Beth.”

  And then she was gone. One moment she was there and then she was a lingering memory. I didn’t want to go on without her, but I had to.

  I returned to Chloe. She looked sad but hadn’t lost that determined steel in her eyes.

  “I don’t like lying to the police but I hate lying to my kids more,” she said.

  “If you want to make sure they’re not taken away from you, you’ll have to.”

  She nodded.

  We had a lot to do.

  We walked down to the cemetery in silence. Chloe obviously didn’t want to speak to me but I was too numb and too sore to talk much anyway. The cemetery appeared surprisingly untouched considering we had dug a hole there in the dark. The grave itself did look fresh but we had positioned it in between existing plots, so from the side of the little graveyard the new addition was virtually invisible. Nevertheless, we snapped a couple of older branches off a nearby tree and arranged them with piles of leaves and mud around the site to try to hide our activity. It wouldn’t pass a forensic test but then it didn’t need to. We just needed to be sure that when Arthur returned on Wednesday he didn’t stumble across a freshly dug grave. After that we pushed the wheelbarrow into the lake and threw the shovels in after it. It seemed easier than cleaning them up and putting them away.