Kirsty hated parties. The smiles to be pasted on over the panic; the glances to be interpreted; and worst, the conversation. She had nothing to say of the least interest to the world, of this she had long been convinced. She’d watched too many eyes glaze over to believe otherwise; seen every device known to man for wheedling oneself out of the company of the dull, from: ‘Will you excuse me, I believe I see my accountant’, to passing out dead drunk at her feet.
But Rory had insisted she come to the house-warming. Just a few close friends, he’d promised. She’d said yes, knowing all too well what scenario would ensue from her refusal. Moping at home in a stew of self-recrimination, cursing her cowardice and thinking of Rory’s sweet face.
The gathering wasn’t such a torment, as it turned out. There were only nine guests in toto, all of whom she knew vaguely, which made it easier. They didn’t expect her to illuminate the room; only to nod and laugh where appropriate. And Rory – his hand still bound up – was at his most winning, full of guileless bonhomie. She even wondered if Neville – one of Rory’s work colleagues – wasn’t making eyes at her behind his spectacles, a suspicion which was confirmed in the middle of the evening when he manoeuvred himself to her side and enquired whether she had any interest in cat-breeding. She told him she hadn’t, but was always interested in new experiences. He seemed delighted, and on this fragile pretext proceeded to ply her with liqueurs for the rest of the night. By eleven-thirty she was a whoozy but happy wreck, prompted by the most casual remark to ever more painful fits of giggling.
A little after midnight, Julia declared that she was tired, and wanted to go to bed. The statement was taken as a general cue for dispersal, but Rory would have none of it. He was up and re-filling glasses before anyone had a chance to protest. Kirsty was certain she caught a look of displeasure cross Julia’s face, then it passed, and the brow was unsullied once again. She said her goodnights, was complimented profusely on her skill with calf’s liver, and went to bed.
The flawlessly beautiful were flawlessly happy, weren’t they? To Kirsty this had always seemed self-evident. Tonight, however, the alcohol made her wonder if envy hadn’t blinded her. Perhaps to be flawless was another kind of sadness.
But her spinning head had an inept hold on such ruminations, and the next minute Rory was up, and telling a joke about a gorilla and a Jesuit which had her choking on her drink before he’d even got to the votive candles.
Upstairs, Julia heard a fresh bout of laughter. She was indeed tired, as she’d claimed, but it wasn’t the cooking that had exhausted her. It was the effort of suppressing her contempt for the damn fools who were gathered in the lounge below. She’d called them friends once, these halfwits, with their poor jokes and their poorer pretensions. She had played along with them for several hours; it was enough. Now she needed some cool place; some darkness.
As soon as she opened the door of the damp room she knew things were not quite as they had been. The light from the shadeless bulb on the landing illuminated the boards where Rory’s blood had fallen, now so clean they might have been scrubbed. Beyond the reach of the light, the room bowed to darkness. She stepped in, and closed the door. The lock clicked into place at her back.
The dark was almost perfect, and she was glad of it. Her eyes rested against the night, their surfaces chilled.
Then, from the far side of the room, she heard a sound.
It was no louder than the din of a cockroach running behind the skirting boards. After seconds, it stopped. She held her breath. It came again. This time there seemed to be some pattern to the sound; a primitive code.
They were laughing like loons downstairs. The noise awoke desperation in her. What would she not do, to be free of such company?
She swallowed, and spoke to the darkness.
‘I hear you,’ she said, not certain of why the words came, or to whom they were addressed.
The cockroach scratches ceased for a moment, and then began again, more urgently. She stepped away from the door and moved towards the noise. It continued, as if summoning her.
It was easy to miscalculate in the dark, and she reached the wall before she’d expected to. Raising her hands, she began to run her palms over the painted plaster. The surface was not uniformly cold. There was a place, she judged it to be halfway between door and window, where the chill became so intense she had to break contact. The cockroach stopped scratching.
There was a moment when she swam, totally disoriented, in darkness and silence. And then something moved in front of her. A trick of her mind’s eye, she assumed, for there was only imagined light to be had here. But the next spectacle showed her the error of that assumption.
The wall was alight; or rather something behind it burned with a cold luminescence which made the solid brick seem insubstantial stuff. More: the wall seemed to be coming apart, segments of it shifting and dislocating like a magician’s prop, oiled panels giving on to hidden boxes whose sides in turn collapsed to reveal some further hiding place. She watched fixedly, not daring even to blink for fear she miss some detail of this extraordinary sleight-of-hand, while pieces of the world came apart in front of her eyes.
Then, suddenly, somewhere in this ever more elaborate system of sliding fragments, she saw (or again, seemed to see) movement. Only now did she realize that she’d been holding her breath since this display began, and was beginning to become lightheaded. She tried to empty her lungs of the stale air, and take a draught of fresh, but her body would not obey this simple instruction.
Somewhere in her innards a tic of panic began. The hocus-pocus had stopped now, leaving one part of her admiring quite dispassionately the tinkling music which was coming from the wall, the other part fighting the fear that rose in her throat step by step.
Again, she tried to take a breath, but it was as if her body had died, and she was staring out of it, unable now to breathe or blink or swallow.
The spectacle of the unfolding wall had now ceased entirely and she saw something flicker across the brick; ragged enough to be shadow but too substantial.
It was human, she saw, or had been. But the body had been ripped apart and sewn together again with most of its pieces either missing or twisted and blackened as if in a furnace. There was an eye, gleaming at her, and the ladder of a spine, the vertebrae stripped of muscle; a few unrecognizable fragments of anatomy. That was it. That such a thing might live beggared reason – what little flesh it owned was hopelessly corrupted. Yet live it did. Its eye, despite the rot it was rooted in, scanned her every inch, up and down.
She felt no fear in its presence. The thing was weaker than her by far. It moved a little in its cell, looking for some modicum of comfort. But there was none to be had; not for a creature that wore its frayed nerves on its bleeding sleeve. Every place it might lay its body brought pain: this she knew indisputably. She pitied it. And with pity came release. Her body expelled dead air, and sucked in living. Her oxygen-starved brain reeled.
Even as she did so it spoke, a hole opening up in the flayed ball of the monster’s head and issuing a single, weightless word.
The word was: ‘Julia.’
2
Kirsty put down her glass, and tried to stand up.
‘Where are you going?’ Neville asked her.
‘Where do you think?’ she replied, consciously trying to prevent the words from slurring.
‘Do you need any help?’ Rory inquired. The alcohol made his lids lazy, and his grin lazier still.
‘I am house-trained,’ she replied, the riposte greeted with laughter all round. She was pleased with herself; off-the-cuff wit was not her forte. She stumbled to the door.
‘It’s the last room on the right at the end of the landing,’ Rory informed her.
‘I know,’ she