‘Help me.’
I shivered.
The garden was in complete darkness now but I must have left a light on in the kitchen because I could see the phone sitting on the wall.
An uncomfortable thought was starting to form at the back of my mind but I managed to contain it and dropped out of the hammock.
I walked up the garden path towards the phone.
A crack on the windowpane stopped me rock still.
I eased my breathing and strained my ears.
Somewhere in the distance a dog barked in warning.
A flutter of panic hit.
I didn’t want to look at the decking by the window. And yet I couldn’t help myself. Something was drawing me to the French doors.
Even though I kind of knew it would be there my eyes widened with shock as they absorbed the small, white, gleaming cockleshell.
I hugged myself, too frightened now to move closer. A strangled whistle sound wheezed in my throat.
The temperature had dropped to cold, almost frosty.
About the French doors the air began to crackle.
Draughts stirred, lifting and billowing the curtains at their sides.
A darkness beside them was thickening and warping. Something was coming, swirling into being – a shape, a dark mass.
Then I saw it clearly – the murky shade of a woman in a long gown, discarnate, shadowed with blacks and greys. I had the impression of dark curls snaking around the palest of faces like seaweed clinging to a corpse, a marbled neck and stained cotton dress. But it was just that – a notion. I didn’t see them with my eyes but with my mind, like my imagination was filling the contours within the depth of blackness.
There was the acrid smell of muddy sulphur and an unbearable feeling of loss.
For a long second it hovered there like a storm cloud.
Then a heartbeat later it was gone.
Chapter Five
My computer screen flicked on. I fingered the scrap of paper in my hand. It read ‘Marie143’ in John’s looping handwriting.
When I drove into St John’s on Monday morning, he had been leaning against the wall, waiting for me. As soon as he spotted my red VW Beetle he nipped over and held the door open for me.
I watched his face wrinkle with concern. ‘I left my phone at the pub. Nancy brought it in this morning. I just got your messages. You sounded weird. What’s going on? You OK?’
Good question. What was going on? Was I OK? Were things happening because of something going wrong in my brain? Or was this stuff external?
I hadn’t been able to come to a conclusion on Sunday. Which was an improvement on Saturday when I had been simply ‘weird’ as John had correctly suggested. The seeming physical nature of whatever had manifested seemed very real and I was certain that something supernatural had turned its gaze on me.
Martha was alarmed, of course. It was all over her face when she arrived late on Saturday night. She came over as soon as her husband, Deano, got home, on the off chance that I was still up for company.
I had left a rather hysterical message on John’s phone and was just calming myself down, trying to get a grip on what I’d just seen, so her timing was perfect.
Martha could be counted on for good solid comfort. Her green fingers tended our social circle’s gardens and house-plants when we went away, while her gentle manner and nurturing aura had us all calling on her for a shoulder to cry on whenever things got tough. There was something indescribably soft about her, without any drippy overtone, that made you feel safe in her company.
Ever practical she sat me down around the large pine kitchen table and made us a cup of tea while I gasped and spluttered through what had happened in the garden, climaxing with the revelation of the phone message.
I know I sounded quite crazy as when I looked up Martha’s face was crossed by heavy lines of strain. Her honey-sweet voice told me that in her opinion I was probably just overdoing things.
‘You know, darling,’ she soothed, ‘you have really been through the wringer these past few years. Life’s not easy and I know being a widow with a young child must seem an awful lot to cope with. Do you not think that perhaps your brain is creating an outlet for you?’
She was being rational and I would have loved to believe her, but there was no denying something peculiar was happening. Something that went beyond psychological stress, even perhaps beyond mental illness or the possibility that my brain was rewiring itself around a blockage.
The quiet lull of her voice, the reason in her argument, the relief of her physical presence served to pacify me a bit. Even her suggestion that I might want to see a counsellor was acceptable although wide of the mark, but then she added, almost as an afterthought: ‘Of course you want to keep the memory of Josh alive, it’s a completely natural impulse, but this way,’ she shrugged limply, ‘just seems so negative, Sarah.’
‘What are you talking about?’ The words exploded out of my mouth without thought or care. ‘How dare you?’
Martha took in my expression and started to backtrack. ‘God, I’m sorry, Sarah. I know it’s a touchy subject.’
But I was on my feet, walking up and down the kitchen, hands gesturing to the ceiling with outrage and exasperation. ‘You think this thing is my husband?’
‘Well, I …’ Martha’s eyebrows knitted together. She shrank into her chair.
‘That’s bloody ridiculous.’
Martha relaxed a little. ‘I’m glad to hear it, Sarah, really I am. I know you’ve not been yourself lately.’
I stopped pacing, rested my knuckles on the table and took a deep breath. ‘This has nothing to do with Josh. Nothing.’ I tried to speak in a controlled voice. ‘This thing, Martha, is female.’
She had her mouth open as if she was going to speak but then closed it. A small sigh escaped her. ‘Really?’
I knew she was trying to help but she sounded so insincere, I realized that it was pointless talking to her, and rather than offend her again with another exasperated tut or sigh I answered her with a small shrug.
She cocked her head to one side and held my gaze. ‘Have you ever read Stephen King?’
OK, I thought, now she’s getting it and replied, ‘Maybe. Yes, when I was a teenager. I’m not reading anything like that now and before you suggest it, Martha, no I’m not letting my imagination run away with me.’
She smiled and stretched her hand to me across the table. ‘Honey, I wouldn’t dream of patronizing you like that. What I was going to say is I once remember reading an interview with him, where he said something that had quite an impact on me.’
‘Go on.’
‘We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.’
Exhaustion fell across me.
She must have seen it because she asked if I wanted to go to bed.
I nodded.
Martha got to her feet pretty damn quickly.
At the front door, she paused and held out a little green pill. ‘Valium. Get some sleep, Sarah. Call me in the morning if you need to talk. You’re not alone.’
‘I know. That’s the problem,’ I said and closed the door.
The next morning I woke up with a sentence going round my head. It was a phrase Sharon had used to