‘I guess we all have our secrets,’ she said. ‘Just took me a long time to find out what that sumbitch was up to all them years.’
‘I’m sorry.’
She looked at him. ‘Do you keep secrets, Ben?’
‘Not that kind,’ he said, struck by the directness of her question.
‘I have a secret,’ she said. ‘One that goes back a long, long time. Momma told me when I was a lil’ girl. She said never to pass it on to another livin’ soul, ’cause folks would hate us for it.’
‘Why would they hate you?’
‘History,’ she said with a shrug. ‘History matters a lot here in the South. Like the song, you know? I wish I was in the land of cotton; old times there are not forgotten.’
‘Dixie,’ Ben said. ‘So are you going to tell me?’
‘Tell you what?’
‘Your secret. I’m intrigued.’
She smiled. ‘You’re a livin’ soul, ain’t you?’
‘Managed to stay that way until now.’
‘Then I can’t. Don’t take it personal.’
‘Fair enough,’ he said.
‘Let’s change the subject,’ she said. ‘You never told me much about yo’self, Ben. What do you do for a livin’?’
‘I’m a restaurant inspector for the US Health Department.’
‘Oh, come on now.’
‘I’m a teacher.’
‘Maths? English? Geography?’
‘No, I teach people to do some of the things I used to do. Like how to protect folks who need protection, or help people who’re in danger. Stuff like that.’
‘Now I’m the one who’s intrigued,’ she said. She watched him curiously for a moment, then added, ‘You don’t like to talk about yo’self much, do you, sugah?’
‘It’s kind of a habit with me,’ he admitted.
‘So I ain’t the only one who keeps secrets. Well, I guess that makes me feel better. You married?’
‘Once upon a time.’
‘Kids?’
‘Just the one. He’s grown up now.’
‘Family?’
‘My parents died a long time ago. I have a sister. Haven’t talked to her in a while.’
‘You should. Even though my folks are both passed now, there ain’t a day I don’t think about them and pray to my Lord to keep a special eye out for the both of them. God and family, that’s all there is. That’s my strength.’
‘I haven’t talked to Him in a while either,’ Ben said.
‘He ain’t forgotten you,’ Lottie said. ‘He watches over all of us, ever’ moment of ever’ day.’
‘I used to think that way, too.’
‘So what changed?’
Now it was Ben’s turn to want to change the subject. That was a part of his life he definitely didn’t wish to discuss and he regretted having raised it.
‘Let’s have another drink.’ He held up the bottle. There was surprisingly little left. He was a fairly hardened whisky drinker and it took a lot to make his head spin. He’d have been lying if he’d said it wasn’t spinning now. Lottie seemed more or less unaffected, apart from maybe a very slight thickening of her tongue and the very fact that she’d brought up the subject of her mysterious secret. He suspected that she was itching to tell, but wasn’t yet drunk enough. Maybe he should have bought two bottles from Elmo instead of just the one.
‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve never known a woman who could knock back the scotch the way you can,’ he said as he emptied the last of the Glenmorangie into their glasses.
‘Fulla surprises, ain’t I?’
‘I’ll drink to that.’
When at last the whisky was finished, Ben was ready for bed. He thanked her for a wonderful dinner and a pleasant evening. She said, ‘Why don’t you stay a week or two longer?’ and they both laughed.
He gave her a hug and then trudged up to his room. He thought about retracting the pull-down staircase behind him, then decided against it. The combination of the white wine and the scotch was kicking in harder now, everything whirling a little. There seemed to be two beds in the room, both of them gently swirling around in circles in front of his eyes, and for a moment it was hard to decide which one to crash into fully clothed, jeans, boots and all.
‘I’m getting too old for this kind of nonsense,’ he muttered to himself. Then his head hit the pillow and he closed his eyes and was instantly asleep.
He dreamed fitfully, the kind of ethereal reverie that seems vivid at the time but is burst like a bubble in the morning, forever lost to memory. It was through his dreaming that he heard the strange sounds that some more focused part of his mind told him weren’t imaginary. His eyes snapped open and he sat upright.
He definitely hadn’t dreamed it. A thump that had seemed to resonate through the floor beneath him. Followed by the crash and tinkle of breaking glass. Some kind of commotion. And it had come not from outside, but from somewhere in the house. From downstairs.
And then he heard another sound that blew away the last fog of sleep and whisky, and had him jackknifing out of bed in alarm.
The sound of a woman’s scream of terror.
Followed a moment later by another cry. A much worse sound, of a very different nature, the kind of wailing shriek that can only be caused by the most unspeakable kind of agony.
Ben ran for the bedroom door.
He crossed the pitch blackness of the attic bedroom in two long strides and tore open the door. The little landing outside his room was every bit as dark. The world of the blind. And the deaf, too, because now all he could hear from below was dead silence.
He called out, ‘Lottie?’ Heard the tension in his own voice. Trying to understand where the screams had come from. It was a big house. They could have come from anywhere on the two floors below him.
No reply.
He hurried down the drop-down stairs to the first-floor landing, which was dimly illuminated by a narrow chink of light escaping from Lottie’s part-open bedroom door. He hesitated, then ran along the landing to the door and peered inside. The room was large and cosy, and empty. The light was coming from a little wall lamp above the double bed. The covers were rumpled aside, as though she must have got out of bed in a rush. Ben’s pulse was quickening as he ran back along the landing. The luminous green skeleton hands of his watch told him it was 4.13 a.m. He stopped again at the head of the stairs, listening hard.
Still total silence from below. Too quiet, even for the middle of the night. The kind of