Читать книгу The Forgotten Room: a gripping, chilling thriller that will have you hooked - Ann Troup, Ann Troup - Страница 11

Chapter Three

Maura lay in her bed clutching the camphor- and lavender-scented sheets to her chin and listened – it was a beautifully clichéd dark and stormy night, one that rattled the windows in their frames and caused draughts to lick across the skin in unseen malevolent caresses. For fear he’d go on a midnight wander, get outside and blow away like some pyjama-wearing woebegone Mary Poppins, she had even resorted to putting the chain on Gordon’s door. She’d hated doing it – she was supposed to be his nurse, not his keeper.

The only thing in the house that hadn’t felt it necessary to make its presence felt that night by rattling, creaking, clanking (or bizarrely pinging) was the chain on Gordon’s door. He seemed to be sleeping soundly, which wasn’t surprising given the heap of pills she’d been obliged to pile into him. In fact, he’d been unexpectedly compliant when she’d taken in his cocoa, sat with him and helped him to prepare for bed. He hadn’t even flinched when she’d cleaned the rug with white vinegar to neutralise the smell of pee, or batted an eyelid when she’d found the major source of the stench – the several vases that had been used as impromptu receptacles for Gordon’s urinary urges. Maura was sure that Moorcroft, Crown Derby and Minton had not intended their delicate and beautiful wares to be used for such purposes. Had they not been worth a small fortune she might have thrown them in the bin, but instead she’d borrowed Cheryl’s rubber gloves and had scoured them clean while praying she wouldn’t ruin them.

Sleep proved elusive and all she had done was toss and turn on the lumpy mattress, trying to find the sweet spot. The camphor was intrusive too, a particularly vile smell reminiscent of frugal old ladies and the bad old days. It reminded her of staying with her grandmother when she was little, of secondhand shoes and hand-me-down clothes, of having her face washed with carbolic soap and being expected to clear her plate because people were starving in Africa. It reminded her of the instruction to make do and mend, a philosophy she felt she was being forced to live by. How did you make do with nothing and mend a broken spirit? More to the point, how did you begin in a house that was so depressing it seemed to suck the joy out of everything?

Cheryl had said that parts of the place were dangerous, and Maura had assumed rotten boards and woodworm-savaged beams, but as she lay beneath the pungent sheets she began to wonder if the danger wasn’t from something else entirely – the bad that Gordon had been so eager to tell her about. The look of the place made it feel as if no Henderson, in the history of Hendersons, had brought a good intention to the place. It seemed to have been pieced together with menace and meanness – no one period predominated, no one style. Just a building stitched together by time, passing fashions and a family who had been custodians out of habit and grudging obligation rather than pride and heritage. All speculation on Maura’s part, of course, but Gordon was hemmed in a single room full of filth and clutter, and she had to contend with a mothball-sodden bed and a ceiling that was so creaky it seemed as if it would cave in at any moment. It was as if the house was trying to corner them both.

Why on earth hadn’t they sold up and left? Why stay in a place that exuded such misery?

They were good questions, ones she could apply to herself – why had she stayed with Richard when it had been patently clear he was a self-serving, booze-dependent dickhead? Why hadn’t she thrown him out the moment she’d caught him in bed with her sister? Why, after she finally had thrown him out, had she pitied him, looked after him and cried when he finally drank himself to death?

Sometimes there were no answers, or none she wanted to face. Maybe it was the same for Gordon Henderson and Estelle Hall; there were just things they didn’t want to deal with.

Annoyed with herself for being maudlin, she threw off the sheets and moved towards the window to watch the storm play out. The lights of the estate surrounded the Grange, but at a distance, like the lit torches of an angry mob encamped and holding the house under siege. It felt so lonely and she wondered if that was another reason Gordon had taken to his clutter and his room, like children did when they built pillow forts to keep the adult world at bay. Would she wake him if she crept downstairs and made herself a drink? It seemed unlikely. She had given him a hefty dose of Zopiclone, enough to fell an elephant for the night, let alone a frail old man. Too much in her opinion, but she’d always found Dr Moss a bit heavy-handed with the meds. They had butted heads many times over his prescribing at the hospital, and bitter experience had shown her he didn’t like to be questioned – especially by nurses. Nurses were a lowly sort in Philip Moss’s eyes.

Despite Gordon’s drug-fuelled repose, she felt the need to creep through the house, pausing once to glance out at the storm as it crackled across the sky and howled around the house.

The essence of a figure glimpsed through the landing window caught her eye. A dark, human shape standing under the trees, a shape that made her freeze, made her breath catch in her throat and caused her to clutch her dressing gown to her throat as if a handful of fleece could protect her.

Her instinct argued that only a madman would be out in the storm.

A madman in the middle of nowhere, staring at a house containing only a feeble old man and a lone female.

A madman lurking in the dead of night with no innocent reason to be there.

The builders had gone home, the houses near to the Grange were far from finished, and it was hard to believe anyone would be lost around here when the house was the only thing they could be looking for. If it had been Bob, the handyman, surely he would have called, or at least come to the back of the house? If it was Cheryl, or even Dr Moss, they would have just come in or knocked – they’d have no reason to lurk outside.

The clock in the hallway below chimed midnight, scaring the bejesus out of her and diverting her attention from the window. When she looked again, the figure was gone, and she had to question whether it had ever been there at all – though her heart still pounded with a violence that argued it had. She peered out, trying to pick up movement, but there was nothing. Just the storm and the wind forcing the trees into a frenzied ballet of whipping branches and whirling leaves. Whatever. Whoever had been there was gone, leaving no trace other than the mild panic of a woman who was to all intents and purposes alone in a house that appeared to be straight from the pages of some Gothic horror novel.

Pulling herself away, she made her way down the stairs, trying to recall if she had locked the house as per Cheryl’s instructions. Her memory was playing tricks on her. She knew for a fact that she had locked up properly, but a midnight maggot of irrational fear wriggled and writhed, making her doubt her recall. She stamped on the little bugger and forced herself to snap out of it and think like a functional adult. There had been no figure under the tree – just a shadow or an illusion conjured by lack of sleep and unfamiliar surroundings. The house was creeping her out and hooking shadows from the dark corners of her imagination. She had come to the Grange to escape all that, not to bring it with her and have it enhanced by noisy floorboards and a high wind. Coffee and a flick through one of Cheryl’s magazines would banish such thoughts and entrench some good sense. There was nothing like perusing pictures of airbrushed women wearing clothes you could never afford (or get away with wearing in public) to slam a person back into the realms of insignificance. To Maura it was the mental equivalent of a strong black coffee after a drinking binge – it might make you sick and keep you awake, but it did you good. With resignation and as much composure as she could muster, she defied the house and its air of doom and strode through the passage into the kitchen, where she filled the room with light, filled the battered old kettle and settled down with a magazine.

When the rock hurtled through the window it didn’t just shatter the glass, it shattered every shred of equilibrium that Maura had managed to cling on to.

Breath froze in her throat as the glass exploded inwards, shards of it hurtling towards her like a thousand shining knife blades, the rock landing on the table like an unexploded bomb of dread.

Instinct took over and she dropped to the floor, covering her head as glass glittered her hair and clung to the fleece of her dressing gown. Tiny slivers found their way inside her sleeves and down the back of her neck, nicking her skin, biting deeper and drawing small beads of blood.

The boom was fading, but the shock hadn’t – adrenaline had coursed through her, making her heart lurch and her limbs shake. She knew she had to move, yet she couldn’t. She knew she had screamed – it had emerged as a deep bellow, and now that she tried to call out, it felt as if her entire voice had been emitted with it and was rattling around the room, unable to find its way back.

There had been a figure, and it had meant her harm. It had done her harm and there was a good chance it wanted more.

The kitchen phone was attached to the wall, too close to the door and window to be safe to run to. The only other she had seen was in another room, back beyond the passage and the door and located in the heart of the house.

She ran through the route in her mind, begging her limbs to comply and help her to move. Her own phone was locked in her car where she had thrown it in disgust, so as not to have to see her sister’s name flashing up and demanding her attention every five minutes. But what did that matter now? She had to get out of the kitchen and away from the broken window, and the rock that had damned near taken her head off.

Pressing her shaking hands to the floor, knowing they would be cut on the fallen glass but having no choice, she pushed backwards, scooting towards the door that led to the corridor beyond the kitchen. She dared not try and stand – not only did she doubt her legs would take it, but while she was on the floor, with the table in front of her, she felt she had some kind of shield from what might be coming after the rock. With her senses ratcheting up and beyond red alert she shuffled through the door, ignoring the glass that grazed her hands. Once into the shade of the passageway she shuffled onto her knees and slammed the door shut, groping with bloodied and shaking fingers for the bolt she knew must be there and ramming it home before she dared to take a breath.

In a film she might have leaned against the door, caught that breath and thought she was safe. But Maura had watched dramas where that kind of stupidity had cost people dearly – she was no fool and immediately launched herself towards the morning room where she had spied a phone earlier on. Panic still engulfed her and, as she lurched, dripping blood, shedding glass and looking half drunk and half crazed, she became convinced that the assailant would have cut the phone lines and that she’d be trapped in the house with a maniac who could burst through locked doors, or worse still – axe their way through them yelling “Here’s Johnny!”.

Once at the morning room door she dropped to her knees again and crawled towards the low table that held the phone, not even daring to look towards the long windows, not daring to imagine a face pressed against the panes and the hot breath of the intruder blooming on the glass…

There was a dial tone.

The buttons didn’t stick, even though they always did in her nightmares.

She bashed 999 into the keypad.

Someone answered and Maura finally found her voice, though it was greatly diminished by the experience and wobbled as if it had no legs. ‘Police, please. Someone just threw a rock through my window and I think they’re still outside,’ she babbled to the dispatcher.

Then she hid behind the sofa, keeping low and staying quiet until the police pounded on the door twenty minutes later. Each one of those minutes in horrified silence, waiting and listening for every creak, every groan and every shift in the building, and convinced she could hear the steps of the intruder – convinced Gordon would be murdered in his bed and that she would be the coward who let it happen.

I could see her through the kitchen window. Sipping her coffee, flipping through the pages of a glossy magazine, dreaming about how life could be if only she were thinner, or taller, or had bigger breasts, more money and less stress. That’s what those magazines did – taught you how to be dissatisfied with your lot. I know all about that, about settling for what life gives you – and hating it.

For a moment, when the upstairs light had flicked on, I thought the nurse might have spotted something, but if she had she didn’t seem to care. She hadn’t seen me, hadn’t noticed. She was warm in there with her hot drink and cosy dressing gown, while I was weathering the storm just to get a glimpse of her through the window. Like some poor relation swallowing my pride and begging for scraps at the back door.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be – I shouldn’t be some midnight stalker skulking in the shadows and seething with anger. I deserve better, after all I’ve done for them, I deserve better.

Anger and resentment moved my hand to a chunk of stone that had fallen from the rockery, forced my hand to pick it up, made my hand hurl it at the glass of the kitchen window. I paused for a second as the glass shattered in a beautiful shower of wanton destruction – a shock to wake the dead but not enough to kill the living.

Not yet.

Shocks take time to kill.

It was inherent cowardice that made me run and I hate my weakness more than I hate them. And I hate that I made my move too soon, I have a treat in store for the nurse. I shouldn’t drive her out just yet.

And they forget.

I have a key.