Midnight is a Lonely Place (48 page)

‘No, no,
NO!
’

Alison sat up violently, her hands to her temples. Her nails were red with her own blood. She stared round the room. The lights were no longer on, but she could see quite clearly. The woman was standing by the window, her blue gown moving gently as though the wind were blowing from behind her, her feet in the soft dune sand, her hair tangled in its combs. She seemed to see right through the wall, through the house, through the darkness and the snow.

Alison cowered against the wall. Blood. There was blood everywhere; down the front of the woman’s dress; on the floor on her own sheets and – she looked down suddenly, seeing without trouble in the darkness, all over her own hands.

Her own scream blocked out the sound of voices. She screamed on and on, out of control, out of her head now, watching herself from the doorway, watching the group of people downstairs rise from the kitchen table, pick up their candles and head towards the stairs. Diana was there first, the flame of her candle shivering and trailing smoke.

‘Alison. Alison, darling! Oh Christ, what’s wrong with her?’

She could see her mother’s arm around her, see her mouth moving, but she felt nothing. He was there now, inside her head again. Laughing. Why was he laughing? Laughing at the blood and the pain. Laughing at her: the woman by the curtains. She was indistinct now, a shadow from a distant past. Nothing more. Disappearing. Vanquished. Crumbling back into the sand. Part of the forgotten time …

‘
Pater noster …’
It was Patrick’s voice, trembling, in the shadows.
‘Libera nos a malo. Ave Maria. Libera nos a malo.’
The words slid into a sob of pain.

‘Her face. Christ, Di, look at her face.’ Breathless, Roger had joined the group on the landing, peering over his wife’s shoulder. ‘Shut up, Paddy!’ He turned on his son. ‘I won’t have that sentimental crap uttered in this house!’

‘Go away, all of you.’ Diana tightened her grip on Alison’s shoulders. ‘Go away. I’ll see to her.’ She glanced up, scarcely able to see through her tears. ‘Kate, will you stay. The rest of you go downstairs.’

For a moment Roger opened his mouth, about to speak, then he changed his mind. He handed Kate his candle and turned away. He was shaking visibly as he ushered the others down.

Obediently Kate went to the bathroom for a facecloth and, wringing it out brought it back to the bedroom. Diana wiped the blood from Alison’s hands, then gently she guided her back to bed. ‘You’re safe now, sweetheart. Quite safe.’

‘What about her face?’ Kate was holding the candle steady.

‘I’ll leave it for now. They’re only superficial scratches.’ Diana glanced at her wearily. ‘I’m not letting you and Paddy or Joe leave this house again tonight.’

‘Someone must get help, Diana.’

‘Time enough in daylight. Everything must wait until then.’

‘But what about Greg? What about Cissy?’ Kate had been appalled at the sight of Cissy Farnborough lying, barely conscious, on the sofa by the fire.

‘She’ll be all right. I can take care of her. There is someone trying to kill us all out there, Kate!’ Diana pulled the sheet up around Alison’s chin and tucked it in. ‘I am not letting anyone else set foot outside this house.’

Kate looked down at Alison. The girl was quiet now, lying very still on her blood-stained pillow, breathing long, even breaths as though she were asleep again. ‘What do you think happened?’ she asked in a whisper.

‘She had a nightmare.’ There was a desperate set to Diana’s chin.

‘I think it was more than that.’ Kate walked further into the room. The small intimate space, lit by the two candles was icy cold. On the floor in front of the curtains lay a scattering of sand. Kate stared down at it for a moment, frowning, then she turned away. ‘Why did your husband swear at Paddy for praying?’

‘He doesn’t believe in God. He stopped believing the day he discovered he had cancer.’

‘And does he believe in evil? In possession? In ghosts?’

It was Diana’s turn to shiver. ‘He’s a reductionist and a fatalist. He believes in nothing that cannot be scientifically proven.’

‘How strange.’ Kate’s eyes were fixed on Alison’s face. To her, Roger had come across as a man with poetry in his soul. And he was a man who still, in extremis, cried out the name of Christ even though it meant nothing to him.

‘Do you pray?’ Diana sat down on the edge of the bed and laid a gentle hand on her daughter’s forehead. It was very cold.

‘Not very often. But it was me who taught Paddy the words to say. Outside in the dark it seemed the right thing to do. He thought Marcus would understand the Latin.’

‘And did he?’ The note of irony Diana was aiming at somehow failed to materialise; the question came out straight.

‘I don’t know. But the words made me feel better. A shield. A talisman against evil.’

‘He’s got us trapped here, hasn’t he.’ Diana looked at her suddenly and for a moment she could no longer hide her panic. ‘Every one of the cars is damaged; the phone won’t work; no one knows what’s happened. Bill and Cissy tried to help us and look what happened to them.’ A tear slid down her face. ‘And Allie. What’s happened to Allie?’

Kate knelt beside her and took her hand. ‘I think we should take Allie downstairs. I think we should all stay together.’

‘She’s right.’ Greg’s voice from the landing made them both jump. He hobbled in and stood looking down at his sister. ‘I’ll ask Joe to come and carry her down then I think you should make a huge cauldron of soup for us all.’ He was looking at his mother. He glanced at Kate who was still kneeling on the floor. ‘Everything will seem a bit less fraught in the morning, then we can send for reinforcements.’

Kate gave him a watery smile. ‘You make it sound easy.’ The flickering candlelight, made her face look ethereal. She had, he noticed not for the first time, a frail, pre-Raphaelite beauty, emphasised by her disordered, tangled hair and helped, he supposed wryly, by the submissive posture, on her knees at his feet.

‘It will be easy. Everything is always better in daylight.’

‘Don’t tempt providence!’ As if realising that her position put her at a disadvantage, she scrambled to her feet. Standing, she was as tall as he. ‘Greg.’ She put her hand on his arm, her voice barely a whisper. ‘Look, by the window. On the floor.’

He raised an eyebrow, then picking up the candle, he limped across and surveyed the carpet.

‘Sand. It could have come from Allie’s shoes.’

‘But it didn’t. I was up here earlier and it wasn’t here.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘I just am.’ She shrugged. ‘I notice things like that. After the cottage.’

‘What are you saying?’ Diana turned to look at the carpet.

‘She’s saying that some sand has blown in the window and that it would be better if we all went downstairs and sat round the fire,’ Greg said firmly.

‘Don’t patronise me!’ Diana snapped. She stood up. ‘What does the sand mean?’ She looked at Kate.

‘All right, I’ll tell you,’ Greg said slowly. ‘It means that I don’t think we are dealing with a human killer. I don’t think there is anyone out there in the woods or on the beach. I think our enemy is a man who has been dead for nearly two thousand years; a man who is very, very angry because we have disturbed a grave in the sand. And I think we are all in terrible danger.’

LVI

‘I must have been mad to come, quite mad!’

Anne Kennedy walked along the line of small cars, the keys in her hand as she peered through the driving snow to try and find the vehicle she had been allocated. In her other hand were the handles of a large canvas holdall, a road map bought from the car hire desk in the airport terminal, the strap of her shoulder bag, and there were three books balanced in the crook of her elbow.

It had not been snowing in Edinburgh. This was ridiculous. Sisterly love had overstepped the bounds. There it was. Number 87. A small, neat, bright red Ford Fiesta. With relief she slotted the key into the lock and pulled the door open. The car smelled of plastic and air freshener. It was blessedly spotless. Tossing her bag and her books onto the back seat she climbed in and closed the door then she fumbled for the light switch. She had to find out how to get from Stansted out to the east coast before the snow piled too thick in the country lanes.

Her last conversation with Kate had worried her a great deal, as had the fact that Kate’s phone was still out of order. It had been with enormous relief that she had found two visiting lecturers to look after her flat and wait upon C.J’s every whim, so that she could head south for a three-day break to reassure herself that all was well. Now she was not so sure that she had done the sensible thing. England, with its usual paranoia about any weather pattern one or two points either side of the norm showed every sign of closing down completely. The forecast was becoming increasingly hysterical and to make matters worse, Kate was not even expecting her, thanks to the incompetence of the telephone engineers who swore each time she rang them that the line had been checked and was working perfectly.

She took one last look at the road map, memorised the formula – A120 east towards Colchester, A12 north towards Ipswich and then A120 again – switched on the engine and turned out the light. It would take, she reckoned, about an hour, perhaps an hour and a half at most. She glanced down at the dashboard clock. It was nearly nine already. The roads were unpleasant but by no means impassable as she drove east, the windscreen wipers carving arcs in sleet which turned white and sparkling in the reflected headlights of oncoming cars. The road was more or less straight and she made far better time than she expected, bypassing Dunmow and Braintree and turning north at last on the main dual carriageway which cut through the flatlands of East Anglia towards Suffolk. The radio played quietly in the background with once a break for the weather forecast – dire: overnight snow would thicken with easterly gales tomorrow causing drifting, and piling high tides onto the beach with the full moon – and a news update, then it lapsed once more into Brahms and Schumann.

It was ten past ten when she pulled into a layby in front of a multi-armed signpost and, flicking on the light, consulted her road map again. It showed Redall as a small dot on the shore. Leading to it was a broken line which denoted a track of some sort. To reach the track she had to negotiate about four miles of intricate lanes. She scowled. The snow was harder now and though the little car had bowled gamely through the worst it could throw at her so far, there were signs of it drifting now she was on a deserted road. There were no car tracks visible; and at the foot of hedges a deceptively soft bank was building up on both sides of the road.

‘Oh, well, plough on.’ She muttered to herself. She had already pinpointed a pub on the mainish road which looked as though it was only half a mile or so from Redall. Perhaps she should make for that first.

The tyres slithered uncomfortably as she engaged first gear and pulled out into the middle of the carriageway, but once she got going the car held the road. Left. Left. Right. She repeated the turnings to herself out loud as she negotiated each increasingly narrow lane with more and more care. She should be nearly there now. There should be a pub on the next bend.

There wasn’t. She drove on. The turning she knew should appear within a couple of hundred yards did not materialise. The lane turned inland again and wound infuriatingly back on its tracks, climbing up and down steep hills which had no right to be there at all. She must have missed a turning somewhere. ‘Damnation!’ She pulled up and consulted the map again. It looked so straightforward on paper. Left, left, right. A straight bit, a bend, the pub and then a few more bends until the top of the track. She wound down the window and stared out. The wind was ice cold, clean, cutting. Ice crystals seared her skin. All she could hear was silence and then, almost subliminally, in her bones, the distant moan of the wind. Hastily she wound her window up again. She preferred the steamy, incestuous fug of the little car with its canned music – Schumann had now given way to a Beethoven Sonata.

She had begun to ponder the possibility of having to spend the night in the car – not a pleasant prospect without rugs or thermos – when she saw the lights of a house loom out of the snow ahead. It was no pub, but at least the occupants might be presumed to know where they were.

They did, and it was a good five miles from Redall. ‘You turned the wrong way back there, my dear.’ The elderly man who opened the door in his dressing gown had invited her into his hallway to consult her map with her. ‘What you had better do is go on down here,’ he stabbed at it with a nicotine-stained finger, ‘and then turn back along the estuary road.’

‘Are you on your own?’ A pale wispy woman in a worn eau-de- Nil bathrobe, her straggly hair in rollers, appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘You shouldn’t drive around on your own on a night like this.’

‘I know.’ Anne managed a bright smile. ‘I didn’t realise the weather was going to be so bad.’

‘Would you like a cup of tea before you go on?’ The woman was descending the stairs now, one step at a time, painfully.

Anne was sorely tempted but she shook her head. ‘It’s kind of you, but I think I had better go on. It’s settling quite deep and I don’t want to get stuck.’