“What’ll it take? For a worst case scenario?”
“We’re a long way from that, Paul, don’t worry.” Sam brushes his hands together. He looks relaxed, almost insolent. He’s still smiling, revealing those crooked teeth, slightly discolored.
I look over at Alice. Her hands hold the sides of her plate so tightly her knuckles turn white. She does not lift her head. Paul pitches his cigarette out in the sink. It hisses.
“Well, welcome to Beacon Terrace, Mina. Hope you brought your bell, book, and candle.”
EIGHT
The house is quiet, the night air sticky and close to the skin like a hot, damp breath. Thin curtains hang lifeless in front of the open window as I climb into bed and lie there in the dark, hands folded on my chest. It’s hard to fall asleep, my brain clicking and whirring and jolting like a broken clock. A little past one I must start to drift off because I’m woken what seems like seconds later by a sound outside the closed bedroom door.
I lie for a moment, half-conscious. It had sounded like scrabbling claws, pawing at the wood. I lie still, my mind turning to Eddie in an absent, somnolent way. The two of us in our old house in Clovelly, sitting on the beanbags in that sunlit spot of the attic that had always smelled a little like mothballs and damp. “Mouseshit Corner,” Eddie had christened it, because we’d regularly find mice droppings up there no matter how many trapsour mother put down. We’d take up our father’s copy ofMysteries of the British Islesand pore over the stories about demons and ghosts in quiet, awed wonder. Eddie was particularly fond of Black Shuck, the legendary devil dog that prowled the dark Suffolk lanes with flaming red eyes, his appearance a portent of death and disease.
Then the noise comes again. It sounds like an animal is out there. A big dog, mouth laced with drool. Grunting, panting. Scratching at the wood. There is a wet snuffling sound along the bottom of the door like it is seeking ingress. Hunting me. I force my rigid muscles to move, hearing the click of my spine, the sharp, shallow breath in my lungs. I think of calling out for Sam but he’s downstairs and I can’t alert him without waking the whole house. My eyes fall on the key Lisa handed to me earlier. I didn’t lock the door when I went to bed and now, seeing a large shadow briefly blot out the light in the gap along the bottom, I wish I had. I wonder if it’s possible a stray dog has broken in somehow (“Can she find Donald? Ask her to look for him. Please!”) and as I edge slowly toward the door, I can’t help feeling that whatever is out there is low to the ground, predatory. I hear that hoarse panting again, like an animal caught in a snare. Close-up, the sounds are heavier, more primitive. Porcine. It makes me think not of a dog but of a beast covered in wiry bristles with thick, ugly tusks that scrape along the floor.
I press a hand to the door and the movement seems to pause, as if sensing me.It knows you’re there, Mina,some quiet, internal voice tells me. I take a short breath and then another. I am a statue, perfectly still. I wonder if it can hear how fast my heart is beating. Then I open the door.
The hallway is empty, the air still. In the darkness there is a static that lifts the hairs on the back of my neck and tightens mylungs. I stare into the gloom, eyes strained for movement, but no shadow darts across the hallway or peels away from the wall, no creeping hand clamps around my ankle. There’s nothing there, I tell myself after a moment, closing the door and climbing back onto Billy’s narrow, sagging mattress. Nothing there, silly.
Still, though. I lie awake a long time afterward, eyes peeled open in the dark, listening for the rattle of the doorknob or the quietclickof the latch as whatever I thought I heard out there finds a way in.
NINE
The next morning, I open the front door to find a middle-aged man standing at the gate. He has an arm missing, the empty shirtsleeve pinned to his chest. His face is hard and gnarled with knots of pink scar tissue that reach all the way to his hairline. He watches me as I step outside, the ground already warm beneath my feet. The crowd today is small, only a handful of people. But it will get bigger. Already it has the feel of something building. Pressure, like a storm. Incense sticks burn in the gaps between paving slabs. Someone is carrying a placard which readsGIVE THE DEAD THY TONGUE. The mood is somber, pale faces rubbing tired eyes. A woman in a flowered sundress lets her dog urinate against the gatepost. The dark stain spreads onto the pavement, steam rising into the air.
“What are you all doing here?” I ask them. “What do you want?”
The man with the placard watches me approach. His voice is very deep and has no inflection, his lips barely moving.
“We’re here to see the girl. Bring her out so she can speak with us.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Is it true?” Another voice on my right. I turn toward it. It’s the woman with the pissing dog. She looks me up and down, assessing me. “What they’re saying about her.”
“Depends what they’re saying, I suppose.”
“That she’s got powers,” the man with the placard says.
“You’ll need to be more specific,” I reply calmly.
“I’ve got a limp.” That’s another man, older and slightly twisted at the hip as if by polio. He leans on a stick. “I’m not able to work. Can she help me do you think? She’s been telling me to come here and she’ll heal me.”
“I lost my wife in the crash.” That’s the man with one arm and scarred face. His eyes are a sketch of misery. “After the funeral her jewelry went missing and I think my son has took it and sold it. Will you give her this? I need to know what to do!”
He’s holding something out to me but I don’t reach for it. I don’t want it. I think of all those psychometry tokens lying in the kitchen drawer with a feeling of such profound sadness I think I might start crying and never stop.
“This is madness,” I tell them, staring around at them all. “Please, go home. She’s a young girl, just a teenager. She’s not special, she’s just sick.”
The woman with the dog narrows her gaze. She has beady eyes that gleam like sunlight on metal.
“Aren’t you that reporter?”
“I’m not, no.”
“You come here with him, though?”
“Yes.”