The Patchwork House (18 page)

I propped myself up on the table to prevent myself from falling. The movement caused the torch to roll off and clatter onto the hardwood floor. The light flickered for a moment but didn’t go out.

My stomach was heaving like I was going to throw up. Somehow I managed to keep it in check.

“Then why is she talking like Beth?” I managed to say between gasps.

“I think the ghost is just providing the power. Her brain is still connected and sort of working, so you know, turn the handle and the music comes out.”

“Why are you saying I’m dead?” Beth asked. “I’m not dead! Jim! Tell him I’m not dead!”

“Sorry, Beth,” said Derek. “You’re very very dead. I checked your pulse after you fell and you didn’t have one. When you stood up, once I got the courage to come anywhere near you, I checked it again and you still didn’t have one.”

I went around the table, pushed past Derek and grabbed the torch. Then I returned to Beth and moved around her, shining the light at the back of her head. I saw a tangled mass of hair near the top of her skull at the back, and the clear protrusion of skull bone.

She really was dead.

“And her eyes?”

“Huh?” said Derek.

I spoke very quietly, almost too softly for him to hear. Beth may have been dead, but I didn’t want to alarm what was left of her. “What happened to her eyes?”

“Oh, I did that.”

I felt like I’d been kicked in the throat. All the breath escaped my body and I couldn’t draw any new air in. I just stared at him open mouthed. Eventually I managed to say something. “You did this to her? Why?”

“Every time my light shone on her I saw those dead eyes staring at me. I went a bit crazy after the fifth straight hour, or at least that’s what it felt like. Hard to tell, but it was a long time. She wouldn’t leave me alone so in the end I put her eyes out with a kitchen knife.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Amazingly, Derek was still talking. “Think of it this way. You get to do what most people don’t when they lose a loved one. You can ask her all the questions you always wanted to, and she’ll answer. All those things you wish you’d asked when she was alive and you never did.”

I threw myself at him, launching myself across the table and slamming into him. I swung a punch at his face but it was wild and he dodged it easily.

“You defiled her,” I screamed, lashing out at him uncontrollably.

He threw me off and stood up. Even in the gloom I could see him backing away, his hands held out to try and placate me.

“Hey, Jim, look I know how it sounds but you’ve got to understand, I was alone in the dark with a fucking corpse following me around. I couldn’t get rid of her. She kept staring at me, it was driving me crazy. I had to do something!”

“You could have covered her head or something. You didn’t need to ruin her eyes!”

“She would have taken off anything I tried to put on her. I tried shutting her in a room but she managed to get out, and then she stared at me like I’d betrayed her. I couldn’t take it anymore.”

I lay on the floor where he had thrown me. All the fight had gone. I started sobbing.

“Don’t cry, Jim,” said Beth. “It’ll all be okay.”

Somehow that just made it worse.

Weird trivial shit went through my head then. How was I going to get her body back to the US for burial if she wouldn’t lie down and stop moving? When her brother died, her parents had insisted on an open casket. That was going to be tough to do for Beth’s wake. And oh God, the police! How the hell was I going to explain this to them? Could I blame it on Derek?

Shit, none of that mattered. The woman I loved was dead, yet she was still walking about the place. It was beyond sick. It was beyond wrong.

I wished she wasn’t dead. I wished I could have done something to save her. But what could I have done, trapped in a different time?

Derek picked up the torch and put it back on the table standing up. The light it cast upon Beth’s face caused her eye sockets to resemble yawning mouths, the shadows extending the size of the pits. She still looked beautiful but in a twisted way. Derek was right about one thing. I did have the chance to ask her stuff I’d always wanted to.

“Beth,” I said, trying to be brave and taking her hands in mine again.

“Hi honey,” she said. “I’m cold.”

“I know. I’ll get you a blanket in a minute. Beth, I have a question for you.”

“Okay, go ahead. Ask me.”

“Beth, I love you more than any other woman I’ve ever known.”

“Do you want me to leave the room?” Derek asked.

“Yes,” I snapped. Then I hastily corrected myself. “No! Don’t fucking go anywhere. I don’t want to be alone again.”

I turned back to Beth, trying hard to pretend her beautiful brown eyes were still gazing at me.

“Beth, will you marry me?”

She giggled and gripped my hands so tightly.

“Oh God, oh wow. Yes! Yes I’ll marry you. Oh Jim!”

She threw herself at me, her arms around my neck. For just a moment I felt that her death wasn’t real. For just a moment I believed she was still alive.

And then I pulled away from her.

“I’m sorry, my love, but you’re dead. You died on the stairs.”

“Why are you saying these things?”

“Because it’s true, hon.” I stroked the hair beside her face. Fresh tears rolled down my face. I didn’t want to let her go, but I had to.

“I thought we were going to get married.”

“Yes, hon, of course we’ll get married. We’ll get married in the States, yeah? When we go back? You’ll look lovely in white.”

I picked up the torch and shone it at her one last time. She really would have looked lovely on our wedding day.

“Stay there please, Love. Derek and I are just going to the next room for a moment. We’ll be right back, okay?”

“Okay, I trust you, Jim. You won’t leave me, right? I’m scared of the dark.”

“No, Beth, I won’t leave you.”

“Okay. Have fun!”

It was like talking with a child. Clearly her brain was breaking down, making her revert to childhood. It broke my heart to leave her there.

Derek and I quietly left the room. Softly I closed the door behind us. I was crying so hard it was tough to keep my eyes focused. We were standing now in the short passageway with the rear doors at the far end. I wondered if I could break them down if I ran at them hard enough. Or maybe I could convince Derek to unlock them with his keys. I had an important question to ask him first.

“Did you find Chloe?”

“No.”

“Shit.”

“She’s probably dead.”

“What makes you say that?”

I wasn’t aiming the torch at him but Derek’s whole demeanor told me he was shrugging.

“I’ve had a lot of time to get used to the idea. I did my crying and I’m done now. I’m more worried about what I’m going to tell the kids.”

“If you didn’t love her, why did you marry her?”

Derek didn’t deny my blunt question. “I got her pregnant. I did the honourable thing.”

“You were an idiot for getting her pregnant when you had no money.”

“Yeah, well shit happens. We can’t all have the perfect life like you.”

I paused before answering, refusing to let him get to me. “My life doesn’t feel very perfect right now.”

We stayed there in silence for a full minute.

“So what do we do now?” I asked.

“I can’t leave,” said Derek, “not until I’m sure. Besides, if we can find a body I can at least claim on her insurance.”

“That’s pretty cold,” I said sourly.

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to get rich off her death. I’m thinking of my kids, believe it or not.”

I changed the subject. “There’s ways to force a time change. We can try it if you want. Maybe we’ll jump to a day where Chloe is. Maybe she’s still alive.”

I was hoping he would tell me it was okay, I could leave and he would carry on looking. Instead he seemed interested until I told him we’d have to give up the torch.

He shook his head, becoming more animated than at any point since our reunion. “I can’t cope with the dark again! I was in the dark with your dead girlfriend for well over an hour before I remembered she was carrying spare batteries.”

“So what do you suggest we do?”

“We should talk to the ghost. Ask it what it wants. If we give it what it wants it might let us go and give us Chloe back.”

“I’d rather lose the torch and be in the dark again.”

“We only have one torch and I’m not leaving it.”

“But I have the torch,” I pointed out.

“And I have the keys.”

“Want to swap?”

We handed over the precious items warily, like Cold War enemies exchanging captured spies on neutral ground. I half expected Derek to grab both items and run, but then he’d be in the same situation he was before I arrived. He may not like me, but at least he was with another live person again. I guessed that must be the deciding factor.

Immediately I went to the back door and unlocked it. I swung it open and was about to take a step over the threshold when I hesitated. Did outside count as a different part of the house? If I was out and Derek was in, could a time change occur, leaving me alone again?

“Leaving so soon?” Derek asked. There wasn’t much humour in his voice.

“No, just getting some air.” It was very pleasant to breathe in the cool night breeze. I gazed at where I assumed the horizon was, looking for any faint sign that the sun might be rising. I had no idea how many hours remained until dawn but there was no doubt it was way overdue.

I wiped away my tears and realized I was desperate to pee. So I unzipped my fly and relieved myself out the back door, into the dark. It felt oddly liberating, after all the stress and heartache and pain. Here I was, pissing out the back door of a posh manor house.

“Are you taking a leak?” Derek asked with disbelief.

“I recommend it. I’m not gonna go find the toilet in the dark.” Once I was done I zipped myself up and stepped back inside. “Just don’t step over the threshold, okay?”

Derek followed my lead while I held the torch. I avoided lighting him up and instead shone the torch towards the conservatory door. I suddenly felt ravenous and thirsty. It was amazing what you didn’t notice when you were under stress. Right now I felt almost relaxed. I realized with a heavy heart that I didn’t have much left to lose. Beth was dead. I no longer had to worry about finding her, or escaping with her. Without her, I couldn’t think of much point in fighting to keep myself alive. There was a time when I burned through girlfriends like mobile phones, upgrading to a fancier model every year or so when I got bored of the old one or something cooler came along. But Beth was different. I couldn’t live without her. That was a stupid statement. Of course I
could
live without her. I was still capable of maintaining myself. I just didn’t
want
to. I felt it more keenly now than when she was alive. I missed her so much already. I wanted to go back into the dining room, turn off the light and hold her close, pretend that everything was okay. Even in this brief respite I was still under stress and probably not thinking straight. If I made it to morning, how bad was it going to be when the full impact of her loss hit me? Could I really cope with all that hurt after going through so much already?

So what did I want now? What was left? I wanted Derek to find Chloe so we could all leave. I also wanted something else first. Something that seethed within me now, boiling up like heart burn.

I wanted revenge.

I rolled that last word around in my head for a while. It sounded right. It was as good a cause as any.

It implied fighting, instead of just stumbling around in the dark. It implied that the entity might have some weakness, which so far it had not revealed. It demanded I grow a pair.

“Where are you going to confront it?” I asked Derek as he came back in.

He took the torch from me and said, “In the wine cellar, where else?”

Of course. The wine cellar.

“Do you still have matches?”

“No.”

“Shame.”

“Are you planning on burning down the house?”

“No, just the clock.”

“There might be matches somewhere we’ve not looked. Or you could try sawing through the clock’s base with kitchen knives.”

“Okay, let’s go get them.”

CHAPTER 13

Together, Derek and I
stepped into the conservatory, being careful not to get separated again. Once we were in I let him go ahead. He had the torch so he didn’t object to leading the way. I wanted him where I could see him, however dimly. After all, here was a guy who had put out the eyes of a corpse with a kitchen knife. Even if Beth wasn’t my girlfriend, I don’t think I could have done that. If I was crazy enough to do it I certainly wouldn’t be calm and rational afterwards. I shuddered. Derek gave me the creeps. Whatever his justification, I could never forgive him for what he’d done.

But I wouldn’t need to. After I had my revenge on the entity, once we’d found Chloe and escaped from this house, once all this was done, then I’d cut off all ties with Derek and never see him again. Not a problem when you live in different countries.

We entered the kitchen, again trying not to get separated. Once inside I hung back by the conservatory door. A weight had descended on me, a depression so profound it was hard to breathe. There was no point in returning to the US, not now Beth was gone. Without her, I had few ties in the States. I had no job besides working for my dad, which took me all over the place. It didn’t matter where I was based. All my friends over there I knew through Beth, so we would likely drift apart too.

She was my world. And she was gone.

Derek pulled the knife block from the kitchen counter, but it took him both hands to hold it so he put the torch down.

“Come and take the torch, will you?”

In a daze I walked over and picked up the torch, grateful that he wasn’t asking me to carry the knives. In my current mental state I might use them on myself. Now of course I had the problem that I would be leading the way with a heavily armed psychopath right behind me. I would have to try hard not to piss him off.

I shone the light around the kitchen in case there was anything else we could use.

“Have you noticed something,” I asked as the light moved over the central counter.

“What?”

“The food debris is back.” I walked over to the counter and ran a finger over its surface in the torchlight. My finger gathered fragments of the meal we had shared together on the night we had arrived here. That meant we were now either in the same night, or one soon after. Was this “tomorrow” night? I hurried over to the rubbish bin. Inside were take-away bags and containers.

“This time someone really did clean up.”

“So?” said Derek.

“Well think about it. On the night we arrived, we ate our meal then abandoned it when we heard the banging upstairs. Later we came back to the kitchen and found everything was gone, no leftovers, no bags, no crumbs. So at that point the kitchen had moved back to a time before we arrived. Now the crumbs are still here, but someone put the big stuff, the bags and containers, in the bin. Did you do that?”

“Of course not.”

“Well then it must have been done in the morning, on the day we left this place. The morning after the night we arrived.”

“Which means we make it to morning?”

“I think so. If Arthur had done it, he would surely have cleaned the counter too. We obviously left in a hurry but stayed long enough to pack up our stuff and chuck this crap away.”

“So why is this important right now?”

I wished Beth was here, she was much better at getting her head around this stuff than I was.

“Because it means this is the night
after
the night we arrived. We’ve moved forward in time.”

“So what? Maybe Arthur does come in the morning after we arrived, and maybe he only has time to put away the big stuff. Maybe he has no idea what happened to us and is just pissed we left everything in a mess. Maybe it doesn’t mean we get out of here alive.”

I didn’t answer him. He was right, but what he was missing was the significance of
when
we were. Something was nagging at my brain, something vital. I led the way from the kitchen and Derek followed. He was eager to get down to the wine cellar. As we walked, something important occurred to me.

Beth was dead. Was she the fifth ghost? Was it her? It didn’t feel like her, and it was highly unlikely she would put us all through hell. Unless she was still really pissed at me. But I couldn’t see her taking it out on Chloe and Derek too, even after death. I’d been looking for the identity of the fifth ghost, assuming Father Jeremy was number three as his corpse had told me, and Percy was number four. Beth had died in the house, she could be number five. As I understood it, the clock–once installed–sucked in any “available” spirits and then waited for more people to die. That meant Beth was number five. But I honestly didn’t believe the entity could be Beth. She was mad at me when we parted, for sure, but not crazy enough to put us all through this.

So if Beth wasn’t the fifth ghost, who was?

I was aware of Derek walking behind me as we passed through the conservatory. His breathing was ragged with exhaustion and from hefting the heavy knife block. I thought about how much damage he could do to me with those knives. Of course he could have killed me already, but what if one of those knives ended up killing him instead?

“Derek,” I asked as the two of us crossed into the ballroom.

“What?”

“How much do you hate me?”

He stopped in his tracks. A few steps further into the room I stopped too. I covered him with the torch beam. He dumped the knife block on a nearby table and dusted his hands down.

“We’re going to do this now, are we?”

“Do what?”

“Have it out. You and me. I wanted to deal with the fucking Amityville Horror first but as usual it’s all about you. We need to work together to survive this, you and me, so I was going to play nice. I’ve been biting my tongue this whole damn time and now you just want to bring it all out in the open and deal with our issues, is that it?”

“I need to know what you’re capable of,” I said.

“I’m not going to knife you in the back, Jim. Jesus, there’s been enough death already. What the hell do you take me for?”

“You took out her eyes, Derek.”

“She was
dead
!”

“I know that, but… I don’t understand how…”

“I went a bit crazy, I admit it. I went nuts because she kept staring at me every time I looked at her. I lost it, I went nuts.” He was repeating himself. My eyes flicked towards the knife block, and I wished I’d confronted him before we’d picked it up from the kitchen. “But there’s a world of difference between taking out a corpse’s eyes and hurting a living person, Jim.”

“So you say.”

“So I say. I’m not going to hurt you, as much as I’d like to.”

I took a step away from him. “Why? Why do you want to hurt me?”

“Because I fucking hate you, Jim. I don’t know why I ever accepted your friend request. When you moved away I thought I was rid of you. You’re an insufferable prick and I never wanted to see you again!”

I was stunned. I thought I might have inadvertently pissed him off at some point. This was a profound hatred. This was deep shit. But what shook me more than Derek’s words was the movement I heard upstairs. Creaking floorboards and the like. Something above our heads was waking up. I raised my eyes skywards.

“Uh, Derek,” I began, but he was in mid-rant now and wasn’t going to be silenced.

“Look at you, you smug bastard. You’ve never done a hard day’s work in your life. Everything you have was handed to you. You live off your dad’s money, jetting about the world looking at cool places and then back to your luxury apartment in Chicago, which Daddy paid for no doubt.”

The movement upstairs had faded but was still audible. Whatever was overhead was heading away from us, likely making for the staircase…

“And boo hoo about your fucking girlfriend, Jim. I’m sure you’ll miss her for the five minutes it will take to find the next poor bitch that comes along.”

“I asked her to marry me,” I said.

“She was fucking dead when you asked her, you dickwad. You could have told her you were signing up for the army and shipping off to Afghanistan for all the difference it would have made. It’s piss easy to ask someone a tough question when there are no consequences to the answer.”

In the distance I could hear those footsteps. They sounded like they were on the stairs already.

“Derek, we have to leave.”

“No! Fuck you, trying to run away again. Just because your bitch is dead doesn’t mean you don’t owe me. You’re going to help me find my wife, you miserable shit. It’s your fault she’s here.”

“I was trying to be nice.”

The footsteps were getting louder again and I could swear I heard a door burst open. It wasn’t overhead anymore; it was coming from behind Derek, on the ground floor.

“Nice? Yeah you’ve always been nice, haven’t you Jim.”

I didn’t stop to listen to him. I took off at a run, heading for the door to the right of the stage.

“Come back here,” Derek yelled.

I opened the door and was about to pass through when I realized the entity was already here. It stood in a black cloud of hate just behind Derek. My former friend didn’t seem at all fazed by the presence.

“You are not allowed to leave.”

The door slammed shut with such force it propelled me back into the ballroom and I nearly dropped the torch. I stood quaking in fear. If I hadn’t relieved myself at the back door, I’d be pissing myself right now.

My voice sounded small and squeaky. “So I was right.”

“We had a little chat while I was on my own in the dark,” Derek said. “We realized that our hatred towards you is entirely mutual. We have so much in common it’s scary.”

“I know why you get on so well, Derek,” I stammered, having problems forming words. “It’s because you’re the same person. Derek, you’re going to die and you’re going to become the last spirit trapped in the clock. You are the fifth ghost!”

“That’s not true. I’m not in any danger. The entity likes me. You’re the one who’s going to die, Jim.”

“Think about it, Derek. If that were true then I’d be trapped in the clock and I’d be the entity. Or if neither of us then Beth! Either way, I don’t think the ghost would have murdered her.”

Derek faltered somewhat. “That’s not true,” he insisted.

“It is true,” I said. “But you don’t need to hate me.”

“Why not?”

I had the germ of an idea, but I needed to be back in the same time zone as all of our equipment.

“We need to return to the night we arrived here. I need to show you pictures on my phone.”

“Pictures of what?”

“Derek, you don’t know me. You don’t know the real me. There’s stuff I do, it’s not on Facebook and I don’t go around shouting about it. I only work a third of each year for my dad, so in my time off I volunteer. I know I was a lazy bastard before, I know you resent that, but I’ve changed, I swear.”

“Bullshit!”

“Then let me show you. Ask your friend to take us back to the night we arrived and I’ll show you.”

There was a long pause. I hardly dared to breathe. Then, without another word, the entity disappeared into the conservatory. There was a shift in the atmosphere, and I knew we had jumped in time again.

“It’s done.”

I breathed out heavily, sweat running down my face and neck. Were we really back to the same day we’d arrived? Was all our equipment sitting in the drawing room? Was Chloe here?

“Okay,” I said. ”Come on. I’ll show you the real me. I’ll show you the pictures of the kids I help, and the shelter I work at.”

As we were leaving the ballroom, I casually shone the torch at Derek’s face. For just a second as I passed the knife block, I blinded him. In that moment, I grabbed one of the knives and slid it under my belt behind my back. I prayed I hadn’t just stabbed myself in the arse with it. Adrenaline was pumping so hard through my system I doubt I would have felt it cut me. Thankfully, Derek didn’t notice that I now had a weapon.

There was no sign of the entity now. Derek seemed more at ease, though I kept him permanently in my torchlight so I could keep tabs on where he was.

“I’m so glad it’s gone,” he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know what comes over me when that thing is around.”

“So you don’t hate me?” I asked hopefully.

“Oh I still hate you, but that thing scares the crap out of me. It kind of takes over. All I can think about is hurting you.”

“That’s reassuring,” I said. If Derek found that funny, I didn’t catch him smiling. I was trying to get a handle on just how far gone he was. After all that time alone with a corpse for company, after whatever the hell the entity said and did to him, and after putting out my girlfriend’s eyes with a kitchen knife, I guessed he wasn’t too far from the ragged edge. I was about to send him even further over.

We were about to enter the kitchen when I stopped. Derek turned.

“What is it?”

“I can hear something,” I said. I shone my light at the other door, the one leading to the backdoor hallway. “I think Beth’s still in the dining room.”