The Patchwork House (19 page)

“But we’ve moved back a night. She shouldn’t be there.”

“Can I check? Do you mind? I want to be sure. Then we can go get my phone from the drawing room.”

Derek eyed me suspiciously and then nodded. I led the way, uncomfortably aware that Derek was right behind me. If he’d had a torch, he’d have seen the blade tucked into my belt. But he didn’t, so as far as I knew he was unaware of it. My heart hammered again. Did he know what I was going to do? Did I know? I was just taking this one step at a time. Right now I just had to get Derek away from the house.

I stumbled as we reached the doorway to the corridor beyond the conservatory. I deliberately fumbled the torch and let it roll away. As I dropped, I stopped myself from falling by grabbing hold of a large porcelain urn. There was nothing in it but it looked heavy nonetheless. I prayed it wasn’t too heavy to lift.

“What is it?” Derek said, sounding very unconcerned for my wellbeing.

“Just tripped. I’m tired.”

Derek reached for the torch. I saw his hand go for it. I took my chance.

I hefted the urn. It was just the right weight. I brought it crashing down on Derek’s head. It didn’t break. Instead it bounced off with a hollow thunk. Derek crashed to the floor and didn’t move. I grabbed the torch and put it between my teeth. Then I turned him over and checked he was still alive. He was, thankfully. I didn’t want him to die in the house. I had no idea how quickly he would recover, so I summoned every last ounce of strength, placed my hands under his arms and heaved him towards the back door. I was lucky Derek was skinny and didn’t weigh very much, but even so the strain of pulling him to the back door was nearly too much for me.

The door was locked of course, so I dumped Derek on the floor and scrambled for the key. I was glad I’d opened the door
tomorrow
because now I knew exactly which key was the right one. I got it first try. I could hear footsteps coming. Loud, violently loud. The light fixture above my head creaked as it swung. The walls reverberated with the crashing of something very angry.

There was no doubt in my mind now. Derek and the entity were one and the same. It knew he was injured and it wanted to make sure I didn’t leave the house.

I threw open the door and reached down to grab Derek again. The entity’s crashing footsteps were so close now, it could only be in the next room. I hurled myself towards the open back door, expecting it to slam closed any moment. Instead, both inner doors, to the conservatory and the dining room, burst open with a bang that startled me.

I didn’t stop to look, I didn’t use the torch to see where it was, I just pulled and pulled and somehow managed to get Derek outside and out of the way just before the outer door slammed shut.

CHAPTER 14

Still I didn’t look back.
I dragged Derek’s prone body away from the house as fast as I could. The wheelbarrow was still on the opposite side of the courtyard. When I reached it I dumped Derek in, grabbed the handles and took off as fast as I could, heading towards the lake. The torch was hurting my jaw and my teeth. The blade at my back was uncomfortable as hell, my legs were like jelly and my arms felt like they were going to fall apart, but I kept going. I had to get as far away from the house as possible.

I must have looked quite a sight, bouncing over the lawn with a bloke in a wheelbarrow. At one point I hit a bump and the barrow lurched, hurling Derek out onto the ground. I cursed, gathering him up and shoving him back in again. As I set off again, I realized I’d passed up my one opportunity to get my phone back, and maybe get my hands on a fresh lantern. But I’d made my decision and I wasn’t going to waste my hard-fought opportunity.

It took a long time to reach the lake. When we got there I was beyond exhausted.

I dumped Derek out of the wheelbarrow unceremoniously. He was waking up. I had to do this now.

Breathing so hard I thought my lungs would explode and my heart would give out, I tore the knife from my belt. I almost hoped I’d fumble the blade and send it flying into the lake. Then the decision would be made for me. But no, not today.

No excuses.

I held the torch in one hand and the blade in the other, and I stood above Derek as he slowly woke up. I had to do this now.

Right now.

Derek groaned but had not lifted his head yet. I was running out of time.

One with a torch, one with a knife…

I had to kill him. I had to plunge the blade deep into the soft tissue between his neck and his shoulder and then rip it out. I had to sever a major artery and let him bleed out onto the grass.

He’d be dead in seconds, here by the lake. Then he couldn’t die in the house, and the entity would never come into being. Here, on this night when we first arrived in the house, Derek would die and maybe Beth might live. It was a brilliant plan with just one tiny drawback.

I couldn’t do it.

I tried. I thought I might be capable, if push came to shove. I believed that if I ever had to kill someone to save myself or someone I loved, I wouldn’t hesitate to get the job done. And here I was, with a prime opportunity to deny the entity its existence, to kill its origin before it could be born within the walls of the house, and I couldn’t go through with it.

I sat sobbing on the ground, the torch and knife still in my hands. I was exhausted, beaten and defeated. I had one shot at ending this insanity and I had not taken it.

I thought of Percy, driven so insane by the constant abuse from his grandfather’s ghost, who had murdered an innocent priest in cold blood just for a chance to be free from the torture. Now here I was with a similar chance.

I was either a better man than Percy, or a bigger idiot.

“Where the fuck am I?” Derek moaned, rubbing the back of his head and wincing.

He must have seen the knife in my hand by the light of the torch because he sat up in a hurry.

“Why do you have a knife? Did you hit me?”

“Yes. I’m sorry. I was going to kill you.”

He sounded understandably pissed. “Was it something I said?”

“Believe it or not I was trying to stop you from becoming the entity.”

“By killing me?” I couldn’t see his face. He could come at me and take the knife if he wanted to. I wouldn’t blame him. I didn’t shine the light at him, just kept it by my side as I sat slumped by the lake.

“If you were going to die and become that
thing
, I figured I’d make sure you didn’t die in the house. That way the clock wouldn’t suck you in and you wouldn’t be the one in control. Maybe Beth’s entity could take that spot, since she dies in the house tomorrow night. Maybe she wouldn’t die at all.”

“If you’d asked me I might have volunteered.”

“I was hardly going to tell you what I was planning. The entity would have stopped us since you and it were getting along so well.”

“Fuck that… Bloody thing crept into my head. Whispered things. Told me to do and say stuff. I feel free now, for the first time in hours I can think clearly. Made me cut Beth’s eyes out. Oh God… I couldn’t stop myself…”

At first I thought he was choking but instead he was vomiting onto the lawn.

Had I misjudged him? Was he under the influence of the entity when he’d done and said those things? Ironically, if I’d known that, I wouldn’t have dragged him down here to kill him. His behaviour was fuel to my anger and desperation. I had
wanted
him to die. At least, some part of me had. Not enough to actually go through with it.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay,” he said in between hawking and spitting. “I’ve not been myself since I stepped into that house. If you cut out my girlfriend’s eyes I’d cut your throat too.”

Well that was a reassuring thought.

“I’m just glad you didn’t go through with it,” he said.

“Me too. I’d never forgive myself.”

“Yeah I’d hate to have made you feel bad by letting you stab me to death.”

He was starting to sound like the old Derek I used to know. I even smiled a little, despite my exhaustion and my increasingly slim grip on sanity. For the first time in a while, I felt like I had someone on my side.

“So what do we do now?” I asked.

“I have to go back in,” said Derek. In the gloom I saw him rise to his feet.

I turned off the torch, but we were plunged into total darkness again. There was no hint of dawn’s arrival. I had no idea what time it was. I turned the torch back on. It seemed a little dimmer than before.

“If you go back in, it’ll just cloud your mind again,” I said as I reached into my pocket. My spirits lifted a little as my fingers curled around a handful of spare batteries. I took out two and turned the torch off again.

“What choice do I have? I still haven’t found Chloe.” His voice sounded different in the darkness. More ethereal. Like I was hearing him inside my head.

I unscrewed the end of the torch. “I’m not going in there with you.”

“Then I’ll go in alone. You don’t have to go back in. Why don’t you stay out here and wait for dawn?”

I emptied the nearly-spent batteries into my lap and then slotted in two new ones, hoping they weren’t already dead. I felt like a Hollywood action hero, battered but determined, loading new cartridges into my shotgun before heading back into the fight. Right now though, a torch was so much more useful than a shotgun. If I couldn’t see, how could I shoot?
What
would I shoot? It would feel reassuring though, carrying a gun. I needed one of those rifles with a torch attached to the barrel.

Christ! I was falling asleep. My body was at breaking point. I needed rest so badly. I felt like curling up in the grass and taking a nap. I’d wake with the sun and only then would I go back in the house to get my phone, and then I’d get the fuck away from this hell hole.

I screwed the back of the torch together and clicked it on. The light shone bright and strong. This time I did smile.

Derek was standing close to me, his hand outstretched.

“I’m not going in there in the dark!” he said.

The last thing I wanted to do was give him the torch. I had made up my mind. What else could I do?

“You’re not going in at all.”

“Jim, I have to.”

“I’m going.”

“I appreciate it, Jim, but you don’t have to do that.”

I clicked off the torch to save the batteries. “Yes I do. If you go in, you’ll die and become that
thing
. If you go in, it’ll get control of your head again. If you go in, I have to give you the torch, and I don’t think I can do that.”

There was a long, silent pause.

Derek spoke first.

“I’ll walk you to the back door then.”

“Okay.”

I clicked the torch back on and he reached out to help me up. I shone the light towards him just to double check he still had eyes or wasn’t missing his head or something. He seemed normal but tired. His eyes were sunken and his face was drawn. He seemed even thinner now than when he’d arrived.

Then I swung the light around where I had been sitting to make sure I’d not left anything behind, save for the two spent batteries. The torch glinted off the knife, which I’d forgotten about. I picked it up, electing to carry it rather than risk stuffing it into my belt again.

Then the light settled on the wheelbarrow.

“I’m going to need that,” I said.

“The wheelbarrow?”

“Yeah. Push it will you?”

Derek dutifully raised the wheelbarrow and moved back towards the house with it. I walked alongside him, keeping the torch off to save power and only occasionally flicking it back on for a moment to ensure we hadn’t veered off course.

“The photo of Anna,” I said as we walked in pitch blackness. “You brought it, didn’t you?”

Derek spoke his admission without emotion. “Yeah.”

“Beth was really pissed at me about that. Why do you have it?”

“I’ve no idea how it got out of my wallet. It’s inside a hidden flap, there’s no way it could fall out.”

“So you were in love with her?”

“Obviously.”

“I wish you’d said something to Beth before she died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So what’s the story?” I asked. “When did you fall in love with her?”

“While she was still dating you. No, earlier than that, when she and I met at that stupid convention thing I was working at. She was working there too. We hit it off. I invited her to come out with me and some friends…”

“And then she met me.”

“Yeah.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.” Derek sighed. We listened to the sound of the wheelbarrow trundling over the lawn and our soft footsteps on the grass.

“So you must have been pissed at me,” I guessed after a time.

“I was already pissed at you. That was the final straw. I only stayed around you to be around her, but she never noticed me after that. And then you fucking dumped her.”

“What can I say? I was an arsehole back then. She had a chance to go to Australia and I was a lazy fuck and didn’t want to go with her. I told her to stay with me or it was over. We argued. I dumped her.”

“She was
crushed
by what you did. For some reason I can’t fathom she really loved you.”

“How do you know? She left the country a couple of weeks after we split up.”

“Because I went to see her. I begged her to stay. I told her how I felt. She said I was sweet and she loved me like a brother and blah blah blah. After what you did to her, it’s hardly surprising she didn’t want to be with anyone else.”

We were quiet again. I was stunned. I had no idea Derek felt that way about Anna. I’d even run it by him before I asked her out, in case he intended to do it first. Still, what could he say to me but yes it was okay? What would I say in his situation?

“Why didn’t you go after her?”

“To Australia? Oh sure, nothing says boyfriend material more than following someone halfway around the world on the vague hope she’ll fall in love with you.”

I did laugh at that. It felt good, cathartic.

“Laugh at my pain, you bastard.”

“If I get Chloe out, are we going to call it quits?”

“Will I stop being mad at you, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Jim, you’re the most arrogant, lazy, freeloading, oblivious fuckwitted wanker I’ve ever met.”

“I guess I deserve that.”

“Yes you bloody do. And you tried to kill me!”

“Sorry.”

“Apology not accepted.”

“Glad to hear it.”

We were silent for a while after that. We were close to the house now. We could tell without turning the light on. The walls exuded an air of hostility.

“You got a plan?” Derek asked.

“Yeah.”

“Gonna share it with me?”

“Hell no. I don’t want that thing in there having any idea of what I’m up to.”

Truth was, I was making this up as I went along. I had a theory, but if I was wrong I didn’t want to have to explain to Derek why it hadn’t worked.

“Do me a favour though,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“Go to the garage and get a couple of shovels, put them in the wheelbarrow and meet me back here.”

“Are we going to bury something?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s not me is it?”

“No, Derek, I’m past the whole murdering you thing. Just remember, don’t step inside the house, okay?”

“Like I need reminding.”