Adam Nevill - House of Small Shadows

With one hand clasped across her mouth and nose, she peered through the gap.

And looked away. She heard herself whimper and say, ‘God.’

She glanced back into the dim ruby air and again saw the vertebrae of an impossibly curved spine, and so pronounced beneath the dead white skin, the bone joints seemed in danger of breaking through the bloodless flesh of the small figure hunched over inside the galvanized metal tub. Mason’s ethanol bath. In which, what must have been Edith sat facing forward.

Without the cottage-loaf wig of rags and false hair, the back of a mostly hairless skull confronted Catherine. The shoulders were so narrow and pinched and the scapula so defined, she was not sure anything so wizened could still be living. But it was the mere glimpse of the scar, from a long dorsal incision, reaching from the nape of the scrawny neck to the black water’s lap-lap-lapping edge, for which her shock and revulsion were mostly saved.

A second figure she could not see, but heard sobbing, was also inside the room.

Maude?

Catherine fell as much as fled back through the oblivion of the utility corridor to the front door of the house. In the surreal confusion of her partial sight, the image of that emaciated form shivering within the black water hounded her. And she knew she would rather risk freezing to death outside than spend any more of this night under the same roof as these grim creatures that conducted such ghastly rituals in the early hours of the morning, in a house alive with rats.

For the first time in her friendship with Leonard, she felt hot knots of anger towards him.

The two great front doors of the Red House were locked. And whoever had locked the doors had taken the keys.

When she awoke, the bedroom was still lit by the small lamp.

Catherine sat up slowly and held her head in both hands until the swoops settled. The concussive ache in her head had lifted, as had the shivering and sensitivity of her skin. Maybe the hot constriction in her throat had awoken her, because the need to gulp at cold water was urgent again.

A great distance of time and space separated her from the memory of running through the house to her bed. Her recollections of the previous night were murky. While more conscious than she had been in some time, she still struggled to distinguish between what had been a nightmare or delirium, and what had been real. Poor bald, scarred Edith, that had been real. Or had it? The children in the costumes a dream? And the mannequin with the head? Impossible. Just part of a nightmare.

Illness, being drugged with what the old fools thought of as medicine, must have opened a distant region of her mind. The part she used for dreaming had accelerated its activity when she was half awake. Her trances verified she was susceptible to this. And God only knew she’d had a few of those. Until she could get out of the building and get home, she could not afford to consider her experience to be anything else. Her sanity was dependent upon it.

She opened the heavy drapes and looked out at an indigo sky from which the light dissolved. Catherine quickly checked the time on her phone. 8 p.m. Not possible.

Surely it was 8 a.m. and the last vestiges of night were surrendering to the dawn. She had dropped the phone on the stairs the night before, her fingers had been clumsy about the handset’s controls, she might have accidentally reset the clock.

Weak and unsteady on her feet, she opened and fired up her laptop on the writing table. Like the phone the computer showed a red battery level. But she had been recharging them. She remembered doing it.

She reattached both chargers to the wall sockets. Even though there had never been a signal here, the idea of the phone and laptop being lifeless suddenly seemed too terrible to consider when surrounded by such ponderous antiquity.

Once the laptop screen loaded, she was confronted by the horrible shock of having slept all day following the troubled night.

8 p.m.

Her stomach was cavernous and burned with hunger. It’s why she was so clumsy, so weak, why her thoughts were struggling to coordinate beyond bursts of clarity in a fog of bewilderment. She’d been out of it for twenty-four hours with little water and without food.

The door to her room was locked from the inside. At the thought of being here again after dark, she twisted the key then yanked the door open. And stared down at an antique silver tray, filled with cutlery, plates, two silver tureens. An envelope rested between the teapot and butter dish. Beside it, a red hatbox, with a folded cream garment laid upon its lid, and a pair of narrow white slippers.

Carefully, Catherine brought the tray inside and placed it on the writing table. The tureens were cold. But she’d eat the old hat before she touched another morsel of Maude’s food. Where did they even buy it from? The presence of food in the house was incongruous. Nothing, nothing at all, was making sense. Three days to be upset by a horrid film, frightened repeatedly, chased through the grounds by flies, to suffer the kind of delusions she attributed to the insane… Edith in that metal tub. The smells. The stairs. ‘Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.’

She had come here as a valuer of antiques, but that role now seemed so distant as to be irrelevant. She hadn’t valued a single item. Because they were still testing her, assessing her. Maybe no stranger from the outside world could just saunter in here and make off with the kind of haul that would make international news. Or was all of this preparation?

But for what?

Her hunch about Edith’s dementia extended into fears of a dreadful complicity, as if she had made an agreement with something poorly explained to her, or deliberately concealed.

Catherine could smell the delicate floral perfume wafting from the ancient lace of the gown upon the wooden dummy. It tried to insinuate its presence inside her head. She fingered the yellowing cotton of the hat; the silk flowers piled about its brim were brittle with age. The embroidered shawl was probably a hundred years old and even touching it made her shudder. So small and stiff were the handmade shoes she could tell at a glance she wouldn’t get three toes inside them.

She tore open the envelope and drew out the stiff paper, watermarked with Mason’s initials. The same stationery posted to the office and hand-delivered to her home.

She struggled through the contents of the note, written in Edith’s unsteady hand. When she finished she slumped on the bed and stared at the dark window.

My Dear Catherine

We did not wish to disturb your rest, but have been called away to supervise tonight’s events. Maude has left you supper. Refreshments will be provided after the performance of The Martyrs of Rod and String. A more modern drama from the Caroline period. We do trust you are now well enough to join us. Our theatre is a spectacular local tradition, with origins pre-dating the first Roman footstep on British soil. Though exactly when they started I cannot tell you. My uncle thought he knew and told me, but I forget.

Your dress has been altered. A hat and shawl have been provided. Do take care of my mother’s things, they will not be easy to replace. We begin when the first stars unveil.

With kind regards, your fond friend

Edith Mason.

P.S. There was a gentleman caller, a Michael, here this afternoon. A very agitated and persistent individual, who seemed keen to speak with you. We told him you were unwell and resting. And he brought a girl with him who had far too much to say for herself. I did not catch her name, though that hardly matters. We sent them away to the pageant to wait for you. In future will you please inform us when we are to receive visits from strangers! I thought I had made myself perfectly clear about our desire for privacy.