Stephen Jones - Dark Terrors 3 - The Gollancz Book of Horror

‘We should check she isn’t lying unconscious in the house,’ he said. ‘I would never forgive myself if something’d happened to her, and I’d done nothing to help.’

Peering through the spotless windows of Wren’s Nest, they were joined by elderly Mr Godleigh from number 10 and young Mrs Treen with her toddler, Danny, from number 15. Everyone tried the windows, which were all sensibly locked from inside. The bungalow looked immaculate, not a cushion out of place, not a single item of crockery left on the kitchen drainer. In the bedroom, the pale grey duvet was undented and there were no clothes lying around. Admittedly, they couldn’t see into the bathroom, and curtains were drawn over one of the frosted windows. Through the garage door, the red gleam of Emma’s car could be seen. ‘Do you think we should break in?’ Lily Treen suggested.

‘That’s against the law,’ Mr Godleigh said. ‘Perhaps we should call the police.’

‘Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary,’ Cynthia responded hurriedly, visualizing Emma’s alarm should she turn up again. She really didn’t feel that Emma was inside but didn’t want to say so, not having any proper foundation for her feelings. ‘There’s bound to be a good reason why she’s not here. She might have caught a train to visit relatives, got a cab to the station. Do you know any of her family, Mr Homey?’

Michael Homey shook his head. ‘Perhaps Mr Godleigh is right,’ he said. ‘It’s better to be safe than sorry.’

‘I think we should wait until tomorrow,’ Cynthia insisted, and her tone of voice brooked no argument. ‘Emma is a respectable young woman. I don’t think we should have policemen breaking her windows just yet.’

At five past six that evening, a long ring on the doorbell disturbed the Peelings from their salad and quiche. Cynthia opened the door to a rather sinister-looking couple, who turned out to be detectives. They asked if the Peelings had a spare key to Wren’s Nest, as Emma Tizard’s parents thought they might.

Taken aback, Cynthia shook her head. Was anything wrong? Her guts, ahead of the subsequent information, began to churn. She could see two police cars parked at the kerb: uniformed officers were looking in through the windows of the bungalow next door.

Emma Tizard was dead. Her body had been discovered by children playing truant from school. It appeared she’d been brutally murdered, horribly mutilated as if with mindless fury.

If the police found any evidence in Wren’s Nest, they presumably removed it from the property. As the last car pulled away, the two plain-clothed detectives came back to interview the Peelings. Cynthia felt utterly sick, guilty for not having suspected something was wrong after all, and confused as to why her instincts hadn’t alerted her.

‘Did Miss Tizard tell you what she was planning to do over the weekend?’

Cynthia shook her head. ‘No. We weren’t that close.’

The male detective made a swift note on his pad.

The body had been found still clutching a handbag. The authorities had had no difficulty discovering who Emma was. ‘And you never met any of her friends?’

Cynthia uttered a brittle laugh. She was still deeply shocked. ‘No, no. None of us in Cherrytree Lane know much about Emma at all.’

‘So you don’t know what kind of interests she had?’ The female detective seemed to conceal an unpleasant implication in the words.

‘Art,’ Cynthia said, ‘History too. She borrowed books from me once, well, from my son. Ancient history.’

‘She never mentioned anything a little more… unusual?

‘What kind of unusual?’ Cynthia didn’t like the tone of the question.

The female detective shrugged. ‘Well, anything to do with the occult.’

Cynthia had to laugh. ‘What? Emma? Certainly not. She was a very down-to-earth person. What are you trying to say?’

The male detective cleared his throat. ‘Certain items in the house suggest she had an interest in that sort of thing. Books and so on. ’

‘She must have used them for her art,’ Cynthia said lamely. She could think of no other explanation. Emma had been such a nice, ordinary girl.

The detectives wanted to know when Emma had last been seen. Cynthia couldn’t clearly remember, but thought it was before the weekend. ‘She used to paint and draw a lot. Sometimes we’d never see her at weekends. She used to work then, you see. She worked very hard.’ Cynthia felt tears come to her eyes, remembering the water-colour that hung above her bed, a haunting scene, painted by Emma. Soft Emma, gentle Emma; a quiet, artistic soul.

‘And there was never any mention of the time she lived in the city?’ The female detective’s voice had taken on a softer note as she registered Cynthia’s distress.

Cynthia shook her head. ‘No.’

‘It may just be a coincidence.’ The male detective carefully re-capped his pen. ‘But the young lady Miss Tizard used to share a flat with in London disappeared under strange circumstances too. Unfortunately no trace of her was ever found. Are you completely sure Miss Tizard never mentioned this to you?’

‘Quite, sure.’ Cynthia collected herself, straightened her spine. ‘How dreadful. Do you suppose the same person.?’ She shuddered eloquently, pressing a handkerchief to her lips.

The female detective shrugged. ‘It was several years ago. Perhaps, as my colleague said, a coincidence.’

Numbed and troubled by this ghastly event in her life, Cynthia Peeling started sleeping badly. She had horrifying and revolting dreams, which left a sour taste in her mouth, but the details of which she had difficulty recalling. The only one she could remember was that in which she had witnessed a coarse and brazen Emma Tizard violently making love with Mr Peeling. To make it worse, Cynthia had enjoyed the dream. Her waking self found sex rather ridiculous and unnecessarily messy. Rodney Peeling had been puzzled by the peculiar looks his wife had given him over breakfast on Thursday morning.

The police could not solve the mystery of Emma’s death. During the next week, television reconstructions of Emma’s supposed last movements, and flashes of telephone numbers which people could contact to give information served only to remind Cynthia of the grotesque horror of her neighbour’s murder. The tabloid press found out about the occult angle, and lurid headlines suggested the dead girl’s involvement in Satanism, inferring she had been the victim of a ritual killing. Everyone on the estate who had known Emma agreed that the occult stories were rubbish.

The day of the funeral dawned unexpectedly dull and overcast, after a week of sunshine. A sizeable group of Willowdale Farm residents gathered in cars around Wren’s Nest to escort the funeral cortege to the crematorium. Emma’s mother and father, who introduced themselves as Ruby and Steven, had arrived the night before. Ruby Tizard was a frumpy sparrow of a creature who wore grandmotherly hats. The Peelings had kindly offered them accommodation for the night, because Mrs Tizard was obviously too upset to spend it in her dead daughter’s bed, the only one available in Wren’s Nest. The Tizards were strangely reluctant to enter the bungalow at all. Cynthia supposed that was because of their grief, and was sorry she couldn’t offer them more comfort. She wondered whether she should comment on the newspaper stories, and make it clear how wrong they were, but decided it was too soon to broach such an intimate subject.

To make things worse, the funeral, which should have been a dignified occasion, was fraught with minor mishaps and irritations. The minister whom the Tizards had especially wanted to lead the service telephoned at the last minute to tell them with unctuous apology that a family emergency prevented him travelling south. A quick replacement from the local church proved unsatisfactory, since the man knew nothing of Emma, save what he’d read in the papers, which didn’t give him much scope for a moving, personal sermon. As he swayed before the congregation, singing the praises of a girl he’d never met, the lights in the chapel flickered, threatening a total failure that never quite happened and the public address system, which should have carried his voice to the furthest ear, spluttered and buzzed, reducing the earnest tones to a wobbling fart. Halfway through the service, Lily Treen’s young son began to scream inexplicably. When Lily took him into the hall outside, he threw up with gusto on to the marble tiles. Everybody must have heard. Mrs Tizard began to cry. Afterwards, when questioned and consequently disbelieved, the child gabbled incoherently about a nasty lady who had put out her tongue at him. From what the adults could gather, the tongue had been black