Under a Watchful Eye(30)

When Seb felt able to leave his room again, in the early evening, the first thing he smelled in the corridor outside his bedroom was Ewan.

During the hours he’d been alone in his room, he’d decided he would read the stinking pages of Ewan’s manuscript. He’d do that this evening. If Ewan then refused to leave his home, and to take up residency in a guest house at Seb’s expense, he’d call the police. He would risk whatever it was that Ewan decided to cast at him, whether he was awake or asleep. If this didn’t end now, he sensed that a turning point in his life was imminent. One just ahead of him that would swing him about and compel him to revisit the hardest and unhappiest years of his life. It was that simple.

Still tired and delicate, as if hungover from that day’s binge of emotion, Seb went upstairs and checked the living room.

Ewan wasn’t inside but the television was still on, as were the ceiling lights and a lamp on a side table. The bulging bin liners and rucksack were still in place beside Seb’s favourite chair. Cider cans littered the floor, the rug was stained in three places and the floorboards were tacky from spillages.

Seb turned the television off. The house fell silent.

He searched for his guest and found him behind a closed door on the first floor, passed out, mouth hanging open, lying on his back. He’d eventually gone into one of the guest bedrooms and climbed onto a bed, fully dressed. There was a long, arcing smudge of dirt at the foot of the white duvet cover. Seb anticipated burning the bedclothes in the garden later.

Maudlin and feeling sorry for himself, Seb returned to the living room, removed the empty cans and dropped them into the recycler. Ewan had also eaten three bags of crisps, two Magnum ice-creams that he’d found in Seb’s freezer, and put bread in the toaster but forgotten about it.

Methodically, Seb cleared away the mess.

At seven he rinsed the mop he’d used on the living-room floor a final time and straightened his spine, rubbing his lower lumbar. And immediately became dizzy as if the blood had drained from his head.

Blinking rapidly, he tried to clear his eyes of the red motes of light that fell through his darkening vision. The ambient sounds of the room, and the sea beyond the nearby cliffs, retreated as if sucked down a drain. Sensing a scrutiny from behind, he turned.

Ewan stood at the far end of the dining room, seeming taller than ever, his form entirely dark save for the bloodless face. Seb dropped the mop.

Ewan smiled and stretched out a long arm to point into the living room, to somewhere near Seb. Through the unnatural silence came Ewan’s voice, but in a tone that was older and gentler, even emotionless. For a moment Seb was unsure whether the voice sounded from within the house or inside his head.

Work to be done.

Seb stepped backwards and submitted to an overpowering compulsion to look down. The first thing his startled eyes settled upon was the stained covering sheet of Ewan’s manuscript, spread out on the coffee table. Breathe in the Astral.

Seb peered back at the doorway. Ewan had vanished.

Through the open balcony doors returned the distant buzz of a lawnmower, the soft hum of a car engine, the song of the thrushes in the garden below.

Inside the kitchen, a room now pungent with lemon disinfectant and bleach, there was no sign of Ewan.

Unsteadily at first, but gathering purpose as he moved, Seb walked downstairs to the bedroom that Ewan had occupied.

And found him lying upon the bed. His eyes were closed but twitching. His chest rose and fell.

You have no idea. No idea. Ewan’s voice announced itself from behind Seb, or again from within.

Seb turned as if he were turning inside a dream, and in the hall outside he saw the black form of a man, Ewan, who stepped away, out of sight and deeper into the passage.

Seb forced himself to follow. He heard no footfall, not even his own, and passed into an empty hallway. There was no way that Ewan could have hidden himself in so short a time by making it into another room. Besides that, the man was still stretched out on a bed in the spare room.

A noise erupted from the room where Ewan slept. A deep moan that rose and broke into a whine. The sound of an animal in pain.

By the time Seb was peering through the doorway, Ewan was making the noise of a man choking to death. His freakishly double-jointed hands had also bent inwards and shook about. Tremors returned along his forearms to his shoulders. His spine suffered a spasm, arching his body into the air. Gangly legs kicked spastically into the duvet, before bending at the knee and thrusting out from his pelvis at odd angles. His eyes opened and rolled white as the muscles in his face convulsed. Froth gathered in the messy beard.

Staring in shock and revulsion, Seb feared Ewan’s neck was close to snapping when it pulled the big head backwards. The entire weight of his upper body appeared to be supported by the crown of his skull. One of Ewan’s lower legs bent back behind his thigh and his body jumped as if electrocuted, onto its side. The muscles of his arms shuddered violently and the contorted form propelled itself, or bounced, off the bed and onto the floor. Out of sight, a coconut crack issued from the connection of a skull with a wooden floor.

The seizure – because Seb was certain that he was witnessing one – continued on the floor, where Ewan’s body thumped about, his thin legs kicking while his torso bent backwards from the waist. The bearded face gulped at the air between mouthing words.

The electricity in Ewan’s nervous system gradually earthed. The spasms of his muscles subsided, and soon his body merely twitched.