Under a Watchful Eye(38)

From where he stood, he could see that the doors of the study and utility rooms were closed. The television was mounted on a wall and was out of sight, but the set emitted no light. It wasn’t switched on, so the light wasn’t coming from there.

Just out of his sight, on the far side of the living room, the paper was soon being strewn about as if loose leaves were being subjected to a hurried investigation.

What he could see of the living area, which reached to the windows and balcony beyond, might have become a basement. One in which his furniture had been stored for years. The light was faint and grainy, with a hint of tarnished silver, as if it were passing through gaps in the walls. Picture frames were black holes. Bookcases were inky rectangles. The corners of the room and balcony doors were lost entirely to darkness.

The unnatural light aged whatever it fell upon. He suspected he’d re-entered his most recent dream and become engulfed by the ghastly illumination of the watery tunnel.

Where was the source?

The voices?

‘Ewan?’ he called out, but too quietly. ‘Ewan! God’s sake, what are you doing?’

His voice startled a fresh activity within the living room, and he was relieved that he could not see what had cast its shadow onto the far wall.

Those lengths of what might have been the impossible shadows of wavering tree branches soon took shape as peculiarly long arms held out before a wasted body, topped by a large head.

The murky suggestion of shadow then rose up higher and felt about, as if blind and unsteady when upright.

A heavy object struck the living-room floor and Seb’s heart may have stopped for several seconds. He assumed that a sighting of whatever was inside the room would be foolish. ‘Who’s there?’ he cried out, the force of his voice compelled by panic.

A soft thump.

Scratching.

The shadow on the living room wall grew within his sight.

Taking three steps at a time, Seb fled down the stairs. As he descended, his last glimpse of the shadow repeated maddeningly inside his mind. That sense of a figure dropping to the floor, then rising to all fours. It groped about as if more capable, and in possession of a much longer reach, when positioned low to the ground like a stalking animal. As the shape had moved fluently about the room there had been a swishing sound, reminiscent of a heavy cloth sweeping floorboards.

The muttering that followed him down the stairs was human-like, though much reduced, before it degraded into something canine.

Seb reached the foot of the stairs and turned for the ground floor. He would have kept going had the last flight of steps not looked so impenetrably dark. He was also certain that the darkness down there swelled and bustled with a curious energy of its own.

As he hesitated, the back of his neck tingled afresh, in anticipation of both an attack from below and a blow from behind. One glance over his shoulder was sufficient for him to notice movement on the staircase wall. What could have been human limbs commanding an unnatural extension, struck out and snatched at the air, and in a manner uncomfortably similar to that of a magnified insect. And if those were the shadows of hands, then the nails extending from the digits were long enough to qualify as claws.

The scream that followed was reminiscent of the distant shrieks of the apes in Paignton Zoo, which could be heard miles away on a still day, as faraway territorial disputes were conducted on the contoured cement of their enclosures.

Seb pounded down the passage and threw himself inside his bedroom. Using what felt like a superhuman strength, he raised one end of his antique chest of drawers and hauled it across the floorboards, scraping the skirting-board paintwork. He dropped the heavy article part-way across the door.

At the windows he tore open the curtains.

His shaking fingers began a futile clawing at the window locks. He turned the steel security key backwards and forwards, momentarily forgetting that the key required a simultaneous press and turn to release the window. By the time he remembered this, he’d become paralysed with terror at the sound of what moved through the passage beyond his bedroom.

A shriek outside was followed by a heartfelt sobbing and a string of muffled words intoned in some kind of entreaty for mercy or succour. The piteous whimpering of a grown man had recommenced, and directly outside his door. A sound that passed inside his room to inhabit his nerves.

When the crying ceased, a nasal whine shook Seb enough for him to make another attempt to unfasten the window lock, while knowing that the drop from the first floor was too great. Two broken ankles. He was trapped.

The whine passed away in the direction of the stairs.

Not breathing, Seb listened and received an impression that the intruder was conducting a search, albeit blindly.

It entered the empty bedroom on the other side of the wall. A grumble whined into a bestial snarl. With horrible clarity, Seb imagined an old mouth that opened too widely. One filled with yellowing teeth.

Shouts of distress issued from Ewan’s room, further down the passage. Such was the strength of Ewan’s bellow his cries passed through several walls.

Seb crouched under the window and hugged his body into a ball.

Ewan flung wide the door of his own room and shouted, ‘No! No! Get away! Get away! No! No! I’m trying to help. I’m only trying to help!’ This was swiftly followed by the sound of Ewan’s feet slapping towards Seb’s bedroom.

Seb watched the door handle being snapped up and down from outside. Ewan was trying to get in, and desperately enough to employ his feet, knees and hands to bang at the door, shaking it in the frame.