Whatever happened though, and disturbing as it might be when it happened, it was nothing that he didn’t understand, that couldn’t be measured and studied and explained. It wasn’t the house, wasn’t anything external at all, just the dysfunctional workings of his own mind and body.
As he relaxed he heard Ruth’s voice, then saw Rob, looking exactly as he’d looked at college. Rob was peering into the handset of a telephone and saying he could see something, and then Alex was staring out at him from inside the handset, Rob seeming far away through the pinholes in the plastic.
He was still conscious enough for a small part of his brain to register what was happening. Hypnagogic hallucinations, not dreams, just the mind’s jumbled replaying of the day’s events. Sleep would follow soon though, and the dreams would come. It was how they came that mattered.
When he woke it was with a start. The room was still dark around him but something was wrong, something he couldn’t quite pin down. He tried to move but couldn’t, like he’d suffered some kind of seizure. He wasn’t breathing properly either but he was awake, his eyes taking in the shadowy details of the room, his ears picking up the delicate background of the machinery.
A real unease started to creep through him. It wasn’t the paralysis - he recognized that now, sleep paralysis. If he stayed calm it would pass, a few minutes and his body would catch up, his brain sending out the signals to free it from sleep. He’d woken suddenly, that was all, the process dislocated.
But he felt uneasy as he lay there, worse, afraid, and he was wondering why he’d woken up the way he had. His eyes darted around the room, his ears straining, the electrical background somehow blocking everything else out now. And then he heard something else and realized, that he’d woken because there was someone in the house.
A footstep on the stair. One of the stairs creaked and it had sounded now. He heard nothing else at first but someone was coming up the stairs. He tried again to move but couldn’t, the sleep paralysis still locking him in place, stealing his voice, robbing him of everything but the movement of his eyes.
From where he lay he could see only the upper part of the door frame, even with his eyes wrenched downwards in their sockets, but he looked to the door anyway, dreading that he was right and that a figure would appear there. No one came for what felt like minutes.
But then it happened, not a figure filling the door frame, but a shadow slipping through it, silent, a subtle change in the feel of the room, a smell in the air that he couldn’t quite identify, a scent, like fruit.
His chest constricted tightly around him, his eyes searching desperately. She was in the room. It was a girl, he knew that, something about the scent. She was in the room, but out of sight, moving along the far edge of the darkness, closer, that scent growing stronger and loaded with malice, a sickening sweetness.
He tried to call out and couldn’t, becoming more terrified because he was prone and helpless, unable to move as she crept closer. And then as he fought for breath he slowly began to sense who she was and what she wanted there.
She’d come for him because of that night ten years ago. She was here, the thing he’d always dreaded, she was here to confront him and there was nothing he could do to help himself. All he could do was lie there and wait, the scent growing stronger, the feeling of her physical presence overwhelming his senses.
His eyes were straining to his left, trying to make out her shape against the pale screen of the window and curtains. He fixed on that square and then it was black, as if he’d closed his eyes, and he knew that she was standing next to the bed, looking over him, and that in a moment he would feel her sit down on the mattress next to him and that he would have to see her face, feel her breath on him, the silent suffocating malice.
He knew this terror, and tried to brace himself against it, too late for anything else. She’d come for him and there was no escape. He’d wronged her, and this was her rightful vengeance.
8
He took the tube from the station to Rob’s house but then made a couple of wrong turnings in the walk from the tube station, going back to his A to Z, stopping a middle-aged woman, then a young guy, neither of them speaking English.
It was a cold morning but sunny and by the time he finally got to the house he’d worked up a sweat and felt uncomfortable for it. He climbed the two steps to the front door but waited for a second, composing himself again. He could hear music somewhere inside, a radio, and then without warning the door opened.
He turned, expecting to see Rob but finding a girl standing there instead, tall and attractive, long brown hair, tanned and athletic. She was looking at him questioningly but as if impatient for him to speak she said, ‘I thought I saw someone come up the steps. Can I help?’ She was Australian, her accent fresh and friendly, fitting the way she looked.
He checked the door number again and said, ‘I’m here to see Rob Gibson.’