The food, a shower, then an hour of being awake in a house bright with sunlight slowly brightened Becky’s mood, but not Seb’s. His own nightmares and the bad reviews were fresh intrusions, and his paranoia was sufficient to attribute the reviews to the same force that had recently pitted itself against him. Though a connection between the two would be hard to prove. The reviews had continued for years, the sightings of Ewan were recent.
As he showered and dressed, Seb became angry. He still had no clear idea whether he was seriously disturbed, or if, by some miracle, Ewan Alexander had mastered the ability to appear and vanish from his sight like an illusionist. But this was his world, the real world, a place of comfort and technology made comprehensible by science. He liked it and refused to let it go. Admitting to himself that he was hiding at home, and cowering behind a female guest too, didn’t come easily, but he’d found a strength during Becky’s visit that had been lacking when alone. He wanted to fight back now, wanted to strike out at whatever it was that had crept in. Going about his business as usual would be a start.
‘I suggest we take a walk through the woods to the cove,’ he said. ‘Then grab a late lunch at the Court. Fancy it?’
‘Absolutely. Love to.’
That settled it. They’d go out as a determined front.
But things can change.
‘Us both having bad dreams?’ he said later as he pulled on his coat in the hall. ‘It seems odd that we both had nightmares last night. No dickie tummies and we both ate different meals.’
Becky grimaced as she came down the stairs, rummaging through her bag. ‘Mmm? It was so strange because I was sure I’d woken up.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh, yeah. I was in your bedroom. I could see everything clearly, as if the landing light was on and shining inside the room. And there was someone outside the house, crawling or something. It sounded like someone was rubbing themselves against the wall, or dragging themselves down the side of the house. You were asleep and lying with your back to me. You didn’t wake up. And the window was open. I was too scared to get up and close it, you know, before this thing got in.
‘I could hear these voices too. Tiny voices. They were tiny elderly voices. Old people. A crowd of them. They were in the room somewhere, like in a corner that I couldn’t see, or in the air above the bed. It was horrid. Where does this stuff come from? I never remember dreams. It must be you! Your fault, freaking me out about that face at the restaurant window!’
With some difficulty, Seb opened the front door.
He parked at the pub and led Becky to the stile at the edge of the farmland bordering Marriage Wood. This was an area of ‘outstanding natural beauty’ according to UNESCO. The wood would be carpeted with bluebells and Seb thought this area might enchant Becky, and perhaps help make amends for what he’d put her through that weekend.
If the treetops in the wood were a wind-blown chaos in a gale, the ground remained oddly still and Seb liked the airy, vaulted spaces extending for hundreds of feet between the myriad trees on the slopes. When Seb wandered through the wood he usually only came across occasional dogs and their owners, in the foot of the valley before the trees leapt up the slopes and loomed over the trails below.
Amidst the sweet beech and larch that morning, and all the way to the sea, they came across no one. He led Becky along the main trail, passing the ruined limekilns that once produced the materials that built Torquay and fertilized the surrounding land. He pointed out to her the excavation craters that pitted the earth, all overgrown with ivy, as were the pale slabs that suggested ruins of a greater antiquity.
The intended destination was a sheltered cove where the water became an enticing aquamarine colour as it deepened, while the shallows were so clear that a photograph failed to reveal the water’s surface. Seals often frolicked in the cove, or followed those patient fishers, the grebes, around the shoreline and towards Brixham harbour.
As they lost sight of where they had entered the trees, and before they were in sight of the stone gateposts at the rear of the cove, Becky stopped walking and sucked in her breath as if she’d trodden on broken glass. Seb turned to see what was wrong. ‘What?’
She didn’t answer him, but appeared troubled by something she’d seen. Her head was angled to peer up the slope on the right side of the trail.
Seb moved to where she stood and noticed that her face had adopted an expression identical to the one accompanying her narration of her dream. She whispered, ‘I thought . . .’ Then added, ‘Doesn’t matter.’
Seb followed her stare and peered through the trunks, part furred by khaki moss and black ivy. The bonier branches had once given him the idea that such trees might resemble the magnified legs of insects. ‘What is it?’
‘I could swear . . . up there . . . there was an arm that waved.’
She wasn’t making much sense and struggled to find the words in the right sequence for whatever had caught her eye. ‘Sometimes trees look like people, don’t they?’ She tittered after she’d spoken, embarrassed. ‘I’ve been reading too many of your books.’