The Shadows Call Read online

  ‘If she’s anywhere she’s likely to be in there then.’

  Sarah headed for the little door in the eaves next to the window. I discreetly closed the closet behind her, while she crouched to access the crawl space. ‘Hello, is there anybody there?’ she asked in a singsong voice. She asked another two or three standard questions. Then she backed out, shivering. ‘I think the only living things in there are spiders.’

  She turned off the device, brought up the latest file and played it. This time she listened to it herself. By the disappointment on her face there were no anomalous voices calling out from the after-life. She looked up. ‘We may as well do the other rooms before we hit the basement.’

  I led the way into the spare bedroom. It smelled of new carpet, a warm scent of fibres, rubber underlay and glue. Behind me, Sarah had entered the room, fiddling with the recorder. She opened her mouth to tag the beginning of her latest EVP session, but the words caught in her throat. ‘What the bloody hell?’

  I didn’t need to ask what had surprised her. I knew that there was graffiti scrawled on the walls, but had never taken much notice of the writing: I took it that it would be the usual tacky stuff that people of low intelligence scrawled on walls, and had pointedly ignored it – planning to paint it over before the kids ever came to visit.

  Nevertheless, I was speechless.

  All over the walls was the same repeated message.

  I WANT YOU.

  That wasn’t the worst of it.

  Some of the writing had been scraped deeply into the plasterwork, and it was obviously new damage, because the crumbling plaster dust made small piles on the brand new carpet beneath.

  ‘How did this happen?’ I wondered aloud.

  Sarah stared at the walls, then accusingly at me. ‘Is this some kind of Joke?’

  ‘If it is, it’s in bloody bad taste.’ I looked at her, and she was in total agreement, but her mouth was set in a slash of disdain for me. ‘What? It wasn’t me!’

  ‘Who else could it be?’

  ‘Not bloody me.’ I darted a look around the room. A carpet knife could have done the scoring of the walls. ‘The bloody carpet fitters. I knew I should’ve been here when they were in the house.’

  ‘Jack, who in their right mind are going to come in, fit your carpets and then vandalise your property on the way out?’

  She was correct. I knew the fitters weren’t responsible. ‘Who else could it be?’

  ‘Well if it wasn’t you, there’s only one feasible explanation.’

  The ghosts? I left it unsaid, but that’s exactly where Sarah’s mind was drifting.

  ‘I don’t like this, Jack.’ Sarah looked ready to run. ‘It’s getting a little out of hand now. I haven’t the experience to deal with this.’

  ‘Hold on,’ I cautioned. ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There’s a rational explanation. We have to think before jumping to conclusions.’

  ‘OK, convince me then. If it sounds plausible I won’t bugger off. But I’m warning you, Jack, if this is down to a poltergeist I’m out of here. If it can scratch a wall like that, it can scratch us too.’

  I gave it my best shot. ‘There was already graffiti on the walls. I saw it, even if I didn’t pay it much attention before. Here’s what I think happened. When the fitters were in, the carpet was probably much bigger and had to be propped against the walls while they cut it down to size. The stiff carpet must have rubbed at the writing, made it look newer than it is, maybe loosened the edges and made more dust fall out. Once the carpet was laid some of the plaster dust fell and settled on top of the carpet. It makes sense when you think about it.’

  ‘It makes more sense than the fitters doing it,’ she concurred. ‘And, OK, I’m sorry for suggesting it was you. It would be a poor idea of a joke if it were.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It would.’

  But someone was having a nasty laugh at my expense.

  Despite persuading Sarah with my lame theory of carpets gouging the walls anew, I hadn’t convinced myself.

  Whoever had scratched those words into the wall had sent me the text message, and perhaps who’d spoken them in my nightmare.

  Taken in that context, it made more sense to me; because it threw me back more than a decade to when those words had been screamed in despair.

  16

  I Want You Back

  I wanted to see Gangs of New York, but Naomi didn’t, electing instead to coerce me into watching some Reese Witherspoon vehicle about a woman who ran away from her husband in Alabama to reinvent herself as a New York socialite. It was a romantic comedy, not exactly my cup of tea. It was possibly a decent movie, but I deliberately didn’t enjoy it, and made it obvious throughout, grumbling and moaning. By the time we left the cinema, Naomi was decidedly frosty and declined my suggestion of going on to the pub even though she’d dressed for a night out in her red satin dress and new black boots.

  ‘Take me home,’ she commanded when we were back at my car. Back then I drove a Vauxhall Corsa, a sporty model with tinted windows and “go faster” stripes, just the thing to suit the boy racer in me.

  I was six months older than Naomi, and she was still early in her twenty-third year. We’d been together since school. Long enough to have progressed beyond that first flush of infatuation, and settled into a place where we were comfortable arguing about the mundane and the ridiculous. In my mind, couples did that sort of thing. My parents had been arguers, and I doubted they could have lasted as long together without constantly bickering: otherwise they’d have had nothing to say to each other. I wasn’t being serious when I suggested that Naomi was like that character out of the movie, a spoilt bitch that didn’t appreciate the good in her man. ‘What you going to do, run away to New York too?’

  ‘I should for all you care,’ Naomi had snapped. She scrunched down in the front passenger seat, as far away from me as she could get in the small car.

  ‘I do care,’ I said, peeling out with a squeal of rubber. We’d parked in a public car park, which even at ten in the evening was still full. I roared along the aisles, heading for the exit. There were undulations in the road surface, an attempt at slowing down traffic, but my Corsa skimmed off them, jostling on the downslopes.

  ‘Slow down for God’s sake!’

  ‘I thought you were in a hurry to get home?’ I gave the throttle another nudge.

  ‘Stop being stupid, Jack. You already spoiled the movie, don’t go on or you’ll spoil everything.’

  ‘What do you mean by everything?’

  ‘You know fine well what I mean.’

  I barely gave way at the exit, pulling a sharp left on to the main road. An approaching vehicle almost ran into the back of us. The driver hit the brakes, and his horn a second later. It blared.

  I flipped him a two-fingered salute out of the window and roared off, exceeding the posted speed limit.

  ‘You’re talking about finishing with me because I didn’t like a bloody soppy movie?’ I snapped across at Naomi. ‘I told you I wanted to watch Gangs of New York.’

  ‘You know I’m not interested in all that violent stuff.’

  ‘Leonardo di Crappio was in it. I thought you liked that pretty boy? You’ve watched the flaming Titanic enough times.’

  ‘It’s DiCaprio,’ Naomi said, and not for the first time that evening. She knew I was deliberately mispronouncing the actor’s name.

  ‘Crappio,’ I sniped.

  ‘If he’s so crap why did you want to watch a movie with him in it?’

  I fumed. Caught out by the old double twist.

  We were fast approaching a crossroad and the light was on green, but about to change. I put my foot down. We were ten metres off the lights when they went amber. I sped up. The amber flicked to red, and we breezed through, beating the traffic waiting to pull out from the adjoining streets. I emitted an angry laugh, exclaiming my disregard for the other road users.

  ‘Jack, slow down.’

  ‘No. You wanted home. I�
�m taking you home.’

  ‘You’re just being a dick.’

  ‘You’re just being a bitch.’

  You wouldn’t think we loved each other, not if you heard the course our argument took next. There was lots of swearing, name-calling and screams. Naomi was crying before we’d finished, and I was hammering at the steering wheel with my hands, shouting like a lunatic. The only good of it was that I’d lost some of my forward volition and had slowed down to around forty miles per hour. It was still too fast for the conditions. I flew through another red light, this time earning an angry blare of horns from a van driver and a truck driver, both of who had to brake to miss us. I turned my anger on them, flipping them the ‘V’ sign out the window, screaming threats at them. I knew they weren’t in a position to follow so was safe enough from a beating.

  Looking back, that’s what I would have deserved. If those guys had followed, cornered me, then dragged me from my car and gave me a good kicking, I’d have asked for it. I was being a dick. More than that, I was being reckless, not to mention a purely selfish and immature dick. Naomi told me, but I didn’t listen.

  ‘That’s it!’ she finally howled. ‘We’re finished! Stop the car and let me out.’

  ‘No. I’m not fucking stopping.’

  ‘Let me out, Jack. You’ve gone way too far this time!’

  ‘I’m not stopping for nobody…’ To prove the point I stamped the throttle hard. ‘And you aren’t going anywhere til we get this sorted.’

  ‘There’s nothing to sort. I told you: We’re finished.’

  ‘No we’re not. We are going to sort this. Fucking hell, Naomi?’

  ‘You’re always the bloody same. If you don’t get your own way, you just go off on one. Well I’m sick of it. I’m sick of walking on eggshells around you. I’m not putting up with it any longer. Stop the car, Jack. Stop right now.’

  ‘No! You’re not finishing with me.’

  ‘Like you can stop me?’

  My anger had deflated, now shrinking to a cold slice of panic that speared my heart. I had gone too far. I was just too woodenheaded to admit it. ‘I won’t let you,’ I cried, and my voice was a high-pitched whine.

  ‘Ha!’ Naomi’s face grew harder. ‘Don’t dare start with your usual threats. I don’t give a shit if you kill yourself. Go on. Commit suicide, see if I care.’

  ‘Who says I’m going to kill myself?’ My eyes were extending out their sockets.

  ‘It’s what you usually say, Jack.’ Naomi lowered her voice, doing a pretty decent impression of my voice. ‘“Oh, don’t leave me. I couldn’t live without you, Naomi. I’m going to kill myself!”’

  ‘I was just a stupid kid back then,’ I challenged.

  ‘The first time, yeah. What about the others? You tried it only four months ago. And I know you, you’ll try it again.’ Naomi pulled at her seatbelt, unclipping it. ‘Go on. Prove you won’t. Stop the car and let me out.’

  ‘No. Put your belt back on.’

  ‘If you don’t stop the car, I’ll jump.’

  ‘Now who’s being an idiot?’

  ‘It’s called emotional blackmail, Jack, and you’re a bloody expert at it. Well, sorry, but two can play at that game.’ Naomi pulled at the door handle.

  ‘What are you doing? Stop it!’ Jumping from the car at that speed she’d break her neck. I began to assert some pressure on the brake pedal.

  Naomi got the door open. I grabbed her with my left hand, held her elbow.

  ‘Get off me, you psycho!’ Naomi yanked free, made to push the door open further.

  I could never be sure if she was bluffing or not. It wasn’t something I was about to allow happen. I grabbed her by her hair, a good handful and yanked her towards me. I was trying to save her life, for fuck’s sake! Naomi screeched, clawed at my hands and I let go, but only so I could reach across and grab for the partly open door.

  That was when Naomi went for my face. She screwed her nails into my cheek to a point I thought she’d draw blood. In response, I screwed my eyes shut, shouting out.

  The sound that followed was the loudest I’d ever heard. It was as if a grenade went off inside my skull. A white blinding flash seared my vision, even behind my screwed eyelids. I felt weightless. No up, no down, no left or right. In contradiction a terrible force rammed my guts. I was too confused to scream.

  In the next second my eyes were open, and I cast glances around, but could make no sense of the colours I saw in hyper-clarity. Reds, oranges, yellows, and the deepest black I could ever imagine. My hearing was compressed down to a faint whistle. I was numb from the neck down. Except for in my right leg – there was a furnace of heat brewing in my knee.

  I knew we’d crashed.

  I just didn’t see it coming, had no idea of what we’d crashed into.

  Grey dots swirled across my vision. I shook my head, and my ears popped. There was a screeching sound coming from somewhere and it took me a minute to realise it was rising from my throat. I tried to shift in my seat, looking for Naomi.

  Where was she?

  I was too disorientated to understand the severity of what had happened. I expected Naomi to be seated beside me. Her seat was buckled forward, the headrest touching the dash. Naomi wasn’t a big girl. She could fit in the space beneath the buckled chair. I reached, pressing it back, and found that the supports had sheared and the chair back was loose. I pushed it away, gritting my teeth against a fresh burst of pain that came from my core.

  Sparks popped.

  The stench of burning rubber filled my senses.

  ‘Naomi? Naomi!’

  The left side of the windscreen was shattered. On my side it was starred from where my forehead had impacted it. Only my seatbelt had halted me flying headlong through the glass.

  ‘Naomi? Naomiiiii…?’

  Naomi had unclipped her belt.

  I clawed at the steering wheel. It pinned me. The entire bonnet was crushed, everything forced back by a foot. The dash had warped at the centre, and more sparks fizzed and crackled. I pulled and shoved, crying out in alarm. My belt was tight. I fed down a hand and hit the release mechanism. Thankfully it popped open and I’d a little more room to move. I twisted as best I could, checking the rear seat as if I’d find Naomi there, having spotted the impending collision and leapt in the back for cover. Absurd, I know, but the hope was there. Naomi wasn’t.

  My worst fear was realised. Naomi had been catapulted through the windscreen when the car had come to such a violent and abrupt stop. That screeching noise began to leak from me again. I fought to get free of the steering column. My door was jammed. The door’s structure had twisted. The window had exploded. I pulled and pushed, trying to find a way out the window. I got my torso out of the gap, but couldn’t free my right leg. The steering column was jammed against it, and my foot was caught under one of the misaligned pedals. In that moment I would have ripped my leg out of the socket, so I threw my weight this way and that, and finally pulled free. Agony flared through my knee, shot to my foot and ricocheted up my entire body to my brain. I screamed, and tears flooded my features. I fell on the road alongside my car. I held on to the car, scrabbling at the paintwork for a handhold to help me rise; I made it to my left foot, but the right wouldn’t bear any weight. I hopped along the car, calling for my girlfriend, hanging on where I could. I fell twice, grazing my palms on nuggets of shattered windscreen glass and unrecognisable bits of metal and plastic. Both times I rose, and limped in agony for the wall we’d smashed into.

  These days, if anyone notices my limp and are shameless enough to ask about it, I reply equally barefaced. I lie. I tell them that the gimpy knee was down to an accident on the rugby pitch. I wouldn’t mention the crash, because they would then demand the gory details: I didn’t want to tell them how lucky I’d been. Not after what happened to Naomi.

  As we’d struggled, and my attention was off the road while I tried to close Naomi’s door, the car had swerved left, mounted the pavement and struck a garden wall. The
garden belonged to a corner lot, and we’d hit the worst possible place where the wall formed a right angle. The sandstone wall had largely defied the car’s forward volition, stopping it dead. The bonnet and engine compartment had folded around the sharp wedge of stone. Naomi had been thrown headlong through the windscreen, catapulted over the wall and twenty feet into the garden.

  It was possibly no more than thirty seconds since we’d smashed into the wall, but already neighbours were leaning out of their windows, or had come to front doors, checking on the commotion. Lights had come on in the bedrooms of the house the garden belonged to, and the oblong cast from one picked out Naomi’s crumpled form as if she was in the spotlight on a stage. I screamed her name.

  I scrambled over the partly collapsed wall, and fell among flowers and shrubs. I fought free, partly crawling across a previously well-tended lawn that was now littered with blood-dotted glass, debris and shards of sandstone. My gaze never shifted from Naomi, limned as she was in the yellow glow from the bedroom light. Her dress was rucked up around her waist, her stick thin legs deathly pale above the black boots. She was dead still.

  It seemed like a mile across the grass, and felt as if it took an eternity to reach her, but then I had her cradled in my lap, pushing down the hem of her dress in an effort at protecting her modesty. I stroked hair back off her features. It was clotted with her blood. Her face was unrecognisable, torn to tatters as she’d gone through the exploding window, as red as her torn dress. I moaned her name now.

  Naomi stirred.

  She mewled like a kicked dog.

  ‘Naomi, baby, it’s going to be OK.’ Even I didn’t believe my words. I touched her face, and she pulled away. It was reflex, I’m sure. ‘Naomi? Can you hear me, babe?’

  She gave a second mewl, and her body shuddered in my hands.