The Shadows Call Read online

  ‘Shit. You’re making me feel guilty now.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  I grinned. ‘I’ve jobs to do here. I’m having the beds delivered and stuff. After what happened with my car crash and getting sick at work I’ve a good excuse for not going in.’

  ‘I haven’t. And it’s not going to happen: I’m not good when it comes to lying.’

  ‘I’m not lying, just being conservative with the truth. I was sick yesterday, so should get away with it.’ I understood I was putting her in a bad position, her being management and all. ‘You wouldn’t grass me up would you?’

  ‘I’m not going to tell.’ Sarah placed down her untouched tea, frowning. ‘You’ve got an excuse, yeah, but if it were me I couldn’t do it. I don’t think you should either.’

  ‘I’m not being dishonest, Sarah. We’ve a sick pay scheme in place, and I haven’t been off once this year. Not even when I was genuinely ill: I don’t feel bad about taking my allowance.’

  ‘Once this year?” She looked momentarily confused, but chose to ignore the way her mind was going. ‘Sick pay’s not an allowance, Jack. The scheme’s there to help when you’re poorly, not to be abused.’

  ‘Now you do sound like a manager. I don’t see it as abuse, Sarah. I pay my national insurance, it’s time I got something back from it.’ I waited for her to start quoting the importance of business ethics and loyalty to our employer. ‘It’s not as if you work in pay roll, or HR: it doesn’t affect your team’s staffing levels if I don’t go in.’

  Sarah shook her head. ‘We’re just going to have to agree to disagree. After last night, I don’t know how you can still doubt me.’

  I offered a lecherous wink. ‘Talk about things going bump in the night, eh?’

  ‘Typical man,’ she said, but I got a shy grin from her. ‘Seriously though, with all that knocking going on I wish I’d left the recorder running. It would have been incredible proof.’

  ‘At least we can corroborate each other’s story.’

  Sarah made a face. I guessed what it meant. She didn’t want anyone knowing that she’d spent the night with me. What was wrong if the story got out, she was my girlfriend, and it was no business of anyone else? Was refusing to stay off work really because she didn’t like to lie? It was a bit of a contradiction if she wasn’t prepared to admit she’d been with me all night.

  ‘Do I embarrass you?’ I said before thinking things through.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Do you regret sleeping with me now?’

  ‘No, Jack. Why would you think that?’

  I shrugged. I knew it made me look like a petulant teenager, but I didn’t care. Disappointment soured my guts.

  ‘You sound as if you don’t want anyone to know about us,’ I said.

  She stood, and I thought I’d pushed things too far too soon. But Sarah face-planted a kiss on me. She held the back of my head, twining her fingers through my hair as her lips roamed over mine. I tasted her breath – hoped that she didn’t get the sour tang from mine. Finally she stepped away and looked up at me. ‘Did that feel like someone who regrets anything?’

  I leaked air like a deflating balloon. It was all it took to dispel the discomfort of the last minute or two.

  ‘Can you give me a lift back to my house?’ Sarah asked. ‘I can’t very well go into work dressed like this.’

  ‘Yeah, just give me a minute to fetch the car round.’

  I bustled. Found my keys, and headed out. I fetched my Volvo from the back lane and halted at the junction. Sarah was waiting for me at the front door. If I turned out on to the main road towards her I’d be facing the wrong way up the one-way street. I waved her to the car and she pulled the door shut behind her. She got in the front passenger seat.

  ‘I don’t agree with what you’re doing, but suppose I could cover for you at work,’ she offered as I pulled out. ‘I could tell them I called to check and you were poorly.’

  Just about to ask why she wouldn’t admit to staying at my house, I realised she was right. If I’d the strength to make whoopee all night, I’d have no excuse for throwing a sickie. ‘Yeah, if it doesn’t offend your morals,’ I said, but I weighted my words with a cheeky grin. She elbowed me in the shoulder.

  ‘Go easy,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to lose control again.’

  ‘Three times in one night? Dream on, Casanova.’

  ‘I meant of the car,’ I said. ‘But if you want to see if I’m good for a third time in the sack, I’m willing to give it a blast. I can soon take us back.’

  She smiled, but shook her head. ‘Take me home.’

  With those words my reinvigorated desire popped like a soap bubble, and my mind was again cast back to that fateful night when Naomi died. I drove Sarah home slowly, taking care to watch for my dead girlfriend stepping out between parked cars.

  20

  Crimson Teeth

  ‘I’m really sick, boss.’

  ‘So I heard.’

  ‘I take it you spoke with Sarah King, the manager from Store Ops? She, uh, called me earlier and I told her I wouldn’t be coming in.’

  ‘Yes. She said. I’m only surprised that you’re feeling so unwell. I mean, it was only a minor collision you were involved in yesterday. Nothing to fret over.’

  ‘I’ve been having stomach problems for a while.’ The lies sounded more plausible when laden with a sprinkling of truth. ‘With throwing up at work, I really upset it and it has flared up. I had a really bad night.’

  Daniel Graham said nothing.

  ‘I’m going to try to get a doctor’s appointment,’ I went on, ‘to see if he can prescribe me something. I’m just not confident it’ll be today.’

  ‘If anything changes, let me know. But, Jack…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I expect to see you in on Monday.’

  ‘I’ll be there, boss. I promise.’

  ‘In fact, if you’re feeling up for it, you can come in tomorrow evening for stock take. You can make it up for letting me down today.’

  Now I said nothing. I was fuming.

  After a beat Daniel must have realised he sounded like a bully. He quickly backtracked, saying, ‘It was a stupid suggestion. If you’re unwell you’re unwell. Just take today off and I’ll see you after the weekend. You have your kids this weekend don’t you? Still a good idea to have them over if you’re not feeling too good?’

  What a fucking saint.

  ‘It isn’t catching,’ I said, trying not to sound too scathing. ‘The kids will be fine. I’m sure I will be too, but right now I feel as sick as a dog. Sorry, boss, but the toilet calls.’

  I hung up before he could respond.

  Standing in the parlour, I held my phone by my side. Staring off into space. When I told him I’d had a bad night the silence from the other end of the line was palpable. He’d confirmed to me that he’d spoken to Sarah. I wondered what she told him, and if she had admitted to being with me all night. I used to think that Daniel was a closet homosexual, but lately I’d noticed him eyeing Sarah in a way that proved otherwise. Was he jealous of us? Was that the reason why he was such a dick towards me? Then again, if Sarah had told him about our night of passion he wouldn’t have bought my sickness as an excuse for being absent from work. No, Sarah couldn’t have told him. But then I wasn’t sure if that made me happy or disappointed. I looked at my phone. No reason to: it wasn’t as if I’d find the answer there.

  I ate breakfast, drank more tea. Hung about waiting on the delivery guys. By mid-day they hadn’t turned up so I went upstairs to my bedroom and stood looking at the wardrobe doors.

  ‘Knock, knock,’ I said.

  There was no response.

  ‘Naomi? Was that you knocking earlier?’

  I listened.

  ‘Two knocks for yes, one knock for no,’ I commanded, feeling mildly foolish.

  Stepping up to the door, I rapped my knuckles on it. The sound was identical to those I’d heard in the early hours. A bone-ach
ing chill descended over me.

  ‘Did you hear that, Naomi? Can you knock like that for me?’ I rapped again in demonstration. Waited.

  Considering the implications of all that I’d seen and heard, what I’d done, I posed another question. ‘Are you mad at me?’

  No reply.

  I pulled open the doors and looked inside. The wardrobe was large enough to accommodate me plus half a dozen ghosts. Stepping inside, I waited then repeated my question. ‘If you are angry, then tell me. Knock like you did last night.’

  Minutes passed. Another idea struck me.

  ‘If I’m not speaking to Naomi, who am I speaking to? Is it somebody else?’ The shadow figure had been a male, no doubt about it. If I could touch him, then maybe he was more corporeal than his insubstantial form suggested. Maybe he could make a fist and pound on a door. ‘If I’m speaking to the shadow man, then let me know. Knock twice. Let me know what you want from me.’

  Again I received no reply.

  But then I got to thinking. Sarah said that ghosts were believed to manifest using the available energy, and there was little for a spirit to feed off in this room. Maybe I was receiving answers, just not in a way that I could comprehend. I went to the dumbwaiter closet and found Sarah’s digital recorder where she’d left it after turning it off. Unfamiliar with how it worked, I fiddled around a bit, then set it running. I placed it inside the wardrobe and closed the doors. From outside, I said, ‘If you have a message for me, then speak into the device. Tell me who you are and what you want.’

  A knocking from below caught my attention, but there was nothing sinister about the sound. It had a different, natural resonance as it echoed up two flights of stairs, and I immediately recognised the clack of the front door knocker. The new beds had arrived.

  I greeted the deliverymen at the door. They’d parked their truck on the street, its hazard lights blinking to stave off any over eager traffic wardens. It was an older man, skinny, about eight stone wet through, huge Adam’s apple, and a younger guy who looked as if he’d got the job on his muscular build alone. Despite my initial impression of them, the younger one seemed to be in charge, and it was the older bloke who was the hired muscle. I showed them in, pointed out the rooms I wanted the beds delivered to and left them to it. My bed would be easily assembled. The kids’ bunk beds would take a little longer to erect, coming in about a thousand parts and twice as many fixings. I wondered if I bunged the boss a few quid he’d make his pal put the bunks together for me. In the end I decided that the job would keep my mind off the weird goings on in the house. I thanked them kindly and ushered them out of the door at first opportunity.

  The young man paused on the step, as if he was waiting for a tip. But instead of sticking out his hand he offered a funny look, and made a nod towards the stairs. ‘Has summat happened in this house, mate?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Up there? Y’know on the landing next to the bathroom?’

  ‘No. Not that I know of.’ I kept my features straight, so as not to betray the lie. Or my excitement. Had he seen something too?

  ‘Ah, man, it was probably just my eyes playing tricks on me.’ The man shook his head, abashed to have brought it up.

  ‘Why? What did you see?’

  ‘Probably nothin’.’ He peered past me, again looking up the stairs. ‘Just, well, when I turned the corner I thought I saw a woman on the landing. I thought it was your missus. But when I looked again she was gone. Didn’t see her in any of the rooms.’ He held up a hand. ‘Not that I was going through your place, like, the doors were all open and I could see the rooms were empty.’

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘That’s strange.’

  ‘Aye,’ he agreed.

  I shrugged.

  ‘Summat else,’ he added. ‘She looked as if she had blood on her face. I was gonna give you a shout, but when I couldn’t find her…’

  We stood looking at each other for a slow beat. He shook his head. ‘Probably just me,’ he said, and handed me the delivery note for signing. He took the papers back without comment and turned for his truck. The older man had already got in and started the engine. By the look on his face, and the rapid bobbing of his Adam’s apple, he too had seen something and was keen to get away. I didn’t bother waving them off, shutting the door quickly and heading along the vestibule for the stairs.

  I went up to the half-landing, a buzz of adrenalin in my gut. Daylight streamed through the stained glass window, casting colours on the wall on the left of the adjacent landing. Standing at the vantage outside the bathroom door I looked up at what had alarmed the deliveryman. At a glance it was easy to see how he’d conjured the image of a woman out of the splash of pattern on the wall. The bloody face was in bold relief. In the next instant the clouds must have covered the sun because the image faded and disappeared. A second or two later and the sun poked out its head and the woman was back again. Definitely a case of pareidolia. Or was it?

  Moving up the short set of stairs, I noticed my own shadow projected before me. I went close to the wall so that my head and shoulders were cast adjacent to the woman’s face. This near it had lost much of its definition, the way an oil painting does when viewed up close, but having concentrated on it as I approached I could still make out the features. More than ten years after the event, I could still clearly picture Naomi’s face in those last moments we spent together, but I could also recall her from calmer times. Lifting my right hand, I directed its shadow twin so that it lay over the face. I stroked and my shadow played its fingers down her right cheek.

  A tear oozed out of my left eye and ran down my jaw.

  My shadow fingers stroked her hair, made a soft caress of her cheek. After Naomi’s death I’d honoured her memory with a form of subdued grief, only once weeping for her at her burial as I watched her casket lowered into the grave. The rest I bottled inside, and kept to myself. Grief for me was a private thing. I’d buried it as completely as the six feet of dirt that covered her coffin. Only recently had it resurfaced, and it had proved the undoing of my marriage to Catriona. My bitchy wife hadn’t understood. My doctor told me it was best to grieve, to let Naomi go with an outpouring of emotion, but my wife hadn’t seen things that way. She couldn’t understand my sudden weepy periods, or my heart-broken sobs as we lay together in bed. She thought my love for Naomi diminished her, pushed her to a lesser place in my affections. She was angered, grew bitter, said I was obsessed with a fucking corpse. Perhaps my riposte wasn’t well thought out when I replied that sex with her was like screwing a corpse, so where was the fucking difference. Maybe my scorn was what pushed her into the willing arms of Mark Wilson, Catriona’s attempt at showing that she wasn’t the one with a problem in the bedroom.

  The main reason it had taken so long for me to release my pent up grief was this: who exactly would listen?

  How would crying for Naomi do any good? It wasn’t as if she could hear me. I was brought up in the Church of England faith, but was largely agnostic. I barely believed in God, let alone Heaven. I didn’t think that a haloed Naomi was sitting on a cloud somewhere, strumming a harp and watching over me. All that remained of Naomi was a collection of stained bones and tattered funeral raiment, buried two yards beneath the earth. How could she hear my heartfelt cries? Oh, I did try to speak to her. I asked her to respond, let me know she could hear me. Give me a sign. But her response had been as cold as her decomposing body.

  My faith in God and an afterlife at His side was already built on shaky ground, and when I failed to receive communication from my dead girlfriend it plunged deep into the earth, swallowed wholly, and I’d come to realise I was a confirmed atheist.

  That was then.

  Tracing the outline of that face on the wall, I wondered - had I seen it back then - would I have accepted it as the sign I longed for? Would this pattern on the wall, this result of apophenia, have swayed me down a different path? It was hard to say, but I thought that I’d been too closed down to accept anythi
ng as proof that my girlfriend’s spirit endured. But now? Since moving into my new home, having witnessed both unnerving and perplexing events, and having engaged with a person who helped explain my way around the weird and wonderful goings on, I was beginning to accept possibilities.

  One thing I was certain of, before now a pattern on the wall wouldn’t have brought me to tears.

  ‘Jesus, Naomi, I miss you so much.’ I physically touched the face now. ‘I love you and I want you back.’

  Speaking out loud like that caused a twinge of guilt to shoot through me. Hell, I was with Sarah now. I shouldn’t be dwelling on my love for another woman. It almost felt like cheating. The way Catriona had cheated on me.

  The clouds shifted.

  The face faded.

  Had Naomi felt my guilt, and withdrew from me?

  ‘Don’t go, babe, please.’ I reached for the blank wall.

  The sun stabbed light through the stained glass.

  The face reappeared. Vivid red. Blood poured fresh from the eyes and mouth. I touched the lips. To smooth away the hurt. The crimson teeth snapped, gnashing at my fingers like a savage beast.

  Recoiling from those teeth, a scream leaped from my throat.

  My fear took me backwards. My left heel skidded off the top riser, and then I was weightless. I fell.

  It was only a few short steps down to the bathroom’s half-landing, but from the top of my head to the floorboards it was at least ten feet, and my skull made a perfect arc all the way down.

  The back of my head felt as if it imploded, and a wash of scarlet agony swept across my vision. I lay crumpled on the half-landing, with my feet propped up the stairs. Black edged my senses, floated in like ink on water, and then all was a foggy swirl through which I could define neither detail nor sense. All senses fled but my hearing was the last to fade. I could hear the pounding of my heart in my veins, and the cackle of bitter laughter.

  21

  The Writing’s on the Wall

  My palm stung.