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Dusk -- creeping around corners, lurking under trees, hiding the ruts in the track up to the house, changing the colors of sunset from gold to jaundiced yellow, shifting shapes of rain butts and abandoned garden chairs to ossified bears and giant insects. Jenny felt its darkness gather about her shoulders and drift before her to the cottage, rushing easily through the gap under the door while she struggled to juggle luggage and keys. By the time she had the door open, dusk had filled the rooms within with threats indistinct as the light. Breath on her neck sent her a step over the threshold. "Not bad, eh? Lucky for us old Desi broke his ankle and couldn't drive down." Bob pushed past her and set the rest of their bags down. "So you keep saying." Jenny followed. The door opened directly onto the dining area. The rough plastered walls, beamed ceilings and stone floor all matched perfectly with the description Bob's workmate had given them. She shivered. "We'll soon get the place warmed up. Look -- a real fireplace." Bob grinned with the enthusiasm of a Boy Scout who has at last been told he can use his two sticks. Jenny nodded. The chill rose up from the stone flags, a reminder of damp earth and graveyards. The dusk filled her nostrils with the smell of it. "Where's the light switch?" she groped around the door. "Found it!" Warm light flattened the moving darkness, restoring the furniture to proper inanimate shapes. Jenny struggled to keep her exhalation even, annoyed with herself. This holiday was meant to quench the fear that followed her like footsteps in the park, to blow away the memory of decayed breath and a slobbering mouth searching her throat. There were no shadows waiting beneath the stone flags to grab her ankles. One, two -- trod on a crack -- you're it! "Right, then! You see to the fire while I unpack," she spoke briskly, deliberately treading on the gaps between the flags, feeling icy fingers snatch at her as she strode across the room to the window. She turned with her hand on the curtains ready to shut out the approaching night. "Whoever finishes first gets supper. OK?" She smiled to soften the tone which sounded in her ears too much like a schoolma’am. They were supposed to have left work behind with the fear. Jenny turned back to the window and caught her breath. A face, only glimpsed for an instant, but the fear and shock of it cramped Jenny's muscles into immobility. Only an instant and it was gone, but whose was it? "What's the garden like?" Bob's voice carried a hint of chastisement. Did he know? Was that why he brought her here? To confront it -- whatever "it" was – was it fear, or herself? "Dark, the garden's dark." Jenny forced her fingers to unclench. Nothing, no movement. It must have been her reflection, but did she really look so scared, as if the foul vagrant still followed her? It had smelled as if his flesh was already rotting, his bony fingers and sinews impossibly strong for one who lived rough. That was what they thought – all of them -- the police, her colleagues, Bob. She could have beaten him off, outrun him; it was her fault. Perhaps she had wanted it to happen or perhaps it had never happened. He was still following her. He had invaded her mind the same way he had invaded her body. "I thought you were going to unpack." Jenny heard an unspoken injunction to pull yourself together. It must have been a reflection. How else could it just vanish? She carried the luggage upstairs and determinedly kept her eyes on the curtains as she drew them. She deliberately flung open the wardrobe doors. Nothing hid there except a few hangers and a lavender bag. She rejected the urge to look under the bed. She would have no more to do with bogie men, no more reflections on the glass or in her head. Forcing her limbs to move smoothly and unhurriedly, Jenny completed her task, laying claim to the dressing-table with her make-up bag, taking possession of the bathroom with their toothbrushes. Any shadows that yet remained could stay out of the way until they went home again. She would conquer them, assert her superiority with the mundane. When she went back downstairs, Bob was still kneeling before the grate like a penitent priest. "You look as if you're about to offer up an invocation." "Ha ha! It's probably the only way I shall get this thing to light." "Would you like me to have a go?" Bob scowled. "What do you know about lighting fires?" "Well,
let's hope the cooker runs on electricity, otherwise we shall
starve as well as freeze." |