Connelly regarded him warily.
‘You’re afraid of me, aren’t you?’ Ward said quietly.
Connelly didn’t answer.
‘Well, perhaps that’s understandable after what you’ve seen,’ Ward murmured.
‘I appreciate that you may want to go.’
‘I didn’t say that. But try and see it from my point of view, Chris. I just watched you murder someone. How the hell am I supposed to feel?’
‘Do you think there’s a book in it?’
Ward laughed and, once more, Connelly felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise.
‘And this?’ Connelly said, holding up the handwritten pages.
‘I told you, I didn’t write it.’
‘Then who did?’
Ward could only shake his head.
‘You must have done it,’ Connelly insisted. ‘You said you thought you’d written other parts of your book without remembering. While you were blacked out.’
‘That’s different,‘Ward said, pointing at the pages.‘The words are different.
The structure’s different. The cadence. Everything about it. I did not write that, Martin.’
Again the two men looked silently at each other.
‘Now, are you going to help me or not?’ Ward said.
‘Help you do what? Murder someone else?’
‘Very funny. Give me twenty-four hours. Stay here. In the house. Watch what happens. Watch me.’ Ward swallowed hard. ‘Things happen at night mainly. Stay here and see.’
‘Twenty-four hours,’ Connelly murmured.
‘That’s all I’m asking.’
Connelly nodded slowly.
WATCHFUL EYES
1.06 p.m. Connelly found some tins of spaghetti in one ofWard’s kitchen cupboards and heated them. Ward made some toast then the two men sat at the
kitchen table and ate.
‘When was the last time you went out?’ Connelly wanted to know.
Ward could only shrug. ‘I can’t remember,’ he said. ‘That’s the problem, Martin. There isn’t much I can remember these days.’
‘You said things happened at night. You mean these blackouts?’
‘Not just that. They seem to happen at any time of the day or night,’ he murmured. ‘No. I’ve been seeing things too. Hallucinating. At least 1 think I’m hallucinating. If I’m not then things are weirder than even I thought.’
‘What have you seen?’
‘Things,’ Ward said vaguely. ‘I don’t know what the fuck you’d call them.
Apparitions.’
‘Ghosts?’
‘No.’
‘Then what?’
Ward swallowed hard. ‘Figures,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s hard to describe them. It sounds even more fucking stupid sitting here in the middle of the day. In the light.’ He ran a hand over his unshaven cheeks.
‘They look like apes. I know it sounds ridiculous.’
‘Where have you seen them?’
‘In the garden. Around the office. But always at night.’
‘Have you ever found any physical evidence?’
‘Like what? Footprints? That kind of thing?’
Connelly nodded.
‘No,’ said Ward. ‘Never.’ He sat back in his chair and laughed. ‘And you wonder why I drink?’ he said bitterly.
Connelly regarded him indifferently. ‘How much do you know about this house?’
he asked.
Ward looked vague.
‘Its history,’ Connelly continued. ‘Who lived here before you?’
‘Oh, come on.The fucking house is new. It had been standing empty for two years before I bought it. It’s not built on some fucking Indian burial ground or a cemetery or any of that kind of Hollywood bullshit. Its a new house. I was the first tenant. Nothing happened here before I moved in, Martin. The house is not haunted.’
There was another long silence finally broken by Connelly.‘And these …
apparitions?’ he said.‘You think they’ll come again tonight?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Could they be linked with what’s happening though?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ward said a little more loudly.
The two men locked stares.
‘This is like something you used to write,’ said Connelly.
Ward didn’t answer. He merely got to his feet and dropped the dirty plates into the sink. ‘Want a drink while we wait?’ he said. ‘Wait for what?’
Connelly asked. ‘For the night to come,’ Ward said.
TIME TO SPARE
4.29 p.m.
‘What do you think this means?’ Connelly held up the sheets of handwritten paper.
‘I told you, I don’t know,’ Ward rasped, sipping his drink.
‘Perhaps the answer is in here somewhere. The answer to all of this. It can’t hurt to go through it.’
Ward shrugged. He watched as Connelly spread the sheets of paper out on the coffee table, gazing at each one in turn.
‘“Reality and fantasy become inseparable”,’ Connelly read.
‘It’s a pity they don’t. I’d write a novel about an author who wins the fucking lottery,’ sneered Ward.
‘Is that what you think this means? That what is written eventually becomes fact?’
‘Who knows? The point is not what it means but how it got in my office in the first place. We need to know who wrote it, not what they’re trying to say:
Connelly read more. ‘It talks about confrontation,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘How conflict is good. How power is good and weakness is bad.’
‘Perhaps my office is haunted by Nietzsche,’ chuckled Ward.
‘I’m glad you find it funny, Chris. I wonder if the police will be laughing when they see that video.’
‘Are you threatening me, Martin?’
‘Why? What if I was? Are you going to do to me the same as you did to her?’
‘Fuck you.’
‘I’m trying to help. You asked me to help. That’s what I’m trying to do.’
Ward regarded him balefully for a second then refilled his glass. ‘All right, go on,’ he murmured.
‘It’s this last bit. “There are others.” I wonder if it means others like you.’
‘Murderers, you mean?’
‘What do you think it means?’
‘I told you. I don’t know and I don’t fucking care. All that bothers me is how it got into my office.’
‘Are you sure you didn’t write it?’ Connelly was growing agitated.
‘How many more times? I told you—’
‘Are you sure?’ shouted Connelly.
‘It’s not my writing. It’s not the way I write. I’m sure!
Connelly got to his feet and wandered over to the French windows that looked out on to Ward’s back garden. In the sky, clouds were building steadily like gathering formations of troops preparing for a final onslaught.
‘It looks like there’s another storm coming,’ murmured Connelly.
Ward didn’t answer.
THE COMING STORM
6.42 p.m. Rain hammered down unrelentingly, falling from the seething banks of black clouds in torrents.
Ward gazed out of the French windows and watched the droplets pounding against the concrete outside. Part of the garden near one of the oak trees was already under half an inch of water. Elsewhere on the grass, other puddles were growing larger as the downpour showed no sign of abating.
The first distant rumble of thunder rolled across the sky like artillery fire.
When Ward turned his head, he saw that Connelly was also looking out of the window. The agent looked a little apprehensive.
‘If this keeps up it’ll be dark in an hour,’ said Ward.
‘And then?’
Ward shrugged. He sat still a moment longer then got to his feet.
‘I’m going out to the office,’ he said. ‘Just to shut the computer down. Turn off the monitor. I’ll lock it up for the night.’
‘Do you want some company?’ Connelly asked, also rising.