From dining room to lounge, and thence into the hallway. Still nothing, no whisper or sigh. Julia and her companion could only be upstairs, which suggested that she had been wrong, thinking she heard fear in the shouts. Perhaps it was pleasure that she'd heard. An orgasmic whoop, instead of the terror she'd taken it for. It was an easy mistake to make.
The front door was on her right, mere yards away. She could still slip out and away, the coward in her tempted, and no one be any the wiser. But a fierce curiosity had seized her, a desire to know (to see) the mysteries the house held, and be done with them. As she climbed the stairs the curiosity mounted to a kind of exhilaration.
She reached the top, and began to make her way along the landing. The thought occurred now that the birds had flown, that while she had been creeping through from the back of the house they had left via the front.
The first door on the left was the bedroom: if they were mating anywhere, Julia and her paramour, it would surely be here. But no. The door stood ajar; she peered in. The bedspread was uncreased.
Then, a misshapen cry. So near, so loud, her heart missed its rhythm.
She ducked out of the bedroom, to see a figure lurch from one of the rooms farther along the landing. It
took her a moment to recognize the fretful man who had arrived with Julia-and only then by his clothes. The rest was changed, horribly changed. A wasting disease had seized him in the minutes since she'd seen him on the step, shriveling his flesh on the bone.
Seeing Kirsty, he threw himself toward her, seeking what fragile protection she could offer. He had got no more than a pace from the door however, when a form spilled into sight behind him. It too seemed diseased, its body bandaged from head to foot-the bindings stained by issues of blood and pus. There was nothing in its speed, however, or the ferocity of its subsequent attack, that suggested sickness. Quite the reverse. It reached for the fleeing man and took hold of him by the neck. Kirsty let out a cry, as the captor drew its prey back into its embrace.
The victim made what little complaint his dislocated face was capable of. Then the antagonist tightened its embrace. The body trembled and twitched; its legs buckled. Blood spurted from eyes and nose and mouth. Spots of it filled the air like hot hail, breaking against her brow. The sensation snapped her from her inertia. This was no time to wait and watch. She ran.
The monster made no pursuit. She reached the top of the stairs without being overtaken. But as her foot descended, it addressed her.
Its voice was...familiar.
"There you are," it said.
It spoke with melting tones, as if it knew her. She stopped.
"Kirsty," it said. "Wait a while."
Her head told her to run. Her gut defied the wisdom, however. It wanted to remember whose voice this was, speaking from the binding. She could still make good her escape, she reasoned; she had an
eight-yard start. She looked round at the figure. The body in its arms had curled up, fetally, legs against chest. The beast dropped it.
"You killed him..." she said.
The thing nodded. It had no apologies to make, apparently, to either victim or witness.
"We'll mourn him later," it told her and took a step toward her.
"Where's Julia?" Kirsty demanded.
"Don't you fret. All's well..." the voice said. She was so close to remembering who it was.
As she puzzled it took another step, one hand upon the wall, as if its balance was still uncertain.
"I saw you," it went on. "And I think you saw me. At the window..."
Her mystification increased. Had this thing been in the house that long? If so, surely Rory must-.
And then she knew the voice.
"Yes. You do remember. I can see you remember..."
It was Rory's voice, or rather, a close approximation of it. More guttural, more selfregarding, but the resemblance was uncanny enough to keep her rooted to the spot while the beast shambled within snatching distance of her.
At the last she recanted her fascination, and turned to flee, but the cause was already lost. She heard its step a pace behind her, then felt its fingers at her neck. A cry came to her lips, but it was barely mounted before the thing had its corrugated palm across her face, canceling both the shout and the breath it came upon.
It plucked her up, and took her back the way she'd come. In vain she struggled against its hold; the small wounds her fingers made upon its body-tearing at the bandages and digging into the rawness beneath-left it entirely unmoved, it seemed. For a horrid moment her heels snagged the corpse on the floor. Then she was being hauled into the room from which the living and the dead had emerged. It smelled of soured milk and fresh meat. When she was flung down the boards beneath her were wet and warm.
Her belly wanted to turn inside out. She didn't fight the instinct, but retched up all that her stomach held. In the confusion of present discomfort and anticipated terror she was not certain of what happened next. Did she glimpse somebody else (Julia) on the landing as the door was slammed, or was it shadow? One way or another it was too late for appeals. She was alone with the nightmare.
Wiping the bile from her mouth she got to her feet. Daylight pierced the newspaper at the window here and there, dappling the room like sunlight through branches. And through this pastoral, the thing came sniffing her.
"Come to Daddy," it said.
In her twenty-six years she had never heard an easier invitation to refuse.
"Don't touch me," she told it.
It cocked its head a little, as if charmed by this show of propriety. Then it closed in on her, all pus and laughter, and-God help her-desire.
She backed a few desperate inches into the corner, until there was nowhere else for her to go.
"Don't you remember me?" it said.
She shook her head.
"Frank," came the reply. "This is brother Frank..."
She had met Frank only once, at Alexandra Road. He'd come visiting one afternoon, just before the wedding, more she couldn't recall. Except that she'd hated him on sight.
"Leave me alone," she said as it reached for her. There was a vile finesse in the way his stained fingers touched her breast.
"Don't, " she shrieked, "or so help me-"
"What?" said Rory's voice. "What will you do?"
Nothing, was the answer of course. She was helpless, as only she had ever been in dreams, those dreams of pursuit and assault that her psyche had always staged on a ghetto street in some eternal night. Never-not even in her most witless fantasies-had she anticipated that the arena would be a room she had walked past a dozen times, in a house where she had been happy, while outside the day went on as ever, gray on gray.
In a futile gesture of disgust, she pushed the investigating hand away.
"Don't be cruel," the thing said, and his fingers found her skin again, as unshooable as October wasps.
"What's to be frightened of?"
"Outside..." she began, thinking of the horror on the landing.
"A man has to eat," Frank replied. "Surely you can forgive me that?"
Why did she even feel his touch, she wondered? Why didn't her nerves share her disgust and die beneath his caress?
"This isn't happening," she told herself aloud, but the beast only laughed.
"I used to tell myself that," he said. "Day in, day out. Used to try and dream the agonies away. But you can't. Take it from me. You can't. They have to be endured."
She knew he was telling the truth, the kind of unsavory truth that only monsters were at liberty to tell. He had no need to flatter or cajole; he had no philosophy to debate, or sermon to deliver. His awful nakedness was a kind of sophistication. Past the lies of faith, and into purer realms.