The Creeper, page 14
Chloe sank into its corner and threw up her legs.
‘I love this couch,’ she said, stretching her arms toward the ceiling. ‘It’s comfier than any bed I’ve ever slept in. Just don’t go peering under any of these blankets. It’s probably pure filth.’
Behind the open curtains sagging in folds on the floor, a window faced out towards the cul-de-sac. Its pavement was lined with tall amber streetlights. Distant dots peppered the surrounding estate like candles in dead air. Ben paid them a tired glance before collapsing into the couch’s other corner. The car seat had been discomforting and the kitchen chair Spartan like its kind, but the couch almost made it all better. Like a drowning man at sea, he submerged into its softness, letting the throws rise around him like waves.
‘How are you still awake?’ Chloe asked.
‘Am I?’ he replied, his voice a croaky whisper. ‘I don’t know what I am anymore.’
Chloe heaved herself off the couch. The bones in her feet cracked as she walked across the hard carpet, towards the open curtains. Ben folded both arms over the couch’s backrest.
‘Lovely,’ Chloe whispered, standing before the bird shit that had streaked the window, ‘just lovely.’
‘That’s good luck, you know?’
‘For a lad who doesn’t believe in superstitions,’ she replied, ‘you certainly do keep going on about them.’
Chloe dragged the left curtain into place, its rings swishing across a pole whose screws were coming away from the wall.
‘Would you look at that,’ she said. ‘Any day now, the whole thing is going to collapse. The landlady would want to replace them,’ she added, leaning in to sniff the curtain. ‘Ugh, and these too.’
Ben had zoned out. He was staring past her. Memories of the village rallied under the moonlight. Chloe’s suburban dead end – with its concrete, symmetry, and artificial light – couldn’t have felt any farther from Tír Mallacht. Here there was comfort and security. Her house wasn’t exactly palatial but the rent probably didn’t leave too deep a dent in her pocket. And it seemed to abide by the classic all mod cons included mantra. There weren’t many modern conveniences two hundred years ago, and there certainly weren’t any in Tír Mallacht now. What if Sparling had been right after all?
Chloe was still stood where she was, primed to drag the other curtain into place. Outside, all was calm like an abandoned cemetery with mausoleums the size of houses. The last drops of rain had dried. The wind had given up its chase, or else it had simply run out of breath. Even thinking about the miles they had walked was enough to dim the light behind Ben’s eyes.
Chloe’s fingers suddenly tensed around the curtain’s cloth, as if something had caught her eye on the street. She snapped it closed and staggered backwards, both hands searching blindly for the couch.
‘Ben,’ she tried to call out, but the word came no louder than a whisper.
He was slumped over the backrest, eyes finally at rest. His revival was slow, like an old fluorescent light flickering into uncertain action. Chloe’s fingers clinched around his shoulder bone.
‘Ben,’ she repeated, shaking him awake. ‘Ben, please.’
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, sitting back.
‘He’s outside.’
Ben rose to his feet, head spilling with sleep. He looked to her – to the whitest eyes he had ever seen, so flushed with fear that he knew who had to be responsible.
‘That’s not possible,’ he said disbelievingly.
Chloe had to be mistaken. Whoever she had seen was probably just a neighbour out for an evening stroll. Ben rounded the couch and approached the window. Chloe stayed back. She stared at the curtains, seeing past them, to the impossible sight seared into her mind.
‘What does he want?’ she asked. ‘Why did he follow us?’
‘It can’t be the same person, Chloe. How would he even get here?’
‘Open it,’ she said, taking a timorous step forward. ‘See him for yourself, if you don’t believe me.’
Ben threw the curtains open with a sharp wrench of his arm.
There, in the centre of the street, not forty yards away – his scrawny black shape illumed in orange light, as still and sinister as the night before – was the man from the far field. In the shadows that fell by his face, Ben could feel the eyes that had all the while been watching them.
‘No,’ he whispered. ‘That’s impossible.’
It was the same man.
His was the only body on that deserted street. It was too spindly and disproportionate to be anyone but him. The streetlights overhead brushed his shape with the faintest gloss of copper, but the darkness kept the features of his form a mystery.
‘I told you,’ Chloe whispered. ‘And then the next night he’s closer. So close that you can see him, and he can—’
‘Stop,’ Ben interjected, so loudly that he startled himself.
They had abandoned Tír Mallacht at first light with the dawn still breaking over the rain-swept trees. By foot and by car they had travelled, leaving it all behind. Nobody could have caught them. The man outside the window couldn’t be there.
It was a cruel joke and it had gone on for long enough. Ben stormed away from the window, fists clenched, nostrils flaring like a warhorse at full gallop. Chloe reached for him, but he had already crossed the room, simmering with a rage that he couldn’t contain. Not while she suffered at the hands of the Tír Mallachts and their fucking creeper.
‘What are you doing?’ she shouted, following him into the hallway.
‘I’m putting a stop to this. It’s just a man, Chloe, and I’m going to prove it to you.’
Ben threw open the door and charged outside, never second-guessing what he was about to do. To think was to hesitate, and his anger wouldn’t allow it. Cold air raced into the hallway as the door handle knocked against the wall. The silence was broken only by Ben’s footsteps as he paced towards the pavement, and there he stopped.
The man was gone.
There was no sound to be heard or movement to be seen. The whole estate had the eerie air of an abandoned film set.
‘Where’d he go?’ Ben said, walking onto the road, his neck all the while turning, searching, but finding nothing. ‘He couldn’t have just…’ He stopped himself from saying it.
Chloe came to stand in the doorway. There she watched Ben walk out to the centre of the cul-de-sac, facing where the stranger had stood, where the memory of him still did. Ben had his hands on his head, scratching at its short hairs. Out there, alone, on that orange-coloured concrete he resembled an astronaut on some alien planet, seeking desperately for life.
‘What do you want?’ he shouted.
His voice echoed to nowhere. Behind a curtained window, a neighbour’s light came on, and then another, like dead souls stirring from their slumber.
Ben made a beeline for the house two doors down. He was never the kind to go knocking on strangers’ doors after dark but someone had to have seen their stalker running from the scene. There was no dithering on the doorstep. Ben slammed down its knocker as though he’d seen their pursuer close the door behind him. He listened as a chain was slid into place. The door clicked. It peeled open so slightly that the chain’s links weren’t tested. From within, there peered the face of a woman, elderly and understandably apprehensive. Of all the houses, he had to pick this one. He fought the urge to apologise and bid her a good night.
‘What do you want?’ she asked, holding up a phone for him to see. ‘Don’t think that I won’t call the Guards.’
Perhaps that’s what Ben should have done. Wasn’t there a law against staring in people’s windows? There was probably also one that didn’t smile too kindly on terrorising grannies after hours.
‘There’s no need to do that,’ he said, taking a step back. ‘I was wondering if you saw anyone outside. He was standing right there,’ he added, pointing back to the street. ‘He was tall. Dressed all in black. You couldn’t have missed him.’
‘I just saw you,’ she replied, ‘shouting your head off.’
‘Please,’ Ben pressed, ‘did you see him? Or did you see someone running from here? I need to know where he went.’
‘This is a quiet estate and that’s the way we like it. If I hear you outside again, I’ll call the Guards.’ Here she advertised her phone for the second time. ‘I know where you live. I’ve seen your friend with the hair.’
The door closed before Ben could respond. The woman was probably still stood in the same spot, listening for the sound of his retreat. Other houses had awakened. A dog was barking somewhere. The whole street seemed hypersensitive to every noise. Ben couldn’t bring himself to knock on another door. He was surprised that he hadn’t already heard the distant siren of a Garda squad car.
‘Where did he go?’ Chloe asked as he approached her.
‘I don’t know,’ he replied, shaking, his frustration more restless than before.
She looked to him, waiting for more – some explanation for what she had seen – but Ben had no words to comfort her. The truth was that there was nowhere the man could have gone. Dark bodies shifted by their curtains as he stepped inside and locked the door behind him, sliding its chain in place. It had taken him mere seconds to get from the window to the door, and in that time the man had disappeared.
13
Music had been playing. In the background of Alec’s thoughts there had been strings and possibly piano, comforting in their distance like the ebb and flow of an unseen ocean. Now there was only the cadent tick of the clock and the crackling of hot logs on the fire, its light shivering across the rug as far the armchair’s back legs. He reached for his brandy, deliberated for a moment, and then withdrew his fingers back to their locked position. Alec hadn’t been listening to the music. But the realisation of its absence further accentuated his sense of loneliness. During these fugitive and altogether futile moments he would often reflect upon his parents and the fraction of a life they had given him.
Alec had no children. In light of his life’s experience the man viewed having a family as an act of cruelty. It was no better than adopting a dog only to throw it into a cage. He had never broached the topic with his parents when they had been alive. But he would often ponder how exactly they had deemed it admissible to have a child. What selfish lies had been shared between them? Was it love or simplicity that sealed his fate? They knew of the horror that he stood to inherit, of the curse that was not his doing but his to suffer all the same. Cruelty was too tame a word.
His mother was the first to go. She thought that she could live with it but the restrictions became too much. Alec remembered only her silence and short temper, and the way she used to stare down at him like a metal ball chained to her freedom. The woman’s anger eventually turned to distrust. She came to doubt if any of it was necessary. Her death was proof enough for Alec. He still recalled her screams with crystal clarity, and the turmoil of that night when they were cut short.
His father persevered for some years after, but he was never the same man. The memories he clung to – of a love and companionship never to be repeated – turned cancerous, blighting whatever happiness his life might have held thereafter. He taught Alec how to survive – inspiring in him the fear that was essential – and saw to it that his son was financially self-reliant in the event of his death. That had been the man’s ultimate plan all along: to die, but by his own doing. A rare feat for any Sparling. He drank too much. He ate too little. Eventually, he became reckless and as a result his plan never came to fruition. He didn’t scream like Alec’s mother had done. He went quietly and without complaint, as might a drunk who had lingered after hours by the bar, all too aware that he had outstayed his welcome.
Mr French and Ms Coogan had been carefully chosen from a long list. Alec predicted that their financial circumstances would ink their contracts without great debate. Neither of them had any children. And they each possessed the essential skills that he had been searching for. On paper they were the perfect candidates.
His only regret in his handling of this project was that he hadn’t organised it sooner in the year. Other matters had demanded his attention, as choppy waters call the captain to the quarterdeck until he sails again through the calm. This storm had, unfortunately, lasted late into the summer. Alec emerged from it unscathed. But the long evenings had been squandered. Daylight truly was more valuable than gold, and one of the few luxuries that Alec’s commanding wealth could not buy.
The October days were too short. With any luck, Mr French had the know-how to organise his interviews before nightfall. Otherwise, it would all have been for nothing. The man’s master’s thesis had certainly shown some promise, and judging by his focus during Alec’s presentation, he also shared a keen eye for cartography. Nevertheless, it bothered Alec like a loose marble rolling between his thoughts.
Alec was only a boy of seven years the first time he saw him. It wasn’t an act of disobedience, nor was it truly his parents’ fault. At that age and having demonstrated the care that would come to define his life, they assumed that he was safe to be left alone. But he was still a child and still susceptible to childish curiosity. It took something as simple as a noise he didn’t recognise to draw his eyes outside, into the night, where he saw him standing at the edge of their estate. Strike one, and he hadn’t even hit puberty. Panels were added to the windows shortly after, becoming a staple of Alec’s life from that point onward.
The second mishap occurred fifteen years later. His father was still alive. Alec had to visit the university for the sake of sitting an examination. It was scheduled to finish later than the hour he would have liked to be home, but there was no evading the issue. The university had already been accommodating enough, and Alec was confident that he would be safely indoors before dark. Of course, the car’s unprecedented breakdown could never have been foreseen.
His home was isolated as per his father’s design, and Alec ran for miles, racing against the sun. When he climbed the front steps and fell against the door, there was still time. But a mountain of sand had slipped through the hourglass. He had made it, though only barely. He hammered down the knocker until its iron almost split. No response came from within. All windows had already been sealed with their wooden defences, denying any points of entry. Alec’s father was in the study, passed out drunk, leaving his son outside in the night for the first time in his life. Strike two, and Alec hadn’t seen the darkness since.
He slouched back in his chair and cast a disappointed eye over his lot in life – the room that had, since birth, been his prison. It was a solemn place. A sepulchre of unwanted memories. Every year it felt a little smaller as though its four walls were constantly shifting inward ever so slightly. Given the lifetime that Alec had spent there, it was a wonder he hadn’t been crushed alive already. Where had the years gone? His hands were those of an old man; veins and grey-skinned bone. He had never known love or meaningful friendship. The world’s offering was denied to him. If it was pity he deserved, then there was no one to give it to him.
He knew that his father would never have approved of what he had done. But then, every Sparling eventually cracked in some way or other. Addiction, depression, even madness; they were as common to his blood as the curse that sired them. For Alec, it was his obsession with escaping his fate, to do what his father had deemed impossible. So many had been sacrificed by his own self-concern and cowardice. And still it remained, as contagious as the day it was first spoken.
It never changed. Not since it had been created. It didn’t age. It didn’t die.
‘Bedtime,’ Alec said as he raised himself to his feet, quitting those thoughts, flinching slightly from that rusty feeling in his lower back. He walked over to the fireplace and shifted its iron guard in place. His shadow came to stand in the cage now strewn across the floor. There was still a spit of brandy in the glass beside his armchair. Memories of his father tainted even that simple pleasure. The grandfather clock read half past ten. Its eleven chimes would be loud and long, and he would rather not be around to hear them.
The repairmen had come that afternoon to service the faulty shutter in the master bedroom. Although they had other appointments to attend that day, the persuasive power of Alec’s pocket convinced them to inspect every security feature on the premises. They spoke to him as though he were odd or eccentric, sharing jokes at his expense. Their camaraderie wasn’t something that Alec could relate to, and the laughter between them seemed far too forthcoming to be genuine, he thought. Perhaps falsities were simply the social norm.
This was the only occasion that Alec could recall Lara donning a frown. Such were her reasons for doing so that it left him feeling quite flattered. She had obviously overheard the mechanics deriding her employer. Far from subtlety were these men born. They were the crass, mouth-breathing sort and the Italian blood must have simmered in her veins at the impertinence of it all.
Lara had subsequently checked each room by Alec’s request. She was the only person he enjoyed any regular contact with. He trusted her above all others because there were no others. Not that Lara was any the wiser, but upon Alec’s death she stood to inherit a handsome sum. A posthumous gesture of his appreciation as he could never truly find the right words to say in life.
The hallway was lined with lamplight. A dark green runner covered its length, leaving only the narrowest strip of mahogany on either side. There were no windows, paintings, or other ornamentation. Its only function – for Alec at least – was to access the stairs. These Lara swept each day and polished occasionally.
Upstairs, doors stretched down to the far wall; rooms that Alec had no use for. These included the bedroom once belonging to his parents, and his old nursery, windowless but well ventilated. His mother’s perfume still haunted the air where her dressing table – like all furniture – had been concealed for decades under white sheets. Its smell didn’t trigger any fond, nostalgic reminiscence. Instead, it caused Alec to pity his youthful past self, with all those idle years laid out before him, not quite understanding back then how or why his life was different.
