Psychopathia: A Horror Suspense Novel (13 page)

Licking his lips, Toby glanced over her shoulder again. ‘You have to go,’ he said. ‘I have to close the door.’

‘What?’ Seeing her brother was only making her worry more. She pushed past him and strode into the room. ‘I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on.’
Squinting, she stared around the room. ‘Why’s it so bright in here? Where’s all the furniture?’

Toby was still at the door, fidgeting, casting glances down the stairs. ‘You have to go,’ he repeated.

‘No. I’m not going anywhere.’

He closed the door, placed his back against it like he was afraid it would come flying open again, and peered around his room. He nodded his head. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘It didn’t get in. It’s all right.’

‘Toby? What didn’t get in?’ A worm of serious concern unwound in the pit of her stomach.

‘It’s all right,’ he said again. ‘Not in here. Can’t come in here. Too light. Too bright. Too nice in here. Nowhere to hide. Makes it all squinty.’

He wasn’t making any sense at all. ‘Have you been smoking, Toby?’ she asked.

Snapping his head around, he looked at her properly for the first time. ‘Tully?’ he said.

‘Yeah? What’s going on, Toby?’

A few rapid blinks, and he shook his head. ‘Sorry. Nothing. Nothing’s going on. Where have you been?’

She was just as confused as he appeared to be. ‘I just got home from work. Which you didn’t turn up for.’

Toby walked over to his mattress and flopped down on it, digging around in the blankets and pulling out his smokes. He rolled and lit a cigarette, Tully standing against the wall watching him.

‘Why is it so bright in here?’ she asked.

Smoke trailed out of his nostrils and he twisted his head around to look at the extra lights in each corner of the room. ‘It was too dark in here before,’ he said. ‘I like this better.’

There was nothing for her to sit on. She crouched down on her heels and frowned over her brother. ‘Are you okay, Toby?’

He took another drag on his cigarette and nodded. ‘Wasn’t feeling well this morning. I would have called work to say I wasn’t coming in, but I fell asleep.’

‘What sort of not well?’

Quickly, so quickly she almost didn’t notice, his eyes flicked towards the corners of the room again. His throat worked. ‘Just sick. I just felt sick, okay.’ His brows drew together. ‘I…I…I don’t know. I was sick, that’s all.’

She scooted across the floor and put a hand to his forehead. He squirmed away.

‘I’m fine now,’ he said. ‘
I’m okay.’

He sounded like he was trying to convince himself along with her. ‘I think you need to go to the doctor,’ she said.

‘No. No, it was just a stomach bug. I slept it off.’ He tucked his head down and concentrated on the cigarette.

‘You want to come inside with me and grab a coffee. Something to eat?’

He shook his head. ‘No. I’m going to go to bed. Work again tomorrow, right?’

She sat on her knees on the floor looking at him. He kept his face averted. She squeezed her eyes shut tight a moment. ‘How do you stand it being so bright in here?’

‘Better,’ he said. ‘Better this way.’

She tried to touch him again, but he leaned away.
‘Toby, I’m worried about you. You’re acting weird.’

Her brother shrugged, and
smoked his cigarette. ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘I’m going to go to bed now.’

Sitting back, reluctant, Tully stared at him, but he kept his face down and all she could see was a tumble of dirty blond hair. ‘Okay,’ she said at last. ‘I’ll see you in the morning, then.’

His head bobbed. ‘See you in the morning. Close the door when you go, okay? Properly.’

‘Whatever. Okay. Get some rest, all right? I’ll see you in the morning.’ She had to get out of there. The bright light was torture, everywhere she looked a thousand watt
light bulb burned her retinas. Gaining her feet, she went to the door then turned back to look at him hunched over on his mattress which was in the middle of the floor. He flicked ash into a dirty saucer.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she said. Waited for him to nod. He did, but she waited in vain for him to say good night. Eventually she opened the door and slipped out, casting a final glance backwards at him.

Halfway down the stairs, she heard the snick of the key in the lock.

Tully opened her bedroom door and stepped out into the hallway, rubbing her eyes. She could hear her stepmother downstairs, talking to her father. Groaning – it was too early to be up, even if she did like the mornings, she liked a decent amount of sleep better.

Her bare foot touched something wet, and she stopped still, looked down.

‘What the fuck?’

The carpet was sodden. Bending down, she touched the wet patch with cautious fingers, held them to her nose and sniffed. Water. It was water. Just water. She looked at the floor up the hallway. Wet prints led to the bathroom.
Her knees cracked when she stood up, moving in slow motion, feeling her heart quicken. She shook her head. No.

The bathroom door was open a crack, and her hand rose ghostlike to push it open. Her parents had their own bathroom, neither one would have left a path of wet prints down the thick carpeting of the hallway. Hannah couldn’t even walk yet.

‘Toby,’ she whispered. ‘Must have been Toby.’ That made sense. He was a male in his early twenties. They were inconsiderate. Didn’t think twice about tracking water all over the house. She looked back at the footprints. Each one was as wet as the one before. Each one was far wetter than it ought to be as though water had oozed out of the very feet leaving the tracks.

Her mouth was dry. The bathroom door swung open on silent hinges. She edged into the gap.

The shower curtain, thick plastic covered in daisies, hung around the bath. Tully wanted to run. She didn’t want to edge farther into the room until she could reach the shower curtain. She didn’t want to pull it back in a clatter of rungs. What if the footprints were leading to the bath, instead of away from it?

Her foot stepped in a wet patch again, and she almost cried out. But her vocal chords were paralysed.
A small mewl of disgust escaped her and she jerked her foot away, only to find there was no dry place to put it. The entire bathroom floor was soaked.

The curtain around the tub taunted her. Lifting her eyes to blink at it, she thought she saw it billow outwards. Just a little. Just as though someone lying in there had shifted position.

She groped out for the towel on the rail beside her. Soft and thick, she pulled it off and threw it down on the floor. She didn’t want to step on the wet carpet. It might not be wet just with water. A flashback to the bathroom at the cabin. The tub filled with water, and something she’d been sure was urine.

Despite herself, she sniffed, and was that a hint of ammonia she could smell? Maybe. Maybe it was.

A noise downstairs made her jump, and she knew she had to do something. It was all very well standing paralysed in the doorway to the bathroom, but if her stepmother – or her father – came running up the stairs right now, they’d want to know what was going on. Already, she didn’t know how she was going to clean up the mess in the hallway. But she was going to. As soon as she’d seen what was in the tub.

Stepping on the towel, she edged nearer to the tub, biting down on her lip hard enough to hurt. A couple steps more.
Pull the curtain back. See what was in the bath.

She was holding her breath. Her hand trembled as she reached for the curtain, and she yelped when she tugged it back, before she’d even seen anything.

There was no one in the bath, and she almost collapsed against it in relief. Panting, blinking, she leaned on the side of the bath then twisted around to sit on it. The relief was short-lived, dismay moving in to take its place.

So, no person was lying in the tub, their skin wrinkled and peeling, greenish, bloated. But the twist of sheets submerged in the yellow water was almost as bad. She didn’t understand it. Didn’t know what it meant.

‘What’s going on? Why is the carpet all wet?’

Tully hadn’t heard her stepmother come upstairs, and she jerked around at the voice, almost losing her seating, almost tumbling into the bath.

‘You gave me a fright!’ she said before she could stop herself.

‘What are you doing?’ Mary asked. ‘Why is everything wet?’

Tully stared at her. She didn’t have an answer. Or not one she could reasonably give. Her stepmother walked into the room, shaking her head. She looked over Tully’s shoulder at the bath.

‘Tully, what are you doing? Why have you made such a mess? Are those sheets in there?’ She leaned over and dipped her fingers into the water. ‘
It’s freezing cold water!’ She wrinkled her nose and backed up a couple of steps, her face showing her confusion. ‘Tully, we have a washing machine. If you wet the bed, you wash your sheets in the machine.’

Tully shook her head, then abruptly stopped. ‘I know. I’m sorry. I kind of panicked, I guess.’

Mary was looking around, wringing her hands. ‘But you’ve made a terrible mess. Why, Tully, why? You could have asked me if you needed help.’

Tully wanted to cry. Her whole body seized up, stressed, and she just wanted to explode into tears, throw herself into her stepmother’s arms and sob out the whole story.

But her stepmother was shaking her head, worry and disgust warring with each other on her face.

‘I’ll clean it up. I’m sorry, Mary. I just wasn’t thinking.’

Mary met her eyes. ‘Do you need to go to the doctor, Tully? Is it something we need to worry about? Shall I get your father?’

That made Tully jump up, her feet squishing into the sodden carpet. ‘No! No, it’s nothing to bother Dad with, honest. It was just an accident.’ She looked down. ‘I…I just drank too much last night, I guess.’

That solidified the expression into disgust. ‘Clean it up, Tully,’ her stepmother said. ‘We have a washing machine. You don’t need to go ruining my good carpet – and my towels.’ She sniffed and grimaced. ‘You need to think about whether you have a problem, if this is happening. I am not happy about this, not one little bit.’ She turned and left the bathroom, but Tully could hear her muttering the whole way down the hall. She slumped back down on the bath.

Great. Now her stepmother thought she had a drinking problem. And wet her bed.
She pressed her lips together in a thin line and dipped a hand into the tub. Mary had been right, the water was freezing. Not just cold, but freezing. She groped around for the plug, fingers going numb. Then she snagged the plug and the water sucked down the drain, taking the sheets with it. Tully snatched them up and tears welled up as she had to bend over the bath, holding the drowned and twisted sheets from blocking the drain. There were more than a pair of them in there, she discovered, and the stink of urine was strong now, and she had her hands in it. She wanted to drop the sheets and turn the shower on. Hot. Scalding hot. Get under it and scrub the skin from her bones.

It was disgusting. The
water drained at last, but the sheets were still heavy with it. She let go of them and stepped back, hating the feel of wet carpet under her feet, and hands held out, dripping with the yellow water. She was going to have to move the sheets downstairs to the laundry, probably ought to wring them out first, but she shook her head. No way was she going to do that. Nope.

Snatching up another of the clean towels, she
tip-toed out of the room and into the hallway. She’d use the towel to soak up the footprints – sure that was what they were, someone had got out of the bath and walked down the hall. The towel wadded up and pressed against them did some good, got a bit of the moisture out of the thick carpet, but when she sat back on her haunches and looked, they were still really wet.

She went downstairs and fetched a laundry basket for the sheets. Her stepmother glared at her through the doorway to the kitchen and shook her head, as though she was now convinced her stepdaughter was a hopeless case. Tully sniffed and blinked her stinging eyes.

There was more than one pair of sheets twisted up in the bottom of the bath. Tully thought that every pair from the linen cupboard might be in there. Swallowing down a bitter taste of bile, she pulled them out and dropped them splat into the plastic laundry basket. Three complete pairs. How would she explain that to Mary? She’d pissed the bed three different times? Tully wasn’t willing to admit to that. No way in hell. She’d be shipped off to rehab before she could yell ghost. And if she yelled ghost, she’d be shipped off to an insane asylum.

Which brought her thinking full cycle again. If only they hadn’t gone up to Seacliff that night. If only she hadn’t been badgering Toby to try the EVP thing with her. All she’d wanted was to try contacting her mother. She missed her, was all. Certainly she hadn’t been asking for any of this.

The basket was brutally heavy. Unwilling to squeeze the water from the sheets, she’d just dumped them in the basket, and she grunted in relief when she let it drop on the floor in front of the washing machine. Still wrinkling her nose, she filled the machine, adding the towels to the load. Soap powder, and turned on to the heavy duty cycle. Hopefully the smell of piss would wash out. Otherwise her pay was going to go on new sheets.