The Patchwork House (17 page)

I closed my eyes and tried to shut out the incessant noise. I had to concentrate. Trying to work out how to get back to Beth was making my head spin, and the unnatural ticking was freaking me out. I tried to concentrate on the task at hand. All I had to do was trick the entity into making me jump in time. Simple, right? But what could I do to prompt the entity to make me time travel?

As far as I could tell, the entity would cause a time jump for three reasons. The first reason was to split us up. Since there was nobody else to split me up
from
, I couldn’t exploit this to trigger a new jump.

The second reason was to prevent an escape. I could go smash another window, but Arthur said there was only one recent case of vandalism. If I caused another, would I change history? Would the entity send me into next year to avoid a contradiction? If I did enough damage, would the police come? Should I set a fire? What if nobody saw the fire and called for help before I had burned to death? Yeah, maybe not. Feigning escape was an option, but perhaps not a very good one.

So that meant I would try the third method and see how that went. The third reason for a time jump was to separate us from our equipment.

I was about to take a huge gamble. Just thinking about it made me nauseous. But if I got this right, I’d be back with Beth. Perhaps I’d be back in Chloe’s time instead, or back with all the equipment. My mobile phone, the camera, the charger, the lamps…

If I got it wrong, I’d end up in the middle of an entirely different night, all alone, with no light. Or worse. The entity seemed to be able to move parts of the house forwards and backwards in time. Perhaps only the room with my equipment would jump and I’d be left exactly where I started.

I could still escape. I could smash another window and leave immediately. I could hide out in the lodge until dawn. Then I could run away and never come back.

But what about Beth? I’d spent my life running away from women as soon as they got close, treating them like shit. Before, it didn’t bother me. Now I cared. I cared about Beth. She was everything I could possibly hope for and then some. She was smarter than me, better looking than me, yet she wanted to be with me. How could I let her go? The old me would feel threatened, would feel that there was too much pressure. I would throw it all away because of some misguided sense of self-importance. That was the old me. I wasn’t like that anymore. I had changed.

Or at least I told myself I had changed. If I ran away now, I would simply prove that the selfish, egotistical little shit I used to be had not changed one bit.

If I ran away now, Beth and I would be over – assuming she ever got out too. If I didn’t at least try to rescue her, there would be no future for us. To leave her here, to make her suffer when I could have at least tried to find her, I just couldn’t do it. She had probably also worked out the triggers for the time jumps—maybe she was in the process of trying them out herself. I knew she wouldn’t give up on me, so I wasn’t going to give up on her.

I left the dining room and returned to the hall via the living room. Once again I didn’t let my torch waver from the direction I was heading in. I even resisted looking up the stairs as I passed by. I hummed
Ode To Joy
under my breath, mostly to drown out the ticking.

I headed straight for the drawing room.

As I entered, I looked around, just in case all our equipment had magically returned. It had not. The room was as untouched as it was the first time we’d entered the house.

I checked that I still had my matches and candle stowed away. Then I placed both torches on the table in the middle of the room, both still on.

Then I left the room.

I stood in the hallway, the light from the drawing room casting a dim glow. I closed the door.

And I waited.

There was no sound. No movement. I was alone in the dark

I could see the outline of the door in front of me, lit from behind. It was pretty faint and cast no light into the hallway.

“Come on. Come on!”

I was waiting for the light around the door frame to go out. When that happened, either the room had jumped in time or I had.

The glow refused to disappear. It stubbornly stayed on.

I banged my fist against the door.

“Come on, you fucker,” I yelled.

Still nothing.

I turned towards the stairs, or where I thought they lay.

“I know you can’t resist this. Take my torches you bastard. Leave me in the dark. You can do it. Go on.”

I turned back. The glow was still there.

And then something occurred to me.

Every time there had been a time jump–that I was aware of–we had been in a separate part of the house. Not just in the next room but a different section. The house was a mish-mash of different architectures, built in different eras. Perhaps the entity was able to make sections of the house jump but not individual rooms. Perhaps the very fragmentary nature of the house itself was what gave the entity the ability to move pieces of it around in time, rather than the whole building jumping together.

It was just a guess but it fit with my experience.

The drawing room, hall and living room were all in one section of the house. The oldest part built in the Gothic style. The kitchen and dining room were in the part of the house that had burned down and been rebuilt.

I had to leave the oldest section of the house. And that meant going further from the torches and the meager light.

I wanted to light my candle. I didn’t though. If the entity knew I still had light, it might not bother to separate me from the torches. It probably knew anyway but I couldn’t bring myself to give everything up just yet.

Tentatively, my ears straining to hear any unusual sound while my eyes showed me absolutely nothing, I walked away from the drawing room. I moved slowly, mindful that I could veer off course and walk into a wall. Or, worse, I might bump into the stumbling corpse of a dead priest wandering about in the dark. But there was no sound, just my own footsteps and the creaking of the boards beneath my feet. I kept going, assuming I was walking towards the kitchen. I couldn’t see a damn thing. It was absolutely, completely and utterly dark.

I struggled to control my breathing. With every step I felt more and more panicked. I fought down the urge to turn and run back to the drawing room as fast as I could, to grab the torches and to find something to smash a window with, to run and run and never come back. I thought of Beth. I pictured her in my mind. I stopped, turned and checked that the glow around the drawing room door was still there. It was, and my eyes drank in the light greedily. I had to tear my gaze away from the dim rectangle. I positioned myself once more so that the drawing room was behind me and I kept moving forward.

Eventually, I stumbled down the slight step into the kitchen.

I felt the air change behind me. The hairs on my neck stood up. It was a feeling I was familiar with, even though I’d not noticed it before because I’d been running or shouting or just plain terrified. It was a feeling that seemed to accompany shifts in time, or at least that was my guess.

I turned.

The light around the drawing room door was gone.

The entity had taken the bait.

And now I was in the dark, with no torches, and still completely on my own.

I strained to listen. Not a sound.

I could resist no longer. I pulled out the matches and I struck one. I expected a spectral face to loom out of the darkness but none came. Instead I could make out the parts of the kitchen nearest to me, and I could see the reflection of the flickering match in the window. I couldn’t see very far into the hallway. I took out the candle and lit it, shaking the match out before it could burn my finger.

Now I could see further. There was no light coming from the drawing room, so that part of the house must have time-jumped. A day–maybe more–separated me from my torches.

But the ghost wanted more. It wanted every source of light I had. I could feel it. I knew that my strategizing about numbers of days and how many jumps it would take to get back to Beth were completely worthless. What mattered was whether or not I was willing to trigger the jump. Could I really go through with it? Could I take that final step and leave myself completely vulnerable.

I’d come this far. I wasn’t going to run away now.

I found a stand in one of the cupboards and placed the candle into it. Then I put the only source of light down on the floor of the kitchen. The flame glowed against the tiles, casting a flickering pool of light across the floor. I put my matches down nearby, not close enough for the candle to light them, but near enough that I could find them in the dark if I had to.

I took a deep breath.

I stepped over the threshold, back into the hallway.

The atmosphere shifted again.

I was plunged into darkness and thrown into hell.

CHAPTER 12

This latest jump
changed everything. I could hear it coming from above. I stepped back into the kitchen; the room felt different now than just moments ago. The candle and my matches were gone and it was pitch black again, but above my head there was noise. Creaking floorboards. Running feet. Wailing and screaming. Something bad was happening, upstairs in the apartment.

I wanted to run away and hide somewhere. Instead I stumbled forwards, hands outstretched, blindly making my way towards the apartment door. I scuffed my shoulder and elbow against the wall first, then moved along until I felt the indentations of the door frame. I located the handle and opened the door.

A gust of cold air blew outwards, surprising me. I took a step back, my hand still holding the door, straining to see anything at all. I heard someone at the top of the stairs crying in pain. The sound twisted my guts with anxiety. It could be Beth. It sounded a bit like her, though I’d never heard anyone make such a twisted, tortured noise as this before.

I put my foot on the bottom step and squinted upwards towards the crying. The stairs turned around a bend half way up, so even if there had been light I wouldn’t have been able to see the source of the sobbing. I hesitated, not wanting to go further. The entity had tricked me several times now, I was not about to be tricked again.

“Beth?” I whispered. The crying continued. “Beth,” I said a little louder.

The person at the top of the stairs held back their crying for a moment.

“Jim?”

Oh my God, it was Beth.

“Beth, it’s me, I’m here.” I started moving up the stairs, still hesitant. How good an impression of Beth could the entity make? Was she real? Did I dare hope?

“Oh God, Jim.” I heard her rise, start coming down the stairs towards me. We crashed into each other half way up. It was her! It was really her! I held her tightly in the darkness. Her long hair felt so soft beneath my fingers as I stroked it. We sought out each other’s mouths and kissed desperately.

We parted, breathless. I was crying. I reached out to touch her face, feeling her cheeks beneath my fingers. They were wet with tears, just like mine.

“I thought I’d lost you,” I said, holding her close again.

“Jim, where did you go?”

“We got parted. I let you get ahead of me and I was taken to another time. I was all alone. I thought I’d never see you again.”

“Oh Christ, Jim, I’ve been all alone too!”

“Where’s Derek? Did he leave you?”

“Yes. He said he heard Chloe and he ran ahead. Then he disappeared just like you did!”

I vowed to punch Derek hard in the face if I ever saw him again. Leaving Beth was unforgivable. Right now though, I didn’t intend to spend one more second in this house than was absolutely necessary.

“Where’s your torch?” Beth asked, panic in her voice.

“I gave it up to get back to you,” I explained.

“What? Why? What were you thinking? You mean we’re stuck in the dark?” The questions came faster than I could answer them. She sounded like she was about to lose her sanity. “I’ve been alone for hours, Jim. Please tell me you have a candle or something, please!”

“I don’t, I’m sorry. Where’s your torch?”

“It was ripped out of my hands hours ago. I’ve been searching for it ever since.”

“And your cell phone?”

“Battery’s dead.”

“Shit. Why were you up in the apartment?”

As Beth answered, we descended carefully, still clutching hold of each other for fear of something pulling us apart and sending us tumbling through time.

“The ghost has been taunting me with voices. I heard you, I heard Derek, but whenever I moved towards the voice there was nothing.”

We emerged into the kitchen. My plan was to return to the living room and try to break a window again. Unless…

“Beth, do you have the keys?”

“No, Derek had them.”

“Okay well never mind. We can break a window. I did it earlier, I was going to escape.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I couldn’t leave you!” It felt good to tell her that, especially because it was true. I couldn’t believe I had even contemplated leaving without her. She would still be here, sitting on the stairs crying, waiting for rescue, and I would be hiding out in the lodge, feeling guilty. Despite everything, I was glad I was here right now. I was glad she was here too.

She held me a little tighter. She didn’t have to say thanks, her body pressed tightly against mine showed her appreciation. She kissed me and I felt like ripping off her clothes and fucking her right there in the kitchen. The stress and terror of this night culminating in a passionate release of two bodies in the dark.

But that could wait for later. Right now we had to get out of here.

I think she felt the same way. She didn’t move away from me, didn’t stop leaning in and keeping me as close as possible. Maybe she just didn’t want any chance she might lose me again. She seemed to have forgotten her previous animosity towards me. Nothing like a night of terror in a haunted house to settle a domestic dispute.

“Did it hurt you?” I asked as we stumbled through the kitchen in the dark.

“Yeah, it pushed me down the stairs. I don’t think anything’s broken but it fucking hurt.” I held her a little tighter. “And my eyes hurt from all the crying. I’m such a flake.”

“No, God no. It sounds like you were alone even longer than I was. I think I’d have gone insane.”

“Where are we going?”

“To the dining room. It’s got the largest window panes. I should be able to break one with a chair.”

“You said you broke one already though.”

“Yeah I did, and when I came back it was fixed.”

“The ghost moved the room through time?”

“Or me, who knows? Remember Arthur talking about the broken window?”

“Yeah.”

“Well there you go, that was me. I’m the vandal.”

Beth didn’t respond to that, but given all she’d been through I hardly expected her to appreciate an ironic aside. We had just entered the living room, going entirely by memory because it was still pitch black of course. I stumbled over a chair I swore wasn’t there before, but then the last time I was in here might have been a week ago for all I knew. It was too awkward to hold each other close as we passed through doorways so we simply held hands, but tightly so we didn’t accidentally slip apart. I turned and crashed into another chair, bruising my leg.

“Fuck! What happened in here?”

“Derek and I were trying to escape the… ghost. We made a mess.”

Finally, with much crashing and stumbling, we made it into the dining room.

“The window is to our left,” I said. The heaviest chair fell apart, but I should be able to use one of the others.”

“Okay.”

“Now listen, you have to trust me. I have to let go of you now or I won’t be able to break the window.”

“No, don’t leave me!”

“I’m not leaving you. Just stay right here.” I led her over to the table, feeling the polished wood with my free hand. I guided her over so that she could feel the surface too. “Now as long as you keep your hand on the table right here, we’ll be fine.”

“But what if the ghost separates us again?”

“It can’t. It can only move us around if we’re in different parts of the house. This room is in the oldest part of the house. I think the entity can move pieces of the house around in time like a giant Rubik’s cube, but it can’t split the rooms themselves. If one of us leaves the dining room to go to the conservatory, we’re walking into a different section of the house, a newer part. Then we could get separated. Okay?”

“Okay, if you say so. My head still hurts and I can’t stop crying.”

“Once we’re outside, we’ll head to the lodge. There might be more candles we missed, you never know. Or we can just wait it out until dawn. It has to come eventually.”

“All right, my hand is on the table. I’m letting go of you, okay?”

We let go. I hurried around the table looking for the nearest chair, not wanting to be apart from Beth for any longer than necessary. Oddly, there were no chairs on the side of the dining table furthest from the window. I moved around to the head of the table, feeling my way. No chairs here either. Now to the window side.

“Where the fuck are all the chairs?” I said, widening my search away from the table now in the hopes that someone had pushed the chairs up against the walls.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Beth said. I stopped in the darkness, turning towards the sound of her voice. “They’re all in the living room. They got moved.”

“Moved?” I asked. “Who moved them?”

“Well I helped.”

An icy chill slowly crawled up my spine.

“Why would you do that?”

“I don’t know,” Beth replied. “I’m a bit confused. Must be the bump to my head.”

“
Who
did you help?”

“Derek and I moved all the chairs.”

A terrible feeling came over me then.

“Don’t you want to escape?” I asked, moving very quietly towards her.

“Of course.”

“Then why move the chairs, Beth? Why take the heaviest chairs in the house out of the one room with window panes big enough for us to climb through?

I reached her now. I took her hand in mine again and put my other hand up to her face and hair. Her cheeks were still wet with tears.

“Let me see what’s wrong with your eyes,” I told her soothingly.

“But we can’t see anything,” Beth replied.

“Just keep still.” I raised my fingers, tracing a damp path from her cheek to her lower eyelid. My hand trembled as I placed my index finger on the surface of her eye. And felt nothing. With mounting horror, I gently moved my finger forward. It met no resistance. Her eye wasn’t there.

Suddenly a torch snapped on. Beth’s face was illuminated. The dampness was not tears, it was blood. Both her eyes were missing, empty sockets gaping at me in the sudden burst of light. I closed my eyes against the glare and recoiled, smashing into the table and sprawling to the ground.

When I stood up, Beth was still bathed in a pool of torchlight. Sickened, I stared first at my girlfriend’s ruined face and then back to the source of the light, blinking furiously as my eyes adjusted to the glare.

“What the fuck? What happened to Beth? Jesus, what the fuck happened to her?”

“She fell down the stairs,” Derek explained. “She was pushed.”

“Did you push her?”

“What? God no! Not as such.”

“What does that mean?”

“I didn’t push her.”

I turned my horrified gaze back to Beth’s beautiful face. “Baby?” I said. “Your eyes…”

“What’s wrong with them?” she asked.

Oh God, she thought she was still in the dark.

“Beth.” I stepped forward and took her hands in mine, staring directly into the black pits in her skull.

“There’s no sense trying to tell her,” Derek said, coldly.

“Why?”

“Because she’s dead.”

“What?”

“She banged her head halfway down the apartment stairs. The ghost pushed her so hard she died when her head slammed into the wall.”

I still held her hands in mine. She seemed so innocent somehow. The kind of innocence that comes with lack of understanding. An ebbing away of her intelligence, like her brain was shutting down.

I stepped away from her.

“Jim? Where are you?” she implored, breaking my heart just a little bit more with each word.

“You’re very calm about this,” I accused Derek. “She’s dead and yet she’s still walking around.”

“I’m guessing she’s possessed by the ghost. Jim, I’m sorry—I really am. She’s been tormenting me for hours. I kind of got used to the idea that she’s dead. Sorry if that sounds callous.”

I rounded on him. I still couldn’t see his face behind the torch, but I hoped he could see how incensed I was.

“Sounds callous? She’s fucking dead, Derek!” Hot tears coursed down my cheeks. I felt my legs weaken and I had to reach out to the table for support. “She’s dead and now she’s a fucking puppet.”

Derek stepped forward and stood the torch upright on the table. The light diffused throughout the room, casting everything in an eerie gloom.

“I’m sorry, Jim, I don’t know what else to say. She’s been following me around since she died, like she expects me to protect her. I had to lie to her about losing my torch to explain why she couldn’t see anything. If I sound indifferent about it, well I’m trying to stay sane while a corpse traipses after me in a dark, haunted house in the middle of the night, when I’m the only living person left in the whole building.”

“Don’t call her that.”

“What? A corpse? She is, Jim, she’s a corpse. She’s gone. She’s not in there anymore.”