When the footsteps began their stealthy progress up the metal stairs, I could have kept quiet. I could have gone silently to my room, crawled out of the window, disappeared into the muffling snow and never found out what was in the plastic bag. But I didn’t. Instead I hammered on Jason’s door, yelling at the top of my voice: ‘ Jason! JASON, GO! ’ As the Nurse’s horrible shadow appeared out of the gloom of the staircase, I launched myself away, skidding, still shouting, bounding down the corridor in a way that was so frantic it must have looked like exuberance, not fear, all the way to the garden staircase – ‘ JASON! ’ – throwing myself down the steps, half sliding, half falling, slamming into the screen at the bottom, diving out into the snowy night.
Outside I paused, just for a second, breathing hard.
The garden was silent. I glanced through the branches at the gates to the street, then back to the plastic bag, which hung only a few tantalizing yards to my left, just above the do-not-go-here stone. I looked back to the gates, then to the bag, then up at the gallery. A light came on, glaring across the garden.
Do it -
I launched myself sideways from the doorway, not through the wisteria tunnel but away from the gates, towards the bag, scurrying crablike into the undergrowth, hugging the wall where it was darkest. Overhead the branches bounced, throwing snow everywhere. The shadow of the carrier-bag flickered across my head. When I got to the deep shadows and the undergrowth was too thick to go any further, I sank down on to my haunches, panting silently, my pulse rocketing in my temples.
The bag swayed lazily overhead, and beyond it the silvered windowpanes outside Jason’s room sent back a reflection of the trees and swirling snowflakes. A few beats of silence passed, then something in the house splintered deafeningly – a door flying back on its hinges, or furniture being overturned – and almost immediately came a sound I will never forget. It was the sort of sound the rats in the garden sometimes made at midnight when a cat had them skewered. It unravelled through the house like a whip. Jason was screaming, a terrible, penetrating sound that raced round the garden and lodged in my chest. I clamped my hands over my ears, shuddering, unable to listen to it. My God. My God. I had to open my mouth and gulp in air: big, panicked lungfuls because for the first time in my life I thought I might faint.
The bag in the tree shifted in a small breeze and a little snow shook out of its soft hollows. I looked up at it, my eyes watering with fear. There was something inside it, something wrapped in paper. I could see it clearly now. Jason’s cries crescendoed, echoing into the night, bouncing off the walls. I didn’t have long – it had to be now. Concentrate… concentrate. Sweating, trembling uncontrollably, I stood on tiptoe, groped for the branch, pulling it down and reaching cold fingertips up to the bag. A little ice fell off it, the plastic crackled under my fingers, and for a moment I pulled my hand back instinctively, startled that I’d actually touched it. The bag swayed a little. I took a deep breath, stretched up and grabbed it more firmly, just as Jason stopped screaming and the house fell into silence.
I shot back, pulling the bag along the branch with a series of shuddery jerks. When it came off the end the branch leaped away from me, whipping back and forward. Icicles cascaded on to me as I tumbled backwards into the dark, huddling in the undergrowth – the frozen bag tight in my numb hands. Did you hear me? I thought, staring up at the gallery, wondering where she was, why the house was so silent. Jason – why so quiet? Are you quiet because she’s stopped? Because you’ve told her where to look?
A window flew open. The Nurse’s horrible horse-like form appeared in the gallery, her face indistinct through the trees. I could tell by the intent, motionless way she stood that she was thinking about the garden – maybe thinking about the echoes of me, ricocheting down the stairs. Or maybe she was looking at the trees, wondering where a plastic bag might be hanging. I rotated my head slowly and saw the shadow of the branch I’d moved, magnified ten times and projected up on to the Salt Building, whipping and bouncing across the white stretches on the wall. The Nurse put her nose into the air and sniffed, the odd sightless eyes only two blurry points of shade. I shuffled further back in the undergrowth, breaking sticks, groping blindly for something heavy to hold.
She turned, stiffly, and walked slowly along the corridor, tapping her long fingernail on each window as she passed it. She was coming in the direction of the garden staircase. A second shadowy figure moved behind her – the chimpira. Next to my foot a stepping-stone was sunk into the wet ground. I clawed at it frantically, making my fingers bleed, dragging it out and clasping it, with the bag, against my chest. I tried to picture the garden around me. Even if I could get through the twisted branches, the gates were a fifteen-second sprint from there, straight across the naked garden. I’d be safer in here, where my tracks couldn’t be seen for the undergrowth, and if I…
I stopped breathing. They’d found the staircase. I could hear their footsteps echoing on the stairs. They’re coming for me, I thought, all the bones in my body turning to water. I’m next. Then someone was pulling open the screen door, and before I could scramble away the Nurse’s dark profile emerged through the frozen filigree of snow-covered branches. She dipped a little to enter the wisteria tunnel then travelled quickly, smoothly, as if running on invisible tracks, to the end where she emerged, standing straight and dark in the snow-covered rock garden, twitching her huge head in tiny movements, like a stallion sniffing the air. Her breath was white – she was steaming as if from some exertion.
I didn’t breathe. She’d sense it if I did – she was so attuned she’d sense my hairs going up, the infinitesimal widening of an artery, maybe even the crackle of my thoughts. The chimpira hovered in the doorway, peering out at the Nurse, who turned her head first in my direction, then to scan the trees, and then in the opposite direction – to the gates. After a moment’s hesitation, she continued across the garden, every now and then stopping to look around herself with great deliberation. For a moment, as she went into the tunnel, she was lost in a swirl of snow, then I heard her trying the gate, I heard it opening with a long, slow creak. The snow cleared and I could see her, standing very still, contemplating, her hand resting on the latch.
‘What is it?’ hissed the chimpira, and I thought I heard nervousness in his voice. ‘Can you see anything?’
The Nurse didn’t answer. She rubbed her fingers on the latch, then lifted them to her nose and sniffed, her mouth a little open as if to let the scent roam round her mouth. She pushed her head through the gates and looked out into the street and it hit me like lightning: no tracks – no tracks in the snow. She’ll know I haven’t gone out there…
I shoved the package inside my jacket, zipped it up, pushed the stone into my pocket and edged silently, just another shadow slipping round the trees, to where the broken security grille hung on its hinges. The window was just as I remembered it, slightly open, the glass rather mossed. I leaned over as far as I dared, gripping the frame for balance, and hauled myself across the blank stretch of snow, up onto a toppled branch that lay against the wall. I stood for a moment, wobbling, my hot, terrified breath coming back at me, steaming up the pane. When I wiped it my own face met me in the glass and in my shock I almost stepped back. Slowly, slowly, concentrate. I turned and squinted through the undergrowth. She hadn’t moved – her back was still towards me, she was still considering the street in her detached, unhurried way. The chimpira had stepped out of the doorway and was watching her, his back to me.
I pulled the window open in tiny increments, lifting the pane to stop it squealing and at that moment, as if she had heard me, she turned from the gate and looked back in the direction she’d come, her head rotating very slowly.
I didn’t wait. I hooked my leg through the gap and with one push levered myself into the house, dropping down into a crouch in the dark. I stayed there, shocked by the noise I’d made, my hands on the floor, waiting until the sound had spent itself, echoing around the closed-off old rooms. Somewhere in the darkness to my left I could hear the scattering footsteps of rats. I fumbled in my pocket, switched on the torch and, holding my hand over it, allowed a timid beam to creep across the floor. The room leaped into flickering life around me – small, with a cold, flagged floor and piles of rubbish everywhere. A few feet ahead was an empty doorway. The beam extended into it, smooth and featureless, far down into the depths of the house. I clicked off the torch and crawled like a dog, pushing through cobwebs and dust, head first into the doorway, then on into the next, going deeper and deeper into the house until I had gone so far into the warren of rooms that I was sure they would never find me.
I stopped and looked back the way I’d come. The only thing I could hear was the thudding of my heart. Did you see me? Did you see me? Only silence answered. From somewhere in the darkness came a steady drip drip drip and there was a smell, too, rich and peaty, the mineral smell of trapped water and decay.
I crouched there, breathing hard, until, when an age seemed to have gone by and I could hear nothing, I dared to switch on the torch. The beam played over piles of furniture, timbers that had broken from the ceiling, a confetti of plaster and wiring. I could hide here for ever if I had to. My hands quivering, I pulled the package out from my jacket. I’d expected something weighty, something dull and clay-like, but this was too light, as if it contained balsawood or dried bone. I put my fingers inside and found something wrapped in tape, a smooth surface that had exactly the quality of butcher’s paper – thick and shiny. Blood wouldn’t settle long on its waxed surface. I had to stand for a while supported against the wall, breathing hard through my mouth because the thought of what I was holding was too much. I picked at the tape, got hold of the end and pulled at it, when from behind me, a long way back in the darkness, I heard an unmistakable sound. Metal screeching against metal. Someone was pushing open the window I’d climbed through.