The House That Jack Built: The House That Jack Built

straight, his muscles twitching and pulsing, his head swimming with it… he wanted to kick and punch and scrape and tear…

'Rob!' Julia's voice, thin and whining, damn her.

'I told you, it'll be fine,' he said, rubbing the rainwater from his face. Couldn't she tell that he was struggling? He didn't need her wheedling at him.

'Hurting…' she said, and he turned on her, fist clenching, only to freeze as he saw the bright white dimples in her arm where he was digging his fingers in as hard as he could. The ragged edge of one of his nails had drawn blood.

Suddenly it was gone, all of it, the huge pressure that he had fought to keep in, vanished in an instant. He let go of her arm and put his hand to his mouth.

'I'm sorry,' he whispered. 'I didn't realise.'

She was scared. She had that same look in her eyes that she'd had when he'd hit her a few months ago. He hadn't meant to, now or then. Sometimes he just got so angry, it was horrible… To feel such uncontrollable rage, to be shaking with it, to need to thrash and hit just to shake the feeling out of his muscles, the feeling that he was going to rupture.

She had nearly left him, he knew that; he'd scared her enough. The terrible thing was that he hadn't even wanted to hit her — he'd caught her by accident. But the look she'd given him when the back of his hand had hit her temple… It was so full of disgust at him… such contempt… He had hit her again, just to earn it.

'Please, I wouldn't have…' There was a look of disbelief in her eyes now and he found himself almost wishing her to push it. He hadn't been directing any of his anger at her — wouldn't have done — but after everything that had happened tonight, wasn't he allowed to lose it a little? The look on her face said not, and that was nearly enough to set him off again. Nearly.

He held up his hands placatingly. 'I wasn't angry at you, sweetheart, just freaked out, you know? I told you before, that was just… I don't know what that was… but I'd never do it again, OK?' He tried to look friendly, tried to soften his eyes. 'I couldn't hurt you, babe, never…' He held out his hands to her. 'Please? Forgive me? Let's get out of here, OK? Go where it's safe.'

After a moment, she nodded and took his hands.

He gave her a genuine smile then and pulled the van keys from his pocket. 'So sorry, baby,' he said. 'I just lost it in there, what with everything, you know?'

'I know.'

They hunched over in the rain and started to walk quickly up the road.

'What do you think it was?' he asked.

'I don't know.' Relief, both at being out of the building and having Rob calm down, had begun to squeeze tears out of the corners of her eyes, and she rubbed them away with the rainwater. 'I don't believe in…'

'Ghosts and stuff?'

'Yeah. Mum always used to. She loved it, always reading books about it… but, well… I thought it was rubbish.'

'Same here. Good at the movies but don't believe a word of it at home.'

'So there must be a scientific explanation?'

'To the fact that we both saw a woman kill herself in the bedroom and a man appear in the airing cupboard?'

They looked at one another and burst out laughing. There was as much panic in it as humour, in fact they could just as easily have been screaming, but it helped for the moment, a release of the pressure that had been building all night. Rob hugged Julia and they carried on walking, his arm around her shoulders.

'It'll be all right,' he said. 'It'll seem better in the morning.'

'Where did you park the van?' Julia asked, though she knew the answer, had seen him park it there earlier when the police had cordoned off the road.

'It's there,' he said, pointing at the white van just along the road, 'just a few doors up.'

'So how come it's taking us so long?' Julia asked, that note of panic returning to her voice.

'It's not. I mean, we only just left…'

They were stood outside Jackson Leaves. They hadn't moved an inch.

'But that's ridiculous…' muttered Rob. 'We walked all the way up…' He looked ahead of them, and they started to walk again, the hedge moving past them, the parked cars.

'It's fine,' he said. 'I don't know what happened, but look, the van's just there.' He pointed at it with the keys. Only a few houses away. They kept walking… and walking… and walking…

Julia gripped Rob's arm even tighter as she turned to look up at Jackson Leaves, the tatty gables, the loose guttering that dripped in this constant damn rain…

'It won't let us go!' she cried.

'It's just a house,' Rob said, pulling her — gentler this time — along the pavement. 'It's just bricks and rot and damp…'

They began to run. Rob kept his eyes fixed on the van, pointing the keys at it like a talisman as they ran faster and faster towards it. The rain made it hard, stinging in his eyes and making his feet slip on the pavement, but he focused hard and pushed forward… They'd make it…

His feet lost their grip in the wet and he fell, pulling Julia down with him. They landed on the pavement with a grunt, Rob jarring his elbow on the tarmac and Julia scraping her side.

'Stupid…' he rubbed at his elbow. 'Sorry, love, clumsy idiot.'

Julia wasn't listening. She was looking up at Jackson Leaves.

It was staring right back.

'I don't get it,' he said. 'This is stupid. We were moving, you could tell we were…' He looked along the road towards the van. 'Everything was moving but we weren't getting any closer to the things further away. Which doesn't make sense.'

'None of it does, and none of it will,' Julia said quietly. 'It just is. We should go back inside.'

'No way,' Rob said, getting to his feet. 'I'm not setting one foot back in that house, we're getting out of here if it ki-'

'Don't say that,' Julia interrupted. 'Don't encourage it.'

Rob put his hands on her cheeks, rubbing the rain from her eyes with his thumbs. 'Come on, babe,' he said. 'Keep it together, and we'll get out of here, OK?'

She got to her feet but made no sign of agreeing with him.

'We'll try the other way,' he said. 'Walk down to the high street.'

He turned her away from the house, doing his best not to look at it himself, and they began to walk along the pavement in the other direction.

'It'll be fine,' he said. 'You'll see. In a minute, all of this is just going to stop and we'll be back to normal. We'll probably even laugh about it, that stupid night when we got ourselves all turned around until we didn't know what was happening… Shared hysteria, that's what it is… Derren Brown stuff.' He scuffed at the puddles beneath their feet, sending a spray of rainwater into the darkness ahead of them as if to test whether it was safe. 'We won't be able to figure out how we got so wound up, just you watch, it'll be that night that we lost it,' he laughed. 'That night we went so bloody mad we ended up walking around in the rain while some American nutjob tried to burgle us. That's it, you know,' he continued, moving a little faster. 'That whole thing in there was just some kind of trick so that they could get in the place and turn it over. Not that they'll find anything worth having, not in that stupid… bastard… house!' This last was screamed at Jackson Leaves, still stood, uncaring, to the side of them.

'I don't know,' he said, dropping down to sit on the kerb. 'I just don't know.'

After a moment she sat down next to him. 'We'll have to go back inside,' she said.

He shook his head. 'I'm not going back in there.'

'It's no better out here.' She had become gentle, only too aware of how close Rob was to breaking. He wasn't violent any more, he was too scared even for that. You couldn't fight Jackson Leaves.

'I just can't bear the idea of going back in there, baby,' he said, starting to cry. 'That noise, the blood and