The Shadow Project

This time the house responded instantly with ‘Come Fly With Me’ from hidden speakers all around the room.

She mixed her drink, sliced a lemon, clinked ice in the glass and took a slurp. ‘Cheers, Frank.’ Then she added some more gin for good measure, left the kitchen and the lights escorted her back down the corridor.

What’s the matter with you? she thought to herself. Why couldn’t she just chill out and enjoy what was left of her vacation?

Well, maybe it’s got something to do with being left all alone in a dark, creepy house that talks to you and makes things happen by themselves, with nobody around for a mile in every direction and a storm blowing outside.

As she thought this, a gust of wind hit the building and she was sure she felt it move.

‘What is this place, Tornado Alley?’ she muttered to herself. Wondering for a moment about what she would do if there was a power cut, she quickly reassured herself that her oh-so-scientifically-minded and supremely clever brother would have a genny down in the basement if it came to it.

She slumped back down on the sofa with her drink, grabbed the remote control, aimed it at the giant wall- mounted TV and pressed a button.

The TV stayed blank. Instead, a bright flame whooshed up to fill the electronically-controlled open fireplace below it.

Sabrina cursed. Why did all the goddamn remotes have to look exactly the same? She killed the fire with another touch of a button, chucked the remote down and picked up the right one to turn on the TV. Flipped through a bunch of channels and landed on a rom-com movie she’d seen years ago but liked enough to watch again.

She settled back against the cushions, getting in the mood and smiling to herself as Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal went through their bickering, fast-talking routine.

Suddenly, lights came on in the corridor. One after another, click, click, click. And stayed on.

She frowned. ‘Adam, is that you?’

She half-expected him to walk into the room, brushing rain off his jacket and putting down his case, calling, ‘I’m ho-ome.’

But there was no reply.

Sabrina muted the TV. ‘Adam?’ she called again. Still nothing. She got up from the sofa, stepped across the room and peered out into the corridor. The lights were already fading again.

‘Is someone there?’ There was a tremulous little edge to her voice that she wished hadn’t come out. Her heart began to beat faster.

Outside, the thunder rumbled, and the rain lashed down harder on the windows and the skylights.

Sabrina was frozen to the spot, staring out into the dark corridor.

Something moved.

She tensed.

Cassini came slinking out of the darkness.

‘Oh, Cass, you almost scared the shit out of me,’ she sighed. ‘Jesus.’ She couldn’t help but chuckle with relief as she scooped the cat off the floor and walked back to the sofa, holding him in her arms. ‘Don’t you ever think about doing that to me again, pal. OK?’

She went back to the sofa, took another gulp of gin and tonic and turned the movie sound back on. Cassini draped himself across her lap, so floppy he felt boneless, and she stroked him absently. She could feel the tiny vibration of his purring resonating through her, relaxing her.

‘I would be proud to partake of your pecan pie,’ said Billy Crystal in a funny voice up on the screen. Sabrina smiled.

And the cat’s body suddenly tightened like a spring on her lap, and his needle-like claws dug through her jeans and stabbed into her skin. She let out a cry of pain. The cat was up on his paws, arched. Then he jumped off her and darted away.

Then Sabrina looked up and saw that the lights were back on in the corridor.

And that there was a man standing there.

Watching her.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Sabrina shrieked and took off across the open-plan living room towards the stairs.

Too slow. The man was squat and heavy with muscle, but he was quick on his feet and in two powerful bounds he was on her. She went crashing into a side table, rolling and lashing out at him with her bare feet. A grunt as her heel connected with his eye socket; he let go of her and she scrambled to her feet and made the stairs. Her legs felt ready to buckle under her as she raced up the open treads. His footsteps pounded up behind her. Then she was on the landing and launched herself down the glass corridor.

The first door she came to was the master bedroom, and she grabbed the chrome handle with both hands and jerked it open. Staggered inside just as the man came sprinting down the corridor after her. He shoved his hand inside the door, and she slammed the edge of it hard on his fingers.

He let out a sharp cry. She yanked it open and slammed it again hard enough to sever those damn fingers – but he’d jerked his hand away and was roaring with pain outside the door as she braced her weight against it and remembered the password Adam had told her.

‘Lock!’ she shouted.

The house responded and the bedroom door instantly clunked as the mechanism engaged.

Sabrina stood there panting, her hands shaking, doubled over with the pain from the stitch in her side. She looked around her. She’d never been in Adam’s bedroom before. There was a big leather bed, a bookcase filled with science and architecture books, a bureau and a sofa. Next to the sofa was her brother’s prized candy-red Fender Stratocaster guitar, leaning up against an amplifier. Nothing she could use to defend herself. If this had been the States, there’d have been a pistol or a shotgun for home defence.

Calm. Calm. Pull yourself together. She’d read that in these situations, barring a loaded .357 Magnum in the bedside table drawer, the best thing to do was stay out of the way, let the thieves take whatever the hell they wanted and not confront them. She was safe in here. The locks were sturdy. Everything was fine. Stolen TVs and silver were easily replaced.

But how had he got past the security? This place was tighter than Fort Knox. Panic welled up like a tide. Her mobile was downstairs. She was stranded up here.

She glanced at the window. Rain was lashing on the outside of the glass. Maybe if she could get out onto the balcony and run round the outside of the house, she could scramble down the fire escape and get away.

At that moment she realised the sounds of pain had gone quiet outside the door. Suddenly she heard his voice again, just the other side of the thick wood. He didn’t scream, ‘I’m going to get you, bitch.’ That would have been bad enough, but what she heard was even worse. He spoke one word, in a normal tone that scared her almost to death.

‘Cassini.’

And the lock clunked open.

The lock clunked open and she stared at the handle in horror. Watched it turn, and before she could react or think to shout ‘lock!’ the door opened. And he was in.

She backed away across the bedroom, past the sofa towards the window. He padded in towards her. She could see the fire in his eyes and the bunched muscles under his rain-speckled shirt. The fingers of his right hand were bloody. His teeth were bared in a fierce grin as he stalked across the room.

Her hand brushed something hard. Adam’s guitar, propped up next to the sofa. A big, heavy lump of solid wood, like a musical axe. She wrenched it up in both hands and swung it at his head.

The man stepped back out of the arc of the blow, and the momentum of the heavy guitar almost carried Sabrina off her feet. It smashed into the bookcase. Glass flew everywhere.

The man came at her. She recovered her balance and swung the guitar at him again with a grunt of effort, and this time it caught him hard on the shoulder. She was sure that she’d have shattered a normal man’s collar