‘Samantha? Can you hear me? Samantha?’
It’s cold in there. It has that strange, deserted quality that houses left empty for some time possess: a vacancy, almost a grief. There’s a pattering sound in the hallway, like running water, or fast-moving feet. My blood chills.
‘Samantha, for fu—’
A hand, reaching out of the blackness, circling my wrist in a sharp, snapping motion. I scream.
‘Shut up, for God’s sake! I’m trying to listen!’ She tugs at me, hard. ‘If you’re not coming in, then piss off home, Frances.’
I almost do. I make it as far as the furthest corner of the house, where long arching fingers of buddleia brush against my face. What stops me is the graffiti I find written there, almost obscured by a clump of stinging nettles. The rust-coloured paint has run and faded, but the message is still legible: Where is Edie Hudson???
I catch the collar of my coat on the raw edge of the bent metal and hear a satisfying rrrrip sound as I drag myself through the gap and into the bungalow. Glass crunches as I land awkwardly, twisting my ankle beneath me. Dust settles in my throat and sinuses, making me want to sneeze. What are you doing? the sensible voice in my head shrieks. All this just to spite William? All this just to dig into his past? Go home, Frances.
As my eyes adjust to the dark I see Samantha in the doorway, her back to me. Some of the dust sheets are spattered with paint and damp, giving them an eerie Rorschach effect. It gives me a jolting memory of William and me on our holiday in Tenerife, drinking sweet red cocktails and watery pina coladas. He asked me if I ever used ink-blot tests in my work.
‘Rorschach?’ I said, stirring my cocktail idly. ‘That’s psychology. It’s a different type of therapy. I don’t do that.’
‘Shame,’ he answered. ‘I always wanted to try.’
I picked up the napkin beneath my glass and, eyes fixed firmly on William’s as I did so, poured a little of my cocktail in the crease, folding it carefully before opening it before him.
He studied the dark mirror image for a moment before lifting his head and looking right at me. ‘I see you,’ he said. When he took my hand I felt something blooming in my stomach, a warmth, a sticky, carnivorous love.
When I reach Samantha, I see what she is looking at. Someone has drawn a swastika on the wall. They’ve made a bad job of it and paint has run down into the floorboards. There is a hole in the door leading to the kitchen, like someone has put a fist through it. More scuffling in the corridor and the sound of a door creaking slowly closed. Or open, a little internal voice speaks up. I put my hand on Samantha’s shoulder.
‘Do you smell it?’ she asks me.
I nod. Something has died and rotted away somewhere in this house. I’m reminded of a story I heard once about a remote asylum in Ohio. An inmate there disappeared, the body eventually found in the attic over a month later. When the decomposing corpse was removed, they found a stain beneath it; a ghostly outline of the body in chalky white, and no matter how hard workers tried to clean the floor, the stain would not come out.
‘Back then, the whole graveyard smelt like this,’ Samantha tells me in a low whisper. ‘He was killing rabbits and just leaving them to rot.’
‘What do you think it is?’
‘Well, Frances, I’m no pathologist, but I think there’s a dead body down there.’
‘But – but you know it can’t be Edie, right? She’s been gone almost twenty years.’
Samantha turns towards me in the darkness. I see the flat glaze of her eyes. ‘Well, then, we’d better go and see who it is, hadn’t we?’
Together we sidle down the hallway, backs pressed against the wall where the flowered paper peels away in long strips to reveal grey plaster, damp to the touch. The smell of urine and rot is stronger out here. As we creep towards the kitchen I can see the units have been destroyed; cupboard doors hang from hinges and gas pipes jut through the wall, black holes like wide, unblinking eyes. I can see the place where the sink once stood, and the cooker, and the fridge: the large pale outlines against the dark walls like the ghosts of furniture past. I think of that dead woman turning to liquid in the asylum attic and the imprint that can never be cleaned away and I reach for Samantha, squeezing her hand so hard she gasps. Her skin is icy, and there is a tremor running through her. She’s afraid.
Across the bumpy lino of the kitchen floor is another door, partly open, revealing a slice of black space. The rustling sound is coming from inside. We exchange a glance. Samantha pulls the knife from her pocket and together we cross the room as quietly as we can, trying to ignore the fetid smell that is rising up from the basement like something corroded and black.
It’s Samantha who eases the door open carefully, allowing us room to slide through. The stairs creak ominously, and the darkness is thick and so dense that I feel I might reach out and stroke it. The smell is the worst of it, so putrid it is almost toxic. Sweet, like spoiled meat. I want to go back, I try to say, I want to get out into the light and the clean air. Something bad has happened down here, something unspeakable. This whole house is an open wound, festering. Someone should burn it to the fucking ground.
‘God!’ Samantha
