She whacked her hand again on the shelf above her head, deliberately this time. ‘Wake up, you stupid cow,’ she growled at herself.
Then Viggo licked her face and that did the trick.
She cradled his head in her hands and scrunched his ears, partially to tell him that she loved him and she was all right, but mostly so that he would stop slobbering at her. He whined a little, appreciating the gesture, but was soon growling again. The sense of déjà vu was so strong that even when she checked her watch and confirmed that yes, it was 3:07 in the morning of Saturday the 14th of March – exactly the same time she had woken up to see the soil-eating man, which was a funny coincidence – the act of getting up and putting her boots on had a dreamlike quality to it, as if she were not entirely in control of her own actions.
She shushed him and followed him outside. Heavy cloud had insulated the ground from the frost, and this time when he led her to the Neary plot the bulk of her new neighbours’ shed was a square shadow against the night. A thin strip of light showed under the door, and from inside she could hear the low murmurs of soft conversation between a female and male voice. In the weeks that they’d been clearing the ground and after the structure had appeared she hadn’t bothered herself with interfering, because as far as she was concerned they could have any size shed they liked. And if the figure she had seen that first night had just been Everett’s brother Gareth then, bizarre and terrifying though it might have been, it hadn’t been burglary and no crime had been committed. If anything, she was in the wrong now, sneaking around and spying on them. So what if they were having an illicit overnighter? She could hardly accuse them of breaking that particular by-law. They weren’t playing loud music or being a nuisance. She should go back to bed; live and let live.
Then came a sound she knew intimately well, but one that she had never heard coming from inside a shed: the scraping of shovels and the digging of earth.
‘What?’ she whispered to Viggo. Digging at this time of night? And how were they managing it inside – did their shed have no floor? It was so nonsensical that she listened more closely, trying to find an alternative explanation for the sound, something that her old ears had misinterpreted, something that made sense. Maybe they were mixing potting compost. It was still a chilly night; maybe—
And then the door opened, and Gareth stood framed against the light, having to duck his head under the frame, stepping outside with a shovelful of soil. He saw her, tossed the shovel to one side and came for her, just like before, except this time he opened his jaws and snarled. No human face could unhinge so widely or boast such close-clustered and overgrown teeth, like the business end of a construction digger, and the noise that came from it was like nothing she had ever heard out of a human throat: and the shock of it paralysed some tiny, terrified animal part of her brain. The figure – it’s no man, whatever that thing is it’s not a man – came for her, and Viggo went absolutely berserk.
Dennie screamed and ran, only realising that she had forgotten to lace up her boots until the moment her feet tangled and she was pitching forward, hands outstretched, and her head smacked into something so hard that—
* * *
Viggo was licking her face and whining, but the whining was also coming from inside her skull, rising and falling with a throbbing headache that filled it like a festering sore about to rupture. She groaned and dragged herself slowly into a sitting position, wincing as the headache shifted and sloshed with her movement. Wooden floorboards were hard beneath her hands. Morning light stabbed at her through the window, making the headache worse.
She was on the floor of her own shed, half-covered by the sleeping bag that had slithered off the folding camp bed which was tipped on its side next to her. Finally done it, idiot, she chided herself. You’ve finally gone and fallen out of bed and given yourself a concussion. Now they’ll all know that you’re going gaga. Happy now? She inspected herself with her fingers – there was a lump the size of a golf ball above her left eye but no blood, it seemed. That was some relief, but the bruising was going to be spectacular, and the pain in her head nothing compared to the ‘I-told-you-so’s’ that she was going to have to endure from her children, from Angie, and from the other allotment holders—
A strip of light under the door.
The sound of digging.
A mouth with far too many teeth.
She levered herself to her feet and yanked the shed door open, squinting into the glare of daylight. It should have been bolted shut from the inside, but it swung freely. Unless you just forgot to bolt it yourself last night. Or unless someone had dragged her in and dumped her but been unable to bolt it after themselves when they left. The combination of headache, bright light, and suddenly being upright threw her guts into revolt – nausea twisted her, and she was nearly sick on her own threshold, but she held it back. No. Not in front of other people. Have some dignity for once. She staggered outside.
It was Saturday morning,
