for a week, together. Like we used to.
It was called Famous Haunts. The DVD cover promised to take us to dimensions beyond our own and to show us that life is only the veil to something altogether more mystical. Everything else waits on the side we can't see. We laughed, of course. We mocked the psychic and the velvet suit he was wearing. We shrieked with laughter at the female presenter who cowered behind the men as they crept around some old stately home.
We mocked, safe in the knowledge that our reality of tartan blankets, the savings accounts and the moderately expensive Scotch was a world away from what was happening on the DVD. After all, we were estate agents, accountants, primary school teachers. And what could be safer than that?
I think we laughed the hardest when Simon suggested the Ouija board. It was late by then and the sun was just coming over the lake beyond the house we'd rented for the week. We were full of Scotch and we laughed when he said he'd drive into town the next day and buy us a kit, then we'd see how brave we were.
I laughed as I went up the stairs to bed, safe in the knowledge that it was all rubbish. We were going to get drunk again; all put our fingers on the glass and shout questions into the air. I was looking forward to it.
Was I scared that night? No, I don't think I was. The cottage was just as cosy; we were drinking expensive wine and letting the dishes from dinner get burnt clean by the dishwasher. I had a blanket around my shoulders, and I had Katie beside me. She told me she wasn't scared either, but I noticed she'd put her crucifix around her neck. I laughed at her for it. She was a senior marketing executive for a High Street clothing chain. The forces of the dead meant nothing to her other than all the movies we'd watched back at university. I remember she laughed nervously and drank a lot of wine when Simon brought out the box.
I took a handful of crisps from the bowl as Simon read the back of the box in a Bella Lugosi voice. A long ramble about the mirrored veil and how we would be casting the veil aside like dust to the air. Not everybody stayed at the table all the time; we wandered around, getting more crisps, pouring wine. At first Simon's theatrics were fun, but we bored easily.
It's strange. I just remember what happened in flashes. Tableaux that I can't quite fit together into a full picture no matter how much I pore over them. I remember looking at the board through my wine glass, my attention only half on the table. I was looking at Katie too. I was looking at the profile of her face, the delicate slope down to her shoulder blades. The light of the fire was glancing off her cheeks and she looked beautiful.
When the glass smashed some of us laughed. Not all of us, but a few who thought that Simon had somehow orchestrated it to scare us. After all, we were in an old cottage by a lake, miles from town. It was perfect.
I didn't laugh, but only because Katie didn't. She had a hand clutched over her mouth and looked horrified. I remember the small noise she let out as she scrambled away from the table and ran from the room. Someone went after her, I think it was Sarah.
Picking glass out of my finger and calling Simon an idiot. He didn't reply. He was dragging the joke out as long as he could, pretending to be scared.
The evening was ruined. None of us wanted to talk. Someone ran the Hoover across the rug to pick up the last pieces of glass and we poured a lot of wine to fill the silences. One by one we went to bed, mumbling excuses about it having been a long day.
I was one of the last. I gathered up the last few glasses on the table. I felt tired and full of wine as I dumped the glasses in the sink. The house was quiet and I tried to stop the glasses clinking together in case anyone could hear. It was unlikely, the house was huge and the bedrooms were a long way apart. I could hear the wind outside and the clich? of it all made me chuckle.
I poured myself a large glass of water and called out to the last couple of people in the living room that I was going to bed. Nobody answered. I crept through the house quietly, wondering if anyone was sitting awake worrying about the Ouija board and the smashed glass. Then I remembered Katie and how terrified she had looked.
I paused outside her door, wondering if I could go to her or whether she'd just see it as a cheap come-on. We'd flirted and people had joked about us getting close, but neither of us had admitted anything to the other. I had my reasons, mainly that I secretly thought she was too good for me. She was graceful and quick witted, and I felt like a boorish, brash idiot when I was around her. But I often caught her looking at me when we were in a group, and she was always the one by my side on the holidays the group took. Maybe I had a chance, even a small one?
The light was on so I tapped at the door and waited, vaguely aware that I was actually nervous about seeing her and maybe admitting how I felt. There was no answer so I tapped again and called her name. My hands were sweating and I rubbed them briefly on my shirt.
The door swung open slowly when I tapped the third time. And that's all I remember.
She was in my arms and the sun was beginning to rise. There was blood everywhere.
I looked up. The blood was drying and Katie's eyes were lifeless. The water glass was in pieces, but the largest piece was embedded in her throat. The house was silent.
I think I screamed for the others to come. I screamed for a long time and it never occurred to me to wonder why nobody came.
I stroked her face and whispered her name when I couldn't scream any more. Then I realised something else, and immediately wondered why I hadn't thought it earlier. She had been murdered, and whatever had killed her could still be in the house, waiting.
I put her down and leapt to my feet. I yelled into the silence for someone to help me. I was panicked, desperate to find someone but nobody answered my calls.
I can see the blood on the floor now, but I don't think I saw it then. I was too blinded by panic that I just ran.
There was nobody in the third bedroom, or the fourth. In my panic I couldn't remember names, or who should have been in which room. I yelled incoherently until I was too exhausted to keep running and shouting at the same time.
I collapsed in the hallway, slid down the wall onto the floor and sobbed. A sudden, strange thought entered my head. How would I explain this to my office? I had commitments next week; they were expecting me back for meetings. I stared blankly at the neutral walls and tried to reconcile the two realities. They wouldn't fit together. All I kept coming back to was Katie's staring eyes.
I don't know how long I stared, half thinking about Katie, half about my desk and my calendar. It felt like forever.
The phone. It occurred to me suddenly and cut through the daze. I scrambled to my feet and raced through the house, tripping over my own feet in my hurry to get to the living room. I might have been screaming again but it made no difference to the empty house. I knocked over chairs and sent coat-stands sprawling as I ran up the hallway to the living room.
I remember slamming into the closed door. It had been locked and the key was nowhere to be seen. In my panic I remember wondering why on earth anyone would have locked the door to the only telephone.
I took a run up at the door after I'd pounded it without it moving an inch. When my shoulder connected with the wood I heard a crack, the lock was coming away from the wall. I immediately slammed at it again, ignoring the pain resonating across my shoulder. The door collapsed and I landed heavily in the living room.
And I screamed.
They had been arranged around the table, with the Ouija board as a centrepiece. Some of them stared at me; some of them didn't have eyes any more. All of them, every other person in the house was at the table, and all of them had glass protruding from their throats. There was a glass on the table and it moved on its own, whipping from letter to letter and leaving a red trail as it moved violently back and forth across the table. There was still blood dripping onto the rug.
That'll do more damage than the wine I spilt, I thought. Then I screamed, raking at my face with my fingernails as I backed out of the room in a frenzy of terror.
&n
bsp; The fallen coat stand tripped me and I fell sprawling onto the hallway floor. And that's when I saw the blood. There was a wide trail as far as I could see, from the stairs and into the living room. As if someone had dragged... I stopped myself before I could complete the picture.
I stared at the blood for a long while. It might have taken me an hour to work up the courage to touch it, and that's when I noticed the glass in my hands.
Tiny shards, only painful now that I knew they were there. As if I'd forced my hand into glass... Or as if I'd forced glass into something else and it had broken. As soon as I thought that, I knew.
So here I am now, out on the lake in a small boat. I weighed anchor almost two days ago and the more I stare back at the house, the more I remember. Talking to Katie, then feeling different. She made me leave, told me I was scaring her.
I went, feeling feverish and confused. There was a pressure in my head, as if something was waiting be released. Then it happened.
My hands tingled, then my whole body... then I couldn't move any more. But he could, the one we released from the