A Weaving of Ancient Evil Read online

  She came over to him. ‘Lucky escape?’

  ‘You can say that again. I thought she was going to keep me talking for hours. But when I told her I worked in a factory, she couldn’t get away quick enough.’

  ‘Intellectual snob,’ Cat said bluntly. ‘I’ve come across her type before. I get it all the time. Do you fancy getting some air?’ she said, changing tack.

  Steve glanced about the room. Everyone seemed to be tied up in conversation, and besides, he fancied the chance to get to know Cat better.

  ‘Cat,’ he said as he followed her out of the French doors. ‘Is that short for anything?’

  ‘Catherine. I hate Catherine, or Cathy or Kate.’

  ‘I see,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sure you do. You’re the only one here who has any life to them. Tim is as dull as they come, and Sean really needs to get a life. Have you been on his website?’

  Steve shook his head.

  ‘Very sad. It’s a site for those poor anoraks that get off on knowing who played the third corpse in the sixteenth episode of the second series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. If you know what I mean.’

  Steve smiled. ‘He seems okay... and Tim’s a very good writer. He’ll make it big one day.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No doubt about it.’

  ‘I’ve never read him,’ she said blithely.

  They were walking down the sloping lawn towards the lake. ‘According to DeMarney there’s a boat around here somewhere. What do you say we find it and take it out on the water?’ he said.

  ‘Won’t your girlfriend object?’

  ‘Lisa’s not my girlfriend. We’re just mates.’

  Cat narrowed her eyes sceptically.

  ‘No, it’s true. We’ve known each other for years... since we were kids. I can’t imagine us as an item.’

  ‘Maybe you can’t,’ Cat said.

  ‘Meaning?’

  She smiled enigmatically. ‘There are some things only another female can see. Men are too blind.’ She started to run the last few yards to the lake. ‘Come on.’ she called back over her shoulder. ‘Let’s find that boat.’

  In her room Lisa laid on the bed, eyes closed, but sleep was refusing to come. Despite her eyes being heavy and her limbs aching her brain was telling her it was too early for bed. She could even hear voices coming from the garden.

  She went again to the window and saw Steve and Cat walking on the path around the lake, talking animatedly. Every so often Steve would throw back his head and laugh, and Lisa winced. He never laughed with her the way he did with Cat.

  ‘Why don’t you kill her then?’

  Lisa spun round, startled. The voice had come from behind her. It was an evil croak of a voice, whispery and distant, as though its owner was speaking from the bottom of well.

  She was alone in the room.

  Suddenly she realised she was holding her breath and let it out in a long sigh. The palms of her hands felt clammy, and there was sweat trickling down her back.

  Could she have imagined the voice?

  No, that was ridiculous. If it had come from her imagination then it would mean she was capable of such thoughts, and she didn’t believe she was. Seeing Steve and Cat together, obviously enjoying each other’s company, made her feel uncomfortable, but not to the extent of wanting the girl dead. That was unthinkable.

  She turned her attention back to the window. They were still there by the lake, but now Cat was standing on the path whilst Steve was struggling to pull something out of the dense undergrowth at the edge of the woodland.

  It was a boat. A small wooden rowing boat, complete with oars. Lisa watched Steve drag it out from a covering of brambles and ferns. He tipped it over to remove the layer of dead leaves and innumerable small crawling creatures that lined its bottom, then slid it across the path and into the water.

  She wished she could hear the conversation. Surely they weren’t planning to take it out on the lake now. She looked up at the sky. The sun had fallen to the west and the first few fingers of dusk were creeping in to claim the sky for the night. The boat bobbed on the water and Steve was leaning out, holding it steady for Cat to climb aboard.

  Lisa remembered what DeMarney had said. The Foundation wasn’t insured against boating accidents, and Lisa could not get the disappearing ducks from her mind.

  She pulled open the bedroom door and ran out of her room, and almost ran straight into Tim who was just leaving his.

  ‘Hi there,’ he said, then saw the expression of panic on Lisa’s face. ‘Is everything all right?’

  She explained quickly about Steve, Cat and the boat. Tim looked at her curiously, as if he couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. Even she had to admit that it sounded pretty lame. But she couldn’t deny the feeling of panic that was overwhelming her. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘It’s all right, really,’ she said, moving off along the corridor.

  ‘I could use the air myself,’ he said, keeping up with her.

  Then they both froze as an ear-shattering scream echoed through the house.

  Earlier, Susan was sipping her orange juice and looking about the drawing room. The boy called Steve was deep in conversation with Cat. Of Lisa, the girl he had come with to the seminar, there was no sign. The other two boys were having their time monopolised by the three tutors, especially the woman, Nancy, who was having an intense meeting of minds with them. As usual Susan found herself alone and isolated – shut out of the proceedings.

  She set her empty glass down on the nearest flat surface – in this case a small cabinet holding some dull and dusty books – and slipped unnoticed from the room.

  Walking back across the foyer she looked into the room opposite. It was a sitting room of sorts, elegantly decorated in a Regency stripe. The three plush armchairs were arranged facing an ornate fireplace. To her disappointment she saw there was no television. She racked her brain to see if she could remember there being an aerial on the roof, but although she could clearly picture the ornate and twisted Elizabethan style chimney stacks, she couldn’t visualise an aerial.

  She shrugged and hoped her mother had remembered to set the TiVo to record her favourite programmes for her. Soap operas had been her life for the past few years. She watched them all – even the daytime ones that her mother would dutifully recod for her to watch when she got in from school. It was an unhealthy obsession, she knew, but one her mother encouraged. In her mother’s mind, if Susan was in the house, stuck in front of the television, she couldn’t be out, meeting boys, and getting herself into trouble. The thinking was similar behind the clothes she bought her daughter to wear. What boy, in his right mind, would find this little mouse of a girl, who wore deeply unfashionable clothes, attractive?

  Susan knew exactly what her mother was playing at. She was actively doing something about the clothes situation. The soap opera fixation would be the next item on the agenda to be tackled. And there definitely was an agenda, mapped out clearly in her head. By this time next year she would be wearing trendy clothes, her hair would be cut in a fashionable style, she would be actively socialising, and – most important of all – she would have a boyfriend!

  She closed the door to the room and climbed the stairs. She had decided to go to bed and read until it got dark.

  Her room was gloomy. Earlier she had pulled the curtains to close off the heat from the sun. The window of the room had been painted shut, and as such offered nothing in the way of ventilation. Consequently the afternoon sun had poured into the room and turned it into a sauna. The Foundation, obviously aware of the problem, had provided an electric fan, but when she had switched it on she found the blade revolved so slowly as to be practically useless. So she had drawn the curtains to cool the room down.

  Now it was too dark in the room to read. She took her book from the bed where Sean had dropped it earlier, put it on the bedside table and pulled back the covers to
check for spiders. It was another of her rituals. Her morbid fear of the creatures coloured almost every waking moment, and she lived in absolute terror of them. To her relief there was nothing in the bed.

  She went across to the window, pulled the curtains back and recoiled in shock.

  There, on the other side of the glass, something hideous was staring back at her. A grey-white face composed of something that looked like mouldy dough, with deep-set, black insect eyes and a mean and narrow slit of a mouth.

  Before she closed her eyes to shut out the horror Susan got the impression of stringy white hair framing the face, and a body swathed in dusty black cloth. She turned away from the window in panic, collided with the bed and went sprawling across the soft mattress – only the mattress was no longer a mattress any longer but a soft and boggy mass that reeked of rotting vegetation and sucked at her body greedily, trying to pull her down into itself.

  She managed to wrap her fingers around the intricate curves of the iron bedstead and pull herself free of the slimy, clinging mass and threw herself to the floor. Behind her the creature outside the window was scratching at the glass, trying get in. To her horror she heard the screech of wood against wood as the sash window started to open upwards.

  7

  A scream burst from Susan’s lips as she struggled to her feet and ran across to the door. For a moment her sweat-drenched hands slid and slipped on the smooth brass doorknob, but finally they found purchase and the knob twisted and she wrenched the door open. She propelled herself out of the room, glancing back in time to see something black pour through the open window.

  She slammed the door shut behind her, heard the sound of heavy footfalls and turned to see Tim and Lisa running towards her along the corridor.

  ‘What on earth has happened?’ Lisa said as she reached the other girl.

  ‘In there...’ Susan said, nearly beside herself with terror. ‘...Something horrible... something... NO!’ she shouted as Tim pushed open the door.

  Tim looked into the room. ‘It’s okay,’ he said to Susan. ‘There’s nothing in there.’

  Susan was in Lisa’s arms crying now. Lisa looked at Tim and shook her head.

  ‘Really,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing there.’

  This time Susan heard him and stammered through her tears, ‘The window.’

  Tim glanced at Lisa and shook his head. He walked into the room. The window was closed, the curtains hanging at the side of them, still and calm.

  ‘Come on,’ Lisa said to Susan. ‘Come back to my room. You’ve obviously had a bit of a shock.’ She led the trembling, still sobbing Susan back along the corridor, all thoughts of Steve, Cat and the lake pushed to the back of her mind by this more immediate crisis. And anyway, she knew the only reason she wanted to go out to the lake was because she was jealous of the time Steve was spending with Cat, when in Lisa’s mind he should be spending it with her.

  Tim walked across to the window and stared hard at it. He couldn’t understand what Susan was going on about. There was nothing outside, and the window itself hadn’t been opened for years, judging from the layers of paint that had effectively sealed it shut. He was just about to turn away when he noticed something on the floor – a small scrap of black material.

  As he stooped to pick it up a small breeze played on the back of his neck, and he had the distinct impression the window was opening. His fingers closed around the material and he stood upright, turning back to stare at the window. It was still closed. Imagination, that’s all, he thought with a smile.

  He opened his hand to study the material, but he might just as well have picked up a piece of paper ash. The material was nothing more that a dirty smudge in the centre of his palm.

  Through the window he could see the lake, and the small rowing boat that was making lazy progress across the water lily covered surface. He recognised the occupants as Steve Vincent and the weird girl called Cat.

  For the first time since his arrival he began to feel optimistic about the week. If Steve was making headway with the weird girl, then there was a chance he could become more than just acquaintances with Lisa. He realised he’d just missed his chance to get to know her better. Perhaps tomorrow… He dusted off his palm and left the room. As the door closed a throaty chuckle sounded outside the window.

  The oars were rough and were beginning to make Steve’s hands sore. The only rowing he had done before this was on a school field trip to the Brecon Beacons, and then it had been sculling a canoe – something completely different to this. The canoe had been light and easy to handle. This boat, though small, was sluggish in the water, awkward to row and difficult to steer.

  Cat was leaning back, lying almost flat in the stern of the boat, her arm over the side of the boat, her fingers trailing through the water, leaving a small wake. She watched the exertion being etched on Steve’s face with some amusement, and then let her eyes flutter shut.

  It was easy to imagine herself the heroine of some great drama; being rowed across the lake to her final resting place. And while Steve was not her ideal vision of the drama’s dashing hero, she had to admit there was something attractive about him. He had very kind eyes. Dark brown and quite large, they drew you in and gave you the confidence to reveal your innermost thoughts. Not that she would ever reveal all the secrets she kept locked away in her mind... not to anybody. They were for her to know and her alone.

  ‘Are you asleep?’ he said, sounding quite peevish.

  She opened one eye and squinted up at him. ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Just wondered.’

  They were about halfway across to the island and the evening light was beginning to fade.

  Steve continued. ‘I’m thinking that perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea. It’s starting to get dark.’

  ‘Go back then, if it bothers you.’ There was a sarcastic edge to her voice that Steve found unpleasant.

  ‘No. We’ll go on,’ he said stubbornly and fought with the oars to straighten the boat in the water.

  Cat pushed herself up into a sitting position. ‘Would you like me to row for a while?’

  ‘Can you? Row, I mean?’

  ‘An uncle of mine used to run the pleasure boats at a park in Edmonton. I used to spend a lot of my summer holidays helping him collect fares. Did quite a bit of rowing after he closed up for the day.’

  ‘Don’t know why I’m wasting my time then, if you’re so experienced,’ he said tersely and offered her the oars.

  She took them without a word and started to row. Steve watched her effortlessly cut through the surface of the water, propelling the boat along much quicker than he had. Soon the island was no more than twenty yards away.

  ‘That’s odd,’ Cat said, a frown lining her forehead.

  ‘What is?’

  She had stopped rowing but the boat was still moving forward in the water.

  ‘Look, ma. No hands.’ She laughed but there was uneasiness in the laughter. ‘We seem to be being pulled along by a current. I don’t need to row.’

  Steve looked across to the island. ‘It’s taking us around to the back.’

  The boat was moving through the water, following the island’s shoreline, but getting no closer to it.

  ‘I can’t see the house,’ Cat said.

  Steve glanced back. They had travelled so far around the island that all he could see was the trees of the surrounding woodland. ‘I think we’d better head on back,’ he said.

  ‘You’re welcome to try,’ she said offering him the oars. ‘Besides, don’t you want to see who else is on the island? Look.’

  Two hundred yards ahead of them, moored to a small jetty was another rowing boat – a much newer version of this one.

  ‘Well?’ Cat said.

  Steve shrugged.

  The current seemed to be taking them into the shore; in fact it was lining them up with the jetty.

  ‘I didn’t know lakes had currents,’ Cat said.

  ‘I’m not sure they do.’

&nb
sp; ‘Then how do you explain...’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t.’

  There was a bump as the boat hit one of the jetty’s wooden stanchions. Steve took the painter from the front of the boat and threaded it through a ring screwed into the woodwork. The rope painter was old and looked weak, but he was sure it would be strong enough to moor the boat safely.

  He grabbed hold of the metal ring and pulled the boat alongside the jetty then said to Cat, ‘Go on. Hop out while I hold it steady.’

  She stood and took a tentative step, grabbing onto his shoulder for support when the boat rocked beneath her. The light was fading from the sky, casting much of the island into shadow. She looked beyond the jetty at the dense growth of trees, and suddenly her desire to explore the island evaporated. She hesitated, her wobbling legs making the boat sway in the water.

  ‘Well, go on,’ Steve said shortly.

  ‘I’m going!’ she snapped back and reached for a handhold. She got a knee up onto the platform and started to haul herself up. As she did so the boat lurched in the water and she over-balanced and went sprawling face first onto the rough wooden boards.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Steve called from the boat.

  ‘I’m sure Miss O’Malley will be fine,’ said a man’s voice.

  Cat propped herself on her elbows and looked up at the urbane figure of Roger DeMarney who was standing at the other end of the jetty, arms folded, a look of amusement on his face. ‘Although I’m sure I told you that the Foundation is not covered by any insurance, should you have a more serious accident.’ The way he said it made it sound like a threat. Next to him stood a tall blond woman, smartly dressed in a charcoal grey business suit, her blond hair drawn back in a French pleat.

  She looked less than amused.

  Steve had scrambled up onto the jetty from the boat and stood next to Cat. DeMarney’s manner along with the woman’s disapproving stare made them feel like naughty school children caught scrumping.

  ‘This…’ DeMarney said, indicating the woman, ‘…this is Sarah Delacourt, the Foundation’s administrator. She is the person who keeps all this ticking over.’