Elise woke, cramped and cold, on the attic floor, clutching the fleece blanket from the sofa. The last thing she remembered was dozing in the lounge, waiting for James to come home. Groaning with the effort she sat up and stretched out. Behind her, the rocking horse creaked into life and began gently moving back and forth, as if Oliver had been waiting for her to wake up before he began playing. Elise shook her head, stood up and left the room without acknowledging him.
Memories of the night before and the Ouija board session with Val cascaded through her mind and she felt bad for hardening her heart to the ghost child, but she was tired and helpless in the face of a world she had no experience with. In her old life Elise had been a woman who dealt only in facts and evidence. Now she was at a loss when it came to ghosts and Ouija boards and she couldn’t help wishing they’d never moved to the white house.
If James had rented a house that didn’t cry out to every maternal instinct she was trying to ignore would they be finding a way back to each other now? Would they be weaving a new life together, or would they still be ripping apart the threads of the old one?
She could hear Val laughing downstairs in the kitchen and the smell of coffee percolating drifted, pleasantly, through the house. Elise went into the bedroom for a change of clothes before heading down to the bathroom on the first floor.
Halfway down the stairs something swiped her hard, from behind, and a sharp pain across her shoulders made her stumble forward with a shocked cry. She grabbed at the handrail, but wasn’t quick enough to stop her tumble and she slipped down the last few stairs, landing on her backside at the foot of the staircase. Mumbling with embarrassment and grateful that neither Val nor James seemed to have heard her fall she stood up and hobbled to the bathroom, grimacing at the burning pain in her shoulders.
She stood with her back to the mirror, peeled off her top and when she glanced behind at her reflection she gasped at the sight of three livid red scratches across her upper back. Blood was beginning to seep from each laceration and Elise stared, horrifed, at the scratches for a few seconds. She got some tissue and with trembling hands dabbed at them, gently, before turning the shower on.
She washed, quickly; wincing when the hot water pattered across the cuts, but the bleeding had stopped when she got out of the shower and she dressed, carefully, before going downstairs to join James and Val.
James was out on the decking smoking a cigarette and Val was washing up their breakfast things. She stopped and dried her hands on the tea-towel when Elise walked into the kitchen.
“Good morning, sleepy-head,” she said, smiling. “Did you enjoy your lie in and do you want a coffee before I hit the road?”
Elise nodded and began drying up whilst Val poured her a coffee. The back door banged and the stale smell of tobacco drifted through the kitchen before James appeared. He seemed startled at the sight of Elise standing by the draining board, wiping the plates, and he stopped abruptly in the doorway, unsure of how to react to her and terrified that she would look at his face and instantly know what he had done the night before.
He smiled, politely, at her. “Did you sleep well?”
She wanted to ask him where he thought she’d slept and why he hadn’t woken her when he’d come in, but she simply inclined her head and concentrated on the plate in her hands, acutely aware of Val in the room.
Guilty relief washed through James when she looked away from him and he turned to Val who was watching the two of them with a veiled expression in her eyes. “What time are you heading back to Kent?”
“In half an hour,” she replied, quietly, placing Elise’s coffee on the counter.
“Well, I’ll say goodbye now and leave you two to make your tearful farewells.”
Val hugged him, quickly, and said, “It won’t be too teary; I’m coming back for another visit before I go to South America.”
“I can’t wait,” he said with a forced smile. He glanced at Elise who was staring at him with a defiant look on her face and he walked out of the room, hurriedly, lest she see the guilt that he was sure shadowed his eyes.
“Are you ok?” Val said, concernedly.
Elise picked up her coffee and nodded, smiling, guilelessly, at her friend. “There’s nothing wrong that a lovely strong cup of this stuff won’t fix.”
“And a call to Ghostbusters,” Val muttered, sarcastically.
“You will come back, won’t you, Val?”
“I said I would and wild horses couldn’t keep me away, Lise.” She reached out and touched Elise’s hand. “I’ll be back in a few days, I promise.”
******
Despite what Val had told James, Elise shed more than a couple of tears when her friend left. She stood by the side of the road; waving, frantically, as Val drove away until she could no longer see her. When she turned back to the white house she saw Ben Lancaster standing by his front door, watching her. She lifted her hand in greeting, but he turned away and went inside his house without acknowledging her.
She was surprised by the disappointment that curdled in her stomach at his deliberate snub to her and she wondered what had caused it; however, as she walked up the driveway to the white house she saw James as the first floor window, staring down at her with steel in his grey eyes and she instantly knew why Ben had not returned her greeting. Sighing, resignedly, she walked back to the white house, missing Val’s calming presence more than she’d ever thought possible. James had been easier to deal with when there was someone else around.
James was standing halfway down the stairs when she pushed open the front door and stepped into the house. His face was red and mottled, as if the emotions boiling inside him were poisoning him from the inside, and his eyes blazed with cold fury.
She shut the door and held up her hands in an effort to placate him and said, “I’ll tell her she has to book a room at the pub when she comes back.”
It was as if the sound of her voice lit the kindling of his resentment and the guilt he felt about Amy Collins.
“I don’t care about bloody Val,” he sneered. “I saw you waving to the cretin over the road, Elise.”
“I know you did,” she replied, quietly. “It was a polite greeting from one neighbour to another, James.”
He stamped down the stairs, until he was standing at the bottom, face to face glaring at her with his cold grey eyes. Determined not to show any fear Elise stayed utterly still, standing in front of the door. Her show of irascibility only infuriated him more. He wanted her to be penitent and respectful; he wanted her to soothe his own guilt with her apologies even though he knew it was unfair and irrational. He needed to release the burning raging storm inside him.
When he spoke his voice was low and menacing. “I forbid you from having any kind of contact with that man, Elise, do you hear me?”
For a few seconds she wanted to laugh with disbelief at his archaic behaviour, but she knew it wouldn’t defuse anything. Instead she reached out and touched his arm, gently. He batted her hand away, ferociously, and she flinched away from him.
“James, please,” she whispered. “I don’t want it to be like this anymore, please stop it.”
He laughed, a harsh grating noise and grabbed her shoulder, pulling her to face him and making her wince as his fingers dug into the cuts across her back.
“This isn’t you, James,” she cried, trying to touch his face, but he shied from her touch and pushed her away from him. “The James I love knows I would never touch another man."
“You make it like this, Elise,” he growled, angrily. “You’ve made me this man. Are you proud of what you’ve done to me? Are you proud of what you’ve turned me into?”
"All this rage you’re feeling; I know it’s hard to believe but I think it’s this place. Please, James,” she pleaded. “It’s this house making you crazy; believe me, please, my love.”
“You think I’m fucking crazy?!” He whirled away from her, his face livid and a vein in his neck throbbing, wildly. “You have the nerve to say I’m crazy, Elise? Jesus Christ, after all you’ve put me through and you say I’m the fucking nutter?”
Resentment sluiced through her and she stamped her foot, crossly, like a child having a tantrum. “You say after all I’ve put you through, like I did it on purpose. Do you think I had any control over any of it? Do you think I planned the last few hellish years? Do you honestly believe it was my fault? If you think that then you are fucking crazier than I ever was.”
Tears she couldn’t control spilled from her green eyes and he was reminded of hearing her cry on one of those nights that she lost yet another one of his babies. Her agonised choking sobs had echoed around the bathroom and he had stood on the other side of the door out in the hallway, feeling helpless, crying silently and wishing she would share her pain and grief with him. He had known though that she wouldn’t leave the room until she had cleaned away every drop of spilt blood, disposed of her ruined sweatpants and stopped crying. The only trace of their loss would be her tear ravaged face.
He hadn’t told her that her determination to make sure he never saw the horror she suffered had only made him feel useless and increasingly distant from her with each subsequent miscarriage. He hadn’t wanted to see the carnage any more than she had, but every time she suffered through it alone she closed a little bit more of herself off to him until he hadn’t known how to reach her.
He had wanted her to cry in his arms and let him kiss her tears away. He had wanted her to hold his head against her breast and stroke his hair when he wept, but she had always refused to talk about it afterwards. Her only focus had been keeping positive about the next attempt and he had wondered how many times she would put herself through this before she accepted that perhaps they were never meant to have children.
He would have given up long before her, but she had needed him to be stoic and positive too and her strength and stubborn determination to have a child, even if it wasn’t his, had pushed a wedge between them that he couldn’t dislodge when Noah had been stillborn and she’d finally fallen apart so completely.
“I know it wasn’t your fault,” he said, bitterly. “If it was anyone’s fault it was mine with my defective deformed sperm. You should have married a real man, Elise.”
She closed the space between them and her Freesia perfume filled his senses. He was instantly reminded of Amy Collins the night before and the scent of peach that had lingered on her creamy skin.
“I married you because I loved you, James. We lost sight of that somewhere along the way, but I still love you, I always have and I always will.”
For a few crazy seconds he wondered if she would still love him if he blurted out what he had done the night before. He stepped away from her, mostly to get away from the scent of her cloying fragrance for it was beginning to make him feel sick. His earlier anger was gone, washed away on a tidal wave of memories, leaving only the desperate urge to get away from her and his guilt.
“I’m going out,” he said, quietly.
“Where are you going?” Dismay tinged her voice as she stepped back to let him past.
“Just out,” he snapped, striding from the house before she could stop him.
He slammed the door behind him and strode, quickly, away; down the coast road towards the village and the pub. He was going to drink until he forgot who he was and all that they had been through. He was going to drink until there was nothing on his mind, except where he would fall.
******
Elise sank onto the bottom step and sat for a few moments, listening to the rhythmic ticking of the clock in the kitchen and the distant crash of the waves against the cliff face behind the house. Upstairs, the rocking horse began creaking and she felt guilty for ignoring Oliver. Sighing she stood up and went upstairs to her bedroom. Standing on the chair she pulled an unpacked box from the top of the wardrobe. She placed it on the bed, opened it and pulled out the folded up blanket that covered the things underneath it.
Reverently, she took out a tatty teddy bear and hugged it close to her chest. Closing her eyes she allowed herself to remember placing it in the empty cot only a couple of weeks before Noah had been stillborn. She’d had such hopes for the growing child in her womb. The baby who had survived past the dreaded first three months and filled her with joy every time she felt him kick and move inside her. She had made plans and she had dreamt of the wonderful things ahead of him.
It was all gone now. Her hopes had been dashed too many times and that future had been taken away. What was the point in keeping a teddy bear she had bought in another lifetime?
The attic door was closed, but she could hear the rocking horse above her, squeaking and groaning, monotonously. Nervously, she crept up the stairs and, slowly, pushed the door open. The room was freezing cold and she knew, instantly, that Oliver was in there with her, watching her, although the rocking horse was now still. Carefully, she sat the teddy bear on the floor in the middle of the room.
“The bear is for you,” she said, quietly. “I thought it might give you some comfort when you're lonely.”
Nothing stirred in the room and no noises answered her, however she could feel him still there. She was shivering with the cold that saturated the attic, creeping around her and freezing her inside as well as out. Slowly, she backed out of the room and down the stairs. As she reached the bottom she heard footsteps rush across the attic. Even as a smile began to form on her face the door above her suddenly slammed shut with such force the whole house seemed to shake and she couldn’t hold in the startled yelp that ripped from her.
A deep silence sank over the white house for a few seconds before the toy horse began its familiar frantic creaking rocking. The hallway light began flickering, constantly, on and off and the temperature plunged again like it had in the attic. The second floor of the house was suddenly Arctic cold. Every hair on Elise’s neck stood on end and she shuddered, violently.
“Stop it,” she said, forcefully. “You don’t scare me.”
Without warning a growling spiteful maniacal laughter erupted all around her, loudly echoing around the hallway, bouncing off the walls and making it impossible to tell where it was coming from. It was the most malevolent sound she had ever heard in her life and it froze the blood in her veins. Her bravado died, instantly as fear filled her and she fled, down the two flights of stairs, grabbed her keys and ran out to her car.
She drove away from the house, as if every demon that had ever haunted her was chasing behind.