Elise drove up to the white house and parked in her usual place. James’ bike was not there, which wasn’t unusual for that time of day, and she was glad. As much as she disliked the idea of going into the white house alone, she dreaded more the point when she’d have to voice the news of Val’s death yet again. Wearily, she wiped away the tears that were falling again and got out of the car.
She saw Ben crossing the road, heading towards her and her throat constricted when she thought of Val, darting over the busy main road on her way to a meeting, never imagining she was about to get sideswiped by a lorry.
‘A fucking lorry,’ Elise thought, angrily. ‘For fuck’s sake, Val; how could you not have seen a fucking great lorry, you daft bitch?’
“I’ve left you a couple of messages, but you didn’t answer me,” Ben called, breaking into her trance.
Elise started and stared at him, hollowly. “Sorry,” she said, eventually. “I got called away and forgot to pack my charger. My phone ran out of battery somewhere on the M4 yesterday.”
Ben touched her shoulder, gently. “Are you okay, Elise?”
She shrugged, nodded, shook her head and said, “I don’t know.”
Ben smiled, wryly. “Well, I’m glad you cleared that up for me.”
“Sorry,” she said, again. She opened the back door and pulled her overnight bag from the car. “What were you trying to get hold of me for?”
Ben took the bag, despite her faint protestations and walked towards the house with her. “You wanted Kay to come over today. You left a message on my phone asking me to arrange it.”
“Yes, you’re right, I did,” she replied, absently. “Jesus Christ, that feels like a lifetime ago now.”
“She’s over at mine, but she won’t come into your house” Ben said, apologetically. “She’s happy to see you if you want to pop over now?”
Elise glanced back at the white house, shivered and nodded. She put her overnight bag by the front door and followed Ben over to his cottage. His friend, Kay, was standing in the doorway, with her arms wrapped around herself, staring fixedly at the white house opposite.
“Hello, Kay,” Elise said, politely. “Thank you for coming to see me.”
She flashed Elise a strained smiled and said, “Ben filled me in on some of the phenomenon you’ve witnessed and I had every intention of performing a cleansing spell for you, but there’s something dark in your house, Elise. Something so dark I can see it from here and I know already that I can’t help you with it, so forgive me for not wishing to go in there.”
Elise’s voice trembled when she asked, “What do you mean you can see it? What is it?”
“To me it looks like a black cloud of energy enveloping the entire house. Elise, it’s feeding off you and your husband, and it’s getting bigger and stronger. You have to leave there. You have to get out as soon as you can.”
“I thought it was just a little boy,” she whispered. “A lonely little boy trapped in my house.”
“Trapped is the right word,” Kay said, gently. “Whatever is there is desperately trying to escape. It’s so very dark and it’s using you and your husband to grow stronger. There's a woman there too; he killed her and he keeps her with him, but now he wants you. They're both trapped in there.”
“Do you believe in possession?”
Kay winced and looked at Elise, properly, for the first time. “I believe in things you probably haven’t even thought of. You have to leave that house, Elise, as soon as possible.”
Elise shuddered and remembered that Val had said the same thing. “So, what am I supposed to do?”
Kay closed her eyes and swayed, slightly. When she spoke her voice was low and soft. “It’s been there a long time, Elise. It’s not just a ghost anymore.… it’s much more than that. There's so much hatred there, so much need. It’s evil, Elise.” She opened her eyes and looked at Elise, fearfully. “I wouldn’t even know how to go about getting rid of it. If I was you I’d call in a Catholic priest.”
Elise recalled the last strange conversation she’d had with Val and she began to laugh. It was a harsh strangled high octave laugh that hitched with every breath she took. She saw them watching her, alarmed, and she stopped, abruptly. “Thanks for your help, Kay. I appreciate it, really, but I’ve been on the road for a long time and I’ve had a shitty couple of days so I’m going to go indoors and have a long hot bath.” She nodded, politely to Ben and Kay and turned away.
“Elise,” Kay said, quietly. “I brought you a protection crystal to wear around your neck, please take it.”
“I’m not sure it will be any good to me,” Elise replied, sarcastically.
“The blonde woman next to you wants you to have it,” Kay said, gently. “She’s right next to you and she’s nodding when I tell you to take it.”
Elise couldn’t hide the bitterness in her voice when she said, “Is this a joke?”
“She’s a pretty lady, with blonde hair and blue eyes,” Kay said, candidly. “She’s dressed like…” She paused, laughed and said, “Sheena, Queen of the Jungle . She says I have to tell you she's looking after your little ones, Elise.”
Elise smiled, sadly, at the thought of her lost babies and Val when she’d first arrived in Porth Kerensa. She wiped the sudden tears from her eyes and turned back to look at Kay who reached out and passed Elise the silver chain with a pretty pink crystal hung from it.
“It’s a Rose Quartz and I hope it helps.”
She slipped the necklace in her coat pocket. “Thank you, for the necklace and thank you for coming to see me.”
She turned away again and walked to the white house without looking back.
When Elise stepped into the house she stopped and stared, shocked, at the devastation that lay before her. Pictures had been ripped from the wall, ornaments and books had been smashed and torn, and the dining chairs had been upended. Glass and debris were scattered all over the floor, along with mud and shredded houseplants that had been ripped from their pots.
Tears spilled from her Elise’s tired eyes and she sunk to the floor, clutching her knees, with her mouth open in shock. She closed her eyes for a few seconds, hoping it was all a bad dream, but the carnage was still there when she opened them again and she shoved her fist into her mouth to force back the scream that threatened to break free.
Slowly, she stood up and moved through the room, wincing at the sound of glass and china crunching beneath her feet. The ship in a bottle and watch that she’d bought James were smashed to smithereens on the dining table and the clothes were torn and crumpled in amongst the broken glass on the floor. The birthday card that she’d laboured over had been ripped into tiny pieces and the word ‘Bitch’ had been scrawled, in marker pen, over the aerial picture of Porth Kerensa that she’d carefully wrapped up.
She couldn’t even imagine how she was going to explain any of it to James when he finally got home. She wondered if he’d presume she’d gone on a grief stricken rampage and chalk it up as another example of her ever increasing madness. He’d definitely call her mad if she told him she thought an evil presence in the house was responsible.
“You were never mad, Lise,” Val’s voice whispered in her memory.
Elise began to tidy up the destruction in the dining room and it was a few minutes before she realised the wooden horse upstairs was rocking, frenetically. She always considered it as a warning from Oliver when he rode his toy horse so urgently and it usually scared her, but that day she didn’t care what he was warning her about and she wasn’t frightened. The anger churning inside her almost welcomed a confrontation with whatever it was trying to scare her away.
The fury with Val for bloody dying, anger with Fate for the path she’d walked, the impotent rage she felt towards the fucking thing in her house…all of it was boiling, lurching, bubbling away inside her and she wondered if this was how James felt all the time. She listened to the harried rocking upstairs and she swept and tidied feverishly, waiting and hoping something tangible would show itself…something she could fight.
Eventually the rocking stopped and the room was clean again, albeit bare without the pictures and knick knacks on the shelves. Emotionally and physically exhausted, she went upstairs for a hot bath to soothe her aches and pains, although there was nothing in the world that could take away the agony of losing Val.
She fell asleep in the bath, lulled by the heat and the silence of the tall white house. She slept and she dreamt about James, walking along the road next to the harbour, holding the hand of a little boy with brown hair, blue eyes and a friendly smile. She listened to them chat about getting an ice cream as she followed them up the road and she wondered when they would notice her.
The slam of the front door woke her and she sat up in the cold water and thanked heaven that she’d lit some candles for ambience because night had fallen whilst she slept. Shivering, she climbed out of the bath, wrapped a towel around herself and called out, “I’m up here.”
She towel dried her hair and it took her a couple of minutes to realise only silence had answered her. Everything in her body went tense and, apprehensively, she opened the bathroom door a crack and peered out. The hallway was empty, but there was a light on downstairs and she could hear the low hum of voices on the stereo in the dining room. Feeling foolish she walked into the lounge to call down to James.
Elise jumped, violently, when she saw him standing in the shadows at the top of the stairs. She clapped a hand to her chest and laughed, nervously. “Oh, you scared me,” she stammered. “What time is it?”
“What are you doing here?” James voice was low and hostile, raising her hackles instantly. “I wasn’t expecting you to be here. I thought you’d left me, left us.”
Elise frowned and opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off.
“I asked you for one thing, Elise. I asked you for one fucking night to talk about us and how we could save us, but you couldn’t do it, could you? Just that one thing, Elise; after all I’ve done for you.”
“I know, but it wasn’t my faul…”
“It’s never your fault, for fuck’s sake,” he shouted, furiously, stepping forward. His face, bathed in the moonlight flooding through the patio doors, was tight with fury and his eyes were so very dark. He didn’t look like the James she had known all her life, calm or angry. He looked as if he was wearing a gross caricature demonic mask and Elise shuddered and blinked, rapidly. She could smell the stench of whisky coming from him and she tried not to retch.
“James, please,” she begged, moving slowly backwards. “It’s not what you think?” She became aware of the rocking horse upstairs, creaking and squeaking as its never ending gallop started again, echoing through the house. Strangely James didn’t appear to notice it.
He walked towards her, menacingly, as if she were his prey and he was stalking her. “What do I think, Elise? Tell me…because I’m really fucking interested to hear what you think I think.”
“I don’t know what you think,” she stuttered, bravely. “But I bet it’s not the truth.”
“I think you went away with one of your men friends and shagged him all night, you dirty whore.” He grabbed hold of her bare shoulder and squeezed it, tightly. “But do you know what? I don’t even care because I spent the night fucking my secretary. Yes, I made love to my beautiful young sexy secretary and she came so many times, Elise, crying my name every time.”
“You fucking bastard,” Elise hissed, furiously. With strength she didn’t know she had she wrenched her shoulder from his grip and slapped his face, over and over again, with both hands, screaming insults at him, until he pushed her, viciously, away from him.
“What’s good for the goose,” he sneered, spitefully.
Elise lay sprawled against the back of the sofa where she’d fallen, clutching her towel around her, and stared up at him, angrily, remembering the day she’d caught him masturbating in the shower and the name he’d uttered when he came.
“You really are a stupid man, James. You bloody stupid, stupid man. I want you to leave. Fuck off to your slut secretary and I hope you live happily ever after.” She laughed, harshly. “As long as she doesn’t want to have children, because we both know you’re fucking useless for that.”
With a roar of unadulterated ferocity he hit her so hard she fell to one side. He covered her mouth with one hand and with the other he yanked the towel from her naked body, tore his trousers down and forced himself inside her. It was if he was possessed by something he couldn’t control. He felt as if he was hovering above himself, listeing to the insults that spilled from his lips and watching as he slapped, pinched and bit her. And when he drove himself in and out of her unrelenting body he didn’t even feel the scalding heat of her tears on the hand that he held over her mouth.
She struggled at first, kicking and bucking beneath him, trying desperately to heave him off her, but he was too strong and he was hurting her too much. He tried to force her head to the side, but she resisted him. His face was frozen into a snarl and she knew she would never forget that mask of hatred he wore as he raped her. She wanted to close her eyes and banish it from her memory for he didn’t look like the James she had known for so long, but she would not give him the satisfaction of looking away while he hurt her so badly. He pushed and pounded at her, muttering the word, 'whore' over and over again and she thought it would never end until finally, with a primal roar, he ejaculated deep inside her.
Eventually he took his hand from her mouth and pulled out of her. She rolled away from him and curled into a foetal position with her knuckles jammed against her mouth to suppress the shriek building in her throat. The rocking horse had stopped its deranged canter and the only sound in the white house was their gulping breaths as both of them took in what had just happened.
James stood up, slowly, and opened his mouth to speak, but Elise spoke first, her voice heavy with venom. “If you say sorry I swear to God I’ll find something sharp and stab you to death.”
“Elise,” he choked, miserably. “I’m…”
“I fucking mean it,” she replied, caustically. “Get out, James. Get out of here and don’t come back. Not ever.”
She lay in the dark, on the unforgivingly hard floor, and listened to him crash around putting his trousers on before he stumbled down the stairs. She heard the front door shut and she let out the breath she felt she’d been holding in since he covered her mouth with his big heavy hand.
Gingerly she stood up and went back to the bathroom to run another bath. She sat in the scalding hot water and scrubbed every inch of her skin until she was red raw. She drained the water away, dried herself, carefully, and applied after-sun lotion to her pink tender skin. Elise was on autopilot…moving systematically and performing each action robotically because otherwise she thought she might go stark staring mad.
She lay in bed, wide awake for a long time, staring at the ceiling, but all she could see was the angry hatred that had been etched into her husband’s face when he assaulted her. He had killed any memory she had of the man she had known and loved for so long.
There was nothing left of them to save now.