Текст книги "The House on Fever Street"
Автор книги: Celina Grace
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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 17 страниц)
Chapter Twenty-Two
Time stopped. Or so it felt to Jake. He watched the shaft of dust-filled light settle back into immobility and then he shut his eyes tight. He stood there, blind, trying to shut out the world. His own blood pulsed through the red curtain of his eyelids. If I just stand still for a moment, he thought, everything will be okay.
He heard Carl let out his breath beside him, in one sudden huff. At the same time, Veronica began to whisper, to moan, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. Jake kept his eyes shut. He wasn’t aware of it until the next day but he had clenched his fists so tight his fingernails had cut reddened half-moons in the palms of his hands.
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”
“Shut up.”
Carl’s voice cut across Veronica’s whimpering. None of them had moved yet. Jake heard someone begin to move, Veronica, it must be Veronica and immediately felt his brother shift beside him. Carl must have put out a hand to stop her.
“Wait.”
She started to cry properly.
“Oh my God, Carl – what the fuck – oh my God – “
“Be quiet. Wait here.”
Jake opened his eyes. The light from the hallway made him squint. He could feel his heart thudding regularly inside him – it actually hurt, as if a small fist was punching his ribs from the inside. He felt utterly sick.
Carl moved forward slowly. He put a hand back to stop Veronica and Jake from following him.
“Wait. Stay here.”
The two of them watched him walk slowly downstairs. Jake could feel himself beginning to shake; it was incredible, as if unseen hands were roughly agitating his limbs. His teeth began to chatter.
Carl reached the body on the hallway floor. A slowly spreading pool of blood had begun to creep across the black and white tiles. Candice’s face was hidden by her dirty blonde hair. Carl bent to press his fingers against her neck.
“Is she – “
Veronica’s voice clogged. She cleared her throat and tried again.
“Is she dead?”
“Yes. Yes, she’s dead.”
Carl sounded distracted. He stood up, looking down at Candice. Jake could see the sheen of her inner thighs from the top of the stairs. That’s my semen, he thought, with a clutch of the stomach. He was shaking like someone in the grip of a high fever. His legs felt like they were about to collapse beneath him. He lowered himself to the floor as carefully as his shaking limbs allowed and reached out to clutch the banister, needing to hold onto something solid. His heart beat against him, thud thud thud, a metronome of dread.
“Oh my God – oh my God – “
Jake could see the hem of Veronica’s dressing gown shaking from the corner of his eye. He closed his eyes once more and tried to breathe deeply. He knew he was going to have to be sick again at some point. He tried to speak but his mouth was too dry. He swallowed and tried again.
“Carl – “
There was no answer. He heard his brother begin to walk back up the stairs, slowly, moving like an old man. Hot tears began to burn the back of his eyelids.
“Carl – “
He was beyond shame but he heard his voice break. Nothing mattered but to have his brother come and make it all better, like he always had before. Jake began to cry.
“Carl – “
Out of the darkness, he felt his brother’s warm hand on his shoulder, pulling him up into the light. Jake opened his eyes. Carl had both hands on his shoulders.
“Jake, come on. V, come on. Come with me. We’ll go into V’s room.”
Veronica gave a gasping sob.
“What about – what about her?”
“Just come with me for the moment. We need to talk. Come on.”
The three of them sat on Veronica’s bed. It would be more accurate to say that two of them collapsed on Veronica’s bed. Jake rolled onto his side, burying his face in one of the cushions that littered the headboard. It smelt delicately of some flowery scent and it made him want to cry again, it smelt so innocent. Veronica sagged back against the headboard. She was so pale she was almost grey, dark shadows smudging her eyes, her lips bruised and sore looking. Carl sat at the end of the bed. His face was blank. Jake thought he looked like a man who was dreaming awake.
Veronica gave one small sob.
“Is she really dead?”
Carl shut his eyes and then opened them again. He was staring straight ahead, at nothing.
“Yes, she’s really dead. She must have cracked her skull on the floor.”
“Oh – “ Veronica gave a little moan.
Jake put one hand up to his face to cover his eyes.
“What are we going to do?” he said, from behind the slitted mask of his fingers.
Carl brought his gaze back from the middle distance to look at his brother.
“I don’t know. You’ve got to let me think.”
“We should…”
Veronica’s voice petered out in a whisper. Carl looked at her.
“Should do what?”
She swallowed. “Should call the police,” she said, in a tiny voice.
“Fuck, no.”
“Carl – “
She began to cry again. Carl shook his head.
“Carl, we must – “
“No.”
“Oh – “
“Why not, Carl?” said Jake, still half covering his eyes. He was growing steadily sicker with every minute that passed. He kept hearing the thud of Candice’s head hitting the hallway floor. He kept seeing the expression on her face as she went over backwards.
Carl was silent for a long moment. Then he spoke and his voice sounded like he was suffering from a bad cold.
“If the police come – if they come – they’ll find the drugs. They’ll test us all for drugs. We’ve gone through four grams tonight, there’s no way we’d get away with it. They’ll be able to see what we’ve been doing.” He cleared his throat. “She’s got your spunk all over her, Jake. Mine too. Inside her. What will they think? They’ll think we drugged her and raped her and then pushed her down the stairs.”
“You pushed her down the stairs,” said Jake dully. He heard Veronica gasp. Carl was silent for a moment. Then he sighed.
“We won’t mention that again.”
Veronica was still crying.
“Carl – they won’t – we have to – they won’t – “
Carl cut across Veronica’s moans.
“V, they will. What are we going to say? At the very least, they’ll do us all for possession. For supply, even. Of Class As. What’s that, ten years? And then a dead girl on top of that? A dead girl who’s probably not even sixteen yet? Fuck – “
Jake took his hand down from his face.
“Excuse me a second,” he said, and bolted for the bathroom for the second time in an hour.
The bedroom was silent when he walked back in. He fell back onto the same side of the bed, pushed his face back into the same sweet-smelling cushion.
“You alright?”
Jake nodded without speaking. He heard Carl take a deep breath.
“We need to think about what we’re going to do.”
“What if someone heard us?”
Veronica’s voice was thick with tears.
“No one heard. We’re in the middle of a detached house, V. No one’s ever complained about the noise before, have they?”
Veronica began to cry again, quietly.
“We can’t just leave her there, on the floor. Oh God – “
“It’s all right.” Jake had never heard his brother speak in such a low, comforting tone. It almost made him feel better.
“It’s alright,” said Carl, again. “We’ll deal with it. It’s not as bad you think.”
Jake laughed. He actually laughed. He could feel himself teetering on hysteria, could feel it surfacing inside him like vomit. He pushed his face deeper into the pillow, snorting laughter into the padding.
“Jake – “
He couldn’t stop laughing, he was gasping with it. Then he was crying. He felt Carl, or perhaps it was Veronica, put a warm hand on his back. Slowly, his laughter tailed off. He rolled onto his back, dislodging the hand – it was Carl. His face felt raw, his nose felt as if it had been flayed. His breath caught in occasional little hitches.
“What are we going to do?”
Veronica opened her mouth and then closed it again. The two of them looked at Carl, funny how they both looked at Carl, knowing immediately that he’d know what had to be done. Jake was suddenly, violently glad of the presence of the other two, of the warmth and closeness of the dark bedroom. He wanted to stay in there forever. He would have been quite happy for time to have stopped right there, freezing the three of them on the top of the bed, forever held in the room, like something from Pompeii. Anything to put off what was coming next. He listened with dread and soon it came. Carl spoke.
“You know what we have to do.”
The two of them were silent. Then Veronica spoke up, just about – her voice was a whisper.
“Where?”
“I think here. In the back garden somewhere.”
“No,” said Jake. It was almost a sob.
Carl looked annoyed. “Come on, Jake. It’s the only chance we’ve got. If we dump her somewhere, the police’ll find her – our DNA’s all over her. They’ll find us in two seconds.”
“They’ll find us anyway.”
“They won’t. No one knows she’s here. We don’t even know who she is – just some little squat chick, she’s probably homeless. No one saw us leave. The fucking taxi driver was some illegal immigrant. She’s a nobody. Who’s going to be looking for her in our back garden?”
Jake took a deep breath.
“Are you sure?”
“What am I – psychic? I’m as sure as I need to be. I’m not going to prison, Jake, that’s for damn sure. I’m not saying goodbye to the career I’ve worked fucking years for, worked fifteen hour days for, three six five, twenty-four seven, not for one little fucked-up junkie slag, that’s for sure. Not for one little chav that no one is going to miss. Not me. No way.“
There was a moment’s silence. Then Veronica spoke up.
“Now?”
Jake felt like crying.
“Not tonight, I can’t do anything tonight. I’m fucking exhausted – Carl, please – “
Carl put a steadying hand on his shoulder.
“We can’t do it tonight. It’s getting light for one thing. We’ll wait until tomorrow night. We all need to get some sleep.”
“But we can’t just leave her there – “
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it.”
Candice was suddenly an ‘it’. Jake noticed but he was too exhausted to care. He wanted to bury himself in sleep, wrap unconsciousness around him for as long as he possibly could. Dimly, he felt a welling pulse of gratitude for Carl, who was going to take care of things, who had taken charge. He said nothing but he put his hand out to his brother, who took it wordlessly. Veronica gave a little sob and put her arms around them both. The three of them stayed like that for a long moment.
“Come on,” said Carl, releasing Jake’s hand. “Go to bed.”
*
Jake slept for eleven hours. When he finally awoke, it was the first morning of all the awakenings that were yet to follow, the first morning where he had a second of blissful unconsciousness before the awful weight of reality came crashing down, almost obliterating him beneath it. He rolled over onto his side and buried his face in the pillow, gasping with the sickening truth of it. Then he sat up slowly, tears rolling down his face. For a moment, the room swam and he had the weirdest feeling of dislocation, as if he wasn’t in his actual body, but removed from it and hovering somewhere in the air, watching himself from afar. He blinked and shook his head, a mistake as pain thudded through him.
Jake made his way to the bathroom shakily. He had the worst hangover of his entire life – his whole body felt as if it had been dipped into a vat of poison. He bent over the toilet again but there was nothing left inside him to come up, leaving him doubled up, dry-heaving until it felt as if he was about to turn himself inside out. His head throbbed. He sat back against the bath, feeling the cool porcelain against his sweating back. Slowly the nausea and chills ebbed slightly, just slightly, enough so he could eventually get up. Somehow, he managed to get himself in the shower and stood on trembling legs beneath the hot gush of water. He watched the soap scum flood past his feet and felt a tiny, marginally bit better, as if some of the past night’s sins were washing away down the plughole.
The relief didn’t last long. He wrapped himself in a towel and plodded back to his bedroom, past Carl’s closed door. Then he heard something that froze him to the spot. Panting, moans, the creaking of the bed growing in urgency. They were having sex. He couldn’t believe it. For a moment, he felt the black despair about him chill white with shock, and the fleeting thought came and went: my brother is not normal.
He made it back to bed, somehow. Jake lay beneath the covers, gripping the edge of the duvet with shaking hands. I can’t deal with this. No human being should have to deal with this. He closed his eyes tight, trying to block out the world. He wanted to go back to sleep but he knew blissful unconsciousness would elude him. After a moment, he sat up again and ransacked his bedside table, searching for the sleeping pills he had once been prescribed. Thank you God, there were two left in the little brown bottle. He swallowed both and lay back down, trying to breathe deeply and think of nothing, counting down the minutes to oblivion.
Chapter Twenty-Three
They were sat at the kitchen table when he came downstairs. He’d paused on the landing, afraid to look down at the floor below. He had waited up there for several minutes, gripping the banister, unable to bring himself to move. Then, cringing, he moved to the top of the stairs and looked down.
There was nothing there on the hallway floor. The black and white tiles looked oddly more real, more there. Jake blinked. Then he realised that they’d been washed, the usual film of dust and grime cleared away. Now they sparkled in the light that came flooding through the fanlight of the door.
He walked downstairs slowly, holding onto the banisters at every step. He couldn’t, couldn’t, bring himself to walk over the very spot that she’d landed. One of the tiles was cracked across, a thin white thread across the black surface, and he wondered queasily if it had broken under the impact of her head. Or had it always been like that? He knew he’d never be able to look at it again without wondering.
Jake paused in the doorway to the kitchen, when he realised Carl and Veronica were already in there. They were both sat silently at the table, the scraps of their breakfast meal scattered across its surface. They both looked at him, wordlessly and Jake could feel a blush rising in his face, scorching his skin. He dropped his gaze to the dirty kitchen floor.
“Do you want coffee?” Carl said tonelessly. Jake had to swallow before he was able to reply.
“Thanks.”
He sat down at the table, no longer able to trust his legs.
Veronica looked down at her plate. He had never seen her look worse – she looked wretched, fading away before his eyes. The skin of her face was scraped red with stubble rash. Mine or Carl’s, he wondered and felt his empty stomach clench. He couldn’t believe that less than twenty four hours ago, he’d been inside her. How was it possible? And this morning he’d heard them both fucking, after Carl had removed the dead body of a girl from their hallway floor. Jake closed his eyes briefly. I hope he washed his hands first, he thought, sickened.
He heard the clink of a cup being set down in front of him and muttered his thanks.
“What time is it?” he asked. He’d totally lost track of the hours.
Veronica answered him. Her voice sounded as if she was coming down with a cold.
“Twenty past four.”
“What day is it?”
“It’s Sunday. You’ve been asleep for hours.”
“I took sleeping pills. I had to, I couldn’t stand to stay awake.”
“All right.”
He heard the warning in Carl’s voice and heeded it. Jake put the coffee cup to his lips. He wondered if he would ever feel hungry again.
“You’d better eat something,” said Carl. Veronica nodded.
“I can’t. I feel sick.”
“Eat something, Jake. Go on.”
Veronica’s voice was so soft, so oddly maternal that it brought tears to his eyes. Slowly, he nodded and moved towards the fridge.
“Where is she?”
He had to ask it, if only to rid himself of the dread that he was going to stumble across the body in some unexpected place, lodged behind the sofa, or hidden in one of the spare bedrooms.
There was a moment’s silence. Jake felt a sudden, queasy swoop of vertigo. They didn’t know what he was talking about – he’d imagined the whole thing, had dreamt the whole hideous business up in his drug-infected sleep. He felt a wild burst of relief, relief that Carl’s voice put a sudden, violent end to.
“It’s in the dining room.”
So it had happened. Of course, he’d known that all along. Jake felt for a kitchen chair and manoeuvred himself into it. His legs were shaking.
“Christ, you look awful. You look like you’re about to faint.”
Veronica put a hand on his shoulder.
“God, what are we going to do? I can’t bear it, I can’t –“
“Come on,” Carl said roughly. “Don’t be such a fucking wuss. I’ve told you, we’ll sort it out, no one will know, no one will ever find out and then the three of us can forget this ever happened. It’ll just be like nothing ever happened.”
They dozed again for an hour, curled up on the sofas in the living room. Jake needed the warmth and immediacy of the others. It was an antidote to the colder presence, whose chill he could feel seeping through the house, snaking from the dark cavern of the dining room, a cold ribbon of air reaching the kitchen and hallway. He pressed himself closer to Veronica, shivering. He was beginning to realise the enormity of the task they’d set themselves but there was no help for it – the need to empty the house of the corpse was paramount. He’d never be able to set foot in this place again if she – it – remained in the house.
They waited for it to get dark, beginning to drink again. It was the only way any of them could contemplate getting through the night that was to follow. At the first taste of alcohol, Jake’s stomach clenched and he tensed, waiting to see if he could keep it down. Somehow, he was able to and by the time twilight had smudged the windows of the living room, he was just right, drunk enough to not be able to think too closely about what they were about to do, not too drunk to be incapable.
It was full dark before Carl would let them open the kitchen door to the garden. There was a thin slice of moon caught in the branches of the beech tree and the leaves and grasses whispered in the night breeze. The three of them stood on the patio, in the dark. Carl wouldn’t let them turn on the kitchen light.
“I’m going to go and unlock the shed. It’ll be too small in there for more than a couple of us to dig so Jake and I will do it. V, you can take over when we get tired.”
“Take over?” said Veronica faintly.
“Come on, V, this has to be a joint effort. We’re all in this together.”
“Okay.” She looked utterly miserable, as far as Jake could see in the dim light. “What am I going to wear?”
“What?”
“I can’t dig in my pyjamas.”
“For God’s sake – just borrow a pair of my jeans. Everything we wear will have to be washed anyway, if not burnt.”
“I’m burning mine,” said Jake. “I can’t have these clothes in my wardrobe ever again.”
Carl said nothing but his breathing was indicative of impatience. He left them in the kitchen and walked towards the shed, kicking through the overgrown lawn. Jake strained his eyes to follow the blacker outline of his brother. He heard the clink of the padlock on the door of the shed.
“Go and get changed,” he said to Veronica.
It took them all night, literally all night. The shed was floored with old boards, stippled with woodworm. Carl prised them up from the foundations, working by torchlight, he and Jake holding their breath at every creak and snap of the wood. Eventually, they cleared a space through to the hard-packed earth below. Spiders scurried away from the beam of the torch and Jake saw the twisting pink glint of an earthworm. He felt his stomach clench again. They were going to lower her into this earth, into the worms, clog her hair with dirt… He took a firmer grip on the torch, trying to steady the beam.
The earth was packed hard, dried solid after weeks of hot weather. Their shovels scraped miserable little slices of dirt at each thrust, until Carl brought a watering can and poured water over the ground. That made it a little easier but after an hour, their hands were blistered and their backs aching from the unaccustomed exertion. Veronica took a turn, breaking her long polished nails on the handle of the spade, her curtain of blonde hair falling in front of her sweating face. The interior of the shed filled with stink of nervous exertion.
Eventually they’d cleared a trench that they thought would be big enough. Veronica leant against the wall of the shed, panting with exhaustion. Jake looked at her, dully conscious of her need for support and comfort but not quite able to give it. Carl stood gingerly up and put his hands into the small of his back, grunting. His hands were raw with broken blisters.
“Right,” he said and Jake was shocked at how quiet his voice was, how unsteady. He felt the anxiety twist sharper and deeper. He needed Carl to be the strong one, to stay focused, to know what to do. What would they do without him?
“Carl – “ he said, unsure of what he wanted to say.
“Right,” said Carl again, ignoring him. “I think that’s about deep enough.”
Veronica’s breathing was mostly under control. She brushed a strand of hair away from her face with her grimy hand.
“What now?”
Carl sighed. “Now is the tricky part. You two go inside and hold the door open for me.”
Veronica’s voice was tiny. “Are you going to – “
“Get it? Yes. I’ll carry it out here. You need to hold the door.”
They waited in the kitchen. Jake held the back of a chair to stop his hands from shaking. He was horribly afraid of seeing the body, of seeing what terrible damage two days of decay had done. In the end, it wasn’t as bad as he’d anticipated. Carl carried her through the kitchen, the body securely trussed in a white sheet. There were stains on the sheet that Jake didn’t look at too closely. Carl carried her small body easily, held against him like a strong bridegroom carries his bride. The white sheet made a lighter patch against the blackness of the garden. Jake and Veronica watched from the kitchen window, watched Carl and his fluttering white burden move into darkness until the door of the shed swung behind them and cut them off from view.
Veronica sat down heavily at the kitchen table. She was weeping again, monotonously, the tears running in a slow, steady trickle over her stubble-grazed chin to fall in tiny drips on the table. Jake filled a glass with water and drank it down slowly, suddenly ferociously thirsty. He could feel the blood thudding in his head. His back ached fiercely. He yearned for sleep, for the oblivion that sleep brings.
“It’s almost over,” he said to himself. Veronica heard him.
“Thank God,” she said, her voice clogged with tears.
The kitchen door opening made them both jump. Carl was back, minus his white-wrapped burden. He looked more exhausted than Jake had ever seen him.
“Jake, I need your help.”
Jake swallowed. “With what?”
“Don’t panic. It’s nothing like that. I need you to help me put the boards back. I’ve put the earth back already.”
Jake hesitated. The pause in his response was born of simple fear; terror of going near the body, and exhaustion and a whole heap of other emotions.
“Please,” said Carl and the crack in his voice made Jake realise how near to the end his brother was. He softened.
“I’m coming,” he said.
The smell in the shed was worse now; sweat, wet earth and something else, something horrible, sweetish-sour and fetid. Jake put his hand over his face.
“I know,” said Carl tiredly. “Believe me, it’s better now that it’s covered up. Come on, let’s get the boards back.”
They bent wearily to their task. Dawn was just around the corner, a pale greyish glimmer beginning to stain the darkness. They hammered the nails back as softly as they could and stood up, moving like old men. Jake felt old. He put a dirty hand up to his sweat-stiffened hair, wondering if he’d gone grey overnight, as people were said to do.
They walked out into the gradually lightening garden. A few birds were beginning to sound their tentative, early-morning notes and Jake listened for a moment, almost swaying with tiredness. He was seeing things only hazily, blinking through a fog of exhaustion. Beside him, Carl clicked the padlock shut and tested the door of the shed. Then he stood by his brother for a moment, looking at the pearly dawn light and hearing the cool, liquid notes of the birdsong. The two of them stood silently, leaning against one another, too tired to move. Then at a ‘come on’ from Carl, they began to walk back to the house, stumbling groggily through the dew-soaked grass, walking slowly back across the garden to where Veronica waited for them in the silent house.
In the kitchen, Carl put a hand out to them both as they stood there, earth-smeared, shattered, swaying like zombies.
“Leave your clothes here on the floor,” he said. “I’ll take care of them. Have a hot shower and get to bed. And after this night, we never, ever mention any of this again. Right?”
“Right,” Veronica whispered.
Jake looked into his brother’s brown eyes, ringed in shadow, laced with tiny threads of blood. Eyes just like his. He saw the command and recognised it, but he saw something else that he’d never seen before – a wordless appeal. He felt a bone-deep chill take hold of him and yet there was relief there too, in the yielding to the inevitable. They were in this together, from this moment forward.
Jake took a deep breath. “Right,” he said and then turned away from them both, to begin the long, weary slog up the stairs to bed.
