Psychopathia: A Horror Suspense Novel (8 page)

‘Now what?’ he asked.

‘We wait for it to move,’ Damien replied. ‘It doesn’t usually take long.’ He cleared his throat and spoke louder. ‘We’re talking to whichever spirit is in the house. The one who keeps hiding the car keys. Give us some sign you’re here.’

Everyone looked expectantly at the glass. When it jittered beneath their fingers, and slid a centimeter
closer to the word YES, Lara gave a little shriek.

‘Did you feel that? It moved! It really moved!’

‘You’re here,’ Damien said. He’d obviously decided to take charge. ‘Will you speak to us?’

It was a strange sensation as the glass hitched under Toby’s fingers then slid over the varnished table top.

‘Are you pushing it?’ Lara asked. ‘Matt, you’re pushing it, aren’t you?’

Matt shook his head. ‘Not me.’

‘I’m not pushing it,’ Lara squealed.

‘I’m not either,’ Tully said.

Toby didn’t bother to answer. He wasn’t pushing it. He thought if anyone was, it would be the new guy, Damien, and he didn’t say he wasn’t either. But what the hell, it was still a weird feeling.

The glass
slid to a stop, nudging the E in YES. Toby saw everyone exchange little glances, and tried to resist the temptation to look behind himself. The shadows were getting thicker back there. He could feel them gently swaying in a breeze.

‘Are you the spirit who chased Toby and Tully up at the Enchanted Forest?’
Lara was having a hard time sitting still, and kept glancing at the camera. The candles flickered at the edge of the table.

Toby heard his sister draw in a breath and hold it when the glass moved again. It backed up from the word
YES and did a circle of the alphabet. He didn’t think Tully was the only one holding her breath – everyone at the table seemed to have stopped breathing. He caught himself doing the same and let the air spill softly from his lungs. The glass stopped to nudge the YES again.

‘Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,’ Tully whispered under her breath. ‘Why did you chase us?’

Lara laughed. ‘Yeah – you scared the living shit out of them.’

The glass quivered under Toby’s fingers, like it was alive, like it had a mind of its own. He wanted to snatch his hand back, but it stayed there, barely touching the glass, but drawn to it.

It moved again, another perambulation around the letters. A second time.

‘What’s it doing?’
Lara asked.

‘Shh,’ Damien replied. ‘Let’s just see.’

It moved quicker. Touched the N. O. T.

‘Not!’
Lara said. ‘Not what?’

C. H. A. S. E.

They blinked at each other over the homemade board. Tully was chewing the inside of her lip again, and Toby felt like something had come along and scooped out his insides. He was hollow with shock.

‘If you didn’t chase them,’ Damien said, ‘what were you doing?’

The glass reversed under their fingers, and moved towards the letters again, stopped, then started.

Tully spoke up. ‘You weren’t chasing us. It felt like you were chasing us. Through the woods, remember.’ She shook her head. ‘What were you trying to do?’

The glass trembled, moved, slid in jerky slow motion across the board. C. A. T.

‘Cat?’
Lara asked, puzzlement drawing her brows down over her eyes. What does a cat have to do with anything? Do you mean a cat chased them?’

C. H.

‘C H? Ch? Ch what? Chips, Cheese? China? Were you from China?’ Lara leaned over the letters and stared hard at the glass.

It moved to NO. The candles
Lara had put on the table blew out. All at once. Next to him, Tully jumped, and snatched her hand back from the glass.

‘What’s going on?’ she asked.

The glass wobbled under their remaining fingers, and moved again. It circled the letters, then did it again, moving faster, a wide swooping circle, and again. Behind Toby, the shadows thickened like cobwebs, and he turned, fingers leaving the glass. Something moved back there, someone there, standing looking at him, he could just make it out, a figure, standing behind a curtain of shadow, looking at him.

The glass swept off the table, and smashed against the wall, shattering on impact, sending the shadows scattering. The figure twisted, and vanished. Toby blinked, licked his lips, mouth dry.

‘Turn on the lights! Oh my god did you all see that?’ Lara was jumping up and down, up from the table, the camera in her hand, aiming it first at the scatter of Scrabble tiles still on the table, then panning it over at the wall behind them where the glass had shattered.

The room flooded with light, and Toby blinked in the sudden brightness.

‘That was awesome,’ Lara said. ‘Did you see the glass go apeshit when I asked if the spirit was from China? Man, I don’t care if this gives me a week of bad dreams – it was so totally worth it to get that on film.’ She was pushing buttons on the back of the camera. ‘It got the glass going round the board – wow, this is amazing – you guys have to see this. And there it goes, right off the table. You can’t see it smash against the wall, but it definitely flies off the table.’ She looked up, eyes wide and excited. ‘I guess it doesn’t like China, huh.’

Tully had grabbed hold of Toby’s arm, and he could feel her trembling
against him. ‘Has anything like that ever happened before?’ she asked Damien.

The new guy
backed away from the table, his hands up as though to ward something off. He shook his head. ‘Ah, nope. That’s a new one.’

‘What do you think it means?’ Matt this time, and when Toby looked at him, Matt’s face w
as paler than he’d ever seen it.

Damien was shaking his head. ‘I don’t know. It was like it got angry, or frustrated or something.’

Tully nodded next to him. ‘That’s exactly what it felt like. As though it was annoyed because it couldn’t communicate properly.’

Toby sucked in a deep breath. ‘It wasn’t that it couldn’t communicate properly,’ he said.

The camera swung around to face him. Lara was recording again. ‘What do you mean, then?’ she asked.

He shrugged, looking away from the camera and back at the wall where the shadows had been, where the figure had been standing watching him. There was a cut in the wall, he saw, where the glass had hit, biting into the wallboard. The floor was covered in broken glass. He sniffed.

‘It got pissed off because we weren’t listening, not because it couldn’t communicate.’

Tully was looking up at him, blue eyes clouded. ‘What are you saying?’

He shrugged. ‘It wasn’t trying to say Cat, or China.’

Everyone stilled, all eyes on him. ‘What was it
saying?’ Lara asked.

‘Catch,’ Toby said. ‘C A T C H. It was telling us it wasn’t chasing us.’ He stopped t
o look at Tully. ‘It was catching us.’

She stared back at him, and her fingers on his arm dug in, clutching.

No one spoke for a minute or more after he made his announcement. They stared at him, then Damien spoke up.

‘Ah, I think I’ll head home,’ he said. Tosser. ‘It’s getting late.’

Tully swung around on him. ‘You said it would be safe!’ She waved a hand at the spill of broken glass. ‘Does that look safe to you?’

He was digging around in his pockets, pulled out a bunch of keys. ‘Sure, but you didn’t tell me you had a demon in your house.’ He shook his head. ‘It is safe. Usually.’ He wouldn’t meet their eyes. ‘Anyway. I’m, um, going to go now.’

Lara
had the camera on him. ‘You’re just going to leave? You just told us we have a demon in the house, and you’re leaving? What sort of arsehole are you?’

‘An arsehole who likes his own skin.’ He turned on his heel. ‘I’ll let myself out. Good luck.’

And just like that, the loser was gone. Toby glanced behind himself again, sure the figure would be standing there staring at him. Them all, maybe, but mostly him. He was sure it had been looking at him. But the lights were on now. Lara was going around blowing all the candles out. There were barely any shadows left.

‘So what do we do now?’ Tully asked, standing by the table looking at the spill of tiles.

‘Well we put this shit away for starters,’ Matt said, picking up the Scrabble box, and sweeping the alphabet tiles into it with a great clatter. ‘From now on, this is for playing Scrabble.’ He stuck the lid on the box. ‘And personally, I hate Scrabble, so don’t go asking me for a game.’

‘He said we had a demon in the house.’
Lara’s exuberance had disappeared.

‘Yeah, well that guy couldn’t tell his arse from his head, so I wouldn’t worry about it.’ Matt put an arm around her shoulders. ‘There’s no such thing as demons.’

‘You said there were no such things as ghosts.’

‘And I still
reckon I’m right. But I’m definitely right about the demons. That’s just some Christian bullshit. You can’t take it seriously.’

Tully was shaking her head. ‘I don’t know, Matt. These programmes I’ve been watching – some of the houses were being haunted by demons.
That was what they called the really dark spirits, the ones that wanted to hurt the people that lived there.’

‘Fuck Tully,’ Matt spat out. ‘Are you trying to make this worse? There’re no fucking demons in our house. It was him – whatshisname – Damien, he was pushing the bloody glass, wanting to make it look cool.’

‘Sure, then tell me why he ran out of here like his pants were on fire?’

Matt didn’t have an answer for that. Toby checked the wall again. Nothing there. He looked through the doorway to the narrow hallway. No figure.

‘We should all go to bed,’ Matt said. ‘There’s no point talking about this. Talking about it will only make it worse.’ He put his hands on Lara’s shoulders, and steered her away towards the bedrooms.

Tully turned to face him. ‘What just happened, Toby?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. But I think Matt’s right. We should just go to bed.’ He wanted to check the shadows behind him again, but resisted, not wanting Tully to freak out any more than she was.

‘It was a really dumb idea, wasn’t it?’

‘What was?’ He didn’t want to talk about it.

‘The séance. We were stupid to do it.’

He spoke on a sigh. ‘Tully, it wasn’t even your idea. Don’t worry about it.’

She nodded, matched his sigh, then went to the kitchen and found the dustpan and brush.

‘Leave it,’ Toby said. He didn’t want her to touch the broken glass, or go anywhere near where the figure had stood, looking at him. But she gave him a questioning look.

‘It’s broken glass, Toby. Can’t just leave it there.’ Bending over, she scooped the fragments into the pan, and dumped them in the rubbish. The lights were on, so the shadows
hadn’t been able to crowd around her. He blinked and dug his nails into the fleshy part of his palm.

‘I’m going to bed,’ he said. ‘Yell if you need anything.’

She gave a tired nod and he made his way to his room, where he was pretty sure he was going to lie awake for the rest of the night – checking the shadows. He curled himself into a knot under the covers and whispered the lyrics of a Black Keys song under his breath, eyes tightly shut. Sleep snuck up on him, smothering him in the darkness of his blankets.

Until something screamed in the night. He came to, thrashing his way to the surface, sheets wound around him, and stared blindly out at the
murky dark.

Movement from the other rooms. Matt’s voice. ‘What the fuck was that?’ The sound of bedroom doors opening. His sister’s voice, too low for him to make out the words, but he heard the fear in them.

The scream again. Outside. Someone outside was screaming. Toby launched himself from the bed, but the sheets tangled around his feet, tripping him up, and he landed on the floor, breath knocked from his chest. Heaving in a lungful of air, he twisted, pushing at the ropes of sheet tied to his ankles, kicking out with his legs, turning.

He froze. There was something under the bed. From outside came another scream that pierced the night, cut a great rift in it
, but he barely heard it, staring at the eyes looking back at him from under the bed. He was sure they were eyes, twin glowing globes, milky blue, lit from within, staring at him, looking at him, seeing him, stripping his very flesh from his bones with their gaze, digging deep under his skin, probing within him, into every crevice and thought, learning everything there was to learn about him. He opened his mouth to cry out against it, but his vocal chords were frozen. Something hot spilled against his thigh, and he whimpered as he wet himself.

The eyes blinked, winked out and he
howled, scooting backwards from the bed, from the darkness that lurked under it, from the eyes that any moment now, might open again and stare into his soul. He scrabbled on the old floorboards, scrunching up the mat he’d landed on, found his knees at last, his feet, but his legs barely held him, and he lurched backwards until he felt the door behind him, the knob biting into his spine. He stared at the deeper slice of darkness lurking under the bed.