Chapter Twenty-Five

A Return Visit

“You know who this is and why,” I said. “Let me have an answer.”

A simulated voice, if no more artificial than I suspected hers might be, had answered on Bella’s behalf. I’d begun to wonder if anything about her wasn’t false. I was too enraged by how she’d managed to estrange me even further from my son to leave her any more of a message. Suppose she let Roy hear what I’d said and perhaps played it to Julia too, demonstrating yet again how deluded and obsessed I was, bordering on dangerous? So long as my call made her respond, I couldn’t afford to care. “Do your worst,” I said, having ended the call, and laid the phone on my desk.

I’d withheld that challenge until it couldn’t be recorded, but might it reach her by some means? There was no point in antagonising her more than necessary, but I was determined to ensure she left my son alone. My final words had started to disturb me in a way I couldn’t grasp, as if they ought to convey more to me than they did. The impression lay like a shapeless weight on my mind while I waited for the phone to ring, if that was how Bella would respond. Half an hour crawled by, followed by another half, each marked by the emergence of a few commuters from the station and the voice of a train listing the stops on its route. I peered at every distant face, none of which resembled Bella’s. Perhaps she wouldn’t arrive that way, but I thought it best to watch the street as it grew secretive with twilight, and in any case I felt confined to my desk by my inability to think. I watched the sunset on the faraway windmills drain into the sea. The spindly vanes continued to work, plucking without result at an upright oval of pale cloud, so apparently insubstantial it was barely visible. I did my best to hope that Bella might end up as ineffectual as the windmills looked. After all, she’d caused me no physical harm, and how much longer was she going to need Roy? They must be close to finishing the expeditions they were basing on my aunt’s journal. Surely she couldn’t do much worse to Roy than she already had – and then, far too tardily, I wondered whether anybody else could have been another kind of victim.

Had I already learned the worst she was capable of, or at any rate seen examples of it? As my thoughts took a dismaying shape I was distracted by the spectacle at the horizon, the unnaturally regular oval cloud hovering over several windmills. Of course they couldn’t shift it, but it hadn’t moved of itself or altered any of its outline, though it had been loitering for minutes since I’d noticed it. It was the sort of phenomenon that gave rise to tales of alien visitors, and I imagined people phoning the authorities, but these thoughts were simply hindering the ones I was afraid to have. Had someone besides me recognised or at any rate suspected Bella? At once I was certain who had, and as though my realisation had wakened it along with my brain, the phone rang. “Bella,” it said, and another voice followed it as the ringtone fell silent. “I’m here, Patrick.”

It appeared to come from the hovering cloud, which had opened its mouth. The cloud had eyes as well. If it hadn’t just produced the features, presumably the darkness gathering at the horizon had let them grow clear. The cloud was a reflection of the intruder behind me, the source of the voice. I twisted around in my chair, grazing my arm on the edge of the desk, to see Bella in the middle of the dim room. In an attempt to fend off panic I demanded “How long have you been there?”

“Since you called me. I was waiting to be noticed.”

With all the force of the realisation that had come to me I said “I thought you didn’t like to be.”

“Every girl does, Patrick,” my visitor said, accompanying it with a simper. “Whatever can you mean?”

“There are people who learned to their cost that you didn’t.” It appalled me to have to add “There were.”

“You can speak freely. We’re all alone.”

“Yes, you wouldn’t want Roy or his mother to hear.”

“I was thinking of you, Patrick. I shouldn’t think you’d want to estrange them even further.”

“If that’s what it takes to get rid of you it’s worth the risk.”

“You don’t think you could be risking them.”

“Don’t you dare harm them. Leave them alone.”

“I’m afraid I shan’t be doing that quite yet. What would you propose to tell them? You haven’t even made it clear to me.”

“About the woman who saw my aunt killed, for a start.”

“Miss Dennison.”

“That was her name, and I ought to have seen how it gave you away.”

Bella widened her eyes, which appeared to darken faster than the room was darkening. “How was that, Patrick?”

“When I spoke to Roy after she’d seen both of you he didn’t know her name, but you did.”

“Unless he’d forgotten it and I reminded him.”

“Why would you know it at all?”

“Why shouldn’t I? You did.”

I felt as though Bella aimed to let the darkness overwhelm my mind, and I clung to the knowledge I’d gained. “I should have realised what she meant to tell me when she rang.”

“What might that have been, Patrick?”

“That it was you she’d recognised, not Roy.”

“How would she have managed that?”

“Because she saw you when you were using my aunt the way you’re using him.”

“Do try to remember what I told you and your family. That was my father.”

“I don’t believe you ever had one.”

“Good gracious,” Bella said, and it was as if the darkness tittered. “I’ll look forward to watching you attempt to convince your family of that.”

“If nobody’s going to believe it, why did you do away with Miss Dennison?”

“Precisely, Patrick. I’m sure that’s an objection they would raise.”

“I’ll tell you why,” I said furiously enough to overcome the dread that was massing around me like the dark. “Because you didn’t want to risk being found out then, but now you’ve got such a hold over Roy and his mother you feel safe.”

“And will you be explaining to them why I’m supposed to have killed your aunt as well?”

“I didn’t say you had, but now I know you did.”

I wished I could distinguish her expression, but the light switch was beside the door beyond her, and I’d grown nervous of venturing closer to her in the dark. “You haven’t told me why,” she said with grotesque coyness.

“Because you couldn’t stop her destroying the relics you’d made her collect. I think you lost the control you’re so determined to keep and went for her.”

“She oughtn’t to have done it. She knew full well I was just a step short of achieving what I’d set out to achieve.”

I felt as eager as afraid to learn “Which was…”

“My powers that waned when my summoners died. Each time I return to the earth.”

I had a sense that the foundations of reality, or at any rate my notions of it, were under threat. “You don’t mean the people who are buried at those sites.”

“Those, yes. When they’re all gathered I shall be free.”

“To do what?”

“To be myself, as the likes of you are.”

For an instant I felt seduced into sympathising, and then I retorted “Not to kill even more people.”

“Patrick, you’re becoming dull. I wouldn’t have expected Thelma’s nephew to grow up such a monomaniac.”

“Better than the kind of maniac you are.” I was furiously aware that my response might well be taken to exemplify dullness. “You killed my parents, didn’t you,” I said as my lips grew stiff.

“Now, Patrick.” She might have been addressing a dotard. “What evidence do you think you have of that?”

“I don’t need to give you any. We both know the truth. It wasn’t just your mobile number my mother recognised.”

“Do remind me.”

“When you wouldn’t meet us at the restaurant because you were afraid she’d know you or my father would. She saw your picture on Roy’s phone when he rang you.”

“She remarked on it, did she?”

“She began to, and I think you know it. I’m guessing you were there and not letting us see you. That’s one of your powers, isn’t it? The power to sneak about and spy on people.”

“Do try to think clearly. If nobody knew I was there, how could that have stopped her speaking up?”

“Because she couldn’t have been sure what she was seeing.” I was answering so as to clarify the truth in my own mind. “She was when she’d spoken to Miss Dennison again,” I said. “She knew you and my aunt’s man were related somehow.”

“Her ideas weren’t as imaginative as yours, then.”

“They were close enough for you to want to silence them.” My mouth was growing unwieldy with rage again. “She recognised your eyes,” I managed to pronounce. “And my God, the last thing my father said, he was starting to tell me you were there in the car.”

“You really think you heard enough to say that was what he meant.”

“How would you know how much he said if you weren’t there?”

A silence admitted it had no answer. By now the room was so dark that I could scarcely make out Bella’s shape. Another surge of fury left me struggling to say “That’s why you were so ready to get together the second time, because you knew they wouldn’t be meeting us. Christ, you even said you’d been feeling you should meet them when you already had.”

“Tell me this, Patrick. If I’ve silenced all these people, why haven’t I silenced you?”

“Because you’ve made certain nobody will believe me.”

“Then perhaps you should trouble yourself less and leave me to finish my mission.”

“I’ll leave you alone if you leave my family alone. I will if you finish it by yourself.”

“I regret that isn’t feasible. Besides, I’ve grown rather attached to your son.”

When I dug my nails into the arms of my desk chair I didn’t know whether I was trying to contain my rage or preparing to launch myself at my visitor. “Parasitic, you mean.”

“Can you truly not appreciate how much I’ve given him? He does, you know. You should ask him.”

“I’ve seen how much you’ve taken. He’s so weak I had to open a door for him.” At once I realised “You were there in the dark, weren’t you? You saw.”

“You do seem bent on blaming me, Patrick. It’s those beneath the earth that feed on your energy. You felt cold where they were, didn’t you? That’s how they draw on you to help them to return.”

“And you’re using Roy to make them.”

“They have to be vital when the relic is collected for my purposes. We won’t be making many more excursions, so do try to content yourself.”

“Content.” The word came out of my mouth like spitting. “I won’t be that until Roy’s rid of you,” I said.

“You shouldn’t force me to protect myself again, Patrick.”

“What are you threatening me with now?” I demanded, staring fiercely at the dark. I had no idea how long it took me to grasp that I was confronting only darkness. I shoved myself to my feet and strode to the door, which was shut – unopened for at least two hours. The light confirmed that I was wholly alone in the room, and I went through the rest of the apartment to confirm that it was deserted as well.

Surely the threat had been merely a warning; what else could she do to me? I was as ineffectual and unconvincing as she could wish. I had no evidence of any kind against her – and then I thought of the item she’d given me the first time we met, the rarest of the books that used a painting by my aunt. At once I was sure whose name had been blotted out inside the cover, and it must still be under the erasure. I hurried to the shelves where I kept all the books to do with Thelma, but that book wasn’t where I’d filed it. It was nowhere to be found.

I couldn’t help wondering if Bella was spying on my useless search. When I gave up at last, I felt compelled to listen for any hint of trespassing as I made myself get ready for bed. Once I started pacing through the rooms to persuade myself that the intruder hadn’t returned, I was reduced to muttering “Go to bed. Go to bed.” Even there I found it hard to close my eyes, and harder still to shut my thoughts down. I did my best not to think of Bella, in case this functioned as an involuntary summons. I tried to recall memories that wouldn’t bring her to mind, but thinking of my parents only revived my father’s loss of control when they’d found her with them in the car, and any attempt to remember my years with Julia simply reminded me how thoroughly Bella had ingratiated herself. Any thoughts of Roy led straight to her and my fears for him, and a bid to reminisce about my aunt and uncle found me walking in Third Mile Wood, but now I knew I wasn’t alone with Thelma. Our companion was dodging behind the trees, constantly changing from one side of the path to the other, even though I never saw the presence cross the track. This was the nearest I came to dreaming, which wakened me enough to prompt me to struggle not to think of Bella. Suppose striving to keep her out of my mind simply invited her? As I tried to fend off the possibility I heard a sound outside the bedroom.

Somebody had dropped an object, or at any rate something had fallen. I wanted to think one of Thelma’s sketches of me had dropped off its hook, but I felt less than eager to check. Enraged by my reluctance, I flung off the quilt and strode to throw the door wide. The dim corridor was strewn with rectangular items – the portraits that had hung on the wall. I switched on the light and uttered several words I seldom used. All the pictures were still on their hooks. The objects scattered the whole length of the corridor were pages torn out of a book, and the empty binding lay on the carpet outside my bedroom.

Not just the sight of all the litter had provoked my outburst. I’d recognised the archaic handwriting of Lumen Scientiae’s journal. I grabbed the binding and retrieved the pages, only to discover one was missing – the page that gave the names of the writer’s familiar. Its absence might have been an especially sly gibe at my helplessness, since if I showed anyone the book I was bound to be accused of theft and vandalism, unless the culprit had simply taken extra care not to be identified. “Still here, are you?” I said rather more than conversationally as I headed for my desk. “Aren’t you going to make yourself known?”

Only silence replied while I laid the remains of the book in the drawer, having shoved pens and printer cartridges aside, and locked it in. I wanted to believe that Bella had made a mistake at last – that I’d been given evidence I could use if I could only think how. Perhaps sleep would clear my mind, if I was able to sleep, unless I had to think first. I turned off the light in the corridor and hurried to take refuge in the bed from a sudden chill that made me shiver. I slipped under the quilt, and as my head found the pillow a face rose out of the dark to loom over mine. “You came to my bed and so I’ve come to yours, Patrick.”

A convulsive shudder hindered me from recoiling. “Get away,” I protested in a voice that my throat choked almost beyond hearing.

“Don’t you know what you want? I’m here because you called again for me.”

Her body had reared over mine, and her face was descending towards me. I could have thought it was starting to extend itself from the head. My hands jerked up to stave her off, but they hadn’t made contact when I felt I was about to be fooled into touching her more intimately than I would be able to explain, not least to myself. I seized her by the shoulders while I scrambled out of bed, and my fingers sank deep into a pair of hollows in the flesh. As I gave a cry of dismay she writhed out of my grasp, and I thought she grew thinner and supple as muscle untrammelled by bones in order to make her escape. Before I could take a breath I was alone in the room, but I floundered to the door and switched on the light, feeling as though I might never dare venture back to the bed. When at last I did I left the light on, but I still didn’t sleep until well after dawn.