Her skin burned with the heat of the lovemaking. Her face would be flushed, she knew it. Adam and Belle would figure out how she’d spent the last hour. What they’d say didn’t concern her; if they said anything at all. Only she intended that particular triangular relationship should retain its present equilibrium. So Kym didn’t return to her room. Instead she padded along the corridor to the entrance hall. There she crossed the chequerboard pattern tiles to the front doors. Carefully, she eased one open. She didn’t want raucous hinge squeaks to attract her housemates’ attention. Nor had she switched on the entrance-hall lights. Illumination spilling from the corridor was enough. Kym could stand here for a moment to enjoy the breeze that would chill her skin and chase away the pink flush from her cheeks.
There were no lights in the distance. The trees that formed a haphazard line along the drive swayed in the night air. There were no stars; cloud covered the entire sky tonight. Scents of moist earth reached her nose. All she could hear was the hiss of air currents streaming through the branches.
A hand touched Kym’s shoulder.
‘Fisher. You shouldn’t have followed me.’ Kym spoke the words as she turned back toward the door where the silhouette of a man stood against the backdrop of light. ‘Fisher?’
The blow knocked her sideways. Then there was a sense of falling.
A spasm ran through her body as she clenched her fists. The side of her head was numb. Her right eye felt stiff. Kym was worldly enough to know when she had a bruised face. When she opened her eyes she realized she was lying on her back on something smooth and unyielding. No, I don’t want to dream this dream again. Only that same smell returned. A musty, organic smell. The scent of a rodent’s nest found under boxes in a potting shed. A muskiness of animal bodies curled up in their nest. Above her the room was a dome of pure darkness.
Switch on the light, Fisher. That’s what she’d thought in her dream after the jolt of electricity had knocked the wits out of her. Then she’d collapsed onto the floor of the house within a house. After that, the nightmare had crept through her unconscious mind. Now, this dream again. Wait … She remembered her time in bed with Fisher. That searing heat as he climaxed. Later, she’d stepped outside into the night air to cool the glow in her skin.
Oh, but my head … This feels like a real ache …
Kym gazed up into the darkness. Why were her arms and legs so heavy? A restlessness gripped her. She needed to make herself comfortable but all she could do was lie on her back. Rolling her head to one side, she saw a grey line running vertically from the floor up ten feet or so. Is that an aperture revealing a sliver of outside? Suddenly, a light blazed to reveal twin doors, like those of a barn. They were open just a couple of inches. Through the gap she glimpsed the profile of the tower against the night sky. A deep grey against deep black. She groaned as she searched for the source of the light. That pain in her head. It throbbed like part of her skull had been torn away. At best she could only rotate her head from right to left; her aching skull rolled against a hard surface. Then Kym looked above her.
That’s a vehicle hoist, she told herself. The kind they use in garages to lift your car so the mechanic can change the silencer. She lay directly between the steel channels that the car would pass along to mount the hoist. These were perhaps five feet above her. Now with a rising surge of panic she searched for what she knew would be there.
As her eyes searched she heard the sound. A chime. A resonant shimmering tone on the air. Then another. The same chimes that sounded in the house. Then she made out the cross member of a baulk of timber spanning the steel beams of the hoist. The wooden cross-section was perhaps eight feet long by a foot wide. The chime sounded again, then another. Faster. More urgent. A harshness brushed aside the shimmering hum. But how can I hear them now? Why in this garage? And, for God’s sake why am I lying on a table beneath the hoist?
It’s the dream … it’s the same dream … However, panic crackled inside of her. Her heart thudded. And yet with the brutal clarity of a wide-awake mind she saw the iron spike protruding directly down from the timber. It was painted black apart from its point that glittered with the silvery hue of naked metal.
Oh, God … She tried to rise from the table. Leather straps held her ankles and wrists. Tearing her eyes away from the steel shaft that pointed at her stomach, she twisted her head to the left. Floating out of the shadows, a gaunt face with blotched skin. Kym saw the stubbled jaw again. On his forehead was the sickly yellow scar in the shape of a crescent moon. He gazed at her with grey, watery eyes. Then he nodded. He was satisfied. He moved back toward the shadowed wall. With an effort Kym lifted her head so she could see his feet.
The floor had been painted white; it had the appearance of a surgery; a place where cleanliness came first. And of course he had bare feet. He wouldn’t want his footwear to soil the pristine white of the floor. So there he was with neither shoes or socks.
‘What are you doing!’
He didn’t answer. The chimes grew faster, harsher, they clamoured in a single note that throbbed; a heartbeat of brass.
She turned her head to see the house looming from the darkness. It appeared to crowd the door; a mass of masonry and black windows that softened as they distorted – this was a fish-eye view of a face peering in at her. A stone face. A face within a face; a house within a house. One second she saw the bulging front of the eighteenth-century house, then it turned inside out in a single fluid movement to reveal the alien visage of the medieval façade. Back and forth. Exterior. Then medieval core, looming with fish-eye distortion. The chimes were thunder tearing through her brain.
‘No! Go away!’ Kym screamed at the house. ‘Go away … I don’t want you to watch!’
Watch? Of course you want to watch. You must watch. You made this happen, didn’t you? Because the truth in all its searing intensity struck her. I’ve dreamed about this before. Now it’s really happening …
The chimes throbbed louder. They synchronized themselves with the throb of the motor that lowered the car hoist. Her eyes bulged as she looked up at the baulk of timber that grew in size as the hoist smoothly and slowly descended. She couldn’t take her eyes from the point of the iron spike. Like her dream of just eight hours ago it was blunt. Only she knew it wasn’t that blunt. Not so blunt it couldn’t penetrate her sweater then her flesh beneath.
The point settled on her stomach.
This was no dream agony. This was real. Her eyes bulged as the point dug deeper into her body. It formed a depression there that creased the fabric of her sweater. Her eyes hurt as they strained from her face. She wanted to scream. Yet all she could do was pant. And the chimes rose into a phantom clamour; the sound drove through her ears to enter her flesh where they harrowed her nerves like a plough blade.
The motors of the hoist rose, laboured with the shriek of slipping drive belts to bring the baulk down further with it protruding iron spike. Agony tore through her in withering blasts.
Then that audible pop! The pencil-thick spike that resembled a huge iron thorn broke through the weave of her sweater. A second later it was through the skin of her stomach. Unimpeded, it slid smoothly into her body. The iron shaft was so bitingly cold as it entered her gut. She watched in dread as blood, released through the puncture wound, jetted from her in a crimson fountain. With it came heat that steamed the air white.
Kym had held onto her last lungful of air for as long as possible. There wouldn’t be another. With the chimes raging in her ears, and the iron spike sliding through her body to break out the other side, she opened her mouth until her lips stretched into an agonized O. Then Kym screamed.
This was a full-blooded scream of someone dying in agony. The scream of someone who knows perfectly well this is no dream.