Until she remembered herself. And looked at him properly.
Sasquatch. It was almost funny, now that he thought about it. The wild creature in the woods. Was that how he looked to her? Well, if that protected them so be it. The woods were a boundary and he guarded them. He was not so very far from Kilfayne’s own walker in the woods.
He’d just meant to sit down for a while, finish up the emails he’d had to put aside earlier when Patricia called and then…
He woke up still in that hard chair, face on the kitchen table pillowed in his arm, the light of the laptop giving the kitchen an eerie glow and a full mug of stone-cold tea beside him.
Honestly, he didn’t even remember making it.
The kitchen door swung wide, creaking, the night whispering in through the boot room beyond. The outer door there was open as well and the scent of the woods was rising. Wildflowers and moss, the peaty, oaky smell of sap and fresh leaves, the warmth of the night… And the sound, the creaks of branches and the whispering of leaves, the nightsong of the forest.
Was that what had woken him? The door opening? Or the woods beyond? But the outer door had been closed. Locked. He knew that. He’d done it himself.
It wasn’t locked now.
As he stared at it, he heard that sigh, deep and threatening, a sound of satiation and desire.
He was still dreaming. He had to be.
Except he wasn’t.
Outside in the night the wind was rising. There was a full moon over the trees, and clouds scuttered across it, making a patchwork of light and dark flood over the garden beyond the door and the boot room. The trees rose like a black wall on the far side of the cottage garden, their deep tangle even darker on a night like this.
And in between, right at the edge of the woodland, he could see a figure. It wasn’t entirely there, nor entirely human. Not really. It was made of leaves and branches, a tangle of vines and tendrils, of fruit and flowers. His imagination, he liked to tell himself.
Even if that wasn’t entirely true either.
Nick sighed.
The figure smiled at him – always amused with Nick’s dark moods, never one to take anything seriously – and then beckoned him forward. It vanished into the trees as if it had never been there to begin with.
The night stirred with expectation. A bird called softly from the trees, a long wavering song. The wild wood waited.
‘All right,’ he murmured in a low voice. ‘All right, I’m coming.’
What else could he do? What choice did he have? He headed out into the night and the woods closed around him like a tomb.
CHAPTER 11
ALEX
There was no sign of Nick the next morning, although the breakfast things were laid out for her in the kitchen, and the coffee was on the stove. It was Saturday. He’d been making plans, she recalled, so maybe he’d already gone. Alex helped herself.
She’d slept late, her sleep disturbed again by those old dreams. She’d woken in the night convinced there was a party going on in some distant part of the house but was too tired to go and investigate. Besides, there were only the two of them here and she didn’t believe Nick was sneaking in all his mates to have some kind of blow-out without her noticing.
It must be the wind or something. Sound travelled strangely in old buildings. She knew that better than anyone.
Gabe would have started talking about stone tape theory – the idea that old buildings could somehow record events of great passion or pain and replay them in the right circumstances, memories etched into the very stones. Eduardo would probably counter with something about infrasound and its effect on the human mind, making people see and hear things, or even just have that uneasy sense of being watched. None of it explained this place, she thought.
As she left the kitchen there was a flurry of movement on the stairs, she was sure of it. As if someone had seen her coming and rushed away. A soft giggle followed and she froze, standing in the hall.
Such an imagination, her father used to say, and ruffle her hair.
The memory was like a punch to the chest and for a moment she couldn’t move at all.
Stop making up stories,Alexandra, her grandfather would tell her, in a lot less affectionate tone.
This place was going to be the death of her, she thought. She was going to lose her mind in the quiet, imagining things that couldn’t be true. When she got to the study, she opened the laptop and put on some music, turning up the volume as high as it would go. If anything in the house made a noise after that – a pipe or a mouse or ancient floorboards and errant breezes – she didn’t hear it.
