That won’t be happening here.
The visitors can say what they like, they can even choose to believe it if that helps them sleep when they lay their heads back down on her pillows. The storm outside might have stopped – for now – but nobody is leaving here tomorrow morning. After what she has already seen and heard, Robin is fairly sure that at least one of them will never leave this place again.
Amelia
It’s still dark outside, but I shake Adam awake.
‘Bob’s gone. I can’t find him!’
I watch impatiently as my husband rubs the sleep from his eyes, blinks into the darkness, and peers around the bedroom. It smells as though we are in a chapel now. That musty scent of old Bibles and blind faith. The only source of light is the flame from the candlestick I’m holding, and it takes Adam a while to remember where we are. It’s as cold in here as I suspect it is outside now thanks to the complete loss of power overnight, and he instinctively pulls the bedcovers around himself.
I pull them back off. ‘Did you hear me? Bob is missing!’
‘He was sleeping out on the landing,’ Adam says, suppressing a yawn.
‘Well, he isn’t there now.’
‘Maybe he went downstairs—’
‘He isn’t there either! I searched the whole place, he’s not here!’
Now Adam looks worried.
He is finally hearing what I am saying. The unfamiliar concern on his face makes me feel worse – I’m the one who worries, not him. When I am most anxious, he always remains calm. We balance each other’s emotions, that’s how our marriage works. Or used to.
‘Well, the front doors were definitely locked and Bob doesn’t have a key, so he must be here somewhere. I’ll help you look,’ he says, lighting the other candle and pulling on a jumper over his pyjamas – a feeble attempt to combat the cold. ‘I’m sure if we put some food in his bowl he’ll come running – he normally does.’
Adam is still half asleep, but drags himself out of bed and hurries onto the landing. He pauses to stare at the empty dog bed – as though I might be making it up that Bob is missing – then hurries ahead of me down the stairs. I notice that he deliberately misses some of the steps, which creak loudly when I walk on them.
‘How did you know which steps not to walk on?’ I ask, following him a little more closely.
‘What?’
‘You skipped some of the steps. The ones that creak.’
‘Oh… well, it annoys me. Like squeaky cupboards or doors.’
‘But we only arrived last night. How did you know which—’
‘I might not be able to remember faces, but facts and figures, or the things most people overlook – like which steps creak – tend to stick in my mind. You know that about me.’
Adam does often remember peculiar details. A photographic memory of sorts, for unimportant things. I decide to drop it – we have bigger issues to worry about right now – and together we search every corner of every room for the missing dog.
‘I don’t understand it, the doors are still locked, he can’t have got out,’ Adam says.
‘Well, he didn’t vanish into thin air,’ I reply, pouring some kibble into Bob’s food bowl and calling his name.
The invitation is met with a silence that sounds even more ominous than before. I don’t know what to do. I pick up my phone, but of course there is no signal, and who would I call even if there were?
‘We should search outside,’ Adam says, and we hurry to the boot room.
He unlocks the old chapel doors, and heaves them open.
The scene they reveal stops us both in our tracks.
The sun is starting to rise behind a mountain in the distance, and there is just enough light outside for us to see a wall of snow higher than my knees. Everything is covered in a thick blanket of white, and I can barely make out the shape of our car on the driveway. If Bob really is out there somewhere, in snow this deep, he won’t last long.
Adam reads my mind and does his best to calm the panicked thoughts swirling inside it.
‘You saw me open the doors, they were definitely locked. The snow is taller than Bob – even if he could have got out, he wouldn’t have; that dog doesn’t even like the rain. He must be inside, did you look in the crypt?’
‘After last night? With just a candle? Of course not.’
‘I’ll use the torch on my phone,’ he says.
I’m about to correct him – he’s forgotten that his mobile is still back in London – but then I watch as he hurries to find the old leather satchel he uses for his work. It’s so tatty, I should get him something new. He reaches inside and pulls out his phone.