The Diary Of Pamela D. Page 15

  She succeeded this time, but it wasn’t the sort of sleep she was expecting. It felt as though she had wakened during a dream to a room that felt the same as the one she was already in. There was something unmistakable and familiar about the dream, but it had never before been like this- never so real, so immediate.

  And then, she remembered. It was the dream she used to have before she had ever come to Yorkshire, the dream in which-

  She awoke with a start, even as a brilliant flash of lightning illuminated the terrifying figure standing silhouetted in the doorway of the balcony, illuminated through the curtains like a magic-lantern show. She gave an incoherent cry of terror, pulling Tessa with her, away from the menace of the man she had mistakenly assumed in her dream was Theo.

  Muzzy-headed with sleep, Tessa began to come to life in her arms. And as another brilliant flash illuminated the black shadow that stepped through the curtain, the two girls screamed and shrank away from the demon in man’s form named Albert Askrigg.

  -10-

  Thrusting Tessa behind her, Pamela reached back blindly with her hand until she found the light switch and opened it. The sudden glare seemed to diminish Albert’s presence, as though removal of the dark subdued part of the essential nature of his being. Regardless, he still dwarfed the two girls in stature. He held a long knife in his left hand and his mien was at once every bit as unreasoning and malevolent as Pamela remembered.

  ‘Go,’ Pamela hissed to Tessa, ‘get out of here. It’s me he wants. Don’t argue with me! Just do it!’

  There was an unnatural stillness in Albert’s stance as he appraised Pamela speculatively and allowed her friend to leave. There was no longer any sign of the slow-witted, uneducated Albert whom everyone thought of as a simple but likable lout. Everything about him was different, his dialect, his bearing, the cold intent in his eyes . . . even the timbre of his voice.

  ‘You’re a fool, Pamela,’ he told her, speaking slowly, as though giving full emphasis to his every word. ‘Theo’s not the man you want. I am. And what’s more, we both know it.’ He approached her until she was backed up against the wall. He reached over and bolted the door, which Pamela knew to be built of solid oak two inches thick.

  ‘The truth is,’ he continued, ‘Theo doesn’t give you what you want. You want to be dominated . . . controlled. You remember how it was between us.’

  ‘I remember that you tried to force me. And then, when I wouldn’t give in, you tried to kill me,’ Pamela said, biting down on the fearful quaver in her voice. ‘I remember you telling me where you put those girls’ bodies.’

  ‘Ah, so you’re responsible for CID dragging the tarn.’ He shrugged. ‘It makes no difference, really. They were just experiments.’ He caressed her cheek with his knife, causing her to gasp with fear and flinch away from him. ‘But you, you’re no longer just an experiment, Pamela. You’re exactly what I’ve been looking for.’

  Though trembling all over now, she fought down the useless urge to flee and forced herself to look into his mad eyes for the first time. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean,’ he said, trying to brush his lips against her own, ‘that for all these years I have been looking for the perfect woman, someone who is a match for me, who will stand up to me. Someone whom I wouldn’t kill.’

  ‘No?’ She tried to keep the full attention of his eyes on her own while her hand strayed behind her, seeking . . .

  ‘No,’ he said in a husky voice that chilled her, made her feel as though she were going to be physically ill. ‘Why would I kill the perfect woman, Pamela? How could I? The others, they were just dreck, not worthy of the air they breathed. But you, Pamela, you’re different.’

  Her hand found the door jamb and moved upwards.

  ‘H- how am I different,’ she said as he leaned over her, touched the smooth skin of her cheek with his coarse, unshaven jowl.

  ‘You smell different,’ he breathed, putting a hand on her waist, causing her to jump involuntarily. ‘You brought your air with you into this house. It was magic, Pamela . . . pure magic. You breathed new life into this miserable old cavern, into a community of small-minded, mean-spirited people. Did you know that? You changed everyone, as though you’d waved a magic wand. What do you call that but magic.’

  ‘You exaggerate,’ Pamela said, trying to evade his searching lips, her hand finding the lock. ‘There were plenty of nice people here, in this house and everywhere. It’s just people like you that can’t see things for what they are.’

  ‘Ah, well, that just ties in with what I said,’ he murmured, getting too close this time. She was forced to quickly sidle away from him lest he touch her inappropriately. She moved into the centre of the room and began backing away once more, moving towards the balcony.

  ‘Like I said, Pamela, you’re pure magic.’

  ‘What, no more Miss Prissy Pants,’ she jibed, trying to control her voice enough to sound sarcastic.

  Something, a memory of a conversation she’d overheard, came back to her then . . .

  “It makes no sense. There wasn’t a single sign of resistance from any of his victims. But how can that be?”

  “It was probably just fear- they were terrified not to sate the sick demands he made of them.”

  “I don’t know . . . for some reason I’m not convinced of that. There has to be something else . . . something we’ve so far overlooked . . .”

  ‘Look, Pamela,’ Albert said, trying to appear appealing to her, ‘Theo doesn’t love you. He never has and he never will. He only wants to marry you so that he won’t be disowned-’

  ‘That isn’t true!’ she cried, as though the words were torn from her. She began to feel her sense of certainty falter. ‘Theo does love me. More than you can know.’

  He turned a horrible parody of a pitying expression on her that almost made her scream. ‘No, Pamela, he doesn’t. Remember what he said? “I loved you from the moment mother threatened to disown me.” He doesn’t love you. He’s just afraid of losing his inheritance.’

  ‘No!’ She began sobbing, shaking her head, as if to dispel the hold he had on her. ‘That isn’t true. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ But his words so closely resembled her own doubts that she was no longer sure. Saying words, only to try and fend off his invasive insinuations, she blurted, ‘You’re just trying to twist his words.’

  ‘Am I?’ Albert approached her once more with growing certainty in every dangerous line of his giant frame. ‘You know yourself what an unfeeling man he is. How many times have I seen the truth of him reflected in your eyes? Ask yourself: Why do you doubt him? Why? Because the man has no feelings, Pamela, especially not for you. The only reason he’s being nice to you now is so that he can become married to you, and being married to you means protecting his inheritance. That’s all you are to him. As long as you’re tied to his coattails, working for him, he’s no longer in danger of losing out on his mum’s cash.’ He moved closer to her, until she neared the balcony door. ‘But I’m different, Pamela. I just want you for yourself. Trust me, you’ll see. Now, do be a good girl and take your clothes off. I’m not going to hurt you if you do what I say . . . but if you disobey . . . ’ His face was expressionless, unreadable, but he made a cutting gesture with the knife that caused her to begin weeping in terror. She made a move to disrobe, her heart pounding- but then she stopped, faced him once more.

  ‘This isn’t how it normally goes for you, is it?’ Pamela asked him bitterly, feeling a timid surge of anger. ‘They’re usually on their backs by now, doing whatever it is you want them to do. That’s really what this is all about, isn’t it? This isn’t about Theo, or me, or all those girls you killed. It’s really all about you, about this sick little game you play, about the way you manipulate terrified, helpless young women into desperately trying to please you, but all the while they’re really hoping, praying, trying to believe that in the end, you’re not going to kill them.’

  ‘But I’m not going to kill you,’ he said,
doubt and anger flickering momentarily behind the veil of compassion he tried to draw over his features.

  ‘Oh, but that’s your usual line, isn’t it,’ she rejoined. ‘I’m supposed to want to believe you enough to save my own life.’

  ‘Don’t you?’ he said, and there was something unspeakably evil in his eyes that almost had her gibbering with terror. ‘Don’t you believe in me, Pamela? Don’t you want to come out of this alive?’

  ‘So, tell me Albert . . . ’ the words sprang from her as though spoken by someone else, which was just as well, since they were at once more calm than she herself could have willed, ‘how did you get in here? You can’t have climbed up. It’s too high, and I didn’t see any sign of a ladder. And how did you manage to overhear what Theo and I were saying? You could only have done that if you were inside the house.’

  ‘All right,’ he said, straightening up and appraising her speculatively, ‘we’ll play it your way for the moment.

  ‘I’ve always been here, Pamela, right close at hand. I’ve watched you eat. I’ve watched you sleep. I was right there at your elbow as you sat upstairs with Theo each and every night. I even know what you were thinking, especially when you were alone.’

  ‘That’s it, isn’t it,’ Pamela said quietly. ‘There are secret passages in this house. You somehow found them and managed to make use of them.’

  He shook his head. ‘Haven’t you guessed the truth yet? There are no secret passages in this house. There aren’t and there never were.’ He smiled suddenly, but it was a smile that almost stopped her heart from beating. ‘Haven’t you wondered how it is that all those professional trackers were unable to find me, when I’ve never been more than a few hundred yards from this place? I let them know it, too, leaving them signs all over the place, so that they knew that I knew that they knew I was near to them . . . so near they could almost feel me breathing down their necks. So tell me, Pamela, how did I manage that?’

  She waited, dreading what he would tell her.

  ‘I was right in front of them all along. Haven’t you heard the old saying? “A wise man always hides something in plain sight.”’

  Pamela shook her head. ‘No. That isn’t possible.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ he taunted. ‘You know what the people in CID call me, don’t you? Grendel. The elusive and indestructible monster who drinks blood and feeds on human flesh.’

  ‘I suggest you tell that to Beowulf,’ she rejoined meaningly.

  ‘Hello, Albert.’

  He wheeled around to face Theo, who watched him with eyes that were at once as dangerous and cold as his own.

  Pamela scarcely recognised him. Theo? There was not a trace of the compassion she had seen in him, no caring in his eyes, no warmth in his soul, no . . . the thought sent shivers of terror through her . . . no soul at all.

  ‘You conniving little bitch,’ Albert said for Pamela’s benefit. ‘You unlatched the door.’

  Pamela looked wildly past Theo’s shoulder, hoping for a sign of the Chief Inspector and some other men. But there was no one. Albert, too, noticed this, but warily.

  ‘What, no reinforcements then, Theo?’

  Something hard, like a smile that was not a smile, touched Theo’s stony features.

  ‘No witnesses,’ he pronounced.

  Pamela almost fainted. Were Albert’s words true after all? Were both of these men brutal, uncaring, ruthless monsters?

  Albert acknowledged what Theo had said with an inclination of his head. ‘No witnesses, then. But I’ve got the knife.’ He waved it menacingly, not taking his eyes from Theo’s.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Theo told him. ‘With or without it, I’m still going to rip your arm from its socket, and you’re going to go running home to your mam and bleed to death, just like you always do.’

  For the first time, Pamela saw real fear in Albert’s eyes. ‘You’re insane.’

  As if to verify this as fact, Theo nodded. ‘It takes a one to know a one.’ Then, he began to advance, as though his opponent was of no consequence at all.

  Albert held the knife up, defensively, and started backing up. Suddenly, Pamela gasped as he lunged, tried to plunge it in Theo’s abdomen. Theo responded with a movement that was almost too quick to comprehend. He evaded the thrusting sliver of metal and struck Albert a blow that sent him reeling.

  Pamela had never once in her life been in such close proximity to such naked violence. She felt a sympathetic concussion from the blow Theo inflicted on Albert, attesting to the power of both men. Such a blow, she knew with certainty, would have sent her flying across the room like a rag doll, bones crushed, internal organs ruptured and bleeding. She backed away further, towards the open door of the balcony. She felt something warm and wet on her cheek. Putting her hand to her face reflexively, glancing down, she saw the slash of blood that had sprayed her- the hand that touched her cheek encountered a warm, sticky substance . . .

  ‘That hurt,’Albert pronounced distinctly, smiling through the blood on his mouth.

  Without warning it was though a dam had burst, allowing the violence incarnate it had contained to burst out with unfettered savagery. Pamela sidled away until she was back by the door as the two men cudgelled each other like titans, Albert swinging his heavy maul-like fists while looking for any small opening to slash or stab, Theo dodging, ducking, raining blows like a frenetic sledgehammer when Albert invariably missed.

  But chance, or fate, suddenly seemed to deal Theo a foul blow- as the two fought on the balcony he slipped on the rain-soaked deck, losing his balance, almost falling backwards over the railing. Albert seized the opportunity instantly, falling on Theo like a bird of prey, bending him back, knife upraised for the final, triumphant killing blow.

  ‘Theo!’

  Without volition, without thought for herself or what she was doing, Pamela broke out of her paralysis of fear and began running, throwing herself at Albert-

  At once, things seemed to move in slow-motion. She crashed into Albert, not daring to believe that she would have any effect on his apparently immovable mass. Yet somehow, catching him off-guard or propelled by fate, she managed to topple him-

  She knew at once, the instant their bodies made contact, that this wasn’t enough. So she kept going-

  There was a brief instant as they both went over the railing when they seemed to hang suspended in midair for an eternity, as though time itself had become a paradoxical membrane that was stretched to the limit, of frantic motion and long, ponderous seconds that seemed to last centuries-

  And then . . . she was staring up at the evening sky as though aware for the first time how beautiful it really was . . . the rain appeared as a million glittering motes of light that fell to earth like tears shed by an anguished and bereaved God over His ruined and belovèd Creation . . .

  Her reverie was broken by a babel of voices, the approach of running feet, and suddenly her vision was filled with Theo’s aghast features.

  ‘Oh God! She’s still alive! Someone call 999! Pamela? Look at me. No, Pamela, don’t do this!’

  As though looking straight through him, she could see a bright light. It was as if everything around her was losing substance, as though the light itself were in truth the only thing that was real. She began to feel herself rising towards it-

  ‘I’ve called one. There’s an ambulance on it’s way, Theo . . . oh, God! No! Don’t try to move her-’

  ‘Pamela, listen to me. Listen to me, please! Look at me! I can’t lose you now. Oh, dear God, you can’t die!’

  Pamela saw Theo’s tears as though they were echoes of falling stars, reflecting the piercing rays of light that emanated from the unbearably bright object before her.

  ‘I love you. Do you hear me? We’re going to get you to a hospital, and they’re going to fix you up, and we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together . . . please . . . Oh, God, No! . . . I’m begging you . . . don’t do this! NO!’

  The last thing she was aware of as the light took her w
as echoes of that cry that felt as though it were torn from Theo’s very soul, a cry as lorn and bereaved as a lone kestrel on the open sea.

  epilogue

  ‘What happened then, gran?’ The fifteen-year-old girl was laying on the rug in front of the fire, her eyes wide. ‘She didn’t actually die, did she?’

  Her grandmother stopped rocking in her chair a moment and gave the girl a humorously disparaging look over her glasses. ‘If my grandmother had died, then a long line of Dewhurst women, including yourself, would never have been born, and you wouldn’t be here to listen to this tale, nor I to tell it.’

  ‘So what did happen?’

  ‘If I am to be allowed to continue without any further interruption, then perhaps I’ll tell you.

  ‘Now, then, where were we? Oh, yes, Pamela has fallen off the balcony. Well, everyone thought she was going to die, and she was rushed to hospital. Everyone went. In fact, they left in such a hurry that the doors either were left standing open or unlocked. But nobody cared about that. All they cared about was whether poor Pamela was going to make it or not.

  ‘There were tears aplenty, let me tell you, and prayers from lips that hadn’t prayed in years, and from people who really didn’t believe in such things, but prayed all the same because there was nothing else they could have done.

  ‘The news wasn’t good, of course. The doctors didn’t hold out any hope, and told them she wouldn’t last till morning. But by daybreak she was still clinging to life, and all her friends gathered together and kept vigil.

  ‘Theo was a gaunt wreck, let me tell you. He was a strong man in every sense, stronger than most. But he stayed by Pamela’s side every minute of every day, eschewing sleep and food, believing that his will alone was all that was keeping her alive from one moment to the next. He believed that if he faltered even once that she would quietly slip away.