THIRTEEN

'The door was open,' the strange man said, holding his hands out in front of him as if Rob were no danger at all. That was already a lie, though, as far as Rob was concerned, rubbing his wrist where it had been twisted when the poker was wrenched from his grip. A dark-haired woman followed the man into the room, offering an apologetic look that didn't wash for one minute.

'I saw you before,' Julia said to the man, confusing Rob even further. What was she talking about? They'd never clapped eyes on him, he was sure of that. 'You were with the police,' she continued.

'Sort of,' said the woman. The American ignored both of them, pushing his way past and talking to the man that had appeared upstairs. 'We work with them occasionally,' the woman continued.

What's that supposed to mean? Rob thought, only too aware he was being fobbed off. His heart was pounding in his chest... what was going on? God, but he needed a drink.

'Got any alcohol?' said the American, as if he'd been reading his mind.

'No...' Rob was wrong-footed. What did this guy think this was? A house-party? Oh... alcohol... the penny dropped...for the man... to warm him up. It wasn't as if they hadn't been looking after him. 'I was lighting a fire...'

'So light it.'

Rob found he was actually stepping forward for a second before he stopped himself. 'Look! What's going on here?' he shouted, sick of being on the receiving end. 'You say you're with the police?'

'Not as such.' The woman again; the bloody man was never going to answer his questions it would seem. 'We're independent of them,' she continued. 'But yes, our paths cross from time to time. Why don't we sit down and go through what happened?'

Julia shook her head. 'I'm not staying here a minute longer.'

Rob's head hurt with the confusion of it all. He tried to put it into words: 'We saw a woman appear out of thin air... Killed herself in the bath... Not in our bathroom, you understand, no, in the spare bloody bedroom...'

'There's a fat man...' Julia added, 'in an old suit... he smells...'

'Banging on the walls, voices in the TV...'

'Your friend, appearing out of nowhere in our airing cupboard...'

'Our bloody airing cupboard!'

It was uncontrollable now, the words falling from him like vomit, poison that needed to be ejected. Dear Lord, but what was he going to do? He wasn't sure he could handle this... Everything felt hazy...

'Please!' the woman shouted. 'One at a time... We can handle this, but we need to know what's been going on.'

There was only one thing Rob could think to do. 'Handle it on your own,' he said, grabbing his wife's hand. 'We're not staying...'

It didn't occur to him to question leaving them in the house; at that moment, they were welcome to it. He needed to get out, needed to clear his head. Another moment stuck in there and he honestly thought he might lose his mind.

He checked his jeans pocket, giving a sigh of relief as he felt the reassuring shape of his van keys. That was all they needed. In a couple of minutes, they'd be driving down the road, heading as far away as they could.

'Come on,' he said to Julia, pushing her out of the door in front of him. 'The flat's empty for another week yet, we can stay there.'

The rain was still lashing down and neither of them was wearing a coat. They were soaked through in moments, but they didn't care.

Rob stared at the American's big black car. 'Typical yank, that is,' he commented, pulling Julia around it by her arm. 'Compensation for something else.'

His anger was hardening into a lump in his throat, his teeth grinding as he fought to stop himself kicking at the stupid bloody car until he did some damage. Fear had set him off now and he was finding it hard to keep himself straight, his muscles twitching and pulsing, his head swimming with it... he wanted to kick and punch and scrape and tear...

'Rob!' Julia's voice, thin and whining, damn her.

'I told you, it'll be fine,' he said, rubbing the rainwater from his face. Couldn't she tell that he was struggling? He didn't need her wheedling at him.

'Hurting...' she said, and he turned on her, fist clenching, only to freeze as he saw the bright white dimples in her arm where he was digging his fingers in as hard as he could. The ragged edge of one of his nails had drawn blood.

Suddenly it was gone, all of it, the huge pressure that he had fought to keep in, vanished in an instant. He let go of her arm and put his hand to his mouth.

'I'm sorry,' he whispered. 'I didn't realise.'

She was scared. She had that same look in her eyes that she'd had when he'd hit her a few months ago. He hadn't meant to, now or then. Sometimes he just got so angry, it was horrible... To feel such uncontrollable rage, to be shaking with it, to need to thrash and hit just to shake the feeling out of his muscles, the feeling that he was going to rupture.

She had nearly left him, he knew that; he'd scared her enough. The terrible thing was that he hadn't even wanted to hit her – he'd caught her by accident. But the look she'd given him when the back of his hand had hit her temple... It was so full of disgust at him... such contempt... He had hit her again, just to earn it.

'Please, I wouldn't have...' There was a look of disbelief in her eyes now and he found himself almost wishing her to push it. He hadn't been directing any of his anger at her – wouldn't have done – but after everything that had happened tonight, wasn't he allowed to lose it a little? The look on her face said not, and that was nearly enough to set him off again. Nearly.

He held up his hands placatingly. 'I wasn't angry at you, sweetheart, just freaked out, you know? I told you before, that was just... I don't know what that was... but I'd never do it again, OK?' He tried to look friendly, tried to soften his eyes. 'I couldn't hurt you, babe, never...' He held out his hands to her. 'Please? Forgive me? Let's get out of here, OK? Go where it's safe.'

After a moment, she nodded and took his hands.

He gave her a genuine smile then and pulled the van keys from his pocket. 'So sorry, baby,' he said. 'I just lost it in there, what with everything, you know?'

'I know.'

They hunched over in the rain and started to walk quickly up the road.

'What do you think it was?' he asked.

'I don't know.' Relief, both at being out of the building and having Rob calm down, had begun to squeeze tears out of the corners of her eyes, and she rubbed them away with the rainwater. 'I don't believe in...'

'Ghosts and stuff?'

'Yeah. Mum always used to. She loved it, always reading books about it... but, well... I thought it was rubbish.'

'Same here. Good at the movies but don't believe a word of it at home.'

'So there must be a scientific explanation?'

'To the fact that we both saw a woman kill herself in the bedroom and a man appear in the airing cupboard?'

They looked at one another and burst out laughing. There was as much panic in it as humour, in fact they could just as easily have been screaming, but it helped for the moment, a release of the pressure that had been building all night. Rob hugged Julia and they carried on walking, his arm around her shoulders.

'It'll be all right,' he said. 'It'll seem better in the morning.'

'Where did you park the van?' Julia asked, though she knew the answer, had seen him park it there earlier when the police had cordoned off the road.

'It's there,' he said, pointing at the white van just along the road, 'just a few doors up.'

'So how come it's taking us so long?' Julia asked, that note of panic returning to her voice.

'It's not. I mean, we only just left...'

They were stood outside Jackson Leaves. They hadn't moved an inch.

'But that's ridiculous...' muttered Rob. 'We walked all the way up...' He looked ahead of them, and they started to walk again, the hedge moving past them, the parked cars.

'It's fine,' he said. 'I don't know what happened, but look, the van's just there.' He pointed at it with the keys. Only a few houses away. They kept walking... and walking... and walking...

Julia gripped Rob's arm even tighter as she turned to look up at Jackson Leaves, the tatty gables, the loose guttering that dripped in this constant damn rain...

'It won't let us go!' she cried.

'It's just a house,' Rob said, pulling her – gentler this time – along the pavement. 'It's just bricks and rot and damp...'

They began to run. Rob kept his eyes fixed on the van, pointing the keys at it like a talisman as they ran faster and faster towards it. The rain made it hard, stinging in his eyes and making his feet slip on the pavement, but he focused hard and pushed forward... They'd make it...

His feet lost their grip in the wet and he fell, pulling Julia down with him. They landed on the pavement with a grunt, Rob jarring his elbow on the tarmac and Julia scraping her side.

'Stupid...' he rubbed at his elbow. 'Sorry, love, clumsy idiot.'

Julia wasn't listening. She was looking up at Jackson Leaves.

It was staring right back.

'I don't get it,' he said. 'This is stupid. We were moving, you could tell we were...' He looked along the road towards the van. 'Everything was moving but we weren't getting any closer to the things further away. Which doesn't make sense.'

'None of it does, and none of it will,' Julia said quietly. 'It just is. We should go back inside.'

'No way,' Rob said, getting to his feet. 'I'm not setting one foot back in that house, we're getting out of here if it ki—'

'Don't say that,' Julia interrupted. 'Don't encourage it.'

Rob put his hands on her cheeks, rubbing the rain from her eyes with his thumbs. 'Come on, babe,' he said. 'Keep it together, and we'll get out of here, OK?'

She got to her feet but made no sign of agreeing with him.

'We'll try the other way,' he said. 'Walk down to the high street.'

He turned her away from the house, doing his best not to look at it himself, and they began to walk along the pavement in the other direction.

'It'll be fine,' he said. 'You'll see. In a minute, all of this is just going to stop and we'll be back to normal. We'll probably even laugh about it, that stupid night when we got ourselves all turned around until we didn't know what was happening... Shared hysteria, that's what it is... Derren Brown stuff.' He scuffed at the puddles beneath their feet, sending a spray of rainwater into the darkness ahead of them as if to test whether it was safe. 'We won't be able to figure out how we got so wound up, just you watch, it'll be that night that we lost it,' he laughed. 'That night we went so bloody mad we ended up walking around in the rain while some American nutjob tried to burgle us. That's it, you know,' he continued, moving a little faster. 'That whole thing in there was just some kind of trick so that they could get in the place and turn it over. Not that they'll find anything worth having, not in that stupid... bastard... house!' This last was screamed at Jackson Leaves, still stood, uncaring, to the side of them.

'I don't know,' he said, dropping down to sit on the kerb. 'I just don't know.'

After a moment she sat down next to him. 'We'll have to go back inside,' she said.

He shook his head. 'I'm not going back in there.'

'It's no better out here.' She had become gentle, only too aware of how close Rob was to breaking. He wasn't violent any more, he was too scared even for that. You couldn't fight Jackson Leaves.

'I just can't bear the idea of going back in there, baby,' he said, starting to cry. 'That noise, the blood and water... I just can't...'

'We have to,' she replied. 'Look at it out here, it's just as wrong. Look at the rain.' She held out her hand and swiped it gently from right to left in front of his eyes, and for the first time he noticed that the rain wasn't moving. Droplets were stationary in the air. He suddenly realised the rain was silent around them. Looking back over his shoulder towards the house, the rain there was splashing down on the plants, the roof tiles, that stupid American's car. But here? Stillness...

'How is that even possible?' he asked, sticking out his hand and touching the droplets with his fingers, watching as the glistening balls, fat with the stolen light from street lamps, popped against his touch.

'I'm sure there's a proper scientific explanation,' said Julia with a half-smile. She looked up at Jackson Leaves, noticing movement at the upstairs windows. Right on the top floor, the wide shoulders of the American filled one of the window frames as he stared out into the night, though whether it was the night she stood in she couldn't say. Something told her not; that there was more of a gap between them than simply the hedge and driveway. Directly beneath him, one floor down, a blob of red paisley alerted her to the fat man's presence. Unlike the American, she knew that he was watching her and Rob, and whatever version of the world this was that had trapped them was one that the fat man knew well. He could move along these pavements and roads, of that she had no doubt.

'It's...' Rob was staring along the road into the distance. 'I don't know, something's happening.'

Julia followed his gaze and tried to figure out what he was seeing. There was certainly something wrong, but it was hard to put your finger on. 'We need to move,' she said, as it became clear. 'We need to move now, Rob, while we still can.'

He stared along the street, watching as one by one the cars and houses in the distance disappeared. A great wave of darkness was sweeping towards them, swallowing each droplet of rain, each inch of pavement and road. Who knew what would happen if they were still sat there when it arrived? Julia was right, there wasn't good enough cause to find out.

He got to his feet and they moved towards Jackson Leaves, the sound of the rain in front of them building with every step. He took one look over his shoulder just before crossing the threshold, the darkness was nearly on them, it had taken the houses, the trees, it had even taken his van.

'Come on, then,' he said, and they walked into the moving curtain of rain that would lead them back home.