I snapped my eyes open with a start and looked at the mirror. It was covered in condensation - there was no writing. My heart was racing in my chest. I took a towel, which hung over the side of the bath, and got out. With the towel wrapped about me, I stood in front of the mirror and wiped away the moisture with the flat of my hand. Definitely no writing. I had fallen asleep in the bath and dreamt the whole thing up. But what about the knocking? I wondered, creeping into the small lounge and heading for the front door. There was a sudden bang and I span around. The noise had come from outside. I crossed to the window and peered into the darkness. The guy who lived upstairs from me was knocking on his own front door, trying to wake the rake-thin girl who lived up there with him.
With my heart beginning to slow, I closed the curtain and went to my bedroom. Sitting on the edge of my bed, I towelled my hair dry. In my head I could hear the old man out on the road - it was like I could feel his hot, sticky breath against my face.
Witch! he whispered.
Why had he called me that? Was it because I had killed him and his family, or was it a warning? A curse?
With my skin turning taut with gooseflesh, I dropped the towel onto the floor and crawled beneath the duvet. I pulled it over my head, hoping it would muffle the sound of the old guy's voice. With my eyes closed, I tried to think of anything other than what had happened out on the road. It was hard, as all I could see in the darkness of my mind was that little boy and his pale white face framed by his red, blood-stained hair.
I didn't want to, but I had to look at him - go to him. My feet crunched over gravel and the tyre marks on the road. When I was within touching distance, I crouched and reached for him. With the tips of my fingers, I gently brushed the hair from his brow. His fringe was knotted together in thick congealed lumps, which felt hot and tacky against my fingertips.
I'm so sorry, I whispered.
As if hearing my voice stirred him from a light and restful slumber, the little boy opened his eyes and looked at me. I stumbled backwards onto my arse. A crow squawked from one of the adjacent fields, the sound of its giant black wings beating as it soared away. I looked towards the sound and cried out - my voice seeming muffled and broken. It wasn't the sound of the crow's wings that I could hear flapping, but the clothes of that dead family as they pulled themselves to their feet. With my hands clamped to either side of my face, I watched the man with the wheel buried in his chest slide out from beneath it. The iron wheel began to turn slowly, pulling out the man's intestines in white, greasy-looking lengths of rope.
Witch, I heard the old man say again.
I looked over my shoulder to see him standing, his emaciated face covered with skin which looked like the texture of a crinkled plastic bag.
Witch, he said again, then added something he hadn't said before. Witch did it.
I scrambled backwards on my arse as he limped towards me, looking like something from a cheaply-made zombie movie. His arms twitched uncontrollably, giving him the appearance of someone suffering in the latter stages of Parkinson's disease. There was another sound. I snapped my head to the right. The woman with her arm wrapped around her throat pushed herself up off the road with her free hand. Her face was so pale that it looked like a headlamp in the dark. It almost seemed to glow. I watched as her eyes rolled down in their sockets and stared at me.
Well? she whispered, her voice sounding hoarse.
Well, what? I screamed at her. It was an accident! I never meant to hurt you!
Something fell against my shoulder. Whatever it was, it was so cold that I could feel it through my police shirt, causing me to shiver. I glanced up to discover the little boy standing behind me, his hand gripping my shoulder. His skin was as white as a fish's belly. I recoiled at his ice-cold touch and clambered away. Once on my feet, I lurched and staggered down the road. There was an opening on my right in the grey stone wall which surrounded the adjacent field. The ground was sodden through with rain, and pools of mud oozed from beneath my boots. It was cold, damp, and clammy, which made it hard to breathe as I ran across the field, just wanting to be away from those dead people - the people I had killed. I could hear the sound of crows squawking behind me. Glancing back over my shoulder, I could see four black shapes cutting their way across the field at speed towards me. Their jerking, twitchy movements did nothing to slow them down. I turned, drawing a deep lungful of cold air. There was a crop of trees ahead of me. I set off towards them, hoping I could hide amongst the twisted, black trunks.
With a stitch starting to gnaw away at my side, I reached the treeline and looked back across the field. The old man and the other three were just feet away from me now.
How had they gotten across the field so fast?
The wind snagged at their black clothing, making it ripple like black feathers around them. The squawking came again - high-pitched and ear-splitting.
Witch! The old man cackled as if gargling on a throat full of blood.
I turned and headed amongst the trees. The sound of my laboured breathing and pounding heart was almost deafening. Which way? Which way should I run? I screamed inside, feeling disorientated and lost. The trees seemed to crowd in all around me. The gaps between each gnarled trunk seeming to get ever smaller with each passing second.
The sound of squawking and the fluttering of wings - clothes - came from above me. I looked up, speckled grey daylight glinting through the canopy of leaves above me. The branches of the trees entwined like broken fingers twisting around each other, cutting out what little daylight there was, throwing me into darkness. I stumbled backwards on hearing the sound of those people coming closer as they made their way towards me in the dark. I was falling backwards into a hole. I threw my arms out, desperate to break my fall. My fingertips scratched against damp stone on either side of me. Into the darkness I fell, a dim circle of grey light growing smaller and smaller above me. I hit something hard, forcing the air from my lungs.
Gasping for breath, I lay at the bottom of a deep well. It stank of decay - meat that had turned bad. My hair hung over my eyes and across my face.
"Help me!" I called upwards, my voice echoing back off the circular walls.
There was a face peering down into the well at me. It was white, like a full moon set against a dead black night.
"Help me!" I cried, reaching up at the face. "Please, help me!"
"Sydney!" the face called down into the well. "Sydney!"
It was my father's voice.
"Daddy!" I screamed, feeling relieved to hear his voice. He had come to save me. He had come to lift me out of the hole I now found myself in.
"Sydney!" he called, his voice sounding as if it were coming from miles away. "Sydney, open the door!"
"Door? What door?" I sobbed. "There isn't a door..."
"Open up, Sydney!" his voice came again, but this time louder. Closer.
"Daddy..." I started to sob, just wanting him to lift me from the hole. I could feel hot tears on my cheeks.
There was a banging sound, and I turned around and sat up...in my bed. My hair was plastered in damp streaks to my forehead and cheeks. My mouth felt dry, throat raw.
"Sydney!" I could hear my father's voice. "Sydney - are you in there?"
I looked about my bedroom, my head aching, heart racing. The sound of banging came again.
"Sydney!" my father called again from the other side of my front door.
With my tongue feeling like a thick length of carpet, I croaked, "Okay, I'm coming!"
I doubted he heard me, because no sooner had the words left my mouth, he was banging on the front door again. Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, I got up, took a T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms from my wardrobe, and quickly threw them on. A thin splinter of daylight cut through a gap in the curtains. I glanced down at my wristwatch and could see that it had gone half past eight in the morning.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
"Okay, okay! I'm coming," I said, leaving my bedroom and heading for the front door.
I opened it to find my father standing on the other side.
"Christ, you look like shit," my father snapped, brushing past me and into the lounge.
"Thanks, dad," I said, closing the door behind him.