Read an extract from The Angel Stones

 

The pictures of the past played through her mind in silence, but the sounds of the present ramped them aside, as a grinding rasp came from the door.

Someone was still there. Pushing at the door.

And then a tapping.

Lynne put the phone down and crept to the corner of the room. There was a heavy alabaster figurine of a satyr on the windowsill. She couldn’t lift it. On the side table next to it was a ceramic vase. She picked that up. It was also quite a weight. She looked around quickly but there was nothing else she could defend herself with. It would have to do.

She lifted it again and went to the side of the door. The tapping stopped. Outside it was completely dark but through the glass she could vaguely make out a moving shape. Nothing more. And as she watched, it retreated.

The pulsing in her heart was almost painful. Fast and heavy throbs. The screaming in her head almost deafened her. Stopped her hearing any slight sounds from beyond the blocked door.

She hardly felt herself sink to the floor. She sat for a while, hugging the ceramic vase, Then she crawled back to the chair where she had left the phone.

‘Theo…’ she whispered.

There was no reply. The phone was dead. The battery had run down.

She didn’t know how long she sat there. Staring from the phone to the door. Scratching the back of one hand with the finger-nails of the other. The windows were shuttered, but she still felt exposed. She would have preferred to face the horror of sitting in the dark than have this feeling that someone was spying on her through some crack or gap in the shutter. For many long minutes she dared not stand up or move across to the light switch.

The phone was dead. She couldn’t phone the police now even if she wanted to.

Now as the biting tension faded a little, waves of exhaustion swept over her. For what seemed like eternity she sat in mindless vigilance, listening. Listening and hearing nothing.

She blinked.

It was if she had suddenly woken from a trance. She couldn’t just sit there. From somewhere she summoned up an unexpected determination and stood up. She walked directly to the switch and turned off the light. She still had the torch in her pocket. It was a strange reassurance rather than a practicality. She wasn’t going to switch it on and give herself away.

She felt her way forward, and gently pulled at the front door. It didn’t give at all. It was quite firmly secured. A strange calmness had come over her, and she felt certain that whoever had been there had gone. But she had to check. She had to be sure that no one was hiding in the outhouse.

She picked up the ceramic vase, and moved over to the back door. Very slowly she unchained it and tried to slide open the bolt. It was stiff. She had to ease it gently up and down so that it would not make a noise. Then, carefully, she turned the key to open the door.

The hooded figure that loomed towards her in the darkness stopped as Lynne lifted up the ceramic vase. She hurled it forwards, but her hand hit the side of the door. It smashed uselessly at her feet. She screamed.