THE SIXTH GUEST: Chapter One - Part Four

Clare had never seen a ghostly manifestation. She had always enjoyed the stories people told about them but she didn’t really believe. She didn’t believe in anything that she hadn’t witnessed for herself. As a child the tales might have given her a reason to ask for the landing light to stay on; as an adult they had as much impact on her as her vote had on the general election.

Except this wasn’t a campfire story. It wasn’t rolling eyes and spooky voices over too much wine on a girl’s night in. It was physical reality: objects moving; animals going crazy; the hairs standing up maybe literally on the back of neck as a shiver ran from the small of her back up between her shoulder blades and into the foundation of her skull.

Ralph let out another bark, taking a step back. He was right outside the toilet door and from inside, oblivious to what was going on, Henry yelled “Dog! Stop that stupid barking! I’m trying to concentrate!”

And Ralph did. He stopped barking instantly, dropping again close to the floor, but now his head was turning, following a movement to the right; and then he seemed to relax – not completely but enough to throw a glance back at his owner.

This time Clare did move, taking a couple of steps, peering down the hall at where there was nothing now where there had been nothing before, wondering perhaps if it had gone through the corridor wall somehow, into the double bedroom that used to be her study in the good old days but now belonged to her only female lodger.

Then a sound came from the toilet and she realised that it was the next stop for anything intangible passing through that wall and continuing on a diagonal line. It was a human sound: almost inaudible; a human sound coming from Henry. It was difficult to tell what it was, this sound, but it was an unpleasant mingling of a gasping for breath and a gargling murmur. Whatever the invisible thing was, it was in there with him and it was doing something to him.

Clare was petrified, equally unwilling and unable to move. She knew the old man was in trouble but she could not force the lifting of one foot and the replanting of it a step ahead that was required for forward motion. Both hands were covering her mouth now and she was as far away from the horrible sounds coming from that toilet as it was possible to be without climbing up onto the counter or into the sink.

The gurgling continued, Ralph barking again now, scratching at the foot of the toilet door. Then it cut off with a brief crunching rasp like a sharp knife cutting across the thread of an onion, top through to bottom.

Silence again, apart from the increasingly pitiful scratching of the dog on the base of the wooden door.

Ten seconds went by. Fifteen. Twenty. Thirty seconds.

But the heat didn’t let up. It didn’t increase any further but it shimmered all around her as she stared at the wall above the bins, beyond which lay the washroom-toilet and Henry. She knew she should call out to him but her vocal chords and lips were tethered as tightly as her body was. She couldn’t say a word. Still nothing happened and no further noise came from inside the little room. A full minute had gone by; more than that. Clare started to walk round the end of the table.

Then the bins shuddered. The decorative bookshelf slid round another few inches. Her husband’s chair banged in against the end of the table and what sauces were left standing on the cloth fell to their sides. Clare screamed. She turned to run but there was no way out behind her, just solid work surface and cupboards, the broken dishwasher and the sink. There was nowhere to go.

The dog was baying, the pitch different again; the infinitesimal difference that told her he was facing her way now, barking almost directly at her. Clare span back round to face what was coming but it touched her almost instantly and she felt the intensification of the heat that Henry had felt when it contacted him. She felt her hair blow back off her cheeks.

For the first flaking instants it surged throughout her body, whatever it was: a spasm of muscle, dozens of contradictory thoughts and images sparking across her brain pan, scalding liquid in her veins and arteries, pressure pushing outward from the backs of her eyeballs, a building scream that couldn’t cause tangible vibration in her vocal chords, couldn’t make any sound with the air trapped in her spasming lungs.

Then her eyes closed; purely a reflex action, entirely beyond her control or will; and her mind ceased functioning, her thoughts shutting down, her vision turning black.

And she was gone.