The Woman in Red
I'd gotten rid of Winston by suggesting he spend Christmas with fellow Gentleman's Gentlemen at the Ganymede Club.
"You can drink port and pretend you're in the Pickwick Papers," I'd said.
"But what about Madam's foot?" he'd said.
It was only after leaving Natla's Golden Pyramid that the adrenaline had worn off and I'd discovered a few broken bones - not least in my foot - presumably from kicking Natla's ancient Atlantean arse. Now I had a pot and sticks.
"I could stick a bit of tinsel on it?" I'd said.
Winston winced without wincing.
"We always used to decorate Croft Mansion," he'd said.
"Do you remember last year?" I'd said.
I'd become rather drunk on some of Father's Louis Roederer vintage champagne and accidentally shot Baby Jesus in his crib.
"Who will do for Madam?"
"I've got baked beans, cigars and even more Louis Roederer in the cellar. What could possibly go wrong?"
And, spurning a sensible car for the Bentley Mark VI, he'd packed his vintage case, a thermos, a shovel and some boiled sweets and pottered off through the blizzard to drive the 30 miles south to London and his club.
I hauled the front door shut against the snow.
"Mi-u."
"I'd forgotten about you."
We'd been adopted by a lost grey tortoiseshell which Jeeves had named something or other.
"Chirp."
"Do you like beans?"
"Chirp."
The front hall is a bit too draughty for some but with a fire it's better than a cave. I plonked my pot on a stool and prepared to resume reading Campbell Black's "novelisation" of "Raiders Of The Lost Ark". The cat sat on the mat.
"With a bullwhip in his hand and a beautiful lady at his side, Jones journeys from Nepal and Cairo to the Mediterranean, dodging poisons, traps and snakes, battling rivals old and new, all in pursuit of an ancient artifact said to give invincible power to its possessor."
"Purrr."
Eventually I nodded off.
Suddenly I awoke to darkness, unable to breathe. Something formless and warm was covering my face and a thousand old nightmares swarmed. An intense buzzing sound filling my ears, stifling the air all around, a swarm of giant hornets. Had the Tyrannosaurus taken my head in its jaws? Was Bigfoot crushing my skull between its hairy paws? I flailed my arms wildly and fell out of my chair with a crash.
In the event it turned out the cat had taken advantage of my unconsciousness to sit on my face.
"For God's sake," I said , spluttering fur. "Gerroff!"
"Chirp?"
I clumped to the kitchen (a demesne I am not usually allowed near since the walk-in freezer incident) and put the kettle on.
"Purrr?" said the cat, trying to trip me up.
"What do you normally eat?"
I found a tin of tuna and the cat went a bit mad. I found some precooked sausages and marmalade, and made myself the sandwich equivalent of sweet and sour pork. I was just prewarming the teapot when the cat did something odd.
It stopped wolfing food, glared at the window and then shot out of the room.
"Oi!" I said. "Tuna doesn't grow on trees."
I looked out of the window at the snow-covered obstacle course. The outside floods were on, and all I could see were white shrouded vaulting horses, like a wintry Victorian cemetery. The climbing nets glistened unpleasantly and the zip lines hung quivering with icy stalactites. I put my face up against the glass, trying not to breathe fog. No footprints I could see.
"Please don't make me come out there," I said.
I decided to have a look around the house.
Not starting with the cellar. The cellar was a bit of a pain to be frank. I kept finding new rooms and new levels down there, and so Winston and I had by mutual agreement locked it up and thrown away the key. The iron paneled door under the main staircase was still locked.
I lit up a Montechristo and fished a Maglite torch out of my rucksack. My Brownings were nicely all wrapped up in the wardrobe and I wasn't unholstering them without a good reason. I looked at the shotgun over the fireplace.
"Nah," I said, and with that started looking around the first floor.
"Cat?" I called.
No answer.
I debated switching the lights on in every room but I remembered - vaguely - that if I did that the generator in the outhouse stalled. No Winston to go hit it with a shovel. I stopped every now and then to listen. The pot made it hard to hear whilst moving, sending dull echoing thuds around the paneling. I didn't hear anything.
The library, normally cosy, was chilly, dark and devoid of its habitual smell of decrepit paper. I suppose that particular smell only travels when its warm? I switched the lights on and the room looked like a corpse. Devoid of life. Dead trees. Most odd.
My room was my room. Much as usual. But even then - the white light coming in through the high windows and the reflection of the snow on the balcony made it look cold. Like a bedroom under water. Bleached out.
"Hello?" I called. "Kitty."
The cat often liked to hide under the bed, but not even a mi-u.
I leaned on the balustrade over looking the main hall and blew smoke rings at the chandlier. The minutes stretched and I stood stiller and stiller, waiting. I smoked less and less flamboyantly, the cigar smoke trickling out of my nostrils.
Nothing moved down in the hall.
I began to go into that daydream that hunters and snipers go into. I could sense my breathing becoming slower and deeper, my face relaxing. At any second I expected the cat to rock up with a "chirp" and to rub against my leg.
However.
No cat.
After a while I got bored.
"That's it," I announced. "Time for tea."
I clumped down the main staircase with my stick, and for some reason something didn't seem right. I stopped.
I couldn't see anything, and started again.
And stopped.
I did one clump only, one step, and then I realised.
The echo was all wrong.
It wasn't "clump-ump". It was "clump clump."
I wheeled around, shining the torch everywhere. Was someone behind me on the stair? Apparently not.
I hurried down the last steps and into the well lit hall. The echo that wasn't an echo persisted, but I couldn't work out why.
I got the shotgun down and trousered some cartridges from the Toby Jug on the giant mantlepiece. I broke the gun and loaded, but left it broken. Winston never found shot out windows or holes in the ceiling as amusing as I did.
I threw the cigar stub into the fire, the taste of Montechristo smoke in my nose and in my mouth, and I remember thinking "Not quite as good as usual. The after-aroma is … weird. Something's slightly off. Can cigars go 'off'? This one was in the humidor, after all …"
And then, once again, what was happening dawned on me and I was whirling around futilely with the gun.
That smell wasn't cigar. That was a new smell. A burnt smell. A musty smell. I'd smelt it before. A smell of red laval mud. A smell of red laval mud with a overtone of burned … flesh?
And at that moment, as I stood stock still, I saw it. In the unlit passage linking the hall to the back of the the house. A silhouette, also standing motionless.
I held my breath.
She - it was definitely a she - also stood still. I could see a pair of bizarrely shiny eyes, button-like, above - what? The head was not completely ovoid.
I found myself blinking rapidly.
She blicked rapidly, seemingly in exactly the same pattern.
"Hello?" I said.
The thing opened a many toothed mouth.
"Rark?" it croaked.
It was a really bad imitation, but it was definitely me.