The Fetch by Robert Holdstock Read Free Book Online Page B

Michael’s birth-mother, then she’s powerful. And vicious. You have to find out if it’s her. If it’s the house, then something happened here and you can take steps to rid the house of the energy. You need help. You need expert help …’
    ‘Exorcism, you mean. Bell,book and bullshit.’
    ‘Not necessarily exorcism. Not
even
that. Just someone … someone who
knows
about these things.’
    ‘I can’t think for the moment, Jenny. I’ve got to get Susan and Michael out of here. I’ve got to clean up this mess. Dump this dirt somewhere, the chalk pit … that’s going to take hours … I can’t think for the moment …’
    But Jenny was insistent. ‘You’ve
got
to think. Both of you, Susan too. You’re being attacked.
Psychically
. And Michael’s life is in jeopardy. Perhaps yours too. You’ve got to get out of here, Richard. Work on the cause from the outside.’
    Even as she said the words the house seemed to shift, to flex inwards, crowding down upon him dizzyingly and with alarming consequences. He felt immediately panicky, stepping back from the earthfall, overwhelmed by its smell and the aliveness of it. There was furtive movement on its surface, and grains of drying soil slipped down the mound, disturbed by the worm-life below. The room seemed to be oppressing him, stifling him, and he laboured for breath, feeling his heart pounding painfully, his skin breaking into an icy, unpleasant sweat.
    Jenny tugged his sleeve, and he responded to her sudden concern with a hug.
    ‘You’re right,’ he whispered. ‘Get me out of here …’
    Susan came downstairs, carrying Michael. Jenny went over to her and took her case. ‘Ready when you are.’
    ‘I’d better take my dolls,’ Susan murmured. ‘I think I’m going to need something to do.’
    She went into the workroom and reappeared with a carrier bag. Richard had packed a small case of his own things from the wardrobe and drawers in the spare room. He had intended to turn off the electricity in the house, but in his sudden hasteto escape the place he forgot. He practically ran from the front door, returning only to lock it.
    The sound of the car’s engine, revving up, was welcome, and he almost flung himself into the front seat, closing his eyes as Jenny drove swiftly away from Eastwell.

    He returned to the house a day later, shortly after dawn, entering by the front door and standing for a while in the heavy, oppressive stillness. When he entered the sitting room he began to shake again, feeling haunted by the silence, by the familiarity of the surroundings. It was as if the room was tainted, as if he was being watched. He knew this to be in his mind, but he couldn’t help the unconscious response of fear that accompanied him as he stepped round the mound of earth.
    The upstairs light was still on, its dim illumination spilling down on to the brooding mound. The earth, which had been so alive and vibrant, was dead now, the worms burrowed deep. When he touched it, it was cold; no colder, probably, than when it had fallen, but cold in a different way. It was drying out. It was settling. It was quite simply … dead.
    He rubbed dirt between his fingers, sniffed it, then brushed it away. Then he took up the two chalk balls and carried them from the room, opening the back door and stepping out into the grey light.
    The land was swathed in a heavy ground mist and the air felt cold as well as damp. There was no sound in this new day, save for the distant, melancholy calling of a single rook, out in the grey fog that clung to the trees around the disused chalk quarry.
    He walked over the field, now, and through the trees to the rusting wire fencing that protected animals and children from the pit. He was ableto pull the fence down and tread out a path, through the dog’s-mercury and fern, to the sheer edge of the chalk where it dropped away into the dense tangle of undergrowth and rubble below.
    It would be hard work, getting the earthfall here, but he