Darkside by Belinda Bauer

Author:Belinda Bauer [Bauer, Belinda]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: 03 Thriller/Mistery
Publisher: Transworld Digital
Published: 2011-01-06T00:00:00+00:00

Gary Liss liked the nights at Sunset Lodge. The days were all bustle but the nights made him think of old war movies where nurses moved quietly between softly coughing patients, carrying candles.

At night there were just three members of staff on duty. That was usually plenty. Mostly the residents slept through, with only occasional calls for help with the commode. They had one sleepwalker at present. Mrs Eaves had scared the shit out of him the first time he'd seen her tottering towards him in her flowing white nightie. Now he quite enjoyed the break in routine that was the silent little dance he occasionally performed with Mrs Eaves on the landing while he tried to head her off at the pass so she wouldn't dance straight down the wide stairwell with its thick, swirly carpet that hid the stains so well. Mr Cooke had invested in an infrared alarm which fired a clever red beam across Mrs Eaves's bedroom door and beeped loudly in the staffroom whenever she took to wandering through the home. When it did, one of them would bound upstairs - or squeeze into the lift in the case of Lynne Twitchett - and go and corral her back to bed.

Tonight he was on with Lynne and Jen. He liked Lynne, who was giggly and sweet, but wasn't so keen on Jen, who smelled of cigarettes and teased him about his girlfriend. Girlfriend, she always said. How's the girlfriend, Gary? Why don't you bring your girlfriend to the Christmas do? We'd all love to meet your girlfriend.

Jen could go screw herself. He doubted anyone else ever did.

Right now she was bitching about a woman she'd seen in a pub wearing yellow stilettos. Gary thought yellow stilettos sounded hideous, but he was still on the wearer's side.

The radio was tuned quietly to Lantern - the local station - which played old chart stuff and made him drum his fingers and think of school discos.

Mrs Eaves's alarm beeped and Gary picked up his torch. Turning lights on at night could be disastrous. Residents who had only been in bed for an hour would stir like grizzlies coming out of hibernation and start to dress themselves in wobbly anticipation of another day growing older in the garden room. Torches took care of that.

There were fourteen bedrooms on the first floor and Gary knew that Violet Eaves could be in any one of them apart from her own, Gorse. All the rooms had twee names like Gorse and Heather, which were supposed to be Exmoor-centric. Whoever had chosen them had started grandly but must have quickly realized that gorse and heather were the only really recognizable flora the moors had to offer, and had been forced into crap names like Sedge and Blackthorn and - feeblest of all - Moss. Gary reckoned it was Mr Cooke's wife who'd done it. She was always putting her finger in the Sunset Lodge pie.

The old house was a maze of turns and steps and nooks and ramps.

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