The Secret Baby Room by D.D. Johnston

Author:D.D. Johnston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction, novel, Scottish, crime, psychological thriller, Manchester, mystery, thriller, women's, miscarriage, babies, witchcraft, pagan
Publisher: Barbican Press
Published: 2015-04-14T00:00:00+00:00

‌Sixteen

ON THE LANDING FLOOR, there was a crudely painted pentagram. The lines were wobbly and the star’s points were unequal in length. Still, Claire recognised the symbol. At each point of the star there was a candle – a tea light like the ones she and Dan had at home – but the real horror was in the middle. At the centre of the pentagram, streaked with blood, there sat a decapitated pig’s head.

Claire stared in breathless terror, too startled even to run. The pig smelled putrid and flies crawled in and out of its snout. Its eyes were closed, its ears perky, and it appeared to be smiling. It seemed, grotesquely, to be quietly amused. Later, the thing Claire most remembered was that the pig had eyelashes – fine blonde lashes – but at the time she just stared, appalled, struggling to believe what she was seeing.

And then, of course, when she’d fully registered what she was looking at, she turned and ran back the way she’d come. One thing that surprised her, when she looked back on her panic, was that at no point did she remember screaming. She had screamed when she saw the frog, and she had screamed when she was startled by the cat, but the pig’s head in the pentagram instilled in her a terror that seemed beyond noise.

She ran to the first floor landing, but then she heard the noise of a padlock. She stopped, listened. A door hinged, crashed against a wall. Then she heard heavy footsteps, the turning of a wheel, perhaps. The noises were coming from the bottom of the building. For a moment, she stood on the landing, immobilised, and then she turned and ran back towards the pig’s head.

She couldn’t stay near it. She would take her chance with whatever lurked above. But as she ran upstairs, she began to imagine still greater horrors – corpses with no eyes, axe men in blood-stained aprons, skeletons shackled to walls. It was, as Mrs Shaw had said, a place of evil.

Then, when she found the third-floor landing empty, she stood with her hands on her knees, trying to compose herself. Okay, she thought, don’t panic. So, she thought. That was a pig’s head. In a pentagram. Okay. Don’t panic. So Morgana was doing a ritual. Maybe she was a Satanist. So? It was hocus-pocus, the sort of black magic games that Goth kids play before they grow up. It didn’t mean—

The door slammed downstairs and she started to run again. She didn’t know where she was running to. She climbed higher and higher, breathless, face covered with snot and tears. God, she wanted out of there. Why hadn’t she listened to Lianne?

She was vaguely heading to the top of the building, out onto the roof, perhaps. At least there she wouldn’t be enclosed; she’d be— She had her mobile with her and perhaps she could phone for help? But what would she report? A pig’s head? A pentagram? This wasn’t Elizabethan England – she couldn’t report someone for witchcraft.

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