The Hidden People by Allison Littlewood

Author:Allison Littlewood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC031070 Fiction / Thrillers / Supernatural
Publisher: Quercus

Chapter Seventeen

Upon reaching the cottage, for all my concern, I was overcome by a strange reluctance to enter. I peered around the door to see the black emptiness of the passage. I breathed my wife’s name. The sense of abandonment hung more strongly about the place than ever. I forced myself to reach out and push the door wider, stepping quietly inside. I could dimly see that the back door was shut; I rattled the handle and found it remained locked. I raised a corner of the mat—pushing from my mind the time when I had lifted aside another oilcloth and seen what lay beneath—and I saw the key.

I was unsurprised to find the parlour devoid of any presence and the hearth cold. No one was sitting there in the dark: no one living, and no ghost. In order to be thorough before going upstairs, I quickly looked into the pantry and the storeroom, finding all as it had been. I even opened the door to the workshop and stood on the threshold a moment before turning back to the stairs. I had only been delaying the moment when I must go up them. I set my foot upon the first riser then crept, as silently as I could, up the treads. I placed a hand on Helena’s door. I could not bring myself to knock, but instead called her name, very softly, disliking the tremulous note that had stolen into my voice.

No reply came; I had expected none. I pushed open the door and, hearing no further sound, entered the room. The window was thrown open and the half-curtains festooning the bed were shifting in the night-breeze. I did not pause to close the casement, but bent and peered under the bed, for all that I could not account for why I did it; did I really imagine my wife would be hiding there, her eyes gleaming in the dark? Then I went to the door across the landing. My own room was as empty as Helena’s.

I leaned against the doorjamb and closed my eyes. Helena might as well have vanished into the air; I had not the first idea where she might have gone.

And yet I must find her. I chastised myself for my inaction and hurried down the stair once more and out of the door. I checked the keyhole, to see if she had perhaps found some other key and left it there, but it was empty; perhaps she had taken it with her, then, although I could not imagine why she had not troubled to close the door.

I set out towards the village, the moon shining down on all. I presumed that Helena could not have passed me on such a night; I wished to feel certain she could not have tended her steps up onto Pudding Pye Hill, but I knew in this I was merely consoling myself. In truth, she might have gone anywhere. I could easily have missed her in the dark, or while I stood watching the oafs from the village—or the other form I had seen.

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