House of Malice

EIGHT

No, not playing it. What was coming from the dining room wasn’t music. It was a jarring dissonant noise from keys being depressed randomly up and down the octaves. A crashing rumble of bass notes; a pause; then the spine-chilling tinkle of the upper range.

Mandy’s whole body was rigid with tension as she tore open a drawer and grabbed a carving knife. ‘Stay,’ she hissed at the frightened dog. She crept out into the passage and approached the closed dining room door.

‘Hello?’ Her voice came out as a croak. ‘Who’s there?’ she demanded in a stronger tone. ‘Who the hell is that?’

There was no reply. The noise of the piano went on. It could have been a child banging on the keys. Or music played by a madman.

Her mouth was dry. She paused outside the door, listening for a moment; then with a shaking hand she reached for the doorknob.

Turned it— Softly, gently—

Mandy edged through the doorway, heart thumping. She didn’t know what she was going to find. Her fingers gripped the knife handle.

She let out a cry of fear and shock as a large black shape threw itself down from the top of the piano and darted towards her.

A cat. A big black cat with a white tip to its tail.

Mandy almost collapsed with relief. The hand clutching the long carving knife fell limp at her side.

The cat slunk quickly out of the open door and into the passage, like an escaping thief.

‘So you must be Dinky bloody Dora,’ Mandy shouted after it, remembering what that old loony Danvers had said. ‘How the hell did you get in here? Shoo! Away with you!’ She chased it towards the entrance, opened the front door, and the cat bolted off with a last wild and indignant stare.

Mandy closed the door hard and stood leaning with her back against it, breathing hard from the fright the damn thing had given her. It must have sneaked in an open window and got trapped in the room somehow. She couldn’t remember having left a window open. But then, she couldn’t remember having emailed Chester at four in the morning either.

‘I must be losing my mind.’ Legs like jelly, she walked back towards the kitchen still clutching the carving knife. ‘What about you?’ she said to Buster as she slammed the knife back inside the drawer. ‘You’re supposed to be a guard dog, not petrified of some old witch lady’s cat.’

Buster just looked at her.

For the next three days, Mandy closed herself in Summer Cottage and wrote, and wrote, and wrote more. It was compulsive. When she wasn’t eating or sleeping or seeing to Buster’s needs, she was writing. As though she simply had to. She felt guilty about disconnecting the phone, in case Todd tried to call her and wondered why she was ignoring him — but she couldn’t be distracted. The only interruption to her routine was the visit from the telecom engineer she’d arranged to have come and install a landline extension in her bedroom, as mobiles refused to work at Summer Cottage.

Her days become a numbing cycle. Writing. Sparse, desultory meals alone in the kitchen. Back to writing. Then bed; and in the night the dreams would return, making it impossible for her to snatch more than a few hours’ troubled sleep.

The dreams were always the same. She saw the doorway up the passage, the mysterious light beyond it drawing her in deeper, a little deeper each time. When she awoke, the temptation to seek out the place where she’d dreamed the door was became stronger each passing morning. She had to keep telling herself: ‘There is no door. It’s only dreams. Just a phase you’re going through or something. It’ll pass.’

The lure of the writing desk, though, was irresistible. The hours would tumble past. Day merged into night. The developing book manuscript grew ever longer. She experienced its steady growth almost like a physical sensation, like something alive that she could feel swelling and pulsating under the light pressure of her fingers on the laptop keys.

Finally, incredibly, the book was finished. When she hit the final full stop it was early afternoon and she’d gone without any breakfast or lunch. She slumped back in her chair, exhausted, dizzy from concentration and lack of sleep, her eyes feeling gritty and raw, fingers numb from typing.

She still had no title and no pen-name.

Instants later, as from nowhere, both leapt into her mind. She leaned back over the keyboard, scrolled right back to the front of the document and wrote in large bold font:

She stared at the new title page. ‘Did I really just write that?’ But she had, just like she’d written the other ninety thousand stomach-churning words that she couldn’t have imagined herself capable of dreaming up.

High six-figure deal, Chester had said. He’d sounded super-confident. Like it was already a done thing.

She looked around the room at her scanty furniture, the cheap self-assembly desk, the threadbare armchair. She thought of how fine Summer Cottage’s interiors must have looked when the wealthy Ellen Grace had been its owner.

And she wondered.

‘You want to call it what?’ Chester virtually shouted over the phone when she called him later that afternoon.

She told him again. ‘Don’t you like it?’

‘I love it, but I’m not sure the publishers will.’

‘I’ve been thinking, Chester. Screw the publishers.’

He sounded as if he’d been punched in the guts. ‘What are you saying?’ he wheezed. ‘I’ve got Pan, DarkNite and now Vince Pratt at Hodder all ready to wade through a lake of pus to acquire this thing and you want to pull out?’

‘Who said anything about pulling out? I’m not giving this to a publisher, that’s all.’

‘The money’s virtually on the table, Mandy.’

‘I’m going to self publish this,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Ebook only. To hell with the publishers, they’re a bunch of parasites.’

‘Yeah, sure, parasites with lots and lots of cash. They’re like spoilt, useless rich kids with more money rolling in than they know what to do with. But who cares? Think of the advance. The bidding’s already up to three-eighty. Your third up front on signature is—’

‘I can count. No more games with these people,’ she said firmly. ‘Most of the editors can’t edit, some of them can’t even spell.’

‘They’ll get you someone better—’

‘They talk up a storm about promotion and don’t deliver on their promises.’

‘They’ll promote the crap out of this one, I’ll make sure of it personally!’ Chester protested. She could picture his face turning purple as he clutched the phone.

‘Do you know any editor who’s ever written a book?’ she said.

‘No…’

‘I mean, in what other profession would you be expected to take orders from someone who’s never actually done it? Can you imagine a mechanic taking advice from someone who’s never even changed a car wheel, or a surgeon having to defer to someone who’s never performed an operation?’

‘Come on, Mandy, you know the score. This is the publishing biz.’

‘Yeah. Exactly. And I’m expected to hand over ninety percent to these jokers, in return for what? Forget it, Chester. I’m going solo.’

‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this. This isn’t mild-mannered Mandy Freeman the romantic novelist talking. Where’s this ballsy new attitude coming from?’

‘I don’t really know,’ she admitted. ‘I feel sort of different.’

‘Different?’

‘You’ve always stood by me. You’ll still get your commission, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

‘Well…’

‘Trust me, Chester. This way, we don’t have to sit around waiting six months or even longer while the editors fiddle about getting the book out there. Arguing over titles, wasting time over “wouldn’t it be cool” plotting ideas that don’t work. We’ll get this out in a week, or less even. Straight out to the readers. Jessica Lomax has arrived.’

‘What about the cover? Who’s going to take care of the design?’ Chester said, defeated.

‘I’ve already thought of that,’ she told him.