A Nest of Nightmares Read online

  ‘Late for what? Was there something on TV – you-know-who isn’t on tonight, is he?’

  Sheila felt herself blushing. She wasn’t going to talk about Damon; she would pretend she hadn’t heard. ‘I just don’t want to miss my plane,’ she said.

  Victoria stared in disbelief, and Sheila’s certainty crumbled. ‘It . . . is tonight, isn’t it? Not tomorrow?’ She couldn’t spend another night with Victoria; another night and she might never get away, she thought.

  ‘What are you babbling about, Sheila?’ said Victoria, as wearily as if this was an old, old question.

  Sheila dug in her bag for the ticket, praying that it had not been stolen, too. But there it was; she pulled it out, seeing the stiff blue folder enclosing the flimsy ticket, but when she looked at it more closely, she froze. It was a one-way ticket. There could be no mistake, yet she stared, willing herself to be wrong, reading it again and again. Had it changed in the same way and for the same occult reasons as she had herself? Why hadn’t she noticed before? She was certain that she would not have left Los Angeles with only a one-way ticket in her hand – not a one-way ticket to Texas, and no money for her return.

  ‘I can’t stay here,’ she said. ‘I have to go back.’

  ‘Where would you go back?’

  ‘Home. Los Angeles.’

  ‘That’s not your home. What’s in Los Angeles? Damon Greene? Your imaginary boyfriend? You really think he’ll notice if you’re in Los Angeles or in Texas?’

  ‘But I live there – I have an apartment and a job – ’

  ‘You don’t. You’ve been making things up again. People like you don’t live in Hollywood. You wouldn’t fit in. You’re much better off here, where you belong. You can stay in my room, and I might even be able to wangle you a job at Eckard’s. It’s not a bad place to work. You’ll have time to write. You’ll settle down.’

  She wanted to argue, but everything she thought she knew had slipped away. What could she give as proof? Damon? The apartment? The series of temporary jobs in glamorous locations? All those things felt unreal now, as if she had only seen them on television. ‘I won’t stay here . . . you can’t make me.’

  ‘How ungrateful!’ said Grace, and Sheila looked at her, really for the first time since she had met her. She was shocked by the envy and hatred she saw on the fat, white face.

  ‘She doesn’t mean to be rude,’ said Victoria. ‘She just doesn’t understand.’

  ‘Oh, yes I do,’ said Sheila, although she didn’t. ‘I’m not stupid, I can see what you’re doing to me. Changing me, confusing me, trapping me. All right, you’ve got me now, but not forever. Maybe I can’t afford to leave now, with twenty dollars in my purse, but it won’t take me long to get out of here. I’m not like you. I got away once before. It’s not just dreaming. I had another life – the life I wanted. A life you’ll never know. I wrote a book and had it published.’

  ‘You think that makes you special?’

  ‘I know it does. I’m different from you.’

  Victoria adjusted her glasses, checked the top button on her blouse, and moistened her lips. ‘You may be different,’ she said in her thin, colourless voice, ‘but you need us. Don’t blame us for that. We didn’t trick you into coming here; nobody forced you to use that ticket. You wanted to come back, so we helped you. Hollywood was no good for you. You couldn’t measure up, and you couldn’t write anymore. You wanted to escape but you didn’t know where or how. So we helped you. You’re safe here, and you can stay just as long as you like.’ She looked down at her empty plate, wiped her mouth with a folded napkin, and said, ‘I think we might as well go home now, don’t you?’

  Not my home, thought Sheila, but she followed them out to the car. During the dark, familiar drive back to Byzantium she was thinking furiously, planning her escape.

  Money was the most important thing, so she would get a job, even if it meant working in a drugstore with Victoria. She didn’t have to pay attention to her. And she would go on a diet and start exercising to lose this flab; get a facial scrub and do something about her hair, buy herself some more clothes, and when she was herself again she’d fly back to Los Angeles and take up her real life.

  Sheila leaned back against the seat, feeling something inside her unknot. With all that out of the way, she could think about something more interesting. It was as easy as dreaming.

  Kayli was under the mountain again, although Sheila wasn’t sure exactly why. Kayli didn’t know, either. Her mind was cloudy with drugs, and someone had tied her hands behind her and left her in this dark turning of one of the tunnels. She didn’t know where she was or what she had to do, but she would triumph. Despite her confusion, despite the constraints, her will was unbroken. All through the night she planned her escape.

  TREADING THE MAZE

  We had seen the bed and breakfast sign from the road, and although it was still daylight and there was no hurry to settle, we had liked the look of the large, well-kept house amid the farmlands, and the name on the sign: The Old Vicarage.

  Phil parked the Mini on the curving gravel drive. ‘No need for you to get out,’ he said. ‘I’ll just pop in and ask.’

  I got out anyway, just to stretch my legs and feel the warmth of the late, slanting sun rays on my bare arms. It was a beautiful afternoon. There was a smell of manure on the air, but it wasn’t unpleasant, mingling with the other country smells. I walked towards the hedge which divided the garden from the fields beyond. There was a low stone wall along the drive, and I climbed onto it to look over the hedge and into the field.

  There was a man standing there, all alone in the middle of the field. He was too far away for me to make out his features, but something about the sight of that still figure gave me a chill. I was suddenly afraid he would turn his head and see me watching him, and I clambered down hastily.

  ‘Amy?’ Phil was striding towards me, his long face alight. ‘It’s a lovely room – come and see.’

  The room was upstairs, with a huge soft bed, an immense wooden wardrobe, and a big, deep-set window which I cranked open. I stood looking out over the fields.

  There was no sign of the man I had just seen, and I couldn’t imagine where he had vanished to so quickly.

  ‘Shall we plan to have dinner in Glastonbury?’ Phil asked, combing his hair before the mirror inside the wardrobe door. ‘There should still be enough of the day left to see the Abbey.’

  I looked at the position of the sun in the sky. ‘And we can climb the tor tomorrow.’

  ‘You can climb the tor tomorrow morning. I’ve had about enough of all this climbing of ancient hills and monu­ments – Tintagel, St Michael’s Mount, Cadbury Castle, Silbury Hill – ’

  ‘We didn’t climb Silbury Hill. Silbury Hill had a fence around it.’

  ‘And a good thing, too, or you’d have made me climb it.’ He came up behind me and hugged me fiercely.

  I relaxed against him, feeling as if my bones were melting. Keeping my voice brisk, mock-scolding, I said, ‘I didn’t complain about showing you all the wonders of America last year. So the least you can do now is return the favour with ancient wonders of Britain. I know you grew up with all this stuff, but I didn’t. We don’t have anything like Silbury Hill or Glastonbury Tor where I come from.’

  ‘If you did, if there was a Glastonbury Tor in America, they’d have a lift up the side of it,’ he said.

  ‘Or at least a drive-through window.’

  We both began laughing helplessly.

  I think of us standing there in that room, by the open window, holding each other and laughing – I think of us standing there like that forever.

  Dinner was a mixed grill in a Glastonbury café. Our stroll through the Abbey grounds took longer than we’d thought, and we were late, arriving at the café just as the proprietress was about to close up. Phil teased and charmed her into staying open and cook
ing for two last customers. Grey-haired, fat, and nearly toothless, she lingered by our table throughout our meal to continue her flirtation with Phil. He obliged, grinning and joking and flattering, but every time her back was turned, he winked at me or grabbed my leg beneath the table, making coherent conversation impossible on my part.

  When we got back to The Old Vicarage, we were roped into having tea with the couple who ran the place and the other guests. That late in the summer there were only two others, an elderly couple from Belgium.

  The electric fire was on and the lounge was much too warm. The heat made it seem even smaller than it was. I drank my sweet milky tea, stroked the old white dog who lay near my feet, and gazed admiringly at Phil, who kept up one end of a conversation about the weather, the countryside, and World War II.

  Finally the last of the tea was consumed, the biscuit tin had made the rounds three times, and we could escape to the cool, empty sanctuary of our room. There we stripped off our clothes, climbed into the big soft bed, talked quietly of private things, and made love.

  I hadn’t been asleep long before I came awake, aware that I was alone in the bed. We hadn’t bothered to draw the curtains, and the moonlight was enough to show me Phil was sitting on the wide window ledge smoking a cigarette.

  I sat up. ‘Can’t you sleep?’

  ‘Just my filthy habit.’ He waved the lit cigarette; I didn’t see, but could imagine, the sheepish expression on his face. ‘I didn’t want to disturb you.’

  He took one last, long drag and stubbed the cigarette out in an ashtray. He rose, and I saw that he was wearing his woollen pullover, which hung to his hips, just long enough for modesty, but leaving his long, skinny legs bare.

  I giggled.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You without your trousers.’

  ‘That’s right, make fun. Do I laugh at you when you wear a dress?’

  He turned away towards the window, leaning forward to open it a little more.

  ‘It’s a beautiful night . . . Cor!’ He straightened up in surprise.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Out there – people. I don’t know what they’re doing. They seem to be dancing, out in the field.’

  Half-suspecting a joke, despite the apparently genuine note of surprise in his voice, I got up and joined him at the window, wrapping my arms around myself against the cold. Looking out where he was gazing, I saw them. They were indisputably human figures – five, or perhaps six or seven, of them, all moving about in a shifting spiral, like some sort of children’s game or country dance.

  And then I saw it. It was like suddenly comprehending an optical illusion. One moment, bewilderment; but, the next, the pattern was clear.

  ‘It’s a maze,’ I said. ‘Look at it, it’s marked out in the grass.’

  ‘A turf-maze,’ Phil said, wondering.

  Among the people walking that ancient, ritual path, one suddenly paused and looked up, seemingly directly at us. In the pale moonlight and at that distance I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. It was just a dark figure with a pale face turned up towards us.

  I remembered then that I had seen someone standing in that very field, perhaps in that same spot, earlier in the day, and I shivered. Phil put his arm around me and drew me close.

  ‘What are they doing?’ I asked.

  ‘There are remnants of traditions about dancing or running through mazes all over the country,’ Phil said. ‘Most of the old turf-mazes have vanished – people stopped keeping them up before this century. They’re called troy-towns, or mizmazes . . . No one knows when or why they began, or if treading the maze was game or ritual, or what the purpose was.’

  Another figure now paused beside the one who stood still, and laid hold of that one’s arm, and seemed to say something. And then the two figures fell back into the slow circular dance.

  ‘I’m cold,’ I said. I was shivering uncontrollably, although it was not with any physical chill. I gave up the comfort of Phil’s arm and ran for the bed.

  ‘They might be witches,’ Phil said. ‘Hippies from Glastonbury, trying to revive an old custom. Glastonbury does attract some odd types.’

  I had burrowed under the bedclothes, only the top part of my face left uncovered, and was waiting for my teeth to stop chattering and for the warmth to penetrate my muscles.

  ‘I could go out and ask them who they are,’ Phil said. His voice sounded odd. ‘I’d like to know who they are. I feel as if I should know.’

  I stared at his back, alarmed. ‘Phil, you’re not going out there!’

  ‘Why not? This isn’t New York City. I’d be perfectly safe.’

  I sat up, letting the covers fall. ‘Phil, don’t.’

  He turned away from the window to face me. ‘What’s the matter?’

  I couldn’t speak.

  ‘Amy . . . you’re not crying?’ His voice was puzzled and gentle. He came to the bed and held me.

  ‘Don’t leave me,’ I whispered against the rough weave of his sweater.

  ‘ ’Course I won’t,’ he said, stroking my hair and kissing me. ‘ ’Course I won’t.’

  But of course he did, less than two months later, in a way neither of us could have guessed then. But even then, watching the dancers in the maze, even then he was dying.

  In the morning, as we were settling our bill, Phil mentioned the people we had seen dancing in the field during the night. The landlord was flatly disbelieving.

  ‘Sure you weren’t dreaming?’

  ‘Quite sure,’ said Phil. ‘I wondered if it was some local custom . . .’

  He snorted. ‘Some custom! Dancing around a field in the dead of night!’

  ‘There’s a turf-maze out there,’ Phil began.

  But the man was shaking his head. ‘No, not in that field. Not a maze!’

  Phil was patient. ‘I don’t mean one with hedges, like in Hampton Court. Just a turf-maze, a pattern made in the soil years ago. It’s hardly noticeable now, although it can’t have been too many years since it was allowed to grow back. I’ve seen them other places and read about them, and in the past there were local customs of running the maze, or dancing through it, or playing games. I thought some such custom might have been revived locally.’

  The man shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ he said. We had learned the night before that the man and his wife were ‘foreigners’, having only settled here, from the north of England, some twenty years before. Obviously, he wasn’t going to be much help with information on local traditions.

  After we had loaded our bags into the car, Phil hesitated, looking towards the hedge. ‘I’d quite like to have a look at that maze close-to,’ he said.

  My heart sank, but I could think of no rational reason to stop him. Feebly I tried, ‘We shouldn’t trespass on somebody else’s property . . .’

  ‘Walking across a field isn’t trespassing!’ He began to walk along the hedge, towards the road. Because I didn’t want him to go alone, I hurried after. There was a gate a few yards along the road by which we entered the field. But once there, I wondered how we would find the maze. Without an overview such as our window had provided, the high grass looked all the same, and from this level, in ordinary daylight, slight alterations in ground level wouldn’t be obvious to the eye.

  Phil looked back at the house, getting in alignment with the window, then turned and looked across the field, his eyes narrowed as he tried to calculate distance. Then he began walking slowly, looking down often at the ground. I hung back, following him at a distance and not myself looking for the maze. I didn’t want to find it. Although I couldn’t have explained my reaction, the maze frightened me, and I wanted to be away, back on the road again, alone together in the little car, eating apples, gazing at the passing scenery, talking.

  ‘Ah!’

  I stopped still at Phil’s triumphant
cry and watched as he hopped from one foot to the other. One foot was clearly on higher ground. He began to walk in a curious, up-down fashion. ‘I think this is it,’ he called. ‘I think I’ve found it. If the land continues to dip . . . yes, yes, this is it!’ He stopped walking and looked back at me, beaming.

  ‘Great,’ I said.

  ‘The grass has grown back where once it was kept cleared, but you can still feel the place where the swathe was cut,’ he said, rocking back and forth to demonstrate the confines of the shallow ditch. ‘Come and see.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ I said.

  He cocked his head. ‘I thought you’d be interested. I thought something like this would be right up your alley. The funny folkways of the ancient Brits.’

  I shrugged, unable to explain my unease.

  ‘We’ve plenty of time, love,’ he said. ‘I promise we’ll climb Glastonbury Tor before we push on. But we’re here now, and I’d like to get the feel of this.’ He stretched his hand towards me. ‘Come tread the maze with me.’

  It would have been so easy to take his hand and do just that. But overriding my desire to be with him, to take this as just another lark, was the fearful, wordless conviction that there was danger here. And if I refused to join him, perhaps he would give up the idea and come away with me. He might sulk in the car, but he would get over it, and at least we would be away.

  ‘Let’s go now,’ I said, my arms stiff at my sides.

  Displeasure clouded his face, and he turned away from me with a shrug. ‘Give me just a minute, then,’ he said. And as I watched, he began to tread the maze.

  He didn’t attempt that curious, skipping dance we had seen the others do the night before; he simply walked, and none too quickly, with a careful, measured step. He didn’t look at me as he walked, although the pattern of the maze brought him circling around again and again to face in my direction – he kept his gaze on the ground. I felt, as I watched, that he was being drawn farther away from me with every step. I wrapped my arms around myself and told myself not to be a fool. I could feel the little hairs standing up all along my arms and back, and I had to fight the urge to break and run like hell. I felt, too, as if someone watched us, but when I looked around, the field was as empty as ever.