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Title Page

The Vessel

Adam L. G. Nevill

Dedication

For Julie Crisp, who rolled the dice.

‘I believe that something unseen is also here’

‘I believe that something unseen is also here’

Walt Whitman, ‘Song of the Open Road’

Contents

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Story Notes:

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Books by Adam L. G. Nevill

Cunning Folk

The Reddening

Some Will Not Sleep

Hasty for the Dark

Wyrd and Other Derelictions

Free eBook

1

A stillness profound enough to be uncanny hushes a woodland glade. Trees encircle the placid water of a circular pond therein, the surface a black mirror reflecting a sombre sky.

Glimpsed between the columns of trunks and downy birch branches that ring the water, white blossom and vivid flowers erupt along the borders of a distant lawn. Beyond this mown pelt of grass, a weathered vicarage stands sentinel. An outcrop of dour stone with windows as impenetrable as the pond’s untroubled surface.

The atmosphere of mournful tranquillity is only disturbed when a cat appears upon the lawn to stalk a thrush. As it closes upon its prey, the cries of the other birds at a safer height grow shrill.

Behind a French window in the vicarage, the pale smudge of a face peers out. The surrounding void of the unlit room offers vague definition to a withered head. A woman, her white hair thinning, whose face appears disembodied, suspended in darkness. Morose yet expectant, she watches the confrontation on the lawn.

Reflected upon the pupils of her rheumy eyes, the thrush explodes from the lawn. A sudden flight inciting a fresh orchestra of avian shrieks from the wings of this outdoor theatre. The pupils of the watcher at the window quickly become busier with more black shapes, swooping upon the hunter, until a cat’s scream of rage and terror tears the air. The hunted bird’s wings flap-crack in a soaring escape.

Vicarage, garden, wood and pond grow smaller below the reprieved thrush. It sees the land become a patchwork in which the suggestion of a circular village, with the vicarage forming the hub of an indistinct wheel, assumes shape.

Black clouds cover the world.

Within an hour, the thrush descends from a sooty sky, its keen sight fixing upon a housing estate where busy roads encircle cement blocks, and the air is a brown haze. Closing claws upon the railing of a gantry in a grubby block of flats, the bird sees the face of another careworn woman, who sits in silence behind a kitchen window.

2

Jess looks out of the kitchen window without taking any notice of the world. She searches inwardly to gather the resolve and strength required for the day ahead. With fingers reddened by cleaning agents, she habitually worries an old scar that cuts her top lip and extends to her nose.

Outside the flat, the hostile sounds that she has learned to background are unrelenting. A scooter revs. A door slams in a communal corridor. A dog barks incessantly as if driven mad. Above the ceiling of the flat, the thump of dance music pounds a tribal rhythm.

Jess drops her hands to her lap, where her fingers and their bitten-down nails, twist and entwine upon the glossy estate agent’s brochure spread across her thighs. The cover features an artist’s impression of a pristine cedar-panelled housing block. A dream destination of huge windows and balconies set in a grassy park where the graphics of conjured children frolic. ‘New Development. Family Homes.’

In contrast to the comforts the pamphlet promises, this kitchen’s interior can only reveal the evidence of a mother’s attempts to make a space contemporary and homely with cheap, bright pictures and feature walls. In two corners, an intrusion of black-spore fungus persists in discolouring her efforts to enliven the room. When her gaze returns to the brochure, an expression of longing that seems painful induces her to hold her disfigured lip between her teeth.

She eventually stirs from her absorption and glances at the doorway that opens onto the kitchen. ‘Izzy, love! We’ll be late. My first day!’ And to herself, ‘We need this.’

When the small figure of her daughter shuffles into the doorway, Jess tucks the brochure inside her bag.

Izzy enters the room with a slow, determined reluctance. Her auburn hair, brushed into tight bunches, is also tied with pink bows.

Jess finds her daughter’s pale and nervy expression too hard to look at. It is too similar for comfort to the very image of herself that she has been gazing at, on the inside of the kitchen window. And though her daughter’s dressed neatly, Jess’s eyes cannot refrain from dwelling upon the tired aspects of Izzy’s school uniform. A faded cardigan repaired with a different blue wool to the garment’s original fabric, complemented by school shoes, the toes worn grey, the remaining uppers polished to a dull shine.

Jess reaches onto the counter and rummages inside one of her daughter’s three bags. ‘These the right books?’

Izzy nods, unhappily.

Jess shakes a drink-bottle to make sure it’s full. Then holds up a nylon bag by the string handle. ‘Kit I just washed?’

Izzy nods again.

Jess slides off the stool, wets a finger and dabs at a toothpaste stain on her daughter’s cardigan. Only then does Izzy break a silence that has survived since she was last in the kitchen to push a spoon at her soggy cereal, half an hour before. ‘Penny picking me up from school?’

‘Me this week, love.’

On receipt of the information, Izzy’s eyes brighten. But not by much. ‘No more nights for Mummy?’

Jess tugs up her sleeve to check the time. ‘Not if I can help it.’ She looks back at her daughter and frowns at what she reads in Izzy’s eyes. They glisten with tears. ‘Hey. What’s all this?’

Prompted by a query into her misery, Izzy looks at the floor and starts to cry.

Jess embraces her daughter. Eyes screwed shut from the intense concern that squeezes everything inside her chest, she kisses her daughter and lets her lips linger upon the child’s warm forehead.

‘I feel poorly,’ Izzy manages through her sobs.

‘Them kids up your school again?’

‘Can I stay with Mummy today?’

‘My love. You know you can’t. Any more trouble from them, I’m coming to see the head teacher again. Sick of it.’ When Izzy’s sobs subside to sniffles, Jess breaks the clinch and dabs at her daughter’s eyes. ‘My little love. Things gonna get better for us. Soon. I promise. And guess what?’

Izzy is too desolate to raise a smidgen of interest.

‘Got a surprise for you Thursday. We’re going somewhere special.’ Her mother’s voice carries a bright, artificial ring.

‘Where?’

‘Surprise. Like I said.’

‘Where though?’

‘Wait till Thursday. But maybe you won’t be going to that school much longer.’

Izzy stops sniffing. On receipt of such impossible news, that is too cruel to fully entertain, her eyes lock upon her mother’s face and search for insincerity, for tricks, or those infuriating postscripts about being patient.

‘Till then, stay away from them kids. Walk away. Ignore them. Hide if you have to. Only thing that works with bullies is to keep well out their way. Little bas–’ Jess reaches for Izzy again and indulges the small form with a final hug that fuses the child to her chest. ‘But we gotta go now if you want to make Early Bird Club.’

‘Love you, Mummy.’

‘Love you more than anything in this world, Izz. Even more than ice-cream.’

Wet eyes sparkling, Izzy laughs and snuffles up the last of her tears.

‘C’mon. Let’s get cracking.’

Scrabbling up keys and swiping a phone from a counter and looping all three of her daughter’s bags along one forearm, before snagging their coats from a little rack in the reception, Jess herds her daughter out of the flat.

As the front door opens, the barking of the dog amplifies within the communal corridor. Jess and Izzy hesitate and briefly peer between cement walls painted yellow before falling into a quick step towards the staircase.

3

With the finality of a prison gate, the thick security door of the block’s main entrance slams behind Jess and Izzy, shudders in the frame, then locks with a click.

‘Daddy!’ Izzy bursts into a run, her rucksack slapping and bunches flying.

Startled, Jess jerks around – the very word ‘Daddy’ triggering a reaction that most would read as panic if they were to look into her eyes. A response she stifles. Face hardening, she’s powerless to do anything but watch Tony spread his arms as Izzy ploughs into him and buries her face in her father’s stomach. Staggering backwards to exaggerate the impact of the collision, Tony laughs. Blue plastic bags, looped from each of Tony’s hands, sway like bells.

‘You in the school rugby team? Blimey, you pack a punch. You grow an inch every day I’m away, kitten.’ Tony kneels and, closing his eyes, folds around his daughter, kissing the top of her head.

Izzy pulls back and eyes the bags hanging from her father’s wrists. Her smile grows coy. ‘What’s that? Something for me?’

Warily, Jess closes on them. ‘Izz. We’re late.’

Tony and Izzy ignore her. Tony rummages inside the bag and produces a bag of crisps. Izzy seizes them. He whips out a chocolate bar, followed by a bag of jellies, a deli wrap, an apple. Izzy laughs, her little hands snatching.

‘Keep you goin’, eh? Make you even more beautiful. Specially that apple. Snow White apple. Red like you love.’

Jess sighs but seems ready to scream. ‘It ain’t . . . Tone. You can’t just . . .’

Tony kisses Izzy on top of the head producing a loud smacking noise. He points to the car behind him. ‘Go have a look inside, Izz. In the back. Fixed it. Like new.’

Izzy runs to the car and peers through the rear window. ‘My bike! Mummy, my bike!’

Tony turns to Jess. ‘Sorry, luv. I know. I know. I shouldn’t have come but it breaks my heart if I go a day without her.’

‘It’s hard. But they said—’

‘I know. Gotta be another way, though. It’s all I think of.’

‘I gotta get on. Work.’

‘You carry on. I’ll drop Izz at school. No strings. Least I’ll get to see her for a bit.’

It’s the first time that morning that Jess has seen her daughter’s face split by a smile, though her only child’s happiness fails to revive similar feelings in her.

‘Yes, Mum. Yes, Mum. I want to go in Daddy’s car!’

Tony grins, sheepish. ‘It’ll make my whole day.’

Jess’s grim smile battles irritation. She manages to nod at her ecstatic daughter.

Tony pushes his pitch into a wheedling softness that turns his voice breathy. ‘You both do. Every time I see you. Even for a minute or two. Ain’t forgot Mum neither.’ Tony pushes the second bag towards Jess. She looks at it but doesn’t accept the offering.

‘Little something. Don’t mean nothing.’

Jess takes the bag, eyeing it with a distaste often seen on the faces of dog walkers as they straighten their backs in the park with a plastic bag held at arm’s length.

‘Drop you off?’

She shakes her head.

At the rebuttal, remorse makes Tony appear younger. Though the sigh and sympathetic nod that follow suggest the sagacity of an older man. He turns about and scoops up his daughter.

‘Can I ride it outside school?’

‘If we get a move on.’

Jess surreptitiously peers inside the bag drooping from her fingertips and sees a box of Black Magic chocolates. An apple. A handwritten envelope containing a greeting card.

As if throttling a chicken, she wrings the neck of the bag shut.

The doors of Tony’s car close. Izzy’s laughter dims then mutes as the passenger side is sealed, leaving Jess in a suddenly greyer world. Traffic shudders on the main road. A car horn blares. A distant siren suggests that someone else’s day has endured a start far worse than her own. Small comfort.

4

At the crowded bus stop, indifferent faces surround Jess. Eyes hard and minds preoccupied with their own struggles on another grey day, chilled by the cold damp air. A bleak piece of waste ground lies behind a chain-link fence, parallel to the queue. A distant industrial estate cramps the horizon. A few feet from the bus shelter, a muscular dog dumps a crap on the scruffy verge. Its squat owner doesn’t pick up the steaming mess and plods on, surly and huffing.

A petulant moped screams amidst the grinding traffic. Another two buzz in pursuit. In the brazen din of their engines, Jess can’t hear her phone ring but the handset vibrates against her hip. She hurriedly extracts it from her jacket and looks at the screen.

‘Oh, piss off.’ She answers the call with a fake smile. ‘Sheila. How are—’

‘I would imagine you’re there now.’

Jess winces. ‘Nearly. On the bus—’

‘Cutting it fine.’

‘I—’

‘This morning’s call is to emphasise how important a client Mrs Gardner is to this agency. So, under no circumstances – and I mean this, Jess – can there be a repeat of what happened last time.’

‘Like I already said, Sheila, stuff’s in place. With custody. And me and Izzy are looking to move—’

‘So I’m reminding you of the assurance you gave me that your personal problems won’t affect your work. Again. This includes punctuality.’

At Jess’s elbow in the bus stop, a man snaps opens a can of cider and she flinches as if a gun has gone off next to her head. Instinctively, her hand covers the lower half of her face and she fingers the scar bisecting her top lip. As if she’s turned the volume of the world down a few notches, Sheila’s voice fades. Only to rise again with a tone sharpened by exasperation. ‘Are you listening?’

‘Yeah. Yes. And I’m grateful for the job . . . opportunity, Sheila. I need this. Izzy needs—’

‘You have your notes. Morag will brief you on the rest.’

As Jess scratches amongst thoughts scattered by the eruption of the cider can, to cobble together the assurance her employer seeks, Sheila ends the call.

The bus arrives and shudders to a halt. The queue collapses into a scrum about the doors.

Jess doesn’t move and stands apart from the disorder.

5

Bathed in sunlight golden enough to conjure a fancy that she might have stepped into another world, one she’d forgotten could exist, Jess walks tree-softened Sheaf Lane.

She might also have been painted into a fine artist’s vista. Each detached period building in the village of Eadric rears proudly behind a lawn as flat as a bowling green, or stands knee-deep in the kind of floral displays that are awarded trophies at flower shows. Tree blossom further enchants an atmosphere likely to arrest even the most preoccupied mind walking through it. And suffering no competition from traffic or human congress, only the fluting and whistling of birdsong pierces the warm air.

A little dazed, Jess peers at the wisteria-wreathed porches to identify numbers on houses that seem intent on being identified by individual names. Nerthus House is the one she seeks.

A sign on the garden wall of the sixth house on the left, The Old Vicarage, indicates that it is Nerthus House. A building so grand, yet imperiously sombre, that Jess is impelled to check the first page of the folder she carries to make sure it’s the right address. But this is it. Where she’s supposed to be. Handsome but funereal Nerthus House.

Self-conscious, she dithers as two elderly women pass on the other side of Sheaf Lane, each accompanied by a small dog. Her surprise turning to deference, Jess tidies her hair and appraises her simple, functional outfit. The women pause to study the outsider, increasing her discomfort. Unsure whether to laugh nervously or apologise for daring to find herself somewhere so pretty and old and affluent, Jess looks at the dog walkers.

Who walk on without a word.

She turns back to the vicarage and approaches the front door, moving as she might between the aisles of an old library favoured by fierce scholars.

Behind her back, the two elderly pedestrians pause and watch her until the front door of Nerthus House opens.

6

A burly form fills the doorway. The severe expression on the woman’s broad, doughy face appears permanent and projects enough disapproval across the threshold to fill the porch.

Jess smiles at the looming presence. ‘Hi. Morag?’

The night carer that Jess is to relieve is already wearing her coat. ‘Didn’t Sheila tell you to be here at nine?’

‘Sorry. Buses—’

‘Cus it’s gone half-past and we ain’t done the handover yet.’ Footnoting the introduction with a scowl, Morag turns her back on Jess and shuffles inside.

Nervous as much as chastened, Jess steps inside Nerthus House and passes from sunlight to be wholly swallowed within a dim, cluttered hallway, the parquet tiles obstructed by bulging plastic bags.

Before her eyes adjust to the thin sepia haze, she trips at the foot of a once elegant staircase, its path upwards vanishing into the gloom of the first storey, the best part of each step buried under the cascade of cardboard boxes and bags that appear to have tumbled from the darkness above.

Jess rights herself and glances through the doorway of a dining room the size of her flat and sees another dim space crowded to capacity with aged furniture, boxes, cases, heaped clothing, more plastic bags made taut by their contents, bales of yellowing newspaper and magazines sloping into disarray.

A mound of stacked, dust-furred belongings forms the centrepiece of the room, built around a dining table rendered near invisible by the obstructions. The structure resembles the kind of crude playhouse that a child would make indoors were it allowed to use every stick of furniture and possession at hand in its construction. A dark mouth at the front of the pile suggests the door of a burrow, or barrow.

Nerthus House is the home of a shut-in: a dark warren that hasn’t been cleared, let alone tidied. In years. Jess fails to conceal her horror at what she’s seeing in such poor, unhealthy light. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Eh?’

‘It’s . . . I mean . . . Not very dementia-friendly?’

‘How Mrs Gardner wanted it. You can’t touch nothing neither. Ain’t you read the notes?’

‘Yeah. Course. But this . . .’

‘All you gotta worry about is the living room, kitchen, her bedroom, bathroom. Rest is off-limits.’

‘Can’t be right. Who’s the appointee? Who’s got power of attorney?’

‘Ask Sheila. Got nothing to do with me.’ Impatient with the interrogation, Morag stamps into the chaotic kitchen at the front of the house, expecting Jess to follow.

As if infected by the disorder of the vicarage, the night-worker hasn’t cleaned up after herself in a while either. Dirty crockery litters counter-tops and fills the sink. An accumulation of grime on each side of the kitchen windows strains the sunlight a dusty brown and adds decades to the already dated cabinets and appliances.

As Morag pockets her phone and hurriedly throws items into her bag, Jess eyes an untidy pile of medication boxes, stacked on the counter just inside the doorway. ‘Memantine Hydrochloride?’

Morag doesn’t look up. ‘What she’s been prescribed. Diary’s there.’

‘Antipsychs aren’t in the notes.’

‘Hallucinations have come back. She’s feisty when she’s disturbed. Make sure she gets it.’

‘Better light might help her for a start. I mean . . .’ With a nod, Jess indicates the visible gloom.

‘You a doctor? Didn’t fink so. You ain’t even a nurse.’

‘State of this place though.’

‘Do as we’re told. She’s fourth age anyway. You won’t be here long.’

‘Charming. Family?’

‘She ain’t had a single visitor since I been here. Three years and counting. She’s through here. I gotta get on.’

7

Beyond the indiscernible features of the living room, the open French windows at the far end of the large space create a rectangle of intense golden light that appears contained there. Light that frames a glimpse of the rear garden’s wild foliage while failing to illumine much of the room. The dazzle forces Jess to squint and raise a hand to shield her eyes.

Partially eclipsing the glow in the lower half of the French windows sits the black silhouette of a shrunken figure within a wheelchair. Mrs Florence Gardner.

Despite the voices and commotion of the carers who enter the room, the client continues to stare outside, her thinning, unkempt hair a fuzzy halo. As dishevelled as her home, the client is dressed in a shabby velvet leisure suit and old slippers.

Crossing the room and seeing more of the high-ceilinged space, Jess’s bewilderment becomes wonder. Evidence abounds of the cultivated tastes and affluence of a long and privileged life reduced to a dust-filmed museum exhibit. A space overfilled with hardwood furniture and bookcases. The available walls are festooned with oils, line drawings and watercolours. A vast fireplace suggests the door to an unlit tunnel. Before the grate, the dull iron of a barbed fire-poker lies upon a basket of cobwebbed firewood. Next to the French windows, antique dinnerware and silverware glimmer inside the murk of a broad, glass-fronted cabinet.

The only vital feature here is the beautiful garden that lies beyond the room. Jess wanders towards the vista. In such light as falls here she might be admiring a watercolour by Monet.

Her scrutiny is drawn across the lawn to the climax of the visible garden where her vision rests upon a wooded glade, part-glimpsed between columns of trees.

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