The Stuff of Nightmares (24 page)

‘Is Zach still giving you grief?’ asked Mum.

‘Nothing I can’t handle,’ I replied.

‘You mean he’s still—’

‘Haven’t seen or spoken to him in days,’ I interrupted.

‘You’re sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure. He’s got the message now.’

‘About time. See you later, love,’ said Mum.

‘Bye, Mum.’

I put down the phone. It started to ring. I picked it up.

‘Hello?’

Silence. I put down the receiver. Today was going to be a long day, just like yesterday and the day before that and every day for the last month.

I walked through the reception area of my building, my heartbeat now audible in my ears. The lunchtime ordeal was about to begin. After a quick
reconnaissance
through the glass doors, I took a deep breath, opened them and stepped outside. The warm spring air stroked at my face. It was a beautiful day, but it was like something seen out of the corner of one eye. I was too busy looking for him instead.

Sometimes when I came out for my lunch, he’d be on the pavement waiting for me. Sometimes he liked to show himself. Most of the time he didn’t. When all this first started, if he was there I’d ignore him and just walk past without saying a word. And when he wasn’t I’d breathe a deep sigh of relief as I headed off to buy my sandwiches. But on those occasions I’d get the inexplicable feeling that I was being watched, followed. I’d turn suddenly to catch him out before he could duck out of the way or hide behind another pedestrian. Sometimes I actually saw him following me. I tried ignoring him, confronting him, reasoning with him – but nothing worked, because he wanted nothing. Except me.

‘I love you, Kendra. Come back to me,’ he’d say softly.

No, Zach.
No
, Zach.
No, Zach
.

Leave me alone. Please, please leave me alone. I want to move on with my life. I want you to do the same. No, Zach …

That was when we first broke up. But the phone calls and standing outside my apartment building and waiting for me outside my work premises and the emails alternating between abusive and pleading had all taken their toll. Strange, the power of words. Four
words
to be precise. Sent to me every hour on the hour, twenty-four seven. He must’ve written some kind of program to send out the message automatically. I bought myself some anti-spam software and blocked every address of his that I could think of. But email addresses are ten a penny so it didn’t work. And on top of that, the letters and the post-it stickers on my car started. Four little words.

You belong to me
.

Once I came home, and the moment I set foot in my flat I knew something was wrong. I went into the living room, the bathroom, the kitchen, the spare bedroom, then finally my bedroom. Nothing had been taken. Nothing had been touched – except my bed. My duvet was on the floor, my top sheet pulled back and my fitted sheet, the sheet I slept on, was still wet from his stains. It took more than a few horrified moments for me to realize what I was seeing. I spun round, my heart charging. Was he behind me? Behind a door somewhere, waiting for me to come home? Waiting to …

I ran from the flat and out of the building, then immediately called the police.

Once I’d explained that I didn’t think
he
was in my flat any more, the police had sure taken their own sweet time arriving. Two male officers finally arrived after more than half an hour has passed.

‘Has anything been taken?’ asked one, while the other wandered around my flat.

‘No. Not as far as I can see.’

‘The door isn’t damaged,’ the officer pointed out.

‘Zach must’ve picked the lock or something,’ I replied.

‘Does he have a key?’

‘I made him give back his front-door key when we split up but he might have made a duplicate before he did,’ I said.

‘Well, as nothing has been taken and nothing has been damaged, there’s not a lot we can do.’

‘Look what he did to my bed.’ I pointed furiously, my cheeks burning with anger and more than a little embarrassment.

‘But for all we know it could’ve been done … with your permission, at your request,’ said the officer. ‘When you two were together maybe …’

‘And I’m telling you we are not together and haven’t been for weeks,’ I insisted.

But I was wasting my time. It had taken them more than thirty minutes to arrive. It took them less than five to leave. I stripped the bed and put the sheets in a bin liner. I was never going to sleep on them again. After phoning around for a locksmith, I turned the mattress and remade the bed. But once it was made, I sat down on the edge of it and sobbed myself into a headache. The phone began to ring. Like some kind of Pavlovian reaction, I stopped breathing. My breath actually froze in my lungs.

‘Hi, sweetheart …’ Zach’s voice was low and soft. ‘Did you like my present? Just a little something to show you how much I love you.’

‘You are a sick bastard, Zach!’ I screamed at him.

‘I love you,’ he whispered as I slammed down the phone. I knew then that Zach was never going to let me go.

I finally went to bed, dreading him. My front door lock had been changed, but I was so desperately afraid that even a new lock wouldn’t be enough to stop him. I fell into a fitful sleep and woke up terrified, more than half expecting Zach to be standing over me with a knife or maybe even a gun in his hand.

If I can’t have you …

When Zach and I first split up, my good friend Gina tried to tell me that what he was doing was romantic. She doesn’t see it that way any more. None of my friends or family see it that way. Only Zach thinks it’s romantic – at least, that’s what I assume is going on in his twisted head. Only Zach believes that, in time, I’ll come to realize just how much he loves me and go back to him.

He’s not outside my office building today. But it doesn’t matter, because my head is full of him and my eyes are looking out for him and my ears are waiting for his voice to call out my name with that way of his.

‘
Kendra …
’

Whichever way I turn, I can see no way out.

So I guess, if he hasn’t won already, then he’s winning. Because Zach is my whole, miserable life and my whole, miserable life is Zach.

It had started … I could set my watch by the incessant ringing of my doorbell. Nine p.m. without fail. Day in.
Day
out. Maybe if I just sat quietly, in the dark, he’d go away. Maybe he’d think I was out. Maybe he’d think I’d moved.

Maybe …

‘
Kendra …
’

I jumped, then hugged myself as if he could hear me jumping. Why wouldn’t he leave me alone?

‘I know you’re in there … I just want to talk to you …’

‘Go away, Zach,’ I screamed silently at him. ‘Mrs Guy upstairs is going to give me hell for this.’

I’d only met her for the first time that morning. Strange that I’d lived in these flats for almost six months and it was only under these embarrassing, ridiculous circumstances that I’d met the middle-aged, blonde woman who lived directly above me. But then I didn’t know any of my neighbours. I barely had a nodding relationship with the woman who lived across the hall.

I replayed that morning’s conversation over in my head. Mrs Guy’s words rang out, clear as a bell and just as hard to ignore.

‘How much longer do you expect this to continue, Kendra?’

I said, ‘I don’t know what you mean, Mrs Guy.’

I thought:
Mind your own business, you nosy old cow. I don’t need you to contend with as well as Zach
.

‘I’m directly above you, and as the flat opposite to you is empty, I’m the one who has the most to put up with here. How much longer will I, and everyone else
in
this building, have to put up with your boyfriend pressing on your doorbell until all hours?’

I tried to control my temper – and failed miserably.

‘For as long as
I
have to put up with it,’ I said coldly.

‘It’s not just the ringing of the doorbell that I’m down here about either. I hear him shouting for you. Every night it’s the same thing.’ Mrs Guy folded her arms across her chest, flattening her breasts. ‘Why don’t you tell him to stop?’

‘I’ve tried, Mrs Guy. I don’t like him ringing my doorbell any more than you do.’

‘Well, I’m not the only one to mention it, you know,’ Mrs Guy told me.

‘I don’t doubt it.’

No one would dare ring her doorbell till all hours.

She frowned. ‘If you really want to do something about it, why don’t you call the police?’

‘I’ve tried that too, Mrs Guy,’ I said patiently. ‘They can’t … won’t do anything until he actually does something destructive.’

‘Is that what they said?’

‘That’s what they meant.’

‘Well, I’m not prepared to put up with it for much longer. If you won’t do something about it then I will.’

‘Be my guest.’

I didn’t mean to but I slammed the door in her face.

Now he’s beating at my door.
Go away, Zach. Why won’t you go away?

‘Kendra, I just want to talk to you. Open the door.’

And he kept at it, slamming his fists against the door over and over again. Minutes came and went and the rhythm of his drumming and calling out didn’t slacken once.

‘
Kendra, open this door—
’

But all at once the pounding stopped. I froze. Around me the darkness echoed with the sound of the sudden silence. In a way the silence was almost worse. Silence can contain anything your imagination can conjure up.

‘Kendra, please … please, darling … open the door. I need to talk to you … please, darling … I just want to talk to you …’

I stood up slowly. My feet, my legs were no longer mine.

‘Please darling … just let me in …’

I swayed slowly, like a snake in a basket weaving to the sound of the snake charmer’s music.

‘Please, darling …’

I walked slowly, softly towards the door.

God, I was frightened …

Don’t open the door, Kendra. Don’t be so stupid
.

Slowly, softly, I moved forward. I just wanted it to be over. I just wanted him to leave me alone.

‘I can see you, Kendra … Please open the door …’

Soft, seductive words. Breathed rather than said.

I hugged my arms even tighter around me. My arms were mine. My legs were his. I was almost at the door.

Don’t open the door, Kendra …

It was almost as if there was an invisible cord between Zach and me – a cord at which we were both dragging and heaving. A tug-of-war (or was this love?) for my body, my soul, my destiny.

And I was losing.

I put my hand out towards the doorknob.

‘I want a word with you, young man.’

I froze again. Mrs Guy’s voice was ice water thrown into my face.

‘Why don’t you leave Kendra alone?’

‘What happens between Kendra and me is none of your business.’ Zach was furious. He knew, as I knew, that the spell was broken.

‘Yes it is my business when you prevent me and everyone else in these flats from sleeping.’

‘If you didn’t listen at bloody key holes then you’d get to sleep faster,’ Zach fumed.

‘Don’t take that tone with me, young man,’ Mrs Guy said.

I wanted to laugh. I wanted to scream with laughter.

Go get him, Mrs Guy!

‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself. What do you hope to achieve by pestering Kendra every evening? Is she supposed to come back to you when you wear her patience thin? Is she supposed to feel sorry for you?’

‘
Mind your own business!
’ Zach yelled.

I knew this wasn’t the real Zach outside my front door. Zach is … was the gentlest, friendliest, kindest man I’d ever known. He never said a cross word to me or anyone, he never argued. When we were together he
always
let me make the decisions. Always. He never bought anything unless I said it was all right. He couldn’t even buy a sandwich without getting my OK first. He never had an opinion or a thought of his own without asking for my approval – and that was the trouble.

I grew uneasy, then unhappy with our relationship, and it took a while before I realized why. Zach was wearing me down. I had enough trouble being me, without having to be him and me at the same time. So it got to the stage when I grew tired of trying and that’s when I purposely set out to rile him, to provoke him, but even then he never rose to the bait. He’d smile or shrug or tell me he loved me – as if that was the solution to everything. Once I really believed it was. Now I knew different.

So, as calmly, as carefully as I could, I told Zach that I no longer wanted to go out with him.

‘It’s not you,’ I told him. ‘It’s me. I just … I just feel we need a break from each other. I need some time, some space.’

At first Zach just laughed it off. He thought I was joking. When he realized I was perfectly serious, his smile faded. And the new Zach appeared. The Zach who was a stranger – a dangerous stranger.

‘Why don’t you leave the poor girl alone! Go on! Hop it!’ Mrs Guy urged. ‘Your sort make me sick.’

‘What sort would that be?’ Zach asked.

I held my breath.

‘The bullying, domineering sort who thinks that
might
is right,’ Mrs Guy shot straight back at him. ‘The sort with such low self-esteem that the only way you can feel good about yourself is to make others feel worse. You’re pathetic.’

‘Go to hell.’

‘I’m going to stand right here until you leave this building,’ Mrs Guy said icily. ‘If you’re going to keep me up all night I might as well spend it on the stairwell. At least it’s cooler out here than in my flat.’

‘You interfering, old—’

‘There’ll be none of that language either, thank you very much,’ Mrs Guy cut in.

Silence.

Then, to my intense surprise, I heard the sound of Zach’s retreating footsteps thundering down the steps.

‘Kendra … Kendra, are you there? Can I come in?’

Reluctantly I opened the door. I could guess what was coming.

‘Mrs Guy, if you’ve come to complain again then I—’

‘What d’you mean – complain?’ Mrs Guy frowned. ‘Look, can I come in?’