Naomi's Room by Jonathan Aycliffe Page A

Everything seemed to be as I had left it a few days earlier.
    Lewis had brought a tripod. He selected a spot in the centre of the attic and set it up.
    ‘I don’t want to use flash,’ he said. ‘There’s enough light in here if I use a long exposure.’
    He took his time, using different settings, different filters, different timings. As he worked, the temperature seemed to fall steadily. The sense of menace in the room was very strong. It was a struggle to remain there.
    The final shot was to be taken from the window, facing into the attic. There was an old wall at the far end, directly opposite the camera. Lewis set up the tripod and bent down to look through the viewfinder. As he did so, his expression changed. He straightened up.
    ‘Can you feel it?’ he asked. His voice was hushed.
    ‘What? The menace?’
    ‘Menace? No, no it’s not that. It’s something else, I think . . . For God’s sake, man, we’ve got to leave, we’ve got to get out of here.’
    I was startled.
    ‘What is it? What can you feel?’
    But he had already taken hold of his camera and tripod and was making for the stairs.
    ‘Hurry for God’s sake. It’s getting stronger.’
    We ran for the stairs. The tone of Lewis’s voice had made the hairs stand erect on the back of my neck. He was terrified. He did not pause, but scrambled down the steep staircase, dragging the tripod after him. I stumbled behind. At the bottom of the stairs, I turned and slammed the door hard. Panting, I turned the key stiffly in the lock.
    ‘What was it?’ I demanded, pulling for breath. ‘What did you feel up there?’
    Lewis had slumped to the floor, his back against a wall. He was shaking. In spite of the cold, beads of sweat had appeared on his forehead. He raised his head and looked at me. Half a minute, a minute must have passed before he spoke.
    ‘It was like . . .’ When he spoke at last, his voice was faint and hollow. ‘I was alive,’ he said, ‘but I knew I was not truly living. I could see and hear everything around me, but I could not touch it. Except . . .’ He shuddered. ‘Except by reliving my death.’

11
    Lewis left shortly afterwards. He took with him the rolls of Egyptian film, as well as those he had himself taken in the house that afternoon. In spite of his strange panic in the attic, he was more than ever determined to dig to the bottom of the mystery. Almost as soon as he had left the attic and returned downstairs, his mood had changed. Two large glasses of calvados had restored to us both something of our former equanimity and composure. I laughed a little, trying to make light of how we had suddenly turned tail and fled precipitately down those dark steep stairs, like children who have spooked themselves in the night. But Lewis remained sombre.
    ‘I felt it,’ he said. ‘That menace you spoke about. Felt it as soon as I set foot in the attic. Well, it wasn’t so much menace as a feeling of
being
menaced, if you see what I’m driving at.’
    ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I suppose that’s it. As though someone else wished ill of you.’
    ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘Undoubtedly. But more than that.’ He sipped his brandy slowly, less to savour it than to bring his mood down the more gradually. The yellow liquid turned in the glass. ‘As though they wished you harm,’ he continued, ‘physical harm. As though they meant to do you some mischief. Hatred it is, I suppose. Terrible hatred. And resentment, I could feel that too. And something else. Jealousy, I think.’
    ‘Is that what you meant back there when you said you felt compelled to relive your death? That someone wished to kill you? Out of jealousy?’
    He shook his head with an air of reluctance, as though he wished he could say ‘yes’ and leave it at that. It took a while and several sips from the glass to bring him to it.
    ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, something else. It wasn’t there at first. It was quite different in quality to the first impression, to the menace. As