Don't Open Your Eyes

by Gwyneth Jones, Ann Halam

Genres: Horror

Synopsis

The Knight boys are bad news - everyone in the neighbourhood knows it. But when Diesel make friends with Martin Knight, she wonders if maybe people aren't right about them at all.

After Martin dies in a joyriding accident, Diesel is devastated. She finds herself spending more time with Martin's brothers, becoming obsessed with making sure Martin finds rest somewhere he feels safe. Except, the past doesn't seem to want to stay in the past, and Martin doesn't seem to want to stay dead . . .

A spine-chilling teen horror from award-winning writer Gwyneth Jones under the pseudonym Ann Halam. You can find out more about the fiction Gwyneth wrote as Ann Halam here: http://www.gwynethjones.uk/HALAM.htm

Release date: July 19, 2022

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

Diesel found Herbie the squirrel lying on the ironing board, in the middle of a mass of boxes, newspaper padding and upturned chairs; and carried him around with her. Up the stairs and down the stairs, her footsteps sounding loud and strange on the dusty bare wood. Soon 57 Linden Grove would be a house with people living in it. Now it was still empty and strange; promising secrets. She looked into her own new bedroom, her parents’ room, the spare room, the nice big bathroom. In the bathroom she found her mum putting up the yellow shower curtain with the stars on it. ‘Are you doing anything useful?’ said Mum.

‘I’m settling in.’

Mum nodded, and didn’t seem bothered. If it was important to get the shower curtain up, it was just as important for someone to walk around cuddling a soft toy, thinking this house is ours now, this is where we live … Diesel’s parents had talked about getting a proper house with a proper garden for years and years. She had shared the dream for as long as she could remember. She had pictures in her memory-box that she’d drawn when she was five, with trees like green lollipops, and people who were triangles or rectangles, with round heads and crooked legs sticking out at odd angles; titled Our New House. The house in those pictures -a triangle on top of a square, with a curly pig’s tail of smoke sticking out of a chimney pot-had never happened. There had always been something in the way, not enough money or no houses of the right kind to be found. Now the dream had become reality.

She looked down from the window of her new bedroom into their new back garden. It had a long rectangle of tufty lawn, untidy flower borders; and a greenhouse at the bottom. The garden of the empty house next door was more interesting. She could see into it over the wall. There were full-grown trees in it; far too big for a back garden. Through the branches she could see things lurking, like shipwrecks on the green seabed of grass and weeds. Old furniture, and was that a supermarket trolley? And parts of a motor bike? She decided she’d investigate. It didn’t look as if it would be hard to get over the wall.

She could hear the removal men having trouble with the sofa, so she went to the top of the stairs to see what was happening. Diesel’s dad was hopping around, giving the men advice. The men were not taking the advice; they seemed to be enjoying the game of knocking as much paint as they could from the walls and woodwork in the front hall.

‘I’ll tell you what we need to do,’ said the foreman. ‘We need to take it round the back, and in from the garden through those French doors in your living room. We’ll have to knock up the neighbours.’

Everyone went outside, four removal men, Diesel’s dad, Diesel and Herbie, and looked at the houses on either side of number 57.

‘Don’t think we want to knock there,’ muttered the foreman. He meant number 55, the empty house with the jungle for a garden. It looked as neglected as it did at the back. The small front yard held a heap of rubble, some festering litter, and a rotting armchair.

‘It’s empty,’ said Diesel’s dad. ‘I’ll have to get onto the Council about that chair.’

They rang the bell at number 59. Diesel and her mum and dad had met the people who lived there: Mrs Michael, the house-proud old white lady and her son. It was her middle-aged son who was called Michael. Diesel’s family didn’t yet know the family’s proper surname. Michael was out at work. His mother was happy to let them take the sofa through, if they could. The removal men went in to have a look, and it was okay; they wouldn’t have to deal with the awkward corner that made the front hall in number 57 difficult. So through they went. Diesel came to watch, hoping the men wouldn’t bash Mrs Michael’s beautiful clean paintwork. Everything in number 59 was shining and immaculate.

Dad said to Mrs Michael, ‘I’m not very happy about having an empty house next door. It’s a liability. Property that isn’t being looked after can get problems, like damp, and that soon means trouble for the houses on either side. There’s no For Sale board. Do you know what’s going on?’

‘Oh, number 55 isn’t empty!’ said the old lady, surprised: as if Dad must have known this.

‘It isn’t empty? You’re kidding. I’m sure it’s empty.’

‘The boys live there, the Knight boys. With their mother, except if she’s off on one of her sprees. The father left them years ago, of course.’

Diesel saw her dad’s face fall. It was quite a change: one second happy and excited, eyes sparkling, next second all worried and shocked.

‘I really think the estate agent told us that 55 was standing empty.’

‘Well, I don’t know what they told you,’ said Mrs Michael. ‘But it’s not.’

Mrs Michael was as clean as her house. She wore a pink nylon overall, brown stockings and floral slippers with a pink furry trim. Every time Diesel had seen her she’d been wearing the same kind of thing, usually with pink rubber gloves as well: and holding a can of polish and a cloth; or something like that. Her hair was set in gleaming white curls; she was wearing lipstick and powder, very neatly applied, though she was obviously just doing the housework. The first time the Pragers had come to look at number 57, Mrs Michael had popped out into her own garden when they were out at the back, and talked to them over the wall; which was much lower than the wall on the number 55 side, and topped by a fence with roses trained over it. She’d chatted to them through the bare branches of the roses (it had been winter then), and they’d all three felt that they were being checked out. She’d been very friendly every time they’d come back since, so she must have decided they were okay.

Diesel thought Mrs Michael was too clean; too pink-and-white. A younger Diesel (she’d always been accident prone) might have had problems with someone like that living next door. Balls over walls; noisy games, broken windows sort of bother. But she was fourteen now, so she expected she could keep out of trouble.

In all the chats they’d had, Mrs Michael and her son had never mentioned number 55, the house the Pragers believed was empty. It just hadn’t come up.

The removal men took down a section of the fence, where there was a gap between the roses. The sofa went through into the Pragers’ garden. The men took it in through the French doors and then very neatly and quickly put the fence back; with Mrs Michael watching them like a hawk. The unloading went on, all the sunny afternoon. Linden Grove stayed quiet as it had been when they arrived. The comfortable old red brick houses dozed in the sunshine. A few people passed, mostly mothers with young children. A couple of dogs trotted. Cats came out to sit on steps or sniff at the parked cars.

It was exactly the right kind of street. Nothing too scary-posh, but nice. A street where black and brown and white people lived together and nobody worried. Where people smiled as they walked by; where toddlers sat on the kerb and played with their toys; and on Sundays everyone would probably come out with buckets and suds to clean their friendly, shabby cars. No one was cleaning a car this afternoon, but a young couple, man and a woman, were doing some work on theirs. They had a row of tools laid out on the pavement. Diesel could hear them giving each other orders in cheerful, easy-going voices.

She sat on the front wall of number 57 (they had a little front garden inside the wall, rather than rubble and rubbish); feeling as if she’d landed on a new planet. Their block of flats, that big sad barracks, was the spaceship that had carried them from earth. Those rooms with no outside space attached; nothing but blank corridor and a lift that smelled of disinfectant (on its good days), had been their cabins. That so-called balcony, where you couldn’t do anything except hang washing, because it was so narrow, had been their porthole window on the emptiness of outer space. The journey had lasted years, but it was over now. They were safe on the other shore.

She felt like singing, as if she was five again: my wall! my door! my garden! my house!

When the removal men had left, she stopped being useless and idle. She hung up Herbie on one of the coat hooks in the hall so he wouldn’t get mislaid, and helped Mum and Dad. They started putting things together: spreading rugs, arranging furniture; making beds, unpacking pots and pans. They also laid the stair carpet (downstairs was rugs; upstairs nearly-new fitted carpet; left behind by the previous owners). As Mum said, it was the single biggest thing you could do to make a house sound normal. By the time they’d finished this difficult feat, it was ten pm and they were starving. Diesel’s mum heated up some tinned soup. They drank it from mugs, half asleep, and Diesel went off to have a shower and go to bed.

It had been a long day; a day taken out of normal life. Tomorrow Mum and Dad would be back at work and she’d be back in school. Linden Grove would carry on its quiet hours without them until evening, and then they’d come home. Home! Soon, day by day, living here wouldn’t be strange and wonderful. Diesel felt that they should have done more celebrating tonight, because by tomorrow living in the new house would have begun to be ordinary. But never mind, they could have a housewarming party later. Her mum and dad were good at throwing parties. There were plenty of things she wanted to decide about her new room, but they’d wait. She sat Herbie on the pillow, got into bed and closed her eyes.

Someone was playing the TV or the radio very loud.

It wasn’t Mum and Dad downstairs. It was right by her ear.

She sat up. The loud music was coming through the wall from number 55.

So Mrs Michael was right, it wasn’t an empty house. Unless it was an empty house haunted by pop music. She lay down again, thinking, it’s late, they’ll soon switch it off

An hour later, by the luminous figures on her alarm clock, the music was still going on.

It was the radio, not the TV or a music player. She became sure there was no one actually listening, in the room on the other side of her bedroom wall. Radio-world voices were talking into a blank silence through there; and playing their music at full volume unheeded: like a tap left on, with water pouring out of it in an empty bathroom. Someone had fallen asleep, forgetting to turn off the radio.

The walls of the spaceship flats had been thin as cardboard: it was one of the things her parents had hated most about living there. You heard loud music, loud canned laughter from the TV; you heard people quarrelling, people slapping their children and the children wailing. It was miserable sometimes. But at least their neighbours at the flats had never been noisy all through the night. She wondered what kind of bedroom it was, on the other side of her wall. How would it be furnished? With an old supermarket trolley and pieces of motor bike?

There was a succession of different presenters, as the hours went by. They all had the same kind of laid back, soothing late night voices. Other people who were up all night for work or loneliness reasons phoned in, and chatted and laughed as if the radio presenters were their old and dear friends. It never stopped loud and clear, right through ‘til morning.

Diesel came down next morning heavy-eyed, feeling terribly sleepy; with her brain not in gear. Mum and Dad were in the kitchen, looking miserable. She knew they had been kept awake too. Their bedroom wasn’t right next to the guilty bedroom, but the noise had been too loud for anyone in number 57 to escape from it. She’d heard them getting up and coming out onto the landing once. They’d stood there arguing about whether they’d be better off trying to sleep on the couch downstairs. But she’d been too sleepy and sort of hypnotised to call out to them, and in the end they’d just gone back to bed.

‘It was a random incident,’ Diesel’s mum was saying. ‘I’m sure it won’t happen again.’

Dad’s expression was grim. ‘I’m not. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’

‘I bet Mum’s right,’ said Diesel. ‘We couldn’t be that unlucky.’

She understood why her dad was upset. It was only one night, but it was a bad omen, a cruel twist to the story, just when their dream had come true.

When she came home after school Mum had cheered up. They arranged the rest of the furniture; though this was only temporary, because they were going to redecorate. It was fun finding things that had been feared lost in the unpacking, and finding the right places where everything ought to go. Dad arrived back from work and they kept on sorting and shifting together, shouting answers to the quiz questions on early evening TV as they went from room to room; and eating sausage sandwiches (sausages fried by Dad, once he’d discovered the frying pan in a bathroom cupboard). But Diesel caught Mum and Dad looking at each other worriedly, and knew they were thinking about that radio in the night. The move to a real house had been such a treasured fantasy. They’d been looking forward to this wonderful change so much. Nothing, nothing was supposed to go wrong.

‘Look at the state of that place,’ she heard her dad muttering to her mum. ‘Just think about it. It’s a dump; like no other house on the street: that tells the whole story. I could kick myself for not asking the estate agent a few more questions. I’m sure he said it was empty.’

‘Don’t worry Leo,’ said Mum, ‘Maybe it won’t happen again.’

About nine in the evening a car pulled up nois. . .