The Further Side of Fear

by Helen McCloy

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries; Thrillers

Synopsis

Lydia Grey, an American returning to London after many years, is woken by footsteps in the night. There is someone in her room - of that she is sure. But that is also impossible. There is only one door and it is bolted shut. The windows are eight floors up, and are locked against the winter night.

As the noise recedes she switches on her bedside lamp. No one is there. Was it a dream? An illusion of a half-awakened state? Or is someone out to get her?

Release date: March 14, 2014

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 256

Sample

SHE WOKE TO darkness. She could not see the clock. She knew it was well past midnight because there were no sounds from the street. She was not
surprised at having wakened before dawn. She was a light sleeper and she had gone to bed early after a hearty dinner with wine. Now she felt rested and refreshed, too wide awake to go back to
sleep. In a moment she would switch on the bedside lamp and read.

It was then she heard a footstep, muffled by the carpet, but unmistakable. There was someone else in the room.

But that was impossible. There was only one door and it was locked. The windows were eight floors above the ground, sliding panels of glass, also locked against the winter night.

As if she were blind, all perception was concentrated in her ears. Otherwise she might not have heard the next footstep soft as a whisper.

How could this be happening? She had no contact with the shadow worlds of crime or vice or espionage. She possessed nothing of such value that anyone would take this risk to steal it. No one had
reason to fear or hate her. Some people disliked her, but they were on the other side of the Atlantic. This was London. Here she had no enemies and only one old friend. Here encounters were brief.
Hate, intimate as love, takes the same time to ripen.

The footsteps were around the corner of the L-shaped room, between her and the door to the hall. She thought of escape in the other direction. Slide off the bed, slip behind the long curtains
that masked the door to the balcony? Impossible. She couldn’t thread her way in darkness through the unfamiliar pattern of this furniture without making a sound. The balcony would be a trap.
No way back into the room without the intruder blocking her way. No way out but down. Eight floors to the street. A regrettable accident. The jury will recall testimony that the deceased had wine
with her dinner. The post-mortem confirms this.

Lie still. Breathe calmly. Wait. Pray. She couldn’t close her eyes altogether. To be utterly blind is to be utterly vulnerable. Surely darkness would hide the slits between upper and lower
eyelids.

The thick carpet that covered the whole floor was serving the intruder well. If her hearing had not been sharpened by fear, she might not have heard the third step.

Which way was he moving? Or she? Could it be a woman? The former tenant of the flat had been a woman. A letter had come for her the other day addressed to “Miss J. Smith.” She could
have kept a key. Who else might have one? Only Mr. Erskine, the house steward for the whole building. He would undoubtedly have keys to all these apartments, but that meant he could enter this
place at any time in her absence without her knowledge. So he would have no motive for coming by stealth in the middle of the night when she was there. Besides, it was impossible to associate Mr.
Erskine with any invasion of privacy.

More likely the former tenant. Something she had forgotten when she left. Something that had suddenly become so valuable to her that she had to recover it at once. All this has nothing to do
with me, Lydia Grey. I am involved only because I happen to be the new tenant of the place. Nothing personal about it.

How desperately, how illogically the fearful mind clings to its belief in the normal, the civilized, the safe. Second thoughts were less complacent. Why hadn’t the woman come openly by
daylight? Why hadn’t she rung the bell and asked Lydia for whatever she was seeking? If this was something she had to do secretly, why had she come when there was someone here? This way she
was taking a double risk—the risk of breaking the law and the risk of being caught in the act.

Now Lydia became aware of degrees in the darkness. It was not really light. It was simply not-dark against dark, just enough gradation in luminosity to show dark, formless mass defined by
density alone against a thinner dark. Her vision had had time to adjust to the faint light filtered through curtains from street lamps outside.

Slowly one of the masses moved without sound. It was coming toward the bed where she lay. She had to shut her eyes now.

Steps became more audible, too close for comfort. Then silence. Was someone pausing by her bed, looking down at her to make sure she was really asleep? Her eyelids must not flicker. Her
breathing must not quicken. Criminals killed those who saw them, those who could identify them afterward. She must lie still as one already dead.

It seemed to go on forever—the deathly silence, the uncanny sense of being watched by an unseen gaze for an unknown purpose. She had never felt more exposed.

At last the steps moved away. Toward the bookshelves and cupboards that were part of the wall at the other end of the room. A creak, a scrape, a rustle. Someone was going through her books and
papers. Another creak. Even the linen cupboard. How could anyone search without a light? Did the intruder know the place so well that the faint glow seeping through the curtains was enough?

The steps were moving again, this time toward a little pantry which had the courtesy title of kitchen. There was a tiny stove with two burners, an oven and a grill; an even tinier refrigerator
with a single shallow tray for ice cubes. Not that it mattered. You got out of the habit of putting ice in your drinks when you lived where no one else did so.

The pantry door was around the corner from the bed where she lay. A search there would take longer than elsewhere. You would have to move glass and china and aluminum slowly if you wished to
move them with as little noise as possible. Of course you would shut the pantry door to muffle what noise you had to make. Then you might even risk a little light with the door shut.

She heard the door close softly. She hesitated only a moment, then dashed on tiptoe across the thick carpet to the telephone. She couldn’t call the police. It would take minutes to explain
to them who she was and where she lived and what she wanted. She would have to speak so loudly she would be overheard in the pantry. She didn’t have minutes, only seconds. So she would call
Mr. Erskine. He lived on the first floor of the building in an apartment of his own. He knew her voice. A second’s whisper would give him some idea of the situation. He could call the police
for her. He would have time to explain everything to them and he could speak as loudly as he pleased.

Erskine gave all the tenants the private number of his apartment so they could reach him in case of emergency at night when the switchboard of the house telephone down in the lobby was closed.
She dialed his number. She heard the dry, double rasp of an English telephone ringing. Buzz-buzz, pause; buzz-buzz, pause. No answer. Was he deep in sleep? Had she misdialed? She could not take
time to dial again.

Could she risk a longer dash to the hall door now, when the pantry door might open at any moment? No. She had used up the last of her nerve running to the telephone and perhaps the last of her
luck.

Play safe. Go back to bed, dragging the covers up to your chin. Was this the way she had been lying before? Would it matter? People always stirred and turned over in their sleep.

She heard the pantry door open. To her surprise she found she could not bring herself to close her eyes entirely. Perhaps she had not used up the last of her nerve after all, since she still
felt it was worth a risk to be able to see a little.

Bathroom next? No. Movement was in another direction. Had the bathroom been searched before she woke? Was the object of the search something that could not be hidden in a bathroom? The footsteps
were going toward the window, not real footsteps, just a susurrus of leather soles on carpet pile, something like a stealthy animal moving over dry grass. If only this were an animal! The most
dangerous creature on earth is a fellow human being.

The not-darkness, filtered through curtains, was still too weak to show her color or volume, but now mass stood directly in its path, the faint glow showed her contour and one curious detail of
contour—a hint of the sophisticated line of an overcoat cut by a good tailor. So this was a man after all.

His back was toward her, his face toward the windows. She couldn’t estimate his height because his shoulders sagged. That was the only other thing she could see—posture.

The shoulders were eloquent with the honesty of the innocent body that reveals so much more than the schooled, ambiguous face. This man was unhappy.

Who was he? Erskine, who had not answered his telephone a few moments ago? A thief? An utter stranger? Or someone she had thought of as a friend who was secretly an ememy? What did one really
know about another human being?

One of the hands drew a curtain aside for a fraction of an inch. He was looking out into the lamplit London square. An odd thing to do. Most intruders would have got out as quickly as possible,
once the search was over. Why stand looking out at leafless trees, bleached in the cruel glare of sodium lamps? Or was this a look down rather than out? A look down to see if a waiting car was
still parked by the curb?

He dropped the curtain and started to turn. She closed her eyes.

Steps receding. Silence. After a while there was a change in the quality of the silence. She recognized the sudden absence of those inaudible vibrations from the presence of another living,
breathing being that never reached consciousness quite as sound. He was gone.

Why hadn’t she heard the familiar creak of the hall door or the click of its snap lock as he went out?

She waited a little longer. Finally she switched on the bedside lamp. She had been right. She was alone now.

She ran to the hall door. If only she could catch a glimpse of him in the hall without his seeing her. . . .

She paused, one hand on the knob of the snap lock. She had forgotten the bolt. The door was still bolted on the inside.

He had done the impossible. He had got out of the room without using the only exit and he had done it without making the slightest sound.

Was he no more than a half-waking dream of her own, an illusion of the hypnagogic state? Or was he not of this world at all, but merely an appearance, a wish to return to familiar scenes made
visible however briefly, however uselessly, by the sheer force of its own desire? If there were revenants, they would not be happy. They would stand as he had stood in a posture of final
defeat.

She turned the knob of the modern bolt. Another knob, lower down, released the snap lock. She opened the door and looked out. The long, bright corridor was empty, but she heard the hum of an
elevator descending. That was real.

If the intruder was flesh and blood, what he had done was harder to accept than illusion or apparition and therefore more frightening. He had got i. . .