by Mark Morris
“Fell out of my wheelchair.”
Relief, mixed with irritation. “You daft old cow. Are you hurt?”
“No. Help me up.”
She was lighter than she looked, as if her bones were hollow. “You should be in a care home, being abused by minimum wage immigrants, not doing all this.”
Her breathing was even more laboured than usual. “I’ll call the doctor.”
A cackle. “No you bloody won’t. Stop fussing, man. I’m fine. Nothing broken. Now what happened?”
“You know what happened. Nice touch changing your accent, by the way. And how did you stop yourself from wheezing like a dray horse?”
“What did it say?”
“You know bloody well what it said.”
“Brendan, I’ve been on the floor for the last half an hour.” He glanced at the desk. The microphone she used to relay the messages was lying out of reach. If that thump he’d heard had been the sound of Helen tipping out of her wheelchair, then she couldn’t have been responsible for the voice.
“I told you. Spirit. Spirit’s come back to you, Brendan. After all these years, it’s come back.”
Mad. He’d met scores of psychics over the years who were convinced they were a hotline to the other side. He’d always assumed their so-called spirit guides were a symptom of fragmenting mental health issues. Perhaps he’d judged them too harshly. Hello spirit, it’s me, Brendan. Nah. She was messing with him. Had to be. “Is this some kind of elaborate scheme to make me think I’m going mental?” In a weird way it would make sense. He’d convinced her all those years ago that her son was safe and happy on the other side; and now, with her health fading fast, she needed to convince him that he wasn’t a fat Irish fraud.
Helen was watching him with the unblinking gaze of a fundamentalist proselytiser. “It’s Spirit, Brendan. You know I’m right. And you’re scared.”
“Only thing I’m scared of is spending the rest of my days locked in here with you.” Christ, he needed a drink. And he needed to flee this room, which stank of stale smoke and a darker, unidentifiable odour that he suspected may be encroaching death.
Helen wheeled after him. “Shitting yourself, you are.”
“Stop following me around. It’s like being hounded by a fucking Irish Davros.”
“You know I’m right, Brendan. You know it.”
Drinking straight out of the bottle, he rooted around for the magnet pen. Aha. There it was, trapped under the wheel of the drinks trolley. He should pluck the earpiece out and throw it at her. “If Spirit has ‘come back’, then what do I need you for?”
“You turn your back on this gift you’ve been given, you’ll regret it for the rest of your days.”
He’d had it. He rounded on her. “There is no gift, woman. There never fucking was, and you playing mind games with me won’t change that.”
There. It was done. He should have rammed this home years ago. He waited for one of her follow-up barbs, but none came. She merely smiled sadly, and then trundled off back to her room.
* * *
It was gone noon when he lurched awake on the couch, his head pulsing from dehydration. Desperate to prove that Helen was messing with him, he’d been up till the wee hours drinking and trawling through ‘Find Cheryl’ sites for any mention of those on-the-nose snippets. There was nothing. His phone was buzzing on the table, and it took him a while to muster up the co-ordination to reach for it. The number was withheld. It was either a bailiff or a potential client. He havered for a second, and then answered.
“Mr. Kelly?”
He didn’t recognise the voice. “Yes?”
“This is Jonathan Golding from the Daily Mirror. The family of Cheryl Palmer has contacted me. They said you’ve been helping them?”
Jesus. He wasn’t sure how to respond, settled on, “I see.”
“They’ve invited me to come along and experience for myself how you operate. Would that be a problem?”
Yes it bloody would be. He’d been down that road before and it hadn’t gone well. “My schedule is quite packed, Mr. Golding. When were you thinking?”
“Now. We’re right outside.”
Shite. Brendan staggered to the window and peered out. Gathered on the porch were Mrs. Palmer, Patrick the dead-eyed wonder son, and a skinny man who looked up and waved before Brendan had time to duck out of sight. Fair play – taking him by surprise was smart. He could tell the journo to sling his hook, but how would that look? He’d only be opening the door to ‘Psychic Brendan runs Scared from Scrutiny’.
“Give me a minute.” He hung up, drained the last smidgen of whisky to quell the panic, and made for Helen’s door. Whether she was stringing him along or not, what did it matter? He needed her. He didn’t dare do this alone. “Helen.” No answer. “We’re in trouble, Helen. I need you. Helen.” Still nothing. What if she’d died in there? No, he couldn’t think like that. She was just punishing him.
A knock came on his own front door, followed by, “Mr. Kelly?” Someone must have buzzed the gang into the building.
“Helen. Please. I didn’t mean what I said last night. I need you. And Spirit.”
“Mr. Kelly?”
Shite. He couldn’t put it off any longer. Hopefully she’d come to her senses. Wait – what about the earpiece? Hadn’t he removed it last night? He pushed his little finger inside his left ear. There was a lump deep in there, which he hoped was the device and not a clump of earwax.
He smoothed his hair, crunched a mint, and then let them in. Mrs. Palmer gave him an apologetic smile, Patrick was his usual charming self, and the journo launched into the type of smarm offensive Brendan used to excel at: “So kind of you to find the time, Mr. Kelly. Call me Johnny.”
Mrs. Palmer perched on the edge of the couch, and her son flumped down next to her, radiating passive aggression. Johnny’s eyes darted around the lounge-cum-reading room, gathering details he’d no doubt regurgitate later for his readership. And he’d have a field day with that. With its velvet curtains, old lamps, and cloths draped on every surface, the room could easily double as a set for a mini-series about a psychic. Helen’s work, of course.
“Mind if I record this?” Johnny asked.
“Be my guest. I have nothing to hide.” Except for the septuagenarian in the spare room. He automatically touched his ear. Come on, Helen.
“I have some questions,” Johnny smarmed. “But those can wait. How about we launch straight into it?”
Without being asked, Mrs. Palmer handed Brendan the blue scarf. He closed his eyes. Come on, Helen. “Spirit. Spirit? Are you there, Spirit?”
As the seconds dragged into minutes, his shirt collar seemed to tighten around his throat. He was beginning to sweat. “I’m getting… a sense of warmth.”
No one reacted to this. Too vague. Could mean anything. “There’s something else… something else…” Come on, Helen. He found himself praying to hear that voice, whatever that might mean. But there was nothing. Of course there was nothing.
Then, into his ear came the familiar, hiss-puff, hiss-puff. He almost cried out in relief. He knew she wouldn’t let him down. She’d come up with something.
“Spirit? Do you have something to say to me? Please, Spirit. I’m open to whatever you have to show or tell me.”
Hiss-puff. Hiss-puff. Dead air, then: “Fish-fingers on pizza.”
Another quirky phrase delivered by that smooth toned voice. Spirit or Helen, what did it matter? He opened his eyes. “I’m getting… do the words, ‘fish-finger pizza’ mean anything to you?”
Mrs. Palmer looked confused. Not the reaction he was looking for.
“Does that mean something to you, Mrs. Palmer?” Come on, woman.
She shook her head. “No. Not that I can recall. Patrick?”
“Nope,” Patrick said, gleefully.
“It means som
ething to me,” Johnny said. “Here.”
He held out his phone, and Brendan, who could now feel sweat dribbling down his sides, automatically took it. On it was a comment left under the Find Cheryl Facebook page: ‘OMG, remember how Cheryl used to looooove fish-fingers on pizza????’
“I put that up last night under a proxy account. Among others. It’s what we call a false fact.”
Shite, shite, shite. Almost exactly how he’d been taken down last time.
Mrs. Palmer was looking bewildered. “Johnny laid a trap for him, Mum,” Patrick said, with a triumphant smirk. “And he fell for it. I told you he was a faker.”
Helen was doing her disappearing act again. Think. “I can’t explain how that slipped through. Spirit can be… sometimes it can be… Hang on, what about the other things Spirit told me? Chips and rice, and… the other one.” He’d gone blank. Worse than blank. He was heading for a full-on panic attack. “Those weren’t online. You said so yourself, Mrs. Palmer.”
“Both phrases are mentioned in cached pages,” Johnny said. “Cheryl’s late uncle mentioned her penchant for chips and rice, and one of Patrick’s ex-girlfriends put the Mary Poppins reference on her blog in the early two thousands.”
Bloody Helen. Bloody, bloody Helen. So it was she after all. He’d almost believed that Spirit nonsense for a second. What was it, some sort of elaborate revenge scenario? Had she been biding her time until a press-worthy client eventually pitched up in order to nudge him towards another public shaming? If so, he had to admit, she’d played a blinder.
He was going to fucking kill her.
“People like you are vultures,” Patrick spat. “You need to be stopped.”
Mrs. Palmer gave him a look of such eloquent disappointment and pain he almost felt it physically.
Say something. “Mrs. Palmer, you were the one who came to me, remember?”
“Don’t fucking talk to her,” the son roared. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
Mrs. Palmer fixed her eyes on the carpet.
“I bring comfort,” Brendan said, aiming this at Johnny, and unable to mask the desperation. “I bring comfort to the grieving. That’s all I’ve ever offered.”
“Were you bringing comfort to the woman who took her own life after she found out you were a fraud, Mr. Kelly?” Johnny asked, not bothering to hide the smirk.
The sweat coating Brendan’s sides turned to ice.
“She’d lost her only son, I believe.”
The journo was saying something else, but Brendan wasn’t listening. Mrs. Palmer was leaning forward, frowning at something on the carpet. Next to the heel of her sensible shoe sat a familiar white, maggoty shape, complete with a sliver of yellow earwax.
Gave
Michael Bailey
“Without individuals we see only numbers: a thousand dead, a hundred thousand dead, ‘casualties may rise to a million.’ With individual stories, the statistics become people – but even that is a lie, for the people continue to suffer, in the numbers that themselves are numbing and meaningless.”
Neil Gaiman, American Gods
87
Michael Shoe could no longer give, although he tried once more. A pint. Eight weeks prior he had tried for his second to last time, and eight weeks prior to that was his third to last. Perhaps the counts would be high enough this time, he hoped. Three pints of blood wasted. Twenty-four weeks’ worth. He gave, but no one took anymore.
“What about platelets?”
The nurse blinked and pressed her lips until she made a flat line out of her mouth with small brackets on either side.
“Not today, but in eight weeks you can try again.”
“It takes two days for platelets to recover,” he told her. “Whole takes eight weeks.”
Her new look told him she knew this. She was the nurse. She was the one educated in medicine, not the patient. She understood blood. She was also the one who had argued with him the last time he gave. Her name was Stacy, according to the badge.
“The US Food and Drug Administration allows donations of whole blood only once every fifty-six days,” he told her, because he already knew the regulations and had had similar arguments with nurses like Stacy over the years, “but with every pint of whole blood, a donation of platelets can also be made within that same fifty-six-day window. Or six platelet donations.”
If his blood was bad, or low in red cell counts, or whatever the condition may be, at least he had his platelets. He could stop taking his blood pressure medication, and the aspirin; perhaps that would help. Statistically, he only had a few years left that he could donate.
Michael returned a generous smile.
“Yes,” she said, “but State regulations prohibit simultaneous whole blood and platelet donations, and at your age—”
“What does my age have to do with anything? I’m eighty-seven and healthy.”
“Look, Mr… Shoe,” she said, reading the form in front of her, “if you must give, you can return in two days for platelets. Snacks and orange juice are down the hall.”
“I’ll see you in two days,” he told her.
The brackets around her lips disappeared. “You’re a generous man, Mr. Shoe. If more people were so giving, the world wouldn’t be how it is today.” Her words broke at the end.
She was thinking about her mother, he knew, or her daughter or son or husband or whoever had been taken from her. Someone close, he could tell.
“You give and give and give,” Michael said, “but the world keeps shrivelling.”
She turned, and so did he.
There were millions of people like her, like Stacy, only millions, with loved ones falling like dead autumn leaves. Falling by the millions.
The media, what was left of it, recently put world population below a billion.
The world covered in fallen corpses, he imagined.
Soon the tree of life would bare all.
86
He gave because the world needed blood. Lots of it. Every fifty-six days the date on his calendar was circled like a red ensō symbol, like the outline of a blood cell. That’s how long it took to fully recover the pint lost with each donation. In between the circled days, he’d throw in a day for platelets. The ‘clear blood gravy’, someone once told him.
Every eight weeks for whole blood, every eight weeks for platelets, staggered for optimal donating.
Michael first gave at sixteen, although at the time it had required a signed slip of paper from his parents. That was seventy years ago, back when world population was moving in the opposite direction. Now, at eighty-six, he could still remember witnessing that drastic flip from acceleration to deceleration.
He knew the exact number, then, the way every boy and girl knew the number: 17,989,101,196… the highest population of people ever recorded – nearly eighteen billion. They taught the number in schools, more so when the number drastically plummeted.
Michael ate his snacks and drank his orange juice and noted the new count displayed on the screen in the lobby: 2,472,499,606 – fewer than two and a half billion people remaining on the planet. One could find the current number anywhere, and watch it dwindle in real-time. 605, the last three digits clicked. 604, 603, 594, 589. In those few seconds, twenty-six people died.
A countdown to the end of mankind.
One was supposed to wait between ten and fifteen minutes after donating blood to let the dizziness settle, for a chance to rehydrate. Four glasses of liquids, he’d read a long time ago.
Michael drank, and took this time to calculate numbers. The world loved numbers.
The last three numbers were now 570.
He jotted the math into his notebook. For seventy years he’d given blood religiously. Every fifty-six days, nearly on the day.
70 x 365.25 = 25,567.5, or the number of days in seventy years (including leap years).
/> 25,567.5 ÷ 56 = 457 (rounded up), or the number of times he’d given whole blood in those seventy years, and the number of times he’d given platelets… also the number of pints.
457 x 16 = 7,312. The blood he’d donated, in liquid ounces.
7,312 ÷ 128 = 57.125. That same number converted to gallons. 57 gallons.
And that was whole blood, not counting platelets.
How many people were affected by his blood, how many had it gone to? He was a universal donor, for platelets anyway, so it must have gone to some use. His red blood had only gone to those with AB blood types, he knew, but AB was in high demand for both study and to keep those with AB healthy. How much became wasted over the years? How much utilised? How much could he give before he, too, died with the masses?
Others in the waiting room watched the reverse death counter on the screen the way children used to watch cartoons; rarely did they blink.
80
Michael gave platelets because his red cells were still in recovery mode. He glanced long enough at the world population counter to summon a memory. At eighty, he was still capable of remembering the past.
“History repeats itself,” his father had said. Michael was ten, then. The phrase had stuck with him for seventy years, hiding until now, hibernating. The counter had awoken the memory at this precise moment because history had in fact repeated itself.
A bicycle accident had sent him head-over-handlebars and crashing into the street gutter, a broken bottle slicing his wrist from palm to elbow. He’d lost a lot of blood in what appeared to be a botched suicide attempt, and staggered his way home, pale and shivering, holding the wound. World population was on the rise then, somewhere around seventeen billion. “I remember the number,” his father had said, sitting next to his hospital bed as they watched a small screen, “the population when I was your age. The biggest number I’d ever heard of: four billion! The world only had four billion people. Can you imagine?” At ten, Michael couldn’t imagine, and had nearly decreased the population by one.