Now You See Me

by Chris McGeorge

  “Christ, Tim,” Pru said, obviously agreeing with Edmund, “can you say that any less creepily? Like get rid of her, or make her disappear, or... No, you know what—they’re all equally bad.”

  Tim didn’t react. “I’m just being real,” he said, in that same cold voice he’d adopted since the crash. “I’m seeing what is in front of us, and I’m thinking about how we can resolve the situation. We can’t turn back the clock. We can’t undo this. It happened, and as a result of our actions—” despite his fear, Edmund felt a kinship to him when he said “our” “—this woman is dead. This woman, who happened to be alive and be on that road at the time our car was too. Our world has changed, whatever happens now. We can never go back to a time before it happened. Nothing we ever do is ever going to make this different. Our world has changed. I’m just trying to make it a little brighter.”

  “But what can we do?” Edmund said. “How can we ever be the same again? Because—she’s dead. She’s bloody dead. I did that.” Edmund started to sob again.

  “No,” Robert said, his face stony. “We did that. We all did.”

  “Let’s go upstairs,” Tim said, “we’ll go in one of the back rooms, get Edmund a drink, and we’ll talk about what happens next.”

  Rachel nodded. “We’re not going to get very far when our eyes will always go to her—the body, I mean.”

  “This is so crazy,” Pru said. “I’m dreaming, right. This is some messed-up nightmare.”

  Edmund was staring at the woman. This picture—the one he was seeing—would be imprinted on his mind forever. Her lying there in front of the fire. Blood starting to clot from the wound on her forehead. Her legs bent out of shape.

  “Edmund,” someone was saying. Tim.

  He looked around. Everyone was staring at him, looking concerned. They should be bloody concerned. He had—Oh God.

  “Edmund,” Tim said again, “let’s go upstairs. Away from all this. And let’s think.”

  All he wanted to do was to get away from the body. So he nodded. But some part of him wanted to stay too. This is what you did, a voice inside him chirped. This is what you did, and you want to run away? What gives you the right?

  Edmund ignored the voice, and let himself be led upstairs by Tim. Pru, Robert and Rachel followed behind. Amber was the last to go up. She heard the door close behind the others and she went to the body. She looked at the woman with something like admiration. “How does it feel?” she whispered, wishing the woman could answer. “How does it feel to be broken? How does it feel to be without hope?” She reached over and threw another log on the fire, replacing the fireguard in front. As she passed, she drew her wrists over the woman’s eyes, which flickered in a small and imperceptible motion. “How does it feel to be dead?”

  Amber shrugged. “Sucks to be you.” And smiled.

  She took the stairs two at a time and paused at the door at the top—the basement was laid out so when you were at the very top, you couldn’t see down into it anymore.

  A rustle. Amber listened, not even sure if she had heard it, or if it was just another noise made by the crackling fire. She waited a few more moments, heard nothing else and shut the door.

  In front of the fire, no one noticed that the woman’s eyes had opened.

  Her right index finger twitched.

  Chapter Sixty

  Three years ago...

  The last person. A black hound and a horse head. Why did she remember that?

  Because there was only... Darkness.

  Pain. Everywhere. Arms. She couldn’t feel her arms. She tried to move them. Left twitched, but her right wasn’t there. Or rather it was, but it wouldn’t move. Her legs—there was nothing, no movement.

  She felt hot, blazing hot. That kind of whole searing hot that came with a bonfire. Or a fireplace. She tried to open her eyes. Her left opened but her right stung with something, a red liquid that came pouring in. She smelled it—blood. Her left eye was fuzzy, couldn’t focus on anything. But as she blinked, things started to come into focus.

  Confusion. What happened? Where was she? The last thing she remembered? Train. A train—she was on a train. But she got off the train, didn’t she? Yes, she had been walking somewhere. It was dark. Something ran out of battery, and it had got darker. Her phone. And then, a sound. The sound of a—car. Oh God, it had hit her—and then—she had hit the ground. She had thought she had died, but—then here.

  A few more blinks and a scene presented itself. A basement—tables, a fireplace, chairs, a rug she was lying on.

  Everything hurt. Existence felt like something she had to fight for. She reached out with her hand and felt the perimeter of where she could reach. Hard, cold floor but then something else. Something swishy. She grasped it and pulled whatever it was into her vision.

  A coat. Nothing that would help.

  She felt an overwhelming sadness. “Help,” she tried, but found the word quiet and gargled. Then she clamped her mouth shut.

  Why wasn’t she in a hospital? Why hadn’t someone found her? Unless—whoever had hit her had brought her here. And if that was the case, then she didn’t want to alert them.

  How was she going to get out of this? She couldn’t feel her legs—let alone walk, let alone run. She shifted her head to try to see around the room. Stairs. Stairs—she couldn’t get upstairs. She was stuck.

  Call for help? Not call out, but maybe there was something she could find to get a message out to people. Maybe—what was one of those things called? A phone, yes, a phone.

  The coat.

  She reached her hand out again and pulled the coat even closer. She patted it down, fully expecting to find nothing. But there was something—in a pocket. Something rectangular and solid. She tried the zip, but every time she pulled, the coat went with it. It wasn’t going to work when she had no way to stop it.

  A phone. She knew, in her mind, that it was a phone. And she couldn’t get to it because of a bloody zip. To her, the phone meant instant salvation—as though she’d use it and instantly the police would come and the doctors would come and the paramedics would come and scoop her up and fix her.

  She tried pulling on the zip again to the same result.

  How was she going to—She thought of something. She pulled the coat over, so it was in front of her face, blocking the room out of view entirely. She moved the fabric as close as she could and then bit down on the corner. She pulled the zip, and the fabric held. The pocket opened. She put her hand in and brought out a phone.

  Relief plunged into her like a wave. This was it. All she needed.

  She tapped it. Thank God it wasn’t password protected. She tapped the phone symbol and then tried dialing 999. But her fingers weren’t working very well. At least one of the nines always came out as an eight or a six. She kept trying—over and over and over to the same result. She tried one last time and that was the worst of the lot—856.

  Something shifted upstairs. A creak in the building. Almost like someone was up there. Waiting for her. A monster, just biding its time, coming to gobble her up. She thought back to all the monsters she had been scared of when she was a child. The monster under the bed, the monster in the closet, the ghost in the basement of the hotel they used to stay at in Skegness. The monster above her now, in her mind, was all those combined.

  She didn’t have time to waste not tapping three numbers. And that meant she definitely couldn’t tap out Robin’s number... Robin... Robin was...? So she just tapped the phone button and saw a name at the top of the recent calls.

  Matthew McConnell.

  Just a name. She managed to press it. Someone. Anyone. To get help.

  She propped the phone against her ear.

  Dialing. Dialing for a long time. Crackling. White noise. Of course, she was in a basement. No signal, or very little. And then, “Hello...”

  “Hello,” she whispere
d harshly.

  “...who...this...?”

  “Matthew...McConnell?”

  “...yes, who is...?”

  “It’s me, Sam.”

  “Sam...?”

  “Sam Ferringham. Please help me. Oh God.”

  “...who...?”

  She could barely hear him. She needed to tell him where she was. She strained her head up to see any landmarks. Then she remembered she was inside. So, anything that could tell him where she was. But she couldn’t move her head far, before something in her neck cracked. She screamed in pain and stopped. She was looking above the fireplace, as far as she could go, and two monsters looked down at her.

  “There’s...a black hound...”

  “What are you...about?”

  “A black hound...and a horse head.”

  “A black...and...horse...what?”

  “The...whoever is up there...the horse head...is coming back.” She mangled the sentence but didn’t have the strength to put it back together.

  “Are you in danger?”

  “Find him...find Robin Ferringham...if...ever...”

  “What?”

  “In trouble.” She meant to say, I’m in trouble. She wanted Robin. She needed Robin. Now she knew. Robin was her love. Why had she ever left him, to go away and work? Why hadn’t she spent more time with him? That was what she would truly come to regret.

  She couldn’t focus on the conversation. Did she even know if it was going the way she was thinking? “Wait, Clatter... Clatteridges, 7:30 p.m. 18th August 1996!” Why did she say that? What did that have to do with anything? It was like she had split into two different people. The one acting and the one thinking. And the one acting was operating at double the speed of the one thinking.

  Wait!

  “Hello?”

  The voice at the other end. But she heard something. A new sound from above. A door opening.

  She ended the call.

  Door. And then creaking. Staircase. She pressed the phone into her hand so it wasn’t visible.

  She strained her head to look around, wanting to at least look her monster in the eye. It wasn’t what she’d expected it to look like. A young girl. Pretty. They locked eyes. As the pain became too much she closed her eyes.

  “Shit,” the girl said, running back upstairs.

  Door again. She shifted again so she could see the phone. Had to get rid of it. But then... She quickly and painfully put it to her ear. And made another call. When she was done, she stabbed at the red button and, without thinking, tossed the phone as far as she could. She heard it skittering across the floor and colliding with something. One of the last sounds she ever heard.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Three years ago...

  “She’s still alive.” Amber rushed into the back room and slammed her hands down on the table everyone was sitting at. “She’s still bloody alive.”

  “What?” Edmund said, his heart leaping.

  “Barely, but she’s there. I heard her muttering to herself.”

  Edmund stood up. “Well, we need to call an ambulance. Quickly.”

  They had been talking about how to hide the body. And they had all come to the same conclusion thanks to Amber’s insight. The floorboards in the basement were loose. They would take them up, dig a hole, place the body inside within the suitcase, fill the hole in and replace the floorboards, making sure they were more secure. A body under The Hamlet. It would ruin their favorite spot, but they couldn’t risk going outside with the body again. And even if it was found, which it never would be, who was to say it was them who killed her? Suspicion would fall on the owners. Done and dusted—the group didn’t have a key. It was regrettable others would fall under suspicion because of them, but that’s all it would be. There’d be no evidence to hold them. And that was if the body was ever found—which was very unlikely.

  Amber didn’t seem to worry about the fact that suspicion might eventually roll around to her in such a scenario. She just seemed to be happy to be along for the ride, truth be told. Edmund watched her with a kind of disgusted fascination. She was taking it all incredibly well. Far too well. She really was so obsessed with Tim that she would do anything for him. She was the kind of sure deal that would have been great for a guy, until she turned around and killed him. Edmund had no doubt that she had that in her heart.

  But now the woman was alive. That changed everything. Edmund got his phone out, but Tim snatched it away.

  “What are you doing?” Edmund said, not understanding. He swiped at his phone but Tim moved his hand. “She’s alive. It’s over. We don’t need to be in this nightmare anymore.”

  “It’s not as simple as that,” Tim said. “I wish it was, but it’s not.”

  “You said she was dead,” Robert said to Tim.

  Tim looked at him, angrily. “I’m a goddamn physicist, not a doctor.”

  “She’s seen my face,” Amber said. “She looked straight at me, and who’s to say who else she’s seen, while we’ve been piddling about here.”

  “Tim,” Rachel said softly.

  Tim snapped at her. “I’m thinking.” He started pacing around the room, every step he took appearing to be a struggle.

  “I don’t understand what there is to think about,” Edmund shouted. “She is down there alive.”

  “Yes,” Tim said, stopping, “but who knows for how long. She was messed up pretty bad. Who’s to say she won’t die in the ambulance, or in the hospital, and we’re all still up for murder. Or death by dangerous driving. Or whatever. It’s still prison time. And what if she lives? Grievous bodily harm. Prison. Drink driving resulting in injury. Prison. And then we tried to cover it up. Prison. We’re all staring down the barrel of a boatload of shit however you look at it.”

  “But she’s alive,” Edmund said.

  “Yes,” Tim said, “and unfortunately at this point, that’s a problem.”

  “What are you saying?” Robert said.

  “Yes, what are you saying?” Edmund stressed.

  “I’m saying—” Tim picked his words “—she’s alive. But for us to continue our plan, she has to...not be.”

  Amber stepped forward. “We have to kill her.”

  The group of them stared at Amber for a long time—Edmund didn’t know if it was more for the sudden outburst or for what that sudden outburst entailed. Edmund scoffed. “What?”

  “No,” Pru said, “Tim’s right. Amber is right.”

  “Are you all utterly insane?” Edmund shouted. He turned to Rachel, whose warm eyes had cooled. “Rachel, please...we can’t...”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Ed,” she said. “There is no other way from here. We set off on a path and we can’t turn around now. We have to go the distance.”

  Edmund looked round. No one was looking happy, but they weren’t denying what had to be done either. “I don’t believe this. I can’t... I won’t...” He pointed at Amber. “Don’t listen to her. She’s crazy. She’s insane. I can’t stand by... I can’t kill someone.”

  “You don’t have to,” Tim said, to Edmund first and then to Pru, Robert and Rachel. Amber stood by him. “I’ll do it.”

  “You can’t...” Edmund said.

  “Yes, I can,” Tim said quietly. “There’s nothing more in this world I love than the people standing in front of me right now. I would do anything for you, and sometimes that phrase requires some physical clarification.” He slowly unbuttoned his cuffs and started rolling up his sleeves.

  “Oh Jesus.” Edmund looked away and gagged, feeling as though he was going to throw up again.

  “No,” he heard Amber say, and he clung on to one last hope that she would stop this. But she said, “You don’t do this alone. We do it together.”

  Tim nodded.

  “Are you kidding?” Edmund said. “Have you all lost
your minds? Who is this girl? We don’t know her. What the hell is going on?”

  But by the time Edmund looked around, all he saw was them disappearing through the doorway.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Three years ago...

  They went down the staircase, Tim first, Amber second. Hand in hand. The mass, the body, was still there in front of the fire. Her eyes were closed. She looked dead. The blood from her forehead had clotted, mostly in her hair, the spindly fibers matting and creating a sort of gauze. It was hard to imagine that she was still alive. At this point, they were hoping against it. But as they looked, a finger twitched.

  “Maybe a reflex action,” Amber said. “Dead bodies do that.”

  But then the woman gave a long and incredibly labored breath.

  “Shit,” Tim said. “What do we do?”

  “We kill her,” Amber said. “It’s as simple as that.”

  “What do you mean, simple?” Tim said.

  “Do you remember the cat I told you to kill? My cat,” Amber said, rolling up her sleeves. “Piece of shit yowled all night, you remember? Basically woke up the whole street. The vets’ said he was in heat or something stupid like that. And my bitch of a mother wouldn’t take him to get his balls chopped off.”

  “I remember,” Tim said. “I remember that day.”

  “So do I. Luring that cat out there like some stupid horny piece of shit. Remember when it came to it?” Amber said, looking at him.

  Tim looked away, at the crackling fire.

  “You couldn’t do it,” Amber said.

  “You didn’t have to skin it,” Tim barked, so loud that he paused to make sure no one upstairs heard him. After a creaking from above them, there was nothing.

  “No, I didn’t,” Amber said. “I just got a little carried away. Shoot me. Then, as I recall, you got a little carried away with me in the bushes. Some may say that you got carried away a little prematurely.” She beamed. “I became something else that day. Something new. Maybe today’s the day you become new too.”