Now You See Me

by Chris McGeorge

  Tim sighed, went to her. “I brought you in on this because I know you’re good with this kind of stuff.”

  “Hence the cat.” Amber laughed.

  “Hence the cat,” Tim agreed, with far less aplomb. “Look, are you going to help or not?”

  “Of course,” Amber said, her eyes on fire with possibility. “What’s the plan, Mr. Claypath?”

  Tim looked around for anything to end it quickly. But he found nothing. It was just the basement of a pub. Plastic menus and beer mats. Nothing for a quick departure. Upstairs, there were knives and things like that. But that would make a mess.

  Tim sighed and then suddenly knew what they had to do. And he didn’t want to do it. Dear God, he didn’t want to do it. But they had to. He had to.

  “You have to hold her limbs down,” Tim said.

  Amber looked at him. “How is that going to...?” She trailed off and then it clicked in her head. “Oooh, what are you going to do with her? Are you going to smother her? Strangle her? Maybe you should just throw her in the fire, or...”

  Tim couldn’t meet her eyes. “Just bloody do it, okay.”

  Amber let go of Tim’s hand, and approached the woman. She was incredibly calm—maybe bringing her in had been a terrible idea. She was crazy—Edmund was right. But then, this whole situation was crazy. And it was going to get a lot worse before it got better.

  Tim thought of the group. He pictured them in his mind. He had to do this for them. Or it was over. They’d never see one another again. All get shipped off to different pens, prodded and poked, and made to eat sludge, and told when to piss and shit. That wasn’t any destiny for any of them. And this insipid imbecile, this stupid bitch, had threatened to take that all away, because of her blundering incompetence. She deserved it.

  Amber crouched down over the woman’s legs, even though they looked like they were never going to move again, and gripped her wrists. The woman made no sign of recognition of this. She was so far under she wouldn’t know what was happening.

  Bitch.

  He went to her, knelt down, one leg either side of her torso, his face looking down at her battered, broken one. This bitch, walking along some road in the dead of night, without any sign she was there. Just there to make them all suffer.

  What a silly little bitch.

  He reached out with his hands, and clutched her throat in his palms.

  They were going to achieve so much before she came along. Now they had to fight to survive. Because of her.

  An anger flared up inside him.

  He pressed down. Hard. He felt the muscles in her throat, felt them tighten and then constrict. And he carried on. He watched her face and saw that her one visible eye was fluttering open. Good—he wanted her to feel it. He wanted her to know what it felt like, to have your life flash before your eyes.

  Her whole body started to shake, as he pressed down even harder. It was easy, this. Just grip down and watch a soul disappear, a life force fade away. Her eye rolled back in her head, and a frothy spit started coming out of her mouth.

  Amber was making some kind of sound behind him—something between a laugh and a cry, holding the woman’s shaking limbs down. Tim wasn’t laughing. But he wasn’t crying either.

  He was in the moment, existing faster and stronger than he ever had before. What a feeling—to have a life in your grip. And to be allowed to be the one to decide that it was over. He pressed even harder just for the hell of it, and a little laugh escaped him.

  Such fun.

  And then she gave one final choke, a wheeze. And her body stilled. Her eye rolled back. And she stared at him, would forever. He knew she was dead.

  But he carried on, squeezing her neck.

  For how long—he didn’t know. But soon enough, Amber was forcing him upright and pulling him into a hug. She was laughing, and he did too. And then she cried, and so did he. But for him—for both of them—they weren’t tears of pain. They were tears of joy.

  At becoming something new.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Three years ago...

  They were all sitting around the table in the basement. Except Edmund, who couldn’t seem to sit, as though sitting was too much of a normal action for this crazy night. They had been meaning to get to work—they got the shovels from The Hamlet shed that was never locked. And they found a toolbox with a crowbar that could be used to pry up the floorboards—although it wouldn’t take much prying.

  No one was talking. No one was looking at each other—except Amber and Tim. They were having a hushed conversation at the head of the table, sitting as close to each other as if they were lovers. Edmund watched them out of the corner of his eye, and saw that Rachel was watching them too.

  The woman hadn’t moved for almost twenty minutes. She was really dead this time. The subject was now going to be how the group could live on. Not Tim, he would be fine—Amber had shown him the way.

  But for the rest of them. They all felt it. They all felt bad. And they would make this ruin their lives. They would constantly be haunted by the woman’s bent form, lying there on the road. They didn’t feel any excitement over it—they felt regret. And regret was like a wave eroding a cliff—it was only a matter of time before it collapsed. In saving their own lives, they had also condemned themselves. He needed a fix. He needed some way of convincing the group that they would be absolved of this crime altogether, so they could continue to cover it all up—dot the i’s, cross the t’s—and then they had to go on living without this shadow over them.

  He had to find a way for them to see that they could have a life beyond this. That they could still be together. And together was all that mattered. Tim looked around. Everyone was staring at the table. This wasn’t right—they should be alive, more than alive. They had just overstepped a line the majority of humans never would. They, collectively, had killed someone. And that was awful. But also kind of beautiful. They always said their friendship was strong. But now they were bound in ways they could have never hoped. So he stood up, and Amber stood up next to him. “I know what we need to do.”

  The rest of them looked at him, expectantly, hopefully. Hoping that he would be able to fix it all. And maybe he could.

  Tim smiled, a warm hearty smile that he truly meant, looking into the faces of the people he loved.

  “We have to die.”

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  The present...

  “Robin. Robin...” A girl’s voice. Familiar.

  Someone splashed water over his face.

  He opened his eyes. He was resting against the wall of the tunnel. His head ached, and something was dripping down his forehead. Back to Marsden and back to frequently getting knocked unconscious. In spite of everything, he almost laughed.

  The abandoned tunnel looked a little different from before. The tunnel was lit—lit by a small battery-powered light. The same one he had seen in the Monster’s hideaway all those months ago. Now he could see the tracks running through the center of the tunnel clearly, and see that the floor was dusty, cluttered with rock debris and pockets of pooled water. The light did not reach to the other side of the width of the tunnel, so he could not see the other wall, but he knew it was there. He wondered where exactly in the tunnel they were, and if the wall he was resting on had the canal on the other side of it, or his freedom.

  He tried to move but his body wouldn’t respond. There was something resting on his shoulder. Someone. Sally. She was taking shallow breaths and her eyes were half-open. “Hey,” she said, “I guess I don’t need to tell you that you probably shouldn’t have come.” She gave a chuckle that turned into a splutter. She spit out a mouthful of blood. Robin looked down to see her arms were wrapped around her midriff—they were covered in blood. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

  “What happened?” Robin whispered.

  “Well, the damnedest thin
g happened. I got shot and now I’m bleeding to death,” Sally said, somehow making it sound like a minor affliction. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “It was Amber,” Robin said. “Sam saw Amber that day. That’s what Sam meant when she talked to Matthew. A black hound and a horse head. Amber has those symbols, tattoos, on her wrists. Amber’s behind this.”

  “Bit late on the newsflash there,” Sally said. “She was the one who shot me. Got any theories about Tim Claypath?”

  “No,” Robin said. “How can he be here?”

  “I’m just glad you saw him too,” Sally said, taking a rasping breath. “I thought I’d started to see things. Was he riding a pink crocodile for you too?”

  “What?” Robin said.

  “Joking,” Sally said. “At least have the decency to laugh—I’m dying here.”

  As if to cement his existence, there was a sound of footsteps crunching up the tunnel. And Robin looked up to see Tim Claypath towering over them. He was an imposing figure—he felt like a fictional character that had leaped off the page. Because he shouldn’t be here; he couldn’t be here.

  “How?” Robin said. “How the hell are you here?”

  “That’s really the least interesting question you could be asking right now,” Tim said. “Probably the most relevant would be what is going to happen to you and your little friend here. Although you might not like the answer.”

  “Don’t give him the satisfaction,” Sally said.

  “What are you going to do?” Robin said anyway.

  “Well,” Tim said, crouching down in front of him, “you, Mr. Robin Ferringham, came to Marsden chasing ghosts and monsters and your lovely wife, and just couldn’t bring yourself to fail once again. So you lured Ms. Morgan here out to Standedge, and you horrifically drowned her, before shooting yourself. Really is a nasty business. You must be really messed up in the head to do that.”

  “But I’m not going to do any such thing,” Robin said.

  Tim put his head in his hands and screamed. “Yeah, dipshit, I know you’re not. We’re gonna drown the bitch and then shoot you, making it look like a suicide. I thought you were meant to be smart. But we’ve been watching you throughout all this, and the whole thing has been an incredibly poor showing on your part.”

  Robin didn’t have time to process it, and even if he did, he didn’t want to, so he moved on. “What do you mean ‘we’?”

  And then suddenly, another figure came into view, carrying the two bits of metal sheeting that had been the doors to the Monster’s lair. “Got the evidence.” Amber. It was Amber. But she was almost a different person from the one he knew. Her voice seemed different and she held herself differently. She propped the two sheets against the far side of the tunnel and Robin saw that she was carrying a gun.

  “Is that everything?”

  “I don’t know. Looks like it.”

  “Can you be sure?”

  “I think so. Take them back to the engineer.”

  Robin looked from Amber to Tim. Tim didn’t react to that. “Prudence?” Tim wheeled around to him at the mention of her name. “She’s alive too?”

  Tim looked unstable, like he was battling with himself. “They all are.”

  “But how did you do it?”

  “Well,” Tim said, “we didn’t use the opening in this tunnel you happened to find. If we’d known about that, we wouldn’t have had to go through all the pomp and circumstance. We really were kicking ourselves when we heard about it.”

  “If you didn’t use the opening, the crack in the tunnel, what did you do? How did you do it? Don’t you at least owe me that?”

  Tim laughed, looked at Amber, and she laughed too. “We don’t owe you shit. You have been an incredible pain in the arse to us. You and your oozing friend.”

  Robin changed tack. He just wanted to keep Tim talking, because he didn’t want to get to what was next. Maybe if he had time to think, he could come up with a way out of this, but right now, he couldn’t see any. Tim would be a lot faster than him, and that wasn’t even taking into account that he’d have to carry Sally. And Amber had a gun.

  “You got Matthew too, didn’t you?” Robin said. “Loamfield said... I thought he was saying that Matthew caused the crash. But he meant you, didn’t he?”

  Tim didn’t say anything.

  “And your sister? Where’s your sister, Tim?”

  Tim grabbed Robin by the neck in a swift motion. He gripped hard so all the air left Robin’s throat. He choked. “Shut up.”

  “Tim!” Amber shouted, and Tim let go. Robin slid back down the wall, gasping. “We stick to the plan. We have the evidence. We stage the crime scene. You know that.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Robin said, still gasping. “Why did you do all this?”

  Tim laughed again. “Well, it all started very simply, really. You see, Robin, you’re staring at the two people who just happened to kill your wife.”

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Robin couldn’t feel anymore. The life went out of his body, replaced with an inconceivable sorrow. Sam. His Sam was dead. She wasn’t here anymore, not here in this world. And the worst thing about it was that he had known. He had felt it that first day she was gone, three years ago in their flat. He had known that she wasn’t coming back. And three years of unchecked grief fell on him in one instant.

  As he listened to Tim’s story, he didn’t cry. He didn’t squirm. He didn’t try to run away. His voice was distorted, like he was underwater, like he was drowning.

  “Robin, you still with us?”

  Robin looked at Tim, through misty eyes. He didn’t even notice he’d stopped talking. “You killed her?”

  “Yes, that’s what the story was about,” Tim said.

  “She was alive. She was still alive, and you... Why didn’t you help her? Why wouldn’t you just take her to the hospital? You didn’t have to...”

  Tim looked at him, almost like he pitied Robin. “You clearly don’t understand. She was on that road, in the dead of night. She was invisible. We would have run her down if we’d been stone-cold sober. Anyone would have. So what happened to your wife—she brought it upon herself.”

  Robin felt his blood boil up. He wanted to lunge at Tim, but his body still didn’t work. All he managed was a small dip forward and back.

  Sally’s head lolled on his shoulder. She had gone quiet and he couldn’t see if her eyes were open. Please, Robin thought, don’t let her be dead. But then she made a noise and Robin knew she was still there. At least for now.

  “Why did you tell me?” Robin said.

  “What?” That wasn’t Tim. It was Amber. She walked into his line of sight and stood next to Tim.

  “Let’s just get it over with,” Tim said.

  “No.” Amber held up a hand. “What did you say, Robin?”

  Robin looked at her and sniffed. “I said ‘Why did you tell me?’ Why did you tell me about Sam? You could have just killed me. You could have just got it over with and I would never have had to know.”

  “Oh, Robin,” Amber said, crouching down in front of him. She took one hand and rubbed his tears away. “I read your book. Without Her. And I understood. I understood something that I don’t think you even knew yourself. But it was obvious to me. I had to make you see. And now you do—you feel it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Robin said, more tears coming to take the place of the ones wiped away.

  “Look at all this,” Amber said, standing up again, stretching out her arms to indicate the whole scene. “Look at everything you’ve been through. All to find out what happened to Samantha Ferringham, your doting little wife. You’ve been running toward the truth for so long that you didn’t stop to realize that you don’t want to know it. You never actually wanted to find out what happened. Because then there would be nothing left—other than to hav
e to face up to actually having to let her go.”

  Robin said nothing. The tears were a steady stream now. And he gasped. He couldn’t believe it—but she was right. Sam’s story was over. And soon, his would be too. That was what Amber and Tim had wanted. They had wanted to break him. And he was broken.

  There was just one thing he wanted to know.

  “How are you here, Tim?” His voice was tiny now. “How can you be here?”

  Amber looked at Tim and shrugged.

  Tim sighed. “Fine. I’ll tell you. But you have to act impressed.”

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Three days before the Incident...

  “Can you believe how many texts Matt has sent?” Edmund said, laughing as he placed his phone on the table. “I mean, Jesus Christ, have some self-worth.”

  They were in their usual place—the basement. The body beneath their feet had been there for just shy of three years. It remained unfound. The police had never come, never even so much as asked a single question. It was as if she just disappeared, and the world shrugged. But even so, their plan was not changing.

  Robert finished his game of Solitaire by sweeping all the cards into his outstretched hand. “I’m starting to think he’s just doing it to piss us off.”

  Sometimes Edmund caught himself. Sometimes he remembered that Matt used to be one of his best friends. But Matt had not been there that night, and Edmund had come to resent him for that. Even though it wasn’t Matt’s fault, everyone had come to resent him for that. What had first been protecting him from the truth had soon soured—he didn’t need protecting from anything. They did.

  Amber was sitting in her usual seat at the back of the room, not engaging with any of them, except Tim. Over the years she hadn’t become any less crazy, and somehow she seemed to be able to sway Tim.

  “We all know the plan, right?” Tim said.

  Rachel put her hand up. “I am still a little fuzzy on the whole disappearing act we’re doing.”