by Terry Kitto
‘It’s Hornes,’ Trish gasped.
‘Open it,’ Sam urged. ‘See if the bastard’s been sentenced.’
‘I can’t,’ Trish said. Her bowels contorted; had she remembered to eat that day, she would have been sick.
‘Want me to?’ Will asked.
‘Please.’
She passed the phone to Will. He shared her want for justice, as did Sam, and had even gone as far as to say that Michael was guilty. He swiped her lock screen away, loaded the email, and exhaled a shaky breath. His eyes flitted back and forth. Face lit by the smartphone, it appeared gaunt and wilted, his heavy brow further pronounced. He grimaced.
‘Guilty,’ Will said. ‘He plead guilty.’
Trish held back the urge to swear. She crouched, knees to her chest, a hand on the steel bench. A tsunami of emotion rushed through her: sad elation for Shauna having found legal justice, only to be swallowed by a riptide of indignation – Trish didn’t believe Michael had killed Shauna. Hornes had no doubt told him to plead guilty to curry favour with the jury and have his sentence shortened. If that was the case, then Shauna’s true killer would still be at-large. They’d never be found.
Sam squeezed her shoulder, but that only worsened matters. A guttural moan escaped her lips as she tried to hold her tears back. She’d been torn in two.
A haywire compass, unsure which direction her loyalties lay.
The seventy-foot narrow boat was propped up on two hay bale trailers. Swirled calligraphy, peeled by age, spelled Calypso on its left side. Sleep, a stout retiree who leant on a walking stick far too short for him, turned to Trish with a grin.
‘Waddya thinkin’, T?’ he asked.
‘Looks like home.’
Far better than the Reliant and collieries in which she had slept for the best of a year; and a vast improvement to the overpriced, squalid flat she’d shared with Michael before that.
Michael, convicted of her sister’s murder. Michael, connected to the rogue shadow imprint.
Trish followed Sleep across the farmyard as night encroached. They passed carcasses of abandoned machinery: a throng of wheelless ice cream vans, a rusted dump truck, Calypso, bound in a county with no canals. Sleep was a collector of lost things.
‘You can move in tonight,’ he said.
‘I don’t have any rent money right now.’
‘Nonsense, I don’t want nuffin’,’ he said. They strode to his cottage. Behind the grimy windows were piles of junk: cardboard boxes, broken gadgets, and damp furniture stacked to the ceiling. Trish’d known Sleep since childhood, and he’d never entertained the notion of settling with someone. The rooms seemed less empty when full of junk.
‘I could clean for you,’ Trish offered.
‘No need. It’s all spares for repairs. Never know when it’s needed. Besides, what friend of your father’s would I be if I let his only daughter go homeless?’
Calypso certainly was better than sleeping on back seats and under desks. Trish hugged Sleep and crossed to the Reliant.
‘How’s she keepin’?’ he asked, nodding to her trusted steel steed.
‘Really great.’
‘One of my best finds,’ he said. ‘Good thing about Reliants. She’ll take you where you need to go.’
A scuff was visible in the paintwork. Trish purposefully stood before it.
‘A wheel bearing might be on the way out,’ she said.
‘Don’t worry, I’ve got one somewhere. See? Spares for repairs. Right, better get yourself sorted. The solar panels are in. No plumbing, though, and ’elp yourself to the kitchen anytime. Door’s always open.’
‘Good night, and thanks again!’
‘Night, me lover.’
He waved and staggered into his cottage. Her stare lingered on him. Would her parents have aged so rapidly if they hadn’t taken their lives? Trish wouldn’t have been a witness; Shauna would have gone to university and not met her end in Penzance. Michael wouldn’t be in Dartmoor Prison, as Hornes’s email detailed. A domino effect where choices had little to do with fate.
Trish took the three bags-for-life of clothes from her boot and trudged up steps made of metal crates into Calypso. Despite being able to reach out and touch both walls, the narrow boat squeezed in a kitchen, saloon, bathroom, and two bedrooms. Every wooden surface, from the cupboard to the ceiling, was painted in duck-egg blue. Larger than the Reliant; small enough to not feel lonely.
A rummage through assorted cupboards and closets found relics left by its previous owner: cutlery, AA batteries, a socket set, and a bundle of Christmas decorations. Once she packed her clothes away in the farthest cabin, she went to the saloon and draped the set of multicoloured fairy lights over the furnishings. She plugged them in, and the interior became speckled with primary colours. Through squinted eyes it resembled the lighting shop.
‘Teagues,’ her father would often repeat, ‘the name you can trust!’
Shelter wasn’t the only reason for accepting Sleep’s offer. The remaining farmland in his name – for the rest he’d sold or gambled away – was devoid of humans and cattle. There was no Wi-Fi or cable TV, and the nearest string of transmission towers was a few fields over. Little interference with frequency energy was perfect for accessing the ombrederi.
She sat cross-legged on the elm floorboards. Natural frequency energy crept over her skin, infiltrating her pores, her mind. She firmly thought of the shadow imprint and willed her foresight to play. She was determined to find Shauna, even if that was deemed impossible; she hadn’t been a witness when she was alive, so she couldn’t be a guiding imprint in death. Calypso’s twinkling interior blurred to her family’s lighting shop, then dispelled her into the ombrederi.
Trish ambled across a freshly mown garden under the ombrederi’s magnetic black sky.
Fen violet and pink bell heather burst from the flower beds. Autumnal leaves swept into the air to rejoin branches of the arthritic willows hunched on the border. And a body. Will, unconscious, nestled in the compost upon a bed of dew drops. Fennel sprouted from his eye sockets, and thistles shot from his open mouth.
The mouth of a tunnel opened up before him. Trish edged inside and found an ill-lit cavern. Sam lay on a soiled mattress in the centre of the room, his skin grey and eyes vacant. A mound of white powder rocked a set of weighted scales. Rocks cascaded and tore his comatose body apart.
Fire engulfed the scene, and there James raced to a blaze on a never-ending highway. Rasha, grabbed at by many hands, was bound by blue twine. The shadow, faceless, emotionless, stood amidst a fiery desert and offered its congealed hand –
Trish woke. Orange sun leaked through windows she didn’t recognise. Oh, that’s right. Calypso. She rose, back stiff from a night on the saloon floor. Her phone was on the table. Battery: 12 percent. Reminders: seminar.
Trish raised herself from the floor, skulked to the narrow bathroom, and washed her face with the bucket of cold water Sleep had provided. Sleep – had she slept? She couldn’t tell if her lucid dreams were more. If her visions were foresight, she’d surely have no one left.
Loneliness impending.
The whiteboard projector blinded Trish and threw the fourteen board members before her into oily shadows. Trish was certain they’d oppose her hypothesis, Will included. Upon his advice, Trish didn’t mention the shadow; he’d said it would only invalidate any claims she’d make. They faced a disciplinary, after all.
‘Through occupation, my foresight was stronger than ever. Even now, I can slip into her mind as if it’s my own. Remotely.’
The PowerPoint presentation froze on the previous slide. She fumbled with the tablet – the spinning pinwheel of death.
‘We hear what you’re saying, but this hardly breaks new ground,’ Vanessa said, her tone sympathetic. ‘When the board trials an imprint, we share the same space in the ombrederi. That’s over fourteen witnesses connected at once.’
Trish adjusted the dielectric band. She couldn’t argue against Vanessa’s statement;
when an imprint was trialled over a misdemeanour, the board all convened into the ombrederi where they could examine the imprint’s memories. A cocktail of anxiety and foresight led Trish to entertain several outcomes for the seminar; she had prepared for arguments. Trish continued in her customer service voice.
‘On the contrary, I think it’s the tip of an iceberg. Occupation and telepathy are one and the same, a connection between imprints, using the frequency in much the same way.’
James leant forward on the table to part himself from the board.
‘We do not contest your findings – the opposite, in fact,’ he said. Beside him, Will smiled supportively. ‘What we do contest is your approach to the investigation, which should not have breached an occupation. Yes, Sam as well, we don’t expect you to take full responsibility.’
‘We were negligent, and we accept any repercussions the board sees fit,’ Trish admitted. Barely true; she’d fight before accepting punishment. ‘Occupations are rare but are imminent nonetheless; when they happen, results are usually disastrous. I am the only witness in the Network’s existence to successfully expel an imprint from a host – one of the few with foresight. That must mean something. So I implore you – if I’m removed from the adolescent program, move me to the occupations unit where I can better explore my hypothesis.’
A shudder rippled through the board members; whether horror at the idea or awe at her bravery, Trish could not tell. Will stared hard at his notebook. Vanessa reclined in her chair, eyebrows arched, and James leant toward Trish, so much so that he would soon be sprawled on the tabletop.
‘Your successful expulsion was not down to a tried-and-tested method,’ he hissed. ‘It was on a whim, and it is that whim that allows you to be here leading a seminar rather than being tried in a disciplinary.’
Vanessa tugged at James’s shirt. He retreated back into his chair, took a deep breath, and continued.
‘You will not be placed on the occupations unit,’ he said, ‘nor one that involves direct contact with the public for the next twelve months. At that point, your involvement with anything beyond sonar will be reconsidered.’
Blood rushed to Trish’s face, and sweat soaked her jumper’s collar. James raised his eyebrows to provoke a response. Trish could not find her voice; it had fled, as her body wanted to. She had to be careful. The Network was all she had now. She couldn’t lose it.
‘If it isn’t too much work, I’d like a summary of all activity ran under the adolescent program,’ Vanessa said softly. ‘Submit it to the archives whenever is best for you.’
Trish smiled without thanks, for words could no longer break through the barrier of rage and embarrassment. She paced from the glass boardroom with as much restraint as she could.
As far as Trish was concerned, the board had lured her into the seminar under false pretences, emptied her of wisdom, and stripped her of privileges. Trish’s hypothesis was completely new to her and Sam; the board considered it dated information. She descended the levels of the mineshafts, glad that she, Will, and Sam had not told the board about the shadow. Perhaps finding its true identity would give her argument more validity.
Trish arrived in Will’s usual haunt. He’d be down at any moment. It was cool there. The frequency energy tickled her nape, and the darkness seemed less vacant. The usual trickle of water couldn’t be heard from the adjacent waterlogged cavern. There would be the hum of the machinery and the rattle of the air conditioning unit that was overdue an inspection. It was as if she had crossed into a vacuum.
The shadow was there. Did it haunt her? The static energy was familiar and strange in the same breath. Certainly not Abidemi, as Will suspected.
The groan of the mechanised door announced Will’s arrival. Trish broke her engagement to the imprint.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked as he hugged her.
‘Not really.’
‘That was harsher than I anticipated. I’m sorry.’
‘Not that,’ Trish said. ‘It was here.’
‘What, the shadow imprint?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I feel like I know it.’
‘That’s how I felt,’ Will said. He closed his eyes, and his lids fluttered. Engagement unsuccessful, he opened his eyes. ‘It’s gone.’
Dark bags hung under his eyes. He wore the same button-down cardigan from the day before. Uncharacteristic stubble sprouted across his narrow jaw. He worked long hours, though that was nothing unusual. He crossed to the bench with a series of electromagnetic beacons – which Trish often teased reminded her of a swingball pole – and plugged them into an adapter to charge.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked.
‘Some of the lab’s ketamine has gone. Hasn’t been signed off for experiments. Go figure.’
The previous night while taking Rasha home, Trish hadn’t worn her dielectric band. She’d seen lines of white powder on a coffee table; Sam’s thoughts had been more than a craving. He’d used again.
‘Oh bugger,’ Trish exclaimed.
Dissociative drugs were commonplace in witnesses’ practices to ease connection with the ombrederi. Two winters ago, Trish and Will had petitioned to remove them; a marginal proportion of their colleagues abused substances during their lifetime. They’d done it for Sam most of all, to eradicate temptations that lay in his path. The board had been unanimous in voting against the ban, and Trish couldn’t help but think it had less to do with scientific integrity and more about the witnesses’ own weaknesses.
‘But Sam’s sobriety?’
‘Gone out of the window, along with his things, and him too if he even tries to deny it to me.’
‘He could help at the Refinery,’ Trish said. She hated mentioning the Network’s private facility. Though neither had been, they’d reason to fear it: it was the final home for aged witnesses once a lifetime of imprints had finally killed their nerve. Even though psychiatric help was given there, it wasn’t somewhere witnesses ever wanted to go.
‘The Refinery,’ Will scoffed. He ran his fingers through his locks. ‘Sam’d be worse than he is now. It’s my fault. No, it is, I’ve neglected him.’
‘That’s all on him,’ Trish said, squeezing his shoulders. ‘It’s his choice to take it, and it’s his choice to seek help. Talk to him. It’s all you can do.’
Trish held him and planted a purposefully moist kiss on his forehead. He sniggered and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. She sympathised with Will, but she needed answers.
‘So, occupation,’ she said. ‘What’s that about?’
Anxiety bled across Will’s face.
‘I know you know something, and Sam too. I don’t need foresight – I saw how you looked at each other yesterday.’
Will shook his head, leant against his workbench, and stared up at the strobe lights for a moment. Then he said, ‘Rose Bickle.’
‘Sam’s mum? She’s in the Refinery.’
‘Yes, but do you know why?’
‘Witnessing drove her to insanity,’ Trish said. Will shuffled his feet. ‘You don’t believe that?’
‘Not since all this Abadi business.’
‘What is access to the Refinery like at the moment?’
‘Restricted. There was an energy spike. It broke through all the dampeners. Mayhem. You’re not thinking of going? Bless her, but Rose won’t be able to help you; she’s more dead than she is living. You won’t get answers from her. Not even Sam could.’
She nodded. It was clear why Sam wanted to numb the pain with laboratory grade dissociative drugs. She’d made equally reckless decisions in her search for Shauna. Rasha Abadi could be worth another visit. Just a courteous act of get-well-soons. Or tell me what you know for a shed load of chocolate bourbons.
‘Speaking of occupation,’ Will said. He lowered his voice. ‘I think your hypothesis has legs, quite a few.’
‘Thanks for sharing that with the board,’ Trish quipped.
‘I didn’t say anything because I don’t think the occupations unit is the be
st place to explore your theory. I think you have the right program already, and I didn’t want it to be taken away from you.’
‘Sonar?’
‘Think about it. Everything we are, everything we do, it’s all because of the frequency. Sonar makes imprints’ memories become yours. All branches of the same tree.’
‘Sonar’s a borderline failure. I haven’t been able to collate one solid memory.’
‘Maybe it’s not enough to have knowledge of an event. Perhaps you have to be emotionally invested?’
Trish nodded. Will spoke of Shauna, of closure, the one thing most witnesses desperately sought. She hugged him one last time and dashed to the storage warehouse.
She had contemplated using sonar to find Shauna before but always adhered to the Network’s one fundamental rule when it came to equipment: not to be used for personal reasons. Of course, Sam flouted that every time he stole ketamine from the Network’s stores. Will had recently planted deflectors at Sam’s flat to cure his own imprint-induced insomnia. Desperate times meant disobeying guidelines.
The only entrance point to the storage warehouse was a coded gate. She punched in a number, relieved her access had not been restricted since the mishap with Rasha. The automatic lights cast insect shadows onto the walls from the witnessing paraphernalia that lay in wire display cases. If the activity centre was the erratic heartbeat of the collieries, then the stores were the nervous system containing countless gadgets in various states of disrepair. Trish took the receptor from its stand. This version was mobile, its shell bulbous to accommodate the battery and riddled with welding marks where the device was regularly adjusted and trialled. As it said on the tin – puns were Sam’s territory, but Trish was secretly partial – it allowed for better reception to weaker imprint activity, those that absorbed and emitted memories without will. The target for the sonar program: using such memories to rebuild moments lost in time. It was hers, not officially and not with permission, but there were some things more important than abiding by the rules.