The Frequency

by Terry Kitto

  ‘We can’t expect you to do that.’ Phil sounded hurt. Sam knew he’d toed the line. He felt useless, and he hated it. ‘But we do need help. Did he want to be buried? Cremated? Music? Flowers? Don’t think even he knew. When you’re that young, you’re too concerned about living to think about what follows.’

  If only Phil knew. It was those moments that Sam resented the Network. It forced them to live a lie. Will’s family barely knew him. Like Will, Sam’s adolescence had been burdened by his suppressed sexuality, a heaviness he hadn’t known he carried until it was finally let go. Being a witness was very much the same; Sam hated the idea of keeping a secret rather than the secret itself.

  Phil stared into the fruit bowl where only a melon sat, its skin warped with late signs of decay. Its flesh would be mulch. Margaret passed them three cups of tea in various shades of tan, a rarity in her compliant hospitality.

  ‘He’ll need clothes,’ Margaret said. ‘A suit. The funeral directors will make him look smart. There’s stuff upstairs, the clothes he brought. And work documents, all in a box up there. We’ll need to contact HR at your work, let them know officially.’

  ‘I’ve told them. I can get you the details. Shall I – ’

  ‘Yes, you know where the bedroom is.’

  Sam rose from the table and grimaced at Trish. He abandoned his tea – too milky for his liking – and skulked down the hallway. He took his time climbing the stairs to Will’s room. Sam stopped on the landing and closed his eyes to skirt the edges of the ombrederi. Will had been constantly haunted in his adolescence. The imprint had often come as he slept and shrieked with a soul-tearing burden. He’d been too young to truly read its identity back then. Her imprint wasn’t there now. It meant everything and nothing.

  Sam stalled, completely on purpose. He pushed the door forward; it had since been repaired and no longer hung from broken hinges. The room was cleared of debris. A sun-bleached square of wall suggested the wardrobe had been there; Will’s clothes were stowed in plastic storage boxes. The window was boarded up with plywood, but one thing that couldn’t be removed was the splatter of crimson on the carpet, walls, and ceiling. Nose-burning bleach hung in the air; despite Marge’s best efforts, Will’s blood could not be scrubbed away.

  Giddiness overcame him, and he put a hand against the nearest wall to stabilize himself. An unbearable heat swarmed across his body, dissipating just as quickly as it had come. In the farthest corner, a bright light crackled in Sam’s periphery: a burning noose swaying from a crooked ceiling beam. Abidemi had been there, just as James said. Sam, overwhelmed by the reality of Will’s mortal death, hadn’t registered Abidemi’s aura that day he barged into the room. The noose swung in circles as if it lured Sam to the ombrederi. Beneath the noose was Will’s desk, the only item of furniture still intact, and atop it was a grey folder file. The night he died, Will would have, just as he had so diligently in the months prior, worked on his file – a file only the Network’s board was allowed to discuss. Sam grabbed the folder file, sped from the room, and yanked the door shut.

  His legs only took him to the end of the landing. He collapsed at the top of the stairs. The thought of joining the others was not attractive, so he opened the box folder. Inside were sheaths of paper, unordered, furiously scribbled upon. Notes, ones that meant little to Sam, were marked against placeholders for paragraph and pages. That was, until he turned a torn sheet over and read: Gywandras > transcendence.

  A silhouette appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Sam dropped the papers. There were no symptoms of engagement; it was Margaret, face impossibly ancient in the half-light of the hallway.

  ‘We’ll do Will proud,’ Sam said, and he meant it. ‘The funeral, together. Really celebrate his life.’

  ‘Should have done that while he was living it,’ Margaret hissed. ‘He always thought he could fix people. He thought that’s how love worked. And maybe it is, but you couldn’t be mended, and that broke him.’

  ‘Unfortunately, that’s not how addictions work.’

  ‘Then you should have let him go. You know what he said to me the night he came back, barely legible through tears? He said you took those drugs – no, I don’t know what they are, drugs are drugs to me and Phil – he said you took those drugs so you could be in a world of your own. A different world to him.’

  ‘That’s not how it was.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter how it was; he felt that way, and it’s how he felt that made him throw himself . . . I’ve had to grieve for my son twice. First when he came out, and now that he’s . . . You’ll never understand how that feels.’

  ‘You can’t blame me.’

  ‘Who else do I have to blame?’

  Sam’s mouth gaped, unable to answer, so he closed it. Grief taught him to think before he spoke.

  ‘I think you should go now,’ Margaret said.

  Sam could do no more than gulp back a retort, rise from the stairs, and descend past Margaret. After an abrupt goodbye, during which Sam dodged Phil’s attempts to have them stay, Trish and Sam jumped into the Reliant and drove god knows where. Trish clipped a horse box at a T-junction.

  ‘The gywandras could be connected to his death,’ Trish pondered. ‘And Abidemi was definitely there.’

  ‘We saw them together, remember?’ Sam prompted, thinking back to the frequency spike at the collieries. Will had been alive then.

  ‘A premonition can mean a thousand things,’ Trish said. She tapped the steering wheel, took a deep breath, and blurted, ‘Will knew about the gywandras. He knew it existed.’

  Sam flipped through the pages on his lap. He didn’t want to confirm Trish’s thoughts. Then he found another intriguing sentence.

  ‘The body is nothing more than a cage inhibiting imprints from true transcendence,’ he read.

  ‘Transcendence of what?’ Trish said.

  Sam gripped the passenger side door handle as she veered the Reliant Robin from the dual carriageway onto rain-soaked backroads.

  ‘I know James warned us off seeing Rasha again,’ Sam said, ‘but she’s the only person alive who is connected to the gywandras.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking the same thing,’ Trish said. ‘Coincidences don’t just happen. Her powers are strong. She engaged with an imprint at her school and forced it onto someone. I’m starting to think that Will’s death wasn’t so straightforward.’ Sam noted the sharp pang in his diaphragm whenever someone else said ‘Will’s death.’ ‘Rasha’s occupation was rare in so many ways. Maybe Will’s death was an occupation.’

  Sharp pang.

  ‘It’s still a leap,’ he retorted.

  ‘Still more probable than suicide, on all counts,’ Trish said. ‘Perhaps . . . perhaps there is a way to lure the gywandras in, just as we did before.’

  Sam was puzzled a moment, for the only time they had done that – inadvertently so – had been Rasha’s accidental occupation.

  ‘Hell no,’ he barked. ‘I won’t allow it.’

  ‘Hear me out, please. It’ll be different this time. Rasha has already made the appropriate engagement – ’

  ‘Answer me this. If that girl – if Rasha – lost her mind, would you visit her week upon week in that shithole we call the Refinery and look into her eyes and tell her everything is okay and that she’s safe there even though she doesn’t know where “here” is?’

  His mum’s eyes, softly hazel, the skin around them further sagged and lined week after week. The real kind of horror that only the most unfortunate of children could ever know. Sam chewed his fingernails. He just wanted to move on. Something Trish couldn’t – rather, wouldn’t – do. It wasn’t in her DNA.

  Sam’s phone vibrated in receipt of a call. He whipped it out of the cup holder.

  ‘It’s James,’ Sam said, reading the caller ID.

  ‘Just let it ring out,’ Trish said.

  ‘Last time we did that, someone died,’ Sam reminded her. He swiped to answer and put the phone to his ear.

  ‘Sam,’ came
James’s panicked voice. ‘I know you’re on compassionate leave, but I’m gonna need you and Trish to come down. I presume she’s with you. You’re the only people who can help us. We’ve got a code red. It’s another occupation.’

  Sam never thought he’d step foot in Angove Lodge again. To accommodate the ageing population, the one-storey care home had various extensions added over the years, each uglier than the last. Trish rolled the Reliant up before the home’s garage doors as the sun set. Patinated windows brimmed with nests, beneath which sat a rusting minibus speckled in seagull faeces. An absolute death is better than this shit, Sam thought. He knew it to be true; his grandfather had spent the remainder of his days there. Rose often recounted that, whilst the carers were well-meaning, the workforce was spread thin amongst forty residents. At his end, his grandfather would have been better off at home with Sam and Rose, or even in his own downtrodden flat.

  Sam and Trish climbed from the Reliant and unpacked the equipment James had asked them to collect when he pulled up in his people carrier. He hopped out and tottered over to them. He patted the square of Sam’s back and hugged Trish.

  ‘How are you both keeping?’ James asked.

  Sam and Trish looked between themselves. On the way over they’d agreed not to mention the gywandras.

  ‘Turns out funeral plans make for great bonding with the in-laws,’ Sam drawled. Trish scowled at him, passed bags to both men, and led the way to the front of the home.

  ‘Where is the occupations unit?’ she asked.

  ‘Temporarily engaged.’

  ‘The occupation in Bodmin?’

  James did a double take at Trish; she wasn’t wearing her dielectric band. Secrets were no more.

  ‘Still ongoing,’ James exclaimed.

  ‘So the ban from public relations no longer applies?’ Sam sneered.

  ‘Temporarily lifted,’ James said.

  ‘What has the care home been told about us?’ Trish asked.

  ‘Private healthcare,’ James replied, slightly hesitant. ‘Sent by the patient’s family. The woman I spoke to is an agency worker. Sounded desperate on the call, didn’t ask many questions.’

  ‘What do you know so far?’ Sam asked.

  ‘Ted Lower, eighty-six, MS, dysphagia, bedbound. The nurse on the phone said he’s been experiencing unwarranted neurotic behaviour this last week. Ever since the frequency spikes escalated in Pendeen, as it happens.’

  They reached a key-coded door. James pressed the buzzer.

  A bedraggled shift worker arrived from the adjacent corridor. She slammed her key fob against the sensor. There was a meek beep, and the door flung outward. She raised her pencilled eyebrows as if to ask who they were.

  ‘Doctor Peter Wright, Pink Cross,’ James said before gesturing to Sam and Trish. ‘My two juniors. All we can do at short notice. I spoke to Jill?’

  ‘That’s me. Christ, no, no, thank god you’ve come,’ Jill said. She ushered them inside and shut the door quickly – a shrivelled raisin of a man scuttled toward it in an attempt for freedom. Jill led them down the corridor she’d come from. ‘Don’t bother signing in, can’t leave him alone, not for a minute. I’m not trained for this, hell, I’m not paid well enough for this – ’

  I feel you, sister, Sam thought.

  ‘It was a good job his son called when he did, I’d never have known he had private healthcare. Don’t tell us agency nothin’.’

  Sam raised his eyebrows, certain that James had feigned his London accent during the phone call.

  ‘He’s out of his mind,’ Jill continued. ‘Well, most are, but in a different way entirely. The GP put it down to a UTI, but I’ve seen plenty, and they’ve never caused . . . this.’

  They stopped before a door. Sam noted a photograph on the door labelled ‘Ted.’ It was a picture of a confused man gazing up from his wheelchair with pearly eyes. Jill turned and put an arm across the doorway to stop to them. Her nicotine-licked teeth chattered.

  ‘I don’t know if you know, but it’s important before you see him,’ she said. ‘He hasn’t walked in years. Not spoken for the same time. He’s been blind since his sixties. My god . . .’

  Jill sunk against the wall. James headed the party and pushed the door open. Inside, Ted stood with the posture of a healthy twenty-year-old. Blood raced across his forearms, eyes clear, and a toppled side lamp cast him into a half-light. Piss – the stale apricot kind – crept over Sam’s nostrils: a catheter bag had emptied onto the frayed carpet by the hospital bed. Ted turned at the sound of their arrival, his bloodied nightgown hitched around his disjointed hips. Blood dripped from his flaccid penis where the catheter tube had been torn out.

  James turned to close the door.

  ‘We’ll just get some privacy,’ he whispered to Jill. ‘Try to calm him down.’

  He closed the door. It was four of them, alone in the room.

  ‘We should try to speak it to first,’ Trish said. ‘Establish the degree of the occupation. Sam, I need a reading.’

  ‘Sure,’ Sam said. He fumbled with the equipment bag.

  Trish approached Ted.

  ‘Ted, can you hear me?’ she asked. ‘Can you see me, Ted?’

  The old man cocked his head, birdlike, inquisitive.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Trish asked, and the reply was higher pitched than Sam had expected, with a Russian accent.

  ‘Nika.’

  What followed was a torrent of angry words. They streamed from the old man’s mouth faster than the man previously had capacity for. Ted, or rather Nika, paused, cocked their head, and awaited a response. When none came, another flurry of Russian was spat, harsher than before. Sam, the spectrophotometer in hand, fumbled to power up the gadget.

  ‘Well,’ Trish said, ‘I take it no one knows Russian.’

  ‘No, but I’ve got a reading,’ Sam said. James looked over his shoulder at the screen. Ted’s body appeared in a navy-blue silhouette. Inside him thrashed two wispy silhouettes: one green, which sunk from his body, whilst the second was red and thwarted the first. ‘The imprint is dominant. We’re losing him.’

  Relief swamped Sam’s chest: at least it wasn’t the gywandras.

  ‘Right, we’re going to have to work to get it back,’ Trish said.

  Sam sighed. There was a sense of the forbidden, the kind where lust became warped and destructive, and it pulled Sam in.

  ‘I’ll engage,’ he began. He didn’t have time to close his eyes. Ted lumbered forward on his swollen legs. Bleeding where various tubes had been torn, Ted gestured to his penis, a useless tool in light of the man’s ill health. He jerked his arms, and blood peppered parallel lines across the carpet. Ted stumbled against a cabinet, scattering photographs of his family. He rose with a disposable razor in hand: the tumble had been calculated. With one sharp motion, he sliced through his foreskin. A second swipe. A third. The bereft penis hit the carpet.

  ‘Sam, engage for fuck’s sake!’ Trish screamed.

  Sam closed his eyes and plunged into the ombrederi.

  Sam’s neutral space – the sprawling ancient trees of Cardinham Woods – never came.

  He was thrust into a meek treatment room. A thin bare woman was sat on a hospital bed. She only had one breast, its companion replaced by a scar that oozed with infection. Sam hazarded a guess that this was Nika, and as she conferred with her doctor he discovered it was cancer, or pak, the doctor often said in Russian, and he was old and wizened and leered above her as he recited that she was cured.

  Sam saw into Nika’s mind and found that she wasn’t relieved. The doctor had touched Nika in places he never asked to, did things unrelated to her treatment, and through rape stole more and more of her soul. A parasitic man, worse than cancer. She’d survived one disease and would outlive another.

  The doctor pinned her to the hospital bed and unzipped his trousers. She reached down, as if to hold the bed frame for the onslaught that would follow. Nika found the side table ladled with instruments. Her hand clamped around
an object, smaller than she’d hoped – but alas, it was sharp. She whipped her hand up and jabbed a needle into the doctor’s eye. Opaque fluid squirted from his eyeball, and his erection depleted quicker than a popped balloon. She reached out again, brought up a scalpel, and drove it through the doctor’s temple. The life fell right out of his body, and his body fell to the floor.

  ‘Anything?’ Trish’s voice reverberated from the physical.

  Sam processed through the following memories: tense police enquiries, a media driven court case, and a miserable life sentence in a grungy prison. ‘All because a man took what wasn’t his,’ Nika hissed from within the ombrederi.

  ‘I can’t find the taken,’ Sam said to the physical.

  ‘Think context,’ Trish barked. ‘You need to hurry.’

  Nika was, above all else, emptied of any power or self-worth. To have connected to Nika, Ted must have empathised with her, for Sam had to connect to them both.

  The scene whirled like water down a sink drain. The doctor rose from the hospital floor. But he was now a woman, matronesque with a wild Scottish mane. There was Ted, little Ted, aged seven, and little Ted loved Spitfires. He had countless drawings, and his daddy had made a model from matchsticks, and it really was the cat’s pyjamas. The woman was called Josie, and little Ted sat on Josie’s lap before the crackling fire whilst his mummy and daddy went out to dance with their friends. They had lots of friends and lots of dances, and per Friday night routine, Ted showed Josie all of his drawings since their last encounter. He concentrated on the drawings, absorbed in each detail and every feature of each plane, because Josie did the thing he really didn’t enjoy. She had to do it; she said that if she didn’t, and Mummy and Daddy found out, there would be no more Spitfires. The warmth of the hearth stung Teddy’s eyes, but he dared not blink, not until it was over, and then when it was, he crossed to Daddy’s armchair that smelt of tobacco and shoe polish. He played with the Spitfire and pretended to fly, away from Josie and the fire, up toward the sky to somewhere brilliant and new.