by Terry Kitto
‘I didn’t even ask how Trish is doing,’ she said. She pushed the empty fruit bowl to the side. ‘I was so preoccupied. What’s the latest?’
‘Brain activity is through the roof,’ Sam said. ‘She’ll wake up. Just a matter of when.’
Phil handed out tea and biscuits and sat down between them.
‘But I said, and I always have,’ Marge said after a sip of tea, ‘those mines, all those tunnels underground, all the equipment that was abandoned down there when it closed. Well, an explosion was going to happen sooner or later.’
‘Poor Trish, though. What are the chances of getting caught up in it all?’ Phil said. He rubbed his bad hip. ‘Always happens to good people, too.’
‘Seems to be that way,’ Sam said. He reached for his satchel, took the shoebox out, and laid it on the table. ‘Brought you this. Thought you might want to have a look through.’
He opened the box, took out the wad of photos, and put them at the centre of the table. Margaret spotted Will’s face amongst them. She dragged her chair closer to Phil’s. Sam did the same, and all three sat at one side of the table to pore over the photos. Infectious laughter ensued; many photos were accompanied by a story. Sam pointed at a collection of photos taken on Bodmin Moor. They were of Will, and as if they were pages of a flip-book, a blip grew larger in the background of each photo as Margaret trawled through them.
‘See that there, coming up over the hill? That’s only a bull,’ he said.
‘Never,’ Marge squeaked.
‘We didn’t know it was breeding season. There were three bulls in this pasture. This one bolted straight for us. Never ran so fast in my life. Will lost a welly.’
‘So that’s why he wanted a new pair that Christmas!’ Phil chuckled.
‘Yeah, and afterward we bolted over the fence and straight into a pen of geese. Oh, how they bite! Talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire!’
Will’s parents laughed. Marge delved into a stack of Polaroids from a Halloween two years ago, where their son’s attempt at a raunchy pumpkin had left him resembling a deflated carrot.
‘With those skinny legs of his!’ Phil laughed.
Sam excused himself for the toilet. As he walked along the hallway, he looked back at Margaret’s and Phil’s faces lit up over the pieces of Will they’d never known. Sam smiled; he hadn’t done that in their house for a long time.
Sam didn’t go to the toilet. He went to Will’s bedroom. The police tape was long since removed. The broken furniture was gone, the carpet taken up altogether, a new window installed. He feared the Reeves had thrown Will’s possessions away, but the largest wall was decorated with school photos and university degrees and childhood drawings. A celebration of his life. Beyond the smell of fresh paint, the chorus of birds outside the open window, and the dry heat from the radiator, was frequency energy. An imprint signature. Sam closed his eyes to the ombrederi.
There was laughter, Will’s memories of baking in the downstairs kitchen with Marge, Phil teaching him to drive, lightning in Lanhydrock.
He hadn’t forgotten the ones he’d left behind.
Rain and lightening lashed at the train windows. After multiple delays, Sam was relieved to finally head to Plymouth. He was Trish’s next of kin – her only option – so visits to Derriford were paramount. He got the rush hour train from St Austell, complete with a bus replacement service from Bodmin Parkway to Saltash. By the time the 4:49 Great Western arrived in Plymouth, he had been kneed in the thigh by one of seven excitable pensioner shoppers and the automatic toilet door had sprung open on him midpiss. I need a semi-decent car. He passed a few chain pubs and bars in the taxi to the hospital. Teeth clenched, fists tight, he pushed himself back into his seat. He craved a bitter, a lager shandy – even the fumes from a shot of Pernod. His resolve was absolute. He fondled the scar on his arm for the remainder of the journey.
Derriford’s intensive care unit swam into view. A cluster of white tower blocks and tall chimneys, it was a building Wonka would create whimsical treats from and not a ward where Trish lingered in the balance of physical life and death.
Trish had been transferred to a private room painted duck-egg blue, with a window that caught the brunt of the storm. Her skin was Rorschach-ed with bruises. Synced up to multiple machines, wires and tubes pierced her skin; Sam pretended she was using a gadget in a Network cavern instead. He kissed her on the forehead. The heat her body gave off was incredible. Static pinched at Sam’s skin; frequency energy was rife within her. It leeched outward, and tendrils of light flooded the room. Sam closed his eyes and engaged with the ombrederi.
Trish and Shauna paddled in the sea at the height of summer. A look of complete desperation on Michael’s face in HMP Dartmoor’s visitation room.
Sam came back to the physical. Above Trish’s bed was Abidemi. She swayed from the noose bound to her neck, her body rotten and back flayed. Maggots wriggled from her eye sockets, and vomit and blood oozed from her crooked smile. Fire erupted all over the imprint’s projection. Sam sprung back from his chair and gripped the window blind for support. The fire blew out, and Abidemi was whole: a hopeful smile, eyes of joy. No noose. She had died younger than Sam thought: a young woman of no more than fourteen. A change had occurred in him the past month. He was a little less bitter and a little more optimistic. She wanted Sam to know that she was too: forever his guiding imprint.
In a swath of light, she receded into Trish’s body. Her face glinted. Sam looked closer – tears pooled above her cheeks and meandered to the end of her round chin.
The monitors bleeped.
Rasha towers over her younger self.
It is just as she remembers the seventh night of her haunting to be. The moonlight splices the contents of her room into ghostly shapes. Her former self hugs her bedsheets tightly and shivers in the presence of a gywandras. Except, the transformation isn’t yet complete.
The gywandras pincer erupts from her stomach and punctures her younger self. Younger self – it had been just sixteen days, and yet so much has changed.
The only thing that hasn’t: remembering Syria.
The acrid smoke swarms across rabid fires, and singed flesh smothers her nostrils. Helicopter propellers beat as quickly and as loudly as her thumping heart.
That is it. Rasha is the gywandras.
She knows what is next.
The ombrederi whispers in her head, ‘Kill Shauna.’
Haya was holding Rasha tight when she awoke from her nightmare.
It had become a regular occurrence since that night in Pendeen. Rasha couldn’t tell Haya anything, so she lay there in her mother’s arms, the warmth of her breath on the back of her neck a small comfort in such troubled times. She lied to herself, convinced that the ombrederi was far too complex for Haya to fathom, or that the concept of the dasfurvya may scare her. In reality, Rasha didn’t tell her because she’d only just got her mother back.
She didn’t want Haya to know she’d killed Shauna Teagues.
As Haya sorted out her school stuff, Rasha showered and thought over Sam’s words. It had been the second day of his stay with the Abadis. He’d tried to quell Rasha’s worries and justified her actions because they were written – that Shauna’s death, no matter how tragic, was necessary.
‘There are actions,’ he had said. ‘And then there are reasons for them. You did it for the greater good. If you were truly a horrible person, you would sleep easy.’
Before Rasha left for school, Haya handed her a note. That was their routine now. Rasha unfurled the scrap of copy paper to examine the word she read every day in various degrees of legibility.
Unconditionally.
She surveyed her mother’s handwriting, amazed at how far Haya had come in language and in life.
‘Nice,’ Rasha said in Levantine with rare glee. ‘Consistent lowercases. Just mind how you join the t’s.’
Rasha hugged Haya.
‘Haya improves because of your dedication,’ Sam had sa
id before he’d left. ‘She’s doing it for you, you know.’
Rasha pocketed her mother’s note, as she did every day. Just like the note, her mother would never be far. Whilst she kept it on her person, Rasha could remind herself of what good she could accomplish.
DT wasn’t the same now that Cridland had taken an early retirement.
In his place was a chirpy, fresh-faced graduate by the name of Mr Roskelley. He was young enough to play cool with the boys in Rasha’s class whilst most of the girls seemed to swoon over his golden hair and bright blue eyes.
He didn’t bother Rasha. Despite Cridland’s absence, she named herself a failure.
Cridland’s case never made it to court on rule of ‘corpus delicti,’ as the local newspaper put it. Haya told her it meant the confession alone was not enough. Because Cridland had confessed midfit when the class had chanted the Tredethy rhyme, his confession was deemed unreliable. Cridland banked on the judicial faux pas and never confessed when in better health. There was a silver lining, however: whether spooked by Joel or embarrassed by what he had done, Cridland gave in his notice and never set foot in Gorenn Comprehensive again.
Her efforts seemed to have appeased Joel, for she never saw the imprint. She hoped that he’d found peace and left for the ombrederi. The small victories would have to do.
In her usual spot on the back bench, Rasha sat and pulled out her homework for Mr Roskelley to look over. Two seats over, Fred joined the class late and awkwardly emptied supplies from his rucksack onto the bench with his only good hand. The other was still kept bandaged.
He sat down, pulled a notepad toward himself, and quickly scrawled a design to fit their next brief: a puzzle box. He’d clearly not gotten around to his homework. Rasha watched on as the lead in his pencil snapped. He unzipped his pencil case with a struggle and rummaged around for a sharpener. His attempt to sharpen the pencil, with the sharpener wedged between his elbow and the desk, was feeble at best. Rasha couldn’t bear it. She reached across the table, snatched up the pencil and sharpener, wrung them a few times, and handed them back. She gathered a new piece of drafting paper and continued with her work, ignoring how Fred’s gaze lingered on her a moment too long before he turned to his render.
‘You really don’t have to come,’ Trish called from the back of the converted van. ‘I don’t want to trigger any memories.’
‘After everything, it’s the least I can do,’ Rasha persisted. She shivered in the cold. ‘Please.’
Trish nodded, and Rasha jumped into the front of the cab where Sam was sat. He kick-started the engine and pulled away from the caravan park. They were only meant to say hello as they passed through. Rasha had only seen Trish once since she’d woken from her coma six months ago. She knew that the duo kept her at an arm’s length. They were still processing the events in Pendeen. It only made Rasha keener to make amends. The thought of prison was far from enticing, but she reminded herself, Trish protected me in the ombrederi. She’s in a wheelchair because of me.
Trish was in the back, the wheels of her chair strapped to the van floor. She reached out as far as she could. Rasha offered her hand, and Trish squeezed it.
As Sam drove on to Dartmoor, Trish filled Rasha in on her rehabilitation. Despite weekly physio appointments, she’d reached the extent of her recovery and would never regain the use of her legs. Rasha thought it strange how nonplussed Trish was about the situation. After a little talk, Trish reclined in her wheelchair and went silent, eyes closed. Rasha hoped they’d talk about their time in the ombrederi; she wanted to know where she stood after killing Shauna. That being said, Rasha doubted Trish slept when her eyes were closed, which Sam confirmed when he whispered, ‘She spends more time in the ombrederi than she does with the living.’
Rasha hoped that Trish had found Shauna in the ombrederi, at the very least.
Sam told her how he had become Trish’s full-time carer. The council had found them a ground floor flat in Camelford – in a unit of pensioners, no less – which meant that Sam could give up his slew of part-time kitchen work. He was the healthiest Rasha had ever seen him; his frame had filled out, and colour had returned to his cheeks.
HMP Dartmoor was even more dismal in person than the photos that Rasha had Googled. Weather-stained and dull, she thought it was the best place for those inside. Everyone but Michael, at least.
Michael, the innocent man found guilty of Rasha’s crimes.
Sam dared not enter the building.
‘It’s too much like the Refinery, if I’m honest,’ he muttered.
Sam pushed Trish’s wheelchair to the entrance, then skulked back to the van. Rasha pushed Trish inside through the various sign-in procedures and into the visitation room. They were given the far left table closest to the vending machines, and Michael was already seated when they crossed over. Rasha’s stomach writhed. She kept her composure and pulled the brakes on the wheelchair. Michael cast his eyes over Trish and her wilted legs. He buried his face in his hands.
‘Oh, Trish!’ he exclaimed.
Trish looked at Rasha and nodded. Rasha half smiled and crossed to the vending machines. She pretended to make a decision between fizzy and chocolate. She folded her arms and clamped her eyes shut, then focused on her breathing, trying to stop the anxiety that flooded through her chest.
Rasha suspected that she’d always be haunted – if not by the dead, then by the acts she’d committed in the ombrederi.
She caught fragments of Trish and Michael’s conversation behind her.
‘When Sam told me,’ Michael whined. ‘When he rang me, I didn’t think it was as bad as . . .’
‘I’m still here,’ Trish said. ‘Which these days is a blessing, all things considered.’
‘I didn’t think you’d come back, not after last time.’
‘I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,’ Trish said. Rasha saw their table reflected in the glass of the vending machine. Michael reached across the table, his hands in Trish’s. ‘I believe you. I know you didn’t do it. I know you’re innocent.’
Michael sobbed loudly, head in Trish’s hands, and muttered over and over, ‘Thank you, thank you.’
‘You have to be good now, you hear me? You have to try. Don’t give them any reason to extend your sentence.’
There was no evidence to be procured that the courts could use to free Michael from his sentence, but that didn’t seem to matter as much as someone believing in him.
Rasha couldn’t bear his sobs any longer. She approached a guard for directions to the nearest toilet. The visitation room’s doors were unlocked for her, and she scarpered to the woman’s bathroom and bolted into a cubicle, where she remained until the visitation was up.
No matter her reasons for taking Shauna’s life, Rasha knew she should be in prison, in Michael’s place. If she’d learnt anything at all in the ombrederi, people made themselves monsters, and she was the making of herself.
Deep in the ombrederi, Rasha skulks across Pendeen’s hillside. Shauna’s death cycles through her mind. She tries to focus on the task at hand.
Ahead of her is a four-man tent with its door unzipped, and a Tilley lamp shines a triangular path to Rasha’s feet. Inside, James sits alongside his wife, Jane, and their three daughters. Jane nods at him and ushers the girls outside. Rasha and James are alone.
A wind rustles through the tent. James looks around.
‘The happiest memory I have. It’s amusing, really, how we wish our time away for holidays and adventure, always looking forward to the next best thing, rarely content. But then your world turns upside down, and what you crave most are the mundane and ordinary moments.’
‘That’s true happiness,’ Rasha says. ‘That’s when you know you’ve had a good life.’
‘I can look into you,’ James says. ‘I see so much darkness.’
‘It finds me. It defines my reality.’
‘Interesting. I used to think we defined our own reality. We choose what we believe. It’s ignorance, rea
lly, and we’re all pretending. In this world, you have to do it just to remain sane.’
Beyond the tent flaps, James’s girls laugh and skip in a game of tag.
‘What you’re doing isn’t sane,’ Rasha says. ‘It’s unhealthy to hold on.’
‘I know that, yet I cannot let go. Do you understand?’
Rasha nods. Even though she tells herself that she’s moved on, really she holds on to the past tighter than most. Perhaps, in the end, that was what truly made someone a gywandras: so tied to the past that they never left it behind.
‘You’re a gywandras?’ Rasha asks.
‘You and me both, it seems.’
‘Then you created me.’
‘That is not how a gywandras comes to be. Trish told me what you said to her the day after you were occupied.’
Rasha thinks a moment. So much had been said.
‘I thought the gywandras was me . . .’ She pauses, eyes wide. James looks at her, and it was clear they had the same thought. ‘I will create myself.’
‘Fitting, don’t you think?’
The tent flaps flutter, inviting Rasha forward. She looks out – at herself, in her bed at night in caravan forty-five. The night of her occupation.
‘And if I don’t,’ Rasha says. ‘If I don’t right now, it’ll never happen.’
‘There’s a phrase slung around here an awful lot, but it does what it says on the tin: it is written.’
Perhaps that was why she didn’t sense the gywandras was her for definite. She’d no longer recognise herself, after everything she had done, and everything she was yet to do.
Rasha steps out of the tent and into caravan forty-five.
The bonfire of the memorial service cast Pendeen’s cliff tops into an amber hue so that the spectators looked like insects preserved in resin. The heat sliced through the summer evening chill and took Rasha’s breath away. She, Trish, Sam, and perhaps the entirety of the town were nestled on the cliff tops, the repaired lighthouse a candlewick on the horizon. One by one, the vicar of the local church, a nervous town counsellor, and a suited Conservative MP – campaign badge and all – gave speeches in turn. The story that officials pulled together was frighteningly far removed from the truth and fed many political agendas: Europeans without ID had been trafficked to Cornwall and were caught up in an environmental disaster by mere coincidence. As James had told Rasha in the ombrederi, ‘Reality is what you choose to believe.’