Stranger Still

by Marilyn Messik

  As soon as Matron’s comfortable rear end disappeared out the door, Glory drew a chair to the side of the bed; I put out my hand and she took it. There was information needed exchanging and we didn’t have much time.

  “Ruth?” I asked and instantly saw her as Glory had, earlier; deeply unconscious, an almost imperceptible slow rise and fall of her chest the single sign of life. To say she was a shadow of her former self didn’t cover it. Flesh had fallen shockingly away from cheekbones that now stood stark; her lips were colourless, sunk inwards. She had her arms above the blanket covering her and once-plump fingers with painted nails, one of her small vanities, denuded of varnish and rings, were clawed and clenched.

  “How long?” I meant, how long had she been this way.

  Glory chose to misinterpret, “Not much longer. Sam says it’s eating away at her, sucking her dry and she’ll simply move to a level where her organs will shut down one by one. Like your Alison said, he hooks on, crawls in and embeds.” Glory’s self-reproach drenched me, the guilt she shared with the others that they hadn’t immediately known, and that perhaps if recognised at an earlier stage they could have done something but,

  “We weren’t sure for such a long time, he was so well hidden.”

  “But last year, when she was so unwell?”

  “We think he overestimated how much he could take; when he realised what was happening to her he eased off almost completely,” in a chilling echo of Alison’s words earlier, she added, “no one kills the golden goose.”

  “Why? Why her?”

  “We believe he stumbled across her by accident, he’d probably never found anyone anywhere nearly as strong, and then…” she stopped.

  Our hands still joined, I drew back to look at her, “And then?”

  “He found you.”

  “Me?”

  She sighed, “That confrontation at Jamie’s – we came to get you – we’d no idea it could be anything remotely connected to our worries about Ruth, but you knew, didn’t you? You saw what had happened to Jamie, what had driven him insane; you saw the link to Ruth?” she paused again then continued, “When you recognised what he was, he also saw and recognised what you were.” Shock zipped through me, as I started to see the whole horrible picture – and my role in it.

  Ruth and Jamie were both random victims; but I was the one who’d tuned into Jamie’s nightmares and followed them up. It was because I got in too deep and needed help that two random victims of the same predator were brought together. I’d seen the link but I’d also been the link.

  In her mind, Glory had assembled a sort of crime-investigation board, and I was the string, the common factor, connecting Ruth and Jamie, both tied to and infected by the ghastliness of Phillip. Glory waited for me to understand something else, to catch up – and I did.

  The twisting apprehension, the masks, the chant, the constant crying in my head. I had been carrying the connection, the infection with me, just hadn’t recognised it for what it was. I felt Glory’s distress, knew she had no reassurance to offer.

  “It didn’t occur to us at first either,” she said, “Jamie was right out of the picture by then, and we thought if we kept you completely away from Ruth, he was unlikely to find you, and in the meantime the rest of us were all trying to locate him. You did insist on coming down after the wedding but other than that, we’ve done pretty well keeping you away.”

  “And Ruth couldn’t know…”

  “…about the baby. If she knew, he’d know too and that would put you even more at risk. Your level of ability plus a brand-new baby. Getting hands on you would be like winning the lottery twice over, and all the time we thought we had you covered….”

  “…he was already in and knew everything. ‘Come into my parlour said the spider to the fly’ and I bloody well did!” And then Mrs Millsop arrived back with tea.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  David was mortified; and not helped by Mrs Millsop making it clear, in her opinion Fathers who insisted on being present, were probably best off on the floor and not getting in the way of other people with a job to do. Luckily, none of this was enough to wipe the smile off his face as he cuddled the baby and Mrs Millsop, having applied a witch hazel saturated cloth to the egg-shaped bump on his forehead, was tactfully removed by Glory to give us some time alone.

  As is so often the case in life, these long anticipated early moments with the baby weren’t quite as I’d imagined they’d be. David was, understandably, still not on board with the fact that not only were we not as planned in Edgware General Hospital Maternity Unit, but that nine months pregnant, I’d thought it a good idea to head out in blizzard conditions omitting to tell a soul where I was going. This decision had, he pointed out, resulted in him driving all over the country (I felt this was an exaggeration) through snow and ice, accompanied by his hysterically, guilt-ridden Mother, who insisted it was all her fault but refused to go into details, and without his coat, which someone had borrowed. It had all been, he said, a bit stressful.

  That I’d then had to be rescued from a cellar in which some maniac had locked me was worrying and even more worrying was instead of handing said maniac over to the police, we’d brought him home with us.

  I had to admit, looked at from David’s point of view – indeed from anybody’s point of view, I hadn’t handled this well. On a positive note he was so nerve-frayed with all the above that he didn’t have the energy to give me the piece of his mind I deserved. This was a good thing, because I was tired in a way that knocked all previous tirednesses right out of court. So much so, every time I blinked, my eyelids showed an iron determination to not re-open for business any time soon. The baby, who might have expected to be the focus of all attention, seemed to be fairly philosophical that she wasn’t, and kept dropping off against whoever was holding her. We’d discussed names, despite Aunt Kitty insisting it was bad luck to choose a name before the baby arrived, and we’d lined up three for a girl as I was so certain. We said we’d finalise once we saw who turned up and that wasn’t hard. She looked like a Sara.

  What with Glory’s recent input and its ramifications rocketing around my head, and trying to present David with some kind of rational explanation for recent events, I wasn’t sorry when Mrs Millsop re-appeared. She was, she said, putting her foot down.

  “We’ll feed Baby, then sleep.” I said I had to talk to Glory again but she wasn’t having any of it. “I’m the one who says what happens or doesn’t happen in my clinic.,”

  “But I want…”

  “Well if wishing and wanting were doing and making, we'd all be a lot better off, wouldn’t we?” she said, and I could see resistance was futile. The quicker I did what I was told, the sooner I could do what I wanted, and I wasn’t going to be much use to anyone if I couldn’t keep my eyes open for longer than two minutes at a time. I fed Sara, not without a fair amount of misgiving once I felt the strength of those small jaws, and David went off to check on what was happening with his Mother, who’d had a bit of a funny turn on being presented with her new granddaughter. Her complete ‘overwhelm’ was two halves of a whole, one half thrilled and thankful the baby had arrived safely, the other completely unable to deal with Mrs Millsop’s, “Nana will have to get used to nappy changing again.” Under no circumstances did Laura plan to be a Nana; a Grandma possibly, but she wasn’t even sure about that, and she certainly didn’t intend to get involved in the mucky side of things. She felt she was far, far too young for any of this and all of a sudden, came over tearful. She was going to go to bed she said, she needed time to “Get over everything!”

  I flatly refused to let Mrs Millsop take Sara away while I slept. She wasn’t impressed.

  “That’s plain silly. Don’t come grumbling if you don’t get a wink because Baby’s crying.” I assured her I wouldn’t and she brought in a cunningly converted plastic crate which she’d lined with layers of blankets and placed on one of her trolleys, so I could pull it close to the bed.

  Given it
was now past midnight and had been an eventful day, I expected to go out like the light Mrs Millsop clicked off as she left. Instead of which I was wide-eyed and wakeful. David was just across the hall in another clinic room, said if I needed anything to call, and when Sara cried, he’d get up and change her, but as I heard him snoring as soon as his head hit the pillow, I wasn’t setting too much store by that.

  I desperately wanted to know what was happening, there’d been more for Glory to tell me had we not run out of time, and the overall silence resulting from the proximity of many minds with shuttered thoughts, which was normally a pleasure, was now nothing but a pain. I couldn’t pick up anything and the more questions went round in my head the muddier the answers they churned up.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  “Absolutely not,” David said, and I knew the next thing he was going to say was ‘I forbid it’ but he looked at me, knew I knew and wisely bit his lip.

  “Of course I’ll do it,” I said.

  I suppose you could say we were in crisis talks; and if we were a funny combination seated round the table in the dining room that morning, the darkness of the discussion obscured any amusement. I didn’t feel particularly well, and it was nothing I could blame on the baby in my arms, it was the all too familiar twisting of apprehension in my gut, plus my guilt over any number of things. At a time when David should have been relaxed and celebrating – he wasn’t. And as unruffled as he was trying to remain, the strain of yesterday and now today was showing. This morning when we’d woken, I’d sworn to him this was the last, the very last time I’d put him in this kind of position, but we were where we were and decisions and actions had to be taken of which I had to be a part – and he refused to let me go and discuss that without him.

  Rachael was seated opposite me; I hoped but doubted I’d hidden my shock when I saw her. When they’d turned up yesterday on the rescue mission, I wasn’t really in a state to take stock of how anyone looked but now, the morning light streaming through the large windows was merciless, she was early fifties but today looked years older. She’d been silver-haired almost as long as I’d known her, but now the uncompromisingly chopped, chin-length bob was dulled to match her drained face. If her appearance told a truth, her manner was as brusque and unbowed as ever. She turned to Boris seated next to her, his face giving nothing away because he looked strained at the best of times.

  “Right,” she said, “alternatives?”

  Cheek swollen with one of the aniseed balls everyone else had refused, he said, “We do have options. Sam?” Sam was running through possibilities in his head, visualising, stacking, organising. I wondered what the tutors and students at Oxford made of him, hoped he was doing well, but it was an irrefutable fact he’d probably been a better diagnostician at six than many of them would be in a lifetime. Seventeen now, he’d shot up to around six foot. There were still elements of teenage gawkiness but many more of the man he would become; unchanged was the watchful deep brown gaze of the six-year-old I’d first met. Across the table, he ducked his head briefly at me and dropped an eyelid in a swift wink, it probably wasn’t a move anybody would notice, just something I’d taught a traumatised grubby small boy. To both of us it meant a great deal.

  For the purposes of this meeting, shields had been dropped. When I’d raised an eyebrow Glory had said, “Quicker,” and of course it was for all of us, well with the exception of David and, I devoutly hoped, Sara snuffling in my arms.

  “We’re currently keeping him unconscious at a deep level, limiting brain activity to the bare minimum to keep him alive.” Sam was speaking aloud for David’s benefit, but we all saw and felt Alison flinch. Glory had brought her through in a wheelchair earlier, and a chair the other side of me had been removed to make space for her at the table. She was wearing a silk scarf shaped into a colourful turban; I was surprised to recognise it as one of Laura’s. Alison caught my eye and lifted her hand to touch it self-consciously.

  “Hermes, no less!” Then she spotted the baby and her face softened, erasing for a moment all the strain. Glancing at me for permission, she put out a cautious finger which Sara obligingly gripped. She’d paled though at mention of Phillip.

  “He can’t hurt you,” Rachael reassured her, “he’s in a solid steel reinforced section at the back of the building, safer than a safe and Ed’s there monitoring him.” Beside me I heard David’s instant thought, as did all the others.

  ‘What the hell do they usually use that for?’

  Boris with a twist of a smile answered obliquely, “I assure you dear boy, only in extremis,” and David subsided, somewhere between amused and embarrassed, but still wondering.

  Ignoring interruptions, Sam continued, “We have options but each carries its own risks. There’s a lot we know and a lot we don’t. We presume he’s embedded as deeply in others as he is in Ruth?” he looked at Alison who nodded; the copper taint of her guilt felt by everyone. Sam nodded, “We know keeping him under will stop him causing pain, or further draining victims but it won’t resolve anything. We believe when he embeds, he leaves something of himself, marks his territory, uses it to find his way back and go straight in. We know he’s not particularly strong on his own, he has to utilise Alison to boost him,” he looked across at her, “you’re positive you’ve no way of identifying victims?

  She shook her head, hearing Sam’s clear summary was an unanticipated ordeal, “There was so much pain, - mine and theirs - I never really had any sense of them as individuals,” she looked at Rachael, “I didn’t know about your sister, I am so sorry.”

  Rachael nodded briskly, “Not your fault and Ruth would say the same.”

  Sam turned to me. “We know Stella, that you were specifically targeted and we believe you’ve also been infected and affected.” David’s shock was palpable, this was news to him and although it wasn’t to me, I’d deliberately filed it away in the ‘don’t think about it yet’ drawer.

  “We can,” Sam went on, “simply eliminate him,” beside me and despite everything David flinched a little, “that’s not the problem,” he paused, “the problem lies in the unknowns. We don’t yet understand how or what he’s implanted. We don’t know if he’s not around, whether what’s inside his victims will simply wither away or whether it will rot, in which case it could be a death sentence.” He paused, he had a real sense of the dramatic and in other circumstances I’d have told him so. “We don’t know how many victims are already as damaged as Ruth, or whether there are others we can help,” he paused to let us assimilate and point out anything he’d missed; no-one spoke. “Bottom line is, if he’s dead, we’ll never know.”

  The summary was all the more chilling for the evenness with which it had been delivered, although in the midst of all the awfulness, I felt a certain amount of proprietorial pride at what Sam had turned into; I smothered it quickly, before anyone picked up on it.

  Boris took over smoothly. “As Sam said, we think there are only two courses of action and we have to move fast with both because we’re losing Ruth.” The pain of this reverberated as he carried on, seemingly at a tangent and I jumped as he addressed me. “Stella, we must first look at you and Devlin, because it would seem when you pulled him back from wherever the brain injury had taken him, you did the same thing, you left something behind.” David knew about Devlin and what I’d done in the hospital, but it must have slipped my mind to fill him in on what had happened since, and his bemusement was clear.

  Rachael drew a quick breath, if time was short, so was her patience, so she bridged the information gap. I was apprehensive, I knew how he’d reacted when I’d done a similar brain dump, but under these circumstances he accepted it, maybe it was different because it was Rachael.

  He blinked hard. “Blimey.”

  Boris was still waiting, “Well, Stella?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Will you let us see if we can work out what happened and how? It could be key to saving Ruth.”

  “Wouldn’t you need Devlin
too?”

  “He’s already here.” That shocked me, there was obviously a whole lot of stuff I didn’t know either, but I’d ask questions later.

  “Is there a risk? I asked.

  “There’s always an element of risk, you know that.”

  “Tell me what you need.”

  “Absolutely not,” said David.

  “Of course, I’ll do it,” I said.

  From my other side Alison asked, although she already knew, “And the second thing?”

  Boris smiled at her, “Ah now, with you, Alison we have a different situation. After all your time with him, we can find no trace of him in you,” Sam confirmed with a nod, and Boris went on, “we think he understood enough to know that embedding in you, would somehow lessen what you could do; and to be frank he didn’t need any extra hold over you. He had you under lock and key and all he ever needed was the pain of others to trigger yours and keep you under control. But we need you to help us track them down. You know this man, probably better than he knows himself. Will you help us?”

  “You’d need him conscious?” she said. Boris nodded and we felt the immediate repugnance in her reaction; she could not, absolutely would not, go there again.

  I hesitated, I knew what I could do and how much of a risk I was prepared to take but that was my right. Did I have any right to push the frailty of this woman who’d already helped me so much. I decided it was probably as much for her own good as for the good of the many unknown others, Glory caught my eye and nodded.

  “Alison Olivia,” I said softly, “what was it your parents used to say?”

  She grimaced slightly, “That I always knew my own mind.” we waited while guilt swamped gut reaction and she sighed, “I’ll do my best.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  I’m sure I’ve said it before, but as you know, that’s not going to stop me saying it again; however crazy a situation gets, I believe we only have the capacity to reach a defined level of stunned. When that level’s reached, our brains recalibrate to cope. At no time was this more evident than the couple of days following Sara’s birth.