Count to Ten

by Mark Ayre

  Had she changed for good? Could she still be saved?

  Once Paul was in something resembling the recovery position, his airways checked and confirmed sick free, Will did as his wife had asked.

  On different sofas, they formed different shapes.

  As though she owned the place, Gina pulled her legs beneath her. Sipping from her flute, she watched Will perch on the armchair’s edge, straight-backed. As though to be comfortable in someone else’s home without their permission was a grave insult. On the windowsill, his Prosecco stood untouched.

  Desperate to know what was going on, Will nevertheless found himself afraid to ask. Not because he feared she would refuse to provide an answer. Nor because he feared she might lie.

  Somehow, he was sure she would tell the truth, and it was the truth that frightened him most.

  “I’ve sent a text,” said Gina. “It’s not ideal that you’re here. It’s sooner than I’d have liked. But it’s okay. You’ll just have to get involved earlier than planned.”

  In the hall next door, a man lay with a weak pulse, possibly on the cusp of death. Will’s wife had been upstairs with the same man. Had likely pushed him down the stairs. Now she sipped Prosecco and smiled as though all was right with the world.

  Rendered speechless, Will let Gina go again.

  “Where’s Edie?”

  Gina had always been the greatest mother. Protector, nurturer, inspirer. Will loved to watch his wife and daughter together. Had always felt lucky to have them.

  He was afraid to reveal Edie’s location.

  “I guess you left her with the Khan’s?” It was a rhetorical question. “You should have stayed home. Our neighbours do too much. It wasn’t fair to put them out.”

  “They were happy to.”

  “What about Edie? She must be worried?”

  At this, Will flared. “She was already worried.”

  Gina sighed. “I’ve been distant, I know. I’ve wished I could be honest, but it wasn’t my choice. We have to play it their way.”

  “Whose way?”

  Gina ignored him.

  “The important thing is, I love you, and I love Edie. That’ll never change. Whatever I do, I’ll never leave you behind.”

  Gina had told Will she loved him a million times or more. Will was sure he’d never left her waiting on a response.

  For the first time, through crept the real Gina’s voice. Will had begun to believe his wife was gone. At her words, hope choked him.

  “I wasn’t sleeping with Paul, either,” she said, waving a hand towards the door, as though the unconscious man behind it meant nothing. “That’s not what this was.”

  Rather than call an ambulance or ask Gina why she had attacked Paul, the selfish question sprung free.

  “You didn’t cheat?”

  “Not with Paul.”

  Hope went sour, then poisonous.

  “Not with Paul?”

  “There was no tawdry affair,” Gina said. “No one-night-stand met at a bar, no fumble at the Christmas party. Will, I love you. We’re forever.”

  None of this made sense. Once more, Will was struck speechless.

  No shortage of words blighted Gina.

  “I did make love to someone, but it wasn’t about sex. It was more, and it’ll be even soon.” She shook her phone. “As I said, I’ve sent a text. By the end of the night, we’ll each have slept with another. Then we can move on.”

  As the conversation slipped further from his understanding, he determined to say something.

  “I don’t want to sleep with anyone else. It would be a betrayal. Whatever you say, if you slept with another man, it was a betrayal.”

  “Not a man,” said Gina, and laughed at his expression. “Nor a woman.”

  Placing her glass on the sofa side table, she leaned forward, looked side to side, then met his eye. They were about to share a secret.

  “Will, sweetie. There are Gods walking among us.”

  Collapsing in her seat, smiling with divinity, Gina grabbed and drained her glass.

  “Are you going to drink that?” she said, pointing at his.

  “What happened to you?” Will asked.

  This was not the wife he knew and loved.

  There are Gods walking among us.

  Someone had taken Gina, addled her mind.

  No longer could this go on.

  Standing, leaving the Prosecco, Will grabbed his phone, unlocked the screen.

  “What are you doing?” Gina was standing too.

  “There’s an unconscious man through there,” Will said, pointing, and then following his finger. “We need to call an ambulance.”

  In the hallway, he dialled 999.

  Appearing in the doorway, Gina grabbed his handset. Lobbed it through the open front door.

  Will must have forgotten to shut it.

  For a moment, fury painted Gina’s face. As soon as it came, it seemed to blow away, disappearing into a sympathetic smile.

  “I knew you wouldn’t understand,” she said, slipping past him to the foot of the stairs. Bending low, she said, “But it’s okay. Soon you will. Heidi is coming.”

  “I won’t be here for that,” Will said, turning to the door.

  It was on the front step he realised why his wife went to the foot of the stairs, rather than the door.

  Simultaneously, she brought the doggie doorstop onto his skull.

  Eight

  Outside his father’s room, Trey’s mother waited. As he approached, she examined his clothes, grabbing his shoulders as he arrived to smooth his black top.

  “You have nothing smarter than this?”

  “No.”

  Tutting, she moved from top to trousers, tugging at the legs to eradicate the creases.

  “It could always be worse, I suppose,” she said. “Not that your father will care. He won’t even notice.”

  “So why does it matter?”

  “Appearances always matter. You’d do well to remember that.”

  Since his mother had arrived in his room with a bucket and mop, Trey had felt uneasy. Like a genetically modified plant, the feeling had grown rapidly when she had mentioned with such surety that Trey’s father would not be around much longer. Another boost came when she spoke of appearances.

  “Who’s in there?” he asked.

  “Your father, you, me. Probably Victor.”

  Victor, known to most as Vicious. She spat, rather than spoke, the name. Olivia’s distaste for her husband’s top man was an open secret.

  “Rest assured,” she said. “When your father is gone, Victor will be out with the bins. In one piece, if I’m feeling generous.”

  “If it’s just the four of us, why do appearances matter?”

  “What part of ‘always’ did you not understand? No, don’t answer. It’s time.”

  Taking her son’s hand, Olivia Michaels led Trey through a plain door. Unguarded. Unlocked.

  Assassination was a threat Harvey no longer needed to consider. Fate or nature or God had performed the job many others had failed.

  Having occasionally entered when it was a games room, Trey knew his father’s chamber was large. When Harvey had requisitioned it, no longer able to manage the stairs, two pool tables, two sofas, an arcade machine, a television and a magazine rack had been discarded.

  Once emptied of fun, professionals had equipped the room like a luxury hospital suite, shipping in all manner of equipment, most of which Trey couldn’t name. Nor did he know what it did.

  The resulting space looked small, cramped.

  Against the back wall, dominating the room, was his father’s huge, four-poster bed. Drapes along all sides had been pulled back. The sheets were expensive and soft. Beneath the thick mattress, the professionals had added a mechanical lift which could bring Harvey upright. In his ever-weakening state, it was a feature he no longer used.

  Through the door, between two pieces of equipment taller than Trey, a path led to the foot of the bed. To the left
of his father’s head stood Vicious; to the right, his mother.

  Olivia kissed her husband’s cheek.

  “Hello, darling. Our son is here.”

  Our son.

  Trey tried to recall when last he had seen his parents in the same room. When he was six? Perhaps once since then.

  Then again, he’d rarely seen them separately. Trey might have been an orphan.

  It occurred to him he had been unhappy most his life.

  “Trey, don’t dawdle,” said his mother. “Come and speak to your father.”

  As Trey approached, Vicious gave a smile that matched his nickname. The impulse to run pounded through Trey and he struggled to resist. This could be a cruel trick.

  Opposite Vicious, his father beneath him, Trey’s spine tingled. With his mother at his back, she could grab his shoulders and shove him towards his father. Harvey’s hands looked feeble. Gnarled, brittle, they might still throttle Trey. Revenge for allowing the beloved Beth to die.

  Despite her claims, Olivia might also place a knife in her son’s hand. Tell him to murder his father so they could take his money. Vicious would be in on it. Or Olivia would deal with the brute.

  “Hello, father,” Trey said. The words were weak, but he was proud to have forced them out despite his visions.

  For a minute, no one spoke. Under the unbroken gaze of Harvey, Trey’s fear grew. Though he was not talkative, anything was better than silence.

  “I don’t know why I’m here.”

  A mask covered Harvey Michaels’ face, providing oxygen he struggled to draw without assistance. At his left side, the sheet under which he lay began to tremble. Inexplicably, Trey thought his father was about to evaporate.

  No. As though the sheet weighed a thousand tonnes, Harvey lifted his hand from beneath it. An IV line pierced a vein.

  It was not his father’s hand. It belonged to a man a hundred years or more older.

  Seconds that felt like hours passed as Harvey raised his shaking hand, at last taking hold of his son’s.

  As those diseased fingers enclosed Trey’s, he had to fight the impulse to recoil. Not because he believed he could catch his father’s illness. Because he was afraid of the man who lay before him, even in this current state.

  For the first time, Harvey’s eyes flicked from Trey to Vicious. Though it pained him, he nodded.

  All of Trey’s strength he funnelled into keeping still, steady.

  At the signal, Vicious removed the mask from his boss’s face.

  Across the world, the powerful and mighty Harvey’s voice had sent tremors. Lying amongst the fruits of his phenomenal wealth, it was his most prized asset.

  “You survived where your brother and sister died.”

  When all else failed, the voice clung on, though it had lost its power. Wheezing, fading. Soon, it would be gone. If Trey’s mother had been telling the truth, Harvey would be dead before that time came.

  “All the beatings Victor has dished out; you have taken.”

  Harvey’s hand was slipping from Trey’s. It wasn’t intentional.

  Despite his repulsion, Trey gripped his father tighter, holding them together.

  “I’m proud of you,” Harvey said.

  For a mad second, Trey believed his father was proud of him for holding on. That his real message was yet to come.

  There was no more message.

  Exhausted, defeated, Harvey nodded to Victor again.

  Instead of refitting the mask, Victor went to one of the many machines.

  “I don’t understand,” said Trey. Both of his parents had told him they were proud. Something was wrong with the world.

  “Your father is saying goodbye,” said his mother. “This is the end of Harvey Michaels.”

  His father’s hand slipped free.

  Victor was still at the machine. He had yet to touch any of the buttons.

  Trey was a mess. His brother and sister were dead. His father was about to follow them into the light.

  None had shown Trey an ounce of compassion. None had loved him. Had he been kidnapped; no ransom would materialise. When the note came, they might have read it with bemused expressions and asked: who’s Trey?

  And Trey had loved them each fiercely.

  Standing above the father he had barely known, he realised he would grieve. As he had mourned the brother who beat him and the sister who treated him with contempt.

  Victor had his finger on a silver switch. He turned back to Harvey, waiting for final sign off.

  A hand fell on Trey’s shoulder. His mother squeezed.

  Harvey nodded.

  The door swung open. Someone rushed in.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” said Olivia. A bloodthirsty warden, her convict in the electric chair, thwarted by a last-minute pardon.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” said the newcomer. “There’s someone at the gate. They have a message for Mr Michaels.”

  Victor’s finger hovered on the switch.

  “Tell them they’ve missed their window,” said Olivia. “When they die, they can impart their information in the next life. Assuming, that is, they end up in hell.” She raised a hand to her husband. “No offence, dear.”

  But Harvey wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were on the man by the door.

  “Speak,” he rasped.

  Olivia’s grip tightened. Although the newcomer had arrived bearing a message and had permission to deliver it, he hesitated.

  “Well?” snapped Vicious. Only two people would dare speak on behalf of Harvey Michaels, even at his death bed. Both were present.

  “I don’t know her name,” the man confessed, “but she says she knows Master Michaels.” He nodded at Trey. “You, sir.”

  “So?” said Olivia.

  “She says she knows about the ritual,” he continued. “She says Trey can’t give you what you want, but that’s okay.”

  Olivia’s grip became so tight Trey feared his shoulder would break.

  “Sir, Mr Michaels,” the newcomer finished, “she says she can cure you.”

  Nine

  Nestled amongst what appeared to be an eternity of fields and forests, lost at the bottom of a sunken stretch of land, Amira found a clutch of homes and shops so small the place could barely be called a street, let alone a town.

  In a grocery store the size of a market stall she asked, “Do companies actually deliver here, or is it all grown from home?” She glanced at the stack of loo roll. “Well that’s branded, so if you’re making it yourself you’re breaking some laws. Copy Right infringment maybe. I’m no expert.”

  Given he had to be at least 206, the man behind the till was probably due a Guinness World Record for oldest human. He was like one of those ancient wales or turtles but less elegant. No one would want to see him in a zoo.

  He didn’t strike Amira as the chatty sort.

  “I’m no expert in this particular field, I should say,” she continued. “In many fields, I am an expert. To name a few… oh is that a Kit Kat?”

  Plucking a bar from the stand and plopping it on the counter she said, “I’d like to buy this please. Also, some information.”

  The ancient man rung up the sale with the speed you might expect of a 206-year-old. If the information was barcoded and also needed adding into the till—which was not as old as him but might have been the first—Amira would have retired before she received a receipt.

  Because information was a specialist item, Amira hoped it could be handled separately to and concurrently with the Kit Kat.

  “I’m looking for a man named Richard Unwin.”

  Behind the counter, the man froze, the Kit Kat in his hand, halfway between counter and till. His eyes went so wide Amira feared he might be having a heart attack.

  “I take it you know of whom I speak.”

  “Out.”

  The voice rasped, seeming to tear at the throat on its way out, but was clear. Amira understood the word. She just didn’t care for it.

 
; Withdrawing her purse, she said, “Was it not clear? I can pay for this information.”

  “Out.”

  “Don’t be unreasonable. It’s only information. A few quid in your pocket. Buy oil for your pacemaker.”

  “Out.”

  It was possible the man was like a parrot, and “Out” was his version of “Pieces of eight.” It might well have been the only word he knew.

  Needing information, wanting to be deluded, Amira could have believed this if his eyes weren’t speaking the same as his mouth. Out. Out. Out.

  “Can I at least purchase my Kit Kat?”

  This time, his eyes did all the talking. Amira sighed, unable to believe he could afford to turn down a sale. If the obstinate man had been behind the counter for 200 of his 206 years, he’d probably had less than 200 customers.

  At least he had branded toilet paper.

  She said, “Sod your Kit Kat,” and left the store.

  However small was this village, there would be someone else to ask.

  Someway, somehow, she would find Richard Unwin.

  Ten

  Sometime prior to Amira’s arrival, the minuscule town had gathered. In a space large enough for the lot of them, perhaps a larder, they made a pact never to speak of Richard Unwin.

  If not never, they had at least promised not to divulge information to any Asian people, because they were racist.

  Or perhaps it had been women, because they were sexist.

  Or outsiders, because they were bastards.

  After being frustrated by a further four residents, Amira happened upon a pub. The sign outside was dirty enough to be unreadable. Maybe they couldn’t think of a name and had obscured a blank sign to conceal this embarrassing fact.

  Through a creaking door, a small room contained four tables and a bar, behind which sat two stools. One of these looked as though it might be able to handle a feather’s weight, the other tilted like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Praying that skipping breakfast would be a blessing, she chose the former.

  In one corner, two men in their eighties played a card game in complete silence. Each had a pint. It was impossible to tell what they were drinking. Amira guessed someone had last cleaned the glasses between the two world wars.