by Ben J Henry
The students opened their sketchbooks. Even the girl whose phone had been binned was pressing her pencil to the page, her expression livid. Rainn scanned the classroom and when her eyes landed on Gus, he realised that he had neither pencil nor paper. He left his seat to help himself to the supplies along the bench against the far wall. Passing Winter’s table, he saw a sketch of a policeman covering his ears.
Rainn leaned on Winter’s desk so that their eyes were level. Gus watched her rub at the tattoo on her wrist and look down as though checking it was still there. She spoke quietly to Winter, asking about the picture, and Winter launched into the tale of her murdered boyfriend.
Rainn squeezed Winter’s shoulder and circled the room, pointedly avoiding the efforts of the Lancashire girl, who sat back when she passed in the hopes that Rainn might comment on her work. The teacher stopped by Gus’s desk, taking a moment to admire his pencil sketch: a folded oval with a bolt of lightning across the inner circle.
‘I’m not much of an artist.’ Gus grinned.
‘And what do you fear?’ Rainn asked as though he had not spoken.
‘Tattoos,’ he replied, shuddering. ‘Needles.’
For five long seconds, Rainn appraised him with disappointed eyes.
‘Perhaps you fear people knowing who you are.’ Her whisper was a statement, not a question. ‘Speaking of which: Happy Birthday, Augustus.’
She flashed a smile and he opened his mouth to reply, but she had already returned to the front of the room. She perched on the desk and rubbed a thumb across her tattoo while students continued with their sketches. Gus tried to catch her eye, but she ignored him. He was about to rise from his seat, to ask her how she knew it was his birthday, when she hopped abruptly from the desk. Rainn drew the lesson to a close, sending the breadstick to Mrs Lawson’s office for insolence when he commented that they were only halfway through the hour.
Gus remained in his seat as the other students filed out of the classroom. He watched Winter shoo the Carpenter twins on their way, and they glanced back at her through the window with tight-lipped pouts of abandonment. Rainn shot Gus a winning smile and led Winter from the classroom, chatting conspiratorially like old friends.
They just dropped dead
Happy Birthday my Adult Daughter. Wow. 18 years ago, you were causing me more pain than I’d ever experienced. Still deciding if it was worth it. Home for dinner. Sorry. Love you lots xxx
Alicia held the phone in both hands and read the message three times. Her bare legs were crossed on the bare mattress, her jeans beside Winter’s sleeping bag on the floor. The phone had not been silent; her sleep had been deep, and she cursed herself for missing the message that she had been waiting on for days.
Home for dinner—she checked the time to see that it was approaching four in the afternoon. She had hoped that a nap on the mattress might result in a lucid dream of the cottage, but she had slept all day, and she had no memory of any dreams. The sleep had at least cleared her head, and it was with sharp eyes that she read the message a fourth time, picking out phrases.
Sorry—for turning up late on her birthday? For spending four nights away from home without bothering to tell her husband and daughter where she was? For hiding a list of dead people behind a painting above her bed?
Or for murdering Jack Henson?
Her finger hovered over the call button, but she stopped herself. Instead, she typed into the internet browser: Bristol Marigolds sweet shop Melody Wilson.
The Bristol Post had uploaded a news article at nine that morning. Melody Wilson had died in a kitchen fire. Alicia’s head was no longer clear as she scanned the article—loved by the community; daughter shocked; lived alone—but there was no mention of foul play. The elderly proprietor had apparently left the stove on while boiling pasta, the net curtains had caught on fire and she had been asphyxiated by the smoke. Alicia scrolled back to the top, to read the article more slowly, but lowered her hands. The phone slipped through numb fingers and tumbled from the mattress to the floor. Feeling limp and heavy, she stared at the empty plant pot beside the bedroom door, her eyes tracing a deep crack down its side.
She jumped at a thump downstairs. As one waking from a dream, it took a moment to connect the three wooden thunks to its context: someone had knocked on the front door. She pulled on her jeans and stuffed the phone into her pocket as she rushed down the stairs. Winter? No—she knew the door was boarded. Crossing the living room, she pressed her hands to the boards and peered through the crack to see her neighbour standing on the far side, his green eyes narrowed.
‘It’s Gus,’ he announced unnecessarily.
‘It’s locked,’ said Alicia. ‘Boarded shut. I’ll let you in the back.’
Not entirely convinced that she was awake, Alicia walked along the corridor to the kitchen, drawing the phone from her pocket to clear the internet history. She heaved the rotting door over the floor tiles and looked expectantly at Gus, who stood in grey jeans and a grey T-shirt, with a black rucksack over his right shoulder. He lingered on the doorstep like a monochrome vampire, awaiting an invitation to cross the threshold.
‘Hi,’ said Alicia. ‘How did you know I was here?’
Gus shifted his rucksack higher onto his shoulder and explained that he had overheard Winter telling the twins that Alicia was sleeping there. Alicia lacked the energy to be infuriated by this news, and moved aside so that Gus could enter. He stepped inside the kitchen and surveyed the dark, stripped space, from the peeling wallpaper to the ugly ceramic plate above the radiator. On a metal bracket, the kiln-fired plate depicted two deformed hippos swimming in a circle.
‘What on Earth is that supposed to be?’ he nodded at the plate.
‘That’s my Year 6 art project.’
‘It’s gorgeous.’
She ignored the comment and walked into the living room while he described, with a hint of pride, how he had caught the twins in the car park at the end of the day and told them that he had been asked to hand Alicia homework. They had been surprised that he had the gall to talk to them, but were eager to describe the whereabouts of the abandoned cottage that Alicia had been forced to hide in. They had refused to give him a lift.
Alicia pulled the dustsheet from the sofa and cast it on the floor, scanning the cushions for spiders. Gus dropped his bag and took a seat, camouflaging against the stone-grey fabric like a lizard. With a straight back, he turned his head from the crack in the window to the empty fireplace.
‘I love what you’ve done with the place.’
‘It’s my grandmother’s—it was. She died the day I was born,’ Alicia paused. Eighteen years ago, today. ‘I would offer you a cup of tea, but I don’t think there’s a kettle.’
Gus made no comment, continuing to scan the room as though he were a parent visiting her university digs.
‘I don’t actually sleep here,’ said Alicia. ‘Well, I did today, but not last night. I just…’ She shook her head and then gestured at the bag between his feet. ‘You didn’t come here to give me homework?’
Gus glanced at his bag as if he had forgotten something.
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I wanted to tell you what you missed in art class.’
Alicia’s stomach clenched, but it was not her mother’s absence that Gus was referring to. He explained how the new counsellor had clearly never taught a lesson in her life, and how interested she had been in what Winter had to say about Jack.
‘And,’—a deep furrow appeared between his dark brows—‘she knew it was my birthday.’
‘It’s your birthday?’ asked Alicia. ‘Mine too.’
Wind whistled down the chimney and flecks of ash spread across the black tiles at the foot of the fireplace.
‘That’s not all,’ said Gus, and Alicia thought he looked evasive. ‘She had a tattoo on her wrist. And it was the same as—it was the symbol on that book. The eye.’
Alicia knew which book he meant and understood his caution. She watched dust motes hover in the b
eams of light that filtered through cracks between the boards. Their unspoken agreement not to mention her mother’s secret had come to an end.
‘Does your mum have any tattoos?’ Gus ventured and her eyes snapped back to his. He flushed, his Adam’s apple shifting up and down at the umbrage in her eyes; his question tainted with accusation. ‘Have you any ideas, I mean…’ he continued, but Alicia sat back against the cushion and folded her arms before she spoke.
‘No, she doesn’t have any tattoos. And I don’t know what that symbol is, or what that book is. Or where she is. Or anything. You saw the names?’ A nod from Gus and she continued, ‘I searched some of them. Lots of them. These people are dead. All closed cases, unexpected deaths—drowning in riptides, falling off horses. Heart failure. They just dropped dead.’
She could not mention Jack. She did not mention Melody. Their deaths were more real than the faceless names and her throat caught at the thought of them.
‘I looked up the symbol,’ said Gus. ‘But “lightning eye cult” didn’t get me very far. Nothing.’
Alicia appeared transfixed by the boarded door and Gus felt the distance between them. Her body was tense, her lips firm, and it might have been because she had only met him the night before, or because his uncle was a police officer and her mother a suspect in what she now believed to be a murder case, but she was not being honest with him. He was tired and frustrated and he resented the filter in her eyes.
What do you fear? Rainn’s question pulled him back to the lesson in which he had disclosed nothing, shut tight as Alicia was now.
‘I don’t really have insomnia,’ he said, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. He faced the door as she did, like two reluctant guests on a talk show. ‘I take pills to stop me from dreaming. My parents died last September. A year ago, today. My uncle says they had heart attacks—she went first and he was just so damn mortified…’ out of the corner of her eye, Alicia watched him chew his lip, ‘he followed right after her. They just dropped dead.’
Alicia sat up, mirroring his posture, though nothing but empty expressions of sympathy formed on the back of her tongue.
‘I don’t know why he doesn’t want me to dream,’ Gus continued before she might comment, ‘but I know it’s got something to do with how they died. Something he’s trying to protect me from. They’re lying to us, Alicia. My uncle. Your mother. But we should be honest with each other.’ He lifted his hand as though to grip her knee, as his father would have done, but thought better of it. He stared into her malachite eyes.
What do you fear?
His voice was sombre: ‘Tell me something nobody knows.’
Alicia suspected there was something he wanted to tell her. They were strangers, linked by the missing and the dead, but he was trying to forge a connection. Her thoughts turned to the side alley at home, and the five minutes she had spent on Saturday evening staring at the box of washing powder on the shelf above the dryer. There was only enough left in the packet for one load, but she was determined to make it last for two. She had started to guess how many cubic centimetres of powder were in the corner of the box, so that she might halve the amount accurately. But it was dark and she did not like to be alone in the side alley any more. It was no longer safe.
‘I started counting things this summer,’ said Alicia, looking over Gus’s shoulder to the empty mantelpiece. ‘I would guess how many days it would be until the phone rang and someone had found David wandering around the back of their farm, living off fruit and berries. I wouldn’t let myself change the date, even when it was getting close. And when the days became a single day, I counted the hours, and then the minutes. And then the seconds. I would stop what I was doing and listen for the phone. I was so sure it would ring. I was certain.’ She remembered the buzz of a lawnmower or the quarrel of birds building to a crescendo, like seconds ticking down on the timer of a bomb. ‘And when nothing happened, I picked something else. Another date—or maybe he would be back by the time my toothpaste ran out, or the sunflower outside the window had reached the third pane of glass.’ Her father had asked where the sunflower was. He had not seen her eyes dart to the bin. ‘I’m not crazy. I know it makes no sense, counting down. But knowing that it isn’t rational doesn’t make it stop. Each time I start to count, it gives me hope. That’s what I live on.’
They breathed into the silence and Alicia sat back in her seat, pulling up the sleeves of her green cardigan. Gus made no comment, and she was grateful for that; she did not need him to justify or excuse her behaviour.
‘Tell me something nobody knows,’ she demanded.
‘I’m into guys,’ said Gus, fighting the urge to break eye contact. ‘It’s a big deal, coming out to your parents, or so I’ve heard. I never got to do that.’ He said nothing for a few seconds and the wind pressed the leaves of bushes against the front windows. ‘I don’t think it matters, who you find attractive—blonds, brunettes, guys, girls. But I would have liked to have known if it mattered to them. And…’ he sucked in a breath and Alicia looked away. This was harder to say than he had expected, and she suspected that she was the first to hear it. ‘They were murdered, and they never really knew who I was.’
When his eyes met hers, sincerity burned as anger.
‘I want to know if they’re in that book.’
In the pause that followed, over the thumping of their hearts, they did not hear the footsteps coming down the side of the cottage. Alicia cleared her throat. She wanted to help him. She needed to be honest with him. Or as honest as she dared.
‘There was a sketch in the back of the book,’ she said. ‘It was my mother’s. She had drawn a shed, and I don’t know where it is, but I know I’ve seen it before. That’s why I’m here—I’m trying to remember, before she gets home. I’ve got to remember where it is, so I can find it before I speak to her.’
Gus stood up so fast that Alicia flinched. He paced back and forth across the carpet.
‘The pigtails—the twin—Winter said about this cottage and pigtails said the one with the creepy shed in the garden.’
‘But there isn’t…’ Alicia’s eyes widened. There was no shed in the garden, but in the woodland beyond there was a clearing. In that clearing she had played with her brother, and that is where she had seen the shed.
A well-kept secret
‘How can a dream be dangerous?’ Alicia mused, plucking a white petal from her shoulder. She and Gus stepped over the low wall at the back of her grandmother’s property, entering the woodland.
‘My pills, you mean?’ said Gus. Behind them, a breeze caught the swing and a high-pitched moan swept the trees. ‘I don’t know. I used to wonder if maybe I’d seen something that I wasn’t supposed to. Something that might come back to me in a dream.’
‘Like a repressed memory?’
Gus shrugged, hands in his pockets, as they strolled between the silver birches. He kicked at fallen leaves, uncovering thistles, and Alicia studied his face in the dappled light. Dark rings lay in shadows beneath a scruffy fringe, giving him the appearance of a boy growing old too fast.
‘I had my first lucid dream last night,’ she said.
His face lit up: two cat-eyes in a shaft of light between the trees.
‘I’ve had vivid dreams before,’ she continued, ‘ones where you wake up and it takes a moment to realise you weren’t actually late for the test or—’
‘Waltzing with a wombat?’
‘Sure. But nothing like this. It was just as she described—Mum. Every tiny detail. Each fibre of the carpet, the grain of wood in the banisters, it was…it was like waking up.’
She brushed a hand through her hair, self-conscious at how wonderstruck she sounded. She scrutinised his expression as one might examine a crystal ball: searching for signs of judgement. He was very conscious of his eyebrows.
‘What did you do, in the dream? You shaved Winter’s head, am I right?’
She grinned, and told him about the wolf leading her to the cottage.
‘It’s weird, isn’t it?’ she added. ‘A part of me—some part I couldn’t reach when I was awake—it knew the shed was here. It makes you wonder, are all the things that we think we have forgotten just waiting there…sitting on shelves at the back of our minds?’
The decline steepened and they used the lower branches of trees to prevent them from slipping on the leaves. Gus considered what memories might lie forgotten on shadowy shelves, and what his uncle was so keen to protect him from. Alicia, chatting as though she had not spoken to a soul in days, vented her frustration at failing to maintain the lucid dream, and her inability to dream of the cottage since.
‘Apparently,’ said Gus, ‘if you spin on the spot, that helps. It grounds you in the dream, or something like that. That’s what I read in that book of your mother’s, before my uncle confiscated it.’
Guilt flashed across his face when Alicia frowned.
‘What did he want with it?’
‘If he’s scared of me dreaming, he definitely doesn’t want me doing it lucidly. Who knows where a wolf might lead me?’
She did not return his smile, and he wished he had not mentioned that her mother’s bedtime reading was now the concern of a police officer. As they passed between the final pair of silver birches and entered the clearing, Gus filled the silence with tips that he had read on how to achieve a lucid dream.
The clearing was twice the size of a tennis court, with a section of abandoned railway line running through its centre. The line was raised on a grassy bank, and beyond the iron girders, a wooden shed stood pale against the trees. Gus shielded his eyes from the light of the early-evening sun, a gleam of orange catching a section of the track like the edge of a blade. The pair walked shoulder to shoulder, treading fallen leaves as they crossed the clearing. Alicia recalled David’s squeals as they played on the abandoned track, killing time before her tennis lesson in the park. The shed was a mere whisper in her memory: the door had been locked, and she had paid it little attention.