by Thorne Moore
A monster standing right behind me, its fangs brushing my neck, its claws biting into my shoulders.
It wasn’t a sense of mere dread any more. It was sheer, writhing, all-consuming terror. Why? Why did the brook bring a scream bubbling up inside me? Why did the sight of a drainage culvert leave me suffocating, unable to breathe?
I was back on that chill, wet January evening, watching my apple being swept along the gutter into the dark, gurgling drain and…
Again, I was drowning, sinking. Sweat was breaking out all over me, but it was cold, not hot. Ice cold. I was shaking, dizzy. That driving ache to find Serena Whinn, that surge of obsession and desire, gave way to an overwhelming need for flight. I had to get out. Get away, find somewhere to hide. Some corner where no one would ever find me.
Bile rose. I would have been sick, but I had nothing to bring up. Just burning acid.
I forced my head down, forced my lungs to work, desperate for oxygen.
The trembling calmed. But the terror was still there, at my shoulder, waiting to fold me in its black, suffocating wings. I had to get away.
I forced my legs to work, one step, then two, then I was running.
I ran, driven more by instinct than by memory, back to Foxton Road, back to Linden Crescent, to my car. It took me minutes to unlock it, my fingers were numb, the key wouldn’t go in. Someone or something was chasing me.
Kenneth Dexter.
That was his name. Dexter. Coming for me.
Dexter.
I started the engine. Was it left or right? I didn’t care. Just as long as I drove far away from Marsh Green.
And whatever had happened there.
— 4 —
I made it home. Must have done, though I have no memory of the drive. I just remember running through the passage in pitch darkness, into my flat and slamming the door.
I drew. Scribbled and scribbled and scribbled. Faces. Brooks, culverts, wells, more faces. Snarling faces, sinister faces, scary faces, faces of dragons, faces of beasts. Anything to give faces to the monsters lurking out there – except that they weren’t out there, any more. They were in here, with me, behind the sofa, under the bed. They were my memories, and they were black and terrible, but no matter how I scribbled, they wouldn’t come clear. They were always just beyond my sight.
Even daylight couldn’t make them clearer. It seeped grey into the room like a smothering mist, sucking the life out of the yellow glow of my lamp.
I looked at the heap of scribbles around me. Black, black, black. And the face of Kenneth Dexter.
I stared at it, watching it change, fluctuate, like Frankenstein’s monster, coming to life. It had a pulse!
And then, for the first time, I noticed the thing that was giving it a pulse. Not evil life, but the message light on my phone. It must have been flashing all night. I wanted to ignore it. How could I deal with phone messages, with present day inanity at a time like this? But I had this little cattle prod, deep inside me. I don’t know if I was born with it, or if it had been implanted with all the rods and staples that had reconstructed me, but it was there, and now it began to prick and prick, telling me I needed to listen. I needed to hear a real human voice before I drifted into completely detached insanity.
‘You have four new messages.’
Karen, where on earth are you? Charlie. She was the one who’d had the phone installed. Said I needed to be able to keep in touch. Meaning she could keep in touch with me. Why didn’t you come into work? Miles is waiting. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten. He’s giving you another half hour, so jump to it.
‘End of message.’
It’s Hilary. What time is it there? Thought you’ d be home from work by now. Anyway, ringing to say happy birthday for tomorrow. We’ ll be away. Shaun has a match. So… hope the card arrives. Bye. My sister, who lived in Australia and kept in touch on birthdays and Christmas when she couldn’t very gracefully get out of it. Yes, if it was Saturday, it must be my birthday. I’d forgotten.
Karen, it’s Charlie again. Where on earth are you? I came round to look for you when Miles gave up waiting. What are you up to? Please contact me.
Next message.
Karen. I’m seriously worried about you now. It’s late and no one’s had sight nor sound of you. I’ve asked your neighbours. Maybe you’re tucked up in bed and fast asleep. I hope so. Phone me in the morning. You must. If I don’t hear from you, I’ ll have to go to the police.
I couldn’t cope with Charlie and her worrying and nagging. Not today. I had to get out. Always, I had to get away. I took a long swig of cold water, splashed some on my face and staggered back out to the car.
Just as well it was early and a Saturday. I’d left it skewed halfway across road and pavement. I jiggled it back and forth, clear of bikes and parked cars, and drove. Just drove. Quarter of a mile, and then the car began to splutter and hop. Then it stopped. In a side street, fortunately.
I hadn’t been paying any attention to the petrol gauge. Empty. Drained dry. Hardly surprising. I didn’t know what to do about it, so I got out and left it. There was a park down the road. By the river. I walked round it, down the riverbank, staring into the waters.
Water.
Dark water. Water to drown in and suck me down.
Dark as dark glass. Through a glass, darkly.
For now I know in part, but then shall I know, even as I am also known.
I was crouching on damp grass. I kept trying to recapture Serena’s face, turning to smile at me, but every time she turned, instead I saw Kenneth Dexter. Blue eyes wide with horror. Blue eyes screwed with anger.
Go away, go away! I want Serena, not you! She’s turning to me, she’s…
I was sick, shivering again. The sky was grey above me, spitting on me. I couldn’t stay here. The cattle prod was pricking. Straightening, feeling all my joints grinding, my head throbbing, I walked out of the park.
I walked the two miles to Gem’s Books. I don’t know why. Because it had always been a refuge in the past, a place of escape and there had to be somewhere.
‘Karen! Long time no…’ Malcolm Garnet’s remorselessly cheerful greeting petered out. He was beside me. I didn’t see him coming towards me. One moment he’d been down the shop, behind the counter, and the next he was by my side, taking my arm, leading me to a chair.
‘Oh dear, you are in a state, aren’t you, Karen? Has something happened?’
I shook my head violently, and then, perversely, said ‘Yes!’
‘What?’ His voice was very soft. He was my Mr Tumnus. ‘What happened?’
‘I can’t remember! But something happened.’
‘All right. It’s all right. When did it happen?’
‘1966.’
‘Ah.’ That floored him, but he had other things to think about. I keeled over.
‘Oh, oops, there we go. Come on now. Look at me, Karen. Focus. You’re shaking. When did you last eat?’
‘Breakfast.’ I’d had cereal. I think. I’d held the packet. Maybe I’d poured some and eaten it.
‘Today?’
‘Yesterday.’
‘Right. Come on through.’ He was leading me into the back office, sweeping books off the spare chair to make room for me. It was cluttered, more cluttered even than the shop, which was chaotic enough. I liked the clutter. It was like my flat. Just books…everywhere.
Malcolm was messing with a kettle and a toaster. ‘I was just about to have breakfast, so you can have some with me. Will you do that? Karen? Can you hear me?’ He was holding a mug to my mouth. Tea, too hot, burned my lips, but he made me sip. Then he was feeding me a piece of toast. The oiliness of the butter turned my stomach. I was heaving.
‘All right. All right. Just wait there.’
He left me in the office, but I didn’t want to be sitting there, on the chair in the centre of the room, like I was on display. In the centre where monsters could creep up on me. I retreated behind his desk, among the boxes and crates, my back to the wall,
and crouched, wanting to disappear. To be swallowed up.
Malcolm was hunkering in front of me, holding my hands. He started to say something, then sighed, then started again.
‘Oh dear, Karen. Will you come out? No? Don’t worry. Stay there. Listen. I’ve called Charlotte. She’s coming, with Dr Pearce.’
‘No!’ He really is Mr Tumnus, offering me toast and then betraying me. He has horns.
‘You’ve got to have help, Karen. They’ll help you sort yourself out. It’s for the best. You know it is.’
You see, what I did is, I’d go about my daily business, or I’d pretend to, and I got by from week to week, month to month, occasionally even year to year. And then something would happen and I’d unravel. That’s how I think of it. My mind was shattered into a million pieces, just like my body, and someone, the doctors, I suppose, put it all back together again, like they did with my body, with needle and thread, and bandages and sticky tape, all back into one lump. But every so often, I’d brush against something sharp that snagged on a thread and the whole thing came undone. Then the doctors had to move in again with new thread and they’d start to sew and it hurt.
It always hurt.
I hate doctors.
‘So, Karen. How are you, today?’
‘Very well, thank you. How are you?’
‘I’m fine.’ Miles sat back and surveyed me, over the tips of his fingers. He was tapping them slowly together. He was very thin. All his joints were sharp. He was like a spider. ‘Who am I?’
‘You’re Dr Miles Pearce and you’re a pain in the arse.’
He allowed himself a thin smile. ‘And am I anyone else today?’
Shelob, actually. ‘Well, I’d say you exhibit certain tendencies which might lead me to equate you with Uncle Andrew, in The Magician’s Nephew. Or maybe Steerpike.’
‘I see. You equate me with these characters.’
‘I could.’
‘But you don’t think I’m either one of them?’
He had to ask. Because sometimes I wasn’t Karen Rothwell. Sometimes I was someone completely different. I’d been Jane Eyre for a while. And he had been St John Rivers, trying to bend me to his will. That had been all right, because I’d just argued with him. I’d refused point blank to go to India. But then there’d also been a time when I discovered I was Éowyn, warrior princess of the Rohirrim. And he had been the Witch-king of Angmar. Our session got a little heated. A little physical. I can’t remember what I did, but I know he finished up with a black eye.
That was then.
‘No, I’m not identifying you as anyone other than a very tedious psychiatrist who’s holding me prisoner.’
‘You’re not a prisoner, Karen. You know that. This is a hospital.’
‘Oh good. Can I go?’
‘When I’m convinced you’re ready. Are we happy to talk today?’
‘Well you are, obviously. What do you want to talk about?’
‘What do we always talk about?’
‘My accident.’
‘Yes, let’s start there.’
Start and finish. Always the same. I don’t know where our talks ever left us. I suspect their purpose was not so much to explore the trauma of my fall and its aftermath, but to assess how close to functioning sanity I was. And after three months, this time, he was beginning to conclude that I was close enough. Talk, therapy and medication. Mostly medication. They made me eat. Made me smile and walk and read. Made me sit up and beg.
Malcolm Garnet came to visit me. Not for the first time, though I don’t remember his earlier visits. He felt responsible, I suppose, since I’d chosen his shop for my meltdown. Besides, he didn’t have much else to do. Since his wife had died about eight years before, he had made himself comfortable in his own world of books and had about as much of a social life as I had. I was his best customer, and often his unofficial shop assistant, too, so he visited.
‘Karen, you’re looking so much better.’
‘Thanks. I am. Better enough to be embarrassed at the exhibition I put on in your shop. Did I frighten off all your customers?’
‘Customers? What customers? No you didn’t. Here, what do you think of this?’ He produced an ancient and very chewed copy of The Hunting of the Snark. ‘I rescued it from a house clearance. Thought of you, clambering into that skip, that time. So. Do you think it’s saleable?’
We pored over it and considered the market, a little oasis of normality. The oases were spreading, linking up, mastering the desert. The medication was working.
Finally, Charlie was in my room, helping me to pack up my toiletries.
‘You’re looking fine, Karen. Almost roses in your cheeks. We’ll have you back home and leading a normal life in no time at all. And you know I’m always there for you.’
Of course she was. She was my social worker. I was being released back into the world on condition that she monitored me. I’d have to demonstrate to her that I was eating, regularly. Eating and digesting, not just throwing up. We’d been playing this game for years. She insisted on weighing me.
‘I think I’ve found you a new job. Much better. You never liked it in accounts, did you?’
‘Would anyone? I bet the White Witch did a jig at the thought of being rid of me.’
She laughed. ‘Way too undignified for Ms Creighton. You’re the one doing the jig. You’re free of her at last. But you want to keep working, don’t you? There’s a vacancy in Learning. Office work, like before, but much nicer people.’
‘Local gov again, Guv?’
‘Well, why not? They’re always keen to help.’
What Charlie meant was that the council had to earn its Brownie points by employing a quota of problem people like me. So she’d found me another job where I could sit and type all day and it wouldn’t matter too much if I messed it up. Or if I didn’t turn up some days.
So I went back to my flat and my books and I started a new job, which was very much like the old one, but it was okay, because I was sane. When I’m sane, and taking my medication, I’m very sane.
I was sane enough to stop obsessing about Serena Whinn and that dim and distant time of childhood joys and terrors. The lid was back on Pandora’s box. If I’d had any hope of finding her, it would have been different, but I knew I didn’t, so I put it all away.
At least, I thought I did. Then I was given some notes to type and it all started up again.
Forthcoming adult education classes. Watercolours, conversational French, Photography II, Victorian literature. I was typing up the résumés of the enthusiastic amateurs and retired teachers who’d be running them.
David Lamb. He was the one who’d be teaching Victorian literature, one of the professionals. I looked at the list of schools where he’d taught before retirement – I looked blindly, seeing only letters to be typed, until my gaze flittered across the words Lyford VI Form.
I stopped. End of any work I’d manage that day.
It seemed that David Lamb had taught in Lyford VI Form from 1972 to 1978. I tried desperate calculation. It covered a year when Serena would have attended. There couldn’t be any doubt that she’d have gone to VI Form. Lyford was just going comprehensive when we left. I don’t know that I understood what it meant at the time, except that I wouldn’t have to take the Eleven-Plus. Which was a relief.
Yes, I could remember Serena smiling at my relief. Pleased for me. Not for herself, because the Eleven-Plus wouldn’t have been a problem for her. She’d have sailed through that and O levels and surely gone on to do As, which meant the VI Form that was to serve all the town’s new comprehensives.
Yes, but what subjects would she have studied? David Lamb had taught English. Chaucer and Shakespeare, Austen and Shelley. That suited Serena. Poetry. I couldn’t see her doing physics.
It was pointless, trying to guess, when I didn’t need to. David Lamb was here. I had his address. All I had to do was ask him.
He looked a bit surprised to find me on his doorstep. I’d knocked, no
reply, but I’d seen a man coming down the street, and I’d waited, on the off chance it might be him, and yes it was.
‘Hello. Looking for me?’
‘David Lamb?’
‘That’s me. What can I do for you?’ He had his key in his hand but he made no move to insert it in the lock while I was standing there like an expectant mugger.
‘You’re going to be taking an adult education class in the autumn. Victorian literature.’
‘Ah. Yes.’ He was opening the door now. ‘But if you’re interested, you’ll need to ask at the council offices. They’re producing leaflets. I’m afraid I haven’t got any material to give out yet. But of course I’ll be very happy to see you in my class.’ He wore a corduroy jacket. I wondered if they were obligatory for teachers. I could remember one who wore a shiny black suit and a bow tie, but most of them wore corduroy.
‘I’m the one typing the leaflets.’ Since I was in one of my sane periods, I was looking reasonably normal. Nothing too wild-eyed or alarming. Just an anonymous council employee.
‘Ah. I see. Oh dear. Have I made some terrible slip-up? Split an infinitive?’
I laughed. I wasn’t laughing at what he’d said. I was laughing at the thought that I might actually be on the brink of a breakthrough, but he didn’t know that. He laughed with me and it seemed that now we were good chums.
‘Nothing like that. At least, I haven’t noticed any. It’s personal, really, why I came. I saw that you used to work in Lyford.’
His grimace was expressive. ‘That’s going back.’
‘I grew up there.’
‘Ah. Did I teach you? Sorry, I don’t know your name.’
‘Karen Rothwell. No, you didn’t teach me. I left Lyford before I went to high school, but you might have taught a friend of mine. I’ve been trying to track her down.’
‘Oo.’ David Lamb’s grimace deepened. ‘Names. That was a long time ago. But come in, anyway. Wife’s away, so excuse the mess.’
The mess was a pair of shoes not correctly positioned on the shoe rack and an unwashed mug on a coffee table in the sitting room. I laughed again. I could show him real prize-winning mess.