by Ryan Casey
But there were just two that held Ashley’s attention on this little diagram of Saturn and its moons.
Two of them, right next to each other, quite a distance from the rings.
Tethys and Dione.
Ashley gulped.
Tethys. Dione.
Could it be…
Dhalar Tethys? Dhalar…Dione.
His body froze. His mind froze.
As he stared at the screen, the woman turned another page of her Sun newspaper.
Maybe Saturn wasn’t such a dead end after all.
EIGHTEEN
Ashley went back to see Grace a couple of hours later with the images of Saturn, its hexagonal north pole, and two of its sixty-two moons—Tethys and Dione—fresh in his mind.
When he followed Mr. and Mrs. Wisdom into the hospital room, he saw that Grace was propped even more upright than she had been when she’d been asleep. Her eyes, although baggy underneath, were open, beaming blue. The first person they looked at was Ashley, and she smiled shakily.
“Thank God,” Mrs. Wisdom muttered, rushing to her daughter’s side and stroking her sweaty blonde hair. She kissed her daughter’s cheek. “Thank God you’re okay.”
It wasn’t just the four of them in the room though, not anymore. To Grace’s left, a doctor in a blue uniform stood with a forced smile on his face. His head was shaven. He was Indian, or Pakistani, or whatever. All the best doctors seemed to have some Asian blood in them these days. Just a sign of the times. The doctor watched Mrs. Wisdom as she whispered to her daughter, watched Mr. Wisdom as he planted a heavy hand on his daughter’s shoulder, watched Ashley as he tried his best to hold his smile and show his relief despite all that he’d just stumbled upon in the Internet cafe.
“Hello you,” Grace said, holding a hand out for Ashley.
Ashley tried his best to ignore the bitter taste in his mouth. The memories of the metallic tang as he’d fallen to the floor, a fitting Grace standing above him, sweat and saliva dribbling down her front. He held on to Grace’s hand. Felt it, so cold but so damp and sweaty. He didn’t grip too tightly. Doing so brought back too many memories. Of walking down the Blackpool Pier hand in hand, candy floss all over their mouths. Of climbing the Arnside Knott in the Lake District in the torrential wind and rain.
Holding Grace’s hand reminded Ashley of everything that he had lost. It reminded him of everything that should be there, but just wasn’t quite…right.
“Sorry,” Grace said, smiling as well as she could manage and staring right at Ashley as he leaned down towards her. “Hear I gave you a bit of a scare.”
Ashley gulped. The whiff of Grace’s breath he got, sour after having not brushed her teeth since being in hospital, used to be forgivable. But now he noticed it. Noticed it more than ever. And he realised how off it was. How rank. How wrong. How much he wanted to get away from it. From her.
No. Not from her, exactly. But from whatever was inside her. Fuck—if there was anything inside her at all and he wasn’t going completely insane.
But the scales. The drawing of the lizard man. The hexagons, Saturn and its moons, all the weird ramblings. He’d have to speak to Grace about all of it. Properly.
Just not now.
“The good news is that Miss Wisdom is fine,” the doctor said, cutting through the reunion—the latest reunion—with his slightly Indian accent. “Her brain scan came back all clear and she’s got no damage at all.”
Mrs. Wisdom let out a whimper of relief and went back to her daughter, kissing and stroking her hair.
Ashley rose. He could see that this doctor was holding something back. He could see it behind that flat smile and those big brown eyes. There was something else. A flip to the “good news.” Something he wasn’t telling them.
“Is there something else you want to tell us?” Ashley asked, focusing right on this doctor.
The doctor’s eyes diverted to the white tiles of the floor. He scratched at his shaven head, little specks of dry scalp tumbling towards the floor. Then, he cleared his throat and looked back at Ashley. “There are a couple of things we are not sure about. First off is the scars. On her back.”
Ashley’s arms heated up, like a trail of boiling water had been poured down them. The scars on her back? Could they be…could they be the scale-like things he’d seen? Had the doctor seen them too?
“What scars are you referring to?” Mr. Wisdom asked. He fiddled with his tie. Brushed down his suit.
The doctor cleared his throat again and stepped over to the side of Grace’s bed. He smiled at her as she looked around the room, seemingly curious herself at the doctor’s words.
“What scars? What—What are you talking about?” she asked.
“If you’d like to roll over onto your side please, Miss Wisdom,” the doctor said. He went to push her over himself, then backed off as if she was on fire or something.
Grace hesitated for a few moments. She looked at Ashley with those same eyes she had when he’d freaked out about the scales on her back two nights ago.
Then, hesitantly, she rolled onto her side and the doctor opened up her white robe.
Ashley felt a wave of nausea overcome him when he saw the scars. He tasted it in his mouth—the same sickly feeling he’d tasted when he’d first seen the scales. Mrs. Wisdom gasped and covered her mouth. Mr. Wisdom stopped adjusting his tie and just stared.
“As you can see,” the doctor said, pointing at the cracks in Grace’s skin. They were all over her back. Little bumps of skin, red, making her bare skin look like cracked earth in a scorched desert. “Miss Wisdom has severe scarring on her back. Perhaps this is as a result of the sinkhole. It’s realistic. But…” He cleared his throat. He didn’t elaborate on that “but.”
“Is this—is this what you meant the other night?” Grace asked, staring right at Ashley. “The things on my back you were on about? Is this what you mean?”
All eyes turned on Ashley. The marks on Grace’s back. They weren’t the scales he’d seen, but they matched them just about. Scratches in her skin, like those a cat might make. Scars that had healed over long ago.
Hexagonal scars.
Dione. Tethys. Saturn.
“The year of the reptile…”
“Ashley?”
Ashley blinked. It was Mr. Wisdom. He had a hard hand on Ashley’s shoulder and was staring him in the eye.
Ashley took a deep breath in. Wiped his forehead. “Yes. No. It’s…It’s different. But it’s…I don’t…”
“It—it must be. From the sinkhole. Must—must be the damage it did.” Mrs. Wisdom nodded to herself. Nodded at the doctor and nodded at everyone, trying to convince herself seemingly.
Ashley gulped. He stared at Grace’s back, then looked Grace in her eyes.
The way she looked back at him. The tearful, watery eyes. The fear in those eyes. She looked like a child who didn’t understand where they’d cocked up in their mathematics homework. Or a dog that had peed in the house and didn’t know what it had done wrong.
“There’s something else though,” the doctor said, clearing his throat and looking at the floor again. “Something…something less explicable.”
They all turned back to the doctor again. Looked at him as he returned to his flat smile.
“What is it?” Ashley asked. “What haven’t you told us?”
He scratched his head. Reached for a pile of documents on the grey steel cabinet beside all the hospital equipment. “We…I did a full-body scan of Miss Wisdom. And I…I couldn’t understand it myself at first.”
“What—what is it?” Mrs. Wisdom asked. “She’s—she’s okay, right? She’s okay?”
“Yes, Mrs. Wisdom. Your daughter is okay. More than okay, in fact. I went in to my office and I had to check and double check I had the right results, but—”
“Just spit it out, boy,” Mr. Wisdom said. His cheeks were flushed. A rare slip of comp
osure.
The doctor looked down at the papers in his hands. Looked over at Grace. Then, looked right at Ashley.
“Congratulations.”
He brought back that false, flat smile once again.
“Miss Wisdom is pregnant.”
NINETEEN
The drive back from Preston Royal Hospital was a characteristically quiet one. Seemed to be the case nowadays, these quiet drives. The false smiles. Ashley holding onto Grace’s hand, so cold, so…so not Grace. It was growing more and more common. More and more a part of everyday life.
The four of them got back to the Wisdom household after what seemed like forever at the hospital. They had to dodge the journalists as they scurried out of Mr. Wisdom’s Mercedes and made for the front door of the bungalow, but this was also becoming a part of everyday life too. There seemed to be more journalists though, despite the rain crashing down and kicking up that earthy smell that Ashley could never for the life of him remember the name of. He’d done his best to avoid the headlines—to avoid the media circus—but it was growing. Momentum was gathering.
So too was the weirdness surrounding Grace, really.
The silence that permeated the Wisdom living room that afternoon was more deafening than ever. Mr. Wisdom’s tie was barely clinging onto his neck as he sat back on his cream leather sofa, his eyes staring more through the episode of “Antiques Roadshow” than at it. Mrs. Wisdom was twitching and picking at her sleeve, as usual.
Grace held Ashley’s hand. Ashley held hers back. But there was no warmth there, not anymore. Not after the scales. Not after all the mutterings and words about the year of the reptile. Not after the hexagons.
Not now she was pregnant.
“I suppose we…we should think about tomorrow,” Mr. Wisdom said, clearing his throat. “About the police interview. How we’re going to…to approach things.”
Ashley’s stomach sank. He’d forgotten about tomorrow’s interview with the police, what with all the other stuff he was having to deal with. Mr. Wisdom’s voice, too. It sounded crackly. Lacking the assertiveness of usual. He wasn’t young. All this—his daughter’s return, her first pregnancy—it should’ve been the happiest moment of his life.
Instead, the bags under his and his wife’s eyes said it all.
“I just have to be honest,” Grace said. “I…I don’t remember anything. Anything of what happened to me. Just…just the blackness of the hole. Then walking into that police station. That’s…that’s all.”
The lack of a response from even Mrs. Wisdom summed up Ashley’s inner reaction. Because for all Grace’s claims and assertions that she didn’t remember a thing, the truth was that, forgetting all the weirdness about her having been gone a year and turning up unmarked but for the sudden appearance of a bunch of hexagonal scars on her back, she was now pregnant. Five months, according to the doctor, although he wasn’t “completely certain,” whatever that meant. She’d been gone for nearly twelve months. She’d been pregnant for five. November. November was the month she’d been impregnated. Seven months after her disappearance.
No. After her death. How was that possible?
“Yes,” Mrs. Wisdom said, trying for a smile but barely looking convinced of her own fake-smile abilities right now. “You—you be honest. Just…You can only tell them what you know. All you can do. Right, Ashley?”
Ashley nodded. Smiled, although his cheeks were starting to ache from all this put-on smiling. “Right.”
Grace squeezed his hand again.
For a moment, it felt fine. Just for a moment, before all the baggage of her return came crashing round around him again.
“The police will ask,” Mr. Wisdom said. He scratched at the bald patch in the middle of his grey hair and crossed one leg over the other, staring at his foot.
“Ask what?” Ashley asked, more to keep the conversation going than anything, because he knew the answer already.
“They will ask about the pregnancy. If that information leaks, which, judging from our friends outside, wouldn’t surprise one too much.”
Ashley listened to the sounds of the muffled voices outside the window. It was like living in the middle of a film set. Maybe once all this was sorted, Grace and he would be able to go away on a break. Take a holiday in the Lake District and camp in a tent in the middle of nowhere, just like they used to.
He got a bitter acidic taste in the back of his throat as he realised just how distant that desire was even though his girlfriend was with him again.
“I wouldn’t expect them not to ask,” Ashley said, turning to Grace. He smelled the sweet perfume coming from her. Watched her blonde hair reflect the light just peeking through the windows. So real. So close to him, once again. “There’s nothing I can say, though. You believe that, don’t you?” He looked back at Mr. and Mrs. Wisdom.
Although Mrs. Wisdom smiled and nodded, Mr. Wisdom didn’t move a muscle.
Grace said, “Maybe…Maybe I should go see some friends again. Sammy and Lara. A few of the girls. Maybe…Maybe that would be a good idea. After the interview.”
Mrs. Wisdom grinned and started plucking the sleeve of her opposite arm. “Great idea, love. Lovely idea. Have them round. Or go out. Whatever.”
Grace turned and looked Ashley directly in the eye. She smiled at him with her sleek red lips. “That okay with you, ‘Daddy’? Sorry, that’s…that’s not too soon to joke about, is it?”
Ashley chuckled. “Course. It’d be good. For you to see the girls. Nice for them to see you’re real and not just some news story after all.”
Grace held her smile then looked down at her bare feet.
Ashley felt a tightening in his lower stomach. He really needed to piss.
“Sorry, just give me a second.”
He stepped up and walked across the bouncy carpet in the lounge, dimly lit but for the crack under the blinds, and made for the chestnut-brown hall door.
“All this stuff. The scars. The things I’ve said. The…the lines in the kitchen and the…my pregnancy. I don’t understand. Just like you, I don’t understand.”
Grace spoke quickly. Her voice sounded tearful. Weak.
“I want to, though. To understand. It just…I don’t feel me. I feel like I fell to sleep when I slipped down that sinkhole and everything since has just been a dream.” Tears flowed down her cheeks. She held her hands between her legs and twisted her fingers around one another.
“We know,” Mrs. Wisdom said. She scurried across the room and wrapped a chunky arm around her daughter’s neck. “‘Course we—we know that, love. We just want to help. All of us, we just want to help.”
Ashley thought about walking back over to them, as the reunited mother and daughter sobbed onto one another’s shoulders. But it was the look that Mr. Wisdom had on his face that convinced him otherwise. The way he was sitting there and peering at his daughter.
Like he knew something was off.
Ashley turned around and opened the door to the hallway. He didn’t even look at the staircase as he made for the toilet door beside it—he didn’t want to remember what he’d witnessed in there yesterday again.
He entered the bathroom, a whiff of lavender greeting him as he slid the lock across. The same smell that this bathroom always had, and always had had, for the many years Ashley had been visiting the Wisdom household.
He stepped in front of the mirror. Stared into his own eyes. Looked at his beard, which was getting rougher and rougher. There were bags under his eyes. He’d always had bags underneath, but now more than ever, he thought.
Yet his bags should be gone. They should be cured.
No. They shouldn’t. What was happening was wrong. Totally wrong.
He turned on the hot water tap and put in the plug. He stared at himself as the hot steam kissed his cheeks, made its way up into his nose, condensing on the mirror until the lower half of his face was covered.
After the i
nterview, when Grace was catching up with her friends, he was going to find out about the hexagons. Find out about all these weird-as-hell Saturn links. Find out about the year of the reptile.
The pregnancy.
He knew it now, as the condensation blurred his view of his eyes. He tasted salt in his mouth. Accepted it. Accepted the feeling of his eyes watering, as the steam filled up the bathroom.
Grace wasn’t back. Not totally.
He turned the tap above the full, boiling-hot sink of water.
Grace wasn’t totally back.
But he’d be damned if he didn’t try to understand what had happened to her.
What was happening to her.
TWENTY
Ashley scooped up a spoonful of Cheerios. They’d gone soggy after sitting in the milk for too long. Then again, they looked too dry beforehand, so it probably balanced things out. He swilled the creamy milk around his mouth and, despite the best resistance of his body, he swallowed, feeling nauseous as he did, feeling the Cheerio-and-milk concoction slide down his throat and into his unsettled stomach, which was rumbling away.
Today was the day of Grace’s formal questioning on her disappearance. But looking across the circular breakfast table at her scooping and wolfing down Cheerios of her own, hair washed, wearing a posh blazer over a white shirt, nobody could have guessed. She was quiet—she had been since she’d come back. But she seemed calm. Focused.
Incredibly calm and focused for a pregnant woman who’d only got out of hospital for some kind of demonic-style seizure yesterday afternoon.
Her eyes peered across the table at Ashley as she held her spoonful of Cheerios just below her mouth. She raised her eyebrows. “Whatsup?” she asked.
Ashley blinked a few times and turned back to his bowl of cereal, realising he must’ve been staring at Grace for longer than he thought. “Just nerves,” he said. “Just want to…to put a line under everything.” He chose his words carefully. Partly honest, but carefully. He didn’t want Grace to know he was intending to do some extracurricular research into the hexagons, and the scales he’d seen, and all her murmurings about reptiles and Saturn’s moons. He wasn’t afraid of her. He was afraid of the part of her that had possessed her to etch those lines on the kitchen floor. That had muttered those words.