Sara’s Face

by Melvin Burgess

  The house had many eyes, but not much brain. People are the other way round. Mark stole along the corridors, pausing at each corner and before each door, checking on the little screen of the Palm Pilot to see if anyone was there – not easy on such a small screen – before freezing the camera for a few minutes, so that he could carry on his way without being spotted.

  Up to the foot of the big stairs – far too dangerous; so many corridors and doors led on to the stairway, and the lifts were like traps. Instead he snuck up the back stairs. Along more corridors, past more doors, all ready to open, all full of security men for all he knew – until, at last, he got to her door. He stood a minute, thinking, What am I waiting for? So he didn’t. He knocked.

  As usual, Sara had spent the day with Heat. They’d been shopping in the morning, had lunch at Heathcote’s and then dropped by on a recording studio to listen to some takes he’d had done a few days earlier. They came to and left the studio by the back entrance in an effort to escape publicity, but someone had tipped off the paps. Wearing her mask, no one could know who Sara was, and so they’d posed for them, mouth to mouth in their masks. Again, Heat had slipped his tongue through into her mouth, not so briefly this time. Sara waited patiently while he licked the inside of her lips.

  To Sara, it was the price of fame and fortune. Sleeping with Heat would be a kind of sacrifice, a rite, a ceremony. It would become part of her myth, that she and he had been lovers. She didn’t mind – a part of her wanted to. As a man, Heat was unpleasant, but as a star, he was very sexy indeed. He had slept with hundreds or maybe even thousands of women before. He moved like no one on earth; he was desired by millions. All this was exciting, but, even so, Sara took the view that the later it happened the fewer times she’d have to do it. With her, all things sexual brought her thoughts back to Mark. He was her sexual voice. She could not have such a relationship with him in Heat’s house, or so she believed, but all the time she was aware of an invisible connection between them, a bond of desire, heart to heart, chest to chest, sex to sex. Almost every night, she remembered making love to him. Since those lovely few minutes in the cupboard, she had been thinking about him all the time. So that night, when she opened the door to a knock and saw him standing there, she actually yelped with surprise and excitement.

  Her face was a picture. Afterwards, Mark remembered it like an X-ray, because she was wearing her mask and all he actually saw was her jaw drop and her eyes flash; but even so he had a powerful image of her whole face going shock horror wow!

  She glanced left and right, then stared stricken at the camera watching her over his shoulder. Mark was cruel enough to wait just a second while she fumbled for words before he held up his Palm Pilot proudly.

  ‘I blinded the house. It can’t see a thing.’

  Sara stared from him, to the camera, to the Palm Pilot.

  ‘Blinded,’ he said again. ‘They can’t see us.’ Then he added, ‘Can I come in?’

  Sara stepped to one side to let him in and then closed the door behind him.

  ‘You idiot,’ she hissed. ‘You’re going to wreck everything.’

  ‘I blinded it,’ he repeated, holding up his little machine. ‘I control ze house. Nuzzink ’appens ’ere unless I say so.’

  ‘What are you on about?’

  ‘I can program the CCTV with this. I can program the whole fackin’ house. I just freeze the cameras. They can’t see a thing.’

  Sara took a little bit of convincing, but once she believed him she was delighted.

  ‘Wow. You bastard. The whole house? You can control the whole house?’

  ‘I turned up the heating in Heat’s room last night just to make him sweat, baby.’

  ‘So we can do what we want.’

  It wasn’t a question; it was a statement. Mark felt a familiar flicker of alarm. Sara! He’d been thinking he could get into her room and make love to her. She was thinking – what? That they could wander around the house stealing antiques or taking photos for Heat magazine or some other dangerous adventure. Well, of course she was – it was obvious. He was amazed at himself for not realising it before.

  ‘Well, but what about the guards? I can’t control the guards obviously. It’s people that are dangerous. Ain’t it always the case?’ he said.

  ‘You’re James Bond,’ she said. Despite himself, Mark grinned and pointed the Palm Pilot at her like a gun.

  ‘Bang.’

  His eyes drifted over to the bed, but Sara had already moved on.

  ‘Thank God you turned up. I was going out of my mind with boredom. This place is like prison. But now! Now we can do what we like …!’

  She turned to him and beamed. ‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’

  All the way, Mark was having kittens. He’d been creeping about like a burglar, but Sara was strolling along, jabbering away like they were kids sneaking out to raid the fridge at midnight.

  ‘It was all right for her,’ he recalled. ‘Heat wasn’t going to send her anywhere. I was the one who’d get into trouble.’

  At least she didn’t want to go hunting around Heat’s private apartments, as he’d feared; she wanted to go back down to the service area in the basement. Mark felt better once they were down there. The corridors upstairs were carpeted thickly, or laid with rugs, so that people could walk along in near silence. Down here, it was unfurnished, and bare, and you could hear people coming much better.

  They found a room, empty except for a few chairs and tables stacked to one side. If Mark had worried before that she was using him to amuse herself, his doubts soon went. There was a bolt on the door and as soon as it was closed and locked, she turned to him for a kiss. Within moments they were both struggling to get out of their clothes, falling over their pants and getting their heads stuck in their tops in their efforts to get their hands on one another.

  And then they made love.

  Afterwards, Mark could easily have fallen asleep lying there with Sara wrapped around him, but she wanted to be up and doing. She pulled her clothes back together and wanted to explore.

  ‘So you crashed the whole security system?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s as blind as a bat,’ boasted Mark.

  She walked to the door and pushed it open.

  Mark sighed, but he wanted to impress her too much to back down. He tapped in his codes on his Palm Pilot to test his control of the cameras outside, and the two went out to explore the house.

  Eyes, yes, eyes everywhere in that house of secrets, peering down every corridor for shadows and unwanted visitors, for guests prying where they shouldn’t go, looking across the floor for feet pattering, from the ceiling to examine the crown of your head. Down here there were as many as upstairs. Obviously, Heat wanted to keep tabs on his staff as much as his guests.

  They walked in a cloak of invisibility, blinding each eye with what it had seen a minute or two before as they came towards it. Clever boy! Too clever, perhaps, for his own good. As he walked he kept glancing to the girl at his side. Her face was bare now. Bare was how he loved her. After seeing her about the house and in magazines and on websites wearing her mask, he found her naked face incredibly erotic. Her skin was like golden silk. What on earth was she doing in this ogre’s den?

  You’d have thought that a place with so many eyes must be full of secrets, but they found nothing. It was all empty corridors down there, rooms full of equipment, old stage props, abandoned furniture and other cast-offs. There was a recording studio, unused – Heat had another one upstairs in more congenial surroundings. The main control rooms, where Tom Woods and his staff controlled the house, were located further back. But at last, behind a set of double doors, they found another corridor, a long, straight passage with doors on each side. One of the fabled secret passages, perhaps, leading to who knows where? Sara and Mark went along it, opening each door one at a time and looking in, hoping to find some dark secret of Heat’s tucked away down here. But it was the same story. The rooms were empty.


  They found nothing different until they came to the last one.

  As Sara approached that last door, ready to put out her hand to grasp the handle, something changed. Something about the door … She paused and looked closely at it and saw that the surface of the door wasn’t real. She let out a little cry of surprise. In fact, the door was dissolving in front of her eyes – or was it growing? She couldn’t make it out for a moment, until she realised that she was actually watching something pass through the solid wood and move towards her. It was the apparition she had seen before, but this time it was right in front of her. Instinctively, she lifted her mask up to her face to protect herself.

  The creature was half free of the wood by now. This close she could see why it had no face; the face had been removed. She could see the marks of the knife round the sides where it had been neatly sliced off and pulled away. Instead of features, there was just this terrible wound, a blood-smeared death’s-head. But what made it even more terrible was the fact that the eyes were still intact. So close, Sara could see into them quite clearly. They were deep, soft, velvety blue eyes. Kind eyes. In that desert of bone and blood, they seemed horribly out of place – alive and seeing, thinking and feeling in the face of death.

  Once again, the creature was wearing Sara’s clothes. And once again, even though there was no face to see, she knew she had seen this person before; but where, she had no idea.

  The apparition left the door. As it approached her, the temperature dropped.

  Sara flung herself against the wall as the creature swerved to go around her and carried on up the corridor behind them, leaving behind it a smell of antiseptic and hot blood. It moved at a walking pace along the corridor until it turned the corner and disappeared. Sara dropped the mask and looked up at Mark, panting with fear and excitement. He was looking at her with an expression of anxious curiosity, and she realised at once that the apparition had been there for her eyes alone. Only she was witness to its existence. It had been so horribly real! And yet Mark had seen nothing …

  ‘I … thought I saw something,’ she said, unwilling to admit to what had just happened. She put her mask back on, trying to hide the emotions that were running through her.

  ‘What’s wrong? Are you all right?’ demanded Mark, grabbing her arm. All he had seen was her cry out and fling herself to the wall, as if something was there when nothing was. She was making no sense at all.

  Sara shook him off, dashed forward, seized the handle to the door through which the monster had emerged, and pulled. Nothing budged; the door was locked tight. She let out a little groan of anger and frustration before recovering herself. She tugged a few more times before turning to Mark, pretending again. ‘A locked door. Now what can that mean?’ she exclaimed. Mark was staring behind, over his shoulder, still trying to work out what she had seen. He turned to look at her.

  ‘That thing.’ She nodded down the corridor. ‘Didn’t you see it? A ghost or something, I dunno,’ she said. She felt embarrassed by her vision, and had no idea what it meant or how to explain it to him. She shrugged.

  ‘You just saw a ghost?’

  She shrugged again. ‘I thought I did, anyway,’ she said, as if she was owning up. ‘You know. Kinda.’ She giggled and nodded behind her at the door. ‘So what’s that about?’ she asked as casually as she could.

  Mark glanced behind him again. A ghost seemed to him more important than a locked door, but to Sara, even though the vision had been as solid as the two legs she stood upon, it was the door that held the secret. She knew that at once, without knowing why. He began to tap into his Palm Pilot, trying to examine the area while Sara leaned with her back against the door, watching him and glancing over his shoulder to where the apparition had disappeared. Behind her, she felt the door begin to chill. Its temperature was dropping like a stone. Something must be drawing near.

  ‘But there’s no cameras here,’ he said. Unlike everywhere else in the house so far, the corridor they were in was not mapped on the security system. For some reason, Heat had chosen to be blind there himself. There was something here he did not want to see, or be seen …

  Or, perhaps, he had simply never bothered. Or else they had never had the system put in here, so far away from anything of significance.

  ‘If it’s a secret, I want to see it,’ said Sara. She stood upright. The door, which had a moment before felt like a block of ice, was now growing hot.

  ‘Especially other people’s,’ said Mark, with a half-smile.

  ‘Especially Heat’s,’ said Sara. ‘I think he’s up to something, don’t you? Or if it’s just an empty place, it could be our place,’ she added, trying a touch of temptation.

  They examined the door; there was a keyhole. They looked through it into darkness. Sara put on her mask, got down on her knees and sniffed around the door like a dog to smell what was inside. She stood up suddenly with an exclamation of disgust. Mark got down after her and sniffed. There was the faint but unmistakable whiff of rotting meat.

  ‘It smells of death,’ whispered Sara.

  Mark turned to look at her and then sniffed again.

  ‘A mouse got trapped in there, maybe,’ he suggested. ‘A mouse? Down here, miles from anywhere?’

  ‘There’s windows,’ said Mark. Many of the rooms down there had windows, facing a gully round the back of the house. A small living thing might have slipped in and got trapped. Sara shook her head.

  ‘I want to see inside,’ she said. ‘Can you work it out?’ ‘Well, not tonight, anyway.’

  There was nothing else to be done. They left, Mark with his hands stuffed into his jeans pockets, Sara with her hand on his arm. As they went, she glanced behind her and saw under the door a faint light, through which shadows passed, as if someone inside were walking up to the door. The light flashed twice, then died.

  ‘Strange, innit?’ she asked Mark.

  He pulled a face. ‘It’s just a locked door,’ he said.

  He walked her back to her room. Sara did not say any more to him that night about what she had seen. She stood on her tiptoes, kissed him on the mouth and fled to the safety of her bed. Mark left through the window he’d come in by and walked home alone across the wet fields. At home, he fell into bed and went to sleep at once.

  Sara – 8 June 2005

  (Sara is on her bed with the curtains drawn and a little light on. She is white and scared. She keeps peeping outside the curtains.)

  OK. This is a record. I’m making a record of what happens. She’s out there somewhere. She could be on the other side of the curtains right now. Outside, watching for me …

  (Pause. She listens intently, but we hear nothing.)

  Mark came tonight. I was so happy. I’d been thinking about him all week. And now this. What does it mean? She had no face and she’s wearing my clothes. What does she want?

  (She leans forward and whispers even more quietly.)

  I’ve seen her before. Here. In this house, I know it! In a photograph. No, don’t ask me how, she has no face. But she used to live here, I know it. I’m certain of it … One of the staff maybe.

  What does she want? Wandering up and down the corridors at night, lost. And only for me! No one else sees her. Please, please, don’t let me be going mad. But I’m not mad. You may think I am but I’m not. It means something. Everything means something. I just have to know what it is …

  Or to warn me. Could be that. Could be.

  I’ll tell you this, if they did anything to that girl, I’ll make sure they pay for it. Murder? Could be. That’s what ghosts are sometimes here for, isn’t it? I signed a donor card. Jonathon asked me to, he said he’d done it, it was only right. The op’s in about five weeks. That’s how long I have, because one thing’s for sure – I ain’t gonna be here when the man comes for me with the big knife – no way! I’m out of here. Someone else can do me later on. But for now I just have to keep quiet while I find out what’s going on. So long as they never find out that I know. Five weeks to find out what
’s behind that door …

  (There’s a noise outside. Sara jumps and shrieks. She pulls the curtains tight, then peers out. She begins to shake and cry.)

  Please leave me alone. Please go away. I’ll do what I can. Please …

  (She pulls the curtains, reaches up and rests her hand on the light switch. She peers at the crack between them.)

  Are you afraid of the dark, too? But it’s night-time.

  (She turns out the light. There’s a period of silence.) Can’t we be friends? (There’s a rattle as she turns the camera off.)

  Who’s That Girl?

  Mark had no idea what visions Sara had seen.

  The word ghost on her lips didn’t convince him. She’d often seen such things in the past and mostly they had a rational explanation. A UFO turned out to be an aeroplane emerging from behind the clouds, a ghost hovering in her bedroom transformed into the reflection from a streetlamp through a crooked window pane. A shadow cast by a concealed walker, the echo of a footfall from behind a building, light on water, the wind blowing over the soil-pipe – Sara was far too keen to turn the mysterious into the supernatural for Mark to take such things seriously. Even when her sightings remained unexplained, they were always presences half seen, half felt, and there was always the suspicion that there was an ordinary explanation somewhere if only it could be found.