Six Days, Six Hours, Six Minutes

by Alex Smith

  The man looked at his outstretched hand like it held a live grenade. He didn’t make any effort to shake it, both of his own hands trapped tight beneath his legs. In the harsh light of the bulbs overhead—a fitting Blake was always trying to get replaced, because who wanted to get therapy in a basement room that felt like a morgue?—the man’s skin was a nasty shade of grey, like old beef. He swallowed hard, the loudest noise in the room.

  “Okay,” Blake said, retracting his hand and walking to his desk. The room was a mess, rammed with boxes of paperwork that he’d been meaning to sort for years. He grabbed his mahogany swivel chair and manoeuvred it clumsily around the chaos until it was next to the young man’s, close enough for them to touch. He would have some information about this guy somewhere, probably a file, definitely an email, but it would mean ten more minutes of waiting while the ancient computer booted up. “Once more, I’m sorry, it’s really rude of me. Let’s try again, I’m Blake, Blake Barton. It’s a ridiculous name I know, my parents were idiots.”

  He smiled again, but the man wasn’t having any of it. He was hunched over in his chair like he was going to be sick, and Blake double-checked the location of the wastepaper bin in case he needed to move fast.

  “I know it can be tough,” he said. “I know it feels like the world is ending. Trust me, I’ve been there.”

  It wasn’t just the spiel. He had been there, a lot of chemo and one testicle removed. It was almost ten years ago, and the whole thing felt like a nightmare, but still a fresh one—that sickening, awful terror of waking up from something terrible.

  Hey, Blake, said his brain. This is his session, not yours.

  “But there is light at the end of the tunnel. Staying positive is the single most important thing right now. When did you hear the news?”

  The guy didn’t respond, he just stared at the floor like there was a hidden message there. Blake studied his clothes, a pair of jeans that were scuffed and stained, a green shirt that looked as if the guy had slept in it for a week. His blonde hair was a mess of greasy knots.

  “Okay,” said Blake. “How about we just start with a name.”

  The guy opened his mouth, his lips cracked and bloody. When he spoke, it was as if it was for the first time, his voice like somebody kicking gravel.

  “I don’t have a name.”

  Okay… Blake thought.

  “Look, when I first got diagnosed, I went off the rails. Didn’t talk to anyone for two weeks. I know where you’re coming from.”

  “You were sick?” the guy said, looking up. His grey eyes matched his skin perfectly, the colour of wallpaper paste, and they met Blake’s for a nanosecond before darting away.

  “Yeah,” he replied. “But I got better. Cancer isn’t the big shot it likes to think it is. We can beat it.”

  The guy looked almost disappointed.

  “That’s too bad,” he said, the whisper almost lost in the endless electrical hum of the basement.

  “Excuse me?” Blake said, leaning in to hear better. He was close enough now that he could smell the man, that unpleasant tang of unwashed flesh, of clothes left wet for too long. In the small space, it hit him like a shovel to the face and he recoiled, biting his lip to stop from saying anything. “Did you just say too bad?”

  “That might have been a way out,” he said. “It’s a better way to go.”

  Blake shook his head, trying to make sense of what the guy was saying. He wished he knew where his file was. He was a primarily a counsellor for people with cancer, but every now and again he ended up with somebody who needed more help than he could give, somebody who belonged in the psychiatric facility across town. This guy might have been sent here by mistake. He started to get up, ready to switch on the PC and open his emails, but the guy’s hand snapped out like a cobra, cold fingers clamping down on his arm. The speed of it, the unexpected contact, made his heart judder like an old engine. He almost screamed.

  “It’s happening,” the guy said, and this time he locked his gaze on Blake’s with such intensity that Blake was the one who needed to look away. “I’m not supposed to be here but I had to tell you. I had to. There’s nothing you can do about it. He’s coming for you. He’s coming for you right now.”

  “Whoa whoa whoa,” Blake said, practically ripping his arm free. He pushed himself up with enough force to set the chair spinning, taking a few steps back until he hit the wall. “Easy, mate, I think you might have the wrong room.”

  The phone was within reach, security on speed dial like it was in all departments. He eased his way towards it, not wanting to make any sudden moves. The man watched him go, eyes almost bulging out of their sockets, like he was a field mouse watching a hawk. No, it was more like he was a mouse watching another mouse about to get snatched by a hawk. His hands were back beneath his legs and he was rocking gently.

  Definitely a nutcase.

  “Let me make a call,” Blake said. “Get someone who can help you.”

  “I’m not the one who needs help, Blake,” the guy said. “He’s not coming for me. He’s not coming for anyone else, just you.”

  “Who?” he asked. His foot hit a box and he stumbled, slamming a hand on the desk to stop himself. Blake wasn’t exactly a big guy—five-ten on tiptoes and a shade under thirteen stone any time of year that wasn’t Christmas. He’d been trained in restraint, just like all the guys he worked with. Basic holds, enough to subdue somebody until the cavalry arrived. It wasn’t like he’d ever had to use it, though, and for the life of him he couldn’t remember a single thing he’d learned in their half-day Stay Safe seminar.

  Just keep the desk between you and him, he told himself, before realising that if he did that then the guy would be between him and the door.

  “Him,” the guy said, the word almost a moan. “He has no name. The devil doesn’t need a name. He’s the darkness in all of us, the night that swallows the day.”

  Blake picked up the phone and tapped the button, hearing it connect. Come on, come on. His best mate of years, Adam, was a security guard here at the hospital and Blake knew most of the guys from the lodge. Come on.

  “You can’t get rid of him, not when he chooses you,” the guy went on. “You can’t run from him. You can’t escape him, because then he’ll come after your family, your friends.”

  “Security,” said a voice on the other end. “Wha-duh-ya need?”

  “He’ll come after Julia. Connor too.”

  The words died on Blake’s tongue, time seeming to slow to a crawl. He lowered the phone.

  “What did you say?” he managed. The guy shook his head, lifting those pale, lifeless eyes. There was a sadness there, something terrible locked away inside his skull.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his breath hitching like he was about to break down. “He’s the devil, he takes your name, he takes your life, and you have to give yourself to him.”

  “Hello?” said the voice on the phone. Blake ignored it.

  “How do you know my wife’s name?” he asked. “My son?”

  “He’s coming. I’m sorry.”

  The man pushed himself up like a Jack-in-the-Box, the chair flying out behind him. Blake tensed, ready to run if he needed to, but the guy ripped open the door and bolted. Blake froze, unsure what to do, eventually lifting the phone and saying, “Hi, yeah, there’s some guy down in two-under, South Wing, he... I don’t know, he threatened me. I think he might be on drugs or something.”

  “He still there?” the man on the phone asked.

  “No, he ran off, headed east. No, I mean west, left, toward the lifts. Young guy, maybe twenties, looks rough, smells like a homeless guy. Green shirt.”

  “You need medical?”

  “No, no, nothing like that,” Blake said, although the truth was he felt like he needed cardiac surgery after the encounter. “He just said some stuff, that’s all. I don’t know, probably nothing.”

  “Okay,” the man on the phone said, and the tone of his voice said a lot more—seriously
, you called us for that? “We’ll look into it.”

  “Cool,” Blake said, then listened to the line go dead. They hadn’t even asked him who he was or which room he was in. He should have told them who he was, told them he was friends with Adam Deane. Wasn’t that how these things always worked? He replaced the handset and stood there for a moment, hands braced on his desk, waiting for everything to return to its normal rhythm. Only when he’d remembered to take a few deep breaths did he straighten. He switched on the computer, then scanned his desk for any sign of a file that might explain who the guy had been.

  Nothing.

  The machine whirred and buzzed its way to life, and while he waited Blake walked across the office and out into the hallway. There were a couple of people chatting further down, and an orderly wheeling a mail cart. No sign of the young man. Blake turned back then stopped dead for the second time that morning.

  On his office door, just below the scuffed sign that read ‘Blake Barton, Therapist’, and slightly off-centre, somebody had carved that same symbol into the wood.

  Four

  “You do realise it’s somebody fucking with you.”

  Julia Barton sat opposite Blake in the hospital cafeteria, holding a squirming Connor in her arms. She was a couple of years older than him—thirty-seven, nearly thirty-eight—but she was often mistaken for somebody in her twenties. It wasn’t that she had a particularly youthful face, but she was always smiling. Not just with her mouth, either. Julia’s smiles started in her eyes and radiated outward, like sun-drenched ripples in a stream.

  Blake was pretty sure those smiles were what had carried him through the dark years of his life when he’d thought he was going to die right there in the ward. Julia had been a junior doctor, her first post out of medical school. For a while, it had been the regular patient-specialist relationship, but over time she’d started spending more time at his bedside, chatting about books and cars and football and just about everything that wasn’t cancer. And she’d started visiting, too, when she was off duty.

  Those conversations had shown him that there was something worth fighting for, that there was a reason to get through this. That, and the fact that she’d relentlessly told him to stop being such a whining baby about the whole thing. The day he’d been discharged she’d been waiting in the car park in an ancient Rover that had once belonged to her dad. She’d driven him home, made some tea, and that had been that. She’d been looking after him ever since.

  It had also taken some of the sting out of being intimate with a girl again, after his surgery. Julia had probed and prodded down there so many times that she knew the area better than he did. By the time they went to bed together, on his third night of being home, she and his lopsided junk were old friends.

  “Where are you, Blake?” she said, pulling him back. “I said somebody is messing with you, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, sure, I can really see Harold playing practical jokes. He’s the sort to keep a whoopee cushion in his desk drawer, for emergencies.”

  “Sarcasm is the last resort of a douchebag,” she said, pulling Connor off her shoulder before he could climb right over it. She settled him in her lap. “Maybe it was Tim, the man who works down the hall.”

  “Tom?” Blake said. “He’s gone, retired. Like three years ago. No, this guy was really weird, Jules, he knew about you and Connor and everything. I didn’t like it.”

  “Aw, diddums,” she said, expertly juggling Connor to her other side so she could grab her fork. The cafeteria was full-to-bursting, like it always was, but there just wasn’t time to meet anywhere else. With both of them on opposite sides of the enormous complex it was either hospital food or nothing. “He was probably just chatting to somebody before you turned up. You were late, right? Harold was probably trying to keep him busy while they waited for you. He probably told him you had loads on your plate what with your wife and child.”

  Blake had thought that too, but when he’d cornered his supervisor later that morning Harold had flatly denied it. Of course, the blond guy in his office could have spoken to anyone else in the department, but they were all repeatedly cautioned against giving out any personal information, especially if it was somebody else’s.

  “But nobody knew who he was,” he said, prodding the egg sandwich that sat before him. “There was no record of anyone even having that slot. You guys didn’t send him, he wasn’t on the outpatient list. Who the hell was he?”

  “For fuck’s sake, Blake,” Julia said, eating a forkful of lasagne. “Who cares?”

  Connor flashed the grin he’d stolen directly from his mother. If they weren’t careful he was going to start sharing her vocabulary too.

  “Babe,” warned Blake.

  “Sorry,” said Julia. “Mea fucking culpa.”

  Julia shoved some pasta into Connor’s mouth and he happily chomped on it, cheesy drool overflowing onto her scrubs. Blake looked up, studying the crowds, the worried-looking patients milling alongside the uniformed staff. There was a constant stream of noise, but it was the weird, muted, not-quite-real clamour you always got in spaces like this.

  “What if it’s connected to the mark?” he said. Julia frowned and he added, “The one on the door this morning. What if he put it there?”

  “Oh Blake, is this going to be like the time you thought the neighbours were using our outside bin for their rubbish?”

  “What? No.” He frowned. “And they were using it.”

  “Or the time you thought my parents were conspiring to get rid of you.”

  “They bought me a one-way ticket to Scotland, babe.”

  “Yeah, because you said you’d always wanted to go. They couldn’t afford the return. It was a nice thing for them to do. Paranoia doesn’t suit you, B.”

  “But you have to admit, it’s weird, right?”

  Julia offered Connor another spoonful of cheese and he clamped his jaws around it, burbling.

  “Right?”

  “It’s almost weird, I guess,” she said after a moment. “Like, if your definition of weird is very narrow. This is a hospital, and you’re a therapist for some very ill people. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen patients do weird things. Only the other day a woman—a big woman—fought off a bunch of orderlies and tried to climb out the third-floor window to escape an imaginary fire. Now that’s weird. Your thing, it’s kind of a three on the weirdness scale. You’re just a drama queen.”

  “But—”

  “Drama queen.”

  “It was just—”

  “You’re still being a drama queen.”

  She smiled, and the whole cafeteria seemed to grow brighter. Blake threw his hands into the air, rolling his eyes. She was right. He did tend to blow things out of proportion. It was one of the reasons he usually kept stuff like this to himself, because deep down he knew he might be overreacting. It’s just that this particular weirdness had been so weird.

  “Fine, fine, I won’t mention it again.”

  “See that you don’t,” she said, checking her watch. “Ah, shit, I’d better go. Any plans for the grotbag?”

  “Nah,” he said. “Home I guess. Grab some beers, some cigarettes, watch some porn, have a party. We rock out when you’re not there.”

  “Yeah, sure,” she said, passing the kid over the table. Blake grabbed him, marvelling at how warm Connor always seemed to be, like a bag of hot coals. He was getting heavy, too, squirming so much that he almost wriggled free. Blake placed him on his lap, the kid looking up with a frown—the look he’d stolen directly from Blake.

  “What?” he asked his son. “We’ll get some crack too, if it will make you happy.”

  The kid smiled again and Blake laughed.

  “I might be a little late back,” Julia said, getting to her feet and brushing crumbs off her scrubs. It still took his breath away, how beautiful she was. She didn’t look a day older now than when she’d sat at his bedside all those years ago. “I’m in theatre this—”

  “We s
hould have another baby,” he blurted out. She laughed, higher and louder than she’d obviously intended because she cut it off with a hand.

  “Shut up, Blake. I’ll see you later, kiddo.”

  She blew Connor a kiss as she walked away, turning back only once to say, “And you, stop worrying, not everything that happens in life is actually a thing, okay?”

  “You’re a thing,” he muttered to her back as he watched her go. Then he smiled at the baby and finally took a bite from his sandwich.

  Five

  In the end, they didn’t go straight home. Connor threw a shit fit as soon as he saw the Volvo, and trying to get him into the baby seat was like trying to wrestle a small but surprisingly strong bear. By the time he’d managed to get the clips in, the noise coming off the kid resembled an air-raid siren. He eased the big car through the barrier, turning up the radio to try to drown out his son. It was a futile effort, but within five minutes of leaving the hospital Connor’s screams had ebbed into soft mewls. Five minutes after that, he was fast asleep.

  Blake headed out of town, following the circular and happy just to drive for a while. Connor was always exhausted after nursery and it turned him into a psychopath. A good sleep and he’d be back to his normal dribbling, contented self.

  The day was made of wet concrete, the sky a solid slab of grey that looked close enough to touch. It was almost enough to induce a claustrophobic panic, and Blake had to ease the window open a crack to remind himself that there was enough air on Planet Earth to keep him going. The rain hammered down so hard that even at full speed the wipers struggled, traffic held to a steady forty by the torrents of water that ran off the camber. That suited him just fine, however. He didn’t need to be anywhere.