Room Empty

by Sarah Mussi

I reach out and take hold of the door handle.

  I turn the handle. I push it. It’s nailed shut.

  I shove the door.

  You see! You see! Go back!

  The wood panels are rotten. I put my shoulder against the door and with all my strength I shove.

  This is my time. I will not go back. I will recover.

  One panel crumbles, splits.

  Everything must crumble at my touch now.

  Today.

  No door can hold out against me. I’ve waited for this. With every last ounce of my will I strain against it.

  The boards give.

  It creaks. I yank and shove. I thrust the door handle down harder.

  The door opens inwards and away from me.

  There’s nobody here.

  I can still smell engines. I can still smell that sourness of death. It’s derelict. I pause. I turn around. What if it’s not? What if he’s waiting, watching? I look back through the open door. The smell of death. I understand now. Opposite is the city abattoir. Fletcher was right about that.

  I hear the lumbering of a lorry. It must be coming from beyond the wall, over there to the right.

  Somebody sticks a blade into the calves of my legs. My eyes shrink and water. I stagger. I inhale sharply. I stumble back to the open door. I wheel around and around. No one is there. Somebody yanks my hair and forces my head up. I see the towers of wood, piled higher than the brick wall. Barbed wire. Through the barred window.

  He’s here. He’s here. I know it. His shadows are stalking me.

  He’s not here. Just memories. I must go on. This is where all secrets end.

  This is where my truth begins.

  This is the workshop where he mended the cars.

  I close the door behind me. I don’t want to be interrupted.

  Grimy light filters in, greenish, dull. There ahead, at the back of the arch, is the room.

  The empty room.

  I suppose it was once an office. It has a glass window with bars. It only looks out into the interior of the workshop. The glass is bubbled and opaque. I see the door.

  I step around a deep pit. That’s where he checked the engines. I remember standing watching. I walk towards the door. Somebody must have kicked it in. It’s broken. Part of the wooden panels have sprung loose.

  I push the door open.

  The room is exactly as I remember.

  The one armchair in the corner, its stuffing poking out. A tiny back window barred and high on the wall. Ragged carpets.

  And the dead body of my mother.

  59

  I sink down against the armchair. One rusty spring pokes into the back of my leg.

  I didn’t realize she’d be here.

  The tsunami is back. No warning earthquakes, no building storm. It hits. Races up the shores. I run. I scream. I’m too small to get away. My tiny legs are dragged backwards. I can’t fight. A large wave forces me underwater. I gasp for breath. I gag. I scream.

  I remember everything.

  I remember everything.

  And I can’t breathe.

  And my heart won’t beat.

  And I can’t stop it from happening.

  And none of it was my fault.

  My mother is screaming.

  And he is there.

  Doing all those things again.

  Drowning me.

  I’m on the floor. Right where my mother lay. I can feel her very near.

  Something is wrong. His shadows have dragged me under. Tony said something would be wrong. A searing pain. Potassium. I’m too weak. He called it Dani’s Toxic Problems Of The Heart. The shadows. I am here. I have come this far. It must be a seizure.

  My heart is in the shadows. They’re curling around it. Heart failure. Sometimes it doesn’t beat at all.

  I should call someone.

  I want to live.

  He owned this garage.

  Tony taught me about heart attacks.

  He said he overdosed once.

  Tony warned me.

  My mum worked here.

  I can’t move. It hurts. I should dial the emergency services. It takes all the effort I have to find my phone. I drag it from my pocket. My fingers are travelling around the base of the chair leg. My palms are sweating. I fumble to swipe the phone open.

  That was it. My mum worked here – in this room.

  The pain comes in waves. Aching. Stabbing. I don’t enter the correct passcode on my phone. I can’t breathe. I try to get my breath. I put my head down on the floor and suck in the earth.

  Papers. She worked with all his papers.

  The shadows flood forward.

  He employed her. He wasn’t my father. I breathe. I sip air. I was so scared he’d be my father.

  My phone rings.

  My chest has a thousand tons of concrete on it.

  She just worked here. She did his paperwork. I came here with her after day care. I helped her, I think.

  My phone rings again. I try to answer it.

  I hope I can tell whoever is ringing to help me. I shouldn’t have come here on my own. I get that now. If I die, I help nobody. My finger trembles. My chest fights back. I concentrate. I swipe the phone open.

  ‘Hello?’

  Fletcher?

  Thank God. Thank God.

  I can’t answer. Just no air.

  ‘Hello?’ he repeats again.

  ‘Fletch,’ I whisper.

  ‘I can’t hear you very well,’ he says.

  I drink in water. I breathe in water. I hold the phone closer to my cheek. I press against the floor.

  ‘Fletch,’ I say.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he says.

  ‘In the room,’ I say.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Room,’ I whisper.

  ‘OK. Are you OK?’

  ‘Don’t know . . . Too much . . . Can’t move.’

  My heart. My breathing.

  His voice is panicky. He tries to reassure. This is the tone he used with his mother, I just know it.

  ‘Okaaay,’ he says. ‘I understand. Now listen carefully. Can you hear me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Just stay very, very quiet,’ he says. ‘Don’t try to stand up. Don’t even try to. Can you still hear me?’

  ‘Yes,’ I whisper.

  ‘And don’t panic,’ he says. ‘There is nothing to panic about. I’m going to come and help you. I’m going to put this call on hold and phone emergency services. Will you be OK while I do that?’

  ‘No,’ I whisper.

  He is a life jacket holding me up. His words are a rope thrown to save me. If he leaves me, I will be alone in this empty room. Alone with the shadows. Only the sound of his voice is holding back the drowning.

  ‘OK,’ he says. ‘I won’t leave you right now then. We’ll talk a bit. Then I must call an ambulance.’

  ‘OK,’ I whisper.

  ‘I’m going to tell you what I’ve been doing. I want you to know. I want you to understand how important you are. That everything you said to me made sense. I’ve taken charge. I’m doing what you say. I’m doing it for me. Can you still hear me?’

  ‘Yes,’ I whisper.

  But his voice is growing faint.

  ‘I’m taking a bus to where you are,’ he says. ‘I went to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. I went to a lot of NA meetings. In fact, I went to meetings all day. I travelled all over London and just went to meetings.’

  I’m listening.

  ‘I had to jump the buses,’ he says. ‘I didn’t want to – it’s not right. But when I have money I’ll pay it all back. Are you listening?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m doing OK,’ he says. ‘I knew I had to do it. Dani, can you hear me?’

  It’s hard to hang on.

  ‘Can I put you on hold now? Can you tell me the name of the street where you are? How far is it from the woodyard?’

  ‘No . . .’

  ‘Just hang on. I won’t go. I’m on a bus. I went to this m
eeting over the river,’ he says. ‘There were really nice guys there. People who’ve suffered. They understood. They welcomed me in and called me their own newcomer. They don’t want to let me go. I think they saw that I want to change. I’m going to change – do you hear me, Dani?’

  I can’t speak any more.

  ‘All the things you said to me. I listened. I want to be OK. You helped me to see that, Dani.’

  Please just come. Please keep talking.

  ‘One of the guys at the meeting was really kind. He said I can sleep on his sofa until I get sorted. And I called Tony. He says he’ll help. He says he’ll be there for me.’

  I’m so glad. I’m glad Tony will help. Maybe they both need each other. Fletcher needs a dad. Tony needs a second chance at being one. I’m glad that Fletch went to the meetings. I wish he was here with me.

  ‘How you doing, Dani?’ he says. ‘Can I put the call on hold now? Can you hang on while I call someone?’

  I can’t. I see the darkness curdling around the walls. If Fletcher stops talking, my heart stops beating.

  The shadows are slithering around in the corners of the room. It’s like the Alien told me it is. The outer darkness. It was always there behind everything.

  The black hole. It will suck me up, and I will be nothing. Without the Alien there to protect me, I cannot hold back the darkness. And the Alien is mad at me. He won’t save me any more. The Alien is sitting on his star in Outer Space, waiting for me to join him.

  ‘Don’t go,’ I say.

  ‘Listen, Dani,’ says Fletcher. ‘I really need to call the emergency services. I’m off the bus and I’m walking down the high street in Clapham. I’m getting on another bus but the Tube or trains would be quicker. I can get to you quicker if you can let me go.’

  I know who the man is. I want to tell Fletcher. We can find him. We can bring him to justice. We can live in the light. We can kill the shadows. But not now. Right now I just need Fletcher.

  ‘Can you hang on while I do that?’

  I can’t let Fletcher go. He’s the silver thread that’s holding me to this world; without him, without hearing that he’s on his way, winding the thread in, without hearing his voice, I cannot hold on to my heart. It’s like he’s there inside my heart. He’s one of its strings and he’s pulling all its chambers together and keeping the blood pumping.

  ‘OK,’ he says. ‘I understand.’

  And that’s the thing: he does understand. I don’t need to explain to him. He knows if the thread isn’t cut, I can hold on.

  ‘Just keep talking,’ I whisper into the phone.

  ‘But you’re all the way over in Lewisham,’ he says. ‘The bus is going to take for ever. And I don’t know the streets around there. It might take me hours.’

  Holding on and letting go.

  ‘OK,’ he says. ‘I’m going to do something illegal.’

  I don’t know what to say. I don’t know if legalities apply any more, when you’re lying on the floor in the empty room where your mother died.

  ‘I don’t have any money,’ he says, ‘so if I’m going to jump the buses, I might as well jump a taxi.’

  I don’t understand.

  ‘I’m going to flag down a London cab and get him to drive me all the way to you. It’ll be much quicker.’

  ‘But . . .’ I whisper. It’s too much. Just get here.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘I’ll have to do a basher when we get to the other end.’

  I don’t know what a basher is. Fletcher tells me anyway.

  ‘You have to do these things when you’re an addict on the streets.’ He laughs. ‘What it means is, I get the taxi to stop near an ATM because I claim I don’t have enough cash on me. The taxi pulls up and I get out and then I do a basher. I quickly bash the pavement with my feet in a direction that is not back towards the taxi.’

  He laughs again. ‘And he’ll be pulled up out of sight or on a red line or facing the wrong way – so he can’t follow. When you live on the streets you know how to do this kind of stuff – you even know the best ATM machines to get the taxi to pull up at. You know the ones near an alley you can escape down, the ones with no cameras and no stopping and no parking for miles.’

  One shadow is sneaking a tentacle out towards me.

  ‘I’m gonna try it now. If he follows me, I don’t care anyway,’ Fletcher says.

  I hear him yell, ‘Taxi!’

  I hear an engine. I hear a car door slam.

  I hear somebody say, ‘Where to?’

  I hear Fletcher say, ‘Lewisham. Phoenix Wharf, Mordly Hill Street.’

  Then he says to me, ‘You have to tell me exactly how to get to where you are from the woodyard. Can you do that, Dani?’

  I don’t know if I can.

  ‘It’s the arches,’ I whisper. ‘Go down the arches. Last one. The street behind the woodyard. Train line.’

  I hear traffic. The noise of a radio.

  ‘OK,’ he says. ‘I’ll go down the arches.’ He sounds unsure.

  ‘You’re going to be OK,’ says Carmen.

  She is standing with my mother, very near me, by a door I’ve never noticed before.

  And I look up.

  I see my mother’s face.

  It feels like the very first time.

  And it’s her. It really is.

  ‘My baby,’ she whispers.

  She moves across the room. She sits down on the floor beside me. She strokes my hair, kisses my forehead. She cradles my head and I feel her loving Thinness.

  Through the strange doorway, I can see a greenish light.

  My mother says, ‘Don’t let go, my baby. Don’t go through that door. I love you.’

  I hear Fletcher ask the driver if he’ll stop at an ATM. I hear him spin the driver a line. He’s so convincing. Fletcher is coming. I hear a car door. A swishing noise.

  ‘Can’t talk . . . nearly there . . .’

  A breathlessness. A wavering. The tentacles curl forward.

  Fletcher is coming.

  I can no longer hear his voice very well.

  ‘Hang on.’

  I seem to be fading in and out. I want to hang on, but the shadows won’t wait. The cold of Outer Space has already touched me. The doorway seems suddenly wider. I’m freezing. Only my mother’s love is keeping me alive. Fletcher’s voice is very dim and very far away.

  I cradle the phone into my ear, just trying to hear him. His voice comes in snatches. I hear the lorries of the timber yard, cracking, smacking. Their gates squeal open; I’m back, far away in the past. I reach out to touch my mother’s leg and it is as cold as Pluto.

  ‘HANG ON,’ Fletcher shouts. ‘I can hear you breathing.’

  Fletcher.

  ‘I’m coming.’ He’s panting. ‘I’m on the bash now.’ Gasps of air. ‘Only two streets away. Hang on.’

  But the shadows of cold have touched me. The Alien is rocking on his star, laughing. All his tentacles reach out to embrace me. And that silver line to Fletcher’s phone is so stretched.

  ‘Found the arches,’ Fletcher screams down the phone. ‘Where exactly are you?’

  I can’t answer.

  ‘OK, I’m here – last arch,’ yells Fletcher.

  I can hear him. Really hear him, not just through the phone. Voice stretched. Panting.

  Really hear him.

  So far away.

  ‘I’m calling an ambulance. I’m here. I’ll shout. I’m still talking to you.’

  His voice fades.

  ‘I’m HERE.’

  I hear him say the address then, ‘Collapse. Ambulance. Hurry.’

  ‘The very last arch looks empty,’ he shouts.

  Yes, everywhere is empty. The darkness in the carpet is pressing against my cheek. I’m so cold.

  My mother soothes my brow and whispers, ‘I’m so sorry, my darling.’

  Carmen smiles at me. ‘I’m waiting for you, when you’ve made up your mind.’

  I blink at her.

  ‘It’s t
he only final way to solve the dilemma,’ she says.

  60

  ‘Dani, say something!’

  Fletcher.

  I think I am saying something?

  But I can’t answer.

  In the distance I hear a wailing.

  Step Twelve

  Spiritual Awakening

  61

  The wail of emergency services.

  They’re coming.

  My mother smiles at me. I can feel her love, warm like sunshine.

  ‘Oh, Dani,’ Fletcher says.

  He’s a shell now, fragile as a dried sea urchin.

  ‘Don’t die,’ he says.

  His eyes pass through me, pass through the walls of the empty room and out over London.

  ‘You’re the only one who makes any sense.’ His voice hollows out. ‘I need you. I can get better. I can get clean.’

  ‘OK,’ I whisper.

  And I mean it.

  Because here I am, back in the room with my mother, and she loves me and she wants me to live.

  And that is the thing about love. It has a power beyond anything in the universe and all black holes shun it.

  And it doesn’t matter any more who locked that door on the empty room, or how our mothers died.

  Or who that third person was. Or why he did what he did. He can wait. We will find him out. Now is not his time.

  Not really.

  That will come.

  Fletcher is here.

  There will always be third persons to face. We can leave them behind. We will leave him behind. Let them face their own karma.

  Our addictions were third people.

  Let them go.

  Our very own third people.

  Just like my Alien.

  But we no longer have to give anything power over us any more.

  ‘You’ll help me?’ Fletcher asks.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘To beat this thing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All the way?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Whatever I do?’

  ‘Yes.’

  And I will. I will.

  That’s all. I will.

  My Fletcher.

  I will be there for him, even unto death.

  Fletcher sighs like, at last, he can breathe. He takes my hand. He kisses the back of my fingers. I know what he’s saying. His kiss tells me that he will be there for me too.

  All the way.

  Through the black hole of Outer Space.