Five Stories High

by Jonathan Oliver

  Claire laughed. “I’ll wrap the rest up for you to take home,” she said. “You need to keep your strength up.”

  “What about the twins?” I said.

  “They’ll be high on Monster Munch by now, I should think. I wouldn’t worry.”

  I heard a car door slam outside. “That’ll be Dave back,” Claire said. “He’ll run you home in the car if you like? You can leave your bike here.”

  “I’d rather cycle,” I replied. The curt way I said it sounded rude but Claire didn’t seem to notice. She was already half way to the door to let in Dave.

  “Willy’s here,” I heard her say.

  “Oh. Does he need a lift home?”

  “He says he’d rather bike it.”

  Dave said something else I didn’t catch and then entered the room.

  “Sure I can’t take you home?” he said. “It’s freezing out there. They’ve turned Winnie’s driveway into an ice rink.”

  “Oh God Dave, that sounds dangerous,” said Claire.

  (Oh God Dave, I thought. Get them away from me.)

  “I wouldn’t worry, love. Kids are made of rubber, you know that. Hugh’s watching them, anyway.”

  Hugh was Winnie’s husband. He was an airline pilot. I thought about how pointless some conversations are, how they repeat the same information over and over using only slightly different words. This one seemed to have been going on for years.

  “I’d better be going,” I said. “It’s getting dark.”

  “You’re sure you won’t stay for supper, darling? There’s plenty.”

  I shook my head. “Mum’s expecting me back.”

  Finally I made my escape. The outside air hit me like a snow pie, full in the face. I tugged in my breath, struggling with the kickstand of my bike, which seemed to have frozen in place while I was inside. Eventually it loosened its grip and folded away. I pushed off down the drive, going into freewheel, then turned so abruptly into the road that I almost fell off. I regained my balance and shot off down the street. The sense of being free was so enormous it seemed to tear my chest. I thought of Claire’s blue glass swallows with their silver snowflakes. The sky above me was the same colour blue, almost exactly. It was getting darker though, even as I looked at it, darker by the minute.

  I flew along by the moor, gaining speed. As I saw the lights of Knutsford swarming towards me I realised I’d come away without Claire’s mince pies. Later, once I was home, I found I couldn’t stop thinking about those mince pies, how they’d tasted exactly like the pies Claire always made, even though the person that made them wasn’t Claire.

  The kind of detail that makes a disguise perfect. Like a shield of steel. Only Aunty Claire wasn’t Superman. I didn’t know what she was.

  WHEN MUM AND Dad went over to Claire and Dave’s to see in the New Year I stayed at home. I knew they’d be upset but I couldn’t face it – having to pretend, feeling scared all over again. I told Mum I had an important essay to finish for college and that seemed to smooth things over but I could tell she was worried.

  “Are you sure you’re all right, love?” she said.

  I said I was fine, that I just needed some time by myself to concentrate on work.

  “I’ve been skiving off all holiday,” I said. I smiled, hoping to set her mind at rest. “Say hi to the twins for me.”

  They left around eight. I briefly considered phoning Ronny but decided against it. I hadn’t written to her since Christmas Eve. It seemed pointless, somehow. There was no way of explaining to her what was going on – not in a letter, not all at once – and writing to her as if nothing was going on seemed too dishonest. I was desperate to see her, and yet at the same time I dreaded it. It was as if my whole life had changed, suddenly. None of the old things made sense any more.

  The whole world seemed different. Alien.

  WHEN REBECCA SEES the spacecraft in A Maggot, I wrote, she knows that no one will believe her account of it, because there is nothing in their world to prepare them for what she has seen. Her only option is to tell a lie, or be persecuted as a witch.

  I copied the words – the final words of the essay I’d told my parents I was staying at home to write – into a notebook I found in one of the pull-out storage drawers under my bed. Hardly a decisive action but it made me feel better – as if I was telling the truth anyway, at least to myself.

  I drew a line beneath the words about A Maggot, then began a new paragraph.

  On the 23rd October 1992, my aunt, Claire Bounsell, née Wilton, briefly went missing in York during a weekend anniversary trip with her husband David. She reappeared again just minutes later, apparently unharmed. My aunt and uncle came home to Knutsford and went on with their lives. The incident has been mainly forgotten, but the person living as Claire Bounsell is not my aunt. She looks like my aunt, she speaks like my aunt. She has my aunt’s memories and to any outside observer it would be impossible to tell the difference between my aunt and her replacement. No one, including her husband, family and twin children appears to have noticed that anything is wrong. And yet there is no doubt in my mind that my aunt has been replaced by an impostor. I also have reason to believe the impostor might be dangerous, although when and in what form the danger might reveal itself, I do not know. It could be that it will never reveal itself, not in my aunt’s case, anyway. I think there is a strong possibility that we are being tested, that my family and I are test subjects. If whoever or whatever has replaced my aunt is able to continue in the deception without being exposed, then their power would be limitless. If their power is limitless, it follows that it is not a question of if they should choose to exercise it, but when.

  The various possibilities for what has happened would appear to be as follows:

  1: My aunt has been replaced by another person, schooled in every detail of my aunt’s history and personality.

  2: My aunt’s body has been possessed by the spirit of another human being, whilst keeping her memories and personality intact.

  3: My aunt’s body has been parasitized by an alien being, whilst keeping her memories and personality intact.

  4: My aunt has been replaced by a shape-shifting alien being, with the ability to mimic my aunt’s behaviour and personality exactly.

  5: I have lost my mind.

  I know I am not mad. Therefore it follows that one of the above must be true. As of this moment I have no idea which. But I intend to find out.

  EVEN THOUGH I knew I could never show the notebook to anyone, the relief of actually setting down what I’d been thinking was like a weight lifting. I felt like dancing, actually. I realised I felt better – cleaner and clearer – than I had done in weeks. I snuck myself a glass of Dad’s Glenlivet and then called Ronny. There was a lot of noise going on in the background and I think she’d had a few but she sounded so pleased to hear me it raked my mind.

  “I thought you’d died,” she said, and laughed.

  “Family stuff,” I said. “I can’t wait to get back to college.”

  “I thought you’d be out partying this evening.”

  “I’ve been writing a John Fowles essay, actually.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “No such luck. He’s the perfect New Year’s companion, is our Mr Fowles.”

  “I can imagine.” She went quiet for a moment. I heard a muffled cheer then the sound of a glass smashing. “Oh God,” she said. “I’ve got to go. Wish you were here, Willy.”

  “Me too,” I said. “See you next week.”

  “Bye, then.”

  “Bye.” I silently mouthed the words ‘I love you’ and then put down the phone. Afterwards, I felt glad I hadn’t said them aloud because they didn’t seem adequate. Saying I love you is supposed to be a big deal, especially when you’re saying it to someone for the first time, but the phrase has been used so often it’s lost most of its meaning. The way I felt about Ronny didn’t seem as if it could be covered by those three trite words. People say I love you but what they really mean is I
want to be in love or I want to own you. What I felt about Ronny was I was glad that she existed and that I was going to see her again, that I didn’t want anything bad to happen to her, not ever.

  Even if I was about to cock everything up by being a dickhead I felt happy just knowing she was in the world.

  IN THE FEBRUARY of the spring term, I booked a session with one of the student counsellors. I was feeling pretty confused by then – about my course and about my life, about everything, really. I think what I wanted was someone I could talk to without the risk that they’d go blabbing to anyone else. The counsellor’s name was Sylvia. She was about fifty years old, I guess, with a thin face and white hair. She kept reminding me of someone, and after a while I realised it was the picture of the Snow Queen in a book of fairy tales I’d had when I was a kid.

  The Snow Queen used to scare me because she pretended to be good when she really wasn’t – she was some kind of vampire. Sylvia wasn’t a vampire. She had a Scottish accent and wore loads of rings. I was fascinated by those rings. It was as if she was carrying her whole history on her fingers.

  I told her I’d been feeling weird since Christmas, more or less.

  “What sort of weird?” Sylvia asked.

  “Afraid, I guess.” I hunched my shoulders inside my windcheater. “I keep thinking the world is dangerous, that there are things in it I don’t understand and that they’re closing in on me.”

  She didn’t say anything. She seemed to be waiting for me to speak again, to say something more, so I told her there were people in my life who seemed different from how they used to be.

  “It’s hard to explain,” I said. “It’s just a feeling really. But it won’t go away.”

  “Do you have any brothers or sisters, William?” Sylvia asked.

  I shook my head. “Mum got really sick after she had me. Something to do with her blood pressure. The doctors said it might be dangerous for her to have more children, so she and Dad talked it over and Dad had a vasectomy. I don’t think that’s what they planned though. When they first got married, I mean. I think they wanted more kids.”

  “That must have been difficult,” Sylvia said. “Knowing they had so much love and hope invested in you. That’s a lot of responsibility for anyone to bear.”

  I shrugged and said maybe. In fact I knew it hadn’t been like that at all, that Mum had accepted things the way they were and made the best of them.

  “We’re so lucky to have you,” I remember Mum saying the day I found out I’d got into college. “Just be happy, Willy. That’s all we want.”

  They’re all right, Mum and Dad. But Sylvia seemed sold on her idea of me being brought up in a hothouse atmosphere or whatever and so I just went along with it, letting her believe she had hit on something, that she had helped me. What else was I going to tell her? It was either all, or nothing, and I wasn’t ready for the funny farm quite yet.

  And in any case, she had helped, in a way. She was interesting to talk to and I liked her. That’s why I went back for the next session, I suppose, because it gave me a focus, an hour during the week when I could stop feeling anxious. I decided I wouldn’t be going back after Easter though, because there was no point. I was beginning to feel guilty for deceiving Sylvia, for coming to depend on her when I had no intention of being honest with her. Also there was Ronny. She never said anything, but I knew she was becoming suspicious of what I might be getting up to on Wednesday afternoons and why shouldn’t she? I’d become secretive and moody. I knew I would have had similar worries, had our situations been reversed.

  And the fact was, it was still far easier for me to stop my sessions with Sylvia than to come clean with Ronny about them. Coming clean would mean telling her why. And I couldn’t do that.

  I’D BEEN DREADING the Easter vacation, but that particular problem solved itself. Or rather, Ronny solved it. Midway through March, she suddenly asked me if I felt like spending the holiday with her.

  “You could meet the parents,” she said. “Then we could go off by ourselves, if you like. My Dad knows this guy who runs a caravan site, in Wales. We can get a cheap deal.”

  Of course I jumped at the idea. I fobbed Mum off by saying I’d bring Ronny to meet her and Dad over the summer. A return match, if you like.

  “You’re only young once, I suppose,” Mum said. I heard her sigh come down the telephone line, a long, echoing susurrus, like the tide going out.

  “Tell the twins I’ll see them soon, I promise,” I said. I was careful not to mention Aunty Claire directly, and Mum didn’t seem to notice. She didn’t say anything, anyway, which suited me fine.

  That week in Abergevenny was a turning point for Ronny and me. We went back to college closer than ever, the kind of closeness you’re lucky to find even once in a lifetime. Ironically I think it was this new closeness that led to Ronny finally taking the gloves off.

  “I need to know what’s going on, Willy,” she said. About a week into the summer term, this was. “You’ve been acting strange ever since Christmas. I don’t care what the problem is – we’ll sort it out – but I need to know.”

  I tried playing dumb at first. I said I had no idea what she was talking about. But that wasn’t going to work with Ronny, not now, she knew me too well.

  “Either you tell me or we’re finished,” she said in the end. Her voice was trembling as she said it, and there was this look on her face, as if her insides were burning up and it was costing her everything she had not to let me know. I could have called her bluff, perhaps, told her I was worried about exams or something, and maybe she’d have forced herself to believe me or to pretend she did but even in the state I was in I had enough sense to realise that would have been the beginning of the end for us. I had no idea what madness might do to love, but even the stupid young bastard I was then knew that lies would surely end it.

  So I told Ronny everything. Right from when Aunty Claire went missing in York. It felt like leaping into the darkness, not knowing if there was a safety net there to catch me, or just the void. I was in tears by the time I’d finished. I felt surprised by the strength of my reaction, even while it was happening. I hadn’t realised how much strain I’d been under, just trying to act normal. In a way, I’d been leading a double life.

  And Ronny? She didn’t say a word the whole time I was talking, not even to ask a question, just kept holding both my hands in both of hers. She was still holding them when I finished, which I hoped was a good sign.

  “Do you believe me?” I said. I’d stopped crying by then, but I could tell how red and puffy my eyes were, just from the feel.

  I’ve never felt more naked in my life.

  “I don’t know yet,” Ronny said slowly. “I need time to think.”

  “About us, you mean?” I thought I was going to be sick.

  “Not about us, we’re fine.” She sounded distracted, vague, as if she was still sorting through my – what? Narrative? Testimony? – and trying to decide what the hell she was supposed to do with it.

  I mean, what do you do, when someone you’re close to – someone you love – comes out with something so preposterous that to believe them would mean admitting you’re as crazy as they are?

  Run, probably. Only Ronny didn’t.

  “About what, then?” I said.

  “About what might be going on.”

  “Ronny –”

  “You’re OK here in college, aren’t you? I mean, you feel safe here?”

  I nodded. “I think so.”

  “You can keep going to lectures and everything?”

  “That isn’t the problem. I –”

  “I know it’s not. But I need to figure things out, and there’s no way I’m going to be able to do that if I’m worried about you freaking out the whole time, is there?”

  “I won’t lose it.”

  “OK then.” She let out her breath in a big gush, as if she’d been swimming underwater and had just resurfaced. “Let’s go and get something to eat.”


  We went to the Student Union bar, wolfed down jacket potatoes and afterwards just sat there in our corner, huddled into each other like protestors on an overnight sit-in, listening to crappy Oasis records or whatever the doofus in charge of the sound system happened to be playing. I had no idea what Ronny was thinking. I was just glad not to have to pretend anymore and glad to hell and back that Ronny was still by my side. The next day I got up as normal and went to lectures, like Ronny had said. The way our schedules panned out I didn’t get to see her until after supper and when I did she didn’t speak so much as a word about the evening before. For a moment I even found myself wondering if I’d imagined it all: her ultimatum, my confession, the lot.

  Now who’s the doofus? I thought. I decided to roll with it – it was what Ronny seemed to want, and anyway, what else could I do? A part of me suspected that Ronny had decided to pretend the whole incident had never happened, just to shelve it, the way you might shelve your best friend’s attempt to seduce you when you were both blind drunk, or your dad confiding that he’d once slept with your mother’s sister before they were married.

  Information to be used in an emergency maybe but information, on the whole, that was best forgotten.

  I wouldn’t have blamed Ronny for a moment if she had.

  I was mistaken. Two nights later, Ronny told me she wanted to hear my story again.

  “Not the stuff about Claire,” she said. “I’m talking about what happened on Christmas Eve, after you came out of the pub. Tell me exactly.”

  I shrugged. Christmas Eve was the easy part. I told her again – me yelling at Tony Stoney not to be a fucklord, then going down like a ton of wet gravel in the pub car park.