New York Nights [Virex 01]

by Eric Brown

  He shrugged. ‘I’m okay. You?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ She laughed. ‘I never got round to telling you - I sold a novel on the day we were abducted. Talk about mixed fortunes.’

  ‘A book? That’s great. Promise to send me a copy, okay?’

  ‘If you promise to read it.’

  ‘Deal. Coffee?’

  ‘Why not?’ She watched him pour the steaming liquid into Barney’s old mug. ‘I’ve just got back from visiting my editor in Seattle. They’re interested in two more books, subject to rewrites.’

  ‘What do you know? My sister, the novelist.’

  ‘I’m seriously thinking of moving over there, Hal. It’s a great place. So open and clean. There’s a big community of sisters. I should be happy. Come visit me, won’t you?’

  ‘Sure, I’d like that. Always wanted to visit Seattle.’ He sipped his coffee, wondered what to say next. ‘Have you seen anything of Kia?’

  ‘I visited her in the clinic yesterday.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘She’s okay. She remembers nothing at all about the period she was enslaved, fortunately. She’s had the NCI removed and she’s undergoing counselling.’

  ‘Are you two . . .? I mean, will you still be seeing each other?’

  Anna smiled at his awkwardness. ‘Kia likes the idea of living in Seattle,’ she said. She looked around the office. ‘So, tell me about your work. Had any interesting cases recently?’

  He smiled, relieved that she hadn’t asked him about Kim. He told her about the case he was working on at the moment, her questions filling his hesitations and silences.

  He wondered what had changed, why Anna no longer taunted him, his lack of imagination, his insular views. He was the same person he had always been; he still felt guilty for favouring Eloise over Anna, and he wondered if this was why he still felt uncomfortable in Anna’s presence, because he feared that she knew.

  She finished her coffee and looked at her watch. ‘I must be going, Hal. Look, why don’t we meet for a meal next week?’

  He smiled. ‘That sounds great.’

  ‘I’ll call you, okay?’

  He rose and showed her to the door. She paused and touched his cheek. ‘You saved my life, back then,’ she said. ‘If it hadn’t been for what you did, that cutter would have got me.’

  They embraced, and Halliday watched her as she turned and stepped through the door.

  He returned to his seat and picked up his coffee. He considered what LINx had said about the motivation of human emotions like love and affection, wondered if they were nothing more than self-serving effects of biology and the ego. Sometimes, it seemed in his bleaker moments that they were, while at other times he knew the theory to be the conclusion of an intelligence that had never truly experienced the tortured complexity of what it was to be a human being.

  He was startled by a movement at the corner of his vision. He sat up and stared across the darkened room. Eloise was leaning against the wall, legs outstretched, her feet positioned toe to heel.

  ‘Hi there, Hal,’ she said.

  He found his voice. ‘Eloise . . . What do you want?’

  ‘I’m going away too, Hal. I came to tell you that I’m leaving.’

  He swallowed, nodded. He told himself that this was nothing more than an hallucination, a product of his subconscious.

  She stared at him with massive, sapphire eyes.

  ‘You know, don’t you? You really do know, Hal.’

  He opened his mouth, but no words came. At last he said, ‘What? I know what?’

  She smiled with sweet innocence. ‘What happened all those years ago, in the fire.’

  He felt his heart pounding. ‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘I’ll help you, okay?’ she said. She stared at him, lips pursed. He wondered at the expression in her eyes: dislike, contempt?

  ‘That day, Hal, you were in the playroom with Sue and me, you were playing chess with me. Sue was reading, alone as ever.’

  Suddenly, it came back to him.

  ‘I ... I smelled the smoke,’ he said.

  ‘But it was too late by then, too late to save the house. The flames were all coming up the steps.’

  He closed his eyes. The darkness was tinted with the crimson lick of flames. ‘I could see through the door, to the stairs. I thought I could make it through the flames, down the stairs.’

  ‘But not with both of us, Hal. You could only carry one of us at a time through the flames.’

  It was coming back to him in fragments, and accompanying the images in his mind’s eye was the pain. He saw the twins watching him, terror in their eyes, as he stared down the staircase at the flames engulfing the house. Susanna was screaming.

  ‘You had a choice to make,’ Eloise said. She stared at him with bright blue eyes, and he was aware of her accusation. ‘You could only save one of us. . .’

  ‘You were both watching me,’ Halliday cried. ‘It was almost as if you knew the decision I had to make.’

  ‘What did you do, Hal?’

  He shook his head. ‘What could I do? I had to save one of you, it . . . it didn’t matter which. I picked up Anna because she was the closest...’

  He stopped at something in her expression. She was leaning forward, intent. ‘Is that why you saved her, Hal? Is it?’

  Her stare bored into him and he felt a sob escape his throat. ‘No . . .’

  ‘Tell me, then.’

  ‘Because . . .’ he began.

  Because, as he stared at the twins in the attic rapidly filling with smoke, he was overcome with a terrible awareness of his guilt at forever favouring Eloise. It came to him, suddenly, that Eloise had manipulated him over the years, knew of his prejudice and played on it, excluding her sister from his affections.

  He had grabbed Anna and made for the stairs.

  ‘You made it through the flames, Hal. I watched you go.’

  ‘We fell through the floorboards on the second floor,’ he said. ‘Anna was injured. I managed to get to my feet and carry her out to the lawn. I left her there and came back for you.’

  He had somehow made his way back up the stairs to the attic. ‘You were lying on the floor, unconscious,’ he whispered. ‘I picked you up, hurried through the flames.’ Even as he spoke he could recall the heft of her small body in his arms, the dead weight of her as he stumbled from the wreckage of the house and out onto the sunlit lawn.

  The next thing he recalled was the pain of being told, by his father, that Eloise was dead; the pain, and the guilt.

  Now he looked up at the frail ghost of the dead girl and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Eloise. I’m so sorry. I ... I had to save one of you.’

  As she watched him, something in her expression changed. He no longer saw the accusation in her eyes, the contempt. She smiled at him. ‘You’ve lived with the guilt for long enough, Hal. You did all you could that day.’

  ‘You . . .’ He held out a hand. ‘Do you forgive me?’

  She raised fingers to her mouth and hid a small laugh. ‘Hal, there’s nothing to forgive!’

  And her words were like an absolution.

  She pushed herself from the wall and hurried to the door. She looked over her shoulder. ‘Goodbye, Hal,’ she said.

  He stood up, moved around the desk. ‘Eloise!’ he called. He saw her pull open the door, heard her quick footsteps on the stairs, but by the time he reached the door and stared down the long flight of steps, she was gone.

  For what seemed like hours after that he sat at the desk and stared at the oak tree on the wallscreen, going over what Eloise had said, his memories from all those years ago.

  He slept fitfully, and dreamed, and then awoke with a start.

  It was after midnight when he noticed the bundle on the fire escape. He was fixing himself a coffee at the percolator, and happened to glance through the window.

  He knelt on the chesterfield and opened the sash, staring in disbelief. Rain lashed down on a small
curled shape wrapped in the inadequate protection of a polymer-fibre refuse bag. ‘What the hell . . .?’ he said.

  A small head appeared, blinked out at him. ‘Mr Halliday,’ she said sleepily.

  ‘Casey? What in God’s name are you doing out there?’

  She sat up, rubbed her eyes. ‘They chucked me out the room I was using, Hal,’ she said. ‘I didn’t have anywhere else to go. Thought it might be dry up here.’

  ‘Christ, it’s freezing.’

  ‘It’s warm enough in the bag.’

  ‘You’re wet through.’

  She shrugged again, smiled at him through the rivulets of rainwater-dribbling over her thin and undernourished face.

  ‘Come in and get dry, for chrissake. You can sleep here the night.’

  He held out a hand and helped her inside, then shut the window on the wind and the rain. She shivered in front of the fire, soaked to the skin.

  ‘Don’t you have any dry clothes, Casey?’

  She pointed to the bag, and the sopping bundle within.

  ‘I’ll get you some dry things and a towel.’ He fetched one of Barney’s old shirts from the bedroom, and an old jacket of his own. While she towelled herself dry before the fire, he retired to the bathroom and washed the tiredness from his face.

  When he returned, Casey was hunched on the edge of the chesterfield, warming her hands before the fire. He guessed that she was thirteen or fourteen, but in the oversized cast-offs she looked about ten.

  He poured her a coffee and sat in the swivel chair. ‘Look, you can spend the night in the next room. I’m working until nine.’

  ‘I start work on the stall at eight,’ she said.

  ‘We’ll get you fixed up with some accommodation tomorrow, okay?’

  She nodded, tipped the big cup to her lips, eclipsing her pale face. When she lowered the cup, he saw that she was crying.

  ‘I’m so sorry about Barney,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, we all feel cut up, Casey. He was a great guy.’

  She looked at him. ‘And Kim,’ she said. ‘Why did Kim leave you?’

  Halliday shrugged. ‘She said . . .’ He paused, and shook his head. The pain of their final encounter returned. He had tried pleading with her, begging her not to go. ‘It’s complicated, Casey. It’s very complicated. You see, I lied to her, and she couldn’t accept that.’

  She shook her head. ‘But you loved each other!’

  ‘Yeah.’ He shrugged. ‘She said it was a trial separation. We’ll still see each other. I’ll try to patch things up.’

  She nodded, and the silence stretched. He poured two more coffees.

  ‘Hal,’ Casey said, ‘can I stay here and talk until the next customer comes, please?’

  He smiled. ‘Why not?’ he said. He needed the company. It was the graveyard shift, and things were quiet. He sat back in the swivel chair and stared at the image of the oak tree on the wallscreen.

  Outside, the rain continued to fall.