Chris tore his gaze from the subtle reminder of his life’s own dissipation, casually painted on the roadway in front of him. Nothing was solid. Everything blurred. He glanced around the café, then back out onto the street. Somewhere out there lay an answer; he just had to find it.
Chris concentrated, trying as hard as he could to remember what he really understood. Somewhere, inside, he was aware of the solution, he knew what had been happening; he just had to find the trigger that would make it come to him. The problem was, there was no certainty in his memories. It was no good just forgetting about it and hoping it would come to him later. Whatever had in fact happened, it had tampered with the way he remembered things, the way he thought. That, itself, was a distinctly uncomfortable realization. Who had the power to screw with a person’s memories?
Looking across the street, he saw doorways leading to buildings and offices and shops. Simple mundane places, but significant now. He had seen someone inside a doorway—he remembered that too—someone who was there and yet not there, a reflection of themselves. It wasn’t one of the doorways across the street; it was another doorway. His forehead creased with concentration. It had been at the coffee house near work. And there he had seen…the girl from the bus shelter. Patrick had said that they’d taken her away. But Chris had seen her in the café. She’d been talking to a friend. He didn’t even know whether he could trust what Patrick had told him. That stuff about church had drilled a seed of doubt into the back of his head.
The rain had started to ease, so he took a last sip at his coffee and thought about heading outside. He wanted to wander the streets for a while thinking, and then he could head for that coffee shop, his coffee shop near work and try to piece together the few fragments of memory that remained. If he was there, with the familiar cues to prompt his memory, he might make a better job of recalling things than he was doing now. He shoved his hands into his pockets and headed out onto the street, leaving the fragrant warmth of the café’s interior for the suddenly grey and cool damp of the air outside.
As he walked, traffic growled past and people strode past him, occasionally having to step out of his way. Chris’s preoccupation made him almost oblivious to the little things that what went on around him. He watched the pavement, looked into doorways and through shop windows. Everything was just as he remembered it should be, but he almost expected it not to be, as if the way he was seeing things had changed. If he had some real clue about what he was looking for, all this might make sense. The clouds above had passed, leaving a blue sky and sun bounced off plate glass windows and shiny building surfaces making shattered stars of reflected light. Within about half an hour, everything had dried.
He came across an old wooden bench on the pavement, set into cement blocks outside a small park. The park was some solace from the city’s bustle and grind, an urban haven that he knew became packed with office workers during the lunch hour when the weather was good enough. He’d walked past it enough during the day when running errands from work. At night, it became the refuge of drunks and street people. He stopped and sat on the bench, crossing his legs and watching the people coming up the street towards him. After a while, he leaned back, draping his arms over the back of the bench and feeling the sun’s warmth playing across his face. He glanced back into the park, which was empty at the moment. Back in one corner was a crumpled brown paper bag, an empty green bottle poking out of one end. A couple of other benches sat nearby and a small cement plinth with a metal plaque set into it graced the center. The metal was tarnished and faded. He was familiar with the park, but he couldn’t remember having ever read the plaque. He stared at it for a while, thinking about memory, about the mark people made on the world. The plaque was probably there to commemorate whoever had made the bequest or whatever it was that had enabled the establishment of the park in the first place. Or maybe the park had just been set up to commemorate someone or other, now nameless and faceless in the city’s midst. He wondered if anyone actually bothered to read the thing, or even if they’d be able to make out the lettering any more. Whoever the benevolent patron might be, even their legacy was obscured by time and the elements. Did they even realize that they’d been forgotten, nobody even paying attention or caring? Chris had never bothered.
He shook his head and he was just about to look away when a large black bird fluttered down and perched right on top of the plinth. It tilted its head to one side, looking at him. Chris sucked his breath through his teeth. The bird hopped once or twice, fluttered, steadying itself and then tilted its head the other way, fixing him with a one-eyed gaze.
Slowly, Chris got to his feet, and took a step backward, nearly colliding with someone who was walking past.
The passing pedestrian cursed at him and Chris muttered an apology, never taking his eyes away from the bird. It was still watching him.
What was it with birds? What was it with black birds? He took another step back, forcing himself to look away. He could feel the damned thing watching him. He started walking away, heading towards the part of town where his particular coffee shop lay. Several yards up the street, he looked back over his shoulder. The bird was still there watching him. It hopped once to reposition itself, keeping its black gaze fixed in his direction. He stopped and turned to face it.
“What?” he said.
The bird tilted its head one way, then the other, and then squawked at him, a harsh, rasping sound, clear against the background rumble of traffic.
Chris swallowed, turned and quickened his pace.
It took him around ten minutes to reach the coffee shop and by the time he did, his heart was hammering. He knew it was irrational, but the incident with the bird had unsettled him and the cold hollow of the encounter rested inside him, working away at his chest. He pulled open the coffee shop’s glass door gratefully, seeking solace from the unreasoning fear in the familiar smells, sounds and tables. He glanced out the window before heading to the counter. Although he knew logically that it was unlikely that the bird was going to appear out there, he wanted to make sure, he needed to make sure. He wasn’t certain what he would do if the thing actually showed up, but the brief look granted him a reassuring sense of relief.
It was nearing lunch hour, and the place was about two-thirds full. Thankfully, there was still a seat near the window. He headed for the display cabinet, picked out one of the plastic-wrapped designer sandwiches and handed it to the person behind the counter as he ordered his coffee. She would toast it and bring it to his place once it was done. He kept glancing out at the street while he waited for her to fix his coffee and then he juggled the cup and saucer carefully back to the seat by the window. Just in time, because a whole string of people came through the door just as he pulled out the high stool and sat.
Taking a tentative sip, he half-listened to the conversations going on inside. He angled himself on the stool, so he could both watch the street and have the ability to look at the other customers without having to look back over one shoulder. A mirror along the café’s inner wall let his slight angle be just enough. He could watch things in the mirror without being too obvious about it. Meanwhile, he plucked at the faded recollections wandering through his head. Yes, he had definitely seen the girl here. He had…gone up to her, tried to talk to her… She’d been with a friend. They’d looked at him strangely and then left, talking about him. Actually, Chris didn’t blame them. It was unlikely that his reaction would have been any different.
The fragments were starting to inch together, pulling themselves into a tissue-thin fabric.
The bird was still worrying him though, despite knowing that it was probably just coincidence coupled with his own fragile paranoia.
His sandwich arrived, a ciabatta toasted with salami, black olive pesto and mozzarella. There was a time when you’d be hard pressed to get a toasted ham and cheese with any sort of decent cheese on it. Instead, you’d just get processed stuff and on any bread other than white, that left dark brown toasting marks in s
tripes against a paler background, always slightly stale. Merging of cultures happened in all sorts of little ways if there was the chance of a profit driving it. He picked at a piece of the paper napkin that had adhered to the melted cheese.
He had the half sandwich partway to his mouth when the girl from the bus shelter near home entered. Chris stopped in mid-action, his mouth held stupidly open and watched her as she headed to the counter with her friend. It was the same friend, he was sure.
Shit. He hadn’t expected to see her, either one of them.
He placed the sandwich slowly back down into the plate and watched her in the mirror. She hadn’t noticed him, even if she’d remember him, which he doubted. They got their coffees and some pastries to go with them and headed for a table near the corner, one of the ones with big comfortable leather chairs. Had he not wanted to watch what was going on outside, he would already have moved to one of those very chairs as soon as it came free. The girl sat with her back to him, her friend half obscured by her shoulder. Rather than turning all the way around, Chris continued looking at their reflection in the mirror. He was absolutely sure that it was the same pair of girls. There was nothing to tell him that there was anything special about her, anything unusual, and if it hadn’t been for the incident at the bus shelter…
Her friend looked around the room and caught him watching. A brief frown and she leaned in close to her companion to say something. Chris swiveled quickly back to face the outside and picked up his rapidly cooling sandwich. He didn’t want any sort of incident, not this time. Christ, he was turning into a stalker. There’d been so much in the press about stalkers over the last few months, celebrity stalkers, others. You could get arrested for that stuff.
There was a time, earlier in his relationship with Stase, that he’d been just that. He’d followed her desperately—there was no other word for it. He had stood in the rain, rivulets of water trickling into his eyes waiting for her to emerge from a classroom. He had lain in wait in places he knew she was going to be. He didn’t really like remembering that obsessive part of his personality. He picked at a bit of the sandwich, popped it in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. Whatever had happened to his obsession for Stase? When had fascination turned into apathy and numb acceptance?
A quick glance in the mirror revealed that the pair was no longer watching him. That was fine. He wasn’t going to follow her or her friend, but her presence had helped confirm the shard of memory which sliced at his intellectual discomfiture. He finished his sandwich and coffee slowly, waiting for the girls to leave.
After they had gone, he waited for a while, then pushed his stool back and headed back outside. A look in each direction confirmed that they were nowhere to be seen. Chris walked quickly up the street, looking for the doorway where he had seen the other man. He knew it was around here somewhere, he just wasn’t quite sure where. It was the shop front over the other side of the road from it that gave it away. He remembered the grainy marble ledge he’d rested against as he’d watched the doorway. Chris walked along beside it, running his fingertips across the surface, and then he walked back again, looking at it all the while. Large iron studs had been set in a regular pattern all along the top surface, clearly to discourage people from sitting on it. He had sat over there, about a third of the way along, his backside resting just on the lip, avoiding the dull metal points. He took up the same position, looking across at the three broad stone steps leading up to double glass doors, slightly in shadow at this time of day.
He sat there for about quarter of an hour, not really sure what he was trying to achieve. The image lurking in his memory was firming in his mind, but the same thing was hardly going to happen again. He wasn’t going to see another hollow man resting in the doorway waiting for…
Waiting for…
The van. A white van. That was what Patrick had been talking about. The image was cloudy, but he remembered a white van. Two clean-cut guys and a white van. And there had been a man there, hadn’t there? He frowned. He thought he had seen the same guy a couple of days later, looking slightly lost. There was the feeling of shock and surprise. It had stopped Chris in his tracks.
One by one, more puzzle pieces were slotting into place.
Patrick had said they’d taken Stase away. He had a vague recollection of the white van and something about the kitchen too. Patrick had said that they’d done something to him. To him. To Patrick, but to Chris too. And to Stase.
Piecing things together in his head was not enough. He could still be imagining it. He had to find proper evidence.
Chris pushed himself from the wall and picked a direction at random. He knew what he was looking for now. He started walking, keeping his eyes peeled for evidence of another one of the nameless. He walked, and he walked. He looked in doorways, under overpasses, in small alleys. Faces floated past him and he looked at every one. He varied his route, taking small side streets and across the courtyards of large building. Still there was nothing. Late, late in the afternoon, he was ready to give up. He had to get back in time for Anastasia’s return home, though he was sure he could think up some excuse for being out without revealing the true details of what he was doing.
Feeling downcast, he headed for the nearest bus stop that would take him home. It was about three blocks away from his current position. He’d get home, spend the evening with Stase and then return in the morning and start the search again, although his hopes of finding anything else were starting to trickle away.
His mind was elsewhere, fixed on the evening and the need to get home when he saw her. Sitting at a bus shelter, not lying, sitting. She was staring across the road. She had a shopping bag at her feet and some papers had fallen out of it, lying scattered about her feet. It was this that attracted Chris’s attention. No one else seemed to be paying any attention to her. She sat in the corner, staring blankly across the road. He stopped in mid-stride. A bus pulled into the stop, obscuring her from Chris’s view, a big smiling set of white teeth on a toothpaste advertisement squarely in the way. A couple of seconds later, it pulled out again. The woman was still there. It was one of them, he was sure. And yet, how come he was seeing her and no one else seemed to be noticing? He couldn’t waste time on thinking about that now…
He dashed across the street, avoiding traffic, walked quickly up to the bus shelter and stood right in front of her. Tightly permed, dyed deep red hair, a bone-colored coat, a brown skirt and a floral print blouse, he put her somewhere in her fifties. Still her expression hadn’t changed. The skin on her face was loose, papery, but still tinged with the color of life. Her hands were folded neatly in her lap. A car raced past behind him, and the wake of its passage stirred a couple of the papers at her feet, but still she didn’t move.
“Excuse me,” said Chris.
Nothing. Not a flicker.
He bent down, started scraping the papers together. They looked like invoices from the little he could ascertain from the brief glance he gave them. He righted the bag and shoved the papers inside. From the woman, there was no reaction. He crouched there, looking up into her face. No, she wasn’t breathing either, or didn’t seem to be.
“Excuse me,” he said again.
He glanced to left and right, wanting to make sure he wasn’t attracting too much attention, but people walked past, apparently oblivious. There was no one else at the bus stop, but then, the bus had just left a few moments before. Chris chewed at his lip, assessing, deciding what he was going to do next. Again, looking left and right, he slipped around the side of the bus shelter and headed for the doorway of a nearby building. He positioned himself just inside, his face barely poking around the corner, watching.
Chris waited. For a long time, nothing seemed to happen. The woman sat there. People walked past. Chris waited.
He was about to give up, when, at the next corner, a plain white van turned and headed towards them. The bottom dropped out of Chris’ stomach. His breath quickening, he bit his lip. He had to see. Trying to keep o
ut of sight as much as he could, he leaned against the corner of the wall. The van came nearer. It reached the bus shelter, slowed and pulled to a stop. He glanced up and down the street, but everyone else seemed wrapped in their own little worlds.
The van’s near door swung open and then a pair of black shoes was followed to the street by neatly pressed dark trousers and a white coat. A short, clean haircut completed the picture. Around the other side of the van, another door slammed. Another man, looking remarkably like the first, appeared around the front of the vehicle and joined his companion. After a brief consultation, they both stepped under the bus shelter. The first one leaned down, retrieved the woman’s shopping bag and headed to the back of the van. Chris presumed he was opening the back; a moment later, the sound of a door handle turning and the doors swinging open confirmed it for him. The man reappeared without the bag.
Both men moved to either side of the woman and eased her to her feet, then slowly walked her to the back of the van. A couple of seconds later, there was the sound of slamming doors. The first man moved back to the front of the van, opened the passenger door and climbed back in. The sound of a closing door from the other side told Chris that the man’s companion, the driver, had also climbed back in. The next instant, the motor started, and the van pulled out from the bus stop and started heading down the road.
Chris got a good look at the man in the passenger’s side as they passed his location. There was an incredible blandness about his features beneath the neatly tended blond hair. There seemed to be no distinguishing features at all.
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