by Peter James
‘I’ll think about it,’ the woman said, and left.
Charley tapped another row of digits on the calculator.
‘Hi!’ Laura put on a smile the way she might have put on lipstick.
‘What the hell’s going on, Laura?’ Charley said, without lifting her eyes from the display of digits.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Come on!’ Charley said, warningly.
Laura shrugged. ‘I’m sorry, Charley.’
‘Sorry? You’re sorry? Is that all you can say?’
Laura turned away and fiddled with a showcard. ‘What do you want me to say?’
Charley stood up. ‘Bitch. You fucking bitch.’ She stormed across the shop, yanked the door open, marched out into the street and along the pavement. She kept on walking, angry at herself now, angry for being weak and going there, for doing exactly what she had determined she would not do.
Chapter Twenty-Three
She became aware she was walking through darkness; except it was not darkness, not shadow. She was walking between two tall hedgerows, down a crumbling lane. She stumbled on a loose stone. ‘Darn!’
‘Where are you?’
‘Lane.’
‘What is your name?’
‘Dunno.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Tell me what you are wearing.’
‘A frock. It’s sort of cream with a pattern.’
‘How long is it?’
‘’Alfway down me legs.’
‘What shoes are you wearing?’
‘Brown. Heels are too high. I shouldn’t be wearin’ heels.’
‘Why not?’
‘Cos I’m expectin’.’
‘Who is the father?’
‘Dick.’
‘You sound frightened. What are you afraid of?’
‘Dunno. It feels bad. Bad.’
She passed Thadwell’s Farm, with its cobbled yard and the tractor and haycart in the tumbledown barn, and on past the stagnant pond.
A man she recognised was sitting in the lane in front of Rose Cottage, painting at an easel. He was well groomed, very correct looking, and stood up politely as she approached.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said in a crisp military tone.
‘Good afternoon,’ she mumbled in response.
‘Who are you talking to?’ said a voice in the background, a voice she no longer recognised.
‘Jolly nice one, isn’t it?’ said the man.
He was in the Navy, she seemed to remember.
She reached the gate and stopped. She stared down at Elmwood Mill. A horse in the stables whinnied, as if it recognised her. Horse. A black cloud engulfed her. She took a packet of Woodbine cigarettes from her bag and lit one.
‘You are bothered by the horse. What is bothering you?’ said a faint voice, distant, like a radio that had been left on in another room.
‘Jemma’s my ’orse. She’s got my ’orse. He promised me.’ Her voice was breaking up; she was crying. She took a nervous pull on her cigarette, then opened the gate, and paused, searching for the dog, listening; she stared down at the kennel. No sign of it. She began to walk down the drive, scared, weary, the infant weighing heavily in her belly.
The car was there. His car. The black Triumph with its roof down, parked carelessly in front of the barn. The horse whinnied again and she gazed through eyes fogged with tears at the smart stables and saw the head of a chestnut mare looking out.
Everything was fresh, in good condition. The barn was newly roofed, the doors recently painted. The woodwork of the house was bright. She threw away her cigarette and walked across the gravel and up the steps, where she hesitated, daunted. She looked at the bell, at the polished brass lion’s head knocker, then at the bell again. She pushed the button.
There was a solitary deep bark from inside the house and the door was opened almost immediately, as if she were expected. A woman stood there, tall, elegant, aloof, in a hacking jacket, breeches and riding boots. Her black hair hung down across one side of her face with studied carelessness. She pursed her lips and glared witheringly, with fierce burning eyes.
‘I told you not to come back here,’ she said coldly.
‘Please, I just want to see ’im. Please let me see ’im.’
The woman smiled, a cruel smile filled with menace. She turned, walked across the hall and opened a door. She clicked the fingers of her right hand once, and mouthed one word: ‘Prince.’
The mastiff came into the hall and stared in hostile recognition; he lowered his head, his gums slid back and he snarled.
She backed away, turned and ran, almost falling down the steps, heard the dog snarling behind her. She felt a searing pain as his teeth bit into her leg.
‘No! Get off!’ she screamed, windmilling her arms and kicking out. The dog shook her leg in his massive jaw, like a bone. She lost her balance and, cradling her belly with her hands, crashed down the rest of the steps on to the drive.
The dog was over her. ‘No! Get off! Get ’im!’ she screamed, trying to roll away. ‘Oh please get ’im off! No! Dick! No! The baby! Don’t harm my baby!’
Above her she could see the face of the woman in the hacking jacket, watching, arms folded.
She clambered to her feet and tried to run, but the dog went for her leg again and sent her back on to the gravel. She screamed in pain.
‘Prince, stop. Prince!’
The dog let go.
She lay there, weeping, her leg and hands in agony, and saw Dick, in baggy trousers and collarless shirt, his face puce with rage. ‘Clear off, I told you! Clear off! I don’t want you coming back. Out!’
She looked up at the woman who was staring at her as if she was nothing. Nothing on earth, just absolutely nothing.
‘You hear?’ he shouted. ‘You hear what I said? Next time I won’t call him off.’
She climbed to her knees. ‘Help me. You got to help me. Please, you got to help me.’
They stared in blank silence.
‘Help me!’ She was shouting now. ‘You got to help me!’
Their faces faded.
A distant siren. Wind rattling glass. A chair creaking. Someone wheezing.
‘You’re all right, Charley. You are all right. You are safe. You are free in time. Stay with it. Move forward a little, move forward.’
She opened her eyes, saw Ernest Gibbon’s face, almost without recognition. She closed them heavily again. She felt herself sinking into darkness.
There was roaring of water in her ears.
It was dark; night; the weir thundered. There was determination in her step. She had something in her left hand that was heavy and slimy. She walked on the grass, the wet dewy grass beside the gravel. The dog growled.
‘Shh,’ she hissed. She was trembling; afraid of the dog; afraid he might not be chained. The mill race flowed darkly. The dog growled again and she tried not to be scared, tried to think only of the hatred she felt. He barked and the chain rattled in the iron hoop. She looked at the silent silhouette of the house, expecting at any moment a light would come on or a torch beam would flash across at her.
Swift. Had to be swift. The barn loomed ahead. She flashed her torch straight on the kennel and the glint of red of the mastiff’s eyes glared back at her. He snarled and strained at the end of his chain. Her heart pumped fast; the snarl seemed to fuel her anger, made her strong, suddenly; stronger than the dog.
‘Prince! Shh!’ her hissing voice commanded.
He hesitated at her tone, hesitated at another smell. The smell of the bone which she held out towards him as she called him softly, ‘Good boy! Here, boy!’
She held it high, just out of his reach, and as he tried to jump up, his jaws snapping, the chain pulled him back and he lost his balance. She stepped forward, holding the bone even higher so he had to stretch his head up, exposing his neck.
As he took the huge bone greedily in his jaws, she sliced the serrated blade of the knife she held in
her right hand as hard as she could across the centre of his throat, pushing with all her weight, feeling it biting in, razor sharp, cutting through flesh and muscle and bone.
There was a punctured sigh, and the dog seemed to sag. Blood sprayed over her hands, her clothes, her face. The mastiff made a gargling sound. There was a squeak of air, like a whistle. He whined, the bone fell out of his mouth and he coughed, lurched sideways, his paws collapsing, and fell forwards making sharp rasping sounds, blood spewing out of his mouth, flooding around his chest, his paws. The rasping sound began to die down.
She ran over the bridge across the mill race up the embankment to the woods; a prickly bush tore at her. She stopped, her heart thumping so loud she could hear it echoing around the woods, around the night, could hear it echoing a million miles away. She threw the knife into a clump of bushes, heard the rustle as it dropped. Somewhere close by an animal squeaked.
They could find the knife in the bush. Stupid. The lake. Why the hell not throw it in the lake? She tried to switch the torch on, but it slipped out of her blood-soaked hand and fell into the undergrowth. She knelt down, scrabbled for it, then was paralysed with fear as she sensed something behind her.
She turned. A light had come on in the house. The bedroom light. Someone was at the window, a shadow behind the curtain. The curtain parted; there was a creak as the window opened.
Except it wasn’t a window; it was a mirror. She was staring at her face in a mirror, and a figure was looming behind her, blurry, indistinct. She smelled smoke; burning wood; straw.
Charred flesh.
She saw the eyes, just the eyes. Raw through the blackened skin. There was a loud bang. The mirror exploded into spidery cracks. A jagged shard fell away, landing at her feet, and she screamed as the figure moved towards her.
The darkness became red. A red light. Ernest Gibbon’s face, myopic through his thick lenses; his jowls heaving up and down as if there were tiny motors inside operating them. She was drenched in sweat.
‘It’s happened again,’ he said. ‘The same every time.’ He sat for a while, wheezing, studying her with the faint disconcerting trace of humour she had noticed last time. ‘We need to get beyond it. The answer is beyond it.’
‘There’s a parallel,’ Charley said. She felt drained.
‘Oh yes?’
‘My real-life relationship with my husband and my relationship here with this man — Dick. Don’t you think that’s too coincidental?’
‘People often come back and go through the same situations as in previous carnations. Some people believe it is because they failed in the way they dealt with the situations before.’ He removed his glasses and wiped them with a spotted handkerchief. The surrounds of his eyes looked naked. ‘Who is this unpleasant woman? Do you know her name?’
‘No.’
‘Could she be the person who comes up behind you in the mirror?’ He put his glasses back on.
‘The person in the mirror looks hideous — disfigured — the face is burnt.’
‘Is it a man or a woman?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘How would you feel if I did not bring you out when that figure comes up behind you next time?’
She felt a current of fear. ‘What — what would happen if you didn’t?’
He thought for a moment. ‘You might find you are able to deal with it. We should try. I think it would be dangerous not to try.’
‘Dangerous not to try?’ she repeated.
He nodded like a sage. ‘When we open up the subconscious like this, there is always a danger of spontaneous regression.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I try to do everything here in a controlled way. If you are getting uncomfortable or frightened, I can bring you back out, quickly. If you were to start regressing on your own, somewhere away from here, and the figure in the mirror took hold, then —’ He shrugged.
‘Why should it? It’s only something in my memory.’ She saw uncertainty in his eyes and that scared her. She wished she were not here, had not started this. She wished she had more faith in the man.
‘I don’t know why it should, Charley. I don’t know if it is just memory. It’s what I said last time. It’s very strong.’
‘But you didn’t tell me what it was.’
The teacher-knows-best smile was fainter, had lost some of its confidence. ‘I don’t know what it is. I haven’t come across this particular situation before. I don’t know anyone who has. I’m going to do some research, to see if there is anything to compare, some other case history.’
‘I thought you were meant to be an expert,’ she said, more acidly than she intended.
He looked at her and blinked slowly, seriously. The smile was gone. ‘In man’s understanding of the supernatural, Charley, we are all amateurs.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
She walked along the station platform among the throng of commuters returning home from work, from London mostly, the smart and the shabby, the eager and the despondent, home to her indoors, to she-who-must-be-obeyed, to the little woman, the little man, home to noisy kids and empty dark houses, home to the loved, the hated, the infirm, the dying, the dead.
And the reborn.
If you kept coming back, you didn’t die. You merely changed. You got reconstituted. Recycled. Even your knowledge, your experiences, got recycled.
She filed through the ticket barrier then walked, her shoes clattering on the concrete of the steps, down into the tunnel. The train moved off, rumbling above them. Did everyone else around her, all the hurrying people, have past lives? Had they come back many times too, back to this life each time they died, the way they came back to this station night after night?
If? If it was there? What then?
The thought spurred her to walk faster, to run up the steps the far side, out into the blustering wind of the clouded grey evening, almost to sprint across the car park to the little Citroën with its two-tone paintwork.
Her hands still hurt, but she barely noticed as she climbed in, started the engine and switched on the radio out of habit. There was a roar of laughter. Frank Muir was telling a story. Not now, she could not cope with humour now. She pushed in a tape. Rachmaninov, solemn, sombre, old, too old. She felt the violin string as if it were sliding down her own tight nerves and she punched the tape out and drifted into her thoughts again.
She drove out of Haywards Heath on to the country road, pressing the accelerator to the floor, wishing the car would go faster, almost willing it to go faster. To get home.
To find out.
The car lurched as she came into a bend too fast, the tyres squealing, saw a car coming the other way, the driver looking at her alarmed, thought for a moment she was going to hit it but somehow the Citroën hung on. Then the bend went the other way and she swung the wheel, foot stabbing at the brake, cut the corner and narrowly missed a cyclist who swerved, fist waving in the air. Christ, slow down. She gripped the wheel, felt her face steaming.
The sky was blackening as she pulled up in front of the barn. It looked like a storm was on the way.
She climbed out of the car and closed the door, crossed the bridge over the mill race and ran up the banked slope on the far side and into the woods, following the route she had taken in the regression. A gust of wind rattled the branches and spots of rain were coming down.
She trod through some bracken on to the mossy earth and looked up at the trees, the tall, thin hornbeam trees growing crookedly out of the wild undergrowth. Their branches were tangled, some of them supporting uprooted trees from past storms which lay across them like spars, lay where they would stay until they rotted, until they went back into the earth. Biodegradable. As humans were.
In the regression it had been dark, but she knew the way. There was a small indent in the ground, a ditch in front of a thick bramble bush that was covered in rotting blackberries. She went a few yards to the left and through a heavy undergrowth of bracken. A bird jumped in the branches of the
trees above, chirping like a dripping tap. A distant dog barked. A tractor droned. The woods were darkening around her, melting the trees, closing in on her.
She was panting and shaking, covered in a clammy sweat. She did not want to be here any more, wanted to turn, run to the house and close the door on the night, close the door on the bramble bush that seemed to be drawing her in, that seemed to be growing as she looked at it, spreading around her ankles, rising up her legs. Switches were clicking inside her, changing the speed of her blood, re-routing it, churning it, pumping it over blocks of ice, sucking out the heat, refrigerating it.
She crawled underneath the bush, pushing up the branches, the thorns catching at her clothes, then something caught her eye. At first she thought it was a rotting strip of wood, or a flat root.
A stone. Might be a stone. Hoped it was a stone. It seemed to rise out of the brambles at her, bringing the bush with it. She scrabbled towards it on her hands and knees, oblivious to the stinging pain of the brambles, and she gripped the handle, gripped it as if it was the lever that would move the world, then backed out and stood up, pulling branches up with her, letting them rip through her clothes, through the skin of her arms.
She turned it over in her hands, touching the cold, rusted metal. A knife with a bone handle black with age and weathering, and a long serrated blade eaten with rust.
The knife she had carried in her regression. The knife with which she had killed the mastiff.
She felt pain in her finger, as if she had been stung, and looked down. A thin line of blood began to appear from the tip of her index finger down to the first joint. She dropped the knife, jammed her finger in her mouth and sucked hard. The cut had gone right down to the bone.
It seemed as if the thousand eyes of the falling night were watching her. The wind tugged at her hair, her thoughts tugged at her mind.
She bound the cut with her handkerchief, her mind racing, trying to find an answer that was better than the one she had.
She had killed a dog. With this knife. In another life.
She pulled herself free of the brambles, her linen dress ruined, and stumbled down through the woods towards the lake. An explanation. There had to be an explanation. Something.