by Jason Arnopp
Quite apart from the fear, he wouldn’t want to give his brother the satisfaction.
As I step forward to hug this boy, a green explosion blinds me.
1 An entirely fabricated quote – Alistair.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Cold soil devours my body temperature. Blades of grass squash themselves against the side of my face. Birds chirp and sing.
Hands, my hands, are wrapped around my head, shielding me from sunlight. Sherilyn’s backpack forms a protective shell.
It feels so safe to remain foetal, blind and still. Seeing and feeling are overrated.
Yet my brain is a relentless angle-grinder, sparking questions.
How was it possible for me to meet my own ghost in a basement?
How was it possible for me to film a video I’d first seen twenty days beforehand? (I’m sorry, Paranormals, so very sorry, for accusing you of making a video I was somehow destined to make myself. And I’m even sorrier, Sherilyn, for leaving you down there.)
And how in the blue caterwauling fuck was it possible for the presence my young self glimpsed in that Suffolk cloakroom to have been my adult self?
Images parade before my mind’s eye. Terrible iterations of me. My face on the shrieking airborne Mimi. My face on the charred basement spectre. My face on a traumatised child then known as Jacob.
Jacob Titherley, my birth name.
I withheld one detail about Maria Corvi. About her parting shot to me in Italy via that bastard Bonelli’s mouth. She didn’t say, ‘Hey, Jack Sparks. Enjoy your journey.’ No, that would have been too simple, too easy. She said, ‘Hey, Jacob Titherley.’
All the abominable events since, I realise, have been about me. Someone, or something, has said: ‘You want it to be all about you? Coming right up.’
‘Me’, hidden in the three words on the video that only I could hear.
Myself, dead, blackened, my eyes brimming with despair, starring in the video I’d watched so many times.
‘I’, endlessly circled on the Ouija board in that boiler room.
This must be how a mouse feels as a cat plays with it, prolonging its demise. I’m on the journey advertised by Maria, my life mounted on rails. If Maria hadn’t appeared in my Hong Kong hotel room, I wouldn’t have read Astral’s umpteenth email and so would never have gone to Los Angeles. If I hadn’t become obsessed with the video, my paranoid relationship with the Paranormals might never have reached critical mass, ending their lives. I’ve been manipulated every step of the way.
I still have no idea where I am. Only that I’m outside and it’s suddenly day.
I fear I’ll open my eyes to some vast, barren hell. Nothing would surprise me.
Only when my memory dredges up a shower tray full of blood am I motivated to do anything, if only to kill the image. Because if I start to cry for Bex, I know I might never stop.
So I heave myself into a sitting position, groaning at the pain from one hundred Crowley cuts. I pull my legs to my chest to form a protective front against whatever awaits me.
Then I open my eyes.
There is no hell. Not here, anyway. Beneath an ashtray sky, dense grey woods stretch out to a horizon crowded with hills. (Eleanor: I’m trying so hard to write as well as I can, despite the pain. I truly want to be remembered as a good writer. It’s all too easy to question my own judgement now, so if you see anything bad, please change/remove. I trust your discretion.)
I’m on a grassy cliff edge, the height of two trees. All that forbidding woodland looks too dead and dour for this to be California. But why should I be back there? Only just now, I seemed to be in Suffolk in 1983. Tony Bonelli’s words come back to me: ‘She can do anything, Jack. Anything. She can take you anywhere, any time she likes.’
Any time she likes.
The trees are bare and gnarled, reaching skyward, as twisted as . . .
As twisted as arthritic fingers.
Oh God, no, surely not. Lots of landscapes look this way. I could be anywhere.
Except I’m mounted on those rails. There’s a deranged rhyme and reason behind all of this.
I shuffle myself around on the cold soil and see the back of the church.
The building towers over me. Steeple pointing to the heavens. Stained-glass window translucent in a renegade shaft of sun.
As queasy as I feel, it’s weirdly reassuring to have found a familiar landmark.
My phone, I realise, is still gripped tight in my hand. It reveals the time to be 2.36 p.m. . . . on 31 October.
Halloween. The same Halloween I’d believed to be firmly in my rear-view mirror.
A dull pressure squeezes my skull as I take in the scene depicted by the window’s coloured glass. Jesus on the rocks. Father Primo Di Stefano’s words echo back from the memory vaults: ‘It is Christ during his forty days in the wilderness.’
I lasted twenty days after Halloween. And now I’m twenty days back. No prizes for guessing the total.
Best not to think about myself in the same light as Jesus Christ. Talk about playing into Mimi’s hands.
A laugh rings out inside the church. This volcanic eruption, this hysterical belly hoot, stops me in my tracks.
This laugh sounds exactly like me.
My skin prickles as I stare up at that window, then hurry towards it.
Beneath the glass, missing bricks provide footholds as I haul myself up.
‘Signor!’ says a voice from inside that sounds exactly like Father Primo Di Stefano. ‘Please, what are you doing? Show some respect.’
I grip the towering window’s ledge and take one more step up, so I can peer in through the glass. As I cling to the rough masonry, my quads and calves shake under the strain.
From this vantage point, the simple altar and pulpit sit in the foreground, then a sea of pews rolls back to the furthest wall. Just past the altar stands Father Primo Di Stefano, side on to me. His assistants Beard and Beardless flank Maria Corvi, each holding one of her arms.
I don’t linger on these people for long, being drawn quickly to three more sitting five rows back.
There’s Maria’s mother, Maddelena. Back from the grave.
Then there’s the man I used to call Translator Tony. Back from the grave.
That guy sitting between the pair of them? That’s me. Grinning and clapping, with my hands held above my head.
I don’t know if you’ve ever looked at your past self through a window, but it’s disconcerting. The effect is so very powerful that your brain falls over itself to find an explanation. I must be looking at my reflection, it suggests. Or maybe I’m watching a video on a big screen. Or maybe that’s not Jack Sparks in there.
This is not the first time my brain has told me lies.
Maria’s raggedy head now faces my window, her eyes glued to mine, full of sunlight.
Her knowing expression intensifies. Ah, hello Future Jack. How’s that journey working out for you?
Past Me’s own attention shifts my way. From memory, from direct experience, I know he wants to figure out what the funny actress girl is looking at.
The idea of making eye contact with Past Me brings the cloakroom to mind. Soulquake! I shove myself away from the wall and land on my back with a gasp.
Anxiety threatens to drag me under as I run through everything I know, or think I know, about time travel. Why didn’t I listen to Pascal’s speculation back in Culver City? The little I know about time travel has been derived from fiction. I doubt having seen the occasional episode of Doctor Who can help me right now.
One central tenet feels instinctively right: meeting Past Me would be bad. If we were to touch or even talk, the world might explode or implode or something. Anti-matter and matter. I actually laugh at this. A hysterical outburst from a man lying on the ground behind a church while a previous version of himself carries on watching an exorcism inside, oblivious to his timeline looping the loop.
This is fifty shades of fucked-up.
I stop laughing when I consider I m
ight be dead. Could I be a ghost? Is this death? I’m comforted to feel warmth in my neck, then a pulse. But might a dead person feel alive to themselves? What if the thing looking out through Maria Corvi’s eyes can see me, but no one else can?
I remember the ghost in the basement, back in LA. Or forwards in LA, depending on how you look at it. That surely was, is, will be my ghost. My future ghost. Unlike me, it was transparent, fading in and out of sight. Then I remember it was badly burnt, and I suffer another anxiety spike.
My thoughts spiral this way for some time, until my scattershot breaths deepen and the panic subsides. I decide I must act.
Inside the church, Father Di Stefano cries out in pain. Ah, that must be Maria regurgitating the nail into his leg. How did I ever think that was fake? I really was just shielding myself from reality. A lifetime ago.
What to do? How about if I dare speak to Past Me and tell him to abandon this book? What if I tell him to apologise profusely to Di Stefano and especially Maria? If I undo the offence caused by that laugh, might it undo all the horrors to come?
Maybe I’m being given that second chance.
What are the rules here? I’m doing what I accused the Paranormals of doing: making them up as I go.
After pacing a shitload of circles, psyching myself up, I make my way around one side of the church.
The first thing I see, upon clearing the corner of the building, is Tony Bonelli. He’s standing a good distance away towards the front, where the cars are parked. He’s smoking and hasn’t seen me yet. But a lurking memory tells me he’s about to.
Sure enough, he spots me standing back here by the cliff edge and nods casually. I expected him to be horrified or at least afraid, but of course to him I’m the same Jack he’s working with inside. At this distance, he’s unlikely to notice I’m wearing a different T-shirt. The jacket’s the same, these are probably the same old jeans. He can see neither Sherilyn’s backpack nor the bulk I’ve gained from all the bandages and pads under my clothes.
Blazing, I stomp towards him. My hands twitch in anticipation of the soft flesh of his throat, eyeballs, anything they can get. I want to make this fucker suffer for what he did to Bex, even though he hasn’t done it yet. Even though he will no doubt be driven to it by madness.
Bonelli frowns, takes a step backwards. He’s about to say something, probably to ask what’s wrong, when Past Me emerges from a side door. Gripped again by nameless fear, I duck back around the corner of the church, out of sight.
I hear Tony gasp, startled, and remember how peculiar this moment was for Past Me. I thought the guy had been rattled by the exorcism, when in fact his reaction to seeing my homicidal doppelgänger was pretty natural. I’m surprised he didn’t run away screaming.
What the hell am I doing? Forget Bonelli, forget revenge, forget fear: I need to change this timeline. Right now, it’s running exactly as it did before. I prepare to round that corner once again. This time, I’ll make a difference. I’ll get Past Me’s attention and tell him everything I know. The universe will not implode.
Let’s go.
‘Hello, Jacob,’ croaks a young girl’s voice from over my shoulder.
There, right behind me, stands Maria Corvi. Her hands clasped demurely in front of that blue smock, a big smile on her face. She’d be quite the jolly picture if her own blood and stomach acid weren’t still smeared around those lips, along with flecks of rust. Yes, she’d almost look human without the cracked facial skin and those pus-yellow eyes.
Those eyes of hers, with actual hellfire dancing where the retinas and optic nerves should be. No trick of the sun after all.
She places her forefinger against my lips. The broken-nail finger, wet with blood. Her rotten-kipper breath infests my sinuses. ‘It went well in there, don’t you think, Jack? I do love saying all that Bible stuff the priests want to hear.’
I wonder if she’s about to let me in on a joke. To pull back the curtain on the real Oz. The actual Truman Show. And when she does this, I’ll somehow be magically off the hook. Bit of fun, no harm done.
This is, of course, a prime example of misplaced hope.
With a tiny left–right motion, her finger smears vile liquid on my lips, then withdraws. I seize my chance. ‘Are you . . . Are you who I think you are?’
Mock-innocent now, coquettish, Maria says, ‘Mamma will soon call for me. I would so hate to worry her.’
Maddelena Corvi. The mother who was right about her daughter being possessed. The woman with hours left to live.
‘Listen,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry for laughing, okay? I’m so very, very sorry.’
I recognise Maria’s mannered shrug all too well. It’s the one I employ when I want to pretend I don’t care.
‘I take it all back,’ I persist. ‘I know who you are. You’re real, and I’ll tell the world.’
From inside the church, Past Me’s voice rings out loud and clear: ‘There’s no such thing as the Devil!’
Maria’s laugh is faint in her throat.
‘Maria?’ calls Maddelena from inside the church. Maria’s sickly eyes dart to follow the sound, and her mouth hatches open. From the back of her throat, loud and clear, comes the rich ticking sound of a grandfather clock.
The sense of a trapdoor beneath my feet breeds desperation. ‘I want to live. I’ve learned so much. Please forgive me.’
Maria tilts her head to one side, looks up and places one finger on her chin. As if actually considering the idea.
Tick-tock, goes the back of her throat. Tick-tock.
Maddelena, her voice a paper aeroplane on the breeze, calls her daughter’s name again.
Tick-tock.
‘Please,’ I say, ‘at least spare Bex. Rebecca Lawson. She didn’t deserve that.’
Sorry, Sherilyn. I’m so sorry. I have seconds, just seconds, to make my case.
The ticking stops when Maria speaks again. ‘Nothing to do with me. Entertaining, however. Did you hear her bones, the way they broke down in that pipe? Bex’s broken bones.’
My eyes sting with tears of nausea, of blind hatred. I reach behind myself and feel around for the secret compartment in Sherilyn’s backpack.
Maria’s eyes twinkle. ‘Of course, my little Antonino wanted to kill you. I couldn’t have that. But you should throw your pets the occasional treat.’
My probing fingers find the compartment empty.
‘You won’t see Tony again,’ says Maria, with a giggle. ‘I sent him way back through history. Oh, the fun he’ll have.’
What would a cosh achieve anyway? I’d only be harming the thirteen-year-old girl this thing occupies.
Actually, no.
No. I promised myself I wouldn’t lie to you again: I’m not paralysed by the fear of harming poor blameless Maria Corvi. It’s fear full stop. The kind of fear you feel when confronted with true evil’s glacial gleam. The kind of fear that warms, then soaks, the crotch of my jeans while I barely notice.
Maria reaches into a pocket in her smock and produces the cosh.
Looking for this, Jack? Naughty naughty.
My stomach shrinks as I back away from her. Maria follows, cruel smile fixed, dropping the cosh back inside her pocket.
My mad brainwave is born more of outright despair than logic. I know Maria created Mimi, using my and the Paranormals’ combined ego power. But perhaps if I could bring Mimi back, deliberately wake her, she might protect me. Perhaps I could turn Maria’s creation against her.
‘I am perfection itself,’ I tell Maria, trying my hardest to convince. ‘Unstoppable. The greatest writer who ever lived. I just spent forty days in the wilderness. I am He. I am Jesus Christ!’
Mimi’s hovering face fails to appear. Nothing happens at all.
Maria’s bestial features rearrange themselves into something like pity. ‘Oh Jacob, you really haven’t been paying attention. Mimi and I are very close indeed. In fact, we’re inseparable.’
Her right hand shoots up to clamp itself around the left-hand side o
f my neck. My flesh becomes hotplate bacon, hissing and sizzling against her palm.
Maria pouts and purrs. This tidal wave of pain, fine wine to her.
I can make no sound. There can only be submission as I sink to my knees and plunge into black.
Next thing I know, I’m denied the privilege of unconsciousness. I’m on my front, being dragged along the grass by a fistful of my hair. Every few feet, the hair rips out in Maria’s hand and my head thumps the ground. She tosses the torn clump aside, grabs another fistful and resumes the process.
The wooden cosh sits between my teeth, its round end wedged against the back of my throat, choking me, ensuring I breathe only through my nose.
As I’m being scalped and beaten senseless, I can smell the bubbling pizza pepperoni that now passes for skin beneath my jaw.
I reach out for Maria’s legs, but my fingertips never so much as brush them.
Is that the sound of me finally mustering a scream? No, it’s an ambulance siren, drawing closer.
This thirteen-year-old girl hauls me towards the cliff edge. It’s astonishing how very fragile we all are. Bring just enough mayhem to someone, beast them to perfection, and suddenly a fatal fall feels like mercy.
Somewhere in the background, Maddelena says, ‘Maria? Dove sei, la mia bambina?’ But she won’t save me. Because this has already happened and I’ve got the message now: I can’t change anything. It’s already done and so am I.
Maria says something triumphant. Forgive me, but I’m so rigid from the massive anticipation of violent death that I don’t even hear.
She shoves hard, the grassy soil falls away and gravity claims me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
So I wake spread-eagled in the rough arms of a tree, with no idea of what’s what.
My left leg sends intense distress signals. Something’s very wrong there.
God knows where the cosh ended up, but I can still taste the wood.
I can only tell what’s up and what’s down from the way my blood drips. The body’s natural compass.