by C. J. Tudor
Alice stirred a little and snuffled into the pillow. During one of her “episodes,” she would fall straight into a deep, silent sleep. At night, when she should be sleeping peacefully, she was never at rest. Turning, crying out, moaning. Often, she thrashed around, screaming, gripped by terrible nightmares. When Fran went to try to comfort her, she pushed her away.
It hurt. But it was understandable. Despite everything they had been through, all that Fran had done for her, the bond they shared, it was not Fran she cried out for in the dead of night. It was not Fran she wanted to soothe the nightmares away.
It was her mummy.
Routine. You became a creature of it in a job like hers, Katie thought. The same hours, the same tables, the same bright fluorescent lighting bearing down. You had no real sense of time in a service station. No clocks. No windows in the café where she worked. A bit like a casino, or an institution of some kind.
It messed with your mind and your body. Katie would find herself eating cereal at dinner time and craving a steak at dawn. Then there was the scratchiness in her eyes and throat from constantly breathing recycled air. Oh, and the glamour of always smelling like stale food. She could never seem to get it out of her clothes, hair or nostrils.
Sometimes, when she emerged after her shift, blinking into the pre-dawn, she had to take a moment. The daylight, the fresh air, the noise. It felt overwhelming. It took her most of the thirty-minute drive home to adjust, recalibrate. To ease the stiffness in her muscles and mind; to relax into being human again.
Every action became so robotic in this artificial world you functioned like a slightly battered and badly maintained machine yourself, performing your tasks with minimal power input, brain engaged elsewhere. Put into neutral. Humming over but only half alive.
Unless something happened to jar you awake. Something unusual, something out of the routine.
The thin man was back.
This was more than unusual. This was wrong. Very wrong.
The thin man had his own routine. He visited approximately once a week; never more than nine days between visits, never less than six.
He never returned on the same day. Ever.
But here he was.
She had just finished her shift and was heading out, hoodie over her uniform, rucksack slung over her back, when she spotted him.
He sat at his usual table, near the front, behind a pillar, where he could watch people coming and going but remain unobserved himself. Often, he had his laptop open, but this morning he had what looked like a notebook and paper spread out on the table in front of him.
She frowned. Something about him looked different, too. Hair? No—that was the usual dark, unkempt non-style. Clothes. He was wearing different clothes. Earlier he had been wearing a grey sweatshirt and black jeans. Now, he wore a checked shirt and blue jeans. He had changed. Why? And why had she even noticed?
She shoved the thought to one side. That wasn’t the only thing that was different. Normally, like her, the man operated on autopilot. Breathing, moving, performing all the tasks required of life (except, perhaps, eating), but not actually living. That vitality, that energy, had been sapped from him.
This morning, he looked as if he had some of it back. She wouldn’t go so far as to say he had color in his cheeks, but he didn’t look as much like a walking corpse as usual.
Something had happened, she thought. Something that had forced him to change his clothes, alter his routine. Despite herself, despite wishing that he would disappear for good, she wondered what.
She walked over to the lanky, bearded youth she was working with on this shift (Ethan? Nathan? Or was it Ned?). That was the only thing that did change here on a regular basis. Her co-workers. The pay wasn’t bad, but the rotten hours, stifling environment and the need for your own car to get you here made the services a less than desirable workplace.
It certainly wasn’t what Katie had imagined herself doing with her life. Sometimes, she could see the pity in her young colleagues’ eyes. Most of them were only here to fund their way through university en route to something better. But she was stuck here permanently. This was her better life.
“You’re a trier, Katie,” she remembered the career adviser at school telling her, with a smug smile, comb-over slicked fast to his freckled head. “You work hard. You’re a good student. But let’s be realistic, you’re never going to be Oxford material.”
Patronizing dick. But then, he had been right. Because here she was, a single mum, working in a dead-end job that a robot probably would be doing in ten years’ time.
“When did the thin man come back?” she asked Ethan/Nathan/Ned.
He barely grunted, “Dunno,” intent upon attempting to either break or dismantle the coffee machine. Whatever he was doing, it certainly wasn’t making coffee. She knew they received training, but sometimes she wondered. Oxford material, indeed.
“Here,” she sighed, dropping her bag behind the counter. “I’ll do this one.”
* * *
—
GABE HADN’T MEANT to return to the same services so soon. Normally, he would be miles away by this point. But things were not normal. Not even close. Not even his normal, which was, by most people’s standards, pretty insane.
He had changed out of his wet clothes in the camper van, thought about trying to sleep, but every time he closed his eyes, all he saw was that damn liquefied body seeping into the car trunk. And then he saw Izzy, in the back of the same car.
Who was the man? What had happened to him? What had he done with Izzy?
He needed to stop somewhere. Stop and think. And this place was as good as any. He ordered a black coffee from a harassed-looking young man at the counter and sat down to wait for it at his usual table. The table hadn’t been cleared. Same with a lot of them. In fact, the young man looked like the only staff member on. He wondered where the blonde waitress was. Maybe she had finished her shift. He couldn’t help feeling a tiny bit disappointed.
He reached into his bag and took out the items he had retrieved from the car, still wrapped in plastic. He laid them on the table, and paused, feeling suddenly furtive. The Samaritan had once told him: “We’re all being watched. The Man has got eyes everywhere. Internet, CCTV, traffic cameras. You’ve always got to act like somebody is watching.”
He looked around the coffee shop. In one corner, an older couple in matching Barbour jackets sipped lattes. They probably drove a Volvo and owned a spaniel, he thought. At another table, a young woman in a business suit, and heels that were entirely impractical for driving, tapped furiously at her mobile phone. Finally, there was a mum and dad with a sleeping baby in a car seat. They gulped gratefully at their coffees and threw annoyed glances at anyone who made a noise.
None of them was paying Gabe the slightest bit of attention.
He slipped the items from the plastic bag and stared at them again. He tried to view them objectively. The bobble looked so much like the bobbles Izzy had been wearing that morning. But then, lots of little girls had bobbles exactly the same. There were no stray strands of hair attached and, if the Samaritan was right, it was too late to get any useful DNA anyway.
Of course, he could still call the police, but he already knew what they would say: So, he had found a car. So what? No one denied there might have been a car. But it wasn’t Izzy he’d seen in it. Oh, they would be nice. Patient. Understanding. To a point. The point where they treated him like he was crazy. Just like before. He had grown used to them rolling their eyes whenever he came into the station. The polite but firm tone. The suggestions of talking to someone, of counselling. People he could see, numbers he could call.
In a way, he had preferred it when the police thought he was guilty of something. At least they listened to him. At least they treated him like a grown man, rather than some pathetic figure of pity. That was the worst. Becoming invisible, sou
ndless. The assumption that everything he said was nonsense.
There is, Gabe had learned, more than one way to become lost.
For now, he supposed, he was on his own. If he were some hard-boiled detective, he might add, Just the way I like it. But he didn’t like it. He found himself thinking about the blonde waitress again. He wasn’t sure why. Yes, she was attractive, and she seemed kind. But then, that was her job—to be nice to customers, to smile politely. It wasn’t as if he really knew her. Besides, she looked like she had plenty going on in her own life as it was. She certainly didn’t need his problems. And, aside from a rusty old camper van, that was all he had to offer.
He opened the map and spread it out on the table. A few places had been marked with an X, but they didn’t mean anything to him. He folded it back up and picked up the Bible. He had glanced at it only briefly before, the soft, moldy feel of the pages putting him off handling it for too long. Besides, he remembered the stickers on the back window of the car.
When you drive like I do, you’d better believe in God.
Real men love Jesus.
The Bible seemed appropriate. But now, as he thumbed through the still-damp pages, he noticed something else. Certain passages had been underlined:
But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. (Exodus 21: 23–25)
If a man injures his neighbor, just as he has done, so it shall be done to him. (Leviticus 24: 17–21)
You shall purge the evil from among you. The rest will hear and be afraid and will never again do such an evil thing among you. (Deuteronomy 19: 18–21)
He will avenge the blood of His servants and will render vengeance on His adversaries. (Deuteronomy 32: 43)
Real men may love Jesus, but it seemed that this one was strictly Old Testament. Vengeance, retribution, blood. Gabe felt an icy nail scrape down his spine.
He put it to one side and opened the notebook. Ripped edges. Blank pages. Why rip them out? What was written on them?
“Americano?” a voice asked.
He jumped, looked up. The blonde waitress with the kind eyes stood by his table holding a coffee.
“Oh, yes, thanks.”
He noticed that she wore a hoodie over her uniform.
“On your way home?”
“Just heading off.”
She put the coffee down and nodded at the notebook. “Looking for a message in invisible ink?”
He glanced at her more sharply. “What?”
“Sorry. You were just staring really hard at a blank page and…just a joke.” She started to turn away.
“Wait!”
Something sparked suddenly in his brain. Pages torn out. There must have been something written on them. Maybe something someone didn’t want anyone else to see. “Have you got a pencil?”
“Err, yeah.” She fumbled in her pocket and produced a stub.
He took it and started tracing it over the paper. He wasn’t sure it would work. He had only ever seen people do this on TV. But as he watched, words appeared faintly through the lead, an imprint from the previous page.
Gabe held the notebook up and stared at it. He frowned. “Don’t suppose that means anything to you?”
The waitress shrugged. “Sorry.”
He nodded, deflated. “Here’s your pencil.”
“You keep it.”
She walked away. Gabe stared back down at the notebook. Several fragments of words and letters had overlapped. But three stood out. A ghostly imprint of a dead man’s hand.
THE OTHER PEOPLE.
Tentative streaks of silver were just starting to lighten the sky when Katie emerged from the services. Despite feeling tired to the marrow of her bone, every limb aching with exhaustion, she liked this time of day. There was a calmness to the first hours of dawn. The day just waking, nothing to spoil it. A new beginning. A fresh start.
All rubbish, of course. There were no fresh starts. Not really. We’re all too entrenched in our own personal ruts, unable to summon up the energy to dig ourselves out. Life, as we know it. Or as she knew it, anyway.
This morning, like most mornings, she would drive to her younger sister Lou’s house to pick up her children and make breakfast. Then she would see Sam and Gracie off to school and finally get home to bed for some sleep. At 3:10 p.m. she would pick the children up, make dinner, drop them at her sister’s again and, after they were in bed, head back up the motorway to work. Like bloody Groundhog Day. Although, at least, she reminded herself, she had a couple of days off before the routine started again.
She walked across the car park and climbed into her battered Polo. She turned on the engine and selected a CD. Yep, her car was so old it still had a CD player and she was so old she still had CDs.
Tom Petty seeped out of the speakers as she drove, singing about a good girl who loves her mama. Lucky her. Maybe “Mama” wasn’t a bitter drunk (mental note—better call Mum tomorrow). She turned the song up. “Free fallin.” Just what she felt like doing sometimes. Forgetting everything, putting her foot to the metal, driving past the turn-off that would take her home: to the dirty dishes, toys scattered across the floor like a Lego and Barbie obstacle course, the bills on the doormat, the sheer drudgery of everyday life. Driving as far as she could, to places she had never been.
Of course, it would never happen. She would tear her own heart out before she ever left her children. And don’t get her wrong—life wasn’t bad. She was luckier than most. She had a job, a house, her health. But she still couldn’t help wishing there was something more. Problem was, she didn’t know what. Perhaps it didn’t even exist. You could spend a lifetime running from one life and chasing another. Gold at the end of the rainbow. Greener grass across the meadow. But, in most cases, the gold would be fake and the green grass would be AstroTurf.
When she got married, she had dreamed of a perfect family. A lovely home with a big garden. Maybe a dog. Holidays in a pretty cottage in Cornwall. She and Craig would watch their children grow up and grow old together.
Hah! Some dream that was. When Sam was five and Gracie barely one, Craig had left her for a sales rep called Amanda. The family home was swapped for a modern apartment (all tiled floors and white bloody sofas) and couple’s holidays in Dubai.
“I just think we rushed into things,” Craig had told her with his earnest, brown-eyed stare. The same one he had used on her when he told her he wanted to settle down and start a family.
“I need to have my life back again.”
Never mind about her life. Or their children’s. Never mind that when you committed to bringing new lives into the world, yours went on hold. You didn’t get to just pick it back up again, like a discarded coat, slip it on and head off out of the door.
But then, Craig had always been selfish. She should have seen it before but, as always, she had fallen into the role of pacifier, making allowances so as not to let her marriage fall apart. More fool her. It had happened anyway.
Now, Sam was ten and Gracie was five, and the best they got from their dad was an occasional trip to the park and age-inappropriate birthday and Christmas presents. Still, at least he paid maintenance. That was one thing. Without it, her meager salary wouldn’t cover the basics, let alone the extras children needed. Like clothes and shoes.
No such thing as a happy family, she thought. We’re all sold a lie. Adverts and sitcoms—even bloody Peppa Pig. Families were just strangers, bonded to each other by accidents of birth and misplaced duty.
You couldn’t choose your family. You couldn’t even choose whether to love them or not. You just sort of had to. Whatever they put you through.
She thought about Mum, eaten up by bitterness and alcohol, Lou with her string of failed relationships, and her older sister, who she hadn’t seen for nine years. Ever since the funeral. What
had she found at the end of her rainbow?
Her foot pressed down a fraction on the accelerator. The sign for her junction drew into view: 14. Barton Marsh. She left it a few moments longer than normal, then flicked on the indicator to change lanes and pulled off on to the slip road.
Tom warbled that he was, “Gonna leave this world for a while.”
If only, she thought. But then, that could well be her mantra for life. If only she hadn’t gone back to the coffee shop today. If only she had gone straight home. If only she hadn’t served the thin man. If only she hadn’t seen the words emerge in the battered notebook, like a bad dream resurfacing from the depths of her subconscious.
THE OTHER PEOPLE.
You wanted something more, Katie, she thought bitterly. Well, there you go. Be careful what you wish for.
When he had asked if it meant anything to her, she managed to shake her head, even as her stomach twisted itself into a tight knot. Then she walked away, as quickly as she could, without breaking into a run.
He obviously didn’t know what the words meant. And hopefully, he wouldn’t find out. Besides, it was not her problem. She couldn’t help him. She didn’t even know him.
But she knew them.
Gabe lay on the narrow camper-van bed. His feet hung over the edge. His arms, even folded on his chest, poked off the sides. He closed his eyes, but his mind kept on whirring away. The Bible. The notebook.
The Other People.
He had tried googling it, but the only things his search had thrown up were an old Netflix show and an Indian rock band. He didn’t think that was what he was looking for. But then, he didn’t really know what he was looking for. He didn’t even know if the words had anything to do with Izzy or were just something random jotted down, like a scribble on the back of your hand to remind you to pick up milk.
He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. There was no point in even pretending to sleep. That ship had sailed. He’d never been a good sleeper anyway. Never found respite in the darkness. Every whisper of wind or slight creak of the house would send his eyes shooting open. He would lie, for hours, tense as a board, staring into the shadows, senses alert. Waiting for the nightmares to begin.