by Sant, Sharon
I shrug. ‘I want to go home now.’
‘What about the wake?’
I look across to where the vicar has seen the last of the congregation away and is heading back into the church. ‘They can do it without me. They’ll have a better time that way. Whose stupid idea was it to have a party to celebrate someone dying anyway?’
Dante throws a longing glance at the funeral cars. ‘It’s a long walk,’ he says.
‘There’s no way you’re getting me back into one of those today. It doesn’t matter how long it takes me to get home now, they can go on without me too.’
‘I know, I wasn’t going to suggest it… I was just saying.’
‘Don’t.’
‘You must be tired after all the emotional trauma, though. Maybe the car is the best idea. We could ask them to take you straight home.’
‘I’ll be walking home,’ I tell him with a resolute frown.
He plunges his hands into his pockets. He’s wearing his suit without a coat and I can see that he’s shivering but he doesn’t say a word about it. ‘I know that. Shall we go, then?’
‘I need to do something first.’
Our steps crunch on the gravel path as we walk. Dante clings to my hand, following where I lead. The grounds of the crematorium are divided into sections: a garden of remembrance for the cremations, and graves with headstones for the burials. It’s not hard to find the first stone I’m looking for – shining grey granite in a part of the gardens that is full of new graves, the earth on them velvet-black and freshly turned. The words inscribed upon it are in Polish.
‘Do you know her?’ Dante asks as I stop in front of it.
‘Not really.’
‘But you knew where to find it. You’ve been here before?’
‘Yes.’
‘How come, if you don’t know her?’
I sense that he’s waiting for a reply. When I don’t offer one he simply squeezes my hand slightly. Then we’re silent as I stand looking at the stone. The only parts I understand are her name and the dates of her life. I can feel Dante’s questioning gaze on me.
‘I wish I’d brought something to put on it now,’ I say.
‘We could go and get flowers if you want,’ Dante says.
I shake my head. ‘I don’t suppose she cares.’ I squint up at him. ‘Let’s go. I need to see some more people.’
I turn and face the path again. We’re quiet as we walk, listening to our footsteps and the steady cawing of that solitary crow. When we reach a secluded plot, bordered by a rambling holly, I stop again. This stone contains three names, three separate sets of dates and some bullshit about going to eternal rest. I didn’t choose the wording, and now I struggle to remember who did. I’m sure it wouldn’t have been Gran. I think the verse came from a standard book at the funeral director’s office. I would have preferred some of Gran’s own words on there, now that I think about it. I run my fingers along the smooth black edges as I murmur their names.
‘I’m sorry,’ Dante says.
‘Me too.’
There is nothing more to say and we stand together reading the stone, the now rapidly fading sun glinting weakly off its polished surface. He folds me into his arms and I fall into him, letting his embrace chase away the ghosts.
I’m exhausted when we arrive back at my house, just as Dante said I would be. He stands awkwardly at the step before realising that I’m not going to ask him in and bidding me goodbye with a quick, candid kiss. I watch his retreating figure, slouched into his pockets as he shuffles away in his too-big jacket, before closing the door and sliding the bolts. I need to eat and get some sleep before I head out again for a new night’s patrol. This is how I have come to think of my nocturnal hunts. I’ve been out every night for days now and not seen anything untoward since my encounter with the drunken girl I rescued from the derelict bus station. The only thing I have is the overwhelming but uncorroborated fear that he is following me everywhere I go. I even smelt him in the chapel earlier. The idea that he is stalking me, as I’m stalking him, fills me with a cold dread, but I’m more certain than ever that he is. It could have been any of those strangers at the funeral today. Does he want to see if the dead girl still walks once he’s had his hands around her neck? Maybe I’m the ultimate prize in some grisly game.
I try to shake the notion as I fill the kettle, but my hands still tremble. I force myself to remember Polish words on a grave, the image of a pale fifteen-year-old lying on a mortuary slab, the ominous, angular shapes hidden underneath death shrouds. The words in Gran’s diary burn through my head; they mingle with the memories of others that are now part of my own, of rocks and glass tearing into my back, fighting for breath with hands at my throat as a cold moon looks on.
Putting the kettle on its stand, I grip the sides of the sink and draw deep breaths. I have to do this – tonight, tomorrow, as many times as it takes.
That’s when my gaze is drawn to the kitchen window. Outside on the sill there’s a flower laid out with great care.
And it looks just like one of the flowers from Gran’s coffin.
I’m showered and calm again, my hair still damp and curling when I head out of the door. I slam it shut, the sound echoing around the silent street. A backlit curtain twitches in the opposite house, a face quickly disappearing as the fabric falls back into place. My stomach is empty and raw and my finger ends sore from biting them. It’s all good, though; it means I’m keen and alert and hungry for the fight. I hoist the backpack higher and plunge my hands into my jacket pockets. All strategy went nights ago and now I simply head out where my feet take me.
An hour sees me almost on the outskirts of town where there’s a sprawling retail park, full of corporate chain stores and eateries. It’s late – or early depending on which way you look at the day – and most of them are in darkness now, but one building is still full of life. I look up and the lights of the casino are almost haloed in the freezing darkness. I’m surprised, somehow, to find myself here, like I blacked out or something while I walked. Inwardly, I chide myself for letting my guard down.
I’m here now, though, so I take a seat in a dark corner on the wall that skirts the car park. From here, I can see everyone and everything going on in and around the casino entrance, but no one can see me, at least, unless they’re really looking for me.
Weeknights at the gambling den seem quiet and there’s precious little distraction for me as I watch the doors and reflect on my day. I’ve heard it said that some people only start to grieve once the funeral is over and recognition of the end comes. I’m not sure that what I’m doing is grieving. I don’t know what I feel about Gran; I’m sort of numb. I recognise desolation, though, that feeling of being entirely alone in the world. There’s Dante, of course, but I hardly know him. How can I be sure he’ll always be there? There’s also Karl and Gail: two people only around for me out of some misguided sense of professional duty they have that extends to me in a personal capacity. I have my counsellor, Helen. Ditto.
I think of Dante. I can almost smell his warm scent on the night air. I pull my phone out and re-read the text he sent a few days ago.
R u ok?
Hardly even a sentence at all but it means something, so much more. In the midst of all this hate and chaos, there’s a misplaced, incongruous emotion pulling at me as I read the text once again. Do I love him? I don’t know the answer but there must be a reason why the question has even occurred to me. Maybe I just need him and there’s a big difference. I wonder what he’s doing now. He could be asleep, but it’s more likely that he’s in the feverish grip of his nightmare. Maybe he’s awake and even now his mum is holding him, soothing away the terror like she did when he dreamt of monsters as a little boy. I wonder if he’s ever revealed to her the images that haunt him now, the ones he won’t share with me.
But then something wipes my mind of Dante and everything else so that only one thought remains. I hug the rucksack to my chest and unlace the top, grasping the handle
of the knife but leaving it hidden. My breath comes shorter and shallower as I listen. There’s silence, other than the distant bleeping of machines and the low hum of concentrated merriment in the casino. But there’s a smell, one I know only too well. It was there at the funeral today; it was on every girl he killed.
And it’s here now.
Thirteen: Cat and Mouse
I daren’t look behind me. I hold my breath and listen, but there’s no sound to betray a presence nearby. My fingers curl tighter around the hilt of the blade. I scan the car park, my eyes struggling to pierce the gloom in the darkness beyond the few tall lamps. There are a handful of cars, dark shapes punctuating the shadows, but I don’t see any movement. The smell is there, though, scraping at the back of my throat. He has to be behind me, I have to look.
I jerk into action and leap off the wall, spinning around with my knife ready. I almost lose my balance and panic grips me as I right myself. But the road is silent and empty once I collect myself enough to look. Slowly, I approach the scraggy bushes growing along the wall. I extend my knife arm and inch towards them. Parting them with the blade, I dart a look and then jump back. There’s just enough light from the casino to see that nobody is hiding there. I spin around and scan the streets beyond the boundaries of the casino car park but they’re silent and empty.
I start to walk slowly around the car park, eyes flitting everywhere and seeing shapes in every pocket of darkness. But when I look again there’s nothing there. I think I might actually be going crazy.
I don’t know how much time has passed when I finally stop waiting for him to appear, it’s like my brain can’t deal with chronology right now. I stow my knife back in the bag, though I keep it in easy reach. The initial adrenaline kick has subsided and I feel cold, right through to my bones now, so I guess I’ve been out a long time. The smell no longer seems to be here either, or maybe I’ve just become accustomed to it. Whatever just happened, it doesn’t seem to mean anything after all. Perhaps I did imagine it. Perhaps I’m so obsessed by this pursuit that I’m beginning to imagine him everywhere.
What the hell am I doing here? Am I supposed to do this or not? Maybe I’m way out of my depth.
Bouncers stand at the door of the casino ushering people out. It must be nearly dawn, then. Howls of laughter ring through the night air as the punters depart, along with drunken cat-calls and shouts for taxis and I can almost smell the heat of bodies from here. I suddenly, desperately need the safety of my house. Turning homeward, I throw a last glance around for a sign of him but there’s nothing. I’m practically running as I start back home.
Helen smiles brightly at my entrance.
‘I’m glad you’ve come back,’ she says.
‘I never said I wouldn’t.’ I peel off my coat and drape it across the back of my chair.
‘No, that’s right, you didn’t,’ she says. ‘So, how have you been this week?’
I take a seat and give a vague shrug. I wonder if she can see how exhausted I am. Night after night wandering the streets, days spent dwelling on the next patrol or my relationship with Dante. None of that is conducive to sleep at all. I had promised myself that I wouldn’t come back to Helen now, thinking that seeing her and talking to her might give away what I’m up to, but after being chased by shadows last night, I decided to keep today’s appointment. It’s like my safety net, the place that stops me from going crazy and gives me a breather from all the madness that has become my life. So even though I’m scared of slipping up, it seems a better option than sitting in my house jumping at the sound of every falling dust mote. ‘Good,’ I say. ‘I’ve been out a lot.’
‘Really? And how did yesterday go?’
‘You mean the funeral?’
She nods.
‘Ok,’ I say, ‘not as bad as I thought it would be.’
‘Do things feel different today?’
‘In what way?’
‘Well,’ she says, folding her hands in her lap. ‘Do you feel like you’ve had some sort of closure? Has it made you think about where you go from here?’
‘You mean have I forgotten her?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘The people we lose never leave our hearts and memories, but time can dull the pain a little. People grieve and move on, it’s part of life.’
I want to say that I’m not people. But then I flashback to the face of a fifteen-year-old corpse and wonder if her family are grieving and moving on. How do you ever move on from that?
‘It’s not always that simple,’ I say.
‘It’s not,’ she says. ‘But that doesn’t mean it’s not achievable.’
‘How long does it take?’
‘How long is a piece of string?’ she says.
I don’t know why people say that, it’s the most annoying reply to a question ever. But I don’t tell her that, instead I think for a moment and something else occurs to me. ‘What if you were having a really bad recurring nightmare? Something so awful that you couldn’t function during your everyday life for fear of it? How long would that take to work out?’
She gives me a small smile. ‘Is that someone you know?’
‘Maybe.’
‘One of my patients?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Then I’d say that’s between me and that person how his recovery is going. Unless he wanted to tell you himself.’
‘What can I do to help him if he won’t share it?’
‘Cassie, we’re here to talk about you, not your friend.’
‘But this matters. I just want to do some good, I want to help people. I’m tired of leeching the life from everyone around me… and that’s not meant to be a pun or irony or anything, I’m talking metaphorically…’
She smiles. ‘I know.’
‘I think helping fix other people can help to fix me, I think it’s what I’m supposed to do with my second life. Does that make sense? And I think helping to fix him is the first step.’
‘It might be, but you know I can’t talk about him.’
‘I don’t want you to. I just want you to tell me what I can do. That’s not talking about him, that’s talking about me.’
She sighs. ‘You have to wait, that’s all. Wait for him to be ready. I suspect that you are new to each other and are both keeping a part of yourself hidden away from the other. That’s only natural in all new relationships.’ She pulls out her notes. ‘Has that helped any?’ she asks as she starts to flick through them.
‘I don’t know.’
She looks up from her paperwork. ‘Tell me about your trips out. What sort of things have you been up to?’
‘Nothing in particular. Just out, walking and stuff… y’know.’
‘And how have you felt being out? No panic attacks?’
I’m about to reply when it hits me. Apart from yesterday I haven’t really freaked out all the nights I’ve been hunting. I’ve been nervous as hell, of course, psyched and ready for attack, confused and scared, but I haven’t actually lost it like I did last night.
‘No,’ I answer slowly. ‘I don’t think I have had any.’
‘That’s great,’ she beams as she writes it down.
Dante is leaning on the wall of the clinic building when I step onto the street. He kicks himself away from it and smiles at me.
‘Hey.’
‘Are you going in now?’ I ask.
He shakes his head. ‘I thought we could do something.’
‘Don’t you have an appointment with Helen?’
‘Maybe. I don’t think I’m in the in the mood, though.’
I frown at him as we start to walk, the sun sitting low in the sky making me squint. ‘You’re not ditching her are you?’
‘I’m surprised you haven’t,’ he says defensively.
‘Me too, actually.’ I glance up at him. ‘So, why aren’t you seeing her today?’
He shrugs. ‘There doesn’t seem any point.’
‘Won’t your mum hit the roof when she finds out?’
‘W
hy would she find out?’
‘Won’t Helen phone her?’
‘She’s not allowed to without my permission.’ He adds in a silly voice, ‘I’m all growed up now.’ He throws me an awkward smile. ‘Which means I can do whatever I want.’
‘All that world of choice and you come to meet me?’
‘I wanted to know if you were ok. After yesterday…’ He smiles, that sweet, uncomplicated smile of his that is about the closest to the real Dante I get, and my heart swells at the sight of it. When everything else in my life is a mess, this smile from him seems to give it new meaning. I smile back.
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘Well,’ he says carefully, ‘it was kind of a big deal.’
‘It was. But I’m all growed up now too.’
‘I didn’t mean that… I meant… It doesn’t matter.’
I reach for his hand and he seems to relax.
‘Usually I’m horrible to you, but that wasn’t actually me being horrible,’ I say. ‘Besides, you should be flattered. I’m always most bitchy to people I really like. That’s my Gran’s fault.’
‘You must think I’m amazing then,’ he says slyly.
I look straight ahead and bite back the second smile that pulls at the corners of my mouth.
‘So you’re ok?’ he asks.
I nod. ‘Yeah, I think so.’
‘And it was ok with Helen today?’
‘Yeah, I think she seemed happy. She did that little excited scribble thing that she does when you say happy things to her.’
He laughs. ‘I noticed that too. She really gets off on positive vibes.’
‘Maybe she’s on bonus for turning out rounded individuals.’
‘She’s on for a massive one when she sorts me out, then.’
‘At least you can be sorted out.’
He smiles at me. ‘You’ll see, everything will work out.’
I raise my eyebrows. ‘Where did Mr Optimistic come from all of a sudden?’
‘I might as well take each day as it comes and stop worrying about what will come with it,’ he replies with a shrug.