Night is Watching

by Lucy Cameron

  What is really the cause of this change in behaviour? Should she call her mother? His final words linger – ‘How did he know about her?’

  ‘Who?’ Anna snaps. ‘Who did he know about?’ Another woman? That would make sense. An affair would cause the guilt, the lack of sleep, the strange behaviour. Perhaps it’s someone at work. That’s why he’s been moved so suddenly. Has this Kier somehow found out? That would make sense. Explain why he plagues Rhys’s dreams. Taunts from his subconscious. It is almost a relief. She doesn’t want to hear him say the words. She holds her breath. A hand squeezes round her heart. She is ready. She can deal with it.

  ‘Jenny. How did he know about Jenny?’ Something inside Anna crumbles. Not that other woman. Not that ghost that lurks in the shadows. Her who is always around the corner, just out of sight, just out of reach. Why does it always come back to bloody Jenny?

  ‘I told you he was a bad man,’ says Harry. He peers round the doorframe. Anna doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  ‘And I told you to get to bed.’ Why does he never listen? He can’t see Rhys like this. ‘You can’t lurk around listening to other people’s conversations.’ Her words are harsher than intended. Harry’s bottom lip quivers.

  ‘Dad was shouting.’ He blinks away the tears. Rhys turns his back.

  ‘I don’t care. I told you to go to bed.’ Anna bombards her tiny target. She knows the anger should be aimed at Rhys. She can’t stop herself.

  ‘You’ll get them though, won’t you Dad?’ Harry runs towards Rhys. Anna intercepts. ‘Won’t you, Dad?’ Rhys’s shoulders shudder. ‘You won’t let them get us, will you?’ Rhys raises his head. His shoulders rise as he takes a deep breath.

  ‘No son, I won’t.’ Rhys doesn’t turn around.

  ‘Rhys!’ He knows fine well Harry needs little encouragement. ‘For God’s sake, why would you say that?’ To Harry: ‘Bed. Now.’

  She half drags, half carries Harry out of the room.

  ‘They’re Nosferatu, Mum, aren’t they? Those two men across the street. That’s what I heard Dad say,’ says Harry.

  ‘There is no such thing as Nosferatu.’

  ‘They can’t get in though, Mum, can they?’ He looks up at her with big questioning eyes. Full of fear and tears. They search for comfort. God, if Rhys is looking to push someone into doing him some serious harm, he’s going the right way about it. What on earth is she supposed to say now? It’s late. She’s tired. Rhys is having some kind of breakdown. So much for the united parenting front they swore they would always uphold.

  ‘No honey, they can’t get you. I’ve told you, your dad and I will never let anything bad happen to you. That’s a promise. Now get into bed.’ He wipes his nose on the back of his hand, climbs under the covers. Anna hands him a tissue. Alleviate his fears. Get him to sleep. Deal with realty in the morning.

  ‘Why can’t they get us, Mum? What will stop them?’ Genuine fear. It breaks her heart.

  ‘I will.’ She tousles his hair. ‘And your dad.’ She leans forward. Kisses his head.

  ‘Mum,’ he says as she rises, ‘could you stay for a little bit?’ He smiles weakly. ‘Just because, you know…’ She sits on the side of the bed. Cuddles him. Strokes his hair. Murmurs words of comfort. Rhys has to stop this right now. She can’t allow Harry to get upset. Can’t allow the flames of his fantasies to be fanned. Not Harry. Not now.

  Downstairs, she hears Rhys crash about. The sound of furniture scraping the floor. Harry’s breathing deepens as he finally slips into a deep, exhausted sleep.

  Rhys’s footsteps sound on the stairs. Anna lifts here head. Waits for the door to open. Waits for the apology.

  His shadow passes.

  The sound of the unmentioned bedroom door as it opens and closes. Anna wants to run in there. To scream in Rhys’s face that Jenny isn’t coming back. It’s time he accepts that. It’s time he focuses on her and his kids because they are here and love him. They aren’t going to walk away without explanation. She wonders if she would be able to hold his eye and say the words. She wants to tear the room to shreds and scream and scream and scream. She doesn’t. She strokes Harry’s hair until he’s soundly asleep. Slides from the edge of the bed. Heads back downstairs, a silent ‘fuck you’ aimed at the door Rhys has closed behind him.

  Rhys has moved the sodding furniture. The solid oak coat rack is pushed across the front door. The Welsh dresser in the kitchen over the back door. The kitchen table pushed up against it. The blinds have been knocked out of place as he checked the window locks. They are well and truly barricaded in.

  What if there’s a fire? She wants to shout. How will we get out? ‘Burnt to death by husband’s stupidity’, the headlines would read. ‘Oh but why?’ the neighbours would ask. Because Rhys thought you were all demons after his soul. Or at the very least mad men pretending to be. No, you didn’t mishear me. Yes that’s Detective Sergeant Rhys Morgan. Yes, the one working the highest profile serial killer case the city has seen. That’s him there. The one entrusted with the search for truth and justice. The one sitting upstairs in his dead, sorry, missing presumed dead, sister’s room. Yes, you’re right. She disappeared twenty-two years ago, the room? Bit of a sore spot actually.

  Anna slumps onto a chair at the table in its new position. Pours herself the last of the wine. She’s not going to cry, she’s not going to goddamn cry. The glass leaves a red ring on the pine surface. Sitting here she notices for the first time she’s missed a spot when she painted one of the kitchen walls.

  Interesting what you can see, when you look at things from a different perspective.

  39.

  The look on Anna’s face is clear. She fails to hide it. He’s not sure she even tries. Disbelief. Despair. Then anger.

  She believes he’s stupid. That he says these things to hide his own mental failings. He knows what she will say. He is a detective after all. She will say he needs medical help. Patronise him with a doctor’s appointment that will be all wet handshakes and ‘unpacking mental boxes’. Anna will say he’s the one with the issue. Sleep deprivation. Blah blah blah. Why is it so hard for her to understand? He’s not the one with the problem. Not that kind of problem. He does have a problem. Kier Finnegan. As with all other problems he just needs a way to resolve it.

  Rhys paces.

  Kier said he worked at the hospital. Simple then, he’ll call the hospital. Rhys pats at his pockets for his mobile phone. Call them up and ask them… what? The look in Doctor Curtis’ eye was already judging. Ask if Kier Finnegan is the man he chased through endless corridors? Rhys taps the corner of his phone on his chin. Doctors, doctors, doctors. He takes a deep breath, dials Davies’s number.

  ‘It’s me… No, nothing like that. Are you still at St James’?’ Davies sounds like he’s eating something crunchy. ‘Can you look into the name Kier Finnegan for me?… Someone I met… Not sure yet.’ Davies carries on eating and talking. Rhys takes that as a yes. He listens for a few moments more before hanging up and turning off his phone.

  He needs to know more about the man.

  Is he even a man?

  Why does Rhys even ask himself that question?

  Rhys paces.

  The dreams that contain Kier are so real. Kier made Jenny real.

  How?

  Rhys peaks through the gap in the pink floral curtains. Looks across at Kier’s house. The upstairs windows are all he can see. The lights are on. Something inside moves. He should go over there. Demand an explanation.

  A shiver scuttles up his spine.

  So many questions, his head may explode. He’s not going out there. Not tonight. Not while it is dark. Better to go in the morning. When it’s light. Purely so he will have digested the information. No other reason. Don’t look like that.

  He could go to the station? Type Kier’s name into every available database. But that would involve leaving Anna and the kids alone and at the very least Kier is a madman who threatened his family. Should he call the police? He is the po
lice. Rhys stares at Kier’s house. He’d have to explain his actions to the night shift. It can wait. He’ll do it in the morning. First thing. What can he do now?

  Rhys paces.

  Rubs at the tiny blisters around his wrist. A physical reminder. A physical reminder! Rhys strides across the landing to Harry’s bedroom door. He’ll bloody go in there and show her, he’ll… Harry’s blotchy distressed face flashes in his mind as he raises his fist to thump on the door. Rhys blinks. His fingers rest on the wood. Behind the door he hears Anna’s soft murmur of comfort. He’ll wait. He’ll wait until she comes out, then show her. Then she’ll be sorry, for that look, for the words she didn’t have to say. So many things to do, that he should do. All these reasons to have to wait crowding into this mind. He strides back into Jenny’s room. Sits on the cool bed. Unplugs the laptop.

  He stares at the blank screen for a while, then slowly types Kier Finnegan in to the search engine. His heartbeat quickens as he waits for the results to appear.

  The first pages show little. Pages teenagers have set up about themselves. Links to amateur music videos. Drunken photographs. Rhys refines the search. This time something of interest appears. It’s the title ‘After two centuries local farm to close, Finnegan family set for life’ that catches his eye. It’s a small article. A local community magazine. A surprise they even put it online.

  The Finnegan family have over two hundred years of dairy farming experience with many families in the local area still enjoying fresh milk delivered to their door daily. Sadly this is all about to end. Following the death of his father last spring, Simon Finnegan has decided to wind up the family business to pursue ‘other interests’ in the city. This is a blow to the local community as the farm currently employs over twenty local men and women. Moira Finnegan, Simon’s mother and widow of the late Kier Finnegan did not wish to comment. Friends of the family have said she is understandably devastated by the decision but respects her son’s wishes. She will not be moving with him to the city. Finnegan Dairies will be a much-missed part of our everyday lives and we wish the family all the best for the future. The property will go on sale at the end of the season and is believed to be worth millions, a drop in the ocean of the Finnegan family wealth. To celebrate the role this family has played in the local community, we look back over the generations that have helped us enjoy our cereal and coffee every morning for the last two hundred years.

  And there they are. A small handful of posed photographs of family and employees throughout the decades.

  Rhys moves to the desk. Twists the lamp. Shines it onto the laptop.

  All the photos are titled Finnegan’s Dairy Annual Family Photograph. The first is the then-current family and a few local workers. A dower-looking Moira Finnegan, dressed in black. Her son, Simon, to her left looks like the weight of the world has been lifted from his shoulders. No one else in the photo smiles.

  The next image is forty years earlier. Eoghan Finnegan is listed as head of the family. To his right is a man who looks a lot like Kier. Could it be him? He wears a large brimmed hat, is turned slightly to the side. Zooming in only makes the pixellation poor. Rhys prints the picture. Saves it to the desktop in a folder named ‘Truth’.

  There’s nothing of interest in the next three images.

  Then there it is.

  The last image. The photograph shades of sepia. He stands slap bang in the middle. Taller than the men on either side of him.

  Kier Finnegan. Nausea rises in the back of Rhys’s throat. It can’t be him though, can it? His name is there in black and white, ‘Dairy owner Kier Finnegan (centre) with his younger sister Bronagh and fellow employees Emmet, Joseph and Henry.’ But what does that mean? Families often pass names down. The date printed next to the article is 1920. Rhys’s head feels light, like it doesn’t really belong to him anymore. He zooms into the picture. There is no pixellation. No doubt, not really, not in that place in his stomach that points out the truth even when his brain doesn’t want to listen. That casual crooked smile to camera. Hands resting on the men’s shoulders. It could be a relative though; couldn’t it that does happen, people looking exactly like their distant descendants?

  Rhys prints the picture. The printer is loud in the now-silent house. He returns to the bed where he sits and stares at the image for a very long time.

  40.

  Now the man really is afraid. The wind roars. He has no idea which way is up or down, just that he falls in the pitch black. Then there is an almighty crash. It takes a second for the man to realise it is the sound of his body as it impacts with a hard, flat surface. He is warm and cold. His eyes move from side to side, peer into the blackness. Searching. Waiting for the pain to pass.

  Endless time ticks.

  He opens his eyes. Can see nothing in the dark. He draws in a deep breath, tries to stop the shakes that wrack his body.

  His eyes close.

  It’s the stench that wakes him. The stench of rotten vegetables. Of bins long forgotten. It makes him gag. Worse, it makes him retch. He rolls onto his side and heaves bile onto the cold flat surface.

  Then it comes. The tiny pinprick of light. It grows brighter and larger until it is a massive orb in the sky that illuminates everything. He has to raise his hand to his eyes to see as if it were a brilliant summer’s day.

  It is not.

  Everything around him is dead. Rotten. Black.

  Tendrils of light shoot from the orb. Great electric fingers. The light pulsates and glows like a heartbeat.

  The landscape around him is charred, as if by a great fire. The once-lush fields now charcoal mounds. The once-lush flowers, piles of ash. The rip in the landscape has spawned towering black masses. A dark, cold cityscape against the stark white orb.

  Slowly the man rises. He has no idea which way to turn. The rot spreads in every direction. Never ending.

  Did someone call his name?

  A whisper on the wind.

  He realises he is at the white fence. The one that contained paradise within paradise. It is no longer white. It is black and broken. Splinters of wood crack beneath his feet. The great apple tree at the centre of the paradise is a dark impression of its former glory. A tree struck by lightning, over and over again. Angrily beaten until it can no longer remember what it once was. Again he hears the voice whisper on the wind.

  It takes a while for him to notice her. She is camouflaged against the base of the tree. Her charred skin blending with its roots. It is only when she opens an eye he can identify her at all. He sees her momentarily in his mind’s eye. She runs through the lush garden, happy and in love. A pain twists like a knife in his chest. She opens her mouth. A tiny dark hole against her leather skin. He has to lean in close to hear her. Close enough to feel the heat that radiates from her body.

  ‘Run,’ she whispers. So much fear. So much pain. He holds her eye for a moment, as he cannot identify her hand. His forehead creases. There is nowhere to run. Nowhere to go. Everything is broken. Everything is rotten.

  41.

  Anna’s angry because she’s tired. Tired and hungry and dragging the kids round the supermarket when they should be at home thinking about what to cook for dinner. Angry at being angry all the time.

  She taps the redial button on her phone harder than necessary. The phone she’s calling rings and rings and rings. Clicks to answerphone, again.

  ‘Rhys. Where on earth are you, you’ve been gone all day? Work have called and said you haven’t shown up. I told them you’re ill. Why? I don’t know.’ Anna stops. Scratches her head. ‘Maybe because you are?’ The phone continues to record the silence. ‘I’m worried about you. Will you please call me back?’ A sigh. ‘Will you be home for dinner?’ The sound of Harry and Louise as they fight further down the aisle. ‘The kids are fine by the way. Don’t worry about us, we’re fine.’ The anger rises. She hangs up before she says more.

  It’s Rhys’s fault. Anna thought he was there. Tucked up in his little shrine. But he wasn’t. He’d di
sappeared by the time she got up in the morning, ready to go in there and shout, shout at him for upsetting Harry. Gone, just a dent on the bed next to the laptop. No goodbye. No call. No nothing. All bloody day.

  Argue is all Anna feels she does these days. One argument after the other. Harry’s still adamant there are Nosferatu living across the street. Not helped by his father who seems to believe the same. It should be laughable, but it isn’t. Rhys has hung garlic above all their barricaded doors. Anna had to squeeze out of the house around a coat stand that’s too heavy to move. God, what is he out there doing? Maybe she should’ve told DI Quinn the truth when he called? Whatever that is?

  Anna argued with Louise. Her cheeks flush as the words replay in her head.

  ‘I’m not saying it again. You’re not old enough to be left looking after Harry. We’re all going to the supermarket together, that’s the end of it.’ Louise stamps her foot.

  ‘I’m old enough when it suits you.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘When Dad’s too drunk to drive home from work. It’s okay to ask me to look after Harry then, while you go and pick him up.’

  ‘That’s completely different.’ Anna knows it isn’t.

  ‘And where is Dad anyway?’ Louise stares at Anna defiantly. ‘Is it true that he’s finally lost his mind? I’m not surprised if it is, he’s been acting all weird lately.’

  ‘That’s enough.’

  ‘All I can say is I hope no one at school finds out or we’ll have to move.’ Tears appear at the corners of Louise’s eyes. ‘Except we can’t, can we?’ Louise’s voice is loud. ‘Dad won’t leave that creepy room he keeps for his sister who’s obviously dead!’

  Anna shouts a lot then. About Louise being disrespectful and rude all the while feeling like the hypocrite she is. Harry cries. They all cry. Then hug. Apologise. She can tell Louise doesn’t mean it. Anna wishes Rhys was there. Could see what his behaviour does to the kids.

  But he isn’t.

  Anna has no idea where he is.

  That’s why she insists they all go to the supermarket. She doesn’t want the children to be home alone if Rhys comes back. The thought makes her sick with shame. He’s their father. He will never harm them… would he? Since when did everything get so complicated?