by Ray Cluley
All he saw to tell him it was a popular suicide spot were the signs. Written in English and in Japanese, they urged people not to kill themselves, to seek help. They were probably no more effective than the help lines situated at points across San Francisco’s bridge, the phones only there so people had someone to say goodbye to.
He stayed as long as he could before the city and its bridge called him home.
S
The mist that enveloped him was the outer edge of a full fog bank, but the sun would be up soon to burn it away into vaporous shreds. Besides, Terrence suspected he’d be going little further than the bridge he was under. The lady he’d retrieved was pointing along the length of its span, not beyond it, so he took the Siren Cisco north.
The bridge was the city’s only route north. Before it, people had crossed to Marin County by boat, historical trivia Terrence found difficult to believe even though he’d seen the pictures. To him, the bridge had always been. It was a constant presence, reassuring in its solid construction and gaudy colour. To Terrence it was a symbol, albeit one he found difficult to define. A reminder of what could be achieved in life.
It was an altogether different symbol to those who jumped from it.
“From the golden gates to the pearly ones,” Terrence muttered, trying to believe it. He didn’t hold with the notion that suicides went to Hell, figuring it was exactly the place they thought they were escaping. But religious or not, those who jumped could only go straight down.
He looked out into the fog and saw nothing. Out there somewhere in nature’s shroud was the famous Alcatraz, but Terrence knew that there were stronger prisons. He was in one. Laura, Matthew, Lee, Samantha, Jess, Dan, Stuart, Elisabeth, Catherine, Sun . . . they’d all been in one, escaping the only way they knew how: with a sudden, sharp spla—
—sh!
It came so suddenly on the tail of his thought that Terrence wondered if he’d conjured the sound. Less of a splash, more a crashing explosion of water—and to starboard a group of ever-expanding circles pushed outward. There was a sequence of smaller splashes as someone rose from the centre. Somewhere above was the screech of tires but it sounded to Terrence like his own internal scream, one he voiced by crying—
“Bobby!”
He knew it was stupid, that it couldn’t be, but he called anyway. He’d have said the recently dead pointing him to new corpses was impossible, yet that’s what they did, and he did as they told him so maybe this was his reward, Bobby brought back to him. A chance to save him.
Terrence surged forward, looking for the man to reappear, speeding to where he’d last seen him.
“I’m coming, Bobby!”
There, splashing, sucking up breath.
He cut the engine. “I’m coming!”
Oh Jesus, oh Bobby, why did you leave me? Why didn’t you make me listen? I could have helped.
“Here!”
Terrence was leaning over so far he was nearly in the water himself. He was leaning too early as the boat drifted closer. Bobby was too far away, out of reach. His head was back, his long fringe a darkness over his face, mouth gaping, sucking up air with loud “huh-huh-huh” noises. One hand came out of the water occasionally and swept an arc that had him turning.
Terrence grabbed the boathook and knocked it to the deck in his haste. Picked it up, lunged it over the side, Bobby’s hand coming down on the pole quite by chance. He clutched at it and Terrence pulled him in.
The water washed across the man’s fringe, plastered it across his forehead, out of his face.
It wasn’t Bobby.
Terrence growled, cheated, angry with himself for ever thinking such a thing. Of course it wasn’t Bobby. He nearly wrenched the hook from the man’s grasp. Nearly withdrew to lunge and spear him with it instead.
“Leemee.”
Terrence was close enough to grab some sleeve. He released the boathook, let it sink into the bay.
“Come on, I’m here. Come on. Grab my arm.”
He leaned back and heaved the man to the boat. The man gave a shrieking cry of pain, but Terrence was able to get his hands under the man’s armpits. He heaved again, sickened at how easily his upper body moved as if separate to the limp legs that came up after. The man’s chest went in instead of out, each ragged breath pushing it close to the shape it was supposed to be.
Twisting his own body around, Terrence leaned to bring the man up and over the rail. He struck the deck feet first with another shrill cry and Terrence saw the man had a length of bone sticking out from the bottom of his shoe, a jagged white shard pushing out from under the heel.
“You’re going to be alright.”
He stripped off his sweaters and draped them over the man. More of a boy, barely mid-twenties. Bobby’s age. Bobby’s build.
The man coughed up some of the Pacific. It dribbled down his cheeks in thin lines of bloody water. “Leave me.”
“I’m going to get you to a hospital.”
“Please.”
Terrence saw the word on the man’s lips but didn’t hear it. It was too soft. He knelt closer and took the man’s hand. It felt strange to Terrence, not because of how the wrist was angled but because it had been so long since he’d held hands with another man.
“Hurts.”
“Yeah,” said Terrence. “But you’ve got to fight it. Grit your teeth, come on.”
“You,” said the man, pausing to swallow a wheezy breath. “You don’t understand.”
He could no more understand than a net could hold water, but he realized then that he didn’t need to. What needed to be understood was that he never would.
It wasn’t Bobby, but it was. He said, “Let me go.”
Terrence turned the boat and brought the engine to life with a throaty roar. His speed did not matter, for the man on the deck had already died, but even if Terrence had known he’d have leaned on the throttle all the same, speeding away from the bridge that haunted him.
Ahead, the lights of the city outlined the reasons he would never follow Bobby, or any of those he pulled from the bay. He didn’t enjoy life, not anymore, but he clung to it as a drowning sailor might clutch at the wreckage of his ship. He’d clutch the wreckage and kick, toward, toward, and maybe sometimes he’d even scream for help, but he’d never let the dark waves take him.
He wanted to, but he didn’t know how.
Knock-Knock
J-J looked at the door. He tried to speak but at first no sound came so he tried again and this time it came out but it was quiet. “Who’s there?”
Instead of listening for an answer, J-J watched for movements where the shadows gathered in the corner of his room. He could make out the rectangle shapes of his posters, and the chair where he put his clothes, but near the desk, where the door opened, he thought he could see . . .
Something.
“Who’s there?” he called again, louder. He never asked what was there. He didn’t dare.
What should have been there, in that wasted corner of the room where the door opened (the sort of corner he never had in the old house) was a bin with a basketball hoop over it. And around that, maybe some loose balls of crumpled paper if he’d been having a bad day. He tried to remember if today had been a bad day and thought maybe it was. He’d sketched a few bumblebee cartoons his mother liked (she called them Buzzwords) and he’d tried to add a new character call—
There it was again. The knocking sound. On the door, on his bedroom door. On his side of the bedroom door. He was sure of it.
“Who’s there?” he asked again, knowing in his heart that it was him. It was Dad.
“Joseph Jacobs, what’s all that noise?”
That wasn’t Dad, that was Mum. She didn’t sound pleased, but she sounded closer the more she spoke which meant she was coming to his room instead of just shouting from hers.
That was good. But she’d used both full names and that was usually bad, though not as bad as Joey.
Something in the corner, much taller than a rubbish bin, darkened for a moment. It bled its gloom into the other shadows of the room as the door opened.
“J-J?”
Mum stood in the light from the hall and her shadow stretched into the room with the others but that was okay because her shadow wasn’t scary or even all that dark and anyway it was hers.
“Bad dream again, honey?”
J-J could only shake his head. He looked to the corner and so did she. She sighed. She opened the door wider to fill the room with light and came in. She sat on the bed, a reassuring weight that made the springs creak and a reassuring smell of cigarettes even though she’d quit and her hand took his and he could feel the reassuring oiliness of the moisturizer cream she put on before bed.
“The knocking sound?”
He nodded.
“What did we say about the knocking sound, honey?”
J-J filled his lungs and released the breath as a sigh that admitted he already knew she was right. “Just night noises as the house gets ready for bed.” He would feel silly tomorrow, but that was tomorrow and right now he was still a bit scared.
“That’s right. It’s because this is a new place. The flat is settling down for bed, like you. It’s just that you’re not used to the sounds yet. Plus we have more neighbours and they make noise.” She ruffled his hair, which was good because it felt good but bad because it meant she was about to go again. But then she said, “Knock-knock.”
He smiled at her and replied, “Who’s there?”
“Interrupting cow.”
“Mum . . .”
“Interrupting cow,” she insisted.
J-J slumped in pretend disappointment but he didn’t really mind. It was an old one but a good one. He started his reply, knowing he’d never finish it.
“Interrupting c—”
“Moooo!”
They smiled at each other and there was something sad in it but that was only because of the old times in the old house.
“Knock-knock,” she said again.
“Who’s there?”
He was expecting the interrupting frog, the interrupting dog, maybe the interrupting duck.
“Interrupting starfish.”
This was new. J-J sat up, intrigued, and began, “Interrupting starfi—”
Mum pushed her hand against his face, fingers spread wide sort of like a starfish, and muffled his laughter when it came. She pushed gently which was okay and pushed him so he was laying down and tickled him. He giggled and tried to push her hands away but he didn’t try very hard. Eventually she stopped.
“Good one, huh?”
“Good one,” he agreed, looking up at her from a tangle of bed sheets, one of the pillows half over his face.
“Good night. I’ll leave the door open, alright?”
J-J nodded and felt a little embarrassed, but only a little. Then his mum kissed him on the forehead, her hair tickling his face so he had to wrinkle his nose, and she stood up. She straightened the bedding around him, said good night again, and went back to her own room.
J-J felt better, but he still waited for the knocking. He waited and waited and he fell asleep.
S
The knocking had first started about a year ago. He remembered because it was so close after his birthday, which was the first time Dad died, and now it was nearly his birthday again.
J-J had been sitting up in bed, decorating the cast on his arm with the new pens from Mrs. Davies next door. He had the curtains open so the streetlight came in. He was drawing a sequence of pictures, not knowing to draw boxes around them yet or to call it a comic strip, not knowing in another twenty years he’d be doing it for a living (with a series called Buzzwords). He was drawing a monkey trying to open a banana. His mother would keep the cast when it was taken off and sometimes, when he was older, and usually when he was a little drunk, Joseph Jacobs (never Joey) would look at it and see brown circles around a thick yellow arc and remember what it was meant to be. He’d called that monkey Chunky because of the ice cream he liked. He was drawing the third and final picture, the banana leaping out of its skin, when there was a knock-knock-knock! at the door. It made J-J feel like the banana but only because it was all of a sudden. Not because it was scary. Not yet.
“Yeah?” he said, thinking Mum would come in.
Knock. Knock.
“You can come in, I’m decent.”
It was what Mum said sometimes, and sometimes it made her laugh when he said it.
From down the hall, from the front room, the TV suddenly went quiet and Mum called, “J-J? You ok?”
Knock. Knock. Knock. From right outside the room.
“Who’s there?” he asked. He thought maybe Mrs. Davies or one of the other neighbours was staying over to keep Mum company. They’d started doing that since Dad died. But really he knew it wasn’t Mrs. Davies or a neighbour which was why he asked it so quietly. He didn’t really want an answer.
He was pushing so hard on the yellow pen that the felt tip disappeared into the plastic casing.
Knock.
. . .
. . .
Knock.
“Go away!”
The TV sound had crept back up but now J-J heard his Mum running down the hall and even though he knew it was her he screamed when the door burst open. She rushed in and scooped him up and held him in her lap, rocking back and forth and, “Shush, shush, shush little darling,” she said, “Mummy’s here.”
J-J clutched at the pink fur of her dressing gown. “Someone was knocking on my door.”
“Well, there’s only me here, baby. Only me from now on, alright?”
He nodded against her.
“Alright?” she said again to check.
He nodded harder, but he wasn’t sure.
“Hey, what are you drawing?”
So he told her about Chunky and the banana and she laughed and told him it was great, so J-J laughed too, and they talked about other drawings he would put on different parts of the cast. When they had filled it with imaginary pictures, J-J said, “Lucky it was my left arm, Mum, eh?”
She made a strange sound that was like a swallowed hiccup and sucked her lips into her mouth and stroked his fingers where they poked from the plaster. “You know he’s not coming back, don’t you honey? Not ever. He’s gone now. I promise.”
J-J looked at her and believed her because she was Mum.
“And soon your arm will be all better.”
“And your nose,” J-J said.
She stroked his cheek. Her nose was bigger than it usually was and she looked like she was wearing special make-up on her eyes but she wasn’t. Older, Joseph would say that his Mum was a canvas Dad liked to paint on, but he didn’t understand it that way yet.
“Yeah, and my nose. Might be wonky, though. Like Gonzo.”
J-J laughed and she smiled, and she was right about his arm because it was fine after a while but she was wrong about her nose because that was fine too and not wonky at all.
She was also wrong about Dad and the knocking and the never coming back, not ever, because he came back again the very same night.
First he came back in J-J’s dream.
J-J knew it was only a dream because Chunky was in it and a talking bee and sometimes weird things happened like he’d be outside but his bedroom furniture was there, or Mum would be at work at the pub and he was allowed in and she was working in her dressing gown and then when he went through a door he was suddenly in his room again.
Dad was sitting on the bed, turning the pages of J-J’s sketchbook and looking at the pictures.
“What’s all this shit?”
&nb
sp; And now it wasn’t much like a dream any more because it was real, this was something that had happened, and even though J-J wanted to change it, he couldn’t. So he said exactly what he’d said last time when it was real.
“Pictures I drew. If you flick the pages fast they move.”
“I know, Joey, I’m not a retard. Why are you drawing little girls in pink dresses?”
“She’s a princess. She’s gone to the tower to rescue the knight. If you flick it she climbs the—”
“I know to fucking flick it, Joey.”
J-J backed away because Dad had said two bad words which meant he was being mean.
“Come here. Sit down.” Dad patted the bed next to him and even though J-J knew what would happen and he didn’t want to he went and sat down anyway because it was a dream. He could smell the oil on his dad’s hands that was always there even when he washed, and he could smell the smell on his breath that made Mum angry because she smelled it all the time.
“The princess is supposed to be in the tower,” Dad explained. “If you draw girls in pink dresses people will think you’re gay. You’re not gay, are you?”
J-J knew to say no because of the way Dad asked the question, but he didn’t really know what the question was. Maybe if J-J showed him how the book worked Dad wouldn’t mind so much.
“Look,” J-J said, “If you flick it—” He reached for the sketchbook but Dad grabbed his arm like he really did the time when it was real and he pushed J-J away from the flick book and just like before he didn’t let go when J-J fell and there was a cracking sound that hurt oh so much that J-J screamed and called for Mummy and still Dad wouldn’t let go. He shook him instead and J-J screamed again because his arm moved different. The flick book fell to the floor and the dream was different now because the book was flicking all on its own and there was no tower or princess or anything, just a big brown door that opened and closed and opened and closed and from the pages came a knockknockknockkno—
J-J woke and scrambled a nest of bedding around himself.
The knocking was real. It was coming from his real door. There was no flick book but J-J had knocked the clock from his bedside table to the floor. The numbers on the floor glowed 03.46 and the 0 at the front meant it was early in the morning and not the afternoon. J-J didn’t want to pick it up because he didn’t want to reach outside the covers because the door was opening all on its own without the handle even moving which was impossible but it was still happening and maybe he was still dreaming. But he could feel how the cast on his arm itched and if he was dreaming he didn’t think he’d feel that kind of thing.