Alex composed herself, unlocked her room, and went downstairs. Time to ask the Podis some questions.
Downstairs in the kitchen, Lily sat nursing a mug of tea, a lit cigarette dangling between two fingers. Alex stormed in, her prize from under her mother’s wardrobe folded and stuffed in the back pocket of her jeans.
“No shopping?” Alex dragged out a chair and away from the table so she was as far from her mother as possible. Alex sat down, landing hard enough to make the wood groan. Lily watched her, her blue eyes peering through a blue mist that encircled her head.
“I forgot something.” Lily sounded cold, and under all the blue screening, Alex thought her mother appeared to be remorseful.
“Well that’s funny, because I found something.” One of Alex’s hands found their way to her back pocket, and she fingered the letter, not yet ready to pull it out.
“You found something?” Lily said quietly.
What did she think? That some big fight was about to erupt? Well perhaps she had the right idea, Alex thought.
“I know what letter came this morning.” Alex changed tack, not ready to divulge her find yet. Lily pinked, and took an extra-long drag from her cigarette in an attempt to cover her surprise.
“What came this morning?” Lily tried to smoke the filter. She must have got a mouthful of the foul taste, and stubbed out the fag. She grabbed the pack and tapped the bottom on the table. Nothing came out, and she tapped a little harder. When Alex remained silent, Lily slurped at her tea and tried not to make eye contact.
Finally Alex sighed and said, “A letter, concerning me. A letter from the health authorities.”
Lily smacked the edge of the pack on the table and a cigarette jumped out. With a look of relief, she grabbed it and lit the end.
“You hid it in your bedroom,” Alex continued, “while I made the tea this morning…” Alex stopped as she noticed her mother’s expression turn from guilt to confusion. “Oh…” Alex rocked back on her chair, while her brain caught up with events. “I searched in the wrong place. You put the letter in your handbag… Shit, you’ve already been to the post office!” Alex smacked her forehead as she realized that battle was lost. Her hand returned to her back pocket. This was something her mother wouldn’t expect.
Lily stared though the grey smoke of her cigarette and the blue mist of her eyes, blinking hard as if trying not to cry. She clicked the lighter repeatedly, flicking the flint and igniting the flame, then releasing her finger to cut off the gas supply. Life and death, were so simple, it was the in between that got in the way.
“I’m sorry Alexandra. I didn’t have a choice … the doctors, they, we … couldn’t get you to go in to the surgery, and your behavior has been so strange. I just wanted to help…” Sobs racked her body. Her head bowed over the table once more, and her blonde hair fell, covering her face. Alex got a sudden visual of Jeremy, her mother had collapsed into one of his typical seated positions, and the juxtaposition of Jeremy over Lily was almost too much. Alex fought the urge to run. First she needed answers about her father.
Trails of blue smoke escaped from under the edges of her mother’s hair and snaked through the air towards Alex. Ignoring the blue mist, she finally removed the letter from her back pocket, opening it up with a sharp snap. She slapped the paper down on the table.
“I went looking for the letter in your bedroom after you left.” Alex dared her mother to call her to task over her snooping. Maybe she had her crazy eyes on, as her mother quickly broke eye contact and turned to the letter. Moments later, the lighter flicked again.
“What did you find there?” Lily finally asked with a meek voice.
“I found something very interesting, a letter from Harry. He wrote to me years ago in the hopes you’d hand it over on my 18th birthday. Somehow, you neglected to give his note to me, but considering your alcohol issues, and the empty bottles hidden with the letter, I kind of understand why you forgot about the letter.”
Lily seemed to be reducing, shoulders sagging, head lowering, becoming steadily smaller each minute. Wordless, Lily fiddled with the lighter. She refused to make eye contact with her daughter, as if a simple glance would make things worse.
“Well, I found the letter, and he leaves some cryptic clues as to why he left, I hoped, as you no doubt formed a big part of his leaving, that you could fill me in.” Alex shoved the letter along the table and under her mother’s nose hoping the invasion of the Podis hadn’t wiped out her mother’s memories of the past.
Lily stared at the paper for a long while, thinking. Then she said, “Your father, Harry … he became disturbed.” Lily spoke in a whisper. “I don’t know, everything happened so quickly. A matter of days, and he took himself away.”
“To where?” Alex shuffled her chair a little closer.
“I didn’t want him to go, I begged him not to go.”
“Where? Where did he go?” Alex shifted to the edge of her seat.
“We were so happy, I couldn’t understand what had happened to him.”
“Obviously not so happy,”
Lily continued, not hearing, or not listening to her daughter. “He had to pack his bag, took one of the holiday suitcases and grabbed his clothes and not much else, left you and me with everything.” She sipped at her tea. “He didn’t want to say goodbye to you and left while you were at school. He was crying buckets, I was too. A taxi waited outside, beeping its horn. I tried to run after him, convince him to stay, but he just dragged his suitcase out to the taxi and left. Said he’d come back when he got better. The morning before he went, he wrote that for you.”
Alex sat silently, watching the tears course down her mother’s cheeks, making black rivers with her mascara.
“I hid the letter. I intended to give it to you on your eighteenth birthday, but everything happened such a long time ago. I forgot, and what does it matter now?”
“Where did he go?” Alex asked once more, her voice softer and less accusatory. Her mother’s sadness got to her, despite the blue smoke thickening in the small kitchen. She tried to control her emotions and sat twirling and tugging on her blonde hair.
“St Patrick’s Hospital.”
“St Patrick’s? Where’s that, and what for? Why would he check in to a hospital?”
“It’s on the other side of Berkshire, going towards London, my love. He went into the psychiatric ward.” She lit another cigarette. “He was delusional, Alexandra.”
Chapter Seventeen
A show Alex had long ago stopped watching flickered across the television screen. She rested her head on the arm of the sofa, eyes half closed. A strange aroma filled the air—cologne, rich and deep wafted across the room. She shut her eyes fully and breathed deeply as she attempted to place the scent. An old memory tried to surface. She couldn’t quite place it, and the recollection stayed tantalizingly out of reach. Harry’s letter was clutched in her hands as the theme tune for the lunchtime episode of Neighbors played in the background. She knew the mystery scent heralded Clive’s return. And everything bad that came with him. She shut her eyes tightly and listened to the singing Australian voices on the television.
The sofa creaked as Clive sat down, his weight on the cushions making her topple enough to lean against him. She kicked her legs over his and cuddled in his warm embrace. Her heart ached, and she wanted to be close to another being, be held. Still not opening her eyes, she imagined Jeremy was next to her, and not in a chilled cubicle at the coroners. She wanted Jeremy to lean over her. And as his curls bounced on her face, he’d kiss away her tears. But she had murdered him. Driven him into the ground.
“You’re not real.”
“I am, Alex. I am very real.”
“You’re not. I take after my father, and I’m delusional, like he was. I need to turn myself in before I do anymore harm. He went to a hospital called St Patrick’s. I thought it would be fitting if I checked in to the same place as him. Like father, like daughter. Do you suppose he’s still there?”
“I don’t know, Alex.”
“They’ll give me pills and you will fade into nothingness, just like you appeared. Of course, if I tell them I killed Jeremy, they’ll put me somewhere terrible, like Broadmoor. Isn’t that where they stick the criminally insane?”
“You’re not insane. You don’t belong in either of those places. You belong in the real world, fighting against the Podis.”
Alex snuggled into the nook of Clive’s neck, smelling the warm sweet smell of the demon. She needed to be held so desperately, even the demon would do. Soon he’d be nothing but a distant memory. She sighed and relaxed. “Look, I understand. I need to do what my father did. I need to pack my bags and turn myself in. It’s okay. Me being crazy explains why you had me do all the work, explains why no one ever saw you, why no one ever heard you, why even though you claimed to be so powerful, you couldn’t shimmer into someone else’s mind for a moment when I needed you to.”
Clive wrapped his arms around her and stroked her hair. “I am real, and if you like, I can prove it to you.”
Alex sat up and eyeballed him curiously. “And how do you propose to do that?”
“First we need to go to the park.”
“You know what? Sure, fine, I’ll go along with this. Do your worst. Make the sky fill with the blue smoke of the Podis.” She waved her arms around in mockery. “Let me write a note to my Mum, she at least deserves to know where I’m going.”
“She’s not here?”
“No, we had a talk earlier. Then she went out for groceries.” Alex smiled. “Properly this time.”
Clive frowned, not understanding, looking over Alex’s shoulder as she scribbled a few words on a post-it. “Take a knife.”
“A knife?” Alex said. “Why on earth would I need one of those?”
“You want me to give you proof? Well, you might want protection.”
“I can’t carry a knife, if I get caught, I’ll get arrested, or whatever the police do to you for carrying a concealed weapon.”
“Then grab a torch.”
“What?” She glanced at the time. “The sun’s not going to go down for hours.”
“Go fetch the torch,” he repeated. “The heavy one with D-cell batteries, I’m sure you have one somewhere…” Clive started opening and closing cabinets, finally emerging from the depths under the sink with a long heavy red torch.
“It’s the middle of the day. Tell me why I would want to take a torch with me.”
“Because babydoll, you want proof, and with proof, you will need protection. My powers are limited in this world. I can pick up things, touch things…” He banged the cabinet door closed. “But I’m not allowed to hurt anything. It’s against the rules of conduct in your dimension. In our own world we can kill each other as we please.”
“I thought you couldn’t die.”
“Well, we can. A death simply doesn’t happen very often. Usually we live pretty much forever.”
“Oh,” Alex said, crossing her brow, and tilting her head as if trying to puzzle out the demon.
“So take the torch, put it in that multi-colored backpack of yours, and walk with me.”
Alex stuck the post-it on the cabinet above the kettle, grabbed the torch and followed Clive out of the kitchen. She stopped long enough to put her thick jacket on. A cold breeze blew in under the front door and through the hall, despite the curtain. Alex threw the torch into her backpack in amongst all the other junk. Satisfied she had everything, she opened the door. Together, Alex and demon walked into a blustery day, a light drizzle coming down just hard enough to add a nasty chill to the air.
“So where are you taking me?” She felt airy, almost weightless, like a weight had been taken off her shoulders. So far, she’d not even spotted any Podis-infected people about, and soon she would be in the hospital where her father went. When they gave her medicine, she’d eagerly swallow the pills that would dull the blue smoke into nothing and make Clive fade back to wherever he had come from. Her face fell a little as she thought about Jeremy. Should she tell them at St Patrick’s? Also Mr. Duggan and his little cat. Her breath caught in her throat. She’d all but forgotten about the first two. No, she decided. Best keep their deaths to herself.
“To the park.” Clive searched the streets with a dark intensity. They passed someone, and Alex spotted the blue smoke emanating from their eyes. Another had a sickly thin smoke that disappeared instantly like warm breath on a frosty morning. A couple leaked a thick cloying substance that seemed to crawl from their eye sockets, so heavy it fell to the ground like liquid. She shivered involuntarily and looked ahead. Most of the Podis-infected were somewhere in the middle with blue mist billowing out like a smoke stack, up into the air where the different shades mixed and mingled above the buildings.
Alex watched all this with a sense of adventure, a sense of taking in all she could before the visions were erased from her mind forever. The only part she couldn’t quite explain was the way the infected people all seemed to follow her path with interest, and at any one time, a dozen eyes appeared to be focused on her. Alex figured that with hallucinations, paranoia was most likely joined hand in hand and ignored the hazy blue attention. Today, more people seemed to be infected, as if in confirmation that the Podis were breeding. A chill ran through her, as she considered if they were real or not. If she took pills to take away her sight, would that meant they really didn’t exist? Or leave her like a sitting duck, ready to be taken at their leisure?
No. She was being silly. Enjoy the oddness. Tomorrow the world would be back to normal.
“To the park then,” she said. “And what are we going to do when we get there?” The day was taking on a festival feel, almost a sense of going into the House of Mirrors with Clive on her arm to cling to when a face appeared too close.
“This is serious Alex, be on your guard.”
“That’s why I have the torch, yeah, I get it,” she replied, shrugging her left shoulder, making her rainbow bag dance up and down with the movement. The heavy torch gently knocked at her in the small of her back. She had never noticed before how heavy that particular torch was.
“This is it, babydoll. You ready?”
Clive had lost his sparkly white grin. In fact when she really looked at him, she realized he’d gone pale—completely washed out. A small wave of doubt made her step falter.
“Sure…” She caught a whiff of fear from Clive. The demon, scared? Her happy thoughts fled, and a creepy sensation spread a rash of goose bumps over her skin. By the time they entered the park on one of the smaller paths, she had a tight hold on Clive’s arm. They headed for the most thickly wooded area. Then he pulled her off the path.
Alex wasn’t sure what to expect as they wandered aimlessly in and around the densely planted trees. A branch snapped nearby as Clive led her across the fern carpeted undergrowth. Alex jumped at the sound, and clung onto Clive with both arms, a nervous titter escaping her lips.
“Made me jump,” she said quietly. To her left a squirrel darted up a tree.
“Stay nervous, might keep you alive.”
“Keep me alive? What are you going on about…?” Alex began saying. But her words were cut off as a large man bounded out from behind a wide trunk and crashed directly towards her.
“Silly girl, asking for this,” he spoke, more a guttural spew than a statement. A balaclava covered his face, and he’d dressed all in black. Only his eyes remained uncovered, and they spurted a thick blue essence that blew fast towards Alex, touching her with cold fingers moments before the man barreled into her.
“What the fuck!” she hollered.
They hit the ground together, his weight knocking the breath out of her. For a moment she lay motionless, stunned by the fall. Then she beat at him with her arms, struggling to get out from under him.
“Clive!” she yelled. She turned her head to the side, thrashing from side to side as she searched for the demon. She tried to knee him, but the man pressed down harder on her, grunt
ing in pleasure.
“Clive!” she shrieked. He’d gone. She grabbed at the man’s face but got the balaclava instead. She tore it off, and seeing the expression of glee on his face, she wished she hadn’t. “Get off me…” she shouted at him. “GET OFF ME!” Alex screamed. He grabbed one of her arms by the wrist, and then caught the other. He held them together in one of his massive hands and pinned them above her head.
Unable to do more than flap her hands, she twisted her head away from the man, straining away from his hot breath that reeked of vomit.
“Stupid girl, didn’t you realize this was bound to happen,” he grunted, his Podis smoke wrapping around her head, it stank of ozone, like when an electrical storm is overhead. It trickled into her nostrils and inside her mouth, coating her tongue with a sticky dry film.
“Help,” she cried, too low at first. “HELP ME, SOMEONE HELP ME!” she screamed. She tried to kick him again, but he pinned her legs down with his own.
“Shut up stupid girl.” With his free hand he punched her across the face. She stared up at him, momentarily stunned. He took the back of his hand to her a second time. The blow hit her hard, and for a moment her thoughts jumbled in her mind as a dull thud vibrated around her head. Alex tasted blood on her lips leaking into her mouth and down the side of her face, but the pain still hadn’t arrived, only the coppery taste from a cut.
“Shut up, or worse will come.”
She thought he might have tried to smile, but his attempt seemed more of a sneer, and this frightened her more than anything. What was he going to do? Images flashed before her of what he might do. Alex bucked, and managed to catch his side with her knee. Before she could kick out a second time, the man gave a punch to her stomach. Her breath shot out, and she lay still, trying to make her lungs work. While she lay on the ground winded, he started fiddling with his trousers.
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