by Unknown
“Then why send you a text?”
My grin falters for a second and I laugh. “Same old, Sarah.”
I stop to concentrate, bring up her number, bounce on my heels, please, please, please, as it begins to ring.
“Hello?” A man’s voice.
My face falls, leaving me with nothing but tears on my face. “Who is this?”
“Is this Derren Kattenhorn?”
“Who is this?”
The voice on the other end sighs. “Mr Kattenhorn, this is DS Quirke. I have some bad news. We’ve just found your wife’s body.”
The press explode into a frenzy, bristling with cameras, notepads and microphones. The bride’s body found the morning of the wedding. What a story.
I squint through the flashes, each one revealing the afterimage burned onto my retinas, the photo of my Sarah’s body the police have just shown me, asking me to confirm that it’s really her.
There was no denying it.
But the text. I showed them the text, asked if it proved anything. They frowned, just as Tom had done, and asked if I knew another Sarah.
But they took it seriously. They checked her phone records, double-checked them, but the last message sent, though indeed to me, had been sent over a week ago, confirming that I’d booked the restaurant, asking if I’d got us a table near the door.
They said they’d look into it. Maybe it had been sent by the jogger who’d found the body. Maybe kids playing a sick prank.
Another taxi ride home. The sun is shining but the wind is strong, flapping at our clothes. Fine weather for a wedding.
I stand, hunched, hands in pockets as Tom waves off the taxi.
“I don’t think there’s any food left in the kitchen,” he says.
“There’s a Chinese,” I reply, the words thick in my mouth. “Down the road.”
“You want to come with?”
I shut my eyes, seeing the image of Sarah’s corpse again and when I open them my vision is flecked with sparks, signs of an oncoming headache. “No. No, I think I want to be on my own a bit… I’ll be alright.”
He stares at me a moment and I look back, nodding that everything is fine.
He puts a hand to my shoulder before heading off.
The silence of the lift, the hall and my flat is a relief. To be alone, to not have to be strong for anyone, feels like a release.
Throwing the keys onto the hallway table, I switch on the light and shield my eyes. The oncoming headache means that the lights are too bright and I flee.
As I stumble to the dark sanctuary of my bedroom, my phone goes off.
My heart skips again, another text from Sarah.
We made a promise. S xx
I shove the phone back into my pocket, hard, my teeth grinding, my head pounding, wondering what it means, if the police are any closer to solving that particular mystery, at least. They told me to tell them immediately if it happens again.
I throw my bedroom door open so hard it bounces off the wall and almost closes behind me, the light spilling from the hallway enough to see by.
Heading straight for the aspirin, I throw two back, washing them down with last night’s water. No, fuck that, I’ll call her phone again, tell whoever’s doing this-
“Hello, Derren.” The voice is quiet, almost apologetic, but it makes me seize.
The dark shape standing at the other side of the bed is unquestionably, inexcusably her: the waves of her hair, the curves of her breast and hip, that pose. The light from the hallway throws her into stark relief, the shadow clinging to her like the deepest velvet.
The sight doesn’t take my breath away. It suffocates me.
She doesn’t move as I splutter, as I step back, as I knock my drink to the floor. She just stands there, hands clasped in front of her, large as life as I split in two, trying to decide which is true: that she’s here or that I’ve lost it.
“Sarah?” Her name cracks painfully in my throat, bringing tears to my eyes.
“Did you not get my texts?” She tilts her head. “I sent you two.”
She slips around the bed, her bare thigh grazing the bed sheet with a silken whisper. As she gets closer I realise that she’s naked.
“I … I did,” I stutter, coming to meet her, “but … but there was blood in your bed and we didn’t know where you were and they said they found your body. You were … you were…”
“Sh … sh … sh … sh,” Her hands lace themselves over my shoulders, slipping into my hair as she pulls me close.
I hold onto her so hard,my tears wetting her bare skin.
It really is her.
The way she feels, the way she smells, the way she touches and holds me, fingers tracing along invisible lines like an affectionate fingerprint, it’s all her.
“I thought I’d lost you.”
She makes a small noise of sympathy, runs her thumbs over my tear-stained cheeks. “Baby. You’ll never lose me.”
I can see her clearly now. She’s as beautiful as when I last saw her, exactly how she would have looked if she’d let me stay that night.
“But I am going away.”
The joy slowly rising in my chest stops dead.
She hugs me again with another little coo of feeling.“What? But… No,” I stammer.
“I’m dead, Derren.” She steps away, looking down at her feet. “It’s not so bad. It’s like…” She shrugs and shakes her head, her laugh is small and sad. “It’s indescribable. But all I could think about was coming back, seeing you.”
Why?
I don’t even say it, I feel the word move my lips but it doesn’t make a sound.
And she smiles that slow, sultry smile of hers. “I promised, remember? Back in front of the flat?” She runs her hands down my chest and tugs me gently by the lapels of my jacket, pulling my lips closer to hers.
It takes me a few moments to realise what she means and her grin widens at my expression, her eyes twinkling mischievously.
“You mean … sex?”
Her smile deflates a little at my tone. She covers it with a laugh. “I did promise you, didn’t I? A night to remember?”
Her eyes flick down to my lips as she licks her own. “I’m a ghost with unfinished business.”
Her lips press themselves hard against mine. I kiss her back, lost in the moment, but most of me is still reeling.
She works off my jacket with a small pout of concentration. It drops to the floor behind me and with a small gasp of victory she pushes me back across the bed.
I close my eyes as she straddles me, kisses me hard, a devouring with an intensity I know only too well from her.
Her fingers begin to work at the buttons of my shirt.
Opening my eyes, I twitch. We’ve fallen across the spear of light from the hallway.
Her skin is suddenly grey where the light touches, bloodless. Her nails are torn and red-rimmed, her wrists are covered in welts. And her belly…
“Holy shit!” I buck and she grabs my shoulders for balance as I try to crawl away out from under her, unable to tear my eyes away from her stomach, the blood there dabbing my clothes. But I can’t escape.
Sarah looks down at me, hurt. Where the light doesn’t touch she still looks like Sarah. Where it does … a corpse.
“Sweetie?”
“I’m back!” The front door slams, carrier bags rustling in the hallway.
With a small, indrawn breath, Sarah’s gone, the weight on my hips disappearing as though someone flicked a switch.
Tom knocks on the door as he pushes it open. “Derren?” he calls, and stops when he sees me.
He smiles, sympathetically. “You still hungry?”
“I…” I look around at my empty room, check my rumpled, bloodless clothes. The only evidence that she was ever here is my position on the bed, my jacket on the floor, the upturned glass inking the carpet. “No. No, I’m not all that hungry. I just … I just want to go to bed.”
Tom says he understands and closes the door behind him.
I sit up, trying to breathe steadily, wiping the sweat and tears from my face. I can still taste her on my lips.
I whisper into the dark. “Sarah?”
But she doesn’t answer.
I don’t sleep. How can I?
Instead, I sit up at the head of my bed, arms curled around my knees.
My vacant eyes stare out into the dark room. My heart skips at small noises. My nose fools me with the half-imagined memory of her smell.
The lights are off, the curtains are drawn, my jacket is wedged against the door to prevent the hallway light from creeping under.
“Sarah?” I whisper her name but the room, my phone lying amongst the sheets beside me, remains silent.
My mind feels hollow, unthinking, unfeeling, a sea of black through which slow-moving masses of thought and emotion sail alone like shining icebergs.
It was all far too real, I tell myself, too detailed to be a hallucination.
My mouth works as I think, chewing over the bitter ball of mixed feelings: grief, elation … anger.
When I pinch the bridge of my nose, my fingertips come away wet on a pair of fresh, thin tears.
I recall the intensity with which she kissed me, pushed me, tugged at my clothing.
Our reunion was nothing like I’d imagined. No way near as heartfelt or intimate.
To come back just for sex. It’s so unbelievably … Sarah. Her unfinished business is my dick and she’ll just keep coming back until she has it. I hope.
I breathe hard down my nostrils; Sarah was never one for thinking things through, it was part of what made us work, what gave us chemistry. She always left the logical thinking to me and what is obvious to me has clearly passed her by.
When I look back up, the curtains are aglow with morning sunlight. My thoughts have melted away. All but one: the alternative.
I stay up for as long as I can, the following night, whispering her name.
But the fatigue is too much and I pop another two pills before sinking into the pillow.
It still smells like her.
And it’s the smell of her hair that wakes me.
In the dark, she’s perfect again, her eyes twinkling from the reflection of some indefinable light source.
She’s lying at my side, her fingers tracing invisible lines across my chest. Her mouth curls at the corners as she sees that I’m awake.
“You take too much aspirin.” She nods over to the empty packets on the bedside table. “You never used to take pills before.”
“I get headaches.”
She raises herself onto her elbows to kiss me, her cool palm resting on my beating heart. I stare at her for the longest time, drinking in her every movement, every feature.
She leans in for another kiss, this one longer, slower, and this time I feel her hand begin to slide down my chest…
“Sarah.”
She stops, her lips freezing mid-kiss. I watch as they turn into a pout. “What’s wrong?” She moves away, seeing my incredulous expression. I’m annoyed that she still hasn’t spotted the solution that is so clear to me. I don’t want to but I can feel myself becoming upset. “What is it?”
For a second, I can’t say it, shake my head, hoping that she’ll somehow be able to read the silence.
“Derren—”
“I don’t want you to…” The words explode from me before I can stop them, triggered by her tone. The silence after rings in our ears.
She frowns, taken aback. “Don’t want me to what? Don’t you want this?”
I sigh. “Sarah, I do. But … just … not…”
“I made you a promise. I promised you a night like this.”
She looks hurt, confused. Her eyes explore my face, searching for understanding.
“Yeah…” I swallow. “Well, after what happened… I didn’t expect you to keep it. Jesus, Sarah. I mean…” I sit up and again she pulls away, clutching the blanket to her naked chest. “How do you think this makes me feel, huh? You’re gone and then you come back to tell me we can have sex one last time then you’re going? Don’t you see how…” I try to pluck the word from the air, “…how stupid that is?”
I stare hard into her eyes. Her features have darkened into a scowl, daring me to continue.
Snorting, I turn away.
“I want to spend my life with you. Don’t you see that? Don’t you want that too? Now, I don’t know how this works, unfinished business, but it sounds to me like if we do it, then you disappear, forever this time… It ever occur to you that if we don’t have sex, maybe … you can stay? That we’ll be together? Forever? I don’t care if it’s just at night but … I love you, Sarah. I thought I meant more to you than this. I want a future with you. Not … not one last fuck…”
I give her time to reply, trembling to hear her speak, but she doesn’t say a word.
“I mean, if we can have either one or the other, doesn’t life seem better? Isn’t that better than just … sex?”
But the room is empty, the duvet still settling from where she was sitting, leaving behind a lingering warmth and a single, shining teardrop.
I wait for her, night and day, hoping she’ll return.
Around me, my room slowly becomes a shrine, a beacon to call her back. Her favourite CDs litter the floor, the last one sitting silent in the player - the speakers sighing in static. Half-eaten plates of her favourite meals dot every available surface.
There’s nothing Tom can do to turn back the tide of sentimental debris except shoot me looks of hurt and concern as he comes in to tidy a little, say a few words to coax me from my room.
But there’s nothing out there for me. All I want in the world will be right here.
“Sarah.”
The air is thick with the smell of her incense, small candles sending up tendrils of smoke from the bedside table.
I’m wearing the shirt she really likes.
She appears as gently as a sigh, sitting at the foot of my bed, her back to me. When she sniffs I can hear the tears.
“I thought of nothing but you when it happened,” she whispers. “It wasn’t even thinking, the thought was so big. You really were the whole world to me, Derren.”
For some reason, the candlelight does nothing to deaden her skin, the flickering shadows cupping her curves in autumn hues.
“I’m sorry,” I reply. “I just … your coming back from the dead, it’s-”
“I’m not back from the dead, though, am I?” she snaps. “I’m still fucking there, Derren.”
When she turns, her eyes are bright with angry tears. “You have no idea how…” She waves her hand. “I came back to be with you. I came back because, for some reason that just fucking escapes me, keeping my promise to you means more to me than even fucking dying.”
She stares hard into my eyes but all I can do is stare back, hurt and bewildered.
“I can’t believe… You really don’t understand how strange it is from this side. Fucking … sex.
“Of all the times I remember being disgusted when overhearing someone talk about it, all the times I laughed about it with my friends. Derren, we treat it in the same way we treat shitting, sometimes, something we can only consider staring in the face behind a closed door, like it’s something to be fucking embarrassed about or ridiculed in public, like we’re still schoolchildren. Because it’s sex we’re talking about and not … burps and farts, that somehow makes it more mature but still just as repulsive. It’s not!
“I came here because I love you, because every part of me, my heart, my body and especially my fucking soul, wants to be with you.
“You act like I’m crazy. Let me tell you something, Derr, when you die, you’ll know exactly how fucking special it is, how vital. It’s love.” She taps her chest hard, over her dead heart. “Love. Fucking … life! And what’s worse is we all know it and pretend it’s not.” Her lip quivers as she studies my face but I’m too breathless from her words to reply and she sighs again, hangs her head and turns away to stare at
the carpet. “Grow the fuck up, Derren. I’m dead. You can’t have that future you wanted with me. All you can have is this one last little bit of life I can give. My last breath. You want to say ‘no’; fine. I’ll keep coming back. But it won’t be living, it’ll just be … not.”
I don’t know what to say. But then that’s her point, isn’t it? There’s nothing to say. All I can do is show her.
I slide across the bed and she leans in as I put an arm around her. Her skin is cool but to me she is very much alive. I can hear her breath, smell her scent.
I kiss her lightly on the temple.
“I wanted a future with you.”
“I know you did. But people never get a chance like this, to have one last time together and know that it’s truly the last.”
“It’ll never be enough.”
“Never enough is better than never again.” She looks up into my face. “You can say the same thing about living.”
I move to kiss her but she stops me. “Just sit with me a moment,” she whispers. “Just for a minute. I’m not … I’m not ready to go just yet.”
And so we sit holding hands and I try to imagine a life without her. All I get is a numb, grey pain in the back of my throat.
She breaks the silence with a sniff. “It’s time to say goodbye.”
She stands up, guiding me softly to my feet.
I lean in to kiss her again but again she stops me with a red-nailed finger across my lips. I expect her to smile as she did on the doorstep but her expression is solemn and serious. “I need you to see. You need to see.” A single, thin tear runs down her cheek as she strokes my face. “Close your eyes a second.”
I do as she asks, listen as she crosses the room.
She turns on the light.
I turn my head away with a tearful shudder but, with gentle pressure on my jaw with her fingertips, she coaxes me back around.
Her eyes have clouded a milky white, the barest film of creamy blue still showing from beneath. Her skin is grey and her cheeks are hollowed. Her nails are torn and red-rimmed. There are bruises on her upper arms. Her wrists are covered in welts.
I look down towards her legs and immediately look back up again, away from the wounds that killed her. “Your stomach…”