“How do you know that?”
“Because I know Eren and he is resolute—but he’s something more than that. He’s just. You see that?”
“Why would any of us listen to you anymore? Why would we trust you?”
“Because this is not over. You can hate me all you want—later.”
“He’s right,” Mandy said, dully.
“Thank you,” Sheppard said to her. He tried a smile. It felt like lifting weights piled on the ends of his mouth. He didn’t get very far. Not when he was interrupted.
Mandy slapped him straight in the face. It was stronger than he ever thought would be possible from such a small girl. His face flew to the side and he felt a hand mark developing on his cheek.
Mandy, the sweet girl who had always been by his side, now looking so angry. “Why would you do that? Why would you do that?” and again, just because it seemed she couldn’t think of anything else, “Why would you do that?”
Sheppard looked at her, his tears drying on his right cheek and his left cheek stinging.
The air definitely felt thicker now—it drooped around them almost visibly. Sheppard could see it in the corner of his eye. Like reflections of a time never lived. His cravings kept on a shelf in the back of his mind with the other lives.
And some kind of new feeling manifested itself. He mistook it for the need to vomit again.
“I just need some water,” Sheppard said, still watching Mandy intently. She was watching him, as though he was the devil, but he thought he detected an element of softness coming through. “I need some water. And then I’ll get you all to safety.”
He started toward the bathroom, but a hand shot out from under the desk to grab his leg. He looked down. Headphones looked at him and pointed. To the timer. It seemed to be going faster than before. Accelerating.
Fifteen minutes.
Sheppard looked back to Headphones and nodded.
Smiled.
Headphones lowered her sleeve. “Also, my name’s Rhona...dick. Who the hell calls someone Headphones?”
Sheppard dropped the smile and nodded dutifully. He passed Ryan without looking.
“You better know what you’re doing,” Ryan called after him as he walked toward the bathroom. He pushed the door open, and chanced a look back at them. They were all watching him—of course they were.
Behind the others, Constance was still shackled to her chair—she wasn’t smiling, or rocking back and forth. She was actually looking scared—the first time Sheppard had ever seen her look scared in all her time in the room.
Sheppard stumbled through the bathroom door—no closer to knowing how to rescue them all.
49
Sheppard almost forgot where Alan had been placed. He walked into the bathroom and felt something squish under his feet. He looked down to see one of Alan’s hands. He jumped back against the door.
When he had regained some kind of composure, he maneuvered around the lawyer, trying not to step in any of the blood, and went to the sink. He turned the hot tap on. Winter’s body was still there in the tub—he saw it in the mirror. Winter, a pawn in Eren’s plan. He felt even sorrier for the old man now, being manipulated so easily. Sheppard cupped water into his hands and splashed it on his face. It felt good. He had to stay awake, and stay alert. All his sordid addictions would have to be kept at bay. He had to save everyone else—that was all that mattered now.
He leaned over the sink and shut his eyes as the steam rose—overriding the cold, slick sweat on his clammy skin.
He opened his eyes.
The mirror had steamed over. As if nothing behind him existed anymore. But he could feel Winter.
Winter had always been such a strong figure in his life. He remembered going to his house on Saturday afternoons for his therapy sessions. He had protested to start with, but after a while, he relied on them. Winter always had a way of explaining things to him, making them seem more entertaining than they actually were. He taught Sheppard how to deal with his increasing fame, told him which thoughts were harmful and which were beneficial. He taught Sheppard how to be a better man.
If only I had listened.
Sheppard reached into his pocket and took out Winter’s notebook. He still had no idea why the old man was carrying it—an old notebook with old session notes. He flipped to his own notes—looking at the underlined words. Was this what Winter really thought of him? Aggressive? Muddled? Important words, he guessed—but then why had Winter also underlined “A new dream about...”? Not even a full sentence. He read on: “A new dream about a field of corn. Out in the distance there is a farmhouse—a farmyard. It’s on fire and it’s burning down. Morgan is out in the field looking at it. As he watches, a scarecrow rises up out of the field of corn. Morgan just knows that it was the scarecrow who set the fire. The scarecrow smiles at him. And that’s when he wakes up.” Sheppard read this, enraptured. He’d forgotten all about the nightmare. He used to have it every night—waking up in cold sweats, sometimes even having wet himself. It began just after—just after he did what he did.
But the painting on the wall? The painting on the wall was depicting the dream almost to the letter. Such a strange painting to have in a hotel room—he had thought that when he saw it. Now even just thinking about it made his skin crawl. And Mandy had said it looked creepy too. He read on: “I need more information to really understand this nightmare. It sounds like a classic ‘created destroys creator’ thought stream, but I don’t know how that pertains to Morgan exactly. Also—NB—IMPORTANT POINT Morgan says that the worst part of the nightmare is he knows the children upstairs are burning alive.”
Sheppard almost dropped the notebook. Children upstairs? Why was that so shocking? Had someone... He looked at the page—at the underlined words, at the wording of the dream.
Sheppard looked at the words. What did they mean? How could they mean anything? He traced his finger over them. Too broad. Too—He stared at the words. And he thought. And suddenly, it all clicked.
No.
It all came back. The air was solid now. He couldn’t breathe.
No. Not— But it all made sense.
50
Before...
She clutched the invite tightly, making the card crease down the middle. She had arrived far too early—couldn’t just sit around at home. Besides, she knew she would have to scan the entrance and pick the opportune time to make a move.
Her brain was already trying to convince her this was a bad idea. Suppose the bouncers know this woman? Suppose they know what she looks like? What then? Will they call the police? What would she do then? Hold up her hands, call “guilty” and walk away? There was too much riding on this for that.
They wouldn’t know her. She had to get in.
It was simple. She was going to wait for the time when it was busiest. Then even if people did know the woman, no one would notice. The bouncers would be flustered—more capable of making mistakes. She would slip through the cracks. And through the door.
She checked her watch. Far too early indeed. So she propped herself up in a café across the street. It was just gone five—the party didn’t start till eight. Party rules dictated that people wouldn’t be arriving until about ten.
She ordered a coffee and waited.
She checked her Dictaphone was working—switching it on and off. Full battery. When that was done, she spent most of her time thinking, or gazing unenthusiastically at YouTube videos on her laptop. For a while, they were on-topic—watching his smug face on that damn show, watching him lord himself over everyone else, watching an audience lap it up, but soon they just became whatever came up on the sidebar: Top 10 English Haunted Hotels, Nyan Cat Remixes, the funniest things babies have ever done, the stuff that kept the internet rolling on its endless journey to ruin the world. Still, she was part of the problem—she was hypnotized by this crap just
as much as everyone else. She looked through the window to see no one had arrived at the club yet.
At seven, the café closed. She asked to stay a little longer, but seeing as she had only ordered one small coffee in two hours, she knew she wasn’t going to win. She moved to a pub down the road, opting for a window seat. She could still see the club, although not as well.
She ordered a Diet Coke at the bar and got the Dictaphone out of her pocket again. Off and on. Light flashing. It was still fine.
The internet was to blame for him. He could’ve been a daytime television anomaly—a person that most of the population weren’t even aware of because they all turned their televisions off at nine when they went to work. But it was the age of the internet, where every show could be chopped up and put online and farmed out for millions and millions of views. This was his home and he wasn’t even the one who made it. The television channel made him his own website, where clips of his show were put up. His YouTube channel quickly flooded with ten-minute segments—Celebrity Cuckold, The Truth About You, Sleepin’ Around and Around. Eight million subscribers were the audience, a pack that grew incredibly quickly as they enjoyed his brand of Sherlockian hilarity. If Sherlock had been an idiot, that is. Most of what he deduced wasn’t even true. He was a detective who couldn’t really detect anything. But above that he was a personality—a television personality, an internet personality, it didn’t really matter. He was right even though he was wrong.
As the light in the sky dimmed, she put her laptop away and made sure the external mic on the Dictaphone was working. She recorded herself reading the fact on a beer mat—A blind chameleon still changes color to match the environment. She played it back. It sounded fine. It was going to be far noisier in the club, but she thought it would still pick voices up if she held it close enough. And she would. Because too much was riding on this to make a simple little mistake like that.
It had only been two weeks since...since... People were calling it the tragedy. The tragedy—so cold and distant. Maybe that’s why people called it that, to put space between themselves and what happened. But that wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted to understand why. And she was ready. Her anger fueled her most—it was what got her out of bed in the morning, what saw her through the day. Her brother had always hated when she was angry, could see in her eyes how it wrapped around her and consumed her. Her brother had always said that she could never let her anger control her—put a lid on it while there was still a lid. Because if she didn’t, there would be nothing else.
But she was alive and he was dead. And it was all Morgan Sheppard’s fault.
And, now, sitting in the pub, she was angry. She was so very angry. But she was also resourceful. Her journalism degree was almost over and she had signed the recorder and mic out at the desk. She was ready.
Because she was alive and she didn’t understand why he had to be dead.
She watched out the window and by eight thirty, a slow trickle of people started entering the club. Brickwork was an underground nightclub just around from Leicester Square tube station. It was notoriously expensive and notoriously exclusive. She had never set foot in there before, and by all account, had no right to set foot in there now. This was a private party for television people and their high-class friends. The invite she had swiped had been from a low-level employee working on his show. She watched as the gaggle of women who walked up to the door pulled out their invites. They were all stopped at the door by a burly bald man dressed in black. The bouncer had a list. The women were checked off and disappeared inside.
At nine, a limousine pulled up and she saw him get out. He had a tuxedo on and was already swaying. The bouncers didn’t ask him his name.
She wondered if she should go in, but there was no queue and she didn’t want to risk it. She waited another thirty minutes, until she couldn’t wait any longer. A queue of about thirty people had built up and she swallowed the rest of her Diet Coke, checked her hair in the bathroom and went out. She joined the queue and noticed the crease on her invite. She tried to straighten it out but only made it worse.
The queue moved slowly and she tried to blend in with the women waiting in line. She noticed that there was only one man in the queue, a straightened-up button-down type who seemed rather stoic and out of place. He didn’t say a word as the women around him laughed and joked, sometimes about him. The women were the usual glamorous, 2-D type—the kind of women you couldn’t see from side-on. They were what her brother would’ve called “Extras from The OC,” a dumb program they used to watch together when they were younger about pretty people with pretty problems.
When the woman ahead got to the door, the group became very flustered and high-pitched. There were three of them and the one in charge of the invites had not brought them, instead electing to bring more drink. They were stupidly drunk, considering they hadn’t yet entered the club. It seemed like their names were on the list though as they were allowed inside—probably nothing at all to do with how slutty they looked. Self-doubt seeped in.
What was she doing? Really? Starring in her own little espionage thriller? This was stupid. She turned and saw a wall of sexy young women coming down the stairs, blocking her exit. She felt the recorder in her hand.
You’re a lot more than you think. You’re strong, stronger than him. And you’ve read the papers—he’ll be worse for wear, you just wait and see. You’re cleverer than he could ever dream of being. It was her brother’s voice. Her thoughts often came to her in his voice. He was always more confident than her.
A fresh pang of anger flared in her mind.
You’ve come this far.
See it through.
Without another thought, she entered the club—the doors spitting her out onto a bustling, dark dance floor. The place seemed to be far more crowded than she expected, given she had watched everyone enter. People were everywhere, blocking her view of the rest of the club. She made her way over to where she presumed the bar was, dodging all the featureless silhouettes of people, lit up occasionally by a flash of multicolored light. The dance floor was densely packed and progress was slow. Getting through it was like an impossible version of Frogger, sometimes having to double back on herself to avoid people swooping by with drinks. Finally, she made her way through and got to the bar.
She ordered a gin and tonic. She often thought nightclubs were intolerable without at least something coating your judgment. A sober her could see the absolute insanity of a penned-in drinking factory. She got her drink and paid an astronomical amount for it. The price of being thirsty in London.
She looked around. The dance floor was the majority of the club but there were booths to the left and right sides. She scanned around and found what she was looking for—the booth nearest to her on the left-hand side had a partition around it. It was the VIP area. And behind the theater-esque ribbon, was him. She watched him smiling and talking, swaying even though he was sitting down. He had this look of joyful bewilderment. He was drop-dead drunk. The others in the VIP area she didn’t recognize, apart from one person who she thought might be a host of Morning Coffee. The rest of the men looked like business types and they were peppered with scantily clad women, who looked as though they had won a prize just by being there. Add smug, subtract self-respect.
Propping herself up against the bar, she watched him. She hated him. It was red, raw, unbridled hate. She had never felt anything like it before. She understood why people equated hate to love. It felt the same. Wherever you were, whatever you were doing—it was there. Love pulled you to someone else, and so did hate. But for the exact opposite reasons. You looked at someone you loved, and saw a whole life spread ahead of you—a life that could be. But in hate, you just looked at someone and saw devastation—a life that once was. But both could drive people to terrible things.
Anger is not you. Her brother had been able to see it within her, before she had herself. And he had seen
the dangers of it.
Three gin and tonics later and the world was shifting, as though a wave lapping against an unknown beach. He was still in the VIP area, drinking amounts that seemed illogical. She hadn’t stopped watching him but no one seemed to notice. The music was deafening and the lights were low, so the chances of someone even seeing her were slim. She wondered if this was it. If he wouldn’t leave the VIP area at all, and she had gone to all this effort just to spend a night staring at him... Would it all be for nothing?
The middle of the fourth drink and someone tried to talk to her. A young man who looked too confident for his own good. Bad news.
“Wow, I love your outfit,” he said, with the enthusiasm of a self-help coach. “You seem quiet. You haven’t talked to anyone all night. Are you on your own?”
This made her shiver slightly. The idea that he had been watching her all night was not particularly enticing. “I’m here with some people,” she said. “I’m just waiting for them.”
“What’s your name?”
“Zoe,” she said, without hesitation.
“I’m Tim,” the man said. Tim was a boring name even if you made it up. “I work with a Zoe. She’s not here though.” He seemed lost as he looked around.
She didn’t notice. She was watching as he, him not Tim, stood up on two unsteady feet. He whispered something into one of the women’s ears and she laughed for an unreasonable amount of time. He stepped over the cordon, tripping as he brought up his right foot. A fresh bout of laughter came from the VIP area and he turned to them and gave them a thumbs-up. He staggered off and got swallowed by the crowd of dancers.
“I wonder if I could buy you a drink?” Tim was saying, as she slid off her stool and left the bar. She didn’t really care for Tim’s feelings—leave it for the other Zoe to clean up.
She followed the dark mass she thought was him through the dance floor. It didn’t really matter if it wasn’t him. She knew where he was going. The only place a man who had spent an hour heavydrinking in a nightclub would go. The toilets.
Guess Who Page 24