Fog Heart

by Thomas Tessier

  ‘I might’ve guessed. Birds of a feather.’

  ‘Where’s Oona?’ he demanded curtly.

  ‘Far from here, in good hands.’

  Shit. ‘My wife is with her.’

  Roz didn’t care for that. ‘Forget about Oona.’

  Oliver shrugged. ‘I can’t. She has a way of getting under your skin and into your life, and then you want to get into hers. Oona’s very special.’

  ‘Not the way you think.’

  ‘You don’t know her, Roz,’ he said. ‘That’s rather sad, not knowing your own sister. Half-sister, whatever. The truth is, I know Oona far better than you do. I understand her.’

  ‘Get out of our life.’

  ‘You could have told me that on the phone. Are you staying for dinner, Roz? Got a room booked in town, have you? Or do you want to kip here for the night?’

  ‘You’ve been warned.’

  ‘Warned about what?’

  ‘Is Becky still here? Or did you dump the body?’

  ‘Becky?’

  ‘Becky Wade-Wellman.’

  When Oona had mentioned Becky on the phone, Oliver had been startled for a second. Becky was current. In England people would soon be looking for her, if she wasn’t already a missing-persons case. Oona had come up with the name and the connection to him. It was not evidence of anything but it could be used to make Oliver the subject of official scrutiny, and that would be bad.

  However, Oona wouldn’t tell anyone on her own. Oliver could handle Oona. Roz was the threat, as he had known all along. He stared calmly at her and saw no fear in her eyes – another good sign, because it was a mistake.

  ‘That rings a bell,’ he said blandly. ‘Did I hear something on the news about somebody with that name?’

  ‘No, you told Oona about her all by yourself.’

  ‘Oh, yes. How does she do that?’

  ‘You still think there’s some trick to it? When you come to Oona, she begins to know you. After that, just the sound of your voice tells her more. You have no idea what kind of power you’re dealing with, Mr Spence. Oona is genuine. She has a tremendous talent. That’s how she does it.’

  It quickened his heartbeat to hear that. If it was really true, then Oona was much more special than he’d thought. Oliver wanted her, he had to have her, in some way, at some level. What couldn’t they do together? They were kindred spirits in a shitty world, and he couldn’t bear to let her slip by without trying to make something happen between them. Oona had challenged him to his face, and he loved her for it. It said everything.

  Roz feared the awful media attention he could bring on them, but that wasn’t the greatest threat Oliver posed. Roz was afraid of losing control of Oona. She knew that if he came between them she’d be left out in the cold. Alone. Not a happy prospect, not much of a future.

  Oliver smiled to himself. But, then, look where Roz was now. Alone. Here. No future at all.

  ‘Funny, but I thought it was you who killed that little girl in Scotswood. That maybe you put the blame on Oona and have been making up for it to her ever since.’

  ‘I was the only one who loved Oona, and cared for her,’ Roz responded. ‘Always have done. I’m the one who’s kept her alive, or she’d have found a way to get herself killed by now.’

  Hello. Did Oona honestly mean those provocative remarks she had made about his killing her? Perhaps so. Oliver didn’t quite know how to factor this idea in yet, but he found it fascinating. Would he kill Oona? Perhaps, but not before they wrote a passage of secret history together.

  ‘I visited her all the time,’ Roz continued quickly. ‘I was the only one who did. I saved and prepared and made arrangements so that when she was finally released she’d be able to start a new life in a new country. She could do something to help people, she could use her gift in a positive way. You don’t know anything about it. You have no idea.’

  ‘Why did she do it?’

  ‘Do what?’ The belligerent cow.

  ‘Kill a child of four.’

  ‘She was a child herself, she didn’t mean it.’

  ‘That’s not true, and you know it,’ Oliver said. ‘You know the real reason she did it, don’t you?’

  ‘Leave off,’ Roz replied angrily.

  You can’t say it, Oliver thought, feeling gratified. It was because Oona was like him. Oona did it because she wanted to and needed to and liked it. Even at the tender age of eleven. He’d come late to it, much later. She was so far ahead of him. She’d been forced to stop for a while, but Oona was like him.

  By Christ, he could love her. The image of Oona’s face swam in his head, Oona as she was today and Oona as she was in the old newspaper photo – the dark hair, the heart-shaped face, the eyes that knew so much. His slum angel. Visionary. Goddess.

  This was so convenient, really. He would take great delight in disposing of Roz and saving Oona – how often had she alluded to somebody saving her in her psychic riffs? That was what Oona wanted and needed: saving. She was brilliant and gifted, but she was a wild child with little understanding of herself. Direction and focus were called for, and Oliver could provide it. He might have to give up his wife for this, Marthe certainly, but he could see how the prize was worth even such a high price. You can find bright and beautiful women. They’re all over the place, and each one of them may be a gem. But Oona was a true discovery.

  ‘Roz.’

  ‘What?’

  Oliver stood up and went slowly to her. She didn’t back off or show any fear. He slipped the leather strap off her shoulder and tossed the handbag onto a chair. He ran his fingers down the underside of the lapels on her blazer, deliberately brushing the back of his hands across her breasts.

  ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’

  ‘I think you do, Mr Spence.’

  ‘You have lovely fair skin,’ he said, stroking her cheek and letting his hand trail down her neck. He slid his fingers under her blouse. ‘A lovely, lovely neck.’

  ‘I don’t like being touched by you.’

  Oliver leaned forward until his face was almost touching her neck. Roz remained perfectly still. ‘Lovely fragrance,’ he told her. ‘Joy, isn’t it?’

  ‘Joy,’ she echoed sardonically.

  Oliver gently felt the pockets of her blazer; they were both empty. His hands came to rest on her hips.

  ‘I think I’ll touch you anyway.’

  ‘Back off.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Roz.’

  He put his lips to the base of her neck, the delicate hollow just above the collarbone. Her body shook once but then appeared to exhale. He wouldn’t let her move away. He licked and kissed her, his mouth moving up her throat. Roz pulled back her head an inch or two. He looked at her – he saw no anger, no fear in her expression. In a way, she seemed almost curious.

  Now, a faint smile. ‘Fancy yourself, don’t you?’

  He smiled back at her. ‘Sssh…’

  He kissed her throat again, and he could feel her body yield slightly in his arms. His hands came up to her neck as he kissed her mouth. She opened it a little, reluctantly, giving in to him step by step. He wrapped her hair tightly in his fingers, another tiny demonstration. With difficulty Roz turned her mouth away from his, and caught her breath.

  ‘You’re a bit rough.’

  ‘A bit of rough is just the thing, Roz.’

  Oliver held her head still by the hair and began to unbutton her blouse with his right hand. She moved her mouth hungrily and tried to kiss him, but he held her off for a few seconds, letting the desire build. Then he crushed his mouth against hers, backed her to the wall and yanked at her blouse. Roz whimpered faintly, and did not resist.

  He let go of her hair and used that hand to reach up beneath her skirt. Tights invariably angered him, but before he could pull them away Roz suddenly bit into his upper lip, the whole left side, nearly as far back as the gums – clamped her teeth into it and wouldn’t let go. Oliver howled with pain and rage. Then Roz jerked her head violently away, an
d a strip of his face was torn off. She spat his own flesh back at him.

  The shock to his head dizzied him for a second, but he was so furious that he lunged with both hands at her neck. He dimly saw her hands moving together, and then one of them came up in a pointless attempt to hold him off –

  – and he had the oddest sensation: of leaking into himself. He was choking Roz, but his strength was rapidly vanishing. Then he became aware of the pain. He looked down and saw that she had stabbed him with one of those cheap little two-inch paper knives that are barely sharp enough to open a manila envelope – but can puncture flesh. And a lung, he realized. Jesus, he was bleeding into himself. He touched the handle of the knife, sticking out between his ribs, and wondered whether to remove it or not. His knees were turning spongy already. The bitch must have had that toy tucked up in the palm of her hand all the while. Opened it, slipped it right in. Not his heart, but nearly as bad.

  Oliver couldn’t believe it yet. He glanced back up at Roz, just in time to see her arms swinging around, hands locked one in the other, clubbing him on the side of the face. He went down on one knee, and managed to hold himself there. Roz came closer and casually plucked the paper knife from his chest. She put the tip of the blade to his throat.

  ‘Now you know why I came here, Mr Spence,’ she said. Funny bitch, she was half crying. ‘I knew this was how you’d try to do it. Better here than have you come for us at home.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘You’re something else, you are.’

  ‘I try.’

  ‘You don’t deserve to live.’

  ‘Who does?’

  It was hard to find a breath and it hurt too much to speak. Oliver was about out of words anyway – they sounded so distorted and clotted. He wondered what his mouth looked like, and what it would take to fix it. Then he had an image of blood seeping into his left lung and gradually filling it. He would bleed to death, on the inside. That is, he would drown. But slowly. So he had to think carefully and find the right way, while there was still time to save himself.

  ‘The Beckys and Oonas of the world,’ Roz answered. ‘And all the little girls like them.’

  What about the little girl in Scotswood? he thought at once. Didn’t she deserve to live? Forgot about her, didn’t you? Never mind, best not to ask – even if he could. Roz might react badly and all he wanted was for her to keep talking, buy some time. But she said nothing more. Just stood over him, glaring through her tears, holding the knife on him.

  He didn’t see or hear Marthe until the last second, same as Roz. She must have come in by the back door and seen what was happening. She flew across the timbered floor, bare feet padding softly. She came up behind Roz, who turned when the sound got to her – too late. Marthe rammed something into the back of Roz’s neck. Roz jerked once, then froze, her eyelids flapping. Then they were all moving – Marthe shoving Roz, who fell forward as Oliver tried to turn away. The blade jumped into his throat.

  Shit, oh, shit. Such a lot of damage from one chintzy little piece of junk. Oliver eased the knife away from his neck and put his hand over the wound. He lowered himself to the floor, trying not to injure himself further. The hole in his throat felt very large. Missed the major arteries, but too much of his blood was oozing through his fingers.

  Marthe dragged Roz onto a tarp, rolled her up in it and tugged it across the room to the sinks. His warrior queen. They would have no trouble disposing of Roz, same as Becky. The acid, the long slow dissolve. That had been Oliver’s idea. Marthe had never heard of George Haigh, the Vampire of South Kensington, who from 1944 to 1949 murdered several people for financial gain and gave them the acid-bath treatment. Only his monumental stupidity had got him caught and hanged. But Haigh had had a certain wit and charm of his own, claiming that he drank the blood of his victims, and, on the day of his execution, issuing final suggestions as to how his likeness should be displayed at Madame Tussaud’s.

  Oliver slapped the floor with his free hand. It felt like a sheet of rubber hinged at the wrist. Marthe heard him and came. She peered down at him anxiously.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘No,’ he uttered, through bubbles of blood.

  ‘Okay, wait.’

  She came back a moment later with two towels, and started to pat his hand and neck with the dry one. That only increased the pain Oliver felt, and he pushed away the towel.

  ‘Hey, let me see,’ she said, voice flat and calm.

  Marthe cautiously peeled his fingers away from his throat to expose part of the wound. More blood foamed out from between his teeth. She made a face and clucked. She took the wet towel and pressed it against his neck.

  ‘Hold it there,’ she told him. ‘Hold it as tight as you can to stop the blood and close it.’

  Oliver did that, but it was no help. He was gulping air but too much blood went into him with it. Marthe stared at his wound and made another face. It wasn’t working. Then she noticed, for the first time, the bloody hole in his shirt. She poked a finger through it and felt his other wound. A serious frown.

  ‘Doctor,’ he said, the word coming out in a damp red cloud. ‘Hospital. Accident.’

  It was as much as he could manage to say. They could handle the awkward questions, explain it away as a freak accident. The main thing now was to get him to some help, fast. The opening in his throat was too large, his lung was punctured, he was bleeding to death and drowning, at the same time.

  Marthe stood up, thinking. Do something. God save him from women who stop to think. He tried to speak, but all that emerged was a growl and some pink suds. He slapped his hand on the floor again but it barely made any noise.

  Grey patches mushroomed across his vision, then disappeared, and were replaced by others. Oliver wanted to lie down, but knew that would be much worse. He held himself together, sitting in a more or less upright position, but his strength was fading.

  ‘Ma – Ma – Ma—’

  Marthe knelt before him. ‘What to do?’

  Oliver could feel the rage exploding in his face – the only way he could communicate it to her. But she gazed impassively at him and didn’t move. He knew. She was thinking it would be too risky and troublesome to deal with the doctors and police, easier just to heave another body into the sink.

  Dangerous thoughts.

  Oliver could feel the muscles in his face writhing. He must continue. He was the last of the famous international playboys, barely at mid-career. Oona would understand. Too soon to be one for the books. He gave it his best effort, summoning all of his strength, swallowing blood to clear his throat for a few precious seconds, and then geysering a frantic shout.

  ‘It’s – not – too – late—’

  Marthe blinked, as if mildly surprised. She absently wiped at the red spray on her cheek. Then, just before she got up and kicked his rubbery arm out from under him, his less than perfect Myra leaned forward and smiled sadly at him.

  ‘Oliver, you must be joking.’

  24

  Laundry detergent, vodka, juice, assorted non-prescription painkillers, tampons, wintergreen bath salts, a bag full of mints and English liquorice. Carrie checked the list: yes, she had everything. It had taken a while because she was unfamiliar with New Haven, and Oona’s handwriting was tricky to read.

  Oona had hardly spoken a word since that ghostly apparition of Roz. The incident. They had both seen it, no mistake about that. And poor Oona had been hysterical for hours afterwards, biting her lips, pulling her hair, weeping and moaning – before she finally lapsed into a restless sleep disturbed by occasional plaintive whimpers.

  Carrie sat with her through all of it, often holding Oona in her arms, talking to her, comforting her. She knew that Oona was convinced that Roz was dead. Somehow, somewhere.

  When she woke up the following morning Oona had seemed calm, subdued and lost in herself. Her skin was pale, and cool to the touch. She ate a little and drank some hot tea. But she seldom spoke, and mostly just sat in bed, looking vaca
nt.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ Carrie told her.

  ‘It won’t ever.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to mean what you think.’

  ‘But it does.’

  Roz didn’t return home that day or the next. There was no phone call from her, explaining why she was late. Oona had told Carrie that Roz had gone away to take care of some family matter. She hadn’t said where, but she did tell Carrie that Roz would be back by – yesterday.

  This morning Oona gave Carrie some cash and a list of things she needed, and asked her if she would go out for them. They had to talk seriously. Carrie wouldn’t return to New York and leave Oona by herself, but she couldn’t stay in New Haven indefinitely. If there was still no word from Roz …

  The apparition had fooled Carrie completely. Roz had looked and acted so real. There’d been no sense that she was witnessing another psychic incident, she didn’t have the feeling that it was happening to her again – until the end.

  The sounds were another difference. Carrie was certain that she had heard the front door open and close, and footsteps on the stairs. So had Oona; they had both looked up at the first sound. When Carrie thought about it, she could even remember the little noises that Roz made as she walked across the bedroom carpet and sat down in the chair by the dressing table. They were everyday sounds, perfectly normal. And wrong.

  But the most persuasive aspect of the experience was that Carrie and Oona had shared it. They had both seen the same thing and heard the same noises. They hadn’t anticipated it, or spoken of it at all. It seemed to Carrie that psychic incidents witnessed by more than one person must be quite rare, and hard to explain as anything but genuine.

  Carrie was beginning to draw her own tentative conclusions. There might be an afterlife or another level of existence, and it may be that some portion of our consciousness continues in that realm – personality, nature, soul, whatever. And it may also be that there are occasional ghostly intrusions from that world into this one, and that particularly sensitive people are more likely to experience them.

  But none of that necessarily meant that the intrusions had a purpose or design, that there was a method or process at work, or that whatever happened after death was part of a higher spiritual order. Existence in the next world, to call it that, might be as random, blinkered and mysterious as life in this world. Perhaps the intrusions were just irrational occurrences.