by Luke Walker
He crossed to a window which overlooked the front garden and stared outside. Grass, flowerbeds, the path leading to the walk which in turn led back to Audley Road. Nothing moved.
‘Where the hell are they?’ he whispered.
‘Keep your head down,’ Karen said. ‘They could be hiding but able to see us.’
‘They’re not there. Nobody’s there.’
Stu strode through the hallway to the kitchen. A few paces inside the room and the reality of their situation hammered into him.
Geri’s house.
He leaned against the fridge and stared as Karen and Will followed him.
It’d been over ten years since he’d last set foot in Geri’s house. Nothing, in this world at least, had changed. Everything from the spacious kitchen which opened to another room was the same. The same washing machine, the same table in the centre of the next room, the same patio doors letting in the moonlight. It was like standing in a photo.
‘Are we here?’ he whispered.
‘Yeah, I think so,’ Karen said and touched the wall. She stared at it, then at the table. Stu watched her cross to it while Will stayed at the door. Karen ran her fingertips over the table surface and laughed.
‘This is unbelievable,’ she said.
‘Why is this place normal and nowhere else is?’ Stu replied.
‘This is Geri’s house,’ Will murmured. He stared at Stu. ‘This is her world, isn’t it?’
‘How the hell does that work?’ Stu shouted.
‘Think about it. Her house is okay and everywhere else is a wreck. Just about everyone we’ve seen has tried to kill us and this is the one place we’re safe. She probably wanted us to come here to begin with.’
‘Geri’s dead,’ Stu said and knew that didn’t change anything. Mick and Andy also being dead changed nothing as well and that was as horrible as things could get.
‘Does that matter?’ Will said and stepped towards the hall.
‘Where are you going?’ Karen asked.
‘Upstairs.’
He headed to the stairs and Karen stood. Stu shook his head. She sat back down and rested her hands on the table. Stu fell beside her and tried to think of anything other than his dead friends.
Forty Eight
‘Twelve steps,’ Will whispered and gazed upwards.
How many times had he walked up these steps all that time before? How many times full of nerves and excitement? How many times with Geri in front of him, looking back, taking his hand and smiling?
He climbed the first two steps and a memory came fast and hard.
Walking behind her, her hand in his with the house silent and empty this lunch time, with his shoes on the floor beside the front door, and the winter sunlight striking the white of Geri’s legs below her knees as they ascend. She sees his gaze on her shins and calves and she laughs and she lifts her skirt to flash her thighs at him and she laughs again. There’s a glimpse of her underwear and every thought is shot out of his mind at the sight of her thighs and the white cotton. And it’s November and he’s twenty and she’s holding his hand as they go upstairs and there are another four months of this, of being happy, before it all goes bad, before he can’t cope with Geri, anymore.
The memory fell off him in small degrees. Will took a few deep breaths, glad to lose the picture of all those years ago. Moving with slow, deliberate care, he reached the second floor, gazed at the closed bedroom doors and wondered if going back in time would feel anything like this.
Back in time. Save her. Save Andy. Save Mick.
‘Mick. I’m sorry.’
He barely heard the sound of his voice. Everything of the last few hours was far away.
Will crossed to the nearest door.
Opening it was easy.
Stepping into Geri’s bedroom was impossible.
Will gazed at the bed, unmade as always, at the posters of bands long since disbanded, singers long since out of the music industry, and at the piles of clothes on the floor.
This is exactly what going back in time would feel like.
It was all as it had been almost twenty years before. His life of university, jobs, drawing and Karen hadn’t happened in this room. Here, everything was stuck in the seven months he and Geri had been a couple.
You weren’t a couple. You let her down. You let her go.
‘Fuck you,’ Will whispered and entered Geri’s room.
At once, the cold from outside which had pressed into the house vanished. Warmth replaced it. More than warmth. This was the gentle burst of heat that rose early in the morning on good days which would grow hot.
‘Geri?’
Will moved a few steps further into the bedroom, vaguely glad the door didn’t close behind him.
‘Geri. Geri.’
Saying her name brought some small sense of calm. He gazed at her desk and pictured her sitting at it, studying, revising. The memory of his last two years at school and the time after drew in close around him and he welcomed it. In a mad way, it was like going home, going back to the days when everything had been okay and it didn’t matter that it hadn’t been, really. They’d been together, they’d been friends; Andy and Mick had still been with them, and most of all, things made sense.
‘I miss you,’ Will said and let out a little laugh. ‘How about that?’
He traced his fingers over a poster of Oasis, then another of Blur.
‘Why all this, Geri? Why this place? Why is your house not the same as the others?’ He paused and gazed at posters of Britpop bands. ‘Why this time?’
He couldn’t take a guess. If the house was a sort of memory of Geri’s life, then why fill it with a time ten or so years before she died?
Will eased himself down on to the bed and fought the strong urge to lay back. Do that and he knew he’d never want to get up.
‘Andy, Geri. Mick, too. They’re gone.’
Those horrible seconds on the cycleway returned: the feel of Mick’s sweat soaked hand in his, the shouts of the killers who’d chased them, and thinking of Karen the second before Mick’s hand fell from his.
He closed his eyes and didn’t open them.
Even when the lips kissed his.
Forty Nine
Karen balanced the plates of sandwiches; Stu held the glasses and the carton of milk. Together, they went to the stairs and up. Will lay on Geri’s bed, arms by his side and he didn’t move when they approached the door.
‘Sarnie?’ Stu said.
Will rolled over and sat upright.
‘Food?’ he said as if the concept was foreign. Karen answered, mostly in an effort to not focus on her husband on his ex-girlfriend’s bed. She knew it was stupid given the situation but that didn’t change the bizarre note of jealousy she felt.
‘Kitchen’s full of it. The fridge works, the cupboards have got a lot of stuff. It’s like someone stocked up for us.’
She and Stu entered the bedroom and placed the food and milk on Geri’s desk. Karen eyed the food. She wasn’t hungry and didn’t think Stu was either. Thinking of Andy and now Mick taken from them had stolen her appetite. Even so, she knew they needed to eat. God knows where or when they’d next find food if they had to leave Geri’s house.
She offered the plate to Will. He took a sandwich and nibbled at it without enthusiasm. Karen did the same and rested beside him. Stu sat at the desk and they ate in silence for a moment.
‘I felt her,’ Will said around his sandwich. ‘She was here.’
‘You saw Geri?’ Stu said.
‘No. I felt her. Just for a minute when I came in. I think she always wanted us here.’
Karen gazed around the room, struggling with vertigo. Being in Geri’s bedroom with it looking exactly as it had when they’d all been sixteen or seventeen was too surreal for her to get a grip on.
‘Anyone got a plan?’ she muttered.
‘Sort of,’ Stu replied. He chewed the last of his sandwich. ‘This is all about Geri, right? It’s her house; she came to us b
efore all this. She’s dead and I’m guessing she wants to either tell us something or wants us to do something.’
‘Suggestions?’ Will muttered around his sandwich.
Stu waved a loose hand at the clothes on the floor and by the wardrobe.
‘There’s got to be something here that will mean something, right?’
Karen eyed the wardrobe. It was easy to picture the messy clothes inside it just as it was easy to see her friend in her short skirts, in that black wrap she’d loved so much. Those clothes would be in the wardrobe and below them would be Geri’s shoes and boots, and in the cabinet beside the desk, there’d be a load of her tapes and CDs.
The past was in the wardrobe and in the cabinet. It was all around them, breathing their air.
‘Who wants to look?’ Will said and put his plate on the bed. Karen glanced at him. He had his hands linked on his knees and his head hung limp. Pity came instead of jealousy, followed by a fierce wish Geri had left them alone, had stayed dead.
‘I’ll do it,’ she said and crossed to the wardrobe.
It opened easily and inside was just as she’d imagined it. Skirts and tops hung together on the rack, and piles of more skirts and jeans lay at the bottom of the wardrobe beside shoes and boots. Karen squeezed one of the skirts between her fingers and thought of Geri as she liked to remember her: seventeen and laughing.
I miss you, you bitch, she thought and blinked back tears.
‘Anything?’ Stu asked.
‘Give me a minute.’
She touched more clothes and ran her fingers over a pair of boots she hadn’t seen in years. Geri’s favourites. Black, two inch heels, and a silver pattern in the stitching up the side.
Karen opened the second half of the wardrobe. Four built-in shelves were piled high with CDs and paperbacks. Two photo albums jutted out beside the books and Karen didn’t have to try hard to resist opening the albums.
Not ready for that. No way.
A small cabinet with three drawers was below the bottom shelf. Karen squatted and opened the top drawer. Jewellery. In the second, everything from pens to cassette tapes, and in the bottom, a mix of underwear and colourful bras. Karen touched them and there was no surprise when she felt the shape of a book below the bras.
She pulled the book free. A simple notepad with the cover torn off and the first page full of tidy handwriting in a steady blue. Karen read the first line. For the third time, she fought back tears. When Will placed his hand on her shoulder, she gave up and wept over her friend’s diary.
Fifty
‘I’m sorry.’
Kirsty tried to think. Was it the fourth time the old guy had apologised or the fifth? Fear made it impossible to be sure.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ she replied and did her best to give Sam a reassuring smile. He and Charlotte were on the bed, his arms wrapped around her while she quietly wept against him. Kirsty pressed herself against the wall below the window and eased her legs flat. At the bedroom door and holding the blade close to his side, Phil watched her. She risked staring at him for a moment and again wondered how fast he could move.
‘I’m not a bad guy,’ he said. She hadn’t been expecting him to talk and did a good job of keeping herself still.
‘Okay,’ she said.
‘It’s just that the last few days, they’ve been difficult. I’ve had to think on my feet a bit.’
He smiled. He actually smiled. That was somehow worse than his tears.
You fucking bastard.
Kirsty kept her face blank.
‘I didn’t know what I was going to do until we were halfway here. Of course, it depended who lived here now. This used to be my parents room.’
‘Did it?’
The window was only a foot or so above her head. How fast could she stand, open it and scream? How fast could be move across the floor and stab her with that knife? The bigger question was one she had no answer for.
Would he?
‘Yes,’ he said.
He glanced at Sam and Charlotte. ‘Good thing for me it was you two here,’ Phil said.
‘Get out of my house, you bastard,’ Sam roared.
Phil flinched but that was all. ‘Please keep your voice down, Sam. I don’t like this any more than you do, but it’s a strange business. I’m doing the best I can to keep this all together so please keep your voice down.’
Sam subsided and pulled his weeping wife against his chest.
‘I gave him to the count of two hundred to get you from your car,’ Phil said to Kirsty and she nodded although he’d already told her this. That had been just before Sam’s first apology. ‘He did a good job. One hundred and seventy.’
Sam shook and Kirsty mentally willed him to keep quiet.
‘When are you going to tell me what this has got to do with me?’ she said.
‘It’s not to do with you. Not really. I tell you, I knew it would create problems when I got you instead of your husband or Will or Karen or anyone else. Getting them would have made it a lot easier.’
‘To do what?’
‘To get to my sister.’
Kirsty paused, unsure of what to say next. He watched her; she watched his face and watched it change. All the life fell out of it, leaving him standing at the door like a corpse.
‘You need help.’
They were the first words Charlotte had spoken. She’d lifted herself from Sam and faced Phil. ‘You need help,’ she said again.
Light and life returned to Phil’s face as if trickling into it.
‘I do,’ Phil agreed. ‘But probably not the same sort of help you’re thinking of.’ He pointed a stiff finger at Kirsty. ‘I need her help. More importantly, I need help from her husband.’
‘I want to help you. We all do, but you have to tell me what this is about,’ Kirsty said and prayed he’d believe her.
‘It’s about my sister,’ Phil replied as if it should have been obvious. ‘I told you. I’m not a bad guy. I don’t want to hurt anyone here and if there was any other way of doing this, believe me, I’d be doing it. You wouldn’t have heard from me; you wouldn’t be here, I …’
He broke off and placed a trembling hand over his eyes, then lowered it to cover his mouth.
‘She wouldn’t be haunting me,’ he whispered and the words were close to being lost below his hand.
‘Let me help you. Please,’ Kirsty said and risked a glance to Sam and Charlotte. He was watching her, unblinking and unable to keep his face clear of the obvious wish she could find a way out of this.
‘Tell me about Geri. I know you saw her at the cemetery.’
Kirsty wished for more saliva in her mouth and on her tongue. It felt like a piece of dead meat in her mouth. ‘I saw her, too.’
Phil stared at her and she had no idea what to make of the look on his face.
‘At the cemetery?’ she said.
‘Did she speak to you?’
‘No. She was by the gates when I was in my car. She was facing the road. She started to turn towards me and vanished.’
Describing in such matter of fact terms robbed it of any power, of the fear that had made her deaf. At the same time, it helped to bring it into the real world. She could deal with it a little more by stating it in a basic way.
‘How did you know it was her? You never met.’
Kirsty surprised herself by laughing. ‘Who else would it have been? I don’t make a habit of seeing ghosts.’
Phil let out a noise halfway between a laugh and a snort. He eyed her. ‘You want to help me, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
She didn’t hesitate in her reply. A little hope bloomed. She could talk him out of this, get herself and the old couple out of the house and get the police here. Then get Stu back from wherever he was.
‘Then we need to find your husband.’
Kirsty’s hope wilted. ‘Why? What’s this got to do with Stu?’ she cried.
‘He was her friend,’ Phil said as if that explained everything
.
Staring at him, Kirsty realised that to Phil that was exactly what it explained.
Fifty One
Stu took the diary from Karen’s hand. She’d been holding it towards him for at least thirty seconds with no sign she’d sit down. Will wouldn’t take it. Not that he could be expected to, Stu thought. And Karen had done enough with going through Geri’s stuff. Stu had seen the photo albums and an urge to grab those albums and look at pictures of the past had come and gone quickly. Even just thinking about doing so was enough to make his stomach threaten to reject its little meal.
Karen joined Will on the bed, their legs touching. Stu moved to the window, then decided being in full view of anyone outside was a bad idea. He crouched and gazed at the diary without reading it.
‘Should we really read this?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ Karen said.
‘Jesus.’
Marvelling at the feel of the little book, Stu ran his fingers all over it. It felt as real as his own skin or the dirt and sweat covering him, and yet his rational mind told him it couldn’t be. Geri was gone. Her home was gone. And this diary was just dead paper.
‘I keep thinking we’ve gone back in time,’ he said without taking his eyes from the diary.
‘Read it,’ Will muttered.
‘Or we’re inside Geri’s head, maybe. She created all this and we’re stuck inside something she imagined. Maybe none of this is real and we’re just somewhere Geri made up.’
‘Stu,’ Karen said.
‘Yeah. All right.’
He couldn’t get away from it, no matter how much he rambled or voiced his fears.
Stu focused on the neat handwriting and said the first word on the page.
‘I …’
Everything went black.
Fifty Two
Light first. Then heat. Will, Stu and Karen exist in the heat and light, exist as one. Their eyes are blind, their skin bakes. And when the light roars down on them, their eyes are opened.
Colours and space; gaps and light. Red sits below their skin and swallows them and digests them. They drop into the gaps, they swim in the red down there and in that bleeding light, in that horror and in that hope, everything shrinks in an instant to an infinitesimal dot. They live inside it, still bathed in red, still lit by that light, dancing there on the last day of summer, on the first of day of winter and all the days in between when life makes sense, when the city and its streets and grasses and secrets are theirs. They love there; they live there and it’s the most wonderful place in the world. More than that, it’s all theirs, every dark inch, every lit corner, and they exist as one; their friendship will never be brighter or louder and how they shine right now, how they glow in the red. This is the centre of their town, the middle of their youth and they love here, they live for each other here and now.