by Luke Walker
Vision comes. Scenes flipping from one to another on all sides.
A razor touching a forearm, a line of blood welling from white flesh. Children playing football and the lush green of the grass below their feet. A glimmer of a flickering light in a bathroom and a girl leaning over the toilet, vomiting. Night on a suburban street, teenage boys and girls in a rambling line and small drifts of snow cover gardens. The razor again, and a long sleeve sliding over the arm to cover it. A school desk, glowing yellow light bouncing on to it from the window behind, the timeless yellow light of a thousand schooldays that all last forever.
Vision goes.
The centre of the tiny dot explodes; they race with the growing dot, pushed out to the edge, growing with that edge and falling away from the centre as fast as it wants to push them away. Still lit by the red and the horror and light, they streak through time, racing from the dead days of childhood at the centre of the dot, racing from what is theirs, expanding always, always further out to later years, teenage years and those years burn in space; they burn with each other through their time of love and grief and doing all they can to forget that grief even if it costs them their time and all the love inside it.
Now their thoughts each belong to the others, their shame and their hurt all race with the speeding growth and come crashing into the end of everything, crashing as they reach the end of their time.
Within the swirling red and its love, they see the end of everything. A howling void. There is nothing but one forever scream in the dark, no light or love or red. And somewhere beyond that endless scream is home.
The life in the red buries them alive and brings all its horror and all its hope for love to them in one crushing instant and it brings a name with that horror and all that hope.
A name spoken from the other side of the scream.
A name in the dark.
Red.
The red.
Oh god the red, the red between …
Fifty Three
The diary fell from Stu’s hands, hit the carpet and Stu collapsed. He lay sprawled on the carpet, staring at the ceiling. Will watched him with an odd detachment. It was a little like being drunk or lightly stoned and that was fine. That meant he could handle what had just happened.
‘Were you?’ Karen whispered.
Speaking was an effort but he managed it. ‘Was I what?’
‘Glad it finished.’
He stared at her. Her face, so familiar and so lovely for the best part of twenty-five years now belonged to a stranger judging him.
‘What?’ he said.
‘We know,’ Stu said. He pulled himself against the desk but didn’t rise any further. ‘We know how you felt which means you know how I feel.’
Karen didn’t drop her gaze from Will.
‘Sort of,’ he said and his cheeks flamed.
‘Sort of?’ Karen echoed.
‘Okay, a lot. Christ, what do you expect me to say? It fucked up with Geri and that fucked me up, but it was still a relief. She was hard work, more hard work than I wanted. For Christ’s sake, I was twenty. What twenty-year-old wants a manic depressive girlfriend?’
He fell silent, face still red, and stared at his hands.
‘I didn’t want her to sleep with a load of other blokes and I didn’t want her miserable but I couldn’t change what she did or how she was. So when it ended, I …’ He managed to look Karen in the eye. ‘I was probably more messed up because of knowing it was a weird relief than because it ended. Does that make sense?’
‘Yes,’ she said, her voice sluggish. ‘I always wondered how you really felt about her and what that made me. If it made me second choice.’
‘You’ve never been second choice. You’re my wife.’
Karen made no attempt to wipe her wet eyes. ‘You know what I felt,’ she said.
‘Yeah. And there’s no need for it. Geri, she’s gone. I want her to be happy or at peace or whatever but that doesn’t change anything between us.’
He took her hand and offered silent thanks when Karen kissed him. He glanced at Stu as Karen pulled away.
‘You really think any of this was your fault?’
Stu studied his hands and took his time before replying. ‘I’m the one who stayed here. And I always felt like I could have kept us together after Geri died. Probably bollocks but it’s how I felt. Like I could have done more.’
‘It’s not bollocks,’ Karen said and Stu gave her a weak smile. ‘You were always a good bloke.’
Stu’s smile grew stronger even though he looked away from her.
‘Thanks,’ he murmured and gestured to the diary. ‘Want me to have another look? We still need some answers.’
‘As long as we don’t see all that stuff again,’ Will said and attempted to picture all the red and the light, the images of the past, of Geri cutting herself, of the howling in the void beyond.
‘She was there, wasn’t she?’ Stu said.
‘I think that might have been her …soul or spirit or whatever. We were inside her. We saw her, didn’t we? Cutting herself. At school. With us, walking home from somewhere. We were all there,’ Karen said.
Stu picked up the diary and opened it at a random page. He scanned the page and the colour bled out of his face.
‘What?’ Karen said.
Stu looked up and his eyes met Will’s. ‘Dude, this is …it’s like a letter to you.’
‘Read it,’ Will said and wished his heartbeat would slow to a normal rate.
‘Sure?’
‘Read it.’
Stu licked his lips, dropped his gaze to the little notepad and went on without a pause and without looking back to Will.
‘Will, I am sorry, there, I said it finally. Only took me far too long. I am sorry, I am sorry. I can say it as long as you like or as long as I can keep saying it. I am so fucking sorry, this is not what I wanted. This is all the way from anything I wanted to happen or for you to feel this way. I am sorry. Is it okay now? No, of course it isn’t. I’m not that stupid even though everything I’ve done has been stupid lately. Not that I’m making excuses, I know I can’t. I wouldn’t try to even if I had any. This is as bad as it can get, isn’t it? I think that and hope sort of I’m right because I don’t want anything worse than this. But there’s always worse things like how I can make myself feel, how I can fuck myself. There. Said it. I didn’t know if I would till I did. I can fuck myself and the worst part is what I think of. Because I don’t think of you. I don’t. I’m sorry. I fuck myself and I think of the worst thing to happen to me. Sounds small doesn’t it? The worst thing to happen to me. The worst thing to happen to you and I’m part of both, I was there for both, I was involved in both. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Jesus Christ God I am sorry. How many times do I have to say it? Will. Will. Will. Will. Will. Will. I can keep saying that. I really can. I really can. I really can. I really can. I know you won’t ever see this. I know you never will but I still had to tell you I am sorry. I didn’t want to do this to you or for you to feel like this I really didn’t. Sorry Will, so sorry always. Geri.’
Silence.
Will inhaled once, twice, and the tears broke out of him as if eager to taste the air. Karen took him and he wept against his wife. He wept for dead love.
Fifty Four
Kirsty eased her arm down towards her knees and moved her wrist in slow circles on the pretence of fighting its stiffness. Phil watched her, unspeaking. She massaged the flesh, waited until his gaze moved from her and snatched a glance at her watch.
3:42.
As bizarre as it seemed, she’d been sitting here, trapped with an old couple and a man driven crazy with grief and confusion for easily five hours. Jo would have called the police hours before; they’d be looking for her at the cemetery and they’d be calling her friends and family to see if she’d been in touch with any of them.
What they wouldn’t be doing was searchin
g an address that had nothing to do with her. And that meant they probably had no chance of finding her.
Her stomach rumbled and the sound almost made her laugh with the ridiculousness of it. Her body didn’t care about being trapped with a dangerous man or the threat of ghosts. It cared about food.
Despite her growing hunger, she didn’t vocalise it. Phil had taken the three of them to the bathroom an hour before and although he hadn’t put his knife to any one of them while the others used the toilet, it had been raised to his waist and the threat of it was clear. Kirsty hadn’t dared to try anything, to call for help or even open the bathroom window during her minute in there. So what if she could open it without him hearing? There was no way she could call for help and have any of the neighbours see her before he could open the door and silence either with his fist or his knife.
But would he, her mind asked? Was he dangerous because of aggression or was he just a man confused and still grieving for his dead sister, and made dangerous because of that grief? Would he really wound or kill any of them if they made a move?
Her stomach rumbled and Phil glanced at her. ‘Hungry?’ he said.
‘No.’ She knew how pointless it was to lie. Even so, she couldn’t bring herself to admit it. Admitting her hunger would give him another edge over her.
Another edge? He’s got a knife. What more does he need?
‘Yeah. okay. I am.’
‘So are we,’ Sam said. He still had his arms around Charlotte. Neither of them had spoken in hours and Kirsty had discovered she was madly envious of them. They weren’t facing this alone. They had each other. She had a missing husband and a daughter she might never see again.
Exhausted tears threatened and she kept them inside. Phil appraised her, then Sam and Charlotte. He swapped the knife between his hands and flexed his fingers. The white tips bloomed with red as he wiggled them.
‘I should have thought. Sorry.’ He stood and pointed at Kirsty. ‘Best way to do this is if you go downstairs and make us something to eat. Some sandwiches or something.’
‘All right.’
Kirsty spoke as calmly as she could while her mind raced through options. Get downstairs, run to the door and run outside. A neighbour’s house or the road? Shout for help as soon as she was outside or leg it to a front door and scream through a letterbox?
‘I’ll have to trust you, Kirsty. I know you want to get out of here. I do, too. But we have to wait a bit longer.’
‘How much longer, Phil?’
‘Until it gets dark. Shouldn’t be long.’ He checked his watch. ‘Just another couple of hours. Then I’m gone, but until then, I have to trust you to just get some food and nothing else.’
‘Yeah.’
She stood, the curtains heavy against her back and neck. With a tremendous will, she kept her gaze from Sam and Charlotte, desperate to not see their hope and trust that she could somehow get help.
How can I? He’s got a fucking knife. What the hell can I do?
The answer was as simple as it was obvious.
Get your own knife.
‘Sandwiches,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘Give me a few minutes.’
He opened the bedroom door and stood to the side. Kirsty took slow steps towards him and the door, her eyes staring ahead to the hallway. As she drew level with him, he placed a gentle hand on her wrist.
‘I’m trusting you, Kirsty. And you have to trust me. I don’t want to hurt anyone, but unless all you do is get some food …’
The threat hung between them. All at once, she knew it didn’t matter why he was dangerous. Grief or not, Phil was dangerous. All she could do was hope she could somehow get through to him.
‘Just food. That’s all,’ she said.
He opened the door fully. She left the room and started down towards the kitchen.
Fifty Five
Karen finished speaking when the words ran out on the page in her hands. The last word—school—brought a range of emotions and memories. Greatest of all those emotions was fear, and the strongest memory was a pained one: the last day of school, a hot day with all the time in the world stretching away from it. Despite the hurt inside the memory, she did her best to hold on to it. There was sense and logic inside it. She knew it.
‘Girl’s got issues,’ Stu muttered and Karen let go of the picture of the long dead day.
‘We still don’t know why,’ Karen replied and tapped the page. Despite the room temperature, the page was cold.
‘Does it matter?’ Will said. They were the first words he’d spoken since Stu finished reading Geri’s letter. He answered his own question in the same flat tone. ‘It does, doesn’t it? Otherwise we don’t know what to do.’
‘We’ve got an idea from that,’ Stu said and pointed to the diary. ‘We need to go to school.’
‘How the hell can we do that? We go outside and we’re dead. Jesus, you saw what happened to Mick,’ Karen shouted.
‘So, we just stay here?’
‘Yes,’ she yelled and took a breath to calm herself. ‘At least for now.’
‘We can’t,’ Will said and she stared at him. ‘We can’t stay here forever and we have to help Geri. That means leaving.’
She wanted to hit him, to scream at his face that Geri was dead and they would be too if they left. His mild eyes looked back at her; she squeezed the bedcovers between her fingers and took another calming breath.
‘Okay, say we do go. How do we do it without getting hurt? For all we know, those mad bastards are right outside now.’
Stu stood and walked to the window. He ducked below the ledge, then rose an inch so his eyes were level with the bottom of the pane. ‘I’ve been thinking about this. This is different to everywhere else here, right? I don’t think Geri’s house is part of the rest of the town otherwise why haven’t the people outside tried to get in? If they could, I think it’s safe to say they’d have broken down the door the second after we got here.’
‘Fine. Which means?’ Karen said.
‘Which means this place is like a protection for us.’ Stu splayed his fingers over a section of the wall between two posters. ‘We really should have come here first. We would have been safe.’
He left the rest unsaid. Even so, Karen heard it.
And Mick and Andy would still be alive.
‘If this house is our protection, our safety, we need to keep it with us,’ Stu said and took his hand from the wall.
‘How? We can’t take the whole house with us if we leave,’ Will said.
‘I know, but I think if can keep part of it with me, I’ll be okay.’
‘You?’
Stu glanced at Will. ‘Yeah. I can run faster than you.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Karen said. She knew, though. It was all over Stu’s face.
‘I’ll go to the school. I’ll go and see what Geri’s doing.’
‘No way,’ Karen said immediately.
‘You’ve got a better idea?’
‘Yeah. We stay here and work out what the fuck’s going on.’
‘There’s nothing we can do here.’ Stu faced the window. ‘I think if I take Geri’s diary with me, I’ll be okay.’
‘You think?’ Karen whispered.
‘Yeah.’
‘Christ.’ Karen laughed. ‘We’re making this up as we go along, aren’t we?’
Stu gazed at her and Karen saw the sweet boy she’d known twenty years before.
‘Yeah,’ he said and his face split into a sunny smile.
He stood and extended his hand to her. She gazed at it and handed him the diary without speaking. The last few words in the diary played over in her head—
he did it again and I couldn’t stop him and I want them to hurt like me, all of them at school—
‘Wait a second,’ Karen said and crossed to the wardrobe. Steeling herself, she rummaged through the messy piles of clothes and shoes and closed a hand over one of the photo albums.
‘
What are you doing?’ Will said.
‘Getting more protection.’
She pulled the album free and let it fall open to a double page spread of pictures. At once, grief filled her just as joy did.
‘Geri,’ she whispered and traced her fingertip over Geri’s smile and her face. The shot was from a night in a pub, probably around the time she and Andy had left for university. In the photo, Geri was smiling and lifting a drink to her mouth, Mick beside her with two fingers held up to the camera and his tongue sticking out. In the photo beside it, Mick had lowered his hand, Geri’s drink was at her mouth and not quite obscuring her smile as Mick kissed her cheek.
Karen’s tears pattered on the picture and she let them fall, smiling as she studied the other photos. They didn’t appear to be in any order. Shots of their late teen years mixed with older shots of Geri and her family when she’d been twelve or so, then shots from university life. Karen turned the page to photos of childhood pets: a large black and white cat, one ear tucked under his head and a paw reaching towards the camera; a border collie pup chasing a ball in the garden. She turned the page again and her gaze immediately fell on a photo in the top right.
It was all of them. She sat beside Geri on a school table. Stu was on Geri’s other side, Mick beside him, and Will in front of Geri, her hand on his shoulder with Andy squeezing into frame beside Will.
Others had crammed into the shot and while she could name all of them, she knew they weren’t part of the photo in the same way she, Geri and the boys were. Maybe they knew it, too. A few were smiling, but most were looking out of shot or at each other. She touched Geri’s hand on Will’s shoulder and there was no jealousy. Seeing them together in such a perfect moment was exactly as it should be.