by David Haynes
“You can’t just come in here like this. I won’t have it.”
Chris opened his mouth to apologise before he realised Joe wasn’t talking to him.
“It’s my house. Go back to where you belong.” Joe’s voice was shaking as he spoke.
Chris wanted to go in and take Joe back upstairs. He was sleepwalking and dreaming but wasn’t there a rule about not waking sleepwalkers? Something in the back of his mind told him that it was a bad idea to wake him up.
“Please, Lizzy, please just take him.”
Chris went cold.
“He shouldn’t be here. Neither of you should. Please.”
Despite his intentions, Chris took a step inside the room. He had to be sure there was nobody else there and there wasn’t. Joe was all alone but he hadn’t noticed Chris.
“I don’t know what you want, son. I don’t know what you want but you should be somewhere else now. You both should be.” Joe’s voice cracked completely and he fell against the dresser, sobbing.
Chris jumped forward. “Granddad.” He tried to whisper but he knew he was almost shouting. He grabbed Joe’s arm and as he did so, he felt the hairs on the back of neck bristle. He shivered involuntarily.
Joe grabbed Chris’s arm and pulled him close. “They’re here, they’re both here,” he whispered.
Chris could see streaks of tears rolling down his cheeks. “Who’s here? Who is it?” He was sure Joe wasn’t sleepwalking now.
He turned his head and looked Chris straight in the eye. “Lizzy and Jack. They’re here, inside my house. They’re...” His voice trailed off and he slumped against Chris.
The big, baggy jumpers and the over-sized dressing gown couldn’t disguise how thin Joe had become. Chris could feel every bone in his body through his ancient pyjamas. He didn’t want to turn around and look into the space where Joe had been looking a moment ago in case he saw something, or someone, he didn’t want to.
“Come on, Granddad, I’ll help you back upstairs,” he whispered.
Chris didn’t exactly drag him but it wasn’t far off. Joe’s legs moved but his feet were slow to follow suit. Chris couldn’t have done this five years ago, or maybe even two, but Joe had lost so much weight that it almost made Chris cry to think about it.
He was still fit though. He was still a vital man who could walk miles and miles in a day without ache or pain.
“Joe, you’re going to need to help me up the stairs, okay?”
Joe went rigid against him. Chris could tell by the hot breath on his cheek that Joe had turned to face him. If he’d turned too, their noses would touch.
“Did you see him, did you see your dad?”
A chill went through him. “I didn’t see anyone. You need to help me.”
Joe gently pushed him away. “They should be somewhere else. They shouldn’t be in this house.”
Joe started up the stairs on his own but Chris followed closely behind. As they reached the top, Joe turned toward his room.
“Granddad, I think I... no, I need to talk to you.” He tried to whisper but it was louder than that. Something was happening now and whether or not it was all connected, Chris owed it to the man. He owed the man who’d acted like a father for the last thirty-three years to be straight with him. He owed him more than that but the rest he could never hope to repay.
Joe turned. “And I need to speak to you.” He walked into his bedroom and started to close the door.
“And I think your dad will be listening.” He closed the door completely, leaving Chris on the landing.
What did that mean? He stood still and stared at Joe’s door, then turned and went back to his own room. Lou had changed position but she was still breathing heavily.
What on earth did Joe mean?
Chapter 16
“I wonder if you and Mum might like to spend some time at Land’s End this morning? Lollipop’s got some spends for you?”
Chris had asked Lou if she could give him time to speak to Joe alone. He hadn’t mentioned the incident involving Joe in the night, but he had told her he was going to talk about her.
Ollie looked up from his egg. Once again there was butter on his cheeks and yolk on his chin. Gerald the giraffe was on the table next to him.
“And can I buy something made of plastic? Or one of those foam swords again?”
Joe put a twenty pound note on the table. “You can buy whatever you want as long as you buy your mum an ice cream.”
Ollie grabbed the money and gave it to Lou. He hadn’t wet the bed and he hadn’t woken up at all in the night, so both of them looked a hundred times better than they had at the same time yesterday.
“You know what this means, Dad?”
“I’ve got a vague idea.” Chris sounded better than he felt.
“If I get one of those foam swords, you’ll never be safe again.”
They all laughed, even Joe who looked like he’d aged ten years overnight. Chris had slept on and off for most of the night and been awake completely since four o’clock. At no time had he heard Joe get up and go for his walk. He had a feeling it was a very long time since the old boy hadn’t taken that morning ritual.
“Are we going then?” Ollie finished his apple juice and stood up. His foot was bandaged but there were no traces of blood seeping through and he had hardly limped on the way down the stairs.
“You might need to get dressed first.” Lou stood up and ushered him away.
“I’ll put the kettle on then.” Chris flicked the switch. “Will we need this?” He reached into the cupboard and grabbed the bottle of Bushmills.
Joe shook his head. “Lizzy won’t like it.” He tilted his head toward the stairs. “She won’t leave, neither of them will.”
Chris closed the cupboard door. “Granddad, please.” Things were bad enough without hearing that. “Ollie might hear.”
“Better than seeing,” Joe replied.
*
Ollie and Lou had gone off for the day. While he’d been getting dressed, Ollie grew reluctant to leave but Chris had promised him he would be right here when he got back. He could even hit him over the head with the sword if he wanted to. Ollie had made them all stand in a circle, put their hands on top of each other’s and promise they would always be together. None of them had complained about doing it.
Joe and Chris sat at the table facing each other, where it seemed they had almost entirely spent the last few days.
“I need to go first, Granddad. I need to say it out loud before I think myself out of it.”
Joe just nodded. He looked like he wanted to get something off his chest before it suffocated him too.
“The woman, the woman down at the cove on the day Dad drowned, I did see her. I know I saw her because I’ve seen her since.” He waited for a reaction. A voice of dissent, just as there had always been, or a widening of the eyes to indicate shock, but there was nothing. Not even a flicker. It disarmed Chris slightly but he carried on.
“I think I saw her up at the cemetery on the day we went to visit Dad, but I know I saw her at Pendeen when I was with Pat. There’s no question about that. I’m pretty sure Pat saw her too.” Now it was out there and he was talking about it, it didn’t sound quite as bad as it had done in his head.
“Only, she doesn’t look the same now. Something’s changed, something... She’s gone lower if that makes sense? Lower and darker, like the shadows are holding onto her. I don’t know, it sounds ridiculous, like a dodgy film script. I don’t know how to explain it.”
He looked at Joe again but the man was impassive.
“Granddad?”
“I’m listening. You just keep talking and get it all off your chest. And then I’ll say my piece.”
“You remember I told you, Mum and the police about her eyes? About how they weren’t there and how they made me feel? Well now it’s still the same, she’s still the same as that, only worse somehow.” He paused and took a deep breath. “There’s that creature in mythology – the Medusa
who turns people to stone. Well she’s like that but her eyes, or where her eyes should be, strip you back, right back and leave you with nothing. Life, happiness, love, willpower, it’s all gone in an instant. So all that’s left is sadness and grief. Overwhelming grief. The same grief I felt after that day at Hawk’s.”
He stopped again and tapped his forehead. “It’s all in here anyway. All of it. She just flicks a switch and it all comes to the surface. Boom! And you don’t just want to die, you want her to help you there.”
He slapped his forehead.
“Jesus Christ, this is madness, absolute madness. I can’t believe I’m thinking these things, let alone saying them.”
He stood up and walked around the table. He’d questioned his sanity so many times over the last thirty-three years, it was second nature, but this wasn’t just his own sanity he had to consider now. He sat back down.
“And the worst thing about all of this is Ollie.”
For the first time, he saw a flicker of emotion from Joe and was pleased.
“Ollie’s seen her too. I don’t know how many times for sure, but at least once. That’s why they’re here, Granddad. The night before they got here, she was there in his room, trying to pull back the covers, trying to look into his eyes and do what she’s trying to do to me. She wants us both, I don’t know why but she wants us. She won’t have my son though. She won’t touch him, I can tell you that.”
Anger started to rise to the surface. It wasn’t as powerful as he’d felt with Tallack but it was there.
“Nobody is touching either of you.” Joe spoke loudly and with the rock-steady tone it had always had.
“I went to speak to Pat, you know. That’s where I was coming from on the morning they found him. We had a fight about her. He wouldn’t listen to me. I didn’t know what was wrong with him then but that’s why he was down there on that slipway. She’s the reason his blood was all over the slipway.”
He drew a deep breath and tried to clench his broken fist. The pain spurred him on. “He’d seen her before, I know he had. I think that was just the last straw. She killed him.” Chris threw his head back. He was babbling and it all made sense to him, but Joe had barely said anything. “What the f…” Joe hated swearing. “What the hell is going on? I’m going down the same route as Dad.”
Joe stood up and walked into the front room.
Chris felt better for unloading like that. He’d done it countless times over the years, although never about anything quite so disturbing or absurd-sounding.
Joe came back in and put a file on the table. “You’re right about Pat.” He pushed it over to Chris. “Have a look in there.”
The file was a simple A4 docket. It was a faded green colour and he recognised it straight away. It had been his when he was a little boy. Joe had scribbled black ink over the top of the name, Christopher, but it was still just visible. He’d kept his stories in there. All of them ripped carefully from his little notebook.
He lifted the flap. What he found weren’t the stories of a little boy, perfecting an art he would come to rely on in later life. No, what he found were the disturbed rants of a man who was trying his hardest not to end up on the slipway at Hawk’s Cove with his wrists gouged down to the bone.
He pulled the wad of paper out. It was four inches thick and made from paper of varying sizes. As the bundle came clear of the docket, some of the smaller pieces fluttered down to the floor. He ignored them because it was the image on the top sheet which caught his attention.
On the page, in black ink, were two large circles side by side. They had been drawn over and over again. As Chris picked it up, he could feel the indentations made by the heavy hand that had made them.
“All Pat’s work. All of it.”
Inside the two circles, Pat had drawn two crosses. Again they had been overwritten so many times that at the very tips, the pen had punctured the paper.
Chris put it to one side and looked up. “There are so many.”
“And the first few I just threw in the bin.”
Chris leafed through them quickly. They were mostly of the same two circles scrawled heavily into the page, some with crosses, some without but on others Pat had written something.
“How did you get these?” Chris asked.
“He posted them through the door. Sometimes I’d go for weeks without getting any, and then there would be weeks where they would come every day.”
Chris read one aloud. “Don’t look, she’s coming.” The words were written beneath the circles again, but this time they were filled in.
“He had seen her before.” He held the paper up like a trophy. “I knew he had.”
Joe nodded. “And then there’s the notes. The suicide notes.” He reached across and pushed the papers to one side. At the bottom was a collection of carefully folded sheets. They were different.
“Saying the same thing over and over and over.”
Chris unfolded one. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry...” The whole page was filled with the same thing. He opened the next one and two more after that. Each one was filled with exactly the same thing. Over and over again.
“The first time I got one of those was the day after you’d gone back up north with your mum. About a week after we put Jack in the ground. I knew what it was and I knew what was in his mind. I spent the day down the road there at Hawk’s waiting for him. I waited until it was so dark I couldn’t see the path anymore; just me, the sea and the rocks. I thought I saw your dad a time or two then, floating in on the tide and banging his head in the rocks. But Pat didn’t come.”
Joe scratched his head. “I waited the next week too, when I got another. And the time after that. I must have spent about two weeks waiting for that great big idiot to come down there and do something stupid to himself. The first time he sent a note and I didn’t go down there, I walked up and down the kitchen all day until my feet bled. Eventually, after a few years, I realised he wasn’t going to do it, but by then he was drinking like a fish. He was probably too drunk to hold a knife most of the time, let alone...” He stopped there. Pat hadn’t been too drunk two days ago.
Chris held two sheets of paper side by side. One with the circles drawn on and one with his apology.
“What was he sorry about, Granddad?” He put the pages down.
Joe bit his lip. “What were we sorry about. That’s a better question.”
Some of it I can tell you first hand, I was there, but the rest, I can only repeat what the boys told me. I didn’t want to tell you this. For all the world I never wanted to tell you, but I won’t see this go on and I won’t see anybody else’s body down there.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward Hawk’s Cove.
“Little Ollie...” Joe stopped and coughed. “He looks just like Jack did at that age. His face is burned into my brain and no matter how long passes, he’s there. I won’t see you or your little boy suffer for what we did.”
“Joe, you’re starting to scare me here and I’m already... If this isn’t something we need to know now then...”
“You need to know now. It’s all connected. All of it. And you and Ollie are in the middle.”
Chapter 17
August 1969
“Slow down there, Jackie-boy. I nearly spilled the beer.”
Jack took his foot off the accelerator just a touch and then hammered it down to the metal. Pat lurched forward, spilling more beer down his shirt.
“You did that on purpose!”
“Yep.”
They were out on the road again. They had a tank full of petrol, a packet of Embassy and a bottle of Dad’s home brew in the back. All courtesy of a stint on the pots.
“Reckon Joe will notice his beer stash has gone down?” Pat asked.
“He won’t mind.” And Dad wouldn’t mind. Not as long as Jack was up and fit for five in the morning. He pulled up to a junction. It was left to St Ives or right to Penzance.
“Where we going then?”
Pat pushed two cigarettes into his mouth and lit them both. He handed one to Jack.
It was mid-September and the summer had been long and hot. Long, hot and hard work for the pair of them. Joe paid them well for working the pots but the money just went straight into the tank of the Hillman Minx.
“I’m not going to go and sit in the park again, Pat. I’m not going to wait for Susie Curnow to flash her tits at me.”
“St Ives then, let’s take a nice slow drive up there.”
Jack wound down the window and then pushed the car into first gear. He accelerated hard out of the junction, sending a cloud of cigarette smoke into his eyes and ash into his lap. He wasn’t that keen on smoking, neither of them was, but Pat thought they looked like film stars when they smoked and that was a good enough reason. He preferred the smell of the sea and of the land, particularly when the sun had been on them all day and cooked them up into a rich, heady brew.
He intended making the most of the last few days here, especially of the time with Pat. Once he went up to Exeter they probably wouldn’t see each other until Christmas. It’d be tough but it’s what Mum would’ve wanted so he was happy to go. Besides, Dad would look after Pat. He’d been doing it for the last fifteen years so Pat would be okay. Maybe he’d get off his arse and do his share of work when Jack had gone.
“So, you’re going to have to get used to some early mornings when I’m gone. You’ll have to cut back on this.” He pointed at the glass bottle in Pat’s hand. The beer inside looked dangerous.
“Sooner that than the pit.” Pat took a drink and offered it across.
Jack took a quick drink and passed it back. “He won’t let you go down there. I know he goes on about it but it’s just a threat. He wouldn’t let you.”
“Your dad is like a god,” Pat announced and blew smoke out of the window. “He’s better than that actually. You don’t have to pray to Joe, you just have to bring his pots in.”