The towel was sodden when she put it down but the damp long strands against her skin still made her flinch. At least for the moment her thirst had gone. If she could just get to sleep before it came back then she had half a chance of a full night’s rest.
Mike was snoring when she slipped back between the sheets. He was in the same position in which she’d left him and feeling the warmth spilling from his body, she fought the temptation to cuddle in next to him. Her wet hair would wake him and then she’d have to explain why. Her bloated stomach was already returning to normal size as if the water had just been absorbed into her and disappeared. She pulled her knees up under her chin and let her eyes shut. They felt gritty behind the lids, but she ignored it. As she stifled a sudden yawn, she figured ignoring things might be the way to go. Maybe then everything would go back to normal. Please God.
* * *
Her mouth was like sandpaper when the alarm dragged her awake at six. The space in the bed next to her was empty and from the bathroom she could hear the power shower roaring. Her mouth ached as she tore her tongue free from the roof of her mouth.
Water.
Her robe half pulled on, she stumbled into the kitchen and filled the coffee jug with water. Her throat screamed and her thirst raged, but there was some satisfaction in delaying her need. Almost as if she could nearly convince herself she was still in control.
Only when she’d pressed the on switch and the machine started gurgling did she let her trembling hands pull a bottle of water from the fridge and rip the lid free. She swallowed greedily, enjoying the cool in her burning throat. She didn’t pause until the bottle was half-empty and only then did she notice Mike watching her carefully from the doorway.
‘You okay?’
‘Sure. Why do you ask?’ And it was the truth. Right at that moment, with the water bottle in hand, everything was okay. The thirst had gone.
‘You were dreaming again. Most of the night. Shaking and sweating and muttering under your breath.’ He paused. ‘What is it you’re dreaming about? Is it a nightmare?’
Even though she could easily have drained the bottle, Lucy screwed the lid on and put the water back in the fridge. ‘I don’t know what I was dreaming. I don’t remember.’ She left him in the kitchen and headed to the shower.
* * *
The dreams of deserts and oceans came more vividly every night that week and she woke each morning with the gritty taste of sand in her mouth and an awful sense of dread.
Chapter 3
Things didn’t get any better as November crawled into the crisp cold of December - if anything they got worse. At least November had been a damp month. There had been rain most days and Lucy had been able to let the drops slip into her mouth when the thirst had got too much on her journeys from the tube to home or work. Now the air was dry and she’d taken to carrying a bottle of Evian in her handbag. It needed refilling too often to think about.
At work she’d managed to keep things pretty much on an even keel despite the dreams and exhaustion, but she wasn’t stupid or tired enough not to realise that the changes in her had been noticed. She spent a lot of time at the water cooler, but none of it gossiping. Over the past week she’d taken to going to the bathroom and drinking from the taps there. She wasn’t sure if it was clean for drinking, but decided she didn’t really care.
Jimmy George, her boss and someone she’d had a brief one night fling with at a perfume giant’s Christmas party when they both been just starting out, called her into his office and asked her if maybe she needed checking for diabetes. His wife had it and Lucy was showing the symptoms. She’d smiled and said she’d had it checked. It went some way to reassuring him but she could still see a shadow of worry in his eyes. She said she might go home early. He said that was fine.
The busy network of London’s shopping streets sparkled with lights and festive glitter, but looking into the magical displays in the store windows with their colours and shapes and promises of better things made her cry. The tears came suddenly and out of nowhere. Sobs shook her shoulders blurring the pinks and reds and blues of the baubles in the Selfridges window frame, and she rummaged in her bag for a crumpled tissue.
It’s because it’s all so bloody happy. Everyone’s so bloody happy and they don’t know. They don’t have any idea how wrong things can get. They don’t know what’s coming.
She pushed the small voice inside her away. That didn’t make any more sense that the dreams that left her exhausted and with dust in her mouth.
Her reflection in the glass served as a mirror and she wiped her smeared mascara away and swallowed the tears. She needed to get a grip. Maybe after Christmas she’d go back to the doctor’s and get them to check her hormones out. See if that was possibly an issue.
Her throat scratched as if a cockroach was hatching its babies behind her tonsils and she drained the few mouthfuls that were left in her water bottle. The next place she went she’d fill it in their ladies’. Screw what other people thought. But then, she thought, looking at the shoppers around her, London wasn’t a place where you got noticed. In London at Christmas, a smartly-dressed woman could sob in the middle of the street and no one would see. Not that she really cared.
Some of them would be crying soon. People all over the world would be crying soon.
She fought the urge to slap herself hard in the face.
In the old world elegance of Liberty’s she bought Michael a watch she couldn’t afford from behind a case with two locks on, which was never a good sign for price. The smiling middle-aged woman whose make-up didn’t quite cover the cracks around her eyes handled it carefully as she slipped it into the dark box and filled in the engraving slip. To Michael. All my love forever, Lucy.
She couldn't picture the watch he wore and that made her sad too, as if it was a sign of something sinister. She just needed to get past whatever all this crap was. Things would be better in the New Year. They had to be.
She browsed and let the hour tick away as she bought a few more gifts, but her basket seemed painfully empty and bland compared to the over-laden arms and sacks of those around her. Christmas was about children, and it was pretty hard to get excited about it when you were all grown up.
With a heavy heart, she could see her Christmas laid out before her. They’d exchange their gifts in the morning, both happy with the taste of the other. Maybe have sex and then have breakfast, before heading into Surrey for lunch with Michael’s family. It would be pleasant enough, but politely upper class: no one drinking too much or laughing too loudly. They’d make their excuses by seven or eight and then head home to watch whatever trite Christmas specials the TV companies were offering, while eating the best part of a box of Quality Street. On Boxing Day they’d probably catch up with some friends for cold turkey and mince pies and bad party games and then sit out the rest of holidays in a kind of amicable peace.
By the time New Year came they’d both be silently itching to get back to work and avoiding the ‘baby’ conversation. The previous year when he’d tried to whisper in her ear how nice it would be, she’d made a flippant remark that a baby wasn’t just for Christmas. She wasn’t sure she’d get away with it that easily now that thirty was closer than twenty. He probably had a point. They probably should think about starting a family soon. After all, what the hell was stopping her?
She squeezed the stupid thoughts that made no sense back into the small box in her head where the dreams lived, queued to pay for her few items and then went and collected her gift-wrapped watch. Even the small pleasure of cellotape, pretty paper and scissors had been taken from her.
By the time she stepped out into the icy night air, she’d had an idea. Why should she be dreading Christmas and just waiting for it to be out of the way? Where was the rule book that said they had to go to Michael’s mother’s or watch shit TV?
At half ten when Michael got home from an office party, Lucy was in her joggers and T-shirt, browsing the Internet. Beside her, a sheet of paper was
covered with scribbled numbers and a variety of times and dates. She sipped her wine before smiling up at him.
‘What’s all this?’ he asked, taking his suit jacket off and undoing the buttons of his shirt. He kissed the top of her head, his big hands rubbing her shoulders. She glanced at his watch and suddenly the brown strap was familiar. Of course she knew what his watch looked like. How dumb of her not to remember. It didn't matter. She was pleased with the new fashionable waterproof stainless steel one she’d bought. He’d like it. It would suit him.
‘I was thinking we should go away for Christmas. Get away from it all and do something different. Just the two of us.’
‘Really?’ He pulled her out of the desk chair and sat down, before tugging her back down onto his knee. His breath was warm and boozy and the glazed look in his eyes was affectionately comical. It made her smile. It felt good. But then she’d felt good, or at least better, ever since she’d come up with this plan.
‘Ten days in the sun. It’ll be just what I… we …need.’
‘Sounds great. Where are you taking me?’
‘Thailand.’
‘Cool.’ he yawned. ‘Never been to Thailand.’ He paused and then coughed up a drowsy laugh. ‘Beats Christmas at my parents’.
* * *
Lucy didn’t dream that night but sank into a blissful dark peace. In the morning they had sex before work for the first time in a long time, and by lunchtime their trip was booked. There was more bounce in her step as she moved round the office and she felt better than she had in days. Something about the holiday felt right, as if she and the world were back in tune with each other. It would be good for them, she decided. Maybe they’d even make a baby there.
They left on the twentieth, neither bothered much by the long flight ahead and with only their gifts for each other and basic necessities in their two small holdalls. The aeroplane purred across the sky, the sleek metal cutting smoothly through the air. The roar of take-off settled down to a gentle hum and after sipping champagne, Lucy settled back in her reclined chair and left Michael to nibble peanuts and watch the movie as she drifted into sleep. The dream came back. It was strong and vivid.
* * *
The heat burned on her skin and there was sand under her bare feet as she ran through the catacombs. She could smell old death and when she paused to catch her breath she could make out glints of bone in the red clay walls, all flesh long since rotted away. She moved further in, never stopping for long, the ground beneath her slanting and cooling as the depth increased. She was running downwards, working further and further in the soul of the earth.
Some of the small caves around her were broken and empty and glancing this way and that and with her breath pounding hot and hard in her chest, she weaved through the arches. She was trapped in the golden honeycomb surroundings.
The catacomb was endless but not empty. She could feel the echo in the ground of others running. Three others. She knew there were three because three plus one made four and four was THE NUMBER. There were three other women always in her dream and even if she didn’t see them she knew they were there because three and her made four. She saw flashes of long hair here and red hair there as they ran like she did, constantly hunting through the maze of caves, searching for answers, fighting their fear. She wondered if they saw each other or her or the ghost of her dark straight hair as she ran. She wondered if they were only here in her head.
Dizzy, she leant against the wall, wanting to feel coolness on her skin but there was only more heat. From behind her came a laugh, deep and throaty, and she peered into the dark hole in the wall. White teeth and eyes smiled at her from beneath a wall of dreadlocks. A man sat cross-legged on the floor, his jeans tatty, and the skin on his bare chest was dark and leathery. The air stank of stale sweat.
‘Where am I?’ She whispered to him.
He drew on a long tapered joint and laughed. ‘In Patmos we speak the Patois.’
The smoke stung her eyes. ‘I don’t understand you.’
His body was so thin that his hair and eyes and teeth were everything. ‘It’s nearly time.’ The last word was dragged out by his Jamaican drawl. ‘Look.’ He used the reefer to point behind her and she turned.
About twenty yards away, a little dark-haired girl wandered up and down a row of sealed caves. A tatty teddy bear hung from under one arm, swinging slightly as she walked. Lucy’s legs were heavy and tired, but she jogged over. She needed to see this. The way the ragged openings were covered seemed strangely flat and it was only when she got close that she could see properly. She pushed streaks of wet hair out of her eyes and peered closer. Something pale and leathery had been stretched across the front of each, tight as a drum and so thin it seemed like papyrus paper.
She couldn’t see the seam where the rock ended and the skin began, but one edge had a thick red mass stamped on it, like a seal on an old-fashioned letter. There was hair and sinew clumped into the dried crimson wax and she knew then that the dried stretched fabric had once been warm and human skin and the wax had once been blood. The oldest blood. She expected her stomach to turn but there was nothing.
The little girl paused several caves down. She looked back at Lucy and smiled. She bent and placed her teddy carefully on the ground by her feet so that he was sitting up against the wall. For a moment Lucy thought the glass eyes caught hers and there was life in them, feline and raspy, and then there was just the bear again. She looked back at the toy's owner.
The little girl frowned as she concentrated on picking at the seal of the cave in front of her, the pale scar that ran down her forehead tightened around her eye with the expression. She didn't give up though. Three quarters of the seal was already gone. Red covered her small hands and ragged fingernails.
‘I’ve opened one already.’ She looked up proudly. ‘It took me ages to figure out how, but I did it.’
Lucy moved closer. Past the child, the open cave was a dark void, sucking in the light and heat. It was oblivion. Or worse. Lucy’s heart pounded hard against her ribs. For a moment, behind her eyes too many images flashed. People burning, screaming as they jumped. She saw a lot of stairs twisted by intense heat that tore at her skin as if it were she that staggered down them, a burden on her back and in her heart. Two people changed forever in one instant. She opened her eyes and gasped, a foreign man’s name almost on her lips, but lost into the catacombs as she stumbled against their walls. The little girl seemed amused by her confusion.
‘And now I’ve nearly done this one. This one's for you.’
Filled with a dread she didn’t really understand, Lucy tried to pull the girl’s hands away from their steady picking at the bloody wax of the second sealed cave, but she couldn’t get a grip on her, as if they were both coated in oil. She blinked and found herself back against the wall twenty yards away.
The little girl looked back over her shoulder. ‘It’s much easier to open them than to close them.’
The child carried on talking, but that was all Lucy understood. Her language had descended into something that Lucy didn’t understand. In Patmos they speak the Patois. She pushed the words away. Sense was what she needed from this, not riddles.
Behind her, the Jamaican was still laughing. ‘It’s nearly time!’ He cackled and coughed as he smoked. ‘It’s nearly TIME!’
‘But I’m not ready!’ she screamed into the haze and gloom. ‘We’re not ready.’ She didn’t recognise the language of the words that came out of her and she didn’t know why she was saying them.
She woke suddenly, one hand wiping away the ghostly grit of the red sand from her face with such force she was almost slapping herself. She checked her palm. There was nothing. Just the hum of the plane and the glow of the dimmed lights. She took a long breath. Her hair itched with sweat and she smoothed it down. It was just the dream.
Nothing to worry about. Her heart still pounded hard, telling a different story.
Beside her, Michael had fallen asleep with his earphones in.
She wondered what the movie was. On the small screen it looked like Los Angeles; warm sunshine and stick thin beautiful people. Her head was still fuzzy.
All the world is a movie and somewhere there’s a script that tells us so.
The thought came and went so fast she barely felt it brush against her mind. She sighed and pressed the hostess button in the arm of her chair, hearing the soft ping as the light above her came on. She needed a glass of water.
Chapter 4
Phuket was everything that the brochures and Internet had promised. The ocean was warm and calm and the sky stretched endless blue above them into the horizon. The first couple of days were pretty much perfect. Or so they must have seemed to Michael and that was what mattered to Lucy.
They held hands on the beach and swam in the hot, salty ocean, before spending the afternoons lounging under woven palm tree shades, reading books and sipping cool drinks. As the sun set they showered, changed and wandered further away from the sea front to find some small local restaurant where they could sip wine and eat barbecued seafood dinners in the cooling night air with the kiss of the hot sun still on their skin.
Eventually, they would wander back to the hotel and sit on the balcony to listen to the lapping black ocean for a while. When the rest of the hotel was sleeping, they would go to bed and make each other sweat before falling asleep naked, the cotton sheets kicked away. By the end of the third day, Lucy’s skin glowed a healthy deep brown and she felt happy. Nearly perfectly so in fact, and maybe as relaxed as she could hope to feel given how things had been over the past month.
There was just the small problem of the little girl and she wished it would go away. She was there amongst the holiday makers, Lucy was sure of it. She kept seeing her. It was crazy and she knew it just wasn’t possible, but that hadn’t stopped her dragging Michael on a long walk in the middle of the day following a family whose daughter had olive skin and long, dark hair, all the while pretending she was just in the mood for stretching her legs.
Apocalypse- Year Zero Page 7