The door clicked open.
Whereas hers and Michael’s flat was all clean surfaces and inner city chic, the hallway of number six reeked of something unloved. The thin orange carpet was stained and worn and even before she’d taken her first step inside, Lucy could smell stale dirt and the sweet tang of rotten food. Someone hadn’t taken the rubbish out in a while. A pair of small socks lay dirty in the thin stretch between the rooms.
Unafraid, she took another step inside. The door ahead to the lounge was only slightly open. It was where the music was coming from.
She peered into the room on her left. The room that would be a study in her flat upstairs, but down here smelt of both stale and fresh urine. It was dark but she could see that the bed was empty. There was a black spread across the pink sheet, and she knew immediately that this was the cause of the father’s anger.
‘I told you. Don’t do it again! You’re not a fucking baby!’
The words echoed in her head. Her mouth twisted into an expression that turned her pretty face ugly. Michael wouldn’t have recognised her and in that moment she didn’t care. Where was the little boy? Her eyes found him curled up in a corner, his blankets pulled up over his head. No one had changed the sheet. The water behind her eyes boiled.
She left the boy asleep and headed to the lounge. Without a moment’s worry about the man on the other side, she pushed the door wide. The sitting room was a mess. Beer cans littered the floor and several takeaway cartons were stacked on the wooden coffee table and the occasional fork was glued into the left-over food. Some of that had been there a very long time. On the floor beside the chair was a ball of greasy rolled up paper. Fish and chips. Somewhere inside, where Lucy’s mind existed behind the wall of water, she wondered if he’d taken the boy with him when he’d gone out, or simply shut him in his bedroom and growled at him to stay put.
Lights flashed in the corner of her eyes. Or maybe it was just the reflection of sun on the surf.
The man in the chair finally turned his head and stared at her shocked for a moment.
‘What..?’ He didn’t finish his slurred question but got unsteadily to his feet. Lucy could smell the booze on him. It was polluting his water.
Liquid dripped from her hairline and ran down her face in streams like it used to when she would go running with Michael. She flicked her tongue out and tasted it as her clear sea blue eyes locked with his bleary yellow ones. It didn’t taste like sweat. It wasn’t salty. It was as fresh and clear as mountain rainwater. She was pure.
Her pyjamas felt suddenly heavy and she looked down. So that was what was confusing him. The material clung to her naked form, wet and sagging darkly. She was soaking. Rivers of water flooded down her body, briefly forming a pool at her feet before being absorbed back in. She almost laughed. Out through her head, and in through her feet. It felt good though. She felt clean. She looked up. And now she needed to clean up here.
‘Stop hitting the boy,’ she said.
He stared at her for a second longer and then recognition dawned on him. He laughed and the sound was as mean as his smile had been; sharp and empty of any goodness. Lucy could read that laugh. He didn’t care that she was soaking wet or how the hell she got into his flat. She was now just the nutty bitch from upstairs whose husband died and who didn’t know when to leave well alone.
‘Fuck off out of my house.’ He spat his disdain into her face. The running water cleaned it away but she could still feel its slime touching her.
She felt her face contorting into a snarl. This man was scum. This man was wrong. This man would never get better. She took a step closer.
‘In Patmos we speak the patois,’ she said, although she didn’t really know way, and before he could move away she took his face into her soaking hands and released her rage.
When she finally let go the man dropped back into the chair with an unhealthy thud. He wouldn’t be getting up again. His wide eyes stared at her with a frozen disbelief that would be there forever. He looked a lot more sober than he had done when she’d first come into the lounge only minutes ago. Lucy watched him as her skin dried. Maybe death could do that to you.
She felt slightly numb, her head floating somewhere between the two Lucys as it readjusted. She looked again at the man in the chair with a mild surprise. He was dead. She’d touched his face and now he was dead. Her eyes drifted downwards and she saw there were only a few patches still wet on her pyjamas.
She was drying fast.
‘What’s happened to my daddy?’ The voice was soft and scared and lived in the pipes. Lucy turned round to see the little boy standing in the doorway. He started to cry.
Chapter 7
‘And how exactly did you come to be here, Mrs. Miller?’
The police and ambulance had arrived almost simultaneously about ten minutes after she called them. Not bad for London, the confident girl in her head figured. The rest of Lucy just trembled and shivered, much like the little nameless boy was doing in his bedroom. She’d tried to hug him but he’d run away from her. That had made her feel like she was the bad voice in the shower and toilet. She pushed her hair out of her face. It was completely dry.
‘I’d been hearing some noises,’ she said tiredly, leaning against the grimy kitchen worktop as the ambulance men loaded the dead man onto a stretcher in the lounge. ‘I think they were coming up through the pipes or something. It sounded like he was hitting the boy, so I came down to see if everything was okay.’ Her feet itched to be away from there and back in the safety of her own flat. She was starting to feel sick.
‘How did you know to come to this flat?’ Detective McBride was younger than she’d expected. He wasn’t much older than her and was wearing a smart suit, even at this time in the morning. Just promoted, the voice in her head said, and looking down at his overly-polished shoes, she knew that the voice was right. She felt centuries older than this boy in front of her. The voice in her head that sounded like her but more, laughed. You got that right, baby. You got that so right.
‘I’ve seen them coming and going a few times,’ her own voice cut in. ‘Said hello at the mailboxes. That kind of thing. I was pretty sure they were on this floor and then when I got down here the door was open.’ She looked right into the young policeman’s eyes. ‘And I came in and found him dead in the chair.’
The uniformed policewoman appeared in the doorway holding the little boy wrapped in a blanket.
‘The bedroom’s a mess, sir. And he’s got a lot of bruising. Fresh and old. I’ve called social services.’ She spoke softly, but Lucy barely heard her. She was absorbed in the two wide eyes that stared out from the woman’s shoulder. She wondered if he’d ever looked so afraid of his father. I didn’t mean it, she thought, willing him to hear her. I don’t know how it happened. I just wanted to help you.
He didn’t even blink.
‘It seems odd that no one else in the building heard anything.’ McBride frowned and put his notebook away. It didn’t sound like an accusation, just an observation. Since she’d called the police, lights had come on in all the flats, the residents shocked and surprised as the drama unfolded.
‘I know. I’ve been meaning to call the building superintendent. I guess our flats must have been linked by pipes or air vents or something.’
‘Yeah. I suppose you must be right.’
‘And I’m a pretty light sleeper,’ she added. ‘Since my husband died.’
* * *
After what seemed like an eternity but was probably closer to half an hour, they let her pad back upstairs to her own flat. Lucy closed the door behind her and then went to the window. Down in the street colours of all variety flashed on top of cars, and some of the residents had even gone out on the pavement to get a better look.
They gasped silently and pointed as the body came out, and then Lucy spotted the policewoman handing over the boy to a woman in jeans and a big jumper whose car was ordinary.
Lucy thought the gathering crowd were like vultures
. As the woman from social services’ car drove away, heavy rain began to fall, the weighty drops hitting the road like hard pellets. The residents scurried back inside and there was a satisfaction in that. She stared at the falling water for a moment and the satisfaction faded. She drew the curtains tight and leaned trembling against the wall.
What had she done? What the hell had she done? She remembered Crawley spitting at her and she remembered feeling so angry and touching his face. She touched his face and then he was dead. She wanted to cry.
Maybe it wasn’t her. Maybe he’d just died, she thought. Maybe he’d had an embolism or aneurism and it was just coincidence that she’d been touching him when it happened. You tell yourself that sister, you keep telling yourself that. The voice in her head didn’t sound impressed.
Her stomach flipped and nausea washed over her from the feet up. She shivered, her palms suddenly cold and her face sweating. She was going to be sick. Very badly sick. Pain slashed at her belly, and doubled over she stumbled to the bathroom, falling heavily to her knees. She’d have bruises there tomorrow, she thought vaguely as she retched. Her stomach heaved and the water flooded out of her. When she was done, she stared into the bowl, her head in her hands, snot running from her nose.
It wasn’t sea water this time. Not like on Boxing Day. This was dirty water, like old dishwater that hadn’t been emptied away, stale and stagnant. There was a thin layer of grease on top that made her think of fish and chips and Chinese take-aways.
She trembled and sat back on her heels, remembering the wall of water behind her eyes. She remembered standing on the beach and calling the wave. And she remembered standing in the midst of it while everything around her died. She stared into the toilet. It was true. There was no false memory. There had been no blackout. She knelt by the toilet until the sun came up and her knees and ankles were ready to crack with numbness.
She rang in sick to work. Hearing her own voice explaining about the dead man and the beaten child in the flat downstairs she could just imagine the email that would be flying round the office that morning.
Poor Lucy.
Doesn’t she just have all the bad luck?
First Michael, now this.
Most people never see a dead body in their whole lifetime.
She left the curtains drawn and with the duvet pulled up over her head like a cocoon, she trembled and shook for hours. It was true. It was all true. She’d called the wave on the beach and it had never really left her. The water had been with her downstairs. But what had she done to Crawley? How had she killed him?
She thought about the thirst and the dreams and how strange it was they’d gone after she’d been swallowed up in the hot tropical water.
‘I’ll never know why he wanted to go to Thailand in the first place.’ Sylvia Miller’s words haunted her. Under the duvet, the air was hot like the red sand of her dreams. Thailand was never a place she’d really thought about going either. The Maldives, yes. Mauritius, yes. But Phuket? She’d never considered it until those strange couple of months before Christmas. Had she gone there to call the wave, or had the wave pulled her there to call it? Chicken and egg. Which came first? Which was she?
The stronger Lucy in her head was hungry and at about midday she got up and made toast and marmalade. She stood in the kitchen she ate it like a zombie, her jaws chewing and her open lips smacking. The stronger Lucy didn’t really care about which came first. The stronger Lucy relished the powerful liquid pulsing in her veins. The stronger Lucy thought there was no point in crying over spilt milk.
Lucy went back to bed and cried for a while.
* * *
She didn’t go to work the next day either, but she did get out of bed. She pulled her knees up under her chin and sat on the sofa, picking at what was left of her fingernails. She should go to work, she knew that. Jimmy would be worrying about her. But what if someone did something to annoy her? Some stranger in the street? How could she be sure that she wouldn’t do anything? Liquid raced round her body and although it was contained in her skin, she wasn’t sure she was in control.
The stronger Lucy was itching for release and Lucy knew until she had reconciled that voice to her way of thinking she didn’t dare go anywhere. She wasn’t trustworthy. She didn’t trust herself. She drank a long glass of cool soothing water and ordered pizza. She left the money at the door and told the delivery boy to leave the box outside. He didn’t argue or comment. This was London after all. She felt better after she ate.
On the third day the local newspaper came. She’d showered and dressed and had even been thinking about maybe braving a short walk to the little Seven-Eleven at the end of the road. She’d made it down to the hallway to check her mail when she saw it there, sitting innocently on the tidy shelf.
CHILD BEATING FATHER FOUND DEAD IN FLAT
The headline stared at her and she picked up the folded cheap print in sweating hands. Upstairs. She’d take it upstairs to read it. Back to the safety of her flat.
She made herself a thick latte from the expensive machine she and Michael bought but had rarely used and curled up on the sofa. The paper sat beside her and only when she’d finished her drink did she finally open it.
Her eyes scanned the details; widower father, wife killed in car accident two years previously, evidence of drink problems and abuse of his only child, found dead by a neighbour. She lingered over widower. Her heart ached. Not a monster maybe. Just grieving.
Don’t kid yourself, sister. The voice inside sneered at her soft emotions. He was still hitting the boy. That’s not grief, that’s just mean. She flinched a little. Maybe the voice was right, but she didn’t want to be that tough. She didn’t want to lose all empathy, even if it was hypocritical given what she’d done. She read on further until her gaze froze.
‘The precise cause of death is as yet unknown but an unnamed source from within the police claims that although no foul play is evident it appears that the man identified as Nicholas Crawley, suffered a sudden and fatal change in the chemistry of his blood in particular his hydrogen and oxygen levels. How such changes came about continue to baffle the police medical examiner, but there is no apparent risk to the public.’
Lucy read it three times. Hydrogen and Oxygen. For a moment she felt as if she couldn’t breathe, her heart was beating so fast. Hydrogen and Oxygen. H20. Water. She’d messed with the water in his body. She thought of the foulness she thrown up in the toilet when she’d finally got back down to her flat. Was that from inside him?
She was controlling the water.
She thought about that for a moment and then corrected herself. She could do things with water. But controlling it? No. She wasn’t controlling it. She hadn’t wanted to kill Crawley. Well, maybe she’d wanted to hurt him on some level, but kill him? How could she have wanted that?
She hugged her knees and thought about the feeling of Crawley’s face in her hands, and the feeling of the wave enveloping her. She thought of the quarter of a million dead across Asia.
I am become Death.
Hot tears made trails on her face. Somewhere at about her chin level they disappeared, reabsorbed into her skin. She felt it happen.
* * *
It took three days before she could get an appointment with the doctor. She’d thought about going straight to a Harley Street private practitioner but decided against it. They protected their patients too much and would probably just load her up with pills and send her back home and that wasn’t what she wanted. She knew what she needed to do, and impatient as the new Lucy inside was, she also knew it was right. They were no use like this. She needed some down time. To get her head round things.
She didn’t wash or brush her teeth, partly for effect and partly because she didn’t want to touch the water, even though she longed to. She felt betrayed by it. Her teeth were scaly as she ran her drying tongue over them. Her breath was bad, she could taste it, but it could all only help.
No one sat near her in the waiting room.
She didn’t blame them. She looked a mess. She went through everything in her head. She wasn't nervous. All she had to do was tell the truth. In some ways, she was looking forward to it.
Finally in the small surgery office, she let it all come out. She told the poor, tired man on the other side of the desk about the dreams and the thirst. She told him how she’d dragged her handsome husband to the other side of the world to die. She told him how she’d called the wave; she was the cause of the Tsunami that killed a quarter of a million people. She’d done it. It was her. He stared at her in disbelief and tried occasionally to ask a question but she just carried on talking, right over him.
She pulled the crumpled newspaper article out of her pocket, and stabbed at it with a finger, pointing out where she’d highlighted the relevant details that so obviously proved she’d killed him with her power over water.
After a while she ran out of things to say, so she just started all over again from the beginning, her allocated five minutes running into twenty and then thirty as the doctor tried to get her to stop talking. He rang for a second doctor and they stood talking quietly in a corner while she babbled. The Lucy inside her suggested she rock a little backwards and forwards, so she did.
Eventually they called for outside help, and behind her incessant talk of water and death and power, she heard grieving and delusional, and perhaps psychotic and then section for evaluation.
She could have cried and hugged both men. She didn’t though. She just kept on talking and swaying as if they weren’t even there. Even the inner Lucy who had no real truck with this plan was impressed.
* * *
It was so much safer in the hospital. Everything was calm and clean and bright. At first she’d been worried about all the other people, but nothing made her too angry, the drugs saw to that, and so they were safe. Her small room gave her plenty of time to think, and she’d been right in her thinking that this was the best place for her. Even the Lucy inside was coming round to that when she was awake. Which wasn’t that often anymore.
Apocalypse- Year Zero Page 11