by Kim Newman
Constant, the snick man, took a large laundry sack out of the van and held it open.
It was a warm day. Faces were pressed to office windows all around the courtyard.
Constant held the sack open wide.
A long pause. Keith saw the snick in Constant’s eyes and unbuckled his belt.
‘Shoes first, I suggest,’ said Leitch.
Keith undid his trainers and dropped them in the sack.
‘Good lad,’ said Constant.
Keith undressed and put all his clothes into the sack. He was conscious, standing naked, of the stone he’d gained in his thirties. Constant dropped the sack in a bright orange waste bin.
Keith started to protest.
‘Out with the old,’ said Leitch. ‘It’s important. Lie down, please.’
Keith got onto the stretcher. It was exactly his size. Constant drew a thin sheet over him and then, with the help of the other assistant, swiftly fastened straps over the sheet.
‘It’s so you won’t hurt yourself,’ said Leitch. ‘We’ve a long journey.’
Keith tested the straps. He was held securely. He should have taken his chances with the snick man and made a run for it. Back into the office, out of one of the street doors, into the crowds.
Then what? He apparently had no money, no credit, no car, no business, no home.
The stretcher slid back into the van. The roof cut out the sky. The doors were shut and fastened. The strap across his throat prevented him lifting his head more than a few inches.
He heard Leitch and his assistants get into the fore compartment of the van and felt the engine turn over.
* * *
The windows in the back of the van were opaque white plastic, letting in light but no information. Gratton, the attendant, sat out of Keith’s sightline, walkman giving out a muted snare drum.
The van travelled over roads of differing qualities, at various speeds. It got shady and then dark, as afternoon passed into evening. A light was turned on. He shut his eyes against its harshness. His mind raced so fast at the beginning that he lost the sense of time. Hours had passed. He didn’t know in which direction he was being driven.
Why had they done this to him? Was Ro having an affair with Vince? Were his wife and partner scheming to oust him? It seemed more extensive than that, as if everyone he knew were in on the game. They had his kids’ signatures, in crayon.
Who was Leitch?
Even now, he couldn’t remember the man’s face.
‘Nearly there, sunshine,’ said Gratton.
The attendant leaned over into Keith’s field of vision, and checked him.
‘Is that an earring?’ Gratton asked, pinching his lobe.
Keith nodded. He had got his ear pierced last year, when Jennifer had hers done. She’d wanted to do her nose, but he’d put his foot down.
Gratton gently took out the stud and palmed it.
‘All for the best, mate,’ he said.
* * *
The van parked and the engine shut off. The quiet was unnerving after the lulling grind of the engine. The doors were wrenched open. Keith smelled the country: damp, vegetable, earthy.
It could be Cornwall or Wales or – depending on how late at night it was – Yorkshire. If it were Scotland, night would have passed and it would be the next day.
The stretcher was pulled out of the van. He saw sharp points of light in the black of the sky. Away from town, the stars were brighter.
‘A good trip, Keith?’ asked Leitch.
Keith turned his head and didn’t reply. Leitch stood by the van, looking over a clipboard.
‘We’re far from the madding crowd out here,’ said Leitch. ‘A lot of therapy is getting away from it all. It sounds like old hat, but you’ll be surprised how effective it can be. Everything put into perspective. Things seem clearer.’
He indicated the stars. Keith felt cold.
‘Let’s go inside, shall we?’ Leitch said, as if Keith had a choice. ‘It’s a homey old place.’
Beyond the van was a house, set in its own grounds but not a mansion. Trees grew close to the walls, which were buckled a bit by thrusting roots. A fluorescent globe light shone over the front doorway.
The house was at the end of a gravel driveway. Keith was carried by Gratton and Constant, who were careful not to let the undercarriage castors of the stretcher sink into the gravel. He looked left and right. A thin row of dark trees lined one side of the drive. A long, low, prefab-looking building was on the other, like a factory or college annexe.
The stretcher was slid up a ramp placed on the front steps and the woman, Heather, opened the doors. The attendants set the stretcher down. Leitch himself unbuckled the straps.
Keith could have gone for his throat.
But maybe that was the test. If he so much as flinched, tasers would come out and he’d be zapped unconscious.
He needed to pee. And he was shivering.
‘We’ll get you something to wear,’ said Heather.
Keith sat up. He was in the hallway of what felt like a small hotel. A corkboard hung on one wall, opposite a mirror in an ugly old frame.
Heather helped him off the stretcher. He hugged his sheet to him. He was led into a small sitting room, where an imitation-log electric fire was on. Heather opened a drawer in an old chest and gave him a pair of off-white woolly socks, drawstring-waisted tracksuit bottoms, a yellow pajama jacket and a mouse-coloured dressing gown without a cord. She turned away as he got dressed. The clothes had a hospital feel to them, soft as if washed too many times, slightly stale.
‘There,’ she said, looking at him, ‘aren’t you handsome.’
It was something you’d say to a child or a very old person. It wasn’t meant.
Leitch looked in. He approved of Keith’s clothes.
‘Early to bed, with no supper, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘There’ll be breakfast tomorrow. Then we can start.’
Keith was led upstairs to a dormitory room with six beds, all empty.
‘We’re not too busy now,’ said Heather. ‘All the better for you. You’ll have all of us to yourself, working on your behalf.’
He was laid down on a bed, professionally.
‘Let me see your hands,’ Heather said.
He showed her his manicured nails. She smiled and clipped a plastic noose around one wrist. It ratcheted tight and connected to the bed-rail. The bed, he now realised, was bolted to the floorboards.
‘Just to be extra-safe,’ Heather said.
She turned out the lights, and left the room.
He still needed to pee. He wasn’t tired enough to sleep. He wanted to shout. He pulled the plastic cuff, testing it. He could get a foot or so of play in the line, but that cinched the noose into his wrist. Once notched up, it couldn’t loosen.
He could roll off the bed, and did. That pulled loose the sheets and blanket – he hadn’t slept under anything but a duvet in years – and exposed him to a wicked draught. The room was dark, but he could feel under the bed. He found a plastic beaker, about a litre size, lowered his tracksuit bottom one-handed, and peed noisily into the container. Then he rearranged himself, and tried to get the bedclothes straight. He lost the top sheet and found scratchy blanket against his face and hands.
He didn’t think he slept, but between one blink and the next it was light in the room. He was woken by a snick that gave him a panic spasm. Constant stood over him with his shears. Keith could move his arm, and realised Constant had cut the plastic tie. Constant snicked the air.
* * *
Should he eat the cooked breakfast? It might be drugged.
‘I wouldn’t let that go to waste, mate,’ said Gratton.
Keith looked down at the plate. Full English.
He hadn’t eaten since yesterday’s quick lunch. Hunger was a claw in his stomach.
He tucked in.
‘There’s lovely.’
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten anything fried. It was one of Ro’s health
policies. His body no longer had a tolerance for grease.
The small dining room was attached to a plant-filled conservatory.
Keith looked around, itching for something.
‘No papers, I’m afraid,’ said Gratton, realising before Keith what it was he was missing. ‘Can’t be doing with distractions. Let the outside world roll on by itself. You have to concentrate on your own problem.’
‘I don’t have any problem.’
Gratton smiled, tolerantly. ‘You’re here, aren’t you? You must have a problem.’
Leitch stepped into the room. He wore a white jacket over jeans, and a big smile.
Keith was suddenly furious.
‘What the hell is this all about? Why the hell am I here?’
Leitch sat down at the table, poured tea from the metal pot, shook a thin sachet of sugar.
‘Those are questions you have to ask yourself, Keith. You’re a clever man, so you know that you know the answers. But clever people can hide things from themselves. Stupid people can’t, you know. Their one great advantage. Do you think you’ve been hiding answers from yourself?’
Keith genuinely didn’t understand the question. ‘That makes no sense.’
‘Indeed. If you realise that, there’s a chink. You’re here to make sense of it.’
‘Where’s “here”?’
Leitch poured sugar into his tea.
‘Not important,’ he said. ‘The map name wouldn’t mean anything to you. Don’t look out. Look in.’
He made fists and held them together against his chest.
‘All the way in, Keith.’
Keith looked around the room, past Leitch’s eyes, wondering if there was movement in the conservatory, calculating his chances of making a dash. He looked back at Leitch’s bland face, and pushed back his chair.
Beyond the plants, windows were open. He felt a breeze.
He stood up, stretched.
‘Good grub,’ he said, and ran, tipping the table aside.
He felt a thump in his side, then real pain. An expert jab to the kidney. Gratton held him up, so he didn’t fall. Keith’s legs were unstrung. Pain ran up and down the entire right side of his body.
Leitch still held his teacup.
‘I’m disappointed, Keith,’ he said, sincerely. ‘You only hurt yourself by refusing to admit that you have a problem. I thought we were making progress, but I see that you were playing the cunning game, hiding in your burrow, squirrelling away nuts for the winter. You’ve let yourself down. And people depend on you, Keith. Love you, need you. Rowena, Jennifer and Jake, Vincent, Mary, all of them. People you don’t even think you know depend on you. Clients, officials, tradesmen, suppliers. They all want only for you to get better, to take your place. This isn’t torture, it’s therapy.’
Keith was able to get a footing again. His sock-swaddled feet were flat on the tiles. The pain was going.
‘You must understand.’
Keith didn’t say anything. He couldn’t bring himself to nod.
‘You must.’
Another blow, in the same spot. He’d have doubled up, but he was held fast.
‘Early days yet,’ said Leitch.
* * *
Still in the loose clothes he had been given last night, Keith was escorted out of the house and into the long, hut-like building. The windowless space had an old animal smell.
Overhead lights fizzed on. The building had no interior walls or partitions. In pools of light, basic furniture was arranged in basic configurations. It was like a rehearsal hall, with rough stage sets laid out. There were people here, mostly gathered at the far end, where there was no light.
Heather sat at a kitchen table, opposite an empty folding chair. She wore a dressing gown it took Keith a moment to recognise as Ro’s.
He turned to Leitch and got no clue.
Gratton walked Keith into the scene and sat him down.
‘Keith,’ Heather said, ‘this can’t go on. The kids have noticed, things have been said at school.’
Keith looked at the woman as if she were mad.
‘Say something, damn you,’ she said.
She was doing Rowena, perfectly. The old accent still there, smoothed out by elocution lessons. Heather touched her hair, an exact Ro mannerism.
‘You’re frightening me,’ she said.
Keith looked back at Leitch and Gratton. His side still ached.
‘You’re not my wife,’ he said.
Tears started in her eyes. ‘Keith,’ she remonstrated, almost whining, looking away, making as if to slap the table, then covering her face.
‘But you’re not,’ he protested.
The woman began to sob, uncontrollably.
When Rowena’s brother was killed in a car accident, she had been exactly like this. Then, he had tried to comfort her, to get close, to make it better.
Now, he froze.
Heather – not Rowena! a stranger! – tore her hair, clawed her face, screamed and cried, leaked gummy fluid from her eyes and nose. He folded his arms, cold inside, and watched the act.
He couldn’t take this any more.
He stood up, and turned. This was just a silly game.
Where Leitch and Gratton had been standing were two smaller people, Jake and Jennifer. Not stand-in midgets. Their faces were round with horror, appalled at what they had seen.
‘Daddy,’ said Jennifer, reaching out.
‘No,’ said Jake, holding his sister back. ‘Remember, we agreed.’
Leitch was with his children.
‘This is low,’ Keith said. ‘Really low.’
The woman was still making a scene, collapsing into quieter, exhausted sobs that racked her entire body.
‘This isn’t Mum,’ he told his kids. ‘This is make-believe. I’ll get you out of here, I promise. I won’t let them hurt you.’
He stepped towards his children. Damn the kidney-puncher. He’d take anything for Jake and Jennifer. It wasn’t just him in this trap now. He had to protect the kids.
He really saw their faces and froze.
They were terrified of him. Jennifer broke away from Jake, and ran to Leitch, burying her face in his jacket. He cuddled and soothed her. Jake held his ground, and looked up at Keith, mouth set, defiant. He was white with terror.
‘Dad, don’t…’
The lights went out and came on again.
* * *
He was in another rough set, conforming to the layout of his office, sat in front of an old unconnected television set and a manual typewriter. At the edge of the light, Leitch watched, taking notes.
There were no other ‘actors’.
Keith tried to think through the problem. He wanted to call in Vince, to hash it all out. They could crack almost anything.
He had heard of these things. Interventions.
But they were for people with serious drug problems, alcoholics, and addicts of self-destructive behaviour. Weak people who excused their bad behaviour by blaming it on irresistible compulsion. Randy bastards who called themselves sex addicts, fat fools who said the Devil made them eat too much, downright crooks who alleged poor toilet training made them steal car radios. Keith was not like that at all. He was just ordinary.
He followed Leitch’s advice and looked in, searching for a reason.
Until yesterday, he hadn’t had any serious problem. If anything, his life had been well above average. Vince, though it didn’t hinder him in the business, was in much worse personal shape, divorced and estranged from his daughter. There were no hiccoughs in Keith’s marriage. He had even been secure enough to tell Ro that Mary had a little crush on him. The kids were great, getting on well in school (and terrified of him) and Ro was contemplating going back to work, not just for the money. But because she wanted to.
Financially, they were set up. No hidden holes in the accounts. No money bleeding out anywhere (that he knew of).
Imagining images on the dusty screen of the pretend computer, he ran scenarios. Vince was
in worse shape than Keith had thought, mixed up with one of his daughter’s mad slut friends, spending more and more to keep above water, concealing the drain on the business. Vince knew he’d be found out soon, and had set things up so it all seemed to be Keith’s fault. His partner, his best friend, had framed him, projecting his own troubles.
Did Vince resent Keith that much? Resent his undivorced wife and unestranged children?
It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t not be true.
Leitch stepped into the light, and sat down on a swivel chair.
‘Let’s talk business,’ he said.
Had Vince fooled Leitch? Or was the therapist in on it? Keith had to try least-worst scenario first.
‘It’s not me, it’s Vince,’ he said. ‘Look closely. Who called you in? Who showed you the books? This is a setup, a conspiracy. Cui bono?’
Leitch looked genuinely sad.
‘Keith, Keith, Keith… listen to yourself. Ask yourself if even you believe yourself. Look at it like the daily crisis, attack it. Think it through.’
Keith spent too much time with Vince. There was no space in his partner’s life for the scam he’d imagined.
‘If not Vince, someone,’ he said to Leitch. ‘You, maybe.’
‘I only want to help you face your problem.’
‘I haven’t got a sodding problem! How many times do I have to say it?’
‘How many times can you say it, Keith? How many times before it sounds as fake in your ears as in everyone else’s?’
‘I haven’t got a problem, I haven’t got a problem, I haven’t…’
Leitch was right. It did sound fake. Clearly, Keith had a problem, or he wouldn’t be here. It was just that the problem wasn’t with Keith. It was with…
‘Everyone else,’ said Leitch. ‘The whole rest of the world is wrong, and you’re right. Hold that up to the light, Keith. Think. Take that step. Admit the problem, and perhaps there’s a way past…’
He heard the unforced sincerity in the man.
He was letting them all down, he knew. Somehow. In a way he really couldn’t see.
But no. He wasn’t a boozer, on drugs, a gambling nut, screwing around, abusing his kids, dragging the business down. He just wasn’t.
He couldn’t think of a problem.
‘Leitch, I don’t know what you want me to say.’