by Johnny Mains
When I passed a camera crew one day, a female student from Israel was saying, ‘People are tweeting he’s dead, but he isn’t. That’s just evil. He’s not dead. He wouldn’t leave us like that. He’ll come back, I know he will.’
On day twelve I asked permission to take Annabelle away from the set. I said I thought she needed it, and they bought that. They gave me petty cash to get a hire car. We drove somewhere, only about twenty miles away, but a nice place with a spa, and stayed overnight. We swam in the heated swimming pool. Booked two rooms but slept in one. Didn’t even set foot outside the door one day. Made love ridiculously, non-stop. I called room service and ordered more champagne.
‘Are you paying for this? You can’t afford this.’
I told her it was all on the production company’s dime. Her expression changed completely. I crawled across the bed towards her, said it didn’t matter, did it? ‘So what?’
She prowled the room for her smokes, then said she’d like to drive back to Seagate after lunch.
I said, ‘Fine.’
We didn’t converse over the food. Picking at her salad, she was dived on by some spotty lad from the local rag who asked her about the rumours her husband is dead, that the television company knew it and were covering it up. Annabelle seemed to tighten and wither, covering her face with her hands. I told the moron to get out and get lost, following him through to reception to make sure he did. Outside I caught another guy taking photos through the dining room window with a hefty lens. The two of them stood back and stared me out, like cornered rats, afraid of nothing. Cunts. That explained it. I’d had a weird feeling all day. I’d sensed somebody watching us at the poolside while we swam. I’d thought I saw somebody, back-lit with the sun behind them, but when I’d wiped the water from my eyes they were gone. Like I say, that explained it.
We drove back in silence. When we were five minutes from the hotel Annabelle placed her hand on my thigh.
That evening I couldn’t stand the laughter and music in the bar. I stood overlooking the beach, listening to the sombre toll of his heartbeat coming from the speakers, seeing the iridescent green lines of the projected ECG. Thirty people or more were gathered down there with candles, though whether they were Christians praying for his wellbeing or avid fans I couldn’t tell. Were they proper visitors at all, or was it pre-arranged? You couldn’t take anything at face value any more. What was genuine public reaction and what was part of the schtick? The channel was after ratings, but they were legally culpable too, weren’t they? Wasn’t there some kind of professional duty of care? Could they be sued if he didn’t come out alive? And if something went disastrously wrong, wouldn’t they do everything they could to bluff it out, play for time – just like the reporter was saying?
Children played hopscotch on the sand near the giraffe lights and generator. I shivered at the unbidden fantasy that the trucks would move away, the electrics and machinery towed off, and he’d be left down there though lack of interest, a victim of the viewing public’s fickle apathy. I shivered because I found myself almost willing it to happen.
‘He’s strong.’ Annabelle’s voice, right behind me. ‘You have no idea how strong. He’ll never let down his public. Never. They made him who he is. He’ll never forget that. Never.’
I held out my hand. Pale as paper, she took it. Pressed her lips against mine. When she stepped back she must’ve seen my eyes flicker.
‘Nobody can see us.’
‘I know.’ I turned up my jacket collar and we walked to somewhere out of the icy wind, the little gift shop by the turnstile to the pier that sold fishing bait and postcards.
My teeth were chattering. ‘What are we going to tell him?’
‘When?’
‘When? When he comes out. What do you think I mean?’
‘We tell him nothing, of course. Why would we?’ She looked at me like I was the stupidest, most naïve idiot in the world. ‘Oh, Nick . . .’
‘Don’t be a fucking bitch, all right?’ I turned my back to her.
‘Well, what are you going to do? Tell your girlfriend?’
‘Yes.’
‘No you’re not.’
‘I will. I’m prepared to.’
‘To do what? Throw away what you’ve got?’
I barked a laugh. ‘Got? What have I “got”? I’ve got nothing. You’re kidding. This place? This life? In this dump? It means fuck-all to me.’
‘You don’t mean that.’
‘I fucking do. And don’t act as though all this is bollocks, what we’ve been doing together for the last twelve days, because I know –’
‘Oh, grow up! You’ve had good sex. I’ve had good sex. I’m not saying I haven’t enjoyed – ’
‘Oh, thanks a fucking – ’
‘I just don’t want to take away – ’
‘You’re not taking away anything!’ I turned on her. I’d had enough. ‘For fuck’s sake, you’re bringing. Bringing me everything I’ve ever wanted! Christ. I’ve never felt so . . .’
‘What?’
I choked back the word, then thought, fuck it. ‘So . . . alive.’
Her eyes filled up and her lip curled. ‘Go. Go.’
I knew I wouldn’t be invited to her hotel room that night. I thought I may even have blown it completely. I sat in my room and sobbed. I felt like doing a Keith Moon and tearing the room apart, disgusted with myself that I was so fucking well brought up I’d never do anything that would embarrass my parents. I thought, fuck my parents! I looked down at the ghost-written biography of Kelso Dennett I’d thrown at the wall. It had fallen open at a photograph taken in India. He was fire-walking. Everybody was grinning. He was taking Annabelle by the hand. She was doing it with him, stepping barefoot onto the coals, but she looked frightened to death.
I heard a rap at the door. She took me by the hand and led me down to the beach. She found a secluded spot out of sight of the men in Hi-Viz jackets, under the shadow of the lip of the Promenade, not far from the concrete slipway. She knelt and took me into her mouth. The mixture of hot and cold was explosive. I almost passed out in a shuddering fit. My fingers ran through her hair. It was the colour of seaweed in the spill of artificial lighting. I cried, ‘No.’ I said, ‘No.’ I was facing the grave and she wasn’t. I turned my cheek to the wall and shut my eyes.
At the twenty-day mark, I thought things would settle into a routine as far as the stunt was concerned, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. The tension, far from easing off, was ratcheting up unimaginably. Everyone could feel it, and the callous metronome of those insidiously slow heartbeats – fifteen beats per minute now – did nothing to calm anybody’s nerves.
I was getting blinding headaches. Maybe it was because I was existing on Red Bull to pep me up through a whisky hangover most of the time, or maybe the pressure of lying to Cyd was getting to me. I was flying off the handle and giving excuses why I couldn’t sleep at her grotty one-bedroom flat, cuddled up on stinking nylon sheets. I blamed it on the job, but the truth was I couldn’t stand the sight of her any more with her M&S cardigan and lank, boring hair. I’d say I was going for a walk, but I wasn’t going for a walk, I was going to her. To Annabelle Fox from the fish fingers commercial I used to watch when I was seven years old.
‘Did he really spend months at a Tibetan monastery?’
‘No. Not months. Years.’ She was sitting up, twisted in crisp white sheets in the afterglow. ‘See, what people don’t understand is his body doesn’t matter to him. It’s just an instrument. The mind is what matters. That’s how he got into tattoos and scarification and body modification. Medicine men who put needles through their cheeks and don’t feel a thing. It’s all about physical extremities, pain, distress, fear – whatever – anything to remove you from your sense of self, your sense of mortality.’
‘I’d have thought his mortality would be all too important to him,
down there in the dark, alone.’
She looked at her own reflection. ‘That’s because you’re not him.’
‘Good.’
She didn’t turn to me. ‘It is good.’
We fucked again, deliciously, freer now, and while I was in the bathroom disposing of my used Durex, I heard the sound of a glass smashing. I shouted but Annabelle didn’t answer. When I came back into the bedroom she said it was an accident, she’d dropped it. Although she was in bed and the glass was over on the coffee table. I didn’t say anything, but I had a strange feeling that wasn’t what had happened at all.
Later that night I woke up in the dark of the room. It must’ve been four or five in the morning, but really I had no idea. It scared me that my heart was drumming in my chest. It was inside my ears and it made me think of the heartbeat coming from the speakers down on the beach. At the same time I had a definite, overwhelming sense of a presence. Of someone in the room. Luckily my eyes had opened because if I’d had to open them I wouldn’t have.
A spill of intense yellow came from the bathroom – one of us must’ve left the light on. Illuminated by it stood a figure. A man standing there, arms hanging at his side, simply looking at me. Looking down at the bed. It was Kelso Dennett, dressed exactly as he was when he stepped into the coffin. Naked to the waist, lycra pants, sleeve of tattoos, pentagram, shaved head.
I switched on bedside light.
‘Wha?’ Annabelle rubbed her eyes, contorting against her pillow. ‘Nick? Jesus . . .’ I was blinking too, inevitably – the sudden brightness flooding my vision, a complete searing white-out. ‘What the hell?’
But by the time my eyes had got accustomed to the glare, there was nothing to tell her, because there was nobody there. ‘Fuck. Nightmare. Really bad. Shit. Sorry. Sorry.’ I kissed her. ‘Sorry. It’s gone. Gone . . .’
But it didn’t go.
It didn’t go at all.
The next night I sensed him in the room again. In the exact same place, like a replay. Like the image from the DVD. Except this time I didn’t turn and face him, and this time I could feel him walking slowly towards the bed.
I didn’t open my eyes.
He stayed there for several minutes, but it seemed like hours. Perhaps it was hours. I have no idea.
And I thought: How long has he been there? How many times before and I haven’t noticed? And I tried to close my eyes even tighter, and shut out the sound of his beating heart, but it only seemed to get louder.
The days come, and the nights, and I haven’t told Annabelle what I saw standing by the bathroom door, not that I’m sure what I saw, or even if I saw it. When you think about what you did yesterday, it’s like a dream, isn’t it? If somebody told you it didn’t happen, or it happened differently, you wouldn’t be able to contradict them, would you? All you could say is – well, what would you say? I don’t know.
I don’t know what to say to her. I don’t know whether to ask her to come to my room instead of me going to hers, or whether that will even make any difference. Why should it?
Now, I hardly sleep anyway because I can’t bear the thought of waking in the middle of that night with that feeling of panic in my chest. I can’t bear it because I know who will be there, looking down at me.
Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.
Twenty-nine days now. Thirty tomorrow.
I count them like a prison sentence. With my unblinking eyes fixed on it, the digital clock at the bedside moves past midnight. I can hear her gentle breathing inches away from my back. I feel the aura of another warm body next to me. I cling to her the way a child clings to its mother, and she strokes my hair. She has no idea what is inside my head. She has no idea what is in the room. Now it’s my secret. It’s all about my secret now.
Day thirty-six.
The headaches are worse than ever. I need to go to the doctor. The doctor has to give me something for this. It’s not normal. It just isn’t.
And I know the viewing public is getting excited, but I’m starting to spend all my waking hours thinking what they are going to find when they dig down and bring up his coffin. My stomach knots on a regular basis. Is he going to be dead? Is that his last, greatest trick, after all? The great almighty fuck-you? Then, at other times, I become absolutely certain that when they dig him up, the coffin will be empty.
I’m not sure which of the two eventualities terrifies me the most.
Which is why I dare not sleep any more. I can go four nights without sleep, can’t I? Just four nights. Of course I can. I’ll make sure I can.
Then it will all be over.
I dare not close my eyes. Because shutting them means opening them – and opening them . . . what the fuck will I see?
BBC News (UK)
baffling tv ‘stunt’ ends in horror:
mystery of magician’s ‘final trick’
Thursday 11 April 2013 12.44 BST
DNA tests are expected to confirm that the body found under Seagate beach yesterday – buried in a coffin as part of a stunt by an acclaimed television illusionist – is that of local man Nick Ambler.
Mr Ambler, 28, was the son of hotel proprietor Stuart Ambler and his wife Corinne, and had been working on the production as a runner.
Detectives have said they want as a priority to interview TV magician Kelso Dennett, whose present whereabouts are unknown. They are also urgently seeking his wife, actress Annabelle Fox, to help them with their inquiries.
Famous for controversial and sometimes blasphemous stunts, the showman had returned to his home town claiming, in typically audacious fashion, that he would survive being buried alive for forty days and forty nights. It was only when the coffin was exhumed yesterday that the body of the dead man was discovered.
A spokesperson for Kent Police said: ‘Initial findings indicate that the young man had been in the coffin for the entire forty days. Scratches on the inside of the lid, together with broken fingernails, indicate a desperate and no doubt prolonged and agonising attempt to escape.’
Last night, in the glare of the news cameras, a visibly shaken Mayor of Seagate opened the sealed envelope entrusted to him by Kelso Dennett before he stepped into the coffin forty days earlier. It contained a single sheet of paper, folded once, on which was written just two words in block capitals – the name of the deceased.
That Tiny Flutter of the Heart I Used to Call Love
ROBERT SHEARMAN
Karen thought of them as her daughters, and tried to love them with all her heart. Because, really, wasn’t that the point? They came to her, all frilly dresses, and fine hair, and plastic limbs, and eyes so large and blue and innocent. And she would name them, and tell them she was their mother now; she took them to her bed, and would give them tea parties, and spank them when they were naughty; she promised she would never leave them, or, at least, not until the end.
Her father would bring them home. Her father travelled a lot, and she never knew where he’d been, if she asked he’d just laugh and tap his nose and say it was all hush hush – but she could sometimes guess from how exotic the daughters were, sometimes the faces were strange and foreign, one or two were nearly mulatto. Karen didn’t care, she loved them all anyway, although she wouldn’t let the mulatto ones have quite the same nursery privileges. ‘Here you are, my sweetheart, my angel cake, my baby doll,’ and from somewhere within Father’s great jacket he’d produce a box, and it was usually gift wrapped, and it usually had a ribbon on it – ‘This is all for you, my baby doll.’ She liked him calling her that, although she suspected she was too old for it now, she was very nearly eight years old.
She knew what the daughters were. They were tributes. That was what Nicholas called them. They were tributes paid to her, to make up for the fact that Father was so often away, just like in the very olden days when the Greek heroes would pay tributes to their gods with sacrifices. Nicholas was very
keen on Greek heroes, and would tell his sister stories of great battles and wooden horses and heels. She didn’t need tributes from Father; she would much rather he didn’t have to leave home in the first place. Nicholas would tell her of the tributes Father had once paid Mother – he’d bring her jewellery, and fur coats, and tickets to the opera. Karen couldn’t remember Mother very well, but there was that large portrait of her over the staircase, in a way Karen saw Mother more often than she did Father. Mother was wearing a black ball gown, and such a lot of jewels, and there was a small studied smile on her face. Sometimes when Father paid tribute to Karen, she would try and give that same studied smile, but she wasn’t sure she’d ever got it right.
Father didn’t call Nicholas ‘angel cake’ or ‘baby doll’, he called him ‘Nicholas’, and Nicholas called him ‘sir’. And Father didn’t bring Nicholas tributes. Karen felt vaguely guilty about that, that she’d get showered with gifts and her brother would get nothing. Nicholas told her not to be so silly. He wasn’t a little girl, he was a man. He was ten years older than Karen, and lean, and strong, and he was attempting to grow a moustache, the hair was a bit too fine for it to be seen in bright light, but it would darken as he got older. Karen knew her brother was a man, and that he wouldn’t want toys. But she’d give him a hug sometimes, almost impulsively, when Father came home and seemed to ignore him – and Nicholas never objected when she did.
Eventually Nicholas would say to Karen, ‘It’s time,’ and she knew what that meant. And she’d feel so sad, but again, wasn’t that the point? She’d go and give her daughter a special tea party then, and she’d play with her all day; she’d brush her hair, and let her see the big wide world from out of the top window; she wouldn’t get cross even if her daughter got naughty. And she wouldn’t try to explain. That would all come after. Karen would go to bed at the usual time, Nanny never suspected a thing. But once Nanny had left the room and turned out the light, Karen would get up and put on her clothes again, nice thick woollen ones, sometimes it was cold out there in the dark. And she’d bundle her daughter up warm as well. And once the house was properly still she’d hear a tap at the door, and there Nicholas would be, looking stern and serious and just a little bit excited. She’d follow him down the stairs and out of the house, they’d usually leave by the tradesmen’s entrance, the door was quieter. They wouldn’t talk until they were far away, and very nearly into the woods themselves.