by S. C. Ransom
At the hospital Rob was whisked away into the depths of the A&E, and I was shown into a small family room. It was mercifully empty, so there was no need to pretend any more. I made sure that the door was securely closed before trying again.
“Callum! Please, let me know that you’re OK. I’m here and I need you. Please come.”
I waited, but nothing happened, and the creeping despair that had become so familiar over the last week started to claim me again. He wasn’t there, and I couldn’t fathom out why. Nothing could hold him against his will, he seemed to be able to hear me wherever he was, and he could run much, much faster than any mere human. So why wasn’t he with me? The more I thought about it, the more my mind kept circling back to a nagging fear: that whatever I had done with my amulet to stop Lucas hadn’t only affected him. What if the energy I had produced had got them all, sent them all in sparkling streams down the nearest drain? I looked at the seemingly harmless bracelet. Something subtle had changed; I could practically feel the power in it. The more I thought about it the sicker I felt. What had I done?
I was working my way through the box of tissues on the little table when the door opened and a nurse came in.
“Are you with Robert Underwood?” she asked in a kindly tone. I nodded bleakly. “Are you family or friend? We need to contact his next of kin.”
“I’m just a friend. I lost my phone and don’t even have his mobile number.” I sniffed unintelligibly at her before pulling myself together. His parents needed to be here now. “Could you look in his phone for his parents’ numbers? I’m sure he has them listed.”
The nurse looked at me sympathetically, patting my arm. “We’ll be doing that next. I just wanted to check that you weren’t family before we started. Is that his wallet?” She pointed at Rob’s belongings, which I had carried in from the ambulance. I nodded briefly and she picked up the phone. “You stay in here and I’ll let you know just as soon as he regains consciousness.” Her shoes squeaked on the floor as she left the little room, carefully closing the door behind her.
I slumped back in my chair, drained, wondering what on earth I was going to tell his parents when they turned up. Had they seen the files on his computer? Had he told them what he was doing? Somehow I thought it was unlikely but I couldn’t be sure. My problems could be a long way from over, but they were nothing compared to what Rob was facing. Sighing, I looked at the briefcase lying on the little table in front of me. It was no more than a computer bag really. A laptop bag.
I sat bolt upright, appalled at what I was thinking, but I knew that I had to do it. Taking a deep breath I pulled the case towards me and unzipped it. Inside was Rob’s laptop, and on it would be the copies of the memory card files that Ashley had seen. I could feel my heartbeat racing as I lifted out the computer and pressed the on button. Quickly scanning the hard drive I discovered the videos and heaved a great sigh of relief as I deleted the entire directory. Shutting it all back down as fast as I could, I slipped it back in the case. All evidence of the existence of Dirges was gone.
Suddenly exhausted, I stood up and moved stiffly over to the small water cooler in the corner of the room, favouring my bad arm. The water was icy, and for a second I pressed the plastic cup against my forehead before draining the whole thing in one go. I could feel the cold water hit my empty stomach, and it made me shiver briefly as I refilled it.
“Alex?” The voice was hesitant, but joyful. “Alex, are you OK?”
The cup fell from my fingers unnoticed, drenching my feet. “Callum? Is that really you? Are you here?”
“I’m here, I’m right here. You’re all right, I can’t believe it.”
I could barely make my voice work, the tears were coming so fast, but this time they were tears of relief, of joy, of release. “Yes, I’m fine, just fine.” I grabbed a tissue from the table and blew my nose noisily. “Sorry. I can’t believe that you’re back – what’s been going on?”
“I’m sure that this has been the worst – the absolute worst – day of either of my lives,” he said with considerable feeling.
“I need to see you; let me sit down.” I couldn’t believe it was actually him. I wanted to see his eyes, feel his touch to believe that one part of the nightmare was over. I pulled the little mirror out of my pocket, and found the wires for the headphones, hurriedly tucking them into place. “Where have you been? I’ve been calling you for ages. It’s all gone horribly wrong.” My voice caught as the tears overwhelmed me again.
“Don’t cry, Alex, please.” Callum’s voice was equally strained, and I finally found him perfectly reflected in the mirror. His beautiful, familiar face was etched with pain, his eyes dark, the wayward hair sticking up in all directions. He manoeuvred himself into position looking over my shoulder, his free arm wrapped tightly around me in the mirror. At long last I could feel the whisper of his touch, and everything became too much for me. Tears streamed down my face and my shoulders heaved. He let me cry, murmuring gently to me and stroking my hair.
When the emotion finally subsided I straightened up and mumbled an apology. “I’m sorry, Callum, I didn’t mean to do that; it’s just been so awful.” I reached up to stroke his face, catching the hint of his skin as my fingers skimmed the air around him. “What happened?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing. I’ve not had time to talk to any of the others yet.”
“What do you already know? I mean, have you been around at all?” I pulled yet another tissue from the box and dabbed at my eyes, noticing briefly that the make-up covering my bruises had yet again been washed away.
Callum briefly pinched his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “I’ve been with you for almost every minute, Alex. Every minute I could manage of every day, until today. It’s been complete torture.”
“So you were there at the pub yesterday? You heard what Rob said about Catherine?”
“Yes, and I had a decision to make.” The pain was evident in his voice. “I made the wrong one.”
I looked at him quizzically.
“Rob told you that she was going to Cornwall,” Callum continued. “I saw you at the station first thing this morning and realised what you were going to do. I didn’t want you to be fighting Catherine in Cornwall without me being nearby, but I knew it would take a while to get there, so I set off straightaway.” He gave me his familiar rueful look. “I’m fast, but I’m not Superman. I realised that I wasn’t going to be able to make it all the way there, so I waited at Swindon where I knew the trains would stop, just to check. I hoped that maybe I would find a way to talk to you when I saw you, give you a bit of encouragement, you know.” His arm was back around me, holding me as if he would never let me go. “But it was Catherine I found, and I saw she had an aura, and a really miserable one at that. She clearly didn’t have the amulet with her either; I would have been able to sense it. I thought you’d won, that you’d already fought her and got it back.”
“I wish I had,” I said in a small voice. “She did a deal with Rob and gave him the amulet last night. She must have realised that Cornwall was far enough away to be safe from you all.”
“I’m not surprised she wanted to get rid of the amulet, and the difficulty will have been to do it safely. I tried to make her life as miserable as possible while she was wearing it, but she’s already phenomenally depressed, so it was quite a challenge.”
“So how did you find me? What did you do?”
The pain crossed his face again. “I was on my way back already, running as fast as I could, when I heard a call. I couldn’t quite work it out, because there seemed to be two voices, but one of them seemed to be you. I was so pleased; I thought it meant that you had the amulet back.” He paused for a moment, his free hand dropping down towards my amulet. “I guess I wasn’t the only one who heard the call.”
“No,” I shuddered, remembering.
“Who was it? Who connected with him?”
“Lucas. He—”
“Lucas!” exploded Callum.
“I might have known it was his fault.” His eyebrows knitted together in a huge frown. “Wait till I get my hands on him…”
“But you can’t; he’s gone.”
His beautiful face was a picture of horror. “So that means Rob’s actually…” He didn’t finish, but he didn’t need to. I nodded mutely.
“They said they would come and get me when he regained consciousness. I’m not expecting them back.”
“He will have resisted.” Callum’s lips were pressed together in a tight line as he thought about what had happened.
“Yes, he did. It was horrible, and there was nothing I could do.” My voice caught but I took a deep breath and carried on. “I did try, but Lucas got what he wanted and now he’s gone.”
“So what exactly happened to Lucas at the end?” he finally asked.
“I don’t know. One minute he was standing over Rob and I couldn’t bear it.” My voice was catching again but I had to carry on. “I tried to get between them, to stop him being able to get to Rob, but it didn’t work. All of a sudden Lucas was covered in this sort of glitter. After that he disappeared and the glitter formed a small puddle, which ran into the drain.” I paused, watching it all again in my mind’s eye.
“That sounds odd,” said Callum, frowning. “I mean, that’s not what happened to Catherine. She exploded – the sparks went everywhere.”
“So what did I do to him?”
“I don’t know – maybe he’s gone or maybe you did nothing.”
“Maybe I’ve made him even more cross,” I wondered out loud. It didn’t add up though. From what I had seen I couldn’t imagine Lucas coming back.
“Well, we’ll know tonight, when or if he comes back to St Paul’s. I’ll be waiting for him.” Callum looked murderous.
I sighed. “It’s all such a mess. Rob was greedy, callous and spiteful, but he didn’t deserve this. No one does.”
Callum was looking really confused. “I know he was an opportunist lech, but that’s quite a harsh description. What else did he do to you?”
“Oh, you have no idea. He had my amulet, and he had the memory card, so he was going to expose you all to the papers.”
The confusion still hadn’t left Callum’s features. “Memory card? Am I missing something?”
“Ah, yes, well – I didn’t mention that, did I? No.” I rubbed my free hand over my temples, trying to dislodge the headache that was forming again. “The thing was, when I took the amulet off before, when Catherine made me think that you no longer loved me, I couldn’t bear the thought that every single record of you was about to go from my memory. So, as a sort of back-up, I made a video of me telling your story.” He raised an eyebrow at me but said nothing. “I recorded everything, finding the amulet, how we first met, what you told me about your world. Everything. I put a password on it and put it in the envelope with the amulet, which I gave to Grace.” I paused for a minute, remembering with awful clarity seeing the card on the ground in front of me as Catherine got to work, and shuddered again. “It fell out, and Rob must have picked it up while he was waiting for the ambulance. It wouldn’t have taken him long to break the password. Once he had all that info, all he needed was the amulet and he was on his way to being a rich celebrity.” I couldn’t keep the bitter twist out of my voice, despite what happened to Rob afterwards.
“So what was he going to do with it all? How does that make him rich?”
“He told a publicist he had proof of life after death. He wanted to bribe you all with information about yourselves so that you would reveal yourselves to people over here.”
Callum’s hand was clenched in a tight fist. “I wish I had got here in time. I’d have made him realise that he was messing with something that was none of his business, believe me.” He radiated fury.
“I know, I couldn’t believe it either.” I hesitated a moment before continuing. “He doesn’t deserve this though.”
“No, I guess not,” Callum said tightly, and I wasn’t at all sure he meant it.
We sat in silence for a while, wrapped as closely together as we could manage, waiting for news, but, as I expected, nothing happened. The nurses came and checked on me from time to time, but they had no information about any change in Rob’s condition. I was desperate to leave, to go somewhere where I could be alone with Callum, but I knew that I had to wait and see his parents.
Soon enough they arrived, and after a brief visit to his bedside, they were ushered into the little room with me. I really didn’t know what to say; I couldn’t be sure that he hadn’t told them any of his plans, and I absolutely didn’t know what they might find later on, when they were tidying things up. I swallowed hard at the thought. Later – that meant when Rob was dead, when he finally succumbed to the creeping fog. I could still remember the malevolence lurking in that fog, and I hoped for his sake that his end would be quick. None of us could help him.
Rob’s mother was surprisingly upbeat; the doctors clearly hadn’t got to the stage of declaring him brain dead just yet. She was worried, but her optimistic nature didn’t let her consider any option other than total recovery. I tried hard not to bring her down as she questioned me about what had happened. It seemed that Rob hadn’t told them what he was doing, but there was a trail of evidence that was difficult to explain away. The most difficult was what we were both doing in that square in Soho, and she kept coming back to that. I continued with my story of coincidence, that I had just bumped into him there and moments later he had keeled over, hoping that the repetition would make them believe it. It slowly seemed to be working with his mum, but his dad was less easily fooled.
“What I don’t understand,” he suddenly interjected after sitting in near silence for twenty minutes, “is why he was heading for that building in the first place. And your story,” he looked at me with piercing eyes, “is plainly nonsense.”
I didn’t know what to say, and sat there with my mouth open, panicking, while Rob’s mum looked in confusion between the two of us. “What do you mean?” she asked finally when I remained silent.
“I mean,” said her husband, with considerable feeling, “that Rob had no business with those publicity people, or at least as far as I know he didn’t. So he must have been going there with you.” He jabbed his finger angrily at me. “I don’t buy this coincidence rubbish. What are you up to, and why did you need to involve our Robert?”
My blood ran cold. I had no idea what I could tell him. I knew that if I started to lie I was just going to end up in more and more trouble. Rob was going to die, so there would be the police, investigations, endless questions. I couldn’t possibly sustain a lie through all that. I was going to have to tell him the truth, or at least something close to it. I could feel my eyes brimming over again.
“Tell him Rob didn’t want to tell anyone, including you, that it was his secret.” Callum’s voice was calm and soothing. “Then at least we buy some time.”
It was a sensible idea. I nodded imperceptibly, tears marking fresh tracks down my battered face.
“It was Rob’s idea, honestly. He wouldn’t give me the details, but he had an idea that he thought would make him a celebrity.” I lifted my eyes from the floor and looked directly at his dad. “He told me not to tell anyone, anyone at all, that he was even thinking about it. You’re just going to have to ask him when he comes round.”
Mr Underwood looked furious, straining on the edge of his seat as if he were about to leap towards me.
“Leave the poor girl alone; she’s as upset as we are,” interrupted Rob’s mum, leaning over and patting me on the knee. “As she said, we’ll just ask Robert when we can.” She smiled brightly, almost as if she believed what she was saying.
I couldn’t quite return the smile.
The three of us sat there in near silence for the next hour. Callum left to go and do a quick bit of gathering, promising that he would be back in an instant if I called. I knew it was pointless my waiting, but it seemed callous to leave Rob’s mum. His dad con
tinued scowling at me, sitting back in his plastic-covered chair, arms folded across his pot belly. I glanced at him surreptitiously from time to time; this was what Rob was going to look like when he got to middle age, I realised with a shock. Arrogant and angry and running to seed. Then I remembered that he was never going to make it that far and felt hugely guilty for the thought.
Finally I could take it no longer, and excused myself to go to the bathroom. I stood in the long corridor in the glare of the overhead fluorescents and tried to decide what to do. It was strangely silent but I started to walk up the corridor in the direction that the last nurse had come from. Turning a corner I was faced with a long line of windowed cubicles, most of which had curtains drawn on the inside, but some of which had open doors. Looking purposeful I walked up the line, taking a quick glance into each one that was open. As I went past one cubicle, a man in a white coat and a stethoscope came out hurriedly, looking at his pager as he walked. I nodded at him in greeting and he nodded back, seemingly convinced that I had a reason to be there. I checked through the open door but Rob wasn’t in that one either.
As I walked down towards the final set of doors I could hear the monotonous beeping of a heart monitor, and I was suddenly gripped with fear. I put my head around the door and peered inside. Rob was lying on the high treatment trolley, which had its sides up to stop him falling off. He was hooked up to several machines but seemed to be breathing on his own. I stepped into the room and realised that there was a nurse writing something in a file that was resting on the cupboard at the side. She smiled as she recognised me.