Artifact

by Bowes, K T

  Peter shook his blonde hair in defiance and balled his fists. “You can see her game, Raff! Just dump her!” He shoved the Italian in the chest and met a hard wall of resistant muscle. The atmosphere in the kitchen hiked upwards further, reaching danger levels as Raff shoved his chair out of the way. Jayden felt her chest tighten as the situation overpowered her. Fear moved in waves through her body and froze her muscles while heightening her nerve endings. Her chest locked and she panicked, her lungs refusing to release the stale oxygen. As Terror smirked with glee and settled on her head, exacerbating her feelings of helplessness with a chilling nail raked down her spinal cord; Jayden bolted.

  The frightened woman reached the street without her coat or scarf, snatching the long leather boots on her way through the front door. Overwhelming fear engulfed her, holding her captive and creating a sickening blindness as she stood on the cobbles and zipped her right boot. Her sock felt wet inside. She raked her hands over her face, no longer sure where to run to escape. Her demons caused her to flee without regard for her own safety in the darkness of the city, goading her on with snickered threats and memories of another, angry, persistent male. Once outside in the freezing night air, the influence of Fear grew, snaking around her shoulders with its scrawny withered arms as she faced the mile home by herself. Raff’s promised lift forgotten, Jayden fingered the phone and door key in her trouser pocket and rued her lack of cash for a taxi. Steep Hill loomed ahead of her, a dangerous, cobbled descent with shadowy corners into which she could be dragged unnoticed.

  With a sob of panic which delighted the fluttering demons, Jayden set off running towards the overwhelming call of her apartment. Her heels clicked against the cobbles and steep pavement and her legs felt like jelly before the first turn. The gradient yanked at her calf muscles and she panted with the exertion needed not to fall flat on her face. She reached the sharply angled window of the Reader’s Rest bookshop and gripped the icy sill, seeking to halt the perilous, uncontrolled downward descent. The distance closer to home emboldened her and she heaved in a ragged breath, eager to press on. Then she heard footsteps behind her, quick and determined.

  The blindness descended again. She ran, her ankles twisting on the high heels and her legs complaining at the enforced angle. Down and down she plummeted, keeping upright only through sheer bloody mindedness and a primeval need for self-preservation. Her fingers ached from catching hold of stone windowsills worn by centuries of other grasping hands descending the dangerous hill. She snagged a nail and felt the skin rip.

  “Wait up!”

  Jayden heard the cry and increased her speed, the urgency in the male voice jangling her nerves and driving her faster. But the descent was treacherous at the best of times and her speed worked against her. On a long, straight part of the hill, Jayden felt herself lose control and cannoned sideways into a guard rail, falling to her knees. Her left hand gripped the smooth, hand-worn metal above her head, yanking her arm upwards and inducing bolts of tension through her shoulder muscle.

  Ed puffed up to her, his cheeks lit pink in the streetlights. “Didn’t you hear me calling you?” His tone oozed irritation, but he offered Jayden his hand. She studied it hard, looking for weapons before searching his face for ill intent. “Just give me your bloody hand!” he demanded, flexing his fingers and then dragging her up by the forearm. Her bruised knee caps felt skinned and sore through the rough material of her slacks and the grey flagstones stared back without compassion at another foolish victim of their gradient. For a moment, Jayden bent at the waist as though someone had cut her strings from above. It bought her time to search for control as the clock marched through its cycle.

  When she stood upright, she swallowed at the expression of anger in Ed’s eyes. Pursed lips writhed against his teeth as he studied her with suspicion. Embarrassment ran through her veins and she distracted herself with temporary busyness. Shaking hands rubbed at the knees of her trousers and her fingers found torn cloth. “I’ll be fine,” she said, studying the tear. “It’s not far now.” Hearing only a hiss of irritation, Jayden stood up straight and braced herself for Ed’s rebuke. As the earth revolved nonchalantly, tethered to its predetermined axis, Jayden held her breath and waited, her rosebud lips a petulant line.

  “Are you two-timing my brother?” Ed asked, his voice a rough exhalation.

  “What?” The question knocked Jayden sideways and her pretty face betrayed a stunning lack of guile.

  “No.” Raff’s dirty secret bit her on the backside and her eyes flashed with vengeance. He’d done it again.

  Ed’s blue eyes narrowed and a flickering Victorian street lamp nearby caused his sapphire irises to dazzle and glimmer. His head bounced just once on his neck, acceding albeit with reluctance. “Whatever you say.” He eyed Jayden with suspicion and something else which he shrouded from her, leaving only its imprint in the air between them.

  “I’ll be fine from here,” she stated, injecting false calm into her voice and knowing even as she spoke the words, her enlarged pupils betrayed her fear of the darkened street.

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” Ed’s words fuelled mixed emotions in the woman’s heart, forcing rebellion to vie with reassurance. Seizing her cold and reluctant fingers in his warm, strong ones, he pulled her towards him and set off, striding down the slippery cobbles with surefooted confidence.

  A relentless drizzle spattered the world, carelessly speckling the earth with yet more of its generosity. It forced Jayden to cling to Ed’s arm, dismayed to feel only a light shirt sleeve under her palms as the soles of her boots struggled with their greasy hold on the cobblestones. Their comical progress ended after only five minutes, arriving at Jayden’s front door soaked through their clothing to the skin. The saturated flimsiness of Ed’s white shirt clung to expanses of his chest and shoulders in an uncomfortable embrace, betraying a powerful chest. A mortifying moment of awkwardness punctuated the horrendous evening and Jayden entered her sanctuary with a wave and a grimace after fumbling with her door key. “Thank you,” she said, dismissing her saviour. “I would’ve been fine.”

  Ed kept his thoughts to himself, waving fecklessly with a hand dripping rainwater. He set off back up the High Street at a steady jog. Jayden leaned her spine against the inside of the front door and pondered her hasty exit, which inadvertently left Raff alone with his furious partner. “Serves you right for dragging me into your lies again,” she whispered to the empty hallway. Her fingers tingled from the cold and she remembered the lightness of Ed’s touch on her hand and arm. “Even your own brother left you to it,” she sighed. Her lips quirked upwards at Ed’s choice to see her home rather than fight his brother’s battles, but his question stilled any delight. She snorted with disdain and mimicked Ed’s question. “Are you two-timing my brother?” The attempt at replicating his deep baritone brought her no pleasure. “Yeah, mate,” she sighed. “You have no idea.”

  As thoughts of Raff threaded through Jayden’s brain, she bit back the bubbling irritation at his treatment of her. She seemed so easily displaced from friend to prop in his deceptive play act of a life and she shook her head at his disrespect. She used her phone to send him a spiteful text, missing characters because of her chilled fingers, which only made her angrier.

  ‘Never again! I hate you!’ she typed. ‘That was too much.’

  Only a hot shower eradicated the ice from her bones but nothing expelled the disappointment of duplicity. Raff’s deception painted Jayden as a serial fornicator and she rued the smearing of her reputation. She snuggled down in her comfortable double bed and stilled her mind through practiced methods, making pointless forays into the land of healing slumber.

  Chapter 6

  Jayden put her key into the lock and turned it, feeling a peculiar sensation which caused the hairs on the nape of her neck to prickle in warning. It was a feeling she used to get when the girls at school had whispered about her behind their hands, their desire for gossip outweighing the need for decency or kindness.
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br />   Jayden turned, shaking off Humiliation and scanned the dark street, raking the passing faces for someone showing a particular interest in her. People dashed by, hardly noticing the woman in the dark coat, smothered in the shadows between two brightly lit stores. They bustled with purpose through the cold, eager to get home to warm, lit houses and the promise of dinner.

  Jayden looked back to the lower slopes of the pedestrian walkway as it narrowed slightly, to navigate the ancient city walls which poked up like ramparts at the edges of the modern flagstones. The twenty-first century marched quickly past the roughened stone, originally laid by hand and crafted into incredible structures such as the ancient Stone Bow, the original gate into the city. The rushing Lincoln commuters merely bobbed their heads in acknowledgement of its vital historical value, paying it scant lip service as long as no part of it impeded their progress.

  Jayden sighed and pushed the front door open. Then it came again, that sixth sense warning her. From her vantage point on the third step she swivelled her head and then she saw him. Down by the Stone Bow, whose gnarled and ancient bricks had slowed entry to the city for centuries as it glared down at the River Witham’s murky depths, was the dark figure of a man. As her eyes settled on his face, she felt the breath go out of her in one terrifying gush of air and adrenaline took over, surging through her like acid, galvanising her and giving her options.

  Part of the frightened woman wanted to hurl her bags to the ground and run after him, hit him and hit him until his pulped body slid into the dark river, erasing him from her life forever. But the bigger part, the sensible, rational part, urged her to go inside and slam the door against him. As her frantic eyes focused on him again, he turned and blended into the crowd like drifting fog and was gone from view. Jayden felt physically sick.

  Realising her vulnerability abruptly, she kicked away envelopes littered on the floor behind the front door, where the postman had pushed them through the letterbox and spun around to close the door firmly behind her. She met resistance. At first, her brain told her that it was just the rug sticking, or the letters in the way, or something else that was making the door impossible to shut. But then Fear launched itself at her sense of reason and she let out a gasp of horror as she knew without a doubt, that somebody else was on the other side.

  Jayden put her full weight behind and gave it a vicious shove, wanting with all her might to prevent that ‘somebody’ from gaining entrance and hurting her all over again. She heard herself cry out in anguish and a muffled sound erupt from the other side. Blood surged and pounded so loudly through her ears and brain that she was completely deaf and it wasn’t until she heard her name being called that something snapped inside her head. The person on the other side was calling her new name, ‘Jayden’ not her old name. Surely he couldn’t possibly know that?

  Hesitation gave her opponent an opportunity and with a mighty shove, the door jabbed inwards and slammed Jayden back against the narrow hall wall. She was winded and terrified as the tall shape of a man entered her safe place. He was dressed from head to toe in black material which shone peculiarly in the glow of the street lamps outside. His head was completely covered and Jayden’s breath came in snatches as she closed her eyes and slid down the wall. She had known this moment would come and there was a sense of peaceful acceptance that arrived with it. Not of welcome, but more a nodding acquaintance with her fate. “Jayden, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to shove it that hard, but I could hear you calling out. I thought there was somebody in here with you and I...crap Jayd; I’m really sorry.”

  The man’s voice didn’t sound like his. It was deeper and more together. Had she really been crying out? Jayden concentrated on breathing and focused on the extraordinary fact that she wasn’t going to die right then. It gave her such a feeling of relief that she cried loudly and unashamedly, tears dripping down her face and bouncing off the fluffy lapels of her coat. She heard the click of the front door and the clatter of the motorbike helmet being removed and set down on the red quarry tiles. Ed’s muscular body sank down next to her and he placed an arm awkwardly around her shoulders, pulling her into him gently at first and then when she didn’t resist, dragging her in more firmly.

  He kept apologising. He said sorry close to forty times as they sat cuddled together on the cold floor tiles downstairs and another thirty once they had made it upstairs to the flat. Jayden said very little in response, allowing him to follow her upstairs and into the living room, but leaving him there to climb up to the next level, seeking solace in her bedroom. Once there, she stripped off her work clothes, discarding the smart grey suit over her bed and donning jeans and a comfy sweater. She examined her face in the mirror of the ensuite finding it blotchy and mottled from her extended bout of crying.

  Jayden rinsed her cheeks with cold water and face-wash, drying roughly on an expensive maroon towel as if in punishment for her face’s betrayal of her. Ample black eyelashes shrouded green eyes, which sought to protect and shield her from the world. Teardrops and water mingled on them, leaving tiny diamond-like sparkles as temporary disco decorations. She pulled her long curly hair free of its clips and let it hang down around her face and shoulders like protective curtains and ventured back out into the bedroom.

  She was astounded to find her visitor waiting for her there and it gave her heart another little kick of fear. Ed stood by the bed looking utterly lost and a steaming mug of something teetered dangerously in his hand as he looked frantically for somewhere to put it. Jayden’s eyes darkened as she felt incensed at the man’s ignorant penetration of her safety. “You can’t be here!” she exclaimed at him and his hand wobbled in surprise at the aggression in her voice. Hot liquid slopped out of the mug and onto the wooden floorboards at his feet. He had managed to extract himself from his tight black leather motorbike gear and sturdy boots and seemed more rumpled in his jeans and white tee shirt. There was a large hole in the toe of his right sock and it made him appear deceptively vulnerable.

  Jayden’s brain shouted warnings at her which she frantically tried to process. She was a counsellor and dealt with people under stress every day of her working life. She understood better than most, the destructive patterns of behaviour that threatened victims of extreme trauma. She had done this so many times before, fought her demons with determination and courage and yet here they were again, laughing in her face with the same old tapes playing on repeat in her brain. With an exhausted sigh, she slumped down on the double bed and put her face in her hands.

  Her hair moved slightly in the draught that Ed’s movement caused as he gently put the dripping mug on the floorboards next to Jayden’s foot. She heard the swish of denim as he went into the ensuite and returned with some toilet roll to mop up his spills. He was very close to her as he lifted the mug, wiped the bottom and then put it back down. His ministrations over, he seemed unsure what to do next. Making a decision, he sat down next to her on the bed without touching her and then to Jayden’s great annoyance, flopped backwards across her bedspread.

  Jayden glanced sideways at him, seeing how his tee shirt had come untucked from his denims. A black leather belt threaded through the loops on his jeans and a detailed buckle fastened at the centre. It had an attractive metal horse galloping across the leather, taking up almost the entire width of it. Jayden stared at it and wished that she was a horse, able just to run away. His stomach was brown and smooth, a snake of dark hair running from his belly button down into his jeans. An ugly appendectomy scar poked tantalisingly above the belt, an unfortunate crease of dented, stitched skin on an otherwise unblemished canvas.

  “I need to make a phone call,” Jayden said abruptly and, grabbing the mug of tea, made her way down the staircase to the floor below. Ed had brought her handbag upstairs and laid it on the dining table at the kitchen end of the room. With hands that shook a little less, Jayden found her mobile phone inside one of the pockets and dialled a number. “Hi, May,” she said gently when the call was answered by a woman’s lilting voi
ce on the other end, “How is Mum today?”

  The woman’s reply seemed to bring comfort, even though she shouted slightly down the phone in a constant denial of her own deafness and as Jayden listened, her shoulders visibly relaxed and a grateful smile touched her pretty lips, turning her at once from defensive to beautiful.

  “Hi Mum,” Jayden intoned with tenderness as another wavering voice came down the phone in reply. “How are you today?” She nodded silently as her mother recounted her day, including all kinds of little details offered with a childlike enthusiasm. Jayden began to feel calmer at the sound of her mother’s familiar voice. Hannah’s gentle, lilting accent worked its way through her daughter’s veins like a balm as she chatted about her trip to the beach yesterday and the ice cream that she and May had eaten on the promenade. Jayden was relieved for in those moments, she had her parent back and it was a blessed and precious tonic for the young woman. “Mum,” she said quietly, “I think Nick might be out...Mum...Mum?”

  She heard the clatter as the house phone hit the tiled floor of the old cottage in Aberystwyth. There came a cacophony of noises that caused Jayden to put the phone away from her ear in distaste. Then a disjointed, concerned voice came shouting back out of it. “Lily? Lily? Are you still there?”

  Jayden put the phone back up to her ear. “Still here May. What happened?”

  “I don’t know my love, your mother just threw the phone on the floor and walked away. It’s a shame. She’s been so lucid today; I had begun to think that...never mind. It’s just the way of this disease isn’t it? Lulls us into a false sense of security and then breaks us down again.”