The Other Lives

by Adrian J. Walker

  We walk a few paces and pause at the stove, and for a pleasant moment I imagine my father entering the door behind us with supplies from the local shop. But then we hear it: a thud from upstairs followed by my father’s pained grunt. Then another, and muffled voices. Zoe grips my arm.

  I lift a brass poke from the fireplace and we creep to the staircase. The creaks don’t matter because by now the sound of whatever is happening to my father is too loud. I stop at the bottom of the ladder to the attic, looking up. Shadows swing in the candlelight, fast-moving and precise. My father cries out as another blow is dealt. He spits and growls, but he doesn’t whimper. I am painfully proud of him.

  I begin the climb. The ladder is solid and makes no noise. I stop as my head reaches the hole, steel myself and look inside. There, bound to a chair, is my father. One of his eyes is fat and bleeding, and more blood streams from his nose and mouth. He looks up at the tall, hawkish man above him: Hunt’s man, sent to kill me.

  He raises his arm again, but I launch myself into the room with a roar. Halfway across I stumble, but I find my feet, swing the poker and bring it down against the side of the man’s head. He crashes against the shelves behind him, sending the books and boxes tumbling.

  ‘Elliot!’ my father cries.

  I turn and swing again, but the man ducks and my blow becomes a harmless swipe. A gold tooth glints from his grin as he steadies himself to launch for me, but before he can, Zoe is there with a coal shovel, which she has slammed into his face. He stumbles back, dazed and staring at Zoe in surprise. He explores his mouth, sees blood on his fingers, and his surprise turns to rage.

  I raise my poker again, but I’m too slow and he slams me with a left hook that sends me flying against the chimney.

  I’m deaf. My eyes can’t focus. Somewhere I can hear my father’s voice, and I look up at a room that’s struggling to make sense of itself. Through the shifting colours, I see a pistol pulled from a jacket by a long, sinewy hand.

  ‘Zoe,’ I say. ‘Run.’

  She drops the shovel and runs for the ladder.

  I try to pull my senses together. Sight, that’s all I need, sight; the rest can wait. The corners and walls begin to come together into some kind of focus, and apparently my hand is reaching for the dropped poker. I take a breath and heave my body upwards. Everything is slow. I’m on my knees as he approaches, raising the gun and pulling back the slide; then I’m crawling; then somehow I’m up on my feet; and I’m jumping, lashing the poker at his face. It connects, just — not enough to hurt him, but enough to knock him off balance. He staggers back and stops, facing me, eyes wide, feet balancing on the edge of the attic door, arms out. He gives little adjusting jerks of his abdomen, bending forwards, then back, focussing on me, willing himself to stay in the room. His arms flail, but there’s nothing to hold onto, and finally gravity sends him falling backwards. His head crashes against the wood; then there’s a second of silence and a heavy thump as he hits the landing. Then nothing.

  I look down through the attic door. He is lying on the landing carpet, arms outstretched, gun still in his hand, eyes closed. There is blood on his brow. I stand and take a breath, and I’m just about to turn to check on my father when the eyes beneath me open. In a flash he raises the pistol and I reel back just as he fires it up through the hatch.

  The sound of fumbles and thumps follows the shot, and I imagine him on his feet, scrabbling back up the ladder, but the sound disappears down the stairs below. He’s gone after Zoe.

  ‘Go!’ shouts my father, already up on his feet. ‘Go after her!’

  Before I know it I’m outside on the harbour. The cold wind stings the side of my face, and there’s whistling in my ears. There are people about now, gathering in small groups at the harbour’s edge and outside the other buildings, looking at me. I walk past them, holding my face. Someone points at the north beach, and I pick up my heels and run for the steps.

  She’s halfway across the beach, sprinting in the wet sand. He’s behind her, limping, holding his head, but gaining on her. I keep up my pace, hearing only the whistling, like a drill in my ears, and the sound of the waves still pounding the shore. I try to focus on the stooped figure lolloping ahead of me. Sometimes I see one of Zoe’s limbs beyond him. At times they are far away, at others they are closer, but I can’t make sense of it and there are no flashbacks to warm days on this beach from another life; there is only this moment right now, just this moment of me pursuing a killer with no hope of what I will do if I catch him, only that I have to do it, I have to protect her, and I wonder if I will remember this in another life, and…

  …And suddenly I’m behind him, and the sound of his deep, lupine breaths joins the whistling and the waves, and all I can think to do is jump, so I do, and my arms wrap his legs and I squeeze with everything I have and I bring him crashing to the sand.

  My face is buried. There’s grit and salty weed in my mouth. I raise my head. His gun is far from us, sticking out from the sand. I look up and see his boot coming for my face, and when it arrives, just for a few moments, there is nothing. No me, no life, nothing—just a void of time in which I don’t exist. And then my eyes open again and I’m staring up at the sky.

  I roll over, coughing. It feels as if my head has been split in two. I sit up and I wonder how long I have been unconscious. Not long. We’ve made it to the rocks. Then he’s there again, his great bulk hunched over Zoe, who stands before him, arms out like she was with me that first time, placating — somehow she’s found a way to be calm and direct with him, to try and reason with him.

  But reason is not in his job description, this man whose entire body and mind is primed to kill and whose black tie flaps in the wind. With a jab he strikes Zoe in the mouth, and she drops to her knees. She makes no sound; the blow has muted her. She leans forward, hands on the sand, staring and trembling with blood pouring down her chin.

  Somebody shouts, and I realise it is me because I’m on my feet and running again. I hit him square in the back and we tumble to the floor, but I come off worse and he’s on his feet before I’ve had a chance to get my bearings. His shadow blocks out the sun, and he leans down and grips my collar.

  He looks hard in my eyes, and I sink into him, thinking how much easier this will be as him, instead of me. I speak. My voice is as deep as a canyon.

  ‘Mr Hunt sends his regards,’ he says.

  But Elliot Childs is looking away. I follow his eyes and see a pale-faced girl standing with a rock in her hand.

  And suddenly I’m back, Elliot Childs, watching Morag scream, a banshee-like scream that soars above the whistling in my ear and the crashing water. She brings the rock down hard upon the head of the man above. He flies from my vision and I stand, staring at Morag’s hungry, animal eyes and hunched form staring down at the wounded lump beneath us. I look for Zoe, and she’s on her feet.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I say. She’s still shaking, but she nods and staggers towards us. But in a few steps, she freezes.

  ‘Elliot, watch out!’

  I turn and see our assailant, who’s rolled onto his back and found his gun, which he’s now aiming directly at Morag. Before I can think, I’m standing before her, arms back, looking down at the barrel. I close my eyes, preparing for the shot, but as I do, I catch a glimpse of something moving to the right, behind the rocks. Something black and flapping.

  The shot rings out and I sense an impact somewhere, but it’s not in my flesh. When I open my eyes I am still standing. At my feet lies William, sprawled and bleeding on the sand. Zoe falls down by his side, and I feel Morag brushing past me, her scream in full throttle again as she brings her rock hard down upon the skull of the man in the sand, three times, four times, a fifth. A single shot rings out, and the man falls upon his back. For a second Morag stands still with her rock raised as the man’s limbs dance a short jig beneath her. She turns and gives a weak smile. There is blood on her neck, and she flops to the sand, quite still.

  The whistling in my ears
fades a little, but the waves roar on. I look down at William’s face, and he grants me a smile and a word from his lips.

  ‘Brother,’ he says, and his eyes lose some of their light.

  IDEAS

  London

  THESE THINGS ARE SUPPOSED to change you. That’s how stories work. They lift you from your feet, plunge you into unknown waters, then shake you off and return you renewed and refreshed, a better person than the one you were before.

  But stories don’t make sense in the real world. You can’t just dissect reality and pull out a series of events whole, like a heart or a tumour, and hold it up for the audience to examine. Reality has pipes and veins. Real stories drip.

  I return to London neither renewed nor refreshed, and certainly not a better person. Sorry to disappoint you.

  In the near dark of the interview room, I recount my story to a detective inspector. She sits upright in her chair with her arms crossed, willing my words to deaden under the weight of her stare. All I can hear is the sound of my voice and the dripping of the gutter outside, marking time.

  My father was right; remembering the details of that tragedy in the forest seventy-five years ago has allowed me to regain control. I don’t know about the others. Morag is dead, and Zoe…

  Run, I said, when the police arrived. And, to my surprise, she did. I have not seen her since. I suppose I should feel happy about that.

  The DI presses me to speak, but my mind is moving at half speed, thoughts like sludge. I regurgitate events until there’s nothing left, and they lie before me like flotsam shored from a wreck. That’s about as cooperative as I can be.

  In any case, I get the feeling the DI is only going through the motions. I get the feeling she does not really want to know why there are three dead people — a vagrant, a hitman and an unidentified girl — on a beach. I get the feeling she has been told not to ask too many questions. Words and boxes checked — that’s all she needs to do. Hunt is behind this, of that I have no doubt.

  The door bursts open and my lawyer, Cavendish, blusters in, smelling of pipe smoke and dogs, briefcase in one arm, shop-bought coffee in his other, half a pastry flaking crumbs in his mouth. He argues with the detective inspector, shouting words like charges and circumstantial, before bustling me out.

  I follow him down the steps of Scotland Yard onto the rain-washed street, and our cab winds through Whitehall and Covent Garden as Cavendish regales me with tales of hounds and Norfolk life. In the Cherry Tree he dresses me down over double brandies and pints of Guinness, then reassures me about the lack of concrete charges, my safety from conviction. He gives me a nod and a wink, behind which I am certain Hunt also lurks.

  I visit my father in hospital, laid up in a bed with a drip in his arm and his leg raised in a sling. When the nurse has left us alone, I ask him what it all means. These Knots and Gleaners and other lives. He gazes at me, the same way he gazed at me from his office all those years ago.

  ‘We must always take things to their logical conclusions, Elliot.’

  ‘I never understood what those words meant,’ I say, and I don’t think of them again.

  I don’t think of them in my flat, or in the bath, or out on the balcony later that evening.

  I don’t think of them as Patti meets me with a slap on the cheek, followed by kisses and hugs and questions. Or as she drives me around London, recounting the many hells she has endured in the last week — the press, the photographers, her day-long meetings trying to calm the US agents, the social media maelstroms still raging and for which she has had to take on extra staff to temper — or when she takes me for dinner, drinks too much, laughs hilariously at whatever few words escape my mouth, and takes me home. Or as we make love that night, or as I lie awake holding her, the shape of her body strange against my own, thinking of Zoe.

  I don’t think of them as I wake the next day, or as she discusses strategy over champagne breakfast. I don’t think of them as her eyes dance across her kitchen walls, imagining press releases, articles, book deals, the show.

  The show which, it seems, must go on.

  The days pass, each one strung out and swollen with time and space, and I don’t think of those words at all.

  December grinds on and London fills with lights, bells, people, colours, perfume, monstrous gleaming teeth and shining skin on fifty-foot screens. Christmas in the twenty-first century: the purest of humanity’s dreams throttled and gutted by its worst.

  I meet with Hunt in some dark Mayfair brasserie with tasteless eggs and choral music. I drink vodka, pale and wan against the gleaming amber of his eighteen-year-year-old Highland Park. He fingers the rim of his heavy glass.

  ‘You do understand, I hope?’ he says, feigning awkward pain. ‘It’s like I said, Elliot. I need people who I can trust, and you going AWOL like that, well, I had to ask myself — is this guy a liability? Is he going to give me problems? Do I need to engage?’

  He leans forward.

  ‘No hard feelings?’

  I blink, catch his eye and take a nauseous swoop into that blue ice-fortress he calls his mind. I grip my cold glass for balance.

  ‘None,’ I say.

  ‘Good,’ he replies. ‘Because we’re not done yet. I still want to go ahead with Mary O’Brien. Your little holiday has seen her popularity soar. I was thinking the Christmas slot, sound good?’

  I hesitate. His mouth twitches.

  ‘Unless, of course, you think you’re not ready?’

  We watch each other over the fist of holly and candles in the middle of our table, and even though my thoughts, my insides, the very threads of my being feel like gossamer being pulled apart, I give him my most confident smile, wink, and reply: ‘Excellent idea, Callum. Let’s tear that bitch down.’

  ‘Right, just like poor George Cooper-Wright, eh? May he rest in peace.’

  ‘What?’

  He frowns.

  ‘Didn’t you hear? Last night. Suicide, apparently. Very sad.’

  He drains his drink and calls for the cheque.

  ‘Oh, and, er, you needn’t worry about any charges or court appearances. I had a wee chat with that lawyer of yours and made some calls. All forgotten.’

  ‘But there were bodies.’

  He stands and throws some notes on the table, then pulls on a huge, cashmere coat.

  ‘Like I said, all forgotten.’

  With a smile he walks out, placing a heavy hand on my shoulder as he goes.

  I step out onto the wintry street and walk up to Trafalgar Square, where a Salvation Army band plays ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’.

  I don’t think of the words.

  There is a jingle of coins.

  ‘Happy Christmas, sir?’ questions a rosy-faced lady from the band. She’s holding a tin out for me, half-full of coppers and silvers. I avoid her eyes, ignore her and move on. I’m thirsty, so I call for my car.

  Terry’s driving.

  ‘Where’s Colin?’

  ‘Hello, Mr Childs,’ says Terry. ‘Where to?’

  I mumble the address and we set off through London, with Terry talking his usual talk. Hordes of tourists bustle, their selfie sticks held aloft like glorious beacons, necks arched and heads together, smiling upwards again and again for photos that will either vanish into the ether or burn themselves onto bank after bank of high-grade servers in some far land. I wonder what a future civilisation will make of these artefacts when it sifts through our dust, finding endless repetitions of that same picture: faces smiling at nothing, selves turned in upon themselves, like snakes eating their own insides, leaving nothing but empty skins.

  ‘Right, Mr Childs?’

  We have stopped and Terry has turned to face me, grinning.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said you’ve got to look after yourself, Mr Childs, because nobody else is going to. Ain’t that right?’

  He winks and waits as I stare back.

  ‘We’re here, by the way.’

  He nods outside at the Cherry Tree.
Here I saw a woman who stopped me in my tracks, and a photograph of a boy from a different time who I remember being. Here I left and lost control and discovered I had lived before, and that this thing that I can do, this gift — this curse — is nothing more than memory.

  If all this is true, then I was once a young boy who died protecting his brother, and who never read his father’s last words to him.

  You’re going to have a lot of ideas yourself in your lives, and I suppose what I’m trying to say is that you need to know which ones are good and which ones are bad.

  I have had other lives too, and will have others again. And if my mother was right, I am part of some greater family; the people whom my soul has inhabited and will yet inhabit.

  Something jars, but I don’t quite get it yet. I don’t think of the words.

  Instead, I get out of Terry’s car and step into the bar, where I drink three neat vodkas and two pints of Guinness, and land upon a single thought: These thoughts of mine, these ideas that come and go: What if it’s the same out there? What if the world is alive and we’re just thoughts? What if we’re ideas coming and going?

  It feels ridiculous, this thought, and I laugh alone at my own stupidity: It’s a cavernous, endless laugh that comes from somebody else in another place and another time, and it goes on and on as I stagger home, avoiding every ruddy-cheeked face, and I crease up on the floor of my apartment and close my eyes until I can no longer tell if I’m still laughing or weeping or screaming.

  The day of the show arrives. Something’s still jarring as I sit in makeup — something in my mother’s half-baked idea of a soul family. It doesn’t add up. How many did she think there were? Millions? Thousands? Hundreds? How can that be?

  I don’t think of the words. Nina pops her head in.

  Five minutes, Mr Childs.

  The lights come up and the music blares and I step out in front of the crowd. Every face is merely a thought, an idea, a whim.