The Colour of the Soul

by Richard T. Burke

  It was worse than she had thought. Somebody had died, and it seemed she was at least partially responsible. Her heart hammered against her rib cage, and her breath came in short, ragged bursts. Forehead, ears and cheeks tingled from the hot flush crawling across her skull.

  As the implications of what she had learned raced through her brain, the door swung open. An overweight nurse with prematurely greying hair barged into the room.

  The woman’s eyes scanned the crumpled sheets. “Where—? Oh, there you are. What are you doing down there?”

  “My parents. I was just ...”

  “It’s far too early for you to be trying to move about.” The nurse stood with hands on hips. The nametag on her chest read Angie Simms. “Let’s get you back into bed and no more of this nonsense until you’ve had some physiotherapy sessions. Come in here, Nick, and give me a hand, will you?”

  A skinny man emerged from behind her. The brown uniform and the walkie-talkie strapped to his belt identified him as a security guard. His shirt hung loosely off narrow shoulders. He licked his lips nervously, eyes darting around the walls through thick glasses.

  “You take one side. I’ll take the other,” the woman instructed. “On three. One, two, three.”

  Annalise found herself lifted by her arms and deposited on the thin mattress.

  The nurse rearranged the sheets and helped her back to a sitting position. “It’s just as well I came in when I did. Your family are all here to see you. I’m not sure what they’d make of it if they turned up to find you sprawled on the ground. Now, let’s get you tucked in.”

  “I was—”

  “I’m not really interested in what you were doing. The only thing you should be concentrating on, young lady, is staying in your bed and getting some rest.”

  “But I feel fine. I’ve been resting for nearly a year.”

  “You’re clearly not fine, or you wouldn’t have been crawling around on the floor like that, would you? Anyway, we’re not having a discussion about this. While you’re here, you’re my responsibility, and what I say goes. Nick will be outside keeping an eye on you. Won’t you, Nick?”

  The man nodded and retraced his steps. As Annalise turned back to face the nurse, a distortion in the outline of the retreating guard caught her attention. From the edge of her vision, she picked up a muted grey disc swirling behind his head. Interested to see how the woman compared, she angled her gaze towards the ceiling. A churning mass of deep purple interspersed with patches of pale pink coiled around the nurse’s body.

  A knock at the door disturbed Annalise’s speculation about the meaning of the colours. Her mother’s head appeared in the opening. “Is it okay if ...?”

  Her father didn’t wait for the invitation to enter. He crossed the floor in two strides and enveloped his daughter in a bone-crushing hug. His shoulders rose and fell in deep, choking sobs as he buried his face in her hair.

  “I’ll stop by later,” the nurse said, reversing through the doorway. The hint of a smile played at the corners of her mouth.

  Sophie moved to the other side of the bed and wrapped her arms around her daughter and husband. They clung to each other as the dampness of their tears seeped into the material of the hospital gown.

  “Okay, okay. You’re crushing me. I need to breathe.” Annalise laughed as she extricated herself from their embrace. She glanced up at her younger sister through waterlogged lashes. Beatrice looked on with folded arms.

  Slowly, the huddle broke apart as her parents stood. Annalise ran fingers down her damp cheeks. She reached out to her sibling.

  Beatrice approached the bedside, and they hugged. “Hey, Sis. Glad to see you’re awake.” She was the only person in the room with dry eyes.

  “So, how are you feeling?” her father asked. He had aged visibly during Annalise’s year of unconsciousness. His face bore more creases, and the hair at his temples was several shades greyer than she remembered.

  “Fine. I can’t walk yet and I’ve lost my memory. But other than that, everything’s good.”

  “It’ll take time, but I’m sure you’ll be back to normal soon. We thought we’d never ...” His voice cracked. “We’re just so happy you’ve woken up.”

  Annalise grabbed his hand. “Thanks, Dad. What’s been happening while I’ve been asleep?”

  “Oh, you know, life goes on. The house has been very quiet. Your sister’s always on her phone. Your mum seems to spend every waking minute here. I even managed to watch a bit more football without you to hog the TV.”

  Annalise pushed him playfully on the arm. “Glad to hear you’ve been productive. Anyway, I never stopped you watching sport.”

  “I’ll remind you of that next time you want to switch over to X-Factor or whatever programme is on during a game. So what’s all this stuff your mother’s been saying about you seeing colours.”

  “Yeah, it’s weird. If I stare directly at someone I can’t see anything—the colours, I mean. They’re not visible when I look straight ahead, only from the side.

  “So what can you see around me?”

  Annalise inspected him from the corner of her eye. “It’s a sort of yellowy, rotating pattern.

  “What about your sister?”

  Beatrice covered her face. “Don’t look at me.”

  Annalise flicked a sideways glance in her direction.

  “What can you see?” her father repeated.

  “It’s difficult to describe. It’s like—I don’t know—thunderclouds, I guess.”

  “Oh great,” Beatrice said. “Dad’s a banana split, but I’m a bloody thunderstorm.”

  “And your mother is dark blue mixed with grey, so she tells me,” her father said.

  Sophie frowned. “Can we change the subject?”

  “Okay,” Annalise said. “Will you please tell me how I ended up in hospital?”

  “We’ve been over this. Can’t we just drop it?”

  Annalise’s expression tightened. “So who died?”

  Silence descended as if all the air had been sucked out of the room.

  After several seconds, Sophie spoke. “Have you remembered something?”

  “No, I heard you talking outside.”

  Sophie shot a glance at Dan. She turned back to her elder daughter. “I thought we agreed we weren’t going to talk about that.”

  Annalise folder her arms. “No, you don’t want to talk about it. So you’re not denying somebody died?”

  Her father grasped her hand between his own. “It was a terrible accident. You need to get well first, and if the memories still haven’t returned, we’ll tell you everything we know.”

  Annalise pulled her hand free. “There’s nothing wrong with me. I want to hear it now.”

  “It really would be better if we wait,” her mother said.

  “I don’t want to wait!”

  “Just tell her,” Beatrice yelled. “You killed somebody in a car crash.”

  A wave of confusion washed over Annalise. “Car crash? I don’t even own a car.”

  “Mark let you drive his. You had a head-on collision. There, now you know.”

  As Annalise stared at her parents, she noticed the thunderclouds around her sister’s head had turned a darker shade of grey.

  Chapter 4

  Steven started up the computer. He yawned and rubbed bleary eyes as he waited for the system to boot. He had only found sleep when the sun was already streaming through the gap in the thin curtains. Two hours later, he had blinked awake with the memories of the previous night still fresh in his mind.

  After returning home, the first task had been to put all his clothes, including the anorak, in the washing machine. He could have burned them or thrown them away, but that might have drawn unwanted attention. He reasoned a less risky approach was simply to remove all physical traces of his contact with the girl. The wash cycle would accomplish that goal, and he had deliberately chosen clothing that was cheap and relatively common. If the focus of the investigation came close e
nough to search for forensic evidence, it was probably already too late.

  The buzz from looking into the girl’s eyes as the light behind them faded still lingered in his brain. Even now, his hands trembled as his fingers flew over the keyboard. The first job was to check the online newsfeeds. He selected the MSN website. If they featured the story, then it would be on all the news channels.

  Sure enough, the headline of the third item down was Teenage Girl Found Strangled. Steven clicked on the heading. He skimmed over the page, gaining a quick first impression. Satisfied that there were no obvious details that could lead the police to identify him as a suspect, he focused on the text beneath the photograph of Steadmore High Street. The only facts revealed by the piece were that a nineteen-year-old female had been strangled and her body found dumped in an industrial bin. Officers were attempting to trace the victim’s movements. A statement was expected around midday. There were currently no suspects.

  The article advised women to avoid walking alone at night. It concluded with an appeal for witnesses and listed both a website and phone number.

  Steven smirked. The vast majority of leads would be from people either suspicious of a neighbour or who thought an acquaintance was behaving strangely. The hotline would be swamped by thousands of callers, none of whom knew the first thing about the killer’s true identity. All of them would have to be investigated. That would take up many hours of precious police time. They hadn’t yet worked out how he had contacted the girl. No doubt they would eventually establish the link, but Steven felt confident the precautions he had taken would resist even the most persistent of investigations. His grin deepened as he imagined the shock of the man whose photograph he had borrowed when he became the chief suspect in a murder enquiry.

  Next, he switched to the Google search page and tapped in the phrase Steadmore murder. When the results popped up, he used the Tools menu to restrict the time period to the previous twenty-four hours. He scrolled down the list and clicked two links at random. The articles were mostly a rehash of the MSN story and contained no new revelations. Twitter produced similar results, the ravings of conspiracy theorists and offensive jokes interspersing the news-related items.

  He was about to close down the web browser when a tweet caught his eye. Steadmore girl wakes from coma by Veronica Stimpson. He clicked the accompanying photograph of a hospital and waited impatiently for the page to load. The left and right edges of the screen displayed a variety of advertisements ranging from exhortations to gamble to offers of a six-figure salary for part-time work. The main frame steadfastly refused to update. Judging by the nature of the advertising, this was a site designed to lure unsuspecting web users in with the promise of salacious gossip.

  “Damned clickbait,” he muttered.

  Eventually, the centre panel appeared. The text was identical to that in the tweet and invited the reader to learn more by advancing to the next page. Steven succumbed and immediately regretted it. He cursed as a video opened in a fresh window, and a man who looked like an archetypal second-hand car salesman began a spiel about how he had made thousands of pounds using a simple-to-follow plan. Steven closed the video with a stab of the mouse button and swore again when a pop-up box asked him whether he was sure he wanted to leave the page.

  The missing section finally updated and displayed another tantalising piece of the article.

  Doctors were astounded when the teenage girl who has been in a coma for nearly a year regained consciousness last night. Click next to discover her first words after waking.

  Steven fought the urge to smash his fist through the screen. Gritting his teeth, he followed the instructions. A new set of advertisements flashed up in front of him. The second-hand car salesman recommenced his over-hyped pitch. Seconds later, a woman’s voice joined in the mix as another video started.

  “Unbelievable,” he growled. “Why would anybody put up with this shit?”

  He closed all the open windows, and the computer speakers fell silent. Pausing to slow his breathing, he restarted the browser and navigated to the Google page. In the search box, he typed, Steadmore girl coma wake up. Once again, he restricted the enquiry to recent articles.

  Steven scanned down the list of results. His gaze settled on one promising link until he realised it pointed to the irritating website he had just abandoned. The rest seemed unrelated to the terms he had entered. He advanced to the second page. The topmost result read, Student in a coma saved when she wiggled toe.

  He clicked the highlighted text, and a page from The Daily Mail opened. A quick perusal revealed it to be a story from 2016 about a twenty-two-year-old car crash victim who moved a toe as the hospital authorities were about to turn off her life support machine. He returned to the search results and ran his eye down the remaining hits. The penultimate link grabbed his attention. Steadmore patient wakes after year in a coma.

  He opened the page. It was an unattributed piece from the local paper, first uploaded on the current date. Details were sparse and from unspecified sources. The journalist had not spoken to anybody close to the family, and the main focus of the article was a description of the initial accident. The item concluded with a brief report of the girl’s condition. Hospital staff were hopeful she would make a full recovery.

  Steven slammed his hands down on the keyboard. This changed everything. Taking a deep breath, he muted the sound and once again selected the original link. Maybe the website from hell would reveal more.

  Chapter 5

  Annalise folded her arms. “Tell me what happened. I want to know everything.”

  Beatrice stared guiltily at her sister then once again focused on her phone.

  Dan Becker flashed a glance at his wife. “Well, obviously we can only pass on what the police and Mark told us. There were no other witnesses to the crash, although another driver showed up soon afterwards.”

  “I get that. Go on.”

  “So Mark bought this new sports car, a red Mazda MX5. God knows how he could afford the insurance for something like that, let alone the purchase price. Anyway, he picked you up in it and planned to motor down to the south coast somewhere. Lymington, I think he said. Apparently, you asked if you could drive.”

  “I don’t remember anything about that.”

  Annalise’s father swallowed. “I’m only telling you the information Mark supplied to the police. He said you were very persistent and desperately wanted to have a go behind the wheel. He tried to talk you out of it, but you were adamant. In the end, he gave in.”

  “So you’re saying I drove this car and crashed it.”

  “Yeah. He stopped on a quiet stretch of road, somewhere in the New Forest, near Lyndhurst, I think. You swapped seats. The car was only moving slowly when another car approached from the opposite direction.”

  “This is all news to me. What happened next?”

  “According to Mark, you panicked. You weren’t used to the controls and put your foot down on what you thought was the brake. In fact, it was the accelerator. The car accelerated fast and swerved into the middle of the road. It hit the other car, a Fiat five hundred, with a glancing blow near its rear end. The other driver lost control. He collided with a tree and died outright. The car you were in, the Mazda, rolled over twice but came to rest on its wheels.”

  Annalise’s focus alternated between her parents. She raised a hand to her mouth and bit down on the knuckle of her forefinger. She felt like she had just woken from a nightmare, only to discover it was all real.

  “You really shouldn’t be hearing this now,” her mother said. “You’ve been awake less than a day. This must be a terrible shock for you.”

  “I want to hear it all.”

  Her father resumed the story. “You were unconscious. Another driver turned up and helped Mark pull you out of the driver’s seat. The police told us you were both very lucky to survive.”

  “It doesn’t feel like it. So that’s how I ended up in a coma?”

  “You bashed your head d
uring the collision. They rushed you to hospital, and you’ve been here ever since. The cuts and bruises healed quickly, but apparently there was no higher brain function—at least until this morning.”

  “Do you think there might be a connection between the car crash and the tampering with my drip?” Annalise asked. “Maybe somebody taking revenge?”

  Dan and Sophie Becker exchanged another look.

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” her father said. “We don’t even know whether or not it was deliberate.”

  “So it turns out I’m the suspect in one crime and a possible victim in the other,” Annalise said. “I’m guessing it was all over the papers.”

  “Yeah, anything to sell a story. For weeks after the crash, those piranhas camped outside our house. They followed us everywhere. Whatever happens, you mustn’t talk to them. They’ll only twist your words.”

  “What about the police?”

  “They came to see us a couple of times. When it was clear you weren’t going to wake up anytime soon, the visits stopped. Should we sort out a lawyer, Sophie?”

  Sophie sighed. “We probably should, but I’ll bet they don’t come cheap.”

  “The money comes second. I just want what’s best for our daughter.”

  Beatrice looked up from her phone. “So why is there a guard outside the door?”

  Dan ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know. The hospital people said it was a precaution.”

  “Why is he there? Is it to keep somebody else out or to stop her leaving?” She nodded towards Annalise.

  “Beatrice!” Sophie snapped. “Don’t talk about your sister like that.”

  “I’m just saying. They didn’t mention what they were taking precautions against.”

  “This keeps getting better and better,” Annalise said. “I wake up to discover I’ve killed somebody. Now my sister thinks the guard might be there to prevent me from escaping. I’m beginning to wish I’d stayed in a coma.”

  Sophie moved closer to the bed and hugged her daughter. “Don’t say that. We’re just relieved to have you back. We’ll get through this as long as we all stick together. Right, Beatrice?”