“I didn’t know she had it in her.” Zoe giggled. With her chin on her collar bone she looked down her front and brushed the grey ash marks from her chest. She wondered whether she would be knocking back vodka shots when her tits dropped (even the pierced one) and her face shrivelled. She could imagine herself up the over-sixties club smoking a joint with her blue rinse and playing poker with the girls. Except most of her mates would probably be like the Sinclair’s; at home with each other, while she would be living on her own with her vibrating friend in one bedside drawer for the lonely nights and a stash of Viagra in another drawer for when she got lucky.
“Your parents must worry.”
She glanced up before getting back to her clean up; “Don’t all parents?” Dad didn’t say much, but mum rang regularly, asking when her next visit would be, cautiously asking what she had been up to, but not really wanting the worry of knowing.
“Yes.” He went quiet and still.
She patted her dress back into place against her body. “Right. Shall we go through the market and walk along the canal for a bit? We can double back and grab something to eat in the market.”
“You have perfect breasts.”
She blurted a laugh. “What did you just say?”
“I am not sure…” He stared through her with his jaw trembling. “Don’t tell my mum.”
“Your mum? I think it’s your wife you need to worry about.”
“Yes… Yes. My wife.” He was back with her, he looked her in the eye vacantly. “Why do I need to worry about my wife? Is she okay?”
She squeezed his shoulder on her way back round behind his chair. “She is fine, and you don’t need to worry about anything. I just didn’t know you had it in you either.” Everyone had thoughts they wouldn’t want broadcasted, she wouldn’t embarrass him by dwelling on them. Besides, her breasts were perfect. She laughed to herself. They had their fans. “So you up for the market?”
“Yes that sounds nice, Zoe.”
In dementia the ability of the brain amazed her with how it could rewrite time and transport its owner to different places and the different phases or stages of development of who they were. Shame it was so painful for the relative when the person became lost in their time travels within their own lives. Mr Sinclair wasn’t lost yet though. She was grateful for that – and in that moment she realized she was getting attached to the old bugger. She would swap shifts with someone before she had to deal with him losing his way. She walked him forwards along the path. The caretaker was ahead of them to the side of the path tending to a large sit down mower.
“What have you been up to then?” Mr Sinclair called over his shoulder.
“I have been out with the girls – went clubbing the other night.” In her memory the night was a blur of flashing colourful lights and thumping dance sounds, visits to the bar and giggling wickedly. The rest of the night was narrated to her by her mates the next day and the bloke she woke up next to. “It was good fun.”
“You have an emotionally demanding job; its good that you get to let your hair down and relax.”
“Yeah.” It was. She had invested her time, money and effort in her nurse training and she worked hard – A&E didn’t allow for slackers.
“Have you met any nice men?”
The man she woke up next to was called Simon, she knew him. They had woken up together enough times to be at ease with sharing the morning after and not making any plans to see each other. It was just a casual thing. They might see each other out and about, and spend the evening mucking about, talking, having a laugh and getting slaughtered, then going home together at the end of their night for some safe fun. She might enjoy sex, but she lived to enjoy life, and she didn’t want an S.T.I or B.A.B.Y to spoil that. She had a few good friends that she could trust like that. “Yeah I have met a few… Nothing serious.”
“Don’t worry – someone will snap you up.”
She wasn’t worried. If it was anyone but Mr Sinclair the reassurance would irritate her – why should she worry if no bloke took the bait? She was happy enough being single. “Doubt there’s anyone worthy enough.” She couldn’t imagine anyone would be worth sacrificing the fun and friendships she had for something serious and life changing like a relationship. “Maybe I am happy being single.”
“You don’t want to settle down with someone at the moment.”
“It sounds weird, and I might change my mind when I hit thirty or forty and the scene isn’t so forgiving, but I don’t think I want to settle down at all.” She slowed his chair to a stop and popped the break on as she remembered her craving for nicotine and to replace the cigarette she had dropped.
“You don’t want children then?”
“No. Not at all. Never even used to play with baby dolls when I was a child.”
“How do your parents feel about that?”
She pursed her lips on her cigarette and stood poised with her lighter at its end. She sniffed and wrinkled her nose against a noxious odour of petrol, and decided against striking the flint of her lighter. The caretaker was besides her filling the large mower with fuel. “I think my sister is making up for that, she’s two years younger than me and has one kid already and another on the way…” The caretaker had stopped what he was doing and was staring at her. She smiled around the cigarette in a communication of “What the fuck are you staring at?”. His stare didn’t break and he didn’t smile back. Freak. She walked on with the unlit cigarette between her lips, the smell of petrol, her potential flame and her earlier clumsiness with a cigarette, and his stare, putting her off loitering and lighting up so close to the mower and the caretaker.
“Are you a lesbian?”
The cigarette bobbed as she laughed. “No I am not!”
He laughed with her. “You shouldn’t be offended. There’s is nothing wrong with being homosexual in your generation.”
“Jeez. You sound just like my mates. No I am not gay, and I am not going to have a flat full of cats or become a vegan hippy. I am a card carrying straight girl who can barely keep a houseplant let alone look after a pet, and I love a bit of meat.” If she was having this conversation with her mates the word ‘meat’ would be substituted with ‘cock’. An image of the petrol can appeared in her mind. She puzzled at it and then dismissed it. “I have plans to get a place with some friends.”
“Don’t they want to settle down either?”
“They are enjoying themselves like me, but yeah they do want to. They said that when they meet fella’s they will move out and rent their rooms out. There’s always a demand for nursing accommodation, and I will be there to keep an eye on the place and be the live-in-landlady.” Happy she had put some distance between her lighter and the fuel, she stopped. The caretaker had gone, leaving the can of petrol beside the mower, she scanned the common but couldn’t see where he was.
Zoe applied the flame to the cigarette and sucked its heat into the tobacco. Her mind dwelt on the image of the petrol can. She didn’t understand why she would give it any more thought. It was a safe distance away from Mr Sinclair and herself. Why was she worried? She wrinkled her brow at her self-questioning. Okay, she admitted to herself, she may have been overcautious earlier; there wasn’t much chance of her lighter being the cause of a fire but she had a healthy respect for danger – she enjoyed life too much. Fire was dangerous. She blew out a puff of smoke and carried on walking Mr Sinclair in the direction of the heart of Camden.
The petrol can.
Zoe frowned. Maybe the petrol can was like when she was on a course about mental health and obsessive thinking; the lecturer used her in an example of how hard it is to control thoughts, she asked Zoe to think about pink elephants for thirty seconds, then to think about anything but pink elephants for thirty seconds. In that second set of thirty seconds she couldn’t shake pink elephants; they were in her memories all over the place, having dinner with her and her family when she was a teenager, in the bedroom of her flat with her and Paul Maguire – the best s
ex she had ever had, pink elephants mooching around the dance floor in some of the more memorable nights out she had at that time. The more you try to think about something else the more you think about the thing your trying to avoid.
Petrol can.
The petrol can danced into her head on the back of a pink elephant. She laughed and shrugged it off.
Zoe held the lighter before her and thumbed the striking wheel. It rubbed, but there was no spark. She pursed her lips on her cigarette. Scratch. No flame. Mr Sinclair blustered, shivered and coughed. She pressed her thumb down on the lighter. “What the bloody hell did you do that for? I’m soaked!” Zoe frowned at the shock and anger in his voice, and averted her gaze from the quivering flame of her lighter and found that Mr Sinclair was squirming in his wheelchair in an attempt to twist his body round so he could look at her. His grey hair was no longer neatly combed, but dark, wet and plastered to his head. There was a strong smell coming from him. Her eyes crossed to the end of the cigarette protruding from her mouth. It was already lit. She had lit it earlier.
Petrol.
An orange light flared, cramming itself into her eyes, blotting out her vision. She screwed her eyes tightly shut, not against the light but against the wall of heat that slammed into her. Her eyebrows tightened as they singed, the fine ends of her fringe vaporised, her body became awash with sweat that evaporated as quickly as it emerged from her pores. She staggered away, reeling from the heat. Mr Sinclair screamed and thrashed from within a quivering field of fierce yellowy orange light that tore around him twisting into great forks that stabbed at the tail of a great black snake of cloud pouring itself into the sky.
Zoe stared at the lighter clutched in her hand.
She saw the petrol can lying discarded on its side a few feet from them.
There wasn’t a pink elephant in sight.
Hands grabbed at her, a scrawny boy of about twelve shouted in horror at her, and pulled her away from the burning heat, but she didn’t hear his words. He fell to the floor, his nose spread across his face in a bloodied mess, his face blanked by shock. Only then did she realise she had punched him out. She stared at her fist, speckled with his blood and watched the boy scrabble away and a burly man run towards her, his gruff face snarled up in anger. She didn’t hear him but read his lips as he shouted; “FUCKING BITCH.” Then he was running away from her and she found that she had the pink elephant of a petrol can in one hand and her lit lighter in the other, brandishing them both after him as a deterrent. She dropped them both, not understanding the slips in time and her trips in and out of awareness. Mr Sinclair was motionless within his smouldering prison, all colour and detail burnt into blackness.
It seeped out of the thing that called itself Zoe Sampson and drifted into the head of the creature called Peter Sinclair. The bonding was different – difficult. After all the trials It had put flesh through It had found that It could soak back into the flesh, even when flesh was dead. It could become one with it, control it, animate it, create with it or give it life again. This time It could not enter the flesh. The skin was ash. The flesh and muscle carbonised charcoal. The habitat that was Peter Sinclair had been destroyed.
Zoe spun round, surveying the wide ring of terrified and angry people that drew close to her with their hands gesturing for her to be calm, or pulling people back that got too close to her.
“Don’t do it!” A kind looking man begged her before terror spread from face to face among the onlookers and the circle of people broke and fled. Don’t do it? She already had – she had torched Mr Sinclair. She didn’t understand what the man had meant until she watched herself ignite her lighter and apply the flame to the chest of her uniform. The pain was instant and winded the air from her lungs as heat dug itself into every millimetre of her body. Zoe Sampson bucked and thrashed within the suit of flame and heat that clung to her and devoured.
It abandoned her. Unable to stay within the flesh as the flame consumed it. It watched them both burn. It felt diminished – part of itself trapped within the burning flesh. It understood the limits of the flesh It needed for form, but now It understood and shared her fear of fire.
The smoke rolled up into the air and broke against the face of the East Tower of The Heights. On the seventh floor Mrs Sinclair cursed the youths she suspected for the bonfire and shut the window against her husband and his nurse drifting into her home.
Chapter Forty
Kelly walked up the path behind Craig and shook her head at him and the way he coveted the nail gun like a baby. He had opened it and assembled it in the car, but she had insisted that he kept it unloaded while she was driving. All she needed was a nail in her foot. Rachel answered her door and appeared a little wary of the heavy-duty power tool. Kelly nodded to Rachel. “You would think he saw this as his chance to satisfy his inner child.” Kelly followed Craig into Rachel’s flat. He seemed his usual self, she joked with him to get out of the mood she had with him, but she was sure her attitude had ruined things between them.
Craig passed the nail gun from one hand to the other, inspecting it and testing its weight. “I know, but I saw it used in a few films.”
“I would think you would avoid trying anything from films after your track record of shoulder barging doors,” Rachel teased.
“Ha-de-ha-ha.” Craig responded flatly before shaking the gun in the air and adopting a more up-beat tone. “Argos. Cost me a bit, but if it does help slay our monster then I can take it back on the sixteen-day no questions asked money back guarantee. God, bless Argos and my statutory rights. Flippancy aside though, we can’t get our hands on anything like proper guns, so this could be the next best thing.”
Kelly winced as the guns nail-spitting eye pointed in her direction, she pushed it aside. “Well, I wouldn’t like to be on the receiving end of that.”
“Hopefully ‘it’ won’t want to be on the receiving end either.”
“Surprised you didn’t go for a chainsaw; Evil Dead style.” Cat gave a smile that attempted to be as genuine and friendly as her tone, but just looked awkward and anxious as she entered the lounge from the kitchen with two mugs of tea.
“I love those films,” Craig enthused.
“Me too,” Kelly lied weakly. She had only seen one of them. Her comment drew no attention from Craig, only a curious glance from Cat. What was the point. Kelly had lost that competition.
“Yeah, but a chainsaw or something like that would involve getting up close and personal, I don’t like that idea – I want to be able to bring it down from a distance!”
“Tough guy,” Cat said playfully.
“Not quite.” Craig answered quietly.
Kelly decided to address the elephant in the room that was being ignored. “Cat, you’re back?”
“Yeah; me and the kid just went out to clear our heads before…” Cat widened her eyes in mock drama; “the big showdown.
“Yes. We went for a walk together,” Jason jumped in quickly but sounded like he was reading from a script.
Cat put the mugs down heavily on the table as an audible full-stop on Jason’s explanation. He was a bad liar, he was clearly covering up for Cat but Kelly couldn’t be bothered to play Cat’s games.
Rachel wrung her hands as she watched Cat take a seat with Jason. “Yes, I went out to get some breakfast stuff and they were here when I got back.”
Jason pointed to an array of different empty bottles on the coffee table. “I found plenty of bottles to use for the Molotov’s.”
Rachel smiled sourly. “I don’t know what frightens me more, the fact that this is a twelve year old talking about Molotov’s, or that I found he had tipped a bottle of my fifteen-year old single malt down the sink. I had thought that he would apprise himself of milk bottles from the neighbours, but no; he’s far more resourceful.”
“You guys get any other stuff?” Jason cut in.
“We got the gas cylinders earlier; ‘Goldie’ has been dragging her arse all the way here. We will have to meet you down
there.” With everyone’s attention momentarily upon her Kelly felt a coldness in her gut. She felt like an outsider in the group again now that Cat had returned.
Craig deposited the nail gun on the table, “Our version of a gun.” He pulled the carrier bag that he had tucked into his jeans and from the bag he produced a compact red plastic gun. It looked like a toy gun, but it was a flare gun they had picked up from an army and navy surplus store on Chalk Farm Road. “Something a bit more explosive.”
“That should pack a punch!” Jason whooped.
Craig nodded. “And we have Rachel’s hefty sword, and there’s an axe we can pinch from the fire point in the lobby.”
“Which one do I get?” Jason asked excitedly.
“Er! – None of them,” Kelly was quick to counter.
“I’m not just saying this to be argumentative; you have put him out of the way of the action in our little gunpowder plot and I’m fine with that, but he’s still gonna be on his own,” Cat’s objection actually sounded diplomatic, and reasonable.
“Well, you are going to be safely locked away.” Kelly watched his face turn down with disappointment and Cat bristle. Kelly pulled the heavy crowbar from under her arm and gave it to Jason. “Only, and I repeat only if someone is clearly under the influence of the thing in the basement or you are in danger from someone do you use this. If you need to you swing it as hard as you can and they won’t be messing with you for long.”
“Only if they deserve it, of course.” Cat added quickly.
The smile that Cat flashed at Kelly wasn’t smug, sarcastic or cruel. The only interpretation Kelly could make of it was that it was to show Kelly she was on her side, that she didn’t want Jason hurt either. It was too little too late. Kelly didn’t bother smiling back. Jason shouldn’t be involved. Cat’s face hardened and she folded her arms as she too gave up.
Chapter Forty One
Craig stood in the lobby of The Heights alongside Kelly, Jason, Cat and Rachel. Rachel’s secret army. This was it. They stood for what seemed like forever, listening to the silence of the building. The quiet was so strong it was almost tangible like white-noise. The emptiness of the lobby drew in around him; its familiarity reminded them of the normal lives they had once led in contrast with the disturbing memory of their escape the night before. Even on the quietest days you usually heard some background noises; kids on the green, the whir of the lifts, fire doors banging, footsteps echoing down the stairs. Today the green was empty. He had noticed that two patches of the grass were scorched and smoked. He had never known anyone to have a bonfire there before. There were no sounds of movement from the floors above. No sounds at all.
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