by Matt Haig
I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more is none.
I knew precisely what I had to do. It was as though, all of a sudden, the future had become as solid as the past. I was being guided by something outside myself, as though I was being written by another hand, caught inside a story I couldn't quite control. Not Reuben's story, and not my own, but someone else's. It was impossible to tell if I was the hero or the villain of this narrative, and it made no real difference, for my actions were already written.
'I am going out, and I will open the door on my return,' I said, above your kicks and wails. 'I will be three hours at the most. There are some old books in one of the tea chests. An early Alice in Wonderland. The eight hundredth ever printed. Or somewhere around there. It's got the number on it still, I believe, on the inside cover.'
'Open the door!' you screamed above my words. 'Open the door!'
I stood there in the hallway, still baffled by the force of your emotion. A possession I knew I could never grasp.
Your scream melted into tears. 'Open the door.'
'Goodbye Bryony,' I said, too soft for you to hear, and trod my way downstairs to the shop.
*
The mahogany case was open and that old gun lay before me, the engraved steel of the trigger-guard shining in the dark like a waking eye. It looked so beautiful, so exquisitely crafted, it was almost impossible to believe it could perform the task I had in mind.
I picked it up. I took the old bullets from their tin box. I loaded the pistol.
As any father would, I tried to keep you safe. Every waking moment I thought about it, the ways I could ensure you a long and happy future. Yet it occurs to me now that every single attempt I made had a reverse effect. Each time I tried to interfere in your life I pushed you away from me, and lost a little more of your trust and respect.
Even when my actions were hidden, and you saw the puppet but not the strings, they were equally futile. It was as though there was an enemy within my own mind, a double agent who was willingly jeopardising every task. Of course, this is not so far away from the truth.
Indeed, over the past few weeks and months I have come to a greater understanding of the invisible forces that thwart our best efforts. I see that there is not such a great difference between the psychic and physical landscapes. Both, in their separate ways, are continuous narratives within which the actions of the living are determined by those who have gone before.
In our own city, with its Roman foundations, with its Saxon streets and Norman defences and Victorian railway, we understand how things connect. How the old and antique contains the present and how, in turn, that present manages to seal our futures. You live and walk and breathe among these layers.
Minds are the same. They are not cities shaped in our own image. They are cities shaped by the whole human experience, by all that has gone before, all this knowledge that has been built by those who exist in memory, in books, in possessions.
Yet if minds are cities they can be vulnerable to attack, invaded by forces coming at us in the night, when we are weak, when there is no one manning the towers.
You see, Bryony, this is what has been happening. Everything I have done to protect you has only served to aggravate him, and stir his unrested soul in jealousy. As I have been watching you, I too have always been observed. If I had done things differently, shown you a little less attention, displayed to him a little more grief – then perhaps I would never have gained this new knowledge. Perhaps I would never have been forced to realise that our minds are no stronger than those of animals. They are territories that can be invaded and taken over the same as any other.
Yet only now do I realise there is a way to calm his soul, and quench its horrendous thirst. In doing so, I truly believe he will love you again, and rest in the peace we prayed would be his. It is my last hope, and will prove to be my last action. I will raze my mind's city to the ground, and create a fresher, clearer space, where avenging spirits float through without pause.
It was quite a walk, but I had time. Once I had crossed the park, and passed under Reuben's lamp post, I headed towards the river. I went the quiet, longer route, via the cycle path, so there were fewer eyes to witness my journey. On and on, in the dark, with the pistol weighing against me. Onwards, over Lendal Bridge, and further down Stripe Lane. I could smell the wild flowers, the hedgerow plants, and heard the skylarks, and knew I was getting closer. What was the plan? Were you going to stay the night there, before heading north to Beningbrough and catching a morning train to somewhere else? Or were you going to stay living out in the wild, like Neolithic hunters, outside our civilisation?
My suspicions grew. Why had he wanted to meet you in the middle of nowhere? I had seen what he had done to George. I had heard what he had done to Alison Wingfield. I knew only too well what his father was capable of. Maybe he was meeting you there to do unthinkable things, more unthinkable than I had already seen – things he could get away with, knowing everything was constructed to look like two teenage lovers escaping happily into the night.
A mute swan blocked my path. I didn't see it until the last moment and then there it was, wings outstretched, hissing its warning. He may have had a family to protect but as far as I could see he was a sole operator, a highwayman swan, looking for spoils I couldn't provide. There was something of a standoff. To my right, the river. To my left, the copse. As the swan showed no sign of moving I was forced to venture into the dense, low woodland and steer around.
When I was back on the path I heard a voice behind me.
'Daddy? Daddy? Look.'
The swan wasn't there.
It had disappeared completely.
In its place was a young boy, about seven years old, with a birthmark on his face. He was holding out his hand. 'Look, it's on my finger. Look!'
I crouched down and he came over to me. It was fully dark now, but the luminous bottle-green beetle crawling over his hand could be clearly seen, as could Reuben's young eyes. That intense look he used to have, sternly inquisitive, his eyes pressing me to respond.
'Reuben,' I said.
'Is that a tamsy beetle? Have I found one?'
'Reuben? Why are you here?'
His voice became cross. 'Is it a tamsy beetle?'
'Yes,' I said, and got caught in the memory. 'But it's tansy. Tan-sy.'
He looked sad. 'I didn't mean to push Bryony in the nettles. I'm sorry, Daddy.'
'It's all right, Reuben. Bryony's fine.'
He frowned at me, as though I was lying. 'She's gone.'
'No,' I said.
'We've lost her. In the dark.'
'No. She's safe. She's at home.'
'She's gone invisible. She's not here.'
I became cross. Not with Reuben, but with myself, with the nervous mind that had conjured this apparition. 'No,' I said. 'You're not here.'
'Where am I?'
I tapped the side of my head. 'In here.'
'Where's the beetle?'
I kept tapping. 'In here as well. You're not real. You're not real. Now, I've got to go.'
'Don't leave me, Daddy,' he said. 'Don't leave me, don't leave me, don't leave me . . .'
The hallucination began to cry. I closed my eyes and begged reason to stay with me. 'Oh, let me not be mad,' I said. 'Not yet.'
I could not afford for the possession to take hold tonight so with clenched eyes my hand reached out slowly, cautiously, towards that imagined face. Of course, I expected to feel nothing at all. I expected my fingers to glide through empty air and confirm it as a delusion. Instead, I received a sharp and most painful bite.
You must remember I was already crouching down, and so the action of yanking my hand away, combined with the sight of the swan returned to where it had been standing, caused gravity to gain the best of me. I dropped backwards to the ground.
Given that the swan was violently beating its wings and hissing like the Devil, I desperately tried to scramble to my feet but was still too slow. Trap
ped in this awkward position the wild bird was upon me, its neck thrusting forward, its wings full-stretched beating my legs.
There was no stopping this creature.
Again I tried to get up but received such a winding blow to my chest I was knocked down, lower than before, landing in mud. He would have killed me, I am sure, and with hindsight we might see this as having been God's intention (or whatever unseen author was still shaping my quest), yet I needed to make you safe and survive a few more hours. So I reached inside my coat, drew my pistol, and while my other hand wrestled helplessly with the bird's neck I shot him in the breast. After that loud, echoing clap there was a final hiss and then the neck collapsed. Dark blood leaked fast out of him, glugging almost, and I was momentarily paralysed by the sight. Life cut away very quickly and after the smallest of fits the poor bird fell limply across my legs.
Now, in a rotten panic, I carried the bird to the river and tried to keep any more of its blood from staining my clothes. When I saw its previously unseen family in the shadows, asleep in their watery nest, I felt such a terror fall over me that I cannot describe it to you. Oh, Bryony, it was such a hideous feeling! Those blameless, unclaimed animal souls. Once the bird had been washed away on the current, half sinking, I vomited amid the rushes and tried to clear my mind by inhaling that chilled air, but it was no good. If I was ever to live past this night I knew that pale swan would haunt me, as the albatross did the old mariner, for the rest of my days.
*
At the end of the copse the path thins out and makes way for the hay meadow. As I could see the shed from there, I decided to stay back, hiding among the last of the bushes.
The incident with the swan had taken longer than I had realised. My watch told me it was ten past nine. Denny would have arrived. Yet I stayed amid the blackberry bushes and creeping thistle, and waited for him to appear. It was there I caught a smell. Something overpowering the wild flowers. A burnt, toffeeish smell. In the distance smoke rose from the sugar factory, erasing stars. A night shift. People would be there. They might hear the gunshot and come to inspect before I had time to discard the body.
I saw a dark shape pass across the shed window. It was him. I could recognise the outline of that hideous padded jacket I had seen him wear when he had met you at Clifford's Tower. A dark swollen chrysalis. It disappeared back out of view. My thoughts became questions. What was he doing in there without a light on? Had he broken in? Did he know someone who owned that shed? What was he getting prepared? How long would he wait for you before leaving? And where would he step out from?
I couldn't see a door. There obviously was one – which had probably been forced open – but I couldn't see it from this side.
Oh please, picture me there.
See me amid those bushes. Crouching in the dark. Damp with swan blood and mud-water. A trembling antique pistol in my hand. I want you to understand the rapid madness of my thoughts. The creeping doubts that weakened my resolve. The familiar sensations in my brain, bringing the alien images of other experience.
*
I saw him, in my mind. I saw Denny, with the others, on East Mount Road. He was looking at me. 'Don't do it,' he said. 'You don't have to do it just 'cos of Tully.'
And my mouth began to whisper Reuben's words. 'I'm not doing it 'cos of Tully.'
And Andrew Tully himself, laughing and looking around at the other boys, and their laughter scorching me the way it must have scorched Reuben.
And Denny shaking his head at me. 'You'll kill yourself.'
I shook the memory away. It was false, I told myself. It was as false as all those other hallucinations. It didn't happen. Denny was as responsible as the rest of them. Of course he was. Yet I could feel it happening, the changes inside me.
I was about to lose myself again, my soul destroyed by those fires raging inside my mind, at the worst possible time.
'Stay strong, Terence,' I told myself. 'Stay Terence.' My name sounded hollow, as if it meant no more to me than it did to the surrounding plants and trees, yet I still had clarity.
Denny was going to hurt you. I could not question it. At some future place and time he was going to reveal his true and hideous colours and do to you what he had done to Alison Wingfield. Reuben was playing with my mind. He wanted Denny to hurt you. Of course he did. Reuben himself had been trying to hurt you, through his various methods, since he had died. I followed the horse and it had led me to him – that had been the first sign. And then the Higgins incident. He had found ways to get inside their minds, as he had found a way into my own. His jealous spirit couldn't settle while you were still with me, so for you to run away with this violent rogue would have been most desirable.
I had to act fast, as Reuben was still pressing in.
I stood up and walked onto the plain.
The moment I was out there, treading across that ancient earth, I was no more than an empty vessel. Reuben would have been able to come at any moment and steer me away, but he didn't. It was just me, watching myself, this Terence with his pistol down by his side, trying to stay out of view from the window.
Terence picked up speed and tried to think away his own footsteps, and the pain that throbbed through his left leg.
He could see the door. A dark rectangle of wood swinging slowly away from the side of the shed. He stood still. He raised his gun. He stayed there, silent as the waiting wolf. He felt the bushes and the low trees retreat behind him, sensed the river sliding further to his right. The boy appeared, wearing his padded jacket. A silhouette that seemed too small for the distance between them, as if perspective was melting away.
Had the boy seen him? Terence didn't know. All Terence knew was the pistol in his hand, the pistol he now raised and fired.
He had missed. He was sure of it. For a moment the boy was still standing, and made no sound of pain.
Terence was searching his pocket for another cap when the boy fell back, holding his shoulder, and his scream came. Then there was someone else, another silhouette. A boy the same size as Denny. No, bigger. A man, crouching over the fallen body.
*
It was so confusing in the dark. Terence, whom I can see falling into myself again, began to panic. Who was this other man, dragging Denny behind the door, out of my sight? I didn't know. I had to leave. A thousand black flies swarmed up my body and buzzed their angry murmurs around my head.
I heard something else. A baby crying, screaming, somewhere behind, within the copse. I turned and walked – jogged, hobbled, stumbled – towards the sound, the crowd of flies keeping speed. Behind the bushes but before the trees: two babies lying, writhing, on a bed of nettles. He was wailing like he always had done, and you were silent by his side. 'Shhh,' I told Reuben. 'Shhh. Please. Shhh.' I went to pick him up, closing my eyes and mouth against the flies. The buzzing stopped. And the crying. There were no babies.
It was then I headed home. Through the low wood and towards the footpath, feeling the silent scream of nature from every tree, every insect, and every living thing.
You are sitting down, aren't you? Are you at Cynthia's? I can see the look on your face, I can see it as if you were here with me, frowning as if looking at a piece of music. Something you'd never played. Your eyes narrow. Flinching, almost.
Please don't be scared. I can't cope with the idea that I have become something else to be scared of, even from my grave.
My grave.
Oh, I feel it already. I feel the daisies growing above me, as Keats did in the days before he died. It's so strange, you know, sitting here. Writing in this car, straining to see in the dull light. Knowing that tomorrow I will be nothing, knowing there will be no more to add to these words, knowing I will not be knowing. Or maybe gaining a different kind of knowledge. Reuben's kind.
No.
I must stop this, right now. This pathetic weakness. This fear that –
Never mind.
Imagine my panic. Imagine, for a moment, how you made me feel when I came back, opened the a
ttic door, and discovered an uninhabited room and an open window.
It was in such horrendous desperation that I searched behind the door, under the old sleigh bed, among the boxes, hoping that this was just another delusion. A reverse hallucination: your presence masquerading as an absence. Then I noticed a torn page on the floor.
'Advice from a Caterpillar.'
Other pages too, ripped apart, lying on those old green-painted boards like a foreign map, an unfamiliar archipelago of text and tea-party illustrations.
'Bryony? Where are you? Petal? Petal? Petal? Where are you? Bryony? Show yourself.'
It must have been at this point that I walked over to the open window and began to contemplate your only route of escape. I still do not quite understand how you managed it. To have risked your life climbing out of that window and onto those loose tiles, your feet teetering on the gutter rail, the awkward hang down to the roof of your bedroom, the horseback shuffle along the ridge, getting tangled up with the ivy as you descended the trellis. The mad and blinded action of your love.
For a moment, I was convinced you must be dead. I saw a missing roof tile and imagined it slipping under your foot, causing you to fall. As the adrenalin flooded into me I ran down those flights of stairs. I picked up the keys I'd left in the shop, again catching my hip against the chest and nearly losing the Girl with a Tambourine.
Outside I saw your wet footprints treading away from the puddle, fading as they left the passage. Relief you were alive was quickly swallowed by concerns as to where you had gone. The street held no clues. The park, the street lamp, the growl of indifferent traffic. I strained my eyes in every direction but it was clear that I was too late. You had disappeared out of the scene.
And then, the faintest of sounds. The telephone, the shop line, at that late hour.