by Mark Morris
She ends the call. Her foot crunches on something. A can. It could have come from anywhere. But an image comes to Anna now, of the boy standing in the night, watching, drinking soda in the long wait. She looks at the house, at the room where she sat minutes ago. The books, the green wing chair. A fragile world in a bright box. She feels sick.
A shadow moves at the corner of the brightly lit living room. A slight, dark curve by the curtains. A head. He is crouching by the window, trying to keep out of sight, looking into the night. Looking for them. Anna laughs a little to herself. She was never great at science, but she knows you can’t see out of a lit window into the dark.
The lights go out. The house vanishes, black into black.
Timeless fear pours into her. She thinks for the first time that there might be others. How did he come here? There is no sign of a car. Breathe, she tells herself.
“Get on my shoulders, Pearl,” she says. “Up you come. Pony ride.” Small, hot palms on her neck. Pearl’s silence is wrong too. Pearl is never quiet. She seizes her daughter’s legs where they hang over her shoulders and runs.
The forest is full of night whistles and petrichor leaks from the earth. As Anna runs she pants, looks behind her at intervals. She feels beasts and old things trotting beside her in the shadows of the trees.
* * *
The gas station is a mile distant, off the highway. The man there is tall, quiet. He gives Pearl a juice box even though they have no money. He lets them wait for the police in the back room. He lets them watch his little TV. There is nothing playing this time of night but a biography of a Prime Minister. The man closes the front and sits with them. Either he feels sorry for them or he does not want to leave them alone in his shop.
“She’s a good girl,” he says, nodding at Pearl, who kicks her legs. There are twigs in her dark hair. Anna begins to pick them out.
Red and blue light flares on the glass. The eerie squawk of a siren.
The policeman is the most exhausted person Anna has ever seen. He is composed of a series of pouches: under his eyes, around his mouth, about his midriff. There is no one at the house, the officer says. He searched. He found the saucepan in the kitchen, leaking a bay of brown milk across the floor. There was no blood. No sign of forced entry. Most of the windows were open, the front door swinging gently in the night air. No trace of a vehicle. No trace of anyone for miles about. Where could he be, or have gone? What more was there to be done?
Anna says, “I can’t take my daughter back to that house unless you find him.”
The tired policeman says, “You should get a dog. They’re good company if you live alone.”
She sees what is happening with the slow grace of a nightmare. “Listen,” she says. “He was in the house. He went into my little girl’s room. He tried to hit me with an iron bar. Pearl saw him, I saw him…”
“I wouldn’t tell her scary stories before bed either,” says the policeman. He mops his forehead with his handkerchief. The hot night is not kind to him. “Children imagine things.” She hears what he leaves unspoken. Women and children. He asks her what medication she is taking. She tells the truth and sees his face harden to certainty.
“I didn’t imagine it.” The pitch of her voice rises. She sounds like Pearl denied a story. “Is there someone else I can speak to?”
The policeman shrugs. “Come to town in the morning.” He rubs his face hard, leaving a flaming trail on his cheek. “Take you home,” he says. “Been a long day for all of us.”
* * *
Back at the house thin greenish dawn is leaking into the east.
“Bed, now,” she says to Pearl.
Pearl yawns and rolls her new fire engine across the coverlet. “Brrrrrm,” she says. The man at the gas station gave it to her. Anna was flustered by his kindness.
“If you have trouble,” he said as she got into the police car, “you call me. Here’s the number. I’m closer than they are. Get there faster.” In his eyes she saw weary acceptance. He knows that the law is only for some. She despises him for his weakness, she is grateful for the offer.
Her eyes have the grainy, burning feeling that comes of no sleep. Her body is toxic; the chemicals of high alert swill uneasily around, riding in her blood.
Pearl broom-brooms the fire engine over the coverlet.
“The bad boy won’t come back,” Anna says. “He’s gone.”
Pearl gazes at her truck with loving, unfocused eyes.
“Do you want anything?” Anna stops herself from asking, “Hot chocolate?”
Pearl shakes her head and yawns. She will sleep soon.
Anna goes downstairs. She mops the kitchen floor. Then she puts the pan back on the stove. She makes more chocolate, steaming and hot. She puts three heaped tablespoons of sugar in it. Then she brews coffee thick as syrup. She adds the coffee to the hot chocolate. She takes the whiskey bottle from the shelf.
She sits in the green wing chair in the dawn. This was Ma’s favourite chair, of course. How had she forgotten that? Anna thinks of the long nights her mother watched as she slept upstairs. How alone she must have felt.
Anna drinks. Her eyes water at the fumes. The alcohol, sugar and caffeine are good. She needs something more. She gets pills from her handbag and crushes two under a saucer. They make the coffee mouth-numbing.
We will leave here, she promises Pearl silently. Perhaps it will not follow us. But she knows in her heart that what’s done is done.
She hears the rustle in the wisteria outside. Morning birds explode into the air in the wake of something’s passage.
When Anna looks it is there, in the grey light beyond the window. It wears her mother’s face, eyes sewn shut for the grave. Ma’s nightdress flutters about its chalky ankles. The reekling sways, sensing Anna. The blind head seeks her, yearning. Its dead lips stretch to show yellow teeth.
Anna comes close to the glass. “You may not come in,” she whispers. Her breath leaves white clouds on the pane. “I guard this house.”
ALMOST AUREATE
V.H. Leslie
Eamon saw the bronzed man as soon as they arrived at Casa del Sol. Laden with luggage and shepherding two toddlers on Trunki Ride-On suitcases away from the ornamental fountain and toward the entrance, he could see the man leaning against the railings of the uppermost balcony, watching the new arrivals with apparent interest. He was shirtless, thin and wizened, the colour of Hawaiian Tropic. Eamon followed the stream of holidaymakers into the foyer, pausing at the entrance just long enough for the twins to wave goodbye to the coach and the holiday rep who’d accompanied them for the brief journey from the airport and whose only job had appeared to be apprising them of the temperature: 36 degrees, set to rise. It certainly felt hot, hotter still as Eamon passed beneath the bronzed man’s gaze and into the welcome relief of the air-conditioned foyer.
The hotel could have been any hotel on the resort, though Sherry had spent a great deal of time agonising over the choice in the brochure. A stucco complex edged with bougainvillea, it had the added bonus of a poolside crèche, so they could entrust the twins to someone else and still keep a watchful eye on proceedings. Eamon had initially cautioned against this arrangement, fearing that either the twins or Sherry would be distressed at being separated from one another though in such close proximity; far better out of sight, out of mind. But he knew that Sherry would never agree to hotel babysitters or to placing the children in a kidz club—the post-trendy spelling now as old and worn as many of the regular holiday guests who passed through the doors. It was a miracle they were even having a holiday with Sherry’s new-found maternal cautiousness, so it seemed wise to concede to all of her whims and preferences.
Sherry trailed behind Eamon and the twins with the rest of their suitcases, having opted to retrieve the remaining luggage from the underside of the coach rather than convey the children into the hotel. Eamon remembered a time when he did all the heavy lifting in their relationship; now the more arduous task was supervising the twins.
He watched the children circle the foyer on their wheeled cases while he moved slowly along the check-in queue, their orbits getting wider and more energetic with each revolution. He ignored the tuts he could hear further back in the line, even when they threatened to collide with a baggage carrier. It was easy to observe them in this detached way, from this distance, as if they were nothing to do with him, moving excitably along their elliptical paths while he stayed rooted to one spot.
Eventually his eldest—by approximately fifteen minutes— Alex, came to settle at his side, screeching the sound of imaginary brakes so there was no doubt whose child he was. Annabelle, less accurate, bumped into her brother and sent him toppling. Sherry called them the Two As, a hangover from her time as a teacher, coupled with the iteration Top of the class whenever they did so much as smile, poo, or eat what was placed in front of them. Eamon had observed nothing in their brief lives that set them out as being particularly remarkable, save their ability to cry for protracted periods of time, which they started up in earnest now over their mini-collision. Eamon tried to appease them whilst handing over their passports to the receptionist, knowing it was part of their twin nature to goad and outdo each other in all things. Only when Sherry picked them up in turn was calm restored and Eamon fell back behind them, dragging their cases and bags as they headed towards their room.
* * *
It was not the kind of holiday he and Sherry had ever envisioned taking. They were the kind of people who went travelling, who were fundamentally opposed to the package holiday mentality and who avoided tourist locations. But since the twins had come along, many of the things he felt were defining to their identity as a couple were being slowly undermined. He thought of this almost always as a betrayal on Sherry’s part, though he had to admit, as he reclined on a sunlounger, beer in hand, that he hadn’t given a thought to the lack of historical hotspots they would be visiting, or the authentic Spanish cuisine they’d be forfeiting for burgers and full Englishes.
He was, in truth, relieved not to have to learn the local lingo or spend weeks researching the best restaurants and cultural sites to tick off from an array of guidebooks. Here, he was just one of the anonymous horde of English holidaymakers, pale and pasty or sunburnt and peeling depending on how far into their holiday they were, sporting beer bellies and football shirts with equal pride. Just once, he could allow himself permission to disappear into the stereotype.
Sherry smiled across at him, two pina coladas lined up on the plastic drinks tray while the Two As napped in the shade of a parasol. The hotel complex enhanced this feeling of concealment, the pool area having been built deep into the earth, the accommodation blocks clustered around the circumference giving the impression of a beautified council estate. Eamon imagined the process of digging the foundations, of excavating all that dry red earth to make way for fun pools and slides. It was like lying at the foot of an enormous amphitheatre, a cavernous tiered hollow, decorated with terracotta planters of bougainvillea and orange blossom.
At the summit of all this, on the uppermost balcony above the reception, he spied a solitary figure. He knew instinctively that it was the man he’d seen upon his arrival. He observed the bronzed man’s bleached hair, which contrasted so discernibly with his dark skin, both testament to a lifetime of sun-worship. Though his frame was diminutive and skeletal, he stood at the apex with such command and authority, like a prince surveying his kingdom.
Eamon found himself thinking about what the view would be like from up there and was reminded of the pictures he had seen in the holiday brochure. Parasols of coconut husk, clay-coloured orbs from such a height, encircled the pool, alongside neat rows of sunbeds arranged like seating at an auditorium. Eamon’s view of the complex in comparison was obscured by the poolside bar and the imitation waterfall which cascaded down from manmade boulders, severing the kids’ side of the pool from that of the adults’.
He wondered whether the bronzed man could hear the inane chitchat from the group of teenagers at the water’s edge or the shrieks of children as they splashed in the shallows. For a moment, Eamon was transported to the top, to the blissful quietude beside the bronzed man, away from the commotion and noise of the day to day and all the burdens and stresses at the very bottom.
He felt a prodding at his side and turned to see Sherry staring at him, her sunglasses pulled down against her nose. She nudged him again and pointed firmly toward the twins who had begun to stir in their pushchair. He stood at her silent bidding, creeping across the hot ground in the hope they might fall back asleep. But a chorus started up behind him as a group of children practised their cannonballs and the Two As burst into stuttering wails. He tried to glance up at the bronzed man as he rocked the pushchair, but the angles were all wrong and he was unable to see beyond the façade of the reception. From across the pool, he did see another man, however, a young father wearing a baseball cap, bouncing a gurgling baby on his knee, and he recognised a similar worn expression that spoke of sleep deprivation and regret. But the young man didn’t return his glance for he was looking up.
* * *
Eamon rose early the next morning and as quietly as possible gathered his swimming trunks and towel and snuck out of the hotel room and down to the pool. A brigade of hotel staff were lining up the sunbeds and opening parasols, one man kneeling studiously at the pool’s edge, taking samples. The water was an expanse of smooth, unbroken turquoise, the scent of citrus and chlorine mingled together in open invitation. It was too early for a swim really, the sun still low, the water not yet warmed, but Eamon wanted the pool all to himself, to not have to swim under the scrutiny of the bikini-clad teenagers who flirted at the water’s edge or weave between elderly women blindly backstroking their way along speculated trajectories. Eamon draped his towel over a sunlounger and waited for the hotel staff to disperse.
Even at such an early hour, the bronzed man was there. Eamon wondered if he was watching the sun rise between the mountains, but his line of sight seemed directed irrefutably down. Eamon took off his T-shirt and felt the warmth of the bronzed man’s gaze as he stepped into the tepid water.
He found himself contemplating the colour of the bronzed man’s tan as he swam. Perhaps it was the morning light, but he appeared almost aureate, shimmering on high like a statue or idol. If it weren’t for the occasional movement as he shifted position or extended his grasp along the balcony railing, it would have been easy to take him for the gilded figure of a man.
The hotel complex was coming alive, guests emerging bleary-eyed on their way to breakfast, pausing to reserve clusters of sunbeds, the circumference now littered with emblems of footballs clubs and Disney characters in terrycloth. Eamon heard the familiar shrieks of the Two As, spotting Sherry in the distance with the pushchair and he stopped mid-stroke to rise onto his back. He stretched out his limbs to float, his ears beneath the surface so he was deaf to everything except the sound of water. And he watched the bronzed man at the summit stretch upwards in imitation, reaching toward the sky.
* * *
After breakfast, Eamon decided to take a walk around the complex. He wanted to see how high he could get. He took the elevator to the top floor, but came out beside a conference room full of stacked chairs and trestle tables. He leant against the glass and looked down at the pool, spying Sherry asleep in the sun, but it wasn’t nearly as high as the bronzed man’s platform. The only staircase descended back to the foyer, so he made his way down, taking another set of elevators to a parallel accommodation block. Though he emerged at a roof terrace, he couldn’t find a way across to the bronzed man’s balcony. Chancing upon a cleaner, he tried to ask in broken Spanish for a way up to the topmost floor. But without the bronzed man there it merely looked like part of the roof and the cleaner shook her head blankly, whether in answer to his question or due to misunderstanding he was unsure.
Making his way back down and resuming his place poolside, Eamon saw that the bronzed man had likewise returned to his station. But his arms
were folded as if he were displeased by Eamon’s wandering. Eamon sank into his sunbed, lifting his book to block out the bronzed man’s gaze. He forced himself to read, though the words held no gravity and he glanced up every few pages to check if the bronzed man was still there.
He felt better in the water. Despite the fear of colliding bodies, he began to swim with more dexterity, weaving between children crowded on lilos and novice swimmers lacking spatial awareness. In the afternoon, he took turns pushing the twins across the water in their swimming rings and taught them to jump off the edge into his waiting arms, making a big show of lifting them into the air as he caught them. It would have been easier with one, instead of having to partition his attention between each child, but eventually Sherry rose from her sunbed to join in their game and they were able to all play together.
The bronzed man continued his vigil into the peak of the day. Even when Eamon wasn’t looking directly at him, he seemed to cast a golden light over the complex. Eamon’s hippie sister practised Reiki and was always talking of auras and mystic energies. Aura was not a word he would typically use but the bronzed man did seem to radiate an ochroid glow that extended beyond the mere colour of his tan. Looking at him for too long was like staring at the sun; you had to blink away while the afterimage blurred on your retina.
The Two As cried at being returned to the crèche after so much fun in the water. They gripped the safety rails as if they were prison bars. Sherry turned her sunbed round, hoping they would calm down if they couldn’t make eye contact. Their whimpering increased when the kidz club mascot tried to pacify them.
“Ignore them,” Sherry said. But Eamon was watching the way the gold light fell across the play area and trickled onto Annabelle’s face.
* * *
Back home the twins were Eamon’s usual alarm clock, but here he woke before them and made his way down to the pool. He liked this nascent hour before the hotel was overrun with people, when he could swim in the adults’ side of the pool instead of being stationed opposite the crèche, before he was called upon to change nappies and placate tantrums. It also meant getting out of dressing the twins and the tedious process of covering them both in a milky film of suntan lotion, and he would continue to swim until he was summoned away for breakfast. Of course, there would be a reckoning for enjoying so much free time, but he didn’t care how many jobs and errands Sherry devised when they got home to satisfy her sense of fairness, to atone for being an unrepentant sun-worshipper.