by Ophelia Keys
Chapter 2. DYLAN ALONE
tuesday, december 15
Dylan
Indigo’s been gone for over a month. At first I measured it in hours. Six hours missing. Fourteen hours missing. That’s when I still thought that looking in her notebook would render up some clue. Then it got to big numbers like forty-two hours and it seemed much better to count in days and weeks.
I was proactive at first. I called her last client. His wife answered. She was still frightened. I suspect she always will be now – because she was followed so long. She couldn’t tell me anything – hadn’t even heard of Indigo. Then her husband grabbed the phone and he was yelling. He wasn’t happy that Indigo had run out in the middle of everything. Well, it sounded to me like the first sensible thing she’d done. I hung up on him mid rant because I was just on the edge of shouting back, ‘Are you happy now your wife’s free and it’s taken Indigo?’
After two weeks I’m still running on adrenalin. It’s a like a drug coursing through me all the time, leaving a metal taste in my mouth and a kind of electric buzzing at my fingertips. I’ve had trouble with insomnia before but I never knew you could be quite so wired and so burnt out all at once. The problem is that there’s nowhere for that adrenalin to go. No heroic rescue to be made. Nothing to do but go back to the same places, secretly letting myself into Indigo’s building while her house mate is at work. Walking through the rooms with the bad feeling that the house is watching me and it knows I’m missing something huge. That’s what it seems like anyway – some huge and obvious clue that will lead me straight to her. Only I’m too stupid to see it.
Most of all I go to the kitchen. Because that’s where it took her. I know this, because I saw her go. It’s pretty much burned into my skull. Really, I kind of knew it the moment I knocked on the door – that something terrible was happening inside. If I didn’t still have her key I probably would have broken a window or something. It felt that bad. Once I was in I ran up the stairs and just about crashed into the wall, I was going so fast. They were standing in the kitchen. Its body (shaped just like an ordinary man) almost blocked her from view, but I could see a fragment of her face and her arm. I guess it would have been out of its line of vision, but I caught a glint from her hand, a little knife.
Maybe it was just wishful thinking, but for a split second I was sure she looked past it and right at me. And so I think she must have had a moment of hope. That some sort of help had arrived. But I just stood there as it reached up, really quite slowly, to touch her face. I was in shock I suppose – to see it in the house. It didn’t belong there. It was Indigo who acted, bringing the little knife around in a sudden, savage arc. But it never struck. All I could do was stare as its fingers connected with her forehead and they both stuttered and flickered off like a broken projector image.
I’ve seen some really strange things over the years. I was once taking an account from an elderly woman who believed her dead sister was watching over her. Part way through the interview a little porcelain dog from the mantelpiece shot past us and burst into smithereens against the opposite wall. Things like that were happening all the time. I had journals full of that stuff. There’s always an explanation. And I know it will all be explained scientifically some day. I don’t have the background to do that. I’m a recorder really. I take down the accounts, do the research. I don’t know why, but I just know that someone needs to do it. It needs to be witnessed before it can be explained. So, I’ve seen some unusual things. But this was different. I saw them both flickering in and out like guttering candles. And then nothing, just the empty kitchen. I don’t really know how else to describe it, except to say it was the most unscientific thing I ever saw.
So now I regularly stand in the kitchen, looking at that spot where I last saw her. It gives me a kind of link to the moment. I have this idea that if I remember it clearly enough, I’ll know what action to take. But no matter how hard I think about it, no matter how much detail there is, I still have no idea what to do. The truth is she just vanished. She was there and then she wasn’t. Kind of like a car accident, only with nothing left behind to prove that it was real.
After I go to her house I generally come home and sit and watch TV, and watch the clock. There’s a big empty space with me all the time. Or, rather, a little Indigo-sized space. It’s like her absence is beside me all the time. While I’m looking at the five o’clock news (five o’clock, that makes another hour gone), I’m thinking of all the things I used to hate about her that I can now see were the best parts of her. Her stubbornness and the way she always did things secretly, and then would try to coerce me into helping her once she was in real danger. Well now I saw her stubbornness as courage, and it was my cowardice that had forced her to trick me into involvement.
I’ve tried to cope with what happened my own way. It’s left me burnt out and empty. I think the only thing to do is what Indigo would do in my place. A way to honour her, I suppose. I’m going to drink myself into oblivion.
I started methodically. And maybe you’re already seeing a fault in my plan. I’ve never been a happy drunk at the greatest of times. I’m the one who suddenly turns nasty just when everyone else is reaching the peak of enjoyment. But I forget that quite easily, because I’m not generally a drinker. Truth be told, drunks kind of disgust me.
It begins with a flood of remarkable insights. This time was no different. Only no one was with me to suffer through it. I just sat there having realisations about my life. I’ve never told anyone this before because I’m kind of ashamed of it, but my father is a very rich man. I don’t ever have to worry about money. Indigo doesn’t know about that and I wish it wasn’t true, because for some reason it makes me feel pretty worthless. My mother was a free spirit who left me with him – knowing he had the cash to bring me up. As if that’s all it took. I guess she thought that an illegitimate child was going to be hugely popular with the strait-laced family he already had. I don’t think I need to even go into that. It wasn’t a great success.
So here’s the amazing insight. It suddenly dawned on me that one of my parents was a big empty space that I filled up with whatever. My father was a man and my mother was absence. And what did that mean for who I was? Did it make me a changeling – something half from another world – I mean half-born of my own imagination? I started to picture myself as some sort of lumbering minotaur, blundering about, ruining everything I touched. I’m a terrible drunk, like I said. I just kept on and on, as if I was stuck in some kind of pop-psychology labyrinth. Oh, it was complicated. Sometimes my mother wasn’t absence. Sometimes she was a sliver of memory – of sitting in enormously high grass while she held a buttercup to my face. Only in my mind I can see its reflection, a yellow coin on my chin, and I start to wonder if it’s a real memory or just something I saw in a movie.
So after drinking a magnificent amount of horrible cheap Scotch, followed by something liquorice flavoured (which was all I had) I just sat at my table with my head resting on my arms and felt I was in some dreary existentialist novel. The flood of energy was over. All the insights I’d had were empty and I was a disgusting drunk. Worse, I was a coward for anaesthetising myself against what I’d done to Indigo. That was it. At the heart of it. What I’d done.
I’d kept her in the dark. I should have given her all the information I had right from the beginning. If she had known how dangerous it really was she might have hung back. If I’d told her that followers always took someone. But I hadn’t and now she was gone. The equation was starkly and beautifully simple. It was almost a relief. I guess this was the moment of true insight when I could have stopped drinking. But I didn’t. If you had a bit of a literary background you might say I’d waded out so far, it seemed just as hard to come back as to go all the way. And I’ve always been very goal driven. Well now oblivion was my goal and that’s where I was headed.
wednesday, december 16
Everyone knows that the problem with that kind of oblivion is that it’s quickly
replaced by something ten times worse than what you started with. I suppose I’d forgotten about that too. The full reality. When I woke I was aware that the sun had been blazing through the shut blinds for hours. Only now I couldn’t block it out anymore because there was a shrilling noise with it. A part of me knew perfectly well it was the phone, but another part was still lost in that black, primitive emptiness that had been such a blessing, when I finally felt it coming.
Each ring tore another layer back, bringing me closer to a harsh reveal that I didn’t want. On the sixth ring I finally acknowledged it was the phone, but didn’t want to answer. By the seventh ring Indigo’s disappearance had hit me again. By the eighth I was back in my body and it was a terrible place full of pain and lurching nausea. The ninth ring reminded me that the phone was important now Indigo was gone. It could even be her. I flung one arm over my eyes and reached for it.
She had a pretty voice and it was saying very quickly who she was and why she was calling, but I was in such a terrible way I couldn’t grasp it.
‘Sorry?’ I whispered, when there was a silence.
She started again, voice just as bright. ‘It’s Ani. Indigo’s tenant, remember?’
I sighed deeply. It was rude of me. It’s not that often I get called by beautiful women. At least, I’m pretty sure it was not that often, as I usually had a strict policy of not answering the phone.
‘I’m going to have to call you back …’ I began, cursing her for waking me out of my blissful nothingness, but she was starting again.
‘Look, Dylan. I know you said that Indigo’s gone away for a while, and I’m not really sure if you know what the real situation is over here. But I’m getting this crazy vibe in the kitchen and I’m pretty sure something really, really bad happened there.’
I sat up pretty quickly when she mentioned the kitchen, but then had to double over in a wash of nausea. She must have taken my struggle not to be violently ill as an emotional moment, because she said, worriedly; ‘Don’t freak out on me though!’
That made me laugh. I laughed for quite a while. Which made me realise she was right – I was ‘freaking out’ in rather a huge way.
‘What do you mean ‘the kitchen’?’ I asked, stupidly. ‘How could you know that?’
‘Well, I think it’s obvious something happened in the kitchen. And I don’t think Indigo’s gone away at all. I think she’s still in the house.’
I stood up so fast at this that, to be honest, I almost blacked out. I had to sit down again and actually press the phone into my forehead to get rid of the darkness at the edge of my eyes.
‘The house?’ I managed, finally.
There was a bit of silence. ‘Dylan, I don’t think this phone thing is working out. Why don’t you give me your address and I’ll come over?’
Well I got the address out before, I’m sorry to say, I had to stagger to the bathroom and be copiously sick. It’s not necessary for you to judge me. I was totally disgusted with myself. Rest assured this is the last time I plan a course of action on what Indigo would do. She always has big ideas but she’s never been much of a forward thinker.
Afterwards I slumped numbly against the bathroom wall with evil little white flashes going at the edge of my vision. But I didn’t stay there long. I had only met Ani a few times, but I had a very clear memory of her magnificent long legs and wide-set blue eyes. Not that I was in a condition to make a good impression, or that I even really wanted to. I just didn’t want to horrify her with my evil-smelling kitchen and mail-strewn passageway. I was a clean person usually. A bit obsessive compulsive. But the last month had been a sudden slide into chaos and I’d stopped even seeing it as mess. Until Ani called. Yes, I could think about these things even with Indigo gone. I’m only human.
The apartment was kind of presentable when she arrived twenty minutes later. But I was still a total mess, and she saw it as soon as I opened the door.
‘Sorry to tell you that stuff over the phone,’ she said, walking in with a good smell (vanilla perfume and sunlight). She was almost as tall as I was and could look me straight in the eye. Maybe I shouldn’t have noticed but, in my defense, I was in a pretty vulnerable state.
‘It’s kind of a shame,’ she said, looking at my intricate collection of bird skulls, but not commenting, ‘that you’re so hung over. You’re totally in the wrong place for this.’ She sat herself down on a linoleum chair, legs stretching out like some crazy Bambi creature. ‘But I’m really glad it wasn’t you. I mean, I had to read you to be safe, but I can see by just looking at you that you didn’t do it.’
I didn’t understand anything she was saying. ‘Do you know where Indigo is?’ I asked, enunciating carefully.
‘Well, I’d like to hear what you think, but the kitchen seems to be the last place she was when she was definitely anywhere.’
I just stood there and looked at her. I was really stunned.
‘You’re sick,’ she said, brightly. ‘You’d better sit down before you puke.’
I sat down.
She was still looking around the apartment, eyes passing over my locked cabinet of notebooks. ‘I’m glad it wasn’t you. I mean, I was starting to think you might have done it.’ She laughed. ‘I’ve got no idea what a ‘follower’ is, but I can tell you, the kitchen feels like the Bermuda Triangle or something.’
I registered the word ‘follower’ and was just alert enough to guess where she’d found it. ‘You read her diary?’
She shrugged. ‘It was on her bed.’ She leaned forward and fixed me with her big eyes. ‘And I should have known that kind of negative energy could only be something from another plane.’
I laughed. ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but you sound like a new age freak.’ I really meant it as an apology, but I don’t think it came out that way.
She sat back and glared at me. ‘Well, I guess you have your own ideas, but if I were you I’d be looking at the house.’
She was right, of course. I stood up very slowly, head throbbing. ‘Let’s go then.’
‘If you think you’re up to it.’
She was definitely not happy with me. I suppose I deserved it. Politeness is about the first thing to go with me when I’m sick. Add to that the shock of it all. Because it was impossible she knew about what had happened in the kitchen.
It was already too hot outside. It usually took twenty minutes to walk to Indigo’s place, but I guess I made it a little longer. I couldn’t move very fast and I think the sun was literally killing me. It must have been high thirties Celsius and I was dehydrated and at the point of passing out any moment. Strangely, it was the fear of passing out and making a spectacle of myself that I was most worried about. I guess it was easier than thinking about Indigo.
I followed Ani’s long legs up the outer stairway and waited for her to unlock the door, politely pretending that I didn’t still have my own key, and that I hadn’t been letting myself in and poking around for the last month. The house blew cool air over us as we went in. I swear Indigo’s place has its own weather system.
I stopped in the passageway, looking at the high white walls and letting my eyes adjust to the gloom. Ani shut the door behind us and I had a memory of Indigo slumped against it, peeling the straps of her shoes away from red marks on her legs. I could see she’d run so fast and so far in those shoes that she must have been in total panic. Which was not really like Indigo at all. She was generally pretty cool, which just means she puts a high priority on hiding any fear she’s actually feeling. I think that’s what scared me the most, even more than knowing she had seen another follower and it had seen her. To realise that she had been running from something in pure terror. But I suppose it was an improvement in a way – for her to be heading away from trouble instead of straight toward it.
Ani touched my arm and made me jump. ‘Do you want to go to the kitchen?’
I just leaned up against the wall and she stood there looking at me. It was pretty clear that neither of us wanted to go.
She didn’t even blush. ‘And that notebook too. I read about it but I don’t know what it is. Some sort of dark idea that’s become material I suppose. You have to wonder why she’s invited that into her life.’
I couldn’t help it, I laughed, and she looked pretty annoyed.
‘Well, at least I’ve got a theory. What are you doing about it? Just taking endless notes and like ‘case histories’ and never having a real opinion about anything?’
I wasn’t laughing anymore. She really had been reading Indigo’s diary.
‘Let’s just go upstairs.’
We went up to the third level, which was mostly taken up by a big front room stretching across the width of the building. Just before it was a poky little space, which I guess had been a maid’s room or something in Victorian times. Now it had a battered table and a little kitchenette. Maybe it was my aching head, but I couldn’t feel anything strange there. Just the kind of sick feeling you might expect from a hideous hangover and the memory of Indigo’s white face as she disappeared into nothingness.
I’d walked straight in, but Ani was standing just outside the door, arms crossed. There was a half-made coffee on the bench, and I guess she had decided, mid-way through, to call me. It awakened another memory. It was a while ago now, when I was living there. Indigo had been making coffee and I’d walked up behind her and kissed her softly on the back of her neck, burying my face in her hair. Ever since she’d been missing I’d been thinking of stupid things like that. Wondering what it had been that had made me so fed up with her in the end. I was drawn out of my maudlin loop by Ani suddenly walking in and crouching down to press her palms against the floor – pretty much exactly where I’d seen Indigo disappear.
‘Oh yeah, she’s definitely still here,’ she said, sitting back on her heels and wiping her palms on her bare legs. ‘But she’s …’ she stopped. ‘Underneath.’ She pronounced the word strangely, as if it was coming to her syllable by syllable. She stood up slowly and seemed to look right through me, lips parted as if she was about to continue.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked. She was starting to make me edgy with her wall-eyed look.
‘She’s underneath,’ she repeated.
If there’s one thing that really creeps me out it’s mediums, and it was becoming more and more obvious that’s what she was. I wasn’t all that surprised. Indigo couldn’t seem to do anything without attracting some kind of supernatural trouble, even subletting her house.
‘You mean downstairs?’ I tried.
She shrugged, finally seeming to see me and looking miserable. I walked straight down to the landing. The stairs leading to the street level were totally boarded over and had been ever since Indigo first got the place. It was one of her bizarre rent requirements that she didn’t try to open it up. The landlord used to come look at it once a week, sometimes twice, just to make sure she hadn’t opened it. Pretty creepy and not technically permitted for a landlord, but if you’re getting a massive Victorian terrace for a hundred a week, you don’t complain. Eventually he seemed to trust her a little more and I’m not sure that he came at all anymore. We never wanted to look down there anyway.
It was a pretty messy job, just big slats of wood leaning over the stairway and awkwardly nailed down straight into the carpet. I had to go searching for a hammer, which I eventually found beside Indigo’s bed. I guess that said something about her state of mind before it took her. The nails weren’t too difficult to get up. Though it would have been easier if I wasn’t so horribly ill and cramping up every two minutes. Ani had gone dead quiet and just stood behind me.
I’ll tell you what I really hate about mediums. There can be two of you there, but you’re actually completely alone. To be fair, not all of them were like that. Some of them seemed kind of chatty and normal and would just drop odd things into the conversation now and then, as naturally as if they were commenting on the weather. Ani was not one of those. She was of the full on trance type, and that was not something I wanted to be around.
I went up the little flight of stairs to rip the top of the panels from the base of the wooden banister up there, pretty relieved just to get away from her for a few seconds. She was crouching down again, running her fingers lightly over the loose nails like someone reading braille. After a moment she looked up at me and said in a surprised tone, ‘He just nailed it all shut. He didn’t even bother to clean up. He just nailed it all shut and waited for a few months.’
She really had a very sweet voice. No matter what she was saying. At that moment I just wanted to tell her to shut up. I assume it was the landlord she was talking about. I didn’t want to know what he’d done or what was down there. I just wanted to find Indigo. Even though it made no sense, I was totally convinced we would find her. Ani thought she was there. And though I’m not at all superstitious, I just knew at a gut level that it was true.
I came down and lifted the planks away, leaning them up against the walls. They were heavy and I was pretty unwell but I could see Ani was in no condition to help. When I was done, I stood at the top of the stairs and looked down into the dimness, feeling cool air wafting past, as if the house was able to breathe again. The steps were covered in the same dark carpet as the landing, making it hard to see where they ended. I let out a deep breath. There was no point putting it off.
I started down, keeping one hand on the wood of the banister while the other trailed against the wall, dislodging drifts of old plaster. When I got halfway down I made out the tiny seams of light around the front door and began to see doorways on my left. I looked back. Ani was descending very slowly. I’d been feeling pretty unfriendly towards her, what with the fact she was scaring the hell out of me, but now she just looked like an animal being herded into a slaughterhouse and I felt bad for her. I went back up and touched her arm, a bit awkwardly I suppose. She’d lost her blank look, and I was glad to have her fully with me, even if she was scared out of her wits.
‘You don’t have to come down,’ I said.
She looked surprised. I guess she had no reason to think I wasn’t a complete jerk all the time.
‘No, I want to,’ she replied, actually stepping past me.
We came down almost together, her pale head just a little before mine, but we both stopped at the foot of the stairs. The front hallway was very dark and it was undeniably cold, with no sense that the sun was burning outside. I could see the nearest internal door was boarded up pretty solidly and didn’t like to think about that too much. Ani was walking a little deeper into the coolness of the house, but she stopped beside the stairs and gasped as if someone had tapped her on the shoulder. I came closer, skin prickling and very willing to acknowledge that the ‘vibe’ was pretty bad.
There was a little closet under the stairs. I could make out the handle of the door. Ani was pressing herself right up against the panels in a very strange way. I waited, but she didn’t move. She had simply laid herself against the door, breathing deeply, as if she was asleep. I hesitated before I gently pushed her aside, even at that moment too aware of the heat coming off her skin. I opened the little door, fingers tingling. Needless to say, it was utterly black. I had to stoop to get in, aware of Ani’s shadowy form out in the hallway next to me. I waited for a few moments, hoping my eyes would adjust, but nothing happened. Meanwhile I breathed in the air, stale and strangely warm. Then I did it quickly, without letting myself think about it. I crouched down and reached out, into the darkest corner. I felt it right away – the soft give of a body. I jumped back. It startled me, even though I kind of expected it. I reached forward again, felt cool skin under my hands, though I couldn’t tell if it was an arm, a shoulder, or a leg.
‘She’s not there,’ said Ani, in her sweet, absent voice.
‘Oh, yes she is,’ I told her.
It was awkward getting Indigo up the stairs. Partly because I was doing it on my own, and even though she
’s very little she was still quite a weight for one person on a stairway. Also because I wanted to get as far away from Ani and the darkness as quickly as possible in the way that a little kid will take a panicky flying leap into bed to avoid the thing that might be lurking underneath. I pretty much fell onto the landing and Indigo fell like a rag doll with me. It’s horrible to say but her head hit the carpet with a thud, and she still didn’t show any sign of life. I half lifted her up again.
‘Take her away. To her room,’ said Ani, emerging from the darkness breathlessly, pupils huge and black.
She grabbed Indigo’s legs. Together we carried her up and laid her on the bed. I was sure she was dead, the way her head lolled back on the covers. My brain was pretty much failing to absorb this. In just the same way, it wasn’t able to bridge the disconnect between seeing her flickering out like a fey candle in the kitchen and finding her very real body stuffed in a cellar under the stairs. I can’t say I was even upset. I just felt hugely focused and amazed. My hangover had dissolved in a warm flow of adrenaline. I could see Indigo in extreme detail, each eyelash lying against her cheek and the soft bruised colour beneath her eyes, as if she’d been awake too many nights.
‘She’s breathing,’ said Ani, touching my arm to get my attention. I had a strong feeling then that I was a crazy, swirling kite that she had by a string. Only her hand was keeping me from some kind of reverse-plummet into the sky.
She said it a little louder. ‘Dylan, she’s breathing.’
I finally saw Indigo’s chest rising and falling. It knocked all the breath out of me, to realise she was alive. It was only then I registered she was wearing a flimsy slip of some silky white material. I don’t think I’d ever seen it before, and she certainly wasn’t wearing it when she was taken. It was not something I wanted to think about too much. It just seemed too corporal, and this whole thing was meant to be some kind of a metaphysical situation.
I closed my hand about her arm and shook it. There was no change. She really just appeared to be sleeping. A piece of her dark hair was sticking to the edge of her mouth. I brushed it away, very carefully – it was the only useful thing I could do. Ani was looking at me.
‘You’d better stay with her,’ she said. ‘Keep her warm.’
I wasn’t really sure what she meant. It seemed warm enough in Indigo’s room, oppressive you might call it, but Ani left without any explanation, shutting the door behind her. I knelt on the bed and opened up the windows to let more of the hot afternoon air in. A blackbird was singing. Maybe it will sound strange, but I pulled off my t-shirt and then carefully peeled off Indigo’s dress, throwing it as far away as possible. I lay down behind her and wrapped my arms around her small body. She felt cool and kind of insubstantial. I thought if I held her too tightly she might dissolve away and leave me holding nothing at all. It occurred to me that an ambulance might be appropriate, but instead I just watched the tiny rise and fall of her chest under my darker arm, and listened to the soft whoosh of her pulse right up against my ear. Outside the door, I could hear the sound of nails being driven into wood but it seemed very far away.
I shut my eyes. Skin against skin I felt I could pass my awakeness to her by some kind of mysterious osmosis. All the terror of the last weeks was drifting off and I had a strange feeling that our breathing had become one, as if I were drawing air through Indigo’s mouth and she was breathing out through mine. I wanted to stay awake for her, but gradually, the rhythm of her soft breaths was taking me over and carrying me, breath by breath, into sleep.
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