With time, Bridget realised that Terry had played no part in her parent’s split and was in fact not as un-cool as she once thought. A couple of tickets to a rock concert had definitely helped sway it. But it was probably indulging Bridget’s music taste behind Matt’s back that had truly cemented his place in her heart. That Marilyn Manson CD was well hidden in her room and Matt still none the wiser after all this time.
Life had quickly become domestic and it just felt right. Terry encouraged Matt to go for the detective training and he gave up his own tattooing career to help support him. He took on the kids and the house, he was being the perfect supportive husband. Life was amazingly good. A divine, easy and reliable state of bliss.
“How are the kids?” Matt whispered.
“Miss you,” Terry answered. He shuffled back into Matt’s frame. He enjoyed being laid in Matt’s arms. Three years of it still felt as good as that first time.
“I‘m sorry… I thought I had a lead…” he sighed. He was disappointed and guilty, he had sacrificed his family for naught.
Terry didn’t say anything. Not only was he sandwiched between the throes of sleep, he didn’t want to make Matt feel any worse. They both knew the line of work he was in, both knew it was unsociable hours. It was hard, but there was no point beating each other up about it.
“Got any plans tomorrow?” Matt whispered. He was beginning to feel the warm waves of sleep creep upon him.
“Got a client in the morning, then I said I’d take Billie to Asda…”
“What?”
“Oh you know I can’t handle the idea of her lugging a week’s shopping home on that trolley… Those buses are awful…” Terry defended himself.
“Good Samaritan…” and he was gone, he felt Matt’s body soften.
Terry smiled to himself in the dark, then he allowed himself to fall back to sleep.
----------------------------------------------------
“…And the police are appealing for any witnesses, or anyone with any information, to come forward.” Terry turned the car off and thus too the radio.
Seven kids. It made his stomach solidify and sink. Seven kids were missing. He couldn’t imagine what those seven families were dealing with right now. The thought niggled in the back of his mind continuously, like an earworm.
As he’d waved the girls off in the playground this morning, he’d felt the fragility of his family hit him. There was someone out there kidnapping children. Only this wasn’t your classical abductions, this was military grade kidnapping. The facts of the case were harrowing, enough to make your skin crawl and throw you into the throes of deep paranoia.
The assailant broke into the victim’s house, in the middle of the night. Then he set about immobilising the family members with a dart filled with a sleeping toxin, then he took the child and he vanished. There was no trail, no evidence. Not a single shred of anything to go on. It wasn’t luck, it was efficiency. The police department were grasping at straws.
Pressure was mounting, seven children had gone missing in the dead of the night and the police couldn’t figure it out. One of the lead detectives on the case was Matt so Terry was witness first hand to how it was tearing the police force apart.
They had so little to go on. Every sex offender in a twenty mile radius had been questioned, every military personal of a remotely suspicious background had been questioned too. There was nothing, nothing at all to go on.
It wasn’t a kidnapping, there was no ransom notes.
There was no connection between the victims.
Nothing.
Seemingly random, it was like trying to find order in chaos.
Terry took a breath, he needed to clear his mind.
He’d pulled up on the side of the road, he was in the centre of the city. A bit of a rough area but he wasn’t worried. 9:30am wasn’t the sort of time you expected to run into trouble.
He took a deep breath and exhaled. He needed to keep a clear mind. After a moment he climbed out of the car. He took his satchel with him and crossed the road. He double-checked the address and headed up the path.
He knocked on the door.
Somewhere nearby a dog barked. It wasn’t the house before him.
After a moment, there was the sound of a deadlock being disengaged.
He was dressed somewhat smartly today; a red shirt and black jeans. He was wearing only a summer jacket and already the greying skies told him that might have been a bad idea.
“Hello?” A middle aged woman answered the door.
“Hi I’m Terry, you have an appointment…”
She looked him up and down for a moment, confused and hesitant. Again, his appearance had been unexpected. Perhaps they’d expected earthy sandy tones, witchy jewellery and a supernatural aura. Instead they got a tall, skinny, heavily tattooed bloke with a set of piercing eyes and a topknot.
He smiled warmly, flashing perfectly straight teeth.
“Yes, yes, come in…” she ushered him in, coming to life.
He stepped into a cramped hallway that smelt strongly of cats. It was always the first thing he noticed when he stepped into a house. It often led him to wonder what his house smelt of. “Go in,” she pointed to the front room as she shut the door behind them.
“Shoes?”
“Oh keep them on,” she dismissed with a wave of her hand.
She looked tired, a wrung out nothing left in the tank sort of tired. Her maroon dyed hair was pulled into a messy ponytail, her dress sense of a football shirt and pyjama bottoms and the grubby slippers all painted a picture of a woman who had lost hope. Her square face melted into nerves and anticipation as she followed him into the living room.
The prime cause of the smell greeted him from the sofa. Three Siamese cats lay sprawled across each seat. The other settee was home to a blanket and a line of TV remotes. Between the two faded green sofas stood a dirty brown coffee table. The room was painted terracotta and the council fire place was the prettiest thing in the room.
Terry tried not to be judgemental about people’s houses, but sometimes he couldn’t not. He scanned the corners quickly, spied a cat litter tray complete with a few turds. As he hesitated in the room, looking for a suitable perch, he spotted the kitchen. It was messy and cluttered.
“Do you want a drink?” the woman asked, she slipped past Terry and shooed the cats off the settee. They bolted in three different directions.
“No, I’m good thank you,” he declined politely.
“Mind if I have one?” She probed.
“Of course not,” Terry smiled warmly. As she disappeared into the kitchen, Terry took a seat on the sofa. It croaked and groaned under his ass. Which was surprising when he weighed a meagre ten stone. He removed the deck of cards from his bag and began shuffling them. As he idly shuffled, he glanced around the room. In amongst the clutter there laid the memories of a woman and a life long lost. Scattered around the room sat happy pictures of the woman with people, partying and laughing. A wedding picture too, hidden towards the back. She had looked beautiful in her peach dress and her husband in the kilt.
“I’ve never done this before…” the woman entered into the room. She sounded embarrassed and apprehensive.
“Don’t worry, nothing bad can happen. It’s not the exorcist, I promise…” he smiled warmly.
She placed her cup of coffee, in an official England football team mug, on the coffee table.
“Mind if have a smoke?”
“I’d prefer not if that’s okay, I’ve been quit three years…” Terry answered honestly.
“Oh that’s good! Well done! I could never quit!”
Terry had once thought the same.
“Right, I want you to shuffle these cards…”
They were tarot cards but Terry wasn’t going to use them for divining. They were part of the “act” as he liked to call it. While he could read someone’s future with the cards, he rarely practiced it. No, he used the cards because people had an easier time opening
up if he used them. They were usually apprehensive if he tried to connect with them without them. Physical contact was a great conduit to connecting energies, but not everyone fel comfortable with that. Even Terry had met a few clients he hadn’t wanted to hold their hand, for varying reasons.
The woman finished shuffling the cards.
“Right, hand me the cards and then I want you to pick one Jesse,” he took them back and then opened them up in front of him. She picked a random card.
Terry placed the rest of the deck in his satchel and took the card she’d picked.
He turned it over and it read “Three of Swords”.
Pain was the major theme here.
Because Jesse had shuffled the cards, before picking one, she had imbued the cards temporarily with her energy. Now it was easier to sync into it.
He felt himself connect, that strange indescribable tethering to some external energy.
Then, a man appeared out of nowhere and sat next to her on the settee. She didn’t react, she merely sat watching Terry intently. Terry had thought as a child that ghosts would manifest as greyed out silhouettes of their former selves, but they generally manifested in their healthiest state before death. The only way Terry could tell a spirit from a living person was by the faint shimmer.
“He’s got Lion,” Terry relayed the message given by this gentleman. Majority of the time he barely understood the obscure references the spirits gave him. But it resonated with Jesse and she erupted into tears suddenly. The ghost’s expression saddened and he turned his attention to her, he lovingly placed a hand on her thigh but it went unnoticed.
He was handsome, in a old-school kind of way. He was broad, naturally muscular and had fashioned a dashing moustache. He had manifested in a T-shirt and a kilt.
“Who’s Lion?” Terry asked. He was capable of communicating mentally with the ghosts, capable of projecting his internal voice and communicating with them. Sometimes he’d get lost in a particularly intense reading and forget which plane he was talking on.
“Our cat…” the spirit replied.
“Oh, and your name is?”
“Barry…Tell her that Jim says hi,”
Terry relayed the message. She needed a moment, she left to the kitchen. Everybody handled it differently, some people took it all in their stride and others need a few moments to adjust. Some would be sceptical, out to try and dupe you and others would hungrily lap everything up. There was so many shades of human nature in-between.
Jesse returned, returning with a sheet of kitchen roll pressed to her eyes.
“Is Jim well?”
A series of images flashed across Terry’s mind, there was no warning to it but he’d learnt to tolerate it. The spirits would be able to throw memories and visions into your mind while you connected with them. Sometimes that felt like someone had installed several photos on your desktop without your permission. Unfortunately there too was the occasional thing Terry would be given by spirit that he wouldn’t be able to forget. Some things scarred indefinitely in his mind…
“The cancer is gone, he’s well now. No more pain, no more tubes, no more chemo…”
“Is he in a better place?”
This was the ultimate question. This is what drove someone to seek out a medium, the chase for the knowledge that their loved one was okay and now in that ‘better place’. Terry never had any answers for what the ‘better place’ was, no spirit had ever given him a solid answer. They only said it was ‘good’.
“Yes, he is. Barry said he is in that better place,”
His use of the name she’d not given him made her shiver.
“He says you’ve got to stop drinking, you’ve got to get out of the house. Jane needs you…” again, another message from Barry.
“…He says that,” Terry stalled suddenly, he wasn’t sure what he’d just been shown. Sometimes spirits got too eager and assaulted him with images and words, he would need a minute to untangle the mess. “…Are you saving two pound coins? For a holiday?”
Terry was as confused and unsure as he sounded.
“Yeah…” Jesse was surprised and stupefied.
“…He’s saying buy the dog. A white dog…?”
“Oh my god… My friend, she’s selling little bichon frise puppies…”
“He’s saying get one…” Terry shrugged.
For a critic it would sound mundane, all these seemingly trivial aspects of life. They’d probably even argue that a spirit couldn’t possibly want to connect with their living ones and waste it on such trivial things. But Terry knew it was these seemingly trivial things that held the most worth in someone’s life. Rarely did a spirit step in to guide someone on the big things in life. It was always the smaller, more intimate details.
Here was this woman’s dead husband encouraging her to buy a puppy. He knew this puppy would reinstate a purpose into his wife’s life.
“Oh my god…” she snuffled and was speechless.
“He’s saying that he loves you, but its okay if you want to love somebody else. He knows you’ll never forget about him…”
Sometimes the spirits came through and they brought the most heartbreaking of wisdom with them. As Terry was the medium, he was the conduit for these emotions. He could feel the sadness soak into his soul.
“He says he loves you more than anything in the world, but he wants you to be happy…”
“I love him too,”
The spirit smiled and placed a ghostly hand on her cheek. It was always eerie to see, a spirit interacting with an unsuspecting mortal.
“Is Jean getting a new car?” the barrage of images hit him like a shotgun.
“No, my son has…”
“No… I see a woman, blonde and she’s got a red car…”
Jesse shrugged.
Barry threw another set of images at Terry and he recoiled.
“Ok… It’s a… a… is she… is she about to start a new job, a job that requires her to travel?”
“She’s waiting to hear back from an interview… About a job!”
Well Terry assumed Barry was trying to tell her that their daughter was going to get the job. Quite what that had to do with a shiny red car though… Sometimes the spirits were awfully cryptic.
“Wait… Her boyfriend has a red car…”
Bingo.
Barry smiled before he threw another series of images inside Terry’s head.
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The school playground was a horrendous place, full of catty politics and nosey parents. It had taken him a long time to feel comfortable waiting amongst the fellow parents. Terry was used to drawing attention, the unconventional appearance always did after all, but he always felt conspicuous because he was the only gay dad in the school. It had initially caused a bit of a ripple to say the least. It had taken the better part of a year before he felt remotely comfortable about it.
Now he did his best to avoid the fellow mums and dads like the plague. He wasn’t unsociable, nor was he rude, he just didn’t want to take any of these people home with him. They were strangers he had only a tenuous link to, he liked it to keep it that way.
That didn’t stop a few mums from being over-friendly, prying for gossip that could be spent in their little gaggles. When Terry’s medium-skills leaked, (he did well, it took over a year) he found interest in him peaked significantly.
As Terry sat on the wall and waited for the school bell he contemplated this. He was the tall skinny heavily tattooed father, the one with the long hair who was married to another man and he could talk to dead people! On paper Terry was quite the character. Maybe some should write a book about him?
He felt himself dwell in this plane of daydreams as fellow parents lined up near him. They kept a polite distance, most of them barely acknowledging him. It was nice to finally feel one with the unofficial ‘group’ they all had. He was one of ‘them’.
He’d witnessed the new parents arrive on the s
cene, seen their nervous stances as they felt like strangers in an established land. He remembered that feeling…
“Hey Terry!” a woman called offering a short little wave. Terry smiled and tipped his head. A polite rebuttal. She kept on walking, her destination a little further down the playground.
The school was a U-shape, the two playgrounds in the centre. The higher playground was for the older children, the bottom for the younger. A small waist-high wall separated the two.
As it was a primary school both of Terry’s step-daughters were in the same school. Bridget was on his left side, the fifth door from the end. Christine was on the right, the furthest door nestled in the corner.
Terry watched the woman disappear into the folds of her ‘gang’.
He had no idea what her name was, but he knew her face. He also knew her intentions pretty well. She was one of those women who thought any gay man was only gay because he hadn’t found the right woman. It had taken a careful dance of batting away her flirty advances before she finally got the hint. Terry knew that she still held a torch for him, which was flattering.
She was short, pretty round and in desperate need of a spruce up. The stylish haircut had grown out, the dyed streaks had drifted apart towards the tips and her dress sense was shocking. It should be illegal for women to wear velour tracksuits, a prison offence should be in place for the offending items containing the word “juicy”.
“Hey,” Bridget appeared at his side.
“Hey kid,” he greeted. She hoisted herself onto the wall.
“Good day?”
“Yeah…” she agreed. The playground was beginning to rise to life as more classes begin to pour out.
A comfortable silence fell between them. Terry used to find their silences uncomfortable but he’d come to realise that Bridget was the type of soul that didn’t need to endlessly chatter. Now he could happily sit saying nothing to her.
“…Can we get a dog?”
Life’s synchronicities made him smile. He’d instantly flashed back to the morning’s chat with Jesse. Life had a peculiar way of echoing itself.
“Me and your dad are still talking about it,” Terry answered.
Ten Missing Children Page 3