I turned off as soon as there was a side street to turn into, then immediately took a left and then a right, until I had lost all sense of direction. Some bizarre logic suggested that if I lost my way the things would lose theirs too, as if they were somehow in my control. I ran through nameless streets that all looked the same. My heart was pumping furiously, my head amazingly clear. I was sorry to have lost Stella and felt soiled after almost becoming trapped in Maxi’s sticky web of betrayal. At least I’d managed to make a mess of her post-modern surgery squat, I thought with grim satisfaction, but then realised I didn’t actually hold a grudge against her. In this city you had to sell yourself and others in order to postpone your ride in the open-topped trailer I’d seen earlier that evening.
I stopped for breath. The night was humid and prickly. Bent over, hands on knees, I listened but couldn’t hear the creatures any more. Could I really have outrun them?
No clatter of pursuit, but the telephone was loud and clear in the night.
It was only a couple of streets away, or so it seemed. I had to stop it ringing before it attracted unwelcome attention. As I ran I caught sight of my reflection in the oily blackness of a ground-floor window. My hair was uneven and scraggy. If anything I stuck out more than before. From my pocket I pulled out the black beanie Stella had given me and put it on.
I stopped in front of the house the ringing was coming from. The air was very still and heavy like just before a storm, the streets behind me quiet, but I sensed my pursuers couldn’t be far away. I ran up the three steps, stepped across to the window ledge and smashed a single pane with my elbow. Reaching in to release the catch, I jumped down into the room, landing as softly as an eleven-stone man in cowboy boots can.
I followed the ringing out of the front room and into the hall which was cast in a ghostly half-light by coloured glass in the front door. The end of the hall, however, lay in darkness. I walked slowly, my heart hammering, sweat trickling down the back of my neck. There were two doors. I opened the first and stepped inside.
I looked across to the far side of the room. There was something there but it wasn’t a telephone. I stood there for a few seconds feeling every hair on my body stand stiffly erect. Fear filled me up like gas fills up a room.
I took three steps back, turned around and closed the door behind me. I twisted the knob to open the second door and suddenly the ringing was much louder. I could see the telephone sitting like a lobster on a table covered with a sheet. Feeble starlight made the room’s shadows grainy and thick. There seemed to be dust sheets covering all the furniture and the sheets were smeared with something dark. The deep carpet impeded my progress, catching at my boot heels.
I picked up the receiver and the sudden silence seemed louder than the persistent ringing. The Bakelite felt clammy in my hand and the receiver slipped as I lifted it to my ear. A woman’s hysterical voice screamed down the line — ‘Carl! Help! Come quickly, Carl! Please!’ — then was cut off.
I stood there in the darkness, cold and alone, as the line buzzed.
I knew the voice on the line. It was Annie Risk’s.
I rattled the cradle but the connection had been severed. I dialled Annie’s number and listened to the rustle of digits down the line. To my amazement the ringing tone sprang up at the other end and then stopped as the phone was picked up. My heart in my mouth, I waited for a voice.
‘Hello?’
It was Annie’s voice.
‘Annie,’ I said. ‘It’s Carl.’
‘Hello? Who is it? Hello?’ She sounded anxious.
‘Annie, it’s me. Was that you before ringing here? Annie, what’s wrong?
‘Who is this?’ Panic caused her voice to break. She couldn’t hear me. I could hear her but she couldn’t hear me. To her it was just a wrong number. She’d be hearing those odd metallic scratchy sounds I’d heard both at the flat and at the shop when I’d picked up the phone and there’d been no one there. Then, out of the terrible silence, came her voice again, barely a whisper: ‘Carl?’
I shivered.
‘Annie, it’s me,’ I shouted.
Silence.
‘Carl. Is that you? Are you there? Carl!’ She broke down and cried. ‘Carl. Oh Carl.’
I shouted her name again but she obviously couldn’t hear me. For a few moments all I could hear down the line was the sound of her quietly crying. Then the line went dead and a tremor passed through me.
Some time later I came to, roused by thunder outside. I was sitting in one of the armchairs. I felt a terrible emptiness, like you feel when you wake up and realise it wasn’t a dream and your life really is spinning out of control. Rain beat against the windows like the feet of small animals. The dust-sheet beneath my hands was damp and sticky. I pushed myself to my feet. I had to get on. As I reached a standing position and stretched my body backwards a flash of lightning outside turned the room momentarily to daylight and imprinted its shocking colours on my retinas.
The sheets, which I had thought merely grimy with age, were stained with blood, and from its vivid shade I knew it was not long spilt. A thunderclap shook the room, rattling the windows in their frames. My flesh crawled as I strained to see into the corners but, dark again, they guarded their secrets. I backed away to the door and just as my hand closed on the knob another jagged flash of pure white light lit up the room. There was red everywhere. Even the carpet was tufted and matted with blood. I turned and fled.
In the dark hall another lightning flash burst in through the half-light at the far end. As if someone were taking pictures of me. There was nowhere to turn. I knew I had to go back into the first room and confront what lay there. I opened the door. A thundercrack made my breastbone vibrate. I walked across the dark, tacky floor towards the figure in the bed.
There was a drip stand at the head of the bed and tubes threaded into the patient’s pale arm.
‘Oh God,’ I whispered.
Lightning stripped the bed bare of shadows and I saw the bruised, bloodshot eyes staring right at me. They were not my father’s eyes, but mine.
Part Three
‘This king, his king, remained such a stranger and so inaccessible that he was no more than an abstraction, no longer even a symbol, and in no way a human being; Boris came quite naturally to doubt the reality of his existence.’
Chapter Twelve
My father’s life seemed to diminish in every respect. When he was in the house he would be sitting talking in the lounge with my mother. The door would be closed and the radio playing quietly to cover their voices. I sat on the stairs and listened a couple of times. He never turned the radio up quite loud enough, so I could hear most of what they said to each other. It was practical stuff. The doctors had given him between three and eighteen months. I heard him telling my mother with an even voice how he was going to make sure there was enough money for us both. Most of the time she wouldn’t say anything and when she did I could hear the strain in her voice. She was fighting to keep her emotions under control. Sometimes she couldn’t and I heard her voice break, I heard her sobbing, and pictured my father putting his arm around her and the two of them sitting there on the settee staring at the gas fire.
I sat shivering on the stairs, part of me wishing I could sit with them and part of me too frightened to behold their faces while they talked about death. Also, I knew that my presence would make it harder for both of them.