Bloody Parchment Volume 1, 2011

The Bloody Parchment anthology was published in collaboration with the South African HorrorFest. All works here are copyrighted to the authors, who assert that these are original works of fiction by them that they have kindly allowed to be reproduced in the Bloody Parchment anthology.

This anthology is a work of collaborative fiction. Names and characters are the products of the authors’ imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

The opinions expressed in this anthology are not necessarily those of Bloody Parchment and the South African HorrorFest.

This anthology is not for sale, but may be freely distributed.

Direct any enquiries to nerinedorman@gmail.com and place “Bloody Parchment” in the subject line.

Follow the Bloody Parchment blog at: http://bloodyparchment.blogspot.com

South African horror/extreme/sci-fi and fantasy culture in all media have been neglected and marginalized for as long as the genres have been thrilling the public. With the country’s uncomfortable past, the focus had always been squarely placed on political subjects and frivolous comedy as an escape from it―two polar opposites denying all the other amazing entertainment genres.

Some of us prefer things to be a bit stranger and more “out there” than normal. Being actively involved for several decades with the production of alternative movies

and music, our dark entertainment portal SHADOW REALM, INC. and the creation of film festivals like the South African HORRORFEST, X FEST Extreme Film Festival, and CELLUDROID Sci-Fi/Anime/Fantasy Film Festival, we have taken it upon ourselves to help South African Alternative Culture emerge from the shadows, and bring together like-minded creators and consumers of everything off-centre.

With the HORRORFEST becoming the all-encompassing South African Halloween event (est. 2005), from the get-go we intended to have it encapsulate more than just movies. Music was incorporated with THE MAKABRA ENSEMBLE, creating new, original soundtracks to classic silent movies, performing these live underneath the big screen (from Nosferatu to Phantom of the Opera).

There is the short film competition, and naturally Halloween dress-up is a regular part of proceedings. A small, dark photo exhibition was incorporated in 2007, but will be expanded to include both art and photography.

Then, of course, there is the written word where it all starts. Horror literature precedes cinema by centuries and has conjured up frightening images for incalculable generations. When deciding the time was right to incorporate a literature segment for the event, our first choice to oversee it was Nerine Dorman. Her passion for the craft and genre had her take it up with full force, handling both the live reading evening and the short story competition.

Our Shadow Realm website incorporates movies, music, gaming and literature, the latter chapter named Bloody Parchment. With this already established name and all of these endeavours being integrated, dubbing the HORRORFEST’s literature segment BLOODY PARCHMENT was inevitable.

Paul Blom & Sonja Ruppersberg-Blom (Flamedrop Productions)

With movie and music production and film festivals an inseparable part of our lives under our Flamedrop umbrella, adding the publication of literature to that list would be a natural progression, hence the compiling of the best stories from the inaugural Bloody Parchment short story competition.

We’d like to thank Nerine, the writers and the judges, the faithful audience supporting our events, the movie-makers sending us their productions, sponsors, affiliates, assistants and press for helping in the expansion of what we’re passionate about.

http://www.HORRORFEST.info

http://www.SHADOWREALMinc.com

http://www.SHADOWREALMinc.com/bloodyparchment/index.htm

http://www.FLAMEDROP.com/events

http://www.TERMINATRYX.com/makabra

http://www.flamedrop.com/AlternativeAlliance

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There’s no such thing as “let’s quickly put together a short horror fiction anthology”. Ask me, I know all too well. Bloody Parchment for me has been a labour of love, born out of the desire to give authors an opportunity to let their words shine while maintaining their creative integrity.

Of course none of this would have been possible without the tireless work of the South African HorrorFest organisers. Husband-and-wife team Paul Blom and Sonja Ruppersberg-Blom have ensured that the fest—South Africa’s only festival of this nature—is, at time of writing, headed toward its seventh year. It has grown into more than just film screenings to encompass live music and a literary event spanning a week of horror each October.

The Bloody Parchment anthology of short fiction intends to add value to the SA HorrorFest and much work has gone into its creation.

A big word of thanks must go to our judges, who kindly read the entrants to the short fiction competition—Sarah Lotz, Terri Dunbar-Curran, HJ Lombard, DJ Cockburn and Annette Bowman. Thanks go to my proofreaders, Gary Cummiskey of Dye Hard Press and Carrie Clevenger, creator of Crooked Fang, who caught a number of gremlins. Then, thanks to Danielle Eriksen, who kindly laid out the actual document. All of you have saved me sleepless nights and none of this would have been possible without your support.

A huge big thank you goes to the people who keep me sane, offer me quiet support and sensible advice I don’t always take: Thomas, Andrew, Cat, Carrie, the two Michelles, Terri and Hennie. You guys are full of awesomesauce.

Lastly, I’d like to thank the stars of the show, our authors, for entrusting their darlings in my hands. Liam, Sally, Carol, Chris, Rachel, Carine, Damon and Wendy. Thank you for the privilege of working with your words.

Nerine Dorman

http://www.HORRORFEST.info http://www.SHADOWREALMinc.comhttp://bloodyparchment.blogspot.com

Email queries to: nerinedorman@gmail.com

Khepera Redeemed: Nerine Dorman

The Depths: Carol Hone

Burden in my Hand: Damon Yeld

Strange Fruit: Rachel Green

The Night Walkers: Wendy Cockcroft

Clear Black Glass: Carine Engelbrecht

Apartment 415: SA Partridge

1301: Chris Miller

Regrets, Sunday Afternoon: Rachel Green

New Lease on Life: Liam Kruger

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an excerpt from the novel by Nerine Dormanhttp://www.lyricalpress.com/store/index.php?main_page=authors&authors_id=107

The tarmac is rough beneath my fingers, my skin raw and bleeding. Somehow, I’ve fallen. It is dusk and when I look about, I discover I’m on Queen Victoria Street, the dome of the planetarium behind me, the white wall of the Company’s Garden a comforting barrier to my right. The buildings to my left appear greyed out, their windows blank. My breath mists before my face although I don’t feel the cold.

When I flex my injured arm, there is nothing wrong with it until I wonder about the gash. It materialises the moment I think about it, confirming my suspicions I’m not present in the waking world. Now that I’m here, I may as well explore. The next thing striking me is how abandoned the setting is. Cape Town streets are never this deserted. Underpinning this realisation is the overpowering sense of being watched, of eyes taking my measure, considering all my aspects.

Affecting an air of nonchalance, I shove my hands in my pockets and walk, my boots making no sound at all. It’s not a well-realised setting. For one, I can’t smell anything and I can’t see farther than a hundred meters before a mist blurs then obscures anything that may lie beyond it. I’ve not gone more than twenty paces when I hear it—heavy booted footfalls less than ten meters behind me.

It’s like a bad horror movie. I know I shouldn’t react, should continue on my path without letting on that I’m freaking the hell out, but I spin around to face whatever is following me.

There’s nobody there, which leaves me feeling incredibly stupid. And, of course, the invisible walker starts up the moment I apply myself to reaching the end of the street. We repeat this futile exercise another three times. I make the mistake of looking over my shoulder to check one last time when, for some benighted reason, I trip. Whether this is because it’s a bad dream cliché or my own sheer bad luck, I’m jolted awake at the instant I’m supposed to hit the ground.

My gasp for air sounds too loud and I’m very much present in number seventeen, alone, making the kind of noises a drowning man does when he breaks the surface. The scarab scar on my chest and hand sears, yet when I scratch at the raised flesh, I pull my fingers away with an oath. That scarred skin is colder than ice.

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9

Carol Hone

The screen door was being stubborn and sticking open, again. I turned in the entrance and jabbed it with the toe of my shoe, unwilling to put down the bags of groceries to free my hands. When the tremor struck, I was balancing on one foot and swearing. The floor shook, the door frame swayed. A juddering rumbling engulfed me. Outside, the trees and the two-storey brick-and-timber house across the way shimmered as if turning into one of those desert mirages.

I dropped everything, planted my door-jabbing foot on the floor, threw out my arms like a bad tight-rope walker and swore again. Groceries landed with a rustling thump of plastic and cans on the kitchen tiles. Our terrier, Jumbo, shot in through the door, yelping, whacking my leg on the way past. Behind me, my husband, Greg, let out an even higher-pitched yelp. The world quietened and stilled.

Earthquake? Except we don’t get earthquakes here. The screen door creaked and swung in, shutting neatly with a click―like it was

teasing me. Bastard thing. Greg hissed. “Need a plaster. Damn. What was that?”The groceries could wait. He stood over the open dishwasher, clutching one hand in

the other. Blood welled between his fingers. Where was Hailey?“Thing bit me.” He chuckled. “I know...don’t put the sharp knives in point up. How

was I to know the house was going to move?”“Plasters, plasters,” I muttered. “Where’s Hailey? Do you know―” The shock

seemed to have rearranged my thoughts. “Wait! I bought some!” I knelt and rummaged through the bags. Ugh. Broken eggs leaked yellow yolk around cans of dog food and beetroot. I found the packet, tore it open, dropped the plaster wrappers and let them flutter down―thinking all the time how I’d never do that normally. “Here! Where’s Hailey? Where’s—”

The distinctive sound of Hailey’s small footsteps galloping down the hallway answered me. Our daughter rocketed into the kitchen, wrapped her arms round Greg’s leg and grinned up at me. “Hello, mummy.”

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I heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank God for that.”He held up the cut hand. “It’s not that bad, really.” The blood had spread into the

delicate creases on his palm, sketching out the lines of his life like new-inked crimson calligraphy.

I frowned. “No. Guess not.” We didn’t get earthquakes. This was like it snowing in the Sahara. I stuck the plaster over the cut then looked into his eyes. “What in all the names of—”

Greg shushed me and pointed down at Hailey’s brown-tussled curls. “Oh.” Swearing was a bad habit of mine. “Anyway, what happened just then?”“You’re shaking, love.” He pulled me close, kissed my forehead then bent to pick up

Hailey. She snuggled into his shoulder. At eight years she was easily small enough for Greg to pick up and carry one-armed.

The sight of the two of them together never failed to give me that melting feeling. Greg was tall, dark and not-so-handsome but the loveliest man I’d ever met.

“Dad? What was it?”“That, munchkin...” Greg said, “was the earth moving itself around to get

comfortable. It was nothing. Let’s go into the lounge room and watch some TV. Karen?” He started walking then jerked his head a little to get me to follow.

My heart was still thudding like a rock band’s drumbeat. I went to the screen door to check the neighbourhood. Nothing. No smoke, no sirens. The sweet smell of the roses along our footpath drifted in. Across the road, Connor, the Hanson’s teenage son, pulled into their drive in his banged-up utility. He did his usual Houdini routine and climbed out the ute’s window. In the gap to the right of their house, I glimpsed the patchwork rooftops of the suburb on the opposite hillside. A flock of crows flitted across the blue-blue sky and the fretwork of thin cloud. Normal.

In the lounge Greg and Hailey were nestled on the couch watching a cartoon on the new plasma screen. Jumbo was up there too, his chin on the armrest. Ears back, tail thumping the leather, he watched me to see if I’d order him off. I leaned against the wall, crossed my arms and breathed slowly, gathering the calm aura they seemed to radiate. Hell. Tremors were common in some parts of the world. Breathe...slow.

The wall lurched. The floor, the lounge, the plasma TV, all dropped away with a bang and a grumble of cascading chunks of house and rubble. I fell and gripped the carpet with claw-like fingers, hanging on as the carpet bucked and rolled under me like some maddened beast. “Greg! Hailey!” They were gone. I gaped, lying flat, moulding my body to the carpet.

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I screamed and screamed but couldn’t hear my voice, saw only dust and my bloodied fingers.The thunderous noise kept on, growling, cracking the bones of the house, swallowing.

The annihilation of everything around me. Dust spewed in a thick roiling haze. My nose clogged and I coughed and spat dust and a spray of fine blood.

The shaking stopped. The air slowly cleared.Before me, a few feet away across a slope of carpet, was a chasm. Beams, fractured

wall and roof tiles lay across the hole. I coughed again then stood. My legs shook so much I stumbled and almost fell.

“Greg! Hailey!” I screamed their names, listened then screamed again, repeating their names over and over until the words came out in ragged whispers. I lay down and dragged myself forward on my belly. Hot stinking air breathed from the hole. Brick fragments scraped at my T-shirt and jeans. Something, some muffled noise, reached my ears from below.

“Hailey?” Terror had magnified the size―the chasm was only a three-foot-wide crevice. I peered down past a higgledy-piggledy structure of criss-crossed wires, timber beams and pieces of plaster, as well as strangely preserved items: our bedside lamp, a dusty but folded towel, the side of the lounge and a teacup. Farther down was blackness. “Greg?”

“Need a torch,” I muttered. Calm. Must stay calm. Can’t help them if I panic. I sniffled then scraped away tears with my arm, only to have to gulp back more tears.

As if to balance the bad, I found behind me the remains of a kitchen cupboard buried under rubble and inside it, a torch. The rugged dolphin torch flicked on. I inched closer again and shone it down into the hole. Past the pieces of my house, the hole continued. I closed my eyes a moment, shaken by the depth of it and by the teaspoon of hope it conjured inside me. Could they have survived?

“Hailey?” Being small, perhaps she stood a greater chance. She would fit into a smaller space than Greg. An awful thought in its way, but I couldn’t stop myself hoping and running through every possibility. That sound again. An echo? Or someone replying?

The house cracked and crunched as it settled. Gravity wasn’t going away. Would the whole structure collapse completely given time or another tremor? I’d been listening for someone coming to help me but nothing and no one seemed to be outside. Past the kitchen cupboard had been a gleam of sunlight and a segment of sky. But the whole suburb, hell, the whole city, might be as bad as our house.

“Mrs Taylor! Is that you?” A male voice. My heart pounded twice and steadied. I turned and saw Connor half-crouching in the gap behind where I’d found the kitchen

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cupboard. His face, clothes and hair were shrouded in grey dust. “Thank god. Thank god. Holy―” He lowered his head a moment and closed his eyes as he said it. “I am so glad— Thought I heard you yellin’.”

“Connor.” I shook my head. Tears rolled down my face. “Is your house—”“Yes.” He nodded slowly. “Same as this. It’s awful.”“Can you get help? Call for it? Have you a phone?”“Mine and ma’s. They’re talking to each other but nowhere else. Police, fire,

ambulance— Nothin’s—” He stopped, swallowed. “Look, I heard my mother calling from inside the house. I’m going to try getting her out. Thought I’d better tell you first. Get you out―least that way if I, well, if I die in there, someone will know.” He looked at me. “Come this way, Mrs Taylor. Seems to be safe.”

“No. I’m searching too.”I could make it out of here, crawl out through that gap, but not yet. I was going to try

to reach them. Until then, I hadn’t known I had the guts to even contemplate it. Of course, I hadn’t done it yet. I put my finger to my mouth and gnawed off a sharp piece of fingernail.

After a moment Connor replied. “I’ll be back to help if I can.”I nodded, my neck bobbing for too long like some damaged doll. “Wait! Connor! A

phone―can you throw me one? So we can talk?” He pulled one from a pocket and tossed it then wriggled around and carefully returned to the outside world.

“Luck, Connor,” I whispered. I dusted off the mobile. The charge was good and the signal at five bars. I punched in the number for the cops. Nothing. Not even a ring. “Damn.”

I shifted rubble and found a length of cord then tied the torch to my belt in case I dropped it. Being stuck down there, even a few yards down, without light... I shuddered.

There, on the edge of the black hole, vertigo gripped me in its malevolent hand. I swayed. My head seemed disconnected, as if filled with air, awareness inflating and shrinking and my legs clumsy logs. If I tripped...

Heights always did that to me. Concentrate! Think of details! Nothing else. Nothing else. They need me. Like a gigantic tongue, a strip of torn carpet dangled into the hole. Using that as

support, and testing each place where I rested my feet, I climbed down. Three feet down, four...below eye level. I stopped, shifted the torch in my hand. Some hand-sized rubble slid and poured over the lip. The pieces rattled as they bounced off things farther down until it grew quiet again.

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Lower down the torchlight reflected off a miasma of dust, the floating particles sparkling like miniscule diamante. I played the beam across the cloud. This couldn’t go on forever, could it? Was this some freak underground cavern revealed by the quake?

The sides of the crevice changed as it went deeper. First the concrete foundations then freshly sheared red and cream rock before it changed again. My feet rested on black rock with a smooth water-worn look to it.

Pale blue light swelled into being on the left side of the dust miasma. “What is that?” I whispered. “Greg! Hailey!” Voices! I could hear voices! “Greg!” No

one seemed to reply to me though the murmuring continued. I eyed the rocks below me, planning a route, places I could put my feet. Thank

heavens I had gym shoes on. The dust might be the worst of it. But as I descended―slowly, painfully, like some sort of geriatric mountain climber―

the dust sank away and, by the time I reached where the top of the cloud had been, it had vanished altogether. In the torchlight the rocks showed a strange gleam, as something below flickered with that blue light. A tuft of brown caught my eye. I eyed it a while, afraid it might be a hank of scalp-torn hair. The gap here was crescent-shaped and barely wide enough for my body...a foot and a half wide by four foot long...if it narrowed farther.

How could Greg and Hailey have gotten past this point? As I manoeuvred myself so I could reach that brown tuft, my thoughts rampaged through my head. Unless the quake had pushed the land back together after they fell past? What natural phenomenon produced a blue light? A fungi? Glow worms?

If I braced my feet just there, if I crouched, stretched my arm down. Couldn’t see it. Had to use feel. My fingers brushed something soft. Got it. Heavier than I thought it would be and larger. I pulled. It dragged and caught against the rock in a few places.

My heart skipped beats then pounded so hard my head swelled in time.Curious, yet terrified of what I might see, I held the brown thing before my eyes

and directed the torch at it from below. The light sifted through a rugged brown landscape, gleamed on polished amber eyes―a teddy bear. I remembered. Half-sobbing, I clutched it to my face and inhaled―imagining I smelt Hailey. It had been on the lounge next to her. Hope flared. It didn’t matter how. Didn’t matter at all. If they were here, they were here. Frantically, I wriggled about until I could see past the narrow point. Then, back straining as my head swung below the rest of my body, I lowered my face and looked.

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Below me the crevice widened and to the left side it continued down in broad ledges that were almost steps. At the bottom was the source of the blue light. I stared, unable to decipher what I saw and heard.

My mind focused. Fine details: bevelled edges, black plastic. The little creatures of inexplicable fear scattered gibbering through my mind―the things that woke you in the dead and silent hours of the night. That made you sweat on your pillow and sit up bolt upright with your heartbeat thudding loud enough to make your chest move.

Why the fear struck I did not know. Perhaps it was the cramping closeness of the rock all around me, the alien glow of the light or the muttering voices...

The rock shrank in on me. I knew, just knew, that in seconds I’d be swallowed up too―the rocks would crash down on me, filling up the spaces, pouring into my ears, my nose… My muscles seized tight and I could taste the dry rock as if it were being shovelled deep into my mouth. Gasping, I thrust myself upright, feet finding places, scrambling upward, knocking elbows, scraping skin, sucking air in and out so fast it choked me. I kept on scrabbling―out the hole, through the destroyed kitchen. Outside. Night time. Stars wheeled around me and I fell to my knees on the grass gasping.

I needed to find someone real. Evidence I wasn’t inside a nightmare or spaced out on drugs in some hospital. Words would do that. Connor.

I staggered across the road and past his utility. There I stopped and looked about me. All along the street the houses were gone. Flattened. A fire poured into the sky from three places and not a single house had been spared.

“Connor!” I ran around the perimeter of the pile of crumpled brick and timber that had been a human dwelling, a family home, and found no way in.

I smelled the smoke before I saw it. From their back yard, the entire city was laid out below me. Hands on knees, chest heaving, I beheld the new face of my city―fire and smoke, and devastation from horizon to horizon.

“My god. My god.” I dragged my hand down across my streaming eyes, my face, and left my finger in my mouth, both for comfort and to stop myself from whimpering while I stared.

There was no help for me there.“Right.” My own voice would be the centre of my universe. I stamped my foot on

the real ground. Bit my lip and felt pain and tasted blood. I was real. This was real. No matter how awful. What I’d seen down in the crevice had to be something real too. I drew a shuddering breath. Had to be. Some sort of residual glow.

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“I have to go back and check. Can’t leave anything to chance.” I wiped my dribbling nose, my eyes. “If they’re alive...and they might be...I can’t let myself be scared by dreamed-up fears. Right.”

I marched back to my house, through my bomb-wreck kitchen and climbed down the crevice. No fuss. I was getting this done. Got to the narrow part, climbed past and down to the lowest ledge, though that sense of almost-panic hovered at the back of my mind. This time I would not be too quick to judge.

I lifted my head, turned and looked, and knew exactly what the glowing thing was: a phone. I chuckled. Not exactly a normal thing to do, but nothing was normal right then.

I turned slowly, torch radiating light, revealing. This space was bigger than I’d thought. A few pieces of debris had made it this far. In a far corner the light gleamed off something light in colour. I frowned. Then my eyes widened. Held the light steady. Had it moved?

“Hailey?” I barely heard the word I spoke. Then louder, “Hailey?” A hand? Could it be a hand?

“Mummy!”“Hailey! I’m here!” Couldn’t afford to fall down some unseen crevice. Torn between

lighting my way and keeping the torch on Hailey’s hand, I picked my way across. The phone in my pocket rang. I tapped the button automatically.

“Mrs Taylor? Are you okay? Mrs Taylor! Don’t go down the hole. Don’t!” Connor sobbed.

What? I clamped it to my ear. Still counting the steps. Three yards maybe and I’d be there.

“Mummy! Please! Help me!” Her hand twitched.The fear in her voice... I hopped and jumped across a meandering crack. Flailed

about. Banged my knee on rock. “I’ve got you darling. I’m here!” “Mrs Taylor!”The torch went out. The earth rumbled and moved, shifting its geological core. I

braced myself with hands and knees to the floor of the cavern, riding the earthquake. The crescendo abated until there was only residual grinding and crackling. All was black. My heartbeat thumping at my temples, I frantically groped around until I found her hand. Warm, the pulse at her wrist beating strongly. She was caught somehow beneath the crack I’d jumped over.

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“I’m here, darling.”With my other hand I felt about me, still clutching the phone, finding smooth solid

rock to the left, to the right, and I extended my hand out in front. More rock. Trembling, I reached up. Rock. I bowed my head and rested my forehead on the back of my hand. The voice from the phone persisted. I put it to my ear. Tried to compose myself before I spoke.

“Connor,” I said, my voice cracking. “I’m trapped down here. Please get help.”The phone was silent a moment. “I can’t.” I heard him swallow. “Look at the phone.”It bleeped as the photos and the texts came in. Ten, fifteen, thirty. I went through them

all, one by one. Snapshots of faces, weary and dirty, and behind each of them the corrugated shadows of rock. The messages:

HLP ME. PLZ GET HELP. SOS. And innumerable versions of the same.After the messages blurred under tears, I gave up and curled into a ball, though still I

held Hailey’s hand, her small fingers entwined in mine. I murmured the comforting sounds a mother makes to her child when all is lost except the ability to let them know that you love them and they are not alone.

I huddled there in a foetal position, hiding my head against my knees. Rocks all around us. The earth had dragged us into its black and awful womb.

17

Damon Yeld

There’s something in my hand.Someone’s hooting their horn in the parking lot.What the hell are they thinking? Don’t they know there’s a wake going on in here?A good old malty farewell.I don’t know who decided this was a good idea. Everyone is sitting around the tavern,

listening to the music and quietly overflowing to whomever is sitting closest to them.Except for Patrick and Allen. They’ve got their shirts off, arming sweat off their

faces, breathing out chaotic confusion in the form of words, drinking shooters and toasting the dead.

He was my best friend. I suppose he might have been theirs as well.I sit next to his mother and father at the bar. With equally dazed expressions they

nurse beers, occasionally lifting their heads as though to say something then, thinking better of it, looking down again, mouthing nothing. They look old and confused.

Lost.There’s that horn again. It jolts me from my observations like a warning.“Fucking shithead,” I say drunkenly.I play with the thing in my hand. It’s strange how you can have something in your

hand and not be able to tell what it is just by the feel.Mom rounds on Dad, struck by an urgent thought.“You must remember to get the book back from...what’s his name...Ryder... He can’t

keep it... It doesn’t belong to him.”“For Christ’s sake!” Dad hisses and lights a cigarette.“Don’t say that to me! I know you wouldn’t care one way or the other but...”“Planning to start a library are you?” he asks her but his voice cracks. She hears it and stays silent. Then she starts weeping. He leans an unsteady arm

around her shoulders, in the process knocking his bottle of beer on the floor.Breaking glass and flowing alcohol.

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He doesn’t seem to notice. I feel like retching but end up crying instead, great hitching sobs.

Death feels so close in this room. Just a blink away. Everyone seems to feel it. The older people struggle under its ever-increasingly inevitable weight, while the younger ones rebel against it with desperate posturing to prove they’re still alive.

No one names The Dead. Is that a rule? Some kind of superstitious law?I really wish that arsehole would stop hooting like that, it’s starting to freak me out.I keep expecting to hear a crash for some reason.I ask my best friend’s father if he wants another beer. He shakes his head.The music suddenly gets turned up and I feel dizzy and lethargic. I recognise it from

somewhere...so familiar but I can’t place it.I decide I want to cross the room.Why do I feel so wrong? I’m trying to walk but everything’s soupy and thick, and I

feel lame.I find I have to sit or I might fall down.I’m seated in the booth across from his brother, who is being cornered by his boss―

or should that be former boss?―Mr Grundig. The German has that pinched look on his face, the one he always gets when he’s not

making enough money. He’s explaining to the brother that he doesn’t know what he’s going to do now.

“...with season coming up, und now I have novon du pierce. Dis Is kak... I need du go du Germany und...”

At this point I have a strange little overlay. I clearly hear him saying “In Germany ve give our employers two days’ notice if ve are going du die, du days!”

Ray turns to him. He seems to take overlong in studying the little man’s hairy face and skew glasses.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”Grundig has no response, interrupted halfway through his lamentation.“You are not vorking ja?” He recovers quickly, adjusting his glasses.“You vould like du make some money?” Grundig asks him sipping his beer. “ Ja.” He

nods to himself. “What? Are you serious?”“Ja, ja. Vell... It is a solution? Look... De piercing studio needs to run... You vill need

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de money.” Grundig nods his head and looks at Ray frankly. We both know what I’m talking about don’t we? Burying your less-than-satisfactory brother cost more than you thought, didn’t it?

“You slimy little turd,” I say, but he doesn’t hear me.He speaks again.I lose the thread of their conversation.Someone is watching me. I can’t see his face but I can smell him from here.He smells like engine oil and burning petrol.He leans against the wall by the pool tables in his leathers, smoking a cigarette.Which, on the face of it, I realise is impossible because he’s still got his helmet on,

the visor down.The man gives a little cynical salute and beckons me toward the door. He is wearing

my dead friend’s leathers and his helmet.“Hey!” I say loudly, turning to tell Ray, who seems not to have heard me, so I turn

back and the man is gone.I run for the door.Outside a soft breeze blows. The parking lot blazes with orange light.At the other end is the man, leaning against a Honda CB 750. The same one my friend

had. (How did he get there so quickly?) His arms are crossed over his chest.“Who are you?” I shout across the parking lot as I walk toward him. “Who do you think I am?” he asks. That voice...do I recognise it? He lifts the visor

and I can see the eyes.The cheeks are raised, pushing up against the eye sockets in a smile... A smile that is

so familiar...“Peter?” I ask, realising something terrible.The rider keeps smiling at me with my face. He extends his hand out, palm up.“I think it’s time we were going don’t you? Hand them over, Pete.”I don’t know what he means for a second.“Oh...right.” The thing in my hand. The keys to the bike.“Where are we going?” I ask him. He shrugs and mounts the bike. “The highway.”The highway.

20

Rachel Green

My heart almost skipped a beat when I saw the classified ad in the New Medical Practice. Third share in General Practitioner’s surgery for sale, including client list and all fittings, Laverstone, Wiltshire. Price on application. I’d grown up in Laverstone, still had ties there. An aunt, a cousin...probably most of my childhood friends. It would be odd to go back after ten years away; people there would still remember the child I used to be.

I answered the advertisement and, a week later, had a reply from Dr Glover and went to meet him. I remembered him well. He’d seen me through childhood inoculations, scraped knees and chicken pox. He was the only doctor in the practice in those days, though the surgery had grown with the town. He always smelled of soap and disinfectant, and kept a jar of barley sugar on his desk for his younger patients. We couldn’t do that now since there are too many regulations about offering sweets to children. We could be sued if they developed diabetes, for example, or be blamed if they got cavities in their teeth.

The years had not been kind to him. Ignoring his own advice with regard to smoking had brought on emphysema. He was retiring early on health grounds although he could still manage to walk eighteen holes after a golf ball. His surgery partners welcomed me, pleased a local had bought the position. It made the transition easier because I knew many of the patients already.

I was still the new boy, unfortunately, so on the day the district nurse phoned in sick, it fell on me to cover her workload. I looked with dismay at the first job on the list.

Change sterile dressings. Eleanor Dandy. 9, Barrow Hill.When we were kids we used to be afraid of the house on Barrow Hill. An old witch

lived there we told each other in furtive whispers. If she caught you she’d skin you alive and hang you out for the birds to eat. What she did with the skin was never mentioned, though we all had our own thoughts depending on whether we favoured horror films or History Channel.

That was when I was nine or ten years old, before GCSEs and A levels faded into the excitement of nightclubs, girls, university and medical school. Now I was a fully grown man in a moderately expensive suit and a doctor’s bag, once more standing outside the house on Barrow Hill.

21

The air smelled of iron and ozone, dark clouds scurrying ahead of a westerly breeze as a prelude to rain. I was glad I had a car these days instead on my old pushbike.

The witch’s house hadn’t really changed during the past fifteen years, though the paint had peeled from the sun-bleached woodwork and the upstairs windows were festooned in spiders’ webs and dust. The roof had sagged at some point in the past decade, probably as a result of the two missing tiles letting the damp and mould at the timbers. The brickwork needed pointing too, and the chimney breast was a few degrees off vertical. It was almost a surprise the house was still occupied.

I pushed open the gate and marched up the path to the front door. I could see the gnarled old trees that had us so spooked at the back of the house, apples, probably, the shrivelled black remains of old fruit still clinging to the branches. An old line threaded from trunk to trunk, the washing hanging from it limp in the misty rain. I laughed at my younger self thinking these misshapen old dresses were the hanging corpses of adventurous young boys. The rest of the garden was a mass of weeds and overgrown shrubs populated with the wicked thorns of ancient rose bushes and brambles. The broken trunk of a long-dead damson tree sported fungi the size of dinner plates and I had to take care not to slip on the algae-encrusted brick path.

A tarnished brass lion’s head glared balefully as I grasped the ring it held and knocked. The sound echoed through the house and I had time to pull out a handkerchief to wipe away the flakes of rust and verdigris it showered onto my hand. After a few minutes the door was opened by my patient, Mrs Dandy, dressed head to toe in black lace. She peered up at me through cloudy eyes. “You must be the new doctor.”

“Dr Mattocks, yes.” I held out my hand but she didn’t take it. “May I come in?”She stood to one side. “I’m in the back room.”I followed the sound of the television through waist-high piles of books and

magazines, most of them covered in dust. I paused and wiped the top of one pile with my hand. Comics. Hundreds of them. Thousands. There must be a small fortune of collectible ephemera here, all slowly rotting and giving way to the all-pervading damp.

The front door closed with a creak and Mrs Dandy shuffled across the intervening distance. “My son’s.” She put a hand on top of the pile, the skeletal fingers almost touching mine. “He believed there was a hidden meaning in comics, one that would free him from his mundane life. Do you subscribe to that theory, doctor?”

I shook my head. “I can’t say I do, Mrs Dandy. I didn’t know you had a son. How old is he?”

22

“Fourteen.” She pushed past me, forcing me to clutch at a stack of comics to keep my balance. Her dress rustled like newspaper as she passed and I was enveloped by the scent of camphor and stale urine. The shifted comics sent up a cloud of dust.

“He’ll always be fourteen.” Mrs Dandy turned and looked at me, her eyes still gleaming in their dark hollows. She tapped her forehead with her finger. “In here.”

She turned again and walked on toward her living room. “When I was expecting him, some boys climbed over the wall to pick the apples off the tree. I went outside to shout at them. A fine game, they thought, to throw my own apples at me as I chased them round the garden. A fine game until I fell and they saw the blood. Toby was born eight weeks early and was never right in the head. He found his freedom, though.”

“He did?” I smiled at her, trying to ignore the grime of her surroundings. “That’s good, isn’t it?”

“It depends on your perspective.” Mrs Dandy reached the sitting room and paused. “Toby believed he could fly and, on his fourteenth birthday, jumped off the Oxford Road viaduct. They reckoned he broke both his legs and lay there almost an hour until the express from Glasgow came through and killed him.”

“Oh.” What could I say to such a sad story? “I’m so sorry. When was this?”“Nineteen fifty-four.” She moved to the armchair and picked up the television remote

control, turning the sound down to a faded whisper. “Before your time, I think.”“A little.” I gave a sort of nervous half-chuckle and looked around the room. It was lit

by the television and whatever managed to sidle past the yellowed net curtains and cobwebs. The carpet had seen better days when her son was alive, and the dust had settled into drifts in the corners. I half expected to see a wedding feast set out at the end of the room with a cake festooned with cobwebs and nibbled on by rats. Only the path to the hall and to the television seemed free of the thick layer of times past.

I looked for somewhere to set my bag. “You could probably ask the council for someone to come and clean once a week, you know.”

“Are you saying my house is dirty, mister...”“Mattocks. And it’s doctor.” I smiled. “Not dirty as such, Mrs Dandy. A bit of TLC,

perhaps.”“TLC?”“Tender loving care.”“There’s be none of that going on in my house.” She sank into an overstuffed, pre-war

armchair and picked up her knitting. “Why are you here, Mr Mattocks?”

23

“It’s Doctor Mattocks, Mrs Dandy. Please try to remember. The district nurse is a bit under the weather today, so she asked me to look at your dressing.”

“You want to look at me, do you?” The knitting needles clicked in counterpoint to her speech. With the thinness of her limbs and the over-starched, over-large dress she looked more like a spider than someone’s mother. Had she always looked like that? I don’t think we’d ever seen her when we’d been children. Not close up. “I’m not some specimen for you to poke and prod.”

“No, of course not.” I set the case on the floor next to her chair and pulled on a pair of sterile gloves. “Change your dressing, is what I meant to say.” I looked at her. There was nothing but old age visible. “Erm...what’s wrong, exactly?”

“My leg.” Mrs Dandy twitched back the hem of her skirt to reveal a swollen lump on her left outer thigh. Despite it being swathed in bandages, I could see it was leaking a ghastly amount of fluid. I shuffled a footstool forward.

“Could you lift your leg onto this?” I began to set out sterile gauze and a fresh bandage while she raised it. I used safety scissors to cut away the old bandage, a deed to which Mrs Dandy tsked sharply.

“No wonder the health service is in such dire straits. We wouldn’t have wasted a bandage by cutting it in my day.”

“Which is why so many people got infections.” The cloth fell way and I pulled off the gauze. Only my training enabled me to keep the shock from registering on my face. The wound on Eleanor Dandy’s leg was a delicate shade of yellow, raw and seeping putrid bile. I looked up to find her watching my face. “You should have this removed surgically.” I used a tongue depressor to peel back a flap of skin. I could swear I saw the white of bone just below the surface. “This needs an X-ray at the very least.”

“Just dress it.” Mrs Dandy returned to her knitting. “It’s been like that for thirty years and has never troubled me. It’s my bad circulation.”

“If you insist.” I shook my head, incredulous that no one had insisted she have it removed before now. Thirty years? It was barbaric to leave a wound so long. I used forceps to drape the gauze over the top and hold the end of the bandage in place. “I came here as a boy once.” I wound the cloth around her thigh, concentrating on the job. “We were all afraid of you as kids.”

“In case I caught you and skinned you alive?” Mrs Dandy chuckled. “Don’t look so surprised. I heard all the stories. It’s the fate of an old woman living alone to be branded a witch.”

24

I tied off the bandage. “Are you sure I can’t persuade you to a hospital visit? We could have you in and out the same day.”

“I told you no already.” She struggled to her feet. “You will stay for a cup of tea, won’t you doctor?”

“Um...” I made a show of looking at my watch. “I don’t really have time, I’m afraid.” She looked so bitterly disappointed I relented. “Perhaps just a quick one.”

“I’m so glad. I never get any visitors.” She shuffled toward the hall again, a tug boat to my steamer. “Nurse Crenshaw always stays for a cup of tea.”

“Just a quick one, as I say. Plenty more visits to do, you know.” We reached the kitchen and I was instantly sorry I’d agreed to stay. The kitchen was a health hazard from all the dirty crockery and dropped food. I could see mouse and rat faeces along the skirting boards and the stench of rotting apples from a crate by the back door filled the room. Mrs Dandy ignored it all, shuffling from sink to stove to cupboard to make a pot of what I hoped was Assam.

“Would you carry it through?” Mrs Dandy began the shuffle back to the living room where the television was now showing a morning chat show hosted by people wearing so much foundation they were likely to develop skin cancer.

Mrs Dandy settled back into her chair with her knitting. “You can be mother. I take milk and two.”

“Of course.” I hesitated over the cups. The dirtiest was obviously hers―it displayed traces of the lipstick she was wearing but that left me the chipped cup with a crack that ran down one side. I could almost taste the botulism. I resolved to take a few sips for politeness and make my excuses.

“Lovely.” She accepted her cup and stirred it several times. I sat back and sipped, my mouth well away from the chip. It was a bitter brew. She glanced across at me. “I do remember you, Mattocks. You were tall for your age. Lanky. You stole three apples and threw one at me when I shouted at you. It hit me on the cheek.” She touched the spot. “I knew you’d be back one day.”

I grimaced, both at the memory and at the sudden pains in my stomach. I closed my eyes and concentrated on breathing as she chattered on, only looking up when she fell silent. At least I tried to look up. I just couldn’t move my head. I could only lift my eyes as far as the lump on her leg. It must have been a trick of the light, for I’d swear the thing was moving of its own accord.

25

“Are you quite comfortable?” She rose from her chair and pulled back the net curtain, then came over to my chair, stopping just in front of me, the ulcer on her leg pulsing. She raised my head between her hands. “Atropa belladonna, the deadly nightshade. Ingestion causes stomach cramps, nausea, vomiting and paralysis. You’ll notice I didn’t drink the tea.” She turned my head to face the window. From this close I could see it wasn’t damp washing at all, but the skinned body of a child. She turned away to withdraw a pair of flat-bladed knives from her knitting bag. “I always get them in the end, you know.”

She began to undo the bandage I’d so carefully tied around her ulcerated wound. Once free, the mass unfolded like the head of a turtle from its shell. The glimpse of white I’d thought was bone were actually teeth in the head of a monstrous, atrophied, conjoined twin. One eye peered myopically from the folds of flesh. Mrs Dandy placed the knives against the skin of my neck and began to peel away thin strips.

“Edith’s looking forward to having skin again.”

26

Wendy Cockcroft

“I’ve had enough of this, Tessa,” said Russell, flooring the brake. “Get out!” He leaned over, fumbled with the door lock, opened it and pushed her out.“But how will I get home?” she cried.“That’s your problem!” he snapped, then shut the door and drove away. “Russell!” Tessa cried as the Ford Fiesta’s tail lights faded into the distance.He didn’t even look back. “Now what’ll I do?”Rows of terraced two-storey houses stood on either side of the deserted street, their

curtains long drawn. Their locked doors leered through the dim yellowy light of the street lamps that shone dully overhead. A blast of icy air made her shiver. Tessa buttoned and zipped her coat then pulled up her hood. It was a mile-and-a-half walk to her flat. At least she didn’t live with Russell. The nerve of the man! The argument had been his fault. If he hadn’t gone bumping and grinding against that slithering wench in the bright red micro-mini, Tessa wouldn’t have felt a need to douse them both in Russell’s lager, would she?

Although she had money for a taxi, there were none to be seen. Tessa fumbled in her pocket for her mobile phone. Her hands were cold; she’d brought no gloves because she had expected to be driven home. She checked the time―three in the morning. There were no buses and...a taxi! Tessa held her hand up but the car sailed on by, three passengers slouched in the back seat. “Damn!”

She called the directory service. A man answered. “Directory service, how can I help?”

“I’m looking for the numbers of local taxi companies,” she replied, and gave him her post code.

“Would you like me to call them for you?”“No thanks, just text them to me.”“No problem. Please tell them you got their numbers from us.”“Sure.”

27

The phone beeped, and three numbers flashed up. One was engaged, the other just kept ringing and the weary-sounding woman who answered the last one told her that the next cab would be available in an hour.

“I’ll walk home,” said Tessa, discouraged. “That’s up to you, love,” said the operator. Tessa ended the call. She walked onward. What else could she do? A flicker of movement in the shadows

made her jump. A dog digging through the bins? It could be a fox. It wasn’t particularly big. Perhaps it was a homeless person in a sleeping bag, trying to get comfortable. He could freeze to death on a night like this. There was nothing she could do about it.

The shutters on the shop-fronts seemed to leer at her, as if they were aware of her predicament. Tessa shuddered. A sensation of being watched took root, feeding on the fear she was beginning to feel. She hurried along.

Soon the shops and other buildings petered out. Ahead of her, the lights were more orangey and much dimmer. The road curved around, bisecting the cemetery. On the near side was the old burial ground of St Columba’s, where the gravestones were tall and sagged with age. Across the road was the new multi-faith cemetery, where the stones were small, straight and shiny. The lights on the other side were out, but on this side, trees and bushes overhung the pavement. Tessa decided to speed her steps and not cross the road.

Just past the cemetery then down a short cul-de-sac was the block of flats where she lived. It wasn’t that far. She could make it. Out of habit, Tessa looked both ways before she crossed the road that would bring her to the old cemetery.

Skeletal trees stretched bare branches overhead and the breeze rustled the hedge’s evergreen leaves. There was no knowing what might be lurking behind it, but Tessa could discern the tops of the rusted struts of the wrought iron railings that ran along its length. If a rapist or murderer was lying in wait, he would have to climb over the fence to get to her―she’d have time to run away.

Warily, Tessa stopped and looked around. She was alone. There was nothing to see. Just the dim outlines of the shops and other buildings she

had left behind, and the dull glimmer of the street lamps’ light on the gravestones in the new cemetery on the other side of the road. Right beside her, gnarled old trees punctuated the high hedge that almost obscured the wrought iron fence around the old graveyard.

It occurred to her to look up. Perched among the branches of a moss-stippled oak a big black shape lurked.

28

Tessa’s stomach dropped. Icy fingers of terror crawled up her spine and she ran headlong across the road. She felt, rather than heard, the thump of something dropping to the ground behind her. I’m nearly home. I can make it.

Out of the shadows ahead of her, another shape like a big black bat stepped out. Tessa halted, her fists curled as she looked around wildly. There were more of them. From the trees above and the shadows behind and beyond her, they came, and they surrounded her. She wanted to scream, but she couldn’t make a sound. Fear itself was choking her.

Black-robed and hooded, they gathered silently around her, sapping her will. Tessa struggled internally, beating against the walls that were forming in her mind, but to no avail. There was nothing she could do. The thought of being touched by these creatures appalled her, but there was no escape. No way out. A bony, mottled grey hand stretched forth as one of the strange beings reached out. Unwillingly, she lifted her hand and allowed him to take it.

A sense of unreality pervaded Tessa’s consciousness. A part of her knew and understood what was happening but she didn’t want to deal with it. Accepting this as a nightmare that would quickly pass was better than having to cope with the knowledge that these creatures were evil and intended to murder her.

They led her to the gate of the old cemetery. It creaked open on its rusty old hinges and they all went through together. Screened from the road by the trees and bushes, they made their way up the hill to the old dilapidated church. Lightheaded, Tessa felt as though she was floating up the frost-hardened gravel path among these black-robed things. A strange yellowish light shone through a crack in the door of the crypt.

Although her will was paralysed, a part of Tessa’s mind remained active. She counted the creatures. There were five of them. If she could just break free of the power they had over her, she should be able to fight them off.

Into the stinking crypt they went, a dark, dank place roofed, walled and floored with thick flags of limestone. Coffins and sarcophagi had been rudely pushed aside to accommodate a rough wooden table with a bench on each side. Six thick, misshapen candles burned in sconces and corners of the crypt. There was something about the shape and colour those candles that just seemed wrong to Tessa, but she couldn’t even wrinkle her nose.

One by one, the creatures pulled their hoods down. Barely able to move, Tessa could only see three of them directly.

Dull glassy eyes gazed out from hollowed sockets in yellowish-grey mottled skin stretched over skeletal faces. The one that still held her hand tugged her, and she turned to see him open a wide mouth full of broken brownish teeth.

29

Were they were going to devour her? What were they? Zombies? They looked like zombies. Like something that was dead,

but somehow living. A word slipped into her awareness. Ghouls. But this wasn’t meant to happen―not in Holy Ireland! In a church, no less. Weren’t they supposed to be unable to step on consecrated ground? This was so wrong!

If Russell hadn’t gone slavering over that skanky whore in that bloody nightclub, I wouldn’t have ended up here. This is all his fault, the bastard. If I become a ghoul like this lot, by God, I’ll go straight after the pair of them! she vowed.

Tessa’s arm twitched. I can move! Fired by her fury, Tessa lashed out at the ghoul who held her hand. He fell gasping to

the stone-flagged floor. Another ghoul grabbed her shoulder, but she spun and punched him in the face. The crunch of breaking bone excited her. She could beat them.

The others came for her, but Tessa raced up the slippery stairway and fled. Determination to get away from them, coupled with the belief that she actually could,

fuelled her flight. Tessa ran down the gravel path toward the gate, flung it open and tore off down the road. She didn’t look behind her for signs of pursuit―that would only slow her down. The sounds of a car horn beeping and a familiar voice calling her name barely registered.

“Tessa!”She kept running. “Tessa!” he called again. Tessa slowed down, stopped, then looked around. “Russell?”“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was annoyed, but you were right. I was being an arse. Come

on, get in the car. I’ll take you home.”Panting, Tessa stood there for a moment, then got in the car and let Russell drive her

home.“What happened?” he asked, when they arrived at her door. “You look like you’ve

seen a ghost.”Adrenaline still lingered in her system, but now that she was safe, Tessa wasn’t sure

what to say. “Tessa?” Concern creased Russell’s forehead. “What happened?”“I...I don’t know,” she replied. “Do you want to come home with me? Ma won’t mind.” “I’d rather not be alone,” she said, trembling. “All right, then, I’ll go home with you.”

30

Russell hugged her tightly then brought her back down to the car. As they pulled away from the cul-de-sac, Tessa found herself wondering if the whole

thing had simply been some kind of waking nightmare. She would never be able to talk about it. That was for sure.

31

Carine Engelbrecht

The mirror was a stagnant pool of black glass. Tara blinked. No change. She touched its cold hard surface. Vaguely she remembered an image of herself―blond hair, blue eyes. Stubble covered her head now. She felt it by touch and winced.

“Why won’t you let me see?” she asked.“See what?” The man sounded surprised.“How bad the accident was. What it did to me.” What you are doing to me?Did she imagine the slightest hesitation? “There was no accident.”“You hit my car and, doing so, rammed us both off the embankment. There was a

woman...” She faltered.“No woman,” the man said. “No accident.”At this point, Tara usually began to cry. “I saw her body...with the throat cut and all

those marks on her face. I saw her.”“Shut up!” the man snapped. “You are crazy, woman! Crazy! There was no accident.”Her stomach churned and loosened remnants of her last meal. Her hand, touching the

clear black glass, trembled.“Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “This is hard on both of us. You have a psychiatric

disorder. It causes delusions. Some days you don’t even remember I’m your husband.”The first few times the man said it―those ridiculously untrue words―she had

laughed right in his face. And paid the price. Now she remembered the caress of steel on her skin.

“You aren’t my husband,” she said, but conviction was seeping out of her, with willpower, sanity and memories of all-night parties and beach walks with her two dogs. Who was feeding them? Was anyone looking for her?

“See, what did I tell you? How do you think that makes me feel, after twenty-nine years of marriage?”

Tara sighed. “I am only twenty-two years old. I’ve never been married.”Her skin was smooth, unblemished and unlined, except by his design. According to

the man, that too was in her mind, a denial of reality. Although it repulsed her, she held onto the image of the other woman, rolling from the back seat, tumbling down the embankment.

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During those times when he left her alone, she searched the tiny room for evidence. A foreign hairpin. A hair. A drop of blood. Anything not her own. Anything to prove that the woman had existed.

On the first two days she did see herself, pale and bruised. He must have done something to the glass, but he said it was just the delusions.

The blood on the pillow was hers. Examining her cheeks, her jaw, she found scabs. Bits of thread that could be crude stitches. All in her head, he insisted. Like memories of Jason Christopher and his bike and the wind on her face. Would Jason love the horror she’d become as much as he loved his Stephen King?

Her existence was confined to the throbbing battle inside her head between what the man told her and what she remembered.

What kind of mind game had he played with the dead woman? How long had she lasted?

She touched clear, black glass...

33

S A Partridge

The world outside the window was expectant. A black cat streaked across the gutter onto the roof, stopping only for the tiniest second to shine its yellow eyes into the room before darting away. Rain was threatening. The greens were brighter, the rough red bricks of the neighbouring apartment block more stark. In the distance, Table Mountain loomed. A neat row of ants marched through a crack in the wall, seeking shelter. The whole world seemed to be in on a secret. Anton was good at keeping secrets.

He watched, noticed things. How a man would turn around and look behind him as he walked, like he had a guilty conscience. The child that took something that didn’t belong to him when he thought no one else was looking. From his window on the fourth floor, Anton saw everything. He saw their true colours. When the rain began to spit against the glass, he sighed and turned away. His vigil was over. The rain sounded like hundreds of fingertips tapping at his window drowning out the sound of mice devouring the floorboards.

Anton shared the apartment with Jessica. Loud, messy, haphazard, pretty Jess. She could win his forgiveness for her failings with just one look from her big brown eyes. They only ever ran into each other when their mealtimes coincided, and her appearance would always surprise him. Not because he wasn’t expecting her, but because the way her appearance kept changing. One day she would be blonde, the next a brunette with shadowy make-up. The only constant was her eyes. They were his favourite part of her, and if he had to pick a word to describe them it would be mahogany, deep and rich like the wood.

They didn’t mind each other. The flat was cheap, and falling apart, so neither of them felt obliged to keep it clean. This suited Jessica, whose lifestyle was rather anarchic. She was hardly around and when she was in, she spent most of her time in her room listening to music. She loved music. Anton, whose life was far simpler and less chaotic, didn’t mind either way, as long as she was in it.

As soon as the rain came, the sky darkened, bringing with it early night. Anton put the kettle on. It would be his seventeenth cup of coffee since Jessica had last been home, four days ago. Above him, the fluorescent bulb flickered.

It wasn’t like her to disappear. For all her irregular coming and going, she was a habitual lover of her own bed, despite its old stains and lumpiness. He thought about the last

34

time he had seen her, dressed in cut-off shorts and a mesh top, about to go out to see a new band.

“Don’t wait up for me,” she said, half-way out the door. “I won’t.” “You will anyway, and I wish you wouldn’t. I’ll be fine.” He put his cup away and decided he’d wait a while before taking up the count again.

A streetlight blinked into life outside the kitchen window, making him jump, and he moved to the battered couch.

If he had fallen asleep, Anton didn’t remember doing so. He was sitting on the couch facing the door, which was still locked on the inside. Had he been waiting up late again? The room smelled damp from the window being open all night, and the sharpness of the cold stung his nose. He didn’t get up.

It was going to be a cloudy, miserable day―day five of his lonely vigil―but Anton clung to the hope that she would return. She always did. He cast a wary eye around the apartment, at the mildewed walls and towers of dishes building on the kitchen counter. It would have to be cleaned up sooner or later. The thought didn’t stir him to action. He was pining, spending his days staring out of the window. Moving away meant that he might miss something vital, something he hadn’t noticed before. The thought made him shudder.

He stretched widely, but stopped mid-yawn, startled by the unmistakable squeak of bedsprings. Jessica’s bed was ancient, yet she refused to invest in a new one. Every time she sat on it or got up, the strain of the bedsprings could be heard from any room in the apartment. He waited, but heard nothing more.

Anton rose and took a few furtive steps toward Jessica’s room. Her door was closed and her toxic green keep out sign glared at him warningly. He shot a glance toward the front door. The key was still on the inside, where he had left it.

He inched forward and closed his hand around the door handle. It felt cold and stiff, but that meant nothing. When it opened, it moaned like everything else in the apartment.

She was there, sitting on her bed with her head bowed. Her hair hung loose and ragged, like unravelled rope. The curtains were closed, giving the room a murky quality, as if everything in it was underwater.

“Jessica?” he asked tentatively. She lifted her head slowly, and once again, her appearance took him aback. Her eyes

were swollen with tears and underlined with dark rings. Her bottom lip trembled. Anton took a few cautious steps toward her. “What happened?”

35

She shook her head frantically, lifting her face to meet his gaze. “I don’t know. I shouldn’t be here. This is all messed up.” “What do you mean? You live here. What’s wrong?” Again, she shook her head, and one hand travelled into her hair to grip the roots. Anton took another step forward and, for a moment, she looked panicked. “Don’t,” she said, and then she was gone. He stared at the empty bed for a few moments as her words resounded in his mind.

After about two minutes of this, Anton realised that, for the first time since he had heaved the monstrosity up four flights of stairs, the bed hadn’t squeaked which he thought odd. With that thought, he went back to the living room, closing the door carefully behind him.

Jessica didn’t appear again until the following week. Anton had been grocery shopping, a task he performed with the same mathematical efficiency he adopted in every other aspect of his life. Coffee, twelve oranges, toothpaste, newspaper, milk. He counted the oranges out into a bowl and arranged them so that he could make out all twelve with one glance. By midday, there were eleven oranges in the bowl. He upended the pungent spheres on to the counter, and counted, twice. There were still eleven.

He opened Jessica’s door to find her lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Orange pulp and rinds littered the floor, and the room was alive with a fresh citrus haze, as if she had spritzed the juice into the air.

She turned toward him as he entered. “I can peel it, but I can’t eat it,” she said miserably.

He stared at the ruined fruit all over the floor. “You seemed to have killed it.” She frowned at his poor attempt at humour. “I can try and make you some soup,” he said. She shook her head. “Won’t work. It will just end up on the floor.” “What happened to you?” he asked. She ignored his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. She sighed deeply. “I keep coming

back here. Sometimes I’m at the pier, and sometimes I’m nowhere.” “The pier?” he asked. “I remember being at the club listening to the band play. The music was just lovely

and I left shortly after they finished. I still had my beer in my hand, and I walked to the pier. That’s all I remember. I don’t even know why I was there.”

Anton felt useless and awkward. She looked miserable. There was no spark of life in her eyes. Her arms hung limp at her sides like a defeated soldier.

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He wrung his hands. He opened his mouth to speak then closed it again. He could never think of the right thing to say in front of her.

She didn’t speak again but disappeared once more, like a hologram blinking out, and he spent an unhappy hour cleaning orange pulp off the walls and floor, all the while thinking of something he could say when she returned.

As the cold isolation of winter drifted to other parts of the world, paving the way for the warmth of spring, Anton felt like he was losing his grip on his secret. People began to emerge from their nests as the sun came out, feeling the need to socialise. Jessica’s disappearance became pronounced as her friends sprung out of hibernation, wanting to invite her to the beach and cocktail bars. These visitors were like an ever-present buzzing in his ears. Keeping them away was a full-time job.

She only appeared once during all this hubbub. Anton had just closed the door on yet another faceless friend looking for information, when she strode into the kitchen.

“Who was that?” she asked. “Someone looking for work,” he said quickly, pleasantly surprised to see her outside

her bedroom. “It’s amazing how they get in here,” she said, rattling the coffee tin. “Oh god, I love

the smell of coffee. Won’t you have some?” “Of course.” She moved aside so he could busy himself at the counter, measuring four heaped

spoons of ground coffee into a cup. It was going to taste awful. He smiled at her warmly then turned back to the task. He hadn’t looked at her properly since her return. She was still wearing the cut-off shorts and the mesh top from the night she had disappeared, but in the light he could see her face had changed slightly. Her eyes were deeper, darker. Anton didn’t stare into them for too long.

Jessica leaned over his shoulder to take a long sniff of his coffee. “That’s going to taste like tar,” she said happily. He took a sip, and coughed. “This place needs more pot-plants,” she announced, looking around. “Okay.” “And wind chimes.” “No problem.” She beamed at him and twirled around back to her room. Anton didn’t see her again

until only a month later, once all the changes she wanted were in place. He had purchased

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little ceramic pots for each corner of the apartment, and placed a different plant in each one. Despite having no artistic talent, he painted the wind chimes himself in bright colours and patterns, and hung them over the door, and at every window. With the remaining paint he decorated the ceramic pots with little flowers and stars. When he was done exploring this newfound creative streak, the apartment blazed with colour. Most of the mess was gone, although there was nothing he could do about the damp that was creeping up the walls at an alarming rate, despite the weather. He put it out of his mind.

In the past, he had spoken to Jessica maybe once, twice a week, and only about trivialities, like the electricity bill. Now, they were beginning to develop a proper relationship, and he delighted in the little things she did, like poking at a wind chime, or the way she was learning to anticipate his peculiar habits. He felt understood for the first time, as if someone had entered his world and didn’t want to run away screaming. All their interaction took place in the apartment, but he didn’t care. The outside world couldn’t offer him as much joy as a single moment with her could.

Spring was good for one thing. He planted a little garden on the ledge outside the kitchen window, and it flourished. He planted fragrant lavender and sweet peas and, between them, snowdrop lilies appeared of their own accord. The smells wafted in to the kitchen like perfume, although the latter flower didn’t bring with it the reaction that he had expected.

Jessica crushed a lily between her pale fingers. “These grow in graveyards.” “I didn’t plant them, it’s just a weed,” he explained. “That’s the point isn’t it? It knows.” “What do you mean it knows?”“Graveyard lilies, the rot. It doesn’t matter how much you paint over it it’s not going

to change anything,” she said. Anton had heard about the power of ghosts from books and films, but it was nothing

like the real thing. He sought cover behind the couch as she hurled plates and bowls, creating a maelstrom of porcelain shards in the air. Glass shattered.

He stumbled with his words, unable to think of anything that would calm her fury. She screamed, a guttural wail that he was afraid could be heard in the entire apartment block.

She hurled the toaster at the blackening wall. “I hate it here!” Her eyes blazed.

She destroyed the entire window-ledge garden in seconds, pulling out a clump of lilies and smashing them. As a pipe burst below the sink, the soil and the water splashed mud all over the kitchen floor. It was over within minutes, then she left him there alone in the chaos.

Anton didn’t replenish the window box garden.

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The police stopped investigating Jessica’s disappearance at the same time as friends and family stopped knocking on his door. Anton knew that there was only so much they could do; Jess was one among hundreds of missing girls.

When autumn approached, Jess began to brood. As the leaves crinkled and the air grew chill, her manifestations became more frequent and longer lasting. She’d sit on the couch and stare at the door, or out the window, for hours, unmoving.

Anton took little notice of her increased discomfort. He delighted in her increased company, yet he took care not to voice this.

They sat together on the kitchen counter, staring at the reddening sky through the window. It was twilight, a time of day when the skeletal autumn trees seemed to stand straining for that last breath of light before nightfall. It was Anton’s favourite time of the day, and for the first time in his life, he was able to share this with someone else. He smiled warmly at Jess, always careful to avoid her eyes, but she didn’t return the gesture. She was eyeing him appraisingly.

“I’ve been thinking about things,” she said. “About?”“I’ve had a lot of time to think over the past months and I think I was looking for

something more when I walked to the pier. That night I didn’t come home.” “Do you know what it was that you were looking for?” he asked. “It was something in the music that made me realise there was something more out

there, something that would transcend life and sadness. Like an answer to every question I’ve always wanted to ask. I just knew that it would be there, and everything would be all right.”

“But it wasn’t?” “No, it wasn’t. I’m still stuck here, in this flat. I didn’t understand that at first and it’s

something I’ve been thinking about for a while now.”Anton usually avoided all mention of Jessica’s disappearance because it upset her and

caused her to vanish for days on end. He chewed on his words before answering. “Have you come up with anything?” He wished he could take her hand. “Yeah, I think so. I think I was supposed to come find you,” she said. It was the last thing he expected her to say and he repeated it in his head a few times,

as if trying to find a different meaning in her words. “What do you mean?” “I think you’re supposed to come with me, wherever it is I’m going.”

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“And you know that for certain, that if I go with you, to wherever it is we’re going, we are going to find this answer, or whatever it is we are supposed to find?”

“Yes,” she said without hesitation. Anton opened his mouth to reply then stopped. What was he going to say? That he

wasn’t ready? His breath caught in his chest and he looked toward Table Mountain in the distance in order to focus his eyes on something else.

“You want me to go with you?” he asked tentatively. “Of course I want you to go with me, Anty. It’s always been you and me,” she said

with uncharacteristic sweetness. “Do you think you could love me?” “Perhaps. Besides, we’ll have forever to find out.”He grinned and balled his fists. This was the moment he had been waiting for. He

could feel the sweat beginning to moisten the palms of his hands. “Now?” he asked. She nodded, as if spurring on a child. .Prompted by Jess, who remained sitting on the kitchen counter swinging her legs

back and forth, Anton crawled to the edge of the window. He felt giddy and elated at the same time, something he had been deprived of his whole life.

The mountain was totally obscured by darkness and, for an instant, he regretted not being able to say goodbye. Like a child leaning over pool too deep for him, he looked down. He couldn’t see the bottom. He dived.

Inside the apartment, the door with the toxic green warning swung closed. The music began.

40

Chris Miller

Missy slipped out from under the covers and eased open the bedroom door. It creaked and she looked back at Simon, but he remained undisturbed on their California Queen. There was a time when the earth could rend and swallow them whole and she wouldn’t know it but over the past year her sleep had grown restive.

Missy paused at the threshold, taking care to step over the squeaky section of floor board. Simon was a light sleeper. As she crept toward the bathroom she heard the erratic patter of light rain on the roof. Outside storm clouds hung heavy, eager; inside, humidity clung to her skin and grappled with her nightgown.

The latch on the bathroom door sounded like the click of the alarm clock, the one that preceded the actual alarm by a half-second. She imagined it waking Simon now and felt her heart go from thump-thump to flitter-flitter.

In the medicine cabinet was the box. She knew right where it sat, even before opening the mirrored door. The sight of the packaging, with its wavy blue design, now instilled a feeling of nausea rather than anticipation. If only it were the good kind of nausea. With one practiced motion Missy tore open the box.

Lying across her palm, the stick felt foreign. Like the game she played as a child where she repeated a word again and again until it lost all meaning, the sound of the vowels and consonants having become alien to her. She tested its weight. No more than a few ounces, yet heavy with consequence. Missy closed her eyes, said a silent prayer, and sat down to pee.

With the tip doused, Missy held the stick in front of her and stared at the display. “No minuses,” she whispered as she waited for the stick to declare. Missy longed for a plus. It could be pink, blue or green—it didn’t matter. Two short perpendicular lines would make for a happy woman and maybe a happy man. That cliché about boiling water came to mind as she sat on the toilet with her panties around her ankles.

Then her wait ended. One straight line. Intercepted by none. Discarding the pregnancy test, she stepped out of her nightgown and turned on the

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shower. The water was hot and sprayed against her face and chest. Before the room could steam up she heard Simon enter. The chrome-beaded rings of the shower curtain raked the rod and he slipped in behind her. As she tried to stifle her emotions, she was grateful for the hot water; it concealed the erratic nature of her tears.

* * * *The sun hovered over the horizon; its waning glare hit Missy full in the face through

their kitchen window. Steam rolled up the wall and disappeared against the ceiling. Spaghetti roiled in a large pot on the stove behind a pan of poached salmon and dill. Missy used her apron to pull buttered asparagus from the oven. She placed the dish on a trivet. Her short apron was not enough to reach both handles of the spaghetti pot so she looked for pot holders. Finding none, she cursed softly then grabbed the pot by its handles and rushed it to the colander in the sink a couple of feet away where she cursed aloud.

“Am I back in basic training?” Simon said from the other room.“I doubt they ever served salmon on a shingle,” Missy said. “I didn’t hear you come in.”Simon entered the kitchen. “I’m not surprised. With all that racket I could have sworn

my Navy buddies were here.” Missy shook out her hands. She took off her ring and put it on the window sill, then

put the side of her index finger to her mouth in an attempt to sooth her burned fingers.“Let me help you.” Simon opened the freezer and pulled out a bag of frozen peas. He

placed her hands on either side of the bag then put his hands on hers. “Better?”Missy looked into his brown eyes, but could see no further. “Yes.” The weight of

his hands on hers felt reassuring, felt good, proper; they felt compensatory. “Dinner will be ready in ten minutes.”

“Good, time enough to shoot off a couple of emails.” He left her there, holding the peas, without having kissed her hello.Missy set the table and opened a bottle of Pinot Grigio. The salmon, pasta and

asparagus did not touch one another on the plate; yet together they formed a nice picture. Something one might see on an over-priced menu.

“Looks great,” Simon said. He clipped his BlackBerry to his hip, pulled out her chair and poured the wine.

They ate in silence. The gentle clink and scrape of knife and fork on plate rang out like a fire alarm. He smiled at her. She smiled back.

“How was your day?” Simon asked.“It was fine.”

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“I noticed the neighbours have a new SUV, one of those hybrids.”Missy pressed her lips to gather herself so her voice wouldn’t crack. “It looks nice.”

She wanted to cry out loud a visceral scream. I’m right here. Can you see me? No, all you see is a new car and your BlackBerry. We will never need a car that size because I am barren, my womb and us—we are barren.

“Jackson and I were thinking about taking in eighteen holes this weekend. Try out my new irons. Maybe you and Clarissa could do something,” Simon said.

Missy didn’t answer.“Babe, are you all right?” “No.” She put down her fork. “I’m not all right. We’re not all right.”“I can cancel the golf.”“This isn’t about golf.” Missy could feel hot tears in the corners of her eyes. “Do you

love me?” “Of course I love you,” Simon replied.“No, sweetie. You love the idea of love. You love the idea of golf on the weekends,

let’s face it, you’re no Tiger Woods.” At this she smiled in that way that said I know and that’s okay. “You love the idea of coming home from the office to your beautiful wife.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes. “And to your brood of children.”

“Is that so wrong?” he asked.“No, but for us it’s a fantasy.”He tilted his head, furrowed his brow, and looked at her. Really looked at her, she

thought. As if she was suddenly in 3-D.“I took another pregnancy test this morning.”He waited.“I’m barren. There will never be a brood; we’ve both known it for a long time.”“That’s not true,” Simon said. “We’ll keep trying. There’re alternatives.”“What alternatives? We’ve tried tracking ovulation, basal body temperature, lubes,

herbs, post-coital pillows, invitro, sperm count and mobility—it’s all veneer, a shiny coating to make us look pretty—but we’re hollow.”

“I love you,” Simon said.“No you want to love me, but you don’t and I don’t fault you for it. We’re

pretending—hoping a child will fix us. We’re broken, babe. And there are no replacement parts.” She got up from the table.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

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“I have to leave.”“For how long?” “I don’t know.”She packed a bag and left—her wedding ring still on the kitchen window sill.

* * * *Missy drove about the city, going into parts where she had never before ventured.

A light rain accompanied her. The wipers made a soft swoosh-thump every few seconds. Eventually, she found Route 18 and the Meridian Hotel.

Missy knew of the Meridian but had never lodged there. It was a five-star establishment situated among old trees. The hotel proper sat at the east end of the lot while sharing the property line on the west with a cemetery as old as the trees. She recalled a newspaper article about a dispute over the boundary but the original records had been lost. The lawyers for the Meridian convinced the city that the hotel’s tenants took precedence over those of the cemetery.

Exiting her vehicle, Missy handed the car key to a valet. Two doormen in red uniforms opened the brass doors leading into the lobby. She followed the veins in the marble floor across the grand hall to the front desk where she met the concierge.

“Good evening. My name is Mr Alves. I have your room ready.”“I haven’t booked a room.”“No, but I’ve been expecting you.”“Excuse me?” “I had a feeling an unknown guest would present herself this evening. I had no idea

you would be so lovely.”Missy felt her cheeks flush.“Stefan! Take Miss―”“Larson,” Missy said. Or was he about to say Missy? “Show Ms Larson to her room.” He entered a few keystrokes and handed Stefan the

room key. Stefan took Missy’s suitcase and led her to the elevators. Inside the elevator, she reached for the button marking her floor and Mr Alves never mentioned it.

“Allow me,” Stefan said. * * * *

Missy sat on the edge of the bed in room 1301. She flipped open her phone and ran her fingers over the buttons, feeling the edge of each one on her fingertips. She pressed “one.” The display flashed Calling Simon.

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“Missy! Where are you?” Simon asked.“I drove around for awhile trying to get my bearings, you know? About us.”“Tell me where you are. We can fix this. I’ll put my golf clubs up on eBay.”Missy smiled. “You don’t need to sell your clubs, but it’s a nice gesture. I think I need

to be alone tonight. But let’s meet in the morning for breakfast. I’m at Le Meridia―”Her cellphone died. She picked up the phone by the bed but heard only soft static.

Thunder bounced of the windows and she jumped as if she were a child. The rain came down in sheets and there was a slight tremor in her hand as she replaced the receiver. She needed a drink.

After three vodka cocktails with pomegranate and a napkin from the bartender with his phone number, Missy made her way back to the elevators.

“Right this way.” Stefan escorted her into the first elevator. He pushed the button to her floor. As she stepped out of the elevator she could feel his eyes on her backside. At her door, she slid her card key into the lock and waited for the green light. The lights in the hallway went out. At the far end of the hall a door closed.

“Hello? Is anybody there?” Footsteps behind her. That or the effects of three vodka cocktails. Not enough to get her drunk, but she had

a good buzz. Footsteps again, closer now. Instinctively she looked behind her. Emergency lighting kicked in. She was alone.

The green light came on, the door latch released and she pushed through.Missy flicked the wall switches but her room remained dark. Inhale. Exhale. “Silly girl,” she muttered. “You’re a grown woman.” She made her way to the bed,

wriggled and stumbled out of her clothes and slid under the covers. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep when she recognised Simon’s scent and

felt someone curl up behind her. “Simon,” she said through a sleepy sigh. “How did you get here?”“Shh,” he whispered and kissed the back of her neck. They made love to the lightning strikes and rolling thunder, not just sex, but intimate

honest love. * * * *

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Missy felt the morning sun through her eyelids. She clasped her hands and pushed her arms out in front of her, stretching the muscles in her back like a calico cat then reached across the bed for Simon. He was gone, but his scent lingered. She would have preferred he wake her and they take breakfast together, or better yet, order room service.

She dressed, gathered her things, and went to the buffet to look for him and possibly a spinach omelette. In the lobby, Mr Alves still manned the front desk. “Do you ever sleep?”

He turned to face her. “Good morning, Ms Larson. I’m afraid last night’s storm delayed my replacement. I hope the loss of power didn’t inconvenience you.”

“Not at all. I’m looking for my husband. You gave him a key to my room last night.”“Oh, no. I would never do that. The security of our guests is paramount. You

would’ve had to authorise something like that. I have no record of any such authorisation.”“But, he was here.”“Perhaps the storm did disturb you, my dear. I don’t mean to be presumptuous but

you did imbibe the spirits last night.” He tilted his head toward the bar.Missy understood the implication. Never mind, she would find Simon and figure it

out. “I’d like to check out, please.”“Certainly. Let’s see, that was room ten thirteen. Was everything satisfactory?”“No. My room is thirteen oh one.”Mr Alves chuckled softly. “I’m afraid that room doesn’t exist.”“Sorry?” “We don’t have a thirteenth floor,” he said while tapping the keyboard. “It’s a silly

superstition, but many hotels are constructed without a thirteenth floor. Ah yes, here it is.” He turned the monitor to show her the room record: room 1013—Missy Larson. Stefan could accompany you back to your room if you’d like to check. His replacement didn’t make it either.”

She looked to the elevators and saw Stefan at his post. He tipped his cap to her. “No, that’s fine.” Missy resigned herself to whatever powers had orchestrated the past

twelve hours. “Where do I sign? And it’s missus.”Missy signed the receipt and turned to leave.“Mrs. Larson, I seemed to have overlooked this.” Mr Alves handed her an envelope

that read Missy.

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She recognised Simon’s script:

Hey Babe,Thanks for last night. Sorry I had to leave but things will be different now.Love,Simon

“Is everything all right, Mrs Larson?” asked Mr Alves.“Yes, I think so.”

* * * *Missy turned down her street and felt her chest tighten. Parked in front of their house was a

sheriff’s vehicle. The officer met her at the front step.“Mrs Larson?” Her mouth felt dry. The words struggled to escape. “It’s Simon, isn’t it?” “There’s no easy way to say this, ma’am.” The sheriff removed his hat. “We found your

husband’s car last night in a ravine off Route 18, about a half-mile shy of the Meridian Hotel. Forensics says he likely hydroplaned and lost control of the vehicle.” He paused. “I’m sorry. He died at the scene.”

Missy stared at him. He seemed to speak in slow motion, the words stretching from his mouth to her ears.

“…come down and identify the body. If there’s anything I can do for you, please let me know.” He handed her his card.

Images from the previous night flashed in her eyes—his touch, his scent. Missy dropped her bag and gripped the door frame. Her eyes watered, blurring her vision. Darkness crept into her peripheral and she staggered inside. The walls held her up, leading her to the bathroom. At the sink, she splashed her face and drank from the tap. Cool water ran down to her elbows and off her chin, soaking her chest, but it sharpened her senses. With only water in her stomach she felt nauseated and turned to the toilet. After an uncertain moment, the sensation passed.

Clutching the porcelain, her gaze drifted to the waste basket and the discarded pregnancy test. She blinked and blinked again, not believing what she was seeing. Missy grasped the stick from the previous morning. Silent tears ran down her face and spilled onto the cool tile floor. The stick in her hand showed two perpendicular lines, neither pink, blue, or green—but it was there.

47

Rachel Green

Ticker-ticker-ticker.From her bed she can hear the clock ticking. It’s one of those fold-up travel clocks her

aunt gave her when she was little. She used to take it on holiday until her brother told her the luminous dials were radioactive. Outside she can hear children playing and, somewhere, the whine of a Sunday lawnmower. The ceiling tiles have one hundred and forty-four dots each.

Ticker-ticker-ticker. She wishes she hadn’t done it now. Wishes she hadn’t waited until her mother went to

visit Aunty Gladys. Wishes she hadn’t taken the razor blade. Wishes...Ticker-ticker-ticker. DripDripDrip.

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Liam Kruger

You know, in Jewish homes, there used to be a tradition of emptying out every dish, pot and basin out of the windows when somebody died.

Calm down. Try and take some deep breaths.This was done to tell the neighbours that Uncle Abe had kicked the bucket. The

spiritual explanation was that souls could be trapped by water, and keeping water under the roof prevented them from rising to heaven.

I know it feels like you can’t breathe, don’t worry about it. Push through.You’re not going to be able to talk for a couple of minutes, but you seem to be able

to hear well enough. Why, look at that, your eyes are moving―high tolerance, I see. Don’t worry about it. You’re not dying.

I used to live here too. Alone, like you. One of the biggest problems, I think, about living alone, is adapting to a world where everything is under your sole influence. Don’t you think? After a childhood―an extended childhood―of feeling other people’s warmth in the chair I just sat down in, there were few things quite as depressing as coming home after a long day of pretending to know what I was doing to find my crusty cereal bowl in the sink, exactly as I left it after breakfast.

So, naturally, I was rather pleased when I found out that my new place was haunted. Just like you.

The realisation was gradual; I blush to think of it now, but there must’ve been weeks when I meandered up and down my hallway in various states of undress, probably scratching myself, as if no one was there. Wait, that’s not quite right; no one was there. What I thought was that there wasn’t anyone there, which is different.

It was the little things that tipped me off, you know? Lights being on when I was almost certain I’d left them off, beds being made or unmade, footsteps in the room next door―which seemed reasonable at first, because the walls between these apartments are paper thin, as you know. It was worse in my time. I could sit in the middle of my living room and hear the couple in No. 15 fuck or fight while the lady in No. 11 tried to telemarket from home. The footsteps were coming from a room in the apartment, though, a fact that only

49

bobbed to the surface of my consciousness after I’d figured it out.Obviously, poltergeist wasn’t the first thing to jump into my head. The age we

lived in, I was almost certain my flat was being broken into; I crept downstairs holding my umbrella like a baseball bat, or like I supposed a baseball bat should be held, every second or third night for about a week. Then I’d sit in the dark for ten, twenty minutes, waiting for whoever else was there―because I could tell by the tensing of my bladder that there had to be someone else there―to leap out, stabbing or shrieking or however it was the burglars operated. The lack of sleep started getting to me, though, and I realised I didn’t have anything really worth stealing, so I learned to ignore the sounds.

Please stop rolling your eyes like that, it’s distracting. I’ve told you you’re not dying.The realisation came when I saw that my books were disordered. I was nursing a

nasty burn on my forearm from when the stove had unaccountably turned itself on while I was cleaning it, and my boss had instructed me to take a few days off. Our uniforms are short-sleeved and the customers don’t like their food being handed to them by folks with nasty, seeping bandages. I said sure, and took my time looking at the books I hadn’t read. I didn’t really have time to read, back then, but I made sure the books were in sequence so that I would know where to find them, if I found the time. You’re not a very big reader, are you? You’ve got a row of empty beer cans where I kept my biographies. No matter. Anyway, it was when I found the Borges tucked in behind Grisham that I knew something was up.

I didn’t have any idea what to do about it, though. Would you? Of course you wouldn’t. You didn’t. I mean, I couldn’t exactly go around the apartment waving a birthday candle and compelling my secret roommate with the power of whomever―I don’t believe in that stuff. And I wasn’t about to go for one of those blood-and-bones sangoma exorcisms either―for one thing, I wouldn’t know where to find one. Christ, do you have any idea how awkward that conversation would have been? I bristle enough as it is every time my brother calls a car guard chief; and here I am trying to get a witch doctor to play Pagan African Superstitious Eye for the Sceptical But Attempting To Be Open-Minded Guy. Not happening. Besides, it’s not like anything had happened to warrant eviction. More on that later, mind you.

So I did nothing, for a while. The impact on my life wasn’t all that significant―I mean, I took far more care with heated appliances, certainly, but otherwise...I did entertain guests less frequently, but that wasn’t any great change. On the rare occasions that I did bring a bunk-mate home, I was so intensely aware of being watched that my performance suffered considerably, so that well sort of dried up, figuratively. Literally too, I suppose. But, really, I

50

welcomed the company, taciturn though it was. The solution to my problem―the ghost-in-our-house problem―came from my

grandmother, which was as much of a surprise to me as anyone. She was staying in the spare bedroom for the weekend―the room you offered to that drunk friend of yours before you two inevitably ended up together in the master. One of ouma’s old friends was being buried in town, and she wanted to flaunt her continued survival where possible.

Grandmother was terrified of the big city and all of the crime in it; I was almost certain she would be woken up by the scraping of chairs going on in the empty dining room, and start asking unfortunate questions. Luckily, any sounds getting into her room were drowned out by her snoring and, later, her alarm clock, which also failed to wake her. Still, my grandmother―like many other grandmothers, I suspect―claimed to have some sort of second sight. Apparently grandfather swings by for a chat every few weeks, and my parents’ old house is haunted by a little Spanish girl.

Naturally I wanted to know if she was picking up on any sort of presence over here. I didn’t want the question to be too transparent, though, or else she’d just have said yes to maintain her image. We were sitting in the lounge―my furniture wasn’t as nice as yours but I think the couch was a little more comfortable.

“I’m curious about who lived here before me,” I hazarded, because my conversations with grandmother were awkward enough to sustain statements like that.

“Yes,” she replied. “I wonder how much their rent was, when the neighbourhood was better.”

“Well that’s true.” I watched the light fixture in the kitchen swing back and forth behind her. “But I was thinking more about their identity. Like how I could get to know about a person who was previously living. Here.”

She looked at me, a little startled, and stared for some seconds, eyebrows arched and lip pressed together. She looked around the room, carefully, as if on the verge of some great veil-breaching revelation, and said, “I don’t know, check the Googles or something.”

She shrugged and picked up a copy of People, to start on the crossword.So I checked “the Googles”. I wasn’t the online savant that you are, but it didn’t

take much more than “death” and the name of the neighbourhood to bring up a series of obituaries from the local paper. About half of these were families reporting the tragic death of their pets, a disproportionate amount of which were beagles named Snoopy. The human deaths were about as clichéd―KS, female, eighteen, died in a car crash on the way home from a matric farewell; GD, male, twenty-three, took own life; EW, female, sixty-one,

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passed quietly in her sleep after a long battle with cancer; and JT, male, forty-three, died of injuries sustained during armed robbery en route to hospital. It was all so unbelievably typical, I was convinced that I was going to be stuck with some dull working-class ghost...and then her entry caught my eye. I can see you know which one I’m talking about.

CA, female, twenty-four, overdosed on painkillers and wine. It was a little contrived, yes, but there was something romantic about the wine. Oh, I willed my ghost to be her. A little bit of digging got you further here than I did―you found the coroner’s report, clever duck, so you heard about the cigarette burns all up and down her arm, and the tattoos. I only heard about that later―from the horse’s mouth, so to speak―but she seemed interesting, to be sure. A quick trawl through Facebook later, I had her name and her face. Are you on Facebook? I shall have to find out.

Her online profile had become a little shrine, after she died. Friends who obviously knew nothing about the circumstances of her death were throwing condolences and eulogies at her unmanned profile now, numerous and sentimental as graveyard flowers. Like you, I ignored these at first, scrambling first through her photo albums, madly seeking some sort of tangible proof; here a generic beachside landscape, there a black-and-white deck chair, a pile of bottles next to a familiar corner, and―ah. A photograph she had taken herself, standing in this very bathroom, of her reflection in that mirror. She’d cropped her hair short and had the camera placed in front of her protectively, like a talisman.

It was her. It had to be her who was haunting me. And now I had found her.I found out more, over time; her Facebook profile, revealing even at a cursory glance,

became like an encyclopaedia under my scrutiny. I know which books she’d read, which music she’d liked, where she’d worked, who her co-workers had been. I bought the books, played the music and visited the mediocre restaurant with the remarkable mojitos. Is this not sounding familiar? The ghost girl’s reconstructed life? Of course it is. I think you might’ve been more desperate than I was, to convince yourself that the girl had lived here.

Don’t worry. She really did.I have to hand it to you; you really dived head-first into the project. There were some

aspects to the arrangement that I put off, even as I teased out the barest details of her life. I didn’t want to be seen buying an Ouija board, I told myself. I think I was reluctant to try to communicate. Nerves, you know. Not you, of course; you went right out and got everything you might need to talk, didn’t you? Not that you ever talked to her. I am sorry about that.

When I got desperate enough to think it might work, we used the mirror to communicate. It seemed appropriate.

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I remember the routine well. I’d turn on the shower, not even touching the cold faucet, just letting it get as hot as it could―waiting for the surface to steam up. It wouldn’t happen every time, but it’s a small apartment―there are only so many places for a ghost to be. I’d feel that tingle in the back of your mind that we both know so well by now, and I’d say “Hello”. Fingers that weren’t fingers would press themselves to the glass and write in a fluid, almost curling style―Hello yourself.

She was blithe, even as a ghost. Especially as a ghost.Would it be wrong of me to say I coveted her then? It wasn’t like your relationship―

and your relationship was sweet enough, with the awkward entreaties to undying love and all that. I loved her, of course, but I loved what she had managed to make herself into―mourned by people who hadn’t spoken to her in months even before she died, beloved by people who had not been as fond of her in life. She’d tethered all these hearts to her grave, with some pills and a bottle of wine. I was awed. It’s no big deal, she’d written, and through the steam I was sure I saw a shrug of those angular shoulders. I don’t mean to belittle what you felt, dear; I’m sure you thought you loved her very much. She’d have appreciated the sentiment.

From here, I think, the story should become very familiar. I didn’t leave the house very much, after first contact. I had money enough to last a while, so I stocked up on wine and candles, and that was that, for a time. I sang praises to the ghost girl, constantly in her company, talking and laughing at the gross world of the living.

I don’t think I ate for a week. Later, she told me that she’d come to regret the suicide attempt. She still called it an

attempt because, well, I’m still here, aren’t I? She said that she’d had time to think things over and, once she’d done all the things ghosts can do―the big ones like flying, and the little ones like reading every book in the house without blinking―she began to miss the stuff of life. That spoiled her for me, a little, but it didn’t really matter by then. I had become transfixed, wrapped around her gossamer fingers. Having felt the power she wielded, I can’t bring myself to get angry at her anymore. You’ll understand.

We made love, eventually. I had gotten very drunk and the last threads of daylight were creeping out under the curtains. Without apparent thought, I found my hand sliding down past my navel. It struck me that I wasn’t entirely in control of my hand stirring; that the nerves were jerking a little, like a frog with a current through it. You are, of course, familiar with the sensation; when your hand becomes someone else’s glove, and when your eyes are seeing for someone else. There’s that vague sense of panic, and the rush that comes

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with it. I’m afraid I didn’t have the same rush of virginal shame that you wallowed in, but there’s nothing especially wrong with that. You came around. It felt good; when it was dark enough, the tongue in my mouth might not have belonged to me, for a few minutes at a time.

Test-driving, it’s called. She didn’t tell me that through the mirror, though.Like you, I said that I loved her. And, like you, I was eventually asked to prove it. I think it was easier to make you do it. I hadn’t been struck by any thoughts about

the immortality of love―more by the spectacle, the ruined car-crash lives she’d left behind, making a clean exit. It took convincing; she told me that we could escape the confines of the apartment, that we could be united in spirit; that I would never be out of shape.

If the last one didn’t convince me, it did make a difference. I think I should’ve grown suspicious around the time that she started making very

specific instructions about how to go about killing myself. I’d wanted to go with hanging; that rafter in the dining room would have been excellent for it. Pills and wine in the bathtub, she’d said, like me. Like you.

So I’d sat there, feeling my body grow numb and weak, as my muscles stopped listening to my screaming, panicked brain, and felt myself stepping out for a moment.

“Calm down,” said a voice that didn’t disturb a single atom, but which I could still hear. “Try to take some deep breaths.” My rolling, thrashing ghost eyes stopped for long enough to see her, perfectly composed down to the cigarette burns on her arm, floating a few feet above me and my body, which was twitching.

“I know it feels like you can’t breathe. Push through it.”She smiled at me and sank into my body. I can only imagine what the look on my

face must’ve been like. It’s probably a little like the look on your face. Except it’s my face, now, isn’t it?

The first thing she did when she had control of my body was throw up. It seemed the dosage of pills and wine she’d prescribed―which, incidentally, is the dosage of pills and wine I advised you to take―would be enough to push me to the edge, without quite killing me, providing ample opportunity for a somewhat more experienced ghost to step in, and take control, which she knew she was capable of, after those late-night test-drives.

You mustn’t be mad at me. It’s not like you ever checked to ask your ghost’s name. She told me about the Jewish tradition as she was washing her face―my face―in the

mirror. About the friends that had decided they loved her after she died. About how it was time to re-connect, even if it meant using my body.

I hadn’t wanted it anyway.

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I do feel a little guilty, obviously. She had stolen my grand gesture from me; no online shrine, no mourning relatives. I suppose I’ve stolen something from you.

I didn’t mean to deceive you, duck, but would you have fallen in love with me if I hadn’t pretended to be her? Would you have given up this lovely body―well, nothing a diet won’t make lovely―like I gave up mine?

Don’t moan like that, little ghost. There’ll be someone else coming along soon. It’s a nice apartment. I won’t tell the new tenant about the scraping chairs, or the dripping faucets. You’ll have a chance, like me.

Then you can tell me how wrong I am.