HARVEST
Steve Merrifield
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Copyright 2010 Steve Merrifield
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for Rob
who encourages and supports me
in all that I do
HARVEST
Steve Merrifield
Prologue: End of Days
The Year 60 CE
The centurion ran. Slipping and sliding in the mud that sucked at his bare feet. His sandals had been claimed by the boggy ground at the start of his race through the trees. He had sacrificed the shelter his tall shield offered against the onslaught of rain for a burning stake to light his pursuit through the darkness. The guttering orange light plucked twisted trees clawing out of the dark. The branches were buffeted by the bitter wind that drove the deluge of rain into his face. His frantic fingers plucked at the clasp on his shoulder and he shrugged off the burden of his waterlogged cape. Beyond his arena of light, the bold moonlight became his ally and he picked out the shadowy shape of the white-haired old man he hunted.
The armed natives that had defended the camp had largely been unskilled in war, and had fallen easily to the centurion’s forces in a short bloody battle. However, the remaining tribe had turned on the raiders. In an unsettling nightmarish skirmish, the weak, the old, the women – some with babes in their arms, and the children themselves, had all flung themselves at the soldiers with wild eyes and chilling screams. They had desperately grabbed and clung to his soldiers, giving up their chance to flee; sheathing his men’s swords with their bodies, to ensure the elder of their tribe could escape.
The centurion had not been so easily distracted; he had left his men to slay the remaining natives while he chased the feeble old man. “Feeble”, yet the old man had somehow overcome the miring mud that was almost defeating him; a soldier of the empire in his athletic prime.
The soldier was stopped by the shock of icy water washing over his bare feet, and he suddenly realised the rushing sound of a stream beneath the constant hiss and drum of the rain. Angling his torch down he could see the shallow stream driven into a wild race by the lashing rain and the dark mounds that dammed and channelled its flow. The shapes were corpses, boars, deer, horses, cattle – from what he could see each had a deep glistening rent in its throat or a dark puncture wound in its head. Sacrifices. Offerings to the water of the earth, or whatever Gods these people worshipped, exchanges for potency of power and magic. Sacrifices that spread as far as he could see in either direction of the stream. More offerings than he had seen before. He didn’t let the sight stop him, but used the corpses as stepping-stones to cross to the other side, as the elder had surely done. It hadn’t been the first disturbing sight of the night – that had been when he and his men had uncovered the bodies in the tribes’ camp. The seven scouts he had sent out over the last week. Their heads missing.
The centurion found himself in a grove of oaks and sycamores that lead to a broad dark clearing. The old man stood in the middle. The soldier slowed his pace so that the sounds of the storm would hide his approach.
Many of the resistant native tribes had been massacred in the past months; those that remained were scattered and ineffective, their leaders slain, their shamans and holy men fleeing their homes and lands on the island to head across the sea into the west and exile. This elder and his tribe were organised, and had headed away from the coast and a chance of escape, so that they could travel to this place. There had been whispers among prisoners taken in the lead-up to this raid, rumours that this shaman was opposed to co-operation and to retreat and was set on a course of action unsupported by the other mystics.
The soldier blinked the rain from his eyes and wrapped his fingers around the wooden hilt of his weapon as he marched with quickened determination. Whatever reason this elder had come to this land so foolishly close to the port of Londinium, he would not escape. The centurion would end his life and finish his mission: his part in the completion of Governor Seutonius Paulinus’s plan to cleanse the land of the barbarian native resistance. His senses focussed on the night air, crisp around him, and the continual rapping fingers of rain on the shoulders of his leather tunic and his helmet.
Blue light flashed with magnesium brilliance from the sky and a ribbon of energy dumped itself into one of three chest-height misshapen standing stones positioned just paces from where the old man stood.
The soldier gathered himself from cowering, recovering from the crater in his resolve that the sudden explosion of shock had left. The old man was still there, unscathed and unmoved. The centurion returned his grip to his weapon, withdrew the wide flat blade from its sheath, and made his final approach with a quickened step. The old man’s foreign lyrical tongue danced on the wild air.
The centurion’s torch guttered and crackled with the deluge, weakly picking out the details of the man as its radius of light encompassed him and gave away the soldiers approach, yet the frail man made no attempt to escape.
Another blast of light hit the second stone in the triangle with a similar spray of sparks, lighting up the area and revealing seven bloody heads with wild eyes piled on a large fresh swelling in the soil that seemed to move and undulate in the midst of the stones. The soldier blinked away the blue vein of light from his eyes in time to see the old man cast small items on to the swelling.
The old man’s poetic voice died abruptly, his tongue stilled in his palette. The last breath he had drawn drifted out of him in a slow exhalation. The shaman’s head lolled forward, staring at the foot of bloodstained sword that jutted from his chest, its wickedly angled tip pointing into the darkness. His legs buckled beneath him and a golden sickle tumbled from a gnarled hand. The soldier angled his skewering blade toward the ground and the elder slipped from the sword into a bloody sprawl of robes at his feet.
The soldier had expected a third strike of lightning on the remaining stone in as quick a succession as the other two, but was grateful that it hadn’t – the two strikes had been unnerving enough. In the flickering light of his torch the centurion cast an eye over the small engraved tablets the elder had cast on the mound along with acorns and sprigs of holly and mistletoe. The heads of his scouts were gone. The soldier re-sheathed his blade, now cleaned by the rain.
The swelling in the earth sagged and the broken clods were quickly re-knitted by the flow of water chasing along the ground as the downpour continued. Confused and unsure of what he had plundered into, he flashed the standing stones with a cursory glance of his torch, and saw that each monolith was marked with an identical trident-like symbol that meant nothing to him. The soldier kicked and stamped the old man’s tablets and offerings into the soft ground, and took satisfaction in the completion of his mission.
The Present
The daytime sun had baked the concrete towers that reached up for fourteen stories into the north London skyline. The communal gardens and walkways between the three tower blocks had been cast in shadow all day, but offered no relief from the unrelenting heat. The night offered little change in temperature.
The night-time June air was thick with a heat and a heaviness that weighed down upon everyone on the estate. It made sleeping difficult and bedclothes impossible. All waited for the distantly rumbling storm to clear the life-draining veil that had smothered the residents for several days and nights.
The Heights had once stood proud among the typically low-level buildings that surrounded it. It was to be the start of new life in the community, offering a better standard of living, there to solve the problem of a growing city population. Now, forty years old, the buildings of the high-rise estate stood like depressed giants of a forgotten time and abandoned ideals. The shops that had been built into the base of the east tower had been gutted by fire and had never re-opened. The boarded-up windows and sealed doors of the shops gave a depressing view to those who headed to the flats themselves.
The Heights didn’t have the reputation of the local Somers Town area for its social problems, nor did it have the desirability of the period apartment buildings of Kentish Town and Highgate, or the more modern purpose-built flats that had developed. For those new to seeing the estate it could easily share the stereotypical reputation of buildings of its type as being dirty, dangerous, poverty-filled and rife with drugs. However, there was a difference within the towers: there wasn’t a drug problem on the estate, most residents had jobs and supported themselves and its tower design ensured security; the only danger would be from the residents themselves and those that were invited in, and as a result it was more secure than most homes.
In the same way that the locals had lobbied to keep the inadequate Camden Town Underground station for fear of changing the character of their town, there was rumour that the three towers were being considered for a preservation order. Their height afforded some of the resident’s views and glimpses of the areas that drew people to Camden, and if you were high enough, a panorama of the city basin, important considerations in the growing gentrification of the City’s more rundown suburbs, and for buyers not wanting to pay a fortune for that always desirable view.
More importantly than all these aspects there was a sense of community, a community of casual smiles of recognition, a general familiarity with the people that shared floors or met regularly in the lifts and stairwells.
Veins of brilliant white light chased each other down from the sky, disappearing in the horizon, leaving a brief purple, red and blue memory of its pattern in the eyes of those who watched. Thunder creaked through the air like slowly splintering tree trunks before the sound opened up into the shuddering booms of falling bombs. After a short while a rushing noise and an uplifting cool breeze swept through the estate, chased by a wall of rain that slammed against the parched earth and paving and ran off in rapid currents.
The three towers stood amongst the dancing shafts of light that ripped the sky asunder, conquering the local skyline solid and strong, weathering the rage and power of nature. A bolt of energy lanced through the sky with blinding light and fury, striking the east tower. The raw power flashed through the narrow copper conductor running the height of the building and pounded into the ground with a dull wet thud and a spray of sparks. The tower plunged into darkness. The full 20,000 volts passed harmlessly into the ground. The energy radiated out and enriched the soil with its nitrogen, finding forgotten bones and ancient flesh buried deep down. Completing a forgotten ritual and giving them life.
It reached out from its flesh and bones with It’s mind and senses. The air was thick with smells and tastes, and charged with noise and energy. Altogether different from the world It had fleetingly experienced so long ago. It could feel the minds of those above. The energy of so many lives. The world was brimming with life, while It was so weak. Too weak to reach them. It would grow stronger. The balance would change.
Part One: The Reaping Begins
Chapter One
Craig Digby checked his camera and adjusted the angle towards the schoolchildren being corralled into place in the sports hall of the school by their teachers. It was strange being back at the secondary school he had left eight years previously. He concentrated on preparing his equipment but he felt self-aware, caught by the flaws within himself that high school had fleshed out. The headmaster strolled up to him.
“Digby? Digby, isn’t it?”
Craig couldn’t believe it – Benchman was still head teacher at the school. Craig had maintained a dislike for him until the day he had finished his final exam and left the secondary school. Benchman had put on his final report that Craig was an under-achiever. The man still wore cheap bland grey suits that emphasised the aura of falseness about him. Yet now his hair matched his suit.
“That’s right,” Craig acknowledged. He remembered his frustration in the fifth form at the contradiction of being expected to act as an adult while being treated as a child. The hypocrisy burned him now as it had back then because Benchman was the embodiment of it. Except, he told himself, he was twenty-four had achieved good school college and university grades and was unquestionably an adult, and more satisfying than that Benchman had no power over him.
“Colin Digby. Thought I recognised the name – you haven’t changed much.”
Craig suspected Benchman deliberately mistook his name and he heard an underlying accusation in the last part of his sentence. Craig hadn’t changed much in appearance, no more spots that had kept him from being attractive, but he was still of average height with messy unkempt blond hair and blue eyes, his shoulders broader but still lacking the muscle behind his build. He stood unflinching as he had done at school, unfazed by authority, a picture of rebellion with his shirt untucked, but without the blazer that had been mandatory, and his tie was now neater than it used to be. His redemption was that his untidiness was now trendy. Craig didn’t want redemption though; he wanted Benchman to see he was still a rebel and hadn’t conformed to what his headmaster had wanted for him.
Craig corrected him as casually as possible, wanting desperately to end his sentence with “you wanker.”
“That’s right… Craig. How could I forget? Had you at my desk a few times to push your studies in your final year if I remember.” He winked.
Craig simply smiled. Benchman had been his form tutor in his final year – no one wanted Benchman as their form tutor in the exam year because he wanted their passes to reflect his influence on the pupils, to be an example to the other teachers. The head had realised Craig’s commitment to his Art, Media and Graphic Design lessons was largely at the expense of his work within Maths English and Science, subjects Benchman had been head of in his rise to the top. He had pushed for Craig to work harder in those areas, forced him by restricting his time in the art and design rooms. Craig had wished he could have been rebel enough to flunk those exams just to infuriate Benchman. Craig might be stubborn but he wasn’t stupid.
“So this is your line of work now, is it? You were always more artistic than you were academic.” There was no malice in his tone but the word “artistic” was emphasised as if it was taboo.
“Actually, I’m a freelance photographer for the local paper.”
“Freelance, eh? So you do this to make up the money?” He nodded over his shoulder to the children who were now arranged and seated in an order of height and symmetry.
Craig prepared his return and decided not to bite on the assumption of how much he was paid. “Not really, I do a variety of photographic work. I get some displays in galleries from time to time.” The last bit was an exaggeration. It had been a while since he had had the time to put together a portfolio and a display.
Benchman looked down at him through his glasses. He still towered over Craig, even as an adult Benchman made him feel small. He fixed Craig in his sights and drifted into that deliberating look he gave his pupils for late homework excuses or if he disagreed with a pupil’s opinion. Craig remembered the look, which was essentially an unanswerable last-judgement. He hated it even more because under the glare of those eyes he found himself agreeing with what Benchman saw and thought.
“You had a brother here too didn’t you? Darren?”
“Yeah.” Benchman got his name right first time. Typical.
“What’s he doing with himself now?”
“He’s running the family business with my dad.”
“Yes, did well in business studies and maths. I remember. He had his head screwed on. I thought you had moved away after your final year.”
Craig’s family had moved to London from Bath at the start of his secondary education. Losing all his junior school pals in the process. “Yes. We moved back to Bath as Mum wasn’t happy.” Losing him all his mates from secondary school.
“And you returned to the big city to make your fortune.” Was he scoffing?
“I returned for University actually. For a degree. Got a first.” Craig corrected and boasted, scoring himself a point.
“Better let you get on with it, then.” Benchman flashed a grin and strode away. He took his seat and folded his arms sternly and produced a prepared smile, the same smile that had stared back from Craig’s own school year-photos. He didn’t know how Benchman could be so fucking smug, from what Craig had read the only notable Alumni the school had produced were two serial killers.
Craig settled behind the camera, prepared the shot, saw Benchman’s gaping trouser zip and the off-white triangle of underwear it exposed and grinned wickedly.
“Smile!” Craig called to the assembly.
Flash.
“Prick!”
Kelly Mason walked around the east block of The Heights to get to the main entrance. She smiled and nodded to people she passed. She knew most of the faces she saw, and they knew her. She often wondered whether they feared her, with her uniform and what she represented, or whether they hated her or resented her because of it. Perhaps they respected it or got some security in seeing it, but more important than other people’s perceptions was that it gave her something to hide behind and devote herself to. She was sure they wouldn’t know it was her crutch. They didn’t know her past and how much it now meant for her to have something that she belonged to.
That’s why she wore her police uniform on her journey home while others changed back into their civvies at the Kentish Town station where she was based. She would hang it on the back of her bedroom door in her flat so she could see it from her bed. When she couldn’t sleep for the solitude of the night, she would look to it and what it represented, to know that at thirty-four she was finally strong and in control of her life. She was a lifetime away from what she used to be like, which is where she wanted to be; as far from that time and that self as possible.
She was startled from her thoughts by a muffled crash. She was sure the sound came from the rubbish storage area, but it wasn’t due to be collected until tomorrow, and she had just passed Alec the caretaker. Kids? She didn’t not understand why anyone would want to be in there. She looked at the double doors that clearly instructed ‘NO ENTRY’. Her movements became cautious and quiet as she approached them.
She eased one open and peered in. Warm air assaulted her with the pungent smell of rotting food and waste baked by the heat wave. She put the back of her hand to her mouth and wrinkled up her nose against the smell as she stepped in to the darkness. She plucked the large torch from her belt and snapped it on. The torch light plucked a grizzled face from the dark to startle her. Grime and dirt masked the pale and aged flesh, his hair dishevelled and matted with thick grease.
“Harry!” she chastised. “Harry Crabb, come on out of there. You know you aren’t meant to be in here.” She walked over to him and took the old man gently by the arm. Harry was a resident of the tower, known for his eccentric dementia. She looked down at a black plastic sack that was ripped open with its contents strewn about and picked through. Slivers of greasy meat hung from his hand. “Oh, Harry!” She clumsily brushed the slimy waste from his fingers as if cleaning a messy child. “You have a home you know? It’s not like when you were on the street. You get meals on wheels. You don’t have to keep doing this. Come on. I’ll take you.” She hooked her hand under his arm and ignored the feeling of grime, trying not to think about his unsanitary state. She looked about the large room, which was full of bags from the chute opening in the lobby; the damp-blackened concrete gave the ceiling a cavernous depth that conspired with the dark. “How did you manage to see a thing in here?” she mumbled incredulously.
Kelly got him to the doors and he turned awkwardly in her grip.
“Goodbye...” he called over his shoulder into the room.
Kelly frowned and scanned her torch through the darkness of the room and then back into his face, his lower jaw was masked in thick stubble that was stained and crusted in places. She was able to ignore the morsels of food nestled at the sides of his mouth because his strange expression of warm nostalgia was so distracting. She gave one last hesitant and puzzled look into the void. “Harry, there’s nothing there but bags of rubbish,” – and a terrible stench, although she decided that Harry would be contributing to the ripe air himself. “Come on, Harry.”
She closed the door on the rank smell. The dark rushed in on the shrinking rectangle of light falling through the doorway except for a dull green glow on the far wall. Odd, she didn’t remember seeing a green light bulb or anything that would have cast that light. Harry squirmed in her grip. “Alright, Harry let’s get you home.”
Craig reached the door to his flat in the east block of The Heights, but before he could enter it his neighbour called out to him. Virtue Kafar sauntered along the corridor from the lift behind a pram. Craig faced the slender young woman and said a quiet hello to her, his face flushing. Her boyfriend had died six months previously. Craig had seen her soon after, in passing as they were now, and he had blurted out his condolences to which she gave him a flicker of a smile in thanks before scurrying away with tears in her eyes. Since then he had only given her sheepish smiles of acknowledgement and had retreated hastily. “How are you?”
“Okay…” She wrinkled her petite nose and tilted her head from side to side as if considered the question. “…ish. You?”
“The same.” He inwardly cringed and thought he could kick himself – it wasn’t the same at all. Her boyfriend had died. She was only a few years older than him and had lost so much. He searched her face for a reaction to his comment. Although her long black hair looked tired and was roughly tied back from her face, the sallow appearance from her grief had gone and the rich dark colour of her skin had returned, the weight from her maternity had been lost and she was her slender shapely self again. However, her dead boyfriend got in the way of him finding her attractive.
She looked distracted, fortunately because he would have hated for her to catch his appraisal of her. It felt wrong. She went through the actions of retrieving her keys from a pocket in her sweatshirt and pushing a stray band of hair behind her ear, but she was clearly hesitating around saying something. He made the same play of retrieving his keys.
“Craig, when you ask how I am, you mean, how am I coping with Will not being around, don’t you?”
Craig was caught by her candidness. “I guess so…”
She smiled around perfect teeth. “That’s nice of you, that’s nice of everyone, but can I ask you a favour?”
He would be more than happy to do anything for her. When Craig had first moved in he couldn’t work out how to use the heating and had decided to call on his neighbours for advice. Harry Crabb, Craig’s other neighbour, had given him an absent stare then closed the door on him – that was the first and last time Craig had called on Harry. Calling on his other neighbour had been completely different. He had received a warm hello from both Virtue and Will. Will had even come in and showed him how to use it. He had told Craig that he was welcome to join him and a few of his mates for a kick around on the common ground on Sundays, Virtue had picked up that he lived alone and offered him round for dinner. Craig had never taken their offers up, but it was a kindness he had needed being so far from home. Now Will was gone. He felt a twinge in his chest like an old wound. “Sure.” He nodded eagerly, hoping to move the conversation back to casual and shallow pleasantries.
“When you ask me if I am okay,” she winced. “Can it be about me, about my day, or how Billy is, or bypass that and just pass on the gossip of the block? I don’t get as much of that as I used to since Will died and Billy was born. Just get sympathy. Spend most of my day in the parks or at home with Billy.”
“Er, yeah…” He was relieved to be let off from having to figure out how to approach the elephant-in-the-room-boyfriend.
“I’m glad you didn’t take offence. I am not blocking out what happened, just trying to move on from it and I don’t think I am going to do that if everyone’s point of reference for me is Will.”
“I understand.”
“That was a bit heavy for a casual hello, wasn’t it?” Her eyes flitted between his face and various locations in the corridor.
“A bit, but if it helped…” His face reddened and he shrugged, mirroring her fleeting eye contact.
“I think it did.”
“If you don’t ask me how work is then we have a deal.”
“That bad?” She winced.
“Yup.” He didn’t make eye contact at all now as he found it uncomfortable on top of their new level of familiarity.
“Sorry, hope it improves for you. And that’s the last you will hear on the subject from me.” She plugged her keys in the door but left them there. “I have seen that you’re around a bit during the day, so if you ever fancy a cuppa and giving me some adult company and conversation then feel free to give me a knock.”
“Ok, I will,” he lied. “Cheers.” He keyed his door open. They said goodbye to each other and he entered his flat and stabbed the play message button of his answer machine.
“Er, ’ello this is mum.” Silence. “This did go beep, didn’t it? Er, how are you? Me and your dad were wondering how you were. How’s your job?” Dull and unfulfilling. “Taken any arty pictures?” Too busy earning. “Have you heard from any of your friends from school or university?” Sporadic emails and vague plans – none of them live in the area, but thanks for the reminder, you nearly have a full list of my shortcomings there, Mum. “Met a girl or anything?” Bingo! Cheers, Mum, yep – don’t think you have missed out any sensitive area. “Your brother tells us you ’ave ’ad a few problems with cash.” My mistake, you had one last nail to hammer home. Craig cursed; he had told Darren in confidence. Bastard! “Now don’t moan at ’im!” she continued with her jovial west-country brogue that he missed so much, yet he still couldn’t bring himself to call home on a regular basis. “He’s just worried for his younger brother, that’s all. Not gloating, so don’t get on your ’igh ’orse. If you can’t afford to keep yerself, you can’t afford an ’igh ’orse.” Thanks for that pearl of wisdom Mum. There was a heavy breath forced by her plumpness then she continued. “’Enry, I mean your dad, said he’s got some cash put aside for you. And there’s always a place at ’ome. Just ’ow you left it – but tidier.” He could imagine the sharp twinkle in her eye and the slant of her smile, and it forced him to grin too. “Love you, darlin’. Call me back. Er... Bye, son.” A pause. “I ’ope that bloody machine works...” she tailed off as she hung up.
Thanks mum. Amused by her tightness with her ‘H’s’ but irritated by the reminder of the things that depressed him.
The machine clicked and clunked again.
“Hiya, Craig, you reprobate! It’s Vicki. I know you’re off taking pictures of little girls, you perve. But, I just thought I should return your call. Sorry, there hasn’t been much work to go round the past week. Don’t lose heart. You can count on me!”
Craig sank into his armchair dejectedly with the heavy reminder of the lack of work. He exhaled a deep breath as the reality of his life crushed down on him.
“Fuck.”
Chapter Two
Cat Thorn struggled out of her bed and ran her hands down her slim body, smoothing the creases out of her tee-shirt nightie. It was three in the afternoon and she had been in bed since she had tried to rise that morning. She steadied herself against what felt like a hangover, her head feeling over-sized as her vision swam and swirled. Her surroundings seemed unanchored, yet she hadn’t been drinking. Her legs were weak at the knees and she was cold inside, as if her body was hollowed out.
She staggered over to the full-length dress mirror, dresses and tops hung from each side of it like curtains at a window. She brushed her feathered auburn hair from her face and leaned close to the glass. Her eyes showed little sign of illness. She looked pale, but then her creamy complexion had never had much colour. The storm had woken her up with its violence, and had left her with a distracting pressure in her head that forced itself between her eyes, creating a disorientating headiness. Her face had all the signs of disturbed sleep. She shuffled to the lounge, gripping the doorframes and then her sideboard for support. She couldn’t understand the feeling in her head and the sluggishness that clung to her limbs.
Part of her experience of last night seemed absent from her mind. The symptoms had come on too quick to be viral. She checked her watch. She was due to cover the end of Ryan’s shift at the clothes shop she worked at. She could make it to the railway arches in Camden market where the shop was, but there was no way she felt fit enough. She would have to call him and tell him that she wouldn’t be able to make it in today.
Her memory of the night before was suddenly unlocked as some-thing came through the air at her. She couldn’t see anything but she knew it was there. Just as she had experienced in the night, as if the storm that had raged outside had torn into her flat. Her terror took hold of her again as it came like a wind blasting through her flat from a great change in air pressure. It raked her hair into the air around her face like wild flames that forced her to clench her eyes closed, yet a brilliant green light washed over her with a brilliance that filtered through her lids. She dare not open her eyes, even as her feet began to tread the air as she was swept from the floor, she didn’t want to see what raced around her body yet pressed against every millimetre of her body as it held her and lifted her.
Cat cupped her hands over her ears as a tortuous screech lanced through the current and into her head with the sound of a hundred infantile screams. Her instinct was to call for her mother – but her mother was dead. The pressure from the air pressed against her body and held her in place while a throbbing pain pounded in her head as the lengthy wail seemed to crack her skull and press deep into her mind. Her cry of pain joined the chorus as she called for the only person who claimed to care for her – “RACHEL!”
Rachel Williams stood at the butcher’s window and stared. The sweet musty smell of meat carried from the shop on the warm air. It never smelt like that at the meat counter in the large metal Sainsbury’s she worked in on Camden Road, it was too clinical there – just like the service; they were discouraged from chatting to customers. Checkout staff were told it affected the scan rate and delayed shoppers through the queues it made. She preferred the independent retailers for her shopping; the service was more personal and friendly. You could have a good banter, you got to know people. You need that in a city the size of London and you relied upon the people you saw in your travels for company.
She found that her gaze was no longer on the succulent sides of meat but her reflection. She realised her tights were sagging and pulled at them as discretely as she could. Sadly it wasn’t only her tights that had subsidence, like the loose skin at the top of her arms that her friends down Mecca also had and called ‘bingo wings’ due to the way it hung and wobbled when you thrust your hand in the air and shouted “House!” if you won, or her belly button which was no longer a hole punched in a taut navel but an eye squinting out of a puffy socket, or her rear that had gotten dimpled and a little closer to the ground. At least her breasts were still full, even if they no longer stared ahead of her. What was it Linda at work had said about her own breasts? More of an averted gaze. She laughed to herself, being a bit of mutton staring in at the fresh meat, some of which boasted about only being twenty-one days old. Twenty-one was forty years ago now, when her hair had been long and a rich chest-nut brown, not dull greying and forced into curls and waves through a tired perm.
When she laughed and smiled her cheeks bunched up and the lines around her eyes and lips smoothed out a little. accentuated her expression. Shame she couldn’t claim they were laughter lines, just age. In one of these rare moments of self-examination like this she marvelled at how easily she could present a smile despite the pain that never seemed much further away than the background. Her eyes were cast in shadow in the reflection, but she had been told they shimmered like grey opals. But that was a long time ago and she wouldn’t hear that voice again.
She may be heading for the twilight years, she decided, but at least she kept her eye on the fashion trends and tried to keep of with whatever her age decided she could get away with. She hadn’t let herself go. The heavy bottle in her shopping bag glanced off her shin in a sharp accusation. Well, not entirely.
Reflected movement in the window attracted her and she saw a small fluffy black and white kitten. It meowed gently at her from its small pink mouth and sniffed her shopping bag gingerly before nuzzling its head against the smooth plastic. Her face bloomed. “Aren’t you a cutie?” her pleasure at the sight faltered when she looked from the reflection and saw that there was no cat sitting at her feet. The stark image of the Royal Free hospital came to her mind. She knew that place too well. She looked back at the window and found the cat’s reflection had also gone. “Hello, there – I wonder where you’re going to come into things...”
Rachel arrived home, rattled her key in the lock and dragged herself and the shopping bags through the door of her flat. She was greeted by Simon, a builder acquaintance who quickly apprised her of the jobs he had managed to do for her while she was out. She thanked him and ensured he had taken the money she had left him as he squeezed past her and out onto the street.
“Got to dash, see you in church Saturday night.” He climbed into his white van marked “M.I. Foreman & Son” and sat next to the old man, Simon’s father; the father that only Rachel could see.
“Oh, by the way;” he called out the window as he started his engine. “I’ve had the front door open to get bits from me van, and what with the floorboards being up I shut your cat in the lounge.”
Rachel frowned. “But, I don’t have a cat!” she called after him as he drove away. Puzzled, she closed the door behind her and sat her shopping down on the battered burgundy chaise longue nestled amongst the clutter of the gloomy hallway. She moved to the lounge and stood before the door thoughtfully. She opened it. No cat.
There was a faint drumming sound on the floor and a familiar black and white kitten trotted hesitantly up to her from behind her armchair and rubbed its cold wet nose on her legs. She knelt down and ran her hands through its soft fur, feeling the rapid beat of its little heart and its reverberating purr. She beamed down at the fragile animal. “Hello there, my little one! Looking for a home, are you?”
Jason Thompson lay on the floor with his control pad, sending his character through to the next level on the X-box, when his mum burst into the room. “Come on, honey. We better get a move on. Claire and the twins are waiting.”
Jason leapt to his feet and shut the game down. They may be girls but he was bored. Since his parents had separated, Jason and his mum regularly went round to Claire’s for tea; they took it in turns to cook for each other some nights. Claire and Jason’s mum were old school friends. He hoped he would get a friend like that one day. Most of the friends he had didn’t know how to be around him since his parents had split, even though it was an uncommon situation for a class mate to be in, they didn’t want a share of the bullying he received either.
Jason let his mum take him by the hand as they went out the front door, a habit she had gone back to since his dad had left them. He knew his hand had replaced his dad’s. All through the storm the night before last he wanted to run into his mum’s room, so he understood the need for comfort, but it created uncomfortably deep feelings in him where he felt sorry for his mum and missed his dad. Mischief welled up within him and he used it as an excuse to shake loose from his mum’s grip. He dashed to the stairs, calling after him, “Race you!” He heard his mum’s feet skuffle into action as she flew after him.
“Not fair! You have a head start on me!” He heard her giggling voice trail after him.
“You’ve got longer legs!” he shouted back, already two flights down.
“Smart arse!”
Jason rang Claire’s doorbell and pushed past her as she answered it, just as his mum came skidding down the corridor in second place. Claire called after Jason, “She just can’t keep up with you, can she? I could give you a run for your money though.” She winked at Jenny. “Being a younger model and all!”
“Six months younger!” Jenny smirked, giving her friend a mock slap. “Cheeky bitch!”
“All counts, darlin’.” Claire shut the door behind them. Jason scrunched his eyes up as she rubbed his short black hair. “That new haircut makes the world of difference! You know, he’s gonna be a right looker when he gets older.” Jason could feel his face get hot.
“Are you saying my son is ugly now?” His mum laughed, nudging Jason to say that it wasn’t so. “Made him have a French crop, so he doesn’t look so much like his dad.” The discomfort returned to Jason upon hearing his dad referred to negatively, it left his innards feeling jumbled and cold.
“Well, at least you know he came from good-looking stock, Grant was a looker. I just hope my girls take after me and not my Brian,” Claire joked. Claire was the only one who didn’t avoid talking about his dad as if he was some dark secret. Claire cocked her head towards the twins’ room. “Don’t you worry; I’ve got dibs on him for one of my girls. I see wedding bells in the future. I’ve seen the way they look at him. They adore him!” She laughed and his face burned more fiercely. He didn’t think of the girls like that. He didn’t think of girl’s like that full stop. Actually he did think of girls, but girls and the idea of “going out with them” was a bit of a mystery to him. He could feel Claire watching him fondly as he headed off down the hall to the twins’ bedroom.
“Yeah, but he will have to choose between them; who will he pick?”
“Oh, my God, that’s a point. They argue about Barbie enough now. Could be Jason next!”
“Hope not, I’ve seen their toys afterwards. They aren’t playing tug of war with my kid’s arms!” Their laughter trailed out of clear earshot as he headed into the girl’s bedroom.
Emily and Amy both looked up from their play and greeted him enthusiastically. He was eleven – four years older than Emily and Amy. He bothered to get on with the girls more than other boys his age seemed to because Amy and Emily accepted him and he valued that, so he happily joined in their games, even if it meant helping dress dolls and playing “girly” games. They also had a different games console to his, which was an added attraction. Jason didn’t have many friends – none that he saw out of school; it was one of the reasons he didn’t go out – as well as being frightened that he might bump into those that picked on him. David Renshaw and Mikey Kent, two boys from school, lived in his block a few floors down from his home. They hadn’t hit him or anything, just taunted him about his dad leaving, and anything else they could think of. He chose to avoid them. It made things easier.
He sat with Amy on the floor and idly joined her in some drawing. He could hear Emily behind him on the other side of the room talking firmly to herself or her doll.
Emily’s voice was suddenly harder and louder and in his ear. “Stop it!”. He yelped as she thumped his back, more through surprise than pain.
“What was that for?”
“You started it. You kept calling my name!” She frowned moodily.
“I didn’t call you, you idiot.”
“I’m not an idiot,” she sulked.
“He’s been helping me,” Amy defended.
Jason laughed as he frowned at Emily and shook his head dismissively. “Idiot!”
“I’m not...” she mumbled. She looked about her room at the piles of teddies and dolls. “Someone called me...”
Chapter Three
Albert Taylor marched purposefully down the stairs. He didn’t like to take the lift when he was in his undertaker’s uniform. It tended to make people think the worst; that someone had died in the building. He also disliked making pleasantries with people he knew or recognised. It wasn’t becoming of a mourner, or indeed a chief undertaker. His very job was to be discrete and create a solemn sense of mourning, something he didn’t feel he could do while talking about the weather with Mrs Jenson, the football results with Bob Chanter or listening to Rose McCarthy’s gossiping, or whatever with whomever else he could encounter in the lift. It just didn’t seem right.
Despite the fact he was on an early call and was unlikely to meet anyone, he still descended the ten floors by foot in his heavy black suit, well tailored to his broad towering build. Despite his sixty-three years and the exertion of descending six flights of stairs, he still walked with a stiff back and a regimental even step. He saved his cheer and his slouching for when he was at home with his wife Iris. Two years more and he could retire and be with her, for against his solemn dark look when working, he was a warm sensitive man with a deep love of his wife and cosy home and distant children, and maintained a jovial outlook on life. He could handle the descent and the climb, but he was glad the storm of a couple of nights ago had ended the heat wave; the stairs had been hot and airless. The crepe wrap on his black top hat trailed softly and ghost-like in his wake.
Slowly Albert’s pace lost its rhythm. At first he ignored it. He was a stubborn man. He only wanted to weaken and take his medication if it was necessary, not just at any twinge. A belt of pain cinched his chest sharply and forced the air from him. It took both his hands to steady himself on the banister. His hat came lose and fell from his head, toppling down the middle of the stairwell with the black crepe trailing and flapping gently behind as it disappeared. He fumbled for his spray. He heard his hat hit the ground with a hollow slap that sounded out in an ever-decreasing echo. He was scared, scared that this attack could be the one that the doctor had warned him about. He didn’t want to die alone. He flipped the lid of the spray. He wasn’t going to go without his Iris being there to be held. He gave two measured sprays under his tongue and waited. He thought of her warm plump body in his arms. Slowly the pain abated and his chest muscles loosened. He rested on the step for ten minutes before attempting to retrieve his hat.
He wouldn’t let his condition beat him.
Albert reached the bottom but had decided to abandon the regimented step and strolled casually down, cursing as he realised his hat had missed the landing of the lobby on the ground level and gone straight down into the basement level. He descended the last flight of steps from the lobby area to the locked basement door and crouched down steadily, scooping his hat up. He brushed the dust from it and turned for the stairs, the hat had landed flat on its top but didn’t seem to be damaged.
He was startled by the sudden clunk-click noise of a chunky lock being turned.
From the corner of his eye Albert saw the heavy metal door to the basement slowly opening. He gulped his discomfort down, but the hairs on the nape of his neck tingled and stood despite his attempted resolve. He turned to the large half-open metal door. The caretaker? he reasoned, still unsure. “Alec? Is that you?” He moved towards the door, rationalising the situation with every step. Who – what else could it be! He laughed at himself as he went to open the door further.
The door ripped from his grip and slammed against the wall. A blaze of green light burned from within the doorframe. Albert’s brief scream reached the fifth floor landing as his body was yanked into the basement and the door crashed shut behind him with a deafening echo that rolled like thunder.
Chapter Four
Craig gathered his camera and mobile phone before glancing at his reflection in the hallway mirror and lazily tended his ruffled hair, leaving it between messy and styled. Freshly shaven and with an air of CK In2U aftershave around him he answered the door to Vicki.
“Hiya, babe,” Vicki greeted him cheerily. She looked him up and down, lingering on his shirt and tie. “Hope you didn’t make that effort for me, sexy boy.” She winked.
Didn’t she find him attractive at all? Craig had a realistic view of his looks. He knew he wasn’t a stunner, but he knew what to wear and brushed up reasonably well. He hadn’t had that much luck with the girls to be cocky with them, but he had a good sense of humour and if he felt relaxed he could really get a good rapport going. With Vicki their whole time working together had been a rollercoaster of playfulness, and at times it was like there really could be potential, yet as soon as he thought seriously about his prospects she suddenly seemed out of reach. He straightened his tie. “You’re a bit up yourself! I’m trying to look presentable for the interview. Professional, understand?” he explained, making a show of eying her casual clothes.
He found himself rewarded with a smile that broke across her fresh smooth face. “Oooh, excuse me, ‘Mr Professional’. I just decided to go for the tight jeans and slack jumper.” She did a twirl to model her vintage jeans and faded rainbow-striped jumper. “It’s my respectful look, my sympathetic look, my persistent look.” She put a pen to her lower lip and beetled her brow as she acted out a mime of intense thought. “And my suspicious-determined-reporter look: it suits all occasions.” She stopped and beamed again, flicking a stray clump of crimped blonde from her eye.
He smiled appreciatively. She neglected to mention the sexy-arse-in-those-jeans look. “Yeah, well. Just leave the persistent and suspicious-determined-reporter look here, okay?”
She held her hands up in mock surrender. “Tact is my middle name.”
Craig closed his door. “That’s funny, I thought it was ‘shit stirrer’.”
“Ha-ha,” she returned flatly. She clutched her chest theatrically. “You have wounded this poor journalist.”
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t realise you had feelings under that hard exterior.” He laughed.
“That’s it. Mock me. Don’t know why I bother calling you...”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t have much choice. It would be well harsh using some other photographer for a job two floors away from me,” he joked as they headed to the lift.
“As if I would. You’re, my only photo boy: you’re my bitch.”
Craig was drawn into her playfulness. It was these times that bemused him. “Yeah, just don’t you forget it!”
The doors squealed shut behind them and the lift jerked into life shuddering up to the next floor. Craig watched Vicki stand close to the doors, aware of her claustrophobia. As the lift slowed to a stop Vicki bobbed on her toes impatiently and jumped into the safety of the corridor before the doors had fully parted.
She quickly found her confidence again and nodded down to his side. “Is that semen you got in your hand?” She smirked.
He looked down to the mobile phone she referred to and laughed. “Siemens,” he corrected. “Yes it is. I told you I was getting this phone.”
“And I told you I was going to wind you up about it, so we are even. A word that is an ‘i’ away from being a reproductive fluid is a dodgy product name.”
“Yeah? All this coming from the girl whose initials are VD.”
Vicki looked genuinely shocked. “Bitch!”
They reached the door to the Chambers’ flat and Craig quickly pocketed his phone.
She prodded the doorbell. “You’ll get brain cancer putting it down there.”
Craig cocked his head near to Vicki’s ear while they both stood facing the door, waiting for it to be answered. “Ha-ha. Don’t – my balls are like plums as it is. Haven’t had it for ages.” Years actually. He wasn’t into one night stands. He blushed at his own laddish posturing, he wasn’t like that but he hoped she didn’t know just how unlucky he had been.
“Ooh, big boy!” She smirked.
“Enough for a handful.” He winked playfully, riding the yearning tension within him. He arched an eyebrow tauntingly. “Want to test my theory?”
“If that’s a pass, it’s original.” She jumped back in before he could answer. “Anyway. I’m every man’s dream.” She looked to him. “Small hands.” She held them up and waved them in his frowning face. “Makes everything I hold look bigger.”
Before Craig could pursue their verbal foreplay the door was opened by a woman who appeared frail for her probable thirty-odd years. Her bobbed brown hair was untidy as if she had been asleep moments before their arrival. Her pink cardigan sagged from her frame, like flesh that had been left behind from a severe loss of weight, her white tee-shirt appeared creased and lived in, tucked into her jeans to neaten her appearance. Her eyes were young, but they stared out from lids puffy from crying and a face gaunt and exhausted, a face that was a mask that added years to her. It was hard to believe she was the same woman he had photographed at the press conference.
“Mrs Chambers.” Vicki greeted. “Hello, again. It’s Vicki Day, we have been talking on the phone. This is my photographer, Craig Digby. You called us the other day?” Vicki’s voice was pleasant but professional.
“Oh,” the woman exclaimed as if it had slipped from her memory. “Please, come in. I keep losing track of the days.” She let Craig and Vicki pass her and then gave a cursory look of suspicion into the corridor before shutting the door and joining them in the hall. She asked them to call her Claire.
Craig looked about the hallway; it opened into the kitchen on the left with the lounge ahead of them. To the right the hall travelled down further to the second bedroom and was capped with a bathroom door. The master bedroom was off the lounge. It was tidy but the curtains were still drawn on the large windows of the lounge leaving the room in a gloomy yellowish haze and giving the flat a cramped stifled atmosphere. It took him back to the oppressive days of the heat wave several weeks earlier.
Claire pulled her cardigan around her like a comfort blanket and weakly offered them a cup of tea as if it was a politeness that would be a struggle. They accepted and she shuffled off into the open kitchen like a frail old lady and started the tea-making ritual.
Craig called out to her. “I was at the press conference the other week with all the other photographers and journalists. But now I am here and it’s just us I had better tell you that I live in this building, a couple of floors down, I hope you feel comfortable about that,” he offered courteously and professionally.
“I thought I recognised the face. I guess I don’t mind; everyone knows what’s been going on anyway,” she called back meekly from round the corner in the kitchen.
When tea was made the three of them settled down into an atmosphere of pregnant expectation, Claire in an armchair and Vicki and Craig on the three-seater sofa. Vicki quickly cut off any chance of the awkward quiet becoming a stifling silence. “So, Claire. You called us the other day. It’s been...” Vicki looked at notes on her pad, checking the facts, helping her to sterilise her next question. “Two weeks since little Emily went missing?”
Claire nodded. “Yes, I wanted to make another appeal for any information. Didn’t want people to forget.”
The national press had lost interest. They were waiting for a conclusion. The Camden Gazette, through Vicki, was Claire’s only voice. Vicki had been just another reporter at the conference, didn’t get any question time as she was only with a local rag, but she would not let go of a story that had the possibility of being national again. She had managed to get Claire’s number of a source she had in the local police, and had called vowing to keep her story in the papers. “Of course, we have the facts of the story. I just need an update, a few lines, a quote or two to go with it: How do you feel now that two weeks has passed? And with the police making no progress?”
Craig watched uncomfortably as Claire sighed under the weight of Vicki’s journalistic angle that reinforced the pain and hopelessness of the situation. “It’s terrible. I mean there’s just nothing to go on.” She stared intently at Vicki as if measuring her for a moment. “It just happened! She was asleep in her bed and then she was gone.”
“Do you feel the police haven’t done enough?” Vicki pushed.
“No, no.” She leapt in with her emphatic answer, despite her general malaise. “There’s not much to go on. She disappeared, no one has come forward with seeing anything, and she had no reason to run away.” Her voice fractured into faltering tones forcing her to clear her throat of thick emotion. “It just feels so useless.”
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