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Time speeds up. Or stands still. Or spins out of control. I’m frozen in the doorway with the corpse at my feet. Sheena’s gone. So is Roger. What happened here? And why am I the witness?
A sob escapes and hovers in the air. A stray emotion for a man I didn’t love, a man who exploited me and betrayed my trust. Roger can’t hurt me any more but did he have to die?
I take in the terrible tableau. Did he hit his head on the bath? My fingers go to the bump on my own head. Too many collisions for one night. But I’m alive while he’s been despatched by something shocking.
Sheena said it was magic. Surreal... Alister’s word. And Salvador Dali’s. And now... Roger’s dead.
It’s dark in here. A darkroom. A place where dark things happen. Something in my chest splits open and a lifetime of my own darkness seeps out into the puddle at my feet.
The floor is covered in shards. Red glass. Something about red. The face of the clock is still. Roger’s face stares up at me but no-one’s home. It’s the same thought I had when I arrived tonight. How did I know?
It’s time to get the boys, time to call the police. Then I notice a string pegged with prints lying across Roger’s body. He was pegging them out to dry when he fell off the ladder, fell against the string, brought his house of cards crashing down. There must have been noise – a clatter, a scream, a crash, a thud – but now there’s only silence.
The photos are silent too. But their images trumpet a story. Me running between the graves. Me crouching behind a headstone. Me pointing a camera towards the cliff. Me running towards the edge, then crawling on my belly. Me suspended above the grasping waves. While the woman was trying to kill me, the cool opportunist in Roger Nightingale walked to his tripod and documented it all.
Did he snap her image? Several prints have fallen at an angle away from the door and I can’t see them. I slide down the doorjamb, trying not to gag. Now I’m close enough to kiss him, close enough to feel the absence of breath on my sweating cheek. It’s all I can do to lean over the leering spectre while my eyes adjust to the dark.
There I am, squatting behind my camera, focused on the cliff.
The empty cliff.
An emptiness with attitude.
The woman isn’t there.
In a state of disbelief, I check the other prints. The sequence is here, but she isn’t. I don’t understand. There was plenty of time for Roger to snap her image with his long lens. Several images.
As I stare past his unseeing eyes my mind starts joining dots. She isn’t in the photos, but she was here a few days ago, on Roger’s path. Was she here earlier tonight?
Roger stole images of me, and other women, and that’s what we did to the woman. Took her photo without her permission. Now she’s missing from Roger’s print. What if she appears at any time of her choosing but she won’t be photographed, won’t be captured? She won’t be known?
The message said I was going to die, but instead it’s Roger. As I pull away from his appalling grin he seems to be mocking me. It’s his final gesture. As if he knows...I’m next.
I’ve got to get out of here. Away from mad conjecture and a dead man’s stare. My own photos must be here somewhere, in Roger’s secret stash. When the police arrive, they’ll be lost to me forever. But when I look back at Roger’s body I lose my nerve. The woman has disappeared again. Let her stay that way.
***
When I stagger onto the landing the boys are racing up the stairs.
Derek sees my face. “What’s he done this time? I’ll kill him.”
“The universe...beat you to it,” I whisper.
They take turns staying with me while the other checks the scene inside. Nigel calls the police and I empty my stomach into the flowerpot. Roger’s dead – the cold fact hits me – despatched so neatly. By electrocution.
“He was on the ladder,” Derek murmurs as we wait downstairs, “pegging photos on the string.”
“And he fell against the safety light,” Nigel says, “and got an electric shock.”
They think it was an accident. So will the police. But I’m remembering a charred stick-figure against the sun and words seeping into my brain: Roger’s dead.
Forensics arrive. Then a detective asking questions. Questions about Roger. Questions about Sheena. Questions about the file-box of girly pics that’s still on the landing. And all the time, wraiths in Aloha shirts depart the downstairs flat. Nothing like a police presence to empty a brothel.
Then we’re driving home, reaching Nigel’s doorstep just before my midnight curfew. I should have been with Alister, wining and dining the night away with a sexy new man in my sexy new dress. But something surreal threw me against the wall.
And on the other side of town, something surreal snuffed out Roger.
I’m so weary I can barely perch on the toilet on my way to my room. When my head hits the pillow I’m already asleep.
The woman is standing on a ladder perched on the edge of the cliff. She’s wearing Sheena’s bathrobe and holding her arms towards the sky. It’s an ancient rite. As her fingertips connect heaven and earth a tempest is raging. Lightning bolts slice off her hair and the wind blows what’s left of it into spikes. Waves leap up the pali, licking the fallen locks from her feet. Thunder is echoing behind the clouds and flashes of silver light strobe the scene.
I’m hiding behind a headstone, pointing my camera towards the cliff, wanting to capture this surreal spectacle and become famous. But a voice warns me not to press the shutter. If I do I’m dead.
The woman morphs into Roger. He looks at me before tumbling off the ladder and catching fire. His skin lights up from the inside. He’s a Halloween pumpkin, a hollow shell.
I’m screaming a silent scream: “Where’s the woman?”
But the charred shell that used to be Roger has crumbled into dust.