What I Did I Should Never Have Done
Wes let Charlie gaze deep into his forgettable face before she left for work. She had a photo shoot booked for some upmarket engagement and a meeting with some gallery owner, and she always needed to stare into the abyss before a stressful day.
Her eyes had been brighter, once. He remembered them, a vivid forest-green, brimming with life and adventure. They were muted now, vacant. Her creativity hadn’t suffered but it had gotten darker. A lot darker. Her aesthetic had shifted from finding those little details in the world that made it brighter and more playful, to minimalist voids and absences, a focus on negative space.
Her deep red curls, dyed back to their vibrant natural colour, now looked like they were trying too hard. Underneath, the iron-grey was beautiful, he wanted to tell her. She didn’t need to hide it. He liked the way it framed her sweet, oval face in silvery tones. He knew her body now, could read its language like braille, and it was fatigued.
She was working too hard.
He kissed her, hard and long and deep and full of regret. She kissed him back, mouth as greedy as her eyes. He broke the kiss after counting slowly to five in his head and turned deliberately away to stare at the dead TV.
She blinked then and only then, and in her reflection in the plasma screen he saw the pain of loss slashing through the dusty vacancy. Her eyes lit up again, sparked into life by furious disappointment as his image was erased from her mind.
In those moments, she looked like the old Charlie.
“I love you,” he said, half-turning back to her and cupping her chin. “Have a good day today.”
Everything faded. Her shoulders slumped.
“You too, baby.” Even her voice was dulled.
It wasn’t fair that he’d got himself weaned off most of his vices and she was stuck with hers for as long as he was alive. He didn’t feel he could celebrate his daily sobriety with her or Hugo, like that would be throwing it back in their faces. It had rankled at first, but now it was just another thing he didn’t talk about.
Charlie twisted her fingers together. “Will you be home tonight?”
“I don’t know.” Wes shook his head. “If I’m not I’ll call you, and you can see me that way.”
“It’s not as good, and you’ve been away a lot.” She shivered. “Kiss me again.”
Wes nearly said no, but he couldn’t. He kissed her, and almost lost himself in the life-or-death urgency of her lips on his. He let her choose when to break it this time and held her in silence for a moment.
“I’ve got to go,” she murmured.
Wes released her. “Yeah, okay. I love you.”
“Do you?”
The question slapped him out of nowhere.
Charlie was serious.
He didn’t know how to answer her, so he said what she needed to hear. “Of course I do.”
She smiled like she wasn’t sure if she believed him.
Wes tried to lighten the mood. “I’ll send you a couple of selfies later.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Charlie got to the door and let herself out. “Okay, take care, and I’ll see you later.”
“Love you.”
She didn’t say it back, and left Wes in the flat alone.
At least, he felt alone.
Hugo was doing something for his course which Wes was funding, so that meant the soft sod was putting in all the hours he could to prove he wasn’t as useless as his old man said he was.
Katy was— Wes hesitated. He knocked her bedroom door and opened it. Katy was cross-legged on her bed with her noise-cancelling headphones on, sketching something in a leather-bound journal.
Wes waved at her, and she hung the headphones around her neck.
“Yeah?”
“Charlie’s gone,” Wes said. “Are you okay? I might be out later. There’s food in the fridge for lunch, and the chef’s coming in to do dinner.”
“You know that never stops sounding weird,” Katy said, shaking her head. “A chef.”
Wes ignored her. “We should probably talk about all this. Me, you. The stuff I’m seeing, all the weird shit…”
Katy sat up as if she was going to say something but he felt his phone buzz.
“Hold that thought.”
He wasn’t actively dating right now, and the circle of people who wanted to talk to him was depressingly small now he was limiting his party life. He wondered if he should point this out to Katy, but she’d only accuse him of playing the lonely card for pity points, or something.
Katy frowned and slowly put her headphones back on. “Okay.”
Teenagers.
It was only Cousin Jem asking if he fancied another drink, but Katy was no longer listening to him.
“I saw the end of the world,” he said loudly, watching her body language as she lounged on her bed, phone in hand, scrolling. “It was pretty fucking scary, and I think we have two versions of it to head off at the pass. Piece of piss for us, though, right? What with you being a god.”
She gave no indication that she’d heard him.
“Great. Well. Good talk. Really reassuring.” He shut the door harder than he meant to.
God, she gave him a headache.
A dull pounding thudded against his temples, spreading tightly over his head. His vision spotted.
Not again? What now?
He made it to the living room and staggered to the sofa, which broke his fall.
The world melted around him.
“Hugo! Katy?” He didn’t know if he’d shouted their names aloud or just in his head.
The apartment disappeared and he was in a warehouse, dingily lit with flashlights and a weak generator, surrounded by family in ceremonial robes like the ones they wore to rituals. The scene strobed in three parts, each one flickering uncertainly as Wes tried to pick out details belonging to one or other of the overlays.
There was a shrine in the centre of a candle circle, the candles melted into a wall of globulous wax, wicks protruding at uneven intervals, sinking into pools or rising in volcanic columns. Another shrine on top of this was less defined, the candles separate rather than merged, each one in an individual holder and hardly burned down at all. The shrine itself was cobbled together, a patchwork of Granny Wend’s, Olive Shaw’s, and Eileen Foreman’s.
Still a third tried to assert itself, blinking at Wes from the recesses of a memory he had yet to make, a possibility still forming - in this version, Ricky was in the circle of candles and tied to a chair. The shrine had been obliterated and pieced back together badly. There were even fewer robed figures, and there was a buzz of sickness in the air.
Wes could see that this time, the ropes binding Ricky were greased with something, and he was awake, sober, and furious, straining at his bonds, but he couldn’t Change.
“Told you I’d deliver him,” said a voice in the shadows, a voice that slithered in and out of Wes’s ears leaving only the words behind. “Now open it, and give me what I want.”
No, no that’s not me, that’s not my voice…
“To open the portal, we sacrifice one of our own,” someone intoned, over the top of him. Wes had the horrible feeling it was Jem Foreman.
An overlaid, flickering cousin whom Wes didn’t recognise spoke up from the shadows. “The True Face will reign supreme, filling us all with freedom.”
Wes struggled to find the threads of the visions and focus on one at a time, the way he’d done with the three visions in Fairwood’s kitchen. He tried to focus on the shrines, and rewinding the images and playing them forward until they separated clearly.
One shrine peeled away and presented itself – the cobbled-together version, untidy but intact, put together in a hurry.
Ricky wasn’t bound. They just tossed him on the floor like an overloaded binbag, a bone crunching as he hit the ground. He rolled onto his back, and Wes saw it had been his nose.
Wes’s heart sank, its leaden weight pushing another wave of nausea up his throat.
Get up, Richard, get it together for fuck’s sake.
But Ricky was out of it. He didn’t even register that his nose was broken.
“Told you I’d deliver him,” said a voice in the shadows, a voice that slithered in and out of Wes’s ears leaving only the words behind. “Now open it, and give me what I want.”
“Will it work if he’s wasted?” somebody asked.
“It’ll work,” Jem said, and raised an axe above his head.
Wes didn’t want to watch, but he couldn’t look away.
The axe fell on Ricky’s exposed neck, and a spray of blood caused the scene to ripple and change.
“Told you I’d deliver him,” said a voice in the shadows, a voice that couldn’t be remembered. “Now open it, and give me what I want.”
In this version, Ricky was already in the circle of candles and tied to a chair. The shrine was broken and badly repaired.
This was the version in which the ropes binding Ricky were greased with something, and he was sober and angry.
The ointment, fucking hell… But I’ve got that, so how…
A cousin Wes didn’t recognise spoke up from the shadows. “The True Face will reign supreme, filling us all with freedom.”
Ricky struggled with his chains but there was no chance of escape. He snorted, giving up, and closed his eyes. “Fuck you.”
The scene flickered and jumped, something cold and wet pressing against Wes’s forehead. In the present, Hugo was trying to bring him around, but Wes wanted to see how this ended. He really hoped it didn’t end the way the other version had.
Someone else was speaking. “If he rejects the Ascension and won’t open it for us, I say we sacrifice him and open it ourselves. Last chance, Soothsayer. What d’you say?”
“So let it be,” Ricky said, not even looking at him.
The robed figure’s glory whipped out of its robes and wrapped around Ricky’s neck. It squeezed and wrenched.
Ricky’s neck was crooked at an unnatural angle, and his whole body slumped.
Candlelight glinted on the blade of a saw, held under Ricky’s nose. No breath misted the surface. The blade was placed on the back of Ricky’s neck.
No! Not twice! Wes didn’t wait to see the blood: he swiped at the scene, and it changed.
“To open the portal, we sacrifice one of our own,” someone intoned. Wes had the horrible feeling it was Jem Foreman.
A few others came forward and threw an unfortunate man over the candle wax, so he skidded over the concrete and came to rest sprawled before the shrine.
“Told you I’d deliver him,” said a voice that Wes couldn’t remember. “Now open it, and give me what I want.”
The unfortunate sacrifice wasn’t a big guy, and he looked smaller in these surroundings. Wes’s breath caught. He was dressed in a grey hoodie and tracksuit trousers, his head was shaven, and as he rolled onto his front, Wes saw the scar tissue puckering the back of his head.
He couldn’t breathe.
Not again, not again, this one has to end differently, this ends differently, doesn’t it?
Someone – Jem? Wes couldn’t see – jammed a flat-edged paint scraper between the lips of that second mouth, and levered it open.
Why the fuck is he letting them do that? Wes wondered, and then realised Ricky couldn’t move. He was bound hand and foot, and looked unconscious. Something glistened, greasy and thick, on his bonds.
The man stuck his hand down inside Ricky Porter, pulled a handful of tendrils out with mucus dripping along his arm, and sliced through them all.
“Behold the glory!” he said, throwing the tendrils on the shrine. He heaved Ricky to his knees by the back of his hoodie, Ricky’s head lolling, and cut Ricky’s throat.
The portal to Grandad’s world began to open.
Wes swiped at the scene, desperate to end it. The scene crumbled around him, but wouldn’t change to something else, refusing to reveal any other option.
“Shit, no!” Wes came around on the sofa, Hugo holding him still as he thrashed at the air, trying to hold on to the trails of the future before they evaporated. “No, it doesn’t end like that, it can’t…”
Katy was applying a cold, wet towel to his forehead.
He wriggled free of Hugo’s firm, big hands and pushed it off, sitting up.
“He dies in all of them, he can’t die in all of them…”
“Who dies?” Katy crouched by the sofa arm, the towel dripping onto the rug.
Wes forced himself to breathe properly. He was panting, light-headed. “Ricky.”
Hugo released him, and looked at Katy. “Do— Is this something you guys should discuss in private?”
Hugo had a horror of ‘eavesdropping’ on family business, which was usually endearing, but right now Wes needed him to stay.
“No,” Wes said shortly, as Katy said, “Yes.”
Wes tensed his jaw.
There was an awkward pause.
“I’ll just be in the study,” Hugo said, giving Wes a kiss on the cheek. “You sure you’re okay?”
Wes flashed a glare at his sister. “You want to answer this one for me as well?”
“He’s fine,” Katy shot over him. “Thanks.”
Hugo smiled at her, not at him. Wes’s chest constricted in a sudden, irrationally jealous spasm.
Why is he even with me, anyway? Because I make him feel special? Because I’m finally paying the bills?
He rubbed his face and struggled into a more comfortable position on the sofa, leaving space for Katy beside him.
She slid up onto the seat, putting a cushion between them.
“I’ll be just in there,” Hugo said, with a last worried look at Wes, and slouched off to give them some space.
Wes glowered at his sister. “Sorry,” he said, not meaning it.
She chewed her cheek and shrugged. “What was that about?”
“Ricky dies. Three times. I saw… three different ways he dies.” Wes shook his head, trying to articulate the absolute shitshow he’d been forced to witness. “Okay, look. There’s a – how can I put this? Some members of the family have started a cult. Worshipping you. They think you’re a Death God, and they think sacrificing each other, or themselves, is the way to go, to get the cull done with, and to pave the way for… well, for Grandad.”
Katy stared at him. “You what?”
“Yeah.” Wes shifted, leaving out the part where he might have started it by accident. “Don’t feel bad about it, you can’t control what other people do, right? Look, it’s just a – fucked up misunderstanding, or something, okay? But they think that the cull, that you, that all this, is leading up to the end of days where Grandad comes through the portal and lays waste to the world, and they – we, whoever’s left – become gods. And reign with him.”
“Become gods,” Katy repeated flatly, blinking. “And reign with him, over… what? Over a wasteland? Yeah, hard pass.”
Wes nodded fervently, exhaling. “With you on that one. Um. So that little… seizure I just had, that was me, um, seeing three versions of the future…”
“Oh, that’s the side effect from the pills you took?” Katy frowned. “Is that still happening?”
“Clearly.” Wes tugged a cushion out from behind him and channelled his frustration into it, squeezing hard. “Look. Can we – can we both agree that nobody touches our cousin, right, not you, not me, nobody. Because I don’t… I don’t like any of the versions I just saw, and I’m really hoping those aren’t the only options we’ve got.”
Katy was quiet for a moment. “Who kills him?” she asked eventually, a note of fear in her voice.
“The cult.” Wes skipped the part where that was his fault, too. It wasn’t like he was lying.
“My cult?”
Wes didn’t know how to answer this. The last one had mentioned ‘the True Face’, and he doubted that was anything to do with Katy.
“The cult. A cult. Somebody’s cult, does it matter? Loads of robed figures in a warehouse, they’re using some sort of shrine with dribbly candles all over the place, and they want to sacrifice Ricky to open the portal for them. Like, in one they ask him to open it, and he says no, and they kill him anyway. There’s no version I saw where he lives.” Wes chewed the side of his finger, nipping away skin until it stung sharply and he tasted blood. “Oh, and I had another one of those in Carrie’s kitchen. Where I saw the end of the world.”
Katy balked. “Are you fucking serious?”
Wes sucked his injured digit and nodded, tired of words.
“Grandad?”
He nodded again.
Katy was white, face drained and tense. “Did – did you see anything else?”
“There’s a version where it doesn’t happen,” he mumbled around his finger. “The end of the world, I mean.”
Katy slapped his hand out of his mouth. He rolled his eyes and dug his nails into the cushion.
“But only if Ricky dies?” she asked, but Wes wasn’t sure about causality in cases like this. “Or, or do we have to stop him dying? Or what?”
He shook his head. “Stop him dying, I think? I hope? I don’t – I mean, he’s kind of growing on me. And we can’t ask him, because he can’t see his own future, can he? So if he’s intimately bound up in stopping whatever happens, he can’t tell us shit.”
“Balls.” Katy flopped back against the sofa, chewing her lip. “No, but hold on, what if we went back to the Outside again, and he could maybe see—”
“He won’t go for it if there’s a risk of Grandad using the portal to come through, but we can ask him.”
She was quiet, frowning as she thought it over.
“Okay. What if we – what if I – summon everyone, all the family, and we do like a big announcement and just tell them to stop. That their Death God says to stop. And Grandad’s not coming through. They’d listen to me, right? Then we don’t have a problem.”
“Mm.” Wes shrugged. “Not a bad idea, I’m sure if you tell a bunch of murderous, committed fanatics their god says they’re all wrong, they’ll definitely have a think about it.”
“But I’m – I’m their god, so they’ll definitely listen to me. Right?”
Wes wondered what the hell they taught kids in school under the guise of Religious Studies, but she was now flushed with adamant certainty, and that was almost cute.
He sighed. “At least you’re unkillable, I guess.”
Katy reddened more deeply, and Wes relented.
“No, you’re right. Big family announcement. That ought to do it.”
“If they won’t,” Katy said with a frosty calm, “I’ll eat them.”
Wes scratched his chin, belly full of bees. “Yeah. Yeah, that’ll do it.”
“We can use the nightclub,” Katy said.
“My nightclub?” The bees turned into hornets, and multiplied. “You – you’re not eating people in my nightclub. I just had it painted, no way am I cleaning blood off the fucking ceiling.”
“We’ll use the nightclub,” Katy repeated, and Wes knew there was no winning this one. “It’s big enough, London’s mostly easy to get everyone to, and they’ll send representatives for family groups anyway so it’s not like everyone needs to show up.”
“Fine. But— Oh, shit.” Wes’s phone buzzed again. “Who the fuck is this?”
It was Jem. Wes never wanted to hear Jem’s voice again, not now he’d seen what Jem might become. It wasn’t fair to loathe somebody for something they hadn’t done, like an action committed in a dream, but Wes nearly threw his phone across the room.
“Jeremy Foreman. He’s one of them.”
“Hold on.” Katy grabbed his arm before he could stow the phone back in his pocket. “Why don’t you answer him, and see if you can find out what the plan is?”
The hornets swarmed into Wes’s chest, fighting it out in his lungs. “Because…”
Just tell her.
He could barely breathe.
“Because…”
He snatched at air, gulping for it, and there was none. He couldn’t focus. Katy slid off the sofa and kneeled in front of him, her hands over both of his.
“Wes, look at me. I think you’re having a panic attack. Look at me.”
He blinked, barely able to see her.
“We’re going to breathe together, okay? In and out, slowly, I’ll count to two and see if you can copy me, okay? It’s fine, you’re fine. Just breathe in. One… two…”
Wes closed his eyes, fighting it.
He managed a few calmer breaths with her holding his hands, but his skin crawled under the pressure, and he shook her off when he could cope on his own.
“I don’t want to see him. I don’t want him to see me. I think – I think some of this might be my fault. In some of the futures I saw. Because people get addicted… to me. And it makes them do things. I don’t make them do things. The need to see me, that’s—” He stopped.
Katy hadn’t moved away. “Okay. So how do we avoid that?”
Wes shook his head, folding himself up on the sofa, huddling on it like a child. “I don’t know. I don’t want to be the reason the world ends, or why Ricky—” He clenched his jaw, biting off the end of that thought before it left his mouth.
Katy rubbed his back, a grounding pressure he simultaneously needed and didn’t want. “It’s okay. Keep breathing.”
Why? If I stopped, wouldn’t that solve everything?
Wes swallowed a lump of self-pity, and forced his breaths into a regular pattern.
“What if I could get rid of it?” That was less drastic than the other option. “My – my glory. What if I could… if there was a way? Wouldn’t that work? All those possibilities… just… couldn’t happen.”
Katy gave a soft hiss. “Can you even do that?”
Wes shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. I know Charlie’s not… not ready to get well, but she might not have a choice. If I get rid of it, that would solve everything except Grandad.”
His sister squirmed.
Wes narrowed his eyes. “What?”
She knotted her fingers together, and suddenly burst out: “All right, but what if I told you I had this weird thing happen to me in the park the other day and I saw this old man and he told me it was my destiny to kill Grandad?”
Wes’s eyebrows crawled up his forehead. “You what?”
“Yeah, like an old guy who said, and I know this is really bonkers but I swear to Grandad—”
“Please tell me he wasn’t Welsh.”
Katy exhaled heavily. “Yeah. And… kind of not real.”
“Tina bloody Harris, I swear to—” Wes stopped. “Right. Okay. Okay. Your destiny is to kill Grandad…”
“And Ricky’s I think. And yours? It wasn’t super clear, but—”
“No, it’s never super clear,” Wes spat, vibrating. “For the love of… No. Fine. Fine. Right. I need to figure out how to get rid of my glory or turn it off or something, and you have to kill Grandad. Perfect. What the fuck are we going to do?”
“Tell Ricky,” Katy said immediately. “He needs to know all this, right?”
Wes waved this away, unsure he wanted to have that conversation. “Yes. Let me tell him, though. About, about the death part. You know what he’s like, he won’t even entertain the idea there might be other options, he’ll just get all fatalistic about it, and that’s not happening. He’s not going to die like that. I won’t…” He heard himself in the vision, handing Ricky over, cold and cruel. “Gods, what if my glory makes me do that? Corrupts me? This whole thing I can do… Is that why I’m like this?”
“No, you’ve always been a bit of an arsehole,” Katy said, as if she thought this was reassuring.
Wes scowled. “I meant, what do we do with all this right now? Jem’s messaging me about meeting up, what do we – what do I say?”
“Say yes,” Katy said, hopping up beside him to peer at the screen. “Say yes, and see if you can get him to tell you who else is involved, and where the next sacrifice will be. And when! When it is, and I can stop it.”
“You can’t feel them? As the Beast?” Wes wasn’t sure about agreeing to meet Jem alone again or getting any deeper with the cult than he was already.
Katy shook her head.
“The creepy Welsh guy, Myr—”
“Don’t say his name,” Wes interrupted, remembering Ricky’s words.
Old words make old things come out.
Katy blinked. “Oh, okay. Him, then, he told me it wouldn’t be easy to see people who just thought they were doing the right thing. Like, I know how people feel, but I don’t know why they feel that way. It’s easy to feel when they enjoy being cruel, when they love killing and hurting – you know, stuff like that. But otherwise, it all gets a bit complicated. That’s why my List was originally around my own fear, I think. That’s much easier than going off how other people feel.”
“Right.” Wes felt like he’d taken a wrecking ball to his frontal lobe. He stared at his phone like he’d never seen a text before in his life. “So what am I saying to Jem?”
“Yes, you’d like to meet up. You… you thought more about what he said, whatever it was he said to you, and you’re…” Katy scrunched her nose, frowning. “You’re… more open to hearing what he’s got to say. No, hold on, say… say you spoke to me, and I said I wanted you to witness my sacrifices.” She squinted at him. “Is that a bit much?”
“I guess we’ll see.” Wes messaged back, paraphrasing, and waited. “Shit. What if he asks why you want me to watch? Am I overthinking this?” He recalled his conversation with Jem in the pub, and followed up with,
:She accused me of being a sceptic.:
“No, maybe that’s too much. Bollocks.”
He chewed his nails down, ruining his manicure, until Katy knocked his hand away again.
Jem replied eventually, without any indication of suspicion.
:Meet me at Piddingdean parish church, St Michael and All the Angels, next Sat 14:00. Memorial Service. You’re welcome, and expected.:
“Okay.” Wes breathed out. “Next Saturday, twenty… twenty-seventh? Two p.m., St Mike’s in Piddingdean.” He nodded. “Right. I can go and talk to Ricky then too, face to face.”
“Great.” Katy bit her lower lip. “I’ll come too, but, like, you know. They won’t know I’m there. And we can see what’s going on, and what they’ll respond to best.”
Wes had some serious doubts about this being resolved by negotiation or common sense, but he nodded.
“Right. I’ll ring Carrie and give her a heads’ up we’re popping over Saturday, then.” He gave her a brilliant, forced smile that didn’t reach his eyes, but she wouldn’t remember that.
If I lose my glory, Charlie won’t be addicted to me anymore, and if she’s not, she’ll leave me. And if I don’t, everything ends. Badly. Everything ends badly.
It shouldn’t be a difficult choice to make, but Wes found himself not knowing which he preferred; to let her go and face the emptiness where she had been, or let the world burn and his last moments be with her and Hugo.
He didn’t say a word of this to Katy, and when Charlie came home, they all ended up going out to the cinema together, Katy’s film choice, where they spent two hours in the dark not talking and pretending they were a real family.
Wes ate popcorn and force-laughed at all the jokes, Hugo’s hand on his thigh and Charlie’s resting on his arm, knowing that for even this mundane moment he would let a thousand worlds burn.