III
Dickie Stay calm, he says. Don’t shoot till you have a clear sight of him. Don’t shoot till you know.
That makes sense. But the gun wants to shoot. You can feel it straining against your fingers, like a dog tugging at its lead. Sensing the moment arrive.
Beside you Victor stands stock-still with the rifle raised to his shoulder – finger on the trigger, eye pressed to the sights. He has been like that, unmoving, hardly speaking, for an hour, while you fidget and quiver beside him. Damp clings to you thick as moss. Above you, around you, darkness falls through the trees, rises up from the ground. That is the only sound to be heard, the hush of the falling dark.
And then a branch snaps. Reflexively, Victor cocks the rifle – your nerves jolt, your mind floods with panic –
He uncocks again. Nothing, he says.
You gasp, heart hammering between your ears.
You have been terrified so long you are wearied by it. Terror has become indistinguishable from boredom, a kind of tumultuous numbness. If only the shit could hit now! If only there could be a tsunami, a firestorm, some Ragnarok that would engulf the world! To suffer, to die en masse, in innocence – somehow that seems better than one person being killed, seems better for everybody.
You check your phone. It is almost ten.
What if he doesn’t come?
He’ll come, Victor says, keeping his eye to the gun sights.
But what if it’s not tonight? Ten was just the time he gave you for the drop-off. It doesn’t mean he’ll be here to pick it up. Maybe he won’t come till tomorrow, you think. Maybe he won’t come till many years later, and you can grow old here in the forest, kneeling in a hole in the earth.
This fella doesn’t want to stick around, Victor says. He’ll grab his money, and then he’ll be off like a hot snot.
Right, you say, your little squib of hope dying instantly into the darkness. Victor sees, misunderstands. But we won’t let him, Dickie.
No, you say.
He peers at you through the mustering gloom. There’s no other way, he says. You know there’s no other way.
Yes, you say. You know this. You just have to toughen up. Toughen up! You hiss it to yourself. Imagining yourself surrounded by azaleas, in the garden, your father slapping your ear.
Thunder rumbles overhead, so loud that Victor lowers the rifle and looks up. A moment later the deluge begins, hitting the leaves with a sound like a thousand machine guns opening fire.
Within a minute, you are drenched. The ground around your feet begins to fill up with water. How plausible is it that we’re out here in weather like this? you say.
Victor looks at you in mystification. Plausible? he says.
We’re hunting squirrels and he wanders into our path, isn’t that the story? But who’d be hunting out here in the middle of a storm?
We don’t have to use it if you don’t want, he says. We don’t have to have a story at all. We can always just bury him here.
Something about that word – bury – strikes home as nothing else has. Maybe because the sound and feel of your shovel in the soil has become so familiar. Nightmarish images flood your mind, unaskable questions. What if someone finds out? What if it’s not enough? What if you bury him, and still he comes back? You close your eyes, take a deep breath. Then you say quietly, If we go through with this. Can you promise me the children will never see those recordings? Can you guarantee it?
Victor considers this. He is barely visible in the rain and darkness. Well, I’m not saying it’ll guarantee it, he says at last. You say this lad’s got films on his phone, then fuck knows who he’s given them to. A hundred people could have them. A thousand people could have them. It’s the twenty-first century, the entire fuckin’ planet could have seen them for all I know. Now I’m betting we’ll put an end to the whole business tonight. But if you wanted to guarantee they didn’t see anything – it’d be the kids you’d need to shoot, not your man.
You stare back at him in horror. Then covering your mouth with one hand, you scramble out of the trench and into the trees.
Imelda You pull up at the top of the driveway but instead of going in and changing your clothes you don’t get out of the car You just sit there
The house is in darkness Nobody home Even with a storm on the way And though you wanted to avoid him the longer you stare at those black windows the angrier they make you That he is not even there for you to have to lie to That inside the hour you will be with Big Mike and he doesn’t even know let alone try to stop you He is out in the woods with his troll and you with your father dead and Rose dying and on your way to another man’s arms and he has driven you to it and does he even care?
Well to hell with him To hell with make-up too Big Mike will take you as you are You turn the key in the ignition The lights flare up against the house The engine roars You reverse at speed but hit a potted plant FUCK and you turn the engine off again and fling open the door so roughly it rebounds against your knee and pain shoots through your leg and you beat your fists on the steering wheel and you scream out loud alone in the car I can’t do this!
You can’t You just can’t go and be with someone else and come home and pretend nothing’s wrong when everything’s wrong
And there and then you decide if you’re going to cheat on him you’re going to bloody well tell him first He’s bloody well going to know about it You take out your phone but get voicemail So much the better You will go right down into the woods Confront him in his warren Tell him to his face that his marriage is ending and it’s his fault
You go inside for a torch but Dickie must have them all down there And when you open the back door to look out Wondering could you find your way in the dark At that instant like it’s been waiting for you there’s a rumble of thunder directly overhead and a second later rain comes down in torrents like it’s the end of the world But if he thinks that’s going to stop you he’s got another thing coming You charge out as you are Don’t even bring a coat Slam the door behind you
The instant you step out you’re soaked Rain comes at you in waves The ground’s already turning into marsh Your shoes keep sinking so you reach down pull them off throw them back in the direction of the house and march barefoot over the field towards the woods You’re going to let him have it Both barrels
Just as you reach the treeline your phone beeps with a message from Big Mike Darling Still delayed See you before long
Both barrels Dickie Barnes By Jesus if you knew what was coming
PJ Whoa, says Cass.
Yeah, you say.
Out of nowhere the rain’s come hammering down so thick that you can barely see through the windows. Even the cars that sluice by are almost hidden, all you can see are their lights, pale and fizzing like disintegrating moons.
We’re going to get drenched if we walk back from town, Cass says. She turns to you. Will I just call Mam? Do you reckon she’d come pick us up?
I think she’s out, you say. I think she has Tidy Towns.
What about Dad? Do you want to call Dad?
You make a show of considering this, then say, We could ask the driver to let us out up ahead and then go through the woods? It’d be way quicker.
Rain thunders against the roof. Cass looks reluctant.
I know a short cut, you say.
I know a short cut, she retorts. I invented the short cut. It’s just it’s pitch dark.
We have our phones? you say, then as she’s still wavering, Red car–blue car?
She presses her lips together. You both look out into the streaming night. A car passes by, and another, but it’s impossible to make out their colours.
Okay, okay, Cass says, throwing up her hands. Go and ask the driver.
Augustina The mattress in the corner is stained with black mould. A bag sits on it containing everything you own. The smell of damp here is overpowering. You have been gone for months but the house feels like it has been empty for years, a ruin from long ago. A tree is pushing through the roof of the house next door. Like the forest is taking it back, bit by bit.
What you looking at? Ryszard says, coming up behind you.
The woods, you say, pointing at the window, though there is nothing to see.
How he ever thought anyone would want to live here, you say.
Mmm. He is not listening. His hands rest on your hips, then slide up to your breasts.
Don’t, you say. He keeps going. I can’t, you say. Not in this place.
You fucked me in this place, he says. And you fucked him.
You turn to look at him. His eyes, his lips, glister blackly at you through the gloom. He says these things to see what you will do. He doesn’t really care, he is not the jealous type.
Mike kept you here after his wife found out. It was different then. The mattress had no mould, it had sheets, Egyptian cotton he told you. How long were you here? Weeks? Months? Time stopped making sense, each day was the same. He brought you every luxury. Takeout every night, every possible cream and lotion for the shower. But the water flipped hot and cold like someone with a fever, and he didn’t like you going outside in case you might be seen.
You felt like you were seen anyway, in the daytime on your own. Like someone was watching from the trees. You never told him, he said he didn’t like crazy types. He was going to leave his wife for you, he said, he was just waiting for the right moment. Then over time he stopped coming. Day after day, night after night, alone looking into these woods. One night a car pulled up outside. You thought someone had come to kill you. Went to look anyway out of sheer boredom. Saw a beautiful man taking machine parts from the boot of his car. When he left town for good you left with him. You should never have come back.
I hate it here, you say.
After tonight you’ll never see it again, he says. He picks up his coat. Stay there. Don’t go outside.
Just like Mike used to say, you think. But you say only, How long will you be gone?
He shrugs. All I have to do is grab the money, he says. Then he squeezes your hips and whispers in your ear, Then we are rich.
Sometimes he feels like a house that no one has ever lived in. Shiny and enticing but not quite finished. Trees waiting under the floor to take over the off-white rooms.
He turns the light out as he leaves. Only then do you see his torch on the table. How could he go without it in this rain? He is more nervous than he lets on, you think. You run to the door, scan the face of the woods, but you can’t see him. You return inside, sit in the dark. Crazy, this whole plan is crazy. And you are crazy too, to fall in love with him, to get pregnant with his child. Crazy ever to come back here.
Dickie You run into the trees as far as you are able before you have to stop and tug down your trousers. You throw up into the darkness at the same time as you void your bowels. You cry too. Everything is coming out of you tonight. You wipe yourself with a paper tissue, dither over what to do with it, finally push it into the undergrowth. Then, jaggedly sucking in air, you rise to your feet.
Emptied out, you find yourself calmer. Your panic has left you along with everything else. You see that Victor is right: this is the only way. Yes, it’s insane. To be out here, in the dark, with a gun, waiting to kill someone – to kill them, in cold blood, it is insane, absurd, horrific. But how much of life is insane, when you think about it? Civilization itself is insane, it’s insane to continue as normal when the world is burning alive. So leave that aside, leave all thoughts of right and wrong, of fate, Furies, penance, atonement. See the problem for what it is. Then it becomes quite simple. Someone is trying to take something from you; this is how you stop him. In all likelihood you will succeed. In all likelihood Ryszard will die, and there will be no consequences. No dogged pipe-smoking inspector will appear on your doorstep, no echoing heartbeat will pound from the forest to wake you from your sleep. You will not be racked by guilt, your children will not sense any difference in you, you will not be estranged, exiled. The fact is that people do terrible things every day and the world goes on, they commit atrocities, and then resume their ordinary humdrum lives. In real terms a death is practically non-existent. It’s simply a case of seeing that, of seeing things as they are.
With this eerie clarity, that is akin to weightlessness, you start to make your way back. But what is the way back? In the light of the phone all you can see are trees, skeletal white and eye-socket black, teeming around you thick as the rain.
Dickie! The walkie-talkie, clipped to your jacket, erupts in a fizz of noise. It’s almost ten! Where are you?
I don’t know, you say. The blackness has suddenly grown hot, you feel sweaty, clammy, as if you were indoors, in a crowd.
You must be close, the walkie-talkie reasons. Shine your torch till I see if I can see you.
You raise the phone, bring it in a circle.
Anything? you say.
Hello? you say. Victor? But there is no response.
You stumble forwards in what seems like the right direction. The trees, slick with rain, press in on you, as though herding you. Between them, in the torchlight, you seem to see – you see –
Hello? you say again. Hello?
You take a breath. Don’t worry about what you see. It’s just a matter of retracing your steps. Realistically, you can’t have come far. Realistically. Yes! That’s what you need to focus on. You lift your hand to your eyes, make a concentrated effort to see it. It is real, the gun it holds is real. The moon is real. The trees are real.
Ghosts are not real. The faces are not real.
Imelda Then you step into the trees and instantly it’s as if the world’s been scrubbed away leaving only the rain and the dark How could he think this grass was greener How could he desert you for this
Or is Geraldine right Has it just come time Does marriage have a sell-by date like everything else
That’s what she said Not that long ago but before all this You were all in Bojangles together Girls listen to me she said If you had the chance to go back in time knowing what you know now Would you do it again Leaving the kids out of it would any woman in their right mind marry her husband again?
Well that had you all stumped Even Una Dwan who’d usually offer some sort of perspective
It was Roisin who spoke up in the end You remember it how you were surprised The one who was having so much fun since Martin left her Swingle Having a ball Still it was she who said now: But you can’t go back in time
How’s that Geraldine said
You can’t go back in time she said Isn’t that the whole point of it Marriage I mean That’s why you do it Because you can’t go back You can only go forward So you’re making a vow you’ll go forward together Stay together even though you’ll change get sick get old That’s the vow
A vow you think now Yes And imagine yourself confronting Dickie You made a vow On our wedding day You made a vow!
But you can’t remember what the vow was
You must have said it too You remember standing there in front of the priest But you were so out of it You barely knew what was happening
It’s impossible to think in this rain You can’t even tell if you’re going the right way There’s a track or a trail you know but you can’t see it and then Something stabs you right in the eye
A tree branch it must be You crash back into wet leaves Your eye burns like it’s on fire The same one as then That day the wedding and as you pick yourself up and stumble forward again a little voice in your head laughs and says Maybe you’re gone back in time after all Imelda Maybe you’ve got your wish
Ridiculous But the pain’s the same too Like it’s been in there waiting all this time to return You remember squinting out of it from the top table trying to spot Frank like if you looked hard enough you could make him appear
And then being led out by the hand by the man you’d just married The band playing the first dance Wonderwall Across the room you saw yourself in the mirror wrapped up in gauze A white drift of sadness A ghost Dickie with his hands on your hips The guests grinning at you from every side and their smiles were a wonderwall closing you in and Dickie’s arms were a wall and the new house was a wall and the stack of gifts was a wall and all of those walls were toppling in on you and you felt like you were being buried alive
And at the back of the room you thought you saw Daddy there with a leer on his chops raising a glass as if to say Well girleen are you satisfied Are you happy now
Cass The bus pulls in and hisses to a stop. Across the road you see the lane that leads up to the unfinished houses and the track you used take to the Bunker and you get a rush of excitement, I’m back! I’m back! But as soon you step down onto the roadside it’s immediately clear you’ve made a mistake. The wind pounds you, the rain hits you in freezing slaps like you’re out on the open sea with waves coming over the deck. You turn to PJ, whose teeth are already chattering. Let’s just stay on the bus – you have to shout over the storm. We can get a taxi from town. What? he yells back. Back on the bus! you repeat, pointing. But already the bus is pulling away and vanishing into the rain.
Nothing else for it. Hugging yourself, you hurry over the empty road. After he crosses, though, PJ stops. What is it? you say.
He doesn’t reply. Rain explodes on the asphalt. It’s so cold it feels like little splinters of ice.
I’m not so sure this is a good idea, he says.
What are you talking about? The short cut?
He looks back unhappily. Something is clearly bothering him, but he won’t say what it is. He just keeps looking back and forth from the woods to your face with a troubled expression. Then he asks if you’ve seen Pet Sematary.
What the fuck? you say. He starts in on a confusing speech about things coming back when they’re not meant to – something like that, you can’t really follow, it’s hard to hear and the rain is like someone is literally continuously emptying a bathtub of water over you. But we never had any pets, you tell him, trying to hold on to your patience. Look, let’s just get moving. At least in the woods we’ll have some cover.
You continue up the lane. Reluctantly, PJ trudges after you. As you near the ghost estate, you see something: a light in one of the houses. I didn’t know there were people living there, you say.
Yeah, PJ says.
Yeah, there are, or…?
He doesn’t reply: he is walking in the other direction, over to the track. Now it’s you who wants to hold back. Maybe you could knock on their door? Take shelter until the rain has eased? But at that moment the light goes out and something about it gives you the chills and you follow PJ as he splashes away into the brambles.
Big Mike Cantwell House on your left like a grey ghost coming out of the trees. Creaghan’s Stores closed. The forest in the distance, a black sprawl. Phone mast on the hill rising over it. Harder and harder to see anything with this rain.
In your left pocket two grand in cash, in the back seat a bolt gun from the farm. You’re not going to hurt her. But you need to be firm.
Your father used to say you can never trust a woman: it was a whatdoyoucall with him, an article of faith. The biggest joke God ever played was to create women’s bodies then put women’s brains into them, that’s what he said. Like leaving a poisoner in charge of a sweetshop. She never seemed like the tricky type. But look at this. Doesn’t even tell you she’s back, just shows up on the fucking main street, you have to hear it from your foreman. I seen that old housekeeper of yours is in the family way. With a smirk on him.
Mind games, that’s the way they operate. She knew it’d get back to you. Planning to come out of the woodwork once she had you nice and rattled. But she won’t be expecting you tonight. Hasn’t made her move yet, you’ll get the jump on her.
Past the Barnes place. Not far now. Watch for the turn. Here we go.
You park halfway up the lane, sit there a minute. The lights are out in the house, but you know she’s in there. It’d be just like the brass neck of her to put herself up in your own bloody private property while she’s back in town to put the squeeze on you. When you had her living there she did nothing but complain about it. Too damp, too cold, nothing working. Didn’t like the woods. What brought her back? She’ll say it’s for money but you’ll bet anything she’s heard about you and Imelda. They can never bear to imagine you with someone else. Naturally jealous. Even the good-looking ones – especially them. It’s all fun and games at the start then for the rest of eternity they’re wheeling over you like vultures.
You haven’t been out this way in months – not since she ran off. Too depressing, looking at these houses. You used to be here every day, calling in to her with this and that. She had this green T-shirt she wore – Little Miss Innocent. That’s when you first noticed her, really noticed her that is. Wearing that T-shirt, doing the ironing. Something about her bare arms moving back and forth through the cloud of steam, the green eyes coming up to meet yours then dropping back down. Getting into your head so you couldn’t think straight.
You told her you’d run away with her. She didn’t want to go back to Brazil. Okay, Thailand, then. Patagonia, Costa Rica. I don’t give a fuck so long as it’s warm and no one can find us. Madness, of course. You say these things in the heat of the moment. Though at the same time, why not? If the market hadn’t tanked you could have sold these gaffs. Cleaned out the accounts, slowly, over six months say. Then one day you’re gone. Could have spent the rest of your days playing golf, drinking pina coladas. Instead you’re stuck here in Joan’s fucking spiderweb.
Enough. Stay focused. If word gets out of that baby it’ll be like a bomb gone off, doesn’t matter whose it is. You can say goodnight to Imelda, Joan, the garage too most likely. Yes, she has it all worked out.
You check your phone, send Imelda a quick text. Almost there Darling Can’t wait. Then you grab the bolt gun and get out of the car.
Little Miss Innocent – what a joke. If a man had a notion what was going on inside a woman’s head he’d run a mile, that’s what your father always said.
May he rot.
Dickie But the faces are not unhappy. They are laughing, they are pleased. It is all going terribly well. The band has begun to play the first bars. You look around for Imelda.
Dickie! crackles the walkie-talkie. Jesus, boy, where the fuck are you?
At the wedding, you say softly.
What? I can’t hear you, what?
You smile to the guests, the pink glazed faces, the dealers among them that your father thought it politic to invite, the Nolans of Banaher, the Tighes of Rathcoole; you give a little wave, making your way through the sweltering ballroom to the floor for the first dance.
Yes, a real success, you think. A shame of course that Paddy Joe couldn’t come. People wondered about it, no doubt. No father of the bride? You wondered yourself. But it’s one less speech! you told them. And it was undeniably for the best. You’d taken enough of a chance as it stood, God knows.
Your mother begged you not to do it this way. Why not have something small, she’d said. Why all this show? But you had insisted. It had to be grand, it had to be at the same scale as Frank’s. You didn’t want it to feel like a consolation prize. We are going to find joy in this tragedy – that’s what you told her. We owe it to Frank.
And you were right, weren’t you? Though for a time, you knew, people hadn’t been sure. On the street corners, in the pubs, at the petrol station, shouting to each other over the pumps as they filled up their cars, the townsfolk had debated whether this was the right thing. But now they were all behind it, behind you, Dickie, rooting for you, as in times past they had rooted for Frank on the football pitch. The Barnes boy had come good, they told each other. He had stepped up, just as he did with the garage; he’d put his notions behind him, done right by his family in the face of great sorrow. And now wasn’t he marrying the most beautiful girl in the four provinces?
It was the kind of story that gave everyone a lift. And so they had filled the church, they had sung the hymns and wept at the vows, and at the end they lined up at the door – more of them even than there had been at the funeral – to shake your hand. Freed from the burden of condolence, the embarrassment of its insufficiency, they had looked you in the eye as if seeing you for the first time. Good man, Dickie, they said. Maith an fear. Good man.
The only dampener was the bee sting; she was still wearing the veil. At the same time, was it the worst thing? It suggested a hint of sorrow remaining beneath the surface; it silenced any voices that might otherwise have found the celebrations unseemly, too joyous. In Imelda’s veiled face, anyone who wanted to could divine the pain you had suffered, what it had taken you to get here.
Now, as the music played and you led Imelda onto the floor, you breathed a sigh of relief. You were on the home stretch; you had pulled it off. For the first time in a long time (in a lifetime?) you felt you were standing on solid ground. You turned to her and smiled. But when you placed your hands on her hips, she started, and pulled back. You asked, in a murmur, if she was all right. She stared at you a moment, as if she didn’t know who you were. Then, lifting the folds of the dress clear of the floor, she turned and rushed away.
Perhaps you should have expected something like this. She’d been so strange all day, and throughout the speeches, you’d had a sense of agitation, a growing, unaccountable desperation brewing beneath the veil. Her head strained this way and that, searching for something, someone: her father, you thought. Now, as she sped away, you wondered had she finally found him in the crowd. But she continued through the door of the reception room and out of sight.
The guests were too surprised even to react. The music stopped, the band gaped incredulously at the space from which she had disappeared. And you, with a fixed smile on your face, floundered there on the dance floor, alone in the circling disco lights, not knowing what to do. For a moment it appeared everything might collapse. It seemed you could see the cracks, sprinting over the floor, up the walls, the guests starting to blink and check themselves, as though waking from a dream. Then your eyes fell on your mother, watching impassively from the top table, and with a burst of inspiration you went to her and took her hand.
She was clad that day in grey, the furthest she would budge from her mourning: stone-grey, like a statue, and her face too was that of a statue. Not a word, not a flicker of movement, that whole day long, as if she feared the merest tremor of life would send grief exploding through the bones of her face to destroy her. Yet she rose from her chair as if this had been the plan all along. Her fingers were pliant in your hand, and cold, like living marble. The band struck up again; the two of you danced together to the moronic music. The guests took in the spectacle with fond smiles, and applause, and flashing cameras: as if this was the first dance after all, as if they thought she truly was Imelda, or it didn’t matter that she was not Imelda, that she was your bereaved mother, expressionlessly waltzing over the parquet. They believed in you, you realized – believed in the person that they’d encountered here tonight, in the transformation they had witnessed, the odd, awkward boy into the likeness of his brother. They had accepted you as one of their own, and anything that might shake that acceptance they would simply refuse to see. That was what it meant to belong.
It was a measure of your success, of the night’s success, and yet – here at your moment of triumph – you felt a chill steal over you, eerily akin to that horrible sense you’d have in college when, working on an essay, you pressed the wrong key and accidentally wiped it; and the more you thought it couldn’t possibly just be gone, the more it wasn’t there. But what was wiped here? What had you lost? As the song reached its climax, and the guests’ voices joined in with the chorus, you searched and searched and failed to find an answer: there was only this cold, persisting sensation of being exposed, in a way that you didn’t recall ever feeling before, as though certain protections, magical spells that had shielded you all your life without your knowing, were suddenly gone, and you found yourself alone, nameless, lost amid strangers.
The song drew to a close, the crowd erupted in a cheer; your mother broke away from your arms and in a bitter rasp said, Go to your wife, Dickie, for the love of God.
You stumbled away from her; someone thrust a pint into your hand, but you didn’t drink, for fear it would pass right through you. In the heat everyone looked strange and horrific, sweat shining from their jowls; the jostle of bodies was like a midnight forest, bone-white and grave-black, that pitched forward, blocked and receded, as if steering you down a secret path …
Dickie, Dickie, come in, Victor’s voice sizzles from the walkie-talkie. Dickie, are you there?
Yes, you say falteringly. Yes, I’m here.
Where? Where are you?
You look around. Wind charges through the clearing, the trees bow to you, sorcerers at a black Mass. The ballroom, the guests, the pint in your hand, all that is gone.
But the path is there still.
I’m close, you say. I’m on my way.
Imelda You ran Shame burning in your eye Dress clinging to your back in the heat Ran as fast as your legs would carry you out of the reception room with its columns and dark wood through the hall up the grand staircase Not knowing where you were going till you came to your room Flung yourself through the door Slammed it behind you
The bridal suite of Burke’s hotel It was the grandest room you’d ever been in Everything gold with a coat of arms Champagne in a bucket on a little table to itself More gifts piled up on the dresser Cookware dinner plates crystal linen bedsheets The rest of your life stacked in a pyramid and tied with ribbons
You went to the window raised the blind Looked out the window there was nothing to see The last of your hope gently ebbed away And as you stood there you wondered how you’d ever believed it All that you’d lived for A child’s dream a fairy tale
The truth was that Frank had not been a great one for showing up at the best of times Alive Hale and hearty Those poor under-10s he’d leave hanging around in the rain waiting for him to coach them And weddings Definitely not his thing Couldn’t hardly even speak about his own without five pints inside him and a line of coke
Yes it was always going to be a long shot you saw that now
From below came the faraway sound of music laughter and as you listened something did return to you then A story you’d heard once About a traveller who finds his way inside a mountain to a magical feast Beautiful people dancing laughing all that Decked out in gold Join us they say glad to see him and he does Has a brilliant time thinks it will never end Till it ends he wakes up on the hill in the morning Goes home to his home but it’s a hundred years later there’s no one That’s all gone his family his life
What is there left to do but to disappear
You put on the TV lay down on the bed The presenter off that show advertising hair extensions
England after all maybe A fallen woman in a shelter in Cricklewood A witch drinking cider in rags behind the station
Tomorrow you said out loud
Then the door opened and he was standing there
PJ Things are always coming back. Birds. Comets. Leaves on the trees.
Yeah, that’s true.
Rebirth, she says. That’s the whole nature thing.
Yes, good point, you say. I forgot about that.
You know she’s trying to cheer you up, but it’s not working. You’ve got this feeling like in a movie when someone’s going down the stairs in the dark to a basement and you’re watching it thinking no one would ever do that but now the someone is you and you just keep going down. Around you the woods yawn like a mouth packed with a million teeth, the way the black wet leaves glisten and drip in the torchlight make you think again of squirrel guts, like the whole forest is covered in them. You wish you could just turn back! But you know Cass would laugh if you said it and also there is someone (who?) in the sex house so you can’t so you keep going.
I’d forgotten how fucked up the signal is here, Cass says, looking at her phone. I get it for a second, then it vanishes.
Dad says it’s spirits.
Spirits?
Yeah, he says spirits control the signal.
She doesn’t say anything to that. She looks up and around at the crashing night. Where are we?
I think we’re going the right way, you say.
You think? Cass says. What happened to the track?
This is the track, you say. It must just have got a bit overgrown. Though actually you’re starting to wonder whether it is in fact the track or even a track, because right now you don’t recognize anything. It’s like the forest has rearranged itself or even that it’s a completely different forest, though of course that’s impossible.
We’re not lost, are we?
It’s just because of the storm, you tell her.
Thunder crashes overhead again, the rain hammers down KKKSSCCCCCHHHHH. You wonder if you did turn around would you even be able to find your way back to the road, is there even a road left to find.
Then through the clamour comes a clear, bell-like ping. A moment later: Oh my God, Cass says.
What is it?
Nothing. It’s just – they’re publishing my poem.
What?
I just got an email. She laughs. In a forest in the middle of the night, how random is that.
You wrote a poem? you say.
It’s just for this tiny college magazine, she says. It’s no big deal.
It’s going to be in a magazine? you say. An actual magazine? Made of paper?
It’s not one anybody reads, she says.
Wow, you say. Maybe you’re going to be famous!
She laughs again and tells you that when she’s a millionaire poet living in a big mansion you’ll be welcome to stay with her any time. Then she holds up her hand. Wait, she says. Did you hear something?
No, you say, but then you wonder. Like what?
I don’t know, she says. Like rustling, she says. Like someone moving through the trees.
Isn’t that just the sound the rain makes? you say.
She doesn’t reply.
And the two of you stand and stare into the dark, listening.
Augustina With the lights out the house seems smaller, a tiny thing in the grip of the storm. The walls shake, the wind is like a great hand, pounding its palm on the roof – no, wait. There really is a pounding. You run out to the hall, see a shape in the glass.
Augustina! Open the door!
But it is not Ryszard’s shape. And the voice is not his voice.
I can see you! Open the fucking door!
You switch the light off again, run back to the kitchen. How is he here? Why?
The hand thuds on the door again. Then the sound of jingling and an intestinal metallic slurp as he tries a key in the door.
Leave me alone! you scream from the back of the hall.
He is in the house now. He is at the foot of the stairs. He switches on the light. Leave you alone? You’re in my fucking house! He takes a step towards you, and another. You shrink back into the kitchen. I’m sorry, you gabble. I’m not staying.
No one asked you to come back here! Mike bellows.
I’m not staying, you repeat. I’m leaving now. I just had to get something. You can’t tell if he even hears you. His eyes are black, deathly. Please, you cry. I’m pregnant.
But that only makes him worse. Pregnant? he repeats. Pregnant? And he starts to shout, words that make no sense, money, main street, black male – he looms over you, roaring like a bear, you sob, you wrap your hands around your belly. Then he tips backwards as an arm appears around his throat. Ryszard, dripping rain, clings to his back, punches him in the head. Mike reaches over his shoulder to claw at Ryszard’s eyes, totters backwards to crush him against the door frame. The light goes on again, off again.
Imelda Dickie came to you He knelt at your side Can I look? he said And he drew back the veil Colours lights seared like hot irons into your eye In the mirror you saw yourself red raw and swollen
That’s not from a bee is it he said
Who did this to you Was it him
You didn’t reply Who he him what did it matter You turned to the wall
He stepped away went to the champagne bucket Took an ice cube wrapped it in a handkerchief put it to your eye His hands were gentle Hold it there he said and you did You lay there and felt the cold bite into your skin
While Dickie sat down on the bed beside you Put his elbows on his knees his head in his hands As you watched his shoulders began to shake What have I done he said
Without the veil you could see him clearly for the first time He was the first thing you’d seen clearly in a while in fact And as he sat there you could see that he was a ghost too That Frank had gone and left him here like you Life done but still wandering the earth
That he’d thought tonight would change things That he’d expected something to happen Some transformation or transportation just as you had But here you were it was only the two of you in a room
You would have liked to comfort him He was so sad But what could you say What solace has a ghost for another ghost So you sat and watched him cry and somewhere at the back of your mind you remembered your mother telling you when you were a little girl of the secrets between a woman and a man that you would find out on your wedding night And you wondered if she meant that there was nothing simply nothing That was the secret No spells No magic Just two people in a room seeing for the first time life stretching on ahead of them endlessly And you lay back closed your eyes thought would God only let you die here
That’s when you felt it
Cass The forest is a sea of goblins, slapping you, snagging you, jabbing you, grabbing at your arms and ankles. You run until you can’t any more. Then you stop, panting, raise your phone. PJ’s face stares back at you, pale, dripping rain. You turn the phone light on the trees surrounding. Every direction shows the same indistinct mass. Well now we’re really lost, you say. You shine the light on PJ again. Why’d you run?
Why did you run? he counters.
I was following you!
I thought I saw something, he confesses.
Was it a cat? you say. Was it a resurrected zombie cat?
He lowers his eyes, presses his lips together.
So where are we?
He ponders, then snaps his fingers. If we see what side of the trees the moss is growing on, I think that’s north.
You think it is? Or it is?
It’s north, he says, it’s definitely north.
You both look at the nearest trees but they either have no moss or there’s moss on every side.
Fuck this forest, you say. PJ concedes that it actually doesn’t matter because he doesn’t know what direction the house is in anyway.
Dickie Walking in the darkness. Paths split and split again. You choose without thinking, they are all leading to the same spot.
Dickie, goes the walkie-talkie. Dickie, I think we’ve got company.
You raise the gun sights to your eye. Through the heat vision scope everything is doubly dark, as if all life has been removed from the planet. In the future this is what the world will look like all the time. Darkness illuminated only by enemies.
Augustina Behind you the house is silent once more. Mike’s keys are in the ignition. You turn the car around, take it back towards the road. Everything you own in the bag on the back seat, two grand in cash in your left pocket.
Imelda The first time you thought you’d imagined it
Then it came again like knocking on a door
Dickie! you said
He raised his head from his lamenting You took his hands and you placed them on your belly
Feel you said
And on his knees by the bedside he looked up at you mouth open
There she is you said That’s her
And she You knew it was a she She kicked and kicked like she’d just figured it out Hello Hello Here I am Hello
PJ This is ridiculous, she says, and opens up her keypad.
What are you doing? you say.
Calling Dad, she says.
Your blood runs cold. You can’t! you exclaim.
This place is freaking me out! she yells back. You lunge for the phone but she dodges you, shoves you away. What the fuck! she shouts. Stop being such a child! You come at her again but she pushes you back, just like when you were little kids. She’s still taller and stronger. So all you can do is watch from a distance, hating her, while she crouches defensively with the phone pressed to her ear.
Imelda For a long moment you stayed like that him kneeling before you your hands on his hands on your belly like it was the whole world which it was as far as she was concerned
And at the same time you felt the world re-gather around you or you re-gather in it because you knew from now on things would have to be different There was no more time for lamenting No time to be sorrowful ghosts You would have to be solid flesh and blood right here The two of you together You knew he knew it too We’re in it now you said I suppose we are that he said There’s no getting round it You laughed He laughed with you put his ear to your tummy the feast inside the mountain
And that was the vow you realize Then There That long moment We’re in it Two people that had ought to be dead and buried Now here you were in a room in a town together alive That’s what the baby was telling you as she thumped around in your womb Alive she was saying This is a miracle I will keep kicking until you get it
Dickie Suddenly amid the rain you hear a sound, a familiar sound that it takes you a few seconds nevertheless to recognize. Christ! You never set the phone to silent! You scramble a hand into your pocket and dig it out and then see <<CASS>>
And for a long moment you are frozen. You watch the phone glow in your palm, on and off: at the back of your mind the dim form of a memory stirs in response, when she was so small she would fit in your hand and you felt her heart beat against your palm.
Imelda And then from nowhere your phone beeps with a message Must be Dickie He is thinking the same thing as you Do you remember the time Yes It made me realize Me too Do you think we can Yes We can try Stay where you are so I’m coming back
But no Almost there Darling Can’t wait
Big Mike You had forgotten him You come to a stop there in the forest
Dickie Then Victor’s voice crackles from the walkie-talkie again: Dickie! I see him! I have a visual!
You silence the phone, put it back in your pocket.
PJ Cass takes the phone from her ear, moves on into the trees without looking back at you.
Imelda You start to reply But can’t think what to say You can hardly go over to him with your eye all swollen up anyway Just leave it for now till you get back to the house Leave it till you’ve got Dickie out of these woods that’s the main thing for now It’s not right to be out in weather like this Bunker or no
Cass You press on into the forest. It’s utterly black, even with the torches: like walking into dark matter.
Imelda No he has not been right for a while Not himself Things have been changing so much Maybe it would be good for him to talk to someone Una might know a good person Tomorrow you’ll call her Yes you think and call Lar while you’re at it Tell him to come stay Insist this time There’s plenty of room What will the girls make of him Your true origins Maybe Roisin will take a shine He can tell her her fortune You will meet a black dog
And in the instant your smile drops away You come to a halt there in the woods
As if you could see it in the shadows As if it was stood there for real right in front of you
That you thought had come for Rose
Staring at you with eyes like saucers
Dickie A visual, no. But you hear something, or think you do. And when you raise the scope – isn’t that? In the distance, but drawing closer?
PJ It’s so dark you can hardly make her out now, a shadow among shadows. The staircase feeling of earlier has gone. You’re in the basement now. And she must feel the same, because her voice comes thinly out of the dark: Tell me some science.
Science?
One of your facts, tell me something. I need some distraction.
Okay, you say. Any particular area of science?
Anything.
You think for a moment. Did you know that there are more bacterial cells in your body than human cells?
Seriously?
Way more. You have five hundred different species of bacteria just in your intestine. There’s enough bacteria inside you to fill a two-litre bottle. Some human genes originally came from bacteria.
Well that’s disgusting, she says.
Yeah, you say. But it’s interesting. People get so hung up on are they this kind of person or that. But if you have ten times more not-human cells than human cells, then, in a way, you’re not even you.
It kind of takes the pressure off, you say. I feel like if people knew they were mostly bacteria it would solve a lot of problems.
Cass laughs. You’re definitely you, she says. Whatever about the bacteria. You’re you, a hundred per cent. She shakes her head: and for a moment you get this surge of happiness, there in the wind and the rain, as if somehow the future will actually be okay in spite of everything.
Then Cass says, Hey, look! Isn’t that that weird tree?
Imelda And without knowing why you start to run Fast as you can Running to Dickie just like at the wedding you ran from him But the ground is treacherous Roots and brush grab at your feet Branches spike you slap you stab you jab you The darkness itself pushes you back like it’s trying to stop you getting to him like it doesn’t want you to get there in time But in time for what? In time for what?
Cass Oh yeah, he says. We must have been going in the right direction after all.
Dickie Yes, it is – a figure! Red, white and gold, how hot, how bright, in the inky darkness! Promethean! What a thing life is!
Imelda Just like in a dream the harder you run the less it feels like you’re getting anywhere But you keep going You know he’s there That you’re close
Dickie He’s almost here! Are you in position? Yes, you are in position. Yes, you are ready. You have been ready for a long time – you see that now.
Imelda Dickie! you cry But your words are smothered in the rain
PJ Now ahead of you at last you see the Bunker.
Doesn’t look like there’s anyone there, Cass says. I guess we can take shelter for a minute.
And something shrills up inside you, a numb terror.
Cass, you whisper. But how could you begin to describe it.
Dickie You raise your rifle. You take a deep breath. Every day people have to do things that are ugly, even wrong. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices for the ones that you love. Sometimes what you give up is the best part of yourself.
Imelda So you run harder again Faster again As if you could run back into the past Take your veil again Dry his eyes again Lie down together again on the bed
Cass PJ stops and turns to you, arms down by his side, eyes round, and whispers, I’m sorry I made you miss your party.
Dickie The world is how it is. That’s not your fault. You can only think about your family. Do your best to protect them from the worst of it. And when the world breaks through – make sure that they don’t suffer.
Imelda Put his hands on your hands on your belly and tell him again This is the world now It will be how we make it
Dickie There’s two of them! Do you see? Yes, you see their torches flash in and out through the thickets. But you remain calm – you have never felt so calm.
Cass Whisper back to him, I’m glad you did – I’m glad I found you.
Dickie Kneel down, resting your elbow on your thigh, the gun to your shoulder. Remind yourself why you are doing this.
PJ A click from somewhere – a glint of light –
Imelda It’s not too late We can start again
Cass Grey squirrel! you cry and you grab your brother’s hand –
It is for love. You are doing this for love.