by Terry Kitto
The hull of the boat thwacks the ledge. Ewella and Kyauta pause, eyes wide on each other, breath held. The urgent sea babbles and they hear no footsteps or hurried voices. Ewella sighs relief, and they both turn back to their work. One more push.
There is a third shadow on the deck. Silver glints in her periphery. Kyauta throws himself at the shadow and tackles the man to the ground. A blade scuttles across the deck. In the weak moonlight Ewella recognises him: Kyauata’s often rapist. Kyauta is half his size, yet punches and slaps, overcome by his urgency to escape a life he never asked for. The watchman kicks Kyauta away and jumps on top. He presses his fingers into Kyauta’s throat. Kyauta’s body thrashes and his eyes roll to the back of his skull.
The blade glints by Ewella’s feet. She snatches it up, colder and heavier than she anticipated, and lunges it into the man’s back. The knife slices through meat and tendon as if they are water. She plunges into his flesh again. A third time. The life leaves him, and he collapses aside Kyauta. The boy coughs, rolls onto his front and breathes. Ewella stabs and stabs. The watchman’s blood pools across the wooden deck. She jabs, she cries. Kyauta picks her up into his arms and wrenches the blade from her grasp. He tosses it into the dingy.
Ewella comes to her senses. Escape. They push the boat — one final heave of adrenaline. The boat topples over the edge, snags the side of the ship and slaps into the water. Movement sounds under their feet. Kyauta takes Ewella’s hand and leads her to the ship’s edge. She looks down at the hungry water.
‘I can’t swim,’ she utters.
‘Down,’ Kyauta commands.
‘No.’
‘Yes.’
He steps back from her and scuttles towards the ladder to the lower decks.
‘Come back,’ he promises and lowers himself into the darkness. He buys her time. If she does not jump his efforts — successful or not — will be wasted. She is prized. She will face few repercussions. For Kyauta it means death. Ewella curls her toes over the lip of the deck. The ship bobs with the motion of the waves. She breathes as they rise; exhales as they fall and succumbs to the rhythm of ocean. She drops.
Ewella takes a gulp of air before she hits the water. The sea envelopes her, and rushes into her nostrils and ears. The water is icy and her limbs tense with shock. She clamps her mouth shut so it doesn’t spring open and gulp down the salt water. Her hand brushes the underside of the dingy. She cannot kick, no matter how much her mind screams for her body to move. The amassing weight of the water pulls her down. The dingy is lost in blackness, more absolute than a starless night.
A body hits the water. Hands find her and wrench her up by the armpit. She runs out of air. Giddiness overcomes her. They have captured her again. Should she open her mouth to a watery death and take her life into her own hands?
No, the water whispers. Your purpose has not yet come.
She kicks. The underside of the boat looms into view. Her head breaks the surface. Kyauta is beside her. They are both alive. They are both free.
Ky helps her onto the boat, and after a few attempts, she clambers up onto a seat. He springs up, snatches a pair of oars and wades. They drift from the ship. The waves roll them closer and closer to the shore. The ship shrinks behind them.
They both dare to smile. But Ewella cannot revel in her delight for long.
A clap rumbles across the sea. Ewella looks over Kyauta’s shoulder: the second life boat. Bodies drop into the water — one, two, three, four. Kyauta rows faster. Ewella picks up the second pair of oars and begins to wade. It is harder work than she imagined and it takes every morsel of energy to row as fast as Ky. She will. She must.
They will not go back.
‘You don’t have to take me there,’ Sam said for the umpteenth time from the passenger seat. The morning sky bled crimson. Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning. He glared at James as he drove his people carrier down the motorway. ‘Pretend you’ve dropped me off.’
‘Don’t be an idiot, Sam. People talk,’ James retorted. He took a sharp turn onto the A30. ‘Vanessa gets daily reports on the Refinery’s work.’
Sam swallowed spittle and balled his fists, tempted to punch James if he weren’t in control of a vehicle doing eighty down the motorway. He couldn’t believe James had let the board go awry, for Vanessa to have tight reins over the entire operation.
That notion was quashed when Sam’s phone rang within his pocket. He withdrew it to find that Margaret (caller ID complete with dragon emoji) was calling him.
‘Don’t answer it,’ James said.
‘People talk, don’t they?’ Sam scoffed. ‘If they can’t reach a junkie, they’ll presume the worst.’
‘Fine, make it quick.’
Sam swiped to answer and held the phone to his ear.
‘Samuel,’ Marge sneered. She knew he hated his full name. She loathed having hers abbreviated.
‘Marge, how are you and Phil keeping?’
‘So-so. Morgues don’t really incite positivity. Yes, they’ve released the body.’
The body. Sam met the news with indifference; witnesses understood the body to be a vehicle. Margaret’s detachment from Will’s body made her compatible for a life in the collieries.
‘It’s with the funeral directors if you want to see it,’ Margaret continued. ‘Put it this way, Phil’s in bits. It’s not the last image of Will he wanted.’
‘So you’ve got a date for the funeral?’
‘June 3. It’s soon, I know, but leave his body too long and, well . . .’
The line fell silent: Margaret had hung up. Sam had barely spoken, and Margaret had had a conversation with herself.
Will’s body. Just a flesh prison entombing the imprint, he tried to tell himself. That was wrong. It had been an inexhaustible source of warmth when alcohol and drugs weren’t enough. Strength when his depression rendered him physically weak. It would be cold and lifeless forever, and its forever would rot in a wooden coffin. He had to see it one more time. To say goodbye.
James held out a hand for Sam’s phone.
‘You won’t need it where you’re going,’ he said.
Sam tossed his phone into James’s hand.
‘Any chance of taking a detour?’ Sam said. ‘The coroner’s released Will’s body and – ’
‘I sympathise, but it’s in the other direction entirely, and if Vanessa catches wind –’
‘All right, how’s this: take me there, and I’ll go to the Refinery quietly. I won’t kick up a fuss. Believe me, I was planning to.’
‘Fine,’ James said. Sam didn’t care if he was a pain in the arse; after all, James was driving him to the Refinery, so Sam didn’t trust James as far as he could throw him. ‘Which morgue?’
Margaret had been purposefully vague with the morgue’s location, but Sam gathered that, in proximity to the Reeves’ home, it could only be Tredrae Funeral Directors.
‘Rosenannon,’ Sam confirmed.
After forty-five minutes of hard driving and cold silence, James pulled up at the Chapel of Rest. Freshly painted and endowed with potted plants, the chapel was a monument of pride for the community. The Reeves often hosted dinners for the Tredraes, giving into the innate desire for the village people to forge good relationships with those who would bury them and their loved ones. What we fear most, Sam pondered, are the people who’ll see us at our worst.
James turned the ignition off and faced Sam.
‘I can only give you twenty minutes,’ he said. ‘The Refinery nurses will be waiting for us.’
‘If Vanessa calls, tell her you treated me to a last meal at Maccies,’ Sam said. He opened his door but didn’t climb out. ‘What does she have over you?’ he asked James.
‘She’s a force to be reckoned with.’
‘No,’ Sam said. ‘Something changed after Will died.’
James took a deep breath and squeezed the steering wheel between his hands.
‘After Will, I was next in line for the gywandras trials.’
Sam sat back in his seat. To be at the mercy of the gywandras was a fear all its own.
‘Was?’ Sam asked. ‘Let me guess, until Rasha came along?’
‘But she’s untouchable.’
‘It better stay that way.’
James rubbed his forehead. ‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘Twenty minutes.’
Sam jumped from the car and raced into the chapel. Stained windows, pointed archways – Sam half expected to be greeted by Wednesday Addams upon arrival. The reception smelt of fresh paint – the kind synonymous with stale armpits. Eddie, the undertaker, squeezed himself into a black suit inches too small and sweated profusely as a consequence. Sam knew by Margaret’s incessant local gossip that he was the Tredraes’ youngest son. Dealings with the dead were generally a family affair and, akin to farming or building, one had to be raised in it to find appreciation for the craft, just as Rose had introduced Sam to the Network, to his uttermost reluctance.
‘You’re a family member?’ Eddie asked him when Sam gave Will’s name. Sam paused. Margaret called him Will’s –
‘Partner.’
Eddie swallowed his embarrassment, face scarlet.
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ he said. Sam distracted himself with various funeral care plan leaflets spread across the desk.
‘Thanks, I appreciate it,’ Sam said. Eddie went to get keys from the metal cabinet below the desk and steered the conversation toward the chapel’s awkward location on a one-way road.
‘You found us okay?’
Sam stole the moment to wipe a tear from his face. All too real.
Eddie’s keys jangled in hand as he led Sam down a dated hallway. To think there were dead bodies refrigerated on the other side, chilled so their loved ones could delay their grief and abide more time in their not-so-blissful ignorance. Still a sceptic, Sam thought, despite the fact he sought what he vindicated others for: closure.
They passed a fire exit – that’d be Sam’s escape route; there was no way in the frequency he’d go to the Refinery. Eddie led Sam past a door labelled ‘Morgue: Employees Only.’ A light wave of frequency energy doused Sam’s skin. The assortment of bodies the morgue housed, with brains in varied states of detachment from their imprints, fizzed like newly opened soda bottles. Memories popped into Sam’s mind: a plane crashed in southern India, a family fought over dinner because their mother had cheated with the groundskeeper. Imprints rarely clung to happy memories. A waste of life for people to die embittered, Sam thought.
Eddie led Sam into a side room. The frequency energy eased with each step. Flower-printed wallpaper and discount vinyl flooring covered the walls and the floor. Will’s body lay in a coffin, the lid open. His coffin.
His body.
‘Take all the time you need,’ Eddie said. He squeezed Sam’s shoulder, departed from the room, and closed the door softly, as if careful not to wake the dead. Will’s body would not wake again. It was in a suit, as his parents promised, skin grey, eyes locked closed. The undertakers tried to make it look asleep rather than dead: light makeup poorly hid the bruises acquired in his final moments. A cut embellished the forehead where surgeons had drained the fluid from a haemorrhage. The nose, once beautifully beak-like, sat crooked. A crop of red hair sprouted above the right ear. Sam leant over and rubbed the auburn strands. He expected makeup residue to come away between his fingers. It didn’t. The hair wasn’t curly, but flat and thin and not Will’s at all.
Rasha’s words from the day they had introduced her to the Network echoed in his mind.
‘It’s like I’m becoming someone else. Becoming them.’
The eyebrows were the same, lips unchanged, details he should know, but not for sure. He couldn’t mistake the eyes. He rolled Will’s eyelids up, pebble heavy. The left eye was its usual autumn hazel. The right eye was toad green.
Sam closed the eyes and raced to the reception where Eddie diligently worked at the computer.
‘Hey, mate, don’t suppose I could borrow your mobile? Left mine at home.’
‘Of course,’ Eddie said. He withdrew his smartphone and passed it to Sam.
‘Won’t be a sec,’ Sam said. He strode back down the corridor and found signal by the fire exit. He had two minutes before James would start looking for him. Sam opened Google, searched for Gorenn Comprehensive’s number, and rang it.
‘Hello, Gorenn Comprehensive, Suzie speaking,’ came the receptionist’s sickly sweet voice.
Sam spoke with a rasp to age his voice as much as possible.
‘Hi there, this is Mr Keats. I’m ringing on behalf of Mrs Abadi for one Rasha Abadi.’
‘Good morning. No problem, she’ll be in class now. Would you care to leave a message?’
‘I would, my ’andsome, problem is there’s bit of a language barrier, see. I don’t quite understand what she wants to say myself. They have a delicate relationship, what with all they’ve been through. Seems urgent, though.’
‘Ah, no problem. Hold on the line, and I’ll have her come down.’
‘Thank you.’
Sam checked the phone screen. His twenty minutes were up. James would come and find him at any moment.
‘Hello?’ Rasha answered. ‘Mr Keats?’
‘Rasha, it’s Sam.’
‘Sam? Are you okay? I saw Trish, and she said she’s not with the Network. Told me to be careful, never to be alone – ’
‘Promise me you’ll do exactly what she says.’
‘Okay.’
‘I need to ask you something. When you were occupied, you said your body changes?’
‘I feel their pain. Is that normal?’
‘I don’t even know what that word means anymore. But Rasha, does it feel like . . . your body is becoming that person?’
‘Yeah,’ Rasha said quietly. ‘Sam, the receptionist is listening in and – ’
‘Right,’ Sam replied. ‘If a witness approaches you, don’t listen to them, don’t go with them.’
‘Even James?’
Sam thought over the hold that Vanessa had on the director, how terrified he was of the gywandras scheme.
‘Yes,’ Sam retorted. ‘Even James.’
The line went dead, cold silence in which his synapses seethed. There must have been a reason the ombrederi chose occupations to counteract the gywandras; and it must have been more a coincidence that a body changed allegiance to the occupying imprint. There was only one person Sam knew who’d been occupied for an extended period of time: his mother, Rose. He knew the answers he needed were where he least wanted to go.
The Refinery.
The Refinery, a double entendre all its own, was a seventeenth-century arsenic refinery that stained the view of Portreath’s North Cliffs. In the turn of the twentieth century it passed into the hands of the Network under the guise of Cornish Heritage. A brand-new building was erected alongside its one remaining chimney and equipped to be a mental hospital for witnesses. From the outside, it could be mistaken for any old heritage site.
James drove his people carrier into the Refinery’s courtyard. Sam broke his nervous silence that he had maintained for a good fifty minutes.
‘What experiments was Vanessa talking about, exactly?’ he asked. His hands gripped the seat.
‘I don’t think telling you would make you feel any better,’ James replied.
‘How the fuck did it come to this, James?’ Sam growled. ‘To let it get so out of hand.’
‘You have to understand that I came onto the board as director thinking what you do, that the Network was there to stop hauntings and support witnesses, that any and all experiments were to benefit that purpose.’
‘They were experimenting with the gywandras before you joined.’
‘No, it’s been occupations ever since Edward Penrose established the Network and funded it with his trust. But whatever the Network is intended to be, I know it can do good. We’ve proven that, haven’t we?’
Sam shrugged, uncertain as to whether he could support that statement. Yes,
they’d collectively spared Rasha and Kasey from occupations in recent weeks, but there was no doubting the trauma they’d induced. Sam stared at the building through the windscreen.
‘If I’m doing this, then you have to swear to me that you’ll protect Rasha, and Kasey too. Don’t let Vanessa have them.’
‘I’ll do what I can.’
‘When can I come out of the Refinery?’
No answer from James.
‘Will’s funeral is soon. I need to be out by then.’
‘It’ll depend on your behaviour,’ James said. ‘Honestly, right now your best bet will be another occupation. That’s where you and Trish seem to excel, and it’s the only time the board has agreed to reward you some merit.’
‘Let’s hope it doesn’t have to come to that.’
The two men climbed from the people carrier. With its barred windows, electronic doors, and flock of CCTV cameras, Sam doubted the gothic building had many attempted escapes.
The wooden double doors opened before they pressed the buzzer. Two women in clinical uniforms stepped out. The taller of the two, witchy with her hair clipped into a bun on her crown, spoke first.
‘Samuel Bickle?’ she asked, face stiff as if emotions did not come easily. Her name badge read, ‘Mallory.’
‘The one and only,’ Sam retorted.
‘Better late than dead,’ the other, labelled ‘Lilith,’ said. Her eyes studied Sam’s heavy eyes, wispy beard, and clenched fists. She turned to James. ‘We can take it from here.’
‘Remember,’ Sam reminded James.
James nodded profusely. Sam followed the nurses into the Refinery’s foyer. The doors closed behind them with a whine and click.
Sam realised that a majority of the Edward Penrose fund was diverted into the Refinery rather than the collieries. Despite its outward demeanour, the building’s interior was immaculate: floors lined with nonslip linoleum, walls seamlessly tiled and grouted, no imperfections in sight. The foyer had five doors, all of which locked with key fob readers to the left of them. Sam was escorted through the door straight ahead into a wide luminous hallway where identical locked doors were spaced twenty feet apart. Open serving hatches offered glimpses into the madness that the Refinery kept hidden. A stick-thin man, his hair down to his knees, consulted feverishly with his own shadow. In another, a riled woman cradled a blanket in her arms then thrust it into her toilet. Sam kept close to Mallory and Lilith. I don’t belong here. I can’t. I won’t.
