The Wannabes

by F. R. Jameson

  “Well,” Toby said, “after the news that’s broken the last two mornings, I can’t say I’m overly eager for this.”

  “You’ll want to sit down.”

  “Of course I will. How wonderful.” He perched gingerly on the couch.

  “There was something I didn’t tell you yesterday, or the day before.” Clay’s hands were knotting into each other, his eyes fascinated by their movement. “The reason I was at Raymond’s, the reason I went to Nick’s, was that I had dreams about them. I don’t remember much about the dreams now, but I know I dreamt I killed them both.” He looked up. Toby sat tense, holding the coffee mug so tight he’d soon implode it. “This panicked me – of course, especially when the bodies showed up. But I was in bed with Belinda and she told me I’d been there all night, that we’d been in each other’s arms, that I’d slept soundly.” He shook his head at his own stupidity. “Last night I put in a razor in my shoe before I went to sleep, just so I’d know any dream I had was only a dream because I hadn’t cut my foot.”

  Toby took a nervous sip of coffee. “That’s thinking with your head.”

  Clay nodded. “I did dream last night, I dreamt I went to Jake’s and murdered him. I killed him, set fire to his apartment, all the time my foot aching. And when I woke this morning, there was a huge gash in my sole.” The words choked in his throat momentarily. “I slept with both Belinda and Judy last night.”

  Toby’s lips twisted, as if in disgust at the very idea, and despair that Clay would do such a thing.

  “They set it up nice,” Clay said. “They eased me into sleep and both got to claim I was there with them. But that’s nonsense, I was out and walking last night – I have the scar to prove it. I was out the two nights before and there’ve been dead bodies each time.” He choked; Toby stared at him so nervously. “I haven’t been round Jake’s place yet, but when I do I know I’ll see it burnt and the murder squad outside. I’ll see I’ve killed another man, another friend. But please, Toby, listen to me – it wasn’t really me who did it. I don’t know what’s going on, but something terrible is and I want to find out what.”

  Toby took a slow sip. It was obvious he was trying to remain calm but the mug was trembling all the way to his mouth. “Have you come to kill me?”

  “No, I’m awake now, really awake.”

  “And Jake is dead?”

  “I haven’t looked, but yeah – I can remember doing it.”

  “What do you mean, you can remember doing it? Didn’t you have any control? Any sense of right or wrong? Any qualms of conscience?”

  “No,” Clay said. “It was a dream. You know what things are like in dreams – you don’t have any control, you don’t really know what’s happening. I’m sorry, Toby, I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry for coming back, sorry I have to sit here and tell you this. I’m sorry I’m scaring you right now, sorry I killed your friends – but I promise you, it wasn’t my fault.”

  Toby lowered the mug to the carpet and dropped his head to his hands. He rubbed his palms against his eyes. His gaze came back up slowly and gave Clay an almost sympathetic expression. He lifted his mug and gulped back the rest of his still steaming coffee. It must have burnt his tongue, the roof of his mouth, his throat – he didn’t seem to mind though.

  “I’ve something to tell you too.” Toby’s voice was numb.

  “Yeah?”

  “Jake and Flower told me about Raymond’s book yesterday. It was an interesting chat, it gave clarity to a number of things. Raymond’s book is about witches, Clay, and he based them on Abigail, Belinda and Judy.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, that was my response. Apparently, he had evidence they were practising witchcraft, using it to forward their acting career, boiling love potions to snare the men they wanted. I don’t know. Until this morning I thought of them in that crappy little flat and concluded they were obviously as good at witchcraft as they were at acting – but maybe I underestimated them.”

  “Oh my God.” There was a taste of such sourness in Clay’s mouth.

  Toby continued: “Raymond believed it completely, was absolutely convinced. He became quite paranoid about the fact, cut off all ties with them just in case, cut off ties with mutual friends. Apparently, he had a couple of large glasses of wine one night and got a little indiscreet with some people, and that obsequious prick Charles West danced over to tell them. There was a phone call the following morning about how Charlie had told them Raymond had written a good book and how excited they were. Raymond changed his number straight away.”

  “That’s why the whole gang fell apart then.”

  “Quite. He got wrapped tight in worry. It cost him friendships, cost him his marriage, apparently. He felt he’d found out this terrible thing and rather than keep quiet about it, or perhaps gone to some kind of witchcraft-exorcist or whatever, he’d published and was going to be terribly damned.”

  Clay just stared at him. “If they are witches, could they really make me do all this?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t help thinking if they’re that good, why don’t they just put spells on casting directors, producers, rich husbands? Something that would allow them to fuck off and leave us alone.”

  Clay sat back in the chair, his head aching. “It’s the TV adaptation. That’s why they’ve done it. They wanted parts in that show, they wanted to play themselves, I guess. They killed Raymond because they must have known he’d never allow that to happen. And last night I wasn’t looking for Jake, I was looking for Flower – I just took Jake on the way. They must have wanted to kill her so one of them could take her part. Oh Lord – I’m so sorry!”

  “Flower was with Lizzie Jones,” said Toby.

  “What?”

  “She went over there to comfort her. Jake would have gone too, but they thought Flower’s softer touch would be appreciated more. She said it was possible she’d stay the night.”

  “Okay,” nodded Clay. “They clearly didn’t know that.”

  “What about Nick Turnkey?”

  “I don’t know. He did say he knew things about Abigail, but what would he know?”

  “I haven’t a clue, but there’s something else I should tell you.”

  Clay took a deep breath, his fingers tense on the arms of the chair.

  “The book is apparently about them becoming full witches, rather than just dabbling. And it ends with them sacrificing one of their lovers to a demon and receiving powers in return.” Toby sighed. “Christ – this sounds like nonsense.”

  “How do we know what’s nonsense any more?”

  “Yeah, but how do we know what’s real? Raymond thought, because you’d disappeared, that you were the one they’d sacrificed. He thought they’d killed you and wrote the character of the lover accordingly. Obviously, you haven’t been murdered, but maybe with these powers they’ve developed some kind of hold over their other lovers.”

  Clay nodded. It was some kind of explanation.

  Toby suddenly shot up from his seat. “Jesus, man!” he yelled, pacing left and right across the carpet. “What the fuck am I talking about? What am I, some rabid Dennis Wheatley fan? Some reader of The Fortean Times? No, I’m a cynic, a disbeliever – there’s no such thing as witches, demons, men who can be controlled in their sleep to kill. All of that is unreal, all of it can’t happen. It’s all wide-eyed, zero-credibility, mumbo-jumbo bullshit – yesterday.”

  He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. “Even after Jake and Flower told me, I didn’t really believe them. I thought they were still shocked at Raymond’s death, had bought into some of his more overt rubbish. He never told me what his book was about, but he did become awfully credulous, annoyingly willing to believe. You could end up having conversations about ghosts, yetis, aliens, the Loch Ness monster – all of which were possibilities to his mind, none of which could be dismissed out of hand. I liked Raymond, liked him a lot, but he could get irritating after the first two hours. Jesus, man!” He sat back down. “I wi
sh he could have seen you, I wish he could have seen you alive – that would have given him a much needed shock of reality.”

  “I think he did see me.”

  “Oh yeah...”

  They sat silent, each staring at a spot three foot in front of them. Church bells struck noon, the chimes blunt in the still air. Outside, children screamed in playful delight – their fun not yet affected by despondency and a ground-down lack of energy. The two men sat in their chairs and pretended not to hear these sunshine noises of normality, heads down and just looking at the first clear piece of carpet they could find.

  “What are we going to do?” asked Clay.

  “I don’t know how to answer that.”

  “What if I turn myself in? I’ve killed three men, after all.”

  “You haven’t really though, have you? They’ve killed three men, you were just the weapon. Besides if you get banged up, maybe I’ll be murdering people tonight. Who knows who else they could do this to? I’m assuming they can do it to you because you’ve shagged one of them – in which case I’ll fortunately be safe – but think of how many other bastards they’ve shagged and how many people they could do this to! Maybe if you’re locked up safe, someone else will start having strange dreams and carry on with their kill list.”

  Clay put his head in his hands and groaned.

  “Anyway,” Toby added, “what are you going to tell the police? Are they going to believe the truth? Are they even going to listen to you? You go to them and you’ll accidentally fall down a staircase in no time.”

  “So what do we do?” asked Clay.

  “This only happens when you’re asleep right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, how long can you stay awake?”

  “The rest of my life.”

  “Good,” said Toby. “We’ll go see some people. We’ll comfort Flower and Lizzie – that’s really the least we can do – but we can also see if there’s any more they can tell us.”

  Clay nodded. “And what are we going to do with whatever we know? How are we going to stop them?”

  “I don’t know what we’ll find out yet but, as long as you don’t fall asleep, we’ll be okay. Tell me if you feel like a snooze and I'll jam you full of coffee, Red Bull, Pro-Plus. I’ll make you jittery with caffeine. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll stub cigarettes out on your arm. I’m not having you visit me in a murderous somnolent state.”

  “I want to go somewhere first,” said Clay.

  “Where?”

  “Jake’s place – I want to look at it.”

  “Why?”

  “I guess I want to make the dream a reality.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I want to see what I’ve done.”

  “Okay.” Toby stood up. “We’ll go pay our last respects.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  It was a mournful bus journey. They sat side by side, never looking at each other – but their connection was impossible to miss. The two of them shared a pained numbness, an expression of thoughtful hurt, both churning over the same agonies again and again. To passers-by they might have looked like a pair of lovers at the cigarette butt of their relationship; surely no one guessed that death stained them: it was on their clothes and faces and in their eyes. People avoided them. The seats behind and in front of them and those directly to their left were all pointedly unoccupied. People – pensioners, mothers, fathers, wandering kids – looked at them and thought whatever it was might be catching, the mood might turn violent with a bitter screaming match. Little did these people appreciate that the two men were stinking of death, the odour of embalming fluid. Two sad-eyed undertakers on a lonely ride to somewhere dreadful.

  Toby wasn’t scared of Clay. Even knowing what Clay had done, he still felt safe. He was terrified, that was true. But Clay was not what terrified him, it was everything else. He’d always been a man for facts and reality, not giving credence to what he saw as the ramblings of crackpots and charlatans. Now his entire world had been bent and twisted out of shape. From being a place he knew – but didn’t like, a lot of the time – it was now mysterious and strange. There was no such thing as witchcraft and spells that could make you kill. That was the kind of nonsense which belonged in the fiction of Carl Chainsaw. Now he had a new and disquieting thought, how much of that was actually fiction?

  If there were such things as witches, demons, ghosts, goblins, aliens, then they’d never intruded into Tobias Coops’s world. However, if even one of those things existed, it was conceivable the others did as well. It was possible the ghosts people thought they saw from the corners of their eyes might really be rattling their death chains. There was a chance the President of the United States did meet with space aliens and various treaties and accords existed between the planets. It was maybe even likely that Elvis was working behind the counter of a chip-shop in Swindon. To Toby’s mind all of these things were crazy and unknowable, but if one was possible, then the entire world was crazy and unknowable too.

  Clay he knew. Clay he regarded as solid. He’d done these terrible things but he hadn’t chosen to do them, he’d been forced into it by this awful world which now existed around them. Clay was a good man. Clay was also scared but Clay was going to help him get to know the world again. As long as Clay stayed awake and kept that remorse in his eyes, then Toby would know him and feel safe. The moment his friend’s eyelids drooped, or worse, remorse was replaced by something colder in the pupil – then Toby would worry, then Toby would run away. Until that dreadful moment though, Toby was going to trust in his friend.

  Clay stood up and pressed the bell for the next stop and they made their way tentatively down the moving bus. Toby sensed that the top-deck gave a quiet but recognisable breath of relief at their departure. It was understandable; after all, they were men who’d received bad news – and there is nothing more discomforting than men who have received bad news. It was a bright sunny day and most people were travelling somewhere nice and pleasant, so were glad that all signs of misery had departed. He guessed they wouldn’t even be curious; in fact they were probably an odd kind of anti-curious. None of them wanted to know what this bad news was; whatever it might be, they didn’t want to be stained by it too.

  Bright and harsh, the sunlight shone down on them. They walked side by side, silent mourners on their way to a funeral. Clay limped badly – the pain in his foot seeming to increase the nearer they got to the building. Toby slowed his pace to compensate, and the two men moved achingly stutteringly along.

  They both knew what they were going to see, already knew the building would be burnt, that inside would lie the beaten and charred remains of a good friend.

  Clay had seen it and Toby had seen it in the conviction of Clay’s eyes. But he still wasn’t scared of Clay. He separated them – the Clay who visited here last night was not the same Clay he was accompanying now.

  The corner waited for them, the corner they’d have to turn to see the fate of their friend.

  Clay’s limp got worse, his right foot lingering as if reluctant or even scared behind him. He winced as he walked, but didn’t make a sound. Toby kept a polite distance, his hands behind his back, his gaze ahead.

  The police officer guarding the building was looking the other direction when they finally rounded that corner. If he’d been looking up the street rather than down it, he’d have caught sight of them which would surely have made him curious. Two men appeared and then halted, quite still and terrified. One of them, the bigger of the two, seemed to collapse sideways into the black railings, clutching at the metal uprights for support. The other – slightly shorter – trembled with his mouth dropped open. He was shocked, but also looked as though he was expecting that shock.

  Clay pulled himself along the railings, out of view.

  Toby stayed and stared at the building. Alone, he knew he’d be mistaken for just another morbid voyeur, a man minding the business of somebody else’s tragedy. He looked at the windows out of which he’
d gazed the day before, the now blackened windows. He looked at the police officer – the second time he’d seen a uniform outside a friend’s house. It was another life gone, another existence destroyed.

  One could never think of Jake or Raymond or Nick again without being touched by the denouement. All memories tarnished by the fact that not only did they die young, but in such horrible violence. They were friends, he’d liked them and disliked them, he’d had some good times with them – and now whenever he thought of them, he was going to have to think of this, their brutal fucking end.

  Toby watched the house until gradually his senses returned to a semblance of normality and he could move and think and feel. All he had was hatred, complete loathing for the evil bitches who’d killed three friends and given another nightmares which couldn’t be forgotten. His anger was quiet, everything was quiet – death does that. Even though you generally can’t wake a corpse, people like to whisper around it just in case. The neighbours, stunned by the terrible crime on their street, had retired behind their curtains to mourn the bloke they’d barely known next door. The police officers, because the duty of the job demanded it, stood completely still. The pedestrians held off their whistling, their gossip, their laughter. Their eyes tried not to stare, but stared anyway at this newsworthy event on their route.

  Suddenly Clay attempted to jump back in surprise, but because of his right foot he just staggered clumsily. “That girl!” he gasped, staring ahead, eyes bulging.

  “What?” Toby was startled, but still turned his head slowly.

  “That ginger haired girl, over the road, just heading round the corner. Don’t you see her? I saw her on Holloway Road yesterday, I saw her in Soho. She keeps staring at me, she keeps following me. She’s someone, Toby, I tell you she’s someone.”

  Toby stared at him and stared at the corner. He couldn’t see anybody.

  Clay straightened up, almost as if he was going to run and somehow chase this ginger phantom on his dodgy foot – but then a mobile burst out.