by Ryan Casey
But there was nothing. As Ashley approached the road that his flat was on, he examined the roundabout from every angle he could for some kind of explanation. But, nothing. No clues. No explanations. Just rows of shops. Speeding, honking cars. Nothing more.
Ashley made his way through the double doors at the front of his block of flats. He kept his head down as he jogged up the stairs, which reeked of piss. His footsteps echoed as he climbed his way up, his knees aching with the weight of everything that had happened over this last day. It felt like he’d woken up with a hangover and never truly got over it.
He made his way down the second-floor corridor. Kept his head down as he crossed the carpet, much softer under his shoes, and headed towards his wooden door. His heart raced. He could hear whispers from the flats along the corridor. He hoped they wouldn’t notice him. He hoped they wouldn’t speak to him, not today.
He reached his door. Stuck his hand in his grey jogging bottoms and fumbled around with his shaking hand for his key. He dropped his key on the floor first time, and then sunk down right away to pick it up again. He stuck it in the lock. Turned it.
“Hey, Ashley.”
The voice from behind him as Ashley opened the door made the hairs on his arms stand up. He froze. He wanted to just get in and out. He couldn’t be doing with any questions. He couldn’t be doing with any shit, not today.
Ashley turned around. It was Carlo.
Only Carlo wasn’t grinning at him with his chipped tooth. He wasn’t throwing banter in Ashley’s direction. Instead, he was half-hiding behind his flat door, gripping onto the frame.
“Hey, Carlo,” Ashley said. As much as he’d wanted to avoid people in his return to his flat, he think he’d have preferred Carlo to act the same rather than…Well, whatever this was. “You…you okay?”
Carlo nodded just the once. His brown eyes were wide and his hair was tufted up. “I…The landlord. He came. Cleaned up. I think he…I think he heard too. About—about—”
Carlo didn’t finish his series of “abouts”. Ashley had already done a decent job of figuring out that “Grace” was the likeliest word to follow.
“I’m just going to stay somewhere else for a few days,” Ashley said, dancing around the elephant in the corridor as much as he could. He opened his door even more, listening to it creak as it moved. “So I’ll—um. I’ll see you around.”
“Yeah,” Carlo said. He nodded again. Moved further behind his doorframe.
Ashley turned around to his door. Opened it up completely and headed into his flat. His cheeks burned. Time seemed to stretch out. Carlo had never acted like that with him. Is that how everybody was going to act with him now? Did they seriously all think he was involved in Grace’s disappearance in some way?
He closed the door to his flat and was surrounded by a strong, chest-tightening tang of orange air freshener.
Even with his door closed, he knew Carlo was still out there staring at him.
Ashley didn’t spend long in his flat. He checked on the bathroom, which admittedly had been cleaned rather well. The landlord had left an ominous, “We’ll discuss payment soon” note on top of the loo, but it was better than it could’ve been. Looking over at his breakfast bar, it looked like the crumbs had been cleaned off there too. Like the place was ready to rent out to somebody else.
In truth, that’s what this probably was. Preparation for a new tenant.
Ashley showered and changed into some green skinny jeans, a striped green t-shirt and a grey hoodie. Just changing clothes made him feel a lot fresher, although he’d still have to take a shave when he got back to the Wisdom household. He rubbed his tongue across his teeth as he packed his blue rucksack with shirts, jeans, socks, boxers.
He figured he might not be back here for a very long time.
He went over to his light wood bedside cabinet. He could hear people chattering outside, so he decided to wait until that chatter died down before setting foot out of here. He didn’t want to risk another Carlo-like situation. He had no idea what people thought of him, or how differently everybody might react to him. It was like he’d become some kind of weird celebrity overnight. Some kind of mass murderer—except they’d probably treat a mass-murderer nicer in case he decided to kill them.
He got a sweet whiff of old belongings, like an old person’s home, when he opened up the bottom drawer of his bedside cabinet. The hinges of the drawer creaked as it opened, stuffed with old photographs, old items, old belongings. Memories of Grace that he’d kept locked away in a drawer. Memories that he swore he’d never look at again, except when he was drunk, or stoned, or in the clutches of grief.
He reached in and pulled out the first pile of printed photographs. He rubbed his fingers across the smooth surface of the top one. It was a photo from a night out that they’d had printed. An old digital camera of theirs had crashed and lost all of their holiday photos, all of their memories, so they’d made a vow to have all special photos printed after that.
Ashley flicked through them. The photos of them in fancy dress. Grace wearing a pink wig and grinning away with Ashley and two of their old friends, Dave and Megan. Ashley was wearing a Super Mario outfit. He smiled as he flicked through these pictures. Smiled at all these memories long gone. But memories that he now had the opportunity to live again.
A weight sunk to the bottom of his stomach. He tasted something salty on his lips and realised he was crying. The memories were gone. Dead. Buried. Because nothing would be the same again. Nothing would ever be the same again.
Ashley would still wake up at night convinced Grace was dead.
And Grace. She’d still be…different.
He went to close the drawer and stop himself moping about these reminders of the past when he saw something lingering at the bottom of the drawer. A blue Pukka Pad. One of Grace’s old university notepads. He smiled to himself. Reached in and grabbed it. Maybe the pad could come in handy. Maybe Grace could get back to sketching again. She’d always been good at art. Maybe now was a good time to get out her creativity. It was supposed to be helpful with times of stress, right?
He flicked open the Pukka Pad after wiping the dust off the cover. The pages were sharp against his thumb, and the pad smelled musty and old.
But it was what was on the pages that made Ashley freeze.
The notepad dropped from his hands. He stood up. Jolted to his feet. His heart raced. His throat welled up. This wasn’t possible. It wasn’t possible.
Except it was. It was right there, etched in pencil right below him.
On the left-hand page, there were a series of lines. An angular shape, like a hexagon. Hexagons within hexagons. Just as angular as the lines Grace had started to etch on her parents’ kitchen floor.
The last thing she’d seen.
But it was what was on the right-hand page that made Ashley’s skin crawl even more. That made him want to hurl and cover up the orange air freshener smell with more vomit, more sickness, more confusion.
He blinked. Tried to see something different. Tried to convince himself he was imagining things, just like with the scales, just like with Grace’s return itself.
But he wasn’t.
Every line of the page was filled with writing.
And every line of the page said: YOU’LL UNDERSTAND YOU’LL UNDERSTAND YOU’LL UNDERSTAND.
FIFTEEN
When Ashley hopped off the bus and arrived back at the Wisdom household, he noticed that Mr. Wisdom’s prized Mercedes was nowhere to be seen in the drive.
He unlocked the door with the spare key Mr. Wisdom had hesitantly provided him with last night. As he did, he could hear muttering behind him. The snapping of cameras. Questions. The press were still gathered around. Ashley had made a point of ignoring every possible local news story when he’d been out, and kept the television away from the news channels. But he knew. He could sense it: the scepticism, the outcry. He was under scrutiny.
But he had bigg
er problems on his hands.
Under his arm, rather. He kept the blue Pukka Pad tight against his body as he slammed shut the front door. The house echoed as the door closed. Ashley turned around. Examined the dimly lit hallway. Looked at the pictures of Grace, all across the dark wood cabinet beside the stairs. Grace at school. Grace at graduation. Grace on holiday.
All with those striking blue eyes. All of them static and rigid, but more real than the Grace that had wandered back into his life.
He pushed open the kitchen door. On the side of the marble worktop, where the sun was shining through, he could see there was a note of paper underneath a flat grey stone. Ashley walked over to it and slipped it out, taking a read.
Gone to town for a break. Back later. Make yourself at home. X
The final sentence had clearly been added in a different style handwriting than the first two sentences, the discrepancy between Mr. and Mrs. Wisdom clear even from a piece of notepaper.
Ashley placed the note back under the stone. He turned around and looked at the patch of brown carpet that had been stacked on top of the etching that Grace had started on the kitchen tiles. He wanted to see what was under there. To confirm his suspicions that the drawing he’d seen in the notepad was the same hexagonal lines that Grace had started on the floor.
YOU’LL UNDERSTAND YOU’LL UNDERSTAND YOU’LL UNDERSTAND.
What did it all mean? What did any of it mean?
He crouched down and lifted the edge of the rough brown carpet. He got a sour whiff of dirty old mud, wedged into the foundations of the carpet by footsteps that had been walked years ago. Ashley’s heart raced as he pulled the carpet back and stared at the chips in the floor, the knife-shaped holes and lines. He stood back. Heard a few noises outside—sounds of footsteps getting closer, of voices approaching the house, of an engine stopping or starting. He froze. Stared through the lowered blind at the silhouettes beyond.
Nothing. Nobody at the door. Not Mr. or Mrs. Wisdom or Grace. Nobody.
He took a deep breath. Got a sour taste in his mouth. What was he so worried about, anyway? He was only looking at the tiles. Only checking to see the etching matched up with these weird drawings in Grace’s old notepad. What was wrong with that? He needed an answer to this. He needed to know for definite. He needed to see it for himself.
He returned to his knees and moved back the carpet again. Rubbed his fingers across the dusty indentations beneath him. He could hear creaking in the house. Creaking as the warm sun beamed against the building, drifting through over his skin.
And then he saw it. Half of a hexagon, stabbed right into the solid kitchen floor.
And starting just inside this hexagon, there was a smaller hexagon, unfinished after Ashley’s intervention earlier that day.
Ashley gulped. Licked his dry lips, which tasted of damp old carpet and dust. He placed the Pukka Pad beside the etching on the floor and opened it up on the page he’d folded over, past the innocent self-portraits, past the drawings of the gardens and the lakes and the villages.
His stomach sank when he saw it again. He had known all along that the hexagons on the page of Grace’s Pukka Pad matched up with the attempted hexagon on the floor, but seeing it here like this just made it all the more weird in reality.
But it was the words. The words that made the hairs stand up on his arms.
YOU’LL UNDERSTAND YOU’LL UNDERSTAND…
“When you do understand, you’ll see there’s nothing to worry about. Nothing ever to worry about again.”
Grace had written these words. She’d written these words and drawn this hexagon before she’d fallen through that sinkhole.
And now she was talking about them, obsessing about them, like they were the most important things in the world.
A creak upstairs.
Another creak.
Ashley froze. The only room upstairs was the loft conversion that Mr. and Mrs. Wisdom had turned into their bedroom. But they were out. He’d seen the note. They’d gone to town for a break. They’d said so on the note.
Another creak, and then another, then another.
The hairs on Ashley’s arms stood up. The sour taste in his mouth got stronger as he crouched there, completely static, completely frozen.
Somebody was in the house.
Ashley listened closely for more noises. He thought he heard them, but that could just be the journalists or the sun on the house or the—
A little mumbling. A muttering. Somebody…somebody was speaking.
“He—hello?” Ashley called. His throat was dry. His head pounded. He wasn’t sure whether calling out was the right thing to do. It must’ve been Mrs. Wisdom. She must’ve stayed at home. There had to be a logical explanation for this. For all of this.
Then, he heard a door creak. A wardrobe door? Or a bedroom door? One of the two. It had to be. Someone had to be in. Home. They had to be.
“Hello? It’s…it’s Ashley,” Ashley said, his voice tight and reluctant. “I…Who is that?”
He crept over towards the kitchen door. Out of the warmth of the kitchen and towards the stairs. He couldn’t hear anybody up there anymore, as he held the Pukka Pad tightly underneath his arm, curling the pages as he moved. His legs shook as he walked. Fuck—he wasn’t even sure why he was walking. There was somebody in the house. That was enough reason to turn around and walk away.
But no. There was nothing malicious in this. It was either one of the Wisdoms, Grace, or a journalist who had sneaked their way in.
Ashley grabbed a black metal candleholder from the dark wood cabinet as he passed.
He wasn’t sure whether he was more fearful of his girlfriend or of a journalist intruder after all.
“I’m coming upstairs,” Ashley said, as he took a first step up the soft-carpeted stairway, which creaked beneath his feet. His cheeks flushed. He regretted saying those words right away. If there was an intruder, they’d know he was coming now. They’d be able to ready themselves. To prepare themselves.
He clutched the heavy candleholder tightly in his hand as he got further and further up the stairs. Every step felt like it lasted forever. The dark-wood door at the top of the stairs didn’t seem to be getting any closer.
Another rustling. Another movement.
“If…If that’s Harold or—or Mrs. Wisdom or Grace, please, just…” But the more he spoke, the less he believed his own reassurances. But he was going to have to see who it was. He was too far into this place now. There was no turning back.
He stopped outside the doorway. Stood there for a few seconds. Cold sweat trailed down his forehead and onto his lips. He held his body tense, but he wasn’t sure there was any other way he could hold it. He gripped the candleholder in his sweaty hand, the Pukka Pad wedged underneath his other arm.
“Okay,” he said to himself, taking a few shaky deep breaths. “It’s probably nothing. Probably nothing. Just look. Just—just look.”
He placed his hand on the cold metal door handle. Held it there for a few seconds. Took another shaky deep breath. Held his tongue against the ridge of his mouth.
“Come on. Come on. Come on.”
His heart pounded as he lowered the handle and pushed open the door.
The light pierced his eyes from the wide-open skylight. The sun beamed into the room, over the white bedsheets, which smelled strongly of a spring meadow.
But it wasn’t the bedsheets or the skylight that caught his eye, not when he adjusted to the brightness of the light.
It was Grace.
Except it wasn’t Grace.
This woman was standing underneath the skylight peering right through into the blue sky. Her neck was perfectly arched backwards. Her eyes were rolled up into her head, saliva oozing down her chin, laced with blood.
And covering her back—Ashley couldn’t make it out properly for the bright light through the skylight, but he could make it out well enough. Just enough to understand that he hadn’t
been completely insane last night. Just enough to convince himself that he hadn’t been imagining things.
Grace’s back was covered with thick ridges. It was like she was covered in a lizard’s scales, except her human flesh and skin were still there and they were dripping blood, sliced like pieces of meat.
“Dalhar Tethys,” Grace mumbled, more blood-laced saliva dribbling down her chin.
“Gr—Grace?” Ashley said. He started to walk towards her, then away from her, then fuck-knows-where to her. What was she? What did he do? How did he react?
Grace’s body continued to shake as she stood on the very tips of her toes staring up into the blue sky. It was like she was standing up having a seizure.
“Dalhar Tethys,” Grace repeated, pronouncing the plosives right from the back of her throat like no other words Ashley had ever heard her mutter.
“It’s—It’s okay,” Ashley said, as he rushed over to Grace and tried to place a hand on her shoulder—
She spun around as he did. Knocked his hand away, sending the candleholder flying to the other side of the room. He fell back to the floor with a strange force, like she had a bubble of energy surrounding her and he’d made contact with it. His head spun. He smelled metal in his nostrils. The same metal he tasted at the back of his throat. The smell, the taste of a nosebleed. A taste he’d experienced so many times in his youth, but never as serious as this.
He looked up towards Grace. She was looking right at him now, her eyes still upturned, phlegmy saliva dribbling down her chin. Her nipples were erect. She was still on her tiptoes. Still shaking like a phone on vibrate.
“Please, Grace. Come…come back to me,” Ashley said, his bottom lip quivering. “Just—just come back.”
“The year of the reptile,” Grace said. “The year the great reptile rises from the dust and makes everyone understand. Dalhar Tethys.”
