Sleepless

by Lou Morgan

  The camera shifted slightly as the rescue worker reached the bottom of the hole and moved the edge of the tarpaulin, peeling it back to reveal the top of a head of sandy brown hair, matted with blood. Noah.

  It hit Izzy what must have happened. The ring of steel. The way the tarpaulin lay. Noah had been impaled on one of the steel reinforcing bars.

  “You know what they’re going to say, don’t you?” Grey stared at the television screen.

  “They’re going to say that…” Izzy couldn’t bring herself to say it.

  “They’re going to say that Noah did that to Jools. They’re going to say he did it. That he killed her, and then he … he…”

  “They can’t!” Izzy’s mouth dropped open in horror. “It’s not true!”

  He gave her an odd look. “You sure about that? It sure as hell plays that way, doesn’t it?”

  “You don’t really think that.”

  “What do I think? I think that you’re seeing things that aren’t there, and you’re doing things you don’t remember. I think that Dom turned up dead and we don’t know how. I think that the last time we heard from Noah, he was losing his mind. I think that he had the most to lose if Juliet told her parents. So, you know what? I don’t have a damn clue what I should be thinking right now, but if I was a reporter, a scholarship kid under pressure at school killing one of his classmates, maybe two, right here? It’s one hell of a story.”

  Izzy slumped into the closest chair. It was her favourite – a huge, soft thing covered in patchwork velvet and heaped with cushions. She always felt safe there, always felt happy. Or she always had, up till now.

  Now, it was just another thing that used to be good and never would be again.

  “We can’t fix it, can we?”

  “We can’t fix it.” Grey turned off the television as it cut back to the news reporter on the street again. Neither of them needed to see any more. He tossed the remote on to the sofa, then perched on the edge and rested his head in his hands. “We have to choose,” he said from behind his fingers.

  “Choose what?” Izzy hugged a cushion tightly to her chest.

  “Between the others and ourselves.” He dropped his hands and looked right at her. “Somebody’s working their way through the group, and I don’t care what Noah thought about the way Dom died. Juliet didn’t do that to herself. And Noah? He didn’t… He didn’t…” He bit his lip and stopped. There were tears welling up in his eyes – tears he obviously didn’t want her to see, because he blinked hard and cleared his throat. “We’re in trouble, Iz.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “We can hole up here, lock the doors, stay awake. That at least keeps us safe from whoever’s out there. If Noah was right about the forty-eight-hour thing, we’ll be fine…”

  “Fine. You mean fine, apart from all our friends being dead.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “What’s the alternative?”

  He didn’t answer for a long, long time. When he did, he sounded as tired as he looked. “We find the others. Whatever happens, we find the others.”

  Izzy turned the idea over in her head. Mia could be anywhere – if she was still alive. They could waste hours looking for her and putting themselves right in the path of whoever had stuck a hook through Juliet’s throat. She shivered, and right on cue, Juliet was there again. This time, she wasn’t hanging from the balcony above. This time, she was standing on the balcony and looking in. Her neck was twisted, the skin around it loose. As Izzy watched, she slowly raised one of her hands and pressed it against the glass.

  “I’m losing my mind.” It was a relief to say it out loud. Grey barely even flinched.

  “You and me both.”

  “I can see Juliet.”

  “What’s she doing?”

  “I think she wants to come inside.”

  “When we found her…” He stumbled over the words. “When the lights came on? I didn’t realize it was her. She didn’t look like her. Not at first.”

  “Who was it?”

  “It was you, Iz. I saw you hanging up there.”

  “Me?”

  Juliet’s mangled hand tapped lightly on the window, and Izzy turned away.

  “Juliet’s parents, they work in the hospital. So does Noah’s mum, right? She’s a nurse. Every day, they’re going to see Noah’s mum and they’re going to think—”

  “Stop it, Iz,” Grey snapped. “There’s no point.”

  “But we know what’s really happening. We have to say something. We have to!”

  “Why? So we can watch our lives go up in smoke, too? What about our parents? What do you think they’re going to say when we tell them we took those pills; that we’re involved in all this?”

  She was about to tell him that she knew how that kind of conversation went, and she never wanted to go through it again. But she stopped herself. Luckily, he didn’t seem to notice her hesitation. “No!” she said angrily, hoping it covered what she’d been thinking.

  “Right, then.” He softened a little. “Let’s just get through the next few hours, all right? Once we’re sure we’re not going to go completely gaga – permanently – we’ll figure out what to do. Besides –” he smiled sadly – “if we walk into a police station and tell them that you’re seeing evil nurses and dead people, and I’m seeing people who are standing right next to me swinging from steel cables, we’re going to end up in a nice comfy padded room. And probably shot full of tranquillizers. And you know what that means.”

  Izzy knew very well what it meant. It meant a cell just like the one in the video. And an ending just like it, too.

  Maybe that’s how he’d got there in the first place. Maybe he’d asked for help…

  Grey was right. They had to get through this first. Then they could maybe start figuring out a way to clear up the mess they’d found themselves in.

  If they got through this.

  “We should still try and call them,” she said.

  Grey shook his head. “They haven’t called us. Well. They haven’t called you. All they’ll get if they try me is a fish.”

  Of course, his phone was somewhere in the lake, wasn’t it? “Tigs is much more likely to try calling you than me.”

  “Yeah, well. She never gives up.” There was something that looked suspiciously like a smirk on his face.

  “Should she?”

  “Why d’you want to know?” Grey grinned and winked at her. It was, for a second, beautifully normal and she could almost believe it was the same as any other time they’d crashed out on her sofa to watch horror films all night. Almost the same, anyway. Only this time, they were the ones in the horror film, weren’t they?

  Grey pushed his hands back through his hair. “Executive decision, I’m going to the bathroom.”

  “Thanks. Probably more information than I needed.”

  “That wasn’t what I actually meant to say – although I am going to the bathroom. What I meant was – executive decision. We hole up here for now, at least. I don’t love the idea of running round in the dark, and you know what this place is like at night.”

  She did. The Barbican, once any events had finished and the Centre itself had closed for the night, was creepy at the best of times. Now, from the safety of the apartment, even the thought of venturing back out on to deserted, shadow-filled walkways outside was terrifying.

  “So. I reckon we’re going to need more coffee. Stick the machine on, yeah?”

  “You know where the kitchen is.” She tried not to sound offended.

  Grey shrugged. “I’m going in the other direction, though, aren’t I?” And with that, he sauntered off down the hallway to the bathroom at the far end.

  “Unbelievable…” Izzy muttered, shaking her head and very deliberately not looking at the windows. She rinsed out mugs and pressed the buttons on the coffee machine with shaking fingers, and generally bashed about in the kitchen the same way she always did when Grey was there. She heard the bathroom doo
r unlock and heard him coming back down the hallway towards the kitchen. The coffee maker gurgled and she turned to check it and seeing movement out of the corner of her eye, she glanced over at the doorway to the hall. Grey was standing there in the half-light, silent. Watching her. His eyes followed everything she did and he looked so serious again that it worried her.

  “What’s up?” she asked, pouring milk into the coffee. He didn’t answer. “Did something happen?”

  Grey simply leaned against the doorframe and smiled at her.

  It wasn’t a nice smile.

  “Grey? You’re scaring me…” Izzy put the milk down and dropped her hand, feeling for the handle of the closest kitchen drawer. The drawer where the knives were kept. She could feel herself starting to tremble. “Seriously, you’re beginning to freak me out.”

  He still didn’t reply. Only kept on watching her, smiling at her.

  “Grey!”

  From somewhere at the other end of the apartment, there was the sound of a lock clicking and a door opening; of footsteps coming back down the hallway. Grey’s voice drifted in from the living room.

  “How’re we looking with that coffee, then?”

  Izzy’s hand froze halfway to the drawer.

  Grey was in the living room.

  But he was also in the kitchen doorway.

  “Iz? Did you call me?” A second Grey, the Living-Room-Grey, appeared from the hallway – and the two of them were suddenly side by side in the doorway. The one who had been there all along, the fake Grey, cocked his head on one side and sneered at the real version of himself. He raised his hand to his neck and slowly drew a finger across his throat.

  “Iz, look at me,” the real Grey said quietly.

  “I am.” Her hands were shaking so violently that she had altogether given up on being able to open the drawer – and what was she going to do with a knife, anyway?

  She jerked away from the drawer, from the knives, from everything so abruptly that she knocked over one of the mugs. It shattered, sending shards of china scattering across the worktop and spilling boiling hot coffee over the edges and on to the floor. The last drips caught the light as they fell, and Izzy could see the toe of a leopard-print shoe peeking around the edge of the doorway…

  “Hey.” Grey was beside her, holding a washing-up cloth. “You’re safe. It’s fine.”

  “I’m not, and you’re not – and nothing’s fine. Nothing’s fine. It just isn’t.”

  “I’ve got this. Drink the coffee.” He pointed to the remaining mug. “You’re going to need it.”

  “I’ll make another one.”

  “No. You’ll drink that because you look like crap, and I need you to stay awake. I can make my own coffee. Besides, yours is terrible.” He dropped the cloth on the floor and started to mop up the worst of the puddle by poking it around with his foot while he handed her the full mug, closing her hands around it just to make sure. “It’s going to be a long night, and an even longer day tomorrow.”

  As she walked stiffly back into the living room, still shaking enough that she had to concentrate on not spilling her coffee, from the corner of her eye she saw the fake Grey walking along the hallway, his hands in his pockets. He stopped outside her bedroom door, turned and gave her a cold smile. And then he vanished.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Izzy had wanted to put the news on again to see if there was anything more about Noah and Juliet – or about the others. Grey snatched the remote from her hand. “Trust me,” he said, “we’ll know. One way or another.”

  So they watched films, just like they had so many times before. Like everything was normal. Old black and white movies, Izzy’s slasher films (although even Grey admitted those suddenly felt a little too real for comfort) and ghost stories. They watched vampire films and films with monsters; films with terrible lines and worse effects, in which people screamed and cried and ran for their lives, but none of them looked like they felt the same way Izzy did. None of them seemed numb. None of them seemed to be lost. They were scared, sure, but at least they knew what to do. They ran out of the house, or away from the abandoned mine. They hit the killer in the head with a shovel or blew up the mad scientist’s lab. There was always something they could do.

  What could she do? Where could she run to, to hide from the things that were in her own head? And, worse, what else would she see? What else could she see?

  Izzy knew perfectly well that neither of them were actually watching the films. They were a way of passing time, of staying awake. Nothing more. They had argued for hours. About whether they should go to the police, whether they should go to the hospital. Whether there was anything they could have done. Whether they could have saved Juliet or Noah. Whether there had been someone coming for them, too. Whether there still was. Whether they should be afraid. Because she was. She was afraid.

  She leaned back into the cushions of the sofa. However soft they were, there was no getting away from the fact that she was bone-achingly tired. Her ribs felt tender and her skin prickled under her clothes, like it was too small for her. When she stretched, her spine popped and clicked, and then felt stiffer than ever. Her eyes were so scratchy they might as well have been full of sand. Blinking, seeing, trying to focus on anything – they all hurt. When she looked away from the television screen at Grey, she could feel every muscle behind her eyes trying to refocus on him – a series of short, painful spasms and tugs inside her face. The cut on her cheek was still stinging from the antiseptic she’d cleaned it with, too. Her whole face felt like there were bugs crawling under her skin.

  Grey didn’t seem to be faring any better. He slumped on the sofa and stared blankly at the screen. Every now and again, he blinked slowly. The rims of his eyes were even redder than before, and he was so pale. His skin looked paper-thin – thin enough to see the veins beneath it if she looked closely enough and to make out the thin white scar across the bridge of his nose. She’d always meant to ask him how he got it. Maybe she should have – it didn’t look like she was going to get the chance now.

  “Would you do it again?” she’d asked as the figures on the television screen ran and screamed and hid and stabbed.

  “Do what again?”

  “Take the pills.”

  “Are you crazy? Of course not!”

  “I mean, if it didn’t go like this. If they were just … pills. And if they worked and nobody would know and nobody died.”

  “That’s a lot of ifs.”

  “I’m just trying to make conversation.”

  He fidgeted in his seat. “I don’t know. I guess I’m supposed to say no. Because it’s cheating.”

  “But you’re not going to, are you?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that I feel like I’m in one of these –” he nodded to the screen – “and I put myself right there. You know the bit where the girl’s walking up the stairs in the empty house, even though she thinks that’s where the serial killer’s hiding? And you’re shouting at her not to do it? I feel like I’m watching myself walk up the stairs. It’s going to end badly and it’s all my own fault.”

  “So … that is a no.”

  “Huh.” He looked thoughtful. “Maybe it is.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.”

  She risked a glance at the window. There was nobody there, dead or otherwise, and the flicker of blue light thrown up from the police cars and ambulances on the street had long since stopped. They were all still there, of course, but the Barbican tended to be home to the kind of people you didn’t want to risk keeping awake all night with flashing lights.

  Above the market, the sky had moved through shades of black and dawn-pink and orange and finally into the bright blue of tomorrow. Already it was beginning to bleach into the hot white of a London summer’s day.

  “Do you blame Tigs?” Izzy couldn’t stop herself from asking the question. It just sort of fell out of her, and she was surprised by how scratchy her voice sounded.

  “What for?”

  �
��The pills. This.”

  “I want to.” Grey paused. “I really do want to. But it’s not her fault, is it? She was just being Tigs. With her, there’s always an easy fix. Always has been. In her world you chuck money at something until it goes away, and if it doesn’t you chuck pills at it so it doesn’t bother you any more. Sometimes you do both. That’s not her fault, either. She just doesn’t know any other way. As far as she’s concerned, everyone can be bought with something.”

  “Is that why she has so much trouble with you?”

  “Yeah. She just hasn’t found my price yet.” He did his best to grin.

  Izzy thought for a moment. “There’ll be police about, won’t there?”

  “I guess.”

  “So at least we shouldn’t have to worry about somebody coming after us.”

  “That’s what scares you the most, is it?” He slid forward to the edge of the sofa and rested his elbows on his knees, rubbing at his face like he was drying it with an invisible towel.

  “No…” The truth was, she didn’t know. At first, it had been the video that scared her – the thought that the FokusPro could turn any of them into that. Then she had seen Juliet, seen Dom… And now she didn’t know what should scare her the most. “No,” she said again.

  “Right, then.” He stood up and stretched, yawning. Izzy fought back the urge to yawn, too. “We must be down to less than twenty-four hours by now?”

  “Something like that.”

  “See? Piece of cake. All we have to do is not go crazy and not die.” He was doing his best to grin at her, but it came out more as a lopsided sort of scowl. He yawned again. “I think half my face has gone to sleep.”