Sara’s Face

by Melvin Burgess

  This had been different – vivid, unmistakable, impervious to rationality. It had filled her senses and nearly overwhelmed her, but she had not let him know that.

  Much later, when he had seen the video diary, Mark was amazed.

  ‘She never let on. Later on, she got more anxious, but that night you’d never have guessed she’d seen anything like that.’

  Yet there were hints. When he awoke the next morning, Mark found a text on his phone, sent at half past two the previous morning.

  ‘Ghost outside curtain,’ it read. ‘What shall I do?’

  That was all. When he texted her and asked about it, she replied, ‘I told it stories.’

  ‘What sort of stories?’ he asked.

  ‘Ghost stories, of course,’ said Sara, and laughed.

  The videos tell another tale, but there again, as Mark himself pointed out, it may be that the diaries themselves aren’t real. Sara herself no longer speaks, but it may be that they’re just another voice she invented to amuse herself and, perhaps, us. There again they may be true only in parts. Truth to Sara seems to have been just one more piece in the game she played with who and what she was. Nothing else she said or did can be taken at face value; there’s no reason to treat those diaries as any different.

  So far as Mark was concerned at that point, the significant thing about the evening was not the ghost or the locked door, but the fact that they had got together again. In the storeroom that night they had made love in the glare of the neon strips overhead, but afterwards Sara had found a little lamp and put that on instead. There in the gloom they admitted to each other at last that they were in love. Yes – the real thing. They had been together and they had been apart, and all they had been able to think about was the other one – being with them, talking to them, sharing with them, making love to them. Even in the overarching presence of Jonathon Heat, Sara admitted that Mark had been there in the forefront of her mind.

  ‘We should be together,’ Mark had said.

  ‘Soon, we’ll be inseparable,’ Sara replied.

  Soon – but not yet. First, fame and fortune. Mark didn’t want to spoil the night and he held his peace, but sooner rather than later, he would try to talk her out of her plans. Fame and fortune by all means – but not like this! Not through Jonathon Heat. And no surgery. Above all, please, no surgery with Dr Kaye. It wasn’t really that he was scared she’d damage their sex life, although it did bother him. All his instincts, all he knew about her, were against it. Her inclination to hurt herself, her periodic bouts of self-destruction – the fact that this very doctor had been so abusive with those same problems in Heat – all these things rang every warning bell he had.

  He had no illusions about how hard it was going to be. How do you talk someone out of their dreams when their dreams are only just coming true? So it was very much to his surprise when she offered a way out herself.

  Later the next day, Mark rang her and found out more about the ghost – the faceless girl walking out of the door, the smell of antiseptic and blood, the fact that she was wearing Sara’s clothes. Mark was put out that they had found love, made love, declared love – and then off she went seeing faceless monsters. But he put his pique to one side. He saw the meaning of it at once.

  ‘It was wearing your clothes; it has no face, same as Jonathon Heat has no face. It’s walking his house. What else do you think it means?’ he demanded. ‘It’s about you. It’s about surgery. You’re having your face done by his doctor. It’s obvious!’

  ‘She’s not me,’ said Sara. ‘She’s someone else.’

  ‘She’s wearing your clothes.’

  ‘Anyone can wear another person’s clothes.’

  ‘Ghosts go about trying on other people’s clothes?’

  ‘Why not? Anyway, I know who it is …’

  For some reason, this statement appalled Mark. ‘Who?’ Sara hesitated. ‘I’ve seen her. I don’t know her name. Here, in this house. I think she must be one of the staff.’

  Despite himself, Mark felt a thrill of fear and fascination. ‘Is?’ he repeated. ‘Are you saying that this girl … she’s still alive?’

  ‘Maybe. I’ve seen her face. Or maybe it’s a photo …’

  ‘Oh, come on!’

  ‘I’ll prove it. I’ll find her.’ Sara nodded. ‘Then we’ll see.’

  Mark had a sudden flash of memory – Jessica telling him the story about Sara shouting at the mirror … ‘Who’s that girl? Who’s that girl? Get her out of my room …’

  ‘Or the mirror,’ he said. ‘Maybe you saw her there.’

  There was a long pause. ‘Bollocks,’ said Sara in a flat voice, and he knew he’d made her angry. Later, Mark was to regret not following up this line of thought with her, but at the time he decided that he’d been led away from his intention and made his way back to his argument. ‘But that’s not the point. So what if it’s someone else? All that would mean is someone else has been fucked around before you.’

  Not believing his own argument – he was just thinking on his feet – Mark hardly expected her to. But Sara agreed. ‘Exactly!’ she exclaimed. ‘What, then? Maybe I’m not the first. How many has he had here? And, Mark – what does he want them for? What do you think? Why does he want young girls?’

  Mark snorted in amusement. Why did a rock star want young girls? But that was obviously not the answer.

  ‘Or why does he want young girls’ faces?’ said Sara. And now Mark felt the terrors run right through him, because Sara had seen a girl who had lost her face; and what was it in all the world that Jonathon Heat wanted most?

  ‘That can’t be true … no, that’s ridiculous … surely …’ he stuttered. She must be joking!

  But Sara replied without amusement.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’m so keen any more on letting that old Dr Face Gobbler anywhere near me with his knives. But something’s going on in this house. We have to find out what it is.’

  ‘We?’ squeaked Mark. But he knew it was true. They were in this together. He wasn’t going to leave her now.

  ‘I’ll find the girl,’ said Sara. ‘You get us behind that door. Then we can talk about getting out of here before the op.’

  This conversation terrified Mark. He had been so happy – for one night only. Now in the morning there were ghosts and Heat had turned into a monster – a murderer, a thief of faces, an abductor of young girls. Such a public man to have such a terrible private life! Dark missions had hatched during the night, objectives to be fulfilled, mysteries to be solved, terrible dangers to negotiate.

  But what nonsense it all was! Heat was mad, but not that mad. Did Sara really believe he was plotting to steal her face? Mark put down the phone, lay down on his bed and wept.

  But not for long. As always, his worry was for Sara. What had liberated these terrible thoughts and visions? Was it a real ghost? Or was it what he had always feared for her – creeping madness, and delusions of danger tearing her soul apart? On the other hand, what if she was seeing something real? Mark did not necessarily believe Sara, but he did believe in ghosts for the simple reason that he had seen the evidence. He had an aunt, his grandmother’s sister, who knew the dead well. She attended a spiritualist church in Wythenshawe, where she lived with no human company, but not alone, as she always said: with her dead husband, Terry, her spirit guide, Missy Salome, and her pet cats and caged birds. Mark, along with his brothers and sisters, all thought she was mad until one day she showed him there was more to it.

  As a child, he owned a tan-and-white mongrel terrier called Taylor, who was always escaping and running away from home. The dog’s senses were so sharp he quivered with life, but he’d get so deeply involved in what he was doing that he’d forget where he was. He’d had two car accidents in this state, which led to a heavy limp in his right back leg and bad hearing. The end came when he was down the park pestering a horse – a brown filly, who was that much quicker and more nervous than the old gelding who had b
een there for years. The horse got fed up with Taylor yapping at her, waited until he was digging for rabbits in the hedge, walked up behind him and stamped on his head. Taylor quivered once more and then lay still.

  Mark was at home at the time and ran like the wind when he heard. He cradled the cooling dog and raged against the horse, who stood watching him from the far side of the field. He took his pet home wrapped in a blanket and buried him like a Viking with all his favourite things in the hole with him – his current bone, his blanket, a scattering of Good Boy Chocs, a dried pig’s ear and his collar and lead. The only thing missing was his ball, which had mysteriously disappeared.

  A few days later, his aunt amazed him by telling him where it was. Taylor had run off with it on that last fatal journey and dropped it among the laurels to one side of the mansion house whose grounds the park had once been. Doubtfully, Mark went to have a look – and there it was. Joyfully he carried it back, plastic proof of a world beyond this one.

  ‘How did you know?’ he asked her.

  ‘Taylor told me,’ his aunt replied proudly. From then on Mark was a believer. He even snuck out against his mother’s wishes to watch his aunt and other mediums performing in church, where he saw messages carried between the living and the dead on a weekly basis.

  So the world of the dead was real to Mark, but the little proofs put forward in church were an entirely different thing from Sara’s. They were friendly messages from homely spirits, family and neighbours who no longer happened to be visible. This thing of Sara’s with its torn-off face, its stink of blood and hospitals was altogether mad. Mark believed in spirits, but he believed in madness, too, and in hallucination. To his mind, it was far more likely that what Sara saw were her own thoughts and feelings animated in her eyes, rather than anything with a real life outside of her own.

  Only one thing was clear, whether this was hallucination and delusion or all for real, Sara was suffering. She had to get out – she had to escape. If she wouldn’t go of her own accord, he had to make her. But how to go about this was not so obvious.

  His first thought, despite Sara’s stories, and his own suspicions about Heat and Dr Kaye, was actually to go and tell them what she was thinking. He did not believe that Heat was as dangerous as she suddenly seemed to think – he thought of him more as a victim himself – and although Kaye was fatally flawed, Mark did not yet think that he had done any of this on purpose, certainly not that he would kill for body parts to carry out his plans. Kaye, he thought, was more wrong than bad and, if he knew that Sara was having thoughts like these, surely he’d call off the operation, for now at least.

  But Sara would never forgive him. In the end, it was that thought rather than any belief in what she was saying that held him back. For the same reason he dismissed thoughts of telling her mother. Jessica was a known flake, she’d be bound to overreact somehow, come storming in and make a mess of things one way or the other. Jessica always caused more crises than she ever solved.

  Another option was to follow Sara’s plan and try to get to the other side of that door. The trouble with that was, if she was hallucinating, as Mark believed, opening the door wouldn’t stop anything. She’d still be seeing ghosties and ghoulies and suffering delusions that there were dark secrets to be uncovered. She’d probably only put up another obstacle, another condition, and then another, until it was all too late. And if it was true … well, that was madness, sure, because what fool walks into the ogre’s den? ‘That’s what we have police for,’ said Mark to himself, although he knew very well there was no evidence that would get them to take on this job. And, anyway, what would happen if Heat caught them? Then Mark would be sent away and she would be left behind – his lovely Sara, surrounded by enemies and delusional fears, with only Heat’s mad hand to hold.

  It was a dilemma. Mark needed some advice. He rang up the only person he knew who knew Sara as well as he did – Janet.

  The first thing she asked was, ‘Have you spoken to Jessica about it?’

  ‘No,’ said Mark. ‘Do you think I should?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ replied Janet. ‘Don’t do that. She’d make a mess somehow, you know what she’s like.’ She sat down on the edge of her bed and chewed her nail. The fact was, Sara had anticipated Mark by ringing Janet up the night before. They’d had their usual long rambling conversation and, along the way, Sara had dropped in her latest game with Mark – seeing ghosts. Janet remembered the apparition she’d been seeing in the corridors? Well, she’d made a whole story up about it just for Mark – as usual, just made it up on the spur of the moment, more to wind him up than anything else.

  Janet was annoyed with her. She liked Mark, and she knew Sara had strong feelings for him. She’d seen how hurt she’d been when they’d split up. Part of the reason for the split in the first place had been Sara’s silly games and here she was doing it all over again.

  ‘Don’t you think you’re getting a bit old for that sort of thing?’ she’d said.

  ‘Ooh, get you.’

  ‘I like him, that’s all. And so do you. So why piss him around?’

  Sara had been rather light about it. It wasn’t a big deal, just a game. He was such a clever box, she wanted to see how clever he really was, if he could actually get behind that door. It was just a bit of fun … So she claimed.

  ‘He’s your boyfriend, Sara.’

  ‘He deserves it for dumping me.’

  ‘That’s silly.’

  ‘I suppose,’ Sara sighed. ‘I guess you’re right. He’d be really hurt if he found out. I’ll get out of it, don’t worry. But don’t tell him, whatever you do. I’ll get out of it somehow, OK?’

  Now, listening to Mark worrying to her over the phone, Janet was more annoyed with her than ever. Sara was unwise – but she was also her oldest and best friend, and loyalty stopped her from telling him what was going on. It wasn’t the sort of thing you interfered with. It was up to Sara to get out of it. But Janet resented being made a part of such games, and was touched by how worried Mark was about her friend.

  ‘She hasn’t said anything to you?’ asked Mark.

  ‘No,’ lied Janet obediently.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, just go along with it for now, see what happens. It’ll probably all sort itself out without you having to do anything,’ she said vaguely. ‘She’ll forget about it in a day or two. You know her.’

  Mark thought about it. ‘She’s really putting a lot of pressure on me to get behind that door, that’s the thing,’ he said.

  ‘See if it lasts,’ insisted Janet. ‘She’ll probably have forgotten all about it by tomorrow. It’ll blow over. just … don’t do anything for now and see what happens.’

  They didn’t talk for long – Janet felt too uncomfortable about the deception for that. Mark did mention Sara’s second thoughts about surgery at Home Manor Farm, but Janet, her mind on her lie, didn’t make much of it – only that it would probably be better if Sara didn’t go ahead with it.

  She didn’t want to leave Mark with nothing and so, before she put the phone down, she told him that she believed Sara loved him.

  ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘Cos you know what? I think I might love her, even.’

  Janet’s heart cracked.

  ‘You don’t think she might be making all this up, do you?’ she asked cautiously.

  ‘Do you think so?’ asked Mark.

  ‘You know what she’s like.’

  ‘Bitch, if she is!’

  ‘But you know Sara, she just goes spinning off and then she can’t get out of it; it’s just the way her mind works,’ said Janet, trying to redeem her friend. ‘Or maybe she makes bits of it up. I sometimes wonder if she really knows what the truth is.’

  ‘That’s what scares me,’ said Mark.

  He put the phone down disconsolately. Janet’s advice was good. Sara would most likely forget all about the ghost and getting behind the door within a week at the latest. But he hadn’t discovered anything t
hat would help him get her out of Home Manor Farm. At least she had agreed in principle. The only thing now, it seemed, was to wait for the ghost to blow over and try to talk Sara into leaving sooner rather than later. But he knew he had the whole power of Jonathon Heat, his wealth, his fame, his people and his vision, working against him. How could one young man with a dodgy Palm Pilot work against that?

  The answer, he told himself, was with his heart full of love. Oh, yes – Mark was, and is, a romantic. And maybe he was vain enough to believe that he could be a hero.

  Ghostly visions, lies and deception, silly games, fame, boundless ambition and an imagination that could transform ordinary things into pure magic – no wonder Sara comes down to us as such a tangle of contradictions. What did she really see, what did she really think – what were her hopes and aims? We only have the clues she left behind to work it out.

  Concerning her visions, we have three elements of evidence – her video diary, what she told Mark and what she told Janet. Which was true we do not know. Janet certainly believed that up until then Sara had never tried any of her games and imaginings on her – she always told her what was real and what wasn’t. On this occasion, she’s not so sure.

  ‘I wonder if she was just protecting me. If she knew how dangerous things really were in that place, she had reason to keep me away.’

  Perhaps. Either way, Sara had neutralised the concern of her best friend by telling her that the ghosts were games played on Mark. When Janet rang her up later that same night, she asked her about something else Mark had said that Sara had not mentioned the night before – that she was having second thoughts about the surgery. When this was confirmed Janet was delighted. She, too, thought Sara was mad to have any changes made, except perhaps to the burn mark on her face. Now that Sara said she was thinking of saying no, she realised how relieved she was.