Menace

by Gary Fry

  None had been there on the day…except in that weird hallucination Jane had experienced while gazing out of the dark old house in the background.

  But they were all certainly here now.

  3

  The photographer hadn’t included a business signature at the foot of his email, and she had no prompt way of contacting him. Jane’s earlier thoughts about the guy’s mysteriousness resurfaced, but then she focused on being more practical. With her hands shaking, she telephoned her agent, hoping he’d still have a number for the man. When the call was answered, it occurred to Jane that she might have avoided this conversation by performing an Internet search for the photographer, but it was too late now: Jack Bentley had begun to speak.

  “Hey, Jane, good to hear from you. Listen, I was about to call anyway. I’ve just been in touch with Lauren Jenson—you know her?”

  “Uh, no. Sorry, I—”

  “She’s a big wheel in the lingerie world. Anyway, she reckons she might be able to secure us—by which I mean you—a yearlong contract modeling underwear for a major catalogue. How about that, eh? Are you going to thank your uncle Jack?”

  The guy, a dedicated family man, was innocent enough in his flirtation, and Jane had been under his auspices since the start of her career, five years earlier. He’d spotted her at an aspirants’ photo shoot in London, one of those cattle markets where the chance of a bid could be ascribed as much to astrology as careful preparation. But from the 100-plus girls attending the event, only she and a few others had been selected for further consideration. Jane, looking in a mirror later at her parents’ Clapham semi, had concluded that her unusual bone structure was probably what Jack Bentley had noticed. She got her figure from her mother and her angular face from her father, whose ancestors, two generations back, had been Romany travelers, untamed and exotic. Both of her parents, chaste and protective, had accompanied her to early negotiations with Jack—she’d been only sixteen—and the commissions had started coming in only weeks later.

  But how to reply to Jack now? He was someone else she’d yet to tell about her pregnancy. She thought this was probably unprofessional conduct, but how else to deal with it? She wished her mum were still alive to offer reassuringly solid Christian advice. But she and Jane’s dad had died in a car accident before she was twenty. Jane had cried for months afterwards, but now thought she was getting over it.

  “Listen, Jack, thanks as ever for all your work on my behalf,” she said at last, calming the tumult in her skull. “It’s appreciated.”

  “It ain’t free, darling. Fifteen percent.”

  “And worth every penny.” She paused a moment to let the compliment do its work, and then went on at speed. “But look, I wonder if we could discuss all this another time—tomorrow, maybe? I’m right in the middle of something and need your help.”

  “Sure, give me a call in the morning. I won’t be seeing Lauren for another few days, anyway. But I did say we’d give her an answer before the week was out.”

  “I’m pretty sure that won’t be a problem.” Jane hesitated, drew a sharp breath, and then simply said it. “In the meanwhile, do you remember that job you rigged up a few weeks back—the one where I had to travel all the way up to bloody Yorkshire?”

  They talked for several more minutes, during which Jane felt her hand holding the telephone more and more anxiously, her fingers almost turning white. While speaking, she’d been unable to tear her gaze away from that frightful image onscreen, all those creepy-looking kids who simply couldn’t be there…couldn’t.

  At last she got a telephone number from her always-organized agent.

  After hanging up, she counted to ten before redialing. By this time, she’d moved into a different room—the kitchen, where she switched on the kettle for a mug of comforting tea—and her call was answered soon after.

  “Craig Collins speaking. What can I do for you?”

  Jane hurriedly reintroduced herself. The photographer struggled for several seconds to remember her—Jane supposed that in his profession he worked with lots of attractive women—but when she mentioned that empty old house on the northeast coast, he achieved immediate recognition. Maybe the place had been spooking him lately, too; after all, he’d had to work with the materials Jane now saw again, as she took her steaming mug and the phone’s handset back to her lounge.

  But then she got down to business.

  “I really like the finished product. It’s…intriguing, as I imagine your client wanted it to be.”

  Just then, Jane noticed what was missing from the book cover: a title and the author’s name. How stupid of her. She’d been so shocked by the content of the image she hadn’t realized its publication paraphernalia was yet to be added. And who was the author? Who was the publisher? What would the book be called? In short, why did it all seem so fucking mysterious?

  But she must remain focused. After drawing another deep breath, she said, “Could you tell me where the six children came from?”

  Craig hesitated a long while, as if he didn’t wish to discuss the issue, but then Jane realized—after hearing a brief slurp—that he’d been taking a drink of something, just as she now did. But was his beverage as mild as tea, and was it also to calm his nerves? It was impossible to tell, and anyway she needed to concentrate on what he had to say.

  “They were the ‘further materials’ I mentioned on the day we did the shoot. Basically, it was just an old photograph the author sent to me. He said he wanted it integrating with the image of you, making it look as if you were the kids’ mother standing outside their former home, with only the sea behind you all. That’s the only instruction I received, other than the necessity of capturing you in a variety of emotional postures—that was the phrase the guy used. And after I’d selected the best of the snaps we took up there, I emailed them as JPEGs and a few days later, the author replied and told me to use this one: the one I’ve just sent you.”

  “So…you’ve never met him? Whoever he is.”

  “There’s no mystery, Jenny.”

  “Jane.”

  “Sorry, Jane.” The photographer paused, as if to add: No mystery except for why you’re asking me all these questions. But then he said, “His name’s Luke Catcher. Look him up on the Net. He writes dark suspense novels and is pretty popular. But this latest book—the one we’ve worked on—is some kind of memoir, apparently. A reminiscence about his unusual youth.”

  Jack Bentley had already told her about this, but again the phrase unusual youth intrigued her. She looked back at her PC’s screen, examining those children one more time. She felt as if a thousand questions were bubbling inside her, but eventually she reduced this chaos to just one.

  “When you received the JPEG image of the kids,” she began, and took another slurp of salving tea, before finishing what something deep within forced her to say, “who was standing where I’m now standing, in front of the gang?”

  The photographer exhaled sharply, as if finally tiring of all these snooping inquiries into his working methods. But when he spoke, his voice sounded distracted and uninterested, every bit the preoccupied artist she’d met on the coast, an attitude she’d mistaken for nefarious collusion with his unknown clients.

  “That’s the funny thing,” he told her, but as he went on, Jane couldn’t see anything funny at all. “He’d cut out the person at the heart of all those brats. There was just an adult-sized gap.” Then, after another unhelpful pause, Craig Collins added, “Maybe Luke Catcher was one of the sprogs in the photo. Maybe the missing figure was his mother. And maybe he…hated her.”

  4

  Sleep didn’t come easily to Jane that night, even after resorting to her usual prayers. She kept dreaming of mothers—her own in particular, clinging onto a crucifix and wishing for peace and prosperity. She also dreamed of another woman, but one bearing no features Jane could recognize. In truth, this mother was just a void, an absence, a black shape into which Jane felt herself being pulled while screaming like a child
. Then the figure subsumed her, and after reopening her eyes, Jane was no longer in London. She was back up north, outside that coastal property, the one alongside which six children bayed, each desperately in need of care. She went to them, feeling something deep inside her twitch and churn as they all—dressed in clothing from another era, just as her peripheral vision confirmed Jane now was—turned their creepy blue gazes slowly her way…

  5

  The following morning, with no work appointments to attend (she’d postponed a new photo shoot because she was due at the hospital in the afternoon for her first maternity scan), Jane searched for Luke Catcher on the Internet. She found him immediately, his official website appearing at the head of countless links to pages dealing with his work. After connecting to his homepage and observing many covers of mass-market books, she was surprised she’d never heard of him.

  The author, who came with many commendations from the serious broadsheets, wrote literary dark suspense novels, and, on the basis of a quick browse around his site, Jane learned that he was a regular bestseller with a dedicated fan base. His forum had around 2,000 members and he even turned up from time to time to respond personally to inquiries. But the question Jane wanted to ask was more private than what was afforded by a public message board.

  After scanning several more pages detailing the content of his work—serial killers, forensic detection, abnormal psychology, even the occult and the supernatural—she found a contact section, where an email address for his webmaster was situated beneath his agent’s postal address. Jane had a website of her own, and deployed a similar trick. Putting an imaginary middle-man between oneself and the public was an effective way of screening out the many wackos and weirdos the world was unfortunately full of. She suspected that any message she sent would get straight through to the author; he wasn’t that famous.

  This latest thought offered her confidence as she carved a missive on the unblemished slate of the email. And eventually, after some judicious editing, she settled on an informal tone.

  Dear Mr. Catcher,

  You and I have never met, but I hope you’ll remember me anyway. I am the model you selected to appear on the cover of your forthcoming memoir. I was very flattered to have been offered this work and hope I have done the image justice.

  The reason I’m writing is curiosity, I guess. I’ve now seen the final image and cannot help being intrigued by the children seated behind me. The photographer (Craig Collins) said he was instructed to Photoshop them onto the picture of me standing in front of that house.

  I suppose I’m just wondering who the children are. I’m pregnant myself, you see, and have a natural interest in all things maternal at the moment.

  Hope you don’t mind my asking!

  Best wishes and good luck with the book.

  Yours,

  Jane Marlow

  She’d hesitated before mentioning that she was expecting a child of her own. After all, this would be the first person she’d told, and a complete stranger to boot. She wondered why she’d done so and what mysterious alchemy existed in this yet-to-be minted relationship… But then she decided that maybe the simple reason was its anonymity: the guy didn’t know her from Eve and probably wouldn’t care anyway. Indeed, she’d be surprised if he even responded to her email.

  Jane sent the missive, shut down her PC, and then retreated to her bathroom to wash and change. She had her first hospital scan today—the dating one to determine when the child was due—and it was surely too soon to sense anything moving inside her. Nevertheless, as she climbed into the shower wearing only her cross around her neck, that was exactly what she did feel: a little shifting in the belly, like an intruder in a home who had no business visiting at all.

  6

  The hospital was a few miles from her flat, but it was cheaper to travel by bus than drive and pay for petrol and parking. Such cost-cutting was what her future financial situation had reduced her to. Whenever out in public, she dressed down, in baggy garments and a pair of shades. She wasn’t deluded enough to think that anyone would recognize her from the many millions of images they saw weekly, but she’d always drawn a lot of attention, especially from laddish men, and today she could do without that.

  It was this—a meddlesome guy—and her youthful hunger for partying that had got her into trouble in the first place. But as she entered the NHS institution with its grumble of infirmity and antiseptic scents, she revised this thought. The baby was only a “problem” if she chose to view it that way. And she still wasn’t sure she wished to terminate it. The feeling she’d experienced more recently—of something growing inexorably inside her—had left a mark on her mind, like a pledge of mounting affection, of fondness, of burgeoning love.

  While heading for the maternity ward, she wondered again whether she should tell Neil Lindsey, the man who’d fathered her child, that he was about to acquire a responsibility more significant than his regular appearance on a satellite TV soap opera. But Jane knew that she meant nothing to him, that she was just another notch on his thoroughly dented bedpost, and that only acrimony was likely to follow. Maybe his attitude towards women (well-documented in the tittle-tattle columns of tawdry tabloids) could be ascribed to having grown up with none. He was one of…how many brothers? Five, was it? More, maybe? Jane couldn’t remember, but soon realized that such psychological speculation would get her nowhere. The man wasn’t to be trusted, simple as that. And although the alternative—trying to survive alone, without sufficient resources to do so—would involve a struggle, what choice did she have? It was the child she must protect at all costs.

  There. She’d just experienced a feeling of connection to the life developing rapidly inside her. And now here was more evidence of her escalating bond: a first scan; an opportunity to see the growing fetus.

  Thrusting aside a mental image of a woman standing near a coastline with many children beside her, Jane advanced to the reception desk and announced her arrival.

  She was called into the consultancy room half an hour later. Inside was a plump, smartly dressed female sonographer, maybe forty years old, seated behind a gruesome-looking device with an intimidating operating desk, a mammoth screen, and a sucker on a wire hanging beside a surgical bed. After being greeted and asked a number of health-related questions, Jane was instructed to remove her jacket and climb on the bed to repose. Then her loose sweater was elevated to reveal her midriff. The sonographer’s eyes betrayed a telling flash of envy as she rubbed gel onto Jane’s belly and reached for the suckered snout.

  “Is your partner not with you today, Ms. Marlow?” the woman asked, and if this insensitive question had helped the woman deal with the unequal comparison between their figures, Jane felt disappointed. But she decided to humor the plump professional.

  “No, he’s out of the country,” she replied, the lie coming disconcertingly easy. Then she was unable to prevent herself from elaborating. “He’s involved in finance and travels the world. But we’re both very excited, as you might expect.”

  “How lovely for you,” the woman went on, and there was no trace of cattiness about this comment. In truth, she sounded as if she witnessed alternatives to comfort and security all too often: single mothers-to-be with little or no idea what their futures held… But then the sonographer eliminated Jane’s paranoiac mind games by getting on with her job. “Just lie back and let’s see how things are coming along.”

  She made the baby sound like an object, but Jane supposed this was just a turn of phrase. The woman’s London accent was strong, almost cockney, and although Jane had, for professional purposes, tried to eradicate most traces of her average upbringing from her speaking voice, she felt relaxed enough to drop the act today.

  “What are you hoping for?” asked the sonographer, running the rubber snout across Jane’s flat flesh.

  “Owt.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Oh, sorry,” Jane continued, wondering where that geographically inappropriate colloquial word had c
ome from. “I mean, anything. I’m not bothered. A boy or a girl.”

  “Well, we’re unable to determine the sex during this scan,” the older woman explained, observing her enormous screen, which, only a brief glance confirmed, meant little or nothing to Jane. It was all static and blotches, wobbling images that refused to cohere. “But when you return in a few months, we can—”

  We can…what? What could the hospital do when Jane visited for another scan? The sonographer wasn’t saying. While examining that chaotic gathering of writhing pixels, she’d gone silent. Was there a problem? If so, surely Jane had a right to know. And she was just about to raise her head and ask for clarification when the woman spoke first.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Marlow, would you excuse me a moment?”

  “Yes…of course,” Jane replied, beginning to worry as the sonographer crossed the room and exited quickly. Was something wrong with her child? Jane was shocked by how much she cared. Only yesterday she’d been considering abortion, and now that seemed a monstrous act, as monstrous as her religious parents would have considered it. But it was the connection to her unborn child that disturbed Jane, and the professional’s sudden departure seemed to threaten that.

  Jane sat up, wiped gel from her belly with a disposable tissue, and then thrust down her sweater, as if attempting to protect her baby far too late, after her negative thoughts had already done so much damage… But that was nonsense, surely. And so were her ensuing thoughts about that strange old house on the coast, where six other children were clustered on the cliff side, in as much danger as her own might be. Then, panic encaged inside her like a vixen in a trap, Jane imagined that dark figure extracted from Luke Catcher’s familial photograph: the cut-out woman, the missing mother, nothing more than a void seeking—