Menace

by Gary Fry

  Jane raised one hand self-consciously to her scalp, realizing the errant hair she’d tucked beneath a plait must have come undone. Then she looked again at the author, her unease mounting. There was something Jane couldn’t understand, and she gave voice to this at once. “May I just ask one last question? Then I’ll shut up and we can just talk about the weather or something.”

  He smiled—thinly, yet authentically. “Okay. Go ahead.”

  After only a brief pause to phrase the inquiry, she asked, “If your parents were so sick, why…well, why did they have so many children?”

  The author glanced away, at the darkness gathering at the windows, whose lush curtains were yet to be drawn. Then, after another mouthful of bloody meat, which turned Jane’s stomach at a glance and possible even burdened what continued to develop inside her, he replied, “That’s partly what my book’s about, my dear. And it’s due to be released in just a few months.”

  11

  Now, weeks later and reflecting on that simultaneously awkward and yet pleasurable meal with Luke Catcher, several scraps of nebulous information had come together for Jane, and their combined form inspired little confidence.

  She was seven months pregnant and as large as she was likely to grow. She’d maintained her healthy, meat-free diet and controlled her fluctuating moods with a mixture of natural remedies: fruit teas, herbal supplements, and multiple vitamins. She’d even dyed that treacherous streak of grey, leaving her mass of hair familiarly dark, even though lately it was commonly dried-out. She recalled an earlier thought about her developing baby absorbing her strength, stealing sustenance, making her bones ache and her flesh itch. It was strange to feel as if something parasitic lay inside her, colonizing her daily functions and even her perceptions. Although Jane spent the great majority of time alone—with the exception of regular medical inspections, brief shopping trips, and occasional telephone conversations (from supportive friends, her disappointed agent, and too many cold-callers)—she found herself expressing edgy sentiments, spitting rueful comments about nothing in particular, and generally imagining that the world was harsher than, in a less uppity state of mind, she believed it to be.

  But then frightful suspicions began to take grip. Fragments of what she’d been told by the author kept returning, like unruly infants from whom she’d tried to seek respite. After their meal together, he’d left her with a promise of a signed first edition of his forthcoming memoir. That was as much as he’d revealed about the tome, despite her constant attempts, during what remained of their meal, to prise from him relevant information about his “unusual past.”

  And what did she already know about that?

  Lying back on her couch in the middle of a warm August afternoon, she reflected on what Luke had told her that day.

  The first recollection that aroused Jane concerned the author’s mother’s vegetarianism. Jane hadn’t touched a single piece of meat for months now, but this may be just a consequence of her unsettled body. Pregnancy was notorious for upsetting diet, wasn’t it? But what to make of Luke’s revelation that his mother had also had a grey streak in her hair? Just coincidence, of course; a similarly deleterious effect of motherhood. Hell, Mrs. Catcher had had six children in quick succession; that must have been incredibly demanding. No wonder she’d been, as Luke had also revealed, cranky and paranoid towards the end.

  And it was this final observation, far more than any other knowledge—including Luke’s claim that his father had been ill for many years with a serious back problem—that prompted Jane to stand from her seat, grab her jacket from her entrance hallway and finally head outside.

  Despite her present vulnerability, she had a seriously overdue visit to make. It was one that might refute her most fearful suspicions…or even, God forbid, confirm them.

  12

  Neil Lindsey’s flat was located in Brixton, a short drive through manic midafternoon traffic. Jane felt herself growing frustrated as jam followed jam, and at one stage noticed her right eye twitching in the rearview mirror.

  Gerrout o’ ma way,” she found herself spitting at her windshield.“Ah’ve things t’ do and tha’s all no’but an ’indrance.”

  Irrepressible anxiety had rendered her language chaotic, fragmentary, colloquial. But she no longer worried about why this was so. She had far more serious matters on her fretful mind.

  At last she reached the actor’s tenement home and went to park around the back in spaces reserved for each tenant. She knew Neil didn’t drive—too busy partying to invest in transport—and she selected the spot reserved for him. Then she got out and looked at the building. It was here, in the ground-floor flat, that her child had been conceived. Jane felt a little tearful approaching the property. This was the first time in months she’d have been voluntarily in touch with anyone from her small social network. Nobody other than Luke Catcher, back up north and away from the London grapevine, knew of her pregnancy. And would Neil be shocked after seeing her? Would he even suspect the baby was his? These were issues Jane had to tackle; too much had begun squirming in the dark corners of her mind to keep her infant a secret any longer. Indeed, it was the impending birth to which most related.

  She advanced to the front door and rang the bell of her former lover’s accommodation.

  While mulling over what little she’d learned lately, Jane had checked the TV listings for the satellite soap opera in which Neil played a regular role. He hadn’t featured in any recent story, but that didn’t imply anything untoward, did it? It was common for minor characters—and despite his frightful ego, that was all he was—not to appear in every episode. Similarly, a brief Internet search had turned up no significant news about the man, about how his life might be in danger from some mysterious ailment affecting his back… But Jane was getting ahead of herself, suffering more of that paranoiac state of mind she’d tried to guard against since having been told that Mrs. Catcher, Luke’s enfeebled mother, had suffered the same.

  As Jane sensed her right eye twitching again, a voice spoke from the building’s intercom system.

  “Hello? Who is it, please?”

  The voice was hale and healthy—a man’s voice. But it wasn’t Neil.

  Without pausing to work out whom she addressed, Jane replied, “Oh yes, hello there. I was wondering if I might speak to Neil Lindsey? I’m a…well, a friend of his. Jane Marlow. If you mention my name, I’m sure he’d want to see me.”

  He’d better, she thought, embracing the considerable swelling at her waist. The actor was certain to be shocked at the sight and his attitude was apt to be blunt: a young woman, in the prime of her career, compromising it with a sprog, for God’s sake! But Jane still hadn’t decided whether she planned to tell him the child was his. She was here for another reason, more an attempt to put her mind at rest than anything else. And her first observation—Neil’s failure to answer his own doorbell—hardly boded well for that hope.

  “Wait a moment,” the man said from the intercom device, and its crackling speaker fell silent.

  Jane glanced away, at the featureless street and its incessant activities: cars chugging back and forth; folk strolling anonymously along pavements; aged trees resisting urban redevelopment. Then she turned back to the door and wondered whether the man inside was one of Neil’s many brothers. Neil had claimed to have quite a lot, hadn’t he? Had it been four or five or—

  Before Jane could settle this issue, the voice returned from the intercom system.

  “Okay, you can come in,” the guy said, his tone edgy and cautious. “But please try to be quiet. If you’re a friend, you’ll know how sick he remains.”

  God, he still hadn’t recovered; it had been months since Jane had first heard about his indisposition. That was her first reaction while responding to the beep from the door and then giving it a firm shunt. She advanced into a functionally decorated hallway, her heartbeat thumping against her ribs. What was she about to find in the room, and how would it relate to her own situation? She and
her child’s biological father had been working on the coast lately—Whitby and Southend, respectively—and both had returned…altered, somehow. Was there anything more than coincidence at work here? Stepping across to the ground-floor flat’s entrance, she’d have to believe that was all it was, because the only alternative was—

  As the door opened in response to her callow knock, Jane pictured Luke Catcher’s face in her mind, an author who was cunning, clever and almost certainly troubled. He’d written a book about his past, but had felt uncomfortable discussing its events in person. And why was that? Was Jane condemned to piece together the story from investigations like this one, visiting a previous lover who’d recently been taken ill? As a man greeted her in the same voice she’d heard over the intercom, Jane wished she was safely at home in her own flat, reading Luke Catcher’s imminent publication and learning what was going on in a much safer way. She sensed her child kick against her stomach; her right eye twitched anew; she ran an unsteady hand through that greying streak of hair (the dye was already failing to hold); and she could admit to feeling terrified.

  “Please come in,” said the man, and Jane knew at once that this was one of Neil’s many brothers. He had the same dark eyes, dark hair, and chiseled physique. She entertained a brief mental image of the Catcher children, all boys like those in the Lindsey family, seated close to a cliff side in what could only be classified as a supernatural vision… But if she allowed that event to become real in her mind, what else would she accept?

  “So…how is Neil?” she asked after entering the flat and closing the door behind her. She hoped his brother would settle her mind immediately, claiming that the actor had been suffering pneumonia or some other condition unrelated to the cursed Catcher family. His sustained glance, however, convinced Jane that it wasn’t going to be as straightforward as that. The man, frankly, looked crestfallen—frightened, even.

  “Nobody can make sense of it,” he said, his hands wriggling together like insects copulating. “It’s baffled the medical world. He’s still undergoing tests, but it’s been months now. We’re seriously considering—that is, my brothers and I—alternative solutions.”

  What did he mean by “alternative”—the world of unregulated charlatans and chancers, perhaps? Just how sick would someone have to become before people grew desperate enough to pursue those options? Jane looked again at the man—she didn’t even know his name, let alone that of his multiple siblings—and was about to ask another question when she heard a sound to her right. She glanced that way at once.

  And saw a terrifying sight.

  Neil Lindsey, her former lover, a man idolized by a million dewy-eyed female teenagers across the country, resembled a crooked old man.

  He came into the room from the hallway that led to the bedroom, the one Jane recalled only vaguely from her previous, intoxicated visit. He was bent over on two walking sticks, his face lowered to the ground. He grumbled and groaned, shuffling forwards with enforced infirmity. When he gazed up, his familiar dark-eyed gaze—the look that had seduced Jane approximately a year ago, before their short-lived relationship—appeared…compromised somehow, as if no longer boasting its usual disarming glint. The light in the room wasn’t good; Neil’s brother had the flat’s curtains closed. But Jane couldn’t decide whether this was to protect the actor from even more discomfort…or shield him from the public’s eyes.

  “It was the…graveyard,” said Neil, his voice a raddled husk; he sounded about fifty years older than he ever had in his TV soap opera. “That was…what did it.”

  Jane looked away, as if expecting the brother’s familiarity with what the actor had lately become to help with translation. Then, in a rapid whisper, he said, “He has this idea in his head that he sustained this…ailment while filming a scene in a Southend churchyard. We think that’s nonsense, however. One of his co-stars noticed nothing untoward. He just seemed to collapse there, with little or no reason why.”

  “Felt it…go into me,” Neil continued, now drawing closer to Jane. “Felt it…it…IT.”

  The other man automatically offered what Jane needed to know. “That’s all he’s been saying. He’s made the same claim independently to me and every one of my five brothers. It’s as if he’s suggesting that he was…oh, I know it sounds ridiculous…that he was possessed or something.”

  This information was bad enough for Jane—it made her think of similar sensations she’d experienced that strange day in Whitby, when she’d felt something or someone violate her—but two other new factors were far worse.

  First, the way her former lover looked up at her: his previously dark-eyed gaze was now a shocking light blue. The pupils were dilated and the irises milky, but there was no escaping this disturbing conclusion.

  But it was the second realization that made Jane’s right eye start twitching again and her mind reel with mounting paranoia: Neil, she’d just learned by chance, was one of seven brothers.

  Jane glanced at the other man.

  “Whatever the truth is, we have to look after him,” he was saying, laying a tender hand upon his sibling’s stooped and burbling head. “After all, he’s the baby of the family.”

  13

  Jane hadn’t wanted to know the sex of her imminent child and had asked the woman who’d conducted her second scan at twenty weeks not to tell her whether she’d give birth to a girl or a boy. What did it matter anyway? She’d offer love to the baby, whatever its characteristics. And after two unproblematic scans, what could be wrong with the infant? Why, nothing at all. Every negative thing she’d suspected during her pregnancy was just paranoiac nonsense.

  After visiting Neil Lindsey, she spent the next few weeks hiding out in her flat and reading a number of novels she’d ordered online, each written by Luke Catcher. Jane supposed that curiosity had got the better of her, and that she’d found it necessary to review the work of the man who’d entered her life lately. She hadn’t heard often from the author since their restaurant meal; he’d sent a few emails, chiefly making casual inquiries about her well-being. He was simply being polite, that was all; he’d been brought up well by responsible parents and the issue of family was important to him. What else could motivate these occasional communications?

  At any rate, she’d told him little more than the date on which her child was due and in which hospital she’d likely give birth. This might strike some as inappropriately intimate, but as he lived so far north, her disclosures would surely have few consequences. In the meantime, she could come to grips with his fiction. If he ever made another trip down south, they might meet up again, and it would be good to tell him about the books she’d read.

  Nevertheless, the more of the novels she devoured, the less eager she felt about being reacquainted with the man. She wasn’t shocked; as a longtime fan of horror films, she knew about the darker reaches of human experience. But even so, some of Luke’s subject matter was decidedly risqué. He concentrated principally on serial killers, but most with a penchant for the otherworldly. Some professed to practice black magic, while others firmly believed in ancient myths, dark rituals and sinister folklore. The occult and the supernatural were never far from the surface of his gripping, stomach-clenching narratives.

  The overriding impression in Jane’s mind upon finishing each tome was one of deep unease. She’d met their amiable author, after all; the simple truth was that he hadn’t seemed the type to be engaged—obsessed, even—with such unpalatable issues.

  Why focus on such matters when the real world was full of real horrors? Her former lover’s physical problem was just one obvious example. As far as Jane knew, the actor was still undergoing tests with the NHS. She’d called his flat on several occasions, getting a different brother each time, as if the six of them—seven including the youngest Neil, of course—operated informal shift-work, caring for the man who was hardly able to walk and talk.

  And what was wrong with him? Jane had repeatedly asked herself this question since her visit last month
. But now, only a few weeks shy of her delivery date, she must focus exclusively on her own condition. The bulge at her waist was huge; she constantly felt her child kicking, during daytime and especially at night. Her appetite had refused to budge from its new preferences, and she hadn’t eaten meat for half a year. She also prayed more regularly, gripping that crucifix around her neck. The streak of grey in her hair, a stubborn connection to the woman she’d once pretended to be, refused to remain dyed, kept relinquishing its faux black after she’d sluiced it through with fresh chemicals. She grew regularly anxious, her nerves vibrating with unrest. She hardly dared look in the mirror on such occasions, in case that anxious twitch had returned, the tension that pulled down the lid of her right eye. She commonly found herself muttering nonsensical litanies, words and phrases whose meaning she could hardly define: “What’s tha doing here? Tha’s after no good, I’ll go bail. Get thy ways yom wi’ thee, get thy ways yom.”

  And all the while, a single concern lingered at the back of her mind: what had that sonographer—the woman’s name was tattooed in Jane’s mind: Jackie Meadows—seen while conducting her first maternity scan?

  Jane couldn’t say why this continued to trouble her, but the truth was that it did. It always had, ever since it had occurred. She’d known at a profound level—as profound maybe as her developing child—that something had been wrong that day, something far worse than faulty wiring on a medical machine. But she’d pushed it aside, just as she’d pushed aside so many other creepy episodes and observations during her pregnancy. Nothing should interfere with the successful delivery of her child. The terrible fact was, however, that she believed something already had.

  She was destined to have a boy, she simply knew it. But…what else might come along with the lad?