by Seth Patrick
They were looking at her with a different kind of hunger, Claire thought: their appetite for news of their son was almost as insatiable as Camille’s desire for food.
“Have you spoken to him?” said Monsieur Koretzky.
“Spoken? No, I wouldn’t put it that way, but our souls…have made contact. He said he misses you. He can’t wait to see you again.” The couple smiled at her, close to tears. “Esteban is at peace,” said Camille. “He knows you’ll be together once more.”
Claire turned to her husband, smiling, but Jérôme was sullen. “What’s she doing?” he whispered, sounding worried.
“She’s giving them hope,” said Claire, but Jérôme didn’t seem reassured. “Look at her, Jérôme. She hasn’t seemed this happy since she came back. She’s found what she needed.”
“What?”
“A sense of purpose,” she said, watching the Koretzkys as Camille walked on. Both their faces had the same look of desperate grief, mixed with equally desperate hope.
“Yes,” said Jérôme. “But whose purpose? God’s or Pierre’s?”
Ignoring her husband’s cynicism, Claire prayed that they were the same thing.
60
When she’d gotten back from collecting Victor from the Helping Hand the night before, Julie had wanted to give the boy a bath. He liked the water, certainly, but he always seemed a little cold to the touch, and after a bath he felt warmer.
With the power out, there was no heating and no hot water, so she’d waited, expecting it to come back overnight. But that morning there had still been no power. She’d hunted down a camping stove from the back of a closet, surprised that it was working given how long it had been since it was last used—at a summer festival she’d gone to with Laure, the year before she was attacked.
She used it to heat up some water so they could take turns bathing.
“It’s ready,” she called, looking at the pitifully shallow water. “It’s not deep, but it’ll have to do.”
Victor came through and she smiled. It was good to have him back, have him safe. She hadn’t asked him about the night before, about the man in the Helping Hand, but there was something she needed to know. Something she’d wanted to know since he first came to her.
“Victor?” she said. He looked at her, attentive. “Why did you come to see me? Is it because I’m like you?”
The boy shook his head. Julie felt a sudden rush of emotion, tears welling up in her eyes. Victor stepped forward and put his arms around her, holding tight.
“It’s because of the fairy,” he whispered in her ear.
Julie was taken aback, hearing his voice. It was only the third time he’d ever said anything to her. “What fairy?”
“Mum told me that if she went away, the fairy would look after me until she came back. She said if I ever saw her, I would recognize her.”
“A fairy?” He was just looking at her, adoring, a hint of a smile on his face. “You think it’s me?” She laughed, touched by his faith in her but saddened that this was the only thing he had to cling to. “I’m not a fairy. Fairies have nice hair, pretty dresses… They always smile. They have magic wands. That’s not me, not by a long shot.” She hugged him again. “Now,” she said. “You get undressed and have a wash, OK?”
She left him to it. She didn’t see him remove his long-sleeved top, didn’t see the state of his forearm, the dry skin patterned with darkened veins, cracked and sore in places. Victor ran the fingers of his left hand over it, looking frightened.
• • •
Late afternoon, the doorbell rang. It was Laure, in uniform. Julie let her come in, but she gave her a wary look.
“Why are you here?” asked Julie, suspicious.
“I’m not here for the boy,” said Laure.
“What is it then?”
“We don’t know how long the power will be out, so we’re checking everyone’s OK. People are worried. The shops have shut, and there are rumors that the power won’t come back for days.”
“Days?” She glanced at the gloomy sky outside and, despite herself, shivered.
Laure nodded. “It’s almost deserted on the streets. Lots of people are planning on leaving town to stay with relatives.” She paused, before adding, “Do you have all you need?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” said Julie. And I certainly don’t need anything from you.
Laure’s eyes barely met Julie’s. “You could always stay at my house. I have a fireplace for heating and plenty of food.”
It took a moment for this to sink in. Then Julie laughed. “Are you asking me to move in with you?” She hadn’t meant it to sound unkind, but she saw Laure flinch a little.
“Well, I suppose.”
The offer hung out there for quiet, awkward seconds before Julie shook her head. “We’ll be fine,” she said. “Really.” Victor was all the company she wanted now.
• • •
Early evening, the doorbell rang again. This time, after Julie had looked through the peephole, she didn’t even take the security chain off the door. It was the man from the Helping Hand, and she didn’t like the thought of him being around Victor.
“What do you want?” she said.
“To help you and the boy. He isn’t safe here.”
“Leave us alone,” said Julie. The man had an intensity that scared her.
“Please,” he said. “I know what he is. He’s not the only one.”
Julie gripped the door handle tighter, ready to shut it if he made any kind of move. “I don’t know what you mean.”
The man looked desperate. She wondered what his connection with Victor was. “Listen to me,” he said. “If you stay, you’re putting Victor at risk. There are others like him, and when people find out, do you think they’ll just open their arms and accept him?” Julie looked to the floor, not wanting him to see that it was a fear she shared, that she knew it would be dangerous if anyone found out the truth about the boy. “Soon people like Victor will be hunted down, and who knows what will happen to them. It’s safer at the Helping Hand. We can protect him.”
The man gave her a broad, well-practiced smile, but the intensity was still in his eyes. She didn’t like what she saw.
“Not a chance,” she said. “Last time you people looked after him, you lost him within a day. I think I know where he’s safer, and it’s not with you.” She shut the door and listened, waiting until she heard the man descend the stairs.
And she meant it: there was no chance she would let the man near Victor again, not after seeing how terrified the boy had been last night. But there were other options.
She went into the kitchen where Victor was eating a bowl of noodles. He looked up at her, full of trust. She wouldn’t let him down. If that meant a few sacrifices, then so be it.
“Pack your things,” she said.
61
With the power down, Adèle and Chloé had dug out every game they could find and gone through them one at a time.
“Too childish,” Chloé would say to some of them. “Too long,” to others.
Adèle smiled when she realized that most of the ones Chloé was rejecting were supposed to be educational. Children aren’t stupid, she thought. They can tell when you’re trying to sneak some teaching in alongside something that’s supposed to be fun, as easily as broccoli in ice cream.
They played, and Adèle smiled and didn’t think of Simon, or of Thomas, for that matter. All she thought of was Chloé, and laughing. But there was only so much Buckaroo! you could play.
“Do you want to go out?” she asked. “Get some fresh air?”
“No,” said Chloé. “How about we play something else?”
“OK,” said Adèle. “Your turn to pick.” She gestured to the pile of games, but Chloé shook her head.
“How about Truth or Dare?”
Adèle didn
’t like the way Chloé was looking at her. “OK.”
“Truth. How old was I when Dad killed himself?”
Adèle nodded. The girl deserved answers, however hard it was to give them. “You hadn’t been born yet.”
“So he never saw me?”
“No.”
“Next question,” said Chloé. “Did he want to die because of me?”
Adèle took a sharp breath. “No.”
“Was it because of you?”
“It’s complicated,” said Adèle. She wanted the game to stop, if these were the kinds of thing Chloé wanted answers to. “You’re too young to understand.”
Chloé looked upset. She jumped to her feet. “I’ll ask Thomas!” she yelled from the doorway. “At least he’ll tell me the truth.” Then she ran to her room, slamming the door behind her.
Adèle called out to her, then followed. She felt drained suddenly, her legs heavy. She knew just how much she’d enjoyed not thinking about Simon, but it was never going to be for long. She went into Chloé’s room, where she found her crying in the corner. She knelt by her daughter and held her.
“It’s natural that you want to know,” said Adèle. “But the truth is, I have no idea why he did it.”
“Was he unhappy?” said Chloé.
Adèle sighed. “Sometimes he was unhappy, so unhappy that nothing would stop him feeling despair. Other times, he was full of life, finding happiness even in the smallest of things. It was a kind of illness, Chloé, though he refused to accept that.”
“When he died, did he know I was going to be born?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think it was my fault?”
“I know it wasn’t, Chloé. He was happy when I told him I was pregnant. Very happy.” She thought of the tears Simon had cried when he’d heard and of the way she hadn’t been sure, even then, how he’d really felt.
And she knew she could never tell Chloé the truth.
62
Toni was sitting in the empty Lake Pub when the police came.
A bottle of whisky was rapidly vanishing, but he wasn’t feeling any effect. He dreaded going back to the old house now, dreaded being told again that his mother wanted nothing to do with him, that she preferred the company of a murderer to…
Then his thoughts tangled, as he realized that murderer was just what his mother thought of him. Stopping Serge, that was all he’d done. It wasn’t murder to put a rabid dog out of its misery, was it?
Yet that was exactly the problem. Family came first, in all things.
Now Serge had made a promise to stop. Yes, he’d promised before, but this was different. It had to be. Serge was renewed, back from whatever hell he’d been sent to. He’d gotten one more chance, yes? Of course he had.
Another glass of whisky. It didn’t help.
The power had been out all night. He’d decided to stay closed today, but he’d had a text message from a friend in town about reports of looting. Daytime looting, for Christ’s sake. No way he was going to open up if that was how things were.
He thought about his friends. None that could be described as close, but he had some all the same, not just the people he worked with day to day. He was always vaguely shocked by the fact. Since his mum had died, though, what else could he do? Talk to people. Drink with them, even. He’d moved out of the old house, into an apartment, and discovered he didn’t always mind company. It seemed almost like blasphemy now that he’d sought any kind of comfort away from his family, but it was how he’d coped for the last three years.
By forging some kind of life for himself.
More whisky, he thought. Then there was knocking at the door. He walked over and unlocked it. It was the police, two of them.
“Are you closed?” said the first officer.
“The power’s down,” Toni said. “What else can I do? Besides, I heard about the looting.” He watched their eyes for any reaction as he spoke. They shared a look but didn’t take the bait.
“Can we come inside for a minute?”
Toni waved them through, wondering where this was going.
“So you’re hitting the bottle?” said the first officer, nodding toward the bar.
Toni looked across to where he’d been sitting. One glass, half-full. And the bottle beside it? Hell, wasn’t it almost empty? He hadn’t thought it would look quite so damning. “Not much else to do but worry,” he said. “I was serious about the looting.”
The second officer nodded dismissively. “Yeah, yeah. We’ve had some reports. Nothing bad.”
“Yet,” said Toni. Grim, he walked back to his glass—might as well finish the bottle now there was so little left.
“It’s weird, though, Toni,” said the first officer. This was Michael, Toni thought—not exactly a regular, but a familiar enough face in the Lake Pub. “Everything just feels…pent up. Like the town’s waiting for something to happen.”
The other one laughed. “Yeah, the fucking power to come back on.”
Toni shrugged. “I know what you mean,” he said and took another drink. His comment had been aimed at Michael. There was a feeling of something about to happen. There was thunder in the air, his mother would have said.
“Anyway,” said Michael. “Shame you’re closed. We were hoping to be able to ask more than just you.”
“Ask what?”
“We have a picture of the guy who attacked your barmaid.”
Toni felt his blood freeze. Michael held up a sheet of paper. For a moment Toni was expecting a clear still from CCTV, but instead it was a photo fit. “Look familiar?” said Michael. “Lucy managed to give us a description when she woke up.”
Toni had to stop himself staring at the officer. Woke up? “They told me she…”
“Yeah,” said the second policeman. “I heard the doctors had the same look on their faces. She pulled through.”
Toni found himself glad at the fact that Lucy was OK. She would be fine. Everything would be fine. Then he looked again at the picture the man was holding out to him.
It was Serge. Clear as day.
“Ever seen him in the bar?” said Michael.
“No idea,” said Toni, reminding himself to breathe. “I have a lot of customers.”
“Put it up inside for when you get to open again,” said Michael. “Call me if anyone knows him. And go easy on the alcohol.”
Toni nodded, pulse racing.
It would only be a matter of time. For all the isolation he and Serge had experienced, it had never been complete. People had known Serge. That was why the story about Paris had been necessary. They’d noticed when he wasn’t around.
And they would notice the picture.
He waited for the police to have safely gone. He took his keys and knew he’d had too much to drink. That he shouldn’t even consider driving.
Then he drove back up the mountain all the same.
63
In the bowels of the hospital, the lights in the unattended morgue flickered and failed, then came back, the harsh white glinting sharply off the metal doors, their latches all firmly closed. There was silence. Then a slow, steady pounding began, growing in intensity. One door shook and strained with each beat until at last the latch gave. The chamber door swung wide.
Simon Delaître crawled out from the cold metal slab, shielding his eyes from the light. He turned to look at where he’d come from. Icy water slopped from the chamber like afterbirth, pooling on the floor.
Naked, he walked out of the morgue into a hallway and stumbled upon a locker room. He punched one of the locker doors, first denting it, then, with a second punch, breaking the lock open. There were clothes inside, too small for him. He moved to the next locker, then the next. On the fifth try, he was satisfied with what he found and started to dress.
In the hospital above him, Lucy Clarsen suddenly
opened her eyes and smiled. Her room was empty, for once, Alcide back at work, the doctors with more pressing demands on their time. She’d been dreaming again—although dream wasn’t exactly what it had been, more a waking vision. This time she knew the dreams had meaning. It all came back to her: everything that she’d been unable to remember since she’d first woken. Her smile grew fierce.
She got off her bed, the lights flickering and then failing again and again. She walked along the deserted corridors in her hospital gown, searching. At last she saw him, the man in borrowed clothes.
She reached him and held out her hand.
“Come with me,” she said to Simon.
As she took his hand in hers, the lights across the hospital failed completely. There were cries from corridors and rooms where no natural light reached, anguish from staff whose equipment failed them. Deep in the basement there was cursing as the generators refused to restart.
The two walked calmly to the entrance and out of the hospital. And as they left, the building came to life once more.
• • •
They made their way to the Lake Pub and broke in around the back, then Lucy led the way upstairs to the room she used to live in.
“The pub’s closed,” said Lucy. “No one will find you here.” Some of her clothes were still in the room. She looked through them and dressed. “Are you hungry?” she asked.
Simon shook his head.
“Liar,” she said, smiling.
“I’ve eaten enough,” he said. He sounded irritable. “I can’t stay here.”
“What will you do? Go and see Adèle?”
Simon looked at her, astonished. “How did you know? Who are you?”
She stepped toward him. “Your guardian angel,” she said. Then she kissed him eagerly, and he responded. She pushed him hard to the sofa, his eyes wide at the strength in her.
Each of them had as much desperate need as the other, all thoughts gone except sheer lust. Their desperation grew. She took him inside her, feral glints in their eyes. They fucked until they both came, gripping each other fiercely. Her face calmed at last, then looked pained.
