The Returned

by Seth Patrick

  “Are you OK?” said Julie.

  “I just stumbled,” said Adèle. “I think I’m a bit tired, that’s all.”

  “Please, sit down. Let me carry the tray over.”

  Julie took the tray from Adèle and led her across to a seat, then cleaned up the broken cup.

  They both sat again. Adèle looked at Julie with a sad smile. “Weren’t we less formal, once?”

  “That was a while ago,” said Julie.

  The conversation stalled for a moment. “So,” said Adèle brightly. “You’re back with Laure again! I’m so glad. I’ve not seen much of her in all this time. Even as neighbors.” She leaned over, conspiratorial. “I think she works too hard.”

  “It’s temporary,” said Julie. Putting work first was something else that Laure would have to change if she wanted things to progress. “Until the power outage sorts itself out, anyway.”

  Adèle nodded. “Thomas works hard too,” she said, frowning. Julie tried and failed to come up with a way to keep the conversation going, but thankfully Adèle spoke again. “So who’s the boy?”

  “My…nephew. He chose a bad time to come stay.” Julie changed the subject quickly. The less they talked about Victor, the better. “You know, a man came to my apartment looking for you.”

  “Really?”

  “He called himself Simon,” said Julie. She wondered if he’d actually paid Adèle a visit. “At the time I didn’t really think much of it, but now… Was it him? Your Simon?”

  Adèle shook her head. “Simon’s dead.”

  Julie could see the truth in her eyes, though. “I know,” she said, putting her hand on Adèle’s. “But was it him? Did he find you?”

  Adèle looked at her for a moment, feigning confusion. Then, with a mixture of fear and sorrow, she slowly nodded.

  71

  In the apartment above the Lake Pub, Simon Delaître woke.

  “Hello,” said Lucy, grinning at him.

  He sat up sharply, looking at her with suspicion. “Did you drug me?” he said.

  She raised an eyebrow. “Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “And why are you angry? How long’s it been since you last slept? I bet it feels like a thousand years.”

  Simon kept scowling. He threw on his clothes and headed for the door.

  Lucy smiled at him. “Where are you going?” she asked, pouting. “You aren’t still going after Adèle? What’s the point? You can’t have been that happy.”

  Simon turned to her. “Shut your fucking mouth,” he snarled, his fists balled by his side. “You know nothing about me. You know nothing about us.”

  Lucy shook her head. “I think I know plenty. I mean, look at yourself. You’ve changed. You can feel it, right? Simon, you’re dead. Face it. Come with me. I know where to go. I know what to do.”

  He thought. Then he shook his head. “I need to understand,” he said and left.

  • • •

  Father Jean-François heard the door of the church open behind him. He didn’t turn. He felt it in his blood, without having to see which of them it was. He’d known it was only a matter of time before one of them came.

  “Hello, Father,” said the voice behind him. “Remember me?”

  Reluctant, he turned around. “Of course, Simon,” he said.

  “You’re not surprised?”

  “No. I was expecting that you, or someone like you, would come to see me. Just give me one minute, and I’ll be with you.” He put his hand into his pocket, checking that his cell phone was there, then went to the vestry to do what he needed to do. Before he returned, though, he sought out the bottle of brandy he always kept hidden and took a drink. Usually it was only brought out when he delivered bad news to someone who might need it afterward. This time, it was he who needed the lift.

  Simon was sitting in a pew, waiting, a look of absolute desperation on his face.

  “What brings you to me, Simon?” said the priest, avoiding the dead man’s eyes.

  “I died, Father. I think I came back to understand why. To understand my own death. Do you think that’s possible?”

  The priest nodded slowly, still not quite looking at him. “Yes, it’s possible.”

  “You’ve known me all my life,” said Simon. “You know my story better than I do. I need your help. I don’t remember it, you see. I don’t remember anything about that last day, and I need to know why I did it.”

  Father Jean-François was at a loss for words. He could hardly come straight out with it, could he? “It’s difficult to say. You were a very withdrawn child.”

  “When you heard about my suicide, were you surprised?”

  “I was very sad,” the priest said, looking at his hands.

  “But were you surprised, Father?”

  “Surprised?” He shook his head. If Simon wanted to know, he had that right, surely. He made himself look up, eye to eye. “No. It didn’t come as a surprise. We had all been worried about you for so long. I doubt anyone was surprised.”

  Simon looked distraught. “But I’ve changed,” he said. “I know I have. I think I can make Adèle happy.”

  Father Jean-François shook his head and felt his courage fail him. With courage, he would have told Simon that he’d heard him say exactly those words before, more than once.

  And then the doors of the church opened again, and the priest stood, stepping back from Simon as the police filed inside.

  “Don’t move!” came the shout. “Stay where you are.”

  Father Jean-François had only enough courage left to meet Simon Delaître’s angry gaze.

  “Thanks,” said the dead man bitterly, and then the police were upon him.

  72

  Toni and Serge reached the lake quickly, too quickly for either of their liking. They found themselves at the same spot where they would have been if they’d headed straight downhill from the old house. They shared a look but didn’t comment on it. Hours of walking had gotten them precisely nowhere, and it wasn’t something Toni wanted to dwell on.

  Ahead of them, in the low water of the lake, the steeple of the ruined church was fully exposed, and the tops of other walls were visible nearby.

  “OK,” said Toni, making sure he had his bearings while he got his breath back. “Now we head to the northwest and hope the road there is beyond any roadblock the police might put up.” He started to walk along the shore, but Serge wasn’t following. Instead, his brother was calmly taking off his shoes.

  “What are you doing?” asked Toni.

  Serge gestured at the lake. “It’s quicker to swim across.”

  Toni looked fearfully at the cold, still water. “Please, Serge. I can’t swim all that way, not now. I’m shattered.”

  “Come on. It’s not that wide. We did it as kids.”

  Toni shook his head, unconvinced. Yes, they’d done it as kids, but now he was overweight, out of shape, and exhausted.

  “Come on,” said Serge. “Trust me.” He tied the laces of his boots to his belt at the back and stepped into the water. “It’s OK. It’s not that cold. Come on.”

  Toni shook his head again, but he sat and began to take off his boots. When he put a foot in the water, he yelped. “Christ,” he said. “Serge, it’s freezing.”

  “It’s not freezing,” said Serge, smiling in encouragement. “Chilly, maybe.”

  Toni looked across to the other side, worried. The far shore looked impossibly distant. “I won’t make it.”

  “Of course you will.”

  “What about what’s underneath? What if I hit something under the surface?”

  “We’ll avoid the old village, Toni. Look…” He pointed to a large rock on the other side. “See that rock? We aim for that, and we’ll avoid any trouble. OK?”

  And with that, Serge waded out and started to swim. Toni had no choice but to follow, the sh
ock of the cold taking his breath from him again, his weak strokes moving him slowly forward in the water while Serge powered on.

  He could see his brother forging ahead. “Slow down, Serge,” he yelled, having trouble keeping the water from his mouth. “Wait for me.”

  Serge stopped, treading water. “Come on then,” he called. “We’re almost half—” His voice cut off as he suddenly disappeared below the surface, almost as if he’d been dragged under.

  “Serge!” Toni yelled, swimming urgently toward the spot where his brother had been. “Serge!”

  Toni took a breath and went under, opening his eyes and trying to see through the murky water. He dived down, but he couldn’t stay under for more than a few seconds before he had to resurface. He tried again and again, desperately searching, but there was simply no sign of his brother.

  It wasn’t long before Toni could feel his fatigue start to overwhelm him. He knew he couldn’t stay out there any longer, so he swam back to the near shore and dragged himself out. He sat shivering, watching the water, stunned that his brother was gone.

  “Forgive me, Serge,” he said and held his head in despair.

  73

  Thomas sat in his office, watching the CCTV feed from the station’s cells. Every now and again, the power from the hard-pressed emergency generator in the basement would flicker, sometimes enough to bring his PC down. Then, he would have to wait until it rebooted before he could watch again.

  Watch Simon Delaître refuse to stay dead.

  Everyone was exhausted. A third of his force had gone now, not turning up for shifts, unable to be contacted. All his remaining officers had to pull extra hours, and he was rotating staff, sending them home for six-hour breaks. He hoped that most of those left recognized the sense of emergency and would rise to the task.

  The town was still managing to get calls through to the station. It had its own cell tower, drawing its power from the generator. And thank God, Thomas thought. The priest’s call had come through, and Thomas had rustled up every officer he could spare. It was only when they’d reached the church and had their man in handcuffs that the stares began, the whispers, the wary eyes.

  Here was the man their captain had killed. They’d seen the body bag. They’d seen him go to the morgue. Now he was back as though nothing had happened. Welcome to my life, thought Thomas grimly.

  Some of those officers hadn’t returned to the station, he noted. He couldn’t entirely blame them, of course. If he’d been a weaker man, he thought he would have done the same—run from it, rather than face it down. Whatever it was.

  The last he’d heard from the mayor’s office was that the power situation would be resolved within twenty-four hours.

  Twenty-four hours, he thought. They could hold out for one more day before going begging for extra help from outside. As long as that hadn’t just been a lie too. He called Bruno into his office. “Bring the prisoner up here,” he said.

  “Delaître?” said Bruno.

  Thomas nodded, and he could see the unease flicker across Bruno’s face.

  Three officers brought him up, cuffed. They sat him down.

  “The three of you can go,” Thomas told them.

  Bruno seemed uneasy. “Are you sure, sir?”

  Thomas looked at Delaître. The dead man was watching him with a dark smile. “Yes,” he said. “Leave us.”

  Thomas showed Delaître some images. One was a picture of Camille Séguret, taken from the school’s commemorative website. One was of the woman who had called herself Viviane Costa, something Thomas now had no doubt was true. “Look familiar?”

  Delaître said nothing.

  “Are there others like you?”

  Nothing.

  “Why are you here? Is the power outage because of you and your kind?”

  Delaître’s smile became a sneer. “How did you deal with Adèle?” he said. “It must have been hard. It can’t have looked good, shooting a man who was so inconvenient.”

  Thomas scowled at him. “I won’t let you near my family again.”

  “Really? I think you’ll find I’m very persistent.”

  “I’ll find a way,” said Thomas, teeth gritted. “Now answer my questions. How many of you are there, and why are you here?”

  But Delaître would answer nothing. He just sat there with his sneer. Frustrated, Thomas had him taken back to his cell, asking Bruno to stay for a moment.

  “Nobody lets him out. Not again, not for anything. Give him a bucket to shit in. If he even shits at all.” He thought for a second. “In fact, nobody opens the door again, you understand?”

  Bruno nodded. He was untroubled by the order, Thomas noted, an order that for any other prisoner would be a breach of human rights. Bruno, it seemed, understood just as well as Thomas that Delaître wasn’t exactly human. “Yes, sir. What about meals? He keeps asking for food.”

  “Nothing,” said Thomas. “He gets nothing.”

  He dismissed Bruno and went back to watching the prisoner on camera. There had to be some weakness, something that he could exploit. A few minutes later Delaître raised his shirt, and Thomas saw what appeared to be a wound, like a burn, covering much of his chest. Delaître prodded his own skin with a detached curiosity, seemingly unworried by a lesion that would have had any normal man rolling in pain. He pushed at the edges of the damage, peeling back a small piece that he then tore away.

  As Thomas watched, Delaître held the flesh up to the light, his expression one of mild interest. And then he ate it.

  I’ll find a way, Thomas had told himself. Maybe now he had it. Simon Delaître would wither and waste in his cell. Adèle would never even have to be told he’d returned after the shooting. Because however long it took, the man would never leave that place again.

  74

  Chloé didn’t know what to make of the boy. They were bouncing together on the trampoline, but he was so quiet. “I haven’t seen you at school,” she said.

  “That’s because I don’t go,” said the boy.

  “How will you learn to read?”

  “I can already read,” he said.

  And they kept bouncing. That was how it went until Chloé decided to confide in him—although she had a vague awareness that it was more like a boast.

  “You want to know a secret?” she said. The boy nodded. “Swear you won’t tell?”

  “I swear,” he said seriously.

  “My dad was dead, but he came back to find me.” She expected him to call her a liar.

  Instead he smiled. “I’m dead too,” he said.

  Chloé laughed. “Stop it!” But the boy nodded. They both stopped bouncing. Chloé’s laugh faded, and then her smile went too. She believed him.

  “And I can show people things,” he said. It was his turn to boast.

  “What things?”

  “I don’t know. Whatever’s the biggest in their minds, I think. Even if they don’t know it.”

  “Show me,” she said, wary.

  The boy raised his arm and pointed to the door. Chloé turned to look.

  It was her mum standing in the doorway. Adèle, but from two years before. Chloé knew that somehow. Adèle, from the day Chloé and Thomas had come home, and Thomas had gone to fetch her mum, then had shouted at Chloé to get to her room, to go now, and stay inside, and she’d done as he’d asked. But she’d peeped once, peeped to see her mother when the ambulance had come, and she was being taken away, her nightdress covered in blood.

  And now her mum stood there again in the same nightdress, blood everywhere, her wrists cut deeply open, and the life pouring onto the ground.

  Chloé fainted.

  • • •

  Adèle was first to see her fall. She ran outside. Julie followed, to see Chloé prone on the grass by the trampoline.

  Adèle knelt by her daughter, brushing the ha
ir from her face, clearly terrified to move her. “Sweetheart, can you hear me? Chloé?”

  “What happened?” asked Julie, mainly to Victor, but the boy just stood on the trampoline, silent and solemn.

  “She fell,” said Adèle. “I saw her fall.”

  Julie stepped in. “Let me,” she said. “I’m a nurse.”

  She checked the girl for any obvious injuries before lifting her and carrying her inside, throwing one more questioning look back at Victor. She laid Chloé on the sofa, aware of Adèle behind her, watching, fretting. Julie could empathize now more than ever.

  With care, she checked Chloé over more fully. Her breathing and heart rate seemed fine, and nothing appeared to be broken.

  “Is she OK?” asked Adèle, shaken.

  “I think so,” said Julie, feeling pretty shaken herself. “Did you see how she fell?”

  “No. I only saw it out of the corner of my eye.”

  Julie nodded. She was satisfied the girl wasn’t hurt. Sprains and bruises were possible, but the best thing she could do for Adèle was give her certainty. “She may have been dizzy,” she said. “Like you earlier. It’s probably a virus, but she doesn’t seem injured. I don’t think you have to worry.”

  Adèle nodded. Then Chloé stirred, opening her eyes a little.

  “It’s OK,” Julie told her. “Just lie still and rest.”

  Chloé nodded in silence, her eyes fixed on her mother’s face. The girl wore a curious expression, Julie saw—almost of accusation.

  Julie turned to Adèle. “Keep an eye on her,” she said. “She needs peace and quiet. I’ll take Victor back to Laure’s. If you’re worried, just come get me, OK?”

  “OK,” said Adèle, not taking her eyes off her daughter.

  Julie took her leave and marched Victor back next door.

  She gripped him by the arms and crouched down to his level. “Tell me what happened,” she said, trying to sound firm while keeping the anger from her voice. “That’s an order.”