Torchwood_Long Time Dead

by Sarah Pinborough

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the man – Owen – says. ‘We’ve caught them. There won’t be any more trouble.’

  ‘But what about Billy Grainger?’ Eryn asks. ‘Did they hurt little Billy?’ The man and the woman look at each other and she sees it all in that glance. Billy Grainger won’t be in her class if they ever let her go to school today. Little Billy with his squint and his knees that pointed inwards is done with school. He’s done with life. ‘Oh no,’ she says, and puts one hand over her mouth.

  ‘Come into the kitchen,’ Suzie says, resting a gentle hand on her arm. ‘I’ll make a pot of tea.’

  Eryn allows herself to be led out of the sitting room where the suited man is talking quietly through whatever kind of phone is in his ear, and she sits at the round pine kitchen table that looks so ordinary with her post opened from yesterday still littering it. A gas bill and a bank statement, nothing exciting, there never is, but she was going to file it away when she got home. After everything that’s happened, she’d completely forgotten.

  ‘I saw them with Billy in the playground,’ she whispers.

  Suzie Costello is adding tea bags to the pot and waiting for the kettle to boil. She doesn’t turn around.

  ‘I knew something was wrong when I saw that,’ Eryn continues. She doesn’t know if the woman is listening and she doesn’t really care. She just needs to say it again as if maybe by repeating it over and over she can get it out of her system and get back to being sensible Eryn Bunting, a nice young girl, responsible primary teacher, a little old for her time but that’s all right because she quite likes being that way. ‘Nobody ever plays with Billy. He’s the one that even the teachers have a hard time liking.’

  She pauses then – she feels bad saying it even though it’s true and even though it can hardly hurt Billy now – but it feels wrong. ‘But those two little girls were playing with him. They were pretty girls too.’ She looks up at the woman. ‘Twins. I didn’t recognise them, which is strange because I know most of the children in the school, even if only by sight. It’s like a sixth sense with teachers, that ability to recognise your own. They had Billy’s hands and then they just led him right out of the gate and Billy didn’t so much as look back, even though all the children know that they can’t go out of the gate at playtime.’ She frowns with the memory. ‘I banged on the window but they didn’t hear me. I could see Anna, who was on gate duty, telling Jimmy Logan off for something and she hadn’t seen them.’ She can remember every detail perfectly. The classroom smelled of dusty central heating and her heels clattered on the parquet wooden floor of the old building as she ran outside. She banged her hand on the door frame and it really hurt but she didn’t stop.

  ‘I called after them,’ she says. ‘The bell had just gone and all the other children were lining up to come back inside, but I ran out of the gate. They were just going round the corner and into that bit of woody wasteland that people keep saying is going to be nice new flats but has been empty for ages apart from the hoarding. I’m not much of a sprinter and I had heels on – only low ones, but still not exactly running shoes.’ She can remember how her legs burned with the sudden exertion and her large breasts bounced painfully under her jumper. She can remember wondering what was scaring her so much. This wasn’t a strange man with sweets luring one of her children into a car or something, this was just children sneaking off to play. Still, she couldn’t fight the dread that coursed through her veins. Something wasn’t right. Not at all. It was those children and they had Billy and they weren’t HER children and there was something very wrong because they were playing with Billy and no one ever played with Billy.

  ‘They must have been walking fast, because they were quite far across the muddy ground and were weaving their way through the bushes. I called after them again but they didn’t stop until they were sheltered in the middle of a thicket. That’s when they finally looked my way.’ A sob caught a little in her throat. ‘Billy was crying when he turned around. He saw me and he looked so scared. He started to call out and one of them lifted her hand and wrapped it round his mouth. His glasses tilted funny on his face. It was so weird. She looked like she was barely exerting herself, but poor Billy’s face was all squashed in her grip.’ She looks up and swallows. It’s so hard to believe. Just thinking about it now she feels crazy.

  ‘It’s over now. A cup of tea and getting it off your chest will make you feel better.’ Suzie is getting milk out of the fridge and gives her a half-smile as she speaks. It’s sympathetic but Eryn can see she’s not really listening. How can all this seem so ordinary to her? And to those others?

  ‘The other one turned round and looked at me. She was so pretty. Maybe 6 or 7. About Billy’s age, I suppose, but he’s always been smaller than the other kids. She smiled right at me and I stopped moving forward. I don’t even know why.’ Her nose was running and she wiped it on the back of her hand. ‘She was laughing at me. I could tell. I looked behind me, hoping Anna had come too, but there was no one there. I was so scared. Not as scared as Billy, but so scared. I looked at Billy, stuck and so small between them and I could see that he really thought I could help him. That I would just make them let him go. That’s what adults do, isn’t it?’ Suzie puts the mug of tea in front of her and she wraps her hands round it, needing its warmth. ‘That’s when it happened. The one that smiled at me, she just reached up and tugged at her pony tail. I didn’t understand what was happening at first. It looked so odd. And then I saw the skin coming away from her face and showing what was underneath. All those TEETH.’ She gasps at the memory. ‘Just teeth. Sharp, shiny teeth. Rows and rows of them. It turned my way again and I knew there was nothing I could do but run. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. That’s what I thought. And god help me, as the second one started to pull its face off, I turned and ran all the way back to school.’

  She’s shivering, and Suzie leans in to steady the mug in her hands before she spills it. ‘Drink that. It’ll make you feel better.’ She has dark serious eyes, but Eryn wonders how anything could make her feel better ever again. She holds the mug but doesn’t drink it. She’s still lost in the re-living of the previous afternoon. She thinks she will be for ever.

  ‘I ran into my classroom and went to the window. My class were all confused, and the TA was trying to get them organised with art stuff and was calling to me to help but I ignored them all. I watched the gate as the minutes ticked away. I’d almost convinced myself it had never happened at all and it was all in my head, like some kind of brain tumour making me see things, when the two blonde girls came back to school, holding hands with each other and no sign of Billy. I’ve never been so scared in all my life. I couldn’t stay. I faked a migraine, went home and then called the police.’

  ‘You did the right thing.’ Suzie sips her own tea, and Eryn raises her mug.

  ‘What happened to Billy?’ she asks, and then takes a sip. She knows the answer, but she needs to hear it out loud.

  ‘They ate him,’ Suzie says, and Eryn starts to cry properly.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asks. ‘Who are you people?’

  ‘We’re Torchwood,’ Suzie answers, as if that explains everything. Eryn drinks her tea.

  It was all there. Everything. She remembered it. And more. She sat in the gloom of the bathroom, her pants down around her knees still, and her mouth dropped open slightly. Billy wasn’t run over. Not like she remembered it. Those girls had eaten him. There were things like that everywhere, she was sure of it, and there was Torchwood to stop them. That’s what they did. Torchwood. The young man and the woman. It was the woman that she was thinking about now though. She pushed the image of long-dead Billy to one side. She couldn’t help him then, and she couldn’t help him now. It was the woman. The woman in the deli. Suzie Costello.

  One hand rose to her mouth and her brain itched like crazy as the pieces came together. She’d sat at her kitchen table and drunk tea with Suzie Costello, and then she’d forgotten everything. She’d fallen asleep. When she
’d woken up she was hazy. Not quite ill but not quite well either. She took a couple of days off work and that’s when she found out that Billy had been knocked down and killed, and then she’d been upset and little things like that month’s filing went out of her head. But now she remembered – it was clear as a bell in her head. The bank statement was on her kitchen table when Suzie Costello made the tea that made her forget. But after that, it wasn’t there. She could see the gas bill but not the bank statement.

  Suzie Costello had taken it. She knew that, just as she knew that Suzie Costello was the woman she’d bumped into at the deli, the woman with the dark shadow on her back. She trembled in the gloom and hot tears spilled down her cold cheeks. She remembered everything. Torchwood. Torchwood were meant to protect them from things like the girls that ate Billy, that’s what they did, but now Suzie Costello had the darkness inside her, the terrible, terrible darkness that was so hungry and wanted to play with them and make them scream and never let them die and…

  Eryn got up from the toilet, pulled up her knickers with trembling hands and then locked the door. She was freezing, and her legs numb from sitting half naked for so long. How long? She didn’t know. She didn’t care. Suzie Costello had the darkness inside her – she’d seen it on her back. And now that she’d seen it, it would come for her, she knew that, and the darkness would be far worse than the thing with the teeth that had eaten poor Billy. The darkness was everything in every nightmare she’d ever had.

  There was a lipstick in the bathroom cabinet and she wrote her message with it on the bathroom wall.

  I REMEMBER.

  Eryn Bunting was as sensible and practical in her death as she was in her life. She smashed the glass of the cabinet mirror and sliced her wrists open with two deft slices, straight up the vein, not across. She sat on the toilet again and let out a sigh. The glass breaking wouldn’t have woken Alan. He’d stretched out across her side of the bed and would be sleeping like a baby. Black spots appeared in the corner of her vision. Not her side of the bed any more. She didn’t mind the nothing that crept in and stole her away. Nothing lived in it. Nothing that would make her scream.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Suzie let the chemistry take hold. For the first five minutes or so in the cab, they’d kept themselves under control, but as soon as the driver had turned off the main road and the back of the car was in relative seclusion, she and the policeman were all over each other. They just couldn’t help themselves.

  By the time they tumbled through the door to his small flat, they were laughing and tearing at each other’s clothes, kicking their shoes off as he half-carried her into the bedroom.

  ‘Excuse the mess,’ he muttered, shoving abandoned shirts and trousers to one side so they could fall onto the unmade bed. She giggled as his knee caught awkwardly on her skirt and he laughed back before kissing her some more. A rush of warmth overwhelmed her. This wasn’t like it had been the night before with the stranger whose dead mess now littered her own apartment. This was normal. She liked him. She really did. She hadn’t felt like this in such a long time, even before she’d spent such a long time dead. This was old Suzie back, girly and soft and just wanting him to sweep her up in his arms and make everything OK.

  Their breathing got heavier and she felt the yawning space inside her opening up. The shadows that surrounded her were reaching for him but she pulled them back, containing it all inside. The darkness couldn’t leak out; not here, not now. No, she thought. No, you can’t have him. She closed her eyes. Not yet. Not ever.

  His mouth was warm on her neck. She had to kill him, she knew that, and she would, she really would, when this was done, but she wouldn’t give him to the place on the other side of the gateway she had become. She wouldn’t let the darkness have him. She closed herself off to everything but his touch.

  Afterwards, when they were finished, she dozed off, content on his chest. Killing could wait. Everything could wait. Just for a little while.

  Sirens wailed through the Cardiff night as the shadows stretched across the city. The black patches left in the woman’s wake expanded hungrily. She was distracted and it could play. It needed MORE. There was so much pain to explore. It was becoming impatient with her containing it. Soon it would be too strong for her and it would pour out through her eyes and consume them all, but for now it stretched as far as it could in the patches that had leaked from her.

  On his way home from the theatre, Colin Friend was wondering at the unfairness of his life. He was a good actor, but never quite good enough it would seem. Slightly too short for this role, not quite handsome enough for that and not quite ugly enough for the staple diet of ‘character’ parts. He was nearly 40 and living in a studio flat in bloody Wales for the duration of the run – which after tonight’s poor audience showing might not be anywhere near as long as planned – and had actually been grateful to get the gig in the first place.

  When he’d left drama school, he’d been so full of high expectations but, as much as he tried to keep the dream alive, now that his hairline was receding and the offers of work were thinning just as quickly, it was hard to keep the bitterness at bay. He lit a pre-rolled cigarette – no Marlboro Lights on his pay cheque – and inhaled hard. What would he do if he gave up acting anyway? He wasn’t qualified for anything else. At some point, though, he was going to have to make financial plans or he was going to end up back in his mum’s spare bedroom, and that was something he could live without.

  As it turned out, money was no longer going to be a worry for Colin Friend. Nor in fact were the terrible reviews that would hit the local papers the next day calling his performance ‘the worst Macbeth in the history of the Scottish play’, one saying he ‘didn’t know whether to laugh or cry and neither in a good way’. These things were soon to be completely insignificant to Colin, who, as he rounded the final corner to the slightly tired modern block he was renting in, spotted a strange dark shadow against the bus shelter.

  He wouldn’t have stopped at all if the cat, only its front paws and head visible, hadn’t yowled. It was an awful sound, not the normal angry hiss associated with the independent animal, but a cry of pain and terror. Colin liked cats. His mum had two, and sometimes he thought he liked those old moggies more than he liked her. He wondered if the cat was trapped or stuck to something, or maybe had been hit by a car and knocked into the gloom and, throwing his cigarette away, he trotted over to it.

  He frowned as he crouched down and stroked the cat’s head. Its ears were pressed flat against its head and it was trembling. Nothing was visible from the midsection, and its lower body was lost in the pitch-black shadow falling across the back of the bus shelter. The oddness of the dark was forgotten.

  ‘Let’s get you out of there and take a look,’ Colin said softly. As last words go, they weren’t the ones he’d planned to send into posterity, but then neither was this exactly how he’d envisaged his last moments in this dimension. There would be no wailing fans. There wouldn’t even be a body. His hand reached into the shadow and then he froze. What the…?

  Within moments, both the man and the cat were gone, and if there had been anyone passing to listen, they might just have heard the very faintest of terrible screams.

  It would be a small comfort to Colin Friend, if there were any comfort left in his tortured eternal existence, to know that he wasn’t alone. Over the course of the night, fifteen more people stepped into unusual black patches. One stumbled out of one dimension and into the next while drunk, the others were simply victims of their own curiosity. One was the Mayor’s driver, who’d had to wait so long for his boss that he ended up stopping on the way home to take a piss up against a wall and thought the dark shadow would hide him from view. It certainly did that. He arrived in Hell with his flies undone.

  In other parts of town, several people committed suicide after scrawling ‘I Remember’ somewhere it could be seen. The message wasn’t for anyone in particular, it just needed to be out. Torchwood and the
terrible blackness had become one for them, and with Torchwood gone, there was only the blackness left and they knew, although the rest of the city hadn’t woken up to it, that the blackness was coming. It would swallow the people and then the city and then the entire world and there was no one left to stop it.

  It was coming. The screaming of millions.

  When Suzie woke up, she was still tired and incredibly bleary, confusion coming from inside her. It was as if she was both in the room and also spread across the city at the same time. Her ears ached as if someone had shrieked right into them. It was the strangest sensation and she shivered slightly. What had happened? Had the world inside her escaped a little while she’d drifted? She felt the darkness pull back inside, curled up and secure behind her eyes. Maybe it was just that sleep had eluded her since her most recent resurrection and now that she’d finally dozed off her body wanted more. For the first time, she hoped that was so.

  The sheets smelled of washing powder and cotton and for the first time in a long time, she felt something close to normal. It couldn’t last of course, she knew that, but she wanted to enjoy it before the morning rolled around and she’d have to kill him and disappear into her strange new life. She stretched one arm out. She didn’t want to kill him yet. She didn’t want to kill him ever. She squashed the old Suzie’s thought, but she couldn’t quite squash the feeling that came with it. There was something about Tom Cutler that stopped her feeling lonely. No one else had ever done that. She had an awful precognition that when she killed him she’d be lonely for ever. Her hand found nothing and she sat up on one elbow and looked around. He wasn’t in the room.

  She found him in the lounge. The curtains were open wide and he was by the window, sitting on the edge of an armchair and staring out at the night. He lit one cigarette with the butt of another.

  ‘What is it?’ she mumbled, tying his tatty dressing gown around her waist.