by S. C. Ransom
“What did you do?” I asked with a creeping horror, not sure I really wanted to know.
“I did the only thing I could do. I took your memories at the same time that she was stealing them.”
“But why? And how could you do that? Why didn’t you die too?”
“I had to act quickly, so I took the only option: I emptied my amulet completely first,” he admitted.
“You let them all go? All the memories? The happy thoughts? Everything that keeps you from sinking into despair every day?” I could hardly believe it. All he’d told me about the amulet, about keeping sane in his awful existence, all of it relied upon having a store of memories in his amulet. And because of me, because of what I had done, he had lost them all.
“But I thought that an empty amulet was impossible, that you would sink into unbearable despair. That’s what you told me.”
He looked into my eyes. “That’s all true, but I had to try. It was because of me that you had put yourself in Catherine’s power, so I had to try to make things right.”
“So how did you do it?” I whispered.
“I wasn’t sure what to do, but I knew that I had to be fast. I also couldn’t risk filling it up completely as that would have taken me with Catherine, and I wasn’t going to leave you.” He smiled at me, almost shyly. “Releasing the existing memories turned out to be pretty straightforward,” he continued. “Much easier than I expected, actually. It’s through our will that the memories are stored there, and it turns out we can set them free when we want to. I don’t know what happened to them. Maybe they find a home in someone’s mind and I added a little bit of false happiness to their life.” He smiled. “I only had a second; a fraction of a second. Once I had cleared the amulet I took a copy of every memory that Catherine was pulling out of your mind.”
“Could you see it all?” I whispered, mortified.
“Well, I tried not to look at them,” he said apologetically, raising his eyes to mine. I couldn’t hold his gaze.
“After Catherine had disappeared,” he continued, “I waited with you until the ambulance arrived. You were unconscious. Luckily Rob had seen you fall to the ground, and when he got to you, he found Grace too.” He spat out Rob’s name. “When he couldn’t revive either of you he got help.
“They took you both to the hospital. Grace was wearing the amulet so I was able to follow easily. I could see you,” he said wistfully, “but I couldn’t get into your head, only hers. I sat by you for days, watching as the doctors argued over whether you had any chance of recovery. Then they started to talk about switching off your life support.” His voice was tight with pain.
“I knew my only chance was to get your amulet back on your arm. I just felt that the connection that it gives us would make it easier to transfer all the memories back into you. But I was running out of time. My only choice was to find a way of persuading Grace to give it to you, but it wasn’t as easy as I had hoped.” He paused. “I had to get a bit creative,” he smiled a little as he looked up, guiltily.
“What did you do to her?”
“Well, I didn’t have the quality of the connection with her that I have with you, so it wasn’t easy to manipulate her. But she was wearing the amulet a lot – she just couldn’t stop thinking about you – and I kept talking to her. I couldn’t risk her seeing me – I didn’t want to frighten her – but I could tell I was getting through somehow. When the doctors gave in to your mum and let Grace visit, I began to feel more hopeful.
“The second she put the amulet back on your wrist I was able to start getting all of your memories back from my amulet into you, back where they belong. All of those years of gathering came in useful in the end: I thought through how to reverse the process, and I just hoped it would work.” His smile was apologetic.
“So you were able to put all my memories back? That means your amulet is empty – surely that’s not safe?”
He looked even more sheepish. “I’m sorry. I had to keep one, and it had to be a good one. That is enough to keep me going for now.”
“Which one?” I was torn between embarrassment and curiosity.
“The moment you realised you loved me,” he admitted quietly, staring deep into my eyes.
I searched back: the sensation was peculiar. I could visualise the riverbank, remember the warm sun on my skin, waking up from that few minutes’ sleep, then everything went fuzzy and the perspective changed. Suddenly I was looking down at me, listening to my words, and bursting with love for me. “I don’t understand,” I admitted.
“I had to take your memory to put it in my amulet, but I couldn’t leave you with no recollection of that moment: that wouldn’t have been fair. So I gave you mine.” He looked up at me almost shyly. “I hope that was OK.”
I suddenly felt with complete certainty that everything he told me was true. Catherine had lied. Callum loved me. As I looked into his eyes I could tell that he could see the conviction in mine. The anguish in his face faded and was replaced with joy. I had never seen anyone look so relieved and so content.
I felt his touch on my face and yearned to be able to hold him tight. “I love you, Callum,” I whispered, reaching for where his ghostly face shimmered in the dim light. “I am so sorry for what I have done to you, for not trusting you.”
“Don’t be sorry,” he soothed, “I wouldn’t have believed that I could love you more than I already did, but I do.” He paused as a nurse walked by to a bed at the end of the ward.
I gazed back at him, full of emotion. He loved me just as much as I loved him. It felt as if my heart would burst it was so full.
As he said the word love I became aware of the tiredness which was creeping up on me. I nodded in agreement, but had to get one last thing straight.
“You will be here, won’t you?” I challenged. “Be here when I wake up? You have enough in the amulet to stay safe?”
“Don’t worry about me,” he laughed. “I’ll be fine, and I promise that when you wake in the morning, I’ll be here by your side.” His tone changed, becoming much more intense. “I love you, Alex, more than you will ever know.”
I saw his face come closer, and felt the briefest flutter as if his lips had touched mine. The last thing I remembered as I gave in to the sleep was the smouldering intensity in his eyes. He wasn’t going to leave me now, of that I was sure, because I did know how much he loved me: his memory was there in my memory, and I would keep it safe forever. I smiled weakly as I drifted away.
The doctors kept coming to take a look at me, and I was subjected to a huge number of different scans. I could see them talking about me in hushed tones, some of them clearly wondering how on earth I had fooled them, others discussing the best way to write up my case to ensure publication.
But I didn’t care. I was basking in a warm glow. Whenever he could be there, Callum was by my side. Some of the other patients probably thought I was a little strange: he could keep me amused for hours with stories of the more ridiculous things that were happening in the hospital, and his wicked sense of humour often had me laughing out loud, which was difficult to explain when I was apparently sitting alone in my hospital bed.
One morning I had to sit meekly in bed while a police officer interviewed me about the whole incident, including the fact that I had driven all the way to Kew Gardens unsupervised and with a learner’s licence. The officer looked very stern as he sat there with my dad.
“Driving without a licence is a serious offence, young lady. I hope you realise that.”
I nodded as humbly as I could.
“What does he mean, ‘young lady’? He’s only about twelve himself!” Callum was in a happy mood, and was enjoying watching me try to wriggle out of some of the problems I had caused myself.
I fell back on my – by now – standard defence mechanism. “I’m really sorry, officer. I know it was wrong so I must have had a really good reason to do it, but I really can’t remember anything. It’s all a complete blank.” I looked up at him, a pict
ure of contrition.
The young officer blushed. “Well, luckily you didn’t hit anything. I’ll have to file a report though, and you are likely to be prosecuted for at least one offence. It’s not a very good start to your driving career, is it?”
“No, officer. I really am very sorry. I promise it won’t happen again.”
“She has always been very responsible before, officer,” added Dad. “Doing something like this is completely out of character.”
“You should probably go with her to the court when the case comes up,” he replied, folding up his notebook. “You might get the opportunity to speak in her defence, as she is a minor.”
He turned back to me. “You were very lucky not to have killed yourself or someone else,” he said sternly. “We’ll let you know what charges we intend to bring in due course.”
“Thank you.” I made myself sound as apologetic as possible.
“So is that all?” asked Dad as he walked the policeman out. I didn’t catch the reply but was glad it was over for today. I was really grateful that my parents believed the amnesia story otherwise they would have been going on about this for years to come.
Finally, I was discharged. There was no good reason to keep me in, and the hospital needed the bed, so even though they couldn’t work out what had happened to me, the doctors let me go. They insisted that I remain an outpatient, however, and booked me in for more complicated scans in London over the coming weeks. I didn’t care – I was on my way home, where I would be able to talk to and see Callum much more easily.
My parents came to take me home, and it took a long time to move all the flowers and the cards down to the car. Mum kept finding reasons to touch me – squeeze my shoulder, or smooth my hair – as if she couldn’t quite believe I was there. Dad kept catching my eye too. I was so sorry that I had given them such a fright.
Josh was waiting when we got home, a beaming smile on his face.
“So they finally threw you out, eh?” he teased, squeezing me so tightly I could hardly breathe.
“Yeah. They saw through my cunning plan to get off school until the end of term.”
“It sounds like you were irritating the hell out of them too.”
“Actually, they’re keen to have me back. Apparently I am a particularly interesting case.”
“That’s a first for you, then,” he said gruffly, pulling me into another hug so I couldn’t see his face. “You know, I kind of missed you. It’s good to have you back.”
The house was full of flowers and there were hundreds of cards. Stacked neatly in a corner I saw a pile of newspapers. Dad caught my puzzled glance, and looked a bit sheepish.
“You became quite the celebrity you know – and Grace, too, of course. We kept the papers in case … well, so that you could decide what to do with them.”
“How did the papers find out about it all?”
“I really don’t know. A leak at the hospital? One of the kids at school?” He hesitated. “You don’t have to read them, you know. Some of the comments were a little – opinionated.”
I flicked through a few and saw some of the headlines: School Girl Suicide Pact; Double Dose of Kew Killer; Coma In The Pagoda. I decided I didn’t need to read them right now.
I wanted to be able to talk to Callum somewhere private, and to see him more clearly.
“I really want to check my emails and call a few of my friends to tell them that I’m home. Just get back to normal, you know? Do you mind if I go upstairs for a bit?”
Mum smiled contentedly at me. “Not at all. You go ahead.”
My eye was caught by a small flicker of light over her head, bright yellow and dancing around. She saw me frown.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?”
The light was gone as quickly as it had come. “I think you are attracting fireflies,” I laughed. “There was one buzzing right over your head.”
“As long as they don’t bite, I don’t care,” she said, giving me another squeeze. “I’ll bring you up a coffee later.”
The firefly was back. It was very odd: I had never seen one indoors before, and it was daytime too. But I had other things to think about – it was time to see Callum. I made my way upstairs, carefully shut the door and put my headphones on, then set up the mirror by my desk. As I called his name I felt the familiar tingling in my arm, and there he was behind me. He looked as glorious as ever. “Welcome home, beautiful.”
“It is really good to be back,” I said, reaching up to touch his face. “I’ve missed being able to do this.”
As my fingers grazed his cheek I felt the gentlest of resistance. His eyes closed and I could see him move towards my touch. I continued to stroke his face and neck, then I turned around as far as I could and kissed him gently on the lips.
His eyes flew open in surprise and he instantly responded. It was the strangest feeling, like a feather touching me.
Eventually Callum pulled away. “Do you have any idea of what you are doing to me?”
I grinned back at him. “Absolutely. And it’s the very least you deserve.”
I ran my hand through his hair and down his neck, and saw him lean towards the touch. I reached for his face, wanting to see his eyes. They were dark with passion.
“Oh, Alex,” he whispered, “I love you so much.” He pulled back a little and considered me in the mirror. “I can’t believe I’ve actually got you back. I seem to have almost lost you so many times.” His voice was heavy with emotion.
“I wish I had told you everything from the start, as soon as possible after I’d first seen Catherine. Then none of this would have happened.”
“There is no point regretting it now, and no permanent harm was done.” That wasn’t strictly true either, but he refused to go into too much detail about the problem of his nearly empty amulet.
As far as I could tell he was dealing with it by going out early in the morning and late at night. I didn’t want to ask if he was having to sacrifice his principles to keep the creeping despair away and the amulet fed.
I settled back in his arms and looked at him. I could spend hours just absorbing every feature of his face until it was as familiar as my own. I luxuriated in the view I now had: at the hospital, I’d only had the tiny make-up mirror, and it really wasn’t enough to do him justice.
“Callum, how old do you think you are?” He started to shake his head. “No, hang on. I know you don’t actually know, but what do you feel? What’s your best guess?”
He sighed. “I wish I knew.”
“It must be so frustrating, not knowing even that basic fact.”
“It is. The only thing I can go on is the relative ages of the others.”
I looked quizzically at him.
“The other Dirges are a very mixed bag of apparent ages. Some are young like me, others are middle aged. A couple of them are really old.”
I still wasn’t getting it. “How does that help?”
“I must be about as old as I look: we must keep our general appearance when we come over.”
It seemed as sensible an idea as any. “So look at yourself – what do you guess?”
“Hmm, what would be a perfect age as far as you were concerned?”
I laughed. “That’s cheating, you know!”
“Well, I might as well make the most of my few opportunities to have things my way.” The end of his sentence was lost in a mumble as he kissed my neck.
I shook to get him to sit upright again. “Listen! I asked you a question: what do you think?”
“Honestly? I don’t feel that young. It seems as if I was already reasonably responsible when I came over. And by comparing my face to others I see – I don’t know – maybe about nineteen?” He was watching me intently to see if that was a problem. “Go on then, your turn, what do you think?”
He had managed to hit on the perfect age, exactly where I would have put him myself.
“Nineteen works for me.” I smiled, looking up at him from under my lashes. “O
ld enough for a hint of sophistication but young enough to have fun when the situation demands it.”
“But why do you want to know? What difference does it make?” he asked, puzzled.
“Oh, it was just something Catherine said – it made me wonder,” I replied airily, picking up an old receipt from my desk in what I hoped was an offhand manner.
“Well, you should know by now not to take any notice of anything she said.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I guess I was just curious. You know so much about me, after all.”
“Do you know,” he said suddenly, “I have no idea how old you are either. You’ve never told me.”
“You’ve never asked,” I countered. “Maybe I’m too young for you.”
“I’m prepared to take that risk,” he laughed. “Anyway, you’ll be catching me up soon enough.”
“That’s true. Go on then, your turn to take a guess.”
“That really isn’t fair! You can’t make me guess both ages.”
“I’ll give you a kiss if you get it right.”
“Now that is a game I could get used to. OK, I’m going to go for …hmm, let’s see if I can work this out. You’re still at school, but nearly finished; you are learning to drive; and you think most of the boys of your age are a waste of space.”
I nodded at him – he was right on all counts so far. “So?”
“So, you have to be seventeen.”
“Exactly right!” I agreed. “But I bet you cheated.”
“In that case I still claim my reward,” he said smugly. “You didn’t specify not cheating. I’m waiting for my kiss.”
I turned as far as I could towards him while still looking in the mirror, and kissed where I could see that his lips were. “I can see we are going to have to practise that manoeuvre,” he said. “Shall we work on it now?”
“Oh yes, I think so,” I said. “We need lots of practice…”
Callum stayed with me for the rest of the afternoon, only once disappearing briefly to hit the cinemas. He had found the local multiplex and there was always a selection of feel-good or comedy films on. Gathering there seemed to take him no time at all.
