‘Hey, where are you going?’ I yelled.
She didn’t stop, and all round the day was overcast, grey, the clouds crowding the sky. The double-storey houses across the road loomed over, towering, dark figures.
‘Hey,’ I yelled again, and she stopped. She tilted her head back, looked to the clouds.
‘I’m just trying to help,’ I told her.
The woman turned around and stared at me, her blue eyes locked onto mine. She smiled with her mouth closed.
‘I know you,’ she said. A tear spilled down her skin as the wind sifted through her hair. ‘I wasn’t at your house by accident.’
And I could feel a nausea rising, like the aftermath of a carnival ride. That black, sick depth.
‘What?’
‘I know you. I’ve met you before.’
Swirling, churning. Warmth filling through.
‘Wait,’ I told her. I put a hand up. ‘Just wait one second.’
‘I was a nurse at the hospital, after you had your accident.’
‘Just wait.’ I could feel myself overbalancing, kept my hand out to steady myself.
‘I was a nurse at the hospital, and we talked.’
My body felt strange, as if my limbs weren’t my own, weren’t connected to my body.
‘I don’t remember that,’ I said.
‘You do. You just can’t put it together.’
And the world shifted, the houses above leaning in.
‘This isn’t right.’ I put a hand to my head.
‘I came to find you,’ the woman told me. ‘I came for you.’
‘I don’t …’ And the looming buildings stretched and crawled across the sky and the ground bent, tilted beneath.
‘Please,’ I told her. ‘Just wait one sec …’
Then my bones gave way and the ground rushed towards me, the side of my head slamming onto the concrete, the shockwaves spiking, tingling through my skull.
The surface.
Felt cold. Hard.
Tiny granules of rock pushed into my skin, scraping. I could taste them.
‘Do you remember what you said to me?’ she asked.
I couldn’t talk. My mouth hung open, sucking in air like a fish, the chill of the wind slicing into my lungs. My face ground into the dirt, my body weighed down.
‘Do you remember what you told me?’
I could hear her voice and I was thinking about hospital and sheets and arteries and lights so bright.
‘Do you remember what you said?’
I could hear her, the touch of her voice shifting as I faded, drifting, and I closed my eyes and held on to it as I fell away, the warmth dragging me into dream.
I woke up, the solid grooves of the steering wheel pushed hard into my fingers, and I sat up, blinked back into consciousness.
And I was home. The headlights beaming into the concrete driveway.
And there was a woman there.
Sat upright. Sleeping in the warmth of the headlights.
I looked round through the car windows, scanned the darkened streets and houses, as if something might explain what had happened, what was going on. Abandoned concrete paths waiting beneath the streetlights. Leaves wandering, filtering down to earth in the amber glow.
And there she was. Streams of her breath whispering up through the darkness. Her jacket slipped off one shoulder. Resting, unaware.
Her blue dress shining in the bright light.
I got out of the car and stepped round to her, kneeled down outside the reach of the lights. It was definitely her, the same woman. Long dark hair. Make-up smudged in. Lipstick drawn just outside the lines.
I went to speak but my voice stalled, and I cleared my throat, started again.
‘Hey,’ I said.
No response.
All around the world was still, quiet in the shadows. The shapes of the world like cardboard cut-outs against the first touches of the morning light.
I reached over to the woman’s leg, touched the hemline of her blue dress, the smooth edge of it, and she woke up, tightened my heart in my chest, made me fall back, and I stood up, rose over her, still outside the light. The woman squinted at the brightness staring her down, pushed at it with both hands.
‘Hey,’ I said, and the woman looked to me. She shielded her eyes from the beams.
‘Oh my God,’ she said.
‘What is this?’ I said. ‘
I’m so sorry, I …’
‘No, I know.’
She paused a moment. ‘What?’
‘I know why you’re here.’
The woman closed her eyes tight, chugged in breaths. ‘You know?’ she whimpered.
‘Wait. No, I …’ I tried to clarify my thinking. ‘This has happened already.’
The woman tried to angle herself to see my face, both hands casting shadows over her eyes.
‘We’ve already …’ I touched at the side of my head. ‘What’s going on?’
The woman shook her head slow. ‘I don’t …’
‘I found you here, like this, and I gave you a ride home and then a man smashed into my car.’ I could feel heat rising, sweat trickling across my skin. My jaw shivered as I closed my mouth.
The woman squinted up, shook her head again.
‘You said he’d been watching you, that he’d been sitting outside your house at night.’
The woman leaned away. ‘How do you know that?’
‘This has already …’ My head was clogging, aching with disconnected thoughts. I pushed my teeth together, ground them till they slipped. ‘What is this?’
The woman eased herself into the car, her crumpled face lit up under the internal light. She kept her eyes on me as she went, pulled her seatbelt across and plugged it in, held on to it. She stared from the passenger seat.
‘Okay,’ I said. The light flicked off, revealing the first shades of the morning blue. ‘I got in the car, like this, and then we drove to your house, an old place with long grass and a red letterbox, right?’
Her fingers drifted up to her open mouth.
‘I drove you home and when we got there some guy smashed into my car and he got out and he had a hammer and he came after me.’
‘My God,’ the woman said. ‘A hammer?’
‘Yes.’
‘That doesn’t make any sense.’ She paused a moment. ‘What did he look like?’
‘I didn’t get a good look at him – I couldn’t see him very well from inside the car, then I was rushing because of the hammer,’ I told her. ‘He had a black T-shirt on.’
She was silent again.
‘Did he hit you?’
‘No, we drove off.’
‘I went with you?’
‘Yes, you came with me and we drove away.’
She shook her head.
‘That’s not …’ She looked forward, towards the face of the house watching on in the darkness. ‘That doesn’t make any sense.’
We drove back along the busying streets, past the workers queued at the intersections and the bins lined up like soldiers, all exactly the same as before. It was like watching a movie on repeat, the scene outside playing in duplicate.
The boy with the space helmet waved as we passed.
The woman held her stare at my side, eyes locked onto me. Hands gripped round, curling the seatbelt.
We came to her street and I slowed the car right down, scanned the surroundings. There was no sign of the other car.
‘He was here,’ I told her. ‘He must’ve been waiting somewhere.’
I could see the woman looking out, then turning to me at the edge of my vision.
‘This is me here.’ She pointed.
‘I know. I know which one it is,’ I snapped.
‘Okay, well can you just …?’ And I pulled up by the kerb, my eyes on the rear-view mirror, twitching side to side, trying to take it all in. The woman unclipped her seatbelt and opened the door quickly, put her legs out the side and then she stopped. She looked across to me. She looked
up to the mirror, following my line of sight, then back over the shoulder of her seat.
‘He hit you here?’ she asked.
‘Right here.’ I pointed at the ground. ‘He just came up from behind and rammed me.’
We both watched the street in the distance, waited.
Grey bitumen beneath the trees in the early light. The branches flowing in the wind.
‘That’s very strange,’ the woman said. She looked to me again. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’
‘I’m …’ I could feel tears building as I spoke, stopped for a moment to keep them in. ‘I don’t know what’s happening.’
‘Jesus,’ the woman whispered. She reached across, touched me on the arm. ‘That’s really weird.’
I looked onto the road ahead, the point where the hammer had bounced off the street. Right there. I felt a shiver ripple through the back of my skull.
‘What the fuck?’ the woman said, and I looked to her and she was staring back over the shoulder of her seat and I turned quick, saw the car approaching, accelerating towards us. ‘What is he doing?’ She shifted to get out of the car.
‘Wait,’ I told her. ‘He’s got a hammer.’ And the woman looked at me as if she’d never seen me before in her life, then she stood out onto the footpath, her face disappearing from my view.
‘Who the fuck is this?’ The driver was standing up beside his car, pointing in my direction. I could see him in the rear-view. He’d pulled up behind my car this time, before it hit. Wheels stuttering across the bitumen.
‘What are you doing?’ the woman yelled from the other side of the car.
‘Is this another one, is it?’ the driver roared. ‘Is this another one?’
I opened my door and stood out, held my hands up in the air and the driver ducked into his cabin quick, reached into the back seat.
The smell of burned rubber warm on the air all round.
‘Hammer,’ I said. ‘Hammer, hammer.’
‘Get back in your car,’ the woman yelled, pointed at me, and she stepped towards him.
‘He’s getting a hammer,’ I yelled back and I got into the car and started it, and in the side mirror I could see the driver stand back out of his cabin.
I could see.
The glint of the hammer clutched in his fist.
‘What are you doing?’ the woman screamed, then she ran up alongside my car, disappeared from the mirror then pulled open the door, dropped back into the passenger seat. ‘Go, go now,’ she yelled, and the driver was at my window, the face of the hammer on the glass, and I pushed the accelerator and pulled away.
The driver stood on the road, shrinking in the rear-view. He watched as we rushed into the distance.
‘What the fuck?’ the woman screamed.
‘I told you.’
‘What the fuck? How did you know that?’
‘This has already happened.’
‘That doesn’t make any sense.’
We accelerated through the morning traffic, picking gaps and cutting across the lanes.
‘We need to turn down one of these side streets,’ I said.
‘Why?’
‘Because he’ll follow us.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because he followed us last time, into the shopping centre up there. We can’t go there.’
‘What the fuck?’ she screamed again. The woman looked to the roof. Her hands strangled round her seatbelt.
I turned off the main street and into a residential area, skimming along the empty roads. The woman watched over the shoulder of her seat, eyes darting all around.
‘Is he coming?’ I asked.
‘I don’t see him.’
I turned down another street, then another, hooked back around, and we came into a clearing, a sporting field sprawled out on one side.
‘Over there.’ She pointed. There was a car park outside a strip of shops. ‘Just park there, just …’
We rushed through the entryway, rolling along the empty car spaces.
The shops were all closed over with steel shutters, which were covered in graffiti. Car parks were painted directly in front.
There was nothing around, no movement, no other cars on the streets. None of the shops were open, the wall of silver shutters was cold, still. The leaves in the trees all round were frozen as if they were fake. As if they were in a painting.
We both watched the streets, waited.
I could feel my hands quivering on the wheel.
‘Okay,’ the woman said. ‘I don’t know what this is, but …’
‘You know me,’ I said, and she looked to me quick. ‘You told me you know me and you were at my house for a reason.’
The woman stared. Her eyes filled, trickled over. ‘I do,’ she said.
‘You do what?’
‘I know you.’ Her fingers closed round the seatbelt again. ‘I was your nurse at the hospital, do you remember?’
I shook my head. ‘No, I don’t.’
The words seemed to hurt, the woman nodding, her closed mouth spreading wider. She looked down, kept nodding. Took it in.
‘I saw you there, after your accident.’ She raised her eyes back to me. ‘You were hurt, you were broken, and I talked to you.’ She held her stare as she spoke. ‘You don’t remember me?’
I shook my head.
Her eyes dropped, tears spilling in tiny streams. She nodded again. She opened her mouth to speak but didn’t, and I looked back outside, watched for the driver.
The street was still and silent. As if the world had been evacuated, abandoned. The woman looked out too.
‘What happens next?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know, we didn’t do this last time.’
The woman huffed out a laugh. ‘That doesn’t make any sense.’
‘No.’
My brain shifted, ached, trying to make sense of it, grinding through, and I closed my eyes, pushed on them to stop the pulsing pain. It felt like tectonic plates inside my skull were shifting, clashing together, as if my skull had been frozen to cracking point, little splits popping through the ice, and I pushed harder till the colours spread inside my eyelids.
‘You don’t remember me?’ the woman asked.
I opened my eyes and I was home, the headlights beaming up into the concrete driveway.
And the woman was there. Sleeping in the warmth of the lights.
Her breaths floating up like smoke.
I pushed the gear shift up into reverse and swung out onto the street, left the woman alone in the darkness. I accelerated up the street, flashing by the parked cars and houses, and I switched on the indicator to turn onto the main road, the yellow light blinking through the shadows. There were no cars in sight. There was nothing coming on the distance. The leaves drifted down beneath the orange streetlights.
I turned out onto the street, and when I pulled round the corner I was back in my driveway and I jammed the brakes on quick to avoid running straight into the woman, jolting me forward against the wheel. I looked up to the rear-view mirror. The glass of the back window was intact, the streetlight beaming through.
I caught onto.
My face, my eyes staring back in the gloom.
There was no damage. Nothing.
The woman sat in a pile in front of the lights.
I reversed the car again, the pitch of the engine rising as I rushed away from her, and I swung out onto the street and looked back. The woman sat like a Buddha statue, pale in the night. I accelerated up to the main road and I turned, hooked the car round the corner quickly, and I stomped on the brakes again, the woman out in front, lights poking into the driveway. The car was right up on her, the metal right up close. The top of her head visible just above the bonnet. Her breaths floating upwards, through the low beams.
I reversed out again and I went slow, crept along the roadway. I tried to see what was happening, if there was anything that stood out. How I could possibly be switching back. The houses staring out looked normal, quiet
. The street the same as always.
I eased round the corner onto the main street, rolling out, then the car ramped up on the concrete of the driveway and there she was. One moment I was turning out onto the main street, the next I was back. There was no divide to it, no separation. It just happened.
I drove up to the main street again and I watched, waited at the turn. Along the dark street I could see.
The shops closed, the houses on the sides. Sleeping. Dark. The road waiting beneath the orange streetlights.
I stayed, watching the leaves drift like ashes. Nothing came along the street, no headlights on the way. The chill of the air reached in through the open window. There were no sounds, no cars washing by in the distance. The darkened depth like a tunnel beneath the arching branches.
I turned out, came round again, and there she was, sleeping on the concrete.
My breath stiffened in my throat.
I sat in my car and watched the woman sleeping, rested in the low beams. I watched her for a long time and after a while I realised that she hadn’t moved. Nothing had happened, other than the trails of her breath leaking out and floating into the night.
I watched the streams of them, the curling patterns as they slithered into the darkness.
They were the same.
The same swirls drifting, the same shapes.
It was like.
Watching a loop.
I grabbed my phone from my pocket so I could film it, so I could replay it, check what I was seeing, and I framed it on the screen, the sleeping woman in view. The ghostly curves lifting, evaporating away. Then the light of the screen blinked off, the battery flat. I clicked the button to start it up, and it blinked and stuttered, the charger icon fading along the bottom.
I sat in the car and watched the woman breathe for what felt like hours. Nothing changed. The sun didn’t rise, the darkness stayed.
Her breaths rolled out, over and over.
I got out of the car and ran towards the footpath, left the door hanging open in the morning air, creaking on its hinges.
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