One

by Andrew Hutchinson

  The world deserted in the darkness. Me, alone, walking under the amber gaze.

  Skeletons of trees rose alongside the beach, a thin wooden ribcage between the bitumen and the sand, and through the gaps I could see.

  The water in the darkness, the moonlight glimmering off the ripples way out.

  I could see the red light of a boat pulsing on the horizon, beeping, and I leaned through the trunks to get a better look. Its silhouette sat flat on the distance, the dark edges of it contrasted with the stars.

  The red light pulsing, beeping through. Calling me in.

  I made my way down onto the sand, peeled my shoes and socks away at the water’s edge, and I walked towards the crashing walls, closer to the red light. The sound was distinct, not like I’d heard it before, and as the boat moved on the distance it seemed as though the light didn’t. As though the light wasn’t attached. It was just there, on the horizon. Surging. Searching.

  The moon wasn’t quite full, but the night was so clear. You could see every shell and dark patch of seaweed littered along the waterline, curving round into the distance, and I stepped into the edge of the water, felt the freeze of the ocean as it rushed up the sand then fizzed away. Tiny tracks of crabs were sketched along the shoreline, reminded me of going night fishing with my dad, when he’d wake me up, stumbling along the grass-covered dunes in the darkness, stomped in patterns from his gumboots in the torchlight. The memory was so vivid, the sounds and smells bringing it back.

  The red light pulsed in the distance.

  Still in my shirt and work pants, I stepped deeper into the ocean, up to my knees at first, then up to my waist. The waves lapped at my chest as the water rocked by and I panicked at the thought that sharks could be waiting underneath, and I took a step back towards the safety of the beach. Specks of rain touched at my hair, my face, random spots peppered across the water, barely breaking the ocean’s skin. You could smell the change in the air. I held my arms out wide to span the width of the horizon. The drone of that red light pulsing, watching in the distance.

  I held my arms up to it.

  Come get me.

  ‘Come get me.’

  Then there was another sound, ticking like a metronome. It rose and faded between each wave. I could hear it but couldn’t see anything, and I turned round to catch onto where it was coming from and when I looked back, I noticed that I was way out. The shoreline tiny on the distance.

  How had I gotten out this far? The water was still only up to my waist.

  Then above the lights of the houses and streets, a huge, dark presence took flight, blocking the stars and clouds as it went. It rose up, dragging a great shadow across the world. I watched it move over the sky like a blanket. I watched it swarm over the ocean, swallowing up everything, till the world was covered in darkness.

  A low, sick fear sank through me and the waves of the ocean faded into tiny, nudging ripples. Me, alone, waiting in the black liquid. Watching the dark sky.

  The metronome ticking got louder, faster, till it was rattling like a flagpole in a storm, then there were other sounds, moaning, howling, screaming across the water all around, words and voices that I couldn’t make out, the taste of blood in my mouth, the grind of dirt pushed into my hands, cutting into my fingers, and then it stopped.

  The shadow was gone, the moonlight rippling across the water’s surface. The lights of the town waiting on the distant shore. The wind moved its fingers through the dark shapes of the shoreline trees.

  The red light pulsed out at the edge of the world, faded, but still there. The beeping muffled by the gusts.

  I turned away, waded back towards the waiting shore, blue in the moonlight. The wet sand sinking beneath my feet.

  I had to wake the woman up when I got back to the motel room, fingernails tapping on the wooden door in the darkness.

  She opened the door, just enough to see. She squinted through the gap.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I told her. ‘I don’t have the key.’

  She opened the door wide, a shirt draped over her naked body, eyes half-closed. Reminded me of how she looked when I found her, sleeping in my driveway, worn out, messed. Wavering slightly from drowsiness.

  My clothes were soaked, weighing heavy, trailing dribbles of seawater across the carpet, and she told me to get into the bathroom, get off the carpet. She took my hand and led me through and opened the bathroom door, the light already on inside. She turned the taps on in the shower, held a hand under the streams for a moment. The steam rising, puffing across the glass box round the showerhead. The woman turned to me and started unbuttoning my wet shirt, popping the buttons through one by one.

  ‘Do you remember what I said to you?’ I asked her.

  The woman said nothing, eyes still squinting, trying to focus through the bright light.

  She undid the last button then she peeled the soaked fabric away from my skin.

  She slapped my wet shirt onto the closed lid of the toilet, then she staggered, tiny steps, back across the white tiles, out into the darkness of the main room. She closed the door behind herself. The smell of her perfume remained for a moment, blown round by the ceiling fan.

  I stared at myself in the mirror as the steam gathered and fogged at the edges of the glass. Me, in a white singlet. The dark hairs of my chest and my nipples visible through the drenched material. I leaned forward to look at my face, moved around into different angles under the light. The bumps and lines. I would have spent months of my life looking at my reflection. Through acne and ailments. Months looking at my features, never happy with what the mirror returned. Sarah said I was vain because of this, and for a long time I thought about the difference between vanity and self-consciousness, whether it’s about looking good or feeling comfortable. Confident.

  The light caught onto the imperfections of my skin, the dents and craters of my pores.

  I stepped into the shower and the warm water felt like tiny fingers pushing into my skin, dragging across. I sat down onto the shower floor, alongside the drain hole, and I looked up and watched the streams falling towards me, the drops taking shape as they tumbled down.

  Like leaves from the autumn trees.

  The cells of the water connecting and spreading, moving together in long strings. Pouring out.

  Then it hit me.

  ‘Sarah,’ I said. ‘That was her name.’

  ‘Are you ready to go?’ The woman was walking towards the door of the motel room, the room key in her hand. A bright stream of sunlight filtered through a gap in the curtains, beaming onto the light brown carpet, and I looked down at myself and I was dressed and dry. The car keys were hanging from my finger.

  ‘Wait,’ I said.

  She opened the door to the daylight, the damp freshness of the morning air, the pebbles in the driveway.

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We can make it there today if we leave now.’

  ‘Wait, I’ve thought of something.’

  The woman stepped out onto the tiny stones, which crumpled like packed snow as she moved over to the passenger side of the car and I got over to the room’s doorway and watched after her. She stood by the car and she looked back to me. She was waiting for me to unlock it.

  And behind her I saw.

  The door of the car parked next to mine open. And that dark, sick feeling sank through again. Like the stars being covered in shadow. The driver, the man who’d smashed into my car, he stood up right behind her. Right up at her back.

  The woman saw my expression change and she turned to see, then she ducked her head and jolted back across the stones and shrank behind me, putting me between him and her. The driver, he was still in the same black T-shirt, but he was wearing a baseball cap now, his face dark, shadowed beneath.

  ‘Oh shit,’ the woman whispered. She cowered behind my shoulder.

  I squeezed my hand into a fist, gripped round the sharp edges of the keys. They poked and scraped between my fingers.

  The driver raised his hands in surrende
r.

  ‘I don’t have anything,’ he said. ‘I don’t have anything. I just want to talk.’

  My body felt hollow, frozen, my knees shaking. I watched his every move.

  ‘Just give me a chance to explain.’

  I could feel the woman’s fingers on my back.

  ‘She’s playing you, man,’ the driver said. ‘She’s telling you lies.’ Then: ‘She doesn’t love you, man.’

  The driver paused, as if he was waiting for the words to cut. To hurt.

  ‘She’s just leading you on. This is what she does.’

  ‘I know what she does.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’ His voice rose, hands still in the air like bear claws.

  ‘She hasn’t told you what she really does. She told you she’s a nurse, right? That’s true, but people hire her to be with them.’ He angled his head to look round at her. ‘Like a fucking whore.’

  ‘You need to stop,’ I told him.

  ‘You’re not listening, mate.’ The driver took a step forward, his foot crunching the pebbles, and I reached back, put my hand onto the woman’s.

  ‘She doesn’t fucking love you,’ he growled. ‘She’s been hired to be with you.’ The man stepped closer again. ‘It’s all fake – isn’t that right?’ he said to her.

  I could feel the warmth of her breath, heavy on the back of my arm.

  ‘Just go.’ I rushed the words. ‘We don’t want any trouble.’

  ‘We?’ he asked.

  ‘We just …’

  ‘Why don’t you fucking listen,’ the driver roared, his words echoing round the parked cars, the closed curtains of the motel rooms. He crunched forward again, hands still up by his head. ‘Listen to me,’ he said, calmer. ‘You need to wake up.’

  ‘Stay back, please,’ I said. And her fingers wrapped round mine.

  ‘This is not real,’ the driver said. ‘This is not what you think it is.’

  He stepped closer again and I could feel the keys cutting into the sides of my fingers, trembling in my grip.

  ‘Stay back,’ I told him.

  The driver’s dark face pointed towards the woman, watched her. The blackened shadow across his features.

  ‘I’m not going away,’ he told her.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the woman whimpered. ‘I’m sorry for everything.’

  And the driver froze, paused a moment, as if he was taken aback. As if he hadn’t expected her to speak. He opened his mouth, then he tilted his head towards the pebbles, his feet.

  ‘Is this your boyfriend?’ the driver asked.

  The woman hesitated.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, it …’

  ‘It’s fucking …’ the driver yelled again and he was right up beside me now, hands still raised, near my face. He could reach me from here.

  ‘I’m sorry for everything,’ she said again, then she tucked in further behind me and the driver dropped his hands, shoved one down into his pocket. He had something.

  I could feel my heart racing, my breaths stalling, and the woman pushed off from me, rushed towards the car, and the driver surged to chase and I put a hand up in front, held him back. The weight of his momentum halted in my palm, his bones against my skin. The woman pulled at the handle on the driver’s door but it was locked, and I pushed the driver back, moved him. I grabbed a fistful of his T-shirt.

  I pulled him towards me.

  ‘Now, you listen,’ I said. I was up close to his cheek, his ear, puffing on his skin. ‘You need to stop.’ The words fumbled over my rushed breaths. My jaw was shivering. My fist rattled against his chest. The driver felt smaller, weak in my grip, and I looked down to his hand, still in his pocket, then back to him, the side of his head. I tried to catch onto his eyes but he looked away, like a child who’d been caught out. I leaned down to try and see him, to try and look at him, but he twisted to avoid me, to keep away. He smelled of sweat and body odour.

  ‘You need to leave her alone,’ I told him. ‘Okay?’

  His hand was still in his pocket. Any moment, I thought, and this could be over. This man might kill me. End my life. Bleeding across the white pebbles.

  I swallowed a breath.

  ‘You need to stop,’ I told him. ‘No more. Okay?’

  Then I let the man go, shoved him as I went. The driver stumbled across the stones, kept his head down, his face away. His hand still in his pocket. He straightened up, then stood dormant in the morning light, still. I watched him, waiting for a response, waiting for him to come back at me. The driver didn’t move. He just stood there, like a character in a video game waiting to be activated. He kept his head down.

  His hand wilted out of his pocket.

  I watched him as I stepped past and moved towards the passenger side. I watched him as I put the key into the door and unlocked it. I opened the door and got in, and I watched him as I leaned across to open the driver’s door. I pulled up the plastic button and the woman rushed into the car and took the keys from me and started the engine, and I watched him as I reached out, gripped the passenger door to close it.

  ‘Hey,’ the driver said. ‘I’m gonna get her.’

  I pulled the door shut and the woman reversed back, away from the man, and swung the car out, popping across the stones. Then she accelerated out, the wheels scraping into the loose pebbles.

  The driver watched, his darkened face fixed on her the whole time. He just stood there. Smiling.

  III

  We pulled out of the motel and onto the main road, and the woman was breathing heavy, puffing fog across the windscreen. She accelerated along the street.

  ‘What did you say to him?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What did you say? I could hear you talking.’

  ‘I didn’t say anything.’

  ‘Tell me what you said,’ she screamed, her eyes wide.

  We pulled up at a set of lights, me scanning the side mirror, angling round. Empty, straight road behind us, narrowing off into the distance.

  ‘Is he coming?’ the woman asked. She was looking up at the rear-view mirror.

  There was no movement behind us, no movement any place. Nothing.

  I could feel.

  My pulse throbbing through my arms, my hands, my fingers. Any moment he was going to pull round the corner and come rushing up in the mirror. I watched.

  Any moment.

  ‘Is he coming?’ the woman asked again. The lights were still red above us and I suddenly felt overwhelmed, as if there was a power surge in my brain, a glitch, and I grabbed onto the side of the seat and tried to relax my breathing. I took in deep breaths.

  ‘How did he find us?’ the woman asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I answered, and the woman twisted round in her seat, scanned through the back window.

  ‘We need to get out of here,’ she said.

  There were no other cars around, but the lights stayed red. As I tried to calm myself, I concentrated on the traffic light set above, just by the top corner of the rear-view mirror. It shook slightly in the wind, the car rocking with it as the gust pushed through. And then I felt a surge at the back of my throat, pushing from my stomach. Warm saliva, rising quick.

  ‘I’m gonna be sick,’ I told her, and I pushed open the door and spilled out onto the bitumen, rock fragments poking into my hands, my knees, as I went. I could feel my insides reversing against themselves, coiling up, and I waited for it, could feel it sitting up inside my chest. The fumes of acid touching into the back of my throat. I braced for it, waited. Then it eased off, faded back down into my gut. I sucked in the cold air, felt it chill down into my lungs.

  I took in the scene all around me from my position on the bitumen, propped on my hands and knees. The grass fields along the roadside, the houses lined into the distance. The grey clouds moving across the sky. I took it all in, and I noticed that everything was vacant. There was nothing else moving, no people, no cars. The sound of waves crashing in on the distance.

  A flag in the front yar
d of a nearby house whipped and clapped in the wind.

  Like.

  A curtain flapping out the top-storey window of an apartment building.

  The traffic lights were still beaming red, watching over. They didn’t change.

  I climbed back into the car and sat up in the passenger seat, and I focused on the straight road stretching off in front of us, the trail of it leading on over the other side of the intersection. The road passed by houses, residential streets, mountains beyond that. The houses and fences looked familiar, colours and shapes I recognised. I’d seen these roads before. I knew this.

  And in my head, it came clear. Another piece slotted into place.

  I looked up to the red light watching over.

  ‘Sometimes they don’t work,’ I told her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The traffic lights. Sometimes you miss the sensor in the road and they don’t change.’

  And then it came to me.

  ‘What’s his name?’ I asked.

  ‘What?’ The woman was still arched round in the driver’s seat, staring through the back window.

  ‘What’s his name?’ I asked again. The woman didn’t respond.

  I looked to her.

  ‘Last night, I remembered something, and then I just realised you’ve never told me his name.’

  ‘Him?’ The woman pointed back towards the motel, eyes still wide, panicked.

  ‘Yes.’ I thought for a moment. ‘You don’t know it, do you?’

  The woman stared at me. She closed her mouth, narrowed her eyes.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

  ‘I mean, I’m starting to work this out. You don’t know his name.’

  ‘I do know his name.’

  ‘You should, you would have met him in the hospital, where his name would’ve been up there in big letters on the wall, and on the clipboard that was hung over the end of the bed. You would have said his name when you were with him, when you held his hand. You should know his name. But you don’t. Do you?’

  ‘I do.’