Philo arrived back from a trip to Eastbourne further along the coast, where he had delivered a set of legal documents to a firm of solicitors for me, the papers too urgent to post and too important to risk a courier service; personal delivery was another of our minor but no less crucial services. I immediately sent him off to photograph a vehicle that had been involved in a road-rage incident, its headlights and windscreen not smashed in the accident itself, but by the driver of the other car wielding a tyre lever. The insurance company, who regularly used the agency when their own assessors were too busy, wanted the book thrown at the offender.
Nothing glamorous about our daily routine, rarely very exciting, and not often involving anything to fire the imagination. Despite my physical drawbacks, I was an ordinary guy conducting a fairly unexceptional line of work; flights of fancy were not the order of the day (night-time privacy was another matter). I guess I’m just trying to lay down a solid, even mundane base to emphasize just how extraordinary and unimaginable to me were the events that were to follow.
Anyway, it wasn’t until towards the end of the working day that I got the chance to call the BMA, the British Medical Association.
20
Dreams again. Worse than ever. Bloody terrifying dreams.
At least, I thought they were dreams.
When I’d left the office that evening I’d warned Henry not to work too late; as much as I appreciated the effort, he was putting in too many hours, always complaining that it was the only way he could keep up with the paperwork when we were that busy. I reminded him that he had a dear old mum at home who relied on him for company, but he scoffed, saying it was good for her to get used to the idea that he had his own life to lead and working overtime was part of it. I left him to his accounts and time sheets, reluctant to tell him he was lucky to have someone to worry over him.
I went straight back to the flat without stopping for a drink on the way, and on my own that evening I smoked only straights, not even tempted to do Skunk or Rock, because I was mellowed out on something better. Constance Bell was my opiate that evening.
As cynical and streetwise that I thought myself to be – and I pretty much was both, life experience and my occupation seeing to that – I was still acting like a teenager in the throes of his first romantic crush. As I microwaved my frozen-pack lasagna dinner, I was even humming a medley of old love themes. Sure, I’d fallen in love before – I thought I had fallen in love before – and more than just once. There was a time my legs turned to jelly and my brain to mush at the mere sight of Etta, but this time it was different, this time I was on a level playing field. In my mind – and I had to keep reminding myself it was in my mind – our disabilities cancelled each other’s out; it didn’t make them go away, but it kind of absorbed them. I felt that for the first time in my life I stood a chance with someone I could really care for, someone who stirred me in that perfectly normal way. Our relationship, if it had a chance to flourish – God, if it had a chance to happen! – could be that of equals and that somehow would make it ordinary – oh Lord, how I’d longed to be ordinary! It’s hard to explain, but my world is a different world to yours, no matter how much the well-meaning and the politically correct might have it otherwise, and the thought that I could share in the normal emotional experience made me feel like the luckiest man alive for a few hours. I was certain that something had passed between us, even on the first occasion we’d met. A mutual attraction, an understanding of each other’s feelings and tribulations, a subliminal touching of senses? I had no idea what it was, but I was sure it was not one-sided on my part. I had also detected a strange trepidation in Constance’s gaze, a distant haunting that I could not comprehend; its effect, though, was to make her seem even more vulnerable.
I wanted to phone her at PERFECT REST on the pretence of discussing the information I’d gleaned from the BMA earlier in the evening, the meaning of the list of credentials behind Dr Leonard K. Wisbeech’s name, but in reality just to hear her voice once more, to imagine her lips so far away yet so close to mine. Common sense prevented me though: I realized she was probably off-duty by now and I didn’t even know if she lived at the home itself or somewhere close by. It struck me that I knew nothing about her except that she was a care-supervisor and that life had played one of its cruel, dispassionate tricks on her.
Doubt insinuated its way into my happiness. Maybe Constance lived with a partner.
The thought froze me. She was lovely enough to gain the love and respect of anybody, regular or, like me, otherwise. There were enough good people out there who had never worn the shackles of prejudice, who clearly could see another’s inner self, their real worth, superficial physicality no barrier to true appreciation; and Constance, not just because of the almost mystical loveliness in those dark eyes, the beauty of her features, but because of the innate yet evident gentleness of her nature, the purity of her essence, would be easy to fall in love with.
My mood was spoilt; anxiety set me to brooding. Tormenting uncertainties accompanied me to my bed that night.
Voices screamed inside my head and wings, huge, powerful things, the wings of unseen unbirdlike behemoths, pounded my flesh. Amidst the cries were plaintive wails of despair and startled shrieks of terror, but I think it was the sound of my own protests that finally woke me.
I found myself raised from my pillow, bedsheets in disarray around me, tepid light from the hallway casting a wedge-shaped glow through the partially-open door on to the carpet. My skin was wet with perspiration and I was still yelling, my voice raspy, hoarse, as though I’d been at it for some time. My demands were for the creatures of my dreams to leave me alone, to get out of my head and my home, and there should have been some relief in waking, the nightmare should have ended, but they didn’t: the screams, the anguished howls, the beating of gargantuan wings were still with me inside the room, as if joining me from my subconscious, invisible tormentors escaped from their dream base.
I thought I detected moving shadows in the darkest corners of the bedroom, but each time I endeavoured to focus upon them, they dissolved, becoming nothing once more, my eye catching movement elsewhere so that I looked away, only for the process to be repeated. I became aware of the seeping coolness of the air, a kind of icy cold that crept into the very meat of my body, slowing my blood, prickling my surface skin; yet I dripped with sweat and my head felt feverish. Even in the poor light, I could see the mists of my breath.
Pulling the sheet tangled about my legs up to my crooked chest, I retreated towards the wall behind my pillow, moving warily, cautiously, silent now with only my mind begging those persecutors to leave me; yet just as they had followed me from my nightmare they now inched after me along the bed, drawing close, sniggers and chuckles among the screams. Shadows seem to grow stronger, though still they could not be defined, and the light from the hallway seems to dim even more in their presence.
The hump of my back touched the unyielding wall and I turned to my side, drawing my legs up, hands clenching the bedsheet to my shoulder. No hero I, I began to whimper.
I would have fled, but my limbs had solidified and were of no use to me at all. Whimpers denigrated into sobs.
Horrifyingly, the shadows began to deepen, began to mass, so that they filled my vision, and I was too frightened to close my eye against them. The movements within took on forms and they seemed to convulse, to writhe, and even in that darkness I could see that they resembled no living creature that I have ever known. Unlike man and unlike beast, they squirmed before me, the light from outside fading pitifully under their weight.
I hadn’t been aware, but my foot was exposed from the sheet and something intensely cold and slimy brushed against my toes. My own scream, the yowl of hysteria that so far had been locked deep within my constricted chest, finally erupted to fill the room and echo back from the four walls. It broke off, spasmed as the dark contorted shapes frenzied before me, and it re-emerged so piercingly shrill that even these amorphous night prowlers
flinched.
I jerked my foot back under the sheet and pulled the thin cover over my head, the unsophisticated reaction of a child who was afraid of the boogeyman hiding in his bedroom closet, imagining that this insubstantial layer would be protection against the haunting. But cowering there, body quaking, I felt their weight through the material, felt their proddings and their jabs, tormenting nudges that sought to draw me out so that I would face their full horror. I resisted though, denied them their claim, and I prayed for reality to return, for part of me knew that this could not really be happening, that my mind must still be captive of my dreams, that somehow consciousness had not wholly escaped nightmare fantasy.
And so eventually, and in their own time, they went away, whispering and mumbling their discontent as they faded. Yet I still remained hidden and only the gradual dawn light filtering through my flimsy but shielding cloak finally drew me from cover. Only that and the sane, welcoming sound of the telephone ringing in the next room.
21
It had been Louise Broomfield who had called me in the early hours, rousing me from the chilling after-effects of the haunting, bringing me back to the natural world of cold hallway floor, stubbed toes, and insistent telephones, a conventional place uninhabited by ambiguous, shape-changing chimaeras. It had turned out that Louise had also been having a bad time of it, but her dream – her sleep-sensing, as she would have it – was about me and the nightmare I was going through. She had observed me cowering beneath a white shroud while shadowy, spectral demons had roamed the darkness around me, flailing me with ill-formed fists, screeching and berating me as they did so. Although the imagery was confused, she was acutely aware that I was in grave danger, for this was in her own dreamscape, one from which she herself could not escape. Louise had called my name, but I had not responded; she had chastised my tormentors, but they had not listened. All she could do, the clairvoyant told me, was to watch over me until the abuse ended. As had happened with me, the nightmare eventually had faded and early light had awakened her.
Her immediate thought had been to make contact with me, the idea that the dream was hers alone not even entering her head; the psychic link between us had been so strong, she said, and she was desperately afraid for my state of mind. I was both pleased and relieved to hear her voice when I answered the phone for, together with the pain in my stubbed toe, it helped vanquish the lingering remnants of the nightmare (yes, mentally I was already rationalizing the whole experience as a terrible and vivid dream, refusing to accept that for much of it I had been conscious. It’s an example of how a frightened but pragmatic mind will alter perception to minimize the anguish). Louise had warned me that danger was hovering close by, that the dream was either a threat or a desperate message; ultimately, though, it was I who was trying to calm her. Although I was frightened and shaken, my natural cynicism offered a hubristic shield behind which I could take refuge, bravado my only weapon of defence.
Later, when I left the flat for the office, I saw that the skies were overcast, the sunlight grey, another dismal beginning to the day. So early in the morning the streets were quiet, with only a few shop assistants and office staff making their way to work. Seagulls swooped and circled overhead, searching for snacks, impatient for the first appearance of food-gobbling tourists with sandwiches to be snatched, crumbs to be beaked from the kerbsides. The alleyways and narrow passages I took as short cuts seemed particularly bleak and intimidatingly empty, and I hurried through them, the unfamiliar quietness increasing my unease. The broader thoroughfares were more comforting, but still not busy enough for me to feel totally safe. As much as I resisted the notion, the night had left me wasted and vulnerable.
When I finally slid the key into the agency’s ground floor door, I almost stumbled inside. There in the gloom of the stairwell I wedged my hump into a corner and drew in exhausted breaths, my journey being more like a flight through suspect territories. I gave myself time to steady my breathing and for my trembling to settle, then began the climb up the creaky stairs to my office. I paused when a noise from the rooms above came to me.
After the night I’d just been through, I suppose I had the right to feel a little jumpy, even though I stubbornly (and perhaps necessarily) continued to dismiss the whole thing as a wild dream prompted by the worrisome events of the past few days. I peered up at the landing at the top of the stairs and debated with myself whether or not to carry on or turn around and head back outside into the living world again. Part of me was aware that I was being old-maidishly ridiculous, while the other part remembered another ascent to upstairs rooms, those in the repossessed house at the beginning of the week where a shattering mirror filled with agitated monstrosities (self-reflections, I’d later rationalized) had awaited me. I was reluctant to advance further, fearing yet another shock might be in store, and with that nervousness there came the acceptance of what had truly happened during the night. Those terrors that had invaded my bedroom, although perhaps instigated by a dream, had been real: they had materialized into something perhaps less solid than you or I, but nevertheless palpable, entities that could touch and use their weight, wraiths that could be heard and so feared as actual though unnatural beings. The pounding of giant wings, heard not just by myself, but by the clairvoyant and Shelly Ripstone too, had been no illusion, and neither were these night creatures. If I believed in one, then I had to believe in the other. And as I stood there on the stairway it came to me as a dawning recognition that the ‘phantasms’ had not been there to torment but were there to warn me. Louise had been partly right: their message was desperate. But somehow I knew – and God knows I was no psychic, but I knew – that their desperation was for me! And of course, this answer led to another question: Why? What was the message?
Another noise from above. The scraping of furniture. Then it hit me: Was the answer to the other question waiting for me up there?
The urge to turn and flee back downstairs was immense and, in fact, almost overpowering when I heard a door open on the landing above. I had turned, one foot already on the step below, when the voice came to me.
‘Dis? That you?’
Henry. Bless his lovely Yiddisher heart, it was Henry! ‘Uh . . .’ was all I could reply.
He appeared at the top of the stairs, red braces brightening the gloom, his sky-blue shirt a little wrinkled, his gimlet eyes boring through thick, gold-framed spectacles.
‘You gave me a fright,’ he complained, shaking his head in irritation. ‘I heard someone come half-way up, and then nothing. What happened – you run out of breath?’
‘Jesus, Henry,’ I managed to say.
‘You all right, Dis?’ He bent down, hands on knees, to get a better look. ‘Bloody hell, you look awful.’
‘What?’
‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost. What was it – a bad night?’
I hadn’t realized the dread inside showed so plainly. ‘I didn’t expect anyone to be here at this hour, that’s all. You took me by surprise.’
He cocked his head, still scrutinizing me. ‘No, it’s more than that. You really don’t look at all well. Come on up, let me get you some coffee.’
I resumed the climb and he disappeared back through the door. When I entered the office, he was already by the filing cabinets, pouring boiling water into two mugs. ‘I was making myself a cup when I heard you,’ he said. Looking at my face, he shook his head again. ‘You’re as white as a sheet, Dis.’
‘As it happens, I did have a pretty bad night.’
‘Want to tell me about it?’ He gave me a steaming mug, then took his own over to his desk. He sat and swivelled round to face me again. ‘So. Talk to me.’
‘Hmn?’ I blew into the coffee before sipping. I scorched my lips, but it felt good; it felt real.
‘Why are you looking so . . .’ He searched for an adequate description. ‘Well, so bloody grim and haggard. You look as if you’ve reached your first century and aren’t looking forward to the second. Has someone upset you, Dis?
’
Over the years, Henry and I had shared quite a few confidences over a few pints and gins and he had proved a good and comforting friend when my own burdens, those mostly to do with my stature and other people’s attitude towards it – an odd remark in a bar that might have caught me off guard, chortled derision in the street that had been unexpected, the kind of slings and arrows that came with outrageous fortune, and stuff that as a rule I’d learned to cope with. Sometimes though, the word ‘freak’ got through to me and, as independent as I kidded myself to be, I needed some amicable words of compassion, someone to let me know that ignorance was a minority commodity and a sure sign of sickness of soul. He’d always matched me drink for drink, listening to my whining, always agreeing with me, but never trying to kid me that things were not as they seemed. He knew and almost understood the problems I faced, never ever suggesting they were in my own imagination, never once pretending I was anything other than I was: he was too shrewd and respected me too much for that. Henry was invariably sympathetic without ever becoming maudlin and because of that, and because of his honesty with me, I listened and accepted the point when he advised me I had to be what I was and never to imagine I could be anything else – that could only lead to further fantasy and further disappointment. His reasoning was that what I was was incredible enough: I had brains, I had determination, and I ran my own business, I had good friends, excellent associates, and I owned my own home; I was in relatively good health, despite my handicaps, and I was physically strong; I took shit from no one and anybody who knew me properly would never give it. In short, I had a whole lot more going for me than many people who had perfect physiques and good looks. That kind of sugared his words, although his initial advice was a little hard to take; but when I took time to think on it, to really think on it, I realized he made a lot of sense. My life was as it was and even among the harsh realities there was a fair amount of good. I had much to enjoy and good people to enjoy it with. Because of Henry’s pearls of wisdom, my expectations over the last few years had never risen too high; but then, neither had they been too limited. (What Henry wasn’t aware of as yet was that a new light had entered my life in the person of Constance Bell, someone whose love would counterbalance every bad thing that had come my way. If, that is, she was free, and if, as my instincts told me, she was interested in me.)
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