by Gary McMahon
Please consider this an invitation to this month’s Special Therapy Session, Friday through till Monday.
I have the use of a large house in Ullswater, and as well as the usual therapeutic classes and group talks, the plan is to clean the place up a bit. The house is in a liveable condition, of course, with all the usual utilities, but things were left in disarray when renovation work stopped suddenly a couple of years ago.
There will be no charge for the long weekend – all I ask is that you help out with the work, which involves clearing out a lot of rubbish and abandoned items prior to the house being put on the market early next year. Obviously, I see this manual labour as being an integral part of the therapy programme, and we can draw up a roster if necessary so that everyone takes on an equal amount of work but no one has to do anything they are incapable of or uncomfortable with.
I hope to see you this weekend. Please let me know by Thursday evening at the latest if you’d like to attend. I hope you will.
Yours Sincerely,
Clive
Lights flared against the windscreen, making the glass opaque. Alice put down the sheet of paper on the passenger seat and tried to make out what was happening on the road ahead. The lights in front were moving slowly forward, so she let off the handbrake, lifted one foot from the clutch and let the other one drop gently onto the accelerator to apply some pressure. The car inched forward. Brake lights flashed directly ahead of her, and she slammed her foot down on the brake pedal. The traffic was motionless again.
“Great,” she said, thinking that a weekend in the Lake District might not be such a bad thing, if only to get away from all this for a couple of days. She might even get something out of the trip, some kind of insight she was unable to grasp through the more formal group sessions.
She killed the CD and tuned the car radio to a local channel. The news reports gave her more details about the delays: as well as the problem on the ring road, there had been a collision on the slip road to the motorway. Multiple vehicles involved; at least one fatality. Blood and broken bones.
I can still see you. I can always see you.
Her mouth went dry. Her eyes felt gritty. She blinked the sensation away and tried to focus on the traffic. Reaching out an unsteady hand, she pressed the button to find another channel. Cheesy pop music blared from the speakers.
Eventually, after a long delay, the traffic began to move again. When she passed the scene of the incident, Alice kept her gaze locked straight ahead. She had no desire to see the wreckage. The sight of blood didn’t exactly make her queasy, it was more the fact that a life might have been snuffed out, and someone who should be living and breathing could be lying dead. She put her foot down and left the accident behind. If only, she thought… if only it could always be this easy to turn my back on things.
Back at the apartment, she made a cup of tea and sat in front of the television. She knew that she should try to eat something, but her appetite was non-existent. Hunger rarely bothered her these days. In fact, most of her natural desires – hunger, thirst, libido – had withered and blown away since Tony’s death. It was as if he’d taken the most vital parts of her with him, and there was no sign of them coming back. His death had left a huge gap, and when she looked inside there was nothing there, not even any decent memories.
Just a cold dark place into which he’d fallen.
She switched off the television and sat in silence, wishing that she had someone to talk to. Perhaps she should reconsider her negative views of house pets and get a cat – at least there would be some signs of life in the house other than her own. The sound of padding feet, a plaintive meow at feeding time, something to sit in her lap while she stroked it, might be nice.
Outside, it was dark. The rain had stopped a little while ago. Street-lights did their best to hold back the night; the evening sky looked dense and endless. The moon was clear; the stars were too distant to matter. She stared out at the infinite darkness and wished that her life had been different. She’d made the wrong decision too many times. Nothing had worked out as planned. Sometimes she wondered if she were being stalked by a black angel, an inversion of the mythical guardian angels she’d read about as a child. A large, invisible being with black eyes and wings made of raven feathers.
“I’m still here,” she whispered, wondering if there was any truth in the statement. There were times when she felt like someone else’s memory, or a dream locked within a sleeper’s mind. Sometimes she thought that if she stared too long at the back of her hand, she’d see it begin to fade away. Would anyone even notice if she vanished completely?
She grabbed her coat and rummaged inside the pocket. Withdrawing Clive’s note, she made yet another decision, and hoped to God that this time it was the right one.
Yes, she thought. I’ll go. Why the hell not?
She grabbed her phone and sent a text message to confirm her attendance before she had a chance to change her mind.
Folding the sheet of paper in half, she placed it on the coffee table. Then she went to the kitchen to make herself another cup of tea. She stared at the steam as the kettle boiled. Within the rising vapour she saw dancing figures. She smiled. Everything was going to be okay. Wasn’t it?
Wasn’t it?
Alice closed her eyes. The kettle clicked off. It wasn’t the answer she was looking for.
CHAPTER THREE
The van pulled into the pub car park and came to a halt a couple of feet away from where Alice was standing. The early afternoon sky was grey and uninspiring. She walked over to the van and waited, cold and unfocused, her weekend bag clutched tightly in her hand. She felt like a kid about to embark upon a school trip – her first holiday away without her parents: a big moment in a small life, a terrifying and tantalising prospect. Alice still didn’t know who else would be on this trip. Clive had said that they would only be told on the day of departure. He liked his little secrets, did Clive. Maybe he liked them too much.
But, no, that was unfair. He was a good man. He was helping them all.
The side door of the van slid open and a head and shoulders emerged from the space behind the front passenger seat. She recognised the round, friendly face but struggled to give it a name.
“Hi, Alice. All set to go?” The nose wrinkled in a cute way when the familiar face smiled. Ah, yes… Moira Straub, the divorcee whose teenage son had died suddenly three years ago. She didn’t mind Moira. The woman was friendly, if a little highly-strung and rather too fond of overt public displays of emotion. She liked to cry in front of people, and often looked hung-over. But Alice couldn’t hold that against the woman; whatever helped was okay with her.
“Yes…I suppose,” she said, brushing the hair out of her eyes.
“Jump in.” Jake Westing climbed out of the rear of the van, smiling. He was always smiling. He often seemed to be enjoying some private joke, or hiding behind some secret humour. She didn’t trust him but she had no idea why. Just a feeling. She tried to remember who he’d lost. A sister, perhaps. Murdered?
“Hi, Jake.” She hoped her disappointment didn’t show.
Alice moved forward and started to climb into the back of the van. Jake stood beside her. Moira glanced at her. Clive sat in the driver’s seat, his eyes shining behind his spectacles.
“Hi,” she said.
Clive nodded. “Glad you could make it.” He licked his lips and Alice had the strange notion that he was doing so in anticipation of eating her flesh. She tried not to shudder, and then she felt like laughing, but hysterically, not at anything particularly funny.
It was stress. She was getting worked up over this trip before it had even begun.
Steve Kinney was sitting in the back of the van. He peered at her, his blandly handsome face expressionless. He’d lost his wife to cancer or leukaemia - one of those horrible diseases that gouged holes in the lives of those left behind. She felt guilty about not being able to recall the specifics about these people and their situations, but if she
were honest, none of them really meant that much to her.
“Oh…” She felt foolish, as if she’d been caught out at something she shouldn’t be doing. “I didn’t see you there.”
Steve shrugged. His shoulders were broad, powerful. He had a rugby-player’s physique. If he wasn’t so good-looking, he’d be intimidating. He flashed his white teeth and raised one eyebrow. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to unnerve you,” he said, as if he meant quite the opposite.
Alice shook her head. “Don’t be silly.” She climbed inside; the other two followed her in. The door slammed and she felt as if it were a prison door closing just before the van pulled away. She looked out of the window and saw a group of people smoking in the pub doorway. One of them – a small middle-aged woman – looked in the direction of the van, and Alice raised her hand and waved.
A silly thought filled her head. Let someone see me go, if only to notice my exit.
The woman waved back. Then she turned back to her friends and began to laugh. Smoke drifted above the group, mingling with the soft rain that had once again begun to fall.
Clive had switched on the radio. It was a local station, one that played a lot of music from the 1980s. He probably thought it would help create a buoyant mood in the van.
Steve, sitting next to her, was concentrating on his iPad. She recalled that he did the same thing in therapy, always tapping at the screen, distracted. It was clearly his way of hiding. They all had their coping methods, the strategies they relied upon, and she supposed that his was just as good as any other.
Moira was singing along to the song on the radio. She had a thing for Clive; seemingly everyone in the group knew about it except for her. It was a source of amusement that she was so hot for their counsellor without even realising, and Alice sometimes felt sorry for her. Other times – like now – she thought the woman was a silly, high-maintenance cow.
“It isn’t a long drive,” said Clive without looking back. “I reckon an hour and a half will get us to the area and then another twenty minutes to drive up the hillside to the house. I’ve been there before, of course, so I’m pretty sure I know the way.”
Moira kept singing. Steve was tapping at his iPad, and had put in a pair of ear buds. Jake was reading a book.
Fun crowd, thought Alice, and then she regretted being so glib. These were her people now, whether she liked it or not. They all suffered in the same way, had all gone through similar life-changing events, and were meant to support each other. This was her tribe.
Lucky me.
She watched the streets roll by like a theatre set on a pulley system. Everything seemed false, as if it were part of the backdrop created simply for this moment, when she would witness it, and then it would be packed away. After a short while the streets became less dense, with fewer houses squeezed onto the small plots. Then patches of green began to encroach, and before long they were out of the city proper and heading deep into the countryside. The drizzle had stopped and the sun was doing its best to break through the clouds. She could almost pretend that everything was fine with the world.
It never failed to impress Alice that she lived in a city that gave her access to open countryside within the space of only a few minutes’ drive. She realised that England was a relatively small island, and even London wasn’t big compared to some of the American cities she’d visited during holidays abroad, but she still felt the same way whenever she headed out of the urban sprawl and into the sticks.
“So,” said Moira, her singing halted for the time being and the radio turned low. “Are you going to tell us about this house?”
Clive seemed more relaxed now they were on the open road. His shoulders were not so tense and he’d cracked open the side window to let in some air. “I suppose I should really tell you where it is we’re going, shouldn’t I? I mean, it’s only fair.”
He was teasing. He liked to tease. Alice liked it, too, especially when the teasing was aimed at her. This realisation both alarmed and amused her; perhaps, like Moira, she also harboured a secret lust for their counsellor.
“The house belongs to an old friend of mine, someone I’ve known for many years. We studied together at Uni and she inherited the place from a great uncle, or something. I’m not sure exactly why the house came to her rather than someone else in the family, but it did.” He changed gear, shifting up into fifth as the road opened out, seemingly clear of traffic.
Alice leaned forward in her seat, the seatbelt tightening across her breasts. “Have you held these sessions there before?”
Clive shook his head. “No. I usually change the venue of these weekend sessions, just to shake things up. This is the first time I’ve taken anyone out to Grief House.”
“What’s that?” Steve looked up from his iPad. “What a weird name for a house.”
Clive laughed softly. “Yes, I suppose it is. That isn’t its real name, of course, just something the locals like to call it. They named it after the standing stones nearby.”
Steve’s attention drifted back to his iPad. Alice wondered if he might be about to Google the area, but when she glanced across she saw that he was playing a gaudy game involving balloons.
“The real name of the place is Staple House, after the sisters who lived there in the 1600s. That’s what it says on the deeds, anyway, according to my friend.”
Alice wondered who this “friend” was. Was it one of Clive’s old flames? A recent paramour? She found herself wondering what he was like in bed. Was he a considerate lover?
“Yes,” said Clive, startling her. Not for the first time, she thought he might have been reading her mind, then she realised that he was answering a question of Moira’s that Alice had failed to register.
“Oh, that’ll be lovely!” Moira was getting over-excited again. She was like an eager puppy, keen to please its master.
“I have a long walk planned, and we can take in the sights – including the standing stones. They’re called The Grieving Stones. Nobody knows why. It’s just what they’ve always been called. Hence the name, Grief House…obviously.”
Just then, Clive swerved the steering wheel, dragging the car to the left. Alice grabbed hold of the seat in front and tried to see what was going on. A low, dark shape streaked across the front of the van, and then there was an impact. The brakes screeched like frightened birds, Clive called out something she couldn’t understand, and Moira started screaming. The van skidded towards a drainage ditch running along the side of the road, but Clive managed to slow and turn the vehicle before its wheels went into the deep trough.
“Shit!” His knuckles were white as he clutched the wheel tightly, trying to control the skid. The van stopped. “What the fuck was that?” His voice boomed in the weird post-incident quiet.
Steve and Jake were fussing over Moira, who was leaning over the seat and trying to climb into the back with them. Alice undid her seatbelt, slid open the side door, and tumbled out of the van, leaving them to their ridiculous hysterics. The fresh air hit her hard, making her realise how stuffy it had been inside the van. It was no longer raining but the road was still damp. She blinked at the daylight, feeling oddly displaced, as if she didn’t belong here in this hostile world.
She heard sounds behind her: the van doors opening, footsteps on the hard road. Moving away from the others, she walked along the damp verge behind the van and spotted something on the road. It was an animal, but at this distance she couldn’t be certain of the species. Her head began to clear as she made her way towards the slumped form, glancing both ways along the quiet road to ensure that she was not about to be flattened by a speeding vehicle.
The animal was clearly dead. As she got closer, she was still unable to identify what it was. There was a resemblance to a small deer, but it was the wrong colour – were there any black deer in England?
“Messy.” Clive was standing behind her. She hadn’t been aware of his approach.
“The poor thing…” She squatted down and reached out to the dead an
imal, but stopped short of actually touching it.
“It must’ve come from out of one of those fields. Or the trees beyond.”
She didn’t look up at Clive, only at the animal. Its eyes were open wide, the large black pupils obscuring most of the white. There was blood on its face. Its mouth was open, the tongue lolling from one corner.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“What’s that?” Clive bent down towards her and she flinched, as if from an anticipated blow. “Are you okay?”
“Yes…yes, I’m fine.” But she wasn’t. All she could think of was a period of her childhood when she’d owned two cats. Felix and Oscar. One of the cats was jet-black, with short hair; the other was a long-haired tabby. They’d never got on, those two. Always fighting. Never able to occupy the same room without one of them chasing after the other, claws swinging.
She remembered coming downstairs early one morning, unable to sleep for reasons long forgotten. She had gone into the kitchen to pour a glass of milk, then into the lounge to watch some early morning television before her parents got up for work.
She had seen the fur first. Huge clumps of it on the carpet, the sofa, even a few bits stuck to the wall, low down near the skirting board. Long fur. Tabby fur. Then there was the blood. Like a delayed reaction, she only saw the blood after the fur. There was a lot of it.
Terrified, she had backed slowly out of the room and sat at the bottom of the stairs until her father got up. He disposed of the mess without making a fuss. The black cat – Oscar – simply vanished from the house the next day, without either of her parents saying another word about it. Nobody had asked her how she felt. It was like some dirty little secret they were never allowed to mention again.
A few days later she was playing outside in the garden. She saw a small black shape moving in the bushes. Slowly, she made her way over to the spot where she thought she had seen Oscar. Bending down, she pushed aside some foliage and looked under the bushes. There was nothing there. The feeling of having just missed seeing the cat stayed with her for a long time. She often glimpsed dark movement at the periphery of her vision, but whenever she turned her head there was nothing to see.
