Wrong Turn - I Find Myself Alone

by Zoe Jasmine

  “I'm from Raheny, in Dublin,” said Mac after a minute. “And here four years and some, staying with mates in Kilburn, off Mill Lane. Been at this sort of thing since weekend jobs with my da. Five, six years now. Never seen the likes of this.”

  “Have you got a real name, Mac?”

  “Mac's good enough for you if it's good enough for me,” he said. He had the look of a ferret with mumps, his narrow elegant nose blooming out of a face raw with the last of adolescent acne. “I've been with himself the past two years.” He nodded sullenly to his partner.

  “Colum Jenkins,” said the older man, his hand on his left shoulder, rubbing it. “Building's been my trade the past dozen years, working now for myself, previously on a maintenance staff in a clinic in Birmingham. And I think my domestic arrangements are none of your concern. I did some work for a friend of Mr. Comestor's and was recommended; Mr. C rang me a month ago or so. I came out to look at the job, deliver an estimate, collect my deposit. The usual. Mr. C was a pleasant enough chap, a bit distracted, you might say—”

  “Distracted? How?”

  “Oh, Monday morning we arrived, lots of to-ing and fro-ing on the phone. Some buyers interested in the flat below came pounding on his door to ask him some questions about the neighborhood. That sort of thing, don't you know. He didn't look like a man who stayed in one place with a newspaper for very long, did he, Mac? So when we arrived back on Tuesday and he wasn't here, we weren't so very surprised. We thought he'd be back in a moment, or maybe I'd just misunderstood. That was the day the nasty weather began. I left a note asking his permission to do the bathroom first. I didn't care to risk breaking through to a chimney stack whose shaft could well have shifted over time, allowing in the rain, leaving us dealing with the elements. But Mr. C left no written reply on Wednesday morning to answer my proposal. He just disappeared. So we spread out the dust sheets, put our wet things to dry, and got to work, or thought we would.”

  “So it's been rainy weather all week?”

  “Had to set out the oilcloth in the hall the first morning he was gone, Tuesday, it was, to drop our wellies on. We've not had to pick it up yet. Very English weather.”

  They were all skirting the imponderable: that some thing or other had pulled the nails back into the wood so efficiently that the nailheads were once again flush. It was too strange, like biting into an apple and tasting a mouthful of cauliflower.

  “Why didn't you just say, ‘Oh, the hell with this,' and take off?” she asked.

  Mac looked as if he'd made that very remark to Jenkins repeatedly over the past four days. “It's bad doings, and worse to come,” said Mac.

  Jenkins sighed. “Mac is spooked if a mouse runs across his path, thinking it is the devil's agent. But though I don't fathom it and I don't like it, I'm ashamed to be scared of it. And I don't want to leave it till Mr. C comes home. I've a reputation, and a good one, the which I worked hard enough to get. And we don't know where Mr. C is.”

  “There must be a missing persons bureau at the police station,” said Winnie. “Why not call?”

  “ Youring, give your name, and tell some authority that you're scared of your assignment?” said Jenkins. “Go ahead, try it.”

  “You're not telling it all,” said Mac. “He isn't,” he said to Winnie.

  “What's he leaving out?”

  “You mind your tongue,” began Jenkins, but Mac said stoutly, nearly in a shout, “This is a fecking waste of time. And there's naught to it anyway, so just belt up.” He turned to Winnie and continued. “Wednesday we just stood around some, joking about it, trying to show we weren't pissing ourselves with fright. Then yesterday even in the rain we thought we'd get up on the roof and look down, try to find a hole from above and block it. If it was a suction thing, a dark wind howling down the bones of this house, well, we'd clog its arteries and give it a stroke. Give the whole house a huge shake. A thrombosis.”

  “Please,” said Jenkins, “my own heart is listening. Don't give it notions.”

  “So we did,” said Mac. “There's no roof access from this flat right now; that's what your friend Mr. C wants to improve by this rehab. We had to get the ladder out the study window, up in what you call the new house part. We had to steady one end on the window ledge and drop the other onto the pitched roof of the house next door to that, across the yard below. Not to cross to that house but just to have someplace to stand and get our balance so we could turn and begin to scrabble up the slope of the roof over the study, and then cross to where it joins the valley gutter of the older house—Rudge House as you have it—at the chimney stack.”

  “Not my favorite thing, heights,” said Jenkins, and closed his eyes. “But what else was to be done?”

  "So we get out there in the filthy fecking weather, and the wind wobbles the ladder like a vengeance. But we get up onto the roof all right and walk around a bit.

  “We're up there, poking about the rear chimney stack, the one that leads down here. It's nothing out of the ordinary. They capped it with an ironstone chimney pot shaped like a castle in a big chess game. The leads seemed snug enough. A little cracking in the mortar around the chimney pot. We think maybe this is it. We chip the chimney pot off its mount and set it to, on the parapet. It's a great monstrous thing, and heavy. And then the rapping begins up top, too, coming from inside the house, coming out. But it sounds different when you're outside.”

  Winnie wanted to ask that they move into the front room, looking out over the staid, empty forecourt of Rudge House, farther away from the kitchen and the pantry wall still making Morse code at them. But she merely said, “Oh?”

  “It sounded like a voice, is what he wants to say,” said Jenkins. His eyes were brimming. “Some sound pushed through a throat, that's all, but what throat, or whose, or when, we could not tell.”

  “He had his little fit, he did,” said Mac, pointing at Jenkins. “He lost his brekkie and clawed at his clothes. I wanted to go get the priest and nuke that buggery wailer into kingdom come. But he wouldn't let me.”

  “He's a moron,” said Jenkins, not unkindly, “he's that most superstitious sort of fellow; only bothers to believe in God and the blessed saints because he likes to believe in the devil and his army of familiars. In actual fact, of any given Sunday he'd just as soon run down a man of the cloth and rob the widow of her mite. He has no scruples, don't you know, no faith, only dim fears, which he populates out of The X-Files and The Twilight Zone .”

  Mac said, “It's a case of house possession, isn't it? And Mister Colum Jenkins bawled like an infant at the sound of it.”

  “What did it say?” Winnie only asked because the longer they talked, the more time passed since the nails retracted into the wall, and the easier it became to breathe.

  “The consonants were vowels, the vowels were mud, the language was far away, possibly beastly,” said Jenkins.

  “Like if you gave a dog electroshock and convinced him he could speak English,” said Mac, “only he couldn't, of course.”

  “Why did you weep?” said Winnie.

  “Everyone's got a grief,” said Jenkins, “mine is mine and none of your concern, but mine came up the chimney to remind me of itself.”

  “You're as superstitious as he is, only you use a different grammar,” said Winnie. “How long did it go on? How loud was it? When did it stop? What did you do then?”

  Mac said, “We couldn't knock up the compound—so many parts sand to so many parts cement—to mortar it into place. Not till the rain let up. So we headed back in. Then the ladder jumped—it just jumped, like a skipping rope—and tipped into the alley. I was already in the window and Jenkins following; he fell on top of me to avoid losing his balance into the alley. He had a seizure then. His pills.”

  “Bad heart,” said Jenkins. “Been so for a while, but frights make it worse.”

  “You went a bit snoozers on me. Browned your boxers too, didn't you. Talk about stink.”

  “And the ladder . . . ?” said Winnie quickl
y.

  “Still in the alley. Never got to it yet.” Jenkins avoided Mac's eye.

  “And the chimney pot is up there uncemented?”

  “It's forty, fifty pounds of fired clay. Short of a gale-force wind, nothing's going to budge it. We'll right it soon enough.”

  “Tell her about your dream,” said Mac. His head was back and tilted, his eyes hooded, his lips on one side drawn up into a mean pucker. “When you were out cold. Go on, then.”

  “You shut your mouth,” said Jenkins. “It's none of her concern, nor yours. I'm sorry I spoke of it.”

  “Go on, tell her, Jenky-jenks.”

  Jenkins took a breath. Winnie saw him halting in his thoughts. “Now you,” she said to Mac, “you just hold on.” To be funny, addressing the pantry wall: “You, I don't want to hear it.” She took Jenkins by the elbow. “Come on, then. Have a seat. There's nothing here that we can't all walk away from. I'm going to make a cup of tea.”

  “Oh, you don't know,” said Jenkins, “we can walk all we want, but the good it does?”

  “You stupid git. Tell her the dream or I will.”

  “I told you to shut up,” said Winnie. “Why don't you just go. Please? Grab a sandwich or something. We're going to have some tea.”

  “Wouldn't scarper off, leaving my mate here, not with dead Mr. C in the walls, no, darlin', no.”

  She stopped talking to him then, made two cups of tea, and sat down near to Jenkins. “This is all going to seem so ridiculous when we get to the bottom of it,” she said. “Please. I don't care what you dreamed.”

  “Tell her.”

  “I don't hold by dreams,” said Jenkins, “it's not my way. But this was such a dream. I was so deep in it, not drowning but—bewildered—no word for it really. Everything hung in strands of gray, but it wasn't rain and it wasn't fog, it wasn't thread, it wasn't smoke, nor yet was it the scarring of stone with a chisel, nor the ripped seams of old plush curtains, but it was like all that.”

  The house held its breath.

  “Tell the part about your daughter. It's good, this,” said Mac. He looked ready to down a pint of Guinness and settle back to hear an old geezer retell the story of the Trojan horse. “Listen and you'll see.”

  “I don't want to hear it,” said Winnie. “I'm not going to listen. The past has nothing to do with us, it's only what we make of the present that counts, the both of you.”

  “She's a whore, works the Strand,” muttered Mac appreciatively. “You want to hear a dream that a dad can have about his daughter?”

  “Piss off, I'll skewer you with my screwdriver, you,” said Jenkins, half rising, his face now gamboge.

  “What's wanted is a fecking exorcism here before the devil in the pantry wall gets out to claim your soul. What he dreamed,” said Mac, “was a nightmare. Someone got his daughter, some fiend. His daughter. She's gone missing for several months. Or else she's gone swanning off somewhere, no forwarding address for old Da here. She doesn't come home to wash her smalls in the family sink anymore.”

  She got between them before Jenkins attacked him, and there was just a little tussle then. She walloped Mac on the side of the head with a box of Weetabix, to score a point more than to hurt him. Mac retired to the front hall, snorting with laughter. He made a noisy show of taking a leak in the bathroom without closing the door. She stood and settled her hand on Jenkins as his shoulders heaved and he worked to regain some dignity. “Let it go, the pair of you,” she said in a low voice, as if he were four years old, “you're each as bad as the other.” She dragged out a handkerchief from her jacket pocket and handed it to him. “I don't believe a word of it, anyway; you two are having too much fun beating each other up for me to pay attention.”

  “Ah, but he's telling the truth about the girl, she's missing,” wheezed Jenkins. “And it was a harsh dream. It was my daughter and it was not, in that indecisive, maddening way of dreams. She was talking to me, but she was clawed and chewed—”

  “I don't want—”

  “It gets worse. There was a fiend; she's lashed—”

  “I don't want, ” said Winnie firmly but picking her way as kindly as she could. “I have enough dreams of my own, and this is none of my business. I'm paying it no attention at all. It's John's being missing that's getting to you. To me too. Take some deep breaths now. It's okay.”

  She waited for Jenkins to regain composure. Mac wandered back into the kitchen with a saucy expression. “Why does a whore stop having Sunday tea with her da?” said Mac. “He slags her off one time too many for having a job she can do lying down? His dream is all guilt, nothing but. What has he said to her that gets up her nose? It's his fault for being a silly preachy bugger. He's always telling me to make something of myself too. As if I need to hear his mind about it.”

  She took a deep breath and said, “Look, fellows. This is your job and I don't care if you walk out or if you tear the wall down. I'm going to go to the police, and then I'm going to pack my bags and get out of here.”

  She picked up her coat with as much dignity as she could and made her way down the stairs. Out the front door into the sentimental rain that colored the world in halftone shades, as in Jenkins's dream. How useless her mind was in this situation; it only knew how to work in stories. She couldn't think what could retract those nails into the wall that didn't have a supernatural origin.

  She knew what Wendy Pritzke would make of this material, that was the curse: Wendy was with her, working on her own story even as Winnie went sliding and slopping down the hill, trying to remember where she might have seen a police station in Hampstead.

  . . . that girl. Maybe one of those slim-hipped boy-girls, downright gaunt. Wearing clothes too big for her, all hanging on her like medieval rags—that coarse-woven stuff like burlap. She'd be out on the pavement where she usually did business, stalking the stalker. A modern-day Robo-prostitute, not to be trifled with, ready to wreak revenge at last on the ghost of Jack the Ripper. On behalf of all the women who'd died at his knife.

  And what of this notion of Jack the Ripper, his ghost, howling up the chimney stack, ready to emerge when the time was right, ready to do battle again? He had been called the Ripper because of his tactics with the knife, his talent at bloody vivisection. Could some fille Jenkins or someone like her--some modern-day prostitute with an appetite for vengeance--take the life of a ghost? And how could you take the life of someone dead?

  And how had he died? Who had ripped the Ripper a hundred-some years ago? The paterfamilias, or an intended victim getting the upper hand?

  But this was nonsense, a distraction. She had to focus. Could she remember where the police station was? Down Rosslyn Hill, was it? And what would she say when she got there? How could she tell the officer at the desk about superstitious Mac and skeptical Jenkins, and the rapping sound, and the retracting nails? Would the Metropolitan Police come by and tear the place apart? What if they did, and John showed up, having been out on an extended work emergency, or even a tryst of some sort that he was hiding from Allegra Lowe as well as Winnie Rudge? The authorities would be onto him about his plans to put an illegal staircase and deck onto a protected building without the proper permission.

  The police would just get on the phone and call John's office; why hadn't she done that? Because she was in the custom usually of staying out of his life, she knew, but it was time to break that old habit.

  She stopped and bought a phone card, found his work number in her book, dialed. “Adjusting Services,” said the voice that answered, a woman's efficient voice in that faintly curdled South African accent.

  “John Comestor, please.”

  “Who is calling, please?”

  “Winifred Rudge.”

  She was put on hold a minute. The rain battered at her back. “Sorry,” said the voice, returning, “he's not here.”

  “This is his cousin. Is he out of town, do you know?”

  “I don't know his movements. Frightfully sorry.”

  “But has
he been in this week? I've just arrived from the States and I'm hoping to see him while I'm here.”

  “I don't work this department usually; I'm filling in today for Gillian, who's out sick.”

  Gillian and John, an item? No. Gillian was married and sixty besides.

  “Look, can you please ask around? I really need to know where he is.”

  “I'm afraid I can't do that, miss. It's company policy not to reveal the schedules or destinations of our adjustors. I'm sure you can understand. There's little else I can help you with. I do apologize.”

  “You can tell me if you've seen him at least. Please.”

  “There are other lines going. Dreadfully sorry.” She rang off.

  He was traveling on work; he'd been called away suddenly; why couldn't they just say?

  Unless—and this was her fiction spasm happening again—the office staff there had been coached to respond to her with no information at all about him. Why would John do that to her?

  Turning back from the phone, blinking into the rain, Winnie thought that if Colum Jenkins called John's office, maybe he'd get a different answer than Winnie had gotten. Maybe the temp would think, “Not a woman, so not the cousin he's avoiding; I can answer differently.” It was worth a try. There was nothing else to do.

  Except, as she passed it, to step into the overheated offices of Bromley Channing Estate Agents, just as the thought struck her, and stand there dripping on the sisal matting. The properties were posted between laminated sheets in the window, hanging chicly on fishing line. Photographs of facades and aren't-we-smart parlors with fresh flowers. Winnie was grateful that the alibi of middle age made all kinds of mild lies possible. “I was thinking of buying and I saw your sign,” she said to the receptionist, “on a building in Holly Bush Hill, a flat. Is it taken yet?”

  “Oh, a flat,” said the receptionist, as if dealing with anything less than former mansions of Sting was not worth swiveling around in her chair to check on. “Not many of those this time of year. Spring is when they start to come on the market.”