The Quarantined City

by James Everington

  She didn’t hear him come up the stairs but suddenly he was in the kitchen with her, rain dripping from him, sodden clothes making him look dishevelled. His head hung down, his hair dark with water, hiding his face. She distantly noted that he didn’t have Mogwai with him.

  “God, don’t stand there like that you’ll catch your death,” she said, “let me get you a towel.” She made to walk past him to the bathroom upstairs. She hoped he wasn’t mad with her but couldn’t tell.

  He grabbed her waist as she walked past. “Let me get out of these clothes,” he said lasciviously in her ear. He pulled her towards him—she felt water from his clothes start to soak through hers, and again she couldn’t help but think it more than water, or less, something she shouldn’t be letting touch her. His wet tongue licked her ear, then her neck; his sodden hair brushed against her face. Something about the heaviness of his wet clothes made his touch more clumsy and rough than normal, and his fingers were crinkled like he’d been in the bath too long.

  Laura opened her mouth to speak, unsure what she was going to say—should she really refuse him when he’d been out into the storm for her?—and then she heard the sound of rain and wind seeming to rush in from downstairs. Had he left the front door open? Why on earth would he have done that? The shock of it made her breathe in deeply and she realised...

  Realised Trent smelt of nothing. Absolutely nothing; washed clean.

  She pushed him away, wondering if she were going mad—when she looked at him it was manifestly Trent, her man, despite the way his wet clothes clung to him, despite the patch of water he was standing in. But his smell, or lack of it—it didn’t seem like him. Didn’t seem like this person could possibly be her husband.

  “C’mon sugar,” Trent said, looking at her from beneath the weight of his fringe. From the way his wet jeans clung to him she could see he had an erection. “Let’s make babies.”

  She gasped at him, wondering how he could say such a hurtful thing. Was he drunk? But he hadn’t touched his wine...

  It’s not him, it’s not him, she said in her head. How can it be, when he smells of such nothingness?

  He took a step towards her.

  There was a yowling noise from the foot of the stairs.

  “Mogwai!” Laura cried. She ran to the top of the stairs, called his name again, and felt a deep pressure in her chest as she heard the patter of his feet against the wooden stairs, even over the sound of the rain. (Trent had left the door open for some reason, and she could already see the hall carpet was soaked.) Mogwai ran into her arms and he was soft and warm and somehow dry, having kept himself safe in that way cats have. She buried her face in his fur and breathed in deeply.

  Trent came out of the kitchen behind her. She told herself it had just been stress, he surely couldn’t have meant what he said to her in the way it had sounded—maybe he just held out hope too? And how could she expect him to smell the same when he had been out in that downpour? She was an idiot.

  She turned to him, Mogwai gathered up in her arms.

  Why had he left the front door open though, she thought, and what were those sounds? Was is starting to flood down there?

  She tried to smile, and felt the cat tense in her arms. And then Mogwai screeched at Trent, a yowl of utter hatred and fear as though he’d never seen the man before.

  As though he smelt funny, Laura thought.

  Trent, staring at the cat, opened his mouth seemingly too wide, and shrieked back.

  ~

  There is no author biography underneath the story; of course, Fellows thinks. He realises he is struggling to read; the interior of the bookshop has grown dim. Why is it so dark at this time? There is a sound at the window, a sound he realises has been in the background for some time...

  “Hope it was worth it,” the bookseller interrupts his thoughts. “No refunds if you already know the ending.”

  Fellows ignores him, stands from the chair and feels the muscles in his hands cramp; he remembers the feeling from when he used to write. He looks to the window and sees that the sound he can hear is heavy rain against the glass. The small patch of sky visible is the grey of a winter sea.

  “Christ, that rolled in quick,” he says to the bookseller, and immediately regrets it. Is there anything he could say that wouldn’t cause the man or boy or whatever the fuck he is to sneer at him, to look at him like he was speaking drivel? Fellows is glad he won’t ever have to come to The Echo Bookshop again.

  He gathers together his things—the magazines and anthologies and torn mimeographed sheets containing Boursier’s stories, and the newspaper he has been carrying round since reading it in the café. As he does so he glances at the headline. It is not what he read this morning.

  Storm Fury Continues To Batter City. How Much Longer? it says.

  Fellows stares. This morning, he had read the paper through and the front page headline had been: Drought Continues To Scorch City. How Much Longer? The story below had been about how the small allocation of land the quarantined city still had available for agriculture was parched and how crop yields were low, but fortunately catch from the city’s fishing fleet was still plentiful. He reads the story in front of him now in the dim light, sees it claims exactly the reverse: the fishing boats of the quarantined city have been unable to sail for weeks due to the storms, but the rain has at least made the harvest more bountiful than expected...

  Fellows feels the same dislocated feeling as before, the same feeling of waking from a dream to a reality that doesn’t match up. Is someone playing a trick on him somehow? Could the bookseller have somehow swapped the paper while he had been so engrossed in Boursier’s story (and he had been engrossed)? But then he looks to the grey sky, smeared into something broken and spiral-shaped by the rain drops sliding down the window. What has happened to the weather? he wonders.

  “How long has it been raining?” he says to the bookseller, who laughs as if he has been asked something rhetorical. He shrugs.

  “Months? Years? Bloody quarantine,” he adds, apropos of nothing Fellows can tell.

  Fellows goes to the bookshop door, opens it—water is cascading down from the sky and from the gutters of the alleyway. To his left he can just see the marketplace at the end of the alley. Everyone dashing past has an umbrella or a large coat on, prepared as if they knew when they stepped out this morning how the weather would turn... Fellows considers how soaked he is going to get stepping out there in just his linen suit. It will blow over surely, he thinks, as the wind whips litter around the alley. Somewhere in the distance he can hear a cat yowling; he hopes George is safe inside.

  “Shut the bloody door!” the boy yells behind him; when he looks down he sees rainwater has started to seep over the threshold and inside the shop. No time like the present, Fellows thinks, and darts out into the storm. Immediately the buffeting wind and rain make him hunch into himself; as he walks it feels like they are fighting against him. When he exits the alley he sees that the market square is packed with people, and the sound of the rain is magnified as it falls and drips from the canvas roofs of stalls that weren’t there when he came this way. Wasn’t it market day yesterday? Fellows thinks, but that is the least of his worries. He is shivering; he can feel the cold touch of water against his skin from his already wet clothes. Or something less pure than water, he thinks... As he dashes through the market, he vaguely notices the rows and rows of onions and aubergines and potatoes, and the seafood stalls conspicuous by their absence. He stands indecisively at the far end of the marketplace, wondering which street will lead him to his house by the quickest route. His wet hair falls into his face as he tries to think and he has to wipe it away.

  Georgia, he thinks, Georgia’s flat is nearer than your place. It is an easy route there, and a glass of something warming seems very tempting...

  Forgetting about going home, he heads towards the old town.

  ~

  He is soaked when he arrives at the lobby to Georgia’s apartment block. It is
empty and all he can hear is the rain outside and the drip from his clothes onto the cracked and faded tiles. The inside of the building is warm and humid; it reminds Fellows of the changing rooms of the local baths. As does the faint smell of piss.

  Before calling the lift he goes over to a small bench next to a hulking wrought-iron radiator, and checks the bag with the new Boursier stories in it to make sure they haven’t got wet. They are mainly dry; the only damp one is the one produced on a mimeograph, which has started to run slightly. He glances at the title as he pats it dry: The Quarantine. So Boursier does write some straight realism then, he thinks, at least that one won’t be set in some strange other world. At least that one won’t change things.

  He considers this as he calls the lift for Georgia’s floor—is that what he really believes? Surely the storm had blown in suddenly, and everything else was just the bookseller playing some stupid joke? He tries to keep things straight in his head, picturing the places he knows well: Georgia’s flat, The Carousel, the streets between, his house... But the last only calls to mind piles of second-hand paperbacks, and fading, sightless eyes set in a boyish face. He is glad he hasn’t gone straight back.

  “Christ look what the cat dragged in,” Georgia says when she opens the door to her apartment. “You’re soaking. And what the fuck are you wearing Fellows?”

  “What I was wearing this morning,” Fellows says irritably. Georgia rushes to get something to dry him with, makes him take off his jacket and shirt and wraps him in an old towel. She makes him sit in front of a two-bar fire which smells of smoke when she turns it on. Fellows can tell she is concerned because she has yet to call him a twat. When he surely has been one, although in what exact way he couldn’t say.

  “This morning?” she says finally. “But you were wearing...” She looks momentarily at a loss, her eyes leave his and return. “But you at least had a coat this morning. And an umbrella, didn’t you? What have you done with them? Oh I know,” she adds, still fussing with the towel around him, tucking it in.

  “Huh? What?”

  “You traded them, didn’t you?” She glances at the plastic bag full of stories. “You couldn’t get any of the old money so you traded your coat and umbrella for more stories by that Boursier guy. Girl. Woman.”

  “No, Georgia,” he says, smiling in spite of himself. “I got the money. I got the stories...”

  “I mean, why would you even go out in that?” Georgia says, looking at the storm beyond the window and shivering. He can’t help but look too and the roofs and spires of the city look completely different to how he remembers yesterday, greyer and more blurred and the sea invisible. Maybe something about the view disturbs Georgia too, for she gets up suddenly and turns away. As if to hide her reaction, she goes and fills the kettle, lights the gas with a match, and puts the kettle on the hob.

  “But I didn’t,” he says, “when I went out this morning it was scorching, remember?” His voice speeds up; surely she will remember? “The damn heat-wave which the newspaper is obsessed with, almost as much as the quarantine...”

  “What?” Georgia says; the concern in her eyes when she turns unnerves him more than any mockery would. “Are you... Have you got a fever?”

  Fellows sits back, closes his eyes wearily. “Go on then,” he says. “Tell me.”

  “It’s been raining almost every day since the quarantine,” Georgia says. “That’s what the paper won’t shut up about. This damn storm.” She waves her hand at the window without looking at it. “You know this, you tw... You moan about it to me, how it ruins your precious walks around the stupid city! Jesus, and I mean really Fellows, are you okay?”

  “You’re saying it’s rained since the quarantine?” Fellows says. “All through the summer?”

  “The summer...?” Georgia says. “Look at it out there, Fellows, does it look like summertime to you?” The city is even less visible out of her window than before, as if there were nothing in the world but Georgia’s flat and a smudge of ill-defined shapes crowding round it.

  Fellows feels a sick, tight feeling in his stomach; his face blanches and he suddenly feels shivery despite the warmth from the fire. He reaches for his bag, wanting not Boursier’s stories this time but the newspaper he has been carrying round all day. There was one thing he didn’t check back at the bookshop... The wet paper almost falls apart in his hands which become black with its ink, but he can still make out the date at the top of some of the pages. It is not the date it said this morning; it is a midwinter date which ties in with Georgia’s chronology and not that in his head. Fellows suddenly feels very weary; he closes his eyes and sighs.

  “What side of the road do we drive on Georgia?” he says quietly.

  “What? Weirdo. The left.”

  “Always?”

  “Christ,” Georgia says, “yes. I thought you could drive? It would have kept you dry if nothing else,” she adds.

  “I don’t drive anymore,” Fellows says. Georgia doesn’t speak, and for a few seconds he listens to the rain battering against the windows; it is hard not to imagine it getting inside. Then that noise is drowned out by the increased agitation of the kettle on the hob.

  “Are you putting something more interesting in that coffee than milk?” he says. He still has his eyes closed but he can tell Georgia grins in response.

  “Of course. Medicinal. You twat.”

  Fellows smiles.

  ~

  “George? George!” Fellows calls out into the evening street from his front-door, where he is sheltering from the continued downpour. When he reluctantly left Georgia’s and walked home, wrapped up in Georgia’s hooded raincoat (“I’m not going out there,” she’d said), the streets had seemed almost washed clean of other people, and it was not hard to imagine that the storm had lasted for months. The sewers of the old town had not been up to the downpour, and unclean water had been flowing down the sides of the streets.

  “George!” he calls again. He has never really noticed before how close the name of his cat is to that of his only friend in the city; he struggles to remember whether he or Lana had named the animal but he can’t. Every time he thinks of Lana feelings of bitterness and guilt overwhelm any concrete memories of their time together. Surely Lana would have named George if it was she who wanted a cat in the first place? But he can’t even remember that.

  Regardless, when he arrived home George had shot out the door as soon as he opened it, and now he is concerned whether the pesky animal is sheltered somewhere from the rain. Shake his treats, he thinks, then: what kind of utopian world was Boursier imagining where normal people can afford to give their cat treats? And why is he even worried about the stupid cat anyway?

  Nevertheless Fellows can’t help but feel relieved when he sees George appear from behind one of the gas street-lamps and run towards him; somehow he doesn’t look too wet. The cat comes inside and winds round his legs, purring. But there is something wrong, something odd. Fellows scoops up the cat into his arms, sees that it now has a tag on its collar where there was none before. He turns it round so he can read it.

  Mogwai.

  He lets the cat fall from his arms, watches the familiar way it goes into the pantry and stands next to the cupboard where he keeps its food, turns to look at Fellows and makes an expectant, impatient noise.

  In a daze Fellows feeds the cat—George? Mogwai?—and then sits halfway up the staircase so he can watch it eat. He pulls out Into The Rain from the bag and reads it again, just to be sure. The cat comes and nuzzles him affectionately as he does so, causing the papers to shake in his hand. He absently scratches it behind its ears as he reads.

  There’s no way he can sense it, because it isn’t physically real, but something makes Fellows certain that the ghost is behind him on the staircase. He turns and sees a crippled hand that was only inches away from touching the back of his head; he cries out and practically falls down the bottom steps of the staircase in an effort to get away. His head hits a banister with a crack a
nd his vision blurs; there is a moment close to his face but it is just the cat moving away in annoyance at his ceasing to pet it. Twat, he thinks vaguely, and realises he is close to passing out. The thought that this will leave him unable to stop the ghost reaching him jolts him awake; he scrambles to his feet just in time and the ghost tumbles down the steps in a failed attempt to reach him. Despite the demonic, blank-eyed nature of the thing Fellows can’t help but wince as its already damaged and buckled body bounces down the stairs without any sound. It lands on its back and waves its twisted limbs in the air as if it can’t right itself. Then, mercifully, it fades.

  Fellows is as soaked with sweat as the rain had made him earlier; his heart is pounding in time to the noise of the gale outside. This can’t go on, he thinks. This is unbearable and I can’t have it touch me. Can’t. But how...

  Fellows looks at the spot where the ghost had faded from his vision, which is surrounded by the scattered pages of Into The Rain, which he had let go of in his fright. He looks at the cat sniffing at the pages before turning away in indifference, the new yet rusty name-tag around its neck glinting in the lamplight. He looks back at the pages and hears the incessant sound of the rain outside.

  And suddenly he knows how.

  Boursier.

  He will get Boursier to write him a story. A ghost story, he thinks, before realising that is not right. What he needs is almost entirely the opposite of a ghost story.

  He needs Boursier to write him an exorcism.

  PART THREE

  SPOT THE DIFFERENCE

  Fellows knocks again on the wooden door to The Echo Bookshop; he is huddled in the doorway trying to keep out of the rain. The rain that’s been falling for six months—or that’s what the quarantined city thinks anyway. It’s not what Fellows remembers. He remembers a summer so hot that when he sat on the quay looking at the still sea, he’d felt the heat of the stone through his clothes. And the season wasn’t the only change that had seemed to be caused by Boursier’s stories. Fellows feels a new unease in the city; when he walks the streets he is not sure everything is as he remembers, but he can’t put his finger on anything different. And so he feels more on edge than normal (the quarantine itself having hardly affected him), more paranoid that there are things happening that he doesn’t understand.