The Quarantined City

by James Everington

  The front door to their house stuck again and Fellows had to force it, stumbling inside in a more clumsy manner than he’d intended. He went from room to room calling Lana, becoming more and more aware as he did so of the sodden weight of his clothes, of the damp footsteps he was leaving on the polished wooden floors.

  Lana was in the kitchen, and as he entered she turned to look at him with unreadable eyes. The cat was circling around her ankles mewing, wanting food or just her touch, but she ignored it.

  “Hey,” Fellows said. “Hi baby... Listen. I’ve got it all, all figured out.”

  “Got what figured out? How to bring a dead child back to life?”

  He knew she could be talking about more than just the boy he’d hit.

  “The... The boy’s not dead, not really, he’s inside the house, Lana, this house, so that’s why we should go, go somewhere...”

  “Go somewhere?”

  “A holiday. Holiday to all the places... All the... Where we’ve been.”

  “You’re drunk. You’re a drunk. Look at yourself, sopping wet and stinking. You killed a child because you were drunk and now you want a fucking holiday?”

  Lana was staring at him hatefully but underneath he knew there was a pain she wanted to hide, and he felt a childish need to make it all okay.

  “C’mon baby,” he said, a drunken reversion to the cliches he’d used when they’d first got together. He felt cold and anxious, and he couldn’t bring himself to say exactly what he meant: “C’mon, let’s make... Baby, please.”

  Her face darkened, as if he had said something worse.

  “Don’t come near me you stinking drunk,” Lana said, stepping backwards. “Jesus Christ fuck off, are you horny? You’re never fucking touching me again.”

  “C’mon, we need a, a getaway...” He was aware he was whining, like a kid denied a treat; he realised he was horny now she had mentioned it. He moved towards Lana, wanting to touch her—just a touch was all, a hand on his to tether him...

  With a cry, Lana punched him in the face and he fell. It was not like his painless swoon by the roadside, with its accompanying visions, but an ungainly collapse, smashing his head against a drawer handle on the way down. Am I being..., he thought, but that thought cut off when Lana bent down to him.

  “The next time you have one of your drunken falls and babble about ghosts, I won’t be here to bring you back. Go to Hell, Fellows.”

  He passed out.

  When Fellows came back to consciousness it was still night, but enough time had passed for Lana to have packed and gone. She’d taken George with her, he noticed, stumbling from room to room, feeling a sense of loss even though she’d barely taken anything. His head had stopped bleeding, although it still felt like it had split in two.

  He went to the front door and opened it as if he might catch a glimpse of a retreating taxi, but the street was deserted. No traffic at all. At least it had finally stopped raining; the night air was almost warm. Still feeling woozy, Fellows left the door open as he walked away from it.

  Sod her, he thought, in ten years’ time you won’t care so why care now? In ten years’ time you’ll be a successful writer living in a city she’ll only be able to visit by budget airlines. Ten years—he could almost taste it.

  He heard a noise upstairs, like something scrabbling across the wooden floors. Had she left the cat after all? Maybe she had wanted to take George but he’d hidden out of sight; he’d often done so at the sight of a suitcase, fearing another stay at the cattery while they went away.

  Fellows walked up the stairs, calling the cat’s name. George didn’t come at his call and he wondered if he was stuck in one of the bedrooms; the cat was constantly turning up someplace unexpected. He reached the top of the stairs; the sounds were coming from the bedroom. He now noticed the oddity of them. It didn’t sound like a cat at all, but like something slow and clumsy with pain. Wondering if the cat might be injured somehow, Fellows went into the room, and bent to peer under the bed.

  And saw the white mercury-lit eyes of the ghost peering back at him.

  But no, not quite the ghost, for even as he lurched backwards and almost fell he realised it was no longer some nebulous and already fading phantom, but something of flesh and blood, something that smelt of dried sweat and rain damp cloth. One hand reached for Fellows from under the bed, stained black and with one finger bent almost ninety degrees at the knuckle. Fellows turned and ran.

  He heard the clumsy sounds of the thing struggling out from under the bed. He didn’t dare look back in case he stumbled, but from the dragging, scrabbling sounds of its movement he knew the thing hadn’t righted itself, but was coming for him on all fours. Maybe the boy can’t walk, he thought.

  As he turned and started down the stairs he began to get the better of his panic. He was quicker than the ghost or whatever the fuck it now was. He could easily outpace it to the front door, which he had even left open earlier as if anticipating his need to flee. And surely the boy can’t follow me away from here? he thought. What else do ghosts haunt but haunted houses?

  He reached the bottom of the stairs before the boy was even halfway to the top, and he felt a giddy sense of relief as he sprinted towards the door, as if in escaping from the crippled ghost he was escaping from his past, from all his fuck ups. The front door blew open in the breeze, eager to aid him in his flight...

  There was a figure standing in the doorway, blocking his escape route. Fellows stumbled to a halt, blinking. The lights were off and the hall was dark, and the person was impossible to make out properly in the shadows.

  “Hello? Lana?” Fellows said uncertainly. The figure didn’t react. “Who are you?” The panic was rising in him again as he heard behind him the sound of the crippled boy falling down the stairs in its frantic pursuit of him. He couldn’t help but wince and he almost expected the thing to have dashed itself unconscious or worse in its fall. But after a silence of a few seconds, he heard its hands scrambling at the wooden floor again, dragging the weight of is body behind. Its wet gasping breaths sounded like they were coming from something broken, for all their eagerness.

  You need to get away, he thought, and how else but by the door? Whoever this person was didn’t matter—Fellows started forward, meaning to force the stranger aside if he had to.

  As he got nearer, he was unsure if it was the shadows lifting or somehow the figure changed, but Fellows stopped and stared. He felt a terror, colder than his hot panic at the ghost behind him. He felt like if he touched the stranger they might both vanish, matter and antimatter cancelled out. For the stranger looked exactly like him.

  Although not exactly; the stranger in the doorway looked like Fellows maybe ten years hence.

  “This isn’t how it happens,” the figure said. Or had he said ‘happened’?

  “Please,” Fellows said, unable to force himself towards this doppelgänger but knowing the boy was still closing in behind him. He risked a look over his shoulder and saw the thing had paused in its pursuit to pull itself upright, leaving black handprints on the walls. It tottered forwards, one hand on the wall for support like a much younger child, the other held out and grasping. “Please,” said Fellows again; he had to get away.

  “This isn’t right,” the man said, blank and with no emotion, “What you are seeing isn’t right. He’s not a vampire, a leech. It’s like in a dream; the things you are frightened of in a dream are not those which...”

  “What the fuck are you talking about!” Fellows yelled. He couldn’t focus on what the man was saying; it was like the words were inside his own head the voice was such a match to his own. The skin of his back itched anticipating the boy’s deadening touch.

  “Let me past!” But the man just continued his smooth, lunatic babble about waveforms and invisible cities and even pandas. It was like a voice of madness in his head, and Fellows couldn’t help but step backwards away from it, even as he heard the mewing of the ghost become more eager as he did so...

&nbs
p; He didn’t dare turn to face it.

  The hand that touched his was tentative, as if tender with pain and almost as repulsed by the contact as Fellows. He felt small fingers clutch at his, pull as if to lead him somewhere. Then another touch to the small of his back, and despite their weakness the boy’s hands felt like they were casting him down into the darkness away from...

  No, Fellows thought, no. He remembered... He remembered what he had felt and seen before the paramedics brought him back to that deserted ring road. Remembered warmth and the faint sounds of a tide, the feeling of being somewhere safe and self-contained as the womb. Am I being lifted up? he thought.

  And opened his eyes, ten years later, to the sight of pastries, a monochrome newspaper being placed in front of him, and the smell of fresh coffee.

  Quarantine Declared! the headline of the paper read. Unity government to be formed.

  So they finally did it, Fellows thought, finally some sense. It had been an odd morning; since getting up and starting towards The Carousel he’d had a faint but distinct feeling of panic in his chest. Like he was experiencing secondhand the emotions of some poor sod elsewhere. But the feeling was fading now. He pulled out some change for a tip; everyone said the old coins would be worthless soon, but what else could he give? Sometimes what you had had to be good enough. He doesn’t want the waitress with the black, curly hair to think him ungenerous. Sipping his coffee, watching the gulls circle, he wonders if he will ever find out her name or that of the surly chap who runs the place...

  ~

  For a few days after writing the story, Fellows feels empty, purged. He doesn’t try to rewrite or improve The Quarantine, despite its flaws. Indeed he feels little urge to do anything; his life in the quarantined city is quiet again. If the ghost is still in his house, he doesn’t see it. Fellows tries to let things slip back into their previous routine, and largely succeeds.

  There is one oddity though, as if his stories can change things too: his cat has disappeared. He calls its name each morning, but to no avail. He supposes it will turn up; cats often do.

  The new café he has found for his early morning coffee is further away from his house, but Fellows doesn’t mind walking. The Swallow Café is named as such because of the birds nesting in its high, crumbling eaves. Over a coffee Fellows watches them each morning, circling and swooping, as they must do every year—nature itself resetting just as it seemed the city had after his confrontation with Boursier. Not everything is back as it was though: when he had tried to go back to The Carousel one look from Leianna had been enough for him to know his apology via Amit had not been accepted. The things he has done cannot be so easily undone or evaded.

  It is for this reason he doesn’t dare call to see Georgia, much as he longs to.

  One day the waitress hands him the newspaper; she is a softly-spoken blonde, but where has he ever got with brunettes anyway? As he turns the pages made of cheap paper which feels damp, the ink smudging his fingertips, a headline catches his eye, for he has read it before.

  Reclusive writer rumoured to be living in city.

  It is the headline of the first article he had read about Boursier, the one which had sparked his interest all those months ago under a sun as bright as this. But this time, Fellows knows where Boursier is. He stands up, places a tip for the waitress on the table (there is no tip jar at The Swallow), but as her fingers fumble picking up the thin quarantine coins she doesn’t even look at him.

  Fellows shields his eyes from the sun as he walks; his shirt is damp and sticks to his skin like he has been caught in a rainstorm. The streets are deserted; people are keeping inside as the heat of the day nears its peak. Fortunately, since he last saw Boursier he has ceased to suffer the gaps in his mental map of his adopted home; he knows the city again, it fits into the palm of his hand.

  As he walks, he thinks he hears the faint sound of an automobile’s exhaust backfiring, somewhere in the quiet streets.

  When he reaches his house he calls again for this missing cat, trying both ‘Mogwai’ and ‘George’, but again there is no sign of him. Sighing, Fellows goes briefly inside to collect the manuscript of his version of The Quarantine, and then he heads towards the narrow streets of the old town, to the familiar flat above the liquor shop.

  He climbs the stairs, and Boursier’s front door swings open at his touch.

  Fellows pauses before entering, as if he is about to cross some mental boundary. His reasons for being here are opaque even to him. As he steps inside he wonders if he is doing the right thing.

  Boursier’s apartment is not as he remembers it.

  He remembers a space as lacking in personality as Boursier himself, a room so sparse it looked like it was still waiting for someone to move in. He can still see the outline of this beneath the filth and clutter that now confronts him. The apartment looks like someone has lived in it for years, decades, and never cleaned up. The curtains are tightly drawn making the air seem murky; the dust motes illuminated in the light from the moth-eaten fabric floating like undersea creatures. There is a coat of dust over everything: the sagging sofa, the empty cat food bowls, the broken backed books lying face down. Only the floor itself seems to have been given a half-hearted sweep to clear it of grime, and that only because someone has stuck semi-circles of fading blue tape on the floor. Fellows stares at the patterns for a few seconds before he proceeds. Has Boursier gone mad?

  As Fellows’s vision adjusts he sees something moving at the far end of the room; he hears a faint scribbling sound. As he steps forward he sees the back of a man in a white linen suit (at least, it must once have been white) bent over a desk that faces the window. Boursier, Fellows thinks. How has he let himself go so quickly?

  Boursier doesn’t react as Fellows approaches, he is intent on whatever he is writing. You could walk away and he’d never even know you were here, Fellows thinks; why are you here? Tentatively, he lays a hand on the other man’s shoulder.

  Boursier shrieks, spins around in his chair. He flinches from Fellows, blinks like he can’t quite see him, holds up his ink stained hands to ward off a blow. Fellows steps back in surprise. Boursier still looks the same as he, but thinner in the face, gaunt and with thinning hair. Older.

  “Fuck’s sake,” Boursier says, lowering his arms. “I thought you were him.” His eyes glance over Fellows’s shoulder as he says this, fear obvious beneath his annoyance. Both emotions seem to Fellows as distant as the open sea, beyond the quarantine.

  “What do you mean?” he says blandly.

  “What the hell have you been writing?” Boursier asks in return. “The damned thing is here now, inside my house!”

  “You told me to rewrite it.”

  “I told you to finish it, not to... Christ, how many times must we go round this? Alternating back and forth like Schrodinger’s fucking cat! It’s a trap, Fellows, don’t you understand? The city, the quarantine, is a trap, it wants you stuck here nothing changing...”

  But Fellows isn’t really listening (and why would he believe Boursier’s claims anyway?) but looking over the other man’s shoulder at the cheap uncapped biro atop a writing pad, which is covered with handwriting he recognises:

  The Quarantine by Boursier

  “Couldn’t you have picked a better pen name?” Lana said. She was looking out the window at the lights of the city...

  ~

  Fellows’s calm suddenly feels something secondhand and ill-fitting. It slides from him and he feels the familiar sense of unease and disorientation.

  “You’re writing it again?” he says, feeling sick.

  Boursier doesn’t answer, he is looking behind Fellows again, towards the top of the stairs. There is a creaking sound and then a thud, and then again and again, sounding like something dragging itself up the stairs one laborious step at a time.

  “You left the front door open,” Boursier says, but calmly. The panic rising is Fellows’s own. Boursier sighs, turns back to his writing desk as if weary of the whole scen
e. “And so here we go again. The boy creeping closer, blah blah.”

  Fellows looks around Boursier’s apartment; there are no other exits.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” he says to Boursier, noticing with a touch of hysteria that the other man has started writing again. Boursier replies in a familiar placid tone; familiar from Fellows’s own mouth these last few days. But things seem to be flipping back. Fellows looks around; everything—the dragging sound of something hauling itself closer, the doorway where he knows it will appear, the sudden thunder of his heart and the backdrop of the rain (and when had it started raining?) is shot through with a deja-vu both dreamlike and uncanny.

  But the cat, Fellows thinks, there should be a cat shrieking at the top of the stairs. The significance of his thoughts is obscure even to him. But why the difference?

  There is the familiar sight of a small hand, with one finger bent back, gripping the doorframe, so the boy can pull himself up, heave his smudged face into view... It is impossible to tell from the boy’s dead, pupil-less gaze whether he is looking towards Fellows or Boursier. Fellows’s breath is shallow, a struggle against the murky air, as he watches the boy let go of the doorframe and totter forward like a child just learning to walk. Re-learning, Fellows thinks, seeing the old-fashioned metal brace clamped around one of the boy’s legs. He feels a whimper catch and die in his throat.

  “Boursier what do we do?” he manages to say, but Boursier doesn’t react or look up from what he is writing. The child is still a distance away, arms outstretched and mouth hung open, drooling, but Fellows backs up so that his hip is against the back of Boursier’s chair. “What the fuck do we do?” he repeats, and is again ignored. The scribbling sound of Boursier’s pen seems too loud, and despite himself Fellows looks behind to see what the other man, with the same handwriting as he, is writing: