By now it had dawned on Gavin that Natasha was not making a declaration of love, or even lust. 'Believe me, I do,' he said. 'Me, I can write. But I'm rubbish at coming up with stories.'
'That wasn't rubbish tonight,' Natasha said. 'That was brilliant. Transcendent. Extraordinary. You held us all in your hand. That was the best story I've heard in years.'
'But it wasn't my story. It was yours.'
'Exactly. My story, your words. You think you could do that again?'
Gavin nodded. 'I think so. I've never written anything that came so easily. It just flowed. You give me the plot, I'll give you the story.' He held up a finger, putting her on hold for a moment. 'But can you make it about Thomas Butler? Charlie seems to think I can sell tonight's story online. If he's right, I should try to build up a following for the character, right?'
Natasha's smile was slow and sexy. 'Thomas Butler, steampunk detective. He's a good character, Gavin.' She stared into her coffee for a moment, eyebrows furled in thought. Then she leaned back and began. 'Two halves of a whole, Gavin. Remember that.'
It turned out Charlie had been right. It took a few months for the word to spread, but within nine months, the Thomas Butler stories had grown into a global word of mouth phenomenon. Millions of readers had downloaded each of the ten stories Gavin and Natasha had conjured up and posted online on the first of every month. To their delight, they were making money. Even with the fifty-fifty split they'd agreed on at the start, both were earning more than they'd ever imagined possible. Two publishing conglomerates had locked horns in an auction to win the rights to a physical version of the stories. A TV series was in production and their agent reported three companies were bidding for the film rights. It was almost too good to be true. Except that it was happening.
Gavin was bemused to find his dream had become a reality. The only downside was the constant pressure for interviews and personal appearances. He refused almost every approach, which only seemed to make people more eager. As he pointed out to Natasha, she'd be a much better subject for interviews. But nobody knew Natasha played any part in the Thomas Butler phenomenon. That was the other thing they'd agreed at the start. They'd split the money up the middle, but the credit would all be Gavin's. 'It just sounds too weird otherwise,' she'd said.
Weird or not, it worked. Not just in terms of fiction either. Creating fiction together had acted on their emotions like a supercharger. Within days of putting their heads together over Thomas Butler, they'd become lovers. Within a couple of weeks, their lives were as closely intertwined as Natasha's tattoos. Gavin could spend hours at a time lying next to her, memorising the elaborate designs that wound their way up her arms and across her torso. Everything about her was endlessly fascinating. Only an outsider anatomising their relationship might have noticed how little they talked about their past. The road that had brought them to each other was far less interesting than the one they were forging together, stretching into a joint future.
When the end came, it was sudden, swift and shocking. Late in the evening, as usual, Gavin had begun a new Thomas Butler. The only fuel he needed was the words, but Natasha needed coffee and there was none. So she'd set off on her bike for the 24-hour supermarket two kilometres away. Her bike was garishly lit. Too garishly, perhaps, one of the traffic cops dared to suggest. Such brightness was bound to catch the eye, to distract a driver long enough for him to swerve into the cycle lane. Long enough for his SUV to mash Natasha and her bike into an inseparable mess. By the time they'd identified her, Gavin had finished the latest story.
Gavin tried really hard not to fall apart. He made a point of not getting drunk. He refused to take sleeping pills or anti-depressants. He didn't open the thousands of messages of condolence from fans and friends. 'I'm not ill. I'm just sad,' he told Charlie Arthur when the novelist came round to check on his former student.
'Are you writing?' Charlie asked.
Gavin didn't know how to begin to answer that question. There was a vast jagged hole in the middle of his life. He'd lost the wellspring of love from his life and with it had gone his stories. How could he ever expect to write again? And what did it matter anyway? Without Natasha, there was no point.
The days crawled by. Like an automaton, he dealt with the nuts and bolts of the business that had grown around Thomas Butler. Some nights, Gavin managed to sleep for a few hours, but mostly he walked by the river, numb and cold. He'd lost all sense of the passage of time. He didn't even notice that the month was drawing to a close. All around the world, Thomas Butler fans were waiting with bated breath to see whether Gavin's grief meant they'd be cut off from their drug of choice.
On the last night of the month, Gavin went to bed with no expectation of sleep. He lay curled on his side in the dark, the soft hum of the city for his night music. And then it happened. It started at his feet. A deep chill spread through his toes and up to his ankles. Then the back of his calves. The cold rose through the back of his body, ending at the nape of his neck. Then a band of ice crossed his arm and settled on his chest. The chill seemed to penetrate his body, making it impossible to move. Bewildered, Gavin could make no sense of what was happening. It was like an embrace in reverse. Instead of being warmed by a lover's body, it was as if a wintry presence was sucking the warmth from him. His heart raced in panic but curiously, the only coherent thought in his head was that when Natasha came to bed late and cold, this was momentarily how it felt. Cold feet against his, then the press of her chilly body and her arm across his chest. But that cold only ever lasted for moments. It didn't cut through to his bones. And besides, Natasha was gone.
Except she wasn't. He could hear her in his head as clearly as if she was in the room with him. 'I miss you, Gavin,' she said, her voice cracking on his name.
He tried to tell her how much he missed her, how his chest hurt all the time, how his throat was always full of tears. But speech was beyond him. His mouth wouldn't work.
'I've come to tell you a story,' Natasha said. 'I know you can't do it without me, so I've come back. Listen carefully. This is how it begins.'
Her words poured into his head, weaving their inevitable, irresistible tale. At last, she said, 'The End.' And without warning, she was gone. Warmth returned to Gavin's body and he was wide awake, a story banging at the doors of his mind.
Gingerly he got up and went to his laptop, almost afraid to lay his fingers on the keyboard. He felt as if he was standing outside himself, watching the words form on the screen from a distance. Whatever was happening, it was outside his control. The sentences piled up in front of his eyes and as he understood that a story was growing, he felt his grief ease for the first time since Natasha's death.
He finished the story as the sky was lightening outside and posted it online. Then he went back to bed, comforted beyond words by the thought that Natasha had not left him completely.
And so it continued for the next eight months. On the last night of every month, Gavin would go to bed and the chill ghost of his lover would embrace him, revealing a fresh plot for him to translate into a rich and engaging narrative. He learned quickly not to question the gift. At first, he'd tried to convince himself it was a delusion. That somehow, he'd finally learned from Natasha how to tell a story. But every time he sat down and tried to create his own story, he could only make something as pitiful as his old solo efforts. Whatever was happening here, it was happening because of her. Not because of him. And it healed him better than any therapy could have done.
The world outside moved on, of course. The Thomas Butler frenzy showed no sign of abating. Gavin had a literary agent now, who protected him from most of the craziness, but there were some occasions he couldn't escape. Some even appealed to him. The TV company who were adapting the Thomas Butler stories invited him to meet the production designer and the composer, and Gavin thought that might be bearable.
Ella Garrison, the composer, was the first woman he'd met since Natasha who intrigued him. Music absorbed her, that much was clear.
And the sketches she played him for the Thomas Butler adaptation moved him in a way he'd thought was beyond him these days. The lunch where they'd been introduced spread into the evening, and they parted with a promise to meet again soon.
Within days they were in constant communication - texting, messaging, sharing music and books. The unexpectedness of it left Gavin reeling. But Natasha's visitations had convinced him that she would give these fresh green shoots of recovery her blessing. What else could her gifts of story mean if not that his life should go on? And so he handed himself over to the unforeseen.
But on the last night of the month, he left Ella's bed and went home. A new story was due in the morning, after all, and it seemed tacky to be in bed with one woman while accepting gifts from another. Gavin slipped under the duvet and gradually drifted away into what he considered his receptive state.
And woke seven hours later without an idea in his head.
He couldn't quite believe it. He went to the laptop and put his fingers on the keys. Nothing. Utter blank emptiness. What the hell was this? Surely Natasha didn't mean him to live like a monk for the rest of his life, devoted to her memory and the creation of Thomas Butler? How could she be so unreasonable?
Gavin paced the floor, anxious and angry. It wasn't as if he could share his dilemma with anyone else; nobody knew about the original arrangement with Natasha, not really, not the details. And nobody would believe her spirit had been visiting him with the gift of stories. And meanwhile, his phone buzzed with urgent messages from his agent and everybody else who had a vested interest in the new Thomas Butler story which had not appeared on the website that morning.
Finally, worn out with emotion and pacing, he threw himself down on the sofa and fell asleep. And then it happened. The chill, the paralysis, the voice in his head. And when he woke, there was a story, perfectly formed, ready to be fleshed out. Gavin almost wept with relief as his fingers tapped out the latest instalment of Thomas Butler's steampunk existence. Whatever Natasha was playing at, she'd got over herself and delivered. And thank God for that. The thought of the world discovering that he was not the genius who had given them Thomas Butler made Gavin feel positively nauseous. He had a reputation now, not to mention an income. He couldn't bear the thought of losing either of those. Never mind the gift of being able to put his skills to good service.
After that one hiccup, however, paranormal service was resumed. For the next two months, Natasha appeared on deadline night, weaving the kind of stories Gavin had become famous for. As he grew closer to Ella, he felt a secure sense of a future. Three stories now since they'd got together; nothing had changed in his professional life after all.
A different kind of story broke four days after Gavin uploaded that third tale to the website. According to a reliable media source, the three latest Thomas Butler stories had been plagiarised from the work of three obscure Chinese writers. Writers whose work had never been translated from their native language. Writers whose work appeared in chapbooks that had been checked out of the university library over the past year by Chinese translator Gavin Blake. Writers who were now preparing killer lawsuits against Gavin and his publishers.
Gavin read the reports with a growing sense of horror. As he read, a chill enveloped the back of his head, an icy hand ruffling his hair. 'It's not as if I didn't warn you,' Natasha said. 'Two halves of a whole, remember?'
END
Wishing for Alison
by
Steve Mosby
I blow gently on the end of my finger, and I make a wish.
Before I do, I close my eyes. This is partly because I don't want to see the eyelash blow away across the room - because, when I close my eyes, I can imagine it disappearing from this world, in exchange for what I want most in return. With my eyes open, though, there's a good chance I'll see where it really ends up, and it's hard to believe your wish will come true when you've just watched it land on the carpet and lie there, amongst all the other crumbs.
But the main reason I close my eyes is because I don't want to see Alison. Sitting there. Hugging her knees.
When I open my eyes again, the wish, at least, has disappeared. Alison is still there, of course. It breaks my heart to look at her right now, so I stare past her instead. The front room is dimmed by evening. Outside, snow is falling, thick and soft, white against the dull grey sky, each flake landing as quietly as a blink. The window across from me is slightly ajar, and the open curtains are shuffling in the cold, like resentful sentries.
I lean back on the settee, which creaks slightly. It's old and worn out. We should have replaced it - but then again, we should have done so many things. I look down at Alison. She is quietly weeping, and it's a horrible noise. It's the sound of too late, far too late, we can't go back now and all it does is make me think about the wish I just made. The wish that…
Well. You know the rules, of course.
So I can't tell you what I wished for, because then it might not come true.
*****
It was Alison who first told me you could use eyelashes to make wishes. I'd never heard of that before - shooting stars, yes, but not eyelashes.
It was in the third year of University, not long after we first met. In those days, we spent most of our time in her room in Ebberston Row. Alison shared the house with five other girls and - believe me - amongst all the debris from the parties and takeaways, you could have lost a thousand eyelashes on the floor of the lounge without noticing. Alison's room was much the same - plenty of place to hide them. One day, she added one of mine.
"Hold still."
Suddenly, I had a finger in my eye.
She was often like that, though - impulsive; leaping into action without warning - and most of the time I enjoyed it. There was something unguarded and uninhibited about the way she behaved. She'd see something and go for it, unafraid of looking silly or saying the wrong thing: always stepping forward confidently where others would at least hesitate to tread. In my experience, a lot of people who do that just come across as irritating, but Alison usually managed to get it right, and that made her popular instead. It was endlessly strange that she liked me, as I could barely string three words together in front of people I didn't know. But they do say opposites attract, don't they? And she was beautiful, as well - very beautiful, in fact - so the evidence for that keeps mounting.
"What the hell are you doing?" I said.
"Hold still." Alison was concentrating. "You've got an eyelash."
There was obviously no arguing with her, and before I had chance to say Yeah, I've got loads, I had one fewer, lifted from the tickly skin below my eye with a delicate thief's touch. She held it up to the light: a thin, black curl on the tip of her finger.
“Make a wish,” she said.
“What?”
“Make a wish, and blow it. Come on! Quickly.”
From the urgency with which she said it, this was clearly a serious matter to her. As though there were rules to it. Some sort of real, hard science underlying the whole process.
“Okay.”
I thought about it for a moment. Then I made my wish, closed my eyes, and blew the eyelash away.
What did I ask for, that first time?
Well, the natural impulse was to make a purely selfish wish: to ask for something ridiculous, like an enormous amount of money, or to be even half as charismatic and attractive as the young woman beside me. And maybe that was my original intention. But what actually happened, as I pursed my lips and blew, was that I found myself wishing for Alison instead. And I remember thinking why not? as I exhaled, sealing the wish.
It felt good to be selfless: to have made a wish for somebody else's well-being rather than my own. In hindsight, I suppose it was only selfless in the small, irrelevant ways that most people manage. It didn't really matter, did it? It didn't require me to do anything much. It's easy to be magnanimous when all you're talking about is an eyelash.
“What did you wish for?” Alison said.
> I wanted to tell her, mainly because she would have thought it was sweet rather than irrelevant, but even back then, when the concept of using eyelashes was new to me, I at least knew the rules of wishing in general. Alison did too, of course; she was only playing.
“It won't come true if I tell you,” I said. “My lips are sealed.”
She pulled a face at me, but also looked quietly satisfied. A wrong answer that was right. From what I can remember, the rest of the day was typically lovely. They always were. Although we hadn't known each other for long, I was already in love with her.
I wished for her to be safe and happy.
There. My lips aren't sealed any longer, you see. I can say it now. I can shout it from the rooftops. I can tell anyone I like. It won't make any difference anymore, because that wish went wrong a long time ago.
*****
Is it strange, do you think, that wishes don't work if you tell other people about them?
I used to think so, but now I'm not so sure. Maybe I understand things a little better. Wishes are dreams and aspirations, after all, and it's always best to keep those close, the same as you would anything that's valuable to you. If you have something that glitters, people will try to steal it. At the least, people without real, heartfelt wishes of their own will hope that yours don't come true. Dreams have currency, and should only be shared with a few people, chosen carefully, because most will mock them and want to see them fail. Why? That's just the way the world works, I think. When your stock gets devalued, people are pleased.
Looking back, I think of the dreams I've had and the wishes I've made as rough stitches in the wounds of my life: thin threads sewn in place in a desperate attempt to hold my edges together. Sometimes those wounds heal and the stitches fade, and it's easy to forget that all that got you through a patch of life was hope. But other times, the stitches aren't strong enough, and you end up half-open and spilling out, like a battered children's toy. Sometimes dreams and wishes just aren't enough to keep you in one piece.
Crime Writers Page 8
