by Jodi Taylor
There was a bit of a silence and then Jones said cautiously, ‘As the Crone?’
‘No,’ I said, even more annoyed. ‘The Mother.’
There was another silence and then Jones said, ‘Um …’
‘That was for tomorrow night,’ I said quietly, the narrowness of my escape only now beginning to dawn on me. ‘The New King turns up and I’m the … introductory offer. The thinking was that I would then soon be a mother.’
There was a different sort of silence.
‘Right,’ said Jones, briskly. ‘There’s a blanket in the boot with which our friend here can cover his fundamentals. Jerry, can you drive him to the hospital? Better get him checked out I suppose.’
I leaned over the front seat. ‘But what will he tell them?’
Jones shrugged. ‘Whatever he likes.’ He turned to the Year King, now shivering in the corner with his legs tightly crossed. Reaction had set in. ‘Just a word of warning – telling the truth will involve drug tests, the police, widespread disbelief, and possibly being Sectioned under the Act. I’d go with the whole stag party gone wrong scenario if I were you, but it’s your choice. You don’t know our names apart from old Jerry here …’
‘Less of the old,’ said Jerry, opening the door and getting out.
‘And that’s not his real name and this isn’t a real car so that’s a bit of a dead end, but it’s up to you. This lady is under my personal protection and if you ever see her again you will turn and walk in the other direction as fast as you can. Any attempt to implicate any of us in what happened tonight will result in you being found face down in the River Rush the next morning. We’re going to say goodbye soon and …’
The car jolted. We were sitting in a layby without lights and my first thought was that something had driven into the back of us. I was actually looking around for another vehicle when it did it again. And then – then the car moved. Backwards. About a foot or so. But on its own. I grabbed for the door handle, unable to understand what was happening. How could the car move? Jerry was round the back and rummaging in the boot for the blanket. And the engine was off. I looked at Jones who reached out and grasped my wrist. His other hand was under his jacket. Was he armed? I certainly hoped so. Although what good that would do …
The car moved again – jerking backwards for a yard or so and throwing me against the door. I put a hand on the front seat to steady myself and looked wildly around. How could this be? The driver’s seat was empty. Jerry was actually outside the car.
He shouted something and slammed the boot shut with such violence that the car rocked.
‘Left it in gear, did you?’ said Jones mildly, but I could see his colour spiking all around him.
‘Do me a favour,’ said Jerry in disgust, climbing into the driver’s seat in a hurry.
‘Handbrake on?’
‘Any more from you and you can walk back to Rushford.’
The car jolted again. Quite violently this time and then began to move. The engine was off and I could hear the tyres crunching over loose gravel. A giant force was pulling us backwards.
‘Seat belts,’ shouted Jones. ‘It’s going to get rough. Jerry, get us out of here.’
I clipped on my belt again and hung on. Jerry was standing on the brake and Jones was hauling, two handed, on the handbrake and still we were sliding backwards, the tyres skidding in the loose stones on the road. The brakes didn’t seem to be working. If anything, we were picking up speed. Slowly, inexorably, we were being pulled back towards Greyston. And whatever awaited us there.
The Year King was screaming with fear, cowering in his corner. ‘Don’t let them get me. Don’t let them get me again’. Jones and Jerry were shouting instructions at each other as the car began to move faster. If we wanted to escape then now would be the time to jump out because in a minute it would be too late.
I clenched my fists and sat quietly, trying to ignore the pictures in my head. Giant stones, black against the sky filled my mind. I tried to concentrate. To focus my mind. To push back. Giant stones … My world turned blue and purple. I closed my eyes but they were still there. Huge and black and threatening. And injured. What made me think ‘injured’ instead of ‘damaged’?
But they were angry. I could feel it from here. They’d been baulked of their offering. The cycle had been broken – we’d broken the cycle – but there was still time. They wanted him back. They wanted us all back. Their malice flooded my mind. They were very strong and it hurt my head. In an effort to shut them out, I put my hands over my eyes and groaned.
‘Punch it, Jerry,’ yelled Jones. ‘And don’t spare the horses. Everyone hold on tight.’
Jerry pushed the starter. I had a moment’s fear the engine wouldn’t start, but it did. He gunned it hard. ‘When I say now …’
The engine noise rose to a shriek.
‘Now.’
We stopped moving. For a moment the two forces, the one pushing us forwards, and the one dragging us backwards, were perfectly balanced. The car trembled with the strain. The engine was racing. Smoke from the tyres and the exhaust drifted past the window. Giant stones loomed over me. I couldn’t push them back. The engine roared and roared and then, with a jerk that engaged all our seatbelts, we were away.
In my mind, I saw the stones sway … and then I was free as well.
We fishtailed out of the layby and down the road, with Jerry fighting for control all the way. We took a bend too fast and clipped the hedge. I heard the sound of twigs and small branches rattling off the side of the car. Something white – an owl? – appeared briefly and then was gone. And then Jerry had everything back under control and we were cruising smoothly away.
‘Bloody Norah,’ said Jones. ‘Hell of a way to bring in the New Year, Cage.’
We drove in silence until we reached the outskirts of Rushford. The lights seemed very bright after the darkness of the countryside. I stared out of the window, thinking furiously. The moments at the stones had been scary, but the force that had grabbed our car had been terrifying.
And what had it wanted? The Year King back again? After all, this year’s ritual was unfinished. Had barely even started, in fact. What would that mean for the stones? And for the village itself?
Or had it wanted me? To take up my new role as the Mother? Because now Veronica’s team was at least one man down. For some reason, I saw Alice Chervil smiling quietly to herself.
Or Jones and Jerry for revenge?
Or had it wanted all of us in one convenient package?
A river of blood would flow tonight if they ever did manage to lay their hands on us. Enough to glut even those stones for months. Enough to repair the damage we’d done. Enough for revenge …
‘Hey,’ said Jones, softly and took my hand in his own warm paw. The picture blurred and faded away.
I opened my eyes.
‘Well, that brought back memories, didn’t it?’ he said quietly. ‘Are you all right.’
I nodded. Now that I was safe, I was beginning to realise just how unsafe I had been. Only half an hour ago.
‘We’ll drop off the King of the Fairies. Jerry will go with him, just to make sure, and then I’ll take you home. Just hold on a little longer.’
I nodded and closed my eyes again.
We pulled up outside A&E. I felt cheered to see the lights and life. There were people everywhere nursing New Year’s Eve related injuries. For everyone else it was just business as usual. Normality is very reassuring.
Jerry helped the Year King out of the car and I wrapped him in a faintly oil-smelling tartan blanket. He was shaken but calm. And quiet. The posturing man who had strutted his way down the processional way was gone – possibly for ever. I wondered, despite everything Veronica had said, whether they had drugged him after all. Or had it merely been the overconfidence of a young man whose every whim had been indulged for the last twelve months. Whatever it was, the power of Greyston was wearing off. He looked white and cold.
I wrapped the blanket ti
ghtly around him. ‘I don’t even know your name.’
‘Dermot.’
‘Dermot, it might be a good idea to say as little as possible.’
He said, with an effort at a joke, ‘I don’t remember a thing.
Who are you?’
‘That’s the ticket, mate,’ said Jerry. ‘Let’s get you inside. You’ll be freezing your nadgers off in a minute. See you around, missis.’
‘Look after him,’ I said and he nodded.
‘And thank you, Jerry.’
He nodded again and then he and Dermot disappeared through the doors.
‘Well …’ I said to Jones who had moved into the driver’s seat. I wasn’t sure what to do next and felt strangely awkward, ‘Goodnight then.’
He started the engine. ‘Get in the front, Cage.’
‘Why?’
‘It’ll make it easier for you to have a go at me.’
‘Actually, if it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll walk.’
‘It’s not all the same to me at all. I haven’t risked life, limb and Jerry’s car – look at the state of Jerry’s car, Cage – for you to swan off into the night and get yourself involved in something awful. Again. You frighten the living daylights out of me. I don’t know what it is with you. I never know what you’ll be up to next. And there’s no way I’m not delivering you safely to … wherever it is you want to go. So get in.’
We drove the next mile in silence.
‘I suppose,’ he said, slowing for a group of revellers to make their erratic way across the road, ‘there’s no point in asking you to trust me’.
I was suddenly angry. ‘I did trust you once.’
‘And no harm came to you.’
‘No harm? No harm? You kidnapped me!’
‘I helped you escape from a secure mental institution where you were being held against your will.’
‘I was maced by a homicidal maniac in a haunted castle.’
‘Every place you go to is haunted. And I’ve been maced more times than I can count. Get over it.’
‘I don’t want to get over it.’
Silence followed this childish remark.
‘No,’ he said eventually. ‘There’s more to it than that. Did I do something? Say something?’
‘You bugged my house.’
‘Well, not me personally. Different department.’
‘No – you were the decoy, weren’t you? The one paid to lure me away so my house would be empty.’
‘I didn’t lure you anywhere. You came of your own free will.’
‘You know very well I thought you’d invited me because …’ I stopped suddenly.
‘Because …?’
I took a breath. ‘Because all you wanted to do was sleep with me so I wouldn’t notice your people fitting my house with cameras and listening devices and God knows what else besides.’
‘I didn’t sleep with you,’ he said indignantly. ‘Dear God, when I think of the lengths I went to – separate bedrooms – making sure you didn’t drink too much. Really, Cage, your ability to hold your drink is pathetic – and the next minute you’re sprawling all over my lap in the most shameless display of immodest behaviour I’ve ever seen in my life.’
‘Relax,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t you I was after but your chocolate brownie.’
‘That doesn’t make your behaviour any less reprehensible. Now tell me what the real problem is.’
‘What? What real problem?’
‘The real problem. The real reason you ran.’
‘You told me to run.’
‘Well, I just thought you’d go next door to Colonel Barton – not disappear off into the night.’
‘It was eleven in the morning.’
‘Well, whatever. But that wasn’t what I meant. You were all ready to flee long before I told you what we’d done to your house. I saw it in your face. Why.’
I said quietly, ‘The photo frame.’
‘Yes, I know – they broke it when they were installing the equipment. Someone was careless. Is that what this is all about? Because they broke Ted’s photo?’
Ted’s photo was one of my dearest possessions. A few years before he died, we’d had a weekend in London and the photo was of the two of us, posed against an ancient wall at the Tower of London. We were both smiling. It had been a happy day. The photo lived on a shelf beside the chimney breast, angled so that wherever I was in the room, I could see it and Ted could see me. There were always fresh flowers nearby.
Then I’d returned from my Christmas holiday to find it had been dropped and the frame hastily glued back together again. For me, this was where reality had torn itself in two. In Jones’s reality, it had been damaged during Sorensen’s attempt to bug my house. In mine, I’d thrown it at Michael Jones in a last effort to save myself when he attacked me. I knew my reality was wrong because Jones was still alive, but I couldn’t forget it … couldn’t let it go.
I said quietly, ‘I know how it was really broken.’
‘Yes, someone dropped it.’
I gripped my hands together in my lap and said in a low voice, ‘There are two realities. In one version, you remember how the photo was broken. In the other … in the other … in my version …’
I stopped.
He waited. He did waiting very well. Quite a lot of time passed and still he didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Didn’t do anything. He just drove in silence and waited.
At last I said, ‘You won’t like it.’
He sighed heavily. ‘No, I probably won’t.’
‘Or believe it.’
‘No, I probably will.’
I turned my head to look at him. ‘No, you probably really won’t.’
‘Well, why don’t you tell me anyway.’
I sighed. ‘Boxing Day. We went tobogganing. I banged my head.’
‘I remember.’
‘You asked me if I lost consciousness and I said no.’
‘I remember that because just for a second Cage, you looked well and truly out of it.’
‘I was out of it. But it wasn’t the fall.’
‘Did you … see something?’
‘Yes. Yes, you could say that.’
I stopped, really unwilling to go on. Once some things are said you can never go back.
‘Just tell me, Cage.’
‘All right.’ I took a deep breath. ‘The sledge hit me. I opened my eyes. I was fine. You said you’d take me back to your place. On the way, your phone rang. You had to leave suddenly because there was a job for you. In the Midlands. We collected my stuff. I went home. That evening … that evening …’
I stopped, living that moment again. The moment his dead girlfriend had come to destroy me.
‘That evening, your ex-partner Clare came to me.’
The car swerved. Someone behind us hooted. He pulled over to the side of the road and turned off the engine. ‘Clare’s still alive?’ I saw him remember who he was talking to. ‘No, she’s not. Is she? She can’t be.’
‘She’s not. She was very dead. I could see the bullet holes.’
I heard him swallow. ‘What … what did she want?’
I shut out the picture of Clare and her disfigured face ‘Me. She thought I’d taken her place. That I had what she wanted. I tried to fight her off. I was losing. Ted saved me. You telephoned the next morning. You were on your way back to Rushford. You said you had something to say to me. You were excited. You were pleased to see me. I let you in.’ I stopped. The next bit would be as hard for him to hear as it would be for me to say.
‘Go on.’
I wasn’t sure I could do this to him. ‘Are you sure?’
He said, harshly, ‘Yes. Go on.’
‘You attacked me.’
He didn’t speak. I didn’t give him the chance. He’d wanted to know. I was merciless. ‘You hit me. Many times. You threw me around the room. You broke my arm. You broke my ribs. I fell down. You kicked me. You were about to stamp on my face when Colonel Barton came to investigate
the noise. He telephoned for help. They took me to the Sorensen Clinic. You were there too. I found you dying in the basement. Clare had used you to hurt me and it had burned you up inside. You … died.’
I couldn’t look at him. I turned my head and stared out of the window. ‘I was so angry. Everyone – everyone had lied to me or hurt me in some way. Everyone I’d trusted.’ I struggled again to rein in the anger and tamp it down because I’d once seen what my uncontrolled rage could do and I had no wish to do that ever again.
I continued in the same flat, dead voice. ‘And all the time the snow came down. It never stopped. Day after day. We were slowly being buried in it. People were saying it was the end of the world.’
I stopped, remembering the snow. The angry snow. ‘I agreed to work with Sorensen. He flew in some people who wanted to see what I could do and, to revenge myself on him – to revenge myself on everyone, I suppose, I brought the clinic down around their heads. I destroyed everything. They died. I died. Everyone died. In the snow. Then I opened my eyes and I was in your reality – the other reality if you like, and I’d only just had the accident and you were taking me to hospital.’
He was silent for a long time, thinking things through. ‘So you’re saying you broke the photo frame.’
‘Yes. I threw it at you and it smashed against the wall. That’s how it really got broken.’
He shook his head vehemently. ‘No, that’s wrong. That’s not right. Someone dropped it. I swear to you – that’s what happened. It’s in the report. The bloke who did it is up on a disciplinary charge. You must have banged your head and dreamed it. There’s no other explanation because your … reality … isn’t the right one. It didn’t happen.’
‘It’s real to me. My arm still hurts.’
‘Because you were knocked over by a runaway sledge. Of course it still hurts.’
‘And then you told me you’d bugged my house. Well, not you, but Sorensen had bugged my house and I was still confused and I didn’t know which reality was which. I still don’t. One is as real to me as the other. And then you said to run … So I ran.’
‘I meant for you to just push off for a bit while I dismantled the stuff in your house. I thought you’d be back after an hour or so. When you’d calmed down a little and I’d be able to explain. Not that you’d take off into the wild blue yonder and disappear. I’ve been worried to death over you.’
