by Edward Hogan
“Look. Death is not the kind of thing you can be sure about. It’s a force of nature. People have been studying it for thousands of years, and they know nothing. It’s bigger than us. All I can do is trust the knowledge that’s out there and try to pass it on to you. I believed Tabby. I trusted her. The things she said made sense to me, and I’ve seen proof that she was right about lots of them. I’ve learned from experience, too. In my opinion, there is a simple set of rules, and you should learn them rather than asking any big questions. You make the message. You find the recipient. You show them the message. Or you face the consequences.”
I shook my head. “Where’s your family? Where’s your son?”
The ropes of muscle in his chest tightened. “Next question,” he said.
“How many messengers are there?”
“Who knows? Two? Two million? I’ve only met Tabby and you, but I’m pretty sure I’ve recognized others.”
“And you didn’t speak to them! Why not?”
“Once you know what a messenger does, why the hell would you want to meet one?”
“You wanted to meet me, didn’t you?”
He didn’t answer that. He rubbed his face and turned to his desk. I could see that he was becoming agitated, but I wasn’t going to give up. I needed information.
“How do you get round to all the people that have to die?” I said. “Thousands of people die every day. Are they all killed by messengers? Do some just die anyway?”
“I don’t hold the mysteries of the universe! You expect me to know things because I’m a messenger, but being a messenger brings home how little I know. How little you can do, as a human,” he said. “I hate these questions.”
“Don’t you think they’re important? I mean, don’t you want to know where you fit in? What your place in the world is?” I asked.
“Why?” He turned back to me.
“Why? Well, otherwise, you don’t know what you’re doing with your life.”
“Who does? Everyone thinks they’re the center of the universe, but really we’re just tiny insignificant specks. We’re part of something we’ll never understand, and maybe it’s better that way.”
Insignificant speck, I thought. Charming.
“So who was this Tabby, then?” I said, trying to get back to specifics.
“Tabby Smith. She did abstract watercolors. Every messenger has their medium, I suppose. She was so intelligent. She had studied hard under her own mentor and learned everything she could. She taught me all I know about being a messenger.”
“How did you meet?”
“She lived in a tower block back home. I just found myself spending time there. I didn’t know why.”
Those words hung in the air between us. I suppose we were thinking of our own first meeting. He continued. “I guess I knew something was wrong with me, and I had this feeling she could help. She did. I would have done anything for her. She taught me how to control my gift.”
“But you don’t control it,” I said, thinking of Kelly the Hen having her last paddle in the sea.
“I live with it.”
“The people you paint don’t.”
He stood, but there was really nowhere to go in his beach hut. It was too small to pace up and down, so he just put his hands on his hips and sighed.
“When I was about your age,” he said, “Tabby Smith told me I might one day want to leave my family and move away. She’d done so herself. Her theory was that messengers draw or paint those people who pass through their minds. It might be someone you glimpsed for a second through the window of a café. It might be your mother. My father had already died — I never painted him, thank God — and although my family wasn’t particularly loving, I didn’t want to kill them. So I came south with my inheritance money and became a plasterer’s apprentice in Hartsleigh, not far from here.”
“Where’s Tabby Smith now?” I said.
“She’s dead,” he said. His eyes were watering, but it could have been the sea air rushing through the gap beneath the door. “She died just before I moved from the north.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He shook his head.
“Why do we think these violent thoughts, Peter?” I said. “Why are they in our minds?”
“I suppose they’re in everyone’s minds. Everyone has violent thoughts,” he said. “Not much you can do about it.”
“Haven’t you tried controlling them? Isn’t there any way? I mean, you can control your thoughts when you don’t want to laugh or cry. So can’t we stop the visions or change them?”
“I doubt it,” he said. “Tabby said that kind of thing could be dangerous.”
I was getting fed up now. We were in a desperate situation. We needed to find a way out of it, and he wasn’t helping. “Why are you being like this?” I said. “Why are you being so negative?”
“What are you talking about?” he said.
I paused. “You get a kick out of being a messenger, don’t you?” I was trying to wind him up, to get a rise out of him.
“No,” he said.
“Yes, you do. I saw you with that woman going through the postcards. You were having the time of your life.”
“I was not. This is something we have to . . . Tabby said that death is a necessary force. Without it, the world would fall apart. I believe that. Think of the consequences!”
“Imagine how her fella’s going to feel. Eh? He’s gearing up for the wedding. And you could see how excited she was. You’re going to take all that away from her without even trying to stop it. You’re going to rob the fiancé of the woman he loves. Imagine how that feels.”
“You don’t know anything about me!” he said. “Or what I’ve been through. You can’t just come in here and judge me. That woman is going to drink herself into a coma. She’s a drunk.”
“Now who’s judging?”
He took a pace toward me, and I stood up, backed away. I could see the pads of muscle in his hands. I was scared, of course, but there was a flicker of electricity that went through me too.
“Listen,” he said, unclenching his fists. “I’m trying to help. I can help you manage what’s happening to you. But if you keep pushing me like this, I’ll walk away and leave you to make a mess of your life.”
“Well, I reckon you’d know something about that,” I said.
“Get out,” he said, opening the door.
“You listen to me, Pete,” I said. “When I’ve got a problem, I go out and try things. I try to solve it. I don’t waste away in a bloody hut going, ‘Woe is me — everything’s inevitable.’ Now maybe you’re right — maybe I do have this messed-up curse or whatever. But it’s my messed-up curse, and I can choose what to do with it. You can carry on just drawing the future, if you like. But I’m going to change it.”
He made another move toward me, and I nearly tripped over, backing out the door. “Great,” he said sarcastically. “I’m glad you know so much about all of this. I’m glad you’re so powerful. Good luck with your newfound talent. And good bloody riddance.”
He slammed the door, and I suddenly found myself outside, with the peaceful noises of the sea and the gulls and jangling boat masts.
“Prick!” I shouted at the door.
It opened, and I ran until I could barely breathe. I bent over and rested at the side of the path, looking back to check that Peter wasn’t following. Something caught my eye in the grass verge. A scattering of four or five postcards. And there it was among them: the message. I picked the postcard up and looked closely. I could just about make out Kelly the Hen lying on a stretcher on a busy street, paramedics surrounding her, a cowboy hat on the ground. I made my calculations. Two days. It was due to happen on Friday night. I put the postcard in my pocket.
Max tried to teach me some of his mind-control skills. I met him down by the “Women-Only Disco” on the beach. The gray summer continued, and that afternoon was windy and cold. I kept a close eye on Max: I was worried that I still hadn’t made an
y attempt to find the old man in the sketch I’d drawn, and I didn’t want poor old Maxi to start chucking up again. But part of me was still in denial, unable to believe any of it.
We bought cockles from a stall, soaked them in salt and vinegar, picked them out with cocktail sticks, and washed them down with Diet Coke, our mouths all gritty and sweet and sour.
“You’re definitely feeling better, then?” I said.
“Yeah. Much better, thanks.”
“What’s the point of a women-only disco?” I said. “Is that a Helmstown thing?”
“I don’t know. A friend of mine, Jake, says he came down here one night and looked through the window, and all the women were semi-naked and making out and stuff.”
“Sounds like this Jake is a liar,” I said.
“He definitely needs therapy,” Max said seriously, polishing his glasses.
“So are we going to do some meditating?” I said.
“Sure — why not? Let’s go onto the beach. The waves are, you know, soothing.”
There was nobody up that end of the beach. It smelled of fish and rubbish, and the sea was foamy and brown, like Coke sloshing round in a bottle. We sat on the stones, and Max tried to show me the lotus position, but it was tough because we were both in skinny jeans.
“Close your eyes,” said Max.
I did. Immediately, the sea appeared in my mind. It became like a massive building, towering over us.
“First you need to tense each part of your body,” Max said, shouting above the noise of the waves. “Start with your neck. Really tense it up. Then let it go. It should feel warm. A little tingly.”
It felt freezing cold.
“Move on to your shoulders. Make sure you’re aware of your breathing. Try to breathe into the pit of your stomach. It’s all about becoming aware of your body.”
“It’s quite funny that this is supposed to be relaxing, but we’re having to shout,” I said.
“What?” Max said. I opened one eye, but he was smiling.
We went through the various parts of the body, tensing and relaxing. “It’s pretty cold out here, Maxi,” I said.
“Yes. Feel it; become aware of it.”
“I’m very bloody aware of it.”
“Acknowledge it and control it. That’s the aim. Feel your warm blood going to the cold parts and circulating.”
I tried to do that for a while. “Maxi,” I said.
“Yes.”
“My bum’s gone to sleep.”
“Right. You don’t want it to go to sleep. You want it to relax, but not sleep.”
I smiled. Despite everything that had happened that day, I started to feel calm. The sea slid off the pebbles. Max had told me to empty my mind. To acknowledge each thought and just let it go.
The cat. Let it go.
Peter Kennedy. His strong chest and narrow soulful eyes. Let it go.
My anger at Peter Kennedy and his resigned, inactive ways. Gone.
The thought of my next blackout. Gone.
Johnny . . . well, it was harder to let go of Johnny. Of the memories. I couldn’t stop these.
Memory One: Johnny was on the end of my bed in his aviators, telling me the story of how he’d once been dismantling a ballpoint pen. He’d slipped off his chair, and the spring had slid into his thumb, right down under the nail. He was only little, and he’d screamed in pain. Mum and Granddad and Nana had tried to yank it out, but it was stuck deep in his flesh. All the tugging had made it hurt even worse. Then Dad came along, and he very gently twisted it four or five times, and it wound out just as it had gone in.
“You see,” Johnny had said to me. “He was always using his head.”
Even at the time I had thought that twisting out the spring was a pretty obvious solution, but I never said anything.
Memory Two: The days before Johnny’s first fight following the Helmstown defeat. Granddad was round again, and the house had returned to that regime of early-morning running and chewing bubble gum. One afternoon, I found Johnny taking a nap on the old sofa, with its loose-stitch pattern of peacocks and trees. His mouth was open and he was drooling. His hand was on the arm of the sofa, the fingers spread. I was only six, but I’d be damned if I was going to let him get into a boxing ring and get pummeled again. So I went to the cupboard and got a hammer out of the tool kit my dad had left behind. I went back to the living room and whispered, “Dear Johnny, I am sorry, but it’s for your own good.” And I took aim and brought down that hammer on his hand with every bit of strength I had.
He jumped up like a squirrel, screaming, “Dad, no! Please!”
My hammer blow had obviously gone into his dreams.
When he saw me, his eyes widened. He looked at his hand, then back at me. He started laughing. His eyes were streaming, and he was shouting, “Ouch. Jesus!” But he was laughing his head off.
It was a heavy hammer, and I broke his middle finger. They strapped it up, he fought, and he lost.
Memory Three: I had not thought about this for a long time. After the Helmstown fight, I’d woken from my blackout back at Nana’s house in Whiteslade. I was distressed to see Johnny standing above me. I didn’t recognize him. He wasn’t wearing his sunglasses, and one of his eyes was swollen shut. His nostrils were stuffed with cotton wool, and his lip looked like some kind of sea creature. He’d washed his hair, which had gone fluffy and looked weird against his shiny skin. “God, Johnny,” I whispered.
“You see? I’m OK,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”
I did see, and there was plenty wrong with him.
I screamed and jumped out of bed. I ran through the house. I picked up my colored pencils and some paper, and I scarpered outside, sprinting through the garden in my socks, over the stone wall, through the field, toward the shed — that old disused shed on the hill. I started to feel sick. It wasn’t like I was being chased. It was like I was running toward something, something absolutely terrifying. And I couldn’t stop.
I snapped out of the trance when the sea foam reached my knees. I stood up, sharpish. “Max?”
“Tide’s coming in,” he said. He was behind me. “Shall we go home? You look shattered.”
I smiled weakly, wondering why my thoughts kept flashing back to that day at Nana’s. “I’m fine,” I said. I looked up above the seawall, at the beach huts and the paths. “Yes. Let’s go home. But can we walk the long way round?”
We passed through town at twilight, and the place was coming to life. The smell of aftershave and lip balm and cheap wine, and kids sitting in the market square and the city garden, drinking shiftily. But they weren’t my friends. I should have been back home, getting ready to go out with Keisha. Instead, I was stuck here, trying to think of ways to stop an old man and a young woman called Kelly from dying.
“Maxi?”
“Yes.”
“We’re all going to die, right?”
“Well, that’s lightened the mood, Frances.”
“No, I’m serious. I’m being philosophical. I mean, it’s only a matter of time before we go. The clock is ticking for all of us.”
“Yes, but death isn’t a time,” Max said. “It’s a place, really.”
That made sense to me, of course. Peter was painting scenes. He was painting places. “If you could see the scene of your death in advance, what would you do?” I asked.
“God, you’re so emo these days.”
“Come on, Maxi, humor me.”
“If I knew where I was going to die, I would go to that place beforehand and remove anything hazardous,” he said, and laughed.
“You what?” I said, interested.
“Well, if I knew what was coming, I could get out of the way of it,” he said.
“Simple as that?” I said.
“Simple as that.”
Back at Auntie Lizzie’s house, I tried to call my mum, but, as usual, she had switched off her phone. So I went to my room, and I took out the sketch of the old man in the bath and the postcard
of Kelly the Hen. Time was running out. What was I supposed to do? I needed help, and the only person who could help me — the only person who understood — couldn’t even help himself. For Peter, life was just a series of inevitable steps toward death, and there was nothing you could do about it. I wondered what had happened to make him like that. Strange as it sounds, I could feel that he’d been different once. I could sense a warmth and a hope buried in him. I wanted to see it again, though after the fight we’d had, I didn’t know if that would ever happen.
Late that night, when everyone else was sleeping, I heard a noise outside the front door. Going down to investigate, I found a package with Frances written on the front. I recognized the handwriting from that first postcard I’d delivered. The package was from Peter Kennedy.
You can understand that I was a bit wary about opening mail from Peter. He had a bad track record for sending post. There was no stamp and no address, so he must have delivered it himself, but when I opened the door, the street was dark and still and empty. No people, no cats. I took the package inside, wondering how he’d found the address of my aunt and uncle. But, of course, he was a messenger. Finding people was what he did.
The package was flat, hard, and wrapped in brown paper. I took it up to my room and opened it. Inside was the painting of the boat at sea. The one I’d seen in his beach hut. Again, I saw how beautiful it was, with the off-center boat and the metal colors of the sky and sea. It reminded me of why I had liked to draw, before the blackouts. At the bottom he’d written, Just because something is off to the side doesn’t mean it’s not the point. I’m sorry about this morning, and you’re right: I probably am a prick.
I smiled and suddenly remembered how he had looked on the first night I saw him, stony-faced, with his cigarette and his magnifying glass — his jeweler’s loupe — like an eye patch. The long line of him.
There was a letter, too.
Dear Frances,
This is not an excuse. I am a bitter man, and have been for so long that I don’t even notice anymore. It has taken you — a very smart girl — to show me what I’ve become. You said, “Why are you being like this, Peter?” That might have been a rhetorical question, but I thought I might try to answer it, anyway.
