by Edward Hogan
His mother came out of the darkness of the house. “Leo! Back inside.”
“Excuse me!” I shouted.
The mother raised her head. I saw, from her expression, how crazy I must have looked.
“I’m trying to find Vine Alley,” I said.
She pointed. “That way.”
I turned in the direction she’d indicated and saw Helen up ahead in the distance. I called, but she didn’t hear me. I ran.
By the time the grid of Helmstown streets opened up to me, it was too late. Helen was walking quickly toward the alley. I kept sprinting, but I knew I wouldn’t get there before her.
Peter came into view from the other direction, just as Helen was about to enter the alley. He called to her, and there was a brief conversation, which I couldn’t hear. Peter was pointing wildly, and Helen was stepping away from him, shaking her head.
As I got closer, Peter grabbed Helen’s arm, and she wrenched it away and slapped his face. Then she ran — thankfully avoiding the alley — around the corner to a parallel street.
I got to Peter a few seconds later. He was bent over slightly, holding his face. “You OK?” I said.
He took his hand away to reveal a large red palm mark.
“Well,” I said, “you did it, Pete. You saved her.”
“Some thanks I get,” he said.
We looked down the alley and saw the gang of youths, in silhouette in the light of the streetlamp. I shuddered. “Let’s get out of here,” I said.
We walked back toward the beach, and my heartbeat gradually returned to normal. Stopping at the railings above the seawall, I laughed, a bit giddy with the power of changing the future. I clasped my hands together, knelt down, and pretended to pray. “Dear Lord, thank you for giving Helen . . . what was her name again?”
“Rossdale,” said Peter.
“Thanks for giving Helen Rossdale another chance. Please watch over her and make sure she uses her life well.”
“And make sure she doesn’t take shortcuts down dark alleys,” said Peter.
“Yes! Tell her to keep to well-lit walkways.”
I opened my eyes and looked at Peter, who was frowning down at the sea. “What’s up, Pete?” I said.
“It wasn’t God that saved her, though, was it? It wasn’t about higher powers or an inevitable order. It was us. We did it, didn’t we?”
I nodded and then so did he. I thought that maybe I was making some progress, but then a disturbing thought seemed to pierce Peter very suddenly, and he raised his hands to cover his face. “Peter? You OK?”
He didn’t answer for a moment.
“Peter?” I said again.
“Do you know how long I’ve been a messenger?” he said.
“No.”
“Years, Frances, years. I have lost count of the recipients. I have lost count of the people I have painted and delivered to. The people I’ve killed.”
“But, Peter —”
“I could have saved them. All of them. Most of them, anyway. But I didn’t. Oh, God,” he said.
He coughed, dry retching. I went toward him. Being a messenger had given him this worldliness, an acceptance of death that made him seem older than his years, but at times like this I realized that being in your twenties wasn’t that different to being a teenager. You didn’t suddenly have all of life’s answers. In fact, all that happened was that you’d failed a few more tests.
“Come on, Pete. It’s hard, but there’s nothing you can do about that now. Besides, you weren’t to know.”
“Why didn’t Tabby tell me? Why didn’t she know? I always used to feel so guilty. I always used to feel like I was creating the death scenes from my own imagination, you know what I mean?”
I nodded, because, strange as it sounds, I did know. For how could I draw something that wasn’t somehow in my mind? And as Pablo Picasso said, Everything you can imagine is real.
Pete kept talking. “I used to feel that I was causing these deaths. But Tabby talked me out of it. Why?”
“She was probably trying to protect you. Just the way you tried to protect me. You always said that things couldn’t be changed, and that I was just delivering the message. It was to make me feel better. It’s the only thing you can do when things are out of control: try to protect your feelings.”
Peter shook his head. “It’s a lot of people, Frances. A lot of people gone and for nothing.”
“All the more reason to make the future better than the past, Pete,” I said.
I left him to it then, because I knew that what he was dealing with couldn’t be cured by a few kind words and a pat on the back.
This is the good bit of my story. The bit where everything goes right. It’s a short section.
We had saved Helen Rossdale on the Monday, and on Tuesday, I met Joseph Davies, Peter’s son. I’d found him on Facebook, where he called himself Joe, and there was a load of stuff on his profile about a place called Saint Paul’s Rec Centre in Hartsleigh. From his picture, I could see what Peter’s hair probably looked like when he was younger: light and curly and boyish.
A quick bus trip down the coast and I was there. Hartsleigh was no Helmstown. It wasn’t exactly run-down, but it was very ordinary. No big white houses by the seafront or neon-lit bars or amusement arcades. Even the grass looked dull. I waited on the wall of the rec, watching the older skater boys messing around on the kids’ playground, jumping off the roundabout and grinding on the benches.
It wasn’t long before I noticed that I wasn’t the only person watching. Joe was standing about ten meters away, just behind the Scout hut, with his own skateboard, occasionally trying a few tricks, but mainly just watching the others from a safe distance. It made me smile, watching him. I guess he’d just gone up to secondary school and he was trying to pull off a style that was a bit beyond him. He wore headphones around his neck (I could see the lead dangling aimlessly out from under his T-shirt, not plugged in), and although he was trying to wear his jeans down on his hips, he was so slim they kept falling, so that he had to catch them and drag them back up.
Again, it struck me how old the kid was, and how young Peter was when he was born. If Peter had been scared by the situation, imagine how Rowenna must have felt, bringing him up on her own.
I walked over to him. “All right?” I said.
He nodded, slightly suspicious about why a girl my age might want to talk to him. “They’re pretty good, aren’t they?” I said.
“Who?” he said, pretending he hadn’t been staring at the other skateboarders for the last half hour.
I laughed a bit. “Those kids on the playground.”
“I suppose,” he said, letting his board fall to the ground.
“Do you come and watch them a lot?” I asked.
“I wasn’t watching them.”
“But that’s how you get better, isn’t it?”
He shrugged. I turned back to watch the skateboarders, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw him look me up and down.
One of the older lads tried something complicated that didn’t quite come off, and his board rolled toward us. Joe stepped away, but I nodded to the lad. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I said.
The lad walked away.
“You see,” I said to Joe. “They don’t bite, those guys. They’re just a bit shy.”
“Shy? As if! They’re in year eleven.”
“So?”
“Well,” he said, looking longingly at them, “I wouldn’t be shy if I was like them.”
“But you aren’t shy,” I said.
He straightened up then. Proud. “No,” he said. “No, I’m not. Not all the time.”
“I mean, you’re talking to me, aren’t you?” I said. “A total stranger.”
He nodded slowly. “You’re not from round here, are you?” he said, his confidence growing.
“No. But I’m staying in Helmstown for a while. Do you know Helmstown?”
“Yeah, I’ve been there a couple of times,�
�� he said. Not that I believed him. “It’s pretty cool.”
“You been to the skate park?”
“No. I’ve been thinking about going. I mean, I’ve heard of it. I heard it’s good.”
“It’s beyond good,” I said. I leaned toward him and whispered, smelling the chocolate on his breath and too much deodorant. “I mean, these guys are OK, but the guys at Helmstown . . . Do you like stunt bikes?”
“Yes,” he said.
“The stunt bike guys at Helmstown . . . unbelievable,” I said, shaking my head as if they were something disgraceful.
Joe sighed. “Unbelievable,” he said quietly.
“You should come and see them sometime,” I said. “I could introduce you to some people.”
“Me?” he said.
“Sure. I’ve been watching you. You’ve got . . . potential.”
“I’m just . . . I’m starting out, really. I mean, it’s all natural. I’ve taught myself. But I don’t think I’m ready for the skate park yet.”
“Well, you could just watch them, then, I suppose.”
“I could just watch,” he said.
He looked at me sideways, and he couldn’t stop himself from smiling.
On my way home, I got a text from Peter: I need to see you.
I know that he meant we had messenger work to do, but I liked the thought that he needed me.
Peter had come straight from a plastering job on a house that was being completely renovated, and he was covered in white dust. In the dark hut, he almost glowed as he put the postcard into the scanner. “I did it this morning,” he said. “Blacked out in the bathroom.”
The light spilled out from under the scanner hood and moved in a bar across Peter’s hands. The image came up on the screen of the laptop.
“It’s one of the hardest messages I’ve ever done,” Peter said. “So tough to find the clues.”
The man was lying on the pavement, his head turned away, his hand on his stomach. Behind him was a door with no number. There was something not quite right about the picture.
“Do you know who it is?” Frances said.
“I think so,” he said. “The shirt sticking out from under his sweater is the uniform of South-Eastern Trains. I went to the station after I’d done the painting, and I recognized the ticket inspector. He goes to the same supermarket as me. If I’m right, that’s the door to his house. His name is Charles.”
“But you can’t tell how he died?”
“My best guess would be a heart attack.”
“What can we do about that?” I asked.
“Unless you can turn back time and stop him from eating about twelve thousand bacon sandwiches, not a lot,” Peter said. “This is the problem with your idea, Frances. And this has been my point all along: people die. It’s natural.”
“Don’t start that again,” I said. “Move over.”
I zoomed in on the corner of the painting. There was a rounded piece of wood just in shot. “There. What’s that?” I said.
Peter squinted. “Could be anything. . . .”
But I could tell I’d sparked his interest. “Go back to his hands,” he said.
I scrolled across the painting until I came to the man’s fingers resting heavily just below his chest.
“They’re pretty hairy,” I said.
“That’s not hair. Can you zoom in any more?”
I did. We were almost down to individual brushstrokes. The shadowy marks I had taken for hairs were in fact green and black streaks. Peter smiled.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Leaf mulch and moss.”
“What does it mean?”
He scrolled back to the piece of wood. “That’s a ladder,” he said. “He was cleaning out his roof gutter.”
“He fell?”
Peter zoomed out. “Look at the angle of his neck.”
Now I knew what was not quite right with the picture.
“Christ,” I said.
Peter picked up some flyers for a comedy night and slipped the postcard into the pile. He went out to deliver the message and see what he could find out about Charles the ticket inspector, and I went home and made friends with Joe Davies on Facebook. I sent him some videos of kids doing stunts on the half-pipes of Helmstown beach.
I was taking control of things, and it felt good.
Two days later, I sneaked out of the house at dawn and met up with Peter. We set off for Charles Gregan’s house (Peter had found out his surname) to steal his faulty ladder. Like the day before, it was windy.
I could see how Peter’s decision to try to save his recipients was already changing him. His shoulders were straighter, stronger, and there was a new urgency about his movements. He had bought a couple of leather-bound diaries so we could organize our schedules.
“Where does he keep the ladder?” I said.
“Down the side of his house. I saw it when I delivered the message.”
“Pete?” I said.
“Yes.”
“What if he borrows someone else’s ladder?”
“That’s not our problem,” Peter said. “We’re changing the picture on the postcard. Maybe the weather will be better by the time he gets another ladder. Maybe he won’t bother cleaning the gutter. But we can’t follow him around for the rest of his life. We can only go so far.”
Peter pulled up short when he saw the house from across the street.
“What’s wrong?” I said, following his gaze. The gutter pipe under the roof of the house was broken and hanging down in two places. The curtains were open — the only ones open at that time of the morning. A dark patch stained the pavement outside the front door, and one of the slabs was cracked.
“Wow. He really does have to fix that gutter,” I said.
“No,” Peter said. “I don’t like this.”
“What?” I said.
“Think about the picture. The message,” Peter said.
We crossed the road. Shards of wood were scattered on the concrete. The stain on the pavement contained bright-green moss, leaves, dirt, and a darker, brownish substance which had seeped into the fracture in the slab.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “What’s going on?”
Peter shook his head and moved quickly down the side of the house. He came back out a few seconds later. “No ladder,” he said. “Something has gone wrong. It looks like it’s already . . . It can’t be.”
“Are you sure you got the right day?”
“Of course I did!” he shouted.
I looked down.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“What are we going to do?” I said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I need to think.”
He began to walk away. I waited for a moment, and because I did, I was able to hear a woman inside the house, sobbing. I shivered and hurried after Peter.
It was then I found the ladder. Half of it, anyway. It was in a skip down the road. “Peter!” I shouted, and he came back.
I took hold of the jagged end, where it had snapped.
“Rotten,” he said.
“Maybe it’s not the same ladder.”
“We’ll soon find out.”
He went into the newsagent’s. I heard him having a conversation with the man at the till. Then he came out and started walking toward the beach.
“What did he say?” I said.
“It has already happened. He said that a man fell off his ladder yesterday morning. He broke his neck and died in hospital.”
“But I don’t understand. That’s a day early.”
“Yes,” Peter said. “Yes, it is. Twenty-four hours after I drew him. That’s never happened before.”
We went to the Coffee Shack. I had to order because of Peter’s incident with Helen outside Vine Alley. Peter sat at one of the metal tables looking out onto the sea. I put our drinks down and sat next to him. I was shaken up.
“What’s happening?” I said.
He didn’t answer for a while. T
hen he looked at me. “I don’t know. Something Tabby said . . . Death adapts,” he said. His face was blank. “It evolves, just as we do, only quicker. It has the whole world, and everything in it, to use as tools.”
He’d gone back to his old self, and I could see why. There was a randomness to being a messenger. Sometimes it was like we were thrashing around in the dark. But I wouldn’t give up.
“We meddled with the process,” Peter said. “We tried to change the future. We lost.”
“So we’ll fight back. If it’s twenty-four hours, we’ll work faster.”
“It will adapt again.”
“Well, then so will we!” I said. “We can’t just quit, Peter. There’s too much at stake.”
“We’re not in control of it. I told you there’d be consequences,” he said.
“And I told you there’d be consequences. One of which was that you might be able to see your son. Either you want to do that or you don’t.” I winced with pain.
“What’s wrong?” he said.
“Splinter. From that stupid ladder.”
“Let me see.”
It had dug into the pad of flesh under my thumb. Peter held my hand and looked. “Got any tweezers?” he said.
“Do I look like the sort of girl who carries tweezers?” I said.
He brought my hand to his mouth. I sort of froze, feeling his lips against my skin, and a little bit of pain as his teeth searched for the splinter. He bit down, pulled it free, then gave me back my hand. The spit cooled.
We were both quiet for a moment.
“I never said I was quitting,” he said.
When we saw the van pull up by the newsagent’s and drop off the morning edition of the local newspaper, I went across to get a copy and confirm what we already suspected. I remember seeing the picture of Charles Gregan on page two, and I remember crossing the road toward Peter, but after that, it was all a blur.
I came back to full consciousness on the floor of Peter’s hut. He was stroking my hair. I closed my eyes for a moment and let him think I was still out of it, hoping he’d carry on. With his hands on me like that, I could pretend that we’d just woken up together.
“You OK?” he said, probably seeing my eyelids flutter.
