by Ian Somers
‘Don’t say that!’ I snapped. ‘Don’t ever say that to me!’
‘Jesus, Ross,’ she gasped, backing away from me. ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, disgusted with myself for losing my temper with her. ‘Those words reminds me of …’
‘Forget him, Ross. He’s long dead. He can never return to hurt you again. He can’t hurt anyone ever again.’
‘I know.’ I nodded nervously as I scanned the cars that droned past us. ‘I know.’
‘I’ll be in touch. Try to keep your temper in check. And try to keep your mind off that person and the things he did.’
‘Cathy,’ I said as she was about to turn away. ‘Is this the end of us?’
‘I just need some time, Ross.’
Her final words left me cold. She couldn’t say yes or no. If she didn’t know whether she wanted a future with me, then I felt that our relationship was over. Neither of us spoke again. She simply walked away towards the bright lights of the airport and soon disappeared.
I instantly regretted being so short tempered with her. But anything relating to Edward Zalech set me off. In truth, lots of things set me off. My moods had been unpredictable since we left the Guild of the True. A stubborn anxiety had been living in the pit of my stomach since we fled England, and it was growing more potent as time went on. I also suffered crippling headaches on an almost daily basis. I didn’t feel like myself anymore. I was becoming someone different to the person I once was.
Sadness stung my chest when I lost sight of Cathy. I really wasn’t sure if I’d ever see her again. My crutch had been swiped from under me. It was time to stand on my own two feet again. There would now be a time without distraction ahead of me, and I would be forced to deal with, or capitulate to, the many horrors that haunted me.
I steered the kinetibike onto the road and twisted the right grip and moved off at a modest speed. The bike could run on psychokinetic energy, but I chose to drive with petrol that evening, as I was training myself not to use any of my gifts. I was trying to erase the person I had been while I was part of the Guild of the True. It wasn’t easy. The temptation to use my powers was rarely absent. I felt feeble without them. I guess that’s always the way when you give up strength. You feel weak.
At first I headed for a motorway that would lead me to the west of the country, but after a few moments I turned the bike onto a slip road and headed for south county Dublin. I felt an overwhelming urge to visit the small town that I grew up in.
It took almost an hour to reach Maybrook. I slowly traversed the maze of narrow roads and thought that the estate hadn’t changed a bit as I surveyed it. I soon made my way onto the avenue and slowed to a stop outside the house that once had been my home. The windows were grimy and filled with shadows. The garden was overgrown. Litter and dead leaves were bunched up by the front door. Some illegible graffiti on the front window. One piece of Maybrook had changed quite a lot in my absence.
‘Bricks and mortar,’ I whispered to the night. ‘Bricks and mortar that now belong to no one.’
I wondered if anyone else really knew what had transpired in the sitting room of that house the previous year. Did anyone know that one of the most evil murderers ever to walk the earth had stalked the rooms of this abandoned house? I felt ill every time I thought about what happened on that terrible night. I often wondered what Zalech said to Dad before he killed him. Had my father been brave in those final moments? Had Zalech made him suffer? Was it swift or prolonged? Had Zalech watched the house as I now watched it? Did he stand at this very spot as he prepared to enter? What was going through his mind? There were so many questions that would never be answered. Zalech had taken all the answers to the grave with him. I was the only one who kept the questions alive. Zalech and Dad only lived on in my mind.
I took one last look at the house and doubted I would ever lay eyes on it again. There was nothing for me there anymore. I drove slowly along the avenue and out of the estate onto the narrow road to the south that led to a small cemetery. I parked the bike on the roadside, awkwardly scaled the tall iron gates without using my gifts, and wandered the gravelled pathways until I found Dad’s grave. I sat for a while in silence with my head resting against the headstone. I remembered the happy days, back before my mother died. I’d been close to Dad at that time. We’d shared so much and laughed all the time.
Those comforting memories were quickly consumed by the images my mind had conjured up of Zalech killing him. My skull was aching as I tried to banish the false memories from my brain.
‘I know you would have given him a good fight,’ I said to the grave. ‘I know you wouldn’t cower at his feet. It must have really pissed him off that you weren’t a quivering mess. He never got the better of us. No way. We Bentleys were too good and too strong for him in the end.’
I continued talking until my emotions finally boiled over and I wept so hard my throat and chest got sore. It was only an hour since I’d said farewell to Cathy and the loneliness was unbearable. I was breaking apart. The person known as Ross Bentley, who had fought Edward Zalech and Marianne Dolloway, was gradually morphing into a nervous wreck.
My mood grew dark and I wished that I too had taken a place in the family plot next to my mother and father. I often wished for a way out of life. Why remain alive when life is so empty? I had to keep reassuring myself that the future was worth living for. But now that Cathy was gone, I really didn’t see much hope for me.
There was once a time when the mere sight or thought of her would snap me from the depths of the depression. She always found ways to cheer me up when I was down. Once she transported her mind into our cat, Nightshade, and made her dance like a drunken reveller. I couldn’t help but laugh. On other occasions she would remind me of all that I had achieved since entering the Million Dollar Gift.
‘You’re not useless, Ross,’ she would insist. ‘Over the last few short years you discovered your gifts, won the toughest contest ever devised, joined the Guild, saved countless lives, confronted and defeated the greatest of foes, overcame tragedy and you fell in love with the best looking girl that has ever lived!’
Sometimes the speech worked, sometimes it didn’t. Whenever it failed to lift me, Cathy would speak of Sarah Fisher, and how I had rescued her from the clutches of evil. That had been the most dangerous task I’d ever been involved in. We had saved the young prophet from Edward Zalech, who was planning to sell her to JNCOR, who in turn would use her to aid their nefarious activities. It actually did make me feel heroic that I’d delivered her to safety. Sarah was such an innocent and loveable young girl, and it would have been a great tragedy if we hadn’t gotten to her in time.
Innocent and loveable, but also unwittingly powerful and dangerous. Her sinister premonitions often played on my mind. Sometimes I’d become overwhelmed with fear when I thought back to some of the predictions I’d found in her diary. Then it would be up to Cathy to cheer me up again. Sometimes with a hug or a kiss, other times she’d reminisce of the time we first met, in the English countryside on those long summer nights.
Those were nice memories, but now they were causing me even more anxiety. Now that she was away from me, I was struggling to think of reasons to continue on. Dealing with these ugly feelings alone was what I had been dreading for the two weeks since she announced her departure. I reached my lowest point as I sat there next to the graves of my parents. You couldn’t get lower than this.
I was starting to feel the tearing chill of the December night and decided I had to get going. I zipped up my jacket to the point of my chin then pushed myself off the dirt and rested a hand on the frigid marble headstone. I bowed my head and said ‘sorry’ before ‘goodbye’. Would he accept my apology if he could hear my words? I think he would have. Dad was a good soul. He was a wiser person than I could ever hope to be.
There was no true forgiveness, though. Dad was dead and I had taken his place in the world as the lonely man, as Sarah Fisher o
nce described him. Yes, Dad was dead, like so many of those who I had been close to in my life. Being close to me was like a fatal disease.
I scaled the gates and mounted the bike once more. The road ahead was an empty one. A life of solitude lay beyond. To reach the motorway I had to cross through the western side of Maybrook, and as I did, a warm light caught my eye. I slowed the bike and stopped by the corner of Maybrook Road. The box room light was on in the Wrights’ house. It was Gemma’s room. My one real friend from childhood was only a few yards away. I had once endangered her life by calling her to let her know how I was, back when I was living at the Atkinsons’ house. My stupidity had put her in great danger. The calls I made that night had almost gotten me killed, too. Marcus Romand hadn’t been as lucky as I was.
I wished to go to her, to talk to her, to laugh with her. I couldn’t be so reckless again. She might catch that awful Bentley disease if I re-established contact.
The window was cast into darkness as the light inside was extinguished. Best to leave Gemma to her own life, I thought. I started the bike, kicked off the stand, and was about to fire the engine when the front door to the house opened and Gemma came bustling down the driveway to the pavement. She took a glance in my direction, scowled at me, then continued in the opposite direction. I knew her eyesight was awful and felt no offence. She’d always needed glasses but refused to wear them. She could never recognise people in the dark. It seemed some things never change.
‘Gemma!’ I instinctively called after her.
She slowed her pace and looked over her shoulder. Then she scowled again and was shaking her head as she walked away even faster than before.
‘Gemma, it’s me.’
She spun around and squinted at me, then smiled hesitantly, ‘Ross?’ She cautiously walked towards me as that lovely smile of hers widened. ‘Ross Bentley? Is that you?’
‘I wouldn’t say that name out loud if I were you,’ I replied with a snort. ‘It attracts all the wrong sorts of attention.’
She hurried towards me and the glare of a streetlight illuminated her face. She looked more mature and elegant than she did when we were friends. She’d grown into a beautiful young woman.
‘I don’t believe it.’ She rushed at me and flung her arms around my shoulders and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Ross, I can’t believe it’s you! I thought you were dead, you moron!’ I got a slap in the arm then for my troubles. ‘Why the hell didn’t you …’
Gemma took a stunned step backward. It was as if she suddenly went back to not recognising me. ‘My God,’ she whispered, ‘you look very different, Ross.’
‘I am … different.’
‘What happened to you?’ she asked as her gaze drifted across the face that was scarred by combat, hardened by conflict, and weathered by loss. ‘You look five years older than you should.’
‘I’ve lived a lot over the last couple of years,’ I told her. I’d died more than I’d lived in that time, but I didn’t want to sound morbid by admitting such a thing to her. ‘Enough about me, how are you?’
‘Don’t change the subject,’ she replied instantly. ‘How did you get those cuts on your face?’
I slapped the tank of the bike. ‘Went too fast on this hunk of junk a few months ago and fell off. I wasn’t wearing a helmet.’
‘Just like you fell off your skateboard and got covered in dust? Remember that?’
‘Yeah,’ I smiled. ‘It was something like that.’
‘Oh, Ross.’ Tears glistened in her eyes as she stepped forward and hugged me again. ‘I missed you a lot, you crazy bugger. I worried so much about you.’ She released me and looked me dead in the eye. ‘I thought something bad had happened to you. Then your dad died. I was so sure you’d show up for the funeral but when you didn’t, I thought that the only thing that would keep you away was death.’ A deep frown twisted up her pretty face. ‘Why didn’t you come back for the funeral, Ross? Who doesn’t attend their parent’s funeral?’
‘I couldn’t come back.’
‘You do know what happened to your dad, right? How he died?’
‘I know exactly what happened.’
‘They never caught the person responsible.’
‘Oh, he was caught,’ I said bitterly. A shimmer of the darkness inside was revealed for an instant. The memories of fighting Zalech on that lonely country road were as close as ever. ‘He paid dearly for what he did.’
‘The way you say that makes me think that it was you who caught him.’
I said nothing.
‘Did you?’
‘I don’t feel like talking about all that, Gemma. It’s not easy for me, you know.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘I’m over all that now.’ I forced a smile as the lie left my lips. ‘I’m fine now.’
My smile must have been an unpleasant one judging by the reaction it gained from Gemma. She stood away and looked a little wary of me. This was the last thing I wanted. I didn’t want to scare off the only friend I had left in the world. I couldn’t remain with her for much longer either. I was endangering her by being out in the open with her.
‘Are you well?’ I asked.
‘I am,’ she said with a weary grin. ‘College is fun and I’ve made lots of new friends. I don’t work at the supermarket anymore.’
‘Brilliant! I’m glad you escaped the tyranny of Mr Reynolds!’
‘So am I.’
‘How come you’re out at this hour?’ I wondered. ‘Not like you to be out so late on a school night.’
‘Ross, it’s Saturday night …’
‘Oh. I guess I’ve lost track of time this week.’ This was another lie. I no longer paid attention to dates or times or days or months. Every day was a carbon of the previous one for me. My life was alien to the one Gemma was leading. I was in hiding from the world of the gifted. Gemma was a carefree student. There could be no friendship between us. It was far too late for that.
I reached out to her and ran my hand along her cheek.
‘I’ve missed you, Gemma. I’ve really missed you.’
‘You’re going again, aren’t you?’
‘I have to.’
‘Will you ever come back? I mean, will you ever come back properly?’
‘I can’t. I made a mistake when I left this place for London and I will be paying for it for the rest of my life. The price of my error is exile.’
‘Why are you talking this way? What have you done that’s so bad?’
‘It’s impossible to explain.’
‘Can’t you just tell me what’s going on, Ross? I might be able to help.’
‘You can’t.’
‘Are you on drugs or something? Do you owe money to bad people?’
‘No,’ I laughed. ‘If only it was that simple.’
‘Come here if you’re ever in need of help. Even if you simply need a friend. I liked you being a part of my life, Ross. Promise me you’ll come back again.’
‘I will.’ Another lie. I could never return. ‘I promise.’
I turned the key on the dashboard of the bike. The roar of the engine gave Gemma a fright and she took a few sharp steps away from me. ‘Don’t ever tell anyone you know me, or even knew me, Gemma. Do me that favour. Do yourself that favour.’
She looked crestfallen as I drove away from her. I shouldn’t have talked to her in the first place. I’d now tainted her memory of me. At least she wouldn’t talk about me to strangers, although I doubted that my enemies would come looking for her. I was surely off the radar. I would be safe as long as I kept my head down and didn’t get involved in any mischief, as Cathy used to say.
I ran out of petrol before long and had no money to refill the tank. I was forced to use psychokinesis to power the bike for the rest of the journey across Ireland. I didn’t speed like it was possible to on a kinetibike. I didn’t even break the road limits – although I wanted to. I’d always liked being a daredevil but I was in no rush to get back to the empty cottage that night.
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br /> The ride took almost four hours and I reached my home in the dead of night. I rolled the bike up the driveway that arced around the cottage, and parked it in the garage out back. I found the cottage frigid when I stepped into the kitchen. The heating always took an age to fire up, so I didn’t bother trying to get it started. Instead I climbed into bed, fully clothed, and wrapped the duvet around my shoulders.
I liked the cottage for the most part, but the silence on calm nights was in some way disturbing. It was more noticeable than ever now that Cathy was gone. I felt terribly anxious. There, in the quiet darkness, I was overcome with the faces of those who were dead: Dad, Peter Williams, Marcus Romand, Marianne Dolloway, Linda Farrier, Edward Zalech, Shinji Sakamoto, and worst of all, Ania Zalech. I mourned for those close to me and was haunted by those who once opposed me. It was Ania Zalech’s face, though, that was the most troubling of all. I’d never truly gotten over what happened to her. She was too young to die and I was the one who was responsible for her death. It was an accident. There was no intention on my part. I wasn’t a murderer. That didn’t make it any easier to deal with. I was still responsible for ending her life.
On reflection I think something snapped inside me when I killed Ania and I never got a chance to recover properly from it. June Atkinson once told me that the human mind is like any other part of the body. It can be broken like a bone. It can become strained or torn like a muscle. It can get bruised and tender like skin. And like all injuries it takes time to heal, because, according to her, the mind can repair itself over time. If my mind had been injured by what happened to Ania, then it should have been given time to heal. That didn’t happen. I was immediately dragged into a lethal vendetta after her death, one that claimed the lives of my father, some close friends, and many innocents. The last blow was dealt when I seized control over Edward Zalech’s mind. I had in essence become him for a brief moment. I saw the look in Peter Williams’ eyes when Zalech strangled the life out of him. I saw it, but I also felt what Zalech had felt. A part of his insanity and immorality had been passed to me as I time-scanned him. It had remained in some capacity. A piece of Edward Zalech’s tormented mind lived on inside my own – I was sure of it. It had all been too much for one person to deal with and now I was paying the price. My sanity was balanced on a knife edge.
