by Robert Young
I'd left friends behind and family and a sight more besides. I didn't like to think of it as running away, just moving on. I'd head back home to visit of course and see old friends and a few times people had come to stay the weekend but I was finding it harder to make a living that I'd imagined I would and the work I took on kept me really busy and the nature of it meant that there was no normal 9 to 5 routine for me, no cramped commute or daily extra-hot soy latte and a pastry.
Sitting at home trying to keep on top of it all meant often that I'd be up late and oversleep and my social life was a little limited what with the lack of regular colleagues to hang out with and most of my friends back home.
So evenings would slide past at the computer and weekends blurred away and it became normal to do things this way. I'd never been what you might call a social animal, but the passing months in this odd routine had left me more withdrawn and isolated than usual.
That was why nobody had come to me in the hospital; they'd not heard from me in so long, or in such irregular and sporadic bursts, that my absence or silence was unremarkable. But whilst that felt a little - what? Sad? Lamentable? - it did at least afford me some leeway in dealing with whatever was happening. I was aware that my behaviour was erratic at best just now and I was starting to keep even stranger hours than I had been.
What was I going to say to people about this really? More to the point, what benefit would it afford me? No. Better just to try to get through this strangeness and make contact with people again when I was better equipped to. Laugh about it later with them over a beer or dinner. The weirdest thing happened to me the other week…
As the day winds down and the sun sinks outside, it occurs to me that in keeping myself distracted today, the tangible sense of dread that now accompanied my days had not abated at all. I just thought about other things. Then later I dreamed about them again just like before.
That same intensity, same captive feeling, like there was no way to get back to wakefulness and reality. They were red, my dreams, and black. They were loud and pounding and I awoke slick and sweating again and still with a hunger that cramped my stomach.
One has to cling to a little bit of sense and reason, even when there is so little to be found. I concluded then that the vomiting must have been bad eggs. They were not long out of date but you never knew with these things; maybe it was just one of them that was bad and my stomach did the logical thing.
Perhaps instead I should ignore what stale and unappealing fare I had in my kitchen and head out for a meal somewhere. Maybe a burger, or a nice bloody steak. There were a few places down the road, takeaways or restaurants, so I could browse some windows and see what appealed.
The smell of the kebab shop almost made me gag, and the fried chicken place looked more luridly neon and filthy than ever and I actually crossed the road to pass it. The curry place I had been to several times held no attraction and then I stopped outside the little french bistro that had served as both a date venue and a lunch stop one Saturday a while back when caught out by both rain and appetite. I knew that it was good, but the smell that caught my attention was impossible to ignore and I matched it immediately with the chalkboard outside. 'Steak frites', it said.
I was seated quickly in a corner - no restaurant likes to advertise lone diners, it’s not part of the happy, sociable impression you want to create - and ordered the steak as soon as I sat.
'Of course sir. Any sauces with that? We have béarnaise, green peppercorn-'
I raised a hand. 'No sauce.'
'And how would you like your steak?'
'Blue.'
He smiled faintly, gave a curt nod and was gone.
The meat, when it came was thick and seared well but clearly just flashed on each side on a screaming hot grill. The chef had done the meat justice and the hot salty frites and side salad looked fresh and simple. There was a small red-brown puddle forming beneath the steak which grew and spread as I sliced into it and my stomach jumped, eager and thrilled, at the sight of that weeping red flesh.
I ate fast, savouring the delicious mouthfuls though finding something oddly compromised in the seared edges. When it was gone, I very nearly, as though it were the obvious thing to do, leaned down over the china and slurped up the liquid there, but checked myself, a little shocked. Instead I used the frites and the green leaves of the salad to mop the plate clean.
The waiter appeared at my side. 'Everything ok sir? May I take your plate?'
'Great, thanks.'
'Anything else, sir? A dessert menu perhaps, or a coffee?'
'Same again please.'
'Sir?'
'Another please. Just like that one. Maybe even less grill time.'
He was professional enough not to say anything but normal enough to seem to want to
'Very good, sir.'
The second steak was better than the first; bloodier, juicier and messier on my plate, my shirt, my chin. It went down quicker too, my appetite finally back and I was pleased enough to conclude that the vomiting last night was indeed about bad eggs and not something to do with me. For a while it let me forget that this was my first meal of any description since my flight from the hospital.
The waiter was bemused when clearing my plate and looked as though he were about to ask if I wanted another but he was quick with the bill and I tipped him well and was effusive with my praise for his help, the food, the establishment.
With a hearty handshake and a clap on his shoulder I left the restaurant and walked out into the cool night. No plans of where to head but a sense only that having been holed up indoors all day, that I wanted to be outside and moving.
I thought about heading off into town, maybe catch a movie at a cinema in Leicester Square, perhaps just find a quiet bar somewhere for a pint. I even thought about calling a friend before I realised that I could not do that because I could not remember any numbers and had lost my phone, but also because I still did not know what on earth I would say to anyone.
How do you look a friend in the eye and tell them the truth that you are trying not to face - that you have become scared of… scared of what? The daytime? The outside? Was this agoraphobia, or some irrational fear of that searing heat I felt each time the dawn arrived? Some off-kilter reaction to the burns and bandages that I did not want to think about and done so well to avoid.
No. There would be time for that, but now I was happy, outdoors, free and full bellied. I felt invigorated and unfettered and very, very carpe diem. Or rather, carpe noctem.
The night was clear and cool, the lights and sounds reminded me that for all the long hours cowering in cupboards and behind sealed windows, I lived in one of the liveliest, most vibrant cities on earth and even away from its brightest, loudest spots there was life aplenty to be found.
I walked, feeling the pavement glide beneath my feet, watching the shadows and the neon blur and shift. I took in those many sounds and all the different scents on the breeze that had seemed so overwhelming the night before. I felt more able to pick through them, to sort amongst each distinct sensation and sense and to allow it to wash over me.
Tonight I felt more like I was in control than for days, certainly since the hospital. Perhaps the food in my belly had sparked some energy, perhaps it was the refusal to buckle today and hide in the cupboard again, at least not all day. Perhaps I simply needed to wrest back a little of myself from the effects of whatever trauma had befallen me since that night.
Even now, all I could recall was a 'few beers' with people from an agency turning into a few more and a few more and a late bus home and I knew that I had got off the bus a stop or two early, though could not recall why. I remember thinking about getting a takeaway on my way home but I found my wallet empty and made the usual turn into the road that was a couple away from mine and then... And then...
Bandages and burning and noise. Fear and terror. Dreams and nightmares and an awful amnesia. Fleeing in a panic from what ought to have bee
n a haven with Doctors and treatment all on hand.
Getting away from that still felt right, still felt indescribably and inescapably correct in every sense, regardless of the undeniable oddness of the days since. But it got me no closer to understanding, even if I was starting to feel more comfortable in this new skin, this new me.
When I noticed that I was walking that same route again I felt surprised and not a little fearful, but also as though there were an inevitability about it.
Then when I found the spot, though it was not something I had been able to recall, there was a certainty that it had happened right here. And a certainty that whatever it was that had happened, it was malignant and irreversible and that more than an phone and a wallet had been taken from me.
I stared at the gravel driveway, the tree overhanging it, the well kept house and a shot of memory fired then, clear sharp and lighting fast.
Looking up from the floor where I had been knocked down, a tall powerful man stood over me, his fists clenched. From behind and above him a dark figure was dropping, rushing rather than falling it seemed, onto the unsuspecting man below who crumpled under the impact. My own vision went suddenly black.
I couldn't work out the flow of events. If I was already down, struck from behind with someone standing over me, it stood to reason that I had been mugged. But if the powerful looking man standing over me seemed to have been attacked himself had he been attacking me first? Perhaps he had arrived to help me out against whoever appeared from behind and took him down. But his fists had been clenched as he stood over me, not a gesture of assistance.
Before I could think on it anymore there were voices as a couple passed behind me and then into the driveway. They looked at me and I stared back a moment before realising how aggressive it must have seemed and stepped back.
'Is that him?' said the woman to the man.
'Who?' he replied.
'The guy. From the drive that morning. The red guy.'
The man turned back again to study me, trying not to look confrontational.
'It is him, Scott,' the woman said firmly. 'It definitely is.'
'Just not so red,' the man replied. Then said, 'Can I help you?'
'You know me?' I asked though the answer seemed given already.
'I think so. I mean, not know you, your name or anything. But we called the ambulance,' the man stepped toward me cautiously, as much to engage in conversation as to put himself between me and the woman.
'Ambulance?' Of course. There must have been. I just didn't remember.
'My wife found you when we were leaving for work. You were passed out right there,' he pointed at a spot beneath the tree. 'And you were really red, like bad sunburn.'
'When was this?'
'Before eight I guess. Maybe quarter to.'
'No, I mean when. How long?'
He frowned then, unsettled by my confusion, as though he may now have to deal with some lost and rootless amnesiac. As though by helping me, he now assumed responsibility for me.
'I woke up in the hospital you see and I don't really remember anything. I think I got jumped on the way home. But they couldn't really tell me anything in the hospital, didn't really help me at all.'
'Jesus,' he said, rubbing a hand through his hair. 'It was over a week back, maybe two.'
'Two weeks. OK.' Of course. I knew what date it was, had figured that just from turning on the computer but somewhere lost in the confusion I could not place when the incident had been. There would have been the date of the meeting for work that had preceded the trip to the pub that night. But the diary was in my phone. This should all be clear and retraceable. Why wasn't it?
'You OK?'
'Yeah. All been a bit of a blur. Sorry to spook you out like this,' I said, 'Just appearing out of nowhere.'
'No,' said the man. 'Not spooked.' His eyes betrayed the lie though.
I left swiftly, thanked them for their help and watched over my shoulder as they fumbled with keys and tried to look relaxed as they poured themselves through the front door, several clunks and clicks following.
So I had been mugged and left there then, knocked cold. But the sunburn they talked of connected to the bandages in the hospital, but did not explain them. Since when do they mummify you for sunburn? And since when does an hour or so of early morning autumn sunshine give you acute and severe sunburn anyway?
Resolving on covering a few more miles of this night on foot, to do some thinking, I found myself again passing through the same quiet streets of the night before.
Past the same block of flats with the same loitering youths as before, with the same baggy clothes, the same jeans slung right down low beneath the waist, beneath even the buttocks.
But unlike the night before, they were not crowded into a stairwell beneath a sulfur-yellow light. They were blocking my path, moving even as I veered right, then left, to go round them. They stopped when I stopped, formed up in front of me, hands in pockets, heads in hoods.
I had punched the first one in the chin and had my left hand around the second one’s throat, before any of us had said a word. The third man’s expression was shifting, just beginning to register surprise as I lifted him up off his feet and slammed him down onto his back with my free right hand.
He shouted then, a cry of shock and fear, as the impact forced the air from his lungs. Why it had taken him - taken any of them - so long to react was baffling until I realised that almost no time had passed. The first one was still falling and my grip had not loosened on the throat of his friend but it took me still a moment to register that his feet were off the ground beneath him. I opened my hand and he regained his feet just briefly before landing crumpled on his backside, hands clutching at the bruise flowering on the skin.
All three were silent at my feet. All three staring at the floor, or their shoes, or just not at me and we all of us seemed to know right then that the most shocked of us was me.
Not once had I ever hit a man the way I had crashed that fist upwards into the underside of this man's chin, this young man I now noted was not just tall but heavy-set, thick-necked. His companions, thin rangy looking lads, didn't share their friend's physicality, but they were sinewy and fit looking.
I felt bigger then, fuller somehow. Not just because they were sitting and me standing, and not just because they were all catching breath, rubbing jaws, backs, throats. There was no question that these three men, tougher, larger than me, were about to reassert their numerical advantage. No possibility that some natural order might return, some reversion to mean, but what had taken place was completely unambiguous, undeniably final.
'Fuck man,' said one of the skinny lads, running a hand over his bristly scalp.
They all looked up at me then, all at once, like it took teamwork.
'Didn't touch you geezer.' It was all South London estate accents, phlegmy consonants and resentment.
'Why you did that, man?' persisted the skinny lad as his solid companion just looked at me, and looked.
And then asked me, 'What are you?'
I watched their backs down the road for a minute, their hunched figures penetrating impenetrable shadows as they tried to melt away into the night. It wasn't that I could still see them through the darkness that seemed so odd, as the fact that I could still smell them all, smell the fear peeling off them into the air. Smell the blood.
Chapter 10
At first he thinks that the sounds are coming from her, but knows that cannot be the case.
Roth has carefully washed himself, rinsing the blood from his face and taking care to scrub his fingers with the nailbrush by her sink which he then pockets. He has watched enough TV cop shows to know about trace evidence, about fibres, and skin and hair and blood samples beneath the fingernails. Although he has perhaps not watched enough to figure out how he might remove traces of his DNA from her neck. In the end he finds a few sheets of kitchen roll, splashes bleach over them and wipes at the wound with it, flushing when he i
s done.
He is dressing again, pleased that he had presence of mind to remove his sweatshirt for fear of bloodstains. The sounds that catch his attention as he does so, come from beyond the walls of the small flat.
They are the sounds of a one sided struggle and they make him think about the things that he has so often done at this time of night. Someone outside has just lost a fight before it has even started and Roth enjoys the sensation that this memory invokes.
He parts the curtains and peers down to the street below, out between the two tower blocks of the estate in front of him. He can see a streetlight, a man standing beneath it staring after the group of three lads sloping away into the darkness.
By their body language it is clear that they have lost whatever confrontation took place and that such a thing is not normal for them. Nor for the man beneath the streetlight to judge by the way he stands rooted to the spot and staring at the three receding figures.
Soon only the man is in view and Roth finds that he cannot look away from that motionless figure because, just for a moment, he thinks he knows him. Or remembers him at least.
There is a powerful rush of recall as he stares down at the street and then as the figure turns and moves away Roth is gripped by a rising panic and a sense that he must not be allowed to escape. Not again.
He pockets her keys on his way out, he ignores the lift and drops several flights of stairs barely touching steps as he races down them. He streaks across the grass and tarmac of the estate, between the two towers standing like a gateway to the street beyond where the dark figure has vanished from sight.
He scarcely notices that though he is still sprinting and has been since he left the old woman's side, he is not out of breath, has not broken even a bead of sweat. He is moving faster than he ever has, driven on by a desperation for some answers, the hope that this man who for such a fleeting moment looked like the man - that one from the night, the incident - can give him answers. Driven by a fear that he may never have them if he does not catch him.
But he need not have feared for the man must have dawdled after moving out of sight. A few hundred yards along he catches sight of him strolling along, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched. Roth stops running and drops instinctively toward the shadows, watching from a distance. He follows him.
