Cracked Lenses

by L J McIntyre

  I have mental flashes of what would happen if I turned the torch on. We’d be surrounded by horror, by emptiness, by dozens of people all around, staring and snarling silently at us. Vessels in the dark within touching distance.

  I listen carefully for breathing sounds. Annie senses that I’m processing something. She’s waiting for me to make a decision. Her hand is damp, but she isn’t shaking. My hand is, though.

  I let go of Annie’s hand, reach in my pocket and take the penknife out.

  “Get ready,” I whisper not quietly enough.

  I click the torch on and the space in front of us lights into life for a split second, just enough time to take enough of it in. I turn the torch off again and step back a few strides, pulling Annie with me.

  The room was empty, no signs of life or Betsy. But it was only half the large space. I turn a hundred and eighty degrees, manoeuvring Annie as I go, and flick the torch on and off again and illuminate the other half of the factory floor.

  This time there was something.

  Betsy.

  Chapter Twenty Six

  The image of Betsy burrowed into my mind as I flashed my torch on and off. She was in the middle of the large space in between tall steel beams. The floor was concrete and had litter scattered everywhere. But more importantly, no one else was there.

  I turn my torch back on and tell Annie to do the same. I stash the penknife back in my pocket.

  We shine our lights over every nook and cranny until we’re certain we’re alone. The factory seems impossibly large from the inside, or maybe the darkness makes it feel that way. My eyes are drawn to graffiti on the walls. “Where are you now?” it reads. That same sentence is sprayed in red paint on every wall.

  We step cautiously toward Betsy, still unsure of what awaits us. There are many small rooms that jut off from the main space, many places for people to hide in.

  I shine the torch inside the car. Empty. I open the trunk: empty apart from the cut-up rope, metal bar and gloves.

  When I go to open the driver’s door, something pulls my attention down. The front wheel: it’s gone. I swing my head around. Back wheel is gone, too. The car’s held up on bricks.

  “There are no wheels on this side,” Annie whispers.

  “None on this side either.”

  Muffled voices come from somewhere outside the factory.

  “Over there.” I shine my torch in the direction of a side room.

  We run over to it, bolt the metal door quietly and kill the torches. We sit with our backs against the door and listen.

  The voices coming through the heavy door sound like a man and a woman talking in monotone, emotionally-detached voices. The words are difficult to make out. They’re getting closer now. I hear them say it all finishes tomorrow night, but I can’t make out the details.

  They hang around for a while, sometimes talking, sometimes walking here and there. At one point footsteps grow louder.

  Annie finds my hand in the darkness and squeezes it.

  Louder and louder the footsteps grow until we hear feet scuffing the ground outside the door. The door handle jiggles a few times. A woman’s voice says to the other person outside the door, “They can’t escape the Rebirthing.”

  The ground is scuffed some more and the footsteps move away.

  We sit for a long stretch of time shoulder-to-shoulder, listening to the silence, holding hands.

  “I think they’re gone,” Annie says.

  “Let’s speak quietly, just in case.”

  “What did they mean that it will all be finished by tomorrow night? And what the fuck is the Rebirthing?” she asks.

  “No idea.”

  I turn the torch on but hold it in my pocket so that most of the light is contained. We can see just enough to get our bearings and see what else is in the room.

  There are stacks of old newspapers and a few dusty tools on the floor. Across one wall, sprayed large and red, is a triangle with an open hand in the middle.

  “We can’t escape that bloody symbol,” I say. “But we should probably spend the night here.”

  “I’m not sure I can take much more of this.”

  “We should lay some newspapers down on the floor for a bed. Maybe use some as blankets, too. It’s going to be a cold night.”

  After we make a less than cosy bed with the ancient papers, I sit against the door. Annie joins me a few seconds later. The torch is still offering just enough light to see.

  “Do you think we’re going to die here?” she asks me.

  “I don’t know. I feel like we’re actors on stage doing exactly as we’re told, while the town is both the audience and director.”

  “What’s the final act, then?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  She’s quiet for a while before asking, “What did you mean back in the hotel when you said you’d nearly killed someone.”

  I lean my head against the cold door. “A few years ago I was driving home from work when a guy started flashing his lights at me, beeping his horn. At first I thought he was doing it to someone else, you know. Then he drove up beside me, screamed at me to stop. I pulled my car over to the side of the road. He jumped out with a hammer, said I’d cut in front of him at a traffic light. I remember him just screaming. I tried to calm him down but he wasn’t having any of it. That’s it really. It’s all I can remember, anyway.

  “Next thing I know I’m in a police station with blood all over my hands. Footage from his dashcam showed him coming at me with the hammer, swinging at me but missing. And I jump on top of him, start beating the hell out of him. It only lasted about four seconds, but I went into a rage. The footage also showed it wasn’t even me who had cut in front of the guy. He mistook my car for someone else’s.”

  “What did the police do?”

  “At first they were going to press charges against me for excessive force,” I continue. “But the local press picked up the story and somehow got hold of the dashcam footage. That stirred up some outrage online—”

  “No one likes a dickhead,” Annie says.

  “Apparently not.”

  “What happened to the guy?”

  “Hospitalised. He was in a coma but when he came out of it he had brain damage. He’s being fed through a tube now. In the end the police didn’t press charges. Said they’d never get a conviction when it was clearly self-defence. I was referred to a psychiatrist.

  “The day after all this happened was the day I finally went on anxiety medication. Honestly, I’ve been terrified of losing my temper like that ever since.”

  “Come on, Jack, it was hardly your fault. The guy attacked you. Had you done anything like that before?”

  “Never.”

  “Listen, I’ve known some nasty arseholes in my time, and you’re not one of them.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve always believed there was a monster in there somewhere. Scares the shit out of me.”

  “A monster?”

  As Annie’s talking, I feel something vibrate on my hip.

  “Jesus, I completely forgot about my phone.” I dig it out of my pocket. “I’ve got a signal.”

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  A message on the screen says I’ve received an email from Ethan. I open it and read:

  Hey man,

  What the hell is happening there? I’m worried about you. Your email makes it sound like you’re in danger. Can’t you call the police headquarters, tell them what’s happened? Maybe they can send someone there.

  Listen: I spoke to Neil, the editor, and he said he might have a spot for you in tomorrow’s print and online, maybe as an opinion piece, but he’s got to read it first, obviously. Can you write up about seven hundred words and send it over?

  I hope you’re okay, mate. Get in touch as soon as you can.

  I whisper to Annie, “Ethan thinks he can get something in the paper for us.”

  “That’s amazing.” I haven’t heard her sound so happy. “When?”

  “To
morrow morning, so the evening for us.”

  I hit Reply and start typing the article. Annie sits in silence as I write, re-write, delete whole paragraphs, and generally battle to keep the events of the last twenty four hours under seven hundred words.

  In the end I paint a vivid picture of a corrupt police force in cahoots with a twisted town, possibly superstitious but certainly dangerous. I include the shaman and feral ghost woman in the cabin, even though it adds to the ridiculousness of it all. I describe a smear campaign that has damaged my online reputation and a pre-arranged trap that I believe could end with us losing our lives.

  I finish the piece with: “I write this locked in the dark. I write this not knowing what waits beyond the door. I write this and hope someone saves us.”

  I feel an emotional release when I pen those final words and realise I’d written something without anxiety, without my dad’s voice in my head. Annie reads the piece for me. Her face is illuminated by the screen. She looks beautiful, almost pixie-like. When she finishes, she smiles, not her sloping smile, but a full grin that infects me, makes me smile properly for the first time since I don’t know when.

  “It’s fantastic,” she says. “You write beautifully.”

  “Christ, this makes me feel a hell of a lot better. With the outside world knowing, there’s no way they can hurt us now. If it’s published, that is.”

  I finish the email to Ethan by writing, “Thanks for this, Ethan. It could literally save our lives. Whatever edits are needed, can you do them, please. I’m not sure how much internet access I’ll have.”

  Next I google the number for New Zealand’s police headquarters and find a Wellington number. I call and get through to a guy whose nasal tone of voice tells me he would prefer to be anywhere else at this moment.

  “Police headquarters, Wellington, how can I help?”

  “Uhm…hi…yeah, I’m locked in a factory—”

  “For emergencies please call 111.”

  “No, this isn’t an emergency. I mean, it is, but that’s not why I’m calling.”

  He sighs.

  “Right,” I continue, “I’m locked in a factory but I locked myself in here. I’m calling because I’m in danger—”

  “You sure it’s not an emergency, sir?” he says with an exaggerated monotone drone.

  “Listen, the police in this town are corrupt. They refuse to help us.”

  “What town are you in?”

  “Nesgrove.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Yeah but I need help. My car was stolen—”

  “And did you report this to the local police?”

  “Yes, but I just told you they’re corrupt.”

  “So you want to speak to the IPCA.”

  “What’s that?”

  He sighs. “The Independent Police Conduct Authority. You can file a complaint with them.”

  “But that will take too long. I need someone to help us now.”

  “Sounds like an emergency.”

  Annie grabs the phone off me. “Piss off you useless dick,” she hisses before hanging up.

  She gives me the phone back. “I told you. The police are the biggest gang in New Zealand.”

  “Maybe I can call the British embassy,” I say.

  “How can they help?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose they’ll just tell me to inform the local police, too.”

  “I think we’re on our own,” she says.

  “What about the symbol and the poem at the house in the woods? We could google it, maybe figure out what’s happening here,” I suggest.

  I pull up the image I took of the hanging tree plaque, and crop it so that only the triangle symbol is visible. In Google Images I use the search function that allows you to upload a photo to Google. The search engine then returns any images on the web that look similar to the one you uploaded. I upload the triangle symbol photo I just cropped and hit Search.

  A whole range of images shows up in the results. Nothing immediately stands out, nothing looks similar. I scroll down and then skip to the next page. Annie is pressed against me, leaning over my arm. She watches the images scroll by, watches me skip page after page and sighs. The only thing remotely similar was an open hand symbol used by a political party in Zimbabwe.

  I then type the poem in Google: “One must leave, or sometimes two, but yours or theirs, it’s up to you.”

  Nothing comes back in the results.

  “This is useless,” I say.

  “Maybe we can figure out the poem ourselves.”

  “It couldn’t hurt.”

  “Well let’s look at the poem in the grimmest possible way,” she says. “So, for us, the worst thing that could happen is being killed.”

  I nod.

  “Then what if ‘leave’ means ‘die’?”

  “One must die, or sometimes two, but yours or theirs, it’s up to you,” I read. “Christ, that’s bad.”

  “What about the ‘yours’ or ‘theirs’ bit?” she asks.

  “‘Yours’ might mean your family or group—”

  “Or community.”

  “Exactly,” I say.

  “Maybe it means either someone in your community dies, or someone outside your community dies. You choose,” she theorises.

  “Like a sacrifice.”

  “Yeah, but sacrifice to who? Who would kill members of the Nesgrove community?”

  “What about the girl in the lake? She was local.”

  “The suicide—”

  “We don’t know it was suicide,” I remind her. “And she was part of their community. So, does that mean someone killed her, and that same killer needs a sacrifice before they kill another member of the town?”

  “Well the poem says ‘sometimes two’. So maybe the killings come in twos. Maybe there is another one due.”

  I scratch my head for a minute, trying to work all this out. “Some backpackers were murdered and buried in the forest by a former mayor decades ago. Maybe he killed them to save some of his own community.”

  Annie is quiet.

  I verbalise my thought process again. “But that doesn’t explain all the other weird stuff. The old house. The Watchers. The man in the black suit. The way everyone snarls at us.”

  “Maybe it’s a weird cult or the voodoo thing I said earlier.”

  “Maybe, but I keep coming back to the online thing. Why try to ruin my career?”

  “Man, we can go round in circles with this,” Annie says. “But I slept like shit last night so I’m going to sleep if I can.”

  She unzips her jacket, takes it off, and flattens the newspapers on the floor with her hand. She lies on her back and pulls the jacket over her torso as a blanket.

  “It’s going to be Baltic cold tonight,” she says.

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  I feel like I last slept a week ago. I’m tired and the mental cogs are slowing, but I doubt sleep will come easily. She’s right, though: we should at least try.

  I take my jacket off, lie on my side on the cold newspaper mattress and spread my jacket over my shoulders to get as much coverage as possible. The torch is off and the room is coated in heavy black.

  I can feel Annie’s body heat, hear her breathing. She inches her body backwards closer to me, and I edge forward until my body is pressed against hers. Her hand finds mine in the darkness and pulls it over her, my arm resting across her hip. Her hair brushes against my nose and has a soft strawberry shampoo fragrance. My mind and body are searching for a distraction from everything that’s happening out there.

  I feel a strong desire to kiss the back of her neck. But what if Annie doesn’t want an advance from me? What if this closeness is just a way of sharing heat, nothing more? She moves closer to me, pulls my hand up to her chest.

  I remember to the exact date the last time I was with a woman. It was just over three years ago with my ex-girlfriend, Jesse. There’s been no one since then. I decided then that I was better off alone. Bringing someone
else into your life can tip the scale too much, destabilise whatever balance of sanity you’ve managed to create. But this abstinence brings with it a tide of temptation, and with everything that has occurred the last twenty four hours, all bets are off.

  There’s something about Annie. Something alluring that pulls me in, makes me want to know her more. On the face of it, she seems tough, but every now and then I see a tender side she’s trying to hide, and that just increases the curiosity I have for her.

  I breathe in and enjoy the strawberry scent, but that’s all I do. Just being in this position, our bodies pressed against one another, makes me doubt my life of solitude. How nice it would be to lie like this with Annie on a bed on a beautiful slow morning, enjoying a cup of tea, instead of waking alone each morning in darkness in just another hotel room, going out bleary-eyed for another sunrise shoot.

  We lie wrapped around each other for heat. A part of me wants to stay awake. Stay awake and enjoy each minute of safety inside this metal chamber. Sooner or later we’ll go through that door and something will be waiting for us. But I’m not strong enough to combat the tiredness and I fade in and out of consciousness. I feel a sense of comfort through the haze of sleep when I wake to find Annie’s leg under mine, or her arm stretched across my shoulder.

  At one point I dream I’m back home, eight years old, warm piss running down my leg. My mum, her eye swollen, is screaming at me to go upstairs. She turns and stands between me and my dad, and even when the red-faced monster rushes forward and punches the wind out of her, her crumpled, kneeling body still blocks his path to me. Eventually I turn and run, and in this dream, the dream I’ve had for twenty years, my mum looks back at me from the floor—kicks reigning down on her—and she smiles at me as if to say ‘It’ll all be okay’.

  I wake up with that image of my mum in my head and I consciously replace it, as I always do, with her beaming happy face at my graduation many years later, long after she’d left my dad, and before the cancer arrived. That’s how I prefer to remember her.