12-08

by Bethany Chester

  My eyelids close. By the time I drift off, I’ve lost all sense of time. God knows how far away the morning is. I sink into a strange, disturbed sleep, haunted by starry trees and fiery hummingbirds.

  Chapter Nine

  When I wake up, my head is pounding.

  And whose fault is that? asks a voice in my mind.

  “Jamal’s,” I say out loud. I sound very defensive. Okay, so it wasn’t all Jamal’s fault. But it was more his than mine.

  Jamal. Oh God. Did that actually happen? If not, my dreams are really getting out of hand.

  What time is it, anyway? I miss my clock.

  I dig out my old wristwatch from the drawer in my bedside cabinet. It’s eleven o’clock. Crap. I have a lecture at twelve – I really need to get a move on. Why didn’t my alarm go off?

  I catch sight of my phone’s battery cover on the floor next to the bed. Ah. That would explain it.

  I shower and dress, before shoving some books in my bag and going to the kitchen to grab breakfast.

  Annemarie looks up from her textbook as I come in.

  “You look like shit,” she says bluntly.

  “Don’t,” I moan, rooting around in the cupboards for a cereal bar. “I know, okay?”

  “Jamal looked even worse,” she says cheerfully. She gives me a shrewd look.

  “So, what exactly did you two get up to after I left?”

  I try not to look guilty. Does she suspect anything? It’s hard to tell.

  “Nothing much,” I say. “We drank too much, and danced, and then got thrown out.”

  She raises her eyebrows. “And that’s your idea of ‘nothing much’? Who knew you were such a party animal?”

  “It’s not as bad as it sounds,” I say lamely.

  “Sure it’s nots.”

  “I have to go,” I say hurriedly. “I have a lecture in half an hour.”

  “Okay,” she says, smiling deviously. “See you later.”

  “Bye.”

  *

  Annemarie and Jamal are both out when I get home. The kitchen feels kind of empty without them. It’s October now, and the daylight is already fading. I flip on the light, and spot something on the table. It’s a cassette tape, with a note attached. Weird.

  For an old soul, says the note, in Jamal’s spiky scrawl. My hands shake as I pick it up.

  There’s a cassette player on my radio, but no CD player. Jamal knows that. He knows I prefer cassette tapes.

  I take it to my room and rip off the note, sticking it on my bedside table. I fumble clumsily with the plug and the buttons. I don’t know why I’m trembling so much – it seems to take me forever to slot it in and press play.

  I sit cross-legged on the floor, and for the next couple of minutes, I don’t move an inch. I’m completely absorbed by the beauty of his guitar and his voice and his lyrics. How the hell did he do this in less than a day?

  He’s condensed last night into one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard. It’s all there – the ecstasy of our drunken dancing, the sudden brilliance of the run-of-the-mill indie band, how the stars seemed to hang on the branches of the caged tree.

  The kiss is there, too – not explicitly described, but there all the same. As the last chord fades into non-existence, all the uncertainty melts away, and I know for certain what my feelings really are. I don’t know where any of this is headed, but wherever it is, I’m glad I’m going there.

  My phone buzzes obnoxiously in my pocket. I ought to hate it for disturbing the moment, but I’m so high on life I don’t really care.

  The text message contains only two words: Hurry up.

  My eyes flick to the time at the top of the screen. It’s five past four. Crap. Clemency doesn’t mess around. I don’t text back – I just slip on my shoes and head out of the door.

  In my haste, I forget to put on a coat, and the wind quickly starts to raise goosebumps on my bare arms. But Jamal’s song has warmed from the inside out, and I barely feel the cold.

  I find Clemency in my favourite corner of the library, nestled between a bookshelf and the mural. Does she know it’s my favourite, or is it a coincidence? You can never tell with Clemency.

  Despite my attempts to suppress my emotions, I can’t help but beam at her. She smiles warily back.

  “You took your time,” she says.

  “I was busy,” I say defensively. “Besides, I’m only a few minutes late.”

  “Ten minutes,” she says. “But it doesn’t matter. Sit down.”

  The seats are absurdly low; I suppose they’re intended for small children who need somewhere to sit while they read their picture books. We probably look ridiculous, but I don’t mind. As for Clemency, it probably hasn’t even occurred to her to care what anybody else thinks.

  “So what’s with all the urgency?” I demand. “Why have I been summoned?”

  She pauses. “Like I said, things are changing. I won’t say we’re in danger, because we aren’t, but there’s a possibility we could be in the near future.”

  I bury my face in my hands. My good mood has evaporated – now I’m just tired and a little frightened. The ambiguity of Clemency’s warning somehow makes it scarier than any tangible threat.

  “Okay,” I say wearily. “So what are we going to do about it?”

  “That’s the problem,” Clemency says. “We can’t do anything much until we know what kind of danger we’re in. I can sense the threat, but I’m not sure what it is. All we can really do is look at the evidence we have so far.”

  That almost makes me laugh – ‘evidence’. We’re talking about the paranormal here – for want of a better word, anyway. It’s not as if Clemency has given me an alternative one.

  “We have evidence?” I ask.

  “The things that went missing from your flat,” she says. “And the ribbon.”

  “How is that going to help?”

  “Those three things were taken for a reason,” she says. “Think about it. If they only wanted to scare you, they could have taken anything they liked. They’d have taken obvious things that you were likely to miss, rather than small ones with almost no value. And the ribbon made a hummingbird shape. My instinct tells me it was more than just a reminder of the burglary. It has some kind of significance.”

  I feel a bit silly for not thinking of that myself.

  “So who are ‘they’?”

  “That’s what we need to work out.”

  “Oh.”

  For a while, we sit in silence, lost in our own thoughts. The sky outside the windows is darkening when Clemency speaks again.

  “We’ll have to do some research,” she says. “There’s no obvious link between the things that went missing.”

  “How the hell are we supposed to research something if we don’t know what it is?”

  Clemency smiles. “These things have a way of finding you for themselves. We may just have to be patient.”

  “We have to wait patiently for mortal danger to find us?” I ask.

  “Don’t be silly,” she says brusquely. Perhaps my face betrays my emotions, because when she speaks again, her tone is softer. “Chances are, this all relates to one particular person, and they’re trying to contact you.”

  My eyes widen. “Do you mean a…a dead person?”

  “Death is a relative concept,” she says wryly. “But to all intents and purposes, yes. It’s unlikely a living person could have entered your flat in the middle of the night without attracting your attention.”

  I shiver. The front door was unlocked when I checked it the morning after the burglary. The thief came right up to my bedside to take my things, yet I slept right through it. Only now do I begin to understand why the situation was so unlikely.

  “All we really need to do is figure out who this person is,” Clemency says. “Or was, as far as you’re concerned.”

  I don’t know how much more of this I can take.

  “Why?” I ask helplessly. “Why is this happening to me? What did I
do?”

  I’m not really expecting an answer, so I’m surprised when she begins to explain.

  “I’ll give you the short version,” she says, and launches into it without further preamble. “For as long as life has existed, it’s been inextricably linked to the Earth. It makes sense, when you think about it – birds migrate, hunters find prey, animals feel and interpret changes in the weather. And it’s true of humans, too – or it was, in the old days.” Her expression becomes scornful. “As they evolved, they became complacent. They thought they were too clever for the Earth. They began to ignore their connections, to go against the laws of nature. Eventually, they began to destroy the planet.”

  I can see it in my mind – factories springing up across the continents, smoke billowing from tall chimneys, a hole opening up in the ozone layer.

  “But some people are different,” Clemency continues. “Their links are as strong as ever. Some have direct links to the other side, but they are few and far between. These days, they are known as psychics.” She smiles, as if ridiculing the irony of the term. “There are others still who feel a closeness to the Earth without ever being really conscious of it. Those people tend to be reserved and emotionally intelligent. They may never have any kind of so-called psychic experience, but they are born with the sense that there is more to this world than what is visible on the surface.” She meets my eyes. “That is what you are, and it means you are more in touch with the world and the other side – or the paranormal, as you call it – than the average person. And that is something which makes you a more likely target for…”

  She hesitates, carefully considering her words.

  “Why don’t we call them monsters?” I suggest.

  Her lips sketch out a faint smile. “That’s not quite accurate, but it’ll do for now. It makes you a more likely target for monsters.”

  “Well, that’s comforting,” I say.

  I can see the sense behind what she says, though. Obviously, I never considered that I might have some kind of link to the earth, but I’ve always been influenced by my surroundings. When I see a turbulent sea, or a striking landscape, or a rainbow of autumn leaves, it’s as if my soul is straining inside me, sometimes to the point where tears spring to my eyes for no apparent reason. I always thought I was weird, but maybe not. The thought of having an intimacy with the earth is as thrilling as it is terrifying.

  Clemency is a useful person to be acquainted with, but at times like these, I always find myself wondering whether her friendship is a blessing or a curse.

  Chapter Ten

  Someone is trying to contact me. That person is dead.

  That’s pretty much the only thing going round in my head right now. Someone is trying to tell me something, and that person is dead. I can’t quite wrap my mind around the idea. Who are they, and what could they have to say to me, of all people?

  And why did they steal our things?

  I imagine an otherworldly spirit slipping in through the front door and creeping into my room to steal my alarm clock. It sounds so silly. I wonder if the phantom ringing of the phone had anything to do with the person who’s trying to contact me. It seems more than likely.

  Clemency says we need to find a link between the things that were taken, but I can’t think how war memoirs could possibly be connected to a hummingbird ornament and an alarm clock. Then again, hummingbirds seem to be a recurring theme – I even thought I saw one in the campfire. Was it really there, or was it just a trick of the light? I could ask Clemency, but she’d probably tell me that reality is a ‘relative concept’, or something equally vague and ambiguous.

  Either way, I now have a burning desire to know who this mystery person is.

  I’m lying awake, staring up at a crack in the ceiling. It’s one of those nights where I can’t sleep because I’m thinking so much, but it’s just the same thoughts going round and round and round in my head, and even though I know I’m not getting anywhere, I can’t seem to break out of the cycle. It often happens when I’m worried about something, and it’s the most miserably frustrating thing imaginable, especially when I know I need to get some sleep.

  But tonight is a little out of the ordinary, because after almost an hour of pointless pondering, I actually have an original thought. The thought is this: what if my mystery contact has a connection to the building rather than to me in particular? What if they’re targeting me as opposed to Jamal or Annemarie because of this link Clemency says I have? Hamilton House was only divided up into flats a couple of decades ago. It used to be one large family home. Then I remember the first time we viewed the flat.

  I wasn’t too sure when I saw the building from the outside. It had obviously been attractive at some point, but the brick was beginning to fade, and the balconies were rusting. It wasn’t in a particularly student-friendly neighbourhood, either, though I wasn’t too bothered about that. We’re not exactly a rowdy bunch.

  Anyway, as soon as we stepped inside, everything changed. My senses were overwhelmed by this soaring, exultant feeling. To this day, I have no idea what it was. All I know is that I fell suddenly and violently in love with the place.

  I remember looking surreptitiously at Jamal and Annemarie to see if they were feeling the same way, but they both looked pretty neutral. However, that did nothing to change my mind, which was already made up. We had to rent this place.

  Jamal didn’t object; he didn’t really care where we lived, as long as he had somewhere to put his guitar. Typical musician. Besides, he said he’d be happy if I was, which was sweet of him.

  Annemarie was a different story. She kept insisting that something about the place made her flesh creep. Jamal and I protested that there was nothing remotely sinister about the place, that it was just another big old house that had been split into flats, hardly a horror movie set.

  We viewed a few more places, but I barely saw any of them – my mind kept wandering back to Hamilton House. Besides, the other places all had their shortcomings – leaks, mould, not enough room. We began to run out of time, so we had no real choice but to rent this place, much to my delight. Annemarie did try to see the positives, fair play to her. She even said she was sure she’d grow to like it.

  Thinking back on that day, it all seems a little strange. It’s as if the building managed to possess me, to take over my thoughts. My behaviour was totally out of character; I’d never usually push anyone to make a decision I knew they weren’t comfortable with. In retrospect, I acted very selfishly. I feel guilty about it now, even though we’d probably have ended up here anyway.

  But what drew me to this place? It wasn’t just that I took a liking to it; it was something more. Something – or someone – wanted me here. Someone who was interested in me, as opposed to Jamal or Annemarie.

  Do I still have a strong feeling of attachment to the flat? No, not really. I like it very much, but not in the same overpowering way I liked it when we first viewed it. That’s probably for the best, I concede. It would be exhausting if I had to deal with that level of rapture whenever I came home.

  Maybe I should be frightened by the level of control this person has over my emotions, but although it’s unsettling, it doesn’t scare me as much as it ought to.

  I contemplate the situation from every possible angle, by which time my brain is starting to shut down. It’s as if I needed that one flash of inspiration to break out of the vicious cycle. Now my mind is perfectly clear. Perhaps I’ll get some sleep after all.

  *

  At nine the next morning, I stand hesitantly outside the kitchen door. I can hear Annemarie stomping around her room, and the kettle’s boiling in the kitchen. That means Jamal is in there alone. I wouldn’t usually think twice about going in, but – well – I haven’t been alone with him since I found the cassette tape.

  When the three of us were all gathered in the living room last night, he acted as if nothing had happened, although it did seem as if he was avoiding making eye contact with me. Does he regret r
ecording the song? I hope not.

  I dither for a moment, before reasoning that I’ll have to face him sooner or later. Why am I treating this like it’s an issue? It’s not. As far as problems go, it’s not a bad one.

  “Hi,” I say, walking in. He’s at the worktop, making instant coffee.

  “Hi.” He doesn’t look at me, which worries me. Have I done something wrong?

  “You okay?” I ask.

  Finally, he turns around. “Yeah, sorry. I’m just a bit distracted.”

  The cassette tape is definitely the elephant in the room right now. I decide I need to put an end to this.

  “I loved it,” I say. “Your song.”

  A brilliant smile spreads across his face. “You did?”

  “Of course I did! How could I not?”

  “Well, it was thrown together in a few hours,” he says doubtfully. “I didn’t have a lot of time. And the bottom E kept buzzing, and I couldn’t add any extra layers because I was recording on cassette…”

  “Oh, stop it,” I scold. “It’s perfect. I don’t know how the hell you did it in the time you had. It takes some people weeks to write a song.”

  He’s almost blushing. I’m making him blush; talk about role reversal! He was definitely embarrassed last night. He must’ve been scared I didn’t like the song. As if that was possible.

  “You still have to write your song,” he says.

  “My song?”

  “The one you started when we were camping.”

  “That wasn’t a song…”

  “But it will be. You just need to write some lyrics. You can borrow my guitar.”

  “I don’t…I can’t…”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “I can’t sing!”

  “Liar.”

  I stare at him.

  “Everyone can sing,” he says. “Some do it better than others, naturally. But you’re not bad.”

  “When have you heard me…?”

  “When you’re singing along to the radio,” he answers with a grin. “The walls in this place are really thin.”