The Traveller and Other Stories

by Stuart Neville

  Weightless, arms wheeling, she cried out. She barely saw the stairs as they raced up towards her, slammed into her chest, punched her thighs, her shoulders, her head. An age seemed to pass before her back hit the hall floor, the rear of her skull cracking on the laminated wood flooring.

  Her vision funnelled, time stretching like half-dried glue. She saw the smoke alarm on the ceiling above, the small bright red light in the far distance, its high shriek penetrating the thunder behind her eyes. Then she was gone.

  Hammering on the door. A voice calling through the letterbox.

  “Catherine? Catherine, are you there? Are you all right?”

  A man’s voice. Young, familiar.

  “Catherine, I’m going to call the police. Or the fire brigade. I don’t know, one of them. Are you there?”

  The young man from next door, the semidetached next to hers. He always smiled at her when they passed on the driveway they shared. What was his name?

  Catherine lifted her head from the floor and gasped at the pain in her neck, then once more at stabbing in her left side. The smoke alarm still beeped its incessant beeping, the sound of it cutting into her brain like—

  a fingernail against her gum

  —a dulled blade. She wanted to cry out, but she held it in. With a grinding effort, she rolled onto her side, registering new pains, both sharp and dull, around her body.

  “I’m all right,” she called.

  “Are you sure? Do you need help?”

  She couldn’t see the front door from here, so he could not see her lying on the floor.

  “I’m all right,” she repeated. “Everything’s fine.”

  “Are you sure? Can you come to the door?”

  She caught the scent of smoke, bitter, acrid, and she coughed. A wave of pain passed through her body, from her head to her feet, before centring on her side.

  “No,” she said, with more urgency than was necessary. “I’m not dressed. I just . . . I just burnt some toast, that’s all.”

  A pause, then, in an uncertain voice, he said, “Okay, if you’re sure. Do you think you can do anything about the alarm? It woke me up.”

  She pushed herself up onto one elbow, then onto her knees. That stabbing in her left side again. She gave a low groan and took a shallow breath before answering.

  “Yes, I’ll get it to stop. Just give me a few minutes.”

  “Okay. Goodnight.”

  The letterbox snapped shut.

  A cracked rib, she thought. A strain in her neck. Lucky that was all. She braced her forearms on the telephone table and pushed herself upright. As she got to her feet, she turned her head, testing the range of her movement. A spasm fired in the muscles between her shoulder and neck. Her knees buckled and she had to support herself on the telephone table until the spasm passed, taking thin breaths so her side wouldn’t protest.

  That smell, dark and gritty in her nose and throat. The alarm still screeching.

  She opened the kitchen door and black cloud billowed out around her, stealing the breath from her lungs, stinging her eyes. Her rib sparked and flared as she coughed. She reached for the light switch and saw a dark blanket covered the ceiling, thinning as it neared her eye level. Crouching down, she pulled the neckline of her nightdress up to cover her nose and mouth, then hurried to the back door, grabbing her keys from the bowl by the sink on the way. Once the door was open, she staggered out into the clean night air. A fresh peal of coughing erupted from her chest, and she clutched at her left side, fearing that it might burst open. Then she vomited onto the paving stones, the foulness splashing onto her bare feet.

  Catherine leaned against the windowsill and rested for a time, keeping her breath as shallow as she could. When the thunder in her head had subsided enough for her to think, she peered into her kitchen. The smoke had mostly cleared, and there, on the hob, she saw the charred remains of something. After a few moments, she realised it was the tea towel she had hung on the handle of the oven door before going to bed. The ceramic ring still gave off wisps. From here, she could see the dial on the front of the cooker had been turned up full. Parts of the towel had fallen to the floor, causing the linoleum to blacken and bubble, while others had spilled into the open metal bin she used for her recycling materials. Newspapers, cardboard. Some of it had caught light and burned out.

  “Thank God,” she whispered.

  What if it had spread? What if there had been more paper and cardboard stacked up around the recycling bin? After all, she knew how dangerous such a thing could be. Hadn’t that done for her mother? A stack of old newspapers and boxes piled up beside the cooker, spreading onto the worktop alongside it. When the tea towel in her mother’s kitchen had caught alight on the hob, there had been the makings of a bonfire all around it.

  Catherine hadn’t put the newspapers and cardboard by her mother’s cooker, she was quite sure of that. But she hadn’t cleared them away either. It was purely accidental that she had knocked some of the newspapers over, and they had spread towards the hob, and the tea towel that had been carelessly left there on the electric ring.

  None of it on purpose, oh no.

  When she had put her mother to bed that night, enduring her moaning and complaining about every bloody fucking thing that she had done wrong that day, Catherine had absolutely not intended to turn the ring up full before heading out for a late trip to the big supermarket in town, the one that stayed open all night.

  Catherine hadn’t intended for any of that to happen. And yet it had. An accident, pure and simple and fatal and tragic.

  And now it had almost happened again.

  Except she couldn’t remember leaving the tea towel there on the hob before going to bed, nor turning up the ring.

  But who had? The doors were locked. No one had broken in.

  “Do you think you could sort out the alarm?”

  Catherine cried out at the voice. She turned her head to its source and her neck spasmed, causing her to cry out once more. She placed her hand there to calm the muscle.

  The young man from next door, peering over the fence at her. She remembered he was quite short, so he must have stood on something.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. “Do you think you could sort it? It’s quite loud. Or I could do it for you.”

  Catherine coughed, grimaced at the pain, and said, “I’ll do it now.”

  She covered her mouth and nose again and went inside, through the kitchen, and out to the hall. She closed the door behind her and went to the bottom of the stairs, mounted the first step, and waved her hands at the alarm, trying to disperse the smoke and shut it up. The attempt was unsuccessful.

  There was a cardigan drying over the hall radiator. She fetched it and waved it beneath the alarm. Still, it shrieked.

  “Bastard,” she said. “Bloody bastard.”

  A moment of shock at her own language passed, and she went to the closet where she kept the vacuum cleaner and other such items. She grabbed the broom, went back to the stairs, and stabbed the alarm with the end of the handle.

  After three strikes, the alarm came loose and fell to the floor, scattering white plastic on the laminated wood.

  It did not quiet.

  She inverted the broom and brought the handle down on the alarm with all the strength she had, ignoring the pain it triggered.

  The alarm’s casing split open and the battery spun away to clatter against the wall.

  Silence.

  “And stay dead,” she said.

  Her mobile phone rang as she steered the Skoda into the petrol station. She pulled up to the pump, took the phone from the cup holder, and got out of the car, grunting as her rib reminded her of its cracked presence. She checked the phone’s display as she walked towards the items stacked at the front of the shop.

  Georgina, the display said.

&nbs
p; Her sister, three years older, had lived in South Africa for twenty years now. A lecturer at the University of Cape Town. Hasn’t she done well for herself, people would say. You must be proud.

  Yes, very, Catherine would say, smiling.

  She pressed the answer button.

  “Morning,” she said.

  “Catherine, sweetheart, how are you?”

  Georgina soaked up accents like a sponge. She sounded like she’d been born native Afrikaans. Catherine fought the urge the drop the phone and grind it into the ground with her heel.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “How are you?”

  In front of the shop stood bags of coal, firelighters, peat briquettes. She lifted a five-litre jerry can from the stack and walked back towards the pump, her gait stiff from last night’s fall. She held the can between her knees as she unscrewed the cap, then set it down.

  “I’m good, darling. When are you going to fly down and see us? I have a room just waiting for you.”

  “Soon, I promise. I just need to renew my passport.”

  “You’ve been saying that ever since Mum died.”

  “I’ll get the forms from the Post Office this week.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  Catherine removed the nozzle from the pump and inserted it into the can. She squeezed the trigger and the pump hummed.

  “Listen, I got a call from that pastor yesterday evening. The one who spoke at Mum’s funeral.”

  “Pastor John,” Catherine said.

  “That’s him. He said he was worried about you, that you weren’t yourself. Is everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine. I told him yesterday.”

  “He’s concerned that you’re isolating yourself,” Georgina said, her voice taking on that babyish tone, the one she used when she pretended to care about anyone but herself. “He thinks you need to get out more, do more, see other people.”

  “I do see people,” Catherine said, feeling her anger rise. “The church, the library, the shops. In fact, I could do with seeing fewer people.”

  Petrol spilled over the top of the jerry can before she could release the trigger. It splashed onto her shoes.

  “Oh, goodness. Oh, you bloody bastard.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” Catherine said.

  “Did I just hear my sister use a profanity?”

  That sneer in her voice.

  “Yes,” Catherine said. “Yes you bloody did. And what f— . . . What fff— . . . What bloody fucking of it?”

  Silence for a moment, thousands of miles of it.

  “Catherine, do you think you should talk to someone?”

  “I am talking to someone. I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Can’t you just leave me alone? You and everyone else. Can’t you just bloody well leave me in peace?”

  Another few seconds of quiet, then Georgina said, “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “I need to go,” Catherine said.

  “What happened to Mum was an accident. The police, the fire investigators, they all said so. It wasn’t your fault.”

  Catherine smiled.

  “Oh, Georgina, for all your education, you really are stupid, aren’t you?”

  She hung up and tucked the phone into her coat pocket. As she walked back to the shop with the jerry can, screwing the lid on tight, she felt the phone vibrate. She ignored it as she paid for the jerry can and the petrol, thanking the cashier as she took her change.

  When she opened the Skoda’s boot to put the—

  fingers in her mouth

  —jerry can inside, she saw three others lined up. She tested their weight. All full. Twenty litres of petrol all together.

  She did not remember buying the others.

  “How odd,” she said.

  For dinner, Catherine treated herself to a small honey-glazed gammon joint she’d bought from Marks & Spencer, along with mashed potato. The whole meal cooked in less than an hour with little effort on her part. She even had a glass of white wine with it, though she wasn’t overly keen on the taste of wine. After the second glass began to make her feel ill, she poured the rest down the sink.

  As she turned away, she noticed how the recycling had built up. A stack of it next to the cooker. So many newspapers. So much cardboard. It had begun to topple and spread around the floor, and onto the work surface by the cooker. And there, that book Helen at the library had found for her, the one about dreams. It lay open, face down, its pages stretching across the hob.

  “Goodness,” she said aloud.

  I should move that, she thought. That and the recycling. It’s dangerous.

  As she climbed the stairs to ready herself for bed, she found the carpet damp beneath her slippers. And a strange smell. Sweet, chemical, cloying. It made her lightheaded. In the bathroom, she changed into her nightdress, washed her face, brushed her teeth.

  In her bedroom, she noticed the same dampness on her bare soles, the same smell that seemed to make her head float above her shoulders. She climbed into bed and shivered. The sheet beneath her body clung to her back, as if she’d had an accident, like her mother had been prone to, and the liquid had crept across the mattress.

  As she lay in the darkness, she found the sweet chemical smell had become almost comforting. When she inhaled through her nose, the odour seemed to reach deep inside her head, and she began to drift on its currents and soothing waves.

  How nice, she thought.

  She is awake. This is certain. She sees the room in the half-light, the nightstand, the lamp, the mobile phone. Someone is here. They embrace her, pinning her arms to her side. A leg wrapped around hers, pressing it down onto the mattress. She wants to lift her head, but a hand forces it into the pillow.

  She wants to speak, to say, I know it’s you, but the hand clasps over her mouth, sealing her jaw shut. The fingers find her lips, and this time she does not resist. She welcomes their intrusion. If she could open her jaw she would allow her tongue to greet them.

  She feels no desire to scream. Even as the bright glowing orange crackling dancers enter the room and climb the walls, even as they advance towards her bed, she is calm and quiet.

  The breathy giggle in her ear.

  I know what you did.

  So do I, she wants to say, but she can’t.

  She closes her eyes and kisses the hand that holds her still.

  Black Beauty

  “Play something.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You should,” he says.

  The guitar sits there on the floor between us, nestled in its case, inky black. Light from the bedsit’s bare bulb reflects on its curved face.

  “I can’t.”

  I cough, spitting blood through broken teeth.

  “Why not?”

  He hunkers down next to me. Sixty, I guess. Strong. Big shoulders. Scarred face. He takes a pair of wire cutters from his pocket. Snip, snip.

  I’m trying not to cry.

  “I can’t,” I say.

  “Then why did you take it?”

  “I thought I could sell it,” I say.

  He points. “Do you know what that is?”

  I shake my head.

  “Course you don’t,” he says. “That’s a 1957 Gibson Les Paul Custom. All original. They call it the Black Beauty. I can’t tell you what it’s worth now, that doesn’t matter, but I can tell you I worked my arse off to buy it for my boy. And it was worth every drop of blood and sweat to see him play it, to see him make his living off it, so he didn’t have to do the things I’ve done.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, but I know it’s too late.

  “Sorry? Sorry you robbed it off him? Or sorry for puttin
g him in hospital?”

  “Just . . . sorry.”

  “Then show me.”

  “Show you what?”

  Closer now. I feel his breath.

  “Show me how bad you wanted it. Show me how much you wanted to play it. Look at it. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  I look at the guitar. I look at my fingers. I look at the wire cutters in his hand.

  Snip, snip, snip.

  “Pick it up and play it,” he says. “Play it well, or . . .”

  Snip.

  I reach for the guitar, touch the strings with my fingertips.

  The last thing they’ll ever feel.

  PART II:

  OLD FRIENDS

  Followers

  Maybe if he had one more drink they’d leave him alone. Gerry Fegan told himself that lie before every swallow. He chased the whiskey’s burn with a cool, black mouthful of Guinness and placed the glass back on the table. Look up and they’ll be gone, he thought.

  No. They were still there, still staring. Twelve of them if he counted the baby. Even its small blue eyes were fixed on him.

  He was good and drunk, now. Tom the barman would see him to the door soon, and the twelve would follow Fegan through the streets of Belfast, into his house, up his stairs, and into his bedroom. If he was lucky, and drunk enough, he might pass out before their screaming got too loud to bear. That was the only time they made a sound: when he was alone and on the edge of sleep. When the baby started crying, that was the worst of it. He feared that less than the gun under his bed, but not by much. One day that balance might shift. One day he might taste the gun’s cold, hard snout before a fiery sun bloomed in his skull. Maybe tonight. Maybe not. The whiskey would decide.