“Greg.” He hesitated, looking down once more to make sure he had read correctly. “This isn’t your phone.”
At which point, Greg passed out.
CHAPTER FIVE
DRAINING
Stage Two. Game over. The thought flickers through his head. To deny it is a strain. Not game over. Not yet. Not by any means.
He wants to open his eyes, very much.
A laugh bounces electrically along his synapses, though whether it ever reaches his lungs is impossible for him to know. He has no need to open his eyes. He feels the lids bubbling and blistering to nothing. If he waits just a little while longer his eyes will be open forever. And what will be reflected there? Where will his soul go when the process is complete?
His awareness expands abruptly. Floating? Of course he has been floating, this is already known to him. But it is so hard to hold his mind, so difficult to prevent the memories from guiding him to other places. Who is he?
Floating. And now he is sinking. If he focuses very hard on the raw mess which was once his auditory track he can hear gurgling. He knows this is bad. This is the outside world and he does not want to go there.
But his awareness does now contain the outside world, he cannot help this. He is sinking. Physically sinking. If he could remember how to use his arms and legs he would try to swim. He cannot, and does not.
Now his back burns worse, very much worse, than before. Something is wrong. Chill heat is searing his body, stroking organs and muscles with icy fingers. As it reaches his head, as his brain tightens at the onslaught, he realises what is happening.
His body is resting on cold metal. Millions of raw nerves, bereft of protective skin, are pressed against the sheet steel at the bottom of the tank. Each nerve stabs blunt icicles into his mind.
He notices the gurgling again. With a sob he will never know he has given, he realises that the tank is being filled for Stage Three. Welcoming the now familiar burning, his relief allows the memories to take him.
CHAPTER SIX
COMPLEX SPIRALS
Questions. As he floated towards consciousness he knew that there were questions. He was given no chance to recall what they might be. Before he even opened his eyes the world started to spin. Groaning audibly, an almost welcome sign that he was still alive, he recognised the sensation. Not, he decided, the worst hangover he had ever suffered, but certainly deserving of medals as a close contender. Risking all, he cracked open his eyes, only to find that the world was indeed executing complex spirals about his head.
An amused voice informed him that he was not alone in his suffering.
“You too, eh? There’s a pot of coffee on the table.”
Sitting up, an action that his churning stomach strongly disapproved of, he saw the man slouched over the black armchair opposite him. Carlisle. Alex Carlisle. Details from the previous night filtered back into his mind. It appeared he had slept on the settee. Aromatic coffee smells played over his nostrils, and he decided that its consumption was an immediate priority.
“A coffee would be very much appreciated. Thanks.” Ignoring his rebelling equilibrium, he staggered across to the small coffee table in the corner. As he reached for the chrome cafetière standing there, his gaze fell upon a small leather case perched next to it. The phone. Greg reeled with the returning memories, questions shaking him as they flooded home.
Several hours and four strong coffees later, he was driving his blue Ford Focus home. Finding the parking ticket on his window had driven his confusion into anger, and now he seethed. Each dragging mile between Central London and Wimbledon only fuelled his rage.
Alex had told him that it was not his phone. At first Greg had refused to believe it, calmly informing his new friend that it had been a New Year gift from his wife. The obvious thing would have been to look at the phone itself, but to his surprise he had been too scared. Inexplicable alarm bells were howling through his subconscious.
After several moments hesitation he had flipped open the cover of the case. In clear bold print, much like his own, was etched the name Richard Jameson. An address and contact number were also provided.
Combined with the ill effects of the hangover, this new shock forced him to sit firmly back on the couch. Richard Jameson. Not a name he could place, though it was still somehow familiar to him. At the back of his mind, beyond where he could reach, a thought was desperate to make itself heard.
Too confused to consider how to proceed, it had taken Alex to suggest ringing the number in the contact list labelled ‘Home’ and finding out who Jameson was first hand. Dazed as Greg was, Alex had even made the initial call himself. There had been no answer. Several times over the course of the morning they had tried that number. Nobody answered those calls either.
Over that time Greg had chained together a terrifying theory. Without question he had a phone identical to the one now sitting on the passenger seat of his car, right down to the choice of cover. So he must have picked it up somewhere believing it was his. Yet the only time his own ever left his person was his home. So that was where he had made the error. Jameson must have left his own phone in Greg’s house, probably somewhere Greg could have collected it without thinking the location unusual. Somewhere like his bedroom. Beside the bed. Where he left his own phone each night, the alarm primed for the morning. Richard Jameson had been in his bedroom.
Jennifer was having an affair.
Not once had he considered that his wife could be doing to him exactly what he was doing to her. Now it was obvious. Over recent months he had assumed that their relationship had become smoother because of the confidence his own infidelity had given him. But why should she not also be enjoying the self-assurance which came from such secret liaisons?
He felt a fool, and he was furious. The hypocrisy in his anger had already occurred to him, but he could not fight down his rage. Jennifer was still away for a long weekend with her cousin - a story that he now found extremely dubious - giving him the ideal opportunity to check her things. Rifle through her private belongings. Examine everything she held secret.
A stab of shame lanced him and the tears that stung his eyes almost drove him from the road. Adrenaline prevented an accident, his reflexes keeping him on the A3, but his thoughts continued apace.
How could he invade her privacy like that? What if he was wrong? Richard Jameson could be a client who had left his phone at the office, or perhaps Greg could have picked it up somewhere else after all. But he could think of nothing to do except check the validity of his suspicions. It was small consolation to believe that Jennifer would respond in a similar fashion if she had suspicions about Georgina.
With his heart a live thing in his throat, he approached the turn-off to Fontside Avenue. Hunching at the far end of the street, his house was a place of sudden nightmare, full of hidden secrets and horrors. Worst among them was the concrete possibility of a life without Jennifer, mistrust shattering their relationship. For the first time in his life he had no idea what he would find beyond the outer shell of his house. Never before had he considered home to be anything other than a place to run to when life abused you. Now it was somewhere to run from. Threatened by the simple thought of opening his front door, he turned the corner and pulled up several driveways short of his own.
Resting his head on the steering wheel, he forced himself to breathe deep. Over several minutes he caged the anxiety in his chest, coaxing and pleading with it until he could think with something approaching clarity.
A car passed him. Looking up, he witnessed a BMW cruising into his driveway. Gazing on, incredulous, he watched Jennifer, dressed in the clingy summer dress he had given her for her birthday, climb from the passenger seat. From the other side of the car emerged a tall man. Long brown hair hung loose about his shoulders. Muscles popped beneath his T-shirt and jeans.
Jameson.
Tears finally erupted from him, his internal cage no longer able to contain the growth of the beast it housed. For all his certainty
while he had been driving, the final confirmation was agony to accept. Screams built in his chest, squeezing living tendrils around his lungs, but he refused to release them. Knowing what his next step must be, accepting a little of what lay before him, he let himself cry until he was exhausted.
Half an hour passed, then an hour. With each moment a fresh seed of grief flowered within him, growing a garden of pain as beautiful as it was lethal. When there was nothing left in him, his tears began to dry up. Opening a window, he heaved great lungfuls of fresh air, trying to alleviate the tightness which lingered in his chest. When he felt as human as he thought was possible, he readied himself to confront what was happening.
He would walk in on them. As simple as that. It was all he could think to do. Unable to see past the point of catching her during her infidelity, he had no way of planning any further. But he could do that much at least.
As he opened the car door the world took on a strange and remote quality, the details of the world surrounding him made intense and painful. Brilliant sapphire shone from his Focus as he turned from it to move towards his home. Shrubs in his front lawn, which he had planted months ago, had a new gleam, a jade vibrancy that bespoke the life within. Aeons passed during the journey to the front door. Familiar glass panels caught his eye to make him wonder why he had never noticed their crystalline, near religious, beauty. Removing his keys from his pocket he found himself marvelling at the metallic textures of their infinite, microscopic scratches and dents. He eased the front door key into the lock and twisted it to one side.
His world snapped back to normal as fury twistered through him. The key would not turn. Jennifer had changed the locks.
Acceptance and disbelief battled for control of his responses as laden moments thudded by. She had barred him from his own home. There had to be a rational explanation. She could not abandon the last six years of their life together with such casual disregard. Something was seriously awry, he just didn’t know what it was yet.
One sure way to discover the answer presented itself to him, and he reached out to press the doorbell. Pausing only momentarily, his finger seeming in that second to hope that Greg might change his mind, the deed was done.
Footsteps running downstairs. Jennifer calling out, in her sweet honey-husky voice, “Just a minute.” Keys rattling in the lock.
The door opened. Jennifer stood there, wrapped in her white towelling robe. Blue eyes, pure and shining, looked up at him and he was lost. Incapable of doing more than stare at her, tears welled again in his eyes. Auburn hair, cut into a bob, bounced in the breeze as her too large, beautiful lips pursed in a frown.
Almost choking on the strength of the word, he managed to force out her name. “Jen.”
“Yes?” How could she be so calm when she held his heart in her eyes?
“Jennifer?”
“Yes, Jennifer Summers. Do I know you? My husband is upstairs, if you want to speak to him?”
Snatching out, he grabbed her wrists. “Husband? Jen, what the hell are you doing?” Pushing her back, he took them both into the house, still holding tight to her. Then he stopped. He felt his jaw drop.
Green carpet, cream wallpaper with pale green flowers, a varnished teak banister; these were what had occupied his hallway two days ago. Now everything had changed. As he stood there, limp, his mind completely failed to acknowledge the details around him. The alterations were so large that he could not accept them all at once. All he perceived were colours. Pastel blue, darker blues accompanying them. His light, summery hallway, the entrance to his home, was now a cold and claustrophobic place.
In his battle to credit this new and alien location he almost failed to hear Jennifer screaming.
“Greg! Gregory!”
“What?” She sounded like she was in pain, and he realised how tightly he was holding her wrists. Letting go, he was about to reassure her when he realised that she wasn’t looking at him. Her head was turned to look up the stairs, at the longhaired man he had seen earlier, now bounding down towards them with concern and fury in his eyes.
“Greg! Get him away from me!” She was talking to the stranger. Calling him Greg.
With a nimble hop over the banister (now a dark oak, Greg realised, as slow motion once more imposed itself on his world) the stranger landed beside him, looping one arm around his neck and yanking backwards. Shrieking messages of pain, the muscles of his shoulders and upper torso followed the movement, forcing him to step away from his wife and slamming him against the chest of the taller man.
Panic gripped Greg and he reacted on instinct, smashing his head up and back. Warm damp in his hair, along with the loosening of the arm that held him, told of his success. Whirling around, he saw blood streaming from his attacker’s nose, spurting violently in the rush to abandon its host. To make certain he had delivered his intended message he lashed out again, this time with his fist. His knuckles sent him a bright distress flare as they connected with the already splintered bones of the man’s nose, but the resulting howl of agony made his own hurt worthwhile. Whimpering, Jameson staggered against the wall, hands covering his ruined face. Unwilling to just leave him crouching there, Greg lifted his foot back to finish the job. A desperate shout exploded behind him.
“Leave him alone you bastard!”
Even as he turned he could hear the rush of air. The golf club that Jennifer was swinging at him came as no real surprise.
It never got the chance to connect. Every cell in his head suddenly wanted to expand against the walls of his skull. Collapsing, he was barely aware of the golf club swishing harmlessly through space that had only moments ago contained his head, or how deeply it embedded itself in the wall across from him. On a very peripheral level he acknowledged the blood that suddenly fountained from his ears and poured down from his nostrils. Was he crying again, or was there blood seeping from his eyes too?
Like a bird suddenly released from a lifetime of captivity, his mind soared outwards.
On an elaborately beautiful day, when he was twenty-two years old, he met Jennifer for the first time. His final year at University had been a hard one, but he had good reason not to regret his decision to all but abandon his social life while studying. Graduation day. Receiving his first class masters degree.
While waiting for his turn to shake the hand of the principal, the traditional final acknowledgement of the degree award, he found himself talking to the girl next to him. Jennifer Sharpe. Although he already knew her as a face around the faculty they had never spoken, yet they had connected with an immediacy that shocked them both. At the end of the ceremony they had gone for drinks and Greg, never previously a romantic youth, bowled her from her feet. After many more drinks, several clubs, and a taxi ride to her flat, she and Greg made clumsy, wonderful love on her single bed.
Lying there that night, Greg spent fully two hours just watching her sleep. All he could think was that this was the most beautiful thing in the world, a cyclic repetition of fact that both soothed and excited him. Never in his life had he been exposed to someone who burned like she did, and he knew he could never lose her.
Her back curved elegantly to her neck, lightly muscled yet unmistakably feminine, almost feline. Everything in him wanted to stroke it as she slept, but he was too afraid of waking this glorious woman, of shattering the spell she had woven through simple slumber. So he contented himself with listening to her breathe, drinking in the scent of cooling sweat from her body as it mixed with heady perfume. It was a scent he would remember forever.
Coppery smell. Blood. Jennifer smelled of blood? No, it was his blood. As his mind settled once more into the present, he realised he was covered in his own blood. His jacket and shirt were drenched, and his arms were cramped. Looking around, he was almost pleased to find himself back in his altered hallway. But something differed from his recent memory, and he strained to think what it could be. Cramp? That was it. His arms were tied behind his back.
He was lying on the stairway, and found
that his ankles had also been bound. A voice near the telephone drew his attention.
“...appreciate it. Thanks.”
Slightly muffled, coming from behind a handkerchief held over the man’s nose, the voice belonged to Jameson. Hanging up, he turned towards Greg.
“You’re awake. Good. Do you understand what I’m saying?” Greg nodded, confused by the question. “Okay. By rights I should have called the police to have you arrested. You assaulted Jennifer and gave me a bloody good clobbering into the bargain. But I didn’t. I don’t know who you are my friend, but you’re not well. I’ve never seen anything like what just happened to you. You...exploded. That’s the only way I can think to describe it.” He smiled humourlessly. “It’s going to take forever to get the blood out of the carpet. Anyway, I’ve called you an ambulance. It should be here in about ten minutes. Still with me?”
Again Greg nodded. But he had a question to ask. One all-important question, and he had to ask it of this man who had answered to his name. “What is happening to me?”
Confused, the man shook his head. “You’re asking the wrong guy. Wait until the paramedics gets here.”
Not enough, he had to know more. Perhaps he was ill, possibly delusional, but he needed to find out what had become of his wife. His life. “No. I mean…who are you? Where is my wife?”
“Your wife?”
It all made a horrible, sudden sense. This man did not know who Greg was. Perhaps he had believed she was single all along. Guilt flooded him.
“I’m sorry, so sorry. She never told you. She’s married.” A look of shock passed over Jameson’s mangled face, and Greg knew he had been right. “To me. Greg Summers. This is my house. Jennifer is my wife. You don’t belong here.” Good, he thought. Simple statements. I can keep hold of simple statements.
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