Thin Air

by Storm Constantine

  Jay backed away from the desk. ‘I haven’t trodden on any mines. This has all come out of the blue. You make ridiculous accusations and pathetic attempts to threaten me. Then, by miraculous coincidence, those threats come true. I don’t know how you can live with yourself.’

  ‘It’s called survival. We all do what we can to survive.’

  She became still. Perhaps he’d revealed too much by implying he lived under threat too. ‘You know, I think you’re as aware as I am that I’m being punished for something I haven’t done. This will all come back on you one day, Zeke. It’s the way of the world.’

  She’d found her exit line. He watched her pick up her letter and walk towards the door. Not dangerous. Too wounded to be dangerous. She was a casualty of something that not even Michaels himself fully understood. Lorrance wouldn’t tell him. He knew he was just a cat’s paw. ‘Jay, wait,’ he said, as she walked out of the door. She didn’t pause. Perhaps it was for the best. What comfort could he offer her anyway?

  Jay drove home, her skin still afire. She felt slightly better now she’d bawled Michaels out, even though she knew it had probably been a waste of time. She was pleased with the last thing she’d said to him. That was Julie Banner’s influence; the suggestion there was more to life than she knew, cracks in the world.

  Gus had wasted no time. The letter from his solicitors had infuriated Jay. It was doubtful she’d be able to keep her home unless she managed to find work soon. Her credit card bills were through the roof. She’d relied so much on having two incomes to play with, and had taken Gus’ share for granted. They hadn’t lived beyond their means, but certainly to their limit. Now, if she sold the flat to buy somewhere cheaper, Gus would snatch half the profit.

  Back home, she drew the curtains against the grey of the day, and turned on a small lamp. Curled up on the sofa, she sipped rum, its flavour reminding her strongly and achingly of the days following Dex’s disappearance from her life. Looking around herself, she wondered how many of the furnishings would be in her possession after Gus had taken his share. She had to admit that some of it she quite liked. How would she be able to afford to replace it now? Jay had never been without money. Income had always come easily to her. It was as if her life had been enchanted, or she’d been born lucky. In brief times of trouble, something had always come up, and she’d never doubted that inevitability. Now, she felt insecure and afraid. Something, some indefinable talent perhaps, had abandoned her. She’d hadn’t felt this tired since Dex had left. There were no reporters outside the door now, no photographers, only hungry wolves. Had Dex felt anything like this when he chose to walk away from his life? If so, she could empathise. She had no energy to deal with the mechanics of daily existence. She wanted time to assimilate all the things that had happened to her over the last few weeks, and she needed peace, quiet and security for that. Instead, she was faced with just about every major life crisis, apart from bereavement.

  And you can’t get me there, world, she thought. There’s no-one to lose.

  That in itself was a horrifying thought. Her life had been so busy, so wound up with talking faces and hurrying to meet deadlines, she’d never stopped to think that essentially, she was alone. If anybody else was in her position now, they’d have a family to go back to, somewhere to hole up for a while. The money from her parents’ estate had been used to put a deposit on this flat. What a white elephant it was now. Too expensive for what it was; money attached to a post code. She did have distant relatives somewhere, but didn’t know them. They were just dim recollections from her childhood. Dex had had a family of sorts, yet it hadn’t stopped him slipping away from reality. For a moment, Jay considered going back to Julie. She felt sure that Dex’s sister would let her stay there for a while, and eventually perhaps encourage her to find work on a local paper. Jay shuddered. She saw her life withering away in that vision.

  She took a mouthful of rum. How was it possible to feel so tired, yet still be awake? Was there anything to carry on for? For a fleeting second, she saw an image of herself, dead on the sofa, the phone ringing and ringing, bills piling up beneath the letter box. No, she thought firmly, that’s not your path. Fight! She remembered her conversation with Jez in the restaurant. It seemed so long ago. Impulsively she reached for the phone and her address book. She would tell him what had happened. She imagined the invitation out to L.A., Jez and his wife waiting to welcome her. No visions of empty futures there. She’d make a new start. The phone rang and rang, and eventually their answer-phone clicked in. What time was it there? Oh, who cares!

  Jay hurled her empty glass across the room, satisfied when it shattered against the wall. The sound of it was muffled. Her flat seemed full of presences, unseen and hungry, feeding on the energy that bled from her like tears.

  ‘Dex, where are you?’ she said aloud. Could he hear her? She needed him now. He was alive in the world somewhere, hiding. ‘I’ll find you,’ she muttered, scrambling to her feet. ‘Damn you, I’m going to find you.’

  All she had to go on was the photograph. It lay beside her on the passenger seat, its edges curled over as if protecting the image on it from her view. She’d really had too much to drink to be driving, but she didn’t care. Like Julie said, she drank too much. She had a tolerance for it.

  Driving out of the city, she felt as if she was escaping a dark, sticky mass that had prevented her from breathing properly. Her anxiety sharpened because of it, but it was a pure and cleansing pain.

  Sometimes, as she drove through the night, she felt as if Dex was sitting beside her, quietly urging her on to find him. His appearance the other evening might have been a cry for help rather than a warning for her. Perhaps this was what life wanted from her, and had forced her to act. Everything was in the process of being taken from her, except for her past, and Dex was so much a part of that.

  She knew that Lorrance’s country estate was near a village called Emmertame, because that was the name of the recording studios Lorrance had owned there a few years before. She would go to this place, ask questions, try to confront him. Dex had had a grudging respect for Rhys Lorrance. Jay realised he might be involved in Sakrilege’s dealings with her, but then again, he might not. He managed the company, but he managed many. It seemed unlikely he’d keep a track of all that went on. Perhaps she could appeal to him for help. In her heart, she harboured the hope that she’d find Dex there. Why else would he have left the photograph in the box for her to find? It was her only clue, and she had to act on it. She had nothing to lose.

  Once she was off the motorway and the A-roads, the lanes were a winding labyrinth of lightless complexity. She followed the old-fashioned road-signs that poked towards narrow thoroughfares, where the hedges leaned inwards and dead grasses were held in stasis by the incisive frost. Even though she saw one or two signs that pointed towards Emmertame, she couldn’t find the place. How long must she keep looking? What was keeping her out? As she drove, incidents over the past few days replayed themselves in her mind. Images revolved in her head of Zeke Michaels’ face, and Gus’ and Gina’s. She could see their mouths moving, but they weren’t speaking. They were barking and yapping at her. She lit a cigarette, tried to push the images from her mind. Where the hell am I going? She laughed coldly to herself. Dex had told her to leave the city. She was doing it now. But what would happen next? What could happen? Her whole reality had become the warm interior of the car, its smells and familiarity. She would drive like this until the morning came, or she ran out of petrol.

  The lights came round the corner towards her like the flaring eyes of maddened supernatural steeds. Her reactions were deadened, yet her instincts took over. She turned the steering-wheel frantically, sending the car bouncing up onto the high verge to the left. There was a paralysing moment of hideous scraping sounds and then the impact as her car hit the hedge. Her neck jerked back. For some minutes she just hung there in her seat, shocked and dazed. Then sounds began to filter back into her consciousness. Amazingly, the car eng
ine was still running. She hadn’t stalled. Painfully, she looked behind her. The lane was in darkness, but for the wan light of the moon. What had happened? It had looked like another car, but Jay couldn’t be sure. The accident had occurred so quickly. Who would be driving through these lanes so recklessly at this time of night? Local kids?

  Jay was shaken up, but not injured, apart from the wrench in her neck and a soreness across her chest where the seat belt had cut into her. She managed to reverse the car back down onto the road. There was a disturbing rattle coming from beneath it. The exhaust system must have been damaged. Keep going, she told herself, just keep going. But eventually, exhaustion and shock became too much. She had to stop.

  It was around four a.m. when she pulled into a lay-by at the edge of the road. It was thick with mud, scored by tractor tracks. Here, she lay back in her seat and undid the safety belt. She turned on the radio and, rubbing her neck lethargically, listened to a ghostly voice that murmured a chocolate-scented smoke through the darkness. These were the dark hours of the soul, when loners waited for the dawn, kept company by the hypnotic voice of the DJ and the old, nostalgic sounds. ‘For all those lonely people out there.’ A blues song throbbed smoothly from the speakers, an echo from a lost age, when fields had been more golden and skies more clear.

  Jay rested her head against the back of her seat and smoked cigarettes. She’d brought a bottle of syrupy dark rum with her, from which she swigged without even noticing the burn as it slid down her throat. She still felt disorientated from the near miss in the road further back. The whole world was muzzy now. There was no moon, but the land was radiant with a subtle blue-white light. Owls ghosted across the stars and there was movement in the hedgerows, strange gleams like the brilliance of eyes.

  Jay only realised she’d been dozing when she found herself waking suddenly, her body paralysed by cramps in her neck and shoulders. One arm felt completely dead and she shook it, banging it against the steering wheel and feeling nothing. Her throat felt thick and dry, her eyes swollen. There was a glow on the horizon; dawn. The radio was silent now; whatever station she’d tuned into had faded away. She stretched as best she was able in the confines of the car, then opened the door. Cool clean air swept in to claim its muggy interior.

  Her feet were uncertain upon the uneven surface of the road. She ached all over. Flat fields swept away to either side, punctuated by lone oaks, their branches bare and tangled. In the distance, to her left, Jay could see a hill rising from a skirt of mist, its summit crowned by a monument that looked like a finger of stone. She was drawn towards it.

  She locked the car and carrying only her shoulder bag, climbed over a gate into the first of the fields. She couldn’t see any houses because of the mist and the rising sun was a pure red disk within it. She felt strange, detached, but on the brink of enlightenment. She would surrender to it. Her fall, her isolation, her journey through the night and the accident which could have killed her had been a rite of passage. Around her, the world seemed different, reinvented. She had no sense of other human beings around. The landscape was the rolling infinity of the otherworld, where dreams would be made flesh and speak, where the impossible might happen. Perhaps she had gone back in time. Perhaps she was dreaming.

  She began to walk, and as she did so, the present drifted away from her like smoke. She entered a new reality in her mind; a vision of what might have been, or should have been, or maybe what was ultimately true.

  Part II

  Chapter One

  The field was endless. Hay field. It swayed hypnotically, the rubbing grasses whispering together. She did not feel tired, hungry or thirsty, even though she had walked for a long time. She remembered that the previous night she had slept in a barn; corrugated iron, the smell of oil, old machinery, rust. In the night, she had heard an owl, and became enveloped by its feathery whiteness. In her mind. The cry of the owl was a mantle. Perhaps there was no owl at all.

  But no, hadn’t she slept in her car last night? Her memory was indistinct, conflicting recollections overlapped.

  She thought she must be dead, killed in the road accident without realising it, although she could not be sure. If she was alive her stomach would be craving food; her body, fluid. Her limbs would ache. She felt nothing. What would it be like to be dead? No-one knew. Perhaps this was how it was; confusion, unsureness. Eternity. This might be it.

  She waded through the field and the grasses surged around her. A solitary tree, leafless, reared against a bruised sky, but the land was seared and yellow beneath it. The air was hot and perfumed with dust and freshly-cut hay. Should it be summertime? There was an inconsistency about the landscape, something dreamlike. The colours were pure and clean, yet somehow watery, like a hazy memory of an idyllic season. She found herself thinking of tropical storms, of rainbows, but there was nothing around her other than a susurrating emptiness.

  Ahead of her, some distance away, an enormous statue crowned a wooded hill, where all the trees were in full leaf. The monument reared above the trees, its arms held wide, gesturing. Summoning. She walked towards it like an infant taking first steps: stiff-limbed, her arms held away from her sides.

  Grass dust had invaded her throat, her eyes. She was drying out. In more ways than one. She remembered the bottle of bourbon she had consumed in that last hotel. The memory, like the landscape, was oddly inconsistent. It had happened to her, yet it hadn’t. She could recall the soulless neatness of the room, how she had wondered at the fact that so many people had stayed here without leaving any trace of themselves behind. People must have wept themselves to sleep in the bed, raged at lovers, thrown things at the wall. The heights of ecstasy must have permeated the furnishings; a woman’s soft sigh, a man’s groan. Nothing had been left behind, as nothing of herself would remain there once she had left. So she had drunk heavily to cushion her despair. Why bourbon? She had never liked it. And where had the hotel fitted in between leaving her car in the muddy lay-by and walking this field? How had she come to lose this time? But the memory of the car journey through the night, and the decision to walk seemed illusory now, like a story someone else had told her. The memory of the hotel seemed more real. Bourbon in her throat. Despair. She had thought that the world expected people like her to drink bourbon, to steep themselves in it, until it dribbled from their mouths and noses, leaked from their pores in toxic steam. She remembered that, before the hotel incident, she had been drunk for several weeks and the decision to call a halt to her life, as it was, had been lubricated by delirium. She was sober now, but she didn’t want to go back. It must be forgotten, all of it, so that she could be dead and perhaps reborn. A muted tremor of fear thrilled through her body. These are not my thoughts. This is not my past. It is him. He is with me.

  She came to the end of the field, and the hunched shade of an ancient hedge-row. It was on a raised bank; she had to climb up to it and even then could not see beyond the tangle. An archetypal gnarled, wooden fence was partially hidden among the spiny branches. She found a gap where she might break through. But into what? She was tired now and needed to sleep, but felt she had to reach some kind of completion before she dared close her eyes, otherwise there might be no awakening.

  For several yards, she crawled along the hedge-row, surrounded by a cacophony of tiny sounds: the click of beetles, the munch of chitinous jaws, the thin shrieks of pain, the rustle and sigh of creatures that had no shape. She came upon a rose bush that dominated the hedge: dog roses. A mass of small blooms hung heavily out in a shady arc that hummed with bees. Their song was Morpheus’ call, the summons to endless sleep or death. Looking up through the shivering pattern of leaves, she saw the sky, pregnant with storms, was the purple of Morpheus’ cloak. A heron cut across this royal stain, bearing some unknown omen, its wings a pale slice against the dark. She peered through a tunnel of leaves that seemed to have opened up near her face, like a pathway through the briars that might lead to an enchanted world. She saw a picture at the end of the leaves: a ch
urch; grey, and mottled with yellow lichen.

  She rolled onto her back and lay in the prickly grass at the edge of meadow. Thistles beneath her, thorns above, and the flowers; scent mingled with the stable aroma of cattle dung. This was a moment, a moment of England captured in time. The sky, the air, the music of summer. It was a ghost around her.

  I will stay here forever, she thought. The skies will change above me, brindle me with patterns of light. In her brain, a tune shivered like a skein of smoke from a distant cigarette. Faces crowded upon her inner eye, their mouths working ceaselessly. Demands, lies, flattery. Give me one honest tongue and I will save this Sodom from destruction. A short but distinct peal of unrestrained laughter came out of her, and she rolled onto her stomach. Beneath her cheek, the warm earth pulsed with life. She could hear the heart-beat of the world.

  ‘We are nothing to you, are we,’ she said aloud. ‘We are your children, but you just spawn and spawn without regard for quality. Vomit us out, sickly progeny. Our peevish wails fill your ears, the trees. What’s left of them.’ Her mind was beginning to work again now; she could think in pictures. It had not been so for some time. But it was not her mind. It was his.

  She rolled over onto her back once more. Years were sloughing away from her into the soil. She had lived too many lives, her energy had been scattered, sucked up by social vampires. She wanted to be nothing, because then they wouldn’t want her, and she would prove them to be what she’d always known they were. There is nothing worth keeping in this world but me, she thought. But then, everyone must think that.

  Her memories were fading. Hard to recall now the people who belonged to the faces, the speaking heads. She had felt mad recently, but now knew she was purely sane. It was necessary only to walk away from the madness for its infection to leave the system.