‘But I don’t understand it. We’ve never heard interference like that before.’
‘I think we need to leave it for the moment,’ said Miller, sounding almost as scared as Sophie.
‘Why?’
Keith slowed then stopped, listening to their conversation. It wasn’t in his nature to eavesdrop, but he doubted they’d be as open and conversational once they knew he was there.
‘I’ve got a strong feeling something bad is about to happen.’
Miller said it with such conviction that Sophie didn’t question it, and Keith himself felt equally convinced that Miller was right. But then, Keith had been getting the same feeling every day since this had started.
There was a rattling from behind Keith. Somebody was turning the front door handle from outside, testing to see if it was unlocked. Keith’s imagination immediately gave him images of opening the door to nothing, or to some unfathomable being from the other side. On the other hand, it might just be a burglar checking to see if they’d left their flat unlocked. Whatever the case, Keith was absolutely certain that he should block the door.
Before Keith had even finished his first step towards it, the door burst open and in jumped Trenton Price, dancing and singing to music that Keith couldn’t actually hear.
‘Baby I’m your man!’ Price bellowed, off-key.
Keith wanted to shout and scream at the man, but he managed nothing. Price ignored him, singing and dancing his way past Keith and into the living room. Keith followed. Price stopped just inside of the doorway, his hands on his hips and standing there like some kind of hero. Keith noted the scared expression on Miller’s face, and also how unsurprised he was. Sophie’s lips, however, were trembling as she stared at Price.
‘You …’
‘Me,’ Price replied, as if she’d paid him a compliment.
‘What are you doing here, Price?’ asked Miller.
‘Saving her money on fraudulent psychics. Wait, that’s a tautology, isn’t it? I’m saving her money on psychics. Or frauds. The two are relatively interchangeable.’
Miller stood up from the table. Keith could see from his defensive posture that Miller intended to protect Sophie, although Keith couldn’t quite imagine how. Miller was far from the type to resort to violence so quickly, but Keith couldn’t imagine Price would react strongly to anything other than being thumped in the jaw.
A loud bang echoed through the front door, which Price had left swinging open. It was enough to make everybody in the room jump to some degree. Everybody except Price.
Once that moment had worn off, everybody stared at Price again.
‘That’ll be the paramedics breaking in downstairs,’ Price said, but nobody asked him what he meant. ‘Into your late neighbour’s flat.’
‘Get out of my home,’ said Sophie.
Price just stood there. Keith had no idea what to expect, but he was truly terrified when Price turned his head and stared at him expectantly.
Butterflies in his stomach, hands shaking, and beginning to sweat, Keith walked past Price and into the living room. When he looked at Sophie, he tried to show her how much he loved her and how much he cared for her wellbeing. If he’d just spouted out his feelings, she’d have only become more suspicious, so he chose to send his love visually as best he could.
‘I asked him to help us.’
Despite telling himself not to, Keith looked down. He couldn’t handle the disappointment and disgust he knew she was throwing at him.
‘What? Why?’
He almost backed down. He almost begged for forgiveness and left the room. But it wouldn’t help. Chances were, nothing would, and this was the very end of his marriage. So go for it, tell her everything. She’ll hate you, she’ll leave you, but you might just help her.
‘She’s not here, Sophie. Tia is gone. She died, and she’s gone.’
‘So how do you explain —?’
‘You’re poor, explains everything,’ Price said, swaggering into the room.
‘Price, I swear to God …’ Miller said through his scrunched up features.
‘I’m serious,’ said Price. ‘Lack of money, meaning cheap equipment, and, best of all, an old-man’s poor circulation. Ready for this?’
Price looked around the room, but nobody had a clue what he was talking about. Miller had a hand over one of Sophie’s, a weak attempt at consoling her. Keith had the urge to push Miller away and place his own hand in Sophie’s, and he might have done so if there was even a slither of a chance of her accepting it. Sophie, dumbstruck, probably wasn’t even aware of Miller’s hand.
‘It begins with the old man, the one that lives — lived — below you, and is usually complaining about the heating.’
‘Mr Hilton?’ said Keith. ‘He’s always cold.’
‘He was always cold. Asked people to sign petitions to improve the heating. But that didn’t work. But a cold, grumpy old man isn’t likely to just give up, is he? So what’s the next step? He takes matters into his own hands and buys a portable gas heater.’
‘How do you know that?’ asked Miller.
‘I’m looking at the facts and working backwards. If I’m wrong we’ll soon know, but let’s work on the assumption I’m right. I find living under that assumption to be easiest way to live. Now will you stop interrupting?’
Miller was biting his lip. Sophie was beginning to come out of her stupor; she turned to Miller for support, not even bothering with Keith.
‘Thank you,’ Price said. ‘Now, the old man Hilton bought a faulty heater. Probably second-hand. Faulty heaters can leak carbon monoxide. It wouldn’t have been enough to be deadly to anybody at first, but over time it would have affected them.’
‘Tia wasn’t killed by carbon monoxide,’ Sophie said, practically firing the words at him. ‘The post-mortem would have picked up on that.’
Keith was brought hurtling back to the moment; he’d been imagining Mr Hilton sitting in his flat all alone, his new heater besides him. He wished he’d thought of Sophie’s point and spoken before her, it might have helped a little to appear on her side. And she was right, that must have been one of the first things the coroner would have checked for.
‘I never said it was the cause of death,’ Price said. ‘Keep up. The relevant thing here is that she died. Now, flash-forward a couple of weeks later, and you’re both suffering headaches, which you attribute to stress. You also get feelings of dread and paranoia, which you attribute to a haunting, and which get worse as time goes on. They’re also all symptoms of mild carbon-monoxide poisoning. Made worse by the fact that neither of you leave the flat very often.’
Price stopped there, and once again Keith was pulled through his imagination and back to the moment. Price was like a teacher stopping to make sure all of his pupils were paying attention. Keith wasn’t sure what to make of it.
‘Then one night your ageing stereo picks up some stray interference,’ Price continued. ‘Saturday night, around eight, to be precise, you leave the radio on or accidentally turn it on.’
‘It wasn’t on,’ Sophie said, turning to the radio as if it could back her up. The music in the background had disappeared now, and there were no other suspicious noises, just the static. ‘There was no sound coming from it.’
Price strolled past her to the radio and turned it down until it was barely audible, but he didn’t turn it off.
‘It was on, just not loud. The brain has an uncanny ability to filter out white noise. Especially a brain that has so many other things to focus on.’
‘It got louder!’ screamed Sophie, shooting up from the chair. ‘By itself!’
‘The noise simply changed; you perceived it getting louder because it became so familiar. Scarily familiar. Hell, you probably even upped the volume yourself, either subconsciously or quickly forgetting the action. After all, turning up the volume doesn’t rank highly on interesting things of the day to remember, not when you’re talking to dead babies.’
As Price spoke, Miller
slowly rose from his own seat. Keith wasn’t sure exactly what he was afraid of, but he knew his wife well enough to know she wouldn’t do anything violent. And he believed Price wouldn’t either, although that was more because he preferred winding people up psychologically.
‘It was my baby,’ said Sophie. ‘Nobody else here even has a baby.’
‘Actually, the person opposite has a daughter. She’s only there rarely, and other than that the young man lives alone, so you probably never even considered it. He mainly looks after her on Saturdays and the occasional weeknight. Care to guess what time he puts the baby to sleep and allows her to cry herself down?’
Sophie took a deep breath, her chest inflating noticeably.
‘This wasn’t just a bit of interference you arrogant prick!’ Sophie screamed, making both Miller and Keith jump back. ‘I felt her — she was here!’
Sophie’s eyes were red, tears building up around them. Price remained unaffected, clearly upsetting Sophie more. Miller put his hand on her shoulder and spoke softly to her, too softly for Keith to hear. But it would be something caring, something soothing. What mattered was that Sophie wasn’t even considering Price’s explanation of events. And Keith was inclined to believe him. It made everything make sense, and it meant that Tia wasn’t in trouble.
‘Please, Sophie,’ Keith pleaded. ‘Please, just listen to him, to what he’s saying.’
‘He’s talking about our daughter being gone.’
‘She is gone! She’s dead, and we’re not, and we need to be moving on, not waiting to hear her again.’
It didn’t work, not even close. Sophie stared at him like he was something she’d accidentally trodden in. How did he make his point while reassuring her he was on her side? Something told him it wouldn’t be that easy, or possible. Keith took a step towards Sophie, and before he even started on the second, she’d taken three steps back.
‘Have you experienced any hallucinations?’ Price asked.
For the first time since Price entered the flat, Sophie no longer looked angry. Now, it was just shock.
‘Considering how sure you were that your baby was here, and the increasing paranoia, it must have been terrifying,’ Price continued, like a hunter that had found a weak spot in its prey. ‘And explains why you were insistent on doing something to save her tonight. It’s also one of the symptoms as the effects worsen.’
Keith stared at Sophie with open concern, and noticed that Miller was doing the same. Her eyes were somewhere distant, deep in some horrendous memory.
‘Sophie?’ Keith said, his voice soft like a caring caress.
‘I …’ she started, but that was all she managed.
‘I’m guessing the reason you didn’t tell anybody is because you suspected you were losing your mind. Good. Shows there’s hope for you yet.’
Sophie twisted on the spot, run a hand through her hair, barely aware of the room and its inhabitants. When she collapsed, Keith automatically ran to her, as did Miller, who was there first due to being closer. It wasn’t a faint, as Keith immediately thought, but she simply dropped to the floor and sat there, finally allowing the tears to come streaming.
‘Why are you doing this to me?’ she said. ‘Leave me alone.’
Miller took his hand away from Sophie — it was no help for her, anyway — and stood up to face Price. Out of the corner of his eye, Keith saw Miller’s expression: pure, indignant, rage. Keith kept his own focus on Sophie, although she didn’t seem to be hearing or seeing anything around her.
‘Are you happy now?’ Miller asked Price.
‘I get paid now, of course I’m happy.’
Keith’s eyes widened. That managed to travel the immense distance to Sophie’s conscious. She glared at Keith as though he’d killed Tia himself.
‘You paid him to do this to me?’
‘No, honey, I just asked him to try and find another explanation. Don’t you see what this means? She’s gone to a better place.’
After Keith said that, he prayed Price wouldn’t put his own opinions in here. Luckily, Price had either not heard or there was actually a shred of decency left in him. Keith watched Sophie as she processed this. For a few seconds, he thought she would agree with him, that she was better off in the next life resting in peace. Then he saw the moment she changed her mind and came back to things as they were.
‘She was here. Here! I felt her presence.’
Keith turned to Price, hoping he had some last piece of evidence that would convince her and make everything all right. Price shrugged, apologetically. It was enough to almost make Keith believe Price had actually cared about Sophie, and that he’d genuinely hoped the truth would help her. But Keith could see just how desperately she wanted Tia in her life, and how she was gripping hold of every bit of evidence she could. And instead of supporting her, Keith was part of a mob attacking her. That mob was more complete than Keith thought, once he realised how guilty Miller looked. He doesn’t believe in it either, not anymore.
‘Get out,’ Sophie said. ‘All of you, just get out.’
***
***
Miller chased Price down the stairs, quickly catching up to him as Price appeared content to stroll merrily away from this situation. Before Miller had the chance to speak to Price, a police officer came bounding up the stairs and almost bumped into them, stopping only inches away from Price.
‘Sir, you need to —’
‘Leave the building due to a suspected carbon monoxide leak, I know,’ said Price.
And he walked straight past the confused police officer. Miller nodded his thanks to the cop for the both of them.
‘Price,’ Miller called.
Apparently, having completed his job here, Price was content to ignore Miller and leave. There was always the chance that his silence was due to guilt, but Miller wasn’t going to jump to that conclusion.
They met several more people in the stairwell, all heading down while looking confused or irritated. Price paid them little attention. Miller flashed a weak smile as he pushed past them after Price.
‘You’d have thought it would be easier to set the fire alarm off,’ Miller said.
‘Easier, but not necessarily effective. You’d be amazed how many people don’t move during alarms because they assume it’s a drill. Of course, saying that, I find it more likely that whoever’s in charge here merely didn’t think of using the alarm. If in doubt, always assume stupidity.’
Miller hardly paid attention to the words. What mattered was that Price was talking to him. Now he might be able to speak to Price about his handling of the situation. There was no way he was going to allow Price to get away with treating the Fullwoods that way.
As they exited the building, there was already a small congregation outside the front door. One man stood apart from the crowd; a young man cradling a new-born baby. The baby’s eyes were red and puffy from crying, but she appeared content for the moment, close to falling asleep on her dad. As Price came past them, the young man held out his hand and passed a mobile phone over to Price.
The young man mouthed something to Price, but Miller had no idea what it might have been as it looked suspiciously like the phrase thank you.
When Miller could no longer see the baby, just the back of the youth’s head, he turned back to Price.
‘Is being right so important to you?’
‘Isn’t this what you wanted?’ Price said, looking back at Miller briefly but continuing to walk.
‘I wanted her to stop believing in something harmful. But no, you had to rip the belief out of her.’
‘I gave her the truth,’ Price called back.
‘Your truth.’
Now Price stopped and faced Miller properly. He was clearly irritated, giving Miller a guilty pleasure.
‘Truth is absolute.’ Price jabbed a finger in Miller’s direction. ‘And looking at evidence is still the best way we have of discerning the truth.’
‘Some things have to be felt. Faith mat
ters.’
‘Right.’ Price was formulating a new argument in his mind. ‘OK. So, let’s say your entire family is brutally murdered.’
Miller couldn’t imagine where Price was going with this, but he made it obvious that he wasn’t happy with the hypothetical.
‘Now,’ Price continued, ‘you have two options. All of the evidence points to suspect A as the murderer. But, there is very loose circumstantial evidence that suspect B is the murderer, along with a general “I know it’s him, I can feel it.” Now, who are you going to send to jail?’
Miller shook his head.
‘I’m not playing your games.’
Price took another couple of steps towards Miller, his finger raised like a gun.
‘Oy!’
That wasn’t Price. Somebody behind Miller was shouting in their direction. Miller turned to see Keith Fullwood storming towards them.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Price, ‘you don’t have to pay me —’
Miller didn’t see Keith make the fist, nor did he even have time to notice Keith pull his arm back. The punch appeared from nowhere, and price was instantly on the ground. Price glared up at Keith, holding his already-bloody jaw.
Keith stared down right back at Price, before breaking off to pace a few steps away then back. Several times he looked like he was going to speak, then changed his mind. It took him a while, but eventually Keith managed to find the necessary words.
‘Just tell me one thing: the carbon monoxide — might she have lived if we’d had an alarm?’
Price didn’t answer at first, instead he checked on his jaw. Miller got the impression he was buying himself some time. Please let him do the right thing, say something supportive. Keith wasn’t really asking what killed his daughter, he was asking if he was to blame, and he obviously expected Price to give him an honest answer. But did Price see that? If this was just another opportunity for him to deliver a flippant one-liner …
‘Like your wife said,’ Price answered, only slightly patronising, ‘if she’d actually died from carbon monoxide poisoning, it would have been picked up on the post-mortem. But also seems unlikely to fully be a coincidence, so it might have had an effect. Might be the coroner was useless. Just about everybody has days when they suck at their job. Whatever the case, for future reference, an alarm wouldn’t hurt.’