Working for the Third had afforded her an otherness that made her feel superior to everyone else. Part of her had enjoyed walking among them, guided and protected by the Third's distant gaze through her. She remembered that the Third had needed her in the beginning. It used to enter her mind and they'd go for walks together, shopping for souls.
Not so much after Firdy came knocking. Not so much then.
But even Firdy's presence had had some advantages. He provided everything she needed so that she no longer had to keep down a job. In all the time she had spent in her flat in London, she had seen her landlord twice: once to introduce Firdy to him and explain that the rent he had been receiving was going to stop, and again some months later, as he crossed to the other side of the street, pretending not to have seen her.
She paid a high price for these boons though, these boosts to her self-esteem. She had had to give up her life to the Third and then to Firdy. Now that she had it back she didn't know what to do with it. Her current plans would keep her occupied for a day or so, but then what?
She considered that maybe it was time for her to try to make friends who didn't kill people, but she didn't know who she was anymore. Every one of her names felt fake. She couldn't tell anybody about the things she had done for the Third, so any future relationship would be based on a lie. What was the point?
She stopped at the side of the road and lit up a second cigarette and then a third, hands shaking. Her mind turned to Will, wondering if he had written his letter or if he had gone straight to killing himself. She thought that Simon would check on him, despite the risk, because The Third was dead and Simon seemed to consider that everyone touched by her had a responsibility to each other now.
The Third had died.
“My God,” she thought. “I'm really alone again.”
She couldn't pretend to have arrived back at Simon's house by accident. She knew the area too well. Her journey had unfolded of its own accord, but she had gone along with it. Like her mental journey, it had been circuitous, but it had led firmly to his door.
There was danger here. There was a lot to be afraid of, not least of all rejection, but she had to try. If she was going to begin again, then here was a foundation of shared experience. Here was the only person she wouldn't have to lie to.
As she rolled the car to a stop, Simon opened the door. He was wearing a blue dressing gown, tied at the waist. He appeared unfazed by her return. She tried to gauge his expression more deeply, but felt ashamed and could not hold his gaze. Unsure of what to do, she rolled down her window. Cold air crept in and she waited.
“When I said that you should leave,” Simon said, “I meant leave the room.”
“I know you did,” Clare said. “How is Sarah?”
She saw him smile for the first time. He seemed unable to help himself. And there was no need. She reminded herself that there was no need to keep her guard up either. Maybe one day, she'd let it go, but not yet. She noted that Simon didn't seem to have suffered her loss of confidence since the Third had died, but then he had Sarah. He had someone to care for and someone to care for him. It made all the difference, she guessed.
“I came to apologise,” she said spontaneously.
Simon waited, his smile waning.
“To you and to Sarah,” she added.
“She can't hear you out there,” he said. “You'd better come in.”
*
Something was cooking in the microwave. The sweet smell made Clare want to cry. Wanting to cry made her want to run. Her mind flitted to the Olive Tree. They did a good mango ice cream. She could still get there before lunchtime.
Sarah was sitting at the breakfast counter in a mauve dressing gown. Her hair was wrapped in a white towel. When Clare had handed her over to Firdy, Sarah's eyes had been like melting chocolate. Now they were red-ringed and could have been carved out of wood. They penetrated her and made her want to lie, about everything, to slide back where she felt safest.
“Sarah,” she said and attempted to hold her gaze steady. “I'm sorry that I gave you to Firdy. I didn't think I had a choice.”
“You didn't,” Sarah said.
“There's something else.” She tried very hard to say what she was thinking. She tried to admit out loud that she had enjoyed handing Sarah over, because it demonstrated her loyalty and usefulness, ensuring her a role in the Third's future, except that there wasn't going to be one anymore, because she had felt her Gods die, one inside the other. Her lips moved, but she didn't make a sound.
“I understand,” Sarah said, though her eyes told another story. Clare supposed that she was saying this for Simon's sake.
“Thank you, Sarah,” said Clare.
“What are you going to do now?” Sarah said.
“I haven't thought about it much.”
“We can think about it together.” Sarah pushed out a stool with her bare foot. Her eyes hadn't become any more gentle and Clare could see that it had been an act of will to make that gesture.
Simon concurred by nodding towards the stool, so Clare sat down. She could feel them exchanging looks behind her back, but it was okay, she had decided not to stay.
Thirty minutes later, however, they were eating home-made cereal bars and laughing. She was trying not to cry at the same time, because she found that she didn't want to leave after all, but she knew that she probably should.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“There is a spare room upstairs,” Simon said, “but we never go in there. To be honest, we don't go in this room either, but we're going to open it for you.”
A cobweb stretched and broke as he pushed open the door.
The room was piled high with things that, for one reason or another, Sarah had been unwilling to let Simon get rid of. She had regarded this room with grudging reverence, whereas Simon could not have cared less if every stick of furniture had been used as firewood. The thought occurred to him now that it was the season to carry out such a purge, but without Firdy to oil the gears, they would have to find legitimate ways of making money and he considered that they could live off the proceeds of this room for several months.
He had blocked the contents of this room from memory so completely that he was shocked by the smell of old books and antique furniture. He saw brass handles that he used to tug on when he was a boy and a writing desk where he had sometimes done his homework, back when things had been more sane.
Clare admired an enormous landscape painting that had been lent up against an old chest of drawers. In the corner, an ornate silver mirror faced the wall.
“Sorry about the mess,” he said. “I'd forgotten.”
“It's cool,” Clare said and she wiped dust from a hardback. She fingered the raised, silver lettering. “Do you mind?”
It felt strange, her being here.
He said: “No.”
“I miss reading,” she said. “Maybe I can borrow a few.”
“You can stay,” he assured her. “Not only tonight.”
Her eyes flicked towards the kitchen.
“It would be good for Sarah if you stayed,” he added.
“How so?”
“She could do with someone to talk to about what happened. Someone other than me. I think she'd open up to you.”
Clare nodded thoughtfully. “And what about you?” she asked.
“I could do with your help,” he said, avoiding the true meaning of what she had asked him. She seemed disappointed by his answer, but he didn't think that he would be ready to open up for a while. Not to her; not to anybody.
*
The three of them disposed of the dead dog in Simon's room using gloves, a mop and a couple of heavy duty rubble sacks. Sarah insisted on helping them and Simon agreed on the condition that they swap rooms for a few nights, while he returned some semblance of order to her bedroom. Later, when she lay down to sleep in his bed, he went to her room and stood in the doorway, observing the chaos that Fir
dy had created. After a pause to take in the enormity of the job ahead, he set to work, beginning by putting scattered photographs in piles, separating them roughly into family, strangers he assumed were her friends, and photos that were damaged but repairable. He disposed of those that Firdy had destroyed or defiled.
Many items were saturated with piss, some with shit. Among the worst casualties was a photo of Sarah, Simon and their father, taken by their mother outside the entrance to a cave. Simon picked it up between the finger and thumb of a rubber glove.
He was not quite 20 years old in the photo. The family had been hiking through the forest. Sarah and their mother had lagged behind, exhausted, but his father had taken him by the wrist and hauled him down to the bottom of a hill, where the stream they had been following split into two paths, one continuing through the forest and the other reaching into a hole in the rock face and on into darkness. At the time, Simon had thought that he was confused, because it had appeared that the second of the channels ran uphill. With hindsight he knew that he had seen the Third for the first time.
His father dragged him into the cave, a few feet into the darkness had been enough, and threw him to the floor, at which point the water had grabbed him. Almost all Simon could remember about the experience was that the water had held him, inside and out. He had choked on it.
“Don't fight,” his father said, “and it'll be over quicker.”
He couldn't have been more wrong.
“Where have you been?” Sarah had asked them when she caught up.
“Man talk,” their father had said and grinned, holding Simon by the shoulder hard enough to bruise him.
Sarah had demanded that someone take a photograph. Her father was smiling and she wanted to preserve it, even if it was a lie. She had successfully ignored the lines that had encroached upon his face over the last eighteen months and she had managed to look away whenever he passed a weary, almost hateful look to one of the others. She needed his smiles, because every week there were fewer than the week before and she worried that one day they would stop coming completely.
In this photograph, everything was fake except for Sarah's smile, which was desperate but genuine. It would have been worth keeping it for that alone if Firdy hadn't done such a good job of soiling it. When Simon dropped it into the rubbish bag, he had to shake it from his gloved finger.
He slumped to the floor with his back against the wall, recalling that three days after his mother took that picture, she had had to report their father missing and she had surprised herself by crying for him every night. Simon regretted that he hadn't been much comfort to her or his sister at that time, but he had been preoccupied. He had been learning about the thing to which his father had introduced him. The thing had been busy learning about him. It didn't take him long to understand that his future was in its hands.
Now he was free, but there were a few more things he had to do before he could rest. He had to eradicate Firdy's presence from the house, starting with this room. He had to sweep up the broken things that Firdy had kicked around the floor, shove wet sheets into bags for dumping or burning, reclaim the room for Sarah. It was too little ... too late ... but he had to make her feel safe again ... he had to … with no surprises … this time …
no hiding …
no … no hiding ...
no more ...
Chapter Thirty-Eight
When he woke, he was stiff and on edge. He heard crackling and pushed himself up from the floor. His arms, legs and neck were aching, but he limped towards the window, where he confirmed that it really was night time.
As he crossed the landing, a loud crack came from the street. When laughter followed, he realised that boys were setting off fireworks and his heart began to slow its pace.
He found Sarah downstairs with Clare, in her new room, discussing books that they had uncovered.
“Hi,” the women said and they smiled at him. He almost stopped on the threshold, because he didn't want to ruin the moment. Already, the house had started to feel like a home.
“Sleep well?” asked Sarah.
“A firework woke me. Must have been a big one.”
“Me too,” Sarah said. “I got up, because I wanted to see. Something normal. The world goes on.”
“And so do we,” said Clare.
Simon looked in the direction of the kitchen door. “Shall we go?” he said.
“Yeah,” said Sarah. “I'd like that.”
*
Local school children had made an effigy of Guy Fawkes using sacks stuffed with what appeared to be hollow fibre and straw. It stood at about six feet tall and had marker pen 'X's for eyes. Its nose was a backwards 'L' and whoever had drawn the mouth had diplomatically opted for a straight line.
Over two hundred people had gathered to watch him burn. An ice cream van was parked off to one side, a shiny fire engine sat to another.
The bonfire was tall enough so that everyone would have a decent view of the burning.
“Actually, it's sort of sickening,” Sarah said.
“Sort of?” said Clare.
A government official made an announcement, but his loudspeaker wasn't working, so they could barely hear him. A ripple of clapping and cheering worked its way from the front of the crowd. They joined in half-heartedly.
At last, Clare was feeling in control again. She wouldn't have said that she was back in her element, but here she was, walking among people as though she hadn't seen the things she had seen or done the things that she had done. She continued to clap, empowered by her secrets.
She had never felt like she belonged in society, even before the Third. She didn't want to belong. Except now she'd met Simon and that was different.
When a little boy smiled up at her, she smiled back and felt a momentary schizophrenia. Her smile had been automatic, but did that make it real or something well-practised? Was anything about her real?
The boy took a swig from his can of fizzy drink and was then weaving between the bodies to get nearer to the front.
“Look,” Sarah said.
A local teen, supervised by a fireman, used a flaming torch to set light to the bonfire. Once done, the crowd gave him a cheer and then cheered again as two men used torches to get the blaze really going.
As Clare had, Sarah found herself watching the crowd more than the fire itself. The children shrieked with pleasure as flames stretched up and up and up and leapt and cracked and barked and grabbed the Guy by the ankles, twisting and roaring and pulling sticks apart to lick at his hollow fibre body. All the while, his grim mouth was set with determination.
“It's going to be okay,” Sarah thought bitterly and laughed. Clare put an arm around her then.
Sarah found that she didn't mind it.
“It is going to be okay,” she thought. “This time, it really is.”
The crowd rippled and rolled like an animal, retreating from the growing flames, until the three of them were no longer lost in the middle, but standing very near to the front. Sarah was glad of the warmth on her face. Despite a hot shower, this was the first time she had felt warmed since the intense cold of the Third. She reached out for Simon's hand and when he took it her warmth was complete.
Three firemen were now standing in front of their vehicle with their arms folded. Like Simon, they were unsmiling. The fire had taken on its own life now and would burn unassisted for a good time to come. It created and recreated itself, finding new sources of fuel and using them up, throwing smoke into the air and ash to the embers. The belly of the fire roared, orange and blue and red, white and green.
The Guy's head was a flame, his fiery crown spiralling up and up and exploding above him. Amber sparks leapt like grasshoppers, turning the grass black.
Unlike the firemen, Simon saw things in the flames that he reasoned could not possibly be there. He watched Firdy's arm reach up out of the embers, the gloved hand melting, ringed with fire, seeking a grip
on the world. He saw the Third, a tidal wave of fury, crashing over her son, then drawing back, like fingernails digging great grooves into the world. He saw Naomi and Ian Moody and Jonathan, rolling in the ash among jaws and teeth and claws, turning over among smacking lips, tongues ...
A hand seized his arm.
Not Firdy this time.
One of the firemen.
Hauling him back.
Sarah holding him too.
Tugging at his sleeve.
Nine years old again. She'd always be nine years old to him.
“What were you doing?” she asked. “What were you looking at?”
Clare was also watching him intently.
He thought for a moment what to tell them and decided to tell them the truth, that he had imagined terrible things in the fire and that he had been afraid, but in the middle of it, as furious as the flames themselves, he had seen himself with the two of them, carving paths through the future, leaving the past behind.
## End ##
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About the Author
Dean Clayton Edwards writes in the South of France with his wife and two daughters. For more books by Dean, including free publications, sign up for updates at https://deancedwards.com
Other books by Dean Clayton Edwards
How to Remember Your Dreams – non-fiction
An ability to remember dreams is the basis for dream interpretation, lucid dreaming and dream analysis. This book will show you how to sleep better, have better dreams, improve memory and enjoy the dream realm.
Dreaming is thought to have many functions, including processing memories, exploring wish-fulfillment and improving mental and spiritual health. It's also a lot of fun.
Improve your life in all these ways and more with this straight-forward, friendly guide to the daily gifts from your subconscious.
Coming soon:
Strange Ideas – a novel
Connect with Dean Clayton Edwards