‘You know why I’m here,’ I told him bluntly, hopping from foot to foot, arms tight across my chest. Even though it was mid-summer, I was cold. I was always cold. The doctors told me it’s Crohn’s, eating me from the inside out, draining me down to just skin and bones.
‘Look, I …’ A single hand lifted pleadingly, fingertips calloused. I wondered if he still played the guitar or if I’d ruined that hobby for him completely when I’d smashed his beloved Gibson. ‘You can’t be here. Do you understand?’
‘The names.’ I glowered at him, felt the throb of my pulse within my inner ear. ‘Tell me the names.’
‘You know that I can’t, I––’
‘You know them.’ I shuffled towards him, the worn soles of my trainers whispering against his concrete step. ‘And you’re going to tell me.’
‘Really, I can’t. Please, don’t do anything … irrational. Look, just come inside and we can––’ He eased back from the doorway to gesture to his hallway, to the plush carpet and floral wallpaper. To the black phone resting on top of a slim pine table.
I bit down on my tongue and moved fast. Side-stepping the porch, I lunged at the red brick of the house, forehead first. I heard my nose crunch before I felt the warmth of blood seeping down my face. With a grimace, I returned to the step, light-headed, to the sound of Roger gasping, the sound gargling in his throat like a fledgling scream.
‘What are you––’
‘The names.’ My bones ached with exhaustion.
Roger’s hand again crossed the threshold, trying to reach me. But his grip had always been weak.
‘Tell me the names.’
‘Please,’ he begged, voice raw with desperation, ‘don’t, don’t do this. Stop hurting yourself, stop––’
I smiled at him and he stopped, remembering the game all too well. I kept my voice low, level. But there was a pounding within my skull that was getting loud and desperate.
‘Either you tell me the names,’ I explained, ‘or I’ll pound my head against the wall of your house until my fucking brains are splattered across your front step.’
‘Please, stop, just––’
‘And when the police come …’ I continued, holding him in a fixed stare whilst he squirmed beneath my gaze like a fish caught on a line, mouth gaping open with each anxious breath he drew, ‘… do you think they’ll believe that I did this to myself? You tried so hard to bury our history, but I can dig it up again. Maybe I’ll tell the police that’s why you took my head and bashed my skull against the bricks until I went limp in your arms, just to keep me quiet, just to keep your sordid secrets safe?’
‘Don’t,’ he pleaded pathetically, sweat glistening on his craggy forehead. ‘Don’t do this.’
‘What would your neighbours – your colleagues – think?’
‘I’m begging you.’ He gripped the door frame, knuckles white.
‘What would your wife think?’
‘Don’t.’ It was a whisper. His shoulders sank as the last of his resistance ebbed away. I’d worn him down.
‘The names and I walk away into the night.’ I had to keep pushing, keen to claim what I came for.
Now he was silent.
‘The names and I forget where you live.’
‘And what will you do with them?’
I made the mistake of tilting my head to the side, causing spots to explode in my line of vision. Wincing, I swiped away the blood that had gathered beneath my nose and squared my shoulders, needing to look firm. ‘Does it matter?’ My question was followed by a guttural cough, my lungs stinging enough to make my eyes water, helping me forget the pain pulsing in my temple. The night was creeping in, I needed to get home.
Roger straightened up, ran a hand through his thin white hair, pale blue eyes never daring to move from my bloodied face. ‘Will you hurt them?’ His forehead crinkled.
‘I’ll make them remember.’
‘Why can’t you just move on?’
I wanted to laugh at him, at the hypocrisy of his comment. Instead, I rubbed my slick blood between my thumb and forefinger. ‘I refuse to live a lie.’
He flinched and then withdrew to the plush comfort of his home, emerging less than a minute later with a folded piece of paper. My trophy.
Satisfied, I walked away, felt his eyes on me until I was out of sight.
And now the names are mine. A story I know the beginning, middle and end to. I whisper them as I trudge into town to wait in line at the job centre, mumble them into my pillow as I lie in bed and wait for exhaustion to take me.
I’m on the third one. I get a jolt of excitement every time I consider that. And yet …
My brother. Her. Their faces find me when I try to sleep. Their last words to me the lyrics to a song I’d much sooner forget. But this time is different. I know it is. While they were just surviving, she’s thriving. I’ve seen it.
My excitement curdles with fear. I’ve lost so much that I’m hollow. Yet still I gamble what remains.
I twist onto my side and clutch a pillow against my stomach, folding into it. Cold. It’s always so cold. It’s hours until the sun will glow through my window, golden and warming. Until then I’m left staring at its substitute – the street lamp just a few feet from my building. I can see the moths that circle it, foolish and committed in their pursuit of light.
Tomorrow, I will catch two trains and one bus. Tomorrow, I will find out if the gift I left in the woods has been found. My stomach clenches, the anticipation becoming unbearable. I can hear myself groaning as I hold my pillow ever tighter. I wish I could have stayed there, in the woods. I wish I could have waited for dawn to bleed across the sky, for birds to begin their chorus within the trees, for the animals of the undergrowth to stir. Those moments, when the world is first stirring, can feel so pure. So hopeful. But then every day ends the same, no matter how it begins.
I loop the names around my mind one final time before I surrender to sleep.
An hour later and Beth was sitting in the centre of the plush sofa they’d got on sale at Next. Her computer was resting on a cushion on her lap. She was idly checking her emails and social media, but she knew that really she was biding her time until she gave in to her curiosity and entered every name on the list into Google. She just wanted answers, which was normal, right? But what if she was just giving the author what they wanted, playing into the hands of a prankster?
Was Josh right? What if the younger team members at work were just trying to wind her up? It seemed like their style. Perhaps it was a reference to a film she hadn’t seen. Her peers at the cinema had an encyclopaedic knowledge of movies. Often, they’d lace their conversations with relevant quotes or anecdotes, which made Beth feel even more excluded from their social clique than she already was.
When it came to films, Beth was sorely out of the loop. It was partly what had drawn her to the job at the cinema; that, and the fact that she managed to get through to the interview stage. As a projectionist, she could finally catch up on the world of the silver screen. As a child, she’d loved to watch fantasy adventure films, where magic and reality collided, films like Labyrinth and Dark Crystal. But as a teenager, cinema trips ended, films and their magic became lost to her.