Authors: Kirsten Arcadio
As my eyes got used to the darkness in the room, I made my way to the window to open the curtains a crack, so that I could get a better look at the desk corner where I’d stood with Tony, just a couple of weeks ago. Looking up, I saw an empty space on the shelf where the clippings file had been, the wood now bereft and nude.
Vince walked over to the desk from the doorway where he’d been standing, watching my reaction.
‘Not good news?’
I sucked in my cheeks. ‘No. The clippings file isn’t here.’
‘Any idea where it might be now?’
I stood very still as I thought about it, listening to pipes grumbling somewhere in the background, and I shook myself. An image popped into my head of Julia berating the assistant in the New Age shop.
‘Yes, I think I know where it might be.’
Once at the shop, we parked up and ran.
‘Show me where you think these things are,’ said Vince, breathless as we reached the entrance.
A pathetic padlock sat on the door latch. Vince bent down to examine it and two seconds later he’d snapped the metal spring open, inviting me to walk straight in. Torch on, low slung by my side, we followed our noses to the place where I’d seen the books on my previous visit. Incense hit my nostrils and I felt choked.
‘You all right?’ Vince swivelled round and put one hand on my back.
Tentatively, I moved into the womb of the shop. We fumbled forwards very slowly, trying to avoid the paraphernalia on the floor.
At the bookshelf, I bent down. ‘Here they are, let’s have a look inside.’ I checked the books, thumbing through them one by one until I got to the last one, volume number seven. As I held the golden binding upside down and flicked through the pages, several small bits of paper flew out. Bingo
‘These are the missing clippings. Let’s gather them back up into the pages of this book and get out of here.’ I felt faint.
I shoved the clippings back into the book. Then Vince gathered up the bound volume and turned to go. ‘Come on Elena! We’ve got what we need so let’s get out of here.’
I stumbled after him, fighting that sinking feeling I knew well from my childhood. I couldn’t breathe. Once outside, I fell to my knees, gulping the fresh night air into my lungs. The feeling of light-headedness started to trigger the usual chain reaction, but this time it was worse. It was as if all the tension from the last few weeks had built up inside and was threatening to squeeze the life out of me. The feeling of being pursued had finally caught up with me. Vince’s warmth somewhere behind me was a lifeline in the dark, something I’d been avoiding needlessly. My childhood experiences had hardened my heart: somewhere along the line I’d decided letting my defences down equated to weakness which might lead me to end up treading the same path as my mother, or maybe worse.
‘Breathe,’ I thought I heard Vince say, somewhere far away, and I obeyed. I had to trust this man, I had to let go. Opening my eyes I found myself nose to nose with him, his face contorted in an expression of concern which appeared both comforting and strange.
‘I’m sorry for getting you into this,’ I said.
He merely smiled and thrust a bottle into my hand. ‘Here, drink this.’
I let myself into the house with Vince behind me, carrying the book we had removed from the shop. Once in the entrance hall, there was a rush of air as he came right up behind me to take my arm, a little forcibly, in order to help me up the stairs.
The adrenalin rush had dropped, leaving me dead tired. My determination to prove wrongdoing on the part of Julia and Iain was weakening and I knew I had to pull myself together in order to stay on course.
‘It’s OK, Vince,’ I told him. ‘Really. I don’t need any help. I just want to get to bed.’
‘Can I come?’ he winked again and this time I did not resist him.
When I opened my eyes, daylight was flooding through the window and it took me a few moments to remember what had happened. I looked around for Vince but the house was silent and I knew I was alone. I hugged myself despite the warmth of my duvet, wondering why I had slept in so late. On the end of my bed was the book we had taken from the New Age shop, half open with the clippings spilling out onto my bedspread. Sitting up in bed I craned my neck to get a better look.
On cue, the telephone by my bed rang.
‘Elena, are you up?’
‘Hi Vince. No I’m not.’
‘You OK?’
‘Yes, but I’ve only just woken up. What are these files doing on my bed? Did I put them here?’
‘That’s why I’m ringing. I’m on my way back now. Start reading. I’ll be with you in about half an hour.’
Half an hour?
How far away was he? Half an hour was a long way around here. It meant he could be some ten to twenty miles away. Or busy with something. Whilst pondering this, I got up and showered quickly, leaving my hair wet and dripping as I pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, before sitting down on my unmade bed to look more closely at the paper strewn on the end of it.
I eyed the clippings for a while. Turning my attention to the
‘Man, Myth and Magic’
volume I noticed the pages looked oddly clumped together towards the back. Slowly, I prised the book open, grabbing at a smaller sheaf of paper which was stuck between the folds. Turning the book upside down to shake the wad of paper out, I was surprised to find it wouldn’t budge. Remnants of yellowed glue were splattered towards the spine and after tugging gently at it, I realised the paper would rip before I’d get it out in one piece. I tutted. Whatever this was, I would have to read through it within the casing of the larger tome.
Leafing through, I saw the paper was covered in Tony’s distinctive, forward-slanting hand.
Tony Elwis
, it read.
Autumn diary.
I ran my fingers over the pages, which were thin and brittle and laced with a familiar odour. Leaning down I inhaled. The lack of dust on this notebook made it easier to take in a thick masculine stench of tobacco and after shave. The tobacco smell was rough and herb-like with a tinge of something akin to cannabis. The after shave was almost certainly something from the Eighties: raw, pungent and cheap.
The pages were so fragile they needed careful handling. When I felt ready, I started to leaf through, afraid of what I would find, and sure enough a familiar sensation crept over me as I studied the scrawl inside. As I read through, my head hurt and I screwed my eyes up to decipher the handwriting. It was smudged in many places and often jumped lines in unexpected places.
A few pages in, I read
‘I watched the woman next door from my window: so tall, pale, brittle and watchful…’
and caught my breath so violently I began to choke. Further on the author described Iain as having no soul and his view of Julia made my chest feel tight again. Worst of all, the writing matched that of the dream diary.
A sense of otherworldliness descended as I read and I tried to piece together what I was reading with the events in the village of the past few weeks. Something didn’t quite add up. For what seemed like a long time, I stared into space, trying to find Tony in the gap there, between the real and imagined, between my dream world and the cold light of day. Maybe my doctors had been right all those years ago.
I didn’t hear Vince come in, nor even come up the stairs and stand in my doorway. His shadow enveloped mine. ‘That was an illuminating read,’ he said, making me jump.
I looked up, but said nothing. I allowed myself to take a long look at him - wondering what he knew - and for once, it was he who flinched.
‘Elena-’
I interrupted. ‘I’ve read all through Tony’s diary. I suppose you have too?’
‘Yes. But who is he?’
‘You really don’t know?’
‘No, you mentioned him before, but I have no idea who he is. What was more pressing was the clippings file. I went over to my office, photocopied it, then took it straight to the police.’
I wondered how long I’d been asleep for. Glancing over at my clock I was shocked to see it was 11am. I’d assumed it was much earlier.
‘Don’t worry, I rang the surgery to tell them you were sick. Someone is going to ring the patients on your list for the rest of the week to reschedule them.’
I smiled at the thought of Louise and Lucy’s reaction to Vince ringing me in sick. They would have a field day with it.
‘What do they know?’ I asked, suddenly alarmed.
‘Don’t worry about Louise and Lucy, I can handle them. Or Emma will handle them. Either way, they’re not your main concern here.’
I looked back down at the open books and papers on my bed and picked up the
‘Man, Myth and Magic’
volume.
‘I didn’t know you were into dreams, prophesies and all that sideways mind shit,’ Vince continued, still standing by the door. He didn’t look impressed.
‘I’m not,’ I lied. ‘I thought he was.’
‘Who? You mean your mystery friend? Was that why he left all this stuff in that book?’
I stared at him, hands frozen on the outside of Tony’s diary.
‘But you were right, this shit has been going on for years. Before now, there was no concrete evidence people had disappeared under odd circumstances, but the fact that your neighbours have so carefully collated a clippings file of these disappearances means the police are going to want to talk to them. The clippings are like trophies. That’s what the DI at the police station said.’
‘What do you think?’ I asked.
‘The sideways mind shit is safe with me, don’t worry,’ he replied.
I got up to level with him, but he put out a hand to hold me away by the shoulder, silencing me with his unsmiling wink, the one which made me wince. We stood like that for several moments before his expression changed, the concern which flickered there replaced by desire.
We embraced: a fast movement, quick and tight, in stark contrast to the slow, gentle affection of the previous night. My world filled up with him and when an odd rattle sounded just outside, I reacted too slowly. Afterwards I realised that as a full paid up singleton, I’d never heard anyone let themselves into my house before. Vince heard it too, and after a few seconds pulled away from me to cock his head to one side. But just as he made to turn round, a crashing blow caused my ears to close and my vision to swim in and out of focus in an uncanny, sickly kaleidoscope of colour, before blackness descended and my head hit the floor. Muffled grunts and a bang followed by a crash found themselves into my consciousness, but the order was hazy and I could not quite tell where the sounds were coming from. Something wet was dripping down from my nose and my lips and I couldn’t move.
It seemed an eternity before I was able to open my eyes.
Feet and yelling. That was all I could register at first. I tried to move but my neck hurt and when I tried to open my eyes, the left one remained shut. I couldn’t breathe, but although it felt like dying, nobody was paying me any attention. Sound came tearing back into my ears so violently it hurt, and I knew I had to get up. Wrenching my neck upwards, I saw with my one good eye, that two men were struggling, pulling, pushing, tearing and ripping. One of them was taller and lither than the other, who looked small and wiry. All dressed in black, he reminded me of a contract killer – and then I realised who I was looking at.
At the same time, a woman’s voice screamed.
‘She’s up! Get her!’
I whirled round, suppressing the instinct to let go of the vomit which was rising up in the back of my throat. Julia was right behind me, arms raised, hair and eyes wild. I had a split second to move before her long fingers pillaged my hair, pulling and ripping at what I now realised was already a pretty nasty head wound. I turned again to see a flash of silver and then I screamed again.
‘Vince, he’s got a gun!’
In a flash, Vince appeared to strengthen his hold on Iain’s upper arms, pushing them both out into the corridor. More crashing and thudding ensued out of my line of sight, but no matter how desperately I wanted to follow them, I had an immediate problem of my own in the form of Julia, who was bearing down on me once more with a heavy looking object –I supposed Tony’s
‘Man, Myth and Magic’
book – above her head. In the split second that followed, I threw myself down on the floor and rolled under the bed. Having calculated that I was thin enough to crawl to the other side on my front, I shifted forwards catching my head on metal elements of the underside of my bed frame as I did so. Intense pain temporarily blinded me and I bit my lip hard enough to draw blood in order to stop myself from screaming.
Now in flight mode, I dragged myself quickly to the other side, wrenched myself out and threw myself at the doorway. Turning sharp right, I ran down the stairs and dived towards the front door at the bottom. Hot on my heels, Iain made a swiping motion towards me and sent me flying. Loud thudding signalled Julia’s flight behind me on the stairs.
More stars lit up the darkness behind my eyelids, but this time I was ready. I willed myself to over come the desire to freeze, just as I’d been taught, and I sprang up, my muscles taught and ready to strike. She was right behind me, holding a large book in her right hand which looked like another of the
‘Man, Myth and Magic’
series. She aimed it at my jaw. A short whistling punctuated the air as the book flew towards me, but I was quick. I could see she hadn’t been trained to fight and I punched the book out of her hand before twisting back and raising my right leg to kick her away. I screamed, a short aggressive sound, before following through. One punch and she was down. As she fell, I saw the surprise in her eyes, and I allowed myself a smirk before I jumped over where she was lying on the ground to pin her hands behind the back and deliver a final chop to the back of her neck. Good. She would be out cold for a while.
‘Watch out!’ Vince shouted.
I turned, too late. Iain was right in front of me, his eyes cold. His fist connected with my head. As everything started to go into slow motion, I knew I only had seconds to get him back before I dropped. In one swift movement, I knocked the gun out of his hand and wound his right hand behind his back whilst Vince got hold of his left. Together, we pushed him to the floor. At least I was still fast. I pushed my knee into the small of his back and whacked him on the head.