Cold Fire Read online

  Looking at the estate, it’s kind of like my dead eye leaks grey into the live one. That’s not exactly it, but it’s close. It’s close enough.

  The estate’s quiet. The same as it was the time before, and before that. I walk fast because the light feels weird. I know it’s midday. The sun tells me so, my watch tells me so, as do the shadows and the warmth and the length of time it took me to get here. But it feels like dusk’s just round the corner, too.

  I need to be here, but not for long. I want out while the sun is high.

  I stop where I saw the lost girl. I look around. There’s no welcome sign on the house door. I’m glad.

  I’m shaky, too. I could panic. I’m right in the centre of the estate. If someone comes for me, it’ll take a couple of minutes to get to safety. Back the way I came, or off Townshend and out to the main road.

  I don’t know why I think that’s safe, but I think it’s true, just the same. I don’t think the estate has any power beyond its arbitrary borders.

  The day’s bright and so it’s full of shadows. There’s nothing in the shadows. The burning men don’t live in the shadows.

  (And the burning women, Sam. Women burn just a brightly as men…)

  They burn in the twilight borders of day and night.

  Are they afraid of the sun?

  I have no idea. All I know is that I’ve only seen them at twilight.

  Do they live in the dark?

  I don’t know that, either. But I wouldn’t come here in the dark. I understand well enough to believe that this world I see is real. Real enough to me. Real enough so the things I don’t understand could hurt me. Maybe kill me.

  I shudder, goose bumps popping up all over my bare arms, then shake my head. I’ve got a headache coming, just wasps buzzing for now, but there’s an option on an upgrade to hornets in the future.

  Suddenly I’m aware of the sun reflected on the windows of the house to my left. I can’t see in, but something could see out, if it wanted to.

  Something could be watching me right now, and I’m standing in the street, wasting time.

  What am I looking for? A scrap of dress? A shoe, with the heel snapped off? Signs of a struggle, five and some years old?

  No. That’s stupid. I’m probably searching for something I’ll never find. Probably.

  What the hell am I doing?

  I laugh. In the light of day, I can do that.

  The cat comes out of the bushes that surround the property the burning man came from. There’s no sound, but I know it’s purring. There are thick posts and a railing, a weird kind of fence. It’s rubbing itself against a post. Content, or scratching. I don’t know anything about cats.

  I can almost see the ghost of a tail flicking.

  It doesn’t look like it’s going to try to kill me.

  (Look familiar, Sam?)

  There are no people. Nobody in the windows, no cars going by, no sounds. Just my heart, the scratch of the cat’s paws, clawing at the ground under the bush, at the edge of the property. Digging, clearing away the woodchip, lain to keep weeds away.

  There’s something there. The cat’s looking at me. It walks away. Sits on its haunches. I walk over, pull the unearthed treasure from the ground. It’s a phone. It’s switched on.

  The cat’s looking at me. I flick the phone open, brush the dirt from the screen, clear the buttons. It’s a flip up, so the buttons aren’t locked. I go into the menu. Check the call log.

  The last call is five years old. Six months. Eleven Days.

  I want out.

  My vision is going darker in both eyes. I think I’m going to faint.

  I want out, but the stranger grabs hold of me (suck it up, Sam) yanks my head down between my knees, holds it there until the stars fade.

  Finally I stand up.

  ‘What are you?’ I say.

  The cat doesn’t say anything. It’s mute. It just gives a switch of its stumpy tail, turns and walks away. I’m waiting for it to fade, gradually turn to grey, then nothing.

  It doesn’t. It reaches a fence, jumps, uses its claws and it’s gone, over the top, into someone, or something’s, back garden.

  The phone rings. I don’t jump. I just press to pick up and put it to my ear.

  ‘Sarah?’

  I say nothing.

  ‘You there yet?’

  A pause.

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  I don’t know what he’s referring to.

  It’s a memory of a conversation. I don’t think he could hear me, even if I could get my voice to work. This call happened back then. Back when the girl was lost.

  ‘That’s what they said. It’s the one facing the green, with the view of the big white building. It’s an Eventide home. I don’t know…some Christian thing.’

  I just listen. Concentrate on keeping my calm. My heart is running away from me.

  ‘Give me a call when you’re there.’ Another pause, more lengthy.

  ‘I’ll give Jess a call, ask again. Just go to the green and have a look.’

  I can see the green from where I’m standing, but I don’t want to move. I don’t want to lose the connection.

  ‘Can’t you hear anything?’ A long pause, broken by the occasional uh-huh.

  ‘That’s it. Can you see it?’

  I can’t see what they’re talking about, but I will, when they hang up.

  ‘I’ll wait. Go in. If it’s not the one I’ll come and meet you.’

  A boyfriend. He sounds very young. Not her father. A friend, maybe? Where was she going? A party? That age? Out alone?

  Why not? It’s a safe estate. I wouldn’t let my daughter go out alone, but I suppose some would.

  ‘OK. No problem. See you there.’

  Then nothing.

  I don’t bother to memorise the number. It’s a mobile. Over five years old. Whoever it was won’t have it now.

  I walk back to the bushes and bury the phone. I don’t think I could take it, even if I wanted to.

  I go to the green. The green goes to the edge of the road. A good short cut, but it’s fenced in. I stand and look. There’s a house there. Same as all the others in most respects. But there’s no doubt it’s the one. The big white building is off over the small green, which is maybe an acre shy of being a proper park.

  The building is big, and there are small buildings all around. It looks old, too. Most is white, but some is plain brick, with green patches. It’s the same I saw from the road. The Eventide Home.

  It looked grander from the road. From here, it looks desolate.

  I turn back. The house the guy of the phone spoke about is still there.

  I look with both eyes.

  It’s too bright.

  Should I knock?

  I should. But I know I’m not going to. I’m going to go home, and forget all about this, because I can’t save the girl. She’s dead. I couldn’t save Samantha, I can’t save Sarah, as much as I want to. They’re both lost girls.

  So I turn to go but when I open my eyes the red door of the house facing the green, in the shadow of Eventide, is before me, and the knocker is falling.

  It’s a hollow sound.

  *

  41.

  The door swings open as the knocker strikes.

  ‘Hello?’ I call. My throat is dry. I swallow. Try again.

  ‘Hello?’

  Still no answer.

  What was I expecting? What did I want? If someone had called out, I think I would have run as fast as my gimpy leg would let me, like a child playing knock up ginger.

  The driveway is empty.

  Whoever lives here could be in the back garden. I don’t think so, though. The house feels empty in a different way. It feels empty like I’d imagine a crypt would be empty. Nothing but skellingtons. Makes me think of Samantha, sitting on my knee reading a book about ghost pirates. Laughing as I read her the story and she looks at the pictures with bright wide eyes. Crying in the night with nightmares. Crying out that the skelling
tons were coming to get her. The skellingtons under the sheet.

  Maybe not such a sweet memory after all, but it’s the right one for this place.

  I push the door all the way open.

  The smell hits me as soon as I step in. I can’t place it. Maybe I don’t want to.

  In the corner by the door is a small table piled high with brochures. I pick one up, fully aware that I’m in someone’s house, illegally, and now I’m taking things.

  I call out again. No answer.

  I read the brochure. It’s for the estate. I relax, a little. The brochure, the empty driveway, the empty house…it’s a show home. The show home for the estate.

  They should have sold it on by now. The estate must be at least ten years old, if not more. Knowing it’s a show home makes me feel better about breaking in, but that’s a minor worry. The place is eerie. Silent. And then, there’s the smell.

  I head along the hall. Stop and examine my reflection in a long mirror hung from the wall. I don’t like what I see. I look ill, a sheen of sweat on a pale, drawn face.

  I turn away, carry on along the hall, trailing my free hand along the white painted banisters as I walk.

  There’s a door to the left, a door to the right, and a door straight on, into the kitchen. I go through into the room on my right. It’s the living room. No one ever lived there. It’s not quite barren, but it’s a cold, heartless room. A sofa, in the centre of the room. A dead electric fire set into the wall – one of those fires with the glass screen. No TV, not even a fake. A few pieces of furniture, but minimal. A coffee table, a bookshelf. I pull out a book, but five come away. Cardboard dust jackets, all one piece.

  In through the other door there’s a dining table with six places set. The dining room runs through to the back of the house, where there’s a large kitchen with no utensils but a double oven with six hobs and a plate warmer. Double doors on the back lead into a conservatory of white UPVC, set with cane chairs and a nest of tables – glass and cane.

  I clump back the way I came and up the stairs, into the bedrooms. Toward the master bedroom. That’s where the smell draws me.

  I ignore the other bedrooms now. The smell's got me. It pulls me into the en suite. The smell is there. It’s heavy in the air. Sickening.

  It’s what I’ve been looking for. It wasn’t the smell of a new house that drew me in. It was the smell of the blood staining the bath and the tiled floor.

  I gag, looking at it. It’s still fresh, running toward a drain set in the floor, running down the sides of the bath tub, along some unseen obstruction, then into a pool around the plughole. I figure out what the obstruction is. That’s where the girl’s body was. The blood is running down the sides, past her legs, into the drains.

  I don’t know how long I stand there, looking. Thinking.

  A long time.

  The house screams, shattering the crushing silence, and everything else, the world outside the blood, floods in.

  I run from the bathroom into the bedroom. The quilt on the bed is covered with dust and bird shit. The floors, too. A bedside cabinet lies over on its side. Glass from a broken window litters the floor. Everything is covered in grime. A smell overlays the blood. Musty. The smell of rot and long neglect.

  The curtains have mould on them, as do the walls, rising from the floor, creeping across the ceiling.

  The sun is going down. I can see my yellow through the broken window.

  ‘Get out.’

  The stranger’s voice, heard, not in my head, but through my ears. Louder than the scream that rattles through the house.

  The bathroom is bright behind me. Flickering, like a fire.

  I don’t look behind me. I run down the stairs. My right foot gives out on me and I slide down. Both hands go behind me to break my fall. My left hand drops my cane. My right wrist takes my weight on it at a strange angle and snaps.

  The screaming is tailing off. The sun is setting. The pain is terrible but I cradle my right hand and push myself up at the foot of the stairs. Then I run, out through the door, into the twilight air, yellow surrounding me.

  The windows all over the estate are brightening with a flickering, twitching, orange glow.

  It’s not just one house. It’s all of them.

  The estate is coming to life.

  I run on, despite the thumping pain in my chest. I run, because if I don’t, I won’t be leaving the estate. Not tonight. Not ever.

  My dead eye burns from the brightness of the estate, burning like the setting sun.

  There’s no time. I cut over the green and throw myself over the fence. I land on my shoulder.

  I close my eyes, right there where I lie, at the side of the road.

  At some point I must have passed out, because when I open my eyes again it’s full dark, with just a sliver of moonlight and a distant orange glow of street lights to see by.

  I look behind me, in a panic. I expect to see them coming, gliding across the green, on fire.

  But they aren’t there. The estate is glowing. There are lights behind every window. Every single house I can see is lit so brightly that a haze hangs over the estate. The light feels solid, until it reaches the green, where it fades and becomes natural moonlight.

  I’m safe enough. For now.

  I become aware of the pains wracking my body. My wrist is already swollen to twice its normal size. I pull out the phone I bought myself to replace my old phone. I call an ambulance before I call Helen.

  I think my wrist is broken, but that’s not the real problem. I’m fairly sure I’ve just had a heart attack. Time is more important than feelings.

  I sit for a long time. At least, that’s the way it seems. Helen gets there before the ambulance. She holds me tight. So tight.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

  ‘Shh,’ she says. ‘You’re not going to die.’

  I’m glad she tells me that. Myself, I’m not so sure.

  *

  Part Five

  -

  The Estate

  42.

  Apparently, my heart had a minor event. The way the doctors talked about it, I imagine small talk and canapés. It didn’t feel like a minor event. It felt like a new year’s bash, maybe for the millennium.

  Helen brought my tennis ball with her to the hospital. I held it while she explained my history to the doctors. She remembers things I don’t.

  There were monitors, scans, sticky pads on my clavicles, my chest, stomach, shins. I felt grey, a corpse on a slab. They kept me in but it’s just the right side that’s dead.

  But then maybe even my right side isn’t quite dead. I think back to a voice in my head that saved my life, telling me to get the hell out of the death house when I didn’t have the strength to move myself.

  I think about the stranger riding around like a passenger in the dead parts of me. I can’t figure out if he’s the kind of passenger who saves me from a wreck or causes one.

  I think these thoughts but they don’t make me happy. I stop thinking. It’s easier with practice.

  When I get out I’m holding my tennis ball left handed, and I’ve got a wheelchair on loan.

  I let Helen wheel me to the car. I don’t use it again.

  It’s one thing using a cane. It’s another thing altogether being in a wheelchair, even if it’s only for a while. The wheelchair sits folded in the porch for two weeks, then Helen finally gets that I’m not going to use it.

  I mooch around the house.

  We don’t make love, but we sleep a lot. I’m grey to start with, just pale after a while. I take to sitting in the garden. I miss the sea, but I can smell it. Just.

  Frank comes over. We sit on uncomfortable deck chairs in the back garden. Frank takes a beer. It’s gone five. The clocks are on summer time and the evenings are lighter.

  Helen’s got a glass of wine. I’ve got tea. I’m not about to give up tea. It’s all I’ve got left.

  ‘How’s the ticker?’ Frank asks, finally, after the usually chatte
r.

  ‘Better,’ I say. ‘My wrist hurts worse than my chest.’

  ‘That’s good, I guess,’ says Frank.

  Helen nods.

  ‘Another four weeks,’ I say, holding out the offending article, encased in off-white plaster.

  Helen’s signed it, like we’re kids. The sight of her scrawl still makes me smile.

  Things are better between us. Same for her, maybe, but better for me. I’m Sam at the moment. I have been since that night. Being Sam works for me. I just need a heart attack every now and then to remember who I am.

  ‘What were you thinking, jumping the fence?’

  He’s not chiding me. Frank doesn’t do that. He’s shaking his head, though.

  ‘Being stupid,’ I say. I told them that’s what happened. A shortcut gone wrong.

  ‘At least it’s just the thumb,’ I say, with a hint of a grin. I feel good. The sun’s shining. It’s safe. Twilight’s a long way off.

  ‘Better than a broken wrist, I suppose.’

  I nod. I agree. It’s the bone at the base of my thumb that’s busy knitting, underneath the big muscle there. It still hurts, though.

  ‘He thinks he’s twenty,’ says Helen.

  Frank takes a sip of his beer. ‘Men are pretty much stupid from the cradle to the grave.’

  ‘OK, pick on Sam day is it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Frank.

  ‘I don’t know why he keeps going that way. It’s not like it’s any shorter. Not really.’

  Frank raises his eyes to me, but I pretend not to notice.

  ‘Easy to trip over there. Best to take it to Skip’s. Some people don’t do what’s good for them, though.’

  Now he is chiding.

  I want to change the subject. Helen doesn’t know about the estate. I want her thinking about something else.

  ‘Another beer, Frank?’ I say.

  He runs his tongue over his teeth inside his mouth while he’s looking at me. I see his nod, just a small thing. He checks, holding it up to the light to see through the brown glass, but more for Helen’s benefit than mine.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind.’

  Helen makes to get up. I wave her down.