Bloodeye Page 5

V. Click; ’07

  Cognition.

  Simplicity, for the sane. For the insane, a winding road. For you, a path with endless forks and no sign as to which way you should travel. An endless road you run and run hurried, but with no idea where you hope to get. A dirt track in places, in others, overgrown with hawthorn and brambles, or strewn with sharp flint and shingles under bare feet, or fluid and cold, like glacial shifts, fluid and hot like lava flowing and splitting around a boulder. To the left, a road, as to the right. Take the left, take the right, moderate interest in the outcome but ultimately, time after time, you go nowhere but to the next road.

  Eventually, faced by the endless chase for answers and solid ground, you grow tired and lose interest. Yet still you run, awake and asleep.

  Hounded.

  While you sleep alone in your bed (because she’s dead dead dead) your feet peddle under the covers, scrunching up between your legs so you feel that you’re bound (in rope) and you bite down on your tongue, trying to break free or keep the screams inside.

  You’re not sure which it is—freedom or screams. Not sure which is the more frightening. Not sure it matters, or if you even care.

  Insanity is tortuous, cyclic, endless. A mandala drawn in blood with a brush of bone.

  You are broken.

  Can a broken thing ever be mended?

  Can a man mend himself, without a crutch of love or medication? Can you?

  Can you?

  You ask yourself again, until, maybe, you are answered.

  26

  Keane wasn’t entirely sure what month it was when his house was repossessed, but it was cold enough for a coat indoors at the time because the gas had been turned off. He wasn’t entirely sure if the electricity had been cut, too, because he didn’t use anything electric.

  When people called at the door, he was polite enough. Sent them on their way when he could, let them in when he couldn’t, and handed over the keys, eventually, when it was time.

  He didn’t go bankrupt, and he wasn’t destitute. He had money in the bank. It was just that he didn’t want the house anymore, and he didn’t have the energy to sell and buy and move all the things that the house was full of. So, he guessed, he let the bank do the work.

  And, as the cold weather turned to snow, he was without a home. He sold the car, because that, too, was part of her.

  Whenever his thoughts travelled back, he pushed them forward, instead.

  He bought a new car, a small hatchback. Everything he owned could fit in the trunk and the backseat. There was enough room for him to sleep in the passenger seat if he ramped the chair all the way back.

  With the money he made from the car and his savings and the sale of all his camera equipment, he had enough to live on. Simple needs; food, mainly, and gas. The car was taxed and insured on his old address. He didn’t bother changing it.

  No job or address, a bank account with money in it. A car, a few bags of things he couldn’t or didn’t want to live without.

  Quiet time.

  Keane was having quiet time, out of the light where his shadow couldn’t find him.

  He didn’t know if it was nuts.

  Truth is, he didn’t care. Didn’t care for anything at all.

  Nothing matters, he thought, as he sat once again in the cold, away from the passing lights of the traffic. Muted shadow travelled through the car. His shadow.

  Every time the lights hit Keane, his eyes roamed the dancing shadows, searching for him. Searching for his killer shade.

  And what are you going to do if you find him again?

  Keane spent the earlier part of winter ’06/’07 wondering about that and little else.

  He didn’t worry if he was insane. He thought he probably was.

  Teresa thought so, too.

  Get back on your horse, baby, she’d say, admonishing him gently, like she always did.

  “I can’t,” he’d say in the empty car while frost crept along the inside of the windscreen. “I’ve lost my horse, Teresa,” he’d say. “Lost my fucking horse.”

  Sometimes he cried. One night he got to wondering if her corpse was frozen and crusted with ice in the dark back in the cave, but he shied away from that thought pretty quickly.

  Christmas passed unnoticed, as did New Year’s Eve.

  He didn’t know it was ’07 until maybe the fifth day of the new year, when he left the car for supplies and a hot meal his body craved.

  “Shit,” he said, looking at the papers at the newsstand in the service station on the London Orbital.

  People looked at him as they passed. He didn’t mind that they stared and wrinkled their noses. He knew he stank. His hair and beard were greasy, straggling things. His clothes were crumpled because he slept in them. He reeked of stale tobacco and body odor. His teeth were yellow and his breath rancid from sweet drinks and lack of brushing.

  “Shit,” he said again, aware of a young mother scowling. The woman put herself between Keane and her toddler as she passed.

  I look like a tramp, thought Keane. He wondered, for a moment, if he cared.

  You might not, said Teresa. But I do.

  The last time his lips had touched her, he’d had his face in her blood on a cold, dirty floor. The last time they’d kissed.

  He put his hand to his cheek, half-expecting to find something tacky at the side of his face. But there was only his beard.

  “Sir?”

  He sniffed, aware he was crying in public, looking like a tramp.

  “I’m okay,” he said, thinking someone was asking after him, like a normal person might.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” said the man at Keane’s shoulder. Keane turned slightly so he could see who was talking to him like he was some drunk in a pub.

  The guy wore security guard’s clothes. He looked kindly enough, but Keane noticed the man wasn’t close, wasn’t far. Being careful, wary of…

  Tramp.

  You’re a tramp, baby.

  It hit hard enough to sting—that realization she was right and he was wrong and that this wasn’t the way.

  It wasn’t the way.

  Keane nodded to the guard. “I’m leaving,” he said. The guard followed Keane to the doors. Keane stepped through and out into the cold, bright air of a new winter.

  That night, he slept in clean sheets in a bed-and-breakfast and didn’t sleep in his car ever again.

  27

  That winter, long and cold, Keane passed the time conversing with shadows.

  Honey, his wife would say, you need a shower. So, he’d take a shower, or he’d eat. Once, he’d cared for her, looked after her needs following the accident that took the use of her legs.

  Now, she cared for him.

  He knew she was dead, but having her in his head made it easier. Life was easier with her there, and slowly, as the winter drew on, he came to relish her little interjections into his life, her guidance and her good sense.

  He wasn’t completely without empathy. He understood the owners of the bed-and-breakfast at which he stayed were wary of him. Understanding this, he kept his distance, was polite, considerate. He was a very quiet resident, and, thanks largely to Teresa’s silent prodding, clean and well-kempt. He kept the beard. Didn’t quite know why. He just did.

  When the last of the snow thawed, when the rains came and it was cool but not cold, Keane began to walk. Not far. Not compulsively. Just into town, and then back to the bed-and-breakfast. Sometimes he’d buy a pack of cigarettes, sometimes not. He smoked less, showered more, ate twice a day instead of four times, and quit drinking.

  When springtime came to the city, people didn’t look at him like he was crazy anymore. He had learned to smile.

  28

  Conversing with shadows with a smile on his face.

  Smile, baby. Just smile, she’d say.

  So he smiled at people he passed on his walks. Smiled at the owners of his small room with mismatched furniture and old television. Smiled and passed
the time of day with the ladies in the newsagents.

  Funnily, as he looked in the mirror each day, the haunted look in his face was gone, though she became more present than ever.

  In the dark, though…in the dark.

  She fell quiet some nights. Like she was afraid. Afraid of him.

  Brother. Keane’s shade.

  And, in the dark, Keane waited. Each night, before sleep, he waited. Flicked the light on, off, on, off.

  Empty.

  The shadows were empty.

  29

  At around 7:40, Keane switched the light off for the final time and sat up from his bed.

  Where is it?

  Not her voice, this time, but his own.

  Where was the photograph with his writing. The one with Brother Shadow’s words.

  It ends Tuesday.

  Keane searched his luggage with a deep frown on his face. Naked, his hair receding but long and his beard thick. The frown grew. He became frantic for a moment, because she wasn’t there and neither was the picture.

  Where the fuck is it?

  He rocked back on his heels and slammed his sole suitcase shut. He didn’t have it.

  What did you do with the picture, Keane?

  He didn’t know. But there was only one place he could have left it. The old house.

  30

  Keane pulled the car tight in at the curb and turned off the ignition. There was a sign in the driveway for an auction company. The bank had put the house on the market and it hadn’t sold, or things just moved slowly when a house was repossessed. He didn’t know which and didn’t suppose it mattered much.

  It was early still, and Sunday morning. Not many people in the street would be up and about.

  It wasn’t like he was breaking in, either. He still had a key…if they hadn’t changed the locks, it would just be…going back for something. Like going out in the morning, forgetting your wallet and going back to get it. Nothing more.

  He watched the house long enough to smoke a cigarette in the car, though. The window down, he listened to the sounds of his old street, too. Didn’t hear any music. A dog barked for a short time, down the road a little way, until someone whistled and it went quiet again. There was no through traffic on the street. No walkers.

  He dropped his cigarette on the road and wound up his window. Took a deep breath and took the short walk from the curb up to the house.

  The front garden needed attention, but otherwise it looked pretty much the same as it had when he’d locked up and left. Maybe the porch step needed another coat of red paint, maybe the windows needed cleaning…but not much was out of place.

  He had to push the door to shift the pile of bills, demands and kebab shop flyers. With his toe, he pushed them to one side before closing the door behind him.

  No one saw me come in, he thought. Sure of it.

  Take your time, honey.

  “I will,” he said.

  The stair lift was still in place. But the house was different. It felt empty and abandoned. A whole winter without heat, without people to shift the dust around. It was cold inside, even though it was springtime and Keane wore only a T-shirt and pullover. A faint sheen of dust on the furniture. No doubt the same in the carpets, too, though he couldn’t see that.

  He flicked a light switch up and down a couple times. Nothing. Of course. The power company had shut off the electric even before he’d left his house.

  He’d figured there would be no electric, no heat, no water. He hadn’t figured on the house actually being uncomfortably cold, though. Felt a little like he was rooting around in a corpse.

  At that thought, a remembered feeling of lying in his wife’s cold and congealing blood surfaced and threatened his resolve. He fought the memory away, same as always, with her voice in his head.

  You there, Teresa?

  I like it when you call my name, she said, and like that the memories were gone and it was just he and Teresa in the house, like back then.

  Where’d I put it, baby? Do you know? he spoke, this time, in his head. He didn’t try to think through it, or think about it at all. She was in his head, and that was all there was. His companion, even now. Guiding him, holding his hand. Caring for him, like he’d cared for her.

  I never saw it, she reminded him.

  No help there, he thought, but not at Teresa, and not in a mean way. He’d never be mean to her, not even in his head. She’d feel it and the last thing he wanted was to hurt her.

  The couch in the front room was covered in a thin layer of white-gray dust. It wasn’t where he wanted to be, so he let himself wander through the house, not thinking much of anything, but touching things sometimes, or just standing for minutes at a time looking around at all the things he’d left behind when he’d left.

  Fled?

  Maybe. He shrugged, alone in the bedroom, unaware that he’d made any kind of gesture.

  Probably. Running from his shadow. But what else was he going to do?

  The bastard wasn’t around anymore. He knew that. Knew the shadow was gone, or, more accurately, the thing that lived in his shadow. Nothing, now, for a long time. It’d be a year in the summer. Not yet, but Keane thought that might be hard on him and Teresa’s memory within his mind.

  But the picture wasn’t around. Funny that he thought he needed to see it. He knew well enough what was in the picture, and the shadow’s message on the back was burned into his head.

  Yet that feeling that he was back in this place for some reason persisted, and if anything grew stronger. It went from a tickle to a punch, an urge to find something…some kind of reason, or answer, or…

  Fuck it, he thought, about to give up. And at that moment another thought:

  Attic.

  Her voice. His wife. Odd, because of course she wouldn’t know where the picture went. She was dead, wasn’t she?

  Dead, he thought, but just to himself.

  Attic, Keane. Go in the attic.

  She sounded…eager.

  31

  Keane hadn’t planned on staying until dark, or going in the attic. The only source of light he had was his cigarette lighter and he didn’t want to use it in the attic near the lagging. He didn’t know how flammable the stuff was and he wasn’t about to risk burning down the house, even if it wasn’t his anymore.

  Don’t worry, she told him. I’ll show you. Take my hand.

  He didn’t want to hurt her, tell her she was just a voice in his head.

  So what if she was, though?

  She was his, he was hers.

  And she was dead. If anyone could negotiate the dark, surely the dead could?

  He pulled down the ladder and clambered up into the musty blackness of the attic (warmer than below, for some reason).

  He reached out at her bidding to take her hand…and screamed when he found it.

  32

  He screamed, then, shortly after as she comforted him in her arms (God, he could smell her, feel her…she was standing…she’s solid) he cried. He cried there in the dark and had no idea for how long.

  After a time—maybe an hour, maybe more, she let him move. His legs ached from standing so still in her cold arms.

  “You can’t rest, baby,” she said. He couldn’t see her, but he could feel her and her words weren’t in his head, but coming from her mouth.

  “You know he’s not dead,” she said.

  Keane shook his head. He didn’t know if his dead wife could see the gesture in the dark, but he couldn’t speak. Not yet.

  His throat felt raw. Like he’d been choked by his shade all over again.

  “He’s coming again, Keane. Brother Shadow. He told me.”

  Finally, Keane found his voice.

  “No,” he said, and felt so tired, so afraid, and yet comforted by this ghost he loved, whether she was real or imagined, he didn’t care. He’d missed her so much, and to have her hand in his in this dark place was more than he could ever wish. He did wonder if he’d finally broken completely, but
she felt, she sounded so real.

  If this was breaking, he thought, then he could deal with it.

  But not him.

  “You know it’s true, Keane. You know.”

  The bastard of it was that he did know. He didn’t need her to tell him, yet it drove it home painfully. After all, hadn’t he been looking for him all this time? Trying to find his dark partner, Brother Shadow?

  “He call himself that?”

  Even though he couldn’t see and she was just a ghost, or maybe his tortured imagination, he sensed her nod, just as he now knew she had sensed his.

  “What is it, Teresa? Who is he?”

  This time she shook her head.

  “I don’t know what it is, Keane. I know it’s not you, though. You know that, right? You believe that?”

  Keane wasn’t so sure. He wondered, often, late into the night. Was his shadow him? A part of him? Something he couldn’t see, like an epileptic seizure dream?

  Was his shadow just a fugue state? Keane, acting out some kind of demon inside? Did he own this? Was all this his doing?

  She heard his thoughts, even though she wasn’t in his head but outside in the dark attic.

  Teresa squeezed his hand.

  “No, honey. No. Don’t think that. You don’t need to think like that. He is Brother Shadow. He’s real. Real as you.”

  He noted she didn’t say “real as me,” but then did it matter? Maybe she was just a part of him, but either way, she was telling him like it was, and despite the chills he felt, the fear, the fucking awful horror of his dead wife and a demon in his own shadow, he smiled.

  That smile felt good here, like a torch against the darkness.

  And at that thought, he knew she smiled, too.

  “A torch against the darkness?”

  “It’s all I can give you. I can’t come back. I can’t fight your battle. I can give you a torch against the dark.”