Harvest (22 page)

The black and white kitten was
the likeness of the cat that had come to Rachel’s flat all those
days ago. Grim realisation planted its chilled spindly fingers on
her skin. Three weeks ago Catherine had been assaulted by some
‘thing’ in her flat. Three weeks ago a cat found it’s way to her...
An omen?

Catherine’s cat?

Cat? –
Catherine?

Chapter
Seventeen

Craig swiped his camera up and
shoved it in his padded shoulder bag and jogged to the door. Vicki
waited, dressed in her familiar baggy jumper and tight fitting
jeans.

“
You took your time?
Haven’t gone and got yourself a babe have you?” Vicki
teased.

“
If I did I would break
it to you over coffee; not just tell you on my doorstep like this.”
He down turned the corners of his mouth and gave her puppy dog
eyes. “Wouldn’t want to shatter your hopes and wishes.”

“
Sod, the coffee, we
could celebrate with a pint of Snakebite that my stalker is finally
getting a life.” The mention of snakebite recalled unpleasant
memories of a night with Vicki drinking him into a
stupor.

“
What’s the job then
gov?”

“
A source in the council
has told me a councillor makes a weekly trip to a gay sauna on
Chalk Farm Road.”

“
Really? Is being gay
still news?”

“
I think it would be news
to his wife and three kids.”

“
The front page of the
local rag isn’t the best way to find that out.”

“
He should have thought
about that before he started getting his jollies in the steam
rooms.”

News is news and that was it
for Vicki. She was right, he didn’t have what it took to be a
journalist. “So we watch and take pictures of him going in.”

“
That’s the plan so
far.”

“
Not sure I like the ‘so
far’ part of that but I’m in. I need the money.” This really was
cheapening his talent. He was glad there was a distance between
them and the west end, all he needed was Vicki pimping him as
paparazzi. If his career led to him making a living from snapping
some heartthrobs sweat patches or some pop-star going commando he
might just end it all now.

“
So,
come on then, you gonna tell me how you really busted your arm or
are you sticking with the ‘I fell running up the stairs’ story,
when we all know you wouldn’t dream of taking stairs when there’s a
perfectly good,
if not scary,
lift?”

Craig flushed at having to lie
to her as they headed to the lift. “Well if you want the truth. I
was looking through those photo’s of you and I couldn’t control
myself – in all the frenzy my arm popped its socket.”

“
You sick bunny.” She
closed her eyes tightly shut and shook her curly mop of honey
blonde hair as if her mind was a snow-globe. “I’m just erasing that
image from my head.” Vicki allowed for a pause that was pregnant
with a change of tact. “So you weren’t disturbed in the night? What
with the police running around here in their size
twelve’s…”

He fingered the button
for the lift, acutely aware of Vicki’s intense gaze boring into
him, searching for a reaction. He didn’t give in to it.
“Police?
Didn’t notice
. Had
an early night. Slept like a baby.” Without looking he sensed Vicki
had raised her brow at his denial, as if the movement had created
displacement in the air. She could see what he had seen in the
mirror that morning as he fixed his tie and styled his hair, his
frame was sagging with the weight of his lethargy, he looked
withered and wasted within his clothes, his youthful face was pale
and sullen with his eyes puffed and vacant.

“
Why do you look like
shit then?” she joked but with a voice edged with
concern.

He allowed a measure of
his frustration at her doggedness into his voice. “I dislocated my
arm yesterday.
What’s your
excuse
?” He quickly covered his emotions with a grin,
but hoped it had been enough to make her back off. Part of his
bitterness was the fact that over the last couple of years Vicki
had become the closest thing he had to a good friend, but he
couldn’t trust her with what had happened last night without it
being opportunistically used for story. He relaxed from his
defensive posturing, but any thought of finding sanctuary in their
usual playful humour was quickly suppressed by his mood and guilt
for lashing out at her. “Actually, I had lots of nightmares. Not
nice,” he confessed, although ‘nightmares’ didn’t adequately
describe the things his unconscious had been subjected to. The
things he had seen had been so vivid and disturbingly real they had
been more like traumatic memories than dreams.

“
Could
this nightmare be a guilt complex?
Because of
something you’re keeping from a good friend
maybe?”

Craig allowed himself to go
with the wave of humour she offered. “Hmmm, let me think? Now, Miss
Freud do you think my dream of an old man being drowned in his bath
is a guilt thing?” Craig rubbed his chin miming thought.

Vicki’s face soured briefly as
Craig elaborated on his dream and gave a vivid description of the
old man in his dream had died. “Ooh... Nasty.” Vicki folded her
arms and turned to Craig in a motion of defeat. “Okay, you win! You
have foiled my oh-so subtle manipulation. But, seriously what
happened last night? I know the Chambers other kid has gone
missing; got a friend in the force. Your name popped up, but no
details. He didn’t divulge anymore. So give it up”

Craig panicked at the
revelation that his name had come up in connection with what had
happened. His guilt caused a rising nausea from being found out and
for the culpability of his part in Amy’s disappearance. “I can’t.”
He admitted reluctantly. “I have been told not to talk to the
press.”

Vicki scrutinised him,
squinting her eyes as if that would focus her deeper into his mind
to get to the information she sought. “You
are
the press,” Vicki scolded with equal humour
and frustration.

“
Oh, I am when you want
me to be!” He laughed as a distraction from the chord that
reverberated jarringly at her statement. “I thought it was stick to
what you know best?” He held the camera up as a prop. Craig could
see that Vicki felt the sting of his words and instantly understood
the mistake of her hypocrisy.

They stood in tense
silence for a while. She flicked him playfully.
“
Sorry.
Just scared of competition I
guess,” she skulked forlornly. “Putting my own insecurity aside,
you know that if I had any influence at all I would get you onboard
somehow.”

Craig didn’t look at her, but
just grunted in acknowledgement. After the overwhelming events of
the previous night he was surprised by the selfish resurgence of
his mundane resentment towards the stunted, unsatisfying direction
his career and life had taken since university. Before university
he had thought his passion and talent for photography would be the
realisation of his aspirations. In reality he hadn’t achieved the
distinction needed to compete with his art-house peers, and his
freelance work was hardly satisfying his creativity, merely serving
the function of paying his bills. It offered him little money or
time to improve his portfolio. He was envious of Vicki having a
fulfilling outlet for her creativity, and that increased the power
of gravity that her profession had on him, although without the
necessary qualifications he could be chasing up a dead end.

Craig ignored a second flick
from Vicki meant to prompt him into his normal self. “Oiy!” she
shouted coarsely in his ear. “Don’t blank me out Mr!”

He squirmed, trying not to
react as Vicki danced about him poking the flesh of his sides. He
surrendered to laughter and told her to leave him alone, but she
didn’t relent. “Right, you cow. You’ve asked for it.” He jumped up
and down causing the car to shudder each time he hit the floor,
Vicki’s face blanched and she clutched at the handrails, glancing
uncomfortably about her.

“
Okay, okay. You win,”
she conceded.

The lift stopped and the doors
opened to two female paramedics as Craig landed from a jump. He
froze, caught out, with his arms curled towards his sides and his
hands knuckled into loose fists. In what must have looked like a
monkey impression. He snapped his arms to his side and relaxed
against the wall.

“
Oh, very
smooth.”

“
I thought so,” he
returned to Vicki. “Ladies.” He said to the paramedics, puzzled by
their expectant stares until he saw the trolley chair between them.
It was smothered with a red blanket and beneath it were the awkward
jutting angles of a body.

Vicki acted first, stepping
from the lift to offer them the space they needed, and using
Craig’s sling as a reign she guided him after her as if he were a
distracted child. Craig dawdled after her onto the second floor,
his head craning after the ambulance crew as they took their places
in the lift.

“
What happened?” Vicki
fished instinctively.

The two paramedics didn’t look
up, but one of them announced without emotion; “Drowned in his
bath.”

One of the medics left the side
of the trolley for the lift controls and a bare arm flopped from
beneath the cover on the trolley. Its skin was shrivelled with age
and pale, clammy like plucked chicken flesh. A drop of water
dripped from its withered curled fingers as the doors closed shut
and the lift trundled away.

Down the corridor he saw a
female police officer comforting an old woman that he recognised
from his dreams. She was the wife of the drowned man. A rush of
dread from the disconcerting manifestation of his nightmare was
followed quickly by grimy guilt when he saw that the police officer
was one of the officers that had arrived at the Chambers when Amy
vanished. He looked away and straight into the face of a visibly
shaken and accusatory Vicki.

“
Drowned in the bath? Just like your dream.
Now,
you are
scaring
me.”

Chapter
Eighteen

Rachel put her arm through the
small handle of her handbag and tucked the body of it awkwardly
under her arm, freeing her hands to carry the small sports bag she
had taken from Cat’s and packed with a change of clothes and
toiletries. Rachel’s mind was still awash with questions and
concern for Cat and the threat that lingered within the Heights.
The lift doors parted and Rachel was surprised to see a young boy
standing within. She recognised him as Amy’s friend, he eyed her
with a questioning concentration as she joined him and smiled
consciously at him; did he know Amy – his friend was now gone? Did
he know of her involvement? Rachel was no stranger to the
grief-fuelled spite of children.

Rachel nodded a polite greeting
to the boy as he said a distracted “hello” to her. She frowned
curiously as she noticed that none of the lift buttons were lit.
She prodded the ground floor button and turned back to the boy who
had no apparent destination. “What floor did you want?”

“
Ground
floor.”

“
Oh.” She nodded,
wondering why that button hadn’t been selected and he had ridden
the lift to the very top of the building instead.

“
What’s a
medium?”

If she wasn’t suspended in a
metal box over ten storeys off the ground she would quite happily
have had the ground to open up underneath her feet. Although she
wanted him to understand, she was not in the mood to explain and
justify her abilities, and she felt too vulnerable herself to deal
with his questions about the twins and deal with the boy’s grief.
The guilt was instant but she was thankful for him cutting in and
saved her from having to answer.

“
Mum said you think you
know things that other people don’t, and that you can help find
people who are lost. Tell if they are alive?”

Rachel shifted uncomfortably.
She wasn’t going to be able to escape. “I have an ability which
lets me see, and sometimes communicate with people that have passed
away.”

He eyed her cautiously as
if she offered tempting sweets under some condition he was
reluctant to accept. “You mean, like the woman in that old
film
Poltergeist
?”

Rachel closed her eyes
under a frown. She hoped there was nothing about her that resembled
the diminutive dwarf-sized medium,
Tangina
Barrons
with her nasal southern American twang. She
wished she could send that character into the light. “Yes, but I’m
a bit taller
and not so
dramatic
.”

“
Emily and Amy
disappeared just like the girl in that film.”

Rachel had strongly denied any
belief in that theory when Claire had suggested it but it was now
the case. “Yes, I think they did.” She watched him receive this
confirmation, hoping she hadn’t been too honest with him. He took
it into some inner consideration.

“
Are Amy or Emily still
alive?”

The question was gently
delivered, but from a child it struck her with the force of an axe.
“I don’t know,” she lied. She was sure from her experience on the
nexus in the twins’ bedroom that Emily was dead, and now she could
only assume that Amy had shared the same fate. Despite her attempt
to save him from grief he looked to the floor with a grim face.
He
had a strange knowing look and there was fear in
his dark eyes.