Harvest (25 page)

“
I
know.
Well you might be questioning your effectiveness
as a police officer in this situation, but if it helps, you do look
very good in the uniform.”

Kelly’s face reddened but
surprisingly to her his cheesy compliment dissolved her frustration
and she was glad of it. “Tea’s lovely. Thanks.”

“
You’re
welcome.”

“
So, your photography
job. How did it go?”

“
Three hours opposite a
gay sauna waiting for a straight married councillor to turn
up.”

“
Is there something you
want to tell me?”

Craig cocked his head to one
side. “Haha. No. That was the problem. He was a no show.”

“
Shame.”

“
Not really. Knowing
Vicki she would have sent me in there after him in a towel to get
the money shot.”

“
Pretty boy like you? You
wouldn’t get out of there alive.” Kelly craned around her. “Don’t
see where you would work. You have a studio elsewhere?”

“
Nah, mainly I work from
home. In the grotto.” Craig got to his feet cupping the hot mug in
his hands. “Prepare to step into my parlour.”

Kelly followed him to a door in
the hall and from the similar layout to her own flat she knew where
it led. “Your bedroom?” She was surprised that she didn’t feel more
discomfort, but then judging from the rubbish compliment he had
given her in the kitchen she didn’t imagine he was much of a smooth
operator. She was quite safe.

Craig opened the door. The room
was gloomy thanks to some drawn blackout curtains and a net of red
LED lights that almost covered one wall. Craig switched the main
light on, but the light from the red bulb only intensified the
depths of the shadows and the dark walls. The other dark blue walls
were barely visible from beneath a mess of black and white
photographs that covered them. Kelly stepped towards the nearest
pictures for a closer inspection. They were gritty casual shots of
people that didn’t seem composed, just glimpses into frozen moments
from people’s lives who seemed unaware of being captured in
film.

“
They’re
good.”

“
Thank you. They are not
going to earn me a successful gallery space, but I like
them.”

Kelly pointed to one of the
photographs. A large built woman, middle-aged with a beaming smile,
her hand a blur in trying to push the camera away. “I like this
one.”

“
It’s my mum. She hates
having her photo taken. She’s great.”

The room had all the typical
bedroom furniture, but set out on top of the chest of drawers and a
desk was equipment for developing, and the shelves behind them were
stacked with film and bottled fluids. Hanging across the room was a
line with pictures pegged to it. The bed was dishevelled and lived
in. The air was ripe, a soothing warm scent of manliness which she
had forgotten could be so comforting.

“
This is my
office.”

“
It’s nice to hear
someone say that about their bedroom without me having to arrest
them.”

“
Yeah, however my
profession is probably the second career to need a red light
though. It’s in my bedroom too. Doesn’t really draw the same
attention when you are seven storeys up though.” Craig let Kelly
step out past him and he turned the light out and shut the door on
the room. “I’m still doing things the old fashioned way for my
personal projects, but I have to hire space at a developing studio
for my commercial stuff, I have started off on digital photography,
but I can’t afford the really decent equipment.”

“
Your work looks good.”
She said as Craig led her back to the kitchen. She drained the last
of her tea and he took her mug. They both stood in the kitchen, he
didn’t sit back down, and she didn’t know whether he wanted her to.
“I’m glad you are feeling okay. If I don’t hear from Rachel I will
give her a call and let you know what’s going on, see if she has
managed to find anything out.”

“
You off then?” Craig
frowned.

She didn’t understand his
surprise; he hadn’t acted like he wanted her to stay. “Er, yeah, I
had better get something to eat. It’s been a long day.”

“
Okay, keep me
posted.”

Craig deflated into a visible
slouch that caused Kelly to hesitate in the hallway. She found
herself speaking, and wondered if she was possessed. “Well, I’m
only having a microwave thing. Dinner I mean. So if you want to
join me it wouldn’t be a problem. Sorry – I mean that’s if you’re
not busy or got plans.” Definitely possessed, she decided.

“
You really don’t know
me. Irradiated food stuffs prepared by someone else sounds great to
me.” Craig wagged his injured arm in the sling. “Didn’t fancy the
struggle, I’m still trying to keep it rested. Anyway, if I had
plans that would insinuate I have a life – which would be nice, now
I come to think of it…” He smiled.

Kelly nodded toward the
direction of the front door and Craig grabbed his keys and followed
her. She experienced a feeling of wholeness that she found
uplifting, as if she had soldiered on with a wound she had only
just realised and dinner with Craig was an act of triage that would
help her recover a pleasure that her injury had kept from her, an
enjoyment she had forgotten. Kelly thought she could run up the
stairs to her floor with the underlying teenage excitement. She
savoured the feeling as they travelled the six floors up to her
flat in the lift.

Rachel’s head lulled and she
nodded briefly into sleep. She opened her eyes, clenched them and
then opened them again whilst stretching her arms up. She stifled a
yawn and checked her watch. Seven-thirty.

Her muscles were
saturated with an aching tiredness from her lack of sleep.
Six hours
had passed in her vigil at the hospital
and
redundancy had settled into her resolve, she toyed
with the idea of leaving. It was clear that little could be
resolved or accomplished at Cat’s side. The crushing silences that
punctuated her lessening and more desperate monologues were wearing
tides that carried with them all the unanswered questions she had
from the hospital and The Heights.

There were too many
happenings and not enough connections or answers: the poltergeist
activity in the Chambers flat;
Emily and now Amy
gone,
Harry’s antagonism towards her, the unknown
significance of the rune symbols Rachel had seen at The Heights,
the coincidence of Cat’s kitten arriving at Rachel’s flat around
the time Cat had entered her coma, the impossible destruction at
Cat’s flat, the intense and mysterious experiences she had
encountered in the twins room and Cat’s lounge, and now the
mysterious watcher at the hospital.

Rachel leaned one arm on the
bed and relaxed her overloaded head on it. Every fibre of her body
called like a siren’s chorus for rest. The carousel of questions in
her mind slowed, the sounds of the ward drifted away and the rhythm
of her blinking slowed. Rachel forced herself to sit up and she
stretched her eyelids wide cramming visual information between her
lids to keep them open a little longer.

Cat snapped bolt upright from
her prostate position and snatched Rachel by her coat collar and
dragged her forcefully onto the bed. Her young face split into a
frantic scream that howled through the air in a banshee cry of rage
and torment that grated against Rachel’s ears. Tongues of Cat’s
flame orange hair flickered wildly about her face from a vortex of
rushing atmosphere while her wide and desperately pleading eyes
pierced Rachel like javelins.

The flesh of Cat’s face became
malleable putty sculpted by unseen hands into a skeletal face. A
face with dark hollows for eyes, a nose pinched against its
cartilage and thin lips tightly sheathed against a mouth brimming
with yellow teeth. The face of the watching stranger stared out
from the fiery halo of Cat’s hair with wild venom filled eyes that
demanded Rachel to leave.

Rachel snapped awake.

She leapt back from the vision
as if it had crossed the threshold into reality. An uncoordinated
hand flailed and dashed her coffee from the side unit to the floor.
Cat and her bedding were undisturbed; a picture of tranquillity. A
sobering contradiction of her nightmare.

She fought to calm her racing
heart and chastised herself for her fear. It was just a nightmare.
The wet of cold coffee registered against her legs as it sank
through her skirt. She groaned at her clumsiness and at the mess
she had made, and wiped at the stains with a balled up tissue. She
climbed to her feet and dragged her chair to one side to assess the
extent of her spillage.

The black tendrils of coffee
stretched out at her feet and formed six crude capital
letters;‘HELP ME’. As soon as she registered them they were
consumed within the widening spread of coffee.

Rachel wondered whether it was
another vision, whether she was still asleep when a voice from
outside the room grounded Rachel in reality: “Every shift I have to
turf you out don’t I?” Although Rachel had angled the Venetian
blinds closed she knew it was a nurse addressing the watcher
outside the room. She moved to the glass wall and listened.

“
She must have been a
very good friend...” the nurse’s sentiment was empathic enough but
her tone was challenging.

With the vision of a tormented
Cat and her plea for help, Rachel’s unease with the watcher had
increased. Rachel crept to the door and dared herself to turn the
knob that angled the blind encased within the doors narrow window.
The gap didn’t afford her a direct view of the nurse or the
watcher, but she could see their ghostly reflections in glass wall
of the opposite room. The watcher was not standing passively in the
corridor as she had expected him to be since his view had been
obscured, but was pressed flat against the glass; listening. His
hands caressing the surface of the window with his fingers probing
and pressing at various points in slow precise movements, as if it
was a ritual that afforded him some mystical presence or perception
of the room within.

The nurse shuffled on her
feet obviously uncomfortable with his actions and his silence. “I’m
sorry,” the nurse’s voice came with a determined force. “Visiting
time is over. Time to go home
Mr…?
”

A silence followed and
dominated the foreground noise of the ward in a challenge of the
nurse’s authority. The man eased himself away from the glass wall
and Rachel snapped the blinds shut so he couldn’t see her. Rachel
could clearly hear the quiet shrink away from a hissing voice,
heavy with a rolling Polish accent that was uncomfortably close to
her. “Yshor Malik... And I-am go-ing.”

“
Well... I imagine I will
see you next shift,” the nurse’s reply clipped the air like a
parting clout round the ear.

There was a slow hissing
exhalation of defeat from beyond the glass followed by a measured
pace of hard shoes sounding slowly away. Rachel relaxed and
released a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding.

Chapter
Twenty

The heavy burgundy heightened
Kelly’s mood, relaxed her body and fogged her mind, forcing her to
concentrate on the simplest of actions. Kelly found comfort in the
meal inside her, the warmth of her snug jumper and the security of
having company. It was in this experience that she found more
contentment than her cherished job had ever given her. Having a
moment like this with a friend or acquaintance – or whatever Craig
was to her, gave her a sense of completeness even if it might only
be for a stolen evening. It was wholesome and fulfilling. She
catalogued the tastes, the smells, the feel of her clothes, the
pieces of small talk and imprinted them in her mind as a reminder
of what she only now realised she had been missing. She would save
them for the nights when there was no company, although she was
sure that memories would be of little comfort now she had tasted
the reality again.

She had been fooling herself
that she was content being alone.

Camden had colluded with her
sense that she wasn’t keeping herself to herself and was living her
life. On a Friday or a Saturday it was difficult to feel alone and
hard not to feel alive while walking the streets of Camden Town,
the energy of the crowds that choked the Chalk Farm Road and the
Market was infectious. Tourists visiting another landmark the city
had to offer, Goths, Mods, New-Agers, Gays, all manner of races and
cultures, all making pilgrimage to the market and shops that would
offer them coffee-culture, exotic foods, herbs, outlandish clothes,
handmade novelties and crafts, S&M gear and drugs. A place that
would support your lifestyle and a place where you could pretty
much be who you wanted. Perfect for Kelly trying to start over and
find herself.

Kelly would go for a coffee,
eat at the market’s food court, drift round the shops, but always
with her Discman playing, and a thick book in her bag; props that
would immerse her in a world of her own making when she felt she
was growing too close to being in the real world around her, or
someone wanted to share her table in an overcrowded coffee shop, or
was showing her more interest than she wanted. She loved the long
walk out of Camden along the canal to Little Venice, but that
served the same purpose as her Discman and book as an escape route
into isolation. Camden had supported Kelly’s illusion of living
life.

Craig strained forward with his
good hand to slide the empty plate from his lap to the table, Kelly
steadied it for him and guided it the rest of the way. She slumped
back into her corner of the sofa and looked at him studiously over
the rim of her wineglass, a little too long to be discrete. She was
surprised at how much the recent events had aged him; he looked
haggard, pale, his skin almost translucent, as if the vitality of
his youth had been drained somehow – more than a disturbed night
could do.