Borderliners (29 page)

‘You little shit!’ I yelled.

Then I closed my eyes and gave in to the darkness.

When I came round again, I was lying next to the front door but Julia and Iain had disappeared. I was on my back with blue uniforms crouched around me. A cold breeze caressed the side of my face, and blue light passed intermittently across my body. I tried to piece together what had just happened but my brain refused to play ball, returning instead to thoughts of Tony, whose blue eyes pleaded with me from some unreachable place.

Gradually, I opened my eyes properly. Somehow a stretcher had been inserted beneath me and I was being carried towards the open door of an ambulance. I blinked back the light as I was lifted up into the inside of the vehicle and placed onto a waiting gurney.

One of the uniforms made an urgent gesture to the others. ‘She’s awake.’

Images of hanged men, hermits and paths paved with burnished gold plagued my night, a long night, spent under the observation of my medical colleagues in the local hospital. Morning came, brought to me slowly by a feeble dawn. The weak rays of light which reached through the curtains mocked my sanity, which I’d been fighting all night as light and dark battled for supremacy in my head. My dreams rolled themselves into a gigantic ball of terror, punctuated by wild images of Julia who rose up above my bed, golden staff in hand, eyes flashing as she cast a spell of eternal darkness on my mind; by the pungent breath of Iain, which threatened to poison my soul; by Tony’s greying hair, and an emerald aura which shone as he stood alone in the road, hands outstretched, cigarette butts at his feet with burning papers lining his path to my window.

The women’s prayer group came out of the shadows beyond them and walked silently to press their noses against my window glass, their eyes unseeing from hollowed-out skull sockets of emptiness and desperation. Ball dresses and tuxedos glowed emerald green behind them as terrified screeching sounds ripped my ears to shreds. And I knew there was nothing to do but ride the storm.

Finally Joan walked to the forefront, arms reaching out towards me.

The police officers who had accompanied me to the hospital disappeared until long after daylight reappeared. Or so it seemed. People came and went in a variety of uniforms and I found I was unable to distinguish between them. Between spells of unconsciousness, a doctor with dancing brown eyes and a pristine white coat had stopped by my bed and taken my hand. As I considered the angelic quality of his curly cherub curls and his open, almost innocent face, he explained I’d been badly concussed and would need to stay in hospital for a few days. With a reassuring squeeze of the hand, he’d told me that disorientation was to be expected, but I’d make a full recovery. All I needed was rest and quiet, but it was torture.

After more dreams and black patches of nothing, where all I could see in the void were the eyes of Tony, as he reached out to me from the clearing, the police returned. My heart leapt as I saw a familiar figure follow them in to stand at the back of the room as they sat down to question me. His hair, as ever, covered his right eye and as he listened in silence, I noticed him flick it back every now and again, his brow furrowed in concentration. A few minutes passed before he strode over to the door.

A nurse followed him back in. ‘I’m not sure if she’s well enough for this yet. So you’ve got five minutes before I come back.’

I caught the wary eye of the DI as it met mine as I moved my head to look at him. ‘Before you ask, your neighbours have been taken into custody,’ he began. ‘Luckily, your friend, Vince here, had the presence of mind to put in a call to us just as you came under attack yesterday morning.’

‘What day is it?’ I asked.

‘It’s Friday 13
^th
November,’ answered the DI. ‘And that’s one nasty head wound you’ve got there. It’s a good job we got there when we did. Who knows what else they might have done?’

‘What, after I’d taken them both out?’ I said.

Vince smiled.

‘Erm, well, yes, sort of,’ said the DI, clearing his throat. ‘We got there in time to finish up with handcuffs and place them under arrest. You’ll have to testify in court, of course.’

I just looked at him in silence. I noticed he couldn’t really look at me – was I in that much of a mess?

‘Just tell us again, what happened. In your own words.’

So I told him as much as I could before the nurse came back to save me from my exhaustion, and the feeling that I would pass out again if I had to relive the ordeal for another second. After the police left, Vince came to the side of my bed and, without a word, stroked my hair until I fell asleep again.

The world turned inside out, so that I was standing in my garden once more, only it wasn’t quite right. The sky was red, split in two by a great rocky expanse which rose up from the ground like a volcano. Then, I was standing at the far edge, looking back at the parade of houses, at my home in the middle of them, and at Julia’s house by its side, flanking the other houses like a guardian, or a stalker.

I shut my eyes and when I opened them again, my garden had disappeared. As if I’d opened the shutters to another world, a brief slash of darkness was replaced by bright light, which made me wince as I stared into the source of it. The light dimmed to reveal a large barn in a clearing, trees swaying on the periphery. I took a couple of steps towards it, realising my feet were bare and my body clad in a silver ball gown, as pristine and new as on the day of the ball. I felt as light and airy as the autumn leaves which were flying from the trees and floating in the air around me. There was no sound but the gentle breeze passing through the trees’ branches all around. It felt like a giant amphitheatre, and I wondered if Ariel and Caliban would appear to stop me in my tracks as I continued to take steps towards the barn.

Another shutter snap, and I found myself inside the barn, its wooden beams drawing in slivers of new sunlight from outside, to illuminate a large, round table at the centre. It looked like the one from Julia’s meeting hall, but Julia wasn’t there. Empty chairs sat, still with anticipation, and as I looked beyond them to the smooth, wooden surface to the table, I saw cards waiting there too. Gliding forwards, I hovered by the table to see what I knew would be there.

Craning my neck to see better, I saw the cards had real faces within their illustrated bodies, and like 3D holograms they hovered just above their flat, paper hosts, mouthing unheard words. The Hanged Man’s green eyes flashed at me and his long, coarse hair hung upside down to almost touch the floor beneath him. ‘Vince?’ I said, but before the man could answer his appearance had changed to that of another, this time with clear blue eyes which cut through time and space. I cut to the next card, the one of Death. As I looked at it, I heard a deep, mournful voice inside my head saying ‘You are the agent of change.’ I tried to block it out.

A hand on my shoulder caused me to jump. I turned slowly to look into the eyes of a young woman with long, dark hair, dressed in a floor length black, grungy dress. ‘Martha?’. She didn’t reply but another voice, a woman’s, started speaking from somewhere within me. ‘Trust your instincts,’ it said. ‘What you have seen has come to pass, as it was always meant to. Life is an illusion and the events of your life are all happening now. There is no past, there is no future, only the here and now of infinite possibility. For everything which could have come to pass will do so, and will not. Your experience is your reality, and your responsibility.’

I hung my head, clamping my hands to my ears, breathing hard. ‘Beam me up,’ I whispered, hoping for a reprieve, but the cards and voices weren’t finished with me. When I opened my eyes, The High Priestess card was floating around in front of them, her dark eyes purple, her long, brunette locks agitated by the breeze which had started to whistle through the barn through newly opened windows. Next to her was another card, but all I could see were the words ‘The Hermit’ written beneath a small oval mirror. I reached out and grabbed it from where it had been hovering, just above the table. Bringing it closer to my face, I saw my own face in its reflective surface. But I didn’t recognise myself. I was changing, morphing into many different versions of me, some older, some younger. In one I was a child, sitting on my grandmother’s knee and she was telling me something. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, no matter how hard I strained my ears. Both figures stopped for a second and stared out of the card at me and then I heard it, my grandmother’s voice from another time, saying ‘It’s your duty to observe, Elena, to pay attention. Not everything is as it seems, reality is not what you believe it to be.’ And as she said this, the card flipped out of my hand and fell to land, face up, on the table. It slotted itself back into the reading.

My eyes moved across to the final cards: Death and The Moon. I took a breath in. All was silent apart from a clock ticking somewhere in the background. It seemed to echo the beating of my heart, louder and louder, as I thought about the messages of Death and The Moon. Then, as I looked at The Moon, several images flashed up. All of my dead patients appeared in the seats around the table, their faces still, eyes boring into me. ‘What is it?’ I said. ‘What have you come to tell me?’

A voice replied, ‘We have not come from anywhere, we were always here. We will always be here. And so will you. Things are not what they seem.’

On the table, The Moon card burst into flames. As blue, yellow and red licked up towards the pitched roof of the barn, the table started to shake. My dead patients were joined by Tony, Martha and my grandmother who sat in the seats adjacent to me. Someone was calling, ‘We may have lived and we may not. You rid the world of her, but she will be back as will others like her, for they live inside all of us. We are one.’ I looked at the Tony figure, my eyes pleading, but he merely nodded.

Then, I dropped to the floor. The world went black and I saw that I was lying in a hospital bed, my bare feet poking out at the bottom of crisp white sheets, my hair splayed on a large pillow behind me. The world outside my window was bleak and rain-splattered. Vince was sitting, silently, at the side of my bed, his eyes closed. He looked as if he was meditating, or thinking something over, something which elicited no answers. I decided not to disturb him and I closed my eyes.

When I woke up again, I was alone. I waited for Vince to return, but when he didn’t, I discharged myself and went home.

Exactly six weeks after I was discharged from hospital, there was a knock at the door and a familiar shape behind the glass.

I gasped. ‘Tony!’

His eyes twinkled a shade of iridescent blue, and I noted that he looked well, very well. In fact much better than I did.

‘I thought you were dead,’ I said, staring at him, as he smiled gently, and took my hands in his.

‘Elena, I came to deliver a message.’

I looked at him, uncomprehending as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, white envelope.

‘For years I was lost, but you helped me, and I was found again. I walked in darkness, and you showed me the way. You helped me walk in the light, to have hope, to look forward to the future, to all of our futures. For we are all God’s children, and He will save us. I know you don’t believe it right now, but I promise you will, one day.’

Then he bent his greying head, clean and dry, towards mine and kissed me, very gently on the cheek as he released my hands.

‘This is for you. Try to understand, and have faith.’

He placed an envelope in my hands, turned and walked away, as I stared helplessly at his retreating back. I wanted to shout, to run and stop him, but I could do nothing but stand there and watch him go. It seemed to me that he disappeared in the direction of the village centre, but when I finally came to my senses and rushed to the end of my driveway, there was no sign of him anywhere.

So I returned to my house, shut the door and opened the envelope to find a newspaper article from a town far away, and a date which didn’t make sense:

East Sussex, 5 November, 1986

Anthony Elwis, 7 September 1942 – 5 November 1986

Anthony Elwis, 44, of Lincoln passed away on 5 November after a short illness. His family were by his side when he drifted off to be with the Lord. Born to Agatha and Mark Elwis in Lincoln on 7 September 1942, Anthony went to Lincoln Boys’ Grammar School and the University of Oxford, where he studied philosophy and theology. He will be sadly missed by his friends and family.

The ground dropped, or I did, I didn’t know which, as my horizons widened and flattened out to meet and engulf me in their hardened embrace.

I thought of Tony, of the Charismatic Community, of their prophesies and of mine. I thought of the futility of my life. Or not. And I thought of eternity.