Dark Vision (23 page)

Interesting. After everything I’d been expected to take in over the last few days, everything I’d been supposed to accept, Gabriel was apparently the one with the learning difficulties. I’d enjoy throwing that one back in his face. If we ever spoke again. I screwed up my eyes, anticipating a wash of pain at the thought, but there was nothing. Maybe there’d just been too much. Seeing Coleen die had finally filled me up past the maximum-level line. I felt numb, like those veteran soldiers who’ve seen all the horrors of the world and can’t react to more. Lily McCain was officially closed to new pain business, it seemed. Which was good. I needed some time off.

‘So … is this what you actually look like?’ I asked. ‘I was expecting something … more.’

‘Well, when it comes to disguises, Lily, less
is
more. But no, I don’t actually look like this. I hope to meet you in my proper form one day, and you can see for yourself. This is Larry. Larry Hoey. I’m playing it safe, and leaving my real body back in the Otherworld, where it will be kept nice and warm and happy. Not like poor Larry here. I borrowed him for the occasion.’

‘What do you mean, borrowed him? Will you give him back?’

‘Just that, borrowed. Until I’m sure of my status here, until I’m sure of
you
, Lily, I’ll be keeping my distance … Can’t be too careful in these tempestuous times, can you? Last thing I need is some rampaging High King in the grip of the green-eyed monster blundering in to spoil our chat. Anyway, Larry’s a bit of a sad case, to be honest. Not married. No friends. Parents dead. Not even a dog to welcome him home at night. He’d just been made redundant from his job at an accounts firm when I found him. He was trying to kill himself. In fact, he was right on the edge of the Liffey, much like we are now, trying to pluck up the courage to jump in. I didn’t let him.’

I felt a wave of sympathy for Larry rush over me, and could clearly picture him, in his dapper coat with his overly polished shoes, feeling so useless in this world he wanted to end it all. Life really sucks, a lot of the time.

‘What did you do?’ I asked, dragging myself away from the image. Now was not the time to get vacuumed into the suicidal mindset of a man I’d never even met.

‘I took him over. Slipped into his body while he was distracted, worrying about whether it would hurt or not when he finally took the plunge. He wasn’t fully committed, you see. Then I got him up and away, home for a nice bath and an early night. Called for a Chinese on the way.’

Fintan the Fearless, chowing down on some dim sum and a chicken chop suey. Strange but true.

‘So … if you’re in his body, where’s he?’

‘Oh, still in here, I suppose. I feel the odd fidget sometimes – a bit like I’ve got a fly up my nose, you know?’

He was so offhand, so casual, but the very thought of it made me squirm. The idea of being squashed inside your own body, unable to make yourself heard, make your will known, while someone else entirely walked round and used it. Yuck. Poor Larry. His life sucked more than most.

‘Will you let him have it back when you’ve finished?’ I said, realising I couldn’t see his eyes behind the glasses. It was dark, and they were hidden in shadows and reflections. It unsettled me in some strange way, as though not seeing his eyes meant I couldn’t see anything at all. Maybe it was for the best. I wouldn’t want to see a glimpse of poor Larry in there and imagine him squealing like Jeff Goldblum at the end of
The Fly
.

‘If it’s still usable. Wear and tear, and all that. These human bodies don’t last for ever, you know.’

He looked at my expression and gave me that creepy fake-jolly smile again.

‘Well, he didn’t want it anyway, did he? Don’t think me heartless, Lily. I was doing him a favour. He wanted to die, but he didn’t have the courage to do it. I was helping him out.’

I wasn’t convinced. Many people probably have moments in their lives when they feel there’s no point in carrying on. In fact, I was having one right now. But until they made that choice, until they decided, until they took that plunge from the side of the bridge, nobody should have the right to just swoop in and take it from them. That was wrong – wasn’t it? Or had I been spending too much time around Gabriel, the man who talked a lot about the glory of choice but had taken all of mine away from me? I’d definitely been spending too much time with someone – because I was sitting here, next to a man I knew for a fact had wanted me dead, and the fear factor hadn’t even kicked in. That was either very brave, or very stupid. The latter seemed most likely. I decided to make the most of my stupidity and ask a question that had been hovering round in my head like a bluebottle.

‘What about my parents? How can you pretend to be a friend when you killed them, and my sisters, and that girl Lucy?’

‘Ah. Well, friendship is a complicated thing, wouldn’t you say, Lily? And that “girl” Lucy … well, she was no girl. She was a grown woman infected with Gabriel’s ridiculously blinkered sense of duty. She changed her form, and off they drove for a jolly car ride. To start with, the car wreck felt like a victory, to be honest – they almost had me fooled. And all the time, poor little Lily was enjoying her second childhood in the loving arms of Coleen. And now she’s gone too. Oops.’

‘Life seems very cheap to you, Fintan,’ I said after a pause. My voice sounded neutral to my own ears, like I was discussing my plans for tea, not a human life. Maybe that’s exactly what Fintan was aiming for. He was testing me, pushing me, trying to find out how much I still cared. If I still cared at all.

Did I? It was an interesting question. And no, I didn’t, right at that moment. I was finding it hard to care about my own fate, never mind the rest of kingdom come. Yet … poor Larry, a quiet voice inside me still murmured, unable to quite shake the thought of this sad, middle-aged man who thought his death would be worth more than his life.

‘No. Not at all, Lily. I love life. But this … this isn’t living. These
people
’ – he said it with as much affection as I’d say ‘slugs’ – ‘have taken this world, this life they were given, and destroyed it. Turned it into a constant battleground of greed. This isn’t life. It’s existence – a wounded animal still crawling through the dust, too stupid to realise it’s already dead.’

I felt my eyes widen. Well, that told me. And at least he was honest, which is more than I could say for some.

I stayed quiet. There was too much to ponder. Too much to turn over in an already overstuffed head. I wanted him to go away and leave me alone, let me stare at the river for a little longer while I thought. I wanted to cling on to the last few words that Coleen had said to me, to try and erase years of bad memories with a few minutes of good. I’d promised her I would.

‘Are you sad about Coleen, Lily?’ he said, breaking the silence. I didn’t even ask how he knew. Expect the unexpected was my new mantra.

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Yes, I am.’

I was sad. Sadder than I’d ever thought I was capable of being. Not only sad that she was gone, but sad about all the missed chances, the missed opportunities. The missed life that we could have shared. The other Lily I could have been; the other Coleen she never got to be.

‘If you choose me, Lily, you won’t feel like that any more. Nobody will ever need to feel like that any more. You’ve been to the Otherworld. You know what it’s like, what it offers. Is it really worth the battle to save the Larrys of this realm? To save all those poor idiots out there, wriggling around like worms, looking for love? Fighting and cursing and deluding themselves that happiness is just around the corner? I know you’re not like that, Lily. You’re different. You see this world, this pathetic life, for what it really is. You know you’ll never find joy or contentment here, in this realm, as it exists. But you can have everything you want if you choose me. And it’s time to choose. I’ve been patient; I’ve respected your wishes; I’ve upheld your safety. But I can’t wait for ever.’

As he said the words ‘time to choose’, I heard a resonant beat in my head, like the heavy tick-tock of a grandfather clock. I shook my face, cleared it away. It was a trick, and I recognised it now.

Fintan’s tiny legs had stopped their playful swinging, the shiny shoes now resting back against the algae-covered dock wall. His voice had lost all pretence of jollity, and his face – Larry’s face – had fallen into a blank expression. It looked like he was working hard to keep it that way, his nose occasionally twitching. Small fists were clenched so hard I could tell Larry’s nails would be cutting crescents into his own palms. The moon was perfectly reflected in his glasses – two huge yellow orbs, still hiding his eyes. In the distance I heard a foghorn blaring its warning, and saw the far-off fuzzy glow of ships’ lights further up the river.

‘Choose, Lily. Choose me. Take what you want.’

It was with those last few words that I started to smell it: the soured-apple aroma that I associated with Eithne. Overripe fruit. Decadence. Indulgence. Something once sweet, now rotting. My nostrils flared, and I glanced around. No sign of her – it must be generic. The signature scent of the Fintna Faidh.

I don’t know if it was the smell, the thought of poor Larry trapped inside his own body, scarring his own skin, or the rush of emotion I’d felt when Coleen died, but my stomach tightened with revulsion. How could I choose him, when the essence of his being made me feel nauseous? My tummy was clenching and cramping, and my throat was compulsively swallowing down my own saliva. I was awash with that awful feeling you get just before you vomit, when you fight to control it.

For all his attempts at camaraderie, for all his flattery, persuasion and honesty, this was how Fintan affected my body. How he affected me. And as I didn’t have anyone else to trust right then, maybe I should listen to myself.

I might not want to choose Gabriel, but I could never choose Fintan either. Yes, he’d been fair. He’d been patient. He’d treated me a damned sight better than everyone else had, bar the occasional assassination attempt. But he was also … wrong. I felt it, deep in my bones, deep in my heart. Deeper than anything else I’d ever felt. It was like an old soul was living inside me and decided to speak: no.

I remembered so clearly the way that woman had felt, the woman trapped in the Otherworld, miserable when all around her were joyous. Wanting to go back to a home that was no more. And I remembered the way I felt when I sensed Gabriel’s love, and when Coleen told me of hers. I was just starting out in this world, an infant in everything but body. I was still learning, still finding my way. Still discovering the depths of feeling I never knew I had, or was even capable of. Much of it had been bad. Painful, agonising. The last few hours had been torture.

And yet … I’d never felt more alive. I’d learned more about myself in the last few days than I had the previous twenty-six years. Life hadn’t been safe; it hadn’t been quiet. It hadn’t been any of the things I’d tried to make it before. But it was mine.

I wasn’t Larry. I wasn’t ready to take the plunge and leave this world. It still had so much to offer, so much I wanted to experience. And I knew, with a certainty that came straight from that old soul inside me, that nobody else should be forced to leave it either. I was going to say ‘no’ to Fintan. That didn’t mean I was going to say ‘yes’ to Gabriel, but there was no way I could play a part in making this creature’s ideal world a reality. Not at the loss of this one.

I swallowed, taking deep, damp breaths to calm my body. I looked around me: breath steaming in curls on the cold air; the lights twinkling upriver; car headlights beetling their way around the Wirral waterfront. Fog and wind and the remnants of someone’s Big Mac meal rolling along the pathway. No, not at the loss of this one.

Once I’d made the decision, I knew it was right. I felt relieved, like a pressure cooker had switched off inside me. I felt certain, and sure, and suddenly scared. Very, very scared. As the cooker switched off, the reality kicked in: no matter how harmless he looked tucked away in Larry’s ventriloquist’s dummy body, Fintan was dangerous. And he wasn’t going to be at all happy with me. I clenched my bundle of keys again, knowing even as I did that it was futile. If he wanted to hurt me, he could, no matter how pointy Mr Yale was. I’d fought for free will, and I had it – but this could well be the last decision I ever made.

‘No, Fintan,’ I said, bracing myself, fingers trembling around the keys. The spirit was strong, but the flesh was pathetically weak. ‘No.’

‘Why? You owe me an explanation!’ he said, his tone so whiny, so petulant, I half expected him to stamp his feet against the dock wall, or cry with frustration, like a little kid getting told off for something he hadn’t done.

‘I owe you nothing, Fintan, but I will tell you this much – I cannot choose you, or play any part in your ambitions. I am Lily McCain. I am Maura Delaney. I know little of your world. But the spirit of Mabe is in me, and while it is, I cannot help you. For Mabe and for this world, I refuse your request, and will offer no succour to the Fintna Faidh as long as I live in this mortal realm.’

I didn’t know where that little speech came from, or the formulaic language. But it flowed from somewhere deep inside, and it felt right. To me, at least. Even as I spoke the words, I felt my body almost shimmering with energy, like I’d just treated it to the world’s most vitamin-packed fruit smoothie. I’d done the right thing, and something inside me was celebrating.

Fintan, however, was not. The smell of rotten apples intensified, gathered so strongly I could almost see it hovering around him like an aura, like colourless smoke. I heard a sharp, distinct pop and looked down. He’d snapped one of Larry’s fingers in two, and it was slanted at a tragic angle. Another pop. The next finger went, bent out of all human recognition. Fintan felt nothing. I wondered if, somewhere inside him, Larry was screaming.

His teeth started grinding together, so loud it made me feel sick, harsh and relentless, building up in its intensity until it was all I could hear. The seconds ticked by like hours, passing to the sound of decaying dentistry and rain pelting into the river. I should make a run for it, I knew. Try to scarper while I still could. But that sudden shimmer of energy had burst through me and fled, and now, somehow, my legs were immobile. I felt paralysed, and couldn’t so much as move my big toe.