Faces of Fear (25 page)

“Listen, you can't start acting jealous. You're my ex-husband, remember?”

“I'm sorry.”

Sarah glanced at her watch. “Listen, are you leaving right now?”

“I've got to pay first – but, yes.”

“Then give me five minutes to stuff my things in my bag, and I'll come with you.”

He blinked at her. “You mean it? Back to London?”

“That's right. And on the way you can tell me all about what you've been doing, and how much you've changed.”

Ken hesitated for a moment, then nodded, and said, “Right, then! I'll see you downstairs in five minutes!”

He leaned over and kissed her cheek. Neither of them saw the pale face looking in through the library door, or the lean, dark shadow that flitted across the ceiling.

Ken was still waiting in the lobby more than quarter of an hour later. If he waited much longer, they were in danger of missing the last flight to Heathrow. He paced up and down, looking at the pictures on the walls, but in the end he went to the reception desk and asked if he could use the telephone.

“I want Mrs Bryce's number.”

The receptionist ran her finger down the guest list. “Mrs Bryce, did you say? We don't have anybody of that name staying here – oh, wait, here's a Bryce, but this is Mr.”

“That's me. I've only just checked out. Perhaps she registered under another name.”

“Well, why don't you ask the porter, sir. Just describe her to him: he's got a wonderful memory for faces.”

Ken went across to the porter's desk, where the porter was arranging copies of the evening's papers. “I'm looking for a woman who registered here two days ago. Blonde, 34 years old. Very smart dresser. She came for the antiques auction.”

The porter frowned, and then slowly shook his head. “We've had nobody of that description, sir. Not for a week or two, and certainly not to the auction.”

“I'm sorry, but you have. She's my ex-wife. I was talking to her in the library, only twenty minutes ago.”

Again the porter shook his head. “You'll have to forgive me, sir. Usually I can remember every single face: but that description has me beat.”

Ken went back to the lobby. He waited another half-hour, and then he picked up his bag. The receptionist gave
him a sad, sympathetic smile. He should have known that Sarah wouldn't want him back. She had probably gone back up to her room, and started to remember all of the arguments, all of the throwing of pots and pans, all the times that he had left her at parties to chat to younger girls. Well, he couldn't blame her. It was just that she had seemed so keen to come with him.

He left the hotel and walked toward the car-park. The evening was dark and drizzly. He was half-way there before he became aware of a tall, dark man standing by the fence. It was the same man that Sarah had been talking to – and kissing. The man who had promised to do her a favour.

“Leaving us, are you,” the man said, as Ken approached. His voice was a soft as cat's fur.

“Yes,” said Ken. “I have to be back in London tonight.” He paused. “Listen, if you see Mrs Bryce, can you tell her that I don't bear her any ill-will. Tell her that I understand.”

“Oh, you think you understand, do you?”

Ken frowned at him. “I beg your pardon. What do you mean by that?”

“I mean that you no more understand than a stone understands calculus.”

“I still don't know what you mean.”

“I mean that Mrs Bryce has promised to be faithful; and faithful she wasn't; but faithful she'll have to be. She's staying here, in Ireland, but not in Ireland, and they can look for her till their eyes drop out, but they'll never find her.”

“What the hell are you talking about? Are you drunk? Where is she?”

“She's here still, like I told you.”

Ken put down his bag. “In that case, I want to see her, and I want to see her now.”

“Oh, you shall,” said Seáth Rider. “You shall see her now and always. You shall see her to your heart's desire.”

Ken was about to say something else when he felt as if somebody had hit him, very hard, right at the base of his skull. He dropped forward onto his knees; his head bursting with pain. He thought he could hear Seáth Rider talking to him, but his voice seemed to echo, like a man talking down a drain. He put out his hands to stop himself from pitching forward, and crouched on the tarmac on all fours, trying to understand what had happened to him. He felt as if his brain were shrinking, as if his face were being sucked in. He felt his ribcage being pulled in, and his legs tightening. He tried to speak, but his jaws felt as if they been clamped together.

His whole body contracted. It was more painful than anything he had ever experienced in his life, and he screamed as loud as he could, but even his larynx seemed to have contracted into a small, inflexible knot, and all he could manage was a strangled howl.

He found himself naked and shivering in the rain; his faculties dimmed; his feet scratching on the pavement. He had lost all of his perception of who he was and what he was doing here. He looked up at Seáth Rider and all he could feel was fear.

“There now,” said Seáth Rider. “There's a good fellow. Let's go and see what Sarah's doing, shall we?”

Sarah came downstairs with her bag packed, but there was no sign of Ken. She went to reception and asked if they had seen him, or if he had left a message, but the receptionist shook her head.

“No, Mrs Bryce; there's been nobody.”

“Perhaps he's gone back to his room. Can you tell me what number it is?”

The receptionist looked through the register. “There's Mrs Bryce, but that's you. No record of anybody called
Mr
Bryce.”

“Are you sure? He told me he was staying here all weekend.”

“You can look for yourself, if you want to.”

She was still searching through the register when Seáth Rider came in through the door, with a brindled dog, straining at its leash.

“Ah, then, you're ready,” he said.

“Where's Ken?” she asked him, in rising alarm.

“Ken?” he said, with exaggerated innocence.

“My ex-husband. He was here. I saw him, I spoke to him. I want to know what you've done with him.”

“Now surely why should I do anything with him. And why should you care. You pledged your fidelity to me remember.”

The brindled dog tried to jump up but Seáth Rider briskly smacked it across its muzzle with the back of his hand. “You can't be too strict with these mongrel mutts, now can you.” The dog miserably subsided, and circled around the back of Seáth Rider's legs.

“We're off then,” said Seáth Rider. “I've taken care of your bill.”

“I'm not going off anywhere,” said Sarah. “I'm driving to Cork, and then I'm flying back to—” She paused. She knew she was flying somewhere, but where?

“I have to get back to my mother,” she said, in desperation. “I have to get back to my business – back to my shop.”

Seáth Rider pulled the dog-leash tighter, so that the dog began to breathe in thin, asphyxiated gasps. “You're
not going anywhere, Mrs Bryce, except with me. Your mother won't remember you. You never existed, as far as she's concerned. You never went to school, you never grew up. Sarah Thompson, they'll say, I never heard of anybody called Sarah Thompson. Nor Sarah Bryce, neither, when she was married. They won't find a speck of a mention of you anywhere, not in christening notes nor school magazine nor local newspaper. You've gone, vanished, you're invisible, except for here.”

Sarah looked around. “I don't understand. This is still the same hotel.”

Seáth Rider passed his hand across his face like a camera-shutter. “There isn't any such thing as ‘the same hotel', Mrs Bryce. There are thousands of Parknasillas, one for each guest who came here; just as there are millions of Irelands, layer upon layer, depth upon depth. The gates are still open in Ireland, Mrs Bryce, and people still walk through.”

“You're trying to tell me that I'm here, but I'm somewhere else?”

Seáth Rider nodded. “You'll be happy here, Mrs Bryce. Happy as Larry. You'll see things that you never imagined possible; and you'll talk to people who'll set your ears ablaze. You'll grow to love me, too. I shouldn't wonder, and you and I will be the best of companions.”

He took her hand and led her out into the night. It was still drizzling, but the bright hotel lights made it look as if they were being showered with fairy dust. The dog yapped, and Seáth Rider slapped it again, sharp and short, right across the muzzle. “You behave yourself now you cur.”

Raymond French went to her room to say goodbye to her. He found the door open and the chambermaid already
stripping the bed. To his surprise, however, the two Daniel Marot chairs were still there. He couldn't imagine that she would have left without seeing them packed up for shipping.

“Have you seen the woman whose room this was?” he asked the chambermaid.

The chambermaid shook her head.

Raymond walked into the room and looked around. The closets were empty; the bathroom had been cleared of cosmetics. The only evidence that anyone had been here was a business card, left in the ashtray, folded in half.

Downstairs, in the lobby, there was no sign of Sarah anywhere. But Raymond was just about to go to the reception desk and ask about her when he ran into Dermot Brien.

“Oh, Dermot – just the man I want to see! You were going to give me the name of that fellow in Dublin who bought those landscapes.”

By the time he had finished talking to Dermot, he was running late. It had started to rain much harder, and if he didn't hurry he was going to miss the last flight to London.

Something else had happened, too.

He had completely forgotten about Sarah, as if she had never existed.

By the next morning, the rain had cleared, and the sky was as blue as a baby's eyes. On the Atlantic shore at Ballinskelligs Bay, a man and a woman walked across the beach. He was tall and dark and dressed in black. She wore white, a fine linen gown trimmed with Kerry lace, and there was a garland in wild flowers in her hair. Her gown trailed on the wet reflecting sand but she seemed not to notice; or perhaps she didn't care.

“I love it down here in the morning,” the man said,
stopping and looking out to sea, his hand shading his eyes. “It's always so fresh. Like the world born anew.”

The woman said nothing but kept on walking. Eventually he caught up with her and took hold of her arm. “You mustn't pine for what was,” he told her. “That life is gone now, don't you see? That's what your father was trying to tell you, that it's no good trying to go back. That running away last night, what folly that was; and look what happened to my poor dog. Besides, didn't I keep my part of the bargain? I'm only expecting you to keep yours.”

She turned and looked at him. Her face was filled with resentment and bitterness. “You gave me nothing,” she said. “You gave me nothing and I owe you nothing.”

He gave her a quick frown, as if her words had badly hurt him. But then he cheered up, and said, “This is just the beginning, you know. You'll see what I can give you, given time. It's a strange life, but a fair one. You'll meet all kinds of people just like yourself; rich and beautiful, some of them; and some of them ragged and odder than tinkers. And I'll show you what magic is, too. Real magic. Walking through hillsides and having no concern for time or space. I'll show you how to feed on blood and spiders and baby's breath; and how to win all of the men you could possibly want, and steal them away; the same way that I stole you.”

Just then, a man appeared around the rocks, walking his dog. The dog was darting and barking at the sea, but when it caught sight of them it came trotting up and stood a little way away from them, its head cocked to one side, making a high-pitched whining sound.

“Here boy, come on boy,” the man called him. “What's got into you?”

The man came nearer and nearer. The woman slowly
raised her hand, but the man walked right past her, missing her by only a few inches. He didn't even look at her.

The woman turned around as if to call him; but then she looked at her dark companion in absolute horror. “He couldn't see me,” she said, her voice trembling. “
He couldn't see me
!”

Her companion man started to laugh. He walked away, still laughing, and shaking his head.

The woman stayed where she was, mortified, while the sea ebbed slowly away on all sides.

Raymond caught the midday flight to London. The Garda had carried out another intensive search of the ditches and hedges alongside the Kenmare road, but they had found no trace of a woman's body. They called into the bed and breakfast and told Raymond that he was free to go.

It was while he was while he was drinking his first vodka and tonic on the plane that he began to wonder what he had been looking for, just before he left Parknasilla. He remembered searching through somebody's room, but for the life of him he couldn't remember whose it was, or what he had been looking for. There was something about chairs but he couldn't remember that either.

Later, when he was looking for a pen, he discovered the folded business-card out of his jacket pocket. ‘Seáth E. Rider, Acquisitor, Dublin & London.'

He regularly tried to solve
The Daily Telegraph
crossword, but it didn't occur to him that ‘Seáth E. Rider' was an anagram of ‘Heart's Desire'.

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Sacramento is the capital of California – situated on the banks of the Sacramento River in what used to be the state's pivotal point – half-way between the goldfields of the Sierra Nevada and San Francisco, at the point where the first transcontinental wagon and railroads entered the Central Valley.