The Eidolon (5 page)
“I don’t have a solution to all this, Robert,” she said once, “but I know there is one. You’ll find a job.”
“And what if I don’t?”
“You will. Just trust that it’ll work out.”
I took her hand and tried to smile. I didn’t know you could feel lonely in your own home.
The lecturer post had been filled and nothing came up with Zimmer’s plan for Cavendish, not that I expected it to. Zimmer cancelled our presentation at the conference, and I was copied into the reply.
From: [email protected]
Sent: 21st February 11:27
Re: Presention at Annual Conference on Astroparticle and Underground Physics
Priority: High
Dear Professor Zimmer,
Thank you for your correspondence updating me on the situation with SightLabs. I understand your reluctance to proceed with your presentation at the upcoming conference, given that your results are preliminary and the ability to validate them has been taken from you. I am deeply dismayed at the decision to close SightLabs and I suggest we raise it at the AGM. I am certain that you will find a body of physicists to back your appeal. You certainly have my support.
Sincerely,
Prof Simon Pickard
At least Zimmer was showing some spine in tackling this. I went to the conference with him and sat in on the AGM. The Chief Executive of the Institute of Physics was chairing and drafted a document to the Minister of Science, outlining the objections to the closure of SightLabs and the cack-handed way it was handled. Everyone at the meeting signed their support and it made me feel better for a bit.
But I still didn’t have a job. I advertised to do web design and got some interest – from a furniture removal business called Packit Up and a health food shop in Surrey. It wasn’t much, but it brought in some cash.
I didn’t realise how much time Cora spent meditating. The flat was beginning to feel like a prison, and I’d go out to the library with my laptop to work when the smell of incense got to me. I was becoming more and more irritable, easily affected by small things, like finding a flier on the hall table for a music festival; the book on transcendental meditation that she was half way through reading, lying open on the couch; the calendar on the kitchen table, the one I couldn’t help reading, that gave a new quote every day, with some namby-pamby non-advice like, ‘Whatever has happened is the perfect reason to keep going. Keep going and create the life you have chosen to live.’
You know what? I didn’t choose any of this. And I don’t need some airhead to tell me I need to be happy about it.
But what was worse than the anger was the indifference. That feeling of nothingness. Like I’d been cored out and I was existing in a pointless shell, going through the motions for the sake of it. Cora’s attempts to help just frustrated me, and I’d snap at her whenever she asked questions, like if I’d had any word from Cavendish or if I’d thought of going out for a beer with Chris. “I’m only trying to help,” she’d say. “I know how difficult this is for you.”
No you don’t
.
You’ve no idea how this feels. And your treating me like a victim is just making things worse.
But I didn’t say any of it. I’d make an excuse to go back to my laptop.
A couple of weeks later when I came back from the library she looked different. Not what she was wearing, but her expression, her demeanour had changed. She was sitting at the kitchen table writing something in a notebook.
“Hi.” She smiled fully, for the first time in ages.
“Hi.” I put my laptop down on the chair.
“How did it go?”
“Same as usual.”
She got up. “You want a coffee?”
“Yeah, okay. How are things with you?”
She closed the cupboard door and spooned the coffee into the mugs. She glanced at me, as though trying to read my mood. “Well, actually... something happened to me today.”
“What?”
She leaned on the worktop and looked down at the mugs while the kettle chugged steam onto the green tiled wall.
“I saw Sarah.”
“Sarah who?”
“My sister.”
“What do you mean – you had a dream about her?”
“No, I was awake.”
“Well, what do you mean you saw her?”
She bit her lower lip, but the smile crept out on either side. “Robert, you’re not going to believe this. Just after you left, I felt really low – I mean worse than I’ve felt in a long time. I just wanted to know she was okay, you know? And then... then she was there, standing at the window. Smiling at me.”
Sweet Jesus, was I hearing this?
“She looked like she used to look. No bright lights, not like a ghost or anything. Just like you look, right now... and when she left, I felt this really strong sense of peace, right here.” She pointed to the left of her breastbone then shrugged. “I just know she’s okay now.” She stared at nothing for a moment then found her focus on me. “Isn’t that amazing?”
What do you say to something like that? Pass it off as casual conversation? “That’s... well... that’s great you feel better, Cora.”
She stepped closer to me. “But don’t you see how incredible it is? She was right here, Robert, as real as you are.”
“That’s great.”
God, she really means it
. I smiled a forced smile.
Do something. Something normal.
I turned to fill the mugs with boiling water.
“That’s it? It’s ‘
great
’? Robert, don’t you see what this means?”
“It means you’re happy, that’s all that matters.” I tried to make it sound light-hearted, but it didn’t come out like that. She took a step back, her eyes searching my face.
“You don’t believe me.”
I let out a sigh. “I believe that you believe it.”
“That’s not the same. I need you to believe this. What do you think I saw?”
“Cora, you’re exhausted... after what we’ve both been through... you hardly sleep, you’re not eating... Your mind can do all kinds of things to you when you’re stressed.”
“You think I imagined it?”
“A lot of people who’ve been through what you have must see things that...”
“That what? Aren’t there?”
“Cora, Sarah is dead.” I put my hands on her shoulders and said it again, gently. “She’s dead.”
“I know that – I watched her die, remember? But I’m telling you I saw her.”
“Oh come on, Cora.” This was getting stupid. “Maybe it was just...”
“No. It was her.” She shook her head. “Why do you always react like this?”
“What do you mean?”
“I know you think that this life is all there is, but why can’t you just admit that maybe you’re wrong? What are you afraid of?”
Oh, please.
“I’m not afraid. Come on, let’s leave it, Cora.” I picked up my laptop and walked out of the kitchen. I could feel the bubble of irritation swelling and I didn’t want it to burst.
She followed me into the living room. “No, let’s not leave it. Why can’t you just open your mind?”
I couldn’t help it. Something snapped in me. “Open my mind?
Open
mymind? My mind is wide open! No, I don’t lap up whatever the latest beardie-weirdie bastard is telling me – I don’t buy it – but don’t tell me my mind isn’t open! I spend my life looking for something that no-one can see, but I deal in facts, Cora, not wild assumptions.”
“Just because you haven’t found a name for it doesn’t mean it isn’t there!”
“If someone could give me a shred of evidence, just a shred” – I picked up the Buddha statue from the bookcase and slammed it down again – “that any of this woo-woo shite is right, I’d believe it. I really would. But there’s nothing! There never has been. All this...” – I waved my hand around at the room – “...this new-age crap is just filling a hole. It’s blind faith, Cora – if you choose it, go ahead, but not me. I need proof, not fantasy.”
“You can’t prove everything.”
“Yes, you can, Cora.”
“Really?” She reached for the silver ring that hung from the black leather cord around her neck. “What about love?”
She held my stare for a moment, waiting for me to answer, and when I couldn’t, she lowered her eyes and left the room.
A leaden silence rang out between us that night. I hated it, the edge that hung in the air after we argued. It flaunts the side of me I don’t want to know. It leaves me feeling deflated and irritated. I wish I could have let go of it, but I didn’t know how. I scowled for most of the evening and banged things when I put them down, frustrated with Cora and bitter with myself. Why couldn’t she just accept that I see things differently? She passed the evening reading a book by the window, although she seemed to spend more time staring at the rain on the glass than at the pages on her lap.
That night when I lay next to her, I couldn’t sleep. The anger dissolved into guilt and it clawed at my insides. Still, in the darkness, our exchanges played over in my mind. I turned to watch her, as she lay sleeping, her skin pale and smooth against the pillow, and brushed a strand of hair from her cheek.
Couldn’t you just have let it go, let her think you believed her? Would that have been so difficult?
The truth was something I didn’t want to face, and there, in the silence of the darkened room, it was surfacing. When did we become so different? It wasn’t always this way, was it? Or did I just dismiss it before; think it didn’t really matter? A part of me, somewhere deep and unsettled within, wondered who she was, and how we ever ended up together. I rolled away from her and closed my eyes. It would be alright in the morning.
B
UT IT WASN’T
alright. We barely spoke for the next few days. She stayed out more and more, and Tibet became the escape route I was aiming for. Until then, I was marking time. I hated myself for it. Sometimes I’d catch her crying, then she’d brush the tears away in angry shame and push past me, and I knew it wasn’t about Sarah. We slept in different rooms, each making the excuse that we didn’t want to keep the other awake. If it weren’t for that picture on the hall table, I’d have said we were flatmates who barely knew each other. I couldn’t think of anything we had in common anymore. Not a single thing. Is that what happens to people?
But the day I left for Tibet, I got a glimpse of something that was there before. She kissed me on the cheek, and that kiss, soft and simple, had more tenderness than all the others we’d shared before. She took the ring on the leather cord from around her neck and handed it to me. She was letting me go. I needed to go, and she knew it; that kiss was her permission. She wouldn’t be there when I got back.
S
OMETHING SHARP IS
needling my face. A taste of copper in my mouth, a throbbing upper lip. Ignore it, it’ll go away.
Nope, it’s still there, pushing against my cheek. Is it pushing me or is it the other way round? Either way it feels like I’m bouncing. How odd.
Open your eyes.
What the...
The whole earth is bouncing nearer and further away, nearer and further away. What way is up? Below, something black and furry, the smell of musty leather. A thudding sound – hooves beneath me. What the hell? A man’s lined, weathered face, dark pebbles for eyes peering in; grey rocks and shingles on the hard ground below. If I lift my head a little. Shit, it hurts – a nail in the skull with each bounce. Sunlight floods in, sets my eyes streaming again, as I squint up. Is that a lake? Why so black, in all this light? Not even a glimmer on it. I remember it, black water with no light. Uneasiness crawls under my skin as the thick grey mist parts for a moment, and behind it... what is that? A dark sphere where the sun should be, not yellow but black, a seething dark orb. I don’t want to, but I can’t help but look, it’s drawing my eyes back to it, draining me, sapping me from the inside. There’s a sound. A soft whispering, a breathing of indiscernible words, and something else is behind the whisper, like the sound of an out-of-tune bagpipe. It hurts – I’m feeling actual pain in my head with it.
God, make it stop. Please...
Blackness falls.
Quiet, the absence of wind and snow, a cup of warm liquid held to my lips, the smell of incense, and blackness once more.
W
HAT DID
I dream? It was a ramble, a rant in the caverns of my dizzy mind. I dreamt that Cora was wiping the blood from my face, soothing me. She stared down at me, unsmiling, and dropped a stick of incense into a bowl of water, extinguishing it, then walked away. I dreamt I was in Michael Casimir’s garden with him, like I used to be when I was young. The old man, the next best thing to the father I never had, and probably better in many ways, was crouched down, staring at his empty beehive, and I was reassuring him that his bees would come back, some day, even though I knew they wouldn’t. A dream about a black sun behind the mist and voices I couldn’t understand.
The smell of incense comes to me, but not from the dreams. Men’s voices in a strange language, whispering nearby. I don’t understand what they’re saying. I try to call out, but nothing comes from my mouth. The sound of a door creaking, and silence.
I
DREAMT THAT
something I could neither see nor hear was behind me on a snowy hill.
Chapter Three
E
VERYTHING ACHES, ESPECIALLY
my head. My tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth and the stench of my own breath as it hits my nostrils makes me want to vomit. My body is drenched in sweat, my clothes sticking to me as though I’ve been doused in a bucket of oily water. I lie back on the hard mat and stare at the wooden beams overhead. Don’t know them. I turn to the door, closed only a moment ago, I think, but it doesn’t help. There’s a sound in my head, the echo of a memory, whispers slithering on the fragments of a dream. I reach for Cora’s ring. It’s still there, in my pocket.
I sit up on the mat, resting my feet on a cold stone floor, my elbows on my knees. I clutch my temples again, trying to squeeze out the last of the sound. It dwindles and dies away but my brain still thumps inside my skull. My lips are stuck together and it hurts to swallow. The wooden beams around me swim in and out of focus. Where the hell am I? Beside me, a wooden bowl half-filled with water sits on the floor next to my boots. My hand trembles as I lift it to my mouth, and the water spills over my shirt.
