Where the Birds Hide at Night (14 page)

Peter wanted to kiss the birthmark on Lauren's neck. He wanted to kiss all of her body. But, doing so was proving difficult. He knew this was possibly the last time he would spend the night at her flat, and he wanted her to just let go and give in to her carnal desires. However, this was Lauren, and she was never going to just do that. This was one of the most alluring things about the woman. She could so easily resist that which others desperately sought out. But why? Was she some kind of asexual bore? Peter certainly didn't think so – after all, he had pursued her for all this time. And was that precisely why he pursued her – the knowledge, and hope, that she
would
resist and keep the full spectrum of intimacy at bay? That was for Peter to know (or work out) and nobody else.

They had spent the last three hours discussing The Space. Peter had opened up fully to her, telling her everything. It had been a cathartic release for him, and for her she had been able to finally consume who Peter really was. The sheath, the facade – all had fallen away and the pair had reached the perfect point of connection. She had been able to absorb The Space's concept and existence so easily, so fluidly, and it was this that drew Peter in even more.

She was almost asleep now, and was starting to feel a bit heavy. Peter eased himself from beside her, watching as she curled up on the sofa without him. He stood up and walked over to the kitchen. There was going to be no sexual contact with Lauren tonight, and he knew that tomorrow he was going to confront Alex. He checked his watch: 10pm. In a way he no longer even yearned for the sexual. He was beyond that now, and he had to stand back from Lauren… from everyone. No longer was he a part of humanity. Permitting himself one final look at the impenetrable one, he exited.

* * *

Anna Davies was nervous to go to the door. It was gone 11pm now and the doorbell went again. She'd lost everything already, save her own life, and letting in whoever was at the door wasn't really going to hurt her. She could lose her own life and not care right now. If you could even call it a life. It didn't matter to her. So, she opened the door. There stood Peter Smith, the man she was convinced had murdered her daughter all those years ago. That his brother Stuart had actually done the deed had not eased her hatred of this fiend who now stood in front of her. If anything it made her despise Peter even more. Her daughter's murder had been the Smith family secret – the big joke to share and laugh about over the dinner table. Oh how she wished for the whole family to rot in damnation.

Peter just stood there, hoping to come up with a reason why he'd come to see the mother of the one he'd lost. No reason was forthcoming. She looked back at him, stooped but keen to display firmness. He knew she was a pale wreck of her former self, and it destroyed him to think his own brother had left all this in his wake. Now he wished he hadn't come, but felt the overriding need to resolve something. Anything.

‘Can I come in?' he asked her, thinking it would at least give her some choice and control over the situation. To bring her to her ease was all that could be done at present. And, to his surprise, she stood aside. He stepped in.

* * *

‘It was so long ago now, and yet it feels so new and so raw,' Anna said coldly, unable to sit in Peter's presence. Instead she supported her weight against the kitchen units, next to the knife drawer.

‘I think about Lucy every day.'

‘Do you?' she came back at him, doubting. ‘Do you really?' Peter looked away sheepishly. He knew he hadn't thought about her every day. He'd blocked her from his mind for years. ‘I reached the limit of thinking I could cope with. I stopped thinking,' she told him. He knew where she was coming from. ‘And all this time, with you walking around a free man and me knowing for sure that you'd done it.'

‘It was Stuart, not me.'

‘It doesn't really matter now, does it? It doesn't matter which one of your family did it. Lucy was murdered, there's no altering that.' She opened the knife drawer and took one out, studying the blade as she waved the object in front of her. Peter sat up, taking a deep breath. ‘A human life is so easy to do away with. My husband found that out when he ended his own.'

‘Please, Anna, don't do anything foolish.'

‘We could both die by this simple knife tonight, couldn't we? Rid the world of our miserable existences.'

Peter got up and walked confidently up to her, taking the knife. She did not resist. In a way, she sighed with relief, ready for him to do away with her so that she didn't have to. But, he put it back in the drawer and held both her hands. He too felt relief, crying as her hard face softened. ‘I loved your daughter, Anna,' he told her. He may well have loved her, though he couldn't be certain. But still, this was what Anna needed to hear. ‘And, she loved me back.' She too broke into a sob. ‘I will find Stuart, and bring him to justice. He will pay,' he finished.

That suddenly filled her with dread. Bringing to justice her daughter's murderer would mark the end of two decades of her life's focus. Where would she go from here? Where
could
she go? That would be that. Finished. Peter felt like a bad actor, playing his part quite well but being very conscious of the fact he was playing. He'd come to the end of his repertoire, too, and just wanted to bolt. He couldn't very well up and leave immediately, and thought to occupy his mind on anything that would fill it before a reasonable enough time had elapsed to allow a respectable exit. That in itself seemed like enough to fill his mind.

He thought of his original life, lived hundreds of years ago, when The Space had first presented itself to the group of ‘higher minds' he belonged to. The Great Collective were just conjurers, witches even; people who had come together to search for the limits of human achievement and been forced to gather in secret because of persecution. In a way they probably deserved persecution – pompous, arrogant people. Years, and lives, had passed; but humanity hadn't. Peter had seen it all – what people feared and hated may have shifted slightly, but not fearing and hating itself. That would always remain. He could see that, and it made him indifferent. Here he was all this time later, bogged down with people in a trapped cycle that could be left to run and run. Sitting watching TV with Mother was always just around the corner. He was alive all this time, yet he felt dead.

* * *

‘I had feelings for him once,' Emma told Peter. ‘Romantic feelings.'

‘And for Katie?'

‘What about Katie?' Emma snapped, defensive. She remembered Peter as the nosy lodger of the Edwards household, and was never very fond of him.

‘I can quite easily read you, Emma,' Peter replied measuredly.

‘And?'

‘You and Katie had a dalliance or two – sexually speaking.'

‘What?!' Emma cried out, her eyes darting about as she fidgeted with her bushy dark hair.

‘Look, you're well aware of what Alex is up to now with this law he has passed. He's done it because of what happened in his life, the people who affected him.'

‘So it's my fault?' Emma snapped.

‘No.' Peter tapped his chin, thinking fast. He knew he was most certainly coming across as a creepy sort of figure to this beauty, but he didn't care. He had his goal, and he would reach it. ‘Look, Alex isn't himself, he's been possessed as it were by a horrible weight. I've witnessed it before, with somebody else in another place and time.'

‘You mean the Judge, Darren Aubrey?'

‘Actually, yes.'

‘I've read your book,' Emma smirked. ‘He became The Leader, didn't he? He set about that dignity experiment thing to wipe out the elderly because he was molested by an old man or something?'

‘You see, in a way I kind of predicted all this with Alex. He is forcing upon others what was forced upon him.'

‘Nobody forced him to marry a lesbian,' Emma bluntly pointed out.

‘No, you're right, but sometimes we just get carried along by life. Sometimes we're just too weak-willed to alter things.'

‘Well he's certainly altered things now, hasn't he!'

‘Look Emma,' Peter urged, stepping forward, ‘I need your help… Alex needs your help. If he is confronted with you, the one woman who can unearth his heart, we might be able to halt his damage.'

Emma couldn't look at him. She didn't want to face this challenge. ‘What a load of bullshit you come out with,' was her wall of a response.

* * *

Peter stepped out onto the street and waited. He knew what was about to happen, The Space had shown him, and he had decided not to fight it. Sure enough a plain white van pulled up beside him and the side door slid open. A puff of smoke was enough to send him to the ground, unconscious. He was scooped up and bundled into the van before it sped off down the road.

* * *

I opened my eyes and lifted my head up. There stood Alex – Reaping Icon – looking in at me from beyond my mental tank; my mental concealment. He was holding a blank piece of paper, and presently began to read from it.

‘Ostensibly we spent three hours discussing The Space in person very openly.' He looked up at me, raising an eyebrow.

‘Ostensibly?' I asked for clarity.

‘Something I haven't done with her before. My overwhelming need for her has been reignited.'

‘What is this?' I replied, standing up off the floor. Reaping Icon slipped the paper into his jacket pocket, pressing his forehead against the tank.

‘Well that's just it, Peter. The opportunity is there for you to utilise such awesome powers. You have consumed your appetiser.'

‘The powers of The Space?'

‘Powers you have full access to. Tell me, Peter, of this woman.'

‘What woman?'

‘This woman of which you spoke. The one you spent three hours discussing The Space with.'

‘I don't know what you're talking about.' I turned away from him. He merely walked to the other side of my tank so I was facing him again.

‘I am in your mind. I know you spoke to this woman, Lauren, about The Space.'

‘I did not.'

‘To what end? Or, merely for the sake of it maybe?'

‘Only once The Space has been over-ruled will an end be revealed,' I blurted out. Reaping Icon was stunned.

‘You say rather a lot with so few words,' he whispered.

‘I don't know what I'm saying. But I know I've said too much. The Space knows something beyond human thinking. A purpose.'

‘The Space is so warm and wondrous,' he pondered aloud, changing his mind. ‘You're giving The Space too much personality.'

‘How do you know?' I asked.

‘I don't.'

‘But you're Reaping Icon, you know everything,' I pointed out.

‘The Space is the summation of everything that ever was, is or will be. You have access to The Space, so you also know everything.'

‘But I'm not Reaping Icon.'

‘Are you not?'

‘Then assumptions can be presumptuous.'

‘I merely suggest the idea that you are wrestling with something that may be an illusion,' he pointed out.

‘Do you mean I created The Space?'

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘You created me. Except the woman, she didn't. But why speak of The Space with her, Peter? She was not a part of The Great Collective, was she? She is something far beyond that.'

‘And what does that reveal about me?'

‘I like how you presume the authority to grant me permission to analyse you.' He stepped back from me, his face blank. I stayed silent. ‘But It is alive, isn't it? It is more alive than the whole universe put together. That goes beyond personality. You cannot even attempt to comprehend transferring human emotions onto it.'

‘Perhaps even we are just not clever enough to comprehend it,' I suggested.

‘Don't be silly,' he laughed. ‘Calling myself silly… how silly of me.'

‘I am not you.'

‘You are all of us, Peter. Past, present, future: you are your own parent and your own child. There is you and only ever will be you. You created me, and I am you… you created yourself. Infinite numbers of the same person over and over and over and over.'

‘The idea of that is unnerving,' I confided.

‘That is why everything is nothing to you. No order, no lies.'

‘I plan on usurping that nothingness. Controlling it!' I called out, starting to feel like I was truly Peter Smith again.

‘Is that wise?'

‘Who knows. I rule the world. Right now, at this very moment in time, I rule the world – the universe. I created the universe! But it's not seen, you don't see it, and that's the crucial thing.'

‘How odd,' he responded to my delightful rage. ‘Tell me what you told the woman,' he pushed.

‘You are Reaping Icon, you already know.'

‘To usurp your entirety, Peter, is what I am.'

‘I wouldn't want to annoy The Space,' I told him. ‘I want to befriend The Space, nurture a relationship.'

‘Indeed you do, which is why you told this woman, wasn't it? You told her about The Space because she
is
The Space.'

‘We all are – it is everything.'

‘And everything is nothing.'

‘She is not nothing, she is beyond that. I want an eternity with her.'

He laughed. ‘You've no idea what you want. But, revealing your whole self to her scored you nothing.'

‘I needed to relinquish myself, give myself over to this life and this life only.'

‘Let your humanity flow freely, Peter, let me feel your sickly emotions whizz around in all their crapulence,' he urged, changing gear. I knew exactly what he was trying to do; what he was exceeding at.

‘It's true, I feel these things, and I will no longer block them.'

‘To no longer block them is to allow me in. Come on Peter, let me usurp your connection to The Space. We will become as one and end humanity's sickness.'

‘Very well,' I conceded, ready for Reaping Icon to consume me. But, nothing happened. I stared back at Alex, waiting for him to be relieved of his burden. It did not come. He merely started laughing again.

‘Rather too easy,' he said.

‘It is what you want… what we want.'

He stepped back from me, clicking his fingers. In came Noose, Ruby and Arthur, who stood either side of Alex and looked across at me. ‘What is the worst thing in the world?' he asked me.

‘Toilet water splashing up your bum whilst you're having a poo?'

Smiling, he clicked his fingers again and in walked Gary Noose, Katie and Stuart. Noose immediately broke down, collapsing to his knees in an embarrassing sob. ‘Oh why, my son, why?'

‘Maybe you should ask Peter,' was Gary's reply. ‘After all, you were more of a father to him than me.'

‘I tried, Gary, I tried.'

‘No you didn't. Do you want to know my lasting memory of you?' he spat. ‘I must have been about five or six years old. I remember asking you where the birds hide at night. You laughed at me. You just laughed.'

‘But,' Noose stuttered, clearing his throat of the choking cries, ‘it was so obvious.'

‘I was a child, Dad. I was a child and you just laughed at me.'

‘But son,' he whimpered, stumbling on his knees to the young murderer, ‘they hide from predators at night.'

‘But where, Dad,
where
?' Gary squealed like a toe-rag, grabbing his father and throwing him across the room. He slammed into Alex's desk and sent much of what was on it onto the floor.

‘In the trees, you dipshit,' Alex growled at him. Gary now went for Alex, who outstretched his hand and placed it on Gary's head. Suddenly all the anger was gone, replaced with terror and shame.

‘Please, please,' Gary whimpered, now on his knees, as Alex kept on with the draining. Noose looked over at his dying son, who called to him: ‘Dad, help me, I love you.' He couldn't move, he felt like he'd forgotten how to. His mind wasn't on his son, it was on himself. No sign of Gary as an innocent newborn, or an evil rapist and murderer – all Noose could see was himself.

Oddly, Alex suddenly stopped, pulling his hand from Gary's head and taking hold of his hand instead. Pulling Noose's weakened son to his feet, he gave him a hug and whispered in his ear: ‘Daddy doesn't love you, but I do.' All at once Gary was a new being altogether, his expression losing all notion of emotion. He looked contented, at one with who he was and what he'd been dealt with in life.

Alex turned to Ruby and Arthur as Katie stepped forward. ‘Katie,' he said to her, ‘my loving wife.'

‘It's Kate now,' was her only response.

‘She's a sinner, my loving parents,' Alex yelled at Ruby and Arthur, ‘she sleeps with other women.' He turned back to face Kate. ‘You dirty bitch,' he went at her, Alex coming out now more than ever. There was still something left of what Reaping Icon had consumed. ‘Why bother wasting my time if you wanted women?'

‘Fuck off, you twat, I hate you,' she came back at him. He thought back to their first ever kiss, at school all those years ago, and he placed the image in her mind. She'd been so in love, or so she thought, back then. Alex was all she ever wanted… back then. She'd blocked it from her mind, conveniently making it all just go away. But now it had returned, forced upon her. She
had
to deal with it. ‘I'm sorry, Alex,' she called out, drowning in her own self-pity. Back then she thought that Alex
was
all she wanted from life. It wasn't to be, he didn't satisfy her. No man could.

‘Here is your daughter,' Alex again addressed Ruby and Arthur angrily, ‘she is a transgressor of the law. She must be punished.' Ruby and Arthur, so distant from their daughter of late, looked across at her. She seemed unrecognisable to them. The little red-haired girl they'd tried so hard to get and who gave them so much joy had departed this world, replaced by some apparently unreachable miscreant. ‘She is not your daughter,' Alex kept on, ‘but I
am
your son.' He turned to me and smiled, still addressing them with: ‘Do the right thing by me, the one who needs and wants you – denounce this stranger, this criminal.'

I looked over at Ruby and Arthur, who just wanted to die and vanish into the ether instead of facing this. But, this was Reaping Icon, and that
had
to be faced. Their eyes darted back and forth between Kate and Alex, the decision seeming to elude them. They certainly were deeply under Alex's enthral.

‘It is a simple choice,' I butted in. They both refused to look at me, but I knew they'd heard me because their sight fell away from Kate and Alex. They stared into space as I finished with: ‘In fact, it's not even a choice at all.' I looked over at Kate, as beautiful and as necessary as Ruby. They were my real family – the family I wanted. But, I had been cast away, never to be accepted back. All I could hope to do now was draw them back together for each other. If only Alex – the original and genuine Alex – could have been a part of that too. Alas, he too, like me, was burdened and bogged down by The Space's curse.

‘Surely you don't agree with your daughter's sick, illegal, lifestyle choice?' Alex perked up.

As I watched on, I suddenly became distracted by a tapping at the side of my tank. I ignored it at first, desperate to see my family's problem resolved. But, the gentle yet irritating tapping would not cease. It was almost like a niggling at the back of my mind, that tickling sensation that keeps trying to remind you of things forgotten. I turned to look where the sound was coming from and there stood Stuart. Obviously I had not been keeping an eye on him in the room.

‘Hello,' he said quietly, looking a bit forlorn.

‘Hi Stuart,' I replied calmly, unable to get at him. I was blocked, my own mentality keeping us physically apart.

‘I genuinely am sorry about Lucy,' he said, again with a look of sadness. ‘It was a terrible mistake, one I've had to live with at the back of my mind all these years.'

‘Only at the back?' I asked him. I'd have thought it'd have been at the forefront constantly. Then again, who was I to talk?

‘Is there no way back for us?'

‘There's no way back for me.' I turned from him. I would not rise to Reaping Icon's goading. I looked back for Ruby and Arthur, to see them in the midst of an emotional embrace with their daughter. Alex just stared back at me, grinning. And then it came, the full thrashing of Reaping Icon into myself. I was He, and all of He; taking the complete culmination of all those centuries of impending hatred. It felt good… too good. Right now I wanted nothing else but Reaping Icon. Now I was ready to destroy all of eternity. I took hold of The Space, for that was the key to ending things as it
was
everything. We grappled, it not wanting to relent but wishing it had never come to humanity. This itself was a paradox – if I removed The Space from all of this, surely Reaping Icon would never have existed in the first place? No, he came from humanity itself, not the poor naivety of The Space.

Suddenly I caught sight of Noose across the room. There was no tank to contain me now, nothing or nobody but Noose and me. ‘Gary murdered Anna's neighbours because of me, Noose, not you,' I called out to him. ‘He wanted to bring me out of the woodwork – your surrogate son.'

‘But you were already dead at that time, Peter,' Noose called back.

‘My inevitable return was already seeding events.'

‘So if there had been no possibility of your return… if you were dead full stop… he might not have murdered them?'

I felt The Space go completely from me, from all of mankind, and Reaping Icon and I were the only ones left. The Great Collective, if indeed they'd ever been Great, were certainly no more. There was no possibility of rebirth, no immortal trappings to ever bog me down again.

Alex stumbled next to Noose, yanking a drawer in his desk open and grabbing hold of a gun. He put it to his head and snivelled: ‘I don't deserve to live, I'm the one who's sick. What have I done?' But, before he could pull the trigger, Noose snatched the gun from him and pointed it at me.

‘You told me to be the one to set you free from The Space's curse,' he said bluntly.

‘The Space has gone,' I said.

‘Are you free from it?'

‘Only in death will I know that,' I answered, closing my eyes and waiting for him to pull the trigger. My desire for him to do that physically easy act was profound. After so long as a yo-yo in life's twisted games, I yearned for my eternal end. The gun fired, and naturally I was numb to its delivery. I waited to drop to the floor, a lifeless corpse. It did not come. I couldn't bear to open my eyes, I wanted them to stay shut forever. They were weeping before they opened, and had I not unsealed them I'd have drowned myself. Noose – Detective Inspector Henry Noose, the best friend I could ever have begged for – was lying dead in a pool of his own blood, a bullet blown clean through his face. His face was gone, he'd removed it with the bullet. I wanted The Space back, it was the only way to drag Noose away from death. It wouldn't come. All I had was Reaping Icon.