The Thrill of the Chase
By Wendy Maddocks
© Wendy Maddocks, 2011
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CONTENTS
STORMED3
THE CHASE 5
Cut up by the death of her girlfriend, Stacey decides to take in Northwood Chase = the deadliest road anyone’s ever known
ROCK A BYE19
Northwood Chase saw Chris’s family die but the toys think there was something behind it. Drugs, rage, something more? Coco the clown knows.
JUSTICE IN THE BARREL46
The old gang used to skip school and smoke but that’s not daring enough for Tommy. How much damage can he do and get away with it?
TO KILL A WORLD78
STORMED
The air tingled with the sounds and smells of people having a good time. The trees gave everything that woody smell and made the clearing seem a little sinister in the half-dark. Even the sting of flesh on flesh had hardly registered; had barely penetrated the drink and drugs haze that engulfed everyone and the heat made the beer and smoke seem all the more potent. The toppling lager cans didn’t matter. The broken stereo that the host kicked over didn’t matter. All that did matter was that the summer was going to last forever and we were all going to live forever. Even me.
That’s how I remember it starting – a party to celebrate the end of a school that half of us were expelled from before the end of the year. It was at my friends house but somehow had worked its’ way outside. Richie had a nice cabin in the woods where he lived with his parents and his new adopted sister. “Party?” he had asked one morning when we were ditching biology.
“All right.” And from that day on any parties were held at his house. It was just a thing we had in our gang – just like we always used my shed to play poker.
“Joey!” Rosie slapped me. “I don’t care how stoned you are, I’m not doing that!”
“Why not? You did it before.” I knew it was the wrong thing to say when she slapped me again, but I didn’t really feel it. Beer really takes the edge off. “I’m going, I’m going.” And I tried to go, honest I did – but my legs just gave out. Rosie ended up dragging me to the nearest tree and sitting on said legs anyway. “Rosie, I thought you just said –“
“I’m a girl. I change my mind.” I was barely sixteen and not about to argue. “Jesus, Joey, be quiet.”
I was back out in the heart of the party ten minutes later – I was sixteen – and treating my friends to my unique version of My Way. A very slurred and mostly made up version, but it was definitely unique. It was getting quite late so we all decided to call it a night, and people started drifting off to their homes. It was just after midnight and the crazy summer heat had finally died back down to double figures and a bit of a breeze was swirling the air up. Rosie left a few minutes later – when I started singing again, incidentally – so I gave her a wave and said I’d see her tomorrow, and Richie, me, Lucy and David were left cleaning up.
“Had a laugh, Luce?”
“Yeah, it’s been okay. Had to drag Rosie with me but I think she enjoyed it too.” She looked at me and I pretended I had no idea what she was talking about. She wouldn’t buy that crap. Like Richie, she’s known me since I was practically a foetus. WE were the Three Musketeers growing. Then David joined our primary and we were officially a gang. “How did we get through so much hash? How did we afford so much?”
For some reason, I looked up at a window and saw a white face there, holding a blue piece of cloth to its cheek and dressed in white. I actually thought it was a ghost for a minute and jumped out of my skin. Richie saw me jump and looked up too. “What?”
“W-w-window.” I truly did stammer. That’s such a pathetic thing to admit to but I have to tell it how it happened. “Ghost.”
“Mate, there’s no ghost there. That’s my sister, Rachel. She doesn’t like going outside so she’s probably been at that window all night.”
David and Lucy were holding each other up with the laughing. It really wasn’t that funny. Then the wind blew her bin liner away onto a tree and it was my turn to laugh. “My black bag!” she wailed. She had got about three inches up the tree before she decided it wasn’t important enough to rip her new trousers for. “Bugger the bag.” And that set us off again – no, I don’t know why any more. Everything just seemed so vital back then.
I went straight up to bed when I got home that night after promising Richie we would do a proper clean up in the daylight. I banged on the door to say goodnight to my Dad and brother Tony. I Fell into bed not through exhaustion but because that was the only way I could make sure I landed on the right piece of furniture. The bed and dresser, desk and chest, they all kept moving and switching places so I just threw myself in the general direction of bed because there was nothing else round there. Pyjamas seemed a bit too complex then with a drawstring and all those bottoms so I just crawled into bed fully clothed.
Must have gone out like a light because when I woke up, my watch read something to four. The minute hand got snapped off when Tony decided to put it in his mouth and eat it. He grew out of the eating everything phase – and into the hitting everything that moves one. Tony’s a year older than me.
I had thrown all my covers off in my sleep and it was as I tried to grab them all up that I heard it. It was probably the sound that woke me. Normally, I just sleep straight through wind and rain, but maybe I woke up because I was hot and uncomfortable. The wind was whistling and the garden gate was banging. “Tony, fix that sodding gate.” I watched from the window as the wind picked up a bit more. Lightning cracked down but no rain followed it. Suddenly, the wind whipped itself into a frenzy, maybe a twister would describe it better – something out of the Wizard of Oz. A tree branch was whisked into the air and crashed against the wall.
It seemed to die down, turn into a light summer breeze again, just as abruptly as it had started and I stumbled back to my bed, knowing my eyes would close in seconds. I slept until noon- I slept and dreamt up a storm.
THE CHASE
I was about to do something very, very stupid. Something that might very well end me. Something I was going to do even though I knew that.
I had been doing stupid things most of my life so no-one would have been surprised I was doing another one. They would have been shocked I was planning it first. Plots, plans, schemes – none of that had ever been my strong point. Stacey needs to really apply herself. That’s what all my school reports said for about ten years. My teachers all sort of gave up on me towards the end. The only thing I ever really worked at went up in smoke. So that went well. Advice like that is sometimes better when you don’t take it, it seems.
Whether it was excitement, nerves or just plain dread I can’t say for sure – maybe it was a bit of all three – but I must have made about a dozen or more mistakes on the order forms I had been processing. At the end of my shift, I printed off my spreadsheet, scribbled sorry in pink highlighter on the bottom and added it to the pile of work destined for other departments. After grabbing my jacket and handbag, I signed out and turned to walk towards my flat. Towards the biggest mistake of my life.
My flat was dark when I unlocked the door even though it was still light out. I kept the curtains closed during the day. My partner used to work nights and have to sleep during the days. It was a hard habit to break. I pushed open the red curtains to let the late afternoon sunlight flood the living room before slamming the door on the rest of the busy building.
There was a pizza in the freezer so I chucked it in the oven and opened a bag of shredded salad. Eating something before my big night seemed important and having at least some of it be good for me even more so, although if – when – I killed myself tonight, I wouldn’t care.
Or know.
Nor would anyone else.
Because, if I believed everything I heard and read, there wouldn’t be enough of me left for a post mortem. An arm here, a leg there, my insides spread all over the road. People would be picking up parts of me for days. If you believed the stories. I really didn’t have the choice. I could prove the stories wrong though. I could be the one people talked about for years to come, the one they told their children about. Or I could be just another stupid girl. This was most definitely the craziest thing I had down whilst knowing it could kill me. Okay, the drink and drugs and tats in dodgy places – I had been aware they could be lethal but I was a kid then, I hadn’t really known. But tonight…
If something went wrong…
I already knew what the accident scene photos would look like.
By the time I had realised all this my salad was starting to go slimy and my pizza was burning, tinging the air with a slightly acid smell. I yanked the door open and grabbed out for something to wave the smoke away and pull the tray out with before the smoke alarm went berserk. Oddly, it flashed through my mind how I wouldn’t be any good to anyone if I burned myself. The pizza was drier than papyrus and not one bit of it looked fit for human consumption. My little brother used to take great pleasure in telling me I was not entirely human. My hand was hot and beginning to tingle. I looked down and saw that I was still holding the tray. When I noticed what I was gripping it with I let go and heard a far away crash as it met the tiled floor. My hand was fastened around a wadded up tea towel – one of a trio of twee home sweet home things Lorraina had bought when we moved in together. Neither of us cared much for the sentiment but the pictures were cute and they served their purpose. I should laugh or cry or scream or something. Only I had no energy left for another emotion. So I did something.
“Don’t be surprised if I don’t make it to work tomorrow,” I said into my boss’s voicemail. “You can fire me. That might be for the best. Just don’t expect me in.” I sat there with the phone to my ear for a minute and a forkful of salad halfway to my mouth. It seemed cruel to hang up on him with no explanation. “I’m riding the Chase.”
Saying it should have been monumental, an epiphanical moment when the reality hit me. It was just another stupid thing I was going to do. But I wouldn’t just go and ride the Chase. I was going to conquer it and control it and make it my bitch. I was going to be the one Northwood Chase didn’t take. Oh, plenty of people negotiated the winding, sloping road everyday taking little Tarquin to his chess tournament or trying to delay that dental appointment. But never at 70mph. On two wheels. In the dark.
“Are you totally crazy?”
I had picked up my ringing phone without even realising. Two years of working in a call centre had conditioned me to stop a phone making noise as quickly as possible.
“Stacey, this is… I don’t even have the words.” My line manager, Mark, sounded tired and frustrated and I wondered what he had interrupted to call me back. “That place kills people, you know.”
Silence. His face on my grainy video phone screen was a Kodak moment if ever there was one. It started concerned which was sweet and then… then it just fell. “It won’t bring her back. You know that.”
“That’s not what this is about and you know that. I’m doing it because…” Worlds failed me then. There was no solid reason for doing what I was going to do but there were about a hundred blurry ones. “Lorraina didn’t die out there just because everyone else does. Just because it’s a blind bend. Just because that’s the way it is. I’m gonna ride it, I’m gonna beat it and I’m not gonna let it have me.”
“So you’re trying to prove a point. That you’re better.”
“I am better.”
“And that’s the kind of thinking that gets you killed.”
It probably wasn’t the most mature thing I had ever done but I hung up on him. I put the phone down on my boss. Good move, Stace. I felt bad and I doubted there would be a hob waiting for me in the morning. Mark had only been telling me things that were true and that I already knew. Logic was an unforgiving mistress. No-one had ever ridden the Chase and survived. Did I honestly expect to be the first?
Shadows were beginning to invade my front room. Evening. Time to get ready.
Leathers covered me from neck to wrist to ankle. The dying summer was still a touch too warm for such an outfit but going without them was madness. Without my battered and ancient leather, the ground could seriously mess me up and I didn’t want to do myself an injury. My feet had swollen too much for anything more than my less-than-practical canvas high-tops. I looked down at the road stretching out in front of me. It was flat at first, tricking many into thinking it was safe to race along but the slight slope and cracked surface began just beyond the first turn. My hands jammed down my helmet and clicked the tinted visor into place before I could think myself out of it. Something tapped the top of my helmet; a chill breathed around me. Rain. Rain was coming. That trip to the garage to pump up my tyres had been sorely needed. Especially considering the amount of power straining underneath little old me.
I revved the engine. Lifted my foot off the ground. Moving now. Still not too late to cease this insanity and go back to my flat. Speed. I needed more speed. I turned around and judged that I needed to give myself just another couple of hundred feet to ensure I was going fast enough to slide round that first bend without tanking. As I walked the bike backwards, I noticed a couple of figures cosied up on the grass bank to the side. Northwood Chase had always been a spot for young lovers. Watching a stupid girl wiping out and then her and her bike go up in a massive fireball – well, that was a hell of a first date.
“Here we go.” The Yamaha grunted and growled and then I let it off its leash. The sppedo climbed. The couple turned to look for the noisy engine and they were so young. Kids. There were no street lights so the road was illuminated by my head lamp and a smudge of moonlight. Focus. Tunnel vision. Nothing outside this chicane of broken tarmac exists. Accelerate out of the first turn. Start like you mean it. Keep left so the overgrown hedge does not knock you off balance. I stopped having coherent thoughts right around then. The next few minutes were filled with braking, swerving and movements so fluid and precise that I must have been practising them in my sleep for weeks. And something else. A feeling. Maybe it was the air rushing by and tickling my bare hands. Maybe it was simple relief that it was nearly all over. I was on the straight and my head lamp was blinking off a vandalised WELCOME TO MILLFORD sign. I stamped down and held tight as the twinkling town lights sped my way.
Curve.
Too late.
No, it didn’t kill me. I felt gravel slip and slide underneath me as nearly two hundred kilos on two brand new tyres scrabbled for traction. Rain. No proper grip. Back wheel scraped the grass verge. I felt it kick out and carve its own arc in the dirt. My hip was almost touching the ground. I was so far out of control that even a stray pebble could topple me.
But it didn’t. I eased my weight to the other side and twisted my handlebars into the skid. Once the bike and the ground realised u was doing what it wanted it was easy enough to ease out of the skid. A quick peek down showed I was still at 65mph. Had I dropped any speed at all? Had that endless instant of panic not screamed SLOW THE HELL DOWN? Then I was flashing past the town sign. I veered off on to the grassy bank and started riding in big, shaky circles as I slowed.
“Not tonight!” I yelled at the road. “You’re not taking me tonight!” Perhaps 6 dirt doughnuts later, my heart was starting to slow down. Not that I knew it had been racing right along with me until then. Standing there, just staring at Northwood Chase, I began to think about how lucky I was to have survived the journey. No. it was more than luck. Sure, it had scared me and tried to turn me away but I had ridden it out. It had not hurt me because I was not frightened of it. After my Lorraina had died here… there was nothing worse it could do.
I killed the engine, pushed my kickstand down and slid off the bike. I managed just a few steps on spaghetti legs before they totally buckled and I fell to my knees in the long, damp grass. A disembodied hand clap echoed and the young couple from earlier walked into sight. The boy stopped and glanced at me then the bike and then the Chase. He was no doubt wondering how a hundred pound girl could handle nearly 1000 ccs of pure mechanical monster and get it safely round that. I shrugged. The girl stepped towards me, staring, wondering how I had managed to do it without getting a scratch on me or the bike. Of course this is all speculation, they could have just been joining the rest of the world in puzzling out just how stupid I really was. My version was better. The boy said something I didn’t catch and the girl went back to his side. I noticed that even though they stood close to each other and they had stopped clapping – it was getting a bit creepy in the silent night – they didn’t touch each other let alone hold hands. Being physical is usually the first thing people think about when they have just witnessed a miracle but these two were young and probably in shock.
“It’s okay. I’m okay,” I told them. There was too much shadow and darkness to see their faces but I don’t think they quite believed me. “Really not crazy.”
“are you sure? That was the maddest thing I’ve seen,” the boy said.
“Seriously? Wait until you walk in on your parents having sex.” That had been the maddest thing I ever saw at his age – I thought he was maybe16 or so. Of course, when I was his age I thought my parents were far too old and rusty to be doing it but there they were – screwing together like a freaking Meccano set.
“You could have – should have – wasted out there. It was so cool.”
You did it Stace.
Yeah I did.
I’m so proud of you.
“I aim to please. Well, not usually but I’m glad my death race was entertaining.” The dark was really blanketing the grassy bank now. I glanced at the clock on my phone, miraculously still clipped to my leathers. Praise the completely scientific and rational explanation for everything. When I looked back up, the couple were gone. There were footprints tracking over the wet ground towards town. It would be the responsible thing to do to call Mark and tell him I would be in one perfectly Stacey-shaped piece for work tomorrow… but it was nearly midnight. I could phone my parents but they hadn’t even known about my plans for the night. Maybe I could –
Don’t freak out but I’m here.
A drop of something wet and hot trickled down my spine and into the small of my back, going cool so quickly it made me squirm. Damn rain.
I always loved it when you did that. Please don’t stop.
“Rain.”
Yes. I’m only allowed to stay for a while so you need to listen and pay attention.
Near-death experiences often brought hallucinations. It wasn’t too unrealistic to believe that the spin on the moving gravel had jarred my nerves so badly that I was hearing things but hallucinations were usually visions and I didn’t see anybody. I was having a great night. “What’s going on?”
I’ll explain it all. Pin back your flaps. The Chase killed me. But you rode it and it spared you. You were lucky.
“No. This wasn’t luck. This is me – “
You dodged the bullet, so to speak. I was coming home to you that night. After the graveyard shift. And then I ended up in my own grave.
“Where was it? I want to see the spot where you…” I just couldn’t say died. It was too hard, too final. And since I could hear her now nothing was final.
In a little while, Stacey. The Chase let you live when you really should have died too. You should be here with me now.
“Rain, why can’t I see you? If you’re real I need to see you.” Then I waited. I looked at my phone again and watched as minutes clicked through. Maybe the witching hour, or midnight to non-insane hoping-to-see-a-ghost people, would make her appear before me. No. No Lorraina. No wispy image. “I’ve missed you, hun. The washing up hasn’t been done in a week.”
Eating off paper plates and kitchen roll. I remember the days.
I don’t know why I did exactly what I did but it made perfect sense to me then. There was an old yew tree further up the road, probably halfway along. I went to it and knelt before it.
You rode the road and it spared you. But they need something in return.
“What?”
It was obvious. Maybe the humanitarian in me stopped me saying it to myself. Maybe I was just being incredibly thick. Or possibly – probably – I was showing her most hated trait in me and I was just being a stubborn as a Brighton donkey.
They say I can come back if you do. And I want to come back so badly.
“And I want you back, Rain.” Did I want her back badly enough to give the Chase what it wanted? Stupid question.
It was well after midnight and I could feel my eyes trying to close. Flickering shut then jerking myself into the closest semblance of awake as I could manage. Bed. My nice, warm flat with my nice warm bed and my nice warm alarm clock that would get me up at dawn. “I’m tired Lorraina. Come home with me.”
I can’t. Not yet anyway.
Then I nodded and went back to get my bike. “I’ll see you soon.”
It only took twenty minutes to get back to the high-rise where my flat was. The lift was always either broken or swimming in puke and pee so I took the fire escape stairs to my flat. That was not always the best option but I suppose my luck was still running strong because it was empty. My rubber soles thudded on the metal grate as I ran up two at a time. I needed to run ff a bit more energy before I tried to sleep. If I hadn’t had an early start tomorrow, I would have ridden my bike around Northwood for a while before jumping the fence to the city athletics track and running a few laps. A girl really has to stay in good shape to tame a bike like my Yammie. My parents had always taken me and my little brother to athletics meets and I’d started running so I could be in one someday. My brother was not an exercise person. He was a don’t move if I can help it kind of person. You know, a teenager.
Why didn’t it shock me how close I had come to not having a family tonight?
When I got inside and closed the front door, I felt my way over to the lamp and switched it on. A soft glow brightened the room but only slightly. The main light would have tricked my brain into thinking it was day and I was too sleepy to wake now.
Bed.
Too far away.
I grabbed the blanket from the back of the sofa and went around. Oh. A body was already there.
I wish it was me. You never said.
Until that moment I had truly thought it was Rain. Somehow she had found her way back.
The figure turned its’ head and threw an arm out in a stretch.
“What are you doing here?” Perhaps engaging a potential ram-raider / attacker was… okay, another stupid thing to do. In a night full of craziness nothing seemed too far out.
The body stayed lying down but turned to face me. I could tell it was a man by the low grunt of a yawn that roared my way. I squinted, glad I hadn’t taken my high-tops off because I was already ready to bolt for the door.
“It’s only you.”
Mark pretended to look upset at that but I knew he was only pretending. I hope so anyway. He did like to play the intimidating, all-powerful boss. It really was only playing though. Everyone knew he was a pussy cat.
“How did you get-“
“Key under the welcome mat. Very cliché.”
“It’s been a long night, Mark. I’m not feeling very imaginative. So, unless you’ve changed my business hours to cover two in the morning…”
“You did it. I’m not sure how to deal with this. Do I put you on a warning for endangering our future sales, hug you because you’re still here or just yell at you for being so damn reckless?
“All of the above?”
There was quiet for a minute and something must have shown on my face. “What happened?”
He tugged me down on to the sofa. I assumed he would shift so I could sit next to him but he didn’t. I ended up lying right next to him. Lorraina and I had chosen a sofa so wide that my feet were dangling over the edge if I sat right back.
“You don’t look like you, Stacey. Tell me what happened.”
But I couldn’t. Not all of it. Not yet. I ran through my bike journey, the twists and bends and my skid, glossing over just how close a call that had been. I left out the part about Lorraina. I was barely making sense of that in my own head. Mark clearly thought I was mentally unstable and confessing to talking to my dead girlfriend would probably send him running for the streets.
“And I’m gonna do it again,” I finished. Sleep was creeping up on me which I had thought was an impossibility given the adrenaline still racing through my veins.
Mark shifted me onto the side, sat up and looked at me like I was certifiable. “You’re what?” he knew what I said and he knew I meant it. “I thought tonight might have gotten all this out of your system.”
“It helped and I’m glad I did it actually. I think the constant trying not to wipe out stops it hurting for a bit. No, that sounds far too emo.” What were the right words? If there even were any words to describe it. “It’s like I was riding so hard, concentrating, that my mind was just filled with the Chase and nothing else.”
“Okay, so it worked once and you were so lucky –“
“It wasn’t luck.”
“What makes you think it’ll work again?”
They can’t take you now. Not until you give them something.
“I just know it. I can ride up and down and I’ll be okay. When I go again I want you to come and see.”
Mark got up so I could stretch out on the sofa and he tucked the blanket around me. “It had the chance to kill me tonight and it didn’t take it.”
I woke up just an hour or so later to find Mark snuggled into the mismatched armchair with my coat around his shoulders. He had taken off my leathers and trainers but I had been sensible enough to put on hipster shorts and a vest top before leaving the flat – just in case I did end up in an accident tonight, I didn’t want anyone seeing me in the altogether. Energy buzzed around me but a sudden thought held me in place.
It’s him.
No. it was all wrong.
I twisted myself until I was staring straight up at the dark, bare light fitting dangling above me. Everything was quiet outside. For once. There was the distant rumble of traffic on the road outside my window. Noise carries – even seven stories up. Not even light from the outer corridor leaked through the seal on my door.
A life for a life.
Mark had been a good friend of mine for a while. He’d known Rain since college, hired her as his PA and then employed me about a year ago. So I had him to thank for introducing us. Of course if Mark had never got us together, let us fall in love, then I would not be hurting this way when she was taken away from me. The three of us, or four when he found a date, used to go clubbing together or went to the motor shows we loved. I drooled over the bikes, Mark did the off road courses and Lorraina… I never really asked if she had a favourite thing to do at them. But she came. And she made me love her for that.
I was going to get myself lost in the good memories we had made. It was not going to help me out of the problem I was facing now. In my head, I made a list and tried to put everything clearly and concisely. Like I said, this was not my strong point and therefore very not an easy task for me.
Lorraina died on the Chase.
I miss her.
I raced my bike down that road.
Lorraina came and spoke to me after.
My boss was asleep on my settee when I got home.
I have to kill him.
Of all those things only the fact that I missed Rain didn’t sound crazy. Maybe that should have made me wake Mark up and warn him that I was going loopy and possibly homicidal.
No, Stacey. You don’t have to hurt him.
I couldn’t do that. I mean Mark was a friend to us both and I was having trouble believing Lorraina would ask me to kill him.
It’s not me. It’s them. They told me to tell you it has to be him.
“I can’t do it to him. Mark hasn’t done anything to deserve it. He did nothing but love you, hun. I saw how he looked at you. It was the same way you looked at me. Plus, he’s my boss.”
Please Stacey. I want to come back so much. They need an exchange though.
“Does he have to be –“ I swallowed “willing?”
There was no answer. I rooted around in my mind for her voice again. I was clinging, still, to the hope I was hallucinating and everything was in my mind though that was definitely fading fast. Truthfully, I had not really believed that theory all night – well, not after the first few minutes – and my brain had already accepted the fact all of this was real. Oh God. I was glad everything was real, I wasn’t dreaming it all up, there was still a chance. But why did I need to cause so much pain to do it.
Properly awake again, I got up and crossed into the kitchen to make myself some hot chocolate. The night had cooled and cold sweat was sticking my vest to my back. Yuck. My milk started warming over the cooker while I plopped chocolate powder and sugar into a mug and reached for a bag of biscuits.
Wait. Something Lorraina had said drifted back to me. Something in return… life for a life… exchange. Not once had anyone said Mark. Could it be someone else instead?
No. It must be him. If regaining a love isn’t worth losing a friendship, then why do we give it such power\?
So, Mark.
My sticky vest peeled back from my back.
“Christ!” I nearly screamed but I bit down on the inside of my cheek to keep silent. Yelling blue murder at three in the morning, halfway up a block of flats, would hardly raise an eyebrow let alone the alarm.
“Mind if I..?” Mark gestured to the milk and mugs.
“Knock yourself out.”
“You must be shattered. Why don’t you get some sleep and I’ll bring this in when it’s ready.”
As if I could sleep any more tonight when I knew what I had to do. “I spoke to her. To Lorraina.”
“I heard you talking in your sleep. Couldn’t quite make the words out though.”
I knew he’d put it all down to something trivial like a dream. Maybe it was going to work out better if he thought that.
“I’m not tired. I think I need to sit here for a while and think.”
“Feel free to think out loud” Mark was like that. He wanted to know everything that was somersaulting through my head but he never made me feel as though I had to tell him.. not talking to him was so easy that it made you want to talk it out with him. And I wanted nothing more than to do that. Maybe I’m too much of a scaredy cat.
“We’re not discussing this.”
“No?” He got up to pour the hot milk in the mugs then started to stir them up. The man, the friend, I’d been told to kill, was making hot chocolate for me. That was almost enough to make me cry. I could feel my bottom lip start to wobble and I chewed my sore cheek again. No tears. Rain could still come back to me and that was a happy thing.
“Thanks,” I said when he gave me my drink. My hands brushed his when I circled the mug. I guess I expected something to happen like in stories, a spark between our fingertips that made me realise I loved him too much too risk him. If that had happened I wouldn’t have been surprised. Hell, we’d shared a bed before one far away and drunken night. But no, there was nothing there. Wrong. Immoral. It was as if someone had shut down my emotions and all I knew was how I felt and no how I should feel.
In the dim kitchen light I could look at Mark and see his spiky hair and huge eyes that were exactly the same shade of amber. Dyed hair? Contact lenses? I could see him watching me carefully like he was waiting for me to break a mug and slash my wrists or throw myself out of the widow. I’d gone on a rampage after the police had told me about Lorraina and smashed all the mirrors in the house. A dangerous, extreme and stupid thing to do but it wasn’t too much of a leap to imagine I might do something like it again.
“You miss her. I get that.” Well, of course he understood. “But it’s only been a month. You’re still grieving and it makes us do stupid things sometimes. You pushed your luck on that Chase and it’ll run out sooner or later. When it does, you’ll be joining Rain and –“
“Would that be so bad?”
“Please Stacey. Rain wouldn’t want you to miss out on the rest of your life for her.”
“I can be with her.”
“Enough people have died on that road because they thought they could take it without you adding to their numbers.” I hated it when people tried to change my mind with logic. Honestly though, I reckoned he spoke a lot of sense. A lot of people had died on Northwood Chase but they were all people who had either not known or not cared about the death toll. None of them were as good as me. Not a one.
“Please come with me tonight. I’ll be fine and you’ll see.”
The sun was just an hour or two away by my watch. Too wired to sleep. Maybe Mark wouldn’t be too peed off with me for falling asleep at my desk. I had a feeling he might be doing the same thing.
No, Stace. No waiting till tonight.
“What if Rain could come back?”
“Random question. She’s not coming back, love. It’s hard and it hurts and I don’t believe the ones who say it gets easier. But she’s gone and – “
“What if, though? What if I found a way to get her back but it meant doing something really bad?”
“What brought this on? I know seeing where she crashed can’t have been easy. People say things like that bring back memories and you start grieving all over again.”
“Not crazy Mark.” Just desperate.
I sat on the chair Mark had vacated, huddled under a tatty blanket and listening as Mark banged around in my bathroom. The shower started running.
“Use my new conditioner and I’ll kill you!”
“You mean the one in the green bottle that smells like vanilla and mint.”
“You arsehole!” I hurled a cushion at the bathroom door because the only way he could have known what the goop smelt like was to open the bottle. Then I realised two things. First, he had man parts and therefore avoided all girly products like they were contagious. Second, Mark had probably just read the label. I had to laugh and,, maybe I was hearing things but I imagined Lorraina was giggling right along with me.
With the daylight getting nearer my conversation with Rain seemed like fantasy. Heat, adrenaline, exhaustion, shock – I’d been through the lot over one night – yay me – and I was still clinging to the idea that hearing her voice had been a hallucination and that maybe she would stay if I admitted I was crazy. I didn’t want to be mad though. So there it was.
My girlfriend was dead and there was a probably naked man in our bathroom. I had forced her voice into my head to stop me forgetting her. The cold truth of that made tears sting my eyes again.
I bent down and started picking at the frayed green blanket at my feet.
It has to be now, Stacey. You have to hurry.
No. The voice was my overworked imagination. The theory was to ignore it and let it fade away when… when my mind decided it would be ready to let go of her memory.
Now. You have to make the exchange before the sun comes up.
Imagined or not there was something so desperate about those words that she was impossible to ignore.
Please. Get the bike and run as fast as you can. They’re going t make me go to the other place at dawn.
In my mind Rain was crying the same tears that I was. Tired, angry, distressed teardrops. And there was no way that was fake. Why would I even pretend she was in so much pain where she was?
I don’t want to go there.
“I know, baby, and I don’t want you to go either. But why do I have to do this to Mark?” But I knew why. I had to give up the one person who I loved and still had left so I could have another shot at us. The Rain I had loved would have taken the shot. I wasn’t her. “What do I need to do?”
I listened as she gave me some instructions and then I know it sounds really cliché but I felt her leave. It was as though she had been pulled away.
My clothes were scattered around the room where Mark had peeled them off me in the dark. The leather jacket was still wearable but the tight trousers were soaked with sweat and a tiny it of blood – I had a freshly bandaged scrape across my left knee. It was almost daylight and I would be going at barely half the speed of last night – I could probably get away with loose jeans or even shorts. Sweat was already sticking every unclothed inch of me to every other inch and shorts were tempting indeed. But not sensible. So… jeans. High-tops again. Smelly, sweaty, past their useful life. But how comfy? My little brother had bought them for me a few birthdays ago and I’d worn them pretty much every day since. Even at work. Lorrraina had first seen me in them when I turned up for my first day in full biker gear and the make up of an off duty whore. Appearances required effort. I’d rather spend an extra half hour in bed than preening myself, thanks.
“You’re crying.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Trust me. I held you in my arms, I rocked you into sleep on the day of the funeral. There might be no noise to the sobs but I know what you look like when you cry.”
I had my back to Mark and I was trying not to let my shoulders jerk but he knew. Maybe I was being too still. Shrug.
“What’s wro- stupid question.”
“Everything’s wrong.”
I turned to him and grabbed a scrunchie to tie my hair up. Mark still had wet hair but his own jeans and t-shirt were definitely not his work clothes. Glad to see he had such faith in my ability to function like a normal human being. I grabbed his hand and pulled him through the door with a grin I think was real.
“C’mon. We’re Chasin’.”
About half way down Northwood Chase there’s a yew tree. You know the one.. I died just a few metres from there. And the tree… well it took me. I crawled from the crash site even though I had a broken spine. I know medicine and that a spine smashed into as many pieces as mine and after a wipe out as bad as mine, I would have died instantly. Probably did. But I crawled to the yew. Those few metres seemed like a hundred miles over splintered glass. Gravel and hot tarmac hurts. The yew tree represents death. You find it in graveyards all over town and this one was lust the same. It marks a hundred graves. It marks mine. We can change that. I fell unconscious under the tree. The black branches reached down and held me and forced me to go with it. It swallowed me and I never felt a thing.
Dawn was just half an hour away. Maybe less. There was a smudge of electric orange in the sky, which was turning ever lighter shades of blue. Riding through Northwood with Mark gripping my waist was a thrilling experience. I’d given Mark my motorcycle helmet and it made him look… like an android actually. Being nearly six foot tall and having muscles that came from lifting weights an hour most days should have made him look butch on the back of a bike but no. Not Mark.
“Why are we doing this?” he yelled to me. The rushing air made it hard to hear him but I was not about to slow down or stop to speak to him because I would only end up thinking myself out of this. “Stacey!”
“It’s something I have to do okay.”
“I get that but do you have to kill me in the process. I know you’re going through hell without Rain and maybe you think if you go fast enough your problems won’t be able to catch you up but they will. Just stop, face them, cry them away and never forget her.”
Amazing. I glanced down at my speedo – just touching 35. Mark was not used to high speeds in the open air so it didn’t surprise me that even 35 was freaking out a banger-with-three-working-gears man.
“Thinking you can out-run this sadness… God, it’s just pathetic.”
I slammed my brakes on. We were near the yew tree from what I remembered.
Mark slid off the bike behind me and followed me as I walked it over to the grassy area at the side. It fell into the thick grass and Mark put the helmet down by it after strapping it around one of the bars. My jacket joined the pile. This was all in silence even though my mind was wading through the sludge of what Mark had said. Was I being selfish| Single-minded? I slapped him.
As I shot my hand out to him, his face fell. My best friend was realising how much he had hurt me. Grief was etched in his own face, loss put shadows under his eyes and there were wrinkles that had not been there a month ago. He was hurting too and I’d been so lost in myself that I had not seen it. There were smiles at work, happy chats at lunch. And all the while he was crying out for a hug. I hugged him.
“I’m sorry Mark. I never asked how you were coping with all this. I mean, you loved her too.”
“She knew that. And I think it hurts more because she never loved me.”
“She did. If it wasn’t for me she would have been with you.”
A tiny smile. Barely there but he was trying. Yay me.
“I was the one Rain lived with but part of her heart was with you. You loved her before I even knew her so you have every right to feel like me. And it’s just blank, like it’s hollow inside my bones and I cry because maybe my tears can fill up the space.”
Mark put a hand to one of my burning cheeks and rubbed a thumb over tears I had not known were falling. His hand fell to my waist and he pulled me towards him. Brown eyes so shiny with unshed tears he couldn’t see me. But I could see him – hungry and tired. To Mark I was just a girl. Not a bad looking one I admit. But a woman who, with one kiss, could make him forget the chaos he was living in and remind him there was something left worth living for.
“Mark. I’m Stacey remember. Male parts not my thing.” I can’t say pushing him away was easy. I needed comfort of my own and I wasn’t too bothered what shape it came in, but I knew it would be a bad idea. We’d just be using each other for empty sex.
I took his hand and led him over to the road. A couple of early commuters were growling up the road so we waited for them to pass and then crossed.
“Where are we going?”
“I know where she died,” I explained. “And I know how. The road sort of moves under people around here and makes them crash. They all die. People assume it’s just an accident blackspot.”
“This is not a good idea.” He held back a little but I pulled him forward.
“Bad ideas are my claim to fame. Seriously, you know that.”
The huge yew tree was peeking around the bend we were walking. Every step towards it was an effort. We got there and for a minute or two we just stood looking at it and squeezing each others hands.
“Here.”
Here.
How did I convince him to let me kill him and feed him to this tree so I could have my dead girlfriend back at my side? Light bulb! “It’s not sun rise yet and the night’s not over.”
Mark looked confused and I thought my heart was breaking again. There were tyre tracks on the road behind me. This must have been where I skidded last night. Or maybe where Lorraina had braked before wrecking all those weeks ago. Logic said it just couldn’t be.
When I turned away from them, Mark was standing a few feet behind me. I back-stepped him then jumped him so hard that my cut leg started to send vibrations right through me. Hell of a time for my mind to remember it could be in physical pain too. My legs braced him against the thick, dark tree trunk. I bent to kiss him. Just to get him to go along with my plan. I never realised I might need that kiss as much as he did. It was as if we were sharing our thoughts and feelings rather than bodily fluids.
“This is no good for you.”
“Don’t care. Just keep kissing me.”
His hand slid under my top. I brushed him away and shook my head. He tried again and I didn’t stop him. We loved each other like siblings or an old married couple who knew everything about their partners but this dimly lit tryst had nothing to do with tenderness or intimacy. It was wild and lustful and raw. Two people, one shared loss. Two people who just needed to feel like functioning human beings again.
“Wait. Protection.”
“There’s no need. I – “
“I’ve got stuff in the bike. Wait right there.” I pinned him against the trunk, chased a kiss off his lips with a grin and wandered back towards my bike.
The sun fully broke the horizon a few minutes later. I spent another few minutes re-belting my trousers and straightening the shirt Mark had been in such a hurry to get off. Then I checked the bandages at my knee. Blood was starting to seep out the edges which meant it was worse than it felt. I’d be spending my morning in casualty. Thrilling.
About ten minutes had passed since I had left Mark and he’d likely be wondering if I’d had second thoughts and ditched him. I went back to the road. The sun was rising quite fast now. A white van passed beeping his horn at me.
Mark was not under the tree. No-one was. There was no sign that he’d ever been here and the only thing that told me he had not just grown bored and wandered away was that there were no footprints on the ground. Maybe I expected his clothes to be left in a crumpled heap. Or his watch lying cracked on the floor, stopped at the exact moment he was taken. Nothing.
“I did it. Now give her back.”
I was talking to the tree because it just seemed slightly less mad than shouting at fresh air.
“You promised.”
I’m trying to come back. There’s something here stopping me.
“You said if I took a life you could come back. You said they just wanted another life, that it didn’t matter if it was yours or not.”
That’s what they told me.
“Is Mark with you? I don’t want him to think – “ Honestly? I was absolutely tired of thinking myself. But Mark. He couldn’t know I’d done this to him.
He only passed through here. They sent him straight to the other place. I don’t know what it’s like there. I hope it’s nice. He deserves to have something nice happen to him.
Ouch.
“I want to speak to who-ever’s keeping you there. They promised to return you to me if I became a killer for them.”
I thought you did it for me.
They say it’s not enough. You gave them a man to pay for your life last night.
True. I could have easily died when I lost control last night. In fact, that stretch had been rock solid before last night.
Now you have to buy mine.
ROCK A BYE
Silently, Chris crept down the stairs, careful to step over the creaky floorboards on stairs 7 and 9. So he had to count every step he took. Probably not the easiest thing to do at midnight when he was still half asleep, but it was that or risk waking the whole house up.
“Hoh, hoh, hoh. You’re so funny.” His sons’ wind-up clown applauded the spectacle of Chris negotiating the stairs in his dressing gown.
After careful consideration (spanning two entire seconds) he decided against kicking the thing down the stairs. He was the only one unable to call the clown a toy, it had always freaked him out a little to be honest. Even when he had had it as a child it had always seemed to watch him and set itself off laughing when he was concentrating on not killing himself. Picking it up, Chris reached the bottom of the stairs and threw the clown onto the toybox by the door. After getting a drink of milk from the blessedly cool kitchen, he thought better of it and retrieved the thing from the toybox. There was a film on TV tonight which looked okay. Ordinarily, he would have just recorded it to watch in the morning but he couldn’t sleep. His mind was running too fast through the events of the previous day.
“Bitch of a day, Coco,” he muttered. The TV got switched to the right channel then, for no reason whatsoever, he turned the volume down.
What d’you go and do that for, Bozo? the clown asked.
Chris shrugged and slurped his milk through a straw. Why had he done that? He wouldn’t wake anyone. Today, his eldest son Jack (whose clown he was talking to) had stormed out of the house after telling Chris and his wife Maria that he hated them, and had swiped his car keys on the way. Angry seventeen year old boys were never the calmest drivers, but put one behind the wheel of a high-performance sports car...
“And we’ll join you again in a few minutes for the Midnight Movie – Blood on Blood!” the faceless broadcaster said. Was he really yawning behind that camera and those test shots? Was it a pre-record? He should get paid double time for working at this time of night. “A frightening tale of...” Chris was not going to watch more than a half-lucid glimpse of the film but, at the moment, only the clown knew that.
*
“Who really are you guys anyway?”
Jack was angry and he had every right to be. Chris had tried to talk to the boy rationally but it had been so many years since he had been a teenager himself. I can’t even talk to my own son. How could I forget – teenagers don’t run on logic. “Jack, don’t be angry with us.”
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out? Were you gonna lie to me forever?”
“Jack...”
This time, he turned on her and Chris couldn’t do anything but watch. “And you! I hope you’ve got something important to say Mom- or should that be Maria – because I sure as hell don’t want to hear ‘we meant to tell you but’ again.” Jack picked up the clown they had given him when he first arrived here, and threw it against the wall, setting the speaker off again.
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