Jake Striker gazed at himself in the mirror. A crack wriggled up the middle of the glass, splitting his face. Printed on the glass in bold red letters was the slogan:
BEANIE’S FAMILY VALUE FOREVER
He was unhappy with how he looked. His face was tense with anxiety. He wasn’t a worrier by nature, but that last little gesture from Montgomery had been nagging him all day. Had it been a friendly wink? Or something sinister, a sly I-know-something-you-don’t?
His gaze wandered over to the only window in the office. It was a rectangle of blazing white. A thick fog had been hanging around all day, and it showed no sign of thinning. The sun made it glow like a lake of silver.
He was here to have a meeting with his district manager. He supposed he’d better pay her some attention.
Suzy was petite, blonde, with a ratty little face. Her Geordie accent was monotone, like tyres droning on tarmac.
“So this promotion is from Head Office. It’s a nationwide push. We’re getting standees of the Chudster Bubble Gum rabbit and we’re displaying them throughout the store, to enhance product awareness, if that makes any sense…”
“I’m aware of the promotion…”
“Head Office emailed every store, informing the managers, but you know how it is, emails go unread half the time, it’s hard to know what’s spam and what’s not.”
“I read it last…”
“I’m sure you looked at it, you’re good like that, but not everyone is, and I can’t treat anyone differently to anyone else, have to be even-handed and fair, even when I know some of my managers are better than others at taking notice of things like that…”
“So if I…”
Jake tried to not let his frustration get the better of him. Suzy wound him up. He was the one who should be conducting the meeting. He should be winding her up. She didn’t need to explain the promotion. He wasn’t a child. He knew all about it, having read the memo last week as soon as it arrived in his inbox. He tried to block her out until she decided it was his turn to speak. He went onto autopilot, nodding and smiling and going ‘mmm’ in the right places while he thought about something more interesting.
His thoughts went straight to the ghost.
#
He never believed it was a ghost, not a hundred per cent.
He’d noticed it because he hadn’t got round to carpeting his landing. Instead, it had highly polished floorboards that he’d stained a rich treacle. You could see your face in them. He considered it classy. His whole house was. It had been a bog standard north Leeds 1920s semi-detached when he’d bought it three years ago. He had transformed it into an elegant home. Door frames with beautiful casements and mouldings. White wood panelling on the walls. Shutters instead of curtains on the windows. The chic French apartment look. It had cost a fortune, and his salary wasn’t exactly jaw-dropping, but it had been worth it. It was one of the reasons he never invited women back, but always went to their places. He didn’t want them messing up the paintwork.
A week ago, Jake had climbed the wooden stairs in his Dolce & Gabbana slippers. He walked down the landing into his stylish study, and stepped on the squeaky floorboard. He felt it give a tiny amount. It was the only squeaky floorboard in the house that he hadn’t got round to fixing. He continued into his study and started up his sleek aluminium computer.
Out on the landing, the floorboard creaked.
He let go of the computer’s power button and it played its start-up sound, an ominous piano chord – dooooooooooo.
It was probably nothing, but to be on the safe side, he picked up a book from the bookcase – Victorian Yorkshire, a hardback history with sharp edges. He returned to the landing, which was empty. Gripping the book tightly, he crept to the bathroom, master bedroom, and spare. There were no intruders in any of them. He hurried downstairs, but there was no one down there either. None of the windows or doors has been forced. He stood in the kitchen with the lights off, looking into the back garden. Nothing stirred in the shadows of the lawn. He went back upstairs, and trod on the floorboard. It creaked. He took his foot off. A few seconds later, it creaked again. It appeared to be sticking, staying there a bit, then springing back up. He stood on it again, squeaked it, let it go. It squeaked again after a brief pause.
He got his toolbox from the shed and prised up the floorboard with a claw hammer. There was nothing in the oblong cavity he uncovered but dust and cobwebs. A few nuggets of old plaster. He shoved at the joists – rock solid. He replaced the floorboard and checked it with a spirit level. The bubble was dead centre. He hammered new nails in and used the level again – still good. He pressed the board with his hand. There was a miniscule amount of play. He trod on it.
Squeak.
He took his foot off and waited.
A few moments later it squeaked again.
He pried it up again, pulling the new nails out with the claw hammer. He used a new set of nails. He whacked them in as hard as he could. He imagined his witch of a neighbour, Rose Glover, flinching at the blows from next door.
Convinced it was as secure as it was going to get, he stood on the board.
It creaked, and then creaked again moments later.
He sat cross-legged and closed his eyes, trying not to get upset. He steadied his breathing, which had become fast and shallow.
When he’d calmed down, he put everything back in the toolbox, brushed his teeth, and went to bed with a Lee Child to try and take his mind off it.
#
The next day at work he performed admirably, considering the landing. He knew it didn’t matter, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He couldn’t work out why it was still squeaking. He tried to focus on the menial tasks of the working day. Joy (VALUED TEAM MEMBER SINCE 2018, her employee badge said) screwed up on number four till. That was kind of amazing considering all you had to do was scan the barcodes. But the Pick N Mix, which required weighing, proved too much for her single GCSE in history. She somehow managed to lock up the entire POS system, and they had to get Chuck in.
Chuck was an IT nerd from Regional HQ. Jake didn’t like him because he didn’t like Jake. It seemed natural that people would like Jake. He was a great guy. He was highly popular. What was Chuck’s problem?
Chuck was such a ludicrous name. Not even a nickname, but his real name, according to his personnel file. He was a proper IT geek. Into hacking, said the Beanie’s grapevine. Had his home computer protected to the nines with VPNs. Jake used a VPN at home as well, but Chuck took it too far. He had something like five or six. He even had his own email server, so he didn’t have to use someone else’s like Google’s or Apple’s. And a voice password as well, rather than one you typed in. And fingerprint identification on top of that. Jake was all for IT security but Chuck was a paranoid control freak.
As Chuck tapped at the command line on the till, Jake said, “You never told me the VPNs you’ve got.”
Not looking up, Chuck said, “No.”
He had a bald spot surrounded by light grey hair, almost silver, that hung down the sides of his face like wire. He smelled of fish.
“I’ve got Express and IPVanish.”
“Yeah, you said last time.”
“What’ve you got?”
“The point of VPNs is to maintain online privacy. So I’d rather not say in case someone finds an exploit and hacks me.”
Jake clenched his fists. Chuck continued typing. Thin black letters and symbols advanced across a blinding white background. It was one of his Python scripts, little computer programs that did God knew what.
“How long are you going to be?”
“I never give estimates.”
Jake gritted his teeth.
“An idea?”
“Think of a number and then add on the time you’ve been interrupting me.”
“Okay. Thanks, Chuck.”
Jake walked away down the pet food aisle, and went into his office to calm down.
He got through the rest of the day without getting flustered. As soon as he got back home he tested the floorboard, which creaked twice. He would have put it down to ‘one of those things’, a quirk of architecture like a draughty corner. Had it not been for the sugar shaker.
The next morning he had his espresso with sugar. He ran on caffeine. He knocked the glass sugar dispenser over, still half-asleep. Granules spilled across the marble worktop. He picked it up, poured some into the coffee, and put it down.
The shaker toppled over. The little metal cap that covered the hole in the lid tinkled. Jake jumped, spilling a splash of coffee. He looked around the kitchen, thinking a mouse may have knocked it over, but saw nothing. He picked the shaker up, inspected the bottom, which was smooth and flat. He put it down and considered it a while, then knocked it over. It clinked and rattled and some sugar grains fell out. He righted it.
A few seconds later, it fell over by itself.
“What the…?”
He got a mug from the cupboard, and knocked it over. He then placed it back on its base. It fell over a few moments later.
A chill scampered down his spine and leapt into his guts, where it bounced around like a panicking fly.
Superstitious nonsense, he thought. Something’s going on here. But nothing he couldn’t figure out. A draught or vibration. An uneven surface.
He went upstairs and tried the floorboard. Again, two squeaks.
He looked around the landing. Had someone broken in and messed with his stuff? If so, they were going to wish they’d never laid eyes on his house. He spent the rest of the morning setting up webcams covering every inch of his home. He stuck Sellotape across the frames of all the windows and doors. It crossed his mind he might be overreacting, but he carried on anyway.
He went to work as usual, and monitored the webcams from his phone. If anything moved, he’d get a notification. He didn’t receive any notifications all day.
He spent most of the time between nine and five at his desk, doing online research. He found nothing that helped. It turned out objects falling over by themselves were always due to draughts, vibrations or uneven surfaces. He knew that already.
That night, he conducted checks on his house that a chartered surveyor would have been proud of. He pulled up the carpets and then the floorboards. A damp meter revealed no significant moisture in the property. He went into the loft and everything was fine. Nothing faulty with the structure, insulation or felt lining. No bats, birds or rodents. He bled all the radiators. He checked the boiler’s pressure and carbon monoxide detector. The windowsills, floors, walls, ceilings – none were out of kilter. He checked all the routes a mouse might use to get into the house. All were sealed off with expanding foam or wire mesh. There were no particularly hot or cold spots. No hollow sections of wall where there shouldn’t be. Nothing up the disused chimney. Door and windows frames solid as a rock.
Into the early hours of the morning, he replaced the carpets and floorboards. He replaced the squeaking one on the landing last. He hammered in the nails, gave it a few knocks with a mallet, and trod on it.
Two creaks separated by a brief pause.
A voice whispered in his ear, “I’m getting closer.”
Jake bucked like a wild horse. His teeth clicked together. A mallet of pain whacked his skull.
He found himself crouched in the doorway of the spare room, looking back onto the landing. His heart was galloping.
He had no memory of moving. It was as if an editor had cut a second of footage from his life.
There was no one on the landing. He jumped up, the pain digging into his head. He must have cracked it against the door frame. He rushed across to look down the stairs, but no one was sneaking up. He thundered down, exploding into the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, the hall – nothing. He pounded back upstairs and checked the bathroom and bedrooms, the boiler cupboard, the wardrobes. Nada.
Lungs heaving, he returned to the landing. He rubbed his head, hissed when his fingers brushed the bump that was rising there like a molehill.
Standing next to the squeaky floorboard, holding his arms away from his sides as if he might unbalance at any moment, he breathed, “Hello?”
Nothing happened for a few seconds, then a whisper slid from the air.
“… Help you.”
Fainter than a breath of wind.
I’m concussed, he thought. I’m imagining it.
You weren’t concussed when it first spoke.
Then I missed something when I checked the house.
You didn’t miss anything.
So I’m going mental?
Let’s see if we can talk to it and find out.
The voice seemed to be coming from his right, close to his head. He turned in that direction, trying to focus on a patch of empty air. He waved his hand through it but couldn’t feel a thing.
He prided himself on being bolder than the average man in the street. He didn’t get flustered. He kept his cool. If he could keep it now, he could find out what was going on.
“You want to help me?”
A pause, then, “… Yes.”
He couldn’t tell if it was the voice of a man or a woman. It was the merest whisper, genderless, neither low- or high-pitched. Like a breeze that had learned to talk.
“Who are you?”
“… My name was Montgomery Charles Williams.”
He hadn’t heard the name before.
“Okay. What do you want?”
“… Help you.”
“How?”
A wordless sigh.
“How are you talking to me? Some hidden speaker somewhere?”
“… Passed on.”
“You’re dead?”
“… Yes.”
He couldn’t help picturing some giggling pranksters in a van with audio/visual equipment, over the moon at the success of their hoax. Jack ploughed on anyway. Maybe if he asked enough quickfire questions, he’d catch them out.
“When did you die?”
“… I passed on in 1872.”
“How?”
“… My heart.”
“Married?”
“… No.”
“Children?”
“… No.”
“Where did you live?”
“… Yorkshire.”
“Where?”
“… Forget.”
“What did you do for a living?”
“… Schoolteacher.”
“What school?”
“… Forget.”
“What do you want?”
“… Help you.”
“How?”
Silence.
“Hello?”
He waited. The boiler in the cupboard gulped.
“… Secrets.”
At ‘secrets’, a spike of surprise stabbed his heart. Jack had secrets all right. He wanted them to stay that way.
“What do you mean?”
“… Afterlife. I know.”
“You know the secrets of the afterlife?”
Silence.
The afterlife doesn’t exist, he told himself.
“… You’re wrong,” the whisper said.
That brought Jake up sharp. He stopped. He waited.
Keeping his lips clamped together, he thought with deliberate slowness and clarity the following words: Wrong about what?
“The afterlife does exist.”
Jake shuddered.
“You can hear what I’m thinking?”
In his head, with the intimacy of a lover’s pillow talk: “… I can.”
We’ll see, he thought.
He pictured something in his mind’s eye, as random as he could muster. A litre bottle of orange Tango, such as could be found on aisle four at Beanie’s.
The whisper asked him about it with hardly a pause, with what felt like genuine mystification.
It had to be a trick. A convincing one. But a trick nonetheless. He couldn’t work out how it was being done. Erring on the side of caution, he told himself to watch what he thought. He tried to do it as vaguely as he could, at the back of his mind.
The whisperer failed to comment on it.
Why are you offering me these secrets? he thought. Why not someone else?
… You’re special.
What do you mean?
… You are unique in this world.
Unable to suppress a smirk, he thought, How so?
… You are the one who should know the secrets.
Jake puffed up with pride despite himself. Hoax or not, Montgomery had hit the nail on the head. Jake was special. He’d felt it all his life. He was simply better than everyone else. Everybody he had ever met had been lacking in some way. They were stupid, or ugly, or boring. When you got down to it, it was extremely strange that he was still only a manager at Beanie’s. How hadn’t he made more of a success of himself? Well, one’s job wasn’t everything. He excelled in other ways. In his sexual conquests. In achieving his goals. In outsmarting people, not least the police. Everyone liked him, except for the odd weirdo like Chuck. This voice seemed to be able to read his mind. It must have been able to see Jack agreed with its assessment of him. Maybe it was playing him, buttering him up. He would have to tread carefully.
“You said you were getting closer…” he said out loud.
“… I am far away,” the voice whispered from the air.
“There’s a delay when you reply.”
“… It will go.”
“And then?”
“… I will be clear.”
“I’ll see you?”
“… Hear. Feel.”
“Will I be able to see you?”
“… Don’t know.”
“What do you mean by ‘feel’?”
Silence.
He waited. The thing made no sound.
“Why are you squeaking my floorboards and knocking my mugs over?”
“… Get your attention.”
“Have you spoken to anyone else?”
“… No.”
“You want to help me? You say you know about the afterlife.”
“… Yes.”
“I take it you want something in return.”
“…. Your secrets.”
“You want to hear my secrets in return? Why? What good are my secrets?”
“… Currency.”
“What?”
“… Trade.”
“So the afterlife is capitalist?” He felt clever saying that. Was this a flaw in the façade? Was he expected to believe there was some kind of trade system when you were dead?
“… We value secrets.”
“Why?”
The thing calling itself Montgomery Charles Williams didn’t answer.
“You’re lying.”
A sigh, louder than before, then, “… You killed someone.”
Jake froze. How the hell did Montgomery know that? No one did, and Jake had been careful to keep it that way. It had happened a year ago, a spectacular operation to advance his career. Had someone found out about it? Had someone granted Inspector Denning access to crazy new technology that could mess with your head? Denning, who had suspected him all along. That was almost as ridiculous as Montgomery being a ghost.
Jake couldn’t work out what was going on. His mind was being read, but that was impossible. It was more likely he was imagining the whole thing. Just in case he wasn’t, he decided it was prudent not to admit to murder, or even think about it. He was veering close to a cliff edge. He had to take back control.
“That’s enough,” he said. “Goodbye, whoever you are.”
“… Listen, Jake…”
Jake didn’t reply. He went into his bedroom, not knowing if he could escape the voice by simply walking away.
“… You fear exposure.”
The voice seemed to come from the air around his head, its pitch wavering like the whirr of a nuisance fly. He walked around his bedroom, down one side of the bed to the wardrobe. He turned around and walked back up, round the foot of the bed, and down the other side.
“… We can come to an agreement.”
He widened a slit in the curtains, squinted out. He saw his street, drowsing under the orange streetlights. There were no suspicious vans parked nearby. There was no one around this late at night, no lights in the windows.
“… You can trust me.”
He left the window, and headed for the bathroom. He cupped his hands under the cold tap and sucked up chilly water.
“… If you give me your secret willingly, I will give you the secrets of the afterlife. I will not cheat you.”
The cold water made the bridge of his nose ache. He continued sucking it down. He could feel the icy trickle all the way down the esophagus into his stomach.
“… You stand to make great profit.”
He gulped down a last handful, closed the tap, looked at himself in the shaving mirror. He looked tired.
“… Untold knowledge. Fame.”
He dried his face and hands on a towel.
“What do you get out of this?” he said into the mirror.
“… Currency.”
“To spend on what?”
“… Cannot explain.”
“Try.”
“… Cannot.”
“Then that’s the end of our chat.”
He left the bathroom, went into the bedroom, got undressed, and climbed into bed. The voice didn’t say anything. Jake fell asleep almost as soon as he laid down.
The voice didn’t trouble him for the rest of the night.
#
When he needed to think things over, Jake always found it useful to have a good talk with his dad. What had happened last night definitely qualified as something that needed a good talking over. He called Janice, the assistant branch manager, and Suzy, his regional manager, to tell them he was taking a sick day. He then drove over to Chapel Allerton to pay his dad a surprise visit.
“Not in work today?”
“Day off.”
“Oh. Right.”
Standing on the doorstep, waiting to be let in, Jake could hear Megastructures blasting out from the telly in the living room. His dad lived alone, Jake’s mum having died seven years ago from a coronary infarction. She would never have let him have the telly on that loud.
His dad shuffled off into the hall and Jake followed.
“Tea?” Jake asked.
“Yeah, please.”
His dad dropped into the armchair and Jake went to the kitchen. He filled the kettle, flipped the switch, plucked a couple of mugs from the mug tree, and popped a PG Tips in each. He also popped a tab of Rohypnol in for his dad, Sweetex for himself.
“Here we go,” Jake announced, coming in with the hot cuppas. His dad took the Liverpool FC mug. “Ta, son.”
Jake took the end of the black leather sofa. His dad slouched on the big armchair with its ugly brown throw. His dad took his eyes off Megastructures long enough to say, “How’s it going?” He had to raise his voice over the telly.
“Y’ know. Same.”
“Oh. Right.”
He returned to his programme and drank his tea. A few minutes later, his chin was resting on his chest and he was snoring gently.
“So something weird happened last night,” Jake started. He didn’t bother raising his voice above the narration of the TV, currently describing the impressive dimensions of the Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Plant in Iceland. “A dead teacher named Montgomery Charles Williams started talking to me on my landing. Says he died in 1872. I’ve looked for him online, but couldn’t find anything. But then, if he’d been born in the early nineteenth century, his records might have gone missing. Handy that he couldn’t tell me exactly where he lived, so I couldn’t pin him down.
“Before I got here I looked for this kind of thing happening to other people. Found a lot of crappy websites about clairvoyants and pseudoscience. Poltergeists. Ghosts. All rubbish, obviously. There’s something interesting called autoscopic doubles. That’s when you hallucinate a twin of yourself. But it’s not that. I wondered if someone was having me on, so I looked up speakers that are small enough to hide, but I couldn’t find anything, and anyway, I checked all over the house.
“I know what you’re going to say. It was a dream. But it didn’t feel like one.”
His dad didn’t say anything.
“What if it’s real? What if I was really talking to a ghost? It said if I tell it about…”
Here he dropped his voice.
“… ‘Dealing’ with that man last year, it’ll give me the secrets of the afterlife.” He laughed. “I know, I know. Bullshit, right? But all I need to do is relive what I did, or so this Montgomery says, and it’ll be listening in. No skin off my nose. It’s no effort to go over it one more time. Just in my head. Not out loud. No risk there, surely. And what do I get in return? Probably nothing.”
He leaned forward.
“But what if, dad? What if? I could find out about the afterlife. Even confirming it exists would be, like, one of the greatest discoveries in history. It’d change the world. Imagine being the man who does that. Imagine being able to tell the world its secrets. You could name your price. You’d be bigger than Einstein. Bigger than Jesus. You’d be the most important person who’d ever lived. Like a god, almost.”
He gulped some tea.
“You’re right. Any charlatan can claim to contact the afterlife. What makes my info any different? I mean, I know it’s true, but no one else is going to believe it. I need proof, don’t I. I have to do something like show this Montgomery to people, show he’s real. Like under scientific conditions. Now how the hell do you go about doing that?”
He stopped to think. On Megastructures, the narrator was saying the Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Plant was fed by three reservoirs – the Hálslón, the Kelduárlón, and the Ufsarlón – that had been created by constructing five dams. The Hálslón Reservoir was about the size of Manhattan. Environmentalists and other opponents had expressed concern that the dams were going to be built on geothermal fissures, great cracks that weakened the ground. These concerns had been dismissed as politically motivated and ignored. The dams were strong. They would not be breached.
End of part one. Some adverts came on. Life insurance. Sofas. Loans.
“What if I get on some psychological study somewhere, like a university. Maybe I make some bizarre claims so they think I have mental issues, and they study me, and then I show them Montgomery. They check it out and, to their astonishment, they discover he’s real. They write a paper, and I become the star of the show.”
Jake nodded, frowned.
“Good point. I’d need to make sure I’m the only one Montgomery shares his secrets with. Become his sole agent, as it were. Information about the afterlife would flow through me and me alone. If he told someone else, I’d stop being special. We’d have to come to some arrangement. Plus I’d need assurances he wouldn’t share my secrets with anyone. But it’s all stuff that can be negotiated, right? There’s something in it for both of us, so there’s a deal to be struck.
“And let’s not forget the best reason of all for telling Montgomery what I did. I’ve never been able to talk about it with anyone. I mean, I’ve told you, but you weren’t listening, like now, so that doesn’t count. No one knows how clever I was. It was ingenious. No one could figure it out. Inspector Denning tried, obviously. He fucking tried. But I was just too smart for him. There were times when I wanted to put him out of his misery and blurt it all out. I’d be like, ‘I did it, Inspector! And the only way you’ll ever convict me is if I lay it all out for you. You’ll never work it out yourself, let alone get a shred of evidence towards proving it. I’ve beaten you. I’ve foxed everyone. And now I’ve got Arnie’s job and that because I killed him, I killed him, I killed him!’”
He realised he’d growled those last words, louder than he’d meant to. But his dad didn’t stir, and the booming telly had surely drowned him out. He breathed in through his nostrils, held it, let it out his mouth slowly.
“This is the perfect opportunity to boast about my achievement.
“Dad, I’ve decided. It’s worth the risk.”
#
“Jaaaake.”
He jerked awake, snorting. He was sitting up, looking around a black bedroom, trying to catch up with himself. His heart thumped. He panted in borderline panic.
“Close your eyes,” the voice said.
He swallowed, tried to control his breathing. “Why?” he gasped.
Montgomery didn’t offer an answer. So Jake, reasserting control over himself, did what he considered to be the macho, ballsy thing, and closed his eyes.
Shapes rolled out of the darkness. Floaters, the specks of pollen and grit that got caught in the fluid of the eyeball. A ball bristling with spikes revolved in a corner, like a freakish alien plant creaking lazily on its axis.
“What am I meant to be seeing?”
The spiny orb, deep blue against the midnight coral of the back of his eyelids, rotated slowly. There was something on the side now turning towards him. Holes. Two of them, with a bigger one underneath. Pits suggesting eyes. A mouth.
The edges of the gaping mouth twitched, and an icy whisper hissed, “Jake.”
Jake shivered and opened his eyes. The face disappeared. Shadows draped his room in grey sheets. He sensed morning was getting started behind the curtains. He waited, feeling the quality of things, trying to detect if he was dreaming. He dug his nails into his love handles. He didn’t wake up. He grabbed his phone: 4.02. He closed his eyes again.
The horror-stricken face hadn’t gone away.
“You will share your secret,” it demanded.
It had read his mind. It already knew he’d made his decision. It was pointless to debate.
“So we’re clear? We swap secrets, and you co-operate to prove your existence. I act as your sole representative. You keep my secret safe.”
“Yes.”
“As a token of goodwill, tell me something about the afterlife before we start.”
The face stared back. It didn’t blink. Maybe he’d taken it by surprise. The mouth hung open, the slack jaw of a corpse. Then the lips (he hadn’t noticed them before, but they were there, a thin blue line stretched around the mouth) spasmed, and it said:
“Mist. Endless silver mist. It’s all I can see. It is cracked.”
“What do you mean?”
“Black cracks run through the silver. I can see different places when I peer through.”
“What places?”
“Places I used to know. Familiar towns. Roads I have walked down. But all slightly different. The streets have unfamiliar names. The people look foreign. The advertising hoardings sell brands I do not recognise. It is not the past or the future. It is many versions of the same places.”
“Like different planets? Like Mars?”
Jake thought he heard Montgomery give a little sigh of disappointment.
“You do not understand.”
“I do. Tell me more.”
“I have said enough.”
“I need more.”
“That is all I can say.”
“Give me more.”
“Cannot.”
“You’ve hardly given me anything.”
“You think so?”
“I do.”
The horrific face jiggled a little, the eyes quivering, the mouth swinging like a pendulum. Jake realised it was shaking its head.
“Your turn.”
Jake could tell it would do no good to argue. He sensed unshakeable stubbornness. Montgomery was a nail hammered flush into oak, and Jake only had fingernails to prise him out. It wasn’t going to happen. He had to take the plunge, or risk losing out on the biggest prize in the world. As long as he took care not to say any of it out loud, he’d be fine.
Okay, he thought. Arnie Green.
#
Jake watched the speedometer approach eighty mph and pushed his feet into the footwell, wishing he had the pedals. Arnie seemed to be blind to Jake’s discomfort.
“Good acceleration,” Jake said, raising his voice over the rushing of the car. He knew this was the kind of thing petrolheads like Arnie enjoyed hearing.
“Nought to sixty in four point three seconds, my friend,” Arnie said with pride. As if he had something to do with the engine’s performance.
Arnie flew into a bend at seventy. The force shoved Jake’s kidneys into the sculpted lumps of the passenger door.
On one side of the road a wall of rocky outcrops rose a hundred feet into the air. On the other a tree-covered gorge dropped a hundred feet to the ground. Jake fully expected an eighteen wheeler Stobart to roar around the corner on their side of the road and smash them into a tin of wet dog food. But that didn’t happen, and they came out of it unscathed.
The trees in the gorge rose up. The cliff face angled down into the earth. On both sides, now, streaks of trunk-brown and pine-needle-green streamed by.
“What are you hoping to see at this car show?” Jake asked.
“Hennessey Venom F5.”
“How much?”
“One-point-six mill.”
“You’ll need a promotion and a pay rise.”
Arnie laughed, a mindless, low hur-hur-hur, such as might fall from the lips of Frankenstein’s monster. Which was an accurate description of his appearance, as it happened. Arnie was a lumbering tree trunk of a man. Some might blanche at the thought of trying to kill him. Not Jake.
“Or win the lottery,” Arnie suggested between the laughs.
Judging by the car Arnie was driving – a Mazda3 fastback with a queasy green paint job – Arnie had a way to go before he could afford a Venom F5.
The road curved round to the right, and the pines on the left fell away as a valley opened up. A flimsy wooden fence ran along the verge. Its posts and rails were molting, shedding scales of white paint.
The bend started getting tighter. Arnie braked a little too hard and Jake’s seatbelt dug into his chest. He clasped his hands and scrunched his fingers together into candy canes. Arnie yanked at the gearstick, making the engine whoop when he selected the wrong gear.
Jake wanted to grab the wheel and scream into Arnie’s stupid face to slow down. He was going to kill them. He needed to drive with due care and attention.
He fought down the urge, letting Arnie get on with it.
Reflective discs topped the fence posts, so close Jake could have wound the window down and slapped them. A few more inches and they’d be mowing them down. Then the road was straightening, and they were out of it, veering away from the edge.
Jake flashed a furious look at Arnie. A smear of sweat shone on his boss’s temple. His eyes were wide, the whites glaring.
Jake decided this was the place. This was where he’d murder him.
Neither of them commented on the accident they’d almost had, and for the next few minutes they travelled in silence. Jake was glad of the rest.
The pine forest skimmed by in a gold-green blur and the sun burned down at them through the windscreen.
Arnie cried, “Look!”
Jake jumped. He saw what Arnie was shouting about – a deer stood between two tree trunks. It was staring right at them, still as a statue, ears pricked.
“Scottish red!” said Arnie.
They flashed past it. Arnie watched it recede in his wing mirror.
“Look at the antlers,” he said.
“Amazing.”
There was some sarcasm there, but some genuine interest as well. He liked wildlife, or at least, he liked watching wildlife documentaries. The ones about predators that showed crocodiles eating the heads of wildebeest. Chimps ripping apart colobus monkeys. None of the other stuff, plants and birds. It had been handy because Arnie was into wildlife himself. He had had to listen to Arnie monologue about the megafauna and birds of the British Isles, and some of it had touched upon deer. Thanks to this grudging education, Jake knew the habitat for Scottish red deer was Scotland, and the most northern parts of England. To see one this far south was unusual. He knew Arnie knew that too, which meant he could predict what Arnie was going to say next, and be ready with a reply that would make him look clever.
“What’s that doing so far south?” Arnie said.
“Maybe it heard about the Hennessey Venom.”
Arnie looked at him, and blasted out a surprised and delighted guffaw. Jake smiled back. It was so easy to impress people.
Jake gave Arnie a few moments to calm down, then said, “There’s another car show round here next month, are you going to that?”
“You bet. Classic cars. Heard they’re showing some F1s from the eighties.”
“You’ll be coming along this way then. What with the deer.”
“Totally. You coming? It’s in the evening.”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“How far is it from yours?”
“Fifty miles on the nose.”
Jake looked across at Arnie, and Arnie looked back at Jake. At the same time, they both said: “Seventy minutes!”
Arnie chuckled with pure joy.
It was a point of pride for Arnie to always accurately predict his travel times. Arnie’s optimum speed was 42.8 mph, calculated from a formula of Arnie’s own devising. Fifty miles always took seventy minutes, assuming reasonable traffic. A hundred would take double. If it looked like he was behind schedule, he’d speed. If he was ahead, he slowed down. It was a strange, obsessive thing to do, and Arnie would never have told anyone he didn’t completely trust. He had told Jake, and Jake had feigned interest, while privately rejoicing at how useful it was for his own plans. Arnie had even made a point of showing Jake his mileage logbook. As if he was proud of an A5 Pukka Pad full of numbers.
They got to Newbiggin-on-Lune half an hour later, Arnie on the verge of palpitations when he saw the Venom. Jake thought his boss was going to cum in his Wranglers when the owner allowed him to sit in the driver’s seat.
Later that night, it was Jake who did the cumming. He picked up a tidy little brunette at Mirage, an eighties club he sometimes trawled for one night stands. As usual, he went to the girl’s place instead of his, and let himself out while she slept, before the wet patch became too adhesive.
#
The month after, on the day of the classic car show, Jake phoned Arnie to lie to him.
“I’ve got to go to my dad’s to watch the football. I forgot that I promised him ages ago. Sorry, Arnie.”
Arnie had sounded absolutely crestfallen, though he’d made a brave attempt to be sanguine.
“Leaving the usual time?” Jake had asked.
“Yes, indeedy.”
After terminating the call, Jake put a fake licence plate into a rucksack, along with:
- a device he’d bought off the dark web for unlocking a wide range of cars
- a bottle of water
- a Tupperware tub containing ham and cheese sandwiches
- a ball of string
- a penknife
- some light cookery weights
- a couple of webcams with extra battery packs
- a pair of thick walking socks
- a pay-as-you-go phone
- a shiny bundle of brown plastic
He’d bought the pay-as-you-go from a market stall in Castleford that didn’t have CCTV, to hide his purchase. He took one last look at a printout of his route, and shredded it. He donned a Wakefield Trinity cap and pulled it low over his forehead, left his house, and drove to his dad’s. He parked his Toyota on the street by the black wrought iron front gate for all to see.
“Nice to see yer,” his dad said when he opened the front door.
“Hello, dad.”
“Come to watch my Sky Sport again?”
Jake hated sport, but he watched it with his dad to keep him company. He tried to visit once a week.
“Whose on?”
“Liverpool, West Ham, FA Cup semi.”
“Let’s hope it goes to extra time so we get our money’s worth.”
“Always wanting that little extra.”
A warm, pleasant breeze made his dad’s twin tufts of grey nose hair quiver.
“Come on then,” his dad said.
They went into the living room and assumed their usual posts, Dad sinking into the black leather armchair, Jake at the end of the black leather sofa so he could stretch out. Football pundits with shaved heads and widely spread legs bantered loudly on the telly.
“Who’s your latest conquest?” his dad asked.
Jake knew he was being sarcastic. His dad didn’t approve of Jake’s promiscuity, but Jake was happy to answer all the same.
“This lass, Kassie. Kaye. Something like that. Picked her up in Mirage. This was last month. We did the business at hers, then I got out around three.”
“Charming. You seeing her again?”
Jake almost snorted. “No. She’s a pain in the arse. I gave her my number, which was careless of me, and she must’ve sent about ten messages, even though I never replied. Stuff like she’d had a good time, and she hoped I’d got her last message because I hadn’t responded. But then she went weird, wanting to know what I thought I was doing, she thought it’d be nice to meet up again, and was I busy or plain ignorant. I’ve got her last one here.”
Jake turned his phone over so his dad could read:
Your the type of male that makes women hate men. One day youll get ur comeuppance. Pig!
“So what was up with her?”
“Bad speller.”
His dad didn’t laugh.
“But really, why?”
“Ohh, y’ know… needy.”
“So you’re not settling down any time soon?”
“Naaaahh.”
There were lists of player names and match statistics on the television, which they stared at for a bit.
His dad said, “Ruth called.”
“Oh? How is the Blue-Eyed Girl?”
“Gary…”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Your sister’s doing well, thanks for asking. Got the psychology professorship at UCL she was after.”
Jake tried to smile. “Good for her.”
“I thought you’d like to know.”
“She’s doing well.”
Jake could feel his smile slipping like a warm mask of wax.
“Cup of tea?” his dad suggested.
“I’ll make it.”
Jake went into the kitchen to boil the kettle. He made two cups of tea. He popped a roofie in for his dad.
“You always made a lovely cuppa,” his dad said as he took it from his smiling son. He was asleep in his comfy armchair before the first goal (Liverpool, Salah, five minutes).
Leaving his phone on the sofa, Jake snuck out the house and walked to a bungalow a few streets away. The owners had a blue Ford Focus. He only knew the Clitheroe family in passing, and had learnt about them through his dad, who’d lived in the area for forty years. They always left around this time for a wholesome family walk in the nearby woods. Jake checked around, saw no one, and used the key device. The car’s lights flashed and the locks thunked. He got in and drove for a few miles until he reached a deserted industrial estate. Weeds burst through the tarmac. Hedges swamped the fences. Behind a corrugated iron shed he changed the licence plate for his fake one, putting the real one in his bag. He got back in and continued on his way.
He kept to the roads with no CCTV, as far as possible, referring to the illegally obtained map he’d memorised. He soon left the city behind and was cruising through the countryside to the north, where the traffic cams petered out.
It was a bright, cloudless day. He listened to the match on Five Live. As the second half was starting, Jake pulled off onto an earth track that threaded through a pine forest. It ended in an obscure patch of dirt that no one ever visited. It hadn’t rained for a couple of weeks, so the car’s tyres didn’t make much of an impression in the dusty path. He removed his Converse and pulled the thick brown walking socks over the ones he was already wearing. He plucked a webcam from the knothole of a nearby pine. He’d used it to verify the spot’s lack of visitors. He stashed it in his rucksack. He got one of the fresh webcams and set it on the ground so it looked back down the road. He confirmed the pay-as-you-go was receiving the encrypted feed. Checks complete, he shouldered his rucksack and set off in his double pair of socks.
It was warm, and his feet got to the squelching stage before he’d gone fifty yards. He walked quickly, the sweat sticking his shirt to his back. There was no path to follow, so he had to tramp over the undulating earth and brown pine needles. The sun skittered between the branches, now and then shining in his eyes. Tiny stars winked and darted in the light, midges looking for mates and blood. The road was to his left, hidden by the trees.
He covered the mile-and-a-half in under half an hour. A grey strip became visible beyond the trees, the sky opened up ahead, and he was standing on the edge of the forest. He was right where he wanted to be, where the bend tightened up. Arnie would be doing seventy or eighty when he hit it. The old wooden fence tottered along the opposite side of the road. Beyond that, nothing but fresh air.
He slid his arms out of the rucksack and dumped it on the ground. He took a swig of water, put the bottle back, and got a second webcam out. He jogged a few dozen yards round to the right and set it up so it could see traffic coming from that direction. He dug out the shiny bundle of plastic. He unfolded it, found the nozzle, and began blowing. The deer inflated quickly, but halfway through he wished he had brought the electric pump, and to hell with the noise. But there was no point wishing, and it wasn’t long before he’d finished. It looked nothing like a real Scottish red deer, but it didn’t have to stand up to too much scrutiny. He tied a piece of string to its white PVC scut.
He tied the cookery weights onto each of its black shiny hooves, and took it out onto the road. To his left, the tarmac curved out of sight, the pines eating it up. Same to his right. An arc of grey, screened off at each end.
He approached the fence. There was no way it would withstand a collision with a cyclist, let alone a speeding Mazda. A couple of metres beyond, the dusty verge running beside the tarmac ended in mid-air. The valley below was an impressive mile-wide trough bristling with pines and glinting rivers. The opposite side rose gently, dotted with clumps of trees and cyclopean rocks.
He returned to the rucksack, leaving the deer in the road but keeping hold of the string round its tail. He practised yanking it off the road. Each time it came easily, the cookery weights clattering and scraping. Tests completed, he hid everything behind a tree. He reckoned Arnie would be along any moment. He watched the split-screen display, the left side showing the road he’d driven up, disappearing into the distance. On the right the road sauntered on into the haze.
He listened to the chirping of the blue tits. A goldcrest joined in. The trees rustled and swayed their branches. He wondered if a Scottish red might be picking its way through the pines, somewhere deeper in the woods. He inhaled the clean breath of the forest, like a car air freshener. Arnie would have liked it here. This was definitely the right place.
A shimmering green shape appeared on the left screen. The growl of an engine rose above the sounds of the forest. He stood up, grabbed the deer, and strode onto the road. He placed it in the middle of the left lane, adjusted its position, and hurried back behind his tree.
He checked the feed. It was Arnie’s Mazda, going well above the speed limit for a single carriage road.
On the right side of the split-screen, a silver Range Rover appeared. It was maybe half a mile away. Jake didn’t want anyone to see the deer except Arnie. It might even cause the Range Rover to crash, which was not part of the plan.
He yanked on the string to haul it off the road. The string snapped by his fist with a flat little thud. String dust puffed into the air and caught the sunlight, a little silver cloud. The deer skidded a little way and scraped to a halt, straddling the white lines. He flinched as though a bouncer had gone to punch him in the stomach.
He ran onto the tarmac, feet slapping hard, stinging through the double socks. The Range Rover roared in his right ear, seconds away. He shot a glance in its direction – silver flashed between the trunks. He grabbed the scut with both hands, and sprinted back, the deer bouncing up and down in front of him. His Wakefield Trinity cap lifted as the air got its fingers underneath. He took a hand from the deer’s tail and slammed it over the cap.
From the corner of his eye, the Range Rover came out from behind the screen of pines. He sprinted for the cover of a trunk, flinging the deer onto the ground, and diving headlong after it. He came down on it chest first, right on his breastbone. His rib cage rattled. His head jerked forward, snapping his teeth together. His entire body bounced off the deer and thudded down again. He came to rest with the deer under his legs.
A shard of wood poked up from the ground by his head. It had been a stump once, now broken and rotten away, leaving only this dagger. He’d missed it by inches.
A ripple of air passed over him, and the Range Rover blasted by. He glared at the split-screen and saw it heading away.
Arnie’s Mazda was about to come round the corner.
There was something wrong in his chest, a tightness, but he got up and ran back onto the road with the deer, slinging it and hoping it would stop in the right place. It felt to Jake like everything had slowed down, which he knew was adrenaline flooding his bloodstream.
Arnie’s green car flew round the corner. The deer hadn’t stopped. It was still sailing across the road, the weights too light to bring it down in time. Jake saw Arnie behind the wheel. His manager flinched as the inflatable animal flew in front of his windscreen. Arnie jerked at the steering wheel and grimaced. His eyes, bulging like peeled boiled eggs, met Jake’s for a flash. The tyres squealed, smoke billowing up in a fury. The Mazda swerved into the fence which exploded into splinters.
Jake staggered as an atrocious feeling shot up inside like a signal flare. It was like he’d jumped off the top of a multi-storey car park. It was alarm. Horror. There was no going back. He’d done something he couldn’t undo. It was terror and euphoria.
Arnie’s fastback left the road and kept on going, as if it hadn’t noticed it had run out of highway. It flew out into the air above the valley like an aeroplane, drawing out a dirty contrail of dust and smoke. The engine whined, leapt up to a shriek.
Its flight path began to sag as gravity exerted itself. The soaring metal, blinding bright where the sun caught it, went down, down, into the waiting valley. The shrieking descended with it.
The deer had come to rest against the fence, right next to the hole Arnie’s Mazda had smashed.
There were snapping sounds, bangs, and finally, a loud crash from the valley floor.
Jake checked the webcams. Nothing coming from either direction. He hurried over to the side of the road, coughing through the blue smoke Arnie had left behind. It stank of burned rubber and clogged up his throat with acrid dryness, forcing him to swallow and splutter. He passed through the gap in the fence, following the twin black lines of Arnie’s last attempt to brake. Where the marks left the tarmac they turned into ruts in the earth. At the edge, Jake looked over, a wave of dizziness sloshing through his head. It was a long way down. He’d explored the valley floor a week ago to see what Arnie might eventually land on. Trunks and earth and roots. There was a tangle of broken branches in the trees now, the bone-white of living wood shining in the sun. A streamer of black smoke was slowly rising from a spot in the shadows further down. He couldn’t see the car.
There was no time to check if Arnie was dead. He almost certainly was. During the planning, Jake had worked out how fast Arnie’s car would hit the deck.
He jogged back across the road, retrieved the webcam, burst the deer with a penknife, and shoved them into the rucksack. He did a quick check of the area, saw nothing amiss, and hurried back through the forest.
His socks were sopping with sweat. His chest hurt, the pain flaring with each thud of his racing heart. That feeling that had rocketed up inside him still fizzled in his head. It made everything bright and clear and exhilarating. The birds, invisible up in the canopy, seemed to be chirping more loudly. A cracking branch echoed through the woods like a howitzer going off. He stepped on a twig and jumped when it snapped.
He made it to the rest area in twenty minutes. He was dripping with perspiration. The blue Focus was still there. He collected the remaining webcam, stuck it in the rucksack. He unlocked the car with the key device and sat in the driver’s seat, legs sticking out the door, and stripped his clinging socks off. He wrang them out and used them to wipe some of the sweat from his feet, though it didn’t do much except spread it around. He put his Converse back on over bare feet, swang into the car proper, and used the unlocker to start the ignition.
The match was starting extra time, Liverpool drawing with West Ham two-all.
About halfway back, as he was hitting the outskirts of Leeds, he realised he hadn’t checked for tyre marks on the track leading to the rest area. He’d assumed the earth was too dry and hard to leave an impression, and he hadn’t bothered to make sure. Now he was thinking that’d been stupid. He continued on his way, mulling it over, squeezing the steering wheel so hard it creaked, wondering if he should return. He could be back there in under half an hour. A quick look at the path, then back again.
Don’t be stupid, he told himself. Don’t be naive. There could be emergency vehicles there by now, summoned by some passerby who’s seen the broken fence. A paramedic notices a man showing unusual interest in a little-used path nearby. The man works for the poor bastard whose body the firefighters are cutting from a Mazda. Highly suspicious. Too risky.
Rain spattered the windscreen. He turned on the wipers. They thumped back and forth. His grip on the steering wheel relaxed. He looked at the weather on his phone. Widespread rain for the whole of northern England, ruining the sunny day. Dissolving tracks left by murderers in dusty paths.
He should have checked the path anyway. He should have checked the weather. It was careless to leave behind possible clues. To be forced to rely on the rain to erase them. Nevertheless, the rain had come, and he didn’t want to give himself a hard time over it. He tried to forget about it, and to allow himself a little smile of satisfaction at his good luck.
He stopped off in the same abandoned industrial estate as before. His stolen car swished between the rusting warehouses as the rain poured down. He swapped the licence plates back.
The penalty shoot out was starting as he reached his dad’s housing estate. He drove to the house of the nice Clitheroe family who went walking in the woods of a Saturday afternoon and returned their Ford. The house looked as empty as before, but they could come back at any moment. He grabbed his rucksack, checked the interior of the car, and got out. It was still raining heavily and he hadn’t brought a coat. His shirt, which had almost dried out from his sweaty walk through the woods, started to stick to his back all over again.
Jake wondered if the car’s owner was one of those logbook types who noted mileage when he got petrol. Was he another Arnie? He hoped not, because there was an extra seventy miles on the milometer that had no right being there. He appreciated having to rely on the driving habits of someone he barely knew was another risk. Yet it was hard to be entirely risk-free when murdering someone, no matter how meticulous you were.
He locked the Focus with the key device at the same time the Clitheroe family ambled into view past a privet hedge. The father, Derek, was balding and emaciated. Mother was Judy, not bad-looking but with a ludicrous perm. Their son was Ralph, a beanpole geek with a plaster on his right eyebrow. They huddled and scampered under a couple of black umbrellas. Judy’s perm was not faring well.
Jake moved away from their car and crossed the road before they got too close. They never even looked at him or their car and he made it down a side street without incident.
He rushed to his dad’s house, shoulders hunched against the downpour. He didn’t meet anyone on the way. Another thing to thank the rain for. His Toyota was still parked outside. He opened the boot and threw in the rucksack.
He let himself in the front door. The telly was still on, the football pundits analysing the game, which had ended in the last few minutes, 7-6 to Liverpool, a real nail-biter. His dad was asleep in his armchair. Jake pulled his soaked shirt and jeans off, peeling and yanking as if skinning himself. He took the damp clothes to the kitchen and stuffed them in the tumble dryer. He selected the hottest setting. Wearing nothing but his boxer shorts, he checked his dad again, who was still unconscious. Back in the kitchen, he tried to think of anything he might have missed. There was nothing, except that he hadn’t eaten his sandwiches, which wasn’t a critical detail. He needed his dad to stay asleep until he was ready.
He towel-dried his hair. After five minutes, he checked his clothes. Still damp, but better than they were. In the living room, the football broadcast was wrapping up. He let the tumble dryer run a bit longer, then lost patience and stopped it. He removed his shirt and jeans and put them on, hot. He got sweaty all over again. Back in the room where his dad slumped in his armchair, the credits were rolling. Jake grabbed the remote, rewound the programme, going back to somewhere in the first half. The fact he could rewind that far was a great relief. The players scurried around backwards, paused, and started running in the right direction.
He shook his dad awake. He looked around, groggy and mumbling, drool hanging. Jake patted his cheek until he came round a bit more.
“What a match!” Jake said.
His dad stared through him, trying to work out what was going on. He looked at the television.
“What did I miss?”
“Couple of goals.”
“How long was I asleep?”
“Not long. It’s only twenty-five minutes in.”
“Oh.” He frowned at the football match. “Who scored?”
Jake told him, and they settled down to watch the rest of the game.
His warm, slightly damp clothes made him hot and red in the face. But he didn’t let that distract him. He kept a close eye on his dad, who was still half-asleep. Who believed he was watching a live match because that’s what his son wanted him to believe.
#
He had no reason to believe otherwise, Jake thought while Montgomery listened. He didn’t know how digital television works. He thought he’d been asleep fifteen minutes. He didn’t suspect a thing. Alibi established.
Turns out Arnie had died. I thought he would, but it was a relief to get it confirmed. The police questioned me at my house, though not under caution. I was their prime suspect, seeing as I stood to gain his job with him gone, and I’d spent a lot of time with him, plus I’d been the last person he called. An Inspector William Denning led the enquiry. God, what a character he was. His face all puffy and soft. Far too pink. Like a giant worm who’d grown limbs and a head. He asked me about my relationship with Arnie, what I did at work, the car shows we went to. He tried to catch me out, asking lots of questions about cars. But I’d prepared. I’d got a lot from Arnie, and I paid attention at the car shows. Online research helped. He asked me about that Saturday afternoon. I told him I’d been with my dad watching the footy. He asked about the game itself, but I was ready with the answers. My dad backed me up. Denning pressed him hard. He kept asking if he could account for the entire afternoon. Dad got confused, and ended up admitting he’d fallen asleep, but only for a quarter of an hour. Denning bit onto that little morsel like a starved dog, but even he couldn’t make me the murderer with only fifteen minutes to work with. He was convinced it was me, but he couldn’t prove it. He must’ve scoured the traffic cameras and all the CCTV he could get his hands on, but I’d dodged it all. He checked my phone records, but all he found was my registered handset that had never left my dad’s house. I’d got rid of all the stuff I’d used, smashed the pay-as-you-go up, melted the deer, burned as much as I could and dumped it in various out-of-the-way places. I kept expecting Denning to find out anyway, maybe find some tyre tracks on the lane in the woods, or some fibres and fingerprints in Arnie’s car. But he never did.
As for Derek Clitheroe, owner of the Ford Focus I borrowed… No problems there either. Turned out he wasn’t the logging type.
As Jake explained all this in his head, he noticed how the face in his eye was more clearly defined now. More human. Still not a normal human face, but getting there.
So I got promoted, Jake continued. Took Arnie’s job, and the only cost was a prize bruise across my chest. Could’ve been worse.
He felt a surge of pride. The fizzing flare in his head lit up again, not as bright as before, but definitely there.
I got away with it! he thought.
The face, watching him from deep eye pits, offered neither confirmation or rebuttal.
That’s it. The whole thing. My secret.
He opened his eyes. It was time to get ready for work. Suzy was coming in today to talk about a ridiculous bubble gum promotion. The top brass seemed to think it was vital for the continuation of life itself. It would look bad if he didn’t go in. But he’d delivered his part of the bargain. He was reluctant to leave without collecting what Montgomery owed him. He closed his eyes again.
Do you need anything else? he thought.
“No.”
When will you honour your part of the deal?
The face now had a nose, and ridges where eyebrows should be. It seemed to have developed in the past few seconds. Its lips moved, and whispered, “Tonight.”
“You’d better.”
The features of the face began to dissolve, the eye pits filling in, the lips thinning, the nose collapsing.
Before everything faded, one of its disappearing eyes twitched. He couldn’t be sure, but it looked like a wink. Then he was looking at an ordinary floater, a ball rolling out of sight.
#
Jake’s district manager was still talking about the Chudster Bubble Gum promotion. He wasn’t sure exactly what she’d been saying, but he’d fill in the blanks after the meeting.
“I’ll let you in on a bit of a secret,” Suzy now said in a lowered voice, leaning forward.
Jake was suddenly all ears.
“Head office consider Chudster to be of such importance, they’ll offer the manager whose store shifts the most units a significant pay rise. Maybe a promotion. District manager.”
She watched Jake for a moment, scrutinising his face, reading his reaction. Despite the promise of untold knowledge from the spirit of Montgomery Charles Williams, it was still only a promise. Jake still couldn’t fully accept it was real. Getting a promotion in a discount home and hardware chain was scarcely the stuff dreams were made of, but it was tangible. It would mean more money, and more power, and those were two of the greatest things in the world. Jake was hungry for his boss’s job, and that’s what his district manager must now be seeing in his face. Hunger was good. It made him a ‘keen candidate’.
Suzy said, “I’m moving on to regional manager.”
“Congratulations.”
“I don’t want to be presumptuous, but if you want, I can give you a bit of a tip on how to do well at this.”
She held her hands up to ward off any protest.
“I’m not saying you need help, or are asking for my help, or anything like that. This is extra information to add to your already ample skills. I’m sure you’d do brilliantly without it, so if you don’t want it, say you don’t want it. I want to be helpful. I think you’d make a great district manager. I can provide a helpful nudge, if that makes any sense.”
Jake appreciated that he didn’t know everything. His superiors must have access to company information that was out of his reach. Any nuggets he could get were welcome.
“I’m not offended. And thanks for your belief in me. Please go on.”
“Well,” his district manager said, lowering her voice to a whisper. She leaned even further forward in her chair. Jake didn’t relish having her rodent-like features close to his, speaking softly, and he wondered if she was attracted to him. She probably was. Maybe the conspiratorial air she was adopting was a pretext to get physically closer to him. If so, she was being about as subtle as a pint of ketchup.
“It’s a bit unconventional. I wouldn’t share this with anyone.”
“Understood.”
“There’s this group of newsagents in the area. About a dozen independents. They’ve clubbed together to get better deals on things, strength in numbers, if that makes any sense. If we can arrange it, we could sell them some of the Chudster stock, but make it look like legit sales to the public. I happen to know the chair of the newsagents consortium…”
Her phone, on the desk between them, rang with an electronic warble. She looked at it, saw who it was, and her eyes brightened.
“Sorry, I’ve got to answer this. Won’t be long.”
She picked it up and answered. “Kay!… I’m great, how are you?… How was last night?”
Jake watched her, wearing what he hoped was his patient face. They were in the middle of a meeting. Having a conversation. The frustration he’d felt when she’d been talking over him burst into anger. This was a new level of rudeness. She was plain ignoring him, relegating him in favour of her friend. Like he didn’t matter. Who the hell was she to do that? His face was getting hot, and he only half-cared that she’d notice his fury.
Slim chance of that. Suzy was listening to whatever Kay was reporting as if it was epoch-defining news, her eyebrows ascending to the heavens, mouth agape.
Eventually, she said, “Oh my God. Kay, that’s amazing. Any idea of a date yet?… Oh, brilliant! Congratulations! I’m made up for you! Better buy a hat!”
She let loose with an uninhibited cackle, seemingly unaware there was someone on the other side of the desk.
“So does this restore your faith in men? They’re not all pigs after all?”
She winked at Jake as she said it. It wasn’t clear to him what the wink meant. Maybe no offence intended. Maybe hey there, handsome. Maybe she intended to provoke him, to stoke his anger, and at that, it was succeeding.
Inside his head, Montgomery whispered: Jake.
Despite the softness of the voice, Jake gave a start. Suzy glanced at him, saw nothing to concern herself with, and continued her conversation.
What do you want? Jake thought.
The secrets I promised, Montgomery hissed back.
You said tonight.
It won’t take long.
I can’t do this now.
It will be quick.
Suzy was still chattering to Kay. She appeared to be settling in for a long session, leaning back in her chair, looking up somewhere above the ceiling, in her own little world. She was utterly ignoring Jake. Fuck her. How dare she.
Tell me, Jake thought.
Close your eyes.
Jake closed his eyes. The deep blue floater was there, waiting.
It had his face. Jake Striker’s face. He had never seen such an expression of gloating triumph in human features before. Glaring eyes. Snarling mouth, bared teeth. Flaring nostrils.
Jake gasped and his eyes flicked open. Suzy put her phone down. He could hear it making a high squabbling sound – Kay, wanting to know what was going on.
“Are you okay?” Suzy asked him.
“Yeah. Resting my eyes. Carry on.”
She didn’t look convinced.
“Sorry, Jake, I’m being really rude.” She picked up the phone. “Kass, I’ve got to go, I’m in the middle of something at work. I’ll ring later. Okay. Yep. Message me… Yes. No, it’s fine… It’s fine…”
She gave Jake an apologetic look. He mouthed, “It’s okay.” She continued trying to hang up, but Jake saw she was giving up on that already. Before long she was in full flow again, ignoring him.
He closed his eyes. There it was, his own face, scowling back at him.
What’s going on, Montgomery?
Can you see it yet?
What?
The mist.
It had been misty all day. Montgomery didn’t mean to discuss the weather, did he?
I don’t know what you mean, Jake thought.
Go to the window.
How is this revealing the secrets of the afterlife? Why do you look like me?
Go.
Jake opened his eyes, shaking his head. The window was ablaze with light. Suzy didn’t even glance at him, until he stood up, and even then she barely flickered. He walked over to the window, standing right next to her, and looked out. He couldn’t see the buildings on the other side of the street. The cookie shop. The barber’s. Department store. The fog hid them all, glowing white, painfully luminescent. None of the shoppers outside seemed to have noticed. They were going about their business in the pedestrianised zone as if it was a perfectly normal Tuesday.
“With you in a minute,” Suzy hissed up at him, twisting from the mobile and twisting straight back.
The mist had got into the office somehow. He didn’t know how that could have happened. The window and door were shut. There were no air vents. It shouldn’t be able to get in. Jake walked back to his chair, thumped down into it. Suzy was looking at him as if he was acting strange.
A claw of pain grabbed his heart, cruel talons digging in. He grimaced. Suzy didn’t notice, looking at the ceiling again.
You saw it, whispered Montgomery.
Why do you have my face?
I swear, of all the Jake Strikers, you are the dimmest.
Jake felt groggy. The haziness was getting thicker. Suzy had put her phone down.
“Are you okay?” Suzy asked. There was a veil of fog between them. She sounded far away.
The pain in his breast was getting worse. It wrapped his heart and breastbone like a belt done up a notch too far. It was exhausting.
“I don’t feel good,” he told her.
What’s this mist? he said in his head.
The afterlife.
He screwed his eyes shut as the pain flared up. It felt like he’d fallen onto a dagger. That face was glaring at him with such intensity he had to open his eyes again.
He stared into a whiteout, a pearly mist that hid almost everything. Suzy was barely visible on the other side of the desk through the glow.
“Montgomery,” he said out loud. “I don’t like what’s happening. My heart hurts.”
Not long now, the voice in his head informed him.
“Who’s Montgomery?” he heard Suzy say. She was a vague grey blob in the mist. A blob which now disappeared entirely. The desk was fading too. A curtain of incandescent fog was advancing across its surface, devouring it. Soon, the desk was gone as well. Everything had turned white. He looked down. His arms and legs and body were pale, ghostly. Suzy’s voice faded, faded, until he could no longer hear it. Now the only sound was a hollow rushing, like a seashell at his ear.
Through his confusion, he realised something terrifying.
“I’m dying,” he said.
That’s the most insightful thing you’ve ever said.
“How?”
We’re swapping places. I’m taking ownership of your body. A second serving of life.
Jake tried to understand, he really tried, but the pain made concentrating difficult.
“I don’t get it.”
There’s no time to spell it out for you. You’re too thick to understand anyway.
“No,” he said feebly.
You are. Two short planks.
“I’m smart.”
I tricked you, so not that smart.
“I don’t even know who are you.”
Because you are stupid.
“No.”
You’ve never done a smart thing your whole life.
“I have.”
No you haven’t. You’re a loser.
“What did you say?”
Loser.
Jake didn’t reply, trying not to rise to the goading.
It must kill you to have such a successful sister.
“What? How do you know my sister?”
Oh, Jake! How do you think?
“You don’t know anything about it.”
Professor at UCL. She’s such a high-flier. Her husband and kids are wonderful. While you’re a manager in a shop, living alone.
Jake didn’t say anything. He was getting angry.
Not long now, idiot.
“Shut up.”
A pause, then a whisper: Idiot.
Frustration boiled up.
“I killed Arnie Green! How’s that for an idiot?”
Jake felt a chill blast of air from the presence in his head. With it came a wave of anger and dismay.
He heard shouting from faraway. He could hardly make it out. A door crashed open. Someone was yelling, “Did you hear what he said?”
He closed his eyes. That other face, a devilish caricature of his own, was still there. Pure rage contorted it into a grotesque mask.
You confessed! the voice shrieked in his skull.
He hadn’t intended to, but he guessed the voice was right. He’d confessed before his boss, before Kass on the phone, and before whoever could hear him through the thin walls of the office.
Despite not meaning to do it, he decided to claim credit for it.
“I win,” he told his own monstrous face. “I’m not so stupid after all, am I?… Gary Butcher.”
It felt good to use his real name after such a long time. A twist of the knife, to remind this imposter his name wasn’t Jake Striker at all, it was Gary Butcher by birth, all five foot one of him.
It was small consolation as the pain in his chest intensified. He winced, clutched his breast, and his hand sailed right through. He opened his eyes, squinting in agony, and saw nothing but empty whiteness. The terrible ache in his chest withered away. He patted himself down and felt nothing – his hands, arms, torso, all gone. He was moving phantom limbs now, the memory of a body.
The rushing sound reached a crescendo, and then shut off like someone had flicked a switch.
He floated in liquid silver. Countless cracks scurried across the shining void, fine as spider webs. There was perfect silence.
He could no longer sense the voice in his head. He was alone.
He tried to speak but nothing came out.
He opened his mouth wider and screamed.
But he had no mouth. He couldn’t scream.
Jake Striker, VALUED TEAM MEMBER SINCE 2015.
Jake Striker, a member of this world no longer.
