Unbelievable, Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen: And, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.
Revelation, 1. 18

The moon shone down again, erupting suddenly from behind a cloud, and the moment seemed significant, caught as we were in a limbo, the conversation stilled.

There was only one person that would know. Maggie. She of the coming moon, for her name to me appeared suddenly portentous. Everything worked in threes, and I had only recent history. Magena, Selena, Neona. It had to be significant, didn’t it? Coming moon, Moon, and New Moon. And now there was another three. Elyssa, Arun and Neona. The third. The third of a kind? Did it make sense?

‘My mother…’ I began, then faltered. The pair of them looked expectant, as the moon gilded their stone-still faces with beauty. My mother was beautiful, but not that beautiful. Maggie too, could hold her own, and neither of them looked their age. But they were ageing. How could my destiny be different from theirs? For, if, as Elyssa had stated, we could not age past eighteen, then what was different in my blood from my female line.

My father.

‘My mother could heal. She looks impossibly young for her age. My grandmother, too. But this…this is different. I think it’s linked to my father. Maggie will know, she must do. Oh…’

I shook my head, overwhelmed by the weight of my family’s secrets, by the way my mother had hidden everything. Why had my mother and Maggie fallen out? Why had my father vanished? Why had my mother…

‘I think it’s time that everyone stopped holding things back from me. Stopped hiding and lying and edging around the subject as if I was too weak to handle it. I need truths. I need something substantial to go on. Tell me what you know, everything that you know, and then I will go to Maggie and drag the rest from her.’ I could feel my throat closing as the tears welled up; the emotionless part hadn’t happened yet, then.

Arun took my arm in one hand and Elyssa’s in the other. Softly, he guided us along the towpath, and the moon lit our way as we wandered back downstream, away from the pub, away from civilisation.

‘The past, I do not remember. I do not know how I came to be like this. I do not know if memory is a controllable thing, whether I have locked the truths away from reach, or whether someone did that for me. I only remember waking, one morning, as the sunlight streamed through the curtains, in a great, soft bed in a house in Bath.’

He paused, considered, continued.

‘There was no-one in the house; it was completely deserted. By ‘deserted’, I don’t mean simply a lack of people, I mean abandoned and left to rot. There was dust on every surface; spiders had made their home in the corners; the air was stale. The bed was clean, the sheets not long changed. I do not know how I came to be there, or to whom the house belonged. I was disoriented and confused, and could not recall my name. I stumbled through the empty, dusty rooms, looking for clues to no avail. But I remember, as I walked out into the sunlight, that it stung my skin and hurt my eyes. It was as if I had been indoors for a great length of time.

‘I returned inside and sought a drink. There was a quality wine on the sideboard, and fresh clothes in the wardrobe awaiting my body. I remained in the house for a few days, but eventually, hunger and thirst drove me to seek food and drink, and I made my way along the quiet, golden streets to the town.’

‘When was this?’ I asked. ‘Didn’t you check the fridge? Turn on the tap for water? Order a pizza?’

Arun laughed.

‘My dear girl,’ he said, glancing down. ‘It was two hundred years past.’

I stopped dead, my mouth falling open, my brain freezing into shock. What had I expected when Elyssa had revealed they couldn’t age? I don’t think it had registered. I still thought of them as sixth formers, like me.

‘I lived as best I could. There was money in the pockets of the breeches I had put on, and I had a roof over my head. The house remained empty and untouched, the dust thickened, and, unable to recall any detail of my past life, I threw myself into the pursuit of further oblivion with gusto. There was no activity, alcohol, drug that I did not try. Women flocked to me; the glass, or mirror, as you would term it, in the bedroom where I returned to while away my days, alone or with company, once wiped, revealed my features to have improved almost beyond recognition.

‘So what happened?’ I demanded, as he recaptured my arm and continued to walk along by the dark, soft water.

‘I lived. I soon discovered myself to be undamageable, my body somehow toughened. The amount I had to drink in order to get drunk would astonish you; I could drink any man under the table several times over. The years flew by and, I confess, I did not notice them. I did not notice as the world began to change, as new inventions appeared, as revolution drove things on. Time meant nothing to me, as soon as I realised I was not ageing. The dates on the newspapers were the only guide I had, but what significance is the passage of time to the immortal?’

He was speaking differently, I had noticed. He had always been articulate and intelligent in conversation, but now his speech sounded proper and old-fashioned, in keeping with…well, to be brutally frank, he sounded like an Austen character. I told him so.

‘You sound like Mr Darcy.’ It was blunt. Rude, even. Suddenly, I felt as if I were insulting my ‘elders and betters’.

‘I met her once, you know. The lady writer, in the Assembly Rooms in Bath.’ He smirked. ‘So uptight. So… virginal.’

I shrugged off his arm, uncomfortable suddenly. Years and years…two hundred, to be precise, of women, wine and…well, not carpet shine, by the sound of it!

‘So why the sixth form? You don’t need to study Frankenstein; you were alive when it was written! You lived through it!’

‘Wait, patience! I will complete my tale.’

‘Sorry, sir!’ I laughed, suddenly, as the image of Arun in breeches drifted cheekily across my vision.

‘One day, I returned to the house to find it overrun with activity. There were perhaps half a dozen servants, sweeping, dusting, cleaning, polishing. My haven had become a hive of wasps. Their eyes stung me as I wandered in, questioning, peering, assessing. I was drunk, of course. It was quite a shock. I enquired what was the matter from a shy housemaid, and she informed me that the ‘Master’ was returning from his travels, and that they had come ahead to prepare the house. When I asked how long he had been gone, she replied that she did not know; the workforce had only that day been engaged, and none of them had ever met the master. She made no comment on the state of the house.

‘I was to meet this ‘Master’ that very night. having become an arrogant drunkard, I simply put myself to bed, as was my wont, and the servants simply cleaned around me.

‘I awoke to a strange stillness. The room was dark, the moonlight streaming in brightly as the sun had that first morning. A figure was standing at the foot of the bed; a tall figure, dressed in a deep red velvet coat. He carried a cane, with which he prodded me once more; clearly the method he had used to wake me in the first place:

‘I thought I had left behind a corpse,’ he intoned, dryly. ‘And yet, here you are, exactly where I left you, and very much still alive. You were very sick…’

‘Who am I?’ I demanded, typically egocentric, failing completely to remember my manners; that is, if I had had any in the first place.

‘Your name?’ he mused. ‘Is that what you ask? It is ‘Arun Bond’, the significance of which should not escape you…or perhaps it does still elude, if you sleep away the daylight hours and venture abroad only by nightfall.’

‘You speak in riddles, sir!’ I cried, staggering from the bed, my head spinning. Somehow, I dressed. He watched me, looking amused. ‘And if I did indeed seem dead, the last time you saw me, why did you not stay long enough to give me a Christian burial?’

‘At that, he burst into reams of laughter, and would answer no more questions. I think my manner had insulted him. The sound of his laughter pursued me as I ran from the house; indeed, I can still hear it, echoing down the years. We never met again. I sought the brighter lights of Bristol, abandoning the Roman city for a long while.

‘As the years continued to pass, I regretted my haste in exiting that house, for I think that man knew all the secrets that are still unknown to me; namely, who and what we are.’

‘So why didn’t you go back?’ I demanded. ‘Are you telling me that you were so sodding arrogant that you couldn’t have a civil conversation with the man who could fill you in?’

‘Yes, Neona, I am ashamed to say I was an idiot. I did return to seek him out, years later, but the house was transformed; a family lived there, and I had no name to ask for. The man and his servants were long gone. I asked around the public houses and my old stamping grounds. There was a rumour a man who bore a resemblance to my description had been a popular figure amongst the society I kept, and that he had last been heard of heading North, but no trace of him ever made itself known to me.’

‘Did you go North? Did you pursue the trail?’ I could hear my voice rising, a note of panic creeping in.

‘No. There was no point. I had no name to go on, and I did not know the country up there. I gave up the small portion of hope that I nourished, and lived on. I cleaned up my act a little.’

‘How did you explain it to your friends?’ I demanded. ‘The eternal youth issue, I mean?’

They both laughed right out loud at that. The sound struck a note of portent in my heart, and as it sank, I knew the answer before he gave it.

‘We don’t have friends. It’s too...difficult to explain. We maintain acquaintances for a while, and then move on; a different town, a different social group. Bath and Bristol held the appeal of size; a hundred different little microcosms in which to lose oneself. The art of disguise is also useful. You learn not to attach; you spend a while, and then move on.’

‘My turn,’ Elyssa smirked, butting in on the conversation and the structure of our threesome. She slipped herself in between Arun and myself, linking arms, and drawing us close. ‘Let me tell you how we met.’

‘Yes, how did you become friends, if you don’t make friends?’ I was eager to know. I suppressed the shudder inside that was beginning to grow; the thought of losing another group of friends on top of the first. Worse: to have to leave them by choice, rather than having a higher power make the decision for you, by removing them from the mortal realm...

‘Bloody hell!’ I suddenly exclaimed. ‘if we’re immortal, does that mean we can access different... levels of existence?’

‘She talks in riddles, too,’ observed Elyssa slyly.

‘She’s asking if we can traverse the boundary between life and death, to visit those on the other side, I believe,’ Arun deciphered.

Elyssa looked humbled. ‘I don’t know, babe,’ she drawled, pondering. ‘I’ve never tried. I mean, how would you go about trying? We’ve already established that we can’t get there by conventional methods.’

‘The curse of immortality, Neona,’ Arun warned. ‘Is an absence of death. No access to death. If you were human and therefore mortal, you might see them again one day, when you yourself pass over. But being immortal...’

‘means that I am never going to see them again.’ I finished, trying not to let my voice break.

‘Who knows?’ Elyssa chirped, cheerfully. ‘We don’t know, do we? That’s the point. All Arun has is theories. He doesn’t know either!’

‘Sorry, Elyssa, you were about to tell me how you met...’ I reminded, attempting to guide the conversation onto less shaky territory.

‘It was a mistake, of course. He might well have killed me, had I been mortal. In fact, it’s pretty much a certainty.’

I was intrigued. I nudged her arm, encouragingly.

‘It was the seventies,’ she giggled. ‘I’d already been around for a while by then. I was crossing the road one night, walking home from a party. He came flying round the corner in his car. No driving licence, of course. Arun doesn’t deal in fake identities. The impact was pretty horrendous. I went flying up into the air and crashed back down again, right smack down in the road. And now, Neona, you’re going to have to reserve judgement.’

I frowned at her, uncertain. ‘Why?’

‘Because he reversed the car a little, and made to drive round me. He was going to abandon me. A proper hit and run.’

‘Jesus!’ I hissed, shocked.

‘There were no witnesses. The car wasn’t legally mine. I had no proper identity, no records, no licence. One human death seemed so insignificant; after all, I’d been watching people die for over a century and a half by then.’

‘But he didn’t bargain on me getting up, right as rain, and dragging him out of the car,’ Elyssa smirked, then.

‘Scared the proverbial ‘crap’ out of me,’ admitted Arun, sheepishly.

‘Of course, once I had hold of him, I could tell that he was ‘different’ too. It was such a relief. It was so lonely, before.’

‘So you became friends?’ I clarified.

‘Not at first. At first there was mistrust. We had never come across our kind. I think they’re all so good at hiding...easier, I suppose, when you have no family or friends to link you to the real world. No-one to notice when you screw up in Biology experiments, for example.’

‘You heard?’ I dripped sarcasm.

‘You’re careless,’ she criticised. ‘You’re going to have to sharpen up. You will, as you mature. You’re already more... elegant in movement. But it’s going to have to get sharp a lot quicker.’

I felt like a child being chastised by elderly parents.

‘And your friends.’ Arun’s voice was careful now, and I sensed a hint of warning. ‘You’re going to have to detach.’

‘No.’ I stated firmly. There is no way. Tienna, Josh, Eric, Tom, Shannon, Mika... I am stuck at this school until the end of Year Thirteen and I am not going to do it with them hating me for severing all contact.’

‘But sooner rather than later will be easier,’ Elyssa pointed out.

‘If,’ I began, a harsh tone overriding my voice. ‘If I am going to have to spend decades or centuries or quite possibly an eternity without friends, other than you two, which I might add, might well drive me insane, then I am bloody well going to make the most of the next year or so. I am going to be human and normal as much as I can, until I can’t anymore.’

I dropped Elyssa’s arm and stood firmly, arms crossed. ‘And I am not going to change my mind.’

‘So there?’ joked Arun.

‘Have it your way,’ Elyssa said softly, a hint of sadness in her eyes. ‘But it will be hard to let go once you become truly integrated, once you know them well.’

‘Hmm.’ I snorted, a tad derisively. ‘I think I’d had enough practise to be able to cope.’

Silence greeted me. A wave of understanding swelled. They caught my meaning, and knew that there was really nothing more to be said.

‘Right,’ I turned, ready to walk back upriver. ‘I’m going home to grill Granny.’

I felt their eyes follow me as the moon went in once more, hard on my back even after I had turned the bend in the river, out of sight. I slammed a few metaphorical doors in my mind, shutting down my brain from all avenues but one; getting home to bed so that I could get up early and demand answers from Maggie before school. But as I walked, one thing slipped through a careless keyhole and, like smoke, coiled around my head:

Elyssa hadn’t revealed how she came to exist. How she Became. I had a feeling that I was not privy to the last of her secrets. I wondered if Arun was.