M - Echoes Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

In a distant corner of the country where a wood had once grown, rows
upon rows of houses marched over the hills, their glassy eyes
reflecting artificial light and human laughter, mocking the primeval
earth for the loss of its power. Susan Marsh sat alone in her room (as
she always seemed to do, these days) staring into space. Downstairs she
heard her mother moving in the kitchen, opening drawers, clashing pans,
probably mouthing the words to some long-forgotten song. From inside
the house, the windows didn't seem like eyes to her. They were merely
panes of glass, shutting out the wind and the cold and the madness that
prowled the streets of her town.

In her mind's eye the 'wind-woman' grinned with her perfect teeth and
frighteningly opaque eyes, and told her over and over again to leave
James alone.

Her earlier desperation to see James, her belief that to share her
experience with him would somehow ease her fear, had faded. She had
worked through the morning like a zombie, grinning fixedly at customers
and saying only what was necessary to Mr Porritt. At one o'clock she'd
taken the bus home and moped in her bedroom ever since.

She finally mustered enough courage to go downstairs into the bright
warmth of the kitchen.

"Mother, I'm just going out. I won't be long."

Her mother turned from her cooking and her eyes looked heavy and
bloodshot. She had been frying something, but the contents of the pan
looked black and shrivelled, and the light on the ceiling was wreathed
in smoke.

"Well, OK. I could say that dinner's ready, but I'll have to start
again. Be careful out in those dark streets, won't you?"

"I'll be alright, mother."

It had been a long time since her father died, but her mother still
slipped into fits of depression from time to time. Previously Susan had
tried to comfort her, to let her know that she was there to share her
grief, but she met with stony silence and occasionally open hostility.
It was best, she had decided, to let her be and ride out the
depression.

The night air seemed sweet and cool after the smell of burning inside
the house, but Susan shied away from all passers-by in case a pair of
full moons blazed from their faces instead of eyes. It was only ten
minutes to James' house and soon she was standing in front of it,
looking up at his bedroom window where curtains barely smothered the
light.

His mother opened the door and she looked anxious. "Susan! I'm glad
you're here. Something's wrong with James. He's been sitting in his
room all day just staring into space. He won't say a word to either of
us. He won't eat or drink. Please see if you can do something."

Susan smiled as she was let into the house. "I'll try, but we're not
really getting on very well at the moment."

"Do you think that's all it is? Perhaps he's just depressed because of
that. Have you broken up? Please make an effort to patch things up,
Susan. I can't stand having him like this."

The woman had stopped babbling and Susan felt embarrassed for her. At
the end of the hallway she could see James' father sitting at the
kitchen table pretending to read the newspaper but surely listening to
their conversation. She muttered something to his mother then walked
upstairs. There was, predictably, to answer to her knock on James' door
so she entered regardless.

James was sitting on his bed staring into space and Susan could see
that he had been like that for some time. Three full mugs of coffee
rested untouched on his desk and his face looked pale and tired. His
bedraggled hair and unshaven face showed that he had lost all concern
for his appearance and was instead absorbed in something beyond the
comprehension of anyone else. Except perhaps for her. She sat on the
bed beside him and was silent for a few moments.

"Penny for your thoughts?" She could think of nothing else to say, and
the question sounded cliched and inane. She found herself wondering if
she would make a good psychiatrist, and decided firmly in the negative.
The patient would probably start analyzing her instead.

"James, your parents are really worried about you. So am I. Has all
this got to do with that dream you had? Was that why you went all quiet
and sullen in the park? You're not the only person in the world with
problems, you know. Jesus, my mother's at home crying her eyes out
because her husband was killed years ago. What the hell have you got to
complain about?!"

He remained fixed in the same position, his eyes staring towards his
wardrobe but failing to focus on anything. "I don't know whether I'm
going mad, James, but I had a strange experience yesterday. A bit like
yours, I think. I've never really believed in the supernatural, and I
didn't take you seriously when you told me about your dream. If you
want me to say sorry, OK, I'm sorry. I think I can appreciate what you
were going through a little bit more now. I haven't been able to tell
anyone about what I saw, and it's an awful feeling thinking you're
seeing things."

Finally James spoke, but his lips barely moved. "What did you
see?"

Susan started, as if she had forgotten that he had the ability to
speak. "Well, it's nice to hear that the lad has a tongue in his head.
I used to know all about that, you know."

"What did you see, Susan?"

"OK, I'll tell you as long as you promise not to laugh." There was no
reactions so she continued. "I was walking to work, and guess who I ran
into? Your best Mate Nick. Sounds like you both had a good time the
other night. Anyway, I had this...blackout, I suppose you could call
it. Suddenly I was somewhere else, as if I was hallucinating. I was in
this strange suburban street. I think I met your dream-woman."

He turned his head slightly towards her. "A suburban street? Do you
remember that walk to school or to town when we were little kids,
Susan? Each house meant something to us. Number 34 was where that
fierce dog Flossie lived. If it came to the gate we would all run a
mile. The woman at number 17 was supposed to be a witch. And then there
was number 13, of course. If you looked into one of its windows, you
were done for. We all walked past it staring straight ahead. Do you
remember that?"

"Of course I do." She laughed. "I hope you haven't forgotten that
electricity generator thing, with the door marked 'Danger' in big red
letters. That was where the Danger Monster lived."

James managed a smile, and Susan felt a pleasing sense of triumph as
she realised she had succeeded where his parents had failed. He
continued. "Yeah, the Danger Monster. I think that was the most
frightening one of them all. But the thing was, none of this was real.
Flossie wasn't fierce; she was just a harmless old Jack Russell who
only came up to the gate to be friendly and wag her tail. The old
witch? Just a lonely old woman. And we all felt so guilty when she
died. I don't know whether we were ever really frightened of those
things. They were all part of the great child hood adventure. We
changed the town we lived in into some kind of unexplored jungle full
of strange monsters and bottomless lakes. Deep down, I think we still
knew that it was all fake. Just a sham. When we got older, these things
faded away and we were suddenly thrust out into the wide, adult world,
where all there is is pinstripe suits and word processors."

"I think I know what you're getting at. This stuff we're experiencing
now. It is real, isn't it? We can't just put it down to overactive
imaginations. Both of us have had...strange encounters and neither of
us can explain it."

"You say you met this woman in a kind of dream suburban street? As I
was coming to meet you that day in the park, I met a tramp. A woman
tramp whose eyes looked like...nothing on earth, I suppose. And again,
this was in this weird street."

There was silence for a time. Susan felt expectancy rising from below,
where she suddenly remembered James' parents. They had probably been
listening to every word they had said. It was so quiet down there.
"James? Do you want to go somewhere else to talk? I think your parents
will be calling in the men in white coats at any moment."

James shrugged. "I think my parents lost patience with me a long time
ago. Just close the door. Let them think what they like." Susan kicked
the door closed and returned to the bed, feeling more secure now she
was sure no prying ears were listening in. "Yeah, you were saying, the
suburbs..."

"It's as if someone out there knows exactly how to get at us. He, or
whatever it is, hits us where we're most insecure. I don't really want
to get poetic, but you could say that the suburbs is a place which is
neither one thing or the other. It's neither town nor country, and for
us, there as kids, it was neither real or imaginative. Everything
becomes blurred there. And I think it's making me sort of...regress. I
mean, the other night I found myself willing something to happen,
staring at my wardrobe door like a kid who's afraid something is
lurking in there. Ready to come out when it gets dark and frighten me
to death or something. But this time, I wanted it to come out. I don't
know why, it just seemed like the right thing to do. It was as if I was
meant to summon something up."

"And did you?"

"Almost, I think. There was something in there, I'm sure of it. But I
lost it at the last moment, lost my concentration I suppose. I don't
know. You see, this...hallucination or whatever she was, she said I
could will her back at any time. That's what I was trying to do, I
suppose."

Susan paused, pensive. "James, I really can't believe we're sitting
here talking about this as though it's all logical, part of everyday
life. I still can't bring myself to accept any of this. And you really
hurt me the other day, in the park. I still wouldn't mind an
explanation, you know."

Susan realised that this was the main reason she had come to see James
in the first place, and had instead been dragged into this nightmare
world and forced into a conversation that shouldn't be happening at
all. But the woman's face would turn away from her, and the twin points
of fiery white light that were her eyes continued to burn away at her
rationality, seeming to endlessly say, "This is happening. This is not
your imagination. This is happening."

James was silent again, this time looking down at his clasped hands,
unsure how to proceed. "OK, I'll try to speak for you, if you can't
think of anything yourself. You met me at the shop, we went to the
park, we talked. I enjoyed it, James. It was almost romantic under the
sun and the trees. Then, you changed. Tell me why, for Christ's
sake!"

"It's so difficult to explain, Susan. It felt as though we had been
watched, tested almost. I felt jealousy out there. Not my own, but
someone else's. I felt disapproval. It was just too much to cope
with."

"So you gave in to it."

"Yes, if you want to put it like that. I don't think we can be
anything more than friends while all this is going on. It won't work.
It's too...dangerous."

She sighed, and now found herself looking down at her hands, which
seemed to be engaged in a wrestling match with each other. "So what
next? What can we do?"

"I'm not sure. What I can say is that something is trying to contact
us. Or maybe only me, and it's trying to warn you off me. For the
moment, all we can do is wait, and see what happens next."

"And you think it's dangerous?"

"Not if things stay as they are. If anything else happens to me, then
I've got to try to be more believing. Less cynical. Maybe then it'll be
able to get its message across."

He slumped back on the bed and lay there, hands clasped behind his
head. Susan realised it was time to go and leaned over him ready to
kiss his mouth. He stopped her with a gentle hand on her cheek and
shook his head. There was no sign of James' parents when she crept
downstairs and back out into the cold night, pausing a moment to stare
up at the dust-like stars scattered over the black sky before walking
home. She feared street corners and huddled shapes which passed
silently by, and the echo of her footsteps on the concrete comforted
her by shattering the uneasy silence. For once, she was glad to get
home.