The Messengers Read online

  “No,” Peter said. “It was his time, that’s all. I’m just a messenger. The messages come to me,” he said, gesturing at a new postcard that he had on his desk.

  I tried to control my breathing. I tried to tell myself this was all lies. Fantastical rubbish. But I was angry about the way he was making me feel. I looked around the room for something to smash. My gaze rested on the postcard. From where I was standing, I couldn’t make out exactly what he had painted, but — if I was to believe this man — on that postcard were the details of somebody’s death.

  Somebody’s life.

  Peter Kennedy started talking again, but I’d stopped listening. The wind screeched through the gaps in the wooden panels, and I could hear the sea, like a broken telly. There was one inside lock on the door. Peter was mumbling about gifts and prophecies.

  I snatched the postcard from the desk, unlocked the door, and sprinted into the noise of the world. Peter got up from his chair and tried to grab me, but I was away.

  I ran across the path, nearly knocking over an old bloke with two walking canes, and skipped quickly down the steps in the seawall. It wasn’t until I got onto the beach that I began to slow down. I was wearing canvas trainers, and the stones pressed through the soles. The sea had made ridges of pebbles, like dunes, and I tumbled over them. Peter was gaining on me and shouting, but I wasn’t listening. There was fear in his voice, a panic I hadn’t expected.

  The paint on the postcard was tacky on my fingers, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at it.

  He was closing in. The stones were wet, and I could feel the sea spray on my face, but the sea was going out, being sucked away from me. After what I’d witnessed that day, there was a part of me that truly believed I was saving someone’s life. And the part of me that didn’t believe it had no problem with the idea of dumping a postcard in the water. But I still had a way to go until I made it to the first waves. I slowed down to look back, and Peter was coming after me. He seemed to glide across the beach stones. I tried to run again, but I tripped. He tackled me, and the postcard fell out of my grasp. Peter had me by the ankles, and then the hips. I felt the raw strength of him coming through his hands. My blood thumped.

  That end of the beach was pretty much deserted, but I could see a man walking his dog in the distance. “Help!” I screamed. “I’m being attacked!” The man didn’t hear, but it was enough to make Peter release his grip. I stood and retrieved the postcard.

  The waves came in, and I staggered toward them. Peter was still on the ground. “Please!” he shouted, and there was such terror in his voice that I turned around to face him.

  He got to his knees. “I’m begging you, Frances,” he said.

  I looked down at the postcard. I was stunned, again, by the photographic perfection of the painting, which showed a man in a suit slumped between two chairs, his eyes rolled back and his hand across his chest. I looked away sharply. “If what you’re telling me is true,” I said, “then I have to save this man. I can’t let what happened this morning happen again. I can’t let you deliver this. It’s too . . . It’s horrible.”

  “But you don’t understand,” he said. “If I don’t deliver the message, my family will . . . they’ll suffer.”

  I frowned, trying to stay inside his logic, crazy as it seemed. “Well, this man has a family too,” I said. “And Samuel Newman had a family. What about their lives? Why should I care about your family more than them?”

  “It was his time,” he said.

  That wasn’t a good-enough answer. The white sea foam sidled between my feet and sent sparks of cold up my legs. My toes went numb. I turned toward the sea and prepared to drop the postcard.

  “I have a son,” he said.

  I stopped and looked out at the patches of color and steely light on the water.

  “A boy,” he said. “He’s eleven. I’m asking you. Don’t do this.”

  Peter put his hands over his face and watched me from between his fingers, like a frightened kid.

  “How can you have an eleven-year-old son? How old are you?”

  “I was very young when he was born. I was still a teenager.”

  I tried to take it all in.

  “Please,” he said. “He’s just a child.”

  He’d got me.

  I walked out of the water toward him, and he stood slowly. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry I made you deliver the card to Samuel Newman. I handled it badly. But I just wanted you to understand the power you have.”

  I shook my head. “You’re wrong about me,” I said.

  “I’m not. You’ve had the blackouts. You’ve made the images. It’s true, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not the same,” I said.

  “You’re young and your gift hasn’t developed yet,” he said. He was trembling slightly. “I’ve been through what you’re going through. Mostly, you’ll have produced duds. Just unfinished scribbles. Your powers are growing, though. It won’t be long. That’s why you came to me.”

  “I didn’t come to you!”

  “I can help you control it. Help keep your family safe. The people you love.”

  “I’m not like you,” I said, my anger about what I’d been through that day suddenly coming back. “Look at you. You’re a mess.”

  He was trembling, almost in tears. “Well, can’t you imagine why?” he said.

  “I’m not going to end up like you.”

  “There’s no choice. I don’t know why this happens to us, but it does. You mustn’t feel guilty.”

  He held out his hand for the postcard, and I gave it to him. “Keep your postcard, and keep the hell away from me,” I said.

  And I left him there, staring out to sea.

  I went to the arcades on the pier that afternoon. I reckon I needed the red and yellow flashing lights and the people around me. I needed silly childish noises. Whizbangs and whistles, and the jingle of coins. I was properly shaken up. At one point, I looked over at a driving game, and I swear I saw the man from that morning, his head on the steering wheel, his neck badly cocked. But it was just a vision. Just another sign I was losing it.

  I went out for some fresh air. The wind caused the little plastic windmills outside the toy shop to whir. In spite of the muggy summer weather, a few kids were tombstoning off the pier, their shouts cut off each time by the water. I thought of that postcard, the man with his hand on his heart. Could it be true that the man would now die? I wondered how many people Peter Kennedy had painted. Who would be next? Perhaps one of the kids jumping off the pier. Maybe it would be the woman who operated the teacup ride or the man who was skateboarding down the sea path, using two golf umbrellas as sails.

  As if that thought weren’t bad enough, I had to consider the possibility that I had done something similar. I thought about the scene from my most recent drawing. Peter had said my abilities were growing. Was this what the blackouts meant? Was I going to become a monster? A killer? I’d have to spend my days hiding out, like Peter Kennedy.

  Don’t get me wrong, I was a rational person, and it was hard to believe what Peter had told me, especially as he seemed so unsure about the details. But how else could he have known about my blackouts? And I’d seen what I’d seen on Landsmere Road that morning.

  Soon, the sky began to darken and the lights of the rides bloomed in the gray. I walked back toward Auntie Lizzie’s. What worried me most was this: Peter had said that if he didn’t deliver his messages, his family would suffer. Until this week, my drawings had just been weird harmless-looking sketches — a face here, a scribble there. But the last drawing I’d done was different. I thought of it now, sitting at the bottom of my bag. Two days. That meant, by his logic, I had until tomorrow morning.

  Auntie Lizzie and Uncle Robert were lying on the plush white sofas watching TV. “There’s a tuna salad in the fridge, Fran,” Auntie Lizzie said through a yawn, and I nodded. Uncle Robert smiled openly at me, but I turned away, not wanting him to see how I was feeling. I needed to ke
ep the details of the day to myself.

  “Any calls, Auntie Lizzie?” I said.

  “No, sorry, love,” she said.

  I went upstairs to check on Max. His door was ajar. “Maxi,” I said. No answer. I walked in. He was sitting cross-legged on his bed with his eyes closed, his glasses on the bedside table. Black baggy track pants and a black T-shirt. He was totally still.

  “Max,” I said.

  He opened one eye and breathed softly. It took him another few moments to wake fully. “Hi, Frances,” he said.

  “What the bloody hell are you doing?” I said. “Are you doing yoga? I thought you were — you know — a boy?”

  He smiled. “It’s not yoga. I was meditating. They teach us at kendo.”

  “Where’s that?” I said.

  “It’s not a place — it’s a discipline. It’s sort of like sword fighting, except with wooden sticks.”

  “Oh, the one with the fencing masks,” I said.

  “Well . . . yes, OK.”

  I sat on his bed and tried on his spectacles. The world was a total blur. I hadn’t realized how bad his eyes were. “God, Maxi, these are making me feel sick,” I said. He took the glasses from me and put them on.

  “Did you have a good afternoon?” he said.

  “No. Did you?”

  “It was fine. I feel pretty good. Balanced.”

  “Right, right.” I thought maybe he was stoned. “You not going out with your mates?”

  “No. I got a text from them this afternoon. They were in La Senza.”

  “The bra shop?” I said. “What were they doing in there?”

  “Looking,” Max said.

  “Jesus. What a bunch of freaks,” I said, although Peter Kennedy had taken my definition of the word “freak” to a whole new level recently. “If that’s what they get up to, it’s no wonder you stay home with your eyes closed.”

  He smiled again. “In kendo, you have to learn to control the mind. To get to a point of stillness where you can see what your opponent is going to do next — where you can see what you are going to do next, and then change it.”

  “Like seeing the future,” I said sadly.

  “Kind of. Like controlling the future.”

  “So what’s in the crystal ball, Maxi? What’s in store for me? Any ideas? Will I get to snog Todd Garner from year twelve?”

  Max took a deep breath and pretended to look into the future. “I’m seeing . . . yes . . . he’ll try to feel you up, and you’ll slap him.”

  I laughed. “I probably wouldn’t slap him.”

  “To be honest,” he said, “it takes ages to learn kendo. I’ve got a long way to go. Most of the people who make hachi-dan, the highest rank, are in their sixties and seventies. Lightning fast.”

  “I’d better spend the next fifty-odd years kicking your arse then, hadn’t I? Before you get good.”

  “You should see them on the videos. It’s amazing.”

  “Really? Isn’t it funny, watching all those old blokes sword fighting?”

  “They’re wearing masks and robes. You can’t tell how old they are. I’m saving up for the gear. It’s pretty expensive, and Dad won’t pay.”

  I thought of Johnny boxing. He had told me once that after a certain number of years of being punched every day, boxers get what’s known as a “conditioned face.” The skin becomes so tough that they don’t get cuts anymore. Johnny thought that was a good thing, but I didn’t. I looked at my cousin, with his delicate cheekbones. “If you have to do a martial art, Maxi, I’m glad you’ll be wearing pads and a mask.”

  I went back to my room and lay down. I took one of my beloved Berol Venus pencils out of the tin and looked down the length of it. The bright-green cracks in the dark-green varnish now looked like some kind of poison ready to leak out. I sniffed up the spicy scent of the wood and graphite, which reminded me of home.

  There was a part of me that wished my brother would hand himself in, just so I could see him again. I knew that was selfish. I had to hope he was safe. Then I thought about Peter Kennedy and the picture under my bed. Maybe, if I didn’t deliver my “message,” I would put Johnny in danger.

  I tried to think of positive things, to calm myself down and take my mind off the day I’d had. Johnny used to pick me up from junior school. I was always so proud to see him out the classroom window — the ragbag rebel in his vest and jeans, with a couple of ice pops. As time went on, he wore his Top Gun aviator sunglasses all the time — usually to hide his black or bloodied eyes. I could hear him flirting with the mothers at the gates, always in that jokey polite tone of his. “Afternoon, Mrs. H. That’s a very fetching blouse you’ve got on.” They loved it.

  We’d walk home together, and he’d sit on the end of my bed and tell me stories about our dad. I would look at Johnny and see myself reflected twice in his shades. Then we’d watch Home and Away.

  According to Johnny, our dad had walked across America holding two bricks by his fingers, and — although it wasn’t in the Guinness Book of World Records because of an error — that was one of the most grueling tests a man could endure. “Once, before you were born,” Johnny said, “we were riding through the countryside in the Citroën, and Mum said to Dad, ‘What’s for dinner?’ and Dad said, ‘Lamb.’ He jumped out of the car, hopped over a fence, picked up a sheep from this field, and stuffed it in the trunk.”

  When he wore his parka, my dad could make it look as though his head had turned 360 degrees. He could recall the names of all the kings and queens of England, and every capital city in the world. “He was smart, you see. That’s where you get it from,” Johnny would say. “I got the brick-carrying gene.”

  I spent a good deal of my childhood with this image of my dad as a charming, record-breaking scamp. A man who leaped over fences and stored history. A master of optical illusions. Maybe after the head-turning trick, I thought, he’d just made himself disappear. But I could see the love in Johnny’s eyes when he told the stories.

  That night, I fell asleep in Auntie Lizzie’s house, imagining Johnny’s weight on the end of my bed, like in the old days. But in my dreams, I felt Peter Kennedy’s big hands on my hips and ankles, the way he’d grabbed me on the beach. In my dreams, I couldn’t figure out if I was scared or excited.

  I woke a few hours later to the sound of quick, heavy footsteps on the landing. I half expected Peter Kennedy to smash through my door. I poked my head out and saw the toilet light on across the landing. Auntie Lizzie, in her nightdress, was holding on to Max, who was bent over the bath, puking.

  “Robert!” she shouted.

  Uncle Robert came out onto the landing in his boxer shorts and a faded T-shirt, his hair genuinely a mess. “Max! What’s going on?” he said. “Have you been drinking?”

  “He’s been in the house all night, Robert,” Auntie Lizzie said.

  “Is everything OK?” I asked.

  Auntie Lizzie turned around, and her expression showed me that it wasn’t. “It’s fine, Frances, yes. It’ll be fine. A spot of food poisoning, probably.”

  She turned back to Max, and I caught a glimpse of his face. His eyes were rolling back in his head. He was sick again.

  “Oh, God, Robert,” Auntie Lizzie said. “He’s bringing up blood.”

  “It’s his stomach lining,” Uncle Robert said. His voice had softened up. He was worried. “Should we call someone, Liz?”

  I backed away into the bedroom, took out my kit bag and retrieved the crumpled drawing. I looked at the image of a cat, its neck clamped between the jaws of a dog. I thought back to what Peter Kennedy had said. Surely he couldn’t be right. Could it be me doing this? Was I killing Max by not delivering the message? Listening to Max struggling for breath, it was suddenly possible to believe him. There wasn’t much of a decision to make. I slipped on my shoes — still wet from the sea — and went downstairs with the picture.

  When I opened the big steel fridge, the light and the cold flooded the kitchen. The tuna salad was still in there, u
nder tin foil. I took it out and made my way quickly through the house and into the cool street.

  The pavement still held a little of the day’s heat, and the streetlights looked like honey and lemon Lockets. I wandered around and sucked my lips to make that noise that pet people make. I’d left the front door open, and I could hear Uncle Robert talking on the phone, outright panic in his voice now. He must be calling the ambulance, I thought.

  “Here, kitty,” I said. I took the foil off the salad and picked out the flakes of tuna, crumbled them between my fingers. “Here, kitty, kitty. Come on. Please, come on.”

  I was shaking now. I suddenly had a vision of Max as a little boy, his big shaggy hair. “Come on, you stupid cat!” I shouted into the street.

  The cat came out from between two cars, meowing, its mouth so wide I could see its pink tongue. I shook some tuna off my hand onto the pavement, and the cat licked it up. I put out my fingers, and it chewed at the little gray bits of fish. Its teeth were like hot needles, but I didn’t mind.

  “There you go, puss,” I said.

  I smoothed out the drawing on my thigh and saw the scene for the last time.

  A workman in a cap.

  A scruffy-looking man in his thirties.

  An old woman behind a half-open door, terrified.

  A dog, a cat.

  “I’m very sorry, but this has got to be done,” I said as I showed the drawing to the cat. I was struck suddenly by how mad this was. As if this could kill anything. As if I could save Max. The cat lifted one front leg and pawed at the picture, but then got back to the important business of eating its surprise fish supper. I held the picture out until my arm got tired, and I felt a sort of calm come over me. The street was so peaceful. Just the swish of leaves and the hiss of cars from the main road. Somehow I knew it had worked.

  The doomed cat walked past me, pressing its body against my shin, like they do. I stood up in time to see Robert stomping out into the front garden in his flip-flops, his mobile phone pressed to his ear. “I called eight minutes ago,” he was saying. “We’re a four-minute drive from the hospital. . . . What? Yes, I understand that, but this is terrible. Our boy is . . . Yes. I know you are. I’m sorry. Two minutes, OK. Thank you.”