The Messengers Read online

  He ended the call and put his head in his hands. Then he saw me. “Frances. What are you doing? Are you . . . ? You’re feeding a cat. Frances, Max is very sick. I hardly think this is the time to . . .”

  I smiled at him and walked over. “He’s gonna be all right, Uncle Robert. It’s gonna be fine. I promise.”

  He looked at me in a sort of dumb shock. It was like all of the fight had gone out of him, and he had accepted that he had no control over the world. He didn’t. I put my hand on his arm because I felt sorry for him, and then I walked back into the house and up the stairs. I didn’t rush. With every moment that passed, I became more certain that there was no longer any cause for alarm. Sure enough, when I got to the landing, Max was slumped against the bath with a sopping facecloth on his forehead, and Auntie Lizzie was running her fingers through his wet hair. It looked like he was meditating. Perfectly well, perfectly at peace.

  I went to bed, shuddering. The ambulance arrived, then left. I lay there, exhausted and sleepless.

  In the morning, I sneaked into Max’s room and sat on his bed. If you looked hard enough, you could see the clues to the little boy he used to be: the windup false teeth on his bedside table, the corner of a wall chart identifying different kinds of beetles sticking out from under his Death Cab for Cutie poster, a box in the corner full of toys. A radio-controlled car with Han Solo sprawled across the bonnet.

  “Maxi,” I whispered.

  He stirred from his sleep and licked his lips. It was early. “What is it?” he said, squinting.

  “I just wanted to make sure you were OK,” I said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I feel . . .” He yawned. “I feel incredible,” he said.

  I smiled and pinched his cheek. “Good. Listen, Karate Kid, will you teach me how to do that mind-control thing sometime?”

  “It takes many years to understand the ways of —”

  “Knock it off! I’m a fast learner, Maxwell. You’d be surprised.”

  “OK, young apprentice,” he said in the voice of a slow-talking mentor. “I will school you in the ways of the kendo masters. But first, I must sleep.”

  I pulled the duvet down over his toes, went back to my room, and sat by the window.

  I didn’t want to watch what was about to unfold, but I told myself that I had to. I needed to know if any of this was real. As time drifted by, I became more and more certain that Peter Kennedy’s ideas were crazy and that Max throwing up was just a weird coincidence.

  The street was fairly quiet but for the wind. Helmstown was at the mercy of the weather, and so far it had been a rubbish summer. There was a van parked at the end of the road, and a workman in a big baseball cap got out, coughing. I couldn’t see the cat anywhere, but I could feel its presence behind the parked cars.

  I recognized the crusty guy who came round the corner from my drawing. His dog waddled just behind him. I took a deep breath. The guy was on his mobile, and I could hear him through the window. “For Jesus’ sake, Mum, it’s fifty quid.You’re not gonna miss it. . . . ” Suddenly I hated him.

  The dog got a move on and galloped away from its owner. I didn’t turn my head to watch.

  My heart was hammering now. I heard the dog barking and the cat hissing. Then the cat screeched once and its voice was taken. Still I didn’t look. Instead, I watched the face of the workman change to horror as he looked over at the developing scene. He began to run toward the noise.

  “Milo, no!” the crusty guy shouted. “No! Get off him!”

  I heard a front door open, and the old woman came out. I didn’t need to look at her, because I’d seen her in the picture. I’d seen her broken features. “Stop! Stop him! It’s killing my cat! My baby! Oh, God!”

  I heard the door slam and then open again. The old woman was too frail to take on the dog. She could barely watch, but she couldn’t look away.

  I heard the growl of the dog.

  I heard the workman shouting.

  The pathetic voice of the crusty guy. “Milo, no! Oh, Jesus! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

  I heard the workman’s hand slapping the dog’s hide.

  The woman still screaming.

  I knew without looking: my picture was complete.

  “Let go!” the workman said. “Come on, boy. I mean it.”

  The cat landed softly. I heard the gentle thud. There was no mistaking it. The old woman moaned. The crusty guy apologized and then kicked his dog.

  “Watch it, you!” the workman said. “People like you shouldn’t be allowed to keep dogs. I saw it happen, so if she wants to report you, I’m a witness.”

  But I was the real witness. The witness and the killer. I had seen it all long before anyone else had. I had made it happen.

  My plan for the rest of the day was this: to stay in my room and not kill anything. That afternoon, Auntie Lizzie gave up trying to coax me downstairs and came in. She sat at the end of the bed with a small envelope.

  “Any news about Johnny?” I asked.

  “No. I called your mum today and she said —”

  “She picked up the phone for you?”

  “Well . . . yes . . . but only because . . . I suppose I just called at the right time of day.”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said.

  “She probably wants to keep you out of it.”

  “I don’t want to be kept out of it. What did she say? Has Johnny been in touch?”

  “No,” Lizzie said. She opened her mouth to speak again but didn’t. We were quiet for a moment.

  “Mum doesn’t think he’s coming back, does she?” I said.

  “You know what she’s like. She hardly ever looks on the bright side.”

  “You don’t seem very optimistic yourself, Auntie Lizzie.”

  She sighed and took some photos out of the envelope. “I thought these photographs might cheer you up,” she said.

  Johnny dressed as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle carrying little old me in his green arms; Mum wearing boxing gloves, pretending to fight little Johnny, who was standing on the sofa at Nana’s house in Whiteslade; Mum, me, and Nana in our cozzies on the beach, pouting like beauty queens. There were a couple taken inside the little shed near Nana’s house that Johnny used as a gym, and I laughed at the one of me hanging off Johnny’s bicep, all the press cuttings and boxing quotes stuck to the wall behind us. There was another little sign hung on the wall, too, and Lizzie put on her glasses to read it. “God Bless This Mess.”

  “God bless it,” I said, staring at Johnny and me in the shed. “Can I keep this one?”

  “It’s yours,” Auntie Lizzie said. She kissed me on the head and left the room.

  That’s when I started to feel the weariness again. It’s the first sign. Your limbs go heavy. I got up from the bed and opened the window, but the fresh air didn’t pep me up much. Then I started to smell smoke, just as I had done before. It smells like the aftermath of a firework. I tried to shout. I wasn’t calling for help. I was just angry and afraid.

  I managed to get to the bed before my sight started to go.

  When I fully surfaced, I was on the floor, with my sketch pad open. An hour had passed. The drawing was sharper this time, and more disturbing. “Please, God,” I said quietly. In the picture, there was an old man lying still at the bottom of a bath, his mouth open, his perfect teeth bared, his lips dark, the water covering his open eyes. It was difficult to believe something so complicated had come from my own hands. The other sketches in my pad were pitiful in comparison. It was the best, and worst, thing I’d ever done. I threw it across the room and backed away as if the sketch pad were some poisonous creature.

  I knew that I needed help, and I knew there was only one person I could go to. Whether I wanted to or not.

  The next day, I found him standing on the path outside his beach hut with a bunch of postcards. A group of women swarmed around him. They all wore white jackets with KELLY’S HEN written on the back in pink. They wore denim s
kirts and cowboy boots, and most of them had cowboy hats on strings around their necks. The goose bumps stood out on their fake-tanned legs.

  I took a long route round and hid behind Peter’s hut for a moment, watching. He was talking to Kelly, who was obviously the one getting married.

  “You just here for the weekend?” Peter said.

  “No, we’re doing a whole week,” Kelly said. “My last proper week with the girls. Thought we’d come to the seaside.”

  “Great,” Peter said. “Oh, look. These are the more naughty postcards.”

  He flicked through the pile of cards in his hands. I was close enough to see them. Kelly threw her head back and laughed. “Look at that one! Here, Treez, this guy looks like your Gav!”

  She showed the postcard to another woman, who cackled and said, “Yeah, chance would be a fine thing.”

  Peter and Kelly went through a few more postcards together. Most of them were photos of male strippers or breasts with faces painted on them. But one of them wasn’t. One of them was a painting of a street, with an ambulance and a woman lying on a stretcher.

  “This one’s a bit weird,” Kelly said. “Have you got any of Prince Harry?”

  Peter held the postcard in front of her for a moment before putting it to the bottom of the pile. I knew what it was. It was a message. I jumped from behind the hut and smashed the postcards out of his hand.

  “Oi! Steady on, girl!” said Kelly. “What’s your problem?”

  I ignored her and turned to Peter. He shook his head. “It’s too late,” he said in a low voice. “She’s seen it.”

  I looked at all the cards scattering along the path. I couldn’t see which one was the message. It had blended into the mass, and before I had a chance to respond, a seagull swooped down and sent a big white dollop toward the crowd of women. It spattered on the ground. Kelly jumped back.

  “It’s good luck when a seagull poos on you, Kel,” one of the women said.

  Kelly looked herself over. “I think he missed,” she said. “Hey, let’s go for a paddle!”

  They picked up a few of the postcards, returned them to Peter, and then clopped over to the steps leading down to the beach.

  I turned to Peter, who was putting as many of his postcards as he could back into the rack. Some of them blew down the path. “When did you draw that one?”

  “Early hours of this morning,” he said.

  “Don’t you feel bad?” I said.

  “I don’t know anymore,” he said. “It’s like when you swim in the sea in January. For a while, you don’t think you can bear it, but eventually you just go numb.”

  I shook my head and thought of the cat screeching this morning, the sketch of the dead old man in my rucksack.

  “Come on,” he said. “I’ll buy you a coffee.”

  He walked off down the path, his shoulders hunched, his painting hand in his pocket. I followed.

  “That woman,” I said. “When she saw the painting, she didn’t even flinch.”

  He sighed. “I told you before. It seems that most people only see a surface image of random shapes. The sort of things that cubist artists used to paint. Tabby, my mentor, thought that the average person’s brain isn’t built in a way that can consciously register a death scene. They can’t decode it with their eyes. It’s too much for them. You can see the death scenes perfectly, though, can’t you? You don’t need any more proof that you’re a messenger.”

  “I killed a cat,” I said sadly.

  He shook his head. “You just delivered the message. Was it a cat you knew?”

  “We weren’t close,” I said.

  He smiled.

  “There’s more, though. I drew a person.”

  He nodded. “Let’s not talk about it here,” he said.

  We joined the back of the queue for the Coffee Shack. The dark-haired bloke in front of us was in his early twenties and had a gray whippet. I’d seen him before. I stroked the whippet’s muzzle for a while. Since coming to Helmstown, I’d watched the man come out of his house on plenty of occasions, and it occurred to me that he lived two doors down from a really nice coffeehouse, yet he had come all the way down here for a plastic cup of Nescafé. It wasn’t long before I realized why.

  The woman behind the counter was about the same age, and she had long red hair and a nice figure. Her name badge said HELEN. She smiled at the whippet as the guy went up to order. “Hello, boy,” she said.

  “Hello,” the dark-haired man replied before he realized she was talking to his dog. I watched the back of his neck turn red.

  I whispered to Peter, “I think the whippet guy fancies Helen.”

  Peter shrugged. “It’d be nice if he could fancy her when I wasn’t behind him in the queue.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re not a romantic, then?” I said. “What about the mother of your son?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

  “But —”

  “Trust me. When you’re a messenger, relationships don’t work out. The closer you get to someone, the harder it becomes.” Then something occurred to him. “You don’t have a boyfriend, do you?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m waiting for the right man.”

  He sniffed at that.

  “What?” I said.

  “The right man,” he said. “People always confuse love with destiny. When people fall in love, they say that everything in their life has been leading to that moment. But every moment in your life leads to death, not love. Death. Every twist, every turn. Every decision, good or bad.”

  “God, that’s a lovely way of looking at it,” I said.

  “I’m just telling you the facts. Death is waiting for all of us. Your death day is out there, just like your birthday. It’s unstoppable. The disease that kills you might be there already, the bad cells might be lurking in your organs.”

  “Lurking in my organs?” I said sarcastically.

  He pointed at a woman on the sea path, who was shouting at a toddler. “Maybe that little boy will grow up to kill me. Maybe his abusive mother is right now doing the damage that will drive him to drink.”

  “A boozing baby?”

  “I’m talking about the future. Perhaps in twenty years, he’ll get drunk, get in his car, and run me over. And everything that happens to me and him between now and then — everything we do — is just a way of getting us to that place and time.”

  The man with the whippet trundled off with his drink, and Peter stepped up to the counter. There was a confidence in his movements that the boys I knew back home didn’t have. Those boys were all so well groomed, almost girlish in their care over their appearance, and here was this man, his shoulders muscled up, who didn’t give a damn about the whitish dust all over his tracksuit top. I found that really hot. And yet he was telling me that even buying a cup of tea was just one more step along the road to the cemetery. It was depressing.

  “So you’re saying death is more important than love?” I said as Helen busied herself with the Styrofoam cups.

  “Of course it is.”

  I sighed, deeply. “Christ, don’t you know any jokes?”

  To be fair, he laughed at that. We both laughed. But then I saw the newspaper lying on an empty table. LOCAL POLITICIAN DIES AT GALA DINNER. A brief look at the photograph told me it was the man whose death scene I had held above the waves two days earlier.

  “It’s unstoppable,” Peter said quietly.

  We took the drinks back to his hut. Inside, out of the wind, Peter unzipped his top very slightly, and I noticed that he wasn’t wearing a T-shirt underneath. I could see the hollow at his throat, that one vulnerable point, and the sinews of his chest. I couldn’t look away. He caught me staring, and I panicked. “You’ll catch your death, dressed like that,” I blurted out, trying to cover myself.

  “It’s July,” he said, and I blushed.

  I studied the paintings on the wall, which — thankfully — contained no cubist art and no scenes of death. They were pain
tings of the sea. Sometimes there were boats; sometimes he’d painted cliffs or little coastal villages. They didn’t have the hyper-real feeling of his messages, but they were nice.

  “You sometimes paint for pleasure, then?” I said.

  “I used to. Used to sell a few, too. Not so much, these days. Don’t have the time.”

  “What’s your day job?”

  “I’m a part-time plasterer.” Which explained the dust.

  “Not quite as artistic, is it?”

  “I like it because it’s boring.”

  “Not many part-time plasterers can afford a Helmstown beach hut,” I said.

  “I inherited some money when my father died.”

  In one of the paintings, the sea and sky were nearly the same metallic gray, and I almost didn’t notice the small white-sailed boat in the corner of the scene. “It’s ace, this one,” I said. “I like the way the boat is off to the side, like it’s not the point.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  We both knew I had questions about what was happening to me, but we needed this moment of calm first. He sat on his chair, and I sat on the floor.

  “You know, I don’t have all the answers,” he said eventually. “Nobody does.”

  “You’ve got more answers than me,” I said.

  He shrugged. “What do you want to know?”

  “Nothing. Everything,” I said.

  “I can only tell you what Tabby told me and what I’ve observed. I’m just a cog in the machine.” He looked at his boots, as if he was uncomfortable talking about these things, as if he thought it was unlucky to discuss them.

  “What happens if I miss the deadline?” I said.

  “From what we know . . . someone close to you dies instead. A life for a life.”

  “That’s . . . I don’t understand.”

  “Death must be satisfied, I guess. The scales have to be balanced.”

  “How do you know it’s true?”

  He closed his eyes and shook his head slowly.

  “Jesus. Did you ever miss one?” I said.