Authors: KA John
‘Patrick?’
He replaced everything except the keys in Louise’s handbag, zipped it up and returned it to the cupboard. He went to bed and tried to sleep. But it was hopeless. The perfume he’d sprayed had lingered in his senses – not that he needed any reminder to think of Louise. But
somehow
it made her presence all the more real and her absence all the more unbearable.
He left his bed, showered, dressed and drove into Wake Wood. He didn’t even realise that it was five o’clock in the morning until he checked his watch as he parked outside the pharmacy.
He unlocked and opened the shutters and the shop door, went inside, switched on the lights and looked around.
A thick layer of dust had settled over the shelves, their contents and the counter, filming the entire interior of the shop a ghostly silvery grey. He picked up a box that contained a bottle of shampoo and looked at the neatly outlined square of clean shelf beneath it. He replaced the box in the exact spot where it had stood and went to the counter.
Louise’s wooden hairbrush was next to the till. He imagined her brushing her hair before … He thought back to the last time Louise would have been in the shop.
Late afternoon before the night of Alice’s return. Louise would have brushed her hair, slipped on her coat, emptied the till, picked up her handbag and hurried out to meet him so he could drive them both to Arthur’s house, ready for the ceremony.
He crouched down to counter level and looked at the wooden hairbrush. Imagined Louise’s fingers curled around the handle as she tugged it impatiently through her long blonde hair, pulling strands out by the roots … strands that he could see still caught up in the bristles. He tugged at one, stretching it out to its full
silver-blonde
length. And as he did so the germ of an idea entered his mind.
Louise had only been in the earth three months … only three months …
Patrick went behind the counter, found a clean plastic bag and carefully placed the hairbrush inside it.
For the first time since Louise had gone he was formulating a plan. Thinking ahead to the future, not back to the past, and it felt good. So good he didn’t want to let the idea go.
He looked around the shop and decided that Arthur was right. He had no right to keep the shop as a shrine to Louise. For the sake of the town he had to move on. Either put the place on the market or find a qualified pharmacist who was prepared to rent it from him.
He left the shop, locked the door and the shutters and returned to his car, more animated than he’d been since Louise had disappeared.
He drove slowly down the main street and out to the road that led to the cottage. All that was needed was a fresh corpse – and as Louise had only been gone three months, he had nine months to wait for one.
When they had a body, Arthur could use the hairs from Louise’s brush as a relic to bring her back. That would give him three more days with Louise. Days in which he could love her, tell her how much she’d meant to him, days in which they could say a final goodbye to one another … precious days …
It was while he was thinking of and planning for that time that another idea came to mind. One that, if it proved feasible, could change the rest of his life.
He slammed on the brakes, stopped the car and climbed outside. He was in the same lay-by he and Louise had pulled into when the car had broken down the first time. The breakdown the mechanic had been unable to diagnose once the car engine had started again.
He looked up at the field where he’d seen the boy who’d disappeared when the car had burst into life.
Had he been a ghost?
Someone like Alice who’d undergone the ceremony of ‘the return’?
Louise was pregnant. He’d seen the stick on the shelf in their bathroom, ‘3+ weeks’. She’d been gone three months – in five months Louise would be coming to full term. If she was still with him they would have been making preparations, decorating the spare room as a nursery … buying a cot … Could he …?
Thoughts whirled around his mind like dead dry leaves in a storm. He needed to talk to Arthur. And quickly.
Because if his idea could work and he planned carefully, he need never be alone or lonely again.
‘Patrick?’ Arthur answered Patrick’s knock in robe and pyjamas. If he was surprised at the early hour Patrick had chosen to make a visit, he made no outward sign. He showed Patrick into his kitchen, switched on the light, brewed coffee and listened in silence while Patrick outlined his plans.
When Patrick finished, Arthur topped up their coffee cups, turned his back and went to the window to watch the sun rise.
‘Could it work?’ Patrick ventured, looking anxiously at Arthur.
‘I don’t know,’ Arthur replied honestly without turning his head towards Patrick. ‘To my knowledge no one has ever disappeared before in the same way that Louise did. And certainly no pregnant woman that I’ve heard of. Therefore nothing like you’re suggesting has ever been attempted. But that’s not to say that it could, or couldn’t, be done. I simply don’t know.’
Patrick dreaded hearing Arthur’s reply but he had to ask the question: ‘Will you help me?’
Arthur turned and finally looked at Patrick. ‘You’ve really thought about this?’
‘Yes,’ Patrick answered.
‘You know, it could go wrong, just like it did with Alice.’
‘Yes,’ Patrick confirmed. ‘But the only thing I want to know is if you will help me,’ he reiterated.
He had to wait five minutes for Arthur’s answer.
FIVE MONTHS LATER
, Patrick joined his neighbours in Arthur’s yard. It was two weeks earlier than he would have ideally chosen but a corpse had become suddenly available. A child – a particularly strong life force, or so Arthur assured him – had been knocked down by a car in the main street. The parents had been happy to donate the corpse once Arthur had promised them that the next available cadaver would be utilised to bring back their child for a three-day ‘goodbye’.
As before, the bonfire was lit at twilight. The witnesses assembled as soon as the sun disappeared from the horizon. The JCB, tractor, rigging and harness were in place, the ancient veterinary tools laid out on a side table.
Patrick found the ceremony of Louise’s ‘return’ less stressful than Alice’s had been simply because he knew what to expect. He took the handful of Louise’s hair that he’d extracted from her hairbrush and handed it to Arthur, who placed it in the corpse’s mouth after he’d enacted all the preliminaries.
Patrick cut himself with a scalpel, his blood was burned, the chanting began. After what seemed like a lifetime of waiting, Louise emerged, bloodied and
exhausted
, from the cracked, burned and battered shell, to fall into his waiting arms.
There was so much Patrick had forgotten. The exact curve of Louise’s jawbone; the precise shade of blue in her eyes; the intonation of her voice … just how much and how deeply he loved her.
As soon as the ceremony was over he drove Louise back to the cottage, where he helped her rinse the worst of the mess of blood and fluid from her body before she showered.
He was surprised by the sight of her naked body – by just how close to term she was. He placed his hand on her stomach and murmured, ‘How much do you remember?’
She looked at him and smiled. ‘I … I’m not sure.’
‘So how is it with you?’
‘Fine.’ She smiled self-consciously at him. ‘You?’
‘Fine,’ he echoed and she laughed. ‘And Alice?’ He kissed her neck, lovingly, intimately.
‘Alice, she’s great,’ Louise said enthusiastically. ‘She – we both miss you. Alice is hoping for a sister.’
‘Really? A sister. I’m glad she’s OK.’
Louise turned on the shower, stepped inside and Patrick went into the master bedroom.
He listened hard with every fibre of his being. Was it his imagination or was there really a tapping? Was someone knocking at his door? He checked his watch. Surely not at this hour. Not straight after the ceremony.
Arthur was his nearest neighbour and he was miles
away
. Besides, Arthur had been with him, helping and supporting him throughout the ceremony. Surely now Arthur and all the others would respect his privacy.
The sound appeared to be coming from somewhere above him. He steeled himself, leaned back and stared. A skeletal tree branch was bouncing wildly on the skylight, hitting it intermittently and lightly. So lightly, the sound was reminiscent of a child’s fingers drumming against glass – or the wings of a small plastic bird …
Tap tap tapping … the branches on the skylight …
The world had turned full circle. Patrick picked up a towel and hid the scalpel in the folds. Then he remembered. The cottage was well within the town boundaries – there would be no blood.
‘Patrick?’
‘Come in. I have a towel all ready,’ he called back.
Arthur sat in his car beyond the bushes in Patrick’s drive. Out of sight but not out of earshot. His car windows were open.
Then he heard it. A long drawn-out scream followed by the unmistakeable cry of a newborn child.
He smiled. Patrick would no longer be alone. Wake Wood’s vet would be a more contented and dedicated man. And more tied to the town than ever.