Harrowing (33 page)
Jamie sat down next to me. He reached for Gayle’s swollen hands, pried her rain-soaked fingers open. She was clutching some ragged piece of paper in one hand. Jamie dragged it away from her and pored over the spidery writing. Most of the ink had streaked off with the rainwater, but we could still make out the address of the studio apartment –
my
address, which was readily available in the phone book for all to see – printed in a childish hand.
“Where did you get this, Gayle?” he asked. “Who gave you this address? Did you look it up in the phone book? Did someone give it to you?”
Gayle continued to mumble inanely, without acknowledging either of us. In fact, she didn’t seem aware of anything in the world around her at all, for that matter. At first I thought she was merely voicing nonsense words without meaning, but as we continued to gape at her, I realized there was a pattern to her voice. A sing-song sort of melody. I bent my head close to her and listened intently.
“Ora,” I deciphered at last. “Ora... and then something else.”
Jamie lowered himself to her side as well.
“Ora pro nobis,”
he declaimed. “It’s a Latin phrase, used in Catholic liturgy. Pray for us. Why would she say that? Is she Catholic?”
I shrugged. Miss Havisham’s was a non-denominational institution. The students could belong to any – or no – religion.
Jamie seized Gayle by the shoulders, began to shake her insistently.
“Gayle,” he called. “Gayle, answer me. Can you hear me?”
Gayle pulled her knees up against her chest and began to rock herself like a small child. Her dirty thumb found its way against her flaccid lips once again.
“Come on, Gayle.”
Jamie tugged at Gayle’s arm forcefully, tried to drag her to her feet, but she resisted, stuffing both hands into her mouth now. Garry burst in at this moment, shaking out a gigantic umbrella at the doorway.
“Come on, fellas. What’re you waiting for? I ain’t got all day, you know, you numbheads.”
He glanced from us to the limp girl curled up on the staircase.
“What’s this?” he squawked. “What’s going on? Who is she?”
With difficulty, Garry loaded the numb girl over his shoulder and manhandled her into the back seat of his new Mercedes while Jamie bore the humungous umbrella aloft over all of us. We carried out the same manoeuvre in reverse order when we arrived at Garry’s pad, ending up with her sprawled in an idiotic heap on the sofa. Lucas wandered in and ogled at her.
“A new adventure, Dad?” he asked.
Jamie chucked him under the chin.
“Looks like it, champ.”
Lucas sucked at his lips.
“I hope we don’t have to go to more cemeteries,” he remarked at last, then went to his room.
Garry loomed over the senseless Gayle as she languished on the sofa and glowered at her.
“Well, you know what I do when I don’t know what to do?” he stammered, scratching his head in bewilderment. “I call on the genius of the family. That is, Jingles.”
Jingle-Fingers, or Jingles, as Garry called her, was Garry’s sporadic girlfriend, with whom he had an on-again, off-again thing going. She was also a hacker. One of the neatest, most dangerous and astute computer intruders I knew.
Jingles arrived within a few minutes. I greeted the mouse-haired punk dressed in black leather and covered with spikey bracelets with genuine warmth. In the short time I had known her, I had only found reasons to admire her. She was keen and sharp as a whistle, but also carried something of the Earth Mama, comforting, down-to-earth, let’s-get-down-to-business energy that made her a sort of oasis of peace in the middle of crises, nervous breakdowns and temper tantrums.
She was also one of the friendliest people I had ever met.
She showered us with affectionate hugs, saving the most heartfelt one for the sporty, muscular Garry. He rolled her into a prolonged bear hug before getting down to business. Briefly, we explained to her about Gayle. She pulled up one of Gayle’s eyelids, tried to peer inside her vacuous gaze without managing to divine anything.
Immediately, she opened her laptop and within seconds, her fingers were flashing away at the shiny keyboard. After a few trials, she came up with some news for us.
“Three girls went missing from Miss Havisham’s a short while ago,” she exclaimed with a grin of satisfaction. “In fact, the same three who were tormenting you, Carrie Anne. The management... did you know, by the way, they still haven’t come up with a replacement for you, after all this time?” She giggled. “You musta been real hard to replace.” She giggled again. “Anyways, as I was saying, the three of them went missing over the summer.”
She chomped her lips together smugly, then sneaked out a stick of gum and folded it into her mouth.
“At first the parents thought they’d run away again, like they had supposedly done when they went missing the first time, and everyone thought they were out on a lark or something. You know, that time when you were actually holding them hostage in the basement, Carrie Anne.” She turned towards her computer, sticking her tongue out between her lips. “But afterwards, the parents came running desperate to the school, cos the kids still hadn’t shown up at the end of the hols. No one’s heard a thing about them since.”
She smiled triumphantly round at all of us.
“Well, sure serves them right, if something terrible’s happened to them. Don’t you think?”
Jamie nodded gravely.
“But I’m still worried about
her,
” he said, indicating Gayle.
I nodded in agreement.
“Yeah. She was a rotten apple. But of the four, she was still the best,” I admitted grudgingly. “Not particularly bright. But a loyal friend to her friends, and fairly brave to boot.”
Heaving a sigh of exasperation, Jingles leapt to her feet and strode over to Gayle’s side. She began to batter at Gayle with fury.
“Hey, Gayle. Get outta it already!” she shrieked crudely into Gayle’s face.
I stared at her in surprise. She’d always struck me as friendly. I supposed tact and reassurance weren’t qualities that came naturally to her.
“Stop feeling so damn sorry for yourself. Not like you’re the only person who’s ever suffered some sorta tragedy, you know. Pull yourself together, girl, and tell us what happened. You might not believe it, but we’re here for you.”
She glanced down at her hands, then patted Gayle awkwardly on the knees.
We waited with bated breath. Her words had about as much effect on Gayle as if Gayle had turned to stone. Jingles shrugged.
“Well, can’t think of anything else to do.” She yawned. “I’ve got a ton a stuff to take care of at home. Dan’s encouraged me to learn to design websites for a living.”
She grinned as she reminded us of the sweet and brilliant British hacker we had met in Europe. She twirled towards the door, chomping gum with exaggerated motions.
“I’m off. Call me if there are any new developments.”
“Ora pro nobis!” Gayle hurled out all of a sudden in a chilling yell.
We all jumped.
“Oh God pray for us pray for us pray for all of us poor and weak-willed sinners pray for us pray for me don’t let him come for me don’t let him come
SavemeSavemeSaveme!
”
She scrabbled from the sofa and dashed towards the door, plastering herself against it, quivering like a leaf, and scratched away at the chipped paint with her fingernails. Tears poured down her face, and she crumpled into a little ball at the foot of the door, stuffing her fists into her mouth again.
Jingles approached her with what I realized she intended to be a soothing expression. But she was so unaccustomed to being soothing, that her expression held more the air of someone trying to skin you alive rather than console you. Gayle let out another heart-rending shriek. But in the end, she let Jingles wrap her in her arms and rock her gently.
“It’s okay, Gayle. He can’t come for you anymore. It’s okay. It’s over. You’re safe now,” Jingles crooned.
Garry mouthed the words “What the hell?” at her. She shrugged. “Go figure,” she mouthed back.
After a while, Gayle calmed down enough to raise her face and stare round at the four of us gaping at her in a sort of stupor. She pushed the hood from her face and glared at us with mistrust.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded petulantly. “Where did you come from, Carrie Anne? Thought you couldn’t stand my guts. Who are all these people?”
Jingles grasped Gayle firmly by the shoulders and led her to the sofa.
“Well, Gayle, we could ask the same of you,” she said in her no-nonsense tone of voice. “What are
you
doing here? Why did you come to Carrie Anne?”
Gayle shook her head in bewilderment.
“Come looking for Carrie Anne? What the hell are you talking about? I wouldn’t look for Carrie Anne if she were the last person alive. I hate her guts.”
I sat down beside Gayle. She flinched away as if I were a leper.
“Well, Gayle, I hate to disillusion you, but that’s exactly what you did,” I said as calmly as I could. What I really felt like doing was punching her brains out. “You came to
my
apartment, with
my
address written on a piece of paper. Why?”
Gayle gawked at me as if I had sprouted wings.
“
Your
apartment?
Me?
I’d never in a thousand years...”
Jamie joined us. He waved at Gayle and smiled a little sheepishly.
“You remember
me,
right, Gayle? You know you can trust me. Right?”
She eyed Jamie warily.
“You always gave me bad marks, Mr. Barrett. I remember that. Why should I trust you?”
Jamie reached out and touched her hand. She pulled it away, as if struck by an electric shock.
“Don’t touch me,” she exclaimed peevishly. “Or I’ll put in a complaint for sexual assault.”
Jingles cackled.
“Complaint? And who are you gonna complain to? Miss Hochmeister here?”
She pointed at me, cackling with mirth again.
“But seriously, Gayle, though it might cost you the world to believe it, we’re here to help you. All of us. We’re all here because we want to help you.”
She wrapped her arms around Gayle’s shoulders again. This time, Gayle surrendered to her.
“You can trust me. My name’s Jingles, and I’m not going to hurt you. So...” She pulled away and studied Gayle’s face. “What
do
you remember?”
Gayle’s eyes turned upwards, almost disappeared into her sockets as she scoured her brain for some sort of obscure memory. Her lips began mumbling again at fifty an hour, as if struggling to recite the lines of some half-forgotten play urgently before jumping out onto a stage.
“Pray for us. Pray for us. Pray for us. He’s gonna kill me, I know he is.”
She gazed straight ahead, her expression bleak.
“She’s dead,” she mumbled. “She’s dead and I saw him kill her.”
Since we all stared at her mutely, and no one said a word, she added:
“He’s gonna come for all of us. One after the other. He’ll find us no matter where we go. And now I’m next.”
“Do I care if you’re next?” The unfortunate words slipped out of Garry’s mouth before he could stop himself.
We glared at him. He clapped his hand over his face. But Gayle didn’t seem to notice. She turned a hollow expression devoid of all hope at us. Her normally dark eyes glinted golden-yellow, like a cat’s, under the stark glare of the cheap, energy-saving light bulb. She squinted.
“And then, once he gets me... He’s coming for
you,
Carrie Anne.”
* * *
I hope you enjoyed this sneak preview of Book 1 in the “Carrie Anne’s Quest” series, THE DEPTHS OF SORDIDNESS, now available on Amazon
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