Nyctophobia (33 page)
‘You’ve been asleep for a very long time, sweetheart. Did you have lovely dreams? How are you feeling? Dry mouth, I imagine. There’s some water by your pillow, love, whenever you’re ready.’
I point to the end of the bed.
‘What do you want? Oh, the mirror? Hang on a mo.’ She presses the button that adjusts the bed, and it slowly rises so that I can see myself.
Jesus Christ, I look awful, like I’ve lost half my body weight. I haven’t been this bad since I made myself anorexic. I try to speak. She gets the message and tips some water into my mouth, then waits patiently while I smack my lips and move my tongue.
‘What happened?’ I manage to croak. ‘Where is my husband?’
For the first time, she looks uncomfortable. ‘I’ll just go and get someone for you.’
‘Where is Mateo?’ I shout, and a black spear of pain shoots through my temples, and I fall back on the freshly laundered pillow.
As consciousness starts to seep away, I catch myself wondering; which side am I in? My real life or my dream life?
I sleep like the dead.
From time to time I awake. Sometimes the sun is too high to be seen, sometimes it’s low in a blue and orange sky. Nobody visits.
Gradually I stay awake for longer and longer periods. Gradually my memory returns. The smell of kerosene, the heat of the flames, the crack and roar as the ceiling falls in.
I stand in the garden watching it burn, knowing that I have freed them, and in doing so, I have damned myself.
Above the cliffs, high in the night sky, the constellation of Ursa Major shines down mockingly, the stars in alignment at the end of Hyperion’s life, just as they were at the beginning.
Nobody will answer my question, no matter how many times I repeat it.
The doctor will talk to you about that,
they say.
Someone will come to see you shortly.
But no-one ever comes. Who is there left who could help me?
Gradually I reach the understanding that Mateo and Bobbie have gone. I receive no visitors. No-one talks to me about what happened.
I find that strange, and start to wonder once again which life I’m in. I want an answer.
One morning the overweight nurse enters with a great smile on her smug face and tells me that the doctor is on his way. When he arrives – Indian, serious and impossibly young – he tells me my left arm will always be scarred, then pronounces me well enough to go home. Even though I have no home.
I get my clothes back. The old blue Nike T-shirt and my faded jeans and trainers. There’s money and credit cards in my wallet still. I sign the release forms. The nurse asks if anyone is coming to pick me up, and I shake my head. They’re not happy about letting me go without an escort – something to do with insurance. But they can’t make me stay.
I sit in the ground floor reception area of the Santa Theresa hospital, next to a ridiculous stone statue of a dancing rabbit that’s presumably meant to make patients feel better, and I wait for my taxi to arrive.
I get into the back of the bright yellow cab and keep my hand on the warm leather arm rest, watching the empty streets of Estepona slide past. Soon we climb, leaving the town behind, heading into the bare hills. The driver has no English, and does not speak. On his dashboard, the address I had written down for him is sliding about every time he hits a curve. My right hand has a yellow bruise on it from the drip. It’ll be gone in a day or two. My left arm is still lightly bandaged. I find myself sweating with nervous tension, terrified by what I’ll find.
There are no houses now, only some thin horses and the occasional burned-out barn. We climb toward the cliffs, making our way through the meandering roads toward Gaucia.
From time to time the driver checks me out in the mirror, as if to make sure that I’m not going to do anything crazy. I open the window. The air feels November-warm on my arms and neck. The bushes and fields fly past, and we reach the turn-off.
I look out and see the road, rocks shimmering in the heat haze, a dense dry row of gnarled olive trees. It still looks like we’ve driven into the middle of a Spaghetti Western.
And there, over to the left, the familiar amber cliffs.
The sunlight is punching down through a sea-blue sky. There’s the break in the dense tree-line. I hold my breath and close my eyes, hardly daring to open them again. Knowing that when I do, my question will be answered.
‘Just here,’ I tell him.
He shrugs at me.
Are you sure?
‘
Seguro.
’ Of course I’m sure.
I give him far too much money and quickly get out, waiting until he drives off uncertainly. Then I make my way over to the iron gates as the sound of crickets fill my ears. The sound reminds me of the ticking clocks.
There’s no lock on the gate anymore, so it’s easy to open. I step inside.
The statue of Hyperion is still there but he has lost his left arm, and the centre of his disc has fallen out, the black and white halves lying shattered in the brown, dead grass. The honeysuckle, campion and lavender have all dried out and gone to seed. There are leaves everywhere like upturned hands. It’s amazing how quickly everything reverts from its groomed state.
I’m frightened of looking up. Either I’ll be faced with shattered brick and charcoal rafters, little more than a blackened cavity in the cliff, the home of rats and lizards now.
Or they’ll be there, the high stone walls inset with glittering windows, the house never looking better, aglow with colour and light. It will still look incorrect, though, an Alice in Wonderland building that might suddenly play tricks on me, closing its doors, turning its walls and twisting its corridors until I can never find my way out again.
Perhaps I’ll head up the path and stop before the studded front door, wondering what to do when, before I can reach a decision, one side of it swings inwards, and there they are.
Mateo will be sporting his sharp blue suit with his whiter-than-white shirt and gold cufflinks. Bobbie will be in bloom, even though she wears the old-fashioned outfit her mother bought for her, the clothes she wore the day she came to the house, the round straw hat, the skirt of tiny brown flowers with a shapeless grey-green top.
‘We were beginning to think you’d never get here,’ she’ll say. ‘Daddy said we had to wait to eat. I’m starving.’
Mateo will be so pleased that all he’ll be able to do is flash his killer smile. They’ll place their arms around me and hold me tight. Nothing will have prepared me for the warmth and light that surrounds me once more. In the hall of midnight blue Castilian tiles, sunlight will bounce off every surface.
‘Rosita is preparing something extra special for you,’ Mateo will whisper in my ear. ‘Welcome home, darling. I’m so very happy you found your way back to us.’
I will go into the house with them, safe in the knowledge that nothing can ever destroy my serenity again.
I stand there just inside the gate with my head bowed down, then slowly walk forward, moving to the statue and its shattered halves of dark and light. I pick up the white half, the sunlit half, and hold onto it tightly as I head in the direction of the house, knowing that when I look up the answer will be before me, and my life will have ended, or just begun.
I see my place in all of this, the place of everyone who stands upon the spinning earth in their lonely havens, pinned between hope and loss, love and desperation. All around me the shadows fly, hands touch, arms embrace, fingers entwine, lovers join and break apart, tears fall, hearts race, things die. The moon unfolds and overtakes the sun, and silvered constellations stud the black heavens with ancient implacability.
Our goal must be to create more light than darkness.
Whatever happens to me now, the clocks will march on and the skies will spin and the stars will stay their course. I know my destiny; it is to find the light by finding him. To be with Mateo.
I take the sharp white half, the sunlit half of Hyperion’s disc, and bare my left arm from the wrist to the elbow, slowly turning it over.
And as I do so, I raise my unveiled eyes to the spot where I pray the house will stand again, against the changeless amber cliffs, a grand and final repose, as I receive the long-sought answer to my question.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
B
ORN IN
L
ONDON,
Christopher Fowler has written for film, television, radio, graphic novels, and for newpaper including
The London Times
, for more than thirty years. He is a regular columnist for
The Independent on Sunday
. Fowler is the multi-award-winning author of more than thirty novels, including the lauded
Bryant & May
mystery novels. In the past year he has been nominated for eight national book awards.
For more information visit
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