Scattering Like Light (27 page)

“What’s he been telling you?” Her voice was low, ominous. “What’s he been telling you, a perfect stranger, about me? He thinks I’m suicidal, does he? Do you? I’ll make you regret interfering!”
She was suddenly yelling and I stepped back in alarm.

I looked around wildly. Callum was walking towards us having finished his call and I saw him suddenly break into a run. I turned back towards Catherine. She had run halfway up the steps and was in the process of climbing over the railings. I was paralysed with fear. The water below her was churning and angry. As I tried to move I found myself shoved to one side as Callum raced past but he was too late. Catherine had made it over the railings and had leapt into the Thames.

“Get help, now!” he yelled at me as he ripped off his jacket and vaulted over the railings. I ran to the side and could see him fighting the currents, trying to see where she had gone. She had disappeared completely and he dived again and again to try and find her. The tide had turned and the currents were whipping back under the bridge. His head came up again after the longest time and I could see him being swept along towards a torrent of water that was pouring out of a gulley in the river wall. Suddenly everything seemed to go into slow motion: Callum’s head slipped under the surface again but I saw his hand reach a ladder at the side of the gushing outflow. The long fingers had a good grip on the rusty ironwork and I could see the tendons straining in his wrist. And then in the blink of an eye, his hand was gone.

I realised I was screaming, the sound echoing off the underside of Blackfriars Bridge, screaming at the water that was the River Fleet. I fell to my knees as people ran to help, summoning the lifeboat, but I knew it was pointless; they couldn’t save them and there would be no bodies to find. I knew now that Catherine had been right. It
was
all my fault. I had made her jump so, thanks to me, Callum and Catherine were worse than dead. They were Dirges.

I was still kneeling on the pavement, my hands gripping the bars of the railings, when someone in the crowd stepped forward to try and comfort me. Their hands were firm on my shoulders. “It’s OK, lassie, the lifeboat’s nearly here. Try and quieten down a touch.” As he spoke I became conscious of a heart-rending keening noise and realised that it was me. I couldn’t stop though; I didn’t deserve to stop. It was no wonder Catherine hated me so badly: if she had got that memory back, if she replayed that little scene in her head time and time again she would have to come to the conclusion that I was to blame. And I
was
to blame.

Strong fingers prised mine from the railings and I felt myself being lifted up, taken away from the water’s edge. I could see the lifeboat sweeping the area under the bridge, puzzled looks on the faces of the crew. I fought to continue watching, even though I knew it was hopeless, but the man who had picked me up just held me tighter.

“Put me down!” I finally gasped. “Please, I need to go, to help…”

“Shhh. The experts are here now; they’ll find them. They just might get washed a bit downstream that’s all. Plenty of people are fished out of the water after an hour or more and are perfectly OK. The water’s not that cold at this time of the year, not really. I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

I felt numb, horrified. Finally I stopped struggling, allowing myself to be helped to one of the bench seats. I kept replaying the hideous scene again and again, watching Callum jump into the water, seeing his hand suddenly vanish from the ladder as the hideous world of the Dirges claimed them both. How could it be? How could drowning in the Fleet have taken him back in time? He wasn’t old after all, not like Lucas had been. He was still a teenager. The world of the Dirges hadn’t held off the ageing process for him; it had done something quite different.

The guy still had a firm hand on my shoulder, stopping me from moving as the pointless sweep of the water continued. I could hear the powerful engines of a second lifeboat coming to join the search, and wondered how long they would look for; when they would give up and assume the worst. Were they the ones who had watched Lucas burn? They would definitely be the ones plucking the bodies out of the water when I finally released them all. Yet again my eyes welled up thinking how close I had got to saving them all: if only Catherine had been persuaded to help us, the lifeboat crews would have been rescuing everyone, setting them free regardless of how long they had been captured in their torment. Would those who had been Dirges longest die first? I wondered.

That thought continued to echo around my head as I watched the police helicopter sweep downstream. A full, fruitless rescue effort was in process, and looked like it was going to carry on for some time. As the helicopter returned up the southern bank my subconscious suddenly broke through: Callum had actually only been a Dirge for a matter of minutes so far. Maybe he wouldn’t be consumed by fire, and given that there was already a search-and-rescue operation going on, if they all appeared in the
river immediately, there would be a much better chance of saving him. My head snapped round towards the man who had lifted me away from the edge, and I grabbed him by the arm.

“Please, what’s going on? Why do they need a helicopter?” I asked in a voice that came out scratchy and rasping, tugging his sleeve again. “Could you find out for me?”

“You just carry on sitting there for a moment,” he said kindly, “and I’ll go and get an update for you.” The minute his back was turned I leapt up from the chair and sprinted across the road. Ignoring all the shouts I ran as fast as I could up away from the river and towards St Paul’s, reaching for my phone as I went.

Veronica picked up on the first ring. “Alex! Where have you got to? Are you still coming into London today?”

“There’s no time to talk,” I gasped. “I need you at the cathedral – now. Where are you?”

“Well, I’m here, but the place is shut. Whatever’s happened?”

“Shut!” I exploded. “It can’t be shut! It’s a church.”

“They are getting ready for an event tomorrow, setting out the chairs in the nave. It’s nearly done now though. Why do you need to be here?”

“I need to do it now,” I gasped as I negotiated my way around a crowd of people waiting for the lights to change. “I need to release all the Dirges
NOW
!”

“Now?” Veronica’s voice was an uncharacteristic squeak. “Why the sudden rush?”

“I’ll explain everything when I see you, but you need to help me. Callum is getting them all together at the moment, but they only think I want to talk to them. They don’t know I have to kill them all now.”

I could sense Veronica trying to calm herself – and me –
down. “OK, Alex, whatever you say. Come to the cathedral. The café entrance will be the best. Wait there and I’ll come and let you in.”

“OK, five minutes,” I blurted out as I shut the phone off.

I carried on running, trying and failing to obliterate the picture in my head. I had spoken to Callum, a real, living, breathing human Callum. I had even touched him, and then I had been responsible for him having to jump. If I hadn’t spoken with Catherine, if I hadn’t said what I did, then she wouldn’t have leapt into the water and none of this would have happened. They wouldn’t have been Dirges and their lives would have carried on. But if I
hadn’t
done that, then I wouldn’t have been there either. The whole impossibility of it threatened to overwhelm me. I knew that time worked in a strange way for the Dirges, that Lucas thought he had been there for much less than fifty years, but I would never have guessed that Callum and Catherine had been dragged in from their own future.

What I was positive about, what was absolutely clear, was that I had to try and fix things. I had to make things right, and I had to do it quickly. Perhaps there was a chance, a tiny chance, that by releasing Callum immediately he would be OK, that he wouldn’t explode in a hideous fireball. I had to try.

As usual in late afternoon Ludgate Circus was packed with office workers starting to make their way home. I was about to turn up towards the cathedral when I realised that I had to talk to Callum in private; I had to confess what I had done.

I didn’t want to go too close to the cathedral as all the Dirges would be there. Standing on the traffic island in the middle of the road I looked around desperately, earning some strange looks from the people standing nearby. I pressed my phone to my ear. “Callum?
Can you join me for a moment? There’s something we need to talk about.” I was never sure how many of the others could hear what I said when I called him, so I didn’t want to give too much away. The tingle in my wrist was almost immediate.

“Alex? What’s the problem? I was busy getting all the others together so that you can talk to them. They’re all on the steps at the moment as the cathedral is shut for some reason so you can’t come in.”

“We need to talk – urgently. Somewhere no one will be listening.”

“Umm, OK,” I could almost hear him thinking. “St Bride’s Churchyard – none of us ever go there.”

“Back up Fleet Street, yeah?” I started to walk.

“It’ll only take a minute.” He paused for a second. “Do you not want to do it after all?” I glimpsed his face in a passing window, and there was nothing but kindness and understanding there. I couldn’t believe that I was going to have to tell him what I knew. I could imagine the look on his face changing from one of love to one of loathing.

“It’s not that, it’s something else but we need to hurry.” I was running up Fleet Street, looking for the little side alley we had been down a few weeks before. I felt him nearly lose contact as I turned down the little lane, the church glistening white in front of us.

I ran up the worn steps and into the deserted churchyard, sinking down on to the nearest bench. Pulling out my little mirror I sat up tall and tried to feel strong. “Thanks. I need to talk to you on your own, somewhere quiet where we won’t be overheard.”

“Well, this is perfect,” he said with an encouraging smile. “This churchyard always gives me the creeps and I’ve never seen
any of the others here either. Ironically, I think it’s something to do with all the dead people.” He smiled again. “So what’s up?”

“I have to tell you something difficult, Callum. Please believe that I love you completely and always will.” I finally found the courage to look him in the eyes. His happy smile was being replaced by a slightly bewildered confusion.

“OK, I believe you. I love you too, you know that, whatever you have to do.” He gently kissed the top of my head and I nearly lost my nerve. I could do what Veronica wanted and let them all go and he might never need to know my part in it all. If he died, he could die happy. And if he lived, well, he would have no memory of our love anyway, and it wouldn’t matter what I said.

But I couldn’t be that dishonest. He deserved to know my part in his tragedy. “I did something terrible and you’ll hate me for it.”

“Have a bit more faith in me!” Callum kissed me quickly. “I love you, remember?”

Would that be the last time he ever uttered those words to me? The butterflies in my stomach were making me feel sick and my palms were clammy with sweat. I tried to settle my breathing.

“Alex?” Callum’s voice was getting concerned. “Are you OK? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I did, in some ways. I found out why Catherine hates me so much. Not half an hour ago I was walking along the Embankment coming to meet you here when I saw you and Catherine on the street.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“You were walking along in front of me, arguing. You were real, alive. You stopped to answer the phone and Catherine walked on. I tried to talk to you but you had no idea who I was. I …
I wrongly assumed that Catherine had changed her mind about helping so went to thank her. She was standing by the steps leading up to Blackfriars Bridge.” Callum looked at me sharply but still didn’t say anything so I carried on. “She was so miserable, I could see that from her aura, and I had to say something. This morning she had told me she was considering jumping off a cliff, you see. I told her that she shouldn’t think about hurting herself and she went mad, accusing you of telling me, a stranger, all her problems. Then she jumped. You tried to save her. You both disappeared as you were swept under the bridge and into the water from the Fleet.”

He was silent for a moment, his eyes guarded. “And this was when?”

“Twenty, maybe thirty minutes ago. It’s only just happened. That’s why we need to do the transfer now. It might not be too late for you.” His gaze remained steady and unreadable. “Really, I mean it. I reckon that there’s a possibility that if we can get you back in the water immediately then perhaps it will be OK, you won’t have been a Dirge long enough to count; perhaps you’ll be able to live. And I’m so, so sorry. If I hadn’t spoken with her, if I hadn’t bumped into you at all, none of this would have happened. You would have spent your life as you should have done, and never had to suffer like this.” I hung my head in shame. “Please, come with me to the cathedral. You might hate me now but if you let me I can try to fix it; I just want to make things right for you.” I kept my gaze on my dirty Converse, not daring to look him in the eye any more.