Sin (36 page)

Caroline looked right back at
me.

There was something odd about
her face. Something unfocussed as if she were one of those 3D
images, red and green pictures slightly offset that needed silly
square glasses to fool the brain into seeing them jump from the
page or screen. She was smiling at me, a blurred double smile that
made her look like Batman's Joker, but a smile still. I wanted to
rub my eyes. Perhaps tiredness or stress was affecting them. The
trials and tribulations of sleeping in forests and killing in
nurseries. I didn't though. My hands stayed where they were,
hovering, waiting.

"Hey, Sin."

You'd think I'd be surprised. I,
myself, would have thought I'd be surprised. I wasn't though. Not
even slightly. I’d been immunised by a constant diet of big budget
movies. And endless stream of Exorcist rip-offs or Grudge sequels.
I didn't want to be showered in the projectile vomit of a demon
possessed girl but, even with that, I wouldn't have been surprised.
If it had just been me, my own talents, then yes, I'd be taken
aback. Teleportation and a perverted sort of murder by decree were
not normal, not by any means, but they were there. They were real.
I couldn't deny the things I'd done even though they weren't
rational, but they
were
real. Hollywood, in her many forms,
had lured me from a young age, and she'd taken me in, and, in
effect, numbed me to the magical. CGI could fold a world in on
itself or turn a person blue. It could get you used to the idea of
dead people talking through living. I wished Joy were here to
explain this one. Not that she would.

"Hi, Jeremy," I replied.

"You're not surprised?" he
asked.

I realised Caroline's mouth
wasn't moving. Her eyes, on closer inspection, were still closed.
She hadn't moved. If I'd laid her on the floor, Jeremy would still
be sitting right where he was now. In the chair.

"No," I told him. "Not
really."

"I am," he said. He didn’t sound
sad, in fact he seemed chirpy, his smile genuine. "I didn't expect
to wake up dead. Saying that, being dead, I didn't expect to wake
up at all!"

"You should meet my sister," I
said. It felt odd. I was talking to the ghost of my dead friend,
whom I'd witnessed being killed. I'd mourned him, however briefly,
and part of my current course of action was the avenging of his
death. I wasn't sad. Right then, I wasn't angry either. I was
chatting to my friend, and I was smiling myself.

"I have," he replied. "She said
to tell you 'hi'."

Way to wipe the smile off my
face.

"You've met Joy? She said
'hi'?"

"Well, I've met her, but she
didn't say 'hi'. She didn't say much of anything really. She just
mentioned that you might need a hand."

I might need a hand? Was the
afterlife some kind of Grand Central Station with everyone milling
around waiting for their train into the Great Beyond? Was the
Hereafter a pub where the souls of the dead met up for cocktails or
the odd pint, the walls resplendent with random photos and those
branded towels they laid out to soak up the spills, the bar
complete with a bust of Queen Victoria? I could ask but I wouldn't
be answered, so I didn't bother.

"Oh?"

"Yes. She said you might need my
help, so here I am. Somehow. You're different to the rest, Sin. You
were a friend."

I was pleased he thought of me
the same way I did of him.

"I am dead, aren't I?"

The question shocked me. How
could you not know? You wouldn't be going to work. Jeremy Kyle
wouldn't be on daytime television, sorting the lives of the normal
people; you and me and the queen makes three. Whether you sat
around on clouds or walked along streets of gold, it still wouldn't
be the same as life, would it? Surely you didn't just pass over
into a complete replica of how it was before you died, including
gone off milk in the fridge, car crash TV and bowel evacuations.
Surely, please, you didn't need to keep stocked up on the Andrex,
did you?

I could answer his question
though. I wasn't one of the greater dead (was there a lesser dead?)
so I wasn't held by the same rules, the same forced obtuseness. I
could never do those cryptic crosswords in the papers anyway. My
mind didn't work in the weird directions that were required to work
out nine across, ‘Man using mashie and spoon going round’. So I
told him.

"Yes, my friend. You are dead.
Connors did it."

"I thought so," he said. He
still smiled, but the corners of his mouth, roughly overlapping
Caroline's, dipped a little. "I thought I remembered being in here
with him, but it's vague."

You should see your face, I
thought.

"He was very interested in you,
wasn't he? I read your file. Even tossed the coin. Was it all real?
At one time I'd have said it was rubbish. The Institute was the
right place for you. But you always seemed so... sane." He laughed.
"It's hard to deny anything now, seeing as I'm sitting here talking
to you!"

I could have told him no. I'm a
patient in an insane asylum. I was rambling, of course. How could
it be real?

"Yes," I said. "It was. It
is."

"Well, Sin. You need to stop
him. He's not a good man. Not at all."

So true.

"I will," I told him. "I just
need to get on here. Connors used me, and I would guess he found
out things about me. I need to find them out too."

"You need to find out about
yourself?"

"I do, yes."

"Well you need the password
then."

"I do," I said. "Yes..."

"I know it," Jeremy said, his
smile back to full radiance. "I don't know really how, but I do
know it. It's capital P, a, s, s..."

"... w, o, r, d?"

"That's it."

Typical. As obviously random as
his office code number. The arrogance of genius. Tappity-tap-tap
and Enter. The screen changed. I expected a bespoke window greeting
me, one with multiple menus and commands that I'd have to navigate
before I found what I was looking for. I was wrong. A simple, light
blue background with standard icons along the left hand side and
the word 'Start' at the bottom. Excellent. Windows, folders and
files. Just how I liked it.

"Thanks, Jezzer. I appreciate
that."

"I'd say anytime, Sin," he
laughed. "But I don't think it's that simple."

I had no idea how simple it was.
My sister had appeared, disappeared, reappeared and abandoned... I
mean disappeared again. That could have been choice, order or just
'cos. I didn't, and probably at no time would, know.

"Probably not, mate, but I
appreciate it anyway."

"I know, Sin. I know. Anyway,"
he paused, his head cocked to the side, making him look like a
wardrobe malfunction from the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy.
They say two heads are better than one, but I doubted they meant
when one was a ghost and the other asleep. "I think I have to
go."

At least he could give me some
warning that he was going. He didn't just vanish when my back was
turned without waiting for it to turn.

"OK. It was good to see you.
Thanks for the help." I took a breath. "I'm sorry about what
happened."

"Me too, in a way. But, to be
honest, in a way I'm fine with it. Being dead isn't too bad. It's
hard to say, because it's not something you can actually
experience. It's just something you are."

I could relate to that.

"Besides," he continued. "It
can't be helped. It's done now. Just stop him Sin. I don't want,
don't need payback, but just stop him, ok?"

I nodded. That was my
intention.

"I promise I'll try."

"Good enough," he said.
"Bye."

"Goodbye, Jeremy. Say hi to
Joy."

Jeremy, or what was left of him
as Caroline slowly became more solid, laughed.

"Don't need to."

Then he was gone.

Did they all go to the same
school of awkward answers?

He'd gone. Caroline was once
more in focus and I felt the loss of my friend all over again. The
fact that it had happened here in this room, in that chair, didn't
help matters. But no. This was the new me. The positive, good me.
Jezzer was OK with his fate so I had to be too. Anyway, I had other
things to deal with. Two fat ladies, clickety click. The computer
screen was sparse. There were the usual icons for the Documents
folder and Recycle Bin etc., but not much else. What there was,
however, was sufficient.

A folder named 'Patients.' Let's
try there shall we?

Simple structures were usually
the best. Less chance for things to be lost or misplaced. In chaos
lay frustration and aggravation. Luckily for me, Dr. Connors was a
man of simplicity. He didn't subscribe to the idea that a tidy desk
meant an untidy mind, or that a desk covered in files and paperwork
and notes indicated a mind of regimented organisation. Calm and
serenity in everything. Even murder. A double click on the icon
revealed an alphabetised list of patients' names, surname first.
Now I'd lost my second name a while back, maybe on a desk laden
heavy with chaos, maybe in Tesco at midnight, amongst the shelf
stackers and insomniacs, but I managed quite well with just my
forename. Usually, when people heard that I was called 'Sin,' they
were more engrossed in that than in than anything that might come
after. That worked well enough, as Matthews linked me to my parents
and that was something I didn't need to be reminded of. An abusive
'it was just a joke' father and a 'don't see, don't know, not
bothered' mother where not things to be proud of. I knew I couldn't
choose who sired me - you can choose your friends, they say, but
not your family - but if I carried their name it was like I was
wearing a sign around my neck, celebrating my deranged lineage.

Thanks, but no thanks.

In this instance, it would serve
me, if only for the first time in my life.

I scanned down the list looking
for 'M.' There were names I recognised and others I didn't. Once
you came to the home, you usually stayed, the revolving door at the
entrance providing you with a one way ticket into drug induced
emptiness. Twice, in my stay, new wings had to be built to house
new patients, the intake was that regular. There were names,
though, that I didn't know. Benjamin James. Collins Sarah. Why did
that sound familiar...? Doherty David. Johnson Bernadette. These
were strangers to me. The institute had been around for a good few
years before I graced its doorstep so perhaps they and the other
unknowns were Connors' success stories. Perhaps he had managed to
actually cure or rehabilitate someone. I was genuinely surprised at
the concept, having had the impression that the only person Dr.
Connors helped was himself. I could only assume that there was
method in his methods. They had to be useful to him in the outside
world. He helped rid them of their demons and they helped him
create a whole new set, complete with matching jackets and forked
tails.

I was a cynic, I knew that, but
my opinion of the doctor being the answer to my prayers had
severely changed. I know knew him for what he was. A beast. A demon
himself, in a non-supernatural but equally horrific way. So maybe
he had helped them and David, Bernadette and James were all living
out their naturals, eternally grateful to Dr. Connors for his aid.
Grunt, grunt, flap, flap. Pigs may well soar through the clouds
above. They may, but they don't. The price of bacon has most
definitely not gone up.

I reached the 'M's' and looked
for my name. There was a folder for a Mandy, first name Andy. Where
his parents related, even tenuously, to my own? He was another
stranger, but I knew the next name. Maxwell Peter. Peter had been
beaten as a child. His mother had started the abuse, apparently
after the six year old boy had knocked over his glass of
blackcurrant juice just as the lottery numbers, a double rollover,
were being announced. The glass was on the hearth of the fire and
smashed as it fell. The lottery ticket was on the coffee table,
completely remote from the fruit juice, but the distraction meant
that his mother missed the bonus ball being called out. The ticket
wasn't a winner anyway, with only one number - a fourteen - being
circled, so it wouldn't matter what ball had popped up in the
machine. But Peter's mother still blamed him for her losing. The
glass wasn't the only thing smashed against the hearth that
evening. Peter was clumsy as a child. His mother wasn't a tolerant
woman. The lottery incident flipped a switch in her that made her
think it was acceptable to punish her son by hitting him, or
pushing him. A broken arm or rib, you see, would heal, so it was
OK. The young boy's father didn't agree, not at first, but after
not long enough thought 'in for a penny, in for a punch.'

It affected Peter as time went
on. It might have been from that first night when his head met the
fireplace much too hard, or it could have been one of the many
times thereafter. He didn't learn too well. His speech slurred more
and more. He became afraid of everyone. He thought every person he
met was going to strike out. He was admitted to the institute to
help him. It was for his own safety. He was brought here because he
couldn't function as a normal person - whatever one of those was.
But he played a mean game of backgammon and would give you his
entire lunch if you were still hungry even if you'd already had
three yourself.

Montgomery Paula was next.
Matthews Sin was missing. Well, I wasn't missing, was I? I was
sitting at the computer. I knew exactly where I was, but my name
wasn't where it should have been. I suddenly doubted my knowledge
of the alphabet and looked back then further on. Then I saw it. I
wasn't under Matthews Sin. I was in a folder simply called 'Sin,'
in capital letters, no less. Did Connors know of my abhorrence for
my family name and respect my wishes for it to be forgotten? Grunt.
Flap. Whatever the reason, I double-clicked on me. It was still
night, but night had a habit of slipping unannounced into day so I
had to keep moving.