All That She Can See

  ‘I’ve never seen her like that!’ Chase said, admiration in his voice.

  ‘Looks like a bit of Normality did her some good!’ Cherry laughed.

  ‘Or a bit of you, Cherry,’ Sally said, joining them.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Cherry asked.

  ‘She looks up to you!’ Chase said. ‘It’s obvious.’

  ‘Is it? No offence meant to Margie, but… she’s almost double my age!’

  ‘So?’ Sally said. ‘Whenever she’s in your shop I can see her mimicking you. When you stand up tall, so does she. When you talk a little louder, she raises her voice too. You told her you were once an anxious person and now look at you! You’re a confident young woman with a business of her own who makes friends on a daily basis. You’re an inspiration.’

  ‘Plenty of people who were once anxious manage to get themselves out of the house and talking to people.’

  ‘True, but they’re as rare as unicorns and out of all of them, Margie met you. You’re her unicorn and now she wants to be a unicorn too.’

  ‘I’m not sure about that, but she did pretty well up there. I’m proud of her,’ Cherry said, watching Margie shake hand after hand after hand.

  ‘Look at you two,’ Sally said, pointing at Cherry and Chase’s linked arms. ‘Thick as thieves. Well, they say opposites attract!’ Sally squeezed their shoulders then wrapped her arms around herself.

  ‘Are you all right, Sally? You’re shaking,’ Chase asked, concerned.

  ‘Just a bit too much excitement for me today. I need a glass of brandy and a lie-down after all that!’

  ‘I think we all do. Home?’ Chase asked.

  ‘Home.’ Cherry smiled – but then everything went black.

  No one else had noticed. Or rather, no one else could see that there was something blocking the sun. There was a large shadow ahead of them, bigger than Chase and Cherry combined. The edges of the shadow were fuzzy and gently undulating but very clearly on the top of its head were two jagged horns. They twisted in on themselves and then snaked back up to the sky and tapered off into long, perfect points.

  ‘Chase. Just stop for a moment.’ Cherry tried to stay calm as she turned towards the gin distillery to see the Meddlum the shadow belonged to. She gasped. Now she saw the edges of its shadow had been writhing because it was burning like an ember. There were no flames but smoke poured off it in thick plumes that covered the street around it. Cherry’s heart started hammering in fright and Chase could feel its thrum in her fingertips as she dug them deep into his forearm. Most of the crowd has dispersed and Cherry was grateful she and Chase were alone. There was no way she’d be able to cover for what she was seeing now.

  ‘What can you see?’ Chase whispered. ‘Cherry, talk to me.’

  ‘I’ve seen big Meddlums before but nothing so… hellish.’ Cherry’s eyes tingled and she wondered if the smoke from Hate was affecting them. Chase peered closer.

  ‘Wait… Cherry, I can see it! In your eyes! I can see the reflection of it in your eyes! Holy shit.’ Chase covered his mouth, watching the creature burn in her irises.

  Cherry stood, transfixed, the two burning coals that were the monster’s eyes boring into hers.

  ‘Oh my god. You see these things on a daily basis?!’

  ‘I tried to tell you.’

  ‘I know but… how are you not more emotionally mangled by it?’

  ‘I am. I’m just really good at hiding it.’

  ‘Oh, Cherry. I’m so sorry. I had no idea,’ Chase wrapped his arms around her but she was still frozen in place. He pulled away and looked into her eyes again. ‘Who does it belong to?’

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t see through all the smoke.’ Cherry squinted and Chase looked around, trying to match the Meddlum to anyone nearby.

  ‘Wait… there…’ Cherry noticed the smoke at the foot of the Meddlum had started to spin into tiny tornadoes. ‘Can you see anyone? I can only see smoke…’

  Chase nodded. ‘Yeah, there’s someone there but… he just looks like a regular guy.’

  ‘He’s coming into focus now. I still can’t make out his face, though.’

  ‘He’s in his twenties, well groomed, doesn’t look particularly happy or… wait… Cherry… I can’t see anything…’

  ‘What? Is the smoke getting in the way?’

  ‘No, I can’t see the smoke, remember? It’s just that… Cherry, he has no good feeling. Like… nothing. I can’t see anything good.’ Chase instinctively put an arm in front of her.

  ‘But his Meddlum is so big…’

  ‘What kind of Meddlum is it?’ Chase asked, still not used to the name Cherry had given the demons she saw.

  ‘Hate,’ she said, blinking hard. ‘I’ve never seen it so big before.’

  ‘Hate for what?’ Chase looked at her as a tear ran down her cheek.

  ‘… himself,’ she whispered. And then a face broke through the smoke – a face Cherry would recognise anywhere.

  Cherry would have run if she hadn’t been sick. Bent double, she threw up until there was nothing left in her stomach. It was all on the cobbles in front of her, the black smoke covering the mess.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Chase rubbed her back.

  Cherry waved him away, swallowed hard, coughed, gagged again, anything to avoid having to answer but her head snapped up when she felt the sun on her shoulders.

  ‘Where did he go?’ The Meddlum had disappeared, leaving only thin grey wisps rising into the air. Its owner had vanished too.

  ‘As soon as you… y’know…’ Chase mimicked her gagging, ‘he turned and ran in the other —’

  ‘Miss Redgrave. Mr Masters. I’ve been looking for you.’

  Cherry and Chase both whipped around to see a familiar and yet unfriendly face.

  ‘Happy,’ Chase said.

  Her expression, as usual, did not change. She wore the same shade of yellow as she had worn before but this time she was wearing a suit. Her briefcase dangled by her side.

  ‘Correct. You made a decision, Miss Redgrave. Did you not?’

  ‘Well, I…’ Cherry said.

  ‘You meddled again, did you not?’

  ‘No, she —’ Chase said.

  ‘We have evidence. And you knew you were strictly forbidden to meddle if you weren’t in the Guild’s employ.’

  ‘It’s not —’

  ‘— what it looks like? No, I’m sure it’s not but even so, looks like we’ll have to be taking you in.’

  Cherry hadn’t noticed the van parked on the side of the road behind Happy. Three men in blue suits were climbing out of the double doors at its rear, unfolding a wheelchair. The image of the van rattled in Cherry’s mind and she shrank into Chase’s side.

  ‘This isn’t right. Get behind me, Cherry,’ Chase, yet again, put his arm in front of her and pushed her behind him. ‘She’s not going with you.’

  ‘No, I know she isn’t…’ Happy said. She lowered the briefcase to the ground, clicked open its clasps and the foam on the inside glowed against her pale skin. Happy fiddled for a moment behind the lid. She stood and tapped the air bubbles out of the syringe she held in her hand, poised and ready. ‘… but you are, Mr Masters.’ Happy’s hand darted out towards Chase’s neck before he’d even uttered a word in protest. All that escaped his lips was a guttural groan as he slumped forwards into the wheelchair the men in blue had strategically placed. Chase’s body fell the wrong way, his stomach on the seat, his head hooked over the back and his knees digging into the foot rests.

  ‘STOP! PLEASE STOP!’ Cherry cried. ‘What are you doing to him?! It’s me you want! Let him GO!’ She stepped forwards to help him but Happy held out the syringe in her direction and she halted.

  ‘A little bit of Compliance makes someone do whatever you say but a concentrated dose means you can do whatever you want with them. I wouldn’t step any closer if I were you. Unless you’d like to join him?’ Cherry hesitated and then moved towards Chase. Happy stepped to the side, blocking her path. ‘Oh
, I see,’ Happy said, her face unmoving. ‘The Hermit has found love? Interesting. Still, I don’t think where he’s going is quite the place for you. I would be careful though, Cherry.’ Happy lifted the collar on Chase’s jacket and wiped off a little of the sauce left over from the cherry pie. She sucked her finger. ‘A little Honesty goes a long way so let me be quite frank. You’re one step away from the back of that van.’ Happy clicked her fingers and the men in blue started to pull Chase away. His arms hit the wheels and his feet dragged across the cobbles. One of his shoes caught and slipped off as they bundled him through the double doors but none of the men stopped to pick it up.

  ‘No!’ Cherry started forward, without thinking, and before she knew it Happy had inserted the very tip of the needle into her arm. She injected a tiny amount of what was left in the syringe and said, ‘Stay where you are please, Cherry.’

  Cherry couldn’t move. Her mind wanted her to move but her body wouldn’t… comply.

  ‘Just be grateful there wasn’t enough left to…’ Happy gestured towards the van.

  ‘Happy…’ Cherry wheezed.

  Happy turned slowly and clasped her hands in front of her. ‘Yes, Miss Redgrave?’

  ‘I hope the woman you are underneath everything the Guild has done to you is no different to who you are now.’

  ‘How sweet. And why is that?’

  ‘Because, now, you’ve taken the one person I’ve truly felt like I’ve belonged with since my father died. Now you’ve taken Chase from me, this is personal.’ Cherry’s body may have betrayed her but her voice held firm and steady. ‘So I hope you’ve always been a monster. Because that way, when I take you down, I won’t feel too guilty about it. And I will come for Chase, you can count on that.’

  Happy looked at Cherry blankly before climbing into the van and driving away. But to where? Cherry didn’t even know where to begin. She knew the likelihood of the Guild being someplace conspicuous or marked on a map somewhere was non-existent. Eventually Cherry’s body became her own again and she walked over to where Chase’s shoe lay on the cobbles and picked it up. She thought of him, how little time they’d had together, and the big gaping hole he’d left. She cursed whoever was listening for making her part of this torturously twisted fairy tale.

  Cherry needed help. Before she’d learned of the Guild, Cherry had only known two people who were like her. One of them was Chase and the other was the man she had recognised in the smoke: Peter. She was sure it had been him. He was a man now and not the child she’d known him as, but it was undeniably his face she’d seen. She’d seen that hateful seed on their final day together at school and ever since it had been growing into a giant ball of living fire. Poor Peter, Cherry thought. Had Peter come to find her? Had he come to help? Had he been to the Guild? Is that where he’d been taken all those years ago? Cherry had to know because if he did know where the Guild was, he could help her get Chase back.

  Grey clouds were hanging overhead and a thick drop tumbled from the sky here and there as Cherry ran to the water’s edge. She was rarely fond of her abilities but at that moment, she knew they would be the key to finding Chase. She turned back towards the town and, against the grey sky, she saw a stream of black smoke pouring upwards into the clouds. Without hesitation, Cherry ran towards it.

  The Lovers

  ‘If no one loved, the sun would go out.’

  Victor Hugo

  19

  Shura

  When you’ve come to call four white walls home, anything different, anything beyond, holds a beauty all of its own. Green floors become lush grass and blue-tinged fluorescent lights become clear skies but Peter wasn’t a fool. Peter couldn’t be tricked into feeling grateful to be let out of his white cell for a change of scenery when he’d seen real grass and he’d seen the sky in his lifetime. He knew what real beauty was and would accept no substitutes, which is why when he saw Shura within the confines of the Guild for the first time, he thought she must be a hallucination brought on from too much time alone.

  ‘Fourteen?’

  The blue suits came for him every time he acted out. This time he had bitten a white coat during a dental examination. He’d wanted to see if he could make the white coat feel something, anything, but all Peter had done was make him bleed and the white coat’s expression had remained vacant. The blue suits escorted him to an examination room. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d been inside one of these rooms. Once upon a time he used to keep track but when he realised the visits would never stop he gave up keeping count. He hadn’t seen the point in carrying on. Now, the two blue suits forced him into the familiar green leather chair and they tightened the straps around his ankles and wrists. They pulled them tighter than necessary and they pinched and caught at the hairs on his skin.

  ‘That’ll do,’ the nurse said and she shooed the blue suits away. Once they were gone, she turned to Peter and he saw her face for the first time. She looked at him from under the dark tendrils that had come loose from the bun on the back of her head and all of Peter’s anger melted away in a moment. The door slid closed and once the nurse had heard the thud of its automatic lock clicking into place she started unfastening the straps.

  ‘Peter Fenwick, I assume?’ she said. Her voice sounded like velvet.

  ‘Um… experiment fourteen,’ he corrected. She wandered around him and he felt suddenly hot and exposed in his green gown.

  ‘I think Peter will do just nicely. As long as you don’t mind?’ Her brown eyes shone when she spoke. ‘I’m Shura.’

  ‘You don’t seem qualified to be a doctor,’ Peter said. The thought had fallen out of his brain, through his mouth and onto the floor before he’d had a moment to process it.

  ‘I’m a nurse,’ she said. ‘And I’m perfectly qualified to carry out what we’re here for today.’

  ‘What I mean is, you don’t seem qualified to work… at the Guild. You’re not… brain dead,’ Peter said in a rush, keen to explain his clumsy comment.

  ‘No, I’m not brain dead.’ And then she smiled, as if to prove it.

  It was the first real smile Peter had seen since arriving at the Guild all those years ago, when he was just a child, and he couldn’t look directly at her for too long for fear of crying. The way her thin but perfectly rounded lips curved, the right side a little more than the left… how the sides of her eyes creased… the slight breathy laugh that escaped when she flashed her crooked front teeth at him. There was so much beauty in that smile that Peter couldn’t help but grin himself.

  ‘And neither are you, it seems!’ She laughed but then quickly put a finger to her lips. She pulled the last buckle loose on Peter’s right ankle, ran to the door with a skip and pressed her ear up against it. ‘I don’t think they’ll hear us if we talk quietly.’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ Peter whispered.

  ‘What? Being a decent human being?’ She raised her eyebrows. When Peter nodded, she simply said, ‘It costs nothing to be kind.’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ Peter said. ‘In this place, it seems to cost the earth. Why are you even working for the Guild?’

  ‘Family tradition. My mum worked here before me. Although things were different when she was here. It wasn’t as cruel back then and I didn’t want to follow in her footsteps but you know what the Guild are like. They can be… persuasive.’

  ‘I know that only too well,’ he said waving the hem of his hideous gown. ‘I don’t wear this as a fashion statement. But why aren’t you all… zombified like the rest of them?’

  ‘You’d be surprised at how many of the white coats here aren’t. Some of us here just want to help people. It’s just the Feelers who need to be… well, zombified, I guess. And it doesn’t hurt if you have acting skills when it’s called for.’ Shura straightened out her face and blinked mechanically.

  ‘That’s even more depressing. How many white coats who still have their feelings still carried out the tests on me? Because this is definitely the first time anyone h
as spoken to me like a human being.’

  ‘Shhh!’ She hushed as he started to raise his voice. ‘If we get caught we might both be on the receiving end of a couple of hundred volts.’

  ‘They’re not going to hear us if you turn that thing on. It’ll drown us out.’ Peter pointed to the grey machine that had come to haunt his nightmares.

  ‘Good thinking!’ Shura flipped a couple of blue switches and turned a dial. She took up the two black discs that were attached to the machine by coiled wires and placed their metal surfaces face down on the leather chair. ‘You’re going to have to scream, though,’ she said, her finger on the final switch. ‘They’ll be expecting to hear you.’

  Peter smiled, happy at the thought of getting one over on the Guild. ‘It’s better when it’s fake.’

  And so Peter screamed and groaned, while Shura laughed. They had a snatched, whispered conversation in between the fake cries and when Peter went back to his four whitewashed walls, he didn’t feel angry any more. How could he when he could close his eyes and see Shura?

  20

  Peter

  The smoke had led Cherry to a rundown house. The windows were boarded up, an old three-piece suite and a broken TV had been dumped in the overgrown front garden and the gate was completely rusted over and sealed shut. The place looked abandoned and yet the black tornado of smoke that was swirling out of the chimney was a sure sign that this was where Cherry would find Peter.

  Cherry was unsure of what she was going to say when she saw Peter. She just knew she needed to get to him as soon as possible. She pulled herself up and over the gate, struggling in the process because Loneliness had hooked its arms around her waist to try to stop her. She dropped to the other side and looked up at the house, watching the smoke rise and fade away.