Penult (Book Four of The Liminality)

  Of course, she had some extra baggage to weight her down. Isobel meant a lot to her. She was her only sibling, her sole confidante through some enormously difficult times. Karla had been pretty much Izzie’s fill-in mom during her growing up years. She couldn’t help but feel responsible for whatever had happened to her.

  She was a prime candidate for a visitation. I could almost feel the roots come swirling around her soul. I watched her for the change. When her eyes stopped twitching and her body went limp, I took her hand and sighed.

  “Say hi for me.”

  I propped my forehead against the window and watched the world go by. On the outskirts of Edinburgh, I could have sworn I saw one of those automated changeable billboards display a giant “Zhang?” in big red letters over a field of chartreuse before the rollers engaged and transformed back into a Guinness ad. Had I really seen what I thought I saw, or was my mind playing tricks?

  Karla remained unconscious for a good hour and a half. The shadows were growing long in the heath before she began to stir. I was the one this time leaning in close, watching her eyes.

  “So … did you cross? Did you … visit Root … just now?”

  “No,” she said, in a small voice on the verge of a whisper. “I was only … sleeping. “

  Somehow, I felt gratified. This was Karla, who bragged about her ability to surf her moods. If she was unable to make the transition into the Liminality even when she was already feeling down, maybe I had something to do with it. Maybe, she was happy with me, or, if not happy, happy enough to stay out of Root.

  Too bad she was sobbing.

  ***

  When we finally reached Inverness, I almost had to pry Karla off the seat. She didn’t want to leave the train. She looked and acted stoned, though I knew better.

  We waited for everyone else to exit first. I hovered by the door, scanning the platform for those solitary young men—the watchers—who I got into the habit of looking for in the days when Sergei had a bounty on my head. But Sergei was dead, and I seriously doubted that his successors had nearly the emotional investment that Sergei had put into finding me, especially when they saw the cost of Sergei’s obsession.

  “Sturgie says he and his friends can help us. You have a picture of Izzie, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “We can go to a copy shop, make a flyer. Promise a reward for information. But maybe we don’t post them just anywhere. We hand them out to Sturgie’s friends. We don’t want your Dad’s people to know we’re looking for her.”

  “It was a mistake, coming here,” said Karla.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I just wish we hadn’t come. I don’t like this place. Too much bad happens here.”

  “Oh, stop. It’s time we make some good memories here. It’s not a bad town. It’s not the city’s fault.”

  I led her onto the platform heading for the one exit before reversing course and heading in the opposite direction. A young man stood alone beside a waste bin, clothes rumpled, hair frazzled, his expression distant and vacant.

  A watcher? Perhaps not. But old habits die hard.

  ***

  Sturgie had apologized profusely in advance for not being able to meet us with a car. His plan was to shuttle us back to his flat on the back of his motorcycle so we could wash up before heading across the river to the pub. I had texted him the minute we pulled into Inverness station, but he had yet to respond.

  We left the station and waited outside on the corner where he had told us to meet him. It drizzled just like in Edinburgh, but here it wafted with the wind weightless, in no hurry to meet the ground. We huddled together under an awning and waited as the damp found us anyhow and seeped into our clothes.

  The foghorn in the harbor competed with nearby sirens. A half hour later and after several more unanswered texts and calls, he had still not arrived.

  “This is not like him,” said Karla. “He is usually good with time. Are you sure he said to meet us here?”

  “He said same corner he met us to take you away from me my first time in Inverness. This is it, right?”

  Karla studied my face for a moment before taking my hand and squeezing it.

  “Maybe he has trouble with his motorcycle.”

  I was tired of standing around and train stations still made me nervous. “It shouldn’t be too far to walk. Maybe we should just go?”

  Karla nodded and we started off down the street. I let Google maps lead the way. Three blocks down we turned the corner left to come across a light show of ambulances and police cars. A small heap of crumpled metal lay smoking against a brick wall. Paramedics were busy trying to delicately transfer an accident victim to a stretcher.

  Karla took off running. I was right on her heels.

  She evaded a policeman who reached out, trying to keep her away. She looked up at me, her face anguished. “It’s him!” She screamed.

  A detective pulled us under an awning. Garish emergency lights reflected off all the dampness.

  “You knew this young man?”

  “He’s our friend,” I said. “What happened?”

  “Hit and run, we presume. Only there we were no witnesses, unless, perhaps, you happened to see something?”

  “No,” I said. “He was supposed to meet us at the train station.”

  “Is he … is he going to be okay?” said Karla.

  The detective bit his lip. “I’m so sorry ,dear. He’s already gone.”

  My head swirled. The glare gave way to darkness. The pavement below beckoned, but Karla steadied me and I kept my feet.

  Chapter 8: Inverness

  Just down the hall from Raigmore Hospital’s mortuary, Karla and I sat in the special room reserved for grieving friends and family. Pictures of baby animals, sunsets and nature scenes dominated the décor.

  Sturgie’s college mates came by in dribs and drabs, many of them sloshed, some teary, some simply disbelieving. I had just gotten off the phone with Renfrew. The old man was crushed. He wanted to drive up that night, but Helen convinced him to stay put. Sturgie’s dad Wilbert, Renfrew’s estranged brother, would be coming up in the morning to handle the transport arrangements.

  Sturgie’s body was to be shipped to Cardiff where he had grown up. His body would be laid to rest in his home town.

  “Never should have called Sturg,” I said. “We should have just shown up and surprised him.”

  “James. Stop. These things happen. No matter what we had done, maybe it was meant to be. Maybe something worse would have happened.”

  “Something worse? What’s worse than getting hit by a truck?”

  A braided metal cable had been found on the road, its broken end still attached to a lamp post. Sturgie had been clotheslined, and as he and his bike skidded across the blacktop, a lorry had run him over.

  I couldn’t rid my head of the image of him lying broken in the road. And my mine kept returning to that oddly tangible dream and the man with the coil.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

  We wandered for a time in the incessant drizzle, hoping to find a place to stay, but there was no lodging in the area. Karla wanted to go back to the hospital but I couldn’t stand being there.

  We retreated to a bus shelter that smelt like a urinal and sat on a hard, cold bench. Our eyes were closed, but neither of us could sleep. I held her and rocked her in my arms, watching sheets of mist dance under the streetlights, concentrating on the rhythm of her breathing, trying not to think bad thoughts.

  “The roots are close,” said Karla. “Do you feel them?”

  “No,” I said, and I knew that it was Karla’s presence that kept the embers glowing in my heart and kept them at bay like a bonfire against wolves. I was afraid to tell her, though. I know how badly she wanted me to cross. And yes, we might cross together, but that was never guaranteed. I wanted to hold her in the here and now, and even if she crossed alone, I would still be here to hold her.

  “I want to go, but th
ey won’t come. Something is keeping them away.”

  “Yeah, well. They’ll come for us when they’re good and ready. I guess.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “I don’t know. Go back down to Wales, I guess. Attend the funeral.”

  She pulled away from me and looked me in the eye. “But we came all the way here. We should still look for Izzie. Yes?”

  “Yeah. We should. But it would be nice to get some rest. How about we find a hotel? Get a few hours sleep. In the morning we can go looking. We have a couple days before the funeral.”

  “Okay.” She relaxed and snuggled back.

  “Maybe you can try to in touch with that friend of hers again. What’s her name?”

  “Gwen.”

  “And I’ll go … I’ll go snooping around the church.”

  She squeezed my arm and looked up at me. “Are you … okay with that?”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be careful. I won’t go inside, that’s for sure. But I can hang out nearby. See who comes and goes. They all go to mass every day, right?”

  “Sometimes twice a day,” she said. “Some days morning, noon and night.”

  “So that’s the plan. I’ll watch and see if I can spot her. Meanwhile, you try and find Gwen, and see if she knows anything.”

  We left the shelter and walked towards the city center. It didn’t matter to Karla but I was hoping to find a bigger, nicer hotel. I needed a good night’s sleep. I didn’t want to stay in some flea bag, tourist place. I really was getting spoiled. A year ago I would have been happy to find a dry corner in some shed.

  We found a place off High Street called the Heathmount, checked in and collapsed on the bed without taking showers or even stripping off the covers. The sun was high when I awoke to find Karla already clean and dressed and standing by the door.

  “I’m going off to look for Gwen.”

  “Why don’t you borrow my phone? Try calling her first?”

  “Can’t. Her parents monitor her calls and texts. If they know I’m in town, this will be a problem.”

  “So where—?”

  “I will go to her school. Every day she goes home for lunch. I know the way she walks. I can intercept her on the way.”

  “Okay. Just … be careful.”

  She scrunched her eyes at me. She didn’t look pleased.

  “You’re still going to the church right?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Just so you know, you have already missed the morning mass, but … no worries. Papa sometimes holds meetings during the daytime. If he’s keeping Izzie out of school, she’s likely to be with him. And if not, there will be another mass at six.”

  “How do we get word to each other if we find her?”

  “Just come back to the hotel. Leave a note.”

  And with that she slammed the door and left.

  ***

  It was the first minute we had been apart since we met each in Rome, and I didn’t like the feeling one bit. I was already anxious, and had to suppress an urge to follow after her, so needy I had become.

  I washed up. It was too late for the complimentary breakfast downstairs. They were already packing things away, so I struck out at random until I came across a bakery and picked up a couple scones in a waxed paper and a cup of coffee.

  I took a deep breath and made my way towards the River Ness and the ancient church that had been taken over by the Sedevacantists. I turned right when I reached the avenue that ran along the river bank. My heart began to pound as I approached the hulk of lichened stone that had once imprisoned me.

  Drugged, hauled to Inverness at night and locked away in that dungeon, I had no idea that it could be so pretty outside. The clouds had broken into shreds and allowed some bits of sun to seep through to make the river shine and glaze the wet trees until they glistened.

  I remember hearing traffic from my cell, but at the time I had assumed that they had taken us to another part of Glasgow. I passed the basement exit from which we had made our escape, half expecting a mob of ardent Sedevacantists to come bursting out to grab me. My pace picked up and I gave that door a wide berth.

  When I came around the front I was startled to find a crisp new sign on the front lawn. This was no longer a Sedevacantist church. It now belonged to the Swedenborgs—a Protestant denomination I knew next to nothing about. The Sedevacantist Catholics were gone.

  It was with a strange mixture of relief and dismay that I turned back to the hotel. My heart calmed, but it meant we were no closer to finding out what had happened to Isobel.

  I didn’t know what else to do, so I went back to the hotel, went up to the room and flicked on the tube. I felt guilty hanging around, watching TV, but I didn’t know what else to do. It didn’t make sense to wander aimlessly around Inverness.

  When I Googled “Sedevacantist” and “Inverness” all I came up with was some island monastery in the Orkney’s called Golgotha. The idea of going there horrified me and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to share the information with Karla.

  I got worried as the afternoon lengthened and there was no sign of Karla. It sucked that I wasn’t able to convince her to carry a cell phone. She had nothing, not even a cheap slab phone on which I could contact her. That girl could be so old school it was aggravating.

  She finally showed up about an hour after I went downstairs to pace the front walk. She seemed a bit more glum than usual, if that was possible. Our eyes met briefly, before her gaze fluttered back down to her feet.

  “No luck, I take it?”

  She shook her head. “The house is vacant. No furniture. Curtains. It seems Papa has moved.”

  “What about Gwen?”

  “She was not at the school. She did not come home for lunch so I went inside and spied in the classrooms. There is no sign of her name anywhere. But her house is still there and her family is still living there. But I did not dare to speak with her mother. I think maybe they sent her away someplace. Maybe with Izzie?”

  “What are you thinking, like a nunnery?”

  “A convent? I have no idea. They are building such places, I know but … I don’t know where.”

  I was on the verge of telling her about the Golgotha monastery but I was afraid she would want to go there. It would be a shot in the dark. And being trapped on an island with those people scared the crap out of me. So I kept mum.

  “So what do we do now?”

  Karla shrugged. “I don’t know. But I think … we are done with Inverness.”

  ***

  That night, Karla barely slept. She kept getting up and sitting at the armchair by the window, staring out towards the river. The window was speckled with a million tiny droplets. The drizzle had resumed.

  “Hey. Come back to bed.”

  “I am wondering if I will have better luck finding her in Root. Together.”

  “What makes you think she’s there?”

  “If you had her life, would you want to keep it?”

  “Who even knows what her life is like. Maybe she’s happy.”

  Karla snapped. “How could she be happy with these maniacs?”

  “Who says she’s with them? We don’t know that.”

  “I feel it is the most likely explanation.”

  “Yeah, well. We don’t know for sure. Maybe … after the funeral … we can go on looking.”

  “Where? Here?”

  “Yeah. Maybe.”

  “Why not Root? Why won’t you come to Root with me?”

  I squirmed out from under the covers “You know why. We’ve talked about this. I’ve sort of … lost the knack.”

  “You don’t want to go, that‘s the problem.”

  “It’s not necessarily … a problem.”

  “James! I am begging you to help me find my sister.” Tears now streaked her cheeks.

  “Hey. And I will. As soon as I can. I’ll cross with you. I promise. I’m just … not there yet.”

  “You promise?”

  “Yeah. I’
ll find a way. I will! Come back to bed. Try and get some rest. We have another long day of traveling tomorrow.

  She rose up off the chair, silhouetted by the window, and glided to the bed like a specter, collapsing, crumpling onto the sheets beside me.

  Chapter 9: Manchester

  We drank loads of coffee that morning with our black pudding, beans and tattie scones. The hedges outside our window still dripped from three days of accumulated drizzle. The sky was still grey but brighter. Thin patches in the clouds filtered the sun and washed the city the city with a subdued glow. I don’t think I could have handled a day with blue skies.

  Karla hadn’t slept much and it showed. She looked ten years older. I could see traces of the woman she would become if she lived past thirty. I hate to say it, but the hollowness in her cheeks reminded me of those heroin addicts I used to see near the bus station in Fort Pierce.

  As for me, who knows how I looked. I avoided mirrors as much as I could. But I was ashamed to feel so refreshed, and guilty for not feeling as distraught over Sturgie’s death. He had been much closer to Karla, the only friend she had outside the church in the real world when she still lived with her dad. To me, he wasn’t much more than a passing acquaintance though I had heard so much about him from Jessica and Helen. How he had basically grown up on the goat farm with Renfrew, spending every summer vacation with his uncle from the time he was seven.

  I also felt bad for not having the same level of emotional investment in the search for Isobel. But I had confidence in a more positive explanation for her disappearance than the worst case scenarios that haunted Karla. Isobel was a capable girl. In some ways she was even more robust and resilient than Karla. Given what she was up against, maybe she was simply savvy enough to be lying low. She was aware of the forces about this world who wanted to do her harm.

  When we checked out of the hotel, I paid the bill with that bottomless black credit card. We planned to hop yet another train that morning to follow Sturgie’s remains back down to Wales, which were apparently traveling by lorry. His dad was already in Inverness making the arrangements.

  Karla perked up a bit as we walked to the station. I was glad to hear her singing under her breath and she rewarded my little quips and jibes with a few smiles. Those right there—those smiles—they were little slices of heaven to me. For such moments … in such moments … I lived.