Alice and the Fly (24 page)

‘Alice? You OK?’

Nothing.

‘Alice.’

I stepped through to the bathroom. The door was stiff and at first I thought it was locked but then I remembered the bathroom door was always stiff, that you have to sort of barge it with your hip to get it open. The bathroom’s still the same – same towels, same toilet-roll holder, even Nan’s facecloth, still curled at the side of the sink. I wasn’t really paying attention to all this at the time, though – I was thinking about the vomit, dripping from the hem of my jumper, dotting the dusty tiles. I examined myself in the mirror. My hair was sticking up in ways I’d never thought possible, far surpassing my usual scruffy bowl. Two large curls corkscrewed from my fringe like horns. I was still feeling the buzz of the whiskey and I ended up standing there for I don’t know how long, staring at my own reflection.

I dragged off your father’s jacket, draped it over the toilet seat. I peeled off my jumper, my shirt, slid off my one remaining shoe, my socks, trousers, boxers. I stepped into the bathtub. It was layered with dust, gritty and dry between my toes. I held the showerhead to my chest, the pipes clunking and shuddering as water glugged out, cold and brown at first, then steaming, hot and clear. It scalded my chest, my stomach, my legs. It burnt like crazy but I didn’t add any cold. I just stood and watched it, pooling at my feet, blackened with grit and dust, gurgling down the plughole.

Once I was clean I stepped through to the bedroom again and fetched some fresh clothes from my bag. I hadn’t thought I’d need them so soon. You were still on the bed, head tipped to the side. A string of spit hung from your mouth.

I leant over you, shook your shoulder.

‘Alice?’

Nothing.

I told you you could sleep soon, but wouldn’t you rather get out of those sick-splattered clothes?

Nothing.

I slid my arms beneath you, one under your neck, the other under your legs. I hoisted. A pain shot through my hand. You were much heavier than Scraps had been. You struggled in your sleep and I told you there-there, told you it was OK. Halfway to the bedroom door I had to stop and crouch, your weight on my knee while I re-gathered my strength. I stood again, heaving you over my shoulder into a fireman’s lift, before stoop-stumbling out across the landing.

I lay you on the bathroom floor. You shivered in your sleep. I rinsed and plugged the bathtub and turned on the hot tap. The water rose. Steam fogged us, misting the mirror, gathering at the ceiling.

I took off your coat. I had to guide your arms out then drag it from under you. There didn’t appear to be any vomit on it except for a few strands of drool, dried across the collar. I cupped some water from the bathtub and scrubbed them away. Next I peeled off your dress and tights, which were saturated, clinging to your legs with webs of spit. Finally I removed your sunglasses. I carried your clothes through to my old room, everything whiskey-stinking together in the corner, and shut the door behind me.

You looked so cold, lying there in your underwear on the bathroom floor, so I sat beside you, back against the tub and held you, icy in my arms. I pressed my face into your hair, breathed in the smell of whiskey and smoke, trying my best to ignore the tang of bile. The bath rumbled behind us. The pipes clunked in the walls. Once the water had reached the three-quarter mark I stood and lifted you. It was hard because I didn’t have your clothes to cling to, just your skin, so cold and goose-pimpled. You struggled at first, flinging your arms in your sleep. I nearly dropped you. You soon settled once I’d lowered you into the water. I cradled your head above the surface. I was shocked at first to see blood, spreading from the back of your neck, clouding the water, but then I remembered the hole in my palm and passed your head to my right hand, holding my left in the air to try decrease the blood flow. Once the bath had filled I reached over and turned off the taps and just knelt there, holding you.

I tried not to look at you – your body, I mean. I kept my eyes fixed on your face. For a few minutes the tap dripped, rippling the water. Then the dripping stopped and the water was still and what was left was a near-perfect silence. I thought maybe I should break the silence, talk to you, only I didn’t know what to say. My knees ached against the floor tiles. How long are you supposed to bathe someone? I checked my watch but the screen was blank. I rubbed it with my thumb, the ink of the digits blurring beneath. I must have submerged it. I guess it wasn’t waterproof.

I decided to wash your hair. I know girls can be particular about exactly when and where they wet their hair but the ends were crunched with dried vomit and I thought it best I rinse them. I dipped your head back – your red curls danced below the surface. Their redness mixed with the tinge of my blood, tinting the water pink. I spread my fingers across your scalp, massaging every notch and socket of your skull. I thought of the times Mum’d wash my hair, the feel of foreign hands on my head. There wasn’t any shampoo but I figured that didn’t matter too much, so long as I got the sick out.

Somewhere outside a firework screeched. I lifted you from the water, picking the loose strands of hair that clung to your forehead. You looked so beautiful, your face pale and clean, glittering with beads of bathwater. I wanted to kiss you but we’d already had one failed kiss and our next had to be romantic, an embrace on a station platform, hand-holding at sunset on Finners Island beach. I thought of Finners Island again and couldn’t help but smile. I hadn’t had a chance to tell you where we were going yet, but there’d be time for that later. Plenty of time for that later.

You murmured in your sleep. Another firework crackled outside. It flowered at the window, giving the room a green glow. I turned to watch it descend. It was then I caught a glimpse of you, the rest of you, your body, blurred beneath the water. I’d shifted slightly when I turned and the movement was still passing through you, your legs bobbing, your breasts rising then sinking. Your feet were crossed. Your hands lay motionless on your belly. Your bra was plain black but your knickers were grey with a sort of pink frill. Something was swelling inside me, some pressure, rising from my stomach to my forehead and I turned away, glanced up at the ceiling, and that’s when I noticed one of
Them
, wriggling out through the slats in the air vent.

I kept my head down. I concentrated on you. Your sleeping face. I figured that, if I ignored it, then maybe it could be like I hadn’t seen it. We could carry on our bath in peace. Only it doesn’t work like that. Once I knew one of
Them
was there I couldn’t help but glance above me. Couldn’t help but notice it, edging along the wall towards us. Just as it reached the window another firework burst outside, red this time, spreading its gangly shadow across the white-tiled wall. The water rippled out around you. You were shivering. No, not you,
I
was shivering. I was shivering and you were just lying there, sleeping, shaking in my arms.

I should have lifted you out then, should have carried you through to the safety and solitude of Nan’s parcel-taped bedroom, only I was determined we weren’t going to be disturbed by
Them
. I wasn’t going to let
Them
do it again. They’re Metaphorical Phantoms, all I had to do was block
Them
out of my mind and there was nothing they could do to harm us. I kept telling myself this. I may have said it aloud as well, I don’t know – everything from then on seems blurred – my head was still throbbing from the whiskey.

Then a scratching started over at the sink and I turned in time to see another, crawling out from behind the mirror. This one was enormous, about the size of your hand – which I was holding now, clutching in my bloodied fist – and it too approached the bathtub, only quicker than the first, not so slow and steady but in these short scurrying bursts. Two more followed from behind the toilet cistern. I noticed another, over by the extractor fan. Another, up on the rings of the shower curtain. I breathed steadily. I closed my eyes. I told myself I had nothing to fear, they were Metaphorical Phantoms. They were Metaphorical Phantoms. They were Metaphorical Phantoms. Then one of the tiles slipped, bouncing from the bathtub and shattering across the floor and a swarm of
Them
scrambled through the hole, spreading up the bathroom wall.

By this point the fitting had started. I was shaking violently, my arms slapping the surface of the water. You were shaking with me, your head rocking over the crook of my arm. I clutched you tight to my chest, trying to hold you still, your eyelids flickering, beads of bathwater quivering on your forehead, but I couldn’t seem to hold you, couldn’t seem to stop you from shaking with me. Blood ran down my chin, dripped onto your cheek and I realised I’d bitten into my tongue. The water was splashing right over the side of the bath, splattering on the dusty floor.

They started to hiss. The usual stuff, calling me a psycho and a pervert, etc. I tried to concentrate on something else, some pure, happy thought – Finners Island, that day with Nan, that time with the eagle. I started to tell you about it, about Finners Island, about how we could live so happily there, the two of us – whispering to you, my face pressed against your hot wet scalp, but with my tongue bitten up I was lisping more than ever and I found it hard even to understand myself. Your hair was getting in my mouth, matted with blood from my tongue. I retched. I glanced up one last time. By now there must have been hundreds of
Them
, a great black tide of
Them
, spreading out across the ceiling. Steam collected around
Them
, their bodies glistening like a sea of fat black olives. I remember laughing. I remember wondering how they could keep a grip on the bathroom ceiling when everything was so damp and then, right on cue, one slipped and thudded to the floor, wriggling on its back. A couple plopped down into the water. Others began to descend on webs.

I shut my eyes. Pressed my forehead to yours. I told myself they weren’t there, they weren’t real, but the truth is they were. I could feel
Them
. On my neck, my arms, crawling down the back of my shirt. I could hear
Them
, their mass hiss growing, surrounding us. I could see
Them
. Even with my eyes shut I could see
Them
. Wriggling from their cracks in the ceiling, from the collar of Goose’s fleece, from the dark corners of your shed, the Lair. More and more of
Them
, every second. I saw
Them
on your father as he sucked at his whiskey bottle, on the Vultures as they danced around the stage in their leotards, on Mum and my father and Ursula and Ken as they sat scooping forkful after forkful of burnt salmon into their fat grinning mouths. I saw
Them
on Miss Hayes, creeping out over her face as she read at the front of class, all those pointless words that don’t mean a thing. I saw
Them
in the meat at Hampton’s counter, wriggling between the folds of flesh. Infested. I saw
Them
pouring from Mum’s Italian leather couch, its stitches splitting, its white folds parting like some great sagging mouth, vomiting a sea of
Them
out across the living-room carpet. I saw
Them
on Angela Hargrove as she lay unconscious on Goose’s bed, head bobbing to the thrusts of the near-bald Hawaiian-shirt kid. I saw
Them
spilling from the belly of your fat fuck of a father as I forced the knife into him again and again and again and the tide of
Them
just kept on coming, on and on. Metaphorical Phantoms. I saw Sarah, not as she is now, but when she was little, when she’d scratch and scratch at
Them
, just like I was scratching at you now, trying my best to claw
Them
from your skin, but there were just so many, too many. It was like the time in the boat all over again, the other time on Finners Island, the time I try not to think about, with all that splashing and shaking, your head dipping back below the surface just like Sarah’s, mouth open as if screaming, only silent, bubbles rising through the water. Metaphorical Phantoms. My jaw locked, my shaking churning the bathwater.

Metaphorical Phantoms.

Clutching you to my chest, as tight as possible, everything getting dark until there’s only the warm metal taste of blood.

Metaphorical Phantoms.

Metaphorical Phantoms.

Metaphorical Phantoms.

The robin’s back. I haven’t told you about him yet, have I? The robin? He appeared first thing this morning, woke me up. I was on the lounge carpet. I don’t know what time this was because my watch is still blurred from the water, but I sat up as soon I heard him cheeping. He was perched on those boards across the lounge window, head poking through the gap. By the time I stood he’d gone again but he’s been back about five or six times since. Each time he does the same thing – pokes his head through, cheeps at me, then disappears. It’s been going on for about two hours now. I don’t know what he wants. I just can’t work it out.

It’s strange, being back at 1 Kirk Lane. I know I said so last night, but here in the daylight it’s even worse. Right now I’m sitting in the lounge and the longer I sit here the more unfamiliar everything gets. There’s something missing, that’s the only way I can describe it. And I know Nan’s missing, I know that’s the obvious answer, but it’s more than that. The colours are wrong – everything’s too dark, the boarded windows murking everything in this veil of gloom. There’s a strange smell. The damp’s got to the wallpaper, giving the various floral designs this warped, wrinkled effect. Everything’s so much smaller. I found a bag of half-knitted jumpers, Nan’s final batch, tucked down the side of the armchair – how did I ever fit into those jumpers? And those plates, those cat plates that line the stairway wall, the ones Nan sent off for each week from
Love Cat Magazine
, each decorated with a different-coloured cat, they used to seem enormous, the cats’ heads as big as mine, but now they’re no more than saucers.