The Everlasting (5 page)

“There's more,” Papa says. His voice has dropped and taken total control of the scene. Everything is listening to him; even the trees seem to lean in to hear
better. For the first time ever Papa is frightening Scott, unnerving him with the look of mad passion in his eyes and the stern set of his face.

“More what?”

“More than what we see, more than what we know. More than life. All around us all the time, Scotty, there's so much more. I can see.” He closes his eyes, takes in a deep breath, and opens them again. He looks around; then his eyes fix on something behind Scott. “I can see,” he carries on, voice lower and heavier than ever. “It's easy after the first time. Close your eyes, think of the song from the Chord of Souls, open them again, and you see everything else. The dead, where they gather. The storms of time eddying around our heads, so close and yet never known.” His eyes have not moved, and Scott turns around to see what his grandfather is watching.

“What is it?” he says. For him there are only trees, shrubs, leaves, and shadows.

“The spell, Scott.” And he mumbles a brief series of words, guttural sounds that do not sound right coming from a human mouth. There's a strange musical quality to them, but it's distasteful and eerie.

“But
what
do you see?”

“A young girl who died in these woods a long time ago,” Papa says.

Scott's blood runs cold, and the hairs on his back rise. “What?”

Papa nods. “Between the trees. There. I see her, because there's so much more, Scotty.”

Scott stands and backs away from where the old
man is looking. “Papa,” he says, and it must be the sound of desperation in his voice that brings Papa around.

The old man stands, shakes his head, and closes his eyes briefly once more. Then he walks toward Scott.

Scott backs away.

Papa pauses, frowns, then reaches out for his grandson. “I would never, ever hurt you,” he says, and he hugs the boy close.

“You scared me.”

“It's right to be scared.”

“Why?”

“The world is a scary place.”

Scott sobs, only once, but enough to elicit a tighter hug from his grandfather.

“You need to know,” the old man says. “I won't be here forever, and you really need to know.”

“What if I don't
want
to know?”

Papa laughs briefly, then says no more. Scott cannot see the old man's face. For once he is glad.

Scott started awake, and he thought the sound he heard was his own startled shout. He sat up on the settee and rubbed his eyes. On the TV screen someone was screaming, and at the window the rosebush still caressed the glass.

What was he going to tell me?
he thought. He could not remember. The fresh memory of the forest and what his grandfather had said was strong, but there was nothing beyond that hug.
Maybe we just went home. Maybe he didn't tell me anything at all
.

He stood and went upstairs to the toilet, looking through the open window as he urinated. The slice of garden he saw seemed quiet and peaceful, but he wondered whether the rest of the garden was quite so innocent. Perhaps it knew when he was watching and shifted to suit his gaze. He finished, flushed, and went into the spare bedroom, and from there the whole back garden was laid out to his view.

Still silent, still wrong. It was as though the garden were watching him. He turned to walk from the window and spun around again. Nothing changed, and he smiled nervously.

Downstairs, he went to the kitchen to switch on the kettle. The small side window opened out over the patio, and Scott stood there as the kettle bubbled and boiled behind him.

Something moved. He edged back from the window, startled and confused. Nothing had moved out in the garden, of that he was sure, but there had been a definite sense of
shifting
across his vision. He closed his eyes briefly and opened them again, wondering whether he had dust or an eyelash in there. But there was no pain, no discomfort. He turned to open the fridge, his view of the sun striking the window adjusted slightly, and then he saw.

The dust on the outside of the window was moving. It coalesced into separate islands like scum on a pond, then shifted as though pushed by an unseen current. There was no sound. It stopped moving, leaving erratic new shapes for the sun to reveal, then started again. Smeared, pushed, pulled across the
glass, it was still shifting when Scott turned and fled from the kitchen.

His heart was thumping. What could do that? Sun, wind, moisture in the air, light refracting through deformed glass . . . He stopped in the hallway and leaned against the wall. He was spooked, working himself up into a state of panic. And there was really nothing wrong.

(
Apart from the broken drawer lock.
)

Nothing strange outside, and only his own fear inside. Could fear change surroundings? He supposed so. Perception was a strange thing, and he knew it could be altered by moods, tiredness, and dread.

(
But the lock. I saw the lock.
)

He heard a car pull up on the gravel driveway and hurried to the front door. Through the vertical blinds at the side window he saw Helen's Astra shift slightly as she stepped out and closed the door behind her. It was early, but he was so glad that she was home that he did not wonder why.

Scott went to open the front door, and then saw the look on Helen's face. She was glancing around, down at the ground and up at the sky, toward the house and into the bushes bordering the driveway. She was frowning. As she remote-locked the car, her other hand waved around her head, as if to knock away a fly or a bee. Scott saw nothing there.

He opened the door, trying to reign in his relief at her return. “Home early.”

Helen's face changed when she saw him. She smiled. It touched her eyes and went some way
toward removing the worry there, but it also left some behind. She was troubled, and Scott did not like that one bit.

“I can't get that damn letter out of my head,” she said. “And you sounded down on the phone, so I came home early.”

“Thanks.” Scott reached out and hugged his wife, kissing her on the cheek. He looked over her shoulder into the front garden. The light fell as it should, the shadows dwelled where they belonged, a few birds skittered around in their Kilmarnock tree. But everything was wrong. If he stepped out there, he could be changed forever.

He shivered and knew that Helen had felt the movement.

“Let's go in,” she said. “We'll cook a nice dinner and open a bottle of wine.”

“Sounds good,” Scott said. Helen moved past him into the house, and he did not turn his back on the front garden until the door was shut and bolted from the inside.

Scott did not mention the broken drawer, but he did let Helen read the letter again. She seemed troubled, but her reaction was similar to before.

“So what do you see when you read it?” he asked.

“None of it seems to make sense to me,” she said. “It's . . . confused. He must have been in a very strange state of mind when he wrote it.”

“Must have.”

“What about you? When you read it?”

Scott did not answer, but he could not hide his own confusion over what he was feeling, seeing, remembering.

“Must be strange for you,” she said softly. “Must make you quite emotional.”

“Yes, quite.”

“Well, let's forget about it for now, go and—”

“What was wrong when you got out of the car?”

Helen sat up straight on the settee, staring up at Scott where he stood before her.

“You looked worried about something. Nervous.”

“You were watching me?”

He nodded.

“That explains it. Felt like I was being watched. And I was.” Helen stood and went out to the kitchen, leaving Scott trying to figure out whether that explained anything at all.

Against all odds, Scott enjoyed their meal. They spent time in the kitchen chopping peppers, spring onions, and mushrooms, stir-frying chicken and sweet and sour sauce, boiling rice, and stirring everything into a tasty dish that went well with a glass of red wine. The kitchen filled with steam and the smells of cooking, and as they sat at the table to eat Scott noticed that the steam had condensed on the window, and the view out into the garden was now hidden. He was glad.

The wine settled his nerves and dulled his heightened senses. The food tasted good. He and his wife succeeded in not chatting about the letter all through
the meal, and even though Scott felt it folded into his back pocket, he did not dwell on the broken drawer.
In denial,
he thought once. But it seemed to be working, so he went with the flow.

It had turned six o'clock by the time they finished. Helen ran hot water into the sink while Scott cleared the work surfaces, and within ten minutes they had tidied the kitchen and retired to the living room. They sat close together on the settee, Scott's hand on Helen's thigh, Helen leaning against his arm. Their wine-glasses were replenished, and Scott felt a comfortable buzz. It was still early, but he looked forward to an evening of wine, a DVD, and perhaps lovemaking later. It was at times like this that he appreciated the simple goodness in life.

“One phrase in that letter . . .” Helen began.

“Hmm?” Scott was annoyed that she'd brought it up again, but at the same time he knew that it was inevitable. She had come home early because of the way he had sounded on the phone, and he'd sounded scared because he'd spooked himself. One last trick from Papa, perhaps. It had been intended for him almost three decades ago, but even after all these years Papa could fool him.

“Where he talks about the Chord of Souls. And surrounds that name with those symbols.”

“Yes.”

“What was that?”

The new memory from that afternoon floated back to him, where Papa mentioned the song from the Chord of Souls . . . and then that weird, almost
animallike series of sounds he had made. “I'm not sure.”

Helen shifted, moving away slightly so that she could turn to look at him. “Really?”

Scott nodded. Shrugged. “Well . . . I think it was a book. But I don't know which one.”

“Why do you think it was a book?”

“Something Papa said to me once.”

“What?”

“I can't remember!” he snapped, immediately regretting it. “Sorry. Just . . . something about something he'd found out in the desert. It was just a story.”

“You're sure?”

“Yes. No. Everything with Papa was strange.”

Helen was silent for a while, sipping her wine and staring at the blank TV screen. Scott could see them both reflected in there. When he was a kid he'd believed that his reflection was another person.

“He talks about it in the letter as though it's still around,” she said.

Scott nodded. But he thought,
Is that what he really says?
And the letter was a shape in his pocket, yearning to be read once again.

The doorbell rang. Scott jumped, but Helen was on her feet before him. He followed her into the hallway, and the instant he left the living room dread clasped hold of him.
Don't answer
, he thought.
Don't go, don't go
. He was trying to speak those words, but something had happened to his mouth. He clasped the wineglass in his right hand and heard a
tink
as it cracked.

Helen unlocked the front door and drew it open.

There was no one there. Day was slipping toward dusk, and trees and bushes made familiar shadows across their front garden. The Astra sat on the drive, glinting with a few diamond spots of rain.

There was no one there, but Scott was so desperate for Helen not to move over the threshold that he stepped forward and grasped her arm.

“Ouch!” She pulled away, catching sight of the cracked wineglass spilling wine onto his right sleeve. “What have you done?”

“Glass broke.” Scott was staring out into the garden, trying to use the failing daylight to discern just what was wrong out there.
Or is it all in here?
he thought, not sure whether he meant the house or somewhere even deeper.

He could feel the letter creased against his buttock.

“Get to the kitchen; you'll stain the carpet!” Helen was already trying to steer him inside, and for that he was glad. She swung the door closed behind her.

“Lock it,” he said.

“Scott—”

He backed along the hall, holding his arm up so that his sleeve soaked up most of the spilling wine. “Lock it, please.”

She locked the door, and Scott turned and hurried into the kitchen. By the time Helen stood beside him at the sink, he'd put down the glass and was dabbing at his shirt with a damp cloth. He took it off, Helen soaked it beneath the tap, and then he heard the sound of something scoring across a pane of glass.

“I fucking
hate
that!” Helen said, wincing.

“The living room.”

“That bloody rosebush of yours.”

Scott turned and went back into the living room, still topless. His belly swung over his belt, handles bulging at his hips. He hated being naked, even if it was only Helen who saw. He could have been so much better.
There's so much more to see
, Papa had said.
This world's just a veil
.

“Damn it, Papa!” Something waved beyond the window, vanishing from view as if being drawn away.

“What?” Helen called from the kitchen.

“Nothing.” Scott's heart was pummeling at his chest. He pulled out the letter, opened it, and read it again, and it mentioned the Chord of Souls, and he felt a sense of doom closing in around him, as though reading the letter was inviting in the same fate that had consumed Papa in the end. Murder and suicide. Perhaps the old man really had been mad after all.

Scott wondered whether insanity was hereditary.

Helen came in and surprised him by hugging him tight. “That was weird,” she said. “Maybe we need more wine?”