The Stone Man - A Science Fiction Thriller (8 page)

Anyway. Shaun’s house.

***

I woke up an hour later, and realised that I’d fallen asleep on the sofa without meaning to. My first thought was to assess how I felt, and to compare it to earlier on the flyover. Was this another blackout like before, or a combination of exhaustion, dehydration and booze? I sat very still for a few seconds, and came to a conclusion; this wasn’t the same as the flyover. This felt different.

Yes … I knew this feeling from past experience; this was waking up drunk. Not as drunk as I’d been before sleeping, but still decidedly tipsy, nonetheless. I knew the light-headed, slightly headache-y feeling that went with a pause in heavy drinking. I’d always thought of it as the tipping point. One more and you’d be almost instantly on your way, pull up now and you could become kind-of sober, kind-of fast, mentally but not legally. I needed water, I knew that much for certain.

I struggled to my feet, nearly fell back onto the sofa, then pulled myself upright and took in my surroundings. Shaun’s living room, at least, had the air of a house designed for resale; Magnolia walls, stripped of paper and painted over, with small, carefully placed shelves on the wall bearing miniature coloured candles. A fluffy, single coloured cream rug lay on the red pile carpet, and the too-small floor space housed a three-piece black leather suite, with the armchairs crammed into the corners of the room so that the whole set
just
fit inside the floor area. The pictures on the walls were canvas frames bearing terrible, colourful acrylic artwork that either Shaun and his wife—I couldn’t remember her name—or a friend had painted. Either that or they had felt sorry for the artist and bought their works out of pity. Behind the sofa, a staircase led to the upper floor. I was never a fan of that kind of thing. Made the whole room feel like a hallway to me, but each to their own.

I heard noise from the door at the far side of the room, tinny sounds that suggested a TV or a radio, and assumed that was where my hosts were to be found. I headed towards it, feeling unsteady on my feet and becoming more and more aware of the need for some water. As I pushed the door open and found myself in the kitchen, the harsh, unshaded light from the spotlight bulbs hurt my eyes and my head. If the living room was magnolia, the small kitchen was white-white-white, with the odd cheap reflective surface here and there. I didn’t like it; someone was thinking about nothing but the property ladder. The floor was tiled with terracotta-effect squares, and the cupboards were, oddly, as white as the walls. Shaun was sitting at the pine (effect?) four-seater table by the wall, watching the small LCD TV on the countertop, whilst his wife turned to see me as she paused halfway through loading the dishwasher. To her infinite credit, she actually smiled.

“Aha, the sleeper awakes,” she said, with genuine amusement, and Shaun turned round also, smiling too.

“Here he is!” he said, grinning. “Thought we’d watch telly in here, didn’t want to disturb you. How you feeling now, bud? Any clearer?” I held my thumb and forefinger tips about a centimetre apart, and raised my hand.

“Not bad,” I said, smiling back. “I think I’d better have some water, to be honest.”

“Good idea,” said his wife (I still couldn’t remember) as she went to the cupboard, still smiling, and took out a pint glass to fill at the sink. “We haven’t got a lot in, but have a look in the cupboards and the fridge; help yourself to whatever you want. Seriously, I’m going shopping tomorrow, so go nuts.” She crossed the room to hand me the glass, and I was struck by how right my original, hazy memory had been. She was indeed gorgeous.

She looked a few years younger than Shaun perhaps, in her late twenties, and tiny. Short enough to come up to the bottom of my neck, which isn’t normally my preference. As she looked up at me, offering the glass, I looked in her brown eyes and took in all of her beautiful, high cheek-boned face, framed by a mess of long, light brown hair, and found myself caught for a second. I was speechless. Maybe it was the booze, but I don’t think I’m exaggerating. She was beautiful. However, I wasn’t gone enough, or drunk enough, to miss the slight creasing of her forehead as I stared for a moment too long, and made a comedic show of shaking myself ‘awake’.

“Sorry, I was miles away there! As soon as you mentioned food, my brain just went, you know, ‘Mmm …
food!
’” I laughed, unconvincingly, and took the glass, but it seemed good enough for her; her expression relaxed and a more genuine sounding laugh of her own escaped her lips.

“I’m not surprised, I can smell the booze on you … but if anyone’s got an excuse after what’s happened to your poor flat, it’s you. Really sorry to hear about that,” she said, with genuine sympathy in her expression as she reached out her arm and rubbed my shoulder. I actually felt myself respond slightly to that, and told my body to keep it together.

“Ah, all the important stuff is still here with me,” gesturing in the direction of the bag I’d left in the other room, “And it might have even been worth it, who knows? Got some decent early shots of the statue thing, and some close-ups other people weren’t around to see—”

I didn’t get to finish my sentence, as Shaun was already out of his seat.

“You’re kidding!” he said, moving closer, “Where? On your camera? Have you got it with you?”

“Yeah, sure,” I replied, heading back to the other room and actually feeling slightly annoyed, in my drunken state. I just wanted to drink my water and eat. Couldn’t this wait? I staggered over to my bag and fished out the camera, then swayed back to the kitchen and handed it to Shaun. “Knock yourself out, buddy.” I turned to his wife, wishing he’d refer to her by name so I could find out what the fuck it actually was. “Sure it’s okay to help myself?”

“Of course, of course,” she said, but she was only half-paying attention, already moving to Shaun’s side to get a closer look at the shots on my camera. All I cared about was picking my glass up from where I’d left it, and rummaging around to grab whatever savoury grub I could find. If seeing my pictures was going to help repay my bed and board, then all the better. As they oohed and ahhed over the close-up images—even though there were no doubt countless more online for them to look at by now—I gave up on the cupboards and went to rummage in the fridge. Straightaway my eye fell on a packet of cheap, budget brand sausages. They would do perfectly.

“Okay to have these?” I asked, straightening up, sausages in hand. Shaun’s wife barely looked around.

“Mmm? Oh, yeah. Go for it,” she said, waving her hand, and went back to perusing the camera photos. The pan and oil were already out on the side, so I turned on the stove, my mouth already beginning to water. Normally, when I’ve been drinking, I forget all about eating, but right then I was ravenous. At that moment, as I put the pan on the heat, a number of odd things happened all at once.

From behind me, I heard Shaun quietly mutter “Whoa,” under his breath, and the murmuring they’d both been producing as they looked at the photos suddenly stopped. I didn’t look around straightaway, but when Shaun’s wife spoke again, what she said made me mildly curious enough to turn and check.

“Yeah … yeah, oh, definitely, yeah … you too, yeah?” she said to Shaun, and put the camera down on the table with her left hand, taking Shaun’s in her right. She sat on one of the dining chairs, looking into his face as he nodded and closed his eyes. He began to breathe heavily and slowly, swaying slightly on the spot as he did so, and grimacing gently like a man trying not to vomit. She gripped his hand tighter, trying to comfort him, but screwed up her own eyes in pain as she put her left hand to her temple, moaning slightly.

“Jesus,” she said through slightly gritted teeth, “I’m
sick
of this shit already!” I started to ask if everything was okay, when I became suddenly aware of my left hand gripping the handle of the pan unnaturally tightly. Confused, I tried to relax it, and couldn’t, as my right fist also curled into a ball and began to shake, and my stomach tensed as hard as it possibly could. This was when I realised everything in my body was suddenly contracting, and hard, and my jaw locked painfully as I suddenly sprayed spittle from my mouth. I yanked the pan backwards off the stove, oil and sausages spilling out onto the floor as my legs jerked and I crashed to earth along with the contents of the pan. I lay on the tiles and convulsed, head pounding, unable to take a breath as I stared wide-eyed at the base of the kitchen cabinets, too stunned to panic. I heard Shaun and
Laura
—I remembered then, of all moments, that her name was
Laura
—overcome their sudden discomfort and rush over to me, heard them saying my name and asking me what had happened, felt them kneeling down and trying to hold me still, heard Shaun telling Laura to grab a wooden spoon for some reason.

Externally, I was all chaos, but strangely, inside, the stunned feeling gave way to a sensation of calm. It was possibly the single strangest sensation of my entire life, up to that point at least. I could feel my body’s spasms and the way my teeth ground against each other, could feel the way my knuckles pushed up, against, and into my face as my feet rattled against the vinyl tiles; yet at the same time, it was as if I was only aware of them as if they were happening to someone else, and that they were of no consequence. It was like I suddenly had more important things to think about, and that sense of purpose was so all-encompassing that it made me feel like I’d found my place in the universe. In that moment I was comforted entirely by knowing that all I had to do was wait. I know, it sounds insane, doesn’t it? The droolings of a hippy shaman. But that’s the only way I can describe it.

Here it comes
, my body seemed to say, and it was right; an image began to emerge in my mind. The only way I can explain it would be to ask you to imagine letting someone else imagine
for
you. I don’t know. That’s the closest to it. But anyway, there it was, someone’s face appearing before my mind’s eye. A blur of a face, at least, but a face nonetheless.

A man’s face, I was certain. You might think I would be going crazy with confusion at this point, confronted with the insanity of an unknown visage appearing in my head, but not then. All I felt was calm, calm enough to consider the image before me. A blonde-haired man, thin in the face, but the image wasn’t clear enough to determine his age. I tried to focus, but I was suddenly distracted by the feeling of Shaun trying to shove a wooden spoon between my jaws. They were trying to stop me swallowing my tongue.

Abruptly, the image disappeared and my body relaxed. The sense of total mental calm was instantly replaced with a strong sense of the absurd, as I found myself on the floor of a relative stranger’s kitchen with him and his wife trying to jam a cooking utensil into my mouth.

They realised I’d stopped fitting, and relaxed themselves, pulling away the spoon and slowly lowering my head to the floor. I lay there, and stared up at Shaun and Laura, who were breathing heavily. They looked at each other, and nodded at the same time.

“Gone again,” he said, and Laura nodded once more. They looked back down at me as I lay there, blinking and suddenly feeling very tired.

“Can you stand?” Shaun said, and I nodded, holding out my hand. He helped me up into one of the dining chairs, and then sat down himself, as did Laura. There was a moment of quiet aftershock, and Shaun slowly took a deep breath and blew air out of his cheeks.

“That’s twice,” he said, looking at the floor. He picked up the glass of water that I’d previously left on the table, leant his head back and drained it. No one spoke, and the only sound was the drone of the small TV in the background. My head was full of questions for them, but at that moment, the only question I wanted an answer to was the one that no one
could
answer; what the flying fuck was the face I’d seen in my head all about? I wish I had the words to explain the sensation of seeing it, and as someone who writes for a living, the fact that I don’t would, once upon a time, have embarrassed me beyond measure. Nowadays … pride is not much of an issue. But the one thing I knew beyond any measure was that it was not a hallucination. It had been too …
artificial
, is the only way I can describe it.

It suddenly occurred to me that, although Shaun and Laura’s response had clearly not been as intense as mine, we had all experienced physical symptoms as a result of
something
, and all at once. Looking at them as they were—Laura holding her head and Shaun still breathing heavily, relishing the feeling of his now-settled stomach—there was no doubt about it. More importantly, as I remembered what they’d just said, they’d obviously experienced something like this before.

“What …” I started, then broke off to swallow as my throat was now very dry. I inhaled through my nose, resettling myself, and continued. “What the fuck was that?” It was Laura who responded first, without looking up.