Darkside

He stood and watched the mist swirl around his legs. His own feet were dimmed by it. Soon it would cover him like a tide and he would be gone.

The thought was calming.

He would be gone. He wouldn’t have to do his job any more – this job he was failing at so spectacularly.

Jonas closed his eyes.

Now that the adrenaline of the walk up here had worn off, he was bitterly cold. He had left his gloves in the car, along with the scratchy blanket.

No matter.

Jonas sat down.

It was cold and wet but the relief numbed him. The relief of calm acceptance.

He crossed his legs like a schoolboy and put his hands on his knees.

This was the end and it wasn’t so bad.

It was the easiest thing he’d ever done.

He wondered whether he would fall over, or remain sitting for hikers to find here like an icy Buddha.

Jonas smiled.

The mist stroked his cheek like a dead lover.

His phone rang.

Somewhere in the white nothingness, it rang its sensible old-fashioned telephone ring – like the phone they’d had when he was a child.

It rang and rang. Maybe it was Lucy. Maybe she needed him. Jonas got up to follow the sound.

He found his phone just as it stopped ringing. He picked it out of a depression in the snow, which his brain only slowly registered as his own footprint.

He followed his prints back to the car, then called Lucy, but there was no answer.

Jonas drove back towards Shipcott and the dream faded to white behind him.

As it did, he forgot all about the ice Buddha and all about Peter Priddy.

* * *

Marvel was late again. The cars were gone again. Deja vu again.

He walked from Joy’s kitchen across the yard to his stable. His cottage. His cottage that used to be a stable.

He took a piss and did his teeth but didn’t bother changing his clothes.

They had left him the Honda this time, which was the best of the cars they’d brought with them.

Marvel was still bleary-eyed as he swung the car out of the farm driveway and on to the snowy road. Once again the slush had frozen overnight and the Honda immediately slid sideways a little. He corrected it easily and stayed in second down the hill.

Halfway down he saw someone stepping into the road ahead. Awkwardly. Someone was coming down the stone steps from the cottages into the lane. He started to brake and the car slowed gently.

He could see now that it was a woman on crutches. Not the old-fashioned under-the-armers, but those steel ones with a grip that went around the forearm. The woman was young, but her legs were crippled – he could see that much. And she didn’t appear to be wearing a coat, just a thick jumper over a floral skirt. And wellington boots. Everyone had those bastards but him!

Marvel expected the woman to turn and walk down the hill, close to the hedge. He thought he’d stop and give her a lift. It was against the rules, but fuck the rules. A woman on crutches in snow. You’d have to be a freak not to stop for her.

But instead of turning, the woman hobbled slowly into the middle of the narrow lane, then turned so that she was facing him, and just stood there!

Marvel braked more firmly.

Too firmly.

Wheels locked and the Honda slid sideways. He applied opposite lock and he thought he’d caught it, then the car gripped briefly and fishtailed away from him again. It slewed once more and – all in slow motion – started to slide down the lane broadside on. Marvel turned the wheel and braked, to no avail.

He looked out of his side window at the woman standing in the road, leaning on her crutches, watching his unusual approach. Part of him was embarrassed, but an increasingly larger part of him was starting to realize that she didn’t understand that he had no control of the car.

She just stood there! As if she was somehow expecting him to go around her!

Thirty yards from the woman, the Honda brushed the hedge and wavered, then kept on going at an only slightly different angle.

And still she stood there.

Marvel yelled, ‘Out of the way!’ through the closed window, then jammed the heel of his hand on to the horn.

She didn’t move. The lane was narrow; the car was wide; there was no way he wasn’t going to hit her unless she moved. For a surreal moment, Marvel looked into her eyes and realized how beautiful she was. And how calm.

Marvel’s entire future flashed before him: the ghastly bump of the car going over the woman, the horror of the eviscerated corpse, the flashing blue lights – and the red one on the breathalyser, the humiliation of the cell in his own nick, the smug look on Reynolds’s forever unpunched face, the collar of his good shirt tight around his neck as the jury foreman stood to condemn him, the slow-drip terror of a cop in prison, the halfway house, the bedsit, the menial office job he’d be lucky to get, the gel-haired teenaged boss who said things like ‘Whatever’ and ‘Facebook’ …

The nightmare that his life would become in a single split second.

Then the rear end hit the opposite bank, the Honda bounced off at a new angle, and – miraculously – slid past the woman in the narrowest of gaps between her and the hedge. The wing mirror actually clipped one of her sticks, and he had time to see her lurch, but not fall, as he passed her.

Another teeth-jarring bump sent the car into a shallow ditch, where it came to a halt sudden enough to throw his forehead against the steering wheel.

Marvel was dazed for a moment and stared stupidly at the unexpected close-up of the slightly retro Honda logo in the centre of the wheel. He thought of Debbie and her lava lamps and that fucking couch. Of putting his shoes on it even though it drove her nuts. Sometimes because it drove her nuts. What kind of prick was he?

Seriously.

What kind of prick?

He jerked in shock at a loud bang on the window beside his right ear, and squinted up at the woman he’d just narrowly avoided squashing to a pulp. He wanted to throw his arms around her and kiss her for not being dead; to cry with gratitude and become a monk and dedicate his life to others as penance for every wrong he’d ever done to anyone.

But she didn’t look grateful. She looked so angry that he was almost afraid to roll down the window, which was plainly stupid, so he did.

‘Are you Marvel?’ she said grittily. And when he nodded she said, ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘Why are you picking on Jonas?’

What a silly thing to say to a grown-up! Marvel would have laughed, except for the fact that the woman he realized must be Jonas Holly’s wife had lost none of her anger between the lane and the cosy little room where they stood now.

He had followed her in, impressed by her dexterity and strength despite the crutches. Up the three stone steps, through the wooden gate, across the uneven slate path and through the front door. She did it all with such determined energy that he dared not even offer his assistance.

She leaned her sticks against the fireplace, where a new fire was made but not lit, and lowered herself on to the couch, from where she eyed him coldly, still apparently expecting an answer.

‘I’m not,’ he said, trying – but failing – not to feel like a naughty schoolboy.

She said nothing, just sat there and looked up at him. Somehow the fact that she was sitting now, while he was still standing, put him at a disadvantage. His feeling of bonhomie at not having flattened her while in the throes