May sits across from me, concern painted across her round face. ‘So this weirdo’s been following you? He followed you here from Cambridge and he knows your name?’
‘That’s the long and short of it, yeah,’ I say. I glance at Martin, feel a stab of guilt at his agitation.
I got off the bus in the town centre and called him rather than go to the library. I had been, simply put, a tad frantic. He had my sister in the car by then and they wasted no time getting from the train station to my location outside a grim little Italian café with a cracked window and hollow-eyed staff.
‘You’re going to call the police, yeah?’ May asks. Commands, really. She’s not known for her patience. Or her tolerance for disagreement. Or her gentle manners for that matter.
‘And say what, exactly? Some fella in a brown coat, who I’m reasonably sure I’ve seen before, sat next to me on the bus? It hardly constitutes harassment, does it?’
A low growl, punctuated by a violent drop of the eyebrows, escapes my half-sister.
I appreciate her coming. Truly, I do. I’m not sure what good she can do though. The simple fact is that this situation has little to do with her. My father isn’t her father, this isn’t her mess to clean up. And while it’s certainly proven to be an upsetting situation, there’s no real indication that I’m in true danger. Creeped out, certainly.
Martin sits beside me on the hotel room bed and slings an arm around my shoulder. He says, ‘do you think it’s perhaps time we went home? We can come back and sort this shit another time. You need to rest, you need to prepare yourself properly before going any further with whatever this is.’
I wish, so profoundly, that I could simply agree with him. Unfortunately I know that escape isn’t an option. I had burst the dam in my desire to taste the water behind it. There will be a flood, there’s no getting around it. My best chance at survival is to go with the flow and hold my breath as long as I can.
‘He’s right,’ May says. ‘You’re floundering, Owen. Weird blackouts and spontaneous nose bleeds is one thing, almost understandable given the circumstances, but a stalker is serious business. It’s time to regroup.’
I sigh, shake my head. ‘It’s not that easy. I can’t explain it but I need to see this thing through. It’s now or never.’
My sister stands and walks towards the window. She eyes the car park, scans every corner, then draws the curtains closed and turns to face me. ‘I don’t like it, but I think I get it.’
I know she does. To some degree, anyway. She found her father shortly after Mum died. He’s in prison for manslaughter. He nailed some kid with his car because he’d had more than a few before getting behind the wheel. As far as I know, May hasn’t kept in touch with him, though she has developed something of a relationship with her half-siblings on that side. The whole deal messed her up good and proper. Hardened her.
Martin tuts and shakes his head. ‘I suppose this means we’re not heading back to Cambridge today,’ he says to May.
‘I think it’s best that we support Owen through this. And we’ll do it properly, responsibly,’ May says to Martin before turning to me. ‘You’re not going anywhere or doing anything without one or both of us, got it?’
I nod while I stand. ‘I’m going to the toilet. Either of you is welcome to join me, since you’re so set on babysitting.’
Neither of them take me up on my offer. I make my way across the hotel room and seal myself inside the spacious bathroom. It’s a nice space, welcoming neutral tones and a large mirror over the sink opposite an immaculate bath tub. Martin always insists on booking rooms with bathtubs, he can’t stand showers and is clinically incapable of compromise when it comes to hygiene arrangements.
I sit down, take care of business, and linger for a few minutes, staring at my left hand. First the palm side, then the back. I wonder how similar my father’s hands looked to my own. If you were to swap mine for his, my relatively clean fingers for the blood-stained digits of a predator, would I even notice? How would I ever know?
A knock on the door. Martin says, ‘You alright in there, Fin?’
And so it begins.
‘Fine,’ I say, ‘I’ll just be a minute.’
I’m washing my hands and catastrophising about how overbearing my partner and sister are likely to be in the near future when I notice my reflection. It’s different. Shorter. The eyes are wrong, the face is slightly off.
I examine the mirror, try to ascertain whether it’s warped or twisted. Nothing seems out of place.
I step back, meet my own gaze. The quizzical expression on my reflection’s face smooths, becomes a soft smile.
‘Hello, son,’ it says.
A feeling hits me, a dense compression. It’s as though gravity is giving me special attention. Breath takes effort. I try to force air into my lungs, rapid shallow inhalations that provide nothing other than a destabilising spin at the peripherals.
My reflection—no, not mine. My birth father’s reflection, occupying the place of my own, grins and raises its eyebrows. ‘We’re almost there. Almost ready,’ it says.
‘You’re not real,’ I say in a stage whisper.
‘And you think you are?’ it says. My father’s reflection begins to raise its left hand, brings it to its shoulder and gives a little finger wiggling wave.
My right follows. The involuntary role reversal disturbs the rapid thump of my heart, provokes an internal scream and a sudden expulsion of cold sweat.
The reflection belts out a single loud ‘Ha!’ and says, ‘Now just stay put, enjoy the soundscapes.’
A crash from the other side of the door. I hear Martin’s voice shout my name before a sickening thunk. A woman’s scream. May. Metallic whistling, masculine grunting, the sound of breaking wood.
I want to turn away from the mirror and reach for the door but I can’t. I’m stuck, locked in eye contact with a dead man. Is Martin okay? May? I’m here, alone—more or less—and the two people closest to me are out there with fuck knows what happening to them. I find myself yearning for any indication that those noises are simply an aspect of the hallucination, madness rather than malice visited on my family.
The chaotic rhythm of physical conflict plays out, too close for comfort and too far for agency. Things get very quiet for a moment, then I hear May shout, ‘Fuck!’ I hear several stomping footsteps and then hammering on the door. ‘Owen, are you okay?!’
My father’s reflection says, ‘toodloo,’ and I’m free. I divert my eyes from the glass, dive for the door and unlock it with shaking hands. Hands that are mine, for now.
My sister embraces me, tears streaking down her face. She’s got a collapsible metal baton in one hand and her T-shirt is torn at the neck.
‘They came from nowhere, Owen, and they took Martin. I clocked one of ’em, he backed off and said Donald would know where to go. That’s your uncle, right?’