Where the Birds Hide at Night Read online

  ‘No, no!’

  ‘So, how did your interview go?’

  ‘Very well, thanks,’ she responded very positively indeed, a jump in her gait.

  ‘Well I’m here if you need any assistance! I know lots about the place, I’m quite keen on fighting crime,’ I said.

  ‘Thanks, I’ll remember that.’

  As she walked away I felt her drawing closer to me than ever before.

  * * *

  A few months had passed now, and my “visits” to the museum club had continued apace. They had not mentioned Lucy since that very first meeting, and nor had I. But, she was at the forefront of my mind at all times. She had since moved out of her parents house into a flat near the police station. I had offered my help in her moving in, and been honoured with the task of some heavy lifting. She had rewarded me with a coffee on a couple of occasions, and we had shared hours of notes about various murder cases in the local area over the years. She seemed to relish reading up about the most brutal of crimes, never fazed by the ever heinous nature of them.

  One tuesday evening, whilst playing whist with Mother and Aunt Sally down at the local community centre, I won a cheap bottle of wine on the raffle. I kept it for a week or more, wondering what to do with it. Stuart was keen that he sample some, but I declined his request.

  ‘Lucy and I are going to have it,’ I told him.

  ‘Lucy,’ he laughed. ‘You’ll never get in her knickers.’

  ‘You’re so base, so tiresome,’ I shot back.

  ‘And you’re not even anywhere near her level, dickwad,’ he laughed again. ‘She wouldn’t shag you if you were the last man on earth. She’s just stringing you along like a little donkey, getting you to run errands for her.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ I spat, sick of his poison.

  ‘I’ve got more of a chance with her,’ was his deluded continuance of this pile of tosh. ‘I’m more her type.’

  ‘And what’s that, a tosser?’

  ‘Let’s face it, Pete, I’ve got the looks… and the brains, for that matter.’

  I left him to his little thoughts, resolving to prove him wrong. I felt my superiority over him, and many others, growing with each new meeting I had with the museum club. They understood me, to an extent, and even though it did feel peculiar and almost like some form of theistic ritual, I continued to attend their gatherings. I was welcomed and encouraged in the widening of my thoughts. Yes, I kept quiet about Lucy due to their apparent disapproval, but everything else about it was fine. Never did I see their faces, but I heard their voices and repeated and learnt the words they spoke. There was much to hear about my apparent past lives, and how I had been one of the first to connect with The Space hundreds of years ago. It sounded at once fanciful, but equally as believable. I wanted to believe, I wanted it to be true. Eventually, as the months wore on, I could almost hear The Space talking to me. I had a strange vision, snippets of past lives playing out in my mind. One even showed the future, where my current body was aged and I had a daughter named Chloe. I appeared to be a single parent, and this troubled me somewhat. Was Lucy the mother, or somebody else? And, what had happened to her? One day they thought I was “ready” for “stage two” of the process I appeared to be going through, and they presented me with a train ticket for a journey I was to undertake the very next day. I would travel across town to a cemetery where I would truly feel The Space running through me.

  That evening I rang the bell to Lucy’s flat, and she let me in. I had the wine, and offered it to her. Reluctantly she took it, suggesting we open it there and then and consume it together. We had a recently solved case to toast, and I was not going to say no to drinking in her company. Soon the bottle was gone and I was wishing we had another. Suddenly Lucy presented one, and we began at that one too.

  ‘We’ve become close friends lately, Lucy,’ I started, both of us still sitting at her tiny kitchen table. Her flat was little more than one room, but I guess it was a haven away from any parents or siblings.

  ‘We have, you’re right! Who’d have thought it, we hated each other in school!’ she laughed.

  ‘I never hated you, Lucy,’ I drunkenly gushed. ‘I just thought you too gorgeous to ever fancy any one like me back. I had no confidence.’

  ‘And have you any confidence now?’

  ‘Confidence for what?’ I asked naively.

  ‘To lean in and try to kiss me.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Hmm, I dunno. Will you slap me?’

  ‘Why don’t you find out?’

  I did lean in, and she slapped me lightly and playfully, pulling my head closer so we could embrace. It was everything I had expected it to be and more – my first ever kiss with the ultimate girl. I was in heaven, our lips and tongues uniting and jousting as if they’d been doing it for centuries. We were both, perhaps, a little new to this, and neither quite knew how to proceed. It did not, therefore, immediately lead to the bedroom, but what did occur in the kitchen was beyond anything I had thus far experienced in life.

  I awoke the next morning, half naked, next to her on the sofa. My mind was hazy, my head pounding. She was still sleeping, but soon stirred to find me sitting up and staring down at her.

  ‘Hey,’ she said.

  ‘Hey,’ I replied, unsure how she might react. Was it all a drunken mistake last night, or truly the culmination of our undeniable bond? She rubbed her eyes before stretching her arms. ‘I enjoyed last night.’

  ‘Me too.’ We sat in silence for a moment, before I cleared my throat. ‘Lucy, I think I love you.’ I think I did.

  ‘You’re good at just blurting these things out, aren’t you?!’

  ‘Sorry, it’s too soon. I just, I just don’t want you to think I’m some user or a snake or anything.’

  She took my hand. ‘I love you too, Peter,’ she said rather casually through a yawn, ‘you’re really sweet.’ She placed her hand on my chest and rested her head on it. ‘We’ve got something really nice going here. Let’s get married!’ she giggled. ‘That’ll cause a stir.’

  ‘Will you marry me?’ I asked her, deadly serious.

  ‘Of course!’

  I don’t know how serious she was, but I was. This was the most successful thing that I could perhaps ever hope for in life, aside from The Space. No, this could be even more successful than that. This was truly real, and right here right now. I could really stick it to Stuart with this one. She caught sight of the time, and I sensed she wanted to get on doing something. She was not for lazing around. Besides, I did have my “big day” with the museum club ahead. That seemed somewhat immaterial and small now compared to what had happened between Lucy and me.

  ‘I’m not due in to the station until this afternoon, but I have a mountain of studying. I must get on,’ she said.

  I knew how important it was to her, and was not about to stand in her way. That could come later, when we had truly established something more solid. I got washed and left her. It still wasn’t half eight and I suddenly thought about Stuart again. He was on his final exam study break from school, his step into adulthood coming as fast as mine appeared to be. He’d probably still be in bed, but I couldn’t wait to brag. I called home from the phone box outside Lucy’s flat to goad him with my news. Mother answered, and she was both furious and relieved to hear my voice.

  ‘Where are you, what have you been doing?’ she cried at me. But, all I wanted to do was tell Stuart. Eventually she put him on and his reaction was not what I had expected. He was rather congratulatory.

  * * *

  I made for the railway station on foot, embarking on my journey across town to the cemetery I’d been instructed to go to. When I arrived, there was a funeral in progress. I held back, watching from afar as a coffin was lowered into its final resting place. Soon the mourners dispersed and I made my way to the fresh grave as two middle-aged men in overalls began shovelling in soil. They didn’t speak to me and I didn’t speak to them, and there was no gravestone to mark the plot’s occupant.

>   Looking around, I caught sight of one of the hooded figures standing over a grave in the distance. I had never seen any of them alone before. They had always been united as six, never split or separate. I headed over, coming to stand by their side. I looked at the gravestone. It was old and tired, lichen-ridden and hardly legible. I crouched down, squinting. It read “RIP Peter Smith 1859-1895”.

  ‘Same name as me,’ I noted to the hooded figure.

  ‘It is you. You have lived many lives throughout history.’

  ‘Am I always called Peter Smith?’

  ‘Labels are unimportant. It could so easily read a myriad of other names you have gone under.’

  ‘Then why doesn’t it?’

  ‘You are Peter Smith now, so you see your other selves as Peter Smith also.’

  I studied the gravestone again. ‘Thirty-six. I wasn’t very old, was I?’

  ‘It is a difficult age to live past, being as it was your original self’s set of years.’

  Was I destined to forever re-live an existence of thirty-six years, going on until time itself ceased to be? I could not tell, and didn’t want to ask. For some reason it already felt like I had lived my current life numerous times before, trapped in this body and unable to move forward to my next life in the future. What was holding me back?

  ‘Where are the others?’ I asked.

  ‘Waiting.’

  ‘Waiting where, and for what?’

  ‘Stretch your mind to The Space, seek out the answers yourself.’

  I looked long and hard at the gravestone. Perhaps the museum club had thought coming here and presenting me with a prior self would re-jig my memory. There was only the slight inkling of something other than imagination in my mind – I could see somebody dead, somebody sprawled on the floor covered in blood. The vision wouldn’t allow me specifics, nor even a hint at a clue. All I knew was that this person had been murdered. I turned to look again at the figure, but I was now alone. There was nothing left for me to do but return home. But first, I wanted to see Lucy again. She would probably not be at her flat, no doubt having gone to the police station by now. Still, I didn’t want to see her there. I wanted to see her at the flat. That was where we could continue our bodily embrace. I decided to go there and wait for her return, whereby we could carry on where we had left off early this morning. Entrusted with a spare key over a month before that I’d never used up until now, I was able to let myself in. I knew she wouldn’t mind, not now we were engaged.

  I walked into the hallway. It was dark, the curtains still drawn. I opened them and walked into the living room. Words cannot describe the sight that awaited me. There was Lucy, crawled on the carpet and covered in blood. She was naked, her battered body left in a heap like a discarded pile of rubble. I dropped to my knees, weeping, shaking her and begging her to wake up.

  * * *

  The police had me lined up as her killer, and this was too much to contend with. I became cold, uncooperative and disruptive to their neat plans for a tidy case. Noose was the only one who believed me, for no other reason than he just did; but he had his own problems. As he was leading me through the police reception one day during investigations, his wife and their young son charged in and began yelling abuse at him.

  ‘How could you do this to your family?’ she was screeching, the tears flowing and her face bright red. She was certainly older than her husband, and looked rather drawn and lifeless with it too. There was something not altogether sincere about her tears. Indeed, why had she come to Noose’s place of work to have this argument? ‘Where is she then?’ she went on.

  ‘Go away Sam, I’m working.’

  ‘Look,’ she carried on, yanking at her son’s arm and pushing him at Noose. ‘Just look at what you’re ruining for a quick fling with that slut Nicola.’ The boy looked up at his father, puzzled and as angry as his mother.

  ‘Please, we’ll have this discussion later. I must get on with Peter’s case.’

  ‘Ah, so this is the Peter Smith you’re so obsessed with, is it? Don’t bother coming home, Henry, we’re finished.’ She stormed off, dragging the boy with her.

  ‘But, Sam, wait,’ he called back.

  She turned back in the doorway, shouting: ‘Always about the job with you, never about your family. Well, you enjoy yourself. Poor Gary doesn’t even know who his father is these days. He never sees you now, and he never will again.’ She left, the door swinging open and shut for nearly a minute afterwards due to her force.

  ‘Bit awkward, that,’ I said to Noose, trying to look sympathetic. I was not really in the mood for sympathy – nobody had shown me any – but this sergeant had at least shown me some form of care and interest. I tried desperately to block all the hurt and torment from my mind. Lucy was everything to me, I just had to make her nothing or her senseless and barbaric murder would be my undoing.

  * * *

  Following my acquittal for Lucy’s murder I should have been in utter turmoil at her death, but I had done well to block the emotions. My only thoughts were a wish that I had actually been the one who murdered her, then at least I’d have known who did it. Not knowing was almost as painful as the loss of her, which I had come to terms with in my compartmental way. She was a section in my life, and each section had its place. There was an order, and I’d be damned if I was not going to maintain that order. One such order was my membership of the museum club, which they had told me was for life. I returned, the first time in over a year since Lucy’s death, little knowing I was stepping into yet another bout of madness.

  The room where they gathered, and where I had first met them, was simply no longer there. The door had been removed from its hinges, opening the space that once lay behind it out and now part of the corridor outside. There were no barriers, no sheaths to conceal its contents. The walls had been whitewashed and a few paintings by local artists hung lazily upon them. I walked around studying them for a while, not quite knowing what to do. One painting caught my eye. It was of a light blue flat cap sitting on a wooden stool in the middle of a bare room, and it was just credited to “Anonymous”. It seemed to have no meaning whatsoever, serving no purpose at all for the viewer. Then, I turned and saw that very same light blue flat cap sitting on a wooden stool in the middle of the room. I felt sure it hadn’t been there when I first came in. Still, nothing surprised or shocked me anymore. A simple hat on a simple stool was simply nothing to me. I’m not saying it wasn’t a nice hat, because it was. Presently I stepped up to the stool and picked the hat up. It was ice cold, almost painfully so, but soft also. So soft was it, that I was dying to try it on. If only it hadn’t been so cold. I wanted it to be nice and warm and then it began to change temperature. Rather quickly, in fact, until it was just the way I wanted it to be. I put it on and it fit perfectly. Turning back to the painting, it was now a mirror and I studied my reflection. The hat aged me, perhaps, but I liked it. Finders, keepers. I strolled back out of the room with my new hat and bumped into a little old lady halfway down the corridor.

  ‘Tell me, young man,’ she said to me, ‘can you tell me where the hat exhibition is?’

  ‘I cannot, I’m afraid,’ I replied, looking around for a directional clue. The old one looked up and squinted at my face.

  ‘Do I know you? You look familiar.’

  Quickly I moved along, not wanting her to associate me with any recent events that had occurred. I was not that person, I was not a part of that.

  I kept on going, one corridor leading to another, and yet another. Endless, identical lines of space bringing my person deeper and deeper into the warren of the museum. Eventually I hit a dead end, a sign on the wall in front of me reading “NO WAY OUT. TURN BACK”. I tried to turn back, but felt the uncontrollable urge to push on in spite of the impersonal command. I heard voices behind me, the museum club members no longer talking in unison but trying to block each other out.

  ‘Reaping Icon is within these three,’ one called out. I turned to face them. Three were kneeling do
wn, their heads bowed. The other three were standing behind them, each one holding a knife to the one kneeling below them.

  ‘Reaping Icon is within us all,’ one of the kneeling cried out.

  ‘We must sacrifice you for the good of preserving the final link.’ With this, the knives were dragged across the throats of the three kneeling figures and they collapsed in pools of their own blood. I was stunned into silence, again believing I was probably just watching a horror film on TV as the three slayers proceeded to mutilate the faces of the deceased. Stricken with a detached complacency that I would somehow not be harmed, I lost myself in thoughts of my new hat and could not bring myself to catch a glimpse of any of the faces of the figures – be they alive, or dead. If I did not believe it had just happened, then it could not have just happened. Who did my hat belong to originally? Why had they just left it on the stool? Maybe they’d left it behind by accident and would be looking for it right now. Had I done the right thing by just helping myself to it? Maybe not, but to blazes with them! It was my hat now, and I was damned if I was going to relinquish ownership of it.

  * * *

  To ever think upon that not requested,

  The juvenile expression of wanton regret -

  If ever there impressed a mind its own,

  Would deviation be a gladness?

  Poppycock, gobbledygook,

  And all that jazz –

  Open to nothing but nothing;

  A life for a life.

  WHAT HAPPENED TO NOOSE NEXT

  (PART TWO)

  Peter looked over at the three hooded figures and grimaced. ‘You’re murderers, and you got away with it.’

  ‘Ending the lives of the other three was a necessity to try and halt the spread of Reaping Icon – he had destroyed their minds.’

  ‘Had he?!’

  Noose coughed, the damp of the hole affecting his chest. He, beginning to accept Peter’s return to life, turned to face the hooded figures also. ‘I remember those three murders in the museum. It was like a sacrifice, the bodies all defaced and dismembered. You’re fucking evil.’ He scratched his chin. ‘Is that what I’m here for, to be sacrificed?’