Officer James Wilkins slumped back into his sofa and flicked the television on. He hopped through the channels, but as usual, there was nothing interesting to watch; he just wanted some background noise. He eventually settled on some sort of cookery challenge show; it seemed to run with the theme that “celebrities” were not, on average, particularly good at cooking, with some of them even struggling to throw together a convincing omelette.
It had not been a good day. The escape of the suspect Magnus Thompson had raised more than a few eyebrows, particularly as Wilkins had already submitted his report stating that he intended to release him. Thompson apparently still feeling the need to escape despite the fact that he had seemingly been telling the truth in his interviews suggested to Wilkins, Jensen and their superiors that there was perhaps something more to the situation than there had initially appeared; it certainly looked suspicious, anyway.
A big question hung over the case: how on Earth had he done it? The next morning, his cell was empty, but it was locked up just as tight as it had been the previous evening, and there was no evidence that anyone had forced entry — or, indeed, exit. It was simply as if he had never been in there at all, though the paper trail said otherwise, of course. Thompson had been processed just like any other suspect, and there was both written and recorded evidence of his time in the police station; there was just no sign of him whatsoever.
Wilkins sighed and closed his eyes, the dull murmuring of the TV show proving a relaxing backdrop.
He was roused from his almost-slumber by the “ding!” of the bell on the microwave, indicating that his meal for one was ready. He sighed again, pushed himself up out of the soft sofa, which had been threatening to swallow him, and walked through to the kitchen. He emptied the unappetising-looking pasta bake into his last remaining clean bowl, quickly wiped off a fork that was in the sink and took it back into the living room to eat in front of the TV, as was his custom these days.
His heart wasn’t really in anything these days. He had once enjoyed his work as a police officer, but nowadays it felt hollow and empty, more like he was enforcing rules for the sake of enforcing them rather than to help make society in any way better. He had actually been excited — and slightly sickened at this admission to himself — to find himself investigating something more interesting than yet another crowd of youths standing on a street corner saying “fuck” a little too loudly for the taste of an old lady who lived close by, or a shoplifting incident whose value added up to less than the price of a packet of cigarettes.
Now, though, this case was proving to be just as troublesome as everything else in his life. The escape of Thompson had, of course, been blamed on him, since he was the last officer to deal with him. There was to be “an enquiry” — the station seemed to launch a thousand of these daily — and he had, for the moment, been temporarily removed from the case pending its findings. He knew that by the time the “enquiry” had finished chewing through the reams of red tape that sustained it, Thompson would be long gone, Barman’s body would be in the ground and there would be little hope of ever finding out what the truth really was.
He finished his pasta as the cookery show finished. He put the bowl on the floor and leaned his head back on the sofa, closing his eyes once again. It didn’t take him long to drift off to sleep.
* * * * *
When he awoke, the sun had gone down. The TV was still on; now it seemed to be showing some sort of outdoor survival program, and as Wilkins’ eyes came back into focus he was treated to the sight of the presenter gobbling down some sort of beetle-like creature. Wishing he hadn’t woken up at that exact moment and wincing, he fumbled around for the remote and flicked the screen off. The room filled with darkness, and he just lay there for a moment, contemplating the silence.
Then he started to think, and he didn’t want to do that right now, so he forced himself to stand up, letting out a grunting moan as he did so — he’d been on his feet all day, and his legs were feeling very stiff — and shuffling towards the stairs, intending to head upstairs to bed.
The house was all too quiet now, and far too big for him to live in by himself. This was why he spent the majority of his time when he wasn’t working in the living room watching television; it distracted him and kept his mind busy, and prevented him from thinking about why the house was so quiet.
He trudged up the stairs one at a time, pulled off his clothes and got into bed, closing his eyes right away.
“You want to talk about it?” came a voice he’d heard once or twice before. It was soft, feminine, soothing. He knew it wasn’t really there, but it brought him comfort nonetheless. He said nothing.
“Uh-huh,” said the female voice. “It’s been a bad day, I know. And I bet you’re thinking that things probably can’t get much worse right now, can they?”
His continued his silence.
“Well,” said the voice. “What if I told you that the man you’re looking for can help you out?”
He opened his eyes and sat up groggily. He blinked a few times, then gave a start. A shadowy female figure seemed to be straddling him, but he felt no weight whatsoever from the figure; she seemed to be completely incorporeal, as if she was made from dark mist. But she was most definitely there; he could see her moving and hear her talking.
As he looked at her, the walls of his room seemed to bend and shift around him; must be my eyes adjusting to the dark, he thought.
Then he considered the strangeness of the situation. There was no way there could be a black, shadowy figure made of mist straddling him, but there seemingly was, so perhaps his walls really were bending and shifting, too?
He reached over to the bedside lamp and tried to switch it on. Nothing happened. The figure did not move, but as his eyes continued to adjust to the darkness — he was at least partly right about what he was experiencing — he started to feel like he could make out things that had not been there before; his walls seemed to be covered in black, scrawled writing: words, phrases, short poems and indecipherable symbols. Everywhere he looked, he saw the strange designs; he didn’t know what they were, and they were frightening. But he could not scream; he found himself strangely fascinated, despite the adrenaline of terror rattling around his body.
“What’s going on?” he asked in a cracked voice.
“Oh, this?” said the figure, moving off him and gesturing flamboyantly around the room. “It’s probably a little early to start getting into the details of it all, but rest assured, all will become very clear very soon indeed. I’m glad that you’ve seen it, though; that tells me something important that I needed to know. See you soon.”
The figure vanished, the room seemed to distort again and suddenly Wilkins was dazzled by the light from his lamp, which apparently he had managed to turn on at some point.
He looked around, his heart racing. His walls were clean, albeit shabby, with the wallpaper peeling here and there, but there was no sign of the strange black scrawl that had been there moments earlier. This was, he was sure, the room he knew very well, but he didn’t feel quite so safe and cut off from the rest of the world here any more. Something seemed to be intruding on his sanctuary, and he didn’t like it.
Oh how pathetic they’d think I look if they could see me now, he said to himself as he pulled the covers up over his head and hid beneath them, leaving the light on. He closed his eyes and tried to get to sleep, but his mind kept whirling around a cycle of images like a hyperactive slideshow screensaver: first there was his darkened room as he’d seen it a moment ago, then there was Jensen, then Thompson’s empty cell, and then there was her face, just for a split second. Then the cycle repeated again, and again, and again.
Wilkins screwed up his face as if this would protect him from the mental assault his own imagination and memories were inflicting on him, but it was to no avail; still the images came, cycling around their sequence faster and faster and faster until, eventually, his exhausted body succumbed to sleep.
The assault continued in his dreams, but this time instead of still images he was reliving those moments. In each instance, he tried as hard as he could to escape, to run away from the things he was seeing, but everywhere he turned, the world seemed to turn with him; he could not get away.
He could just about deal with the simpler images. But then he came to the last situation again, and it was painfully vivid in its detail; he walked up to the gurney with that cold, grey, still body on it, looked up at the medical examiner, nodded his mute agreement that the body was indeed who it was thought she was, and then he found himself just staring down at her face, beautiful even in death, even battered and broken and bloodied as it was. She was still beautiful.
His eyes snapped open and he realised he was covered in sweat and breathing rapidly.
There would be no more sleep tonight.
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