The Other People Read online

  He turned off the camper van’s engine, which was probably loud and chugging enough to be heard back at the farmhouse, opened the glovebox and took out a small flashlight. Then he grabbed his thick parka from the passenger seat and shrugged it on. He climbed out of the van and locked the doors. Probably unnecessary. He was procrastinating. Putting the moment off.

  He zipped up the parka, right to his chin. It was cold tonight. His breath puffed out like cigarette smoke. He looked around. To his left, a half-rotted public footpath sign pointed to a narrow gap between overgrown bushes.

  Footpath into woods.

  Gabe wasn’t sure anything good ever came from taking a footpath into the woods, at night, alone.

  He flicked on his flashlight and headed through.

  Eight minutes. Fran checked her watch. Alice had been gone too long. Even taking into account her bathroom phobia, eight minutes was still too long. Fran grabbed her bag and pushed her chair away from the table.

  She hurried down the main thoroughfare, almost empty at this time in the morning. Past a bored-looking cleaner, squeezed into a uniform several sizes too small for his burly frame, sweeping randomly at the floor. Past the W. H. Smith and the gaming section where—even at this hour, and probably even after hell froze over—one sad loner sat tapping at the flashing buttons of a bandit like some kind of fruit-fixated zombie. She rounded the corner and went into the ladies’ toilets.

  “Alice!!”

  She lay on the floor, curled into a fetal ball, halfway along the row of sinks. Her hair had fallen over her face and one hand still loosely clutched her bag. A bit of toilet paper was stuck to the bottom of one boot.

  “Shit.” She knelt down and pushed back Alice’s dark hair. Her breathing was shallow but steady. When Alice went deep, her breathing was so slow Fran had often feared the worst. But now, as she cradled her head on her lap, she could feel it becoming more regular. Any second now, she thought. Come on…

  Alice slowly opened her eyes. Fran waited, watching her blink away the fogginess of sleep. Even though she had been out for only a few minutes, Alice fell hard and fast. Right down to the depths, where the true nightmares swam. Here be monsters.

  Fran knew a little about those nightmares.

  “I’m here, sweetheart. I’m here,” she soothed.

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “It’s okay. Are you okay?”

  Alice blinked, sat up. Fran helped ease her into a sitting position. Alice looked around blearily.

  “Toilets?”

  “Yeah.”

  It usually was. Bathrooms, changing rooms. Anywhere with mirrors. Fran used to think that Alice’s fear of mirrors was irrational, but no fear is truly irrational. To the person who is afraid, it makes perfect sense. She understood better now. Something about mirrors seemed to trigger Alice’s condition. But that wasn’t all.

  Heels tapped around the corner. Fran turned. A woman in a crumpled sales suit, scuffed stilettos and too much eye makeup walked in. She glanced briefly at Fran and Alice, walked straight past then paused at the mirrors and frowned.

  Fran followed her gaze. She had been so focused on Alice that only now did she realize that one of the mirrors above the sinks was shattered. Shards of fine glass littered the floor nearby.

  The woman tutted. “Some people.” She glanced back at Fran and Alice. “Is your daughter okay?”

  Fran forced a smile. “Oh, yes. She just slipped over. We’re fine.”

  “Right.” The woman nodded, offered a quick, tired smile and pushed open the door to a cubicle.

  She was probably relieved she didn’t have to help. Most people were. They pretended they did. But really, no one wanted to put themselves out for someone else. We all live in our own personal fortresses of self-concern.

  The woman in the scuffed heels and eye makeup would probably forget them before she washed her hands, sinking back into the folds of her own life, her own routine, her own problems.

  But then again, she might not. She might remember the woman and girl on the floor in the toilets. She might mention it to someone; a friend or work colleague, an acquaintance online.

  They had to move.

  “Come on, sweetheart.” She stood and eased Alice to her feet, holding her arm. “Can you walk?”

  “I’m fine. I just fell.”

  Alice picked up her bag—clickety-click—and slung it over her shoulder. They walked toward the door. Alice paused.

  “Wait.”

  She turned back.

  “What?” Fran hissed.

  Alice walked over to the sinks, feet crunching on broken glass. Fran glanced nervously at the closed cubicle door and then followed. Her own fragmented reflection stared back at her from the remains of the shattered mirror. A black hole in the center of it. Hard to recognize the stranger in those splintered shards. She tore her eyes away and looked down, into the sink.

  A pebble lay by the plughole, too large to wash down, although Fran had a childish urge to try and do just that.

  Alice picked it up and slipped it into her bag, along with the others. Fran didn’t try to stop her. She couldn’t interfere in this ritual, whatever it was, wherever the pebble had come from.

  The first had appeared almost two years ago. Alice had just suffered one of her episodes, crumpling into a ball on the living-room floor. When she woke, after twenty minutes, Fran saw something in her hand.

  “What’s that?” she asked, curious.

  “A pebble. I brought it back.”

  “From where?”

  Alice smiled and a frisson of fear skittered down Fran’s spine.

  “The beach.”

  Since then, every time Alice had an episode, she woke clutching a pebble. Fran had tried to think of a rational explanation. Perhaps Alice was picking the pebbles up somewhere else, hiding them and then, by some clever sleight of hand, producing one when she woke. Rational, but still not very convincing.

  So where did the damn things come from?

  The toilet flushed.

  “We’d better go,” Fran said briskly.

  They reached the door. Fran glanced back. Something else was bothering her about the mirror. The hole in the middle of it. Glass all over the floor but hardly any in the sink.

  Had Alice thrown the pebble at the mirror?

  But if you smash a mirror the glass falls straight down. It doesn’t explode outwards.

  That would only happen if something was thrown through the mirror.

  From the other side.

  She sleeps. A pale girl in a white room. Nurses tend to her on a regular basis. Even though she is not in a hospital, she receives the best twenty-four-hour care. The nurses are well paid and not too much is asked of them except that they turn the girl, wash her, ensure she is kept comfortable. Aside from that, the machines monitor the rest.

  Despite this, the turnover of staff is high. Most don’t stay more than a few months before moving on. The usual assumption is that the work is not challenging enough. They need more variety, more stimulation.

  But that’s not true.

  Miriam is the longest-serving staff member, here from the beginning. Before the beginning. Long enough to have formed an attachment to the girl. Perhaps that’s why she has stayed, despite everything.

  It started a couple of years ago. That was the first time. She was downstairs, making a cup of tea, when she heard a single note. Played on a piano. Not repeated. Could she have woken? Impossible. But then, miracles did happen.

  She hurried up the stairs and into the girl’s room. Everything looked as it always did. The sleeping girl slept. The machines whirred: all readings normal. She walked over to the piano. The keys were coated in dust. Nothing had disturbed them.

  She put it down to her imagination. A week later, it happened again. And again. Every few weeks,
that single note would ring out from the girl’s room. You never knew when it might happen, day or night.

  Some of the staff began to talk about ghosts, poltergeists, telekinesis. Miriam wouldn’t hear of such nonsense. And yet she couldn’t summon up a better explanation. So she continued to do her job and tried not to think about it at all.

  Tonight, when the note rang out, she walked wearily to the girl’s room. She checked the piano, the machines. And then she stood over the sleeping girl and stared at her white face, her mass of flaxen hair. Still just the same. She stroked her thin arm and let her hand drop to the bedsheets. She frowned. They felt gritty. But that wasn’t right. They had only just been changed. How could they be dirty?

  She ran her hand along the sheets, raised it and rubbed her fingers together.

  Not dirt.

  Sand.

  The pathway was narrow and muddy. Heavy woodland crowded in from either side. It didn’t strike Gabe as a particularly picturesque or pleasant walk, even on a summer’s day, let alone in the pitch black and freezing cold of a February night.

  The twisted trunks of the trees pushed over the rickety fencing on either side. In some places, the crooked boughs met overhead, branches entwining with each other like lovers’ fingers, crooked as a fighter’s knuckles.

  He fought down a shudder. A curse, sometimes, being a writer. Or ex-writer, he supposed. But then, did you ever stop being a writer? Like an alcoholic, the urge was always there.

  When he was a kid he had dreamed of writing books, like his heroes Stephen King and James Herbert. But growing up in a small, run-down seaside resort with no dad and a mum who spent most of her dole money at the pub, that idea had been quickly knocked out of him.

  The people where he lived were suspicious of aspiration. Other people’s hard work and success simply reminded them of their own failures and poor choices. Those who tried to claw their way out weren’t encouraged, they were mocked: “Getting a bit lah-di-dah.” “Get you with your posh degree.”

  He pretended not to care about school in front of his friends while he spent night after night studying for his exams in his room. He got decent enough grades and, despite almost trashing his dreams before they started in his teens, he was given a second chance. He secured a place at the local polytechnic and then a poorly paid job at a small advertising agency. Just before he started, his mum died. Everyone from their community came to the funeral but no one chipped in a penny to help. Gabe had to pawn what was left of her possessions to help pay for the coffin.

  Another three years spent churning out product leaflets for pessaries, and he was offered a job at a big agency in the Midlands. During a pitch, he met a freelance graphic designer called Jenny. They fell in love, got married…and Jenny fell pregnant. Happy ever after.

  Except there’s no such thing.

  He often used to joke that he got to lie for a living. Haha.

  No one knew how close it was to the truth.

  I lie for a living. I live a lie.

  * * *

  —

  AHEAD OF HIM, the path was widening and the last of the trees straggled away. Gabe found himself upon a narrow bank. A starved sliver of moon floated on a still expanse of water. A lake.

  Not a large lake. Maybe ten meters across, fifteen wide. On the other side, it was hedged in by more trees. Slightly to the right, a high ridge of hill. Secluded. Hidden. Like the wooded walk, it was not pretty. It smelled dank and fetid. The bank dropped away steeply, littered with cans and ancient plastic bags. The surface of the water was covered in brown algae.

  And in the middle, half submerged in the filthy water, was a car.

  It must have been fully submerged, once. But the weather had been abnormally dry for the last couple of years. The water levels were at a record low. Bit by bit, the lake must have retreated until the car was revealed. That explained the cans and carrier bags stranded on the bank.

  Gabe walked down to the edge of the bank. Water crept over the toes of his trainers. The car was rusted and draped in slimy weeds. In the darkness, it looked almost the same color as the lake. But he could still see, just visible in the rear window, illuminated by his flashlight:

  Ho k if you e orny.

  Horn bro en. W tch or ing r.

  He took another step, not caring about the dampness seeping through his socks, and then a voice said:

  “Am I right?”

  “Fuck!”

  He spun around. The Samaritan stood behind him. He must have stepped out of the trees, or simply emerged in a cloud of smoke. Either, Gabe thought, was feasible.

  The Samaritan was tall. And thin. As always, he was dressed in black. Black jeans, long black jacket. His skin was almost as dark. His shaved skull glinted in the moonlight. His teeth were a startling white. One was inlaid with a small iridescent stone, like a pearl. When Gabe asked him once what it was, he had frowned.

  “I brought it back, from a place I visited. I keep it with me.”

  “Like a souvenir?”

  “Yeah. To remind me never to go back.”

  The subject was closed. Gabe knew better than to reopen it.

  He stared at the Samaritan. “You almost gave me a heart attack.”

  “Sorry.”

  The Samaritan grinned. He didn’t look sorry. Gabe did not pull him up on it. Just like he didn’t ask the Samaritan what he was doing here, by a lake, in the dead of night.

  “Is it the car?” the Samaritan asked.

  Most of the stickers had faded or peeled off. Half of the vehicle was submerged in water and the number plate was completely gone. But Gabe knew.

  He nodded. “It’s the car.”

  A wave of weakness swept over him. He felt himself sway. For a moment, he thought he was going to throw up. It’s the car. Saying the words. After all this time. He hadn’t imagined it. The car was real. It existed. It was right here in front of him. And if the car was real…

  “She’s not inside,” the Samaritan said.

  The nausea subsided. Izzy hadn’t died in a stinking swamp, her last breath stolen from her by the stagnant water as she clawed at the windows, unable…

  Stop it, he told himself. Fucking stop it. He dragged his hands through his hair, rubbed viciously at his eyes. Like he could somehow scrub the bad thoughts away with his hands. The Samaritan simply watched and waited for him to gather himself.

  “There’s something else you need to see.”

  He walked past Gabe and waded straight into the water. In a way, Gabe wouldn’t have been surprised if he had just glided on top of it. Or maybe that was the wrong brother.

  He reached the car and looked back at Gabe.

  “I said you need to see this.”

  Gabe didn’t wait to be asked again. He waded into the water after the Samaritan. The water wasn’t as cold as he expected but his skin still shuddered with goosebumps and his breath caught in his throat. He gritted his teeth and pushed through the rotting algae, the murky water lapping at his crotch, the smell slithering up his nostrils and making his stomach roll.

  He reached the car. The smell was even worse here.

  “What the—?”

  The Samaritan replied by stretching out one long arm and popping the trunk. It gave with a rusty squeal. He hauled it all the way open.

  Gabe looked in the trunk.

  He looked back at the Samaritan.

  He threw up.

  Fran gripped the steering wheel tightly. Beside her, Alice slumped in her seat, staring out of the window. Her iPad rested in her lap, but she didn’t seem inclined to turn it on. She only had limited internet access anyway. Just like she only had a basic pay-as-you-go mobile for emergencies. Fortunately, Alice was still too young to complain about these restrictions. In truth, she was often happier reading than using her tablet or phone. But Fran still felt the familiar a
che of guilt.

  She was denying Alice so many things, internet access being the least of them. And it was only going to get harder as she edged toward her teens. But Fran had no choice: it was what she had to do, to keep her safe.

  After they ran the first time, Fran home-schooled her. It stopped the authorities from knocking on their door, asking too many questions, and it meant that Alice was always within her sight. She was still vulnerable, traumatized. She needed time to adjust. They both did.

  But as Alice grew older, Fran knew she needed more normality, to mix with children of her own age, so she had buckled and enrolled her at the local junior school.

  That had been a mistake. Alice was smart but she was also young, and it was so easy to forget a lie. Plus, people talked—at the school gates, in the staff room. A misplaced word repeated to a stranger. A slip of the tongue to a teacher or parent. A friend of a friend who posted a picture on social media.

  Really, it was only a matter of time.

  They had escaped. But at a price.

  This time around, Fran had tried to be even more careful. No more school. A nondescript house in a small town. She found work at a local café and the owner didn’t mind if Alice studied quietly in the back. They tried, as far as possible, to live under the radar.

  They had lasted a year.

  She had known something was wrong as soon as they got home yesterday evening. Fran didn’t really believe in a sixth sense. But she did believe in some kind of primeval alarm, wired into our DNA, that warns us about danger; danger even our brains haven’t consciously registered.

  She had stood in the kitchen and listened to the house, every sense twitching. Alice had already gone upstairs to her room. Fran heard the clump of her footsteps, the creak of her bed. Then silence. Not even the usual faint murmur of the television from next door. The house rested. Fran’s nerves thrummed.

  She had walked across to the window. At six o’clock on a February evening the light was getting thin. The streetlights were just starting to stutter on. She looked up and down the street.