What You Wish For Page 20

  It was Pete.

  From his red forehead and nose, he looked like he’d spent a day lying on a beach with no sunblock on, and his hair was shorter. But it was definitely him. The Jinx. He began walking away.

  ‘Pete!’ I called.

  He turned and squinted at me, taking a step closer.

  ‘Do you remember me?’ I asked.

  With a grimace, he removed his rucksack and dropped it to the floor. ‘Shit, that’s better.’ He rubbed his shoulder. ‘Hey, you’re that photographer dude from Hastings. I met you on the hill that night with Andrew and Marie. You were with that fat reporter.’

  ‘That’s me.’

  He laughed. ‘Fuck, what are you doing in Portland, dude?’

  ‘I’m looking for Marie,’ I said. ‘I . . . I need to find her. After that night on the hill we became . . . well, she was my girlfriend. But then after Andrew died, she disappeared. She . . .’

  He interrupted me. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘She disappeared.’

  ‘No, before that. You said something about Andrew being dead.’

  ‘Yes, and . . .’

  ‘Andrew Jade?’

  ‘Yes. Of course Andrew Jade.’ I wanted to get on with my story.

  Pete looked at me with a mixture of amusement and astonishment. ‘Andrew Jade is the most healthy-looking dead man I’ve ever met,’ he said. ‘At least he was when I left him yesterday.’

  It was like being punched in the face.

  ‘Andrew’s alive?’ I whispered.

  ‘Of course he’s alive. And Marie’s in pretty good shape too.’

  PART THREE

  VOX HUMANA

  23

  All the way to Minneapolis I was talked at by the middle-aged man who sat next to me. The British royal family, the cost of mountain rescue, the best barbecue equipment, the cheapest restaurants in Orlando and who was going to win the World Series. When he said, ‘And what about those alien abductions in Texas, huh?’ I thought I was going to scream. But I was trapped. There was no escape.

  It was only on the second flight that I got some peace. I lay back, but I couldn’t sleep. My head was buzzing too much, the clamour of anticipation loud in my skull. Soon. soon, soon . . .

  After Pete had told me that Andrew was still alive and that Marie was with him, I couldn’t speak for about thirty seconds. It seemed too unreal. I couldn’t absorb it.

  Pete quickly realised how shocked I was by his news and, worried that he’d said something he shouldn’t, picked up his rucksack and took a stride towards the taxi rank. ‘Well, see you around, dude.’

  I stepped in front of him. ‘Let’s get a coffee,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t—’

  ‘Come on, Pete. I’ve come all this way.’

  He grinned lopsidedly. ‘I guess I could use a latte.’

  Back at Starbucks I bought him a venti latte and a muffin.

  ‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘Everything.’

  He hesitated for another second, but the urge to impart this obviously shocking tale overcame any fears he had.

  ‘I stopped by to see them on my way back from Greece. Man, Greece is so—’

  I tapped the table impatiently. ‘Are you here to join the Loved Ones?’

  ‘You know about them?’

  ‘That’s where I’ve been for the past few days. I know them very well.’

  He relaxed.

  ‘I thought Marie might be there. But you need to tell me – how can Andrew be alive? He was killed in a car crash. Marie went to the funeral.’

  Pete raised a bushy eyebrow. ‘Man, this is fucked up.’

  ‘So where are they? What are they doing? I need to know, Pete.’

  ‘OK, OK. I need to explain . . .’ He slurped his coffee. ‘Andrew’s group used to be affiliated with the Loved Ones here, but a year ago, something like that, he emailed Lisa to tell her that his group had discovered “a deeper truth” and that they were going to form their own cell. Lisa was, like, whatever, dude. Andrew Jade’s always been an awkward fucker, since we first got involved with him years ago. And his cell’s, like, tiny. There are only thirteen of them.’

  He stared at an attractive Asian girl who slinked past our table.

  ‘Pete . . .’

  ‘Yeah, sorry. Lisa asked me to check up on them again on the way back, see what they were up to. She knew where they were staying. That’s also what I was doing the first time you met me – I mean, of course I was stoked by the sighting in Hastings but the real reason I was there was to make sure they weren’t up to anything . . . what’s that word you Brits use? Dodgy.’

  He swigged the last of his coffee.

  ‘They didn’t exactly lay out the freaking welcome mats this time. The moment I got there Andrew said I wasn’t welcome, that I was going to, like, disturb their aura. But I did persuade them to let me come in for a minute, to use the bathroom. They were sat around this big oak table – it was like some kind of ye olde worlde farmhouse kitchen, y’know? Andrew told me that he had been visited that very day, and that there were only a few days to go until the Big One.’

  He looked up at me over his cup.

  ‘Marie was there, plus that writer chick, Samantha O’Connell, and a bunch of others. Mostly girls actually, plus two or three guys. There was a scrawny little dude called Kevin, who seemed kind of in awe of all these women. Because they were hot, all of them. It was like some kind of fucking harem.’

  Kevin? Could it be the same Kevin who had shown me his alien porn collection? If so, what the hell was he doing there? Then I remembered – I had seen him coming out of the bookshop where Samantha had been doing her book signing. My God. It was a fucking conspiracy.

  ‘Andrew threw me out after about five minutes. None of the others spoke to me at all. They just stared, like they were on tranquilizers or some shit. It was creepy. You ever see that ancient movie, Village of the Damned ? So anyway, I left and came straight back here.’

  ‘Did you send Andrew a flyer, inviting him here?’

  He shook his head. ‘Uh-uh. I’ve been in Europe since the summer. But maybe he’s still on the mailing list. Lisa and Zara aren’t too hot at keeping that shit up to date.’

  My heart was beating hard. ‘I need the address of where they’re staying.’

  ‘Sure.’ He produced his phone and flicked at the screen, cramming muffin into his mouth with the other hand. ‘Here we go. So, what, you gonna head down there, give them a big surprise?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  He grinned, his mouth full of muffin, crumbs on his lips.

  ‘Say hi from me, won’tcha?’

  It was light when I left Minneapolis, and light too when I landed at Gatwick. I hadn’t slept at all on the plane, and I yawned as my feet touched terra firma.

  After a stroll through customs I tried to call Simon on his mobile. To my surprise, Susan answered.

  ‘Oh, hi, Sue. I don’t suppose Simon’s there?’

  ‘Richard!’ She actually sounded pleased to hear from me. ‘No, he’s at work. Idiot forgot to take his phone with him.’

  ‘But he’s living there with you?’

  ‘Yeah. I gave in to his begging.’

  ‘That’s fantastic. I’m really pleased.’ I paused. ‘So who’s feeding Calico?’

  ‘He’s in a cattery. It’s costing you seven pounds a day. The details are on your fridge.’

  ‘OK. Cool. Well, look, I’m so happy to hear about you and Simon. I’ll come round and see you as soon as I can.’ I paused and added, ‘I’ll bring Marie,’ then hung up.

  I found my car in the car park. England was freezing; winter had arrived while I was away, and it reached through the concrete walls of the car park and made me shiver. I sat in my car and turned the engine and heating on.

  Pete had given me the address where Andrew and Marie were based. It was just outside Eastbourne.

  ‘It’s a big old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere,’ he said. ‘They seem to be totally isolate
d and self-sufficient. They’ve even got chickens.’

  I eased my car out into the open air. The sky was frosted blue, the colour of Marie’s eyes.

  England seemed so strange and flat after Oregon. Where America had mountains, we had hills; where they had huge pine trees, we had hedgerows and shrubs. But this was my country, the place where I belonged. As I drove away from Gatwick, America receded into the distance, a fading memory, already yellowing at the edges like an old newspaper.

  The A23 seemed to go on forever. I felt like I’d entered some kind of time loop, where you find yourself passing the same piece of scenery over and over. I could have sworn I passed the same pub half a dozen times. My hands were slippery on the wheel.

  Unwanted thoughts strafed my brain. Was Marie sleeping with Andrew? That was what cult leaders did, wasn’t it, screw their disciples? Look at David Koresh, Charles Manson, the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who claimed to have slept with more women than any other man on the planet.

  I could picture Andrew, with his little glasses all steamed up, his forehead gleaming sweatily as he leaned over Cherry and Samantha and Marie – my Marie – and pawed them. It made my flesh creep. And another grotesque thought: what if she had been sleeping with him all the time she was with me? I remembered the way she had laughed that night on the way home from the nightclub, when I had asked her if Andrew was her boyfriend. I tried to recall the sound of the laugh, to work out if it was a false one.

  I wished Andrew really was dead.

  The needle on the fuel gauge was worryingly low. At the first opportunity I pulled into a petrol station and filled up. I bought a cup of coffee and a bag of crisps. The man behind the counter sniggered at my Loved Ones outfit. I sat in my car and drank my coffee, ate the crisps and studied my road map.

  When Pete had given me the address of Andrew’s group, or cell, he added, ‘It’s not easy to find. I hitched a ride out there, but I was wandering round for hours before I finally found it. It’s not exactly well signposted.’

  ‘I can’t believe,’ I said, ‘that I came all this way – to the far side of America – and Marie was only twenty miles away all the time.’

  Pete shrugged. ‘Like I said, it’s not well signposted.’

  Then he said, ‘Hey, don’t take this the wrong way, dude, but don’t you think if Marie had wanted you to find her she would have let you know where she was? Doesn’t the way that she’s hidden away from you tell you something?’

  I shook my head. ‘No! She doesn’t know what she wants. She’s been brainwashed by Andrew. She’s probably being kept a prisoner.’

  ‘She didn’t look like a prisoner to me.’

  Now, I turned off the A23 just north of Brighton and headed towards Lewes. I passed Falmer and the universities – where all this had started, years before, when Andrew met Samantha – and soon I was driving across the South Downs.

  I suppressed a yawn as I passed the Long Man of Wilmington, a huge chalk figure in the face of the Downs. No doubt some conspiracy theorist somewhere believed that the Long Man of Wilmington had been carved into the hill as a message to extraterrestrials, or that aliens had created him themselves, making him a distant cousin of the Easter Island sculptures.

  I was so sick of it all. Aliens, UFOs, conspiracy theories, the fucking Chorus, the word ‘contact’. Sick, sick, sick. After I had saved Marie and taken her home I was going to make my house an alien-free zone. The X-Files box sets would be chucked out; all of the books Marie had about abductions would be thrown on a bonfire. It would all be for her own good . . .

  Fuck. What the hell was I thinking? I was as bad as Andrew or Lisa, trying to control people’s beliefs.

  When I found her, I was going to talk to her. Set out my case. Try to persuade her that we should be together. If she didn’t want that, if she would prefer to stay with Andrew, then I would have to accept it. I would be heartbroken, but I would learn to live with it.

  I just needed to hear it from her mouth.

  I just needed to know.

  I turned off the A-road and crossed the Downs, heading towards the sea. Apparently, Andrew and company were based quite close to a village called East Dean. I slowed the car.

  A thick mist had drifted in from the sea, enveloping the southern part of the Downs. It was like driving through a cloud that had fallen to earth. The mist crept into the car, making goose bumps rise on my flesh. There was no other traffic around. I felt like I’d driven into some other world, a Twilight Zone, and I could almost hear that creepy music all around me.

  I pulled over to the side of the road beside a large wooden gate. I got out of the car. I had a feeling I was close.

  ‘It’s down a little lane between two farms,’ Pete had said.

  Beyond the wooden gate I could see a herd of Friesian cows. I could hear sheep bleating in the next field along. Separating the fields was a narrow country lane. It fitted Pete’s description.

  I rifled through the boot of my car and found a screwed-up kagoule. I put it on and walked down the lane. Small trees had been planted in rows on one side and they stood like sentries in the mist, dark figures silhouetted against the white fog. To my right were neat, clipped hedgerows. The birds sang loudly but tunelessly in the trees above me.

  I hugged myself against the chill. The mist clung damply to my clothes and hair. The path beneath my feet was wet. Spider webs glistened on the hedgerow.

  The country lane branched off in two directions. I peered through the mist. One branch led towards an open field. The other path turned a corner. I decided to try the second and there, at the end of the lane, was a gate set between two hedges. I pushed the gate open and stepped into a farmyard.

  The house was large and very old. The roof was thatched, the chimney crooked, the white paint cracked and flaky. Ivy crept up to the first floor where damp had pushed through the paintwork. Could this really be the right place? A farmer would probably appear at any moment to tell me I was trespassing on his land.

  All around my feet, chickens pecked at the ground. A pair of hens scattered as I walked towards the house, emitting loud, unhappy squawks. There was a knot in my stomach like a fist. I tried to look through the windows but the curtains were drawn. There were no sounds coming from within. I stepped back and looked up at the first floor windows. I thought I saw somebody step away from one window. Had they seen me? I was almost paralysed with trepidation. I was acutely aware that right here, right now, everything could go wrong. All my searching could prove to have been in vain.

  I walked around the side of the building, where a large white van was parked. It had no markings, just a few muddy smears across its flanks. I looked through the window. There was nothing to see.

  I took a deep breath, strode up to the front door and knocked.

  There was no reply. I knocked harder. Behind me the chickens clucked and scratched. I rang the doorbell. Exasperated, I walked around the other side of the house. As I turned the corner I saw a face at the window, looking out at me, shock displayed on pale female features. The face pulled away the instant I turned, leaving smudges of breath on the glass.

  It had been Marie.

  I ran up to the glass and thumped it.

  ‘Marie! It’s me! It’s Richard!’ I banged the glass harder. I pressed my face to the window and looked into an empty kitchen. I saw a door open inside and a woman looked straight at me.

  Samantha O’Connell. I banged the glass again. I shouted Marie’s name, over and over.

  Driven by desperation, I stooped, picked up a stone and threw it with all my strength at the window.

  As the glass smashed, shards flying, the front door flew open and two men ran out. One of them was Kevin. The other one was holding a shotgun, which he pointed at my chest. I put my hands up to shoulder level and stepped backwards, stopping a few feet in front of the gate.

  Kevin looked me up and down. ‘So you found us after all.’

  He seemed nervous, probably remembering the first time we had met, wh
en I had almost strangled him on the floor of his flat.

  ‘Andrew said you would. I thought you were too stupid, myself.’

  ‘I just want to see Marie,’ I said, as calmly as I could. My voice didn’t sound natural. It was too high, cracked with nerves.

  ‘That’s not going to happen,’ said Kevin.

  ‘Shall I shoot him now?’ The man holding the shotgun lifted the barrel in my direction, reminding me of Jake in Portland. I was tempted to tell him he had a spiritual twin across the ocean.

  ‘No,’ said a voice from behind them, and Andrew stepped into view.

  I almost ran at him but was deterred by the shotgun barrels that were pointing at my face. I clenched and unclenched my fists. I tried to breathe slowly, calmly.

  Andrew was dressed head to toe in black. His hair was slicked back. His glasses were different, with thicker, darker frames. He looked very confident, powerful, arrogant. Bile rose in my throat. When Andrew smiled the rage inside me roared. I looked at the shotgun. I was helpless, and now I was this close to Marie I wasn’t going to take any risks.

  ‘Reports of your death were exaggerated,’ I said.

  Andrew smiled thinly.

  ‘How did you do it? Fake your death.’

  He snorted through his nose. ‘It wasn’t hard. You believed what you wanted to believe, Richard.’

  I had no time for this.

  ‘I want to see Marie,’ I said. ‘I know she’s here.’

  Andrew interlaced his fingers. ‘She doesn’t want to see you.’

  ‘Let her tell me that herself.’

  He laughed softly. ‘It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? Why do you think she left you in the first place? She hates you, Richard. You’re one of them. A non-believer. She knows that you would try to keep her tied to the Earth. Only here, with me, will she meet her true destiny.’

  ‘What, to be taken away into outer space? It’s not going to fucking happen. The Chorus,’ I spat. ‘What a fucking joke. You don’t even believe it yourself. You’re just here because you like having all these people worshipping you like you’re some kind of prophet, when you’re actually a liar and a fucking pornographer. It’s all crap. Evil crap.’