The things Michael didn't say

 

The line between being rescued and being summoned at this point,  is thin. Virtually no way of knowing for sure.

Thin enough to fit on the screen of a phone glowing in the three-a.m. rain.

​ Our lives dont just wander into the dark; the bottom drops out entirely. 

What began as a familiar noir-tinged mystery, a worried friend, a girl with no face, a cryptic phone call from a man who moves through rooms like an uninvited shadow, we have now warped into something far more ancient, quiet, and deeply unsettling.

​The Architecture of a Trap.

​Frenchy sits at the kitchen table, listening to the rain, nursing a growing realization that "forgettable" people are often the most dangerous. 

Michael is the kind of man who looks comfortable in chaos because he likely built the room around it. He created it. 

 Frenchy presses him on the phone, looking for answers about Belle Vue, but he gets something far worse than a lie: he gets recognition. Vague recollections. 

​"You're involved because Tiny brought you into it... Ask yourself why Tiny keeps finding the same people. 

Not only the dead people.

But. The ones who made them dead."

​Michael doesn't sound like a kidnapper holding a hostage. He sounds like a kindly school ma'am explaining to the children the fear of Chicken Licken and the sky falling down. 

Then the photograph arrives  showing the light burning inside the abandoned walls of Belle Vue, showing Michael standing behind a pale, silver-haired woman, the trap appears to spring.

​Except the trap isn't made of bricks and mortar. It isn't even in DC.

 Frenchy stares at a ghost image on the glass screen, Tiny Fair is somewhere else entirely.

​The transition is breathless. She stands in a white stone temple, stripped of the screeching corridors and locked doors that usually haunt her memory. Below her lies an ocean that isn't blue, but a shimmering, internal gold. It feels, for a brief second, like peace, a sunlit sanctuary away from the dead souls that follow her.

​Then the dark shape appears on the horizon.

​Belle Vue isn't left behind; it is waiting at the end of the water. illuminated. Crowded. Hundreds of silent figures lining the shore, watching the horizon for a arrival that has been delayed for too long.

Tiny is approaching the abyss.

But she is here, thank god.

The Spider Tree

Coraline sat beneath the spider tree.

It had grown enormous over the years, its twisted branches spreading above her like the fingers of some ancient creature. She had spent so many hours beneath it that sometimes she wondered whether the tree remembered more about her than she remembered about herself.

The great stone fountains stood empty.

Once, water had poured from the mouths of carved angels and gathered in the basins below. Now they were cracked and dry, green with moss, their ancient stone stained by years of neglect.

Nothing moved.

Nothing flowed.

Nothing seemed to belong to the world anymore.

Coraline looked down at her gown.

It had once been magnificent.

Heavy velvet, beautifully made, the sort of garment that announced a woman before she had even entered a room.

Now it was faded and torn.

The hem was dirty. The sleeves were fraying. The velvet had lost its richness.

Like her.

The sunlight fell across her face, illuminating every line and crease.

She had once been beautiful.

Perhaps she still was, in some strange, ruined way.

Her eyes had become small and narrowed against the brightness. Her silver hair was wound tightly around her head like a rope, severe and immaculate.

And yet the diamonds remained.

They still glittered at her throat.

The enormous ruby upon her finger caught the sunlight and burned red.

It seemed almost indecent that such beautiful things had survived when so much else had not.

Coraline lifted her hand and stared at the ruby.

"You're still here," she whispered.

She wasn't sure whether she meant the stone.

Or herself.

A bird sang somewhere beyond the garden wall.

For a moment Coraline closed her eyes and listened.

Then she heard children laughing.

Her eyes opened immediately.

She looked towards the far end of the garden.

Nothing.

Only the long grass moving gently in the breeze.

She smiled sadly.

The children were gone.

They had finally broken free.

They had cut the invisible cords that had bound them to her, to the house, to everything that had happened before.

She had watched them leave.

Hadn't she?

Coraline frowned.

For a moment she couldn't remember.

Had she watched them leave?

Or had she only imagined it?

The thought frightened her.

She looked towards the house.

Every window was dark.

She could almost see little faces behind the curtains.

Waiting.

Watching.

She blinked.

Nothing.

"You're gone," she whispered.

The garden remained silent.

"You're free."

This time she believed it.

Or desperately wanted to.

The sun was beginning to sink.

Orange light spread across the garden, touching the fountains, the stone walls and the dying flowers.

Everything seemed to be fading.

Just as she was.

Pain moved through Coraline's body.

It came suddenly, violently, wracking her skeletal frame until she had to grip the arm of the chair.

She waited for it to pass.

It didn't.

She breathed slowly.

There was something strangely peaceful about knowing that she was reaching the end.

The point of her being alive was diminishing rapidly.

Perhaps that was why she felt so calm.

It was time to return home.

The word came into her mind again.

Home.

She had spent most of her life running from it.

Now she couldn't decide whether she was returning to it or simply disappearing from everywhere else.

Rain began to fall.

Tiny drops landed on her velvet gown.

Coraline didn't move.

She reached beside her and picked up the little silver hand mirror.

The glass was tarnished around the edges.

She held it towards her face.

The woman staring back frightened her.

Not because she was old.

Because she could see everything.

Every lost child.

Every terrible room.

Every moment of childhood abuse.

Every cruelty she had swallowed.

Every time she had stood silently while something inside her screamed.

Her face had become a map of everything she had survived.

She touched the glass.

"Is that really me?"

For a moment the reflection seemed to smile.

Coraline lowered the mirror.

She knew that couldn't have happened.

She knew it.

Didn't she?

She looked again.

Nothing.

Only her own exhausted face.

She laughed quietly.

Perhaps this was what happened when a person had carried too many memories for too long.

The past began to walk around with you.

Sometimes it sat beside you.

Sometimes it spoke.

Sometimes it looked back at you from a mirror.

Coraline closed her eyes.

She saw the children again.

Running through the garden.

Laughing.

Free.

Then suddenly they stopped.

They turned towards her.

"Come with us."

Coraline opened her eyes.

Nobody was there.

She looked at the house.

The upstairs window was illuminated now.

A woman stood behind the glass.

Silver hair.

Pale face.

Watching.

Coraline stared at her.

She knew that woman.

She was certain of it.

But she couldn't remember from where.

The woman slowly raised one hand.

Coraline raised hers.

The woman lowered hers.

Coraline lowered hers.

Then Coraline understood.

She was looking at her own reflection in the window.

She began to laugh.

A soft, broken laugh.

"You're losing your mind."

The words sounded almost comforting.

Perhaps she had been losing it for years.

Perhaps madness had simply been another name for remembering too much.

She looked once more towards the garden.

The rain was falling harder now.

The fountains remained empty.

The spider tree stood black against the evening sky.

And beneath it, for just one fleeting moment, Coraline thought she saw a small child sitting in the grass.

A little girl.

Dirty knees.

Untidy hair.

A frightened face.

Coraline stared.

The child looked exactly like her.

She knew that face.

She knew those eyes.

The little girl raised one hand.

Coraline's heart stopped.

She wanted to speak.

She wanted to ask her what she wanted.

But the child spoke first.

"You forgot me."

Coraline's mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

Then lightning flashed somewhere beyond the clouds.

The child was gone.

Only rain remained.

Coraline looked down at her hands.

They were old.

Veined.

Trembling.

The ruby was cold.

She suddenly understood.

The children had escaped.

But there was one child she had never managed to free.

Herself.

She looked towards the darkening house.

For once, she felt no desire to run.

She had spent a lifetime running from the rooms inside her own mind.

Perhaps there was nowhere left to run.

She placed the silver mirror carefully beside her.

The orange light was disappearing now.

The garden was becoming indistinct.

The fountains.

The trees.

The house.

Everything was dissolving into darkness.

Coraline leaned back beneath the spider tree.

Her pain was still there.

Her memories were still there.

The ghosts of the past were still whispering.

But somewhere beyond them, she could hear children laughing.

This time she didn't look.

She knew they were free.

That was enough.

She closed her eyes.

And for the first time in her life, Coraline stopped fighting the darkness.

She let it come.

Quietly.

Almost gently.

As though it had been waiting for her all along.

The House

 

Someone had been in the house.

Libertine knew it.

She stood in the doorway, staring.

“Look.”

She pointed towards the wall where the enormous antique mirror had once stood.

It was gone.

Not moved.

Gone.

In its place hung a cheap, ugly oval of something pretending to be what it certainly was not in her eyes. 

“No,” she whispered.

She walked further into the room.

The large television was gone too. A small dusty screened old one had replaced it.

Then another.

And another.

She turned slowly, taking everything in.

The jewellery. Rings, watches.

Gone.

The ornaments.

Gone.

Beautiful hand woven carpets.

Gone.

Even the beautiful old furniture had disappeared, replaced by things that looked as though they had been dragged from the back of an Ikea warehouse.

Inferior things.

Cheap things.

Things without history.

Things without a soul.

“Someone has been here while we were away.”

Her voice was quiet, but there was absolute conviction in it.

Her husband looked around.

“Libertine…”

“What?”

“Did you consider that we moved out already?”

She stared at him.

“What are you talking about?”

“We moved out. Someone else is living here.”

She laughed once.

It wasn't a happy laugh.

“No. We live here.”

He said nothing.

“Don't look at me like that.”

“I’m not. Looking at you like anything.”

“You are.”

Then she saw him.

“There's David.”

The maintenance man was standing further down the hallway.

“Ask him.”

Libertine moved towards him.

“David. What happened here?”

He looked uncomfortable.

“What do you mean?”

“The furniture.”

He glanced around.

“I don't know.”

“The mirror.”

“I don't know.”

“The televisions. The jewellery. Everything.”

David shook his head.

“I haven't been in this house.”

Libertine stared at him.

For a moment nobody spoke.

Then her husband lowered his voice.

“Libertine, you know I'm on the edge right now.”

She turned towards David.

“I cannot work any longer.” He spoke quietly. 

He pulled up his trouser leg.

“Look at my leg.”

She looked.

The swelling was extraordinary.

One leg was almost twice the size of the other.

“Jesus.”

“I told you.”

“You need a doctor.”

“I know.”

He took one step towards her.

Then another.

His face suddenly changed.

The colour drained from it.

He reached for the wall.

“I'm not (...)”

He never finished the sentence.

He keeled over. Flat out, face to the ground.  Blood crept out from underneath him, slowly circling his head.

The sound of his body hitting the floor seemed impossibly loud inside the altered house.

Libertine froze.

Then ran towards him.

“David!! ”

Nothing.

“Call someone!”

But Libertine wasn't looking at the man on the floor anymore.

She was looking at the room.

At the hideous replacement mirror.

At the empty space where the old one had stood.

And then, very slowly, she noticed something reflected in the new glass.

A woman.

Standing behind her.

Libertine turned.

There was nobody there.

She looked back at the mirror.

The woman was still there.

Watching.

Waiting.

She recognized her, and yet didn't recognize her at all. 

And Libertine suddenly understood the most frightening thing of all.

Perhaps someone had been in the house.

Perhaps someone had taken everything.

Or perhaps the house had never belonged to Libertine in the first place.

Perhaps she had moved out and simply forgotten who lived there now.  What was happening to her?

 Somewhere beneath the noise of David struggling to breathe, beneath his body lying motionless on the floor, beneath the cheap furniture and the terrible new mirror, a woman's voice whispered angrily:

** Libertine.  You were never supposed to come back.**

The Dead Remember Everything

Libertine looked at him.

He was older now.

Older, certainly, but unmistakable.

The same shock of white hair. The same carefully maintained smile, glistening against a light tan that somehow seemed absurdly inappropriate for a dead man. But there it was.

She stared at him for several seconds.

“We met?”

He smiled.

“You don't remember?”

“I don't think so.”

“New York. Twice.”

And then she remembered. Not that she was readily giving it away.

“Oh yes.”

Of course.

How could she forget? My God.

There had been a riot.

Not the kind that made newspapers for weeks, but the smaller, more intimate kind, you know the sort that erupts inside a family when the truth becomes impossible to contain. That kind of riot. Or shit show if you prefer.

The exhausted wife.

The furious, entitled only child.

A son who had suddenly discovered that his father's appetite for women might cost him everything.

There had been women.

So many women.

And children.

Secret children.

Women threatening lawsuits, demanding recognition, threatening to expose what had been carefully concealed for years.

And the son had been terrified.

Not necessarily of losing his father.

Of losing his inheritance. Money was the love that bound these people tightly. 

Libertine remembered it all now.

“We met twice,” she said quietly.

“Yes.”

“When did you die? ”

He considered the question as though death were merely an administrative inconvenience.

“Oh, not too long ago.”

He looked around.

“I didn't know my way around very well at first.”

“And yet you found me.”

“You were easy to find.”

Libertine sighed.

“Did you find Penelope?”

He frowned.

“No.”

“Perhaps you should look harder.”

“Why?”

“Because she was your fucking wife.”

She paused.

“And the mother of your son.”

Something flickered across his face.

Recognition.

Then shame.

Or perhaps something that resembled shame. 

“The woman from Edinburgh called me,” he said.

Libertine said nothing.

“She said she was pregnant.”

“And?”

“I didn't know how true it was.”

“I knew.”

He looked at her.

“That caused the divorce.”

“No, Rodriguez.”

Her voice had become very quiet.

“Your betrayal and constant lying caused the divorce.”

The room seemed to change.

Libertine suddenly became aware of where she was.

Lying against him.

Her head resting upon his pillow.

The intimacy of it felt wrong.

Almost obscene.

She moved away.

“I don't know how I've come to be here,” she said. “I don't know why I'm lying here with you.”

Rodriguez watched her.

“But you came. I  needed to speak to you."

“No.”

She shook her head.

“I didn't come here for you.”

She looked directly into his face.

“You need to go to Penelope.”

He said nothing.

“She died broken, Rodriguez.”

The smile had disappeared.

“She died carrying the consequences of what you had done. And your son was devastated after your death.”

She stopped.

“There were other children, too.”

His eyes lowered.

“Children you never knew existed.”

Silence.

“Children who grew up without knowing their father.”

Rodriguez looked suddenly very small.

“All for what?”

He didn't answer.

“For the sake of your son's inheritance?”

The words hung between them.

Then Libertine remembered the little girl in pink pyjamas. 

She had seen her.

A tiny girl lying in a bed.

Her lips blue.

Her eyes open, but clouded over, lifeless and opaque.

Like the eyes of a dead fish.

And yet she had sat up.

She had spoken.

Libertine had taken her by the hand and tried to lead her to her mother.

But it had been too late.

The girl was already gone. Reduced to a heartbreaking obituary.  The 'fly high little one' that no one wants to read.

“That was your child,” Libertine whispered.

Rodriguez stared at her.

His face had changed.

“She died because of what you left behind.” Which was nothing.

Libertine swallowed.

“Her mother killed her.”

He closed his eyes.

“Then she threw herself from a rooftop.”

Rodriguez opened his eyes again.

“She didn't die immediately,” Libertine continued. “She survived the fall, but her spine was shattered. Her legs were twisted beneath her in ways no human body could ever endure.”

He looked away.

For once, there was no charming smile.

No carefully rehearsed explanation.

No woman to distract him.

No excuse of a son to protect.

No inheritance for him to preserve.

Only the dead.

And they had remembered everything.

“You thought your secrets would disappear when you died,” Libertine said.

She stood.

“But they didn't.”

Rodriguez remained sitting on the bed.

“The dead don't forget,” she continued.

“They don't care about your money. They don't care about your reputation. They don't care who inherited the house or who stood beside your grave.”

She looked toward the doorway.

“They remember what you did.”

Then she turned back.

“All of this pain was the price someone else paid for your fun.”

Rodriguez said nothing.

And for the first time since Libertine had known him, he looked exactly like what he was.

A dead man.

Not a wealthy man.

Not a charming man.

Not a husband.

Not a father.

Just a dead man sitting alone among the consequences of his life.

And somewhere beyond the room, Libertine could hear a woman calling his name.

It was Penelope, calling - pleading. 

Still waiting.

Still remembering.

Still refusing to let him disappear.

The Lost Souls

The lost souls were no longer merely haunting Frenchy and Tiny Fair.

They were begging.

Not with voices that could be clearly heard, nor with hands reaching from the darkness, but with fragments. Glimpses. Disturbances in the air. Curtains moving when there was no breeze. A door left open that had been firmly closed.

They were trying to be found.

Trying to be heard.

Trying to be understood.

Trying, above everything else, to be set free.

Frenchy had begun to realise that their presence was not born from malice.

They weren't following them because they wanted revenge.

They were following them because nobody else had listened.

They were the dead.

Murder victims.

Lives stolen by someone who had remained hidden for years and possibly behind the walls of Belle Vue Hospital.

An unknown serial killer who had somehow managed to disappear into the very place where madness, suffering and death had become almost indistinguishable from one another.

And now the dead were refusing to remain silent.

Tiny Fair stood beside Frenchy, watching the thin curtains tremble in the darkness.

"They want us to find him."

Frenchy didn't answer.

He had reached the same conclusion.

The souls had been circling them for a reason.

Every strange occurrence.

Every unexplained movement.

Every sudden feeling of being watched.

Every fragment of a story that seemed to belong to nobody.

They were clues.

The dead had no hands with which to point.

No mouths with which to tell their stories.

So they had found another way.

They were illuminating the darkness.

And strangely, the more frightened the living became, the clearer the truth appeared.

Paranoia had begun to betray the guilty.

The nervous glances.

The desperate attempts to control the story.

The sudden silences whenever certain names were mentioned.

The fear of Belle Vue.

The fear of being discovered.

It was almost as though the killer's own terror had become a beacon. He was illuminating himself. 

Frenchy looked towards Tiny Fair.

"Do you think he knows we're getting close?"

"I think he knows already."

That answer unsettled him.

Because if the killer knew, then the question became much more dangerous.

What would he do?

Run for the hills?

Disappear before anyone could reach him?

Destroy whatever evidence remained?

Or had he already used his last resort?

Burned his last bridge.  For certain his options were few.

Frenchy would have preferred to spend his time anywhere else.

He wanted his quiet life back.

He wanted leisure.

Sunlight.

Coffee.

Ordinary conversations that didn't end with the dead whispering from somewhere beyond the curtains.

But ordinary life had become impossible.

Not while the lost souls were still following them.

Not while they were begging to be released from the prison of a secret that had kept them trapped for so long.

Tiny Fair touched his arm.

"We have to go back."

Frenchy knew exactly where she meant.

Belle Vue.

The abandoned hospital seemed to wait for them.

Its corridors held their darkness like a secret.

Its empty rooms seemed to remember people who had vanished from the world.

And somewhere inside those walls, perhaps, lived the person responsible.

A murderer who had hidden among the forgotten.

A predator who had watched the years pass while his victims remained trapped in theirs.

Frenchy sighed.

"One final trip."

Tiny Fair looked at him.

"Do you really believe it will be the final one?"

He didn't answer.

Because somewhere behind them, a curtain moved.

Then another.

And for one fleeting second, Frenchy thought he saw several pale faces gathered behind the glass.

Waiting.

Watching.

Begging.

Not for revenge.

For freedom.

The truth was their only escape.

And Belle Vue was where the truth had been buried.

Lifting The Veil

The apartment was exquisite.

Glass stretched from floor to ceiling, swallowing the skyline whole. Sunlight poured across polished oak floors, catching the edges of marble worktops that had never known the clutter of ordinary lives. Everything gleamed. Everything whispered money.

"One and a half million dollars," the estate agent said with a practiced smile, as though repeating a sacred number.

Libertine wandered silently from room to room.

The kitchen was immaculate.

The living room immaculate.

The bedroom...

Too immaculate.

She stopped.

Against one wall sat a cardboard box filled with brand-new toys, still wrapped in tissue paper. Bright colours seemed strangely out of place inside a room so carefully designed. She reached down and lifted a small teddy bear. Its stitched smile looked oddly hopeful.

Her husband found her standing there.

"What do you think?" he asked.

She turned slowly.

"I don't want it."

He looked surprised.

"It's beautiful."

"It is."

"So what's wrong?"

She looked towards the towering windows.

"It's too small."

He laughed softly.

"Don't worry."

She smiled back, grateful for his kindness, but he had misunderstood. He thought she meant the square footage. She meant something else entirely.

There was no air here.

No place for the wind to find her.

No scent of rain before a storm.

No horizon beyond concrete and glass.

She had spent too much of her life behind walls built by other people. Beautiful walls were still walls.

Holding the teddy bear, she wandered onto the balcony.

Across the narrow courtyard, another apartment stood with its doors wide open. A little child peered through the railing, watching the grown-ups with quiet curiosity.

Libertine smiled.

She held up the bear.

The child looked towards their mother for permission before nodding shyly.

She crossed the courtyard moments later and placed the bear gently into small waiting hands.

No speeches.

No explanations.

Just a gift, freely given.

As she walked back, she realised something almost startling.

There had once been a time when she would have looked over her shoulder, waiting for someone to accuse her of doing something wrong.

No one came.

No voices followed.

No invisible judge stepped from the shadows.

The silence was different now.

Not the suffocating silence of secrets buried beneath generations of fear.

This silence breathed.

The veil had lifted.

The truths, once hidden beneath carefully constructed stories and inherited loyalties, no longer needed disguises. They stood in plain sight now (...) weathered, undeniable, and strangely ordinary beneath daylight. They had been dug from the earth, dusted off, and left facing the sun.

There was nothing left to protect.

Nothing left to carry.

She felt it then.

Not happiness.

Something quieter.

Relief.

Years of turmoil had begun retreating from her mind, not with violence but with patience, the way the sea withdraws from the shore after a long storm. Wave by wave. Tide by tide. What had once threatened to drown her was simply... leaving.

The ocean had never promised to stay.

Neither had pain.

Her mind, once crowded with ghosts, felt spacious.

Clear.

Unburdened.

She slipped her hand into her husband's.

"We'll find somewhere else," she said.

"Somewhere with room to breathe."

He squeezed her hand without asking why.

For the first time in her life, she wasn't escaping the past.

She was simply walking towards the future.

And the future, unlike every locked room she had ever known, had left the door wide open.

The darkness hadn't been erased, but it was no longer going to dictate her direction. 

Because the truth, once uncovered, becomes less of a burden,  than the silence that once concealed it.