THE WHITE SHEET

Paul stood on the white sheet.

He had been standing there for three minutes.

Perhaps four.

Karen said three was sufficient, but Paul had learned that with Karen, sufficient was a dangerous word.

He was naked except for his socks, which he had been instructed to remove next.

The sheet was perfectly white.

Not hospital white.

Not funeral white.

Karen called it clean white.

There was a difference.

Everything Paul brought home from the police station was considered contaminated. His boots. His trousers. His shirt. His belt. Sometimes even his thoughts, although Karen had never actually said that.

Not in so many words.

He stood there, exhausted, looking at the bathroom door.

“Shower first,” Karen said.

“I know.”

“You know what?”

Paul closed his eyes.

“Shower first.”

“Good.”

Thirty-five years of marriage.

Thirty-five years of policing.

Thirty-five years of coming home to the woman who knew exactly where he had been, who he had spoken to, what he had touched and, increasingly, what he had been thinking.

The house had become a checkpoint.

Karen was the border.

Paul was the contraband.

He sighed.

That was another thing she didn't like.

Sighing.

It suggested resentment.

Resentment suggested secrets.

Secrets suggested guilt.

And guilt, in Karen's mind, was practically a confession.

She had not always been like this.

Or perhaps she had.

Perhaps grief had simply given her permission.

When Paul's father died, the cancer had eaten him slowly.

Not dramatically.

That would have been easier.

Instead, it had taken him piece by piece, patiently, like some enormous invisible crab beneath the bed.

The appetite first.

Then the strength.

Then the dignity.

Then the voice.

Paul had watched it happen and felt himself coming apart with him.

Karen arrived at exactly the right moment.

She became indispensable.

She took him to the priest.

She hid the Jack Daniel's.

She made appointments.

She organised the funeral.

She told him when to sleep.

When to eat.

When to stop drinking.

When to pray.

When to grieve.

And Paul, who was drowning, mistook the hand around his wrist for a lifeline.

Thank God for Karen.

He used to think that.

Thank God for Karen.

Over and over.

Like a prayer.

Like a confession.

Like an instruction.

She moved into his house.

Then she rearranged it.

Then she rearranged him.

Marriage followed quickly.

She was a good Catholic girl.

Especially when kneeling.

Paul remembered laughing about that once.

Karen didn't.

Karen remembered everything.

She was organised to a fault.

God knew Paul was failing at the seams.

Then came the baby.

Unexpected.

Wonderful.

Terrifying.

A new life.

Paul held that tiny, furious creature and felt something inside him click back into place.

Complete.

For the first time in years, perhaps.

He had a family.

A home.

A respectable job.

A wife who loved him.

A child who needed him.

Everything was all right.

Everything was absolutely, perfectly—

“Paul?”

He opened his eyes.

Karen was standing in the doorway.

“You've been staring at the wall.”

“I was thinking.”

“About what?”

“Nothing.”

Her face changed.

Only slightly.

But Paul knew that face.

“Nothing?”

“I was tired.”

“You're always tired lately.”

He looked at her.

She looked back.

For a moment they were simply husband and wife.

Then Karen smiled.

It was a small smile.

Almost tender.

“You should shower.”

“Yes.”

Paul stepped off the sheet.

Behind him, Karen immediately folded it.

Carefully.

Precisely.

As though something poisonous had fallen onto it.

The police force had taught Paul many things.

How to lie.

How to watch.

How to recognise fear.

How to recognise guilt.

How to recognise the moment a person decided they had nothing left to lose.

He had also learned that the most dangerous people weren't always criminals.

Sometimes they wore wedding rings.

Sometimes they made the bed.

Sometimes they packed your lunch.

Sometimes they stood waiting for you when you came home.

And sometimes they loved you so thoroughly that you couldn't remember where their life ended and yours began.

Paul showered.

He watched the dirty water disappear down the plughole.

He wondered whether Karen could smell guilt.

Perhaps she could.

Perhaps that was why she had become so vigilant.

Because there was something in the house that she had never found.

Something Paul had buried so deeply that even he occasionally forgot it existed.

His old friend.

His lawyer friend.

Years ago.

A man Paul had known for years.

A man who trusted him.

A man who had eventually been arrested.

Convicted.

Sentenced to nineteen years.

Nineteen.

Paul had always found that number strangely satisfying.

It was long enough to destroy a life.

Not long enough to make the newspapers interested forever.

Nobody knew.

Nobody had ever known.

The evidence had appeared in the right place.

The information had reached the right people.

The investigation had moved in precisely the right direction.

And Paul had watched from the shadows.

His colleagues called it good police work.

His lawyer friend called it betrayal.

But he had never known who betrayed him.

That was the beauty of it.

Paul dried himself.

Outside, Karen was waiting.

“You've been a long time.”

“Sorry.”

“Were you thinking again?”

“No.”

Another smile.

This one didn't reach her eyes.

Paul looked at his wife.

Thirty-five years.

She knew everything about him.

Everything except the one thing that mattered.

And suddenly, horribly, Paul wondered whether Karen had known all along.

Not the details.

Not the evidence.

Just the shape of it.

The smell of it.

The stain beneath the floorboards.

Perhaps that was why she insisted upon the white sheet.

Perhaps she wasn't trying to keep the filth out.

Perhaps she was waiting for it to reveal itself.

Paul looked down.

There was a tiny dark mark on the pristine white fabric.

Karen saw it too.

Neither of them spoke.

Then Karen bent down.

Very slowly.

She touched the mark with one finger.

And smiled.

“Paul,” she whispered.

“Yes?”

“Tell me where you've been.”

And suddenly the house seemed very small.

Much smaller than it had been yesterday.

Much smaller than it had been thirty-five years ago.

Much smaller than a prison cell.

Because a prisoner, at least, knows when the door is locked.

The House We Could No Longer Find

It looked all right, at first.

There was something almost cheerful about it.  

Throwing the model aeroplanes out into the sea. There were dozens of them, perhaps hundreds, floating on the water like tiny, colourful promises. 

Red wings, blue wings, yellow tails, little painted windows catching the sunlight.

But I knew what would happen.

They would become heavy.

The paper would soften.

 The colours would run. 

The little hollowed out  fuselages would fill with water, and one by one they would sink.

A sodden graveyard of things that had once believed they could fly.

I found a little shopping mall afterwards.

I don't remember why.

Perhaps I was looking for someone. Perhaps I had forgotten who. 

There was a shop selling scarves and I bought a red one. It was beautifully made, almost impossibly so. The fabric was soft between my fingers and the stitching was perfect. I held it against myself in the mirror and thought, Yes. This is mine.

That seemed important.

I drove home.

Except I didn't know it was home.

There was a little house at the end of the road. Small Georgian windows. A black-painted front door. Something about it made me stop the car.

I looked at it for a long time.

Then I realised.

Ours.

I felt an enormous relief.

Our house.

Our beautiful little house.

The place where we had once put everything that mattered.

I went inside briefly, then remembered we needed bread.

So I went out again.

The bread was wonderful. Warm, soft and fresh, wrapped in white paper. I carried it carefully against my chest as though it were something precious.

And on the way back, something happened.

I couldn't find the house.

There were so many of them.

Small Georgian windows.

Black doors.

The same little steps.

The same railings.

The same neat gardens.

One thousand houses, perhaps.

Ten thousand.

And suddenly I understood something terrible.

I had no telephone.

No number.

No way of asking where I was.

No way of asking where you were.

I walked up and down the street holding the bread, the red scarf billowing behind me, looking for the door I had loved.

But it had disappeared amongst all the others.

Or perhaps I had.

Perhaps I had never known which house was ours.

Perhaps ours had only existed because we were standing inside it together.

Without you, it was just another house.

Eventually, I stopped looking.

That is the strange thing about losing someone - something.

There isn't always a final moment.

Sometimes you simply become unable to find each other.

And then, somehow, forever has already begun.

I never saw you again.

What remained of us was left behind in that little house.

Our photographs.

Our clothes.

The things we had chosen together.

Letters.

Jewellery.

Books with our names written inside them.

All those small, ridiculous objects that had once seemed incapable of being destroyed because they belonged to us.

Strangers came in.

They tore through everything.

Drawers were emptied onto floors.

Cupboards were opened.

Our precious belongings were lifted, examined, dismissed and carried away.

They didn't know what anything meant.

Why would they?

They had never stood in our kitchen at midnight.

They had never watched the rain against those little Georgian windows.

They had never heard us laughing behind that black door.

To them, it was simply a house.

And I think that was the final insanity.

Not that I had lost you.

Not even that I could no longer find home.

It was the realisation that everything we had loved could survive us without remembering that we had ever existed.

Outside, somewhere beyond the houses, the little model aeroplanes were still floating.

Colourful.

Beautiful.

Sinking.

And I was still holding the bread.

What Do They Really Want?

 

Perhaps the most frightening thing about Tiny Fair, Frenchy and Michael was that none of them had ever been entirely honest about why they were there.

Not even with themselves.

Frenchy told himself he wanted the truth.

He wanted answers about Belle Vue.

The lost souls.

The people who had disappeared.

The names buried beneath decades of silence.

But perhaps that wasn't his true interest.

Perhaps Frenchy needed the dead to speak because the living had never told him enough.

He had begun to suspect that every ghost was carrying a piece of something he desperately wanted to know.

And that made him vulnerable.

Because a man who needs an answer badly enough will eventually believe the person who promises to give it to him.

Michael understood that.

Michael understood people.

That was his particular talent.

He knew what Tiny feared.

He knew what Frenchy wanted.

And, most disturbingly, he appeared to know what they would do before they knew it themselves.

Michael had never really been interested in rescuing Tiny.

He was interested in **where she could go**.

Where she could enter.

What she could remember.

There were places other people could not reach.

Doors that remained invisible to ordinary people.

And Tiny Fair, whether she understood it or not, seemed to possess the ability to cross them.

Michael had discovered that long ago.

Belle Vue wasn't the beginning.

It was merely the place where the three of them had finally begun to notice one another.

Tiny's interest was different.

She wanted peace.

That was all she ever said.

Peace from the voices.

Peace from the memories.

Peace from the endless procession of damaged people who seemed to find her.

But perhaps Tiny didn't actually want peace.

Perhaps she wanted somewhere she could disappear without dying.

Somewhere nobody could follow.

Somewhere the past could no longer reach her.

And Michael had shown her such a place.

The temple.

The golden ocean.

The impossible sunlight.

It was beautiful because it was not real.

That was the frightening part.

Frenchy, meanwhile, had begun to realise something he hadn't wanted to admit.

He wasn't investigating Michael.

Michael was investigating **him**.

Every question Frenchy asked had been anticipated.

Every door he opened seemed to lead somewhere Michael had already been.

Every secret he uncovered somehow revealed another secret about himself.

And then there was Tiny.

Always Tiny.

Standing between them.

Smiling.

Confused.

Terrified.

Or pretending to be.

Frenchy could no longer tell.

Perhaps Michael wanted Tiny.

Perhaps Tiny wanted the temple.

Perhaps Frenchy wanted Tiny.

Perhaps none of them wanted what they claimed to want.

And perhaps the lost souls at Belle Vue weren't asking to be freed at all.

Perhaps they were warning them.

Because there was one final possibility that nobody had considered.

Michael wasn't trying to take Tiny to the other side.

He was trying to bring **something back**.

Something that had been waiting beyond that golden ocean.

Something that knew Tiny.

Something that remembered Belle Vue.

Something that had been watching Frenchy since before he ever heard its name.

And perhaps that was why Michael never seemed frightened.

He already knew what was coming.

Tiny was the doorway.

Frenchy was the witness.

And Michael?

Michael was the man standing beside the door, quietly waiting for somebody to open it.

The terrible question was no longer:

**What does Michael want?**

It was:

**What does he intend to let through?**

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.**