D. Mitchell - The King of Terrors

‘April 28th, 1976.’

‘Wrong. It’s May 10th.’

‘That’s the date they put on the birth certificate, yes. But it’s not the right one. You’re older than me, by nearly half an hour. You were born at 7.30pm, and I followed at 7.55pm. You cried your lungs out; I didn’t, they had to make me.’

He sat there, stunned by what he was hearing. ‘This is some kind of sick joke…’

‘Look at me,’ she said. ‘Don’t you see a resemblance?’

Of course he did. He hadn’t realised it at first but that’s probably why she looked so familiar when he first saw her.

‘What was her name?’ he asked, delivered coldly, still refusing to believe what he was hearing.

‘Elizabeth.’

That single word made him crumple, in spite of everything he was feeling, in spite of the defences he was rapidly throwing up. ‘Elizabeth,’ he echoed quietly. He looked down at the coin resting in his hand.

‘It’s a Charles the Second silver crown, 1662,’ she explained. Your half was left to you wrapped in a sheet of paper torn from an encyclopaedia.’

‘So how did she die? Why did she dump me at Cardiff railway station? How come you and I never met till now?’

She glanced quickly and furtively around the ward. Everyone was involved in their own little world. ‘I can’t tell you at this moment. This is not the right place,’ she said, her voice deliberately hushed. ‘But you have to believe me.’

A man wandered onto the ward. He was draped in a heavy winter coat. Gareth saw her freeze and she watched him closely. He glanced in their direction. Then saw who he was searching for and made his way across the ward to the bed. She sighed.

‘Look, are you in some kind of trouble?’

Her attention snapped back to him. She looked like she wanted to say something, but her lips slowly came together and the words remained unsaid. She held out her hand for the coin necklace. He gave it to her and she concealed it in her fist.

‘What were you doing last night, running out in front of me like that? You could have killed yourself. Who were you running from? Has the box of gold jewellery got anything to do with this?’

‘Keep your voice down, Gareth,’ she said. ‘Please.’

‘You steal it?’

‘Absolutely not. Do you have the box safe?’

‘I have it, yes.’

‘It’s all there? Everything?’

‘Of course it is! What do you take me for? Tell me straight, what’s going on? Are you on the run from the police?’

She shook her head. ‘I came to help you. To warn you, Gareth.’

‘To warn me of what?’

She let out a deep breath. ‘Of them…I can’t speak about that here,’ she said quietly.

He threw his hands up in frustration. ‘OK, OK. Not here. You’re a strange one, lady.’ Her eyes were heavy, as if she were desperately tired. She was fighting to keep them open.

‘Shall I come back later?’ In part he knew he wanted to get out because he couldn’t handle what he was hearing. Couldn’t handle the fact this woman could be his sister. It threw his entire life up in the air.

She reached out, grabbed his hand. He didn’t know what he should do. Till a few minutes ago this woman was a stranger he had almost killed. Now she was a potential sister he never knew he had. Struck dumb, he just let her hang onto his hand. It felt warm. Reassuring. A contact he never dreamed of ever making. Emotions bubbled up within him, competed with each other for a piece of his troubled mind. The peace he’d found since coming to Deller’s End was in danger of being crushed like tinfoil. When he looked into her eyes he saw only truth, and that scared him. Terrified him. He tried to pull his hand away but she wouldn’t let it go.

‘You have to believe me, Gareth.’

‘I dunno…’ he said. ‘It’s all too weird. I’ve got to go. Maybe I’ll see you this evening, huh? I need time to think about this.’

He wrenched his hand free and she tried to sit upright, but pain forced her back onto her pillow. She grimaced. ‘Be careful, Gareth,’ she said.

‘I’ll see you later,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring you your box.’ And with that he turned and left her, hurrying from the ward and out of the hospital.

The cold, fresh air did little to revive him. His mind was spinning. This wasn’t happening, he thought. It was all too sudden, all too unreal to grasp.

He wandered the snowy streets of St Davids in a half-daze, finally clearing snow from a metal bench overlooking the cathedral and he sat there in the freezing cold. The grounds were deserted and sheathed in an undulating skin of snow broken only by the many dark headstones rising from it. The sky was a pristine white. Fresh snowflakes circled his lonely frame like excited children as he thought deeply on the implications of the visit. But there were no answers to be found, so he bought a bottle of Johnnie Walkers and went back to the hotel to find a few answers inside that. Did he really want his life turning inside out just as he’d got it back on track? He drank deeply of the whiskey and decided maybe he didn’t. Then drank again and decided that maybe he did. What if she was a fraud? But where did she get the other half of the coin if so, how did she know the details of how it was left to him, and what the hell was there in it for her to pretend to be his sister anyhow? None of it made sense. Unless she really was his sister. He took a stiff swig and gasped on the hot liquid. He ought to get something to eat or he’d suffer for it, he thought.

She came to warn him, she said. Warn him of what?

In the end he lay down, the drink taking its toll on him, and his mussed-up head tried to grapple with a plague of contradictory thoughts. As sleep drew its warm veil over his tortured mind he thought it would be rather swell to have a sister. And he smiled, in spite of himself.

When he awoke, the sky beyond the window was black. He rubbed sleep from his eyes, not fully realising how tired he’d been. The combination of tiredness and alcohol had all but floored him. He took a look at the time. 6.15pm. Visiting time at the hospital had started fifteen minutes ago. He splashed cool water on his face, grabbed the cardboard box full of jewellery, slipped his arms into his coat then headed for the hospital.

If anything the afternoon sleep had worked wonders. He woke up fresh and clear-headed, deciding he had to see Erica again. The prospect of a sister — his real family — filled him with something akin to excitement. It was as if a massive piece of the puzzle that had been missing in his life was finally being slotted into place. All the mysteries, the many questions, he might now find answers to them. He all but ran through the hospital doors, hoping he wouldn’t be too late.

He was taken aback to see that her bed was now occupied by an older woman.

‘Where is the young woman who was in this bed?’ he asked, managing to intercept a nurse. ‘Has she been moved?’

She was in a hurry and the flash of her eyes told him so. ‘She discharged herself, I believe. Are you a relative?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m the one who nearly killed her.’ He saw a look of horror spread across her face, her mind racing to the nearest panic button. ‘I mean, I knocked her over in my car. I have something I’d like to return to her.’ They both looked at the carrier bag he had in his hand.

‘Well she obviously thought she was well enough to take herself off.’

‘I suppose you have no idea where she went?’

‘You suppose right,’ she said bluntly. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me…’ And she scurried away to attend to other duties, but couldn’t resist calling back, ‘And try not to hit anyone else; we’re rather busy!’

He stood there. No amount of staring at the bed with the woman in it transformed her into Erica. He came down from his elation as if he’d been on a drugged high and it didn’t feel at all comfortable. He shook his head resignedly and headed for the double doors at the head of the ward. As he lifted his hand to push through the doors a man standing there held up his hand and stopped him dead. He was middle-aged, near to forty maybe, smartly dressed in a charcoal-black woollen coat that finished just above his knees, the shoulders peppered with shimmering beads of melted snow; his trousers were dark, ending in a pair of wet but shiny black shoes; his hair was neatly trimmed, his face a little red from the heat.