David Mitchell - Slade House

Freya u angry? if so dnt undrstnd

sorry, cldnt sleep cnt think worried

sick. Lottas wedding begins noon

dnt know if I shd go or call police

or wot. dont care what happnd or

if u with anyone but pls PLS call.

Avril doesn’t do head-screwing jokes like this, but if it isn’t a joke, it’s a mental meltdown. “If u with anyone”? We’re monogamous. We have been since Day One. Avril knows that. She should know that. I try calling our neighbor, Tom, but it’s still NO SIGNAL DETECTED. Maybe there’s a payphone in the bar — The Fox and Hounds is stuck in the 1980s. Otherwise I’ll ask Maggs the Moody Cow if I can pay to use her landline. I read the final text:

told Lotta u have glandular fever

so we stay at home. called Nic n

Beryl but they not hear from u.

police say wait 48 hrs b4 search.

PLS FREYA CALL ME, AM

LOSING MY MIND!!!

Nothing Fred Pink has said tonight disturbs me as much as this: Avril’s the sane one who soothes away my nightmares; who reattaches my handle when I fly off it. The only explanation is that, yes indeed, she has lost her mind. I hurry down the steep stairs to the bar below …

… and when I arrive, I enter the upstairs room I just left … and I stand there gasping like I’ve just been drenched in icy water. My hand grips the doorframe. The same tables, the same chairs, the same night-time window, the same enameled Guinness ad with a leprechaun playing a fiddle; the up stairs room of The Fox and Hounds. By going down I went up. My brain insists this happened. My brain insists this can”t have happened. My digital recorder’s still on the table we were sitting at — I forgot to pick it up in my panic — between my undrunk tomato juice, my empty cashew-nut packets, and Fred Pink’s brandy glass. Behind me, the stairs are going down, and I can see the floor of the bar below, an ugly chessboard pattern. I hear the Have I Got News for You theme tune from the TV. Breathe, Freya; think . Stress does this; your job is stressful; hearing a nutter tell you your sister had her soul converted into diesel was stressful. Avril’s texts were stressful. Memory’s a slippery eel at the best of times, so obviously, ob viously, you just, just “pre-imagined” going downstairs, but didn’t actually go. If you walk down the stairs again — I mean now — one calm step at a time, I’m sure—

My phone rings. Fumblingly, I get it out of my handbag: the screen says CALLER NOT RECOGNIZED. I fire off a fierce secular prayer that it’s Avril and answer with a frantic, “Hello?”

All I hear is an uncoiling sandstorm of static.

I speak at it: “This is Freya Timms. Who’s this?”

Maybe standing by the window will strengthen the signal.

I speak more loudly and clearly: “Avril? Is that you?”

Big trees on Westwood Road smother street-lamps.

Deep inside the static, words form: “Please! I can’t breathe!”

Sally. Sally. It’s Sally. I’m crouching on the floor. My sister.

It can’t be; it is; listen! “You can’t do this to me — you can’t!”

My sister’s alive! Hurt and scared, but alive! My words unblock and my tight throat opens enough to say “It’s Freya, Sal — where are you? Sal! Where are you?”

The static howls and beats and flaps and wails and thrashes and I hear “Someone’llstopyouonedayyou’llsufferyou’llpay—”

The line’s dead, the screen says NO SIGNAL DETECTED and in my head I’m screaming “ NO! ” but that won’t help so I’m clicking through the menus to CALL REGISTER but I hit GAMES and activate Snake and my stupid bastard phone won’t let me go back until it’s all loaded, but Sal’s alive alive alive, and I should call the police now, but what if she calls back when I’m talking to them, or what if she’s been locked in a psycho’s cellar for nine years like that Kampusch woman in Austria who escaped from her captor last month or what if—

My phone’s trilling and flashing. I answer: “Sally!”

“No, dearie. This is the Moody Cow from downstairs.”

Maggs the landlady? “Look, I’m coming down, I need—”

“It’s a bit late to help Sally now, I’m afraid, dearie.”

I hear her say the line one more time in my head.

I can’t speak, or move, or think, or do anything at all …

… the dead flies in the strip-light have woken up.

“That was only her echo, dearie. Her residue. Time’s voicemail, if you like, from nine years ago. Oh, very well, then — it was your sister’s ghost talking.”

Fear shunts me back through gluey air. “Who are you?”

Maggs sounds teasing and friendly: “Surely one of Spyglass magazine’s top journalists could hazard an intelligent guess after everything you’ve heard?”

What have I missed? “Let me speak with Mr. Pink.”

“Fred passed away months ago, dearie. Prostate cancer. A horrible way to go.”

A deep gulp inflates my lungs: a bona fide psychopath who impersonates the dead and keeps a fan-club of sicko helpers — the other customers? A locked-up pub; blinds down; murder. Murder . I go to the window. It’s a sash design, but it has frame-locks and it won’t open.

The landlady’s voice crackles out of my Nokia: “Still there, are you, dearie? The connection’s breaking up.”

Keep her talking: “Look, just tell me where Sally is, I’m sure—”

“Sally’s not anywhere. Sally’s dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.”

I drop the phone and let it lie and grab a chair to smash the window and scream blue bloody murder and wake the street and scramble down a drainpipe or jump out but when I turn back to smash the glass the window’s gone. It’s wall. It’s gone. It’s wall …

… I turn to the stairs. The stairs are gone. There’s a pale door instead, with a worn gold doorknob. The landlady’s on the other side. She’s doing this. I don’t know how, but she’s doing this, and she’s inside my head. Or wait wait wait—

I ’m doing it. I ’m the one with the psychosis, not Fred Pink.

I need an ambulance, not a police car. 999. Dial it. Now.

Really, which is likelier? The laws of physics breaking down, or a stressed-out journalist breaking down? I pick up my phone, praying this lucidity lasts. A crisp, efficient-sounding lady answers straight off: “Hello, emergency services?”

“Yeah, hi, I— My name’s Freya Timms, I–I— I–I—”

“Stay with me now, Freya.” The operator sounds like my mum, but efficient. “Tell me the situation, and we’ll see what we can do to help.”

If I speak about hallucinations in pubs, she’ll fob me off with a helpline number. I need something drastic: “I’ve gone into labor; I’m on my own, but I’m in a wheelchair, and I need an ambulance.”

“That’s fine, Freya, don’t worry; what’s your location?”

“A pub — The Fox and Hounds, but I’m not from round here so—”

“It’s fine, Freya, I know The Fox and Hounds. My brother and I live just down the street.”

I think, Thank God! but then I understand.

I understand why she sounds so amused.

I understand there’s no way out of here.

“Better late than never,” says the stern voice on the phone. “Turn around and look at the candle on the table, behind you. Now.”

As I obey, the room dims. A candle sits on an ornate candlestick engraved with runes on its stem and base. The flame sways.

“Watch the flame,” orders the voice. “Watch.”

Reality folds in, origami-like, and darkens to black. I can’t feel my body but I’m kneeling, I think, and three faces have joined me. Left of the candle hovers a woman in her mid-thirties. She’s familiar. She is Maggs the landlady, but twenty years younger, slimmer, blonder, smoother-skinned and eerily beautiful. Right of the candle is a man of the same age, also blond, and also known to me … as I study him, a young Fred Pink emerges from his face. The two are twins. Who can they be but Norah and Jonah Grayer? They are absolutely motionless, like the candle-flame, and like the third face watching me over the candle. Freya Timms staring out of a mirror. I try to move a limb, a thumb, an eyelid, but my nervous system has shut down. Is this what happened to Sal? I somehow know it was. Did she think of me? Did she want her big sister to come and rescue her? Or was she past that stage by then?