Shaun Hutson: Heathen/Nemesis

She couldn’t enter it.

The memories were piled high in there, as high as the copies of his manuscripts. As high as the filing trays, filled with their letters and notepads.

She closed her eyes and pushed the door open.

In the dull light from the desk lamp she gazed around. One half of the room was occupied by two huge bookcases, the other by his desk. On part of the desk sat a typewriter, an old portable manual model. Ward had never invested in a WP; he’d never found the need to fill his room with technological gadgetry. He wrote long-hand, then typed. It was as simple as that.

Beside the typewriter were loose sheets of notepaper with hastily scribbled notes. She saw a dictionary, a thesaurus, the pocket tape-recorder she had bought for him one Christmas. The filing cabinets and drawers remained shut, their secrets hidden from her.

Donna noticed that the small clock on the desk had stopped, its hands frozen and still.

Like Chris.

She flicked off the light and closed the door behind her, walking into their bedroom. The effort of getting undressed seemed too great; she sat down on the edge of the bed, her head bowed as if under some enormous weight. Tears were rolling down her cheeks, her quiet sobs loud in the stillness of the bedroom. Grief she thought she had expended at the hospital now seemed to crowd in on her. She fell back on the bed, her legs drawn up to her chest, and lay in that foetal position, her body quivering as she cried.

The darkness outside was impenetrable but it was radiant compared to the gloom in her soul.

And she knew this was only the beginning.

Eight

A dream.

It had to be a dream.

She heard the sound but thought it was part of her subconscious. The persistent two-tone bell.

She sat up quickly, her eyes wide and staring, red-rimmed. It was no dream. Daylight poured in through the open curtains of the bedroom. The ringing of the doorbell was virtually unabated now, occasionally interspersed with the banging of the brass knocker.

Donna put both hands to her face and felt the stiffness in her neck and shoulders, the beginning of a headache.

The ringing continued. And the banging.

Donna finally swung herself off the bed and moved mechanically across the landing and down the stairs. She paused beside the front door, she put one eye to the spy-hole and recognised the figure outside. She pulled open the door.

‘I thought there was something wrong ...’ Jackie Quinn began. Then, as she looked at Donna, she realized that there was. Something terribly wrong.

Donna stepped away from the door, allowing Jackie into the hallway.

‘Donna, what’s wrong? What is it? You look terrible,’ Jackie said quickly, shocked by her friend’s appearance.

‘What time is it?’ Donna mumbled quietly.

‘Sod the time,’ Jackie rasped. ‘What’s happened?’

‘It’s Chris,’ Donna said, tears already forming in her eyes. ‘Jackie, he’s dead.’

The two women embraced, Donna clasping her friend to her with a strength born of desperation. Jackie could feel tears soaking into the shoulder of her blouse, could feel Donna trembling helplessly in her grasp. And she too felt that awful sense that someone had punched her in the stomach, knocked the wind from her. Shock struck like a clenched fist.

Jackie guided her weeping friend towards the kitchen and sat her down, keeping her hands on Donna’s shoulders, stroking her hair repeatedly. She found herself looking into eyes that bulged in the sockets, eyes criss-crossed by veins.

Eyes without any semblance of hope.

At twenty-eight Donna was a year older than Jackie, but her face might have belonged to a person of forty. Beneath her puffy eyes the skin looked bruised, the lids themselves swollen. Her nose was red, her cheeks untouched by make-up. Her hair was unkempt, tangled like intertwined lizard-tails. Two nails were broken on her right hand and another chewed down as far as the tip of the finger. Her face was tear-stained and Jackie could see patches on Donna’s sweatshirt and jeans. She thought the dark stain on her thigh was blood.

Jackie found tears coursing down her own cheeks, so touched was she by the plight of her friend.

Gradually Donna stopped sobbing. Jackie held her close again, rocking her as she would rock a child. She kissed the top of Donna’s head, pressing her face against the other woman’s hair. Donna pulled back slightly and looked at her.

‘It happened yesterday,’ she said quietly. ‘A car crash. I had to identify his body.’

‘Donna, I’m so sorry,’ Jackie murmured, wiping tears from her own face before pulling a tissue from her handbag and wiping Donna’s face. The older woman sat still and allowed her friend to minister to her.

‘Have you been here on your own all night?’ she asked.

Donna nodded.

‘Why the hell didn’t you call me? You need someone with you.’

‘I need Chris.’

Jackie nodded slowly and swallowed.

‘Have you slept?’ she wanted to know.

‘A few hours. I must have dropped off on the bed last night. You woke me up, ringing the doorbell.’ She smiled thinly.

‘Come on,’ Jackie said, holding out a hand and beckoning her. ‘You’re going back to bed.’

‘I can’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep. Not now.’

‘You’re out on your feet. If I hadn’t woken you up you’d still be asleep now. Come on.’

‘I’ll never be able to sleep, Jackie.’

‘I’ve got some sleeping pills in my handbag; you can take those if you have to. Please, Donna. You need some sleep now.’

Donna got to her feet and allowed herself to be led upstairs to the bedroom. There, Jackie drew the curtains and turned down the bed while Donna slipped off her clothes and threw them to the floor. Naked, she slipped between the sheets. Jackie sat on the edge of the bed stroking her hair until she saw her friend’s eyes begin to close. It took a matter of minutes before she was asleep. Jackie took one more look at her then hurried downstairs.

In her sleep Donna rolled over, her lips parted slightly, her breathing even.

One hand slid across the bed to rest where her husband would normally have slept.

Nine

She awoke with a start for the second time that day, sitting bolt upright, her head spinning.

Donna looked round to see Jackie standing by her bedside, a tray in her hand. On the tray was a bowl of soup, some bread and two mugs of tea. Donna smiled thinly and sank back onto her pillows, pulling the sheet round her breasts. She glanced across at the clock on the bedside table and saw that it was almost two-thirty. A watery afternoon sun was trying to fight its way out from behind a bank of thin, high cloud.

‘You should have woken me earlier,’ she said, rubbing her eyes.

‘You needed the sleep,’ Jackie told her, setting the tray down on the bed. ‘You need food, too.’

‘Jackie, I can’t,’ Donna murmured wearily.

‘I don’t care whether you can or can’t, you need to eat. Take it.’ She pushed the tray towards her friend and perched on the edge of the bed. Donna looked so tired, so drained. Normally, the two women were not dissimilar in appearance. Both were blonde and about the same height, Jackie perhaps a little bigger around the hips and bust, but they shared the same well-defined features; on more than one occasion they had been mistaken for sisters. At the moment, Jackie thought, Donna could have passed for her mother.

Reluctantly Donna reached for the soup and began sipping it.

‘The doctor will be here at about four,’ Jackie announced, raising a hand to silence the protest she saw forming on Donna’s lips. ‘I don’t care how much you complain, it’s better he looks at you. He might give you some tranquillisers or something.’