The Eidolon (7 page)

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay on? Even for another week?” says Danny. “The trek round the lakes should be something.”

There’s no question of staying here. I haven’t slept properly since... I glance up at the mountain looming in the middle distance. “I just need to get home.” Behind me, on the steps of the monastery, the old monk is watching.

“I’ll let you know about the next trip, whenever it comes up,” says Danny. “Take care of yourself.” He holds out a hand.

“You too.” I grip his hand and shake it. “Keep out of trouble, okay?” I know he won’t, but saying it absolves me of responsibility when he doesn’t.

Danny grins. I get into the truck, where the leather seats are worn through so that the springs are just visible at the edges. They squeak in protest when I sit on them. It smells of cigarettes and damp clothes, and there’s a crack at the bottom left corner of the windscreen.

The driver jumps in, grinning his gums at me as his cigarette wobbles. He scrapes the long gearstick into neutral and turns the key. He mumbles something I don’t catch, and wheezes at his own joke as the engine growls to life, a puff of smoke chugging from the back, the smell of diesel suffusing the icy air. Danny’s waving figure retreats as we pull away from the monastery, dwarfed by the white mountain. I’m itching to get away from here, back to reality. I thought about little else during another night of sleeplessness, and the memory of that black lake. I don’t do ghost stories, especially ones that gatecrash your subconscience. But I didn’t bank on feeling a sense of loss. Something about losing that feeling of certainty I had on the mountain. That life would never be so clear again.

The truck bounces over the shingle-strewn ground, the springs squeaking their objections like a pen of frustrated piglets. The driver is in his element, hooting and grinning each time we shudder over the bumpy ground. Six years ago I spent three months on the back of a Suzuki DR350, negotiating the rubble trails of Mongolia that are passed off as roads. I
like
off-road driving, preferably on two wheels – it’s the stuff of adventure. I love the purity, the freedom, the danger. But my fingers close round the roof handle of the truck and my other hand grips the patchy leather of the seat. There’s no-one else on the road for us to hit, but his driving is making me nervous.

We pass through several small towns, where men and women sit on the side of the road selling yak meat from coloured rugs, and children dressed in bright, grubby clothes, with unruly dark hair and running noses, crouch in the street playing games in the dust or running, waving after the fair-haired stranger in the truck. The towns give way to valleys of green splashed with snow, and great canyons spanned by metal bridges; the kiss of industrialisation, even out here in the wilderness.

The miles bounce away under the tyres and each one of them carries me further away from the mountain and the black lake. For four days we travel towards the southeast, stopping in the small villages to eat and to try to sleep. The driver, Jinpa, knows someone in each of the settlements and finds us rooms for a few yuan. I’m not sleeping well. I don’t know what happened on the mountain. Part of me just wants to forget.

T
HE FLIGHT IS
on time. We take off from one of the highest airports in the world, over the sandy razor-peaked mountains and turquoise rivers meandering through the dusty valley basins. One day away from home, thank God. One day away from a pint of beer, a hot shower. Chips and curry sauce. Anything that’s not tsampa and sodding butter tea. The gloss will wear off before I’ve unpacked my rucksack, I know, but until then, I’ll savour it all.

The wilderness becomes patchy, obscured by blotches of white cloud, succumbing to dense, grey fog. The engines whine and shudder over some invisible bumps in the sky. Nothing out of the ordinary. A ping announces the seatbelt sign is switched off. A couple of people make their way up the central aisle to the toilets. One of them is a monk, not unlike the one with the crumpled face from the monastery. I get a sinking feeling in my stomach that has nothing to do with turbulence.

Other worlds. Some physicists believe in an infinitely expanding cosmos full of parallel universes, all budding off every time we make a choice about anything. Just another theory, and not one that’s cost me any sleep. So how come the monk’s superstition is getting to me? It’s ridiculous. One fairytale with a bad ending and I want to keep the light on. I look down. My fingertips are gripping the armrest. The seatbelt sign is switched off, but mine is still tight around my waist. This is the third time I’ve checked that it’s secure. What the hell’s wrong with me?

“Are you alright, sir?” The air stewardess is frowning at me. Her perfume announced her approach five seats away. Her face is the colour of a tangerine, and quite distinct from the colour of her neck.

“What? Eh, I’m fine, thanks.”

“Not keen on flying?” She purses her scarlet lips and inclines her head, giving me that look that mums learn to give to children when they graze their knees.

“No, I don’t know what’s got into me this time. I’m usually fine with it.”

“Just relax and try to get some sleep. We’ll be there in no time.”

I can’t wait. What for, I’m not quite sure.

I
WALK AMONGST
the droves of people striding through the corridors of Manchester Airport, yawning and rubbing my eyes. My muscles feel like they’ve been locked in a dusty cupboard for a month. Outside, the early morning light bulges between grey clouds on the other side of the large panelled windows. We arrive in a foyer with shops – shops that sell things you didn’t realise you had to have until they reminded you, like miniature bottles of shampoo and shower gel in case you feel compelled to wash your hair on the plane. There’s something about entering an airport that plays on the idea that you’re escaping to something better – leather bags to give you that executive look, perfume to make you smell like a film star, whatever that scent may be, jewellery modelled by some heroin-chic stick insect. Maybe, if you’re here long enough, you have a party in your own head, where you are that executive, or film star or stick insect. And all at a price that’s a snip if you move in circles where having second homes in Paris or New York is commonplace. And if you don’t? Well, why not just pretend, for a little while? Make the most of the daydream.

I don’t like daydreamers. This is Manchester, for fuck’s sake.

I make for the coffee stand and join the queue. My watch, a genuine 1993 Swatch watch, tells me I’ve got two hours until the next train. I pay for my coffee and walk to an empty table. The chair scrapes on the tiled floor as I pull it back, making the skin on my arms prickle. I drop my pack and slump into the seat, before the obligatory mobile phone check-in.
Maybe she sent you a message.
Its screen stares up, blank and unapologetic, telling me she hasn’t. What was I expecting?

There’s a bald man in a suit sitting at the table across from me, tapping feverishly on his laptop. He keeps sighing at it as though annoyed by its fickle performance. A mobile phone sits on the seat next to him. Armani suit, Rolex, cufflinks. An executive. A real one. Why’s he frowning then? What’s he so worried about? He’s meant to have it made.

At the next table sits a teenager, with purple hair that sticks out in all directions over her button earphones. She’s blowing pink bubbles, her head bent over her phone, texting at a speed that makes my thumb ache just watching her.

People bustle past. They’re right when they say that airports are great places to people-watch. Most of them look like they’re late for something because they walk at a pace just short of a run and almost none of them smile. They do their best to avoid eye contact, locked in their own worlds. I think back to the kids running after the truck in the dusty villages, smiling and waving.

Should I call her? Maybe I should tell her about what happened – it’s crazy enough for her to understand.

There’s a
pop
and a pink bubble explodes over the teenager’s face. She peels it off, then stuffs in back in her mouth and carries on chewing.

I select Cora’s number and my finger hovers over the dial button.Absence makes the heart grow fonder, they say
.
Whoever they are, I hope they are right. I suspect, though, that all absence does is give you time to forget the stuff that pissed you off before. I cancel the number and it disappears from the screen.

T
HREE HOURS LATER
I’m standing outside our flat in the drizzle. There are no lights on, at least none that I can see from outside. My heart picks up pace as I climb the stairs, and not just from the exertion. What if she’s home? God, I don’t know if I’m ready for another round. It would be easier if she wasn’t.

The pansies have wilted. Their purple heads are drooped over the edge of the pot and the soil is dusty. I turn the key and stand in the dim doorway. The flat is empty; I don’t have to go inside to know. It feels like a shell, like I did before I left. I flick on the light as I walk inside. The photo still sits on the hall table, like someone else’s memory. The living room seems bigger than it did before, barer. Some of her books and the Buddha have gone from the bookshelf, along with the tapestry. Something else is missing too, but I’m not sure what. I walk over to the computer and draw my index finger along the top of the keyboard, collecting a small pile of dust. That’s what’s missing. There’s no scent. No incense.

She’s left me a note in the kitchen.

I’ll pick up the rest of my stuff in a couple of weeks when I get back from the pottery. Hope you had a good trip.

Hope you had a good trip.

I stared at the scrap of paper in my hand. If she were here now I’d tell her what happened on the mountain, and she’d believe that it did. She’d believe that it wasn’t the cold, it wasn’t the dehydration or the altitude. Part of me wants to hear her say that I didn’t imagine it, but that’s the reason she’s gone, because I couldn’t deal with her thinking like that.

No. It’s for the best. But it was never going to be easy.

I make myself a coffee and turn to read the feel-good quote on the kitchen calendar, but she took that too. I could use one of those quotes just now, even if it is all just bull.

I go back to the living room. It feels like I’m in someone else’s house – someone who just died. It’s too quiet. Not just normal silence; it’s the kind of silence you get when life isn’t there anymore. Maybe coming back here wasn’t a good idea. I flick on the TV and lie back on the sofa, pulling the blue rug that’s draped over its back across me. My fingers close round Cora’s ring. The sound from the TV is just noise, so I turn it down. But the changing lights add some warmth, and although I’m not really watching it, it’s company. Sometime after that it blurs out of focus and I forget.

T
HE ROOM IS
a haze of shifting lights from the TV, dancing with the shadows of twilight. Through the softness between waking and sleeping, I feel it, like a cool breeze. Someone else is here.

She’s standing in front of the window, silhouetted against the night. She looks just like she used to. She’s smiling at me, her head inclined a little to one side. Slowly, she lifts her hand towards me, a strong, healthy hand, not wasted and thin like it was before she...

Cold fear rushes at me and I sit bolt upright, breathing heavily, sweat gathering in the nape of my neck. The hairs on my forearms prickle and rise. The TV spills its silent colours onto the walls and the window where... I’m on my feet, waiting as a chill slithers from my neck to the back of my knees. She was there, by the window.

Shit, Robert. Calm down. Just a dream, that’s all. A dream.

I take control of my breathing. It’s dark outside – I must have slept for hours. I reach for the lamp beside the TV and turn it on. Then I turn on all the other lights, including the bulb hanging from a cord in the ceiling, the one we never got round to finding a light shade for.

Another coffee and a large whisky. I spend the rest of the evening trawling the internet for jobs, and finish working on the Packit Up webpage – anything to avoid sleeping.

At two in the morning, I give in and go through to the bedroom. Most of her clothes have gone and the wardrobe sits half empty. It feels like there’s a stone in my chest. It feels like I could almost cut it out, but I wouldn’t want to. It’s all that’s left of her in me. I crawl into bed and sleep.

In the middle of a dream about snow and lakes I feel it again – a trickle of cool air on my neck. The snow dissolves and the lakes melt into the stillness of the room and a gentle glow from a streetlamp outside. I don’t know if my eyes are open or not. I don’t know if this is part of the dream, but she’s there again, her hand rising towards me. This time I reach out, I can’t help it, and she’s still smiling with her eyes, soft and unblinking as she looks at me, into me, pleading. As our fingertips touch, the lights go out.

“Sarah!”

I’m sitting bolt upright, entangled in the sheets, sweat dripping into my eyes. I snap on the light and see myself – alone – in the mirror against the wall. My eyes have a crazy look about them and my hair’s plastered to my forehead and I’m breathing like I’ve run up a Munro. I slump back on the pillow and rub my hands over my face.

I need to call Cora. She’s the only one who would understand.

My fingers fumble with the keys on the phone, shaking like an old man, hovering over the dial button. What am I going to say at five-fifteen in the morning? I’ve had a bad dream? I’m scared of the dark? She’ll think I’ve lost it. Maybe she’d be right.

I
LAST FIVE
more days in the flat, surviving on pasta and Dolmio sauce, Coco Pops and whisky. I’ve taken to sleeping with the light on, but it doesn’t make any difference. She’s there, the same dream every night, where she reaches out and takes my hand until I wake up in a breathless panic.

I never used to dream much, not as an adult. But I remember a dream that used to come to me when I was young, maybe five or six years old. It was always the same: I was walking in a wood at dusk, the crows cawing, unsettled in the branches above. I’d come to a bush and stop as I caught sight of a bare foot protruding from its base, and I’d pull back the branches, slowly. There was a man underneath, who looked up at me, and I knew he was frightened. There was blood on his leg and he was breathing too fast. Then the thud of hooves on the ground coming closer. The man shook his head and raised a finger to his mouth. I let the branches fall back and stood up. When the horseman came I never told him.