The Evil Inside (17 page)

Although I'd only been gone a night, it felt like a million years.

Although I was tired beyond words, the floor seemed the only place I could be.

There was a miniature Jackson Pollock with a pickaxe busting up my brain.

The room was spinning slowly and a large black hole was opening up beneath me.

I spread out my arms, closed my eyes and simply tried to hold on.

Monday.

And I was already late for my own funeral.

I cocked an ear from behind the closed boardroom door:

‘ … and with coolcams' improved traction and recall coming through the TV, press and online modules, we can build off that solid base to explore other more innovative and daring extensions of the brand.'

‘How about a reality TV show, for example? Remember our initial pitch TV concept? Why not produce a show where people send in all kinds of weird and wonderful real footage that they've captured on their own coolcam? Sort of like a home-made
Hard Copy
, where the coolcam owner gets to play director.'

‘Sorry I'm late,' I said from the doorway.

My voice sounded strange, even to me. Like it was coming out of the blank TV screen.

Anthony, blue marker in hand, didn't – or couldn't – continue talking.

The director and the producer had apparently already shown the rough cut of the TV ad and were now sitting out the business end of the meeting out of politeness. The director scowled at me like I was a father who had missed the birth of our child. Her frizzy hair seemed to almost spark with contempt.

Bill looked at me like he didn't recognize me. Lucy looked down at her lap.

The coolcams clients, who had flown over specially from Frisco late the night before, blinked at me like security cameras and whispered something to each other.

Funny, now that I looked around at everyone I worked with, they all seemed like the biggest bunch of phonies.

Anthony hustled me out of the room and propelled me into the sterile, gleaming kitchen, shutting the door behind us.

‘Guy … ' For once he had no idea what to say. The smile ran away from his face. He sat rigidly with his hands on both his knees, like a parole officer prepping a perp.

The electrical sockets behind him were laughing like bastards at me.

‘Sorry I'm late,' I repeated dumbly. ‘Callum must have done something to the clock radio.'

But the fact that I had still been up at 5 a.m. speed-reading Bill's Dad's godforsaken books and still had unabsorbed particles of Nadine's nefarious Blue Meanies scuttling around my cerebellum like turbocharged cyber-crabs hadn't made it easy for me to make the 8.30 a. m. Monday morning meeting either.

Plus, I hadn't shaved or showered since Friday. My suede jacket had ugly brown rum and Coke stains on it. Not to mention the bruise of the century I was sporting on my forehead. I must have looked a sight.

‘Girly,' Anthony said again, reaching out but then pulling back his arm. It was shaking. ‘You're not quite right at the moment. I think you need some help. I know you're already seeing someone, but maybe you need to ramp that up a bit.'

A ramp. That sounded like a good idea. Something I could fly a motorbike off into the wild blue yonder with. Like Evel Knievel.

‘Now, Guy, I've got to get back to the meeting.' He was talking very slowly and repeating my name like I was a mental patient or something. ‘It's all under control, Guy, so don't worry. They love the ad. Take some time off, I'll talk to Mia, and we'll work something out.'

‘Mia's gone,' I said. But he already knew that. And I didn't give two shits about the fucking ad any more.

There was only one thing that really interested me this morning.

‘Anthony?'

‘Yes, mate?'

‘Who wrote
You'll see
on the whiteboard?'

Christ – when was she going to get some decent magazines for her fucking waiting room?

I picked up an antediluvian
People
with a strapping and hirsute Patrick Swayze dancing on the cover, then put it straight back down again. Then did exactly the same with the latest
Mind Monthly
:
the nation's most respected journal of psychotherapy.

I finally unearthed a bedraggled
Scientific American
from the bottom of the pile and scanned the contents: it may as well have been hieroglyphics.

Truth be told, I was a complete science dunce. Which was also the reason why I'd avoided Terry's tricky satellite job for as long as I could. Not that it mattered any more. So I really had no idea about chaos theory or string theory or M-theory or multiverses or any of that heady Stephen Hawking stuff. God knows what I'd been dribbling on to Nadine about.

All I knew was that lately I felt like one of those accursed figures in an Escher drawing who are constantly on the move yet never actually getting anywhere because the planes of their existence keep shifting beneath their feet.

For a few moments, I couldn't even remember how I'd got to today's session. Had I walked or taken the subway? And, bizarrely, I'd even temporarily forgotten Madame Inquisitor's surname.

I imagined there was a whole conference in that alone.

‘With dissociative – or fugue states as they're sometimes called – often it's not one specific thing that causes it. More a combination of factors or events over a period of time colliding or interacting with the individual psyche of the patient.' She smiled as if to say: the more, the merrier. ‘That's why some people handle traumatic or stressful events better than others.'

‘I see.' But I didn't really.

‘Sometimes “nothing” needs to happen in “real life” for the psyche to feel attacked or become distressed.'

I constructed my own fragile finger steeple. It wasn't the short, easy answer I was looking for.

‘But that's because “real life” isn't really our real life. It's only our internal world that is truly “real”.'

I looked at her blankly.

‘OK then. So why have these “episodes” only started to happen to me now? Why didn't they start years ago?' Go on, answer me that, Ms Know-it-All.

Her brow furrowed into a knowing smile above her eyes. ‘Well that's not to say that the psyche can't also be placed under extra stress through external or extraordinary “real-life” events. There may be a cumulative internal dysfunction building up over a period of months, years or even decades. And then something “happens ”' – she parenthesized the air – ‘in the everyday world that triggers a psychological crisis or meltdown.'

She fixed me with those punishing eyes. ‘And that's when some patients “zone out”, to use your term. In extreme cases, people can commit atrocious crimes while in a fugue state. Not long ago, for example, a man in Canada lost his job, then drove sixty miles through a blizzard to a farmhouse and murdered his in-laws for no apparent reason. Then he drove home again and carried on as if nothing had happened. Afterwards he had absolutely no recollection of the event.'

I wished I could have zoned out then and there.

A nice long drive through the snow might be fun.

‘But that's an extreme case. Can you think of anything that may have triggered inner turmoil in you recently, Guy?'

‘You mean apart from losing my wife, my son and now probably my job?'

Her pupils expanded slightly, ready for the kill. ‘What about losing your unborn daughter?'

‘Bubby – what's she got to do with it?'

‘
Bubby
? I didn't realize you had a name for her.' She suddenly looked super-alert and dangerous. ‘You haven't mentioned “Bubby” before, Guy?'

No I hadn't.

Because what could I possibly say that would make any sense.

Even to me.

*

It was Courtney's eighth birthday. I hadn't been invited to the party, of course, but since Saturday was one of my designated ‘Callum Days', I was picking him up afterwards.

Estella the maid opened the door.

‘Any news on—?'

But I already knew the answer before she looked down and shook her head. I'm sure Anthony would have had the decency to let me know if there'd been any improvement in Esmeralda's condition.

Estella looked tired. It was no wonder: she spent every day at the Johnsons', and most evenings by her second cousin's bedside. But they were much more than just relatives, of course. Esmeralda was an only child and her parents were both dead. She'd spent a lot of time with Estella growing up at her grandmother's house and then as young women the two of them had come to New York on a great adventure together.

Just like we had.

I followed Estella down the brightly lit hallway along a long, tawny tongue of Turkish carpet past a mini-gallery of Man Rays, Tannings, Smarts and Whiteleys. Mia had been openly envious of the Johnsons' small but significant Austral-American art collection.

Britney Spears
Baby
,
One More Time
'd from a speaker somewhere over a chorus of high-pitched screams and giggles. I heard Anthony laugh then snort like his wife, as he did sometimes after a few drinks. I found him sitting on a high stool in his gleaming, restaurant-sized kitchen with a champagne flute on the gold-flecked granite bench in front of him. He was talking to a Botoxed and bronzed East Side yummy mummy – presumably there to collect her snotty daughter.

‘You look like shit,' he said under his breath, running a hand through his wheatfield hair.

‘Maybe a champagne would help?' I hinted, when he didn't offer one.

‘Uh, Guy, this is Sabrina.' The woman was as thin as an eight year old herself.

‘Hi,' I said stupidly. ‘I'm Callum's dad.'

As if she gave a flying fuck.

Susanna walked in the other kitchen door, holding an empty flute. ‘You're late, Guy: I said three not four,' she said curtly before walking out with a refill.

‘Jeez, love the bloody welcoming committee!' I said, moving back towards the hallway. ‘Where is my son?'

‘Down in the “zoo”,' Anthony called after me. ‘They're watching a clown.'

I manoeuvred past a couple more Moët-handed mommies in the main living area and went through to the jungle-themed rec room where the kids hung out. One of the girls was replacing Britney with Eminem on a huge ghetto blaster in the centre of the room.

‘But I hate Eminem!' one of the other girls stamped her feet.

‘I only like red M&Ms!' said a much bigger girl, cracking a gag. The others all laughed, perhaps in deference to her superior height and weight.

The white rapper's scatological chanting grated on my nerves: I was admittedly a little old for Eminem, but from the white trash words I was hearing, these girls were way too young for him.

I scanned the room. Crisps and cake. Cups filled with green and red fizzy drinks.

No sign of Callum.

I asked one of the now-rapping girls if she knew where he was, but the music was way too loud and she couldn't hear me. I walked towards Courtney's bedroom.

Bright plastic letters on the door spelt out ‘
COURT
'; a befitting abode for a little princess.

I tapped twice, but then was almost bowled over by a clown running out in a slapstick hurry, frantically scooping up all his silly horns and squeakers and water pistol-flowers and shoving them – along with his matted platinum wig – into a big plastic bag resting against the wall.

And although I only caught a quick glimpse of his pancaked face as he ran out, there was something disturbing about it under the make-up. His red-ringed eyes were glassy like a fish's, his rubbery lips quivered like Jell-O and his bald head seemed way too small for his puffy sequined shoulders.

Gollum the Clown. He also reeked of cheap perfume.

I stepped into the dark room. The light was off and the curtains were drawn. The cheap perfume smell was in here, too. I turned on the light: Courtney was lying motionless on her bed. She was naked, with her underpants lying on the pillow beside her. Her jeans were on the floor.

‘Fuck!' I said. ‘Courtney – are you OK, honey?'

She moaned softly. Then turned her head and threw up some shiny green stuff.

I picked up her jeans.

‘Courtney?' I said, tapping her pale cheek. ‘Courtney?'

She moaned again just as I felt a presence behind me.

It was Callum. And Susanna.

I went to open my mouth, but then Susanna's shrieking completely drowned out me, Eminem and everything else.

Britney pouted accusingly at me in her tartan school dress from the poster above the bed.

While Callum now stood beside me: silent, his head turned upwards and his piercing blue eyes locked firmly on to mine; giving me that same unnerving look he'd given me in my office after that poor little bird had lost its head.

*

The cop patted me on the shoulder and lifted his moustache in apology. We'd been in the kitchen for what seemed like hours.

‘Sorry for the mix-up, Mr Russell,' the cop said, closing his folder. ‘The doctor says Courtney's fine. You obviously disturbed the perpetrator before he—'

Anthony patted my other shoulder, a little less convincingly. Susanna was still eyeing me suspiciously. According to the cop, the clown – one Barry Abbott – was a distant cousin to a big political family and a habitual child molester. While not blessed with the family's trademark charm, intelligence or good looks, his surname and money usually got him off the hook. All of which enabled him to keep popping up in variety of kid-friendly guises round Manhattan and the boroughs: magician, junior swimming coach, clown etc.

Four hours after he'd fled the party, he had been caught white-faced and red-handed near his apartment in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, shoving the plastic bag into a dumpster. He foolishly hadn't thought to wipe off his make-up yet.

‘But I'm still not clear why
you
were in Courtney's room too, Guy?' Susanna had said, even after the cop had eventually cleared me.

‘I told you: I was looking for Callum.'

‘But Callum was right here with me here in the kitchen. I was getting him a glass of water.' She still seemed convinced I was implicated in some way.

‘Well he wasn't in the kitchen when I looked in here, was he? He must have come in through that second door after I walked out.'

Unlike Lee Harvey Oswald, I wasn't feeling as cool as a cucumber.

I looked tiredly at Anthony for verification.

‘That's right,' Anthony said. ‘Guy's a lot of things, but he's not—' The shocking thought didn't bear completion.

Anthony and Susanna looked at each other. Then Susanna started to fill a glass of fruit juice for her daughter and Anthony gave me a ‘what are you gonna do?' shrug.

I walked slowly back down the Turkish trail to the front door with Callum in tow.

But I was too petrified to hold his hand.

What the policeman had said may have been enough of an explanation for Anthony and Susanna, but I couldn't shake the clear sense that whatever maleficent force Callum was channelling was now growing stronger by the day.

And that force had just tried to frame me for a heinous crime.

And it was beginning to now impact on innocent people too, rather than just attacking and torturing me.

As I stepped off the tongue of the rug, out of the front door into the dark New York night, I felt like I was walking straight into the mouth of doom.