What You Wish For (22 page)

Hours passed. By the time the house grew quiet, I had worked myself into a frenzy of dread. I didn’t really know if I could trust Zara. What if she and Lisa were up in the office now, laughing, imagining my torment as they planned to kill me in the dead of night?

Finally, at around one a.m., I heard the key scratching in the lock. I braced myself yet again.

It was Zara.

She came into the room, her finger on her lips. Checking that the coast was still clear, she gestured for me to follow her.

It was quiet in the hallway, though the overhead lights blazed. Zara padded quickly towards the stairs and I followed her. We went down the stairs and she paused to look around. Someone came out of the kitchen and Zara gestured for me to stay back. Whoever it was went into the front room and Zara tiptoed across to open the front door. She waved me for me to come, and within seconds I felt the welcoming kiss of fresh air.

Zara’s Mazda was parked right there. We climbed in.

‘My passport,’ I said, suddenly remembering. ‘Jake took it when—’

‘Relax. I’ve got it. He left it on Lisa’s desk.’

‘Oh, thank God.’

‘It should be me you’re thanking, Richard,’ she said with a little smile.

‘I know. I’m so—’

‘Oh shit.’

Jake had appeared from nowhere and was standing in front of the car, gesturing angrily. Zara pressed a button to lock the car doors. Jake began to yell and two or three other people came out of the house.

‘We need to go,’ I urged.

Zara hesitated.

‘Please!’

‘I can’t run him down.’

There were people behind the car now too. And more were streaming out of the house, surrounding us. It was like a scene from a zombie film, where the undead crowd around the car, trying to get in.

‘Oh, fuck!’ Zara exclaimed, revving the engine and jerking
forward
, stopping an inch from Jake’s thighs. His face was contorted with fury. I looked across and saw Lisa standing by the side of the car.

Then I heard someone shouting.

‘Hey, hey – they’re here. The Chorus! They’ve landed!’

Everyone standing around the car turned their heads to look. I leaned over Zara, craning my neck to see. It was Rick. He was standing down by the beach, waving and gesturing towards the sea.

‘They’re here!’ he called again.

Everyone apart from Lisa and Jake broke into a run towards Rick. He was trying to save us. I had no idea what he would say when they reached the beach and there was no spaceship there, but at that moment I didn’t care.

Then I realised Zara was staring at Rick too, and her hand moved towards the door. This was what she, too, had been waiting for. I reached across and took hold of her wrist.

‘He’s lying,’ I whispered. ‘He’s doing it so we get away.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because he’s a journalist.’

‘What?’ she hissed.

‘I’ll explain when we get out of here. If that fucker ever gets out of the way.’

Still in front of the car, Jake looked at us, then at the beach.

Lisa shouted, ‘He’s lying. Jake—’

But nothing could stop him from checking it out. He joined the others, running towards Rick. Now only Lisa remained. She screamed with anger and tried to get in front of the car, but she was too slow. Zara shifted into drive and put her foot down.

I watched Lisa in the rearview mirror, gesticulating like a
madwoman
.

22

Zara’s phone rang on and off all the way to the airport in Portland, until she eventually switched it off.

‘Do you think they’ll follow us?’ I asked.

‘I doubt it. But I won’t ever be able to go back there now.’

Her words hung in the air between us.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said.

She stared at the road ahead. ‘It was my life.’

‘They were murderers, Zara. They were going to murder me too.’

She didn’t respond.

After a long silence, she said, ‘I can’t believe Rick is a journalist. What’s he doing? Writing a story about us? And you’ve known all along?’

‘He told me on the way out here. Again, I’m sorry. But I couldn’t let you find out I didn’t really believe.’

The city lights shone on the horizon. I wondered what story Rick had made up. I was worried about him. I hoped he’d made a run for it, managed to get away.

There was something I needed to ask Zara, that had been playing on my mind.

‘I saw a picture on the wall in Lisa’s office: Laura, having sex with an alien. Marie appeared in photos like that. So did Gary’s girlfriend, Cherry, the one he was hunting.’

Zara’s cheeks had gone pink.

‘Is that how you fund what you do?’

She didn’t look at me. ‘When we started, we badly needed money to buy this place and to maintain it. The erotica was one way of bringing in a steady income. I think we were the first to do it. You know I told you about Jay, who runs the Embassy on the East Coast? It was his idea. He’s a graphic designer, and he devised the first pictures. Lisa was the first woman to ever pose in such pictures.’

‘Did you do it too?’ I asked.

‘I did, a long time ago. But Ben, my husband, found out, and . . . well, in the end I begged Lisa not to use the pictures and she agreed. By then we had Laura and a few other women, and men, who were happy to do it, though they wouldn’t admit it now. It all stopped ages ago. We don’t need the money anymore.’

‘So why is there a picture on Lisa’s wall?’

Zara shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe as a reminder of what we’ve left behind?’

She didn’t sound too convinced.

‘I guess you don’t need the money now because you persuade everyone who joins to sign over their property and all their
possessions
.’

‘They do that voluntarily.’

I held up my hands. ‘I’m not attacking or accusing you. Not
you
, anyway. But it seems to me that that’s what the whole thing is about. Lisa doesn’t really believe. It’s about money and power. These things always are.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘We believe. We all believe.’ A long pause. I was pretty sure there were tears in her eyes. ‘Guess you must think I’m a joke, what with my so-called psychic powers and all. They didn’t work very well with you, did they? You’ve made me look like a fool.’

‘Zara. You’re one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. I . . .’

She held up a hand to silence me. ‘Shut up. Do you know why I helped you? Why I didn’t just let Lisa do what she wanted with you? Why I’ve given up everything for you? It’s because I know what it’s like to lose someone you love. When my husband died I thought it was the end for me.’ She paused, sniffed. ‘Lisa saved me from my despair by giving me something new to devote myself to. And now that’s gone too.’

I searched for something to say. I felt guilty. But I also felt like I’d saved her in some way, even if she didn’t realise it yet.

‘Why don’t you come with me?’

She shook her head. ‘That isn’t possible.’

‘I know you won’t believe me right now but you don’t belong with them, Zara. Something bad’s going to happen at the Embassy. I can feel it. They’re murderers. And how do you think they’re going to react when contact doesn’t actually happen? Lisa would probably have made up some excuse and had you posing for porn shots again. You need to go out into the world – the
real
world – and find somebody new to love you. That’s what you deserve.’

We stopped at a light and she turned to me. ‘Can you imagine how I’ll feel if the Chorus come and I’m left behind?’

‘But Zara, you don’t really believe that’s going to happen, do you?’

‘Maybe not now . . . But it will. Some day.’

‘And in the meantime, you need to live your life. Enjoy it. Don’t waste it waiting.’

I hoped I had got through to her. But it was impossible to tell. I was just glad that she wouldn’t be able to go back. I really was convinced something awful was going to happen there.

At the airport, we got out of the car. I hugged her and kissed her cheek. I could taste the salt of her tears.

‘Goodbye, Richard. I hope you find Marie. I really hope it all works out.’

‘I still have no idea where she is.’

‘Then maybe you should take your own advice. Don’t waste your life waiting.’

The next flight to London, via Minneapolis, was at six a.m. and, to my great relief, there were seats available. I was able to transfer my ticket and went into a Starbucks to load up on caffeine. After that, I decided I
really
needed a cigarette so bought some and went outside to smoke.

I stood in the cold night air filling my lungs and wondering if Zara was right, if I really should follow my own advice. How long was I going to go on searching? Perhaps I should give up, get on with my life, accept that Marie didn’t want to be found. But it wouldn’t be easy, even if I wanted to give up. I couldn’t think about anything else. I couldn’t stop scratching the itch.

I stubbed out my cigarette and was about to go back inside when a young guy came out through the doors of the airport, a stuffed rucksack on his back. He stopped to look around, probably trying to find a taxi. And as he looked up I realised, with a jolt that almost floored me, that I knew him.

It was Pete.

From his red forehead and nose, he looked like he’d spent a day lying on a beach with no sunblock on, and his hair was shorter. But it was definitely him. The Jinx. He began walking away.

‘Pete!’ I called.

He turned and squinted at me, taking a step closer.

‘Do you remember me?’ I asked.

With a grimace, he removed his rucksack and dropped it to the floor. ‘Shit, that’s better.’ He rubbed his shoulder. ‘Hey, you’re that photographer dude from Hastings. I met you on the hill that night with Andrew and Marie. You were with that fat reporter.’

‘That’s me.’

He laughed. ‘Fuck, what are you doing in Portland, dude?’

‘I’m looking for Marie,’ I said. ‘I . . . I need to find her. After that night on the hill we became . . . well, she was my girlfriend. But then after Andrew died, she disappeared. She . . .’

He interrupted me. ‘What did you say?’

‘She disappeared.’

‘No, before that. You said something about Andrew being dead.’

‘Yes, and . . .’

‘Andrew Jade?’

‘Yes. Of course Andrew Jade.’ I wanted to get on with my story.

Pete looked at me with a mixture of amusement and astonishment. ‘Andrew Jade is the most healthy-looking dead man I’ve ever met,’ he said. ‘At least he was when I left him yesterday.’

It was like being punched in the face.

‘Andrew’s alive?’ I whispered.

‘Of course he’s alive. And Marie’s in pretty good shape too.’

PART THREE
VOX HUMANA

23

All the way to Minneapolis I was talked at by the middle-aged man who sat next to me. The British royal family, the cost of mountain rescue, the best barbecue equipment, the cheapest restaurants in Orlando and who was going to win the World Series. When he said, ‘And what about those alien abductions in Texas, huh?’ I thought I was going to scream. But I was trapped. There was no escape.

It was only on the second flight that I got some peace. I lay back, but I couldn’t sleep. My head was buzzing too much, the clamour of anticipation loud in my skull. Soon. soon, soon . . .

After Pete had told me that Andrew was still alive and that Marie was with him, I couldn’t speak for about thirty seconds. It seemed too unreal. I couldn’t absorb it.

Pete quickly realised how shocked I was by his news and, worried that he’d said something he shouldn’t, picked up his rucksack and took a stride towards the taxi rank. ‘Well, see you around, dude.’

I stepped in front of him. ‘Let’s get a coffee,’ I said.

‘I don’t—’

‘Come on, Pete. I’ve come all this way.’

He grinned lopsidedly. ‘I guess I could use a latte.’

Back at Starbucks I bought him a venti latte and a muffin.

‘Tell me,’ I said. ‘Everything.’

He hesitated for another second, but the urge to impart this obviously shocking tale overcame any fears he had.

‘I stopped by to see them on my way back from Greece. Man, Greece is so—’

I tapped the table impatiently. ‘Are you here to join the Loved Ones?’

‘You know about them?’

‘That’s where I’ve been for the past few days. I know them very well.’

He relaxed.

‘I thought Marie might be there. But you need to tell me – how can Andrew be alive? He was killed in a car crash. Marie went to the funeral.’

Pete raised a bushy eyebrow. ‘Man, this is fucked up.’

‘So where are they? What are they doing? I need to know, Pete.’

‘OK, OK. I need to explain . . .’ He slurped his coffee. ‘Andrew’s group used to be affiliated with the Loved Ones here, but a year ago, something like that, he emailed Lisa to tell her that his group had discovered “a deeper truth” and that they were going to form their own cell. Lisa was, like, whatever, dude. Andrew Jade’s always been an awkward fucker, since we first got involved with him years ago. And his cell’s, like, tiny. There are only thirteen of them.’

He stared at an attractive Asian girl who slinked past our table.

‘Pete . . .’

‘Yeah, sorry. Lisa asked me to check up on them again on the way back, see what they were up to. She knew where they were staying. That’s also what I was doing the first time you met me – I mean, of course I was stoked by the sighting in Hastings but the real reason I was there was to make sure they weren’t up to anything . . . what’s that word you Brits use? Dodgy.’

He swigged the last of his coffee.

‘They didn’t exactly lay out the freaking welcome mats this time. The moment I got there Andrew said I wasn’t welcome, that I was going to, like, disturb their aura. But I did persuade them to let me come in for a minute, to use the bathroom. They were sat around this big oak table – it was like some kind of ye olde worlde farmhouse kitchen, y’know? Andrew told me that he had been visited that very day, and that there were only a few days to go until the Big One.’

He looked up at me over his cup.

‘Marie was there, plus that writer chick, Samantha O’Connell, and a bunch of others. Mostly girls actually, plus two or three guys. There was a scrawny little dude called Kevin, who seemed kind of in awe of all these women. Because they were
hot
, all of them. It was like some kind of fucking
harem
.’

Kevin? Could it be the same Kevin who had shown me his alien porn collection? If so, what the hell was he doing there? Then I remembered – I had seen him coming out of the bookshop where Samantha had been doing her book signing. My God. It was a fucking conspiracy.

‘Andrew threw me out after about five minutes. None of the others spoke to me at all. They just stared, like they were on tranquilizers or some shit. It was creepy. You ever see that ancient movie,
Village of the Damned
? So anyway, I left and came straight back here.’

‘Did you send Andrew a flyer, inviting him here?’

He shook his head. ‘Uh-uh. I’ve been in Europe since the
summer
. But maybe he’s still on the mailing list. Lisa and Zara aren’t too hot at keeping that shit up to date.’

My heart was beating hard. ‘I need the address of where they’re staying.’

‘Sure.’ He produced his phone and flicked at the screen, cramming muffin into his mouth with the other hand. ‘Here we go. So, what, you gonna head down there, give them a big surprise?’

‘Something like that.’

He grinned, his mouth full of muffin, crumbs on his lips.

‘Say hi from me, won’tcha?’

It was light when I left Minneapolis, and light too when I landed at Gatwick. I hadn’t slept at all on the plane, and I yawned as my feet touched
terra firma
.

After a stroll through customs I tried to call Simon on his mobile. To my surprise, Susan answered.

‘Oh, hi, Sue. I don’t suppose Simon’s there?’

‘Richard!’ She actually sounded pleased to hear from me. ‘No, he’s at work. Idiot forgot to take his phone with him.’

‘But he’s living there with you?’

‘Yeah. I gave in to his begging.’

‘That’s fantastic. I’m really pleased.’ I paused. ‘So who’s feeding Calico?’

‘He’s in a cattery. It’s costing you seven pounds a day. The details are on your fridge.’

‘OK. Cool. Well, look, I’m so happy to hear about you and Simon. I’ll come round and see you as soon as I can.’ I paused and added, ‘I’ll bring Marie,’ then hung up.

I found my car in the car park. England was freezing; winter had arrived while I was away, and it reached through the concrete walls of the car park and made me shiver. I sat in my car and turned the engine and heating on.

Pete had given me the address where Andrew and Marie were based. It was just outside Eastbourne.

‘It’s a big old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere,’ he said. ‘They seem to be totally isolated and self-sufficient. They’ve even got chickens.’

I eased my car out into the open air. The sky was frosted blue, the colour of Marie’s eyes.

England seemed so strange and flat after Oregon. Where
America
had mountains, we had hills; where they had huge pine trees, we had hedgerows and shrubs. But this was my country, the place where I belonged. As I drove away from Gatwick, America receded into the distance, a fading memory, already yellowing at the edges like an old newspaper.

The A23 seemed to go on forever. I felt like I’d entered some kind of time loop, where you find yourself passing the same piece of scenery over and over. I could have sworn I passed the same pub half a dozen times. My hands were slippery on the wheel.

Unwanted thoughts strafed my brain. Was Marie sleeping with Andrew? That was what cult leaders did, wasn’t it, screw their disciples? Look at David Koresh, Charles Manson, the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who claimed to have slept with more women than any other man on the planet.

I could picture Andrew, with his little glasses all steamed up, his forehead gleaming sweatily as he leaned over Cherry and Samantha and Marie – my Marie – and pawed them. It made my flesh creep. And another grotesque thought: what if she had been sleeping with him all the time she was with me? I remembered the way she had laughed that night on the way home from the nightclub, when I had asked her if Andrew was her boyfriend. I tried to recall the sound of the laugh, to work out if it was a false one.

I wished Andrew really was dead.

The needle on the fuel gauge was worryingly low. At the first opportunity I pulled into a petrol station and filled up. I bought a cup of coffee and a bag of crisps. The man behind the counter sniggered at my Loved Ones outfit. I sat in my car and drank my coffee, ate the crisps and studied my road map.

When Pete had given me the address of Andrew’s group, or cell, he added, ‘It’s not easy to find. I hitched a ride out there, but I was wandering round for hours before I finally found it. It’s not exactly well signposted.’

‘I can’t believe,’ I said, ‘that I came all this way – to the far side of America – and Marie was only twenty miles away all the time.’

Pete shrugged. ‘Like I said, it’s not well signposted.’

Then he said, ‘Hey, don’t take this the wrong way, dude, but don’t you think if Marie had wanted you to find her she would have let you know where she was? Doesn’t the way that she’s hidden away from you tell you something?’

I shook my head. ‘No! She doesn’t know what she wants. She’s been brainwashed by Andrew. She’s probably being kept a
prisoner
.’

‘She didn’t look like a prisoner to me.’

Now, I turned off the A23 just north of Brighton and headed towards Lewes. I passed Falmer and the universities – where all this had started, years before, when Andrew met Samantha – and soon I was driving across the South Downs.

I suppressed a yawn as I passed the Long Man of Wilmington, a huge chalk figure in the face of the Downs. No doubt some conspiracy theorist somewhere believed that the Long Man of Wilmington had been carved into the hill as a message to extraterrestrials, or that aliens had created him themselves, making him a distant cousin of the Easter Island sculptures.

I was so sick of it all. Aliens, UFOs, conspiracy theories, the fucking Chorus, the word ‘contact’. Sick, sick, sick. After I had saved Marie and taken her home I was going to make my house an alien-free zone. The
X-Files
box sets would be chucked out; all of the books Marie had about abductions would be thrown on a bonfire. It would all be for her own good . . .

Fuck. What the hell was I thinking? I was as bad as Andrew or Lisa, trying to control people’s beliefs.

When I found her, I was going to talk to her. Set out my case. Try to persuade her that we should be together. If she didn’t want that, if she would prefer to stay with Andrew, then I would have to accept it. I would be heartbroken, but I would learn to live with it.

I just needed to hear it from her mouth.

I just needed to
know
.

I turned off the A-road and crossed the Downs, heading towards the sea. Apparently, Andrew and company were based quite close to a village called East Dean. I slowed the car.

A thick mist had drifted in from the sea, enveloping the southern part of the Downs. It was like driving through a cloud that had fallen to earth. The mist crept into the car, making goose bumps rise on my flesh. There was no other traffic around. I felt like I’d driven into some other world, a Twilight Zone, and I could almost hear that creepy music all around me.

I pulled over to the side of the road beside a large wooden gate. I got out of the car. I had a feeling I was close.

‘It’s down a little lane between two farms,’ Pete had said.

Beyond the wooden gate I could see a herd of Friesian cows. I could hear sheep bleating in the next field along. Separating the fields was a narrow country lane. It fitted Pete’s description.

I rifled through the boot of my car and found a screwed-up kagoule. I put it on and walked down the lane. Small trees had been planted in rows on one side and they stood like sentries in the mist, dark figures silhouetted against the white fog. To my right were neat, clipped hedgerows. The birds sang loudly but tunelessly in the trees above me.

I hugged myself against the chill. The mist clung damply to my clothes and hair. The path beneath my feet was wet. Spider webs glistened on the hedgerow.

The country lane branched off in two directions. I peered through the mist. One branch led towards an open field. The other path turned a corner. I decided to try the second and there, at the end of the lane, was a gate set between two hedges. I pushed the gate open and stepped into a farmyard.

The house was large and very old. The roof was thatched, the chimney crooked, the white paint cracked and flaky. Ivy crept up to the first floor where damp had pushed through the paintwork. Could this really be the right place? A farmer would probably appear at any moment to tell me I was trespassing on his land.