48 :

“It’s not safe here. “

I didn’t understand it. I had to do things, other things, important things. I had to learn how to touch, how to feel, how to move. Did he not know this? Was he, in some way, messing me around?

We’d had the conversation before. He knew what I had to do. He knew that I didn’t want to do it. He knew that I had to become a Black Angel Of Death.

We both knew, without speaking, that I had to kill a man to set her free. In order to defeat monster, one must be a monster. And one who is a monster must be defeated.

The greater good. That’s what I was thinking of. The greater good, the good for the many outweighing the good of the few. But we all know, sometimes the needs of the few are more important than the needs of the many.

I couldn’t get perspective. Or I had too much perspective. Whatever it was, I’d lost my sense of scale.

“What do you mean?” I asked. Annoyed, irritated.

“There’s someone else in that building. Someone like us. Something bad.”

Oh great. Another hoop to jump through, another one of Job’s trials.

“And?”

And I am an experiment. A lab rat. Put this person through all these things, test their responses. Left and right, up and down. Jump and crouch. Like a computer game, like a case study.

“And he’s been watching you. And they’re not always as nice as you or I.”

I am Pavlov’s Dog.

“?”

I didn’t quite say a word, some sub-vocal, gutteral mumble of confusion.

“The world is full of people, good people, bad people. But people. And it’s full of people like us. Good, and bad. He’s not one of the good guys.”

We were walking away from Helen’s apartment block. I turned round, seeing it shrinking with each step, slowly folding in on itself. I saw something dark and person shaped move within it.

“He can see you. “

“Who is it?”

“Not who, simple Simon. What. Used to be a person, a very long time ago. Before there was even a you or an I. Now, trapped forever here in this limbo, this fucking thing has just become so angry at being trapped here, unable to move on, it just hates people like us.”

So, my girlfriend has gone from being stalked by a psychopath to being haunted by an ugly spirit. Great. There is no end to this particular joyride?

“What do I do? I can’t just,” moving my hands around wildly, frantic even “stand here and watch whatever’s going on. I’ve got to do something.”

“Oh, you will do something.” Samuel said. I got the feeling that he was tired, tired of all this, tired of holding my hand, tired of being here, spiritually exhausted. He needed a holiday. “But it can’t be here.”

“It feeds on anger. It feeds on hate. The stronger it becomes, the angrier it gets. Every domestic argument, every screaming match and child’s tantrum feed it until it can do nothing but act-“

It’s a poltergeist. I must not hate. It liked me here. I fed it. It was a vampire and I was it’s transfusion.

“See the flat below Helen? Remember those children? Well, when little Tommy hits thirteen, I can guarantee that that house is going to be bedlam. Hell on earth. Especially when his little sister joins him a couple of years later.”

There’s always someone who knows. Someone who knows something you don’t. Something you want to know.

“Sure, you can do whatever you like there. But I’m warning you – it doesn’t like us, it doesn’t like you, it doesn’t like anything, actually, and it doesn’t mind letting you and anyone else know.”

There was a reason I didn’t want to go into her flat. A reason beyond simple chickenshit fear. It didn’t want me to. But I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t just abandon her.

“You won’t abandon her. You’ll wait. Bide your time. Find her. But not here.”

I couldn’t face him. I couldn’t face either of them, not here or near here. Somewhere else. I had to wait. I had to see what would happen. Where people would go and what would be done.

Waiting is sometimes the biggest punishment of them all.