He smiled and walked away along the street, thinking over what he’d just said. He’d never put it like that before. He’d always known that his interest in his subject had been linked to the incidents he suffered himself. He’d realized too that his studies could easily be playing a part in perpetuating the attacks.
It had never occurred to him though that a part of him might want the attacks to continue. It seemed an extraordinary idea even now, that he could be compelled to something that disturbed him so much, that reduced him to living life as if within a photographic negative.
Yet now that he’d thought of it, the concept smacked of truth and he was amazed that he’d been blind to it for so long. He wondered too, whether Ruth had considered the possibility. Alex had the excuse of being too deeply involved to see the obvious but Ruth had to have seen it.
It was probably one of the things she’d always wanted to ask him, and if she’d asked him in the past he would have denied it. Maybe he still would now, not through ignorance but fear, because it was something to face up to, the idea that he might actually want Emily Barratt to come to him in his sleep, and that for all his science, some deeply buried part of his psyche wanted to believe she was real.
11
The breath burst back into his lungs. He let out an involuntary cry and sprang from the bed, shaking, fumbling for the light switch, scanning the room quickly. He looked at the video cameras. He was awake now, that was all that mattered. He breathed deeply and tried to concentrate but the air still seemed loaded with that sickly sweet smell.
She was there somewhere. He heard the creak of the stair and ran out onto the landing, hitting the light switch. The air below stirred and he followed it quickly, down to the hall, into the harsh light of the kitchen, realizing then what had happened, the trauma of the dream finally falling back into the depths
He fell down onto one of the chairs, his heart sick with its own blood, his t-shirt cold and clammy against his back, exhaustion pulling him down. Rogue thoughts of her presence continued to fire but he was fully conscious now, able to reason against them and dismiss it. He drank some water and made his way back upstairs, his spine still shuddering as he moved through the rooms.
Back in the bedroom he picked up his watch and checked the time, still before three, and sank onto the bed, sitting there for a few minutes before accepting that he was too afraid to go back to sleep, that there was no point anyway when it left him like this.
Besides, his mind was fired up now, the presence of Emily Barratt opening the gates to all the other related ghosts, of Rob and Will and the impending confrontation with Matt, the ghost he’d become of himself. What good was there in trying to sleep?
He got dressed slowly, every movement an effort, got himself together and went out, the night cold and starlit, reviving him, a chill wind that made him pull his coat tight around him, digging his hands into the deep pockets. He walked, relishing the elements, the feeling of being alive out there.
He walked through the pedestrianized centre of town, no one about, no movement, and even on the other side of it there were only occasional cars passing, taxis or police cars looking for non-existent trouble. Friday or Saturday night there would have been a tension in the air, even at that time, but tonight the town was his own.
At first he didn’t think he was heading anywhere in particular, just not towards the river, a place that always drew him but left him morose. He walked on steadily in the opposite direction, twenty minutes or so, and whether it had been chance or a subconscious impulse, he saw that he was only a short distance from the place where the accident had happened.
His adrenaline picked up with the thought of it. He’d never been there since, had never even driven down that road, and yet now he couldn’t understand why. He wanted to see it again, thinking it would help him somehow to go there, part of the process of finally coming to terms with it and what it meant to him.
He turned left, walked a little further, then right, into the long tree-lined street of big houses that swept an arc through the southern suburbs of the town. The houses were Victorian, elegant relics of a lost middle class, most of them housing the student children of a new middle class now.
Here and there as he walked there were still lights on behind some of the overgrown hedges and shrubs that made up the front gardens, music playing faintly, the smell of food cooking in one house, bacon perhaps, and laughter too from the same place. It made him want to be inside with some of those people, to be one of them.