THE SIXTH GUEST: Chapter Six - Part Five

There was something wrong with the dog.

It was a wonder they hadn’t heard him from the front of the house but now they were in the kitchen, despite the bustle, Selina couldn’t help but notice it. Normally, Clare’s Doberman was docile and affectionate, excited to see visitors and the like but not in an overly annoying way. Selina had never been a dog lover but Ralph was hard not to like. Now he was scratching at the back door to come in and giving off an intermittent high-pitched whine; then silence followed by more whining, almost a faint whistle it was so high, and more scratching.

“Hell’s wrong with that mangy mutt?” asked Travis, rummaging through her cupboard. “You got any of that cooking brandy left in here?”

“Maybe at the back. He’s obviously worried about something...”

“Can I see him?” Rosalie squeezed into the gap by the back door beside Selina, peeping through the glass. “He’s big. Can I go out and pet him dad?”

Selina went to open the door but hesitated long enough to check with this new lodger of Clare’s... Mike? He shrugged. “Is it safe?”

“I think so.”

“That dog wouldn’t hurt anyone,” said Travis. “It should be ashamed of itself. Dobermans are supposed to be vicious.”

“You sure?”

“It’ll be fine,” said Selina.

“Okay,” said Mike. “Go outside and stroke him if you like petal. Is there any food?”

“Scooby Snacks,” replied Selina. “Here. Do you want to give him some of these?” She handed the huge bag to Rosalie off the kitchen side.

“Thank you!” She grinned and slipped out. The dog tried to get through the gap but Selina used her leg to keep him outside, wondering briefly what had gotten into him.

Travis was pouring himself some of that vile cooking Brandy she’d bought in a desperate moment. He had a tall narrow glass and wasn’t slowing as he reached the half way point. He looked edgy and wan, totally unlike his normal self. His eyes were still etched red though she’d seen nor heard tears on the bus trip back from town. The whole evening had been like a series of sharp stinging blows to the face. Selina didn’t know how Travis was taking it but she knew it hadn’t hit home with her yet, not by a long way... not any of it: the explosion; the burning bodies; Eddie lying there screaming... She shuddered and screwed her eyes tightly closed.

“You want some of this?” asked Travis. The bottle was empty. “I could split it into two glasses if you want.”

“No. I’m going to have tea.” She flicked on the kettle.

“Mike?”

“No. Thanks. I’ll have tea as well if you can spare some.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“You guys... You lived here long?”

“It’s me that’s a resident,” said Selina.

“I’m just the freeloader,” added Travis.

“Couple of months,” she said. “It’s alright. Close to Boscombe and the sea. Rent’s okay I suppose. How do you know Clare?”

He hesitated, and the hyper sense that told her how best to con people out of their money told her there was more to the story than the brief “We’re old friends” line he gave her. Maybe more beyond the obvious fact that they’d been an item once upon a time. She smiled inwardly, thriving a little on the gossip. It was almost enough to carry her away from the events of the evening. But not quite.

“Where are you going to be sleeping?”

“Clare said something about a loft conversion...?”

“Good luck.”

“What?”

“You’ll see.”

The kettle boiled. Selina poured two cups. “You want some Joey?” The giant was standing silently in the kitchen doorway. He shrugged. Nothing but a fruitcake as far as she was concerned. She hedged her bets and poured him a cup. “Here,” she said. “Bring some milk over.” She glanced back. Clare had come in next to him.

She looked worse than Travis; worse than Selina suspected she looked herself, even after everything. Clare’s eyes had a harrowed look to them, like she’d just walked out of a motorway pile-up unscathed but with all her family killed around her. She looked at each of them in turn until they had all stopped to look back at her.

Then she said just simply, “Somebody’s here.” 

THE SIXTH GUEST: Chapter Six - Part Four

 “What did you say?”

The man showed no glimmer of mirth, no indication that he was joking. He just kept looking at her from near the window, his eyes calm and level. He looked like he was in his mid thirties; no particular signs of aging visible; but a maturity and bearing that a younger man wouldn’t have had. A presence. He was wearing a dark grey, almost black, V-necked sweater, his hardened pecks bare and hairless beneath. And jeans: Clare could see the creases, the weathering around the cuffs from walking on damp earthy ground: nothing vaguely supernatural. But his feet were bare, even though they were cleaner than they should have been if they’d been where the bottoms of his jeans had gone. There was nothing grotesque about his musculature as there tended to be in body builders, but his physique looked almost like it was from the pages of a comic book: perfect tone, a strong neck, a chiselled face. His curly hair and beard didn’t follow any fashion that Clare was aware of but stood outside of those things, neither extravagant nor repressed.

But those eyes! He fixed her still in his gaze; eyes so purely grey they were almost white, locking on hers, making her come close to blushing that she’d taken her eyes off his while she scanned the full height and breadth of his body.

“Who are you?” said Clare.

“I am your God,” repeated the man. “I have travelled here to speak to you.”

“To me?”

“To all of you.”

The sound of conversation was going on in the kitchen as the others settled themselves in. They still didn’t even know there was an intruder.

“What have you done to Henry?” asked Clare. The old man was still shivering wordlessly in his seat, oblivious to all of this, palsied hands curled in at the wrists, flecks of spittle on his lips and chin.

“He came to me first,” said the man, “while you were still out of the house. We spoke together.”

Henry’s eyes were open but his irises were rolled up half beneath his eyelids. His head lolled to the side. “You... spoke to him?”

“Of private things. But he did not like what I had to say.”

Clare rubbed her face with both hands then ran them over and down the back of her skull. She kept them there, clenching two fistfuls of hair at the nape of her neck. “I don’t understand any of this. Who are you? Who are you really?”

The man smiled, apparently benignly, but there was something in his cold grey eyes that said warning... danger. “I am your God. Did you not recognise the signs of my arrival?”

“The signs... What signs?”

“You were not in this room. Your beast was barking. You saw movement where there could be no movement. You felt...”

“The heat...”

“Yes.”

“How did you know about that?” The man didn’t speak. “You... That was... That was you?” Clare released her hands from her neck but lowered them only slowly, crossing them protectively over her bosom.

“Yes.”

She recalled the wind in the trees, the movement of objects in the kitchen as though something invisible had pushed through the room before ramming into her and into Henry. “What did you do to us? To all of us?”

He blinked and Clare realised it was the first time she’d seen him do it, as though it had almost been a conscious decision, a recollection it needed doing rather than a physical need. “I tasted you.”

“What?”

“To find out if you suited my needs.”

“Tasted?”

“I sipped your insides so that I might know you better. Each of you in turn.”

Henry, her, Joey, Selina, Mike, Rosalie: one by one.

“And now I know you well,” he said.

“You know me?”

“I know you have lied to all of them,” he said. “But not as much as you have lied to yourself.”

Clare lost track of what she had meant to say. She glanced at his straight colourless lips then back to his sober eyes.

“You will not die because of it,” said the man, “but no human can be touched by me in that form without being stricken. Even the tiniest fraction of my essence is enough to overwhelm the physiology of any man.”

“You’re saying that you... scanned me; and Henry and the rest. Like a mind reader. You came into me and...”

“And your body could not function for a moment. Yes. But there will be no lasting harm. You need not worry. You will continue to exist for the period you are required.”

Clare nibbled nervously on the back of her finger, her eyes sore, her head pinched, skin too tight around her scalp, not knowing how to respond to any of this. “You’re saying that you’re God.”

“Yes.”

“The God.”

He didn’t speak, only returning her gaze.

“The God of the Bible. Maker of Heaven and Earth. God. The flood, the burning bush, the ten commandments.”

Still he said nothing, only watching her unravel in front of him.

“What do you want with us?”

“You have a purpose.”

“What purpose?”

He took his eyes off her for the first time and looked toward the open door. “Fetch the others. Then I will speak.”

“The others?”

“Bring them to me and I will tell you all why I have come here.”

Clare shivered, clutching each opposite arm with her hands. “You aren’t going to hurt us?”

“Fetch them here and I will speak to you all.”

Clare looked again at Henry. His teeth were quietly chattering behind half cracked lips. He looked like a winding down clockwork automaton, no longer with the strength to function properly. He did not like what I had to say.

“Fetch them,” said the man. “I do not like to wait.” 

THE SIXTH GUEST: Chapter Six - Part Three

Normally, when the house was full of people like this, concentrated into one area it was pandemonium: everyone chattering, Travis always trying to spin things, Selina being flirty and tactile. Now the group were subdued. Mike and Rosalie were outsiders anyway (although another one of Mike’s superpowers was the ability to get on with anyone anywhere anyhow) but Travis and Selina only murmured to one another quietly. The hall was narrow, especially with the shelf unit eating up space on the right hand wall. It was single file as they snaked toward the back of the house and the kitchen.

Clare came in last and closed the door. It wasn’t a Yale, so didn’t lock automatically. She turned the key and left it dangling there for if there was a fire in the night. Fire scared her far more than someone breaking in. She didn’t like to think of her and all her lodgers trapped in the hallway searching for the key if the house were burning down.

She didn’t rush into the kitchen because there would inevitably be a continuation of the conversation they’d been having outside. And she really had no clue where she stood on things. She did not know why the seizures had happened or why it was just to them. And this new information! An explosion in town? All those burn victims? Selina and Travis’s friend killed? It was all just far too much data to take in in such a short span of time. It left her feeling wiped. She wasn’t the world’s expert on everything by any means but she also knew that the others were going to look to her for answers that she simply didn’t have.

“Put the kettle on!” she called. “I’ll be through in a bit!” She needed a minute. At least! A couple of weeks would have been better. She pushed open the lounge door and stepped into the peaceful gloom, squinting her eyes tight shut as she pinched the end of her nose. She’d collapse on the sofa for a few minutes, get her head straight, then go back out and try to rally everyone.

She opened her eyes, still just in the doorway. Henry was sitting in front of her in the armchair nearest the door, his back to the wall, only his profile visible from her angle. He was motionless, looking straight ahead toward the front window. For an awfully long moment Clare knew that he was dead, that his heart had given up on him or his brain had, but then he flinched, almost a facial tic it was so instantaneous and random. His cheek muscles spasmed, his lips curled up as though he were sneering, then his entire face turned blank again.

“Henry?”

He stared forward without reacting. Clare went to feel his forehead to check his temperature but hesitated, not wanting to invade his space, but he was catatonic, he needed checking. She put her hand to his brow. There was no sweat but he was terrifically hot. It wasn’t a wonder – the house was a lot warmer inside than it was out – but there was something seriously wrong with him. On top of everything else!

“Henry? Can you hear me?”

Clare went to feel his pulse but paused again, a little afraid, when she saw his hands. Every tendon was strained, the fingers half clenched, palms hovering over the ends of each chair arm and they shook, right up as far as the elbow. Then deep within Henry’s throat she heard a croaking groan, quiet but laboured.

She thought of the seizure and how it had affected them all and how this could be the next stage, that this was going to happen to each and every one of them. “Henry, wake up!”

He didn’t come out of it but the croaking subsided. The shaking did not. He needed an ambulance, now! She kept a phone by the sofa to the left of the bay window. Clare span on her heal and took a step toward it. Then she stopped.

In the bay, in front of the armchair opposite where Henry was sitting, stood a man in silhouette against the streetlamp light coming in through the pale yellow blinds from outside. Clare’s hand flew to her mouth but the scream didn’t escape. He was tall and very broad in the shoulders and she could tell by his outline that his arms were folded, but every feature was black in the darkness.

He must have been in there the whole time, watching her, but she had no idea who he was, if he was a friend of Henry’s or an intruder. But he hadn’t been helping Henry who obviously needed aid. He had stood there, doing nothing. He might even have been responsible.

“Hello?” asked Clare, her voice smaller than she’d meant it to be.

Like Henry he gave no indication he knew that she were there. But Clare’s eyes were adjusting now and she could see indications that he wasn’t even looking into the room, his back to her. Yes definitely. He was facing away, his arms folded, looking if anything at the blank closed blinds in the window.

“Hello?”

No reaction. He was huge, almost as tall as Joey.

From the kitchen, Clare could hear the sounds of voices and clatter. The others were easily within calling distance but she didn’t call out to them. The same force that had persuaded Henry to enter the room originally, despite all better judgment urging him to return to his bedroom, was keeping her here too, staying her hand.

She could hear the scrape of Henry’s clutching fingers on the fabric of the chair arms, the gurgle of spittle in the back of his mouth, she knew she needed to act; but something was dulling her imperative, slowing her thoughts. And it was so hot in the room. So hot.

“Who are you?” she whispered, turning on the light.

The man released his folded arms to his side. He started to turn around. Clare didn’t move. She couldn’t. All she could do was watch. She registered his thick curly hair; his close-cropped but dense beard; his fair skin. And then he was facing her, pale grey eyes regarding her calmly across the room. He looked directly at into her face and with a voice like grinding bones said, “I am your God.” 

THE SIXTH GUEST: Chapter Six - Part Two

There weren’t too many parking spaces available on Gladstone Road East but it was after seven and that meant it was legal to park on the single yellow line on the right hand side. Joey pulled in overcautiously while Clare craned over her shoulder to look back up the street. “I think that was Selina and her boyfriend.”

Joey started to back carefully into what he perceived was the perfect position but Clare was already out of the car. As she circled round to the pavement Mike’s van passed slowly, looking for a second space.

“Selina, hi!” She and Travis were walking, arms round one another; but the gesture seemed to be less in line with romance than mutual support. They didn’t even seem to hear. “Selina. Travis. Hi. It’s me.” Clare stepped onto the pavement a ways in front of them and they faltered, staring at her. “Are you okay? You look terrible.”

“We’re fine,” said Travis, a little brusquely. He had never been overly courteous but this came across almost as a snap.

“Selina? You don’t look so good.” They got closer. Neither one looked right. They looked shaken to the bone, complexions washed out, eyes red raw. “What’s wrong?”

“Did you hear what happened in town?” asked Selina, her eyebrows coming up in the middle in an almost fearful frown. “Has it been on the news?”

“Has what been? What happened?”

“The explosion,” said Selina. “The fire at the church. All the dead people.”

“Oh my God. You were there? We just came from the hospital. They were bringing in the ones who’d been burned. It was horrific. You saw that? What caused it?”

Selina looked up into Travis’s hooded eyes. The man, normally cocky, coarse and flirtatious, looked like he might literally be in shock; like he was broken in, the way an animal might be: smacked and cowed and almost submissive. Clare’s gaze flicked from one to the other of them and it seemed that either might speak, but neither did. Finally, when Clare was sure there would be no response, Selina murmured, “A friend of ours...” Her nose crinkled up as though she might cry but she didn’t. Travis looked away.

“Oh no,” said Clare.

“It was terrible,” said Selina. “Loads and loads of people were burned. Loads of them died. I never saw—” She swallowed tightly but didn’t go on.

Joey’s car door slammed shut. Mike and Rosalie had already parked up. Mike passed Joey and approached the three of them, Rosalie in his arms, apparently asleep. “What’s going on?” He nodded at the two of them. “Hi,” he said, offering his hand. Neither took it.

“This is Travis and Selina,” said Clare. “Selina’s one of my tenants.” She gestured to him. “This is Mike and his daughter Rosalie. They’re going to be staying with us for a few days in the attic room.”

Both Travis and Selina looked at him blandly without sign of friendliness or approval, indifferent to him under the weight of their own concerns. Without a greeting they started walking again of mutual accord, Travis almost knocking up against Clare’s shoulder. She stepped back to let them pass.

“What’s wrong?” asked Mike.

Clare didn’t respond to him either, looking after them, her eyes thoughtfully narrow.

“What is it?” he said.

“Selina, wait.” Clare jogged after her. The couple didn’t stop but they were moving slowly, not far from the house now and well within the glow of the streetlight outside. Clare passed them and turned so she was walking backward in front of them. Now they were closer to the light she was sure. “It happened to you too, didn’t it?” she said, looking at the light sunburn on Selina’s face and shoulders.

Selina stopped, forcing her boyfriend to as well. “What?”

“The seizure.”

“Let’s go inside,” said Travis. “I need a drink of something or a smoke.”

“Wait,” replied Selina. “What seizure? What do you mean?”

“Earlier this evening,” said Clare, “you had something like an epileptic fit, didn’t you? About two hours ago.” She glanced over Selina’s shoulder at Mike’s thoughtful expression.

Selina didn’t speak but she looked confused; almost dazed. Travis tugged on her arm but she tugged back, unwilling to move.

“You did, didn’t you?”

“How could you know that?”

“Come on Selina.”

“Stop pulling at me!” She snapped her arm back away from him where he was trying to guide her. To Clare she repeated herself. “How could you know that?”

Clare side-stepped to look at Mike clearly. “Me, Henry, Joey, one after another here in my house... then you and Rosalie at the moment you decide to come here and ask me to stay.” She looked at Selina. “And you too. Where were you when it happened?”

“The square.”

“All the way down in town.”

“What the fuck are you going on about?” asked Travis. “When what happened? Is this about when I found you passed out?”

“The same thing happened to all of you?” she asked. “And who’s this guy? To him too? What is it, a disease or something?”

“I don’t know,” said Clare. “Mike’s a... He’s a friend of mine. He’s going to be lodging with us until he can find somewhere else.”

Mike flashed a grin at her.

“There are police lights up the road,” said Joey.

They all looked. Blue lights were just visible, flashing a reflection off the buildings where the road became a T-junction. “There’s been a car crash on the roundabout,” said Travis. Some dumb bastard rolled his car into a shop front.”

Nobody said anything. They watched the flashing lights then eyes turned back, still soundlessly, scanning one another’s faces, digesting everything that had happened.

“We should go inside,” said Clare. “I’ll put the kettle on. It looks like we could all do with a cup.”

“Or something stronger,” said Mike.

Joey was the first one into the porch. If he noticed that the inner door was ajar he made no comment, merely pushed it fully open and went in. His huge body blocked the view of it to the others but even if it hadn’t it was likely only Clare would have considered the significance and she was bringing up the rear.

“I just wanna sleep,” said Travis. “Its’ been a weird fucking day.”

“Tell me about it,” replied Mike. “But at least it’s over now.”