THE SIXTH GUEST: Chapter Seven - Part One

AFTERMATH

It was just like it had been in the mental health secure unit.

Chaos.

Raised voices. Broken furniture. Wild crazed eyes. Staring.

Joey felt the patterning of the wallpaper where he still pressed himself into the doorway under his coarse fingertips, looking from one person to another, not sure what had just happened or who the man with the beard had been.

The little girl, Rosalie, was crying. Mike, her father, was on his knees next to her, gripping one of her shoulders and running two fingers through her hair over and over again, murmuring to her in soothing tones that made Joey feel faintly jealous.

The place where the man had been standing; by the front window; was empty now but Joey kept looking back there as though he might reappear, still unsure what it had all meant. His voice had been unreal: the intensity of it; like he’d been one of the bosses in a computer game, or a villain from a super hero film. But like a psychiatrist’s voice too somehow. Noticing that connection made Joey’s fingers tense, closing into the shrinking circle of a fist.

Travis was still on the floor in the corner where he’d fallen. Selina was fussing around him, gripping his fore and upper arm, trying to help him stand. He whipped his hand out of her grasp and snapped, “Get the hell offa me!” his face feral, like a snarling bear; but as he tried to get up by himself he floundered back onto the wreckage of the little wooden table.

“Travis!” Selina went back to help him.

“I said get off!”

He got onto all fours and pushed himself up, his back arching slowly like it was in slo-mo before he snapped his face into view.

“Well screw you then!” snapped Selina, staggering back away from him. “If you don’t want my help.”

“Ah, fuck you,” said Travis, upright now, looking nastier than Joey had ever seen him.

“Guys,” said Mike. “My daughter’s here. Can you give the language a break for five minutes?” Travis glared back at him. “Please?”

The pressure climbed to a spike for a second or two, then Travis looked away from Mike like he wasn’t there – no apology; just ignored him. “This is all bullshit.”

Selina said, “Travis?”

“It’s all just crap. I’m going to bed. You coming?”

Selina looked unsure. Her eyes were bloodshot, her cheeks moist. Joey glanced down at her cleavage, the way her top had fallen clear of one shoulder, revealing an unusually large area of naked flesh. She nodded and the moment passed. Coming forward, Travis took her right hand in his right so that she had to follow behind him. Neither one of them looked at Joey as they passed but Joey managed to get a quick steal of the back of Selina’s calves in her stilettos.

Mike was up now too, Rosalie in his arms. He gave her a little jerk to move her into a more comfortable holding position. “Come on sweetheart,” he said. “Let’s get you a drink or something.”

He moved toward the door but unlike the other two, he did pause to look at Joey. There was a moment or two where he gave Joey the same look that some of the nurses gave him in the secure unit – you only look safe; I know you’re dangerous – then he smiled to cover it and edged through the narrow gap between Joey and the door, keeping the hulking younger man in view until he was out of sight.

Joey lowered his head and sighed, then he remembered the old man asleep on the chair and started to look back at him.

Before he could, the front door knocked open and Clare rushed back in from outside. She saw Joey and came right up to him.

“Joey. Help me. Quick!” she said, “We have to go after him!”

“Who?”

Clare gaped at him. “The man! The man who was just here! We have to catch him! Come on! I don’t know which way he went! We have to split up and find him.”

Joey shook his head.

“We have to go now! Come on! Come with me!”

“No.”

“What? Why not? We have to get him back here!”

Joey pictured the cold grey eyes; the intensity of the voice. He recalled almost nothing about what the man had said but he couldn’t escape the jarring he’d felt from being in the same room with him. “I have to go to work.”

“Joey, this is more important,” said Clare. “I need your help.”

“I have to go to work.” He checked the time. It was even true.

“Joey please.”

He went to go, forcing her to step back. She was still calling after him when he closed the front door on her.

Outside it was better. It seemed like there had been a buzzing in the back of his head the whole time he’d been in there but that had stopped now. The air was chilly. The street was silent.

Trying not to think about the man with the strange eyes, Joey walked to his car, unlocked it and climbed in, resenting as he always did the restriction the tiny car had on his movements. He started the engine and put his hands on the steering wheel but he didn’t pull off immediately.

He had the sudden feeling that he’d said something he shouldn’t have done when he was still inside. About breaking the woman’s back. He closed his eyes, furrowing his brow; trying to recall if he had or not.

Surely he hadn’t. He didn’t tell that story to anybody. He didn’t want to get into trouble and people never understood why he had to do it when he tried to explain.

He shook his head and pulled his car carefully out into the street. It didn’t matter. He can’t have told them. It was impossible.