The Returned Dead. Rafe Kronos

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СКАЧАТЬ to Debby. I just told you that.” He spoke sharply as if I had failed to grasp something obvious.

      I was becoming more and more irritated by this bizarre story. I took a deep breath and tried to speak calmly. “Right, let me see if I’ve got this straight: you’re married to Debby and called Baxendale but you’re also Jack Rankin and dead but you’re not dead? Is that it? Have I got it right?”

      He sighed, looked down at the floor, back at me and then gave a shrug, as if admitting how strange it sounded.

      “Look, Mr Dawson, I know it sounds completely crazy, that’s exactly why I want you to sort it out. That’s why I’m here. Look: I know I’m Jack Rankin but I also know I’m Roddy Baxendale. I died but I didn’t. That’s why I’m here, that’s why I’ve come to you. I’m desperate. For God’s sake, you must help me, I’m really desperate.”

      Desperate people will pay more. Perhaps I could hit him with an even bigger fee. I needed the money: another big payment was almost due.

      “I think it’ll be best if you just tell me what happened to you.” I said, trying to make myself speak mildly, trying to suggest I had no doubts about his story. “Just explain it as well as you can.”

      Just explain it if you can, I thought. I doubted he could.

      CHAPTER TWO

      Baxendale frowned, pushing his lips forward while he considered what to say.

      “You have to understand I love my wife. That’s what makes all this so difficult.” His eyes went blank for a second and he frowned as if his thoughts were somewhere else.

      What had loving his wife to do with this? And which wife? If the dead Felicity had also come back to life it wasn’t going to help.

      “Your wife? Which wife? Debby? Or Felicity?”

      “Debby, of course I mean Debby.” His voice became warmer, “Debby: I love her. She’s very beautiful, astonishingly so and I love her deeply. We’re very close, very, we really are.”

      Was he boasting? Was he hinting that they had a wonderful sex life? He certainly seemed eager to convince me Debby was important to him. If I took his case I’d need to meet her. That might be interesting.

      “So how long have you and Debby been married?”

      “Almost twelve years.”

      Wonderful: this just made things even more complicated. I considered it for a moment.

      “So that means you were married to Debby while you were married to Felicity or perhaps the other way round, depending on who you married first. Either way, it sounds like you were a bigamist.”

      “Well, yes, I mean no. Not really, no.”

      We were still getting nowhere. I stared down at my desk and waited. It seemed the best thing to do.

      After a few minutes he spoke, “Look, I know it all sounds complicated.”

      Damn right it does, I thought.

      “I’ll try to explain what happened. Tell me, have you ever woken up in the morning and, just for a moment, you had no idea where you were?”

      I nodded, it had happened, especially after a night on the sauce, not that I’d had many of those recently. But in the past it had happened quite a lot; too often in fact. It was one reason I’d almost given up alcohol. Besides, I had learned that the booze didn’t take away the things that haunt me. Nowadays when I woke up I always knew where I was – though that didn’t make things much better.

      “Right, Mr Dawson. You know what it’s like. You wake up and for a moment or two you have no idea where you are or how you got there. Right? That’s what happened to me. I woke up one day and I didn’t know where I was. Only in my case the feeling, the feeling of not knowing, didn’t go away. I didn’t know where I was or -- and this is what made it much worse -- who I was.” A nerve at the side of his mouth flickered like a faulty neon tube.

      He took a deep breath and his next words came out in a rush, “Look, what happened was this. Nearly eight years ago I woke up in a room I didn’t recognise. Well, I knew it was a hospital room; that much I knew, but I didn’t know where it was or why I was there. After a while a nurse came in. That’s the first thing I remember after waking up: this nurse opening the door and coming over to my bed.”

      He paused and he shook his head, as if he was still unable to accept what had happened to him. “She looked down at me then she asked me how I was feeling today. And she called me Roddy. The way she spoke made it sound as if we knew each other well, that this was part of our normal routine.”

      His eyes widened; perhaps he was recalling his shock. “You have to believe this: I had no idea who she was or what I was doing there. No idea at all. I know it sounds weird but that’s how it was.”

      “And she called you Roddy? Did you recognise your name?”

      “No. I didn’t. No.” He shook his head vigorously. “No, I didn’t know Roddy was my name. I didn’t know because that was the exact moment, the terrible, terrible moment, when I realised that I didn’t know who I was. That was when I realised I didn’t even know my own name. My God, I didn’t even know my own name.”

      He shook his head again as if trying to shake off the memory. “Can you understand that? I couldn’t even remember my own name -- my own name; it was terrible. I felt completely helpless, lost, vulnerable. It was a terrifying feeling, horrible, frightening.”

      His face was tense and he was clenching and unclenching his hands.

      “So what did you do?”

      He gave a bitter little smile, a mere twitch of the lips. “What do people always do when they regain consciousness like that? What do they always say?”

      I shrugged.

      “I said, ‘Where am I?’ What else could I say but ‘Where am I?”

      I wasn’t sure if he expected me to smile at this so I just gave a quick non-committal nod, “And this nurse, she told you where you were?”

      “No, she just smiled at me as if I was joking.” He paused and his features tightened. “So I asked her again and she laughed, actually laughed. Then I got angry, really angry; I remember shouting at her. Then a doctor appeared, he tried to calm me but I kept asking where I was, why I was there. I was scared, I wanted to know. Then, after a minute or so, he took hold of my arm and gave me an injection. The next thing I remember was everything going black, it was like my mind was filling with darkness – and silence -- as if the world was fading away. The injection put me out, completely out.” He grimaced, “and I’ve no idea how long they kept me under after that.”

      “When he injected you, you didn’t try to resist?”

      “Couldn’t. I СКАЧАТЬ