The Other People: A Novel(11)

Alice sat, fingers fiddling with her bag of pebbles. Clickety-click, clickety-click. The sound set Fran’s teeth on edge. Restless, insistent. Clickety-click, clickety-click.

Just when she thought she wasn’t going to answer, Alice whispered: “She said that the Sandman is coming.”





Gabe had never seen a dead body before. Not in real life. When his mum finally succumbed to cirrhosis of the liver he had been too much of a coward to view her body in the hospital.

Later, he would wish that he had. It would have made her death more final, more complete. As it was, for weeks afterward he would wake from vivid dreams convinced that she was still alive, that the hospital had made a mistake. Even visiting her graveside felt unreal. It didn’t seem possible that she was gone, forever. It felt more as if she had simply walked away from him, part way through a conversation that remained unfinished, without ever uttering a final goodbye.

This body was some way past goodbyes. It didn’t look much like a body at all. Not anymore. It was mostly bone, with a thin covering of rotted flesh. The skin was stippled a hideous marbled green. In places it had split open, revealing more yellow bone and some kind of unidentifiable grey mush. The face, or what had once been a face, was just a skull, the eyeballs yellow and deflated, cracked lips leering over stubs of yellow teeth.

Gabe’s mind flashed to a drawing Izzy had done in preschool. It was supposed to be her babysitter, Joy (no Mona Lisa, to be fair), but it came out looking more like a cross between Slimer from Ghostbusters and Nosferatu as drawn by someone with psychotic tendencies.

That was what this body looked like. But worse. Definitely worse. A billion, trillion, squillion, minion times worse, as Izzy used to say. And that was before you got to the smell. Jesus Christ, the smell.

Gabe turned and retched. Nothing in it but bile. Still, he heaved several more times before he managed to regain some control.

The Samaritan stood beside him, seemingly oblivious to the smell, the cold water—upon which now floated the contents of Gabe’s stomach—or the rotted corpse.

“Can you close that?” Gabe asked, straightening. “I think I’ve seen enough.”

The Samaritan obliged. He pulled the trunk down again with a dull clunk. He patted the top.

“I’d say your man here has been dead for around a year.”

“Not longer?”

“Old car. Trunk ain’t going to be air-or watertight. It might have slowed decomp a bit, but not much.”

“You’re sure it’s a man?”

He nodded. “He’s naked. Didn’t you notice?”

“The whole stinking-decomposition thing kind of distracted me.”

But now that the Samaritan had mentioned it, Gabe realized he was right. No clothes. Just a putrefying body, locked in the trunk of a car Gabe had last seen driving away with his daughter inside it. He swallowed.

All these years he had been searching, waiting for this. But this was not what he had expected. Shit. What the hell had he expected? And what the hell did he do now?

“Is there…I mean, anything to identify him?”

The Samaritan shook his head. “No clothes. No wallet. No ID.”

He looked at Gabe meaningfully. “But I haven’t checked the front of the car.”

Gabe looked at the Samaritan, then back at the car, the front still almost submerged in the lake. He sighed and waded further in. The water crept up to his thighs.

“Deeper than it looks, man.”

The Samaritan was right. Two more tentative steps and it was up to his waist. Gabe’s foot slipped on the muddy lakebed. He flailed with his arms, splashing foul water into his face, but just managed to regain his footing.

“Jesus Christ!”

“You okay?”

He glanced back. The Samaritan had glided back to shore and now stood on the bank, watching him with the hint of an amused smile. He took a vape out of his pocket and drew on it. He barely looked damp.

Gabe rubbed at his face with the cuff of his coat.

“Yeah, great.”

He reached the passenger door. Tugged. The weight of the water was keeping it pushed shut. He pulled again. This time it gave a little. Gabe wedged his leg in the gap, fighting against the rancid water. He pulled out his flashight and shone it inside. The seats were ancient leather, torn and moldy with water damage. More water filled the footwells. There was nothing in the driver’s or passenger’s side except for some slimy-looking weeds and an ancient rusted drinks can. Fanta.

Izzy didn’t like fizzy drinks, he thought.

He wedged himself in further, stretched out his arm and yanked at the glove compartment. It fell open. Inside there were a few sodden bits of paper so waterlogged they fell apart the minute his fingers touched them. But there was something else: a clear plastic folder. Gabe took the folder out and trained the flashlight on the contents inside. A pocket Bible, a folded map and a slim black notebook, like a diary or an address book.

Gabe let the door fall shut. He waded awkwardly back out, clutching the plastic folder. He was cold now, shivering. Well, his top half was shivering. His bottom half could well have been doing a tango beneath the water for all he knew—he had lost all feeling below the waist a while ago.

“I thought you couldn’t get any whiter, but right now you look transparent.”

“Thanks.”