The Shadow Beneath: The Fragment Trilogy - Part Two

By Bekki Pate

“From the moment I set eyes on Miss Jennifer Bailey, the first feeling I had was of intense fear; the way she looked at me, the way she moved, like she almost wasn't human.” Dr. Jeffrey Payne has a new patient – and he soon realises that there is more to her than he initially thought. She knows things, she speaks to him in different voices, voices that are long dead to him. How does she know such private matters in his own life? And why does he feel as though, despite her being held in the psychiatric ward at his hospital, that she has followed him home?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Britain's Next Bestseller
• Release date: Nov 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781910565636

Bekki Pate

Bekki Pate is originally from Nottingham, but moved to Cannock in Staffordshire to live with her partner and she enjoys having the famous Cannock Chase right next door. Bekki loves Stephen King. Her favourite series is The Night Watch series by Sergei Lukyanenko. She also loves anything by Sarah Waters and Cecelia Ahern. Reading widely has helped her to develop as a writer, to write the kind of books she would want to read.

Book preview

installment!

CHAPTER ONE

24th OCTOBER 2007

Nick

Jenny, put the knife down.

I raised my hands in surrender, and I looked in fear at the thin, pale form before me. Right now, wherever my girlfriend was, she wasn’t in this room with me. Something else had taken over, something borne of grief and guilt, something that over the past few weeks had grown from a minor concern, to a terrifying certainty. Jenny was seriously ill.

Her eyes were black pits of tar, and her hair, dishevelled, clung to the sides of her face. Her breathing was fast, erratic, and as she held the knife up high to my face, I knew that she was capable of swinging for me; this wasn’t a mere threat. She was even smiling, a smile that didn’t belong to her.

Jenny, please, I don’t want to hurt you, put it down, I said calmly. She threw back her head and laughed.

I darted for her, tackled her to the ground and pulled the knife from her bony fingers. She screamed in fury. I threw the knife across the room, and her large, vacant eyes followed it.

Oh, no you don’t; don’t even think about it, I said, my tone warning. But she went for it anyway, and I had to grab her ankles and pull her back.

I decided to tie her down to a chair. All the time she was biting and kicking, screaming so loud that I thought the neighbours might call the police.

It was then that I had to call an ambulance; there was no other option for it.

I had to have Jenny admitted to hospital.

It had started off with small occurrences that, in isolation, I would never have thought much of. She was tired all the time, she wouldn’t eat, she barely spoke. At first I saw this as part of the normal grieving process; she had been through so much over the past few months, and I didn’t want to push her to try and feel better too early.

I was supportive; I held her in the night when she cried, I brought her food when she forgot to eat, I took her back to bed when I found her standing, confused and cold, in the living room at three in the morning. She looked so lost, as though she didn’t know where she was or what she was supposed to be doing there. I can handle it, I told myself as I fought my own exhaustion. Whatever she’s going through we can go through it together.

I thought that if I endured what she was enduring, it might help in some way.

But it didn’t. After a few weeks things got worse, and I hated to admit that she had started to scare me. When I came home from work one day, she was lying on the sofa, staring at the ceiling. That was where I had left her the same morning, and there was nothing to indicate that she had moved from that position all day. I remember sitting on the edge of the sofa with her, and I hugged her tightly, as though I could cure her with the strength of my embrace, but she barely noticed I was there.

The look in her eyes when I let them take her was more than I could bear. She hated me, and as she tried to to kick and bite her way out of the situation, I saw in her face a look of such fury that I barely recognised her.

I’m trying to help you, I had pleaded with her. Please don’t make this any harder than it has to be.

Fuck you, was all she said back.

I filled out the relevant paperwork at the hospital, and then I asked to see her. The doctor assigned to her case, Dr Jeffrey Payne, had warned me against it. He had been informed that Jenny didn’t want me anywhere near her. He said she needed rest, and expert care, and that was what she was going to get. So I had left, dejected. But the ache in my heart wouldn’t let me go without seeing her for too long, so I promised myself that I would visit.

Needless to say her absence was of little relief. I returned to the empty flat that evening, and I immediately felt the loneliness creeping up the walls, enveloping me in darkness. I was naive to think that she would come out of all this and still be the same person she used to be.

I slept badly that night, and I woke up confused for a second, wondering where she was, before I remembered what I had done.

The only other person I had spoken to about this was Ash. He’d been in a daze himself after losing Beth, and he just told me to do what I thought was right. I wasn’t sure if he was actually listening to me properly, if what I was telling him was sinking in, but he took the address of the hospital she was in, and said he would visit if he could.

The next morning I proceeded to tidy up our apartment, to rid it of the bloodstained pyjamas and the anti-depressants, and I replaced all sharp objects to their rightful places. I disposed of everything that reminded me of this hell I’d been living in. I took my time with this because once everything was swept clean, disposed of, I knew that I would have nothing left. There was nothing else to keep my mind busy; there was nothing to make me feel useful.

I was washing the pots, making sure every piece of cutlery and every plate was shining before I placed it on the draining board, when I received a call from Dr Payne. I hardly dared to breathe as he explained what was happening; I prepared myself for the worst.

Hello, Mr Jenkins.

Hi Dr Payne, please, call me Nick.

Nick, how are you?

I’m alright. How is she? There was an uncomfortable pause.

After monitoring Jennifer’s behaviour over these couple of days, although we still have to conduct a few more tests, seems to be representative of some sort of psychosis. A lot of the symptoms she has been displaying, as well as what you have reported, seem to point to this…

He paused for a second, and over the phone I heard paper being faintly rustled.

I have here that she started displaying symptoms four weeks ago, correct?

Correct.

And you stated that she has suffered a recent bereavement?

Yes, she recently lost a very close friend.

Then we have reason to believe this may have caused some sort of temporary symptoms due to the trauma, which is promising.

Why is that promising? How could anything be promising about this situation?

Because we then have something to work from. I am proposing a series of interviews with Jennifer, to ascertain exactly how she is feeling, and what she requires in terms of treatment. This may be quite a long process, depending on how she perceives these interviews, and how she reacts to the medication.

Okay…When can I see her?

Dr Payne cleared his throat.

When she’s ready. That’s all I can say for now. We have to do this very carefully. Any wrong turns and it may set back the treatment.

She doesn’t want to see me, I whispered, more to myself than to him.

She’s in good hands. I’ll start the preliminary tests straight away, and I will keep you updated on everything as it happens. You still have my home and office number?

Yes.

Okay, good. Now, I shall write this all out in more detail for you, and mail it through the post. Okay?

Okay. Thank you Doctor.

Take care now.

You too. Bye.

I hung up the receiver slowly; the phone felt so heavy that I couldn’t lift it enough to place it in the receiver properly. If somebody had told me this time last year that it would all end up like this, that I would lose so much in a short space of time, I would have laughed in their face and then probably bought them a beer for their creativity. If only; if only someone had warned me that this was going to happen, I would have been more prepared, and I would have been at her bedside right now, just sitting with her, even if she didn’t want me there.

But, as it was, I had somewhere to be that afternoon. I tied my shoes, smoothed down my black shirt, and straightened my tie as I made my way out of the apartment and into my car. I sat for a moment with my hands on the steering wheel, thinking that I could just not go, I could just make my excuses and not go anywhere near.

But people were expecting me, and I could not deal with even more guilt weighing on my shoulders.

I had to go, to pay my respects.

CHAPTER TWO

5th NOVEMBER 2007

Marissa

I ran wildly through the corridors of the University, stopping momentarily to secure my backpack onto my shoulders. I was trying to balance a folder and a flask of coffee in my right hand, and my coat in the left. I accidentally dropped the folder and it flew across the floor. I also managed to spill coffee on my coat, and I huffed in embarrassed frustration. I heard a few muffled giggles around me, and I set my jaw in order to maintain indifference.

It’s your first day. You don’t want to make enemies on your first day.

I picked up the folder and continued into the lecture hall. I opened the large double doors and in all my panic about being up late this morning, as well as not being able to find anything appropriate to wear, I hadn’t really been paying much attention to the university itself. But as I entered the lecture hall I was stopped in my tracks. The room was huge, it was like a theatre, with a large projector and podium at the front. There were rows and rows of seats, going all the way to the back of the room. I wasn’t sure what I had been expecting, but it was nothing like the dingy classrooms back at my college in London. The sight of such a magnificent room gave me goose-bumps. Students were shuffling around trying to find the best seats, and getting out their notebooks and pens, half of them looking rather worn from the two weeks of partying before the start of term.

Just as I had settled myself on the nearest bench I could find, as far as possible from other students, the lecturer entered the room majestically through a door at the bottom of the hall. He was tall and thin, superiority oozed out of every pore. I wondered if he practised his entrance in front of a mirror, trying out different techniques, ways of walking, what facial expression to wear, until he had perfected it. He wore grey trousers and a white shirt and tie with blue flowers all over it, spotting its otherwise crispness. Or perhaps they were ink stains.

He cleared his throat pointedly, observing the fresh meat that had sat down in his lecture hall through his thick, square glasses. I was impressed that he could look down on us, make us feel inferior, even though technically he had to crane his neck up to meet our gaze. The hushed whispers of the nearly 200 students became silent. Pens clicked and text books opened, and everyone sat poised, ready to begin. I carefully pulled out a pen and notebook from my bag, along with the book we were to read from and placed them on the desk.

Good morning, everyone, he said. His voice was deep and self-assured enough that he could be heard quite easily without having to speak up in any way. I imagined that he used that very same voice to talk to his wife on the phone or order food at a McDonald’s drive-through. He probably didn’t go to McDonald’s…to order food at a fancy Italian restaurant perhaps. If I was standing up there, I would need some sort of megaphone.

The class mumbled a painful, hungover good morning. The lecturer snorted in amusement at them before continuing.

I guess I should congratulate a lot of you for just showing up, eh? Now, if it’s not too much effort, I would like you all to take a good look around the room, he said.

There was a shuffling as people half-heartedly did as they were told, craning their necks to view the rest of the herd. I glanced around myself, but I could only really see the backs of people’s heads.

I guarantee, the lecturer said, putting his hands behind his back and strolling around the room. That a third of you will leave by the end of the first year. Those of you who came here to party every weekend and doss around because you couldn’t be bothered to find yourselves a real job, will not make it through the term.

There was then a mass of mumbling as the class seemed to wake up a little bit, and they quietly raised their objections to each other; that was certainly not going to be them.

However, he said over the rumbling voices, putting a finger up to emphasise the point. Those of you left, those who put the work in, attend class – whilst not being hungover might I add - study for the exams and read the literature, you will do well, and go all the way to completing your degree.

There was a pointed silence as the class waited for him to continue. He put his hand behind his back again, and leaned forward.

Now, he said in a lower tone. You need to decide which of these you are right now.

I found myself sitting bolt upright now, hanging onto his every word. He had probably done this long enough to know that half the people he was speaking to would not even be here in a month, he could more than likely spot who they were by just looking at them. His little pep talk inspired me to do well, to prove that I was one of those who would be here until the end.

He smiled as he looked around the room. Nobody moved a muscle; everyone was serious now. Either that or they were too hungover to care. He nodded in approval. Now, he said, rubbing his hands together. Let’s get started, shall we?

I like this guy already, I thought with a smile.

After the lecture, everyone proceeded to file hurriedly out of the room, impatiently nudging other people, their destination more important than the destination of the person next to them.

This reminded me of why I didn’t really like people in general; I wasn’t much of a sociable person, and I didn’t make friends easily. I had known my close circle of friends back home for years, and I trusted them completely. Nottinghamshire was nice enough, it had its good and bad areas just like any city, but I couldn’t put my finger on what was missing. It certainly wasn’t as crowded as London which was nice, but there was just something it seemed to lack. Maybe I just needed to get used to it. Maybe it was that everything I knew - my friends, my family - were there, and I was here, on my own, fending for myself for the first time in my life.

I felt a twinge of nostalgia when I thought about my parents. They were so proud that I had managed to get onto the course at the University of Nottingham, but since I had arrived two weeks ago, my mum rang me every day, and I could hear that she was trying to force down tears as we spoke to each other.

I knew that she missed me, and sometimes when I sat in my room in the university halls and heard my neighbours blasting out their music at 2am and shouting and laughing and getting drunk, I felt so alone that I had to stop myself from packing up all my things and leaving for home.

I had chosen Art Design because it was the only thing I was both interested in and could do well. Art was my passion; I felt so proud of myself when I finished a drawing or a painting and it looked good (which was not something that happened often.) To be able to spend three years studying everything to do with my passion was so exciting. So I had closed my pillow around my ears tighter and shut my eyes, and tried to fall asleep. Things would improve, at least I hoped anyway; I would try and make new friends, and I would do well in my studies and come out with at least a 2:1.

I picked up my things and stuffed them into my bag, and stood up to join the queue filing out the door.

That was when I saw him.

He was still sat as his desk, headphones in his ears, oblivious to the rest of the room. Has he noticed that the lecture was over? In his hand was a brown pencil, flying furiously over a sheet of paper that he had secured with his other hand. His tongue stuck out, and he cocked his head, his face drawn into a frown as he studied the paper. He then produced a small eraser and carefully rubbed a bit of the drawing out. He looked at it again, and then sighed in frustration. I wondered how he could see anything with that long, brown hair covering his left eye.

He glanced around the room almost as an afterthought, and his gaze then rested on mine. His eyes were large and kind, but quite distant; they seemed older than the rest of his face. His face; it looked tired, thoughtful, beautiful.

It felt as though a hundred years had just gone by, and all I had done was lock eyes with a stranger. What’s wrong with me? My heart jumped as I realised that I had been staring at him, and that I had actually stood still whilst staring. He smiled at me self-consciously, and I smiled back, feeling my face become cold.

Before I set anything off, I broke eye contact and proceeded to follow the queue of students out the door. I didn’t look back, I was too embarrassed to meet his gaze again in case anything happened, and I made my way back to my room quickly and quietly, my heart still racing as I closed the door to my bedroom. I was just in time; shards of ice had started to form and fall from my skin, my lips almost froze together, and my hands became their familiar blue tinge.

Close call.

CHAPTER THREE

Dr Jeffrey Payne

Personal Diary, 26th October, 2007

As a psychiatrist, I sometimes I meet the most interesting and disturbed people. I remain as professional and as objective as I can during the day, but in the evenings, when I am at home on my own, I cannot help their stories coming to the forefront of my consciousness, almost in a taunting way. My thoughts seem to whisper: look what you’ve had on your hands today, how are you ever going to fix this person? I have lost many hours of sleep trying to piece together a diagnosis or figure out why a certain patient acts in a certain way.

After so many years, a few cases have come to haunt me, and it’s usually the ones where I was too late; I could do nothing to help them in time. They either harmed someone close to them or harmed themselves. One such case eventually threw himself off a building after months of depression; his wife had left him and had taken his children. I remember him telling me he had nothing left to live for, and sometimes it is hard to coax a person into thinking differently when it is in fact true; everything he had, had been taken away. But now those children will grow up without their father, and their mother would have to explain why.

Another case was a young woman who had lost her baby; he was stillborn and she just couldn’t come to terms with it. She bought a doll instead, and treated it like her own child, naming the doll after the poor baby. Her husband, after months of struggling, finally moved out, but I think she barely noticed. He had tried to take the doll off her once but she took a knife from the kitchen and threatened him with it until he gave it back. She even called the police on him once, for kidnapping, and when they realised it was a doll, they charged her with wasting police time. Her sister came round to look after her, but she must have tried something similar, because one day I was informed that her sister had been found stabbed to death in their house, and the woman was arrested and charged with murder. They sent her to a specialist psychiatric prison, and of course they took the doll away from her. She lasted three days without the doll until she hung herself in her cell. Such a tragic ending for such an ill young woman.

I’ve had a man who poisoned his entire family, including his six month old daughter, because the voice in his head would not be quiet until he did, an old man who was haunted by what he thought was the ghost of his wife, and a woman in her forties who eventually committed suicide after the trauma of being abused by her father as a child.

All these tragic stories that made me question by ability to do my job, they do still haunt me, and I ask myself what could I have done differently, what other medications or therapy could I have tried? But you have to let it go: I have had many successes too over the years, but it’s not the successes that keep me from sleeping at night.

Even so, I had a feeling today that I have never felt before in my long career: fear. From the moment I set eyes on Miss Jennifer Bailey, the first feeling I had was of intense fear, the way she looked at me, the way she moved, like she almost wasn’t human. She was initially displaying schizophrenic behaviour, and I have met many schizophrenics, but none of them have ever invoked this response in me.

I start sessions with her tomorrow morning, and for the first time in my career, I want to run away from it all. I want to leave it to someone else, because there is something about this girl that is dangerous.

CHAPTER FOUR

Nick

I arrived at the church a little late, but so many people had attended that I managed to sneak by unnoticed and find myself a seat towards the back. I glanced around to see if there was anybody that I recognised, anybody from the facility perhaps, but I couldn’t find one familiar face. I wasn’t sure