Where these feelings came from she didn’t know, but they had the force of instinct, and she would not be gainsaid. She stared at Oscar. He was overweight, overdressed, and doubtless overbearing: not the kind of individual she’d have sought out, given the choice. But for some reason she didn’t yet comprehend, she’d had that choice denied. Some urge profounder than conscious desire had claimed her will. The fears she had for Charlie’s safety, and indeed for her own, were suddenly remote: almost abstractions.
“Take no notice of him,” Charlie said. “He’s not going to hurt you.”
She glanced his way. He looked like a husk beside his brother, beset by tics and tremors. How had she ever loved him?
“Come here,” he said, beckoning to her.
She didn’t move, until Oscar said, “Go on.”
More out of obedience to his instruction than any wish to go, she started to walk towards Charlie.
As she did so another shadow fell across the threshold. A severely dressed young man with dyed blond hair appeared at the door, the lines of his face perfect to the point of banality.
“Stay away, Dowd,” Oscar said. “This is just Charlie and me.”
Dowd looked down at the body on the step, then back at Oscar, offering two words of warning: “He’s dangerous.”
“I know what he is,” Oscar said. “Judith, why don’t you step outside with Dowd?”
“Don’t go near that little fucker,” Charlie told her. “He killed Skin. And there’s another of those things out there.”
“They’re called voiders, Charles,” Oscar said. “And they’re not going to harm a hair on her beautiful head. Judith. Look at me.” She looked around at him. “You’re not in danger. You understand? Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
She understood and believed him. Without looking back at Charlie, she went to the door. The dog killer moved aside, offering her a hand to help her over the voider’s corpse, but she ignored it and went out into the sun with a shameful lightness in her heart and step. Dowd followed her as she walked from the chapel. She felt his stare.
“Judith . . .” he said, as if astonished.
“That’s me,” she replied, knowing that to lay claim to that identity was somehow momentous.
Squatting in the humus a little way from them she saw the other voider. It was idly perusing the body of Skin, running its fingers over the dog’s flank. She looked away, unwilling to have the strange joy she felt soured by morbidity.
She and Dowd had reached the edge of the wood, where she had an unhindered view of the sky. The sun was sinking, gaining color as it fell and lending a new glamour to the vista of park, terraces, and house.
“I feel as though I’ve been here before,” she said.
The thought was strangely soothing. Like the feelings she had towards Oscar, it rose from some place in her she didn’t remember owning, and identifying its source was not for now as important as accepting its presence. That she did, gladly. She’d spent so much of her recent life in the grip of events that lay outside her power to control, it was a pleasure to touch a source of feeling that was so deep, so instinctive, she didn’t need to analyze its intentions. It was part of her, and therefore good. Tomorrow, maybe, or the day after, she’d question its significance more closely.
“Do you remember anything specific about this place?” Dowd asked her.
She mused on this for a time, then said, “No. It’s just a feeling of. . . belonging.”
“Then maybe it’s better not to remember,” came the reply. “You know memory. It can be very treacherous.”
She didn’t like this man, but there was merit in his observation. She could barely remember ten years of her own span; thinking back beyond that would be near impossible. If the recollections came, in the fullness of time, she’d welcome them. But for now she had a brimming cup of feelings, and perhaps they were all the more attractive for their mystery.
There were raised voices from the chapel, though the echo within and the distance without made comprehension impossible.