GO

Go by Chris Green

I open the front door to discover a large package on the doorstep. I did not hear anyone deliver it while I was getting ready for work, or see anyone from the window. It’s huge. I try to think what I might have ordered. Something three feet by two that might warrant zebra-patterned wrapping. It won’t be my Keigo Higashino novel from Amazon and I can think of nothing else. It must be for Promise. Promise is having a lie-in. It is her day off.

It is addressed to Darius Go. Him again. Darius and Amanda Go lived here previously, but they must have moved out five years ago. The Maguires and the Janssens have lived here since. I never found out who they were or where they went. I get occasional calls asking for one or other of them. This in itself is strange as I have changed our number twice since we’ve been here.

The parcel has no return address and no postmark. It is remarkably light. As I continue to examine it, Stanislav Ruby, from the house with the vintage Land Rovers out front, walks by with his Irish wolfhound. I ask if he saw anyone arriving with the package. He seems to be in a hurry. He mutters something about blackjack, which I do not catch. At that moment my mobile rings. It is work. I have to go in early. Glitch with the software. I shout upstairs to Promise that I have to dash and I am leaving the parcel with her. I assume she will deal with it, but when I return home from a long day at the research establishment, the package is still where I left it. What has Promise been doing all day?

‘I didn’t know what you wanted to do with it,’ she says.

‘Well, we may as well open it, don’t you think?’ I say.

‘But it’s so light. Why is it so light, Phil?’

‘Let’s find out.’

Inside the large box is a smaller box wrapped in jungle-themed paper and inside that one is one in Mondrian print paper. We exchange looks of puzzlement. What bizarre pantomime are the Gos involved in? Like a set of Russian dolls, each box reveals a smaller box, Sergeant Pepper album cover wrapping, Statue of Liberty paper wrapping, Psalm 23 wrapping, etc. until finally, minutes later, we arrive at the smallest one, a plain black box three inches by two. The box is empty. I shake it vigorously to make sure but nothing comes out. This surely is an elaborate prank, but why? Who could possibly gain from it?

Empty the box may have been but as the evening wears on, the feeling grows that by opening it, a sinister force has been unleashed. It’s irrational, but I can’t rid myself of the unsettling sensation that the air around me has changed. Pins and needles creep up my spine. It feels as if there’s something other just out of sight. A demon gnawing at my consciousness. A slow train with an unmentionable cargo coming around the bend. I ask Promise if she feels anything. Has she noticed anything strange since the box? She says she hasn’t, but I sense she feels something is out of kilter too. She seems unable to concentrate on the plot of the eight-part crime thriller we are watching on Netflix. Several times she has to ask me who one of the regular characters is. She doesn’t seem to realise that the private detective has arranged the abduction of the protagonist’s wife so the protagonist will need his services to find her.

The air of menace won’t go away. Disturbing dreams keep me on edge throughout the night. Shadow dances of the kind you can never quite remember, but which leave you terrified. Dark landscapes where you are alone and lost. Vehicles out of control. Chilling reminders something is wrong. Again and again, I wake in a cold sweat.

I get up at seven-thirty. Promise has already left the house. Sometimes she has to start work early. Hours can be unpredictable in the dizzy world of doily design. She probably realised I was having a restless night and didn’t want to wake me. While I wait for the kettle to boil, I look outside the front door. Another package is on the doorstep, a smaller one. This one is matt black. It too is addressed to Darius Go. I try to pick it up but it is so heavy I cannot lift it. It can’t be more than six inches by four, but it refuses to budge. Even if the contents were lead or solid tungsten, it should not be so heavy. Rhonda Valée from number 27 saunters by, trilling an aria from La Boheme. I ask if she noticed a courier struggling up the path to deliver the new parcel. She calls back something but I think it is in Welsh. Jonny Bisco jogs past and I mention it to him. Annex J, he calls back without stopping. Jonny has been a bit strange since his accident.

As I can do little about the black box at the moment, I go to work and try to put it all from my mind. Things will work out. They always do. The Little Book of Mindlessness that Promise keeps by the side of the bed says it’s a question of being present. To calm myself, I queue jazz shuffle on my device and set off in the Seat. Crippling headaches plague me through the day but I weather the storm and arrive home in one piece at the usual time. The matt black parcel is still on the step and Promise is not yet home. I sometimes forget how demanding the cut-throat world of doily design can be. The competition these days is intense. It’s no longer a question of selecting a symmetrical pattern and a suitable substrate. But, when Promise hasn’t returned home by six-thirty and her phone is switched off, I’m thinking there must have been an unforeseen glitch at the studio.

The phonecall on my mobile asking to speak to Darius Go comes as a surprise. Previous calls have all been on the landline.

‘I’m sorry. This is not Mr Go’s number,’ I say.

‘Darius Go,’ the caller says, undeterred.

‘May I ask who is speaking?’ I say. It is best to be polite at first. This offers options about which way you wish the conversation can go. What I’m looking for here is information about the Gos and hopefully the rogue deliveries, but the caller hangs up. The number has not registered on my phone.

To distract myself while I wait for Promise, I google. Go is a surprisingly common name. There are dozens of them on the electoral register and although there are one or two Darcys and Daryls, no one named Darius Go.

I should have realised the police don’t consider a person missing until they have been gone for seventy-two-hours. They will not even take details until then, but Promise has not returned home. Nor, Sergeant Klein tells me with an unwarranted air of impatience, do they deal with nuisance phonecalls. It is with some reluctance that I hire the services of Max Möbius, Private Investigator. But time is of the essence and Max comes recommended, not least by his flyer that comes through the door in the free paper which highlights Max’s astonishing success rate. I make an appointment to see him the following morning.

Although there is a black Jaguar XJ parked outside, Max Möbius’s offices are less salubrious than the flyer led me to believe. Möbius is a tall man, probably in his mid-fifties. He is dressed in a plaid suit that looks like it was made for a smaller man, perhaps a younger man. Unusual too, I can’t help thinking, to find a P. I. with blue hair. Max greets me warmly and shows me into a small room behind a black roller blind. The room is lit by a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Hip-hop music is playing. On a chunky wooden desk in front of us are a miscellany of desktop computers connected by a Spaghetti Junction of wires to a phalanx of peripherals. Max apologises for the mess and mentions something about this being a temporary location while he waits for his new premises to be decorated.

Max turns the Jay-Z track down and begins to run through his fee structure. A little more expensive than the flyer led me to understand. He swallows a couple of Ibuprofen caps with a glass of water. At least, I think it’s water.

‘Bad back,’ he explains, straightening his posture. ‘Operation Desert Storm.’

Presumably, this was before he decided on the blue hair. I give him a brief low-down on my two issues. On the basis that it might be easier to solve, I then go into greater detail on the phonecalls and the bizarre deliveries.

‘H’mmm. Darius Go, you say,’ he says. ‘Give me a moment. Let me just try something.’

He reaches over to one of the computers, keys in a search and in no time at all he has images of lots of different Darius Gos on the screen. Although his hardware looks to be old school, it clearly packs a punch.

‘How did you manage that?’ I say. ‘Google came up with nothing.’

‘This is what I do,’ he says. ‘I’m an investigator, remember. But, before we get carried away, there are fourteen of them and we don’t know which one it might be. It would be easier if there were just one.’

I suggest we leave this for now and move on. I elaborate on the heavy parcel on the doorstep.

‘Perhaps I should take a look,’ Max says. ‘Things are not always what they seem.’

I agree he should take a look, not least because it would be good to get some fresh air. It feels close in here.

‘We’ll go in your car, shall we?’ Max says.

‘OK,’ I say. ‘I’m parked around the corner in the High Street.’ Perhaps it is not his black Jaguar outside after all.

As we move off, Max takes a small dispenser compact out of his pocket and pops two purple pills. ‘Malaria,’ he explains. ‘East Africa.’

We arrive at the house and see the ominous black package is still there. I tell him it must contain some kind of heavy metal, possibly even a dangerous one. One of those with a long name you can never remember when you are watching quiz shows. Yet, without flinching, Max is able to lift the black box. He hands it to me. Instinctively I flinch as he does so. I am expecting it to floor me but I find it is light as a feather. I am utterly unable to explain this turnaround. What magic has Mad Max managed to perform right here under my nose? Embarrassed, I put the parcel down. It blows down the street on the breeze.

Max repeats his maxim, ‘things are not always what they seem. ……. Now, tell me about this other matter.’

As I tell him about Promise not returning home from Dolly’s Doilies, he plays distractedly with his phone. I begin to wonder if he is actually listening to me, when the device lights up and starts vibrating loudly.

‘Promise is nearby,’ he says. He hands me the phone. On the screen, I see a selection of pictures of Promise, captured in different locations, none of which I recognise. Each image has a date and time, the latest, an hour ago.

‘What’s happening?’ I say. ‘How did you get these?’

‘I’m an investigator, remember,’ he says. ‘I’m paid to uncover things.’

‘But how…….?’

‘Come on, man. If I told people my secrets, I would be out of business,’ he says.

‘So what now?’ I say. ‘Where is Promise now?’

‘So I take it you want me to stay on the case,’ Max says.

I sense he is going to start talking numbers again. Probably bigger numbers.

It seems to come out of nowhere but it suddenly hits me. There is a black Jaguar in some of the pictures of Promise. Maybe the same black Jaguar that was parked outside Max’s office. Also, Stanislav Ruby may not have said blackjack this morning but black Jag. I had simply misheard him. And on his morning run past the house, Jonny Bisco may not have said Annex J but an XJ. Of course. Black Jaguar XJ.

Dr Escher says perhaps I should have come to see him earlier, before things got so out of hand. He assures me there is only one reality, but reality isn’t something you can ever hope to pin down. It is dependent on perspective and perception, and perspective and perception constantly change. You will always find possibilities wriggling away beneath the surface, trying to get some of the action. Everyone sees things differently. I have simply been seeing things more differently than most and in the process have somehow created a plausible fantasy world.

Paradoxipam, he says, had a limited clinical trial in this country, and after ZSK seduced general practices with tempting offers of holidays in nice places to prescribe it, it was always going to be something of a social experiment. He has read reports of a handful of people on the drug going off the rails, but all the patients he has prescribed it to have been OK, and he has had some nice holidays.

‘But no damage done, Mr Dark,’ he says. ‘With a change in medication we can get you back on track. You look to be in fine fettle. And there’s nothing wrong with your creative powers. Phantom phonecalls, imaginary friends, mutating parcels, lucid dreams, and Max Möbius P. I. All nicely weaved together into a dramatic postmodern narrative centred around the mysterious Darius Go, who seems to have gone. Many speculative fiction writers would be happy with an imagination like that, Mr Dark. But, to avoid more wobbles, you need to make a few adjustments to the status quo. Less fantasy in your day to day, if you can manage that. For instance, you need to accept that Promise is fictitious and therefore is not going to be coming back. To carry around that degree of delusion in your home life is a pretty big a departure from reality, wouldn’t you say? And it would help if you weren’t so detached. If you were able to listen clearly to what people are saying, you wouldn’t be so confused. Small misunderstandings compound one another. …… That’s about it, really. Blood pressure and heart rate within acceptable boundaries. Well, a little high, but nothing to worry about yet. Now, let’s see. I think we’ll try you out on some of these. You’ll need to take one, three times a day or three, once a day, if you forget.’

This is all very well, but I am now left wondering if Dr Escher is imaginary.

Or to take it a step further, what if I too am fictional?

Who could be be writing this story?

Phil Dark, Possible Illusion

Copyright © Chris Green, 2023: All rights reserved