Last Regress

PROLOGUE

"We watch them living their lives.  We watch their hearts beat, they breathe, they grow, they give birth, and ultimately of course they die.  We watch all of it happening.  We are always there but they do not know it, they do not see us.  Sometimes, only very occasionally, they think that they can sense something, but more often than not the feeling passes quickly and they barely notice the difference.  If we are careless and do not obey the rules set out for us, maybe they actually do catch a glimpse, just for a second or two, but the memory inevitably fades for most of them, all apart from the more sensitive ones, and we are once again safely forgotten.

"It is strictly forbidden for us to interact with them in any way, we cannot help them, we are not allowed to communicate with them at all, and we are only permitted to watch.  Anything else would carry with it the threat of dire consequences, it would upset the delicate balance that we constantly strive so very hard to maintain, and most important of all it would likely bring about our own downfall.

"This is what we have learned from our own mistakes; only the few, only the most sensitive, only the ones who have been chosen to share our fate can be allowed to know us, and so we remain in the shadows, and we watch.

It has not always been this way though.  We have made our mistakes, we have felt the searing pain of bearing witness to the damage that we have caused, and for this we have suffered.  Oh, how we have suffered...

CHAPTER ONE

Five o’clock on a Friday evening is a time that fills most people with a sense of joy, expectation and excitement.  The working week is over, the weekend has finally fulfilled its promise and has arrived to save the day, and now the time has come to join family, friends and loved ones in a ritual celebration of temporary freedom.

For two whole days – even longer if you’re feeling generous and take into account Friday night – all responsibilities to the workplace, to real life, can be abandoned and fantasy is allowed, for a short while at least, to dominate the real world, the mundane world.  Hordes of people spill out from the doors of factories and offices, all of them breathing audible sighs of relief as if gasping for air and clawing their way to release after their five day incarceration at the hands of that evil tyrant better known as ‘Reality’.  Time suddenly becomes an extremely precious commodity and these people do not intend to waste one second of it.  The feeling of liberation is almost overwhelming and if you concentrate very carefully you can just about imagine that you can smell it in the air.  Oh yes, five o’clock on a Friday evening is a magical time indeed for most people, but for Alyssa Matthews it had never really felt that way.

This particular Friday in question was, of course, no exception to that rule, and there was frankly no reason to think it was an exceptional Friday at all.  In a desperate attempt to cling to the working week for as long as she possibly could, Alyssa glanced nervously up at the clock on the office wall and willed the second hand to stop turning, to suspend time for at least a little while.  She began to stare so intently that she realised she may as well be pleading with it in her mind to show her mercy.  No such luck though, there never was, and no matter how hard she stared at it that damned clock just kept on ticking away.  She thought to herself, rather irrationally she had to admit, that she truly felt hatred for that clock.  It in turn detested her equally and it appeared to have concocted the ultimate cunning plan with which to exact its dreadful revenge; it was surreptitiously stealing time from her.  She was convinced that, every time she turned her head, the clock would chuckle away to itself and jump ahead a few minutes.  Alyssa glanced at it, and in return it merrily ticked away, arrogantly counting out every second that marked a surge in her rapidly growing feeling of dread.  It knew that the only time she was really happy was when she was working and it fully intended to use that fact against her.  She fantasised to herself that, right at that moment, everything that had ever gone wrong in her life was entirely the fault of the clock.  It was to all intents and purposes the centre of all evil in her strange and twisted little universe.

She sat there, staring fervently at the wall and feeding her fantasy, her own carefully planned plot to bring about the demise of that awful timepiece.  Of course she was well aware that this was really just an excuse to let her mind wander away from her work when things got a bit too heavy, but she quite enjoyed losing herself within the storyline that was developing inside her head. 

All of that was brought to an abrupt halt though when her boss, Dave, breezed past her desk and said brightly, Hey missy, it’s about time you thought about packing up your stuff.  It’s nearly time to go home you know.  For once we have nothing booked on the schedule for the weekend; we can actually get the hell out of ‘Weird Central’ and go join the real living people in the normal world.

Alyssa hated it when they had nothing booked for the weekend so that statement did little to impress her, although she knew that Dave meant well and she would never intentionally want to offend him.  Dave always did mean well, that was one of his best qualities.

‘Weird Central’ was the rather catchy and yet frighteningly accurate name concocted by the staff of the ‘Institute of Paranormal Research, Cambridge’, Alyssa and Dave’s workplace and, very often it seemed, their second home.  The Institute was named primarily to fool people into assuming it was a department of the city’s university, but it was in fact a privately owned company, set up by a self-styled parapsychologist who no longer had any real involvement with the organisation.  Most of the staff there strongly suspected that he had simply become bored of being associated with the field of paranormal research and had moved onto some other money making venture that was inevitably doomed to be yet another rich kid’s whim.  Of course none of them had ever actually had that rumour confirmed but it was always their favourite theory.

Nevertheless the company was more or less abandoned to survive on the subscription fees paid by members of the public for the privilege of being labelled ‘subscribers’, the sale of the publications that the Institute produced, and the paltry fees that people sometimes paid to have ‘paranormal investigations’ carried out on their properties.

It had proved to be a painfully slow process but they were starting to gain more respect, the staff were diligently clawing their way back from the reputation their founder had given them, thanks mainly to their own sheer hard work and stubborn determination.  Alyssa had come to believe that stubborn determination was a very valuable character trait for people who wanted to get anywhere in life and this had proved even more relevant in the field of paranormal investigation.  The company had eventually progressed to running a very popular website and, more importantly, they were becoming quite well known in their field for conducting professional and impartial investigations.  They finally had something to feel proud about.

Alyssa had been working as a Researcher at the Institute for two years.  Most of her work involved nothing much more exciting than ploughing through various history books, land registry documents, newspaper archives and of course the trusty internet for information about purportedly haunted buildings and locations.  She didn’t mind all that, it was actually quite interesting to sit there for most of the day and delve into the history of old buildings, but her favourite aspect of the job by far was being a part of the team that carried out the actual on site investigations.

The system they used was to make two or three overnight visits to whatever location they were investigating, and they started by taking readings of ambient temperatures and electromagnetic fields.  They checked for the location of plumbing pipes, generators, loose doors and windows, and then proceeded to carefully monitor the area overnight for any changes in these readings.  The team also filmed the area with infrared and heat sensitive cameras, took audio recordings, many photographs, and set up trigger objects in the hope that ‘something’ would respond by moving them.  They occasionally even took to using dowsing rods and crystal pendulums if they believed that they may be experiencing some kind of activity that wasn’t being picked up by electronic equipment, but as these methods didn’t offer any kind of scientific evidence they tended to only use them as a last resort.

Unfortunately the team hadn’t yet managed to gather any concrete evidence of paranormal activity or indeed any kind of activity to speak of with their equipment.  So far some strange mists on photographs that were probably condensation in the cameras, a fair number of orbs on video that were much more likely to be dust motes, and some unexplained noises that were almost definitely ambient sounds that had distorted on audio tape were about the limit of their findings.  Still, they kept optimistically searching nonetheless.  While ever there was a public interest in the paranormal there was a place for researchers and investigators – that had more or less become the company motto and the staff used it to boost their morale whenever they started to feel that their work was becoming futile.

Whilst a sizeable chunk of the company’s revenue came from the publishing side of the business, in turn most of those funds were directed from the sale of their monthly magazine for which the staff of the Institute often pursued their own cases in order to come up with articles and essays.  They were all expected to contribute and the basic rule of thumb was that any subject that could possibly be deemed as potentially paranormal in origin was fodder for publication.  Alyssa’s own forte was to drag out old obscure cases that had long since been abandoned and try to get to the bottom of them, try to find some kind of resolution, and then write a report on her findings as her article.  Of course another good point to this, apart from the obvious one of bringing in money for the company, was that it nicely filled the gaps between investigations and helped to stop everyone from getting bored.

As Alyssa’s mind wandered once again on that Friday afternoon, she found herself pondering the way that she had drifted into this job and thus into her current, rather unconventional lifestyle.  It was only two years ago that she had been in, what she would describe as, a state of limbo.  Her whole life had pretty much been in tatters, she had no idea of what she was going to do with herself, and she had been cast aside and branded ‘too dark and strange for me’ by the man she was supposed to be marrying.

Alex Miller had been an unlikely choice of partner for Alyssa and to be perfectly honest that opinion had been mirrored by the majority of his friends.  They thought that she was worse than wrong for him.  In the past she had always tended to go for the ‘tall, dark and slightly mysterious’ stereotype and Alex was about as far removed from that as you could get, being rather on the short side, with cropped blond hair and an interest in action movies and motor racing that was almost bordering on the unhealthy.  He was generally a sensible kind of guy though, with a great deal of ambition. 

He knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life and he had it all mapped out – quite literally, in a little notebook that he carried around with him – so Alyssa had started to come around to the way of thinking that he would offer security and stability to her rather chaotic life.  A little more affection would have been a nice addition, but when he had suggested they should get married – because it would make ‘economic sense in the long run’ – she had been caught up in the romantic notion of a marriage proposal and she jumped at the chance.  Alyssa had actually thought it quite sweet when Alex rewrote his life plan in his little notebook and included her in there as his wife.  Of course, as she was later to discover, pages are all too easy to tear from books and notes are equally easy to rewrite.

Alyssa could never help but flinch whenever she recalled that last painfully embarrassing, and shamefully public, conversation with Alex.  He had taken her to their favourite pub for a meal, his own way of letting her down gently whilst keeping himself safely in a public place.  Really she should have known from the start that something wasn’t quite right that evening.  After all, they didn’t have very much spare money, they hadn’t been out for ages, and Alex had never been one for wasting his precious funds on frivolous gestures.  The evening had started out okay though, they’d had a nice enough drive out there, chatting amiably about inconsequential matters, and Alex had been extremely well mannered when they got to the pub; opening the door for her, taking her coat and even pulling out her chair for her to sit down.  Actually alarm bells should probably have gone off in her mind by that point because he was never usually that thoughtful or polite, but she remained temporarily content in her own little world of romance.  That was until he single-handedly shattered her fantasies when he dropped the very well practiced bombshell.

He tentatively, or to put it more accurately he nervously, explained to her that, although he thought she was physically attractive and that he was sure deep inside she was a wonderful person, he needed to be with someone who could give him more light in his life, more excitement.  Alyssa almost choked on her glass of cheap house wine when she heard that line coming from the man who carried his life all mapped out in his inside pocket.  He went on to say that he needed someone who was a little more ‘bubbly’, who didn’t spend most of their free time with their head stuck in a book or trying to relate to dark literature in an attempt to deal with their insecurities – really not the stereotype that Alyssa would have chosen to describe herself – he longed for someone who wanted to go out and have some fun, someone who liked to laugh.  He said that the way she lived her life, in fact almost everything about her, was simply far too dark for him.  Apparently she was bordering on the obsessive and that fact scared him.  Alyssa wasn’t quite sure what it was that she was supposed to be obsessed about but she thought to herself that at least she could now count the talent of instilling fear into the hearts of men as one of her assets.

Oh the shame she felt as she sat there in the office that Friday as the light began to dim and she recalled that horrible night in the pub, but more to the point she recalled herself begging Alex to believe that she would do anything to change for him.  At the time she meant it too, every single pathetic word.  Alyssa was absolutely floored.  She promised to change all her interests, she even promised to lighten her hair and change the way she dressed.  It may have been something of a futile gesture but that was how desperate she was feeling.  By that point she was willing to alter every aspect of herself just to try and convince him to stay with her.  For his part Alex completely ignored her total humiliation and informed her that it didn’t matter what she did to the outside, she would always carry that darkness within, and that fact would forever sour their relationship.  How very straight and to the point he was, and he didn’t even seem to notice that every word was cutting Alyssa to the bone.  She just couldn’t understand where all this had suddenly come from. 

Then there came the biggest blow to her confidence of all.  He confessed to her that he had already found someone else to share his life with, someone who could give him what he needed.  He seemed to almost take some kind of sadistic pleasure in telling her that this girl was young, blonde and, in his words, ‘full of fun’.  It was painfully obvious to Alyssa that this was just a set up to make her look bad and make Alex feel as though he had been absolved of any responsibility for the breakdown of their relationship, despite the fact that he had without a doubt been cheating on her for quite some time.  Alex had let her beg and plead whilst knowing that there was no hope for their relationship.

In the end she simply couldn’t help herself, her mouth just seemed to operate independently from her mind, and thus Alyssa replied scathingly, Full of fun?  Oh I see, you mean that she’s a vacuous little whore then?

The look of sheer disgust on Alex’s face shocked her and left her feeling slightly winded, almost as though someone had just punched her in the stomach.  She hadn’t expected to receive a particularly good reaction to that statement but nor was she quite prepared for what happened next.  Alex quite calmly finished his drink in one swig and slowly rose to his feet, taking a moment to regard Alyssa with an expression of rapidly growing pity on his face before he spoke, and so drew the attention of the majority of the pub’s clientele.

I sincerely hope, Alyssa, that someday you find whatever the hell it is in this life that you seem to be looking for, he said in a very loud and contemptuous tone of voice, choosing his words as carefully as he could so as to ensure maximum impact.  I hope that one day you will find a real person inside yourself instead of hiding behind all that darkness.  I wish you well, I really do, but I’m afraid that I can no longer be a part of this void that you insist on calling a life.

With that he turned around, walked out of the pub and walked straight out of her life.  Alyssa was left trying to hide her shame behind her veil of long dark hair, looking like the archetypal Japanese ghost from a horror movie, painfully aware of the looks of sympathy and curiosity as the other customers tried and failed to be too obvious about staring at her.  With her hair still hanging over her face and her eyes cast downwards, she left the pub with as much dignity as she could still summon, which quite frankly by that point wasn’t very much.  When she got outside though, she had no idea what to do.  Alex had dramatically driven off leaving her on the outskirts of the city with no transport home, and no mobile phone.  After a while of pacing back and forth, worrying about what was going to happen – and never once considering that the pub might have a payphone – she managed to convince a mini-cab driver to forfeit his booking and take her home, most likely because he was mortified by the thought of a hysterical woman hanging onto his side mirror whilst he desperately tried to drive away.  When he dropped her off at home she found herself standing in the street outside her house, once again unsure of what she should do, but five minutes and much pacing later and everything became clear.  Not wanting to be alone after what she had just been through, she literally ran to the only place in the world she knew she could go to.

Her one and only true friend, Greg, welcomed Alyssa with open arms and a never-ending supply of love, understanding, extra-soft tissues to mop up her tears, chocolates and red wine.  She spent the next few weeks descending deep into the realms of depression and self-loathing, whilst he picked her up, dusted her down, screamed at her, shook her, and moulded her back into something that vaguely resembled a functioning person.  He was the one who put the suggestion into her head to look for another job, sever all her ties to the past and start afresh.  Alyssa, still existing within a haze of confusion, had somewhat blindly followed his lead in the hope that there was something better out there for her.

She sat there on that Friday as darkness began to fall on the office and thought about the past two years.  It didn’t feel as though it had been such a long time since she had walked through the doors of the Institute for the first time as the slightly nervous new typist.  The paranormal was a subject that Alyssa had always been fascinated with and Greg had decided that it seemed like the perfect job for her, a chance to see from the inside how a paranormal investigation was organised.  Her original job was to type up the investigation reports, answer the phone and do the filing.  However fate stepped in and, after a mere three weeks one of the researchers walked out over some kind of a dispute and, greatly encouraged by Greg of course, she applied for the position.  She was accepted initially on a trial basis, but it soon became apparent, to both Alyssa and her boss, that she was very well suited to working as a researcher.  As she was given more complex and involved projects to work on, and eventually progressed to her own investigations to conduct, her self-confidence began to grow and she slowly started to rebuild her life.  She was now at a point where she considered that she had a pretty good life, slightly quiet and most definitely weird at times, but good nonetheless, and the quiet times suited her.  If only she could have sorted out the problems she had been having lately with her dreams, then everything would probably have been close to perfect.

Dave, who by now was standing impatiently by the door to the office, jerked her out of her reverie and back to the present day.  He was already wearing his coat and was jangling his keys to try and get her attention.

Alyssa, he said, smiling, I’ve got a sleeping bag and a small gas stove out in the car, do you think you might need to borrow them?

Do what? she said, frowning at him and trying to figure out what the hell he was talking about.

Dave tutted at her, Are all my jokes wasted on you? he said, with an expression on his face that made her feel like he was about to affectionately ruffle her hair at any second.  I mean do you need a sleeping bag so you can camp out here for the weekend, or do you intend to actually pack up your stuff and go home?  You know, just another way of saying get your arse in gear.

I’m sorry, Dave, I was miles away, said Alyssa, and then she added quickly, but honestly, a few of your jokes are funny and I do laugh at them sometimes, they’re not completely wasted.  She grinned at him mischievously just so that he wouldn’t think that she was so serious she didn’t know how to have a joke sometimes.

Alyssa really did like Dave, he was always cheerful and most importantly he had been willing to take a chance on her and give her the opportunity to prove herself at a time when she needed all the encouragement she could get.  For that alone she would always be grateful to him.

Listen, she said, putting on her best ‘trying to convince someone’ voice, "why