Freaking Freak Read online

  When she had friends.

  All before she was a freak.

  Had she also been ‘rescued’ by Freak?

  Had she also had the ‘operation’?

  Her fingers!

  Had they fallen off because the operation had gone wrong?

  I urgently reach up to feel the scar running around my neck.

  Is it okay?

  Was my operation more successful?

  Could my head fall off?

  Surely, surely not!

  That’s crazy, right?

  Yeah, but everything’s crazy, isn’t it?

  I stare at the gloves I’m still holding in my hand.

  What do you know about all this Hezzy Heston?

  Are there any questions that you can answer for me?

  Like, were you really Hezzy Heston? Or was that just another lie I’ve been told?

  I smooth out the gloves.

  And I slip them on once more.

   

   

  *

   

   

  I’m at a party.

  The sort of party that would have Mum tearing her hair out with worry if she knew I was really there. She’d also be tearing her hair out that she hadn’t been invited.

  Because this is one of those parties where anything goes. Big house. Sweeping staircases. Action going on on every floor. Drinks flowing like Dad’s organised it all, and he’s been told go for it; someone else is picking up the tab.

  Everyone’s laughing and acting like they started drinking at least half a day ago. They could easily be mistaken for a crowd of totally crazed people if it weren’t for the fact that they’re all expensively and elegantly dressed.

  It’s dress from another era, naturally.

  This is Hezzy’s time, after all.

  Hezzy’s life.

  Hezzy’s emotions.

  Hezzy’s anguish.

  I’m weeping. Almost choking, left short of breath every time my chest is painfully racked by the uncontrollable heaviness of my sobbing.

  I’m not good enough for him. He’s made that plain. He doesn’t want to see me again.

  I feel strangely empty, like I’m just a shell, not really living. Like I’m not really here anymore. Like I no longer exist in this world flowing around me.

  I can’t touch that world, relate to it, be a part of it. And it can’t touch me.

  I don’t want to be a part of it anymore. It doesn’t want me to be part of it either.

  No one acts as if I’m here. I’m invisible to them all.

  Even as I barge my way through them, they don’t register that I’m the one at fault. They drunkenly swerve, right themselves once more. Continue their drunken conversations and raucous chortling.

  My insides feel like they’re being relentlessly crushed by the gigantic hand of a god. Squeezing and squeezing and squeezing, as if he were toying with nothing more than a voodoo doll made of clay.

  Harder and harder. Tighter and tighter.

  There’s no mercy given.

  And as the unbearable pressure builds, deep inside I feel as if I’m liquefying, becoming a tangle of fluids that churn and churn and churn.

  I can’t live with this agony any longer – I really really can’t.

  I reach into my handbag, scrabbling around until I feel the cold yet strangely reassuring hardness of the metal of my car keys.

  Tonight, tonight I’m going to end all this misery once and for all!

   

   

  *

   

   

  Oh no no no!

  I can’t go on with this!

  I can’t be Hezzy as she kills herself!

  For a moment, I feel – ironically – like I’m drowning as I struggle through Hezzy’s intense, overpowering emotions. Trying to reach out for the surface. To become Jill Paxton once more.

  Jill Paxton! Jill Paxton! That’s who I really am! Not Hezzy Heston!

  With a shudder, I finally rise clear of Hezzy’s hopelessness, as if I’m shrugging off an ever thickening, ever hardening coating of ice.

  She’s still there, of course. I’m still wearing the gloves after all.

  But I’m not being overwhelmed by her sense of hopelessness anymore. It was too incredibly painful. Too frightening.

  Hezzy’s heading down the winding stairs as fast as she can. But even here she has to push her way through people crowding the steps, as if they’re just another, more uneven floor.

  At the bottom, the large oak doors are thrown wide open, the clouds of cigarette smoke swirling and eddying in a light breeze blowing in from outside. There’s a tang of the sea in the air. It mingles with the whispering scents of the floodlit eucalyptus trees lining the driveway beyond the doors.

  It’s balmy, quite refreshing. I’m hoping it’s enough to bring Hezzy round, to waken her from her dazed sense of anguish and alienation.

  Instead, like the laughter surrounding her, it only adds to her idea that she’s now permanently separated from the rest of the world. As if anything good, enjoyable, can no longer be hers.

  Suddenly, through a sea of brilliantined hair and peacock-feathered hats, I catch a glimpse of Hezzy reflected back at me from one of the enormous, gilded mirrors gracing the walls.

  She’s beautiful. Despite her misery, the tear-stained makeup, her delicate features and large eyes grant her an enviable elfin quality.

  With looks like that, surely, I think, she could have any man she wanted?

  But obviously not. Not the one man she does want, anyway.

  I want her to stop and take a longer, closer look at herself. Not only so I can get a better idea of what she looks like, but also so that I can persuade her to reconsider the stupidity, the uselessness, of what she’s so set on doing.

  But I can’t, of course. I can’t control her.

  The fact is, everything I’m seeing, sensing and feeling here is already truly amazing.

  See, I shouldn’t be experiencing all this as if I’m really here!

  Even while wearing the gloves, all of my experiences have revolved around intimate sensations and emotions. The passions we feel when we’re up close with someone we love.

  And I was still me. Still Jill Paxton.

  Sure, it was Hezzy’s experiences I was sharing – but it was always as if the emotions were mine and mine alone, a part of me, not someone else.

  Apart from these sensations, which I’d been fooled into thinking were actually mine, I’d never even been aware of Hezzy’s presence in any way.

  It was like an all-enveloping, incredibly realistic dream, where the emotions flared up with an incredible physicality; yet the harder you tried to focus on any visual detail, the farther it uncontrollably drifted away from you.

  I’d never, ever even seen Hezzy.

  Now I was not only seeing her, but I also felt as if I actually was her!

  Even so, I still can’t control her.

  After all, all this has already happened,

  It’s unchangeable. It’s history.

  As she continues weaving through the crowd on her way towards the open doors, she naturally turns away from her own reflected image in the mirror.

  And it’s as she turns away that I briefly see his reflection.

  He’s smiling. He’s looking our way.

  I’m sure he’s both conscious of and amused by Hezzy’s desolation.

  I’d know him anywhere now.

  It’s the Freak King.

   

   

  *

   

   

  Chapter 17

   

  I’d been thinking of taking off the gloves.

  Thinking, of course, that I really really couldn’t continue watching Hezzy head off into the night.

  But now that I’ve seen the Freak King – well, I want to know what he’s doing there!

  This party took place almost a century ago, yet Freak looks no different than he d
oes today. (Well, apart from his clothes of course; like every other man here, he’s dressed in an elegant evening suit rather than the weird jacket and trousers I’d first seen him in.)

  He hasn’t aged. Even though, if he’d really been at this party, it took place so long ago that he should now be dead.

  I want Hezzy to look back, to see if I can see Freak again.

  To see what he’s doing.

  To see if he’s following.

  But, naturally, I can’t get her to look back.

  Hezzy’s eyes are now intently focused on the open doors.

  She heads out into the night air, her pace, her urgency, her determination, increasing with every step.

  The cars parked around the edges of the large, oval drive sparkle in the lights illuminating the trees. They’re massive beasts, all huge engines and sweeping wheel arches.

  Hezzy’s car is an open top, a two seater, yet still ridiculously over-sized by modern standards. Tearful and bleary eyed, she angrily twists the key in the ignition. In a daze, as if drunk by her sense of worthlessness, she carelessly crunches through the gears.

  Reversing out from between the other cars, Hezzy accelerates too quickly, tries to turn too sharply. The car fights for a hold on the loose gravel, but thankfully comes to a halt in the middle of the drive.

  ‘Stop, Hezzy, stop!’

  Someone’s shouting out to her from the open doorway. Hezzy turns to look, her heart, her head, suddenly overflowing with hope.

  ‘Gary?’

  A man’s rushing towards her across the gravel.

  ‘Don’t do this, Hezzy!’ the man pleads. ‘Not like this, not yet!’

  Suddenly, Hezzy feels more crushed than ever. It’s not Gary.

  It’s Freak.

  And the most confusing thing for me is that I realise she doesn’t know him.

   

   

  *

   

   

  I’d thought that, surely, Hezzy had to know Freak.

  That’s the connection between us, surely?

  Freak and the gloves?

  Hezzy drives off, wondering who this ridiculous man was, rushing out towards her in the night, telling her to stop.

  Who’s he to tell her to stop?

  Who is he anyway?

  She’s angrier than ever. Angry that that stupid man had briefly given her hope that Gary wanted her back.

  She doesn’t look back. She sets off so quickly, Freak’s cries are drowned out in the roaring of the gigantic engine, the shriek of tyres throwing up a wake of heavily clattering gravel.

  Almost like an afterthought, she switches on the car’s lights. Projecting out ahead of us, the light illuminates tangled trees and bushes that rush past us like wailing wraiths. The mansion’s gateposts, ever so briefly lit up in a ghostly white, momentarily loom over us as if already welcoming us into the otherworld.

  Hezzy’s driving so fast, I could swear she’s trying to catch up with the light. Faster and faster. No matter how much the road weaves. No matter how unexpectedly things hurtle towards us out of the darkness.

  She doesn’t care. This is meant to be her last ride, after all.

  Freak knew that. That’s why he was trying to stop her.

  But he couldn’t. And, obviously, I can’t either.

  It’s pointless me staying any longer to watch this.

  It’s finally time to remove the gloves.

  I’d read once, I think, that the spirits inhabiting a haunted house are like the images recorded on a computer’s hard disc; a highly emotional event that’s somehow ended up indelibly ingrained on the building’s structure. And what more intense emotion could there be than an unrequited love that drives someone to end their life?

  In Hezzy’s case, all her incredible suffering has become an integral part of her gloves.

  Through her tear-filled eyes, through a windscreen whipped by the onrushing air, I look out in horror at the meandering road being swiftly eaten up by her speeding car. Every curve, every corner, seems as if it will be her last, only for her to instinctively swing the large driving wheel aside – and we once again precariously weave around the bend.

  Her bared hands grip the wheel fiercely, her skin stretched white across her knuckles.

  Her skin!

  Her bared hands!

  Hezzy isn’t wearing any gloves!

   

   

  *

   

   

  I begin to tear the gloves off in a crazed frenzy.

  My God, my God, no, no, no!

  I’m horrified. I’m close to being sick. Revolted by even having touched them, let alone worn them.

  As soon as I’m finally free of the gloves, I quickly toss them aside in disgust.

  I’ve finally realised what the gloves are made of.

  Human skin.

  Hezzy’s skin.

   

   

  *

   

   

  Chapter 18

   

  At school, I’m perfectly sure that I’ve got to be the cleanest girl here. Yet I still feel dirty, soiled.

  I’d spent most of last night showering. Scrubbing my hands and arms in particular until they were red, almost raw.

  But I couldn’t wash off the sense that I’d been scrabbling around in someone’s grave.

  Poor poor Hezzy!

  How could I have worn those gloves, shared all her experiences, without realising that…that…well, it’s just too horrible to even think about!

  That’s why I’d never considered that they could have been made of something as horrifying as human – as her – skin!

  Who could do such a thing?

  Who could skin a person, and then turn her skin into gloves?

  Freak!

  Obviously.

  And yet – he was the one trying to stop Hezzy killing herself.

  I need to find Jackie to get some answers. Surely she must have known the gloves’ secret.

  I need her to take the gloves back too.

  Of course, I’d wanted to destroy the gloves as soon as I’d realised what they were made of.

  But how could I? I mean, they were a part of Hezzy.

  How could I just throw them away?

  Burning them seemed an even worse solution. And as for shredding them, dissolving them in acid, or just leaving them outside for some animal to carry off or someone else to find – well, they all struck me as being even worse!

  Even burying them didn’t seem right. If they were buried, they should be placed alongside Hezzy at the very least, surely?

  No, Jackie would have to have them back. And I’d insist that, somehow, they should be reunited with Hezzy.

  Before I see Jackie, though, I see Jase.

  And boy, does he look miserable.

  His head hanging low. His walk slow and shuffling.

  His eyes, when he bothers to look up, to lift them from blankly staring at the ground, look lifeless, almost hollow.

  He doesn’t seem to have any interest at all in the world flowing about him. Like he’s retreated into his own sad little world.

  Having experienced it myself, I would say that he looks heartbroken.

   

   

  *

   

   

  Has Jase had an argument with the gorgeous Fiona?

  Has she dumped him?

  If she has, I should be glad, I suppose.

  This should be a moment I should relish. Seeing him suffering the same agonies he’d put me through.

  But having seen for myself what poor Hezzy suffered, it seems childishly petty to delight in Jase’s misery.

  Then again, it might make him realise just how much he hurt me.

  Maybe, even, he might be sorry for what he did. Sorry for breaking up with me.

  Would I have him back?

  Hah!

  Knowing, deep down, that I’m second best? Knowing that, i
f Fiona showed up again, he’d drop me just like that?

  Why would I risk putting myself through all that again?

  Jase languidly shuffles up the stone steps leading up towards the double doors of the main building, ignoring everyone crowding around him. For anyone attempting to greet him, he can only manage a wan smile and a dismissive wave of a hand.

  Where the steps level off just before the doors, he stops, slumping against the parapet. As he leans back on the low wall, he puts his head in his hands, no longer caring that everyone can see that he’s distraught, hurt – humiliated.

  Wow, he’s really got it bad!

  People walk past him as quickly as they can, glancing at him in disdain. Distaste creases their faces, like they’re embarrassed, even annoyed, by his weakness.

  Amongst the crowd, though, there’s an exception.

  Jackie.

  Jackie’s staring at him as if she’s suffering more agony than he is.

  Does that make any sense?

  Why would Jackie be hurt by Jase’s misery?

  Has she, all along, been secretly carrying a candle for Jase?

  Poor girl.

  If she did, if we’re being honest, she never had a chance, did she?

  ‘Jackie!’ I cry out.

  She whirls around, her eyes wide with panic, like my cry’s woken her up from some kind of deep trance.

  Soon as she sees me rushing over towards her, her eyes widen all the more. The closer I get to her, the more I think her face looks oddly contorted, like a wax doll that’s been left too close to a fire.

  She turns away, trying to push her way through the people crowding towards the steps, to get away from me.

  ‘The gloves!’ I scream out, desperately reaching out and making a grab for her. ‘I need to talk to you about the gloves!’

  Jackie just as desperately tries to shrug me off when my hand at last latches onto and fiercely grips her shoulder.

  ‘Not the bloody gloves again!’ she resentfully spits back at me. ‘They’re yours; you’ve won, right?’

  Now that she’s turned to face me, not even her fury can hide the haggardness of her once regular features. It’s like being confronted by a witch, a harpy, her ragged hair, her snarling mouth, all adding to the disconcerting effect.

  I’m briefly tempted to step back, to let her get away from me and merge into the crowd.

  ‘Won?’ I’m confused. ‘I don’t want the gloves! They’re the most horrible things I’ve ever seen!’

  ‘Horrible?’

  She studies me curiously, her eyes glistening with bemusement. Then she shrieks with laughter.

  ‘You used to think they were wonderful!’

  ‘Not now! Not now that I know what they’re made of!’

  Her eyes widen once more, this time in complete shock.

  ‘You know?’ she asks suspiciously. ‘How? How do you – Freak! Freak’s already told you?’

  ‘Of course Freak didn’t tell me! I figured it out for myself. I saw Hezzy committing suicide!’