Phoenix and the Bag Man

Chapter 3: Body

I pushed the broken door open.

"Hello, anybody there?" I walked as quietly as I could up the stairs. "Hello?" I stepped across the landing and into the room. Lying on the floor with his back to me lay the swaddled figure of the old man. He was lying amongst all the rubbish on the floor. Not in any kind of bed. He didn't look like he was sleeping. I took a step closer. The room was quite gloomy now. I craned my neck to see better, without stepping nearer. Without getting too close I walked round him and came to stop opposite his face. It was ashen, grey. Around his head a dark halo of blood glistened in the half light, shards of green glass in his hair and scattered on the floor around him, shiny icebergs of green in a sea of coagulated blood. There was a distinctive metallic smell in the air. The initial rush of andrenalin stopped. I felt quite calm, dispassionate, but to the pit of my stomach I felt sick. I wasn't panicked. Absurdly, I felt quite proud of myself about that. I could not bring myself to touch him, but I could see that he was not breathing. The body seemed waxen. I turned slowly round, taking in all the room. I felt there was someone else there. His ghost perhaps. I hoped it wasn't the Bag Man. I turned back to the body. There was Phoenix.

Phoenix. Knelt by the prone figure of the old man.

"I couldn't help him, I couldn't save him." She was sobbing as she spoke, gulping breaths.

"You could have gone for help!" I was angry, I mean she could have done something instead of just kneeling there, wailing. Her tear-streaked face raised and she look directly at me. Her eyes were as clear and weirdly arctic as ever.

"He did it," she said. I saw in my mind's eye an image of the Bag Man's snarling face, I felt his hand around my throat again.

"What?" I looked behind me, suddenly nervous. There was no one there.

"You got to get him MicMic, you got to get him for me. I can't do it 'cos I aren't real MicMic, I aren't real," and she shook her head slowly from side to side.

"Oh, for God's sake!" I'd heard stuff like this from projects past. So wrapped in their own weird problems they couldn't act. It's just selfishness, I'd always thought, wallowing in self self-pity. Self, self, self. It's all they ever seemed to think about. I despised that.

"But this is real," I said. "You might have saved him." I pulled out my phone to call the police when suddenly I felt I just had to get outside.

"I'm calling the cops," I said. Should I call an ambulance, too?

"Can't tell anyone, MicMic, can't," she said. Then she shouted at me, screamed out, "Mustn't tell anyone! Mustn't!"

I ran down the stairs and out on to the front steps. I took a deep breath and made the call. I remember feeling a sudden wave of pity for Phoenix. I felt stronger now things were set in motion and I returned upstairs to comfort her. I made a point of not looking at the body. There was no sign of her. She had done her disappearing act again. I didn't stay.

In the distance I could hear the sound of a ball being kicked, bouncing on tarmac or concrete. I could hear birdsong, cars, the odd shout, the distant endless hum of the city. It was so strangely normal, calm, pleasant even. I stood there, outside in the dying sun, and waited. It seemed like an age but can't have been more than a couple of minutes before I could here the sirens.

'Did you make the call?" asked the paramedic.

"Yes."

"Where's the casualty?"

"Up the stairs. Lying on the floor, at the top of the stairs, in the first room."

"Do you know the casualty."