A Cry From Beyond by WR Armstrong

my watch. It was
six-thirty a.m. In the front room revellers who’d elected to stay
overnight stirred restlessly, also disturbed by the music. David,
standing on the other side of the room by the CD player,
remonstrated with a biker, trying to persuade the man to refrain
from playing music at such an ungodly hour. The biker, big and
brawny, appraised David as if deciding whether to commit murder or
not. In the end, possibly deciding the young shopkeeper wasn’t
worth the trouble, he wandered outside swigging beer from a
bottle.
    “Are you
okay, David,” I asked.
    “Thought
I’d had my chips for a minute there,” he said, looking tired and
dishevelled. His hair hung loose so it brushed his shoulders, his
specs were askew and his shirt was ripped.
    “It was
some party,” he said before collapsing onto a nearby
chair.
    I wasn’t
really listening, being more concerned by the devastation the party
had caused, rather than by the measure of its success. Overnight
the place had become a rubbish dump. Empty bottles, drinks cans,
pizza boxes and various other fast food cartons were strewn all
over the place. Moreover, the air stank of cigarettes and
marijuana. I turned as the sound of violent retching reached me
from the downstairs bathroom.
    “Someone
over did it,” David remarked, sitting up and straightening his
specs.
    A bleary
eyed teenage girl emerged from the room wearing a pink tee shirt
and a pair of white lace knickers. To David she said, “Nice party,”
before crawling into a double sleeping bag occupied by a man I
assumed to be her boyfriend.
    Ignoring
the thumping headache I’d woken with, I checked the place for
damage and breakages. There were few to speak of surprisingly, a
couple of glasses, an ashtray, but little else. A quick check for
burn marks revealed just the one, fairly minor, on a worn old rug
by the hearth. David came to my aid with the job of clearing up. I
enquired where Jenny was.
    “Nipped
home,” he said, “exam papers to mark for Monday. She’ll be back to
lend a hand later.”
    He pulled
on a pair of marigolds and ran hot water into the Belfast sink.
“Michelle looked on the verge of a nervous breakdown towards the
end of the night,” he said, squirting washing up liquid into the
bowl. “She was worried about the gatecrashers; afraid they’d
ransack the place. By the way, did you discover what happened to
your mystery lady, the one you saw by the gazebo?”
    “No, I
didn’t.”
    “You
sound disappointed. Any idea who she was?”
    “Just
another gatecrasher, I guess.”
    But she
was more than that. Even then I sensed that our destinies were
inextricably entwined.
    I left
David to the washing up and wandered around the house hoping to
find her, more determined than ever to discover her identity.
Eventually, I was forced to admit defeat and returned to the
kitchen, where I helped David dry plates and cutlery. Michelle
popped her head around the door. I threw her a cloth. “Work
surfaces need a wipe.”
    She
pulled a face. “Do I really have to?”
    Around us
the revellers finally began to stir, rising from the floor like the
living dead, some heading off without so much as a bye or leave,
others taking the time to congratulate me on a great party. A man
sporting tattoos and long unruly hair wandered into the kitchen
complaining that he’d mislaid his girlfriend.
    “Her name
is Mary-Louise,” he said, “Anyone here seen her?”
    “What’s
she look like,” I asked.
    “Petite
with short brown hair: she looks like a little pixy. She was
wearing blue jeans and a pink blouse.”
    “Maybe
she got bored and went home,” David suggested.
    “She
crashed out with me on the floor over there,” he said, pointing
back through the doorway into the living room. “She was too drunk
to talk let alone walk home on her own. Besides, why would she just
get up and leave, without saying anything. It wasn’t as if we’d had
an argument.”
    “Have you
checked outside?” Michelle