The Frequency Read online

  Read the short story collection for free at:

  www.terrykitto.com

  PENNARD PRESS

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  Published by Pennard Press

  www.pennardpress.co.uk

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  First published by Pennard Press in 2021.

  Copyright © Terry Kitto, 2021.

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  Edited by Natalia Leigh of Enchanted Ink Publishing.

  Proofread by Meredith Spears of Enchanted Ink Publishing.

  Cover design by Daniel Iglesias.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-8381815-0-5

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-8381815-1-2

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  www.terrykitto.com

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  Reader Discretion Advised

  This work contains sensitive material not fit for all readers, including depictions of murder, abuse, racism and homophobia. Please visit www.terrykitto.com/the-frequency for sensitivity guidelines.

  Edith, Thomas, Eileen and Leonard.

  Unconditionally, eternally.

  * * *

  Holly,

  Faithful critique partner.

  A percentage of The Frequency’s proceeds go to Refugee Action. Find out more at www.terrykitto.com/refugee-action.

  Contents

  I. Keep The Lights On

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  II. The Wilted, The Wild, and The Lost

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  III. Untethered

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Interlude I

  IV. When The Dead Come Knocking

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  V. Absolute Chaotic Nothingness

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  VI. Whither We Are Going

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Interlude II

  VII. No Chance At Forgiveness

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  VIII. The River Always Finds The Sea

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Interlude III

  IX. A Slave to Flesh

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Interlude IV

  X. Down and Deeper

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Interlude V

  XI. She Takes You Where You Need to Go

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  XII. I Will Always Pull to You

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  XIII. Body of the Crime

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Pennard Press

  The shadow was coming.

  Fifteen-year-old Rasha Abadi lay slumped against her headboard, the hem of her duvet clamped in her fists. She dreaded the shadow’s return. For six nights it had come to poison her mind.

  Rasha squinted through the nickel moonlight and scoured her bedroom for a sign of its arrival. It was the smallest room in caravan forty-five, and half-mended Oxfam charity electronics littered every available surface. Her clothes dryer aired the previous day’s laundry beside her secondhand desk, which bowed under the weight of school textbooks she’d eagerly consumed. That was where the shadow would appear, just as it had every night the past week.

  Her digital alarm clock on her bedside table blinked: 2:03 a.m.

  It was time, again.

  In the corner, tendrils of viscous darkness coiled into a silhouette not quite animal, not entirely human: a malformed head, a barrel chest, misshapen limbs, and a pinched stomach. It was black – an unearthly deep void unlike anything Rasha had ever seen. The dark was hues of purple and brown in comparison.

  The impossible shadow.

  Rasha clamped her eyes shut, wishing it away – the shadow sometimes disappeared if she did. Only, with her eyes closed, she was plagued by memories of Syria.

  Her bedroom’s plasterboard walls crumbled, and in their place came rubble, fire, and ash: the remains of her family’s apartment. Explosions shook the ground, screams filled her ears, and guilt gouged at her intestines. She reminded herself that she was in Cornwall – three thousand miles from her home city of Homs – and that she’d fled Syria four years earlier, even though her stomach knotted and her heart pounded as if it were happening at that very moment.

  You’re fine, she thought to herself, opening her eyes to the shadow. It’s just PTSD, that’s what Dr Hewitt said. You’re with Mum in Gorenn Holiday Park.

  The shadow grew so tall its waxen head would soon scrape the ceiling. It couldn’t have been her PTSD; her mind only conjured Syria’s decimation and their haphazard journey to Britain. Until that week, she’d never come across anything like it before. It was a shadow and so didn’t have a body. If it only had a mind, then there was one thing it could be.

  A ghost.

  In their culture, they didn’t have ghosts, for spirits didn’t stay on Earth. The closest to that nature were demons called Shaytan, creatures with malicious intent.

  Could that be it? Rasha asked herself. Did she come back as a Shaytan to punish me?

  Ras
ha called her sister’s name. ‘Milana?’

  The shadow stepped forward, and its chest heaved.

  Rasha collapsed onto her bed, too scared to cry. Sweat glued her untamable black hair to her face. The shadow didn’t move closer; it didn’t scream with agony or demand Rasha to atone. It did something impossibly worse: it stood rigidly and silently condemned her for what she had done.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Rasha cried. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Rasha wept and apologised, slumped against her headboard, as her mind plunged into memories of scorching fires, singed flesh and bloodcurdling cries.

  A panicked shriek.

  Rasha sat upright in bed. The shadow was gone, and the room was awash with tepid morning light. Another cry. A flurry of white rushed past the window. Beating wings carried on the air. It was just a seagull telling the world to wake.

  She put her head between her knees so that her racing heart would still. Just a seagull . . . Just a seagull . . . Through the gap in her arms, her alarm clock read 6:20 a.m. Rasha wasn’t too sure if she’d slept or fainted. Her adrenaline had waned, and in the shadow’s presence she’d slipped into memories of Syria. Or were they nightmares? It was hard to distinguish the two. She dared not deliberate; it’d only induce another anxiety attack.

  Her alarm clock blared at 6:30 a.m. Time to wake Haya. Since their family had been reduced to two, Haya had suffered extreme bouts of physically debilitating depression. It took her a long time to get going in the morning and longer still without Rasha’s support.

  She raised herself from bed. Her arms were weak, her chest ached — the aftereffects of another panic attack. A nettlelike sting smothered her body, as it always did when she encountered the shadow.

  Rasha left her bedroom for the kitchen, her every other thought plagued by the shadow. She mulled between cupboard and sink to brew a green tea. Its warped, melted body. Own-brand bread sizzled beneath the grill. Singed flesh. The kettle whistled to a steady boil. Milana, crumpled beneath rubble.

  Stop it, she thought.

  Rasha grabbed a foil sertraline packet from the top shelf and poured a glass of water, assembled a bed tray, and moped to Haya’s room. Rasha’s mother was awake when she entered – it was unlikely she’d slept. Her face was gaunt, as to be expected for someone who had to be prompted to eat. Her thick black hair was neglected and speckled grey. Rasha lowered the tray onto her mother’s side table and climbed into the bed beside her. Haya raised two heavy arms and cradled Rasha, who traced purple scars on her mother’s arm with her hand. Haya had gained those marks by saving Rasha’s life.

  Only she and Haya had survived the explosion that fateful night in Homs. Haya had pulled her from the wreckage and burned her left forearm in a fire that shrouded the debris. Her father’s and sister’s bloodied remains eradicated all thought so Rasha remembered little of the following journey. They’d been crammed amongst crates in the back of a truck, hidden in a waterside town house in Calais, and sandwiched amongst other desperate asylum seekers in a shipping container. British border patrollers had cracked open the container and escorted them to a detention centre in Gatwick. Three months, two key workers, and an appeal later, they were granted ‘leave to remain’ and relocated to the village of Gorenn in South Cornwall. Since then, the duo had lived in a routine that Rasha tirelessly maintained to try to find some sort of normality.

  ‘It’s that time already?’ Haya asked in Levantine, their mother tongue.

  Their Syrian friends had often mused how Haya’s daughters were mirror images of her, so when she looked at Rasha’s plump face, warm beige skin, and wide green eyes with adoration and sadness, Rasha wondered whether she was a constant reminder of Milana.

  She deliberated telling her mother about the shadow, but Haya barely had enough capacity for what was real.

  ‘I don’t know if I can do it today,’ Haya uttered.

  ‘It’s a short day,’ Rasha assured. ‘Mr Keats said one deep clean, three stays. You’ll be done by eleven. Then you can go back to bed.’

  ‘There’s laundry to do.’

  ‘I’ve done it. Take your pill, drink your tea, and I’ll get the sink ready.’

  Rasha planted a kiss on Haya’s forehead and left the bedroom. She arranged Haya’s work clothes on the bathroom flasket and filled the sink with hot water. Haya held on for as long as she could before she rose to wash; the water would be at the perfect temperature by the time she did.

  Rasha changed and avoided the corner where the shadow had been. Within twenty minutes she was in her patched school uniform, sat at the dining room table, munching on a pack of chocolate bourbon creams to suppress her appetite. Glucose, the perfect fuel for the sleep-deprived.

  For someone haunted by shadows.

  Haya stifled a yawn as she entered, acrylic tabard on, hair wound in a tight bun. With her was the cup of tea and plate of toast, which hadn’t been touched. Haya was a far cry from the woman Rasha remembered in pre-war Syria when she’d worked as paralegal’s secretary. Rasha supposed that Middle Eastern qualifications meant nothing when she wasn’t legally allowed to work under ‘leave to remain.’ It was why Rasha had begged the site owner, Mr Keats, to allow her mother to do cash-in-hand work – she craved a purpose as much as they needed the money.

  Haya tutted playfully and offered her hand. Rasha reluctantly gave her the packet of bourbons.

  ‘All this sugar,’ Haya moaned. ‘Your insides will rot, never mind your teeth.’

  ‘Yes, Mama.’

  ‘No sweets before lunch, you hear me?’

  ‘No sweets before lunch.’

  It was time for Rasha to leave, after all. She had four miles of country lanes to walk. She rose and hugged Haya.

  ‘If I have to eat savoury, you have to eat something.’

  Haya nodded.

  ‘I promise,’ she whispered.

  ‘Unconditionally,’ Rasha said.

  ‘Unconditionally.’

  Rasha squeezed her tightly, then donned her rucksack and stepped into the spearmint morning. She faltered on the bottom step and wrung the straps of her bag. She contemplated every lesson sat quietly, hoping to be left alone by teacher and student, every solitary break time spent in an empty classroom or toilet cubicle.

  Get through it, she told herself. Get through it and get back to the caravan.

  Not that solace was found during evenings spent in forty-five, the place she was meant to call home.

  She took a deep breath and trudged on. Gorenn Holiday Park was compiled of caravans each within their own fenced ten-by-twenty-metre paddock, all arranged alongside a clean gravel path. Mr Keats’s caravan was at the heart of the holiday rentals, adjacent to the maintenance shed and activities lodge. His family consisted of seven obese tabby cats that milled within their fenced enclosure. Rasha stopped a moment to itch one of their chins, taking in the sea as it frothed and rolled beyond the caravans, letting the cool salt air course through her nostrils and ease her lungs.

  ‘ ’ere, Rasha,’ came Mr Keats’s voice. ‘What do you know about cats?’

  The site manager, a thin man with a whisker-clad face and beady eyes, looked like an inquisitive otter walking on its hind legs. The morning wind threatened to rush under his bathrobe and Monroe him.

  ‘They like fish, hate belly rubs,’ she replied.

  ‘They like fish.’ He laughed. ‘Well, ’parently mine dunt. They haven’t touched a thing since yesterday. Gonna ’ave to take ’em to the vets, ain’t I?’

  ‘Best be on the safe side,’ Rasha said. She nuzzled the head of an obese tabby.

  ‘Speakin’ of which, keep an eye out on yer walk. There’s been some wrong un’s loitering around here at night.’

  ‘People?’ Rasha returned. She always struggled with Mr Keats’s thick accent.

  ‘They ain’t guests, I know that much. Probably lookin’ to pinch gas bottles, so keep yer eyes peeled. Tell your mother, too.’

  ‘Sure. See ya.’

  School started in an h
our, so Rasha continued on. Shadows at night, strange people who wandered the caravan site by day. Rasha’s anxious mind couldn’t help but put the two together. For a moment she deliberated taking the school bus but decided against it. She hadn’t taken the school bus in months – crammed into a metal box with no escape from bullies was far from appetising. Into the bending valley lanes Rasha went until the caravan park was a blip behind her. Despite the long walk in all varieties of Cornish weather, she enjoyed the momentary freedom from the concrete and plaster that caged her very existence, where benign livestock plodded along in the fields beside her.