by Jeff Noon
“On one page of the book lies the cure to my sickness. A way of putting my face and body back together. Of this I’m certain. But all my various schemes to reverse the spell have come to nothing.” He sighed heavily. “My, but I grow weary.”
For a few moments, the two men watched the reader at her task.
Whisper, whisper…
“What happens when Ava gets to the end of the book?”
Dreylock took a while to answer. “She starts again, from the beginning.”
The woman’s hand hovered over the paper. She seemed to react in some imperceptible way to the statement. And then she looked up from the book and looked directly at Nyquist. Her eyes held within them the night sky, a star in each pupil.
And Nyquist looked back at her – two people staring at each other through a magical looking glass. Some kind of recognition passed between them.
“She’s never looked at me, not directly,” Dreylock said in awe. “And I’ve never heard her speak. Of course, despite this, I am entirely under her spell.”
The woman turned his eyes back to the book and carried on with her reading.
Whisper, whisper, whisper…
“Let’s get some air.”
Dreylock clicked the lock on the nearest window and a door panel slid across. He stepped out into the garden. Nyquist followed as the limping man slowly ascended a flight of steps that led to the roof of the penthouse suite itself. Here, the highest branches of the word tree were visible, poking up through the small circular hole in the center of the roof.
“When I first came up here, I almost expected to find a star fixed to the top of the tree.” Dreylock grinned. “Or a plastic angel.”
Nyquist stared out over the expanse of sky and city. Never before had Storyville seemed so beautiful to him, nor more fragile. He was a character on a page, nothing more, a page that might turn at any moment, or be torn and crumpled, or disfigured with spilt ink or blood or tears, or that might be set aflame in order that the dream of the words be taken into the body.
The city trembled as he trembled.
It breathed as he breathed.
Dreylock had lit a cigarette. “Sometimes people try to escape from the tower. Downhearted types like myself.”
“What happens to them?”
He let out a trail of smoke from his lips. “You really don’t want to know. It’s a terrible sight.”
Nyquist searched through a tangled web of thoughts. “I have one case on hand, to find out who killed Zelda Courtland.”
“And that’s all you can do, play out that story?”
“It appears so.”
“Welcome,” Dreylock said. “Welcome my friend to the body library. Not a book, not a building, but the very world in which we live.” Sparks from his cigarette flickered away in the wind.
The moon appeared from behind a bank of grey clouds, washing the city with its pale light. Nyquist leaned over the edge slightly and peered down. There was no barrier on this side of the roof, only a sheer drop to the ground below. His stomach lurched.
“I can tell you this, John,” Dreylock said. “Once upon a time you were entranced by Zelda. In a different body, with a different mind.”
“I know. I’m starting to feel that once again.”
Dreylock threw his half-smoked cigarette away. He stood close by, his arm on Nyquist’s elbow. “I have words that reach me from afar, through the scars. You should know that Patrick Wellborn attacked you. That is, the real Wellborn attacked the real John Nyquist. He pushed you off a building’s edge.”
Nyquist looked at him. “Because I killed his fictional self?”
“Yes, exactly.” He turned. “You know, Nyquist, your other self was very cruel to me, at our first meeting. I was in desperate straits. I needed your help. I was suffering badly, in terrible pain, and you could see that clearly, I swear. Instead, you took my suffering only as an opportunity to escape.”
Nyquist shook his head. “Am I to blame for the other Nyquist’s behavior?”
“Spoken like Cain himself.” Dreylock gave a strangled laugh. “But here’s the thing, my friends and colleagues all left me after that incident, even the lovely Amber. They’ve all gone their separate ways. And so, because of you… I’m alone.”
Nyquist had placed his feet squarely on the floor of the roof. Again, he stared down.
“It’s a long way to fall, isn’t it?” Dreylock said.
“I’ll take you with me.”
“I believe you would.” Dreylock’s grip tightened. Nyquist could feel his strength, his determination. “And we’d be fighting the whole way.” He squeezed Nyquist’s arm almost to the breaking point, before letting go.
“Did you kill Zelda?”
“Me? How could I do such a thing? My body is a wreck, and I am trapped here, as you are.”
“You have agents. People who can work for you.”
Dreylock smiled. “My powers are limited. And anyway, why would I kill her? For what purpose?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
Nyquist moved away from the edge of the building. He felt weak suddenly, and even more adrift from his true self. He stumbled and almost fell.
Dreylock watched him dispassionately. “You poor sod.”
“What’s… what’s happening to me?”
“It’s really quite simple. Your real self is dying.”
Nyquist forced his eyes to stay open.
“I’m curious. How does it feel?” Dreylock rubbed at his scars as he said this, drawing a copious amount of blood onto his fingers. “Is it very painful?” He picked idly at one of the stitches, pulling it loose. The skin shifted on his face. “I wonder how your lovely Zelda felt, when her physical body was killed.”
Nyquist tried to stand up straight. The uncomfortable feeling was passing a little. He wouldn’t give the man any more chances.
“I don’t know what you’re after, Dreylock.”
“Oh that’s simple. To be put back together. To be cleansed of this.” He drew a bloodied hand down his face from brow to neck.
“You think I can help you?”
“I think you’re here for a reason, Nyquist, a central reason. More so than anyone else. I would like a share of that power.” He laughed again. His face was ravaged, breaking down, but this time he didn’t seem to mind, in fact he gloried in it. He split his lips wide on a hideous grin and his skin followed suit. Nyquist could hear the stitches pinging open. The blood flowed freely from the fissures. “We’ll die here,” he said through cracked lips. “That’s the truth. We were born here, and we’ll die here, each of us alone. There it is, the only story worth telling–”
Dreylock stopped speaking. He froze, unable to move.
Nyquist watched him.
Dreylock put up his hands as though to ward off a blow.
And then they both heard a tearing sound. It was loud and piercing, as though flesh had been torn from bone. Nyquist felt the pain deep within own body and he cried out. Dreylock did the same, to a lesser extent.
“What was that?”
“A page being torn out. It’s the reader, but why… why would she do that?”
Nyquist was still reeling from the sudden attack. “I felt it, inside. I felt it.” He rubbed at his sides, seeking the wound, expecting blood. There was none.
“This is how it works,” Dreylock said to him. His voice was strained. “We are bound to the book.”
Nyquist viewed the city through his blurred vision, the gold and silver lights wavering. The sky was filled with sparks. The moon looked down, sickened and off-white at the sight of such weakness, and Nyquist had to submit. He bowed over. The stab of pain repeatedly struck him, this time deep in the skull. He tried to speak, to put forth words, but nothing good was said, only fragments, gibberish.
There was a sudden shiver of cold air.
Dreylock called out in surprise.
Nyquist turned.
The reader was ascending the steps to the penthouse r
oof. The yellow glow of light came with her, like a lunar gown enveloping her body from head to foot, keeping her both safe, and separate. Ava stood there swaying, a single page of the book held in one hand.
The leaves at the apex of the tree rustled in the breeze, whispering, whispering.
Nyquist moved towards her. Not a strand of Ava’s hair was ruffled by the elements that played around the tower’s upper stories, not a speck of dirt caught in her eye. She was not of this world, but another one, a place that was more real, more fleshy, bloodier, and infinitely sadder. Nyquist knew this from the look in the reader’s eyes.
He came as close to her as the sphere of light would allow. For a moment he thought she might actually speak to him, to pass on some knowledge, or a secret. But her lips remained sealed. Instead, she held up the page she had torn from the book.
Nyquist reached forward. He actually felt the edge of the paper with his fingers.
And then the light closed upon itself, and vanished completely from the rooftop, taking the reader with it.
Nyquist and Dreylock were alone once more.
The single page of the book remained in Nyquist’s grasp.
There were stitches of red thread in the paper, and a tiny bird’s feather stapled in place. And the words themselves, when he tried to read them, only served to make his head spin. But somewhere on that page he felt certain a clue was given, a way forward. And then he saw a phrase, just three words among many: what you seek. And a few lines on he saw the name Zelda. It was enough to make him concentrate, to learn how to decode the book’s ragged, cut-up style. His eyes jumped from one line to another, across the page, and up and down, and diagonally, putting one word with another, drawing a meaning together from all the different places, only to have it slip away at the last grasp. Yet one thing was repeated more than any other, the number nine, whether written as a word or as a numeral. He counted all the mentions; there were eight of them altogether. But then he saw the number at the bottom of the sheet: page nine. Nine mentions of the number nine.
What you seek.
Zelda.
Number nine.
Dreylock tapped him on the arm. “What does it mean? Anything?”
Nyquist didn’t answer. He was already reading ahead across so many invisible pages. Slowly, slowly, from the depths of a lost story, the truth was rising to meet him.
Scissors Cut Paper
IT WAS a long elevator journey with many people getting on and off at the lower levels. Some of them talked to each other, others stayed silent. Nyquist saw them as fellow travelers, fellow residents. For the first time he felt that the Melville Tower might be his chosen home one day, when this current adventure was over. Who knows, he might find Zelda and live with her in some kind of peace. Two fictional people enjoying a fictional life together: there had been stranger unions, he was sure.
At one point the car was entirely filled with people, yet he felt no discomfort as his body was squashed and squeezed between wall and flesh. But for the final stage, from the second floor down to the first, he and Dreylock were alone. Nyquist took out his photograph of Zelda. He was close to recognizing her, and the prospect of seeing her image clearly excited him. The light buzzed and flickered overhead, lending her face an intermittent glow. She had the quality of a dream figure, or a ghost. Which seemed appropriate: her real self, her physical body had passed away. But her fictional self lived on, he was certain of it.
The elevator reached the first floor. They walked down the corridor towards apartment number 9. The door was locked and no one answered the bell.
“Are you going to produce a door key?”
“Not this time.” Dreylock’s face had taken on a cold, fixed expression within its pattern of cuts, bruises and trails of blood.
“You’ve got no idea who lives here?”
“None at all.”
Nyquist banged on the door with his fist but there was still no response.
“What now, private eye?”
“It’s like this: the reader gave me that manuscript page on purpose. She wanted me to come down here, to this apartment. But what’s the point of directing me here, if I can’t get inside?”
“How does this help us?”
“The reader knows everything.”
“So?”
“So there’s a key, Dreylock. All we have to do is find it.”
He looked up and down the corridor and then set off walking towards the fire door at the far end. Next to the door, fixed to the wall inside a glass cabinet, was a fire axe. Nyquist rolled his jacket sleeve down over his hand and smashed at the glass with his lower arm. It took him just two blows to break the glass. He grabbed the axe and hurried back to apartment 9.
“That’s your idea of a key?”
“Stand back.”
He didn’t give him much time. The axe was already swinging high overhead. It hit the center of the door and broke through the wood paneling. Nyquist yanked the head free and raised it again. Dreylock was cowering against the opposite wall of the corridor. The axe struck home a second time, a third, a fourth. The door was now in splinters, especially around the lock.
Nyquist threw the axe to the carpet and used his boot heel to kick the door open. It swung back against the inner wall of the hallway.
“Stay here,” he said to Dreylock.
“As you wish.”
Now he was inside. Nyquist searched the hallway, living room and bathroom. Each was empty, each stripped completely of furniture and floor covering, the walls stripped of paper or paint. The only sound was made by his footsteps echoing on the bare floorboards. He couldn’t help feeling angry, and disappointed. And then he entered the bedroom. It had the appearance of a tramp’s den. There was a pallet bed on the floor covered with a sheet, and a wooden stool in the corner. No carpet, no wallpaper, very little fresh clean air. The smell of an animal’s cage at the zoo. A threadbare blanket was fixed over the window to block out the moonlight – a stray beam found its way through a rip in the cloth, but otherwise, the room was in darkness. A man was sitting cross-legged in the far corner of the room, with his head completely bowed down and his hands folded over his head and shoulders for protection. He was whimpering to himself.
For the moment, Nyquist left him as he was.
A photograph was pinned to the far wall, which the thin beam of light from the window seemed purposely to illuminate. The image showed a woman and a child, perhaps mother and son. The woman was Ava, the reader of The Body Library he had met in the penthouse suite, while the boy was the one who had run away from him on the stairs. Nyquist pulled the photograph from the wall and turned it over to read the inscription: Ava and Calvin, happier times.
“Don’t touch that.”
The cowering man had spoken.
“That doesn’t belong to you.”
Nyquist pinned the photograph back in place.
“Your wife and child, I take it?”
The man was breathing heavily, with some effort. Now he unfolded his arms and raised his head. His face was still hidden in the darkness.
“Stand up. Come on. Let me see you.”
The man did as he was bid and raised himself to his feet. He glowered across the room. “You will be Mr Nyquist, no doubt. I was wondering when you’d find me.”
“Is that so?”
“It is so. For I have seen it written.” He spat out this last word as though it were poison in his mouth. “Written! Written in blood and ink, and piss and vomit and sweat and spit and every manner of bodily fluid. I have seen your story written, your journey, your coming here, your descent into the pool, your transformation, yes, all of it!” Now that he was roused, the man had the tone of an old-fashioned fire and brimstone preacher.
Nyquist waited, his body tensed and ready.
“You know my name. So what’s yours?”
In response to this request, the other man’s hand clutched at the blanket at the window and pulled it free. Moonlight streamed into the room. The figu
re cried out at his own action, a pitiful howl of despair and frustration. Nyquist saw the man’s drawn expression, he saw the heavy eyes, the dirty teeth, the ink stains on his face and hands, and the tattered, unwashed clothing once so stylish, now a set of rags hanging off an emaciated body. He saw the wild uncut hair and the sniveling nose. The man laughed. There was no mirth in it, none at all.
He tried again. “Who are you? What’s your name?”
A glob of jet black phlegm landed on the private eye’s face.
“You little…”
The man laughed again, wildly now, madly. He wouldn’t stop laughing. Nyquist took a step back. He wiped at his face with his jacket sleeve.
Revealed in the light, the room was as dirty and pitiful as the person who lived there: cheap unwashed bedding, a few plates and opened tins of food on the floor. Every surface was covered in dust. Nyquist’s eyes returned to the occupant, who had by now fallen back into a state of helpless despair. He was a beetle-like specimen, tall and thin, his limbs sticking out at odd angles, his mouth surrounded by a black and grey goatee beard. His eyes were slightly too close together, the nose aquiline. He might have looked elegant, handsome even, in any other location: here, the sparseness and the filth of the room infected him. He looked more than halfway beaten, by himself, or the world, whichever got the blows in first. Obviously he hadn’t eaten properly in a good while.
Nyquist said, “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Why not? What else can be done to me?”
“You live here?”
“Yes.”
“How can we talk if I don’t know your name?”
“Theodore.”
“Go on.”
“Theodore William Argyll Lewis. But I used to write under the pen name Louis Argyll. And then later on as Lewis Beaumont.”
He looked proud now, as he listed his various names.
“You’re an author?”
“I write books that few people read. Science fiction mainly, with a little fantasy on the side, to pay the bills.”
Nyquist thought for a moment. “I was directed here, to this apartment. I’m looking for a woman called Zelda.”