‘First thing, Ji, I want you to get in touch with Zenda. I can’t, because the Centre are looking for me because they know I’ve got Alkland. Well, sort of got him, anyway,’ I added ruefully. ‘I’m going to be very high on the Centre’s shit list at the moment.’
This Dilligenz thing,’ said Ji. ‘It’s kind of weird, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. It was. It had struck me as weird from the start, in fact, and knowing what I appeared to know now, it looked weirder still. Pieces were beginning to fall if not into place, then at least onto the same square yard.
The Centre doesn’t need that kind of shit. I mean, there’s always going to be a few people who have to bend the rules, try to gain advantage through unacceptable means. But the Centre generally isn’t like that. The whole point about the Centre is that you do things yourself. They’re not necessarily absolutely moral things, no one there is above a bit of back-stabbing and machinating and lying in the furtherance of their careers, but farming people’s brains had a sort of strange flavour to it. To be that desperate to succeed, to dominate the decision-making of a major Neighbourhood, smacked of some kind of corny ‘taking-over-the-world’ scenario, and things aren’t really like that any more.
People have turned inwards, set up their own little camps where they can be the way they want to be. In a time when hardly anyone bothers to visit Neighbourhoods more than ten miles away, the emotional support for world domination just isn’t there any more. There was something atavistic about the whole thing, a resonance that didn’t quite ring true.
‘What do I tell Zenda?’
‘Don’t just tell her. Get her out. She’s in danger, and so are you.’
‘Do you really think this is what it looks like?’
I sighed shakily, and tried to smile at him. I could see from his eyes that the smile didn’t come out very well, so I lost it.
Ji nodded slowly and glumly.
‘Fuck,’ he said.
‘Then the three of you have got to find somewhere to go. Somewhere safe.’
Ji’s fear overflowed into undirected anger.
‘Come on, Stark, you know that’s impossible. If, if,’ he struggled to bring himself to say the name, and once more Snedd stared at his brother. More than anything else I think the effect this was having on Ji made Snedd realise something truly bad was going on. ‘If Rafe is behind this, fucking nowhere is safe.’
‘I know,’ I snapped. ‘But what else can I tell you? You and Zenda are in deep shit: you know that. I’m trying to keep an open mind on who’s behind this, because the answer I know is true is impossible.’
‘Come on, it’s Rafe. It has to be. Jesus.’ Ji stood and walked to the other side of the room, shaking violently.
‘So you have to hide. You have to get your arses out of here and buried somewhere deep. He will know where you live.’
‘But where? We can’t go to Idyll.’
‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘Don’t go there, not now.’
‘Where then? Come on, Stark, this is your Department. This is your fucking nightmare: what the fuck do we do?’
Suddenly I got a bad feeling. Ji saw the look on my face. I stood up, and Snedd rose with me, an odd expression on his powerful features.
‘What? What is it?’
‘I can’t tell you where to go!’ I shouted.
‘Why?’
‘I just can’t. If I do he’ll know.’ Snedd and Ji were staring at me, and I could see from their faces that something was happening. They started to back away from me, Snedd careering into a chair. ‘Just go. Somewhere safe: somewhere no one will see you. Somewhere that’s on our side. Come on, go! Fuck off! NOW!’
Snedd was at the door by then, and threw it open. He stared back at me for a moment, and I realised that his face looked strange because it was the first time I’d ever seen fear on it. I knew what he was seeing, and I wasn’t surprised he looked the way he did. He was seeing someone he thought he knew in an entirely different light. I knew that to him I would appear to be standing out from what was behind me, outlined with an unnatural intensity like trees in front of storm clouds.
Ji ran to the door and shoved his brother through it. Before he left he turned and looked at me, and his face made me feel better for a tiny moment. By then I could feel the wind rising up behind me and knew I would be glowing with a pale light like some evangelist’s vision. But Ji was there. He was terrified, but he was there. Ji is a rock, and beneath the fear, an old anger was already stirring in him. He nodded at me.
‘I’ll get her out,’ he said. ‘And we’ll wait. Good luck.’ Then he ran after his brother. I waited for what was coming. It didn’t take long.
I turned over and pushed my hand under the pillow, savouring the coolness there. I could hear the twitter of birds outside the window, and knew it was well past time to get up. For a moment longer I basked in the feeling of warmth, the comfort of the heavy bedclothes over me in the morning chill, and then I opened my eyes. The rough glass in the arch-shaped stone window set into the wall opposite had a slight prismatic effect on the morning light, scattering lines of colour onto the flagstones of the floor. From somewhere below in the castle I heard the sound of a trumpet, and the sound of soldiers shouting cheerfully in the courtyard outside.
Then I realised. I was back in Jeamland, and I was late.
17
A long time ago, back when I was young, when I still hoped I was going to be a musician, I woke one morning in a hotel room. I gazed blearily at the digital clock on the bedside table, seeing it through a thick gauze of aching tiredness and shattering hangover, and realised it was after ten o’clock. I’d set the alarm for seven, and dimly remembered fielding an alarm call as well.
Suddenly terribly awake I moaned aloud with despair and swung myself out of bed as quickly as I could. My head reeled and pulsed as I staggered into the bathroom like a wounded giraffe. I showered at warp speed with my head throbbing in a thundercloud of distress, threw my things together and then grabbed the phone and rang the bus station.
They kept me on hold for twenty minutes as I filled a glass ashtray with mangled butts. When I got through they told me what I already knew, what I’d known the minute I woke up. I’d missed the bus.
Doesn’t seem like any big deal, does it, missing a bus? Okay, so it meant I was stuck in a town where I didn’t know anyone, without enough money to get another room for the night. But no big deal, right? It also meant that I wasn’t going to be arriving where I was supposed to go, which was embarrassing, because I was due to crash with some people I’d never met before who’d kindly offered me their floor. I wasn’t even sure I had their telephone number to let them know I wouldn’t be showing. Still, worse things happen.
The thing was, I wasn’t in my own country. I was on holiday, the first one I took completely by myself. For the first time, there was no one looking after me, no one who gave a toss either way what happened to me. But even that wasn’t the issue.
I’d spent the week before with some friends who had now left town, and I felt very confused and pretty bad about something that had taken place with one of them. She was gone now, leaving me to wonder about what had happened, and what it signified. One thing I knew it meant was that there was someone thousands of miles away who was going to be justifiably very pissed at me. Someone who, despite everything, was the last person in the world I wanted to hurt.
As it turned out, things sorted themselves. They do that sometimes. I rang the people I was supposed to be staying with, and let them know I was an utter moron. I found somewhere to stay for the night, and I made it to my destination the next day. A relationship with someone I cared very much about swung off the rails for good, but I kept in touch with her, and we were able to be friends for the little time I had left.
But that morning, as I sat shaking by the phone, I experienced a terrible dismay, felt irrevocably alone and distraught. That feeling has never left me. It’s always there, deep under the surface banter and sna
ppy thoughts. When I woke up to find that I’d been yanked back to Jeamland, when I knew immediately and intuitively that Alkland was gone, those feelings punched to the surface and for a moment I was twenty-two again, a boy by himself, a young man who was long since dead.
I ran out of the bedroom. The other double bed in the room had been slept in, and I didn’t need to ask anyone to know that Alkland had been sleeping in it, and that he was gone. In Jeamland one just knows those things. You understand what I mean: you’ve been there.
A servant dressed in white called out to me as I pelted down the corridor towards the stairs. Anything he had to say would only have been a distraction, and I ignored him. I had to find Alkland, and find him as quickly as possible. If I didn’t, he would die.
That Rafe was somehow active again was something I could no longer deny, however much I wanted to, however difficult it was to accept or understand. No one and nothing else could have dragged me back into Jeamland. Only one person could have possessed a hundredth of the strength and hatred required for that. Just before it had happened I’d felt the faintest tickle in my mind, a tiny warning that someone was trying to get in there, someone who knew me very, very well. There’s only one person who knows me like that, who knew me before all this. I’m sorry, but I haven’t been terribly straight with you. There’s a lot you don’t know about me, and I don’t have time to go through it now.
As I reached the ground floor and skidded round a corner towards the King’s reception I tried to find comfort in the fact that at least Ji would now be convinced that Rafe had somehow risen again. I just had to hope to hell that he got to Zenda in time, and that he’d realised where I was talking about, the safest place for them to go. I wished I’d had more time, time to make sure they got there, time to be ready for this. But no amount of time would have been enough.
I ran into the reception and skidded to a halt. The King was sitting on his throne and again he was smoking, once more tapping his ash into a free-standing lobby ashtray. There was no one else in the room, and the King gazed at me beneficently as I stood panting there in front of him. I noticed that the ashtray had an emblem on it that I almost recognised, something that stirred a deep memory. Distracted, I walked closer, stooping, trying to remember. Something about a hotel, guilt, a souvenir…
‘Well?’
I straightened abruptly, confused. The King was staring down at me. He looked inordinately pleased about something.
‘Er, good morning, your majesty,’ I stammered, feeling very hot. A small glass ashtray with a symbol on it. Guilt. A woman…
‘Do you have any idea what time it is?’ asked the King, with silky smugness. I didn’t. I hate to wear watches. ‘It’s eleven o’clock, Stark. Eleven o’clock! Do you know what that means?’
I shook my head, as much to try to clear it as in answer to his question.
‘You’ve missed your bus!’ the King crowed triumphantly. ‘It’s gone! It’s outa here! It’s history!’
Suddenly hundreds of people started singing. I whirled round and saw that all around the room people had been hiding, pressed up against the walls, hidden behind curtains. Obyrk was there, the women in white gowns, a group of BufPuffs, nobles, ranks of servants, soldiers. They were singing, ‘Bye bye, bus, bye bye.’
When I turned they all stepped out and doubled up with laughter, pointing at me. Dismayed, I turned back to the King, but he was laughing too. I whirled back to face the crowd again and they were still pointing and laughing, and then suddenly they were all chanting ‘We can see your bottom, we can see your bottom,’ and I looked down to see I was naked. I put my hands in front of me and turned once more to the King. He was still laughing, laughing harder and harder, his upper body whipping up and down so fast his head was a blur.
One of the BufPuffs pulled off her gown and threw it in my direction, but it never reached me. It just ceased to be, in mid-air, and everybody laughed. Staring at her body I saw that a symbol had been cut in her stomach with a knife. The blood was still dripping, obscuring the lines, but I could see that it was the same emblem as on the ashtray.
Guilt.
Random shouts came out of the crowd, dancing above the chanting.
‘Miss, I can see Stark’s willy!’
The BufPuff took a pace forward and stood a couple of yards from me, crying and screaming at me, her face ugly with hurt, and I felt the years I’d spent with her collapse round me to lie nakedly on the floor in a small rented room. A greyhound on a jewelled leash came out of the crowd and crouched next to her, licking drops of her blood off the floor.
‘You’ve missed the exams, Stark. They started at nine, didn’t you know? Didn’t we tell you? You’ve missed them!’
There was a pattering sound as several small white things bounced close to the dog’s head: the King’s teeth were flying out of his mouth as he whipped and writhed, shouting laughter, laughter that was tearing his throat and lungs apart.
‘Stark fancies you, Miss!’
Abruptly the BufPuff stopped screeching and fell horribly silent, staring at me with a look of deformed, subnormal stupidity. One hand scratched at her leg, her longs nails raking into the flesh, carving deeper and deeper as they scratched again and again at the same place. Her other hand went to the gashes on her stomach. She took the edge of one of the cuts between two of her nails and pulled, slowly peeling a strip of dripping skin away. The strip was thick, all of the layers of skin in one, and she held it out to the dog, who quickly snapped it up. She started peeling again, revealing a patchy layer of glistening subcutaneous fat clinging to striped muscle. The King’s laughter was now indiscernible from screaming, and the more I tried to cover myself the more exposed I felt. Suddenly the BufPuff shrieked at me again.
‘You little shit! You fucking little shit!’ I took a terrified step backwards, feeling a tooth cut into one of the soles of my feet. ‘You little pervert! How dare you think about me naked! I’ve a good mind to make you walk naked in front of all the other teachers, in front of the whole school! In front of the girls! How about that, you little shit?’
Obyrk stepped out of the crowd wearing a tweed jacket. He pulled a strip off the BufPuff’s stomach and dropped it into her open mouth. He was Miss Taylor’s boyfriend, and swung the keys to an open-top MG sports car nonchalantly from one hand. He cast a disinterested glance towards me, a man with a car looking at a love-sick seven-year-old. The BufPuff chewed the strip hungrily and then pulled Obyrk’s head towards hers, stretching her blood-soaked tongue out to him. Then they turned towards me, bending over me and screaming, ‘He’s got a car!’ at my face over and over again. There was a small movement in the BufPuff’s stomach and I felt saliva flooding into my mouth and my gorge rise before I even realised what I’d seen. A tiny hand was reaching out of the tear in her stomach, reaching out and waving at me.
And still the King laughed, his whole body twitching and rotating with inhuman speed, blurred arms and legs whirling like the wings of an insect. The BufPuff’s other hand still raked at her leg, her fingers now bloody and covered with flecks of meat as her nails scraped audibly against naked bone.
When she shoved her hand into the hole and pulled the head of her femur out of the hip joint with a wet popping noise, I fainted.
And came to immediately to find myself standing on grass. I was trembling so violently I could hear the bones in my wrists cracking, but at least I was clothed. I reached into my jacket without looking up to see where I was. Until I had a cigarette lit, I didn’t want to know.
I was standing on a small island, about ten feet across. The island was flat, and covered with thick grass that was a deep rich green. About ten yards away there was another island, this one slightly smaller. There were others behind me and to the side. I walked to the edge and looked across. There was no water between the islands. There was nothing at all between them, in fact. The islands were just the tops of ragged columns of stone, huge natural pillars which plunged thousands of feet down into mist. The sky
above was opaque, with the texture of frosted glass: a sky that promised snow.
I stood and stared wildly around for a few moments. There was nowhere to go. The islands stretched out as far as I could see in all directions, varying in size and distance, but I couldn’t even reach the nearest ones. I knew I’d been here before, been here in very early dreams, but I couldn’t work out what the hell I could do. I felt like a legendary racing driver tempted out of retirement, climbing nonchalantly into a car and finding he couldn’t even remember how to start the engine.
I paced restlessly round the island for a while, flapping my arms to keep warm, a cloud of condensation shrouding my face. I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember the tune.
The worst of it was I knew the castle had only been a warm-up. It had been no fun, no fun at all, but by Rafe’s standards it was a wet dream. It had been eight years since I’d had to face myself, eight years in which I’d been able to lead the occasional sufferer safely through Jeamland, secure in the knowledge that I was relatively safe, at risk only from other people’s monsters.
I wasn’t any longer. I wasn’t safe at all. The person I’d been for so long wasn’t there any more. It was undercut, pre-dated, its veils torn asunder. I was just me again, and I was afraid. I was out of practice at being me, and as I walked fretfully round the island, waiting for whatever the hell was going to happen next I worked my memory. I had to go back a long way, remember a person I’d once been. Paradise Lost, or Paradise Regained? You tell me.
Then with sudden intuition I turned and looked behind me. There was nothing there.
Three minutes later, there was something there. Not on the island I was standing on, but in the distance. About twenty islands away, front-runner of a storm and coming in my direction, was a Something. I still couldn’t see what it was yet, but I felt confident about one thing. I didn’t want to meet it, had no desire to make its acquaintance, and no wish to interact with it on any level at all.
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