by Jeff Noon
To keep the ...
'Just find that bastard,' she said.
Twenty-five years ago — December it was, and the last day thereof — a young boy of eleven was found strangled and sexually mutilated in the car park of a biscuit factory. A greetings card was left pinned to the body, actually pinned to the flesh, with the words 'Happy New Year, Billy' written inside. Underneath the message, a crude drawing of a Cupid's love-heart, where the arrow had split the heart clean in two.
Despite extensive inquiries, no arrests were made.
One year later, again on the last day of December, another victim was found, a girl this time, the same age. The same method of despatch, the same greeting; this time, 'Happy New Year, Daphne'. The same broken heart
Again, no traces of the killer.
For the next five years, the end of year celebrations were darkened by identical murders. There was much speculation in the press, from various experts, about the patience, if that be the right word, of this curious murderer; what cold, determined mind could wait so long between the satings of evil desire?
Somewhere, the shadow ...
Finally the murderer made his error, and Thomas Break-heart, a quiet, well-mannered computer programmer, was arrested. He readily confessed to the seven killings, saying by way of explanation that his own parents had been killed on 31 December, when he was only nine years old. This was true, and their murder was still unexplained, but it made no light shine in the jury's broken soul. Breakheart was sentenced to life imprisonment.
A few years later the first experiments in digital castration were conducted, on life prisoners only, and without the public's knowledge. Six volunteers died in the early phase; died unknown. Breakheart was the first successful result; his damaged, perverted sexuality was separated from his body, and stored on disk. This plague of information was then analysed, in vain search of warnings.
When the government finally went public with the process, there was the usual outrage from the liberal tendency, but mostly the people were behind the castrations; revenge was satisfied, at least to some degree. If the murderers couldn't be executed, at least let this happen to them, that was the feeling. A right-wing campaign led to the proviso that all Class A perverts were to have their sexuality killed.
Killed. Turned off, wiped clean.
Three years after his sentence began, Thomas Breakheart's sexuality was erased from the prison's mainframe. The man was alone, neutered, with another fifteen years to serve before his promised release, his gift for being an experiment. Fifteen years; which time he spent quietly, studying mathematics in the prison library, never giving the guards any trouble and showing all signs of the cure.
He was released, on the specified day, without fanfare, without publicity, without any word being given. In secret.
He would be fifty-five years old.
Somewhere the shadow, and like a dog, I followed the darkness through the darkness. Dugg's signal was weak, dissipated, maybe corrupted already. Kinsey was urging me on, screaming at me; sometimes just going quiet, frowning, letting me become entuned. There were the crowds on the streets, of course, with kids out late because of the occasion and that made it difficult; the noise, all that crazy joy getting in the way, like I was the only thing between them and nightfall, childfall, lovefall.
Following...
I directed the car into an open space, a parking lot behind a factory. I made to get out, but Kinsey kept me tight. There were other cars behind us, with armed cops, and they did the search. It took them fifteen minutes or so, but I already knew: the scent was lingering here but no longer around. The shadow of a shadow, which petered out, like twisted desire. To grow elsewhere.
'You know what this place is?' Kinsey asked. 'It's the place where he did the first one. Breakheart. This is where he started.'
I looked through the window, at the stark shape of the biscuit factory, while the cop woman hit the back of the seat in frustration:
'The guy's on a fucking tour.'
We spent the next hour searching the seven sites of murder. Every available police unit was on alert. No bodies were found, which was a comfort; and no sign of Breakheart, which was not. At four of the sites I picked up faint messages, thin tingles of mist almost gone, as though Dugg was distantly calling to me with a losing voice.
Somewhere...
As the last site was searched, Kinsey hauled me out of the car. She threw me against a wall and pulled a gun on me. 'This is your last chance, Carter,' she whispered close. 'Where the fuck is he?'
I could only shake my head, slowly.
The feeling was cold stone.
It was gone eleven when we got to the police station. On the way we'd called at Breakheart's dingy little flat. There were cops posted there, as though standing guard over the ramshackle stack of equipment perched on the desk. It was from here that the murderer had made his intrusion into the Monastery's dark, digital heart. I was this close to the carrier's nest, and yet I still couldn't feel anything, like Dugg had never been here, not at all. A sense of loss came over me like a heavy cloud; hopelessness, failure, anger at having failed, fear. Fear for the kids.
In the station, cops were hanging around, stalled, drinking thick black coffee as they waited for a call-out, hoped against being called. A call that would mean that the bad thing had happened. And the big clock on the wall crept towards midnight, victim of a thousand stares. There were some sad balloons strung up, and a drooping HAPPY NEW YEAR! banner. Nobody said anything to me, nobody would even look at me. If only the clock would reach for twelve early, maybe then the murderer wouldn't strike, following the established pattern.
'How do you know it was him?' I asked, to anyone.
Kinsey was working the drinks machine. 'What?'
'Breakheart. Could've been anyone breaking in.'
'Left his marker, didn't he.'
'What, a greetings card?'
'Yeah. Fixed on all the screens it was, animated, with the severed heart spinning around.'
'Could've been anyone, leaving the message. It was in all the papers—'
'The message ... you wanna know what the message was?'
I nodded.
'Happy New Year, Douglas.' Kinsey laughed cold and I don't blame her.
'That's my middle name. John Douglas Carter. That's why he chose me? For the name? Stole me, I mean. Stole my ...'
'He tried others. All prisoners called Douglas. Didn't work. They fought back.'
'Oh.'
Dugg always was a sucker slave. Any good master would do.
'Just find this Douglas,' I said. 'Find all the kids called Douglas, their parents, warn them ...'
Kinsey was looking at me in disgust, shaking her head.
'But how will he do it?' I asked. 'Breakheart. I mean, murder somebody now. How can he? Perhaps he can't. Perhaps ...'
'This is so comforting, Carter. It really is.'
'No, listen. It's not his sex, is it? His was killed, turned off. It's mine. I've never been into hurting people, never into kids. Not ever. He's just a body, a shell. The desire's not in him, it's in the shadow.'
'Shadow?'
'The sex, the gnome.' I had stood up now, excited. 'Dugg's a masochist, not a sadist. What's Breakheart going to use? Perhaps he can't. Perhaps he can't do anything!'
Kinsey crunched her coffee cup into a ball.
'Well, he's out there. He's searching for something.'
We fell back into silence then. One of the cops, Kinsey's partner, got up and ripped down the HAPPY NEW YEAR! banner. I went to the Gents, washed my face, stared at myself in the broken mirror, rubbed at the back of my neck. Somebody stood behind me, a dark shape in one of the open cubicles.
It took a few seconds to realize that both my hands were still resting on the faucets. My neck was still being touched.
Close.
I turned: the shadow turned with me.
Copcar, rollercoaster, streets laced with dancers, slick with vomit, kissing couples. Kin
sey beside me, holding on. Me with the eyes shut, me with my hands clenched tight, sweating, cold. Hot inside, with the strongest feeling ever felt. This was him, this was Dugg, but stronger, more powerful, somehow darker, more in control. Doing the wanting. Turned inside out, not wanting the doing.
Doing the wanting.
Close. It was close to the station.
Street lamps flashing, music pounding, all the clocks of Manchester ticking, ticking. Eleven twenty-five. Honking the horn to part the crowd that knew nothing of the darkness that lay within them, waiting, hiding, prowling the moments, the laughter and the flashbulbs and the drunken sprees.
I had a map of the city in my head, following a black spot that crept along the streets, twisting and twisted. Hair bristle. With Kinsey broadcasting the constant changes of our whereabouts over the radio. It was strong, the black mirror in my head, like Dugg was broadcasting as well, calling me, fighting back. SOS. Distress signal. Find me, help me, retrieve me. Stop me.
Stop me.
Doing the wanting.
Somewhere the shadow and a crooked somewhere, almost lost, fading out, with me directing the driver until the shadow darkened again, the tingle like broken glass, coming into focus, sharp head-blinding focus.
'Here!'
Copcar, rollercoaster deadstop, engine panting, tyre screech. Breathe out, at last. Dust settle, slow rain, radio squawk. Out. Me, the cops, other cops. Not thinking any more, just following. Listening. Dugg, calling, calling... but so many people. Banks of the Irwell, the river. Pathway crowded, brass band music from the other side, clear.
Clock: 11.47.
Running, pushing people away. The cops behind me, some ahead already, making way, ordering people aside. Good. Clear run. Boats on the river, partying. Rave music, mixing in. But where, where now? A man and woman, distraught, shouting. 'Douglas! Little Douglas? Where?' The woman screaming and then crying to see the police, so many police. 'Please God ...'
All this in a blur as ...
Shadow, pitch black. Don't leave me! Find me! Crowd thinning out, gone. A fence, broken. Muddy ground behind some shops, half-built shops, can't remember. Kinsey beside me, gun out, breathing sharp. Climbing through, hair on barbed wire. Figures, ahead. Two. A man, a young boy. Boy on the
ground, clothes torn, please God__the man scrabbling about
near some waste bins, desperate, wailing he was.
Coming in close. Kinsey checking the boy. Alive, OK. She stood up, got the gun tight on the man in the shadows. 'Breakheart!'
He comes up from the darkness, turns, shocked. No, scared. No, empty. Empty sack. His face, his eyes, drawn wide, nothing behind them. Alone. He comes forward, slowly, midnight chimes from Albert Square and over the river and great cheers on the air, flash of fireworks, exploding. Breakheart's face ghosted, gaudy orange and yellow as he stumbles in the mud, the rain, 'Can't find him ... lost him ... can't find him ... please ...'
Cops all over him then, but I was moving to the wastebins. A movement there, rustle of paper, plastic sheeting. A flap of binbag. Crackle. Closer, shadow dark. Somewhere . . . two glints from beneath a pile of rubbish; two dark, purple eyes. Jewelled, they were, and bright with fear.
'Dugg?' Gently said, so as not to ...
The shape moves, slowly first, and then rushes out of hiding, running towards me. I open out my arms, wide to receive. A voice behind, 'Don't! Don't shoot!' Kinsey's voice, but then the firing of a gun, heavy blast, burning. Burning inside me, the pain, as the shadow jerks back, pounded deep into the metal side of a bin.
'Nailed him!' A cop voice, male, edged with shock.
It slides to the ground, this lump of stuff that somebody threw out one sad day. I walk slowly towards it, hardly breathing. Kinsey at my side, 'Carter, I tried to stop him . . . Jesus!'
I kneel down, stroke the thing's head, his small, broken misshapen body. The eyes are open, but barely so. 'You did it, Dugg,' I say. 'You stopped him.'
The eyes, the beautiful twin-jewelled eyes, slowly close.
The shadow inside me lightens, lightens to a cloud of scent that drifts away, finally, to nothingness.
CALL OF THE WEIRD
Dog J-Loop need a good head clean. Hungry worms crawling around inside his skull, making his mind go itchy. Bad enough scratching mad on the streets of Manchester. Bad enough with his Mistress selling copies of the Big Biscuit, and her saying all the time, 'What's wrong with you these days, J-Loop? You're supposed to look boneless and homeless, not rabid and stupid!' Worse still that the good Whistle not working, because all them worms got to it. Whistle is one smart bone-ticket to the intersnout. Mistress feeds your jaws with Whistle. Then you can talk to her, through the inter-snout. Bad enough to lose the sharing, but worst of all that J-Loop's music starting to come up wrong.
J-Loop a robodog DJ at Howling Club, slipping latest Dogga tunes into the collective head of the cross-bred pack down on the floor. That night the whole pack-net very nearly collapsing when J-Loop misses a beat in his brain due to the worm invasion. Money-sucker bossman of the Howling, shouting down the DJ for the mishap.
Trotting home to Mistress-comfort.
'Dear pet, what is it?' Soft hands of the Mistress stroking all along his fur. J-Loop managing just enough intersnout to sniff the gist.
'Me got the worms, Mistress.' Hoping these ragged growls make up sense.
'Oh my poor doggy!'
Nanoworms being the fear of every good mistress; a curly intruder that make a robodog want to go off-string, being the urge to run weird.
'Oh my poorest doggy!' Mistress tugging tight on the string that binds their love together. 'Please don't leave me!'
But J-Loop no longer understanding the words, only the stroking hands. Makes for one urgent need to get the laundry done. The trouble being that J-Loop never cleaned his head before. Idea of it scary, because his tune-spinning at the Howling Club is only bootleg money. According to the Authorities, J-Loop is purely a jobless dog, linked up direct to the Basic Bones Allowance. Well known the Authorities make real cheap head-cleaning jobs of basic boners. Which laundry involves losing your robo-brain to the wave-kennel, whilst the cleaners make up new edition. Pack-rumours telling of how some dogs die in the process, it being a moment of losing your way. Scary losing of the way to a street-honed robodog.
'Loopy, don't you go being no mudpuppy now,' Princess Lickety snarls at him. She's one sleek robobitch at the Howling Club. 'Us dogness stick together, you catch the ball?'
Catching the ball real good, because dog-to-dog being his only intersnout since the worms came calling, and two days later Dog J-Loop sauntering out of the Town Hall, quite merry on the end of Mistress string, freshly laundered brain in his head. No worms, no nothing. J-Loop feel dog-ambient! Pair of them set up street-camp, J-Loop adopting perfect begging mode: front paws crossed just so, plaintive look in dewy eyes, fur raised in bristles against Manchester rain. Mistress starting out her melancholic selling-chant: 'Please help the homeless! Buy the Big Biscuit. Only fifty-four pounds!' And it's exactly now that J-Loop gets the call: yearning voice inside his brain. This no worm-sickness, this no itching; voice being strong and passionate. Constant hungering.
J-Loop goes off-string. Tugging string loose from his Mistress fingers. Running free, desperate cry chasing but no contest. Like, going weird in greyhound style!
Rain-drenched and guided, stranger's voice pointing the nose-way, fifty minutes later J-Loop arrives in Southly Poshtown. Voice making the dog scratch his claws against the front door of a big manhouse. Young girl opens the door, takes one look at J-Loop, starts to scream: 'Noodles! You've come home!'
Noodles? thinks J-Loop: Who the fuck this Noodles?
'Mummy, Noodles has come back to us!' young girl shouts back into the house, and then she's dragging J-Loop inside behind her, tugging hard on loose string.
Seven weeks, J-Loop lives a canine-prince of a Poshtown life: warm blankets, juicy steaks, ultra-flea powder, his very own platform boot to chew on. Each day
at play with the young girl, and swallowing lots of good Whistle-bone but making only sniffing visits to intersnout. Not knowing what to say. Each night sleeping by the embers of dying fire.
Each night to dream a doggy-dream.
To let the floating voice of Noodles give free howl to final moments; the shivering to stillness of canine brain inside the Town Hall doggy-bath. Each and every night, the repeated death of the robo-poshdog inside him: J-Loop feeling possessed by story. How Noodles had died during his high-class head-clean; how a bone-whisper of his doggy-mind keeping alive inside the kennel-waves. Like embers of dying fire, yes? How Noodles had waiting and waiting to do before J-Loop came for his clean-up: another black robodog! Exact same Labrador model! Slightly downmarket but no time for choices. How Noodles's pedigree patterns had slithered through the waves, straight into J-Loop's brain.
Seven weeks passing by, this nightmare stupid dog inside of J-Loop, never leaving him no peace! Seven weeks, the stupid games of second-rate Mistress; cloying warmth, wet meat, platform boot leaving too many sequins in the mouth. Oh-so-tight leather collar around his chafing neck! Too much. Too chafing much! Seven weeks then J-Loop gets up one night, snuffles around twisting backdoor key in front paws, full robo-mode.
Door against superdog. No wailing contest!
Running the streets of Manchester, old-time memories: rain and piss and rancid cats to chase. Noodles howling upside his head, demanding his whereabouts. 'Catch this ball, Noodle-brain!' Dog-to-dog intersnout talking. 'J-Loop in charge of the two-pack.'
Noodles only a growling at the edges then. Belly up.
Back to the old ground, early morning: there's the old Mistress, newly issued robodog on the end of her latest string. J-Loop feeling down to dirt from the sniffing of this but still making a keening goodbye from across the way. Got my own trip to make, Mistress. Sell some Biscuit! Hoping this got through. Then trotting over to Howling Club to find the Princess Lickety, tied to a table leg. 'You want to go off-string, good robobitch?' snarls J-Loop.