by Tanith Lee
Just before Dawn Jones came round there was another voice. She actually gave her name. Clover, Woods said. And she was straight, he said, out of Bladerunner or The Matrix, rather, I personally judged, muddling up his Sci Fi genres.
Clover had been dancing in a leaning tower with giant flowers and coloured lights, and had sex—Woods assumed ‘carnal’, which was what she called it, meant sex. Also she had stolen some clothes despite the O.C.s (? Did that mean observation cameras—he thought it sounded like it.)
“Two amoral criminals,” he remarked to me, “a serial murderer and a nympho thief. And a sex-maniac in Mediaeval show-biz or whatever, whenever. And a boring old fart with a maiden aunt.”
When Dawn came out of unconsciousness, she was the same as ever she had been. He asked her if she had had any funny dreams when under. She said she hadn’t. Nothing, just a blank. He asked her if she was, at home, reading a lurid book. She stared at him for a second. She seemed only bewildered.
“Has anyone told you you talk in your sleep, Mrs Jones?”
She said no one had told her that.
She didn’t appear upset, but only anxious to get away. So he gave her the usual dental advice and the leaflet to assist recovery, and she left.
He could tell his assistant soon forgot the exoticism of the whole episode. But Woods found it plagued him.
He began to read back issues of the local papers, and make inquiries here and there. Had there been a murder near the cinema? There wasn’t a cinema? Was there a night club in London called The Leaning Tower? Very tall, strobes on the roof, secret rooms for personal liaisons? Nobody had heard of anything so spectacular. He, as I had to, later, tried to locate even the memory of a theatre called The Obelisk off Cartwheel Lane. Zilch. Of course.
Then the consultations with colleagues and others.
“Woodsy, if you’ve never had a patient go off on one before, when they’re under, you’ve been a very lucky man. Had a pretty girl once, seventeen or less, started telling me she’d always fancied me. Woke up and gave me the usual cold shoulder. I was only twenty-five then. Or there was the guy started predicting the lottery numbers. I, like a chump, started to try to memorise them, but it wasn’t just one or two goes, he went on and on. Probably the forecast for the whole year’s draws. And then…”
At length Woods happened, of all places on holiday in Spain, to spend an afternoon on the beach and get chatting with a doctor from Northampton. They exchanged discreet anecdotes of their professional lives. In the end the story of Dawn Jones came up.
“Tell me,” said the (unnamed to me) doctor, “did she ever act this out? By which I mean seem to become fully, as far as she could, any of these—four was it?—people physically?”
“That is the truly unsettling thing,” Woods told him. “Before I moved out of the area—my new practice is in Sussex—I’d begun to hear she was sometimes seen going about dressed as a man, or in a mini-skirt or something like that, truly unsuitable for a lady of her age. Or in theatrical costume. So, she was mad?”
“Oh, yes,” said the doctor on the beach. “Very decidedly. If in a very specific way.”
When he had the facts all keyed in, Woods started his serious reading. In that line he encountered one or two others resembling Mrs Jones. One of the more famous was the notorious Eric Verner Wassen, whom I’ve mentioned previously. Foremost of his episodes, if you ever take time to pursue him, was impersonating—or rather being—the King of Mars. It was this eventually that saw him incarcerated as a public hazard. Woods thought Dawn’s story might be worth making something of, even though it seemed, at least in the real world, lacking in all criminality and violence. It was a tumbled and evasive route Woods took, but finally someone put him in touch with my editor, and so with me. He ‘Foresaw’ a book, a film script; I the writer and he the inaugurator, profits shared. I, on the other hand, saw a long article. We’re still, as they say, ‘talking’ about that. She had no relations surviving, it seems. No one to muscle in or sue. That makes it more sensitive, somehow. The deeper I’ve got into it, the more I have felt this. I’m not a moralist. I’ve done a few things. Most of us have, in my line of work. You have to, to dig things out. But this. As I say, he and I are still discussing matters.
OK
I, even if Woods didn’t, have tried to find out if Dawn’s doctor ever caught a whiff of her condition. But could get nothing at all out of him, or anyone else at the surgery.
Frankly I don’t think they ever much bothered with her. She never got ill, or never told them when she was, and passed her by now obligatory For The Old Folk tests with flying colours. Wasn’t she ever confused or forgetful? I was patiently told that this wasn’t uncommon in our more elder citizens. Providing there was no hint of Alzheimer’s, leave well alone.
I had a notion they were bloody careless, as I say. For there would have been hints of just that very thing, even if wrongly. Because when Dawn was off being Clover, or one of the other three, didn’t she sometimes wonder where she, Dawn, had been, and why she couldn’t recall?
But that is someone else’s problem.
Now, though.
I’d better relate my meeting with Dimble the Timbrel, the charity worker. (I call him that childishly because when I first met him, he kept on for about ten minutes about one of his kids and the word timbrel, is that in the Bible?, Sound the Timbrel or some rot or other.) He was one of those one-drink-and-I’m-sloshed. And not even cheap, since they like to go on having lots of those just-one-more type drinks.
However, he told me about the Jones house-clearance. And even something about how Dawn was found dead.
There were no suspicious circumstances. When the police broke in, she was just sitting up in her flat in the loft extension. (The doctor had called round in answer to her telephone request, and been unable to gain access.) She was in the armchair. The electric fire was on—it seemed she never put in central heating—and a nearly empty tea-cup stood on a table. She wouldn’t have looked asleep. The old dead normally don’t. They look—knowing. Knowing and fierce, as if to reprimand you. Or knowing and pleased, as if they glimpsed, in the last second, the joyful theme park of Heaven to which they were about to transcend. No one told me which of these looks Dawn had. And Dimble hadn’t, of course, seen her at all. But the house and contents—he’d seen every scrap of those.
OK
This, I’d take a bet, is the only proof I can offer, aside from the gossipy or malicious or brainless—or compassionate—eye witness accounts reporting on Dawn at large in her own, or her four other, lives.
OK
(Stop writing that God forsaken two letter word.)
As I understood it, the house was three floors, the upper one being the attic-loft conversion. Although the way Dimble described it the place sounded as if it had an extra attic on the top of that. (And peering at the house through the overgrown trees a couple of times still hasn’t quite got the details straight in my mind.)
Each floor is converted (Dimble) to a separate flat, though on the first floor upper storey there is the potential to alter one large flat into two smaller ones. The stairs are mutual, as is the downstairs hall and front door. Dawn seems to have lived in all these flats, (her last tenant was apparently back in the late ‘70s.) But in fact Dawn, herself, only lived in the loft extension. Judging by what lay about elsewhere, the short-haired business guy had one half of the first floor, and the girl—Clover—the other half. The unlikeable girl in the red T-shirt lived on the ground floor, the biggest flat, (which also had access to a large kitchen, the garden, and a basement with cellar—empty but for the skeletons of two rats.) The second floor flat below the loft seems to have been where the actor set up his pad.
(One wonders what each of these five intelligences made of the others. Were they simply not at all aware of anyone else in the house, or did they get glimpses, perhaps more internal memories than actually thinking they saw anyone. Did too any or all of their imaginary friends ever inhabit the house, dire
ctly sharing their lives—the dog, for example, or the Micky-Nicky boy or girl, or the actor’s numerous lovers, the friends and aunt of the short-haired man? I have a theory that perhaps Dawn’s talent may have had to move them in with her, because near the end, as her strength was breaking down, those journeys up to town, or to Lewisham or New Cross or wherever, let alone Brighton, would have become insupportable.) Again Reg, at The Stag and Star, had mentioned that the actor who he thought was called Thes-sris(?) (from Thespian?) had announced he travelled to and from the city by cart. What could that have been? A bus—taxi?
In the rooms, all through the five flats, was a ‘cram’ of furniture, some old and damaged, some newish and cheap. (Just one ‘wonderful’ thing, it seems, a screen, both tapestry and painted, with peacocks depicted.) There were a couple of televisions, radios, and so on. There was nothing, Dimble said, that seemed particularly comfortable or attractive. (Why would there be? The comfort or glamour was invoked by the fluctuations of Dawn’s deranged and versatile mind.) Four of the flats had a wardrobe, however. And in these, variously, and as appropriate to each personality, were T-shirts, jeans and boots (ground floor), suits, shirts and a selection of other ‘dull’ (again Dimble’s word) male garments (half first upper floor flat), short tight dresses and costume jewellery of an extravagant and ‘lurid’ sort (opposite half of second first upper floor flat). The theatrical fancy dress for Thessris, in the third story second floor flat, was strewn about over an unmade bed. There was also one other oddity, (as if all of it were not odd). This being, Dimble gleefully said, a most sensational dress from the Flapper era of the 1920s, pink and gold, beaded and trimmed. It was a collector’s item, and had brought the charity well over five thousand pounds. He had confessed he concealed his knowledge of it from the clearance people. (He trusts I won’t reveal as much.) The thing was, it had skipped their original notice, since it was behind a black and a grey curtain (two of them) in, of all places, the north half of the second floor flat. That is, the short-haired guy’s wardrobe. (A question or two extra there. Had that personality, a male, been less ‘dull’ than thought, having some gender issues, maybe?)(!)
I’ve been shown photographs, on Dimble’s screen, from one of the charity’s disks. House interiors and bits of furniture the charity had taken on, including the screen and the dress. Some other oddities too—such as a realistic-looking toy or model gun, found in a cupboard on the ground floor.
There’s no reason any of that should be falsified. (Unless they’ve gone to so much trouble in order to get my three hundred pound donation, I suppose.) For me the pictures provide solid proof of… something. Some of the items are also still in the local shop. They are minor things, yet present, and as described.
The house itself now stands empty. A builder has bought it and will soon be doing the flats up to try to lift the price. I’ve driven past and seen how half the trees are marked for culling, a vile act in this age of global warming. The bastard must have bribed the council. Driving by not long since, I parked again, and went to the unsecured back gate, looking over. One tree was already gone, revealing that there seemed to be some sort of grave in the garden. I went in and took a look. Quite a big grave, for what it was, because almost certainly a family pet had been buried there. The little marker read, in black waterproof paint, Rover. 13 years, one month. Be happy in Heaven, Dear.
For the record I’d better add there is, very definitely, no evidence at all that either I, or certain of my most reliable—if also nameless—contacts, were able to unearth that Dawn, when in her killer persona, ever harmed a soul, while the Clover personality stole nothing, except in Dawn’s fantasy.
OK
Split personality. Multiple personality. Classified terms for a particular form of certifiable madness.
But.
You know, we all do it—don’t we?—one way or another. I mean, of course, we lead many different lives inside our one.
One personality for work, and one for your sexual partner, another for the kids, if you have any. Another when you’re really elated, or when you’re angry, and another when you’re scared shitless. Every seven or ten years, too, you seem to grow into another skin as the old one shreds itself off. Older and wiser, older and more stupid. I’m not the guy I was at ten, or at twenty or even thirty-six. Who will I be when I’m forty-six, or fifty, or seventy-four? God knows.
And we have fantasy lives too, don’t we? Reading a book, or watching a good movie. At our console playing computer games of death and daring. If we write, or act, quite other lives. And when we dream—oh, sure, then we really do. Twenty or a hundred, or more, other little Us’s. Multiple Personality Syndrome. Once I dreamed I’d got to Mars, even if I wasn’t King of it, like Eric Verner Wassen. And once, only once, when I was a kid about five, I sleep-walked through our house, which was a two-up two-down terrace in Walthamstow. But in the dream all my toys were running and playing up and down the stairs, my train and my toy bus were rushing along the lino in the kitchen, and our recently deceased tom cat was flying, on silvery wings, harmlessly in and out of the shut glass of the windows. I saw this. I was there. It was real. My misery when I woke below in the kitchen, at 2 a.m., was temporarily insurmountable. But Dawn Jones, thank God, never did wake up. Or not in this life.
I have a feeling. This ‘dry run’, dress-rehearsal—now it’s done…
I may just hand over my three hundred pounds to Dimble. And suggest to D.C.W. he find another patsy. Rest in peace.
Let it go.
James Michael Pinkerton
London.
March 2011
Dawn:
102
After I got up, I had the soup, the way I like it, very hot, with two cream crackers and butter.
When I looked out, it was summer, the sky so blue and all the trees thick with green. I put on a light dress.
I took the dog for a walk.
He’s very good, the dog, but wilful. Sometimes he goes off on his own, he always has, especially to the park. We walked through the park. What a golden day. And over in the west, where the flats used to be, I could see the new bridge shining, just like gold itself in the light.
As we were coming back the dog indicated he had to go off again, but he’d be back tomorrow to see me. He always comes back. I stroked him, and told him to give my love to Ben.
When I got home there was cooked chicken in the fridge I’d forgotten about. I had a sherry, and then a long cool bath. Painted my toenails as I haven’t for so long. I admit, I admired myself in the mirror. It’s nice to be young again. I think I’m about twenty-four now. It suits me.
Played the piano until eight, no stiff fingers! Then had a nice cold chicken dinner with a glass of wine.
Went to bed at eleven-thirty. Wonderful music on the radio. Looking forward so much to tomorrow, and to getting news of Ben.
The moon is shining on the bridge. It’s silver now.
Emenie:
103
After I got out of the hospital I took advantage of the free offer and came out here. It’s wonderful country, and the weather, for autumn, is very good.
I climb the mountains and go for runs along the downs. There’s a waterfall that plunges down about a hundred feet. Off to the west I can just make out the bridge. Steel, and always shining, but always, too, half lost in the mist. I suppose one day it’ll come clear.
Killed twice yesterday. Both excellent. They were hikers, a couple, and we all enjoyed it a lot. Afterwards they shared their sandwiches with me. First time ever I’ve had caviar, and in a sandwich for God’s sake. But I liked that too.
Tonight I’m twenty-one, and going to some dinner at the hotel. There is a man there that I’ve promised to kill, but we haven’t been able to fit the time in yet. There’s such a lot to do. If we can’t tonight, I’ll try to make a proper date, and stick to it.
One small problem. That idiot called Alun, who keeps coming back for more. I have murdered him four times and all different ways. I think
I’ll have to talk to him seriously about this. There are other people waiting. He will have to get to the back of the queue.
Rod:
104
After I got out of the hospital I carried on with my original plan. I went up by train, but it was a surprisingly quick journey, less than two hours. Marvellous weather, not a cloud in the sky. Vanessa had packed cheddar and pickle sandwiches; George must be a good influence on her after all. Had half a bottle of wine on the train. My watch, by the way, kept perfect time.
It is as I remember it, the house. Though the land round it is, if anything, more lush. Beautiful autumnal shades of ginger and russet and honey-green. The fields golden, and in one a red tractor. There’s a new bridge out towards the west end of the town, glowing like copper in the afternoon light; I can see it from the upper windows here.
First class dinner served by the live-in cook.
I suppose I’ll have to ask them down, George I mean, and Van. Not yet, though.
I can remember playing in all these rooms, with my dolls, in my pink dresses.
I’ve hung the pink and gold dress up in full view on the back of the bedroom door. Yes, you can take things with you. The past is exactly the same country it always was, when you re-enter it willingly.
I look younger, and feel younger. That is a definite bonus. But I don’t want to be ten or thirteen again. And I don’t want to dress as a woman any more than I ever did.