The Spiral

by Iain Ryan

  We’re off the main floor of the club before I can get a handle on the situation. There’s two of them, two men. One on either end, carrying me like a dead body.

  A bright spray of light washes over.

  The club music mutes.

  Parked cars in my perpendicular view.

  We’re behind the club in the lot where I saw the grey van last night.

  I thrash around. The guy holding my legs reaches up and punches me in the stomach. I nearly puke into the hand covering my mouth. Tears roll sideways out of my eyes.

  The door opens again.

  The music blares.

  Mutes.

  The hand comes away from my mouth, and I swallow a scream. They stand me up in front of Roberto Agrioli. He’s heavier-looking up close. A short stocky unit. He glances at me then turns and lights a cigarette. He stands there a few seconds and takes a drag while I wait. ‘So,’ he says, ‘this is no good.’

  ‘Look, I just—’

  And I’m folded over on the ground before I know I’ve been punched again. It’s an expert tap. Straight into the kidneys. I start to whimper.

  Breathe into it. Breathe in—

  ‘Yes? Yes, you understand now don’ you, you dumb bitch? You’re not allowed to interrupt me,’ says Roberto. He squats down, trying to get my attention. ‘Who the fuck are you? My boys say you’ve been hanging around the club like a bad smell all week. Now you’ve got everyone’s panties in a bind. This is no good. No good at all. Who are you?’

  I bring my legs in underneath me. ‘I’m no one.’

  ‘No, too late for that,’ says Roberto. He puts his cigarette in the side of his mouth then drags my face in close to his. ‘Nooooo!’ He pads around his belt line and produces a six-inch knife. ‘I know you, don’t I? You came to see me not long ago.’ He glances up at the bouncers and says, ‘You two can go back inside. Don’t let anyone out here.’

  The other men leave.

  I say, ‘I’m just looking for my friend. That’s all.’

  ‘That’s not all.’ He points the tip of the blade towards me. ‘This is not a good place for you to be putting your nose in where it’s not wanted. Your friend, yes? The blonde one. She was a busybody too. Now I want you to lift your dress up for me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me. Do it slow.’

  He brings the knife right over to my face, his arm fully extended. In Muay Thai, you never really see a knife waved around like this. You don’t show a weapon before you use it. It’s a mistake.

  I slip my heels off. ‘No. I’m not doing that. I have money.’

  Roberto frowns. He takes the cigarette from his mouth and flicks it away. As he does, his knife hand shakes and I go for it. I get right into his space, pushing my left forearm into his wrist and wiping the blade away. I ram the other hand – palm open – up under his chin.

  It works. Roberto’s head snaps back.

  From there, I punch down into the elbow of his knife arm, folding it up and bringing it under my armpit as I turn into him. There’s a sickly crunch as the whole limb comes out of its socket. Roberto squeals like he’s never been hurt before.

  The blade falls to the ground. I don’t bother picking it up.

  As I’m standing there, holding him, trying to take a second, Roberto surprises me with a half-assed lunge for my throat. I turn my head, sweep his hand away and step around to the side, my elbow locking around his neck. Then I kick his left knee out and slam him into the ground. Winded, he’s so open and dazed that my first three blows connect without much defence on his part. He starts to moan, losing consciousness already.

  I pause.

  Roberto starts to drag himself away. We’re between two parked cars now. I kick him twice to stop him moving. Then I turn him back over and get on top of him to work on him some more. My fists drive into his old skin, into his weak face, his mouth. I pummel his body to bring his arms down, then go back to the head, working him back and forth. At some point, I realise I’m screaming. Oblivious. My hands dripping with blood.

  Despite the winter cool, I sweat through my clothes, tossing and turning in my bed, dark visions roaring through the room.

  Roberto struggling.

  Roberto’s eyes.

  Desperate for comfort, I slide a hand between my legs. I’m already wet.

  The heat of him.

  Was it just? Was it fair?

  Is he dead?

  The orgasm surges up.

  There’s a lot of fighting in the books I study. One of the lead series is called Fighting Fantasy, but that’s just one example. All the gamebooks within the broader subgenre have their own ‘fight mechanics’ or combat systems. These systems vary but they always revolve around tactical decision making and dice play. Within the communities of readers who love these things, combat is a major point of discussion. The fighting, it seems, is the main attraction.

  At times, the combat systems have produced notorious examples of unfairness, the most famous of which is in a book called The Crimson Tide. In that book, you take the role of a young child – that’s the main character – and very early in the adventure you confront a giant mud worm with a fighting skill-level far exceeding your own. There’s no way to defeat the worm except via improbable luck with the dice. No tactic will save you. You’re just a kid, after all. Enough people have found themselves dead at the hands of this worm – in the first act of the story – that readers started asking the author Paul Mason about it at conferences and meet-ups. What were you thinking there, Paul? Do you love dead children? Is it a metaphor? Is the book an abuse narrative? Eventually, Mason admitted what a lot of people suspected: it was a typo. You weren’t supposed to die like that. It was supposed to be fair. But another kind of luck – unrelated to the dice – intervened. Over time, I’ve come to see The Crimson Tide as an accidental truth. Unlike linear first-person fiction, you can die in a gamebook. But in an unfair gamebook, death lurks in random, stupid, unjust corners, just like real life.

  As if on cue, the landline in the living room starts ringing.

  8.13 a.m.

  I’m too scared to pick it up.

  The answering machine clicks in.

  Archibald Moder’s precise therapy-patter echoes down the hall to my room. I put a pillow over my face and scream. It’s still going on when I snap out of it.

  —and if you find that amenable I feel—

  Something different this time.

  I get up and walk towards the phone.

  —just call my assistant and he’ll set it up for you. I’m sorry it’s taken so long to return your calls. I don’t take on a lot of interview requests these days but as long as this won’t waste a whole day, I’m happy to have you out to the house. My assistant’s mobile number is oh four, three seven one, nine, double—

  ‘Holy shit.’

  I play it again.

  It’s not the dictaphone recording.

  It’s not a prank call.

  Moder wants to resit the interview.

  I crawl back into bed and lie there.

  This is a second chance.

  And in my mind, a reward.

  I close my eyes.

  SERO

  18

  Through the darkness comes amber and bronze. Walls, a window, curtains. The sound of human movement. Muted voices floating up underneath you.

  This is the inn.

  You sit up from the bed and pat your chest, expecting the skin there to be charcoaled from the priest’s beam of light. Nothing. You experience stabs of recall:

  Rohank’s voice in your mind.

  The strobing room.

  Heat. Sand. Wind.

  Dark water.

  A dream?

  A bright pathway lights up your synapses. A desire. With absolute certainty you know the way forward, the way to regain your memories.

  You need to follow Rohank’s vision.

  You need to ride into the desert.

  19

  They call the long flat
lands beyond the city a desert but it features no dunes or pits of sand. Instead, it is a giant shallow basin of red dirt, some monstrous crater in the earth surrounded by mountain ranges. The thing looks about a week’s ride in diameter but you know, in your heart, that the site you’re looking for – the site Rohank showed you – is two days west, a straight line between the morning sun and Rohank’s tower on the edge of the city behind you.

  The horse senses your resolve and performs with an unprecedented level of cooperation. It breathes heavily, sucking hot air into its lungs as it gallops. It’s out there.

  20

  Night falls and the sun is replaced by a moon so bright the landscape stays visible. You make camp as best you can: unroll a blanket on the flat sand, lie close to the horse for shelter.

  Sleep comes quickly until something takes hold of your ankle. It keeps hold as you try to snatch your leg up, still dazed. The force of the recoil pulls a skeletal arm up out of the desert floor. A wretched torso follows, a body of moving bones crawling out of the ground towards you. Another arm erupts from the sand by your left shoulder: a hand reaching out, a mess of rotting bones entwined with a tight weave of white sinew.

  Demons.

  The horse brays and stands, on the verge of bolting.

  Sword, sword, sword …

  You kick at the skeletal figure at your feet, loosening its grip before rolling and unsheathing your weapon, springing up into a fighting stance. The sand around you is alive with horror now. Faces and torsos and arms swim and squirm. Another hand circles your ankle. You reach down and drag a beast up out of the ground and hack away at it with the sword. Once sawn in two, it falls back into the maelstrom. You see it clearly for a moment: human bones made alive by desert snakes. A monstrous pale whipping beast operates the spine with the serpent’s head pouring out the mouth of the skull.

  The horse twists and bucks. You scramble up into the saddle as it rears and begins to run. Together, you make for dawn on the horizon.

  This land is possessed.

  No escape.

  Destination or death.

  The end of it, surely.

  ERMA

  I sleep through an entire day and feel no better for it. I ache from heel to wrist. My hands are swollen, knuckles torn open. Around three o’clock, I return the call to Archibald Moder. His assistant picks up. He tells me his name is Harlan and he gives me an address right out on the back roads, about two hours south of the city. I look it up: it’s the mountain country down near the border. ‘If you get lost, call us,’ Harlan says. He sounds young, with some of Moder’s vocal mannerisms. A son or nephew, perhaps. Harlan tells me they still need a few days to clear a block of time in the old man’s schedule. ‘He’s frail but still quite active, unfortunately.’

  ‘That’s more than fine. I’ll come out as soon as he can see me.’

  It’s cold in the apartment. I shuffle around with a quilt for a cloak, unable to do much more than boil the jug and order pizza. Then, hunched over in the afternoon dusk listening to Radio National, it finally dawns on me that I might have killed a man. I really put Roberto down last night. He’s middle-aged, out of shape. He might not survive a beating like the one I gave him. But it doesn’t seem so sinister, if I’m honest. It feels like a dream. Or like a memory, something misremembered. I don’t feel like a villain. The truth is, I don’t feel anything.

  A week later and the Centre for Creative Writing and Cultural Understanding is unusually busy. Our TV appearance unleashed all this. Postgrads and research assistants mill around. A cloth banner is being painted in the foyer. The photocopier runs hot spitting out posters demanding ‘The Time Is Now for Campus Safety’. Howard takes his usual student consults down the hall but even the serial non-attenders are in today. In the Squadroom next door, Kanika’s phone is ringing off the hook. I can hear her talking through the wall.

  I’m trying to tune it out. I’m deep in my research for the Moder interview. It’s set for tomorrow. Mid-morning. In the days since I spoke to Harlan, all I’ve done is sit around the apartment preparing. I’ve reviewed every clipping there is. I’ve revised my already bulging files. I’ve even replayed most of his novels, taking notes and dog-earing pages. My interview with Moder is going to sound effortless and casual, but underneath I’ll be probing. I’m going to the heart of it with him. It’s no small thing to interview a former psychoanalyst. I’ve read enough failed attempts. I’ve listened to him reduce journalists to tears in archival recordings. Age has softened him apparently, but, even still, he won’t be an easy nut to crack.

  I’m focused on the research because there’s also a bunch of other noise in my life I’m trying to blot out.

  I’m not sleeping again. I spend every night waiting for the Agriolis or the cops to walk through the front door. And, two days ago, I dodged another barrage of calls from human resources. They’ve set an agenda now, another interview, something to discuss ‘the preliminary findings of an internal investigation concerning personal conduct allegations made in 2004 by a former research assistant’. That last part reads like an administrative oversight. I guess the cat is out of the bag now.

  Jenny.

  More Jenny.

  Fucking me from the grave.

  That little—

  ‘Erma?’

  Kanika stands in my office doorway.

  ‘Yeah? What’s up?’

  ‘They found her. They found Sarah Holdings.’ Kanika hands me a piece of paper, a printout from the Courier Mail website. My eyes hit a familiar name in the first paragraph and it’s like a knife sliding into my skull:

  BRISBANE STUDENT FOUND DEAD IN HOUSE OF MISSING MANSFIELD MAN

  Police have discovered the body of missing University of Queensland student Sarah Holdings, 19, in the house of another missing person: Mansfield man Roberto Agrioli.

  A crime scene has been declared, with Brisbane detectives and Scenes of Crime officers currently at the house. The investigation is …

  I’m skimming down the page.

  The Agrioli man, 46, was last seen at the Sam Hell nightclub in Fortitude Valley between 3 and 4 a.m. …

  Police believe Agrioli is a part-owner of the establishment and may have been assaulted immediately prior to his disappearance. He is wanted for questioning in relation to Holdings’ death.

  Holdings has been missing since …

  I pretend to read the rest but I’m stalling. I trawl back to anything I might have said to Kanika about Agrioli or Sam Hell or my ad hoc surveillance operation down in the Valley.

  I cough. ‘Well, there’s something to be said for …’ and I look up.

  Kanika’s pale. She’s holding on to my shoulder, steadying herself.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘I’ve got to find a new research focus,’ she says. She has no idea what’s going on with me. She’s completely dazed. ‘I … I can’t do this anymore. This day in and out? What was I thinking? I need to change my life.’

  And I’m listening but her voice is a whisper in my ear, drowned out by a sensation much, much louder. A big emotion flowing through, flooding me, making the office cramped and oppressive. My mind is so clouded that it takes a moment to realise what it is.

  It’s relief.

  If Roberto killed Sarah Holdings, Roberto might have killed all these other missing women too. All our disappearing students.

  Is he the guy? Is he the killer?

  And Jenny’s right there in his orbit.

  Was Jenny his accomplice? His victim?

  Either way, Roberto got what was coming to him. No one will doubt my story if I have to tell it now. He came at me in the car park. I fought back. Even if I killed him with my own hands and his mafia friends buried him in a back lot somewhere …

  I’m going to be OK.

  No one cares about Roberto.

  No one.

  And maybe, just maybe …

  I’ve accidently finished this thing.

  Solved the mystery.

  Case cl
osed.

  Kanika is gently holding on to my shoulder.

  Archibald Moder’s people insist on an ungodly 8.30 a.m. interview (‘His morning brunch, Dr Bridges’) and I’ve timed the journey out there at a little over two hours. I take the Story Bridge – still lit at this time of morning – and merge onto the highway, driving a drudgerous outbound commute through the city’s suburbs, most of which reside behind corridors of sound abatement walls and real estate billboards. I refuel in Logan and wolf down a McDonald’s breakfast over the Courier, noting the Agrioli case has dropped from page one to page four, then hit the road, driving around the arse-end of Beenleigh and into the winding roads that will take me to the mountains.

  By eight o’clock, a muted sun sits in the grey sky overhead and I’m driving through misty forest corridors that absolutely no one associates with humid Queensland. These are the hinterland green spaces, the hills, once the original country of Brisbane’s white trash but now home to the city’s millionaire retirees and art patrons.

  Up on the mountain proper, I drive through streets lined with two-storey timber colonials (all white), green hedges and gravel drives. I see yards with fountains and tennis courts and decorative pools. The Moder property sits right on the southern edge of Tamborine Mountain at the end of a road branching out like a spire. To get there, I pass through a long tunnel – an impossibly dark tree canopy – to a small cul-de-sac at the end. There are two gates. The right-hand one bears a small rusted emblem.

  I leave the car idling and take a closer look at the emblem, certain it can’t be real. It is. An ornate shield locked inside a cube-shaped spiral. The Zone Mover logo. It’s on the cover of every Archibald Moder book. There’s an intercom by the gate but I’ve been told to call instead.

  A familiar voice answers. The man himself. Moder laughs a croaking, wheezing laugh and tells me to come on up.

  Inside the compound, a wide concreted drive sweeps up an incline to a house hidden in the treeline. A short way along the drive, I come across a man standing in the centre of the path. He’s my age or a little older, and he’s just standing there, dressed in a tan polo shirt, cardigan and tailored blue shorts. As I approach, I see that he resembles a young Archibald.