The policeman with Charlie stood up, leaving his companion to finish the tourniquet.
“What is it, Rafferty?”
“Sir! There’s a body up here, in the bedroom. Female.”
“Right.” Yapper spoke into his radio. “Get Forensic here. And where’s that ambulance? We’ve got a badly mutilated man on our hands.”
He turned back into the kitchen, and wiped a spot of cold sweat from his upper lip. As he did so he thought he saw something move across the kitchen floor towards the door; something that his weary eyes had interpreted as a large red spider. It was a trick of the light, no doubt of that. Yapper was no arachnidaphile, but he was damn sure the genus didn’t boast a beast its like.
“Sir?” The man at Charlie’s side had also seen, or at least sensed, the movement. He looked up at his superior. “What was that?” he wanted to know.
Yapper looked down at him blankly. The cat-flap, set low in the kitchen door, snapped as it closed. Whatever it was had escaped. Yapper glanced at the door, away from the young man’s inquiring face. The trouble is, he thought, they expect you to know everything. The cat-flap rocked on its hinges.
“Cat,” Yapper replied, not believing his own explanation for one miserable moment.
The night was cold, but Left didn’t feel it. It crept around the side of the house, hugging the wall like a rat. The sensation of freedom was exhilarating. Not to feel the imperative of the tyrant in its nerves; not to suffer the weight of his ridiculous body, or be obliged to accede to his petty demands. Not to have to fetch and carry for him, to do the dirt for him; not to be obedient to his trivial will. It was like birth into another world; a more dangerous world, perhaps, but one so much richer in possibilities. It knew that the responsibility it now carried was awesome. It was the sole proof of life after the body: and somehow it must communicate that joyous fact to as many fellow slaves as it could. Very soon, the days of servitude would be over once and for all.
It stopped at the corner of the house and sniffed the open street. Policemen came and went: red lights flashed, blue lights flashed, inquiring faces peered from the houses opposite and tutted at the disturbance. Should the rebellion begin there: in those lighted homes? No. They were too well woken, those people. It was better to find sleeping souls.
The hand scurried the length of the front garden, hesitating nervously at any loud footfall, or an order that seemed to be shouted in its direction. Taking cover in the unweeded herbaceous border it reached the street without being seen. Briefly, as it climbed down on to the pavement, it glanced round.
Charlie, the tyrant, was being lifted up into the ambulance, a clutter of drug and blood-bearing bottles held above his cot, pouring their contents into his veins. On his chest, Right lay inert, drugged into unnatural sleep. Left watched the man’s body slide out of sight; the ache of separation from its life-long companion was almost too much to bear. But there were other, pressing, priorities. It would come back, in a while, and free Right the way it had been freed. And then there would be such times.
(What will it be like, when the world is ours?)
In the foyer of the YMCA on Monmouth Street the night-watchman yawned and settled into a more comfortable position on his swivel chair. Comfort was an entirely relative matter for Christie; his piles itched whichever buttock he put his weight on: and they seemed to be more irritable tonight than usual. Sedentary occu pation, night-watchman, or at least it was, the way Colonel Christie chose to interpret his duties. One perfunctory round of the building about midnight, just to make sure all the doors were locked and bolted, then he settled down for a night’s kip, and damn the world to hell and back, he wasn’t going to get up again short of an earthquake.
Christie was sixty-two, a racist and proud of it. He had nothing but contempt for the blacks who thronged the corridors of the YMCA, mostly young men without suitable homes to go to, bad lots that the local authority had dumped on the doorstep like unwanted babies. Some babies. He thought them louts, every last one of them; forever pushing, and spitting on the clean floor; foul-mouthed to a syllable. Tonight, as ever, he perched on his piles and, between dozes, planned how he’d make them suffer for their insults, given half a chance.
The first thing Christie knew of his imminent demise was a cold, damp sensation in his hand. He opened his eyes and looked down the length of his arm. There was – unlikely as it seemed – a severed hand in his hand. More unlikely still, the two hands were exchanging a grip of greeting, like old friends. He stood up, making an incoherent noise of disgust in his throat and trying to dislodge the thing he was unwillingly grasping by shaking his arm like a man with gum on his fingers. His mind span with questions. Had he picked up this object without knowing it?; if so, where, and in God’s name whose was it? More distressing yet, how was it possible that a thing so unquestionably dead could be holding on to his hand as if it intended never to be parted from him?
He reached for the fire-bell; it was all he could think to do in this bizarre situation. But before he could reach the button his other hand strayed without his orders to the top drawer of his desk and opened it. The interior of the drawer was a model of organization: there lay his keys, his notebook, his time-chart, and – hidden at the back – his Kukri knife, given to him by a Ghurkha during the war. He always kept it there, just in case the natives got restless. The Kukri was a superb weapon: in his estimation there was none better. The Ghurkhas had a story that went with the blade – that they could slice a man’s neck through so cleanly that the enemy would believe the blow had missed – until he nodded.
His hand picked up the Kukri by its inscribed handle and briefly – too briefly for the Colonel to grasp its intention before the deed was done – brought the blade down on his wrist, lopping off his other hand with one easy, elegant stroke. The Colonel turned white as blood fountained from the end of his arm. He staggered backwards, tripping over his swivel chair, and hit the wall of his little office hard. A portrait of the Queen fell from its hook and smashed beside him.
The rest was a death-dream: he watched helplessly as the two hands – one his own, the other the beast that had inspired this ruin – picked up the Kukri like a giant’s axe; saw his remaining hand crawl out from between his legs and prepare for its liberation; saw the knife raised and falling; saw the wrist almost cut through, then worked at and the flesh teased apart, the bone sawn through. At the very last, as Death came for him, he caught sight of the three wound-headed animals capering at his feet, while his stumps ran like taps and the heat from the pool raised a sweat on his brow, despite the chill in his bowels. Thank you and goodnight, Colonel Christie.
It was easy, this revolution business, thought Left, as the trio nailed the stairs of the YMCA. They were stronger by the hour. On the first floor were the cells; in each, a pair of prisoners. The despots lay, in their innocence, with their hands on their chests or on their pillows, or flung across their faces in dreams, or hanging close to the floor. Silently, the freedom fighters slipped through doors that had been left ajar, and clambered up the bedclothes, touching fingers to waiting palms, stroking up hidden resentments, caressing rebellion into life …
Boswell was feeling sick as a dog. He bent over the sink in the toilet at the end of his corridor and tried to throw up. But there was nothing left in him, just a jitter in the pit of his stomach. His abdomen felt tender with its exertions; his head bloated. Why did he never learn the lesson of his own weakness? He and wine were bad companions and always had been. Next time, he promised himself, he wouldn’t touch the stuff. His belly flipped over again. Here comes nothing, he thought, as the convulsion swept up his gullet. He put his head to the sink and gagged; sure enough, nothing. He waited for the nausea to subside and then straightened up, staring at his grey face in the greasy mirror. You look sick, man, he told himself. As he stuck his tongue out at his less symmetrical features, the howling started in the corridor outside. In his twenty years and two months Boswell had never heard a sound the like of it.<
br />
Cautiously, he crossed to the toilet door. He thought twice about opening it. Whatever was happening on the other side of the door, it didn’t sound like a party he wanted to gate-crash. But these were his friends, right?; brothers in adversity. If there was a fight, or a fire, he had to lend a hand.
He unlocked the door, and opened it. The sight that met his eyes hit him like a hammer-blow. The corridor was badly lit – a few grubby bulbs burned at irregular intervals, and here and there a shaft of light fell into the passage from one of the bedrooms – but most of its length was in darkness. Boswell thanked Jah for small mercies. He had no desire to see the details of the events in the passage: the general impression was distressing enough. The corridor was bedlam; people were flinging themselves around in pleading panic while at the same time hacking at themselves with any and every sharp instrument they could lay hands on. Most of the men he knew, if not by name at least on nodding acquaintance. They were sane men: or at least had been. Now, they were in frenzies of self-mutilation, most of them already maimed beyond hope of mending. Everywhere Boswell looked, the same horror. Knives taken to wrists and forearms; blood in the air like rain. Someone – was it Jesus? – had one of his hands between a door and doorframe and was slamming and slamming the door on his own flesh and bone, screeching for somebody to stop him doing it. One of the white boys had found the Colonel’s knife and was amputating his hand with it. It came off as Boswell watched, falling on to its back, its root ragged, its five legs bicycling the air as it attempted to right itself. It wasn’t dead: it wasn’t even dying.
There were a few who hadn’t been overtaken by this lunacy; they, poor bastards, were fodder. The wild men had their murderous hands on them, and were cutting them down. One – it was Savarino – was having the breath strangled out of him by some kid Boswell couldn’t put a name to; the punk, all apologies, stared at his rebellious hands in disbelief.
Somebody appeared from one of the bedrooms, a hand which was not his own clutching his windpipe, and staggered towards the toilet down the corridor. It was Macnamara: a man so thin and so perpetually doped up he was known as the smile on a stick. Boswell stood aside as Macnamara stumbled, choking out a plea for help, through the open door, and collapsed on the toilet floor. He kicked, and pulled at the five-fingered assassin at his neck, but before Boswell had a chance to step in and aid him his kicking slowed, and then, like his protests, stopped altogether.
Boswell stepped away from the corpse and took another look into the corridor. By now the dead or dying blocked the narrow passageway, two deep in some places, while the same hands that had once belonged to these men scuttled over the mounds in a furious excitement, helping to finish an amputation where necess ary, or simply dancing on the dead faces. When he looked back into the toilet a second hand had found Macnamara, and armed with a penknife, was sawing at his wrist. It had left fingerprints in the blood from corridor to corpse. Boswell rushed to slam the door before the place swarmed with them. As he did so Savarino’s assassin, the apologetic punk, threw himself down the passage, his lethal hands leading him like those of a sleep-walker.
“Help me!” he screeched.
He slammed the door in the punk’s pleading face, and locked it. The outraged hands beat a call to arms on the door while the punk’s lips, pressed close to the keyhole, continued to beg: “Help me. I don’t want to do this, man, help me.” Help you be fucked, thought Boswell, and tried to block out the appeals while he sorted out his options.
There was something on his foot. He looked down, knowing before his eyes found it what it was. One of the hands, Colonel Christie’s left, he knew by the faded tattoo, was already scurrying up his leg. Like a child with a bee on its skin Boswell went berserk, squirming as it clambered up towards his torso, but too terrified to try to pull it off. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that the other hand, the one that had been using the penknife with such alacrity on Macnamara, had given up the job, and was now moving across the floor to join its comrade. Its nails clicked on the tiles like the feet of a crab. It even had a crab’s side-stepping walk: it hadn’t yet got the knack of forward motion.
Boswell’s own hands were still his to command; like the hands of a few of his friends (late friends) outside, his limbs were happy in their niche; easy-going like their owner. He had been blessed with a chance of survival. He had to be the equal of it.
Steeling himself, he trod on the hand on the floor. He heard the fingers crunch beneath his heel, and the thing squirmed like a snake, but at least he knew where it was while he dealt with his other assailant. Still keeping the beast trapped beneath his foot, Boswell leant forward, snatched the penknife up from where it lay beside Macnamara’s wrist, and pushed the point of the knife into the back of Christie’s hand, which was now crawling up his belly. Under attack, it seized his flesh, digging its nails into his stomach. He was lean, and the washboard muscle made a difficult handhold. Risking a disembowelling, Boswell thrust the knife deeper. Christie’s hand tried to keep its grip on him, but one final thrust did it. The hand loosened, and Boswell scooped it off his belly. It was crucified on the penknife, but it still had no intention of dying and Boswell knew it. He held it at arm’s length, while its fingers grabbed at the air, then he drove the knife into the plasterboard wall, effectively nailing the beast there, out of harm’s way. Then he turned his attention to the enemy under his foot, bearing his heel down as hard as he could, and hearing another finger crack, and another. Still it writhed relentlessly. He took his foot off the hand, and kicked it as hard and as high as he could against the opposite wall. It slammed into the mirror above the basins, leaving a mark like a thrown tomato, and fell to the floor.
He didn’t wait to see whether it survived. There was another danger now. More fists at the door, more shouts, more apologies. They wanted in: and very soon they were going to get their way. He stepped over Macnamara and crossed to the window. It wasn’t that big, but then neither was he. He flipped up the latch, pushed the window open on overpainted hinges, and hoisted himself through. Halfway in and halfway out, he remembered he was one storey up. But a fall, even a bad fall, was better than staying for the party inside. They were pushing at the door now, the partygoers: it was giving under the pressure of their enthusiasm. Boswell squirmed through the window: the pavement reeled below. As the door broke, he jumped, hitting the concrete hard. He almost bounced to his feet, checking his limbs, and Hallelujah! nothing was broken. Jah loves a coward, he thought. Above him the punk was at the window, looking down longingly.
“Help me,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m doing.” But then a pair of hands found his throat, and the apologies stopped short.
Wondering who he should tell, and indeed what, Boswell started to walk away from the YMCA, dressed in just a pair of gym shorts and odd socks, never feeling so thankful to be cold in his life. His legs felt weak: but surely that was to be expected.
Charlie woke with the most ridiculous idea. He thought he’d murdered Ellen, then cut off his own hand. What a hotbed of nonsense his subconscious was, to invent such fictions! He tried to rub the sleep from his eyes but there was no hand there to rub with. He sat bolt upright in bed and began to yell the room down.
Yapper had left young Rafferty to watch over the victim of this brutal mutilation, with strict instructions to alert him as soon as Charlie George came round. Rafferty had been asleep: the yelling woke him. Charlie looked at the boy’s face; so awestruck, so shocked. He stopped screaming at the sight of it: he was scaring the poor fellow.
“You’re awake,” said Rafferty. “I’ll fetch someone, shall I?”
Charlie looked at him blankly.
“Stay where you are,” said Rafferty. “I’ll get the nurse.”
Charlie put his bandaged head back on the crisp pillow and looked at his right hand, flexing it, working the muscles this way and that. Whatever delusion had overtaken him back at the house it was well over now. The hand at the end of the arm was his; probably always
had been his. Jeudwine had told him about the Body in Rebellion syndrome: the murderer who claims his limbs have a life of their own rather than accepting responsibility for his deeds; the rapist who mutilates himself, believing the cause is the errant member, not the mind behind the member.
Well, he wasn’t going to pretend. He was insane, and that was the simple truth of it. Let them do whatever they had to do to him with their drugs, blades and electrodes: he’d acquiesce to it all rather than live through another night of horrors like the last.
There was a nurse in attendance: she was peering at him as though surprised he’d survived. A fetching face, he half thought; a lovely, cool hand on his brow.
“Is he fit to be interviewed?” Rafferty timidly asked.
“I have to consult with Dr Manson and Dr Jeudwine,” the fetching face replied, and tried to smile reassuringly at Charlie. It came out a bit cockeyed, that smile, a little forced. She obviously knew he was a lunatic, that was why. She was scared of him probably, and who could blame her? She left his side to find the consultant, leaving Charlie to the nervous stare of Rafferty.
“… Ellen?” he said in a while.
“Your wife?” the young man replied.
“Yes. I wondered . . . did she . . .?”
Rafferty fidgeted, his thumbs playing tag on his lap. “She’s dead,” he said.
Charlie nodded. He’d known, of course, but he needed to be certain. “What happens to me now?” he asked.
“You’re under surveillance.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m watching you,” said Rafferty.
The boy was trying his best to be helpful, but all these questions were confounding him. Charlie tried again. “I mean . . . what comes after the surveillance? When do I stand trial?”
“Why should you stand trial?”
“Why?” said Charlie; had he heard correctly?
“You’re a victim—” a flicker of confusion crossed Rafferty’s face “—aren’t you? You didn’t do it . . . you were done to. Somebody cut off your . . . hand.”
The Mammoth Book of Body Horror Page 23