by Simon Clark
The man with my face smiled. However, an uncertainty made it appear forced. So he didn’t know who Natsaf-Ty was, or that he was nothing more than a childhood imaginary friend who had taken to visiting me again. That clone of me in the car’s driving seat had managed to copy my flesh; what’s more he could pick up some of my emotions; but one thing he could not do was understand that the mental projection, or hallucination, call it what you will, lacked actual substance. Natsaf-Ty was as real as a tree to him. Yeah, pick the bones out of that, you filthy creature. Burst a blood vessel trying to figure it out.
My heart pounded as I leaned forward to look the man in the eye. And just for a second I was sitting in the car, looking out at the original of me and being screwed up inside because I couldn’t unravel the mystery of Natsaf-Ty, keeper of the sacred frigging crocodile.
I whispered, ‘You’ve seen him, too, haven’t you? And you’re scared of him.’
That Echo of me raised his fist. Clenched there was a knife with a narrow blade fully eight inches long. So this is it, I told myself, we’re going to fight it out in the grounds of my old school.
I hissed at the pair beside me. ‘I’ll grab him. You take care of the bitch in the back seat.’
Only it was the Mason Konrad-look-alike who caught us by surprise. He turned, then jabbed the point of the knife blade into the underside of the stranger’s chin who sat beside him. With a god almighty shove, he drove the blade slowly up into the man’s head. It must have passed through the floor of his mouth, tongue then mouth roof into the sinus cavities.
Maybe the stranger knew all along this would happen to him, that his destiny was to sit in the passenger seat to wait for the knife to be rammed up inside his skull. In any event, he didn’t show much surprise. After blood squirted from the wound, like his jaw had decided to piss blood, he began to convulse.
‘We’re going to the police,’ Eve told the copy of me and copy of Mom as they climbed out of the car.
‘Why don’t you just do that?’ the man answered.
Just for a moment the woman lingered there as if reluctant to leave. The expression suggested she was going to ask to come with us, but she had this hurt look in her eyes as if she knew we’d reject her offer a third time.
The man vanished into the green wall of bushes. The creature that pretended to be Mom knew she must go, too, and slipped away into the vegetation. By the time I dragged the knifed man out of the car several events were taking place at once.
‘What are you going to do with him?’ Eve asked as I let the stranger sink back on to the lawn.
‘Nothing,’ I replied, ‘he’s just gone and died on me.’ I ripped up a handful of grass to scrub off the big splotch of crimson from the leg of my jeans where the guy’s bloody head struck as I tugged him from the seat.
Madeline announced other events that I had been too busy notice. ‘The school’s on fire.’
Eve listened. ‘Sirens. Do you hear them?’
I clicked my tongue in annoyance. ‘Those things made plans before we even got here.’
A loud bang came from the direction of the swimming-pool block; dark smoke rose in a column.
‘They’re burning the evidence. The history classrooms are alight, too.’
Eve stared at flames bursting through the screened windows. Screams rose in a sustained wail. ‘We should let them out.’
‘You’ve got to be joking. They wouldn’t thank us for saving them, they’d kill us the first chance they got.’
‘But they are proof of what happened to us, Mason. We need them alive.’
The sirens grew louder. I grabbed another handful of grass. Bloodstains are stubborn. They don’t want to vanish. They want to yell their scarlet truth to the world. Look! Caught red-handed!
I shook my head. ‘We’re getting out of here before the police come.’
‘What? You’re crazy. We can show them what happened.’
‘What they’ll see, Eve, are burning buildings and me covered with bloodstains; there’s a pool of blood on the car’s passenger seat, and there’s our friend here, dead in the grass. What are the police going to deduce from that?’
‘We can’t just run away, Mason.’
‘Eve, Madeline, get in the car. No, in the back, or you’ll end up covered in that stuff.’
‘Mason?’
‘Eve, don’t you understand? OK, so those monsters have won the battle this time. We’ve got to stay free to win the war.’
chapter 25
The car had become a telltale heart. Like in the story by Edgar Allan Poe where a murderer is convinced he hears the heart of his victim beating beneath the floorboards with all the force of a drummer pounding at the bass drum. In the tale only the murderer can hear the heartbeat. To him it’s a thunderous sound. It’s more than a sound, in fact, it shakes the entire universe. So the car – Mom’s little green runaround that took her to work and the supermarket – became a latter-day telltale heart. Drive a car with a quart of blood sloshed over the passenger seat then you’ll know what I mean.
As I drove away from my old school that had flames pouring out of the buildings, including the old swimming pool (which had been our jail), police cars and firefighters were surging up the road. Once more, my knowledge of Tanshelf’s hidden back lanes meant we could avoid meeting the emergency services head-on. Even so, the experience of driving with blood congealing on the passenger seat while Madeline and Eve sat in the back lacked any appeal whatsoever. As I drove, my eyes flicked from the road ahead to the brown-red pool on the upholstery that normally accommodated the human bottom. A dozen ravenous flies dived in to feast.
When I sped into the suburbs the blood of the murdered Echoman, the one that my clone had stabbed in the underside of the jaw, appeared to grow bigger. The congealing lumps stood proud of the cloth; indeed, to my eyes they seemed to swell. How long before they became gore mounds that rose above the level of the passenger door to be on plain view of every passerby? Imagination, I know: it’s the telltale heart thing.
‘Slow down,’ Eve told me. ‘We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.’
I drove faster. ‘The moment anyone sees that blood they’re going to be calling the police.’
‘It looks strange,’ Madeline said, ‘there’s two of us sat in the back and you driving, Mason. I should have sat in the front passenger seat. I don’t mind the blood.’
Eve grunted. ‘I bet you don’t.’
In the rearview I saw that Eve had slid along the seat to be as far from Madeline as possible.
‘As soon as I can I’ll dump the car. First, I’ve got to get us home.’ The temptation to floor it made the muscles in my foot twitch as it rested on the accelerator, but that wild, excessive speed really would turn the entire vehicle into a telltale heart: the machine might as well sprout severed arteries and spurt blood all over the road. Instead, I kept the mph down. Minutes later, a surge of relief gushed through me as I pulled on to the driveway.
‘I’ll get the garage door.’ Eve opened the car door before I’d even stopped.
In less than twenty seconds I’d driven the car inside the garage. At least that telltale heart on wheels was out of sight, but it didn’t magically make the blood vanish. If the police connected us somehow with the fire at the school, not to mention the corpse in its grounds, they’d find the blood-drenched car in a snap. Suddenly being home didn’t seem like a good idea. But where could we go?
For now, my sister tolerated Madeline’s presence in the house. Just – only just.
‘Mason, I’ll allow her to come indoors, but she mustn’t come upstairs. OK?’
‘OK.’ I nodded. Madeline said nothing; her expression, neutral.
‘And she’s not allowed to touch any of my things. Right, I’m going to shower and change my clothes. The stink of those monsters is still on me.’ With that Eve went upstairs.
When the bathroom door had closed, Madeline said, in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘Eve hates me, doesn’t she?’
‘You should name him.’ Madeline filled the kettle.
‘I should what?’
‘Give him a name.’
‘He’s a monster, why should I do that?’
Madeline regarded me with all seriousness. ‘If you’re going to fight them you must know your enemy, so you must give him a name. It’s a way of taking possession of something if you give it a name.’
‘But what name? Kevin? Tony? Tone the clone?’
‘Nothing flippant. You mustn’t underestimate him.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Call him Konrad.’
‘Konrad? That’s my surname.’
‘I know.’ Madeline spooned instant coffee into a mug. ‘It’s not a name you’re going to forget in a hurry, is it?’ She glanced out of the window. ‘A van just slowed down as it passed the house.’
‘It didn’t take the Echomen long to come and finish what they started.’ I locked the door. ‘Where’s the van now?’
‘It’s not stopped. Do you think it’s them?’
‘I don’t see why not. They’re probably checking that we really are stupid enough to return to the house.’ I pushed the tip of my thumb into the side of my mouth as I tried to think of a plan. ‘With luck, this is just reconnaissance.’
‘Do you think they’ll attack? Konrad seemed frightened of the figure in the cell.’
‘Ah …’ I smiled. ‘Konrad, my secret twin. Yeah, he did seem unnerved didn’t he?’
‘But who is it, Mason?’
‘He’s …’ For a moment I was ready to rattle out anecdotes about old Natsaf-Ty, my childhood imaginary friend, keeper of the sacred crocodiles, but this was Madeline I was speaking to. I was forgetting her nature: she’s of the Echo tribe. Could I really trust her, just because she appeared to be on my side? Instead of elaborating I simply gave a knowing wink before adding, ‘The man who walked through the cell walls is our secret weapon.’
As Madeline finished making the coffee I peered round the edge of the window in case the mystery van had returned. It hadn’t – instead a young boy stood out on the front lawn, looking directly at me.
Madeline reacted with alarm as I moved. ‘Mason? Where are you going?’
‘They’ve just pulled another stunt. But I’m not letting them get away with it.’
By the time I’d opened the door the shower of blossom from the cherry tree was the only evidence he’d been on the lawn. At least it suggested which direction he’d fled. And the boy? Did I think for a moment that he might have been a kid from the neighbourhood who’d run on to our lawn for a dare? No, I told myself, as I pursued him through the bushes, he’s me. Or at least he’s me aged ten. The Echomen sent him to screw with my mind. I’m convinced of that.
The kid – the ten-year-old clone of me – raced through the border of bushes that grew alongside the boundary fence, so now I only caught glimpses of his arm or shoulder as he ducked his way through the branches. Those same branches whipped back into my face, one slapped me right across the eyes so I blundered along with all the grace of a charging hippo.
‘Come back.’ I growled the order. ‘Come back. I want to talk to you.’
But do I want to talk, I asked myself, or do I want to beat you to a bloody mess? The kid’s gone Echo. He might be luring me into an ambush. More of his kind might be lurking in the bushes. Mental graphics of me falling in agony with a knife blade in my guts exploded into my mind. Right ahead, a high fence where the apple trees grew. The kid would be trapped.
‘Stop! I only want to talk!’ Liar, liar, pants on fire. If I grabbed him this would be evidence to show the police that nature had gone freak.
Ahead of me, leaves fell where the kid charged through the vegetation. I dragged my knuckles across my eyes to scrape away the water that blurred them. Scuffling sounds, a scrape of foot on wood … damn, the kid’s climbing over the fence. I slammed through the low branches of the apple tree to find the ten-year-old copy of me rolling over the boards; his legs, body and head disappeared on to the far side of the fence into the next garden. Only he’d screwed up somehow. One arm stuck at my side of the fence. I lunged at it.
‘Got you!’
I grabbed the wrist. The bones seemed as thin as pencils beneath the flesh of the forearm. Blinking like crazy I managed to focus my eyes. This is what held him: I stared in surprise at a camera that dangled by a strap against the boards of the fence. The strap itself had wedged into a gap where the wood had split. For some reason the kid didn’t want to leave without his camera; to continue running all he need do was let go of the strap, yet he wasn’t letting go. Although he said nothing I could hear him panting with exertion at the other side of the fence. All I could see of him was the elbow, the forearm and the hand that hung on to the camera strap. By this time the camera swung furiously as I tried to haul the kid back over the fence. And there, right in front of my face, was his hand with that same tell-tale scar. Just like mine, the scar was a bright red emblem in the shape of a Y.
‘Don’t struggle,’ I told the kid whose face I still could not see. ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’
No? Not even a little bit of hurt? Mason, you know you could twist the boy’s thin arm and feel the bones break under the skin. Remember what his kind did to your mother?
‘No,’ I whispered to myself, ‘I’m catching you whole. You’re coming with me to the cops.’
The camera still did the pendulum dance at the end of the strap as I gently, yet firmly, held the arm while getting ready to reach over the fence so I could capture the boy without hurting him. Only your plans don’t always go the way you intend.
All of a sudden my right hand that held the boy’s wrist jerked upward with such force that it painfully yanked my shoulder muscles. On the other side of the fence the child cried out in pain.
‘Stop it, you bastards! You’re hurting him.’
Clearly, someone had grabbed hold of the kid then hauled him ferociously away.
Originally, the boy had no intention of leaving his camera behind, that much is obvious, but this time what choice did he have in the matter? When I pulled myself up to look over the fence he – and whoever had got him – had vanished into the trees that clustered at the other side. For a moment I listened, but the only sound was someone mowing their lawn a couple of houses away.
I scooped up the camera from where it had fallen on to the earth. It was one of the old kind that used photographic film rather than digital technology. Everything about it was manual – you turned a wheel on top to advance the film, the focus could be adjusted by twisting the lens clockwise or anticlockwise; a tiny window revealed the exposure counter and told you how many shots were left on the film and, my God, it was amazing! The instrument appeared to tingle in my hands. I know, I know … it wasn’t the camera itself – that was cheaply made; not worth a penny these days – it was the circumstances of how it came to me, and who owned it. The boy loved this camera. This much I knew: the kid was a ten-year-old copy of me. He wasn’t even human in the conventional sense. But he must have lavished such care on this clunky old mechanism of cogs and shutters. For whole moments I stood there beneath the apple tree, turning it over carefully in my hand as I examined it with all the rapt attention of someone finding a diamond-encrusted Fabergé egg in their garden. The numbers on the barrel of the lens had been almost worn away through use, as were the black letters of its maker printed on silver metal above them (it was either EDOX or EBCX; not that either name meant anything to me anyway). The thick black strap that had accidentally brought the boy to a dead stop still had a plush velvety feel of newness. The camera itself, as I said, could have be
en a worn-out antique. Even the plastic shell of the instrument had been broken, yet the boy – it had to be the boy I decided – had with such loving care glued the broken parts back together again. He’d even replaced one of the lugs that fixed the strap to the camera with a heart-shaped buckle that must have come from costume jewellery. The whole thing was a miraculous reconstruction of a smashed-up old camera. But despite the affection lavished on its repair it was absolutely revolting. The camera belonged to a creature with my face as a child; one of a new mutant breed that had tried to kill me, my sister, and had succeeded murdering my mother. Through the tiny window at the top of the camera I could see a figure 12. So, Echoboy had taken twelve photographs on a roll of twenty-four. What were the images contained within that camera casing? You can bet your sweet life they weren’t of cute puppies, or views of his home, or friends sat grinning on a wall. This was a camera operated by one of the Echofolk. Wouldn’t the photographs be of what obsessed those creatures? Might they record their experiments at the school? The nailed-down clones of my sister and me? Had the boy secretly photographed my mother drowning in the pool? The boy must have been sent here by Konrad? What for? To screw with our minds? Or to photograph us? Why? For future reference? For wanted posters?
I grew angry. The monsters. The fucking murderers …
Or did the boy come here with the idea of photographing Natsaf-Ty? Because it was my imaginary childhood friend that had got Konrad so scared. He couldn’t work out who the dusty red man was. OK, Natsaf-Ty didn’t exist in the real world, or rather he only existed as an exhibit in Tanshelf Museum. But Konrad and the other Echomen couldn’t figure it out. Konrad had glimpsed the mental image of the mummified body and didn’t have the human cognitive process to understand that Natsaf-Ty just ain’t real. I made him up because I was a scared and lonely kid. And it was either invent an imaginary father-figure or sit back and watch my mind flare out under the trauma of being separated from my grandparents whom I loved.