by Simon Clark
‘Very funny, Benny. Hey, stay clear of the greenhouse.’
‘You’ll get nowhere working for nothing,’ Scotty added.
Rajeed patted Victor on the back. ‘Vic’s not obsessed with wealth. He loves the world. This charitable work in Africa proves this friend of ours is a noble man.’ The four laughed, then sang out, ‘Whoa . . . whoa!’ when the ball cannoned in the direction of the fragile greenhouse panes again.
Victor turned to Jay. ‘We’re only half in and half out of this world, aren’t we? I can smell roses and feel the sun’s heat. I know you can put me into this world fully, can’t you? So I can be seen by my friends and talk to them?’
‘Is that what you want?’
‘But you’re not here for that, are you, Jay? You’re going to show me something I don’t know. Just as you showed me what really happened to Archer’s father. That he betrayed him to his killers. So what happens, Jay? Do my friends stab me in the back?’
Jay walked to the house where he vanished inside. Victor followed. He was back in the kitchen he knew so well. That afternoon his retired parents busied themselves making sandwiches. Both wore safari style shirts in keeping with the day’s celebrations.
Victor sighed. ‘Bless them, they threw an African themed party. Look at the Hippo cake. All that bright green icing. I said to them, “Mum, Dad, I love you but did you have to buy the Hippo cake? I’m nineteen, not nine.”’
Jay kept silent.
‘Is this what you wanted me to see? Is it connected with what you said about us believing events happened in a certain way in the past? And not realizing that the facts were actually different?’ His parents chatted softly, mainly about what plates to use, should they bring out the coleslaw yet, that kind of thing. ‘I have lovely parents. My father used part of his retirement lump sum to fund my trip to Africa. They paid my airfare, accommodation, meals . . .’ He groaned. ‘No . . . I don’t want to see what happens next. Jay, please don’t do this to me.’
At that moment his mother paused as she sliced the bread. ‘You have done the right thing, James. It’s a small price to pay.’
‘It’s not selling the car that bothers me.’ He watched the four playing basketball. ‘It’s that I’ve lied to Victor.’
‘Come on, James, a white lie.’
‘Why couldn’t we be honest with him? He’s our flesh and blood.’
‘But there’s no need to worry him needlessly. What you’ve done for James is wonderful. You should be proud.’
His father sighed. ‘He isn’t a boy any more. I should have told him, man-to-man, that I used the lump sum to pay off that damn loan. He’d have understood.’
‘Yes, he’d have understood, James. What he wouldn’t have done is allow you to sell the car. You’ve made this placement in Africa happen. You helped him get the career he’s always wanted.’
Victor closed his eyes. ‘So that’s what happened. I thought my parents had lots of money in savings. I didn’t realize they’d made these sacrifices, like selling the car, so I could go work at the reserve. Dear God, Jay, do you know how this makes me feel? Dad told me he’d sold the car because he had a new one on order. I was too full of what I was doing to even ask why there wasn’t a new car when I came home. Now I know the truth I feel like some miserable parasite. A sponger. A spoilt—’
He opened his eyes. The kitchen had vanished. Instead, he stood on the deck of a ship at sea. It rolled in the heavy swell. People crammed on its deck had to grip on to the railings. Lightning seared the night sky. Dark-skinned mothers clung to their babies. Victor flinched at the sound that reached him. Such a terrible sound that seemed full of pain and despair. A huge groan rose through the deck of the ship.
Beside him, Jay murmured, ‘That’s the sound of the keel breaking.’
Victor spun round toward the bridge. Painted in grave black letters beneath the windows was one word: N’TAAL.
Forty
N’Taal. The name burned through the fabric of Victor Brodman’s being. Here he was on the doomed ship. The rending of metal as it disintegrated told him that he’d arrived in its death throes. Lightning cast rivers of blue light in the sky. With brutal incandescence it revealed the deck of the N’Taal in every detail. Victor saw that streaks of rust had corrupted its paintwork. Corrosion-rendered holes in the steel deck. Jay gazed on the scene of imminent tragedy in his customary unfathomable way. Did he sense the panic of his own people? Dozens of men, women and children were struggling through hatches up on to the deck. They called to one another. Mothers passed infants to fathers from the dark pits formed by open hatchways. So this was the ship-full of refugees reviled by the world. After Jay’s people had been driven from their homes, robbed, beaten, abused, they’d been herded on to a ship condemned by its owners as unseaworthy. Nevertheless, the freighter had been towed out of national waters with its cargo of desperate refugees, then it had begun its grim odyssey. Sailing from port to port around the Atlantic, the refugees had pleaded for asylum only to be turned away by warships before they could even reach dry land.
Laura had told Victor enough of the story for him to know what the grim outcome would be. He watched as desperate crew members and passengers worked together to deploy the lifeboats. The winch mechanisms that would lower the boats to the sea had become so rusted that they’d jammed solid. These lifeboats were clearly decades old. When they were freed from canvas covers the hulls were decayed to the point where the boats simply fell to pieces.
On the deck the men and women were shouting to each other as they tried to launch the lifeboats. This whirlwind of activity turned to weeping and terror when they realized their means of escape was useless. Parents knew that they had no way to save their children. Families sat down on the deck to cling to each other.
Victor adjusted his balance as the ship tilted. ‘Jay!’ he yelled above the scream of rending metal. ‘Jay. I know you can bring me into their world. Do it! Let me help them!’ A lightning flash lit up many frightened eyes. ‘Fight what’s inside of you, Jay. Don’t let me stand here doing nothing. You must allow me to fully enter this reality. You’ve got to give me a chance to help save them!’
At that moment, the mood of the refugees changed. He’d sensed their sorrow at knowing that they and their children would soon be dead. Now, faces became angry. Everywhere men and women clenched their fists. As they sat to await the inevitable they beat their fists against metal decking. Soon the rhythmic pounding rivalled the thunder. One by one they took up a chant. It was in a language Victor didn’t understand. Without a shadow of doubt he knew its meaning.
‘Feel this pain . . . everyone who rejected us, feel this pain. Send us the child that can make the world feel this torture. Send us a child that can hurt them . . . like they brought hurt to us.’ The chant grew louder. Filled with rage it drowned out the thunder. The angry pounding of their fists hurt Victor’s head; it grew louder and louder until he thought his skull would crack. The faces of the soon-to-be-dead were no longer masks of despair. They were alive again . . . energized . . . a power flowed there. It was hate, it was rage, it was a passionate lust for revenge.
Jay stood amid all those seated people on deck. His face wore the same expression as theirs. His lips moved as if he’d joined the chant.
Victor tried again. ‘Jay, let me through into this world. I can save some of the children. See the rafts? Let me through. I know how to inflate them, Jay. I can help!’
The voices grew louder. That pulse of sound was electric with fury. The eyes of the people blazed. The rhythm of the chant and the pounding of the deck grew faster. Blood flowed from torn skin. Nobody felt it. Nobody deviated from the intensity of the chant.
Metalwork in the ship screamed. The flanks collapsed under the weight of seawater. Seconds later waves washed over the deck. Smoothly, the ship began sliding under the surface. Slabs of dark green brine closed over it.
A deluge of water smashed a young mother against a rail, breaking her spine. As the baby she held
fell from her lifeless arms Victor dived in the foam after it. Down he swam into the cold body of the Atlantic. Beneath him, the N’Taal drifted to its undersea tomb. Heart thundering, pent up breath burning in his lungs, he grabbed the baby. A moment later he was back on the surface. He’d hold on tight to the tiny infant. Whatever happened he’d never let go. It was either survive together, or die together. Victor roared to the universe his defiance at death.
He must keep treading water. With one arm he held the baby tight to him. He wouldn’t abandon it . . . he wouldn’t.
Victor opened his eyes. For a moment he smelt brine. The rush of surf filled his ears. Then he realized he stood in a bedroom. There wasn’t so much as a drop of water on his clothes. Thank God, the baby . . . He felt its body pressed against his chest. Breathing deeply, he looked down. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. What he took to be the shape of the child against his chest was only his arm. At some point he’d gripped his left forearm with his right hand, then pressed it against his breastbone. For a while he’d been convinced that he’d held an infant from the N’Taal there.
He gave a grim laugh. It sounded disturbingly maniacal to his ears. Jay stood beside him. ‘What are you going to show me next, O Ghost of Christmas Past? But you’re no Dickensian ghost, are you? You’re a demon . . . OK, you resemble a boy, but you are all monster. You traipse me through a sorry parade of grim events. Ones that I can’t change. You can’t change them, either, so that’s probably what frustrates you. You are a monster with a couple of fancy little tricks: inflicting curses, showing people the past. But, Jay, you don’t have the power to do anything else. You’re just a neurosis in the shape of a human being. All you’re capable of is repeating the same two tricks over and over.’ Victor trembled with anger as he added, ‘I’ve worked out what you resemble . . . what you’re so dumbly aping. Being with you is like watching television. Does that sound strange? It does, but then I’m in second stage. I’m allowed. The virus is eating my brain. But seriously, do you know why I compare you to a television?’ Jay’s face was expressionless. No doubt that vengeance-fuelled mind worked behind the mask though. It would be choosing other venues to visit. Victor smiled as the revelation surged through him. ‘Being with you is like watching television because, like you, television can show terrible things. Every day we watch murder on our screens, all those endless crimes committed against good people, and all those terrorist atrocities. We watch grim tragedies on television, while we sip our coffees, and we bear witness to all that human suffering, but, we the viewers, can do nothing about it. The news media inflicts scenes of human misery on us, just as you can take me on your “little walk”. We are spectators, but we can’t do one thing to stop the suffering. And in a way the television curses us. We watch the aftermath of a hurricane on television, say, see dead people in the ditches, think how dreadful it is, then shrug as we hop channels and laugh at some trite comedy show. But deep down all those horrible things we’ve seen feed our anxieties. We become pessimistic about the world; we worry about how our children are going to cope in the future. Jay, you are redundant. We’ve all become our own Vengeance Child. And we’re doing it so much better than you.’
A door opened to the gloomy bedroom, light spilled in from the hallway.
‘So what’s this place, Jay? You want to torture me again with the sight of something awful? I can see all man’s inhumanity to man simply by switching on my TV.’
A figure stepped through the doorway, then moved silently toward a child in bed. Victor recognized the night visitor.
‘Laura?’
Jay said, ‘I’ve told you before. She can’t hear you.’
Victor went to block her way, but she bypassed him without any sign she noticed he was there. Laura wore casual clothes; she seemed to carry an object in her hands but Victor couldn’t identify it. Stealthily, she crouched beside the bed so she could see its occupant’s face.
‘Still awake, Tess?’ Her voice was gentle.
In bed a girl of around thirteen nodded. The face framed by wispy blonde hair wore the haggard appearance of someone who’d suffered. When she pushed back her fringe Victor noticed the girl’s wrists were bandaged.
He turned to Jay. ‘This is Badsworth Lodge, isn’t it? You’re showing me a girl who’s tried to commit suicide by cutting her wrists. And here is Laura at work. Is this what you want me to see?’
‘If you marry Laura, then she’ll go away. She won’t look after us any more.’
‘Then you really do love her.’ Victor watched as Jay gazed with such pure affection at the woman. ‘I only said I was going to marry Laura to stop you from crashing those planes. Jay, I’ve no intention of marrying Laura. Do you hear me? We will not marry.’
Jay didn’t respond. He listened in on Laura’s conversation with the girl.
‘Tess, I know you didn’t really want to hurt yourself.’ Laura spoke in a soft whisper. ‘Now . . . I’m going to try very hard to make life happier here. To do that I’ve broken an important rule. My bosses will be mad if they find out. But I’ve bought this.’ She moved the object that she’d carried into the bedroom so Tess could see it. ‘His name is Scraps. He’d been put into a rescue home because nobody wanted him. Lovely, isn’t he?’ Laura held the puppy so Tess could see it.
The girl’s haggard face brightened instantly as she saw the bright eyes of the puppy look into hers. When she stroked a floppy ear his pink tongue darted out to lick the girl’s fingers. If the wrist wound had bothered her before it didn’t now, for the girl chuckled. ‘It’s a tickly lick!’
‘Pets make people happy,’ Laura told the girl. ‘It might be against the rules to keep a dog here but he’s ours.’ Although she laughed there was steel in Laura’s voice when she added, ‘They will have to prise this dog from my cold, dead hands.’
Victor breathed deeply. ‘I thought Laura was special. Now you’ve shown me why.’ The room grew blurred. Laura, the girl and the puppy receded to a speck of light. Victor grunted wryly, ‘Where now, O Shade? Or can I go home now?’
The world around him snapped into focus again. To his surprise he realized he was in the familiar surroundings of his living room. The television, however, was an older model. The evening sun shone through the window to reveal the same red sofa and a coffee table bearing neatly stacked wildlife magazines. Beside the magazines was a crisply folded newspaper.
Victor smiled. ‘That room hasn’t been that tidy since . . .’ The smile died.
A second later a woman came through the doorway into the room. Her thick black hair fell down over the shoulders of the green ranger fleece that she wore. Clearly she was in a hurry . . . a desperate hurry.
Victor glanced at the date on the newspaper. His blood ran cold. ‘I know what you’re doing. You’re showing me Ghorlan on the day she disappeared.’ He shuddered to the roots of his bones. ‘Jay, there’s no need to do this.’
Without turning to Victor, Jay said, ‘You’ve got to see what really happened.’
Forty-One
Victor knew it would be pointless to talk to Ghorlan as she moved about the living room. It would have as much effect on her as demanding answers from a character in a television drama. This is just a ghost of real events, he told himself. That isn’t even Ghorlan. All he could do was bear witness to her phantom actions. She picked up the phone, dialled, then sighed. ‘Victor, must you have switched off your phone tonight?’ She replaced the handset, pushed back her hair from her beautiful face then got busy. Quickly, she pulled a voice recorder from a drawer in the desk at the end of the room. She clicked her tongue in frustration when she saw that the battery power level was low. Clearly annoyed by being delayed, she opened a fresh pack of batteries, then switched them with the old ones in the Dictaphone.
Victor studied her face with growing perplexity. Why is she so anxious? But then she seems excited, too, as if she’s got to do something that’s incredibly important. Once more she dialled the telephone in vain. She made a tempes
tuous gesture with both hands as she called out, ‘Victor.’
He groaned. ‘This must be the last few minutes of her life. I found the fleece on the beach. But why did she go down there at this time of night? And what made her go into the water?’ His heart ached beyond belief. ‘That last day I was giving a talk to students. That’s why my phone was switched off.’
Ghorlan rushed back to the desk again, she opened a notepad, then picked up a pencil. Before she started to write, she checked the wall clock in exasperation. Victor thought he caught the words: ‘Can’t or I’ll miss him.’
Victor glared. Miss him? Miss who? A man of course. He grimaced as emotion threatened to overwhelm him. ‘Please don’t show me what happens next,’ he murmured to Jay. ‘I don’t want to see.’
Ghorlan headed toward the door, then paused before leaving. She seemed torn between rushing to her rendezvous and one last task. After glancing at the clock again she dashed back to the telephone. ‘Please, Victor, have your phone switched on.’ She hit the speed-dial key. Once more she sighed as she heard the recorded message. ‘OK, never mind . . . I’m still going through with this.’ The record message tone sounded. Quickly, Ghorlan said, ‘Never mind, Victor. I’ll catch you later.’ After that, his wife raced out of their home for the last time.
Despite what he knew about the impossibility of interacting with anyone in this world he sped after her. At the top of his voice he cried out, ‘Ghorlan! Ghorlan!’ Her name rang out into the forest. Victor came to his senses as he ran amongst the trees. He knew he was back in the present again on Siluria; even so, he couldn’t stop calling out for his dead wife. ‘Ghorlan . . .’
Gales laughing through the branches mocked his grief. Ahead of him lay the castle. There was no sign of Jay. Once again, Victor Brodman was completely and utterly alone.