by Jeff Noon
“Would sir like anything else?”
“No. No, thank you…”
“Very good. Enjoy your stay with us.”
“I’m not staying.”
Nyquist turned away. He would visit room 225, and see if Eleanor was there. But the receptionist called after him, “Oh sir…”
“Yes?”
“Elizabeth’s grandmother went into the lounge bar. I thought you’d like to know.”
He followed directions along a corridor and into the bar area. The place was deserted, but faint music could be heard coming through a pair of closed doors. These opened out onto a small ballroom. And even here the mist had penetrated, its ribbons of grey drifting slowly along in time with the music that came from some invisible, spectral orchestra. Nyquist listened closely: it sounded like an old recording, complete with scratches and the sound of the needle turning in the groove. A few lamps, three or four at most, shone down from the ceiling, their beams moving in lazy arcs and colouring the air: pale yellow, burnt orange, a dying scarlet. A giant chandelier had broken loose from its central fixture and fallen to the floor below. It looked to Nyquist’s eye like a crashed spaceship, governed by an alien technology based on light and colour. Hundreds of candles had been set around the vast mound of broken crystals and smashed bulbs, each one aflame. He bent down to pick one of the crystals; it sparkled and glinted in his hand as the rays of light from overhead crossed the floor, back and forth, back and forth. The effect was hypnotic.
He managed at last to draw his gaze away from the crystal’s depths and to look across to the far side of the ballroom where an old woman could be seen. She was dancing alone to the music, her body swaying on the spot. The two shadow men stood one to each side, their arms crossed over their chests. Nyquist walked up to the old lady, but she seemed to be unaware of him. One hand held a wine glass from which she would sip now and again. Her eyes were closed, her skin ravaged by life’s claws, her cratered cheeks wet with tears. Her hair, a web of grey silk, reached at least a yard from skull to tip, hanging down around her face, shoulders, and below the waist; in this way she was carrying her own ready-prepared shroud. For, from all the evidence on view, the old lady was not long for this earth. She looked to be more than a hundred years old.
“Aisha?”
Still she danced.
“Aisha Kinkaid?”
Now she turned her head and opened her eyes at last. “Oh. Hello… Mr…”
“Nyquist.”
Her eyes shone yellow in the dim light. “Ah yes. Of course. The private investigator.” Alarmingly, whenever she spoke, filaments of mist rose from her mouth.
“Where’s Eleanor?”
She stopped moving, with the feel of an automaton coming to a halt as her mechanism wound down. “Why, you rude, rude man. Are you still pursuing her?” Her voice was low and gravelly, as severely damaged by time as her flesh and blood was. And her teeth, when he glimpsed them, were quite black.
Nyquist spoke quickly. “She’s in danger.”
“Indeed she is. How well informed you are–”
“Let me have the key! To room 225.”
“And why should I do that?”
“I believe you’re holding Eleanor captive there.”
She stared at him without speaking.
Nyquist held his fury in check, as far as he could. He said, “I’ll do whatever it takes to stop you from hurting her.”
The two guardians moved closer, the masks of fog shifting on their faces. But Aisha dismissed them with a simple wave of the hand and they both left the ballroom immediately under her orders. She took another sip of the dark red liquid in her glass. Her eyes, old as they were, and bloodshot where they weren’t yellowed, twinkled disarmingly. And the mist rose from her mouth as she spoke.
“What a sad little dance we have performed, the two of us, around and around like puny marionettes.”
Nyquist grabbed her roughly, he couldn’t help himself.
The wine glass fell to the parquet floor and shattered.
He pulled her to him, her body crackling like a basket of twigs.
“Tell me where she is!”
He was shaking the poor woman half to death, his frustration burning through his body in a current. But still she didn’t answer, and he realised that he was doing more harm than good. He stopped the action but still held on tight to her brittle arms.
She spoke, her voice drowsy, fog-veiled. “Please… you’re hurting me.”
Nyquist looked into her eyes; they were more than halfway lidded, weighed down with sorrow or life itself or drifting memories, or all three combined.
“Unhand me, young man.”
He did so. For a moment he thought she was going to fall but she found her balance, and her slippered heels crunched over the shards of glass on the floor as she led him to a side alcove under a ruby-red lamp. They sat down opposite each other across a small circular table. “You must forgive my manners,” she said. “It has been a while since a gentleman has called on me.” Each and every word was accompanied by a different pattern of mist.
Nyquist decided on a reasoned approach. “Why do you want Eleanor so much? Can’t you let her stay in Dayzone, or Nocturna? It’s where she belongs.”
“Sadly, that cannot be.”
“Why not?”
She tilted her head to one side as she listened to the music. It sounded far off, indistinct, performed in another time and place.
“Mrs Kinkaid. Answer me…”
“A ritual must take place.” She looked at him as from the depths of a pit. “Eleanor has to die, I’m afraid. It really is that simple.”
Nyquist gripped the tabletop in his anger.
She smiled. “My granddaughter Elizabeth was always a sickly child. Perhaps you’ve heard?” He nodded, allowing her to carry on. “My son Dominic brought her back into Dusk. Only here, in these realms…” She gestured about her. “Only here could the girl hope to survive. But of course, he was not only saving her, he was bringing her home. She belongs here.”
She reached into a sequined handbag that rested on the seat beside her and took out a white silk handkerchief. With this she wiped at her eyes, trying to hold back from crying.
It did little good. Her voice cracked as she spoke.
“Oh, her dear little face! She was as pale as a dying moon, I swear, and her breath could hardly be felt. Why, even her shadow was listless. I could not bear it. I could not bear it at all, to see her like that. I took her into my arms, calling her name softly. Eliza. Lovely, sweet Eliza…” Now the tears escaped, one single droplet from each eye. They trickled slowly from crevice to crevice on her wrinkled face. Her hands reached out involuntarily, worked by some electrical spasm. “Yet it wasn’t enough. It simply wasn’t enough, not as she grew older, and more in need of sustenance. And believe me, Mr Nyquist, we have tried every possible means, to allow Eliza’s survival. You see how it is, we are a strange family. We live for one purpose only.”
“And what is that?”
“To bring the dusk into being.”
She breathed out, allowing him to see the mist as it travelled from her body. It formed in a cloud and then dispersed around her in grey, threadlike, ever-searching strands, each one curling, drifting, dancing, adding its presence to the mist and fog that already floated around the ballroom. Her eyes clouded over as she told her story:
“For years and years and years and years and further, untold, wearisome, wretched years I have lived and breathed, and with every breath added to the dusk, from my first gasps as a baby, to my last, which cannot be that far away now. And my adopted son’s only true task in life was to provide me with a female heir to carry on my work. I attended the coming together of Dominic Kinkaid and Catherine Bale, their bond of flesh, the sacred rite, and I worked my spells over their heaving flesh and sent the mist into her body. And so it was done: the child of dusk created.”
Nyquist tried to concentrate; the air of the ballroom was too heavy, too sick w
ith the old woman’s vaporous energies.
“Alas, an intruder entered the womb as well. Her twin. Her sister. You see, I hadn’t planned for that. The intruder sucked half or more of the life from poor Eliza.”
Now he felt the urge to put his two hands tight around her neck and break her dried-out, fragile body into dust. But she spoke on and delivered the verdict as a judge might, at the end of a court case:
“And so it is, that Eleanor has to die, in order that Eliza might live.”
Nyquist stood up. Without pause he grabbed the edge of the table with both hands and pulled it from the alcove with such force that it broke away from his grip. It hit the ballroom floor with a clatter and spun away until it came to rest against the fallen chandelier. The lights sparkled a thousand different hues and the crystals shivered and chimed like the workings of a vast timepiece. The old lady remained as she was throughout all this, perched on her red velvet seat, unmoving. Nyquist reached over and picked up her bag. He searched the contents and found the key to room 225 among them.
She said, “You won’t find her, Mr Nyquist. I have hidden your dear Eleanor away, far away…”
And upon saying this, Aisha Kinkaid faded from his sight.
He stared at the empty seat, at the mist that quickly took her place.
Time froze.
He tried to move his hands forward, but he couldn’t manage it.
Even his lungs had stopped drawing breath. His heart was no longer beating.
Suspended…
And then she reappeared in the same place, seated in the same position, saying, “Yes, she’s safe. I have checked on her, on them both.”
He breathed again, and felt the surge of life quicken once more in his body. The shock trembled him. He gasped.
“They’re together, Mr Nyquist, the two sisters. They are preparing for the end.”
“Where… where did you go?”
Aisha smiled. “As you move through space, so I can move through time.”
His mind clicked back into motion. He worked it out. “She’s on a different timeline?”
“That’s right. One that you could never reach, and that she can never leave.”
Nyquist considered: here was a person who far outstripped Patrick Bale’s control of time, who manipulated it as an artist mixed paint on a canvas.
He said, “It’s you. You’re Quicksilver.”
She nodded. “Yes, I was the very first perpetrator, and then later my son Dominic took over. I taught him the art of stealing time. Of course, after he died, I had to revert to my old ways.” Aisha shuddered. “Only a short while ago I ventured into night and took a life.”
Nyquist recalled the news he had heard on the streets of Nocturna. “That was you? You killed a man?”
“I’m afraid so.” She shivered. “It very nearly destroyed me, to leave the dusklands.”
Nyquist remembered the shadow man’s words: Quicksilver awaits you. Finally, that promised meeting was taking place.
“But why?” he asked. “Why are you killing people?”
She dismissed the question. “Go! Go now. Find Eleanor, if you can. But know this, that no matter what you do, she will still give up her life.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“I believe it will. By your hand, or mine.”
He turned away across the dance floor.
Aisha Kinkaid called after him. “Only one thing matters, Mr Nyquist. Not myself, not my son Dominic, and not Eleanor. Only Eliza. Through her the dusk will live and grow and take over your precious city…”
At last he was out of earshot. He hurried back to reception – the desk was now empty – and walked on until he reached the elevators. He ascended in the tiny car up to the floor above where he followed the arrows towards his destination. His mind was troubled, but this was what he had to do.
By your hand, or mine… Did that mean that Aisha Kinkaid had knowledge of his own predicted role in Eleanor’s death?
Well no matter. Now it would end, one way or another.
The corridor ran around a large rectangular inner courtyard. Looking over the balcony he saw a swimming pool filled with fog rather than water, and a number of people sitting at a long table, each person working to strip and empty the seed pods of the kia flower. Bright orange seeds floated up to his level; Nyquist watched them sparkle in the trapped mist.
A little further along the corridor he came to room 225.
He was about to knock at the door when he paused.
He realised that he still had a choice, even now: he could still walk away, and keep on walking, hoping that he could forever outpace the feelings inside. But how far would he have to go? How many miles? And how many hours would have to pass? And even then, would he ever escape his destiny? Was it even a possibility?
But if he stayed, if he faced Eleanor, if he confronted the demon, whatever it turned out to be, he might yet defeat it. He might not have to kill her. He could force himself to be a good man, not a murderous man. Yes, he could do that.
A good man…
But Nyquist felt his fingers curling round to press into his palms, hard enough for his nails to draw blood. He glanced at his watch: it was still five past seven. The second hand was shivering, held in place by some spell, yet desperate to move on. And he felt the cruel mechanism of his own life at work, clicking away, his heart made of cogs and springs.
He knocked on the door.
There was no answer. He tried again with the same result. So he took the key and placed it in the lock and turned it, and the door opened.
It was dark inside. He found the light switch and clicked it on.
A perfectly normal hotel room was revealed. A double bed, expertly made up. A small desk, two chairs, a wardrobe. A bedside telephone. A clock on the wall, a mirror below it. Floral prints on the wall, a small drinks cabinet. The walls and bed linen in various shades of grey. It was all vaguely familiar from somewhere. He went to the window and looked out. Room 225 was situated at the rear of the building, looking down onto an empty street with a small cinema across the way. The cinema’s neon sign shone on his face.
He turned back to the room.
This was it, exactly, down to the last detail.
This was the place he had seen in the drug vision, the room where he would force the last breaths from the helpless, suffering body of Eleanor Bale.
Unknown and Cruel
He moved over to the mirror and stared at himself. Above his head, the wall clock hovered between one second and the next.
Those eyes.
He had seen them before, in the vision. The same look about them: cruel, selfish and cold. He couldn’t bear it.
The hands closed on the soft grey pillow, holding it down across the face of…
Nyquist turned away from his own reflection, his own thoughts.
He looked around the hotel room, searching for a clue, a sign, anything that would help him understand the circumstances that held him. A photograph album on the desk caught his attention. He leafed through the pages, taking in one image after another. The first few showed a baby in swaddling clothes; later photographs revealed a girl of some three or four years, even then bearing a likeness to Eleanor, around the eyes and mouth especially. But it wasn’t Eleanor. There was too much sadness in the expression; a sadness born not of daylight, and not of darkness, but of this godforsaken realm between. Even at this young age the girl had lived too strange a life, that was evident. Nyquist turned one photograph over to reveal a name: Elizabeth, age 4. Here she was, the missing part of the puzzle. All subsequent photographs showed the same girl, the earlier shots taken within the dusklands, her face and figure surrounded by the mists or bathed in moonlight, whilst all the later images showed the child sitting alone in this room, or in rooms similar to this one. Nyquist pictured the child being kept here, locked in against her will, for whatever purpose fate had in store for her. Until she reached the appointed age…
The final photograph show
ed Elizabeth Kinkaid at the age of twelve.
The resemblance to Eleanor was now complete. And she was now outside once more, released from captivity. Her mouth was open and a thin trail of mist came from her lips. The dusk came from her, she bore it into life, one breath at a time. Yet she still looked distraught, her skin stretched on the bones, pitted with marks. She was still suffering from the illness that threatened both her, and the dusk’s continuance. And now Nyquist understood a little of Aisha Kinkaid’s needs: this world, her world, whatever it might be, had to be kept alive by any means necessary.
And that meant Eleanor Kinkaid had to die.
She had stolen too much of her sister’s energy from the womb.
Eleanor was seen as a parasite. It was that simple.
Nyquist cursed his own part in all this. He’d broken the girl out of the Aeon Institute, released her back onto the path that would lead to her death. And now he waited for her in this room, as tightly bound here as Eliza had ever been. He waited for the clock to start ticking again, to release those final two minutes on their countdown towards seven minutes past the hour.
What would happen then?
Had he been cast as the murderer all along, the agency of Eleanor’s death? Perhaps Aisha had brought him here by her powers, through the drug, through her spell and charms.
It made sense. It made a terrible, horrific sense.
But still, he wasn’t sure…
And he vowed there and then to never harm the girl, to never touch her, to allow her to live on. He would kick the future in the teeth, he would break the future in two.
The neon sign’s light cast his shadow across the wall. He started to pace, to stalk the room like a caged animal, worrying at his confines. The mirror glimmered with his passing image but he would not look at himself. His hands itched at the palms and were slick with sweat and dried blood. His mind raced ahead of his body, seeking answers. There were none. Only the bad feelings crawling through him like a disease. It all hinged on the hidden events, yes, he knew that. Those stolen few minutes from the room on the edge of twilight, when Dominic Kinkaid had been killed. And as he thought of this, the mist almost cleared from his mind’s eye and he saw himself once again in that room of death, moving towards the bed as Kinkaid screamed…