“Nope, I can’t. I come here. I do my best. I leave. They pay me. It’s that simple. And I accept that what they pay me buys my silence and you can measure that against whatever ethical yardstick you have but it puts food on my kid’s table and I get to hide a lot of the income from my bitch ex-wife’s bitch lawyer.”
“What about everyone else that works here? That guy Ned for example?” She hoped that she hadn’t sounded his name suspiciously but she looked over her shoulder, suddenly conscious that he must be here somewhere, perhaps even watching her now, his dark eyes barely visible from the shadows. She shivered.
“Ned? I don’t even think that’s even his real name. Listen, so far as I’m aware, we all in the same boat here bobbing aimlessly on the same sea and there’s never a staff meeting, never a secret Santa and never a manager’s barbeque.”
“Then what about the patients?”
Omotoso sighed heavily, paused to look at her, hand on the key to the next room. He seemed to be measuring her up, deciding perhaps whether she was trustworthy enough to be told something, anything. She held his gaze anxiously.
“All the patients in Innsmouth exhibit the same type of symptoms,” he told her at last. “They all have complicated mental illnesses but even so their behaviour is abnormal. Their cognitive functions are limited.” Omotoso looked pained, like he wasn’t sure whether he ought to be talking about this. When he next spoke, it was in hushed tones and Alix had to lean forward to hear him properly. “You ever seen a patient have prolonged electroconvulsive therapy?” he asked. She looked at him sideways and thought about it.
“Electro-shock therapy?” she asked, puzzled. The image of Jack Nicolson’s smiling face popped in to her head. It didn’t help ease the tension. “Sure. Electrodes placed directly on to the skull give a shock designed to stimulate a mini-seizure. They used to use it to treat schizophrenia but it’s come a long way since then.”
“It’s pretty crude, still,” whispered Omotoso. “The seizures cause gliosi. It damages the central nervous system and kills off part of the brain. Afterwards, patients are left all zombielike, unable to communicate properly. They revert back to a sort of primal state. That’s just like the patients we have here. Except the effects don’t ever wear off. A large number – a disproportionate number – go on to develop alternative egos like Anwick. Usually, the alternative personalities are spiteful and nasty but it’s the same pattern each time.”
“And you have no idea what causes it and how to treat it?”
“I can’t even categorise their mental illness. I’m not given any information about any of them. The stuff I know about Anwick I got from BBC News.” Omotoso looked around nervously. They heard footsteps back down the corridor. He froze. Alix could feel the anxiety emanate from him and she suddenly felt a shiver down her spine. “I’m not a physician any more, doctor Franchot,” he said with even more intimacy. “I haven’t been for three years. I’m just a caretaker.”
The bolts shot back from their hinges with a loud clank and the door swung open. Omotoso motioned for Alix to go through but his eyes bored into her. What was he trying to tell her? She sensed that the conversation was over but Doctor Omotoso had a lot more to say. He ushered her through, the footsteps behind them getting louder.
“Why do you do it then, doctor?” she asked him as they made their way hurriedly down the next white corridor.
“Because I don’t have a choice,” he said. The anger in his voice was unmistakeable.
Chapter
42
She couldn’t get anything more out of Omotoso and they walked the remaining two or three minutes it took to get to Anwick’s cell in silence. She wanted to know more but something that she couldn’t quite fathom stopped her. It was something in the walls, or the air maybe. Something festered in this building; a dark energy gathered around her and it brought with it memories of things she had long forgotten, arguments she had had and things she had once treasured but lost, dreams filled with images of loss and abandonment. Spectres of the past that filled her with foreboding and sadness.
She felt angry at Ash and at herself for letting her imagination run away with her. What she had done was unfair and judgmental. There may well be a perfectly good explanation for Ash having her entire history on his hard drive. She just wasn’t seeing something. All she had to do was postpone her visit here and phoned him or gone to see him and he would have laughed and told her not to be so silly. But she didn’t, she bottled it up and stored it away and it may never come out.
The sound of the door slamming against the wall as Omotoso fumbled for the handle shook her thoughts away and it took flight like a flock of startled birds. She was left in a cold room staring at a familiar door and, thankfully, an empty desk.
“Where the Hell is he?” said Omotoso, frustrated.
“You mean Ned?”
“Yeah, useless Eastern European bastard.”
“Do you know much about him?” she asked cautiously.
“Zilch. I don’t know anything about nobody in the Twilight Zone. Why?”
“No reason. Just – you know – a bit odd, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I guess so. You ready?” He was standing by the security panel, poised to hit the buttons.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m ready.”
He punched the pad, and the door clicked. He pushed it open and bowed slightly as she passed him.
“Remember the bloody line this time,” he said to her as she passed.
The sound of the door locking behind her sent something fluttering through her stomach and up her gullet as she realised that she was now encased in the windowless prison yet again. Anwick sat hunched in the corner, arms pulled around his crossed legs, his lipless mouth charily forming silent words, perhaps of prayer, she thought. There was something very reptilian almost about the way he looked, she noticed. Tiny pin prick eyes darted around the room, skin so pale it was almost translucent. It was as if his time at Innsmouth had stripped him of those little qualities that define us as human, those small imperfections of the skin, laughter lines, crow’s feet. The things that separate us from animal.
Alix stayed close to the door uncertainly.
“Hello, professor.”
He came for her out of the depths of the shadows; a ghost from the darkness, crossing the short distance inhumanly fast until the cord snapped taut and his progress was halted as suddenly as it had begun. He pulled at the cord angrily but it held fast.
Alix’s heart had stopped working in that split second and she took a moment to breathe deeply after she realised he was still attached to the wall; bound to this cell like a foetus to the womb.
She glanced down at the thin yellow line that ran the length of the room across the floor and for a moment she closed her eyes as the image brought her back, standing at the platform of a train station with her father and her sister. A scene played out in her mind for a split second. She must have been no more than eight, Zara no more than five. A yellow line ran across the platform edge. She could hear her father’s voice shouting, panicked, desperate. She could see Zara peering over the edge of the platform to the track below and her father roughly hauling her back. How Zara had wailed and how her father had raged, and how Alix had merely wondered: what was over the platform edge that Zara had seen?
“Do you remember me?” she asked.
“Ah,” he said. “Yes. I do. The Host, come to visit me again. How lucky I am.” There was something sexless about the way Anwick spoke; a voice that was not quite high enough to be female but not low enough to be recognisable as male.
“Am I speaking to Azrael?” she asked.
“Who else?” As if it had been obvious.
“We didn’t get off to a very good start last time.”
“No,” he agreed. “I tried to use you to bargain my escape, for which I apologise. I hope you are not hurt.”
Not physically at least. “No. But let’s not do that again. I’d like to speak with Professor Eugene Anwick, Azra
el. Can you arrange that for me?”
“I’m afraid the professor is not taking visitors at the moment. He is unwell. In fact, were it not for me, he’d be dead.”
“Can you explain that to me? Why would the professor be dead?”
Anwick looked disappointed all of a sudden. “Oh, this is simply intolerable. You know nothing do you? I thought you were here to take me out of this rotting place and in fact you know nothing!” He folded his arms and looked at the floor mournfully.
“You could explain it to me,” she suggested.
“What would be the point? You’d never be able to take it all in. There’s no time, doctor Franchot. There’s no time.” He looked up at her. “This place, this hospital, is nothing more than the carpet under which all of the World’s dirty secrets are swept. And whilst I grow weak in this form the Witch Hunters take their conquest ever closer to victory. All is lost Alix Franchot. All is lost.”
“What happened to Katelyn, Azrael?”
“Katelyn?” Anwick looked up. There was a tear in his eye. “Yes, Katelyn. Is she still dead?”
“She’s dead, yes.”
“But is she still dead?” Anwick wasn’t mocking her, she could tell. There was genuine concern in the way he talked.
“She’s... she’s still dead.”
“And her body? Is her body safe?”
Alix swallowed hard. Anwick was staring at her intensely, staring at her in the way that a child might stare at a parent; earnestly, with complete trust and faith. But this was too much of a coincidence. Why would he ask about Katelyn’s body just after it had been taken from under the mortician’s nose?
“Is the body safe, Alix Franchot?”
Alix ran her hand across her mouth. She thought hard. He knew something. He knew about Katelyn’s body going missing.
“The body’s missing, Azrael.”
“Lilith didn’t keep it safe?”
“Who’s Lilith?”
Awick’s mouth curled around like he was about to say something but the movement began to distort and to Alix’s horror he began to let out a mournful low cry. It wasn’t a noise that Alix had ever heard before. It was barely human. The sound of utter devastation compressed into a whine that grew and grew in volume until it was all around her and she was drowning in it. She sank to the floor, her hands clasped over her ears trying to shut out the awful sound.
And then it was gone. As quickly as it had come. She looked up. Anwick was still staring at her.
“What about Megan?” he asked suddenly.
She didn’t answer at first. She felt breathless, the horrible noise was still replaying in her head. But then he was looking at her, waiting for an answer. Not a hint of the mournful despair on his face that she expected. Had it even been real?
“We’re looking for her,” she said at last. There seemed little point in lying to him.
“She’s gone too?”
“Yes.”
Anwick glanced down to Alix’s feet. His expression remained unchanged but he seemed deep in thought. She shuffled her weight from one side to the other. After a few moments he looked up at her sharply.
“The key to the coming of the Hollow One is the Harbinger. He will have Megan and he will have Katelyn. There may be still time to save the Ether but I must be freed from Anwick. He is of no use to me.”
“Did you say the Harbinger?” Alix thought back to Jacob Lightfoot’s diary. He had referred to the man who came to White Helmsley as the Harbinger. Suddenly there appeared another connection between the Helmsley church deaths and Megan and Katelyn Laicey. When he didn’t answer she repeated the question more urgently. “Who is he, Azrael? Who is the Harbinger?”
Anwick had straightened up and was looking at her- not through her, to the wall on the other side. He seemed transfixed by something.
“Azrael!” she said, trying to move her head in his eye-line to attract his attention. “The Harbinger. You mentioned something about someone called the Harbinger. Who is he?”
For the first time, Alix saw something glimmer in Anwick’s eyes. A spark of energy: distant and faint but nonetheless something that conveyed life to her. But his lips were pursed, his arms rigid, body stock-still. Fear, she thought. Like he’d seen a ghost.
“Azrael? Professor Anwick?” She looked behind her where he was staring but there was nothing there. So why did she also feel it? That disquiet we feel rumbling at the bottom of our chests when we are expecting something bad to happen. The early warning system kicking in.
“Professor?”
“The Harbinger.”
His murmur was barely audible.
“He’s here.”
Chapter 43
Harker threw her phone across the room. It shattered against the wall, three or four small components scattered across the marble floor of her apartment. She snatched her bag from the counter and slammed the front door shut behind her. The Mercedes was already waiting for her at the bottom of the path. The driver, knowing better than to question her instructions, slipped the car into drive and pulled away into the city traffic.
Her conversation with Baron had been short but she had been troubled by it. Troubled enough to break a three hundred pound phone.
“Amanda,” he had said. “I fear the killer has struck again.”
“What do you mean?”
“I attended a homicide this morning. A small terrace in Bristol. A man in his eighties was killed in his own home. I think it’s the same man who did Ephraim Speck. Maybe also the same guy that took Megan Laicey.”
“Why? Why do you say that?” Harker couldn’t hide her agitation.
“It’s Maurice’s idea but there are similarities.”
When he had finished telling her of what they had found, Harker had felt the blood drain from her face.
“What was his name?” she had demanded.
“Why is that important? Bricken. George. Amanda?” She hadn’t responded but stared instead at the picture on her wall. It was an ancient oil painting, faded and torn at the edges: the crucifixion of Jesus at Golgotha, the spear of destiny thrust into his side, Joseph of Arimathea kneeling penitently at the cross.
“Amanda?” Baron’s voice had brought her back with a jolt. “Did you know this man?”
“No,” she had said dismissively. “Was anything taken from the house?”
“The place is ransacked but I don’t know whether anything is gone.”
The phone had been broken into pieces before Baron could finish.
Now, as the car weaved its way through the London traffic, Harker chewed her tongue thoughtfully. Things were happening much quicker than she had thought possible. Baron would have a reason for suspecting the same killer, and he was rarely wrong. She had never heard of George Bricken, but she knew his death was somehow significant and it was possibly connected to a secret having fallen into the enemies’ hands.
The car pulled up outside a shabby hotel in Soho, the sort of place that wasn’t apparently open but also wasn’t apparently closed. A weathered sign above the door read G AND HOTEL SO O. Paint had peeled off rotting frames, plaster had fallen away to expose brickwork. When she got out, the Mercedes, looking in stark contrast to its surroundings, hastily pulled away.
The interior was hardly an improvement and Harker had to steady herself on the slanted floor before marching to the reception which was represented by a serving hatch in the wall. She could see straight through to a messy office in which sat a small man, no more than four feet tall, wearing a tweed suit complete with waistcoat and patches. He was glued to a portable TV. He had long, wiry grey hair which sprouted irregularly from a perfectly round scalp, the centrepiece of which was a long handle-bar moustache which he played with absentmindedly between his little, stubby fingers. From the sounds coming from the TV, he appeared to be watching two French men fuck each other.
“Amanda Harker,” he said, not taking his eyes off the screen. “Ain’t seen you in a while, miss.”
“Busy times,
Bill. The key?”
Bill waited for one of the Frenchmen to climax before taking a small key from around his neck and offering it to her.
“Password?” he asked. “For old time’s sake.”
“You mock me.”
Bill raised an eyebrow, withdrew the key enough so it was out of her reach.
“No life on the Ether is sacred. All things belong to Cronos,” she said resentfully.
Satisfied, he leaned forward. Harker took the key and headed for the lift at the back of the room. She had to prise back an iron grate to get in but the mechanism didn’t give her much difficulty. She pressed the button marked B; the old drives whirred, the lift juddered for a moment and then descended two floors down.
Once at the bottom, the grate was opened by another small man who looked identical to Bill. Same tweed suit, same wiry hair, same long, slightly greasy looking moustache.
“Hello Henry,” said Harker.
“That’s Henry,” said Bill irritably, pointing upwards. “I’m Bill.”
“I’m sorry,” said Harker, although in truth she found Bill and Henry’s propensity to wear the same clothes but habitually swop roles nothing short of infuriating.
“Come to see the Steward ‘ave we?” Harker stuck her nose up at the grating sound of Bill’s feigned cockney accent.
“Must you speak in that loathsome manner?”
“Just blendin’ in, miss,” he said unpleasantly. “Steward ain’t seein’ no one today. E’s got backache.”
Harker looked at the little man indignantly; the puffiness around his eyes said he’d been smoking again, no doubt over indulging on the many mind altering drugs this World had to offer.
“You look unwell, Bill,” she observed.
“Enjoyin’ my retirement is all, miss. Now, as I say, the Steward-”
She cut him off with: “The Steward will suffer my counsel. There’s a war about to start, Bill, and the time for sitting on our arses is at an end. The Harbinger senses our hesitancy and may well have solved his most Byzantine problem. In all likelihood, the Portal is open and all that remains is to find a suitable Vessel for Sin to plunder the Ether and you say the Steward - the Necromire’s ambassador here in this shithole of a world - has backache. Listen, when the Change comes do you think He will have space on his Canvas for fat dwarfs like you with appalling dress sense to waste their days getting high and watching French pornography? The-”
Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1) Page 19