For what it’s worth, I’m sorry Alix. Things aren’t ever going to be the same for either of us now. How curious that at her most desperate, she should take comfort from the sound of the voice in her head but the words were spoken so sensitively, like an old friend putting an arm round her shoulder. Like her mother telling her everything would be okay.
The whir of an electronic bolt made her look up suddenly and for a moment she forgot her sorrow. The mechanics kicked in and shortly the door swung open. Alix sat bolt upright, then quickly scrambled to her feet. Perhaps it was Omotoso. Perhaps this nightmare would end. She walked forward but was jolted back by the cord attached to the wall.
“Hello?” she said weakly. There was no reply. Just the sound of someone clumsily dashing something against the door; a metallic sound, clanking. Then a trolley appeared in the doorway, like a service trolley. Were they bringing her food? The trolley was wedged in the doorway, holding it open and she could hear murmurings on the other side. Singing. Was someone singing? She strained to hear, held her breath, wished the sound of the blood rushing past her ears wasn’t so bloody loud.
There was someone definitely on the other side of the door singing She’ll be Coming Round the Mountain When She Comes.
In a Russian accent.
Alix swallowed hard, fumbled for the cord around her waist, felt the ridges digging into her. How was it secured to her? She needed to release it, quickly. Panic started to build. She couldn’t get her shaking fingers to work properly. She cursed under her breath as she felt how tightly the cord was attached; there just didn’t seem to be any clear way that it was fastened. It was just part of the orange tunic, part of her.
More banging as the trolley bashed against the sides of walls. There seemed to be some problem fitting it through the doorway. She began to pull the cord out from the wall furiously but it was no use.
“Fuck!”
Alix, breath through your nose. You’re taking on too much oxygen, said the voice in her head as clear as day.
“Piss off!” she shouted back.
The voice was calm. At least the mad part of her was calm. That was good.
Ned had to stoop slightly to fit under the doorway. His massive body filled it almost entirely and, when he finally managed to bash the trolley through, the cell seemed just that little bit smaller. He wore scrubs and a surgical mask but it was unmistakably the same man that she had met on her first visit to Innsmouth, the same man seen at the hospital on the CCTV outside the lift to where Katelyn’s body was taken, the same extraordinary height. The same dark eyes.
“She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes-” he sang quietly as he busied himself closing the door to the cell and pushing the trolley up to the far wall before turning to her.
“N- Ned,” she stammered. “It’s me. Doctor Franchot. I was here the other day. Do- Do you remember me?”
He ignored her, turned back to the trolley so that his back was to her, humming the same tune over and over again.
“Ned?” she said hopelessly.
I don’t think he’s here to offer room service, said the voice in her head.
“Shut up!” she screamed, clasping her hands over her ears and falling to the floor. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”
There was the horrible sound of metal scraping against metal, the sound of instruments on a tray. He seemed to pick one up and study it for a while before replacing it.
I always find She’ll be Coming Round the Mountain When She Comes a bit of a sad tune, said the voice in her head. Did you know it’s a derivation of the Negro spiritualist tune called When the Chariot Comes, which is a reference to the end of the world?
“No,” she said weakly. “I didn’t know that.”
I know that you people have massive annoyance about invading mental parasites who say, “I told you so” – I learnt that from Anwick – but I have been saying you really need to get out of here for some time now.
After a short while examining each instrument from the tray, Ned turned to face her. Beneath the mask, she saw his cheek muscles manipulate into a broad, sickening grin. She leaned up against the wall for support, pulled some of the cord out a little to give her some room to move, adrenaline flooded through her as her body prepared for fight or flight but in truth she knew that only the former was a genuine option.
“What do you want?” she croaked.
“I apologise for inconvenience, good doctor, but since you may be staying with us for some time it may be necessary to prepare you.”
“Prepare me?”
“Yes. You must be prepared.”
He held her gaze for a short while before picking up something silver from the tray. A tool of sorts, pliers maybe.
Then it hit her. Like a tidal wave.
Anwick had said they had removed his teeth and nails.
“No,” she wheezed, scrambled against the wall, frantically pulling the cord. “No!”
He advanced on her quickly, trapping her in the corner with ease and pulling her by the hair to the middle of the room, the horrible noise of the cord rubbing against the pulley as she was pushed to the floor. She screamed, lashed out with her hand but he caught it neatly and cast it aside with unnatural strength.
You’re going to need my help if you want to keep your teeth, Alix, said the voice.
She struggled but it was useless. Ned had leverage over her and he used it to twist her arm upwards and round, restricting her movement. Crushing pain ripped down her arm. It felt like another inch and her arm would snap off and she quickly realised she couldn’t even wriggle without it being agony. He stood over her and with his free hand squeezed hers hard, so hard that her fingers quickly engorged and reddened.
“Get the fuck off me!”
“Please, Doctor Franchot, this will be over quickly if you keep still.” He said ‘please’, but there was no hint in the tone of voice that he had any desire for this to really be over quickly.
Any time you want me to step in, you let me know, Alix. The voice seemed so calm in all the commotion.
He took his other hand off her arm but she was still locked in place. She felt her body sway to the right as he leaned to pick up the tongs from the tray. In her panic she pulled the other way. Pain swept up her arm. She swallowed back the vomit, let out a cry, tears of rage rolled down her face as she seethed and spat at her aggressor but she knew he had her.
Surely you’re not going to let him do this, Alix, said the voice. Just say the word. Believe. Believe in me and this will stop.
Alix hated her nails. As much as she tried when she was younger to groom them, manicure them, grow them, they never seemed strong enough to last very long. They snapped so easily. Nail polish was a fad. Nail polish remover was more dangerous than it was helpful. How many times had she looked at her hands and thought how much easier life would be without them? Recently, she had forgotten about doing anything with them at all and they looked haphazardly misshapen and unloved.
But right now, they were the most precious thing to her in the whole world.
She felt his hot breath caressing her neck, felt his eyes down her top as it fell open slightly, felt his sweat run down her face, felt his body stiffen suddenly, his heart rate increase.
“This will be quick,” he told her.
“What did you do to me?” she seethed. Her clothes were gone. Her underwear gone. Fuck, what did he do to her?
She heard the horrible noise of his grunt in her ear, the noise of gratification, of dominance. Knew how he was enjoying the moment, taking her in, reeling in her helplessness.
There was nothing left.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Help me.”
The change was like nothing Alix had ever experienced before. It started in her stomach, an energy waking within her, like a light suddenly switching on. It spread out across her midriff, embroidering itself into her body, weaving itself into her limbs, down her legs, up her arms; a translucent second skin growing over the first. She felt
light and agile, she felt empowered. She felt as though what was around was now part of her, that she was no longer just a person in a room: she was the room, and the building beyond it and the sky above it. She was whatever she needed to be to survive. The world no longer constrained her and what was previously impossible was now ordinary. She felt as though, if she needed to, she could re-write the laws of physics.
But there were other feelings. Deeper, more intimate feelings. A feeling that her body was no longer exclusively her own, that her mind had merged with something else. Like she was not completely in control.
Something caught her eye. The glint of metal in light and she remembered the giant man towering over her, crushing her hand and placing a pair of tongues around her finger nail. She even felt the nail start to bend as the tongues were squeezed together and a spark of pain run down her arm into her shoulder as the edge of the nail snapped away from her finger. It tingled, like an electric shock. One short, sharp tug and the nail would come away as easily as a Velcro strip. But there was an odd stillness in the air despite her predicament. The loudest sound was that of the blood rushing past her ears and even the noise of the giant man lifting up from the floor, high above her head, and crashing against the concrete wall, was somehow muffled and distant.
She stared at him, blinking in the light of the room. He lay awkwardly screwed up in a ball on the opposite side of the room, a little blood trickling from his mouth. He was conscious, barely, heart beating, but dazed and winded. What the Hell happened?
Then the cord binding her to the wall. She examined it. How fragile it was, how breakable. Like old twine. She tugged at the leather round her waist and it tore easily. She wondered why she had ever been worried about it in the first place. It fell to the floor by her feet and she kicked it against the wall out of the way and then she realised what it was that she had first missed, that feeling she couldn’t quite place. She felt awake. Unequivocally awake. Had everything that had happened to her before this time been a dream or an illusion? Perhaps this was what it is like to wake up after a long coma, to see the world through real eyes for the first time, to taste real tastes and to feel real sensations. It felt like previously the world that she lived in had been shrouded in an opaque veil, so that everything was virtually determinable but the world’s true image was always just slightly obscured and out of view. Now that veil had been lifted and she saw things as they truly were for the first time. She saw every imperfection on the walls around her, every groove, every hairline crack. She saw the door leading out the centre of Innsmouth, saw its locks and various internal mechanisms. But it was ajar. Easy to open. The world was so simple now that she could see it properly. And from deep inside her head she heard the familiar voice again of the entity that called itself Azrael, sitting on her mind, symbiotically looking at what she saw through the same eyes.
Welcome to the real world, Alix. Open the door and walk out of here. I have a lot to explain to you.
Chapter
51
Ash replaced the phone in his pocket. Answer message again. Why wasn’t she picking up?
He was sitting at home, not really having much of a desire to go to work just yet. His desk was a mess, more messy than usual. Three weeks of paperwork untouched. A station record. He was losing track of the number of problems he had to resolve: Eph Speck crucified in his own home, Katelyn’s body taken, Megan kidnapped, a whole bunch of dead people in a church and now Alix had gone AWOL. And three weeks worth of untouched paperwork.
He had no leads save for the connection between the guy who worked at Innsmouth who Alix had recognised as being on the CCTV footage at the hospital where Katelyn was taken. It might have been nothing at all. The picture was lousy and she could easily have been mistaken but he had given the image to Keera to follow up on and emailed Harker to see if he could get access to the employee records at Innsmouth. It was bloody ridiculous that he didn’t have access to that information with so many bodies and two missing children.
He buried his head in his hands, tried to clear his mind. Think. What was going on?
The doorbell shook him from the depths of his thoughts. He pulled the curtain back a little and stared outside, saw the back of a van outside his front porch and frowned. Who was calling at this hour and why did they bring a van? He tucked his shirt into his trousers, did up the last few buttons, and went to open the door.
Penny stood at the door beaming oddly at him. Behind her, men were unloading furniture draped in plastic sheets.
“Through here?” one of them shouted.
“Yes!” Penny called back, waving the removal men through the front gate. They ambled past her, two of them lugging what was apparently a sofa.
“Penny,” said Ash, “what- what the Hell is this?”
“New furniture for you, sweetheart,” she said, running up the steps behind the removal men and gently caressing his cheek before following them through to his hallway.
“The lounge is at the back,” she instructed. “Through there.”
“But I didn’t order any new furniture. I don’t need any new furniture,” he protested. “Why have you done this?”
“Your old stuff was pretty crappy, Asher. Out with the old and in with the new, as they say.” She smiled. There was too much gum when she smiled, he thought. That was perhaps where he had gone wrong in the first place. Ignoring the gum-to-tooth ratio.
“Down here?” one of the burly removal men asked, while standing in his lounge, eyeing up his old sofa. He cut Penny off quickly.
“No, actually,” he said. “Actually, I didn’t order any of this stuff.”
The removal man looked at him blankly, obviously not used to being given anything other than instructions about where to put things and where to take things. He studied the paperwork in his back pocket.
“You Mr Fielding?”
“Yes, but-”
“Then this is yours. You want us to take away the old stuff?”
“No, there’s been a mistake. Penny! Tell them I didn’t order this.”
“You’re card end in four five two five?”
“Yeah, how-”
“You paid for it.”
He turned to Penny angrily. “You paid for this on my card? How did you get my card details?”
“We’re moving in together aren’t we?” she shrugged her shoulders. “What’s yours is mine.”
“No, that’s not how it works-”
“Oh, Asher, for God’s sake,” she exclaimed, slamming her fist on the new sofa to the alarm of the removal men who took a step back from her like she was radioactive or something. “I’m trying, Asher, I really am. Your house hasn’t been revamped in years and this stuff is fucking good. I mean real Italian leather and everything in a double discount sale and there are cup holders. Two of them. One for you and one for me.”
Ash stood bewildered, mouth open, tired eyes trying to take everything in. He didn’t have time for this. He made a few calculations. The sofa probably cost a couple of grand. It was an okay colour and there were cup holders. If it really was in a double discount sale then it might have only been twelve hundred. Would he pay twelve hundred right now to end this circus and get back on to catching bad guys and finding a missing child?
But then again she knew that. She knew he was in the middle of something big. That’s why she had chosen now to turn up at his house with a new sofa. Attention. He wasn’t even sure what the status of their relationship was. He had kind of hoped if he wished hard enough she would just disappear but that now seemed like quite a poorly thought out plan.
He made his decision.
“Listen,” he said to her. “Take the damn sofa, put the new one there, leave my house. We’ll talk about this later.”
He started to walk away but she grabbed at his arm.
“Asher! At least try it first!” He pulled away from her, kept on walking, not resolving the problem, just burying it deeper. When he got to the car his phone rang. He hoped it was Alix but
it wasn’t.
“Ash,” said Baron. “You need to come and see this.”
Chapter 52
The door to Anwick’s cell had been left slightly ajar and she was able to prise it open and let herself out. She closed it behind her. It wasn’t clear how badly injured Ned was. He wasn’t going to be getting up quickly but that wasn’t a reason to dawdle around and admire the patchy paintwork either.
Alix ran down the long, wide corridor that led from Anwick’s cell towards the end door which she recalled led to the way out. As she ran, she counted the doors, made sure there weren’t nine. That way she knew she wasn’t dreaming. Above her, a fluorescent light flickered intermittently. There was a network of exposed pipes and cables hanging overhead, dangling precariously in places. It reminded her of one of the scenes from Alien. Everything seemed so unfinished; a whole institute built on an archaic foundation thrown together cheaply and quickly.
By the time she reached the end door she knew she wasn’t dreaming. The feeling she had experienced in Anwick’s cell that had preceded her escape (or precipitated it, she wasn’t sure which) had subsided. Her head throbbed, colours had returned to normal, her hearing had desensitised. The veil once again covered the world.
Take the door to your left, said the voice inside her head. She clenched her teeth, desperate for whatever it was to stop, for the madness to rescind. But the voice was still there, as clear and independent from her thoughts as ever. She thought about it. The door in front of her led to the main entrance. She knew that. She’d been through it before. She had no idea where the door to the left went. She’d never been down there. She’d spent considerable time in Innsmouth now and so far she hadn’t seen one helpful sign saying EXIT or even TOILETS. Just a jumble of meaningless numbers to represent different corridors and different sections.
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