The Nature of Balance

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The Nature of Balance Page 26

by Tim Lebbon


  “I can’t drive.”

  “Don’t fuck with me.”

  Mary led Peer across the yard, Spike’s nose tapping against her leg as it followed close behind. She had not picked up food, drink, maps or any other supplies. She had walked them both into the yard without checking for any danger. She was not even trying to be quiet about it.

  “You’re mad,” Peer said.

  Mary giggled. “What’s mad? Falling asleep and breaking your neck?”

  They reached Holly’s Mini. Mary waited until Peer had strapped herself into the driver’s seat before motioning Spike onto her lap. He sat very still; so did Peer.

  “Rip your face off,” Mary said gleefully, knowing that soon it would be true. When the time was right.

  Then Fay would welcome her with open arms.

  “Let’s go, James,” Mary said, jumping into the passenger seat, “and don’t spare the horses.” She laughed, realising the irony of her words and relishing it.

  “I can hardly steer with this dog on my lap,” Peer said.

  “Try.” Mary giggled again.

  Peer stared the engine and eased the car around in a tight circle. She was aware of movement in an upstairs window of the farmhouse, and she saw Mary glancing up as well.

  “Oh, the lovers have noticed us,” Mary said. “How nice.” She gave them a little wave, smiling sweetly. “Put your foot down.”

  There was no longer movement in the window. They must be coming down the stairs. Peer stalled the car.

  Mary grabbed her throat. “Start it again and drive us away. One more trick and Spike will have you. Then I will.” She kept her hand around Peer’s throat, allowing her fingers to sink into the skin with a little more pressure than was really needed. Peer grimaced and started the car again.

  The farmhouse door opened and Paul stood there in jeans and unbuttoned shirt. He had a shotgun cradled in one arm, still broken. Holly appeared behind him, and Gerald’s pale face materialised at another upstairs window. Paul shouted something, but his words were lost in the screech of the labouring starter motor.

  Peer drove slowly towards the lane, steering around the tattered body of the bull, trying not to look at the birds feasting on purple meat and staring dismissively at the car. She thought about stopping; about how long it would take Paul to reach the car if she did so; how much damage Spike would do to her face in the few seconds it took him to cross the yard, raise his gun and blow the hound away. The chances did not balance in her favour, she knew that. But she also knew that she was in the car with a mad woman. The chances that way were worse.

  A flock of birds parted from a tree next to the barn like leaves coming to life. They streamed through the air, passing close over the roof of the Mini and causing Mary to duck involuntarily. Peer sat still. They would not harm her, just as the bull had not. She was not really here for them, just as sometimes she did not even feel here herself. All this was happening to someone else, someone she no longer knew that well. She had changed.

  In the rear view mirror she saw the birds collide with Paul and Holly in the doorway. Almost as if they had been sent here, for this purpose, at this time.

  “Now drive!” Mary shouted.

  Spike growled. His breath stank.

  Peer drove into the lane, glancing in the mirror, seeing the farmhouse door slam shut on light feathered bodies. She hoped that they were all right in there.

  “Where to?” she asked.

  Mary looked at her blankly. Then she glanced through the windscreen at the lane curving its way to the main road ahead. She had no idea where they were going. “Turn left at the end,” she said. “Then I’ll tell you as and when to turn. You just drive. And don’t mind Spike.” She scratched the dog behind his ear and he groaned in appreciation. “He’s a good dog really.”

  Peer glanced down at the hound. Then she stared at him. For the first time, he averted his eyes, and she realised there and then that, like the bull in the farmyard, he would never attack her. But she kept the advantage to herself.

  28. The Lidless

  The woman stopped several feet away, ignorant of the thorns stabbing bloody pearls into her bare legs. She wore a short summer dress, had long auburn hair and graceful limbs, and she was quite mad. Her eyelids had been sliced off and she glared at Blane with boiled-egg eyeballs, her pupils ridiculously small in the expanse of glittery white. Tears of blood ran across the surface of her eyes from the unhealed wounds. Her grin was a grimace. She must have been in immense pain.

  “Don’t your eyes hurt?” Blane asked.

  “Pain is better than sleep,” the woman said. She had a deep voice, which some men would call husky, and she must have once been beautiful. The others stood behind the woman, perhaps deferring to her because of this erstwhile beauty. They all fixed Blane with obligatory stares, regarding him maniacally through masks of dried and drying blood.

  “You’re Blane,” the woman said neutrally. “I’m Gabrielle. We’re the lidless.”

  “Where is she?” Blane asked, horrified but equally excited at the idea that the woman was nearby. All that he could see suddenly seemed relevant, but he did not know why. There were huge secrets straining at the stitches of reality, blatantly laid out for his perusal in the lie of the land and the twisted thing which nature had become, but he could translate it into nothing except death and corruption. He needed someone else to help him see what was staring him in the face, and perhaps had been for many years. His memories awaited their final revival.

  Gabrielle was still. Blane could not hold eye contact for more than a few seconds. He glanced around at the others, all of them young, all possessed of a handsomeness now despoiled by the brutal wounding they had suffered. The women wore dresses, the men wore jeans and shirts, as if dressed for a visit to an informal restaurant. Looking closer he could see their cheeks twitching as muscles ached to cleanse their eyes. He could barely imagine the pain they must be in.

  “Can you still see?” he asked.

  “Who said that?” one of the men said, laughing harshly. A couple of the others smiled pained smiles, but Gabrielle’s expression did not change.

  “Gabrielle,” Blane said, “I’m looking for someone. You know my name, and so does the person I’m looking for, so I know you know where she is. She knows what’s happening-”

  “Of course she does,” Gabrielle said enthusiastically. “She is the Queen of it all. She caused it. She’s the artist. Somewhat abstract, I’ll grant you, but genius nonetheless. Come with me.”

  Blane followed Gabrielle, while the others followed him. He looked down at the ground, trying to step between plants rather than through them, desperate to not see the occasional grey things slithering beneath the shrubs. What Gabrielle had said should have shocked him, he thought, or at least comforted him and confirmed his suspicions. But given voice, it no longer rang true. There was so much more to what was going on than simply the woman. So much more. If only he could see it.

  “Why did you do this to yourselves?” he said, but the answer was obvious. Gabrielle seemed to know that; she did not respond.

  They headed towards the garage in the corner of the square and took a path next to it. It led in between the buildings, curving around odd-shaped gardens and ducking under old trees. “How many of you are there?” Blane asked.

  “Fifty. We few are the only ones who haven’t gone mad.”

  Blane looked at Gabrielle’s back. From behind, with her mutilated face out of sight, she was indeed beautiful. He tried to liken her to the strange woman he had seen in the field outside Rayburn, but he could draw no real parallel. “Why are you helping her? You said she caused this. All the terrible things that have happened. So why help her?”

  Gabrielle answered without turning. “You should see what she can do! She’s in control, and she’s the only one now. We need someone in control, for when the real changes come. That’s why she welcomed us when she found us.”

  “You did this thing to yourselves?” Blane aske
d, aghast. He had been imagining that the woman had forced these people to slice their eyelids away.

  “Of course. Survival of the fittest now, Blane. Those who do not sleep are the fittest, by default. Because they live. Everyone else dies, they all die, and in the end there will be only a few left. We … I, intend to be one of those few. At her side. Working with Fay.”

  “Fay.” He whispered the name and it was like acid on his tongue, sweet yet deadly. It hit him like a punch to the heart. Fay. The fairy. He tried to ally the name with the woman he had seen in the field, and it fit in some peculiar, depraved way. She was as far from the fairy of myth than anyone could be, and yet the description seemed to echo what she had done and was still doing. A fairy gone bad. Rebelling against the land having shed her wings, or had them shorn.

  “You were beautiful once,” Blane said, not knowing why he said it. To appeal to her vanity? Ask her, subtly, to shift to his side, for when he really needed her?

  Gabrielle stopped and turned around. They were under a tree, and the sun came through and speckled her skin like pustules waiting to burst. “What’s beauty?” she said bitterly. “Was I beautiful because men wanted to fuck me? Or is she beautiful because she has survived, and is turning things to her own way? It’s in the eye of the beholder.”

  “And you behold everything,” Blane said, half question, half bitter statement.

  Gabrielle smiled. Her wounds were bleeding again. “I see everything through blood. Quite apt for these times, don’t you think?” She turned and continued along the winding, overgrown path.

  Things skittered out of their way; small grey shapes like frogs with six legs and fur. Plants squirmed at their presence, withdrawing back through the hedge like the tentacles of some great beast. Gabrielle seemed not to notice.

  “Did you lose someone?” Blane asked. “Fay caused all this, you say. Oh, how clever of her. Did you lose someone? Did someone spill their blood across you as you lay awake?”

  Gabrielle paused, but did not turn around. She kicked idly at a shape on the ground, a dead magpie with a watch in its mouth, the watch still on a severed wrist. Maggots the size of peanuts were glutted on its flesh. “That was in the past,” she said, and walked on.

  They proceeded in silence. Fay, Blane thought. The name was so misleading, yet so suited to the woman he had seen. The light laughter that had been haunting him since seeing the deer die in the woods could have come from a Fay, yet he could barely associate it with the Fay he was going to meet now. Perhaps, somewhere in his past, there was a different version of the same woman. Someone who could laugh sweetly, and mean it. Someone who did not love and court death the way this woman seemed to.

  Now that he knew her name, perhaps he would recognise her when they met.

  After watching Blane cross the stone bridge and enter the village, Fay moved through the fields and placed herself just where she wanted to meet him. Here she would reveal all. Here she would cough up the secrets she had been harbouring for so long, and watch his face drop, and see the impact of cruel realisation tear him to pieces.

  She did not want to hurt him. Really, she did not. But why the fuck should she suffer all alone?

  The building was old and had been abandoned for years, but it still stank of death. Its purpose was slaughter and that had seemed to imbue it with a killing air, a haze of murder coating all its surfaces with memories of violent, incessant death. Fay imagined the stains on the concrete floor to be spilled blood because that pleased her.

  She had seen plenty of blood in the last couple of days, like the gorging at the end of a long, slow feast. Her feast had lasted for ten years, and the nibbles she had taken during that time still lay in shallow graves or under indifferent gravestones around the world. There were plenty of bodies to bury now, but few left to bury them. Sometimes, Fay craved the hot tang of blood at her lips, but now she was sure that it would no longer serve any purpose. In the past it had simply been an affectation, not a necessity. The panicked trickle of it down her throat pleased her, because of where it came from. How often she had dreamt of allowing Blane’s own into her system.

  But what purpose was there in replacing same with same?

  She was tired from her rush around the village. She was not as strong as she had once been. Blane must be half way through by now, approaching the square and that fool Gabrielle who called herself lidless. Brainless, more like, but she served a purpose. Just like Mary.

  There were still some chains bolted to the wall, several hanging from the ceiling. The hooks had long since gone or been stolen, but Fay grabbed a fat metal link in each hand and took some of the weight off her legs: slumped like an offering of meat. She let go of the chains and leant against the wall: casual and in control. She sank to the floor and sat on one of the worst stained areas, running her hands across the gritty old concrete. She waited there, one hand on each bony knee: contemplative and concerned.

  Like a schoolgirl about to meet her first date, Fay tried to decide how to greet Blane into the slaughterhouse. The thing in her stomach shifted in anticipation of its imminent revelation. She coughed, and felt the tint of rank blood on her tongue.

  Minutes later, she heard footsteps.

  Then she felt Blane thinking of her, and she cringed in terror at the unconscious authority of his thoughts.

  The door slid open on rusty runners.

  “Brother,” she said.

  29. Mother’s Intuition

  Soon after the Mini left the farmyard, the birds that had made it through the door settled down. Some perched on high plate shelves and the picture rail, others sat on the stone floor, puffing ruffled feathers as if having just finished a long migration. Paul and Holly stared at each other wide-eyed, memories of the attack in the service station all too fresh. Their wounds ached with the recollection of probing beaks and angry claws.

  Gerald blundered downstairs, bare feet slapping on threadbare carpet. “What the bloody hell?” he asked.

  “Mary’s taken Peer,” Holly said tonelessly, as if to convince herself.

  “Who?” Gerald stared at the birds lining his picture rail and shelves like animated Toby jugs: sparrows, tits, siskins, finches of all sorts and several tail-wagging wrens. His shirt was buttoned unevenly. He looked older than he had earlier, his hair greyer, his eyes more pale.

  “What do we do?” Holly asked. She looked at Paul. Her look was different from before they had made love. Her cheeks were still flushed with the effort of not making a noise.

  “I don’t like these birds in here,” Paul said. “Let’s try to shoo them out.” They sat staring at him. Their heads moved with rapid jerks, like a bad stop-motion animation.

  “Don’t open the door again,” Holly said. “Please. We don’t know what will come in next. Let’s just wait here until it’s all over. Just wait …”

  Paul went to speak, but held back. He knew that she knew it was never going to be all over. There must be survivors everywhere, begging phone lines for rescue, huddled in small groups trying to decide what to do, arguing about who was in charge, making friends, losing lovers. All waiting for a rescue that would never come.

  He cradled the shotgun in the crook of his elbow so that the barrel pointed at the floor. He thought briefly about firing at the birds, but how many could he kill with two shots? Five? Leaving dozens more agitated and angered, beaks sharp and quick. Some of them had changed, too. A blue-tit had turned green. A woodpecker had three beaks. A sparrow had bulging pustules either side of its beak. They reminded Paul of poison sacs on a snake.

  “Gerald,” he said, “can we go into the other room? I think we need to shut the door to this one and stay out. I don’t know how long-”

  “Not the other room,” Gerald said, “nope, I can’t have strangers in there. Patty wouldn’t like it. Haven’t dusted in there for months, she’d never be having with that.”

  “Who’s Patty, Gerald?” Holly asked.

  “Patty. My wife. Patty.”

  Holly g
lanced at Paul but he shook his head slightly.

  “Upstairs, then,” Paul said. “Is there any way out of the house from upstairs?”

  “No doors upstairs,” Gerald said, as if explaining to a small child.

  “A window onto a roof,” Paul said. “Anything. Gerald, we have to get away from this room and leave ourselves a way out of the house. Holly, bag up a bit of food from the table. I’ll get some stuff from the fridge. Say if you see our feathered friends doing something different.”

  “That’s all I have seen lately,” she said. There was a carrier bag already half-full on the table, and she only had to throw in a loaf of bread to fill it. She tied the handles together and started filling another. She tried to turn her attention away from the birds but they were always at the periphery, watching her from the shadowed ceiling, emotionless and full of menace. They were silent, too. Somehow that was worse.

  Paul went to the fridge and took out milk, cheese and a chunk of ham. He was shaking and confused, and he wanted more than anything to curl up and go to sleep. Tiredness was held at bay for now by the adrenaline flooding his system, but soon he would come down with a crash. How long did they have left? he kept thinking. How long before they all had to sleep? He’d survived his dreams once, he was certain he would not be so lucky a second time. The terrible idea came that they were all living on borrowed time anyway, and escaping, evading and running from death was only delaying the inevitable outcome of these dreadful couple of days. Wherever Blane had gone he was obviously losing it, involved in some strange personal fantasy that bled to those around him via his beliefs and his peculiar, indefinable charisma. He would not help them. Paul had already begun to doubt that they would ever see him again. Still, he had made a promise. They would go to meet Blane, however inconceivable it was that he would make it.

 

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