by Shaun Allan
I saw it all, and not with a psychic sense of foreboding where I had a Final Destination style vision wash over me, more with a sick sense of inevitability. I was sure that the star players of this show would prefer to stay un-credited, though the cameras would still roll and nothing would be left on the cutting room floor to lower the certificate from 18 to U or even 13A.
The, gentle at first, urges and requests.
The softly spoken protests.
The gradual build up from friendliness to force.
The muted cries. The acquiescence. The tears and then the drugs that would wipe it away like a jay cloth on a spill on a kitchen worktop.
And the feeling of smug superiority that beat down the murmurings of guilt like Goliath turning to David and saying 'Is that all you've got?' before raising his mighty foot and stamping it down on his opponent's head.
I wanted Jersey then. Not in the disgusting way he wanted Caroline. I wanted him in the way David wanted Goliath. In the way I wanted the boy child-killing racer. I knew, in the way I know things, about all the Carolines that had gone before. And the Benny's too. And I knew, in the way I know things that I shouldn't and wish I couldn't, that Dr. Connors knew too.
I wanted Jersey.
I wanted Jersey dead.
I could stop him. I could step from the shadows and tap him on the shoulder.
"Put the girl down, Jersey. You don't want to do that, do you?"
"Sin! How you doing buddy? The girl? Sure, no problem. Sorry, got a bit carried away there. Won't happen again."
I could leap on him, pulling him back, forcing him to the ground as he would Caroline, smashing his face, breaking his neck the way Steven Seagal and countless other action heroes had taught me. Or I could sneak away, ignoring the drama playing out and Caroline's plight. I could carry on with my planless plan and stop Connors, save myself and save the world.
Or 'D' - none of the above.
It was there before I knew it. The feeling. Creeping out of me like spiders from a dead man's mouth. And nothing like that. An EMP, an electro-magnetic pulse that would shut down all the circuits and generators that sparked and chugged in Jersey's dark heart and darker soul. And nothing like that. And nothing like a pocket nuclear explosion, small enough to just destroy the building and maybe the street but leave the nearby 24 hour supermarket untouched.
Well, you never knew when you might run out of milk.
The feeling, and I couldn't describe it as anything other than just that - a feeling - swept from me, finding cracks in whatever dam inside me held it at bay, making those cracks fissures, and the fissures holes. It had an insubstantial substance - there but not, real and utterly unreal. It roared but was voiceless as it hammered at Jersey. Then it was gone. My throat gagged, clenching so tightly I thought my tongue might snap, and the thunder faded.
Was the storm Joy had foretold actually in me? Thunder? It did seem as if a tempest raged in the pit of my stomach, but it could equally have been the gods having a bitch fight - pulling hair, slapping and clawing.
Either way, the sudden absence of force made me catch my breath and I gasped. Jersey turned and in the light from the gods' playground above I could see the shock in his eyes. And the blood. And from his nose. And his ears. Then his knees bent in different directions and he toppled backwards, his head making a dull thud as it connected with a gro-bag lying on the floor.
Dirt to dirt.
I looked from Jersey Dead to Caroline Alive and, in the same gods' glow, saw that she saw me, and that she smiled. Then her eyes closed and she, too, fell to the floor. There was no lifeless collapse, just a fainted fall.
I walked over to her and knelt. She'd made me smile too many times in the past, as quiet as she was, to realise, on waking, what could have transpired here. I searched through the jacket that Jersey always wore and the trousers that were almost undone until I found the syringe of forgetfulness he'd intended for his intended victim. In this I couldn't help, though it pained me, but agree with the corpse whose pockets I'd just pillaged.
I wiped the blood from Caroline's nose, there was just a little, took her arm and pushed up the sleeve. Then, as tenderly as I could with a needle, administered the drug.
"Just a little prick," I whispered, "but he's gone now."
Now what? Should I leave the pair, dead and dazed, and run? Or hide? Or run and hide? Or hide them? Or risk moving them out of the nursery back into one of the many store rooms or vacant cells of the Institute? I certainly couldn't carry them both together. I wasn't a big, strapping bull of a man, I was just me. Strong enough but I'd never be a contender for World's Strongest Man, going up against Geoff Capes or Lars Van Danish or whoever was this year's champion. World's Strangest Man, maybe, but I didn't think there was a prize for that and I doubted they televised the championship anyway. Besides, Jersey would be a literal dead weight - not for any championship, just for moving him - and Caroline as good as. Eventually they'd be found and I'd be seen, and then the game was up before I'd had chance to roll the die.
I stood and looked around. Options, options, come to me, give me chances, one, two...
Over in the far corner was a wooden panelled box. Six feet square and five feet high with faded paintings of trees, hills and approximations of animals - a rabbit, a fox (that looked more like a map of Australia), what could have been a deer but what may have been a dog - adorning the sides. Flies buzzed energetically over its top, a simple handled cover, diving every so often to head butt the surface. The compost heap. Fermentation Central. On the odd times the patients had made it into this forbidden land, the box had become home to various items of clothing, including underwear, a wig, false teeth and even an equally false arm. The latter was the most curious as the only prosthetically challenged person in residence had a false leg, not arm. Barring that and those, though, Glenn used the compost heap religiously. Natural was best.
There was an extraction unit above the box that hummed and chittered and, for a moment, I was back on holiday in Luxor, Egypt. The scarabs were chattering to each other below my balcony as I looked over the Nile to the lit up mountains of the Valley of the Kings.. To the left, the south, the sun set, changing the sky to deep orange as, on the far bank, smoke rose from small fires. The feluccas drifted on the water, the occasional flash of a tourist's camera capturing the setting sun before the boats had to race back to be moored before darkness. It was a childhood dream come true and I'd gone with the woman of my dreams. Beautiful, sensual, funny and amazing in every way, Luxor and fiancée alike.
We hadn't fallen out, my fiancée and I. We couldn't fall out. But she did take the bus to work each day. The Number Five, usually.
A moan, a breath from Caroline snatched me back, thankfully, from the banks of the Nile to the banks of the compost heap. The extractor, I realised, sounded not so much like the casual banter of beetle buddies as it did like a frayed wire complaining that the electricity had to spark across the gaps and was tired of doing so, and warning that it might just fail if it didn't get fixed soon. Not wanting to argue with or risk the wrath of an irate fan, I made my choice.
I scooped up Jersey's body, then put him quickly back down as I realised I wouldn't be able to carry him all that way. I decided his mode of transport wasn't really going to bother him too much in his present deceased condition, so I grabbed his arms and pulled. His shoes squeaked too loudly along the floor so I had to stop to remove them, tying the laces to his refastened (by me) belt. Briefly, I wished I could teleport him as I could myself, but knew I couldn't control my own destination and didn't want him ending up in Jack Duckworth's bathtub - there wouldn't have been room, what with the polar bears. It felt like four days but was probably more like four minutes, with an indirect route thanks to the chaotic spread of tables and benches, before we, my passenger and I, reached the compost box. I was panting but didn't pause as I lifted the lid then dragged, pulled, swore and pushed Jersey's body inside.
I looked in before lowering the top. It wa
s almost empty. I could hope that the gardener just threw rubbish in until it was full and didn't care to witness its decomposition. In that case, Jersey could be hiding in there for a good while before being discovered. I could hope, but I knew, with my luck, someone would walk in straight after I left with the sole intention of investigating the compost heap. The owner of the false arm, perhaps.
I hurried back to Caroline and was relieved to find her exactly as she'd been left. I'd half expected, or a little more than half, to find her gone. She'd be crawling along the corridor to collapse at the feet of a patrolling orderly or, even better, a returning Dr. Connors. She hadn't moved. She was even snoring softly.
Caroline I could carry, albeit not too gracefully.
Attempting the scooping again, this time with a much lighter and less deader person, I picked her up and threw her over my shoulder. No. That sounded like I manhandled her roughly. I didn't. She was delicate, in spirit as well as in body, and I couldn't bring myself to be harsh with her. She wasn't here by choice. I lowered her onto my shoulder, that was better, and I did my best, now that one was two, to slip out silently from the nursery. It was only then that I thought of CCTV cameras. I didn't know, had no idea, if any closed circuit sentries scanned the room with their beady black eyes. My long chats with Jeremy, from which I gleaned so much information I would never have discovered otherwise, being insane or dangerous or both, hadn't mentioned any such security.
Well, Dr. Connors was going to find out which was correct, insane or dangerous, and I looked forward to discovering that myself too.
As for the cameras, if they'd seen me it was tough and too late. If they hadn't, it was an unexpected bonus. One less thing on the catch me if you can list. One less way to grab Sin by the head and shake him until all his secrets fell out.
The corridor was in almost darkness. A high windowed hallway connected the nursery to the institute proper and, at this late hour, it was lit purely by starlight and the ambient almost-light of night time. That was fine with me as the fact that the whole corridor was, more or less, one long slice of gloom saved me the trouble of slipping from shadow to shadow. I reached the opposite end before I'd barely had chance to breathe then realised I'd been holding my breath. I let it out slowly through my nose and forced myself to breathe as normally as the weight on my shoulder would let me.
The double door at this end wasn't locked. It didn't have a lock. Each door had hinges, a hand plate to push either way and a kick board at the bottom for the times you had your hands full or you didn't get lucky with your wife the night before and didn't have a cat handy. I went to push it open but stopped. My fingers had made contact with the rectangle of metal worn smooth but dirtied by so many previous fingers.
This was it. Just as I could feel the thunder grumbling inside me, I sensed that somewhere there was a whirlwind on the other side of this door. Whether I was the dervish in question or whether it was Connors didn't matter. There would, most likely, be collateral damage. Casualties of a war I hadn't even known raged.
I could step through the door right into the face of the night watch, which was usually whichever orderly couldn't pay his rent that week and needed the extra cash. Or, in the case of Nathan, couldn't pay his dealer. Jeremy told me about him. Nathan's extensive crack habit was the only thing that stopped him being a patient himself. Once or twice a patient was allowed to do the rounds when there were no takers for the overtime or Connors wanted some free labour. Wayne Privet, who was so tired of jokes being made about his surname had tried to change it to his nickname 'Whippet' - he no longer wanted to be 'hedging his bets' - was an insomniac, and his perpetual lack of sleep made him jittery. A perfect candidate for the graveyard shift. The twilight tour. He wouldn't fall asleep on the job and his scream, if surprised, was loud enough to bring the whole house tumbling down. He suited his name, though - Whippet. He was lean and wiry. Less meat than a McDonalds. Wayne the Whippet wasn't the sort of person you could like, but you didn't dislike him either. His nervousness was infectious and just a few minutes in his manic company was enough to make your stomach churn and your skin sweat. He was still one of the gang however. A fully fledged member of Us Not Them, so in that respect, he was okey-dokey, along with that pig in the pokey.
The Whippet, the Bender and the rest were, without even realising it, relying on me, The Reverend Sin. Perhaps my name suited me more than I'd known. Perhaps I was here to save them all. Dr. Connors wasn't the clever, influential psychiatrist who took all in and ran a successful mental home. He was a monster. He was a killer. A puppeteer, with no strings to hold him down. He was who knew what else.
I paused, still, and took a deep breath. I held it. I had no choice but to hold it. I felt something change. Something in me. I looked up, out of the windows, up at the night sky, and I could have sworn, just for a second, all the stars had suddenly winked out as if the nine billion names of God had been found.
I don't have epiphanies on a daily basis. Not often at all. A sense of awakening to a knowledge that should have been there all along and that shocks you with its simple, but profound, enlightenment. When the stars came back on, if indeed they'd gone out in the first place, I knew.
From the beginning.
From the bus.
* * * *
Chapter Nineteen
Barry Coombs. Loser extraordinaire. Lifelong welfare sponger, the type that had never had a job, or any intention of having one, but could still drive a car, smoke sixty cigarettes a day and drink a bottle of vodka a night. The type that was proud of it. I didn't know if buses had seat numbers, but if they had, Barry Coombs would have been sitting in, poetically almost, seat 13, top deck. He always sat on the top deck because, from being a surly schoolchild, he thought it was clever. Tough. Hard. He nearly always sat, anally almost, in the same seat. It was his place. His domain. He marked his territory by scrawling profanities on the back of the seat in front. He'd stub out his cigarette in the cushion next to him, but slowly so he could see the material burn. On that particular bus, because even though he always took the number five it wasn't always the same vehicle, he'd managed to almost finish burning the second 'R' of his name. On another he'd only completed the initial 'B'. On another bus still, Barry had written, in scorched circles, the full word and even managed to underline it in a line of cigarette burns that could have been the Morse Code for S.O.S.. The dots-and-joined-dots-to-make-dashes were deliberate. Barry was clever for knowing something like that, he thought. He was a brain. That was how he knew that today would be a good day. He was tired of not being able to feed his children properly on his fortnightly social payouts. He was tired of only being able to afford the cheap shop's own vodka and not the decent stuff. He wanted more than the crappy camel dropping fags he bought for £20 a sleeve from his mate at the house on the corner.
What could go wrong? Barry had a plan. Of course his plan had taken all of the time it took to eat a bowl of Frosties to work out. Barry didn't need to spend too much effort on his schemes. He was a brain. He actually called himself that but, if any of his ideas came to fruition, it was purely by chance. Barry was a brain. A legend. But only in his own head.
He knew how the Post Office worked, having cashed his giro cheque there for as long as he could remember. In fact, he was in there so often, over the years, he'd grown friendly with the staff. They must have liked him - they knew his name, the names of his children. Polite people don't do that. Friends do. So they naturally trusted him, he thought.
The gun wasn't his. Not exactly. He'd found it on the waste ground that had been allotments once upon a time. It was already loaded, but he'd never used it. The most he'd dared was to hold it in his hands, test the gun's weight and feel, ask if his reflection felt lucky, punk. Today, though, was a good day. A good day to fire a gun, or at least threaten to. A good day to earn a bit more dosh. A good day to become a man.
Barry had seen the drawers full of money. Too much money. There were ten counters, eleven if you counted the foreig
n exchange. He dismissed that. You couldn't buy fags or booze or be that man with funny money. Barry was a brain and, as such, wasn't greedy. One drawer full would do. Two at the most.
He didn't know that the woman, Maureen, behind the desk would sneeze in shock at the gun suddenly pointed at her, a sneeze that would make him jump and pull the trigger and empty the magazine before he'd had time to swallow that first spoonful cereal at breakfast. He didn't know that, even if he hadn't killed all those people, and shot his own foot, the cameras had seen it all and would grass him up to the police.
None of that mattered because I'd found a two pence coin and, after a simple flip and catch, the number five bus came to Barry instead of him going to the stop outside the newsagents and waiting until ten past the hour.
Each time there was something. Each time a wrong that needed righting or preventing. Even with the earthquake in Turkey. It wasn't just villages that had been buried under the trees and rocks and earth, or that had fallen into the crevices that opened and closed like a dragon's teeth. There had been a base. A storage site. A weapons cache. Not so much weapons of mass destruction, but still weapons of a huge amount of devastation. Much more than was originally thought and planned for. Much more than was caused when the Earth shrugged her shoulders and I tossed a coin.