by H T G Hedges
A new scream started to build in my throat and I gave it full vent. Born of anger this time, not fear, it emerged as a grating, half mad roar, bouncing and whooping around my cage. Just as the crescendo reached breaking point and the dim idea that this wasn’t really working started a slow ferment in my thawing brain, there came the scrape of metal on metal and I was flooded with light.
For a second or two my eyes stopped working altogether as utter pitch darkness became blinding white clinical light, cutting into my newborn senses and sending my retinas into momentary shutdown, or overload, or something. When I adjusted, the gurney bed had been pulled out of the hole in the wall and two very pale and scared looking guys in scrubs and white coats were staring at me in bewildered panic.
One of them found his voice. He was skinny and pale as milk, fringe plastered with sweat to his forehead. He wore thick round glasses behind which swam red rimmed eyes big as saucers. His voice shook when he spoke, fear making him a high falsetto.
"Um," he managed, then stopped and cleared his throat, bringing his tenor down a few octaves.
"Dude," he said uncertainly, "You’re dead."
"No", I replied in a voice as rusty as old nails. "I’m not." It gave me pause for thought. "Not anymore."
The cold was prickling at my skin, should have been giving me goose bumps, I was naked after all, my sparse covering of plastic sheet having been lost somewhere in the transition from gurney to standing. There was a tag attached to my right toe. It said Hesker, Jonathan G on it. It’s Jon, I thought, detachedly.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I was screaming in panic, or I should have been, the voice of logic trying to set alarm bells ringing. But it was a small voice, the little one that whispers in the dark of the mind. It was easy to switch off. Not just to shut out either, but switch off completely.
"What was it like?" the second doctor whispered eagerly. This one was older and didn’t look at all scared now. Rather, I fancied I could see the germination of an idea twinkling in his eye.
Pause. "I don’t know." It was true, there had been something, I felt sure, but it was slipping away like a floating dream, like mist lost in the morning sunshine. Then it was gone altogether.
"I need to get out of here," I rasped, to myself as much as to them. The blank in my mind was cracking open as a rising tide of shattered memories came flooding in. Station. Gunshots. Crows.
"I need to go…"
"You can’t go," the older doctor interjected sharply. He was ashen faced and bearded, definitely in charge. There was a note to his tone that said that when he spoke he was used to having people listen.
The twinkle had taken root in his eye now and I could almost hear the whirring of his brain as he stared at me, hungrily assessing the potential of the situation - medical journals, articles, who knew? I’d been shot twice, once through the heart and at close range yet here I stood. I was dead when they put me in that drawer which, I guess, made me a medical miracle. Any shock he might have felt had evaporated as his mental compass swung due money.
Looking past him, a big heavy door on the far side of the room, just beyond another steel table hooked up to a compacted arrangement that ended in what looked like a shower head, beckoned invitingly.
"I’ve called security," the older doctor said, clearly anticipating my intentions. On cue, my exit swung open to admit into the room a burly, red faced security officer in a too-small blue-grey shirt tucked into matching trousers. A baton hung casually from one meaty paw, bouncing against the stripe on the pant-leg of his uniform and the expression on his face made it quite clear that he was itching to use it.
"You’ve been through immense trauma," the doctor said, soothing as oil. "We need to run some tests, make sure you’re alright now."
I looked down at the clean wound on my chest: a small round circle in the flesh, smooth, not bleeding, not doing anything. With exaggerated care I touched a finger to the wound. Nothing. No pain, no involuntary flinch, nothing but cauterized cold skin.
"I feel fine," I said, edging a cold finality onto the statement.
"I’m leaving."
I took one step towards the exit again and the tip of the baton came to rest threateningly against my exposed chest, it’s tip almost exactly matching the smooth mark of the bullet’s entry. Memory flooded back in an unstoppable torrent, filling in all the blank spaces in my mind until I was whole again, all apart from one small spot that couldn’t be filled. It was into this vacuum, the legacy of whatever other had been between the bullet and the meat draw, into which I looked now and found cold, dark nothing.
I slapped away the baton with the flat of my palm and slammed my fist into the guard’s ample gut. He doubled over around my hand and tried to stumble backwards but I had a steel grip around his throat, lifting him until his feet were forced onto tip toes to stay in contact with the floor.
I don’t know how it happened, I’ve never been much of a fighter, never really had the need but in that moment my mind was blank, my body totally in control. That little voice, the doubter and second guesser, that had whispered to me in the crowded dark of my apartment was gone, sucked into the insatiate void taken root at the centre of my self.
I receded from it, and it was like the lights came back on. If I let it, I thought, it would swallow the rest of me. I could feel its hunger, on some tangential level. If I let it, it would swallow the world.
I let go of the guard and he crumpled with a whimper. The older doctor backed up so sharply under my stare that he bounced off a metal gurney, sending its contents of strangely archaic shiny instruments clattering across the floor.
"I’m leaving now."
"Wait." It was the younger one who, having seemingly enjoyed the show, had found his normal voice at last, which sounded more like it belonged to a surfer than this skinny intern.
"Dude," he said, "You’re going to need some clothes. Can’t go traipsing in your birthday suit, you know?" I looked down at myself in all my glory. He was probably right.
"Wait here," he said. Avoiding the narrowed eyes of his superior, he ducked out of the door, returning a moment later with a hemp holdall decorated with a variety of pins from which he produced another rumpled pair of green scrubs, the twin of those he wore.
"They might be a bit ripe but, you know, beggars and choosers right?"
They were but I was grateful all the same as I pulled them on. Halfway out the door I paused and tapped my wounded chest, addressing myself to the intern rather than his superior. "This going to leave a scar?"
He grinned. "Fucked if I know man," he said, "But, hey, chicks dig scars right?"
I bolted out the door.
The early afternoon air was wet and fresh and cut through the stale feeling in my lungs beautifully as I sucked down great breaths of it. I’d been putting off thinking about what I was going to do next but now it seemed it was time to face up to the question.
Up ahead, in a small and poorly tended park, an old man wrapped in faded tweed was feeding seed to the pigeons. I watched for a while as they flocked and swooped beneath the muted brilliance of burnt autumn leaves. But something in the movements disquieted me, something in the flap of wings and the flurry of feathers bringing back to mind the crows that I had, what, seen? Maybe felt would be more accurate. Or hallucinated?
It left a queasy sickness in the pit of my stomach and an ache behind my eyes. Then, with it, came another memory. A news report half digested in a split second before the bullet. Something had been burning.
It took me about twenty minutes, running all the way, to cross town and make it to work. I’d drawn attention cutting through traffic, barefoot, dressed in a pair of dirty med scrubs that, on some level, I knew I didn’t want to bring upon myself. But still I ran, relishing the feel of pavement beneath my feet and life in my lungs even as I dreaded what I might find when I reached my destination.
Rounding the last corner I stopped dead, staring at the gutted burned out shell that was all that was left
of Last Rights, wreathed in yellow police tape, still wetly smouldering in the dull afternoon half light. A police cruiser loitered on the curb, two patrolmen drinking coffee and watching the street. I had no reason not to walk over and ask them what had happened, but something stopped me. I didn’t feel like I was operating in the same space anymore, but rather detached, cut adrift.
No survivors - I’d seen the words on the screen. Someone was clearing up a mess that I’d inadvertently started, I was sure of it. Someone had known where and when I was going to be and this fire was designed to take care of Corg and anyone else we might have told.
I realised I was walking in circles and stopped dead. Except, I thought, I knew Corg better than whoever was pre-empting us and there was no way he would have been at work yesterday with his beloved hearse in the lockup: he’d have been getting in someone’s face and giving them hell about his precious car.
Instinctively I reached for my phone, but it was gone along with my wallet and keys and other personal effects.
I started to walk towards Corg’s apartment then stopped again. If Corg was still breathing, his business razed to the ground, me shot dead at rush hour, he wouldn’t be at home. But I knew where he would be.
I changed course once again and set off in the direction of Quiets.
Stepping in off the street, the constant half-light swallowed me with pleasant familiarity, like an oily second skin. Quiet nodded as I crossed the sticky boards towards the bar, reaching for a bottle at the same time.
"Mr. Hesker," he rumbled from the shadows, leaning on the dark wood of the bar and fixing me with an appraising look, "Rumour had it you were dead."
"I’m getting a lot of that," I told him. He clicked his tongue by way of answer and poured out a generous helping of amber liquid into a heavy based tumbler, then glanced at me and added another few fingers to the glass.
"Look that bad huh?" I said and he grinned, flashing a row of perfect white teeth as I tried to catch my reflection in the mirror behind the bar, thick with the grime of at least a decade of miss-care. But the dirty blur looking back at me could have been anyone.
"Quiet," I said, addressing the barman the way all the regulars did, despite the fact it wasn’t his real name, "Is Corg here?"
He nodded. "Couple of hours. He’s out back."
I knocked back the drink in one and headed through a kind of saloon door into what we jokingly called the VIP area. The whiskey burned its way down my throat with a certain satisfaction as I crossed the sawdust. Everything felt different, the thick air, the smell of stale beer and cigarettes, even the whiskey.
I sat down and nodded at Corgen who stared blearily back for a few moments then lifted a bottle of house-vodka - stuff that would burn through the bottle if you left it long enough - and swallowed deeply. Liquid ran down his chin and onto his white shirt, but he didn’t seem to care. He shut his eyes for a long time, then opened them again and took a long look at me. I think he half expected me to have disappeared in the meantime.
"What the fuck," he said, "Is going on?"
"Nothing?"
He laughed then, half crazy and half really, really drunk. It went on for an uncomfortably long time. "Easy for you to say," he struggled out eventually, "You’re not the one talking to a dead man." Then he descended back into dipsomaniac mirth.
"I might be if you don’t take it easy on the hooch, old man," I said, eyeing the dubious spirit uncertainly. He nodded at this and put the bottle down. That in itself was strange - Corg never usually listened to me.
"You toasting my memory?" I asked him.
"Something like that. Been sitting here, waiting for someone to come finish what they started with you and that fire. Come pop a bullet in my head or an ice-pick or-"
"I get the idea," I interrupted. He grinned, but that grin quickly slipped off his face again.
"Danvers is dead. Everyone’s dead. We’re out of a job," he said, waving the vodka around a little shakily.
I took a swallow from the proffered bottle. It tasted like paint thinner but the booze didn’t seem to be doing anything to soften the bizarre sharp focus the world had taken on. I felt wired, buzzing like there was electricity in my blood. Ready to kick down the doors and start screaming. Like a coiled spring, all that shit. I took a long look at Corg as I drank.
He didn’t look so hot, I thought: still in his work suit but rumpled and soiled by smoke and spilled drinks. His face too held a drunk’s glassy vacancy. I sighed to myself; it was time to get him sobered up.
"Nice duds," he slurred, motioning with a jut of his chin to the scrubs I wore, seemingly fully taking in my appearance for the first time.
"No-one says duds anymore," I said.
"I do," he countered with boozy belligerence.
"Oh yeah, you bringing it back?"
"For me it never went away," he snickered, sounding a little more like himself again. He fixed me with a serious look. "You’re not a ghost are you? You know my views on ghosts, right?"
"Yes," I said with a sigh. "I do. You’re fine with them, in general, as long as they leave you alone and stay out of living-folk’s business. You’ve told me before. Several times, weirdly." He was still looking at me with glazed expectancy.
"I’m not a ghost."
"Good," he said.
"Good. Well, I don’t fancy getting ice-picked right now, so we’d better be getting out of here. If I can work out this is where you’d head in a crisis I’m willing to bet someone else could too." I stood up, "Bring the bottle if you have to."
Dark clouds were shifting round my head. "Storm’s building." He raised an eyebrow but I waved it away.
"Let’s go."
Corg lived on the third floor of a behemoth of formerly grandiose apartments, now forgotten and fallen largely into disrepair. The front of his building still boasted a derelict sort of splendour that hinted at the kind of luxury that it might once have contained. Twin columns supported the front entrance whilst ugly, element disfigured gargoyles leered around the eaves. I knew that once it had been a hotel, cruelly and mercilessly carved into flats by a developer with no interest in civic history.
I knew, as well, that Corg had chosen this particular block because it backed onto a district of warehouses and storage depots, one of which he owned under in a fake name and used to hide and smuggle contraband booze and, very occasionally, guns from across the bridge.
Coming here was probably not a very good idea but what was one more mistake in a litany of poor decisions? Besides, I thought, where else was there to go?
Corg fumbled with his keys. We’d made it up two flights of stairs and it had taken some time but he was slowly sobering up; his skin was waxy and dead looking in the pallid light of a bare emergency bulb, red drink rims framed his eyes. I wasn’t sure how much vodka he had drunk but Corg’s constitution was legendary, he’d be over it soon enough.
It took some time but he eventually found the hole with the key and I heard the mechanism click as the door unlocked.
"Wait," I whispered and could see in his suddenly clearer eyes that it had occurred to him, too, that there might be someone waiting for us inside. Apparently the threat of impending death can do the work of a pint of strong coffee and a good night’s sleep in record time.
I held up a hand to show that he should stay, took a step back from the door, then kicked out at it. It crashed open, splintering into the wall on the extreme of its arc, the boom echoing down the narrow corridor. The following silence stretched on nerve janglingly.
Without waiting I rushed the gap, flicking on the light as I went and ducking as I crossed the threshold. Nothing happened. Light flooded Corg’s long sitting room, shining off a lot of chrome fittings and one of those televisions that’s too big for any room, Corg’s favourite lounger sitting front and center of it.
"That was a bit on an anticlimax," he said drily, wandering in and closing the door behind him. "I need to take a leak," he continued, heading down the corridor, flicking on a
rack of low lighting as he went and illuminating some abstract paintings in a broken line along the wall. "Find us a beer will you?" he added before disappearing into the bathroom.
Still feeling like something was wrong, I headed through the decorative arch into the adjacent kitchen and towards the fridge, working from the dim light leaching in from the sitting room that lent a low greenish glow to the room.
I was about halfway across the floor when the sound of breaking glass shattered the silence. My head whipped round meaning the zip of the piano wire intended for my windpipe bit into my cheek and chin instead. Clawing wildly, I just managed to get two fingers between the skin of my throat and the wire before it went taught, slicing into them and cutting off the circulation.
To panic would have been to die, instead I flailed with my free elbow, making contact with something that grunted but achieving no tangible effect on the wire squeezing round my neck. Changing tack, I kicked out against the sideboard with both feet, sending the two of us crashing into the opposite wall. We must have hit the switch because the lights bloomed into life.
For a split second the pressure on the wire slackened, and that was all I needed. Twisting away, ignoring the pain in my digits, I again hammered an elbow backwards, felt it connect with my attacker’s skull, then pushed away from the surface, pulling his weight with me. At last, as we were both sent sprawling over the linoleum, he lost his grip on the end of the wire entirely and it went dancing away across the kitchen floor.
I pushed myself to my feet as he bounced back into a fighter’s stance, balanced, knees slightly bent, fists raised. His movements were graceful in a scary kind of way. For the first time I had the opportunity to take in his appearance and he looked like he meant business; bedecked in head to toe black body-armour, boots, facemask. This guy, I thought, was someone’s black-ops nightmare.
And then he was in motion, jabbing two quick punches into my face that snapped my head back then a third from the left that sent me reeling. I cannoned into the counter once more, spilling shiny bamboo-handled knives from the block that skittered and bounced across the veined marble.