I woke to the dreaded hiss and intense feelings of infuriation, my tent collapsing as a roar of water landed on it. Crawling out of my sodden shell, I tried to stand as soon as the fabric was cleared, but the surface was too slippery and I slithered around like a drunk at a waterlogged music festival. As the water began to recede back to its natural habitat, I registered the naked body pinned to the dune and skidded over to it, sloshing in the wet cement remainder. It was Bentley, splayed out like a white-faced corpse. I had an urge to put my hands around his throat and make sure the job was done, but knowledge that the urge belonged to things not fully remembered lassoed me with restraint.
“Jesus Christ. Bentley! Bentley!” After shaking him a couple of times, I was about to administer a speedily recalled mouth-to-mouth when his beatific eyes opened. “Oh, Gabriel, I didn’t know you cared. I really thought I was a goner, then. That’s the last time I go skinny dipping.”
An apprehensive scan of the horizon in search of the wave’s genesis didn’t take long.
*
The addition of novelty in a place where everything stayed pretty much the same was a source of fascination. We revelled in the simplicity of the pure white head rising some seventy feet out of the sea.
“This place is like Butlin’s for surrealists. What do you think it is, marble?” Gizmo said.
“No.” I said. “Concrete sections covered in dolomite. Well, the original is, anyway. This one could be made of fairy dust for all I know.”
“How do you know so much about it?”
“I’ve seen it before, you can see it from the motorway near Warrington, but I’ve seen it up close. This is not the same, either; the face is different, I’m not sure exactly how.”
Even in its original location it had looked like you might find it on another planet.
“What’s it called, Gabriel?” Vik said.
“It’s called ‘The Dream.’”
Cairo and Gizmo glanced at each other.
“How’s Bentley doing, Cairo?” I said.
“Oh, he’s fine apart from a bad case of near-death eureka – the enthusiasm of the recently converted. Keeps wandering around being helpful and kind. I’ll give it a month at most.”
We should swim out there, it can’t be more than a hundred yards.” Cairo said.
Gizmo seemed less than enthusiastic about the idea. “I thought we were going to do more exploring. And try to work out what the hell ‘Hear my song’ means.”
It was the first time that anyone had mentioned exploration since the incomprehensible back loop of the first attempt. Since then, the subject of going beyond the known environment had been an elephant that remained firmly on the table.
“I think we know what it means.” Cairo said. “What we need to work out is who wants us to hear it. And if we swim out there, we are exploring.”
“Look, then, why don’t you swim out there with Gabriel, and I’ll try heading inland from the dunes with Vik. I don’t see how we can end up coming back from the sea if we do.”
“No.” I said. “We should keep it simple – and one of you needs to stay with Bentley, you can’t leave him with my dad, it’ll end in tears. One or the other, head back from the dunes or swim out there. What’s it to be?”
Gizmo sighed. “Okay.” She said. “We’ll stay here. You go out there.”
We landed at the side of the statue’s base; concentric circles forming a series of steps, the first on line with the water. We’d swum quickly in an unspoken competition, which I’d won, creating a necessity to flop back against the cool curvature of the neck. I tried to keep my eyes on her face rather than the wet silk flesh covered only by a pink bikini.
“Cairo?”
“Yes?”
“Have you had any more memories about what we were to each other? – In the before, I mean. It’s just that I seem to wonder about it.”
“I don’t know, Gabriel.”
“You know when we weren’t ourselves?”
“Yes.”
“It’s a bit patchy.” I said. I didn’t add that I’d experienced fleeting, film-coated recollections of urgent, guttural sex in the bushes while everyone was asleep. And now, the echo of a pretty girl in a pink bikini, she was young, Good Lord, I hadn’t… No, I must have been young myself. “What do you remember?”
“Not much, it’s like I remember it in a different way. It felt good, though, life without doubt or question; instincts and impulses, the certainty of being tribal.”
“Where did you find the bikini?”
“Funny you should say that – it was lying on my bed.”
The implication had fingers of terror crawling over my head.
“Which do you like best, Cairo, this world or the other one?”
“Hard to say, isn’t it? This world is kinder; I know that much. I remember things that chill me to the bone. How can people be so bloody awful to each other? It seems so bad I’m sure I must be imagining it.”
“I wish you were, but I’m pretty sure you’re not.”
“For all the pain and horror, it calls to me. At the beginning, this world was utterly compelling, but now…”
“I’m going to check this baby out.” I said.
Running my hands along the neck, I melted into tactile ecstasy, the architect’s love for perfect material. It was like being two people, one living in the moment, enraptured and kindred to the source of all bliss – the other a chaotic victim of thought and memory, forever twitching about where the next assault would come from and how much it would mangle the heart. And yet, I too, felt the call of that spiteful world.
Cairo, now sitting cross-legged, pointed in the direction of the beach. “It’s interesting to see the shoreline from this side. Those sculptures really do look like people from here. Does it mean anything to you, Gabriel – ‘Hear My Song’?”
“No, no it doesn’t.” I said, returning to her side. “You?”
“I feel like I’ve heard it before.” She shifted position so her head rested on my chest. “Have you been writing your dreams down, Gabriel?”
“Dreams? I don’t think I have any.”
“Everybody dreams, Gabriel. Even here, we must dream. The unconscious is sure to know things we don’t.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“I suppose there’ll come a point where we have to make conscious that which is not.”
“What is this – mystic riddle mode?”
“Well, it makes a change from walking on eggshells mode.” Frustration leaked through her soft tone. “And while we’re on the subject of mystic riddles, I read your notebook. Only I don’t think they’re dreams, Gabriel, I think they’re memories. I remembered I had a green velvet dress when I read it. I’m pretty sure it was my memory, not yours. What else are you not telling us?”
“You read the notebook?”
“Oh, come on, Gabriel, you left it under your pillow, didn’t exactly make it hard to find. Part of you must have wanted me to see it.”
“Well, if you’ve read it, you didn’t need to ask me, did you? Warming me up for the main event, were you?” I got a pain in my head.
“Gabriel? What’s the matter? I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.”
A hollow, splashing sound as something plunged into the water at the shore. Vik looked upward as bodies fell from the sky. Before he had time to move, one caught his shoulder, taking him down like a skittle.
Cairo turned towards the beach then back to me.
“Go.” I said. “Go, I’ll be all right.”
“I can’t.”
“He’s on his own. The pain has gone, I’ll swim with you, stay close.”
Despite being a distance away, the smell of putrefying flesh was unmistakeable. When we sprawled onto the shore, it had become overwhelm
ing. With nails sinking into mottled, oozing flesh, we tried to move the two bodies that had Vik pinned down. Cairo’s voice was little more than an extension of her breath. “Vik, are you all right?”
Vik opened his eyes. “I think all right would be a stretch, Mrs Cairo.”
With the morsel of strength left in me, I heaved the torso to one side.
“If the smell is anything to go by, I hardly dare look. I am hurting very badly. Can you help me, please?”
“I’m… trying... Vik.”
“I have no wish to die here, Mr Gabriel, I do not feel my work is done.”
With hands trembling from exertion, Cairo wiped the torn, decaying pieces of human from Vik’s face. “You’re okay, Vik. See – you’re okay.”
He spoke between sobs. “I keep seeing the faces of dead children. They have had terrible things done to them. Why would I see such things?”
“Vik, I need you to listen.” Cairo said. “Stay here and watch Gabriel. Vik, I know you’re upset, but this is very, very important.”
Vik lifted his head, wiped his face with his sleeve and then looked at it. “Oh dear, I seem to have exchanged mucous for decaying flesh. I understand, Mrs Cairo. I will watch over Mr Gabriel.”
“I’m all right, for God’s sake.”
“Do as you’re told, lad.” She said.
Finding her shoes a few yards away, she put them on and threw a t-shirt over her head, probably remembering the state I’d arrived at the site in when omitting to do the same.
“How are you doing, Gabriel?”
I sharpened myself into a sitting position as Cairo headed for the campsite. Vik had spoken in cut glass English. I recalled that Vik used to be a different person, although I couldn’t fathom how that was possible.
“Are you the man that Vik used to be?”
“Indeed I am.” He held out his right hand. “Vikram Joshi, at your service.”
I shook the proffered palm. “Pleased to meet you, Vikram. So, where’s Vik?”
“Oh, Vik is all right, he just thought that I might be... useful.”
“Useful?”
“I’d like to offer you the benefit of my experience. I wasn’t a good man, Gabriel, I might have dressed it in fine clothing but I thought only of myself. Few who belong to a profession really understand its duty as you do. We’re servants of the people. That’s what I’d forgotten; I served only the greater glory of Vikram Joshi.”
“What happened to you, Vikram?”
“The same thing that happens to so many of us. Things we can’t face are thrown down the well to be forgotten or denied and pieces of us get taken with them. It’s just that in my case, a whole swathe of me went. Vik is everything that I denied about myself, but we both know this can’t go on forever.”
“We have to make conscious that which is not.”
“I know part of the reason you’ve waited is out of care for what might happen to us. I just wanted to say I have faith in you, Gabriel. I sense the natural order of things to come will be like nothing you’ve ever experienced before, not even in this place, but I have faith in you.”
Cairo appeared with Gizmo and Bentley. My dad followed on behind. Bentley whistled as he came upon the bodies.
Cairo tried not to look as she passed. “Bentley, there are living people here who need your help.”
She flopped down on the sand, shivering as the adrenaline, having done its job, began to wane. Bentley checked me over first. “He seems okay as far as I can tell. What happened?”
“He had a pain in his head, it was bad.”
“That’s awfully vague, isn’t it? Could be anything.”
“I am here, you know.”
As Bentley checked Vik out, it was apparent that his near-death promises of future compassion when dealing with patients had left on the first available transport. “Right, is there anywhere that really hurts, Vik?”
“Yes, Mr Bentley, my left arm is hurting very much.” All traces of Vikram Joshi had disappeared and I thought I must have imagined it. Perhaps I was delirious.
Bentley ran his hands along the length of Vik’s arm, provoking a series of ouches. “I don’t think you’ve broken it. You’ll probably be okay. Anywhere else?”
“No, I mean I hurt all over, but I am thinking that I have been very lucky. Do you think that I could go into the sea and get rid of this terrible smell? Will you help me, Mrs Gizmo?”
“Of course, I will. Come on, fellah, let’s sort you out.”
Cairo and Bentley drew towards the pile of death, she, in reluctance, he, with relish, she, holding her hand over her nose while they studied the carnage.
“Okay.” Bentley said. “This is major.”
“Wow. All those years of training for ‘this is major’. I’d never have thought of that. What do you think killed them?”
“Well, at first glance I’d say that they’ve got pretty serious electrical burns, like they were struck by lightning, or an explosion in an environment with high electrical charges. They would have bought it immediately; none of them would have known anything about it.” His eye was caught by the vestiges of a pale blue uniform that led him to the near complete face of its owner. “Hang on a minute, I think I know him. I do, I know some of them. They work at the hospital. These two are cleaners and these two are juniors, like me. We need to lay them out, get to the bottom of this.”
It took several distressing hours to drag the bodies away from the shoreline and on to the side of the dunes. Bentley surveyed the row of corpses like he was inspecting troops. “Right, seventeen with at least nine I know by sight. I might know more, but the rest of these faces are too far gone to tell.”
“Well, I guess the honeymoon’s over.” Cairo said. “We should cover them up; give them a bit of dignity, at least. How the hell are we going to bury them? Do we have any shovels? Where are we going to bury them?”
“It’s nearly sundown.” I said. “They’ll be all right until the morning, it’s not like we can make things worse than they already are. We need to get ourselves cleaned up and eat.” I put my arm around Cairo as she bit her lip. “You’re done in. You need a rest.”
*
Waking in the lodge I claimed when first arriving in Another Place, my only thought was seventeen bodies strung out like a line of fish. I rallied the others; it didn’t take a doctor to work out what the sun would be doing to them. Nobody was in the mood for breakfast. Subdued air suppressed the usual chatter until Gizmo broke the leaden silence. “You say you know some of them – the bodies, Bentley.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think we should assume that whatever happened to us happened around the hospital? Most of them have uniforms on, what’s left of them.”
Bentley’s eyes flashed with Eureka. “How long have we been here, Giz?”
“Since last night.”
“No – not here in the lodges, how long have we been in Another Place?”
“Difficult to say; as Cairo is so fond of reminding us, we don’t know what we remember. Even so, I think it must be at least six weeks.”
“Those bodies, they can’t be more than two or three days old. They must have come from somewhere, which means there must be a somewhere else, don’t you think?”
Cairo wrapped the unnecessary blue cardigan she was wearing tightly around her. “Christ, what the hell could be happening where they’ve come from? How could they just fall out of the sky like that?”
Gizmo rolled her eyes. “What, as opposed to seventy foot statues falling out of the sky?”
“I know, but that actually seems less weird.”
“Come on.” I said. “Let’s get this over with.”
The funeral procession nursed wounds from various mishaps, emotional or physical, particularly Vik, who kept holding the back of his head and turning it from side to side,
like he was having an internal dispute. The smell was more overpowering than the day before, but we’d steeled in preparation, walking upwind to discuss what should be done. I explained the impossibility of digging in sand. Bentley suggested the trees at the back of the site, which had to be in soil, another rejected offering – tree roots notwithstanding, no-one relished the thought of having so much decaying matter in such proximity.
I scrutinised The Dream in its unsullied innocence, the antithesis of what lay on the beach. “There’s only one thing for it.” I said. “We’re going to have to bury them at sea.”
Vik, Gizmo and Bentley were given the task of collecting seventeen rocks from the decorative arrangement at the site entrance. Cairo collected all available rope or line and two double airbeds, which she, my dad and I swelled with alternative efforts of breath and balloon pump. Then I sent Gizmo and Vik for the slat-frame of a double bed, which was lashed between the airbeds. Other than passing on vital information, we worked in silence. After the remaining line was knotted together, I wrapped it around myself before swimming out to The Dream with Gizmo. We fastened it to the neck, calculating the remainder would be short of the beach, but still within wading distance. Rocks were piled onto the makeshift raft and waded forward before I swam out with the rope and tied it to the frame. Then I returned to the base of The Dream where we pulled it in and unloaded the rocks. The raft was sent back and the process began again. Vik and Cairo dragged each body to the shoreline and on to the raft in twos, Bentley and my dad waded out, pushing the raft in front of them, Gizmo and I took it turns to swim out and float it to the base. As the last body was dragged on to the raft, everyone except my dad made their way through the water and on to The Dream, it’s sacred, smooth base despoiled by death, sweat and weary muscles. Despite exhaustion creeping into every cell, we didn’t rest for long; it was too close to sundown. The rope was pulled in, cut to length and tied to the rocks then, the rocks were tied to the bodies.
It took little time to push the ravaged, spilling bodies into the sea and contemplate their journey into darkness; one body, all bodies, one death, all deaths, a sober reawakening into the world of grief and mortality. As the unbearable stench faded and we returned to a regular intake of breath, silence hung in the air like the moment before execution. A single rock and a length of rope remained like it was waiting for another body. We must have miscounted.
The Cairo Pulse Page 12