Anarchy

by James Treadwell

  The sharp face pinched with momentary anger. “Shut up.”

  “Ah, fuck. Look. She’s fucking pissed herself.”

  The blond man looked at her feet, spat a word she didn’t understand, and crouched by her shoes. He poked at her ankle with a finger. She jumped away from the touch and bumped into the bearded man, who grabbed her shoulders. “Stand still, will you?” The weight of his grip shrank her. “Disgusting.”

  The other one sniffed his finger.

  “Not piss,” he said. “Blood.”

  Her shoe was soggy inside. A dribble of liquid oozed over the back. The man was feeling her leg now, up inside her shift.

  “Not woman time,” he said.

  “Great. You hurt her.”

  “Sit down.” After a moment he dragged a stool across the floor and pushed her onto it. Her body had turned into a kind of toy, like one of the dolls Gwen used to make for her with their sad floppy heads. She couldn’t do anything with it. The blond man pulled her shoe off. A dark spill gobbed out of it. He jerked his hands away in revulsion and made a snorting noise. “Get a bowl,” he said. He pulled a handful of tissues from inside his jacket and wiped her ankle.

  “What’d she do to herself ?”

  “Bowl,” the man by her feet repeated, still mopping away blood. In the dull light she saw her own skin pale for a moment. A tiny dark bulb appeared there a second later and began to grow.

  It did something to her memory. It brought things back into order, things that had happened to her.

  “I have to go now,” she said, and stood up.

  The blond man looked up, surprised, and then grinned. “See? I told you she is okay.”

  The bearded one had opened a cupboard and was pushing things around in it. “What’s wrong with her foot? Looks like she lost a fucking toe.”

  “I can’t see. Small cut maybe.”

  “So, good-bye, then.”

  “No no no. Sit down.”

  She turned to the doorway. The bearded man dropped something in the cupboard and hurried to block it again. She walked up to him.

  “Excuse me,” she said, remembering her manners. “Please.”

  He just looked at her. The tip of his tongue fidgeted around his lips.

  “You forgot message,” said the other one.

  She could tell, somehow, that the one called Jon wasn’t going to move out of the way even if she asked him again, politely. No one had taught her what happened in that situation.

  (Not yet.)

  “It’s important,” the other added. “You help us understand it. Then you go. We take you to mummy.”

  There was a sort of thinness about everything they said to her, as if the words were stitched together in their mouths and sent out like sails in her direction, rather than coming from the bit where she always imagined her own speech being created, down in her chest somewhere. She realized now what this strange quality was: lying.

  “All right? You are sensible girl. You do as I ask, everything is okay. Nice and quiet and easy. No more like this, hmm?” He put his hand over his own mouth and mimed a brief struggle. “Not necessary. Understand?” He waited and then went on as if she’d answered yes. “Good girl. Not difficult like kids these days. And so pretty! Okay? Now we’re all friends. I am,” and he said something that sounded like Paul but with a slur in the middle. “You?”

  His smile had exactly the same thinness, the same hollowness, as his words.

  “You miss mummy, yes? A little bit worried maybe?”

  “How about a drink?” Jon said. “Nice glass of water?”

  “You have nasty cut. How you get cut like that? We look after you, okay? Mummy not have a bandage for you? We have upstairs. Jon? Up in bathroom. Go look.”

  “You go look.”

  The blond man shot a suddenly fierce glare back. “Go upstairs. Please.”

  The moment Jon had disappeared around the twist in the staircase the other man came close, too close, propping his arms on the sides of her stool. “He’s okay guy,” he said quietly and quickly, as though confiding a secret. “But stupid. Says stupid things. Bad language. I don’t like this. Don’t worry, okay? I look after you, make sure you go home to mummy soon. You have little smile for me maybe?” One of his fingers touched her cheek, small and cold like the point of a nail: she could feel the hammer’s weight and the bent arm poised behind it. From upstairs came clattering noises, things being tossed around. “Smile hiding in there? Sorry I frighten you before. It’s Jon, he makes me do these things. Always so stupid. It makes me crazy.” He swung around and shouted angrily up the stairs. “What are you doing? Is one of boxes in the bathroom.”

  “Fucking tip up here.” More banging. “Why’d you pile all her shit in the bathroom?”

  “This isn’t your house,” Marina said. “You don’t live here.”

  Surprised again, the man paused before arcing his thin eyebrows ruefully. “You know Professor Lightfoot?” He said the name to rhyme with hoot. “I come to help her. Months ago. When she first comes home. I try, but is impossible. Her legs, too badly hurt. And with snow, day after day . . .” He shook his head. “Too difficult. Agency stops paying, you know? Before Christmas. Ever since then, no money. Hmm? But I come anyway. Even though they don’t pay me I try. Professor is my friend now, I want to help. She’s nice lady, I don’t want her to be by herself with no one else. But you know, I come only from Truro but some days is impossible, I don’t get here till evening, professor has nothing to eat all day, then I have to stay at night and try to get home next day but no bus, no train. Impossible.”

  “Got them.”

  He ignored Jon’s shout. He leaned even closer, speaking rapidly. “So professor says to me one day, Pawel, this is crazy, I can’t live here, I go to Falmouth with other old people, maybe go to friends in London. She tells me”—he tapped his own chest—“to look after house. I trust you, she says. Many crazy people coming to village, someone has to look after house. All these beautiful things.” He waved at the shambles of dirty glasses and empty tins. “Precious.” His eyes gleamed with sudden intensity, so close in front of hers she couldn’t see anything else. As the bearded man came clumping back down the stairs he dropped his voice to a hungry whisper. “Powerful things.”

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  He leaned back and turned around, slowly. Marina realized she’d been holding her breath.

  “Get out of her face, all right?”

  “You stop swearing all the time in front of girl. Not surprise she won’t talk to you. Give me that.”

  “Nah.” Jon unrolled a length of white fabric from the reel he was holding. “I’ll do it.” Pawel made a brief grab at the bandage but Jon pushed his hand away. For a few moments they stared at each other; then the bearded man knelt by Marina’s dangling feet. She saw Pawel shrug.

  “Can’t even see a cut.” His beard scratched her ankle. It felt like a horsehair brush. He fingered her foot all over. “Shit. How can this be bleeding so much? Where’s the . . .” He found the spot where the tiny man had stabbed her and began wrapping the bandage. “There you go. Yeah? All better now.”

  “Is enough.”

  “Couple more turns. Nice and tight.” His fingers felt like fat cold caterpillars. He finished by making a loop and tying the torn end in a clumsy knot.

  They were both looking at her, so she said, “Can I go now?”

  The silence went on too long before Pawel answered.

  “In a little bit.”

  The grimy roundels of Jon’s spectacles no longer reflected the window, so Marina saw the way he looked. His eyes were as blank as Corbo’s, as blank as the shallow eyes of the mask on the table.

  “It’s been ages,” he said, not to her, though his eyes didn’t waver. “Fucking months.”

  “Shut up.”

  “She�
�s not all there anyway. Look at her. She won’t even notice.”

  Pawel kicked him, hard enough to tip him over and make him grunt in pain.

  “Tell me,” he said, “who is this man Gah-van?”

  “Fuck that,” Jon muttered, rubbing his elbow and getting to his feet.

  “You explain,” Pawel went on, ignoring the other man, “then you go. Not before.”

  “You mean Gawain,” Marina said, fixing on the idea of leaving this heavy, angry room. “He’s not a man, really. He’s only a bit older than me.”

  “Pav.”

  “Shut up. Let her talk.”

  Jon was breathing thickly. “You can have your fucking chat after.”

  Pawel leaned over the stool again and lowered his voice, talking as if the other man had left the room again. “I want to know about Gawain who brought mask. He left it here, with message.” His eyes tracked intently over her face. “Is that your friend? Who knows secret of these things? How to make them speak?”

  “She doesn’t know—” Pawel raised a hand sharply to silence the other man.

  “You sit here until you tell me the truth,” he said.

  I don’t know, she’d been about to say, but the idea of echoing the bearded man’s words disgusted her. She clenched her eyes shut, trying to remember. “He said he was going to bring it back to her.” That miserable farewell. “He said it belonged to her. He did know about it but he didn’t tell me, just that the spirit isn’t bad, it was the thing that was using it. He told me once about how it had come alive but I can’t remember, I didn’t understand.”

  When Marina opened her eyes in the ensuing silence, everything seemed to be happening at half speed, as though the threatening air had turned viscous. Pawel was turning to look at Jon, who lifted his hands to the top of his head, sweeping back his straggling fringe; his mouth had fallen open. The sound of a helicopter thudded in a distant crescendo, then faded. Some message passed between the two men without words; she could tell by the change in the way they looked at each other, then at her.

  “So I can go now,” she said, and shuffled forward to hop off the stool.

  Pawel stopped her. “You say, ‘come alive’?” He sounded hoarse.

  “Let’s show it to her.”

  Pawel ignored Jon. “What did he say about this?”

  “Just fucking show her. Hey. You. Come and see something.” He grabbed her arm and hurried her through into the other room. It was messier and even dimmer than the first one, so dim she couldn’t distinguish most of the mess from mere shadow, but what she could see she liked better because it was things she recognized, books and coats and furniture. There were strange faces all around the walls, stranger even than the two men’s, most of them hardly like people at all, but at least they were quiet and kept their distance. Most of the stuff in the room had been pushed to the edges, leaving a bit of clear space around a broad shin-high table. On the table was a circle of unlit candles arranged around something hidden under a cloth.

  “Wait,” Pawel said, but the other man was already leaning over the table, still gripping Marina’s arm with one hand while he reached for the cloth with the other.

  “Here,” Jon said. “Look.”

  “Wait.”

  He didn’t wait. He whisked the cloth away. Underneath it was a thing she recognized completely, even in the murk. She couldn’t stop herself gasping in a little spasm of horror and hope.

  “Idiot,” Pawel said.

  “What?” Jon leered at her. “Are you scared?” He sounded as if the idea of her fear excited him. “Why?” He looked around impatiently. “Where’s that note? Where’d I put it?”

  Marina’s heart was alternating thrill and dread. It told her Gawain had come here, as they’d thought; they’d found his trail. The last time she’d seen the mask that was lying on the table, it had been in his hands. But then her heart contracted again with memories of a day she couldn’t bear to think about at all, wrapped up in the blunt-muzzled face on the table, its pitilessly empty eyes staring up at her. She clutched at her chest.

  “You know this?” Pawel’s voice was at her ear, rapid and urgent. “You see before? Come alive?”

  Jon had let her go to rummage among a stack of books. He straightened with a sheet of paper in his hand. “Here. This.” He held it out to her as if she’d asked for it.

  “Girl already knows,” Pawel said, but the other man waved it at her face and then shoved it in her hands. “What are you doing? Don’t frighten her.”

  “Can’t see, can you,” Jon muttered, and began patting his pockets.

  “It’s the message,” Pawel said. “From friend.”

  Jon took out a box of matches. The first two he struck snapped in his hands.

  “Careful!” But the third flamed and settled. He held it to the candles. They were anchored in congealed buttresses of their own wax. Yellow crescents danced around his glasses and in the sockets of the black dog’s missing eyes. She looked away from them, and read handwriting.

  Hester

  Sorry I missed you. Owen Jeffrey said you’ve been in hospital but you’ve got someone helping you at home now. Hope you’re okay. I don’t know where to find you and I’ve got a long way to go so going to leave this for you.

  I don’t know what to say except thanks for looking after me when you did. You can probably guess now why I left while you were out. If you’re here whenever I get back we can talk about it. Our friend won’t come back, she’s gone for good, but a lot of other things aren’t gone anymore.

  I brought this. It’s yours and I know you wanted it back. Remember you told me it was like a mouth? You were totally right, it opened and spoke. I see you’re missing another one too, that was the same (had a voice in it).

  In the margin here it said, I don’t know where it is by the way.

  Three of the others do too, I won’t say which ones, they’re fine if you leave them alone. You’ve probably had enough voices.

  I wish there was something I could tell you about what’s happening. Maybe when I get back. Though you probably won’t be here. I hope you read this anyway and you’re somewhere safe. Leaving a note doesn’t feel right. I wish I’d seen you. Later on, I hope (but much later, I have a long way to go, the other side of the world

  The paper fell from Marina’s hands. Her heart beat in, in, in, contracting, sucking blood. Jon lunged before the note fell into the candles and batted it to the floor. He knelt to scrabble in the shadows by her feet.

  “Is from your friend?” Pawel said, over her shoulder, his mouth almost on her ear.

  The other side of the world. In her mind’s eye Marina saw the tea-brown globe in her father’s study, every line of which she’d memorized when she was small, from the little picture of Timbouctoo with its piled-up flat roofs to the puffy sea-monster coiled in the ocean next to Van Diemen’s Land. She felt as if she’d walked forever since leaving Pendurra, but she hadn’t moved even the thickness of a dot on the globe, not even the width of one of her own hairs, and yet Gawain had gone . . .

  She swayed, faint. The man at her back caught her. “Is it him?” he hissed. “What did he tell you? Tell me what he said.”

  “She’s still bleeding.” Jon knelt up, holding his hand out to the candlelight. It was smeared dark. “Shit. Must be about to pass out.”

  Pawel shook her. “Open your mouth.” He was whispering but the whisper stung like a shout. “I said open your mouth.”

  “Fuck. She bled all over the floor. Through the fucking bandage.”

  “I have enough of trying to be nice. Girl knows how to make this speak to us, hmm?” Another shake. Her neck was limp and the rattling hurt her. “You go nowhere until I hear everything.”

  “Yeah.” The other man pulled himself up in front of her until she was almost sandwiched between them. “No mummy. You listening? No more mummy.” />
  “Hold it close. Show it to her face.”

  “Oh yeah. Don’t like it much, do you?” He made his grimace, exposing teeth stained as black as the mask. The grip on her arms tightened impossibly hard. She wriggled in hopeless resistance. The man behind her pulled her against his chest with a strange gasp. Jon reached to pick up the mask, his hands still streaked with her blood. She tried to push herself free but she was pinned completely, the mouse under the cat’s paw, the minnow on the hook. She opened her mouth to scream.

  A subterranean groan filled the room instead.

  Jon yelped and stumbled away from the table. “Fuck.” His voice was a squeak. “It fucking moved.”

  The candles wavered. Jagged shadows leaped from every corner. The blunt upthrusting jaws in the middle of the table appeared to twitch. There was an even darker blot at the muzzle’s tip. The deep groan sounded again, undermining every other noise, the whole room vibrating as if the ground beneath it had stirred.

  “What the fuck.” The little of Jon’s face that showed had turned white. “What’s that?”

  The candle flames suddenly stretched thin and tall, all together. Their glow began to redden. Jon dropped to his knees.

  “Master,” he said, a cringing whine. “I’m here.” As if answering, the sound came again, a straining toward speech, like a huge maw trying to open. The ringed flames went from russet to deep crimson, the whole room seen as if through a curtain of—

  “Blood.”

  Pawel’s grip loosened as he said the word. She slumped. She remembered very little of the appalling day when Gwen had stopped being herself and her sheltered sanctuary had turned into a prison of horror, and the few fragments that refused to be forgotten hung separate from one another like stills from a nightmare, but the red light plunged her back among them. She would have fallen to the floor if the man hadn’t hooked her waist to catch her again.

  “Blood,” he said again. “Is her blood.”

  Jon stared until he understood, then knelt and pulled the bandage from her foot. When his fingers were dripping he turned to the mask again.

  “Quick,” Pawel said.