Desolation

by Tim Lebbon

  There was a frantic sound of violence from the open garage. Something squealed in the darkness, a loud, sudden screech of pain. It could have been George, or perhaps it was only a rat being caught by a cat. Cain paused, trapped by moonlight. There came a crash of something being knocked over, a grunt of pain or ecstasy, and a burst tin of paint rolled into view, leaving a black streak behind as if wounded.

  Cain darted to the garage next to the open one, keeping as quiet as he could. He almost called out to see if it was George, but something muffled his shout and he waited there for a while, listening to what was going on inside.

  Something was eating; something else was being eaten. The sounds made by both were oddly complimentary and interchangeable. The victim screeched and whined and coughed, noises that were so reminiscent of pleasure and pain as to be unidentifiable. The thing doing the eating was making loud wet smacks, joyful grunts deep in its throat, and heavy swallowing sounds as it took down another chunk. He could have been listening to a porn film, or a horror movie about cannibals.

  There was a rapid gasp, like the rush of air from a punctured lung, and one final, warbling cry that increased in volume before being cut off with a crunch.

  Cain cringed, trying not to add his own scream to the night air.

  He knew he should go, but he had to see more. Every book he had read told him that he should flee; it was only madmen and victims that did not run away from such sounds. Yet there was no reason to believe that George was in there. It was a cat eating a rat, or maybe a fox eating an old, injured cat. He had come this far, and he was caught. The sounds were horrible, but at least now it was only eating he could hear, not the final dying scream of the thing being eaten. That had already faded into the night.

  He closed his eyes first, shutting out the moonlight to accustom them to darkness. Then he leaned around, turning so that he could look into the garage.

  There was a small car in there, a soft-top, and its canvas roof had been shredded. Something sat in the front seat, slumped sideways, its face buried in the dead thing in the passenger seat. The tang of blood and insides filled the enclosed space, and when Cain tried to breathe through his mouth he could taste it on his tongue. He had never liked steak rare, and this was rarer.

  The thing growled and lifted its head. It shook. Cain felt a fine spray hit his cheek and he stumbled back, wiping the blood from his face. A dog! Whatever it had in there looked quite large, certainly a meal’s worth for a dog of that size. A cat, perhaps? He had always thought it a myth that dogs chased cats to catch and eat them, but all good myths had a basis in fact somewhere along the line.

  The dog stank, a wet, cloying smell like dirty wet fur and the odor of neglect. He wondered what had been happening in that garage for the few seconds before he had emerged from the lane. It had been silent. Was the victim already caught by then, lying trapped beneath the dog’s heavy paws, resigned to its fate but not yet being eaten alive? It was a disturbing image and he tried not to elaborate, but being unaware of every detail gave his imagination free rein.

  His pursuit of George seemed far less important now, as if discovering that gruesome scene had always been the aim of this jaunt. Cain hurried back into the lane, pleased to be immersed in darkness once again, finding comfort in the weight of shadows. He realized that he would probably have no idea which gate led back into the garden. He had a sudden sense of disorientation, and for a moment he was sure this was not the same lane. It did not smell right, though that could have been influenced by the blood splashed on his cheek. It did not feel right. But there was something very different about the dark now. Not more threatening, but more mysterious. As if in agreement with Cain’s thoughts, a bank of cloud drifted across the moon, hiding away anything profound.

  Cain went unerringly to the garden gate, making sure he left it unbolted for when George returned. Because Cain was certain now that he would return. The night’s events were beginning to take on a very staged feel, as if everything were happening for him. The thumping from downstairs, the laughter that was too loud, the scream, the square of garages with the skeletal car and single open garage door. Even the clouds had timed themselves to perfection as they blanked out the moonlight. He did not fear the dark, but right then, after what he had seen and knowing what perhaps roamed the back alleys, he would have welcomed the light.

  Once through the back door and inside the house, he did not feel as safe as he would have hoped. It was only as he closed his own door behind him and turned on the lights that the danger began to recede. If the night was staged, it had the feel of a forgettable book, pulp fiction written without depth or feeling. By the time he went to his bathroom to wash the blood from his face, it had already gone, melted away by his sweat perhaps, or maybe never even there at all.

  Suddenly tired, Cain went to bed without undressing and fell immediately to sleep.

  And as suited that night, his sleep was filled with dreams masquerading as memories, or memories as dreams.

  For four weeks his father has denied him anything other than the most basic food and drink. Sustenance had always been important, according to his father. But four weeks ago Cain was told it was time for the room again. The siren was ready, his father reminded Cain for a few days beforehand, ready to punish and guide. It was not until the first day ended that Cain realized what this new experiment would entail.

  He sits up on his bed and looks around, expecting to see the window out onto the garden, the en suite bathroom door ajar, and perhaps he will hear the heavy silence still promising secret things throughout the house. He looks at his hands, his arms, and sees that he is a young boy again. That young boy is insecure with this knowledge—even more confused with the certainty that the older Cain should not be here; should, in fact, be in a flat in Endless Crescent—but Cain knows his younger self so well, and he smiles and offers comfort. He will be back there again, he knows. And though his younger self has no comprehension of “there,” he seems to take heed.

  There is only this bare, blank room, remarkable because it is unremarkable and he has not been here for a long time. It is clean, but looks grubby with its total lack of finish. The walls are bare gray blocks. The ceiling is skimmed plasterboard. The floor is polished concrete, with nothing to break its monotony other than his own faint footprints sweated into its surface. His dreaming self has prints much larger than that now, and the knowledge of his survival should help him cope and get through this. But sometimes it is only the moment that matters, especially when the moment is so filled with pain, confusion, and hunger.

  Only one wall is broken, and that is with the door. The door itself has a slot at floor level, a flap that is lifted and locked from the outside. The young Cain knows what this is for, but the adult Cain is confused. His confusion is resolved when the flap lifts and a tray slides through.

  The tray holds several covered dishes, and five beakers filled with drinks of various colors. His stomach rumbles, saliva fills his mouth, and as Cain remembers the curry he ate the day before, the siren blasts out of nowhere and drives him onto his back. He screams and thrashes on the cold concrete, and when the brief explosion ends, his mouth is dry again.

  There are no smells from the food. He crawls to the tray and looks down at his hands. For a powerful instant he feels like an alien here, a cruel invader that has to be sent back to whatever nebulous adult future he has imagined, along with the extravagant friends and outrageous places with which he has surrounded himself. But the feeling is brief, and Cain bends to the tray confident that this is the past, not the now.

  Taking the tray back to the bed, he feels eyes upon him. He looks at the door, but there is no sign of any spy hole. That has always been the case. Somehow his father always knows what he is doing in here. And he cannot only see his son, he can taste what he tastes, smell what he smells, because the siren is always there ready to assault Cain with pain and shame. He has never seen the siren, never understood where it comes from or what it is, but he guesses
it must be the walls of the room itself. Still that sense of being watched, and he looks around the room, under the bed, seeing nothing.

  Somebody starts humming. It is a tune he recognizes but cannot place. In his child’s body he feels a very adult sensation, shivering as someone or something touches his soul with unknowable intent. Perhaps he is humming himself, but try as he might, he cannot change tune or tone. It is being hummed to him, not by him, and the tune is endless.

  The tray contains one dish of something utterly colorless, odorless, and bland. It could be an unseasoned potato dish, or something with mashed rice, but he can make out no other constituent parts. Gruel, he thinks, and the word seems appropriate. Another dish contains a handful of fluffy rice and several large spoonfuls of chili, along with a glob of sour cream. There is a curry dish, a pasta bake with chorizo and mushrooms, and salmon in white sauce with green beans.

  His mouth waters, he catches a whiff of the chili, and the instant that smell translates to taste the siren throws him to the floor. He knocks the tray and desperately reaches out to stop it tumbling from the bed, screaming at the same time. The siren stops, leaving pain behind as a hot throb in his head, and a brief flush of anger is put down by something dark lurking in his memory.

  “Don’t fuck him off,” a voice says, “otherwise there’ll be worse to come.”

  “What?” Cain looks around the room, seeing no one. But there is a presence there, a shadow where light should fall, and though it seems to bear no weight it holds import.

  “I said don’t fuck him off. And don’t talk to me. He doesn’t know I’m here.”

  Cain is confused and terrified. He is unsure which emotion is attributable to which Cain—the young one in the room, the old one dreaming in his bed—but they seem to suit both. He examines the drink in the beakers—water in one, coffee, strawberry milk shake, red wine—and stares at the tray, trying not to ask questions or look around at the shadow.

  “In case you’re wondering, he can’t hear me,” the shadow says. “His obsession deafens him. It blinds him too, and that’s why he can’t see that the light’s being eaten. Can you see, Cain? Young Cain, old Cain, can you see the light?”

  Cain glances up at the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, squints, and from the corner of his eye he sees a shadow slinking along one side of the room.

  “Eat, if I were you,” the shadow says. “But careful what you choose. You know why the old fuck has you in here right now. Humor him, and leave the tasting for me.”

  Cain eats the gruel and drinks the water, avoiding the food and drink with any real taste or substance. When he finishes, he places the tray by the door and steps back, watching his father’s wrinkled hands come through to take it away. There is no communication—no praise from a father to his young son, no words of comfort or encouragement—and though Cain is desperate to speak, the shadow sits at his back. He is certain it is laughing at him.

  The humming begins again and Cain lies back in his bed, careful not to let the blanket touch his lips. As he retreats into sleep, meeting himself in there and knowing grander things, the siren waits for him to dream of taste.

  “Pure Sight is so far away from where you are,” the shadow says as Cain drifts away from that room. “The old fuck knows that, too. He’s just doing this to torture you, Cain. He’s doing it to hurt you. Because he knows he can never, ever have it for himself.”

  Cain came awake disoriented, frightened, and so alone. He did not know whether he was the young Cain or the older one, he had no idea where he was, and his friend the darkness served only to hide the truth, smothering him, entering his eyes and ears as if he were submerged in dark water. He opened his mouth to cry out, but the darkness slipped in there also, cool and slick, and he could think only of that shadow in the room in his father’s basement. It was here with him now. Wherever he was, it was here to drown him and take him for itself. Bodiless, it wanted his flesh and bone, his home.

  He finally sat up and cried out, expelling any idea of being smothered, purging that feeling and locating himself in a matter of seconds. He was in his new flat on Endless Crescent, and he had been dreaming of his time with his father. He needed food. He needed drink, something tasty to drive away the sourness in his mouth. He needed more than anything to defy the siren and lose the shadow.

  Cain ran around his flat, turning on every light and closing curtains against the dark. He wanted no point of access for the shadows. Then he raided the fridge, sat at his dining table, and started eating. The first morsel of strong cheese took an eternity to reach his mouth—like sticking pins into one’s own eyes, inviting intentional agony is not a part of any sane person—but when it touched the tip of his tongue and the siren stayed away, he chewed and smiled into the light. More cheese, ham, a selection of chocolates he’d bought the day before, and then he opened a bottle of Australian red and reveled in its rich, full taste.

  As he ate and drank, he started walking around the flat. The walls were all the same creamy color. The paintings in the hallway were stark black and white. Perhaps, he thought, he needed a hint of color. Just a hint.

  The dream hung on like an odor, but its effect had lessened. He could recall being frightened and alone, but simply recalling it would never bring that sensation back. Fear, like pain, was difficult to remember. He chewed against the dream. His father’s hands, wrinkled like those of an old man. That shadow, talking and humming and denying its own existence, because surely his father would have seen it? He knew what his own lonely son was tasting locked away in that room, so surely he would have heard that voice and seen the shadow where there should have been none?

  In the living room, Cain sat on the large chest he had brought here with him . . . and he realized that it had moved.

  Peter had shoved it into the corner when he moved in two days ago. Like Cain’s dreams, it was something that always had to be there but which he would prefer to ignore. And perhaps like the glut of his memories tonight, its contents were weighing it down. He had not opened the chest for years, since before it had been transferred with him to Afresh. The Face and Voice often spoke to him about it, suggesting that by confronting the fears from his past he would be able to tackle them. But he had told them that some things, whether good or bad, are simply best forgotten. They had not pushed him on the matter, but he knew they wanted a look inside, always.

  After his father had died, in those long days when Cain was almost alone in the house, he had conspired to lock the shadow in the chest. By then he was more afraid of it than his father, the dreams, even the siren. It terrified him because it knew him so well.

  Maybe he had moved it last night. He rapped on the wood, daring the shadow to respond. Silence.

  He could remember little of those days alone in the house, his only company the slowly rotting body of his father splayed out on the living room floor. That and the shadow, which haunted his memories as it had stalked that house. He knew that he had sat next to his father for hours on end, constantly expecting the old man to smile and rise, reveal the escapade as yet another experiment performed on his son. He had tried sensory deprivation, emotional withdrawal; perhaps now he was using psychological torture to bring forth the Pure Sight he swore Cain must possess. But the man had remained dead, his form slowly blackening and losing definition, and Cain had eventually been driven away by the smell.

  He remembered a fight, something inside himself, a struggle against logic and reason that left little more than a deep, dark absence in his mind. He knew the fight had been real, because the void was real. He could sense its lack of weight. It was a deep void, wide, and sometimes he thought it was so large that it was larger than himself. But that was impossible.

  After the fight, something like peace, and the timber chest locked shut with something of that void inside.

  And after that his time at Afresh, where people he had never met tried to help him make sense of his life. They said they could help find him a future. To do so, they seemed to sp
end all their time talking about his past. Maybe they were one and the same, and time itself was the great deceiver.

  Cain stood from the chest and moved back into the hallway, looking again at the black-and-white pictures of treescapes and stormy skies. The tang of cheese in his mouth suddenly made him retch, the aftertaste of the rich fruity wine adding to the effect. He concentrated to keep his stomach contents down, the bland landscapes calming him somewhat, but when he returned to the dining room and smelled the remnants of the mature stilton, he fell to his knees and vomited across the floor. The food and wine came up in great gouts, dripping from his nose. His stomach clenched and spasmed. It felt as though a great hand were closing around him, squeezing and purging him of taste. He puked again. His hands splashed in the mess, but he did not care. Smacking his mouth, he sounded like that mad dog eating something in the dark garage, and he was sick again, just bile this time, colored arterial-red by the wine.

  Eventually, the retching calmed and he sat back against the wall, feet drawn up to avoid the puddle of sick. It stank, but the smell seemed to belong somewhere else. He wished he could lose his senses of smell and taste, turn blind and deaf, ridding himself of the curses of perception that his father had been so keen to reveal and destroy. But then the Voice came at him from the dark outside the windows, always waiting there to talk sense.

  Whatever he thought he was doing, your father was only hurting you. There’ll always be his love there for you to rest on, but remember, Cain, he was hurting you. There was no sense to what he was doing, no reason. He kept you there. He kept you alone.

  “I’ll always be alone,” Cain whispered, and the dark grinned back.

  He sat there until morning, watching his vomit dry into grooves cut into the timber floor by dead Vlad’s wheelchair.

  When his father died, Cain thought he finally knew what loneliness was. But there was always the shadow.