Desolation

by Tim Lebbon

  Peter only smiled and nodded, glancing once more at the underwear he would never touch or smell, and then he pushed past Cain and rested his foot on the bottom step. “As I said, I don’t like it down here, so I’m going back up. Any more questions?” And though his mouth made these words, his eyes spoke volumes: There are no more questions.

  Cain made a point of turning away from Peter and looking around, trying not to see the clothing hanging there like secrets out to dry. He saw the chairs that Peter had mentioned—a circle of mixed dining chairs, settees, stools—and though he thought it odd having a gathering place down here, he did not dwell on it. It was dusty and damp and smelled of washing, but as Peter had said—and as Cain himself was coming to find—the residents here were a strange bunch. If Sister Josephine wanted to come down here and preach, that was her prerogative.

  “And now that you’ve met everyone, I don’t need to tell you anything about them,” Peter said, climbing the staircase.

  Cain had a brief idea that the landlord would shut the door and lock him down here, and though the dark never scared him, the thought gave him a second of panic. Like being buried, Peter had said. Cain hurried up the stairs, and Peter closed the door behind him. He smiled at Cain again, his confidence returned after their brief, strange sojourn downstairs.

  “So now that’s over with, if you’ll excuse me I have a few things to do.”

  “Of course,” Cain said, wanting to ask so much more. The door next to his, scratched as if something had tried to get in? George and his nighttime excursions? Magenta? But though the questions begged asking, Cain had begun to suspect that Peter was just as strange and involved as the others. He may live over the street in Heaven, but he was far from innocent.

  Cain spent the rest of that day in his flat. He found some pots of paint under the sink. They were all old and mostly dried out, but a couple were salvageable, and he set these aside. The colors were brash and bright, nothing like the subdued cream that the whole flat was painted with now. Perhaps beneath the surface were shades and tints he could only guess at; those he had found in the kitchen, and others. This could be many flats in one, suiting various people, happening only now to suit him. The black-and-white paintings, the neutral-colored furniture, all was as he would prefer . . . and yet there was that idea growing in his mind, the thought that he could experiment on himself if he so desired. His father was long gone, and that torturous siren was still there only in his head. His brief forays into rich food and drink had come with a price, perhaps, but it was his body, his future and life, the Voice had told him that all the time. He was in control.

  Cain took a knife, removed a picture from the hall wall, and scratched at the paint. It peeled away and fell to the floor like shed skin. There seemed to be several layers of the cream color, and Cain despaired of finding anything different, but then he saw the reason for the many coatings. The color beneath was a rich blood-red, heavy and dark. He removed a patch of paint the size of his hand and stepped back to admire the exposed color. He tried to imagine the whole hallway painted like this, but he could not. It was not fear of the siren or the indoctrination of neutrality by his father. It was simply that he was not capable of realizing such extravagance.

  He scraped at the red, and beneath that was a light green. More scraping, and he uncovered a layer of terra-cotta, warm and orange. It reminded him of the bloodstains on George’s T-shirt. The next scraping took him through to the plaster, but even that pinkness was more colorful than the bland cream. The peeled paint lay on the floor like a shattered rainbow.

  Cain rehung the picture and stared at it for quite some time. It was a landscape of dead trees. Yes, there was something about dead trees. These were in black, white, and gray. Back in the kitchen, he scooped some of the usable paint onto a plate—there was red, blue, and some thick, stodgy yellow—and went back to the hallway. He would bring the dead trees to life.

  The Face would have called it rebellion, but to Cain it felt like coming to life again.

  In the end, he barely touched the painting. Once removed from the frame it felt like vandalism, and a few brief kisses of paint to its printed surface convinced Cain that he was doing wrong. He blew on the paint to aid its drying, reframed the picture, and hung it again. But even with only a slight touch the picture was transformed. The hint of color drew the eye, negating the bland grays with its surreptitious spread. His father would have hated it. Cain was pleased.

  Several times that afternoon he walked into the hallway and simply stood and stared. There was so much color beyond the window of his flat, so much sensory input to sample, so many ways to steal himself away from the life his father had tried to create for him. Pure Sight was seeing clearly, and Cain realized now that his father had never understood even the basics of that. Pure Sight is truth, the old man had said, it’s seeing past the lies. But for Cain, seeing past the lies was everything he had been trying to do since his father’s death. His father was the greatest liar, the worst kind of thief, denying him the basic rights that any child should have. The right to run and play in the woods; the right to revel in wild imagination instead of staid histories; the right to explore food, music, the feel of damp grass on his feet and the sun on his face.

  It took him until evening to realize why this small print, with its new hint of color, should draw him so much. It was because it was something he had created himself, expressing his desire to move on by his own undeveloped creativity. And that felt very good.

  That evening he chose to sing instead of listen to music, and cook instead of eat a frozen dinner. He felt as far away from his father’s influence as he had ever been.

  After one more look at the transformed painting, he went to bed happy, almost content. The taste of dinner lingered on his tongue. He had pushed the chest back into the corner of the living room, and it felt light, as though containing nothing but air. He was not confident enough to open it—not yet—but his fear of it had receded to a memory, rather than something fresh and heavy.

  He left the curtains open and felt the moonlight where it touched his bare skin.

  Cain is in the basement room again, his older sleeping mind in the young version of himself, and he does not remember this at all. The room is dark, silent, bereft of odors, and he is sitting on the floor with his arms raised on either side. He is terrified with the knowledge of what is happening and what must have already happened. If he touches the floor, the siren will berate the contact. If he rests his hands on his knees, that blast of sound will hit him again. Tears threaten, but he tries to hold them back, his older dreaming mind finding it just as difficult as the young Cain. He pants with the effort of keeping his arms raised, but there is no feel of clothing against his chest or stomach. He moves slightly, and feels his sweat-slick skin sticking to the floor. He is naked in the dark, terrified, and he hates and loves his father at the same time. He does not know which version of himself feels which.

  Cain coughs with the effort of holding back tears, the breath wafts against his hand, and the siren blasts into his skull. He cries out and clasps his hands to his ears, and the siren blasts again, again, single short explosions less than a second long, each one feeling like hours. Even with his hands over his ears the sound injures him, seeming to enter his body through his skin and flesh to pound at his heart, his ribs, his bones. The more he touches and feels, the more the siren erupts.

  Something shakes him. He does not feel its touch, cannot discern where it is holding on, but he is being pushed roughly back and forth. He lets go of his ears and raises his hands, and the siren ceases. The shaking, however, continues. And now there is a presence in the dark before him. It has no real weight, but still it fills space, and as the voice whispers in his ear Cain knows the shadow has touched him at last.

  “I can get you away from the old fuck for a while. It won’t be much of a rest, but it’ll be a relief. Come with me.”

  Cain shakes his head, unable to believe that the shadow is real. His father
would know of it, and its touch on his skin—though he cannot actually feel where it is making contact—would surely have ignited the siren again.

  “Don’t be an idiot! I know you know me. You accepted me months ago—years ago, depending on who I’m talking to—so don’t shake your head at me. You want this?”

  Cain shakes his head again. The violent shuddering stops, but then something forces his arm down and his hand slaps against his penis.

  Cain hears the shadow’s laughter a split second before the siren drowns it out.

  The tears are flowing now, and he leans forward so that they drip straight onto the floor.

  “Crybaby,” the shadow says. “You going to let the crazy fuck beat you? Get up. Get up! Wake up!”

  Still, the shaking. And now Cain is on his back, protected from the floor by some sort of material, and though he can feel it against his skin, the siren stays silent.

  “You’re not real,” Cain whispers.

  “And what’s real?” the shadow whispers in his ear, shaking him again with a final violent nudge. “Your mad father’s Pure Sight? Pah!” And then it bites him.

  Cain snapped awake sprawled on the floor next to his bed, sheets and blankets twisted around his legs. He thrashed his arms, kicked his legs at whatever was biting him, rolled over in an attempt to break free, but succeeded only in entangling himself even more.

  “Leave me!” he shouted, but there was no response.

  Moonlight bathed the scene. Cain shoved against the floor with his feet, pushing himself back against the wall, and looked around the room. There were shadows, but none of them moved or spoke, none of them seemed deep. It may still be there, though. Watching and smiling. But it was no longer biting.

  Slowly he calmed, his heart relaxing back toward normal, the sweat on his skin drying into the cool air. His arm hurt where the shadow had bitten him in his dream. He stood, the sheets still tangled around him, and reached for the bedside lamp. Squinting against the sudden light, he looked at his arm, turning it this way and that, but there was no mark there at all.

  You’ll always have nightmares, the Voice had told him, it’s the way your mind deals with what’s happened to you. They’re not pleasant, but they serve a purpose. They purge you. Imagine keeping all those memories, that fear and rage, bottled up inside?

  “Nightmare,” Cain muttered.

  He heard humming from the living room. It was that tune, the one he could never place, the same tune the shadow had hummed to him years before trapped in his father’s house. He shook his head. He bit his lip and pinched his thigh. But he was already awake. The humming was muted and distant, and Cain knew why. It was coming from the chest. That shadow he had locked away, the impossibility from his childhood, was humming him a nighttime serenade.

  “Shut up!” Cain whispered. He did not want to shout in case he woke his neighbors, and he almost laughed at how ridiculous that was. They were playing with him, toying with his mind, and he was afraid of waking them up.

  The humming continued. The unidentified tune was a theme to his life.

  “Shut up!” he said again, dropping the bedclothes, pulling on his jeans and shirt before walking to the door. He switched on the hallway light and glanced at the picture he had changed, taking strength from his action. The humming seemed to falter for a few seconds.

  “Afraid?” Cain asked. “Afraid I have a mind of my own?”

  The only answer was a low, deep chuckle from inside the chest. It sounded like a growl.

  “You’re not real,” Cain said. “You never were.”

  “How’s the arm?” the voice said. “Hope it didn’t hurt too much, but I had to wake you up. Had to, because you have to see.”

  “I’m not listening to you.”

  “It’s not Sister Josephine that uses the basement, it’s all of them.”

  That circle of chairs, Cain thought.

  “That’s right.”

  He moved to the living room door, turned on the light, and stared at the chest. Watching it changed nothing. The humming started again, the chest remained still, and Cain should have burnt it or dumped it or cut it into pieces.

  “I’m killing you,” he said. “That hurt you, the painting I touched, didn’t it? It offended you that I can find my own mind.”

  The humming paused, and then a huge laugh erupted from the chest. It was so loud that wood squealed as it vibrated and the chest thumped on the floor.

  “I want you to find your mind! What, you think I’m your fucking mad father?”

  I know you’re not, Cain thought, but there was no certainty there at all. He had no idea of anything. He glanced back over his shoulder, and from this distance the painting looked exactly as it had before he’d touched it. He may as well have not bothered.

  “You think I’m that mad fuck? Go to the basement and see. See what you’re missing because of him. Just see!”

  “I’ll live without you,” Cain whispered, his words slow and so filled with feeling. His body was on fire, nerve endings sparkling beneath his skin, his balls tingling. He was plugged into something he did not know he had, and though he had never been brave, he felt pride at confronting this thing. It was a shadow that could never be, the manifestation of his father’s madness and his own confused love and hate of that man, and now it was trying to steer him. He never believed that he would be its master, but now, listening to a phantom voice from the chest that contained it, Cain truly believed that he was going to be all right.

  “Of course you will,” the shadow said. “I don’t wish for anything different. I’m for you, Cain, not against you.”

  “Go away,” Cain said.

  “Then go to the basement.” The voice fell silent, the humming stopped, and Cain knew without touching it that the chest was empty. He moved into the living room and lifted it by one of the metal handles. It felt even lighter than the wood and metal that made it up. And Cain felt strong.

  He knew he was foolish to go, but it felt as though he had told himself.

  Creeping down the staircase from the second floor felt like being back in his father’s house. Complete stillness and silence surrounded him, yet the potential for violence accompanied his every step, a breath held and waiting to bellow. He was afraid of the siren, but there were still other dangers much less known. He had chosen not to use the staircase lighting, in case it alerted anyone to his midnight jaunt. There could have been anything on the next stair ready to trip him. Four steps down someone could have been standing there, hands outstretched, nails sharpened, ready to rip at his eyes and claw out his throat. Strange that the face Cain saw in this image belonged to George.

  But the darkness did not frighten him. He was used to the darkness. And knowing more than he should, he was able to mentally see his route down to the basement unimpeded and empty.

  Still he kept quiet, not wishing to wake anyone. He passed Magenta’s door and imagined her inside, asleep and dreaming of everyone she had ever been. Whistler’s door presented him with nothing, so Cain headed down to the ground floor, hand slipping along the rail to guide his steps.

  As he paused outside Sister Josephine’s door, he thought he heard muttering from inside. Maybe she was praying. Or perhaps she had something that hummed to her as well. Cain looked around, startled, wondering whether his own shadow had followed him down. But everything was still and shadows sat where they were supposed to be, waiting for dawn to drive them down.

  Artificial light from the street bled through obscure glazing in the front door, providing a subtle illumination to the lobby. Cain was able to step right up to the nun’s door without touching it. He put his ear to the wood and held his breath. He could still hear the mumbling, but Flat One was as silent as an innocent’s sleep. He moved along to George’s flat, and that was when he realized where the sound was coming from.

  He should have known from the instant he first heard it. The shadow had told him where to go after all, and now he knew why. The basement was alive, lit from with
in, light bleeding beneath the door and marring the floor like an immovable stain. The voices came from within.

  Cain could just discern individual voices. Not the words—they were distorted by the bulk of the house—but one or two of the owners he knew. Peter, scared of being underground, chattered and laughed. Somebody else echoed the laughter and said a few deep, gravelly words. Whistler. A woman’s voice came next, and Cain could not make out whether it belonged to Magenta, Sister Josephine, or neither of them.

  He almost went back upstairs. If he did not investigate any further, then he would discover nothing he did not want to. These people knew each other, they had lived here for longer than he knew, and now they had a stranger in their midst. Why shouldn’t they gather for a talk, perhaps a drink? Who was he to intrude?

  But in the basement, at three in the morning? There were a million better places to meet. It smelled down there, and it was probably cold and damp, and a sudden burst of laughter convinced Cain that he had to see. It reminded him of the merriment he had heard as George stumbled away through the garden, bleeding or giggling to himself. It excluded him, and he hated the mockery inherent in that sound.

  He had no idea how he could change that, but still he reached for the door handle.

  The instant his hand touched the door, the basement fell silent. And now the siren, Cain thought, his fingertips caressing cool metal, the taste of fear rich in his mouth. But the sound that came from beyond the door was something else entirely. It was a flowing, whispering whip like a sheet being flicked from one end, and then a thud as something landed on the staircase just beyond the door.

  Cain withdrew his hand, but it was too late.

  The door was tugged open, light flooded out, and he squinted against the silhouette that stood there. It seemed to absorb the light and project it directly at him, as if to blind, and as he closed his eyes the smell of honey came at him in a wave, warm and sweet as if heated by hot skin.

  “Oh, you’re such a dreamer,” Sister Josephine said.