Desolation

by Tim Lebbon

  “Home sweet home,” he muttered, but Magenta did not respond. They walked through the front garden—still it watched, breathed, filled with secretive rustlings—and Magenta opened the front door.

  “Do I have anything to fear?” Cain asked, suddenly certain that once he entered the house he would never leave again. “Once I’m in there, is something going to happen to me?”

  Magenta turned on the doorstep and her eyes softened. “Cain, haven’t you been listening to anything? You’re as special as us, as unique. You just haven’t admitted it to yourself.”

  “Peter thought he was special. That didn’t prevent George from tearing out his spine.”

  “Peter never knew the Way, and he said too much. If he’d do it once, he’d do it again. He was the landlord, but even after so long it appears he would have betrayed us. We can’t have that.”

  “You knew this was going to happen?”

  “No, but I’m not surprised.”

  “So what do you do?” Cain asked. “What are your special superhero powers? What has the Way given you?”

  “Freedom,” she said, smiling at Cain as if he were a child. “Knowledge. Truth. It’s given me a real life, not one dictated by preconceived notions of right and wrong, good and bad. I’m anyone I want to be, Cain. One day I’m white, next day Asian. One day I’m someone men would die for, next day they don’t even see me. You have no idea of the power in that.”

  “I came here looking for my own life,” he said miserably. “I never wanted to get involved with everyone else’s.” Wherever he looked he saw Peter on the ground, the dog raking at his back with its unnatural claws, and he could still taste the fear and dirt in the landlord’s mouth.

  “You’ll find it,” Magenta said. Her voice was so certain.

  Magenta’s flat appeared normal, and yet there was something about it that disturbed Cain greatly. To begin with, he could not quite pin down what that was, but it did not take long for him to see the sham.

  The hallway was lined with bookcases, and each shelf was jammed with books stacked vertically and horizontally. He glanced along the spines, but there was not one title or author he recognized. None of the spines were cracked or creased; all of the books were unread. He remembered Whistler’s strange volumes of My Philosophy, and he suddenly had no wish to open these.

  The living area was sparsely furnished and decorated in soft green, the dining area empty apart from a tiny table and one lonely chair. The kitchen looked brand new, highly polished stainless-steel fittings set off against white units and a concrete slab floor. It was well kept, neat and tidy, completely unused. Cain went to the bathroom, and as he stood peeing he looked around at the highly polished fittings, the sparkling floor, the bath and shower cubicle that were all far too pristine to have simply been cleaned. These were untouched.

  Magenta was in the living room when he came out, sitting in the middle of the floor, stretching. She nodded at the photo album he had put on the sofa when they came in. “I guess you’ll be wanting to have a look at that now. Feel free to use my bedroom if you want some privacy.”

  “I’m not sure . . .” Cain said. “Some things are best left unknown.”

  “You really think so?” She stood up straight, raised her eyebrows, and shrugged.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Changing.” She smiled at his startled expression. “Don’t worry, I’m nothing like George. It comes and goes with my moods. It’s just the Way for me. Causes some bastard aches and pains sometimes, so I stretch out as often as I can.” She shrugged off her black jacket and unzipped the fly of her leather trousers, squirming them over her hips and dripping them to the floor.

  “Maybe I will use your bedroom,” Cain said, abashed. He picked up the album and tried not to look at Magenta, and the harder he tried the more he looked. She was smiling at him, but there was nothing sexual about it at all, nothing enticing.

  “Sorry if this makes you uncomfortable,” she said, “but I can feel something coming on. Wait and see, if you want. If it will open your eyes a little bit more, it can only do good.”

  I don’t want Pure fucking Sight! he thought once again, but Magenta grabbed the hem of her tight T-shirt and lifted it over her head in one motion, and he could not move. Her body was lithe and athletic, her breasts small, her hips narrow. She sighed and stretched, the muscles on her legs and stomach tensing and releasing as if happy to be free of unnatural hindrances.

  “You’re gorgeous,” he said, unable to help himself. I saw a man killed tonight, and now I’m telling a naked woman she’s gorgeous. But Peter’s death seemed distant already, as if it had happened far away in place and time. If that was Cain thinking more along the Way, then he could live with that small part of it; it gave him comfort.

  “Thanks,” she said matter-of-factly. “Sometimes, I guess.” She lifted one arm behind her head, stretched one leg out in front of her, squatted down, and groaned as joints clicked with the sound of pebbles on concrete. She turned her head to either side, similar crunches greeting each movement, and her face creased in pain.

  “Sorry, Cain,” she said.

  “What for?”

  “Well . . .” But she said no more. Her body flipped sideways onto the floor, and Magenta groaned again, squirming on the carpet. Something moved beneath the skin of her stomach, flexing it, pushing out as if eager for release. It rose higher, parting just below her ribs and pulsing up under her chest. Each breast seemed to grow in size, and her nipples changed from soft and pink to hard and dark. She whipped her head on the floor, blond hair trailing. Her fingers scratched at the carpet—Cain saw a forest of plucked threads, evidence of many previous changes—and then Magenta’s hair was suddenly brunette.

  He stepped back. There was a new woman before him already.

  “Shit,” she moaned, twisting on the floor, her legs filling out, arms thickening, and something happened to her face. “Shit!”

  Cain turned and ran for the hallway. He meant to flee the flat, but the thought of the ravenous George out there, and perhaps that flying, freakish nun, held him back at the last second. He went into Magenta’s bedroom instead, the album clasped to his chest like a talisman, and he shut the door on her swearing and thrashing and her long groans of pain.

  He sat on the double bed—it was made up, and the bedding smelled new and just out of the packet—and listened to the noise from the living room. Magenta’s voice had deepened a little, and her words, though confused, seemed to be singing out some strange mantra. It was not a prayer as such, but there was a pattern there. Even though Cain could not decipher the meaning, it sent a chill into him, as if he were hearing his own death sentence in a foreign tongue.

  Panicked, confused, and feeling more and more as if he were living a dream, Cain went to the window to see if he could escape that way. He looked out over the street at where Heaven sat bathed in moonlight. Nothing moved behind its windows. Its door was firmly shut, and the overgrown garden—ideal home for hedgehogs, foxes, and other night dwellers—was utterly still and deserted. He tried the window, but it was locked. Besides, it was a sheer fifteen-foot drop to the ground. And if he jumped, he would end up tangled in spiky undergrowth.

  The album called to him, begging to be opened.

  Magenta had fallen silent. Pressing his ear to the door, Cain could hear heavy breathing and the occasional groan accompanying the creak of floorboards. He guessed she was standing up, slowly, becoming accustomed to her new body.

  New body? What the fuck was that all about?

  The album was warm from where he had been carrying it. Warm as flesh. The covers were of soft, worn leather that could have easily been human skin. He sniffed the book, and it smelled of lost times.

  The bedroom door opened and Magenta peered in. She was a brunette now, heavyset, high cheekbones, taller than she had been before. Her eyes were the same, though, and they communicated with Cain, telling him not to be afraid, everything was all right, he would understand soon
enough.

  He stared, unable to speak past his amazement. A sense of wrongness set him shivering, and he hugged the album for any comfort it could give.

  “I’m exhausted,” Magenta said, her voice husky and new, “but I’m not rude. You can sleep in here tonight. And tomorrow, if you’re ready, I’ll introduce you to George and the nun.” She closed the door without waiting for a reply.

  I should run. I should return to Afresh, tell the Face and Voice what was happening here. They’ll take care of me, as I am obviously, patently mad.

  And yet . . . and yet there was the photograph album, the one Peter had gone to such great pains to give to Cain before being slaughtered. And within its covers there may be answers to questions Cain had not yet conceived.

  Slowly, squeezing his eyes almost shut, Cain let the first leaf fall open.

  Cain’s father had always refused to answer any questions about the past. “The past is gone, the future is fluid, it’s the here and now that matters,” Leonard would say, and that was always his response. Even as a child, Cain soon came to realize that this was a way of avoiding the truth. There was so much his father could have told him—about his mother, their life together, and Cain’s own time as a baby and young child—but the old man chose to remain silent on the matter. However much Cain asked, the answer was always the same. And sometimes, like a grumpy dog woken from a midday sleep, his father snapped at him.

  “Why are you so keen to hear about the past? Aren’t you happy with the now? Don’t you think I’m doing enough for you, helping you, doing my very best to give you the life you deserve?”

  “Yes, Father,” Cain would say, knowing that there was no other answer for him to give. And Leonard would grunt and nod, walk away, retreat to his study to conceive of some other cruel test to try and thrust his son toward Pure Sight.

  Cain would spend the inevitable lonely hours following such an exchange wandering the house, which was always open to him, and searching through parts of his father’s library, which was not. It always came as a disappointment to find that the books his father studied were much the same as his own: texts on science, mathematics, astronomy, natural history, with nothing given to the exploration of imagination. Back then, Cain had no concept of fiction as an entertainment—it was, he thought, a dark and lonely madness inside him—but he knew of art and expression, and he was saddened that none of the books in the house stretched that way. He would spend hours searching through great tomes on the laws of gravity, hoping that there would be a page or two at least alluding to leaps of imagination. But in such books these leaps were referred to as theories, whereas Cain was searching for dreams.

  Sometimes he thought he may find a secret slip of paper that his father had forgotten about, a letter from his mother, something to show that there was more to Leonard than he ever revealed to Cain. But the books were clean, pure, honest volumes with nothing hidden away, utterly closed to interpretation.

  In many ways, Cain was blinkered to reality and the true worth of things, but he had always been aware that his father had a past that would perhaps explain much of the present. He had never started to question what was happening to him—what his father was doing—until he was eight years old. From that point on he sought not only Pure Sight, as overseen by his father, but also his own hidden truth, his own story. He started to silently question what his father was doing. And though the possibility of escape never crossed his mind, Cain had become more and more uncomfortable with the way his father was steering his life.

  The siren never, ever knew of these thoughts. Somehow the boy kept them to himself, where they grew and grumbled, rooted in an unsettled part of his mind.

  He always believed that these thoughts were the source of his shadow.

  His imagination never had been very strong.

  The first page in the album contained a letter. It was a missive of love, dated thirty years before and written from his mother to his father. Cain opened it from where it was folded in on itself and began to read. At first it did not affect him at all. The sentiments seemed trite, the wording clumsy, and the writing itself was spidery and unsure. But a few lines in he suddenly realized exactly what he was seeing, and it hit him hard. His mother had touched this letter. This was of his mother’s mind. He sobbed out loud, uncontrollably, and dropped the book to the floor. It fell open to reveal several pictures, all of them variations on the same pose: his father sitting astride a horse, with a woman who could only be Cain’s mother holding its reins. She looked so gorgeous, so alive, that he had no idea how she could have ever been a mystery to him. This was the first time he had ever seen a picture of her—even after his father’s death, no trace of her existence had been found in the house—and he felt as though he had known her his whole life.

  Tears blurred the image, and Cain wiped at his eyes. The book stared up at him as if innocent, though it was anything but that. It contained proof of all the lies his father had ever told him. There were images of him and Cain’s mother happy together, smiling, looking forward with the future at their fingertips. Somewhere in their sparkling eyes was an idea of Cain, the child they would have in the future, and the limitless potential inherent in that new, small human. He wondered what his mother would have thought of him now. She had died giving birth to him, so Leonard had claimed, but right now Cain had no idea what to believe. His father had always told him that the future was fluid and changeable, but for Cain the past was equally so. Leonard had made it like that. The truth was elusive.

  Perhaps in this photograph album Cain would find the skeleton upon which he could flesh out his own history.

  He leaned down, still dripping tears, and picked up the book. He closed it so that he could start again at the beginning.

  A sudden crashing sound came from outside. Cain started, heart skipping a beat. Something was being smashed on the floor, again and again. It was so violent that he felt the vibrations against his skin, as if the air within the flat shook with each impact. He ran to the door and opened it a crack. Peering across the hall and into the living room, he saw Magenta sitting cross-legged on the floor, hands on her knees, head dipped as if she were asleep. The banging came again, and it was not Magenta. She lifted her head, moved it slightly left and right, rested again.

  Cain closed the door, terrified of whatever was causing the ruckus. It stopped and started, stopped again, and by moving around the bedroom he could place where it was coming from: directly above him, from the living room of his flat.

  It sounded exactly like the wooden chest being lifted and dropped, again and again.

  “Hello, shadow,” Cain said. He was not surprised. He closed his eyes and opened them again, found himself in the same position and situation, bit his lip, finally convincing himself that he was not in any normal dream. Perhaps it was a fugue of madness, but then madness breeds it own reality.

  The crashing stopped, as if whatever causing it had heard his voice. Cain smiled and looked up at the ceiling, wondering just how close he was to his past. “You don’t want me to see this, do you?” he whispered. There was a high-pitched screech as the chest moved a few inches across the floor.

  What am I imagining here? he thought. What am I seeing, smelling, hearing? I must be asleep, but my senses work, and it’s the strangest dream ever. And in dreams, can I find the truth? He opened the album at the third page, looked at the photographs of his father as a young man. There he is, but is this real? Was he really a soldier? Did he have a mustache like that, his hair cut short, his body fit and lean? Or is this only my mad idea of what I could find, were I only to look?

  Perhaps madness is the Way, after all.

  “Voice?” Cain whispered. “Face? You wouldn’t believe the shit I’ve got myself into here.” The chest was silent, the shadow still once again.

  Cain sat back down on the bed and started leafing through the book. He turned each page slowly, not wishing to rush the process of revelation.

  Here was his father in the army
, posing next to an armored vehicle of some kind. A laughing man stood in the background, and Leonard looked as if he had just told a joke. His eyes held all the humor his face betrayed. Cain had never seen him like this.

  Another image showed his father with a larger group of soldiers, all gathered around a fallen tree trunk, brandishing weapons and with their faces darkened by camouflage paint. His father’s eyes were stark white points against his face, piercing, intelligent, filled with a passion that scared Cain because he had never seen it in real life. Not like this, not so pure. The man he had known must have been much reduced by some event in his past.

  The next page contained another letter from his mother. It was not a love letter. Time had moved on, and now the two of them were in a comfortable relationship, and she spoke only of news, most of it insignificant. It was a missive written for the sake of it . . . but then the final paragraph made Cain freeze: Leonard, I have some news I can only tell you face-to-face. I so look forward to Saturday.

  Next page. Cain’s parents sat on a cliff-top bench overlooking the sea. Whoever had taken the picture had caught a moment of intense intimacy, one that brought fresh tears to Cain’s eyes because he was looking at himself for the first time: his father’s hand on his mother’s stomach, his mother smiling just over her husband’s shoulder, seeing some lost future in the dim distance.

  Cain looked across the bedroom at a mirror. He stared into his own eyes and tried to discern a similar future, filled with such hope and potential. But tears seemed to obscure the way, and his pupils were dark and bottomless.

  He turned more pages, and the past came at him like a flood of forbidden memories. He had tried to imagine these scenes so often—his parents together, his mother blooming as her stomach grew, the private past that his father would never discuss—that some of them felt like vague memories. It was as if he had dreamed each and every photograph and then forgotten the dreams until now, when the actual images reminded him.

  He knew the face of his mother, even though he had never seen her before. So beautiful, so caring, and so naive of what his father would become following her death. Cain knew for sure that there were no such things as ghosts. If there were, his mother would have surely returned to help him by now. He looked around the bedroom just in case. As ever, he was alone.