by Tim Lebbon
“He tortured me!”
“You did that to yourself.”
“No! He kept me locked in a room, he hurt me, and—”
“How? How did he hurt you?”
“The siren!”
“Every time that happened, it was you that prompted it.”
Cain felt threat oozing from Magenta now, a rich, alien sense of menace that flowed around him like her exhalations.
“How do you know so much?” he asked, aghast.
“He gave you everything he could without ruining your life,” she said, ignoring his question. “He gave you the chance to start.”
“I don’t want it,” Cain said. “If it means I become something like George, I don’t want to know the Way. I want a wife, and children, and a job.”
“No you don’t!” Magenta scoffed, turning and spitting at the wall. Her saliva sizzled into the plaster and disappeared, and Cain wondered whose imagination was making it do that. “If you do, then you’re a fool,” she said, “and Leonard and I wasted our time.”
“So will you all decide to kill me now?” Cain asked. “Slaughter me like you did Vlad, tear out my guts and leave me in a park somewhere? Set George on me one evening while I’m out walking?”
Magenta looked at him, and suddenly her eyes were filled with something he could not identify at first. It was so far from the anger that had been percolating there that he stood from the bed and backed away toward the window. It was, he supposed, sadness.
“Of course not,” she said. “You may think us inhuman, but we’re far more human than most.” She lowered her eyes. “No intelligence murders its own son.”
Cain did not hear the word. He could not. Shock held him cool and heavy in that room, grasping tight as if ready to burst his soul from the weak construct of flesh and bone that betrayed it every single day.
Son.
“What are you saying?”
“You hated your father, Cain, even though he did everything in his power to give you something special. That’s all he ever wanted for you. I don’t want you to hate me the same way. Go if you want.”
“Are you saying you’re my mother?”
Magenta stepped aside and opened the door. “Nothing will happen to you,” she said. “Go back to Afresh. Have a nice life. I wish I’d never bothered. Poor Leonard . . .” Her eyes glittered, though tears and anger fought for the cause.
Cain did not want to move past her. He thought of the group photo loose in the album, his father so much younger and the blond woman he had already assumed to be Magenta, his father’s hand on her shoulder, squeezing.
“I’ll make it easy for you,” Magenta said. She left, slamming the door behind her.
The flat was suddenly empty. Unlived in. Sterile. As Cain sat on the bed and started to cry, his tears gave it life.
Later, Cain left the bedroom and peeked into the living room. The flat was deserted; he did not need to look around corners or through doors to know that for sure. It was an empty space filled with unused furniture, that was all, and there was not one clear sign of Magenta’s occupation anywhere. There were not even any smells—no whiffs of perfume from the bathroom, no stale cooking from the kitchen. He had seen her sitting cross-legged on the living room floor, motionless, as if loath to move and touch, mark this place as her own.
Perhaps she was a ghost. Cain did not believe in ghosts, but neither did he believe in werewolves, or nuns that flew, or musicians that could hypnotize a person with one note. And at least that wild possibility would explain her lack of presence here, and the fact that she seemed to change appearance at will.
Mother? Cain thought. Can it be that she’s my mother?
But she was no ghost, just as George was not a werewolf, not really. They were people changed beyond recognition by what they knew. Moved on, they would claim, but Cain simply thought of them as changed. If anything, lessened. He did not wish to be like that.
“No way,” he said, and the siren exploded inside him, driving him to his knees in the lifeless flat, fingers clawing furrows in the carpet, head vibrating with the volume, eardrums heating and suddenly cooling again as they leaked blood. He screamed but could not hear himself. He cried, but no tears fell. It went on and on, longer than ever before, and though Cain knew it was not really here, he could not convince the siren to fall quiet. With his eyes squeezed shut, there was nothing to see but blackness. A shadow seemed to dance across his negative vision, a shifting blur on his eyelids, but if he turned his eyes in pursuit it jigged away. Always hidden, always just out of sight. Buried in such pain, he could not really see anything at all.
The siren drifted away in increments, not simply snapping off as it had every time before. There were echoes, but none of them touched anything in that room. The violent noise whispered away, hissing angrily in his bloodied ears, but none of the air in the flat vibrated with its memory. It was inside him, hidden away deep in memory and history and the part of him that strove for a life of its own. However convinced he was that it would never come again, it would always be there, waiting. And yet he could still not quite believe that it was of his own making. A cruel, confused memory controlled the siren still: the memory of his father.
Perhaps his mother could influence it also.
Cain sat up and leaned against a wall, panting and sweating as the remnants of agony receded like dusk fading to night. He wiped a trickle of blood from each ear, and when he rubbed his fingers together the blood seemed to disappear. He heard a fast, insistent thumping, and it could have been the chest on the floor above, or his heart projecting its beat. If he closed his eyes, the shadow still inhabited the blood-red landscape of his inner sight, so he kept them open, excluding the presence for now. The thumping lessened as his heart slowed, he calmed, and sunlight shone impassively through the windows.
Magenta had left the photograph album in the bedroom, propped against the unruffled pillows like an offering. Cain would not accept it. He had seen what it contained, and those memories would be with him forever. There was no need to reinforce that secret history. He had rejected Magenta, and whether or not she was his mother, that had felt good and right. He had stood up for himself, imposed his own version of life onto the idea that Magenta seemed to have for him. Magenta, and also his father, because the old man’s influence was as rich as ever, hanging around him now like a smell that can never be washed away. The siren was proof of that. The two of them together had wanted him to gain Pure Sight, but he had his own visions of what his life should be. It did not involve killing, or flying, or changing into other people. It had nothing to do with seeing past the way things seemed to be, because Cain would be quite happy with that comfortable surface reality. If things ever seemed sane, level, and safe again, why should he seek more? The brief glance he had been afforded into their strange world would stay with him, but in time it would fade into a hazy memory to accompany dreams of the basement room, the tortures, his misplaced childhood. He would prove to himself that his own modest aims were pure and honorable, not naive and shortsighted. Magenta’s great fault was believing that she was special. The conviction that her strange existence placed her above normal people denied the very reasoning behind her existence. In her quest for individuality and freedom, she had discovered ego of the most destructive kind.
This night, Cain would develop his own ego. He would avoid self-importance and embrace humility, because he was right and they were wrong. The Way was a method to get lost within oneself, not found without. He would be silent and secretive on his mission, and by dawn he would have proven to himself that they—George, Whistler, Sister Josephine, even Magenta—were as damaged and imperfect as anyone. Inadequate. Insane. Monsters.
He pushed himself up the wall, feeling the pocket zipper on his trousers scraping the paintwork. When he turned around and saw the scratch in the plaster, and the small shower of shed paint on the carpet, he smiled. It was the single sign of habitation in Magenta’s flat. Already he had made his mark.
/> But he felt alone and afraid, and once on the landing outside Magenta’s front door, he crept up the narrow flight of stairs to his own flat. He glanced at the short door to his right and ran his fingers down the ragged grooves in its surface, thinking of the photograph he had seen, the blood that had bathed this painted wooden surface. There was no sign of it now. The door had been cleaned very well. He considered venturing into Vlad’s storeroom once again, but there was probably nothing new to learn in there. Nothing comforting, at least. The trapeze artist had denied the opportunity offered him, and now he was dead. That single brutal truth was all Cain needed to know.
If Magenta really was his mother, perhaps they would not be so cruel.
Shaking his head to prevent foolishness from taking root, Cain opened his door and stepped inside. He threw the bolt behind him and went straight through to the living room. He held his breath, fearing the worst, and before entering he peered through the crack between door and jamb. Moving left and right, he could see most of the room. He let out a relieved sigh when he saw the chest pushed neatly into its corner, undamaged and unopened. The painting downstairs was a lie, at least for now.
Sitting on his sofa, Cain already felt weak. He had devised something of a plan and here he was, already retreating to the comparative safety of his abode. He frowned, staring out the window at the roofline and the sky above. The moon had begun to peer through, universal history prying into the day. He began to shake. Any brief sense of confidence was shivered away, leaving him like water evaporating in sunlight. He drew up his knees and hugged them to his chest, taking comfort in the contact, trying to make himself as small as possible so that the world would not notice him. He was angry with himself, but that anger only scared him more. The memory of Peter being taken down by the mutated George hit him, and recollection gave the image a bloody splash as the landlord’s throat was ripped out, his scream swallowed whole. Cain wondered where Peter’s body was now, and whether there would even be any fuss when it was found. George was removed from society, and Peter had been too. Perhaps his death would go unnoticed.
Thoughts of Vlad’s final minutes created themselves in his mind, and the more he denied them the stronger they became. The fear, anger, and pain he must have felt. The denial. This is not happening! Would that intense disbelief make such a death easier to accept? Cain thought not.
The sudden image of his living room window shattering inward as something came through made him stand and retreat to the kitchen. He poured a drink but could not swallow. He was hungry, but the thought of food made him gag. He burped up bile and wondered what somebody else’s insides would taste like.
Where had that thought come from?
There was a thump from the living room, and Cain saw the chest moving from the corner of his eye. “Not you,” he said, denying the shadow a life because it was so much a part of his father, the past, the rotten past that had tried to change the potential in Cain.
He reached for the telephone to call the Voice and Face and tell them everything that had happened. It would be madness to their ears, but that was just what he wanted; they would come and take him back. Back to Afresh, back to the beginning again, but at least there he would be safe in his own little world. And whatever he wanted that world to be, he would be allowed to construct it. The Face and Voice would guide him through his life, and when death finally came Cain would know that he had lived his own way.
At Afresh . . . locked away . . . where madness was understood.
Am I really mad? he thought. Maybe I am. Maybe all this is me, the mad life I’ve already created for myself. He thought not. It was madness, yes, but a complex creation like this was way beyond him. His father and Magenta were responsible for this insanity.
He dialed, the chest slammed against the floor in the living room, the phone rang at the other end.
“It’s me,” Cain said when the Voice answered.
The chest exploded.
Cain? the telephone asked.
“Me . . .”
Timber rattled across the floor, ricocheted from the ceiling, and something dark seeped from the shattered box and slid behind the sofa.
Cain? Is that you?
“I think so,” Cain said, “but it’s the last thing I—” The shadow stood behind the sofa, smiled a smile a little less that pitch black, and darted across the room. Cain could not move. The shadow snatched the receiver from his hand and smashed it down into the phone, cracking plastic and cutting the Voice’s final pleading word in half. It continued striking the phone, seemingly enjoying this tactile act of violence. It did not look at Cain, but he felt its full attention upon him.
Cain managed to step back at last, but only a few steps. His hips hit the kitchen sink and there he stood, wide-eyed, watching the shadow destroy the phone. Once finished, it dropped the receiver and went to work on the phone’s innards with teeth Cain could not see. But they were sharp, however nebulous, and wires were shed like slashed bristles across the kitchen floor.
“No more calls,” the shadow said. Its mouth did not move, but the voice was clear in Cain’s head. Clear, and familiar.
“You’re not here,” Cain said, breathing fast, hoping to invoke the truth. “You’re not real. You never have been.”
“You’ve kept me locked away for so long, have you forgotten me?”
“I dream of you, but that’s all you are. A dream.”
“Do dreams touch?” the shadow asked, reaching out and running a cool, dark finger across the back of Cain’s hand. Cain snatched his hand back and looked at the red line forming there, a scratch from nothing. “Do they taste?” It jumped forward and thrust two fingers into Cain’s mouth, working past his teeth and grasping his tongue. He could taste the shadow, like the remnants of a favorite meal, and the taste brought back memories of the times in his father’s basement—shadows where there should have been none, and conversation when loneliness threatened to drive him mad.
The shadow stepped back, giving him space.
“I don’t believe . . .” Cain whispered, unable to finish.
“Do dreams smell?” the shadow asked, and Cain shook his head, then nodded, because he could smell the faint odor of someone other than himself. “And you hear me,” the shadow said. “You hear me well enough.”
“I hear something in my head,” Cain said, staring down at his feet. He did not want to look at the shadow. He could smell it, taste it, feel it, and hear it. To see it might just make it real.
“That’s good enough,” the shadow said. “So now we need to go.”
Cain shook his head. “I only want to go back to Afresh,” he said, tears lubricating his wretchedness. “I only want to spend my time as I wish to, not anyone else. Me.”
The shadow sighed, and Cain could not tell whether it was a movement or a sound. “That’s all I want too,” it whispered. “But not at Afresh. You have freedom to explore, Cain. You can’t deny yourself that just because you’re afraid.”
“If you think Pure Sight is freedom—”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” the voice said, going from peaceful to dripping with violence in a sentence. Cain looked up, afraid that the shadow would be coming at him, but it had retreated back into the living room to attack the sofa. It tore the cloth outer skin from the timber frame in seconds, tacks flying like bullets and embedding themselves in walls and ceiling, stuffing pouring out like coiled guts. The violence was intense and shocking, and Cain cowered back. But he knew that this devastation would never turn against him. However frustrated and angry the shadow may be, it was not there to harm him. It never had been.
“I shut you away,” he said, and the shadow stopped instantly. It turned toward Cain—there was nothing substantial about it, nothing really discernible other than a shape and a lack of light—and tilted its head.
“And now you’ve let me out again.”
“I didn’t let you out.”
“In all but action you did. You need me. You know you do, somewhere de
ep down, deeper than . . . well, even deeper than me. Pure Sight is just a name, Cain. A couple of words. You have to find what it means for yourself.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You have to. You have no choice.”
“I need to talk to—”
“You need to act on your fucking convictions!” The shadow struck the sofa again, sending it scraping across the room, almost smashed into two parts by the impact of nothing against its frame. “Shit!” The shadow kicked out, rolled, spun, and in a few seconds the sofa was in pieces.
Cain panted, heart racing, wondering whether he could make the front door without the shadow catching him.
“Of course not,” the shadow said. “I’m as attached to you as your smell.”
“You’re my shadow,” Cain said, not quite sure whether that was a question or an admission.
“And something a little more,” it said. “I’m your potential. Heed me. Find me. Go through with what you decided to do. Follow them, watch them, know from their ways how different yourWay can be.”
Cain looked around the open-plan flat and wondered whether he could ever live here again. “Do I have any choice?” he asked.
“Yeah, sure,” the voice from the dark of Cain’s mind drawled. “I’m just your shadow, after all.”
Cain sat down on the kitchen floor so that the is land stood between him and the shadow. He could not smell it or hear it, and it remained on that side, aware of what he needed. He closed his eyes. But all he could see was that photograph with his father, hand resting on Magenta’s shoulder. Cain had rejected her, his own mother, turned away from her ideas of what he needed from life. And now the shadow was inviting him to explore the same thing.
Cain knew that it was right. He knew that what it said was true. It spoke in his mind, and perhaps it was of his mind. And if he could not trust himself, there was no hope left.
As he sat there thinking, the shadow began to hum. It was the tune he had always recognized but never been able to name. It took him back to his father’s house, and the sense of peace and safety that tune had once been able to inspire in him, whatever Leonard was putting him through at the time.