Ventriloquists

by David Mathew

  Hurry!

  Inside the dream’s fragile skull, Nero was aware that time was limited. As soon as he understood this, the temperature dropped: one reality had sneaked in another, and surely further sensory impressions would be swift to follow.

  Hurry!

  I’m hurrying! Nero answered back, willing a fast-forward up the gentle gradient of the passway. The willing worked. The resulting velocity propelled his vision into a thickening confusion of falling snow. And it was quite a blizzard: certainly Nero had seen nothing like it in his fifteen years. Indeed, the flakes were so thick in the air – falling faster as Nero continued to accelerate up the incline – that his breath pulled up short in his lungs. It was hard to breathe.

  Why had the man come here? Nero wondered.

  There was no doubt that he was following a man… but why had the mad bastard climbed this passway?

  This question was on Nero’s mind as the snow coalesced and congealed; as the temperature dipped, the blood in his veins drumming against the chill. The damage to his lungs was bound to be longlasting, Nero feared; and as his eyelids opened, the question was flipped open for him to see through the storm of coughs rising from his chest and throat.

  Jess said, ‘Drink some water.’

  Nero jumped up to his feet, still coughing. He’d been holding his breath, in his sleep. Now he bent at the waist and picked up the water jug. Instead of pouring from it, however, or even drinking from it directly, he tipped what remained of the water over his head. Then he shook like a dog emerging from the sea. Water ran down his brown back, his lightly-muscled chest.

  Lying on her campbed, Jess was evidently not impressed by Nero’s actions. ‘You’re in a funny mood,’ was all she had to say on the subject, however.

  ‘Weird dreams,’ Nero told her.

  ‘Change the mix.’

  ‘I’m point blank. Like I’m chasing this guy through the hills. All snowy and shit…’

  Jess looked scared. ‘I’ve been having something similar again,’ she admitted. ‘Do you know who he is?’

  ‘Nah. But I know one thing, Jess. Following people in times of trouble is how religions start. Following the Prophet and all that.’

  ‘…So who’s he following?’ Jess asked.

  Nero shrugged. ‘Maybe I need to get back to sleep to find out. Nothing else to do… Maybe it’s God. Or maybe he’s just one of them nutters who likes extreme sports.’

  3.

  But he wasn’t, Nero knew. The man he was following was no sports fanatic – extreme sports or otherwise. The longer Nero spent on trying to tune into his leader’s consciousness, in fact, the more he came to believe that this leader loathed his own trials. He was certainly not travelling for the good of his health – or not specifically at any rate – the element of personal survival was at stake.

  For him as it is for me, thought Nero; and he surprised himself with the vaguely Biblical-sounding construction of his own sentence – as if it had been passed to him from a source other than his own word pool.

  ‘Jess?’ Nero asked into the darkness.

  No response.

  Probably best. Nero could hear her breathing: she was still alive. Best he could shoot for, though. Alive or dead’s the options, innit. She’s alive – so that must be good, I suppose. Anyway: what am I gonna say to the girl? Jess, what do you remember about Jesus from R.E. lessons? She’ll think I’ve gone nuts. Did Jesus have to climb some fucking bare high mountains? Snow on the top…

  ‘What is it?’ Jess answered.

  Either personal desperation or the shared visions had made Nero brave. ‘You know the guy we’re chasing?’

  ‘Who said it’s a guy? Could be a girl,’ Jess replied. ‘Nah, you’re right: it’s a guy.’

  ‘Can you see him?’

  ‘No. But I can feel him, I think.’

  ‘In what way?’

  Jess cleared her throat. ‘You won’t laugh?’

  ‘I’ll try not to,’ Nero assured her – or tried to.

  ‘My feet get cold,’ Jess told him. ‘He’s up in the hills, moving north, right?’

  ‘Right…’

  ‘Well, he ain’t wearing the correct footware. Gonna get frostbite. Lose his toes.’

  ‘I agree with you.’ Nero closed his eyes; in his head he searched for the leader.

  Jess continued speaking. ‘I get the impression,’ she said carefully, giving Nero the impression that she was choosing her constructions with defiant deliberation, ‘he’s been placed where he’s at. It wasn’t his choice.’

  ‘Yeah, I agree with that too. He’s a stranger.’

  ‘In a strange land,’ Jess finished.

  The two of them fell silent.

  Why me? Nero asked himself – immediately amending the question to Why us? Why was it he and Jess who could see the man in the mountains?

  ‘Do you think we’re the only ones who see him?’ he asked.

  ‘Doubt it.’ Jess paused. ‘Probably anyone in a world of pain sees him.’

  The possibility was one that Nero had considered, and it pumped him full of hope. Two reasons for this show of optimism pertained.

  The first reason to be cheerful was surely that they’d be able to get in touch with their new leader at will… somehow. And if the transmission was two-way, perhaps their leader would have some words of wisdom. What other use were leaders for, anyway? If the mad prick was capable of shimmying fucking barefoot across a glacier (or whatever), surely the cunt was capable of getting his disciples out of a locked room!

  The second reason to be cheerful was the chance that he might reach out to other observers. If the mad prick was the focal point, couldn’t Nero think his way through him? Couldn’t he form some sort of… some sort of network?

  Once more Jess cleared her throat in the darkness.

  ‘His name’s Chris,’ she said.

  Nero did not respond.

  ‘That’s a lot like Christ,’ she added in a dreamy tone of voice.

  Wild Nature

  ‘Do you know what the crocodile bird is, Mass? Well, it’s name gives you everything once you know it, but the concept’s weird. It’s a bird, right, that lives in the crocodile’s mouth! So why don’t the croc eat it, you may ask. Because the bird cleans his teef. The bird’s his fucking dental hygienist! Pecks all the shit from the croc’s nashers, mate! And that’s nature that is. That’s evolution. That’s cosmic harmony, mate.

  ‘And then there’s the fish that lives on the ocean floor, where by all accounts it can get a bit nippy, right? Female says to the male: Let’s have a cuddle, warm ourselves up a bit. So the male gets cosy and lovey-dovey, and do you know what the squaw does to him? She absorbs him. She absorbs the cunt, right into her own body… Wish I could remember the name of that fish, but there you go: I’m closer to seventy than sixty these days, and forget about bladder control and so forth: the real problem after forty is the memory.’

  Benny tapped the side of his head, helpfully reminding Massimo of where the memory was stored. Massimo said nothing. With men like Benny, sometimes it was better to say nothing.

  ‘Do you know, Mass, there is literally no point to a wasp. No biological or etymological – is that the right word? – point to the cunt. He plays no part in the food chain. He’s full of spite. And he loves to kamikaze into me warm pint of flat lager at The Dreadful Doris. He’s just a wanker, Mass. Not even wasp so-called experts could give two tin shits about wasps. If they died out tomorrow, nothing would change. Apart from you’d have safer picnics.

  ‘What do these three creatures have in common, you may well be wondering. Why’s old Benny giving me this flannel? Well, I’ll tell you, Mass. It’s about environment. Environment. The crocodile bird could live anywhere theoretically, but he don’t. He risks it all perching in a killing machine’s mush. The male fish just wants a nosh off
his missus, if fish go in for that sort of thing. But instead of getting fucked by his wife, he gets fucked by what? He gets fucked by what, Mass?’

  Benny waited.

  Oh, the man required an answer, Massimo realised. ‘By his environment?’ he ventured.

  Benny clicked his fingers.

  ‘By his environment – precisely. And then you’ve got the wasp – that natural irritant; that prince of chaos. Who demands an environment larger than ours. And who will be squashed by its natural enemy – man – who is four-and-a-half million times larger than he is, the cunt. But what does this make us, mate? Am I supposed to feel brave? That I’ve killed a tiny creature with my beer glass? What does this tell me about my environment?

  Massimo shrugged.

  Benny waited.

  Massimo shrugged again and said, ‘I don’t know. What?’

  ‘It is my solemn duty,’ Benny answered carefully, ‘and my moral responsibility, to do everything in my power to control my environment. Do you follow me?’

  The answer was no, but Massimo said, ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘In the examples I’ve given you, Mass, you might think of yourself as the bird to my crocodile…’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’

  ‘Well, you’d be wrong. The truth is, I’m the bird – that’s how it feels. And I’m the male fish getting absorbed into something much more powerful than I am.’

  The female fish, Massimo deduced. This was all about a woman? ‘What’s her name?’

  Benny shook his head, a line of impatience ploughing vertically through his muscular brow. ‘You might even say,’ he went on.

  ‘You’re a wasp,’ Massimo interjected, believing that he was finally on the other man’s wavelength.

  ‘That’s right. I’m an irritant – to you. I love chaos.’

  ‘Well, that’s good, considering how much there is around.’

  ‘Considering how much there is around that’s precisely of your own making.’

  ‘Me? What did I do?’

  ‘You hired imbeciles to burgle the house,’ Benny answered simply. ‘One of them lost his life and half his head…’ Benny chuckled. ‘The other one’s been sending me messages.’

  The news came as a surprise to Massimo. Knowing Benny’s preference for old-fashioned faxes over emails (Benny made no secret of the fact that he didn’t ‘do the Internet’), Massimo asked: ‘He sends you faxes?’

  Again, Benny shook his head. ‘Not faxes, Mass, no; not faxes. Messages.’ He touched the side of his head once more. ‘In here… In me dreams.’

  ‘…Are you serious?’ Massimo said.

  ‘Serious as herpes, mate. What I said to you, if memory serves – and I’m sure it does – is to find two blokes who’ve never worked together.’

  ‘Which I did.’

  ‘Which you did. Full marks for recruitment. And to enter Number 11, in the full awareness that they’d know what it was I wanted them to find. They’d know it when they saw it.’

  ‘Yeah… about that…’

  ‘You wanna know what it was.’ Benny grinned: two rows of pearlies, as flawless as a dolphin’s, giving rise to Massimo’s query-to-self as to whether or not they were dentures. ‘I’ve been waiting for this. Fair enough. You’ve been patient on that score – more patient than a cunt like me would be in your size nines. The honest answer is: I don’t know. Do you wanna see me snakes?’

  What Massimo wanted was a beverage. He’d been in Benny’s Ashridge home for thirty minutes and he hadn’t been offered so much as a glass of water. Coming here, he was starting to believe, had been a mistake. This could have been done on the phone. And the traffic back was likely to be murder… The only consolation would be the crate of knocked-off Shiraz that was waiting for him in the shed. A nice pint of red would do the trick quite nicely right now.

  ‘I have several vivaria,’ Benny elaborated.

  ‘Are they poisonous?’

  ‘No, Mass. A vivarium’s a place where you keep and nurture the cunts. Do you know, the boa constrictor is one of the few creatures on the planet that we refer to by its official Latinate name? It’s interesting that, don’t you think? Why’d he get preferential treatment?’

  Massimo could not suppress a sigh.

  Benny chuckled. ‘Sorry, mate, am I keeping you awake?’ he asked. ‘I’m digressing a tad, aren’t I? That also comes with age.’

  Massimo held up a hand. ‘I’m not an educated man, Benny; you’re losing me a bit. I’m struggling with the relevance.’

  ‘I am explaining my personal philosophy, Mass – me system of values if you will.’

  ‘And that’s cool. But the traffic’s a fucker at this time of day…’

  ‘Of course. In that case, I’ll come right out and ask you a question. Do you know what an intra-rationalist is?’

  ‘Jesus. A reptile?’ Massimo guessed.

  ‘No, mate. I’m one, for one. Intra-rationalism is the commonsense in my view opinion that separate realities exist in balance side by side. And most people in either reality are unaware – their whole lives – that the other reality chugs on.’

  Forced to change mental gears, Massimo struggled with the clarification. ‘Are you… are you talking about alternative timestreams?’

  ‘Not exactly; but you’re getting the idea. And it’s my contention – bear with me on this – that your man Chris Connors was taken to an intra-rationalist existence when the seam between the two worlds split.’

  The words hung in the air like Agent Orange. Benny snickered.

  ‘And don’t even ask if you heard me right because you did. And I’m point blank on the level, Mass. Cunt went somewhere. Somewhere we don’t understand. Somewhere I wanna go, mate. And that’s what I wanted your boys to check out for me. Whether or not the gate’s open.’ Benny shrugged. ‘Turns out it is.’

  ‘…You set him up.’

  ‘Not in the slightest. I had no idea what you’d find. You might’ve found a gold-plated hairbrush, or a toilet bowl full of worms and blood-riddled stools. But the rumours said – the rumours said, Mass, it was a place to watch.’

  Sitting forward, Massimo demanded: ‘What fucking rumours?’

  ‘Like attracts like. There are newsletters, groups. Conventions if you don’t mind.’ Benny sniffed a single nasal ingestion that lasted a full four seconds. ‘Between you and me, you’ve never seen drinkers like Finnish intra-rationalists.’ He smiled at the recollection. ‘Convention in Winnipeg. These Finnish cunts doing half pints of absinthe and reciting scripts from The Two Ronnies for some reason. Word for word.’

  ‘Spunky. So you wanted my boys to open your portal to another dimension.’

  Not knowing if he was being mocked, Benny sniffed again. ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  It was time to go. The warhorse had lost his mind.

  ‘Are you under the impression,’ said Benny, ‘that you owe me something?’

  ‘No. I’m under the impression,’ said Massimo, ‘that you owe me something.’

  ‘Explain your reasoning.’

  ‘I did what I was asked to do.’

  ‘Well that’s debatable, but okay. I thought an explanation might suffice. And I’ve offered you me snakes, which I don’t do for everyone, stand on me, so what…’

  ‘I don’t care about your bloody snakes!’

  ‘Careful.’

  ‘They belong in the Arizona desert. You’re sitting there sipping green tea that smells like an operating theatre and you haven’t offered me so much as the sweat off your prick. I’m thirsty. I’m hungry. I’m hungover and I want to go home.’

  ‘No one’s stopping you, Mass.’

  Massimo rose from his chair. ‘These messages that Connors sends…’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘What’s he say?’

  ‘Well. He don�
��t know me from Adam, does he? So it’s not like he’s speaking directly to me. It’s more like a broadcast. You could probably tune in as well.’

  ‘Thanks; but I’ve lived without it so far.’

  ‘Fair enough. Are you a betting man, Mass?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. I’m reluctant to fully trust a man who doesn’t gamble. It shows a failure of ambition. So would you take on the following wager, I wonder. I bet you a month’s salary – your average month’s salary against my average month’s salary – that you visit the Edlesborough house before the end of the week.’

  ‘And why would I do that?’

  ‘I’ve piqued your interest. You can’t be sure I’m talking bollocks – I’m not, by the way, and I’ll go toe to toe with any cunt tells me I am. Hear me out. You’ll go to that house because you want to know what happened to Connors. Well, I’ll tell you again. He was taken away and landed on a ship at sea. Don’t ask me why it happened at precisely that moment: I’ve no idea. But you can bet your arse the word’s gone around the intra-rationalist community, like the pox in a monastery. And some people get the dreams and some people don’t. The two kids you’ve got locked away in a big house – they get em.’

  Massimo sat down.

  Benny waved a hand; his wedding ring caught a beam of sunlight and sent a fairy to climb the wall. ‘Don’t look so worried, Mass. I won’t interfere with your business – you’ve got your reasons. None of mine. I’m merely illustrating the fact that I know what I know.’

  ‘But how do you know?’ Massimo asked.

  ‘I had you followed… Now now. Don’t take umbrage, mate. Simple business insurance from my point of view. I had to know what I was getting, didn’t I? Even if you did come highly recommended. So I had one of me boys go into the house and have a poke around… and there’s two kids chained up in the walk-in wardrobe! In the nuddy!’ Benny laughed. ‘Frit the life out me boy, that did! Thought they was dead. They was snoozing.’

  Massimo nodded.

  ‘So here’s me proposal,’ Benny said. ‘Go to the house yourself; try to get in. Bring me back something I can use and I’ll give you a grand for your night’s work. Can’t say fairer than that.’