Ventriloquists

by David Mathew

  3.

  Apart from some jars of preserves shattered on the floor, and a few bags of pasta slit open, their contents disgorged, the larder was the least-harmed room so far. Most of the shelves still groaned with washing powders, cleaning products, canned good, pickles, teabags… and wine. When Massimo reached for a bottle at random, Bernadette said:

  ‘You’re doing that now?’

  Massimo unscrewed the top. ‘I am not being sucked into a timewarp on an empty stomach. I refuse to.’ With which he took a couple of nips, then a sharp tug.

  ‘What about a clear head?’

  ‘It’s overrated. Do you want a belt?’

  ‘Yes. God, I’m scared.’

  The bottle trembled in her other hand. The light went up and down the larder’s shelves like a stroboscopic effect.

  ‘Just don’t drop it.’

  ‘What? The torch or the wine?’

  ‘I meant the torch… but actually the wine as well.’

  ‘Yeah, it might spoil the look of the place,’ Bernadette answered sarcastically.

  ‘I was referring to the noise – and the neighbours,’ said Massimo.

  ‘I promise to drink with confidence, in that case. Red wine’s a bugger to get out once it stains.’ Bernadette laughed. Then she raised the bottle to her lips.

  It did not take them long to finish drinking the wine, and Massimo was about to suggest opening a second bottle when Bernadette reminded them that there was the rest of the ground floor and the whole upper storey still to search.

  They moved through the house, the carpets so wringing wet in places that it was like trudging over prairie grass after a storm, and their socks and tights respectively were soon wet through.

  Everywhere the carnage was the same, the chaos identical and total. Belongings broken if not atomised; a television sliced horizontally in half, its lower segment now full of water, like a fishtank. Books spread-eagled on every surface, like birds that had fallen to the earth and stayed there to die. Compact discs embedded in upholstery, as if fired by a novice assailant…

  ‘There’s nothing here,’ said Bernadette.

  ‘Upstairs, then.’

  ‘Upstairs.’

  Here, the mess and confusion were even worse. Three of the four doors had been yanked half-off their hinges, and now hung at crazy-house, trippy angles that didn’t fit the doorframes. The carpet on the landing was less marshy than swamp-like, to such an extent that Massimo formed the fear (with remarkable ease) that the two of them would slip through, as if into quick-sand.

  ‘I hate to say this, Bernadette, but I suddenly need the toilet. Which one’s the bathroom?’

  ‘I don’t think it necessarily matters where you go, Massimo.’

  ‘This is someone’s house!’

  ‘Not anymore, I doubt. It’s that door.’ And she flung the beam in the relevant direction, at one of the doors that hung off its hinges.

  Massimo squeezed past one of the lopsided doors, thanking God that at least the light in here was better than it had been downstairs. With no boards covering the windowpanes that had remained intact, a dreamy mix of streetlamp and moonlight gave off something better than the black hole darkness. Massimo was able to make out the shower stall, bath, the sink… and the toilet.

  ‘I’ll be as quick as I can,’ he called out. ‘Please don’t go anywhere. No pun intended.’

  ‘I don’t exactly want to hear your noises, but okay. I can’t even say close the door!’

  ‘You’re a nurse! You’ve heard worse!’ Massimo assured her, pulling at his belt tongue and unsnapping the poppers at his groin.

  ‘Yeah yeah. Less explaining and more straining, please.’

  ‘Don’t worry – I won’t ned to strain.’ Massimo sat on the seat.

  ‘Nice image – many thanks for that,’ Bernadette called. As well as she could while still holding the torch, she inserted a finger in her ear. She really did not like hearing the ablutive noises of others. At the same time she could not deny that the wine they’d drunk, on top of a few cups of tea in her last break of what had been a busy day at the hospital, had given her a full bladder as well. She’d hang on, though, she resolved.

  In the bathroom it was hazy and strange: it was like his early-morning pee-trips, when he’d sit in the gloom (always sit, even for a pee) because he’d worry that turning the light on would wake him up too thoroughly – and he wanted to go back to sleep. So he’d sit, as he sat now, in surroundings that the darkness had rendered unfamiliar. Or like the times when Charlie borrowed the keys to a nice big property on the sales or rental market.

  Sometimes it was fun to pretend that they owned a place as grand as that, especially if it was fully furnished, like the place where Massimo enjoyed receiving stolen goods. A bit of class. The oiks respected it. In fact, with the wine leaving his system but with it having done its job on his brain, if he tried he could almost imagine Charlie had simply borrowed this very house for the evening… Yes. They’d borrowed it and they’d hired a rent boy from Milton Keynes…

  ‘Am I safe to take my fingers out of my ears yet?’

  Ah, there he was now, bless him! Massimo chuckled.

  Then the bath gurgled.

  The shock to Massimo’s system was sufficient to send his sphincter into spasm. While it was fortunate in one way that he was sitting where he was sitting, the following couple of seconds were pure torture as he struggled to rise and pull up his pants and trousers.

  The bath gurgled again – louder this time. No mistaking the noise: a drainy rumble, in a bathroom’s clear acoustics.

  ‘Oh I smell you haven’t,’ said Bernadette on the landing. ‘Thanks for the bouquet… just when I was getting used to the smell of rot…’

  Shut up, woman! thought Massimo, trying to voice something – voice anything… If the bath was the gate to Oz, then he wanted Bernadette in here with him. A solo voyage sounded horrendous.

  The problem was, he couldn’t speak.

  Clutching his trousers high (no time to refasten the poppers), Massimo stumbled forward in the darkness – and misremembered the angle of the lolling door. His right shin spanked into the wood – he yelped – and he fell forward, over the rest of the door, and onto the sopping carpet on the landing. Though he ended up on his left side, he had no intention of remaining in this position for long.

  The torchlight burst into his face.

  ‘Massimo,’ said Bernadette’s voice behind. ‘What the fuck?’

  Massimo pointed back into the room. ‘It’s in there…’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘The doorway – in the bath.’

  He must have sounded scared enough for Bernadette to take him seriously: for the next beat of time, while Massimo breathed incompetently and struggled to his feet, she kept the light on his features as much as possible.

  ‘Get it out my face!’

  ‘Sorry!’

  Bernadette pointed the torch at the flight of stairs that they’d climbed.

  ‘Not there!’ Massimo screamed at her. ‘In the fucking khazi!’

  She pointed the torch at the available space between where the door hung wonky and the doorframe. Following Massimo’s collision with the door, and its subsequent reshifting, this space was now a triangle of about the same area (but different shape) as a dinner tray, and into it she and Massimo peered, both of them aware of changes in the atmosphere. It wasn’t the smell of Massimo’s passed stool that hung in the air; it was a sudden chill so acute that it burned the insides of their nostrils and paralysed their nasal capacities. They smelt nothing at first; nothing at all.

  Heard nothing either… until gradually a sound, one that seemed to emanate from the bathtub, came to the ear: a sound of winds blowing hard from outside somewhere safe.

  The chill intensified – another dramatic drop in temperature. Without
knowing they had done so, Bernadette and Massimo had taken hold of one another’s waists, side by side.

  ‘God, it’s freezing in there,’ said the former, feeling the skin pinch on the hand that was holding the torch closer to the aperture.

  ‘It wasn’t…’ said Massimo.

  The light inside the room was changing too: it was brightening far more brilliantly than could be accounted for by a simple pocket flashlight.

  ‘Getting bright,’ Massimo murmured, but he was not sure if he had spoken. The cold had seized his synapses. If he didn’t move now, he vaguely taunted himself, he would freeze solid in a matter of minutes.

  Gripping his waist, Bernadette said, ‘Don’t let go of me. Please.’

  Freeze together, would they? Massimo tried to smile: the gesture broke a film of ice that had formed on his upper lip.

  Cold…

  And he remembered what Benny had told him about the deep-sea fish, where the temperature was oh-so low. The male fish cuddled up to the female… and she absorbed him into her own body.

  No!

  Massimo struggled and wriggled – he would not allow Bernadette to absorb him – and he wondered if they could be at the bottom of the sea.

  How would they breathe?

  And why was it getting so bright, if this was the ocean floor?

  Still he struggled. Not getting anywhere.

  The noise of winds howling, louder now – louder, it seemed, by the second; but outside. And they were inside – or were about to be – safe from those gales, but without the adequate clothing... in a place as bright as a snowfield in summer.

  ‘Hold me tight,’ said Bernadette… and her command fed Massimo’s fears of assimilation – of being absorbed – as thoroughly as he himself and his own words (and actions) must have preyed on Nero and Jess.

  As the light from inside the bathroom brightened, as the freezing temperatures dipped still lower, Massimo thought of those two teenagers. How ironic that he’d considered dumping their corpses into the very same wormhole into which he would be dragged!

  Once more, he tried to smile; but the process of freezing had been so rapid that he could not move more than a couple of secondary muscles that served no purpose here.

  His heart… slow… slower. No smile muscles available. Eyes… Ah! He rolled his eyes in their sockets, and he saw that the house that he and Bernadette had entered illegally was all but disappeared. Fading fast. Everything around him – cold – was bright white, but he was inside – cold – and the winds outside – cold…

  Bernadette screamed.

  Like inside an igloo, was Massimo’s last conscious thought. But he heard the voice: it reached him. The voice that said:

  ‘Well, you took your fucking time, cunt.’

  Reunion

  1.

  Massimo and Bernadette were not permitted to sit down: they were made to walk around in small steps to keep their blood circulation active. Rugs and shawls that smelled of beasts were wrapped around their torsos and laboured onto the quivering racks of their shoulders; and the people who administered these extra layers onto the freezing travellers were short, stocky, muscular, dressed in similar protection against the cold. There were seven of these helpers. Their skin was toast-coloured, their teeth short and yellow; the men wore barcode beards, the women had wide eyes, flattened noses…

  And then there was Connors.

  It was Connors who had addressed Massimo and Bernadette: Well, you took your fucking time, cunt… although the apostrophe had been for Massimo’s benefit mainly. It was Connors who had barked his orders to the walls of the iceroom, and in from the cold and the winds had streamed his assistants with their furs and their busyness. It was Connors, it seemed, who ran the show.

  The better part of half an hour elapsed before the visitors became comfortable with the new temperature. The shock to the system had been conquered, but more work was needed. Neither Italian brogues nor hospital-regulation flats were suitable footware for the environment; and once they had been allowed to sit (in chairs fashioned from bleached bone of indeterminate origin), the assistants set to wrapping the travellers’ things and feet in more applications of aromatic fur and hide.

  Throughout this operation, conversation had been kept at a minimum, and this wordlessness suited Bernadette fine. She was used to the professional company of practitioners going through the medical motions – she was a nurse. And so was the young man helping her to keep warm. They all were – they were nurses… with Connors the watchful surgeon – the doctor on his ward rounds – calling the shots. Yes. This was something that Bernadette could comprehend. To be a nurse required patience (and living with Chris required patience): Bernadette would wait. She could and she would. She would listen to the mad wind throttling the building from outside, and be grateful that she was not in its grip… and she would wait.

  Massimo, on the other hand, had some different ideas. He was edgy and restless; as he found himself able to speak, more and more questions – some of them fully formed and sensible, others dreamy gibberish – spilled from his voicebox. He was scared. He was livid. He writhed on his seat, a steady flow of who-why-where-how hissing in the supercooled oxygen.

  It was not Bernadette’s place to tell the man to shut up – not in someone else’s home. No. It was Connors’s place to tell Massimo to shut up, which he did as the assistants withdrew one by one, their functions discharged for the nonce.

  ‘Zip it up, Mass,’ Connors said eventually and simply. ‘You don’t come in here shouting the odds in front of my new friends.’

  Massimo lowered his head. His breath was a balloon of steam in front of his eyes.

  Taking this unexpected cessation in the hostilities as her cue, Bernadette said, ‘Do you mind if I ask a few questions?’

  Connors nodded. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Do you know where my dog is?’

  ‘Not Where are we? Not What do you do for food around here?’ Connors appeared amused by Bernadette’s directness.

  ‘I know where we are, and I’m not hungry,’ Bernadette told him. ‘So how about some dog news?’

  Connors nodded again. ‘I’m really very sorry about your pet,’ he began.

  ‘Oh God.’

  ‘I looked after her’s best I could, swear I did. But there were things –‘

  ‘All right. She’s dead, you’re telling me.’

  ‘I’m afraid I am, love. Sorry.’

  Bernadette looked away. The walls of compacted ice claimed her attention. Her eyes prickled with tears.

  Connors asked: ‘Were you in the house? When you made it across?’

  ‘Yes. Number 11,’ Massimo answered. ‘So what have you got here, mate, then? With those pygmies running around after you. Is this The Man Who Would Be King bullshit? You their fucking leader all of a sudden? King Chris? Lord Chris?’

  Connors smiled. ‘You sound a tad envious, Mass,’ he said. ‘But as you’ve asked so nicely – yea, I suppose there’s a certain kowtowing from certain quarters. My reputation…’ He laughed. ‘…it grew a bit as I travelled north. Prophet Chris is more like it. Holy Traveller Chris.’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  ‘Yeah, that was my own initial reaction, funnily enough. If you want me to, I’ll tell you all about it in a mo. But just tell me first… were you upstairs in Number 11?’

  Bernadette faced Connors again. Slipping her hands free of the furs, she wiggled her fingers to test their condition of numbness and spoke.

  ‘Thank you for trying to look after my dog,’ she said. ‘May I ask why the position in the house is relevant?’

  ‘It’s a theory I’ve developed. The higher you are in the house, the further north you are up God’s body.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘When I came here I was outside the house, as I’m sure you must know. And I landed on a ship at sea. Se
e, the house is the body, I reckon. If I’d been in the basement, I would’ve come here in the far south, right by the Toenail.’

  ‘By the Toenail?’ asked Massimo.

  ‘Toenail Island. You see, all the scale’s to cock… How long have I been away?’ Connors asked.

  ‘Couple of weeks.’

  ‘You see? Here I’ve been travelling for nearly eighteen months. That’s why I’ve picked up a bit of word of mouth as I moved along.’

  Bernadette interrupted. ‘You’re talking as though this makes sense to you.’

  ‘It does! It didn’t at first, I grant you that, but you get used to it.’

  ‘Well, our houses don’t have basements,’ she continued. ‘We do have attic space, though.’

  ‘Right. And that’s what’s further north… if anyone’s mad enough to go somewhere even colder than this godforsaken territory… What’s your name, by the way?’

  ‘Bernadette.’

  ‘Chris Connors.’ He stood up and slid across the ice like a skater; his feet were wrapped in fur and cloth. He extended a hand… and after a momentary hesitation, Bernadette shook it, gratefully and at length. A sharing of warmth. ‘I really am sorry about your dog – she was quite a faithful companion to me, especially considering.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And while I’m dishing out the apologies, I’m sorry we robbed your house.’

  Bernadette dropped Connors’s hand.

  ‘It was nothing personal,’ Connors tried to assure her. ‘Massimo’s probably told you: we went to the wrong house. Which I still think was your fault, Mass, by the way.’

  Massimo snickered. ‘Hardly the point now, though, is it? How the hell do we get back?’

  ‘Get back? There’s no going back.’

  ‘Well I’m not staying here.’

  ‘The door’s there. Mind it don’t slam on your arse on the way out.’

  The three of them fell silent. Outside the walls, the wind picked up a gear.

  ‘What time is it here?’ asked Bernadette.

  ‘There’s no such concept in the north. It’s seen as blasphemous.’