The Possessions of Doctor Forrest

by Richard T. Kelly

  ‘I remember everything now,’ he said, but would say no more. We just sat in grievous silence. Grey hobbled in but it was as if Cal couldn’t stand to be in his presence, recoiled from his gaze. And still he kept saying, ‘I’m sorry, Grey, so sorry …’ He’d never called his father by his first name before – that was so much the stranger to us. But Grey hugged him, pulled him into such a fervent embrace, talked to him in a way that made me cry: ‘I know you can’t see it, Cal, but your life is a precious thing, the world’s out there waiting for you – you have it all going for you, son, you really do.’ Cal, though – he just looked so broken down, inert, bereft.

  ‘It wasn’t enough, Grey,’ he said. ‘Just not enough. I’ll explain.’

  And we sat there, and he looked at us hauntingly – we were waiting for him to speak but he didn’t.

  What he did instead was begin to write, alone at his laptop, behind a closed door, for hours and hours. He shunned our company, really, hardly spoke. We’ve had the computer professionally scanned, on the hard disk is a large hidden file, password-protected, but we hope to get it somehow decoded – it must be what he was at work on so feverishly, the contents must be meaningful somehow, we’re convinced.

  Grey himself had been writing a diary every day for some weeks, since Robert disappeared – I had come to see it as a morbid symptom. But he’d dropped that, he’d been vowing to me that everything henceforward would be Cal and I, family first from now on. ‘I’ll make things right, spend whatever time it takes,’ he said. Now we’re left sick with the feeling we were too late.

  Last night when we ate – when Grey insisted I ate something, was prepared himself to prepare it – he also set a place for Cal, lifted a glass to him, his voice awfully strained. ‘Where have you taken yourself to, son?’ were his words. ‘Don’t leave us lost in the dark.’ This morning he told me with surprising vehemence that if Cal doesn’t reappear then he will go out and find him, cross land and sea, ‘whatever it takes’. But even if we had any realistic hope in that – Grey hasn’t the strength. All we can do is wait, pray for news to come.

  Keep us in your thoughts, Malena. We are support to one another, Grey and I, strong together always, but … really, we have to ask the sky whatever did we do to deserve this? Who decided that we – all of us – should have to suffer so much?

  Yours, always,

  Olivia

  Part IV

  THE CONFESSION OF DOCTOR FORREST

  How to begin? ‘I, Robert Forrest, being of sound mind and body …’

  I have my wits about me still, however badly I wish otherwise – no, for me it is reason right down to the end. And yet, who will believe me? Or imagine anything but that I’ve lived a dream?

  As for my body – well, that has had no ‘soundness’ about it for quite some time. I have been, in the words of the prophet, that creature void of form.

  Where I’m bound for now I cannot imagine. I no longer have Her as my guide, counsel, scourge. But when last we spoke I demanded that She tell me what ‘Hell’ is. This was for Her a glorious, exultant moment, I’m sure. Her incisors gleamed in Her red mouth.

  ‘The lower depths, place of the dead – how you say, Hades? Pandemonium? Pokol, Sheol, Abaddon, Gehenna, Tophet … Daydreams of mankind, most admirable fancies! The doctrine of endless punishment – lake of fire, infinitely slow-grinding rack – these, for sure, are splendid notions. But Hell is only what befits the guilty man, doctor. For some, who lived in gross excess of their meagre selves – a term of solitary confinement, utter deprivation, that will suffice. To be tortured by tedium alone, by nullity. Others will have been so unfeeling in their former lives that – yes – they require a physical shock, prolonged, a rending. But then there is a certain ingrate breed, who saw not what they had, or knew but would not act – they must come back, suffer it all again – the punishment of return, which is yours.’

  I asked Her then what had never before occurred. ‘How many others are like me?’ She looked at me as a mother would.

  ‘Oh, no one is quite like you, doctor. And yet, be it said, “Hades” is full of your sort. You are more gifted than most, a prize in that way. And yet, finally, no better than the strop is to the blade. No, it would be against nature, the right way of all things, if one such as you did not come onto us.’

  ‘And the ones I— whose deaths I caused?’

  ‘That you killed? Your victims?’

  ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘You are hoping perhaps you delivered them, at least, to their maker. Well, they are consoled, some of them, perhaps. Perhaps not. But that is no business of yours or mine. Did you imagine I knew better? I am only the most mediocre familiar – minion, common doppelgänger – just as low a sort as was needed in your case …’

  Such relish for Her in my disgrace. How fatuous was I, to revel in the seeming proof of my theory that the Devil is a woman? The woman was only the instrument, the knife that fitted the wound, fashioned bespoke for use on me alone. Why didn’t I see? In my foolishness, in my fear, again I hear that false, evil, musical laugh, sonorous between my ears.

  * * *

  It happened this way: I reached my middle years in life and, somehow, felt the urge to protest my lot. The risible folly of it strikes me now like a boot in the gut. God no, my life had been lucky, charmed, if any orphan can be counted so.

  My sober-sided aunt and uncle gave me all they had. I was cared for, reared, educated to an enviable standard, while they scrimped and sacrificed. I straightened up just because Allan and Jenny, so solemnly, asked me to – I saw a door was open but would very shortly close, and I hared through it.

  Yes, there was anger planted in me, having witnessed my father’s depredations. Always I will see my 7-year-old self, trailing home early from backstreet football to find him in the living room, ruddily naked, odiously drunk, that woman spread beneath him. Then, not satisfied with stealing my innocence, he stole my mother too. Always I felt infected by his blood in me. And yet while still a schoolboy I came to learn – it hit me with the force of revelation – we are not our forebears, we can fly free of that. Why, then, did I fail?

  It was at Kilmuir that I formally became Myself – where, however much I felt I was Many, I resolved to be seen as One. The school uniform proved helpful: I put it on and liked the look of myself. Grey, amusingly, took me at first for one as posh as him. But I could carry it off, that role. Street fights had taught me to be quick to rile, impervious to pain – I had only to polish these virtues by a certain tone of voice. This I recognised as the fellow my friends saw when they looked at me; my greatest sham posture, or so it seemed then.

  I grew up able-bodied and vigorous, a ‘quick study’, my wits about me, better than pleasant to look at. Moreover I had inside what a vital human creature needs: something that wanted expression. The world didn’t scare me, it was a field where I intended to roam at large, hungry for knowledge and attainment, also to make a good show. Laughter came easily to me. I found that I liked a lot of people, and that, on the whole, they liked me back, at least when I wished them to – women above all, since I had the means. Such enemies as I made, I was comfortable enough in my own skin to shrug them aside.

  So, for as long as I remain I will have to ask myself – why this secret wound inside? A shadow dogged me, always. Was it put there at the kirk where I was dragged by honest Allan and Jenny? For sure I was cursed with old Calvin’s sense of the body as the prison-house of the soul. All through my youth I was fighting dual urges: the pull to excel, to make something of myself – and a warring desire, to run all my energies to waste, down that same hole in the ground into which all life tends, the great endlessly spiralling vortex. That second desire, impossible to assuage, felt like a wound at the core of my being.

  But in that wound I seemed to find something essential to me, essential if not eternal, there was no shifting it, and it was my friend if not always my helper – that is to say, it never let me down. This was ‘I’, me, mine: I
could not deny it, nor say I hadn’t tried it and liked it. It was in my blood, perennial, an ever-combustible agent, forever setting me on fire. Years failed to put it out, always I felt myself burning.

  Yes, I had enough discipline and willpower, enough of the sense I was born with, to pull clear of the vortex, carve out a fine career, the least my hungry ego demanded. I felt the call of money, the nag of material wants. So I made a success of myself, made something of my name. With time, though, I came to wonder what they would say of me once I was gone. Most likely, that I hadn’t done the work I could have. True, I was less than the man I’d believed I would be. My vocation failed me, I disappointed myself above all … It’s no excuse, I know, only the commonest woe. The cure is to buck up, count your blessings, get on with you, son. But we won’t always be told, will we?

  It was too sharp in my breast, this want of something that life couldn’t requite – because ‘human life is limited but I would like to live forever’. Since one life couldn’t be enough, for what reason had I ever existed? That was the distress call She heard and answered, heard it for the despicable vanity it was. And now I have had such a lesson, oh yes, no end of a lesson.

  I believed I could soar. Rather, I have had my face rubbed in the filth of my lowest fears, jealousies, prejudices – one after another. I was given treats, yes, but they were only the sugar of the fly-trap, sweet enough that I be drawn back, there to have my wings picked anew by the wanton girl. I was tricked by the trickster, but I let it be so – I let evil suffuse me, so I could carry on, just one more life, one more … I could even fool myself there was something fit, fated, in each of my victims. Until the last.

  * * *

  The subterranean plot against me ground its mills slowly. I was on the cusp of a crisis, had built a reputation to the point where I could imagine nothing more gratifying than to toss it away. Gloom had settled on me. ‘Career’ had made me a slave to money, to work I despised. That streak in me, that urge to test my luck – because luck is magic! – had proved to be a failed gamble. Really, what I had needed was some of Grey’s good steadfastness. But I was tired of old and worn-out friends, the staidness of their lives nailed in place by children and attendant chores.

  Then I woke up at 45 years of age, looked hard at the mirror, saw that my future faced cancellation. My body was revolting against me. How badly I needed some colour to my complexion, some white in my eye, a lift in the slackness and heaviness of the flesh envelope.

  At least, I consoled myself, I had Malena … Whatever the differences in our habits, the coincidence of our moods was always extraordinary. We were co-conspirators. We knew what was fraudulent about the world and what it cost us to live in it. She understood my need for privacy, largely left me to it. With her – I don’t say I never ‘looked’ at another woman, but when I did it was a whim, nothing more. Malena no man could ever tire of. For all my regrets in life, loving her was the one thing that floated free and clear.

  How fine that it was then Malena wrote me a letter, just as wise as its writer! How dearly I didn’t care to know precisely what was on her mind, the complex little byways of her heart, the sound bases of her carefully weighed decision to leave me … Spare me, darling. Accept yourself as a quitter, deserter, traitor, shallow and self-serving. How I loathed her cruel-to-be-kind candour, her formidable emotional maturity, her warm wish that God would bless me and keep me. I can see the page still, and still I think: go fuck yourself, woman, get all your fist into your gob and stuff your pity back down your throat. If you don’t choke, may it poison you, you and your little faggot boyfriend.

  Thus my lover’s tribute to her. Thus what love can do.

  * * *

  A single man again, then. Still a ‘catch’. But times had changed. I had used to devour a space with my eyes, such questing in my radar-appraisal of the talent in a room, so directed was I to the sexual-comestible, signs of good sport – a dirty laugh or an insolent look, didn’t matter. Beauty, of course, was key: not merely the face, the whole structure, the integrity of line and the promise of some pleasing give— succulence, hidden and scented depth, delights to be made bare. But what now did I offer in return? With the best of my looks had gone a complementary portion of my charm, my ease. The mirror showed me blood in my eyes, drinker’s wrinkles, grey in the hair and the creeping widow’s peak, my now-habitual frown. Not the worst-looking fellow, of course … but no more appealing than the sum of his social status plus your best guess at his bank balance. Which, in my case, was waning.

  I soldiered on, of course, but had to endure rejection, and learning this lesson so late I learned it less well. I couldn’t fail to notice the gazes of young girls flicking past my shoulder, however warm the lipstick-smile. I had been used to finding the limits of women, the soft cores of dependency and fear, before making my exit. (To wit: Eloise Keaton, whom I treated appallingly, once I’d lowered her protective shield of cheek, exposed the nervy girl who chattered to herself for reassurance.) Now, a majority of women appeared to think me just so disposable. Even where I got lucky – I could feel the women, in their essences, had begun to elude me. Intercourse now seemed a sort of gift for which I was meant to be truly grateful. I was paying for sex, whether or not I cared to see it that way. And like the client, I slept alone.

  * * *

  The rot, the infestation – as I recall, it began properly on what was Day #149 after Malena’s departure.

  The previous day I’d flicked idly through Fine Art magazine in my waiting room; seen the generous interview-profile of Killian MacCabe, accompanied by that languorous photo of him and Malena, her face pressed to his back, arms round his waist, eyes closed in the sun-warmth of love … That afternoon I cancelled Mrs Huffington’s eyelift (cancelled also the subscription to Fine Art), went to see Steven, and he wrote me a prescription for Remeron. ‘I have to warn you, Robert,’ he said, with that Steven look, ‘in your condition you might experience hallucinations …’

  I went to bed unusually early, not quite so benumbed by 12-year-old Balvenie as had become my crutch. My feeling on waking was so strange. I had slept for thirteen hours, and it seemed as though I’d been dreaming all that time – so vividly that for some moments I really struggled to remember who I was, what I’d done in this life.

  Morning had crept into the room, swept the night shadows into corners, dispelled their grey hold – the light reviving all that was old and familiar. Back to life, the light said. To the daily round, and burdens carried forward … As I rolled about heavily under the covers, my regular aches and pains returned, as did the fragments of my biography. And yet I so badly wanted to revisit the dreams, in which I had been younger – a schoolboy, a student again. The eyes through which I had looked were those of a person half-formed but teeming with possibility.

  The end of the dream, though, was disturbing: I was out in the city at night, walking darkened deserted streets, wanting to be bare as they were. I tore off my clothes, as if daring the night to confront me with some stranger. Then I had the sensation of rising, climbing, vaulting over rooftops, of being at large: an aura of predation, the tang of someone’s fear, mine or someone else’s, I couldn’t say.

  Resigned to wakefulness I got up, got dressed: formerly a hallowed rite in my day. From the day I started earning proper money I dressed well, always there was magic for me in throwing open the wardrobe door, revealing a costumier’s wealth of hanging and folded apparel, accessories to be assumed. As if the wardrobe contained not merely the means of a transformation but even the doorway to another realm, akin to our own, yet strangely altered.

  This game, though, had lost all its charm for me. My silent habitat, empty but for me (empty including me?), had come to feel like a stage-set bereft of an audience. It was too sparse, too neat, bizarrely untouched but by gathering dust, and defined by a very specific absence. Its stifling order was the cursed mark of myself. What it lacked was the creative chaos of my ex-wife.

  So I stood there before the wardrob
e, naked, heavily inert, thinking to myself: Too much aloneness, it puts the head in bad places. As if one might do anything and it wouldn’t matter.

  * * *

  That day at the clinic was as dispiriting as any before. The morning with Lucinda Millard, discussing her labial tuck, dissuading her from any eye-watering foolishness around the clitoral hood. The lunch-hour rhinoplasty on Suraya Chakrabati, an entirely pointless finesse upon the facts. Then the post-lunch erasure of Eugenie Grainger’s double-chin. For what these women pay me, I knew they expected more than my increasingly mordant and taciturn manners. Still, I saw myself behaving thus and there was nothing I could do about it. Depression …

  With Mrs Grainger wheeled off to day-care, I made a decision to give myself a treat, bring home something old and beautiful. I cleaned up, drove south through Kensington down to Mayersburg’s of Fulham, the great and sombre Victorian antiques warehouse. There I wandered down the long central aisle lit by globes, amid fellow collectors and refugees from the work ethic, each of us searching for gold. I spotted mine rising like an imperious ghost out of a cluster of dusty hanging mirrors stacked against crates. It was a tall ambiguous shape under a dust cover, blank as an installation by Christo. With no assistant nearby I took it on myself to tug away the heavy sheet. And there stood a huge, oval-shaped cheval glass, its frame carved from black walnut, crested by a garlanded cartouche with a relief of serpents, sinuously entwined. French, I decided, Empire style. Leaning closer, I found a pleasing wear and mottle to the plate glass, such that I could bear to see my own face. It was a fancy, no doubt, grotesque, perhaps – but a glorious piece. I had to have it. It seemed as though I’d been meant to free it from bondage. Delivery was arranged and I took receipt two days later, had the shifters lump it upstairs and into ‘the closet’. The sheer dilettante-impracticality of the whole procedure had me laughing in wonder at myself, albeit not for long.