by Kim Newman
Mary has driven you into a ditch.
Go on to 37
35
Achelzoy is miles out of town, across the moor. The road is straight for a stretch, then winds like a snake. Originally, the Somerset levels were marshes. Villages used to be islands: the common ‘zoy’ in place names is a local contraction of ‘zoyland’ or ‘island’. Roads were navigable waterways. In December, the fields are bare and black. Ditches, called ‘rhynes’, are deep and water-filled. They separate fields and run either side of the road.
Between you is an atmosphere you can’t understand. What has happened this evening is still sketchy, unconfirmed. You don’t know if Mary wants to murder you or marry you. You are excited but hesitant. You really wish you hadn’t drunk so much; it’s only in the last year that you’ve looked old enough to get served in pubs, and you downed several pints of cider in the Lime Kiln before you went to the show. It occurs to you that you don’t know how much Mary has drunk.
The road is empty at this time of night. Between villages, the only light comes from the headlamps.
As the road weaves from side to side, Mary drives in the centre, staying on the white line to avoid the curves. Catseyes stare back at you. You aren’t sure if this is a good idea.
Mary laughs when you mention it.
Then the Honda loses traction on a slick patch of ice. Up ahead is a right-angle bend.
The car hits the verge and your side lifts up as it slams into a signpost. The windscreen fractures to frost.
Wheels grinding grassy earth and air, the Honda crunches over a bank and its front end falls five feet, crashing through a thin layer of ice.
Mary has driven you into a ditch.
Go on to 40
36
In the Lime Kiln, Victoria pairs off with you at the bar, keeping up a canny chatter of questions which you punctuate with shrugs and gestures. You see her concentrating, despite the scrumpy she’s been drinking and the dope you can smell on her hair. You’d forgotten how clever she was before she made an effort to hide it. The problem of you has piqued her curiosity. She’s obviously going to worry at it until she has an answer.
Then, probably, she’ll be disappointed.
She’s unlikely to make up with Roger; still drips contempt when she talks about Graham; and, though he’s obviously smitten, has no interest in Neil.
For now, she’s keen on the Invisible Man.
But not — you are certain — on Keith Marion.
The straw-hole in your mask rips. Through it, you can drink from the glass.
‘Not a very distinctive tongue,’ Victoria comments.
You wiggle it at her. She nips it between her thumb and forefinger, not hard.
‘Any solution?’ Michael asks, from the other side of the pub.
‘Not as yet.’
‘Preliminary report?’
She lets your tongue go. ‘It’s a heterosexual male.’
Michael laughs. Your face goes hot but you smile. No one can see you blush. Behind cloth, you’re as cool and suave as you’d like to be. Your blank mask is a screen, and people project what they want on it.
It really is like being invisible, or a ghost. You’ve always wondered what people were like when you weren’t around. Now you can find out. Are you imagining it, or are people really more relaxed with you invisible? Does your presence, your intense need for achievement, put people on their guard, make them watch themselves?
You’ve seen Rowena puke until there’s nothing more to come up and Victoria break a glass on Roger’s head. Surely they wouldn’t act like that if you were there?
Or maybe it’s just Rag Day.
After time is called, everyone drifts out of the pub and back to the college common room. Most other disguises have come apart and not a few kids are moaning in drunken agony. Roger has got proprietary about Rowena and is helping her stagger down the street. She is either crying uncontrollably or singing ‘See My Baby Jive’ under her breath. Roger won’t let her crawl home to her parents until she’s in a fit state.
You’ve drunk more than you usually do but aren’t even slightly giddy. The mask gives you power. Behind it, you can be calculating while everyone else flounders.
Victoria takes your arm and stays close. You are her project.
‘Give it up,’ Neil tells you. ‘It’s boring now.’
He is jealous.
‘No,’ says Victoria. ‘Not yet.’
In the common room, people are piled up on the battered chairs. Dreadful coffee brews in an urn. Graham, not a student but always hanging around the college, skins up and passes a joint round a circle of younger kids.
Ancient iron radiators clank, pouring out heat, misting the windows. Outside, it’s the Arctic; in the common room, it’s subtropical.
Victoria sits you down, takes off your hat and strokes your head through the cloth. She feels bumps like a phrenologist, trying to discern your character in your skull.
‘Rip it off him,’ someone suggests.
‘No,’ she announces. ‘Then he will have won.’
The afternoon passes in a fug of smoke and coffee. Everyone is trying to purge themselves before the evening, when they’ll go to the show at the college auditorium and Michael’s party in Achelzoy. This is down-time.
Victoria is sometimes distracted by other conversations but always comes back to you, the Mystery Man.
When it goes quiet, she kisses you again. A proper snog, what they call ‘sharing a stick of gum’. Tongues entwined, jaws working, swapped spit. She holds your neck and you hold hers. She’s warm even through your gloves.
You aren’t the only couple kissing in the room. Neil is disgusted but no one else even notices.
Victoria breaks the kiss and puts a finger on your lips. The cloth around your mouth is damp.
‘I don’t know you,’ she says.
You shrug.
‘But I will. Oh yes, Invisible, I will.’
At some point, you have to go to the toilet. When you get up, your brain fuzzes. It’s as if movement stirs the alcohol lying heavy in your blood.
You make it out of the common room.
Will Victoria lose interest while you’re gone?
Your bladder’s need is pressing.
On your way back from the Gents, in a stairwell whose chill contrasts pleasantly with the overheated common room, you pause, leaning on a banister.
What are you doing?
Above you, on a landing, someone stands.
Through the slits in your mask and the goggles over the slits, you only just make out legs in jeans.
It’s a girl.
‘Keith Marion,’ she says.
It’s Mary Yatman. Scary Mary.
The brain-fuzz is gone.
‘It’s nothing you did,’ she says, stepping down. ‘You haven’t given yourself away.’
You make out her huge eyes.
‘It’s just that you’re you, Keith. No getting away from it.’
Suddenly, she darts past you.
Because of your limited field of vision, you have to turn round entirely to see her. It’s like trying to train a pair of binoculars on a piece of driftwood far off in a storm-tossed sea. You hear the doors slam on the ground floor but don’t see Mary go.
Back in the common room, you assume everyone will now see through you. The disguise will fall apart and you’ll be laughed at for a while, then everyone — and Victoria — will move on to something or someone of more interest.
But Mary has gone without telling on you.
The space beside Victoria is still there. She crooks her finger and smiles. You go to her.
You would never have thought it could go this far.
It’s nearly midnight and the glass slipper hasn’t dropped yet. At the show, you stand near the stage and watched Flaming Torture. Victoria seems to sing every song at you, eyes always on the white of your mask.
Disco strobe light makes neons of white garments. Kids around gasp as your head shines.<
br />
Afterwards, you snuggle with Victoria in the back of Desmond’s car as he drives out to Achelzoy. She’s on a high from performing, a feverish sheen damping her white-face make-up.
Despite the savage attack of her songs, which all seem to be about violent sex, she’s almost sweet now in her enthusiastic acceptance of approval. As a little girl she took ballet classes, and she was probably like this when her parents applauded her turn in the school show.
You are kissing again and her hands are inside your trenchcoat, stroking your sides. You cup her breast, feeling warmth through your thick glove.
Occasionally, Victoria pulls back, looks into your goggles, shakes her head as if she can’t believe what she’s doing, then returns to you with more passion.
You’ve had an erection for half an hour. You feel as if you’ll explode.
Victoria starts gnawing your neck like a vampire, gripping your jugular with gentle teeth, moistening your mask.
Your forehead presses against the cold car window.
A signpost passes by. Desmond has driven past the Sutton Mallet turn-off.
‘That’s a short cut, isn’t it?’ says Mickey Yeo, in the front passenger seat.
You know it’s not. Sutton Mallet is a deadend.
Victoria’s hand, in a fingerless lace glove, slides over your belly and clamps on your cock.
‘Let’s give it a try,’ says Desmond, pulling the wheel over.
If you let Desmond continue down the Sutton Mallet turn-off, go to 42. If you’re too preoccupied with Victoria’s hand to make a fuss, go to 44.
37
As the car lands in the ditch, your weight is thrown forward awkwardly. The seatbelt, adjusted badly, snaps you back into your seat, suddenly tight across your throat, breaking your neck. You don’t have time for a last thought.
Go to 0.
38
The brief pain is so intense it cancels itself out, spot-burning away all memory of the agony. You’re left with a slight all-over buzz and a white-out. The pain you’ve had and lost can’t have been worse, more panic-making, than the Tipp-Ex blotch on your recent past. It’s like discovering a chunk of your body has been gouged away and lost for ever.
This can’t be helping. No matter what they say.
The pain comes again. You try to hold it this time, to keep it in your mind, but it wipes itself out again. The buzz is more extended and you are physically exhausted, incapable of movement. This white patch is longer, larger, spreading cobweb-strands beyond the area where the pain was, obliterating connected lumps of your memory, your mind. A moment ago, you knew what was happening, had the answers to important questions; now you are in a shade, a fuzzy fug, a nothing zone.
Thick ropes of sticky cord bind your wrists and ankles. Your head is held in a helmet of fast-setting stuff. Recovering from the buzz, you find you can arch your body, raising the small of your back from whatever you are bound to. But your head is fixed. Opaque shields are clamped over your eyes, wiry threads of the helmet weaving around them.
You are Keith Marion.
You can cling to that.
Haven’t you just died?
Or are you trying to misinterpret? To avoid facing the real? You’ve been told that before.
The pain comes again.
Briefly, you’re not sure: Who is Keith Marion?
39
Your knuckles hurt. And you’re drunker than you thought. Standing up has made your head fuzzy.
Victoria is still standing but her head is turned round on her neck, almost like Linda Blair’s in The Exorcist.
The only sounds in the Lime Kiln come from a juke-box burbling ‘Nights in White Satin’ and Rowena dry-heaving in the alley outside.
You rub your sleeve over your face, wiping your eyes.
You see Victoria’s hands hooking into claws. She has sharp, black-painted nails. Her cobweb gloves lack fingertips. She’s going to scratch your eyes out.
Her hands come for your face. You reach for her wrists.
The table between you is pulled out of the way.
You and Victoria almost dance.
You see the amazed faces of other people in the pub. Roger, you think, is envious. Gully, of all people, is appalled. Mary’s face is shut, concealing excitement. Most of the others haven’t been following the plot.
Victoria breaks your hold on her hands and backs off. She isn’t going to fight like a girl.
She punches you in the face and pummels your ribs. Your shoes slip on the spilled beer and you lose your balance.
A few folk cheer.
You get a hold on Victoria’s neck and force her to her knees. Her stiff, sprayed hair sticks into your face. Now she tries to scratch your hands, to make you let go.
She can’t hurt you in this position. But you can’t let her go. You are locked in this violent embrace.
Victoria arches her back, trying to throw you off. Her backbone presses into your groin. She is a warm body.
This can’t be a turn-on for you.
Someone is giving a referee’s count. Victoria twists and hisses, like an angry cat. You can’t hold her much longer. But if you let her go, she might well kill you.
The bell clangs for time. Even with the distraction, there is a moan of disappointment.
‘Break it up,’ shouts the barman.
He is coming to stop the fight. You are relieved and wonder if Victoria is.
Rough hands take your arms and pull them away from Victoria’s neck.
‘Should be ashamed of yourself,’ the barman says.
Victoria turns, her face close to you.
‘Tonight,’ she says, whispering so only you can hear.
‘She could have blinded me,’ you say. It sounds feeble.
Bronagh has found a towel and gives it to you. As you wipe beer and blood from your face, you see Victoria — with Mary and Neil at the bar — turn and mouth the word ‘tonight’ at you.
You sit down, uncomfortable with the erection you have sprouted.
What do you think? Is Victoria a promise or a threat? If a promise, read 50 and go to 55. If a threat, read 50 and go to 56.
40
As the car lands in the ditch, your weight is thrown forward awkwardly. You pitch out of your seat — damn fool, you should have taken the trouble with the seatbelt — and thump against the dashboard. Your forehead smacks against the frosted window, shattering it to fragments.
It’s not exactly a blackout. You don’t lose consciousness, really, but your mind fades. All sensations become fuzzy. You wonder if you haven’t broken something major, and this is your brain’s way of coping with it. You are uncomfortable but not in pain. Things seem to itch rather than hurt.
Close objects are in focus. Beyond arm’s reach, everything is a blur.
The cold seeping into the car makes you stir. The fuzziness goes away and you become sharply aware of your circumstances. Your body is crammed between your seat and the dashboard, but your head is stuck through the broken windshield, which seems to have vanished completely. Your feet and legs are wet and chilled. Water from the ditch is up around your thighs.
You are alone.
Where is Mary?
Tentatively, you push against the dashboard, afraid the buckled car has become a trap. The seat behind you moves back easily, sheared from its bolts. It is not heavy, but you have to brace your back and shrug forcibly to heave the thing off you.
With the seat gone, you can crawl through the windshield-frame. Your palm crunches on a line of jagged crystal still in the frame and you grunt in annoyance and pain.
‘Fuck.’
Your own voice sounds impossibly loud. Since the wrench of metal, silence has been marred only by the subtle, steady trickle of water.
You squeeze through the gap and take a careful hold of the car roof, bracing your feet on the sloping bonnet. You’re crouched a foot or so above the water, and your lower body is soaked through. Already, icy air is turning your wet trousers into a biting skin.
There is no sign of Mary.
She’s a maniac, you think. Her monster never went away, just hid in a deep cave. All these years, it’s been waiting for you, waiting to escape. She’s turned into Scary Mary again. This time, for good.
That’s silly. When Shane Bush racked up his moped, you didn’t think he was possessed by Pazuzu. Mary’s just a teenage girl who drinks too much and drives like a silly bugger. Being too bloody clever has made her forget how bloody stupid she can be.
Still, where is she?
You climb carefully out of the ditch. You can see almost nothing. The headlights still burn underwater, making ghostly pools of gleam in the ditch. But the moon is covered by cloud. You are between villages, miles from street-lighting or central-heated houses. In the ditch, the headlights hiss out.
You’ve climbed on to the far bank of the ditch, away from the road. You feel the effort in your knees and arms. You have been cut in a half-dozen places, on your hands and face. Blood flows slowly, either freezing or clotting. You realise your teeth are chattering and think distantly of exposure and hypothermia.
It would be easy to sit down and sleep, wait for dawn and rescue. Even before then, someone must pass by and see where Mary’s Honda went into the ditch. There should be many cars going back and forth to and from Michael’s party. You can’t see your non-luminous watch-face but it can’t even be midnight. Which means that it’s a long eight hours till light, and it’ll get colder before it gets warm. By morning, the car will be ice-locked.
You’re worried about Mary. You’re not sure, though, whether you fear for her safety or fear her.
You try to call her name, but just croak. You try again, more successfully.
‘Mary …’
If it were light, you would probably be able to see the marks of her escape from the car. She’s probably staggered off into the field and curled up. She may be hurt more seriously than you. She might have slammed into the steering-wheel, crushing her chest. Was she wearing her seatbelt? You think so. When you kissed her, she was held in her seat. You remember the strap against her shoulder.