by Kim Newman
‘We hit people who deserve it?’
She thinks about it. Obviously, she has pieced together the story. Even if Sean and Laraine aren’t talking, their attitudes and actions — not to mention yours — add up to something like the truth.
Mary kisses you.
You didn’t sleep much in the cell. And Mary was on night duty, clocking off when she let you out. So you fall asleep after the first, frenzied coupling. You wake in early afternoon, naked in a tangle on the single bed in your room, and get back to it.
She snaps on her handcuffs, running the chain through the slats of the headboard, linking your wrist to hers. Neither of you can get away.
It’s not slower or gentler but it lasts longer. When you flag, Mary tugs the chain. She bites you, leaving tooth-patterns on your chest and shoulders.
When it’s over, around sunset, your bodies are bruised and throbbing. You feel the pounding of her pelvis against yours for days afterwards.
She finds the cuff key with her toes and pulls it within reach.
‘What would you have done if it’d fallen on the floor?’ you ask.
‘Fucked until the bed fell apart.’
‘Fair enough.’
She does her hair up first, then puts on her uniform.
‘Was this a police reward?’
She laughs, which she doesn’t do often. ‘A job well done,’ she says.
‘Did you?’
‘With James? Yes.’
You bang your head against the board.
‘It’s not an everyday thing,’ she says, buttoning her jacket.
‘Scary Mary lives.’
‘Believe it, girlie.’
‘What about Sean?’ you ask.
‘If I were married to him, I’d have at his bollocks with a Stanley knife.’
‘But you’re not. Laraine is.’
She sits at your desk, doing her make-up with a small mirror and compact.
‘Sean’s in a different ward, so he can’t get to her. Her leg will get better and so will his face. For a while, they’ll hobble around, not hurting anyone. Sean will be careful. He remembers you’re out there. But the scars will heal. And Laraine will make the wrong pud or put the cups in the wrong place and he’ll hit her. She won’t say anything, because she’s afraid for you now, as well as herself. And maybe she’s stupid enough to love the bastard. Women are like that. Sean will be apologetic after the first time, beg her to stay, promise not to hurt her again. She’ll believe him, because she has too much invested in him not to. Then, on less of an excuse, he’ll hit her again, harder this time. Maybe leave a mark. She’ll lie about it to anyone who notices. He’ll start doing it regularly and she’ll start making more excuses for him, blaming herself, coming up with stories of accidents. At that point, Sean will be consumed with disgust for her, probably take to raping her once in a while, to prove the point. Then, someone kills someone.’
You sit up, listening.
‘Best-case scenario is the least likely,’ Mary continues. ‘That’s Sean kills Self. After that you have Larry kills Sean. Justice served and a tiny jail term, lots of counselling, lots of sympathy. More likely, though, is Sean kills Larry. It’s not much consolation but he’ll get arse-raped so often in the nick that anything Larry took from him will seem lightweight. And more likely still, considering last night, is Larry kills Self. Further down the odds, you have various murder-suicide combos. And there’s Keith kills Sean, which I wouldn’t advise since even I can’t really turn you loose after that. Or Total Stranger kills Sean, which you might be tempted to arrange but which I’d also advise against since I’d get a promotion for catching you and your confederate.’
‘What about Larry leaves Sean, meets Wonderful Bloke, lives happily ever after?’
Mary laughs, nastily. ‘In your dreams, Keith.’
She slips on her shoes and crawls on to the bed, hovering over you in her slightly gamey uniform. Her hands spider-inch their way up your torso. She dips her head and takes your flaccid, drained penis in her mouth. Her tongue slithers around, coaxing another erection, stretched and painful, ringed with lipstick.
‘Something to remember me by,’ she says, withdrawing from you and standing up. She lightly swats your dick aside and leaves.
You look at the ceiling.
You refuse to accept the future Mary has laid out. Sometimes, there are happy endings.
And so on.
Begin again?
176
‘We have hundreds of cases now, Susan. Of Marion syndrome.’
‘No wonder. The last five years haven’t been easy on those of us who chose to stick around. When the Spiders came, everyone suffered enough to drive them to fantasise alternate realities.’
‘My wife was killed in the invasion.’
‘I’m sorry, Dr Cross. I didn’t mean to be insensitive.’
‘That’s all right. I incline to agree with you. The miracle is that there are people who don’t suffer from Marion syndrome.’
‘What is he actually doing? Retreating to some arcadian past? Some bucolic twentieth century?’
‘Not quite. It’s cleverer than that. The syndrome, I mean. It’s almost as if it has a personality of its own, separate from the sufferer. Mind-scans indicate that it’s like a voice, whispering, describing, coaxing, even shouting abuse. It takes Marion back over his life, in sometimes minute detail.’
‘So he’s remembering?’
‘Not exactly, though his personal memories are the raw material of the syndrome. When the crisis point came, Marion’s mind shot backwards through his life and he surrounded himself with the furniture of his earlier years.’
‘I’ve noticed people prize things that used to be ephemera. Food packaging, newspapers, used envelopes. Anything from before. They become almost talismanic objects. My boyfriend collects unscrambled videodiscs. Of anything.’
‘This is a more extreme reaction, but the cause is the same. No matter what one thought of it at the time, a world without the Spiders seems utopian to us now.’
‘So Marion is back there?’
‘He used up his real life, his throughline, very swiftly. Since then, he’s been shuffling, rearranging elements, wandering and wondering.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘He’s living life in multiples. Fragmenting himself, spreading himself thin, sometimes almost to invisibility. And he can’t quite keep the Spiders out of it. He’s weaving a tapestry of lifelines, crissing and crossing. Some are wish-fulfilments, some are nightmares. Some are achingly real.’
‘Good God!’
‘What is it, Susan? What’s funny?’
‘A question occurs, Dr Cross. Objectively, if you had spent the last five years away from all contact with the world, which Keith Marion would you believe in?’
‘I don’t see what that has to do with it.’
‘The Keith Marion who manages a bank in the West Country. The Keith Marion who was chemically castrated after conviction as a sex offender. The Keith Marion who is married to whoever and has whichever children. Or the Keith Marion who became catatonic after battling against Arachnoids from outer space?’
‘Well, if you put it like that …’
‘The world is a fantasy, Dr Cross. A kid’s power fantasy, or an adult’s nightmare of loss of control. It’s lost all claim to be credible. Marion syndrome is a retreat to something more reasonable, more convincing.’
‘Where does that leave us, Susan?’
‘Voices in the night.’
Begin again?
177
You drift in joyful reverie from day to day, greeting each moment like an old friend. Dad comments that you dream too much. You aren’t like yourself, he says. But, of course, you are. You’re more like yourself than you were the first time round. You wonder if it’ll be different. If you can change things.
You wonder when you first had a choice, when you’ll first come to a juncture where you could have taken another path. This time, will you
do better? Should you even try, considering that some tiny change might have vast ripple effects. By not getting together with Marie-Laure, will you fail to have the children who’ll rally the surviving Earth people against an invasion of alien spiders in the twenty-first century?
That’s silly. It’s equally likely or unlikely that by doing something different you’ll avert a disaster as cause one.
Do you want things to be different? Do you want to undo Josh and Jonquil’s lives, for instance, take them back out of the world by not making love with their mother? Do you want to manipulate reality so that your own life is better in the far-off world of 1990?
Or do you just want to do it all over again, but to pay more attention this time?
Eventually, the moment comes.
‘Who do you like, girl?’ Shane asks, ‘Napoleon Solo or Illya Kuryakin?’
If you like Napoleon Solo, go to 4. If you like Illya Kuryakin, go to 3.
But this time, think about it.
178
Given that you’re going to get together anyway, you opt to hurry things up and cut in on Marie-Laure, edging Vince out. Marie-Laure is surprised, but you get round her by showing how sensitive and intuitive you are. It’s not difficult. Since you have the memory of living for ten years with the woman this girl will turn into, you have insight into her likes and dislikes and know things about her she won’t be able to tell you for years.
Vince, annoyed, drops you both. Fine. He’s a deadweight.
Your parents notice how hard you work in the garden and comment on your improved attitude. Dad says there might be something for you at the bank.
A job.
For a moment, from the perspective of fifteen years of unemployment, you’re so overwhelmed that you consider accepting it and going into the bank.
No. With what you know, you can do better.
Surprisingly, Marie-Laure chucks you. There’s something creepy about you, she says. You’re sly and you know things.
You resolve to pretend more, to do a better imitation of your younger self; but you can’t. You have years of experience, even if of the dullest imaginable life.
So you get together with Victoria, who is at college and putting together a band. You can’t play an instrument and can barely hum a tune, but you have a memory of the future.
You ‘write’ as many 1980s songs as you can remember, poaching from The Clash, The Sex Pistols, Ian Dury, Elvis Costello, Blondie, Tom Robinson, Culture Club, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Duran Duran. It occurs to you that you’re robbing these people of slivers of their minds. You might in the future be able to sue for copyright violation when they independently write songs you have introduced to the world. You suggest styles of clothes for Victoria’s band, piecing together something somewhere between late punk and early New Romantic. In the end, you wind up dressing them as pirates.
Victoria sings ‘Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll’ at a college disco. It goes down a lot better than ‘Relax’ or ‘Karma Chameleon’, probably because it’s a song from next year rather than next decade. Actually, it’s not quite the same song: you’ve channelled bits of Ian Dury, but Victoria, who genuinely is talented, has added her own input.
When you sign a contract with Real Records, you phase out your ‘song-writing’ and encourage Victoria to take over, which she does.
Whenever you feel guilty about what you’ve done to Ian Dury or Elvis Costello, you remember that the Victoria you knew first time round became a complete waster and moved in with that hairy clod Graham Foulk. Now, she’s a passionate, involved, valuable artist. She brings out of you an invention you didn’t realise you had. You gradually phase out the borrowed ideas and try to retro-fit an alternative world image for her.
And just maybe you’ll prevent Duran Duran from ever happening.
This might work out.
And so on.
Begin again?
179
‘Kill them,’ you say.
‘Then you kill me, right?’ Mary prompts.
‘Yes,’ you admit.
Shane and Grebo have their hands full.
Mary shoots you as you leap at her. You feel a push in your shoulder but ignore it. You think of Juanita as you gouge out Mary’s eyes with your thumbs. You think of Joseph as you take Mary’s gun and shoot Shane in the face.
‘No,’ says Grebo, yelping as Chris chews his wrist like a ferret.
‘Yes,’ you contradict.
Chris gets free. You think of her as you shoot Grebo in the balls. Chris scoops up the twins, hugs them.
People are coming. The police. The noise.
You stand over Mary. She isn’t screaming. She’s patting the floor, looking for a gun. You point her gun at her head.
If you shoot her, go to 182. If you don’t, go to 186.
180
In the first torrential rain of the autumn of 1976, you find yourself in a coffee bar in Soho, wondering how much further you can stretch the small sum of money your parents gave you to seek your fortune in London.
An anonymous man sits opposite you.
‘Keith Marion,’ he says.
I say. For it is I.
Read 13, and come back here.
You’re surprised. Not only do I know you, but I know all about you, about where you come from. You can sense this in an instant.
I tell you the name I am using: ‘Derek Leech.’
Not many people can do what you have done; and they always have to pay a price. Not necessarily to me, but often to someone like me.
I offer you a position. My terms are favourable, though, as always, there’s a catch. ‘You have to think about what’s important to you.’
So, are you interested?
If you are, go to 195. If you turn me down, go to 197.
181
You sit back, almost relaxed. Mary’s gun thwicks. Chris snaps back, blood on her forehead, eyes frozen.
‘Bleddy waste,’ moans Grebo.
Mary slips her gun into her waistband. With gloved hands, she picks up the wrench from the floor. ‘This yours?’
You nod.
She whirls, landing a crunching blow on Grebo’s head. The man goes down and she hits him again, three times. His legs are kicking, but he’s dead.
‘Somebody has to take the blame,’ she says.
Shane is appalled but frozen. His gun is still on you.
‘Congratulations,’ Mary said. ‘You died fighting for your family. Got a lick in.’
She hands you the bloody wrench and pulls out her gun again. ‘Put your dabs on that, please.’
You grip the sticky steel.
‘Ta,’ Mary says.
‘What about James?’ you ask. ‘And Hackwill?’
And the twins?
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘You’ll never know how the story comes out.’
She shoots you.
Go to 0.
182
You finish Mary off, a bullet in her skull.
Armed police officers charge into the flat. Heavy visors, chest-protectors.
Things are shouted at you. You spread your arms.
Chris shouts at you. ‘Put it down!’
You look along the length of your arm and see Mary’s gun in your hand.
You are shouted at again.
You try to let go of the gun, but it’s stuck. Hammer-blows hit your chest. You hear explosions, unsilenced bangs rather than muffled thwicks.
In enormous pain, you’re slammed against the wall.
Chris screams.
Go to 0.
183
It happens in an instant. It doesn’t so much hurt as wear you out, as if you’d fast-forwarded through three hours’ of running after a bus. There’s a lurch, and an instant hangover, which instantly vanishes, leaving your brain fogged with the memory of throbbing fuzziness only fractionally different from the sensation itself.
You’re trapped in a tiny room. You’re dragged down on to a ratty couch and lie there.
Yo
u’re different. There’s a bulge of stomach, a thin fungus of beard, and your arms and legs are feeble. It’s as if you’ve spent years in a prison camp on a diet of chips.
A copy of the TV Times flops on a ratty magazine rack. It’s dated 17 November 1990. This week. John Thaw is Inspector Morse. You hunt through the magazine for a political fact, and infer that the Major government is in power. The world hasn’t changed radically, only you have.
And your life. The room is full of stuff. People live here. There’s a television, a stereo, a stack of LPs, bright-coloured paperbacks, cheap plastic toys, posters and snapshots Blu-tacked to the walls. The place smells of fried food.
You live here.
The creepiest thing you find, when you force yourself to ignore the gunge in your head and carry out a search, is that among the LPs are albums you can remember buying — Dark Side of the Moon, Diamond Dogs, Never Mind the Bollocks — and even a few jazz and blues albums inherited from Dad — Ella Sings the Cole Porter Songbook, Blues for Night People. The older discs are not copies of the albums you own, but the records themselves (Dad always printed his name neatly on the label). The sleeves are in worse condition, with shreds of rolling tobacco stuck to them.
The photographs on the wall give parts of the story. You appear as a glum lump, often with a thin blonde woman you don’t recognise and two kids who don’t look like Jeremy and Jessica but might be their cousins. The only familiar face is VC, who shows up in a few snaps looking like a younger version of the Wicked Witch of the West, all black hair and ratty black shawls. None of her records is in the stack, which makes you wonder how much has happened differently in this life.
You look at your own face, in the snaps and in the mirror. Under flab, pallor and hair, you think you have fewer lines around your eyes and mouth. This face doesn’t seem to have been used.