Fiddleback

by Mark Morris

  I told him, starting with the phone call that afternoon, the reason for my being here. He listened without expression, and when I had finished he straightened up. ‘All right, we’ll check it out. Would you mind waiting here, madam?’

  They seemed to be gone a long time, during which my mind raced without really getting anywhere. At last a dark figure appeared at the station entrance. I tensed briefly, then saw a second figure, a pair of peaked caps pecking at the air as the policemen strode towards me. I wound my window down a little further, but didn’t say anything. The policeman I’d spoken to earlier came up to the car, put a hand on the roof and leaned down. ‘You say the body you saw was in the waiting room, madam?’

  This wasn’t what I’d been expecting him to say. ‘Well … yes,’ I stammered. ‘Why?’

  He looked at me a moment, black goggles of shadow over his eyes making his face unreadable. ‘We’ve made a thorough search of the building and we’ve found nothing. No body, nor any indication that there was ever one there.’

  ‘But … but that’s impossible!’ I said. ‘There was a body. I saw it quite clearly.’

  The policeman beside my car turned briefly to his colleague, who made some remark, his voice too low for me to hear. When he turned back to me, there was a grin on his face, which vanished before he said, ‘With all due respect, madam, it’s a dark, creepy place, this. The imagination can play some strange tricks when you’re spooked.’

  It sounded like a line from a bad horror movie. The fact that he was trying to patronize me with it made me furious. ‘I know what I saw!’ I snapped. ‘It was a man. He had a noose around his neck. There were flies buzzing around him. I didn’t imagine it.’

  The policeman who was doing the talking breathed out hard through his nose as if he found this all very tiresome. ‘Well, there’s nothing there now, madam. Perhaps someone was having you on.’

  Was that possible? I didn’t see how. I thought of the last time I had had contact with the police in Greenwell, the young, horsey-looking officer snarling at me, You’re just a stuck-up bitch with no idea what goes on in this town. Could the entire police force be in on whatever was happening here? It seemed incredible, and yet suddenly I needed to be sure.

  ‘Show me,’ I said.

  The two policemen exchanged a glance. The talkative one said, ‘I beg your pardon, madam?’

  ‘Show me,’ I repeated, pushing open my car door, aware of how reckless, how foolish, this action might be, but unable to stop myself. ‘I want to see.’

  The policeman stepped back as the car door swung towards him. ‘There’s nothing to see, madam. That’s the whole point,’ he muttered.

  ‘Just indulge me. I want to set my mind at rest. It’ll only take a minute.’

  I could feel their exasperation, or maybe it was something else. But the talkative policeman abruptly nodded. ‘All right. If it’ll make you happy.’

  I walked between the two of them, the talkative one shining a powerful torch ahead of us, piercing the shadows with ashen light. At the turnstile the lead policeman handed the torch to his colleague, then vaulted the barrier with ease and held out a hand to assist me. I hesitated a moment, then took his hand and climbed over. His strong, dry grip, the way he supported my weight, suggested a tensile strength which I knew I would have no answer to if he decided to use it against me.

  We walked along the platform to the waiting room, our irregularly spaced footsteps like the tapping of some secret code on the concrete. My stomach hurt; my head throbbed dully; there was a prickling sensation behind my eyes. We stopped at the waiting-room door, which the policemen must have closed behind them.

  Without preamble, the talkative one reached out and shoved the door open. He wafted a hand at the room’s dark interior. ‘You see?’

  I stepped forward, though it was already evident that the room was empty. In the pitiless light from the policeman’s torch I could see that the place was a hovel, strewn with beer cans and litter, smelling of piss. Plastic bags billowed and gaped in the breeze that blew in off the track; graffiti etched the mouldering walls; shadows fled like timid night creatures at the periphery of the torchlight.

  The policeman pointed his torch up at the ceiling, and though he didn’t say anything I could see what he was getting at. The plaster was pocked with holes, stained and scabrous with water damage, but when it had been applied it had been smooth and unbroken, save for a jagged wound where a central light had once hung. There was nothing to which a rope could have been attached – no roof beams, no ceiling hooks, no protuberances of any kind.

  ‘I know what I saw,’ I said stubbornly. ‘I didn’t imagine it.’

  The talkative policeman shrugged. ‘That’s as may be, madam, but without any evidence there’s not a lot we can do. I suggest you go back home, make yourself a nice cup of tea and forget all about it.’

  I was angry and frustrated and mystified, and I wanted to snap at him for being so condescending, but I bit my lip. Because, to be honest, he was right. What else could I do? And what could I expect the police to do if there was nothing here to back up my story?

  I sighed, admitting defeat. ‘All right, I’ll go home like a good little girl. But I did see a body. Maybe if you got a forensics team down here, they’d be able to find something.’

  His face remained deadpan, but I could tell what he was thinking: Yeah, right, we’re always calling teams of experts out in the middle of the night to investigate the claims of hysterical women.

  ‘I’ll tell you what, madam. I’ll pop back here in the daylight, have a poke around, see if I can find anything that warrants it,’ he said.

  I wafted a hand. ‘Whatever.’ Then, hating the attitude of forced tolerance I was being shown, I turned abruptly away from the waiting room. ‘Come on, then.’

  We walked back to the cars in silence. Once there, the talkative policeman said, ‘Do you feel able to drive, madam?’

  I still felt shaky, but gave a brisk nod. ‘Yes, of course.’

  The wind was picking up now, the trees and bushes around the station thrashing from side to side as if trying to tear themselves from the earth. They took my name and the details of where I was staying, then the talkative one said, ‘Thank you, Miss Gemmill. If we need to get in touch with you in due course, we will.’

  The two of them stood and watched as I drove the car out of the overgrown car park and turned on to the dirt track that led up to the road back to Greenwell. I didn’t like their scrutiny. They were probably only watching to ensure that I was capable of driving after my traumatic experience, but it made me feel self-conscious.

  Perhaps surprisingly, I drove steadily, calmly, back to the pub. However, as soon as I cut the engine in the car park, a shudder blossomed out from my belly and into my limbs, so prolonged and violent that I thought even from a distance it must look as though I was having some kind of fit.

  For the second time that day I found myself trying to compose myself in order to enter the pub. I didn’t want to break down in front of all the people in there, especially as some of them might have been involved with what had happened tonight. I took a series of deep breaths, then braced myself and went inside. I was grateful to see that it was a lot quieter than it had been when I’d left over an hour earlier. I’d fully intended to go straight to bed, but now I realized that I could murder a drink. Brandy was supposed to be the thing for shock, but I didn’t fancy that, so I ordered a G and T from the chubby girl who seemed not to know that I was the pub’s only paying guest. I took an exploratory sip, unsure of how my system would take it, and immediately felt a comforting warmth spreading through me, quietening the shudder that was radiating out from my belly. I gulped the rest of my drink and ordered another, and by the time last orders were called I’d sunk four of the things in rapid succession. My head was buzzing like the flies around the corpse in the waiting room, but I ordered a final double. ‘Nightcap,’ I explained to the chubby girl, who’d been watching me gulp one drink after another
with wary fascination.

  I wondered if I was slurring my words. I didn’t care. I tried to take my time with my last drink, but it was gone in three minutes. As I made my way carefully across to the door that led upstairs, all but oblivious now to my surroundings, I heard somebody speak my name.

  I halted, paused a moment as I worked out how not to get my feet entangled in each other, then turned round. Jovial Jim was leaning over the end of the bar, glancing round presumably in fear of his wife, who for the moment was nowhere in sight.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, raising a hand and realizing immediately how drunken the gesture must appear. He seemed not to notice, however. In a low, confidential voice, he asked, ‘How did you get on at the station?’

  I wasn’t so drunk that I didn’t immediately become suspicious. Deciding to give nothing away, I said, ‘Oh, fine. The bloke I was supposed to meet didn’t turn up, but then that’s the story of my life.’

  ‘Who were you supposed to meet?’ he asked.

  I smiled and tapped the side of my nose. Then I waggled my fingers at him. ‘Nighty night, Jim. See you in the morning.’

  I felt quite pleased with myself as I walked up the stairs, the alcohol in my system suppressing all the bad emotions of the day, making what I’d seen that evening seem dreamlike, distant. I let myself into my room and set about the task of making myself a cup of tea, but halfway through, with the tea bag in the cup and the kettle halfway to boiling, I suddenly felt incredibly tired, and stumbled over to my bed.

  I fell on to it face-first and fully clothed, intending to have a few minutes’ rest until the kettle clicked itself off. The next thing I remember was waking up with a jolt, convinced that I was not alone in the room. I was lying on my back and I was naked. I could feel the chill air on my skin. My head felt heavy as a rock. It took a real effort to raise it from the pillow. When I did I saw a naked man standing at the end of my bed, holding his erect penis in his fist and looking down at me.

  My eyes jerked up to his face and I saw that it was Matt.

  I screamed and hurled myself to my left, intending to throw myself off the side of the bed, on to the floor. Matt, however, was too quick for me. He leaped on to the bed, landing heavily on top of me, his long, strong fingers grabbing my upper arms with painful force, pinning me down. I bucked and thrashed beneath him in an attempt to throw him off, tried to bring my knee up into his groin, but it was no use. He had always been lithe and incredibly strong. His hands slid along my arms until they were clamped around my wrists, whereupon he forced my arms up above my head, stretching the skin tight on my stomach, making my breasts ride up. He brought my wrists together and transferred both of them into his left hand, his long fingers clenched around them in an iron grip, my bones grinding together painfully. I felt a familiar sense of bitter humiliation at the fact that he could subjugate me completely by exerting only a fraction of his full strength.

  His right arm was free now. As he raised it I flinched, turning my head aside, expecting him to start punching me in the face. Instead his hand hovered for a moment between us, then his fingers probed at the hollow beneath his breastbone, as if trying to pinpoint a flare of pain, a touch of indigestion.

  His fingers disappeared into his chest, sank in up to the knuckle, as though his skin was putty. He moved his hand down, fingers rigid as a blade, opening himself up, slitting himself from breastbone to navel. A black wound gaped. There was no blood. I saw busy movement inside him. Then something slipped out from between the lips of the wound and scuttled diagonally across his ribcage.

  A spider. A fiddleback.

  The bloodless wound bulged, widened, and all at once they surged up and out of him like ants from a disturbed nest. There were dozens of them. Hundreds. A boiling mass of delicate, pale brown bodies, thin scurrying legs. They flooded out of him in every direction. They fell on me, ran across my stomach and chest and throat. Ran into my hair. Ran in a tickling blur across my face.

  I was frantic, hysterical, desperate to jump up, to get them off me. But I couldn’t move and I dare not scream for fear they would be attracted to the soft, warm cavity of my mouth. Terror and revulsion was escalating inside me, a pressure that seemed colossal, uncontainable. I felt sure something would rupture inside me, that my brain would burst in my skull like a balloon pumped with too much air.

  I felt the sting of myriad bites. I knew that if this didn’t stop soon I would die from the accumulation of poison. Through the blur of brown spider bodies scuttling across my face, I saw Matt ball his free hand into a fist. Now he’s going to hit me, I thought, but instead of bringing his fist down hard he lowered it towards my face, pressing his bony knuckles against my lips. I tried to keep my mouth closed, but the pain of my lips being crushed against my teeth was too much. When I parted my lips a fraction, he forced his fist between them. I tried to bite him, but felt my jaws being slowly prised apart like the jaws of a mantrap. He bore down on me, spiders still scuttling on and around us, using all his weight and strength, ramming his fist into my mouth. I started to panic as my lips and jaw stretched wider than they were supposed to go. I made squealing, terrified animal sounds in my throat that resounded in my head. My jaws stretched still wider, impossibly wide. I couldn’t breathe. I started to feel incredible pain.

  Then something cracked. It felt as if my whole skull had given way. The pain engulfed me, vast and unendurable. Something exploded behind my eyes – blazing light, screaming dark, my thoughts shattering. I felt myself being sucked down and then I don’t remember any more. It was not sleep I fell into, but oblivion. Dead. Black. Nothing.

  I don’t think I came to gradually. I remember simply turning back on, clicking to life like an electric light bulb and instantly remembering all that had happened to me. I was lying on a bed, on my front, my eyes closed, my fingers digging into the mattress as though clinging to a vertical rock face. I knew I should – have been in terrible pain broken jaw, spider bites – but I wasn’t. I opened my eyes.

  I was in my room at the Solomon Wedge. I had half-expected to wake up in hospital, my jaw wired up, my pain deadened by drugs. I could see my hand and arm, a good portion of the mattress, the wall beyond. I could see no spiders. Hear no sounds. I wriggled my fingers experimentally. Felt OK. Could see no spider bites.

  For a few moments, remembering the immense cracking sound that had reverberated through my skull, I was frightened of moving my head. But my jaw felt OK. I ran my tongue cautiously along both rows of my teeth, then clenched them together. Using my arms for leverage, I pushed myself up and slowly heaved myself on to my side. I sat up, looked around. There were no spiders in my room, no bites on my skin, no bruises on my wrists where Matt had gripped me so tightly, no pain in my jaw. Unbelievable as it seemed, what had happened last night must have been nothing more than a particularly vivid dream. I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or alarmed, didn’t know what this meant about my state of mind, or whether it would happen again. I felt momentarily shell-shocked, and then the emotional horror of last night’s experiences came flooding back to me. I started to weep and shake. I felt sick and degraded and scared and vulnerable and totally, totally alone. I curled up into a ball and I wrapped my arms around myself and I cried and cried and cried, soaking the bed sheets with bitter tears.

  ten

  ‘Matt, talk to me,’ I whispered.

  We were heading back to his place in a cab after a night at Graham and Kate’s. Chris and Paula had been there too. Matt had met Graham and Kate before – got on well with Graham, had even started playing for his five-a-side team on Wednesday evenings – but he hadn’t met Chris and Paula, even though we’d been promising to get together for ages. I’d wanted Matt to meet them not only because I’d wanted to show him off to my friends, but because Chris was a TV producer, and the more people in the business I could introduce Matt to the better as far as I was concerned.

  Matt, though, hadn’t been keen, which had started the evening off badly even before we’d got there. It wa
sn’t that he lacked ambition, it was just that he hated – as he put it –‘these contrived meetings’.

  ‘It’s not contrived,’ I told him as we sat with our drinks in the Blue Posts on Broadwick Street, which was where we’d arranged to meet after work (well, my work; Matt was currently resting). ‘Chris and Paula are my friends. I’ve wanted you to meet them for ages.’

  ‘Yeah, but there’s this whole TV producer thing going on,’ he said, swilling what was left of his Grolsch round and round in the bottle. ‘You just want me to impress him so he’ll give me a job. You want me to perform.’

  I laughed. ‘Of course I don’t want you to perform. I just want you to be yourself. If something comes of it, great. If not, no big deal. I mean, I want my friends to be your friends, Matt, and vice versa. And a lot of my friends work in film and TV because that’s where I meet them. I met Chris about eight years ago when we were both working on a costume drama for the BBC, and since then he’s thrown bits of work my way every now and again – it’s just the way things happen. So, you know, if something eventually comes of you not only meeting Chris tonight, but getting to know him, as I hope you will, then what’s wrong with that?’

  Matt was silent for several seconds, shoulders hunched, staring moodily down at his bottle. Eventually he said with more than a trace of bitterness, ‘It’s true, though, isn’t it? It’s not how good you are in this business, it’s who you know.’

  I shrugged. ‘That’s life, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Yeah, well, it stinks.’

  ‘Why does it stink? It’s what happens everywhere. Surely you’re not naive enough to think that it doesn’t?’

  We’d been going out for five months at this point and were still finding out new things about each other. Matt’s revelation at the railway station was now two months behind us. On the few recent occasions when I’d brought up the subject, he had refused to talk about it. ‘Look,’ he’d say, ‘I wanted to tell you, but now I just want to draw a line under it and forget it. It’s something that happened in the past. It’s not important any more, OK?’