Biblical

by Christopher Galt

  Henkje’s jaw remained wired for a month. But even after the swelling and discoloration had disappeared from his face, he was a changed boy. And it was just about the time that his jaw had been unwired that Fabian also noticed a change in the others. First Henkje’s friends, then others in the school began to avoid Fabian. Avert their eyes. Even Robin Hoekstra, who was the closest thing he had to a friend and sat next to him in History, seemed to be avoiding him. Fabian considered confronting Henkje, but he let it go. In many ways, it suited him that his peers kept their distance; he had always felt that he didn’t belong with them, that he was adrift in time, geography and society.

  Three months on from the attack, but completely unconnected to it, the Maartens family moved out of the area and inland, to Bakkefean. Fabian no longer had to face his guilt in the school hallways. But the others. The others remained distant, almost fearful of him. He even began to catch the odd strange look from a teacher.

  Life went on. Fabian still returned to the beach each week, seeking comfort in the spot he had always gone to, but it was somehow less special now, as if the sand he sat in was still soiled with Henkje’s blood.

  He sat again on the beach by the rock, the vast sky pressing flat land and sea. Everything was the same as the day he had encountered Henkje and everything was different. The sky was still as big, but today vast billows of gray-white clouds, like the sails of ghostly ships, slid across its shield and the temperature was several degrees cooler.

  Once more, Fabian thought back to the fury that had been unleashed. He had become an animal, a thing of base instinct and mindless violence. What troubled him most was that he had enjoyed it, a thirst being slaked. He had never, in his fourteen years, felt more vital, more alive. His world had never felt more real.

  He sat with his back to the stone, poking at the sand with a salt- and sun-bleached stick, his thoughts wandering.

  It came upon him suddenly and completely: the same feeling. Like déjà vu but not déjà vu. More intense. He sat bolt upright, casting his gaze around him. Everything was the same: the sky, the temperature, the light. Nothing had changed, yet he felt his heart beat faster in his chest, his pulse rushing in his ears. It terrified him that this could be the prelude to another act of uncontrollable violence, or another episode where time repeated itself.

  He scanned the sea’s horizon, swept his gaze back to the promontory and to the dunes and the dyke behind him. Everything was the same, unchanged. But something was different. It was just that he couldn’t see it. Yet. He scanned the horizon again, turning in a slow three-sixty-degree circle: concentrating, narrowing his eyes, seeking out each detail.

  The promontory. Something was wrong with the finger of grass and sand that insubstantially prodded the North Sea. His vague panic suddenly became specific, concentrated. The lighthouse. The lighthouse was gone. Fabian staggered back a few steps. How could the lighthouse, which had stood sentinel on the promontory for one hundred and fifty years, suddenly disappear? He closed his eyes tight, but when he opened them again, it was still gone.

  Like a sudden surge of nausea, the odd feeling rapidly intensified, reaching deep, deep inside him. This was beyond déjà vu, beyond a feeling of inexplicable resonances: this was a seismic shift in his sense of place and time, the universe around him, within him, reconfiguring itself. He began to shake. Another wave, even stronger.

  The ship-sail clouds had disappeared, the sky now clear. The chill in the afternoon air was gone. Fabian knew he was not somewhere else – this was still exactly the same space he had occupied a second ago – this was sometime else.

  Voices. Distant. Behind him.

  He spun around and looked back towards the land. Like the lighthouse on the promontory, the gentle green swelling of the dyke had disappeared. There was now no clear demarcation between beach and land, instead the sand smudged into a mudbrown band, in turn smudging into an ugly tangle of scurvy-grass, sedge and plantain. How had he come to know what these marsh grasses were? Why was this alien landscape not alien to him? Fabian was snapped out of his thoughts by the sounds of voices again. Many voices. He could not see who was talking but reckoned that they were somewhere beyond the band of marsh grass. To his surprise, he realized he was no longer afraid – not in the slightest bit afraid – but he instinctively felt the need to approach the voices with stealth. He stepped forward, heading inland towards the towering grasses, and felt himself sink up to his knees. Looking down, he saw the soft pale sand had been replaced with dull gray mud. Wadden. He ploughed through the mud, a slow, laborious wading that cost him his sneakers and sucked his sports socks from his feet. Again he was surprised by his lack of surprise: nothing made sense, yet everything was somehow just as he expected it to be.

  It took Fabian ten sweating, heaving minutes to traverse the Waddenzee mudflats and reach dryer sand and the fringe of tall grasses. Once he was free of the mud’s clinging embrace, he looked down at his naked feet and his jeans, sodden and caked with mud. Whatever was happening to him, whatever this was, it looked, sounded, felt and smelled real. If he was going mad, he was going completely mad in every sense. He pushed his way through the grasses, staying hidden in them as he reached their landside edge. Easing them apart like curtains, he peered through cautiously.

  A village. Or a camp. Or something in between.

  There was a dozen or so unevenly spaced wooden lodges clustered around a square of scraped-bare earth. Each lodge was elevated a foot or so from the ground by stout wooden stanchions; timber-framed and beamed, the walls wattle and daub, the roofs composed of densely woven thatch. Unlike the pristine, sharp-edged geometry of Fabian’s brick-built home that proclaimed Man’s independence from Nature, these lodges seemed organic, constructed from natural materials gathered from their immediate environment – mud and seagrass straw and rough-hewn timber. They seemed still part of the landscape, fused with it.

  Smoke curled up into the clear sky from a fire in the raw earth central square. A group of children ran around, playing tag and laughing and squealing as they evaded or submitted to capture. They looked like any group of children, apart from their odd clothes. A woman came out of one of the lodges, climbing down the hewn-log steps, balancing some kind of wood and hide bucket on her hip. She wore a weary maturity around her like a heavy cloak – she was a woman and not a girl – yet Fabian guessed she could only be a year or two older than him. Her hair was red-blonde and gathered up into a knot behind her head. She was pretty, her features regular and well-defined, but Fabian could see even at a distance that her skin was roughened and reddened on the nose and cheeks, as if weather-beaten. He ducked back as she turned in his direction, her face empty of expression. There was no sign that the young woman had seen Fabian hiding in the rushes, but she headed straight for him. He sank back as much as he dared without creating a telltale ripple in the long stalks of seagrass. He could see her clearly now: she wore a yellow tunic, a long mustard-colored skirt with a slightly longer petticoat beneath. Fabian could tell that he was looking at an outfit that did not belong to his time. For a moment he contemplated the insanity of his situation and wondered if he was looking at some kind of re-enactment – maybe they had set up some kind of living museum: a Dark Ages theme park. But that didn’t make sense; it didn’t explain the disappearance of the lighthouse or the dyke, or the Waddenzee mudflats having shifted position.

  Maybe, he thought, ghosts do exist. Maybe this was a village of the dead.

  The woman was now directly in front of him. She tilted the leather bucket and spilled its contents into the seagrass, almost tipping them directly onto Fabian. The water she spilled smelled foul and the odor seemed to seize Fabian by the throat, causing him to cough. He knew he had given away his presence and there was nothing for it but to reveal himself fully. His mind raced as he tried to find the words, form the sentences, to explain the inexplicable.

  He stood up.

  He was now face to face with her, only a meter or so apart. He could see the detai
ling on the brocade band that held her hair back and on the fringe of her tunic; he could see the flaky redness across her nose and cheeks, he could smell her scent, the odor of her body, not an unclean nor unpleasant smell.

  “I’m sorry …” He found some words. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I—”

  She looked straight through him, as if he wasn’t there, staring out into the grasses before turning and heading back whence she came. She hadn’t seen him. He had not been there.

  This was no phantom village. The woman had been no ghost, Fabian realized. He was the ghost.

  25

  JOHN MACBETH. BOSTON

  People, Macbeth knew, liked to scare themselves with spook stories. As a psychiatrist he understood the mechanism: the ghost story reader or horror movie fan thriving on simulations of frightening environments with which to tease and confuse the amygdala, that most ancient and primal of the brain’s structures, into believing there is real and immediate danger; the chemical signals sent from amygdala to hypothalamus in turn releasing epinephrine, norepinephrine and cortisol into the system.

  Except, of course, everyone in their heart of hearts knows that a ghost story or a horror movie isn’t real, so the adrenalinebuzz can be enjoyed at one remove and without real fight or flight, the fear becomes mitigated, vicarious and packaged for entertainment.

  Macbeth, with his odd detachment from the world as others saw it, often noticed the way catastrophe and suffering were reported on TV: conveyed with professionally synthetic modulation and intonation, as if natural voices were somehow inappropriate. Macbeth wondered if it was, just as with horror movies, a deliberate repackaging of fear to keep it at one remove. There had been rare times, of course, when the professional demeanor had fallen away, the fear had become immediate and the reporters became real people. Oddly enough, those rare occasions had been when reality had turned on its head and looked more like a Hollywood disaster movie, like the unreal reality of planes being flown into New York towers.

  The reporting of the events in Boston was becoming like that. The New England media’s handling of the ‘ghostquake’ was mixed and confused. The event made no sense, yet people had died and almost everyone in Eastern Massachusetts had experienced it. Professional gravity yielded to a more fundamental, more genuine anxiety.

  Especially when it emerged that Boston had not been alone.

  Phantom earthquakes in France and India, both on the sites of major historical quakes, had left people injured and killed. Just like the Boston episode, the effects of major seismic events had been felt, the tremors and shaking of the earth experienced by those present, but again there had been no physical evidence of real seismic activity of any kind.

  It was no longer a spook story. Serious efforts were put into establishing exactly what could be causing the effects. The epidemic proposal continued to be put forward: a virus or other agent was attacking the vestibular system of victims. The remarkable coincidence that everyone seemed to suffer attacks of imbalance and auditory hallucination at precisely the same moment seemed not to feature in anyone’s thinking.

  There were, of course, a hundred crackpot hypotheses generated by the conspiracy theorists, the religious Right and the otherwise deranged. The Illuminati were behind it all, creating the chaos from which to establish their New World Order; aliens were causing it, using mind-control beams to confuse the human population before a full-scale invasion of Earth; God was punishing humankind for turning its back on Him and worshiping the false gods of science; the government had developed a new weapon and it had gone wrong, according to one conspiracy theory, or they had deliberately tested it on Boston, according to another. And there were those who exploited the situation and the gullible: claims were made that the phenomena could be controlled and conjured at will and tickets were sold for live concerts by Elvis, Frank Sinatra and Caruso.

  Generally, people went about their normal business, but their faces in the street were anxious and uneasy, as if mistrusting everything they saw.

  In the meantime, Macbeth’s Boston schedule went ahead as planned. Colleagues in Copenhagen called to ask if he’d experienced the earthquake; he regretted admitting he had, for it resulted in endless questions about what it had been like and what he thought had caused it.

  Casey’s head injury had been as minor as Macbeth had suspected, but he was clearly troubled: Casey was someone whose logic and intelligence made sense of almost any puzzle, but the experience in the restaurant was beyond even his rationalization. He insisted that Macbeth move into his apartment for the rest of his stay in Boston.

  “I know you like to have things just so,” Casey said. “But so do I … I think we can harmonize our just-sos for a few days. I don’t know about you, but after what happened the other night, I think we could do with each other’s company.”

  Comforted by the thought of moving in with Casey, Macbeth’s reluctance to cause his brother trouble was largely for show and he agreed to check out of his hotel.

  *

  The woman behind the hotel reception desk was young and attractive, with very dark hair swept back from a pretty face and large blue eyes. He’d spoken to her a couple of times before and when he checked out he picked up again on the way she smiled at him. She was very much Macbeth’s type and in different circumstances he would have initiated a date, but there was too much happening, too many things taking his mind out of the moment. He apologized for checking out early and said he understood if he had to pay in full for the nights he had booked.

  “That’s not a problem Dr Macbeth, I’m just sorry you’re having to cut short your stay in Boston.”

  “Oh, I’m not really … It’s just that my brother has asked me to move into his apartment till I leave. Things … I mean people …” Macbeth struggled to articulate the thought. “Things are a little different after what happened the other night.”

  She nodded understandingly. “Well, perhaps we’ll see you again …”

  “I’m sure you will.” He smiled.

  “You’ve stayed with us before, haven’t you?” she asked, with that familiar frown of concentrated recall.

  “No, this is my first stay in the hotel.”

  “Really? I’m sure we’ve met before …” Her frown remained.

  “No, we haven’t.” He smiled. “Believe me, I would remember.”

  He was about to turn from the reception desk when, over her shoulder, he saw a framed photograph of the dark-haired and bearded man he had seen in the hall by the elevator. Macbeth was relieved that he had been able to deal with the pretty girl and not the man who hadn’t held the car for him.

  “The owner?” he asked the young woman, nodding towards the picture.

  “My father,” she said. “And yes, this was his hotel.”

  ‘Was?”

  “Dad died when I was very young. My mother has run the hotel since. Twenty-three years now …”

  *

  The driver of the waiting cab popped the trunk and started over to take Macbeth’s luggage when a pair of sunglasses and a dark suit full of shoulders stepped out of the town car parked behind the taxi.

  “It’s okay,” the suit said to the taxi driver. “I’m here to take Dr Macbeth where he needs to go.”

  The driver shrugged, shut the trunk and got back into his cab.

  “Are you from the Schilder Institute?” Macbeth asked. “I wasn’t expecting a ride. I’m afraid we’ll have to make a detour – I’ve got to drop my stuff off at my brother’s place.”

  “That’s not a problem, sir, and we’ll drop you off at the Institute after, but I’m not from there.” He reached into his coat pocket and produced a wallet with an official ID. Macbeth saw the blue capitals.

  “FBI?”

  “Special Agent Bundy. I wonder if you could help us with a couple of things. We won’t take you out of your way and you will be on time for your appointment at the Institute.”

  “Bundy?”

  “Yes sir, as in Ted. No relation.”
The FBI man smiled.

  “What’s this all about? What on earth can I do for the FBI?”

  Agent Bundy held out an arm in the direction of the town car. “Maybe we could talk on the way. I’m conscious of your schedule, doctor.”

  Macbeth shrugged, allowed Bundy to take his bags and followed him to the car.

  *

  Macbeth had the same sense of claustrophobia in the back of the Lincoln that he had felt in the police prowler. The windows were tinted dark, which seemed to remove him further from the city they drove through. The driver didn’t turn or acknowledge Macbeth as he got into the rear with Bundy.

  “So,” said Macbeth when they were under way, “what can I help the FBI with?”

  “Have you heard of someone called John Astor?” Bundy removed his sunglasses and Macbeth could see that he had the most striking color of eyes. Almost like targets, each eye had a narrow band of orangey-brown around the iris, surrounded by a wider band of bright green-blue. It made his gaze disconcertingly penetrating.

  “Heard of him, yes,” said Macbeth. “But that’s all. To be honest, I thought he was a bit of an urban myth – him and this mysterious book of his. Why do you ask?”

  “But you have no knowledge of John Astor other than these rumors?”

  “The name has a significance to me, but it’s not at all connected.”

  “Oh?” Bundy leaned forward.

  “I had a patient – years ago, when I was at McLean. He was exhibiting symptoms of what appeared to be Dissociative Identity Disorder.”

  “And his name was John Astor?”

  Macbeth shook his head. “No, that was the name he gave one of his alters.”