by M. H. Laskar
4. ICE AND FIRE
The sudden blinding light tore through his eyelids and into the recesses of his broken mind. It illuminated the events of the past hour with garish unconcern, whilst a splitting headache continued to launch its assault on what little sense he tried so feebly to hold on to. He kept his eyes firmly shut, but he could tell where he was from the scrape of the metal chair. His wrists seared with pain from the cold metal that clung to them parasitically. The air was moist with humidity and sweat and perspiration trickled malignantly across his forehead and down the bridge of his nose, hanging dangerously at the precipice, teasing him for his helplessness to wipe it away. His throat was so parched that he stuck out his tongue to catch the joyriding drop of sweat, but it continued to perch at the tip of his nose, licking at his sanity.
“Thirsty?” teased a voice dryly as the door slammed shut. “Well so am I.”
Saul opened his eyes cautiously and looked into the face of the man who had just entered. The gunshot played again in his ears, the body crumpled again in his eyes. And the one responsible for it stood over him across the table with an expression of utter mock consideration.
“Mind if I?” the police officer asked courteously as he gestured to the chair opposite Saul before scraping it out loudly and sitting down. He placed his elbows softly on the table, intertwined his fingers and rested his head on hands, gazing vehemently into the eyes of his captive. His greasy face shone tepidly in the harsh orange light that pervaded the room. It was a face, Saul deliberated, that he would never forget for as long as he lived. And he wondered how long that would be.
The interrogation room was small and suffocating. The lurid walls seemed to quiver and bulge as if to swallow up its contents, a venus fly trap dissolving its prey. The expansive mirror that extended from one end of the wall in front of Saul to the other rippled with a tempting pulse like a pool of icy water in which he wished to plunge himself and drink his way to the other side to quench his insatiable thirst.
“First things first.” The police officer slowly reached for his hip, as Saul watched on breathlessly, his head trembling precariously from trying not to take a submissive yet lubricating gulp. But to his relief it was a hip flask the officer produced and pointed at him. He placed it gently on the table and swivelled it around in circles as he stared eagerly at Saul. With one swift move he unscrewed the cap and held it to Saul’s face, tilting it for the handcuffed Saul to drink from. An overpowering scent of alcohol infiltrated his nose and stung his already fragile brain, causing him to reel back and splutter as the tilted hip flask spewed half its contents over his vest and mingled with his sweat. His eyes watered but he tried stubbornly to keep them open so as not to let the droplets run down his cheek.
The officer smiled candidly at Saul. “You’ve made me spend my good stuff. Very well. Not a drinker, but a thinker,” the officer chimed. He reached into his inner breast pocket and pulled out a bag of ice cubes. Suddenly he leaned towards Saul, grabbed the back of his head and pushed his face into the pack of ice. The intense relief of the magnanimously cold pack instantly silenced all of Saul’s troubles. For a single moment there was no pain, no torment, no trauma and no chaos but a plane beyond existence, of pure bliss and serenity. But just as quickly and unsuspectingly as it had come, it was taken away. The officer wrenched the pack off of Saul’s face and slammed it into the corner of the table, pulling out a lighter and setting fire to the bag which encapsulated the ice cubes as he did so.
The flames tickled defensively across the bag whilst the ice inside attempted to silence its prevalence, wrestling with one another in a struggle for survival. As the plastic bag burnt, the ice trickled cautiously through and played delicately with the fire, dancing in an amalgamation of equality. But with a swift hand the officer poured the last half of his hip flask’s contents over the fray and the flames soared, devouring the bag mercilessly and annihilating the ice in a domination of supremacy until it lay humiliated in a pool of defeat.
Saul sat trembling on his seat from the overexertion of focusing so strongly to sit absolutely still. He stared at the flames with unfocused eyes, and in his blurred vision he could see the officer’s face gleam in its glow, the shadows under his eyes and brow deeper and darker. Saul’s heart thudded irregularly as if in his fear and uncertainty it had abandoned reason. He had a fleeting desire to be rid of it all, to give in, to be gone. But all the unanswered questions would plague him too much to let it go, he could not. He thought of Hamish, heard his voice and looked into his face as he sat in the car, which was tearing down the empty roads as the cool wind caressed his hair and comforted his tired eyes. He felt the glove compartment at his fingertips, tasted the fresh night air, smelt the deep hue of freedom.
A sudden slam on the table jerked Saul upright. The police officer had thrown down a wet handkerchief over the flames to extinguish them. Neither of them spoke for what seemed to Saul like several painstakingly long minutes. Finally the officer cleared his throat.
“It is in the very best of your interests to co-operate, Mister... Edos, I believe. Time is pressing with extreme gravity so... don’t be wasteful. Now, let’s get straight to the balls of it. Needless to say, I know about your encounters with a certain someone. I’ve been keeping a very close eye on him. Very close indeed. The information you possess regarding his intended purpose and whereabouts has the power to free you. What would you give up for freedom, Mister Edos?”
Saul stared wordlessly at him perplexed.
“Perhaps clarity is opaque in such clouded eyes of yours,” the officer continued. “Let me put it simply: where is he heading? Where?”
Still Saul said nothing. But he could feel an overpowering wave of frustration building up inside him. At the same time, the question had the potential to dispatch a tiny glimmer of hope but at this point of such uncertainty it had no place.
The officer exhaled calmly. “I don’t believe you are fully appreciating the circumstances in which you lie.” He pressed the bridge of his nose delicately. “Alright... silence begets violence, as you wish,” muttered the officer before launching himself at Saul. “WHERE IS HE, HUH, WHERE IS HE?” he bellowed whilst he squeezed his fingers into Saul’s jaw as he wrapped his hand under his chin, causing Saul to scream and splutter.
“HE’S LYING ON THE ROAD WHERE YOU MURDERED HIM, YOU SON OF A BITCH!” yelled Saul as he stood up and levelled up to the officer across the table, as rage coursed through his veins for the first time and fury took control. His throat burned with thirst and the cuffs around his ankles dug in and pulled him down again, and in doing so his eyes widened with the horror of his unexpected angry outburst at the police officer.
The officer chuckled and eased his grip. “Oh, so sentimental! What glorious passion you have! But you surprise me with your naivety. I’m not here for the small talk. I’m after bigger fish. In fact, the biggest catch I’ve ever seen. You’ve ever seen. Straight out the frying pan... Now, apologies for your little tag along’s situation but I would expect that in the face of such you would be more receptive.” The officer paused. “My welcome may fall short but my warmth is something you would not wish to bear. So I shall be blunt as I am sharp. I know you’ve come face to face with him before. That’s not something you forget. No matter how hard you may wish it. Perhaps you didn’t know just who you were dealing with, and just what he was capable of when you got involved. There’s no escape now, you’re in too deep. But let me liberate you in relieving the filth that you have exacerbated through what I can only condone as ignorance through telling me what you know. All of it. No more running. No more deceit. No more lies. You may think me a demon but I only appear so to fight fire with fire. To bathe in the bloody waters of iniquity and indulge in peril serve the necessary. Be it as it may, all you need to understand is this: if you do not accommodate this investigation, the consequences will be irreparably severe for all.”
Saul looked down at his reflection in the pool of water on the metal surface of the table. The concoct
ion of emotions that poisoned his mind that evening was phenomenal, but now he felt a sliver of a different one permeate it: intrigue. The officer was not referring to Hamish. Indeed, he had in fact just confirmed Hamish’s fate. But whoever he was referring to was the reason Saul was sitting in the interrogation room in the first place. Although he did not know of whom the officer spoke, he felt a strong sense of foreboding from some kind of inexplicable recognition. Whoever he was, he had the upper hand. And the threat of the strike from that hand was exactly what the officer seemed to wish to prevent. Saul began to question his boulder of judgment against the police officer but thought immediately of Hamish’s motionless body on the road lying there with resounding finality. With so many unanswered questions burning through his fragile state of mind he knew it best to ingratiate himself to the officer so he looked up to ask for the name of the faceless figure on which both their fates seemed to depend. After a hesitant pause he opened his mouth but his parched throat could muster no sound.
The officer, who had been studying Saul silently, already knew what he wanted to say. His eyes were directed towards Saul but Saul felt them stare right through him, into the abyss. The officer exhaled deeply then uttered a single word.
Razul.
Saul’s eyes flickered with a fleeting trace of recognition as his heart did a double take. The officer was looking back at him attentively. He silently hoped the officer had not noticed the hint of recollection in his expression as he sat wordlessly, straining his mind to develop a suitable response for the officer, but none came. The officer abruptly rose and swiftly exited the room.
Saul sat there, a solitary figure, like a deer caught in the headlights. He fidgeted with the name as he sat on the brink of recognition, unable to assign an explanation or a face. But again he felt the wave of foreboding, sharper this time. It was as if it were ingrained in his subconscious, minute remnants of a long-forgotten dream. He wondered if he was losing his mind. Everything felt so intangible, just beyond his grasp. Who was this ghost? What connected Saul to it? How deep would he have to venture? The thoughts stormed Saul’s mind, a tempest of infinity. The only reality he had was his emotions. And even they were starting to forgo him.
On the other side of the one-way mirror that sprawled the interrogation room wall opposite Saul, the police officer paced back and forth, hands behind his back, head scanning the floor.
“He recognised the name.” he muttered in an intensely dissatisfied tone to his partner, the same one who had accompanied him in the police car earlier.
“I’m not following... isn’t that good news?” the partner replied perplexed.
“Neither is he. No. Not at all. It was a glimmer, a fleeting moment in his eyes.” The officer looked up and said exasperated, “he doesn’t know him. He barely registered the name.” He paused weightily. “We’ve got the wrong guy. We’ve shot the wrong guy.”
His partner did a double take, speechless.
“Are you... you’re sure of that?” he mustered up
“Dead certain. I could stake my life on it.”
“In any case, you’ve shot the wrong guy, that was all your concoction,” the partner replied defensively before tailing off when the officer bore down on him. “Ok... ok, let’s be positive,” he continued more timidly, “we can interrogate him as soon as the sedative wears off. How strong was the tranquiliser dose?”
“We don’t have time.” The officer was already heading for the door. “He’s sleeping like a baby.”
On the other side of the pane Saul sat desolately, staring into nothingness. The multitude of thoughts that swarmed his mind struck like pincers. But before he could focus on any one of them, the door swung open again.
The police officer strode to the table and slammed a pitcher on to its surface, which splashed unceremoniously. He proceeded round to Saul’s side of the table, much to Saul’s trepidation, and swiftly unlocked and removed his handcuffs. The sudden relief on his wrists was liberating yet daunting. Resuming his previous seated position, the officer nodded reassuringly to Saul, who grabbed the pitcher with both seared hands and gulped down the ice cold water with a beggarly ferocity. The water splashed down his parched throat and over his clammy face, easing the soreness and satisfying his voracious thirst. He did not stop until he had demolished its entire contents, eyes closed, panting heavily with relief. A wave of immense fatigue washed over him and he suddenly felt an overpowering urge to curl up in bed and drift into the realms of impossibility. But he could not be further from it. The fog had lifted slightly and Saul knew he needed to offer a resolute and convincing argument to purge himself – the officer had had an uncannily strong aura to arouse Saul’s guilt when in fact there was nothing severe to incriminate Saul.
The officer was smiling at Saul in an unsettling manner. “Nothing that can’t be undone,” he whispered, “...if everything is done.” There was a painfully long pause.
“Would you like to see your little friend again? I can take you to him if you so please? I am sure he will be able to answer questions for the both of us.”
It suddenly hit Saul why he recognised the name. He had seen it discreetly scrawled in red ink on Hamish’s wrist several evenings ago. Hamish did not know Saul had noticed it at the time, but he made sure to scrub it away at the earliest opportunity. The dam of miscomprehension burst as Saul recollected the seemingly excessive fear and panic Hamish had radiated the moment the police sirens tore the night. It was Hamish who was the link. It was Hamish who had had the condemned encounters with the faceless person. It was Hamish who had disclosed none of it to Saul. Betrayal simmered in Saul’s bones, disloyalty festered in his heart. Out of everyone he knew in the circle of untrustables, Hamish was the one person he had always trusted unconditionally.
Before he could let it marinate, his thoughts switched to what the officer had just said. Saul had assumed the missing link to be dead, but the officer had just suggested otherwise. He had seen the fall clearly and remembered it even more vividly. Nevertheless, he felt his eyes could easily have deceived him. The night had been dark and his mind cloudy, cataracted by fear and doubt. The precipice on which he hovered might not be able to support the weight of hope, he thought. But yet it lingered.
The officer spoke again. “The real question is... can you withstand the heat... the naked truth?” He pulled out his lighter with his right hand, and a gun with his left. The cold metal pressed against Saul’s right temple, whilst the heat of the flame blanketed his left eye.
“I’m going to count... to ten. I reach ten with no answer and I pull the trigger. You blink and I pull it immediately. Now, this friend of your friend, where is he? One...”
Saul’s mind ignited itself as the fire of his cruel predicament ravaged his brain. The cold metal gun against his head seemed so comforting, a seductive temptress. His eye was burning from the flickering flame that taunted him. His eyelid was shaking uncontrollably as he fought defiantly to resist his ingrained instinct and reflex.
“Three...”
A blind panic was crippling him as he frantically tried to recall the whereabouts of the stranger with every inch of unfocused focus, before he realised he had absolutely no idea at all. There was nothing he could offer the police officer in exchange for his life, he knew nothing. The insignificance of his existence suffocated and strangled the breath out of him whilst he struggled like a maniac to keep his twitching eye open. He had only a few seconds longer to live but he knew he could not die a quitter, he had at least to hold on to that, to fight the uncontrollable rage to blink.
“Seven...”
Saul strained so hard to keep his eyelid from collapsing that he barely had any brainpower to think of anything at all to say that might save his life, any glimpse of hope was shunned by the darkness in which he sunk. Tears streamed down from his eye and across his cheek, but he did not blink.
“Nine...”
It was all over. An audible gasp erupted from his mouth as he heard the final numbe
r.
“Ten.”
The flame went out. Saul heard the gunshot from earlier in his head once more, and saw the body crumple again. The soothing cold metal against his head shifted slightly as he felt the officer squeeze the trigger lovingly.
Click.
The chamber was empty.
Saul gulped dumbfounded as his vision became hazy, on the verge of passing out. He was still alive. The officer pulled the gun away and Saul jammed his eyelids shut as he tried to console his grieving eye. He was still alive. No bullet had been in the chamber when it was fired.
He heard the officer chuckle. “Did you really think I would shoot you? I’m a police officer.”
Saul peered through his eyelids cautiously. The officer opened the chamber of his revolver and gave it a frivolous spin. There, in the chamber, was a single bullet in one of the six slots. “Lucky guy.” the officer whispered.
Saul gulped and spluttered on his own saliva. He felt even more terrified than before.
“I admire your resilience. The great battle of nature and nurture.” He paused and leaned back casually in his chair. “I do not wish to be blinded by lies and deceit. I appreciate that. And yet the question remains unanswered. This is a most terrible thing indeed.”
* * *
The answer was fifty miles away, with a merciless and primal determination like nothing ever witnessed before. It lurked in the shadows of the forested marshes and dense tree-lined overgrowth that hung in the corner of a quiet little village upon which nightfall had long descended.
It was the one they called Razul.
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The full novel coming soon...
Thank you for downloading and reading the prologue of The Flight of the Alchemist. I hope this has whetted your appetite for the release of the full novel. If you enjoyed this, please feel free to get in touch with me at [email protected]. Your feedback is much appreciated.