“Give us twenty minutes to get the settings,” Craig said. “Won’t take long.”
“Listen, Craig—”
“Jared. Let’s do this like we discussed. You’re pumped, I can tell. It’s only natural. Go for a walk and calm down! Sophie and I can handle this.”
“Right.”
They had talked about it, about remaining composed, focused, letting others help. This footage would be seen, closely scrutinised. Objectivity and detachment were everything.
Jared stepped out into the corridor, walked the short distance to the corner and turned left into the long axial hallway for the whole wing. It was dimly lit, and so quiet, stretching off into shadow at its farthest reaches. Jared started along it, moving soundlessly on the old carpet, with locked doors to his left and long darkened windows to the right. He knew that beyond the steady mirror reflections in those panes the land fell away over sheer crags, buttresses, blurrings of eucalypts, a great gulf of darkness, all invisible now. In daylight it was the sort of panoramic view that caught your breath, weakened you in the knees, made any attempts to capture it in photographs impossible. Photographs never caught the scale, the dimension, the vast uncaring emptiness.
Now that he was finally doing it, everything seemed intensely unreal, and he had to counter that feeling. He took several deep breaths, made himself consider where he was. The old spa complex was all around him, stretching away like a bleached wishbone here by the highway at Medlow Bath, an antique ivory clasp opened and laid out along the ridge, arms pushed back against the incredible drop. The phrase “abandoned in place” had never been more appropriate.
This fabulous old hotel was meant to be restored, maintained, fêted, if only as something as second-rate yet cherished as the Carrington Hotel in nearby Katoomba. But used, for heaven’s sake. Though no one was saying so officially, there was already the distinct feeling that it might all prove too hard, that these empty rooms, forgotten lounges, deserted balconies and silent staircases would stay like this indefinitely, the only thing moving in the halls by day the motes of dust glittering in the westering sunlight, by night the shadows made by the moon as it fell down the sky. Now and then security guards would come and go, trying the locks, checking the fire-doors, running the aircon in various rooms to counter mildew and mould, helping to replace the fire-extinguishers as they reached their use-by dates, escorting the planning people who seemed to come less and less frequently now.
Jared turned to face his own reflection in one of the long casements, stood distracted by the familiar shape with the eye-patch. For a moment it made him forget the great darkness beyond the glass, but then he forced himself to think of it, savour it: the fact that two things could be true at the same time, his image and the other. It calmed him, anchored him somehow.
When he finally did check his watch, he saw it was 6:51, time to get back. He re-traced his course, returned with the same silent tread to the Delfray Room, welcoming the soft murmur of voices as Sophie and Craig made final adjustments, calmly explaining what they were doing for Susan’s benefit. The security guards were off making last-minute checks of the exits.
Everyone knew to leave Jared be now, and he distanced himself, found focus by reviewing how well it had gone so far. The Rathcar duplication was nearly complete: his taking the exact regulator doses across nine long months, the grooming of the monocular separation followed to the letter. The logistical requirements had been met too: securing the Hydro for the evening, keeping the costs well down. The guards were rostered on anyway. Only Susan had to be paid a fee for the two or three hours it should take, and she had turned out to be so interested that if he’d bothered to arrange to meet beforehand she might well have done it for free.
At 6:56, Jared called for Stand-by. Susan took out her mobile and contacted the security men. “Geoff, get Amin. We’re about to start.”
The guards appeared in the doorway moments later, took their places on the spare chairs, interested and attentive.
“All right,” Jared said. “So everyone is clear on the sequencing, we roll cameras at 7:00 sharp, do the control run to make sure our visitor is with us. We set up our things on the mantel, let our guest have a free go at them. Once it happens, if it happens, we then take the thirty-eight minute break and do it all again, this time with me standing over by the mantel and swapping the patch as soon as I can after the event occurs.”
“Is the thirty-eight minutes necessary?” Susan asked.
“Again, it’s what Rathcar did. It wasn’t planned. He just had more things to co-ordinate. But we’re duplicating his sequencing as closely as possible.”
“Understood.”
“Okay, Sophie, Craig. It’s 6:59. Begin recording. I’ll go put the things on the mantelpiece.”
Jared did so, once again crossing the empty dance-floor to the fireplace. First he stood the plastic bottle on its end, then set down the wooden block a short distance along from it, finally placed the red toy locomotive. Though tempted to stay by the mantel even for this first run, pulling his patch aside at the first sign of any disturbance, he made himself return to the monitors by the doors.
The vigil proper began at 7:02.
It was exciting at first, full of a new and understandable tension, an intensification of everything. The objects sat there – so ordinary, so comical in that ordinariness, both unreal yet super-real, but growing more and more unsettling, even disturbing somehow in their stillness.
As long minutes passed, the waiting soon became unbearable, of course. In most modern cultures, human senses were rarely accustomed to being strained this way. What once might have been essential for hunting and for vigilance in the face of danger and strife now brought only a worrying hypersensitivity. Jared watched the monitors, then the mantel across the room, monitors and mantel, glance up, glance down, the cycle repeating over and over. He found himself afraid to blink, straining to catch the slightest movement, the smallest disturbance, keenly aware of the gulf beyond the windows, of the chill autumn darkness all about them, thought of the empty rooms and hallways, the locked bars and dining rooms, the kitchens, closets, the empty pipes, the utterly still interiors of the hotel outbuildings scattered along the ridge. He imagined movement a dozen, two dozen times, but there was nothing, certainly no confirmation from Craig and Sophie at their monitors, watching the test objects in both long-shot and close-up. Geoff and Amin sat quietly behind him, Susan to his right, close by the monitor screens, no doubt staring too.
Jared had not forbidden talking, but that’s what had resulted. There was barely a sound.
Ten minutes became twenty, thirty, and the silence grew to be a layered thing. Sounds not noticed at first gained a striking new intensity: the hum of the recording equipment, the smallest cough, the rhythmic cycle of their breathing, the occasional tick of temperatures shifting, of masonry cooling, old pipes settling, whatever traces came in from the great emptiness beyond the windows.
It was so sudden when it happened – as alarming, dramatic and violent as everyone had said it would be. One moment the objects sat unmoving, exactly as placed. The next they were gone, clattering on the parquetry floor as if an unseen arm had swept them aside.
“First event, 7:46,” Craig said for the audio log, then: “Stand by. Stand by. Counting to the thirty-eight-minute repeat at 7:47 – now!”
Everyone relaxed then, began talking all at once. It was happening. They were in the thirty-eight-minute time-out.
To Jared’s surprise, one of the security guards, Amin, was suddenly at his elbow, handing him a folded note. “When I started my rounds earlier, Jared, a guy parked out by the highway asked me to give you this the moment something happened.”
“What’s that?” Jared said, even as he took the note, opened and read it.
Mr Ryan
I am waiting in front of the hotel in a white Camry. Please give me fifteen minutes of your time. It is very important that you do so.
Martin Rathcar
Jared
passed the note to Craig, said: “Keep to the countdown. I’ll be back in time.” Then he left the Delfray Room, hurried out to the front exit, out through the porte-cochère to where, sure enough, a solitary white Camry was parked by the highway. As Jared approached the vehicle, the passenger window lowered, revealed a man behind the wheel leaning over, smiling.
“Jared Ryan? I’m Martin Rathcar. Thanks for coming out. Please get in for a moment.”
Jared climbed into the passenger seat and they shook hands. “Dr Rathcar, I have to say this is truly a surprise! Really quite marvellous! But why are you here?”
Martin Rathcar looked older than his fifty-two years. He sat with his hands on the steering wheel, his narrow face partly shadowed, partly lit by the highway lamps. His eyes glittered. “I know you don’t have long. My one-time assistant, Kathy Nicholls, let me know that you’d duplicated the monocular separation and were doing this tonight.”
“Using your Nightside Eye.”
Rathcar gave a wry smile. “To call it that. I enjoyed the theatricality, I suppose.”
“I’ve read all the interviews, all the available transcripts.”
“That’s all there are.”
“I accept that. But I thought – since you asked to see me – that there was something you remembered and were prepared to share.”
“Jared, I remember nothing of what I saw, just that it was enough to make me obliterate the memory of whatever it was. It’s strange to find myself asking you to abandon the whole thing now when I have no memory of what it is I’m warning you away from. Feels a bit silly really, especially when it puts me in the position of wanting more than anything to know exactly what I did see. But I have to allow that there were vitally important reasons. Please reconsider going ahead with this.”
The request surprised Jared. “What about your own reply to Sandra Cartwright on 60 Minutes in July 2009? ‘This is science. Learning about the world.’”
“I won’t insult your intelligence by giving the line that was put to me in the same interview, that there are things we are simply not meant to know. I still hold with what I said. If we can know it, it’s science and there to be known. It’s only right that I should wonder now about what I saw that night that led me to take the final step. Theatricality is one thing, melodrama quite another, and I really do hate sounding this way after years of advocating rigorous investigation myself. But it had to have been important. I pretty well committed professional suicide with what I did.”
“Surely not. It was always going to be a case of their having to take your word for whatever you saw. You just pissed off a lot of people. Deprived them of an answer to something they would have called inconclusive anyway.”
“Which, nevertheless, many say was because I saw nothing. That this was my intention all along.”
“Dr Rathcar – Martin – your reputation, your previous work in perception, suggests otherwise.” Jared hesitated. “It really did take your memory of it?” He had never been truly convinced, he realised.
“That’s the thing, isn’t it? I should have insisted on a second subject doing it with me from the beginning, or at least waited until whatever I saw could be verified in a subsequent procedure. But Trioparin is effective only on recent memory. I was told it affected only an hour, ninety minutes tops. It’s like a mind-shock that way, very different to Diprovan and other amnesiacs. Whatever I saw made me decide that I could not by any means wait for subsequent verification.”
“It bothered you that much.”
“I have to allow that it did. I desperately needed to forget. Anyway, the drug worked better than expected. My shortterm memory of the twenty-six hours preceding the injection was lost. Twenty-six hours, can you believe it? Far longer than anyone expected. Part of me wants to know what it was I saw, now more than ever given your intentions tonight, I can’t deny it. But I have to accept that I gave myself that injection knowing what it was I did.”
“But to have arranged for that contingency in the first place, you must have seriously suspected – sensed – that something could go wrong. Trioparin is a last-resort trauma amnesiac. Prohibitively expensive.”
Rathcar nodded. “At the time I simply allowed that there could be intense trans-perceptual trauma. It seemed entirely likely. You deprive one eye of its normal tasks for months on end, suppress at least three key neurotransmitters in doing so, then suddenly restore sight to that – let’s use the pop term – Nightside Eye. Well, you know the outcome, though now I wish I’d never mentioned arranging such a precaution. The media seized on it, had a field day.”
Though he hadn’t automatically expected it, Jared found himself liking this man. “You didn’t just accept that whatever you saw might be dismissed as hallucination, hyper-perception. It suggests you believed what you saw.”
“It does, doesn’t it? I’m glad you think so.”
“You wanted it all gone regardless, though you knew in advance that it would be intolerable for you afterwards. The not knowing.”
Rathcar gave a forbearing smile. “That’s what made me drive up here tonight and ask to see you. Weird position to find myself in, like I say, but I have to allow that it really is as serious, as important, as my subsequent behaviour suggests. I was never much given to pranks or over-reaction, believe me.”
“But what could it be? What must you have seen – even as an hallucination – that could possibly make you want to forget it forever?”
Rathcar sat with his hands on the wheel for a time, staring at nothing. Then, noticing Jared glance at his watch, he continued. “You understand my dilemma. I have to allow that it was either an hallucination for me, something purely subjective, or a reality for us all. They’re the alternatives, the least I can claim. But, Jared, you stand to face the problem I faced: failing in your duty as a scientist. I clearly didn’t want even the possibility of it being real in the objective sense. You see the extremes here, why I can’t help but be fascinated with what you’re about to do. I knew it might happen in time, but now, tonight, I keep reproaching myself for not seeking corroboration before taking my memories of what I saw.”
Jared smiled grimly at the implications. “It really must have been something.”
“Well, no matter. At least you’re doing it at the same place I did. And I understand you’ve duplicated my procedures for fostering the Eye precisely.”
“That was the whole point, duplicating what you did.”
“Again, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I’m fascinated to know what will happen. Maybe I was wrong to do what I did. But that’s the other reason I wanted to see you. Would you consider using a lethophoric like Trioparin to take your memories?”
“Frankly, Martin, I’m more the budget operation. You had institutional funding. I can’t afford luxuries like that.”
Rathcar smiled again. It was a good smile. They truly did like each other. He took one hand from the wheel, patted the pocket of his jacket. “I have some here in case. The last of my supply, pocketed that night, thank goodness. Everything else was confiscated. I’ll wait out here in the car.”
“Come inside.”
“No, I must not be in there. You must appear unbiased. But just remember that it’s here. I’m here.”
“If I do come out to you, you won’t ask what I’ve seen?”
“I’ll want to more than anything in the world. But, no. I promise I won’t. I must believe in myself to that extent. You say you’re not doing this for me, and I believe you. In a sense, I’m not just doing this for you either. It’s because I have to trust myself – trust that I acted for the right reasons. I do not need to know what you see. But if you come out and ask for the Trioparin, I will at least know that you’ve seen something as unbearable and that I was right in doing what I did that night. Right now that means everything.”
Jared made it back to the Delfray Room with seven minutes to spare. Both Sophie and Craig wanted to ask about what had happened, but Jared raised a hand.
“He ju
st wanted to wish me luck and try to talk me out of going through with it.”
“Really?” Sophie said. “No insights?”
“Unfortunately not a thing,” Jared told her. “But we can talk about this later. It’s nearly time.”
At 8:24, Jared crossed to the fireplace again, retrieved the bottle, the wooden block and the toy locomotive from the floor where they had fallen, and began setting them back on the mantel, making sure that the placing of the train coincided with Craig’s 3-2-1 countdown to 8:25 exactly. Jared then moved to the right of the fireplace, watching the three objects, wondering how long it would be – if at all.
It was a different sort of vigil now, of course, marked by a wholly new kind of tension, such a definite – pressure was the only word. Jared’s breathing was so loud in his ears. He could feel his heart thumping, his pulse racing, was aware again of the silence out in the room, of how far away the others were across the dull sheen of the parquetry. A quick glance showed Sophie and Craig at their monitors, faces ghost-lit just a touch, showed Susan looking up from the screens to him, the screens then him. Geoff and Amin sat behind them, darker shapes in the open doorway, eyes fixed and glinting.
The pressure became everything. It could happen at any moment, any instant. He felt he could almost guess when. It was like the waiting tension in a game of Snap or that kids’ game where closed fists were placed knuckle to knuckle against one another, and the kid who was it got to hit the other’s hand before it could be snatched away.
Jared’s thoughts raced. What was it? Who was it? Was it really something as simple as electro-magnetic fluxes, atmospheric and geomorphic glitches, nothing supernatural at all? Or was there motivation behind it? Purpose? That was the real question here. What was out there drawing ever nearer, was even now preparing to sweep the objects aside, so dramatically, so brutally. Where did it come from? How far did it have to travel to do this simple, mindless thing? Is that what the delay meant, or was this poltergeist always here, holding back out of a sense of mischief ? But why did it have to be done – this furious sweeping aside? That remained the issue. The real priority wasn’t just shifting the patch to see what there was after the event, but shifting it in time to catch who or what was doing it just as it was about to happen!
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 24 Page 23