Flashback (The Saskia Brandt Series Book Two)

by Hocking, Ian

  Chapter Twenty

  On the hill that overlooked the small hut, there was a triangular clearing formed by three ancient pines. The limbs of the largest had bent under the weight of snow. Tolsdorf, the woodsman, was braced in a familiar wedge halfway up the trunk. His deer-hunting rifle rested in a notch convenient for surveillance of the hut and its small hinterland of piled wood.

  Tolsdorf was as still as the tree. He felt twenty years younger. He had gathered his wits to a single point: his left eye, open on the rifle’s burning green image intensifier. He breathed through his nose. He was not too cold; rather, the cold of this night had entered him and calmed him.

  He had been settled against the trunk for more than four hours and was now ready to climb down and call this night done. But, in the instant before he looked down to place his feet, he heard a new note in the sounds of the forest. The new note did not belong.

  Sure enough, she came from the south-east. Her footfalls told him that she was no native of the forest or the snow. She was easy to locate with the rifle. Her arms were outstretched like bird wings, aiding balance, whiskers for tree fronds in the dark. Everything about her confirmed that she was the help Tolsdorf had been waiting for.

  At first, her physical weakness puzzled him. How would she be able to fight the Ghost? Could it be that her purpose was to bring the killer here, nothing more? Tolsdorf tried to arrange the discrete elements of his knowledge as though they were playing cards in a hand, but his concentration – narrowed to that green, blazing disc – was not equal to it. The scattered pieces were little more than knucklebones. They told him nothing beyond his fears.

  He felt for the bar of chocolate in his hip pocket, broke off a piece, and chewed slowly as the woman crossed the stream. He saw only part of her face beneath her hood. She stopped. Looked around. Looked at Tolsdorf, who she could not possibly see. Tolsdorf smiled. The lower spike of his three-point crosshair rested on her chin.

  And then she was gone into the hut.

  Tolsdorf’s bristling at this trespass was, he noticed, both automatic and useless. The sensation made him smile. So I am not dead yet. I am still connected to something of the world. There is still meat on the old bones.

  Behind this feeling was one of excitement.

  It is happening. The Ghost is coming.

  Tolsdorf did not know how long he would have to wait. He knew to expect that this man was following the girl. But at what remove? Might he be biding his time? How strong was his knowledge of the forest? Could he read the forest like Tolsdorf could read it? Did he know that Tolsdorf waited, armed?

  These questions itched at him. He was no man to answer them. He was old and wily, but no strategist.

  A second, discordant note rang through the empty air. It was dulled by the snow but Tolsdorf’s heart accelerated again.

  ‘So soon,’ he whispered.

  The sound of his voice surprised him, and its disagreeable edge of satisfaction. This would not be easy. He would need to play this like the most serious of hunts. This was not deer. This was the Ghost.

  It was no less than fifty metres to the hut. The air was empty. Fresh snow might fall soon, but for now Tolsdorf could see the hut in great clarity. Intensified. Raging green: the halos of the doors and windows. The moving fringe of branches at the eaves. And there: twenty metres beyond the woodpile, the unmistakable brilliance of fluorescent material.

  As Tolsdorf eased his index finger through the hole in his glove, the fluorescence – two horizontal strips, perhaps – moved slowly down. It could only mean that the person wearing the jacket had crouched. Were they taking cover? Had Tolsdorf been seen? He doubted it. The man had crouched because he was cautious. Perhaps he had just caught sight of the hut.

  The overall range was less than seventy metres. Tolsdorf did not hesitate, though part of him was doubtful, still trying to read the knucklebones of this moment. Was it not foolish for the Ghost to approach the hut wearing such conspicuous clothing? But the man had no reason to suspect that Tolsdorf even existed, let alone had an open shot from an elevated position.

  The bullet left the gun with little fuss. The noise, though terrific, was absorbed by the snow-covered trees. Only a familiar tinnitus remained in Tolsdorf’s ears, buzzing like those questions – rattling bone-like – and he still could not read the future, still could not be sure whether he had won or lost.

  Tolsdorf knew that the bullet had passed through the left breast pocket of the jacket. He watched his target shift down (a man slumping to his knees) and forward (a man collapsing, dying on his face).

  He slid the rifle’s bolt. He did not regret the kill. By habit, he remained in his tree. He discovered a need to urinate, to drink, and to sleep. The quietened drives of his body were clamouring. However, he did nothing but curl his finger back into his glove, to warmth. The unanswered questions faded now, as all questions must fade. Never was his age further from his thoughts. In his chain of duty since overturning that smoking piece of fuselage, every link had held. He was proud.

  After a time, Tolsdorf climbed down the tree. The movements were economical. His feet found well-remembered places and his hands, taking no weight, passed from friend to friend until he dropped the last half-metre into soft snow at the base.

  Tolsdorf slipped the rifle from his shoulder. He was prepared to shoot from the hip else club with the stock. He approached the hut. He stepped slowly. New questions arose. What if the man was wearing body armour? What if the jacket had been a decoy?

  He glanced at the hut. He wanted to talk with this woman. She must have answers – some, at least.

  There.

  A touch of yellow-orange in the gloom. Tolsdorf had been favouring his left eye, which had kept its night vision, but now he stared at the jacket, both eyes open, and all the demons of his doubt and helplessness returned.

  Question: What made you think you were good enough?

  The jacket had been sprung on a low branch. It still bobbed from the impact of the shot. The bullet hole had drilled perfectly through the green cross on the lapel. It was the jacket of an emergency worker.

  Before Tolsdorf could formulate a thought beyond contempt at the ease of this defeat, he made out a shape in the darkness. A man was standing less than five metres away. As Tolsdorf turned his rifle, the doubts rose again. Why didn’t the man move?

  Something struck Tolsdorf in the belly before he could fire. He looked down and swore. His rifle had been broken in two. He was holding each half. The stock dropped from his left hand: there was no longer any power in his grip. He looked up helplessly as the man stepped forward. Sudden moonlight highlighted the essentials of his expression – curiosity, pity – and Tolsdorf felt his anger return.

  This could still be a victory. He could undo his foolishness and

  mirror, mirror

  defeat the Ghost just as Saskia

  the corpse

  had told him.

  ‘It can only work once.’

  ‘How?’

  on the wall

  Tolsdorf turned, holding his belly, and poured the remainder of his life’s worth into his legs so that they might carry him to

  mirror, mirror

  the

  on the wall

  No more. A second bullet, silent, struck his back before he had reached the space beneath the hut. It was like the darkness coming in.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Jem looked at herself in the mirror. She reached out, hand to hand, and pressed the surface. It clicked and swung open to reveal a cavity. She dropped to her knees and cried out. Saskia’s eyes were filled with blood. The lids were swollen and ripped. Her jaw had dislocated and a safety pin had been pushed through her cheek. Her left arm was broken and its hand missing. A rust-coloured bandage had been wrapped about the stump. Toes – wearing the nail polish that Jem had applied – poked out from a blanket of sacking.

  Air moved through the shell of a ballpoint pen in her throat: sssssssssssssssssssssss.

 
‘Oh, Saskia.’

  Jem took the folded jeans from the foot of the cot. She pressed away her tears on their empty pockets, folded them, and put them back. On a stool was Saskia’s neoprene wallet, some chewing gum, house keys, a handkerchief, receipts, tampons, and a folded wedge of pink paper.

  Jem put her hand on the paper.

  Unfolded it.

  Remembered the disappointment in Danny’s expression.

  On the table, her phone rang. Jem backed out of the anteroom without looking away from Saskia. She picked up the mobile.

  ‘Hello?’ she said. Her voice was quiet.

  ‘Bitte rufen Sie die Polizei! Eine Person ist in Lebensgefahr und–’

  ‘Saskia, is that you?’

  ‘Please contact the police. A woman is in danger and needs your immediate help. You will be rewarded.’

  The caller identity information was missing. Yet Saskia’s voice was clear in the earpiece. Jem leaned towards the cot. Saskia had not moved. She was clearly unconscious.

  ‘What... how do you feel?’

  ‘It’s dark.’

  Jem looked at the closed, blackened eyes.

  ‘Sweetheart.’

  ‘Did you die too?’ asked the voice. ‘Are we ghosts?’

  Ego: ‘When you reached out for her, it was the device that took your hand.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Saskia’s hand itches. She wants to scratch it herself, but she can’t.’

  ‘Which hand?’

  ‘Her left.’

  Jem looked at the bandaged stump, but did not move to scratch it. ‘How’s that now?’

  The voice sighed. ‘Better.’

  ‘Saskia, I want you to listen to me. I don’t know how much you remember. My name is Jem and I’m your friend. Once, you helped me. Now,’ she said, a tear running onto her lip, ‘I am going to help you. Do you understand?’

  ‘The woodsman helped too.’

  Jem drew Saskia’s fringe through her fingers, as though weighing it for a snip. ‘Am I talking to a computer? Are you like Ego? What can I do?’

  ‘Find help. But be careful.’

  ‘That’s why Saskia’s still here, isn’t it? She’s hiding.’

  ‘I’m sorry. It may be too late already. We’re dying.’

  Jem looked at Saskia’s chest. It was still. Had it been moving at all?

  ‘No!’

  ~

  Cory put on his jacket and approached the hut from the higher ground at its back. He looked at the woodsman, who had died face down after a crawl of two or three yards. Cory moved over him and located the smouldering hole in the man’s coat. He held the gun above it. There was a brief tent of fabric, then the coat tore and the bloody pellet rejoined the heel of the weapon. Mass restored: Cory watched it melt into the stock.

  Cory crouched and considered the puzzle of the man’s outstretched hand, which had gripped the edge of a blue tarpaulin. He lifted the sheet and looked into the hollow beneath the hut. His ichor processed the darkness. As it brightened, he saw five pairs of beer bottles. They had been wrapped in foil and placed on a metal tray. Behind them was a stack of newspapers. Cory took a pen from his fluorescent jacket and dipped it into one of the bottles. He touched the pen to his tongue. Salt water. A cable, secured with duct tape, led to an upright tube. Behind that was a battery. The apparatus was a homemade capacitor, probably for a television. But why had the woodsman crawled here? Cory moved further inside. His zero-light modifications chewed the dark until it was an overexposed blaze, and still he could not discern a weapon.

  Cory was still thinking when a radio signal stormed through him. It was a high-strength burst from a mobile phone trying to contact a tower and it came from inside the hut. He sighed as he rose. The old wounds in his chest leaked. He pressed a hand to them and walked to the front of the hut.

  ‘Saskia,’ he said, entering. He noted the chair, the bread on the table, and the stove. He enjoyed its flames with the intensity of an aesthete. Its light dimmed as he stepped closer. The reservoirs of power inside him – stings drawn out by the cold – recovered their extents. The room cooled and Cory healed a little.

  He licked his dry lips and stopped at the mirror.

  By his own clock, the man who looked back was two years from his ninth decade. This man pitied the youth who had told the Provisional Army recruitment sergeant back in Atlanta that he wanted to enlist to honour his state. In truth, Cory’s reasons were threefold: breakfast, lunch, and supper. Make that fourfold: to put many miles between him and the choleric water that killed four of his six brothers, between him and the Transitional Authority camps, between him and his blind father.

  Even now he remembered how gently his mother had read the newspapers aloud to that man, sometimes closing her eyes in sympathy, the better to propagandise hope.

  Cory had decades-brewed hate – for himself, his father, this face in the mirror – and he lashed out. The heel of the gun made a star. By his second strike, fractures radiated to the frame and black-backed pieces fell upon the floor.

  Where the shards used to be, Cory’s ichor overlaid the heat signatures of two people: one crouched, one lying. He paused: the desperate boy who had signed up for the army was still part of him, was a component that could be resolved with the correct function.

  Walk away, soldier. Your superiors aren’t here. You can’t kill Jem now any easier than you could kill her at the safe house. Admit it. She’s too much like...

  Cory dug his fingernails into the crack of the false door and tore it off. He was not prepared for the absolute dark inside. A ghost erupted.

  Catherine?

  The blade stopped before it touched his neck. He had caught her wrist. He paused. He let the moment pay out.

  ‘Jem.’

  ‘Get fucked.’

  The muscles in his jaw bulged. He felt her wrist bones shift. Grimacing, Jem supported the wrist with her left hand, but his strength was beyond her. She screamed through locked teeth. Cory shook her and the knife fell. He kicked it towards the stove and looked back at her. With one strike, she was unconscious, dropping. He caught her awkwardly and laid her down. He put his gun over her forehead. This woman had hindered him from the start. He noted the syrupy blood that bubbled from her nostrils. He huffed and lowered the gun. Later, he thought. Her immediate death would only distract him. His attention moved to the body in the dark anteroom.

  It took only a moment to see that Saskia was dead. Not, perhaps, beyond resuscitation, but her breathing had ceased and her lips and earlobes were darkening to the cyanotic shade that he had seen countless times. Saskia was drifting away from him. He could feel the distance increase with each second, and his anger grew in equal measure. It was not conceivable to come so far and risk so much for the information she surely held about the Cullinan Zero. But, despite her death, there was time. He had to be quick.

  ‘I’m impressed, Saskia,’ Cory said. And he was.

  He closed his eyes and strained to feel the smallest hint of a...

  Yes, it was there. The device in her head – a crude prototype of his ichor – was functioning enough to permit narrowband communication. The device would not last much longer, however. Cory felt it was too closely bound to the flesh; the cyanotic, failing flesh.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Cory prepared himself to interface with the device. It would not be easy. Such an antique would need careful handling - the personal touch. He would insert his very personality. First, he slowed his breathing and lifted his face. In this darkened hut on this freezing night, he had a test of his ability to transmit himself. Cory said, ‘I see a fine mesh.’ He imagined taking a single step down a curving, shadowy staircase and felt a growing detachment. It was working. Sergeant Blake would have been proud. ‘I see knots and whorls in the wood.’ Another step into the gloom. ‘I see a window, also covered by the mesh.’ A third step. And, speaking again, ‘I see a bandage,’ he took a fourth. The hypnotic induction continued with four things he could hear – Jem’s
breathing, the flexing wood beneath his feet, his pulse in his ears, the hiss of air in the chimney – and four things he could feel. With each verbalised sensation, his mind went deeper down the imaginary staircase. He spoke in groups of four sensations, then three, then two, then one. His eyes closed on the hut and (now) the ichor in his blood began to march. The machines wove his mind thread by thread into the program running on that vital, elusive device at the back of Saskia’s brain. Where was she? How deep had she gone?

  ~

  He opened his eyes on a vast firmament, infinite in all directions, whose colourless fractals reminded him of feathers, shells and galaxies. Worlds within worlds, he thought. The illusion did not quite surmount the evidence of his bodily senses, which insisted that he still stood in the hut on the mountain, but laid itself like scales across his vision. As he looked deeper into the fractals, his body grew less substantial. The firmament might have been a photonegative starscape. Close by – yet thousands, perhaps millions of miles distant – were darker, larger orbs at the heart of the fractals.

  Cory could not move. He might have been an astronaut in free-fall. His breathing became irregular.

  I’m still in the hut, he thought. Easy. There is a whole mountain beneath me.

  From behind him, he heard the wing-claps of an approaching bird. There was no time for fear. Only a tension before the impact of its talons, which fastened on his shoulders. The bird thrashed on, dragging him through the air towards the closest of the dark orbs. Cory looked up to see a black breast and a scythe-shaped beak larger than his head. He shied from the thumping wind and looked down.

  My feet. I must have feet. Why don’t I see them?

  Easy.

  The hut, the mountain, and Saskia – all were gone.

  ‘What are you?’ he shouted.

  ‘Ee-caw! Ee-caw!’

  Ichor, he thought. Ichor.

  ~

  He awoke on a forest path looking at the fractal sky. How much time had passed? His head hurt. When he tried to move, plates of armour shifted about his shoulders. He stood slowly and looked at his hands. He was wearing leather gloves with a metal carapace that shifted as he turned his hands and rippled his fingers. His head was covered with a faceless helmet. Cory suppressed his unease.