As soon as the cold street air hit him his body stiffened, the light surrounding him dimmed, and very soon his world was dark once again.
*
46
“That’s disgusting,” Maggie Dolan said, her upper lip curling as she spoke. “Even in a dream that’s truly disgusting.”
“I agree,” the man said. “But as you understand by now, it was only a dream.”
“You know, dream or not, I’m not sure I want to hear any more.”
The man frowned. “You don’t want to hear the ending?”
Maggie stood up and nodded to the door. “I think you should leave.”
“Are you getting scared?” the man said, showing no sign of standing.
“Look. I just have things to do.”
“But you are scared?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because of the knife you have.”
Maggie turned the palm of her hand outwards, revealing the small paring knife. “Yeah, well. I guess I am. Who wouldn’t be with a strange man telling sick stories.” She pointed to the door. “Now are you gonna leave?”
The man didn’t look at her, but took his cigarette lighter out again and brought the flame back to life, rolling his fingers over it again.
“That’s it,” Maggie said walking to the counter. “I’m calling the cops.”
The man shot her a puppy dog expression. “Please. I won’t be long. Then I’ll go. I’ll just walk away. I promise.” He looked her up and down. “And, believe me, I’ll leave you with a good story.”
Maggie’s hand hovered over the phone for a few seconds, as she held a stare at the man.
“And you do have the knife,” he added.
Maggie’s glanced to the knife her sweating hand still clung to.
“Why don’t you sit back down,” the man said, “and hear the final part. I’ll tell you who Patrick really is.”
“And you’ll tell me who you are?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Ten minutes. No more.” Maggie sat back down, pulling her chair away from the table.
“Thank you so much,” the man said. “I’ll continue.”
47
In the darkness that had suddenly engulfed him, Patrick was very quickly conscious of three things. One, he was sitting back, constricted on all sides and with his neck held firm. Two, he felt terrible, with a dry mouth and a head that throbbed with the mother of all hangovers. But the third thing was the most worrying: for some reason he was unable to move his arms or legs. He could clench a fist, but his forearms were held as rigidly as the rest of him.
He could move his head very slightly, and whenever he did it felt like spiders were crawling all over his face, teasing him. He flicked his head to try to rid himself of them, but it didn’t help, and he felt himself being strangled the more he moved.
And then he shook his whole body, quietly at first, then with absolutely no inhibitions, grunting and rolling, straining but not moving the seat he was locked into. It was no good; he was securely imprisoned.
Then a small door opened next to him and he slitted his eyes to the brightness.
“You’re awake,” he heard a voice say.
He blinked a few times then looked across.
It was the Sandman.
Patrick looked down and recognized the seat immediately – it was the low-slung black one he’d seen before. He was in the WishPhixxer pod, whatever the hell that meant. A variety of thick fabric straps – the sort used to secure luggage onto vehicles – tied his arms, legs and neck to the contraption. He was looking through a veil of trailing wires, the sticky-tabbed ones that led to the screens in front of him.
Now he could see his situation he struggled some more. Again, he was wasting his time. There were too many straps and they showed no signs of loosening their grip on his flesh.
“Please, Patrick. I advise you not to waste your energy. You’ll need it later.”
And only then did he see the Sandman holding a small brown bottle in one hand and a large pad of cotton wool in the other.
Patrick flinched and struggled some more as the Sandman tipped some of the clear liquid onto the pad and eased it towards Patrick’s face.
“Stop struggling. Only for the head wound.”
Patrick relaxed a little, only to tense up again at the stinging when the pad reached its target.
“That’s better,” the Sandman said. “My colleagues won’t believe me, but I can’t bear to see people suffer.” He replaced the lid and left the room.
He returned with another bottle, this time plastic with a spout at the top.
“Are you thirsty?” he said in an appeasing tone Patrick found all the more unsettling.
“Very,” Patrick said.
“That’ll be the DKK. Open your mouth.”
Patrick did, and tasted the tang of apple juice. “What’s DKK?” he said.
“Is that better?”
Patrick nodded, not taking his eyes off the Sandman.
“Do you like sport?” the Sandman said.
Patrick didn’t answer.
“Oh, come on. I thought you wanted us to talk.”
Patrick simply gave another frightened glance to the man’s face, who had combed what little hair he had back to its previous style after their tussle had disturbed it.
“You like soccer, don’t you? I know you like soccer. Except you prefer to call it football.”
Patrick felt like his head had recently been kicked around like a football but still he didn’t speak. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. I love football. Love it. So what?”
“I do too.”
“Good for you. What are you going to do with me?”
The Sandman drew a nearby chair up to Patrick and sat down, leaning into the pod so that each man could see even the faintest hint of an expression on the other’s face. “Not the game, of course – I loathe the game.”
“What the fucking hell are you going on about?”
Patrick drew his head back a little as the Sandman leaned forward even more, his face almost reaching Patrick’s captive head. This close up, Patrick could see a small but regular tic in the wrinkled skin just below the Sandman’s left eye.
“I’m not ‘going on’ about anything, Patrick. I’m talking to you, trying to have a civilized conversation as opposed to a slanging match involving the use of foul language. Please remember that.” His brow creased, his eyebrows straining to meet each other. “When I say I like football, I mean I’m enamoured with the charged atmosphere.” Now his eyes shone a little brighter. “It’s like a war, but a war fought with chanted insults and slurs instead of bullets and bombs.” He cracked a smile. “Well, usually.”
“What have you done with my brother?” Patrick said.
“Your brother?”
“Declan. Where’s Declan?”
“Oh, of course. I forgot. I can tell you exactly what we’ve done with Declan. Would you like me to?”
“I’m not leaving here until you do.”
The Sandman gave showy glances to the straps binding Patrick’s limbs to the chair. “It strikes me that particular decision has been taken out of your domain.” He pulled the wrist straps a little tighter. “Anyway, I’ve been thinking for some time that I owe you a full and proper explanation.”
“You’re damn fucking right you do.”
“Please. Language. Luckily for you it transpires that I now have the go-ahead to do just that.” The Sandman leaned back and rasped his fingernails over the silvery stubble on his chin. “Okay. So. Where were we? Yes. Football. Soccer. The beautiful game, as some misguided people call it.”
“Whatever,” Patrick said.
“I have a dream, you see.” The Sandman chuckled to himself. “I’m sorry. Unintentional humour, I assure you. But I do. I have a dream of a peaceful world where wars are as obsolete as smallpox or silent movies or the bow and arrow. It’s about taking humanity to the next level of civilisation.”
Patrick shrugged
as best he could. “What’s all this got to do with me or Declan?”
“All in good time.”
The Sandman now sat back in a more relaxed pose. “You see, soccer is tribal. Territorial. Like most sports, it’s a fight to the death where the loser doesn’t die. Many years ago I had a vision of a world where fights and battles are decided not with bombs and bullets, but by a game – a game where nobody gets hurt. The key to this vision is a world where aggression is channelled – much like in a game of soccer – or any sports match to an extent. Two sides, including their supporters, go to war over the position of a white ball. It sounds utterly futile when you say it like that. But it’s not. It’s a mock war. And that’s better than a real one.
“The two sides could even be two people fighting a whole war against each other. They could maim and torture each other all day long and nobody would get hurt. And at the end there would be a winner and a loser.”
“I don’t see where this is all going,” Patrick said.
“Apologies if I’m boring you. I’ll get on.” The Sandman drew breath again and folded his arms. “Of course, that was my big theory, my dream. But it’s not where our work starts. It starts with the concept of people venting their competitive urges by playing video games against one another. Just imagine how much aggression a person could expel – how much better a person could feel about themselves – if they could live in their dream world and indulge in their most basic – or base – desires. You hate the rich guy in the Cadillac who butts in at the car park every morning? Just live the dream where you blow the guy’s brains out with a Colt45 or pepper his body with slugs from an Uzi. Sick of big government bullying the little guy? Why not wait until they’re all gathered together in, say, a hotel…”
“And blow it up?”
“You understand perfectly. That’s the vision we have in the OrSum WishPhixxer research project; to produce the next generation – or even the next dimension – of video games. And without the need for a console or a screen, with no buttons or controls – just plug your mind in and go. And thus we allow people’s dreams, no matter how depraved and violent, to come true. Just imagine for a moment a world where all undesirable human behaviour should become confined to the virtual world. And, of course, think of the corollary – all the people in the world spending all of their ‘real world’ time doing good things. Imagine how liberating that would be for the human race.”
The Sandman paused and took a slosh of apple juice from the bottle.
“Jesus Christ,” Patrick said. “You’re sick.”
“Sick?” The Sandman let out a chuckle. “Like the people who pay good money to watch films where such vile things – multiple shooting and mutilations – are commonplace, almost de rigueur? Or even people who enjoy reading novels that detail such disgusting events with great skill?”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?” the Sandman said. “How is it different? I’m nothing more than a marketing strategist responsible for the future success of a large corporation by satisfying a market demand. People will always want to be frightened – only the medium will change. I’m no sicker than Stephen King or Alfred Hitchcock or their aficionados.”
“Have it your way,” Patrick said. “Is that it?”
“No. Like I told you, that’s just the basic aim. The application and practicalities of the operation will interest you more. I just wanted to give you a feel for what we’re trying to achieve here, which could be something truly great for human civilisation.”
“So, tell me about where I fit in. And what you’ve done with Declan.”
“Oh, I will.”
“And Rozita.”
“Ah, yes. The beautiful Rozita. How could I forget about her?” The Sandman smiled and gave his stubble another stroke. “Rozita wasn’t that crucial – she just fitted the role, but it could have been any of a hundred different women. She majored in drama at UCLA, you know. OrSum offered her a more stable and stimulating career than being an out-of-work actress waitressing in a succession of LA diners.”
“She’s an actress?”
“But a very good one, as I’m sure you’ll agree.”
“But I don’t understand. How did you get her into my dreams?”
“The same way we got inside all of your dreams: via the microchip.”
“The what?”
“You wouldn’t know about it – it just feels like a pimple – it’s implanted at the top of your neck, just below the lump of bone at the back of your head, the closest we could get to the base of your brain without major surgery.”
“That’s crap. I don’t believe you.”
“There are plenty of things that happened that you don’t remember.” The Sandman laughed again. “And also a few things you do remember that didn’t happen.”
“What?”
“Like being able to play the guitar. We implanted the thought that you could play it but not the skill to do so. That was a good idea but too complex for us to implement – a minor error on our part. So it’s true, whether you believe it or not. We gave you an implant last year. It’s only in the last three months we’ve been using it, though – on and off. The chip operates on microwave frequency.”
Patrick thought for a moment. “That’ll be the contraption under my bed.”
The Sandman frowned. “You know about it?”
“I followed the cables that came from VTA.”
“Ah, yes. Your little chase. Anyway, we use complex digital signal processing techniques to feed graphics, sound, and other sensory information from the transmitter to the chip, which in turn gets fed to the base of your brain, the part responsible for dreams.”
“But what for? Why choose me to be a guinea pig for your new games?”
The Sandman shrugged. “Because you were available. And we haven’t harmed you – in fact we’ve been trying to help you.”
“Help me? Jesus, you’re perverted.”
“Suit yourself.”
Patrick dropped his chin onto his chest. Again he felt the urge to put his head in his hands.
“But I guess you’re more interested in Declan, yes?”
Now Patrick looked up and glared ahead at the Sandman. “If I ever get out of this contraption you’ll find out just how interested I am. He’s my kid brother. I’m supposed to look out for him.”
“Whatever you say.”
“So tell me what you’ve done with him.”
The Sandman took a minute or so to look over Patrick’s face, bending forward to look at it from every angle.
“Tell me!” Patrick shouted.
The Sandman nodded slowly. “Oh, I think deep down you know exactly what we’ve done with him.”
“Stop fucking me about! Tell me what you’ve done with him!”
“Please don’t curse again; there’s no need and little point.” The Sandman paused again. “Let me ask you,” he said eventually. “How much do you know really about Declan?”
“He’s my brother. I know everything about him.”
“You really think so?”
“Actually, yes. I really think so.”
“I’ll make you a deal. You promise to stop cursing and I’ll tell you all about Declan – including everything about the young Declan you’ve quite understandably forgotten.”
“What things?” Patrick said, holding his head up high. “What makes you think you know more about my own brother than I do?”
The Sandman slowly got to his feet. “I can see mere words are not going to sway your mind. I’m going to need something more concrete to convince you. Just wait there.” He stepped away then turned back. “Oh, excuse my rudeness. You have no choice, do you?”
Patrick heard the Sandman leave the room, then a drawer opening and closing. He returned a few minutes later with a folder and a pair of glasses.
“This is a small amount of the case history,” he said. “Of course very little has been produced on hardcopy. But if you don’t believe me after what I’m a
bout to show you, I don’t think you ever will.”
Patrick watched with a dry mouth as the Sandman balanced the glasses on the end of his nose and opened the folder. He sifted through the few pieces of paper of various sizes and shapes before settling on a photo cut out of a newspaper.
“Here,” the Sandman said. “This would be the best place to start.” He held it up to Patrick.
Patrick saw a small, frightened boy being escorted by two uniformed officers, each towering above him. “What the…? It’s Declan.”
“Correct. It is. Now please read out the caption below the photo.”
Patrick scanned the faded text instantly. “Declan O’Halloran, the Manchester boy charged with four counts of… murder? Oh, Jesus!” Patrick gulped and looked to the Sandman.
“Under the circumstances I’ll allow you that curse.”
“Never mind that,” Patrick said. “Just fucking tell me!”
The Sandman let out a sigh, then tutted. “Oh, dear. You want me to tell you but you can’t keep a civil tongue in your head.” He looked around the room. “Now where did I put that duct tape?”
He left, then reappeared with a look of glee. And holding up Patrick’s coat. “Yours, I take it?”
Patrick’s eyes grew wild and energized as the Sandman started searching the pockets.
He found the bottle.
Oh, Jesus, no. The bottle.
The Sandman held it up in front of Patrick’s face and gave it a shake. A froth formed inside and instantly subsided.
“Lookie what Mr Sandman’s found.”
Patrick took a painful gulp.
48
The Sandman shook the bottle once more. “Are you a Sprite or a Seven-up man?”
“Am I what?”
The Sandman tapped a finger on the bottle. “What’s your poison of preference? I prefer a well-rounded Chablis, personally.”
Patrick’s pulse came down a little.
“Whatever it is,” the Sandman said, grasping the lid, “you must be a thirsty boy by now.”
Slow Burning Lies - A Dark Psychological Thriller Page 24