Glister

by John Burnside

  MORRISON

  WHEN HE WAKES, MORRISON IS UPRIGHT, VERY UPRIGHT, IN A WOODEN chair that is too small for him, a heavy, polished old-fashioned chair with a padded back and armrests, the kind of chair that nobody has made for years. He is cold, which doesn't surprise him, because he is also naked, his skin surprisingly white and loose under the unforgiving white light that comes from somewhere above. He is immediately aware of the restraints that someone has fastened around his arms and legs: tight, not rope, maybe leather, or some kind of insulating tape, wound around his arms from the wrist to the elbow, and around his legs from the ankles to the knees, holding him almost incapable of motion, pinned in the chair like an insect pinned to a specimen board. His legs have been bound in such a way that his knees jut slightly outward, his soles raised off the floor, so he cannot gain purchase and push himself up. Whoever did this has very specialized skills—and his mind goes straight to Jenner, who has probably been waiting years for an opportunity to do exactly this, and so eliminate a potential problem. That's the kind of man Jenner is: tidy, ruthless, cool, but, at the same time, someone who takes real care in his work, a man who doesn't like loose ends.

  The chair to which Morrison is pinned is set in the middle of what feels like a large, empty space, a wide, echoey space under a single lightbulb, suspended above his head, casting a pool of light that spreads for several feet around him, though it's not enough to fill the room, which feels vast—and Morrison knows, without knowing why, that someone is out there, just a few yards into the dark, invisible, but watching him, waiting for him to be awake, as he now is. Somebody out there wants his fear—a fear that Morrison is suddenly, defiantly, pointlessly determined to conceal, no matter what.

  “Hello?” He gives a short, mocking laugh and turns his head as far as he can, first to the right, then leftward; though he knows whoever has him is somewhere directly ahead. “Is anybody there?”

  He listens. There is nothing to hear, but he knows someone is watching. He can feel it. He can feel breathing, he can feel a tension, like someone standing very still, keeping himself in check, breathing quietly and slowly, watching, listening. Observing: yes, that's it. This man—and he is sure, now, that it is not Jenner, who would have done things simply, quickly— this patient, self-contained man is one of life's watchers, one of the observers. This is what he works for, not because he enjoys what he does, when it comes to the last act, but for this, this moment of power. A careful planner, obviously, but not possessed of animosity or any other emotion, simply someone who enjoys having power over others. With someone like this, there is no strategy other than delay, a chance to work out what will gratify him, and maybe find some kind of compromise. Try to get him to forget his initial plan, or take things beyond the initial bounds of that plan, or possibly of his instruction set, so he might possibly come to a place he had not anticipated. Maybe, if the initial plan fails, he will do something else, make a mistake, show his hand.

  “Who's there?” he calls again. He's strangely confused by his predicament. On the one hand, he is angry at being tied up, angry, too, that he has been restrained with such expertise, but part of him doesn't care anymore, even about that. He is tired. He doesn't know where this is—somewhere out in the plant, no doubt, but he's never seen the interior of this particular building before. He looks up. The room has a high roof, with crossbeams and what looks like a gantry somewhere in the shadows off to his left. He feels cold, slightly damp. “Jenner?” Morrison is almost certain that it isn't Jenner out there, but he can't think of anyone else who would be capable of this. “Jenner, if that's you, just tell me what it is you want.”

  It isn't Jenner. Jenner doesn't work like this. Whoever is out there is watching a spectacle, maybe playing with him, taunting him with this silence. They are enjoying the mystery, playing. Suddenly, he has the idea that it's kids, that this is some kind of stupid prank. This notion, no matter how far-fetched it seems, is a better explanation for his present situation than Jenner. Jenner would be here now, standing in close where he can do his work, not skulking in the shadows. Jenner is a professional, but this is something a gifted amateur would do—an amateur in the true sense of the word. Someone who loves what he is doing. Not the person who killed Mark Wilkinson and the others; this is a different thing altogether. There is no awe here, no tenderness. This is all hard. Again, the idea comes that there are children out there. But how could a child, even a group of them, do this?

  “I'm not sure who you think I am,” Morrison calls out to the darkness, not too loud, but clear enough to show that he isn't afraid. “But I'll tell you one thing, you're wrong. I'm nobody special.” He laughs again, a soft laugh that is for himself, and nobody else, even if they are watching him. He wants to laugh at the whole thing, the whole situation. This enormous room, these presences in the shadows, him strapped to this chair. It's ridiculous. At the same time, laughing isn't such a bad strategy either. It does him no harm, because it's not a defiant laugh, he doesn't even intend it to be that. It's soft, sad, even a little pathetic, yet it's strangely good-humored. He hears it himself when he laughs again, a note of pathos, of self-pity for a man who has no real work and a phantom for a wife, a man of his age without children or good memories or love. A man who had already arrived at nothingness before whoever is out there caught him off guard and brought him into this new, but not particularly interesting limbo. “Really,” he calls again, “I'm not who you think.” And yes, it does sound pathetic; it is pitiful. Sad. Which may work to his advantage because whoever is out there may well have a soft spot for sadness. People like to look at sadness, because it isn't pain, and because it echoes something in themselves.

  Nothing is happening, though. Still no response. “Where are we, anyhow?” Morrison asks, sounding to himself more than a little foolish. Which may be exactly what is needed because he thinks he hears something, somewhere off to the left. “It's bloody cold,” he says, in the same foolish tone.

  He hears another sound then. Nothing much, just a sound, like something rolling across the floor, five or so yards to the left. It's not a sound he recognizes, but he knows it isn't good. Still, he tries not to let it show that he has heard, and he tries to seem unaware that anything bad is going to happen to him. This is the one thing he remembers from school: don't look like a victim, and there's less chance you will become one. Bluff it out. Letting yourself imagine that something bad is going to happen is already a beginning, a first step into the shameful collaboration between the victim and the one with the power, a recognition that pain, deliberately inflicted and profoundly satisfying, is inevitable. He listens. Nothing, then something. Something, then nothing. Whoever is out there is getting closer, or circling perhaps, but he's not visible yet.

  Then a voice comes. It is clear, youthful, though not perhaps boyish, and surprisingly gentle. “You are Morrison, the policeman,” it says.

  Morrison isn't sure if this is a question or a statement of fact, but he answers anyway. “I am,” he says. As he says it, he feels a thin, vestigial shiver of pride, not in himself, but in the position. The office. He listens. The man in the dark is moving, coming forward, hovering at the edge of the light. He is carrying something—it looks like a bucket—and the lower part of his face is masked. In any other circumstances, Morrison would think the mask was a good sign—but as soon as he sees this tall, rather slender, youthful figure, he realizes that the man is beyond influence: that, however much he may like to observe, he is also someone who acts. He knows what he is going to do, it's just that he has a preordained script for the event, and it pleases him to follow that script. Now, finally, Morrison gives in to defiance. “You know who I am,” he says. “So tell me. Who are you?”

  The man doesn't speak—and now, from some sign that is so subtle that even he can't tell how he read it, Morrison realizes that someone else is there too, standing farther out in the darkness, watching.

  “Who's your friend?” Morrison asks.

  The man looks at hi
m now, his eyes blue and surprisingly soft—and Morrison realizes that he is not much more than a boy. “Who's your friend?” he asks, not echoing, not mocking, but genuinely asking the question.

  Morrison smiles. “I don't have any friends,” he says. He's not being sad, or pathetic. He's not playing tactics. He has no friends and this man, this boy, knows as much. In fact, this boy knows everything about him. Or he thinks he does—only, he doesn't, because nobody knows everything about anybody. In fact, Morrison thinks, nobody knows very much at all. “When I was a kid—” he begins, changing tack.

  “Not good enough.” The man's voice is still quiet, but suddenly hard.

  “What do you mean, not good enough?” Morrison is genuinely annoyed. He had just remembered something about himself, something true, and he had wanted to make it real as well, in the telling. “You haven't heard what I was going to say.”

  The man takes a step closer, then stops. He is in the light now and because he is in the light, Morrison can see that what he is carrying really is a bucket. “No childhood stuff,” the man says. “It's too easy.”

  “But that's where it all begins,” Morrison protests. He hears the slight crack in his voice and is annoyed with himself. He's let something go now, and he can't get it back. It was the surprise of the bucket, of course, that broke his concentration. Right now, all he wants to know is: What is in that bucket? “Where are you going to find an explanation, if not in the distant past?”

  The man nods, and puts down the bucket. “Do you have an explanation?” he asks. He seems genuinely curious, not about the question itself, but about the question of whether Morrison—who is beginning to see himself now, through this man, as a type, as a character in a story—has even bothered to look for an explanation. It's something that Morrison finds insulting, as if this man wants to deny him everything, not just a life, or an explanation, but even a soul. Or maybe what he is denying is the soul itself. The very possibility of a soul. Someone like Morrison can't have a soul of his own, because the soul is intrinsically good, intrinsically clean, a piece of property borrowed from God and all His angels, to be returned some day, pearly and clean and undamaged. The idea makes Morrison angry, and he wants to tell this man, this boy, that he's wrong, that the soul is wet and dark, a creature that takes up residence in the human body like a parasite and feeds on it, a creature hungry for experience and power and possessed of an inhuman joy that cares nothing for its host, but lives, as it must live, in perpetual, disfigured longing. “Well?” The man is still gently curious, and waiting now, making space for Morrison to speak.

  And now Morrison can see into the bucket, or at least one side of it, which is spotted and streaked with something white, but he doesn't want to seem too curious. “When I was just a kid,” he begins, deliberately, with the air of an invited speaker, “my mother took me on holiday. My father couldn't come, he had to work—”

  “What did your father do?”

  “He worked here, at the chemical plant,” Morrison says. He looks the man in the eyes. “I assume that's where we are. At the chemical plant?”

  The man ignores the question. “This is your explanation?” he asks. Morrison nods. “All right,” the man says. “Go on.”

  Morrison looks at the bucket. The contents are white and wet and he can smell something. A familiar smell, like chalk, but not quite. “We went to visit my aunt,” Morrison continues. He feels sad, more or less resigned, not that interested in what he is saying. “She lived by the sea, but it wasn't like this. It was beautiful. Just by her house was a little beach, with this very white sand, and on the beach, a little pier or jetty running out into blue, clear water. I can't tell you how blue it was, or what a gift that pier was to a boy like me. A boy from this place.” He looks at the man. He must be a boy from this place too, but who is he?

  The man nods. “Go on,” he says.

  “Well,” Morrison says, “I swam there every day, of course. They could hardly get me out of the water, even to eat or sleep. It was summer, really warm, but the water was cool, very cool. And I loved that water. It was my home, my element, a friend to me.” He looks at the bucket. He suddenly knows that something terrible, truly terrible, is in store for him, and it has to do with this white, chalky substance splashed and spotted across the side of this bucket. “What's in the bucket?” he asks. The question surprises him. He hadn't intended it.

  “Finish the story,” the man says. “We have lots of time.”

  In a panic, knowing the story will have no effect on anything, Morrison goes on talking, but now he can hardly bear to talk. It's as if the story itself were a form of torture and not whatever it is that this man, and some accomplice out in the shadows, have planned for him. “I loved that water,” he says. “I thought of it as my friend, my companion. Slipping into it, off the end of that dark pier, was like returning to something that had always been there, something that predated everything else in my life. I trusted it utterly.” He pauses: he is breathless now, tired again. “Then, on the last day of the holiday, a current came, out of nowhere. It was a real force of nature, a mysterious black current—not a ripple on the surface, but this quick dark force under the water that grabbed me like an animal and started pulling me under and away, away from the pier, out into the sound.” He stops, breathes, sees the bucket. Plaster of Paris, he thinks, without knowing why. He remembers the smell, an old smell, a childhood smell. “I almost drowned,” he says. “I thought I was going to die. And it really happens, at that last moment. You know, how they say you remember everything, your whole life flashes before you, every detail, all in a flash. Well, that's true, because it happened and I remember it. Only, it wasn't my life. It was somebody else's memories that flashed through my mind.” Morrison stops. He is surprised by what he has just said, because it isn't what he had meant to say. Yet, oddly enough, it has a ring of truth to it. “I was remembering somebody else's life,” he says. “Somebody I didn't know.” In spite of everything, Morrison is almost pleased by this.

  The man doesn't say anything for a moment. Instead, he kneels to the bucket and starts pulling out a length of what looks like wet bandage. Morrison can't tell whether he is listening, or if he has been listening all along. Finally, however, the man speaks. “So what happened?” he asks, as he separates one strand of bandage from another.

  Morrison watches, fascinated. “I died,” he says, almost as an aside.

  The man laughs softly. “But you're still here,” he says. He carries a length of the wet plaster-covered bandage to the chair and begins winding it around Morrison's right arm. “You know what this is?” he inquires, softly. He sounds like a doctor, with that good bedside manner.

  Morrison nods. “Why are you doing this to me?” he asks.

  The man doesn't answer, but continues to dress Morrison in the wet bandages.

  “I didn't do anything wrong,” Morrison says.

  “No?”

  “No.” There is no mistaking, now, what is happening. Morrison knows he is going to die, but he doesn't care about that. He just wants it to be over. “I made mistakes, but I didn't do anything wrong—”

  “What about William Ash? What about—”

  “I didn't kill anybody.”

  “But you knew what was happening.”

  Morrison hesitates a moment, then. It isn't deliberate, and it isn't what he knows the man thinks it is—a calculation, a guess at how much the man knows and what he might get away with—but he does hesitate, and he knows right away that this is a terrible mistake to have made. He doesn't know why it happened—he has been through it all a thousand times, and he has resolved it all as well as he can, but he's never heard anyone say it out loud before. He's never been accused.

  “Well?” The man looks him in the eyes.

  “I knew,” Morrison says. He feels an almost unbearable sadness descend upon him, a weight, hanging in his bones. “But I couldn't do anything—”

  Suddenly, another voice is speaking, a boy's voice, com
ing out of the dark. “You could have done something,” this boy's voice says, and Morrison turns to see who it is. The boy is masked, like his companion, but he seems familiar to Morrison, a boy he can almost place, unlike the man who is working still, working steadily, building up a casing of wet bandages around Morrison and the chair.

  “I couldn't do anything,” Morrison says softly, to the man by the chair. Then, after a pause that really is deliberate, he plays his one last card, speaking even more quietly, even intimately. “I have a wife,” he says.

  “What was that?” It's the boy talking, angry, mocking. “What did you say?”

  “I said, I have a wife,” Morrison repeats, still speaking to the man, who has turned back to the bucket.

  “What has your wife got to do with it?” the boy shouts. “You were the police. You were supposed to protect people.”

  The boy is right, of course. Morrison knows that. But he is also wrong, because he thinks Morrison is someone else, he thinks he is worse than he is. Still, he nods. He is about to speak, when the man turns round and starts wrapping Morrison's face with a wet bandage, the cold, clinging plaster chilling his skin, tiny granules of it seeping into his mouth.