II
In desire of chaos
Becky knew more than anyone else of Adam’s declining motivation for Kismet Lore. His laboratory understudy had, in the space of just three years, become someone in whom he would have confided on any subject other than his visitations. She alone knew him well enough to sense when that dissentious humour was masking a form of inner conflict and, although she had failed to reconcile herself to the eventuality of losing him as a colleague, she proved far less surprised than others that he had torn the rug from under everyone’s feet. Telling her was no easier, however, for they were quite clearly in love with each other… although that’s another story.
For some time his position as her supervisor had been on course for collision with a sudden end but, powerless as she had always felt in breaking through his stubbornness, Becky offered little in the way of immediate response. It was left to Suki to act astounded while, as was typical of her highly-focused demeanour, Becky soon returned her attention to whatever challenges she had previously set for the day’s itinerary. She was the only person to display a state of tunnel vision that even exceeded his own – back when he had been immersed in nine-to-five matters – and Adam had often wondered what motivation to prove herself lay behind such concentration; what was the inner drive that compelled her to maintain a faultless presentation, one that often reminded him of her very first day at the company when anyone would feel urged to dress to impress.
It had been his role to mentor Becky, but conversely her professionalism had proven an example to him; though fresh from college she had learnt as much in one week at the company as he and Suki had in several months. In fact, her emergence as the safest pair of hands he could hope for was key to his confidence in the department’s future and subsequent rush to move on, relieving him of the guilt that leaving his colleagues to an unwanted sidelining elsewhere or, worse, unemployment would have caused.
Inevitably the time came when one-to-one discussion could no longer be put off, however, regardless of what can of worms might spill onto the laboratory floor. First impressions might have led many to believe that Becky had an insular nature in the workplace, but her closer colleagues knew different. She had the ability to switch from an intense focus to a laid back appearance in the blink of an eye, quick to smile if ever a joke was made or a welcome visitor appeared, but returning instantaneously to her previous task. With such discipline and self-control, it was difficult to interpret genuine anxiety behind those sky blue pupils, but that afternoon Adam was sure he felt them upon him when his back was turned, on one if not two intricately slight instances of momentous concentration. Most of us have occasionally looked up at the night sky and wondered if an asteroid is about to destroy the Earth.
‘You alright?’
With Suki having left for the day, he had found Becky slightly more flustered than he had ever seen, a lone strand of hair having curled up towards her eyelashes a giveaway that the situation was causing her stress. Strangely, Adam found himself fascinated by this imperfection, which seemed to enhance the qualities of a countenance he’d had some difficulty training himself not to be bewitched by.
‘It’s just with being off tomorrow, I need to get this sorted,’ Becky responded. She would be absent for his last day in the office, having already booked it as holiday.
‘I’ll cover for anything you leave. It’s the least I can do with five weeks off,’ Adam reassured her.
‘You really going for five weeks?’ Becky asked, leaving him a little taken aback that she did not seek to disguise the neediness in her voice – although under the pretence of ‘good friendship’ they had established maybe there was no reason to. Indeed, they had become accustomed to conducting conversations under a psychological marquee that had so far succeeded in keeping out any extreme conditions. Sensing the weighted questions that were coming, however, Adam could only nod in response, exposing himself as the less secure of the two in testing the marquee’s foundations – not with the path he was preparing to tread.
‘You got the assignment then?’
‘I did, I need to do the research that’s all,’ Adam told her, a vague offer to contribute to an anthology on paranormal writing being the ruse he was using to explain his plans to Becky; she knew him too well to be tricked in the same way as Harris. It was not a complete lie; Adam did have some ambitions outside of science, desiring to merge his expertise with his personal life.
‘You are coming back aren’t you?’
Adam was unprepared for the question; Becky’s quick mind seeming to see his future even clearer than he was able.
‘It would have to be a bestseller wouldn’t it,’ he responded, looking to shrug off any sense of great transformation.
‘You still hoping to emigrate?’
There she was again, Adam had almost forgotten revealing this was his long-term plan, back when they had hardly known each other or come close to being romantically involved.
‘I don’t know.’
‘She really hurt you didn’t she?’
Sympathy was in Becky’s eyes, but this was the first comment wide of the mark. Although it had been a time of upheaval and unbearable stress in his life, splitting up with his long-term girlfriend had not scarred Adam at all, rather it had liberated him, but he recalled giving the impression of a scar to Becky at the time she had suggested they become more than friends. At a loss for a better explanation, however, he had drawn himself into continuing that façade, even though he knew it had cooled their relationship for a time; Becky had not been left unhurt by the rejection.
‘You know there is something right in front of you, if you want it.’
This surprised him, her feelings had either been hidden or had now gone full circle to the last time he had declined to take matters further. At least this time the circumstances would be a little easier. He was able to treat the suggestion as a joke, or else a tease, and they both smiled with the knowledge that they had been here before.
‘Becky, I’m far too old and disturbed for a lovely girl like you,’ he told her.
‘You’re six years older than me, that’s all,’ Becky replied, brightening up in tone at being able to open her heart a little, ‘besides, you’re still a big kid at heart. On the other hand I’m mature for my years and so might be too old for you.’
‘I’m also your supervisor,’ Adam said, attempting to pull a professional face that only made her laugh.
‘I know, what would the managing director say,’ she responded with a raised eyebrow.
Anyone in Kismet Lore would have known Becky was referring to a company secret – that of course everyone knew – namely that the head of their organisation, on a night away and on company expenses, had been arrested for curb crawling. The incident had been in the Truro local paper but was supposed to have been kept from headquarters, although everyone who Mr Phillips said ‘hello’ to each working day knew the sordid details every bit as much as his wife.
‘You’re not supposed to know that,’ Adam went on, now failing spectacularly.
‘The newspaper column’s still on the wall of the ladies’ bathroom,’ Becky told him, their laughter releasing some of the tension. They might not have been able to laugh together again for many a day, but Becky could not let him leave without going one step further.
‘Well, when you come back, I’m going to ask you for a date again.’ She kept a smile on her face as she said this, but Adam knew she was only pretending to tease him.
‘In five weeks a girl like you will pick up some hunk in a bar and be off,’ Adam replied in the same manner, claiming not to notice the sincerity beneath.
‘I don’t pick up anyone in bars,’ Becky replied, lightly offended but then she embraced him warmly telling him to, ‘just take care,’ and the sudden detour into treacherous waters was over, with only the rest of their lives, the wide world and the wonders of the universe left to deal with.
Capital cities are not and never will be for everyone and London is easily
recognised as presenting a challenge to sentiments of a quieter and more relaxed way of living. Belonging to such sentiments himself, having grown up in rural Lincolnshire, Adam had surprised himself in that he had not yet grown weary of Britain’s greatest metropolis.
Londoners are characterised as impersonal, cold to the qualities of individuality. Time seems so precious to inhabitants schooled in a furious lifestyle, with few scraps left over to console the lonely or lend compassion to a fragile disposition. A seething discontent was supposed to have possessed Adam by now, but perhaps the lives we seek out owe more to context than to taste as he remained at peace with the chaos that whirled about him each day. His inner demons were the key to this tolerance of course, as with every other factor of his life, for his shattered bearing found the crowd seductive and allowed its momentum to wash over his trauma and bitterness. The evenings when torrential rainfall soaked the pavements and buildings were the best, when the crowd was at one with wishing to be elsewhere, but the drive of the City meant they were united in having no choice on the matter.
Despite his acquiescence, Adam knew he still did not quite fit in with London life. He still saw the busyness of the metropolis as something alien to him, looked upon the corporate types meeting in Westminster bars for a drink after work as belonging to a different world, and watched in bemusement the Underground rushes that struggled to breathe and cursed their luck if they had to wait another three minutes for the next train. Car drivers who sounded their horns wherever other motorists or pedestrians did not display precision timing still confounded him and, to his mind, the sound of a siren indicated some great drama was afoot even though no one else turned their heads to pay attention.
Was he the only one watching and listening? Often it felt that way.
For five years he had carried on his working life without London seeming to care or acknowledge, still feeling like a tourist but content to move with the crowd in a city that was used to being looked at and troubled not of criticism. Had Adam’s time on this earth been dedicated to the pursuit of life’s happiness then he would not have allowed himself to become swept up by that great motion, choosing instead to dwell where there was a skyline to look out on and walks to take where one’s feet did not have to concern themselves with treading somewhere unsafe. His mind might have been happy to travel elsewhere, questioning Becky over the beauty of Californian beaches or New England in the autumn, but never did he direct his efforts towards finding out those answers for himself, having long since given up the notion that his own personal bliss was attainable. In truth, a fear of flying would probably not have brought him to the Americas, but if there was one wish, aside from his desire to rid himself of devilish markings, it would have been to find a living that could be made in a quieter and serene environment, even if it meant discarding the skills he had built up.
A dream to have a dream, were it not for the ongoing nightmare that had never left and made any pursuit for peace as realistic as locating a magic door to another world.
Surviving in this way, it suited Adam to live independent in a block of flats where he did not know the name of any other person. Indulging in work and personal obsessions, but not in a social or community life. He knew that many would judge him fortunate for his academic abilities, but when daring to look into his future all he could see was a lonely existence that stretched into a nothingness; a nothingness with no compassion or companionship and any achievements easily forgotten by the same people who currently gave the impression he was indispensable.
His rented flat played its part, a voiceless shell that did not overdo its homeliness and would have been incapable of expanding a family life or being a place of great social atmosphere. Again, for convenience, he had come to like it that way, a tiny part of London unimpeded by the busyness that gripped the lives of those outside, all the time knowing that one day it would only become a product of his predicament.
Some believe London is an older city than even architecture can tell. Advances in geology have produced computer simulations of ice age Europe that show the south-east corner of Britain untouched by the glaciers that sat in uncompromising form over the North. Effectively the kingdoms or countries that made up central Europe during that forgotten age might have known the land that became London as the most north-westerly point of man’s domain. At a time when the ocean levels were so low that a person could have walked south-east from that land into a vast and dry valley that would one day become the bed of the English Channel, preceding without raft or sail and seeing neither coastline nor tide as they made their way into the country we now know as France. Is it clumsy to imagine the far north-west of man’s world might have been occupied even then, due to one day look north to the New World of its day once the destruction of a melting environment had carved up the Thames and reshaped the oceans, cutting off the eastern lands to which they once belonged?
It might be too romantic to presume such a density to a people’s character, but Adam felt it was believable, having never come across a population so lacking in insecurity as to their sense of belonging. A London life was a primary colour, vibrant and constant, unused to blending with the outside perhaps, but Adam found it easy to melt into a suburbia that spent so little time in reflection or scrutiny, focusing purely on the matter of the day rather than a beyond.
Having judged his own make-up as potentially detrimental to the well-being of others – especially anyone he became too emotionally involved with – Adam had learnt to bear the scar of loneliness as a necessary evil that London life worked well to keep private. Perhaps it is the way with the modern world that the more people we live in close proximity with the less likely any of them are to speak to us and so, embracing this perversion, Adam had found the isolation craved during the turmoil of his early adult years.
The shame of his visitations had never left him and a need for confession or empathy never found fruition, even if the desire to be released from his bonds, to never see those eyes or be mocked by that laughter again, burned more fiercely than ever. He might have belonged to a liberal-minded profession, been acquainted with colleagues that prided themselves on modern views, but Adam had been raised by a family that would have shunned him for even the hint that he was harbouring some repressed homosexual instinct, while burdening others with personal issues was, in itself, something he had grown up to be uncomfortable with. Somehow he had succeeded in fitting in with both worlds, quite untroubled by the outward task of being a different person depending upon who happened to be looking. An adaptor who had no desire to upset whatever foundations he happened to walk, with no grounding of his own to justify belittling someone else’s sense of self or homeland.
The world would have to move on a long way before he was ready to confess that he was the target of supernatural molestation, treated like a gay emperor’s slave by a demon that made less sense to current thinking than anal-probing aliens travelling millions of light years for similar curiosities. He would humour no therapists who might wish to debate whatever repressed memories caused such an illusion, neither would he become some parapsychologist’s fascination, even if his experience could enlighten their studies. Adam was not a subject; he was a victim and a victim needs to be liberated.
As surprisingly unobjectionable as London life had proved, it was altogether clear that he lived in far too furious a place to achieve the kind of spiritual transformation that was his desire. Not in a city that gave no thought to trampling mercilessly over its roots and never slowed down for one individual. A landscape sensitive to his struggle was needed, surroundings onto which his lifeblood would leave a stain if poured and so, without bitterness, he was preparing to burn his bridges if necessary and seek a clearer path; he was headed elsewhere at last.
Months of work towards such a goal would have been apparent to visitors by the papers, books and references scattered about his workstation, seating and even kitchen surface – accompanied by many strange and curious words printed in bold typeface
and strategically placed as if signalling a different phase of his project; words like ‘spell’, ‘curse’, ‘chains’, ‘stain’, ‘leech’ and ‘parasite’. The act of study had managed to find its way into every corner of his bed-sit and never left. In truth, this had never been an uncommon occurrence in his life, but even he recognised that this era of research had been more furious than any that had come before, despite that no honours or career opportunities awaited its completion. General disorder had never been displeasing enough to impose upon the targets he had set his intellect, though he succeeded in keeping the apartment clean and hygienic.
Regardless of what furies are involved, there comes a time with all great works when written material has to give way to fieldwork. Astrologers might be stuck with interpreting the universe from far away, but Adam believed that the insularity of a laboratory resulted in a limited perspective for any other field of study.
Treading water from a swimathon of brainstorming, it was time to dry off and tackle the open road. To cease being the student who studied the answer and become the one to actively seek it. An ‘expedition’, as he had named it, was now firmly in place, although sometimes he did wonder if a journey or a quest might not be more appropriate – or else an ordeal.
Regardless, the task was no longer open to negotiation; he would pursue its objectives until finding his answers or die along the way.
The purpose of his research so far had been to establish an arena in which his enemies could be confronted. Great generals of history did not win conquests through might alone, they decided when and where their battles would be fought and Adam found little means with which to confront his fears cornered in an Islington flat, his time and energy eaten away by a demanding work and social life. A fresh approach was required, an untried landscape upon which his tormentors would feel uprooted, for a struggle to take place wherein it was not already decreed who would be the victor.
The science community claims that chaos defines the universe, so chaos would not be the worse ally to embrace in order to cause this disruption, even if he believed that chaos only defined the visible universe. But everything was subject to the rules of the Big Bang; Earth itself only allowed to form because certain matter had collided. Adam’s task was hopeless if he sought to change the world as dreamers and poets might. Instead his aim was to let go of the rock on which he held for dear life and allow the Big Bang’s everlasting explosion to affect his destiny for good or evil, just as terrorists had used airplanes of the United States as delusory weapons in the 9/11 attacks. If the world’s greatest military power was so vulnerable to deception, then why should rogue demons of the night prove any less so?
Desiring chaos, therefore, Adam had immersed himself in studies of related phenomena. There were important questions to answer; was it possible to manipulate more pieces onto this unearthly chessboard?; were there paths on which these demons feared to tread?, landscapes on which their dedication to depravity could be shaken?
The universe is infinite. Adam recalled having a drunken argument with an award-winning biologist regarding the likelihood of life existing on other planets. As certain as the ego-fed Austrian had been that the odds were too great for life to have evolved elsewhere – even having produced an equation that demonstrated how unlikely it was to have happened twice – Adam had annoyed him by claiming that the greatest odds were of no consequence as far as an infinite universe was concerned, because in that universe chance itself was also infinite; life would occur elsewhere regardless of odds.
Of course he was untried in biology, having only his scientific instinct with which to tear down a celebrated work, but what mattered was no longer whether a theory could be proven by the content of a thesis, but whether he actually believed it enough to play by those odds himself. There was no choice left but to embrace this wisdom, for if he happened to be right then chance is surely the mightiest tool of God’s creation – whether He exists or not.
The field of the paranormal is awkward, however. It is not always obvious what is in fact being studied and so it was far more challenging to guess where his instincts were wide of the mark. A plethora of speculation, hysteria and blatant fantasies awaited him, demanding great patience and willpower in order to find those rare accounts that were potentially as genuine as his own. A great deal of material had come and gone before his outlook seemed directed towards the more fertile ground; but experience taught him what to discard and eventually a restricted view of a place science had not yet found to exist became apparent.
An epiphany was achieved when he realised the mistake of studying phenomena that had been influenced by the imagination of the public consciousness. Such material was, by human nature, deeply stained of any credibility, even if one was to suppose there must have been sincerity somewhere in the endless tales of poltergeists, alien activity and psychic readings that even the tamest of moviegoers and bookworms must have come across.
Onwards and with more success he then proceeded, stopping wherever he detected a rawness that appeared to belong nowhere else and that echoed of similarities to his own attacks. Surprisingly, rather than succeeding in narrowing down his search, he in fact found trails veering away into a plethora of differing subject matter, into older tales, incorporating history, folklore, mythology and passages of religious texts long since dismissed by historians as superstition.
Man had many strange encounters over the centuries in times before the stars above were hidden from view. Some of which his own paled to in comparison.
As it turned out, there were two links that intrigued him the most, a direct and an indirect one to his own personal haunting. The first direct link would cause the hairs to stand up on the back of his neck, for some would believe it involved a visit from the oldest demon of all.
Not Far From Aviemore Page 2