Darkroom (29 page)

‘I am the purifier.'

‘Don't make me laugh. You're a walking contagion.'

Vinnie gritted his teeth. ‘For God's sake, don't provoke him, Jim, he's going to cremate us!'

‘I am the beauty of simplicity, and objectivity, of uncontaminated good and uncontaminated evil.'

Jim stared at Robert H. Vane's lens-like right eye and suddenly understood what utter evil really was. It was like waking up at night and finding the bedroom to be seamlessly black, without even the faintest chink of light.
I look, I judge, I take what I want and I destroy what I don't want. Because I alone have the right to do so.

Robert H. Vane raised his right hand and it was like a trough, rather than a hand. A trough like an old-fashioned flashgun, but filled with the brilliant energy of evil instead of magnesium powder. Vinnie was right. He was going to cremate them, reduce them all to nothing but ashes and burned bones.

But what had Ruby's grandmother said? ‘
Evil can't bear to look at itself
.'

Robert H. Vane took one more unsteady step closer. Sue-Marie had her eyes tight shut and she was making a high-pitched squeaking noise. Shadow was rapidly muttering a prayer. Even Edward was reciting Psalm 23: ‘Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil, thy rod and thy staff …' Vinnie just kept sobbing and snorting.

One of Robert H. Vane's brass-bound feet caught the edge of a daguerrotype plate, and it gleamed briefly in the corner of Jim's eye. ‘
Evil can't bear to look at itself
.'

‘A-Team,' said Jim, as clearly as he could. ‘Simon says pick up a daguerrotype. Now.'

‘What?' said Sue-Marie, opening her eyes.

‘Just do what I do! And do it now!'

Without another word, Jim bent down, picked up two daguerrotype plates, and held them in front of Robert H. Vane's lens, one above the other. Edward did the same, and so did Shadow, Philip and Randy. Only Vinnie looked confused.

‘Vinnie!' shouted Jim. ‘Pick up some plates! Hold them like this!'

Still Vinnie didn't understand. Jim was just about to help him when Robert H. Vane let out a scream that sounded like a horse caught on a barbed-wire fence. He lurched backward on his tripod, his lens dipping and turning as he tried to escape his own reflection. But in each of the fourteen daguerrotype plates that Jim and his A-team were holding up, all he could see was the murky, distorted image of a man who had grown into something unspeakably hideous.

Vane shook his head and tried to turn himself around, but his tripod legs were caught on the skirting boards, and he tripped on the scattered daguerrotypes. Behind him the silvery-black shadow people collided with each other in their confusion, and twitching snakes of static electricity crawled from one to the other.

‘
That is not me!
' screeched Robert H. Vane. ‘
That is not me! That is not me! I am beauty!
'

Jim brandished his daguerrotype plates nearer and nearer to the lens of Robert H. Vane's right eye. His students did the same, until Vane was almost surrounded.

It was then that Vane ignited his flash. The light was so bright that Jim thought for an instant that there could be no darkness anywhere in the world, not even inside his own skull. The heat, too, swamped him totally, as if somebody had thrown a bucketful of blazing gasoline all over him. His fingernails, unprotected by the daguerrotype plates, felt as if they were on fire. Beside him, Vinnie didn't even have time to scream. His hair flared up, his flesh shriveled, and then there was a sharp crack as his bodily fluids evaporated. He collapsed on to the floor with a hollow knocking of bones.

But it was Robert H. Vane who caught most of his own flash. Reflected back to him from fourteen silver daguerrotype plates, it shattered his lens, roasted his face, and set fire to the black cloth that covered his back. He pitched backwards, his tripod legs blazing, his arms furiously thrashing. The shadow-selves shrank away from him on to the landing.

‘
I am
…
I am
…
beauty!
' he raged. He lifted his flashgun again, trying to hold it steady with his left hand.

Jim shouted, ‘Watch out!' At the same time Vane set off another flash, even more blinding than the first. Sue-Marie screamed as the heat burned her fingers, and Freddy yelled, ‘Shit!' But they held their daguerrotypes tight, and most of the flash bounced back.

Robert H. Vane exploded with a soft, pressurized
whooommfff
! Fiery pieces of fabric and wood were thrown across the room, and his body collapsed in the middle of his burning legs.

Jim dropped his daguerrotypes and frantically blew on his fingers to cool them down. His corduroy pants were scorched at the bottom and his shoes were smoldering, because the daguerrotypes hadn't shielded him completely, but it had been enough.

He looked down at the blazing ruin of Robert H. Vane's shadow-self. His A-Team stood around him, and for the first time in his life he couldn't think of anything to say.

But then there was a rustling sound from the doorway. It was crowded with silvery-black images; the dark side of ordinary men and women. Static electricity flickered on the ceiling like summer lightning, and there was a threatening smell of ozone in the air, as if a thunderstorm were just about to break.

‘This sucks,' said Freddy. ‘How are we going to get out of here?'

‘M
aybe they won't hurt us, now that Vane's gone,' said Edward. Maybe … if we kind of leave the premises quietly … let them get back to their plates …'

‘Are you kidding me?' said Shadow. ‘They may look like an old-time minstrel show, but those mothers are seriously pissed.'

Jim took a step toward the door. The shadow-selves didn't budge. In fact, they began to press even more closely into the room. The crackles of static grew increasingly loud and violent, and showers of sparks began to dance around their hair and fingertips.

‘What are they doing?' asked Sue-Marie, huddling herself close to Jim's shoulder.

‘Building up their energy is my guess,' said Jim. ‘I think they want to blitz the lot of us in one damn great flash.'

‘We should break the windows,' said Philip. ‘If they can't stand the light—'

‘That's right!' Roosevelt interrupted. ‘I saw that in a Dracula picture. They pulled down the drapes and Dracula got totally frizzled.'

‘We can't get to the glass, man,' said Shadow. ‘That screen is totally impenetray-table.'

‘Maybe we should football charge them,' Randy suggested. ‘All get together and go for it.'

‘Oh, sure, and all end up like a KFC party bucket.'

One of the shadow-selves stepped toward them, followed by another, and another.

‘Oh God,' said Sue-Marie.

The leader was tall and looming, with wild shoulder-length hair. He gave an aggressive shake of his head, and his eyes flashed with brilliant white light. He shook his head again, and this time the flash was even brighter. Jim, blinking, heard a slowly rising whine, like the whine of dozens of flash battery packs. It was the shadow-selves, building up their power.

‘The plates!' Jim said. ‘Pick up the plates again, and use them as shields!'

But Shadow said, ‘No way, man! I am sick of this shit! There ain't no black-faced gooks going to barbecue me!'

‘Sonny!' Jim shouted. But Shadow trampled forward, over the daguerrotype plates, and pushed the leading shadow-self back against the wall. Then he pushed the next, and the next, and then he was forcing his way out on to the landing, elbowing his way through the crowd of shadow-selves, yelling all the time at the top of his voice.

‘You get out of my way, you freak! You hear me? You just get out of my face!'

He was halfway across the landing when there was a dazzling flash of light. Jim saw everything in reverse, so that Shadow looked white and so did the shadow-selves who were jostling all around him. There was another flash, and then a whole succession of flashes, as if Shadow was a celebrity arriving at a movie premiere. But with each of these flashes, Jim could feel a tremendous blast of heat.

Shadow shouted out, ‘No!'

Jim saw that his hair was alight, and smoke was billowing out of his hooded top. But he kept on shoving his way through the crowds of shadow-selves until he reached the door on the opposite side of the landing.

Shadow was burning now, and flames were jumping up his back. But he pushed his way into the room, past the rows of wire cages, waving his arms around like a fiery windmill and yelling at the shadow-selves that were milling around in his way. His words weren't even intelligible now – they were nothing but screams of pain and desperation.

He forced his way toward the window. Three or four of the shadow-selves clung to his blazing clothes, trying to stop him, but he twisted himself from side to side and shook them off. Then, without any hesitation, he lowered his head and threw himself right through the black-painted glass. The window exploded, and Shadow disappeared in a roaring gout of fire.

Instantly, as if accompanied by a fanfare of golden trumpets, the sun blazed into the room, and right across the landing. The shadow-selves let out a dreadful, orchestrated shriek, and shrank away from the sunlight with their hands clamped over their eyes. They couldn't even make it to the darkness downstairs. They dropped to the floor, one on top of the other, like slugs showered with salt. Jim and his A-Team stood in the middle of the room, close together, watching in disgust as the shadow-selves writhed and shriveled. Their silvery-black sheen turned to viscous gray, and then to albino white, and then they faded altogether, the way that all photographic images fade in the sunlight. Their grinning black teeth were the last to disappear.

Jim went cautiously to the door and looked around. The landing was deserted. There was nobody in the animal hospital but them. Even the smoking heap that had once been Robert H. Vane had faded away, leaving nothing but a few fragments of a broken camera: a blackened lens, a shutter mechanism, and a few brass hinges.

‘We did it!' said Edward. ‘Or Shadow did it, anyhow.'

‘Shadow!' said Randy.

They hurried downstairs, opened the front doors and went outside. There was a crowd around Shadow already. He was lying on the sidewalk with a blanket draped over him. His face was scarlet and black and badly charred, and a thick delta of blood was running from the back of his head into the gutter.

Jim knelt down next to him. ‘Sonny?' he said hoarsely, but Shadow's eyes were closed.

‘He just fell,' said a white-haired man in a flappy pair of khaki shorts. ‘The window went bang and out he came, burning like a space shuttle.'

‘I called nine-one-one already,' added a young man in a long red apron.

‘Is he dead?' asked Sue-Marie, standing close behind him.

Jim felt Shadow's wrist. He couldn't feel a pulse. ‘I think so,' he said.

‘What happened in there?' asked a fat woman in a flowery dress.

Jim slowly stood up. His face was smudged with smoke and his hair was sticking up like a cockerel. ‘I think you could call it a tragedy,' he said.

Lieutenant Harris came into the interview room, accompanied by Detectives Mead and Bross. They all pulled up chairs and sat and looked at Jim as if the very sight of him made them feel tired.

‘To be frank,' said Lieutenant Harris, ‘we don't believe one single word of it.'

Jim nodded. ‘I didn't expect you to. I don't believe it myself.'

‘The problem is, there is no other explanation. Not unless all of you are certifiably insane.'

‘That's one possibility, of course,' Jim agreed.

Detective Mead said, ‘It's going to take a few days to get a complete report from the CSU, and even longer before the ME's finished. But it doesn't look as if you or any of your students were directly responsible for the deaths of Vincent Boschetto or Sonny Powell.'

‘It looks like two more cases of spontaneous human combustion,' said Lieutenant Harris.

Jim looked at him narrowly. Lieutenant Harris didn't even blink.

‘The ME has already decided that Bobby Tubbs and Sara Miller were victims of SHC, and so we'll be releasing Brad Moorcock. Apparently all of the recent burnings in the Santa Monica and West Hollywood areas have also been caused by SHC. The theory is that solar flares have had something to do with it. That, and the very dry summer. People have literally been microwaved to death.'

‘Solar flares?' said Jim.

‘It could have been “shadow-selves,”' said Detective Mead. He looked as if somebody had just told him that his mother had died.

Lieutenant Harris said, ‘Pending further investigation … Well, Mr Rook, you and your students are free to go.'

He drove the A-Team back to West Grove first. It was evening now, and most of the college building was in darkness. They stood together in the parking lot, all of them exhausted, all of them numb from what had happened to them, and clutching themselves as if they were feeling the cold, but all of them strangely reluctant to leave. In the end, Jim had to say, ‘See you tomorrow, right? We can talk this out in class. Share it with everybody else.'

Sue-Marie said, ‘Nobody will ever know what we did, will they?'

Jim put his arm around her shoulders. ‘That's the fate of all really good people, Sue-Marie. They don't get prizes. They don't get interviewed on TV. They just get the satisfaction of knowing that they've made the world a safer place to live in.'

Freddy came up to Jim and gave him a low five. ‘Thanks, Mr Rook. I think you taught me some kind of lesson today, even though I'm not exactly sure what it is. I just believe that I'm going to be a better person from now on, that's all.'

Edward shook Jim's hand as well. ‘I learned something, too. The more you find out, the more you don't know.'