Ivory (27 page)

“
You mean that you made this? This is one of the creations
that you mentioned?” Descartes the philosopher compared the
workings of the body with machinery, but Martin was sure that even
a great mind like Descartes had not been thinking of this.
“Impossible…”

“
The face is yet to be completed. Look closely at
it.”

Hesitantly, as
if he feared the body would spring to life, Martin leaned in
closer. There was no definite line between flesh and muscle where
the face had been, suggesting that the face had not been flayed or
cut and peeled from the head. Where epidermis and corium became
muscle the layers were wet and milky in appearance, as if the skin
of the face had dissolved, or following Ebony’s explanation, had
yet to be applied. Copper thread traced the fibres of the cheek
muscle and ran beneath the dermis suggesting that the rest of the
muscle beneath was of a similar inorganic and organic composite.
“Impossible…”

“
I can tell by your voice that your conviction
wanes.”

“
And when it has a… soul… it will live? and that is why you
don’t keep your work?” Ebony’s words had been incongruous before,
but now Martin understood. “You set it free…”

“
They are born to finish their lives. Each has a curious
thirst for knowledge and a will to travel. Few have returned to me.
Some have sought each other out and have banded together. They call
themselves the ‘Vitruvian Sons’, as like Ivory they are made with a
formula of aesthetic and of perfect proportion.”

The copper wire that threaded the muscle was undeniable.
“This…
and
Ivory
are like those clock-work toys of yours?”

“
Much more complex, thousands of working components… A
completely anatomically correct and improved body, capable of full
automata animation.”

“
And this is why Ivory works the streets? This is where the
money goes?” The puzzle had been solved, yet Martin wanted to
dismantle it and rearrange the pieces into a pattern that was more
satisfying.

Ebony rested
his hands on the head of his staff. “The work is lengthy and
costly, the personal fortune I have amassed has been depleted for a
decade or more now. She is here to fund my work for them. Her
memories of any depravity will be exorcised and she will live her
own life with any one of my other creations.”

Ebony had been
right in his certainty that Ivory had a companion in her destined
future, and how could she not fall for one of Ebony’s creations? A
being with an athletic aesthetic of Michelangelo’s David and a soul
that was deemed worthy of completing its journey by otherworldly
beings with the powers of Gods. “And that was her future that you
spoke of before?”

“
Yes.” The certainty in his answer dissolved from his face.
“They are my
hopes
… Iris believes me naïve and blinded by my longing for
reunion, she believes the others have a dark purpose for
Ivory.”

Although the
‘thing’ was behind him, its presence was palpable and acted as an
anchor keeping him within the reality that Ebony had created. “The
‘prophecy’ that you mentioned earlier?” The sarcasm came
defensively to his quavering voice in an instinctive rejection of
its possibility, although engaging with Ebony and using a word and
an ideology that was not his own no longer jarred his belief
system. Ebony nodded an affirmative in answer to Martin’s question.
“This is ridiculous.” Another wave of cold energy coursed through
him as he realised his panicked denial would be read as disbelief.
He studied any flinch in Ebony that would indicate he had
antagonised him.

“
You go to such lengths to find answers yet when you are given
them you can not bring yourself to believe.” Ebony stated without
visibly moving a muscle that wasn’t required for speaking. “Has
there not been any moment since you encountered Ivory that you
suspected something
‘unnatural’
at work?”

Ebony’s eyes
narrowed at Martin’s silence in an expression remembered from when
he had sight, as if Ebony could see Martin reflecting upon how
Ivory had miraculously survived being hit by his car, how the
wounds she had sustained healed quickly, the strange howl he had
heard when he had driven into her, and again during the violence at
King’s flat and the pimps ambush, how her image was difficult to
reproduce on paper and could not be captured by camera, and how she
managed to get in and out of his locked house. Ebony nodded. “I see
that it is so.”

Martin had
nothing to say. His sane world, that for so long had had no place
for superstition, souls or immortality, crumbled around him. He had
been awakened to a new world and he desperately leafed through the
fragments of his mind to find pieces that would enable him to
escape and clutch at sanity.

“
On one of your little visits here, you mentioned Bernard
Shaw’s Pygmalion, how close you were to the truth of your
situation. You are the Pygmalion of ancient myth who has fallen in
love with the statue of Galatea. Only it is now, after you have
fallen in love with her that you find that she was a crafted object
of man before she lived.”

Martin snatched up his wits and balled his fists against a
tremor that ran from his feet to his jaw. “I don’t – I will not –
believe your lies! You are insane. You have brought that girl up
within a house of lies, indoctrinated her within your fantasy
world, and forced her to sell herself. At best you are a pimp, at
worst you are an abuser of an adolescent.” Denial felt safe.
Without what Ebony described as the ‘truth’ behind the facts Martin
found leverage and calm. He now had an edge against him. “…Things
that the authorities frown on;
especially
with a body on the premises.
”

Martin wrestled with the memory of this moment but the reedy
voice whispered to him.
“remember!”
The voice came as a distant breeze but hit him
with the power of a gale slamming him back into his memory.
“REMEMBER!”

Ebony extended
his staff before him lance-like against Martin’s threat, and his
voice became an unnatural grumble of thundering cannon balls
rolling across the ceiling around Martin’s head. The candles
guttered as if Ebony’s words disturbed the air and forced the
candlelight to tremble against the menace of the surrounding
shadows. “Leave this place. Speak of nothing. Do not return.”

Martin’s
resolve gave way to a chilled sweat, although the conviction he had
in persuasion of his threat was unshaken there was a tangible
dramatic shift of power, and Martin’s defiance that had united his
resolve abandoned him. His feet burned with a yearning to walk, a
sudden compulsion to leave the house. The threat would still be
effective, yet strangely he no longer wanted to play his hand. He
didn’t want to talk to anyone about this house and everything
connected to it. He never wanted to have to return to this house. A
house that challenged his sanity. “I’m going.” Martin wrestled with
his courage enough to pause in his newfound urge to leave. “Have
you told her that I know that she continues to sell herself?”

“
Yes.”

“
So it’s over then. Now that she knows that I have found out
about her continuing to sell herself she won’t be at mine when I
get home.” Despite everything, this was the most disturbing
thought.

“
She will be there as I instructed her to be. The truth has
not stopped you wanting her, and the discovery of her deception
will not stop you paying for her to return to you.” His voice
became commanding again. “Now follow me.”

The memory
vision collapsed as Martin dug the tip of the knife into the palm
of his hand. With the memory gone he instantly regretted the pain
he had caused himself and he clutched the bleeding wound. He rocked
back and forth on his knees, close to sobbing for the pain and the
memory. He picked the knife up with the hand he was sure was broken
from the rolling pin and took hold of the pin in his other hand, he
stood up and prepared to make another attempt.

The rain
shifted direction and angled against the glass of the French doors
in a torrent that turned the outside world into a shifting
distortion, as if the very elements would attempt to beat back his
escape. He became aware of a creaking noise, lower than the sound
of the rain, but in the room with him. Martin backed against the
glass doors, and his focus darted from place to place trying to
identify the noise, when he saw that the surface of the portrait of
Ivory was squirming. The prized image was blurring. The crisp edges
of her white skin were becoming fractal, migrating into the dark
background. The black of her eyes grew larger and dark veins
emanated from them as the paints tracked into one another.
Swallowing his fear back into his throat he shuffled himself closer
and peered through the gloom at the shifting portrait. The very
edges of the canvas appeared to mirror the blurring of the painting
as the fibres of the canvas drew themselves apart into a frayed
mess. Martin watched powerless as the portrait he had sacrificed
his family and morals for was reduced to a molten slag against the
wall.

There was no
noise, no shadow, no half-caught movement in the corner of his eye,
but his attention was drawn to the door by a palpable gravitas.
Ivory stood in the hall. Her eyes fixed upon him. He had checked
all the rooms in his initial search but realised he had not checked
the large walk-in storage area under the stairs, and he could see
that the door was wide open behind her. Martin knew that this was
not the Ivory he had fallen in love with. Not the Ivory that he had
lusted after. This was the Ivory that he had been warned of. This
was the Ivory of prophecy.

She was
terror.

Chapter Twenty Two

The storm, the
power failure, being trapped with the creeping things in the
shadows, they all seemed there to build the terror, the terror she
wanted him to experience before she struck. Her head dipped and her
glare narrowed. A force tore through the atmosphere of the room,
passed intangibly through his body but jarred his mind within an
agonisingly white hot aura.

“
remember!”
The voice was not in his
ears, but in his thoughts.
“show me what
you did.”
Ivory’s lips did not move, but
he knew the voice emenated from her.
“REMEMBER!”

Martin
dutifully obeyed Ebony’s order to follow him and leave the house,
but in his curiously automaton state Martin failed to take adequate
care in his navigation of the stacks on the landing. His leg
toppled papers and crudely bound books, and they slid from one
another and spilled around Ebony’s feet into a skidding tumble down
the stairs. The remaining stack leaned into Ebony’s legs, and
thinking Martin was attacking him he spun and brought the head of
his staff into what would have been a brutal uppercut had Martin
been where Ebony thought him to be. In changing his stance Ebony
allowed the angular flow of papers and books to replace his flat
purchase of the steps, causing his feet to skate on books and slip
on loose leaves.

Martin found
his reflexes were his own again and he clutched at the front of
Ebony’s shirt to save him from the fall. Pain flashed up his spine
with the urgent report that he was supporting all of Ebony’s
weight. The decision to let go was instinctive, but it was still a
choice. He let go. He knew that the sickening realisation of what
he had done would be infinitely replayed and re-experienced in his
psyche.

Martin clenched his eyes shut and thrashed his arms about his
head trying to swat away the mental control Ivory seemed to have
over him.
“REMEMBER!”

Martin watched
passively as Ebony twisted in an attempt to kick his feet into
footings on the steps but toppled headfirst. This time Ebony did
find a step. With a resounding thud the impact of his face upon the
edge of a step obliterated his nose and shattered his cheek bones.
Ebony’s legs cart-wheeled high over his body and sent him tumbling
down the stairs, scattering books and papers as he went. He grunted
with each impact before his head hit the hall floor and his body
catapulted past his head and smashed into the Great Mephisto with a
force that rocked the amusement on its feet, Ebony slid off the
magician’s casing at a right angle to the stairs but his head
remained where it was, and with the sudden wrench of his bodyweight
the fibrous neck muscles ruptured with the sound of thick dry rope
being twisted. The body flopped to the floor in an unnatural pose.
Death wrestled with life and won. The body settled into its resting
place and did not move.

Martin stood
at the top of the stairs staring down at Ebony, his head was now at
an impossible angle to his body. Books continued to thud down the
stairs after him and papers fluttered gently onto steps or rested
upon Ebony’s person. The house was still and Martin was now alone.
He reached down and picked up the staff that Ebony had dropped. The
staff with its prophecy of men and women in throws of violence and
clambering over corpses for their love and lust of Ivory. Martin
stumbled from the top of the stairs and slammed the door of Ebony’s
workroom against his own fulfilled place within prophecy.

He swung the
staff wildly about him in a blind rage at the room. His swipes were
followed by thuds that he assumed were books batted from bookcases,
the smash of jars and the hollow pop of clay gourds, as he
destroyed the fantasy Ebony had built. The room swirled about him
in a blur of motion with items exploding. The stumpy head of the
staff struck from surface to surface, again and again until there
was one impact that he couldn’t ascribe an identity to and he came
to a halt, panting and sweating from his exertion yet the red mist
continued to veil his vision. Martin staggered from his dizzying
dervish and he realised the red rage was not an internal state but
the muslin drape before his face lashed with blood. He relaxed his
posture and loosened his grip on the staff but found it resisted
him. It was lodged in a cavity that the impact had created within
the face of the body.