Others (35 page)

I filled my head with these ghastly depressing sights, some of which
defied
description, until I reached the end of the chamber. Only then did I press my forehead to the cold, wet wall to take stock, to absorb everything I had seen and somehow accept it. It wasn’t easy, nor did I succeed entirely.

A hand touched my shoulder.

Without looking round, I said, Why, Joseph? Why would anyone keep them like this? Why would they be allowed to live?’

The hand withdrew.

‘Life is a gift, whatever the circumstances,’ Joseph said.

I whirled around. ‘Like this? You think this is living?’

‘It’s all we know,’ he replied.

‘But-‘

He raised a frail hand. ‘Even for these others, it’s all they know. It’s the only life they have experienced and they know no better.’

‘You do, though. Michael has shown you, you’ve read books. Constance has told you of other things.’

‘Even so, we might have been content to remain here. Now everything is changing…’

I was still blind with fury. ‘Wisbeech is going to pay for this, I promise you that.’

‘Just help us be free,’ Joseph said. That’s all we ask.’

‘You will be, Joseph.’ I looked back at all the cell doors, six on either side of the long room. Oh yes, they would
all
be free. I’d help them.

And I’d begin now, before we left this dungeon of the damned.

39

At this far end of the chamber there was another door, this one set back in a recess in the wall and, like the main entrance, made of iron, but much narrower. The same key fitted its lock.

‘You’re sure this is the way?’ I asked Joseph before pushing at the door.

Joseph merely nodded.

‘Michael’s telling you this?’

He nodded again. ‘Michael goes on many journeys through his mind.’

‘He’s aware of this place, these… people… here?’

We all are.’

‘And can he tell you where this might lead?’

‘I can only sense him urging us to use it. The weakness is with me.’

‘Okay.’ What else could I say? What else could I do? I shoved the door and it opened with a squealing of hinges.

Inside was a stone staircase leading upwards, the walls so close I could touch both sides just by raising my arms slightly. The brickwork was rough and unfinished, the atmosphere cold. There was a light-switch, but I decided not to use it; who knew what lay at the top of those stairs?

It was a relief to leave the dungeon and its unfortunate but frightening denizens behind, and I shone the torchlight ahead as we climbed, my limp pretty bad by now, fatigue and trauma playing their part. In this narrow space, it was difficult for the disjoined girl to climb too, and when I glanced around, she was moving sideways, one hand on the steps above, her right foot leading. Joseph was last and he waited patiently as Mary struggled.

There was a short landing at the top, another door at the end of it. This door was sturdy-looking, but I knew I’d have no trouble picking its lock if I couldn’t find the right key on the ring. The third one I tried opened the door easily and cautiously, after turning off the torch I looked through.

There was some kind of storeroom on the other side, lit by two neon ceiling lights, sliding-door cupboards around three of its walls, a work bench and smaller cupboards running the length of the fourth. At its centre was a large square, multi-drawered desk. I listened for a while, scanning the room as I did so, ready to duck back out of sight should the need arise. But there was only silence. I crept in, beckoning Mary and Joseph to follow.

Going to the desk in the middle of the room I looked around me and was surprised at what had been hidden from my view behind the door. The whole section of wall, from floor to ceiling, was filled with banks of VTR machines, the kind of set-up used for the mass production of video cassette copies. I went to the cupboards and slid back one of the doors: the shelves inside were packed with film cans, their dulled metal and faded labels informing me they were old stock. Without bothering to read the labels I moved on to the next cupboard, sliding back its door to reveal stacks of vertically arranged video cassettes: I cocked my head to read their labels, but all they had on them were sets of six-digit numbers, each set separated by a dash. I realized these were dates, some of them going back to 1979. A quick reinspection of the film cans confirmed that the handwritten labels were also dates, some of these going as far back as the Sixties. Perhaps they were case studies of everyone kept at this place, I thought, recordings of their progress. It might explain the changeover from film to video tape, the latter a relatively new and far easier method of filming and storing.

Dates… birth dates… Wisbeech wasn’t interested in names; figures were obviously more factual to him. I doubted he even considered his charges as persons: no, to him they were probably just specimens, freakish examples with which to experiment, to research. That was what this was all about: Perfect Rest’s secret wing was a research centre, a covert laboratory specializing in the unique, atypical and bizarre, the ‘exceptional departures from the ordinary’, to coin Wis-beech’s own phrase, with its own ‘Black Museum’ of human divergences. The findings, the results of these studies, no doubt were shared - no,
sold -
to other medical or scientific research units around the country, if not the world, and there had to be hundreds of malformed babies -
thousands
worldwide - born each year, infants so badly deformed there seemed little chance of survival (or so the anguished parents would be told), only to be secreted away to become valuable commodities of research. And now, with genetics the new wonder-science as far as humans and animals were concerned, their value must have increased tenfold.

My head was spinning. What kind of bastard would do this to his fellow but less fortunate men, hiding them from the outside world, confining them in conditions unfit for the lowest beast, using them merely as specimens of study? Wisbeech, it seemed, was that kind, but I was going to bust the whole sick business wide open! I grabbed one of the video cassettes from the shelf and pushed it as deep into my jacket pocket as it would go. The top of it stuck out, but that didn’t matter, it was secure.

Another horrendous idea occurred to me. If this was big business - and something told me it was - it was highly profitable. It was also very hush-hush. So was it profitable enough for force to be used to keep it secret? Henry. I was thinking of the murder of Henry. Could it be connected with this? Had it been a warning to me? Was it meant to have
been
me? And the manner of my friend’s death, the mutilation of his body. I remembered the look on the face of the boy hiding in my office, the terror in his eyes when he saw my misshapen figure, and I thought of the things living in the dungeon below. Could it be…? Could it be that an abnormal person with a subnormal brain had been sent up to my agency, there to discover Henry instead of me? I tried not to think of the unnatural things that had been done to him, but an overwhelming guilt swept through me. It should have been me, not Henry…

‘Dis?’

Joseph’s voice brought me back.

‘Are you all right?’

I looked down at this tiny man -
boy
- and my rage only grew. Yeah, I’m just dandy, Joseph.’

‘Can we go, then? Please?’

I looked away from him, scanning the room again. The second door was at the end of the work bench, almost opposite the one by which we’d entered. Pointing, I said, ‘D’you know where it leads?’

‘No,’ he replied.

‘But we have to use it, right? There’s no point in going back the way we came?’

He shook his wizened head. ‘Michael is very afraid for us,’ he said then.

‘Too
much information, Joseph. I don’t think I wanted to know that.’ I tried to give him a grin, but it didn’t come off. He held out his hand to Mary and she hobbled over to him, her walking stick tapping on the bare floor. ‘How about you, Mary?’ I said to her. ‘Do you know what’s through that door?’

She, too, shook her head as she clutched Joseph’s outstretched hand.

‘Okay. There’s only one way to find out.’ But suddenly, I felt no enthusiasm for further discovery - I’d already learned more than I knew how to deal with about Perfect Rest and Dr Leonard K. Wisbeech. Sure, there were still plenty more questions, but my head - and my emotions - couldn’t cope with any more. I wanted out, right there and then. I had evidence, I had two of the victims involved and their testimony: what else did I need?

Only Constance, I told myself. Just the person you’ve finally found to love and who could return those same feelings. I crept around the centre desk and over to the second door.

It was unlocked.

40

Amidst the intense umbra of the vast room beyond the door there was a bright oasis of light. And in the light there was a large bed draped with deep red velvet, the smooth material overflowing on to the floor and even running up the wall behind.

On the bed, naked skin contrasting with the rich colour of the fabric around it, lay a small figure with frail limbs and curved spine. Long loose brown hair splayed over the velvet beneath the head and shoulders. She was curled like a sleeping child, the knuckle of one hand touching her lips. Her soft lips. Lips that I adored.

Constance was so fragile and so vulnerable lying there that I moaned aloud before blindly stumbling forward, my attention on her alone, oblivious to whatever else lay in the room’s oceanic darkness. My foot caught something on the floor and I almost fell, somehow managing to keep my balance, arms flailing before me, steps quickening.

I rushed into the ring of light, where concentrated luminance stifled anything beyond, and I knelt on the edge of the bed so that I could touch her shoulder. Constance stirred, but her eyes remained closed.

I shook her, gently at first, then a little harder, until her eyelids flickered. She opened them hesitantly and I saw that even under the harsh glare of the light her pupils did not contract. There was no recognition in her eyes when they fixed on me, just a dulled uncertainty.

I pulled her towards me and held her in my arms. In panic, I studied her face and her body, looking, I suppose for signs of abuse. ‘Constance, it’s me. It’s Nick.’

Her eyes closed again and a small groan escaped her.

‘Constance. Please, try to wake up.’

A frown creased her forehead, but there was no comprehension in her eyes when they fluttered open again.

‘Nick…’ It was a soft, weary cry.

‘You must try, Constance. I have to get you out of here.’

Desperately, I searched the area around us in vain for her clothes. Squinting my eye, I peered into the surrounding blackness and only then did I make out another pool of light some distance away, another red velvet-draped bed enclosed by dark borders, two figures on that bed, one of them small and naked, held by another who… who was not me.

At first I had thought I was looking at a reflection in a mirror on the far side of the room, but the person holding Constance looked nothing like me. It was someone I knew, though.

His shoulders were broad, his figure sleek, and he was handsome, oh so gloriously handsome. The shiny-lapelled dinner suit, the black bow-tie, the glossy slick-backed hair -oh yes, he was very familiar to me by now. And when I put my arm protectively around Constance’s shoulders, he mimicked the movement, he matched me perfectly. And when I pointed a trembling finger at him, he did exactly the same to me. The only difference was that he was smiling and I was not.

That was when I finally began to understand that this person I was staring at - and yes, it was definitely a reflection in a mirror -
was
me. That I was, and had been, haunting myself.

But I had no time to dwell upon its significance, for suddenly the whole vast area was lit up in a shock of lights.

***

It came at me fast, a blur that was on me before I could make out what it was, an assailant that snarled and snuffled like an animal as it tore at me. As I fell backwards under its force, I caught a glimpse of a high-ceilinged room full of tall arc lights, light-reflectors, cameras mounted on tripods - and startled people, who watched this abrupt confrontation on the bed as if stunned.

I sprawled against the velvet as claw-like hands encircled my throat, losing my grip on Constance, unable to draw in breath, an odd pressure pushing against my eyeball from behind. As I fought for air the images that came into view all had soft edges, their focus shifting constantly, so that I couldn’t tell if they were real or imaginary. I saw faces, Wisbeech’s among them, and many more, strangers to me, then the nurse, the head one -
what was her name, what was her name?
- Fletcher! that was her name, and as they dimmed, became almost translucent, they were replaced by others, the faces of all those I had met that night in Perfect Rest, above and
below
stairs! and they too faded, returned, faded once more, and all had been grinning and laughing, as though sharing some huge joke, one that was on me! and then two more individuals appeared, both mocking me, their features shimmering as if viewed through a heat haze, the old midwife, Sparrow, and my own elegant former
self!
the person I once was, an
alter ego
that was not a wish but a past! and
they
were laughing at me too, enjoying the joke, for weren’t they the ones who had lured me to this place…?

My vision began to dull, even though my eyelid could not possibly close, because the eyeball had been pushed too far from its socket…

Yet still I could discern the face - the
face?
- of this demon-thing who was squeezing the life from me, the other images only superimposed over the reality; could see the great gaping mouth, a cavernous hole that almost took up the entire head, the lipless mouth ringed by thin, needle-like teeth, the gaps between giving each one its own deadly individuality, two longer ones - at least three inches long! -descending from the centre, their equally long counterparts below set wider to accommodate them. The eyes were severely slanted, located wide of each other on the long, angled brow, dark pupils against yellow backgrounds, like a cat’s but even more sinister and
far
more malign, and there was no nose - Christ, there wasn’t room for a nose! - and the brow canted back acutely to a tufty protuberance on top of its head, a topknot that might have been gristled skin or a reptilian crest. As if these demon’s features were not enough for such comparison, the skin itself was reddish, as if it truly had been spawned in Hell, and even its ears were pointed and tufted like the top of its head.

This was no human, this could not possibly be of human origin. I refused to believe so. This
was
a demon, this
was
a BEAST! Nothing on Earth could have given birth to such a creature.

Its small head -
a head that was set in its chest rather than between its shoulders
- weaved about me, harsh, stinking hot breath poisoning precious air between us, black, pointed tongue quivering stiffly inside the huge hole of its mouth, those thin dagger-teeth only inches away from me, and I wondered if it would shred my face before or after it had choked me.

But something distracted it. Those terrifying, slanted eyes shifted their gaze, looking past me at the other person who had moved on the bed. The gleam in them seemed to change, to become lascivious.

I twisted my head, to follow its look, and I saw what
it
saw and I began to fight back, for it was Constance this thing was leering at, and she was lying naked, helplessly exposed to this creature. I understood its thoughts, the rapaciousness in its eyes.

I thought I might explode with the fury that swept through me

As I’ve said, my shoulders and arms have always been strong, and now anger and desperation gave them power I had never known before. I grabbed the
beast’s
hairy wrists, lifting my shoulders from the bed as I did so, the hump of my back providing leverage, and I forced those hands slowly, ever so slowly, away from my throat, the slender clawed fingers slowly unfurling, the
beast
returning its attention to me, bewilderment in its rabid eyes. My hands and its wrists shook with opposing pressure and I was aware that ultimately it was a battle I could not win, my attacker had a superior strength that would sustain him longer than my fierce but temporary outburst. So with one last effort, I lifted him away from me and then let go. And as I let go, I brought my own head up.

My forehead smashed into its shallow lower jaw, closing that gaping mouth, but while I cried out with the shock of pain, the
beast
merely grunted. I fell back on to the bed, all senses spinning, and once more the tenacious fingers with their curling nails found my throat. The pressure resumed as if there had never been an interruption, and this time I knew I was totally helpless, that my reserves of strength were all but used up in that last-ditch effort. At first I thought someone was using a dimmer switch on all the lights because everything began to grow dark, but I soon realized it was me, I was leaving it all behind. I tried - oh God, how I tried - to draw in breath, but soon it didn’t matter: the pain had lost its bite, my panic had lost its relevance. I knew I was dying, that air would never squeeze through to my lungs to save me, yet somehow it no longer mattered.

I was dying and it wasn’t so bad. Hell, it was relatively easy.