Shell Shocked (The Cosmic Carapace, #1) (4 page)

He was in a rut. He needed something to get his teeth into, something to get excited about other than a takeaway curry and a single malt.

He winced as he rubbed the lump on the back of his head and walked the four or five strides it took to reach the kitchen worktop. A persistent, dull beam of half light forced its way around the side of the grey curtains which covered the only window. It caught the the gold leafed edge of the business card the odd Mr Spangler had left yesterday. He reached for his laptop and tapped 'Ingress Bushy Park' into the search engine.  1,678,854 results. It didn't help though. There was no result that included 'Ingress', just many, many listings for Bushy Park. Odd he thought. He'd expected some sort of hit.

He picked up the small, thick business card again and turned it over, hoping maybe for directions on the back. Nothing. He read the brief message again, '8pm, Ingress, Bushy Park, London. Bring the tortoise'. Something clicked in the depths of Spencer's mind. The click sent alarm bells ringing through his synapses alerting every quivering fibre of his body that the impact of what he had just realised had made it vitally imperative that he have a cup of tea this instant, and that it almost certainly would need to be followed by another one.

The business card had been printed with the words 'bring the tortoise' on it. A tortoise Spencer hadn't had until around 10pm when he had arrived home to find it waiting for him, only half an hour or so before Spangler had turned up. He had known that Spencer had been let go by the council too... Ok, he had to go and find this place. He glanced at the kitchen clock which told him it was already 8:30. He would be late, but he was going. As soon as he'd had a bacon sandwich, a cup of tea and dug out some lettuce for the tortoise.

~~~~

B
ushy park sulked under heavy grey clouds. Deer sheltered under trees from a breeze whose icy fingers poked in delicate places. There was a dampness to the air as a lone figure appeared around a corner of trees, his coat collar pulled up covering the lower half of his face. He was of average build and average height, he had pretty averagely brown hair and didn't have any easily identifiable features such as a peg leg or an eye patch. All in all he was a police sketch artist's worst nightmare. He would have been completely inconspicuous if he hadn't been carrying a tortoise with 'Prat' written on the side.

Spencer looked down at the business card again. After not finding any reference to an Ingress online he had simply turned up and gone to the local pub. A move which he had found in the past had often resulted in some information, but more importantly, always a pint. The barman hadn't been overly keen on the tortoise though, and had been pretty insistent that, 'The little shelled sod isn't staying in here.'

Spencer had used this to his advantage, explaining that he'd be delighted to leave as soon as he told him where Ingress, Bushy Park was. Unfortunately, 'Never heard of it, now bugger off,' hadn't been hugely helpful. It was a big park.

He was pretty sure this had been a stupid idea. Who offers people a job by turning up at their house late at night and asking them to meet in a London park with their newly acquired tortoise, which you suspected they themselves had left on your doorstep? Only a madman surely? He paused. He could hear music. He spun around trying to find a direction. It was a lone fiddle playing a long, slow, sad tune. He walked towards where he thought the sound was coming from, the wind making the sound ebb and flow as it came to him in waves. It was floating from a copse of trees, and he quickened his pace in its direction. As he got closer he could see flashes of white walls through the thick trunks. He moved inwards until he could see the edge of the tree-line which opened into a clearing and peered around a tree. About a hundred yards in he could see the base of a large house, the upper levels hidden by the treetops. From tree to tree he edged closer until he saw what was clearly the rear of the house. Large windowed doors were open wide, allowing the melancholy music its freedom.

Spencer approached the doors slowly. He had no idea why he was being so cautious, but something didn't feel right. He could feel a tight knot growing in the pit of his stomach. The closer he got the more ill at ease he felt. The air was thick, clinging to his skin and his lungs, his heart beat faster, the knot in his stomach grew in intensity. He realised he was struggling to walk forward, the air was like drying cement, getting harder and harder as he moved. He was starting to breathe heavily, forcing himself forward against the pressure as he reached the doors. He was leaning forward as though walking into a gale, but the air was calm. Calm and solid. A few metres from the door and he was having to dig his toes into the soft earth to push forward. As he strained in slow motion, he noticed the tortoise staring up from under his arm, seemingly oblivious to the forces around them. It blinked slowly. Spencer's mind was clouded, scrambled. He couldn't think about what was happening, when he tried it slipped away like mist. All he knew, with every fibre of his body, was that he had to keep going. This may have had something to do with his bladder somehow reacting to the pressure in an alarming way which suggested that getting inside to a toilet would be a rather good idea. Something strange was happening to his body, he could feel it... stretching some how. Like he was being pulled apart by tiny hands. It wasn’t painful... yet, there was the sense that it was going to be. It felt like it was going to hurt a lot.

He heard a voice, muffled and distorted, cry out in front of him.

“Wait!”

Not being one for following orders, he pushed forward with one last effort and fell forward into blackness.

––––––––

“D
id you see the way his legs seemed to come a bit... sort of... later than he did?”

“They definitely didn't arrive at the same time as his ears.”

“Yes, the ears were strange weren't they? The way they went on ahead a bit and then sort of snapped back into his face. I think he's definitely going to have a couple of black eyes.”

It sounded like the same female voice, but was clearly a conversation between two, a conversation that made no sense to Spencer, but a conversation nonetheless. His eyelids seemed to be swollen and stuck together, his head was ringing like a bell for the second time in 48 hours and for some reason, he craved bacon. He put this down to good sense and concussion, which he almost certainly had.

The voices continued.

“Has anyone ever done it without having fog before?”

“I doubt it, who'd want to?! You get shell shock even with it, imagine what it's like without it?! He's going to need some fog when he comes to, that's for sure. And bacon of course.”

At the mention of the pig product, for which Spencer's craving was now reaching epic proportions, Spencer involuntarily spoke, or at least tried to.

“Ughh!”

“I'll get the fog.”

“I'll get the frying pan on.”

Spencer heard the sounds of two people walking away across a hard floor and the door closing behind them. He forced his eyes open into slits and looked around the room he found himself in. A shaft of light cut across the room from a window so thick with grime it cast the room in a buttery glow. Wooden floor filled the small space from the single brass bed Spencer was lying on fully clothed, to the door on the far side. There was nothing else in the room, no pictures, no ornaments, it was completely bare.

The door swung open suddenly, framing a shape that was roughly the same shape as the door frame it now filled. The figure strode in towards Spencer and the light caught fair hair, a jaw that you could almost certainly chop wood on and a chest (under a white shirt with one button too many undone) that could stop a train. The man fixed Spencer with a stare from piercing blue eyes and ran a hand through his tousled blonde hair.

“Hi there friend, good to see you made it through. The name's Colin. Quite the double shiner you have there, but don't worry, the ladies love a man with an injury, mothering instinct and all that.” He leant forward and winked at Spencer in what was clearly intended to be a conspiratorial manner.

“Don't worry, I can help you out here. I'm something of a big deal in these parts, maybe some of it can rub off on you.” He studied Spencer for a while as if deciding if this were possible.

“Right, see you soon friend!” He strode out of the door as abruptly a he'd come, though Spencer noticed he had paused for just a second in the doorway, framing himself and puffing his chest slightly before leaving.

Prat, thought Spencer.

Suddenly as though this thought had jogged his memory some how, he realised he was gripping something hard, tightly in his hands. He squinted down and stared into the face of the tortoise. Spencer's knuckles were white around it's shell. It gave him a look which suggested that it's all well and good staring at me through two blackening eyes and feeling sorry for yourself, but where's the lettuce? That's what I'd like to know... it was a very expressive look.

The door opened again and Spencer mentally confirmed that he was definitely concussed, as the same, slim and pale woman walked through the door twice. Spencer swung his feet off the bed and waited for every muscle in his body to stop screaming and for the room to stop spinning like that.

“Hi, you'll feel better once you drink this.” The one on the left handed him a tall glass with a cloudy liquid that resembled lemonade in it. There was ice and a slice of lemon, which Spencer definitely approved of. His mouth was so dry he wasn't entirely sure that it hadn't fused together. He took the drink and swigged greedily.

There are many sensations which are difficult to explain adequately. The gentle fall of snow on your face, the squeeze a loved one gives your hand, the first sight of your newborn child. If Spencer had been asked to describe his first taste of fog, he probably would have gone for something like this...

Imagine being punched down the throat with a fist made of sandpaper, whilst simultaneously your nose hair is singed by fumes which rush up to the sinuses and explode with pain. Imagine your chest explodes with a burning fire. Imagine your vision instantly blurs, daubs of colour dancing before you. Imagine every bit of adrenaline you have ever felt in your life multiplied by two and injected somewhere delicate at once. This all occurs in the first half a second of your first sip, from there things go downhill.

Spencer shot bolt upright onto his feet, clutching at his throat.

“Ugghaaarrrgllleehhh!”

“Yes, that's normally what people say the first time!” replied one half of the lady his concussion had supplied him with. The other half placed a small plate with a bacon sandwich on it beside him on the bed as Spencer slowly sat down again and began to vibrate. He was feeling better. In fact he was feeling great. Admittedly this maybe because around 30 seconds ago he was mentally and physically in a pretty accurate version of hell, but even so, this was better. The smell of the bacon was too much. He rather impolitely grabbed the sandwich and started talking for the first time since coming to, with his mouth full.

“What happened, and what the hell was that I just drank?”

“You’re shell shocked. It happens when you cross over, but normally it’s not as bad as that, but you hadn’t had any fog.”

He looked up at the the two women in front of him. They really were identical. He was starting to realise that these were in fact two different women, and not the result of a blow to the head.

They both had jet black hair in a bob to their shoulders, pale skin and large dark eyes that were sparkling with amusement. Tall and willowy, they wore matching black puritan style dresses which went straight down, as did they. The one on the right introduced them both.

“I'm Esme and this is my sister Eva. You need to sleep, so we have drugged your bacon sandwich.”

Spencer spluttered on the last mouthful as he shouted in panic, they both turned as one towards the door. Eva turning at the last minute as Spencer's eyes became heavy and not for the first time that day, the room began to swim.

“Night, night!”

~~~~

B
ecky Ness was staring intently at the handle of her handbag. It was probably the most serious attention anyone had ever paid to a handbag since the people of Ancient Egypt had declared, 'Do you know what? I'm bloody sick of carrying these papyrus leaves everywhere. I've barely got a hand free to whip a slave with.'

Becky's reason for such intense scrutiny was not borne of any lust for a material object, she wasn't that kind of girl. It was due to the aforementioned handle being the only thing currently keeping her from falling some twelve stories to an almost certainly squidgy end.

She was however, calm. It took a great deal more than impending death to rattle Becky Ness, at least, this is what she was telling herself furiously in her head. She was a difficult person to argue against.

She began to swing her legs forward then back repeatedly, the momentum of the rhythmic action sending her higher and higher until she caught her foot on the lead run-off pipe she had been aiming for. Getting firm purchase with both of her feet, she began to pull herself up the bag's handle toward the grotesque gargoyle's head it was caught on. She reached his pointy head and clasped it to her with both hands, swinging her feet back to the plinth he stood on. She caught her breath and looked down to the cobbled street below. People were gathering round the body now, pointing up at her. She had to get away. Now.