The Reviver (26 page)

A window popped up, warning him that the content was sensitive and contained personal medical information. ‘Please ensure you view this document in a private environment,’ the window advised. Jonah glanced behind him. Marmite was settling down on the couch for a nap.

‘I hope you can keep a secret,’ Jonah said to the cat. Then he clicked ‘OK’.

An error message appeared. ‘You do not have permission to view this material.’

Jonah swore under his breath, and then jumped as his phone handset rang loud and
close.

It was Never. ‘Hey, Jonah! Saw you’d logged in, thought I’d see how you were.’

Jonah kept his voice low, a harsh whisper. ‘You were keeping tabs on me?’ He realized how angry he sounded, an overreaction to being caught.

There was a pause before Never replied. ‘Uh … OK. I’ll leave you in peace. Just thought I’d say I’d cleared it with Hugo for you to be off until this time next week, and you should actually
take
the break. Working from home doesn’t count.’

Jonah bowed his head. ‘Shit, man. Look, I’m sorry. I’m tired. How’s
your
day been?’

‘I’ll let you off, mate. This morning was a juicy one. Young newly separated wife, strangled. Boyfriend in the next room, beaten to death with what may have been a crowbar.’

‘Nasty.’

‘And messy. Double onsite, we had Stacy and Terry reviving, with me and J. J.’

‘Was it the ex-husband?’

‘That was the theory, and he
had
gone AWOL. Turned out to be more complicated. The boyfriend had started on her, she’d managed to phone her ex for help. He got there to find her dead, so he killed the boyfriend. Then vanished. He sounds as big a nightmare as the boyfriend, though. That girl could pick ’em. Anyway, how are you? Better after yesterday? Still, uh, seeing things?’

‘I just need to rest, Never.’

‘You’d tell me if there was something up, right?’

Jonah knew exactly where this concern was coming from, and he knew Never could read him; it wasn’t fair to his friend just to play dumb.

‘There’s something I’m looking into. It’s probably nothing, and I promise I’ll tell you soon, but I need you to do me a favour and let me deal with it.’

‘OK,’ Never said, sounding wary. ‘But I’m holding you to that, and I’ll be checking up on you. If there’s anything I can do to help…’

A thought occurred to Jonah. ‘Well … There’s a case I want to look at. It’s in the FRS system, but I don’t have permission to view it. You’re an admin, right? Is there any way…’

‘You sly dog. Make yourself a coffee. By the time you’re done, you’ll have access. Just don’t tell anyone, OK?’

*   *   *

Jonah did exactly as instructed. Coffee in hand, he sat back down and searched for the same key words as before, then clicked on the link.

This time, the case report appeared on screen.

The reviver’s name was Victor Eldridge. As Graves had said, the reviver had been brought in after approaching the wife of a subject he had revived a week before. The wife had not felt directly threatened, and had not pressed charges against him, but the company he’d been working for had contacted Graves. Eldridge had been one of their best revivers. They wanted him looked after.

‘At this time,’ the report read, ‘the remnant effect is assumed to be a mild presentation of memory and emotion originating from the surge phase of a revival. Yet this patient had periods of lucid interaction during which he seemed to think he actually
was
the subject. Under interview, these periods were observed five times, the longest episode lasting twenty-seven minutes. The patient’s responses were consistent and detailed, and information specific to the revival subject seemed accurate. After each episode, the patient was asked how aware he had been, and confirmed that he had been conscious at the time yet somehow observing these thoughts arise without direct control. This suggests that if sufficiently extreme, the remnant effect could amount to a kind of parasitic intelligence, with the survival of patterns of thought and behaviour from the revived subject dominating the mind of the host. How long-lived these effects might be if untreated is currently unknown. In this case an extended course of high-dose novadafinil and propanolol was effective.’

Jonah took a deep breath. It was just as he’d experienced it. Yet the words Dr Graves had used in this report were very different from how she had presented it to him, as an ordinary mental process being misinterpreted by a mind under stress.

She had been trying to put his mind at ease. Delusion. Nothing to be afraid of.

In practice it was much more. Graves had called it ‘parasitic intelligence’.

It was a form of possession.

He noticed a reference beside the paragraph he had read, and when he followed it he came to a list of dated files, each titled ‘Interview excerpt’ with a reference number. Wondering how many laws he was breaking, he opened the first.

A single camera, pointing at a man he presumed was Eldridge: wide-eyed and nervous.

‘Were you aware you’d been talking?’ asked a voice – muffled; it sounded like Graves.

‘Yes,’ said Eldridge. He had an earnestness, an openness, a smile that suggested damage. He seemed horribly fragile. ‘I could hear every word. I could hear the thoughts that
led
to the words. And none of them were mine. That’s the way it always is. I can’t influence them. I’m trapped in my own head and all I can do is watch.’ The broken smile remained as he spoke, but his voice was despairing. The clip stopped. Jonah went back to the report. There didn’t seem to be much else, beyond what Graves had already told him. Eldridge was a mess, and although there was only one remnant strong enough to intrude into his waking actions, testing had revealed evidence of others.

Jonah thought of the term Graves had used: ‘ghost traces’. It seemed horribly appropriate now.

He switched between report and interview footage for half an hour, getting increasingly agitated by both the content and his guilt at the illicit access. Yet it was Eldridge’s expression that had the greatest impact. The man seemed to have given up hope.

He read the section on the drug treatments being used.

‘The patient has been experiencing episodes of profound paranoia,’ it read, ‘making references to an external force he believes to be following him.’ Jonah thought at once of Harker’s lurking presence. There was a reference again, which he followed.

Eldridge’s weary face appeared once more. It looked like the same interview location.

The voice off screen: ‘What are you afraid of, Victor?’

‘There’s something watching me. Something
with
me.’

‘You feel it now?’

‘Yes. Scratching at the back of my mind. I heard it whisper once. Sometimes I think I still hear it.’

‘When did this begin?’

‘Ever since the Ruby Fleming case. Something else was
there.
’ Eldridge said it in an urgent whisper, glancing around as if he may be overheard.

Jonah felt very cold. It wasn’t Harker’s remnant presence he was reminded of, not now.

It was Alice Decker.

He went back to the report text: ‘Prior case was during patient’s employment with Toronto Forensic Revival Department. Case was considered by Eldridge’s superiors to have been a result of his own state of mind affecting that of the subject, leading to subject’s panic and contact loss.’

There was another link, which he presumed would be to the review of this prior case. Instead, there was footage from the revival itself.

Canadian procedures closely followed those the FRS used. The footage had three separate image feeds, the long shot giving context to the other two.

A narrow street, an alleyway with an open door leading into a lit corridor, black bags of garbage mounted high by the wall. At the extremes of the image, Jonah noted tape sealing off the scene. On the ground by the door, a woman lay, her dead eyes open. There was no obvious sign of trauma.

Eldridge ducked under the tape and entered the picture. Jonah was startled by how healthy the man looked, his frame full to the point of being overweight. A confident man, unrecognizable given the shell he was to become.

Eldridge stated his name and the case details as he took the corpse’s hand.

Not aware he was doing it, Jonah’s left hand gripped the desk, needing to hold on to something firm. He wanted to stop watching, but he couldn’t. There was silence for several minutes as Eldridge began the process. Jonah sped up the footage, until he saw the corpse shift. He wound back slightly and played it through.

The woman’s chest was rising and falling in the slow, exaggerated movements the dead had when breathing.

‘Ruby,’ said Eldridge. ‘Can you hear me? My name is Victor.’

Jonah watched the revival proceed, his grip on the table tightening, along with every other muscle in his body.

He was good, Eldridge. Very good indeed. The subject had been revived with reasonable speed, perhaps a little slow, but his subsequent handling of her was exceptional.

Ruby co-operated fully, describing the attack on her, describing the man she had seen, linking him explicitly with a man she had served at the bar she worked in. Eldridge told her that the man had been caught on camera. That the testimony she had given would be crucial in finding him and securing a conviction. That she had done well.

‘Thank you,’ said Ruby. And then the tone changed. A subtle change he couldn’t pin down, but Jonah felt as if the temperature around him had plunged. He shivered.

Ruby spoke again. ‘There’s something here,’ she said. ‘Something in the alley. I can feel it. It’s dark, too dark to see.
There’s something here.
’

Eldridge was taken aback by this. He glanced at the camera and shrugged. A voice came from off screen – the officer overseeing the revival. ‘She’s losing it, Victor,’ the voice said. ‘We nearly have what we need, get her back to the man.’

‘Ruby, is there anything else you can tell me about the man who attacked you?’

Ruby breathed in, slow and deep. ‘It glistens in the dark. It stinks. It’s just out of sight. I can’t see it. Please. Let me go.’

The officer spoke up: ‘Come on, Victor, either get her back on track or wind it up.’

‘Ruby, I want to talk about the man.’

‘The
smell.
It’s strong now. So
strong.
Like bad meat.’

‘Please. The man who attacked you. You said he was talking as he choked you. Can you remember anything else he said?’

‘I … it’s
here.
Please, let me go!’

‘Ruby? Don’t be alarmed, there’s nothing here. There’s nothing here.’

‘But it’s
here!
Please! Help me! I can’t see it! I can’t see it! It’s
coming.
’

‘Ruby, listen to my voice. Try and be calm.’

‘Please, it’s coming closer. I CAN FEEL IT, IT’S RIGHT BELOW ME, I –’

Ruby’s body froze. Gradually the chest sank.

‘Ruby? Ruby, can you hear me?’ Eldridge looked to the camera, talking directly to it and those observing. ‘I don’t know what happened. I think she’s gone. Ruby?’

‘You mean you lost her? Contact lost?’

Eldridge held up his right hand, Ruby’s hand still grasped in it. ‘Contact wasn’t broken. And she didn’t slip away. She’s just gone. She just stopped being there.’ He let go of her hand and stood back, looking at the camera. ‘Nothing there. Nothing.’ He looked lost, shaking his head.

The footage ended. Jonah stared at the frozen final image, Eldridge’s face looking into the camera with the beginning of that helpless bewilderment that would later consume him. Jonah kept staring until a pain in his hand roused him, his grip on the table so tight that his hand had cramped.

I can’t see it,
he thought.
It’s coming.
It was too close to the words Alice Decker had used. Far too close.

*   *   *

He spent the rest of the evening trying not to think about it. He saw movement in every corner, and jumped at the slightest noise. He told himself there was nothing to fear. Nothing.

But he knew what it meant. Alice Decker had not been mere hallucination. Whatever had spoken to him had stalked the dead before. With Eldridge, it had been dismissed as the subject panicking. He wondered how often something similar had occurred through the years since revival began, to be just as easily ignored.

Eldridge had claimed this thing whispered to him. Jonah wondered what it had said.

He found his neck itching, thirst growing – outward signs that the Harker remnant was still with him. It was time to take the medication Stephanie Graves had given him, he thought. Time to put an end to Harker’s lingering presence.

The pills were still with his keys, on the shelf by the door where he’d left them on arriving home. He decided to take them now and get straight to his bed. No need to wait.

He went to the kitchen to fill a glass of water. As he reached out to the faucet, he felt a sudden cold and stopped. He turned, staring out through the kitchen door into the rest of his apartment.

It was dark. Everywhere but the kitchen, the lights were out. A moment before, they had been on. Now, his apartment was a patchwork of black shadow.

He rubbed his neck and tried to ignore the thought that there was still movement under his skin.

His borrowed thirst was stronger. He was aware of something else, something that for a moment he could not pin down. His stomach fell away from him when he identified the feeling.

There was something in the room. There was something in the room, and it was watching him.

He moved to the kitchen door, slowly, his own shadow moving ahead of him. In the corner, in the deep black, was a shape. Someone was standing there, against the wall.

‘Hello?’ he said. He took a step forward. ‘Hello?’

He stared, trying to make it out. So little light, yet there – hands, clasped. There – a darker recess, the eyes. There – a whiteness that could only be teeth.

The shape breathed.

‘
Daniel?
’ he said, almost pleading with it.
Not Alice,
he hoped.
Dear God, not her.
He reached up to where he thought the light switch should be, his eyes not moving from the corner, letting his fingers seek it out.