The White Hands and Other Weird Tales (6 page)

No one answered his knocking so he entered, using the duplicate key. He had knocked quietly as he had no desire to attract the usual crowd of neighbours. Inside, the apartment looked much as it had before. The old concierge shuffled about, looking through Slokker’s personal effects. His clothes were still hanging in the wardrobe, and even his watch lay on the bedside table, next to the unmade bed. The mirror on the wardrobe door had been smashed and likewise the one above the sink in the bathroom. There were newspapers stuck to the windows, and he recognised the pile of pamphlets that Slokker must have taken from Deschamps’ apartment.

The concierge closed the door quietly and walked softly down the corridor to 205. He was doing his best not to feel jumpy, but he had to admit that the whole thing was odd. Once inside, he too noticed that although the painter’s equipment was there, they had yet to begin work. Nevertheless, it looked to him as if someone else, probably Slokker, had been there before him. Things had been moved around. When he checked the windowless room he had to leave the door open so that he could see more clearly into the unlit chamber. There was an odd shadow in the gloom, and so he switched on the dim lamp.

The light revealed Slokker’s starved body hanging in mid-air. The face was fixed in a grimace of pain and the lips were drawn back from clenched teeth. The sightless eyes were staring downwards at his reflection in the mirror. Slokker must have taken the belt from his trousers, fastened it around his neck, climbed up onto the chair and then attached the buckle to the obsolete light fitting on the ceiling. He had then kicked away the chair.

The concierge made himself turn away from the sight and his first thought was of the nasty reputation another suicide might lend the building. First Monsieur Deschamps (though he had at least had the decency to end his life elsewhere) and now this young idiot! He closed the door behind him, ensured that it was securely locked once more and made his way back to his office downstairs. As he sat waiting for the gendarmes’ arrival, he realised that he must have picked up some of the pamphlets from Slokker’s rooms. They were there in front of him, on the desk. He must have put them down there before he’d telephoned the authorities.

That night, after they had taken Slokker’s body away, the concierge was troubled by a dream about being trapped in a dark, windowless room.

The Ulymas Organisation was located in a sprawl of dilapidated buildings on the far west side of the city. None of the structures were more than four floors high and the exteriors were of bland, whitewashed brickwork, the paint flaking away from the walls. The windows were barred on the outside and always dirty, as if to deter those within from seeing the world outside. This neglect lent the business an air of unimportance, as if the work done there was subsidiary. Were it not for the dribble of workers that made their way to the place in the mornings and crept away in the evenings it might even have been assumed that the whole complex was derelict.
 

The employees arrived by way of the underground train line, the terminus of which, most of the time, served only those who worked for the Organisation. Aside from some run-down shops opposite the office complex, the area was a wasteland of gutted buildings and rubble.

David Cohen was travelling to the Ulymas premises from his digs near the centre of the city to begin his first day of work. He assumed that the other passengers on the underground train were fellow employees. This far west and so close to the terminus, there was no other destination to which rush-hour travellers would be bound. He noted their sullen faces and shabby business suits. Many of the men had not shaven and the women wore no makeup. To all appearances they were making only an absent-minded attempt to conform to accepted standards of office attire and appearance. Cohen himself was dressed smartly in a black three-piece suit and was clean-shaven.

For his interview a week previously he had travelled on a deserted mid-morning train. At first he had been alarmed by the state of the Organisation’s headquarters, with its atmosphere of impending abandonment. It did not look to him as though they would be able to offer him a position with any future. But the interview seemed to have gone well and he was promised a better salary than he had expected. The two interviewers had been somewhat vague figures, and neither had asked him any particularly probing or awkward questions. He could remember little of them except that they sat in the shadows at the back of the room. They had not elaborated on the exact nature of his duties, but had intimated that they would be concerned with an area with which he was familiar, intellectual property rights, although he was not told in which particular sphere he would be required to operate. Despite being au fait with various broadcast and publishing media in which such rights are usually exploited, Cohen had not heard of the Ulymas Organisation. When, before his interview, he had undertaken background research he had been unable to find the company listed in any trade publication.

Cohen disembarked at the terminus and followed his dozen or so co-workers over the bridge spanning the railway line and then along a series of underpasses that led out into the road opposite the business premises. None of the employees spoke to one another, but simply filed silently along, with heads slightly bowed, through the gates to the Organisation.

Cohen had been advised which building he should enter upon his arrival and this proved to be at the heart of the complex, some distance from the Personnel Department where his interview had been conducted. He wandered between sullen-looking flat-roofed buildings and across overgrown courtyards. Cohen could only marvel at the sheer enormity of the neglect. Many of the windows were laced with cracks, and some had been smashed. Doors to abandoned exterior storerooms hung from their hinges. Many of the paving slabs were broken, with weeds flourishing in the gaps and on those corners and edges where human tread was less frequent.

Other
than
the
sign
outside indicating that it housed the executive offices, the building in which Cohen was to work was indistinguishable from the others. Inside was a foyer and behind the reception desk sat a bored-looking security
guard
gazing
blankly
at
an
array
of
CCTV screens behind the counter. Cohen told him who he was and the man telephoned a number. After what seemed an age he advised Cohen that Mr Franklin would be down to collect him shortly.

In due course a portly man appeared.

‘Franklin,’ he introduced himself without enthusiasm, offering a damp, limp hand and refusing to make eye-contact. He was in his sixties and was dressed in a grubby grey suit.

‘Cohen,’ replied the new recruit. ‘It’s good . . .’ But Franklin had turned his back and was already moving. Rather put out, Cohen followed, noticing as they walked that the man’s long white hair trailed down over the back of his dirty collar.

‘I am your immediate superior,’ said the man as Cohen attempted to walk alongside him. The narrow corridor, with its threadbare green carpet, was not wide enough to allow them to walk together, so he fell back again and followed.

‘How long have you worked here?’ Cohen asked. The man continued on without turning round.

‘I have been here since the Ulymas Organisation began,’ he replied, now leading the younger man up a tiled stairwell. The layout of the building seemed erratic, almost haphazard, with certain of the corridors appearing to curve so that it was not always possible to see their end. Cohen was dismayed to find that the interior of the building was as run-down as its exterior, with grimy strip lighting providing the only illumination in the corridors. He hoped that the offices themselves would be brighter and better maintained, but he did not feel optimistic.

On their journey he was cheered to see approaching them a young woman dressed in a white smock wheeling what appeared to be a tea trolley. She paused to look at Cohen as the two men passed and it seemed to him that there was a look of pity in her gaze, mingled with a certain unease.

‘You will work in here,’ Franklin opened the door to a depressingly small room. Cohen walked in feeling even more despondent. His new office was cramped, with storage space afforded by wall-mounted shelves that reached up to its ceiling. It was far taller than it was wide, having a floor-area of perhaps twelve square feet, while its height was some fifteen feet. As it was located in the middle of the building, on the first floor, its only view was into a light-well, with a brick wall opposite, covered with lichen. Cohen’s spirits fell yet further when he realised that he would be unable to see even this limited view when he was sitting at his desk, as the small, barred, dirty window was shoulder-high and would be behind him while he worked. He was going to have to try hard to stay positive, he decided. Stretching up on tiptoe he peered through the grimy panes. He could see that there was a basement level below the ground floor.

‘You won’t be disturbed,’ Franklin said, still standing by the door. ‘Few people will need to see you. Someone will come to deliver your paperwork, and they’ll take it away when it’s finished.’

‘I wouldn’t mind seeing a few people!’ Cohen forced a smile.

‘Twice a day the woman we passed earlier will come by to serve refreshments.’

‘Just as long as she remembers I’m here,’ Cohen replied. He could not help thinking that this office was a cul-de-sac in a labyrinth.

He turned to the desk. Sitting on it was a very old computer and next to it a set of trays, the top one of which was laden with folders crammed with papers.

‘These files,’ Franklin explained, ‘relate to the intellectual property cases the Ulymas Organisation wishes you to handle. What you have there should keep you busy in your first week. They all concern serious infringements of Ulymas copyrights that require urgent action.’

‘Is there a company policy on the nature of our response to infringement?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Is there a tendency towards simply issuing a warning. Or do we threaten legal action? Is legal action often necessary?’

‘That will be left to your own judgement. Examine the cases on your desk and let them guide you.’

Cohen reached for the top file, and when he looked up again he found that Franklin had gone. He switched on the ancient computer and settled into the battered office chair, which he was relieved to find was moderately comfortable. Although he was concentrating on the papers in front of him, he was aware that no bootstrap data was appearing on the screen beside him. He looked up at the monitor and discovered to his bewilderment that a mass of crumpled papers had been stuffed inside it. They were backlit by an internal bulb.

He bent forward and pulled out a screwed-up sheet of yellowed paper. It was covered in writing of a kind. He examined others and they were the same. The handwritten notes had no punctuation or paragraphs and were simply a series of non-sequiturs, ramblings or repetitive phrases. But there did seem to be a theme, of sorts. The name ‘Ulymas’ appeared over and over again and invariably in association with such words as ‘terror’, ‘horrible’, ‘infinite’ and ‘omniscient’. Could this be a practical joke perpetrated by his new work colleagues? It was hard to equate his dour new superior, Franklin, with this kind of prank. Perhaps the computer, even his ‘office’ was a joke, but a quick check outside the door confirmed that there was no stifled giggling from the corridor. Indeed, the corridor was deserted.

David sat back down warily and returned his attention to the contents of the folders. The first of these contained various documents relating to a dispute of which even a cursory examination suggested that the position taken by the Ulymas Organisation was legally and morally untenable. Franklin had left a note on the folder intimating that this case was for Cohen’s information only, it having been settled recently.

It seemed that a writer, one whose book had been published several months ago, had received warning that he had infringed the copyright of the Organisation by incorporating certain metaphysical speculations into his work. These speculations, it was argued, could not possibly have originated anywhere other than the Ulymas Organisation. Although they did not make the claim that the infringement had been anything other than accidental, the Organisation had insisted that the exploitation of what they termed ‘psychical leakage’ had to be halted. The book in question was a collection of pulp horror stories entitled
The Darkness Closes In
. There was a copy of the paperback in the file and when Cohen picked it up he saw that the author’s name had been completely blacked out on the cover, title and copyright pages. It was likewise deleted from all of the correspondence. He flicked through the book, noticing that one story in particular had been highlighted in several places with a yellow marker pen. His new employers had evidently taken great exception to the ludicrous denouement of the story where the protagonist had his brains devoured by a huge spider. The poor man’s remains were left dangling and suspended in an abandoned room with cobwebs spun by the arachnid radiating from the empty pan of his skull.

Cohen did not know how the case had been concluded, but surely it could not have been in the Organisation’s favour.

He sank back into his chair and drew a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. He lit one as he read through the rest of the interminable correspondence. There could be no doubt that the whole case had been an utter waste of time. He wanted this to be a part of the same practical joke but it was too detailed, too earnest and only too evidently authentic.

Leafing through more of the files, Cohen found that the main thrust of his predecessor’s arguments seemed to be the Organisation’s ownership of thought, as if human consciousness were itself a facet of intellectual property rights. From the correspondence Cohen could see that his superiors, including Franklin, endorsed this attitude. There were even positive comments from Ulymas himself, the founder and Managing Director of the Organisation.

As he sat smoking, Cohen tried to make up his mind what to do. It was his first day in the job and Franklin had told him that he had free rein to handle affairs as he saw fit. In Cohen’s professional opinion all of the cases he had looked at so far were fit only for the wastepaper basket. Why so much time had been wasted upon them was beyond his comprehension.

In the next few cases he examined it seemed that the Organisation was claiming retrospective infringement of copyright. That is, they were asserting that certain works written before the company’s formation had exploited and plagiarised ideas over which Ulymas asserted absolute ownership. The last two cases were concerned with
infringements
of
copyrights
that
had
not
yet
occurred but which they regarded as inevitable. Invariably these claims centred on fictional works of a bizarre nature. The
Organisation’s
justification
for
such
outlandish
declarations lay in a convoluted refutation of the concept of linear time. As far as Cohen could grasp the proposition, as set out in the paperwork before him, sequential events were considered to be a mere illusion. Ulymas argued the view that time in fact radiated like a spiral or a web. From this, his predecessor had affirmed that what memories we possess are not of events themselves, but of the last memory we had of that event. The more we remember, the further we are from actuality. He had maintained that the passage of time is only a trick of the memory, an infinity of déjà vu, the past a creation of our minds, a spiral without a centre.

Cohen found that his own mind was reeling. His dilemma was acute. All the evidence suggested that he was working for an organisation which, to say the least, lacked the slightest grip on reality. Should he speak to Franklin? It seemed pointless; the man had personally endorsed many of his predecessor’s fantastic claims of infringement. Was he really expected to write further letters in a similar vein and carry on perpetrating the charade?

Perhaps it would be best to delay any decision until he had spoken to some of his other colleagues in the department. Franklin had given him no indication that he was to be formally introduced to anybody else, so he decided to find them for himself. As the best part of the morning had now passed and it was nearing lunchtime, he left his office in search of company.