The White Hands and Other Weird Tales (7 page)

He peered through the glazed panel in his neighbour’s door but the room was empty. The second office along appeared similarly vacant, but the third revealed a single occupant hunched over a computer screen. He knocked on the door with the intention of introducing himself, but the man gazed up at him blankly through the square of glass before turning back to his task like an automaton. Cohen tried the same approach at several more doors before, finally, one worker acknowledged him with a feeble wave of the hand, beckoning him in. Even then, he could not help thinking that the response was lethargic and indifferent, as if the man was drugged.

His name, he told Cohen, was Mr Kromer. He was middle-aged, with curling black hair, an unkempt moustache and dark, sunken eyes. His small, slight form was clothed in a charcoal-grey suit that was worn at the cuffs. Cohen tried to temper his enquiry about the company’s bizarre interpretation of copyright law with small talk. He informed Kromer cheerfully that this was his first day, but Kromer only smiled wanly and finally asked politely but coldly exactly what Cohen wanted, as there were urgent matters awaiting his attention.

Cohen then had no choice but to tell Kramer directly about the quandary in which he found himself. Much to his surprise, Kromer, who listened intently and without expression, did not seem at all perturbed by the situation. When Cohen had finished Kromer explained that it was part of company policy and that, given time, Cohen would come to understand the full justice of their claims. As for the state of his computer, Kromer seemed unable to grasp the reason for Cohen’s confusion. He gestured to his own machine, and Cohen saw that it was in the same state as his, merely the shell of a monitor stuffed with crumpled documents. Kromer explained that the information contained therein changed on a daily basis, with fresh paperwork being inserted every morning.

Cohen returned to his room. Despite being utterly confused by the sheer waste of effort and time his work seemed to involve, he resolved that, as his employers were paying him so well, he would seek to fulfil his obligations. He spent the rest of the day composing letters defending imagined, indefensible future infringements, and was relieved to find that the task became easier as he went on. It was almost like writing a novel, Cohen supposed, and he used all his skill and imagination in inventing a nebulous rationale for the Organisation’s position. Towards the end of the day he found that he was writing at great speed, and that unbidden yet alluring extravagances relating to ‘psychical leakage’ had been incorporated into his longhand correspondence.

At six p.m. Cohen put the files into his pending tray and prepared to leave. He couldn’t recall whether he had managed to have lunch that day, but was sure that the woman with the tea trolley had not passed by. He had a final cigarette and stood staring out of the small, barred window at the brick wall opposite. It was dark outside. At the edge of his field of vision he caught sight of Kromer’s reflection. Kromer was standing in the doorway, now wearing a long black overcoat and a battered soft-brimmed hat.

‘Are you about ready to leave, Cohen? Might we make the journey together?’

Cohen gladly gave his consent. He had spoken to no one during the afternoon and could do with the company.

During the walk back through the labyrinthine corridors of the executive building, Cohen found Kromer more forthcoming than he had been earlier.

‘You were asking about our approach to copyright matters?’

‘Yes. I find it hard to believe that we can legitimately claim absolute ownership of so many ideas and concepts.’

‘Well, Ulymas only wishes to claim ownership of that which rightfully belongs to the Organisation.’

‘And reading through the files I was surprised that so much of it deals specifically with the . . . well . . . with the weird and horrible.’

‘I was as bemused as you on my first day,’ Kromer was sympathetic. ‘I remember feeling a sense of, shall we say, ‘absurdity’ at the Organisation’s claims. But as time has passed, my scepticism has faded. You know, I once received certain memoranda from Ulymas himself . . .’ He stopped and appeared to be recalling the event with great pleasure. ‘They were written in atrociously crabbed handwriting, but they specifically addressed my concerns. In fact, they more than addressed my concerns.’

‘In what way?’

‘They were responses to thoughts that I had not dared to share with anyone else. And the memoranda from Ulymas were always posted within my computer monitor. The words were written in spirals from the inside outwards . . .’

Cohen interrupted:

‘You can’t be suggesting that Ulymas has some kind of telepathic intuition?’

‘Why not?’

‘It seems much more likely that he spies on his employees.’

‘You are not seriously suggesting that he has hidden cameras?’

‘No, I suppose not.’

Whilst they talked, Cohen noted the expressionless faces of the other Ulymas employees staring blankly ahead as they made their way homewards. He had the sensation that they were listening to his conversation with Kromer, or at least absorbing it somehow. Kromer seemed to sense Cohen’s unease.

‘There are no secrets at the Ulymas Organisation,’ he explained with a sad smile. ‘The more one works here, the less independent thought seems to matter.’

‘Have you ever met Ulymas? In the flesh?’ he asked Kromer.

‘I haven’t had that pleasure. I don’t know anyone who has. In fact, some of our colleagues enjoy their own little joke that he doesn’t exist at all!’

It seemed even harder to believe that the Ulymas Organisation was a place where anyone made jokes. Cohen realised that they had been walking through the corridors for rather a long time without actually getting anywhere.

‘Is this really the way out?’ he asked Kromer.

‘Ah, now that’s an awkward question to answer. You know, I’m not sure that I remember ever having found a way out,’ he replied.

‘What do you mean?’ Cohen knew that he was beginning to betray some of his nervousness and exasperation.

‘Just that. I don’t know that I’ve ever found the exit. It’s a funny thing. I try every evening, and I somehow find myself the following day in my own office, but with no memory of what has happened in the intervening hours.’

Cohen stopped walking. Kromer looked surprised:

‘You have to keep trying. You know, just once there might be an exception.’

‘But there never has been yet?’

‘Well, no.’

‘And that doesn’t worry you?’

‘I suppose it does. The implication is that all employees of the Organisation have been denied the right to any existence beyond the fulfilment of those duties that the company has deemed fitting for them.’ Kromer looked almost fearful as he drew breath and continued his speculations. ‘Do you know, I can remember nothing of my former life, except for a vague feeling that I might have once, somehow, acted against the Ulymas Organisation in some way.’

He smiled bravely, and looked furtively around before continuing. ‘Perhaps working here is a form of retribution. Most of the employees I’ve spoken to can’t recall just how they came to work for the Organisation in the first place.’

Cohen took Kromer’s arm.

‘Look, come on, this can’t be right. You’re feeling a bit tired, that’s all. Come with me. We’ll find the way out together.’

But in attempting to recall the location of the exit, Cohen was finding that his own memory of his journey in to work that morning was beginning to fade. They wandered from corridor to corridor somewhat aimlessly, occasionally passing others in an apparently similar state of confused disorientation. In fact, one fellow worker gave Cohen a horrible start. He had only caught a glimpse of the face as the man glanced up at him, but it had seemed to him that the man had no eyes, only hollow sockets stuffed with crumpled-up shreds of paper.

Finally Cohen and Kromer found the tiled stairwell that led down to the foyer. The security guard was not at his desk and the windows were shuttered. They looked through the trellis doors but could see only a black and starless void. The building seemed poised on a precipice above it. There was nothing else there. Nothing at all.

***

By the time they arrived back at Kromer’s office, Cohen’s memory of what had transpired was becoming hazy, so much so that he was inclined to feel that he must have been dreaming. Kromer seemed to have slipped back into his former lethargy and was once more concerning himself with paperwork.
 

Cohen watched him sit down in front of his computer monitor. On the desk in front of it was a sheet of paper that Kromer must have scrawled on earlier.

‘But what have I written here?’ he asked Cohen.

Cohen stepped away from the table. He was suddenly fearful.

Back in his own office, he saw at once that the papers he’d been working on had been taken away. Franklin had left him a memorandum stating that he was not pleased with Cohen’s attempts at letter writing, indeed, he had felt obliged to refer the matter to his own superior.

Cohen looked down at his suit and found that it had become crumpled and soiled. His chin was unshaven. Just how long he had been here it was now impossible to tell. Moreover, it didn’t seem to matter. He finished reading the memorandum from Franklin and read the words: ‘It is time that we took punitive action.’

From somewhere back along the corridor Cohen heard quiet laughter, but there was no humour in it.

Flat to rent. One bedroom. Ravel Street.

Very quiet neighbourhood. £100 p.w.

Contact Mr Mangan. Eves.

There was also a telephone number. I made an appointment with the gravel-voiced Mangan to view the flat that same evening. I had been looking for somewhere new for months, but it had been difficult to find anywhere in the part of town I preferred. I had discovered the quarter by accident during the course of one of my many night-time explorations. The shabby streets that wound down a steep hill fascinated me, and at the bottom was a wide black river. By night there appeared to be nothing beyond the river; no sign of human habitation, no street or house lights. When I visited the quarter by day I found that there was an expanse of desolate marsh, stretching far into the distance.
 

I knew of Ravel Street as I had passed through it several times during my nocturnal wanderings. Like the other streets on the hill it possessed the usual twin rows of amputated trees with branch-stumps on the trunks. The houses themselves varied widely in size and design, although all were run-down. Several were rather grandiose with gabled roofs and verandahs while others were single-storey buildings, some little more than shacks. Many looked long-abandoned, and those occupants who remained seemed down-at-heel, the dregs of society.

The meagre population of the quarter had evidently been there for generations, and, I came to understand, may once have been a distinct ethnic or religious group, although whatever god they had worshipped was long since discarded or forgotten. During my explorations I discovered what I thought must be examples of their abandoned temples, with the roofs fallen in and windows broken and gaping. The interiors were littered with relics and decaying religious incunabula, written in what I could only assume was an ancient, dead language.

I had first encountered the strange people of the quarter during my midnight expeditions into their neighbourhood and initially they ignored me. Many of them were out on the streets at night, wandering like ghosts without any purpose or destination that I could determine. Perhaps, I felt, since their old customs and religious practices had fallen into abeyance, the common identity that bound them together and separated them from outsiders was informed mainly by a sense of shared loss? Perhaps it operated like a black hole at the centre of their mental universe, sucking them ever inwards? It was this theory that fuelled a desire in me to be no longer a mere tourist but a resident, and thus, perhaps, come to understand the mystery.

During my most recent night-visits I had begun to notice that, at last, those whom I encountered turned desolate eyes to meet mine, recognising me as one of their own. And in turn I felt a great empathy with these people. It was their alienated gaze, their white papier-mâché faces and the hopelessness in their expressions that gave them their fascination and distinguished them from those not of the quarter.

I arrived at Ravel Street at the appointed time and waited outside the address I had been given. It was a tall, decrepit house, five floors high, with arched narrow windows and a peaked roof sheltering gables on all four faces. Much of the exterior brickwork and plaster was crumbling and rotten. The windows of the first three floors were boarded up and those of the upper floors were dark. At the front of the building there was a decaying Doric portico.

I looked up and down the street, its amputated trees stark and pale in the moonlight. A brand new-looking car, with headlights blazing, was making its way slowly along the road. If this was Mangan then it was a fair bet that he did not live locally: there were very few cars parked here and they were invariably battered, obsolete models.

Sure enough the driver hailed me and pulled over to the kerb. A short man climbed out of the car, clad in a raincoat and a hat with a narrow brim. He must have been in his early fifties and what I could see of his face was furrowed with deep lines.

‘You are . . . Mr Conrad Smith, is it? To see the flat?’ he asked.

I nodded and shook his hand. He led me to the door of the house, and I asked if there were any other tenants.

‘Oh no, it’s been unoccupied for some time. At the moment only the attic flat is ready. The other flats will be renovated soon.’

He unlocked the front door and we passed into a hall, empty except for a large mirror. A slightly incongruous new carpet had been laid, however, which extended up the steep stairs. After six flights Mangan ushered me into the attic flat.

Although I would have taken the place whatever state it was in, such was my desire to live in the quarter, it was a pleasant surprise to find the rooms in good condition. The lounge and the kitchen had been knocked together into one large L-shaped room, while the bedroom was separate and at the back of the house. I liked the sloping ceilings and the solitary bay window beneath one of the gables. I would be able to sit at this window and gaze down and across the roofs to the black river and the marshes beyond. Mangan warned me that the house would be particularly cold during the winter (it was now October) and that the gas fire would have to be kept lit almost continuously. He advised me that the cost of heating was included in the rent.

We agreed on a six-month contract and I wrote a cheque for a deposit and the first month’s rent there and then. He said that I would be free to move in as soon as the cheque cleared, and promised that when it did he would telephone me and I could collect the keys.

I requested a little more time to wander around and examine the rooms and Mangan went downstairs. What I actually did was to sit at the bay window and gaze out over the quarter, absorbing its melancholy atmosphere.

I do not know how long I sat there before he returned. He looked somewhat flustered, and said that he wished to lock up and go home. During the time he had been away I had discovered that the occupants of Ravel Street appeared to prefer darkness to light. I was intrigued that although I did not see a single source of illumination through any of the windows in the street below me, occasionally I glimpsed the movement of some pale, gaunt figure within.

A few days later I collected the keys from Mangan at his little office in the business sector and hired a driver with a small van to ferry my belongings and myself to my new home. When we reached the neighbourhood the driver expressed some surprise: he claimed never to have been there before, even though he said he was familiar with most of the town. He peered through his windscreen in astonishment at the procession of dilapidated houses and sawn-off trees.

It was beginning to get dark when we arrived at Ravel Street but for a little extra money the man was willing to help me get my belongings up to the attic room, despite the climb. However, I sensed that he was anxious to leave before night fell and he fairly snatched the notes from my hand before driving off as quickly as his battered van would allow.

I watched his departure from the seat at the bay window. The atmosphere of the place seemed to have disturbed him. As darkness fell I watched the first of the night-walkers emerge onto the streets.

That night my sleep was disturbed by dreams in which I myself walked with those on the dark streets below.

***

When I awoke the next morning I felt an almost irresistible apathy and it required all my willpower to get ready for work and walk up the hill through the now empty streets. I caught a bus to the offices where I worked, and I found that it caused me real pain as we left the quarter. Nothing on the outside seemed quite real and made only the vaguest of impressions on my consciousness, like a memory one would rather forget. I did my work competently enough but it held no interest for me, and I found myself repeatedly staring at the clock, aching for it to be time to return once again to Ravel Street.
 

My work colleagues noticed my distracted state and questioned me about its cause. I never discussed any aspect of my private life at the office, though, and they had no means of connecting my behaviour to my recent move.

I wondered if anyone else knew of the quarter’s existence. Certainly it was never mentioned, but then it had no name that I was aware of.

At 5.30 p.m., as usual, I turned off my computer, collected my leather briefcase and prepared to leave. But in the corridor I was accosted by three colleagues who were insistent that I drink with them at a nearby pub. They wanted to celebrate one of the secretaries’ birthdays and refused to accept my excuses. I made several efforts to get away from them during the course of the evening but these proved in vain. Some hours later I found myself out on the street, intoxicated, accompanied by the secretary. I realised by her persistence that she wished to return home with me. She would be disappointed, I knew, but how was I to explain that human intimacy was no longer of any consequence in my life?

In the taxi I asked her where she lived so that I could tell the driver where to drop her, and her confident manner changed at once to a hurt uncertainty. She turned away, and we travelled the rest of the way in welcome silence. Once she had been safely despatched I told the driver to take me to a road some distance from home so that I could walk the rest of the way. The alcohol coursing through my veins had unsettled me, and I wanted to see what effect it would have on my perception of the quarter.

I walked through the streets, encountering from time to time the gaunt nightwalkers. The very shadows seemed alive that night, spilling like Indian ink across a scarred landscape. The trees appeared to be covered with white flesh rather than bark. In the vivid moonlight they resembled the trunks of decapitated bodies of titanic size, half-buried in an upright position.

I almost spoke to one of the quarter’s inhabitants during my wanderings when I thought that his gaze had deliberately caught my own. But I was mistaken. The impression lasted only for the briefest of moments and then his eyes lowered, hopelessly, as if he were utterly desolate and alone.

I could not tell how much later it was that I found myself wandering along the towpath by the river. I passed rotten wooden warehouses and several houseboats moored along the banks. All of the boats were badly maintained and several were half-sunk; only pathetic shells remained, partly covered by the oily water, unburied corpses on a muddy battlefield. There were no lights on in the boats but as with the houses, an occasional ghostly face could be glimpsed within, peering outwards, before being swallowed once more by the dark interior.

Finding my way back to Ravel Street proved difficult. I could not find a direct route home, only a series of diversions and dead-ends. Above me shone the full moon, following me from behind the chimney-stacks and peaked roofs, bathing the vast marshes beyond in a ghastly light.

***

One aspect of the decayed houses of the quarter puzzled me greatly and continued to do so after I awoke the following morning, exhausted, with a pounding headache and fully clothed on my bed. I had noticed before that many of the houses were boarded-up, but now I had discovered that some of them were still occupied. As I had passed one such building I heard footsteps within, so I had listened at other windows and heard more footsteps and low, hollow, whispering voices speaking in a language I did not recognise. I could see into one house through a partly dislodged board, and there I caught a glimpse of a ravaged face.
 

It was dark and I realised that I’d slept through the sunlit hours. I removed my grubby clothes and washed myself. Although I had no appetite I felt that I should eat something and so made myself a meal from the odds and ends I had brought with me to the flat. I took my bowl over to the bay window and peered out into the night. To my astonishment I saw an unusual amount of illumination coming from one of the apartments in the house opposite. I could see dozens of candles burning behind a very large fanlight window.

I was intrigued, and found that I had a clear view into this flat since it was not only directly opposite but also only one floor below my own. The candles had been arranged in a circle on bare floorboards, and there was no sign of any furniture in the room. Then, just after I had lit my cigarette, a figure appeared. It was a naked woman with indescribably white flesh. Her face was obscured by very long black hair that hung straight down as far as her belly. She knelt in the middle of the candlelit circle and was reading from what looked like one of the incunabula I’d seen littering the abandoned temples.

I listened very carefully and thought that I could hear whispering. As I strained to hear I lent forward to obtain a better view out of the open window. She threw back her head and her long black hair parted to reveal her face. It was that of a half-formed papier-mâché doll. The eyes were dead and vacant, as if nothing more than empty sockets.

I took another drag on the cigarette and then flicked it away. Her head dropped and the long black hair covered once more her awful face. The woman’s chin now rested almost on her chest and the curtain of hair streamed over her knees. The whispering grew frantic. Then she let the incunabulum fall from her grasp and blew out the candles one at a time until only the cold moonlight illuminated her body. I watched in horrified fascination as she began to crawl on her belly across the floorboards like a great white spider, her hair trailing behind her. I watched until the moon moved across the sky to a position where its light no longer fell on the scene. Yet even when it had passed and I could see no more, I could hear her whispering softly to herself. Was this the remnant of some ancient ritual, a corruption, perhaps, of the original form of worship of the quarter? It seemed to involve the extinction of light, perhaps signalling the end of hope and a descent into oblivion.

The following day I went to one of the abandoned temples and took an incunabulum for myself.