Thy Fearful Symmetry (2 page)

He glanced at himself in the mirror.
I'm looking at a man damned to Hell, and these days I can't even pretend that Hell is a metaphor
. Somewhere, in some reality, there really were hundreds of millions of screaming, agonised souls doomed to eternal suffering. Calum imagined he could hear their pain grating the air, and the word they were screaming sounded suspiciously like his name.

By eight fifteen Calum was fed, watered, and running down the carpeted stairwell he shared with his neighbours. Pushing open the security door at the ground floor, he stepped into a morning white with frost. Zipping his padded jacket, he shoved his hands in his pocket and tried to make his neck vanish beneath the collar. It was not a morning for faint hearts, and as he made his way down the street towards Byres Road he engaged in a haphazard balancing act, wanting to rush for the Underground, but needing to keep his footing on the frozen pavement. Clouds hung over the city with vague menace, threatening rain or snow. Crossing the Kelvin, he noticed chunks of ice floating in the waters. The river was running high, which meant that, to the north of the city, those clouds had ceased playing tease.

On the far side of the bridge he came to Partick Cross, where Dumbarton Road sliced across the bottom of Byres Road on its way towards the City Centre. The junction growled with rush hour traffic trying to navigate the random patterns of the traffic lights. Calum waited for what felt like an age before the green man signalled that all would be safe for the few seconds he needed to dash to the opposite pavement. A muttering crowd of gloves and scarves crossed with him, clouds of condensing breath fogging the crisp morning air. Many arrowed for Kelvinhall station and the escalators sliding down into the gloom.
 

As usual, the ticket machines weren't working, and Calum joined the shuffling queue for the single manned window. There was no rush. His shopping trip into the city centre, a probably optimistic quest to find some credible reference books about earthbound metaphysical entities, was a leisurely one. While he waited, he picked up a copy of the
Metro
from a stand against the wall, wondering whose job it was to deliver the free newspaper across the city every morning. Even when he was forced to travel at six thirty, just as the Underground opened, the Metro was there regardless of the weather. A minor miracle in the scheme of things, but the miraculous had been playing on his mind of late.

Five minutes later, he slid his ticket into the slot in the barrier, pushed through the turnstile, and scurried down the stairs.
 

There was only one platform at Kelvinhall station. Trains pulled in on both sides, and when he first came to Glasgow he had thought the walkway ridiculously narrow. For a long time he had insisted on walking down the very centre, as though the slightest slip might topple him onto the tracks. Several months had passed before the six or seven feet of tidy yellow-brown bricks had felt adequate, and he still loathed the thought of having to use the Underground if he ever had a drink in him.
 

Glasgow's subway had two lines, the inner and outer circles, which did a constant loop around the city centre in both directions, taking in the South Side and West End. The rest of the city relied on buses and surface trains, a network that some overpaid marketing executive had decided to label the 'Overground'. At least those vehicles didn't smell faintly of sewage, Calum supposed, but the subway remained the fastest way to get about if you weren't travelling far from the centre of the city.

A train waited on the Outer Circle. Beneath the grime, it was the deep, burned shade that had given the route its nickname – The Clockwork Orange. Calum had often wondered whether the name dated to before or after the Anthony Burgess novel. He still didn't know the answer.

To his surprise, the carriage was almost empty – he must have just missed a previous train – and he slumped into a seat, feeling almost jolly in spite of his ongoing transgressions against God, his dreams, and the possible fate of his immortal soul. As more commuters ran to catch the train before it pulled out, he unfolded his copy of the Metro and glanced at the front page.

His good mood shattered as he scanned the main headline.

DOZENS DEAD IN NIGHTCLUB HORROR – POLICE FEAR DEMONIC NEW DRUG

He read more, as what little heat he had managed to build up beneath the layers of his clothing seeped from him in one swift flow. People had dropped dead on a dance floor, with broken limbs, shattered hearts, and imploded brains. There was no suggestion of violence at the scene. Police suspected drinks had been spiked, but were not publicly hazarding any guesses as to what with. Victims had been smiling, even laughing, as they died. Reports told of one dark haired man who had walked among them, and the authorities had issued a description of him as somebody they wanted to speak to very urgently.

Calum recognised the description. It was unmistakeable. Feeling as though everybody on the train was suddenly looking at him, he wondered how much of what he read was his fault.

CHAPTER TWO

Clive Huntley bit his lip and managed not to swear. In his head, the mental clock that insisted on counting every second of every hour of every day with irritating diligence, ticked again. “Jamie,” he forced through clenched teeth, “I've told you once already,
put that down
.”

Something in his voice or face must have shown how close to breaking point he was. At the back of the classroom a surly, dark haired sixteen year old, built for rugby and brawling, looked up, startled. As he lost what little concentration he could lay claim to, the tennis ball he had been bouncing off his desk slipped from his hand. Teenage heads dropped as they tried to follow the course of the ball, which bounced from chair leg to wall, to foot, to bag, and on. Clive suspected it was receiving more than one kick of encouragement on its travels.

“Sorry sir.” Jamie sounded it, and Clive tried to stop his emotions rampaging across his face. For a second he imagined how it would feel to seize a fistful of hair at the back of the boy's head, and hammer his nose against the blackboard. Once. Twice. Third time the charm, and then he would mash the lump of tissue and cartilage that remained back and forth against the green-black slate, leaving wide, damp smears of blood and snot gleaming in the headache inducing strip lighting.

Clive took a slow breath through his nostrils, clamping his eyes closed and counting back from five. The moment passed. With it went the adrenaline that had aggravated his ordinarily mild temper, leaving him feeling pasty and shaken. Opening his eyes, he saw the class watching him, some worried, some simply curious as to what would happen next. “Right,” he managed, “back to Antony and Cleopatra. Mock exams are on the horizon, so today we'll have a trial run. Get your pens ready.” There was a disorganised flurry, as pens were unearthed from bags and pockets. “The question is this. With the death of Antony in Act Four, the play reaches its natural climax, and the tragedy is complete. Act Five becomes an extended epilogue. Discuss. Forty-five minutes, exam conditions, starting now.” Groans sounded across the room, but the whispery scratching of pens scribbling half-formed thoughts soon dominated. Clive sank into the chair behind his desk with relief, surreptitiously pulling the morning's newspaper out.
 

Still feeling a tremor in his hands, he ran his fingers over the lines of text, searching for any mention of his name. The cover story, which also dominated the next two pages, worried him, and with his heart beating too fast he searched the details to see if any of the victims were named. It took him ten minutes, and when he found nothing to corroborate his fears he sucked in a partial breath of relief. There was a description of a man who could have been Ambrose, but it was so hard to be sure. The nightclub was on the university campus, where faux Byron look-alikes were plentiful. Clive also knew his friend's goodness too well, and could not associate him with a massacre like this.
 

The scent on the air was one he associated almost entirely with teaching this age group. Hanging pungently over everything else was the heady, clashing odour of perfumes applied by girls obsessed with sex. Those not already doing it soon would be, and the elaborate nasal mating game they brought into his class made it smell like a whore's boudoir. Underlying the cloying sweetness like a festering sore was a foetid mix of male sweat, and the chemical aftertaste of enthusiastically applied deodorant. Half the boys drooled over the girls, while the others dreamed of joyriding, petty thuggery, and other ways to pass the time after school. Sluts and criminals in the making, all of them.

Clive shook his head, drawing curious glances from the front row of desks. What was wrong with him? When he became a teacher, he had believed no kid was irredeemable, and had tried to bring out their best by engaging them instead of standing aloof. Maintaining his idealism wasn't always easy in practise, but he had remained determined not to become one of those who started their careers with lofty ambitions and quickly fell by the wayside. Recently though, the most disturbing, horrific thoughts had slammed into his head, leaving him feeling rank and violated.

Resting his chin on his hand, he looked back down at the paper spread across his desk. Worry was doing this to him. Since his next door neighbour had vanished nearly three weeks ago, he had been distracted and anxious.
 

Heather didn't know the cause of his stress, and Clive couldn't find a way to make clear why the man was so important to him. How did you explain to your wife of two years that you couldn't sleep at night for thinking about another man's eyes, the way he looked at you in the corridor, the quiet, sensitive conversations you had about Shakespeare, and Milton, and Keats?
 

Clive knew in his heart that he wasn't homosexual, but the way it looked was undeniable. Sometimes, when it caught him by surprise, he even found himself reacting to the man physically, his erection straining before he could reign his daydreams in. But he wasn't gay. He had just never had a male friend quite like Ambrose before. That was all.

Even before his violent disappearance, Ambrose had been preoccupied, less willing to pass time than he used to be. Clive had worried that he had inadvertently done something to push him away. Perhaps Ambrose sensed how Clive felt about him and panicked, reading more into it than was meant.
 

Now Clive might never have a chance to put that right. Disturbed by the deep, unfamiliar lines of worry his fingertips could trace in his forehead, he sat back and gazed out of the window. Spidery frost patterns still clung to the schoolyard where the shadow of the old Victorian building held back the sun. There was something strange and mournful about the shapes they traced, and the longer Clive gazed at them, the more distant he felt from his own body. Yes, he had worried for a long time that Ambrose was pulling away from him, that this beautiful, magnificent man had been scared off. Since that night three weeks ago though, darker, more frightening alternatives had presented themselves to him. Now it was possible that Ambrose had not been running from what they felt for one another at all (when he was distracted, Clive could acknowledge those feelings he would not otherwise concede). Instead, he thought his friend had protected him from something dangerous, violent, and treacherous. Something that visited at Ambrose's flat that night, and howled.
 

Clive's memories danced out at him from between the trailing crystals of the frost-strewn playground, swarmed up, and engulfed him.

Clive woke with a start, not sure whether the clamour belonged to a dream or the real world. His head had barely touched the pillow, so he could not yet have drifted into dream worlds. When he felt Heather's hand on his arm he knew it had been real. “Was that next door?” she whispered.

A cold fist wrapped around his heart, at the same time as something heavy crashed into the ceiling and dropped hard to the floor in Ambrose's flat. More chilling was the vicious roar that had preceded it – the sound that had dragged him from sleep in time to hear the crashes. “I think so,” he murmured.

“Should we...”

“Shh. Listen.” They turned their heads, straining to hear through the wall behind the bed, all that separated them from Ambrose's living room. Clive heard voices. One was Ambrose, definitely, his elegant, cultured tones easily identifiable even though he was speaking too softly for the words to carry. The second voice was one Clive did not recognise, though the accent was English like Ambrose's own. A relative, perhaps? A brother or cousin, come to visit, and in the middle of a family row? The darkness around him sharpened his focus, and he thought he made out words.
Horns… Pandora… Michael…
 

Clive climbed out of bed carefully, searching with his feet for his trousers. It felt very important that he be as quiet as possible. If this were a family argument, he wouldn't want Ambrose to think he had invaded his privacy. Curiosity prevented him from staying warm in bed with Heather, and something more, a protectiveness. If Ambrose was in trouble, Clive wanted to be there to help him. Clive wanted to be the man Ambrose could rely on when there was trouble. Perhaps in helping now he would make amends for whatever offence had driven his friend away.

“Clive,” Heather whispered, “where are you going?” Clive's eyes had adjusted enough to make out his wife's silhouette sitting up in bed. Not too long ago, he would have been worried about her, about what might happen if the trouble next door spilled over. They had been married two years, and Clive knew deep down that there was something wrong in putting Ambrose's safety above hers.
 

Still, he could hardly sit back if their neighbour needed help, could he? The thought settled in his mind, smothering his doubts like a heavy blanket.

“Don't worry. I'll knock on the door and check that everything's okay. Be right back.” Heather huddled in the bed. For some time now, Clive had been aware that she backed off rather than challenge anything to do with Ambrose. She was a perceptive woman, and no doubt sensed that this area was off limits. Besides, she knew as well as he that, since moving up to Scotland from Birmingham, Clive had made few friends outside of work.