Fearful Symmetries (40 page)

“Wobs?” I slap the hand that’s not on my mouth against the wall ’cause there must be a bulb hanging from the middle of the ceiling and so there must be a light switch.

And then I find it. The light is very bright. I move my hand from my mouth to my eyes till I can see right. Wobs is lying in a cot just like the one in his room at home. He’s wearing white pyjamas and lying on his back with his legs and arms out but he doesn’t have a dummy in and his mouth’s wide open.

That fluttery feeling in my tummy gets worse and now I can hear the buzzy sound again too. The buzzy sound that keeps on getting louder and louder even though the other window in Wobs’s room is just like mine: mean and wee and locked. There’s a funny mini room in the other corner—it’s made of glass and has a little door in the side. Someone’s left a cup of coffee on a table inside it but there’s no one there to drink it.

My legs get shaky when the buzzy sound gets even louder and my knees smack against the cold floor before I know I’ve fallen down. I keep whispering for Wobs even though he’s a baby—a baby who slept all the way through his mummy dying and me and him getting taken away to here.

They’re coming.
They’re coming
. I’m older than my age. I’m clever. I’m nearly a grownup really. I keep thinking these things as the fluttering gets harder and the buzzy sound gets louder. But I don’t believe them. I’m just really
really
scared. And I want my mum.

And then the light buzzes too and then it goes out. The dark is darker. The buzzy sound is so loud I can’t hear anything else. I think of mum saying “I love you, Jojo.” I think of her pinching my arms till it hurt and asking “what would you have done if it wasn’t okay, sweetie?” And I think of all our practicing after mister and missus S and the screaming and then the quiet and all the policemen in uniforms who came to ask us questions ’cause mum said she’d been too scared to stop the Really Bad Thing. And then dad lying to me like mum lied to them when he took me to see the monkeys in the zoo and said he had to go away for a bit.

I march into the middle of the room and I reach out into the dark till I feel the bars of Wobs’s cot. And then I think of mum smiling in the living room with the curtains shut and the stereo on and whispering in my ear “come on, Inch-high Private Eye, what’s your plan?”

Keep your mouth shut, I think. Or you’ll catch flies.

I thought everything was okay again till I was halfways down the stairs looking at the messy sheet on the floor. This time mum didn’t scream my name—she just screamed and screamed. And then she stopped. I turned round and ran back up but I didn’t want to. Wobs’s room was dark ’cause the sun had gone away behind the wall at the end of our garden.

Mum stood in the middle of the room. Her face looked strange. Fat and black and full. When she saw me she shook her head from side to side and her eyes were wide. She closed them once and then waved a hand over her face.

“Mum!” I shouted and I didn’t care that my mouth was open ’cause I knew that they’d come back and I was scared. They’d come back ’cause of granny M and dad and Sadie-who-tries-to-make-me-call-her-mummy and their new baby and the scary letters and the brown boxes. And I was scared the most ’cause mum had done the thing she’d always told me not to—the thing she’d been too scared to do too.

She put out her hands to stop me running to her and then covered her mouth with her fingers till I remembered I was supposed to do that too. I could hear Wobs trying to cry but he couldn’t cause of the taped-up dummy.

Mum ran out the door and onto the landing. I saw her eyes fill up black when she turned round to check I was coming and then she stopped and pulled open the cupboard door next to the stairs and ran inside.

When I got there she’d shut the door already but she’d pulled the string that lit the bulb so I could see her through the little slats. Her face was still fat and black and full and her eyes were still wide and her fingers were still over her mouth. She banged at the door till the key fell out onto the floor and I remembered what I was supposed to do and picked it up and put it in the lock and turned it till I heard the click just like we’d practised.

I saw mum fall a bit when she heard the click too and then she couldn’t hold her breath in anymore. She let a bit of it out and some of the flies came out too. They buzzed black at the slats. I heard her scream a bit and then she waved her hands about trying to make them go back into her mouth. She was crying but I could only tell ’cause her face was all wet when she looked at me through the slats.

“Mummy, make it stop! Make them go away! Make them go away, please!” I wanted her to stop crying and holding her breath too. I wanted that the most.

She stared at me till her eyes went as black as her face and I couldn’t see them anymore. And then she smiled. I think she smiled ’cause I saw the white flash of her teeth before I heard her twist the stick that closed the slats and then I couldn’t see anything anymore.

The light on the landing got dim but it didn’t go out. I heard the buzzy sound get louder and louder and I heard mummy scream and scream and kick and punch and rattle the door and I ran back into Wobs’s room and sat on the floor and cried and cried and held his pudgy hands till it all stopped.

The fluttery feeling in my tummy and chest is starting to hurt now. I don’t like it. I didn’t like it anyway but now I really don’t. The buzzy sound is so loud it’s like it’s
inside
my ears and I’ve got one hand over my shut mouth but I don’t think they’re here yet. Wobs’s cot isn’t just like the one at home ’cause I can’t fit my arm through the slats to cover his mouth too and when I stand up I’m too short to reach over the top.

They’re coming. They’re coming. My heart is banging really hard and really fast in the wrong place—I don’t like that either. I try not to cry ’cause mum says that doesn’t ever help but I’m scared. And I need to look after Wobs but I can’t ’cause he doesn’t have a dummy and the cot is different and I can’t fit my arm through.

The flappy feeling in my chest is in my throat and it and the buzzy sound nearly make me scream till I remember to keep my mouth shut. Something fizzes the back of my tongue like sherbet and then I start to gag like when I have a tummy bug and then it all comes up out of me in a big chokey rush.

And then the light comes on again. It buzzes buzzes buzzes and then goes on completely and it makes me blink.

The room is full of black. It’s filled up with it. Black that came from
me
. I put my hand over my mouth again and I want to scream and cry but then I remember Wobs. He’s still lying on his back with his legs and arms out and his mouth wide open.

“Mummy, make it stop. Make them go away, please!” I whisper into my sweaty and wet hand.

But mum is dead.

After the screaming and punching and rattling and buzzing stopped I went back out onto the landing and stood at the cupboard door and stared at the key. After nothing happened I turned it till it clicked again and pulled it slowly open.

Mum was curled up on the floor like we used to do in the garden when it was too sunny for dancing. There was no buzzy sound and her face wasn’t black anymore but she was covered in blood like the dead provocators in gladiator munera and most of it was coming from her mouth and nose and ears. Her eyes were staring up at the ceiling and her tears were red too. Her hands were like claws and some of her nails were gone I think.

I went down the stairs really slowly cause my knees felt funny and then I picked up the dust sheet and then I climbed back up. At the top I listened again but I couldn’t hear Wobs and I couldn’t hear the buzzy sound so I went back in the cupboard and lay down next to mum and pulled the dust sheet over us both and waited for dad.

He didn’t come but other people did. And they took me and Wobs away and left mum behind.

I’m older than my age. I’m clever. I’m nearly a grownup really. And I have to be brave. Mum always said that I have to be brave. No matter what.

I look down at Wobs. The buzzy sound is making him twitch and breathe faster. I think he’s about to wake up.

The room is still black and buzzy and full of flies. Our bit of room is the only bit left.

I take my hand away from my mouth but it’s very shaky and my mouth is shaky too. I Have To Be Brave. I look down at Wobs again and hope his eyes won’t open. I try to reach him over the top of the cot but I still can’t do it.

“I’m sorry, Wobs,” I whisper. “I’ve got to go away.” I look at his pudgy fingers and red cheeks and silly fuzzy hair. “I’ve got to catch them so you don’t.”

And then I leave our bit of the room and run into the black buzzy noise. I put my hands over my mouth again and hold my breath and close my eyes and pretend I’m not crying. I pretend I’m not scared and my heart isn’t banging really hard and really fast in the wrong place.

And then when I think I’m far enough away and when it feels right—which means when it feels really really
wrong
—I take my hands away and I open my mouth. Wide. Wider than a tinkly river with ducks and swans. Wider than the throwing net of a retiarius. Wider than the teeth in the big metal vice on the wooden bench in dad’s tool shed. And then I breathe in.

It hurts. The things I breathe in hurt. Much more than when they came out. Much more than I thought they would and I’d thought they would. I nearly scream as they rattle and buzz in my ears in my nose in my mouth in my throat in my tummy. They scrape and scratch and flap and buzz ’cause now they’re angry. I keep breathing in and in and in till the room stops being black and I’ve got no breath left and then I clap my hands over my mouth and stop breathing anything at all.

I run to the little door in the glass room and when I let one of my hands go to try the handle it opens. I run inside and turn around and shut it again. I can see Wobs’s cot through the fuzzy glass but I don’t think I’m far enough away yet for him to be safe.

It’s hard to hold your breath. It’s even harder when you’re scared and your mum’s dead and you’re trying to be brave but you don’t know what to do. And when angry things are scraping and scratching and buzzing and trying to get out again. I hit my leg against the table with the coffee cup and it topples over spilling everywhere. My spare hand hits the window and bounces back to hit my face. Letting some flies out before I manage to breathe them back in.

I’ll be able to get back out too. When my eyes go black and I start to scream and punch and kick and rattle like mum did I’ll still be able to escape. I’ll be able to run to Wobs’s cot and let all the black out. I’m scared and I’m sore and my heart’s still wrong and I’m full of flies but I’m still Brave like a Gladiator. I still remember what mum said. I’ve got to have a plan. After mister and missus S we always
always
had A Plan.

I look back at the door and there’s a card sticking out of a slot like a key. I don’t know if it’s the same thing but while I can still hold my breath I pull it out and drop to my knees and push it as far under the door as I can till it’s gone and I can’t see it.

And then I have to breathe out. I can’t hold it anymore. I feel sick and scared and hot and sore and all I can see now are black spots. The flies buzz and buzz and fill the mini room black but I can breathe again and when they push me into the door it doesn’t open.

I think of Wobs’s room when it was full of yellow. I think of mum when she looked like an angel. Her face bright and her hair glowy like my nightlight. I cough and choke and breathe.

I look at Wobs through the fuzzy glass. I can see his pudgy arms waving through the bars of the cot as he starts to cry. I can see the fat hairy man and maybe the lady who kept saying “it’s a crying shame” barging through the door with the window in. But I keep looking at Wobs.

“I love you” I think inside my head cause I think that’s what mum was thinking inside hers when she looked at me before her eyes went black and she twisted the stick that closed the slats in the cupboard door. And I hope it won’t ever be the same for him. The same as for granny M and mum and me. I don’t think it will be.

I try to smile again before I forget how to. Wobs
will
call Sadie mummy. But I don’t mind. And I don’t think mum will either.

The fat hairy man and the crying shame lady run out into the corridor with a screaming Wobs between them. The flies turn back from the fuzzy glass and the locked door. They fill me with black and angry. They choke till I can’t remember being scared or sore or me.

And the flies. Filled with fury and stymied grief. Anomalies. The divine and diabolical; the magical and humoural. The obtuse, the diseased, the misunderstood. Never any of it more than flies.

And now, an opportunity too many lost. Finally, an end. We know it’s over. And so we stop flying.

The young man came in one of the windows, because the back door had proved surprisingly tough. He’d kicked it a few times, without effect, before looking for an easier way to get in. The windows were barred, but the bars were rusted almost through, so he had no difficulty pulling them away. The window was locked as well, but he just smashed the glass with a half brick pried out of the garden wall. He didn’t care about the noise. He knew there was only the old man in the house, the garden was large and screened by trees, and the evening traffic was streaming past on the road out front. That was plenty loud enough to cloak any noise he might make.

Or any quavering cries for help from the old man, thought the intruder, as he climbed through. He went to the back door first, intending to open it for a quick getaway, but it was deadlocked. More afraid of getting robbed than dying in a fire, thought the young man. That made it easier. He liked the frightened old people, the power he had over them with his youth and strength and anger.

When he turned around, the old man was standing behind him. Just standing there, not doing a thing. It was dim in the corridor, the only light a weak bulb hanging from the ceiling, its pallid glow falling on the bald head of the little man, the ancient slight figure in his brown cardigan and brown corduroy trousers and brown slippers, just a little old man that could be picked up and broken like a stick and then whatever pathetic treasures were in the house could be—

A little old man whose eyes were silver.

And what was in his hands?

Those gnarled hands had been empty, the intruder was sure of it, but now the old bloke held long blades, though he wasn’t exactly holding the blades . . . they were growing, growing from his fingers, the flesh fusing together and turning silver . . . silver as those eyes!

The young man had turned half an inch towards the window and escape when the first of those silvery blades penetrated his throat, destroying his voice box, changing the scream that rose there to a dull, choking cough. The second blade went straight through his heart, back out, and through again.

Pock! Pock!

Blood geysered, but not on the old man’s brown cardigan. He had moved back almost in the same instant as he struck and was now ten feet away, watching with those silver eyes as the young man fell writhing on the floor, his feet drumming for eighteen seconds before he became still.

The blades retreated, became fingers once again. The old man considered the body, the pooling blood, the mess.

“Shay Marazion Velvet,” he said to himself, and walked to the spray of blood farthest from the body, head-high on the peeling wallpaper of green lilies. He poked out his tongue, which grew longer and became as silver as the blades.

He began to lick, tongue moving rhythmically, head tilted as required. There was no expression on his face, no sign of physical excitement. This was not some fetish.

He was simply cleaning up.

“You’ll never guess who I saw walking up and down outside, Father,” said Mary Shires, as she bustled in with her ludicrously enormous basket filled with the weekly tribute of homemade foods and little luxuries that were generally unwanted and wholly unappreciated by her father, Sir David Shires.

“Who?” grunted Sir David. He was sitting at his kitchen table, scrawling notes on the front page of the
Times
, below the big headlines with the latest from the war with Argentina over the Falklands, and enjoying the sun that was briefly flooding the whole room through the open doors to the garden.

“That funny little Mister Shea,” said Mary, putting the basket down on the table.

Sir David’s pencil broke. He let it fall and concentrated on keeping his hand still, on making his voice sound normal. He shouldn’t be surprised, he told himself. It was why he was here, after all. But after so many years, even though every day he told himself this could be
the
day, it was a terrible, shocking surprise.

“Really, dear?” he said. He thought his voice sounded mild enough. “Going down to the supermarket like he normally does, I suppose? Getting his bread and milk?”

“No, that’s just the thing,” said Mary. She took out a packet of some kind of biscuit and put it in front of her father. “These are very good. Oatmeal and some kind of North African citrus. You’ll like them.”

“Mister Shea,” prompted Sir David.

“Oh, yes. He’s just walking backwards and forwards along the footpath from his house to the corner. Backwards and forwards! I suppose he’s gone ga-ga. He’s old enough. He must be ninety if he’s a day, surely?”

She looked at him, without guile, both of them knowing he was eighty himself. But not going ga-ga, thank god, even if his knees were weak reeds and he couldn’t sleep at night, remembering things that he had forced himself to forget in his younger days.

But Shay was much older than ninety, thought Sir David. Shay was much, much older than that.

He pushed his chair back and stood up.

“I might go and . . . and have a word with the old chap,” he said carefully. “You stay here, Mary.”

“Perhaps I should come—”

“No!”

He grimaced, acknowledging he had spoken with too much emphasis. He didn’t want to alarm Mary. But then again, in the worst case . . . no, not the worst case, but in a quite plausible minor escalation . . .

“In fact, I think you should go out the back way and get home,” said Sir David.

“Really, Father, why on—”

“Because I am ordering you to,” snapped Sir David. He still had the voice, the tone that expected to be obeyed, deployed very rarely with the family, but quite often to the many who had served under him, first in the Navy and then for considerably longer in the Department, where he had ended up as the Deputy Chief. Almost fifteen years gone, but it wasn’t the sort of job where you ever completely left, and the command voice was the least of the things that had stayed with him.

Mary sniffed, but she obeyed, slamming the garden gate on her way out. It would be a few years yet, he thought, before she began to question everything he did, perhaps start bringing brochures for retirement homes along with her special biscuits and herbal teas she believed to be good for reducing the chance of dementia.

Dementia. There was an apposite word. He’d spent some time thinking he might be suffering from dementia or some close cousin of it, thirty years ago, in direct connection to “funny old Mister Shea.” Who was not at all funny, not in any sense of the word. They had all wondered if they were demented, for a time.

He paused near his front door, wondering for a moment if he should make the call first, or even press his hand against the wood panelling just so, and flip it open to take out the .38 Colt Police revolver cached there. He had a 9mm Browning automatic upstairs, but a revolver was better for a cached weapon. You wouldn’t want to bet your life on magazine springs in a weapon that had sat too long. He checked all his armament every month, but still . . . a revolver was more certain.

But automatic or revolver, neither would be any use. He’d learned that before, from direct observation, and had been lucky to survive. Very lucky, because the other two members of the team hadn’t had the fortune to slip in the mud and hit themselves on the head and be forced to lie still. They’d gone in shooting, and kept shooting, unable to believe the evidence of their eyes, until it was too late. . . .

Sir David grimaced. This was one of the memories he’d managed to push aside for a long, long time. But like all the others, it wasn’t far below the surface. It didn’t take much to bring it up, that afternoon in 1953, the Department’s secure storage on the fringe of RAF Bicester. . . .

He did take a walking stick out of the stand. A solid bog oak stick, with a pommel of bronze worked in the shape of a spaniel’s head. Not for use as a weapon, but simply because he didn’t walk as well as he once did. He couldn’t afford a fall now. Or at any time really, but particularly not now.

The sun was still shining outside. It was a beautiful day, the sky as blue as a bird’s egg, with hardly a cloud in sight. It was the kind of day you only saw in films, evoking some fabulous summertime that never really existed, or not for more than half an hour at a time.

It was a good day to die, if it came to that, if you were eighty and getting tired of the necessary props to a continued existence. The medicines and interventions, the careful calculation of probabilities before anything resembling activity, calculations that Sir David would never have undertaken at a younger age.

He swung out onto the footpath, a military stride, necessarily adjusted by age and a back that would no longer entirely straighten. He paused by the kerb and looked left and right, surveying the street, head back, shoulders close to straight, sandy eyebrows raised, hair no longer quite so regulation short, catching a little of the breeze, the soft breeze that added to the day’s delights.

Shay was there, as Mary had said. It was wearing the same clothes as always, the brown cardigan and corduroy. They’d put fifty pairs in the safe house, at the beginning, uncertain whether Shay would buy more or not, though its daily purchase of bread, milk and other basics was well established. It could mimic human behaviour very well.

It looked like a little old man, a bald little man of some great age. Wrinkled skin, hooded eyes, head bent as if the neck could no longer entirely support the weight of years. But Sir David knew it didn’t always move like an old man. It could move fluidly, like an insect, faster than you ever thought at first sighting.

Right now Shay was walking along the footpath, away from Sir David. Halfway to the corner, it turned back. It must have seen him, but as usual, it gave no outward sign of recognition or reception. There would be no such sign, until it decided to do whatever it was going to do next.

Sir David shuffled forward. Best to get it over with. His hand was already sweating, slippery on the bronze dog handle of his stick, his heart hammering in a fashion bound to be at odds with a cardiopulmonary system past its best. He knew the feeling well, though it had been an age since he’d felt it more than fleetingly.

Fear. Unalloyed fear, that must be conquered, or he could do nothing, and that was not an option. Shay had broken free of its programming. It could be about to do anything, anything at all, perhaps reliving some of its more minor exploits like the Whitechapel murders of 1888, or a major one like the massacre at Slapton Sands in 1944.

Or something greater still.

Not that Sir David was sure he
could
do anything. He’d only ever been told two of the command phrases, and lesser ones at that, a pair of two word groups. They were embossed on his mind, bright as new brass. But it was never known exactly what they meant, or how Shay understood them.

There was also the question of which command to use. Or to try and use both command phrases, though that might somehow have the effect of one of the four word command groups. An unknown effect, very likely fatal to Sir David and everyone for miles, perhaps more.

It was not inconceivable that whatever he said in the next two minutes might doom everyone in London, or even the United Kingdom.

Perhaps even the world.

The first command would be best, Sir David thought, watching Shay approach. They were out in public, the second would attract attention, besides its other significant drawback. Public attention was anathema to Sir David, even in such dire circumstances. He straightened his tie unconsciously as he thought about publicity. It was a plain green tie, as his suit was an inconspicuous grey flannel, off the rack. No club or regimental ties for Sir David, no identifying signet rings, no ring, no earring, no tattoos, no unusual facial hair. He worked to look a type that had once been excellent camouflage, the retired military officer. It still worked, though less well, there being fewer of the type to hide amongst. Perhaps the Falklands War would help in this regard.

Shay was drawing nearer, walking steadily, perfectly straight. Sir David peered at it. Were its eyes silver? If they were, it would be too late. All bets off, end of story. But the sun was too bright, Sir David’s own sight was not what it once was. He couldn’t tell if Shay’s eyes were silver.

“Shay Risborough Gabardine,” whispered Sir David. Ludicrous words, but proven by trial and error, trial by combat, death by error. The name it apparently gave itself, a station on the Great Western Line, and a type of fabric. Not words you’d ever expect to find together, there was its safety, the cleverness of Isambard Kingdom Brunel showing through. Though not as clever as how IKB had got Shay to respond to the words in the first place. So clever that no one else had worked out how it had been done, not in the three different attempts over more than a hundred years. Attempts to try to change or expand the creature’s lexicon, each attempt another litany of mistakes and many deaths. And after each such trial, the fear that had led to it being shut away. Locked underground the last time, and then the chance rediscovery in 1953 and the foolishness that had led it to being put away here, parked and forgotten.

Except by Sir David.

Shay was getting very close now. Its face looked innocuous enough. A little vacant, a man not too bright perhaps, or very short of sleep. Its skin was pale today, matching Sir David’s own, but he knew it could change that in an instant. Skin colour, height, apparent age, gender . . . all of these could be changed by Shay, though it mostly appeared as it was right now.

Small and innocuous, old and tired. Excellent camouflage among humans.

Ten paces, nine paces, eight paces . . . the timing had to be right. The command had to be said in front of its face, without error, clear and precise—

“Shay Risborough Gabardine,” barked Sir David, shivering in place, his whole body tensed to receive a killing blow.

Shay’s eyes flashed silver. He took half a step forward, putting him inches away from Sir David, and stopped. There was a terrible stillness, the world perched on the brink. Then it turned on its heel, crossed the road and went back into its house. The old house, opposite Sir David’s, that no one but Shay had set foot in for thirty years.