Others (33 page)

Swiftly, as if for relief from this monstrosity, I turned the beam on a tall, thick jar standing next to the glass case and I groaned, for the specimen in this was as gross as its neighbour. Behind the curved glass there floated an infant’s small head, its eyelids closed, its little pink lips parted.’The face was not easy to look at, for it was squashed slightly and the cheeks protruded, as if it had been crushed between skull and jaw. It was attached to a trailing column of vertebrae and lengthy spinal cord; there was no body, no limbs, just a baby’s flattened head drifting in pellucid liquid with a soft spine dangling from it.

The next jar held within it a large fibrous mass, a rough-shaped ball that looked like some terrible overgrown cyst, only embedded in its scabrous surface was an eye, and a few crooked teeth, and pieces of tufty black hair, all that remained of an embryo that had existed in some unfortunate woman’s womb, sharing the space with, and finally absorbed into, this abnormal sac. I moved the light on, dreading what else I might find, but somehow powerless to stop myself, horribly gripped by these macabre exhibits, repulsed by them, yet curious to see more, as if I were under their morbid spell. Another large, glass case, suspended inside a tangled mass of limbs, intertwined arms and legs, two young bodies fused together in cursed embrace, heads melded by the faces, no spaces between their flesh. I thought I had seen the worst earlier that night, but nothing could match these fresh obscenities. Still I went on, my thoughts numbed, revulsion now strangely submissive; my sensitivities had detached themselves from the observations, my emotions self-protectively had hardened. This chamber of true horrors was too gruesomely awesome to remain shocking, for the normal mind cannot abide heinous repetition and will always strive to shield itself for the sake of sanity. I’m not saying I wasn’t disturbed as I progressed along these rows of outrageous specimens, displayed here like bizarre trophies: all I mean is that by now I was too stunned to be affected. The mummified boy, who had another head growing from the top of his own, the supernumerary head having grown upside down and ending at the neck, meant nothing to me; the two small skeletons lying flat inside a glass cabinet, both of them joined together in longitudinal axis at the pelvis, so that instead of legs each had the torso of the other - none of them truly registered with me. The sights had all become too overwhelming, and mercifully so; I passed between them in a daze, the terrible afflictions at least muted by moonlight, the torchlight never lingering on any one exhibit.

When I reached the end of the room and briefly swung the torchbeam along the shelves bearing rows of various-sized containers and jars, each one of these filled with fleshy substances, I decided I had had enough and a glimpse of disembodied eyeballs staring back at me from behind glass reinforced the decision. I turned and almost dropped the torch in surprise. Someone was standing right behind me.

‘Jesus!’ I said, almost jumping into the air. ‘Joseph, don’t
do
that!’

He looked suitably abashed. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.’

‘ ‘S all right. It isn’t you, it’s this bloody place.’ I scythed the light beam around the big room, not allowing it to loiter on anything specific. Why? Why are all these things kept here?’

They are for the Doctor’s researches,’ Joseph replied, ‘and for his pleasure.’

‘He takes pleasure in all this?’

‘He is obsessed by our forms.’

‘He’s told you this?’

The Doctor likes to converse with me. I suppose he is really testing my intelligence.’

‘But what is he researching?’

‘Our very nature. He talks very much of genetics and how tests on this thing he calls DNA eventually might lead to the eradication of the hereditary diseases that cause our malformations.’

I had to keep reminding myself that this was a twelve-year-old speaking, but it was almost impossible when I looked into that century-old face and listened to his words.

‘And that’s his sole purpose?’ I asked. ‘He’s using you and your friends, he’s studying you all, for the benefit of mankind?’

‘Yes, or so I once believed. The Doctor has changed though; I think he has grown weary of us. I believe that he has other motives - perhaps he always had more than one. But we must go now, it isn’t safe for us here.’

He began pulling at my arm, the way a child who hates a place might pull at a parent. I resisted though, because I had seen another door at the end of this room, a plastic double door without handles, the kind you might find leading to an operating theatre in a hospital.

‘Come,’ Joseph insisted. ‘Mary is waiting for us and she’s very frightened.’

Wait, Joseph.’ I indicated the plastic doorway. ‘D’you know what’s through there?’

I felt his shudder, and he continued to pull at me.

‘I want to take a look inside,’ I persisted.

‘No!’

His cry startled me. Tell me why not, Joseph.’

‘Michael is urging us to leave.’

‘It’ll only take a moment.’

‘No, we cannot go in there. We
will
not.’

Then tell me why.’

He stopped tugging and his voice was shaky when he answered me. ‘Because,’ he said, fearfully looking past me at the door, ‘because that is the dissecting room.’

36

I could feel the beat of my heart as we stood beneath the dismal light of the ground-floor stairwell, me with my ear pressed against the locked door there, my companions holding on to each other like the two lost children they were. I listened for any signs of activity beyond the heavy wood, but either the door was too thick, or there was nothing going on on the other side.

Even I had not ventured into the dissecting room. I was scared. Yes, my senses had become numbed against all the distressing sights in this abominable place, but fear was something that could not be denied. I was afraid of the house itself, as if evil was seeping from its very walls, permeating the air with its corruptness, and creeping into me with malign intent. I wanted to get away from there, wanted to take deep, fresh untainted breaths again: with terrible guilt, I felt that I wanted to be among normal people once more. But I would not leave without Constance. Nothing could make me do that.

I stepped away from the door. What’s through there?’ I whispered to Joseph.

‘I… I don’t know.’ He looked up at Mary, who shook her head. ‘We’re brought here sometimes, but none of us remember…’

‘You’re not telling the truth, are you?’ There was something in his voice, the way he avoided my gaze.

He hung his head and I knelt in front of him. “What is it, Joseph? I’m your friend, you know that’

‘We…’ He took a breath. ‘We have dreams. Michael tells us they are memories.’

‘Of what? What happens in them.’ Dreams were something I could no longer dismiss out of hand.

He kept his eyes downcast. ‘Bad things,’ was all he would say.

Before I could press him further, a noise started up behind the bare wall to our left. It was the familiar sound of the elevator moving. Almost at the same time we heard muffled voices approaching from the other side of the door. Then there came the scrape of a key being inserted into its lock.

I looked around wildly. I’d never get my two companions back up the stairs to the next floor in time - with my limp slowing me up, I probably wouldn’t even make it myself. A narrow corridor ran alongside the staircase and in the dim light I thought I could make out a closed door at the end, one which undoubtedly led out to the riverbank behind the building.

‘Come on,’
I hissed, spinning Joseph and Mary round and pushing them in the direction of the back door.

Joseph shuffled and Mary hobbled, both moving as quickly as they could. I pushed past them, determined to have the door open before they reached it so that they could scoot outside without delay.

‘Oh shit,’ I groaned quietly when I saw it was bolted top and bottom. I guessed it would be locked as well, although now it was a moot point: by the time I’d unfastened the bolts, let alone tried one of the keys on the ring, the door at the other end would be open anyway and we would be in full view. The voices behind us grew louder as the door began to move.

It was as I looked back, ready to face whoever came through, that I noticed the pitchy hole underneath the stairway, more steps, these of stone, descending into it. Without a word, I grabbed the wrists of my companions, pulling them out of sight just as I glimpsed the door at the far end opening wide, two figures coming through. I expected to hear a shout, footsteps running after us, but the voices did not change their tone, nor did the footsteps quicken.

The girl almost stumbled as I urged them on, but I was able to steady her with my grip on her wrist. I wouldn’t let either of them stop, because those sounds were advancing down the corridor, the people above us heading towards the rear door. I almost stumbled myself when I realized they might even be making for this stairway.

The stone staircase obviously led to the cellars or a basement area. I kept my companions moving, and I think the only reason that we were not heard was because the other people were making too much noise themselves, laughing and joking, one of them - there had to be three - even humming a tune. I might have been wrong - Lord knows I had more urgent things on my mind - but I thought I detected an edge to their laughter: it seemed too high-pitched, nervy, and their conversation was stilted, somehow forced.

It was even darker at the bottom of the stairs and I could only just make out the huge, black door that faced us. I listened for the sounds of bolts being drawn above, the click of a lock, but when I heard none of these and the footsteps suddenly grew heavier, I knew that the people behind us were descending the stairs. Even if the door in front of us was unlocked, there was no time to open it without being seen, so I did the only thing possible: I put my arms around Joseph’s shoulders and Mary’s wrist and hurried them round to the back of the stone stairway, quietly forcing them into the deeply shadowed and ever-diminishing gap between floor and angled ceiling. We huddled there, each of us holding our breath, listening to the loudening footsteps over our heads and the voices that approached with them. It was almost pitch black in our hideaway, and I was grateful for that. The air was musty-damp.

I could feel the two crouched bodies beside me trembling almost uncontrollably and I could only hope their nerve would hold, that neither of them would utter a sound in their fright. I squeezed them both, the only way I could think of calming them, but their ragged gasps for breath seemed inordinately loud to me.

The footsteps came to a shuffling halt and I heard the jangling of keys.

‘Do we use sedation?’ a man’s voice said.

‘A mild one,’ came the reply from another man. ‘Just for cooperation. He doesn’t want it too dosed up.’

Metal scraping against metal, a key being pushed into a lock.

‘It’ll behave,’ said a third voice. ‘Always does when it knows it’s in for a good time.’

More scraping, the big door being drawn back. Soft light brightened the corridor slightly and I pushed my companions further into our hiding place. A stench drifted through with the light, a reek that was far worse than the dormitory’s.

‘Who’s the partner?’

The voices were becoming fainter.

‘I think it’s the little crippled girl again…’

As they moved further inside, their words became too soft to be understood, but I thought - God, I was sure! - a name was mentioned. It sounded like ‘Bell’. Panic seized me. Had he said Constance’s surname? Could I have been mistaken? What did it mean if he had? Dread upon dread had tormented me that night, yet none affected me as badly as this. Too many frightening visions rushed into my head, most of them obscene, triggered by the phenomena in my own bedroom the previous night, that sick, incorporeal, sexual orgy of which Constance had been part.

Joseph winced as I squeezed his shoulder too hard, but he did not let out a cry. I dropped my hand away immediately, but the thoughts, the cruel, taunting images, would not cease.

Why hadn’t Constance told me the whole truth about Perfect Rest? Why hadn’t she shared its awful secret with me? Had I been wrong to think there was something between us, a bonding that was all to do with love and not just mutual disabilities? Didn’t she trust me enough to tell? Or was she ashamed? Did her involvement in what secretly went on at Perfect Rest shame her so deeply it was impossible for her to confide in me? Just what
was
her complicity in all this?

As the stench drifted out from the open doorway, almost choking us with its rancidness, the girl began to make soft mewling noises, the piteous sounds of an animal in distress. She crawled deeper into the corner created between sloping ceiling and floor, and I realized it wasn’t the smell that was causing the reaction but its
source.
Beside me, Joseph was trembling as if with fever, but other sounds distracted me again, distant voices, a grating, something sliding across stone, then shouting, voices raised in excitement or anger, I couldn’t tell which.

Quietness again. Shortly followed by a new disturbance.

It was a cumbersome dragging of feet, growing louder as it approached the doorway. Something grunted - I thought it might be an animal - and one of the men shouted. The dragging of heavy footsteps once more. Now all three of us in the sanctuary beneath the stairway pushed ourselves in further, trying to make ourselves as small as possible, using the darkness as a cloak as the sounds drew nearer.

I thought I could hear rough breathing, a guttural kind of sound, and it seemed very close, almost as if whatever was being escorted from that basement chamber was standing right over us. I realized it was the acoustics of the short, brick corridor, the concrete beneath us, and the angle of the stairway over our heads, a funnel effect that was deceptive. Nevertheless, we froze in the darkness, none of us daring to breathe lest we be heard, and even too tense to tremble.

The group of men and their charge was emerging from the underground room and it was with relief that we heard the first footsteps over our heads. The scuffing-shuffling joined them and a tickling sensation on my cheek told me that dust was drifting down from our angled ceiling.

We waited there, still holding our breath, my knees hurting as they pressed into concrete, all of us too afraid to move for fear of giving ourselves away, until the footsteps and the scuffing died away and we were left nerve-racked and drained.

I slumped back against the wall and Mary finally let a shudder escape. There was just enough light in this little nook to see Joseph crouched on his knees, hands clenched to his chest as if he’d been praying. We remained alert for any more noises, the footsteps returning, the grunting of something less than human, but nothing came. Eventually, when we were able to control the shaking, calm our own breathing, I felt brave enough to speak, albeit in a low whisper.

‘What the hell was
that?’

Joseph leaned closer to speak into my ear. ‘I think it’s too late,’ he whispered. ‘I think we should leave now.’

Without Constance? I’m sorry, Joseph, but that isn’t an option.’

‘You can’t help her.’

‘I can bloody well try.’

Mary twisted round to clutch at me. ‘P-p-please…’ she stammered.

‘I’m not leaving without her,’ I said firmly, even though my natural inclination was to get as far away from that place as possible. Forget the media, go straight to the police. These two alone would be enough to initiate an investigation and when I told the Law what I knew, they’d be applying for an immediate search warrant. It would still take time though, and who knew what would happen to Constance in the meanwhile? Images of her, vulnerable and naked, surrounded by creatures from some dark realm that knew no place on this earth, invaded my mind and I had the notion that the phantasmagoria last night, in my own home, was a portent of some kind, illusions based upon a terrible reality that was to come. No, I couldn’t leave here without her, she was too precious to me. Even the fresh doubts as to her true involvement with Perfect Rest could not dissuade me.

‘I have to go after them,’ I said as I began to crawl from our hideaway.

‘No, please,’ I heard Joseph call after me.

But I was on my feet and swinging round on to the first step before he struggled out behind me, the girl following.

‘Wait!’ he cried, grabbing my hand on the rail.

‘I can’t, Joseph. I have to get to her.’

There’s another way!’

I hesitated on the second step. Their eyes were wide as they stared up at me from the gloomy corridor, and I saw that Mary had been weeping, probably through the whole ordeal.

‘Michael says he knows where they are keeping her, but there’s another way to get there, a safer way.’ Joseph kept his dry old hand over mine on the stair-rail.

‘But they took that thing up here.’ I pointed at the way ahead with my other hand.

There will be too many between us and Constance.’

‘Michael is telling you this?’ And in truth, I was having my own strange mind images - a long, dark chamber, doors on either side, a narrow stairway leading up - and something -not a voice, just a thought with these impressions - was urging me to follow Joseph.

‘He’s letting us know,’ Joseph replied.

I peered up the stairs. ‘But there isn’t another way,’ I said.

Joseph tapped my hand and when I turned, he was pointing in another direction. There is,’ he said. Through there.’

I looked in the direction he was indicating, saw the black cavern of the open doorway behind us, felt weak at the thought of going in there. I really hadn’t liked what I’d heard coming out just a few moments ago.

Slowly, I returned to the bottom of the stairs, reaching inside my jacket for the pocket torch as I did so. Joseph and Mary huddled together, watching me.

‘Is that the way you two want to go?’ I asked them.

They glanced at each other before Joseph replied. ‘No, but Michael tells us it is the best way.’

I turned on the torch and shone it through the doorway. Its light barely penetrated the shadows.

What else is in there, Joseph?’ I asked. What does the Doctor keep down here?’

He seemed afraid to answer, and it was the girl who spoke.

‘Others,’ she said.