Others (34 page)

37

Others.

That’s what Mary had said. Others. But what did she mean?

I thought I had seen everything in this God-forsaken hell-house, and now I was being told there was something more.

Others.

I felt my skin begin to crawl.

38

The light-switch was on the inside, beside the big iron door that had been left open, and I pushed it down to find that I still needed the torch, for even though at least six lights came on along both sides of the lengthy, low-ceilinged chamber, their glow came from behind thick, pearled glass and wire mesh. The stench prickled my nostrils and there was something deeply oppressing about the atmosphere itself.

My skin still crawled, as if tiny spider legs were scurrying over its surface.

I raised the torch, throwing its beam ahead. A wide, flagstone floor swept ahead of me, moss growing from its cracks, puddles of water pooling beneath the walls. I saw there were doorways all the way along on both sides, doorways set in shallow alcoves, rough-wood doorways with small barred windows in them.

Oh God, what next? I asked myself, and as I listened, I heard stirrings from the other side of those doors.

I went over to the nearest cell and its little barred window was just low enough for me to see through without stepping on tip-toe. I shone the light through the opening into the darkened, bare cell beyond.

The stone floor was slightly angled towards a round black hole in the far corner and I could only guess at the reason: somewhere in the grounds there was probably a huge covered cesspit, drains from these dungeon-like rooms running to it. On the opposite side to the hole, I could just make out a narrow cot, its iron legs bolted to the floor, its filthy, stained mattress without bedsheets of any kind. The smell was even worse here.

I jumped back with a start when a face suddenly appeared in front of me on the other side of the door. But the face had no eyes, not even indents in the skull where they should have been, and the two holes at its centre that presumably served as a nose dilated and closed in rapid succession, as if this featureless thing were sniffing the air. There was no aperture that could represent a mouth and as I continued to back away, I wondered how such a being could be fed. As if in reply, a long slit opened up in its jaw, a thin, lipless slash that had not been visible when closed. Uttering a high-pitched keening, this thing reached for me through the bars and I saw that its hand had only three fingers.

I reeled further away from it and crashed into another cell door behind me. At once something slid around my brow, something smooth and soft, like a tentacle. It pulled my head back against the bars of the cell door’s window.

I could hear deep-throated gurglings close to my ear, and snufflings, the sound a rooting pig might make. Another tentacle-like thing slithered around my throat, tightening its grip as soon as it had hold, and I felt my flesh being crushed, my windpipe constricted. I pulled at this sleek, soft, noose with my free hand, but my fingers could not grasp it and suddenly I was struggling for air, my senses quickly beginning to swim.

In panic I looked around for my two companions, my head unable to move because of the vice-like grip around my throat and brow, only my single eye able to dart from side to side. Joseph and Mary were still in the underground chamber’s doorway as if scared to venture further and, as the torchlight caught their faces, I could see they could not understand what was happening to me. I was in the shadow of the alcove, just a vague shape to them, and my torchlight in their eyes didn’t help matters.

I tried to shout, perhaps even to scream, but the grip around my throat was too powerful and all that came out was a throttled-squawking that in any other circumstances would have been an embarrassment. I turned the light on myself, dazzling my eye as I pointed it at my own face, praying that now they would realize my predicament. I could feel myself beginning to swoon from lack of oxygen.

Fortunately my friends quickly realized what was happening and they both rushed forward as one, reaching for the fleshy cords that chained me there, pulling at them with all their strength. As my own fingers had, theirs also slid off every time they thought they had a grip and I could hear them both gasping with their efforts. My vision became tinged with redness.

Then something hard pushed by my cheek, scraping skin, but journeying on, striking into the black opening behind me. I heard a screech, felt the stick going in again, another screech, another blow, another screech. The coils around my head and neck loosened, only slightly, but enough for me to push my fingers between the lower one and my throat. Fingers joined with thumb, and I pulled, pulled as hard as I could, while Mary continued to pummel the thing that held me there, repeatedly smashing the end of her walking stick into it. I heard a squeal, and then a kind of yelp, and both cords loosened even more so that I was able to slip through them. I whirled around in time to glimpse a smooth, hairless head, its features minimal, all concentrated in a small area at its centre. Thick, lashless eyelids blinked at me just before Mary struck the thing with her stick again and it reeled away into the shadows, squawking like an injured crow as it went, the tentacles slithering back into the hole like limbs belonging to some exotic sea creature returning to their dark underwater cave. They ended in pointed, quivering tips and as they, too, disappeared from sight, I rushed back to the barred window and shone the torch through.

The light caught movement, something scudding across the filthy floor to hide itself in the far shadows. I followed it with the beam, found it again, cowering in a corner, and I drew in a sharp breath at the sight. The creature hid its head beneath the tendril-like arms, so that all I could see was a pale, sleek, naked body that seemed to darken under the glare rather than lighten. It was as if a shadow were passing through its flesh, a grey blush that made the figure blend with the surrounding darkness. I realized this shading was some form of self-induced camouflage, a way of making the creature sink into its background. Within moments, it looked as if it were made of stone, yet still it pulsed, still it breathed, the tentacles wrapping themselves around the head and body, the ‘knees’ - although the legs appeared to be jointless and as bare and smooth as its ‘arms’ - tight into its chest. Soon, the whole thing became motionless and, seemingly, as solid as the floor and walls around it; only because I had kept the torchlight pointed directly at it could I tell it was still there. It had become a statue of sorts, only its shadowed contours admitting its presence by vaguely defining its shape.

I turned away and leaned against the damp wall beside the thick, wooden door, well clear of the barred window lest those tentacles return to seize me. My shoulder pressed into the hard, wet stone and I had to set my feet flat against the floor to keep myself standing. I’m not sure how long I stayed that way - minutes, seconds, I just don’t know - but it was Joseph’s voice that finally roused me.

‘Dismas?’

I couldn’t even look his way.

He tried again. ‘Dis?’

I slowly craned my head in his direction, my shoulder still pressed into the wall, supporting me.

‘Dis, we should leave this place now. Michael wants us to hurry.’

I pushed myself away from the wall. If I’d been in battle, then maybe you’d call me shell-shocked. But there were no cannons or exploding shells, nor were there the cries and screams of dying men: there was only the horror of the things I had discovered that night. Mary came forward and touched my face with her fingertips.

It was so strange, because in that touch, I could feel her pity for
me,
a compassion so sincere and so unselfish, I could have wept again. I took her hand in my own and kissed her fingertips.

Then I straightened. Well move on,’ I told them both, ‘but first I’m going to see what else is here.’

I didn’t feel courageous, nor did I feel curious, as I worked my way along the dim corridor, going from side to side to peer into each cell: no, I just felt resolute; and filled with a cold anger. I saw things there straight from my nightmare, and from many nightmares long past. A creature that lay watching me from the floor of its prison room, normal, if emaciated, in upper form and face (even if there was a little madness in its sullen eyes), but with just one limb descending from its hips, as though the legs had fused together to fashion a fish’s tail of sorts. It rolled on to its stomach and pushed itself across the floor at alarming speed and I jumped back when I felt something scrabbling at my shoes. I shone the light down at the bottom of the door and saw another hole at ground level, one I hadn’t noticed before and no doubt used to pass food through to these wretched inmates. A grimy hand had appeared there and it was this that was touching my feet.

My two companions mutely followed as I went from door to door, and I could feel their misery at what was exposed to me, an outsider, even if my own shape was not exactly of the ordained order. I also felt their dread of these other creatures, for although they were all of the ‘anomalous and curious’ kind, imperfections of nature that were beyond all bounds, there
was
something fearsome about them; why else would they be incarcerated in dungeons beneath the house? There seemed to be a malign intent about these creatures, an exudation of evil, as though their ill-formed configuration was representative of their inner singularity, a twisted psyche imagined by its physical shell. I, of all people, should have dismissed such an idea out of hand - book by its cover, and all that - but it was a feeling (not just a notion) that was too strong to reject.

I moved on, another cell, another monstrosity inside, although this time I thought that there had been some cruel mistake or that this person had been locked away for reasons other than physical abnormality. At first glance she was beautiful, with large, dark eyes and heavy lashes, raven-black hair that hung in long tresses around her elegant shoulders, small but perfect breasts, the nipples hard and pink against their pallid mounds, legs that were long and thighs that barely touched, the dark triangle of hair between them like a pointer to enticement. She
was
beautiful, but when my gaze returned to hers and I looked deeper into those appealing eyes I saw that same feeble-mindedness I had witnessed moments before in the other prisoner, an imbecile’s gape now accompanied by an idiot’s grin. And when, with a snicker muffled by her hand, she turned away, I saw the reason for her internment here.

There was no skin on her back, in fact, no flesh at all; neither was there much flesh behind her legs. It was as if the meat there had been cut away, leaving bones and muscle, gristle and tendons, organs and tubes, arteries and veins, all open to the fetid air, all displayed before my probing torch. I saw wires and dulled metal plates holding organs in place, tying blood vessels to her spinal column, gauze covering the most delicate areas, I saw tubing that was synthetic and of different colours, presumably there to aid bodily fluids and movement, replacements for parts that must have rotted or become dysfunctional. The cavities glistened with wetness and jutting just beneath the bands of muscle stretched over the bone of her shoulder blade I could see something throbbing in a regular rhythm; I realized it was part of her naked heart.

How one whose innards were so dangerously exposed could be kept from infection and disease, particularly in these foul conditions, I had no idea, but I guessed that her own immune system had adapted in some way to play its part, protecting her from invasive poisons and bacteria while medical application did the rest. Yes, I’d have thought it impossible, but I had observed too many impossibilities that night now to be astonished.

Still resolute, determined to view it all, I went on from cell to cell, peering in, dismayed but no longer shocked by the things I observed. A body so immense it made its prison seem tiny, a person, a non-person - a
freakish
entity - that appeared barely alive, tubes inserted into its orifices that, I presumed, flowed with life-preserving substances and liquids, an oxygen mask over its face to pump air into its weight-beleaguered lungs. In another, a figure so ulcerated and ridden with running sores it was impossible to identify gender, whose eyes gleamed with madness and pain, and whose screams under the glare of my light pierced my heart as well as my head. An empty cell I thought, until something scurried from one dark corner to the other. Each time I directed the beam on to it, it moved again, lightning fast, low to the ground, an odd shape with too many limbs. Finally I ensnared it in my small circle of light by moving ahead and waiting for it to end its run in the torch glow. Numbed though I was, a gasp still escaped me when it rested briefly and I was able to take it in.

Its body
was
low to the floor, for it moved on all fours, the arms and legs bent high over the body, hands and feet splayed outwards on the ground, its head watching me from between those spread arms as a spider might watch a fly. It was only momentarily frozen though, and once again, with incredible speed, it scurried away into the shadows. This time I had no desire to capture it in the light: I had seen enough.

Somehow I persisted in my determination to view them all, for these were the creatures of my last dream, visions made flesh, and they held a bizarre fascination for me. Maybe I wanted to confront my own nightmare, a perverse way of expunging it forever. Or perhaps - and I hated myself for the possibility - I wanted to feel superior (a rare experience for me), wanted to know that my own afflictions were nothing compared to those of these aberrants. Who could tell? Certainly not me, neither then, nor now.

As I went on I wondered how they had found me last night, wondered if somehow they had tapped into Michael’s power, travelling with him along with the others to my home, to my mind. Perhaps the telepathy’s very collectivity was so great that they were carried along with those directed thoughts despite themselves; or perhaps something deep within them, whether it was cunning or desperation, saw that mental power as a means of a brief escape for themselves. Again, there was no way of knowing for sure, then or now, but I’d always been aware that nature compensates - consider my own one-eyed but clear vision, as sharp as a hawk’s, my hearing and sense of smell, as keen as any wolf’s, the strength in my shoulders recompensing for the weakness of my leg - so maybe some of them had taken on this unique gift, the stronger carrying the weaker.