Sin (23 page)

The Murder of Nothings was
getting bigger. Not brighter, but it was certainly growing. It was
a ball now, or at least not just a dot. No. Not a ball. A box. A
spinning cube that was either becoming much larger, much faster, or
was far away and was flying towards us, a speeding train with us on
the tracks. I tried to let go of Joy's hand, intent on turning and
running. I had no idea if I could actually run anywhere, suspended
as I was in the night. But either way, Joy held on fast. She
wouldn't let go and was somehow far stronger than I'd ever
remembered her. My hand was in hers, and it was staying that way.
The box continued to spin and grow or race wildly towards us. At
first I'd thought it was featureless, the sides plain, but soon I
could see detail. Blurring patches of greys and almost blacks.

Then there was a whoosh as the
void we were in was suddenly filled with substance. My heart had
been racing faster than the cube had been approaching, yet between
one heartbeat and the next, the Nothing had disappeared and the
Something had taken its place.

And I knew that place. I knew it
better than the fluff in my own navel. I didn't need to read the
sign on the door that had materialised in front of me to know what
lay beyond it. I could feel it in the air tonight, oh Lord. The
smell. The sense. The blinding white that should have meant purity
but instead signified Purgatory.

Home sweet home.

I looked at Joy. Stared at her.
The question must have been written all over my face in black
permanent marker, perhaps by the same birthday girl who'd so
successfully blown out the candle of the world. Why had she brought
me to the office of Dr. Connors?

* * * *

"There's something I want you to
see," she said. She smiled, a sorry effort that, if it had been in
a grinning competition would have come right near the bottom. The
edges of her mouth twitched in a vaguely upwards direction as if
they knew there was nothing to get excited about, and any attempt
would be meaningless and futile.

We no longer needed to be quiet,
obviously. She hadn't whispered so any semblance of sneaking
sneakily had snuck away. Did I feel betrayed? By my own sister? Was
this a knife so deep in my heart the blade was playing hopscotch
with my aorta? You might say that. Part of me said 'I told you so,'
and another part of me wanted to slap the first part. Yet another
piece of the jigsaw that had a picture of me and the name Sin on
the box told the other two to shut up and get a grip.

The others shut up and got a
grip.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"You need to see something," Joy
said. "You need to be prepared."

I had never been a boy scout,
and I doubted Baden-Powell had this situation in mind when he
founded the movement. I was certain there wasn't an arm badge for
letting your dead sister deliver you into the waiting arms of your
former psychiatrist. What would such a badge look like? It would
probably, I think, be similar to the No Smoking sign, except the
thick red line would be cutting across my face. Would it be the
same picture that was on the jigsaw box?

Ask me another.

So. I prepared myself. I'd
entered this room on more occasions than I could count, at least
not without taking my socks off. The door handle needed an extra
wiggle - sort of a twist-lift-push kind of thing - to get the door
open. The bottom hinge creaked, and half a can of WD40 had failed
to cure it. A keypad lock had to be tap danced with to pass
through. So many certificates and qualifications lined the wall in
gold coloured frames, you could have been entering the Louvre,
except the Mona Lisa would have been dragged off and drugged up. A
desk, massive and leather topped for extra executive effect was the
first thing you saw when you walked in. A little OCD tempered the
good Doctor's habits, enough to make sure the pens were all blue
and they were lined up parallel with each other and the pencils on
the desk. A notebook and diary, each leather bound the same colour
as the desk top (a blur of maroon into crimson) would be squarely
placed in front of the large swivel recliner that enthroned the big
man when he was holding court. A large grey flat screen monitor and
a cordless mouse were the only other occupants of the desk top,
perhaps to ensure nothing diverted your attention from the
Doctor.

There were no pictures, unless
you counted the proclamations of Connors' vast intellect. No
indications of any family. No handshakes with politicians. No faded
photo of a wannabe psychiatrist's graduation. The office was clean
and sharp and pure Connors. It was as focused as a laser and the
man behind the desk could do as much damage. More perhaps.

My preparations took a matter of
seconds. I'd long since discovered that nothing could prepare you
for entering this office. He was the spider and you were the big
juicy fly caught on his web, accepting the invitation into his
parlour. And you didn't need to worry - Dr. Connors would supply
his own condiments. They came in needles and pills. So effectively,
there was no preparation. It was a simple matter, if you were able
to and were not under the influence (so to speak), of tapping,
twisting, lifting and pushing.

So Joy gripped the handle,
then... tap-tap, twist, lift... breathe... push.

I've read that there are police
dogs that can smell death. They know if a body has been in the boot
of a car, or crumpled at the bottom of the stairs. They can tell if
you've touched one, and it can, supposedly, be weeks after the
contact. That's amazing, isn't it? They're called Cadaver Dogs.
Pretty name. The same goes for fear. Dogs, and other animals, can
smell fear. They can taste it. I think it's something to do with,
at least in the case of fear, endorphins or something. Maybe sweat.
I'm no dog. The only canine in my body is in my teeth and just as
my molars don't enable me to dig dark tunnels in the ground, I
don't have the olfactory abilities of your local Fido.

But this room. It wasn't a
smell. It wasn't even a sense, not in the way of the five
senses.

Now that sounded like the
something Grasshopper would say to David Carradine. The Way Of The
Five Senses is fraught with danger. To overcome them, you must
overcome yourself. The way of the psycho is the way of the
butterfly. He who laughs last, didn't get the joke. A wise man
knows that if you throw up on a roller coaster, you might just be
wearing it on the next loop-de-loop.

Did we have a sixth sense? Were
people psychic? Could they contact the dead and move objects with
their hands? Could they know who was going to call even before the
telephone rang? I didn't think so. Which is strange, of course,
seeing as I was currently standing, with a ghost, in a room in the
middle of a mental institute I'd recently vacated.

Or had I? Was I still strapped
to the low bed in my room, flying high on the wings of drugs?

I wondered how I could still
think clairvoyancy was a whole load of tish-tosh on quick-wash yet
accept my present company and the fact that I'd mentally torn a sea
gull apart. Men, eh? And if you press the button on the remote
control
really
hard and
really
fast, it would
miraculously work even though the batteries were deader than... my
sister.

Whatever the reason, whatever
the explanation, you knew this room bred fear in anyone who was
called here. Prickling sensations crawled up your arms. Your spider
sense started to tingle. Your stomach knotted. Even your breath was
afraid to show itself, choosing instead to stay hidden in your
lungs until you forced it out in ragged pants. And behind the desk,
basking in the effect he was having on you, like a leech sucking
blood, would be Dr. Connors. His smile, plenty of shine but oh, so
malign, could chill the balls off an Inuit. He knew it and he loved
it. Almost as much as he loved himself.

Tap, twist, lift, push.
Creak.

"Close the door."

What little breath I had froze
in my chest as I looked at him and he looked, in turn, at me. I
automatically went to close the door when I heard a voice that was
not my own but came from my body say: "Yes, Doctor."

I felt a pull and the door
closed, my hand sliding through it as if it was nothing more than
smoke. Another pull, harder this time, and a bulky man in the white
coat of an orderly stepped into view. I was confused for a moment
as to where he'd come from, and then I realised. He'd come from me!
Like Patrick Swayze in Ghost, I'd just been walked through. Was I
now dead? Had I passed over into Brian's Bright Side of Life only
to find it darker than midnight in a coalmine in December? Then I
felt Joy's hand in mine again. Something was still solid. Unless,
because she was a ghost and I now was, we were solid to each
other...

My head spun and I felt faint.
When had I died? Had I slipped while stumbling across the Seven
Hills? Did I lay, a twisted broken mess in a hollow, food for the
monster rats and other creatures that dwelled there? Was it in my
sleep back at the house? Would Olivia discover me lying in a pool
of my own bodily fluids, three weeks from now? Or... no, it
couldn't be... Had my suicide attempt worked? Was I a cloud of ash
and cinders floating on the thermal updrafts of a furnace’s radiant
section? Had my escape, the crasheddeadmangled boy, the rapist
farmer and his abused wife and everything else been some sort of
mirage as I walked in the Valley of Death? Has it been an illusion
of life to protect, or to fool, me?

Did a ghost vomit? I felt as if
I was about to find out, but Joy put her arm around me and turned
my face to hers. I could see she'd read my thoughts.

"Don't worry," she said. "You're
not dead. I wouldn't do that to you. I'd tell you."

She would, that's true. Joy
hated lies. She found it difficult to even handle fibs that were
just a darker shade of pale. And an omission of the scale of this
would probably have made her as physically sick as I was feeling.
She would have told me.

So I wasn't dead. I didn't feel
particularly comforted, but I was back in the office of my former
tormentor. Or should that be saviour? I forget. I could be forgiven
for being somewhat dazed and confused, and so not amused. Someone
had just walked through my body as if I was a shadow of a shade of
a shiver.

"Trust me," Joy said. What else
could I do?

The burly body that had used me
as a door it didn't need to open belonged, I saw, to Jeremy. I
automatically smiled and took a step forward to say hello to the
only person in such a long time that I called a friend. Even though
I'd been a patient and he was the guy who stuck the needles in,
we'd become, I hoped, friends. Joy held me back, though.

"He can't see you," she said.
"Neither of them can. Or hear you. Just watch."

The perfect opportunity
presented itself for me to tell the doctor just what I thought of
him and his practices. I wondered if I slapped or punched him,
would he feel it. I had opened the door, but to Jeremy I'd been as
nothing. So the chance, I guessed, was a chance missed. Such a
shame.

"So what are we doing here? Why
here? I left here. I don't want to be back."

"You left here to kill yourself.
You don't want that anymore, but if I don't bring you here now, you
might just get it."

What?

"What?"

"Just watch and listen, Sin. And
don't ask questions I can't answer. Just do as I ask, please."

Ok, ok. I'll be a good little
puppy dog. I'll sit at your heel and wait for any tasty treats you
might have to offer, and I'll watch the show.

"Fine," I said. It wasn't fine.
Of course it wasn't. ‘Fine’ was like ‘nice’, meaningful and
meaningless at the same time, but without 'Fine' I wasn't going to
get anywhere. Of course I wanted to know what we were doing here.
If it was a grown up version of show and tell, or if this was some
sort of virtual reality television where you could sit in the
Rovers Return whilst Jack and Vera argued next to you, then great.
Excellent. Maybe Eastenders would be on afterwards. But I didn't
think I'd be able to change channels and walk along any cobbled
streets. Strange things were afoot and, even though I didn't think
feet were all that strange, I needed to find out what they were. So
I said: "Fine," once more, with feeling.

"Sit down, Jeremy," said
Connors. He was smiling his smile, straight out of the freezer. Did
the temperature in the room drop a few degrees?

"Thank you, sir." Jeremy settled
his bulk into the only other chair in the room. It was a simple
seat with legs. A back lent some support, and I'm sure it was
designed by the man himself in a, very successful, attempt to make
you feel even more insecure and insignificant than he thought you
already were. As his chair was the throne, this could almost have
been the stocks. It groaned in protest at the weight of the
orderly, but Connors had long since stopped listening to such
complaints. The chair had objected for a number of years and still
stood, albeit sorrowfully, in front of the desk, a naughty pupil
before the vengeful headmaster.

Did Jeremy notice? Not the chair
- he'd been here long enough to not notice its grumblings either.
No. Did he notice Connors' manner? The way he spoke. The smile that
could melt a relative's resolve yet reduce a patient to a babbling
mess. No-one who worked in this hospital, or resided here either,
was addressed by their first name. Not by the Doctor at any rate.
To do so would place them on an even footing with him. It would
make them his equals. And although he'd insist that all were equal
within these walls, he was plainly more equal than anyone. Or so he
thought.

Connors had called him 'Jeremy.'
I think that would have been my cue to run-baby-run right there.
I'd be watching my back to make sure no blades were sticking out at
odd angles making me look like a drug crazed knife block or a not
so glamorous assistant for a failed circus act. Dr. Connors being
nice was like a vulture at a funeral - it might be wearing a dark
suit and shedding a tear, but you knew there was an ulterior motive
there somewhere. You knew that, once everyone had retired to the
wake to eat, drink and tell their stories, it was going to be
there, spade in wing, digging up its supper.