Slade House

by David Mitchell

  Fred Pink’s glasses reflect and bend the grimy strip light. “I’ll die, one of these mornings. I’m seventy-nine now, I still smoke like a flamin’ chimney, my blood pressure’s chronic. Maggs the landlady’ll die, too; whoever keeps sending you them texts’ll die; and you’ll die as well, Miss Timms. Death’s life’s only guarantee, yes? We all know it, yet we’re hardwired to dread it. That dread’s our survival instinct and it serves us well enough when we’re young, but it’s a curse when you’re older.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, Mr. Pink. And?”

  “Norah and Jonah Grayer wanted to not die. Ever.”

  Bang on cue, a goal’s scored on the TV downstairs and the crowd surges and roars like a kettle boiling. I maintain my professional face. “Don’t we all?”

  “Yes. We do. Life everlasting.” Fred Pink takes off his glasses to rub them on his stained shirt. “It’s why religion got invented and it’s why religion stays invented. What else matters more than not dying? Power? Gold? Sex? A million quid? A billion? A trillion? Really? They won’t buy you an extra minute when your number’s up. No, cheating death, cheating aging, cheating the care home, cheating the mirror and the dug-up corpse’s face like mine that you’ll see in your mirror too, Miss Timms, and sooner than you think: That’s a prize worth the hunting, the taking. That’s the only prize worth hunting. And what we want, we dream of. The stage props change down the ages, but the dream stays the same: philosophers’ stones; magic fountains in lost Tibetan valleys; lichens that slow the decay of our cells; tanks of liquid whatever that’ll freeze us for a few centuries; computers that’ll store our personalities as ones and zeroes for the rest of time. To call a spade a spade: immortality.”

  The wackometer needle is stuck on 11. “I see.”

  Fred Pink’s smile curves downwards. “The one little snag being, immortality’s all hooey. Right?”

  I sip my nondiet tonic water. “Since you ask, yes.”

  He puts his glasses on. “What if, very occasionally, it’s real?”

  And so, at 8:52, Fred Pink proves himself divorced not only from his wife but from reality itself. “If anyone discovered How Not To Die, I don’t think it’d stay a secret very long.”

  Now he acts as if he’s the one humoring me. “Don’t you now? Why’s that then, Miss Timms?”

  I strangle a sigh of exasperation. “Because the inventors or researchers would want recognition, fame, Nobel Prizes.”

  “No. What they’d want is Not To Die. Which wouldn’t happen by going public. Think about it: about the squalid, shitty reasons that people murder each other in large numbers now. Oil; the drug trade; control over occupied territories and the word ‘occupied.’ Water. God’s true name, His true will, who owns access to Him. The astonishing belief that Iraq can be turned into Sweden by deposing its dictator and smashing the place up a bit. What wouldn’t these same warlords, oligarchs, elites and electorates do to enforce their claims over a limited supply of Life Everlasting? Miss Timms, they’d kick off World War Three. Our plucky inventors’d be shot by maniacs, be buried in bunkers or die in a nuclear war. If the supply’s not limited, the prospects’re even bleaker. Yes, we’d all stop dying, but we wouldn’t stop breeding. Would we? Men are dogs, Miss Timms; you know that. Give it twenty, thirty, fifty years, there’d be thirty, forty, a hundred billion human beings eating up our godforsaken world. We’d be drowning in our own shit even as we fought each other for the last Pot Noodle in the last supermarket. See? Either way you lose. If you’re smart enough to discover immortality, you’re smart enough to ensure your own supply and keep very very very shtum indeed. Like the Grayer twins did, in an attic, close to this spot, seventy years ago.” Fred Pink leans back like a man who’s proved a point.

  His belief is unshakable and appalling. I choose my words with care. “How did the Grayers achieve what you’re saying they achieved?”

  “A quartet of psychosoteric breakthroughs. First off, they perfected the lacuna. Which is what? A lacuna’s a small space that’s immune to time, so a candle’ll never burn down in it, or a body won’t age in it. Second, they enhanced the transversion their Sayyid’d taught them—what the New Age jokers call astral projection—so they could venture out from their bodies, as far as they wanted, for as long as they wanted. Third, they mastered long-term suasioning, so their souls could move into a stranger and occupy that body. Meaning, the Grayers were now free to leave their bodies in the lacuna they created in the attic of Slade House and inhabit bodies in the outside world. You with me so far, yes?”

  Yes, Fred Pink is barking mad. “Assuming souls are real.”

  “Souls are as real as gall bladders, Miss Timms. Believe me.”

  “And nobody’s ever held a soul or X-rayed one because…?”

  “Is a mind X-rayable? Is hunger? Is jealousy? Time?”

  “I see. So souls can fly about the place, like Tinker Bell?”

  A pipe gurgles in the wall. “Provided the soul in question is the soul of an Engifted.”

  “A what?”

  “An Engifted. A psychic, or a potential psychic. And like Tinker Bell, sort of; but a Tinker Bell who’ll live inside your mind without your consent, for years if it wants, hack into your brain, control your actions and play funny buggers with your memories. Or kill you.”

  My phone’s vibrating again. “So the Grayer twins are a pair of wandering Jews hitching rides in hosts while their own bodies stay dry-frozen in a bubble back in Slade House where it’s forever 1931?”

  Fred Pink knocks back his brandy. “1934. It took them a few years—and a few lab rats—to perfect their modus operandi, so to speak. But there’s a catch. This system won’t run off the mains. It runs off psychovoltage. The psychovoltage of Engifteds. Every nine years the Grayers have to feed it. They have to lure the right sort of guest into a…kind of reality bubble they call an orison. The orison’s their fourth breakthrough, by the way. Once the guest’s there, the twins have to get them to eat or drink banjax. Banjax is a chemical that shrivels the cord fastening the soul to the body, so it can be extracted just before death.”

  What do you say to a delusional old man who expects you to be awed by the historic awesomeness of his revelations? “That all sounds very involved.”

  “Ah, the Grayers make it look easy. It’s an art form, see.”

  It’s batshit crazy is what it is. 8:56. “And how is it connected with my sister?”

  “She was engifted, Miss Timms. The Grayers killed her for her psychovoltage.”

  Right. Now I feel like he’s just punched me. And I want to punch him back, for dragooning my sister into his nutso fantasy.

  “I knew it wasn’t Alan, and I’ve met siblings of the other four, but not one had the glow. You do, which finally confirms it was Sally they were after.”

  I feel various emotions all too mixed up to sort out, like ingredients flying around in a Moulinex. “You never even met Sally, Mr. Pink.”

  “Ah, but her case study leaves little room for doubt. When I read what her doctor in Singapore wrote, I guessed her psychic potential—”

  “Excuse me. Stop. When you read what?”

  “She had therapy in Singapore. You must’ve known.”

  “Of course I knew, but you—you read Sally’s psychiatric reports?”

  “Yes.” Fred Pink looks surprised that I’m upset. “I had to read them.”

  “What gives you the right to read Sal’s files? And how did you get them?”

  He looks at the doorway and lowers his voice: “With a great deal of difficulty, I can tell you; but with a clean conscience too. If someone’d stopped the Grayers in an earlier decade, Miss Timms, my nephew and your sister’d still be with us. But nobody did. ’Cause nobody knew this backstory. But I know, and I’m trying to stop them. This is war. In war, ends justify means. War is ends justifying means. And believe it or not, I’m a secret warrior in this invisible war. So yes”—a glob of saliva flies from his lips—“I make no apology for combing through Sall
y’s doctors’ notes from both Singapore and Great Malvern, and by adding two and two—”

  Hang on—“Sally didn’t see a therapist in Malvern. She loved it there.”

  The pity in the old man’s face is disturbingly genuine: “She was miserable, Miss Timms. The bullying was merciless. She wanted to die.”

  “No,” I’m saying, “no way. She would’ve told me. We’re family.”

  “Often as not,” Fred Pink scratches his thigh, “the family’s the last to know about the big stuff. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  I can’t work out if he’s referring to my complex sexuality. Fred Pink may be sporadically insane, but he’s no fool. I sip my tonic water and find my glass is empty. 8:57. I should just go. Now. Really.

  “You’re an Engifted too, see.” Fred Pink gazes at my forehead. “Call it an aura, call it a feeling, but I know you’re humming with psychovoltage yourself. That’s why we met here and not down Slade Alley. The alley’s where the Grayers’ aperture opens, into their orison. They’d sniff you out.”

  I’ve met enough delusionals to know they have answers for every logical objection—that’s why they’re delusionals—but I ask this: “If these ‘soul vampires’ only wanted Sally, why abduct the other five? Where are Alan and the others now?”

  “The Grayers didn’t want any witnesses. Alan and the others, they were just…” Fred Pink clenches his face again, as if in pain. “Snuffed out. Their bodies were chucked into the gap between the orison and our world. Like bin bags down a garbage chute. The only upside is, their souls moved on while Sally’s was…converted. Eaten.”

  Maybe a part of me thinks logic can still save Fred Pink, or maybe I’ve a morbid curiosity about his psychosis, or maybe it’s both. “And why didn’t the police ever investigate this Slade House, if it’s so near to where Sally and Alan vanished?”

  “Slade House was bombed to rubble in 1940. Direct hit by a German bomb. Cranbury Avenue and Westwood Road were built over it after the war.”

  It’s 8:59. “So how was Sally lured in in 1997?”

  “She was lured into an orison of Slade House. A copy. A shadow theater. For presurgery.”

  “And why weren’t the Grayers’ preserved bodies in their attic lacuna destroyed by the bomb?”

  “ ’Cause in the lacuna, it’s always a few minutes after 11 P.M. on Saturday, 27 October, 1934. The very second the lacuna went live, so to speak. If you’d been there watching, you’d’ve seen the Grayers vanish, whoosh, like you’d just glimpsed them from a fast train hurtling by at the speed of time, so to speak. But inside the lacuna, it’s that moment eternally. Safer than the deepest nuclear vault under the Colorado Rockies.”

  Maggs the landlady downstairs is right. I’m feeding a sad and broken old man’s madness. My phone buzzes again. The clock’s hands move to nine. I hear Maggs laugh long and hard; the sound reminds me of the stabbing violins from the shower scene in Psycho. “Well, it’s certainly a detailed, consistent theory. But…”

  “It’s a load o’ codswallop, right?” Fred Pink flicks his brandy glass. It pings.

  I switch off my recorder. “I don’t believe in magic, Mr. Pink.”

  The old man exhales a long wavery tuneless note until his lungs are empty. “Pity, you being a journalist and all. I was hoping you’d write a big exposé for Spyglass. Alert the authorities.” He looks at the dark window. “What proof’d convince you?”

  “Proof that is proof, not faith masquerading as proof.”

  “Ah.” He idly examines his ink- and tobacco-stained fingernails. I’m glad he’s taking rejection this calmly. “Proof, faith. Those words, eh?”

  “I’m sorry I can’t believe you, Mr. Pink. Really. But I don’t, and now my partner’s expecting me at home.”

  He nods. “Well, I promised I’d call you a taxi, so that’s what I’ll do. A lunatic I may be, but I’m still a man of my word.” He stands up. “Shan’t be a tick. Check your texts. Someone’s worried.”

  It’s over. I feel empty. Avril’s sent no fewer than six messages.

  U finished yet honey?

  Cooked pumpkin soup

  Soup will be perfect before I go to bed. Next up:

  last london train from ur end:

  twelve past midnite. U on it?

  That’s thoughtful of Avril, but it’s a bit odd, considering it’s only 9 P.M. Unless that “U” means “Will u be.” I open her third text:

  ok am officially worried, tried to call,

  UNAVAILABLE message: where r u?

  U staying at hotel or wot? CALL xA

  A hotel? Avril’s not one of life’s habitual worriers; why do I need a hotel? And if she can text, why can’t she call? Is it the network? The next text reads:

  Hon its 3am and I know ur big tuff girl

  but CALL to say ur ok or I wont sleep.

  Lotta’s wedding 2moro u rmmbr?

  3 A.M.? What’s she on about? My mobile’s saying 21:02; the cracked clock agrees. She never gets rat-arsed on drink and she never smokes dope. I call her mobile…and get a NO SIGNAL DETECTED message. Fantastic. Vodafone must have begun upgrading their network after Avril’s texts arrived. I scroll down to message five:

  Freya u angry? if so dnt undrstnd

  sorry, cldnt sleep cnt think worried

  sick. Lottas wedding begins noon

  dnt know if I shd go or call police

  or wot. dont care what happnd or

  if u with anyone but pls PLS call.

  Avril doesn’t do head-screwing jokes like this, but if it isn’t a joke, it’s a mental meltdown. “If u with anyone”? We’re monogamous. We have been since day one. Avril knows that. She should know that. I try calling our neighbor, Tom, but it’s still NO SIGNAL DETECTED. Maybe there’s a pay phone in the bar—The Fox and Hounds is pretty much stuck in the 1980s. Otherwise I’ll ask Maggs the Moody Cow if I can pay to use her landline. I read the final text:

  told Lotta u have glandular fever

  so we stay at home. called Nic n

  Beryl but they not hear from u.

  police say wait 48 hrs b4 search.

  PLS FREYA CALL ME, AM

  LOSING MY MIND!!!

  Nothing Fred Pink has said tonight disturbs me as much as this. Avril’s the sane one who soothes away my nightmares; who reattaches my handle when I fly off it. The only explanation is that, yes indeed, she has lost her mind. I hurry down the steep stairs to the bar below…

  · · ·

  …and when I arrive, I enter the upstairs room I just left…and I stand there gasping and shuddering, as if I’ve just been drenched in icy water. My hand grips the doorframe. The same tables, the same chairs, the same nighttime window, the same enameled Guinness ad with a leprechaun playing a fiddle: the upstairs room of The Fox and Hounds. By going down I went up. My brain insists this happened. My brain insists this can’t have happened. My digital recorder’s still on the table we were sitting at—I forgot to pick it up in my panic—between my undrunk tomato juice, my empty cashew-nut packets and Fred Pink’s brandy glass. Behind me, the stairs are going down, and I can see the floor of the bar below, an ugly chessboard pattern. I hear the Have I Got News for You theme tune from the TV. Breathe, Freya; think. Stress does this; your job is stressful; hearing a nutter tell you your sister had her soul converted into diesel was stressful. Avril’s texts were stressful. Memory’s a slippery eel at the best of times, so obviously, obviously, you just, just “preimagined” going downstairs but didn’t actually go. If you walk down the stairs again—I mean now—one calm step at a time, I’m sure—

  My phone rings. Fumblingly, I get it out of my handbag; the screen says CALLER NOT RECOGNIZED. I fire off a fierce secular prayer that it’s Avril and answer with a frantic “Hello?”

  All I hear is an uncoiling sandstorm of static.

  I speak at it: “This is Freya Timms. Who’s this?”

  Maybe standing by the window will strengthen the signal.

  I speak more loudly and clearly: “Avril? Is tha
t you?”

  Big trees on Westwood Road smother streetlamps.

  Deep inside the static, words form: “Please! I can’t breathe!”

  Sally. Sally. It’s Sally. I’m crouching on the floor. My sister.

  It can’t be; it is; listen! “No! You can’t! It’s mine! Please! Nonono—”

  My sister’s alive! Hurt and scared, but alive! My words unblock and my tight throat opens enough to say, “It’s Freya, Sal—where are you? Sal! Where are you?”

  The static howls and beats and flaps and wails and thrashes and I hear “Someone’llstopyouonedayyou’llsufferyou’llpay—”

  The line’s dead, the screen says NO SIGNAL DETECTED and in my head I’m screaming NO! but that won’t help so I’m clicking through the menus to CALL REGISTER but I hit GAMES and activate Snake and my stupid bastard phone won’t let me go back until it’s all loaded, but Sal’s alive alive alive, and I should call the police now, but what if she calls back when I’m talking to them, or what if she’s been locked in a psycho’s cellar for nine years like that Kampusch woman in Austria who escaped from her captor a couple of months ago or what if—

  My phone’s trilling and flashing. I answer: “Sally!”

  “No, dearie. This is the Moody Cow from downstairs.”

  Maggs the landlady? “Look, I’m coming down, I need—”

  “It’s a bit late to help Sally now, I’m afraid, dearie.”

  I hear her say the line one more time in my head.

  I can’t speak, or move, or think, or do anything at all…

  …the dead flies in the strip light have woken up.

  “That was only her echo, dearie. Her residue. Time’s voicemail, if you like, from nine years ago. Oh, very well, then—it was your sister’s ghost talking.”

  Fear shunts me back through gluey air. “Who are you?”

  Maggs sounds teasing and friendly: “Surely one of Spyglass magazine’s top journalists could hazard an intelligent guess after everything you’ve heard this evening?”

  What have I missed? “Let me speak with Mr. Pink.”