by Jeff Noon
At last he was free of the Melville Tower.
And he wasn’t the only one: a good number of the other residents were crowded on the concrete forecourt, talking to each other or standing in silence. Nyquist recognized a number of faces among them, people he had met on his travels through the corridors and apartments. He saw the children from apartment 37, the ones who had sung and prayed around the word tree. He saw Alice from apartment 14, her face still haunted by the voices she was hearing in her head. He saw Sam Bradshaw from apartment 21, the cartographer of the building. Others were there as well, strangers to him, yet he felt he knew them all. Amber, Vito, Lionel, Vaughn. Some were scared, some worried, some exultant. Yet none of them dared to move any further. Instead they stared out into the night, into the darkness that lay beyond the glow of the forecourt’s lamp. This was their limit, the borderline of their world. One of them, a teenage boy, was testing his courage, daring himself to take a step outside of the lamp’s circle of light. But he never quite made it; every time he retreated back inside the safety zone. Nyquist recognized the boy: it was Benedict, the eldest of the worshippers. Nyquist nudged through the crowd and spoke to the teenager.
“What’s happening? Why is everyone here?”
“There’s a story going round,” he said, “that we can leave now. Haven’t you heard?”
“No.”
“They say the old king has awoken. Our job here is done. He won’t need us anymore.”
Nyquist looked out to the circle of dimly lit space in the center of the ring of high-rises. All the windows in the other blocks were dark.
“Why don’t you leave, then?” he asked.
“We’re all scared. Maybe we’ll die, once we leave the confines.” The fear was real, written on the kid’s face like a horror story. “And anyway,” he continued, “we’re waiting to see what happens.”
“How do you mean?”
“To see what happens to the woman. If she’ll live or not.”
Nyquist had a bad feeling as he followed Benedict’s gesture: a lone figure was walking slowly away from the tower. And he knew in the darkness of his heart that it was Zelda, that she was making her escape. He also knew that she was in danger, that her life was entirely held together by the building and its powers. Without the reader, without the author, without Oberon and Calvin and all the other spirits of the tower, what would become of her? And the fact that her true physical self was dead also added to his worry.
“Zelda! Zelda!” Nyquist’s voice was lost in the night, carried away by the wind. Yet he kept on: “Zelda! Come back. Turn back! Zelda!”
Now the other people gathered around him joined in with their own calls.
“Zelda. Come back! Zelda, come back to us.”
It was no use: the figure was already merging into the shadows. Nyquist had no choice. He stepped out of the light, into the grey expanse. He felt his shoes on the gravel path beyond the concrete of the forecourt. He felt grass and earth beneath his feet as he left the pathway, taking the shortest route across the central area. The other high-rises rose up on all sides like evil giants from one of the fairy stories his mother had read to him. He called again, hearing in response only the echoes of Zelda’s name caught between the tower blocks.
The further away from the tower he walked, the more the details of his other life came to him, until it was all there in his mind: the case that had led him to the tower in the first place, all the different people he had met on the way – landlords, council workers, prostitutes, police officers. He felt again the sickening fear of his plunge from the rooftop, he remembered the swarm of words attacking him in the old, abandoned library; he saw it all. And he drew courage from this knowledge. He moved on until he saw her again, a figure in the shadows.
“Zelda! Zelda, wait for me!”
She was leaving the circular area, heading for Calvino Road. Once she crossed that limit, the city would engulf her in its twisted, darkened streets and she’d be lost to him, lost forever. Nyquist started to run. His heart was pounding now, and he felt the sweat break out on his brow, and his back, inside his shirt. Everything he knew, everything he had learned in the last few days, in the two bodies he currently occupied, fictional and otherwise, everything told him that he had to stop her. No, not that: he had to reach her. That was it! He had to do as she did, he had to be where she was. This was his story: whatever her fate was, his would be as well. And so he ran faster than ever. He tripped and nearly fell over a loose paving slab, but righted himself and hurried on, reaching the main road. Here he came to rest, for Zelda had stopped also. She was standing alone, but some distance away, across a patch of land where a number of buildings had been demolished, another woman was seen. Nyquist recognized her. Her name was Gabrielle, one of the prostitutes he had spoken to while seeking Zelda’s killer. She was the one who claimed to have precognition of events that happened on the next page of life. Had this knowledge drawn her here, to help Zelda escape the tower?
There was a car parked nearby with its headlights on, turning the area into a theatre set. Another woman was sitting in the driver’s seat.
Now Gabrielle waved to Zelda, calling her name loudly.
Nyquist called to her as well, and for an absurd moment he felt he was in conflict with this other woman, each seeking possession.
Zelda, Zelda, Zelda, Zelda…
The two worlds cried out to her: one real, the other a story.
One of them appealed more than another. Nyquist couldn’t believe it; she was moving towards him. Zelda was walking back across Calvino Road. She was more character than flesh, and the character desired life. And he and she – two characters together – would live on together, they would make that happen.
Bathed in the glow of the headlamps, Zelda looked almost spectral, illuminated from within. She ignored the cries of Gabrielle; instead she came to Nyquist and embraced him. “Quickly,” he said. “We have to get back.” They set off, moving at a pace towards the Melville high-rises, towards tower five. A swarm of alphabugs flew ahead of them, lighting the way. Nyquist could see the group of residents on the forecourt: one of them made a gesture, a wave.
They were halfway across the central area when he felt Zelda slowing at his side.
“Come on, keep going! We’re nearly there.”
“I can’t,” she answered. “Something’s wrong.”
“What is it?”
But this time she didn’t answer. She’d stopped completely. Nyquist did the same, he had no choice. “Zelda…” His voice trailed off as he saw what was happening to her.
It started on her face, in her hair, her clothes, her fingertips. They were breaking apart, crumbling away. In tiny pieces at first, then larger ones. And he saw that inside her body, in the fissures that were now appearing in her skin, the same process was at work. He saw the letters, the words, the phrases taken from the book, the sentences from The Body Library; this was her true nature, and without the tower’s spell Zelda was nothing more than a series of words arranged in a certain manner. Nothing more.
One last time he tried to drag her along.
She couldn’t move. There was no strength left in her.
So Nyquist stood there with her, and he held her tightly. He put his arms around her and tried to hold her body together, to keep the words from cracking apart, the sentences from breaking in two. It was no good. Her body fragmented. There was no pain, no expression on her face other than a sense of loss, and then even more than that: acceptance.
Now she was only words and letters in the air, caught for a few moments in the shape of a woman, a clouded shape that the alphabugs fluttered around and through, their darts of light like the final sparks of her soul.
And then the wind took her away from his arms.
Nyquist was alone.
Alone.
Alone in the story.
He took a few steps back towards Melville Five, towards the lighted forecourt and the people who stood there, watching him, waving t
o him, urging him to return. The tower was his proper place, and these were his true brothers and sisters, fictionals, born of the word.
But then he stopped and he knelt to the ground, his hands covering his face. He felt like crying out, howling, but no sound would come: his mouth was empty.
Nothing more could be said.
And he waited. He waited until the process started in his own body. Here, at the center of the five towers, on this lonely, darkened, weed-strewn patch of ground in Storyville, he waited as his own body was taken back, into the book, into the library, into words alone. And then he could speak, he could speak to the air, to the city, to the life he had lost and the life he had gained or nearly so, and the love he’d held in his arms for so short a time, and he spoke aloud for the night to hear, and for anyone who might care to read these scattered words at some future date, yes, he told the story of his body as it broke apart, word by word, letter by letter, speck by speck, dust to dust.
Part Five
451 BRADBURY AVENUE
Out of Sleep
HE MOVED through one story after another, some from his life, some from lives he might yet live, or from lives he might already be living and not know about. Through the words of the sky he fell, through the pages, the tumbling, rustling pages; through a cloud of words he fell, through the rain that looked like ink spilling down on blue-grey paper. For the second time that day he fell and kept on falling until at last he landed in the book of his own flesh and lay there, scarcely breathing, looking out through his eyes as if he were hiding inside himself. He could see Bella Monroe leaning over him, he could hear the medical equipment bleeping and pinging, he could feel the tubes that entered his arms, feeding him, and taking from him all he didn’t need. And most of all he could feel the letters moving in his body, the blood-red language of his flesh, the story of his body being written and rewritten, moment to moment to moment, and he clawed his way up through the layers of sleep and dream until his voice spilled over from his lips.
Bella…
“Yes, it’s me,” Monroe said. “Can you hear me? John? Did you speak?”
He tried to sit up in the bed but the various sheets, tubes and wires held him back.
“Stay there, don’t try to move.” Monroe pushed him down gently. “I’ll get the doctor.”
“No, no, there’s nothing wrong with me. I need to…”
But he couldn’t for the life of him remember what it was he needed to do. On the edge of waking it had all seemed so clear, but now it drifted away, dreamlike.
“Bella, yes, fetch the doctor. Go on.”
She nodded at him and smiled. “It’s good to have you back.”
The moment she’d left the room he ripped out the tubes from his arms and stomach and slipped away from the bed sheets. At first he could hardly walk, he had to cling to the bed for support. From there he stumbled over to a wall cupboard, where he found his clothes. He took off the hospital gown and started to get dressed. Blood was flowing from the openings where the tubes had entered, but he ignored this for now. It seemed to matter little, that he was losing vital fluid, when the words covered his body. They would keep him alive, at least for the time being. Every portion of him was covered, ever shifting, ever moving. What the hell was being spelled out? A narrative of some kind, but he had no clue as to its meaning, or what it might yet hold. But he knew one thing for certain: he was nearing the end of it. And then Zelda’s face came to him: those final moments when her body had flowed away into words, pure language, lost, lost forever.
He was almost dressed by the time Monroe returned, with the council’s chief medical officer in tow, alongside Overseer K. Nyquist pushed past them all without saying a word, and he took to the corridor, a long white pristine environment somewhere below the Grand Hall in Kafka Court.
Monroe shouted his name and came running after him.
“They don’t want you to go, John.”
“To hell with them!”
“It’s not safe.”
“It’s not safe anywhere, that’s a fact.”
He turned to walk on but then stopped. He was suddenly tired, racked to his core by the long immobile hours in bed, and the events that had taken place in his mind during that sleep, the story of the night in the high-rise and all it contained.
“Bella, I need you to drive me. Will you do that?”
“Of course. Where to?”
He thought for a moment and then answered: “Where it all started.”
“Melville Towers?”
“No, not there. The real beginning.”
“Where? Where are we going?”
But Nyquist was already walking away.
A Book of Spells
IT WAS half past three in the morning. The streets were silent, deserted except for those few nocturnal creatures who preferred the night’s tales. Monroe drove her car at speed, following Nyquist’s instructions. He was sitting in the passenger seat, holding his arm where the blood had already congealed, where the words had already done their job and sealed his wounds with their letters. His mind was clear, the clearest it had been for many a week: the vanishing point lay ahead and he was heading straight for it.
“Will you please tell me what’s happening,” Monroe said.
“I’m still not sure.”
“Is that true? You’re not holding back from me?”
“It’s the truth, Bella. I’m putting it together. But something is taking place tonight, in the city.”
She pulled up at the stop light of a traffic sign. “I feared as much.”
“Bella, you spoke of people coming together with one purpose, the chosen ones. The messengers, you called them. You told me about the story coming alive…”
He stopped speaking.
“John, are you all right? You don’t look too good.”
“I’m fine. Just keep driving. No, wait. Stop here.”
She did so and Nyquist climbed out of the car. He walked across the street and entered a telephone box. Monroe waited for him, keeping her eyes on him the whole time in case he tried to slip away. But he finished the call after a few minutes and came back to the car and they set off once more.
“We’re nearly there,” he said. “The next right.”
“Who did you call?”
“The police.”
He would say no more. She tried to engage him in conversation, to no avail. He was either weakening, or finding some hidden strength; she couldn’t decide which. But a change was definitely taking place.
“Turn here,” he said. “Drive down the street a few yards, and then stop.”
The car moved slowly. “Here?”
“This will do it.”
Monroe turned off the engine and the quiet crept in around the vehicle. They were the only living souls awake on the street; all the lights were off in the buildings on both sides.
“What now?”
His answer surprised her: “Turn away, Bella. Don’t look at my face. Please.”
“Nyquist, you think…”
“Don’t look at me!”
She wouldn’t do as he asked, so he did so himself, turning away from her in the seat. But her hand sought out his features. Her hand moved over his face, tracing the shapes of the letters that moved on his skin.
“I’ve been watching you all night.”
“I know, I know that. I heard you. The words…”
“Well then?”
“I’m grateful to you.”
“But now?”
It took a while for him to answer. “I’m ashamed,” he said. “I don’t know what you’ve been reading.”
“Your face, your story. All that I could manage.”
“I heard you. Speaking to me, telling me things. You were a lifeline.”
“Well,” she said. “It works both ways.”
He turned to her directly and held her gaze, and she did the same, eye to eye. Nothing was said for a moment, not in words. And then:
“There were two women. B
oth called Zelda.”
“You were close to them both?”
He nodded. “Yes. One was like me, suffering in the same way.” He indicated the words that moved on his raised hand. “And she was murdered. It was staged to look like a suicide.”
“And the other woman?”
“The other? The other Zelda died a short while ago, in my arms.”
He said it in an almost matter-of-fact way, but Monroe could sense the deep emotion hidden behind the words. She let the moment go by and then asked: “Is that why we’re here?”
“I need to find out why this happened.” He pointed over to a building across the narrow street. “And the answer, I believe, is waiting for us in that office.”
Monroe followed his direction. The place was dark. But then she noticed a tiny flicker of light at one of the windows on the upper floor.
“Shall I come with you? Only…”
“What?”
“I’m not very good at staying put.”
He smiled at this, but then his expression changed; the words grew more agitated on his face, and his eyes screwed shut.
“What is it? Are you all right?” Monroe reached out to him. “Does it hurt?”
“I think… I think…”
“Yes? John, speak to me, please. Speak to me!”
“I think they’re killing me.”
“They? You mean the… you mean…?”
“The words.” His eyes opened wide. “The words are killing me.”
“No, no that doesn’t make sense. When you were under, in the coma… they kept you alive.”
“Then I don’t know. But it’s not a good feeling.”
And with that, he got out of the car. Monroe followed suit, joining him as he walked across the road.
“What is this place?” she asked. “A. P. Linden Associates?”
“Antonia Linden employed me, right at the very beginning of this case.”
He pressed on the door buzzer and waited. The last time he’d been here, he’d broken in like a burglar. Now he suspected that Linden was in residence, and he also suspected that she would have to welcome him: there was no other choice. He pushed on the door and it opened easily under his touch.
