by Jeff Noon
“Not very secure,” Monroe whispered.
“She wants us to visit.”
They entered the small reception area and walked past the desk, looking into the main office. It was empty. They carried on down the corridor, towards the kitchen. Antonia Linden was sitting at the kitchen table in the near dark, smoking a cigarette and taking sips from a glass of red wine.
“How nice to meet you again,” she said, her words ever so slightly drawled.
Nyquist didn’t have any time for niceties. “Where is it?” There was an edge in his voice. “Upstairs?”
She didn’t even bother to nod.
Halfway up the stairs his pace slowed, he couldn’t help himself. The whispering could already be heard. As they reached the landing he saw a flickering light coming through the open doorway of the smaller of the two upstairs rooms. Monroe started to speak, but he shook his head. There wasn’t a single question he could possibly answer. They entered the room together. Nyquist remembered his first visit here: the same blue and yellow flowery wallpaper, the same desk, the chair, the art deco lamp which was currently switched off. Despite the lack of artificial light, a soft glow permeated the room, emitted from the object that lay on the table in plain view.
The Body Library.
He had heard so much about it, seen so many pages torn from it, or offshoots of it, and he’d witnessed and been deeply affected by its magic: now the real thing was in his sight.
Monroe made a wordless sound.
The manuscript was opened out flat at a middle spread. The pages were either single ply, or made of two or three layers where different parts of other books and magazines had been glued down, or stitched or stapled into place. The whispering was heard again, as a page of the book turned of its own accord, blown by a ghost’s breath.
Nyquist and Monroe could only look on in wonder.
They saw stories, images, fragments of poems, attached objects, trinkets, feathers, bits of cloth, empty cocoons, pressed flowers, leaves, the iridescent wing cases of beetles. The sentences tumbled over the pages in a wild fashion, the cuts between phrases as jagged and as primitive as the ones that had occupied Thomas Dreylock’s face. Nyquist felt within his own body the book’s profound magic, and the words in his flesh responded to it, like to like, species to species. He felt himself becoming lightheaded, that old spell taking him over, but far more powerful than the words he had chanted at the secret meeting of the believers, and more powerful even than the word tree and its natural energies. Here was the source itself, the wellspring from which a rebel language rose up, seeping through his skin, through the bloodstream, up the nerves of the spine, into the brain, there to explode into one story after another, moving continuously into new variations.
Monroe gasped. “It’s alive,” she said. “The book’s alive.”
Indeed it was. They could hear it breathing, they could see the pulse of the pages, the heartbeat. Nyquist could feel the heat generated by narrative itself as it wove through the paper. Yet when he reached out to touch the open page his fingers tingled cold from the contact, as though from a jellyfish’s skin, or a spider’s web in a darkened cellar. Most of the stolen sections were typeset, but at least a portion of each page was handwritten. The words trembled slightly under his gaze. A fine array of veins was visible in the parchment, both red and blue, ready to flow as blood should a pair of scissors come near. Nyquist caught the scent of fog and dust and flowers and animal fur and a slight tinge of decaying flesh, and whenever another page turned he might hear the human whisper or a crackle of autumn leaves or the sound of wings softly beating in preparation for flight.
A single touch had stained the tips of his fingers black with ink. It made him think of the pool beneath the Melville Tower and its mysterious substance, the blood of Oberon. The very same blood was used to write The Body Library. And midnight’s ink never quite dried on the paper, the story was never complete, there was always another word to write, another incident, another character to add.
Nyquist stepped back from the desk as Antonia Linden joined them in the room. She stood just inside the doorway.
“I don’t know what to call you anymore,” Nyquist said. “Linden, or Beaumont?”
“I was born Ava Beaumont, if that’s of any use to you.”
“So right from the start, you were using me?”
“You were a character, one of many. And yet a willing one, as I recall.”
“I didn’t know the real motive for your employing me.”
“There were pressing matters at hand.”
“You had it all planned out.”
“Not all. No, that’s not possible. There’s nothing certain about this endeavor of ours, even with Oberon’s exquisite eye for all the city’s stories. Chance will always be a factor. But by careful consideration, a nudge here and there, a word in someone’s ear, one person forced to meet another without either person knowing why… in this way the tale unfolds.”
Nyquist looked back at the book on the table. Its spectral glow reminded him of the penthouse suite of Melville Five.
“I saw you earlier tonight. In the tower.”
She smiled at this.
“I saw through my other self’s eyes, Ava. You were reading from the book.”
“Such is my task. I do it every couple of nights, if I can manage it, for a few hours or more. It’s very tiring. I sit here at the desk and the book transports me to the tower. And I feel that I’m there, I really do. And I read, one page after another. It makes everything more…” She chose her words carefully: “More real.”
“You pointed the way forward, told me how to find Zelda. Even then, you were urging me on.”
“I had to get you down there, in the basement.”
Nyquist shook his head in disbelief.
Ava shrugged. “I felt for you, John, I really did. I tried my very best to help you, to keep you alive. We needed that final element, the words you swallowed, a father’s message that lived on inside your body. That vital, dark energy that you carried within. John, you do know now; it’s why the book picked you out.”
Nyquist felt cold, his feelings pushed aside.
Ava continued: “There were many others chosen. Some proved themselves worthy, others failed.”
Monroe had been quiet up to now, listening to the conversation. But hearing this last statement she stepped forward and asked, “Is she referring to Patrick?”
“She is. Among others.”
Anger crossed over Monroe’s face.
But Ava stood her ground. “There’s very little either of you can do now.” Her voice had taken on a lilting quality. “Only the final chapter remains to be told. And then, at last, we shall all be free. I only wish that my little Calvin could be in my arms once more. I would like to sing to him one last time. Alas, it will never be. His grandfather needs him more than I do.”
Her eyes closed as she performed the first verse of the “Crooked Man” song, the most perfect and tender-hearted version Nyquist had yet heard. Even the words on his skin were calmed a little by the song. And he knew that Ava Beaumont was herself a victim: her son had been given up to the book, his absence a necessary sacrifice, and all at Oberon’s bidding, no doubt.
Nyquist spoke urgently: “Ava, you needed me to go back to Melville, in spirit at least, to guide my other self through the corridors and rooms of the tower. Is that right?”
“One of you wasn’t enough. No, we needed both of you, working together, both sides of the page, fiction and non-fiction.” Ava smiled at her own success. “It all worked out remarkably well, considering the chances I took. And then you kindly visited a library, and it was all very easy from then on.”
He stared at her. “And for all this to happen, you needed to set me on a task.”
“By that point I knew how to provoke you, how to make you commit.” A half-drunken smile settled on her lips. “You never could resist the search for truth, Nyquist, especially when it concerns the death of love.”
His final suspicion was confirmed.
“I talked to your husband, Ava.”
“How thrilling for you.”
“He told me about your personality, your passion, that you would do anything at all to bring the spell to its rightful conclusion.”
“It’s true.”
“So you murdered Zelda Courtland. It was you. Maybe you had a little help from your assistant, for the nastier aspects.”
Ava Beaumont gazed at the book on the table. “It was all for the one purpose,” she said. “A purpose beyond any of your petty comforts.”
“You should know,” Nyquist replied, “that I’ve already called the police.”
“It matters little. My work is almost done.”
There was a weight to her words, a darkness.
Nyquist put his hand on the open page of The Body Library. He held the paper between forefinger and thumb.
Beaumont drew her strength towards her and said in a stately voice, “Our family has always ruled over the story of this city, back to when Storyville was little more than a few huts beside the river, and the story first flickered into life. Long ago, the seeds of the word tree were planted. Each of us contains the spirit of that same story, the grand story. We are moved by its magical properties, and each tells it in his or her way, passing on the words down the generations.” Her voice rose up, filled with pride. “We shall yet prevail.”
Nyquist tore at the page, feeling the tear inside his own flesh as the words reacted.
Beaumont laughed out loud, her own body reveling in the pain.
Monroe said. “You’ve done your job, John, as Overseer K asked. You’ve found the book.”
“Not quite. She wants me to destroy it.”
He tore out another page. He wanted to tear out page after page until the whole book was nothing but shreds of paper on the floor, but something stopped him. The room seemed smaller suddenly, and he felt suffocated. The words were burrowing madly under his skin, worse than ever. Panicking, he tried to reach the door, only to be blocked by Monroe. She was speaking to him, asking him if everything was all right, but he couldn’t hear her properly. His own writing was too loud, far too loud, the phrases and sentences were crying out in pain from his skin and that was all he could feel, all he could understand, nothing else, his body was a book of skin, bone, muscle and blood. The glow of light around the manuscript was brighter now, pulsating, and his own blood pulsed to the same rhythm. Words were rising from the pages of the book, the same ones taken from his body earlier, they were rising up in a cloud, filling the room. His father’s message. Nyquist stared ahead and he saw within the cloud a place, a field, an overflow pipe, a tree.
A body swinging from a branch.
The words spoke to him.
One Morning in Storyville
THEY LEFT Ava Beaumont to her drink and her cigarettes, her precious book of cut-up magic and her empty, lonely rooms, and whatever ending her story might reach. Bella Monroe drove out towards the east of the city. Nyquist was drowsy, his head filled with visions, his eyes opening on other worlds beyond the road ahead. And all the time he was mumbling and giving out directions, following the words’ instruction.
It was almost dawn by the time they turned down Plath Lane. Monroe parked the car by the farm gate and they both got out. She looked around.
“What is this place? Why are we here?”
“Marlowe’s Field,” he answered. “This is where Zelda Courtland was murdered.”
They walked across the open land, feeling the sodden, marshy ground underfoot. Not a soul was in sight apart from the two of them. Birds sang verse and chorus from trees and bushes as the sun rose over the edge of the world.
“Nyquist, you’re not going to do anything silly, are you?”
“I don’t know why I’m here.”
“You don’t?”
He stopped walking. “Every single ounce of my being is telling me to be here, now, at this time. There’s no hope of resistance.”
She waited for more information, but her friend was quiet. He held up a hand as though testing the day’s warmth. Then he shielded his eyes with the same hand and said, “There, do you see, Bella? We’re not alone.”
Yes, she saw them now: dark figures moving in the early morning mist, other people coming from different directions across the fields, by different roads, in different vehicles from different lives and situations, but all with the same purpose. Nyquist moved on, urging Monroe to keep up. He walked with determination, his body controlled from within by the script that wrote out each moment for him, line by line. The many words glowed on his skin and for the first time he welcomed their presence.
The others were drawing near, a hundred or more of them, men, women and even a number of children, all heading for the same location: the tree by the wastepipe, the hanging tree. He remembered what the two young kids had told him: Marlowe’s Field was the site of a gallows pole, three or more centuries before. He imagined a hamlet in this field: dirt roads, villagers, the crowded square, the hangman going about his business, the final words of the condemned man.
Alphabugs fluttered in, hovering above the heads of the gathering. Monroe by instinct stood back. She was not part of this. Nyquist looked at her, and she waved him on. He could see the others clearly now; all were marked on the faces and hands, and no doubt over their entire bodies, with the new lexicon, the words and letters of the spell. He recognized some of the faces from his time in the Melville Tower; but these were not the residents, these people were real, born of flesh and blood only. Gathered in the field were the poor men and women who had been taken over by the virus. Even Thomas Dreylock was there. All were now drawn forward.
And then he heard Monroe shout out. He turned, to see her approaching one of the men.
It was Patrick Wellborn, his face covered in lettering, but recognizable.
Monroe stopped a few feet from him. Nyquist could see the look of shock on her face. The man she had once loved, that she feared was dead, was now standing in front of her. For a moment she looked as though she might strike him, or shout abuse at him, or at least argue with him. But the anger left her face as quickly as it had appeared, and now she simply stood there, staring at him. The mists of dawn wreathed about them both.
She turned away and came towards Nyquist and then stopped a little way off. She was waiting, as they all were.
For Nyquist’s part, although Patrick Wellborn had pushed him off the rooftop in Lower Shakespeare, he felt little animosity toward him. Some other impulse had taken over them all, and for the moment they were joined in one action, one purpose. Of the infected, only Zelda Courtland was missing.
Nyquist moved closer to the old tree. The others did the same, forming a circle around the bent and twisted trunk. A breeze rustled the leaves. Here two stories joined together perfectly: two trees, two bodies. One female, one male. One upright, hung from the neck, the other upside down, suspended from the feet. One young and one very, very old.
Nyquist looked over to the wastepipe with its swarm of alphabugs: the night’s broken tales ended up here, amid the mist, the dew on the grass, the sparkle of birdsong. It made him think of everything he had lost, both recently, and in the distant past.
On the edge of town where the stories flow away.
A man and a woman are covered in silence. They walk alone, with only one word left unspoken between them, just one word unwritten.
He had never said the word to her, to Zelda, the one word that mattered.
His thoughts were interrupted.
The words stirred within his body.
The spell was beginning.
Nyquist wasn’t the first to feel it. Across the way a young woman suddenly screamed. She bent over double and clutched her belly with her hands. Then she screamed again and lurched upright, her backbone arched over at a dreadful angle. Another, an older man, copied her movements. He howled in pain as his body went into seizure. Nyquist felt himself taken over by the s
ame actions. It began as a sharp pain in his stomach and then grew outwards from there, quickly reaching the outer layer of flesh. His skin burned as the words writhed madly about, slithering over each other in their desire to escape his body. If he screamed or made any noise at all, he wasn’t aware of it: his body had been taken over completely. He, like all the others present, was at the mercy of the sickness. The entire circle was suffering in the same way.
Monroe stepped back, her nerves on edge from what she was seeing and hearing. It was a terrible sight to behold, so many people, each one in the throes of a possession. That was the only way she could think of it: a demon had taken refuge in their bodies and was now eating or bursting his way out, through the flesh. Poor Nyquist: he had dropped to his knees in the dew-wet grass and was pressing the sides of his head with his hands, the better to keep whatever it was inside from breaking free. Monroe moved a little way towards him and then stopped, for what could she do, truly? She was human to her bones, unaffected, without any true knowledge of what was taking place here. All she could do was witness the events and pray to the gods of the city that some good came from this, that the story ended well, not in despair, or loneliness, or injury or death. A glimmer of hope in the last few sentences, this was all she wished for.
Nyquist sank further down, into the grass. He felt his hands clutching at the earth, the damp soil, the insects within the soil; he felt the water below oozing though the ground, he felt the roots of the tree reaching out in a network of growth, seeking food, nutrients, energy; he felt himself as part of the roots, the system, the tree, the earth, the air, the field, the words that flowed from each to each, and the pain, the pain that coursed through him, making his nerves sing, sing aloud with the long epic ballad of the world. And then the pain was gone. It happened like that, in an instant, and he stood up slowly, testing his limbs, his muscles. Everything was fine, in fact his skin tingled with delight. He breathed easily, and his mind was free of thought, cleansed. He stood up tall and proud and strong and saw that the others had done the same, and that their expressions were purged of all cares. And he saw also that their faces and hands were now clean, free of the words that had plagued them over the past days or weeks. He looked at his hands to make sure; yes, the palms and backs were empty, the skin returned to its natural hue. Yet he could still feel the letters inside him, in his head, in his skull, gathering there.
