The One Who Is Two (Book 1 of White Rabbit)

by Stuart Oldfield

Chapter 13

  Like an arrested felon he was alone on the back seat of the police car. A massive wall of uniform towered over the back of the seat in front; the constable from the station was driving, staring expressionlessly at the road and handling the gear-stick and steering wheel with mechanical detachment.

  'But who are they?' asked Loofah, 'And why did they bring us here? I don't really understand.'

  'You don't need to understand,' snapped the Under Manager from the front passenger seat, without turning.

  'But…' he began, but then stopped, sinking back into the seat.

  The police car glided smoothly along the narrow road. Dark woods slid over the glass beside Loofah's head, followed by a sudden blur of high hedges, a brilliant green flash of open fields then more woods. Perhaps Miss Leggett was right, perhaps he shouldn't interfere, perhaps he should just go along with what she wanted and try to keep out of trouble. He sighed deeply and stared at the window, hoping to be carried away by the endless river of colour and blurred shape pouring through his eyes. But unease squirmed in his belly like a restless tapeworm and his fingers remained tightly gripped to the river's grassy bank. He had to try again.

  'But Miss Leggett,' Loofah said, leaning forward, 'I would be able to help you much more if I were properly in the picture.' He waited for a response, but none came. 'Just for example: if I had known that these people might be trying to stop me from getting near the…' he winced, '…the creature, I could have been on my guard. If you had told me before that the little man was working for them then – .'

  'You failed to inform us that this enemy agent had previously approached you,' she snapped, spinning round to blast him with a furious glare.

  'But I didn't know he was an enemy agent, did I? Because you never told me anything about any enemy agents. You never told me much about anything, for that matter.'

  She sighed with exasperation and turned back to face the front.

  'It's really very, very simple,' she said, addressing the windscreen and clearly struggling to control her temper, 'You and the other one have been brought here by undesirable elements. These same elements are now using the creature to further their own evil ends. Presumably you remember what that means… or do I need to show you the photographs again?'

  Loofah cringed with guilt as fresh puppy blood and severed infant organs splattered against the speeding windscreen.

  'And if you will now for once co-operate, we can bring this foulness to an end,' she went on, 'And at the same time get you away from here – and back where you belong.'

  'All I have to do is catch it,' Loofah said quietly, 'And it's got to be me… no-one else will do.'

  'Exactly.'

  The chill miasma of a desecrated tomb wafted through his soul and he shuddered. Yes, it was out there, somewhere beyond the coloured blur of the side window his nemesis was waiting for him. The bravado that had accompanied the false train sighting has now evaporated – he knew that the next encounter would be for real.

  He held a hand in front of his face. The skin flowed over the palm, shades of red, green and blue flowing and blending together like oil on water, with the fingers coming in and out of focus of their own accord, fronds of seaweed undulating in the liquid air. Then, as he stared at the window, the blur poured off the glass and in through his eyes sockets, and then swirled in his skull like swamp fog. Loofah gazed into the murk, trying desperately to make sense of the half-formed shapes that lurked there.

  Peony's spoilt little face loomed out of the fog, followed quickly by Mrs Frimpton's winged-frame spectacles and the ruined telephone kiosk. Perhaps he was, as Miss Leggett repeatedly insisted, no more than an trouble-maker, an abuser of little girl's dolls, a laundry tamperer, a gratuitous vandal. Slime-covered octopus tentacles probed through his abdomen, worming between the steaming loops of his intestines. Or possibly even worse – another face appeared, peeping out from behind a blood-wet axe blade – for was he not, in some weird way, bound up with it, together with all its vile crimes? The tentacles gripped hard and he doubled forward, clutching at his belly.

  But now something new was floating out of the fog – it was a girl, the diaphanous whiteness of her gown flowing in a light mist over her golden body. She turned to him and her smile was like warm balm poured over the icy knot of his guts. Then she swam forward and her mouth started moving as if she were chanting some sacred mantra and, although he heard no sound, he knew the words she spoke. And she was not alone; the little schoolgirl dogs were there too, wagging her tails, and also the seagull peg and the cinema usherette with her tray of ice-creams, all drifting in the fog around the girl, all chanting in unison with her, monotonously and insistently. He saw that they were all smiling benignly, all wishing him well – even the wicked little peg had a benevolent glint in its beady black eye. And why? Because he was the long awaited quester for the mysterious female Janus whose title they chanted.

  Loofah again leaned forward. 'I have one more question, Miss Leggett.' As he spoke, the police radio under the dashboard came to life, buzzing and then crackling incoherently. 'Who is – ?'

  'Be quiet!' snapped the Under Manager and snatched up the handset, 'Shower curtain to towel rail, shower curtain to towel rail. Repeat your message. Over.'

  The radio crackled again and this time words emerged, bobbing like corks out of the liquid noise. 'Towel rail to shower curtain, towel rail to shower curtain. Bath sponge has been sighted. I repeat, bath sponge has been sighted. Proceed at one to plug hole – soap dish and rubber duck are already at the scene. Over and out.'

  The Under Manager tensed visibly as the message came through and as soon it was finished she turned to the monolithic constable.

  'Well?' she hissed, 'What are you waiting for?'

  For a few seconds he showed no sign of having heard her. Then his hand seemed to tighten, ever so slightly, on the steering wheel, easing it gently to the right. And suddenly Loofah was at the centre of a howling tornado of wrenching G-force, whirling hedgerow and screaming tyres as they spun across the tarmac in a fairground terror-ride. This time, however, the car did not come to stop, but flew out of the spin like a loosed arrow, the acceleration hurling him back into the hard vinyl.

  The landscape tore past in an unfocused blur. Loofah sat, paralysed, awaiting with dread certainty the sickening crunch of impact. His stunned gaze was sucked through the windscreen and out into the narrowing tunnel of tarmac, trees and hedges down which they hurtled. Feeling himself tumbling forward into the deadly vortex, he clenched his eyes tight shut. But the screaming orange darkness was no refuge, for it was filled with images of his soft body and hard metal coming together in a slow motion ballet, of jagged steel violating his sacred flesh, of shards of shattered bone bursting through his jeans and of liberated intestines writhing like a mass of landed eels sliding across the seat vinyl – images of flesh and metal, skin and plastic, fusing together into a hideous chimera of man and machine.

  Death, however, did not come and eventually Loofah opened his eyes. The lethal vortex still spun wildly across the windscreen and although the constable and Miss Leggett were sitting side by side staring into it, they were both suffused in an aura of profound sangfroid. The slight possibility that violent impact might not be absolutely inevitable now lurked at the very edge of Loofah's trembling awareness. Smearing sweat-slippery palms on his jeans, he tried to restart his stalled breathing.

  The police siren howled and other cars, small weak things, scuttled out of their way like frightened chickens. They flew down a long hill between stands of dark forest, then swept effortlessly up the other side, scudding from crest to crest over the slow waves of tarmac that rolled down towards them. Loofah noticed a face in the rear-view mirror – deathly white skin stretched tight, mouth pulled into a rictus grin of terror – and hoped it wasn't him.

  'What's going on?' His attempt to sound casual was thwarted by his voice, which disobeyed orders and came out as a high-pi
tched quaver.

  'Visual contact with target re-established,' replied the Under Manager, 'We'll be there very soon.'

  The meaning of her words trickled down his spine like cold, clammy mucous and a small army of soft-bodied invertebrates crawled under his skin. Although the speeding landscape still whirled across the windscreen, inside the car all was still, deadly still. The face in the mirror stared out at him like the death-mask of a murder victim and Loofah remembered his interrupted question.

  'Miss Leggett,' he said, quietly and slowly, 'Who is The Woman Who Looks Both Ways?'

  Her back tensed, but she did not turn or reply. Then suddenly Loofah was thrown forward, nearly crashing into the towering wall of the constable's back. The car swerved to the left and screeched to a halt in a tidal wave of flying gravel.

  They were in a large unmetalled lay-by parked behind an unmarked saloon and another police car. Uniformed officers milled around and a big man in a sheepskin coat rushed to meet Miss Leggett as she leapt out of the car. Loofah instantly recognised the small round head with its eternal grin.

  After a rapid exchange with Truscott, the Under Manager strode back to the car and pulled open the back door.

  'Get out!' she said, her voice hard with urgency.

  Loofah did not move.

  'Be quick!' she cried, 'It's getting away!'

  He turned slowly to face her. 'Miss Leggett,' he said, 'you haven't answered my question.'