by Greg James
“It was a normal night out, nothing special, everyone falling out of the pubs on the Amber Mile. We were laughing. He was so happy. All of my mates said he had such a positive aura about him; whatever that means – nothing in the end, I guess. Everyone went their way, right, and we were alone. He was nice, he was gentle, and he was a good man. You don’t get many of them to the pound, that’s what my mum always said. We’d decided to go back to his place, but we were both a little worse for wear, and couldn’t wait to get down to business, you know. Stupid. We should have gone home.”
She stopped, biting back tears. Jim tried to reach out to her but handcuffs on the wheelchair stopped him.
“I’m okay, I’m okay. So, we got down to business in the back of his car, right? And we did it, and it was good considering how pissed we were. I’d never done it in public like that before. I dozed off for a bit because there was too much wine in me, and then I woke up and I couldn’t see a thing outside. It was one of those nights where the fog had rolled in off the sea and was right up by the glass. It was like fingers were touching it, trying to reach in through the car window,” she rubbed at her arms, remembering, “and I’m on top of him, and I realise how cold it is out there and how cold it feels in here ...”
She paused, swallowing hard.
“He was cold underneath me. I felt sick. Proper rotten. I had to get out of there. I had to leave him. There was a fucking body underneath me, and I’d been sleeping on top of him like that for god knows how long. I could feel how dead he was. It was disgusting. I could feel his cock touching me. It was dead cold and hard. I read about it later, I don’t know why, about how some get a hard-on after death. How sick is that, eh?”
“Yeah, pretty sick,” Jim said.
“I loved him. His name was Jeff. Nothing special as names go, and now he’s gone.” She paused to flick the stub of her cigarette down Jacob’s Ladder, “So what about you, Jim? Ever seen a dead body?”
Her tone and body language were different. There had been a shift, and Jim must’ve missed the moment when it happened. Too wrapped up in himself. There was a stiffness there now, a cold hardness running through her. The sun was still shining, the air was warm and the screams continued to hide inside the seagulls.
“Nah,” he thought of Pine, “nah, nothing really.”
“Don’t lie to me, Jim.”
“What do you mean?”
“You never came back with that milk, did you, Jim?”
No, she didn’t just say that. She couldn’t have.
Lucy turned and faced him; smiling as all the warmth left her face like skin tightening over bone. “Are you Mr Wrightson, sir? Are you sure?”
“No,” he said, “I’m not. And you’re not her. You can’t be. You can’t know about that.”
Her voice became a light sing-song. “You can’t go. Your trousers are covered in blood, silly. Don’t worry, my Dad has spares.”
“Stop that. You can’t be them, not all of them together. You can’t be.”
“Suck my toes, Jim,” she lilted, “or I’ll tell Pas you’ve been slagging him right off ... you vicious, evil cunt.”
The last word was a dry, guttural punctuation and Lucy, voice and all, stopped there.
“I was on time ...” Jim whispered, watching as the smile grew across Lucy’s face and her eyes lost their shine. He tried to reach out and touch her scarred cheek, to touch something good. Feel it. Just once. Please. The handcuffs said no.
“... I was,” he wept, “I was on fucking time.”
Lucy’s head burst open.
There was blood everywhere.
Jim screamed.
Chapter Eight
Jim couldn’t see in front of himself at all. He raised his hands and they were gone, eaten by the dark. He was as good as blind. Light had bled away from this place entirely, but he could hear them. They were in here with him; with their long, thin fingers dragging through nocturnal vegetation which had grown thick and crusty over the walls. After a short while, his eyes adjusted and he could see their bodies; many of them, grinding together, naked, damp and close. Soft, crumbling torsos caressed and stroked one another with straining, empty mouths that he soon felt upon his own skin. Frail fingers were undoing his jacket, and loosening his trousers. He wanted to cry out as they touched him. He didn’t want this to happen again. He wanted to get away and escape, but they held onto him too tightly, like the shadows that cling far too close together in a derelict public toilet.
They had always been here, and they would always be here; and now he would always be with them. And they would never stop doing to him what those boys did to him in the dark, down below.
*
Jim awoke to silence. No voices. No sign of moving shadows. It must be late. The police should’ve been here by now – why didn’t they wake him up?
Lucy ...
She was gone. He remembered something, about her leaving, but it got away from him. He forgot. He tried to sit up, bracing himself against pain, and found that there was none. The pain had gone. Frowning, he lifted his arms and saw that the handcuff was gone as well. He didn’t feel better, though. He felt worse. His heart became an ache in his chest.
Jim got to his feet and pulled back the curtain from around the bed. The ward was empty, quiet, and smelled of ammonia. Night bled through the windows, painting everything with grey. The scuffed linoleum was cold under his feet, and curtains were drawn around the other beds. He could see the dim shapes of reclining bodies through the light fabric. Everyone was asleep. There was a desk at the far end of the ward. A small table lamp was lit, but no-one was sitting there.
I need to find someone, Jim thought, and began to move.
But who did he need to find? It kept getting away from him; what was it? An appointment. Something; must be on time, can’t be late, musn’t be, they’ll cut me off, take something away, something I can’t do without. Something I can’t live without.
The double-doors to the ward opened and closed. He was in a corridor that led away to the left and then turned sharply to the right. He could smell something as he followed it along. Turning right, Jim walked along, careful to avoid patches where the linoleum floor was missing; whatever was coating the flooring beneath glistened wetly in the dull light.
There was a sound: static, white noise distortion, coming from somewhere.
The hospital Tannoy system.
He stopped and listened to a few scattered words that could be made out, just.
“... guilty ... guilty ... guilty ...”
Then the white noise intensified; it consumed the words, tore them apart. He winced as piercing shrieks of feedback echoed from the worn-out speakers before they went silent. Hadn’t someone said to him recently that this place, the Bartlett, had re-opened? They’d not done a great job of renovating the place if it had. Typical. He passed a half-open door; probably an office. It was dark inside. The occupant must have gone home for the night. Jim pushed at the door. Pale light fell into the room beyond.
A face grew out of the shadows; white mould on a black background. Jim snatched his hand away from the door. Mouth open ready to say something, make an excuse, ask for ... someone ...
The face did not move, and neither did its lips or eyes. There was a neat crack running through it from the crown to the chin. Dust bled from the wound. It was a mannequin; dressed in a doctor’s coat, sitting at a desk. There was a computer on the desk. The monitor was an empty plastic husk and Jim could see the computer and connecting wires were corroded with filth. There was a filing cabinet next to the desk. Jim went to it, opened it and closed it. Empty. He left the room, closing the door on that cracked, staring face.
Someone’s idea of a joke, he thought, and went on in search of somebody, or something.
He came to a turn on the right, which must mean he’d come to the northwest corner of the Bartlett. A little further along was another ward. Jim cupped his hands to shield out the light which was reflecting on the dusty wired-glas
s of the doors. The beds were all curtained off, the same as those in his ward, but there was someone sitting at the nurse’s desk here.
Finally, he could get some help. He could find out who he needed to see before they cut him off. If only he could remember what it was he needed, and whom. He crept quietly through the doors, closing them so as not to disturb those sleeping. The nurse was sitting perfectly upright, watching over her charges. She was cast in silhouette by the light of her table-lamp.
“Hello.”
She said nothing. He leaned into the light so that she could see his face; separating himself from the other shadows passing through the ward.
The nurse was bound tight to the chair; he could see raw abrasions around her ankles and wrists. There was a leather hood fastened over her head. It covered her face; the eye-holes and mouth-hole were closed. He could hear light breathing from inside. This wasn’t someone’s idea of a joke. This was kidnapping and imprisonment. This was sick.
Jim untied her wrists and ankles; feeling her jerk and pull away as he touched her. Then he reached around behind her head, groping with his fingers until he found the cross-hatched cords at the back of the hood. He could hear the nurse’s breathing quicken expectantly as he loosened them. Was this the person he needed to find? What was her name? Was it a her, not a him?
... memory’s the first to go ... you just clue out into this dark dream, man ...
No, a man’s voice in his head. Not right. The wrong person.
Jim took the hood off the nurse. He recognised her.
“Lucy?”
Her pupils were dilated so much there was barely any colour left in her eyes. She saw him. She saw a man holding the hood that’d been put on her forcibly. She screamed and head-butted him. Jim fell, winded, and the hood dropped from his hands. He heard the scuffing sound of her bare feet running away across the linoleum.
“... Lucy ... wait ...” his cry wasn’t even a clear sound.
He remembered something: someone in the sun pretending to be Lucy, wearing her as mask and skin, then everything went red. Blood everywhere. He clawed at the nearest bedstead for support as he got to his feet. Fabric strained and tore as the curtain fell away from around the bed, and Jim saw what was laid out upon it. There was another mannequin in the bed. Its face was peeling. It smiled blandly up at him.
There was something resting beside its head: dusty, black metal and plastic. He picked it up. It was a tape recorder. He hesitated. He pressed the Play button. He listened to sounds of coughing and hacking with intermittent whispered speech. He pressed his ear against the minute grille of the speaker.
“... guilty ... guilty ... guilty ...”
Those words again; always those words.
From somewhere outside the ward, Lucy screamed.
Jim ran out of the ward.
“Lucy? Lucy?”
No answer came – so he ran on, hoping for a sign, for something. He remembered her. She could help him, tell him what he needed to know, what and whom he’d forgotten. He threw open every door that he passed, revealing empty offices and storerooms littered with administrative refuse. He had almost come back to his own ward when he heard a heavy sound, and the smell of something he’d noticed earlier grew in the air. The sound was coming from the Gents toilet: a wet croaking, a grinding of old mechanisms.
Jim pushed the door open, revealing its single cubicle space. The toilet itself was shattered as if from an exertion of great pressure. Dirty water was leaking in tributaries across the grime-slickened tiles, and face-down in the overflowing toilet bowl was Lucy. He reached out, touched her shoulder. She fell away from him, shattered into pieces.
Jim stared emptily into the painted eyes of yet another mannequin.
There was no-one alive in the Bartlett.
He found nothing but the silent, watching mannequins in each room and each ward that he explored. The place was empty and run-down. It had never been re-opened. There were tape-recorders strategically placed in the wards and rooms. He listened to them; to the bustle of a hospital, sounds of life, voices and occasional laughter. All of them ringing hollow to him. He had to get out. There had to be a way. If he could just remember what he’d forgotten then it’d all become clear.
It had to.
... it all fits together, somehow, and that makes it perfect ...
“But life’s different,” he whispered.
He felt tears coming as he remembered Lucy, and he wished that he could forget all over again. He pounded the tape-recorder in his hands against the nearest wall. Pieces broke away. He let it play; listening to the voices drag out, distort and come to a choking halt. Dead. Torn. Strangled. The remains of the tape-recorder arced through the air, and smashed to the ground.
*
Jim Hendrice didn’t know how much longer he wandered the corridors of the Bartlett, searching and not searching for a way out. He remembered everything now. It had all come back to him, and he wished it would all go away. He ground his forehead against the walls until the skin broke. He dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands until he felt blood run out. He shouted. He screamed. He chased echoes through the building until he found himself again; until he found a door standing open with a light on inside.
“Am I on time?”
The words were out of his mouth before he could take them back. The doctor was a plain, older woman with a hard, bird-like face, wearing wire-rimmed glasses. The lenses caught the light from the naked bulb dangling on a loose flex from the ceiling. Jim wondered if there were eyes behind those white, shining rectangles. There was a stuffed seagull perched on a pedestal behind her desk.
... old screams dressed in feathers and beaks ...
“Mr Hendrice. Please sit. Make yourself comfortable. Good to see you back on your feet.”
Jim sat but he wasn’t comfortable.
“I’m sure you have some questions. I have some answers.”
“You’ll tell me everything?” he asked.
“What I can; that’s all I know.”
“Why’s all this happened to me?”
“Because it has to. Because it must.”
“But why? What’s the reason?”
“Reason is its own conspiracy, Mr Hendrice, as with all such things, and dreams.”
“I don’t understand. Why me? Why not someone else? Why was I guilty?”
“Because it can only be you; because you are Jim Hendrice and it is your time, your turn, whatever you may want to call it.”
“But, everything in my life, I mean, since I was a child? All this, just for me? It makes no sense, man. It can’t. What did I do to deserve this?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Everything and nothing, Mr Hendrice, all of this and none of it. A lot more and a lot less than you think has happened. The way ahead, your way out, lies through that door. Don’t worry, it won’t take long.”
He looked at the door she indicated. It was set in the far wall of the office. There was nothing distinctive about it.
“What if I don’t want to go through there?” he said, looking back at her.
But there was no answer to his question.
The doctor was a mannequin with a broken skull and a frayed doctor’s coat hanging over loose shoulders. She was bleached with age, her colour fading fast. Cracks were spreading across the perished rubber of her torso. She had never moved, never breathed, never spoken a word. Her dead eyes stared dead ahead because they had never been alive and never looked at life.
There was nothing left for him here.
Through that door, then.
It won’t take long, she’d said.
“Let’s get this over with then, eh?”
Jim opened the door and crossed the threshold.
The wet ripeness of the air took his breath away. The floor was soft and damp under his feet. He recognised it: he was back in the public toilets where he’d been shanked – and raped – by those little cunts. The figure was waiting
for him, as he’d known it would be; tall, thin and solemn in its lank, stained overcoat. Jim walked up to it. Dead skin and old hair stirred across its scalp, crawling with insect life. He wanted to reach out and tear the scabrous head from its shoulders, but there was a promise in its sunken eyes which told him that would do him no good. None at all. This was not about things fitting together perfectly. This was different.
The figure, which he once thought to be an old man waiting at a bus stop, was standing to one side of a doorless toilet cubicle. The cistern inside was an altar to dead vermin, and the bowl below it was running over with soiled water.
“So, this is it then – what it all comes down to, eh?”
The figure did not stir as he spoke.
“I should’ve known better,” Jim said, “than to run, to try and get away, to get up in the morning before all this shit happened. I should’ve stayed in bed. I’d’ve been safe then, wouldn’t I?”
The figure did not speak.
“Fuck me, man. I’m no-one important, never have been,” his voice broke, “I’m nobody. How could all this be about me? When I’m nothing, in the end. It can’t be. Tell me how. I need to know. I have to. Just ... tell me ... please ...” he wept.
The figure told him nothing, and fingers that were more bone than flesh wound their way into Jim’s hair. He lost his footing as it heaved him towards the waiting bowl. A strength that shouldn’t have been possessed by such a moth-frail body pushed his head down hard into the cracked porcelain hole. He could have fought. He could have been the cockroach writhing as the needle pierces its shell – maybe he was, for a while, but whatever kicks and twists his body made did no good. The water in the bowl tasted lukewarm and rotten. He drank it down. It swallowed him whole. The last few pieces of Jim Hendrice went down into the dark to die.
... I was on time ... I was ... I was on fucking time ...
The Thing Behind the Door
“ ... I wear no mask ... ”
Robert W. Chambers
