Stations of the Soul

by Chris Lewando

But even in her state of semi-consciousness, she knew she couldn’t have done anything else. It wasn’t in her nature any more than it had been to simply go home and sleep, knowing this emergency was going on.

  As she slipped into sleep, her last conscious thought was of her brother, Joel, followed closely by an intuition that she shouldn’t tell him what she’d done. That he was like her, she was sure, though he’d never actually told her. He didn’t have the cognitive powers to express something so ephemeral.

  And yet he had changed over the last few years, his ponderous slowness relieved by flashes of something more intelligent, if that was even possible. But worse, what had already been a restrictive sibling relationship – she being a substitution for the mother he’d never known – was increasingly constrained by bursts of total possessiveness that were more than a little scary. Sleep overtook her on a raft of confusion; the guy they’d pulled out of the almost flattened car and Joel somehow occupying the same space in her subconscious.

  Chapter 4

  Robin dreamed. Through the ever-present nightmare of the crash, his mind danced relentlessly through tattered memories, invading images long-buried or totally forgotten. He drifted into his childhood, and sat with his mother, while she read him fairy tales. Then his father, a shadowy figure largely unrecalled, played cricket with him on the green. Was that real? If so, he’d forgotten that episode: sunshine, the intense heckling shouts of other children hovering on a summer breeze...

  The crash slid insidiously into his mind, intruding on other thoughts, as it always did, along with the incident with the youth at the scene of the crash. Had he imagined that young man’s grim glee? Had it been an hallucination, brought on by loss of blood, by his anticipated death? He was aware of being in hospital, that he wasn’t dead, but everything else was a blur. Every time his mind tried to latch onto something solid, he drifted off again.

  Marilyn. Tall, slender, dark-haired, and bronze-skinned, making sense of everything that had been bad in his life. For the first time in years he allowed himself to remember the way she moved. Her joy in dancing lent itself to the memory, like a film on slow play-back in the arc-light of a disco. He remembered shared plans for a long future, where they loved forever. There were children in his plans. Two, maybe three. Happy children. Loved, cared for, wanting for nothing. He recalled times of exquisite tenderness with Marilyn as they dreamed their dreams, and others of heated passion, her eyes dark with lust.

  He’d moved on, but never forgotten. He saw, again and again, her long, pale legs wrapped around the stranger in his bed, the surprise on her face as he walked in on them. That was what hurt most; surprise, not guilt or shame, followed by the subtle hint of a smile. The almost-smile he’d always thought was his alone tweaking her lips. The faceless man, never more than a heaving back, had never known he was there. Marilyn was the reason he would never trust again, but enter into marriage as a contract, a partnership, to keep loneliness at bay, to provide him with a family, with children. She was the reason he had thrown himself into his work until nothing else mattered.

  The tumbling dreams receded, and Robin experienced the hazy awareness that precedes waking from a deep sleep, and with it came knowledge. He hadn’t been sure any of that was real, but now he knew. He tried to shift, and pain shafted his spinal cord, stabbing up into his brain. He emitted a strangled cry and eventually the clawing pain receded enough for him to breathe again. He was on his back. His eyes cracked open carefully, and focused on bars of steel at the side of his face. Sliding further down, they discovered a leg, ratcheted up slightly, sprouting steel rods at intervals through purpled flesh. Was that his leg?

  Oh God. He couldn’t feel it.

  He whimpered slightly, terrified of being sick. He was desperately afraid of drowning in his own vomit as he lay helplessly in the clutch of a monstrous contraption that immobilised him, and this shiny scold’s bridle around his head. He wanted to scream, but could not open his mouth. The frantic shift of his eyes and the flickering lights of the monitor provided proof that he was in hospital, still alive, but a wreck of the man he had once been.

  He wanted them to come and send him back to wherever he’d been for however long it had been. He wanted to be back in the murky clutter of his drug-induced dreams. Or dead. He didn’t even want to be alive – not like this. Deformed, disfigured, crippled. Maybe he’d cried out. A face came into his vision, magnified by his foreshortened view.

  ‘Mr Vanger, can you hear me?’

  His eyes strained, focused on a woman. She had a classic, oval face, full lips, and golden hair. The hazel eyes, shot with flecks of green looked familiar. He’d seen them somewhere before. His mind searched, but the memory wouldn’t come. Besides, he’d never seen a woman this beautiful, except in films, and didn’t trust his own mind. It wasn’t as if you looked at women that closely, anyway. Certainly not at work. In fact, no faces from work rose through the memories of endless meetings and computer screens and spreadsheets. He couldn’t recall in detail the people he’d worked with, never mind the colour of their eyes. They were characterless outlines in suits or heels. Glossy cut-outs from magazines.

  He noticed a strip of white cloth on the woman’s head, and realised she was a nurse. It wasn’t fair. He wanted her to be an angel, not another Marilyn. The nurse’s lips widened into a professional smile that didn’t crease the corners of her eyes. ‘Don’t panic, Robin. Keep calm. You’re safe. We have everything under control. I’ll stay with you until the surgeon arrives. He’s on his way.’

  Her hand came to rest on his wrist. He wanted to shake it off, to prove he didn’t need her false comfort, but it was comforting. For the first time in ages, the warmth of a hand stole through his loneliness. He blinked hard, fighting the urge to cry. The nausea of panic receded slightly. If someone was watching, if he did vomit, maybe he wouldn’t die. Maybe he didn’t want to die, after all. But he was certain he didn’t want to be awake.

  For lack of anyone else to aim it at, his silent fury targeted the nurse. He resented her for her beauty and her freedom, for having a life still ahead of her. His perfect future was gone, along with his perfect looks. He didn’t have to look in a mirror to know that he was disfigured. Worse, he was paralysed from the waist down. Tears squeezed through his eyelids. Jesus Christ, why did they have to pull him out alive? The long moments preceding the crash haunted him. He should have driven free. Why hadn’t he done something?

  Her hand tightened on his wrist.

  With clarity, he recalled the youth peering in to where he lay trapped and bleeding. An angel of death; for behind that serenity, darkness had gathered, revelling in his pain. The boy had wanted to see him die, to know what it was like, but hadn’t been patient enough to wait. He’d gone on to discover others, possibly nearer to death than himself. Why? Fury filled him. Damn, he wasn’t going to die. Not yet, anyway. He was going to find that face and punch the perfect nose into a bloodied pulp. No matter how hard he tried to convince himself that he’d been hallucinating, the face remained with him, the image burned into his mind’s eye, and he knew he hadn’t been dreaming. This consuming rage was the reason he was still alive; that young man’s glee had kept him fighting for life in the wreckage of his once-proud vehicle.

  He wasn’t going to let the bastard walk away.

  What else was there to live for? It had taken an accident of vast proportion to put things into perspective. His consuming ambition had been stolen. Plucked away with his perfect looks. How could he manage people’s expectations, when they would view him as Beauty viewed the Beast: a thing of horror, then of pity?

  In the fairy tale, the Beast was restored, lending reason to Beauty’s love. Had he remained a beast, would her love have been unconditional? Robin doubted it. What woman would now give him that second glance, appraisal in her eyes? Aspiring to be the manager of a bank was such a facile thing in the face of this new reality. Why had it mattered so much? He forced back tears of self-pity. Not even able to finish himself off,
he had to lie there, listen to the hum of the hospital, the beeping monitors, the hushed voices, and mourn his continued existence. Conscious, and wishing he wasn’t, he wondered about the true state of his body. He wasn’t even sure all of it was still there. He felt like a disembodied head floating in a sea of directionless, white noise of pain. He closed his eyes and tried to sink back into oblivion, but the nurse’s hand stroked his wrist, letting him know she was still there.

  ‘Mr Vanger?’

  He opened his eyes at the sound of a new voice. The surgeon was a large man, dark skinned, with soft, brown eyes.

  ‘I won’t keep you long. You’ve been in an induced coma for two weeks, and we’re going to keep you heavily sedated for a while yet. Just until your jaw has stabilised. I just wanted to let you know what was happening. We had to replace your right hip. We’re not certain, yet, what mobility you will recover.’

  Pains clawed inside his spine. He tried to stop the groan that rose in his throat.

  ‘I’ll try to be quick. Your chest was compressed, several ribs broken, and you lost a lot of blood. You were given a transfusion in the ambulance. You can thank the paramedic for that amazingly generous act, later.’

  So, like the CD player in his car, his body had just kept going in the face of all odds. And why would he thank the paramedic for doing his job? In fact, he wished the guy hadn’t bothered.

  The doctor carried on. ‘Your left arm was broken, the hand crushed. You will regain some mobility, but it will take time.’ He looked at his notes. ‘Your jaw was broken in two places, but it’s beginning to knit. Your legs took the worst of it, though, because the engine landed in your lap. At first, we thought we were going to have to amputate the left leg, but we worked for hours to save it for you.’ The doctor smiled. ‘We think we’ve succeeded. I’ll tell you all this again, later, and answer any questions. For now, something to take the pain away.’

  As he spoke, Robin’s gaze gravitated to the purple length of his pulverised leg. Even before the anaesthetic cut in again, he felt distanced from it. It didn’t belong to him. If it was his, whatever they did, seeing that mangled lump of flesh, he knew he’d remain a cripple. Wheelchair or crutches, it didn’t matter. None of it mattered any more.

  Chapter 5

  Inspector Redwall’s desk was scarcely visible under the piles of folders. He wasn’t the tidiest person in the world, an admission with which his wife would vociferously agree. Here they were, a month down the road, and none the wiser. He was reading through yet another statement from the massive Stinger Killer’s pile-up file. He’d read it before, but somewhere, in this mountain of paperwork, there had to be a clue.

  Bruce Wantage was a computer programmer. He’d driven the Motorway just before the stinger had been shot across the road. He’d come forward the day after the accident and written a statement, but it had taken them days to get around to interviewing him. Who knew what his mind had invented in the meantime? After the papers splashed stuff across the front pages, everything was suspect. Bruce had nightmares, now, he’d admitted, over and over, reliving the possibility of being in the crash. He didn’t drive so fast anymore. He’d wake suddenly, shivering with cold sweats.

  Another of the Stinger’s unacknowledged victims.

  Bruce’s story was one of five, all similar. He’d been on his way in to work as usual, and had seen a figure at the side of the road, crouching over something. It was a Motorway, and you don’t expect to see anyone on the hard shoulder, he said, but it was no more than a fleeting glimpse, then he’d driven on and forgotten about it, until he got to work, and the Stinger pile-up was all over the internet. No, he couldn’t describe the man. And how did he know it was a man? He couldn’t say. He just knew.

  Others agreed, definitely a guy. But no-one could say whether he was young or old. They didn’t know the colour of his hair, or the shape of his face. They thought he’d been wearing jeans and a top with a hood. A hoodie? The temptation was to assume it was a youth, a young man, but an older man wanting to maim and kill might have worn something with a hood.

  A flush of unease ran through Redwall’s body. There had been a similar incident a few weeks back, luckily involving only one car. There had been two fatalities, a father, dead on impact with the bridge, and a child who had lingered for a few hours in hospital. If that had been a trial run, this madness had been a huge success. Was it the same person? If so, it was almost inevitable that he’d do it again. But where, and when? Would he stay around London, or would he push off and cause mayhem somewhere else? The Motorways through the commuter belts were notorious for being closely packed and driven too fast. Commuters just want to get wherever they’re going, as quickly as possible.

  Both incidents had been near bridges. Had the bastard planned a ringside view for himself? The stinger had been placed at the side of the road, set to be operated remotely, using the kind of radio device that would operate a model plane or drone. It was a shame someone hadn’t had one of those up, he thought, taking images at the time. They might have seen the guy. Got some kind of clue as to who he was. But it was just as well there hadn’t been a movie of the aftermath. It would have gone viral on the internet. Close-ups of people trapped, bleeding, dying. Why people just loved seeing nasty things through the detached window of a screen, he didn’t understand. They wouldn’t be so keen if they had to deal with the reality, in all its gory detail.

  The device had been placed near a bridge that took a minor road across the Motorway several miles north of the city, on a heavily pounded section of commuter belt. They’d found scuff marks up the side of the slope, and a place where a fence had been sliced through for easy access. Whoever had caused the carnage had, it was guessed, triggered the device from the bridge, and watched the ensuing mayhem. He’d probably made off with some juicy images. The thought jolted Redwall. Maybe the perpetrator had filmed it. Maybe it was up on the dark net somewhere? He’d have one of the nerds check it out. But then, maybe the perpetrator wanted to drool over it in private, not share with the world.

  But that was by the by.

  They’d traced the maker of the stinger, a company in Baltimore, in America, but they’d sold thousands over the internet, all over the world – Jesus, there were thousands of these things out there? – many with private individuals. He had naively supposed such devices to be the domain of the police, or the Forces. Surely there should be some kind of control? Why would anyone want to buy one, without having criminal intentions? But apparently there were hundreds of people who just loved collecting and owning stuff like that. Stroking them in their secret rooms, dreaming of using them, like all the ninja sword copies, until some crazy loon had turned his dream into fact. Anyway, they’d sent a small piece to the company, and requested an analysis, just in case there was some way some particular metal or flaw used in this one could narrow it down to a specific manufacturing run. He didn’t hold much hope. And the Company director’s apparent concern couldn’t eradicate the fact that they were still manufacturing these things – along with many other destructive devices – and selling them to anyone who wanted one, in the name of free commerce.

  They’d put out a plea for witnesses. Someone must have used the road that crossed above the Motorway. Someone must have driven it, seen someone leaning over the parapet to get a good view. Seen a vehicle parked up there, maybe. But it wasn’t the sort of thing that stuck in the mind. Early in the morning people were blinkered, busy with their own commitments, on their way to work or childminders. And there were often people lurking on Motorway bridges, watching the cars go by, as if wondering why they were still stuck in one place while everyone else had somewhere to go. Who knew why people did that? They being faceless others, ignored, the way one ignores the guy in the shop doorway clutching a notice saying Homeless and Hungry.

  Chapter 6

  During the traumatic first days of true consciousness, Robin recalled every word the surgeon had said, with the clarity of recall that had been his hidden weapon
in the world of finance. It was what had given him top marks in all his exams, and why he could peruse a set of accounts one day, and wake up the next morning knowing why there was a problem. He wasn’t more clever than any of his colleagues, he just had an exceptional memory, and that was luck.

  Even though the bridle had been removed, he was sucking soup like a baby through a straw. His inability to speak was the bigger issue, though. It made him an entity without sentience. Those who tended to him, with the best of intentions, talked at him – about politics, soaps, the weather, the state of the country, and the latest lottery winner who, of all people, apparently didn’t need it, and wouldn’t all that money be better shared out between many needy souls? What’s need got to do with it, he thought. If the winner hadn’t wanted the money, he wouldn’t have bought the bloody ticket. And the whole point was that someone had an obscenely large windfall. That was why people who could least afford tickets, bought most. It wasn’t about being fair. Life itself was a lottery; the dream being sudden and absolute change.

  Their inane chatter was a radio that didn’t have an off button. There were days he wanted to scream, but even that was denied him. When someone thoughtfully put a pad of paper and a biro by his hand, it was the gift of water in a desert.

  What happened to my cat? he wrote, and waved the pad until someone noticed.

  The nurse scowled at the scrawl for a long moment. ‘Oh, cat! You have a cat?’

  I did. It’s probably starving.

  The look on the man’s face said it wasn’t his job to find out about any bloody cat.

  Please.

  ‘I’ll see what I can find out.’

  But as far as Robin was aware, it didn’t happen, and if Jaws wasn’t already dead, hopefully someone would have realised what had happened, and taken her in. He wondered if any of his neighbours knew where he was, or cared. He hadn’t really known them. Just a few of them by sight. Mrs Brinman, the widow opposite, was always polite, but it wasn’t as if they ever conversed. Jenny Walshe, next door, always looked hassled, with a baby and two toddlers to care for, and her husband out working all hours, to pay the mortgage, no doubt. There had been times he wanted to tell the man to get a different job. Something mainstream, during the day. Doing shift, with overtime on top, was going to lead to an accident one of these days, he’d wanted to say. But they knew that. And it was him, with his cushy, well-paid job, who’d had an accident. As for any other neighbours, they were just faces, as he was to them. Only, when he went back, he would be wearing a different face. Something they’d notice.