Snakeskins

by Tim Major

  —and blinding, burning, strobing light—

  —and then something pushed her off her feet and into the water—

  —and then she was—

  EIGHTEEN

  She was being watched.

  “Come in if you’re coming in,” Caitlin said calmly to the wide mirror.

  There was no response. She glanced at the speaker grille in the corner of the plain room. It hummed softly on standby.

  “I can’t talk to you like this,” she said. “I get distracted by my reflection.”

  This was, in fact, true. During all of her sessions in the interview room, intermittently over the past three days, she had tried to avoid looking directly at herself in the one-way mirror. She looked alien in her pale scrubs, her hair hanging in clumps, having been offered no shower and no hairbrush since she had been pulled from the sea and into the helicopter. She was curiously unrecognisable, yet whenever she saw her reflection her instinctive reaction was that she was looking at Kit.

  None of the interviewers had answered her questions about Kit’s whereabouts. Caitlin had passed through grief and out the other side. Her initial triumph about altering the trajectory of the Fall had produced euphoria unimpeded by her certainty that she’d soon be disposed of, along with her Skin. But as the days passed the purpose of her imprisonment seemed less and less clear.

  * * *

  On the first day, most of the questions had related to her physical state. She assured the serious-looking men that she felt quite normal, other than the scratchy throat and beginnings of a cold produced by having floundered in the water for so long. When she had found her way to the surface, the motorboat had disappeared. Presumably it had capsized and sunk.

  She asked the men whether anybody had benefitted from the Fall. They refused to answer. She had no idea whether her questioners were Charmers at all. But they didn’t look healthy and their expressions were permanently sour.

  On the morning of the second day – at least, she thought of it as morning, because it had been soon after she had been woken by somebody hammering on the door of her bare cell – the questions had been about her family history. Then the men asked her about her contact and activities with Kit. Her resolve not to respond slipped; she begged to know whether Kit was alive. They didn’t tell her, but in their hesitations Caitlin found hope.

  On the afternoon of the second day they had changed tack and the intensity of their questioning increased. As well as seriousness, the men now exhibited hints of panic. They asked about her contact with other people. They asked whether she had shared what she knew with anybody other than Kit. Years ago, Caitlin played a game to infuriate Evie: She answered each question with a question of her own. She played it again now. She asked after Kit. She asked whether any single person had managed to throw themselves in the path of the Fall. She asked whether anything had changed in the world outside these walls. She asked whether her interviewers were worried about the truth getting out.

  Her interviewers could barely disguise their agitation. After a round of relentless questioning, one man said, “But you already told us that—” and his partner shook his head and said, “That was the other one,” and Caitlin leapt up whooping, and was still grinning when the chain around her wrists snapped taut and yanked her back down into the hard seat.

  They showed her a picture and said a name: Gerry Chafik.

  Caitlin smiled. “Has this Gerry Chafik gone and said something she shouldn’t have said? Or shown somebody something she shouldn’t have shown?” Then, when she registered a flinch, she said in a lower voice, “Are things beginning to look bad for you?”

  * * *

  The speaker fizzled. Then a voice said, “You will be escorted back to your room momentarily.”

  Caitlin frowned. “But you haven’t asked me anything. I’ve been sitting here like a lemon for maybe half an hour.”

  * * *

  The next time she was brought to the interview room, she didn’t recognise the man and woman on the other side of the table. Rather than uniforms, they wore standard business attire.

  “Can you confirm that you are Caitlin Hext?” the woman said.

  “Yes. You already knew that.”

  “We have some questions before we proceed. You’re free to answer them or to remain silent. But we would appreciate your cooperation.”

  Caitlin hesitated. This was new. “Okay.”

  “I’m going to read you a list of names. I’d like you to tell me which of them you recognise.”

  “Sounds fun. But if it’s pop culture, I’m good on films but crap on sport, okay?”

  The woman’s expression was implacable. “Geraldine Chafik.”

  Caitlin tried to make an assessment about whether admitting to knowing Gerry would land the journalist – or herself – in further trouble. Her previous denial had prevented her from asking follow-up questions of her own. And if they’d caught Gerry, surely she couldn’t be put in worse trouble. The same went for Caitlin.

  “Sure. Gerry the journalist.”

  “You’ve met in person?”

  “Once. She seemed all right. Did she do what she said she’d do?”

  The woman looked again at her list. “Russell Handler.”

  “No.”

  “Clive Blackwood.”

  “Nope.”

  “Spencer Blackwood.”

  Caitlin grimaced. “Spencer Blackwood? From college?”

  “I’d be grateful if you’d answer the question.”

  “Yes. We go to college together. Went. I guess you’re not going to let me go back there, are you, or maybe go anywhere at all.”

  “What is the nature of your association? To what degree has Spencer Blackwood been aware of your activities during the last week?”

  Caitlin tried to spread her arms wide, but the chain stopped her short. “Our association is Physics and English Lit and that’s about it. He’s not my friend, or fellow plotter, or anything. Seriously, what is all this?”

  The woman looked to the man, who said, “One more question. Do you feel well? Have you experienced any unusual physical symptoms during the last three days? Nausea? Headaches? Bursts of adrenalin? Unusual sensations of well-being?”

  Caitlin smiled. The scattershot nature of the questions suggested that they had no other data, nobody who might provide a comparison.

  “I’m okay. No better than that and no worse, which is kind of amazing, considering the standards of bed and board here. How’s everyone else looking?” She pointed at the wall to indicate the world outside.

  The man’s demeanour changed. His shoulders slackened. “It’s too early to say. It appears that nobody has benefitted directly from the Fall. I understand that early reports have suggested measurable changes to the seawater, though dispersal has been fast. We don’t know what that means, whether any benefits may be dispersed too.” He leant forward. “Don’t be alarmed. I’m going to remove your restraints.”

  And he did.

  The woman reached into a slim case and pulled out glossy photos. They were screenshots of TV images. Caitlin saw the Rise and Shine ident in the bottom-left corner. In the main part of the image Gerry Chafik sat on a red sofa, hands clasped on her skirt. An inset picture floated above her head. The woman pushed the paper to one side; the photo underneath was a blow-up of the inset image. Caitlin recognised the harbour at Scarborough. She peered at the sea for a glimpse of herself on her boat, but the water was a dark mass and above it the sky was tinged green and the meteor trails looked like rips. A mass of figures hurried away from the camera. At the head of the group a man had turned to address them, his arms aloft in a gesture presumably intended to calm but which betrayed his panic. Caitlin didn’t recognise him, but his facial features could be made out clearly.

  “This photograph and others like it were broadcast on breakfast TV yesterday morning,” the woman said. “And they appear to have triggered a chain of events.”

  She slid the photo aside. Beneath it another
image showed three people, one of whom was Spencer Blackwood, standing on the steps of a grand building. Caitlin frowned at the man on the left, who appeared identical to the panicked man in the first photo, though this person leant heavily on a walking stick. In the foreground Caitlin could see the backs of heads, a crowd looking up at them. At the top of the photo a red horizontal strip and the lower parts of lettering suggested a banner. It appeared to be a rally of some sort, but weren’t gatherings like that against the law?

  The woman pointed at the man in the centre. “Late last night, Russell Handler broadcast a segment of covertly recorded audio on pirate radio. It relates to Ellis Blackwood and a great number of other government ministers. The footage has since been repeated many times on other stations and networks. It supports Gerry Chafik’s story, and adds new details, and raises many more questions and implications. Spencer Blackwood and a Snakeskin who calls himself Clive Blackwood corroborate the account. We suspect that more witnesses will soon make themselves known.”

  Caitlin studied each of them in turn. “You’re not from the government, are you?”

  The man shook his head. “Temporarily, the Great British Prosperity Party has no jurisdiction over this facility. But we must work quickly and we must use our resources efficiently. So this is what we need to know. Are you prepared to testify, to add what you know to the information already available to the public?”

  Caitlin remembered that her chains had been removed. She lifted her hands, stared at the lines on her palms, curled her fingers until her nails dug in, then watched as the elasticity of her skin erased the crescent-shaped dents.

  “Try and stop me,” she said.

  She saw how it would be. The bursting of a dam. Testimonials and truth. The rage of the public, who would now be forced to look to the Snakeskins at the January care home, to relieved whistle-blowers within government, perhaps even to the world beyond the British coast, in the search for sources of trustworthy information. Things would be different.

  She saw, too, what wouldn’t occupy the attention of the public. The Fall would remain an unknown. The gift it bestowed would still be considered divine. Caitlin thought of her dad’s telescope and wondered if he might allow her to borrow it.

  “The truth is coming out, little by little,” the woman said. “And we thank you in advance for the part you will play.”

  Caitlin stood, stretching out her spine. “There’s something I need from you first.”

  “Anything.”

  “I need to see Kit.”

  The woman nodded, turned to the one-way mirror and nodded again.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Tim Major is the author of You Don’t Belong Here, Blighters and Carus & Mitch, YA novel Machineries of Mercy, short story collection And the House Lights Dim and a non-fiction book about the silent crime film, Les Vampires. Tim’s short stories have appeared in Interzone, Shoreline of Infinity and Not One of Us and have been selected for Best of British Science Fiction and Best Horror of the Year. He is also co-editor of the British Fantasy Society’s fiction journal, BFS Horizons. Find out more at www.cosycatastrophes.com

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Enormous, grateful thanks to the team at Titan Books – particularly my editor, Gary Budden, who took a chance on this novel and who has been supportive and critical at precisely the right moments.

  Thanks to my literary agent, Alexander Cochran – here’s to lots of exciting projects in the future.

  Thanks to my many excellent writer friends, particularly the FantasyCon and Edge-Lit clan, for their support, enthusiasm and inspiration. Thanks to Dan Coxon for all of the above plus copyediting and, perhaps most importantly, resolving the alright/all right feud. Thanks to Aliya Whiteley for remaining cool in the face of unnerving coincidence.

  Thanks to my young sons, Arthur and Joe, for forcing me to capitalise on available writing hours.

  Thanks to my mum, who long ago let me use her fancy typewriter, which maybe started something.

  Above all, thanks and love and everything, everything to my wife, Rose.

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