Wavewalker

by Stella Duffy

  He was very uncomfortable. His feet and hands were cold and the bonds around them a little too tight. Again, he tried to roll over but couldn’t, she’d tied him face down on the ground, his hands and feet were tied up and then stretched, hardly racked, but stretched painfully anyway – attached to something at either end of the small room. The floor was wood, clean, like it had been newly scrubbed. Like it had been prepared for him. Max shivered, partly cold, partly – not fear exactly, but in a way there was almost a sense of exhilaration, the chase, the hunt – for the first time in years he didn’t know what was coming next, he had no plan. Max was wise enough to know that panicking, giving in to his fear would be pointless. The situation was almost interesting – if extremely inconvenient. The girl who said she was his daughter was certainly clever. Waking him in the middle of the night, physically hurting him a little – had he been completely awake he had no doubt he’d have been able to overcome her with basic force, but as it was … he would just have to wait. He had no choice and Maxwell North was certainly not going to waste energy or time trying to get some mad little bitch to explain herself to him. In his experience, the slightly mad, the very insane and the terminally stupid always wanted the same thing. They wanted to tell you all about it. Once they had, and you’d said “there, there”, tucked them in, kissed them better, then they were happy. Max assured himself she’d tell him all about it later and lay his cheek down on the floor to get some sleep.

  When he woke, it was dark. It had been light and now it was dark. The light had gone – but surely he couldn’t have slept for a whole day? She’d taken him away in the middle of the night, tied his hands together as he lay in bed, one hand to twist the knots, the other holding the knife to his throat. She’d gagged him, pulled a jacket over his shoulders, put shoes on his feet and walked him out to a car parked by his front door. He climbed into the back seat and lay down, astonished at the passivity the sharp knife induced in him. In the car she tied his feet together and blindfolded him, covering him with an old rug. The rug smelt of dogs. When she finally stopped driving she helped him out, undid his feet, and walked him just a few steps, the knife at his kidneys this time. Prodding and occasionally piercing. By the time they were inside the building, Max had ten or eleven sharp cuts on his torso, each one bleeding just a little. She’d opened a large door and pushed him through into a big space, very likely empty by the sound the slamming door made behind them. She’d taken him in a lift up to this room, tied him up and removed his shoes and the blindfold just before she left.

  But it had been dark then and, as he’d thought over his situation, the sun had come up. In the dark he hadn’t noticed but as the day opened the room got lighter and lighter from above. He assumed there was a skylight, it was white, sunshine kind of light. He could twist his head around enough to see the rectangle of concave translucent glass above him. Other than that – and the hooks in the walls that held his bindings – he was alone in the white room. Only now, having slept, it was completely dark again. It had to be night – eight, nine o’clock or even later. So he’d slept all day? Max couldn’t take the confusion and he did what he’d always done when faced with a problem he couldn’t solve – he blocked it out and hurried on to his next thought. There was no confusion about this one. He was dreadfully uncomfortable. Physically uncomfortable. His silk pyjama bottoms and the jacket she’d thrust on him in the bedroom were hardly padding enough to lie on a floor for two hours let alone what must have been at least half a day. He couldn’t move anything other than his head – and that only from one side to the other, and he was cold. But worse than that, his bladder was on fire and his mouth was parched. The irony of desperately needing to piss and desperately needing to drink simultaneously did not escape him. A way to alleviate the problem however, did.

  He called a few times – “Excuse me!”, “Girl”, “Janet!” – and when that brought no response he waited and tried again a few minutes later.

  “Please?” Still no response. He tried again, but less polite this time. “You!” “I’m thirsty.” “Can you hear me? I must drink!” and finally – “Jasmine!”

  Only quiet came back at him. Max shrugged his shoulders as best he could and lay his head down again. He wasn’t used to shouting – he hardly ever had need of it, except when it was for show, to prompt a reaction from a recalcitrant patient or group. But that wasn’t real shouting, that was just for the work. That was controlled. Projected, from the diaphragm, just like he’d been taught at the elocution lessons his mother had taken him to as a boy. And that kind of shouting didn’t hurt his already parched throat, make him dizzy. That kind of shouting didn’t come from a small, tight knot of fear in his stomach. And that kind of shouting produced a result.

  An hour later Max wet himself. There was nothing for it, he thought about his options and took the best route available, twisting his body a little so he could piss to one side. It almost worked. He wasn’t as wet as he would have been had he just done it where he lay. But he was still wet. At first the physical relief and the warmth were soothing, almost pleasurable, but after a while, lying in his pyjamas, soaking in his own urine, the delicate skin of his penis and balls itching and tender from the ammonia, the physical pain brought about a change in him. He was able to recognize it as a change, but not to do anything about it. Max started to become unhappy. He knew it was irrational, he knew it was foolish but, against his will and in a horribly embarrassed way, Maxwell North began to cry. About half an hour after the first couple of tears, Max cried again. More tears this time, big tears, hot and salty down his face and on to the hard wood floor. He was frustrated and he was angry – he was also completely helpless. Max knew he was crying the tears of an infant, of a small, dirty, helpless baby. Only he was also crying them as an adult trapped in the helplessness of a child. Doubly frustrated. Aware and yet still caught. His tears turned to sobs, arms and legs straining against their ropes as his body rocked inwards from the stomach. The sobs became retching and, a tiny part of his adult self still there to see it, Max watched himself vomit. Sharp, strong smelling bile from an empty and dry stomach. Throwing up, Max finally recognized that he was about a fifth of the way into the Process.

  He recognized it with a yelp of shock and fear. He’d never done the Process himself, how could he have acknowledged the initial stages? He was normally off reading a book or listening to music when people were going through that – anything so he didn’t have to hear their screams for help, for water, for the toilet. Anyway, everyone’s Process was different, that was why it was so unique, so special. The tiny part of his rational self that remained laughed a bitter ironic chuckle and then Max was gone. Completely sublimated in the Process that would start with his reversion to mewling infant and end with his rebirth. At least it would as long as there was someone at the other end to guide him back. Someone who knew what they were doing. Someone as skilled as Max North himself.

  Each Processee was like a newborn. Each one needed a lifeline, a willing midwife at the other end. Just as he’d been there at Jasmine’s birth. Soft, quiet baby that she was. Her needs fulfilled each day and smiling in the casual constant love of the whole House. But the skill for birthing a baby was nothing compared to that needed to birth new adults. They needed the debriefing, the light at the end of the tunnel, the soothing father to take the mess and help them recreate the whole person, the one they now saw in truth. The open self, the honest self, the whole self who now knew what he or she had been, who saw what their past was and knew exactly what had made them what they were today. The Process had worked for thousands and thousands of people, each one carefully guided through the pain and sweat and shit to the promise of glory at the other end. And the harder the case, the harder the leader had to work, the harder it was to facilitate the Process. When Jake had wanted to go through it again a couple of years ago, Max had insisted he wait until he himself could be there to see Jake through. The Process of a forty-five-year-old man has a lot more depth than that of
a boy of eighteen.

  And even Max had failed on a couple of occasions. Sent people off to their deaths rather than bring them back from the place they had ventured too far. Even Max had failed. And in his last moment of self-awareness before he became the self with no division for “awareness” he knew he was going there. That in an hour or so he would be there. Where Michael had been, where he’d guided Anna Johnson to and then back just long enough so she could remove herself for him. Even Dr Maxwell North had failed – or chosen to fail – sometimes. Everyone needed help back. Everyone needed a guide, a rescuer, someone trained and aware enough to know exactly how to save them from their own self.

  This sobbing, retching creature, tied between two walls, thrashing around in his own bile and piss was no more capable of rescuing himself than any of the others had been. And he had far further to go than most.

  wavewalker

  This has been so easy.

  Far easier than I expected.

  I will cure him.

  I am the child of my healer parents and I am curing him.

  He will be whole and well and ready.

  He will say it, make confession and then give the assent.

  And I will do it.

  As she wishes.

  We are one, the mother/child and, through his labour, have given birth to the pure father.

  We three will be unit and united.

  Clear, clean and in the cold running fire will become whole.

  Consumed. Consummation.

  My breathing is excited and shallow.

  I can barely hold it back.

  I await only his word.

  His voice is quiet.

  But I will hear it.

  CHAPTER 36

  Saz paused outside Molly’s flat and looked up at the big French windows that opened on to the balcony. The curtains were half-drawn and the flat looked late afternoon quiet. She got off the bike and walked it round to the back of the house. As usual she had to negotiate the basement tenants’ collection of recycling and rubbish bins and by the time she’d moved the bins and bike she knew that the flat had to be empty – any intruders would have heard her coming a mile off and still had a good few minutes to get away. At least she hoped they would.

  She’d woken with Molly at three, they’d showered together – purely perfunctory and more for the sake of cleanliness than sex, though that had been there too, and then Molly had broken the news. In the couple of days Saz had lost to travelling, Maxwell North had gone missing. Biting back a furious urge to scream at Molly for not telling her when she first arrived, Saz took off and headed north. She borrowed Judith’s three-year-old but almost completely unused mountain bike to get to their home. The extravagant present from Helen had always appealed to Judith more in theory than in practice, but it was ideal for Saz’s purposes. Molly had offered the car but, even with the urgency created by Max’s disappearance, Saz was still desperate for some exercise and knew that the mostly uphill ride to Hampstead would at least dissipate some of the jetlag that hung rock solid to the back of her head. The jetlag that was making it impossible for her to concentrate on anything other than just how much she really wanted to crawl into bed. The bike ride was ideal. It cleared her head and got her back in touch with her body – knee joints in particular. It also got her out of the house before Judith and Helen got back with any awkward questions. She arrived home hot, sweaty and very much awake.

  Molly had told her the flat was well secured and that everything should be in perfect order, but Saz was not at all surprised to find broken glass by the back door as she wheeled the bike round to chain it up. She looked for the origin of the thin shards of pale blue glass and saw that the bathroom window three feet above her head had been smashed in, leaving a few chunks of glass outside but probably even more decorating the bath inside.

  Leaving the bike against the garden wall, she went up the few steps to the solid wood back door. The door was still double-locked and she quietly turned her keys in each lock. She pushed the door back and the evening sunlight fell into the hallway, casting her shadow along its length. After checking the bathroom and finding it perfectly normal except for the shattered chunks of glass in the bath, she walked slowly and deliberately through the flat, opening each door in turn, going through cupboards, looking under the bed, in the wardrobes, behind doors. When she had satisfied herself that the flat was empty she then started to look for the reason behind the smashed window. Nothing obvious had been stolen, the TV, video and sound system were all still in place, no drawers appeared to have been touched, everything looked perfectly clean and tidy, exactly as she would have expected Molly to leave it, although Molly would have been quick to remove the fine layer of two days’ accumulated dust. Saz retraced her steps to the back door and closed it, locking herself into the flat. She left all the lights on, pulled back the curtains to let in the last of the setting light and went through the flat again, this time looking not for things missing, but for things added. It took her a while, but once she saw it she was surprised she hadn’t noticed it in the first place.

  A fire had been made up in the open grate. It was an old Victorian fireplace that Molly kept under protest, loathing all the mess and dirt left after the romance associated with a roaring open fire. She was threatening to have it ripped out and a gas version put in as a replacement but Saz had almost persuaded her to give it a reprieve, at least until after their first winter together. Usually, Molly just left the fireguard in front of the hearth and had a few flowering potplants on the grate to set off the warm tones of the old tiles. The plants and guard were still there but, in the usually empty grate, there was a layer of kindling and rolled newspaper and placed on top of that was a box. Saz lifted it out and carefully set it down on Molly’s grandmother’s oak coffee table. It was a gold-painted box, about two foot square and six or seven inches deep, covered all over in small plaster stars and moons. Saz thought she recognized it as one of the many similar articles piled up in Midas’s Daughter, although it could just as easily have been picked up down the road at Camden Market. A brief panic about letter bombs and underground terrorists went through her head and then she carefully lifted the lid off, placing it on the floor beside her. Inside there was a thin sheet of purple tissue paper over more boxes, these were numbered one to six and, though they were irregular shapes – circles, triangles, hexagons – they all fitted perfectly into the larger box. Saz lifted each one out and lined them all up in order. Box One was slightly bigger than the others, inside there was more of the tissue paper and then a photo. The photo was of Anita, a copy of the one Julia had shown Saz, the one she kept in her purse. Taped to the back of the photo was a match. The next box held more paper and a photo of a man, Saz didn’t recognize him but she felt fairly certain she was looking at a picture of John, this photo too had a match taped to it. She put her hand into the next box and pulled back quickly as a drop of blood spurted from one of her fingers. She’d cut her hand on something and sucking the small wound, turned the box upside down to let whatever was in there fall out safely. She’d half-expected a piece of glass from the bathroom but it was a razor blade attached to a picture of a young man. Saz had seen this photo before too. This was Michael and the picture was one Rose had of him, only in Rose’s photo Michael was in the centre with his outstretched arms around Max and Anita, here Michael was smiling out at the photographer, his arms stretched out holding no one, Anita and Max cut out so he looked like a smiling seventies Christ. In the fourth box there was a photo of Deb, a copy of the one in Caron’s bedroom and another razor blade, this one didn’t cut her as she’d guessed what was coming and had handled the contents very carefully. The fifth box held a clipping of a woman Saz didn’t recognize, the photo obviously cut from the same sort of magazine as the ones Saz had initially been sent about Max and a tiny vial of what looked like water along with a service station sachet of salt. Saz paused before opening the sixth box. It was the smallest of all and she realized she was scared of what she
might find. She took the lid off and removed the usual piece of purple tissue, only this time the tissue had writing on it – in thin silver pen. It was a letter addressed to her.

  Dear Ms Martin,

  I do hope your return journey was pleasant and that you aren’t suffering too much from jetlag – I know what a killer that trip can be.

  I guess you’d like to know what’s been going on, but to tell you the truth, that isn’t really much of your business. You can keep whatever’s left of the money, you’ve done your job now.

  All I want from you is that you tell them the truth. That’s what you’ve been paid for. I know they won’t believe me, but I don’t think they’ll call you mad.

  I’m sorry about the window, I wanted you to have this as soon as you got back.

  I really want everyone to know the truth and I think you’ll have to tell it.

  That’s all.

  Jasmine.

  Saz picked up the box and turned out a photo. It was a polaroid of a man tied by the hands and feet, stretched out on the floor, widthways across a small empty room and he appeared to be screaming, his head was arched back, his mouth wide open, his eyes shut tight against whatever pain was hurting him. The photo was so shocking, so ugly in the naked simplicity of the man’s pain that it took Saz at least five seconds to recognize him. The dirty, screaming man was Max.