Tourmaline

by James Brogden

  Very slowly, he reached for his phone on the bedside table – 3:14am. He and Vessa had demolished the wine and gone to their separate rooms only a few hours ago, after getting tired of waiting for Ennias to show. In response to his movement, the growl came again. It was at the foot of his bed.

  Something was sitting on his feet.

  He bunched the top edge of the duvet in his fists, thinking that if he lunged fast and far enough he might be able to trap whatever it was in the bedclothes and either kick the shit out of it or, more likely, run for the door. Then he remembered: of course, the hradix. It knew him for a friend, supposedly. Didn’t it?

  ‘Mint?’ he whispered, tensing himself to jump.

  The hradix hooted softly, and then resumed its low, rattling snarl. Still, that was promising. Sort of. He decided to risk switching on the bedside lamp.

  Light flooded the small bedroom, and he tensed again, but still the creature didn’t move from its position crouched at the foot of his bed, and when his eyes had adjusted to the brightness, he realised that it wasn’t even looking at him.

  It was watching something else – something a lot smaller which was crawling up the duvet towards his face.

  At first glance it looked like a large grub, or possibly a caterpillar by the way it was arching itself to move forwards, except that it didn’t have any legs, or eyes, or feelers, or body segments – or indeed anything which on closer inspection might have confirmed that it was a normal animal. If anything, it looked more like a short length of raw sausage, except that it was purple-grey in colour. And veined. He’d only ever once in his life seen anything like this, when he’d been walking to work one morning and seen a cat which had been run over and killed, lying on the pavement. The force of the impact had ruptured its abdomen and he’d been able to clearly see its entrails, glistening purple-grey in the…

  ‘Mother of God,’ he breathed.

  The hradix growled louder.

  The loop of intestine was joined by a second fragment, this one looking like a shred of raw muscle propelled by half-a-dozen ‘legs’ made from splinters of pink bone.

  That was when Vessa started screaming from her room down the hall.

  Both he and the hradix moved at the same time, but the animal inside the boy was faster, and by the time he’d disentangled himself from the bedclothes and swatted the disgusting fragments aside, it was already in her room, barking ferociously.

  What he saw when he charged in was not real – could not possibly be real. Despite everything he’d already accepted about the painting, and the Flats, and even the hradix itself; this was so far beyond his comprehension that at first his brain simply refused to accept it.

  The air was full of flesh. Dozens, hundreds, possibly even thousands of scraps of human muscle, bone, and internal organs floated like the flakes of an obscene snow globe, circling slowly while more streamed in through the open window. Already many were busy forming themselves into larger clots and ropes of wet tissue which wrapped themselves around Vessa, binding and lifting her from her bed as she struggled, screaming for him to help. But his presence in the room had been noticed. The cloud became agitated. Parts of it broke away and swarmed towards him, buzzing like wasps, and he saw that each piece bristled with barbed shards of bone. He swatted at them, trying to fight his way towards Vessa, but couldn’t hope to make any impression on the multitude which was already attacking him. Some simply cut at him, but he was also stung repeatedly on his hands and forearms as he tried to defend himself, and the thought of what they were using as poison revolted him; it burned in great welts. The hradix was going crazy, snatching at the air with teeth and claws, but doing no better. Pain drove him stumbling back into the hall, and the flesh-wasps pursued, stabbing his head, his bare legs, and through the thin cotton of the t-shirt he’d worn to bed.

  The shower. All he could think of which might possibly slow them down was the shower. Maybe he could grab a towel and wrap it around his head. That might buy him a few seconds to try and rescue Vessa. His last glimpse was of her tearing at the mask of crawling flesh which covered her face before the door was slammed shut against him, and then something like sinew was wrapping itself around his own throat, and tightening. He fell, cracking his head against the wall, and curled into a ball on the floor, no longer thinking of anything now except trying to get his fingers under the writhing thing which was quickly throttling him. Black flowers bloomed and died in his vision, and he found himself more confused than afraid. This can’t be it, he thought. This can’t be how I die. It makes no sense…

  There was a high-pitched whining in his ears, and he thought maybe that was what happened when your brain was starved of oxygen and about to die. It grew louder, and at the same time the sense of choking grew less. He found he could breathe. He also found that the stabbing attacks had stopped. The whining grew louder still, hurting his ears, and somebody was shouting: ‘Get up, you silly wanker! Get up!’

  A hand dragged him upright by the back of his t-shirt, and Ennias’ face was in his. ‘Stomp it!’ Ennias yelled, shaking him. ‘Fucking stomp the fuck out of it before it can pull itself together!’ With his other hand he waved his phone around – it was that which was making the hideous whining noise – and Steve saw that the bits of flesh were no longer flying but squirming on the floor in obvious pain.

  Ennias let him go and began stamping on them, crushing them into the carpet, his boots quickly becoming covered in gore. Dazed, half-strangled, and in pain from dozens of stings, Steve joined in clumsily, even though he was barefoot and the sensation of the flesh-wasps bursting under his heels was disgusting. Ennias kicked in the door to Vessa’s room and they repeated the process there, crushing anything which squirmed, until the floor and walls were an abattoir of pulverised flesh and bone.

  Then, before either of them could say a word, he hustled them out of the house and into a van, and drove them off into the pre-dawn darkness.

  Chapter 22

  True Colours

  1

  ‘Raft!’ Joe sprinted back to Stray along the Down boom as if it were a running track, waving his arms and yelling. ‘He’s alive! He’s alive!’

  Lachlan and Allie went out in Tatters and found that this was in fact the case, though only just. Their newest castaway didn’t seem to have made any effort to try and survive; he lay on a raft not much bigger than a door with his hands and feet trailing in the water, emaciated, and blistered by the sun. Bobby watched as they towed him back to Stray with an odd feeling of deja-vu, wondering whether they would have enough provisions for an extra mouth and if he would fit in with them or cause trouble – then realised that exactly the same questions must have been asked of himself.

  He waited until later in the day, when their new arrival had been fed, watered and rested, before introducing himself.

  ‘I bet you’re wondering what kind of madhouse you’ve ended up in,’ he said, shaking the man’s hand. It was taken without a smile or much enthusiasm; the fellow looked dazed. Not surprising, Bobby told himself, but there was a wariness about the way the chap seemed to be avoiding direct eye contact that he didn’t entirely like. ‘Bobby Jenkins,’ he added. ‘Welcome to Stray.’

  ‘Thanks, pleased to meet you,’ replied the other, sounding anything but. ‘The name’s Degan.’

  2

  ‘I thought you said it was a safe-house!’ yelled Steve, slamming Ennias up against a wall. His hands hurt like a bastard, and he knew that Ennias could probably break every bone in them if he wanted, but right now he was too angry to care. For his part, Ennias seemed content to take the brunt of his anger. Momentarily.

  ‘Nice to see you up and about,’ he commented. ‘Cup of tea?’

  ‘What the fuck were those things? What were they doing at your place? Why didn’t you warn us?’ With each question he shook the other man, who continued to bear it patiently.

  ‘Steve, l
isten, you need to calm down. You’re on some heavy-duty pain killers and antihistamines, and they’re messing with your head.’

  ‘I’ll calm down when you answer my…’

  ‘Plus, you’ll wake Vanessa, and she needs the rest; she got the worst of the attack.’ Ennias gently but firmly peeled Steve’s hands from the front of his shirt, as if he were a child. ‘So stop shouting, okay? Now, then. Milk? Sugar?’

  Steve subsided and let Ennias make him a cup of tea. Sitting down didn’t seem to make much difference to the dizziness he was feeling – it felt like the room was rocking ever-so-slightly to and fro. Then he remembered that he was on Ennias’ narrowboat underneath Spaghetti Junction, and that the rocking wasn’t just in his head.

  Junction Six of the M6 motorway – officially named the Gravelly Hill Interchange but known universally as Spaghetti Junction – was, as its name suggested, a tangle of slip-roads feeding in from numerous other routes and minor local roads, all raised above each other on five levels supported by hundreds of concrete columns whilst underneath it ran two railway lines, the confluence of two rivers, and the junction of three canals. All of this made it an ideal location for Ennias to have moored a short, scruffy-looking narrow-boat called the Cella. Steve thought it made perfect sense to find that he lived like a troll under a bridge.

  They took their drinks up on deck.

  ‘Let’s define “safe”, shall we?’ suggested Ennias and waved at their surroundings. Vast motorway flyovers curved over their heads in all directions, stacked on top of each other while trees and bushes colonised what open space was left, growing up through the spaces between the carriageways. All of it was mirrored in the canal’s perfectly still surface, and despite the constant rumble of traffic all around Steve found it surprisingly peaceful – even the sight of the hradix, which was hunting for pigeons in the maintenance scaffolding which surrounded many of the support columns.

  ‘Funny story for you,’ said Ennias. ‘A few years ago, a holidaymaker stole a boat he was meant to be returning – he took off into the canal system, repainted it and managed to evade the police for six weeks. Six. You couldn’t do that on the roads. From this junction we have access to a hundred miles of waterway in Birmingham alone – with no patrol cars or CCTV cameras. Helicopters can’t see shit through all this concrete, even with infra-red. Five minutes’ walk that way and you’ve got Gravelly Hill Station and all points north to Derby. Five minutes the other way is Aston station, then New Street, and you can be in Paris by teatime. Above us we’ve got eighteen major roads; with a car parked on the hard shoulder under one of those flyovers you can be anywhere from Glasgow to London in a few hours.’

  ‘Have you got a car parked on the hard shoulder?’ asked Steve.

  Ennias winked. ‘What do you think? See that scaffolding? I hope you haven’t got a thing for heights because if there’s any trouble we’re up that like rats up a drainpipe. My point is, safety’s about having options, not locks. In any event, it wasn’t your safety I was most concerned with. It was ours. The exiles.’

  Steve laughed humourlessly. ‘I love the way you use the word “exiles”. Like you’re all part of some kind of royal family turfed out of your kingdom by a wicked witch.’

  ‘What word would you like me to use, exactly? Possessors? Demons? Dissociated personalities, like Vanessa?’

  ‘She’s not an exile from anywhere. She’s… truth to tell, I’m still not sure exactly what she is.’

  ‘That’s exactly what she is, McBride, whether or not she admits it. There’s no other explanation.’

  ‘So, you’re saying that everything about Sophie and the abuse and waking up for the first time and seeing the Watts painting is all a lie?’

  ‘No, that’s all true – but where do you think multiple personalities come from in the first place? Why do you think some people wake up from accidents with changed personalities or speaking in funny accents or not recognising their loved ones? Why do you think some people with perfectly happy home lives – two-point-four children and all that – suddenly run away from home or go postal in small country villages? You can say it was abuse or drugs or mental illness, but they’re just the trigger factors. The people who wake up one day feeling confused, not recognising the world around them, are us, people from my world. Sometimes we get total control, like me. Sometimes we fight with the original personality, like Vessa and Sophie, even if we were invited in the first place. Sometimes we aren’t strong enough and just hover in the background, whispering and shouting; the voices in schizophrenics’ heads, desperately trying to escape. You bring us here when you sleep too deeply, and your dreams snare us in ours, like two halves of a piece of Velcro sticking together.

  ‘I was a fisherman before this. Lived in a little seaside town called Candlewick Bay in a country called Oraille. I had a wife, two daughters and a little narrow house with blue shutters. Me and my brothers had a nice old fishing ketch which belonged to our dad, and we ran it in the bay; we didn’t make much, but we got by. And then one night, after I’d kissed my girls good night and fallen asleep beside Jessie, a software engineer called Milas Petrovic took the first pill in a course of anti-malaria medication because he was planning a charity trek up Mount Kilimanjaro, and he had the kind of fucked up dreams you usually only get by dropping acid. The authorities in Oraille call what happened a “subornation”, which is a nice, lovely, scientific term for what happened. You don’t need to know the details. All you need to know is that I was asleep when it happened, and when this guy’s dream finished, I was sucked back with it like something nasty going down a plug-hole. I woke up in this body in a council flat in Stoke-on-Trent. Imagine my delight.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Steve breathed. ‘What happened to this Petrovic bloke?’

  ‘I don’t know, and I don’t much care. He could be dead. He could be in here somewhere, trapped and screaming to get out, for all I know. What I do know is that I’ve spent the better part of the last three years travelling around, talking to other exiles, working it out. There are some very interesting people out there if you know the right way to talk to them. Most countries in my world have a branch of their police force or church dedicated to dealing with subornations, and quite a few of them get stuck here. Occupational hazard, I suppose. But this is the first time I’ve ever met anybody like Vanessa who claims to be able to move between there and here. Most of the people I’ve spoken to about it say it’s impossible and that she’s full of shit.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  Ennias shrugged. ‘What choice do I have?’

  ‘You and me both,’ replied Steve.

  ‘Subornation has been going on for as long as human beings have been dreaming, and the Hegemony have been trying to keep a lid on it for just as long. Let’s be honest, they were always going to find you. Far better that happen somewhere out of harm’s way. Try not to take it personally.’

  ‘Thanks, I’ll try,’ Steve replied drily. ‘But you couldn’t have warned us, could you?’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly know how they would track you down or what they’d send at you, could I?’

  ‘I suppose not. So what exactly were those things, then?’

  ‘They were an it. A gestalt creature. A swarm. Some poor bastard dreamed himself too close to a dormant hive of something very nasty indeed – from the looks of what they did to you, I’m going with wasps, or maybe killer bees. You’re lucky to be alive. You know that thing a few years back, when shopping centres were using high-frequency sounds to scare away teenagers, and then the kids recorded it on their phones to annoy their teachers?’

  ‘Vaguely.’

  ‘Well, it turns out that with a bit of tweaking, swarms of intelligent extra-dimensional insects don’t much like it either. Apps, my friend.’ He waved his phone at Steve. ‘It’s all in the apps.’

  Steve laughed. ‘Well I have to say, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind when V
essa told me you were an exile from this other place she calls Tourmaline.’

  ‘What exactly were you expecting?’ Ennias seemed nettled by his laughter. ‘Tiny winged elephants in cages? Jars of eyeballs? That sort of thing? Sorry to disappoint you, mate, but I buy my groceries in Tesco and my mugs from Ikea, just like everybody else. The fact that I can do things like this…’ and he turned his cup of tea upside-down and drank from it without spilling a drop, ‘…is only good for getting me unwelcome attention.

  ‘And it’s Archipelago. The Tourmaline Archipelago. The whole place isn’t called Tourmaline; it’s just one small bit of the world. That’s like calling everywhere on the other side of the English Channel “Belgium” because that’s the only place there you’ve heard of. Just like this place is called the Realt, because it’s abnormal.’

  ‘Us? We’re the abnormal ones?’

  ‘And the strangest thing about all of this is that despite the evidence all around, you think this is all there is – like you’re floating alone in the universe, and that makes you all terribly special and important.’

  Steve felt the bruises on his throat gingerly. At this particular moment in time he couldn’t imagine feeling less of either.

  3

  Degan explored Stray with mounting incredulity. He was allowed to roam freely without being pestered by too many questions; for the moment they apparently assumed that he was in shock and getting his bearings, and he saw no reason to let them think otherwise. It wasn’t all pretence anyway. Before getting suborned by Simkin, he’d heard of the Flats of course – what Elbaite seaman hadn’t? – but like everybody else who’d heard the tall tales of sea monsters and holes in the ocean, he’d expected the secrets at its heart to be grand and terrifying, not threadbare and shabby. How could people have built so much, and out of this garbage? And why here, in the middle of nowhere? For a moment there, this discovery might have seemed worth coming back for, but in the end it was all very disappointing.