This Rage of Echoes

by Simon Clark

  After walking through the door into the house followed by a tumultuous, greeting with plenty of kisses, I was all of a sudden left in my own company. Mom darted out to her little green car for the drive to the supermarket. Eve said she’d make me a sandwich, then added pointedly, ‘You’ll be wanting a bath, won’t you? Towels are in the usual place.’

  Did I really hum that much? Then, when had I showered last? Add to that some of Old Snotter’s aroma that must have transferred to me when he attacked me just a couple of hours ago and I’d be attracting flies as readily as something hairy lying dead in a ditch.

  I ran a bath as deep as I could get it without it overflowing the sides. The prospect of lying immersed in hot water tempted me more than words could say. A lot of my toiletries were still lurking in the back of the cabinet. There was also the usual clutch of disposable razors so I could scrape away the stubble as I wallowed up to my jaw in the tub. Bathrooms are other worlds. You do what comes natural there without being self-conscious. I don’t know if it’s the same for everybody else but my bathroom thoughts run along different tracks. As I steeped my flesh in the tub I gazed at my distorted reflection in the bath tap chrome. It made my face look like a naked thumb with eyes resembling dots on a page. Everyone’s face in the world is different. Of course they are. Even twins aren’t exactly identical. There are minor differences in face shape, or a habit of raising an eyebrow. The way the bath chrome took my reflection then distorted it to look so bloody peculiar, like a thumb with black hair at the end, made me wonder how a stranger could end up wearing my face. Trying to imagine what infinity is really like leaves you with that sick feeling, as if you’re about to topple from a cliff, so it made me nauseous when I tried to understand what process turned people into me. As I dragged the razor down the side of my face to cut away the stubble I realized that I’d blocked questions about what the Echomen really were and why they were changing into duplicates of me. I’d even distanced myself from reality when Ulric, Ruth, Dianna and Paddy had killed them, and I’d seen them kill so many in the last three weeks.

  It’s a way of protecting my sanity, I guess. Even in the early days I’d mentally censored my reaction to the slayings. Just how many slayings? I closed my eyes; a blur of exploding heads, hands clutching at bullet holes in chests, groins, backs, necks, faces, throats, breasts, arms, hands – faces are the worst. A face shot deflates the head like it’s a ball shrinking to half its normal size. I shaved harder. The water swirled round me, that familiar smell of soap. The warm fluid enclosed me in a liquid grasp.

  But I wanted to remember a single incident, not mixed images of falling bodies with the shit blasted out of them by that gang of four strangers. The very same strangers who came out of nowhere, picked me up out of the street, and then carried me away on this insane carousel ride of mayhem. My hand shook as I chiselled at my face with the blade, while my mind whirled madly trying to catch a tail of all those running memories.

  Then this:

  On the third day with the gang: I’d been to buy sandwiches from a petrol station on a road that ran through open countryside. Ulric had parked at the back of the building, well away from other cars. A guy in his twenties followed me back to the van. He wore a red baseball cap that carried the logo of a canoe passing through a hoop.

  ‘Can you give me a lift?’ he asked.

  ‘You don’t know where we’re going,’ Paddy replied.

  ‘That doesn’t matter.’ The man had a bright smile. ‘I’m one of the restless sort. I just keep moving around.’

  He was clean shaven, the jeans and sweater he wore were in good shape, so were his trainers. In one hand he carried a plastic bag with what must have been groceries, and I remembered he was chewing a large pat of gum – a bright green gum that moved around the inside of his mouth like it had a life of its own, as if the guy in the red cap had taken a liking to chewing on bright green caterpillars.

  ‘Sure you can come along,’ Paddy told him. ‘That is, if you don’t mind riding in the back with all our stuff.’

  ‘No worries.’ The hitcher’s smile was a sunny day in its own right. ‘I’m just happy to be moving. One thing that irritates me is sticking in any one place too long.’

  ‘You must have gypsy blood,’ Ruth told him.

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘I’ll open up the back.’ Paddy swung open the doors. ‘Try and make yourself comfortable.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  As he climbed into the back Paddy and Ulric jumped him. They used their body weight to hold him down; at the same time Dianna emptied the plastic carrier bag of its groceries, then she and Ruth slipped the bag over his head. They held it there with the open end sealed with their hands around his neck. When he exhaled the bag ballooned. When he inhaled it sucked tight around his head. The plastic film moulded itself so closely around his skin you could see all his features: even the way his bulging eyes formed raised mounds like a pair of little domes. I watched without emotion over his demise. If anything, I was disappointed that the carton of chocolate pudding Dianna had tipped from the bag with the other groceries had burst open. I watched the chocolate sauce leaking out and thought how good it looked.

  When I started to walk away from the four who had suffocated the hitcher in the back of the van Ulric snapped, ‘Mason? Where are you going?’

  ‘I want one of those puddings,’ I told him.

  Paddy grinned at me as the guy’s struggles morphed into pre-death fitting. ‘You can get me one as well.’

  ‘Anyone else want chocolate pudding?’ I asked.

  Ruth shook her head. ‘But you can see if they’ve got any gum like he had.’ She pressed down on the dying man’s face with the palm of her hand to make sure no air reached his nostrils.

  ‘That bright green stuff?’ I asked in surprise. It looked disgusting.

  ‘Yeah, I’m ready for a change.’

  ‘OK.’

  I strolled across the parking lot to the petrol station shop. Behind me they’d have started cutting the guy’s face off, just to check which one of us he was turning into.

  The bathwater had turned a funny colour. I’d been miles away – and two weeks in the past. I hadn’t noticed, I’d sawed away not only facial hair with the razor but a lump of skin too. Blood dripped from my chin into the tub. I realized I still had feelings after all when I rubbed the cut with the sponge: it hurt like hell.

  chapter 7

  That evening was like the old family evenings.

  ‘What did you do to your face, Mason?’ Eve stood behind where I sat in the chair and without any shyness grabbed my head and pushed it sideways.

  ‘Cut myself shaving – mind my beer.’ A dollop of ale plopped out of the glass to roll down my shirtfront.

  ‘Cut yourself shaving?’ My sister never did display any reticence when it came to seizing hold of my head or a limb if she wanted to examine it more closely. ‘You look as if you’ve been trying to chop your own head off. And look at this zit on the side of your neck. If it bursts it’ll blow the windows out.’

  ‘Eve, you’re twenty. You should be more ladylike.’ Mom used her old scolding voice as she sat in her favourite armchair, but she was smiling; she enjoyed having the old sibling banter back in the house again. ‘He hasn’t come two hundred miles to have his face debated.’

  Eve laughed. ‘It’s a face only a mother could love.’ She gripped my nose to give it a playful shake. ‘Don’t visit the elephants at the zoo – they might not let you out again.’

  After being on edge for so long my body hurt as muscles relaxed. I found I couldn’t stop smiling, too. ‘Mother. She says my nose is too big.’

  ‘Oh, don’t start telling tales on each other again.’

  ‘It’s Eve.’ I grinned. ‘She’s wicked to me.’

  ‘You deserve it. All brothers deserve it.’ She sat on the chair arm to playfully put me in a headlock. Maybe she still felt uncomfortable hugging her big brother in an affectionate way; a bit of play-wre
stling smuggled that hug in anyway. ‘What are your plans?’

  ‘Oh? Nothing much.’

  Mom poured herself a glass of white wine. ‘Say no if you haven’t time but the branches of the apple tree are hanging over Jack’s fence.’

  ‘I’ll cut them back in the morning,’ I told her, then managed a drink of beer between Eve playfully crushing my head. ‘Ouch. Watch the brains, dear.’

  ‘What brains? You once greased your bike’s gears with olive oil. Garlic flavoured olive oil at that. Whenever you rode it you smelt like a deli.’

  ‘Never mind, it kept the shampires away.’

  ‘Idiot.’ Another vigorous head squeeze. ‘What’s a shampire?’

  ‘Same as a vampire, only they steal your looks not your blood.’

  ‘Listen to him, Mother. Away six months then comes back full of psychobabble.’

  She tickled my neck which nearly left me choking with laughter.

  ‘Are you sure about pruning the tree?’ Mom worried that she was imposing on me. ‘Eve and I can do it if we use the long-handled clippers.’

  ‘No, I’m looking forward to some lumberjacking.’ I swigged off the beer. ‘I need to burn some calories anyway. These days half of my time is spent in the editing suite juggling film clips.’

  ‘And the other half in a bar judging by those bags under your eyes.’

  ‘Eve, I told you not to tease your brother. He doesn’t have bags under his eyes. He’s just tired.’

  ‘Speaking of tired.’ The clock on the bookshelf told me it was 10 p.m. ‘I’m going to have an early night.’

  Both Eve and Mom had enjoyed themselves so much that they pressed me to stay up for another beer. I was dog-tired. Of course, I’d lied to them about work. There’s no job for me there at Sliver-cast Imaging as I’d not turned up at the office for the past three weeks. Neither had I even hinted at recent events. How could I explain my troubles to my family?

  ‘You can’t go to bed just yet.’ Eve leaned against me as she sat on the chair arm to keep me in the seat. ‘We haven’t interrogated you about girlfriends.’

  ‘Eve.’ Mom’s gentle warning.

  ‘Mason, I’ll get you a beer.’

  ‘I’m whacked.’

  ‘Aw c’mon, just one. You haven’t told us about all those celebrity parties yet.’

  ‘OK, then.’ My smile was an exhausted one but felt genuine enough. ‘Just one.’

  It was so much like old times, the three of us joking and laughing in the living-room. Once more this whole business with the Echomen, and the killings, moved into the background where it seemed like a dream.

  ‘What’s that you said? No, you didn’t ask the question, did you? It was me thinking it.’ I looked downstairs at Natsaf-Ty sitting on the third step from the bottom. In the post-midnight darkness he was motionless, his eyes closed, the wise old face expressionless. Then he raised his chin until I had a sense of him gazing at me.

  I’d woken at one in the morning with the rank taste of stale beer sticking to my tongue, so went to the bathroom for a slug of mouthwash. The mint was so powerful it felt as if I’d taken a mouthful of electric shocks. When I crossed the landing in the direction of my bedroom I noticed the dusty scent of aromatic resins that signalled the return of an old friend. I can’t describe the appearance of Natsaf-Ty as being a shock or even a surprise. I’d seen him at the house yesterday when Paddy and the others shot the Echoman in the tree. I’d glimpsed Natsaf-Ty several times since. If this ancient Egyptian mummy with the scalpful of cracks that revealed dry bone was an imaginary friend from childhood then he was back again. The herb scents and aromatic resins that the embalmers used to stuff the torso when they emptied out the internal organs were distinct in the night air. Sight of that dried husk of a body, the reddish skin, the criss-cross bandages across his chest: they were real enough at that moment. So, as I’d done night after night as a child, I settled down on the top step. Natsaf-Ty rested on the third step from the bottom. One leg raised, so the bulbous kneebone almost touched his chest, while he sat twisted to one side so he could rest his back to the wall. And, as usual the other thigh supported one hand, revealing perfectly preserved fingernails that were the colour of pearls. And the face … same as always: eyes closed, tongue slightly protruding between lips that would be as crisp as cheese crackers. A sensation that the wise old man gazed at me. As if he wondered about what I was really like, about what I planned to do, and what would motivate me to behave in a certain way. Right now I sensed his expression as being one of accusation. Why did you do that, Mason? What made you kill the truck driver?

  This made me angry. Even though I risked waking my mother and sister who slept in their rooms nearby my voice grew louder as I talked. ‘What’s that you said? No, you didn’t ask the question, did you? It was me thinking it.’ My hands clenched into fists. ‘I didn’t mean to kill the truck driver; he fell out of the cab and the wheels crushed him. But you know something? I would have killed him anyway. And do you know why? Because that man was turning into me.’ Natsaf-Ty, keeper of the sacred crocodiles, regarded me through those closed eyelids as I ranted on. ‘Why was he turning into me? I don’t know. But as I sat beside him in the cab his hair changed colour to the same as mine; he had tattoos on the backs of his hands, but they vanished and then there was this scar on his hand.’ I held up mine to show the Y-shaped lines on my skin. ‘Right now, I’m thinking you don’t believe me, but here I am talking to someone who died three thousand years ago, so if I can believe you’re here in this house, then you’ve no right to doubt what I’m telling you.’ I was breathing hard; my voice grew louder. ‘Just as there’s no rational explanation for us sitting here like this, then there’s no rational explanation – yet – for the fact that something happens to certain people when I get too close. It takes hours, not minutes, but gradually they become me. I know what they’re thinking. I start to see through their eyes. Why can’t you damn well tell me what’s happening? When I was a kid you always had this wisdom – you’d advise me when I had a problem. But you don’t fucking speak to me anymore. You just sit and stare at me like it’s me who’s turned into a freak!’ I jabbed my finger at the mummy’s placid features. ‘Three weeks ago I was walking home through a park at night when a guy tried to kill me. The worse part of it was he looked like me. Not resembled me! Not a bit like me! But exactly like me! Same hair, same face, same voice! Everything the fucking same. Right down to this scar on my hand. I froze. I couldn’t fight him. I thought I’d gone insane and this was all hallucination. He would have killed me if it hadn’t been for these people who dragged him off me. Paddy, Ruth, Dianna and Ulric, the same people at the house a couple of nights ago. You see they’ve been under attack for months. They’re hunted by versions of themselves. Their physical echoes. What else could I do? I joined them. I asked them what was causing this. They don’t discuss it. They tell me this isn’t the time for philosophy, it’s the time for survival. They’re on the move all the time, sleeping in the van, or breaking into an empty house for a bit of extra comfort.’ Natsaf-Ty just sat there. He didn’t move; he could have been a red statue. Only there was this sense of him staring as if he was saying: Mason, I accuse you of being a freak. I accuse you of murder. I accuse you— ‘No, you don’t fucking accuse me!’ I roared these words at the dead Egyptian. ‘I accuse you! When I was ten you would have explained what was happening. You’d tell me what I could do to help myself, like when those kids were stealing my lunch money. How am I supposed to work this out for myself? Where do these people come from that turn into me? And you know something? They’re bloody useless monsters. They’re so fucking easy to kill. So why do they bother to attack us? Last week we were in the van and one walked up to the window. Paddy pulled out a shotgun and Ruth said “No, don’t fire.” “Why not?” asks Paddy. She replies, “Because we’ve only just cleaned the blood off the van from the last one.” Paddy laughs. “Good point,” he says then reverses the van twenty feet, leans out through the driver�
��s window and blows the woman’s head clean off. “Damn.” He’s annoyed with himself because he’s destroyed the head. “Now we can’t see which one of us she was becoming.” Ruth pats him on the arm. “Not to worry, besides I’m sure that one was becoming me.”’ I slammed my fist down on the step I was sitting on. ‘Don’t you see? Sometimes it would be better if they fought harder. Sometimes when they kill one of these Echo creatures I find I’m asking myself, ‘What if they’ve just killed an innocent member of the public? What if they haven’t turned into an Echoman and we made the wrong identification?’

  Natsaf-Ty, keeper of the royal crocodiles and long-time dead man, tilted his head to one side. Through an egg-sized hole in his skull I could see the void where the brains would have been. After death in ancient Egypt the embalmer shoved a metal spike up the corpse’s nose to pierce the soft tissues of the nasal passageway so they could then insert a wire hook to yank the brains out. Imagine the brain coming out like a series of big, bloody bogeys. How long would it take before the skull was empty? Then they’d use the spike to ram in onions to make the rancid corpse smell a little more sweetly. What remained of the human being, Natsaf-Ty, was little more than a pastry crust; picture a slightly over-baked apple pie with the filling teased out. This empty pie of a man was what I’d spent my childhood chatting to. Now he’d returned but he no longer conversed. There was only that long accusing stare that condemned who I’d become. I kill Echoboys and Echogirls, don’tcha know? Echomen are strangers that turn into me.