Slow Motion Ghosts

by Jeff Noon

  He sat there, tied to the chair, this pitiful man with his pitiful mask, his sliced cheek, his hair matted with blood where he had been attacked in Edward Keele’s bedroom.

  It was coming back to him, the whole passage of time, the events that had dragged him to this place, this chair, this cone of light, this mirrored image.

  He was King Lost.

  The red lips extended upwards at the edges as though cut through; the blue cross on the forehead; the white skin, the black teardrop painted below his left eye.

  And the wound on the other side of his face, the sheer ugliness of it.

  And seeing it now, he remembered his own hand holding the knife in a dream, cutting himself. No, not in the dream, but for real. The self-inflicted wound. Someone guiding his own hand as it pressed the knife into the flesh.

  He was being prepared, another sacrifice.

  Above him, the moth continued with its endless back-and-forth journey between bulb and shade.

  Hobbes stared at himself in the glass.

  He could see the fear in his own eyes. As though a part of him had already departed the confines of the skin.

  He licked at his lips, tasting the paint.

  It would be so easy to give in, to let it all slip away …

  He pulled his head upwards. Stay awake! He had to stay awake.

  The light flared once more, brightly, off to one side. It was a camera, taking pictures of him. His sight blurred with it, as a figure moved, a nebulous shape.

  And he struggled once more with the chair, desperate to escape, only to scrape the chair across the floor, the legs teetering, almost falling. He fought against gravity, just managing to stay upright.

  If he fell over, it would be even more painful, and more desperate.

  He had to stay calm.

  To breathe, that was it, to breathe easily. To close his eyes and hold the body still. To find a place for himself where he could crawl and curl up and wait out this pain, this loss, this terrible piercing sense of doubt.

  Hobbes allowed the world to settle around him.

  Now he opened his eyes, and he listened.

  The music was playing.

  He knew it well, this song.

  Just another backstreet harlequin, lost in the Soho blues.

  It was his own song, his own journey through life.

  I’ve given just about all I can give.

  That time when he had roamed the streets of London, a new arrival from the North, lost and alone; and then with new pals, sometimes drunk and rowdy as all hell; and then in the force, first as a copper walking the beat and learning the ropes, and then later on as a detective, working cases. Friends, colleagues, victims and criminals. Jenkes. Dead. Hobbes’s wife, his child, all gone, drifting away.

  Now there’s nothing left to lose …

  Where had it taken him, all that effort, all the years? What did he have to show for it?

  A few lives saved. The line of duty.

  Yes, he could say that. He could put that on the scales and see how much it weighed against the loss of love, of friendship, of hope. He pictured the balance as it tipped this way and that, and then settled at last.

  He turned his head and held his own stare in the dusty mirror, and he smiled.

  ‘Show yourself, Caliban. Let me see you.’

  The camera clicked again, another flashbulb popping.

  A blossom of light.

  The figure moved on, circling, taking picture after picture, and then retreating into the further darkness.

  ‘Caliban! I know it’s you.’

  He shouted as loud as he could. Now the room became still once more, with only the music playing in accompaniment. Hobbes screamed into the blackness.

  ‘Caliban!’

  In answer, two hands appeared, one on each side of the mirror, two black-gloved hands. The mirror was wheeled away.

  Hobbes fought against the last effects of the drug. He was still drowsy, and his eyes were heavy. The room shifted in his sight. He fell forward in his chair, only the bindings at his feet and hands keeping him in place.

  A figure stepped forward, positioning herself at the edge of the circle of light.

  It was a woman dressed entirely in black, with long dark hair hanging down on each side of her whitened face; her eyes were black within smudged circles of grey make-up, and they glistened in the lamplight. A single mark adorned the chin below the edge of the mouth. It was Lady Minerva’s identifying mark, a symbol of Edenville’s empress, and probably a mark of respect.

  Hobbes held the woman’s gaze.

  ‘Natasha? Is that correct? Or Miss Caliban, shall we say?’

  ‘Miss Caliban has retired. I have taken over the role of Lady Minerva.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Do you? I very much doubt that.’

  Her voice was fake, affected, another woman’s tone and timbre. Something copied. She stepped closer and glared at him. Hobbes tried to keep his heart steady, his breathing level. His eyes locked on hers.

  ‘I found a photograph in Edward Keele’s bedroom,’ he said. ‘It showed the two of you standing together. Edward was smiling. You were frowning, and staring off to the side. How old were you at the time?’

  She didn’t answer. Her eyes studied his face, every square inch of it.

  Hobbes continued, pulling together rare strands of logic in his half-drugged brain. ‘How old were you at the time? Eleven or twelve? Edward was younger, the baby of the group. There was a family resemblance between the two of you. Brother and sister.’

  Her eyes carried on searching his features.

  ‘The photograph was captioned, telling me the names of the children: Edward and Natasha. I thought it strange: your mother never mentioned having a daughter. Why was that?’

  Now her eyes met his once again. They seemed to look deep inside him.

  Hobbes could hear his voice trembling. ‘Your arm was draped over Edward’s shoulder. More than a loving embrace, or even a friendly one. It was protective. So the question is this – what were you protecting him from?’

  For the first time the woman’s eyes blinked.

  ‘From your father’s wrath, I presume.’

  Her eyes closed completely for a second or two. When she opened them again, there was a light in them, and she spoke in a calm and loving voice: ‘Many’s the time I stood before my brother and painted his face for him, according to his wishes, following his design. Each element, like so, and like so …’ Her hands worked at an imagined face, as though applying make-up. ‘The whiteness of his skin, the cruel broken mouth that could never dare speak in public, his brow marked with the cross of our Lord, tilted to the side. Just so. Finally, the teardrop on his cheek, the tears that could never dry. Now at last he was complete.’ She smiled deeply. ‘Now my brother was safe. He was strong! King Lost, arise! You shall never be defeated.’

  Hobbes watched her, fascinated. The remembered actions were utterly embedded in her soul.

  And then the darkness returned to her eyes. In a cold, cruel voice she said, ‘You have brought injury to the sacred image and spirit of King Lost.’

  ‘You did that yourself, Natasha. You know that! You carved my face.’

  ‘Your hand held the knife that dug into the mask, and through the mask into the flesh itself. I see the mark of blood upon you.’ Her gloved hand traced at his face, pressing into the wound. ‘For this act, you must be punished.’

  She pressed deeper, and Hobbes felt pain shoot through his nerves. He jerked back in the chair and cried out. From the depths of the pain, he found the words needed: ‘Your brother wasn’t murdered, was he?’ Her own wound, exposed and pressed at.

  The hand hesitated in its progress.

  ‘He killed himself. Or rather, you did it for him. You helped him.’

  ‘We helped him.’

  Hobbes tried to guide her along the memory. ‘All five of you?’

  ‘Four. Myself, Luna, Indigo and Bo. With Lady Minerva standing close by, overse
eing our progress. Edward was wearing his painted mask, as only he could, so beautifully. We walked out under the moonlight, into the shallows. The water lapped about our waists. And there we held him, dear King Lost, we held him in our arms outstretched, beneath the incoming tide, so the water came over him, gently now, gently.’

  She laid her hand on Hobbes’s face, the fingers outstretched to cover his features. He felt the pressure on his skin increasing as, in her mind, she held King Lost under the water. But Hobbes didn’t push back. His mind was working. He had to keep her talking for as long as possible, in the hope that Latimer had taken action and was at this minute on her way.

  So now he asked, ‘Did your brother struggle?’

  Keele lifted her hand from his face. ‘He struggled. Yes, at first. But he wanted this. He persuaded us, all of us. He pleaded with us. It was his only way out. And he wanted the group, his only true friends, to help him into the darkness.’

  Her voice was now entirely her own.

  Hobbes made a statement. ‘The pain was too great for him. The pain of life.’

  She smiled at his understanding. ‘It was far too great. He had taken too many blows, too much hurt over the years. Too many wounds, inside and out, and too many scars. The mask would no longer protect him, Edenville would no longer keep him safe.’

  ‘So you held him under the water. For how long?’

  ‘Minutes. Minutes on end. Three, four, five. Until the tide took him as its own.’

  Hobbes breathed more easily as Natasha Keele moved away. She seemed to be lost to the world, entirely at home elsewhere, in some other realm.

  ‘And then you made your pledge, is that correct?’

  ‘Yes. Some of them didn’t want to do it, they were weakening. Death had caressed their faces. But I held them to their faith.’

  ‘They were scared of you.’

  ‘There is no room for weakness, not in Edenville. King Lost had shown his courage, now I needed them all to show theirs. To be as brave as my brother! And so we gathered in the dark and held hands, all five of us, and we spoke in a whisper as one, the words that Lady Minerva had written for us.’

  Her voice changed, taking on a soft, lyrical tone.

  ‘I have one task only. I will protect the face and form of King Lost. His beauty shineth forth, as always. I will break asunder all those who harm his majesty. I will preserve his spirit from all future hurt, impairment and injury. I will exult him!’

  Now Hobbes understood. He saw the whole thing clearly, the hurt that had led to this moment, to this woman’s intense desire to protect her brother’s image, even to the point of death. For only by perpetuating the image, the mask, the face of King Lost, could she maintain the depth, courage and meaning of her brother’s passing.

  King Lost had to live on, so her brother could live, in spirit, in memory.

  Nothing else mattered, only that.

  It was madness, yet it held within itself a terrible kind of beauty. He saw it in her eyes, in her stance, her movements; he heard it in her voice, in the song that she returned to, over and over again.

  ‘You must’ve loved Lucas Bell very much, when he took up the King Lost mask for himself, when he made it famous around the world.’

  Natasha smiled. She spoke from the very centre of her being: ‘My brother’s spirit travelled the land, indeed the whole world, taking root whenever Lucas played and sang, taking root in people’s hearts. In such manner, Edward lived on, bringing joy wherever his song took flight!’

  Hobbes gave her no time to think of anything else, only the story. ‘And it hurt you, when Lucas killed the mask live on stage?’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘I was crazed with fever, with injury.’ The white paint on her face cracked into many tiny lines. ‘My brother was dying again, in such a public manner! No, it was wrong, dreadfully wrong.’

  ‘So you punished him. You murdered Lucas Bell.’

  Her expression changed and she spoke in a distressed tone. ‘He deserved all that was coming to him, yes, for what he had done.’

  ‘You found him that night, didn’t you? In Hastings.’

  ‘Lucas rested in the dark. He hid himself away, and trembled in the dark for what he had done, for the pain he had brought the world.’

  ‘You killed him!’

  She made no answer, and Hobbes felt his anger rising. He spat to clear his mouth and said, ‘And you think it’s fair, and just, to kill a man? To kill him merely for going against a promise he made, when he was a teenager? He was barely out of childhood!’

  She glared back at him. ‘I didn’t kill him. I was called to his side.’

  ‘You mean he did it himself, Lucas Bell killed himself?’

  She smiled again. ‘He needed persuading.’

  ‘You held the gun for him, you made him do it—’

  The room spun and flashed with sudden colour. Without warning, Natasha Keele had swung her arm back through the air and brought it forward at speed, to slap him hard with the flat of her hand. Hobbes toppled back, the chair almost falling to the floor. But Keele grabbed him by his shirt front and held him suspended at an angle.

  The pain of the blow broke through the shock and reached his cheek, where the knife wound lay, and he gritted his teeth against it, as Keele sneered at him, her face close to his now.

  ‘I have punished where necessary, according to the oath taken, at the homes of Brendan Clarke and Johnny Valentine. Both of them were quite enamoured of me, of what I was, of what I stood for, my relationships to Lucas and to King Lost. Brendan especially was tender in my arms.’ Hobbes could feel her breath on his face as she spoke. ‘Now the message is spread far and wide. The mask is safe. People will not dare to sully its contours, they will not dare to bring injury to my brother.’ Her voice reached its topmost pitch. ‘They will not dare!’

  She let go of him. For a second he could feel himself falling, bound to the chair, his heart leaping with fear, but she grabbed him at the last second and dragged him back upright. She laughed in his face.

  ‘And what about Simone Paige?’ he cried. ‘Did she really need to die?’

  A quiver of doubt crossed Natasha Keele’s features.

  ‘I killed her because she discovered the secret dwelling place, where the first stones of Edenville were laid, and because she caused Lucas to remove the mask from his face. She is to blame, and for this I struck out wildly at her body.’

  ‘I don’t think Simone was to blame,’ Hobbes said. ‘I believe Lucas made his decision on his own. He’d had enough—’

  ‘No!’

  ‘He’d had enough of King Lost—’

  ‘No, no!’

  ‘King Lost was strangling him. He was killing him.’

  ‘NO!’

  She cried and shrieked.

  The wordless howl of her voice. A blur of movement.

  And suddenly Hobbes could no longer breathe.

  Something was covering his head, his face, his eyes, his mouth.

  Opaque, sticky.

  He struggled to escape.

  It was a plastic bag. Miss Caliban’s face was barely seen through the covering, a dark mask. That’s how he saw her now: Caliban, a demonic, half-human creature. Her hands tight around his neck, holding the bag in place as the plastic moulded itself to his features, clogging his mouth and nostrils. He sucked in air where there was none, and felt himself choking, his throat and chest filled with fire, his eyes flickering with dots of light. He rocked back on the chair and, more from instinct than will, he applied his whole force into the act of escaping this torment. He pushed back further with all his strength until at last the chair toppled over under his and Keele’s weight combined, and they fell together to the hard floor. The old chair hit the concrete and crumpled and smashed and suddenly his left arm was free or partially free – he couldn’t see because of the bag that still clung to his face.

  He rolled over and took Miss Caliban with him.

  Still her hands were clasped around his throat. Still she
clung on, holding the bag in place, tighter now, even as he smashed the wooden arm of the chair against her shoulders, her neck, wherever he could hit by blind chance as the darkness closed in around his eyes, the final lights popping out, red, then yellow, now blue, dying, fading …

  No, it would not happen, not here, not in this damp, stinking hole in the ground, he would fight this, he would struggle on, his entire being set to a single purpose: he would live, he would hold on, he would hold on to life.

  It was an empty promise that he made to himself as the darkness cloaked him entirely and his lungs drew in their last few breaths.

  Yet a light still flickered behind his eyes.

  A tiny light. A spark.

  Enough to trigger his body into one last movement, and he roared with anger that he should be this close to the void. His entire body jerked and thrust forward, his free hand grabbed at Miss Caliban, his fingers clutching randomly at a fold of flesh and he closed upon it, squeezing, digging his fingernails in, deep, deep, until they ran with warmth, a fluid, he could only think it was blood, and he dug in further until he could hear her screaming and her hands came loose from his neck.

  It was all he needed. A moment. A chance. And he grabbed at it, this single chance, binding himself to it, and rolled away as far as he could, as the chair crunched beneath him, jabbing at his back and his other arm, but now he was ripping the plastic bag free of his face. He tore it loose and stood up, kicking the remains of the chair away from him.

  One arm was still attached to a broken strut, the other was free.

  He tottered on his feet from his ordeal and he peered through a haze of redness: Miss Caliban and another person, a woman, he thought. He spat out the words, her name …

  ‘Meg! Meg, Meg!’

  She was standing over Miss Caliban, who lay on the floor, supine, her face covered in blood.

  The mist began to clear from his eyes, and he saw it wasn’t DS Latimer at all.

  His body swayed, he was losing his balance.

  The woman stepped forward, a spanner in her hands, dripping with blood.

  Was it the mother of the household, Mrs Keele? Her face shimmered under the hanging bulb. She was speaking to him, the words muffled, heard from many miles away.