The Last Line Series One

by David Elias Jenkins

  “Foul play. What is this Agatha Christie gibberish Paul? I remember when you were a lowly turnkey orderly like the rest of us here. We’re all very pleased you bettered yourself and joined the filth, and I’m certain that coming back here in all your shiny polyester suited glory is exquisitely satisfying to you, making us feel like glorified extras in the cop film you have running in your brain, but let me remind you, I recall the time you shat yourself when one of these kids pulled a sharpened toothbrush on you.”

  Chalmers tucked his shirt in under his beer belly and tutted.

  “Alright Gary, this isn’t personal. I was sent back here because the brass knew I had contacts and a working knowledge of the place. I’m not trying to rub anyone’s nose in it. I know you boys do a difficult job.”

  “Oh put a lid on it. Just admit it. You’re as totally stumped as the rest of us, and you’re freaking out just like I am. What that loonie kid is building in there it just doesn’t make any sense.”

  Stan shivered a little. He looked over at the door. He tried to block out that incessant singing and maddening fucking scissor noise.

  Snip. Snip. Snip.

  “He’s right Paul. I mean have you actually properly looked at those things? They don’t make sense. I mean my eyes see them but my brain just can’t take in the picture. Paul it isn’t natural. It isn’t possible.”

  “It’s like some weird magic trick, or one of those staircases that just go up and down at the same time in a loop, what are they called?”

  A clipped public school voice came from the shadows at the end of the corridor.

  “Penrose staircases. An impossible object created by father and son Lionel and Roger Penrose. Forever descending in a clockwise direction. Only possible two dimensions, never in three. “

  The three burly orderlies jumped at the first words in a way that would have been comical had they not been so scared.

  Detective Chalmers strained his eyes at the slender little man that stepped forward. Early thirties he estimated but could pass for much younger, black belted raincoat, hair like an explosion of wire. Half his left ear missing. Chalmers’ CID brain honed in on little details like that.

  I wonder how he lost that ear.

  Chalmers straightened his tie (a garish early Christmas present from his four year old) and stepped up to the man. Chalmers didn’t think he looked very military, not what he had imagined at all.

  “Well I don’t know what sort of crazy you’re used to dealing with mister, but until you see for yourself what that little fellow has been making in there, I’d be prepared to have your world rocked.”

  The little man smiled politely. There was simultaneously something utterly dishevelled about him and icily efficient. A raggedy fox in a Saville Row suit. Perhaps it was the intelligent glint in the eyes that shone behind his wire rimmed spectacles, but it unsettled Chalmers. He looked like a man that knew a secret he wasn’t telling.

  “Well, you know exactly what to say to turn me on, don’t you? I’m Dr Ariel Speedman, I’ve been sent as a consultant and advisor by your commanding officer to assist you in this matter. It’s good to have your full co-operation. Who’s in charge here?”

  “That would be me. Detective Constable Paul Chalmers. It’s good to have you here, I suppose. I’m sorry no one was there to meet you at the door.”

  “That’s alright, I’m good with mazes. Whizzed through it.”

  Chalmers nodded and regarded Ariel suspiciously.

  “So you really have experience with this kind of thing? You think it could be connected to the missing kids? I don’t understand, don’t see how…”

  Ariel raised a black gloved hand.

  “Detective, I have no doubt you are a competent and diligent officer, and that you have done everything you can, followed every correct protocol in order to bring the case of these missing children to a satisfactory conclusion. But I only get called in when logic breaks down, when the trail of breadcrumbs leads back to a completely intact loaf. Don’t try and think this out, you’ll only give yourself a migraine.”

  “What I care about is solving a multiple murder case, and I don’t see what credentials you have, swanning in here and…”

  Gary stepped his bulky frame between them.

  “You’re from them, aren’t you? “

  “Them?”

  “The STG. You’re one of those Military Intelligence occult investigator chaps. All the things that are going on in the world these days, the weird stuff everyone is seeing but no one wants to talk about. You’re the guy they send to figure it out.”

  Ariel smiled.

  “I’ve never heard of them. “

  “You’re like a spook that hunts real spooks.”

  Ariel took off his spectacles and proceeded to polish them with a microfiber cloth.

  “Gary, is it? I’m a scientist, sent to investigate an anomaly that may have significance to the Ministry of Defence. As you can imagine I can offer you only limited information. I know that must be frustrating. However, nonetheless I have been sent to handle this matter and until it is resolved I would appreciate your absolute and unquestioning co-operation. Be in no doubt that when I am sent in, I am in charge. This can sit uncomfortable with staff and local constabulary who are used to doing things their own way. But there it is.”

  Jim cleared his throat and spoke up.

  “You have our full support and resources Dr Speedman. Just help us get this place back to normal.”

  Gary rolled his eyes.

  “Normal, he says. Normal is relative around here, Dr Speedman. Any day where some of the kids haven’t ganged up to rape a weaker one, or one of them hasn’t carved a spider web into his face with a compass, is considered normal.”

  Ariel peered at him up and down, like a machine scanning for drugs. The singing drifted through again from inside the room.

  Mr Bugaboo, if he catches you

  He’ll beat you then he’ll eat you

  That ragtime goblin man

  Ariel smiled.

  “Like you say, normal is relative. “

  “You’ve seen a few strange things in your time? Strange like this?”

  Ariel blew out his lips and nodded.

  “I’ve seen things that have almost ended me up in a place like this myself, rocking back and forward and eating bits of my own skin. It’s normal that disturbs me nowadays. Sometimes I’ll be in a restaurant or a shop and I start to have a panic attack because it all feels so fake. Because the people around me don’t know. Sorry I’m oversharing , aren’t I?”

  “Don’t know what?”

  “What’s outside that safe little pool of light from the streetlamp. They think they’re safe because they have mobile phones and multiplexes. It’s like a theme park inhabited solely by serial killers in clown makeup and ravenous dire wolves. Just outside that pool of light. And still they queue up for the ghost train. It’s madness really.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence between the group of men in the corridor. The only sound was the childish singing drifting from the room, the occasional snip snip and the dissatisfied gurgling of the Victorian plumbing.

  Finally Chalmers gestured to the door.

  “You want to go in?”

  “Yes, I think I need to get to the bottom of this don’t you? And it starts with the boy in this room.”

  Jim bunched his hammy forearms and jangled the keys on his belt. His hands trembled slightly as he fiddled for the right key, took a couple of tries to get it in the lock. A fine sweat had gathered in the armpits of his blue orderly’s smock.

  “Bit tricky sometimes this door, like it doesn’t wanna open. Just need to give it a bit of shoulder.”

  Jim’s eyes darted to his colleagues and then he tensed his bullish frame and knocked the door open. He took a step back, seemingly reluctant to go in, and called out.

  “Jase. Jase there is a man here to see you. He wants to ask you some questions. I want you to be on your best behaviour for him. OK?”r />
  The singing had stopped. No answer.

  Jim waited for a few moments then nodded to Ariel.

  “You can go in now Dr Speedman. He won’t try and harm you or himself, I don’t think. If he isn’t feeling sociable we generally know first thing on opening the door. But I’m right here if you need me ok?”

  “You coming in?”

  “No it stresses him out. He’s totally fine as long as he trims his trees. I know it might seem counterintuitive in a place like this to give a kid a pair of clippers and a little chisel, but honestly, it keeps him calm and he’s no self-harmer. It just works. Here what works is what we have instead of rules.”

  “Ok.”

  Gary put a beefy hand on Ariel’s elbow.

  “But just holler if you need me.”

  Ariel took a deep breath. He could feel the static crackle of thaumaturgy hit his face before he even entered the room. It was like breathing popping candy deep down into his lungs.

  He doubted that the frightened employees of the institution were aware of it, they just instinctively knew something was wrong. Ariel however could see it all in perfect clarity.

  The way the dust motes floating in the moonlight that streamed through the blinds did not move in accordance with the air currents of the room. The way his own heartbeat slowed rather than quickened as he stepped to the threshold, in flagrant contradiction to the fear he was feeling. As if the room was shut down so tight, every nook and cranny sealed with a putty of magic so rich that time itself struggled to seep through.

  Oh yes Ariel felt fear.

  He had been thrown into hundreds of horrific situations, seen all sorts of insane horrors pull their bodies through the tiny gaps in reality to flop wetly down into our world, hungry and greedy like mutant babies. He had been possessed by demi-gods, ran in terror through spiny forests from the putrid risen dead, seen ancient thirsty fiends turn his oldest friends into taut husks.

  Yet Ariel still felt the hairs on his forearms prickle and rise. Because he could not before recall feeling a wash of pure sickening thaumaturgy hit him with this much loathing and jealousy.

  The Unseelie hate us with every unscientific fibre of their beings. We are grotesque and abhorrent to them, an affront to their incomprehensible notions of racial purity. To them we are a floating punctured cockroach slowly bleeding into a glass of purest water. All the STG boffins in the world have never deciphered the exact cause of this hatred, the ancient slight that had reduced humanity’s standing to that of persona non grata. They could compare it to Japanese treatment of prisoners during the war, the rounding up of Jews by the Nazis, but nothing came close.

  For some reason lost to antiquity, the dark faerie realm of the Unseelie had a grudge against us and they would forever dedicate their eldritch immortal lives to screwing us over. They were a realm of terrifying monsters and thousand year old torturers with eyes fixed firmly on our souls.

  Yet what sat on the immaculate, white-sheeted hospital bed in front of Ariel was a completely unaware eleven year old boy.

  Ariel stepped forward into the room and was instantly hit with the scent of pine needles. He tried not to focus on the very obvious overabundance of a particular item in the room.

  “Hello Jason. My name is Ariel Speedman.”

  “Hello Ariel Speedman my name is Jason.”

  “These are very impressive and beautiful miniature trees you have cultivated. I think when I was a child I would have enjoyed such a hobby very much.”

  “Were you a child like me?”

  “Like you?”

  “Where people are puzzles and things are people? Like that.”

  Ariel regarded the skinny black haired boy that glared back at him with his inky vacant eyes, sitting on the bed in his hospital issued pyjamas. He felt a sudden wave of empathy and sadness, memories of his own bullying and isolation dragged to the surface like popping, deep-water fish.

  “There are different kinds of different, Jason. I was not different like you, but I was different from the others. I wasn’t one of the cool kids. Then when I got older I realized that neither were they.”

  Ariel gave him a smile.

  The boy looked up and regarded Ariel with inscrutable inky eyes. Then without a word he turned away and resume pruning the little Bonsai tree on the bed as if no one else was present. Ariel took it as acceptance.

  Snip. Snip. Snip.

  “You can come in then. Have a glass of water or a jelly baby. I have both they are on the table in the westerly corner.”

  Ariel glanced over at the little table. There was a jug of tap water and three jelly babies in a row. Blue, black and green. Next to that a chipped and old fashioned record player sat on a chest of drawers. There was only one record propped up against it. It was some obscure old ragtime number, hardly a child’s fare.

  “Thank you Jason. I have already had dinner this evening, although I am partial to green jelly babies. But I would very much like to admire this tree you are working on. Bonsai is your hobby?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Not a hobby. It’s my work.”

  “And who do you work for Jason?”

  No answer.

  Ariel tried to bring the boy out of his shell.

  “I heard you singing. Not a bad voice. Don’t know that one though, sounded old. This record?”

  Jason nodded.

  Ariel picked up the sleeve. It was a ragtime number from 1911. The Ragtime Goblin Man, sung by Arthur Collins.

  “You buy this?”

  “Found it. Down in the basement when I was tidying. Been here a long time.”

  Ariel put the record back and stepped fully into the centre of the room, allowing himself to take in the full spectacle of what really filled the space. The smell of pine oil masking rot was overwhelming, the tingle of thaumaturgy pricked Ariel’s skin as if the sharp needles of the bonsai trees were being forced into him.

  Ariel’s genius level brain negotiated with his photographic memory and made a quick calculation as he glanced around the small dreary living quarters. He counted every tree on every shelf and spare inch of desk. Most were beautiful, some were strange. For a moment Ariel’s attention was drawn to one big ugly solitary tree that stood in the corner next to the door. It was unworked, bulbous and far bigger than the rest. It sat there like a squat troll guarding the exit. Ariel wondered if the boy could possibly make something graceful and aesthetically pleasing out of such a monstrous tumour of wood and spiky needle.

  “Two hundred and twenty seven, Jason. All beautiful. Apart from that big one. Close to perfect in fact. Many are similar yet no two are the same. Works in progress. It’s like you’re working towards something, some magnum opus. Perfection. Some ideal in your mind. Jason, will you know it when you find it?”

  The boy seemed not to hear Ariel. He was focussed utterly on the little tree in front of him. His tongue flicked nervously from one corner of his dry chapped lips.

  “I see them.”

  “You see the trees?”

  “Yes.”

  “How they should be?”

  The young boy looked up at Ariel and properly regarded him for the first time. A tiny smile flickered at the corner of his dry lips. It was as if in this statement he had realized that Ariel was not like the other dullards that catered and attended to him. Like he had found a kindred spirit who understood the importance of his work.

  “Yes. I cut away the bits that aren’t needed. Until I find its proper shape.”

  Ariel peered around at the scaled down jungle dominating the bleak room. He intentionally chose not to acknowledge the more bizarre pieces of work, the ones that had got the staff in a panic.

  “You’re in good company there Jason. When sculpting the beautiful figure of David, Michelangelo was asked how he achieved such an impossible feat. He replied that he simply started with a block of marble, and chipped away the stone that didn’t look like David.”

  Jason gave a high pitched girlis
h giggle at this that stopped as abruptly as it started, and he resumed trimming his little tree.

  “I see you’re no mean artisan yourself Jason. You must have a very clear picture in your head for all these trees. I’m no expert of Japanese horticulture. Can you describe this one to me?”

  Jason’s pale face perked up, as if suddenly present in the room. In soft monotone report he confided with Ariel.

  “Netsuranari bonsai sometimes mimic phenomenon that occurs when a tree topples onto its side, from erosion or natural force. Branches along the top of the trunk grow as a group of new trunks. Shakan bonsai have straight trunks like those grown in the formal upright style however, the slant style trunk emerges from the soil at an angle. Fukinagashi style describes a tree that appears to be affected by strong winds blowing from one direction, as might shape a tree atop a mountain ridge or an exposed shoreline.”

  Jason rapidly pointed from one perfectly formed little creation to another as he spoke in breathless enthusiasm. When he finished speaking his face resumed a slack vacant expression as if Ariel was not even present. Then he giggled once and went back to trimming his tree.

  Ariel had ignored the sandblast of thaumaturgy that had been assailing the right side of his face for long enough. The heat and stench of it was like an allergic reaction. He turned his head and looked at the pinnacle of Jason’s creations for the first time.

  Oh God. He really can do it. I can’t believe they’ve ordered me to kill this child. He’s a genius. But he can’t be allowed to live. Not if the rest of us want to.

  “What about these ones, Jason? These ones look special. Where did you get the idea for those? Was it like Michelangelo, did you just trim away the bits you didn’t need?”

  Jason seemed to tense up but kept pruning.

  Snip. Snip. Snip.

  “Jason?”

  “Not my ideas. “

  Ariel looked at the shelf Jason had dedicated to his prize Bonsai. Different from the rest in ways that defied nature, but also in one very obvious way that was entirely worldly.

  “These ones are all dead. The wood is dead. Is that why you chose them to perform such…unusual work?”