Community

by Graham Masterton

  After a few more questions about mundane problems like frozen pipes and interrupted broadband connections and dogs fouling the footways, the formal part of the meeting broke up. Everybody shuffled through to a smaller room at the back of the hall, where a buffet had been laid out on a long table – chicken wraps and slices of pizza and corn chips and various dips, as well as cookies and brownies. At the far end of the room, two elderly women were serving tea and coffee and soda.

  Michael took a slice of pepperoni pizza and then looked around for the girl in the blue bobble cap. He glimpsed her at the drinks table, waiting for one of the women to make her a glass of Russian tea, and he was just about to maneuver his way through the room to talk to her when a broad-shouldered young man with a shaven head and earrings blocked his way and said, ‘Dude! What happened to you?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Michael. ‘Auto wreck.’

  The thickset young man nodded sympathetically. ‘Came off my sickle. I was so smashed up they gave me the last rites, right there on the blacktop.’

  ‘Well, it looks like they patched you up pretty good.’

  In spite of his shaven head and his bulky build and his earrings, the young man had a broad, friendly face, with expressive brown eyes. He was wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket and a black T-shirt with a color transfer of Jesus on it, holding up one hand in blessing, and the motto Jesus Waves.

  ‘Jack Barr,’ he said, holding out his hand.

  Michael shifted his walking stick to his left hand and shook hands with him. ‘Greg Merrick.’

  ‘Kind of weird, this place, don’t you think?’ said Jack, looking around the room.

  ‘So you’re not from round here?’

  ‘Do I look like it? I come from Solana Beach, near San Diego.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Michael. ‘I don’t think this place is any weirder than any other small community I’ve ever been to.’ Not that he could specifically remember any other small community that he had ever been to, nor any of their names.

  Jack said, ‘Everybody’s pretty friendly, I guess. Especially the family I’m staying with. They treat me like their long-lost son. Well, long-lost dog, more like.’

  ‘You’re staying here to recuperate? How long for, do you know? Me – they told me at least three months.’

  ‘Yeah, me too. Hit my head when I totaled my sickle so I have some sort of contusion on the brain. Find it difficult to concentrate, know what I mean? Very short span of attention.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  Jack said, ‘You and me, we should get together, have a few beers, see if we can’t straighten our heads out. There is no greater cure-all for un-straight heads than a six-pack of Coors.’

  ‘I’m on Piracetam, and about a dozen other meds. I don’t know if the doctors will allow me to drink. Besides, does Trinity have a bar? Does it even have a market?’

  At that moment, a smiling middle-aged woman came up to them. She had very red lipstick and a dress that looked as if it had been made out of a chintz couch cover. ‘You young men, you should mingle! There are so many people here who are dying to meet you! It’s not too often that we get new faces here in Trinity!’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ said Michael. He patted Jack on the shoulder and said, ‘Catch up later, OK?’

  ‘What did she mean “mingle”?’ asked Jack.

  ‘It means talking to the first old coot you bump into, followed by the next old coot, and so on, until you’re all cooted out.’

  ‘Right,’ said Jack, with an undisguised lack of enthusiasm. ‘See you later, dude.’

  Michael smiled and nodded at the older residents as he weaved his way down the room, but it was the girl in the blue bobble hat who he was headed for. He found her sitting on a plain bentwood chair next to the end of the refreshment table, with a glass of Russian tea and a cookie on the table beside her. She was wearing a blue cable-knit sweater to match her hat, and jeans, and her ankles were neatly crossed.

  She looked as if she were thinking about something serious, because she had a vexed little furrow in the middle of her forehead. A gray-haired man in a droopy maroon cardigan was standing close to her, but as Michael approached he shrugged and walked away, as if he had tried to talk to her but she hadn’t answered him.

  Michael stood in front of her and looked down at her with a feeling like no feeling he had ever experienced before – or no feeling that he could remember, anyhow. He had no idea who she was, and yet everything about her seemed so perfect. Her blue-gray eyes, her high cheekbones, her slightly parted lips.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. He put down his half-eaten slice of pizza and wiped his hand on his jeans. ‘My name’s Greg. You look like you’re worried about something and I was wondering if that something was something I could help you with.’

  She didn’t respond for at least five full seconds. He was just about to repeat himself when she raised her eyes and said, ‘What?’

  He gave her a smile. ‘I said, my name’s Greg and you look like you’re worried about something.’

  She was staring at him with such intensity that he began to wonder if he had tomato sauce on his chin, and he defensively wiped it with the back of his hand.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I heard you the first time.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And, no, I’m not worried. I was thinking about what I have to do when I get back home, that’s all.’

  ‘OK. And what do you have to do when you get back home?’

  Again, there was at least a five-second pause. But then her eyes widened and she let out a terrible ear-splitting scream, her hands clutching the seat of the chair, her whole body rigid. The scream went on and on until she ran out of breath, and then she inhaled with a sound like somebody dragging a saw across a metal drainpipe, and started screaming again.

  ‘Hey!’ said Michael, and took hold of her shoulders, trying to steady her. But she twisted violently out of his grasp and drummed her heels on the floor and went on screaming and screaming.

  By now the residents had gathered around them. One of the men said, ‘Slap her! Slap her! It’s the only way! Shock her out of it!’

  ‘Cold water!’ croaked an elderly woman. ‘That’ll do it! That’s what my husband always did to me!’

  Michael tried to pry the girl’s hands away from the seat of the chair but now she was becoming so hysterical that she was bumping the chair up and down on the floor and he had to grab hold of the rungs to stop her from pitching herself backward.

  ‘It’s OK!’ he kept telling her. ‘Everything’s OK! Please – try to calm down!’

  She stared at him wildly with her eyes bulging. She looked almost as if she hated him. She was obviously exhausted from screaming but she wouldn’t stop, with her lungs heaving and spit flying out of her mouth.

  ‘Please,’ Michael begged her. ‘Please calm down.’

  But at that moment Kingsley Vane appeared, moving the residents firmly out of his way. ‘Let me through, please. Thank you. Let me through.’

  Over the girl’s screaming, Michael shouted, ‘I don’t know what happened! I started to talk to her, and she was fine at first …’

  Kingsley Vane didn’t reply, but nodded as if he understood exactly. Without hesitation he knelt down on one knee beside the girl and took her into his arms. She was still screaming but he lifted her bodily off the chair and then stood up, cradling her as if she were a child. She stopped screaming almost at once, and nestled her head underneath his chin.

  ‘She’ll be all right,’ said Kingsley Vane. ‘Sometimes the realization is more than they can bear.’

  With that, he turned around and carried her out of the room, with the residents all stepping back to let him through.

  Jack came up to Michael, shaking his head. ‘What in the name of all that’s holy was that shit about? What did you say to that poor girl to make her holler like that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Michael. He suddenly realized that he was shaking.

  ‘You must have done
something to upset her,’ said Jack.

  Michael turned away. With no warning at all, his eyes had filled with tears, and he didn’t want Jack to see that he was crying.

  SEVEN

  That evening, Isobel served them a supper of spicy chicken casserole and sauté potatoes, which they ate together, sitting side-by-side at the counter in the blue-tiled kitchen. Afterward, Isobel said, ‘Go on, you go sit down and watch TV. I’ll clear up. Don’t worry – next time it’s your turn.’

  Michael eased himself down on the couch in the living room and switched on the television. He found that he was halfway through an episode of Unforgettable.

  Isobel slammed the dishwasher door and then came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands. ‘How about a nightcap?’ she asked him. ‘I have a bottle of Shiraz that my neighbors gave me the last time they came to dinner, but we never got around to opening it.’

  ‘Whoa, I’m not too sure I should be drinking alcohol.’

  ‘Oh, come on. One won’t hurt.’

  ‘You ever watch this program?’ asked Michael. ‘Unforgettable?’

  Isobel peered at the screen short-sightedly. ‘Can’t say that I ever have. It probably makes me sound like a feather-brain, but I prefer comedies, and soaps. Real life is tragic enough already, that’s what I always say, without having to watch made-up tragedy on TV. You know what Francis Bacon said.’

  ‘I can’t say that I do. Or if I did, I can’t remember.’

  ‘He said: “Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.” That’s why I don’t watch programs about serial killers, or whatever.’

  ‘And you call yourself a feather-brain?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know if Doctor Connor told you, but I used to be an English teacher. Until my accident, that is.’

  ‘Do you miss it? Would you ever go back to it?’

  Isobel shook her head. ‘I can’t.’

  Michael waited for her to explain why, but that was all she said on the subject. Instead, she lifted up her hand as if she were holding up a wine glass and said, ‘How about that drink?’

  ‘OK, but just one. Talking of death, Doctor Connor would absolutely murder me, if she knew.’

  Isobel brought in two large glasses of red wine and made herself comfortable on the couch, very close to him. She was wearing a plain red needlecord dress with the top three buttons undone to show the sparkling red crystal necklace that rested between her breasts.

  ‘Here’s to us,’ she said.

  Michael clinked glasses with her. Then he nodded toward the TV and said, ‘You want me to turn this off?’

  ‘No, watch it if you want to.’

  ‘I find it pretty interesting, that’s all. The heroine is a detective who has hyperthymesia, which is like the total opposite of amnesia. She can remember every single detail of every single thing that she ever saw or heard – every conversation, every person’s face, every fact, every clue, everything.’

  ‘You wouldn’t want to be like that, would you?’ Isobel asked him.

  ‘I don’t know. I think I’d rather remember everything than nothing.’

  ‘I don’t remember my accident.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Isobel shrugged. ‘This is only what I’ve been told. I had just finished a teaching seminar at Raleigh College in Portland. But when we were all leaving for lunch, the elevator doors opened and there was no elevator car. I was talking to my friend and I stepped into the elevator shaft and fell three stories and dislocated my spine. Like I say, though, I don’t remember doing it.’

  Michael took her hand and squeezed it. ‘You’re OK now, though?’

  ‘I’m fine. Absolutely one hundred per cent. No pain, no stiffness, nothing. They work miracles at TSC, believe me.’

  ‘I still don’t get this community thing. I agree with that guy Jack I was talking to this morning. Like, it’s all a little weird. Look at the way that girl started screaming at me like that.’

  ‘There’s nothing sinister about it, Greg. The clinic uses Trinity to support people recovering from serious accidents, like me, and like you, and sometimes they’re a little off-balance. Trinity is like a convalescent home except that it’s a community, and not everybody who lives here is a clinic patient, by any means. There are some very high-end people here. Doctors, lawyers, scientists.’

  ‘I still don’t get it. Why would they want to live here, people like that, right in the middle of no place at all? There aren’t any bars … not that I’ve seen, anyhow. There’s no nightlife. There are no restaurants. As far as I can make out, you don’t even have a market.’

  Isobel lifted her hand and touched Michael’s cheek, very gently. ‘Sometimes, you know, people have no choice.’

  ‘What does that mean? Everybody has a choice of where they want to live. I just can’t work out why anybody would want to live here. I mean, the natives are friendly enough, aren’t they? There’s a good warm community spirit. But what the hell are they doing here?’

  ‘You know why you’re here.’

  ‘Of course I do. I can’t remember a goddamned thing about anything, so it’s probably the best place for me until I get my memory back. But if it wasn’t, I’d be off to San Francisco like a shot.’

  Isobel knelt up on the couch and kissed him, first on the forehead and then on the lips. Then she sat back with a challenging look on her face.

  ‘I could give you at least one reason to stay,’ she said. ‘Even if you do get your memory back.’

  Michael said nothing, but looked back at her, directly in the eyes, searching for meaning. He was breathing hard. He noticed for the first time that she had a small heart-shaped mole on her right cheek.

  On the television, Detective Carrie Wells was saying, ‘March twenty-seventh, nineteen ninety-eight, was a Tuesday. Sunrise was at five forty-six am. Most important of all, on that day, the FDA approved Viagra.’

  Isobel stood up. She unbuttoned her dress all the way down and opened it out, her arms wide apart, as if she were spreading her wings and preparing to fly. Underneath, apart from her red crystal necklace and a lacy red bra, she was wearing nothing at all. Although her breasts were so large and heavy, her hips were very narrow. Her vulva was waxed and completely smooth.

  Neither of them took their eyes off each other. Isobel knelt down in front of him, still wearing her open dress like a cape, and reached for his belt-buckle.

  ‘I’m not sure Doctor Hamid would approve of this,’ said Michael, hoarsely. ‘He told me to be very careful not to strain my back.’

  ‘Then we’ll just have to make sure that you don’t strain your back,’ said Isobel. She had licked her lips and they were shining pink in the lamplight. She unfastened his belt and then tugged down his zipper. Reaching inside the top of his shorts with one red-varnished finger, she stretched out the waistband so that she could scoop her other hand inside them, and pull out his rapidly swelling penis.

  She gripped the shaft of his penis very tightly, with her pointed fingernails digging into it like needles, and rubbed it up and down two or three times. They were still looking unblinkingly into each other’s eyes, almost as if they were daring each other to continue. Then – still gripping his penis just as hard – Isobel reached over for her glass of Shiraz, held it up and said, ‘Here’s to companionship.’ She swallowed a mouthful, and licked her lips again.

  Michael tried to lift himself up from the couch, but he felt a sharp twinge of pain in his neck and said, ‘Ah!’ Isobel gently pushed him back.

  ‘Let’s take it easy, shall we?’ she smiled. ‘You don’t want to go dislocating your neck again, do you?’

  Michael said, ‘Where’s this going, Isobel?’

  ‘Just as far as you want it to.’

  With that, she lowered her head and took the purple head of his penis between lips that were still wet with wine. She circled the tip of her tongue around it, around and around, and then she dipped it int
o the crevice in his glans.

  Again, he tried to raise himself up, but he felt another twinge, even more painful this time, and knew that it would be dangerous to try. He looked down at Isobel as she took his penis deep into her mouth, her tongue still circling, her head nodding. Already he felt a tightening sensation between his legs, and he knew that he wouldn’t be able to hold off a climax for very long.

  She started sucking him harder, and he buried the fingers of both of his hands into her thick, shiny brunette hair, pulling her head down so that she was taking him into her mouth as far as it was possible for him to go.

  He started panting as his climax began to rise. Every muscle in his body was rigid and he was seeing pinpricks of light in front of his eyes.

  ‘Oh God,’ he gasped, and Isobel lifted her head, so that he climaxed in a loop over the bridge of her nose, and into her eyelashes. She laughed, a high tinkly laugh, like a mischievous fairy, and stuck out her tongue so that she could lasciviously lick the last of his semen.

  ‘Oh God,’ he repeated, still panting. ‘You are amazing. You are something else, believe me.’

  She smiled up at him, her face still decorated with his climax. ‘That’s companionship, Greg. That’s real companionship.’

  He shifted himself up a little, but as he did so he glimpsed a flash of reflected light over by the window seat. Isobel had failed to pull one of the blinds all the way down, so there was a gap above the window sill of at least six inches. At first he thought that he had seen nothing more than the reflection of the table lamp behind him, as he moved his position. But then he saw another flash and realized that there was somebody looking in through the window, and that the flash had come from the dark glasses that they were wearing.

  ‘Jesus!’ he said, struggling to get up from the couch.