The Acolyte

by Nick Cutter

“And you? Who’ll save you?”

  He touched his lips to his scapular.

  “I’m a bog-trotting black Irish bastard. I’ll save my own damned self.”

  Point of No Return

  Rain began to bucket down as I drove away from Hollis’s house. A few fat drops splashing the windshield became a steady drum. The feel of lightning inside of me, electrifying my bones, yet not one bolt cracked the sky.

  I ticked over Hollis’s revelations. They had known. Couldn’t have found two more willing pawns than Exeter and Hollis: one a bureaucrat, the other a brute. Both soulless. The two of them had run the old end-around on The Prophet, compromised the safety of the city.

  Headlights came up in the rearview mirror: dazzling brights that had me shielding my eyes. The car ran up tight on my bumper and slingshotted past; in the driving rain I couldn’t catch sight of the driver or even the make. Slashing in front of me, now only a pair of taillights rounding the bend not far from the Kiketown checkpoint.

  I motored into the ghetto at a crawl, my nerves stretched tight as fiddle strings.

  I parked down an alley and cut the engine. Rain poured off shop awnings and out of downspouts. I slogged up a narrow stairwell to a locked door. My knock went unanswered. I felt along the top of the doorframe and found a key.

  To say the apartment was sparely furnished was an overstatement. Halogens gave it the ambience of a lizard’s terrarium. All the light touched was a military-style bed wrapped in thin plastic in the centre of the main room. Beside it was a filing cabinet stocked with gauze packets and medical tape. Beside that was the machine.

  The kitchen. Drawers and cupboards empty. A pump-bottle of Medina antiseptic soap beside the sink. I walked into the bathroom. A plastic stool at the far end of the tub. A reddish tinge to the enamel.

  Main room again. The machine . . . Powder-coated steel frame, squat and boxy like some primitive robot. Dials, knobs, pressure gauges. Set on rusted casters. A big red “on” switch. Manufactured by ASCO Apothecaries Co. Electric-Manual Suction Unit. Two clear jars, vacuum caps screwed on top. A trio of tubes: one linking the jars, one screwed to the unit, the last dangling free.

  She wasn’t going to do this. I couldn’t let her, could I? We’d have to talk. I couldn’t stand the thought of her strapped to this terrible thing, tubes snaking into her, the life inside of her taken away in such a cold, clinical fashion.

  Footsteps on the stairwell. A knock.

  “It’s me.”

  “Come in.”

  Doe entered wet and shivering. Teeth chattering. I jerked a towel off the bathroom rack. She sat on the crinkly plastic-covered bed. I slapped the security chain on the door; I wanted to take a good look at this sawbones before he got inside.

  I sat beside Angela. “Not trying to start anything, but . . . you’re sure?”

  She glanced at the machine, the suction unit, at me, then down at her feet.

  “Goldberg said the doctor would have something for the pain,” she said. “So that’s good.”

  “When this is over I’d like you to come with me,” I said. “A quiet place where you can recuperate. I’m not asking you marry me—not trying to sweep you off your feet. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Promise me.”

  “Until I’m recovered. Promise.”

  Footsteps mounted the stairwell. A timid knock. I eased the door open a crack.

  I caught the briefest flash of ghostly, heart-stopping white as the door smashed back into my face, flimsy security chain snapping. A blood-spattered medical bag flew at my face and though I got my elbow up to block it, I couldn’t block the boot that followed directly behind, catching me under the chin. The room tilted, spun on some hidden axis, first the ceiling rushing at my face, then the floor, dark whorls of wood grain and my face meeting it. . . .

  Nightmare

  Blood.

  Soaked into the fibres of my shirt. Taste on my tongue. Coagulated in my sinus cavities. My eyes were gummed shut with it. My left arm hung above my head, encircled by cold steel, shackled to something—the radiator, to judge by the steel ribs pressing my back.

  A huge hand, more of a talon, steadied my skull. A wet cloth wiped my mouth and eyes.

  “Wakey, wakey.”

  Soon as I opened them, it was all I could do not to close them again.

  Angela, naked, laid out like a Maltese cross: wrists and ankles cuffed to the posts of the bed in the centre of the room. Her body laid bare. That tiny, unmistakable belly-bump. A catheter tube trailed between her legs. A pouch of clear medication hung on a pole, feeding to a needle inserted into Angela’s arm.

  “Epidural. Never administered one before.”

  The Quint—Number Two, the same one who’d stabbed Exeter, same one who’d killed those rummies at the bar—sat nearby, on the bathtub stool.

  “I may’ve stuck the needle in too high,” he said without concern. “Only things moving are her lungs.”

  “Please. What . . .” I spat a red sac onto the floor. “. . . what do you want?”

  “To get rid of it.”

  “. . . Get . . . get rid?”

  “That’s what you and Acolyte Doe planned on, wasn’t it?”

  Something composed entirely of bear claws and piranha teeth and fishhooks spun relentlessly inside of me, puncturing things, shredding the lining out of my stomach.

  “We broke the law,” I said. “Arrest us.”

  “I’ve never arrested anyone in my life.” He scooched toward me on the stool, little bum-jumps until his face was inches from mine. “I’ll give you two choices. You can erase the life in her belly. Or I can. But it’ll hurt more if I do it.”

  “What you’re asking . . . it’s . . . I can’t.”

  “Think of me as the father who caught his son smoking.” He waggled a finger. “You’re going to smoke every last one of those cigarettes, young man.”

  “Tom Swift,” I said. “Victor Appleton. I can help you find him.”

  I would tell this creature anything, throw everyone under the bus and swear to it all on a stack of satanic bibles if only he’d not do what he was planning.

  “What makes you think,” he said, lips parted to reveal a slit of tombstone-coloured teeth, “we need your help? That we don’t know where Swift is—and haven’t all along?”

  The storm clashed and cycled, throwing rain at the windows. The Quint considered me with eyes grey as arctic ice.

  I said: “You’re going to kill us, anyway.”

  “You don’t really believe that.”

  “I do. Absolutely I do.”

  “Then tell me, Acolyte Murtag: why can I still see the hope in your eyes?”

  He unlocked the cuffs. I went to the bed. Angela lay naked—ragged scar across her right breast, thatch of untrimmed hair between her legs—not so much different than a corpse laid out on a mortuary slab. Drool leaked out of her mouth. The only moving part was her eyes: they darted wildly in their sockets.

  “I don’t know what else to do, Angela. He’ll kill us.”

  I hunted through the medical bag and found a flexible cannula scope that fit over the suction unit’s tubing. Also a pliers-looking device—a speculum?—and a tube of silicone cream.

  “How does it work?” I asked the Quint. “Do I switch the machine on first, or do I . . . does the tube go inside her, then I switch it on?”

  He chuckled. “You may as well ask me the best way to burn a Bible, Acolyte Murtag.”

  I knelt between Angela’s legs, careful not to disturb the IV drip. I tested the speculum’s operation, spread its lips and thumbed the trigger to lock it in position with a rusty-hinged squeak. I smeared its blades with cream and sat dumbfounded, wondering which way to insert it. The instrument looked vicious in my hands: this shiny metal duck’s bill.

  The speculum slid into Angela�
��s body a few inches before meeting resistance. No idea of the topography in there, the twists and bends; I withdrew it, more lube, eased it in vertically. This way it followed some natural curvature and I was able to lock the blades in position.

  A rivulet of blood came. Not much, but it still sent icy sparrows fluttering behind my ribcage. I dabbed it with a surgical napkin with badly shaking hands. I left the machine’s dials at their pre-set calibrations. I mapped Angela’s insides, the location of her uterus—somewhere round her navel?—and bent the cannula hose in an arc that marked my best guess like a blind man drawing a map to a place he’d never been.

  Thunder throbbed low across the sky, this shuddering rumble-roll above the rooftops like a freight train passing overhead; the lights dimmed, vapour thinning in the phosphorous tubes to cast a witchy green-blue tint over the room. The Quint looked on with smiling anticipation.

  “I’m going to . . . I’ll thread this inside, alright?” I told her.

  I knuckled sweat out of my eyes, gripped the hose and inched it in. It hit a bony overhang; I pulled it out, reconfigured the angle, slipped it back in. The plastic bedcover squeaked. Again the hose butted that unknown protrusion but I rotated it slightly, allowing the head to clear the obstruction and break into a frictionless pocket. Blood-veined liquor, what I took to be amniotic fluid, drooled down the speculum handle.

  “Wait,” I said. “Look . . . take a look at that. I’d say that’s done it.”

  The Quint had been observing with an interest that was, at best, clinical. He shook his head.

  “But listen,” I pleaded, “the egg, the placenta or whatever . . . must have broken. You can see here.”

  He scratched his temple with the barrel of his revolver. “If you’d prefer I take over . . .”

  “No, I, no . . . no, please.”

  “Carry on, then. When you’re composed.”

  I didn’t know that I’d done it the right way, but I didn’t know what else to do. There was no instruction booklet and anyway, the Quint wouldn’t give me the time to read it.

  “I’ll turn it on, Angela. If something goes wrong, I’ll turn it off right away.”

  She didn’t say anything. Couldn’t. Too drugged, too numb. I squeezed her hand, though I doubt she felt much. We were going to get through it. She would live. We’d get out of here. Away from all the madness. We could try again, if she wanted. Anything was possible.

  I reached over and pushed the red button on the machine. Nothing. I tried again. Could be a blown fuse. Or the diminished power grid couldn’t handle the voltage? I got off the bed, went to the wall socket and unplugged the cord. Blew on the prongs and reinserted it. Nope.

  The Quint reached over and casually switched the lights off.

  Voltage re-routed, the machine hissed to life. So goddamn loud.

  Oh Jesus good Christ oh God

  I stumbled toward Angela in the darkness, fumbling madly, trying to find her and help her. Save her. She was making these horrible gargling noises that rose above the hiss of the vacuum machine.

  I grabbed the tube leading into her. I felt this ghostly tension, some sort of resistance but my adrenaline was running so high, it was so dark, my head was ringing so awfully, I failed to make note of any of it.

  I just . . . I just pulled.

  A sigh. Whether it came from Angela’s mouth or another part of her I’ll never know.

  The tube came out. Soon after, the lights switched on. The machine switched off.

  And I began to scream.

  Memory Lapse

  Where was I? Where was here?

  Here was a kitchen. An apartment I’d never been in before . . . had I? It was dawn. A new sun curled over the cityscape. A thin bar of sunlight relaxed on the linoleum near my hand. My bloody hand.

  Blood from where? I headed into the bathroom, flicked the light switch. No power. Huh. I turned on the spigot, ran my hands under the cold spray until the blood washed away.

  There was a bed and a strange machine and broken glass and tubes and blood on the wall, blood everywhere and a woman on the bed and the woman was dead.

  I knew this woman but I couldn’t remember how.

  Rigor mortis had yanked her shoulder sockets out of joint. She was shackled and there was something the matter between her legs. I leaned against the archway separating kitchen and main room, staring at the woman—not directly at her, a spot on the wall above her. She looked familiar in a way. She looked tough. Not quite tough enough to withstand all this but then, who would be?

  I glanced out the window. The day clear and pristine. A night rain had left puddles on the road. I’d be fine without my coat so I draped it over the woman, tucking the collar around her neck. I felt poorly for her but there was nothing more to be done. All I knew for sure was that I hadn’t been responsible for her dying—though I couldn’t say whether I’d tried to prevent it.

  I wanted to leave. Had to, really.

  A white business card was balanced above the doorknob. A telephone number and below it was written: When you’re ready.

  It was the sort of day that, as they say, made a man wish he rose early more often. The air was cool but not cold, unburdened by the gas fumes that would permeate it as the day wore on.

  I wandered, backtracked, a route taking me past an alley. A car was parked there. The understanding came: that was my car. I rooted through my pocket for keys and unlocked the door and slid into the seat. I circled the ghetto. Glass bottles arced out apartment windows to shatter on the hood. I took the hint and drove out into the city. Shivering but I didn’t know why.

  Hollis. Garvey. Swift. Newbarr. Amira. Names began to filter back, unattached to faces. My memory gathering old scraps of itself like a bird building a nest.

  I stopped across the street from a place that, same as the car, I identified as my own. My name on the callbox: J. Murtag. Silence when I thumbed the button. Power must be out. I tried every key on my keyring. The last one moved the tumblers. I walked up the stairwell and opened the door. My own door, I guess.

  Inside was an old man in a silly hat. I felt that I ought to know him, too. Behind him stood two females, old and young. The girl was a heathen. Both of them were bald for some reason. A rabbit hopped about a cage. A bird twittered somewhere.

  I said: “I’d like a shower. May I do that—use your shower?”

  The old man bit his lip and said: “It’s your shower, son. Do what you like.”

  Behind the bathroom door I stripped and inspected myself. A belt of dried blood ran round my hips. The water was as cold as a glacial runoff; I stood under it a few seconds before my knees gave out and I crumpled into the basin. Icy spray beaded on my shoulders and ran down my back. The doors began to unlock, images pouring into my mind . . .

  A knock at the bathroom door. Someone asked was I alright. Yes . . . no . . . I didn’t know—leave me be for Christ’s sake. I stared at the wallpaper skirting the tub . . . a pattern of tiny angels blowing trumpets . . .

  Angels. Angel.

  Angela.

  Something cracked. Not any bone, though I would have preferred it. This crack was inside my head and it brought forth a rush of horrible memories. . . .

  Next I was drumming my hands and feet on the basin, shrieking, bellowing. I must’ve screamed myself into a blackout because next thing I knew the door was broken down and they were on me: Newbarr, Amira, my Mom.

  They led me dripping and quaking into the bedroom.

  “Get some rope, Amira,” I heard Newbarr say.

  They lay me on the bed, swaddled like an infant. Amira returned with loops of yellow twine scrounged from God-knows-where. They fastened me down.

  “Until he settles down,” Newbarr said, knotting a second loop round my hips.

  How long did I lay there? Things slipped in and out of focus. I wept and sweated through the sheets, lea
ching the moisture from my body. At some point the ropes were loosened. Someone slipped into bed beside me. A stomach pressed my back through the clammy sheets; Mom’s chin nestled at the slope of my shoulder. Another body curled into my chest, young muscles settled tight to me.

  None of us said anything. Our exhales aligned: three chests expanding and contracting at the same pace. I wanted to tell them it was useless, that I was beyond the redemption tendered in such gestures, but it felt so good—the warmth, the restful motions of their bodies against mine—that I didn’t say a word.

  The sky had gone dark behind the shade when I got up. Mom and Amira were still sleeping. I left them in bed and went into the front room. Newbarr sat on the window ledge, smoking a cigarette.

  “I quit years ago,” he said when he saw me. “Wife couldn’t stand it. Kissing an ashtray, she said. But they do calm the nerves.”

  My trousers were neatly folded over a kitchen chair. I yanked them on.

  “I need a few hours,” I said to him. “Give me until daybreak.”

  “What now?”

  In my pocket were two different telephone numbers to call when I was ready. I’d rub them together to see if they’d catch a spark.

  Two numbers. Two maniacs. Two agendas. Play both ends against the middle. Give them what they were seeking. Everybody got what they wanted. Everybody died.

  Article V:

  He is Stripped of His Garments

  Two Trains A-Runnin’

  I walked down the street uncradling payphone receivers and hanging them up when only silence met my ear. The sky was greyed over with rolling thunderheads, this upside-down ocean flexing deep to the horizon.

  I saw dogs—house pets, as they must have been at one time—roaming in feral packs. I passed through the gates of a cemetery ringed by empty homes, the windows cataracted with dust. The heads were busted off every angel monument.

  I tried another payphone, got a dial tone. I fed it and dialled.

  “You said whenever I was ready.”