As they had invaded my dream, the monsters now invaded my reality, running amok in the big room, screeching, wailing, making whatever noises came naturally to them, sights that almost defied the imagination – the thing whose every square-inch of body was plagued by dripping ulcers, the disjoined abhorrence that scuttled across the floor like a human spider, the creature that slithered, one limb like a fish’s tail dragging behind it, eyes alight with madness and the reflections of flames, the girl, the beautiful girl with raven hair, whose open back bristled with metal clips and wires, implanted tubes, and who whirled around in some crazy dance of freedom – all those who could leave their cells unaided were here, and the nurses and orderlies and the members of the contemptible film crew backed warily away from them, just as they had backed away from me when they had become afraid of my strength, had suddenly regarded me not as a freak to be despised but as a freak to be afraid of. But the minds of these poor creatures were too far gone for them to revel even momentarily in this new sense of power: their joy – if they were capable of such emotion after years of dark and solitary confinement – was (I can only suppose) in being unleashed, no longer restrained, finally free to do what they wanted. And when their disturbed eyes fell upon Leonard Wisbeech, the person they must have known was responsible for their incarceration, was to blame for the pain they had endured all those years because of his experiments and tests, for the very misery of their wretched lives, well that was when their feeble minds began to focus as one.
As his conscienceless lackeys, grubby, debased mercenaries, ran from the chaos and spreading fire, the doctor became aware of all those crazy and hate-filled eyes upon him. He must have suddenly known exactly how Baron Frankenstein felt when his badly-stitched monster rebelled and cast his borrowed, resentful eyes about for his creator.
My eye was on him, too, and seemingly, so were those of the shrivelled husk that was his dead brother behind him. Light from the flames flickered over the little corpse, somehow giving it movement, life, lending its ghastly grin a luridness that had not been present before. It was an illusion, but still I shivered at the sight.
Wisbeech was backed up against the ridge of broken glass and as he tried to move towards the open double doors after his fast-defecting cohorts, a shape moved to block his way. Whether by accident, or perhaps these creatures were endowed with some cunning, the thing with arms like tentacles had cut off the doctor’s exit, trapping him there. Its sleek, hairless body rippled with shifting hues, the flames not reflected against the skin, but seemingly absorbed by it so that it flickered and glowed. At any other time I suppose the sight would have been fascinating, but I was too jaded by everything else I had witnessed that night, too numbed to be impressed; besides, there were other things on my mind. The fire had almost taken complete hold and flames billowed across the ceiling like inverted, sunset rapids, another awesome sight that was too dangerous to be admired for long.
‘Keep away from me!’ No longer the cool-blooded sophisticate I had first met, but a very ordinary frightened man confronted by a nightmare some might say was of his own making, Wisbeech held both hands out towards the approaching escapees and shouted at – pleaded with? – them.
Some of them only grinned though, while others hastened their approach, shuffling, sliding, dragging themselves forward, their eyes – those with eyes – cruel with intent. But it seemed the doctor had one remaining ally, someone who had not bolted with the others. Nurse Fletcher, whom I’d completely forgotten in the confusion, even though she had been slapping and punching my face only moments before, suddenly appeared from nowhere. She stood protectively in front of Wisbeech, facing the oncomers with a fury that apparently no fear could subdue. Perhaps her contempt overcame any intimidation.
‘Get back,’ she ordered them in a raised, no-nonsense voice, pointing over their shoulders and talking to them as if they were children found out of their beds after lights-out. ‘Turn around and go back to your rooms.’
It could have been comical if only they had obeyed, but I knew, just knew, what was going to happen. I briefly wondered, a lightning flash of thought, what kind of relationship she had with Wisbeech – surely it couldn’t just be professional, not for her to lay herself on the line like this, with the room burning around us, creatures from Hell creeping forward and looking as if ready to tear someone – particularly Wisbeech, although anyone else who got in their way would be a bonus – to pieces. Well, maybe I was wrong, maybe they only looked menacing and Nurse Fletcher knew they were pussycats really, and a firm word from her would send them scuttling back to where they belonged. Maybe, but I didn’t think so.
Neither did they.
A thing that had a beak for a nose and talons for hands rushed at her and she screamed as it slashed at her throat with one of those eagle-like claws, the sound ending in a spluttering-gurgling as blood erupted both from the wound and her mouth. She toppled backwards and the creature pounced on her, the others quickly joining it like predators upon a helpless prey. She became lost under a mêlée of misshapen, rummaging bodies and I started forward, knowing I couldn’t let this happen, no matter how much I despised the nurse, I couldn’t let her die in such a way.
‘No!’ Constance grabbed me and held me tight, her grip surprisingly strong. ‘You can’t help her! They’ll kill you too!’
She was right, but still I struggled to free myself. I didn’t have the strength to fight them all and by the savagery of their attack Fletcher was probably too badly injured already to be saved. Joseph joined us and began pushing me back.
‘They’re bad things,’ he was saying in that high, faraway voice. ‘They’re not like us, Dis, that’s why they’re kept locked up. They aren’t human, you must believe me!’
I gave in to common sense, and admittedly was relieved to do so. ‘Okay, okay. Let’s try and get past them to the door. The fire’s out of control.’
In a way I suppose we were lucky that the creatures were too busy with their screaming victim to notice us slinking by the open window that was, until a short while ago, a two-way mirror. Glass fragments stood like a miniature mountain range along its length, lethally sharp peaks that glowed orange as they reflected the raging fire, and I warned my companions to keep clear. Wisbeech was a few feet away from us, his lower back leaning against the glass-edged frame, either for support or in an unconscious effort to keep as far away from the affray as possible. It seemed Nurse Fletcher’s loyalty didn’t stretch both ways.
Gone was that patrician manner, the all-powerful, righteous master replaced in a few moments of threat and primitive violence by a tremulous coward who watched the attack on his senior nurse goggle-eyed and fearful. You had to wonder how flimsy was his disguise for it to fall away so swiftly, what dark pressures had lain hidden beneath the facade to burst through so easily. His finely buffed shoes scuffed against the polished floor as he tried to push himself even further away from the brutal slobbering mob, and when one of them looked up from its work, blood dripping from its jaw, self-preservation finally told Wisbeech he could not just melt through the wall itself, that it was not an obstacle that could be penetrated by will alone. He wheeled around and I winced when I saw him grab hold of the jagged window-frame and haul himself up; he cried out as glass cut into his knee and blood spurted from the palms of his hands, the sound attracting more attention from the frenzied horde. They left their victim – alive or dead, I couldn’t tell, but her limp body was soaked in her own blood – and fell upon the doctor.
He was yanked back by his ankles so that his arms gave way and he collapsed on to the sill, his neck catching the broken glass, cutting deep into his throat. The wall beneath him was immediately drenched in a great wash of blood and he was caught there, the underneath of his jaw snagged by the embedded glass, his knees bent, toes against the floor. The mob had paused momentarily as though fascinated by the blood that was pumped from the wound in a regular cadence. Perhaps they had even become afraid, awed by what they had done to their mast
er, this hated but venerated demi-god; perhaps, like Dr Moreau’s wayward, island children, they had become overwhelmed by the realization of their own rebellion. From where I stood I had a view of Wisbeech’s profile and I could see that he was gazing at the dried little husk that had once been his brother, a wrinkled cadaver strapped to an invalid chair from where, when alive and, it seemed, long after, Dominic Wisbeech had been entertained by acts of the worst depravities, perverted copulations that sometimes ended in the death of one of the participants, a private affair to begin with, but later a financial enterprise with high rewards; all arranged and, in a way, engineered, by his sibling, Leonard. What the doctor was thinking as his life’s blood poured away and his eyes slowly glazed, can only be guessed at, but at least his dying muse did not last long.
His creatures, his mutants, had become emboldened by their master’s helplessness and they plucked at him, touching his hair, his shoulders, immediately snatching their fingers away like nervous kids touching a dead animal; then, impatience getting the better of them, they hauled his body off the glass and threw it to the floor. I was glad I could not see what they did to him then – there were too many heaving backs and rearing heads and limbs – for the sounds of ripping and the breaking of bones were enough.
We backed away, Constance, Joseph and Mary gathered behind me, clutching each other, Mary out of her shock and whimpering uncontrollably. Our escape route was blocked by the mêlée between us and the double doors and I knew we had to skirt around it. But when I realized the extent of the conflagration, I wondered how.
45
Although the flames were still some distance away from us, they were spreading fast and their heat already seemed to be searing our flesh. It was becoming difficult to breathe too, great billows of black smoke filling the air, the inferno itself greedily consuming the oxygen we needed. Across the room, the bed that had been draped in red velvet was nothing but a funeral pyre, the wall behind it and ceiling above obliterated by fire. Great chunks of plasterboard that had covered the ceiling joinery were falling inwards, burning as they dropped; light reflectors blazed like burning bushes and the snake nest of cables on the floor was melting, the acrid fumes poisoning the atmosphere, causing us to clamp our hands over our mouths and noses. My eye stung and tears began to blur my vision; my throat felt scorched and each breath became successively more laboured. It was the same for the others and I knew I had to get us all out of there before we succumbed to the heat and smoke.
It took me less than two seconds to figure it out. If we couldn’t skirt around that rabid mob hunched over its gory prize, then we’d go through it. All right, maybe not directly through it, but through the edge of it, as far away from the fire as possible.
‘Constance, give me your stick.’
Her teared eyes looked at me uncomprehendingly.
‘One of your sticks,’ I repeated, pointing at it. ‘I’m going to need it. Joseph, help them both and follow me. Stay close, but keep behind. If I run into trouble, keep going.’ My throat felt raspy, but not from shouting.
Taking Constance’s metal elbow-crutch and holding it before me like a baseball bat, I began to make my way towards the blood-crazed creatures, flinching at the sight of a naked arm raised high into the air. It wasn’t attached to its body and I knew it belonged to Wisbeech: they were literally tearing him apart.
‘Oh my God!’ I heard Constance cry and I knew she had caught sight of the dismembered limb too.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw that my companions had stopped. Despite the swift-approaching flames, the stifling heat, the choking smoke, they were frozen to the spot.
‘Come on, keep moving!’ I yelled at them, grabbing Constance and pulling her forward.
Unfortunately, either her cry or my yell had attracted the attention of one or two of the creatures. Two began to rise – the tentacle-armed man and the backless girl. I think the girl recognized me, for her lunatic smile widened and her arms reached forward as if to embrace. I noticed the running blood that covered her hands and wrists. The tentacle-man started coming towards me. The girl disengaged herself from the crowd and followed.
I was ready for them though. I felt no pity, no shame, as I rushed forward and brought the metal cane down hard on the naked, hairless thing’s bald skull.
The impact ran up my arms, almost numbing them, and the man went down hard and fast, his skull caved in like a broken egg shell; I hadn’t realized his bones were so fragile and I don’t suppose I would have cared anyway. All I can say in my defence is that there are extremes and then there are extreme extremes. The fact is, these creatures were scarcely human and they appeared to be driven by something evil inside them. I’m sure some social workers would condemn me for my uncompromising stance, but then, what the fuck do they really know? Besides, these demented creatures were going to kill us, just as they had killed Nurse Fletcher and Leonard Wisbeech, just as they would kill anyone they came across that night. They were bad and they were mad, and that’s the end of it.
Its tentacle-arms twitched and quivered and it was soon gone.
The girl with the lovely face and raven hair and madness in her stare, whose inner organs, bones and arteries were exposed inside her fleshless back and legs, was not at all deterred. She stepped around her companion on the floor and continued to approach, her arms still stretched towards me. I saw others behind her beginning to take notice.
Even when a burning ember flew into her hair, causing it to smoulder, she continued. It was hard – oh, it was goddamn hard – and I had to keep reminding myself she was too far gone to listen to reason and even if she meant me no harm (which I seriously doubted) the fire would take us both within minutes. I hit her, not as brutally as I had hit the man, but with enough force to stop her in her tracks.
I had struck her on the shoulder and she had staggered a little. Now she blinked and I thought she was about to cry. She didn’t though. Her face turned into an expression of utter vileness, as though the insane gleam in her eyes had merely been seen through the holes in a mask. The mask had slipped, somehow knocked away by the blow to her shoulder, and here was the real face, no longer beautiful but ridden with malevolence. Her stretched-out hands slowly curled to become claws. But at the same time her smouldering hair flamed up to become a blazing halo around her head.
She started screaming, the harsh fact of being alight cutting to the core of her deluded mind, and wheeled around and around, metal inside her body catching the fire-glow, distracting the other creatures from their task.
‘Now!’ I shouted to Constance and the others. ‘Run!’
Although traumatized – Constance had her hands to her mouth, Mary was sobbing helplessly, and Joseph’s mouth was agape – they did as I bade them, scuttling past me while I brandished my weapon at the mob. There was a sudden whoosh behind me and something fell from above, sending showers of sparks and embers our way, a wave of fresh heat washing over us all like a dragon’s breath. I felt my hair singe at the back, another blast of fiercely hot air engulf me, and then I, too, felt as if I were on fire.
The creatures fell back, not afraid of me, but of what lay behind me, and for a brief moment I saw what was left of Dr Leonard K. Wisbeech on the floor. One arm was missing, cleaved from his shoulder by God knows what, and his face, his once handsome, distinguished face, was a bloody pulp. His clothes were torn open and so was his body: it was as if they had dug into him with trowels, yanking his innards loose so that they glistened in piles around his inert form. It was just a glimpse, and quite enough; I turned my head away.
Then I moved fast, running after my friends towards the double doors, flames licking at the left side of my body, scorching my cheek. Half the room was an inferno, the bed vanished, the door by which we had entered behind a wall of fire (a fleeting thought of all those inflammable film cassettes in the storeroom, the flames reaching them . . .) the wood floor itself ablaze. At least some of the smoke had found an outlet, most of the ceiling covering gone, the fi
re licking at the exposed beams, already eating into the room above, timber crashing inwards. A figure appeared before me – I think it was the thing whose face was mostly covered by a huge hard beak, but my vision was too blurred by tears to see properly – and I swiped at it with the crutch without thinking, without even hesitating, concerned only with escaping the fire. Something else rose in front of me and I didn’t even try to look, I just swatted at it with my sturdy weapon and it, too, disappeared – disappeared with a shriek. I stumbled over something lying on the floor and I think it was the creature whose lower limbs were transmuted into what resembled a fish’s tail. Its bloodied hands snatched at my ankles, just as they had in the dungeons below when they had reached through the aperture at the foot of the cell door, but I kicked them away. Ahead of me, a black-skinned man had his arms wrapped in Mary’s long, tangled hair and was pulling her backwards, away from the door and back into the throng where some of his fellow fugitives cowered before the advancing fire, while others continued their work on Wisbeech’s mutilated corpse, too retarded to appreciate the terrible danger they were in. I was only momentarily distracted by the growth at the centre of Mary’s attacker’s naked back, for nothing else could shock me that night. It was a superfluous head hanging there just below the man’s shoulder-blades, its dead, white-eyed gaze on me, the eyelids drooped, its features slack: this was merely a growth like the membrane sac on my own shoulder, an addition of no merit and absolutely no use. I reached over to grab its host’s wild, coarse hair, and, pulling the legitimate head backwards just as he pulled Mary’s, I brought his forehead within reach of my weapon. I brought the iron rod down hard, once, twice, and a third time, after which he released Mary and staggered away. I bundled the sobbing girl towards the door where Constance and Joseph anxiously waited, both of them almost doubled up with the pain of coughing smoke from their lungs.
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