Pain Cages

by Kane, Paul

  “Ah, so now you do care.” She smirked. “Steve, it’ll be the discovery of the last two millennia,” said Beth, looking over at him. “Not that I’m going to get into the whole science versus religion thing, but you do realize what time of year it is, don’t you?” He caught her eye for a moment, then they broke it off. They drove the rest of the way in silence, the inference hanging heavy in the air. And with the question still unanswered: who had passed this condition on to Matthew in the first place?

  * * *

  “Why don’t you come inside and shut the door?” said the dead man. “We have things to talk about, you and me.”

  Douglas Knowles was freeze-framed in the entranceway. The words broke whatever spell was holding him there and for a second he found himself doing as he was bid, walking slowly inside. Then he stopped again.

  Douglas was still staring at the man, unable to properly take in what was happening––or to grasp that it might be real. The last time he’d seen that face it had been through his windscreen, cracking the glass, panicked and bloody. (A scene his mind had recorded especially for him to play back the highlights.) Then as a dark lump in his rearview mirror after he’d finally screeched to a halt. Douglas had been breathing heavily, eyes flicking up to his mirror, then back down at the white knuckles clenching the wheel, his wedding ring digging into the third finger on his left hand. Rock music was belting out from the speakers, the soundtrack of this particular nightmare… and many more to come. Part of him had wanted to get out of the car and go back to see if the man was all right, but a larger part told him he didn’t need to see that––if he drove away he might just get away with it. So before he knew what he was doing, he’d put the engine, still idling, into gear. He was bringing his foot off the clutch, finding the biting point; moving off, away from the scene.

  There were no other cars around, no houses, just a road that led up to the chemical plant where the man must have been walking from, facing oncoming traffic just like you were supposed to do. But Jesus, how was Douglas supposed to see him in a pitch black tunnel like that? Even if he hadn’t been trying to swerve to avoid the wall he might still have hit him. It had been an accident, that’s all. An––

  “Accident?” said the man, now rising. “An accident!”

  “Y-Y-Yes,” said Douglas, although there was hardly any conviction in his voice.

  “You didn’t even bother to report your ‘accident.’” His tone was unforgiving. “I had to wait to be found. There might have been a chance if––”

  “Get out of my head,” said Douglas, closing his eyes and backing away.

  “You still don’t understand, do you?”

  When Douglas opened his eyes again the dead man was standing inches away, grabbing him by the wrists.

  “I’m real, Doug. This isn’t one of your guilt dreams. I’m not the Ghost of Christmas Past. I’m here, in the flesh.”

  Douglas shook his head. “No, no!”

  “I lost everything that night. Missed seeing my son grow up. And now my wife, she’s…” He let the sentence tail off. “All because of you and your accident.”

  Douglas tried to wrestle out of his grip but couldn’t manage it. “I-I didn’t mean to––”

  “You had a choice that night; I had none,” said the dead man. “See… feel what I felt!” The dead man shoved something into Douglas’s hand, a toy. A small child’s car.

  Suddenly Douglas experienced that night in a way he never had before. He was the one who’d set out to walk home after his shift, who’d been in that tunnel when he’d seen the light. Who’d felt the force of the car, doing almost 50 miles an hour on that bend, ploughing into him. His legs no match for the metal of the bonnet. He felt the agonizing pain as the bones broke in several places, as his hip cracked and he went tumbling over that same bonnet. Heard the music coming from inside, the loud thumping of the stereo. Saw the knuckles on the steering wheel, looking up to gaze into his own shocked face behind the wheel––the pair of them becoming intertwined in that moment. Then the rest of the ‘accident’ was filled in for him, spinning over the roof, his shoulder coming out of its socket, then back down onto the boot and finally colliding with the rough concrete of the road, raking his skin, shredding his thighs, blood pouring from him freely, nose breaking and splintering with the fall. He blinked once, his vision blurred, then again. Everything was black but he couldn’t tell whether it was the darkness of the tunnel or that he was losing consciousness. And it hurt so much. He couldn’t move a muscle. It hurt so much he actually prayed for death to come because then it would end. But he still managed to mutter one thing: “You’ll… you’ll see me again.”

  “Do you understand?” shouted the dead man, pressing him up against the balcony wall.

  Douglas was crying now, and spit ran from his mouth. “Please… please… stop.”

  “You took my life away from me. Now––”

  “Now,” he blurted through the tears. “Now what? Now you’re here to do the same, to take it away from me?” Douglas found hidden reserves from somewhere, his voice becoming stronger. “So do it. What do I have to live for now anyway?”

  The dead man looked him squarely in the eyes, those tired eyes desperate for sleep. A sleep denied him by the drink. He looked back over his shoulder at the place where Douglas now lived. Was it enough, this punishment? How could he weigh it against what he had been through?

  It was a decision, a choice only he could make.

  And so he made it.

  Fourteen

  On approach it looked like a bird.

  Robbins pulled up outside the block of flats just as the body fell. It seemed to drop forever, coat flailing behind like a pair of wings. Then right at the last minute it speeded up, like one of those slick shots in a TV show. It hit the ground with all the grace of a safe landing on a cartoon character’s head. That is to say, it would have hit the ground had there not been something there to break its fall.

  The body slammed into the roof of the middle car of three, parked just opposite and further down from them. The battered old Metro––nobody had decent wheels around there––crumpled up as if it had been placed in a decompression chamber, metal and glass folding itself around the shape that had fallen from the balcony above. They gaped at the wreckage, not one of them knowing quite what to do next. Then Robbins said, “Shit! We’re too late.”

  They got out of the car, but still stood staring at the crushed roof of the vehicle. It was Beth who moved first, her instinct being to try and save whoever this was who’d plummeted the seven floors from above. Except as she got there, Robbins radioing for an ambulance as she did, she realized what a waste of time that would be. The man’s face, white apart from the occasional dash of red, was pretty much intact: it was only his eyes that gave away his state, rolling back into his head like two boiled eggs. As for the rest of him, it was difficult to tell where the flesh stopped and the metal began. Both were twisted and intertwined, his limbs––for she could see it was a man now––were bent into the most awkward of positions. His legs were shooting out at bizarre angles, the bottom halves, below the knee, bending back like a contortionist’s. His arm had split wide open at the elbow joint and there was bone protruding through, while his left hand, having been severed by the glass of the Metro’s window, was dangling––almost off––by the tendons. Something dropped out of that hand onto the ground: a red toy car.

  Beth reached into the hulk, scratching her hand on a piece of sharp metal as she did so. Robbins’ face soured when she pressed her fingers to the man’s neck. She turned to him and shook her head. The DCI followed the diver’s descent again, looking up to see another figure on the balcony where he’d fallen. Beth saw it too. This time Robbins called for backup.

  “Matthew,” she said out loud, “what have you done?”

  They wasted valuable moments trying the lift in the block of flats, then were forced to race up the stairs.

  Turning on to the floor that contained the
flat they were looking for, they fully expected the figure to be gone by now. But he wasn’t; he stood there looking down on the scene below, both hands on the balcony rail. The door to the flat was open behind him.

  They approached him slowly, cautiously. Robbins spoke first, telling him to keep his hands where he could see them.

  “You think I did this,” said the man. It wasn’t a question.

  “I don’t see anyone else around here,” said Robbins.

  “Matthew,” said Becky, “why?”

  He turned then to answer her. “It wasn’t up to me to judge him, he knew that.”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” asked Robbins.

  The man didn’t say any more, and he offered no resistance when Robbins took him by the arm, cuffed him, and started to lead him away. “We’ll take him back to the station,” he said to Beth, “but I’ve no idea what will happen after that.”

  Beth leaned over the balcony and looked down at the fall. She shut her eyes when she thought what that man had just been through. Then she followed Robbins and Matthew back down the stairs again. By the time they reached the street an ambulance had arrived, and the police. Robbins pushed his prisoner’s head down as he deposited him in the back of a squad car. The residents of the flats, all used to minding their own business, came out through their doors to look when they heard the sirens. The owner of the car was screaming about insurance and asking who was to blame. (Ironically, in his heyday Douglas Knowles would have been able to point her in the right direction.)

  More white and orange vehicles were arriving now and Robbins knew that this could go on well into the early hours of the morning. Statements would need to be taken, the body disentangled and taken away.

  Beth joined him again. “What about Matthew? What about who, what he is?”

  “Tomorrow,” the DCI said softly, chewing on an antacid tablet. “We’ll talk about all that tomorrow.”

  Fifteen

  He’d sat with Irene Daley that night until she’d finally dropped to sleep.

  They’d prayed and read from the Bible together, but Father Lilley was extremely concerned about her. It wasn’t so much the stress of the last few days, although it was clear that had taken its toll. She was a shadow of herself, having barely eaten in all that time. But no, it was more the way her mind was working now. She was having dangerous thoughts about the person who had shown up at her doorstep and couldn’t possibly be Matthew.

  “But father, what if––”

  “Irene, he is not your son. He can’t be. You said yourself.”

  “And the grave?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know, I can’t explain it. But I do know that Matthew is with Our Savior right now, not walking this earth.”

  He firmly believed it. That thing might look and sound like Matthew, but it certainly wasn’t the boy he confirmed, the man he’d listened to as he confessed. The man he’d put in the ground while his family stood around the graveside: a grave now thoughtlessly desecrated because of the creature pretending to be him. The more Lilley himself pondered on it, the more convinced he became that this person––if indeed he was a person at all––was here for the most wicked of purposes.

  Already it was infecting Irene Daley’s mind, and was in the process of convincing others that it was Matthew. He looked to the good book––as always––for help and guidance, references to the Devil, how he might send his minions back to wreak havoc.

  ‘And as ye have heard that the antichrist shall come, even now are there many antichrists’ John 2:18.

  Had Matthew’s body been invaded by a demon or ungodly spirit? Lilley hadn’t ever performed an exorcism and wasn’t about to start now.

  As he sat downstairs in Irene’s house, the dawn about to break on this another day, he looked at the photograph of mother and son together. Lilley wondered how his own father, the staunch Catholic who had instilled in him all that was right and good, might have dealt with such a challenge of faith. He thought he could almost hear the man’s voice telling him what to do then. Lilley nodded. It was time for him to become a soldier of God himself, to become the Lord’s right hand.

  He had to stop this evil from spreading. And there was only one way he could think of to do it.

  * * *

  The phone in Robbins’ office hadn’t stopped ringing all morning, and by midday he had his orders. The case was being taken out of his hands and the man they were holding with relation to the death of one Douglas Knowles was to be transferred to a secure facility for questioning. The further tests Beth had wanted to perform would also be handled by ‘more experienced’ government doctors, Robbins was told. Arrangements would also be made at some point to move Knowles’ body from the local hospital.

  “See,” he told her when he finally emerged. “Just as I thought.”

  “They can’t do that. What’s going to happen to him?”

  He looked her in the eye and said seriously, “I don’t know, but you can’t charge a dead man with murder, Beth.”

  Wilson, now back at work but refusing to go anywhere near the cells, drew their attention to the television in the corner. Several officers were gathered around it, listening to the report. Becky recognized a pixilated picture of Matthew from the hospital, the newscaster telling the world about the miracle recovery of motorcyclist Phil Barnes. There was also some confusion as to who exactly the man in the photo was, although the likeness to a ‘hit and run’ accident victim from seven years ago was definitely uncanny.

  “It’ll only be a matter of time before they link it with the exhumation and what happened last night,” Robbins said.

  By two o’clock that afternoon the police station was besieged with reporters and TV crews, and the internet was awash with rumors about Matthew.

  Becky observed the crowds gathering outside. “It’s going to be hard for anyone to keep all this quiet now.”

  An unmarked van arrived for their guest at four. Robbins was to give it an escort of squad cars until it reached the motorway, then the whole thing would be out of their hands. When Robbins and Beth went down to the cells, where he was under constant surveillance by three police officers, the man was still not speaking. He hadn’t said a thing since the balcony.

  “Time to go,” Robbins told him.

  As Valentine and WPC Adams led the man out of the cell, he paused when he caught Beth’s eye. “Don’t worry, you’ll see her again,” he told her.

  Robbins watched him go. “What did he say? See who?”

  Beth fought back a tear. “Doesn’t matter.”

  They walked with him to the back door of the station, opening it up to see the van there in the car park, waiting. But even before they’d reached the second step at the entranceway a deluge of people started piling in behind the van. Someone had tipped them off and the news people weren’t about to miss the biggest scoop of the year, if not the decade.

  They all took notice of him now: the dead man. The people there saw him walking. Soon the whole world would see it too.

  Robbins barked at the uniforms on either side of him, telling them to get more men out for crowd control. The plainclothes officers driving the van backed up when they saw what was rapidly turning into a mob. There was total and utter confusion. Cameras flashed, Dictaphones were pushed through.

  And there, at the back, Robbins saw her––short dark hair, craning her neck along with the other people to see who had gathered here today: Caroline Hills. He turned to see that the man they had in cuffs had noticed her, too. A look passed between Caroline and the person who so resembled the husband she had lost, and Robbins almost felt sorry for him. But then the DCI was being jostled to one side and more policemen were emerging from the station to deal with the numbers.

  “Can we just ask––”

  “Where are you taking––”

  “What connection he has to––”

  “What you found at Westmoor Cemetery––”

  The gaggle of voices was te
rrific, so much so that they wove themselves into one loud hum.

  Then it happened.

  Beth spotted it first and grabbed Robbins’ shoulder. There, in the crowd, was a hand clutching a gun. It was an old-fashioned type of pistol, nothing that might be used on the streets today––more like a relic from a museum. Robbins doubted whether it would even fire.

  But it did. Three loud bangs.

  He saw the man in cuffs go down, two bullets hitting him hard. Then Robbins felt a pain in his own arm, as he dove across to try and shield Beth. If there was confusion before, then there was mass panic now that the shots had rung out. Robbins tried to shout out to his men: apprehend the shooter; secure the area. But the plainclothes officers from the van had already pulled their own guns, which caused even more hysteria.

  Robbins clutched at his arm and his hand came away red. Then Beth was there, examining the wound.

  She told him to keep the hand on it and apply pressure. “You silly sod,” Beth whispered, and kissed his forehead, before checking on the other injured party. She scrambled along the floor to where he’d fell.

  But when she got there she found nothing. No body, no Matthew.

  Nothing except a patch of blood where he’d lay, spreading out like wings on the concrete floor.

  Sixteen

  The next few days were just as confused as that afternoon.

  For a while the news had concentrated fully on what had happened: about Matthew, about who he might be, about where he might have gone after the assassination attempt, about his revenge on the man who had ‘killed’ him. It was discussed on every message board and talk show, theologians offered their opinions and scientists expounded on what Beth had already suggested. But there was no proof, no concrete evidence of anything. So rationality soon began to reign. If nothing else it was a diversion, a curiosity along the lines of raining fish and the Yeti. Certainly nowhere near as exciting as reading about which politician was having an affair or which celebrity had suddenly been diagnosed with bulimia.