Young Blood

by Brian M Stableford

  'It's not news,’ I said. ‘The civil war in Azerbaijan is news. The European elections are news. The territorial disputes in Croatia are news. Even the prime minister's photo opportunities are news of a Sort. attempted rape victim's torment isn't.'

  'News is whatever the people who pay for papers want to read,’ he told me glibly. ‘I don't say that two point two million people can't be wrong, but as long as they pay for the privilege they can have all the human interest they want. Nobody gives a tinker's fuck about Azeris kicking seven kinds of shit out of Armenians, and nobody cares which particular bunch of pigs gets their noses into the Brussels trough, but they really would appreciate being told why your boyfriend topped himself so messily, or what it feels like to be a couple of millimetres away from death at the point of a rapist's carving knife. That's the way of the world.'

  I realised, then, that what I'd told Gil wasn't entirely true. If I told John Mackenzie what Gil had pleaded with me to tell Professor Viners, he'd probably print it. He wouldn't believe it, and he'd almost certainly think that I was completely off my rocker, just as Viners would have done, but he'd probably print it. Even the ravings of a mentally unbalanced girl were news, provided that she was reasonably nice-looking and had nearly been raped. Once it was in black and white, even in the kind of paper that wouldn't print words like ‘tenuous’ and ‘hypothetical’—perhaps especially in the kind of paper that wouldn't print words like ‘tenuous’ and ‘hypothetical’—some people would believe it. Every word of it.

  'Go away, Mr Mackenzie,’ I said.

  He sighed. ‘It's not just me,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘It's all the others. It won't make much difference whether you say anything or not. Some of those guys are perfectly prepared to make it all up. Wherever you go today there'll be photographers waiting, and they'll need text to go with the pictures. Talk to me, and you have a chance to determine what gets printed.'

  He wasn't even trying to sound convincing. He knew that I knew that whatever I said could be adapted and twisted to suit whatever angle he decided to use. He knew that everyone knew that the whole enterprise was utterly and completely cynical. But he still expected me to play the game. This was where the prompter was supposed to urge me to say: ‘Okay. What do you want to know?'

  'Please go away, Mr Mackenzie,’ I said again. ‘I haven't anything to add to what my mother told your colleagues yesterday. That's all there is.'

  He frowned. ‘Hell's bells, Anne,’ he complained. ‘It's not as if we're out to make you look bad. We're on your side, remember—you're an innocent victim of misfortune and viciousness. Our readers want to sympathize with you, to feel sorry for you, to feel outrage on your behalf. Why did your boyfriend kill himself, Anne? Just tell me that. Just tell me why Gil Molari turned his flat into a crematorium. It doesn't have to be true—just tell me what you think. People want to know what you think, Anne. They want to know how you feel.'

  'You don't seem to understand, Mr Mackenzie,’ I said, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice. ‘I want you to go. I want you to go now, and I don't want you to come back. The only thing I have to tell the other reporters is how you forced yourself into my bedroom, and how frightened I was, and what terrible memories it brought back of my other ordeal, and how very similar it was in every way. And I can quote you, Mr Mackenzie. I can remember every word you said—more or less. Anyway, what does accuracy matter if I get the gist of it? You like juicy quotes, don't you—you and your mates?'

  He laughed, but he wasn't entirely sure of himself. He wasn't entirely sure that there was sufficient honour, or even discretion, left in his profession to make his opposite numbers refrain from printing that kind of story.

  He got up, shrugged his shoulders again and left. I closed the door behind him and locked it. By the time I went down to breakfast, he had gone away.

  He was lying about the photographers. They had better things to do with a Saturday than lie in wait outside Brennan Hall, in case some skinny girl who'd once been attacked came out. As news went, I wasn't really hot enough. I'd been in my false coma for too long, and out of it too long. I had cooled off, and unless I reignited the whole affair with some careless spark—some careless word about Viners’ viruses, or vampires, or the equivalent thereof—it would fade out completely. There were too many attempted rapes nowadays, too many murdered kids, too many suicides. Serial killers seemed to be loose in half the cities in England and all the cities in America. I wasn't news unless I took the trouble to advertise myself, and I seemed to have convinced John Mackenzie, finally, that I wasn't going to do that. Maybe he'd even taken the trouble to convince his adversaries that it was no good, just in case I followed through with my threat, and just in case they decided to play along.

  I went to the library and borrowed some books which had chapters on the emotions. They weren't on the official reading list, but I'd long since given up trying to find any of those. The competition was always too intense.

  It was mid-afternoon before I was interrupted again by a knock on my door. I opened it by the merest crack, intending to slam it instantly if I saw John Mackenzie or anyone like him. When I saw that it was WPC Linton, I didn't feel relieved, but I didn't think that I could shut the door in her face either. I let her in and offered her the chair by the desk. She sat down, and I perched on the edge of the bed.

  'Sorry,’ I said. ‘I thought you might be a reporter.'

  'Have they been bothering you?’ she asked, sounding neither surprised nor overly concerned.

  'I don't have any answers to the questions they want to ask,’ I told her, ‘but I'm afraid of what they might make of my don't-knows.'

  'I know the feeling,’ she said. ‘How are you, otherwise?'

  'Okay.'

  She nodded. It was the answer she'd expected. ‘I've got some news,’ she said. ‘We arrested a man this morning. He's confessed to the attack on you. He hadn't really much option. We have the weapon and the bloodstained clothing.'

  'How did you catch him?’ I asked.

  'His wife turned him in, indirectly. She couldn't quite bring herself to share her suspicions with us, so she eventually solved the conflict of loyalties by confiding in her mother. The mother had no compunction at all. We turned up the evidence easily enough once we knew where to search. He's confessed to three other rapes, one unreported. The other two were burglary-rapes, so we didn't immediately connect them with the attack on you. He knew we'd get him for them. We got semen specimens, and he'll match the genetic fingerprint. They're doing the tests now, but it's open and shut. He isn't going to retract. He'll plead guilty, but not to attempted murder. The CPS won't let us press that one, because we'd never prove it. He'll probably get seven years, maybe ten, and he'll serve five, maybe seven. I'm sorry it won't be more, but that's the going rate.'

  'But what about Janine?’ I said.

  'That one he didn't do,’ said the policewoman, regretfully. ‘He was at work, with two dozen witnesses to prove it.'

  'Oh,’ I said. I didn't know exactly how I felt. Not relieved, certainly, even though I wouldn't have to try to identify his voice, and probably wouldn't even have to give evidence.

  'I'm sorry,’ said the policewoman, ‘but I have to ask you this. Is there anything else you've thought of—anything else at all—which might have a bearing on the matter that's still unresolved: the murder?'

  'How could I?’ I said. ‘I was in the hospital, fast asleep. Wasn't I?'

  'Yes,’ she said, uncomfortably. ‘But ...'

  'You still think Gil might have done it, don't you? You want him to be guilty, so that you can close all your cases? What do you expect me to say? What could I possibly say that would be any help at all?'

  'I'm sorry,’ she said, with apparent sincerity. ‘It's not like that. I talked to Gil Molari, you know, when he visited the hospital—while you were still unconscious. He was very worried about you. He was wobbly, though. He was definitely on edge. Sergeant Miller wondered about that mark on his neck. You
rs was gone last time I saw you, but I see that it's back now.'

  I put my hand up to the place where I'd allowed Gil to feed. It was slightly painful, but not raw. ‘I'm sorry,’ I said. ‘It's a nervous habit I have, when I'm concentrating. I don't even know that I'm doing it. But it's not important.'

  'No, it isn't,’ the WPC agreed. ‘I understand you went to see Professor Viners last night.'

  A couple of seconds passed before I realised that this was just the next phase in the line of enquiry. Like the reporters, the police were still looking for more connections which would help them make sense of three incidents which were too closely associated with one another for them readily to believe that there was nothing linking them but coincidence. She was trying to find out more about Gil's state of mind.

  'Yes,’ I said. ‘He asked me to. He sent me a note while I was in hospital.'

  'Do you mind telling me what he said to you?'

  'He asked me not to say anything to the reporters which might be misconstrued. He told me that his tests had confirmed that the virus which Gil caught definitely wasn't from his laboratory.'

  'But it must have been an unusual virus,’ said the policewoman, if it frightened him so badly that he killed himself.'

  'He must have been upset because of what happened to me,’ I said. ‘If the virus prevented him from thinking straight, even for a day or so, it could all have got out of hand. Perhaps he blamed himself, because he thought he ought to have been with me.'

  'He said that,’ the policewoman admitted. After a pause, she went on: ‘I'm sorry, but Sergeant Miller asked me to follow this up. I don't mean to distress you. The man who killed the little girl was probably just a copycat who read about the attack on you. That happens sometimes. But it's an awkward case. We don't have a weapon, you see—we don't even know what kind of a weapon was used, although the pathologist says that it definitely wasn't the scalpel that Gil used to cut his own throat. And then there's the matter of the blood she lost. There's something very weird about all this, you know. If it didn't sound so crazy, I'd wonder whether we're looking for some kind of vampire. Not the kind with fangs, you understand; just some freak with twisted ideas. Killers these days seem to do it for kicks, and some of them seem to be competing with one another to be the most disgusting, the most perverse, the most obscene ... I can't understand why. It's beyond me.'

  'Me too,’ I said. It seemed to be called for.

  The WPC was in full flow by now, and she wasn't content with that. ‘All this stuff about urban blight and the cycle of deprivation, video nasties and ritual child abuse ... none of it makes sense. I just can't imagine what gets into people. It's like a disease. Whatever Professor Viners has in his labs, it's probably nothing to what's out there. I'm sorry to keep coming back with more questions. You've been through enough already. But we have to keep asking, until we find out what did happen. You do understand that, don't you?'

  'I'm sorry,’ I said. ‘I wish I could help you, but I can't. I honestly don't believe that Professor Viners’ viruses have anything to do with this, and I really am certain that the man who killed Janine wasn't Gil. I know I was in hospital, unconscious, but I knew him well enough to be certain that he couldn't have done anything like that. If I could think of anything else to add to my statement, I'd tell you, but I can't. I just want to get back to everyday life. I just want to put everything back together again, so that I can carry on. I just want to be left alone. Please.'

  She nodded sympathetically. Just like the newspaper readers John Mackenzie had cited, she was on my side. She felt sorry for me. She felt outrage on my behalf. She wanted to be able to protect people like me from people like my attacker. She wanted to put the world back together again, although she couldn't figure out how it had ever come to be so badly broken, so sadly in need of repair. She really hadn't come to harass me; in her own way, she was simply looking for reassurance—reassurance of the fact that sometimes the innocent did win through. I wanted to help her sustain that illusion.

  'I'm all right,’ I told her. ‘Thanks for coming to tell me the news. I really do appreciate it. I don't mean to be rude. I just want to be on my own.'

  She got up, nodding profusely.

  'You were very brave,’ she said. ‘Fighting back the way you did. I just wanted to tell you that. No matter what they say about it being better not to resist, I'd have done the same. You were brave, and right to be brave—don't let anybody tell you different.'

  'No,’ I said, ‘I won't.’ I knew, far better than she did, that she was right.

  10

  That night, I went alone into the borderlands for the first time. Nor was I bound for the realm of light, into which the owls had carried me when they came to save and imprison me. I had to seek out and explore a place which was darker by far, into which the owls couldn't accompany me. It required courage to set forth on that journey, but I was braver than I had ever been, and I understood the pressure of necessity. To rid myself of Maldureve, I would have to go into the world that was his own. If I were eventually to banish him, I would first have to make sure that I could find him, and that I could face him.

  The owls had told me a great deal about the borderlands, and the manner in which their tortured topology extended itself into an elaborate symbolic geography. They'd armed me with a vocabulary of empty names with which to begin the task of comprehension, and they'd taught me something of the secret language, too: the language of hidden meanings, by means of which everything that exists, inside and outside the world, may ultimately be connected. They'd described to me the most familiar large-scale features of the borderlands: the Sea of Sleep and the Plain of Silence. They'd warned me not only against the terrors of the Empire of Fear, but also against the seductions of the Wilderness of If.

  My business, for the time being, was entirely to do with a certain house whose walls and battlements were but one-sixth of the whole; whose submerged cellars and dungeons were unfortunately dank and cold and labyrinthine. There, the owls told me, I could be sure of finding the vampire. It was there that his coffin lay, where he was obliged by the laws of his secret nature to sleep while the red sun poured down its baleful light from the star-filled sky. In the long night of the borderlands, the owls explained, I could never find or catch the vampire, because he could run with the wolves or fly with the bats or dissipate himself among the foetid mists which rose from the marshes of the vast demesne whose overlord he was; but by day—not the earthly day, but the dimmer day of the world beyond the world—it was possible to discover and trap him.

  I knew, therefore, where I had to go. I knew what I had to do. I wasn't afraid. I started out from my room in Brennan Hall, whose shadows were so familiar to me. The borderlands are everywhere and they can be entered at any point, but the artistry of dissolving your everyday body into shadow isn't easily cultivated by beings who have lived their entire lives weighed down by matter. It's better by far to embrace shadows with which you're intimately familiar, like those that enshroud you whenever you lay down your head to sleep. It wasn't easy, even then, but the owls had schooled me well.

  I took a heavy torch, which I'd bought at Halford's. It had a square-sectioned body moulded in black rubber, and a hand-grip and yellow push-button controls. I also had a spool of supposedly unbreakable thread, which I'd bought at BHS. I didn't take a sharpened stake; this particular journey was strictly exploratory.

  'Should I also take a sharp-bladed knife?’ I had asked the owls, but they had advised me against such unnecessary clutter. Sharp-bladed knives, they had explained to me, were symptoms and symbols of an outward defiance which merely masked an inner insecurity and a fundamental inadequacy. In the borderlands, they told me, surgery had no power to heal.

  When undertaking journeys into the borderlands, it's a great advantage to have been a habitual lucid dreamer. Nothing we do in our waking lives prepares us for odysseys into the worlds beyond the world; if anything, the adaptations we make in bowing down to the crushing tyranny
of the everyday, injures our capacity for such work by sapping our essential vitality, shrinking the horizons of the imaginable and withering the youth of the soul. If humans were not dreamers, we might easily find it impossible to confront the borderlands; but we are dreamers, and in our dreams we know what it is to be in a world where the rules of chance and determinism no longer apply. Because we're dreamers, we know how to float and fly. Because we're dreamers we know how to confront monsters; not without fear, but at least without mental catastrophe. Because we're dreamers, we know what it is not to be swaddled and choked by a surfeit of normality. Nevertheless, you always have to remember, when you take your first faltering steps into the actual borderlands, that you're not a dreamer any longer, and that you can't escape any threats which you face simply by wishing yourself awake. When we dare to cross the actual borderlands of experience, we make ourselves horribly vulnerable.

  It's a vertiginous experience to come out of the shadows on the other side, to find yourself in a different world: to stare upwards, for the first time, into the starry vault of heaven which arches aloft the world beyond the world, and to see the stars in all the glory of their true hugeness, too bright by far to be eclipsed by the meagre sun. Not that the otherworldly sun is lacking in majesty, despite its relative modesty. The earthly sun is always at its best when it hangs above the western horizon, seemingly bloated, reddened by a moist and dust-laden atmosphere; at times like that, you can stare at it without fear of being blinded, and study it as a mere object, rather than an unbearable cataract of light. The sun of the borderlands is always crimson in colour, and it doesn't have the force to make us turn away lest we should be injured by its contemplation, but its essential authority isn't compromised.