Ghost Virus

by Graham Masterton

  He had managed to find a room for three months at the Thames Reach homeless centre but then he had scrapped with another addict over drugs and he had been forced to leave. Since then he had been sleeping in shop doorways and begging and shoplifting in branches of Maplin’s to raise the £100 he needed every day for smack. Most days he wasn’t able to raise enough, and he would spend hours sitting in the library quaking with cold and hunger and withdrawal symptoms.

  But now – God must have looked down from Heaven and seen how cold he was, and sent him this thick grey coat.

  He shrugged it on, and after he taken a long piss against one of the library’s dustbins, he buttoned it up, and raised the collar, too. He looked up at the narrow strip of grey sky in between the buildings and said, ‘Thank you, Lord. I always knew that You hadn’t forgotten me.’

  He walked back out onto Mitcham Road. His coat would not only keep him warm, it would enable him to go into the Carphone Warehouse shop on the corner of Tooting Broadway and slip three or four new mobile phones in its pockets. God was not only protecting him from the cold, He was helping him to feed his habit.

  He had only been shuffling along the pavement for two or three minutes, though, when he began to feel as if this new coat was prickling his back. It wasn’t a pleasant prickling, either – it felt as if lice were crawling all over his skin, and he had experienced that often enough since he had been sleeping in hostels and homeless shelters and out on the streets.

  He was passing the Primark store so he went into the doorway and unbuttoned the coat, with the intention of taking it off and giving it a shake. Maybe the coat had been left in the alley because it was infested. If it was, he could take it into the launderette and put it in a tumble dryer for fifteen minutes or so. That would be enough to kill the lice. He had done it before after he had shared a bed with a girl he had picked up on Oxford Street. His friend Marcus had warned him that she was ‘a lousy lay’ and he hadn’t realised that he meant it literally.

  As hard as he tried, though, he found that he couldn’t pull the coat off. It wasn’t too tight, but it felt as if it were stuck to his skin, and his sweater was stuck to his skin, too. He pulled at each of the cuffs to see if he could drag the sleeves off, but the coat was firmly stuck to his arms. Two women paused before they entered the store to watch him in amusement as he twisted and turned and tried to reach over his shoulders to pull the coat off his back.

  ‘Having trouble, love?’ one of them asked him. ‘Not practising for Strictly Come Dancing, are you?’

  He gritted his teeth and shook his head. He tugged at the coat even harder, but when he did that, he felt as if he were going to rip off a whole layer of skin, and it hurt so much that he had to stop. He stood in the shop doorway panting with pain and frustration, and with every second that passed, the prickling sensation across his back and his shoulders grew worse.

  A few more passers-by stared at him, but he looked so dirty and scruffy that none of them stopped to ask him what was wrong.

  Jesus, this wasn’t lice. Lice were bad enough, but this was worse. Maybe the coat was infected with scabies, or infused with some kind of corrosive chemical. It was only about ten minutes’ walk to St George’s Hospital. Maybe he should go to A&E and ask for a doctor to help him to peel it off.

  He sat down for a while with his back against the shop window, hoping that if he relaxed and calmed down the prickling sensation would fade. Very gradually, it did. At the same time, though, he began to feel light-headed, as if he might faint. He looked around at the street – at the shoppers walking past, and the cars, and the buses – and for a few seconds they all looked like a photographic negative. The clouds in the sky and people’s faces all appeared to be black, while the road and the pavement and all the shop windows had turned a foggy white.

  He felt different inside himself, too, as if his whole body had been emptied out through his feet, and he had been filled up with somebody else altogether.

  Why are you so surprised? You’re not Jamie. Why did you always believe that you were? You kept on thinking that you were Jamie and look what happened to you. Now you’re back to being yourself and everything’s going to be better. Not only better, but wonderful.

  He managed to lever himself onto his feet. Leaning against Primark’s window he stared at his reflection and he was baffled but also fascinated by what he saw. He thought he looked more like a woman than a man, even though he still had his ginger beard. In fact, somehow, he knew that he was a woman. His irises were normally pale green, but now they were dark and glittering, and his eyes were much wider. His eyebrows were finely plucked and uptilted. His sweater felt tighter, and when he lifted up both hands and felt his chest, he discovered that he had breasts. He squeezed them, again and again. I have breasts. I have breasts? What am I? Who am I?

  He still felt swimmy and off-balance. In spite of that, he didn’t feel frightened. It seemed as if this metamorphosis had been a long time coming, and it was only confusing him because it had happened so unexpectedly, right in the middle of Tooting on a busy Thursday evening, with so much traffic going past and so many people staring at him.

  He started to walk slowly towards the junction with Tooting Broadway, limping slightly with one foot and dragging the other. Across the road he could see the Carphone Warehouse on the corner.

  I need to go in there and half-inch some phones.

  Ah – that’s what Jamie would have done. But you don’t need to do that. You’re a woman. You don’t need to steal any more. You have other ways of making money.

  What other ways? How can I be a woman? I’m Jamie. I’m a man.

  You were a man, Jamie. But not now.

  I don’t care what I am. If you say I’m a woman, I’m a woman. All I need now is a fix. I have to get myself a fix or else I’m going to have a fucking heart attack and die right here in the street.

  I told you. You have other ways of making money. Look around you.

  Where? What?

  Jamie turned around, tilting so much that he nearly lost his balance and fell over. About a hundred metres along the Mitcham Road he saw a bespectacled black-bearded Sikh man in a blue turban standing by the bus stop. The man was wearing a short beige raincoat and carrying a briefcase.

  There you are. A prospective client. I’ll bet he doesn’t get enough of it at home.

  What do I say to him? I can’t take him anywhere because I don’t have anywhere to take him.

  Just ask him if he’d like to come round the back of Primark with you and you’ll make him happy.

  I don’t know. I’m scared. What if he just tells me to get knotted?

  He won’t. But if he does, all you have to say to him is OK, it’s your loss. You’ll regret it when you get home and see your big fat ugly wife all wrapped up in her sari.

  Jamie’s brain was in a turmoil. He couldn’t believe that he was arguing with himself, and yet the woman inside him was so strong and demanding and his own physical need had reached screaming pitch. He saw dazzling flashes of white light in front of his eyes, and the pavement felt as if it were heaving beneath his feet like the deck of an ocean liner.

  He walked up to the Sikh and stood in front of him, swaying. At first the Sikh tried to ignore him, but Jamie was standing so close to him, and grinning at him with such a lewd expression on his face, that at last he said, ‘Go away.’

  ‘Don’t you fancy some fun?’ Jamie asked him.

  ‘What are you talking about, fun? Go away.’

  ‘I thought you might like a quickie.’

  ‘What? Go away, please.’

  ‘We could go round the back of the shops. Only a tenner.’

  ‘Please go and leave me alone. I don’t give money to beggars in the street.’

  ‘I’m not begging. I’m offering you a service. Only a tenner for the best BJ you’ve ever had. And quick, too. I’ll make sure you don’t miss your bus.’

  ‘For the last time, please go away,’ the Sikh told him. ‘If this is suppo
sed to be some kind of a joke, it is not at all funny. You smell very bad and I am not interested in anything you have to offer.’

  Jamie leaned closer to him, and took hold of the lapels of his raincoat. ‘Don’t you think I’m beautiful? You ought to see me naked. If you saw me naked, you’d be interested.’

  The Sikh put down his briefcase and twisted Jamie’s wrists. ‘Get your dirty hands off me and leave me alone!’ he shouted at him.

  Jamie let go of his lapels but slapped him hard on the shoulder. ‘You ungrateful bastard!’ he screamed, and his voice was as high as a woman’s. ‘You wait till you get home and see your big fat hideous wife! Then you’ll wish you’d come behind the shops!’

  By now, a small crowd had gathered around them, although nobody stepped forward to intervene. The traffic next to the bus stop had been at a standstill, but suddenly it started to move, and a police car came past them. The Sikh stepped off the pavement and rapped on its window.

  ‘Please – I need some assistance here,’ he said. ‘This fellow is bothering me and making indecent propositions.’

  The woman PC in the passenger seat peered across at Jamie, who was swaying and leering and clutching the front of his coat with both hands, as if he had breasts.

  ‘All right, sir,’ said the WPC. The police car drew in to the side of the road and she climbed out, followed by a burly male officer.

  The woman PC went up to Jamie and said, ‘This gentleman says that you’re being a nuisance.’

  Jamie pouted at her coquettishly. Her head seemed to grow enormous and then shrink to the size of a tennis-ball. ‘A nuisance? I was offering him a service, that’s all!’

  ‘What kind of a service?’

  Jamie pointed over his shoulder to the shops behind him. ‘A quick BJ, behind Primark. Only a tenner. He didn’t have to get so angry about it. The thing is, the thing is – oh Christ, I need a fix. I really need a fix.’

  The male officer looked down at Jamie. He seemed to tower over him, blotting out the sky, and when he spoke his voice boomed and echoed, as if Jamie were down at the bottom of a well.

  Maybe that’s where I am – down the bottom of a well, like that girl in The Ring.

  ‘You offered him a blowjob?’ said the male officer.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Jamie challenged him, but then he staggered sideways and it was only because the male officer caught his elbow and held him up straight that he didn’t fall onto the pavement and hit his head.

  ‘I think you’d best be coming along with us,’ said the WPC. ‘Can you tell me what your name is?’

  Jamie frowned at her. ‘My name?’

  He thought long and hard but the inside of his head was churning over like wet concrete in a concrete-mixer and the strobe lights kept shimmering in front of his eyes and the WPC kept growing larger and smaller. He began to think that she was repeatedly running away from him and then running back again.

  ‘No,’ he mumbled. ‘I can’t remember my name. I’m not even sure who I am. It’s the coat.’

  The WPC said, ‘I’m arresting you on a charge of importuning for an act of gross indecency in a public place.’ She cautioned him; and then between them, she and the male officer opened up the door of the police car and heaved Jamie onto the back seat.

  ‘Blimey,’ said the male officer, waving his hand in front of his face. ‘He don’t half pen-and-ink.’

  16

  David was woken by the doorbell chiming. He opened his eyes and stared at the bedroom wallpaper with its florid red roses. At first he couldn’t think where he was.

  Where am I? Whose bedroom is this? How did I get here?

  He sat up. The doorbell chimed again, and then a woman’s voice called out, ‘Evie? Evie, are you there?’

  Somebody wants to see Evie, but you know what you’ve done to her. Punished her – taken your revenge, and about time too.

  He climbed off the bed, crossed the landing and went downstairs, although he lost his footing near the bottom. He banged loudly down the last three or four stairs and had to grab at the newel post to stop himself from falling over.

  The doorbell chimed yet again, and the woman knocked and called out, ‘Evie? It’s Bella! You’re not still in bed, are you?’

  He opened the front door. A freckle-faced woman in a white raincoat and a headscarf was standing in the porch, holding a large tapestry bag.

  She took one look at David and said, ‘Oh! David! Sorry!’

  It was then that he realised that he was wearing only the black sweater that he had found at his mother’s house. He pulled it down at the front to cover himself.

  ‘Is Evie there?’ asked Bella, keeping her head turned away so that she wouldn’t have to look at him.

  ‘Evie? No. Evie’s, er... Evie’s gone to see her sister.’

  ‘Gone to see her sister? She didn’t say anything to me. We were supposed to go out shopping early today. They’ve got a sale on at Morley’s.’

  ‘Her sister’s not too well. I don’t know what’s wrong with her. But she asked Evie to go up to Watford and take care of the kids.’

  ‘Why didn’t she ring and tell me?’

  ‘I have no idea. I don’t know when she’ll be back, either.’

  Bella reached into her raincoat pocket and took out her mobile phone. ‘I’ll give her a call. I can’t believe that she didn’t tell me that she couldn’t come shopping this morning.’

  She prodded at her phone but David said, ‘It’s no good ringing her. She left her phone behind.’

  Bella turned her head now and stared at him. ‘She left her phone behind? Evie? I don’t believe it!’

  ‘She was in a hurry, and she was very upset about her sister.’

  ‘Well, have you got her sister’s number? You must have her sister’s number.’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t. Evie keeps all her numbers on her phone and I don’t know her password.’

  ‘What’s her sister’s surname? You must have her address. I could find her number from directory enquiry.’

  ‘Atkins, I think. Or maybe it’s Watkins. I’m not entirely sure. And I don’t know her address. She only moved to Watford in March and I’ve never been there.’

  Bella stayed in the porch for a few moments, looking exasperated. Then she said, ‘What about her sister’s husband? Do you know where he works?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue. I think he’s a solicitor, something like that. Listen – why don’t you wait until Evie rings you? She’s bound to, sooner or later.’

  ‘I’ll have to, won’t I? I don’t see that I’ve any alternative.’

  With that, Bella walked away. She clanged the wrought-iron gate behind her to show her disapproval and crossed over to her bright yellow Fiat 500. There was another woman sitting in the back seat and David vaguely recognised her as one of Evie’s friends. He couldn’t remember her name but he remembered that she never stopped talking.

  He closed the front door and went through to the kitchen. Evie was lying on her side staring at the grey-tiled floor, the back of her dress looking like a map of North and South America in dried brown blood. Her eyes were open but they had turned milky. Maggie the tortoiseshell cat was prowling around, clearly unable to understand why Evie didn’t stand up and feed her, as she usually did. She looked up at David and mewled.

  You can starve for all I care, you perishing nuisance. Evie knew that you were allergic to cats, didn’t she? but she insisted on having one. ‘Who will I have for company when you’re at work?’ And that had been a double-edged question, hadn’t it, because you hadn’t been able to have children. And whose fault had that been? His – because of having such a low sperm count.

  David felt a tinge of sadness that Evie was dead. After all, they had enjoyed nearly seven years together, and for most of the time they had been happy, although she had always desperately wanted children. That had caused endless low-level friction between them, because she had often had dreams that she was pregnant, or that she had actually given birth. She
had once claimed that she had heard their child laughing in another room – the child they would never be able to have. But David had been dead set against a sperm donor. That would have been like allowing his wife to have sex with another man, and the child would never have been his.

  He looked at the slices of onion on the chopping-board. They had all dried up now, but there were plenty more onions in the vegetable rack. Carrots, too, and half a swede, and he knew that there were beans in the fridge. He could carry on where Evie had left off, and make a stew himself.

  He crouched down beside her, and gently laid his hand on her shoulder. If he cooked a stew, that could not only provide him with three or four decent meals, it could solve the problem of what to do with her body. He could cut her up neatly, and package her, and freeze her remains, and over the coming months he could keep the promise that he had made to her on the day that he had proposed to her. ‘You and me, the two of us, let’s become one.’

  Her bones? Well, he could smash up her bones with a hammer and then flush them a little at a time down the toilet.

  He stood up. He felt pleased with that plan, especially since it would have secretly delighted his mother so much.

  Evie was never right for him. Never had his class. Now she’s going to end up what she was always destined to be. Human waste.

  He opened the cutlery drawer and took out a sharp thin-bladed boning knife. While Maggie watched him, he knelt down on the floor and lifted Evie’s dress up over her right hip. He cut the elasticated waistband of her tights and pulled them down as far as her knees. When he gripped her thigh between finger and thumb her flesh felt soft and yielding. With the point of his knife he marked a rectangle into her skin, about fifteen centimetres by eight, and he used this as guidelines to slice deep into her flesh, until the tip of the blade jarred against her femur.

  Carefully, he cut out a large lump of flesh. It was paler and fattier than he thought it was going to be, and there was very little blood, but of course her heart had stopped beating and she had no circulation. Once he had worried the lump away from her thighbone he lifted it up in the palm of his hand and smelled it, and when Maggie saw him doing that she licked her lips. He had read that cannibals claimed that human flesh tasted like pork – that’s why they called it ‘long pig’ – but this didn’t smell like pork at all, or any other meat that he had ever eaten. The closest he could think of was veal.