The Quarantined City

by James Everington

  “You disagree with your friend then? You have a place for fantasy?”

  “When I was a writer,” Fellows says, “that’s what I wanted to write, you know? Stories set somewhere else but reflecting the real world back at... Oh I don’t fucking know. That’s all over anyway; it’s all hogwash.” He sighs. “Just tell me if it has worked.”

  “Yes,” Boursier says simply. “Go back home and you’ll see.”

  ~

  Fellows tries to enter quietly, wincing as the warped door sticks and he has to shove it closed. His heart is already beating too loudly for him to hear properly, and it is only at the last second that he hears the eager clatter of feet on the wooden stairs. Idiot, he thinks as Mogwai circles his heels, the ghost doesn’t make a noise.

  He has resolved to stick to his normal routine rather than go hunting for the ghost; it is not as if the wretched thing appears at a specific hour. As he goes about feeding the cat, making a simple meal for himself, settling in his favourite chair, he feels his actions ridiculous, like he is watching them from without. This self-consciousness means he can’t focus on reading a book as he normally would, and it feels artificial when he gets up to stare out the window at the quarantined city. Night is falling and he realises that the soft, flickering gaslight he is so used to seeing has been largely replaced by brighter electric streetlights. The familiar view seems askew as a result, the angle of the shadows all wrong. But at least his unease cures any desire to go back outside that he might otherwise have succumbed to.

  He pours himself a glass of port which looks almost black in the weak lights of his house; he pulls a book at random from the bookshelf and takes it upstairs to read. He props himself up in bed and Mogwai comes and settles on his lap and falls almost instantly asleep. Fellows starts to feel drowsy himself, feels his eyelids droop despite himself. And why not let himself go? The ghost is exorcised, crossed out like a poorly written sentence in one of Boursier’s first drafts, and the footsteps he can hear as his heavy eyelids fall are just Mogwai for the ghost makes no sound and...

  He starts awake, his body jerking as if thrown forward in a car that has braked too suddenly, and he realises Mogwai has gone from his lap. But the sounds he can hear aren’t the cat for Mogwai is standing by the bedroom doorway, peering down the corridor at something Fellows cannot see. The cat’s body is tensed, arched and fur on end to look bigger. What has he seen? Fellows thinks. There is no reason for him to tense, for the cat has never once reacted to the presence of the ghost. So what can it be? The noises continue—both a frantic scrabbling and simultaneously the slow dragging sound of something being pulled over the wooden floorboards. It’s too loud for a rat surely; could another cat have got inside? An injured cat maybe, run over outside because it too is still unused to the new volume of traffic on the roads... And the sounds are not unlike something dragging its paralysed back half along by its front legs. But wouldn’t it be mewing if it was a cat, and how could he have not noticed such a creature getting inside the house when he had opened the door?

  Underneath the dragging and scratching sounds, he thinks he can hear laboured breathing. Fellows is choked with a sick fear; the images that the sound of the thing’s approach conjure up are unbearable, but then so is the idea of moving from the bed to see what is coming for him.

  He looks towards the window, towards the white flash of a gull’s wing against the night, and thinks seriously about jumping so he won’t have to see.

  He looks back towards the doorway and sees a small hand black with bruises grip the side of the doorframe. One of the fingers is bent back at an angle that makes Fellows wince.

  Fellows gags, feels the sweet sickly taste of champagne at the back of his throat. He gets quickly off the bed and vomits copiously onto the dusty floor. The room reeks of alcohol. But I only drank a sip, he thinks vaguely.

  The hand on the doorframe tightens as well as it can with one finger immobile, and Fellows hears a shuffling, sliding sound, as something attempts to pull itself upright. The thing’s breathing sounds like it is being dragged out of something broken.

  Another hand grips the frame, and then a small face jerks into view.

  Fellows can’t help but cry out. In one sense it is the same ghostly face as before, with nothing but white in its eyes, but horridly more physical. More individual; a face so specific you might recognise it if you knew the boy in life. Fellows can see the boy’s pouting lower lip and a run of freckles across his face that don’t match the dark, curly hair; hair he can see is matted with dry blood. A broken nose. A bruised forehead, and a cheek so swollen it almost swallows one of the boy’s empty, staring eyes.

  The boy tries to pull himself further upright, leaving black fingerprints on the white paint of the doorframe. They don’t fade.

  Goddamnit, Boursier, what have you done? Fellows thinks. He is still spitting lengths of champagne-tasting drool from his mouth.

  The boy tries to turn his head to face Fellows; it doesn’t turn smoothly but in a series of jerks, each accompanied by the sound of something internal being dragged somewhere it shouldn’t be. He doesn’t know how pupil-less eyes can focus on him, but he is sure they do.

  Fellows can hear the sounds of the street from downstairs, as if someone had left the front door open.

  There is a shrieking noise, so full of hatred and fear Fellows thinks first the boy must be making it before he realises it is Mogwai. The cat hisses and yowls again as if it can’t stand the sight of the child. Or as though it smelt funny, Fellows thinks. He sees the cat dart across the room and throw itself screeching at the boy; the boy makes a high yelping noise as if terrified as Mogwai’s body hits him, causing his blood-wet grip to slide from the doorframe. The child crashes to the ground, limbs flailing like he is much younger, like a baby unable to right itself. Or like a bug overturned, Fellows thinks, waiting to be stamped on. Surely that would put an end to this haunting, and be kind to the crippled thing too. He imagines...

  He shakes the thought from himself, horrified both at what he had almost contemplated doing and the hideous and baffling sense of deja-vu that accompanies the thought.

  Mogwai flees from the fallen writhing child and he hears the cat clatter down the stairs and out the mysteriously open front door; there is the sound of car brakes and Fellows tenses... but there is no sound of collision. The car going past his house doesn’t stop. He hopes Mogwai is okay; he wonders if he will ever see the cat again.

  The boy is still kicking on his back; one of his legs is in some kind of black metal brace, Fellows realises, and that is why it is not as bent looking as the other. The boy is making wet gasping noises but there are no words, despite him looking of an age when he should be able to talk. He can smell the boy has pissed himself, maybe worse, and it is the implication of this—how physical it has all become—rather than the smell itself that makes him turn and gag again. There’s a burning sensation at the back of his throat, and his eyes fill with tears that seem equally acidic.

  When he blinks them away and the room refocuses, the boy is gone.

  Fellows walks slowly over to the doorframe; he can still see the evidence of the boy’s fingerprints on the paintwork, the blood so black it looks like ink. He can still faintly smell piss, underneath the alcoholic reek of his own vomit.

  Everything is very quiet in his house and in the city outside. But quiet like something holding its breath, just like Fellows is. Wondering when the ghost will come back.

  But, he supposes, he must stop calling it a ghost now. That bastard hack Boursier had been truthful on that score. The ghost has been exorcised, but in the process become something more real not less. Whatever the boy is, he is no longer silent or incorporeal... His blank white eyes can see Fellows now, and presumably his crippled and stained hand could touch him...

  The thought almost makes Fellows sick again.

  Fucking bastard Boursier! he thinks.

  ~

  For the second time that day he pounds on the door
to the side of the liquor shop, yelling for Boursier until he is let in. His rage makes no impact on Boursier’s calm, reaction-less demeanour, and Fellows shouts until he is hoarse.

  “A ghost?” Boursier says finally. “But why would you think the boy a ghost?”

  “Why? Because up until your meddling he was nearly see-through and...

  “I mean, why did you think the child is dead?”

  “What?”

  “The boy’s not dead.” Boursier says.

  “But of course he’s...” Fellows says but trails off, unable to justify his certainty. And he is certain, despite Boursier’s words.

  Before Boursier can answer, there is a loud pounding on the door downstairs.

  “Open up! Guardia!” a voice yells from outside.

  PART FIVE

  THE PANDA PRINCIPLE

  “Open up! Guardia!” a voice yells from outside Boursier’s apartment.

  “Quickly!” Fellows says, before Boursier can turn away. “What did you mean, the boy’s not dead?” Fellows doesn’t believe this, knows it to be untrue... but what if what he thinks he knows is yet another thing that can be changed?

  Boursier isn’t showing any sign of moving, he just stands with his head cocked to one side looking at Fellows quizzically. The infuriatingly placid look on his features hasn’t faded. Fellows has to resist the urge to shake him; he imagines the author’s head lolling if he did so, as insensible and hollow as a doll’s.

  The hammering at the door downstairs resumes, the angry shouting resumes.

  “What did you mean? The boy was a ghost until you...”

  “Guardia! Open up! We’re armed!”

  “Goddamnit!” Fellows shouts; Boursier still doesn’t move. There is a warning shot fired outside.

  “Go and let them in!” he says, then turns towards the stairs himself when Boursier still doesn’t move. “For fuck’s sake I’m coming!” he yells, hoping the Guardia can hear him, as he rushes down the steep wooden stairs.

  He wonders how he can have got himself in this situation; has it really been only four days since he first read The Smell Of Paprika and all this started? Damn Boursier’s stories! he thinks as he opens the door.

  There are two Guardia outside, one of whom has his gun raised to sky to fire another warning shot; his piggish face can’t hide his disappointment at Fellows’s appearance. The other gestures for him to put his revolver away and pushes into Boursier’s flat; the expression on her face already pissed off.

  “Papers?” she says flatly to Fellows. “Look, go and search upstairs,” she says irritably to her colleague who is fumbling his gun back into his holster.

  “Boursier is up there,” Fellows says as he hands her his identity papers. “He lives here, I imagine it’s him you want so...”

  “Can I see your hands please sir? Palms upward.”

  “My hands?” Fellows complies. He sees his hands are stained with ink; he sees the Guardia notices it too. He hears the muffled voice of the other Guardia quizzing Boursier upstairs; the writer’s replies are too quiet to hear.

  “Look, what is...” he starts.

  “We’ve reason to believe you’re producing subversive literature sir,” the Guardia says. “Pamphlets protesting against our legitimate and beloved unity government, perhaps?”

  “Me? No!”

  The other Guardia comes back downstairs.

  “Just the same idiot as last time,” he says. “He doesn’t know anything.”

  “You interrogated him thoroughly did you?” his colleague says. “No, never mind, I’m sure you did,” she adds as he starts to protest.

  “But it’s him you want,” Fellows says, his voice flustered. “Boursier?” he shouts. “Come down here!”

  “He doesn’t know anything,” the male Guardia says again.

  “You’re in the home of a known protestor,” the other says to Fellows, “albeit a low ranking one...”

  “No, he’s in charge,” Fellows says.

  She snorts. “That imbecile? C’mon. You’ve been seen multiple times over the last few days associating with the protestors, you’ve no job, you walk the streets at all hours...”

  “And that’s a crime is it? Are you actually arresting me?” Fellows says.

  The Guardia smiles. “On that piss-poor evidence? Of course not. But you are coming with us.”

  Fellows calls again for Boursier to come and explain that he is no protestor, but the male Guardia grabs him from behind, twists his arms behind his back. The other opens the door and together they escort him out into the quarantined city. Faces scowl at them from the steps of the building opposite; the Guardia are not much liked in the old town. The various hustlers, dealers and street artists disperse, looking over their shoulders and muttering abuse, as much towards Fellows for getting caught as the Guardia themselves. They think him one of their own, just incompetent.

  “Boursier! Goddamnit!” Fellows tries to twist to shout back towards the apartment, but the door has already swung shut behind him.

  “Just get in the car, sir,” the female Guardia says wearily, not looking at him.

  Fellows turns to see one of the unity government automobiles parked at the side of the road (despite the fact Fellows remembers the roads of the old town being too narrow and uneven for automobiles to use). The car is a long sleek shape he finds almost sinister; with its tinted windows it would be almost completely black apart from a splash of gull shit on its bonnet. The female Guardia opens the rear door; the interior of the car seems as dark as its exterior, a black hole that the male Guardia starts to force him towards...

  “No,” says Fellows. “No, I’ll come with you but I can’t... can’t we just walk?”

  “Walk? Just because you tramp around this city all day it doesn’t mean we’re going to. Just get in.” The Guardia gestures with her free hand towards the inside of the car.

  “No!” Fellows shouts, stepping backwards and causing the other Guardia to stumble and loosen his grip. He pulls away and turns to flee; the Guardia kicks out, catching him in the leg and he falls to the dirty street. His head slams against the ground, causing his vision to fog and his gorge to rise with the stale and impossible taste of champagne... Am I being lifted up? he thinks groggily, words that seem to be from some other place entirely.

  He gets to his feet again, hazy about his next move, and the Guardia behind fumbles at his gun holster with clumsy fingers...

  “Fuck’s sake,” the other says, grabbing Fellows roughly by the arm. In one motion, the physics of which he can’t decipher, she smoothly and without apparent effort uses the momentum of his struggle to bundle him into the back of the car. He sprawls onto the worn leather backseat; hands grab his kicking legs and heave him fully in. He squirms to turn back towards the door.

  “No, wait...”

  The door shuts and the panicked part of Fellows knows even as he lurches towards the handle that it won’t open from the inside. He still pulls at it, hands already shaking. The front of the car is separated from him by a partition, and this and the tinted windows give the impression that he is already in a cell. He feels the engine shudder into life, and he starts to shudder himself.

  There’s a jolt as they pull away from the pavement, and then he feels the car accelerate. His hands scrabble against the smooth leather behind him, but there are no seat-belts in the back. He looks at the tinted glass separating him from the Guardia and the face he sees in it seems blank-eyed and lurching towards him... until he realises it is himself, jolted forward. The car takes a corner too fast, and as Fellows tumbles against the door he tenses himself for a squeal of brakes and the forward momentum of a skid...

  In an effort to quell his panic Fellows looks out the window at the familiar streets of the quarantined city; they are the same as he remembers save for the darkness lent by the tinted glass. But how can the streets of the old town look the same while suddenly being wide enough for two lanes of traffic? He imagines the city laid out on the surface of a bubble
that is slowly being inflated, stretched thin and translucent.

  When the car pulls out of the old town and into stranger streets, it accelerates again. Too fast, too fast, Fellows thinks and he closes his eyes; but what he half-remembers in that blackness is no comfort. Lana’s eyes the day she had left him, furious but also wet with a grief she had no right to, which was a hurt all in itself... Fellows opens his eyes quickly; sees as if hallucinating the park where he had first read one of Boursier’s stories flash by, the prostitutes and gigolos gathered near the fountain posed as if in a painting. Fellows doesn’t have time to figure out how they have ended up here so quickly before his stomach clenches.

  He slams on the partition, shouts that he is going to be sick but either the Guardia don’t hear him or they don’t care. The car passes into the area of the city occupied by the offices of the unity government and civic officials; white stone buildings with an aggressive, angular architecture and flags fluttering from their rooftops. Fortunately the car slows, for there is more traffic here—more than Fellows has seen anywhere in the city before—and he manages to choke down his nausea. They are not going to crash, he tells himself, not at this speed. The car turns and descends a ramp, down beneath one of the imposing white buildings that seem alien to the city he knows. They stop at some kind of barrier and Fellows hears the two Guardia present their papers to a security guard, before the car continues its descent into a basement carpark lit by mercury lights so bright its empty space seems like an amphitheatre, its concrete a stage.

  And that’s when Fellows starts to slam his hands against the windows, starts to yell and then shrink back in his seat, as if to get away from something coming for him. Because for a split second the white light makes it seem like there is open sky overhead, and he imagines he sees a body laid out on the concrete.

  ~

  The Guardia lead Fellows through a long series of grey and windowless corridors, each so similar he soon gives up trying to memorise their route, although he is sure they must have crossed their own path. His legs are still shaking from the panic attack; the male Guardia is gloating under the mistaken impression Fellows had been scared of him. Nevertheless Fellows does feel a slight unease, in the heart of the unity government’s machinery as he is. The corridors are windowless and lit only by flickering electric lights, so he suspects they are still underground. The few other people they pass are not Guardia but office workers who avoid making eye-contact.