by Chris Parker
Marcus removed his hand from Emma’s desk and walked through into his own office. His mobile phone rang. He didn’t recognise the number. He stared at it, feeling the phone buzz in his hand. It was, he realised, the first chance he’d had to talk to someone from this place for several months, since Emma had gone, since he had stopped being available for clients, since he had started hiding away, camouflaging his fear behind the need to write Belief. It was an unexpected and frightening opportunity to act as the great consultant again.
I can’t run away from it.
The phone stopped ringing. He kept hold, kept watching in case a voice message had been left. He waited longer than he needed to. There was nothing. No potential new client. Not even an old friend just touching base. Maybe it had been a wrong number? After all, he wasn’t the centre of the universe anymore. He was more a damaged spacecraft in danger of spinning out of control than a powerful star. He considered briefly flicking through his list of contacts and calling one of them at random.
Hi. Yes, it’s me. I’m just calling to say…
To say what?
To say what, actually?
I’m just calling to pass the time of day. Well, actually, I’m calling so that I can practise talking to people whilst I’m in my office.
Marcus closed his fist around the phone, squeezing momentarily before dropping it onto his desk. He still couldn’t take his eyes off it. For some reason it made him think of a large black-cased insect, confident in its body armour. The temptation to smash it thudded through his veins.
And then someone knocked on the door. Three times, with urgency.
24
Ethan Hall closed the passenger door and settled into the black, leather seat of the Mercedes as if he owned both the car and the driver. Matt stared straight ahead, his hands gripping the steering wheel.
‘Let’s go play,’ Ethan said. He waited until the car had pulled away and joined the line of traffic, moving slowly towards the city centre before adding, ‘Why don’t I have the list of addresses?’
‘Boss’s orders.’ Matt’s focus was fixed firmly on the car in front.
‘You have the list, right?’
‘Nope.’
‘So how do you know where to take me?’
‘I’m gonna ring for instructions after you’ve done the first job.’ Matt blinked.
‘Aah, I see. Your boss has a plan.
‘Dunno. Nothing t’do with me.’
‘Everything is to do with everybody. One way or another.’
‘Don’t know nothin’ about that.’
‘You’ll learn.’ As the car came to a temporary halt Ethan made a point of easing his head back against the headrest and closing his eyes. In the darkness he could feel even more clearly the big man’s heart hammering in his chest. He sighed gently, enjoying the contrast, enjoying the sublime pleasure of waiting for the inevitable. It proved, as expected, to be a brief wait.
‘Ow d’ya do it?’
‘Do what?’ Ethan kept his eyes closed.
‘Make people do things.’
‘We all make people do things.’
‘I mean the way you make people do things…the things you make people do.’
‘I look at them and I hear what’s going on inside. I listen to them and I see their thoughts and their feelings.’
‘That don’t make sense.’
‘Want me to prove it – again? Want me to open my eyes and show you?’
‘You won’t do that.’
‘I’ve got to open my eyes sometime.’
‘I mean you won’t do … do owt t’me.’
‘Why do you think that?’
‘Because I’m driving.’
‘You’ll stop when we get to where we’re going.’
‘Yeah, but you’ll still need me.’
‘To do what?’
‘Take you to the other places.’
‘You don’t know the other places. You’ve just told me that.’
‘But I will know once I report back. And besides, I’m the boss’s eyes and ears.’
‘I’ll tell him you said that.’
‘You won’t get t’speak to ‘im again.’ Matt flushed. Ethan felt it.
‘Is that a fact?’
‘Yeah.’
Ethan lapsed into silence, enjoying the changes he was creating in the other man’s heartbeat. In another life, he mused, he might have been the world’s greatest conductor. ‘I see them as colours,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Your feelings. The responses you try to keep secret. I see them as colours in the air around you. I see how my expressions and gestures and words affect you, how your colours change when I influence you.’
‘That ain’t right.’
‘Is it not?’
‘No. I mean, I’m not saying yo’r lyin’ or anythin’. Or that yo’r mad in the ‘ead.’
‘Good.’
‘It’s just that, y’know, I’ve never ‘eard of anyone who can do stuff like that. So if yo’r the only one it ain’t, y’know, normal.’
‘Did it feel normal having a gun in your mouth, feeling your finger pressing the trigger, feeling your tongue on the metal?’
Matt licked his lips, loud as a wave lapping on a beach. ‘You don’t ‘ave t’ be a cunt.’
‘You didn’t have to take it like a cunt.’
‘I… I didn’ ‘ave a choice.’
‘That’s right. But you’re used to that. You and all the rest. That’s what being normal means. Just doing what someone else makes you do. And those people who make you do things are nowhere near as talented as me. They’re not special. They are just loud. And ballsy. And so full of themselves they don’t realise how pathetic they are.’ Ethan sniffed. ‘You know I can do anything I want with you?’
The car pulled to a halt. ‘We’re ‘ere.’ Matt switched the engine off and shifted in his seat. ‘It’s time fer you t’do wha’ we came for.’
Ethan Hall opened his eyes. Matt was staring deliberately out of the driver’s door window. It reminded Ethan of a time many years before when, late at night, a young, drunk reveller had pushed into the back of a city taxi ahead of him, and how the driver had deliberately looked away and then covered his ears as Ethan punished the man.
It’s what the herd does – pretends by looking at nothing.
‘You’re going to stay here and look as if you’re watching the traffic.’
‘Yeah. ‘Ow did y’know?’
‘Because I’m not normal.’
‘I’ll come in when yo’r done. Just t’check.’
‘Boss’s orders?’
‘Yeah. And ya need t’get it right.’
‘That’s brave.’ Ethan chuckled. ‘Your Boss doesn’t have to worry. It’ll be natural.’
Ethan got out of the Mercedes and looked at the building for the first time. An involuntary smile crossed his face. He stepped forward without hesitation and knocked on the door. Three times, with urgency.
25
Marcus Kline opened the door and took a pace back automatically. He couldn’t help but swallow as the adrenaline surged through his system. There had been a time – it was most of his life – when he could never be taken by surprise. That had been the time before Ethan Hall. That time seemed an age away; memories and ways of being that were now in danger of fragmenting and dissolving forever in the heat of the present.
Fight!
Marcus forced himself to hold his ground. He looked deliberately over the shoulders of the person stepping into his doorway. It was where he always looked when working at his best, when wanting to see and hear with the clarity that produced great insight. It had been one of his first great discoveries, one of the most important weapons in his communication arsenal. He needed it now.
Marcus looked into the space behind and around the person’s head, softening his gaze, resisting the temptation to focus on details, letting his peripheral vision dominate, trusting it to show him what he most needed to see.
Understanding piggybacked his adrenaline. Thoughts of self disappeared. He felt the words, unknown, as yet lacking completeness, forming deep in his belly. He said the name first, using it as a gateway and an invitation.
‘Diane.’
‘Mr Kline! Oh, I’m so pleased you’re here! I’ve tried several times in the last few months and I was beginning to think you’d closed down or gone away or something. And then I saw in the papers about that awful thing with Ethan Hall escaping and that made everything even worse and I thought I’ll try just one more time, but he’s really not going to be there now. And I was wrong! And you are – and you even remembered me!’ The woman’s eyes watered. She dabbed the tears away with the unself-conscious ease of a person used to crying.
‘Diane, come inside.’ Marcus stepped to his right, gesturing into the space of the reception with his open left hand. She followed as if on a lead. He closed the door behind her and, as he looked into her eyes, he smiled gently. She couldn’t help but return it. Her cheeks were flushed. She ignored the moisture on them.
He had met Diane Clusker only once before, by accident when she had been shopping with her husband, Paul. They almost bumped into each other outside the Theatre Royal. Paul had been one of the regular low-fee clients he worked with as a way of giving something back to his local community. Paul had contacted him asking for help to improve his business communications. What he had also needed – and didn’t know how to ask for – was a way of diminishing the negative influences of his past. In Marcus’ experience, every expressed request for help was a psychological form of Trojan horse, carrying hidden within it the person’s secret need and agenda. It had been easy for Marcus to create the changes Paul required. Easy and pointless. The memory of their last meeting flittered in front of his mind’s eye, making his scalp crawl.
‘What can I do for you, Diane?’ He asked quickly, grateful for the protection of the words and the way they shifted him from his head to his stomach.
‘I need you to help me. The way you were helping Paul. The way you were changing his relationship with the past. I can’t deal with anything anymore. It all keeps pulling me back. It’s like a bad dream. You know the sort I mean, it’s a dream in which you try to get away from something terrible and, no matter what you do, you just can’t. And since that…that man…has been allowed to get free, it’s got so much worse.’ Her tears flowed. ‘How can they have been so stupid? I mean, they had him and then…then…It’s like it’s all around me now. Before it was just inside me, just my memories and all the connections and the reminders, but now that he’s out it’s on the inside and the outside. I’ve got nowhere to go but here, to you.’
‘I understand. Let’s move somewhere else.’ Marcus cupped Diane’s left elbow with his right hand and steered her into his office.
We both need to keep moving.
Paul Clusker had been Ethan Hall’s second victim. At least, the second the police were aware of. He had been killed in his own home. He had been chosen because of his connection to Marcus. And Marcus couldn’t help but blame himself. As he did for the other deaths, as he did for the way Ethan was destroying the lives of those he hadn’t killed.
‘How are you coping?’ Diane asked suddenly. ‘I’m so sorry, I should have asked sooner. After all, I’m sure it’s…Well, it must be awful for you, too.’
‘I’m more concerned for you, right now. You are my…’
Defence mechanism.
‘…priority. You were right to be persistent. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here now and I wouldn’t be helping you. Isn’t that true?’
‘Yes. Yes, it is.’
‘That’s right. You are right. To be. Hear.’ Marcus felt himself ease towards the edges of the hypnotic state he was leading Diane into. He would hold himself there as Diane went ever deeper. He couldn’t help but notice just how much of a release it felt for him, too. “You are right because that important part, deep inside, the part that is beyond your conscious awareness even as you find yourself going deeper now trying to find it, that part is truly more resource-full than we can ever imagine. And you can believe in it, can you not, because it just feels right. Hear. Now. Isn’t it? Please, sit down. All the way down.’ Marcus pulled the chair back, away from his desk. Diane Clusker sat without hesitation. Her eyes closed instantly.
26
Ethan Hall felt his eyes widen. He felt his pupils dilate. He knew he was seeing the other man with a clarity no one else on Earth could imagine. He watched the colours of surprise and uncertainty flickering out and around him. He waited, watching and learning. Thrilled.
‘Yes? How can I help you?’ The man asked.
‘Don’t you remember me?’ Ethan breathed the words across the space between them. ‘Don’t you. Remember.’
The man blinked as he tried to follow the command and found himself struggling to access an appropriate memory. Ethan gave him four seconds, letting the silence and his stillness add weight to the pressure.
‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’ He said.
‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ The man stepped to one side. ‘Please.’
Ethan walked through the hall and into the lounge as if he had been there many times before. He heard the door close. He felt the man’s confusion as he followed him into the room. It was like snow, swirling in a breeze. It made Ethan’s skin tingle.
‘Robin,’ he said, ‘how could you forget me?’
‘I really don’t know. I’m so sorry. I’m usually so good at this sort of thing.’
‘Of course you are. Let me remind you. We met at that party. We talked about your allergy. Or rather, you did. You spent quite some time telling me about the terrible reaction you suffer when eating nuts, how you were one of those unfortunate few individuals for whom it’s actually life threatening. Don’t you remember?’
‘Er, no. No, I’m sorry.’ Robin frowned.
‘Don’t worry. It will come to you. I’m sure of that. We both know it’s important to always remember an allergy when it’s so serious. So you will remember our chat. You will remember how I explained to you that some researchers in immunology and genetics consider allergies to be like a phobia of the immune system. By which they mean that an allergy is a result of something happening neurologically and not just physiologically. Which means, of course, that an allergy – even one like yours – is open to influence.
‘I told you, for example, of some people whose allergic symptoms would disappear if they were distracted or fell asleep whilst experiencing a reaction. Isn’t that amazing! One second they are in the midst of a most terrible allergic reaction and the next they are OK! Tell me, Robin, can you imagine that happening to you? Thinking now about how your body responds so severely to any interaction with nuts, can you imagine the symptoms just vanishing? Go on, thinking about it, try. Now.’
Ethan gestured towards the settee. Robin sat down abruptly. Ethan remained standing, watching the first signs of changes in the other man’s pallor, the first subtle shift in his breathing.
‘No,’ Robin said. ‘I can’t imagine anything like that. I can only think of how…how horrible it is…how scared I become.’
‘You can’t imagine it Robin, because you don’t believe strongly enough, because you’ve allowed yourself to become limited. Locked in. You’re malfunctioning, just like your immune system now. You see, your allergic reaction is a result of your immune system overreacting. Let me tell you precisely how this is happening now. You do want to keep listening, don’t you?’
Robin nodded. There was an obvious redness on his cheeks and throat.
‘Of course. And you are right to. Just trust the feeling, Robin.’ Ethan ran his left hand briefly across his face and then continued. ‘Your immune system is made up of different cells all with different functions. The macrophage is like a scavenger cell. Its job is to capture and ingest any foreign substances that might get into the body – things like grass or hay or, in
your case, nuts. The great thing about the macrophage cell is that it doesn’t ingest the entire virus; it also alerts the rest of the immune system to the current invasion by displaying a part of it. This gets the attention of the helper T cells. Their job is to determine whether or not the invaders are dangerous. They do this by connecting themselves to the part of the invader being displayed. If there is a match, these helper T cells send out an urgent message for help to the killer T cells. What happens next is all because of these killers, Robin. Can you feel it?’
Robin nodded again. The redness was darkening and spreading. His breathing was faster, more laboured. He was staring into space, seemingly unaware of Ethan. The synesthete shivered with excitement.
‘I’ve spent several months in a coma,’ he said. ‘It’s a very special place to be. Trust me. The only downside is that you don’t get to enter into the lives of others; you don’t get to influence. I didn’t realise at first how much I missed it. Anyway, let’s get back to those killers. They are fighters. They rush to where the intruder is being flagged. They inject it with a chemical and explode it. Bang! Internal explosions! Imagine that. It’s a battlefield inside your own body, Robin. And it’s a good and appropriate battle if it’s a virus or form of bacteria being blown up. The problem occurs – your problem occurs – when these killers attack healthy cells. Which is precisely what happens every time you have an allergic reaction, Robin. Your immune system has got its coding wrong where nuts are concerned. So it goes on the attack. Exploding cells it doesn’t actually need to. And one of the chemicals released – no, let’s be more precise, here, one of the chemicals excreted – when the cells explode is histamine. You know that one, don’t you Robin? You know how makes you feel?’
‘Yeth.’
‘Of course, you do. In fact, it looks to me that your mouth and lips are tingling already. Isn’t that so?’
‘Yeth.’
‘And your face is starting to swell and when it feels like this, if you don’t take your tablet immediately it will just keep on swelling. Isn’t that right?’
‘Yeth.’
‘Only you can’t move, can you, because you can’t feel your legs or your feet. Isn’t that right.’
