‘Where are you?’ she called, uncertainly. ‘I can hear you but I can’t see you.’
‘Bath,’ the voice echoed. ‘Please help me.’
Wanda half-slid, half-crawled across the floor, until she clumsily fell against the side of the high old-fashioned tub. It felt icy-cold, and it made a dull booming noise when she banged it.
‘Please God help me,’ the voice repeated.
Wanda climbed up on the side of the bath. Inside, the entire tub was awash with blood. A naked girl of about sixteen or seventeen was lying in it, her skin so white that it looked like ivory soap, one hand clinging to the handgrip, the other pressed hard against the tiles. Her hair was soaked in blood, so that it was impossible for Wanda to see what colour it might have been. Her breasts and shoulders were streaked and mottled with blood, both fresh and dried. Her bloody handprints had stencilled Rorschach prints all over the tiles, nightmares in living colour.
Wanda said, ‘Maggie, is that you? Maggie!
She could scarcely recognize this bloodied mermaid as the second-eldest Allison daughter, the girl who used to babysit her when she was small. The last time Wanda had seen her, Maggie Allison had been sitting side-saddle on the back of Rick Merrick’s motorcycle, brightly laughing, her head thrown back so that her long cornsilk-coloured hair had flowed and whipped in the slipstream.
‘Maggie, what happened?’ said Wanda. ‘You’re all over blood.’
Maggie looked up at her and her face was grotesquely smeared, as if she had been taking part in some terrible tribal initiation. Her eyes glistened in the gloom; the bloody water thickly lapped against the sides of the bath, and made a gurgling noise.
‘Window … the window broke. The glass fell into the bath. I tried to get it out but I cut my legs and the back of my ankle. Sliced right through. I just can’t move, and I can’t stop bleeding, and there’s so much blood. Oh, Wanda, I think I’m going to die. I think I’m going to bleed to death.’
‘Is your mom here?’ asked Wanda. What was she going to do? Even if she were strong enough to lift Maggie out of the bath, how could she stop her from bleeding?
Maggie said,’I called and ‘I called but nobody came. Mom was in the yard when the storm blew up … I didn’t hear her after that.’
‘It’s not just a storm,’ said Wanda. ‘It’s something else.’
‘Oh Wanda, get me out of here,’ Maggie pleaded.
Wanda hesitated for a moment, then tugged at the waste-lever. There was a sharp clonking noise but that was all.
‘Doesn’t it empty?’ asked Wanda.
Maggie coughed a bloody bubble. ‘It’s broke … we always used to pull out the plug by hand — but don’t! There’s too much glass. You’ll cut your fingers off.’
‘Maybe I can lift you up,’ Wanda suggested.
‘You could try, but don’t drag me. There’s a huge piece of glass and it’s sticking in my side.’
Wanda looked around the bathroom in desperation. All the while, Maggie continued to cling to the hand-grip, her breathing thin and unsteady, the blood in her hair congealing into a hideous fright wig.
The house trembled all around them, and they heard a sharp clattering landslide of shingles falling off the roof above their heads. The main support beams groaned, tiles cracked like castanets, and nails began to pop out of the flooring. As the house slowly swivelled, the blood-red light from the window slowly moved around the bathroom.
Wanda said, ‘I know what I’ll do … I’ll fill the bath with towels, push them underneath you. That way, I can get you out without you cutting yourself.’
Maggie said nothing, but coughed, and coughed again.
Wanda fought her way across the floor, straining against the unnatural gravity that had dragged away her mother, and was threatening to drag away everything — people, cars, houses, maybe the sky itself. She clawed her way to the linen-cupboard, opened the catch, and was immediately caught on the forehead by the door swinging open, and then half-buried under an avalanche of Sears bath-towels.
Winded, coughing, she shuffled crabwise back to the bath, pulling the bath-towels along with her, although there was scarcely any need. All of the contents of the linen-cupboard came sliding and tumbling across the bathroom floor, and ended up heaped against the tub.
‘Wanda, I’m so cold,’ whispered Maggie. ‘Wanda, please save me. I’m so cold.’
Wanda picked up a towel and plunged it deep into the bloody water. It bulged with air for a moment, then sank. Wanda heard the glass squeaking and crunching on the bottom of the tub, and Maggie gasped, ‘Careful, careful.’
When she tried to pull the towel further down the bath, Wanda felt a quick sharp sensation across the heel of her hand. She snatched her hand out of the water, and saw bright red blood running in feathery patterns all down her wrist
She unfolded another towel and pressed it against her hand. The cut was clean and curved and quite deep. Every time she dabbed the towel against it, more blood welled up. She dabbed it again and again, but it kept on bleeding.
Maggie whimpered. Wanda took out her handkerchief and tied it around her hand, tightening the knot with her teeth. Then she plunged another towel into the bath, and another, and another.
‘Maggie,’ she urged her. ‘Maggie, can you hear me?’
Maggie nodded. ‘I’m so cold,’ she breathed. She had sunk so far down into the water that her words bubbled.
‘Maggie, I’ve covered all of the glass next to you with towels. All you have to do is to roll over onto the towels, then I’ll help to lift you out.’
The house gave a groan that sounded almost human, and part of the bathroom ceiling collapsed, showering them both in plaster-dust. They heard other windows breaking, and a heavy lurching noise which sounded like the verandah roof caving in. The bloody red light waxed and then waned, but the wind persisted.
‘Maggie, you have to try!’
Maggie turned her head and stared at Wanda in pitiful desperation. ‘I feel like … there’s no blood left in me … none at all.’
‘Maggie, you must. You don’t want to die here!’
Wanda reached across the tub and prized Maggie’s fingers away from the handgrip, one by one. It wasn’t difficult: Maggie was so weak now that she was barely conscious. Forcing back to an urge to gag, Wanda cautiously lowered her arms into the water. She hesitated, swallowing bile. Maggie’s back felt like a freshly-slaughtered pig’s carcass, gutted and singed and hung up to chill — hardly human at all. Wanda gripped her cold, yielding flesh and tried to turn her over, onto the towels.
‘Come on Maggie, you’ll have to help me,’ Wanda urged her. ‘Try to pull yourself up the side of the bath … I can’t lift you all on my own.’
Maggie stared at her. White eyes, bloody face.
‘No, Wanda, you ‘ll have to leave me here.’
‘I can’t! I can’t leave you!’
‘You’ll have to. I’m as good as dead already.’
‘No!’ Wanda shouted at her.
Maggie shivered and closed her eyes. ‘No!’ Wanda screamed at her. ‘No!’
She plunged her hands back into the bloody bathwater, and tried to heave Maggie up the slippery side of the bath. She strained and strained, grunting and tugging and letting out little screams of effort.
She sat on the floor beside the bathtub, pulling Maggie higher and higher. At first she thought she would never be able to do it, but then Maggie seemed to grow inexplicably lighter. Soon Wanda had managed to balance her right on the edge of the bath, one blood-streaked arm swinging. A last effort dragged her over, right on top of Wanda, wet and bloody and chilled.
‘I’ll dry you … bandage your cuts,’ Wanda panted. She climbed to her knees, and steadied herself on the side of the bath. ‘There must be a doctor somewhere around … somebody must have called for help.’
It was only then that she realized why Maggie had grown so much lighter, as she pulled her up the side of the bath. The left side of her belly had been sliced right
open. A huge triangular shard of window-glass had cut through skin and fat and membrane and muscle, from her ribcage to her mound of Venus. The way she had been lying in the bath, with her left side pressed against the side of the bath and her knees drawn up, the wound had kept itself closed. But as soon as Wanda had lifted her up the side of the bath, it had gaped wide open.
The bath was filled with knives of glass and cold bloody water and Maggie’s emptied-out intestines. Soft glistening coils, in fawns and blacks and lurid scarlets, with all the pungency of blood and the sourness of stomach acids and the overwhelming truffle-mustiness of human excrement.
Wanda closed her eyes. She knew now that she would probably die today, too. She didn’t have the strength to move away from the side of the bath, not against that unyielding, irresistible force. All around her, the Allisons’ house shuddered and shifted and collapsed, and it was so dark now that she felt sure that today was the end of the world. The bathtub slopped and plopped, and quietly crunched with broken glass. Through the window, she could see the clouds boiling and swelling, more like a speeded-up movie than a real sky.
She pressed her hands over her face and said, ‘I wish for God’s good spirit from above, to shed within my heart His holy love. I wish that — rescued from the power of sin — His love may make and keep me pure within. I wish it may with sweet and strong control, from glory unto glory change my soul.’
She wasn’t sure how long she knelt in the bathroom with her eyes tightly closed; but after a while she became aware that somebody else was standing close by. She sensed their presence, rather than hearing it, and she took her hands away from her face and looked around the bathroom with a slowly growing feeling of apprehension.
‘Is there somebody there?’ she called out. Her voice sounded flat and muffled in the blood-coloured gloom.
At first there was no reply. But then a tall dark figure separated itself from the shadows in the doorway, like a black amoeba splitting itself in half. It was a black man, almost skeletally thin, dressed up in a tailcoat and striped grey formal trousers, with a high wing collar and a watch-chain.
His appearance would have been ludicrously dandified if his shoulders hadn’t been so stained with dust, and his shirt hadn’t been so discoloured. Around the neck it was so greasy that it was almost orange. His eyes glittered in the gloom like two shiny black-beetles feeding on his eyelids, and his mouth was stretched tightly back over yellowing teeth.
He stepped up closer. Wanda gripped the cold, sticky side of the bath, and climbed awkwardly and fearfully onto her feet
‘Are you afraid of me, child?’ the black man asked her. His words were husky-dry, like corn-chaff sifted through somebody’s fingers.
‘Who are you?’ she asked him. ‘What are you doing here? This isn’t your house.’
‘I know,’ the black man nodded. ‘This is your friend’s house, and I can see that your friend is dead. I’m sorry for that. That’s a sorry sight to see.’
‘What do you want?’ Wanda asked him.
He shook his head. ‘Nothing in particular. I was passing, that was all, and felt your prayers. They was such strong prayers I was minded to listen for a while; because in these days people rarely pray so strong.’
He paused, and then he said, ‘If more of your people had believed in things that can’t be seen and can’t be locked up in the bank then maybe this never would have come to be.’
Wanda said, ‘What’s happening? Is it the end of the world?’
The man thought about that and then nodded. ‘Yes, it is, in a manner of speaking. For most of your folks, anyway, with some exceptions. As for you — well, I think very highly of your faith, as a matter of fact, and hallelujah.’
He reached into the pocket of his vest, and produced a small silver pendant on a thin silver chain. He offered it to Wanda, but at first Wanda was reluctant to touch it.
‘Go on,’ the black man coaxed her. ‘Wear it, and you’ll stay safe, even when you walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Do you know who gave me that? Toussaint L’Ouverture gave me that, the leader of the black slaves.’
Wanda reluctantly held out her hand and the black man took hold of her wrist, and let the chain and pendant trickle down into her open palm. She looked down at it, and saw a tarnished silver cockerel, its neck broken, its wings spread.
‘Wear it,’ the black man urged her. ‘And if anybody asks you where you came by it; you say it came from Toussaint L’Ouverture himself, and was a gift to Jonas DuPaul, and that Jonas DuPaul gave it to me, and said hallelujah.’
Wanda didn’t know what to say; but the black man coaxed her, ‘Put it on, child. Put it on. It’ll keep you from harm. That’s a voodoo necklace … and whoever wears it, they give it all of their character, all of their strength — so that when they pass it on, the next person who wears it gains all of the character too.
‘When you put it on, child, you’ll have all of my protection from the evil spirits that walk this land, and the evil spirits that walk the land beneath; and you’ll have all of my wisdom, child, and all of my magic.’
Hesitantly, cautiously, Wanda lifted the necklace over her head. The black man watched her with a yellow-toothed smile, and nodded, and said, ‘Hallelujah. That’s the way of it, child. Hallelujah.’
Six
Karen opened the door for us. The last triangle of sunlight was creeping out of the window like a furtive visitor who has been kept waiting too long in the hallway, and has decided to call it a day. Michael Greenberg stood a little way away, wearing a baggy bottle-green turtleneck. His eyes were swollen with tiredness, and his whole attitude was cagey and sceptical. When I introduced Martin Vaizey to him, he gave a quick, who-cares kind of nod and said, ‘Sure, pleased to know you.’ I didn’t blame him. He’d suffered two psychiatrists; dozens of disbelieving relatives; a clairvoyant who looked like a men’s fashion buyer for J.C. Penney; Karen, who had always been over-romantic and a little screwy, and now this tall Boy Scout figure in a woven linen suit and a Panama hat, carrying a three hundred and fifty dollar Abercrombie & Fitch briefcase.
Martin stepped into the apartment and sniffed the air. ‘Curious,’ he said, after a sniff or two.
Michael unscrewed the cap from a bottle of Absolut Vodka. ‘Anybody want a drink?’
‘No, no, no thank you,’ Martin told him, lifting his hand to his ear, as if he could hear something that the rest of us couldn’t.
‘Erm … alcohol disturbs his psychic sensitivity,’ I put in.
Michael shrugged. ‘You don’t mind if I do?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘And I don’t mind if I do, either.’
Michael poured out two over-generous vodkas-on-the-rocks. ‘What about your psychic sensitivity?’
‘Mine is the kind of psychic sensitivity that for some reason thrives on alcohol. Nasdravye.’
Martin circled the room slowly, moving in and out of the shadows. He seemed to make Karen nervous, and she came up close to me and held my arm.
‘Very curious,’ said Martin. ‘This is quite unlike anything that I’ve ever had to deal with before.’
‘Oh, yes?’ I asked.
He nodded, eyes narrowed. ‘Its transcommunicational vibrancy is totally different.’
‘I see,’ I replied. I swallowed vodka. ‘In — unh — what particular way?’
Martin stopped circling and blinked at me. ‘I’m sorry?’
I coughed. It was strong stuff, that Absolut. ‘I said, in what particular way?’
‘In what particular way what?’
‘In what particular way is its trans —? Well, in what particular way is it different?’
Martin stared at me for a long time and made me feel even more awkward. When he spoke, he spoke very slowly and patiently, as if he were trying to explain to a six-year-old how a ballpen worked. ‘A spirit’s transcommunicational vibrancy is the distinctive, individual way in which it contacts the physical world. Its psychic voiceprint, if you want to draw a comparison.
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‘In this case, the transcommunicational vibrancy that I can feel is very strong and it’s probably human, although not certainly human. There are non-human spirits which are very skilful at imitating humans. It feels human, but it’s not communicating in the way in which I would normally expect a human spirit to communicate, do you understand me?’
‘Yes, of course I understand you,’ I replied, a tad too aggressively. I turned to Karen and Michael and gave them a look that was meant to convey ‘Understand him? Is he kidding me, or what?’
Martin continued his ethereal prowling around the room. ‘With very few exceptions — such as murderers and suicides — most spirits adore getting in touch with the living. As soon as you start reaching out for them, you can feel them reaching out for you in return. It’s almost like immersing yourself in a pool, and finding scores of willing hands trying to pull you out. They love us, the dead. They love the world they have left behind them. Quite beyond reason, sometimes, considering the suffering that many of them experienced before they died.
‘Still — they miss it, and they appreciate every effort that we make to contact them. That’s what makes my life as a medium so pleasurable. You may be sceptical about those who talk to the dead — present company excepted, of course — but almost anybody can do it, to a greater or lesser extent, because the spirits are so keen to talk to us. They want to tell their loved ones that it’s true — that there is such a thing as life after death. They want to tell their loved ones that they’re waiting, patient and sad, for the day when they can walk together, once again.
‘They want to tell us that there’s hope, and happiness, and relief from suffering.’
Christ on a bicycle, I thought, this guy could use a violin.
‘I thought you said this spirit was different,’ I interrupted him.
I hoped Michael Greenberg wouldn’t misinterpret the sharpness in my voice as meaning that I didn’t have very much faith in Martin’s talents. The only reason I was being sharp was because I had heard all of this salespitch about ‘Hope, and happiness, and relief from suffering’ so many times before — mainly from me.
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