World's end taom-1

by Mark Chadbourn

  One posting leapt out at him from LauraDuS@legion.com. It said simply:

  All this is linked. And I have proof.

  Email me if you want to know more.

  He vacillated for a moment or two, then rattled off a quick reply requesting more information.

  Further down the list there was a message from one of the Fortean Times editors, Bob Rickard, talking in general terms about the magazine's philosophy. With a certain apprehension, Church typed out the details of his experience at Albert Bridge and sent it off for Rickard's views. Then he returned to the list and immersed himself in the tidal wave of weirdness.

  With bleary eyes and a dry mouth, he eventually came offline at 1 a.m. feeling an odd mixture of excitement, agitation, concern, and curiosity that left his head spinning. It was a pleasure to feel anything after two years of hermetically sealed life.

  Away from the computer, he became aware once again of the hidden memory's horrible presence at the back of his head; his mood dampened instantly and he knew there would be no relief for him until that desperate event was put into some kind of perspective. He was so lost in his introspection that at first he didn't notice the figure outside as he began to draw the curtains. But a passing car disturbed him and within seconds he had grown rigid and cold. From his first-floor vantage point, the figure was half-hidden by the overhanging branches of the tree across the road, but the subtle way the body was held was as unmistakable to him as his own reflection.

  And a second later he was running through the flat and down the stairs, feeling the first tremors of shock ripple through his body, wincing as the cold night air froze the sweat that seemed to be seeping from every pore. Desperation and disbelief propelled him out into the road, but the figure was gone, and although he went a hundred yards in both directions, there was no sign of the person who had been watching his window. Finally he sagged to his knees at the front gate and held his head, wondering if he had gone insane, feeling his thoughts stumble out of control. There were tears where he thought he had exhausted the well. It had been Marianne, as surely as the sun came up at dawn.

  And Marianne had been dead for two years.

  Chapter Two

  different views from the same window

  Inactivity did not sit well with Ruth and it seemed only right that her enforced absence from work should be put to good use. Although she knew the buried trauma of Albert Bridge was responsible for her daytime confusions, black moods and constantly disturbed nights, she was determined she would not be paralysed by it; practicality was one of the strengths which had seen her rise so rapidly in the firm.

  No one had been arrested for the Albert Bridge murder, although photofits based on Ruth and Church's descriptions had been given wide circulation throughout the media; the suspect had appeared so grotesque that Ruth found it hard to believe he hadn't been picked up within hours. Yet the investigation had drawn repeated blanks and as the days turned to weeks it became increasingly apparent it wasn't going anywhere. One advantage of Ruth's position with Cooper, Sedgwick amp; Tides was her direct access to the Met, where she found plenty of contacts who weren't averse to allowing her a glimpse into a restricted file or digging up some particular snippet of information. So it was relatively easy to find herself that morning in an empty room, bare apart from a rickety table, with the murder file.

  The victim was a low-grade Ministry of Defence civil servant named Maurice Gibbons, a fact which had at first raised suspicion of some shadier motive beyond a simple mugging. When it became apparent the only secrets Gibbons had access to centred on the acquisition of furniture for MoD property, all conspiracy scenarios were quickly discarded. He was forty-eight and lived with his wife in Crouch End; both their children had left home. The only gap in the information was exactly what he was doing at Albert Bridge at that time of night. He had told his wife he was calling in at his local for a pint and she had gone to bed early, not realising he hadn't returned home. She didn't remember him leaving with his briefcase, although it was possible he had picked it up from the hall on the way out; why he had felt the need to take a briefcase to the pub was not discussed. And that was about it. He had no enemies; everything pointed to a random killing. Ruth jotted down Gibbons' address, phone number and his wife's name and slipped out, pausing to flash a thankful smile at the detective lounging by the coffee machine.

  While there could be a completely reasonable explanation for his appearance at Albert Bridge-an illicit liaison, hereto or homo-to ignore it wasn't the correct way to conduct an investigation. Ruth knew she would have to interview the wife.

  Her decision to take action had raised her mood slightly, but it seemed morbidity and depression were still waiting at the flat door, emotions so unnatural to her she had no idea how to cope. Bitterly, she set off for the kitchen to make a strong coffee in the hope that a shock of caffeine would sluice it from her system. As she passed the answer machine, the red light was flashing and she flicked it to play.

  It was Church. "We need to talk," he said.

  They met in the Nag's Head pub in Covent Garden just before the lunchtime rush. Church had a pint of Winter Warmer and Ruth a mineral water, which they took to a table at the back where they wouldn't be disturbed. Church felt in turmoil; he had barely slept since the shock of seeing-or thinking he had seen-Marianne outside the flat. He had tried to convince himself it was a hallucination brought on by all the turbulence in his subconscious, but it added to the queasy unreality that had infected his life. It had had one good effect, though: it had shocked him so severely that he could no longer passively accept what had happened to him.

  "I didn't think I'd be hearing from you again. The last time we spoke you didn't sound too enthusiastic about opening this can of worms any further," Ruth said.

  "You can only bury your head in the sand for so long. That is, if it's been affecting you the same way it's affected me," Church began cautiously. He tapped the side of his head. "I can't remember a thing about what happened, but my subconscious can see it in full, glorious Technicolor, and that little bastard at the back of my head won't let me rest until I sort it out." Ruth nodded. "So," he added, almost dismissively, "what I'm saying is, you were right."

  "I do love to hear people say that." Ruth appraised Church carefully behind her smile. She instinctively felt he was a man she could trust; more than that, she felt he was someone she could actually like, although she couldn't put her finger on exactly what it was that attracted her. There was an intensity about him that hinted at great depths, but an intriguing darkness too. "So what do you suggest?"

  Church took out a folded printout of the email he had received from Bob Rickard, the Fortean Times editor. "I made a few enquiries online about what options are available for people with repressed memories."

  "This happens all the time, does it?"

  "You'd be surprised. Apparently, it's de rigueur if you've been abducted by aliens. You thought that aching rectum was just haemorrhoids? Here's how you find out you've really had a nocturnal anal probe. Regression hypnosis. To be honest, the expert I contacted wasn't, let's say, enthusiastic about its effectiveness. Some people think it can screw you up even more. There's something called False Memory Syndrome where your memory's been polluted by stuff that's leaked in from your imagination, things you've read, other memories, so your mind actually creates a fantasy that it believes is real. The Royal College of Psychiatrists has banned its members from using any hypnotic method to recover memories, so this guy says. But then there're a whole bunch of other experts who claim it does work."

  "And the alternative?"

  "Years, maybe decades, of therapy."

  Ruth sighed. "I'm not too sure I'm comfortable with someone stomping around with hobnail boots in the depths of my mind."

  "So we'd only do it if we were desperate, right?" Church's statement hung in the air for a moment before he turned over the printout to reveal several scrawled names and numbers. "I've got a list of qualified people here."
<
br />   Ruth closed her eyes and jabbed her finger down at random. "They say a leap of faith can cause miracles."

  "Don't go getting all religious on me," Church said as he circled the name. "I have enough trouble sleeping as it is. The last thing I need is you telling me it was the Devil we saw."

  The appointment was fixed for three days hence. As the time grew closer, Church and Ruth found themselves growing increasingly anxious, as if whatever lay deep in their heads sensed its imminent removal and fought to stay in the comforting dark. Church received his first email from LauraDuSC~legion.com. She was Laura DuSantiago, a software designer at a computer games company in Bristol. She didn't actually say how the strange phenomena were connected, but she dropped some broad hints of a personal experience which had given her a unique insight. The ever more disturbing aspects of his own life had left Church oddly intrigued by what she had to say and he fired back an email straight away.

  The day was bleakly cold, with depressing sheets of rain sweeping along Kensington High Street as Church and Ruth made their way west from the tube. There was no hint of spring around the corner. The street scene was a muddy mess of browns and greys, with the occasional red plastic sign adding a garish dash of colour. A heavy smog of car fumes had been dampened down to pavement level by the continuous downpour.

  "When you're a kid the world never looks like this. What happened to all the magic?" Church said as they negotiated the honking, steaming traffic which was backed up in both directions for no apparent reason.

  "Didn't they pass a law or something? It was putting the workers off their toil." Ruth led them to shelter in W. H. Smiths' doorway for a while in the hope that the cloudburst would blow over, but their anxiety to reach the therapist's office soon drove them out again with Ruth holding a copy of Marie Claire over her head.

  Their destination lay up a side road just off the High Street. They buzzed the entryphone and dashed in out of the rain. "The pubs are open now," Church suggested. Ruth smiled wanly; for a second she almost turned back.

  The reception smelled of new carpets and polished furniture. It was functional and blandly decorated, with a blonde Sloane smiling behind a low desk. Stephen Delano, the therapist, stepped out of the back room the moment they entered, as if they had tripped some silent alarm. He was in his forties, with light brown hair that had been blow-dried back from a high forehead and a smile that wasn't exactly insincere, but which made Church uneasy nonetheless. He strode over and shook their hands forcefully.

  "Good to see you. Come on through." He led them into the rear office which was dark, warm and filled with several deep, comfortable chairs. The blinds were down and it was lit ambiently by a couple of small, well-placed lamps. Several pieces of recording equipment were sitting near the chairs. "Welcome to the womb," Delano said. "I think you'll feel comfortable and secure here. You need to feel at ease."

  Ruth slipped into one of the chairs, put her head back and closed her eyes. "Wake me when it's over."

  "You're absolutely sure you want to go through this together?" Delano continued. "I think it would be more effective to do it separately, if only to prevent what one is saying influencing the other. This isn't like surgery. Memories are delicate, easily corrupted by outside sources."

  "We do it together," Church said firmly. When they had discussed it earlier, they both instinctively felt it was something they could only face up to together.

  "Well, you're the bosses." Delano clapped his hands, then ushered Church into a chair next to Ruth's and manoeuvred a reel-to-reel recorder between them. "So we have a good record of what you say," he explained. "I can transfer it to a cassette for you to take away, and I'll store the master here."

  After a brief explanation of the principle, he dimmed the lights even further with a hand-held remote control. Church expected to feel sleepy in the gloomy warmth, but the anxiety had set an uncomfortable resonance which seemed to be buzzing around his body. He turned to look at Ruth, her face pale in the dark. She smiled at him, but the unease was apparent in her eyes. Delano pulled up a chair opposite and began to talk in measured tones that were so low Church occasionally had trouble hearing him. After a minute or two, the words were rolling in and out of his consciousness like distant thunder and he was suspended in time.

  For what could have been one minute or ten, the sensation was pleasurable, but then Church began to get an odd feeling of disquiet. On a level he couldn't quite grasp, he was sensing they were not alone in the room. He wanted to shout out a warning to Ruth and Delano, but his mouth wouldn't respond, nor would his neck muscles when he tried to turn his head so he could look around. He was convinced there was a presence somewhere in the shadows in the corner of the room, malign, watching them balefully, waiting for the right moment to make its move. When the sensation faded a moment later, Church convinced himself it was just a by-product of Delano's hypnosis, but it didn't go away completely.

  "It is the morning of February 7," Delano intoned calmly. "Where are you, Jack?"

  Church found himself talking even though he wasn't consciously aware of moving his mouth. "I can't sleep. I've gone out for a walk to wear myself out so I'll drop off quickly. I have bad dreams." He swallowed; his throat felt like it was closing up. "It's foggy, a real pea-souper. I've never seen it like that before, like something out of Dickens. I see a woman washing something in the river …" A spasm convulsed him. "No..

  "It's okay, Jack. You rest a moment," Delano said quickly. "Ruth, where are you?"

  Ruth's chest grew tighter; she sucked in a deep breath until her lungs burned. "I've been to The Fridge. Clive is whining on. He realises we've got nothing in common." Her voice turned spontaneously singsong: "`Why don't you do this? Why don't you do that?' He doesn't really want me, just the woman he thinks I am. He gets wound up … blows his top … walks off. I'm a bit frightened-it's so quiet, so still-but I try not to show it. I can make it home in a few minutes if I walk quickly. Then I hear the sound of … a fight? … coming from under the bridge." Her breath became more laboured. She wondered obliquely if she was having a heart attack.

  "Jack, do you hear the fight now?" Delano's voice seemed to be floating away from both of them.

  "Yes. I was frightened by the old woman, but when I hear them fighting I forget her. I could walk on … ignore it … but that's not right. I've got to try to help. Somebody might be in trouble."

  "Are you afraid for yourself?"

  "A little. But if I could do something to help I've got to try. Too many people walk by. I find the steps down to the river. They're wet … I go down slowly. There're more scuffling noises. A grunt. I wonder if there's an animal down there. Maybe a dog or … something. I can smell the river. Everywhere's so damp. My heart's beating so loud. I edge along the wall." Another spasm. He thought he almost saw something; was it in the room or in his head?

  "Take a rest, Jack. Ruth?"

  "I go down the steps. I'm ready to run at any moment, but I'm aware I've got heels on. If the worst comes to the worst I'll have to kick them off. They're expensive though … I don't want to lose them. It's dark under the bridge. I can't see anything. I move closer. I think I've bitten my lip … I can taste blood." She heaved in another juddering breath; each one was getting harder and harder. "There're two men. They just look like shadows at first. One of them's big, the biggest man I've ever seen. He's shaking the smaller one. I look over and there's another man there watching the fight. I can see he's come from the other side. I'm relieved … I'm not alone."

  "Is it jack?" Delano asked quietly.

  "Yes, yes, it's Church. He's got a strong face. He looks decent. He makes me feel safer. We both look at the two men-"

  "Is he dead?" Church suddenly interjected, his voice too loud. "Christ, I think he's dead! No … he's moving. But the giant's picking him up. How can he be so strong? Just one arm … what's going on? … he's going to break his neck!"

  "Calm down," Delano hushed.

  "Don't do it or I'm going to call t
he police!" Ruth yelled. She snapped forward in her seat, then slumped back.

  "Take it easy now," Delano said soothingly. "Be peacef-"

  "Stop!" Church thrashed to one side. Delano placed a comforting hand on Church's forearm, but Church knocked it away wildly.

  "He's looking-" Ruth was wheezing, but she couldn't seem to draw any breath into her lungs.

  11 — at us!" Church continued.

  Delano was alarmed at the paleness of her face. "I think that's enough now," he began. "It's time to take a break. We can come back to this."

  "My God! Look at-" Church gasped.

  "— his face! It's changing-"

  — melting-"

  They were convulsing in their seats. Delano grabbed both their wrists, gripped by anxiety that he was losing control; they were all losing control. He stood up so he could place his head between them. "On the count of three …"

  "Not human!"

  "His eyes-"

  — red-"

  — a demon!" Ruth gasped. "Twisted … monstrous …" She leaned to one side and vomited on to the carpet.

  "One …"

  "Evil!" Jack cried. "I feel evil coming off it! It's looking at me!"

  Ruth vomited again, then stumbled off the chair to her knees.

  "I can't bear to look at its face!"

  "Three …"

  For a second, Delano was terrified he wouldn't be able to bring them out of it, but gradually they seemed to come together, as if he were watching them swim up from deep water. Church bobbed forward and put his face in his hands. He felt like he was burning up, his hair slick with sweat. Ruth levered herself back into the chair and sat there with her eyes shut.

  Delano was visibly shaken. There was sweat on his own brow and his hands were trembling as he switched off the tape recorder. Frantically he thumbed the remote control until the light flared up too bright and drove the shadows from the room. "Well that was an unusual experience," he mumbled bathetically. He fetched them both water, which they sipped in silence. Then called in his assistant to clean up the carpet. It was a full ten minutes until they had recovered.