The Crooked Letter: Books of the Cataclysm: One

by Sean Williams

  “The world as we see it is not the world in its entirety. If we cover our eyes with our hand, the world does not disappear. Similarly, the world does not end at the horizon, at the boundaries of our country, at the outer fringes of family and acquaintances, at death. It continues where we do not.”

  THE BOOK OF TOWERS, FRAGMENT 97

  H adrian woke with a moan from the nightmare, flailing at the sheets. They felt like choking hands around his throat.

  It took him a moment to clear the images from his mind and for reality to assert itself. His surroundings first. He was lying in a bed that wasn't his, a high, sturdy affair with metal bars surrounded by a white curtain suspended from the ceiling on rails. The air smelled faintly of disinfectant.

  A hospital, he thought. I'm in a hospital. Why?

  Memories came next. He had been on holiday in Europe, visiting as many cities as he and Seth could fit into three months. Winter had been spreading across the land, bringing darkness and cold as he had never experienced before. The northern latitudes were as far from his antipodean world as the surface of the moon.

  They had missed the film festival in Sweden, but there had been compensations. The royal palace, Riddarholmskyrkan, Grönalund, and a suite they'd saved up for, instead of the usual cheap digs. A fellow traveller called Ellis…

  Emotions were the last to arrive, and they came in a flood. Surprise and anger accompanied his recollections of the confrontation with Seth, then fear as he had chased his brother through the streets of Stockholm. He had despaired while looking for Seth in the subway, then experienced genuine terror for the first time in his life as the Swede had confronted them with the knife.

  And now grief, confusion, pain, futility…

  He curled up and wept. For a long while, he was incapable of anything else. It wasn't a dream. His brother had been murdered, or at least grievously injured, and now he was in hospital. Maybe all three of them were.

  He checked himself between sobs, looking for injuries. His throat was tender to the touch, and his vocal cords burned. There was a sharp, stinging pain in his wrist, but that faded the more awake he became.

  “Crazy weather.”

  Hadrian froze at the voice from beyond the curtain, although it wasn't clear whether the man had spoken to him or someone else. He didn't want anyone to hear him blubbering.

  “I haven't seen a storm that bad since I was a kid,” responded a second voice, older than the first. “That's what I'd normally say, but I've really never seen anything like this.”

  “Did you catch the forecast?” The first speaker had an American accent that jarred against the second's liquid Scandinavian.

  “Television's out. Radio, too. Power's been off most of today. The paramedics were talking about more cuts.”

  “Lucky the hospital has its own generator.”

  “It went off earlier,” said a third male voice. “You were asleep.”

  “Really? Well, hell. Glad I missed that.”

  “Personally, I blame global warming.”

  Footsteps sounded across the room.

  “Any word on lunch?” asked one of the patients.

  “It'll be late, boys, like breakfast,” came a new male voice, high pitched with a faintly British accent. “Don't worry. We're all suffering.”

  A shadow reached up to part the curtain. Hadrian wiped his eyes as the person casting it stepped into sight.

  “You're awake.” The statement came from a slight, finely featured man dressed in a light blue theatre uniform. His tan hair was parted neatly to one side. “We've been wondering when you'd come to.”

  “I'm sorry.” Hadrian apologised for no good reason. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “It's hard to tell. You've been unconscious ever since you arrived here.”

  Hadrian looked at his watch. Its LCD face was blank. He was naked under the sheet apart from a pair of boxer shorts. There was no sign of his bloodstained clothes on the bed or on the chair beside it. The bedside cupboard was shut.

  “Where am I? Which hospital?” The orderly's nametag said BECHARD. He hadn't moved except to step inside the curtain and let it fall behind him.

  “Don't worry. You're in good hands.”

  “Am I hurt?”

  “You haven't been harmed at all. That's good, isn't it?”

  Another shadow appeared behind the orderly, darker and larger. A throat cleared.

  “There's someone here to talk to you.” The orderly smiled, revealing white, perfectly even teeth.

  “Who?”

  “My name is Detective Volker Lascowicz.”

  Hadrian was struck by the man's physicality as soon as he stepped into the space around his bed. He was heavyset and bald, and imposingly tall. His eyes were deep set and took Hadrian in with a single sweep. He wore a bone-coloured overcoat and no tie. Grey hair curled under his throat over the open collar of a white shirt.

  The orderly nodded deferentially and left them alone.

  “I can appreciate that this is a difficult time for you, Hadrian,” said the detective, “but there are some questions I need to ask. Do you mind?”

  A wave of indecision swept through him. He was so far out of his depth that he didn't know what to do. His brother had been murdered before his eyes. He was in hospital. A policeman wanted to interview him.

  “I want to know what's going on,” he said, fighting a second wave of tears. “I want to call my parents.” He stopped, unable to go on. I want to go home! I want everything to go back the way it used to be! The primal naivety of his emotions was dismaying.

  “I am sorry,” said the detective. “The phones are out, including mobiles. I need to talk to you about what happened. Tell me what you know, and there might yet be time to act.”

  “There must have been witnesses. The train was full. Ellie…” He swallowed. “How did I get here? Did someone call you?”

  The detective tilted his head. “You were found in a cul-de-sac and brought here for treatment. Do you recall this?”

  “What about Seth? Was he there?”

  “Tell me what you remember, Hadrian. Then I will tell you what I know about Seth, and we will see what we can do about it.”

  Swiss? Belgian? Hadrian couldn't place the man's accent. It was slight, but discernible: a faint hint of something Germanic. Whatever it was, it was definitely not Swedish.

  Hadrian was distracting himself. He couldn't help it. He didn't want to remember what had happened. He was doing his best to forget whole slabs of it.

  “There's an awful lot I don't understand,” he said.

  The detective nodded again. “That makes two of us. Together, perhaps, we can work it out.”

  Hadrian resigned himself to the inevitable. “All right. But is it possible to do it out of here?” The murmur of voices beyond the curtain had fallen echoingly silent. “There must be somewhere else we can talk.”

  The detective shook his head. “Again, I am sorry. The hospital is very full. There have been many accidents overnight. We can keep our voices down.”

  Hadrian nodded, and quashed a question about what was going on beyond the walls around him.

  All his life, Hadrian had struggled to deal with a concept that other people seemed to accept quite happily. He and his brother were identical, but at the same time they weren't. They were reflected, opposite. Although it sounded simple, it wasn't. How could the opposite be the same as identical? It was in fact very confusing. They had both become so deeply tired of trying to explain their difference to ignorant strangers that sometimes they denied that they were identical at all.

  As with many twins, they had gone through phases in which other people had seemed less important than the made-up worlds they shared or the secret languages they invented, but they had eventually grown bored with that, and worse. Hadrian suffered frequent migraines as a teenager, and was treated for depression at fifteen. Seth always said that it was because Hadrian thought too much, that he should just accept his role as the smaller,
frailer twin without fighting it.

  There was more to it than that. Although they could barely conceive of life apart, there was only so much one could do with one's reflection—hence, the holiday.

  Within a month they had met hundreds of new people and had seen sights to rival their childhood dreams. Yet even in such strange surroundings, there was no escaping who they were. They had the same blue eyes and olive skin; the same slender build and average height; the same dark hair, which they both kept very short; the same long fingers. Wherever they went, the Castillo brothers were asked less about their origins than about their relationship. Some people thought twins were lucky and actively sought their company; others avoided them or made strange signs with their hands to avoid bad fortune.

  They had only met one other set of twins in their journey, and that had been an unsettling encounter. The four of them had sat in a dive in Turkey for half an hour, awkwardly trying to kick-start a conversation, before giving up and going their separate ways.

  Those twins weren't mirrors, Hadrian remembered. They were just identical and couldn't understand what it was like. There had been no point of commonality. In all their lives, Hadrian and Seth had never met another set of true mirror twins. Probably, he had come to think, they never would.

  “Perverts? I would never have guessed.”

  “Not perverts, El Capitan. Inverts. From situs invertus. That's what we are.”

  “My little introverts,” Ellis said, her voice echoing out of her pint glass as she drained its contents. It hadn't taken them long to get drunk. Three of a dozen young people in a backpacker bar, they had come looking to make new friends and relax, or at least explore a common language. There was a sweaty, flushed look to all of them that spoke of too much exercise, not enough sleep, and infrequent access to showers. Hadrian had surreptitiously checked his underarms when their new friend joined them.

  Ellis Quick was slight and perhaps twenty years of age, a little older than Hadrian and his brother and only a little shorter. Light brown hair hung in a tidy ponytail between her shoulder blades. Her eyes were hazel and she wasn't wearing any make up; her nose was bent slightly, as though it had once been broken. She smoked but never bought her own cigarettes.

  It was impossible to tell who she had noticed at first: Hadrian or Seth. But something about one of them must have caught her eye and prompted her to come over. Being fellow Australians, it was only natural that they should get on, or try to.

  “You're not paying attention,” Seth complained. “You broke your promise, and now I'm trying to explain. It's very important.”

  “Sorry. Where did you get up to?”

  “Mirror twins are two people who share the same genetic code.”

  “Like identical twins?”

  “Like identical twins, but with one very important difference. Identical twins are identical. Mirror twins are reversed. We're back to front. Reflections. My hair parts on the right; Hadrian's on the left.”

  “How do you tell?” she asked, glancing at Seth's scalp then Hadrian's. Their hair was jet black; both of them preferred to keep their heads shaved.

  “We just can.” Hadrian remembered long nights as a child spent checking for details that had been reversed: this crooked toenail, this eye slightly lower than the other, that weak knee. There was no doubt about it. They were like the butterfly paintings they'd made in kindergarten by blobbing paint on one side of a piece of paper then folding it over to create a reversed image on the other side. It had been disconcerting to realise that, were this analogy true, he constituted half a painting, not a whole.

  “How deep does it go?”

  “All the way,” Seth said, his tone boastful. “Hadrian's heart is on the wrong side of his chest. His stomach and liver are reversed, too. That's what it means to be situs invertus. He's a reflection of me right down to the bone.”

  “We're reflections of each other,” Hadrian corrected.

  “Even your brains?”

  “Not our brains. That's impossible.”

  “Have they checked?”

  “No.” Seth looked irritated for a second, although it was a question that had often fascinated Hadrian. “It just couldn't happen.”

  Hadrian leaned in close to her, relishing Ellis's rich, spicy smell. He still couldn't quite believe that they were all getting along so well. He supposed he had her natural confidence to thank for that.

  “Go on,” Ellis Quick had said on coming up to them and introducing herself. “Get them out of your system. Quick and the dead. Quick off the mark. Quick tempered.”

  “Never occurred to me,” said Seth, the oldest and always the fastest to react to social situations. “Honest.”

  “I think you're lying, but thanks all the same. I guess you can sympathise. You must get people trying to be funny all the time. You're twins, obviously.”

  “That's right.” Hadrian found his voice, then took a sip of his beer to cover the slight waver he heard in it.

  “Identical twins, even,” she persisted. “People must always be telling you that you look the same, as if you didn't already know it. Well, I won't ask you any questions about being twins if you don't give me any grief about my name. Deal?”

  She held out her hand and Hadrian shook it. Her fingertips were damp from the glass she'd been holding, but her skin was warm.

  “Deal,” said Seth, and she gripped Seth's hand in turn.

  She had forgotten her end of the bargain within the hour.

  “Which of you is the original,” she asked next, slurring only slightly, “and which the reflection?”

  “Hadrian is the invert,” Seth said. “His heart is on the right side.”

  “If it's on the right side, how can he be the invert?”

  “Not the right side: the right side of his body.” Seth patted his left breast. “Want to check? Take a listen.”

  “I don't need to press up against your manly chest to prove anything.” She laughed happily. “With lines like that, boys, it's lucky you've got plenty of beer money.”

  Hadrian could have kicked his brother. “I'm sorry,” he said. “He didn't mean to—”

  “I know what he meant.” Ellis's good humour was direct and frank. “It's okay, really. I've heard a lot worse in the last few weeks.”

  “I'll bet you have,” said Seth.

  “Do you do this often?” she asked. “Chat up strange girls in bars together?”

  “Never,” said Hadrian, although they had fantasised about it in the past—of sharing one woman while she, in effect, experienced the same man reflected. It was an engaging dream, if an unlikely reality.

  Her gaze danced between them. “Do you swap girlfriends, then? If you're exactly the same, you could trade places without them knowing.”

  “We're not exactly the same,” said Seth, unable to hide another flash of irritation. “We're reversed, remember?”

  “I remember. I didn't say I couldn't tell you apart.” She raised her glass in salute. “I'm very observant. Not much gets by me. Try anything, and you'll be in trouble.”

  “We'll be on our best behaviour,” Seth assured her. “Honest.”

  “I didn't say that either.” Her eyes twinkled. “Let's not go dismissing too many options here…”

  “Where was it you met Ms. Quick?” asked Lascowicz. “Vienna, did you say?”

  “That's right.” Hadrian was sitting cross-legged on the bed, staring at the crumpled sheets while he recounted better times. The big detective was taking notes with erratic pen strokes, scratching softly when Hadrian faltered. His throat was still sore, and he sipped frequently from a glass of water as he talked. “We travelled together for a while.”

  “Why? Were you lovers?”

  “Not at first.” The memory was exceedingly tender to the touch.

  “Was she using you?”

  He looked up at that. Lascowicz was watching him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you give her money, pay for her accommodati
on, buy her food?”

  “No. She was never short of cash. We divided everything equally.”

  “You said that you and your brother argued. Was it over her?”

  Hadrian's eyes fell.

  “Not so equally, then,” the detective commented. There was sympathy in his eyes. “Please, I am not easily shocked. You must be honest with me if I am to understand the situation.”

  “There's nothing to understand. It has nothing to do with Ellie.”

  “She was the one who first noticed that you were being followed. And she was there when you were attacked.”

  “But she wasn't part of it.” He rallied to Ellis's defence not just because he felt he ought to but because he knew she was innocent. He had seen the look of horror on her face when Seth had been stabbed. He had experienced her nervousness in Sweden, and earlier. “It wasn't a setup. The Swede wasn't her accomplice, and we weren't being mugged.”

  “How do you know that? Have you accounted for your personal effects?”

  “I—no.” Frustration and hurt turned all too easily to anger, as they had in Stockholm. “Listen,” he said, with furious deliberation, “I'm tired of this. I want a working phone. I want to know what happened to Seth. I want you to tell me where Ellie is. If you don't start giving me answers, I'm getting up and leaving right now!”

  The detective eyed him coolly. “Your brother,” he said, “is dead.”

  Hadrian froze in the act of getting out of bed. He had seen his brother stabbed. He had woken up in unusual circumstances and known that something terrible had happened, but the words stated so bluntly, finally, still came as a shock.

  He sat back down, feeling as though he weighed more than a dozen men.

  “His body was discovered next to yours. The attending officer thought you were both dead, at first, but she found your pulse and called for an ambulance.”

  Lascowicz's formal, accented voice was no comfort. The words fell on Hadrian like tombstones. All his life he had been a reflection of his older brother, the person who, more than any other, had justified his existence. Now that person was gone. What was he now, with no one to define him?

  Seth was dead.