The Crooked Letter: Books of the Cataclysm: One

by Sean Williams

  A police dog, he told himself. And Pukje had triggered the fire alarm using a cigarette lighter…

  Once out of the stairwell, he descended cautiously through splashes of second-hand moonlight that lay across his path. As Pukje had said, the floor below the one on which he had awakened was linked to another building, a squat, dark brick construction with rounded windows and elaborate casings. Hadrian followed a glass-lined corridor across a street to its third floor. As he crossed the self-contained bridge, he looked from this new perspective at the city. The skyline was a mad jumble of straight lines and sharp angles silhouetted against the night sky. There were no lights at all: not in the street or in the buildings. A power blackout, he thought, not just a local failure—like New York in 2003.

  Where were the headlights of cars? he wondered. The roads were as dark as the windows.

  And all he found in the next building were more reasons to be puzzled.

  It had been recently occupied, that much was certain. Nurses’ stations were littered with paper and medications; as they would have been during the course of a normal working day. Wards contained beds with rumpled sheets and hollowed pillows. Cupboards held the effects of patients who, although nowhere to be seen, had made their presence felt in dozens of ways. Browning flowers wilted on shelves. Colourful cards adorned windowsills and bathroom shelves, empty platitudes laid bare. Magazines lay open on bedside tables beside half-empty glasses and meals barely picked at. The only things missing were the patients and the staff tending them.

  Hundreds of people had disappeared for no obvious reason, giving him the run of the building. Where had they gone? When would they come back? He was inevitably put in mind of the Marie Celeste.

  Hadrian was shivering by then as much from nervousness as from the cold. Damp and exposed, he resisted stealing clothes abandoned by the missing patients. Instead, he opened a supply cupboard and helped himself to navy pants and a loose-fitting white shirt. There was nothing for his feet.

  Tucked away in a narrow, gloomy dead end he found a doorway marked “Authorised Access Only.” It wasn't locked. Behind it a narrow service stairway wound down into absolute darkness. He found a torch in a nearby desk, but it didn't work. The best he could do was a cigarette lighter.

  The steps were old and worn, with rounded edges. At their bottom was a scuffed metal door. He pushed it open a crack, expecting to find himself in some sort of morgue, tiled green and sterile. Instead, he saw a large, filthy cellar, cluttered with arcane equipment and lit by flickering firelight. Shadows danced in distant corners. Reflected light gleamed off metal edges and glass dials, looking like eyes. Hadrian edged sideways into the basement and stood for a long moment with the door at his back.

  The air was hot and close, despite the basement's size. The light issued from the door of a large furnace on the far side of the room. Decades worth of junk had accumulated in every clear space, reducing the odds of him finding anything, even an object as large as a human body. He couldn't guess where to start to look.

  Not at first, anyway. If his brother's body had been brought here to be disposed of, then one place more than any other posed a possible solution.

  Hadrian pushed himself away from the door and circled the massive metal bulk of the furnace. It emitted a powerful subsonic rumble as it digested coal and turned it into heat for the antiquated building above. Pipes circled it like metal ropes, attempting to contain the terrible pressure in its guts. It had the air of something about to break free and lumber around the room, crushing everything in its path.

  The furnace's small door was made of toughened glass, smudged black from years of service and as wide across as one of Hadrian's outstretched arms. He peered through it but could see nothing except glowing coals and heat. A heavy iron bar and a shovel rested nearby. He grabbed the bar and banged the latch until it fell away and he could tug the door open. It was like looking into hell.

  A blast of heat rolled over him. The low-frequency rumble increased. Hadrian shielded his eyes. The space within was as large as an industrial oven. Tortured air made chaos of its contents. He gradually discerned glowing lumps of coal and ash in fiery drifts, all painted in shades of orange. The barrage of flame and superheated air tantalised him with hints of things tossed into the furnace for disposal—perhaps illegally—including syringes and empty drug containers.

  There was nothing resembling a person. Hadrian imagined Seth's body shrivelling up like a raisin, curling into a knot and shrinking, collapsing upon itself until what ashes remained were caught in the updraught and hurled skywards through the ancient, caked chimney.

  As he stood looking at the glowing coals, he heard a voice calling his name.

  “Hadrian Castillo,” it said, “why are you running? Show yourself. You will come to no harm.”

  He recognised the thick, slightly formal accent. The voice belonged to Lascowicz.

  “We have something in common, you know. We are both completely out of our depth. I did not know who you were, at first. I did not know who I was. Now that I have realised, perhaps together we can find a solution to the mess the world is in.”

  Hadrian backed away from the furnace. He wasn't imagining the voice. It was real, but there was an unusual quality to it, as though he wasn't hearing it entirely through his ears. It became stronger as he moved back the way he had come, around the furnace and across the basement.

  Gently, he opened the door to the narrow stairwell. The voice echoed out of it.

  “I know you can hear me. Many things are changing around you. Can you feel it? Do you have the slightest idea what happened to you and your brother? To me? If not, you are in grave danger. We can help you. We are the good guys, Hadrian. We are trying to save the world.”

  He closed the door and tried not to listen. The detective and his sidekick had obviously managed to make the hospital's intercom system work. He wasn't going to be gullible enough to fall for their appeal. Although they had seemed innocent enough at first, he couldn't afford to trust them now. He would have to find out what had happened to him on his own; and then he would find Ellis and get on with his life.

  But first, there was the matter of Seth's body.

  When Hadrian had moved away from the furnace, he had felt something strange tugging at him. The feeling had been strong, and as he came back to the furnace it returned. He felt he was getting close to something important.

  He peered down into the orange-hot coals once more. This time he saw more than just the remains of burned coal and rubbish: visible to one side was a distinct surface mostly buried beneath a dune of ash, a smoothness where everything else was rough. An odd note.

  Hadrian hefted the shovel in his hands, wondering how far he could reach into the oven. If he was quick, he decided that he would just about make it. Taking off the cotton uniform top and feeling the heat roll in waves up his exposed skin, he gripped the shovel by its handle and lunged into the furnace.

  He missed with his first attempt. The second only pushed the object further back into the ash. The third didn't quite uncover it, but did make it tilt on its burning bed. He was about to try a fourth time when the heat became too much for him and he had to withdraw.

  His eyeballs felt as though they had been baked in their sockets. All he could smell was burning hair. He breathed deeply of relative coolness before turning back and raising the shovel to try again.

  Staring at him from the furnace's hatchway was the black eye of a skull. Just one. The rest of the skull was buried in ash. The smooth surface of the skull's temple wasn't what he had initially seen in the ash; that lay to the skull's right and looked more like a leg bone or a rib. The skull had been accidentally exposed by his blind flailing.

  He froze, knowing deep down that it belonged to Seth. He didn't need an autopsy to tell him that. He didn't need to hear the calm, sympathetic voice of a doctor or a policeman explaining in layperson's terms that his brother's body had been dismembered and stuffed into the furnace, where fire would eve
ntually get rid of the evidence. He didn't need to sit through an endless inquest debating the finer points of dental records and molten blobs that had once been a watch, a belt buckle, a monogrammed pocketknife. Hadrian knew.

  He sank down on the oil-stained floor and leaned on the shovel for support. Tears evaporated in the blast-furnace heat before they reached his cheeks. He had his proof that his brother was dead. He knew it as surely as if it was his own skeleton in the furnace, slowly cremating. Seth was gone.

  He always liked the heat, Hadrian thought, with a sound that was half sob, half laugh. He put a hand over his mouth to keep in the noise.

  Distantly he could still hear Lascowicz repeating his demand for Hadrian to show himself, turn himself in, do the right thing. Soon all pretence of friendliness was gone from the detective's voice.

  “Do not think you can run, boy. Your chances of lasting a day on your own are slim. And getting away from us, even if you do survive, is unlikely.”

  There was a leering, cruel edge to the words. They wound their way into Hadrian's head and sapped the will from him. Lascowicz was right. What was the point of fighting? He was just one person against a world of uncertainty. He didn't know who he was any more without his brother—his mirror, his nemesis—to define him.

  (“He's all you talk about,” Ellis complained, once. “You say that he gets on your nerves, that sometimes you hate him and long to be free of him. Are you sure that's what you really want?”

  “Do I have any choice?” Seth asked.

  Hadrian held his breath, listening to their conversation surreptitiously. They thought he was asleep. Or maybe they didn't care.

  “Be careful what you wish for,” she said. “You might just get it.”)

  “Give in now,” said Lascowicz, “and deny us the pleasure of hunting you. I dare you.”

  Hadrian shook his head, brushing the detective's influence off him like dandruff. He wouldn't give in until he found out what had happened to Ellis. He still had no idea where she was. If he poked deeper in the furnace, would he find another skull?

  He forced himself to move. His knees unbent like rusted joints. Ash and burnt hair stuck to sweat streaming down his arms and chest.

  With breath held tightly in his chest and eyes in slits, he stabbed deep into the coals with the shovel's stained blade. He dug at random until the shovel was full. Then, grunting, he allowed his muscles and instinct to propel him backwards, away from the hatch. The shovel load came with him. As soon as it was clear, he tipped the contents onto the floor. Glowing nuggets hissed and tumbled, turning black and white around the edges almost instantly. He didn't stop to study them. While his will remained strong, fuelled by anger, he went back for another shovel load, and another.

  The air was soon full of the smell of smoke. With each hurried thrust and lurch his strength halved, until he was gasping despite the heat searing his lungs. He branded his arm on the hatch and barely felt it. A coal touched the sleeve of his discarded shirt and he kicked it away before fire blossomed. His toe registered the burn but it didn't slow him down.

  Eleven shovel loads were all he could manage. He almost tipped the last one on his feet, and he knew then that he was pushing his luck. He dropped the coals with the rest and staggered away, wiping his face.

  Seth's skull had tipped onto its back. The ground was littered with cooling fragments—some of it innocent coal, some clearly belonging to the skeleton he had found: vertebrae, anklebones, a gracefully curved rib. They were black, not the white he had expected.

  From a distance, he peered into the furnace. There was no companion that he could see.

  My brother, he thought, still breathing heavily. Seth's name meant “the chosen one.” Hadrian's was supposed to mean “the little dark one.” How had it come to this—this utter reversal of fate?

  He looked around for a bucket and half-filled it with water from a tap. Some he drank. The rest he tipped on the coals. Steam hissed noisily in the stifling room, making him nervous. Lascowicz's voice had ceased, and the absence of it was worse than its presence.

  I dare you…

  Hadrian's instincts were groaning like hot steam through the boiler's pipes. He had what he needed, for now. Once he was safe, he could contact the local authorities—whoever they were—and see about finding Ellis and sorting things out. While he was on his own, he was vulnerable, and getting caught in the basement wasn't going to do Ellis any good. He needed to get out of the hospital—the faster, the better—and find an Australian embassy. He would be safe there. He could start to put the jagged pieces of his life back together.

  By the light of the furnace, he reached down with a rag and selected one finger bone from the ashes. It was still hot, and he wrapped it carefully before putting it into his pocket. Stepping over the rest, he draped the shirt across his shoulders and sought another way out of the basement.

  “The predator/prey relationship is not a passive one, nor one entered into lightly. Both roles demand equal amounts of inspiration and perseverance.”

  THE BOOK OF TOWERS, EXEGESIS 8:11

  He crouched by a door, listening to hushed voices he knew he shouldn't be overhearing. He didn't want to listen to them, but he couldn't move away.

  It had started earlier in the evening, with a schoolyard game. If two people by accident said the same word or phrase simultaneously, the quickest to call “Jinx!” earned the right to punish the other. Until the victor said the vanquished's name in full, the vanquished was forbidden to speak. Ellis had won the right off Hadrian fair and square. The words they'd said at the same time were “without honour,” regarding prophets in their own countries.

  So he'd sat in silence as Ellis and Seth had talked and laughed around him. They asked him questions and put on a show of forgetfulness when he didn't answer. He never did. The game was stupid. It was childish and idiotic. He would show them just how pointless it was by sticking to the rules to the bitter end, whenever that would be. Cunctando regitur mundis, he'd read in a book once. Waiting, one conquers all.

  He waited and waited, ignoring their baiting and refusing to let his annoyance show. Ellis came close to relenting on several occasions—or feigned doing so—but never once said his full name. He drank harder than he normally would and simmered in his own frustration. Seth enjoyed his humiliation, delighted at having the upper hand again. He poked Hadrian, called him names, knocked over his beer, threw his book across the room—anything to get a response. He got nothing but cold, hard silence. Hadrian wanted his brother to know just how fruitless and hollow his taunting was—and would be, no matter how long Hadrian had to endure it.

  The game had been a joke for about one minute. For three hours, it was a determined one-sided battle.

  It was Ellis, in the end, who took it too far. Smiling, daring Hadrian to protest, she took Seth into the next room and shut the door behind them. Alarmed, Hadrian went to follow, but the door was locked. He heard muffled giggles, and pounded on the door.

  “Who is it?” Seth called. “Tell us who you are, and maybe we'll let you in.”

  He couldn't answer. He wouldn't.

  “Is it the Pope?” Ellis asked. “Is it Father Christmas?”

  “Maybe it's Elvis,” suggested Seth.

  “Or the Devil. Is that you, Satan? We gave at the office.”

  So it went. Name after name, none of them his. Just say it, he urged her. Say my bloody name and put me out of my misery, but she never did, and eventually they tired of the game. What was the fun in taunting someone if you couldn't see or even hear their reaction? After a few pointless poundings, he slumped against the door and simply listened.

  That was when the whispering began. If they shouted to him, he could hear them perfectly. Normal speech was muffled by the door but comprehensible. Whispers danced on the edge of hearing: audible, but worse than silence. Vowels and consonants that simply wouldn't gel, no matter how hard he strained, carried with them an absence—of meaning, of intent, of emotional connection—tha
t cut him more deeply than the taunts.

  It was one thing not to be able to speak up in his defence—another thing entirely not to be able to hear what was being said about him.

  Even as he fumed, he knew that he was behaving as badly as them. He was too drunk to stop it, but not so self-deceiving that he couldn't stand outside himself and see that his attempt to transform victimisation into empowerment was likely to fail. He was intelligent and passionate, but that wasn't enough on its own to turn the status quo inside out. The situation demanded something he didn't have: their cooperation. Without it, he was doomed to try and fail, over and over, until he gave in. And that wasn't going to happen any time soon.

  He fell asleep with his ear pressed hard against the door, and slid without noticing onto the floor and over onto his left side. The whispers haunted his dreams, calling to him, trying to make him respond, but he wouldn't speak; he would tell them nothing, give them nothing. His certainty was absolute. He wouldn't give the two of them what they wanted. Ever.

  Hadrian came to a halt in front of a symbol spray-painted in lurid yellow on the back of a bus shelter. It had caught his eye and drawn him closer, hinting at meaning but eluding his understanding. When he reached out with one hand to touch the paint, he found it to be wet. Whoever had sprayed it had done so recently. Why, and where the artist had got to, wasn't so easy to determine.

  The winter sun had come up not long after his escape from the hospital, half an hour earlier. He had run through frozen-open electric doors without looking back, half expecting Lascowicz or his lackeys to have barricaded the place to keep him captive. He imagined SWAT teams descending on ropes and helicopters to rein him in before he had gone fifty metres.