by Guy Adams
"You're hollow," she said, "and the hole is filled with piss and shit."
The organ surged and they clasped beneath the mirrorball.
"I wish I was dead," he said.
"So do I," she replied, "I'd hate you but I really can't be bothered."
Ryan's mother walked him in time with the music, his feet stood on hers. Despite his size she managed this just fine, towering above him, a plump giant in pink satin. She swung him around the floor, the sprinkled light from above trickling over grey, loose skin.
"I wish you weren't dead mum," said Ryan.
She said nothing, her jaw hung too low for words, clanking around her chest like dirty pearls. She simply pressed his face into her gaseous belly where it sunk deep, as if there were not flesh beneath the fabric of her dress but rotting leaf mulch.
Maggie did her best to hold onto her husband but she was too fat. The sagging folds of flesh beneath her arms caught in the straps of her frock, squirting to either side of the cheap cotton like sausage meat twisted and tied.
"There's just too much of you to love," Hawkins said, his handsome, manly face wrinkling in disgust at her bulging folds. The fat poured, wobbling, from every angle. Her colossal thighs clapping together like retarded seals, her drooping breasts running away from her chest like pink tapeworms.
She tried to beg for his love but she couldn't speak, the great collars of blubber around her neck choking her words.
For Jonah all was delirium. The organ screamed like a hundred factory whistles, leather shoes machine-gunned the walnut dance floor, laughter roared with the cacophony of a field of geese.
Hands tugged at him, plucking at his shirt, his hair his skin.
"Dance with us!" they cried. He tried, spinning out of control, bumping from one to another like a pinball, hands shoving him this way and that. Someone snatched away his eyepatches and he felt the searing hot touch of fire, sprayed down from the mirrorball landing on the useless white of his blind eyes.
Beyond that door… the words pricked at Penelope. There is a box… and inside that box is a door…
"Beyond that door…" she said looking up at Chester, his hair plastered around his skull like a newborn. "Beyond that door…"
Beyond that door is the House. A voice said, somewhere deep inside her, a terrible House, an impossible House.
"And inside that House…" she let go of Chester's hands, watching him spin away on his own into the faceless crowd, sweat dripping behind him like water from a wrung cloth.
"Inside that House is a ballroom," she said. A sudden moment of clarity pierced her head with a light greater than that thrown from the ceiling above, or the spotlit stage or…
She ran towards the stage, climbing up the ornate cherubs and the unfurling clouds to reach for the stage beyond it. The organ screeched, a train approaching a tunnel, as she clambered over a thrusting gold trumpet and fell to the dusty boards beyond it.
In front of her, ever-moving, light trails trickling out behind him as he swayed, the organist played on. Long, distended fingers pulled stops and pressed keys. Thin, lifeless hair flicked from his peeling scalp as he thrashed, his feet pounding the pedals.
"Dr. Luptna I presume?" she asked, grabbing at the flaking cadaver and wrenching him back from the organ. He squealed to be torn free, strips of skin left hanging from the organ keys like the tongues of thirsty dogs.
"Thank you," he whispered, as the last notes faded up the organ pipes to be puffed out like smoke, "I was so very tired."
The houselights came up, revealing the rest of her party, stumbling in blistered pain around the wood of the dance floor. They were crying, or raging, or gasping, each according to their nightmare.
Alan dropped to his knees, remembering Sophie on his back at the last minute and shooting out a hand to support himself so he didn't topple over any further. Maggie was clutching at herself as if insects had been crawling over her. Jonah reached for his eyepatches and sighed with relief to feel them still in place. Ryan sat still in the middle of the floor, head down to try and hide the tears in his eyes. Hawkins cradled his throbbing arm. Barnabas rubbed at his ankles, took one look at Penelope and gave a brief smile. "Good job girlie."
They took a moment to gather themselves, tightened their packs and their hearts and left that insane ballroom to the music that roared inside its own head.
INTERLUDE
On the Other Side
Whatever Martin might have imagined would be on the other side of the door it wasn't this. He stepped passed the planks and screws the door had shed and left his lonely house behind him. He recalled the noises that had baited him during the night – when he had lain in the darkness resolutely refusing to believe in the door he had just stepped through. He had heard machinery, old music, whispering, the muffled sound of a woman talking… He had conjured abattoir images: split meat, thrusting blades… all the horrors he could conceive of. That must have been fear and his own neuroses talking because it was nothing like that beyond the door. It was an old-fashioned penny arcade. Colourful wooden cabinets bleeped and flashed to the percussion of flying ball bearings. A pneumatic clown jerked and spun behind glass, fixed plaster maw offering a tinny cackle at his own private joke. Thick, red drapes kept the machines warm and hid soft, orange lights somewhere in their folds. One of the machines, The 64,000 Volt Challenge, dared him to move a silver hoop over the bends and spirals of a metal bar. Winner takes all!!! It insisted, offering a warning buzz of electricity, blue sparks bristling from the bar, as a clue as to what the loser could expect.
He moved to the next machine, an upright pinball that sent its own ball bearings around a large metal spiral waiting for someone to take its mind off the boredom. Next to that Doctor Heinrich Von Schutt's Medicinal Marvel wanted to guess his weight and offer Sagely Sanitory Advice. Martin had no wish to experience the Diagnostic marvel of the century! so he moved on. He passed them all. No desire to prove himself on Max's Magnatronic Mallet, play a hand or two on Hank Henry's Riverboat Saloon or watch the race at Grand Falls Steeplechase.
"I know what you want," a woman said causing Martin to cry out in panic. He spun around to face Madame Arcana, the Mystic Beauty of the East. She stood in her glass cubicle, one shapely wooden leg crooked up to show off the shine on her cream-coffee thigh. She was swathed in layers of colourful silk. Her glass eyes sparkled from beneath a headdress of golden coins. "I know what you want," she said again, her walnut and brass voice box offering a tone richer and more compelling than Martin would ever have thought possible. He walked over to her, stroking his fingers on the cool glass of her cabinet as a motor within her hips began to jig.
"Beautiful," he whispered, a dreamy wave falling over him as he watched her dance. He shoved his hand into his pocket for a coin as he pressed his nose against the glass. He found some change but was barely able to tear his eyes away from hers to see what he had. Surely it wouldn't work anyway? Wouldn't it be built to take old pennies? He checked the slot and figured a two pence piece might just do the trick, slotting it in and hoping for the best.
Madame Arcana took his donation gratefully. She shimmied on her pistons offering a partial glimpse of her beautifully planed pine breasts as the silks swayed from side to side.
Martin pressed himself closer, wishing he could touch. His head buzzed with a sleepy eroticism. He pressed his cheeks against the cabinet, his mouth huffing condensation on the glass as Madame Arcana flicked her long fingers and produced a thick card from within her palm.
Martin was quite sure he was asleep now. The waking world didn't offer such pleasures. Not for him. His body felt light, the only blood that seemed to flow was in his groin as he unselfconsciously stared at his wooden beauty through half-closed eyes.
"What's my fortune?" he whispered.
Madame Arcana pressed the card against the glass so that he could see the words written on it: "Frankly? Not good…"
Her arms and legs shot through the glass grabbing at Martin and pulling him close
. Squealing in a state of sudden wakefulness, Martin felt a heat growing between her wooden thighs, a heat that drew him within her like a bird sucking up a worm. His bones popped as he was forced inside her wooden cavity, a labial slit parting along her torso, the better to eat him whole. She leaned her head back as if in orgasm and the last glimpse of light Martin was afforded was from between her painted, crimson lips as she snapped close around him.
She began to digest, leaving a handful of pocket change, scattered on the floor tiles, as Martin's only legacy.
PART EIGHT
Once Upon a Time in Valencia
ONE
The Good
1.
Ashe was used to the heat. When you spent long enough in warm climates you developed a tolerance, a state of mind as much as anything else, that allowed you to get on with your business whatever the damn thermometer chose to say. You thought cool thoughts and let the body do its sweating.
When he had worked as a history professor – a life that now seemed to belong to someone else, he was a man of multiple identities these days – the summers had got to him. But that was as much his weight as the sun. When you carried an extra sixty pounds of cinnamon pastry on your waistline you were going to struggle when the air got warm. Now, slimmer, older and much more focused, it wasn't a problem. Honestly. He could deal with it.
Christ but it was hot.
And then there were the flies. Persistent bastards, seemingly convinced that there was nothing tastier in the world than his face. They bashed against his eyes and lips as if they were coated in honey. Every time he brushed them away they returned, mindlessly. It was all he could do not to pull out his gun and start shooting. They were driving him crazy.
He had spent a slow few days in Indonesia, recovering from his experience on the water and the savage crack he'd received to his head. A young boy had found him shouting at the sky amongst the dead fish and driftwood. "The seagulls will not hurt you," the boy had insisted in response to his raving. Not speaking a word of the language, Ashe didn't understand.
The kid had called his parents, the parents had called the local doctor and within a couple of hours Ashe was being looked after by the best that Kupang could offer. By modern standards this wasn't much. No cool hospital sheets, saline drip or candy-stripers fussing around, but it had been enough. Ashe had got back on his feet. On his last day he had even had time to make preparations. He had dried his money out, given some to the boy's family as a measure of thanks and spent a few hours on the beach, awaiting his train, reading his notebook and planning the journey of the box.
He imagined its route, not as dry ink on a page but rather as a visual journey, fleshing out the details he didn't know with best guesses or just plain imagination. From its last sighting on the ocean it had appeared next in the Australian town of Darwin. He would have to hope it could make its own way there, he suspected it would. A subconscious impression rather than anything concrete but he had good reason to trust his gut in this instance. He pictured the box washed up on the beach, nestled amongst the seaweed and shell just as he had been a few days ago. There it was found by an American entrepreneur called Terrance Arthur, in Darwin to enquire about factory space and trade potential. Ashe tried to imagine Arthur's face but all he could see was his own, not surprising given that the man was his father. A father he could no more remember than anything else about his formative life. Was Terrance Arthur a good man? Ashe suspected not. Given what Penelope had told him it would seem that Chester had lived in fear of his parents. A tyrannical pair who ruled their son in all things. No, thought Ashe, picturing young Chester pulling the trigger of a gun, or punching a naked Penelope to the side of the head, not all things… he kept some parts to himself.
At some point Chester – you, his own voice insisted in his head – got the box. Perhaps his father had given it to him as a cheap gift, a washed-up opportunity. Perhaps Chester had simply taken a shine to it and helped himself. He had obviously conducted some research. From what Penelope had said, Chester had known the box's potential, known it was a gateway to some other place. He would eventually make that journey and see for himself. Then Chester's days would be numbered. For Ashe did think of him as another person, whatever his subconscious had to say on the matter. Chester was the man Ashe had the misfortune of inheriting his body from, nothing more. Once inside the House, Chester would play his final part in the prisoner's game. Then have his memory wiped by those library worms until there was nothing left. A hollow man waiting to be filled with something better. Ashe remembered the urge he had felt to shoot Walsingham, the willingness to kill Yoosuf's accomplice… perhaps that man had not been quite as hollow as he hoped. No. No point in thinking that way.
He continued imagining the passage of the box. He pictured it tumbling from Penelope's hands in the narrow drainage gulley that ran alongside Terrance Arthur's New York meat-packing plant, bobbing in the gushing, foul water before dropping into the darkness of the Hudson. From there it floated along the current, en route to its next pair of hands: Alvarado Gomez, a young sailor stood on the dock, cigarette in his mouth and impatience for the ocean in his heart. Perhaps Gomez caught a flash of that dirty New York moon as it bounced off the brass hinges of the box? Whatever had drawn his eye, Gomez fished it out of the water – in Ashe's mind he could see the man clearly, stretching out over the river, boathook in his hand as he dragged the box within reach – and fancied he'd found an unusual gift for his young wife back home. Certainly the box was attractive (to some it was irresistible).
At what point Gomez decided that it wasn't such a lovely gift after all Ashe couldn't decide. Though he imagined the sailor lying in the dark of his bunk, turning the box over in his hands and wondering what precisely he had found. It wouldn't open but perhaps Gomez had been grateful of that, worried what he might see should it ever do so. Perhaps the box had played its trick of ticking when observed, the essence of its maker bristling inside the wood, eager to meet the air. Whatever it was that had unnerved Gomez – for certainly something had – he couldn't wait to pass the box on to someone else once the ship made port. Why he hadn't simply thrown it overboard Ashe couldn't begin to guess, certainly he had almost given it away at the first opportunity. According to the torn page his younger self had procured from the sales ledger of Luis Cortez, dealer in antiques, art and opium – though he wasn't as fastidious in keeping sales paperwork for the latter – Gomez had sold the box for the sort of spare change a sailor can dispose of in one vigorous hour of shore leave.
And there the box had rested for a while. Cortez could see no great value in a box that couldn't be opened, having given up on the trick of it after half an hour of probing and shaking. It gathered dust rather than victims. It was neither the first nor the last time the box would share shelf space with unconventional treasure. Antique shops – or stalls like Yoosuf's – were regular resting points along its journey.
It was Jesus Garcia that would finally liberate the box, catching a glimpse of it while searching for something ostentatious to hang on his wall. Garcia smuggled weaponry for the Republican government, underhand deals from countries and organisations that didn't want to be seen to support the old regime during the Civil War. Politics in gun sales never changed, they sold you bullets on a Monday then denounced you to the press on Friday just after your cheque had cleared.
The very thing that Cortez had thought made the box unattractive – the fact that nobody could open it – was what had appealed to Garcia. He was arrogant enough to think that he would succeed where others had failed. Nothing ever refused his advances for long.
He was to be disappointed. He gave the box hours of his time, tracing every single line of the burned lettering. Nothing would open it. Several times he had come close to shooting the thing (for sure a .45 round would see it open, he thought) but that smacked too much of failure and so he left it alone. One day, he thought, whenever he caught sight of it, one day I'll have you open.
2.
&n
bsp; The train had deposited Ashe in an alleyway behind a bar. He had stumbled into a mess of discarded beer bottles and the aroma of cat piss, a family of strays having made a home by the bins. It was not the best introduction to Valencia.
He had booked himself a room at a local hotel, relieved to find they were willing to accept the dollars he had left over. He had worried that they would be too old but the gleam in the eyes of the rotund Spaniard behind the registration desk said it wasn't so. He had needed to eat. Taking his place at a table in the hotel bar, he stared at the limp chalk marks scrawled across a blackboard on the wall and wondered whether it translated into a menu. He wasn't inclined to point and hope for the best so he asked the owner to recommend something. The owner walked off, bringing him a large terracotta bowl of stew five minutes later. Ashe guessed that there was nothing else to recommend. The stew was fine, chorizo sausage and beans, bobbing in a chilli tomato sauce that Ashe just knew he'd be hearing from again after a few hours. He wiped the bowl clean with bread and killed the spicy heat on his tongue with a large glass of beer.
