Writ in Water

by Natasha Mostert

  • • •

  As he walked away from Stallworthy’s office, Gabriel glanced at his watch. It was already after nine o’clock. The building had gone into after-hours quiet. The corridors were deserted. No clicking of keyboards coming from offices. No voices shouting and laughing. Every door closed. A light breeze was blowing and flyers rustled quietly on the bulletin boards lining the walls.

  At the end of the passageway, he looked back. The light in Stallworthy’s office had gone out. The professor hadn’t passed him in the corridor. He must have taken another way out.

  Gabriel pushed his hand into his jacket pocket and extracted his mobile. Switching it on, he glanced at the lit display. He had two missed calls. Both from Isidore.

  The first time round, his friend hadn’t left a message. But the second time he had. ‘Gabe. Call me…’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Isidore replaced the receiver without leaving a message on Gabriel’s mobile. It was rare indeed not to be able to contact Gabriel on his mobile, and highly irritating. Isidore had a pressing need to talk to Gabriel right now; right this minute. He had some fantastic news to share.

  Isidore felt very pleased with himself. Sometimes he was amazed by his own brilliance. Like today.

  He dialled Gabriel’s mobile number again. Once more he listened to his friend’s recorded voice informing him that he was not available to take the call. This time he left a message.

  ‘Gabe. Call me. I have interesting news. No, I have stupendous news.’ Isidore hesitated. Should he just come right out and tell Gabriel what it was? But then he decided against it. It would be best if he talked to his friend in person and explained how he had arrived at his conclusions. Besides, he felt pretty damn good about cracking this little riddle and would like to spin out his moment of glory. So he merely added mysteriously, ‘Beware the crow…’

  With this tantalising clue he rang off, smiling. No question about it. He the man. Admittedly, cracking the puzzle hadn’t required great deductive skills on his part. He had been surfing the web rather aimlessly and had happened to scroll through a list of animal totems. And hey presto: the answer was staring him in the face.

  He swivelled his chair around to face his computer, his smile disappearing. He was worried that someone had been hacking into his machine. The cloaking device used by the snoop was pretty damn good, but there were telltale signs. What he couldn’t figure out was whether his visitor had been merely curious, obeying the hacker’s code of looking but not touching, or whether his system had in fact been compromised.

  Earlier today he had stripped his system bare but had found nothing wrong. Besides, most of his software was stashed in the university computers at the London School of Economics. It was his file transfer protocol site. Not that the people at LSE knew anything about it, of course. It was strictly under the wire. But it was a great hiding place and it was highly unlikely that the snooper would have been able to track down any of his stuff. Without the FTP address, username and pass code, his visitor would get nowhere.

  But Isidore still felt uneasy. There were very few hackers who were skilled enough to get past his firewalls.

  He sighed and decided to make himself a cup of cocoa. As he waited for the milk to heat, he picked up a small iron circle which he had discovered stuck down one side of the seat of his armchair earlier today when he had made a half-hearted stab at cleaning his apartment. He had never seen it before and thought it might have fallen out of Gabriel’s pocket last night when his friend had been drying his feet.

  He turned the tiny object over in his hand a few times. It didn’t look like much. Probably worthless. Yawning, he opened the lid of the rubbish bin and tossed it inside where it disappeared among yoghurt pots, empty takeaway cartons and soggy teabags.

  He carried his mug of cocoa with him back to his computer. It was high time he visited his favourite MUD again. He hadn’t visited the land of Dreadshine for over a week.

  He knew Gabriel found his addiction to Dreadshine a little sad. And he supposed his friend was right. Instead of face-to-face contact in the real world, he preferred to form relationships in the anonymous, mapless world of cyberspace. And Dreadshine was where he felt most at home.

  Dreadshine was a text cyberworld filled with castles and knights, damsels in distress and deeds of valour. Every member of this online community had adopted a character, which they had invented themselves and which probably had very little to do with the kind of person they were in everyday life. He himself had assumed the persona of the court clown and this was his handle as well. In Dreadshine he was known as Jester. No one knew his true identity. No one knew his real name. Which is the way it usually is in cyberspace. In cyberspace everyone wears a mask.

  He logged on to the Dreadshine site but, before joining the rest of the gang in the castle’s banqueting hall, he made a little detour to visit a friend who lived in the dungeons.

  Or, rather, who used to live there. Razor was a one-eyed cripple who had been tortured by evil monks when he was a child. His hideous appearance caused him to hide himself away in the dank depths of the castle. Razor had been Jester’s friend for a long time and they had slain many dragons and evildoers together.

  But a few weeks ago, Razor had been killed in an online battle with a demonic gremlin. The combat rules of Dreadshine were strict. If you lost a battle you had to pay the price and your life was forfeit. Razor had lost and had been ceremoniously buried by the other Dreadshine residents. The light in his dungeon was now switched off and a message posted for all members to see: Razor’s house is dark. This phrase was always used when a member died. The dungeon where Razor used to live was left intact, though, and sometimes Razor’s friends would go there to pay their respects to his memory: light a candle, leave a bottle of beer.

  As Isidore approached the dungeon, he was surprised to find someone there already. A woman—and obviously a new member. He did not recognise the name. Lady in Green.

  He should probably introduce himself.

  Hi, he typed. I’m Jester.

  I know who you are.

  Have we met?

  No, but your fame goes before you.

  Isidore smiled. She was flirtatious. This was going to be fun.

  Please, he typed politely, would you tell me what you look like?

  I am a seductress. I wear a mask but my eyes are magnificent. The fragrance of pomegranates lies in my bones. I am shame and boldness. I am knowledge and ignorance.

  Wowzer. Isidore blinked. This was one hot babe. His hands hovered over the keyboard.

  Jester has fallen under the spell of the Lady in Green and wishes to spend time with her.

  In that case look into my eyes, Jester. Tell me what you see.

  I see mystery. And tantalising secrets.

  And what do I have on my shoulder?

  Isidore hesitated. How to answer this one?

  What would you like me to see?

  Do you see the crow?

  Crow? He frowned. The next moment a steel vice gripped his head. His brain sliced open and a massive torrent of images rushed into his mind at lightning speed. He screamed. The pain was excruciating. His skull was on fire. He grabbed his head with both hands as though he might shield himself from the relentless assault. But to no avail. His brain was being pulped by the weight of data rushing into his mind at warp speed, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

  The last sensation that flitted across his mind before every thought was extinguished was one of disbelief. On the screen in front of him, letters were appearing:

  Jester’s house is dark…

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Isidore was to be buried in the churchyard of the village where he grew up and his parents still lived.

  Gabriel had taken the train. He couldn’t trust himself behind a wheel any longer. He was shivering constantly and he was unable to keep his hands still. When earlier this morning he had introduced himself to Isidore’s parents, he had twitched and
jerked like a junkie in need of a fix. What they thought of him, he hated to think.

  In the past three days he had experienced five mind attacks. He had come to recognise the signs. The humming in the air. The nausea. His skin stretched tight over his scalp. And then the window opening inside his mind, the toxic avalanche of images and information ripping through his skull like soft-nosed bullets carelessly tearing apart the tissue of his brain. He was now able to anticipate what was coming and was usually able to clamp down before the window fully opened. But the blocking action itself always increased the pain inside his head. Every time he clamped down, it felt as though his skull was about to explode.

  The last assault had happened only a few hours before, while he was shaving. The window inside his mind flying open. His hand with the razor jerking, leaving a thin but burning gash on the taut skin of his jaw. For an agonising moment he simply stood there, allowing the avalanche of information and images to stream through his brain. Then, with a tremendous force of will, he clamped down, and in doing so he felt something inside his head give. He must have blacked out briefly. When he came to, retching over the washbasin, he looked at his mirrored image and one eye was filled with blood.

  If only he could keep his hands still. In desperation, he tucked them under his armpits and tried to concentrate on the words of the minister, a diffident man with shy eyes. He was young, probably too young to have known Isidore himself when he was a boy attending church with his parents. The mourners, on the other hand, were almost all elderly; obviously acquaintances of the mother and father. Isidore did not have many friends. Correction. Isidore did not have many friends in the bricks-and-mortar world. In cyberspace, his friends were numerous.

  Facing Gabriel, on the other side of the grave, was Isidore’s mother. She was weeping quietly. She was heavily powdered and her crimson lipstick was bleeding into the furrows round her lips. In her youth, she must have been a great beauty. Her husband, who was standing next to her, had his eyes closed. His lips were moving soundlessly in prayer. He had his son’s high forehead and thin aquiline nose. Watching him, Gabriel knew what Isidore would have looked like in another thirty years.

  After the funeral there was to be a reception but his mind baulked at the thought. He would take his leave of Isidore’s parents and head for home.

  ‘Mrs Cavendish…’

  Isidore’s mother looked up at him with tear-filled eyes.

  ‘I just wanted to say goodbye.’ His hands were still twitching. His head was bobbing like a crazy man’s.

  If she noticed anything amiss, she did not show it. ‘Thank you.’ Her voice was heavy with tears. ‘And thank you for coming.’

  ‘I just wanted to say…’ He stopped. What did he want to say? ‘I’m sorry for causing the death of your son?’ Or ‘If not for me your son would still be alive?’

  Isidore had died of a massive stroke. Unusual in someone so young, the doctor had explained to him, but not unheard of. A brain aneurism can be present from birth and lie undetected like a stealth bomb. He had listened to the doctor, nodding his head in agreement, all the while knowing what had really happened. An intruder had entered his friend’s head. An assassin. A killer who had torn Isidore’s mind apart with the brutality of a butcher.

  He looked into the sad eyes of Isidore’s mother. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  She touched his arm briefly. ‘Thank you. And God bless. I know Francis counted you as his best friend.’

  In the train, on the way back to London, Gabriel closed his eyes but he couldn’t keep the tears from running down his face. He knew he was attracting curious glances, but he was past caring. Memories of Isidore washed through his mind. Isidore in his flip-flops and swimming trunks, mixing mai-tais and listening to island music in deepest midwinter. Isidore hacking code, concentration sculpting his face into a serene-looking mask. Isidore singing ‘Oh, for the wings of a dove’ with pitch-perfect intonation. Isidore. His friend.

  His friend who had died because of him.

  Oh, God.

  If only he could speak to Frankie. He wished desperately for her presence. In a world in which nothing made sense any more, he needed her aggressive sanity. But he had been unable to track her down. She might go somewhere warm, she had told him the last time he saw her. But she hadn’t left word about where the sun was. And she wasn’t answering her mobile. He had left countless messages since Isidore’s death.

  He was falling into a light doze, flickering in and out of consciousness. The rhythm of the train was soporific. Clickety-clack, he thought. Just as in his Thomas the Tank Engine book when he was a boy. Clickety-clack.

  Vaguely he was aware of a woman taking the seat opposite him. She was petite and had long blonde hair. Her head was bowed; she was reading a newspaper.

  Clickety-clack… clickety-clack.

  She shook the pages and folded the newspaper neatly along its creases. Her fair hair was hanging over her forehead, covering one eye. She lifted her head and brushed the hair away with a slim hand. And looked straight at him.

  There were cobwebs in her empty eye sockets. The flesh along her jaw was green with decay.

  Melissa Cartwright. Catwalk model. Trophy wife of Sir Stephen Cartwright. Kidnap victim.

  You let me down. Her mouth moved and he glimpsed her rotting teeth. You let me down. A tiny black spider dropped out of one eye socket and ran across her lap.

  Clickety-clack. Clickety-clack.

  No. He tried to speak, but his throat worked uselessly, no sound passing his lips.

  Yes. Just as you let him down.

  The head with the ghastly eye sockets looked at a spot somewhere on his right. As in a trance, Gabriel turned his head in the same direction.

  Isidore…

  His mind blacked out in horror.

  • • •

  When he came to, the conductor was shaking him by the shoulder.

  ‘Waterloo Station. Last stop, sir. Time to wake up.’

  Gabriel looked stupidly around him. The compartment had emptied. The seat opposite him was unoccupied. As was the seat beside him. He was the only one left.

  He was so cold. He stepped out of the brightly lit compartment onto the platform, and his back was gooseflesh. It was just the cold, he told himself. Just the cold.

  As he took the escalator up, he kept glancing over his shoulder. The third time he spotted her. Black coat, blonde hair. Cobwebbed eyes.

  He started to push his way past the people in front of him. But it felt as though his legs were caught in quicksand. He tried to take the steps two at a time but he could hardly move. His breath was leaving his throat in a ragged whistle. Again, he glanced behind him.

  She had disappeared.

  The taxi rank. He needed to find a cab to take him home.

  The cab pulled up to the kerb, its yellow sign glowing. As he opened the door and ducked to get inside, he spotted her reflection in the window. She was right behind him. If she stretched out her hand she would be able to touch his shoulder.

  A strange sound escaped his throat. He fell into the cab and slammed the door shut behind him. The driver looked at him with surprise.

  Just a hallucination. Your mind playing tricks. Keeping his eyes resolutely away from the window he gave his address to the cabbie, who was now watching him with open suspicion.

  She’s messing with your mind. She’s planting these images of Melissa Cartwright and Isidore into your brain like toxic seeds. Don’t allow her to do that.

  Her.

  Why couldn’t he say her name?

  Whenever he thought of her, he used the words ‘killer’, ‘assassin’, ‘intruder’. It was as though by not saying her name, he could avoid the truth.

  Minnaloushe.

  Face it. Deal with it.

  And work out how you’re going to tell Morrighan that her sister was responsible for the death of three people.

  At his front door, he fumbled for his keys. Once inside his apartment, he would
be safe.

  He flicked on the light switch. The living room was empty.

  Except… the wind chimes hanging from the ceiling in that quiet, wind-still room were swaying gently. As though someone had passed by close enough to stir the air.

  No. It was just a trick.

  So cold. He looked at his hands and they were shaking. Had they ever been still?

  He walked into the bathroom and turned on the bath taps. He took off his jacket and his shirt. Steam was starting to fill the room, pearling down the mirror like tears. His own face, pale, the eyes unfocused, looked like the face of a person drowning.

  Something stirred behind him. Hazily swimming into his vision was the face of a woman with hair like blonde seaweed. The flesh of her face decomposing, soft as a sponge.

  He screamed. He sprang to his feet, in his haste slipping on the bathroom mat. Running out of the room, he slammed the door shut behind him. His fingers gripped the knob of the door firmly as though trying to keep whatever was inside the bathroom from coming out. He stared at his hand. Any moment now, the knob would start to turn inside his palm… Any moment now.

  Nothing happened. From behind the closed door he could hear the water flowing from the taps.

  Still he waited. The water continued to rush from the taps. How long he stood there, holding on to the knob with all his strength, he did not know. Water seeped underneath the bathroom door on to his feet but he did not move.

  Someone was watching him. He turned his head, stiff as a doll, and looked behind him.

  Against the wall hung Minnaloushe’s African mask. The wooden face with its empty eyes and empty smile. Protection against witchcraft.

  His stomach heaved miserably. Swinging his arm, he struck the mask from the wall. It fell to the floor with a crash. A crack ran through one eye socket. The mouth was still smiling.