The Vorrh tv-1

by B Catling

  ‘Adam will never leave now,’ Seil Kor was musing. ‘The angels have grown old and weary in the forest; perhaps they have forgotten their purpose. Perhaps God has forgotten them all.’

  Uculipsa moved out in a long, slow motion, the gleaming bolt pulled back and forth to load one of the charmed, .303 rounds into the breach. The nose of the rifle poked through the bushes, sniffing at the voices that were approaching.

  ‘How much further do we have to walk?’ asked the Frenchman, realising that he had recognised the wrong track and that there was no sign of the rail line.

  ‘Two more hours,’ answered Seil Kor.

  Tsungali pulled the eager rifle back; it was not his prey. He slid the bolt open and removed the cartridge, placing it in one of the charm pouches he wore on a bandolier. He did not see the thin trace of string escape from the flap of the pouch, the low, damp air catching it in a gust of heated breath. Every bird in the immediate vicinity took off in a startlingly discordant flapping of wings. Tsungali’s gaze twisted up sharply and he observed them in keen suspicion, as they filled all the spaces in the sky between the leaves of the canopy. Seil Kor and the Frenchman also stopped in their tracks to look towards the shudder in the trees.

  The string drifted, kneading the atmosphere, eager to find its host. It possessed an astonishing longevity, and was capable of lying dormant, but sprung, for years, until the heat or scent of a passer-by triggered its urgent jump and vampire attachment. On this day, it would only have a few minutes to wait.

  * * *

  The years had been kind to Muybridge – his endless labours and determination had paid off, and he now lectured all over the world; he was in demand, a man of consequence.

  His vast portfolio of animals in movement had been a great success. He thought about making another great study, this time of human beings in motion; there was no shortage of subjects.

  He had left the rest of his competitors standing. Marey, as predicted, had been easily sidetracked by pretty machines and worthless fancies, leaving Muybridge as the only contender of worth in the field of science and the application of photography for serious purposes; he had been right to trust his instincts. He had given up his correspondence with Marey after receiving his last letter, in which the whimsical Parisian had rambled on about cameras that might record ‘other’ time. It had been a mistake to ask him about Charcot and his experiments in photography. Marey had incorrectly assumed that a fascination with the potential for capturing mental manifestations (or worse) plagued his ambitions, even though he had explained to him the nature of being an objective artist, involved only with the bare bones of fact. That last letter had talked about theoretical cameras, engaged in the recording of impossibly slow movements, such as trees or the depths of the night sky. It had even suggested that holes might be dug in the ground and different levels of water be used as reflective lenses. What the deluded man could ever hope to achieve by standing over such a pit and seeing the stars and foliage reflected in its dismal mud was altogether beyond him.

  Any further conversations about such nonsensical speculations could have been damaging to Muybridge’s carefully constructed reputation and standing; Marey was duly ignored.

  On his way to developing the twelfth generation of his zoopraxiscope, he set about making a copy of Gull’s instrument from memory, estimating where and how it fitted together. Using an assortment of mirrors, he began to identify the exact flickering phenomena that the surgeon had produced. In the second week of his attempts, he came very close, producing a lapping shadow that made him dizzy; he thought about the frequency, the pulsing light and dark, whether it opened the eye to a different sight somehow, affecting the brain directly; he identified a lens that concentrated his creation’s glare to a pinpoint of burning, incandescent energy. Throughout it all, he wondered whether Gull used this instrument in his private experimental wards of skeletal women, if he had found a way of focusing their distorted but empathic willpower.

  Gull’s paper on their malign mental condition had caused a stir in small medical circles. He had given the tragic illness the name Anorexia nervosa, and it cut him another step in history. But Muybridge knew that the good surgeon’s fascination with their brains was on a much deeper level than their eating habits. After all, when half of London was locked in famine, what use could this privileged knowledge about a privileged sickness be to anyone? Gull and he had a lot in common, he thought. The doctor obviously believed this too, because three months later, the letter arrived.

  Dear Mr. Muybridge,

  I pen this hasty note as a disclaimer to my previously false assumption about photography and my special patients. I now think you were right in your belief about their response to images of them.

  Please, the next time you are back in London, let us put your suggestion to a clinical test.

  W. W. Gull

  Muybridge was ecstatic. He desperately wanted to see the physician’s private wards; to be given the tour of the rank and raving females, and see the extent of the mania that Gull had merely hinted at before. He replied at once, and the necessary arrangements were swiftly underway.

  He stood in the leafy suburbs of London, having been redirected from Sir Thomas Guy’s hospital by another note, this time held by a surly porter. He was in Forest Hill. The southern railway from London Bridge had deposited him there, where Gull had said his private clinic was situated. He stepped out of the station and into the overly green trees; a coachman waited for him at the roadside. Ten minutes and dozens of green turns later, they pulled in through high metal gates and stopped. He was taken inside by a custodian, or a warder, he thought, a rhino of a man dressed in a long apron over a dark uniform, with a peaked cap that accentuated the man’s hornlike nose and low, sloping forehead.

  ‘Thank you, Crane,’ Gull said to the departing shadow. ‘Mr Muybridge, welcome.’ He put out his square hand for his visitor to shake, looking about as if to greet another guest. ‘But where is your equipment?’ He looked towards the door; the coachman shook his head.

  ‘I did not bring any,’ said Muybridge, ‘I presumed our first preliminary meeting would be more theoretical than practical?’

  Gull was mystified and twitched his mouth in a small movement that looked like a rehearsal for a larger one – irritation in advance of anger – before it was quickly gathered back. ‘Quite right!’ he blurted, in a boisterous and obvious lie. ‘Let me show you the business at hand, and then you can make your professional assessment.’

  The good doctor took him by the arm and amiably propelled him along the corridors in Crane’s wake. Muybridge was instantly ill at ease; being touched was repugnant to him, and not something he tolerated well. He had never understood why so many people, common people, derived such pleasure from pawing each other, even in public. His treacherous wife had demanded these suffocating duties from him. She used to grab at his arm while walking, hanging from the speed of his sprightly gait, complaining about his pace, telling him to slow down, and hanging on even harder if he failed to comply. It had been embarrassing. But when they were alone, she had demanded much worse. He had never refused his husbandly duties. In fact, he quietly enjoyed them in moderation, and practice had improved him in the rigours of their physical exertions. He fulfilled all that might have been expected of him, but she always wanted more: to cling, to kiss, for him to linger inside her, long after his business was done. Some of her requests had been downright offensive, and against all modern notions of hygiene. The worst of it was that she even pawed him in front of the neighbours or the servants, and at social functions to which she had forced him to take her. It had been uncomfortable, unnatural and thoroughly time-consuming.

  Shaking off the horrid recollections, he returned to the present and found that Gull had removed his hand to denote waiting. They stood outside a long, ward-like corridor. The walls were painted in a thick, heavy yellow, more marrow than flower. The same apron-clad guard stood in contrast by the doors. Gull gestured, and the guard pulled
an elaborate bolt that slid levers and greased phalanges to open to the ward beyond. It all seemed highly theatrical, more like one of the new zoological gardens than a sanctum of health.

  Gull caught the scent of his thoughts, and began to explain. ‘Some of the women here are very unstable, a danger to themselves and others. Their tides of mania and excessive will are beyond discipline or control. Therefore we contain them, and for good reason.’

  Muybridge felt his excitement grow at the proximity of these demented creatures. The pair walked the corridor and stopped at another door, where Crane stood waiting. Gull nodded and the assistant unlocked it.

  ‘First,’ said Gull, ‘I will show you Abigail. She is the one I gave the picture to. She was picked up off the streets, where she was working the Penny Finger trade; she has been here now for nearly eight months.’

  ‘But you said this was an infliction of the affluent, not of the poor, not of street women?’

  ‘Quite right!’ said Gull. ‘But to understand a disease you have to find its root. To instigate it from the beginning. So we collect test subjects and create the malady in them. This is the same protocol that grew from vaccine research, but here we apply it to the mind. Those already suffering are only useful to study symptoms – not the cause, effect and cure: you can’t grow a plant from a leaf.’

  ‘So the subject of your lecture at Guy’s was different from this one?’

  Gull looked at him in the way strangers do when they are trying to politely judge the age of a friend’s child. ‘On the surface they are different, yes, but fundamentally they are the same. The one you saw at the lecture hall came into my care with her malady already fully formed. Her family were glad to see the back of her. They would have willingly packed her off to the bedlam, to die in the filth with all those others that have caused grievous embarrassment to their parents and siblings. This one came here undernourished but in good spirits – I saved her from a life of rotting on the streets. She will take part in the experiments and then eventually be released, if she is well enough.’ Muybridge watched the doctor as he spoke, glancing at the guard every so often to gauge a reaction, but both their expressions remained impassive.

  ‘When she first arrived, we treated her like royalty, spoiling her with food, compliments and fine clothing. She grew fat and weak, and she was soon ready for her first encounter with the Lark Mirror.’

  ‘The Lark Mirror?’

  ‘Yes. It’s a tool we use in our hypnotic process, not unlike the peripherscope I used for your treatment.’

  Muybridge did not care for the comparison.

  ‘Anyway, as I was saying, the problem started when we gave Abigail here the picture.’

  ‘What was the picture of?’ asked Muybridge.

  ‘It was a picture of her, taken three weeks ago. I took your advice and photographed all my special cases.’

  The news took Muybridge aback. He had offered his services and been flatly turned down and now, a few years later, Gull had taken the idea and instigated his own photographic enquiries? He tried to hide his disdain as Gull continued.

  ‘When I gave her the print, she just stared at it. I had to tell her it was her likeness. And then she ate it. Before I could stop her, she stuffed it into her mouth and refused to take it out. By the time Crane arrived to part her jaws, it was gone.’

  Before the words had time to settle and sting, he opened the door. She was on the far side of the room, standing in the corner. She was skeletal and absent. Only the top part of her body was clothed. A thick blouse that looked many sizes too large was wrapped about her torso. The lower part of her body, from her sternum down, was swathed in bandages, ending in a small, dangling flap for decency.

  Her stick-like legs were naked and shivering. Her feet turned inwards and were blue with cold.

  ‘She’s undressed again,’ said Crane, exposing the reality of his below-average intelligence.

  ‘Yes,’ said Gull calmly. ‘Cover her up.’

  A blanket was wrenched from her thin mattress and wrapped around her waist. The guard seated her on the equally skeletal bed.

  ‘Her wounds are healing slowly, it takes a long time when the body has so little to draw from.’

  ‘What happened to her?’ asked Muybridge.

  Gull turned and directed his gaze with withering force into the photographer’s unsuspecting eyes.

  ‘She tried to get the picture back. She clawed herself open to find it.’

  Muybridge yanked his gaze away from the surgeon to look at the frail creature again: her distant, vacant stare; the bandages; her bird-like hands with some of the fingernails broken off. He felt queasy and somehow aroused, one sensation cancelling the other out, making him impassive, becoming for a moment like her.

  ‘If we had not found her in time, she would have bled to death. She ripped her abdominal wall, lost part of her lower intestine and nicked her fallopian tubes without screaming or making any other sound.’ Gull was obviously impressed. ‘Imagine the willpower that would take!’

  ‘Did she use a weapon?’ asked Muybridge, already fearing he knew the answer.

  ‘No, sir, that’s what I am telling you: she used her bare hands.’

  ‘Is that possible?’

  ‘Not to you or I. We would hesitate. The hand would lose its power and only scratch and bruise at our weakness. The human hand is a potent and massively strong mechanism. It is a series of fulcrums and levers worked by tough and dominant muscles. Its sinews and bones are tensile and capable of bearing colossal strain. We barely use a fraction of its potential strength, developing its agile pliancy and delicate touch instead. The hand, without doubt, is an awesome tool. Did you know it is one of the most difficult parts of the human body to destroy? You have to crush and mangle it just to get it to break into smaller parts.’

  Muybridge was not sure he wanted to know all this, but clearly he had no choice, and Gull galloped on.

  ‘There is an ancient funeral practice in Tibet called ‘sky burial’. Deceased monks are carried to a high platform where their bodies are dissected – butchered, really – into small, devourable pieces. The surgeon-priest then leaves the platform so that a flock of vultures may descend onto the meat table. They then eat every scrap and depart, taking the body of the holy man into the clouds. In this procedure, the hands require the most work. All else is child’s play in comparison. To get them shredded enough for the birds to eat takes great effort, heavy, sharp tools and time.’ He paused for a breath. ‘Yes sir, the hand is a ferocious weapon when sent forth, without doubt.’

  All four of them fell silent, with not an ounce of communication floating between them. They all looked in different directions, into different worlds, and waited for theirs to begin again.

  * * *

  Ishmael was thirsty. He had finished his supply of water the day before, and was following a track that seemed straighter than the others, but was, in truth, identical to the rest. He had walked so many since turning his back on the city and pointing himself into the depth of the forest. He had resolved to never take a forking path that curved to the right or the left, and instead sought only straight paths, knowing that even they could be deceptive and capable of making him walk in circles.

  This was a truth he had learned in one of his lessons with the Kin; something about navigation and sense of direction. What at the time of its telling seemed difficult and abstract now hovered over his will like a halo, or a beacon in the night. ‘Humans always walk in circles’ – this is what Seth had said, adding that human beings were faulty in their alignment; they were off-balance, permanently tilted from birth. Even placing one foot in front of another and staring straight ahead was not a remedy.

  But he was now sure that he was not human. Maybe some part of him had been gleaned from there, but not his whole. He was unique, and his dealings with the woman had proven that. He would not be sullied by their fears, or crippled by their imperfection. All their ailments and stupidity meant nothing to him, and here, in
the midst of the Vorrh, they all seemed petty and trivial. None of the hurt and shame had lasted past his fifth hour among the trees. He was unbridled, and the yoke of his previous emotions lay in discarded ruins at the entrance of his new life.

  He had slept in patches throughout the days and the nights, always facing towards the inner direction of the forest. He had spent nights in sandy hollows, or in a trampled nest of undergrowth. Once, he had tried sleeping in a tree, but found that it attracted attention from the things that dwelt there.

  He and the Vorrh were beginning to converse, and he was finding a pleasure in its growing strangeness. He knew he would have to hunt and forage it soon. The loaf of bread, water and wine he had hastily brought was gone, and his body was starting to complain, the pangs of hunger and thirst and his aching feet confirming his corporeality. Perhaps, as he got deeper, these too would burn off and he would change, evolve into a different being. He would have tasted and spoken the possible names of such an original entity if his tongue were not encrusted to the wall of his mouth, and his throat blocked with sand and emptiness.

  As he tramped forwards, he noticed a stone blocking the slender path ahead of him. He approached it, and the rock focused its smooth contours from a supposed stone to an earthenware bowl, containing pure, fresh water. He marvelled at the miracle, seemingly conjured by his thirst, and sniffed at its cool freshness. In only a few seconds, he had swallowed every drop, drinking it with relish. His thirst quenched, he took a closer look at the mysterious bowl. Its shell was that of unfired nut, packed rigid with mud and still showing evidence of the finger-marks of its maker. The prints were tiny; the hands of a child, he thought absently, his brain still soaking up the fluid and its function. He put the bowl in the sack that he carried over his shoulder and resumed his journey through the trees.