The Cloven

by Brian Catling

  “Where is it taking us?” she implored.

  Suddenly there was a clumsy commotion as the creature became entwined in a string of netting connected to small cowbells, empty tin cans, and shards of broken mirrors. The jangling array made the seraph squawk as it slid through the dancing strings. The door of the nearby house flew open and an ancient man fell out shouting, a long-barrelled shotgun in his shaking hands. He did not even look to see who the intruders where. He just rushed and fired as he lurched forward. The recoil sent him spinning and corkscrewing like a child’s top, leaving him sprawled and groaning in a pile of scattered melons. The shot had been wild and nobody was hit.

  “Quickly, leave!” barked Carmella, and all three departed the defiled garden.

  It became clear that the instruction to follow the celestial herald was not to be taken literally. After the incident with Horacio it led them in a series of half circles back and forth around the perimeter of the village. It must be the general direction that should be followed. This was decided when they were eventually making progress towards the sea and the coastal track. With each footfall Carmella doubted the ability of their guide and the virtue of its supposed origin.

  By late afternoon they had started the slow gradient of the winding cliff path, often having to stop and wait while the seraph flapped up and down, fell and skidded off the steep sides, or scrabbled outside of the range of human visibility. Its shrill voice would often be the only sign they had about which of the many dividing tracks they had to take. The light was fading fast and they were getting higher, the sea wind buffeting their nimble footsteps on the narrow ridge.

  “We should stop soon and get off the track so that we might find a place to rest for the night,” said Carmella.

  “But we are almost at the highest point,” said Modesta. “We can stop and sleep on the other side.”

  The seraph, as if in response, squawked and tumbled sideways, looking like the wind was tossing a matted ball of sticks.

  “See. He is pointing towards the inner path, the one to the left, it must be shorter.” And with that Modesta scrambled up the loose pebble path, which looked like little more than a goat track in the dying light. Forty minutes later a luminescence was coming off the land to meet the depth of blue in the twilight sky. The sun had been gone fifteen minutes and its last echoes were clinging to the edge of every surface. They were near the top and capable of looking straight down to the crashing sea and the slender worm of the lower path that inched below. The guide had vanished again and the child was holding her hands out in front of her in a crouching low wander, a movement that looked like a cross between tightrope walking and blindman’s bluff.

  “We should stop now,” said Carmella, looking down at the child, who seemed to be where the track turned downwards. The seraph flew up above the child, calling impatiently, so Carmella stepped forward, expecting a gradual progressive slope, but it was a steep step and she stumbled down sideways into it, the weight of all her bundles swinging to one side of her faltering body.

  “Seraph,” she beseeched as the combined inert momentum unbalanced her and twisted her sideways off of the path and crashing down the cliff. She clawed and screamed at every rock and shrub on the way, trying to dig her heels into every ridge and crevice. She knew in her panic that there was only one chance. If she could catch hold of the lower path, she would fall no farther. As she skidded and tumbled and her skin was ripped from her hands, she saw its thin line of hope rising towards her. She hit it shoulder first and it splintered her collarbone and broke her arm. Then as she screamed and tried to stop, the weight of the falling bundles was moving faster than she was and they sent her cartwheeling over the edge into the roaring darkness of the sea in the granite wadi below.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  On one of the endless grey afternoons of London, Nicholas was lying on his bed listening to his radio when Dr. Barratt poked his head around the door. He immediately sat up and pulled the headphones off. Tinny sounds of audience laughter could be heard escaping.

  “Good voices?” asked the doctor.

  “My favourite,” said Nicholas.

  Barratt came into the room and pointed at the single unused chair. “May I?”

  “Please do, it’s nice to have a visitor.”

  Nicholas swung his legs around so that he sat side-on, looking and waiting for his guest to start the conversation. Barratt was not a blunt man, but he had little time to waste with the formalities and niceties of polite conversation, especially while working inside the less-than-normal confines of the Bethlem Royal Hospital. He was wearing his usual rumpled white coat over another of his tweed sports jackets and grey flannel trousers. Nicholas noted that he must have been in a rush that morning, because there were several tuffs of unshaved skin on his face where the hasty razor had missed its target. Nicholas was fastidious about shaving, never missing a single hair. He could take up to an hour shaving one of the inmates. Especially those that twitched and jumped about unexpectedly. He had never nicked a patient in all the years that he had been there, and nobody knew how many years that had been. He had never had to shave himself, because hair had only ever grown on his head and eyebrows. Not a whisker or a curl occurred anywhere else on his smooth neotenous body.

  “Nicholas, what do you know about Dick and Harry over at Spike Island?”

  “Do I have a full minute on that question?”

  “As long as you want,” said the already frowning doctor.

  “Well…I have never met them, but I knew that they were there because we are alike, the three of us. I know that Hector Professor Shoe-man went to visit them. He told me. And that while he was there, there was a bit of trouble. That’s all I know. Oh, and the fact that they came from France. Why do you ask?”

  “I ask because I have just received some new information about them.”

  “When?”

  “Today. Dr. Hedges, who was looking after them, rang me this afternoon.”

  “On a telephone?”

  “Yes, on a telephone.”

  “I would like to see and use a telephone. I imagine it’s a bit like my radio, but I could talk back. Maybe I could answer some of the questions or even set a subject myself. Maybe I could—”

  And here Barratt interrupted him. “I am not here to talk about telephones, Nicholas.” His snappy tone silenced the room for a few minutes. The man and the Erstwhile sat and gazed at the shrunken, ailing plant in a dented enamel pot that was the only ornament in the room. A few moments later Barratt said, “How do you know anything about them?”

  “Um, that’s a difficult one. I just know they are there and then people tell me the rest, I suppose. I remember that some of us came. Me and another here. Them in France. Some in Denmark. And you told me the rest.”

  “I did?”

  “You said that two like me had come to the Spike.”

  “When?”

  “Some years ago.”

  Barratt was just about to repudiate that he’d had any part in the fuelling of these fantasies about angels and animated corpses, when he remembered the auto-interning.

  “I said they were like you because they buried themselves.”

  “Exactly,” said Nicholas, pleased that their communications were going so well. “And of course we must not forget the two new ones in Germany. Do they have names too?”

  “How did you know about them?”

  “Hector told me all the details.”

  “No, I mean before he arrived.”

  Nicholas suddenly made a face of total blankness, the colour instantly drained and the eyes fixed in innocent moronic surprise. The immediate mask was so acute and theatrical that it made Barratt begin to smile and he had to compose himself to continue in a sterner tone.

  “Somebody in London sent a box of insects to the address where the German ones were being kept. The retirement hom
e where Schumann lived. They reacted wildly.”

  Nicholas kept the same strange face without moving a muscle. It was very familiar. Barratt had seen it before, but not here and not attached to patient 126.

  “Well?” he demanded.

  Nicholas just looked at him with the same raised eyebrows and expressionless unblinking eyes. Barratt had had enough. He stood up and started to leave the room.

  “Please, Doctor, why did you ask about Deek and Hari?”

  Now he was using politeness and funny pronunciations to irritate Barratt even more.

  “Because they have disappeared, vanished, done a bunk.”

  “Oh, that’s no surprise.”

  Barratt stopped in his tracks. “Do you know where they have gone, did anyone or ‘thing’ tell you?” he asked in an annoyed tone.

  “Not yet, I thought that you might.”

  Barratt grunted.

  “They must be full right up with all the parts they have gleaned in that sad hospital. Too heavy to go in the ground. Now they must split up to find another two Rumours to make a plural with. That’s the problem when we are found in pairs or brought together in the same cage. Much better like me, on my lonesome.”

  Barratt went limp, allowed his gravity to slump in the direction of the door.

  “But, Doctor, you forgot to ask the important question.”

  Barratt’s face started to take on the same look of incongruity as Nicholas’s comic stare.

  “All right. In for a penny in for a pound. What question is that?”

  “For points, not money,” he said seriously.

  “Yes, very well.”

  Nicholas changed his face into a beaming smile.

  “Why did we all leave the great Vorrh and come to see you here, of course.”

  “Vorrh…”

  “Yes, I have told you about it before. The forest in Africa with the garden of paradise at its heart.”

  “Oh yes, that,” said Barratt in peeved resignation.

  “The answer is that we came to try to understand why you are all so stupid.” Nicholas then clapped his hands and stood up. Barratt made for the door. “And to protect the tree of knowledge from you.”

  Barratt was in the corridor when Nicholas called after him.

  “Would you like to see one of its cuttings?”

  He turned to look just for a second or two at Nicholas framed in the doorway, waving the miserable plant in his direction, with the same set expression of startled imbecility on his face. Then he turned his back and stormed down the passage.

  Barratt began to slow as recognition seeped in. He stopped dead when it arrived. The face that Nicholas had adopted was that of the silent Hollywood comedian Harry Langdon. Where had patient 126 ever seen his films? How could he produce such a perfect copy? Barratt slowly turned to go back and ask him, but sluggishly halted at the thought of the kind of answer he would get.

  All conversation with Nicholas was exasperating, with his constantly turning the tables on the normal condition of question and answer and cause and effect. Of course this was not unusual in Bedlam, but Nicholas’s technique seemed designed to get under the good doctor’s skin. It was driven by what looked like a self-righteous disrespect for all that Barratt stood for. It was never offensive, just intensely irritating, especially when Barratt tried his hardest to understand the Erstwhile’s point of view. The time before last had been the worst. In an attempt to deepen the communication Barratt had started talking about William Blake and had asked Nicholas to explain one of the paintings of his ol’ man, as the Erstwhile called him. Barratt tried with three different pictures and each time got the same answers: “I don’t know” or “I wasn’t there for those ones.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Ghertrude crept forward and opened the second door that only she had entered before.

  She slipped along the wall towards the old kitchen, the crowbar sweating in her determined hand. As she got closer she could hear voices. She recognized them. It was the Kin and they were talking to somebody. She slowed and strained her ears.

  “Sit still, little one, the blood is still flowing freely,” said Luluwa.

  “Little one.” The words barked in Ghertrude’s head. It must be Rowena! Her stolen child. They’d had her all along! She was back! They had her! Ghertrude’s heart missed three beats and punched her ribs with the fourth.

  “Blood,” she heard next, as if from a separate sentence from a separate universe. Her heart swallowed her brain and adrenaline roared through her body. She charged into the kitchen. Seth stepped in front of her to slow her stampede, embracing her and turning her on her own axis like a dramatic and passionate dancing master. Nobody else moved. She regained her stance and saw Luluwa daubing the face of the seated figure that she held lovingly in her stiff brown arms. It was not Rowena. As the bloody cloth was taken away, the figure turned towards her and spoke.

  “Hello, Ghertrude. You missed my execution, so I decided to come to yours.” Ishmael gave her a sickly grin and she jolted into shock when she saw him alive and again with only one eye. The other had been gouged out, the scarred socket empty and streaming with thin tearful blood. His words eventually bypassed his appearance and she saw the sleek black pistol dangling at the end of his arm.

  In the grief of her disappointment, she did not hear herself say, “Ishmael…how…”

  “With the help of an old friend, a real friend.”

  Luluwa still had her hand on his shoulder. She was watching Ghertrude with an expression that for the first time seemed baleful and accusing, even though Ghertrude knew that the Bakelites had only one fixed set of facial movements. Luluwa removed her gaze and continued to daub at the rend in her patient’s face, speaking as if addressing the wound itself.

  “Ishmael has come home.”

  “This is not his home, he no longer belongs here.”

  “And you do?” said Ishmael, lifting his arm and levelling the slender wagging gun at Ghertrude’s heart.

  “Ishmael will stay with us until the humans stop looking for him,” said Seth from behind her. And there it was, for the first time. Her inclusion with them and her spoken separation from the rest of mankind. She felt cold and horrified; a clammy distance enveloped her life.

  “I’m not one of you,” she barely murmured.

  “That’s not what they have been saying,” said Ishmael, quivering exhortation in his voice. “They say we are brother and sister, you and I. Both made with their help in this very house.”

  Ghertrude clamped her hands over her ears, but his voice still got through.

  “Brother and sister, different mothers maybe. But the same unknown father. Brother and sister who fucked like rabbits. That kind of makes our offspring very special, don’t you think?”

  She ignored the gun and rushed at him, crashing him out of the chair and Luluwa’s arms.

  “You monster,” she screamed, “you foul monster! Don’t you talk of Rowena that way. She was never yours!”

  She was going for his eye. The gun skidded across the floor, hit the skirting board, and fired, the bullet going through the wall. They both rolled in a tangled fury, punching and screeching, crashing into Luluwa’s ankles and bringing her down, whistling shrilly, on top of them. They slithered on the floor, Ishmael shielding his eye and trying to kick out at Ghertrude. Luluwa’s flailing limbs were getting in the way. Seth rushed at them and with his fearsome strength tried to yank Ghertrude away. There was a sickly muffled sound and she bellowed in pain as he dislocated her left leg. Aklia also tried to grab part of the writhing mass. Suddenly all the Kin stopped moving, their heads swivelling towards the door in unison. Luluwa was instantly upright and shrinking back with the others. The fight on the floor continued unaware: Ishmael had Ghertrude’s hair wrapped around his fist and was pulling her head backwards. She had sunk her nails into his
face. Their feet kicked in all directions.

  It was only when the gun went off and they were splashed with the sticky, hot, creamy fluid that they stopped and came apart. Ghertrude saw the pistol floating in space, smoking and moving slightly towards them. Then she saw Luluwa, who was shaking her head from side to side like a dog worrying a bone. A stream of white fluid pumped from her abdomen in a constant rapid flow. It had splashed all over them. Everybody was frozen; the white torrent and the automatic head were now the only movement.

  Ishmael saw the squat young woman whom he did not know standing with his gun in her hand. There was something familiar about her but he did not know what it was. She had closed the door behind her and moved into the room, grating her teeth as she approached. Her eyes were set and ferocious. He did not know what was driving her, but he knew better than to get in its way. So did the remaining Kin, who shrank back. Ghertrude was still on the floor fearing to move because the pain in her hip was agonising when she shifted her weight.

  Meta liked the Steyr Mannlicher in her hand; it fit her newfound vengeance perfectly. For surely these disgusting creatures were of the same family as the shapeshifter that had so ill used her in the warehouse. The sleek metal had automatically cocked itself and was primed for action. Ishmael dithered in front of its awesome sniffing barrel.

  “Who are you?” Ishmael spat.

  “Get back,” said Meta. “Mistress, can you hear me?”

  There was no response. Meta jabbed the gun harder at the space before her and they all slithered backwards away from Ghertrude. Meta grabbed Ghertrude’s hand and materialised before her.

  “Oh, Meta, it’s you, oh thank God, it’s you.”

  A sound from above, as if somebody on the upper floor had changed direction noisily, caused them to freeze. They gripped each other tightly.

  “Are there any more of you here or upstairs?” Meta demanded.

  No one replied. Meta remembered a Wild West film that she had been taken to one Christmas. She always remembered it because her parents could never forget. In one scene a band of desperadoes entered a saloon where a troupe of dancing girls had been high-kicking in fast, loud black-and-white. The ruffians took out their guns and fired endless smoking rounds above their heads. Outraged and confused, the young Meta had said, “Mama, those ladies were dancing, then the horrible men came and killed the ceiling.”