Cuckoo

by Richard Wright

  Perhaps the police would be contacted. Again, the creature’s words played in his head, this time from when it was in the guise of the only true Greg Summers. By rights I should have phoned the police…but you are obviously unwell. So, for Alex, the authorities. He would be held and questioned. The investigating officer would discover that Greg Summers was really a hotel manager called Carlisle, and from there Alex would fall into the nightmare of doubt and revelation which had plagued Richard. Would he return to his flat in the West End, confused and disorientated? It was likely, for his wallet would contain his home address. Tomorrow Richard could try picking up the trail there.

  Turning over beneath the starchy, abrasive sheets, he felt sure that sleep would never come. Precisely forty-five seconds later he was proved wrong.

  Waking later than he had intended, Richard left the bed and breakfast in a hurry. He had to assume that Alex would be released from custody by now, so he was once more at odds with Time. Guessing that the creature would not have pressed charges - for it would be difficult to reach a victim under the watchful eye of the police - he would have to reach Alex’s flat before the man could develop an ill-informed plan of his own.

  First though, he had to visit his own apartment again. Knowing from personal experience how futile it would be just to tell Alex who he really was, he had to collect the evidence he would need to back up his assertions. When he had last changed at his flat, he had left the photograph of Alex and he, meeting in the Ramkin Hotel, in the pocket of his jacket. That would not be sufficient to convince his friend, but it would be a better start than words alone.

  As he strode through the doors of Manorfield Place he nodded at the doorman. Norman, he remembered. It was surprising how much more settled he felt knowing just these little details. They formed an ever more secure network for Richard to develop in. It would be a while before he could return there, and even now he was taking a risk. Last night he had challenged and frustrated a creature with abilities and motivations he could scarcely comprehend. It would be wise to stay hidden for now. He had surprised the thing, even though it knew he had been there. Not just surprised it, but hurt it. Perhaps it was beginning to understand what it was to feel vulnerable.

  For the moment though, he thought himself safe. Not only would the creature be readjusting whatever schedule it was trying to maintain with Alex, but there was also the matter of the arson from the previous evening. Smiling as he entered the lift, he congratulated himself on thinking to sign in to the hotel as Summers. It would only be a brief diversion, the receptionist would be quick to point out to the police that the tall, long-haired man the creature chose to be was not the man who had signed the register the previous night, but Richard still thought he might have bought himself some time.

  Reaching his floor, he pulled the key from his pocket and strode up to the door. There was no sign of a forced entry. With a nod to caution, he slid the key quietly into the lock and entered his home. It was precisely as he had left it. The creature must have been busy indeed not to respond to the affront Richard had been responsible for. Pushing shut the door, he went to the bookshelf and chose a hardback collection of Lovecraft’s stories to take with him. Flicking through the pages, he entered the walk-in closet.

  It was a little disturbing to see his discarded clothes lying on the floor. In that small recess of his imagination which housed his mind’s eye, he was looking at the metaphorical corpse of Greg Summers. In those clothes, that skin, Greg had lived his last minutes before being born afresh in his newest form, like a snake shedding skin before moving to pastures fresh. Its fangs were now sunk tight in the pink, rippled flesh of Alex’s brain, but their poison still ran through Richard’s own veins. The Summers template was still defining a large part of him, but he at least knew how to fight the effects. It made him laugh to think that the twisted, depraved tales of madness so carefully sculpted by Lovecraft might be the best thing for him. Reading them, he hoped, would unleash more memories of the man who had placed them carefully on the shelf.

  Crouching next to the jacket-skin, he reached for the inside pocket. As his imagination worked a kind of magic, he actually felt the garment to be slick, almost greasy beneath his fingers. Unable to banish the feeling, he fumbled around. Nothing. He tried the others. They were all empty.

  Perplexed and a little concerned, he stood. Rubbing his watering eyes, for in the enclosed space of the closet the smell of petrol from his clothes was suffocating, he wondered where he might have laid the photo down. Crossing from closet to bedroom, he reminded himself to change before he left. The fumes were making him nauseous.

  Throwing open the bedroom door, he stopped in his tracks.

  Richard Jameson’s family were engaged in a perverse ritual of incest on his four poster bed. The illusion of naked, heaving movement - his mother gobbling his younger brother’s penis, his father taking her from behind - lasted for just one brief second, and then his brain managed to interpret what was before him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  BACKDRAFT

  It was too overwhelming to accept at first, but his mind eventually had to allow that he had not walked in on some sickening pornographic scene. There was no movement for a start, and too much rope. And of course, altogether too much red.

  Unable to turn away, dazed and repulsed by what they saw, his eyes stuttered across the morbid diorama hanging before him. Stewart dangled, naked, on the left of the bed. A rope was looped round his neck and slung over one of the beams of the four-poster. An angry black bruise shone where the thick cord bit the welcoming flesh of his throat, his head dangling limp over the bright scar of colour. Held up by the rope, his body hung loose, legs folded beneath him to sculpt a penitent man. Everything from the neck down was coated with slick crimson; it took Richard a moment or two to find the source. It lay beneath the rope, on the right of his neck, an ugly slash. Blood still flowed gently from the wound.

  The woman he assumed to be his own mother had also been arranged. She was face down in Stewart’s lap, drenched both from her own wound and the waterfall unleashed by her youngest son. Congealing blood crusted behind her ears. She had been positioned on all fours, her blonde permed hair plastered to her skull by the scarlet shower that had drenched her. Stripped of clothing from the waist down, her rear was presented to the third figure. Her husband hung from the cord that draped over the top of the bed to meet Stewart, the weight of each man supporting the other. Mirroring his offspring, he was naked, neck slashed, pelvis pressed against his wife’s buttocks.

  Richard was in deep shock as he shuffled to the bed. Still unable to comprehend what he saw, he could only stare and wonder. Had they been alive when they were bled? Did the creature reveal itself to them in true form before they died?

  Why was he not more upset?

  He was shocked, disgusted, and repulsed, but it was not a personal grief. He still did not identify these individuals as his family. He recognised them from photographs, but had no knowledge of them as people.

  The note caught his eye. It was pinned to one of the posts of the bed, a neat little envelope that would have been conspicuous if not for the colour. Deep red. A perfect match for the drenched bed sheets. As he leaned across to pull it free, his hand brushed the rope that held Stewart upright. In a sickening parody of life, the corpse’s head swung from side to side, chiding him for his actions. For a moment Richard paused, staring at the swinging husk. Dead, he told himself sternly. Dead for hours.

  Still, the strange warning was unnerving. What could be worse than the macabre scene he was inhaling and spectating? Confused, he took the envelope. For a second it caught on something, then he had it. Stepping back, he opened the little packet and withdrew the single sheet of paper within. The bold strokes of handwriting matched what he had seen earlier.

  Dear Richard, for I see you have returned in part,

  I feel I should congratulate you on your arrangement of yesterday’s inferno. I wonder how much of you I am addressing? N
ot much, I suspect. The Summers personality is a persistent one, it would take longer than you have to be free of it entirely. As you probably recognise, the affront that you perpetrated cannot go unpunished. Witness my rebuttal. Should Richard return to us in full, he too shall suffer. There is also an icing on this cake, one more in the flavour of your own assault upon me. Pulling this note from the bed activated a timer connected to a small explosive charge. This, in itself, should do little more than throw some pretty fireworks. However, you have undoubtedly noticed that your apartment smells strongly of petroleum. There are two full canisters beneath the beanbags in the next room. I recommend you be elsewhere when the fire reaches them.

  I shall be in touch.

  Yours,

  Gregory Summers.

  It was not Richard who reeked so strongly of petrol, it was his whole flat. How long did he have? Smelling the thick fumes in the air afresh, he took a step towards the door. There was a small click from behind him.

  It happened between his first and second step. First that click, tiny and enormous, followed by a small explosion, the heat brushing warm air across the back of his neck.

  The petrol caught. In a blazing rush, the room about him became a deadly oven. The increase in temperature was hard enough, he nearly passed out mid-stride, but then the flames rushed past him on either side, overtaking his own desperate bid for the freedom of the exit.

  Staggering, he took his next steps over a carpet of fire. An image of the beanbags in the other room, and the time bomb sitting beneath them, spasmed through his head.

  Coughing, he blundered through the door, burning his hand as he grabbed the blazing frame to prevent himself falling. In this room too the walls were an incandescent replica of the safety they had once offered, but the carpet had not yet caught. Looking across at the beanbags, he saw the damp trail leading from them, stopping inches away from the furnace of the wall. The carpet of this gap began to smoulder a way to the petrol.

  Desperate, he tried to run, screaming when he realised that his petrol-stained shoes were aflame. Taking two steps, he collapsed with the pain from his blistering feet. Getting his breath was hard, for there was more smoke than oxygen around him. Had he read somewhere that air hugged the floor during a fire? Would it not be better for him to lie down? The creature could have been bluffing about the canisters. There might yet be time to stop and fill his lungs. He thought of how comfortable it would be to never move again, how safe he would be when he died.

  He thought of Alex Carlisle, a man who had helped him for no reason other than simple compassion.

  Reeling to his feet, he cast his head about. All he could see was whirling, flowing smoke. How had he fallen? Was the door still in front of him? Shuffling agonised feet, feeling each step as a freshly roasted pain, he continued in the direction he faced.

  Lifetimes passed. Worlds were born, matured and extinguished. Civilisations rose and fell. Richard lived these aeons as an endless fiery journey forwards. A step. Another. All he knew was searing heat, noxious fumes, and furious noise. Lo, he thought, the dragon cometh.

  His outstretched fingers touched the bubbling, spitting varnish of the door. Another piercing pain, but welcome this time. Fumbling for the handle, he found hot metal and turned. A thousand super-heated coffee scalds cramped up his arm, and he screamed again, pulling as he did so. The door opened.

  Cool air struck him as he stepped forward. Across the hallway stood his neighbour, face twisted in shock and fright. It’s all right, he wanted to say, the dragon did it but I ran away. His parched throat would not form the words; he merely stood silhouetted against his burning apartment, a scorched Mephistopheles.

  The canisters.

  Despite lacking the strength to even speak, he found reserves to throw himself left of his open doorway. Rolling twice with momentum, he ended up lying face towards his door. Still his neighbour looked on, senseless in the face of what she saw.

  The next explosion was huge. The noise and force that slammed over him was stunning, but it was the fireball which fascinated his exhausted attention. Unable to move, he watched it gout from the open door, engulfing the woman who had thought him a decent young man. A blazing new lover claimed her. Before she was hurled backwards into her own apartment, he saw the moment of realisation on her face, bore witness to the slight raise of her eye brows as she stared into the oncoming embrace of flame and pain. Then she was gone, and Richard had to move again.

  As the inferno took hold in the hallway he scrabbled at the floor, dragging himself along the carpet on singed arms. Unable to walk, his feet still aflame, he heaved towards the open doors of the elevator. It was a bad idea to use the lift during a fire, but he couldn’t remember why and didn’t care. His whole body was a screaming, tender obscenity. Even through the thick smell of smoke he thought he could scent the scorching of his flesh. Not a single exposed part of him was untouched. Even those that were clothed sang new sensations of crisp burning. If he tried to use the stairs he would never reach the ground floor. The fire was his enemy now, a ravenous beast unleashed to destroy him. It pursued him, hungered for him, and would catch him on those stairs. The open metal doors were his only possible sanctuary. The fire had feasted on his neighbour, but it would come soon.

  His clawing became more frantic. As he cleared the last yards of hallway he was weeping tears his burned cheeks could no longer feel.

  Wrenching himself into the elevator, he turned to sit with his back against the wall and stared at the corridor. The fire was closer than he had dared think, just yards away. It was a relief to know his skin still had nerves enough to feel the massive heat. With an almighty heave, one that split the taut, seared skin of his back, he hit the button for the ground level.

  It was only as the doors closed him in that he realised why elevators should be avoided in the case of fire. With no time to reverse his decision, he remembered reading of electrical systems destroyed by the intense heat. The elevator could stop dead before he ever reached the ground. As the tiny metal coffin began to slide downwards, he also recalled why it was so unsafe to be trapped in a stuck elevator while a fire raged. The shaft acted as an air-tunnel that the blaze could rocket through. The beast could take him at a whim.

  Floor number five grazed by. Seconds ticked away, and he endured them with helpless frustration. The fourth floor passed him. Not knowing whether it was his imagination or not, he felt a small jolt in the progress of his descent before the third floor came up to greet him. Downwards he continued; floor two, floor one.

  When the doors slid open at the ground floor, the small crowd of anxious maintenance men found him screaming the name of the dragon.

  Unwilling to leave him in the elevator, despite the severity of his injuries, the maintenance crew had moved him to a section of grass outside the building. From where he lay, Richard could see the extent to which the fire had spread through the building. Just fifteen minutes after the initial explosion, the three storeys above the sixth were ablaze. Soon the whole building would follow. He had escaped the beast, and now it raged in frustration.

  After depositing him safely on the cool grass, the frightened men who had retrieved him returned to the building in search of more escapees. Richard had to move. He could not allow himself to be hospitalised, though he knew his burns were extensive and serious. The thing would come for him soon, the letter made that clear. It would find him and claim him, and lying prone on a hospital bed would only make the task easier. He had to hide.

  Weary, he pulled himself to a sitting position and looked round. A few people, probably his fellow residents, were gathered in the car park, their eyes cast upwards as they watched the destruction of their homes. The emergency services had yet to arrive. He had to go, for he had no strength to beat off the well-meaning attentions of the authorities.

  Battling the coughing which threatened to shatter his smoke-filled chest, he hauled himself to his feet. Surprised that he was even able to put weight on them, he ignored the b
roken glass pain that dwelt there. Though he wanted to remove his shoes and check the damage, he did not dare. From the subtle and agonised pulling he felt whenever he took a step, he suspected they had melted to his flesh.

  Hobbling around the side of the building, unable to use his seared hands to support himself against the wall, he made for the river. It was easiest, he discovered, to fix his eyes on a distant point and banish thought from his head. There were no shouts from behind him, and no pursuit dogged his smoking steps. It would come though, when the ambulances arrived and the work crew discovered his absence.

  Time blurred. He was never aware of the sirens that did come, or of continuing along the river to the heart of the city. At some point he must have left the surging body of the Thames and begun to pass through streets. He had no memory of falling asleep.

  When he awoke on a park bench, after an uncertain time, the light told him it was early morning. He did not know where he was or how he had arrived there. All he knew was pain and sickness. Raising a shaking hand, he examined his red, blistered skin and the yellow pus seeping from his wounds. How much of his body oozed with the infection?

  Part of his mind had closed down, the part that experienced the pain. It hurt to move, but he knew he should have been unable to even stand. He managed to do so nonetheless. He should have been aware of nothing beyond his own suffering, yet he found himself thinking almost clinically through recent events as he stumbled onwards.

  The creature had destroyed him. It had hidden his true life from him, burying it beneath the false premise of Greg Summers. Then it had burned that false life from under him like a set of flimsy floorboards. Eventually, he had rediscovered Richard Jameson. That too was gone now. When Jameson took full control of this body he would be embracing the murder of his family, the destruction of his home, the crippling of his own body. What difference now which personality inhabited his profane existence?