Nobody True (37 page)

I followed and within seconds we were in Prim’s small bedroom, so bright and innocently cheerful in daylight, but now menaced by shadows for which the feeble night-light was no match. Andrea quickly remedied that by flicking on the main light switch with her elbow. She hurriedly set Prim on the narrow bed with its cheerful flowery quilt and held her there in a sitting position while a free hand snatched the blue puffer from the bedside cabinet. Maybe it was the lifting and being carried that revived Primrose—or perhaps some inner sense told her she was safe in her mother’s arms—but her eyelids fluttered open and her lips moved between strained gasps for air as she tried to form words. By the time Andrea held the puffer up to her face, her eyes were wider—and looking directly at me.

“Daddy?” I heard her whisper.

Andrea appeared not to have noticed. She held the inhaler in front of Prim’s mouth, index finger on the depressor at the top.

“Open, Baby, open your mouth,” she implored, a tremor in her voice.

Prim’s eyes went to her mother’s and she did as she was told.

Fine droplets of mist sprayed into her mouth and she gulped in air.

“Again, darling, again,” her mother urged.

The procedure was repeated several times and gradually Prim’s shoulders ceased their shudders and the rise and fall of her chest began to take on a steady rhythm. Andrea’s tension seemed to ebb away, even though she must still have been very frightened by all that had happened. I think she was putting on a brave face for our daughter’s sake.

As Prim’s breathing calmed, she looked once again over her mother’s shoulder. Disappointment showed in her eyes.

I stared back at her with what I hoped was a loving smile, just in case she might see me again.

She didn’t. Her sweet pale face scrunched up in puzzlement. “I saw Daddy, Mummy,” she said when her breathing allowed.

Andrea held her close, but not close enough to restrict her breathing. “Hush, Prim,” she said softly, soothingly. “Everything’s all right now. The bad man has gone away. He can’t hurt you anymore.” Her voice sounded as if she had a serious head cold.

“But, Mummy—”

“I’m sure Daddy was watching over us. I think he was there protecting us.”

Was she merely saying this to comfort Prim, or did Andrea believe her own words? There was no way of knowing, but maybe it was the latter. I like to think so.

It gave me comfort.

As I left them there on the bed, clutching each other, Andrea gently rocking Prim to and fro and making soothing nasal sounds, holding a dozen or so blood-soaked tissues to her nose, a fierce emotion was edging my love for them—yes, my love for them both—aside. The emotion was bitterness. And… anger.

I had lost so much on the night of my death and now I’d discovered I’d lost even more: I’d lost something that I’d never truly possessed anyway. The final reality was harsh, overwhelming.

And it was Guinane who had caused everything bad that had happened to me. By coveting my wife and stealing my daughter. By betraying me as a friend and business partner. By murdering me. And by murdering me he had caused the monster to visit my home, to threaten and terrorize the two people who had meant more to me than life itself.

Guinane was to blame for everything.

I entered the lounge. It was quiet and perfectly still, but resembled a battleground after the battle. The floor was littered with broken or bent debris, with fragments of glass, with scattered CDs, with overturned furniture. Even the television screen was filled with a great white, burned-out blemish.

Amongst it all lay the battered corpse of Alec Moker. His body was without aura.

The room was bright with light and the ghosts had returned.

They were pallid. Almost insignificant. Still weakened. My father was among them, perhaps more visible than the rest because there was contact between us. He smiled at me as those around him waned.

I wondered if they had found the strength—as feeble as it was—to come back because their adversary was dead but they needed to witness the outcome for themselves. None was dancing on his body I noticed.

I stopped on the other side of Moker’s corpse and my father smiled at me. The warmth I felt from him, the unbounded love, was akin to my feelings for Primrose.

As he joined his companions in their fading, I looked down at the crumpled bulk that had been Moker.

Fluid from his damaged head was spreading over the beige carpet, sinking into the flattened pile so that it would never be completely beige again. There was no movement at all from him, no death spasms, no voiding of liquids other than the blood itself. Maybe he smelled of death and excrement, I couldn’t tell. There was no twitching of fingers, no sudden lurches of feet. Oh yeah, the wicked witch was dead all right.

Yet with death, there came something else. The final and irrevocable act of all those who had lived in this world: the soul’s departure from its host.

That time had come for Alec Moker.

As I took a step towards the corpse, something about it began to change.

At first, I thought the body was stirring, and my metaphorical heart skipped a metaphorical beat. It couldn’t be. Moker was well and truly dead. Nobody could have survived that kind of punishment to their skull, not even a creature like him. Yet he was moving.

No. I was wrong. Something was emerging.

The body remained still. But something was rising from it. Moker’s soul was taking its leave.

Moker’s black soul, it was like the darkest shadow among other shadows.

The vanishing ghosts opposite drew back, my father’s among them. Their fading images were fearful and some seemed to shrink before the rising darkness. Their alarm was contagious and I took a step backwards myself, reluctant to be close to the thing on the floor. The atmosphere became full of weight, full of foreboding, and there was a pre-thunderstorm charge in the air. I heard faint whisperings from the ghosts as they gradually fled the scene and I sensed their revulsion of this malign animus that was the very essence of Moker himself.

It was a sickly thing, foul and murky, like the stagnant waters of a deep, forgotten well. It appeared to rage within itself; yet it cowered also, as if it knew its own malevolence was beyond redemption and its fate was beyond all contrition. For the first time I understood what was meant by “a lost soul”.

The sludgy darkness continued to rise from the dead body, the vague shapes beyond it almost gone, only their low whispering remaining. It began to take on a form. Moker’s form. Filling out, shaping first a head, and then the shoulders, but always obscure, muddied, unclean. I backed further away as it loomed, until I was almost at the door. I could have been preparing to flee; at that moment, I wasn’t sure.

Features slowly emerged—the big hands, the eyes that no longer gleamed, the ears. Finally, the gaping hole in the face. It seemed that even in death Moker was not without his affliction.

There was no longer any harm to it: somehow the malevolence had been absorbed. And even as the notion came to me, that this thing was to be pitied, the squalid replicate began to break up, falling away in tenuous pieces, dispersing and dissolving like the mist before it, and I watched until there was none of it left. Watched until Moker’s unrepentant soul had become nothing.

Only myself and the dead body were left in the room. The ghosts had departed, Moker’s damned soul had ceased to exist. All was quiet and calm. I prayed that my home would evermore be so.

There was no noise from upstairs, but I assumed that once Prim was reasonably reassured, Andrea would call the police from our bedroom phone. I felt sure she would not venture downstairs until they arrived, and my plan had to be carried out before that happened.

I went over to the still—the empty—body on the carpet. The blood formed a deeply rich halo around its head. Abhorrent though it was to me, I forced myself to my knees, then lay over it. There was no resistance: I sank into Moker’s corpse as easily as immersing myself in water. But nothing had prepared me for the horrendous and debased sensations that swept through me. I saw the victims Moker had claimed, observed their injuries even as the attack was taking place, experienced the exquisite lust and perverted joy that the killer had felt, as well as the thrill of danger that went with the slaying, the sexual gratification that always followed the murders. Yet underlying all this depraved glory was an abject misery, an agony of suffering that had been Moker’s constant companion, a vile wretchedness that had been with him all his life. In this remembrance of recent events, the sick exultation outweighed the bitterness, but I knew the latter had always prevailed and that only for short passages of time it was vanquished.

Within this formation of flesh and bone, I cried out, the awfulness and the sordid pleasure almost too much to bear; but I needed this body, needed Moker’s corpse, for my own purposes, my own revenge. Retribution was my guiding force now.

I brought my own thoughts to the fore, maintaining images of Prim in my mind, in an effort to override Moker’s memories. But, in truth, it was only thoughts of retaliation that quelled the riot of loathsome impressions. With all the resolve I possessed, I pushed the atrocities and the glory they aroused aside and I concentrated on ruling this newfound vessel. I willed myself into every part of the body, its structure, the arteries, flesh, subjugating them so that they would become mine, if only for a brief time.

Slowly, ever so slowly, I moved the fingers of one hand. Then the hand itself. Then the other hand. An arm. It was working: for a little while Moker’s body could be mine. I heard footsteps thudding across the floor overhead and guessed that Andrea was in our bedroom and heading for the phone. I wondered how long it would take the police to get here.

I had to move faster. I had to get Moker’s body onto its feet. I pushed the shoulders up off the floor, then drew up a knee. It took great effort, but I managed to lumber to my/Moker’s feet. I stood there unsteadily, swaying as I got used to the alien body. Taking a tentative step forward, I almost fell, just managing to correct myself before I overbalanced. Another step and it was not too bad. If I concentrated hard, I could make it. The problem then would be whether I was capable of driving a car. Another step. Fine. It was working. I was getting close to the open doorway.

But I remembered something and I turned back, awkwardly retracing my steps. Carefully, I bent down and retrieved the knitting needle from the floor.

40

I left the front door open behind me. Frankly, it was too much trouble to turn around and pull it closed; I’d entered Moker’s body only moments before and it would take time to get acquainted. I paused to use one of the long scarf’s dangling ends to wipe away the blood covering one of Moker’s eyes and when I took the next step forward it was all I could do to prevent myself from falling off the doorstep.

I coped, but movement was stiff, awkward, just as it had been with the woman’s body before. In life, Moker had had a curious style to his walking and in death it was even more strange and ungainly. The feet shuffled more than ever and the body swayed from side to side like the proverbial drunken sailor. A zombie would have had more grace.

As I made my lumbering way down the drive, which was partially lit by lights from the hall behind me and the street lights ahead, I felt the cold night air bite. I should have been almost oblivious of the cold, but instead it struck deep into the hole in my face—and the newly created vent in the top of my head—chilling the flesh inside and touching me, the body’s new controller.* With some difficulty, I wound both dangling ends of the long scarf around my lower face, shielding the gaping hole from the chill.

*I had wondered if the damage to the brain (all those greyish lumps flowing with the blood!) would upset the body’s mechanism—the chemical signals sent through the system, the sinews that worked the bones—but it seemed that the mind, and thus the will, could manage without all of the physical driving force, the body’s engine, if you like. A metaphysical engine had now taken over Moker’s corpse, and while alien to its host, I hoped it would have the power to help me finish my task.

I staggered, stumbled my way to the kerb outside my property, nearly falling twice before I reached it. There was Moker’s ancient Hillman, parked almost directly in front of the house. Even though my state of mind was somewhat dazzled by the adjustment it was having to make—controlling another person’s reflexes and movement, as well as tamping down the remaining dregs of Moker’s memory—I was aware enough to search for the car keys in the raincoat’s deep pockets. The fingers were numb, barely able to feel anything at all, but I could tell there were no keys present in either one. Then probably, with luck…

Yes! I’d reached the old car and peered through the nearside window to see that the keys were in the ignition. Blood trickled into my eye again and I clumsily wiped it with one of the scarf ends. Next bit might be tricky. Driving a car while using someone else’s body wouldn’t be easy, but at least the roads should be virtually deserted at this time of night—or this time of the morning. What time was it? I wondered. One, two o’clock? It didn’t matter and trying to read the tiny digits on a wristwatch—if Moker wore such a thing—seemed like too much effort. It was unimportant.

That was when it struck me. The first memory. Like a bolt of lightning out of the blue, so vivid it seemed more like a hallucination.

Prim’s horrified little face, beneath me, me hovering over it, and then it was Andrea, fighting me, spittle shooting at my face, then Prim again, her chest quivering as she struggled for air, me holding something, the knitting needle, grey, deadly sharp—

I collapsed to the pavement and it was gone, the vision abruptly checked, the scene washed from my mind. My hand scrabbled at the Hillman’s bodywork, fingernails grating against painted metal as I sought to pull myself up. On my knees, one hand pressed against the window’s sill. Sliding against the side of the car as I straightened my knees, hands applying pressure to lift myself, then my whole body leaning there as I tried to recover the strength I’d just lost. It must have taken a minute or two for me to compose myself, to regain the determination to dominate this freakish vessel.

It took a couple of attempts to grip the door handle firmly enough to open the door, but finally I managed. I clambered into the driver’s high seat and settled myself. I stared in dismay at the controls. Of course, I’d forgotten. The gear-shift was on the steering wheel column. Only once had I driven with a gear stick like this, and that had been a long time ago in America. Still, once you can ride a bike…

Still perturbed by the memory flash, I bent low, a shaky hand reaching for the key in the ignition. The engine failed when I turned the key and I pumped the accelerator pedal with a heavy foot as I tried again. Luckily, the engine caught—the Hillman had had a couple of good runs that night, so the engine hadn’t cooled completely—and I slumped back in the seat. Difficult bit, now. Driving the bloody thing.

Left foot on the clutch, I lifted the gearshift beneath the steering wheel into first, then eased up the clutch pedal while pressing the accelerator. The engine roared and the car jolted. The engine stalled. Oh shit, this wasn’t going to be easy. Just before I performed the whole routine again, I remembered the handbrake. I hadn’t released it. I did so slowly, because it wasn’t only the car I was trying to get used to, but Moker’s body as well. After switching on the engine once more, I danced clumsily with the floor pedals. On reflection, I think it was only because the Hillman was still familiar to Moker’s body that I managed to drive the old heap that night. I found that the less I thought about what I was doing, the more those borrowed hands and feet were able to take over. In a way, it was like driving on autopilot and I was grateful for that. I guess from time to time we all do things automatically, and to a certain extent, this was what was happening now.

The first manoeuvre was to turn the car around so that it was facing the right direction. I swung the wheel and pushed down on the accelerator—

—the underground car park, the smart woman wearing glasses turning towards me, surprised then horrified, opening her mouth to scream, a wonderful feeling of exultation rushing through me as I pushed the long thin needle upwards, beneath her breast, into the heart—

The Hillman smashed into the side of a vehicle parked on the other side of the avenue. Oh, sweet…! Had to reverse, pull the car back. Had it made a terrible noise? I didn’t care if my neighbours were roused from their comfortable slumber—so long as I got away first. Okay. Calm down, take it steady. Reverse. Where the fuck was reverse? Oh yeah, down, had to push the lever down. Whoops. That was second gear. I remembered. No, had to pull the lever out first, then down. That was reverse.

Following my recollection of column gearshifts and also relying on this body’s own instincts, I reversed the car back across the road until the rear wheels hit the kerb, swinging the steering wheel to my right as I did so. A light came on in a bedroom window opposite.

Gears grinding, I shifted to first, and put my right foot down hard. The Hillman shot forward and its wing scraped along the side of another vehicle parked at the opposite kerb, taking off a wing mirror as it went—

—a dark, lonely street, wet with rain, a man coming towards me, unwrapping my scarf, waiting for him to draw near before revealing all, the man hesitating, footsteps slowing, the first hint of concern on his handsome face, then the look of utter terror taking over as the scarf fell loose, turning to run, but not quickly enough, first a big hand spinning him back round, then the needle striking upwards, piercing material, skin, flesh, finding the heart, and pure glorious joy—

Uhhh! The memory was almost painful, the shock of it making me jerk the steering wheel so that the Hillman scraped along another car parked on the left-hand side of the road. God, can’t I control them? Can’t I hold back the memories and the perverted pleasure that came with them? Had to get a grip, had to push extraneous thoughts aside. But could I? After all, this was not my body and whatever recollection it held could not be tamed by me, the usurper. Had to make myself immune to them. I still had control over my own mind, didn’t I? Sure I did.

The roads were pretty empty, as was the main thoroughfare when I turned into it. I’d have to drive carefully, concentrating all the way, do my best not to get distracted—Oh God!—

—a cemetery, an old one with Gothic tombs and large angels, weather-worn slabs everywhere, and there was the woman, alone laying flowers on the grave of some departed loved one, and here was I, moving among the stained crosses and angels with spread wings and mausoleums with boarded doors, stalking the woman, who was turned out, attractive, long dark hair, getting closer to her, unwinding the two ends of the scarf, ready to pounce, bringing the murder tool from my pocket as she turns her head and sees me, and pure delight at the terror on her face, those beautifully startled eyes that already know she’s dead, then the exquisite delight as the needle sinks in, through the satin material of her blouse, just under the lower ribs, pushing—no, sliding, for very little effort is required—the long needle through the flesh, piercing then slipping right inside her heart, her scream muffled by a big hand, and she falls across the grave of the one she is there to grieve for, then the touching, the lifting of clothes, pulling down fine panties, pushing inside her with trembling, excited fingers…