Pandaemonium (19 page)

Marianne reaches quickly into her bag and retrieves a paper hanky, which she waves under Deborah’s bent head until one of her hands grabs it.

‘I think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick,’ she says. ‘You said you picture other girls doing it, not you doing it with other girls. I’m the same.’

Deborah looks up and stares at Marianne fearfully through reddened eyes.

‘I don’t mean I’m worried I’m a lesbian,’ she clarifies. ‘I’m the same as in I’ve not done it, so I can’t realistically imagine myself in these situations. When I do, I can’t take the fantasy seriously, which kills the thrill. You need a proxy, a plausible surrogate.’

Deborah is still staring at her, now even more expectantly than during her reading. Christ knows how much and how long she’s been beating herself up about this, and Marianne knows why. Unfortunately, for the same reason, she won’t take the explanation coming directly from Marianne, but she’ll probably accept it from the cards.

‘You see this card here, just above The Moon? That’s Strength. See the way the woman is restraining the lion? There’s compassion there as well as inner strength, but in you that’s combined with the Star card: openness and giving, and that can render you vulnerable. People close to you can take advantage of you, yet they’ll never know the times you passed up the chance to take advantage of them. You have a tendency to be too self-critical and consequently you want other people to see the best in you. You’ve created this disproportionate fear of being a lesbian because it would destroy you in the eyes of the people whose respect you seek most. However, the Strength card suggests you’re better than that: inside, you know that you don’t need their approval, and you resent the things they would try to hold over you.’

Deborah dabs at her eyes and nose. When she pulls the hanky from her face, she looks as though an intolerable weight has been lifted, though she’s not the only one experiencing relief. For a worrying moment, Marianne fears Deborah’s going to lean over and give her a hug, but she’s just running away with herself.

‘That is . . . amazing,’ she says quietly. ‘How can you know all this about me? How can you tell so much from these cards? Don’t take this the wrong way, but are you, like, into witchcraft or something?’

‘I’m into magic, and I’m into myth,’ Marianne says, gesturing to the books that have by now fallen on to the floor. Deborah picks one up, a book of demonology, detailing nightmares and demon myths across five continents and fifty centuries.

‘Do you . . .
believe
. . . in things like this?’ she asks.

‘It’s not a question of believing, or of whether something is factual. Myths endure because they are true: what they tell us about ourselves is true, and sometimes myths were the way we instinctively understood these things before science and philosophy broke them down and explained them. Have a look at this.’

Marianne reaches for her bag and pulls out her beloved third volume of Neil Gaiman’s
The Sandman
.

‘A comic?’

‘Not a comic,
the
comic, and this is my favourite story, about my favourite story.’

Deborah looks on, confused, as Marianne flicks through the book to
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, as commissioned by the Sandman from Shakespeare as part of a deal. It is performed by Shakespeare’s own travelling company before an audience that has passed through a portal from another dimension: Oberon, Titania and Robin Goodfellow among them.

‘There,’ she says, finding the speech bubble she’s looking for and pointing it out.

‘
Things need not have happened to be true
,’ Deborah reads aloud. ‘
Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes and forgot
.’

‘You getting it now?’

‘Kind of,’ she says thoughtfully. ‘Can I borrow this?’

‘Long as you know what you’re dabbling in. I mean, it starts with comics, but this time tomorrow you could be wearing all black and listening to Muse.’

Deborah gives her an ‘aye, right’ smile and climbs into bed.

Finally past the lorry, he takes a curve and sees the windscreen explode into a white glow. Fucker had his lights on full beam.

‘Dip don’t dazzle.’

Merrick recalls that from some public-information campaign way back; can’t remember where, can’t remember when. He should
try
to remember, though: another mental exercise, another little project to stop his brain from trying to shut down.

He is just so tired.

The dazzle at least caused him to flinch, seeped just a little adrenalin into his system, but it’s going to have its work cut out counteracting all the melatonin. The dark is not helping keep his eyes open, nor is the rain, the headlights, the need to squint, the inability to stay focused upon a point or an object. He needs sunlight. He needs the rain to stop. He needs about twelve hours’ uninterrupted sleep.

He’s got the fan blowing, taking the temperature down as low as it will go. His fingers feel stiff from the cold air jetting around the steering wheel. The outside temperature is about five degrees, but the heat from the engine means the fan can only blow so cold: it’s not an air-con system. His eyes feel bloodshot from the dry air inside the car, the lids getting intolerably heavy. Every time he narrows them to peer through the rain, it feels easier to let them fall fully closed than to open them wide again.

He should pull over, find a lay-by, get out, waken up. He’d be drenched, though, in moments, and still have two hours’ driving ahead of him. Plus he’s on a clock and already running late.

They gave him zero notice. He was supposed to drop everything, which was an eventuality he always knew he might have to face working for the MoD, but which in practice he had found impossible when such a scenario was finally precipitated. Thus he took time he couldn’t afford to try and collate his unfinished work into a form that his successor, if he had one, could comprehend.

He left Dartmoor eight hours ago, having been all but escorted out of the building and pointedly reminded not only that his work there was over, but that he was only ten hours from being in breach by failing to report for duty at his new post. The option to make his own way to Ben Trochart was the only courtesy about it. The alternative was to go on a chopper that was leaving within an hour of his being reassigned, which would have precluded any opportunity to put his work in some kind of order and ensure that certain crucial documents were backed up. The prospect of just having to drop his research was anathema; the idea that the project itself might simply be abandoned one he couldn’t begin to contemplate.

What was so precipitately important? He worked for the Ministry of Defence, but you didn’t get emergencies in research. Nor did you get rushed to a room and made to sign the Official Secrets Act, especially when you thought you already
had
signed the Official Secrets Act. (‘Not this version you haven’t,’ he was assured.)

There had been ‘an incident’ at the Orpheus complex. That was about as much as he could get anyone to tell him. This confirmed a buzz on the grapevine in recent days that dozens of personnel had been pulled out of the place, and as such was perhaps the only recorded instance of a rumour about Orpheus proving well founded. It was a US-leased, MoD-owned site in the Highlands of Scotland, a former nuclear command complex that had been recommissioned as a research facility after the Cold War. Its location and scale deep underground naturally made it the subject of endless speculation among bored MoD lab-rats, to the point where it had become a running joke, a byword for the technologically super-advanced or downright impossible.

‘We’re waiting for Orpheus to finish Beta on that one,’ was a common way of saying something couldn’t be done.

The one thing he did know with any certainty about it was that it was mostly a physics hive, so why were they hastily summoning up a biologist? Dwelling upon that might have provided another exercise to stave off sleep, had it not been that he’d already been pondering it for most of the drive and come up blank.

His eyes are closing; it ought to frighten him how involuntary this seems, but it feels so beckoning, so comfortable. It’ll be okay. Just a few seconds’ rest, ten seconds, three hundred and thirty-three metres, surely he can risk that. NO. He snaps them wide, breathes extra deeply a few times, sourcing oxygen, gives his head a shake. The windscreen is a membrane, fluid and warping, stretching the light, smearing the shapes, blurring the white lines. He’s squinting, narrowing his eyes in an effort to shield the pupils, keep them from contracting so that he can see better into the rain-filled darkness. Maybe if he closes one eye and thus keeps it dark-adapted, then he can open it and close the other next time the oncoming lights are too bright. He tries. Yeah. Closing one eye feels good. It feels too good. He wants to close the other one too.

He hits a straight length of road, an interchange. There are streetlights for the first time in however many miles. He can see the road stretch out, unbending, must be half a mile. Six hundred and sixty-six metres would be twenty seconds. He can close his eyes for twenty seconds. The road is straight. He doesn’t need to steer for twenty seconds, doesn’t need to look for six hundred and sixty-six metres. He can just, yes, that’s it, just . . .

NO.

Fuck no.

Did he really think that? Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. That settles it.

He sees the sign for a lay-by, indicates, pulls in. He gets out, steps into the rain, teeming down in plunging streaks picked out against the towering lights flanking the interchange.

Jesus Christ. It was that close.

He lets the cold of the rain lash his face, run down his collar, feels the material start to cling against the skin of his chest. He’ll get there wet and cold, but he’ll get there alive.

Twenty seconds, six hundred and sixty-six metres. Jesus Christ.

Beansy has actually dropped off. All you can see of him is a big lump under the duvet, huddled against the wall beneath the window. Deso just hopes his arse is pointing that way, though the clatty bastard can probably fart so hard that the recoil off the wall will shift the bed. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, as Mr Kane would tell them.

Beansy was first in and out the bogs for a wash and brush-up before nighty-night, and the dozy bastard was asleep by the time the rest of them got back. Marky noticed he was conked when Beansy never responded to a question, and was all for them having a bit of fun: putting Beansy’s hand in warm water so he’d pish himself, or drawing a cock on his head with a magic marker.

‘Naw, we’re no’ having any of that shite,’ Deso had argued, in a way intended to convey that he would not be partaking and therefore did not expect to be on the receiving end either. Marky concurred quickly, realising what a dangerous situation he was leading them all into. Everybody would have been sitting awake the whole night, frightened to let themselves fall asleep before anyone else. Fuck that.

Ghost stories are decent craic at a time like this, but as Deso’s lying there, he can’t help wishing he’d brought a guitar. His fingers are fidgety: he’s moving them under the duvet, feeling an imaginary fret-board and hearing the tune he’d be playing, really softly. He opted not to bring one in case it got damaged and because it was one more thing to carry, but now he’s thinking it’ll feel like a long time before he gets another wee fix. Ordinarily, he might have been in with a chance of borrowing Rosemary’s, but he reckons it’s safe to assume that boat’s sailed now.

He feels a wee bit bad about that business, in fact. Feels especially guilty about what he wrote on that sticker. It’ll come off, he knows, and it seemed funny at the time, but lying in the dim light with the atmosphere quite mellow, he finds himself thinking about what it looked like from Rosemary’s point of view. If somebody wrote something on one of his guitars, especially taking the piss out of something he held dear, he’d take it very personally. It was hurtful. Cuntish, to be honest. He doesn’t want to go as far as owning up and apologising, but he ought to make it up somehow. Be that bit nicer to the lassie tomorrow, let her know he thinks she’s all right, so she’ll understand it wasn’t malice, just carry-on.

And he does think she’s all right, matter of fact. All the hymns and God patter is a pain in the stones, but she’s not as bad as some. Thon pal of hers, Bernadette, for example: fucking wee nippy sweety that yin is. Bernie seems the type that’s religious just so she can have a moral justification for being in the huff with everybody: take the religion away and she’d still have a face like fizz. Rosemary’s the opposite. She always seems burdened: an unhappy clappy. She goes on about the Good News and organises charismatic masses, but none of it seems to be bringing a lot of sunshine to the girl.

Fizzy’s building up to his spooky climax.

‘. . . and all they found was her shawl, the same one she’d been found in when she was abandoned on the doorstep as a baby,’ he says. ‘Totally. True. Story.’

Deso and Marky burst out laughing at this final declaration.

‘That’s fuckin’ shite, Fizzy,’ Marky declares, still laughing.

Fizzy just grins. Couldn’t give a fuck.

‘Not true, and not scary.’

‘Jumbo fail,’ Deso agrees.

‘Can you do better, well?’ Fizzy asks, clearly hoping that Deso can.

Deso thinks for a moment, and realises he just might.

‘Aye,’ he says. ‘I’ll tell you something really scary, and scary because this
is
true. No word of a lie, and you can ask when we get back because it happened to my uncle.’

‘No word of a lie, you got shagged by your uncle?’ Marky says.

‘Fuck off. This is serious. My uncle Iain and my aunty Margaret live out in Perthshire, middle of nowhere. A place nearly as remote as this. One night, about two in the morning, the doorbell rings, wakes them up. Uncle Iain goes downstairs and opens the door, and there’s a man there, about the same age as himself. The man says: “Sorry to trouble you, but any chance you could give me a push?”

‘Uncle Iain goes, “Fuck off, I’m in my jammies, it’s the middle of the bloody night.” He slams the door and goes back to bed, tells Aunty Margaret what it was. She goes spare. She says: “Don’t you remember that time when my appendix burst and our Land Rover broke down on the way to hospital? We knocked on somebody’s door and I’d have died if that guy hadn’t given us a push. Get back down those stairs and help that man oot.”

‘So my uncle gets oot his bed again, and just as he’s walking down the stairs, he realises it has been five years
to the day
since Margaret’s appendix went. He’s thinking, “Oh fuck, man,” as he approaches his own front door. Then he opens it, and guess what he sees?’

‘You getting shagged by the wee man?’ Marky suggests.

‘I’m serious, here. He opens the door, and he can see nothing. No man, no motor. But he can hear this noise, this wee squeaking noise. Eeeee. Eeeee. So he goes, “Is anybody there?” Nothing, just eeeee, eeeee. So he calls out louder, “Hullo, mister, are you there, are you still looking for a push?” And that’s when the eeee noise stops and he hears a voice. It’s distant, like just more than a whisper, saying: “Aye . . . Over here . . . on the swing.”’

Deso lets this hang for a second, then starts pishing himself with laughter.

‘Oh, fuck you,’ Fizzy tells Deso, then he and Marky start lobbing pillows at him.

‘Fuckin’ arsehole,’ Marky says, but he’s laughing as well.

Then one of the pillows misses Deso and wallops into Beansy. He doesn’t respond. No half-conscious retaliation, no rolling over, not even a grumble or a snore.

Something isn’t right.

Never mind snore, Deso can’t hear Beansy breathing, and Beansy does
nothing
quietly.

‘Beansy?’ he asks.

There is still no response. Deso urges Marky and Fizzy to drop the pillows, give it a rest. They go quiet, exchange looks.

‘Aye, very good, Deso,’ Marky says. ‘You’re just trying to freak us oot.’

‘Shhh,’ Deso insists. ‘I’m not. Something’s no’ right. I cannae hear Beansy breathing.’

Without anyone having to suggest it, they all hold their breaths. They can hear nothing.

‘Fuck,’ Fizzy lets slip.

Deso slowly approaches Beansy’s bed, reaching a hand towards the pile of covers. Just as his fingers touch the duvet, he hears a fierce, throaty growl outside the window, and looks up to see a pallid, grimacing, demonic face snarling behind the glass. There are horns at the temples, seeping gouges on the cheeks, the features humanoid but viciously distorted.

Deso jumps back in response, clattering into Fizzy and Marky, sending all three of them into a tangled sprawl on Deso’s bed.

When he looks at the window again, he sees the demon pull the flesh from its own face.

Deso almost closes his eyes in fearful revulsion before noticing that the demon’s arm is clothed in puffed-out nylon. The flesh is revealed to be a mask, beneath which is Beansy’s grinning coupon.

‘
That’s
how you give somebody a fright, Deso.’