The Grin of the Dark (41 page)

'No, that isn't what I said.'

I do my best to fend off a sense that the past is changing – that the
change is creeping up on me. 'What did you say, then?'

'That I couldn't stop you. I should have known it was no use.
Everything's true on the net, and it lets anyone use a mask who wants
to. It's the medium he kept talking about.'

In the midst of my massive confusion I feel it would help if Rufus
accepted at least some blame. 'If you believe he's so bad for the
world, why didn't you stop everyone watching his film tonight?'

'I tried, if you remember. If I'd made more of a scene they'd have
wanted to know why.' He grins with some emotion as he adds
'Anyway, what for? You've made him bigger than his films. You're
the authority on what he does to people. Nobody living has seen as
much of him as you.'

He's blaming me again, and I sense jealousy as well. I don't know
what may come of forcing him to admit to it, but I'm opening my
mouth to try when words spill out almost faster than I think them.
'Mark has.'

'How can he have, Simon?' Rufus sounds as if he's attempting to
calm a mental patient. 'I shouldn't think that's possible,' he says.

'He keeps watching a film of Tubby on stage. He watches it over
and over.'

'Well, never mind. Soon it won't matter.'

'Won't matter?' I say through a grin that makes my jaws throb.

'No, because he'll be everywhere, or what's used him for a mask
will. You've seen to that.'

His smile is no longer bothering to look apologetic. It's rising in
triumph, although its inversion flickers over it. 'You have, you
clown,' I yell and shove myself away from the desk. As if only my grip
has been holding an image stable, the room instantly turns as black
as the inside of my skull.

For altogether too long I can't tell if the room is absolutely dark –
if it's flickering faintly or just my vision is. Has the sky gone out too?
I'm straining to make out any detail of the room when I hear an
object slither swiftly downwards to land on the carpet. It sounds
flabby and plump. I stumble away from it, and at once I'm unable to
judge where I am. I can hear it crawling across the floor with a noise
like the dragging of a balloon full or less than full of liquid. I have to
turn my back on it to locate the window, which is so dim that I might
be peering at a patch of wall. When the faint rectangle stirs with a
feeble pulse of light no more protracted than a heartbeat I swing
around to glare at the room.

I can see very little. I'm not even sure that the dwarfish shape
crouching a few feet away is the computer. All the electricity must
have failed, since the computer shut down when the light did. I don't
know whether the object on the floor has crawled out of the room or
is biding its time close to me. I'm just able to distinguish Rufus
between me and the door, but his presence isn't reassuring. It isn't just
that he's standing utterly still; the silhouette of his head seems oddly
lacking. 'Rufus?' I say louder than I intend.

I don't care for his response, if that's what it is. A whitish crescent
seems to glimmer above his chin, but it's scarcely paler than the rest
of the dim surface within the outline of his head. I edge past the desk
and sidle well clear of him as I flee into the corridor.

Although it's even darker out here, I pull the door shut. Whatever
was in the office besides Rufus, I hope it's trapped. I've no idea
where Colin has gone, but it's Mark I have to go to, and Natalie as
well. I can barely see my way; the passage looks unstable with
dimness or with my nervous vision, while the doors are indistinguishable
from the walls. I only just avoid colliding with the wall at
the bend. I risk putting on speed towards the lift – I still feel too close
to the office and its unwelcome contents – until my right foot kicks
the skirting-board. I've blundered into another turn in the corridor.

There's only one between the lift and the office, and it's behind me.
Have I wandered beyond the lift in the dark? I twist around to find
an object looming very close to me. Surely it's just a wall, but that's
disconcerting enough. Can I orient myself by the numbers on the
doors? I shuffle away from the corner in the direction I was already
taking and run my hand over the wall, which feels furry and chill. The
fur must be the texture of the wallpaper, not mould, but I have to
force myself to keep touching it. Then my fingertips encounter the
smooth surface of a door, and at once I'm afraid it will jerk open,
though I can't put a name to anything I dread it may release. When it
doesn't budge I grope in search of the number. My fingers trace a six
and another followed by more, or are they zeros? In either case there
are too many; I seem to feel them multiply as if they're hatching from
the door. I snatch my hand away and stagger backwards in the dark.

I expect to bump into another wall, but I'm left swaying in the
midst of blackness. The lack of any sense of where I am leaves me
unable to breathe. The dark and my skull are throbbing by the time I
notice a point of light far down the corridor. It reminds me of a
spyhole, which must be why I feel watched. What else can I do except
head for the light? I lurch out of my paralysis and flounder along the
corridor.

The light is more distant than seems remotely reasonable. I've no
idea how far I trudge while it continues to stay unapproachable. Is it
receding, luring me further into the dark? I no longer have any sense
of the corridor; I could be striving to cross a lightless void. As if in
response to my imagination, the source of the light begins to expand,
which must mean I'm making headway. It isn't a spyhole, I see now.
It's a window.

I'm supposing that it looks out onto the night when I realise that
it must belong to a room, because silhouettes are peering through it.
They would be nightmarishly tall if they were outside the building.
Even if they're on the far side of a door I'm not sure that I want to
see their faces. Perhaps my apprehension is fending off the sight,
trying to preserve the illusion that they're too distant to identify. All
at once, with a transition that seems to omit a considerable stretch of
the corridor, I'm too close to deny what I'm seeing. I recognise
everyone framed by the darkness, and the foremost is Mark.

He's at a computer keyboard. Nicholas is standing next to him,
arms around his and Natalie's shoulders. The boy must be leaning
towards the window, since he appears to dwarf his parents, not to
mention the spectators behind them – Warren and Bebe and Joe. I
can't make out the room they're in for the crowd at their backs. I
suspect I could identify many if not all of those people – some belong
to the Comical Companions, I'm sure, and are the girls at the very
back Willie Hart's performers? – but I'm too thrown by realising that
they aren't beyond a window at all. They're on the far side of a
screen.

'Latterly,' I try to call to her. 'Kram, what do youth ink yawed
ooing?' My struggles for coherence simply produce worse gibberish
until my babbling gags on itself. Perhaps my language has run out,
unless I'm silenced by the developments in front of me. Mark has used
the mouse to pull a list of favourite sites onto the screen.

I've deciphered just a couple – SENOTSEMIL, DLOG FO TOP –
when I'm distracted by his expression. His eyes and mouth have
widened, shaping his best Tubby face yet. In a moment his entire
audience, or mine, is copying him. The effort seems to inflate some of
the heads in the crowd near to bursting, not least my mother's. Mark
leans closer to the screen and passes his hand over his face, a gesture
that reminds me of somebody much older deep in thought or a
magician making a pass, and then he clicks on the name of a site. At
once I'm staring through a window at tall slim houses and their
writhing reflections in a canal.

I hear an eager object slither across the carpet. Before it can reach
me I feel rather than hear another click all around me. I'm in a
different hotel room overlooking a Christmas fairground. The slithering
is closer, but a third click seems to cut it off, along with all the
light. I'm enclosed by more than darkness; when I fling out my arms,
wood bruises my knuckles. The impact sets hangers jangling and
shakes the wardrobe. The past has finally caught up with me, or is it
the future, or both? My companion hasn't far to crawl to me. I
haven't time to cry out, even if I'm still capable of making any sound,
before it clambers limblessly up my body and closes over my face.

'Why you, Simon?'

'Why not?'

'But why did you have to be put through all that? What was the
point?'

'Maybe there wasn't one, Natalie, except it was a laugh.'

'You shouldn't blame Mark. I don't believe he was responsible. He
couldn't have known what he was doing, not entirely.'

'It was Tubby, Simon.'

'It wasn't just him either, Mark. It was everyone.'

Perhaps I might end up saying something like that if I ever let them
find me, but I won't. I should have seen that it was everyone long
before I did. How could it have been more obvious? Bebe was nothing
but a letter doubled, and Warren was the labyrinth I had to follow,
on the computer or to reach all the places I visited, if there's any
difference. Nicholas sounds as if he was trying to combine Thackeray
and me, and you can find Lane in Natalie too – Natal Lie, it might be
more appropriate to call her. Joe was just a clown, but I have to
scratch my wrist whenever I think of Mark's name, and the reddened
flesh grins up at me. As for Rufus, how stupidly obvious a pun is that
– a university lecturer called Red Wall? What a brick he was, or
should I say a prick? And Colin comes out as Evil Conner with yet
another of those extra consonants left over. (Memo: relist omens.)
Does that mean he was lying in wait for me to hear of Tubby, or is
he one more aspect of the past that has been changed? Even if I
trusted any of them now, it wouldn't matter. My persecutor was
indeed everyone, and not just those I've named. It is or will be you as
well, because we're all part of the Internet, exactly as we've made it
part of us. We've added it to human consciousness.

How many people really knew what we were creating? Tubby
would have, and I suspect the clowns did. Perhaps that's the secret of
their grins. Their comedy gives the subconscious and chaos a voice,
however unheard it seems to be, but it's feeble compared to the
Internet. That's worse than the subconscious, because nobody has
noticed it's another dimension of the mind. It's hungry for all
knowledge and equally for all falsehood, and how long before
nobody can tell the difference? Its limits are infinite, but most of
infinity is darkness, and chaos breeds in the dark. Like any aspect of
the mind it can be overloaded, and I believe that has already beggun.
I'm sure it can attach itself to your mind if you use it too much.
Perhaps it needs our minds to store the overload. How can infinnity
be overloaded? What sense does that make? It makes sense because it
doesn't, just like Tubby and his discovveries. It's another aspect of
greedy chaos. Once the net catches you it can reprogram your mind,
reconfiggure it in its own immage, so that you end up following link
after link aft er lin calf ter lin. That's why I couldn't and can't
sleeppp.

Of course I can't afford to, since it never does. I have to stay alert
for any references to Tubby and do all I can to render them so
nonsensical that nobody will believe in them. Don't I risk betraying
my location every time I intervene? I have to trust that nobody can
trace me if I concentrate on the screen to the exclusion of all my
surroundings. By now I have less than a memory of glancing through
the window to see I'm in Thackeray Lane.

Or is my purpose a delusion? Could Tubby and I and all that he
brought into the world have indeed been the last of the old? Then
surely nobody is better placed to deal with the new mannifestation.
That's a joke as well. It's not as if I'm going anywhere. It's too hard
to walk, even if my feet scarcely fit under the desk.

I no longer mind being all allone. I don't need to talk to anyone,
not that I can talk. The screen keeps me companny, and my faint
reflection does, even if it often makes me fancy I'm watching Tubby
in a film. The only thing I dislike is touching my face, but I have to
adjust it now and then or make sure it's firmly attached. I don't know
why, if I've been wearing it ever since I played hide and seek with
myself in the dark. Perhaps encountering its siblings made it eager to
spend more time with them, or perhaps it feels unwanted now that
the Internet gives everyone a mask to speak through. So long as it
doesn't prevent me from writing I'll endeavour to cope with its
rubbery antics. I test it by widening my raw eyes and my grin until my
face stings all the way to the bone. I'll keep posting my knowleddge
on www.senseimtroll and www.lestmoresin and www.otestmerlin and www.meritsnoels so nobody can figure where I am, configure
where I am, yam, yam. Anyone with informattion about Tubby or his
influence or the activvities of what used him for a mask should email
me at anny of the sites I use. I've ways to pick up your communiccations.
Call me Smilemime.