Ventriloquists (54 page)

Vig nodded.

‘Vig is right. We’re here against our wishes,’ Yasser preached. ‘Me and Shyleen, my cousin, I mean – but I bet it’s all of us.
All of us,
yeah?’

Cries of
yeah!

‘And if you’re in any doubt,’ Yasser went on, ‘I’ve been learning some of your names. You see, wherever we are really – and I believe Vig if he says it’s a madman’s dungeon – in fact, I can almost remember him… and older man… Benny!... Do any of you remember a man named Benny?’

The cries of
yeah! s
ounded more surprised this time. Benny’s name echoed and hovered.

‘There’s a woman I know who must be with us – with our physical bodies, I mean. And she talks to me and Shyleen; tells us what’s going on in the real world.’ Yasser smiled. ‘At first I thought she was a kind of goddess… she’d love that!’ He laughed. ‘But then I realised – or Shyleen did, to be exact – that she was talking to us in our sleep. In our coma! She wants to help us!’

More murmurs; more cries… Vig’s reciprocated glance at Phyllie was an exchange of mostly optimism. It seemed as though the Asian lad’s words were working wonders. The hollers of disapproval, now, were no more than a quarter-of-the-throng strong, or so he guessed.

He was winning.

Yasser had not quite finished.

‘I came here as the result of some violence in a house in Edlesborough – one of the way Benny gets us here. At the same time, roughly, some other people were attacked in the house, in one way or another.’ Yasser paused. ‘Is there a Connors in the crowd? A Chris Connors?’

‘I’m Chris Connors!’ a young man shouted from midway into the crowd.

‘Do you remember the house?’ Yasser asked. ‘You were there to steal from it… but you were set up. You and the bloke with you. Benny wanted some new blood for his project.’

It was not Connors who spoke next.

‘How do you know all this?’ a man called out – a man who was standing near Connors.

Yasser replied, ‘The goddess
told
me… Who are you, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘My name’s Massimo. I’m the one who employed Connors and Dorman to rob the place… It was Benny who set us
all
up!’

Yasser raised his arms in a gesture that said:
There you are then! We’re all in agreement!

And with every second that passed, there were more people joining the crowd – more people to agree with Yasser’s sentiments, message and rage. Among their numbers, newly arrived, were Don and Charlie – even Dorman. Not everyone knew one another individually… but the crowd absorbed these new arrivals with the hive mind of species recognition. All were welcome… and all would be there in due course, drawn towards the sermon by instincts impossible to ignore. The dead and the living, together on one final battlefield, their anger fed by the memories and thwarted ambitions of those in Benny’s dungeon. Memories creating a false and gruesome nostalgia sometimes, and at other times the purest of factual recollections, which also had to be addressed in blood. Revenge and violence was in the air, like a coalescing storm.

Vig raised his voice and addressed the swelling numbers. ‘So we’re all in agreement!’ he shouted. ‘It’s time to tear this place to shreds from the inside!’

The Can-Do Spirit

1.

At Maggie’s behest Eva had brought Benny down into the vivaria.

‘I thought you should see this,’ Maggie told him. ‘In the absence of our noted film maker… who is where, by the way?’

Benny walked closer. ‘He had a class to teach… How long has this been going on?’

‘I only just got here,’ Maggie told him.

Holding a digital camera on the unfolding events, Eva answered. ‘About fifteen minutes.’

Although the prisoners (or scientific subjects, as Benny preferred to think of them) remained asleep, a discernible shift in posture had overtaken as many of them as Benny could see in and from this chamber. The bodies of some had stiffened, where before they had been relaxed in their comas; others had sat up on their cots. One or two had even opened their eyes.

‘What’s happening?’ Benny asked hopefully. ‘Is it Vig and Phyllie?’

‘It was,’ Eva answered. ‘Right now it’s Yasser… he talking to them
all
.’ Her voice sounded somewhat awed.

So did Benny’s. ‘It’s working… All of them?’ he wished to clarify. ‘They’re all listening?’

‘
As far as we can tell,’ said Maggie. ‘They’re talking about you.’

‘Fame at last… You sure that thing’s got batteried, Ev?’ And he looked straight into the camera.

‘It’s fully charged,’ he was assured.

‘Good.’ Benny made certain his shirt collar was straight, muttering something about wanting to wear a tie; then he turned to face Eva’s camera and he gave the date.

‘It’s three-forty-five,’ he continued, ‘and there’ve been some interesting developments. Or so it would appear… For the last fifteen minutes, there’s been signs of spontaneous psychic activity. The catalysts I used – Vig and Phyllie – have agitated the state of ennui that was the case for the last…’ Benny fidgeted. Because he had not prepared for this, he did not have the facts at his tongue-tip. ‘…the last little while,’ he busked. ‘Vig and Phyllie were the only subjects who went in with the knowledge – or the
certain
knowledge – of what they’d find. So
scientifically,
I’d argue, they have to be the ones responsible for this intra-rationalism.’

This was when the former soldier, for whom Eva had the hots, began to move. Still naked and somnambulant, he swung his legs free of the bed and tried to stand up.

2.

One by one, the prisoners moved on their cots; suction pads were torn from dried patches of skin on their bodies, and dangled from monitoring devices. With the machines’ readings thereby knocked off-kilter, the air was alive with the sound of angry and admonitory beeps. Hydraulic pumps writhed; saline drips spasmed like skeletons dancing, such was the movement in the chambers, the commotion of the prisoners as they tried once again to learn to toddle and stroll.

3.

‘Do you think you should get out of the way,’ Maggie asked, ‘for when they wake up finally?’

Benny asked, ‘Why?’

‘Because they’ll be angry, of course.’

‘
Good. I deserve their anger – and
science
deserves their
anger… I was right all along, girl,’ he boasted. ‘Now where’s that Branston to record it all?’

4.

The answer to Benny’s question was: outside.

At just after four p.m., camera in hand, Tim Branston arrived at Benny’s front door.

Accompanying him was a man named Lydon, a journalist for the
Beds on Sunday
, and police officers Peter Vash and Maureen Tennan. Other officers were also
en route.

Branston was wondering if it would be him or the officers who knocked on the door… when the door opened wide. Wearing blank expressions, Maggie and Eva backed out into the afternoon air. The red light on the camera in Eva’s hand was still on.

Inside the house, someone screamed the first of many screams.

THE END