Desolation (32 page)

“I can never be what he wanted!” Cain shouted. His movement gave George's head a smile and a burning glare. “Why did you leave?” he asked wretchedly. “Why did he tell me you were dead? I never had a mother . . .” Cain sobbed the last word, unable to finish the sentence and unsure of what he had intended saying.

“I'm sorry, Cain. I told you, you were all Leonard ever wanted. As for me, I found the Way
the instant I became pregnant. After that, things were so . . . different.”

“You didn't want me? You don't care?”

Magenta looked more uncomfortable than sad, and that was as much of an answer as Cain needed. He held his head in his hands and cried, wanting nothing more than to feel his mother's warm hand on the back of his head, comforting, loving. But all that touched him there was the coolness of the shadow.

“I'm leaving now,” she said. “I hope we'll meet again. Son.” And before Cain could say another word, Magenta left the room and disappeared into the dark depths of the house.

Her candle remained propped on one of the glass cases. It gave the skull beneath it a quizzical smile, and Cain wanted to smash the case and lose the smile to the dark. But he held back. He could not do that; he had no right.

“Let's get home,” the shadow said, and Cain said the same.

“I don't like this place,” Cain said, and the shadow echoed his words.

On the way out, they carried both candles.

There was no sign of Sister Josephine, but Whistler was lying moaning in the gutter. His hair was caked with blood, his face a contour map of bee stings and wounds, and his pan pipes lay crushed into the concrete pavement. He would have more, Cain knew. His time was not yet over. For now, this strange man's skull was safe beneath his ponytail hair.

 

The front garden no longer held any fears for Cain. He felt changed by everything he had seen this night. The creatures beneath the shrubs were quiet and watchful, and he wondered what they saw when they looked at him. A man with a shadow on his back? Or no man at all?

All the way upstairs to the first floor, along the landing and up again to his own front door, Cain avoided looking to his left. The shadow was still whispering to him, but the voice was deep down inside his mind now, almost incomprehensible, and it may as well have been his own thoughts mumbling away. So he looked to the right, and not because he did not want to see the shadow again, but because he suspected that the shadow had gone.

In the front door, through the bedroom, into the bathroom, in front of the mirror, and Cain finally knew the truth that had been hounding him all night. He had not wished to admit it to himself, however strong the evidence. That way lay madness. But now he could see, and he knew that the shadow had gone forever.

Because Cain
was
the shadow.

His reflection stared back in fear and shock, and he could see himself only because he knew for sure that he was there.

Cain was the shadow.

When Cain first saw the shadow in his father's basement room, it spoke with his voice, but he gave it a stranger's lilt. It bore his shape, but
he made it larger. It spoke of mild rebellion and he shied away from its audacity, though it was really verbalizing his own deepest thoughts. He kept it apart from himself.

For the first time in his life, he had a friend. He would do nothing to ruin that.

 

 

 

Next day, Whistler broke into Cain's flat.

Cain crouched in the corner of the living room and watched the tall pipe player wander in, through to the dining area and kitchen, out again. Whistler paused to look at the pictures in the hallway, rubbing the glass as if he could erase the traces of color that Cain had put there himself. He went into the bedroom and Cain followed close behind, standing in the corner as Whistler rummaged through his clothes, lifted the bedspread, opened the small wardrobe as if looking for a shadow that never was.

Whistler never saw Cain, because Cain was that shadow.

The tall man sat in the living room for a while, nursing a new set of pan pipes and bringing them to his lips, away, up again. It was as if he could not bring himself to play them. Perhaps he was afraid that they would no longer work, or maybe he
feared that Sister Josephine would hear him. His face was bruised and stung from their fight, and he carried himself stiffly, broken bones only too keen to remind him of defeat.

Cain sat next to the window, out of the path of sunlight that streamed through. He did not make a sound, though he was not sure that Whistler would hear even if he did. He watched the tall man, and when Whistler finally stood to leave—pushing on his legs to stand up, an old, tired man—Cain followed him to the front door.

Whistler paused there in Cain's hallway, then spun around. Cain stepped sideways against the wall, hitting it with a thump, and the impact set one of the landscape pictures shaking. Whistler stared at the picture, brought the pipes up to his lips, and played the first notes through this new instrument. Only two notes, quiet and low and quick, but they made the hair on the back of Cain's neck stand on end.

Whistler lowered the pan pipes and smiled. He looked around the flat one more time and, in a voice so low that he must have believed he was speaking only to himself, said, “I only hope he's happy.” Then he left and closed the door behind him.

He had not noticed Cain. Even when Cain had been standing right in front of him, Whistler had not seen him. He had suspected Cain was there maybe, or guessed, or known in some obscure way that only those with the Way could understand. But he had not been certain. Because Cain was the shadow, and even on the brightest day a shadow has a home.

Cain sat in his living room, feeling the warmth of Whistler fading slowly from the sofa, and cried bitter tears. Once, the choice had been his to make.

No more.

Cain crept downstairs that evening and waited in the lobby. He approached Sister Josephine's door several times, raised his hand to knock, drew back. In the end, he hid beneath the stairs with the other shadows, waiting for the sun to sink lower and the light to fade away.

As darkness fell, the world was opening up to him. Reality. Truth. Concepts that he used to have on the verge of sleep or in the depths of dreams, rich ideas of change and exploration, all rose up and invited his inspection. Unlike before, they did not vanish with his next breath. They remained, honest and true, and he could not help feeling a spark of excitement deep inside. Sometimes he used to think he had an original thought; now he had many. He had never felt such potential.

He walked to the nun's door and tapped on it three times, stepping quickly to the side. He heard footsteps from inside, and she opened the door, glanced out, holding a gown closed across her chest.

Cain slipped in.

Sister Josephine shivered and slammed the door, backing away from it, staring at the wood as if it would bulge in after her. Cain was a step behind her, walking back as she did. He could reach out and touch her hair, should he so desire. He breathed in and reveled in the honey aroma, a mysterious and exotic mix of sweetness and sex.

She could not see him.

He stepped aside and held his breath as she passed by, a frown on her face. He waited in her hallway for a few seconds after she had moved into her bedroom, gathering his thoughts and hating himself,
hating
himself.

Was this what Pure Sight was all about? George was a killer, Whistler was a manipulator, and if the pipe player was to be believed, Sister Josephine flew across the city seeking men to fuck to death.

Was this what it was all about?

Cain walked to the nun's bedroom, knelt, and looked inside. She was on the bed, her gown thrown open to reveal her full nakedness. There was a pot of her magic cream on the bed beside her, and she was working it slowly into the knife wounds that Whistler had punched into her body. She cringed. She cried. The smell of her tears merged with the warm, rich tang of the cream, and Cain hated himself even more when he felt the heat in his groin.

Had his father wanted this? Is this what his mother had? He stared at the beautiful naked woman—no nun now, for sure, although she no doubt had a whole history that would always be a mystery—and he thought of what Whistler had said about her. She could fly, Cain had seen that for himself. And she could fight. She was like an imaginary superhero, but one with dreadful faults.

But wasn't that the case with all of them?

Her hands broadened their areas of application, passing over the slits in her skin and working through fresh blood.

A bee came at Cain, slow and unconcerned, and he remained still. It struck his cheek and veered away, buzzing in confusion at hitting nothing. The nun paused and stared at her bedroom door, and Cain moved quickly to the side, out of view.

“I hope I see him again,” she said. Cain bit his lip and frowned, looking down at his hands, seeing them only because he knew that they were there. A waft of fresh honey came from the bedroom, and when Sister Josephine's groans turned into moans of a different kind, Cain moved away and quietly let himself out.

He returned to his own flat, and as he opened the door the phone on his bedside table was ringing. He picked it up and the Voice crackled at him, asking him where he was, whether he was well, why he hadn't called to tell them how things were. Cain held the phone for some time, listening to the silence that the Voice was expecting to be filled. And then he hung up. There was really nothing he could say.

He found it easy to slip into Whistler's flat. The piper was standing at his bedroom window staring out at the dusk, but Cain was not there for him. He crept into the room named for “The Followers” and closed the door behind him.

The difference was immediately apparent. The creatures still looked dead and stuffed, but there was a subtle sound playing on Cain's ears, almost too low to hear. The sound of movement. Muscles stretching, bones creaking, dried pelts whispering as unaccustomed shifting affected the whole room.
He turned the corner and stared at the fox and chicken, and over a couple of minutes he saw the two of them move a minute amount. It was like watching the hour hand of a clock—movement obvious, yet not visible. The fox's jaws closed slightly, the chicken's head fell more to one side, and the flow of spilled blood widened and spread across the floor like melted wax.

Cain turned the final corner and saw the woman in the chair. She was not Magenta. She seemed to be in exactly the same position as when he had last seen her, but her eyes had shifted to the right as if still following him from the room. He leaned in close and listened at her nose and mouth, but there were no signs of breathing. He waved his hand in front of her face, but of course she would have seen nothing anyway. Even in his new state, he did not wish to touch her.

Cain watched for a few minutes. Her eyes did not change. Her chest did not expand to bring in air. But over that time, her mouth opened and closed almost imperceptibly. Wherever she existed now, she was gasping at something both profound and amazing.

That night, Cain went out. He moved through the streets, flitting from shadow to shadow, listening to people whisper sweet nothings, flicking their hair, a goose walking over their graves.

He breathed on one girl's neck and made her turn around, seconds before she would have stepped into the path of a joyrider. She walked on, unnerved, never to know that her life had been saved.

In a shop doorway he found a mugger, scoping his victims and heading out only when he spied a teenager on his own. Cain tripped the mugger and sent him sprawling. The teenager glanced across the street and hurried away from the man, who seemed drunk. The mugger tried to rise, but Cain sat on his back, whispering into his ear, “I'll be watching, I'll be watching.” When Cain finally stood, the man scrambled to his feet and sprinted off down the street, looking around wildly, all thoughts of theft and assault purged from his mind.

In a car park there were a couple having sex in an open-top car. Inviting discovery obviously added to their thrill, but they carried on unaware of Cain standing beside the driver's door. He hated that, but he also loved it. He had become so different.

That night, he followed a murderer home and planted evidence on his clothing. He closed an open window just as a burglar was about to climb through, and gave the boy a shove into a spiky rosebush for good measure. And as dawn began to bring the city to life, Cain's shadow moved across the eyes of a sleeping child, driving away a nightmare that would have marked her day.

Cain had always felt unnoticed, and now that was truly the case. He was a man with a future. He had found his Way, and if he could learn to live with that, the possibilities were endless.