Hello Darkness (17 page)

“Sorry about that, John. I had to make a couple of calls.” She sat next to me on a hard chair, pulling her skirt down over her knees. “Now, would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”

“Fire away.”

“Have you ever had any pets? Of your own, I mean, not the school animals.”

“I don’t really see the point of this. But, yeah, we used to have a dog.”

“Used?”

“It died.”

“How did it die?”

“All dogs die, in the end.”

“You mean it died of old age?”

“Something like that, yeah. Cancer maybe. I was little.”

Ms Cassandra wrote something down on a pad.

“Any other pets?”

“Not really. Well, sorta. There’s a cat that lives on my roof.”

“Your roof?”

“Yeah. I feed her, but I don’t know if I could call her a pet. You know how it is with cats. You don’t own them. They stick around for a while, then they move on. But sometimes it’s nice to have someone to talk to.”

Ms Cassandra arched her eyebrows. She wrote something down on her pad.

“You talk to your cat?”

“She beats most people as a conversationalist.”

There was a slight pause, and then Ms Cassandra tittered, taking it as a joke.

She asked a few more questions, nothing too deep, and I made a couple of wisecracks and she laughed some more. But then I felt like I’d had enough. I had stuff to do. I struggled up out of the comfy chair.

“I have to go,” I said. “I’ve got to—” I stopped myself from saying
get to the Principal
. I didn’t want to give my plans away.

For the first time the Counsellor looked uncomfortable.

“We … we think it would be better if you stayed here for a while, John,” she replied, not looking at me.

“Who’s the ‘we’?”

“People who care about you.”

Click: I got it. This was all part of the plan to keep me away from Vole.

“Yeah, sure,” I said, coolly. “Real caring guy, the Shank.”

Ms Cassandra’s eyes widened a little. And her fingers moved involuntarily towards the mole on her chin. She took a breath.

“I want you to watch something with me.”

“What is it?”

“It’s something that I think you need to see.”

“Will it take long?”

“Not long.”

Ms Cassandra put her hand on my arm and led me over to the iMac in the corner. I won’t deny it, I was intrigued. And I reckoned I still had some time. I sat down and the Counsellor leant over to the mouse, giving me a noseful of perfume. In a couple of clicks she had a video running on the screen.

At first it was hard to make out what the hell was supposed to be going on. It was all shadows and murk, like something out of a low-budget horror film. And, just as with a nightmare, the most frightening part was that vague sense of familiarity. I knew this place: the clutter of boxes and unidentifiable objects. A digital clock glimmered in the corner of the computer screen, showing the time that the video was recorded, but I didn’t bother to check it. I was too busy peering through the static, trying to work out what I was looking at.

A shape lurched into view, staggering and crashing among the boxes. Whoever it was appeared to be performing a drunken dance. He cavorted to a soundtrack in his head made up of industrial cacophony mashed with death metal. He reached above his head with his hands, grabbing at something, scratching at it, fighting it. But there was nothing there to fight against.

“You know who that is, don’t you, John?”

I felt dizzy and nauseous. It was like coming round after a tooth extraction.

“It’s… I don’t know.”

“Do you know
where
it is?”

“It looks like the basement. Under the Interzone.”

“Interzone? Interesting… I’ve never heard of that. But it is the basement, yes. The storage area. There’s a CCTV camera down there. We’re looking at the film from the camera. But who is the boy, John? The boy in the film?”

“It’s fake,” I said.

“How can it be fake? Look at the time and the date, John. Yesterday morning. We know you went down there. People saw you. What are you doing, John? Why are you moving like that?”

“There was someone … someone on my head.”

“Who?”

“The Dwarf.”

“Dwarf…? John, I—”

“Is this the original?”

“I don’t know…”

“It can’t be. The surveillance cameras use tape. Someone had to digitize the video so they could put it on the Mac. Once it’s been digitized, it’s easy to manipulate. Anyone can do it. They’ve wiped the Dwarf off the movie. You can even see where he was – check out the area above my head, it looks weird. And look at the shadows.”

“John, I can’t see anything there.”

Then I happened to look at the clock on the wall. It was 11.45. How the hell had three hours passed by? The Shank was due to speak to the assembly at 12. I had to get to the Principal to tell him what I’d found out. I stood up, ready to go.

“Just sit down and take it easy,” said Ms Cassandra, the tension making her voice harsh.

“I’ve got a job to do,” I said. “There’s a boil here that has to be lanced. And I’ve got the scalpel.”

As I spoke I put my hand in my pocket. I don’t know why – I just did. But the thing is that Ms Cassandra, who was obviously on the brittle edge of an emotional crevasse, thought I was talking about an
actual
scalpel. A scalpel I was about to use for a bout of impromptu plastic surgery. She shrank back into the corner of the room, screeching out, “Don’t cut me! Don’t cut me!”

I wanted to explain that, of course, I wouldn’t cut her, that there was no scalpel outside the realms of metaphor, and that even if there was I’d never hurt anyone with it, because hurting wasn’t my thing. But all that took second place to bringing the truth to Mr Vole. And so I gave Ms Cassandra exactly the kind of sinister look that a scalpel-wielding serial killer might well unfurl the second before getting down to work on the old slice and dice.

She, naturally, moved further away, and I was out through the door before she had the chance to realize that I was bluffing.

I
reached Vole’s room, panting, thirty seconds later. I’d jinked up and down corridors, making sure that the Counsellor wouldn’t figure out where I was going. I knew they’d find me soon enough, but I didn’t need long. I slapped at the door, and entered the Principal’s office the way a fat kid belly flops into the pool.

Vole was sitting at his desk, gazing at the Venerable Bede, placed before him on his desktop blotter. The tortoise gazed right back. It was like one of those staring competitions: the first one to blink’s a sissy.

It was Vole who blinked first. He broke off whatever act of telepathy or mind control he’d been attempting and turned to me. He seemed entirely unsurprised by my sudden appearance.

“Ah, Middlebrow, excellent. I was just about to, er, send for you. Very important job I have for you here. Very important in–ah–deed.”

“Sir, I have to tell you—”

“Quite, quite, quite. Of course you do. And all in good, ah, time. But, for now, I need you to stay here as a – a – a
Guardian
. You know, of course, the role of the Guardians in Plato’s
Republic
? Yes, of course you do. Philosophers who lead by example. And beyond that, lead by, well, frankly any old way they like. Lying, killing, whatever. Because they have right on their side. The greater good. Yes. Made of gold, unlike the base metal of the mob. Or even the iron – or is it bronze? – of the warriors. Yes, anyway, there you are…”

“Sir, what I have to tell you concerns Mr Shankley and the deaths. I know who—”

“Which is precisely why I need you to stay here. You’ve done
fine
work, there, Midwitch. Fine, fine work. And now there is the final, ah, the last leg of the, ah, journey. Insofar as waiting here and not moving can be seen as engaging upon a journey, which I believe it can, if you don’t take a literal approach to things. Or rather,
words
.”

I should have forced my information on him, but there was something curiously reassuring about the old man. Or perhaps it was just something soporific. Either way, the idea that he had everything in hand had a definite appeal. It meant that the burden was no longer mine to bear alone. Yes, it would all be OK. Mr Vole would see to it. I imagined sinking again into the soft chair in the Counsellor’s office.

But, no, that wasn’t right. I felt like a prince in a fairy tale, battling an enchantment. I shook my head.

“Sir, it’s Hart, he’s the one who… I’ve got proof—”

“I know, my boy, I know. And now you can leave it to me. The important thing is that you stay here and guard our great totem, the symbol of all that the school has come to, ah, symbolize. And stand for. My old friend, the companion of my youth. And age. And we can’t take any risks. I’m going to put Bede where no one can reach him.”

Then Vole picked up the tortoise and carried him towards the butterflies mounted on the wall. He flicked a concealed latch on one side of the frame and pulled it back. Behind it was a safe. He took a key from his pocket and opened the door. He then placed the Venerable Bede on top of a pile of papers inside the dark womb. Or should that be tomb? Vole’s back was towards me and I didn’t quite catch what happened next, but I think Vole may have bent and kissed the tortoise’s scaly head. Or perhaps he was simply mumbling some words of encouragement or solace to the reptile. Then he shut the door, swung back the butterflies, and turned to me, smiling.

At that moment there came a firm tapping at the door. We both jumped. Miss Bickersniff, the school secretary, half entered.

“Principal, the assembly…” She was obviously used to his forgetful ways.

“Right with you, Miss Bickersniff,” Vole replied cheerfully. He turned to me again. “Give me your hand, my boy.”

I held out my hand. Vole pressed the safe key into my palm and closed my fingers around it.

“A great responsibility. Keep this safe. Keep
him
safe. Keep
us all
safe. I go now to battle against the forces of, ah, evil. We both know who it is that must be stopped. Cabined, cribbed, confined, to quote the, ah, immortal, er, Bard. Of Avon, that is. Where else, indeed? If anyone at all tries to gain entry, then resist them with all your might and main. I have your word?”

I nodded.

“Principal Vole…” nagged Miss Bickersniff, still waiting.

“Yes, yes, yes. Wonderful. Goodbye, and good luck.”

Then the old guy shook my hand, picked up a battered old briefcase, bulging no doubt with unread documents and papers and half-eaten pork pies, and left.

THE
silence after the thunk of the closing door was like the infinite stillness between the flash of a nuclear detonation and the arrival of the soundwave. There was nothing in the universe apart from that silence. And because even time was beyond the reach of the silence, it felt as if it would last for ever; that sound had been taken out of the world just as you could take an appendix or a spleen or a heart out of a patient.

And then the unnatural silence faded into the familiar quiet of ticking clocks and distant engines and muted birdcalls, and I was left feeling slightly silly. I hadn’t given Vole my evidence. But then he didn’t seem to need it. Had greater minds than my own grappled with the case and found the solution? Was I truly superfluous?

I didn’t know what to do with myself. I sat in one of the guest chairs. Then I sat in Mr Vole’s chair. I gazed out of the window. Rows of houses. Four squat tower blocks of grim council flats. You could buy whatever you wanted in there, as long as what you wanted was sex or drugs. A sky made up of a thousand shades of dark grey. Somewhere in the world there was probably a connoisseur of greys, a collector of grey paintings, of grey statues, grey thoughts; he’d have loved it here.

I looked at the things on Mr Vole’s desk. You’d have expected it to be cluttered and muddled and chaotic like the guy’s brain. However it was almost psychotically neat. There was the large blotter in the middle of the desk, a penholder to one side, a squared-off stack of papers, a laptop. No stains, no biscuit crumbs, none of the tat and meaningless accretions that most desks build up over time. None of the stuff that says,
Hey, this is what I am
.

I opened the desk drawers. Half hoped I’d find something exciting in there: Vole’s collection of Edwardian erotica, perhaps, or an automatic pistol, complete with silencer. But it was just more office stuff: staples, elastic bands, a bundle of what looked like receipts. For want of anything better to do, I thumbed through them. About halfway down there was one from a place called Pete’s Pets. It said:

1 t. cadaver. £4
.

I had no idea what it meant. Then I snorted at the thought that I was so bored I was reading receipts.

I tried to imagine what was going on down in the hall. But my mind was full of … other things. It was snowing static in there like TV reception at the North Pole. And when the static cleared, I saw things I didn’t want to see.

I thought about splitting, but Vole had been so adamant that I should stay. He must be expecting some sort of raid on his office, an attempt on the life of the tortoise. Assassins. Who? Hart? Yes, but not just him this time. Bosola and Funt would be there. Could I fight them all off? Hell, yeah.

I got up and wandered around again. I looked at the photo of Vole as a young man in his lab coat. It was the same face, but subtly different. Not just the fact that he was thirty years younger. He looked intelligent, ambitious. I suppose you need a certain ambition to become a Principal, even in a crap heap of a school like ours.

I moved on and found myself in front of the butterflies. You couldn’t deny their beauty. Each pinned specimen had a Latin name underneath, often bigger than the butterfly itself.
Ochlodes sylvanus; Gonepteryx rhamni; Lycaena phlaeas eleus
.

Vole must have really loved these things to collect and preserve them like this.