Holloway Falls (28 page)

The music fell away and Rex Dryden took the stage.

Lenny put away the notepad.

Dryden’s triumphant deportment suggested he was prepared to receive rapturous applause which then didn’t come. One or two punters clapped: there were some whistles and a couple of whoops. But mostly the audience stood in silent ranks before him.

He surveyed them. He wore a sober, single-breasted grey suit. A ring on the little finger of his left hand glinted under the lights.

He took the microphone.

‘Please allow me to introduce myself,’ he said. ‘I was born on TV. Just like you, and just like Jackie, I got Kennedy all over me.’

Behind him, a close-up of Kennedy on the slab. A vaginal, black and crimson burrow through his skull.

Dryden did a half-turn and looked at the picture. Then he took the microphone from the stand and walked the stage. More images flickered behind him: Kennedy, alive and waving; Mussolini swinging from a lamp-post; Saddam Hussein in a jaunty Homburg with a feather in the band; Pol Pot: Muammar Qaddafi with his eyes rolled white; Jesus Christ; Peter Sutcliffe; Josef Stalin; the Reverend Jim Jones; Mao Tse-tung.

‘Look at these men,’ said Dryden. ‘All these good men. What do we know about them? What do they have in common?’

He stalked the stage like a polar bear.

‘People believed in them,’ he said. ‘Some people thought they were God. Some still do. And some people thought they were the Devil. Some still do.’ He paused, seemed to think. ‘Let me ask you a question,’ he said. ‘How many of you in this room believe in God?’

He waited as if expectantly, his face extended as far forward as his stumpy neck would allow.

‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Any believers here, raise your hand. We won’t laugh.’

A ripple of nervous laughter.

Dryden feigned great surprise. He put a hand to his breast.

‘
Nobody
?’
he said, shocked. ‘Not
one
of you?’

He mimed sadness. ‘Goodness me,’ he said, shaking his head. He jutted out a fat lower lip. ‘What does
that
say about England in the twenty-first century?’ He looked up. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘This evening is all
about
belief. I want to talk to you about what you believe, and why you believe it. And I can’t do that if you don’t know what belief is. Come on, now. Somebody here must believe
something
.’

He shielded his eyes from the bright lights, put his foot on an audio monitor and pretended to sweep the crowd with his gaze.

‘Nobody?’ he said. ‘Nobody here believes in
anything
?
Don’t we have any revolutionary socialists? No free market libertarians? No anti-vivisectionists? No pacifists? No anarchists? No racists? Blimey,’ he said, muttering into the microphone. ‘Tough crowd.’

More nervous laughter.

‘I’ll tell you what.’ He gathered the cable into a loop and replaced the microphone in its stand. He put his hands behind his back and leaned into it. Then he checked himself. He said: ‘Fuck me. What am I like? Liam Gallagher?’ He grinned at the catcalling response from the audience and seemed for a moment unrehearsed and natural. Then he collected himself. He quietened the crowd with his hand. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said. ‘What if we start the evening by introducing an unbeliever to God? What about that?’

He scanned the close-ranked bodies.

Abruptly, the lights went up. The audience blinked.

‘So,’ said Dryden. ‘Which of you unbelievers and heathens believes in God the least? Which of you faithless young scumbags needs salvation the most?’

Hands pointed at heads they did not belong to and names were called out. Friends jostled friends and nervous smiles became affably predatory.

‘Ah,’ said Dryden. ‘Now then. That’s more like it.’ He put a finger to his lips and appeared to talk to himself.

He knew what he was doing. His gaze fell tantalizingly on those who clearly longed to get on stage, then passed over them. They whooped and yelled and screamed. He teased with a playful, lingering glance those who clearly were terrified he might ask them to get up there with him. Eventually, he selected from the audience a slim man with a shaved head, in combat trousers and an indigo denim jacket. The second volunteer was slouching, ambling, dreadlocked to his waist.

Dryden asked for a round of applause. The audience obliged. Dryden positioned the two young men on stage. He asked their names. The bald man was called Tim. The man with the dreadlocks was called Diesel.

‘
Diesel
?’
said Dryden. ‘What kind of name is
Diesel
?’

Diesel was loose-necked and satisfied. He caught the eye of friends in the crowd and grinned.

Tim clicked his fingers nervously at his sides.

From the wings appeared two black-clad assistants. Each pushed a chromium trolley. Upon each trolley’s four shelves were components that might have belonged to a stereo system, wired together at the rear. On the top shelf was a laptop computer and a spaghetti of wiring. The assistants lined up the shelves behind the volunteers, then they returned from offstage with a moulded plastic chair and a towel each. They placed the towels in the chairs and the chairs before the trolleys.

Dryden invited Tim and Diesel to sit. A pale woman with an extravagant head of curly red hair took the stage. She too was dressed in black, and held a clipboard. She kneeled at Tim’s side and addressed him quietly and urgently. He nodded assent, took a biro from her hand and signed something on the clipboard. She repeated the procedure with Diesel.

Dryden said: ‘This is Dr Fiona Wright. She’s here to make sure I don’t go astray and turn the dial up to eleven, or anything stupid like that.’

The doctor looked up from Diesel’s side and smiled. Some in the crowd laughed, without quite knowing why.

Dryden went to one of the trolleys. He held the microphone like a television evangelist. He said: ‘This is called a Transcranial Magnetic Stimulator. And no, I’m not making that up. This is a genuine piece of kit. We’re paying through the nose to hire it. What it does is: it shoots a very precise, rapidly fluctuating magnetic field into a small patch of human brain tissue. Zap. The bit of brain that’s been stimulated kicks into life, allowing people like Dr Wright here to learn what its function is.

‘So, for instance—if I zapped your motor cortex, various muscles would contract, depending on exactly where I’d zapped you. You might have a little spasm in your little finger. Or your whole body might go into convulsion.

‘If I zapped a cluster of cells called the septum—it’s right in the middle of your brain,’ he tapped the crown of his head with the microphone,‘—you’d experience a burst of intense pleasure, like every orgasm you ever had, rolled into one and multiplied by your date of birth. Or so they tell me.’

More laughter from the audience. Diesel chuckled. Tim widened his eyes suggestively.

‘Now, now,’ said Dryden. ‘None of that. We’re here to a higher purpose.’

Tim made a disappointed pout. His eye sockets became shadows when he hung his head. The lights were dimming.

Now Dryden was half whispering into the microphone. ‘This hold-up is for the boys to sign a clearance form. They could’ve done it backstage, but I wanted you to see that no jiggery-pokery is taking place. I’ve never met Tim, have I Tim?’

‘No,’ said Tim.

‘Or Unleaded, here. Have I, Unleaded?’

‘Diesel,’ said Diesel.

‘Sorry, Swampy,’ said Dryden.

Laughter from the crowd. Diesel did a furtive wanker sign for the benefit of his mates.

‘Now,’ said Dryden. He tapped the side of his head, just above the ear, with the microphone. Amplified, the action had a percussive resonance. Dryden dropped his voice to a whisper. The grainy amplification made it insinuating and directionless, like the wind through sand.

‘This area of the brain,’ he said, ‘is called your temporal lobe. In a moment, these machines will fire a carefully calibrated burst of very intense magnetism into Tim and Swampy’s temporal lobes. It won’t take long, but we’re going to need your complete silence for a few minutes. Can you do that? Just for one minute.’

On stage, the two volunteers sat in a spotlight. An assistant bundled two towels into sausages and placed them over their shoulders. Then they moved the trolleys into position. On top of each trolley, alongside the laptop computers, were two paddles. Each was about the size of a ping-pong bat. The paddles were joined like headphones and linked by a wire to one of the system’s boxlike components. They were secured at both sides of each volunteer’s head. The assistants encouraged Tim and Diesel to relax.

The doctor referred briefly to the computer screens. Then she checked the paddles.

She looked at Dryden and said: ‘OK.’

Dryden looked at the audience.

‘Quiet, please.’

He waited until there was silence.

The doctor pressed a key on each laptop. The trolleys began to emit a low, ascending electrical hum.

It didn’t take long.

Tim barked a single laugh. His back went into spasm and he stiffened in the chair. His eyes rolled white. Spittle gathered at the corner of his mouth. Tendons stood in relief on his neck. He laughed again, rapturously, as at a great relief. Then he shouted:

‘
My God
!’

He laughed again, exultantly. The laugh modulated into a joyful sob.

He began to weep. He held out his hands, as if beckoning something to him. He looked at the ceiling.

Meanwhile, Diesel shrieked and bucked in his chair. He howled something that was not a word. He opened his eyes and glared at the crowd. Then he stood and ripped the paddles from his head.

The doctor and both assistants rushed to him. He was led off stage.

After a long minute, the doctor returned for Tim. She removed the paddles from his head. He beamed in pious bewilderment and followed her away.

Dryden hit each keyboard again. The hum died away.

The lights came halfway up.

Dryden took the microphone. Heavy breathing through his mouth, amplified. He pinned the crowd with his eyes.

Then he broke the spell. His voice seemed too loud.

He said: ‘Don’t worry about Tim and Diesel. They’re all right. It happens sometimes.

‘What happened was, Tim’s temporal lobe was stimulated. So was Diesel’s. As a result, Tim had an experience of the presence of God that was in every way as genuine and as powerful as that experienced by Saul on the road to Damascus. Except Tim knows it happened because we flicked a switch and stimulated the
belief centre in his brain. It’ll take him a while, but he’ll get over it.

‘As for Diesel, well. What can I say? It wasn’t
God
that Diesel met.’

He held his breath, but he couldn’t hold back the merriment. His cheeks swelled and he burst forth with a cackle. He clapped his hands. He took the microphone from the stand and walked the stage again.

‘So,’ he said, ‘what happened in this room tonight? What does it say about us? How does it relate to what brings us here?

‘I’ll tell you. It describes Dryden’s First Law: use the right tools in the right way, and people will believe anything you want them to.’

Holloway, Shepherd and Lenny had seen enough. They pushed through the crowd and the swinging fire doors, which were moist with condensed sweat and breath. They passed the lavatories and the coat check, the box office and the bored bouncers. They huddled on the corner of an arctic north London street. Taxis and minicabs breathed smoke into the dirty yellow darkness.

‘That can’t be legal,’ said Shepherd.

‘Like he’d care,’ said Lenny.

Holloway stamped his feet against the cold.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘It might be bollocks, but it gave me the creeps.’

‘Kid’s stuff,’ said Lenny.

‘My arse,’ said Holloway.

‘Look,’ said Lenny. ‘He was probably using infrasound. It’s easily done. A frequency of 18 or 19 hertz will produce feelings of unease and anxiety. Even panic. It’s been the root cause of many a supposed haunting; busted electric fans, extractor fans, high winds in old window frames, resonating between 18 and 20 cycles per second. That sort of thing.

‘A tiger roars at about 18 hertz before attacking. It’s just at the edge of human hearing, so it’s stuff you don’t know you’re hearing: but you still respond to it as a threat. You get scared: feel like you’re being watched. Hunted. Funnily enough, the human eyeball has a resonant frequency of about 18 hertz: so infrasound can cause visual disturbance or hallucination as well. So people hear bad noises, and they see movement. From these clues, their mind creates a ghost. All clever enough, I suppose. But he’s just
playing
. He’s winding up those in the know.’

‘Either that,’ said Holloway. ‘Or he paid two unemployed actors to put on funny hats and jump around making funny noises.’

‘Fair point,’ said Lenny. ‘Whatever. Same difference.’

‘Hardly.’

They had been standing on the corner, opposite the traffic lights. It was Holloway who turned up his collar and walked towards Upper Street. Shepherd and Lenny followed. Their steaming breath combined in the darkness above their heads.

Shepherd sniffed the air. He thought he could smell a bonfire.

‘And who are those in the know?’ said Holloway.

‘People like me,’ said Lenny. There was a certain light in his eyes. ‘People who study this stuff

‘What stuff?’

‘Politics. Psychology. Parapsychology. Magic. Mind control.’

‘Right,’ said Holloway, somewhat dubiously.

‘Seriously,’ said Lenny. ‘That was as close to black magic as I ever want to come.’

‘Oh come
on
. It was Hammer House of Horror bollocks. He was like a stag-night hypnotist.’

They drew to a halt on the edge of the kerb. Lenny walked in excited circles. A nervous young couple, huddled in winter gear, crossed the road. A minicab beeped them. Lenny waved his hands as if ideas were crammed up and jamming behind his eyes.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘He
was
hypnotizing those people. All right, it was in the most basic way, but he was hypnotizing them. All those images. They meant nothing. They were just pictures he knew would appeal to young men with pretensions to nihilism. His target audience. They’ll leave that club believing that somehow Dryden has
freed
them—’