Songs From Spider Street (10 page)

I heaved one
last mass of ice aside, preparatory to removing it from the pit ready for
thawing. There, previously hidden by the shining mass, I was met by an
unexpected and horrifying sight.

There, in his
tomb of ice and silvery scales and dead eyes, was her husband. Or at least,
what was left of her husband. From the look of him, he had not died easily.

Obviously he
had never been imprisoned as she had told me. His only prison had been the ice.

Could the
woman I loved really be a liar and a murderess? If so, why had she played this
game of deception with me and then brought me to the one place where I might
unmask her?

I gave way to
feelings of betrayal and bitterness. And there was the fearful prospect that I
might be next.

I left her in that field, blue and broken, and went off to seek my own
sort of oblivion. Perhaps the clouds would take her now.

Back in the
city, the provisional government had imposed order, supported by large gangs of
armed, black-clad youths loitering on nearly every corner. Things were
beginning to return to normal – the revolution had been thwarted and the spate
of plagues and soul sicknesses was on the wane – and I felt it wise to bury
myself once more in one corner of a large accountants’ office.

My job was to
count beans, by the sackful, and I held a reasonably respected position. I was
told by my boss that my role was a small but vital part of the working of the
country’s economy; he said he was glad to welcome me back after the recent
unrest. He conveniently ignored the fact that my hands now shook so appallingly
that my pages were spattered with random ink spots.

The shops
were, mercifully, beginning to fill with goods again and drink was easy to come
by. Too easy, perhaps.

Sometimes I
could almost believe that I had forgotten her.

But my
constant childhood companions had not. I was being judged by those who knew me
best. And found wanting.

The days
ahead are dark. Now the clouds are gathering.

I wanted to draw the world, so I went to my window but I could only
see a part of it. So I turned my pencil into a rocket and rode it all the way
to the top of my disappointment. If you go to your window and look up, you can
just see me, twinkling up there from time to time; geo-stationary.

The man sits in a chair. He cannot move and he is swathed in bandages.
From what he can tell they cover him from head to toe. They cover even his
eyes, with only a few cracks allowing him a partial view of his surroundings.
The light is very low but he can tell he is seated in a room with bare walls
and few features.

He doesn’t
know if he is ill, or has been in an accident, or if he is supposed to remember
the details of either. He feels blank; his insides hollow, his mind unformed.
He has no memory of colours or tastes or sensations other than those that
surround him at this very moment; and he has no names to help him store them
away in their proper boxes. If he cannot do this, he feels, then what is outside
him might as well be as empty as what is inside him; even nothing must have a
name.

Islands of
memory seem to shimmer on the imaginary horizon in his head, far from where he
is stranded. Unreachable and isolated. Is that where I should be, he asks himself?
Is that where I can find out the answers?

The bandages
itch and chafe and he wonders again why he is wearing them. Is he ill,
infected? Wounded or burnt? He doesn’t feel any pain, only irritation, but
maybe that’s because he is nearing recovery now. Perhaps his stay here is
nearly at an end. Nobody has come near him since he awoke, but he thinks he may
be in a hospital of some sort. Or perhaps a lazaret for those in a state of
quarantine.

The palms of
his hands itch but when he tries to lift his arms he finds that they are
restrained at the wrists. His ankles are the same. So he might be a prisoner.
Why else would anyone secure another person’s arms like this? Maybe he would
harm himself or others if they did not restrain him. So he might be in an asylum?
Hospital, prison or asylum, he does not know which would be the worst of them.

If he could
free himself he’d scratch like a monkey, though monkeys have more dignity.
Monkeys, yes. He remembers monkeys but doesn’t know if he’s ever seen one. He
wonders where they live and who created them. He imagines a green place where
they might live, well-watered and with open skies.

A tree. He
remembers something about a tree; he recalls what a tree is. There was
something special about this tree, something on the tip of his brain. After
several minutes failing to recollect what was unique about it, he gives up,
groaning with frustration. His mind seems to be a ruin, with only vague ideas
left standing on top of each other here and there.

Maybe he is
dead, after all, and in a process of disintegration, decay. But he knows he
wouldn’t feel any discomfort if he was; he can’t explain how he knows, but he
does. Or maybe he is living a cancelled life, merely waiting to be recycled or
re-assigned. That seems much more likely, he thinks.

Perhaps he
has woken like this before, if there has been a before. Maybe he goes through
this same tormented cycle over and over again. But he has no way of knowing,
and that seems worse to him than having to repeat the same thing over and over
and over.

There seems
to be something moving in his bandages; tiny things making only the very
feeblest of movements but they are still unmistakably there. He feels a slight
revulsion at the thought that he is harbouring vermin. Perhaps he was wrong about
being hospitalised; would a hospital allow vermin to thrive on the bodies of
its patients? No, he has been abandoned, he now knows. He is nowhere. And no
one.

Light. There
is light at least. He can tell through the tiny chinks in the bandages over his
eyes. The texture of the light has changed since he awoke. He has no way of
knowing how long that has been; maybe days, maybe only hours. If days, then it
must mean there are no nights here, wherever here is, the small window high in
the far wall remaining constantly bright. No darkness, only light.

He knows his
reasoning over this can’t be right, something inside him reveals at least that,
but it seems to make sense to him. There could be other reasons for the
constant light but he cannot think what they might be.

He suddenly
notices the smell for the first time. Now that he knows it is there it becomes
overwhelming. His bandages are rank and filthy, he realises. They can’t have
been changed for a long time. And the things that are living in them … are they
feeding on him? He can’t feel any bites or stings but maybe they are too small
to be noticed.

Part of the
discomfort, he now knows, is because he is sitting in his own filth. This
accounts for the smell, too, he realises. No staff, nursing or otherwise, can
have been near him for days, if not longer. He twists his head, trying to peer
through the slits in the bandages. The room is virtually bare but for one other
chair, giving him no clues as to where he is, or how long he has been here … or
when he might expect to be released. His heart sinks, his emotions in revolt at
the knowledge that he has been so utterly abandoned. Perhaps, after all his
conjecture, this is simply a form of torture for some act of evil he has
committed and now blanked from his mind.

He could be
in the hands of sadists, yes. They might be the tools of some dictator against
whom he has spoken, despite the warnings of those about him. Or they might be
just men, wise to commit him to this place and to force him to undergo this
cyclical ordeal. The idea of power, its use and abuse, seems new but he knows
it cannot be. If he is on some world somewhere he is aware that power of one
sort or another is what chiefly occupies the minds and lives of its inhabitants
… if there are any.

Sound might
give him some of the answers he needs. He opens his mouth and forces air
through his waiting vocal chords. Immediately he is disappointed with the flat
timbre of his voice, its light and unimpressive tone. Even his wordless groan
lets him down, it seems.

Speech is a
new toy to him. Words are a novelty, yet he seems to be able to call upon them,
which makes him wonder how he knows their shapes, and where and why he might
have used them before.

He gropes
through the ruins of thought for the right shapes, the sounds that could be a
lifeline to some meaning. He can’t see anything much in this room but maybe
there is another room adjacent to it, just next door. Maybe there is someone in
that room and, if he shouts, they will hear him. And they might answer. He doesn’t
know if any of this is true but he invents something for himself – faith – to
allow himself to believe it.

He exercises
his jaw, groans loudly through his tight throat, and then draws in his breath
ready to shout. His breath balances on the edge of action and then he lets it
out, flying from him in a wave of vocalised anxiety: “Why am I here?”

Voices, a
million voices; tiny, infinitesimal and individually inaudible, joining in one
answer that vibrates through his body. The one answer that he felt he knew all
along and that makes him weep with pity for himself, everything and everyone
else, the tears soaking straight into the dirty bandages. “You are God,” they
say.

From where I was I had a perfect view of the world and wanted to draw
it more than ever. So I changed my rocket back into a pencil, and tumbled down,
down, ever down. If you go to your window and look up you can just see me,
moving, twinkling as I spin towards the ground; high velocity.

The light from the sleeping town behind him barely illuminated the narrow
shingle beach, joining with the moonlight to throw a ghostly
hardly-worth-the-effort glow on the foam that gathered and then fled a few
yards from where he stood.

He hitched
his belt up under his paunch, then walked down the few steps to the shingle
beach. Almost unconsciously, he ran his thumb over the clip of his holster.

Shivering as
the cold bit into him, he wished he was back in bed, warm and oblivious to the
fearful task he had before him.

For a moment,
he saw himself under the water, sightless and thoughtless under the salt waves,
drifting out and away from this place; not having to face the future for fear
of what it would look like. He’d give anything not to be standing where he was
right now.

When he’d
been young, this had been his dream job; Deputy Sheriff, and later Sheriff, of
the small beach-side town where he’d grown up. It was beautiful here and, when
he married Mary, he thought things would always stay that way.

The only
daughter of the town’s minister, Mary had seemed quite a prize with her
straw-coloured hair and startling blue-grey eyes. Her shy laugh made him feel
like he needed to hold her close, always.

He remembered
a high night-time tide nearly a decade ago. Just like tonight, there was a bright
moon and a particularly harsh chill on the wind from the sea.

His inability
to act then, his confusion and reluctance to take any life, no matter how odd
or unnatural, had left him living in a town he hardly recognised any more. The
place was haunted by people (he called them that for want of a better word) who
looked like those he’d grown up with, who went about their business quietly and
didn’t bother anyone, but who just didn’t seem
to belong there.

Nobody knew
what they wanted but fathers, wives and brothers all slept uneasily, knowing
that what they lived with wasn’t the person they’d known for all those years.
But why were they here? There was no reason for them to be here. They took up
space and seemed to be just waiting for something. He was frightened that their
wait would be over tonight.

On some
nights, when the fog rolled in, he’d seen one or two of them on the beach,
staring out to sea as if willing something to happen. They were always gone by
morning.

He always
used to love sitting on the headland on moonlit nights, sometimes with Mary
beside him, and watching the night-time waves roll in, all silver and slow.
Now, as he peered at the waves through the darkness, they seemed black,
unclean; they rushed towards him like a pack of predators, hungry for him,
eager to drag him down and devour him.

He shrugged
and flipped up the collar of his coat to try and keep the cold out as the sea
roared and rose, dashing itself into froth as it rearranged the round, grey
pebbles in an endless game.

Yesterday he’d got home from work to find Mary standing in the driveway,
shivering. He’d got out of the car and rushed over to her, told her they’d have
to go inside to get her out of the cold and warmed up.

But she’d
refused. Said she couldn’t wait for him to get home, to get out of the car, to
come inside and start talking about his day; she had something urgent to tell
him and she had to do it right now, right here.

She’d fallen
asleep that afternoon and she’d had another dream, she said. The worst yet.

“I saw all of
us. There was everyone we know, everyone who’s still ‘real’, that is. We were
made of sand and we were walking out of the sea, up the beach towards the town.
Then we all started to crumble away and there were
things
inside us. Oh
God, it was awful!” Mary had shuddered and hugged her coat closer about her.
She’d begun to sob.

After he’d
got her inside, poured hot cocoa inside her and put a rug over her on the sofa,
he’d sat alone in the kitchen to think. This was a warning; it had to be. He
couldn’t afford to ignore it this time.

He found it hard to believe that 10 years had passed since the last wave
of
visitors
arrived on this placid shore. Where had all that time gone?
On watching Mary, making sure she was OK, trying to love her and make her whole
again, he guessed.

A decade of
nothingness. And it was all their fault; those
things
.

He’d watched
that ‘girl’ grow for nearly a year. She’d grown in the place that his daughter
should be. Then one night, with half a bottle of whiskey inside him, he’d taken
her down to the cellar – and she’d gone willingly enough – and put an end to it
all. When she realised what was to happen there was something in the girl’s
eyes, a grotesque attempt to imitate humanity, but he’d hardened his heart to
it.

No-one had asked
where the girl had gone; he suspected that they all wished secretly that they
could do the same thing. At first he’d thought that if he, an officer of the
law, could do something like that, then it might prove an example to others.
But the people seemed too confused, too cowed by the strangeness of things, to
follow his lead.

They looked
at him oddly for a while but then everything seemed to settle down and become
normal again; as if anything could ever be normal again.

When he and
his wife had first learned, just two years after their marriage, that their
daughter wouldn’t be like their friends’ children, he’d felt a bottomless sense
of failure. He’d let down both his wife and himself. After a few months that
feeling had passed and he’d blamed his wife for bearing a ‘slow’ child; then
the child itself for ever being born, before finally and bitterly accepting
things as they were.

Mary had
found it hard to care for the girl, and he’d often come home to find her in the
kitchen crying while the girl sat, neglected, in another part of the house.
Within a few years Mary had changed so much. The dreams had started coming; she
insisted they were a warning.

When the girl
had been ‘replaced’ by whatever it was that had come from the sea that awful
night, he’d almost felt a sense of relief. But he knew deep down that things
weren’t right and he couldn’t allow that
thing
to go on living in her
place.

He’d ignored
Mary’s warnings about that strange night tide and he’d paid a heavy price for
it. Then when she’d told him about their daughter, it had been so obvious to
him; he should have acted sooner.

This time he
wasn’t going to be caught out. He couldn’t change his or Mary’s past but he was
going to make sure the future would be different.

On arriving
at the beach, he wasn’t greeted by the expected army of grit Golems, marching
straight out of his wife’s dream and into the town, replacing and re-making
ordinary, decent lives in their image.

That was
nearly two hours ago and still the sea seemed content to plough back-and-forth
up and across the beach, leaving no unexpected gifts for him to find beyond the
odd piece of driftwood or old beer can. It gathered and groaned against the
ageing iron legs of the darkened pier, creating the uncomfortable sound of
metal and water agreeing to differ.

He swung the
beam of his torch across the grey pebbles and down the beach towards the
headland once more. Nothing there.

Then,
finally, he thought he saw something left behind as a wave retreated, spume
flecking the air just a few feet from him. The pebbles crunched and shifted
under his feet, betraying his presence as he headed for the spot.

There in the
beam it lay, its small mouth opening and closing as though struggling to form
words that were a step or two ahead of its thoughts. And God only knew what
thoughts they must be.

Its
button-bright eyes glistened in the harsh beam of his torch and he saw, even
from this odd angle, that this time the thing had his wife’s face. It was
looking at him.

For a moment
he was tempted to put the cold barrel to his own temple. Because maybe this
wouldn’t be the end. Maybe there’d be tide after tide of these things;
replacing those he loved and stealing his town from him. And maybe he’d be too
old to fight them one day, and he couldn’t face that.

Somehow he
felt that he was just one of thousands of men, standing on thousands of beaches
across the world, trying to hold back the tide and praying that the inevitable
wouldn’t happen after all. But he knew that lonely men on lonely beaches could
never form an army and, as the cold wrapped itself around him once more
bringing with it a new sense of isolation, he hoped to God that he wasn’t the
last one left.

But he knew,
wherever he pointed the gun, that what was happening to this town, to him –
this thing that he hoped was a nightmare, but that had the night-time chill and
salt tang of awful reality – must end here.