Spawn of Man (10 page)

Robert was aware of the torch beam on the periphery of his vision getting closer and he was certain he could hear footsteps. The face was still oblivious to this, however.

‘Do you know what the repercussion of man’s behavior is, Robert Douglas, can you even guess?’

Robert realized he would have to keep the thing occupied so that it did not catch sight of the advancing light and he engaged the face. ‘No, I have no idea, because I don’t know what you are talking about. And I don’t believe you are real. This is not happening.’

‘Then if this truly is fantasy, Robert Douglas, you will not mind if I take the liberty of enlightening you?’

The beam was nearer still, maybe forty feet away now, and there were definitely footsteps accompanying the stream of light, but before Robert could reply the face withdrew slightly. From the pulpiness behind the face, where the flesh and cabling merged, there was the sound of something emerging. Two steel, jointed spider-legs slid forward towards Robert, budding from the carcass-like stalk. They stopped dead, parallel to each other at equal distances from his forehead. From each of the conical ends of the legs came a filament that met its counterpart and fused into a single fibrous spike. The spike quivered in front of Robert’s forehead and from its origin in the fleshy trunk behind the face a viscid, yellow mixture pumped through the legs and built up at the point of the spike.

Robert felt like the proverbial rabbit in the glare of the headlights and could only stare, stupefied at the vibrating needlepoint. Then it rocked backwards slightly, before darting forward to enter Robert’s head, just above the bridge of his nose.

Robert’s body shook as the concoction was administrated into his skull, and the face tilted from side to side to observe his reaction before speaking again. ‘Do not worry, Robert Douglas. This will not harm you. It is a means of transferring information on a biological and chemical level.

‘You see, in the far past the pineal and pituitary glands in the brain were man’s conduit to the inner worlds. The next stage in evolution will be the connecting of these glands again with his voluntary nervous system and therefore his will. I have triggered your pineal gland and it is now assimilating the higher dimensional light that constantly streams into your Earthly reality. This light will then be decoded into information that the pituitary gland can receive.’

Robert was still able to hear the voice of the face-entity, but his vision had dissipated and a multitude of images had replaced it inside his head. These flowed without the limitations of the physical, so they were represented as a high velocity image feed. It was as if Robert were sat in a cinema inside his own head, watching a film that was projected on a 360-degree screen, every scene overlapping but still intelligible.

The face-entity drifted to the side of Robert’s head and spoke very softly, ‘Go back to the institute, Robert Douglas. I am that which Daniel Douglas strove to achieve. I am the result of his work, born on the next plane of the spirits. I journey to bridge the chasm between the worlds of the dead and the living. I am the link. I am the means by which the gates shall open. I am the machine and I am the machine builder. My son will have life again. Your beloved wife and son are waiting for you, Robert Douglas, waiting for you to make the connection. Only your DNA can turn the key. Sit in the chair, Robert Douglas. Sit in the chair and tear the veil, and let the dead have life again. This is my destiny. This is our destiny.’

The sting-like protrusion was slowly withdrawn from Robert’s forehead, breaking the neural connection. The face entity retreated, its flesh and machine coils swaying from side to side hypnotically, and then it was gone. Robert waited for the video feed in his head to fall into some form of composition and not just the random display of pictures he now experienced.

There was a newsreader on a screen, disheveled and attempting to retain his composure. He was speaking as if he found his own words incredulous. ‘Reports coming in from sources all over the world, telling of the phenomenon. What appear to be rifts appearing, portals to somewhere beyond our understanding. The government has urged the public not to panic and to remain calm. The army is already on the streets of all major cities and news is reaching us of skirmishes with what some accounts describe as “beings from the rifts.”’

The footage jumped forward and Robert found himself standing in the middle of a city. When he began to move he stumbled over broken lumps of concrete, suggesting he was present and solid, although he also had the feeling of being physically divorced from these events. The buildings were twisted into agonized deformations, their girders and internal structures broken and exposed like steel bones protruding from concrete flesh. Others were sliced open as if by precision and their metal innards bloomed outwards like gargantuan iron, alien fauna, or upwards, as if imploring the sky to put them out of their misery. Blasted out windows left eye-less sockets behind, black where the darkness bled into the rooms inside.

Human wreckage was scattered all over the desolation. Some of the bodies were dead, decomposed or decomposing, others were huddled, frightened and whimpering, some crazed and howling, some with limbs, eyes or extremities gone. Some sat sullen and quiet, oppressed and dejected. Some in agony, mental and physical. Some with grotesque deformities, misshapen body parts, growths, calluses or impossible injuries that the body could not have borne and still supported life, half of a head missing, or half of a torso disappeared.

Further into the city shuffled moaning, lamentable hordes of mankind, appearing tranquilized by fear, loss, grief or other more artificial mediums. As Robert watched in awe and disgust he began to distinguish figures within the mass of pitiful victims with a different agenda. These individuals were evidently materializing at will to inflict further horror on the defenseless population. As Robert fell to his knees in disbelief he watched people being dismembered and the limbs being discarded in bloody hills of arms and legs, then mechanical replicas of extremities being attached to where the human limbs had been ripped away.

Some of the tormentors wore soiled, striped suits. Others were dressed in rags and others were naked. These were approximations of humans with lurid, burning eyes set in stage-paint white faces. Rows of sharp, predatory teeth were manifold within the frame of smeared, blood red smiles. There were groups of humans trailing single-file across the rubble, swathed in pathetic, ridiculous and inadequate bandages, applied with mock concern by the protagonists. Robert vomited and bent his head, gasping for air. The creatures perpetrating the obscenities scrutinized each agony and each misery, as if the human suffering and despair fuelled their existence on this plane. And their dynamism seemed to increase with each barbaric act or each atrocity beheld. It was as if they fed on the very fear they generated, gorging on the pain and drawing energy from the lost and hopeless remnants of humanity.

Then Robert heard his name called. He scanned the scene again, feeling another wave of nausea rising in his throat, burning like acid.

‘Robert! Robert!’ It was Alex and she was a member of a line of refugees being led out of the city by a group of the beasts that were whipping and scourging them mercilessly.

Robert went to move but the butt of something heavy struck the back of his head and he fell.

‘Robert! Go to the asylum and save us!’ Robert’s head pounded and he beat the broken earth as blood wept from his nostrils. Then the sun loomed down from the sky to fill his field of vision like the flash from an explosion.

***

The torch beam blazed into his eyes and Andrews shook his shoulders and shouted his name, ‘Robert! Robert!’

One hour later Robert regained consciousness. He lay in a small room joined to a ward in the Accident and Emergency department, watched over by Andrews and a junior doctor.

After the doctor had performed a routine number of checks and had left, Andrews spoke. ‘You okay, Mr. Douglas?’

Robert looked at Andrews but did not reply.

‘You gave us a fright there, the doctor seems to think you passed out in the corridor, thinks you are suffering some kind of concussion,’ and Andrews made to smile reassuringly, then checked himself and stood instead. ‘Do you remember anything, Mr. Douglas?’

‘Was there any damage to the corridor, a hole? A hole in the wall?’ said Robert, straining to pull himself into a seated position.

‘Here, let me help,’ said Andrews, and assisted Robert. ‘Yes, there was damage actually. Some kind of blast? The maintenance staff has called in a specialist to investigate and we will be co-operating with them ourselves. Do you remember, Robert?’

‘Yes. There was an explosion.’ Robert looked out of the window at the rising sun. Andrews pursued, ‘When you were unconscious, Robert, you spoke of some pretty strange things.’

Robert turned to look at the detective. ‘I’ve just lost my wife and child, Detective Andrews, I think I might be excused a little confusion.’

‘Yes, I’m so sorry, Robert,’ then Andrews’ brown eyes grew sad again and he seemed to age momentarily as he gripped his dark hair tightly and continued. ‘This is off the record Robert and if I’m out of line, please feel free to report my conduct.’

He spoke now without looking at Robert. ‘I lost my wife and child three years ago, but about eight months ago I got a call.’

Andrews stopped and Robert prompted, ‘From whom?’

‘Oh. From my wife, Rachel.’ Andrews lifted his face to engage Robert’s eyes, the lines on his worn face etched a little deeper.

‘But I thought you said you lost your wife. You mean your second wife, detective?’

‘I mean my wife, Mr. Douglas. My dead wife. From Rachel. My wife who died two years and four months before. My dead wife phoned me, Robert, and begged me for help, that’s what I mean.’

‘Detective Andrews, I appreciate you are maybe not feeling yourself and my loss has triggered things, feelings inside you, memories perhaps. But I really don’t need to be hearing this now. You need help and if you call me in a couple of weeks I will be happy to recommend someone.’

‘I don’t need analysis, Robert. And it does have something to do with you,’ pressed Andrews.

‘What? What do you mean? What are you talking about?’

‘Your wife and child, Robert!’ Andrews now seemed on the point of hysteria.

‘What about them, what the fuck are you talking about, Andrews? What are you trying to say?’ shouted Robert.

Andrews rose and pinched the bridge of his nose and seemed to compose himself slightly. ‘I’m sorry, Robert. I was out of order and I wouldn’t blame you for making an official complaint about my behavior. I’ll leave you now, please accept my apologies and my condolences for your loss, goodnight, Robert.’

And before Robert could protest he was gone. Robert felt weary but did not want to sleep. Not now. Not ever. But he had no say in the process that pulled him down into oblivion. And it was a void littered with memories and plans, all connected to the death of his family. His mind was battered with images both beautiful and grim, like favorite photographs hung in a graveyard.

***

As Robert dressed, he replayed the conversation with Detective Andrews three hours earlier. A winter sun was bathing the room in harsh light, cold and antiseptic. And as Robert crossed the car park, the impression he was severing a tie with his wife and child bore down oppressively. As he arrived at his car, suppressing again the urge to weep, a wretched, forsaken wave cut him like a razor, deep across his throat, and he had to lean against his car to steady himself.

Then his CCI buzzed. He did not feel capable of speaking, so he thumbed the menu display and waited, but the viewer did not divulge a call identity.

Frustrated, Robert touched his graft again and said, ‘Hello, Robert Douglas, bad timing.’

But all that came back was interference, high pitched and unalterable, as if Robert was listening to the white noise that haunted the immensity of space.

Detective Andrews sat watching Robert from his own car. As he watched he listened to a recording made on his CCI unit. It was Robert’s voice from the incident in the hospital corridor. Andrews had discovered Robert and when he had knelt to examine him, Robert had been speaking feverishly, almost incomprehensibly. But key phrases had alerted Andrews and he had chronicled the monologue.

Robert’s wife was pleading desperately, ‘Robert, Robert, go to the asylum, tear the veil, find Jake, come back to me…’

Andrews watched Robert’s car leave then said, ‘Manual drive.’

He pulled out of the hospital parking area. He assumed a six-car distance from Robert’s vehicle and maintained it.

When his CCI notified him of an incoming call with no identity available he did not answer but promised, ‘I’m coming Rachel.’

Chapter Twelve

‘Open your eyes. Open your eyes.’

Alex swam up through a murky pool of unconsciousness, guided by the voice. As she burst into the daylight of lucidity, the scent of something sweet and cloying hit her. Her imagination was a fertile landscape and on this occasion it allowed her the sensation of suffocating in decaying flowers. She was drowning in a sea of dead, wasted petals with a mouth full of pollen and a throat clogged with leaves. She had stopped breathing life-giving oxygen and ingested buds and stems instead.

‘Open your eyes.’ Her eyes opened.

‘Alex, are you awake, dear? There now, you’ve had another restless night. Do you feel well enough to eat something? A little breakfast, maybe, dear?’

Alex struggled to focus on the woman speaking to her. She felt numb, as if her mind had been transposed into another body but had not yet been connected to the nervous system. It was a nurse speaking to her, a pretty, young, blonde nurse with eyes full of sympathy, caring and something else… pity?

‘Who are you? What is this place? Where am I?’ Alex began to connect with her senses.

She was in a small, white room. Cables and wires were festooned about her prostrate form. Equipment hummed and bleeped on both sides of her. And on one side monitors depicted the status of something concerning her body. Some of the tubes issuing from appliances entered her body at various junctures, but she could not see where.

‘I don’t understand?’ Alex protested.

She could not lift her head to view her body or raise herself to inspect it. She was aware of lying on some kind of bed, the mattress firm and supportive. The nurse was bending close to her face, a look of empathy ghosting across her attractive features.

‘I don’t understand?’ Alex repeated.

‘Are you confused again, Alex? Don’t you remember, dear?’

‘Remember what? Who are you? Where am I?’ A slight tremor of panic colored Alex’s voice.

‘You are in the hospital, Alex, remember? The hospital. I’m Mary and we’ve been looking after you for two months, although you’ve only been fully conscious and aware of things properly for five days. Can you remember, dear?’

‘No,’ replied Alex groggily. ‘Why am I in hospital? Which hospital?’

‘Alex, that’s not important. Don’t you remember anything?’ said the young nurse.

Alex shook her head from side to side slowly as if trying to force recollection into her brain.

The dream she had just awoken from still asserted its hold on her senses. She saw the flowers on the bedside table, bright and with heads full and tilted with the weight of moisture. This must have been the bouquet that had suffused her waking with its suffocating aroma and had seemed like thick liquid filling her throat.

‘Alex, you’ve been in a terrible car crash. They didn’t think you would survive. They pulled you through somehow and you fought the infection, fought it ferociously for six weeks, to come back to us, Alex. You are an inspiration, Alex, so brave, so brave,’ purred the nurse, stroking Alex’s head, a sad look imbuing her beautiful features with extreme sympathy.

Alex whispered, ‘What I don’t understand. Why don’t I remember any of this? What happened to me, where is Jake? What kind of infection, am I okay?’

Mary shook her head slowly as Alex’s voice trembled.

‘Alex, don’t you remember the doctor speaking to you yesterday, dear? You were very poorly for a long time. I will ask the doctor to speak to you again. It’s imperative you stay calm, dear, it’s vital for your condition…’ Mary’s voice faltered just for a second and she bit her lip as uncertainty broke the surface of her calm professionalism.

Alex seized on the young nurse’s lapse in an unguarded moment and pushed before the nurse could qualify her words. ‘Condition? What condition? What’s going on here, nurse? What has happened to me, tell me now!’

Mary moved away from Alex’s bedside. Alex was frustrated that she could not shift her head fully to track the nurse’s movements. Up until this moment the nurse had leaned close to Alex with her perfume flushing into Alex’s nostrils. Her piercing green eyes delving into Alex’s without any desire or sexual intent behind them, but still affecting Alex subtly against her will. Alex’s half remembered dream retreated faster now, leaving only a shadow to terrify her, and a maelstrom of fear and confusion rushed in to fill the gap that was created in her mind. When Alex tried to twist to face the nurse’s back, she found her head was restrained, held firm in some kind of brace with padded steel holding her skull rigid. She tried to move her limbs but was unable to.

There was a mirror on the ceiling, held in place by steel cables and slightly tilted at an angle. The portion over the foot of her bed was fractionally lower than the section over her head. It reminded Alex of an assembly that would have featured in an old black and white film, as if she was Frankenstein’s monster, tethered and constrained.

In the reflection thrown back at Alex from the suspended glass she could see the bed, the crisp white sheet pulled up almost to her neck, her head slightly elevated by the inclination of the bed itself and the metal framework holding her skull rigid. She could also distinguish a portion of the bedside table, before it was lost beyond the edge of the mirror. There was half a steel dish visible, but nothing else.

Mary returned to the bed. At first Alex thought she was in her early twenties, but now as Mary slipped a thermometer into her mouth, Alex studied the nurse closely and was slightly surprised. The rolling declivity of her breasts was still ample and partially exposed in the low cut, provocative uniform, but now they displayed minor flaws. As Mary busied herself administering to her patient, Alex began to notice more defects. Almost imperceptible fine lines spider-webbed the thick foundation make up, as if a mask was fixed to Mary’s face. Heavier lines creased the soft skin below her eyes. And the hair was steely grey at the temples now. There were mustard-yellow globules floating in the whites of her eyes. And although her breasts were constructed of perfect, taut skin and muscle, the flesh that connected them to her neck and indeed the neck itself was sagging and bore the marks of age.

‘What’s wrong, Alex,’ said the nurse, more brusquely than she had spoken before. ‘What are you looking at, dear?’ The last word had been added almost perfunctorily.

‘Nothing, nothing. I was just, just wondering what time it was, what day and why I can’t remember anything. Just dreams, terrible dreams, horrible.’

‘Well that’s all over now, dear, isn’t it? You must concentrate on getting well and that’s why I’m here, Alex,’ replied Mary, retrieving the thermometer too harshly, then amazingly throwing it onto the floor, without even consulting it.

But Alex was now preoccupied in wondering why Mary’s hair was not tied back and why she was so heavily made up. It was almost as if the woman was playing the role of a nurse. She was the very embodiment of the role, but borne out of fantasy and not reality, drawn from the moist imagination of a pubescent artist. Alex began to feel an invisible blanket of panic being pulled neatly up to her chin.

It was as if the bogeyman now whispered,
‘There, there, Alex, no need to worry. Just going to make a few small incisions.’
Then performed invasive surgery without the benefit of anesthetic.

Mary was at her side again. Her face looked even more like a caricature of youth this time. She placed something on the table by Alex’s head, something Alex could not see, something that clinked cleanly like glass on metal. Something that now lurked with dread intent in the world beyond the reach of the mirror’s reflection. Hiding and waiting. Sweat broke out on Alex’s brow and ran into one of her eyes, salty and stinging. Alex felt panic grip her throat, threatening to choke her and slapping her face with a cold, clammy hand, demanding she recognize it.

‘Mary?’ Her voice was flat, trying unsuccessfully to suppress the rising tide of anxiety flooding up through her throat. ‘Mary, might I see someone, a doctor maybe or the police? Has my family been to see me? Have they been notified?’

Mary stopped fumbling with the bedclothes and turned to look at Alex. The face was old and her manner had become harsher. The make-up had dried, cracked and flaked away from her skin, which itself lacked the firm elasticity of several moments ago. Even the exposed area of her cleavage was dry and withered and her lips were now thinned, the ruby red lipstick smudged over folds of skin that were recently plump, full flesh. And her perfume was now tinged with a sharp, bitter quality.

Alex recoiled in shock, as if she had been dealt a hefty blow across her face. Her panic had become a suction implement, extracting all the saliva from her mouth and leaving the space behind as dry and tasteless as dust. She quickly realized that somehow she had to get out or summon assistance from someone else in the hospital. Looking at the nurse she wondered if she was in fact incarcerated in a mental institution, and that Mary was an inmate loosed from her restraints and now tormenting Alex.

Alex tried to dissipate the fear welling inside her brain and she tried to even out her voice, as if she were cajoling a child. ‘Mary, I’m sorry I shouted. I’m just a little scared, that’s all. I’m worried because I can’t remember anything. I appreciate all you are doing for me, honestly I do. I just wondered if I could see my doctor, just for a chat… and to give you a little break maybe?’

Gradually, without announcement and with the subtleties of sleep’s arrival, Alex was becoming aware of pain. Not a localized, sharp, breath-limiting pain, but more of a general throbbing of discomfort, with enough edges to make Alex’s subconscious register its nature and anticipate worse to come. Alex’s consciousness in turn recognized it and warned her she was now on a timetable. Something had been placed on the stand by her head, something that maybe this deranged harpy intended to wield soon. Alex was certain that it was not something pleasant.

Mary’s sudden ageing also terrified Alex. Were her perceptions askew due to her condition? The psychotic nurse could not have actually aged? Had an older, crazed inmate slipped into the room outside Alex’s field of vision and disposed of Mary, taking her place at Alex’s bedside? It seemed like her pain and panic were increasing at an identical rate, spurring each other on, as if in some headlong race to be the first to take control. She could try to manage the pain with a degree of will, but she could not afford to allow panic to attain a grip on her. If she was to entertain even the faintest hope of salvation she had to stay focused and in control of her faculties for as long as possible. Panic would, at best, cloud her judgment and, at worst, prevent her from taking advantage of any opportunity for escape.

Alex tried again, ‘Mary, you look, tired. Why don’t you take a rest and let someone else see to me for a while? You must be exhausted.’

‘Exhausted?’ Mary cut her off mid-sentence, her voice a rasping verbal punch as she raised her face to Alex once again. ‘Exhausted you say, exhausted… Exhausted.’ She spoke the word blankly, as if in repetition she would come to some understanding of it.

Mary’s eyes were dulled now, as if in death, and her skin was wan and without moisture. Then a look of remembrance fluttered across her features, momentarily brightening the dark orbs of her eyes.

She spoke as if reading a description from a dictionary. ‘Exhausted, wasted, washed up empty, nothing left, barren, spent, used up, tired, tired, so very, very tired.’

She looked through Alex.

She stared at some distant memory, beyond the confines of the four walls. Maybe looking for the sweet young girl that had stood in her place a short while ago, whilst her fingers entwined in the sheet covering Alex’s body, dragging it off without ceremony. Simultaneously she reached for the implement located on the stand by Alex’s head.

Alex had no illusions now as to Mary’s state of mind. She was deranged. The sensations in Alex’s body were now more acutely tuned. Nerve endings were registering a more incisive hurt like little pins being sunk into her flesh all over her body, remorselessly. Alex closed her eyes against the pain as if with the black shutters of her eyelids she could occlude the feelings that sliced through her body, centered now in her limbs and on her abdomen.

‘Mary?’ Alex did not want to risk another rebuke from the nurse, in part because she was convinced the next reprimand would be of a physical nature, but the increasing severity of her pain demanded she speak. ‘Mary, I really need something for the pain, please. Just something for the pain.’

When Alex opened her eyes there was an awful moment of delay as the image she saw reflected in the mirror above was relayed to her brain and realization dawned. Alex now understood why she had been unable to exert any force in her limbs and why she felt such a dull numbness in her extremities.

Her four limbs were stumps, bloodied and bruised. The right arm was removed above the elbow, the left below the elbow. Her legs were amputated, one above and one below the knee. Excess skin mushroomed beyond the blunted edges of her arms and legs. Each clumsily sown member had the appearance of fleshy sweet wrapper or Christmas cracker. The stitches were thick, black and coarse, like those of a badly crafted rag doll.

Alex screamed and flapped her useless limbs like a fish flipped from its bowl, and she whimpered helplessly, ‘No. No. For God’s sake, what have you done? Where are my arms, my legs, where are they, you bitch!’ And she screamed again until the air emptied from her lungs.