The Glister (25 page)

When I get back, the Moth Man is back by the fire, doing what he always does, as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened. He looks up when I cross over and stand a few feet away, staring at the fire as if it is some kind of miracle, but he doesn't say anything. He just finishes what he is doing, then he feeds me some breakfast and a cup of regular, non-hallucinogenic coffee. I know I've missed something in what he told me about the machine and his father's blueprints and I'm wondering if he knows it too. If he does, I think, he'll surely say something else, he'll surely try to explain—but he doesn't say anything. We sit around for a while, not saying much, just tending the fire and listening to the woods as they go about their business around us. It's not awkward, there's no tension, no sense of delay or expectation. If anything, it's like any other morning: just two friends out camping in the woods. It's friendly, though, with that light, unspoken sense of being comfortable together in the quiet. We sit there a long time, not saying a word; then we put all his stuff in the van and drive down to the Innertown, like a pair of God's closest angels, to pluck a man's soul out of hell.

DREAMING

I
N THE POLICE HOUSE, ALICE MORRISON IS TRYING NOT TO DREAM. SHE IS
awake now but, as she has discovered, this makes no difference, because the dreams keep coming, even when she stands with her head down, her hands pressed to the wall, her eyes wide open. She has always been afraid of what is happening now, afraid that, one day, the shakes won't pass after a few hours, or even after a day or two, that they will stay with her, always, her permanent, vigilant companions. Now, faces loom up at her out of the floor, or they come leering out from a wall, dead faces, but mocking, mocking and desperate at once, terrible, unknown eyes and mouths, flaring out from wherever she turns. Worse still, though, are the noises in her head—not voices, never voices anymore, just a noise like furniture being moved, wooden table legs dragging across a floor, or saucepan lids falling and clattering on tiles, or maybe the sound of piano wires resonating in the dark, where someone is rocking the frame back and forth, back and forth. Or there are bells in the distance, a sound that should be peaceful, a beautiful sound if the bells were out there in the world, and not inside her head. Then, through all that, through the sudden deceptive moments of quiet, comes the sound of a child, the same child over and over again, sitting or kneeling in a corner somewhere, weeping and whispering to itself, a boy or a girl, she doesn't know, and she can't make out the words the child is saying. All she can hear is this dreadful whisper.

She knows Morrison is somewhere in the house. Somewhere downstairs. He's letting her get on with it, because there have been times when she's told him to leave her alone, and now he is leaving her alone, now he's given up and she has the solitude that she's always wanted. Except that, now, she doesn't want it. She can't take it. She's told herself that this won't last, because this is hell, and she's done nothing to deserve hell. Smith, Jenner, and the others from the Outertown, they deserve this more than she does. Morrison deserves it. She doesn't know what he's done, but she knows he's done something. Nobody who works for Smith is innocent. But then, hell doesn't come to the guilty. It comes to people like the O'Donnells, who haven't done anything wrong. That's the twist about hell, the one they don't tell you about in religious studies, the fact that, in hell, it's not the guilty who suffer, it's the innocent. That's what makes it hell. Some random principle wanders through the world, choosing people for no good reason and plunging them into hell. Grief for a child. Horrifying sickness. Noises and faces coming from nowhere, punctuated by terrible minutes of lucidity, just long enough to take stock of where you are. And you are in hell.

Hell, hell, hell, hell, hell.
The sound in her head grows and something tightens all along her arms and legs—like cramps, only much worse—and she feels like her body is about to burst open, tendons and muscles snapping and tearing, the bones cracking. She has known about this forever, she has been at the threshold for so long and now it is finally happening. Morrison is downstairs, fixing tea, or reading a paper, ignoring her. She doesn't want him, but she wants
something.
She wants help. A drug, maybe. It could be that simple. They could come and give her one tiny injection and this hell could end. All she needs is someone to make the call. But she can't do it. She can't ask him. Her whole body wants to scream with the agony, her mind wants to beg for something to free her, and she can't make a sound. She is in hell, and hell is for eternity.

She doesn't know when she first sees the man. She thinks this is one more face, screaming out at her from the doorway, as she turns, searching for an exit. A phantom. God, she knows these are phantoms, she knows these things are hallucinations, or she does some of the time anyway, and it makes no difference. This is the place where mad people live, and she doesn't know how she got here. A few drinks, a few pills? Surely not. She has never believed in that kind of injustice. She has believed in blame and private horrors and shameful acts behind closed doors. She hasn't imagined that the mad deserve their suffering, but she has believed in a route, a road taken, or a history of pain and loneliness, running from the darkest secret of childhood to the asylum, where doctors come and go with needles, and the mad lie down to sleep in oblivion, for precious hours at a time. But where was her route? Nobody abused her as a child. Nobody stole her innocence or made her a witness to unbearable truths. She doesn't know how she got here. She doesn't know how her life got to be unbearable.

But then, nothing is unbearable. When she first sees him, he's one phantom among many, but after a while she becomes aware of a real presence, a warmth that fills the room and she looks out from her hell and sees him there, standing in his own island of light and yet only a few feet away. He has the shape of a man but his face, when she makes it out, is the face of a boy. A gentle, serene boy, gazing at her, calm, forgiving, silent. She knows he will not speak to her, but she needs to break the chain of sound and pain in her head and, when she finally sees him there, she has to ask. He doesn't reply, and she hasn't expected him to reply, but she repeats the question anyway.

“Who are you?” she says. It's a simple enough question.

He doesn't answer, but he comes closer and reaches out his hand—and that, for one terrible moment, is the most painful thing she can possibly imagine. The reaching, the moment before touching. But when he touches her—his hand laid flat across her face, covering her eyes and mouth—she staggers into some new state, some unknown brightness. He lays his hand over her face and her eyes close, and the noises stop. The noises stop and the pain in her arms stops. The pain ebbs away, like water. The noises stop and her head is silent, cool, empty. The gratitude is almost unbearable, but she knows, at the same time, that he has not come here to bless her. She is someone he has found in passing, and his mercy is so huge it costs him nothing to heal her. It's as if she met the Angel of the Lord in some old Bible story, and he has touched her for a moment, and healed her, but she knows that, all the time, his purpose is elsewhere. She falls to the floor then, falling away from his healing hand and into herself, the self she was before, the self she has forgotten in all this noise and pain and fear. So that when she looks up, he is already gone, a shadow passing away, on its way to its divine appointment. But she doesn't care. She is still. Her body is silent. She is capable of sleep.

It may be minutes later, it may be longer, when she hears something from downstairs, from one of the rooms below. Morrison's voice calls out, maybe in fear, maybe in anger, she can't tell, and she can't make out what he says. She is only mildly curious, though, and after a moment the silence returns. The silence of her exhaustion. Outside, somewhere in the trees, a pair of owls is hunting, and closer in, near the window, she hears a gust of wind. Fresh new sounds, sounds that come from beyond her own pain. She hears one thing, then she hears another, but it's fading even as it happens, because she is finding her way to a place where sleep is total, and on the far side of that, a new life. Her name is Alice. Her father loved her, and she had a happy childhood, for the most part. Sleep is her due, and she takes it, with gratitude and relief, and it barely troubles her that, as she slips down and into that dreamless place, the last thing she registers, the last tiny fragment of awareness, is that Morrison is gone and she is in the police house, alone.

MORRISON

W
HEN HE WAKES, MORRISON IS UPRIGHT, VERY UPRIGHT, IN A WOODEN
chair that is too small for him, a heavy, polished old-fashioned chair with a padded back and armrests, the kind of chair that nobody has made for years. He is cold, which doesn't surprise him, because he is also naked, his skin surprisingly white and loose under the unforgiving white light that comes from somewhere above. He is immediately aware of the restraints that someone has fastened around his arms and legs: tight, not rope, maybe leather, or some kind of insulating tape, wound around his arms from the wrist to the elbow, and around his legs from the ankles to the knees, holding him almost incapable of motion, pinned in the chair like an insect pinned to a specimen board. His legs have been bound in such a way that his knees jut slightly outward, his soles raised off the floor, so he cannot gain purchase and push himself up. Whoever did this has very specialized skills—and his mind goes straight to Jenner, who has probably been waiting years for an opportunity to do exactly this, and so eliminate a potential problem. That's the kind of man Jenner is: tidy, ruthless, cool, but, at the same time, someone who takes real care in his work, a man who doesn't like loose ends.

The chair to which Morrison is pinned is set in the middle of what feels like a large, empty space, a wide, echoey space under a single lightbulb, suspended above his head, casting a pool of light that spreads for several feet around him, though it's not enough to fill the room, which feels vast—and Morrison knows, without knowing why, that someone is out there, just a few yards into the dark, invisible, but watching him, waiting for him to be awake, as he now is. Somebody out there wants his fear—a fear that Morrison is suddenly, defiantly, pointlessly determined to conceal, no matter what.

“Hello?” He gives a short, mocking laugh and turns his head as far as he can, first to the right, then leftward; though he knows whoever has him is somewhere directly ahead. “Is anybody there?”

He listens. There is nothing to hear, but he knows someone is watching. He can feel it. He can feel breathing, he can feel a tension, like someone standing very still, keeping himself in check, breathing quietly and slowly, watching, listening. Observing: yes, that's it. This man—and he is sure, now, that it is not Jenner, who would have done things simply, quickly— this patient, self-contained man is one of life's watchers, one of the observers. This is what he works for, not because he enjoys what he does, when it comes to the last act, but for this, this moment of power. A careful planner, obviously, but not possessed of animosity or any other emotion, simply someone who enjoys having power over others. With someone like this, there is no strategy other than delay, a chance to work out what will gratify him, and maybe find some kind of compromise. Try to get him to forget his initial plan, or take things beyond the initial bounds of that plan, or possibly of his instruction set, so he might possibly come to a place he had not anticipated. Maybe, if the initial plan fails, he will do something else, make a mistake, show his hand.

“Who's there?” he calls again. He's strangely confused by his predicament. On the one hand, he is angry at being tied up, angry, too, that he has been restrained with such expertise, but part of him doesn't care anymore, even about that. He is tired. He doesn't know where this is—somewhere out in the plant, no doubt, but he's never seen the interior of this particular building before. He looks up. The room has a high roof, with crossbeams and what looks like a gantry somewhere in the shadows off to his left. He feels cold, slightly damp. “Jenner?” Morrison is almost certain that it isn't Jenner out there, but he can't think of anyone else who would be capable of this. “Jenner, if that's you, just tell me what it is you want.”

It isn't Jenner. Jenner doesn't work like this. Whoever is out there is watching a spectacle, maybe playing with him, taunting him with this silence. They are enjoying the mystery, playing. Suddenly, he has the idea that it's kids, that this is some kind of stupid prank. This notion, no matter how far-fetched it seems, is a better explanation for his present situation than Jenner. Jenner would be here now, standing in close where he can do his work, not skulking in the shadows. Jenner is a professional, but this is something a gifted amateur would do—an amateur in the true sense of the word. Someone who
loves
what he is doing. Not the person who killed Mark Wilkinson and the others; this is a different thing altogether. There is no awe here, no tenderness. This is all hard. Again, the idea comes that there are children out there. But how could a child, even a group of them, do this?

“I'm not sure who you think I am,” Morrison calls out to the darkness, not too loud, but clear enough to show that he isn't afraid. “But I'll tell you one thing, you're wrong. I'm nobody special.” He laughs again, a soft laugh that is for himself, and nobody else, even if they are watching him. He wants to laugh at the whole thing, the whole situation. This enormous room, these presences in the shadows, him strapped to this chair. It's ridiculous. At the same time, laughing isn't such a bad strategy either. It does him no harm, because it's not a defiant laugh, he doesn't even intend it to be that. It's soft, sad, even a little pathetic, yet it's strangely good-humored. He hears it himself when he laughs again, a note of pathos, of self-pity for a man who has no real work and a phantom for a wife, a man of his age without children or good memories or love. A man who had already arrived at nothingness before whoever is out there caught him off guard and brought him into this new, but not particularly interesting limbo. “Really,” he calls again, “I'm
not
who you think.” And yes, it does sound pathetic; it
is
pitiful. Sad. Which may work to his advantage because whoever is out there may well have a soft spot for sadness. People like to look at sadness, because it isn't pain, and because it echoes something in themselves.

Nothing is happening, though. Still no response. “Where are we, anyhow?” Morrison asks, sounding to himself more than a little foolish. Which may be exactly what is needed because he thinks he hears something, somewhere off to the left. “It's bloody cold,” he says, in the same foolish tone.

He hears another sound then. Nothing much, just a sound, like something rolling across the floor, five or so yards to the left. It's not a sound he recognizes, but he knows it isn't good. Still, he tries not to let it show that he has heard, and he tries to seem unaware that anything bad is going to happen to him. This is the one thing he remembers from school: don't look like a victim, and there's less chance you will become one. Bluff it out. Letting yourself imagine that something bad is going to happen is already a beginning, a first step into the shameful collaboration between the victim and the one with the power, a recognition that pain, deliberately inflicted and profoundly satisfying, is inevitable. He listens. Nothing, then something. Something, then nothing. Whoever is out there is getting closer, or circling perhaps, but he's not visible yet.

Then a voice comes. It is clear, youthful, though not perhaps boyish, and surprisingly gentle. “You are Morrison, the policeman,” it says.

Morrison isn't sure if this is a question or a statement of fact, but he answers anyway. “I am,” he says. As he says it, he feels a thin, vestigial shiver of pride, not in himself, but in the position. The
office.
He listens. The man in the dark is moving, coming forward, hovering at the edge of the light. He is carrying something—it looks like a bucket—and the lower part of his face is masked. In any other circumstances, Morrison would think the mask was a good sign—but as soon as he sees this tall, rather slender, youthful figure, he realizes that the man is beyond influence: that, however much he may like to observe, he is also someone who acts. He knows what he is going to do, it's just that he has a preordained script for the event, and it pleases him to follow that script. Now, finally, Morrison gives in to defiance. “You know who I am,” he says. “So tell me. Who are you?”

The man doesn't speak—and now, from some sign that is so subtle that even he can't tell how he read it, Morrison realizes that someone else is there too, standing farther out in the darkness, watching.

“Who's your friend?” Morrison asks.

The man looks at him now, his eyes blue and surprisingly soft—and Morrison realizes that he is not much more than a boy. “Who's
your
friend?” he asks, not echoing, not mocking, but genuinely asking the question.

Morrison smiles. “I don't have any friends,” he says. He's not being sad, or pathetic. He's not playing tactics. He has no friends and this man, this boy, knows as much. In fact, this boy knows everything about him. Or he thinks he does—only, he doesn't, because nobody knows everything about anybody. In fact, Morrison thinks, nobody knows very much at all. “When I was a kid—” he begins, changing tack.

“Not good enough.” The man's voice is still quiet, but suddenly hard.

“What do you mean, not good enough?” Morrison is genuinely annoyed. He had just remembered something about himself, something true, and he had wanted to make it real as well, in the telling. “You haven't heard what I was going to say.”

The man takes a step closer, then stops. He is in the light now and because he is in the light, Morrison can see that what he is carrying really
is
a bucket. “No childhood stuff,” the man says. “It's too easy.”

“But that's where it all begins,” Morrison protests. He hears the slight crack in his voice and is annoyed with himself. He's let something go now, and he can't get it back. It was the surprise of the bucket, of course, that broke his concentration. Right now, all he wants to know is: What is in that bucket? “Where are you going to find an explanation, if not in the distant past?”

The man nods, and puts down the bucket. “Do you
have
an explanation?” he asks. He seems genuinely curious, not about the question itself, but about the question of whether Morrison—who is beginning to see himself now, through this man, as a type, as a character in a story—has even bothered to look for an explanation. It's something that Morrison finds insulting, as if this man wants to deny him everything, not just a life, or an explanation, but even a soul. Or maybe what he is denying is the soul itself. The very possibility of a soul. Someone like Morrison can't have a soul of his own, because the soul is intrinsically good, intrinsically clean, a piece of property borrowed from God and all His angels, to be returned some day, pearly and clean and undamaged. The idea makes Morrison angry, and he wants to tell this man, this boy, that he's wrong, that the soul is wet and dark, a creature that takes up residence in the human body like a parasite and feeds on it, a creature hungry for experience and power and possessed of an inhuman joy that cares nothing for its host, but lives, as it must live, in perpetual, disfigured longing. “Well?” The man is still gently curious, and waiting now, making space for Morrison to speak.

And now Morrison can see into the bucket, or at least one side of it, which is spotted and streaked with something white, but he doesn't want to seem too curious. “When I was just a kid,” he begins, deliberately, with the air of an invited speaker, “my mother took me on holiday. My father couldn't come, he had to work—”

“What did your father do?”

“He worked here, at the chemical plant,” Morrison says. He looks the man in the eyes. “I assume that's where we are. At the chemical plant?”

The man ignores the question.
“This
is your explanation?” he asks. Morrison nods. “All right,” the man says. “Go on.”

Morrison looks at the bucket. The contents are white and wet and he can smell something. A familiar smell, like chalk, but not quite. “We went to visit my aunt,” Morrison continues. He feels sad, more or less resigned, not that interested in what he is saying. “She lived by the sea, but it wasn't like this. It was beautiful. Just by her house was a little beach, with this very white sand, and on the beach, a little pier or jetty running out into blue, clear water. I can't tell you how blue it was, or what a gift that pier was to a boy like me. A boy from this place.” He looks at the man. He must be a boy from this place too, but who is he?

The man nods. “Go on,” he says.

“Well,” Morrison says, “I swam there every day, of course. They could hardly get me out of the water, even to eat or sleep. It was summer, really warm, but the water was cool, very cool. And I loved that water. It was my home, my element, a friend to me.” He looks at the bucket. He suddenly knows that something terrible, truly terrible, is in store for him, and it has to do with this white, chalky substance splashed and spotted across the side of this bucket. “What's in the bucket?” he asks. The question surprises him. He hadn't intended it.

“Finish the story,” the man says. “We have
lots
of time.”

In a panic, knowing the story will have no effect on anything, Morrison goes on talking, but now he can hardly bear to talk. It's as if the story itself were a form of torture and not whatever it is that this man, and some accomplice out in the shadows, have planned for him. “I loved that water,” he says. “I thought of it as my friend, my companion. Slipping into it, off the end of that dark pier, was like returning to something that had always been there, something that predated everything else in my life. I trusted it utterly.” He pauses: he is breathless now, tired again. “Then, on the last day of the holiday, a current came, out of nowhere. It was a real force of nature, a mysterious black current—not a ripple on the surface, but this quick dark force under the water that grabbed me like an animal and started pulling me under and away, away from the pier, out into the sound.” He stops, breathes, sees the bucket. Plaster of Paris, he thinks, without knowing why. He remembers the smell, an old smell, a childhood smell. “I almost drowned,” he says. “I thought I was going to die. And it really happens, at that last moment. You know, how they say you remember everything, your whole life flashes before you, every detail, all in a flash. Well, that's true, because it happened and I remember it. Only, it wasn't my life. It was somebody else's memories that flashed through my mind.” Morrison stops. He is surprised by what he has just said, because it isn't what he had meant to say. Yet, oddly enough, it has a ring of truth to it. “I was remembering somebody else's life,” he says. “Somebody I didn't know.” In spite of everything, Morrison is almost pleased by this.