The Kimota Anthology (19 page)

“How y’ gettin’ on with that bird?” Raven asked, his face slack and stupid with drink.

Lee, who was in much the same condition, winked and gave the thumbs-up. “Great. Got her eatin’ out o’ my hand.”

For some reason this struck Raven as excruciatingly funny, and he went off into a fit of drunken giggles. “Reckon you’ll get her into bed?” he snorted.

Lee nodded confidently. “No problem.”

By the end of the evening Lee was so drunk he could barely stand up. For the last couple of hours he had been sprouting bullshit, too pissed to do anything else, but frightened of the silences between himself and Joanna. She, however, had sat through his slurred spiel, smiling and nodding as though it were the most enthralling thing she had heard. Lee reckoned he could have told her his shoe size or counted up to a thousand and she would have found it interesting. This discovery cheered him, gave him confidence. This bird was just like all the rest, he thought; she wasn’t at all brainy. He patted his hip pocket, happily convinced that the condoms in there had not been bought in vain after all.

The lights came on, and Lee looked around in surprise. The club was only about a quarter full now. People were standing by the exits, waiting for taxis or struggling into coats. The bouncers were looking for drunks they could take round the back and beat up. The deejay, a tired, pasty, balding man in his late thirties, was glumly winding up a length of cable. “C’mon,” Lee said with what he hoped was an enticing grin, “time t’ go home.” He stood up, but somehow the chair got tangled in his legs. He fell backwards into a pool of beer, hearing wood splinter.

For a moment the room whirled sickeningly, then shadows fell over him and giant hairy paws groped for his throat. “It’s all right,” he heard the girl say, “he’s with me. I’ll see he gets home.”

Hands reached under his armpits and dragged him up. Lee came face to face with Joanna. Good, she’s strong, his befuddled mind thought. “Shtupid chair,” he told her, sniggering.

“Come on,” Joanna said, and hauled him out into the night.

It was cold. Lee shivered and wished he’d brought a jacket. It took him a moment to realise it was fog, and not his drunkenness, that blurred the street. “Taxi,” he shouted, and went staggering off, searching for transport. Joanna ran after him and caught hold of his arm.

“No, come on,” she said, “this way. If we’re quick, we can catch the night bus.”

Lee allowed himself to be led, gaping blearily about. Fog sat on the world like a hangover. Lee was sure it was this, and not the beer in his stomach, that was making him feel sick. He shivered again and put his arm around Joanna as the fog closed about them like a cold womb.

Suddenly he jumped back; a long serpentine neck supporting a flat glowing head loomed from the greyness. “Silly,” Joanna hissed in his ear, “it’s only a lamp post.”

Lee smiled nervously. “Can we stop a minute? I’m not feeling too good.”

“We’re there now,” Joanna said, pointing. “Just a few more steps.”

Lee looked up. The bus stop seemed incongruous, something solid and ordinary jutting from the grey void. He shook his arm free from Joanna’s grip and staggered to it gratefully. Then he sank to his knees and closed his eyes, his head resting against the cool concrete.

He was woken by the hiss of pneumatic doors opening. He scrambled to his feet, dazed, trying to make sense of the green metal wall studded with squares of light from within which faces were staring at him. A man in a green uniform leaned towards him from behind a steering wheel.

“You gettin’ on or what?”

Lee gazed blearily about him. “Where’s Joanna?”

The bus driver was obviously in no mood for games. “Who?” he asked dangerously.

“Joanna... the girl... there was a girl with me.”

The bus driver shook his head. “No girl, mate, only you.”

Lee looked around, confused, then shrugged. “Shtupid cow,” he muttered, and boarded the bus.

He paid his fare and swayed towards the back seats. The sickness had sank into a corner, immediately feeling warm and snug despite the pain. He was only dimly aware of the hiss of the doors closing before the chugging of the engine lulled him to sleep.

He woke later. How much later he wasn’t sure. Blearily he looked around him. He had a feeling he had been asleep for hours, but the bus was still as full now as when he got on. He sat for a moment, trying to draw his muddled thoughts together. His head still throbbed thickly, but he must have slept through the worst of it. Around him conversation droned, merging with the engine. Lee could not make out any of the words. He stretched himself from his cramped position and looked out of the window. It gave him no clue. The bus was cocooned in fog; Lee couldn’t even see any street lights now.

He leaned forward at him and tapped an old man on the shoulder. “‘Scuse me.”

The man turned to look at him. He wore a brown overcoat and a cloth cap. Hair jabbed from beneath the cap like grey straw.

“‘Scuse me,” Lee repeated, “but are we anywhere near Headingley?”

The man smiled widely without opening his mouth. “Soon,” he said. His voice sounded thick and wet as though his false teeth didn’t fit properly. “Very soon.’

“Thanks,” Lee said, and sat back, relieved. The man nodded and smiled.

Lee looked around the bus, and it struck him for the first time how clean it was. There were no ripped seats, no graffiti, no advertisements for cheap fares or late-night services. It looked, in fact, like a bus that had just rolled straight off the production line.

He leaned back. The drone of conversation went on and on, and after a while he found himself nodding off again. Just before sleep claimed him, he thought how strange it was that they had neither stopped at any other bus stops, not turned any corners. 

Lee could see countryside, and wondered vaguely where Leeds and the fog had gone. “It’s a real pea-souper,” the old man said, though now he was wearing a track suit and carrying a tennis racket.

“Well, it was,” said Lee. “It’s gone now.”

The old man nodded sadly. “It’s like that,” he said. “It comes and goes.”

Lee was almost jerked out of his seat as the bus pulled violently into the kerb. He watched as the driver stood up and addressed the passengers.

“Which one of you came on drunk?” he demanded. Lee shrank lower into his seat, but the driver had seen him.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” he said. Lee opened his mouth, but found he couldn’t answer. Suddenly the driver had a whirring drill in his hand.

“People like you need to be taught a lesson,” he purred, and advanced slowly.

“Stop him!” Lee screamed to the passengers. “Stop him,
he’s the driller killer
!”

One by one, the passengers turned to look at Lee. He gasped as he saw the front of their heads for the first time. They had no faces...

He jerked awake. Despite his chattering teeth he was bathed in sweat. Where was he? In bed? He looked around, confused. He seemed to be in a sort of dark corridor: he could just make out an aisle flanked by dim rows of rectangular shapes. Suddenly it came back to him. The bus - he was on a bus. He groaned. He must have missed his stop and gone right through. The driver must have taken the bus back to the depot, locked up and gone home without realising he was still aboard.

It was silent now, but this time Lee didn’t feel like sleeping. He had to get out and make his way home before someone found him. He didn’t think he’d actually done anything wrong, but his presence might take an awful lot of explaining.

He got up and made his way to the front of the bus, gripping the solid backs of the seats as though he were on a tightrope. His legs still felt a little unsteady, though his shock on waking had sobered him somewhat. He let himself into the driver’s cab, and was about to switch on the lights when he realised how stupid the action would be; after all, he didn’t want to draw attention to himself. He groped on the panel, looking for a switch or lever that would open the doors, but couldn’t find one. For a moment, panic surged through him. How was he going to get out? Then he found the button he was looking for and pressed it.

Immediately a babble of conversation filled the bus, and Lee looked round wildly, half-expecting the empty seats to be suddenly full of people again. Realising what he had done, he pressed the button and abruptly the drone of conversation ceased.

Lee felt disturbed. Why did the bus company need to record conversation? What possible purpose could it serve? Curiously he pressed the button again. Conversation babbled. Suddenly scared, Lee jabbed at the button, shutting it off. In the dark, silent, empty bus the voices had been eerie and unnatural.

“Pillock,” Lee said to himself, as all at once he realised there would be an emergency exit at the back of the bus. He picked his way down the aisle again, pulling himself along by the jutting seats as though trying to locate his place in a dark cinema. He reached the back and groped for a catch, and sure enough there it was. He released it and the long window at the back came open with a quiet clunk.

Lee lowered himself out of the window and on to the concrete floor below. He was happy to get off the bus, but now where was he? He looked around, his eyes gradually adapting to the darkness.

He appeared to be in a huge square room, like an aircraft hangar, empty of everything but the bus he had arrived in. He felt uneasy, apprehensive: where were all the other buses? And why was this depot so featureless? Slowly he pivoted on his heels, looking for a way out. It was a few minutes before he noticed the door.

Lee walked over to it, the echo of his footsteps lost in the vastness of the depot. He felt increasingly nervous, certain now that something was wrong. This wasn’t a bus depot at all; no stretch of the imagination could believe it so. Then what was it? And what was the bus doing here? Was it in for repair? Had it been stolen? Questions kept his headache company. Lee would have been happy to leave them all unanswered if only this door led outside.

But it didn’t. Even before he had opened it fully, Lee knew he wasn’t going to be in luck. The first thing he was aware of was a pale green glow, like something out of a science fiction film. He opened the door fully to find himself looking down a long narrow corridor. He began to feel sick again; this was like nothing he had ever seen before. The walls, floor and ceiling of the corridor seemed to be made from beaten copper, lit from above by pale green strip lighting.

Lee took a cautious step into the corridor: the gleaming dimpled walls distorted his reflections, transforming them into writhing sickly-green phantoms. The phantoms, one on either side, accompanied him as he started down.

Up ahead the corridor branched off at a right angle. Please let it lead outside, Lee breathed to himself, please, please,

please.

He came to the bend in the corridor. Another corridor, identical to the first, stretched ahead. For a moment Lee felt like going back to the familiar territory of the bus, but the urge to get out of this place, to see the outside world again, was too strong. Taking a deep breath, he started forward.

This corridor was longer than the first, and, Lee felt sure, darker too. The green light seemed dense, murky, giving Lee the impression that he was heading downwards into the earth.

Nervousness and alcohol made him queasy. He forced himself to keep moving, his footsteps clanging softly on the metal floor.

Up ahead the corridor branched off to the left. Lee approached, hope and fear increasing with each step. As he got closer, the slight buzzing that came from the lights overhead seemed to grow steadily louder.

Lee reached the bend in the corridor and looked down it. Yet another corridor stretched ahead of him. For a moment he was swamped by a wave of terror and despair. He imagined himself wandering for days through corridor after corridor, eventually becoming hopelessly lost and hopelessly mad. He stood, undecided. What should he do? Go on or go back?

Two things decided him. The first was that Lee suddenly noticed the corridor ahead had doors set into the walls at regular intervals. They were made of the same beaten coppery metal as the walls, and at first glance had been unnoticeable. The second was far more sinister. From somewhere behind him came a snuffling and a snorting as though some animal were tracking him. He looked over his shoulder, and thought he could detect something way back in the murk of the corridor - a looming shadow on the walls and a pale bloated shape. Fear overcame his curiosity and he plunged into the corridor.

The light here was even more dingy. Lee groped his way to the nearest door and grasping the handle. Should he enter? A sudden thought, sharp and clear, crystallised in his mind: was he
meant
to enter? His hand, limp and sweaty, hovered over the handle. A further outbreak of snorting and snuffling, closer now, reverberated from the walls of the corridor behind him. Bracing himself, he yanked down the door handled and entered.

Immediately light blinded him. Lee threw up his hands, terrified at his sudden inability to see where he was. He felt vulnerable as a rabbit caught in the glare of headlights. Scrabbling behind him, he found the door handle and pushed, closing out the pig-like snorting from the corridor. He stayed in that position for a moment, crouched with his weight against the door, until his eyes adjusted to the light.

Little by little the glare subsided, and Lee was able to make out vague shapes. His first thought was that he was in an operating theatre, his second in an abattoir.  The brightly lit room was dominated by a white man-sized slab which was streaked with blood and scraps of offal. The smell that hung in the air was rich and hot and sticky. Lee moved away from the door and began a cautious examination of the room, taking care not to step in the blood that lay in small pools about the floor.

The room was white-tiled, square and functional, lit from above by the same strip lighting as in the corridors, except this was white instead of green. Along one wall was a runnel supporting a row of butcher’s hooks, while along another wall hung an assortment of oddly shaped implements. Lee examined them, feeling uncomfortable and afraid. There was an assortment of knives of various sizes, the blades peculiarly curved, and many tools that he couldn’t put a name to. He lifted one down from its hook, a small sickle-shaped implement with a fine serrated blade. Lee was surprised at how heavy the thing was, then noticed what appeared to be a small motor inside the handle. Intrigued, he looked for a switch, found one, and turned the tool on. With a high-pitched whirr the blade began to spin, the teeth blurring together as it picked up speed. He turned the tool off, shuddering. The whirring noise reminded him of the dream he had had on the bus.