The Matrix (22 page)

‘But why does he want her at all?’

‘I’m not entirely sure. To question her, I think. She has knowledge he craves.’

‘Isn’t she back already? You said you smelled her perfume yesterday morning.’

‘That isn’t all,’ I said. I explained what had happened earlier that day in the shop.

‘It was Catriona,’ I said. ‘Only she could have played the violin exactly like that. And it was her voice I heard. But what I felt later . . . That was not my wife, it was something else using her. I don’t really understand this, it’s too complicated for me. I think Mylne has been able to bring her back in part, but not all the way. He needs more, much more. But if he gets it wrong . . .’

We finished our meal and washed up. I gave Harriet my bed and made myself comfortable on the couch. She asked for the copy of the
Matrix Aeternitatis
to read, and I gave it to her, first making sure that the page with the woodcut had been sealed with paperclips.

‘I’m glad my parents-in-law aren’t here,’ she said. ‘They’d have a fit.’

‘Were they very upset earlier?’

‘Yes. They don’t know what’s going on. I’ve told them you’re a friend of Iain’s, and that you’re in trouble.’

‘You didn’t say what sort of trouble, did you?’

‘What do you think?’

I smiled.

‘Thanks for agreeing to come. I couldn’t have gone through another night alone.’

‘Will anything happen now that I’m here?’

‘I don’t know. But I think we should both try to get some sleep.’

I was desperately tired. Alone, I could not have slept; but knowing that Harriet was in the next room gave me confidence. As soon as she had gone to bed, I switched off the light and fell asleep almost at once.

I was woken by a soft light playing across my eyes. I lifted a hand to shield them and saw nothing behind the light but darkness.

‘Andrew.’

It was Harriet’s voice, soft but urgent, hissing me fully awake.

‘Andrew, wake up.’

I could see her now, standing in the open doorway of the bedroom. She was dressed in a long gown that reached to her ankles. Her hair was tossed.

I lifted myself against the arm of the couch and swung my legs onto the floor, dislodging the quilt beneath which I had been lying. Harriet came into the living room.

‘What is it?’ I asked. She looked scared.

‘It’s starting, Andrew. I can hear something upstairs. It began a couple of minutes ago.’

At first there was nothing: just the same stillness in which I had been sleeping. Then I heard it too. Flapping and scraping, flapping and scraping, and at times the dull thumping of things like feet.

Harriet joined me on the couch. We sat side by side, listening as the sounds moved across the floor upstairs and reached the door to the attic. There was the sound of a door opening, then a muffled shuffling on the stairs.

‘Can it get in?’ asked Harriet.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. It had never approached this close before. We listened as it came down the attic stairs, then came flapping along the landing. It stopped as it reached the door of my flat.

There was a long silence, then something began to move bodily against the door, flapping to and fro like an eyeless, sightless creature that can smell what it is looking for. Harriet clung to me. I could do nothing more than what I had done. If the circles I had drawn did not protect us, we were defenceless against whatever it was.

And then, more horrifying than any of the other sounds, a voice spoke from the other side of the door.

‘Andrew, open the door. Please open the door, Andrew.’

I froze. The voice was Catriona’s. Not a simulacrum, but her real voice, in every measure.

‘Please, Andrew. It’s cold out here. Please let me in.’

‘What is it?’ Harriet asked. ‘Who is it?’

‘It’s Catriona,’ I said.

I stood up. Harriet grabbed my wrist, trying to pull me back to the couch.

‘For God’s sake, don’t go to her, Andrew. It isn’t real. She isn’t there. Catriona’s dead.’

I pulled my hand free.

‘I know she’s dead. That’s why I have to keep her out.’

I found one of the two books I had used for my defensive spells and flicked through it quickly. It contained a conjuration against evil from
Picatrix
, an infamous Arabic work of sorcery dating from the tenth century and falsely ascribed to the Moorish scholar al-Majriti. I found the verses I wanted and, standing at the door, recited them slowly.

The pleading voice changed in seconds. There was a loud scream, then sobbing, then a deeper voice commanding me to open the door. I went on reading, though my voice shook and I felt sick with fear.

When I came to the end, the voice had lost some of its strength, but none of its anger. I rejoined Harriet on the couch. At the door, something started to scrabble and lick at the wood.

‘Let me in. Andrew,’ came Catriona’s voice again. I did not answer. Losing patience, she threw herself at the door, howling. Still I did not answer.

It went on like that until dawn. I read and reread the conjuration until I knew it by heart. Harriet and I sat huddled together in that cold room, while my dead wife howled and scrabbled at the door. Until that night, I had feared death only as a great darkness and an oblivion. Now, it is not oblivion I fear: it is oblivion I pray for every night.

With dawn came peace. We remained on the couch like lovers held together by fear rather than passion. The silence continued, strengthening with the light, and bit by bit we fell asleep.

I dreamed it was still night and I was in the dark cathedral again. The white-robed congregation had gone, and I sensed that I was alone in the vast building. Alone, and yet not alone. On my right, I could make out a row of tombs, not unlike those depicted in the woodcut in the
Matrix.
Beside them, a door lay open. Behind it, dark stairs led down to a crypt. And on the stairs I could hear the sound of something moving very slowly.

It was late when I finally awoke. Harriet had got up a little before me and was busy in the kitchen preparing breakfast. There was nothing to eat but toast and coffee, with a few eggs Harriet had bought the night before.

‘It wasn’t a dream, was it?’ she asked.

I shook my head.

‘I’m sorry for you,’ she said. ‘To have her there all night. It must have been . . .’

‘I just keep telling myself it wasn’t really Catriona. But it makes little difference. The voice is hers. If I’d opened the door . . . Well, I wonder what I might have seen.’ I paused. My limbs felt dull and heavy, my head ached. ‘I want her to be at rest again. Out of his reach, out of all their reach.’

‘Don’t you want to have her back? If it could be done. Not that thing, but Catriona.’

‘Would you have Iain back?’

She did not answer right away. Her eyes remained fixed on a point just behind me, unmoving, while she imagined what it would be like to see him again, to be able to wipe out death unconditionally as if it had been nothing more than an indelicate stain.

‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t think I would care what it cost. I wake up every night wanting him so much . . .’

I looked at her gently, understanding. There were tears in her eyes. What right had I to disabuse her of whatever little hope she might be building for herself?

‘Even if it was not the Iain you used to know?’

‘You said Catriona was not a simulacrum, that she was real. Her voice, the music, the perfume – all real.’

‘There is more than one reality, Harriet.’

‘I suppose Mylne taught you that.’

‘Yes, he did. Do you deny it on that account?’

She shook her head.

‘Of course not. It just sounds so trite. It may be true, but not for me. This is the only reality I’ve ever known or am likely to know. If Iain were here with me, if I could see and hear and touch him, he would be part of this reality, my reality.’

‘Then you would be wrong. What you would see would be something else, something born from a different matrix. It would never be Iain, any more than that thing outside the door last night was Catriona.’

She shuddered and stood up.

‘Well, there’s no point in speculating, is there? Iain isn’t going to come back. We have to concentrate on the matter at hand.’

‘Which is?’

‘Forcing Mylne to stop. We need to enlist some help. Some of Iain’s colleagues at New College used to take this sort of thing seriously. You know some of them yourself.’

‘Yes; but they probably know less about these matters than I do.’

‘We have to start somewhere. They may know of someone more knowledgeable. Will you come with me?’

‘If you like.’

I packed the
Matrix Aeternitatis
in my briefcase, along with the two books I had used for my protection the night before. At least Harriet would lend my story some backing. But I was by no means sure we were doing the right thing.

I opened the door. Though there had been no sounds for several hours now, it was with the greatest trepidation that we stepped out onto the landing. As I turned to shut the door behind me, I noticed that the wood was gouged with deep scratches, as though someone had been ripping at it with an awl. Or with naked claws. Harriet had not noticed, and I did not draw it to her attention.

*   *   *

We walked into town. More than anything, we needed fresh air on our faces, the touch of sunshine, a sense of normality. By the time we reached the top of Johnston Terrace, the events of the night had indeed taken on the appearance of a dream. Had it not been that we both remembered each and every incident with the selfsame clarity, I think I might very well have pretended to myself that nothing was amiss after all.

We walked down past the castle to the Lawnmarket, then turned left on Bank Street, heading for the Mound. As we did so, Harriet stopped.

‘Andrew, would you mind if I drop in at my solicitor’s? His office isn’t far from here. I should have thought of it before, when I knew we were coming this way. He has some papers for me to sign. I was going to call in next week, but now I’m here I may as well get it over with.’

It was an old family firm above a clothing store in Cockburn Street. The partner who dealt with Harriet’s affairs, a Mr Merchiston, was just finishing with a client: would we mind waiting for a few minutes?

Coffee was brought to a waiting room for us. We sat watching fish swim in a long, coral-filled tank. A purple firefish hung before the glass, gazing at a world it could not comprehend, a different reality upon which, without knowing it, it was wholly dependent.

My father had kept tropical fish, thinking it a special challenge to possess on a cold northern island creatures from the warm waters of the Pacific or the Caribbean. In my teens, I had helped him look after the tanks, learning the rituals of feeding, changing water, and testing the various chemical balances.

‘The tiniest change will kill them,’ I said. ‘Too much salt, too little salt, too many nitrites, a few degrees rise in temperature, a few degrees fall . . .’

‘A little like us,’ said Harriet.

‘In a way. It’s what Mylne tried to teach me, that the smallest change in a ritual could produce incalculable effects. A word misplaced, a gesture inexpertly performed, the correct performance at the wrong time – any one of them could have unwanted consequences. Nothing could be left to chance.’

A mandarin goby hung against a piece of white coral, feeding slowly, oblivious of the narrow limits within which it lived. It rose briefly to the surface, then fell and vanished behind a rock.

A man came through the door of the waiting room, his hand extended.

‘Harriet, how nice to see you. I didn’t expect you so soon. How have you been?’

He was in his forties, neatly dressed, balding in front, a sober man in a quiet suit, well accustomed to the coming and going of widows. Round spectacles framed in gold caught a double image of fish swimming in the tank. Yet another reality. I wondered if the fish could see themselves reflected there; did they think, perhaps, there was another world than their tank, that they would swim there after death?

‘I’m fine,’ replied Harriet. ‘It was hard at the start of term, but I got used to it. You were right, it was good to go back to work.’

‘I thought it was half-term.’

‘It is. I decided to stay in Edinburgh after all. And since I was passing, I thought I’d drop in and sign those papers. Oh, I’m sorry, I’m being rude. This is a friend of mine, Dr Macleod. He was a colleague of Iain’s.’

Merchiston stuck out a hand.

‘Pleased to meet you. I won’t keep Mrs Gillespie long. There are just a few formalities.’

He ushered her to the door, then, as he started to follow her, turned back to me.

‘Macleod?’ he said. ‘Not Andrew Macleod by any chance?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘Well, this is a stroke of luck. I’ve been trying to get hold of you. I sent a letter to you at New College a little while ago, but it mustn’t have reached you.’

‘Not at New College,’ I said. ‘I was attached to the university.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, I must have misunderstood. Harriet said you were a colleague of Iain’s.’

‘Yes, but not in the same institution. I took some seminars for him, that’s all.’

‘Well, it’s a good thing you called in, then. If you’ll wait just a moment, I have something for you.’

He and Harriet disappeared, and I was left wondering what was going on. He returned in a couple of minutes bearing a small envelope.

‘Iain gave this to me before he died,’ he said. ‘I had instructions to give it to you as soon as you returned from Algeria.’

‘Morocco,’ I said. ‘I was in Morocco.’

‘Yes, of course. Naturally, there was no way to contact you there. If you could just scribble your signature on this form, you can take the packet with you.’

I signed on the spot he indicated and he passed the envelope to me.

‘Did Iain say what this is?’ I asked.

He shook his head.

Just that it was important to get it to you. He was insistent about that. It seemed to worry him.’

‘I think I know what it is. Will Harriet be long?’