Thy Fearful Symmetry (12 page)

Since then, nothing had happened. For nearly four hours, she had been trapped where she was, listening to the ruin creak around her, letting the bitter cold sap the strength from her limbs. Malachi was waiting for the man he had attacked to wake up. Leaning against the doorframe, he was a sinister shadow, as patient and watchful as death. Several times she wondered whether he had fallen asleep on his feet, but did not have the courage to move and find out.

When the man on the floor finally stirred, she found she was right to be cautious. Malachi was at his side in a second, and it was all Melissa could do not to shriek. Biting her tongue, she strained to hear. Malachi had dropped to his knees, meaning she would have to stand to see them both, and that was a risk too far. Luckily, assuming he was alone, he did not attempt to lower his voice.

“Who are you?”

“I… what… I...” The stranger's voice was choked and afraid, but this made no difference to Malachi.

“Take a breath and think. I have three questions. You'll answer them or I’ll hurt you.”

“Who...”
 

Melissa jerked at the sound of flesh making solid contact with flesh.

“No. I ask the questions. You answer them. I can't make it any simpler without hitting you again. Do you want that?”

“… no…”

“Good. I don't either. These are my questions. Who are you? Why did you attack me? What happened here? Don't rush.”

There was a pause, time enough for Melissa to take stock. After only a brief glance at the man being interrogated she found it hard to imagine him mustering the strength to attack anybody.
What did you expect, Melissa? He's close now. He senses the danger.
The game being played was for high stakes, and Malachi was taking no chances.

The man began to talk. “My… my name is Stewart Argyle. I used to live here… I still live here. They couldn't find a cause for the explosion. The insurance firms wouldn't pay out. I've… I've nothing left but debt, and no job, and nobody to stay with, and…” with every word, his voice got needier. Melissa's heart hurt for him, and even Malachi's voice softened a little.

“Go on.”
“I didn't mean to attack you. I thought you were after me. I… sometimes I see things. Shapes. Sometimes I think they're hungry.” Melissa knew he needed help. Later, she would return and find a way to put him back on his feet. Perhaps it wouldn't be possible, but she had to try. “I don't know what happened here. It blew up. No gas leak, no trace of explosives, nothing.”
 

Another pause, with only the man's hyperventilation audible. Then Malachi spoke. “What about Pandora?”

“Oh, she was an angel, a real beauty. She got out, but she was hurt. A man carried her. Nobody knows where they went. The police can't find them.”

Melissa knew who the man he talked of was likely to be, but not what had happened to the building. If Malachi had given her a break during the night, she would already have slept, and discovered more about what was happening. Now it would have to wait.

The man continued, babbling. “She your girlfriend? You worried about her? Maybe she...”

“Shh.”

At the same time as Malachi cut the man off, Melissa heard the shuffling behind her and looked back over her shoulder. At first she saw nothing, just the shattered remains of the ground floor flat and the darkness of the street outside.

Something shifted in front of her, a translucent movement in the air, and she realised the obvious. The street had been dark when she entered, but should be in broad daylight now.
 

Before she could move, the living shadow that had gathered like hanging drapes behind her collapsed forward. The weight of the thing shocked her, given she could see right through it. When it covered her head, wrapping snugly around it like vacuum moulded rubber, it was like wearing dark sunglasses.
 

She couldn't breathe.
 

Tendrils of the darkness pushed up her nose, between her lips, joining at the back of her throat and crawling down her windpipe like thick treacle. Melissa gagged, the movement of her throat giving it easy access, and she felt the mass plunge into her lungs. She tried to fight, but it had wrapped her up like a cocoon, and her feeble wriggling offered no real resistance. Melissa remembered smoking a cigarette when she was in school, inhaling deep and feeling the smoke seep through every part of her chest like a poisonous itch, and this was the same, but thicker, and she couldn't breathe, and she was going to die.

As the first black spots went nova across her vision, she was aware of movement to her left, another shadow, but with more bulk.
 

More black spots. Melissa could see less and less of the room. Unable to resist any longer, she tried to take a breath, and the shadow-thing took the opportunity to fill her completely, pushing against her ribs from within until she was certain they would crack, and her lungs would be crushed to pulp against them.

Liquid splattered her face, and she could breathe. Taking a vast gasp of air, her back arching as she heaved in dust and oxygen, she saw Malachi above her, a bottle in his hand. On the out-breath she was overcome with a fit of coughing, and clutched her chest, only then realising that her limbs were free too.

The demon was against the wall, riddled with holes where Malachi had splashed it with the contents of a bottle. Striding past her, he advanced on the shade, his thumb over the bottle's lip, leaving a small space for the fluid to fly free.

The shadow drew in on itself, shrinking suddenly to nothing, and she did not know whether it was destroyed, or just banished.

Malachi turned towards her. Before she could thank him for rescuing her, he grabbed her jacket in his free hand, and hauled her to her feet.

“What the
hell
are you doing here?”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Heather hurried up the road, breaking occasionally into a stumbling run, desperate to reach home before the tears came. They had visited with her twice already, once as she woke up, and once in front of a class of seven year olds. When James, her headmaster, came in she had been at her desk, shoulders shaking, the children white and silent as they watched her cry. Sending her home, he waved away her assurances that she could cope, instructing her not to come back until the 'situation with Clive was resolved'. Management-speak for 'until your husband is in prison and you can deal with it'. James knew what had happened the previous day. They all did. The down-turned eyes in the staff room made it obvious.

Did they know Clive had escaped, a jailbreak that put Houdini to shame according to the police officer she spoke to before she went to work? It had been in the papers, after all. As she approached her building, fishing her keys from her purse, she wondered where Clive was now. Still in Glasgow? That hardly seemed likely, with his picture all over the news. On the other hand, with hundreds taking to the streets to watch the rivers turn red, he could vanish easily into the crowds. Just getting home had been a nightmare of pushing and shoving, and she could have passed within feet of him and never known it.

God, what had happened to them? Heather wanted to believe that this had all begun in the last few weeks, but she knew that was a lie. Ever since they came to Glasgow, Clive had drawn further away from her, until the distance felt unbridgeable. Did he know she had been considering a trial separation? Was that behind the changes in him that had put a young man in hospital? Shit, that would make her partly to blame. Closing the street door, she wrapped her arms around herself.
 

On the second floor, the police tape still warned against entry to Ambrose's flat, and she wondered why it had taken them so long to bring their forensic teams to investigate. Three weeks was a long time, and she could hardly believe they had just forgotten. Thinking back to the night her neighbour had disappeared, she remembered Clive's bravery, and choked back a sob. She knew he had not forgiven himself for delaying at the door until it was too late, but the simple fact that he had been prepared to intervene at all made her miss him more. He was a good man. Hadn’t that proved it?

Heather noticed her own door was ajar, but thought nothing of it. Given the state she had been in when she left home that morning, it did not surprise her in the least that she had not closed it properly. Pushing it the rest of the way open, she stepped into the flat.

For a moment her misery was so intoxicating that she looked at her husband sitting on the couch without seeing him at all. Only when he glanced up from the drawing in his hand did the connections fire in her head, and she froze. A smile spread over her face, an automatic reaction to the strange twist of Clive's lips that she assumed to be the same. Though he had obviously showered - his wet hair was brushed back over his head in that way she hated - the overnight growth of stubble and his bloodshot eyes made him look every bit the refugee.

“Clive?” A stupid question, but he nodded at her anyway. If anything were going to bring the tears back, she would have thought it might be seeing him there, seeing everything that was wrong with her life hunched over the coffee table. Something gave her pause. Wasn't this the first place the police would think to look? “You... you can't be here. Clive, you'll be caught.”

Clive's smile became more genuine, and he stood, the drawing still in his hand. “I don't think so honey,” he said. “They're having a busy day. I'm safe here for the moment.”
 

Heather refused to back away.
I will not run away from my own husband
, she told herself.
Whatever problems we have, I love him, and he wouldn't hurt me
. Something flashed in his eyes that made her heart throb, but she refused to back down. “Clive, we have to talk. The police... you should give yourself up. They'll understand...”

Clive stepped toward her. “I don't think so. No, that wouldn't help. I have things to be getting on with, Heather. I don't have much time.” Raising his eyebrows, as though a thought had just occurred to him, he took a second step. “Say, you could help me, if you like?”

“Can I?” There was a tremble in her voice, and she hated that she was afraid of him here, in her home, where the two of them had laughed, made love, and argued.
 

“Yes, I think you can.” The stress underneath his voice was torrential. Taking another step, closing the distance so that a single lunge was all that stood between them, he held up the drawing. Heather recognised it immediately. Minna's homework, in all its strange glory. Heather had intended to discuss it with somebody, another member of staff, but had never got round to it. Other children had drawn wrapped presents, Christmas trees, smiling families. Minna had drawn what appeared to be an angel. If Heather had not made very clear that the homework had to be something that actually happened over Christmas, or if Minna had a particularly creative or active imagination for her age, then she would be less concerned.

Why the drawing was of interest to her husband, she didn't know, but the look in his eye deepened her fear. It was one thing for her to stand up to him in her own home, but suddenly she was worried about a little girl who spent time in her care. This was not a moment for stubborn pride. She had to get help.

“I like this,” Clive said, glancing at the picture. A flash of real despair crossed his eyes when he saw that flying figure. “Minna Gilroy. Talented girl. Where does she live again? Not far from here, is it?”

The fear coagulated in Heather's throat, a hard lump of terror that tried to stop her speaking. “Well,” she began, and made to step forward. Clive took an instinctive step back, and that was when she turned on her heel, darting for the door. It had half closed behind her, and as she yanked it open with a grunt of frustration, she felt her husband's fingers tangle in her hair.
 

Clive yanked sharply, and her head snapped back, her balance going as her legs tried to continue her flight. Shrieking at the whiplash pain that fired through her neck, she felt her feet leave the ground, and then she fell. In the blur of the moment she lost track of what was happening, and only when her husband's full weight slammed against her breasts, snapping a rib and making her shriek again in pain, did she realise that her own weight had caused him to fall too.

Clive rolled off, leaving her with knives in her chest, and she wondered whether that rib had punctured something important. The door slammed, and then he was standing over her. The sick twist of the lips was back, but his face also wore a deep, conflicted hurt.

Grabbing her shoulders, he dragged her back into the room. “I'm sorry honey,” he said. “It's all for the best. You'll see. I have an angel to find, and Minna Gilroy knows where he went.”

Heather tried to scream, but the pain in her chest stopped her inhaling fully, and all she could produce as she looked up into Clive's eyes was a sad, desperate wheeze.

Gemmell's swearing embarrassed Detective Sergeant Summer, but they were in the heart of the West End before he could stem his own torrent of invective. On a normal day Byres Road was slow going, with students taking a bohemian delight in flouting road safety. It had stopped being a normal day when the taps ran red. At first, the station janitors had hurried to the water tanks, the only logical conclusion being a prank of some sort. While everyone waited for them to come back and report, Summer had rushed into Gemmell's office and switched the television on.

Already in a foul mood, unable to fill a kettle and let the buzz of coffee lift him, he had been a second from going ballistic at her when he saw the images on the screen. Rivers, running red. First there was a shot of the Clyde, which commentators agreed was probably the first to display the phenomenon, then the Thames, the Ganges, the Seine, the Nile, the Amazon, the Mississippi, the Hudson, the Rhine, the Ural – a rapid clip-show of rivers across the world, all the same deep, blood red. Close ups showed thousands of dead fish floating on the surface.

Cut to a news reporter by a kitchen sink, turning the taps, letting the camera close in on the splattering red flow. Another quick cut to a seaside resort, a reporter standing on the shore. At first glance the waters looked normal there, dark and foaming to the horizon and beyond. When the reporter scooped a glass of seawater up and held it to the light, there was no mistaking the pink tinge in the brine.