Unraveled Visions (A Shaman Mystery) (34 page)

His face paled. The tip of his tongue darted. He glanced to where the syringe had landed. It was spinning like a top. Both of us watched the spin decrease until the needle pointed like a compass, towards us.

I’d given him a dilemma. He would have to release his hold on me if he wanted to fetch the syringe and put me out.

“You fucker,” he said, the word sounding even more foul in his cultivated accent.

He raised himself clear of me and his fist came crashing towards my face. But he was not well balanced, he had no purchase. I saw the blow almost before his fist was clenched. An image of Jimmy, holding fast under his assault flashed into my mind. I yanked my head sideways. The blow glanced off; I felt it tug my hair as it passed my scalp and hit the floorboards. I heard the crunch of sinew and bone.

Grace howled and rolled with the pain. I gasped a blessed breath of air. I scrambled out from under him, exploding into arms and legs, pummelling and pounding with my smaller fists. He snatched at my ankle, but I had all the momentum now. When I’d tried to tear myself away from Stan, I hadn’t wholly believed in the seriousness of his attack. Now I knew. If I did not fight with every drop of my strength, I would die under this man’s knife. I used the heel of my foot on the soft middle between his legs. He howled again. Strange that he did not like pain.

But the venom of the snake had entered my body. My spine was growing numb.
My eyes were unfocused.
My legs were like bags of fishing maggots. Soon my mind would close down. I fought against the drug, struggling to stay in one piece while Grace was still knocked off balance.
I threw myself across the room. I grasped the handle of the door. Had he really left it unlocked? My palms were wet with fear as the handle slid down.

The door swung open.
I fled through it and slammed it behind me. In the keyhole lay the key—shiny, black with age and use. It took me almost too many microseconds to recognize my good luck. I felt the handle on his side press downwards. Grace had reached the door.

I turned the key in the lock.

I snatched at the banister to hold myself up. I was staring at the door, unable to move. I had left Mirela, unconscious, in that office. I’d left her to Grace’s mercy, which was none too generous. But there was no other way. If I could get clear of this barbarous prison before Grace broke through the door, I could get help for Mirela. And I had no time to lose; I didn’t know where Stan had taken my scooter in the Land Cruiser, but I had to assume he would return.

I started my descent of the stairs. My numbed legs were out of control. I was
stumbling,
falling. Above, Grace was hammering at the door and yelling for Stan. I was on my hands and knees but had the exit in my sights. I could vaguely remember leaving that key in the lock when I bolted the door, a million light years before all this. If the key was there, I’d be out of this madhouse in seconds.

But the key was gone, leaving the front door locked and bolted.

I thought wildly about smashing a window or crawling into a kitchen cupboard. But first I should check that Grace had not left the place open at the back. I was betting he had. I was praying to every goddess that had goodwill for me. Surely, he would believe he could deal with a couple of silly girls.

I could barely keep upright. Something was swirling in my brain, heavy as poppy juice, drifting me towards lethargy. I blinked several times to keep my vision clear. The only way to propel myself along was to lean forward and sprint, even if that meant sprawling on my nose at the end. I just had to keep going until I was out in the road. I flung myself into the—

Kitchen.

Kitchen? This was not the kitchen. I stood on the glossy tiled floor, sucking in fiery breaths. My knees went and I grabbed the nearest worktop for support. It must be the drug Grace had injected. It was giving me hallucinations. Because I couldn’t be seeing this. Not this place.

This was not the Papa Bulgaria kitchen. This was no kitchen at all. It was a damned place. A place of Hammer Horrors, of worst nightmares.

A place of blame.

thirty-three

the kitchen had gone.
It had been transformed. Surgical instruments were laid out on sterile paper spread over the pristine steel surfaces. Their sharpness caught the overhead lights. Industrial pans were boiling on the hobs. The central island was covered with green cloths. A table for a patient.

I had never visualized this. Killers do their bag of tricks in some dark alley, or a locked basement, or a clearing in deep forest. But black-market surgeons need a place like that too: dark, locked, isolated. A black abode that could absorb malicious intent.

I was focused on the horror at the centre of the kitchen. But closer to the outside lobby, the fridge door was hanging open. I focused on it. As I tried to get my feet moving, the fridge door closed and I saw Stanislaus Papazov, a wide bowl of ice cupped in his hands. I thought he might drop it seeing me sway behind the worktop. But Stan put the ice down carefully. His grin widened. He cocked the point of wood in his mouth and spoke in a measured, dramatic manner.

“Boy, have you been a nuisance,
Sabbie
Daar
. Prying into every corner for Kizzy. Lucky for us, Mirela never could keep anything to herself. Soon as she’d spent the night at your house, she was blurting out what you were, what you planned to do. Want to know why we employed you? We make friends of our enemies.”

My fingers hurt, I was gripping the worktop so hard. “You let this go on?”
My voice came out slurred. I gave a little cough, right in the back of my throat.

“Think I enjoy boiling all day in a hot kitchen?” Stan’s image rippled as he moved, as if he was underwater. “It’s why I bother to come into work.”

My head drooped. I tried to pull myself up to my full height.
Fight the sleep. Fight the drug. Don’t let yourself slide away. If you do, you’ll be dead.

Above our heads, Dr. Grace was trying to break his way through the office door. The steady noise thudded in my head. Stan glanced upwards and walked past me, nudging my shaking body with his neat hip as he went, sending me finally off balance. I felt myself slipping. I so longed for sleep. I was drowning in the need to close my eyes and let myself go. I was on my knees, clinging to the handle of a drawer. The world was blotched with a slow loss of consciousness.

And then I felt arms lift me, as if I was in a small boat on high waves. Stan and Grace, hauling me onto the green-draped surface. They rolled me on to my side, took my arm, and carefully moved it out of the way of my ribs.

Kidneys first. Then, perhaps corneas, pancreas, liver? Finally, the things you could not do without, for once the heart was gone, you were dead.

“I need to scrub up.”

I heard the voice. It took a long time, minutes perhaps, for the words to sink to a place where I understood them. It took all my strength to see round the edges of the black blotches that seeped across my line of vision. I was a mess, almost gone, using the last of my will to force my eyes to stay open.

So I saw Mirela first, before the other two.

She had got down the stairs in the same manner I had, by leaning and crawling. But now she was in the doorway, looking around. I wondered if she was looking about for a weapon. She knew very well where the knife block was kept. She came across the kitchen
like a toddler on their first legs. It was only a matter of time before she crashed and burnt. I tried, with my last creeping thoughts, to will her to reach the knives before she fell.

The two men must have heard, for they looked round. Stan marched over to her as her body folded and collapsed. He lifted her easily, with his body-builder’s muscles.

“We could do her first,” said Grace.

“That’s stupid,” said Stan. “That one is the trouble. Do her first.”

Like a fireman he carried Mirela out of the kitchen. I saw her fine ankles knock against the door frame. I saw him half turn and wink at the doctor. Grace did not see this. But even processed through the sludge of the injection, I understood entirely. Mirela was Stan’s now, and he would do what he liked with her. They disappeared from view, leaving me with Grace. To do what he liked with.

Grace
went back to arranging my body on the surface. I made a final agonizing effort. I touched the doctor’s bare arm. I laid my hand on his tattoo. The healing rod. The sharp-tongued snake.

_____

I watched Anaconda ripple across the laboratory surface, past Bunsen burners, flasks, and tripods, moving ever closer to me.

Anaconda was neither moral nor immoral. He was above and beside all that. He was nature; cruel as needs be. I felt the snake creep around my waist, tightening like a belt, then over my chest and along my back. Even in this spirit place, the paralyzing drug seeped through my blood. I was unable to move. I could not open my otherworld mouth to speak. Anaconda was the drug, squeezing the life from me.

This was spirit power,
upturned
. The rod of healing, deranged.

Grace had been filled with pride once. Being a doctor meant hard years of study, a life of dedication to the well-being of others. He’d sat in the tattooist’s chair, a young medical student, desperate to learn to heal, keen to do good. He’d undergone an afternoon of pricking pain to have the healing rod imprinted, with his oath written within it. But somewhere along the doctor’s journey, after he left this medical lab, he’d lost his sense of honourable direction. He’d set his spirit snake free to roam, free to do its natural will. A snake must do what its nature dictates. I understood that. Anaconda will always look for something to crush. The snake had been loosed from the rod, and hell had descended on the little town of Bridgwater.

I could feel the damp warmth of Trendle’s fur and the cold wet nudge of his nose. Like a friendly dog. I could smell his river smell and it gave me a boost of strength.
I was sure that Grace’s snake respected my otter. He had attacked Anaconda without fear in the ice temple

Trendle’s short legs were splayed on the polished wood of the lab bench. In his jaw he was holding the stick the wolf had given me. It was sprouting strange little blossoms. It was as long as an arm.

“The stick, Sabbie. The rod. The healing rod of the caduceus.”

This was why the wolf had dropped it at my feet. It wasn’t for Mirela or any client. It was a gift for me, in my time of greatest need. Taming the snake was to be my job. But Anaconda had been free from the rod’s healing power for so long. He’d tasted the other way. Instead of giving life, easing pain, offering hope, he’d allowed the doctor to misuse his skills. Victims had died in the process.

The full length of the snake was wound round my body now. His scaly head swayed in front of me. Our faces were so close I could see nothing but the glitter of his black eyes. I strained every muscle against the punishing tightness of Anaconda’s pressure and sucked in a tiny morsel of oxygen.

“Sabbie. Here, here. Take it.”

The pulp of my finger touched the surface of the rod. Trendle dropped it into my open palm.

I could feel its benevolence as soon as I touched it. It held the power of life, well-being, and good health.

I tried to direct my thoughts into the mind of the snake, to keep them away from the crushing of my breath.
Come home
.
Come home. To your duty. To where you are meant to be. To what you are meant to do. First do no harm.

The snaked flickered its tongue at me. I felt his merciless embrace loosen one notch. Enough to take a gasping breath. Enough to free my arm. I held the wand tight and lifted it into his sights.

Here it is. Home. Duty. Purpose. Do no harm.

_____

A moment of blessed blackness and I was back. My eyelids were filled with cement and my body with pain and paralysis. There was a chemical smell at the back of my throat. It seemed to take an hour to
force the grit of my eyelids apart. The doctor moved about like an image on a TV with poor reception. Time had passed; he’d changed into green theatre togs, a short-sleeved loose top and baggy bottoms. There was a cloth cap on his head. He was pulling on surgical gloves, lifting them from an open paper packet and snapping them over his wrists. The muscles of his right arm rippled as he moved, the tattoo
rippling in response. In my mind, I called to Anaconda. I was no longer with him in the spirit world, but I could see him; his image was clear on the tattoo.

Home. Duty. Purpose. Do no harm.

The doctor chose two slender silver instruments. Scalpel in one hand. Forceps in the other. With the forceps he gripped a blade. He fixed the blade to the scalpel handle and laid scalpel and forceps on a cardboard tray. He added a pile of square white swabs.

He came towards me. He carried the tray. The tang of antiseptic hit my nose. An iced chill ran over my skin. I was naked—he’d stripped me while I was out cold, being crushed by Anaconda—he had ripped off my jeans and rugby shirt. And when Grace had finished, he would make sure I was properly weighted before he let the waters of Somerset do their job, turning me into pale ribbons of dead flesh, ready for the fish.

He was close to me now. He held the forceps. They were dripping with a white swab that was so cold as it painted my skin, it made me shudder.

“Shit,” said Grace. “She’s not out.”

Anaconda
. It was a whisper in my mind. I tried harder.
ANACONDA! First do no harm!

I’d felt momentary sorrow for Anaconda in the medical lab. Neither the man nor the snake had imagined that crime would be the outcome of their self-sacrifice. Grace had slid away from dedication and his pledge to heal, exchanging noble aims for financial gain. With that, his totem snake slid from the rod. The thought saddened me. I lay on the brutal surface, stripped and waiting to die, and felt a single, boiling tear ooze from the corner of my eye and drop onto the stainless steel.

“Poor Anaconda,” I whispered.

I saw Grace’s eyes open wide, above his mask. He’d heard my voice.

Even if it did nothing to help me survive, I wanted him to know that I watched him now, as he took my life to keep his enterprise going. I forced my hand up and gripped the doctor’s right wrist. I felt the power of the caduceus, the final vestiges of its goodness.

“I’m scrubbed!” snarled the doctor. “Stan! Get over here! You’re going to have to help me.”

There was silence. Stan was not around. He was still upstairs with Mirela.

“D’you hear?” roared the surgeon. “Help me, please!”

He said the wrong thing. He used the wrong words. He called to his snake, his totem, even though he did not know it.

“Help him, Anaconda,” I moaned. “Come home. First—do—no—harm.”

Grace stared at me. He must have thought I was delirious. I could see the frustration in his face. The lack of his scrub nurse Stan, the way I kept fighting the drug … everything was messing up his nice, simple, gold-lined procedure.

“Anaconda! First do no harm!” The words were slurred, but stronger, louder. “He needs your help. Come home.”

I had little time left to even think. Very soon I would be unconscious again. Very soon, I would be dead. I was no match for the doctor. My only weapons against him were spirit world creatures.

Anaconda
…
it’s time to take up your old duties. Did you not hear the call? Can you not remember your oath?

“First do no harm.”

For a moment, I thought I’d heard my own thoughts. But Grace looked up, startled, the forceps in his hand. He had heard it too.

“First do no harm.”

With a sort of yelp, Dr. Grace clutched his tattoo, as if it stung him. The yellow glow of his aura blinded me as pain attacked him. He stumbled. He lifted his right arm out in front of him. His eyes were wild inside their sockets. Behind his green mask, he howled a cry.

He backed away, yelping with pain. Then the yelps turned to roars. I could imagine how much pain there was. Anaconda had made his decision. He was trying to get home, and he’d do it in the only way he could; by winding himself around the rod of healing, crushing the doctor’s arm into a pulp … or rather, crushing the aural field that was the doctor’s spirit arm. The pain would burn like crazy. A snake of that size could pulverize flesh. I already knew Grace was a coward with pain, but worse for the doctor would be that he had no idea what was happening. Nothing in a physician’s training explains the symptoms we feel in our spirit bodies … phantom limb pain, unexplained sickness. He roared his fear and agony as he stumbled away.

I tried to get a focus on the tattoo. It looked as it always had—a faded old tattoo. For a moment I wanted to reassure him, tell him that the pain would stop and that there was nothing to fear. But why would I comfort this man? What I had to think about was getting out of this place of death.

I was on my side, so all I had to do was tip myself over the narrow edge of the worktop, but it was like moving through bog, through the wet mud of Hinkley Point. It was like drowning and trying to fight against the slow descent to get to the air. I pushed with the elbow I was lying on, forcing my shoulders to follow my knees. The green cloths and cardboard tray clattered onto the kitchen floor. I followed. For a second, I was trapped in the terror of falling. Then it was too late to pull back, even if I’d had the strength.

I smashed into the floor. The impact shuddered through my body, a physical blow. I lost the world as pain shot through my jaw, shoulder, knees. But at least the pain cleared my dulled senses. My body was less numb. The earlier scant dose was wearing off.

I raised my head. Grace was stretched on the floor. Pain had overwhelmed him. Shrill screams were weakening into grunts. He was not looking at me, or at anything. He was barely conscious. He’d reached the place where Anaconda dwelt. I shifted slowly until I was up on all fours, keeping my eyes on him. I began to crawl backwards. My palm struck something cold and pencil-shaped. I looked down for a second. Under my hand was the instrument that had been ready to take my organs. The scalpel that had been on the cardboard tray as it spun to the floor. I let my fingers curl round the handle.