unpublished

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
an excerpt from my novel
the giraffe and the duck-billed platypus

 

prologue

It was in his head, and it was not him.

He felt it now: a hot, squirming presence that pushed against the bone cage of his skull, a dark malignancy that was joy-riding the machinery behind his eyes.

It was not him, but somehow it was a part of him.

It was hungry to become more than just a part, too.

Whatever it was, it was getting stronger. Whatever hold it had over him was being consolidated. He could feel its tendrils moving through his brain, forging new neural pathways, linking together areas of his mind that had never been linked before. New connections of thought and emotion opened up within him, like secret doors onto even more secret places.

He had tried fighting it, at the start, but he had soon learned that resistance would not be tolerated. If it wanted him, it would have him. There was no argument that could dissuade it, no defence that could stop it.

He lay in the darkness, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, and wondered where it was all going to lead. Things were slipping out of his grasp; things that had been unthinkable a week ago were now becoming very distinct possibilities. The darkness within was equalising with the darkness without. The voices were getting louder, more insistent. There was very little of himself remaining and each time one of those dark tendrils snaked out through his grey matter he felt a little more of himself die.

The woman lying next to him uttered some sleep-furred syllables and he felt the darkness shift its attention from the internal world to the external. “The woman”, that was how he thought of her now. Whatever they had shared in the past was lost to him, sealed behind one of the secret doors in the mansion of his mind; walled up like a victim in an Edgar Allan Poe story.

He had loved her, but the darkness inside tolerated no such emotions. Love was weakness, it sang in his mind, love kills. So it had re-wired his emotions, insulated pathways, changed the polarity of his feelings for her.

Once he would have been touched by her sleep-talk, but now it simply made him angry. His hands continued to clench and unclench, not really hands at all but the armatures of some wondrous, perfect machine.

In darkness, anger: in darkness, hatred.

A black cancer that was moving through a head that had once dreamt, but now could only hunger. A black scab eclipsing the who he had once been. A dark power from outside that promised him so much if he would only grant it the boon it asked of him.

A tiny part of him still managed to refuse to serve, but his hands had given in to it. They crushed imaginary throats as he lay there, and the darkness inside exalted at the pleasure of the muscle memories.

He was being over-written like the first draft of a file that was no longer needed.

The deal he had made was going to cost him who he was. It would cost him something else, as well. And though that small part of his mind still rebelled at the idea, his hands were ready and able and willing to overrule those objections.

The woman moved onto her side and she pressed her sleeping body against him. Her skin, once so soft and sensuous now felt wet and necrotic.

His hands clenched, unclenched, clenched, unclenched.

Her hot breath scoured his neck.

He felt the alien heat of her pubic hair against his leg.

His hands clenched, unclenched, clenched, unclenched.

The darkness cried out inside him.

He listened to it.

It was in his head, and it was not him; But soon there would be no difference between them.

None at all.

part one
spiritus mundi



chapter one
valency atom

There ‘s nothing like an early morning nightmare to kick-start your day. The kind that doesn't just make you sweat, but actually leaves a human-shaped imprint on the sheet. A nightmare made of skewed angles and incomprehensible shadows. A dream that you won’t remember on waking, but that will set your nerves jangling for hours afterwards.

For a few seconds I sat there, upright but not really awake; my heart thumping, breathing ragged, hands curled into tight fists of panic. Then, as the veils of the dream dissipated, I relaxed.

A bit.

The bed was unpleasantly damp but I tried to find dry bits of duvet, dry bits of sheet.

Mission: Impossible.

The clock on the bedside table said five but there wasn't going to be any more sleep for me. I looked around the room and tried to reassure myself with its Euclidean geometry. Then I slung on a dressing gown and went into the living room to watch TV.

The early bird catches some dreadful programming.

The early-morning opiates percolating in the glass teat were a motley selection. Programmers must think that people up at that hour have no right to decent programming and sling on punishment shows to force them to keep more reasonable hours.

Countdown: repeated word and number puzzles for mensa-level insomniacs.

A repeated episode of "The Streets of San Francisco" from way back when Michael Douglas was just Kirk’s geeky son, and Karl Malden was the star draw.

An Open University presentation by a man with tortured sideburns, showing pictures of a new red giant discovered by the Hubble space telescope.

More news about a seven-year-old girl —missing now for three days— featuring an appeal by her distraught parents that had made me feel bad enough yesterday on the early evening news.

An American hostess getting couples to bare in front of millions of people what they hadn't even told each other in private before.

Yeah, real nice time to pick honesty, folks.

I smoked a Marlboro and registered my tacit approval of this atrocity by not turning over. Truth was it was a relief. My nightmare pretty much ended in the few foggy seconds following awakening; this show was a nightmare that some of these people would never wake up from.

Almost made me feel better about myself.

Haven't felt that for a while.

I smoked the Marlboro to the filter and went back for another. A WASP woman from Sacramento was talking about what a neat idea the death penalty was.

Sure, I thought, give 'em the easy out. Dying's not hard, it's not a punishment. Living is.

The TV remote control developed a finger complication and the self-righteous bitch gave out in mid-sentence, only to be replaced by another OU show, this one on atoms. My evil twin helped himself to a 5.35am three fingers of Forester bourbon, neat, and do you know something? He grinned as it went down.

At some point I guess my evil twin had more bourbon.

And then, I'd hazard, some more.

By nine I was good and loaded and felt as if nothing in the world could touch me again.

That was when the telephone rang.



†

They say that every drunk has a moment of clarity, a point where they realise their dependence and reach out for help, but I wouldn't go that far. It wasn't me reaching out to the world that made me answer it; I just wanted the phone to shut the fuck up.

I'm a mean drunk, sure. Newsflash: we all are. It’s what drunk’s all about. You may think you’re lowering your inhibitions and putting yourself into a cheery, beer-commercial mood, but take a seat in the A&E department of your local hospital on a Friday or Saturday night and you’ll see how it all comes out.

I’m going to level with you. I've never been particularly nice sober. I know that. I mean, it's not news when someone tells me. And sober I can rationalise about my life a bit. I can blame my present circumstances; past situations; genetic pre-dispositions; a shitty childhood; a headful of other people's unwanted thoughts and an inability to forge a meaningful relationship with any other person on this planet.

And then I get drunk and I can blame myself.

And that tends to make me meaner.

The way I look at it is that in the sea of humanity you need to put yourself as near to the top of the food chain as you can, or develop the kind of warning colours that make other fish think you're poisonous. I still haven't decided which category I fit into.

But, to pursue the woeful aquatic theme in as tenuous a fashion as I can manage, that handful of phone I grabbed was just a baited hook cast out from a world I despised.

I bit, but I bit with teeth.

"Jesus, do you have any idea what the fucking time is?" I think I growled into the mouthpiece, "Who the fuck is this?"

As I think I’ve suggested, I can be a real charmer.

"Good morning to you, too," Heidi Cristinsin said sweetly into my ear, "Liquid breakfast, or still faced from last night?"

"Ha bloody ha," I snarled, "Talk to me."

"You've got a client," she said, still sweetly, hiding the "fuck you too" in her voice behind a patina of saccharine, "have a black coffee and get here in twenty."

“Just tell me which one of us is the boss again.” I tried lamely.

She hung up and the phone wailed in my ear.

"Bitch," I muttered and knew it wasn't the truth. Heidi was about the only person in the world that gave a damn whether I lived or died and she had saved me from my worst excesses more times than I actually cared to count. Start making calculations like that you find out that you owe someone a lot more than you ever show. Heidi took all the abuse I deal out in lieu of thanks with the same, oblivious charm.

"Fuck." I'm incredibly articulate when I've ruined a day before it can begin by dousing myself in bourbon. Some might say that I drink a little more than is good for me, others would disagree and say I drink a lot more than is good for me. I'd tell them that I like to climb into the bottle because through its thick glass the world tends to coruscate and starts to look just a little better than it does out of it. Sure it makes me rude, violent, unpleasant and over-emotional, but those are small prices to pay when you measure them up against what I get when I'm sober.

I'm not quite like other people. Drinking is the least of my problems.

There’s the bad shit I don’t talk about, but live every day of this hollow thing I pass off as a life.

Sweaty pulses of human thought clog up the meat of my mind; unwanted, unbidden intruders that I suck out of the air like I’m some cheap Tandy radio. Ringing voices and screaming ideas; dreams and fears and fantasies so fucking twisted that they hit my gut and make me want to puke.

I'm psychic, or sensitive depending on which term you subscribe to, but I can only pick up the shit. I can't tune in on anything good or honest or honourable. I'm permanently tuned to the wavelength of sin, of guilt, of avarice. Think bad thoughts near me and I'll hear them loud and bloody clear.

Don't want to, can't help it.

Babble and chatter and dripping wounds. Pussies foaming. Pricks jizzing. Blades scoring. Wet thoughts. Meaty dreams. It's why I hate people so much. I see their inner darkness and I don't like it. I don't like it at all.

I slammed the phone back close to its cradle and made the bathroom out of shaky strides and carpet. I hunched over the basin throwing water onto a face I loathe. Dark eyes stared back from the mirror as I tried to shave. Someone very nearby was thinking about doing something to his own daughter that filled my shaving water with bourbon and bile.

Shave aborted. Fell to my knees.

Christ, how was I ever going to face my neighbour again? I mean, it was probably just a fantasy, but what I saw in that sick cunt's thoughts wouldn't be leaving me anytime soon.

I let vomit and foam and dark flecks of hair out of the sink, then dried off my puffy skin with a towel. I dressed quickly and uneventfully. Pulled the next suit off the hanger and matched it up with a shirt and tie. No biggy. Looked at myself in the full-length mirror and thought about how thin I looked. The suit hung off me no better than it had off the hanger. My head was aching and Advil wouldn't make a dent in it so I took some anyway and washed them down with Forester.

Then I hustled out of the room into the hall from where it was only a few steps to the outside world.

Great.

The outside world.

If I could I’d hide myself away and never emerge into that colossal wreck.

I was too fucked to drive so I walked a bit and finally saw a taxi. I waved it down with a windmill-blade arm and packed my sorry self into the back. The driver was a weird hair-slicked cockney dreaming of a drug deal and an arse fuck in a tawdry little scenario I really could have done without. I drank in his sleaze and listened to his mouth say one thing while his mind drooled another. I could almost see his thoughts gain form in the air between us.

I didn't tip him.

He scowled as I paid him and then he pictured hitting me. I smiled a weary smile and mimed blocking the punch he'd mentally thrown my way. Look of surprise in his beady little eyes was worth the taxi fare.

The city was a blur as I hit the pavement and I managed to make my office without listening to any of the multitude of thoughts that were scuttling through the air around me. I opened the door, took the stairs two at a time, and then walked into the worst piece of business that I have ever had the misfortune to be a part of.

Of course I didn’t know it then.

How could I?

I’m a radio, not a fucking prophet.



†



The really bad stuff comes at you indirectly, never from the front.

It’s one of those hard and fast rules like “don’t make soup out of your mother-in-law’s head” or “don’t drink the Kool-Ade in Jonestown”.

Bad stuff —the really bad stuff— lurks in the peripheries; consolidating its strategies until it can hit you without you even realising it was ever there.

It’s the story of my life.

Sciamachy.

Shadowboxing.

The woman sitting in my office wasn’t a shadow. She was anything but. Heidi had sat her down in reception —an anteroom plus desk and two chairs— and they both looked up as I walked in. Heidi looked a little chagrined by my lateness, the client just looked … relieved. I should have read the signs from her face and saved myself a stretch in perdition; but when I run it all over in my mind, wondering if I had known then what I know now, would I have kicked her out of my office, out of my life?

I doubt it.

She had the loveliest smile.

I saw it almost immediately.

Her relief at my arrival turned to something approaching happiness and the thin but utterly red lips turned up at the corners. I nodded greeting and lifted an eyebrow of enquiry at Heidi.

She pretended to type something —probably “fuck you”— and then looked up and smiled.

“Helena Jacques,” she said, “meet John Gallacher.”

Helena Jacques got up out of the seat and proffered a hand. Shake it or kiss it? I did both and was aware of Heidi’s amused stare. Helena was more embarrassed by my incompetence than amused but hell, if she wanted my help then she would just have to get used to it.

I pointed to my office door and asked Heidi for coffees and then went to listen to the story that would forever more haunt my dreams.

copyright Y2+4K: anthony cain