Anarchy (36 page)

H JIA

• • •

They sat on the narrow staircase together, the woman higher up. From there they could watch the road and the house opposite through a small square window beside the front door. Whenever someone passed Iseult leaned forward to put her fingers over Marina's lips, though they were talking almost in whispers anyway. It happened only a handful of times before the afternoon became evening and it was too dark to see; solitary people going one way or the other, usually carrying bags, one pushing a squeaky wire cart whose tiny wheels kept catching in cracks in the road. A couple of cars came crawling and bumping along.

The rest of the time they talked.

Or rather Marina did. She started by talking all about Horace. She kept thinking of different things to say, and they all got mixed up in the wrong order, and so she ended up telling Iseult all about Holly as well, and then about Corbo, and then about Gawain, because Iseult wanted to know about everything he said, everything he'd done, no matter what order she told it in. It was her thaw. For the weeks of winter since Gawain had left, she'd wrapped herself in painful silence. Now, suddenly, sitting in Horace's abandoned house, she began to flow again. She found herself wanting to tell things she hadn't even let herself think about before, about Gwen, about her mother, about Daddy choosing to die instead of going on looking after her. Iseult listened quietly in a way that reminded her very much of Gawain. Neither of them started crying. It wasn't like that now, for some reason. There were a lot of things the woman didn't understand the first time, or even the second, but Marina didn't mind explaining again. For the first time that day she was comfortable. They'd found clothes she could wear, a sort of padded coat and a pair of trousers that fit her at the waist though they only came down to her shins. They'd shared out the last bits of food Iseult had been given. She answered all the questions and told the woman everything she could think of. It turned out to be a relief, shucking off her stagnant misery like her wet and filthy clothes.

“Shall I tell you something now?”

Marina hadn't noticed they'd stopped talking. She'd almost fallen asleep without knowing it. The house, Horace's house, had gone nearly dark and the comfortable feeling had spread all through her.

“I think,” Iseult said, not waiting for an answer, “it was you I came all this way to find.”

“You said Gwen never told you anything about me.”

“I didn't know it was you I was looking for.” This was Iseult's proper voice, not the other one. It wasn't warm like Gwen's, and Marina could hear its edge of suffering, but there was no distance in it, nothing kept back. “I think I had to let go of everything else before you could come along. You know what I was about to do, don't you. When you found me. Perhaps that's how far you have to go before something like this can happen.”

“Like what?”

“Meeting you. A miracle.”

She's tired too, Marina thought.

“I didn't deserve Gav,” Iseult said. “But I'll try and deserve you.”

“The man who did the telephone said you'd be my guide.”

“Did he? Then I will. That's what I'll do.”

“He must have meant we'd find our way here. Do we stay here now? What do we do tomorrow?”

“We'll see if we can find the professor. Though I don't think we will. But it doesn't matter. I know where we're going now.”

“Where?”

“I'm going with you. I'll take you home.”

She was about to argue but something stopped her: a hand in the dark, coming to rest on her shoulder.

“I shouldn't have come looking for Gav. He told me not to. Simple as that. He left a message for me, did he tell you? He said wait for him, that he'd find me one day. And he said not to worry. I should just have believed him, shouldn't I? I should have just listened. I ought to have learned that by now. He was right and I was wrong. So, let's do that. All right? We'll wait for him together. If he told you he'll come back, then he'll come back. He wouldn't have said it unless he meant it. We won't mind waiting, will we, you and I?” The cold hand patted her. “We'll go together. You won't be lonely anymore and nor will I. We won't be hungry. Winter's over, things will grow again. I'll get you everything you need. I promise I will. And you can show me everything. You'll do that, won't you? I want to see your house. I want to see everything you told me about. I'd like to meet your friend Holly. Remember how you thought I was Gwen, when you first saw me? That's how it'll be. I'll be like Gwen was, I promise. And then one day Gav'll come back, and you and I will be there waiting for him, and then everything will be all right.”

• • •

It took Marina longer to get to sleep than she expected. Iseult insisted that she use one of the beds upstairs, though she'd have preferred to curl up with the woman down in the room with the broken window. “No one'll get past me,” Iseult said, with her grimmest and most determined look, the one you couldn't argue with.

She was used to lying in bed by herself in the dark, entombed in unhappiness. After the last two nights of exhausted and uncomfortable sleep among strange smells and surfaces, it was peculiar to find herself back in a lightless bedroom, even though the bed was the wrong texture and size and she could somehow tell that the walls were all out of place even without being able to see them. In the perfect darkness her two days' journey felt as if it could have been a sleepwalk. She half expected dawn to come and reveal that she'd never left Pendurra at all. But she knew that wasn't right. There was something absolutely unlike her own room, even in the dark, a difference more certain than the odd stickiness of the sheets and the springiness of the bed and the window being in the wrong place. It kept her woozily awake until at last she realized what it was: not the smell, not the rub of the pillow, not the unfamiliar angles of the invisible walls, but the absence of misery.

• • •

She woke in silence.

“Iseult?”

She sat up, pushing the blanket away. There was a big dark stain by her feet, damp to the touch. The fresh bandage she'd put on the evening before was soggy. She wiped her heel on the sheet and tiptoed downstairs.

The woman lay in a messy heap. The clothes she'd been wearing were in another heap by her head, not much messier. She'd wrapped herself in a blanket with a flowery pattern. She slept with her mouth slightly open and was making funny scratchy snoring noises. She looked silly, the way everyone did when you caught them asleep. At peace, she went back to being very nearly Gwen. A rinsed-out morning smell came in through the broken window. It must have rained in the night. They'd put a kind of saucepan out on a windowsill upstairs to catch dew. She went back up to check it. It was full to the brim. She brought it carefully in, cupped her hands, splashed her face, and drank.

On the small dresser by the window where she'd put the saucepan down there was a hand-sized statue of a fat bronze smiling man and a black telephone. Iseult had told her the man was a lucky god.

The telephone began to ring.

27

G
oose couldn't take her eyes off the woman's hands. She wanted to, very badly. She'd rather have looked at anything else in the world. The hands were pale and withered and their nails were long and yellow and crooked like an old man's teeth, but it wasn't just that. It was the way they moved. The woman had a thick black blindfold knotted over her eyes like the image of Dame Fortune turning her unforgiving wheel, and yet her hands moved with perfect certainty. They moved to the handle of the sarge's office door.

Sitting at the duty desk, holding up the phone, Goose watched the handle dip and then straighten. The locked door rattled, once.

“What did you say about Horace?” said the voice in Goose's ear. “Hello?”

One of the hands made a fist and knocked on the glass partition.

Tap tap tap

“Is he there? Have you found him?”

The voice was bright and eager and thousands of miles away. Only a few meters across the station a blind and silent head turned slowly and pointed straight at Goose. Its thin lips drew back for a moment to show the teeth, then fluttered, then made a half-pout: mouthing three syllables. The withered fist repeated its summons.

Tap tap tap

“Uh,” Goose said. “That's correct.”

“You've found him! Is he there? Can I talk to him? Please?”

“He's, uh, in hospital. Will you excuse me for a minute?”

“Where's the hospital?”

“Just up the road.” She could have sworn the hideous blind woman was seeing her and talking to her. The three syllables looked like
SéVerIne.
“I need to, uh”—Goose swallowed—“step away from the phone for a moment. Don't hang up, okay?”

“Hang what?”

“Don't hang up the phone. I'll be right back.”

Tap tap tap

“Hang it where?”

“Can you stay right where you are for me? Just like you are now?”

“I think so.”

“Great. Hold on. I'll be right back.” She put the phone down and raised her voice. “Here I go. Wait right there.”

“All right,” the phone squeaked. For an eerie instant it seemed like the half-witted child with the ridiculously fruity accent was actually inside it, an incarcerated pixie. Goose steered around the desk, wiping her hands on her pants, and unlocked the door to the sarge's office.

The head that turned its simulacrum of a stare on her was like a disarmed medusa. The wide black bandage turned it into an eyeless mask tasseled with tentacular hair that snaked halfway to the floor. All the woman's clothes were black too, faded and shriveled like decaying fruit, the knee-high boots tinged green with rot. She smelled only of old fabric and salt. There was no odor of a body at all.

“Can I help you, ma'am?” Goose heard herself say.

“No, Séverine,” the mouth said, in an English-accented voice hollow and soft as wind. “But I can help you.”

“What the fuck.” Goose's hand went to her hip. She felt hot and cold at once, cheeks burning, a sudden chill at her core. “Who the fuck are you?”

“I am the answer to all your questions, Séverine.”

“Who told you my name?”

“No one. I know you, Marie-Archange Séverine Gaucelin-Maculloch. I've been waiting for you.”

“Like hell,” Goose said, stepping back and reaching for the door. She gripped the handle, ready to slam it closed.

“Tell Marina,” the thing in the shape of a woman said, “that Gwen is here.”

“What?”

“The child. A third of the world away. The longer you leave her, the more anxious she gets. She's afraid you've abandoned her as everyone else has. I know, Séverine. I know where the shaman girl is too.”

Goose threw the door shut hard enough to rattle blinds against the glass. The blindfolded thing didn't flinch. She patted her hip again, looked down, and saw she had no weapon. She stared around the station. Blank screens stared back at her from empty desks. The clocks read forty minutes after midnight. Her head was buzzing with something she gradually identified as catastrophic terror.

“Hello?” chirped the pixie in the phone. “Where are you?”

She stumbled around the desk and grabbed it. “Marina?”

“Oh! I did what you said.”

“What the hell is this?”

In the doubtful silence that followed, Goose saw the handle of the door to the sarge's office turn again. She'd forgotten to lock it. The blind woman pushed gently with her corpse's hands, swung it open, and stepped out.

“Are you dead?” the girl's voice asked, hesitantly. “I thought hell was . . .”

The phone had chained Goose to the spot. Or perhaps it was fear. She watched the shipwreck-woman step deliberately closer, walking without need of eyes.

“Marina,” Goose whispered. She didn't mean to whisper but her throat was as tight as a tourniquet. “You're Marina, aren't you?”

“I told you that.”

The woman's boots tapped on the floor.

Tap tap tap

“Who's . . . Who's Gwen?”

“Gwen!” The voice almost split itself open with eagerness. “Did you say Gwen? Is she there too?”

The woman came to the far side of the desk, halted, and reached out an arm. The eroded sleeve of her coat hung from her wrist in a cobweb of frayed threads. She held her hand open for the phone.

“Hello? I can't hear you anymore. Hello?” The voice danced at Goose's ear. “Where's Gwen? Are you in that place with the dark water? Can I talk to her again? Hello?”

The darkness where the eyes should have been was looking at her. The medusa head was perfectly still.

“She's . . .” Goose croaked into the phone. “She's right here.”

Helpless as a child, she passed it over. It emitted a pixie whisper, shrunken and faraway.

“Gwenny?”

The long-nailed hand closed around the phone, lifted it, found a button, and pressed.

A dial tone whined.

“Shit.” Goose pushed herself off the desk to her feet, fists balling. “Why the hell did you— Give me that.”

“I can't help that child.”

“I said give it to me!” The number was still on the desk. Suddenly too shocked and angry to be afraid of the grotesque hand, Goose wrenched the phone back and stabbed out the digits.

“No one can help her.”

“Shut up!” She tried again. Her fingers stumbled over the keys. “Why the hell did you do that?”

“That's thousands of leagues from here, Séverine. What has anything so distant got to do with you? Talk to me.”

“I said shut up!” Down the phone she heard a long bleating tone, a busy signal perhaps, or a wrong number.

“I can show you where you want to go.”

“You can go to hell.” Maybe she'd hit the wrong buttons. Or maybe the phone had broken, another connection snapped.

The blind woman spread shriveled fingers over the surface of the desk. They stroked, gently, side to side, caressing the varnish with inexplicable slow intent. “There's only one girl you have to find, Séverine.”

“Actually.” Goose dropped the phone. “You can go straight to the cells. Right now.” She came quickly round the desk, behind the woman, ready to clamp her and march her. She was itching to do some damage. Then she saw the knot that tied the bandage. It crouched like a burrowing animal in the rank tangle of her hair. Quite suddenly Goose found she couldn't touch her. Her own hands had rebelled. She put all her panicky rage into a yell. “Move move move!”

The woman didn't move.

“And who will tell you where to go?” There was a terrible slithering emphasis on the word
you.

“Cell!” Goose shouted, leaning as close as she dared. “Go!”

“North of here,” the strange voice began, “there's an island. There were houses there, long ago. They and the people who lived in them fell into ruin. The shaman girl has gone to open them again. While you and I stand here she's asleep by their hearth. I can hear her dreams, Séverine. I can follow the sound of her like a thread in the maze.” She lifted her hands to her temples and touched the bandage, fingertips brushing over it with the same sinister softness. “Night or day is all the same to me. I can lead you to her.” Slow as a dancer, she turned around to present Goose with her sightless face. “Find us a vessel, and I can guide you there now. Tonight.”

Goose stepped back.

“By tomorrow night,” the mouth beneath the blindfold said, “she'll be gone.”

“You're talking about Jennifer,” Goose said.

The mouth ignored her. “Already she's closing the ways in and out. The passages obey her. Tomorrow people will be afraid for more than their money. I can hear riot brewing. You'll be besieged, Séverine. This is your last chance to find the girl. I am your last chance. Tonight.”

It was like having a staring contest with the night itself. Goose tried to square up to it and felt it slip away and around her, soft and immense.

“No freaking way,” she said.

After a handful of long seconds the head bowed a little, the mask-face turned away, and the boots tapped back toward the sarge's office. They didn't miss a step. The woman went back in, closing the door carefully behind her, and sat herself in the same chair. The mug of coffee was still on the table beside it. She extended one finger and began tracing around the circle of its rim, around and around and around.

Goose waited for her resolution to come back. Once she knew what she was doing again, she lunged for the door and locked it.

She sat back at the desk, breathing hard, staring at the scrap of paper with Horace Jia's home number written on it. She pressed the numbers into the phone again, double-checking. The only answer she got was the mournful electronic bleat. Busy. Line closed.

A couple of further attempts later the radio beeped and crackled.

“Goose?”

She twitched at the disembodied voice.

“Goose? You there? Kalmykov.”

Of course it was. Calling in from the patrol car. She blinked as she picked up the radio and steadied her voice before she answered. “Yep. Maculloch.”

“Hey,” Kalmykov said. “Goose. Loosey Goosey.”

She glanced toward the office without meaning to. Behind open blinds and glass walls the thing that knew her name sat quietly, waiting. She looked down hurriedly and saw the boy's number again. The boy who'd been a whale and then a boy again, crossing the world's oceans to arrive here. In the little town he'd disappeared from, they said, a revolution had begun.

“What's up?”

“Jack. I'm bored. Got the highway closed but no one's coming by. How's the station?”

“Quiet.”

Kalmykov sighed noisily into the radio. “You too, huh. Hey, we got a while till Thorpe and Turner take over. How about I come on back to the station and you can jerk me off ?”

Goose looked around the chrome and plastic of the station as if seeing it for the first time. The duty rota pinned to the board, promising day after night after day. The red and white flag her mother had tried to teach her to resent. The photo of the prime minister looking like a waxwork, or vice versa. The laminated sign Janice had taped to the inside of the counter:
remember to smile!

“Joke, man. Joke. Jesus. Lighten up a little, will ya?”

She reached around the back of the radio and pulled a wire. It was satisfyingly difficult. She wrenched viciously until the wire came out of its socket with a gasp of smeared static from the speaker.

Everything went completely quiet. She thought about the silence in the cell, the silence in the file, the silence of the mask.

“All right,” she said to herself. “We're done here.”

She went to unlock the door.

• • •

Downtown Hardy teetered on the edge of ghost status even in the middle of the day. After midnight and out of season, every whisper of life was sucked out of it. The area by the dock was wide black tarmac and empty windows. A single tall light overhung the ramp and the pontoons. Jonas's boat was shadowed down among barnacled pilings. Low tide. There was no wind in the bay for once. Offshore, nothing interrupted the darkness, not a speck, not a glimmer. When Goose tried to think about what she was doing, her inner monologue answered like a glitchy file, looping the same two seconds over and over while the rest of the information buffered and failed to arrive:
This is crazy. This is crazy.

“This is crazy,” she said. “I can't take a boat out there. No way.”

The tap of boots on the wood of the dock behind her dragged to a stop.

“Look at me, Séverine.”

“No thanks.”

“Do you imagine darkness matters to me?”

She didn't answer that. The steps came up close behind her.

“By tomorrow nightfall you'll have all your questions answered. Unless you turn back now.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“Because I cannot lie.”

Goose snorted. “Everyone can lie.”

“Not I. Nor can I make you believe me. Turn round and go back if you wish. Whatever you do will be what you choose to do.”

When she examined herself, she couldn't find anything that felt like choice in there. The bit that made decisions had gone missing.

“What happened on that ferry?” she said. “There were supposed to be eighty-plus people on that boat. Where did they all go?”

“That would be more than eighty stories to tell, Séverine, even if I knew them all. Midnight is long past. The girl will wake at dawn and leave the island.”

“Sounds to me like you just dodged the question.”

“If you like.”

“Are they dead?”

“Everyone's story ends in death.”

“That's not what I asked.”

“It's the best answer I have. Are you afraid of me, Séverine?”

Oh yeah.
“No.”