Desolation (12 page)

It took him until evening to realize why this small print, with its new hint of color, should draw him so much. It was because it was something he had created himself, expressing his desire to move on by his own undeveloped creativity. And that felt very good.

That evening he chose to sing instead of listen to music, and cook instead of eat a frozen dinner. He felt as far away from his father's influence as he had ever been.

After one more look at the transformed painting, he went to bed happy, almost content. The taste of dinner lingered on his tongue. He had pushed the chest back into the corner of the living room, and it felt light, as though containing nothing but air. He was not confident enough to open it—not yet—but his fear of it had receded to a memory, rather than something fresh and heavy.

He left the curtains open and felt the moonlight where it touched his bare skin.

Cain is in the basement room again, his older sleeping mind in the young version of himself, and he does not remember this at all. The room is dark, silent, bereft of odors, and he is sitting on the floor with his arms raised on either side. He is terrified with the knowledge of what is happening and what must have already happened. If he touches the floor, the siren will berate the contact. If he rests his hands on his knees, that blast of sound will hit him again. Tears threaten, but he tries to hold them back, his older dreaming mind finding it just as difficult as the young Cain. He pants with the effort of keeping his arms raised, but there is no feel of clothing against his chest or stomach. He moves slightly, and feels his sweat-slick skin sticking to the floor. He is naked in the dark, terrified, and he hates and loves his father at the same time. He does not know which version of himself feels which.

Cain coughs with the effort of holding back tears, the breath wafts against his hand, and the siren blasts into his skull. He cries out and clasps his hands to his ears, and the siren blasts again, again, single short explosions less than a second long, each one feeling like hours. Even with his hands over his ears the sound injures him, seeming to enter his body through his skin and flesh to pound at his heart, his ribs, his bones. The more he touches and feels, the more the siren erupts.

Something shakes him. He does not feel its
touch, cannot discern where it is holding on, but he is being pushed roughly back and forth. He lets go of his ears and raises his hands, and the siren ceases. The shaking, however, continues. And now there is a presence in the dark before him. It has no real weight, but still it fills space, and as the voice whispers in his ear Cain knows the shadow has touched him at last.

“I can get you away from the old fuck for a while. It won't be much of a rest, but it'll be a relief. Come with me.”

Cain shakes his head, unable to believe that the shadow is real. His father would know of it, and its touch on his skin—though he cannot actually feel where it is making contact—would surely have ignited the siren again.

“Don't be an idiot! I know you know me. You accepted me months ago—years ago, depending on who I'm talking to—so don't shake your head at me. You want this?”

Cain shakes his head again. The violent shuddering stops, but then something forces his arm down and his hand slaps against his penis.

Cain hears the shadow's laughter a split second before the siren drowns it out.

The tears are flowing now, and he leans forward so that they drip straight onto the floor.

“Crybaby,” the shadow says. “You going to let the crazy fuck beat you? Get up. Get up!
Wake
up!”

Still, the shaking. And now Cain is on his back, protected from the floor by some sort of material, and though he can feel it against his skin, the siren stays silent.

“You're not real,” Cain whispers.

“And what's real?” the shadow whispers in his ear, shaking him again with a final violent nudge. “Your mad father's Pure Sight? Pah!” And then it bites him.

Cain snapped awake sprawled on the floor next to his bed, sheets and blankets twisted around his legs. He thrashed his arms, kicked his legs at whatever was biting him, rolled over in an attempt to break free, but succeeded only in entangling himself even more.

“Leave me!” he shouted, but there was no response.

Moonlight bathed the scene. Cain shoved against the floor with his feet, pushing himself back against the wall, and looked around the room. There were shadows, but none of them moved or spoke, none of them seemed deep. It may still be there, though. Watching and smiling. But it was no longer
biting
.

Slowly he calmed, his heart relaxing back toward normal, the sweat on his skin drying into the cool air. His arm hurt where the shadow had bitten him in his dream. He stood, the sheets still tangled around him, and reached for the bedside lamp. Squinting against the sudden light, he looked at his arm, turning it this way and that, but there was no mark there at all.

You'll always have nightmares
, the Voice had told him,
it's the way your mind deals with what's happened to you. They're not pleasant, but they serve a purpose. They purge you. Imagine keeping all those memories, that fear and rage, bottled up inside?

“Nightmare,” Cain muttered.

He heard humming from the living room. It was that tune, the one he could never place, the same tune the shadow had hummed to him years before trapped in his father's house. He shook his head. He bit his lip and pinched his thigh. But he was already awake. The humming was muted and distant, and Cain knew why. It was coming from the chest. That shadow he had locked away, the impossibility from his childhood, was humming him a nighttime serenade.

“Shut up!” Cain whispered. He did not want to shout in case he woke his neighbors, and he almost laughed at how ridiculous that was. They were playing with him, toying with his mind, and he was afraid of waking them up.

The humming continued. The unidentified tune was a theme to his life.

“Shut
up!
” he said again, dropping the bedclothes, pulling on his jeans and shirt before walking to the door. He switched on the hallway light and glanced at the picture he had changed, taking strength from his action. The humming seemed to falter for a few seconds.

“Afraid?” Cain asked. “Afraid I have a mind of my own?”

The only answer was a low, deep chuckle from inside the chest. It sounded like a growl.

“You're not real,” Cain said. “You never were.”

“How's the arm?” the voice said. “Hope it didn't hurt too much, but I had to wake you up. Had to, because you have to see.”

“I'm not listening to you.”

“It's not Sister Josephine that uses the basement, it's all of them.”

That circle of chairs
, Cain thought.

“That's right.”

He moved to the living room door, turned on the light, and stared at the chest. Watching it changed nothing. The humming started again, the chest remained still, and Cain should have burnt it or dumped it or cut it into pieces.

“I'm killing you,” he said. “That hurt you, the painting I touched, didn't it? It offended you that I can find my own mind.”

The humming paused, and then a huge laugh erupted from the chest. It was so loud that wood squealed as it vibrated and the chest thumped on the floor.

“I
want
you to find your mind! What, you think I'm your fucking mad
father?
”

I know you're not
, Cain thought, but there was no certainty there at all. He had no idea of anything. He glanced back over his shoulder, and from this distance the painting looked exactly as it had before he'd touched it. He may as well have not bothered.

“You think I'm that mad
fuck?
Go to the basement and see. See what you're missing because of him. Just
see!
”

“I'll live without you,” Cain whispered, his words slow and so filled with feeling. His body was on fire, nerve endings sparkling beneath his skin, his balls tingling. He was plugged into something he did not know he had, and though he had never been brave, he felt pride at confronting this thing. It was a shadow that could never be, the manifestation
of his father's madness and his own confused love and hate of that man, and now it was trying to steer him. He never believed that he would be its master, but now, listening to a phantom voice from the chest that contained it, Cain truly believed that he was going to be all right.

“Of course you will,” the shadow said. “I don't wish for anything different. I'm
for
you, Cain, not against you.”

“Go away,” Cain said.

“Then go to the basement.” The voice fell silent, the humming stopped, and Cain knew without touching it that the chest was empty. He moved into the living room and lifted it by one of the metal handles. It felt even lighter than the wood and metal that made it up. And Cain felt strong.

He knew he was foolish to go, but it felt as though he had told himself.

Creeping down the staircase from the second floor felt like being back in his father's house. Complete stillness and silence surrounded him, yet the potential for violence accompanied his every step, a breath held and waiting to bellow. He was afraid of the siren, but there were still other dangers much less known. He had chosen not to use the staircase lighting, in case it alerted anyone to his midnight jaunt. There could have been anything on the next stair ready to trip him. Four steps down someone could have been standing there, hands outstretched, nails sharpened, ready to rip at his eyes and claw out his throat. Strange that the face Cain saw in this image belonged to George.

But the darkness did not frighten him. He was used to the darkness. And knowing more than he should, he was able to mentally see his route down to the basement unimpeded and empty.

Still he kept quiet, not wishing to wake anyone. He passed Magenta's door and imagined her inside, asleep and dreaming of everyone she had ever been. Whistler's door presented him with nothing, so Cain headed down to the ground floor, hand slipping along the rail to guide his steps.

As he paused outside Sister Josephine's door, he thought he heard muttering from inside. Maybe she was praying. Or perhaps she had something that hummed to her as well. Cain looked around, startled, wondering whether his own shadow had followed him down. But everything was still and shadows sat where they were supposed to be, waiting for dawn to drive them down.

Artificial light from the street bled through obscure glazing in the front door, providing a subtle illumination to the lobby. Cain was able to step right up to the nun's door without touching it. He put his ear to the wood and held his breath. He could still hear the mumbling, but Flat One was as silent as an innocent's sleep. He moved along to George's flat, and that was when he realized where the sound was coming from.

He should have known from the instant he first heard it. The shadow had told him where to go after all, and now he knew why. The basement was alive, lit from within, light bleeding beneath the door and marring the floor like an immovable stain. The voices came from within.

Cain could just discern individual voices. Not the words—they were distorted by the bulk of the house—but one or two of the owners he knew. Peter, scared of being underground, chattered and laughed. Somebody else echoed the laughter and said a few deep, gravelly words. Whistler. A woman's voice came next, and Cain could not make out whether it belonged to Magenta, Sister Josephine, or neither of them.

He almost went back upstairs. If he did not investigate any further, then he would discover nothing he did not want to. These people knew each other, they had lived here for longer than he knew, and now they had a stranger in their midst. Why shouldn't they gather for a talk, perhaps a drink? Who was he to intrude?

But in the basement, at three in the morning? There were a million better places to meet. It smelled down there, and it was probably cold and damp, and a sudden burst of laughter convinced Cain that he had to see. It reminded him of the merriment he had heard as George stumbled away through the garden, bleeding or giggling to himself. It
excluded
him, and he hated the mockery inherent in that sound.

He had no idea how he could change that, but still he reached for the door handle.

The instant his hand touched the door, the basement fell silent.
And now the siren
, Cain thought, his fingertips caressing cool metal, the taste of fear rich in his mouth. But the sound that came from beyond the door was something else entirely. It was a flowing, whispering whip like a sheet being
flicked from one end, and then a thud as something landed on the staircase just beyond the door.

Cain withdrew his hand, but it was too late.

The door was tugged open, light flooded out, and he squinted against the silhouette that stood there. It seemed to absorb the light and project it directly at him, as if to blind, and as he closed his eyes the smell of honey came at him in a wave, warm and sweet as if heated by hot skin.

“Oh, you're such a dreamer,” Sister Josephine said.

Cain stepped back in shock, bumping into the opposite wall.
Dreamer
, she had called him, and he must still be dreaming now. Even with the light shining from behind her, her green eyes gleamed bright.

The nun was naked apart from her wimple. Her greased skin glittered, catching the basement light and diffracting it through whatever she had spread across her body. A hundred rainbow smears sheened her skin. In one hand she held a clay pot. Smiling at Cain, she raised it, dipped in her other hand, withdrew it loaded with a thick golden cream. She spread this across her breasts. They shifted beneath her hand, swaying heavily back into place, gleaming. The rest of her body from her heels to her forehead was similarly adorned, shining with impossible light.

“Sneaking around in your sleep, Cain? You've caught me putting on my magic cream.”