Desolation (15 page)

There were more than a hundred books in the bookcase, all of them titled
My Philosophy
. They were numbered 1 to 113 and shelved in exact numerical order. Each book was identical save for the number, and they all looked new and untouched. Perhaps they were empty and awaiting inspiration. Or perhaps that emptiness itself was Whistler's statement.

Cain rested his fingertips on Volume 23, felt the soft coolness of real leather, closed his eyes, and enjoyed the sensation. He did not know what he should not, and he was glad. The siren remained silent, and he was grateful for that also. The idea of his father's face hovered into view in his mind's eye—he had never been able to remember the old man's true features, not exactly—but Cain was not afraid. He tried to make his father smile, but it was not a memory he was certain of, so the expression broke up and fled into the dark.

He opened his eyes, shook his head, and closed
the bookcase door. He could not intrude this much. He had his own life to make, and part of the foundation for that was a determination to be a good person. Not like his father. If Cain ever had children, he wanted them to look at him and
believe
that he was good.

He glanced into the kitchen. There were vegetables hanging from hooks, colorful crockery from a dozen exotic locations, framed photographs on the walls showing animals in varying stages of slaughter, from alive and breathing, to butchered and chopped. A pig's head sat on the draining board, a trail of black blood still leaking slowly into the sink. Cain stared at its eyes, but their glitter remained still, their insides dull. That he had expected more disturbed him greatly, and he turned and hurried back through the living room and into the hallway.

Cain had learned that Whistler was as different to him as he was to Sister Josephine. They were
all
different, and perhaps
everyone
was this different. Not just those in this building, but the others in the street, the district, the city, the country. His reading had conveyed so much, but as the Face had told him, there was no substitute for real life. Maybe every book he read could not even begin to touch on the wonders of existence. Perhaps the world was much larger and more diverse than he could possibly imagine. His imagination had, after all, been held prisoner until he was a teenager.

“Fuck you, Dad,” he said quietly, meaning it, and his anger boiled up in a way he had never experienced before. He should not be scared of Whistler,
but his father had hobbled his development so much that all he could feel was suspicion and fear. He should not be worried about the way Sister Josephine had manipulated him, but he had no idea who she was, where she came from, or what she meant. If it were not for his father, at least he would have some idea, some experience or knowledge that could perhaps help him to understand the nun, at least a little. She was no more to him than a character in the books he had been reading since his teens; almost beyond belief. He could still not see her as a
person
. “Fuck you, and the Pure Sight you so wanted to give me. So where is it? Does it help me now? Can it make me see my way?”
Old fool
, he thought. But already he had said too much.

Sometimes Cain's mind played tricks on him and he thought he was actually back at the house.

His father is still alive, Cain is in the room, his mind is ruled by the siren, and his life at Afresh and now beyond is a dream given to him by his father.
Dream yourself to Pure Sight
, the old man says. And in this strange dream of freedom Cain meets people he can never know, and they show him things that can never be. His father watches him, ready for the moment when his son's Pure Sight will at last be revealed.

 

 

 

He was about to leave the flat when he saw an extra door in the hallway. Cain had one bedroom, Whistler seemed to have two, and the door to the second was closed, bearing a sign reading, “The Followers.”

There's only bad in there
, Cain thought. But he was not sure whether it was something he should not know, or perhaps simply fear.

The door was not locked. If the room contained secrets it should have been, but that was no justification for Cain to open the door. He did so anyway, stepping back in surprise at the smell that wafted out. It was the stink of age: must and mold, dust and old, old ideas. It seemed to subdue the colors in the hallway, as if an obfuscating gas had escaped from the Followers' room. Maybe it was Whistler's dressing room? He was not a modern dresser for sure, and the aroma of age and mothballs seemed to fit this image. But that idea seemed
not
to fit.
This smell was more important that that; it held more weight than thoughts of which trousers or jacket to wear. It could have been the stench of an ancient tomb, broken open for the first time in centuries and laden with the timeless musings of the lonesome dead. Smells like that would surely carry a curse.

The bad smell should have discouraged Cain from going any further. And on its own, it would have. But Cain had other senses, and though he heard nothing, he saw a thin slice of what was in the room. And though he tasted nothing but dust, he felt the power of that place drawing him in. It did not feel dangerous—it was too impersonal for that, too remote—but it
did
feel daring. Through the slightly open door he saw a line of shelves, and he gasped at what they contained. Animals, all of them stuffed, mounted on plinths or backboards. He nudged the door a little wider and revealed more of the same. There were several squirrels in a woodland tableau, though Cain had never heard of squirrels grouping together like this before. Two badgers sniffed at the muzzles of dogs—a Labrador, and another breed confused by bad taxidermy—instead of snarling at them. Birds posed in midair, courtesy of stiff wires and blocks of wood.

If these are the Followers, who were they following?
Cain thought. He remembered what he had seen in the park, and shook his head. That was just too weird.

The room was divided by at least two high bookcases, staggered to form partitions that created a route through turning left, right, left again. There
must have been a window at the other end, but as yet it was hidden from view. The smell was still there, and now that he knew where it came from—dusty pelts, dried skins—it was even more repellent. He wanted to go, leave this sickness behind, and he actually took a step back. But a tail protruded around the first corner in the room, bushy and red. Cain had only ever seen a fox in books.

He rounded the corner and the fox was eating a chicken, the frozen grasp of its jaws matched in detail by the crepe-paper gush of blood from the chicken's ruptured neck. Here at least was a realistic depiction. And yet on a shelf above the fox a rat toyed with a legless cat, the rodent's paw stretched out as if dealing a never-ending coup de grâce.

The most disquieting thing about the displays was not the lack of movement but the utter silence. Everywhere he looked there were animals running, fighting, cowering, sleeping, or fucking—two field mice had been truly mounted after stuffing—and yet the room was totally quiet. It was so unnatural that Cain made noise on purpose, pulling his feet across the carpet, coughing, making sure that he was not alone in here with the stillness. He drove the silence out. And when he realized that he had started humming the unidentified tune from his dreams, he turned to leave.

He expected a shadow to be waiting behind him, but there was only the fox and chicken.

What all this meant, he could not begin to understand. An innocent hobby of taxidermy, perhaps, but it felt so much more than that. There was no care over how the animals were represented, for
a start. These were not considered studies of the creatures in their natural habitats, but creations for Whistler's own entertainment. Why else would the badgers be sniffing at the friendly dogs, the rat fighting the cat?

And—

There was something else. Turning around, looking at everything from a new angle, Cain realized at last. Every animal had its head cocked, as if listening to distant music too high-pitched to be audible to any human observer. The fox, chicken in its mouth, held the same pose, as if in life the chicken had been forgotten. The field mice were paused in their rutting. Squirrels had abandoned their search for nuts. It did not matter how accurately or not they were posed, each animal was listening for something. And though they were all dead, dusty, and rank, Cain truly believed that they could all hear.

He bent down and stared into the fox's eyes, but they were dulled with concentration.

Cain knew he should leave. He was terrified of what he had found. He'd had the clever idea that by coming here he would be taking positive action, but now he was only more confused. However hard he tried to convince himself that Whistler was as normal as a million other people, he knew that he was wrong. Cain was blinkered and damaged, and perhaps governed more by his past than he had yet admitted to himself, but he was not stupid. Whistler was not normal, and now Cain had invaded his flat, seen his secrets, disturbed his space to such an extent that the man would surely know.
The smell was out of the room, the pig's eyes had seen him in the kitchen, his shadow had passed across the pictures in the hall. Cain had left his mark simply by being here, and he had no idea what form Whistler's revenge would take.

But there was that one last turn in the room, tempting him with secrets. Hidden away by one tall unit, Cain had only to take three steps to round the end of the bookcase and see the rest of the display. It was impossible, but it seemed even quieter than the parts he had already seen. Perhaps because it had not yet been polluted with his breath or his heartbeat.

So quiet . . . almost as if something waited for him around there.

He hummed that unknown tune again, waiting for the shadow to reveal itself, but he had no audience other than the dead animals, forever listening. He wondered if they heard him and knew the tune.

Indecision almost made Cain shiver; he needed to go one way to get out of here, and the other to see what was left. His mind tore him both ways. He rested his hand on the end of the bookcase, so that a simple lean would enable him to see around the corner. There was a window behind there; he could see the splash of natural light, he was so
close
.

He should go, flee Whistler's flat now, get back to his own place and phone the Voice for a talk, comfort, some reassurance—

He had to see, even though he knew that to turn this corner would take him another step toward somewhere dark—

Humming the tune, Cain leaned around the corner.

He had no idea of what to expect, but the smiling face disarmed him completely. His heart thumped hard, double speed, and a cool twist of shock reached up into his throat and prevented him from drawing breath.

Magenta
. . .

The woman sat in a rocking chair, hands clasping the handles, her brunette hair brushed straight and flowing over her shoulders, feet placed together on the floor, red-painted toenails visible in her open-toed sandals, neat trousers, expensive blouse, jewelry catching the daylight filtering through the curtained window and throwing it back at Cain. And her face, expertly made-up and beatific, smiled at him from her place of rest.

She had Magenta's eyes . . . and yet the rest of her was different. The face was rounder, not long and pinched. Her hands were small and dainty, whereas Magenta's were large, long-fingered, used to hard work. Her nose was smaller, her mouth wider. And the smile on her face—constant as she sat with her head cocked to one side, listening—was empty and dull. A smile that Magenta would never give, whoever she was impersonating, because there was so much more to her than that.

And yet those eyes, powerful and piercing, even with no moisture to give them depth.

“Magenta?” he whispered, instantly feeling foolish. The woman was stuffed after all.

Her eye flickered, and Cain fell back against the shelves. An ocelot's beak stabbed him behind the ear, a rat's teeth grazed his palm, but he could not take his eyes from the woman in the chair.
Rocking
chair
, he thought.
If she were alive, her heartbeat would set it moving
. But there was no movement . . . other than those eyes.

He stared into them, trying to see into their depths. They were dry. Perhaps the movement had been caused by a bird flying past the window, subtly altering the light coming through?

Or perhaps she was alive.

She stared, and Cain stared back. He could hardly breathe. The tension was unbearable, a thick silence that one of them had to break soon, building and building toward some terrible pressure. He held his breath and heard his heart, but there was nothing else. She would laugh soon, unable to carry on the charade any longer. The trick had been played, and however complex the chain of events that had led Cain here, they had succeeded in pulling him in. Perhaps now they would leave him alone.

Cain took a sudden step toward the woman, hoping it would startle her into moving. The rocking chair remained still, and her eyes were now staring at his chest. He was so terrified that he burst out laughing.

He would touch her, see if she was warm . . . but that was something he could never do. No matter how long he stood here, the finality of that touch would keep him away.

If she's not alive, then Whistler murdered her!
Cain thought, the true horror of what he was seeing hitting home for the first time. He had barely had time to think about how she had died.

There was a crash from somewhere else in the building, and Cain recognized it as the front door
slamming. He waited for a reaction from the woman—

(
Magenta, it
can't
be Magenta, can it?
)

—but still she stared, head cocked as if listening to Cain's internal ramblings, the fear, the doubt, the dawning realization of the terror behind the scene he had discovered.