Desolation (2 page)

As he approached the front door, Cain realized that the garden was louder than the street. Leaves whispered in a slight breeze, bees bumbled from one flower to the next, and down beneath the waist-high canopy something was scurrying around in the shade. Birds, perhaps. Or mice. But all these sounds were somehow louder than the occasional car passing beyond the gate, the woman still calling her child's name in vain, the music polluting the summer day from open windows. It was as if
coming through the gate had moved him on a great distance.

For the first time Cain felt truly alarmed at being out here on his own, away from what he knew. He had been thrilled when the Face told him it was time to leave, invigorated, proud of his soon-to-be independence. Although his father's death and much of Cain's existence from before were little more than dreams—like the memory of a book read long ago, someone else's life and experiences—he felt strong and fit and ready to begin again. He
knew
he was ready, he was certain of it . . . and yet he craved that Face and that soothing Voice. The cool hand on his brow. The calm void of drug-induced sleep.

Natural sleep was when it hit him the most. Then, so the Voice had said, Cain's mind tried to compensate for his lack of memories by creating false ones.
Never trust them
, he had said,
they lie, and dreaming is going to hinder your recovering mind as much as aid it
. Cain had his doubts, but the Voice knew what it was on about, he was
qualified
. Cain shook his jacket and heard the comforting rattle of pills.
Here
, the Voice had said quietly just as Cain was leaving,
don't tell . . . but take these. They'll help you to settle in with only reality as your bedfellow
.

“Help you?”

Cain spun around, letting out an involuntary squeal.

“Whoops, sorry!” The man in the doorway held up both hands and stepped back into the house. “Didn't mean to spook you.”

“I'm not spooked,” Cain said. Strange choice of words. “Just a bit startled. Sorry. I was admiring the garden.”

“Ah yeah, the plants. They look a bit severe, but they keep people to the path.” The man came forward again, down the small front door step so that he was on a level with Cain. He was only Cain's height, but something about his bearing made him appear taller.

“I'm here for the flat,” Cain said. “I have this.” He handed over the crumpled letter from Afresh, and the kids' parting shot echoed once more in his mind,
another fuckin' nutter
. . .

The man opened the letter, smoothed it several times as if the creases contained hidden messages. There were none—Cain had read it a hundred times on the way here—but still he was nervous at what would be found.

“That seems fine,” the man said. “I've had the flat ready for a couple of days, wasn't sure when to expect you. Come on in and I'll show you up.”

“That's it?” Cain said. It all felt so easy.

The man gave him a frank up-and-down inspection, as if looking for scars or something less visible. “As I said, I've been expecting you. The people who sent you appear to be very good payers, and everything's sorted. I'm not going to make anything hard for you with the deal I have with them. You stay here for a whole year, I get paid. You do a bunk at the end of the first week and disappear, I still get a year's money. Not bad, eh?”

“Not bad,” Cain said, impressed, confused, flattered at the Home's confidence in him.

“I'm Peter,” the man said, holding out his hand.

“Cain.”

“Pleased to meet you, Cain. First name? Last?”

“Just Cain. It's easier to remember.”

Silence hung heavy for a few seconds, backed by buzzing bees and rustling beneath the plants that kept people to the path.

“So what happened? The letter says you're been in the Home for quite a while.”

“My father died.”

Peter raised his eyebrows, expecting more.

Cain frowned, looked down, and he could remember nothing.

“No worries, just me being nosy,” Peter said. “Never could keep my nose out of other people's business. Comes with being a landlord, I guess. Come on in.”

Cain heard something in Peter's voice that told him he would be questioned again later. How would the landlord take the answer?

I don't really know what happened to me
, Cain would have to say.
My father died, but before that there was only loneliness, and time, so much time. I don't remember much of it except in dreams. And most of those are bad
. Would Peter want someone without a past in his building, good deal or not?

Peter took the suitcase and left Cain with his carrier bags and the chest. Cain hefted the latter up over the front door step, and for the briefest instant it felt heavy, heavier than was possible, as if suddenly filled with lead. He grunted and let the chest hit the floor, then tried again. It slid easily across the quarry-tiled lobby.

“Hot day,” Peter said. “You warm in that coat?”

“It was cold where I came from.”

“Tall Stennington?” Peter headed for the staircase, head tilted slightly awaiting the answer, but Cain offered none. The landlord dropped the suitcase unceremoniously at the foot of the stairs, then turned around and grinned at Cain where he struggled with the chest.

“No lift, I'm afraid,” Peter said. “Almost had one put in a couple of years back for a guy who lived on the second floor. He used a wheelchair, so I'd have got a grant from the council. Then I could have charged more because I'd have been disabled access compliant. But he didn't need it in the end.”

“Did you give him a flat down here?”

“No, he died.” Peter stared at Cain, obviously expecting a reaction. But Cain was not surprised at the revelation. It hardly seemed important.
People die
, he thought, and his own lack of concern chilled him.

“So where's my flat?” he asked, glancing up the staircase. The lobby and stairs were wide, bright, and airy. The walls had been decorated a pale yellow, and over time they had been scuffed and chipped from people walking up and down, apparently leaning against the wall for support. The vinyl flooring was the same color.
Lovely
, he thought.

“He was killed. They found him on Rich Common with half his stomach eaten.”

Cain frowned, shook his head, avoided Peter's gaze. “How do they know it was eaten?”

“Sorry?”

“How do they know?”

Peter shrugged. “Teeth marks, I suppose.”

“Right,” Cain said. This fool was trying his best to be antagonistic. All Cain wanted right now was to see his room, make it his own for the future, unpack, lie down and spend his first night in . . .
ages. Ages
, he thought.
It's been ages since I slept free
.

“Room five, attic room,” Peter said, suddenly bright and casual again. “Come on, I'll give you a hand with that!” He grabbed for the chest handle, and for a second Cain was going to lash out.
Leave me alone!
he thought, but it made no sense, and by the time he realized that Peter had lifted the chest and started climbing. It thumped from tread to tread. The tapping Cain thought he heard in accompaniment must surely have been an echo.

“Come on!” Peter said, pausing on the sixth stair, looking down at Cain and smiling. “And don't mind me. I'm a bit morbid at times. Watch too much shit on TV.” He laughed as he started up again.

Cain hefted his suitcase and carrier bags and followed his new landlord. “So who else lives here?” he asked.

“Ah yes,” Peter said, paused on the first floor landing. “I should have given you the tour. Oh well, maybe later. There are a few things I need to show you—laundry room in the basement, fire escape, alarm board, postboxes, that sort of stuff. But for now . . . well, who else lives here.” He looked at Cain and smiled again. Then he giggled.

“What is it?”

“Well, mate, you're sharing a house with some odd folk, that's for sure.”

Another fuckin' weirdo
, the kid had said. “Odd? How so?”

“Where to begin?” Peter said. “Follow me up and I'll talk you through your new neighbors.”

Cain felt uncomfortable at the thought of Peter describing his neighbors out here on the stairs and landings. Any of them could be listening, and he did not want their opinions of him to be tainted by what their mutual landlord had to say. But no doors cracked open, no shadows revealed lurking residents, and he thought that maybe they were all out. At work, perhaps. Or wherever it was they went during the day. Freedom was not something Cain was used to, and he could not imagine anyone not taking full advantage of it.

“Ground floor,” Peter said, “Flat One. Sister Josephine. Don't ask me if that's her real name. Bit of all right beneath her habit, I reckon, but as I've never seen her not wearing it—
never
—I wouldn't know. She thinks she's a bit special.”

“What's a nun doing living here?”

“Who said she's a nun?”

“Well, her name . . .”

“Yeah, but I just said don't ask.”

They walked along the first-floor landing, past two doors, heading for the flight of stairs to the second floor. The idea of inhabiting a dead man's flat did not disturb Cain as much as it should.
At least I'm out
, he thought. Peter dropped the chest, glanced at his hand as if in pain, folded his arms and nodded at the closed doors.

“All strange,” he whispered. “It's the number of the house attracts them. Number 13. Some streets
don't have it at all, you ever noticed that? Evens on one side, they're fine, but odd numbers . . . seven, nine, eleven, fifteen . . . mad, eh? Surely number fifteen would really be thirteen, so it'd be just as fucked up?”

“I've heard some buildings miss out their thirteenth floor,” Cain said.

“Ah yes, but do they? Maybe the floors are all there, home to government agencies or alien corporations. Ever thought of that?”

“Not really,” Cain said, although he had read books containing that theory many times. He had no idea whether Peter was serious with any of this, or just testing him, dangling bait of various tastes and textures to see what he bit. Odd folk, thirteenth floor, a nun who may or may not be. The landlord seemed just as strange. His face was old before its time—he looked fifty, whereas Cain was certain he was no older than thirty-five—and the lines and crags in his skin hid true meaning like an abstract poem. It would need deciphering, concentration. Cain would need to
know
it.

“Well, don't forget it,” Peter said. He laughed again. He seemed to do that a lot, although Cain had yet to hear true humor there. Perhaps after so long in the Home he had become inured against wit.

“So who's here?” Cain asked. The door he had just passed held a number 4, while the one next to him held a vertical word
Three
, the
T
hanging askew from where a screw had popped free.

“Well, maybe we should get you to your room first,” Peter said, glancing at Flat Three, at Cain, then back at the door.

I'm too tired for this
, Cain thought,
too confused, too overawed. I need to sit in my new home and take out my book and read
. He had read
The Glamour
a dozen times already, but he never tired of it, always found new messages hidden between chapters, beneath lines, behind paragraphs of exquisite prose and mysterious metaphor. On the surface the book was about invisibility, and Cain could relate. He felt so unseen by the world.

“Yes, maybe that is best,” Cain agreed. He moved past Peter and headed up the flight of stairs to his attic room.

“Oh!” Peter uttered behind him, but Cain had taken the lead. He reached a small landing with two doors leading off, one marked “Flat Five,” the other bearing only long, deep scratches for its entire height, as if something large and fearsome had tried to get through. Unnerved, he waited for the landlord to reach him.

“Flat Five,” Peter said as he reached the landing, panting with the effort of hauling the chest. “Cain! Not such an odd fellow, perhaps.” He laughed again as he took out a key and unlocked the door, dragging the chest through. He looked at it as if it could contain proof of all the lies he had so recently uttered.

Cain stood on the threshold for a few moments, unsure of what was about to happen. Was his life really starting afresh? Were all the bad times behind him? Would those memories—those torturous dreams of being hurt and alone—ever fade away to give him the peace he craved? He felt the lump of the pill bottle in his jacket pocket, and remembered
the Voice's secret smile as it had pressed them into his palm.
Avoidance
, Cain thought.
I can go on avoiding the truth forever. But that doesn't mean it isn't always there, just as my father is always there. He hurt me, but he loved me. That's what the Face and Voice said. I have to come to terms with the fact that he simply didn't know what love was
.

“Nice views,” he heard Peter say from somewhere in the flat. Cain stared down at the chest where it sat just inside the door.
I'm in there already
, he thought.
I beat myself in
.

“You can see the cathedral to the east, and north are the mountains outside the city. Wintertime, you can see snow on them from here.”

“This is my new home,” Cain whispered, not loud enough for Peter to hear. “I can do what I want in here.” He leaned through the door without setting foot inside, and rested his right hand on the chest. The wood felt warm, but that must have been the weather. “And I'll never be alone again.”

“Cain?” Peter said, emerging from a room on the left. “You need a hand?”

Cain forced a smile, and then surprised himself by realizing that force was not required. “Please,” he said. “I don't have much stuff, but sometimes it's heavy.”