The Midnight Men and Other Stories (6 page)

Lucky, lucky me.

I looked around for my bathrobe, but the only one I could find was an old one of Gloria’s. It was a white frilly thing, but I thought Kathy might get a kick out of seeing me in it, so I put it on. As I descended the stairs, I became lost in an explosion of my favourite smells: fried mushrooms, grilled bacon and scrambled eggs.

“Honey,” I sang, “this really is the first day of the rest of our lives!”

I stopped short in the kitchen doorway. The woman hunched over the electric cooker was wearing my bathrobe, but it was not Kathy. When she turned, a shout of shock and revulsion escaped me.

The unholy apparition was barely recognisable as the Gloria I had known. Most of her skin was gone, burnt off like so much wax. Her inner wiring was exposed. Her left leg was badly mangled, and as she started towards me she dragged it along behind her like a ball and chain.

God, the irony just doesn’t quit.

After much scraping and clanking, Gloria stopped and focused her naked electronic left eye on me. The skin and facial muscles on the right side of her face were melted into a gruesome mask. I found it hard to look her in the face, but I managed it.

“David,” she said, her once-human voice now sounding like gears grinding together. “I’m finding it very hard not to be angry with you right now.”

I took a hesitant step towards her.

“Gloria, I thought you were—”

“Dead?” she hissed. “Well, I suppose I should be after what you did to me.” She dragged herself one step closer. “But, I’m prepared to forgive you, David. One last time.” She held up a wooden spoon with a mouthful of scrambled eggs heaped on it. “I even made your favourite breakfast, just to show you how much I want us to get over this.”

I shook my head vigorously, trying to clear my head of this aberration.

“Jesus, Gloria! What does it take to get the message through? I don’t love you! I never did! Can’t you understand that?”

Gloria cocked her head at a funny angle. “But you promised to look after me, David. I was your responsibility, wasn’t I? For life. Not something to be tossed away when you found someone better. That was the agreement. Can’t you understand that?”

An involuntarily laugh escaped from me. “This is absurd! Gloria, you’re a replicant.”

“So?” she cried. “I still loved you, David.”

“No you didn’t,” I told her. “You were programmed to love me. For better or worse, for richer or poorer, you had to love me, Gloria. It was part of the agreement.”

She stepped up to me, her squat, metal nose pressed against my own fleshy pink one. “You think my love isn’t real?” she whispered. “You think because I am not flesh and blood like you, that I don’t have emotions?” She faltered then, and an oddly human misty glaze came over her eyes. “Way down at the bottom of the sea, with my inhibitor chip gone, I had a lot of time to work out how I really felt about you. And, do you know what, David? I realised I do love you. Even after all.”

“Gloria, stop this,” I said, knocking the wooden spoon out of her hand. “This has to end. Today. Now.”

She shook her head slowly. “No, David, this is the beginning for us. A true beginning. No inhibitor chip. No programming. Just you and me.”

I ran my hands through my hair in frustration. “But I love another woman, Gloria! A real woman!”

Gloria’s ruined face pulled into an ugly snarl. “What, that slut, Kathy Bedford? The whore who came to service me and ended up servicing you?” I was so stunned, I fell back against the refrigerator. Gloria poked me in the chest with her metal forefinger. “Don’t think I didn’t know what was going on. And what’s really ironic, honey-dear, is that I was prepared to turn a blind eye to your little affair. But not now. Oh no. That little fling of yours is over!”

“Gloria?” I said, the words trembling on my lips, “where’s Kathy? What have you done to her?”

She turned away from me, her eyes settling on something outside. Following the path of her gaze, I stumbled across the kitchen to the open window.

The heated swimming pool!

All I could see was a mass of raven-dark hair spreading out like a fan in the centre of the pool. Ice water flooded into my veins. I rushed out through the door, and without hesitation, I dived into the crystal blue water. When I raised my eyes to the surface, I found my worst fears come true. It was Kathy staring down at me, her pale features frozen in a mask of shock.

I dragged her naked body to the poolside and wrapped it in the ridiculous, frilly bathrobe I’d been wearing. Holding her there, lost in grief and stroking her dead skin, I forgot, momentarily, the monster that had invaded my home.

Moments later, I was reminded, as the sound of shuffle-clank-shuffle-clank came over the tiles and stopped behind me.

“Poor Kathy,” she said. “She just couldn’t hold her breath as long as me.”

I said nothing, containing my rage, silently plotting a more permanent end to this fiendish bitch.

Then she said: “Kathy said an awful lot before she died. She told me some very interesting things about the RSA.”

She had my interest, and I hated her for that, too. I half-turned towards her.

“Did you know, for instance, that all replicant spouse units are fitted with a sort of black box flight recorder, like they have on aeroplanes?” She paused, letting me soak up the information. “Yes, you see they were worried that some of their products would get abused, so they had these little recorders put in which log everything that happens to each unit. You can’t erase it, and you can’t destroy the box. It’s very clever.” She looked down at Kathy with a feigned expression of pity. “The only time it doesn’t record, she said, is during the recharge period, so Kathy’s plan was almost perfect. Sadly, she didn’t know that I came to at the last minute. Spoiled everything.

“I think Kathy told me all that to try and stop me drowning her, but I couldn’t stop myself by then. So that’s all up here.” She tapped the exposed metal plate at her temple. “Anyone who downloads my black box will know I’ve been very naughty.”

She giggled like a schoolgirl. The sound sent a shiver up my spine.

“But,” she went on, her voice returning to its cold, emotionless state, “it also recorded everything you did to me, David. Every . . . little . . . thing.”

I looked back down at Kathy and smoothed a few strands of hair from her face. “So where does that leave us, Gloria?”

“Like I said earlier, David, this is a new beginning for us. No inhibitor chip. No programming. Just you and me.” She laughed. “Of course, you’ll have to dispose of Kathy’s body first. But then, you’re getting pretty good at that sort of thing, David. Wouldn’t you say?”

She stepped up close to me and ran her cold, metal fingers through my hair, the way lovers do. The sensation was like being touched by the icy hand of death itself.

“I want to make a real go of it this time, David. How about you?”

Well, what could I say?

That’s love for you.

“You wish to see them now?” the girl said. “The bones?”

Carter stared at her through a rolling column of smoke. The hand he was using to hold up the opium pipe suddenly felt heavy and dropped to the tabletop with a dull smack. The girl was young, full-lipped, skin the colour of coffee; he’d never seen a woman as beautiful in his life. And as the opiate surged through his system, she seemed to grow more beautiful by the second. Carter found his usually sceptical, suspicious self sputtering like a spent Catherine wheel in the Mexican night. Right now, he would follow this girl anywhere.

“Where are they?” he said, the words tumbling from his dry mouth like stones.

The girl stood up, gently took the pipe from his slackening grip and placed it back in its cradle. She beckoned him to stand with a jerk of her head. As she turned to walk away her beaded dress shifted, parted, allowing the briefest glimpse of brown flesh. Rising on unsteady feet, Carter followed the girl eagerly out into the night.

Chavinda was a beautiful city located high in the mountains of Michoacan, veiled from the outside world by a curtain of tall pine trees. The story that had led him here was too good to resist, but as he followed the sensual figure of the young Mexican girl down the cobbled main street, he wondered if this was all just a big joke. Chavinda was a small place, estimated population about fifteen thousand. It seemed hard to believe that the Devil himself had once walked these quaint, cobbled streets.

The locals called Chavinda ‘the place of ropes’. He hoped he wasn’t about to hang himself with this back street deal.

“I’ve heard stories about the bones,” he said conversationally, as they left the main esplanade and began descending a stone staircase between buildings. “Lots of stories. I’ve heard so many I really don’t know what to believe.”

She stopped abruptly on the steps, turning to him with a steady, mirthless glare. “What is the worst you have heard?”

Carter had to steady himself. The opium had turned the contents of his head to a thick soup. He didn’t like the way the girl’s expression had become so severe, so suddenly unsexy.

“The worst?” he said. “That the bones are magical. That they contain a great power. Stuff like that.”

The girl searched his face. “You really are that naïve,” she said.

Before he could ask her what she meant, she was walking away.

They continued down the steps and into a narrow sandy-floored alley. Long rows of single storey adobes with red tiled roofs crowded in on both sides. Squinting, Carter was unable to see the end of the run.

The girl stopped at the third house on the right and pushed open the unlocked door. Fingers of moonlight crept across a dark room. On a table near the back wall a cluster of candles fluttered around a garish crucifix. The sight of several stray cushions and a small portable television perched precariously on a stool told him this was the living room. Another room, possibly a bedroom, lay beyond a beaded curtain on the right. In the silence, he heard a woman’s voice mumbling, as if in prayer.

“I live here with my mother,” the girl said. “She has watched over the bones for the better part of a decade now. But she is very ill. You will understand soon enough.” She gestured for him to go through the beaded curtain.

When he stepped into the room, he found the air thick with the cloying scent of candles and sweat and stale piss. His gaze was drawn to the mumbling silhouette in the corner. The old woman was huge, perhaps as much as twenty-five stone. Her legs protruded from beneath her robe like two huge hanks of ham, the skin rippled with distended varicose veins. She was seated beside a small table, low on the floor, edged with lit candles. In its centre was a bundle of rags. He felt his eyes drawn to the bundle for a protracted moment. His wavering, drugged mind slipped in and out of focus.

“Mama,” the girl said softly. “
El comprador
.”

The woman halted her muttered prayer and looked up. Her eyes were sunken into deep hollows, the edges reddened and wet. Her face was as pale as linen. She looked at her daughter, then at Carter.

“
El hombre
?” she snapped. “
El hombre? ¿Qué te pasa
?”

The young woman inhaled sharply before crossing the room and crouching beside her mother. “
Mama, tiene mucha guita…”

“No, no, no, Alita,” the old woman said. She opened her mouth to say more, but her body began to shake with sobs, her anger giving way to a sudden surge of grief.

“Is there a problem?” Carter asked.

The girl shook her head vehemently before turning back to her mother, placing a comforting hand on her arm. After a few moments, the woman took a deep, steadying breath.

“
¿Habla usted español?”
she said.

Carter shook his head.

“It’s all right,” Alita said. “I will translate for you. Please take a seat.”

He dropped onto one of the cushions, careful to pick one not too close to the woman’s abrasive stink.

“Is that them?” he said, nodding at the rags on the table.

The girl looked over her shoulder at them, and a shadow passed across her face. She nodded.

“You wish to know the story?” she asked.

“Is it important?” he asked with a shrug.

“Yes,” the girl said in a snappy, reprimanding tone. “It is very important that you understand what you are purchasing.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ve got some time to kill.”

Alita whispered into her mother’s ear. The old woman fixed her gaze on Carter’s, and he saw a profound sadness lurking just beneath the surface.

Slowly, she began to talk, and the girl translated.

“He came amongst us only once,” she began. “Many, many generations ago. Made himself flesh so that he could experience the life of Man firsthand. And he did. He did things . . . filthy, vile things. And some things that ordinary men have never even thought of.”

“Sorry,” Carter said. “Who…?”

The woman’s eyes grew wide. “
El Diablo
,” she said in a rough whisper.

Alita didn’t need to translate that.

She continued: “His crimes were so terrible he was imprisoned and sentenced to death. They hung him and gutted him like a fish, right out there in the Plaza—” the old woman pointed “—for everyone to see. They burned his body, but the bones would not yield to the flames. They endured, his final parting gift to us. But it is no gift. Far from it.”

The mother looked at the bundle, her fleshy hand rising towards the table, before snatching it away.

“You only have to sit close and you can feel their power,” Alita went on. “You can almost see the dark deeds he committed, hear the screams of his victims, the young, the old, the innocent . . . That is the curse. You can never touch them. You will want to. You will find it hard not to, but you must never touch the bones with your bare skin.”

“Why not?” Carter said.

“Why do you think?” Alita replied directly.

His heart rate seemed to have doubled in the last few minutes. An irritating pulse had begun in the centre of his forehead.

“So,” Alita said. “You will take them?”

He looked at the bundle, and in his drugged haze he thought he saw them rise from the table, drift across the dead air towards him . . .