Thy Fearful Symmetry (6 page)

At least Malachi would get his wish. Doped up on sedatives, Stacey was hardly going to be much trouble today. Guilt at his own relief flushed his eyes. Melissa misinterpreted it. “I'm sorry Mr Jones. There's nothing else we can do when she gets like that.”

Malachi nodded again. “I know. And Melissa,” he was suddenly tired of being Mr Jones. “Call me Malachi, okay?”

Melissa smiled, genuinely this time, energy flooding beneath her skin. Malachi realised how attractive this slender, vibrant girl was. At the same time as he felt a stirring of arousal, for perhaps the first time since losing Stacey, self-disgust crushed it beneath spiked soles. How could he have such thoughts in the same building where Stacey suffered daily?

Melissa had turned before the shadow fell over his face. With a slight bounce in her step, she led him along the corridor. “I really shouldn't, Mr... I mean, Malachi. Supposed to keep things as professional as possible, you know?”

The two of them walked in silence, hers companionable, his awkward and introspective. Though he had been here many times, and had little need for a chaperone, it was a standard courtesy that visitors were escorted at all times. It would be nice to think that this was simple courtesy, but Malachi suspected it was more to do with protecting the patients. Long-term care at such an establishment was expensive, and after several months or years even the most loving family member might feel the need to take matters into their own hands. None of the patients here were going to recover, and even if the financial burden could be shouldered, the emotional one was crushing. In his darkest moments, when despair and sorrow were overwhelming, Malachi had found himself thinking the unconscionable:
why won't she just die?

 
Halfway down the corridor a stairwell presented itself on the right, with an elevator on the left. Melissa took the stairs, as Stacey's room was only on the first floor. Halfway up, they met Mrs Ryland coming down, her wispy white hair floating around her wizened face like fine-spun candy floss.

“Mr Jones.” She spoke clearly, as always, with the air of somebody used to deference.
 

“Mrs Ryland.”

“Did you get them yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, keep trying dear. They can be tricksy, but you'll get them. I know you can do it.” With that, she continued, taking the steps carefully, her skinny seventy-year old frame fragile but poised.
 

Melissa smiled at him, saying nothing. The conversation was the same as ever. Who "they" were had never been made clear, and he knew that the nurse thought she was broadcasting from deep inside her own dementia-ridden world. Malachi wondered whether that was the case. Sometimes he thought he knew who she meant. The ones who had struck down his wife in body and soul. One day soon, he would be able to tell her that, yes, he had got them. What would her response be then?
 

For Malachi, of late, an even greater concern was what, after he found a way to inflict pain and ultimately death on a being who was immortal, came after? The fact that he couldn't picture life without his quest to sustain him left deep, disturbed pools of doubt within him.

What would there be to live for, when his vengeance was complete?

Stacey was sleeping when Malachi entered her small room, and did not wake when he brushed his lips against her cheek. She was lying on her side, facing the window that looked over the gardens and the driveway, and it was almost possible to pretend that nothing had happened to her.

Melissa walked quietly around the bed, grabbing the empty water jug on the bedside table and the accompanying plastic beaker. The only glass in this room was the television screen inset in the wall, and that had a tough, shatterproof plastic cover. Even the furniture, comfortable though it was, had been securely attached to the floor. Stacey wore no restraints now, as she would be too groggy to cause any trouble when the sedatives wore off. Usually, after an episode like the previous night's, she woke content and happy. Often, she would spend the day staring out of the window, saying nothing, hardly moving. Though it was impossible to be sure, Malachi sensed that these moments were among her happiest, when her mind was empty of everything but the view.
 

Having collected the jug, Melissa made for the door, taking the flowers from him in passing. “I'll be back when I've found a vase.” Malachi grunted as he moved past the bed, to the window. That she should not be leaving him alone at all went unmentioned.

The view was good, and he wondered why he had never appreciated that before. These days he noticed much that he had missed during his two years of training and searching. Perhaps it meant the end was near, and the quest would claim his life. Could that be why these moments of beauty kept leaping out at him?
 

Should he be frightened that he didn't care?

Closing his eyes, he imagined that Stacey was simply asleep in bed behind him, that this room was theirs, that he would leave for work any moment now, kissing her softly on the way out so as not to wake her. In this moment of fantasy, Stacey's face was soft, untouched.

Malachi had tried connecting to the past in this way before. As always, it felt strange to him, like a home movie of somebody else's life.

Turning, he saw the reality. Stacey's long hair lay back from her face, and the unspoiled cheek and lips, the graceful eyebrow. She was perfect. On the left side of her face.
 

Of the right side, little remained. The flesh had been ripped off during the attack, by the demon that had appeared to her. Though he had not been there, time had shaped the moment in his mind. Fingers hooked beneath the skin above her eye, taking firm hold and pulling down. Fats and muscle tore wetly, yanked across her eye, towards her chin, like mould-ridden wallpaper falling from a wall. Droplets of blood sprayed in its wake and filled the air with hot copper smells. Her eyelid, half of her nose, her lips, everything was torn neatly down the middle.
 

Time had healed her as best it could. The recessed flesh would never grow back, and advanced cosmetic skin grafts were beyond his means, leaving her more scar tissue than muscle there. She scarcely had strength to twitch that side of her face. Her teeth were exposed, and had become discoloured through constant exposure to the air. Drool spilled down her chin. Nothing could be done about the loss of her eyelid, and she wore a patch most of the time to let her sleep when she wanted.

Malachi imagined the patch gave her some relief from whatever images stayed with her of the attack. It was a desperate hope, but one he refused to relinquish. To believe otherwise would drive him mad.

Kneeling by the bed, he crossed his arms on the duvet and, nestling his head in the crook of an elbow, gazed up at the woman he had loved for twelve years. Even knowing he might never see her again, he felt no urge to cry. Too much had happened since the days when he had wept every time he stepped into this room. That morning, he had crossed a final threshold. In his coat pocket, the knife and the blackjack were heavy weights. Despite the months of training, he had never killed another living being before. Few would blame him for starting with Orloch, but what of the man that demon had worn like a suit? What had he done to deserve so brutal a death? Had he felt every slash of the stainless steel blade across his flesh?

Malachi found it curious that all he felt was longing. Not shame at having performed the act, but a deep, sorrowful yearning for the humanity that should have made his own deeds abhorrent to him. For many months he had mourned the fact that he had been away when Stacey was attacked. Now he realised he had been wrong, and his absence had spared him nothing.
 

Self-pity pulled the long-absent tears to his eyes. “You got off lightly,” he whispered to her, and believed it. “You're the lucky one, after all.”

Two hours later Malachi was on a train pulling out from Newcastle Central Station, heading north along the east coast line for Edinburgh, where he would change trains and cross Scotland's central belt to Glasgow in the west.

Pandora was in Glasgow. Soon, he would be too. How long would it take to track her down? Days? Weeks? Not months. Demons were notoriously arrogant. Though they walked freely among humanity, pretending they were mortals, they rarely changed their names, or hid from sight. It was likely that a scan through the telephone book would be enough to give him a shortlist.

Then there would be vengeance. It would be a warning to hellspawn across the country, if not the world, that humanity had been through enough, that they were tired of being pawns in whatever eternal game was being played at their expense.

As the train passed through villages and towns on its way through Northumberland, he wondered how many demons there were. Even his own amateur attempts at investigation had tracked down two angels and a demon in or near Newcastle. That was just one city. Presumably they were in other cities too, and towns, and perhaps even the villages he sped past now. What of other countries? How many angels and demons walked the earth, interfering with the lives of men and woman, destroying and rebuilding on a whim? What would people see around them, if they opened their eyes?

Malachi rubbed his temples, hunkering down in his seat. These were problems beyond his ability to deal with, almost beyond his ability to process at all. All he wanted was Pandora, and then he was done.

Closing his eyes, he tried to sleep.

In the next carriage along, Melissa was also hunkered into her seat, terrified that the man she once knew as Mr Jones, now simply Malachi, would see her if he made for the buffet car. With her head turned to the window, and her hair cut short, she doubted he would recognise her, but the risk was not worth taking, even if her back was killing her from sitting in so twisted a way.

Getting on the train had been difficult, with Malachi standing moodily on the platform. Melissa had been forced to wait on the footbridge above the track until he had boarded, before sprinting to get on herself. The change of train at Edinburgh was going to be no less nerve-wracking.
 

More than anything, she wanted to be at home, curled up in front of some reality television show, a mug of cocoa in hand. She had no choice though, and knew it. Some duties could not be ignored.

Malachi deserved to have his vengeance. After tending Stacey for two years, Melissa knew this better than anyone.

Unfortunately, Malachi was not the master of his own destiny, despite his belief otherwise. That he thought Pandora was a demon instead of an angel troubled her. It was manipulative on the part of whatever had set him on his task, and despite the importance of what he would do, she was not comfortable with it. Would he be so driven, if he knew the truth? Should she tell him, or propagate the lie? She knew the answer. Those that were guiding his life could not be denied. They were further up the food chain than he was. Much further.

Melissa wondered if Malachi would be able to accept that, when he inevitably confronted the truth. If not, he would be swatted down like an irritating fly. The thought made her wince, deep inside, and she tried to push her own feelings aside.

Even though she thought she might love him, she was going to keep lying to him, and would never get a chance to tell him how she felt.

CHAPTER SIX

Clive stared at his hands, trying to imagine the warm, tacky heat of the blood that had made them scarlet slick. In the dry gloom of the police cell he could almost picture it, just for a second, before denial took over. It couldn't be true.

Rubbing his hands together gently, ignoring the muted pain from the cuts and bruises that covered them, he tried once again to fill in the blank place in his memory, which the police told him should contain the experience of trying to deliver the final quietus to Jamie Swann. There was a classroom full of witnesses, three of whom had torn him from the boy and held him down while others ran sobbing for the next classroom. Claire O'Hara, a teacher new to the school, had come through and taken over, though he had remained pinned to the floor by his pupils. If they had not done so, the police told him, he would have killed the boy.

Clive's punched the thin mattress. The fornicating little bastards had set him up. School was finished for the day, and he was in no doubt that they had gathered together to celebrate on one of the estates, shooting up and drinking, fucking each other in a perverse victory orgy, boys on boys on girls on girls, and in the middle of the filth and depravity would be Claire O'Hara, giggling and cheering them on, lifting her skirt to anybody who came close enough to stick it in. The boys lusted after her, a young pretty thing with power over them, and most of the staff had commented on hands sneaking into pockets to shift aside bulging erections. Claire feigned embarrassment, but he knew she was sluttishly delighted, that she encouraged it, that...

Clive put his head between his hands, and howled. What was wrong in his head, with his mind? None of this was him, none of it came from the Clive Huntley who had married Heather, and come to Scotland full of hope and good intentions.

“I am a good man!” Pushed out through his teeth, the words sounded harsh and mad. Could he believe them? With thoughts such as those exploding unbidden in his mind, so vivid and real, could he seriously doubt that everything the police said was true? Again he started to rub his hands together, and then stopped self-consciously, feeling like a poor second cousin to Macbeth.
Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?

He paced the small cell, back and forth, from the door with its sliding shutter, to the windowless rear wall. Although he had been in a daze after being interviewed by the Inspector on duty (whose name he could not remember), he vaguely recalled coming downstairs, so knew he was in a basement level.
 

What was the sentence for unprovoked assault on a minor? How long would they ask him to expiate a crime he had no memory of committing? Ten years? Twenty? Even if he could prove he had not been in control of himself, he would probably end up confined to a psychiatric institution. Did they still do that?