Entangled (14 page)

‘Maybe help if you can meet mother and father again,’ said Brindle.

‘Maybe it would, but it’s not very likely is it?’

‘Told you, Uglies know way to spirit world. This is the Cave of Visions, and I will talk with spirit of my father tonight.’

Ria felt uncomfortable when Brindle spoke of spirits and the spirit world. She believed in them, of course; everyone did. But at the same time she’d never seen any solid evidence for their existence.

What happened next only added to her conviction that the Uglies were getting everything upside down.

Grondin had quietly left the platform while she’d been talking to Brindle but now he returned carrying a broad woven basket filled with hundreds of small mushrooms of the vile and obnoxious ‘Demon’s Penis’ variety. By age-old lore the collection and consumption of these mushrooms was forbidden to the Clan under penalty of death, so Ria spat and made the sign of the evil eye. ‘You’re not planning to eat those, are you?’ she asked.

‘Of course we will eat them,’ said Brindle. ‘How else you think we get to spirit world?’

‘But those who eat Demon’s Penis turn into demons!’ Ria exclaimed. ‘Don’t you know this? I can’t believe you don’t know this! They grow long tiger teeth. They go mad. Their mouths foam. Blood drips from their eyes. They run about trying to kill everyone. If they are pregnant they give birth to monsters. These mushrooms are very, very bad, Brindle.’

‘You are intelligent person, Ria, but right now being kind of stupid – I’m sorry. You don’t know anything. Have just been told these things by other know-nothing people and you believe. Have you ever with your own eyes seen somebody eat these mushrooms and grow tiger teeth, go crazy, like you say?’

‘Well, no. I haven’t. But everyone knows it’s true.’

‘No, Ria! Not true! Uglies know these mushrooms very well. They are sacred to us. Very special. Very good. We don’t call them bad name like you do – “Demon’s Penis” – which makes you think bad thoughts, puts horrible idea inside head. We call them Little Teachers – because they teach us. We call them Little Doctors because they heal us. We
call them Little Guides because they show us how to enter spirit world, and return to land of living.’

‘Well, maybe they do all that for Uglies, but I am Clan and if I were to eat them I’d turn into a demon with long teeth.’

‘Let me ask you question, Ria. The Painters – they were your ancestors, right? If you go back to your father, and your father’s father, and your father’s father’s father – all the way back to the long-ago – then no more Clan, only Painters, right?’

‘Yes. We came from the Painters.’

‘Means Clan and Painters same thing but at different time?’

‘I guess.’

‘Then safe for you to eat the Little Teachers.’

‘Why?’

‘Because Painters ate the Little Teachers in the long-ago. Made ceremony with them. Travelled to the spirit world. Uglies showed them how.’

In front of the ledge where Ria was perched with Brindle the rock floor was flat and open. Here, with much shuffling and hooting, all the Uglies – hundreds of them, males and females, young and old – found places for themselves, settling down cross-legged or reclining on improvised cushions of skins. Grondin and three other elders moved amongst them distributing more of the woven baskets overflowing with Demon’s Penis. Despite everything Ria had been taught it was obvious that the Uglies weren’t in the least bit afraid of the disgusting fungi.

‘Why should I believe you,’ she asked Brindle, ‘that the Painters ate Demon’s Penis?’

‘Please don’t call bad name like that, Ria!’ he protested. ‘Hurts my head. Please show respect to the Little Teachers.’

‘OK. Why should I believe you that the Painters ate the … Little Teachers?’

‘Should believe me,’ Brindle said, ‘because Uglies can’t tell lies – we share our thoughts. Don’t forget past. Uglies were here in the long-ago, welcomed first people who looked like you to come into this land. Showed them many things – good hunting grounds, good shelter, good water. Fed them when they were hungry. Gave healing when they were sick. When my ancestors gave your ancestors the Little Teachers, that was when they became the Painters. When your
ancestors turned against the Little Teachers that was when they became the Clan.’

Brindle reached into the basket of mushrooms that Grondin had set down between them, took a handful, pushed them into his wide mouth and made a great show of chewing.

Ria watched, bewildered. How could the Uglies just sit here and feast on these obnoxious mushrooms while enemies with terrible spears roamed free in the world beyond? Who knew how many more of them there were than the four they’d killed today?

‘I will ask spirit of my father about the spearmen,’ Brindle said, picking up her thoughts. ‘He will tell me what to do.’

‘You should ask him about Sulpa as well,’ Ria remembered. ‘Grigo, Duma and Vik said he’d told them to kill Uglies. Whoever he is I think he’s part of this.’

A strange, irregular beat began to echo round the Cave of Visions, growing in volume, an amazing, hair-raising, exhilarating sound, the like of which Ria had never heard before. In the lamplight, with its play of flickering shadows, she found it difficult to pinpoint the source of this mysterious, complicated reverberation, which seemed to come from everywhere at once. But soon she traced it to three Ugly males, spaced far apart amongst the crowd, hunched with batons in their hands over knee-high cylindrical sections of tree trunk. Each of these wooden cylinders had a deerskin stretched tight over both ends and the braves seemed to be producing the sounds she was hearing by beating on the deerskins with their batons. Awesome. Ria began to keep time with them, sitting up on her cushions and swaying her head and shoulders from side to side.

Then a small, very ancient and wizened female Ugly rose to her feet in the middle of the floor, brought a length of cave-bear femur to her mouth and blew through it while the fingers of both her hands danced over holes drilled into the bone. The result was another sound, so heartrending, so plangent and so energised with emotional power that Ria found tears – of joy, of sorrow, she didn’t know which – running down her face.

‘What’s that incredible sound?’ she asked. She felt dazed. A little giddy. ‘What’s it for? Why does it make me feel so weird?’

‘We call it the bone song,’ said Brindle. ‘It goes out into the spirit
world. It’s like a serpent, winding here and there.’ He made sinuous hand movements. ‘It becomes a road for us to follow when the Little Teachers bring us through to the other side …’

Brindle was eating more mushrooms as he sent her these thoughts. Just about everyone in the room was eating mushrooms, even the kids. Everybody looked … calm. Kind of relaxed and thoughtful. No one growing tiger teeth. No one going insane. No atmosphere of threat or violence at all.

Still swaying to the unfamiliar rhythms, Ria took one mushroom from the basket and placed it in her mouth.

It was bitter, tasting of roots, of earth.

‘False.’ ‘True.’ ‘False.’ ‘False …’

Leoni was filling out the questionnaire on autopilot while her mind was busy with a more pressing problem. Who was she going to call?

All her friends’ numbers were stored on speed dial on her own cellphone and she didn’t remember any of them. Not one. Her coke snorter’s Swiss-cheese brain didn’t hold on to little details like that.

As this realisation sank home Grinspoon hailed a passing colleague and stepped into the corridor again. Through the open door all Leoni could see was his back, the dirty grey hair straggling over his collar, the dandruff on his shoulders, the way he nodded his head and moved his hands as he talked. It was the perfect opportunity for her to call … Information!

With shaking fingers she dialled 411 and asked in a stage whisper for the number of the UCLA Med Centre.

The operator wasn’t helpful: ‘I don’t hear you clearly, ma’am. Say again, please.’

‘UCLA Med Centre,’ Leoni breathed.

‘Ma’am – in which city would that be?’

Under normal circumstances Leoni would have been spitting buckshot by now, but these were far from normal circumstances. ‘Los Angeles, of course,’ she hissed.

‘And which bed centre did you say in Los Angeles?’

‘Not
bed
centre.
Med
Centre. I … want … the … number … for … the … UCLA … Medical … Centre. Surely that can’t be so difficult?

‘Do you wish me to connect you, ma’am?’

Leoni was picking up hints from Grinspoon’s body language that his conversation in the corridor was ending, and she was forced to lower her voice still further ‘No. Please just give me the number,’ she hissed. ‘Just give me the number, OK?’

‘310-861-8251.’

Leoni scrawled the figures on the palm of her hand, hung up and shoved the cellphone under her bedclothes just as Grinspoon turned away from his colleague and walked back into the room.

‘Have you finished the questionnaire, Miss Watts?’

‘Umm. Not yet.’

‘Well, get on with it, then’ – he looked at his watch – ‘I haven’t got all night.’ There was a chair by the bathroom door which he now sat down in. He crossed his legs and began to examine the fingernails of his right hand.

Another ten minutes passed. Leoni was sweating under the covers, and giving ever more random responses to the annoying, persistent, repetitive questions on the form. She could feel Grinspoon’s cellphone nestling against her thigh and it was driving her crazy. She was terrified that he would make another call, or receive one – either way her entire escape plan would go down the tubes. But she didn’t dare reach down and switch the instrument off; if it was password-protected she wouldn’t be able to activate it again later.

Five more minutes. ‘False,’ ‘False,’ ‘False,’ ‘True.’ She glanced over at Grinspoon. He had finished with his fingernails. Now – hopeful sign – he tilted his head back against the wall and yawned. Tick, tock, tick, tock. Never had Leoni felt more aware of the passage of time, or more fervently willed another human being to fall asleep. ‘True,’ ‘False,’ ‘True,’ ‘False.’ Grinspoon’s eyelids were drooping closed, his neck muscles relaxed and his head flopped forward, pulling his upper body with it. He began to topple off the chair, then jerked awake at the last moment, sat upright, and gazed around, blinking in apparent confusion.

‘I’m nearly finished with the questionnaire,’ Leoni offered. ‘Just give me another few minutes, OK?’

Grinspoon yawned and made an exasperated sound. ‘I’ve got a call to make,’ he said. ‘I’ll be right outside in the corridor.’ And he stood up, patting his pockets.

It was now or never. Her heart thudding, Leoni started punching in the number before Grinspoon was even through the door. She figured she had thirty seconds – tops – before he realised what had happened to his phone.

An operator answered: ‘UCLA Med Centre, who would you like to speak with?’

‘Er … um …’ – Leoni was momentarily tongue-tied – ‘Bannerman. Dr John Bannerman.’

‘He’s unavailable right now …’

‘But I have to talk to him! It’s urgent!’

The operator was unimpressed. ‘He’s in surgery and he can’t be disturbed. Would you like someone else, or shall I connect you to Dr Bannerman’s voicemail?’

Leoni was shaking with stress and fear. She felt as though she was about to burst: ‘Voicemail? OK. Yes. Put me through.’

For a moment the line went dead but then, without any announcement, there was the kind of tone that normally invites you to leave a message. Was this really Bannerman’s voicemail? Perhaps the operator had put her through to another extension entirely? Since there was no way of knowing, she just had to go for it. ‘John?’ she yelled into the phone – she was no longer making any effort to keep her voice down – ‘This is Leoni Watts. I’ve been kidnapped by my parents. They’ve locked me up in a fucking mental hospital called … um … er – shit, I can’t remember. Mountain something or other’ – she racked her brains – ‘Mountain Ridge Psychiatric Hospital, that’s it. The Director is a guy called Sansom …’ She sobbed, peered at the door, took a deep breath: ‘You’ve got to get me out of here, John. I don’t have a friend in the world who can do this for me except you.’

As Grinspoon came pounding back in with a thunderous look on his face Leoni hung up his phone and held it out to him. ‘Look what I’ve found,’ she said.