Fearful Symmetries (15 page)

“Is this it?” Leah asked. But her mum wasn’t listening. She was tapping on the window. She was trying to show him something she had spotted.

Leah knew what came next. In all the other dreams what came next was the squeal of tires, the world breaking apart underneath her, and her trying to grab onto Milo, trying to keep him safe. (Even though he wasn’t there, she would think in the morning, he hadn’t even been born yet!)

That’s how the dream was supposed to go.

“Listen, George,” her mother was saying.

The car kept moving. The tires kept spinning, whispering against the asphalt.

“Is this what it is for me?” Leah tried to ask her mother, but her mother was still pointing out the window. “Is this my sign?”

And it wasn’t just Milo in the car. It was Inez, too. It was Oscar Nunez with his shriveled-up tongue, and Joanna Sinclair, and Yasmine with her black eyeliner, her eyes like cat’s eyes. And it was Hector, he was there, he was holding Yasmine’s hand, and he was kissing her gently on the neck, peeling back her skin to kiss the hard, oyster-grey thing that was growing inside of her.

“Leah can’t come with us,” her mother was saying. “Just let her off here, would you, George? Just let her off.”

“No,” Leah tried to tell her mum. “No, this is where I am supposed to be. This is supposed to be
it
.”

And then Leah was standing in a doorway, not in the car at all, and it was a different dream. She was standing in a doorway that was not a doorway because there was nothing on the other side. Just an infinite space, an uncrossable chasm. It was dark, but dark like she had never seen darkness before, so thick it almost choked her. And there was something moving in the darkness. Something was coming . . . because that’s what omens were, weren’t they? They meant something was coming.

And everyone had left her behind.

When Leah woke up the house was dark. Shadows clustered around her bed. She couldn’t hear Milo. She couldn’t hear her mother. What she could hear, from outside, was the sound of someone screaming. She wanted to scream along with it, oh, she wanted to be part of that, to let her voice ring out in that one perfect note. . . .

But she couldn’t.

Leah turned on the light. She took out the mirror. And she began to search (again—again and again and again, it made no difference, did it? it never made a difference).

She ran her fingers over and over the flawless, pale expanse of her body (flawless except for the white scar on her thumb where she’d sliced it open chopping potatoes).

Her wrists. Her neck. Her spine. Her crabapple breasts.

But there was still nothing there.

She was still perfect.

She was still whole. Untouched and alone.

“For they’re the same thing, Glenn, as the horror and the wonder I talked about inside, the horror and wonder that lies beyond any game, that strides the world unseen and strikes without warning where it will.”

—Fritz Leiber, “A Bit of the Dark World”

On the Tuesday night of the final week in January, Peter Rait had the spine dream again.

It was the fifth terrifying time in as many years and, as always, the weather seemed to be a contributing factor. The hot winds that blew in on Everton from inland New South Wales came off the deserts and brought hard summer to the town: sleepless nights, blinding days, a fitful restlessness that changed everything and everyone. The municipal pool was crowded for the daylight hours; kids ignored safety warnings and jumped into the river, plunged into reservoirs, climbed the town’s three water towers and jimmied the latches so they could sink into the secret glooms they found there. Every other summer, it seemed, a body was found floating in one spot or another. Fences were set up, access gates secured, locks replaced, cameras installed. But come the first scorcher, like a rite of passage, the kids would deal with fences, gates, locks and cameras, often in ways ingenious beyond their years, often beyond their budgets, showing that too much safety was never wanted as much as people said. The Town Council had strategy meetings, but deep down everyone knew that it was as if people needed the danger, sought it, filled themselves up with it. It was the world happening, after all, and there was no protection from that.

So, those winds. Far better than this Tuesday’s sticky late-summer stillness. And that dream again. Little wonder that Peter came to Dan’s quarters in the south wing of Everton Psychiatric Facility an hour past midnight and knocked at his door. Dan took the news calmly enough, made them herbal tea and took their cups to the armchairs where they sat watching the curtains stir in the breeze from Dan’s battered old fan. The only light came from under the door and the hallway beyond.

“Tell me again, Peter,” Dan said, watching the darkness beyond the tall windows. “What are you getting?”

“The spine. Same as before.”

“Tell me as if I don’t know anything.”

“I’m seeing a spine, dreaming of a spine.”

“By itself? No skull, ribs, pelvis?”

“Just the spine, Doctor Dan. Picked clean. Or like something on display. But an
urgent
spine like before. No other word comes close.”

“What’s in the background?”

“Darkness. Stillness. Like a museum exhibit against black velvet, or a lecture room display. A chiropractor’s model. You know the kind.”

“Tell me again. Supported by a holding frame?”

“No. That’s the thing. I don’t see any kind of support. As if it’s freestanding, weightless.”

“Nothing else?”

“The sense again, the strong sense—urgent
is
the only word—that it may not be a true spine. It looks wrong somehow. Like it’s a mask for something.”

Dan avoided the questions such an answer automatically brought, just sat sipping his tea, watching the curtains lift and fall. Everton Psychiatric Facility might be the new name for Blackwater Psychiatric Hospital, intended to give the place a more modern feel in a new millennium, but they were the same old buildings. It was the time of the year for system overloads and brown-outs. Now that Carla was officially running the place at last, leaving Dan to devote more time to his external consulting, on the nights he didn’t go home he had a generous office bedsit in the Devereux wing. Air-con was limited to the wards and main staff areas. At least his old fan gave the illusion of cool air.

He went back to it on a new tack entirely, hoping to take Peter by surprise.

“Could it live in fire?”

“Well, yes. If those segments and joints are like asbestos. Protecting a central nervous system.”

“In water?”

Peter barely hesitated. “Easily. It’s like a marine creature anyway.”

“Desert?”

“Again, easily. It already looks desiccated, mummified.”

“In space?”

“I said weightless, but how can I know? I can’t know its chemistry from looking.”

“Think carefully, Peter. It’s in a display situation, you say, but is it avoiding you or approaching you?”

“Excuse me?”

“Is it larger than last time? All the other times? Is it coming at you, following you or keeping away?”

“I’m not sure, Doctor Dan. It seems to be still.”

“But is it different in any way? Is it in exactly the same position as the other times? A chiropractor’s side-on display?”

“No! It’s angled towards me now! My God, yes! It is!”

“Is that what it’s hiding? Masking its approach?”

“What? No! No!”

“What else?”

“Unclear. Still unclear. But something’s not right. Something else.”

“Final question, and you take this back to bed with you and sleep on it. Is it
your
spine? Is there something
you
want
you
to know?”

It was an obvious question, one that would be sheer recklessness directed at ninety-five percent of Blackwater’s inmates. But this was Blackwater’s unofficial backup handyman, in his late forties, tall, greying amid the tousled black hair, a personable schizophrenic who had been discharged years ago but had elected to stay on, taking room and board in return for doing odd jobs about the place. He was also its prize psychosleuth, someone who saw things, knew things. This would play to his strengths, settle him, Dan knew, give him a focus. It was how Peter worked, how this needed to work. He would indeed sleep on it.

Peter set down his cup and stood. “Good luck to both of us trying to sleep. You have a busy day tomorrow.”

“How so?”

“Someone’s coming to see you.”

“I have three appointments tomorrow, Peter. You know something?”

Peter turned when he reached the door. “You know me. I just like to check the appointment schedule from time to time. Goodnight.”

Dan sat another ten minutes pondering why Peter had mentioned the next day’s appointments, then went back to bed.

It was a hot morning after a difficult night when Allan Grace was shown into Dan’s office at eleven
A.M.
, and Dan couldn’t help but be surprised at what he saw. Grace was a tall man, imposing, with a long pale face, wide forehead, grey eyes and limp sandy hair, dressed in an extremely dapper fashion in a tailored black suit, with matching black socks and shoes, wearing a crisp white shirt with the top button done up, though with no tie to warrant it. He had a sheen to his skin, a gloss of perspiration that gave him a waxen look.

The collar was far too tight for the man’s neck, Dan saw, and “muffin top” came to mind. Allan Grace was lean, but his neck muffined out over the crisp white collar. It made the whole thing look odd, desperate, wrong somehow.

Dan wanted to say something, but figured there had to be a reason: some health or self-image issue, scars, tattoos, something, that made the tightly buttoned collar, the whole over-formal outfit, necessary on such a muggy day. Maybe the man owned only the one business shirt, had found it way too tight but wanted to make a good impression.

“Thank you for seeing me, Doctor Truswell,” Grace said.

“My pleasure, Mr. Grace.”

Dan found the man’s handshake cooler and drier than he expected, then led the way to the same armchairs and side tables he had used with Peter the night before. He poured glasses of chilled mineral water and handed one to his guest.

Grace drank gratefully. “I don’t mean to intrude on your time too long. I’m still quite new in town, and wonder if you might consider acting as a consultant for me in a project I’m completing in the area?”

The man had a good mellow voice but wheezed when he talked, which again made Dan want to say, “Loosen your collar, man! Undo the top button!” But Grace’s elegance and otherwise composed manner cautioned Dan. He’s intelligent enough to know what he’s doing, Dan told himself. There truly may be health issues in play, even mental health issues, but he’s managing, controlled. Let it be.

“You find me immediately wary, Mr. Grace. As well as having little free time because of ongoing duties here and various secondments, my position requires considerable discretion. Any useful information would be general at best.”

One of Grace’s pale hands went up in a reassuring gesture. “This has more to do with general conclusions you might have reached from completing those duties, bits of information you might have picked up in the extracurricular activities you’ve pursued.”

Dan ignored the gentlest barb in the final words. Maybe the heat and humidity were getting to him, the lack of sleep. “Conclusions regarding what?”

“Have you heard of something called the Fuligin Braid?”

“Again, please.”

“The Fuligin Braid. Fuligin, as in dark, sooty, and Braid as in strands of hair or cord woven together.”

“I haven’t, no.”

“No matter, though your reputation—I was hoping. So let me approach this somewhat differently. I’ve heard stories. You work for the police sometimes—”

“Mr. Grace, like I said—”

“Allan, please. And no details wanted, I assure you, Doctor. No prying. But there are stories about successes. Patients and orderlies talk, you understand. Locals. This concerns Everton. Something you might look into better than I can.”

“Just how does it concern Everton?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out. My research has brought me here.”

Dan had to smile. “
My
successes.
Your
research. Allan, I feel I’m meant to ask. What is the Fuligin Braid?”

“Here’s where I risk being dismissed as a certain mental health stereotype, but can you believe that there is inherent evil in the world?”

It was the perfect way to ask it.
Can
you, not
do
you. But Dan dare not encourage this detached but intense, strangely overdressed man.

“Not as a coherent, directed thing, no.” It was an easy lie to give to strangers, well-practiced and comfortably delivered.

“But the stories? The Toother business? The Haniver sisters coming to you?”

It was uncanny, always unsettling when a complete stranger tosses off facts about your life. Always flattering in an interview when someone has done their homework properly, but for Dan this was someone knowing
too
much.

“All right. Let’s say I’d prefer not to. You’ve studied me closely.”

“I value that word ‘prefer,’ Doctor. You are someone who has come out from behind the desk. Stepped out into the world.”

Dan refused to be drawn. “Many do.”

“You allow for a greater world and so find one.”

“Again?”

“You continue to allow that there
is
a greater world. Have constantly tested this one and found more to it. Your conclusions and insights could be invaluable to me.”

“Two questions before this goes any further, Allan. Where did you get your facts, and how does this connection with the Fuligin Braid concern Everton?”

Allan Grace looked for a moment as if he were going to tug at his terrible collar, give in to the temptation to undo the button, but controlled himself. “May I have five uninterrupted minutes? Then I will go and bother you no more.”

“Five minutes then.”

“I am investigating something called the Fuligin Braid, a term coined in Prague by Laurence Sanston Londasleite in 1853. Londasleite suggested that what we know as night is made up of four distinct parts, three in the everyday physical world, one on a plane separate but linked to ours, what he called the Inchoate.”

Dan took a sip of water. “The Fuligin Braid is these four elements wound together?”

“The Four Darks, yes. Darkness as we know it. It comes from a very old area of hermeneutics. Londasleite was seen as a crackpot even in his own day, but his point stands. Our instinctive, atavistic fear of darkness is because of the two final threads, the ones that—how shall I put this?—make darkness more
pro-active
in our own world, the last strand in particular. I know this all sounds very much your Madame Blavatsky hocus-pocus, something that makes arguments for the existence of the phlogiston and the luminiferous ether look positively respectable. But ideas are of their time, and valid connections being missed fill recorded history as much as wrongheadedness and outright errors do: people in 14
th
-century Europe not seeing that fleas on rats were the main plague vector for the Black Death; the Victorians failing to see that the new industrial-age smog was a major cause of tuberculosis, that sort of thing. Science is rightly about invisible particles, waves, force fields, and quantum states, calibrated and regulated by good honest mathematics, but what if darkness
does
have a paranormal aspect to it, distinct and quantifiable? What if something like the Fuligin Braid could exist? What if it
does
?”

“So what are these Four Darks?”

Allan Grace gave a thin smile. “The first is the simple, observable physical state produced by the absence of light, which he regarded as obvious and incidental, just so much circumstantial window dressing. The second Dark serves a carrier function, like plasma in the blood, something very much akin to the luminiferous ether people once believed filled the universe. But the next two are the pro-active parts. The third strand of the Braid affects the brain, enlists the brain, actively suborns the brain, actively contributes to what we call the mental disorders. Londasleite believed it does that as a way of maintaining a heightened mind-body-world connectivity, so the individual is properly primed for interacting with—dealing with the final part.”

“How so?”

“His contention was that we evolved essentially as creatures of light, that the whole biological purpose for sleeping, actually needing to become
unconscious
in order to rest properly, was to protect us from night’s two pro-active, disordering powers. But the final strand is the one that’s most interesting. It’s where an actual
artefact
is produced, a night artefact in a sense.”