No Hero (29 page)

Another step. Another. I half brace myself against the wall, half crash into it. It takes me five tries to get the door handle to work. And maybe this is all Clyde did. Maybe he just came around and went to throw up in the bathroom, went to offer a sacrifice to the porcelain gods. It could happen. It could be.

And he had the presence of mind to shut the door behind him?

Another wave of vertigo and nausea. I hear a groan as I stumble out into the corridor, but if I turn around now, I’ll never be able to keep going. It’s a hundred miles to the elevator. I trip, bite the floor. I rather wish someone would show up with a shoulder to lean on and a glass of cold water.

I make it on my hands and knees. Feels like I’m swimming—desperately trying to come up for air. I’m not even sure if I’ve pressed the elevator button until the doors open and I fall in.

I throw up before the doors open again. I feel better for it. Just about make it to my feet. Stagger across the open expanse toward the pool. My vision is blurring, but I can already see the answer to my question. One girl. Just one girl, hanging on to the edge of the pool as if her world is crumbling, sobbing out her heart.

The sound of footsteps behind me. I half turn, half fall. Kayla weaving her way toward me. Sword drawn.

“No,” she slurs. “No you feckin’ don’t. Not my girls. No.”

In the background I can still hear Ephie sobbing over and over, “It was him. It was him. He took Ophelia. It was him.”

Too tired to explain. Too sick. Too heartsick. Headsick. I lie back. Back here again. Back on my back again. Kayla advances.

And then, either Ephie realizes the effects of her words, or by chance she hits the part of the cycle that redeems me. But I don’t feel any better at all, don’t feel any hope, any relief as she says, “It was Clyde. Clyde took Ophelia. It was him. It was Clyde.”

Kayla’s gone when Shaw and Tabitha make it down. She was screaming. Howling. She saw the blood in the water. And I was trying to explain it was there before. But then Ephie said it was Ophelia’s, and Kayla seemed to almost be pulsating with fear and rage. I thought she was going to pop something. Like some terrible eighties horror movie. Smash cut to an exploding head and a collapsing mannequin. She left then, her sword scoring an inch-deep groove in the concrete floor.

I wouldn’t want to be Clyde right now.

Oh God. Oh shit and balls. Oh Clyde.

Clyde.

I trust Clyde.
Oh Jesus, what sort of fool am I?

Beware the painted man’s false promises until he shows his second face.
The very first thing I was told. The very first thing. And I can still see, when I close my eyes, one of the Sheilas saying,
maybe it means you, Clyde.
Him saying they weren’t really tattoos.

It was all there. All of it. He cast the spell. He brought the Dreamers here. He made the disk that knocked us all out. Jesus.

How long? That’s the only question. How long has he been against us? It can’t have been since the beginning. I can’t believe that. I won’t believe that. If I do...

Shit and balls and fuck, fuck, fuck.

I watch Shaw and Tabitha go through the same thing when I tell them. Tabitha has her head between her knees. And I can tell she’s crying and trying not to show it because, well, because she’s Tabitha, and she’s not the sort of person who can cry in front of us all. But this has broken something, this betrayal. Something feels cracked in all of us. Shaw walks back and forth muttering to herself and shaking her head angrily, occasionally barking things into a walkie-talkie and ignoring the responses.

And in the background Ephie keeps on sobbing. And eventually I manage to pull myself together enough to go over to her, and stroke her head, and tell her it’ll be OK, we’ll find Ophelia, we’ll find Clyde, we’ll fix this, we’ll make it right. And slowly, slowly she subsides until the squid and octopuses come and wrap her in sinuous limbs, carry her back into the pool, spread-eagled on her back, hair spread out like a peacock’s tail, somewhere between sleep and catatonia.

Tabitha’s next. She’s sitting curled into herself. She won’t show me her face.

“Talk to me,” I say. “Give me something here. Please.”

It takes a while, a little coaxing, but eventually she says, “No.” It’s not just a denial of my request, but of everything, of the whole world.

“I know,” I say. “I don’t know.” I look about. “I don’t know how to process this.”

Finally she looks up, her heavy mascara in thick trails down her cheeks. Funny—I’m not sure if that’s by accident or design. Not that funny really.

“He was the best of us,” she says. “Best of us and not one of us. Fuck. Fucked up.” She shakes her head, more and more violently. Her hair thrashes about her head. I touch her shoulder and she stops and looks up at me. Pain and distress. Hate too. Not of me. Of herself. “I fucking kissed him.” She looks at her hands, her feet. “He’s got a fucking girlfriend. They’ve dated since university. And I kissed him. Who does that? What bitch? He was the best of us.” She shakes her head again, a final vicious spasm. “Fuck.”

“He was the only person I was sure it couldn’t be,” I say.

“Me too.”

“We’ll find him,” I say. I try to find something that sounds like confidence. “We’ll fix this. Fix him. We’ll get it out of him.”

She looks at me like I’ve gone mad. “What? We can’t. He’s gone. Don’t you understand that? Clyde’s dead. He’s dead. He just hasn’t stopped moving yet. We’re just waiting for Kayla to put her sword in him.”

“His machine—” I start.

“Was a lie!” She’s shouting now. Shaw looks over, but I hold up a hand to keep her back. This needs to happen. It’s time to get everything out.

“Don’t you get any of this?” Tabitha demands. “The machine to kick out the Progeny—it can’t be made. Some Progeny fuck lied to us. Just made something to knock us all out. So he could take Ophelia. It was a lie. He was a lie.”

“You did the research,” I say. “You read what was in the book. You thought this was possible. He didn’t make the machine he said he did, but that doesn’t mean the machine we want isn’t possible. You can make it. You can help us fix this. Help us make it right.”

“I’m a research assistant.” She enunciates the words. “Understand that. I shouldn’t be in the field. I shouldn’t be making shit. I do research. Just learn stuff. Don’t apply it. I go out in the field—Clyde gets infected. Build stuff—he steals Ophelia.”

“No,” I say. I shake my head. “No, that’s not right. You’re wrong.” I get down on my knees. I’m close to her and Tabitha’s aura of “bugger off” is so highly developed that it feels like a violation of private space, but I think she needs some human contact right now. “You are not responsible for this. You didn’t do this. Clyde didn’t do this. The Progeny did this. Evil mind worms from outer space. Not you. Not me. Not Clyde. We’re going to get him back. We’re going to fix this. Me. Shaw. Kayla. You.”

There is a glimmer of hope, something maybe. And then she drowns it. But she’s not talking to me anymore. I see the shutters go down. I’ve done my best, what I can. I beckon Shaw over. She shoves the walkie-talkie back into her pocket.

“Please can you talk to Tabitha,” I say. “I think she needs to talk this out. Shutting down will be bad.” Tabitha reminds me of parents, of lovers, of husbands and wives I had to visit when I worked with the murder squad, when I delivered bad news. Some of them took it quietly, some took it loudly. All of them needed to talk. Not usually to me, but to someone. They needed to reconnect with humanity, to confirm, “It wasn’t me.” Tabitha needs that now.

“What are you doing?” Shaw asks me.

“I’m not sure... Something with Kayla. I mean, someone has to stop her.”

“Stop her?”

“I think Kayla is going to kill Clyde,” I say. “We have to—”

“Arthur.” Shaw reaches out and grabs my arm. She has a sad smile on her face. “You really don’t know Kayla at all.”

“What? What do you—”

“The girls’ prediction,” she says. “That Kayla can’t save Ophelia. Kayla believes that body and soul. With complete conviction. And with good reason. The girls tell the truth. Kayla won’t chase Clyde because she doesn’t believe she can do anything. She wouldn’t have stayed here as long as she did if she could have done something about it.”

God. I just accused her of planning to kill her daughters. And then the one guy I trust took her daughter off to kill her. And she’s sitting alone somewhere feeling powerless.

“Where is she?” I ask. “I need to talk to her.” I need to try and make some of this right. Anything right.

“Try Halal House, near the bus stop.”

“Where?” There was something about that sentence that I missed, I’m sure.

“She likes falafel, Arthur.” Shaw speaks slowly, patiently. Her hand, I notice, is still on my arm. “Halal House. Near the bus stop. She likes the food there. She finds it comforting. Whenever she’s upset she usually goes to eat there. Try there.”

I nod and turn to leave.

“Arthur,” she says. She still hasn’t let go of me.

“Yes?” I turn.

“This is good work. It’s good to see you taking charge of this situation.” She gives my arm a squeeze and finally lets go.

I nod numbly. Taking charge. This is what I needed to finally take the lead? This? I’d rather I wasn’t leading at all.

One of Oxford’s curiosities—something that goes unadvertised to tourists—is that late at nights its streets are ploughed by a strange fleet of grease-stained vans. The sun drops below the horizon and they roll out from unnamed, and presumably equally greasy garages. They track the city’s streets in search of their prey. Finally they will encounter a pack of drunken students and will proceed to ply these uninhibited, unsuspecting youths with spicy meat of dubious quality and origin. It’s the stuff horror movies are made of.

Halal House is the sedentary version of Oxford’s infamous kebab vans—an establishment where the owners have the pluck to attempt to sell the same wares to sober people. Only the hardcore falafel fanatics can be found there during daylight hours.

Kayla is among them, at the back of the place, wedged into the furthest corner of a booth, legs tucked up in the almost impossibly narrow space between table and seat. A plastic container lies untouched before her. Her face is hidden behind her long bangs and all I can really see of her are her fine hands turning an ornate pocket watch over and over.

Slowly, feeling like an animal trainer approaching a circus tiger without his chair and whip, I slip into the booth opposite her. She says nothing. Silence. Not one of those comfortable ones I’ve heard about. I open my mouth a couple of times. But how do I start? Any sort of apology seems paltry in the face of everything that’s happened.

Eventually I just decide to talk.

“K—” is about as far as I get.

“Feck off.”

I blow the rest of the word out in a long tremulous breath. Close my eyes. But I have to do this. I have to get this conversation working. She needs to talk. People always needs to talk. My palms sweat. A spot between two of my ribs begins to ache.

“Kay—” I say.

“I said feck off.” Still she doesn’t look at me, just works the pocket watch over and over. I’m not even sure if she’s paying attention to me. It’s as if the curse is just an automatic reflex, some vocal tic that I keep triggering.

“Kayla—”

A knife smashes down into the tabletop. A simple, stainless steel table knife. Not even an edge on it. Buried up to the handle in the peeling linoleum. Quivering slightly. I don’t even see her hand move.

I am so very, very scared. I have accused Kayla of the worst imaginable bloody things. Of course she wants to kill me. I’m the worst possible person to be starting this conversation with her. I sit and stare at the linoleum’s fresh scar.

Kayla starts up with the pocket watch again. We sit in silence.

“It was my da’s,” she says, letting the watch briefly pause upon her knuckles. She begins talking so abruptly and so quietly that I almost miss it, almost ask her to repeat herself before common sense kicks in and shuts my mouth for me.

“I took it off him after I killed him.” She looks up from behind the shield of her bangs, not at me, but at some spot over my shoulder, not at the now, but at the past.

“They were in me, you know,” she says. “The Progeny. They were feckin’ in here.” She taps the side of her head. “I was twelve years old. But they couldn’t get a grip, couldn’t keep hold. They kept trying to fix me. Kept trying to stitch me up in some new way so they could keep me, hold me, have me as a puppet. They feckin’... feckin’ changed me. Made me different. They feckin’ raped the inside of my skull. They’re always getting in there. Every time I take one of those bastards down. I can feckin’ feel them, worming in. Trying to stay there. I don’t even know what’s left of who I was. I don’t know who I am. If there’s anything of the original, or if it’s just all... all stuff they feckin’ made.”

“I’m...” I start, but what is there to say? I don’t know. I stay there, mouth slightly open, like some slack-jawed idiot. Which is maybe all I am. “I’m sorry,” I say. It feels insignificant.

She lets out a grunt or a snort. I can’t tell if it’s derision or acceptance. She twirls the pocket watch once more, spinning it across her fingertips.

“Epilepsy,” she says. “Seizures. Bad ones too. Something when I was born. Not right.” She taps the side of her head. “So they went and did some surgery. Went in there and cut some things out. Scar tissue. Still get headaches sometimes.” She shakes her head. The movement of the watch doesn’t falter.

“Wasn’t my Da they took first. Was my ma. Then him. Then me. Then Izzie. Except, like I say, it didn’t stick. What the doctors had done. Couldn’t stick.”

I catch a gleam in her eyes at that, a slight, grim smile. “I’m their feckin’ mistake. And I make them pay for it.” Then the smile is gone.

“They’d been in the sheep. We had a farm, see. Up in the highlands. And the Progeny, they’d been at the sheep. Trying them on for size, I suppose. Breeding up maybe. Izzie told me. I called her a fool and told Ma on her. Then Izzie wasn’t a little girl anymore. Nobody was who they’d been before. Not even me. Changed. A little more than human. A little feckin’ less.”