The well of lost plots (36 page)

“My head’s thumping,” muttered Arnold.

“So’s mine.”

Arnold cocked his head and listened. “It’s not our heads — it’s the door.”

“The door of perception,” I noted, “of heaven and hell.”

He opened the door and a very old woman dressed in blue gingham walked in. I started to giggle but stopped when she strode up to me and took away my wineglass.

“How many glasses have you had?”

“Two?” I replied, leaning against the table for support.

“Bottles,” corrected Arnie.

“Crates,” I added, giggling, although nothing actually seemed that funny all of a sudden. “Listen here, Gingham Woman,” I added, wagging my finger, “give me my glass back.”

“What about the baby?” she demanded, staring at me dangerously.

“What baby? Who’s having a baby? Arnie, are you having a baby?”

“It’s worse than I thought,” she muttered. “Do the names Aornis and Landen mean anything to you?”

“Not a thing, but I’ll drink to them, if you want. Hello, Randolph.”

Randolph and Lola had arrived at the doorstep and were staring at me in shock.

“What?” I asked them. “Have I grown a second head or something?”

“Lola, fetch a spoon,” said Gingham Woman. “Randolph, take Thursday to the bathroom.”

“Why?” I collapsed in a heap. “I can walk. And why is there a carpet on the wall?”

The next thing I saw was the view down the back of Randolph’s legs and the living room floor, then the stairs, as I was carried up over his shoulder. I started to giggle but the rest was a bit blurry. I remember choking and throwing up in the loo, then being deposited in bed, then starting to cry.

“She died. Burned. I tried to help her. It was her hat, you know.”

“I know, darling. I’m your grandmother, do you remember?”

“Gran?” I sobbed, realizing who she was all of a sudden. “I’m sorry I called you Gingham Woman!”

“It’s okay. Perhaps being drunk is for the best. You’re going to sleep now, and dream — and in that dream you’ll do battle to win back your memories. Do you understand?”

“No.”

She sighed and wiped my forehead with her small, pink hand. It felt reassuring and I stopped crying.

“Be vigilant, my dear. Keep your wits about you and be stronger than you have ever been. We’ll see you on the other side, come the morning.”

But she was starting to fade as slumber swept over me, her voice ringing in my ears as my mind relaxed and transported me deep into my subconscious.

The Hades family when I knew them comprised, in order of age, Acheron, Styx, Phlegethon, Cocytus, Lethe, and the only girl, Aornis. Their father had died many years previously, leaving their mother in charge of the youthful and diabolical family all on her own. Described once by Vlad the Impaler as “unspeakably repellent,” the Hades family drew strength from deviancy and committing every sort of horror that they could. Some with panache, some with halfhearted seriousness, others with a sort of relaxed insouciance about the whole thing. Lethe, the “white sheep” of the family, was hardly cruel at all — but the others more than made up for him. In time, I was to defeat three of them.

THURSDAY NEXT,
Hades: Family from Hell

A WAVE BURST ON the rocks behind me, showering me with cold water and flecks of foam. I shivered. I was on a rocky outcrop in the darkest gale-torn night, and before me stood a lighthouse. The wind whistled and moaned around the tower, and a flash of lightning struck the apex. The bolt coursed down the earthing cable and trailed a shower of sparks, leaving behind the acrid stench of brimstone. The lighthouse was as black as obsidian, and as I looked up, it seemed as though the arc lamp rotating within the vast lenses was floating in midair. The light swept through the inky blackness illuminating nothing but a heaving, angry sea. I looked backwards in my mind but could see nothing — I was without memory or past experiences. This was the loneliest outpost of my subconscious, a memoryless island where nothing existed other than that which I could feel and see and smell at this moment in time. But I still had emotions, and I had a sense of danger, and purpose. Somehow I understood I was here to vanquish — or be vanquished.

Another wave burst behind me, and with beating heart I pulled on the locking lever of the steel front door and was soon inside, safe from the gale. The door securely fastened, I looked around. There was a central spiral staircase but nothing else — not a stick of furniture, a book, a packing case, nothing.

I shivered again and pulled out my gun.

“A lighthouse,” I murmured, “a lighthouse in the middle of nowhere.”

I walked slowly up the concrete steps keeping a careful watch as they curved away out of sight. The first floor was empty and I moved on up, each circular room I reached devoid of any signs of habitation. In this way I slowly climbed the tower, gun arm outstretched and trembling with a dread of impending loss that I could not control or understand. On the top floor the spiral staircase ended; a steel ladder was the only means by which to climb any higher. I could hear the electric motors that drove the rotating lamp whine above me, the bright white light shining through the open roof hatch as the beam swept slowly about. But this room was not empty. Sitting in an armchair was a young woman powdering her nose with the help of a small handmirror.

“Who are you?” I asked, pointing my gun at her.

She lowered the mirror, smiled and looked at the pistol.

“Dear me!” she exclaimed. “Always the woman of action, aren’t you?”

“What am I doing here?”

“You really don’t know, do you?”

“No.” I lowered the gun. I couldn’t remember any facts but I could feel love and loss and frustration and fear. The woman was linked to one of these but I didn’t know which.

“My name is—” The young woman stopped and smiled again. “No, I think even that is too much.”

She rose and walked towards me. “All you need to know is that you killed my brother.”

“I’m a murderer?” I whispered, searching in my heart for guilt of such a crime and finding none. “I . . . I don’t believe you.”

“Oh, it’s true, and I will have my revenge. Let me show you something.”

She took me to the window and pointed. There was another flash of lightning and the view was illuminated outside. We were on the edge of a massive waterfall that curved away from us into the darkness. The ocean was emptying over the edge; millions of gallons every second, falling into the abyss. But that wasn’t all. In another flash of lightning I could see that the waterfall was rapidly eroding the small island on which the lighthouse was built — as I watched, the first piece of the rocky outcrop fell away noiselessly and disappeared into space.

“What’s happening?” I demanded.

“You are forgetting everything,” she said simply, sweeping her hands in the direction of the room. “These are a just a few of your memories I have cobbled together — a last stand, if you like. The storm, the lighthouse, the waterfall, the night, the wind — none of them are real.” She walked closer to me until I could smell her perfume. “All this is merely a representation of your mind. The lighthouse is you; your consciousness. The sea around us your experience, your memories — everything that makes you the person you are. They are all draining away like water from a bath. Soon the lighthouse will topple into the void and then . . .”

“And then?”

“And then I will have won. You will remember nothing — not even this. You will relearn, of course — in ten years you might be able to tie your own shoelaces. But for the first few years the only decision you will have to make is which side of your mouth to drool out of.”

I turned to leave but she called out, “You can’t run. Where will you go? For you, there’s nowhere else but here.”

I stopped at the door and turned back, raised my gun and fired a single shot. The bullet whistled through the young woman and impacted harmlessly on the wall behind.

“It will take more than that, Thursday.”

“Thursday? That’s my name?”

“It doesn’t matter, there is no one you can remember who will help you.”

“Doesn’t this make your victory hollow?” I demanded, lowering my gun and rubbing my temple, trying to recall even a single fact.

“Ridding your mind of that which you value most was the hard bit. All I had to do then was to invoke your
dread
, the memory that you feared the most. After that, it was easy.”

“My greatest fear?”

She smiled again and showed me the handmirror. There was no reflection, only images that flashed past anonymously. I took the mirror and peered at it, trying to make sense of what I saw.

“These are the images of your life, your memories, the people you love, everything you held dear — but also everything that you’ve ever feared. I can modify and change them at will — or even delete them completely. But before I do, I’m going to make you view the worst once more. Gaze upon it, Thursday, gaze upon it and feel the death of your brother one last time!”

The mirror showed me the image of a war long ago, the violent death of a soldier who seemed familiar, and I felt the pain of loss tearing through me. The woman laughed as the images repeated themselves, this time clearer, and more graphic. I shut my eyes to block the horror, but opened them again quickly in shock. I had seen something else, right at the edge of my mind, dark and menacing, waiting to engulf me. I gasped, and the woman felt my fear.

“What is it?” she cried. “There is something I have missed? Worse than the Crimea? Let me see!”

She tried to grasp the mirror but I let it drop. It shattered on the concrete floor as we heard a muffled thump of something striking the steel door five stories below.

“What was that?” she demanded.

I realized what I had seen. Its presence, unwelcome for so many years in the back of my mind, might be just what I needed to defeat her.

“My worst nightmare,” I told her, “and now yours.”

“But it can’t be! Your worst nightmare was the Crimea, your brother’s death — I know, I’ve searched your mind!”

“Then,” I replied slowly, my strength returning as the woman’s confidence trickled away, “you should have searched harder!”

“But it’s still too late to help you,” she said, her voice quavering, “it will not gain entry, I assure you of that!”

There was another loud crash; the steel door on the ground floor had been torn from its hinges.

“Wrong again,” I said quietly. “You asked for my worse fear, my dread, to appear — and it came.”

She ran to the stairs and yelled, “Who is there? Who are you?
What
are you?”

But there was no reply; only a soft sigh and the sound of footfalls on the stairs as it climbed slowly upwards. I looked from the window as another section of the rocky island fell away. The lighthouse was now poised on top of the abyss and I could see straight down into the dizzying depths. There was a tremor as the foundations shifted; the lighthouse flexed and a section of plaster fell from the wall.

“Thursday!” she yelled out pitifully. “You can control it! Make it stop!”

She slammed the door to the staircase, her hands shaking as she hurriedly threw the bolt.

“I could hide it if I chose,” I said, staring at the terrified woman, “but I choose not. You asked me to gaze upon my fears — now you may join me.”

The lighthouse shifted again and a crack opened in the wall revealing the storm-tossed sea beyond; the arc light stopped rotating with a growl of twisted metal. There was a thump at the door.

“There are always bigger fish, Aornis,” I said slowly, suddenly realizing who she was as my past began to reveal itself from the fog. “Like all Hadeses, you were lazy. You thought Anton’s demise was the worst thing you could dredge up. You never looked further. Hardly looked into my subconscious at all. The old stuff, the terrifying stuff, the stuff that keeps us awake as children, the nightmares we can only half glimpse on waking, the fear we sweep to the back of our minds but which is always there, gloating from a distance.”

The door collapsed inwards as the lighthouse swayed and part of the wall fell away. An icy gust blew in, the ceiling dropped two feet and electricity sparked from a severed cable. Aornis stared at the form lurking in the doorway, making quiet slavering noises to itself.

“No!” she whined. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you, I—”

I watched as Aornis’s hair turned snow-white, but no scream came from her dry throat. I lowered my eyes and turned to the door, seeing only a vague shape out of the corner of my eye advancing towards Aornis. She had dropped to her knees and was sobbing uncontrollably. I walked past the shattered door and down the stairs two at a time. As I stepped outside, the outcrop shivered again and the conical roof of the lighthouse came wheeling down amidst masonry and scraps of rusty iron. Aornis found her voice, finally, and screamed.

I didn’t pause or break my pace. I could still hear her yelling for mercy as I climbed into the small jolly boat she had kept for her escape and rowed away across the oily black water, her cries only drowned out as the lighthouse collapsed into the abyss, taking the malevolent spirit of Aornis with it.

I paused for a moment, then put my back into rowing, the oars rattling in the rowlocks.

“That was impressive,” said a quiet voice behind me. I turned and found Landen sitting in the bow. He was every bit as I remembered him. Tall and good-looking with hair graying slightly at the temples. My memories, which had been blunted for so long, now made him more alive than he had been for weeks. I dropped the oars and nearly upset the small boat in my hurry to fling my arms around him, to feel his warmth. I hugged him until I could barely breath, tears coursing down my cheeks.

“Is it you?” I cried. “
Really
you, not one of Aornis’s little games?”

“No, it’s me all right.” He kissed me tenderly. “Or at least, your memory of me.”

“You’ll be back for real, I promise!”

“Have I missed much? It’s not nice being forgotten by the one you love.”