Mirrorman Page 45

  Then it happened, very slowly to begin with, right in front of him. Gribble couldn’t believe it.

  The hand in her lap started to grow. He could actually see the hand enlarging itself, becoming huge and puffy and bluish white in colour. It grew and continued to grow to the size of a football. The blotchy bluish-white swelling moved along her arm, forcing the material of her jacket into a stiff fat tube of trapped flesh.

  By gradual degrees, as if subsiding into a warm bath, Phyllis lay back on the floor and closed her eyes. She looked peaceful and at rest, perfectly normal in fact, except for the giant hand and arm lying stiffly beside her, fingers poking out of the pale-blue football like gorged slugs.

  Gribble had seen pictures in medical textbooks that were very similar – of people who’d died of rattlesnake venom. He wasn’t squeamish, and had a strong stomach, but he had to turn away. He might have called Doctor Khuman for assistance; even considered doing so for a fleeting moment before he realised it was too late. Poison of such virulence, acting with such speed, would have killed an ox cold stone dead by now, much less Phyllis Keets.

  He slumped down on the chair, face averted from the sight, and looked without seeing them at the arcing green blips on the screen.

  4

  Nearer.

  He’s getting nearer, Cawdor is convinced of it. The sensation in his hand – like sparks of pure energy jumping crazily between nerve cells – is proof of that. By this time Kersh’s brain is running out of images. Pretty soon the only image he’ll have left is of himself in the penthouse. He won’t be able to retreat from that; it’s his last and only refuge. There’s no place else to go.

  I just wanted to make sure he was OK.

  Swirling in from the surrounding darkness, a woman’s voice that sounds familar, echoing as from a great distance. Is the voice from within – or from the outside world, beyond the Zone? Or is it yet one more sly trick to throw him off his guard? By now Cawdor is suspicious of everything. After coming awake in a perfect replica of the Troth Foundation and encountering the fake Gribble on the terrace he is prepared to take nothing at face value.

  I can feel his eyes on me.

  Cawdor places the voice – it’s Phyllis’s, he’s in no doubt. But identifying it doesn’t help; it only adds to his confusion. Is Phyllis in league with Kersh, here inside the tower? If not that, then her presence is bleeding through from the outside, from the shadowy room where his body lies on the bed. But that doesn’t seem credible either, because how could Phyllis Keets know of the existence of the Troth Foundation or that he was there?

  It’s another trick; it has to be. In his desperation, Kersh is trying everything: images, memories, emotions, voices. Even dredging up dream phantoms from the deepest recesses of his own mind – the creature with the slimy sac of a body and scaly feelers.

  After Phyllis, Cawdor wonders what Kersh will try next. He has to break Cawdor’s spirit, crush him entirely, in order to survive, using any means possible. The more searingly painful and soul-destroying the better. So what else can his sick mind come up with?

  A sharp cry, as of an animal in pain, echoes from the surrounding darkness and swirls through Cawdor’s head.

  Crazily, that too sounded like Phyllis. But he still doesn’t know from where. Here inside the Zone or from out there.

  A thin shrieking sound insinuates itself into his head. This time, though, not human. It is the whine of jet engines. The instant he recognises it, Cawdor feels his heart seize up. A crawling black panic clutches his insides like a claw of sharpened talons. Because he knows what is about to happen, and he knows he cannot face it. He couldn’t endure the annihilation of his wife and daughter over again – blown out through the shattered side of the airplane – and retain his sanity.

  Cawdor fights with all his mental strength, resisting the image trembling on the edge of his consciousness. No way, Frank. You had the power once, but you’ve lost it. The sound fades away; the image is stillborn. Gaining in confidence, Cawdor smiles to himself, quietly triumphant, and it’s then that the realisation hits home. If Kersh really has been stripped of his power, maybe this is the opportunity Cawdor has been waiting for. The time to pit his will and belief against Kersh’s; the time to prove himself the stronger.

  This is it. The one thing Cawdor has been praying for, and the one thing that Kersh fears most. The ultimate test.

  Hands clamped either side on the polished black surface, Gribble held his breath as he eased the helmet off, being especially careful not to let Cawdor’s head thump back on the pillow when he lifted the helmet free. He set it at the foot of the bed, the skein of cables and wires trailing down to the floor.

  Gribble mopped his face with his shirt sleeve. Sweating like a pig. Not the effort of removing the headpiece – tricky though it was – but riven with feelings of guilt at deceiving Doctor Khuman. And, far worse than that, the awful dread churning in his guts that he might have done more harm than good. Real and irreparable damage, in fact, considering the delicate nature of Jeff’s mental and physical condition. How in hell could he have acted so dumb? He was playing with a man’s life as if it was some damn-fool experiment to prove his genius at home-grown amateur gadgetry. It was wilfully and criminally insane to have even attempted such a crazy stunt.

  In the light of the lamp Cawdor’s face had a waxy pallor. Hardly surprising, Gribble thought. The poor guy had been to hell and back; recovery from such a major trauma was going to take months. He ground his teeth in shame and remorse, wondering why it had taken so long for that simple fact to sink in.

  He rearranged the single sheet over the motionless body. Turning away, he purposely kept his gaze averted from the horribly bloated figure of Phyllis on the other side of the bed. It was then he glimpsed the red light flashing on the keyboard.

  Gribble spun round and leant towards it, eyes bulging.

  The gentle green arcs measuring Cawdor’s vital life signs were gone. No peaks and troughs. Just three straight lines, that was all.

  Three straight green lines humming softly across the screen to oblivion.

  * * *

  There was no doubt in Gribble’s mind that it was the worst moment of his life. He stood rooted to the spot as Doctor Khuman straightened up and turned away from the bed, tugging the stethoscope loose and letting it dangle in his hand. The expression on Khuman’s lean brown face obliterated the last shred of hope, plunging Gribble into the darkest, bleakest depths of despair.

  He couldn’t look Doctor Khuman in the eye, and neither could he meet Annie Lorentz’s frowning stare. Her bewilderment was plain, as she tried to take in both Cawdor’s comatose form and the bloated body of Phyllis Keets lying beside the bed.

  Gribble had roused her at the same time as he had rushed upstairs to Doctor Khuman’s room. Despite the hour, after one-thirty in the morning, the doctor was awake and still fully dressed, reading and making notes. Gribble led the way downstairs, so distressed that in answer to Doctor Khuman’s questions he could only shake his head dumbly. Annie Lorentz had followed on, appearing a few minutes later in Cawdor’s room as Doctor Khuman was carrying out his examination. She stayed silent: the sombre atmosphere, and Gribble’s rigid, fistclenching stance, made all questions redundant. And the absence of activity on the screen confirmed the obvious.

  ‘Why did you wait before calling me?’ Doctor Khuman asked, and his hushed tone didn’t soften the accusation.

  ‘Wait?’ Gribble was confused. ‘I called you right away. The instant I noticed something was wrong I came up to get you.’ He made a vague gesture towards the bed. ‘It’s been only a few minutes, doc, I swear.’

  ‘All signs of life are extinct,’ Doctor Khuman pronounced. ‘No cardiovascular or respiratory functions whatsoever. Such a condition takes not less than fifteen and as much as thirty minutes.’ With the tip of one finger he touched the shiny black helmet, which was still lying at the foot of the bed where Gribble had placed it. ‘Is this the cause? You put him into the Zone and
he never came out of it. Is that what happened?’

  ‘No… No!’ Gribble protested. ‘I did, yeah, I admit – I wanted to help Jeff, so I tried out the VR program, but he was perfectly OK in there. I monitored him and he was fine. Annie will vouch for that. There was no sign of any physical lapse or nothin’.’

  ‘Until you noticed it too late on the screen.’

  ‘But that was after,’ Gribble insisted. ‘Not in the Zone. It was when I took the helmet off that his functions failed. That’s the honest truth, doc.’

  Doctor Khuman closed his eyes. ‘Oh my God.’

  Gribble was stricken. ‘What – What is it?’ he stammered, ashen-faced. ‘What’d I do? What went wrong?’

  ‘I think he got through,’ Doctor Khuman said. He looked down, touching the helmet again. ‘I think Cawdor made it. Or had nearly made it, when you took him out. Now God know’s where he is. In limbo somewhere, trapped between this existence and… the one he was seeking to enter.’

  Gribble hung his head. ‘I got scared, that’s why I pulled him out. I thought I’d pushed Jeff too far, that he wasn’t in the right physical shape to withstand the strain.’ He stared at the floor, tears of remorse welling in his eyes. ‘I try to help the guy and make a complete balls-up of everything! What a dumb asshole!’

  He felt a hand on his shoulder. Annie squeezed it comfortingly. It didn’t make him feel any better. If anything, it made him feel worse, because her consolation only chafed and made more unbearable his sense of stupidity and failure.

  Then Doctor Khuman surprised him. ‘Your friend Cawdor’s physical condition is not a relevant factor,’ he informed Gribble with a shake of the head. ‘You see, in that other place, the life of the mind where he dwells, he suffers no wounds that were inflicted here, in the outer world. He has two good hands. He is physically as he imagines himself to be – a whole man. It is his psychological strength, his will and determination and self-belief – those are the qualities that are absolutely crucial.’ Doctor Khuman regarded the prone body, the face with its waxy pallor. ‘He has passed through, beyond the pale, but perhaps he remains there, adrift in nowhere; in the literal sense, a lost soul.’

  ‘But we can do something,’ Annie Lorentz burst out. ‘Can’t we, Satish? Can’t we help him somehow?’ She pointed to the helmet ‘That contraption, Gil’s VR program, it worked before. Why not try it again?’

  ‘You don’t understand, Annie. It will do no good. What you see on the bed is an empty shell. It would be like fitting the helmet to a dead carcass. The person you knew as Jeff Cawdor has vacated it’

  ‘So there’s nothing we can do?’ Annie leant against Gribble and gazed down at the body. Her voice sank to a whisper. ‘No way we can reach him?’

  Doctor Khuman didn’t answer, which was what Gribble had expected all along. The dying ember of hope was finally extinguished. No way through. A dead end. Feeling hopeless and wretched, he watched as Doctor Khuman lifted the shiny black helmet in both hands. The action meant nothing, triggered no response in Gribble. His stare remained blank and uncomprehending even when he heard Doctor Khuman say, ‘Yes, there is something we can do, Annie. Where Cawdor has gone, I can go, too. Well, Mr Gribble?’ he said, a faint smile straining his lips. ‘Would you like another guinea pig for your experiment?’

  ‘Another…?’ His meaning at last penetrated Gil Gribble’s befuddled brain. He swallowed a dry lump in his throat. ‘I can’t do it, doc… I daren’t risk it, not after what happened to Jeff.’

  ‘You are not risking anything, Mr Gribble,’ Doctor Khuman said gently. ‘I am. And I am quite prepared, and willing, to accept the risk. But of course I need your agreement as well as your expertise. Well?’

  Her pale-blue eyes fixed on Doctor Khuman, Annie Lorentz clutched Gribble’s arm. ‘Satish, you don’t mean – the same thing that happened to Jeff might happen to you?’

  ‘I won’t deny that it could happen, Annie. Anything is possible. But it is more a possibility than a probability. I’m sure Mr Gribble appreciates the distinction. Isn’t that so?’

  Gribble’s nod was mechanical.

  Doctor Khuman’s nod was brisk. ‘Good.’

  Cawdor is blind and lost. He thinks, I’m trapped in here. Going round and round and getting nowhere. Gribble had offered him hope – the belief that entering the Zone would give him the power to defeat Kersh. Back there awhile, out on the terrace, he had been filled with expectation that it was himself and not Kersh who was in control. And then – nothing.

  Now Cawdor feels lost and alone and helpless, and knows in his heart the bleakness of utter despair. He has deluded himself into thinking he was getting near to Kersh. Nearer and nearer pounded the rhythm inside him, when the truth is that Kersh is as safe and impregnable as ever in his tower. Nothing can harm him because he has created this world in his own image. And, because Cawdor too is part of the image inside Kersh’s head, he cannot escape from it.

  Cawdor’s hand twitches.

  Part of the image –

  Cawdor’s hand jangles with a surge of pure energy.

  – inside Kersh’s head.

  How much nearer to Kersh can he get than that? He’s here already. In the blink of an eye the vast gulf that separates the two of them shrinks to zero. He’s so near, Cawdor realises, so damn close that he and Kersh are bound together as a single indivisible entity. The difference being that until now Kersh has wielded the power, disrupting the flow of events – which is what Doctor Khuman meant by ‘disruption’, Cawdor suddenly understands, at their first meeting, that stormy morning in his office. Until now Kersh has called the shots, because of Cawdor’s failure to realise that he also possessed the power to influence the course of events. The signs had been there all along. The broken mirror in the bathroom. The dreams of the sailing ship. The night of his drunken stupor when he’d seen Kersh in the electric chair. Phyllis’s accusation that he had molested her when the fantasy had existed only in his mind: that had been Kersh too. Sarah and Daniella falling under the influence of the Beamers: Kersh again. At every critical stage Kersh had stepped in and twisted events to serve his own demented purpose. While Cawdor had stood impotently by, the ignorant and hapless victim, not knowing he too had the power to shape events, even when Doctor Khuman had told him precisely that in so many words.

  How could he have been so fucking blind? When, right from the start, it was all as clear as daylight? He ought to have acted sooner – he could have acted – but for his ignorance. No, not ignorance alone. Stupidity. The signs were all there in the shards of broken mirror on the bathroom floor. Pointing to the future and into the past. God help him, the portents were staring him in the face and he had done nothing.

  Blind ignorance and wilful stupidity.

  For these sins of omission Cawdor has paid a terrible price. He has been stripped of everything he held dear, left with nothing but a broken body teetering on the cusp between life and death. And still Kersh isn’t done with him. He can resurrect those same searing images any time he likes, as many times as he likes, replaying the same events in an endless loop to gratify his sadistic pleasure.

  Always and for ever, replaying them from here to eternity, each time twisting the screws of torture tighter on Cawdor’s rack of guilt and self-recrimination. On and on, for ever, always the same.

  And the same. The same. The same. The same.

  They decided to use Doctor Khuman’s study, three doors along from where Cawdor lay stiff and silent as a waxwork. Before they could begin, however, there was another matter to attend to. Mrs Brandt had been summoned and instructed to arrange for the removal of the corpse of Phyllis Keets. Several things concerning this puzzled Gribble. Was the housekeeper – though without question a resourceful woman – supposed to manage this by herself, or was there help to hand? Even more perplexing, Doctor Khuman didn’t ask for, and apparently didn’t require, any kind of explanation for the unexpected appearance of Phyllis Keets, nor for her demise. Almost as if, Gribble thought, he knew
her identity, and her purpose in coming to the Troth Foundation was no mystery to him.

  It certainly was to Gribble. Though for the time being he put such mysteries and speculations on hold: there was more pressing business that couldn’t wait.

  Seated behind Doctor Khuman’s desk, the keyboard and screen in front of him, Gribble made his final preparations. Already wearing the helmet, Doctor Khuman reclined in the armchair opposite, his hands splayed on the leather arms, sensor pads attached to the insides of both wrists. Annie Lorentz sat on the carpet facing him, leaning back against the desk, in her customary position of knees drawn up and clasped in her arms. Gribble could see the top of her head; it was a great comfort to know she was there.

  Annie peeked at him over the desk. Her eyes were large and shadowy with apprehension. ‘You sure about this, Gil? You want to go through with it?’

  ‘No,’ Gribble replied stolidly. ‘But I have to. I owe it to Jeff after what happened.’

  ‘That wasn’t your fault. Doctor Khuman said as much.’

  ‘He also said that Jeff was trapped in some kind of no-man’s-land like a wandering – what was it? – lost soul. I couldn’t live with that.’

  Annie held his gaze. She turned back and crouched over her knees, eyes narrowed, watching Doctor Khuman with scarcely a blink. Gribble spent a few moments more finalising his preparations. Then he was ready. He pressed the key.

  Far away, in the murky depths of the underground passage, Kersh sees a vast shape which glitters faintly. The shape is advancing towards him, filling the passage, its bulbous sides brushing the stone walls. The glittering effect, Kersh now makes out, is caused by chunky rhinestones and hundreds of sequins on a glowing one-piece suit of almost fluorescent white. The suit is split in a V down the middle, revealing a hairless chest that swells to a vast pale belly that overflows a straining belt, its gold buckle encrusted with a rainbow of bright flashing stones.