“No, thank you,” said Richard, warily.
Brother Fuliginous added a little milk to the tea, and passed a cup and saucer to Richard. “Is it poisoned?” he asked.
The abbot looked almost offended. “Good gracious, no.”
Richard sipped the tea, which tasted more or less exactly like tea always tasted. “But this is part of the ordeal?”
Brother Fuliginous took the abbot’s hands and placed a cup of tea in them. “In a manner of speaking,” said the abbot. “We always like to give the seekers a cup of tea before they start. Part of the ordeal for us. Not for you.” He sipped his own tea, and a beatific smile spread across his ancient face. “Rather nice tea, all things considered.”
Richard put down his teacup, almost untouched. “Would you mind,” he asked, “if we just began the ordeal?”
“Not at all,” said the abbot. “Not at all.” He stood up, and the three of them walked toward a door, at the far end of the room.
“Is there . . .” Richard paused, trying to decide what he was trying to ask. Then he said, “Is there anything you can tell me about the ordeal?”
The abbot shook his head. There really was nothing to say: he led the seekers to the door. And then he would wait, for an hour, or two, in the corridor outside. Then he would go back in, and remove the remains of the seeker from the shrine, and inter it in the vaults. And sometimes, which was worse, they would not be dead, although you could not call what was left of them alive, and those unfortunates the Black Friars cared for as best they could.
“Right,” said Richard. And he smiled, unconvincingly, and added, “Well, lead on, Macduff.”
Brother Fuliginous pulled back the bolts on the door. They opened with a crash, like twin gunshots. He pulled the door open. Richard stepped through it. Brother Fuliginous pushed the door closed behind him, and swung the bolts back into place. He led the abbot back to his chair and placed the cup of tea back in the old man’s hand. The abbot sipped his tea, in silence. And then he said, with honest regret in his voice, “It’s ‘lay on, Macduff,’ actually. But I hadn’t the heart to correct him. He sounded like such a nice young man.”
Twelve
Richard Mayhew walked down the Underground platform. It was a District Line station: the sign said BLACKFRIARS. The platform was empty. Somewhere in the distance an Underground train roared and rattled, driving a ghost-wind along the platform, which scattered a copy of the tabloid Sun into its component pages, four-color breasts and black-and-white invective scurrying and tumbling off the platform and down onto the rails.
Richard walked the length of the platform. Then he sat down on a bench and waited for something to happen.
Nothing happened.
He rubbed his head and felt slightly sick. There were footsteps on the platform, near him, and he looked up to see a prim little girl walking past him, hand in hand with a woman who looked like a larger, older version of the girl. They glanced at him and then, rather obviously, looked away. “Don’t get too near to him, Melanie,” advised the woman, in a very audible whisper.
Melanie looked at Richard, staring in the way children stare, without embarrassment or self-consciousness. Then she looked back at her mother. “Why do people like that stay alive?” she asked, curiously.
“Not enough guts to end it all,” explained her mother.
Melanie risked another glance at Richard. “Pathetic,” she said. Their feet pattered away down the platform, and soon they were gone. He wondered if he had imagined it. He tried to remember why he was standing on this platform. Was he waiting for a Tube train? Where was he going? He knew the answer was somewhere in his head, somewhere close at hand, but he could not touch it, could not bring it back from the lost places. He sat there, alone and wondering. Was he dreaming? With his hands he felt the hard red plastic seat beneath him, stamped the platform with mud-encrusted shoes (where had the mud come from?), touched his face . . . No. This was no dream. Wherever he was, was real. He felt odd: detached, and depressed, and horribly, strangely saddened. Someone sat down next to him. Richard did not look up, did not turn his head.
“Hello,” said a familiar voice. “How are you, Dick? You all right?”
Richard looked up. He felt his face creasing into a smile, hope hitting him like a blow to the chest. “Gary?” he asked, scared. Then, “You can see me?”
Gary grinned. “You always were a kidder,” he said. “Funny man, funny.”
Gary was wearing a suit and tie. He was clean-shaven, and had not a hair out of place. Richard realized what he must look like: muddy, unshaven, rumpled . . . . “Gary? I . . . listen, I know what I must look like. I can explain.” He thought for a moment. “No . . . I can’t. Not really.”
“It’s okay,” said Gary reassuringly. His voice was soothing, sane. “Not sure how to tell you this. Bit awkward.” He paused. “Look,” he explained. “I’m not really here.”
“Yes, you are,” said Richard.
Gary shook his head, sympathetically. “No,” he said. “I’m not. I’m you. Talking to yourself.”
Richard wondered vaguely if this was one of Gary’s jokes. “Maybe this will help,” said Gary. He raised his hands to his face, pushed at it, molded, shaped. His face oozed like warm Silly Putty.
“Is that better?” said the person who had been Gary, in a voice that was jarringly familiar. Richard knew the new face: he had shaved it most weekday mornings since he had left school; he had brushed its teeth, combed its hair, and, on occasion, wished it looked more like Tom Cruise’s, or John Lennon’s, or anyone else’s, really. It was, of course, his face. “You’re sitting on Blackfriars Station at rush hour,” said the other Richard, casually. “You’re talking to yourself. And you know what they say about people who talk to themselves. It’s just that you’re starting to edge a little closer to sanity, now.”
The damp, muddy Richard stared into the face of the clean, well-dressed Richard, and he said, “I don’t know who you are or what you’re trying to do. But you aren’t even very convincing: you don’t really look like me.” He was lying, and he knew it.
His other self smiled encouragingly, and shook his head. “I’m you, Richard,” he said. “I’m whatever’s left of your sanity . . .”
It was not the embarassing echo of his voice he heard on answering machines, on tapes and home videos, that horrid parody of a voice that passed for his: the man spoke with Richard’s true voice, the voice he heard in his head when he spoke, resonant and real.
“Concentrate!” shouted the man with Richard’s face. “Look at this place, try to see the people, try to see the truth . . . you’re already the closest to reality that you’ve been in a week . . .”
“This is bullshit,” said Richard, flatly, desperately. He shook his head, denying everything his other self was saying, but, still, he looked at the platform, wondering what it was he was meant to be seeing. Then something flickered, at the corner of his vision; he followed it with his head, but it was gone.
“Look,” whispered his double. “See.”
“See what?” He was standing on an empty, dimly lit station platform, a lonely mausoleum of a place. And then . . .
The noise and the light struck him like a bottle across the face: he was standing on Blackfriars Station, in the middle of the rush hour. People bustled by him: a riot of noise and light, of shoving, moving humanity. There was an Underground train waiting at the platform, and, reflected in its window, Richard could see himself. He looked crazy; he had a week’s growth of beard; food was crusted around his mouth; one eye had recently been blackened, and a boil, an angry red carbuncle, was coming up on the side of his nose; he was filthy, covered in a black, encrusted dirt which filled his pores and lived under his fingernails; his eyes were red and bleary, his hair was matted and snarled. He was a crazy homeless person, standing on a platform of a busy Underground station, in the heart of the rush hour.
Richard buried his face deep in his hands.
When he raised his face, the
other people were gone. The platform was dark again, and he was alone. He sat down on a bench and closed his eyes. A hand found his hand, held it for some moments, and then squeezed it. A woman’s hand: he could smell a familiar perfume.
The other Richard sat on his left, and now Jessica sat on his right, holding his hand in hers, looking at him compassionately. He had never seen that expression on her face before.
“Jess?” he said.
Jessica shook her head. She let go of his hand. “I’m afraid not,” she said. “I’m still you. But you have to listen, darling. You’re the closest to reality you’ve been—”
“You people keep saying, the closest to reality, the closest to sanity, I don’t know what you . . .” He paused. Something came back to him, then. He looked at the other version of himself, at the woman he had loved. “Is this part of the ordeal?” he demanded.
“Ordeal?” asked Jessica. She exchanged a concerned glance with the-other-Richard-who-wasn’t-him.
“Yes. Ordeal. With the Black Friars who live under London,” Richard said. As he said it, it became more real. “There’s a key I have to get for this angel called Islington. If I get him the key, he’ll send me home again . . .” His mouth dried up, and he could talk no longer.
“Listen to yourself,” said the other Richard, gently. “Can’t you tell how ridiculous all this sounds?”
Jessica looked as if she were trying not to cry. Her eyes glistened. “You’re not going through an ordeal, Richard. You—you had some kind of nervous breakdown. A couple of weeks ago. I think you just cracked up. I broke off our engagement—you’d been acting so strangely, it was like you were a different person, I—I couldn’t cope. . . .Then you vanished . . .” The tears began to run down her cheeks, and she stopped talking to blow her nose on a tissue.
The other Richard began to speak. “I wandered, alone and crazy, through the streets of London, sleeping under bridges, eating food from garbage cans. Shivering and lost and alone. Muttering to myself, talking to people who weren’t there . . .”
“I’m so sorry, Richard,” said Jessica. She was crying, now, her face contorted and unattractive. Her mascara was beginning to run, and her nose was red. He had never seen her hurting before, and he realized how much he wanted to take her pain away. Richard reached out for her, to try to hold her, to comfort and reassure her, but the world slid and twisted and changed . . .
Someone stumbled into him, cursed and walked away. Richard was lying prone on the platform, in the rush-hour glare. The side of his face was sticky and cold. He pulled his head up off the ground. He had been lying in a pool of his own vomit. At least, he hoped it was his own. Passersby stared at him with revulsion, or, after one flick of the eyes, did not look at him again.
He wiped at his face with his hands and tried to get up, but he could no longer remember how. Richard began to whimper. He shut his eyes tightly, and he kept them shut. When he opened them, thirty seconds, or an hour, or a day later, the platform was in semidarkness. He climbed to his feet. There was nobody there. “Hello?” he called. “Help me. Please.”
Gary was sitting on the bench, watching him. “What, you still need someone to tell you what to do?” Gary got up and walked over to where Richard was standing. “Richard,” he said, urgently. “I’m you. The only advice I can give you is what you’re telling yourself. Only, maybe you’re too scared to listen.”
“You aren’t me,” said Richard, but he no longer believed it.
“Touch me,” said Gary.
Richard reached a hand out: his hand pushed into Gary’s face, squashing and distorting it, as if it were pushing into warm bubble gum. Richard felt nothing in the air around his hand. He pulled his fingers out of Gary’s face.
“See?” said Gary. “I’m not here. All there is, is you, walking up and down the platform, talking to yourself, trying to get up the courage to . . .”
Richard had not meant to say anything; but his mouth moved and he heard his voice saying, “Trying to get up the courage to do what?”
A deep voice came over the loudspeaker, and echoed, distorted, down the platform. “London Transport would like to apologize for the delay. This is due to an incident at Blackfriars Station.” “To do that,” said Gary, inclining his head. “Become an incident at Blackfriars Station. To end it all. Your life’s a joyless, loveless, empty sham. You’ve got no friends—”
“I’ve got you,” whispered Richard.
Gary appraised Richard with frank eyes. “I think you’re an asshole,” he said, honestly. “A complete joke.”
“I’ve got Door, and Hunter, and Anaesthesia.”
Gary smiled. There was real pity in the smile, and it hurt Richard more than hatred or enmity could ever have done. “More imaginary friends? We all used to laugh at you round the office for those trolls. Remember them? On your desk.” He laughed. Richard started to laugh, too. It was all too horrible: there was nothing else to do but laugh. After some time he stopped laughing. Gary put his hand into his pocket and produced a small plastic troll. It had frizzy purple hair, and it had once sat on the top of Richard’s computer screen. “Here,” said Gary. He tossed the troll to Richard. Richard tried to catch it; he reached out his hands, but it fell through them as if they were not there. He went down onto his hands and knees on the empty platform, fumbling for the troll. It seemed to him, then, as if it were the only fragment he had of his real life: that if he could only get the troll back, perhaps he could get everything back . . .
Flash.
It was rush hour again. A train disgorged hundreds of people onto the platform, and hundreds of others tried to get on, and Richard was down on his hands and knees, being kicked and buffeted by the commuters. Somebody stepped on his fingers, hard. He screamed shrilly, and stuck his fingers into his mouth, instinctively, like a burned child; they tasted disgusting. He did not care: he could see the troll at the platform’s edge, now only ten feet away, and he crawled, slowly, on all fours, through the crowd, across the platform. People swore at him; they got in his way; they buffeted him. He had never imagined that ten feet could be such a long distance to travel.
Richard heard a high-pitched voice giggling, as he crawled, and he wondered who it could belong to. It was a disturbing giggle, nasty and strange. He wondered what manner of crazy person could giggle like that. He swallowed, and the giggling stopped, and then he knew.
He was almost at the edge of the platform. An elderly woman stepped onto the train, and as she did so, her foot knocked the purple-haired troll down into the darkness, down into the gap between the train and the platform. “No,” said Richard. He was still laughing, an awkward, wheezing laugh, but tears stung his eyes and spilled down his cheeks. He rubbed his eyes with his hands, making them sting even more.
Flash.
The platform was deserted and dark again. He climbed to his feet and walked, unsteadily, the last few feet, to the edge of the platform. He could see it there, down on the tracks, by the third rail: a small splash of purple, his troll. He looked ahead of him: there were enormous posters stuck to the wall on the other side of the tracks. The posters advertised credit cards and sports shoes and holidays in Cyprus. As he looked the words on the posters twisted and mutated.
New messages:
END IT ALL was one of them.
PUT YOURSELF OUT OF YOUR MISERY.
BE A MAN—DO YOURSELF IN.
HAVE A FATAL ACCIDENT TODAY.
He nodded. He was talking to himself. The posters did not really say that. Yes, he was talking to himself; and it was time that he listened. He could hear the rattling of a train, not far away, coming toward the station. Richard clenched his teeth, and swayed back and forth, as if he were still being buffeted by commuters, although he was alone on the platform.
The train was coming toward him, its headlights shining out from the tunnel like the eyes of a monstrous dragon in a childhood nightmare. And he understood then just how little effort it would take to make the pain stop—to take all the pain h
e ever had had, all the pain he ever would have, and make it all go away for ever and ever. He pushed his hands deep into his pockets, and took a deep breath. It would be so easy. A moment of pain, and then it would all be over and done . . .
There was something in his pocket. He felt it with his fingers: something smooth and hard and roughly spherical. He pulled it out of his pocket, and examined it: a quartz bead. He remembered picking it up, then. He had been on the far side of Night’s Bridge. The bead had been part of Anaesthesia’s necklace.
And from somewhere, in his head or out of it, he thought he heard the rat-girl say, “Richard. Hold on.” He did not know if there was anyone helping him at that moment. He suspected that he was, truly, talking to himself. That this was the real him speaking, and he was, finally, listening.
He nodded and put the bead back into his pocket. And he stood on the platform and waited for the train to come in. It arrived at the platform, slowed, came to a full stop.
The train doors hissed open. The carriage was filled with every manner and kind of people, all of whom were, unmistakably, quite dead. There were fresh corpses, with ragged cuts in their throats or bullet holes in their temples. There were old, desiccated bodies. There were strap-hanging cadavers, covered with cobwebs, and cancerous things lolling in their seats. Each corpse seemed, as much as one could tell, to have died by its own hand. Some were male, and some were female. Richard thought he had seen some of those faces, pinned to a long wall; but he could no longer remember where he had seen them, could not remember when. The carriage smelled like a morgue might at the end of a long, hot summer during the course of which the refrigeration equipment had failed for good.
Richard had no idea who he was, anymore; no idea what was or what was not true; nor whether he was brave or cowardly, mad or sane, but he knew the next thing he had to do. He stepped onto the train, and all the lights went out.