He needn't have feared. The one occasion he did see Quaid's stooping shoulders across the quadrangle he was involved in a smiling exchange with Cheryl Fromm. She laughed, musically, her pleasure echoing off the wall of the History Department. The jealousy had left Steve altogether. He wouldn't have been paid to be so near to Quaid, so intimate with him.
The time he spent alone, away from the bustle of lectures and overfull corridors, gave Steve's mind time to idle. His thoughts returned, like tongue to tooth, like fingernail to scab, to his fears.
And so to his childhood.
At the age of six, Steve had been struck by a car. The injuries were not particularly bad, but concussion left him partially deaf. It was a profoundly distressing experience for him; not understanding why he was suddenly cut off from the world. It was an inexplicable torment, and the child assumed it was eternal.
One moment his life had been real, full of shouts and laughter. The next he was cut off from it, and the external world became an aquarium, full of gaping fish with grotesque smiles. Worse still, there were times when he suffered what the doctors called tinnitus, a roaring or ringing sound in the ears. His head would fill with the most outlandish noises, whoops and whistlings, that played like sound-effects to the flailings of the outside world. At those times his stomach would churn, and a band of iron would be wrapped around his forehead, crushing his thoughts into fragments, dissociating head from hand, intention from practice. He would be swept away in a tide of panic, completely unable to make sense of the world while his head sang and rattled.
But at night came the worst terrors. He would wake, sometimes, in what had been (before the accident) the reassuring womb of his bedroom, to find the ringing had begun in his sleep.
His eyes would jerk open. His body would be wet with sweat. His mind would be filled with the most raucous din, which he was locked in with, beyond hope of reprieve. Nothing could silence his head, and nothing, it seemed, could bring the world, the speaking, laughing, crying world back to him.
He was alone.
That was the beginning, middle and end of the dread. He was absolutely alone with his cacophony. Locked in this house, in this room, in this body, in this head, a prisoner of deaf, blind flesh.
It was almost unbearable. In the night the boy would sometimes cry out, not knowing he was making any sound, and the fish who had been his parents would turn on the light and come to try and help him, bending over his bed making faces, their soundless mouths forming ugly shapes in their attempts to help. Their touches would calm him at last; with time his mother learned the trick of soothing away the panic that swept over him.
A week before his seventh birthday his hearing returned, not perfectly, but well enough for it to seem like a miracle. The world snapped back into focus; and life began afresh.
It took several months for the boy to trust his senses again. He would still wake in the night, half-anticipating the head-noises.
But though his ears would ring at the slightest volume of sound, preventing Steve from going to rock concerts with the rest of the students, he now scarcely ever noticed his slight deafness.
He remembered, of course. Very well. He could bring back the taste of his panic; the feel of the iron band around his head. And there was a residue of fear there; of the dark, of being alone.
But then, wasn't everyone afraid to be alone? To be utterly alone.
Steve had another fear now, far more difficult to pin down.
Quaid.
In a drunken revelation session he had told Quaid about his childhood, about the deafness, about the night terrors. Quaid knew about his weakness: the clear route into the heart of Steve's dread. He had a weapon, a stick to beat Steve with, should it ever come to that. Maybe that was why he chose not to speak to Cheryl (warn her, was that what he wanted to do?) and certainly that was why he avoided Quaid.
The man had a look, in certain moods, of malice. Nothing more or less. He looked like a man with malice deep, deep in him.
Maybe those four months of watching people with the sound turned down had sensitized Steve to the tiny glances, sneers and smiles that flit across people's faces. He knew Quaid's life was a labyrinth; a map of its complexities was etched on his face in a thousand tiny expressions.
The next phase of Steve's initiation into Quaid's secret world didn't come for almost three and a half months. The university broke for the summer recess, and the students went their ways. Steve took his usual vacation job at his father's printing works; it was long hours, and physically exhausting, but an undeniable relief for him. Academe had overstuffed his mind, he felt force-fed with words and ideas. The print work sweated all of that out of him rapidly, sorting out the jumble in his mind.
It was a good time: he scarcely thought of Quaid at all.
He returned to campus in the late September. The students were still thin on the ground. Most of the courses didn't start for another week; and there was a melancholy air about the place without its usual melee of complaining, flirting, arguing kids.
Steve was in the library, cornering a few important books before others on his course had their hands on them. Books were pure gold at the beginning of term, with reading lists to be checked off, and the university book shop forever claiming the necessary titles were on order. They would invariably arrive, those vital books, two days after the seminar in which the author was to be discussed. This final year Steve was determined to be ahead of the rush for the few copies of seminal works the library possessed.
The familiar voice spoke.
"Early to work."
Steve looked up to meet Quaid's pin-prick eyes.
"I'm impressed, Steve."
"What with?"
"Your enthusiasm for the job."
"Oh."
Quaid smiled. "What are you looking for?"
"Something on Bentham."
"I've got "Principles of Morals and Legislation'. Will that do?"
It was a trap. No: that was absurd. He was offering a book; how could that simple gesture be construed as a trap? "Come to think of it," the smile broadened, "I think it's the library copy I've got. I'll give it to you." "Thanks."
"Good holiday?"
"Yes. Thank you. You?"
"Very rewarding."
The smile had decayed into a thin line beneath his -”You've grown a moustache."
It was an unhealthy example of the species. Thin, patchy, and dirty-blond, it wandered back and forth under Quaid's nose as if looking for a way off his face. Quaid looked faintly embarrassed.
"Was it for Cheryl?"
He was definitely embarrassed now.
"Well…"
"Sounds like you had a good vacation."
The embarrassment was surmounted by something else.
"I've got some wonderful photographs," Quaid said.
"What of?"
"Holiday snaps."
Steve couldn't believe his ears. Had C. Fromm tamed the Quaid? Holiday snaps?
"You won't believe some of them."
There was something of the Arab selling dirty postcards about Quaid's manner. What the hell were these photographs? Split beaver shots of Cheryl, caught reading Kant?
"I don't think of you as being a photographer."
"It's become a passion of mine."
He grinned as he said 'passion'. There was a barely-suppressed excitement in his manner. He was positively gleaming with pleasure.
"You've got to come and see them."
"I-”
"Tonight. And pick up the Bentham at the same time."
"Thanks."
"I've got a house for myself these days. Round the corner from the Maternity Hospital, in Pilgrim Street. Number sixty-four. Sometime after nine?"
"Right. Thanks. Pilgrim Street." Quaid nodded.
"I didn't know there were any habitable houses in Pilgrim Street."
"Number sixty-four."
Pilgrim Street was on its knees. Most of the houses were already rubble. A few were in the proces
s of being knocked down. Their inside walls were unnaturally exposed; pink and pale green wallpapers, fireplaces on upper storeys hanging over chasms of smoking brick. Stairs leading from nowhere to nowhere, and back again. Number sixty-four stood on its own. The houses in the terrace to either side had been demolished and bull-dozed away, leaving a desert of impacted brick-dust which a few hardy, and fool-hardy, weeds had tried to populate. A three-legged white dog was patrolling its territory along the side of sixty-four, leaving little piss-marks at regular intervals as signs of its ownership.
Quaid's house, though scarcely palatial, was more welcoming than the surrounding wasteland. They drank some bad red wine together, which Steve had brought with him, and they smoked some grass. Quaid was far more mellow than Steve had ever seen him before, quite happy to talk trivia instead of dread; laughing occasionally; even telling a dirty joke. The interior of the house was bare to the point of being spartan. No pictures on the walls; no decoration of any kind. Quaid's books, and there were literally hundreds of them, were piled on the floor in no particular sequence that Steve could make out. The kitchen and bathroom were primitive. The whole atmosphere was almost monastic.
After a couple of easy hours, Steve's curiosity got the better of him.
"Where's the holiday snaps, then?" he said, aware that he was slurring his words a little, and no longer giving a shit. "Oh yes. My experiment."
"Experiment?"
"Tell you the truth, Steve, I'm not so sure I should show them to you."
"Why not?"
"I'm into serious stuff, Steve."
"And I'm not ready for serious stuff, is that what you're saying?"
Steve could feel Quaid's technique working on him, even though it was transparently obvious what he was doing. "I didn't say you weren't ready -” "What the hell is this stuff?" "Pictures."
"Of?"
"You remember Cheryl." Pictures of Cheryl. Ha.
"How could I forget?"
"She won't be coming back this term."
"Oh."
"She had a revelation." Quaid's stare was basilisk-like.
"What do you mean?"
"She was always so calm, wasn't she?" Quaid was talking about her as though she were dead. "Calm, cool and collected."
"Yes, I suppose she was."
"Poor bitch. All she wanted was a good fuck."
Steve smirked like a kid at Quaid's dirty talk. It was a little shocking; like seeing teacher with his dick hanging out of his trousers.
"She spent some of the vacation here."
"Here?"
"In this house."
"You like her then?"
"She's an ignorant cow. She's pretentious, she's weak, she's stupid. But she wouldn't give, she wouldn't give a fucking thing."
"You mean she wouldn't screw?"
"Oh no, she'd strip off her knickers soon as look at you. It was her fears she wouldn't give -"
Same old song.
"But I persuaded her, in the fullness of time."
Quaid pulled out a box from behind a pile of philosophy books. In it was a sheaf of black and white photographs, blown up to twice postcard size. He passed the first one of the series over to Steve.
"I locked her away you see, Steve." Quaid was as unemotional as a newsreader. "To see if I could needle her into showing her dread a little bit."
"What do you mean, locked her away?"
"Upstairs."
Steve felt strange. He could hear his ears singing, very quietly. Bad wine always made his head ring. "I locked her away upstairs," Quaid said again, “as an experiment. That's why I took this house. No neighbours to hear."
No neighbours to hear what?
Steve looked at the grainy image in his hand.
"Concealed camera," said Quaid, "She never knew I was photographing her."
Photograph one was of a small, featureless room. A little plain furniture.
"That's the room. Top of the house. Warm. A bit stuffy even. No noise."
No noise.
Quaid proffered Photograph Two.
Same room. Now most of the furniture had been removed. A sleeping bag was laid along one wall. A table. A chair. A bare light bulb.
"That's how I laid it out for her."
"It looks like a cell."
Quaid grunted.
Photograph Three. The same room. On the table a jug of water. In the corner of the room, a bucket, roughly covered with a towel.
"What's the bucket for?"
"She had to piss."
"Yes."
"All amenities provided," said Quaid. "I didn't intend to reduce her to an animal."
Even in his drunken state, Steve took Quaid's inference.
He didn't intend to reduce her to an animal. However.
Photograph Four. On the table, on an unpatterned plate, a slab of meat. A bone sticks out from it. "Beef," said Quaid.
"But she's a vegetarian."
"So she is. It's slightly salted, well-cooked, good beef." Photograph Five. The same. Cheryl is in the room. The door is closed. She is kicking the door, her foot and fist and face a blur of fury.
"I put her in the room about five in the morning. She was sleeping: I carried her over the threshold myself.
Very romantic. She didn't know what the hell was going on."
"You locked her in there?"
"Of course. An experiment."
"She knew nothing about it?"
"We'd talked about dread, you know me. She knew what I wanted to discover. Knew I wanted guinea-pigs. She soon caught on. Once she realized what I was up to she calmed down."
Photograph Six. Cheryl sits in the corner of the room, thinking.
"I think she believed she could out-wait me."
Photograph Seven. Cheryl looks at the leg of beef, glancing at it on the table.
"Nice photo, don't you think? Look at the expression of disgust on her face. She hated even the smell of cooked meat. She wasn't hungry then, of course."
Eight: she sleeps.
Nine: she pisses. Steve felt uncomfortable, watching the girl squatting on the bucket, knickers round her ankles. Tearstains on her face.
Ten: she drinks water from the jug.
Eleven: she sleeps again, back to the room, curled up like a fetus.
"How long has she been in the room?"
"This was only fourteen hours in. She lost orientation as to time very quickly. No light change, you see. Her body clock was fucked up pretty soon."
"How long was she in here?"
"'Till the point was proved."
Twelve: Awake, she cruises the meat on the table, caught surreptitiously glancing down at it.
"This was taken the following morning. I was asleep: the camera just took pictures every quarter hour. Look at her eyes…"
Steve peered more closely at the photograph. There was a certain desperation on Cheryl's face: a haggard, wild look. The way she stared at the beef she could have been trying to hypnotize it.
"She looks sick."
"She's tired, that's all. She slept a lot, as it happened, but it seemed just to make her more exhausted than ever. She doesn't know now if it's day or night. And she's hungry of course. It's been a day and a half. She's more than a little peckish."
Thirteen: she sleeps again, curled into an even tighter ball, as though she wanted to swallow herself. Fourteen: she drinks more water.
"I replaced the jug when she was asleep. She slept deeply: I could have done a jig in there and it wouldn't have woken her. Lost to the world."
He grinned. Mad, thought Steve, the man's mad.
"God, it stank in there. You know how women smell sometimes: it's not sweat, it's something else. Heavy odour: meaty. Bloody. She came on towards the end of her time. Hadn't planned it that way."
Fifteen: she touches the meat.
"This is where the cracks begin to show," said Quaid, with quiet triumph in his voice. "This is where the dread begins."
Steve studied the photograph closely. The grain of
the print blurred the detail, but the cool mama was in pain, that was for sure. Her face was knotted up, half in desire, half in repulsion, as she touched the food. Sixteen: she was at the door again, throwing herself at it, every part of her body flailing. Her mouth a black blur of angst, screaming at the blank door.
"She always ended up haranguing me, whenever she'd had a confrontation with the meat."
"How long is this?"
"Coming up for three days. You're looking at a hungry woman."
It wasn't difficult to see that. The next photo she stood still in the middle of the room, averting her eyes from the temptation of the food, her entire body tensed with the dilemma.
"You're starving her."
"She can go ten days without eating quite easily. Fasts are common in any civilized country, Steve. Sixty per cent of the British population is clinically obese at any one time. She was too fat anyhow."
Eighteen: she sits, the fat girl, in her corner of the room, weeping.
"About now she began to hallucinate. Just little mental ticks. She thought she felt something in her hair, or on the back of her hand. I'd see her staring into mid-air sometimes watching nothing."
Nineteen: she washes herself. She is stripped to the waist, her breasts are heavy, her face is drained of expression. The meat is a darker tone than in the previous photographs.
"She washed herself regularly. Never let twelve hours go by without washing from head to toe." "The meat looks…"
"Ripe?"
"Dark."
"It's quite warm in her little room; and there's a few flies in there with her. They've found the meat: laid their eggs. Yes, it's ripening up quite nicely."
"Is that part of the plan?"
"Sure. If the meat revolted when it was fresh, what about her disgust at rotted meat? That's the crux of her dilemma, isn't it? The longer she waits to eat, the more disgusted she becomes with what she's been given to feed on. She's trapped with her own horror of meat on the one hand, and her dread of dying on the other. Which is going to give first?"
Steve was no less trapped now.
On the one hand this joke had already gone too far, and Quaid's experiment had become an exercise in sadism. On the other hand he wanted to know how far this story ended. There was an undeniable fascination in watching the woman suffer.