I could feel the two crouched bodies beside me trembling almost uncontrollably and I could only hope their nerve would hold, that neither of them would utter a sound in their fright. I squeezed them both, the only way I could think of calming them, but their ragged gasps for breath seemed inordinately loud to me.
The footsteps came to a shuffling halt and I heard the jangling of keys.
‘Do we use sedation?’ a man’s voice said.
‘A mild one,’ came the reply from another man. ‘Just for cooperation. He doesn’t want it too dosed up.’
Metal scraping against metal, a key being pushed into a lock.
‘It’ll behave,’ said a third voice. ‘Always does when it knows it’s in for a good time.’
More scraping, the big door being drawn back. Soft light brightened the corridor slightly and I pushed my companions further into our hiding place. A stench drifted through with the light, a reek that was far worse than the dormitory’s.
‘Who’s the partner?’
The voices were becoming fainter.
‘I think it’s the little crippled girl again . . .’
As they moved further inside, their words became too soft to be understood, but I thought – God, I was sure! – a name was mentioned. It sounded like ‘Bell’. Panic seized me. Had he said Constance’s surname? Could I have been mistaken? What did it mean if he had? Dread upon dread had tormented me that night, yet none affected me as badly as this. Too many frightening visions rushed into my head, most of them obscene, triggered by the phenomena in my own bedroom the previous night, that sick, incorporeal, sexual orgy of which Constance had been part.
Joseph winced as I squeezed his shoulder too hard, but he did not let out a cry. I dropped my hand away immediately, but the thoughts, the cruel, taunting images, would not cease.
Why hadn’t Constance told me the whole truth about PERFECT REST? Why hadn’t she shared its awful secret with me? Had I been wrong to think there was something between us, a bonding that was all to do with love and not just mutual disabilities? Didn’t she trust me enough to tell? Or was she ashamed? Did her involvement in what secretly went on at PERFECT REST shame her so deeply it was impossible for her to confide in me? Just what was her complicity in all this?
As the stench drifted out from the open doorway, almost choking us with its rancidness, the girl began to make soft mewling noises, the piteous sounds of an animal in distress. She crawled deeper into the corner created between sloping ceiling and floor, and I realized it wasn’t the smell that was causing the reaction but its source. Beside me, Joseph was trembling as if with fever, but other sounds distracted me again, distant voices, a grating, something sliding across stone, then shouting, voices raised in excitement or anger, I couldn’t tell which.
Quietness again. Shortly followed by a new disturbance.
It was a cumbersome dragging of feet, growing louder as it approached the doorway. Something grunted – I thought it might be an animal – and one of the men shouted. The dragging of heavy footsteps once more. Now all three of us in the sanctuary beneath the stairway pushed ourselves in further, trying to make ourselves as small as possible, using the darkness as a cloak as the sounds drew nearer.
I thought I could hear rough breathing, a guttural kind of sound, and it seemed very close, almost as if whatever was being escorted from that basement chamber was standing right over us. I realized it was the acoustics of the short, brick corridor, the concrete beneath us, and the angle of the stairway over our heads, a funnel effect that was deceptive. Nevertheless, we froze in the darkness, none of us daring to breathe lest we be heard, and even too tense to tremble.
The group of men and their charge was emerging from the underground room and it was with relief that we heard the first footsteps over our heads. The scuffing-shuffling joined them and a tickling sensation on my cheek told me that dust was drifting down from our angled ceiling.
We waited there, still holding our breath, my knees hurting as they pressed into concrete, all of us too afraid to move for fear of giving ourselves away, until the footsteps and the scuffing died away and we were left nerve-racked and drained.
I slumped back against the wall and Mary finally let a shudder escape. There was just enough light in this little nook to see Joseph crouched on his knees, hands clenched to his chest as if he’d been praying. We remained alert for any more noises, the footsteps returning, the grunting of something less than human, but nothing came. Eventually, when we were able to control the shaking, calm our own breathing, I felt brave enough to speak, albeit in a low whisper.
‘What the hell was that?’
Joseph leaned closer to speak into my ear. ‘I think it’s too late,’ he whispered. ‘I think we should leave now.’
‘Without Constance? I’m sorry, Joseph, but that isn’t an option.’
‘You can’t help her.’
‘I can bloody well try.’
Mary twisted round to clutch at me. ‘P-p-please . . .’ she stammered.
‘I’m not leaving without her,’ I said firmly, even though my natural inclination was to get as far away from that place as possible. Forget the media, go straight to the police. These two alone would be enough to initiate an investigation and when I told the Law what I knew, they’d be applying for an immediate search warrant. It would still take time though, and who knew what would happen to Constance in the meanwhile? Images of her, vulnerable and naked, surrounded by creatures from some dark realm that knew no place on this earth, invaded my mind and I had the notion that the phantasmagoria last night, in my own home, was a portent of some kind, illusions based upon a terrible reality that was to come. No, I couldn’t leave here without her, she was too precious to me. Even the fresh doubts as to her true involvement with PERFECT REST could not dissuade me.
‘I have to go after them,’ I said as I began to crawl from our hideaway.
‘No, please,’ I heard Joseph call after me.
But I was on my feet and swinging round on to the first step before he struggled out behind me, the girl following.
‘Wait!’ he cried, grabbing my hand on the rail.
‘I can’t, Joseph. I have to get to her.’
‘There’s another way!’
I hesitated on the second step. Their eyes were wide as they stared up at me from the gloomy corridor, and I saw that Mary had been weeping, probably through the whole ordeal.
‘Michael says he knows where they are keeping her, but there’s another way to get there, a safer way.’ Joseph kept his dry old hand over mine on the stair-rail.
‘But they took that thing up here.’ I pointed at the way ahead with my other hand.
‘There will be too many between us and Constance.’
‘Michael is telling you this?’ And in truth, I was having my own strange mind images – a long, dark chamber, doors on either side, a narrow stairway leading up – and something – not a voice, just a thought with these impressions – was urging me to follow Joseph.
‘He’s letting us know,’ Joseph replied.
I peered up the stairs. ‘But there isn’t another way,’ I said.
Joseph tapped my hand and when I turned, he was pointing in another direction. ‘There is,’ he said. ‘Through there.’
I looked in the direction he was indicating, saw the black cavern of the open doorway behind us, felt weak at the thought of going in there. I really hadn’t liked what I’d heard coming out just a few moments ago.
Slowly, I returned to the bottom of the stairs, reaching inside my jacket for the pocket torch as I did so. Joseph and Mary huddled together, watching me.
‘Is that the way you two want to go?’ I asked them.
They glanced at each other before Joseph replied. ‘No, but Michael tells us it is the best way.’
I turned on the torch and shone it through the doorway. Its light barely penetrated the shadows.
‘What else is in there, Joseph?’ I asked. ‘What does the Doctor keep down here?’
>
He seemed afraid to answer, and it was the girl who spoke.
‘Others,’ she said.
37
Others.
That’s what Mary had said. Others. But what did she mean?
I thought I had seen everything in this God-forsaken hell-house, and now I was being told there was something more.
Others.
I felt my skin begin to crawl.
38
The light-switch was on the inside, beside the big iron door that had been left open, and I pushed it down to find that I still needed the torch, for even though at least six lights came on along both sides of the lengthy, low-ceilinged chamber, their glow came from behind thick, pearled glass and wire mesh. The stench prickled my nostrils and there was something deeply oppressing about the atmosphere itself.
My skin still crawled, as if tiny spider legs were scurrying over its surface.
I raised the torch, throwing its beam ahead. A wide, flagstone floor swept ahead of me, moss growing from its cracks, puddles of water pooling beneath the walls. I saw there were doorways all the way along on both sides, doorways set in shallow alcoves, rough-wood doorways with small barred windows in them.
Oh God, what next? I asked myself, and as I listened, I heard stirrings from the other side of those doors.
I went over to the nearest cell and its little barred window was just low enough for me to see through without stepping on tip-toe. I shone the light through the opening into the darkened, bare cell beyond.
The stone floor was slightly angled towards a round black hole in the far corner and I could only guess at the reason: somewhere in the grounds there was probably a huge covered cesspit, drains from these dungeon-like rooms running to it. On the opposite side to the hole, I could just make out a narrow cot, its iron legs bolted to the floor, its filthy, stained mattress without bedsheets of any kind. The smell was even worse here.
I jumped back with a start when a face suddenly appeared in front of me on the other side of the door. But the face had no eyes, not even indents in the skull where they should have been, and the two holes at its centre that presumably served as a nose dilated and closed in rapid succession, as if this featureless thing were sniffing the air. There was no aperture that could represent a mouth and as I continued to back away, I wondered how such a being could be fed. As if in reply, a long slit opened up in its jaw, a thin, lipless slash that had not been visible when closed. Uttering a high-pitched keening, this thing reached for me through the bars and I saw that its hand had only three fingers.
I reeled further away from it and crashed into another cell door behind me. At once something slid around my brow, something smooth and soft, like a tentacle. It pulled my head back against the bars of the cell door’s window.
I could hear deep-throated gurglings close to my ear, and snufflings, the sound a rooting pig might make. Another tentacle-like thing slithered around my throat, tightening its grip as soon as it had hold, and I felt my flesh being crushed, my windpipe constricted. I pulled at this sleek, soft, noose with my free hand, but my fingers could not grasp it and suddenly I was struggling for air, my senses quickly beginning to swim.
In panic I looked around for my two companions, my head unable to move because of the vice-like grip around my throat and brow, only my single eye able to dart from side to side. Joseph and Mary were still in the underground chamber’s doorway as if scared to venture further and, as the torchlight caught their faces, I could see they could not understand what was happening to me. I was in the shadow of the alcove, just a vague shape to them, and my torchlight in their eyes didn’t help matters.
I tried to shout, perhaps even to scream, but the grip around my throat was too powerful and all that came out was a throttled-squawking that in any other circumstances would have been an embarrassment. I turned the light on myself, dazzling my eye as I pointed it at my own face, praying that now they would realize my predicament. I could feel myself beginning to swoon from lack of oxygen.
Fortunately my friends quickly realized what was happening and they both rushed forward as one, reaching for the fleshy cords that chained me there, pulling at them with all their strength. As my own fingers had, theirs also slid off every time they thought they had a grip and I could hear them both gasping with their efforts. My vision became tinged with redness.
Then something hard pushed by my cheek, scraping skin, but journeying on, striking into the black opening behind me. I heard a screech, felt the stick going in again, another screech, another blow, another screech. The coils around my head and neck loosened, only slightly, but enough for me to push my fingers between the lower one and my throat. Fingers joined with thumb, and I pulled, pulled as hard as I could, while Mary continued to pummel the thing that held me there, repeatedly smashing the end of her walking stick into it. I heard a squeal, and then a kind of yelp, and both cords loosened even more so that I was able to slip through them. I whirled around in time to glimpse a smooth, hairless head, its features minimal, all concentrated in a small area at its centre. Thick, lashless eyelids blinked at me just before Mary struck the thing with her stick again and it reeled away into the shadows, squawking like an injured crow as it went, the tentacles slithering back into the hole like limbs belonging to some exotic sea creature returning to their dark underwater cave. They ended in pointed, quivering tips and as they, too, disappeared from sight, I rushed back to the barred window and shone the torch through.
The light caught movement, something scudding across the filthy floor to hide itself in the far shadows. I followed it with the beam, found it again, cowering in a corner, and I drew in a sharp breath at the sight. The creature hid its head beneath the tendril-like arms, so that all I could see was a pale, sleek, naked body that seemed to darken under the glare rather than lighten. It was as if a shadow were passing through its flesh, a grey blush that made the figure blend with the surrounding darkness. I realized this shading was some form of self-induced camouflage, a way of making the creature sink into its background. Within moments, it looked as if it were made of stone, yet still it pulsed, still it breathed, the tentacles wrapping themselves around the head and body, the ‘knees’ – although the legs appeared to be jointless and as bare and smooth as its ‘arms’ – tight into its chest. Soon, the whole thing became motionless and, seemingly, as solid as the floor and walls around it; only because I had kept the torchlight pointed directly at it could I tell it was still there. It had become a statue of sorts, only its shadowed contours admitting its presence by vaguely defining its shape.
I turned away and leaned against the damp wall beside the thick, wooden door, well clear of the barred window lest those tentacles return to seize me. My shoulder pressed into the hard, wet stone and I had to set my feet flat against the floor to keep myself standing. I’m not sure how long I stayed that way – minutes, seconds, I just don’t know – but it was Joseph’s voice that finally roused me.
‘Dismas?’
I couldn’t even look his way.
He tried again. ‘Dis?’
I slowly craned my head in his direction, my shoulder still pressed into the wall, supporting me.
‘Dis, we should leave this place now. Michael wants us to hurry.’
I pushed myself away from the wall. If I’d been in battle, then maybe you’d call me shell-shocked. But there were no cannons or exploding shells, nor were there the cries and screams of dying men: there was only the horror of the things I had discovered that night. Mary came forward and touched my face with her fingertips.
It was so strange, because in that touch, I could feel her pity for me, a compassion so sincere and so unselfish, I could have wept again. I took her hand in my own and kissed her fingertips.
Then I straightened. ‘We’ll move on,’ I told them both, ‘but first I’m going to see what else is here.’
I didn’t feel courageous, nor did I feel curious, as I worked my way along the dim corridor, going from side to side to peer into each cell
: no, I just felt resolute; and filled with a cold anger. I saw things there straight from my nightmare, and from many nightmares long past. A creature that lay watching me from the floor of its prison room, normal, if emaciated, in upper form and face (even if there was a little madness in its sullen eyes), but with just one limb descending from its hips, as though the legs had fused together to fashion a fish’s tail of sorts. It rolled on to its stomach and pushed itself across the floor at alarming speed and I jumped back when I felt something scrabbling at my shoes. I shone the light down at the bottom of the door and saw another hole at ground level, one I hadn’t noticed before and no doubt used to pass food through to these wretched inmates. A grimy hand had appeared there and it was this that was touching my feet.
My two companions mutely followed as I went from door to door, and I could feel their misery at what was exposed to me, an outsider, even if my own shape was not exactly of the ordained order. I also felt their dread of these other creatures, for although they were all of the ‘anomalous and curious’ kind, imperfections of nature that were beyond all bounds, there was something fearsome about them; why else would they be incarcerated in dungeons beneath the house? There seemed to be a malign intent about these creatures, an exudation of evil, as though their ill-formed configuration was representative of their inner singularity, a twisted psyche imagined by its physical shell. I, of all people, should have dismissed such an idea out of hand – book by its cover, and all that – but it was a feeling (not just a notion) that was too strong to reject.
I moved on, another cell, another monstrosity inside, although this time I thought that there had been some cruel mistake or that this person had been locked away for reasons other than physical abnormality. At first glance she was beautiful, with large, dark eyes and heavy lashes, raven-black hair that hung in long tresses around her elegant shoulders, small but perfect breasts, the nipples hard and pink against their pallid mounds, legs that were long and thighs that barely touched, the dark triangle of hair between them like a pointer to enticement. She was beautiful, but when my gaze returned to hers and I looked deeper into those appealing eyes I saw that same feeble-mindedness I had witnessed moments before in the other prisoner, an imbecile’s gape now accompanied by an idiot’s grin. And when, with a snicker muffled by her hand, she turned away, I saw the reason for her internment here.