Had I occupied my own body, I know I would have thrown up right there in the car so repugnant was the memory sustained within the tissues and cooling flesh of this monster, but even so, my own mind reeled with shock and it was not entirely due to these invasive visions alone; no, it was the glorification that went with them, the overflowing happiness as the hatchet had struck again and again, the lazy spurts and dribbling of thickening blood, the disassembling of the human structure – the complete destruction.
This time something lingered after the vision had dissolved to black, not a continuation but the isolated memory of Moker’s final act of desecration. No wonder the police had not seriously connected my murder with the other serial killings, because there was one more gross defilement that had not been evident in my case.
Moker always left his victims in quiet, concealed locations, places that he could return to as himself, inside his own body, to carry out the mutilations without being disturbed; lonely sites where he could squat over the demolished body and defecate into the bloody pit left by the removed heart.
It was just as well there was so little traffic about at that time of night, or else my erratic driving would probably have caused a serious accident. As it was, I struck parked vehicles along the way, knocked over a bollard on a pedestrian island and for a time, when my concentration was at its weakest, travelled for almost a mile on the wrong side of the road. It was the memories somehow detained by Moker’s entity, his being, released at irregular and uncontrolled intervals, finally shed only after they had been recalled one last time.
—working with cadavers in the morgue, washing them, cleansing them, so they were fit for burial, the private obscene moments with them—
—faces of men in expensive suits, wearing silk ties and crisp shirts, surgeons who hid their natural repugnance with professional aloofness (although not all succeeding too well) as they peered into the hole of my face, the shaking of their head because there was nothing they could do to rebuild, there was not enough there for reconstruction, the operations to re-form at least a workable orifice, the pain suffered, the hope denied—
—looking at myself in a mirror, but me as someone young, in jeans and baggy jumper, the anguish, the despair, the bitterness – the anger! The smashing of mirror, any mirrors, anything at all that reflected my image!—
—the maiming of small animals—
—the stares from people, the screams of children, the undisguised or ill-concealed disgust of women, of girls, boys—
—the misery, the emptiness—
—then glorious flight, freedom from this marked body, invisibility, the dreams that were not dreams but true escapes, the journeys away from myself that were a discovery that changed everything—
Here I was, Jim True – or the spirit of Jim True – inhabiting another person’s shell, remembering that person’s life, the pain, the wretched misery, the surprising and new joy, while driving towards my own destiny, or what I perceived to be my destiny.
—walking the streets, people glancing at me and freezing in their tracks or quickly looking away again, searching for a place, a particular house, finding it, knocking on the door, the wild-haired woman with the pinched features and ashen skin standing at the open door, looking out, seeing me, the mother who had abandoned me, screaming now at the sight of me, the disfigurement her only recognition, slamming the door, shrieking at me to go away, go away!—
Had to shut the thoughts out, had to fix my focus on the road ahead, concentrate on steering the car, hardly bothering with the gears once it was in third, the effort of using the stiff column shift too much.
—catching a bee in an empty jam jar, filling it with water through a small hole drilled into the lid—
So many memories, rushing to expunge themselves, no chronological order to them anymore, a boy one moment, a man the next, but one common thread through all the ages, one consistent theme: rejection . . .
Fortunately, most of my journey was by way of broad main roads, the minor ones unnecessary, otherwise driving would have been even more difficult, with less leeway for swerving and avoiding parked vehicles. I ignored traffic lights, reluctant to shift through the gears, and again my luck held, no other traffic crossed in front of me.
—fitting the mask, the white surgical mask, concealing the affliction even though the disguise was further cause for curiosity or ridicule. Keeping the ugliness to myself. For street wear, even in the summer months, the long scarf, wrapped tightly around the head so only my eyes showed, often the surgical mask beneath this, then the hat, which cast shade over my eyes because even these were unsightly, too black, too protruding—
I’d driven this route many, many times but although it was familiar to me, I had to fight hard to remember which turns to make (so heavy was the Hillman that changing down for corners was unnecessary as long as I maintained reasonable speed).
—children, a classroom, a playground, full of them, gawking in fear, whispering to friends as they pointed, some of them sniggering, later to laugh outright, call me names—
—rejection—
—loneliness, time spent in dim rooms, bitterness the only companion—
Steady as a car flashed me from behind. Slowly I lifted one of those big hands, the other remaining gripped on the steering wheel, touched the scarf to make sure it was still in place, still hiding the deformity, as the impatient driver put his foot down and sped around the lazy Hillman, glaring across his passenger at me as he passed. He gave a derisive little toot of his horn, rear lights disappearing into the distance.
—the dreams, many of them horrible, depressing, but others that were wonderful and the realization that these generally were more than just dreams, that they were flights from the body, journeys of the spirit which took me to familiar places, but where I could not be seen, where my grotesqueness was hidden by invisibility, where even to myself there was nothing at all – learning that these flights were not restricted to night-times alone, that they could be controlled, sleep, itself, the only invariable, the essential requirement, and that could be learned, could be governed just as the journeys themselves could be governed—
—so many places travelled to, so many homes visited, so many activities spied upon, so many bedrooms—
—and always the glorious sense of freedom—
—the impossibility of rejection—
—and always the misery of returning to life as it truly was, the loneliness, heartache, the resentment—
—but eventually, the miracle of dominating the dead, of using corpses for my own gratification and for revenge—
—the first experiment, the first freshly deceased body, witnessing its lingering soul finally leaving its vessel, for a certain psychic ability had always been with me, perhaps nature’s compensation for the physical affliction, watching the soul lift itself from the corpse, like steam from a pot, but perhaps less clear, leaving a vacancy behind, or so it had occurred to me at the time, and on a whim, escaping from my own body in the otherwise deserted mortuary, letting it sleep in a chair in the empty little office attached to the tiled room where the cadavers were kept, lying down in the cold shell of flesh and organs that were already corrupting, raising a dead arm stiffly, awkwardly, rigor mortis in its earliest stages, elevating that reluctant arm, then the other one, then, although with more difficulty, the legs, one at a time, finally sitting up and looking around, viewing the last fleeting memories that were stored both in the brain and body itself like faded tape—
—repeating the experiment, over and over again, until it was time to take it to its logical – logical to me, that is – conclusion, the procurement of other, fresher, bodies, to live, if only for a very short time, as that person had, no, as whatever that person was capable of—
Oh God, it was unbearable. The sickness here, the evil within. I almost collapsed against the steering wheel, only the knowledge that I was drawing near to my destination preventing me from doing so. What other memories of this m
an Moker did I have to suffer? I didn’t think I could take much more, not if they were like those already remembered.
But there was one last memory to be recalled before it was erased forever and perhaps, in its way, it was the most disturbing of all because it was the very beginning of his hatred of normal people.
—chaos, images rushing through with no order and proper recognition—
—until everything slowed, everything resolved itself into one final and perfectly clear recollection—
—darkness becoming lighter, redness then too much brightness, shapes moving around me, feeling myself lifted, a separation, a snapping of something that had connected me to existence itself, the terrible, the awful, feeling of isolation, the sadness of losing something even though I didn’t know what, then the sounds around me, noises that sounded like intakes of air, familiar because it had seemed always to be with me, except this was sharp, unpleasant, not cosy and reassuring anymore, and those shapes, bright, white, leaning towards me, another blurred form coming into my feeble clouded vision, and there was something familiar about this, something nice and warming—
Another flashback, one already experienced, inter-posing itself for only a moment, a snapshot of the woman whose home I had searched for and found, the mother who had screamed – go away, go away! – before slamming the door in my undisguised face.
—rejection—
—absolute rejection—
And then, no more, the last memory unfinished.
I pulled the car over in a violent swerve, no longer able to bear the weight of these memories that were not mine but belonged to someone who had known only misery throughout his life.
Despite everything I knew about his deeds, despite the evil that was as much part of his nature as love is of most others’ – despite that, I laid my head on those large hands that rested against the steering wheel and wept. I wept for Alec Moker.
41
The irony wasn’t lost on me as I wiped tears from those bulbous eyes with the sleeve of the raincoat: I was weeping for Moker with his own tears.
Rationally, it seemed foolish to feel pity for someone as wicked and as perverted as Moker, a necrophile who had murdered and mutilated four people – who had tried to kill my own wife and my little Primrose, for Christ’s sake! – but that was what I felt for him. His whole life had been despicable, from birth to manhood, he’d suffered shame and humiliation, hopelessness and loneliness; and perhaps worst of all for Moker – rejection. Total rejection. Rejection even by his own mother. Wouldn’t that be enough to warp any person’s soul, that and the physical disfiguration that was its cause? Yet I could not wipe the picture of Moker kneeling above Primrose, the sharpened knitting needle ready to sink into her small heart, from my mind. It still shocked me, still filled me with a burning anger: but pity for him loitered behind the anger. Who could live a life such as his and remain normal? Mentally normal, I mean. Who would not develop a distorted view of life itself under those same circumstances? But maybe Andrea had been right when she had called me gullible, because there are many in the world who suffer even worse afflictions than this killer, victims of constant pain, people with terrible abnormalities, paraplegics, men, women and children who need machines to help them breathe – the list is endless – most of whom strive to live as normal lives as possible, without overt bitterness, without rancour, without resentment of others. Why the hell should I feel sorry for a monster like Moker? I shouldn’t. Yet somehow, I did.
When the weeping had stopped and my eyes were dried, a realization occurred to me. I had ‘remembered’ through Moker the killing of four people. Four people. I hadn’t been among them. Not that I needed it, but this was final proof that Oliver Guinane was my murderer. Bitter resentment and insanity were Moker’s excuse, but what was Guinane’s? Envy and greed? Yeah, envy and greed. He envied me my wife – and child. He wanted to make a huge pile of money out of something I didn’t support. Pretty basic, really.
But why he had chopped off my genitals was a mystery.
I looked out the side window up at the gtp sign, our agency’s logo, neon-lit over the glass front doors. Guinane True Presswell. That name was going to vanish when the so-called ‘merger’ went through. Some accounts might move, but many of our existing clients would be content to come under the wing of such an internationally successful advertising agency as Blake & Turnbrow. Oh, a certain amount of new presentations would have to take place, a lot of client lunches would have to be undertaken, as well as corporate days out, but no doubt the freshness and glamour of it all would win most reluctant clients over. It was the nature of the game.
Although these thoughts ran through my mind now that Moker’s memories mercifully appeared to be spent, they were trivial, totally unimportant as, in the grand scheme of things, all such matters are. At that moment, I focused on one thing alone.
Clumsily pushing down the handle, I opened the car door and lumbered out. With effort, I peered up at the building. The top office lights were on, the low stone balustrade of the mock balcony on the fifth floor silhouetted by them. Sydney’s office, and next door, the one I shared with Guinane. And Guinane’s silver BMW was parked right outside our building, just behind Sydney’s Merc.
It took me several attempts to get my finger – Moker’s finger – to press the lift button for the fifth floor. For some reason, conducting small tasks with somebody else’s body proved more difficult than making the bigger moves – it hadn’t been easy to pick up the killer’s deadly knitting needle from the floor in my home and slide it into one of the raincoat’s deep pockets, as it hadn’t been easy buttoning the dead woman’s jacket earlier that night. Walking, getting in and out of cars, even driving was relatively easy compared to opening doors and pressing lift buttons.
Fortunately, the plate-glass doors of the agency were unlocked, so one side only needed a shove for me to gain access.
The street outside, dampened by a light drizzle, was deserted, which was unsurprising at this late or early hour, whichever way you cared to look at it. My feeling, and it was only a guess, was that it was around one or two o’clock in the morning. The small lift came, its door slid open. Feeling weaker by the moment, I shuffled inside, awkwardly thumped the fifth-floor button and leaned back against the rear wall, hands resting on the waist-high interior steel rail, allowing them to take some of my weight. I wasn’t sure how long I could use this body before its system finally ran down completely, but the woman’s corpse earlier had got me from Bayswater to Paddington, so I should have some time left. Of course, I hadn’t walked from my house to the agency in the centre of London, but the sheer effort of concentrating on driving, hindered by the constant sudden replays of Moker’s memories, had somehow wearied me, let alone the body I had borrowed. My knees were not far from buckling and my upper body felt too heavy, as if I were carrying weights in the raincoat’s pockets. It was even hard to keep my head up; the neck felt too decrepit to bear such a load. Had to cope though, had to use whatever was left to carry out my little task.
The lift came to a halt, although I didn’t feel it and only realized I was on the fifth floor when the doors slid open. The mini-reception area (the main one was on the ground floor) and corridor were unlit, only a faint glow radiating from an office further along. Walking woodenly from the small lift, I waited in the reception area for a while, listening for any sounds, anything at all. The three partners’ office suite was at the far end of the corridor and nobody there would have heard the lift arriving. At least, I didn’t think so, but at this time of night (or morning) the rest of the building was silent, so the sound might have travelled. I hoped it hadn’t: it was important to catch Guinane by surprise. I’d use the knitting needle to kill him.
So quiet. So very quiet. I’d worked enough late nights in my time to be used to the loneliness that comes to offices when most employees have packed up and gone home for the night, switching off lights and leaving behind a sepulchral kind of quietness. You might get a lot
more work done without the usual interruptions, but eventually the eeriness starts to get to you and you wonder if you’re the only person left on the planet. That’s when you give someone a call – wife, girlfriend, business associate, it doesn’t matter who, just so that you hear another voice.
On this night, the agency was filled with that quiet eeriness – more so than ever, you might say – but who could I call? What would I say? It’s me, babe, but not as you know me. If only I’d had a proper mouth to say the words. Andrea didn’t need to be freaked out anymore tonight. Besides, I didn’t regard her as my wife now; he’d destroyed that. And it seemed I could no longer regard Prim as my daughter either. That was the really hard part.
I shuffled onwards, occasionally reaching out a hand to the wall to steady myself, knocking askew one of the several framed advertising awards the agency had won, most by Guinane and me, a couple by one of our talented junior art director/copywriter teams. Our Walk of Vanity, we called it, but all the awards seemed absolutely worthless to me now. Although I didn’t need to breathe air anymore, I was conscious of the involuntary snuffling sounds coming from the cavity of Moker’s face, half-raspy, half-sibilant, and I did my best to control them. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a controllable thing and I could only hope the sound was loud to me alone.