“I trust you,” I said.
Rusty, Dr Randle’s dog, sniffed around my legs, happy and excited by the smell of Ian. Ian, if the past was anything to go by, would sniff the dog smell on my jeans when I got home, give me a you disgust me stare and then march off, ginger tail in the air showing me his arsehole as a sign of contempt.
“He’s hungry,” Randle smiled, looking at the scruffy little dog. “If I don’t feed him he’ll start throwing himself at the fridge door again.”
I reached down and scratched Rusty’s ear. He flopped over onto his back, belly up.
“I’ll head off,” I said, rubbing the dog’s belly. “I’ll see you again on Friday.”
The dog looked at me for a split second, as if he knew I was telling a lie.
Outside, I picked a couple of brown soggy leaves off the yellow Jeep’s windscreen before getting in. I closed the door and fired up the engine. It was a cold, bright breathy autumn afternoon. I slid all the heater levers on, rubbed my hands on my legs to warm them and found some old rock ’n’ roll on the radio. The yellow Jeep crunched away from the curb. I edged my way out into the traffic.
I clicked open the front door and stepped into the skeleton house inside. It’s funny how a house can look just the same on the outside when everything inside is changed. The hallway, the living room, through to the kitchen; it all looks so empty now. All clean. Everything washed and wiped and dusted and vacuumed and put away. Bleached bones. Anything valuable, I’ve stacked in packing crates in the locked room. Everything dangerous, I’ve buried in protective post.
I let down the kitchen blinds, drew the living room curtains. I sat for a few minutes on the sofa and thought about what Randle would think when I didn’t show up on Friday, what she would think when she realised I’d gone. Maybe she’d feel good. Maybe she’d think that her fugue theories had been right all along. Probably she’d think that. I hoped she’d miss me a little too.
I’m at my desk now, at my typewriter in the bedroom. Ian is on the bed, sleeping on a pile of my notebooks. The Dictaphone noise doesn’t bother him anymore. After all this time I don’t really hear it either. Soon I’ll wrestle the cat into his carry box, pack up the Dictaphones and leave the house, maybe for good.
Two nights after my living room floor disintegrated into a wet, deep concept and I’d swum and recited the Ryan Mitchell Mantra for my life, the shark came back. Two a.m. and me sitting up in bed, cold with panic sweat and covers bunched up in my white knuckled fists. The walls strained and stretched, sending odd shadows and strange associations rippling around the room. But the First Eric Sanderson’s newly unpackaged Dictaphones chattered away to themselves in each corner of the bedroom and the memory shark, the Ludovician, stayed locked out behind the plaster. It couldn’t cross the perimeter. It couldn’t break through the non-divergent conceptual loop. The First Eric Sanderson’s letters ranged from lucid to almost indecipherable, but his tactics worked. They all worked.
And so, tentatively at first and then with careful but growing confidence, I became a pupil of my last self. I learned about the Ludovician and about the word-trails of Dr Trey Fidorous. I learned what little Eric could remember about the labelless car parks, access tunnels and buried places that made up un-space. I learned how to set up fake conceptual flows and short-circuit the existing ones, how to attach the bracken and lichen of foreign ideas to my scalp and work the mud and grass of another self into and over my skin and clothes until I could become invisible at will, until anyone or anything could be looking straight at me and never see the real me at all.
The First Eric Sanderson sent me a CV and I got a job. The First Eric Sanderson sent me a list of useful character attributes to look out for and that’s how I chose Mark Richardson, the data analyst. We worked in the same office. At work, I learned about Richardson’s family, his past, his beliefs, his worldview, his hopes. I studied his voice, mannerisms, expressions. I practised in front of a mirror, with a video camera and with a tape recorder. I practised them for days and months until I could build him around me in seconds, until I could disappear, until I could move around at will without sending a single ripple of my real self out into the world. If the Ryan Mitchell Mantra was a clumsy crisis shield for those early months, then my fake Mark Richardson persona was a stronger, more flexible, more advanced replacement–an almost perfect mask.
When the First Eric Sanderson wrote the letters he was an empty box of tactics and manoeuvres, a broken wind-up soldier. It took me a while to realise: he was training me to do something he should have done himself. Something he didn’t have the strength for.
The months of my new life stretched out until they became a year. Eventually I’d done everything I could, become as good at all the tricks and the tactics as I could be.
The letters from the First Eric Sanderson stopped four days ago. Just like Clio’s idea for a tattooed face on her big toe, Eric had ghost-projected the last whispers of himself into the future, bacon-sliced up into 300 envelopes and boxes. And finally the last one had arrived. A man lives so many different lengths of time. And each one has its own end.
If I don’t come back, or if I do come back without my mind, I’m leaving a copy of this account in the red filing cabinet with all the first Eric’s letters. If there is another Eric Sanderson reading this, I’ve left you everything I can. I’m sorry it’s not much.
I’m going to look for Dr Trey Fidorous.
All I have done here is learn to protect myself, I haven’t made a single step towards understanding anything. The First Eric Sanderson was right; if there are any answers, they will be with him. My plan is to follow the route the first Eric took to find Fidorous when all of this began. I’m going to start in Hull and work my way across the country. Hull. Leeds. Sheffield. Manchester. Blackpool. East to west. Fidorous’s trail of words must be years old now, but it’s the only lead I have. I can’t stay here and try to defend myself like the last Eric did.
And there’s something else: I have dreams about Clio Aames. I have dreams where I’ve seen her and recognised her and known her and held her. But in the morning, they go, lifted from me like the low hanging mists lift from the playing fields and I have nothing. Just emotion, and a general sense of something lost. The truth is; I can’t be only this anymore.
In the garden across the street, the shadow of the telegraph pole creeps its way slowly around the world. At its top, there’s a starling, hunched down against the end of summer.
TWO
At night the salmon move out from the river and into the town
Raymond Carver
9
On the Trail of Trey Fidorous–Recovered Palaeontology and Finds (Hull to Sheffield)
1. Single-celled animals
The first of two flyposted texts discovered in Leeds and possibly created by Dr Fidorous (although, in appearance, these could not be further from the biro-swarmed sheets described in the first Eric’s letters). This and the following text were exposed as part of the refurbishment of Leeds Central Station. Despite weeks of searching, no other possible Fidorous flypostings were discovered in the city. Single-celled animals is the original title (printed in the bottom left corner).
AaBbCcD
dEeFfGgHhIiJj
KkLlMmNnOoP
pQqRrSsTtUuV
vWwXxYyZz
2. The nucleus of the cell contains biological information
The second possible Fidorous text, discovered alongside the first. Again, The nucleus of the cell contains biological information is the original title.
3. Fossil fish reconstruction
The first image is a replica of a text structure found in the Arundel Way underpass in Sheffield. The image had been created horizontally across two tiles at the base of a stairway (see photos & map of underpass layout) using letter transfers. The structure seems to represent a species of prehistoric armoured fish, although the image is incomplete with large areas of damage. The second image is my speculative reconstruction. The text ha
s been reproduced actual size. No other underpass texts were recovered.
4. Computer virus mosquito in amber
This image was discovered as an acetate label on a 31/2” floppy disk in Sheffield Interchange (see maps/photos) and has been greatly enlarged here. The structure is probably a mosquito. The disk carrying this image is transparent orange plastic (rather than the usual matt black), giving the impression of an insect trapped in amber. The text appears to be programming source code and there are some similarities to the Melissa Virus code circa 2000/2001. Could this be connected to Fidorous? The disk itself is unsalvageable.
5. Postcard of the Greek island of Naxos
This postcard found in a lay-by in the Broomhill area of Sheffield. The reverse of the postcard is still blank but the photo credit describes the image as ‘Naxos at dawn’. There’s some slight rain damage. It’s very unlikely that this is connected to Dr Fidorous or to the First Eric Sanderson but the chance discovery of it gave me a thin sort of encouragement. As this isn’t strictly a ‘find’ I’ve wrapped it in clear plastic along with two pieces of protective post and stored it separately, in the pocket in the top of my rucksack.
10
Flotsam and Jetsam
The rain came down so hard it had real weight, beating my head and shoulders into a flinch, pouring heavy over my waterlogged clothes and streaming in flukes from my hood and from my elbows and from the bottom of my coat. Hard, heavy, roaring and angry. It was difficult to see. I brought a hand up to shield my eyes but this created a new shelf and a flow of fresh rivulets were soon throw-twisting themselves off the ends of my fingers and curling their way under my hood to run down my cheeks and chin. I struggled to blink away as much water I could.
Then I saw what was out there, and it staggered me.
God, my lips said. The word was stillborn and tiny and bundled away in a sweep of the gale.
I’d been hoping the gateway might belong to an old house, the Willows Hotel according to my map, but it didn’t. I’d left the road too early or too late; this was the entrance to a park, not a driveway. Everything beyond the gateposts was furious: a river gone gigantic and deformed and crazy, banks burst and out on a greedy, rolling brown rampage. The size and force of it overloaded me, made me sick and dizzy. A too muchness.
My rain-blinking eyes struggled back from the flow and down to my feet. The water around my boots was peaty-brown and alive too, I realised. No boundaries. The river was here and reaching and grabbing and actually pulling at my feet and calves with a beautiful, mindless ache. A willpower in pressure. The river wanting to drag me off and smash me up and remake me as part of its pointless and stupidly powerful and passionate drive to change and obliteration.
Caught there, caught in that second of realisation and awareness, when everything came into quick focus and this thing, this event I’d stumbled into was all around me and instant and real, I wanted it to happen. I wanted to let my knees buckle. Let my shoulders slump, just let it all go–fall forwards, down and finally, thankfully, out. This monster river could take me away and unknot me and spread me out however it wanted and however it liked because, honestly, finally, I just felt so fucking tired of endless hours of doing my shitty best to cling my component parts together as a human being. I wanted to pile up and silt-slide, wrap around the trunks of trees, a lost nothing of unthinking debris and high watermarks. Just to be all the way empty, just be all the way gone.
Seconds passed.
I sucked in a lungful of air and let it leak out–slow, wet and steamy. I took a heavy but careful step back against the wanting of the water. After a moment steadying myself, I took another, and then another. I turned, slowly, very slowly and very carefully, and began to make some progress back towards the yellow Jeep.
A cat is a responsibility after all. And feeding and keeping and caring about a stupid fat cat isn’t much, isn’t much in the entirety of what counts for being a person and the huge range of what people do, but it is something. It is something and it’s something that’s warm and that I still have.
I stood in the hotel lobby, backpacker’s rucksack slung over one shoulder, the cat carrier in the opposite hand. The warmth of indoors burned at the rain-sting on my cheeks and forehead, flood water leaked out at my feet. I had a strange feeling of the heat driving it out. The brown river water spreading flat and urgeless from me now–dying, or already dead.
Climate change.
“My God, have you ever seen the like? We’ve started work on an ark out the back.” The reception counter was quite high, but she must have been very short or sitting unworkably low; it hid everything from her chin down. “And flood warnings on the radio, John said the water’s high enough to take cars away now. Cars. You wouldn’t want to be down in the valley now.”
“No,” I said, dripping. “I was down there, it’s pretty wild.”
“Really?” she grew half an inch through pure neck-crane. “Is it like they’re saying? Cars?” She was maybe early fifties, hot ginger hair, bright eyes and red generator cheeks powering a big-hearted but trouble-causing sort of a mouth. An operatic mouth, I thought, big and decent.
I’ve got good at faces. The first step is to see.
“Well, I missed your turning,” I said. “It was a bit touch-and-go.”
“Oh, love.” She gave me a tough guy’s smile. “And look at him too. We don’t normally take pets. John, John’s my husband, he doesn’t like animals, but it’s not like we can send you back out there tonight, is it?”
The last part wasn’t addressed to me.
“Thanks. He’s very grateful,” I said, looking down at the cat-carrier. “Aren’t you?”
From her laugh I knew the cat was still glaring out of his carry case, a big fat fuck off expression all over his face. “Well, anyway,” I said. “I’m grateful enough for both of us.”
“Don’t you worry, love, twenty-five years I’ve been with him,” she nodded her head to the rear of the building before turning back to smile at the cat. “Maybe the two of you’ll get along after all.” Then, to me with a wink, “Have you and smiler come a long way?”
“Further than I can remember,” I said.
Further than I can remember. Pushing on the walls, rattling the handle. Testing myself. Testing myself and passing–not the slightest of bumps registered in the world. No slight widening of the eyes, no slight reddening of the cheeks, slight twitch of the mouth, slight pull of the scalp, not a single twist of blood in the water, nothing at all. Further than I can remember, I said, and nobody felt the pothole we’d travelled over.
I smiled. “He’s like a permanent attachment.”
She nodded, happy with that, then caught herself. “Oh, but would you look. I’m sorry, love, here’s me going on while you’ve both been out there in God-knows-what. You’ll want to get checked in and get those soaking clothes off, won’t you?” Her head disappeared then reappeared along with a hand holding a printed sheet of paper. “It’s only a straightforward form, it shouldn’t keep you long.”
I squelched to the desk, dropped the bag, put the cat down next to the phone, pushed up my coatsleeve to try to control the dripping then swivelled the paperwork to face me. She passed over a pen and I reached to accept it. Now I could see; she wasn’t short, she was sitting down. She was in a wheelchair. The cat didn’t look impressed.
“Old Ironside, that’s me,” she told the cat, “but you can call me Aunty Ruth if you’re going to be good while you’re here. What’s your name, cheerful?”
I looked up from the form. “His name’s Ian.”
Her eyebrows dropped and bunched just for a second, then were chased back up by a breezy grin.
It’s hurtful and wonderful how our jokes survive us.
Since I left home on this journey, I’ve thought a lot about this–how a big part of any life is about the hows and whys of setting up machinery. It’s building systems, devices, motors. Winding up the clockwork of direct debits, configuring newspaper deliveries and anniv
ersaries and photographs and credit card repayments and anecdotes. Starting their engines, setting them in motion and sending them chugging off into the future to do their thing at regular or irregular intervals. When a person leaves or dies or ends, they leave an afterimage; their outline in the devices they’ve set up around them. The image fades to the winding down of springs, the slow running out of fuel as the machines of a life lived in certain ways in certain places and from certain angles are shut down or seize up or blink off one by one. It takes time. Sometimes, you come across the dusty lights or electrical hum of someone else’s machine, maybe a long time after you ever expected to, still running, lonely in the dark. Still doing its thing for the person who started it up long, long after they’ve gone.
A man lives so many different lengths of time.
A man is so many different lengths of time.
Change. Collapse. Reinvention.
The cat twitched his ear.
I passed the completed form to Aunty Ruth.
“Well, it’s a pleasure to have you, Ian and–” she looked down at the form–“Mr Richardson.”
“Mark. Call me Mark,” I said, leaning over the desk, holding out my hand and getting all of it, the whole Mark Richardson act, just right. I glanced to the front door and hitched the smile up one side of my face. “Believe me, it’s a pleasure to have made it.”
My room was small, functional but very clean–the kind of domestic clean that feels almost scrubbed raw. The thought crossed my mind that Aunty Ruth might be the kind of woman who would spit on a hankie and rub it very hard against the side of your mouth.
Ian jumped out of his box the second I turned the clasp and settled on the chest of drawers with his back to the radiator, half-open eyes fixed on me, left ear making sweep scans of the small space behind him.