One could not mistake that Croft was dead, either. He had known what he did, had maybe practiced it earlier, (dress rehearsals). A smear of blood had ebbed from his mouth, a fragment of a tooth. His face otherwise was only closed, as his eyes were; more a shutter than a face: No one home. The back of his skull, and some of its formerly internal cargo, had flown free to strike the wall.
The smell that hung there was bizarre yet over-intimate, human discharges of different inevitable sorts. The visual effect, despite its utter conviction, contained an intense element of unreality. Carver found he was not convinced. Although he knew, with intrinsic built-in knowledge, as of life and death themselves, that the procedure had been achieved and was complete.
Nor could he move. He did not have full liberty. For example, now, he could not – or would not – go to the fridge. Somehow, but speaking aloud, he ordered himself to the table, and grabbed the bottle of water.
Then he found it hard to leave the table.
Where was he going? To the door, and out again.
Leave this – this room – area – stage-set – leave it to the remains on the floor.
“Come on,” Carver said aloud. His voice was iron, emotionless.
My son, Croft had said. But not to Carver, however it had seemed. It was to the past Croft had referred, the past that went by so slowly.
My son. Years ago. They killed him. Not enough... to bury.
Carver turned, gained the door, went out. He shut the door carefully, and locked it with the triple keys.
The smoke was getting less. How much time had gone by now? The sun, or its implication, had shifted. Below, through the trees, he could just make out movement around the building. Nothing nearer. And nothing there was distinct enough anyway to ascertain what damage had been caused.
He must get on.
Try to reach some aperture of escape, even if he had not ever located anything on his forays. He should have taken the gun. He knew sufficient to fire one. Go back in then, into the shed, approach the body, take the gun.
He was not afraid or anxious about the body. It was not that. And yet somehow it would not be possible to go back into the shed again.
Carver walked down from the rise once more the other way, away from the building, the sheds, northward. He got now about two hundred metres. There was a bench, not stone with griffins, only plain wood, backless, no arm rests. Carver sat on the bench.
Drink the water. Pull himself together. (They had been fond of that expression at the schools.) Why did no one else come in this direction? But they would. In a while. He should have taken the gun. Or perhaps it had held merely a solitary bullet. No, at least two – Croft had offered to kill Carver. There must therefore have been at least one more – or did he know Carver would not consent, or did –
A bird called from the tops of the trees, shrill and angry.
Carver drank the water.
The interval was concluded. Carver found he had lain down full length on the bench and slept. Had the water been drugged? No. Stop that. Exhaustion, that was all. And carelessness – due to what? Shock? Fear? Insanity – yes, no doubt that. The chemical or viral madness that struck this Place – introduced–
All the trees had changed to a smoky copper. Red Alert,
6th Level – only sunset. Pull yourself –
He sat up, and the empty plastic bottle fled from him, dissociating itself, as the gun had from Croft.
Somebody was standing on the rise, where the sheds were, above Carver, and looked over at him. The figure was painted, on its right side, a sunset, nail varnish red. A woman. Then she dropped down, the way a cat or dog might have that had been standing on its hind legs to perform a trick – He could not see her now.
Carver did not shift from the sitting position. Not aware of it, still he knew the woman was springing down the hill towards him. As she broke through the mix of shadows and shapes on to the apron of the weedy turf, he nodded. “Hello, Ms Merville. Out for a run?”
She had halted.
She stood knee-high in fern, wild geranium, the taller grasses. Despite her contemporary jeans and T-shirt she had, with her long dark hair and curiously rhythmic stasis, a look of something classical. She was slimly curved against the light. Her hair reached her waist. Her eyes were not blue – they were – some freakish overlay of the dying light.
“Car,” she said, “come with me, back to the sheds.”
“No,” he said pleasantly. “I don’t want to, thanks.”
“I know what happened,” she said. “I saw him through the window. But there are six other sheds. One of those.”
“We’ve all gone fucking mental, Angie,” he said. “Better get used to it.”
“You’re wrong,” she said. Her voice, as his had previously been, was expressionless. “You haven’t. I haven’t.”
She was beside him. She had advanced so smoothly somehow he had not properly seen her do it. Her hand rested on his neck, was gone. Where her hand had touched, a coolness spangled. She smelled wonderful. Her eyes were not blue. Her hair hung to her waist. She was like a beautiful snake.
“Get up, Carver,” she said, and now her voice was metallic and cruel, and he had got to his feet.
The sunset stayed as they walked up the rise, a rich Burgundy red, diluting and sinking only on the right, while they climbed.
The sun was going down on the wrong side of the sky.
Or – the sun was going down – twice–
At the top of the rise, there were the sheds again, repetitions, facile. Carver saw the pieces of sky and the sun was already just down, and in the proper quarter, westward, over there to the right. All else was twilight, and greying. But here. The rose-red varnish went on.
The central shed. To the left of them. Or course. The shed had raised its profile through blue and green and yellow and orange. It was scarlet-crimson now. As he had predicted before: 6th Level Urgency Alert.
“Yes,” she said. “Car, the keys work the same on every shed. Open this one.” This was the last shed to their right, nearest to the greying west, the seventh.
He found the keys, undid the central door of the seventh shed. When they were in he locked the door shut. It was dark inside, nothing in it, empty of tables and fridges and Croft. Just over there, the stain of red soaking in, strengthening as all the dusk went out.
Velvet black of night, with a ruby fastened to the collar.
Anjeela had brought food, ham and cheese rolls, Greek salad, and a thermos of black coffee – these self-evidently obtained from the (probably now defunct) take-out annexe.
He ate sluggishly, a sullen kid not wanting to give in. The coffee had kept most of its heat. That was better. When he offered her a share she shook her head. She stuck to the lukewarm litre bottle of water she had brought. They all knew him, his preferences. His weaknesses. They had known. Now she did. Just her. And himself. If he anyway knew anything – either about himself or anything at all.
When they had finished their meal, about half of which was uneaten, she set the leftovers neatly to one side, covered protectively by their wrappers. (He had seen Sara do this, never Donna. And not so many other women. But they had never had to “Watch the pennies” as Sara had sometimes said.) (Had Anjeela had to watch them? How did you, anyhow, watch a penny? You would lose interest.)
In the dark of the seventh shed, with only that red neon blotch to remind him, he watched this woman as carefully as any penny. Her own light-complexioned darkness had an alluring visual effect. A figment of night made into a woman–
For a long time, aside from his thanking her for the food and offering to share the coffee, he had not spoken. She had not spoken at all since they came in here. She sat on the floor as he did, and across from him, again faintly side-lit by the glow, that also aureoled her hair. Which definitely was much longer. Not extensions, he thought. A wig perhaps – but the hairline had no look of a wig. The hair had grown silky. It moved loosely when she did. She had very beautiful hands. The paleness of the n
ails against the dark skin... But neither her nails nor fingers extended themselves.
Without preface, a savage and raucous wailing and bellowing broke out in the distance, the sound of exultant rage and agonised protest so generally and often heard – and seen – on such TV stations as Al-Jazeera or the British BBC.
“They’re still some way off,” she said at once, as the inhumanly human notes quavered and abruptly fell apart to nothing. Was she reassuring him? Seeking reassurance –?
“Yes,” he said, “How long for, do you wonder? Before they come up here.”
She shrugged. “When they do, they do.”
“You’re happy with that.”
“I accept it will happen, sometime.”
“Pragmatic, then. You’re pragmatic. Christ, we shouldn’t be sat here, waiting for them–”
“I am not,” she said, “waiting for them. I am waiting to tell you something, Mr Carver. Something you will need, and ultimately must understand. Though very likely not at first. That will be difficult for you.”
“Oh, difficult. Sure.”
He got up and went to one of the windows. Any lights might possibly not be spotted through the red smoulder from the central shed. Where the ground descended, surely only the blackness of the moonless, starless overcast night paid out its folds. The up-and-down building, what might be left of it, seemed now to offer no locating illumination. Even the smudges of fire had died. It was, like this, invisible.
“Well then, Anjeela. What is it you have to tell me? You’re pregnant perhaps–” He was astounded by what he had just said – redundant, crazy – oh, crazy, of course – “rather soon to know, isn’t it?”
“No, I am not pregnant, Mr Carver. Nor, incidentally, is your partner, Donna. She never was. As you suspected, I believe.”
“Why,” he said woodenly, “are you calling me Mr Carver.”
“What would you prefer?” she asked. Almost as Sunderland had said it that time, so long ago, a hundred years, in the flat with Sara shut in the kitchen, and the world changing so fast – so fast – “Car? Andrew? Andy? Andreas?”
“I don’t care what you call me. I wondered why you’d altered what you called me.”
“I thought you might prefer more formality at this moment Mr Carver. Given what I have to and am going to say.”
“So now this is a hospital, and you’re the specialist, right? You’re going to tell me I have three months to live. Or two. Is that it?” Between fury and unexpected terror – he felt such emotions sweeping in on him, and horror, that too, that extra primal sense of the darkness and the redness – the 6th Level Alert, only one below Armageddon – one quarter minute to midnight on the nuclear clock –
She kept silent. She let him fall silent. She let the silence open wide its awful wings and threaten to devour them both.
And then, out of the silence, she said, “You might prefer I told you that, Mr Carver. But it isn’t that. Your last medical check showed you healthy and very fit. Everything in perfect working order. Much, much better even than for many much younger men. But this other matter. That’s different. Sit down, Mr Carver, please. It will be easier then, on us both.” And he left the window and sat down.
As she spoke to him, she ceased to be beautiful, or anyone he (even slightly) knew. She became only her voice, and then the voice smoked off into the dark and the red. Her voice became only what it said to him, and told him, the pictures this summoned. Sometimes he thought he interrupted to ask her questions, or to contest what she said. Did she reply? Or not–? Conceivably he did not speak. Afterwards,though he could recollect his asking, denying, challenging, he could not remember hearing his own voice. Therefore maybe he had only listened, dumb.
“Scar. You’ve read the file and the other notes on Scar. No need for subterfuge. Please credit me when I tell you this, no one can presently either see or eavesdrop, let alone record, our talk or actions. All Surveillance, and affiliated systems here, have failed, or are in the full process of it. Security and visio-audial went the first. As with any type of Third Person. Of course, this is enemy sabotage, and connected to the other effect which has taken hold, the generalised irrational behaviour of almost everyone on site, the – madness I may as well call it. It amounts to madness, sometimes in its most pronounced forms. And in this case, perhaps, to judge a book by its cover is only common sense. What else but mad was poor Charlie Hemel? Or any of the several others who have done similar or worse things in the past forty-eight hours? But you’ve witnessed a lot of madness, haven’t you, Mr Carver? Enough to recognise it without too much prevarication. Accept, then, the mechanisms are also out of their minds. And I can say freely what I must say. And you should listen in turn as freely and openly. There will be no record. Not that a record of this particular lesson is required. It must simply occur. Scar, then, the curious clue to some unprecedented espionage or conspiracy, some terrorist or conjunctive plan. Scar. A name for a mark on the skin, a landscape feature. A family name. And the Third Scar, the enigma – the final item – at which the deadly curse, as in a story of Mr Sherlock Holmes by Mr Arthur Conan Doyle, will fall. I won’t now unravel the leads in this piece of nonsense. It was and is a very open code, and meant to be suspected, if perhaps not entirely solved. It was leaked, of course. In the same way that Silvia Dusa – do you remember Silvia? – was intended to desert Mantik and go over to the opposition, or rather to the branch of the opposition in whose faltering stronghold you and I now find ourselves. Silvia Dusa had her own mission, which she fulfilled rather well. She sold you to the enemies of Mantik, the outfit here. And when Mantik had tangled you up sufficiently – the faked and incriminating recording of you and Silvia, her death, the implication of your exclusion – and left you unprotectedly alone, the opposition, under the aegis of Mr Peter Croft moved in, and took you and brought you here, to this cliffy retreat. And no, though in a way you are in Britain, we are not in Kent, Mr Carver. Hopefully in a while, sooner or later, you’ll get a proper overview of where we are. But that’s for future reference. Meanwhile, fully to clarify Scar for you, the Third Scar. There are indeed three subjects. Not marks of old wounds, nor outcrops of cliffs, nor, in themselves, influences, curses. They are three people. As for the family name given them, I’m afraid this is someone’s little joke in very bad taste. Maybe it even halfway suggested itself to you, and you dismissed it, not unintelligently, as meaning nothing. Except, it does, you see. Or, you will see in a moment. Take your mother’s name, now. Zarissa, originally. But she anglicised it, a common self-protective measure among foreign immigrants to any unknown country; either the parents do it, or the children at last. Molinsky becomes Mollins, perhaps, or Goldman – Oldman. Petre or Pe’ta – Peter. Cava becomes Carver with the last A replaced and thrown off, and Andreas – Andrew. And Zarissa – Sara. Sara Carver. S. Carver. SCARVER. Loose the last three letters. SCAR.”
“It passes down through the mothers, it seems, the relevant gene. Though the women themselves are not, at least as is so far known, imbued with its powers. Rather like the disease haemophilia, which passes through the mother and, again, as is so far known, affects mostly her sons. Though an occasional daughter has, it was eventually determined, also been afflicted by the ailment. So it crosses from family to unrelated family, through sexual union in or out of marriage. The woman herself ungifted, or unpoisoned, dormant, only the conducting agent. In this case now, the three people referred to in Mantik’s scheme do include two men and one woman. All of them fairly young, in their early or mid thirties, as are you. Of course, as are you. Since you, Mr Carver, are the third of their number. Let me make clear at once that the skittish use of your mother’s name to identify both you and the rest of the English trio, does not mean Sara, your mother, gave birth to all three. Indeed not. Her only child, at least this far, has been yourself. The other male’s mother was an English woman, who died during his infancy in Europe. And the female member of the Scar Trio – well, her mother is still alive, though perhaps not fo
r too much longer. A frail woman, this mother, and extensively vicious to compensate her for her frailty. How do I know to offer such a personal insight? Why, because the bitch is my mother, naturally. Since I am the Second Scar, Mr Carver. Drink some more of the coffee now, Mr Carver. It will help you. Yes, good. Rest your back against the wall. Good. I will wait a moment or two. I think we have time.”
“There are estimates of between four hundred and six hundred other people of this, our, type, so far identified, or largely analysed as probable, across the accessible and investigable world. Some of these are still children, of those many are less than ten years of age. Rather randomly then, twenty adult candidates are scattered about the northern United States. Approximately the same number in South America. Thirty-six or thirty-eight have been verified, or are rumoured to have been, through Russia and her satellite countries. In the Middle East one hundred and ten, (the bulk in Iran). In the Scandinavian countries ten to seventeen. In China, the Koreas, and Japan, jointly, seventy-five. Australia, at the last count, eighty-one. There are, or seem to be, uncountable others in India, where indigenous religious beliefs and mysticism may both camouflage, and conversely, falsely promote, their activities. Most of Africa is in a complementary state. By and large no data, however carefully collated, can provide an exact, numerically accurate list. Even so, from information now available, and fully validated, the fact that such persons exist is proven. What do they matter though, this strange random and polyglot tribe, of which you and I, Mr Carver, are part? They matter, and we, I and you matter, because of the genetically bestowed powers I have mentioned. Powers, Mr Carver, Natural abilities of various sorts, all of them quite extraordinary, and of differentiated and – shall I use the word? – there is no other – miraculous scope. There have always been, so legend and history both inform us, such people. Miracle workers in the literal meaning of the words. They can read minds, or move objects without physically touching them, take on animal forms, levitate upward into the air, heal – or harm. Cure. Or kill. You’ve seen, Mr Carver, something of what I can do. Shape–shifter, that would have been the name for me, back in ignorant years. I will show, in a little while, when there is more time to spare, something of the full gamut of my abilities. It started when I was eleven years old. I saw a movie – who was it? Some pretty girl – I wanted to be blonde like her. My hair was black as coal. When my mother saw me, she beat me. Extra spitefully. She thought I had used bleach from the kitchen. She thought I had wastefully and time-wastingly endangered myself, and wasted the bleach, and that blondes were scum from the Devil’s fundament. In the morning, of course, I had healed my cuts and bruises – not from any non-existent bleach but from her hands and the implement she had wielded, a fish-slice. But my mother forgot what she had done. If she’d recalled I think she would have accused me of ‘harming myself’. (This had happened, this false accusation after one of her attacks, before.) But by the morning also I was brunette again. When they began to investigate me, I did not know – I was twelve. An agent of Mantik’s – Mr Preece he was called – visited me when I was just fourteen. I had been discovered later than the first of the two men, I was the second discovery. The third and last of whom is you. And so we arrive at you, Mr Carver. You.”