Quickly: before the lights come back on. As tightly as I could get it I rolled the belt up, then found one of those gaps in the concrete blocks by touch in the blackest of black. It took some shoving but at last I inserted the rolled belt into the gap where it couldn’t be seen. With luck – plenty, plenty luck – the belt with its wolf’s-head buckle would be waiting for me when I needed it.
chapter 13
The Bible describes a plague of darkness as a ‘darkness to be felt’. In the disused swimming pool it was that kind of darkness. Five minutes ago I’d been instrumental in burning the stranger to death. I’d taken his wolf’s-head belt away from him, then hidden it by wedging it into the gap between the concrete blocks that made up the walls, which in turn formed the long, narrow cell. In this darkness I was dripping wet. Madeline, the other-worldly woman with the beautiful athletic figure embraced me, whether in an amorous way or to help keep the chill from my near-naked body I don’t know. By then, I wished I’d checked the dead guy’s wrist for a watch. Down in this abyss of blackness I had no way of telling the time. Too late now. From the scraping sounds the burnt corpse was being hauled away. To attempt an escape would be crazy, even though the cell must be open. It was too dark to see where the exit would be, nor could I see how many Echomen were there. Being living is better than being dead. So for the time being I’d keep it like that.
Minutes later the sliding sounds had vanished. With the darkness came silence. Madeline said nothing. For the time being she was content to keep her body pressed hard against mine. After a while I put my arm around her. She was so smooth to the touch; her breath warmed my chest. Another moment later she put her head on my shoulder. The softness of her hair released such a wave of pleasure inside of me. Getting sexy … That feeling I didn’t put into words; it suggested itself the way my skin tingled. Despite being locked in this weird cell, despite the attack by two strangers, my blood lit up with erotic sparks. Sex vibes weren’t just titillating my flesh either. Madeline pressed closer. One arm embraced me. Her lips were the softest purveyor of kisses. A kind of hunger drove her as she kissed my bare shoulder then moved to my face. Mouth on mouth her kisses were passionate. That passion I returned with a heat of my own. I wore shorts, nothing else; all she had on was my T-shirt. Her nakedness beneath that could have been a surreal generator that pumped out waves of sheer erotica. Listen, people make love in the strangest places. In cemeteries they call it ‘drinking wine in the graveyard at midnight’ as naked bodies writhe on tombs full of bones. In aircraft it’s called ‘the mile high club’, in public lavatories it’s ‘cottaging’. Sex in other public places is ‘dogging’. What do you call full-blooded bodily penetration in a prison cell after you’ve burnt a guy to death? Write your own answer here … make it a powerfully descriptive one. Make it resonate with the act of fucking under the watchful eyes of hidden jailers.
There we are. Standing on wet tiles as we hold one another. Here are the firm contours of that athletic body of hers. I kiss her on the mouth while heat surges through my body. Her supple back arches as her hips push against mine. My hand slides under the hem of the T-shirt to stroke her bare stomach, before travelling upward to cup a breast, the hard nipple pressing deliciously into my palm. Her murmurs encourage me to go further; she loves this. She wants more … A sigh of pleasure in my ear as I move my hand downward over her stomach. I glide over her navel, heading south, deep south, way down south—
Bang! The lights came on. Three narrow beams of tungsten brilliance that blast downward through the steel grille above our heads. Through the dazzling glare Madeline’s smile shone at me. She didn’t care that she was in this swimming pool turned jail. She was happy to be with me; that’s all that mattered.
With the light I expected a third stranger to arrive. Taking a step back, I tried to look up through the grille just a foot above my head. I even reached up to slip my fingers through the mesh.
Then I raged at them. ‘Bastards! Do you think it’s funny? Are you getting a kick out of this? Why didn’t you leave the lights off? You could have waited until the change was complete. Then you could have laughed yourselves to fucking death!’
I lunged at Madeline. ‘You knew this would happen, didn’t you!’ I didn’t shout this at the woman (she still smiled; she wanted loving; place and circumstance were unimportant to her; she wanted it there and then; yeah, I’m telling it so raw and so coarse because that was the state of me right then). No, it wasn’t beautiful, mysterious Madeline I yelled at: it was the invisible jailers. Because her mystery had just evaporated. I held up her hand. ‘You waited long enough then you switched on the lights and showed me this!’
There, that’s why the mystery’s gone. Madeline stands smiling. I’m brandishing her hand. There’s a scar, a Y-shaped scar on the flesh. That’s right I was kissing me. Or something BECOMING me.
‘Great joke, guys! You are so fucking brilliant!’
A smiling Madeline still expecting sex, touched my face. I pushed her against the wall. With one hand I gripped her hair; the other I pressed to her throat.
‘She’s your crash-test dummy, isn’t she?’ I roar the words into the void. ‘You stuck her in here so she’d be close to me. You wanted to see if she’d turn into me, just like the others. OK, your experiment worked. Now I’ll complete it for you. You sit there and watch me kill her. How do you want me to do it? Quick or slow? I can beat her head against the wall. Or I can take my time … just leisurely strangle her nice and slow. Eyes pop out, tongue protrudes, lots of gurgling, twitching.’ My heart pumped hard in my chest as I psyched myself. ‘She might be one of your kind, but you’ll not be worried about losing her, will you? And what about me? Why should I worry? If this creature is becoming me I can’t be guilty of hurting another individual, can I? No, because in reality I’ll be hurting me. And when I kill her with my bare hands I’ll really be killing myself.’
For the first time I saw real fear in her eyes as I held her against the concrete wall. And now those eyes were the same colour brown as mine. The dark arch of the eyebrows was the same as I saw in the mirror.
‘If you follow me I’ll kill you. Understand?’ I tightened my grip on her hair. ‘I said, do you understand?’
A frightened nod. With that I let go of her so quickly she could have been burning hot metal. Thirty feet was as far as I could go in that narrow cell. She stood against the wall, the image of the abandoned waif, shivering in a T-shirt that barely reached the top of her naked thighs. When the cell was plunged into darkness again, I told myself, Big mistake, Mason. She’s turned Echo. You should have killed her while you can.
When I woke I found myself sitting against the wall. A figure stood ten paces away. I know it was completely dark yet I still saw them. For a moment I thought Madeline had crept toward me. Whether it be an Echoman or Echogirl, they turn evil, that much I know. As well as adopting my appearance she’d soon be driven to kill me. So, in a snap of movement I was on my feet. There, looming from the darkness, a tall, thin figure. Despite the absence of electric light I made out the familiar shape of a hairless head. The more I stared, the clearer the image became; the atoms of the thing itself seemed to glow.
‘I hadn’t expected to see you here,’ I murmured. He was back. Natsaf-Ty, my childhood imaginary companion, keeper of the sacred crocodiles, and for the last fifty years premier exhibit of Tanshelf Museum. For a second I gazed at the near naked figure with just parts of his body still covered. Whatever archaeologist unwrapped the mummy, when it underwent scientific examination, had retained the bandages around the loins to no doubt spare the more sensitive museum visitors. Natsaf-Ty stood in the centre of my long narrow cell just as I remembered him. A gaunt Egyptian mummy with dark red skin. Cracks formed a crazed pattern on his scalp. As of old he cut an impassive, even serene figure. He didn’t move. There was a spirit of the eternal about that utterly still form. The glow that emanated from the mummified Egyptian grew a little brighter so I could make out the face; its eyelids we
re closed, the tip of the tongue protruded through lips as arid as the desert that once entombed him.
When I spoke the words seemed flippant, but that was to mask my anger at being a prisoner. ‘Natsaf-Ty? Thank you for dropping into see me. I hope you’re here to show me the way out?’ No reply; no movement; nothing; not a whisper, nor sigh or inclination of the head to hint that he’d heard me. Natsaf-Ty merely ‘gazed’ at me through those closed eyelids. ‘I preferred it when you were more chatty … of course that’s when I was a child. Imaginary friends just aren’t the same when you grow up …’ I paused. ‘Come on, Natsaf-Ty. Speak to me. Just like you used to do when I was ten years old.’ I clenched my fists. ‘Hey, hey! What do you make of my companion, huh?’ I could just make out a hunched mound that was the sleeping Madeline at the other end of the narrow cell. ‘You can see for yourself what’s happening. Three weeks ago I started meeting people who were turning into me. Me and my friends call them Echoes. That was a code word that could be used in public; although by turns we refer to them as Echomen or Echofolk. Now here’s a woman who’s turning into an Echogirl. More to the point, she’s becoming me. What do you suggest, Natsaf-Ty? You were always the one with wisdom. You advised me what to do when I was bullied at school, or when I wanted to find my father wherever he snuck off to. Back when I was ten you were so patient when you explained the reasons why my grandparents never used to come and see me. But you’re dumb now. You never speak! Come on!’ I advanced on the motionless figure. Tongue protruding slightly, eyes closed, yet looking at me – always damn well looking at me in the same way as if he read my mind. What a mind I owned! What a screwed-up mind! ‘But you know something? That’s my mind; it’s the only one I’ve got, yet somehow nature, or the devil, or bloody dick-eyed Martians have found a way of duplicating me – and maybe even my screwy mind. So, welcome to my home, Natsaf-Ty, keeper of the bloody sacred crocodiles. Why don’t you shake me by the hand because I’m the photocopied man. They say no man is an island, well I’m a whole archipelago. I’ve been pirated. There are other Mason Konrads out there. So what do you suggest I do? I mean, are you here to help me? Or are you here to watch me die? Because sure as dogs crap in the park that’s what’s going to happen.’ I advanced on the figure with the ruined body of dried, cracked skin that had been turned red by the embalmers’ salts – a medley of reds, coruscating from rust-red to faded tangerine. Never before have I touched – or attempted to touch – this three-thousand-year-old mummy; at that moment, however, I not only wanted to touch I wanted to punch, kick, mutilate. ‘I’m sick of you appearing from nowhere just to stare at me. Why do it? Aren’t you comfy in your coffin anymore? Go haunt some other fool. If you’ve not come all this way to help me, then what’s the point? What’s the fucking point!’
Yeah, smart move, Mason. When you can’t do anything to escape from here, why not get angry and beat up your imaginary friend? What’s more, you’re shouting but you haven’t woken Madeline. Doesn’t that suggest something, Mason? You must be dreaming….
Dreaming or not, the notion of venting my fury on what must have been a product of my imagination came down like a crushing weight on me. I turned my back to the wall, then slid down until I was sitting on the tiled floor. When I spoke my voice cracked with emotion. ‘So why do you come here?’ I was closer to the mummy now so had to tilt my head back to look up at the serene face with the closed eyes. ‘Come on, old friend, we’ve known each other for a long time. You can tell me, can’t you?’ From this angle I also looked up through that steel grid of a roof. Beyond the three-thousand-year-old face, I could just discern the ceiling beams of the swimming pool. Perhaps a little illumination crept in from somewhere because there where the lights (unlit, of course) dangling at the end of their cables. There was another object hanging there, too. For whole moments I stared at it. Then, with a surge of heat blazing through my veins, I climbed to my feet.
Natsaf-Ty was close enough to touch now. Close enough to punch – not that I wanted to punch – at that moment I wanted to hug his ancient, crusty flesh. ‘I know why you came now.’ My voice rose. ‘Even though you couldn’t tell me you could show me!’ I laughed – were there flecks of hysteria in the sound? ‘You wanted to show me a sign. And a sign you have showed me!’ I laughed louder. ‘Behold the sign!’ Standing on my toes, with my head tilted back so I could see through the criss-cross bars, I gazed at the sign Natsaf-Ty had revealed to me. The words were painted on a board six feet by four suspended just beneath the roof lights. I read that sign aloud: ‘No Pushing. No Splashing. No Ducking.’ My eyes watered from the force of staring through the gloom. ‘And someone changed the D in Ducking to an F. My God, how they did that I’ll never know.’ I shook my head with amazement. ‘I’m at Tanshelf High School. I came here for five years. Five long, long years. This is the old swimming pool. Every time we saw that sign it made us laugh – oh boy, we had dirty minds back then.’ I read the sign again that some trickster had doctored. ‘No Pushing. No Splashing. No Fucking.’
Did this help me? Did knowing that I was held prisoner in my old school have the potential to save me? I don’t know. But knowing where I was being held set the blood racing in my veins. If knowledge is power then I’ve just become that bit more powerful. I’m no longer a beast in a cage.
So – old Natsaf-Ty had a valuable reason for being here after all. I’m in a place I know; this must give me an advantage.
‘Thank you …’ I thanked the air of my prison. Natsaf-Ty had gone. Whether back to his glass case in Tanshelf Museum, or whether his image had retreated into some quirky fold of my brain I couldn’t begin to say. That’s the territory psychiatrists and occultists battle over for possession.
I know where I am … I know this place. That knowledge comforted me. Proverbially, I was standing on solid ground again.
Bang. Lights on. Dazzled. Can see nothing. Screams. More screams mixed with ‘No! Don’t!’ I shielded my eyes to see what happened at the far end of my cell. Madeline had woken up. She moved from side to side as if trying to bounce herself from the concrete walls. When I shielded my eyes from the glare, that’s when I saw what they were doing to her.
chapter 14
Simple: they’re trying to kill her.
Was it an ego thing? If Madeline was slowly undergoing a transformation into me, did I feel as if I had possessory title over her? Whatever went through my mind at that moment I found myself racing along that narrow corridor of a cell.
‘Leave her!’ I shouted at her tormentors. ‘If you want to stick someone try sticking me!’ Because I’d seen what they were doing to her. At least two people must have stood on the steel roof above her. Through the gaps in the bars they were spearing her with broom handles – broom handles that had been sharpened to a lethal point. She screamed when one of the spears drove through her T-shirt into the upper part of her chest. When she used both hands to grip the pole I saw the Y-shaped scar – the same Y-shaped scar that graces the back of my right hand: it’s a raw conjunction of lines that are still a blood red after all these years. A lasting memorial of the night I was driven by jealousy to swing a punch at my best friend. The punch missed and I ripped open the back of my hand. That was then – this is now: the men, or women, above her were invisible against the downward glare of lights. All I could make out were moving silhouettes that jabbed the wooden poles down into Madeline’s body. A bloody patch formed around a rip in her T-shirt at the shoulder. Her red lips pressed together as the pain nearly overwhelmed her.
‘Leave her alone! She’s one of yours!’ My rage thundered. I gripped one pole, tried to twist it from the unseen hands above but it slipped through my fingers. A second later they jabbed it through another section of cage roof to stab at Madeline. Tears rolled down her cheeks from those oh-so familiar eyes.
I roared at them, ‘Stop it! You’re hurting her!’
She sobbed broken-heartedly now. When she tried to protect her face from a sharp point it cruelly dug into the palm of her hand. Ins
tead of pulling I yanked the pole backward; the pressure of the steel bar against the shaft snapped it. A few fibres of wood held the pole together and it was quickly withdrawn. A pity. I’d have loved to have one as a weapon. Another pair of poles appeared to try and stake this woman, who seemed so fragile now as she hunched her shoulders and cowered before the makeshift spears.
There wasn’t a great deal I could do to fight back as the attackers stood on the grille above us. Instead I grabbed hold of Madeline. Hugging her tightly to me, I used my body as a shield. The salvo of jabs I expected didn’t materialize. Instead it went suddenly silent. For a long time I held Madeline close, her head tucked in against my chest, my head projecting over hers to protect it.
‘I know you hate me,’ she whispered at last. ‘I don’t want to be like this. I don’t know what’s happening to me.’
It wouldn’t be long before the lights went out – our captors were predictable. Gently I told her I should check the wounds inflicted by the spears. Without hesitation she gripped the hem of the T-shirt and slipped it up over her body, then over her head. If I’d expected any involuntary change of gender what I saw there in the harsh lights proved me wrong. I saw smooth female skin, breasts, and adult womanhood just where the supreme deity or mother nature intended. Without a murmur she allowed me to lightly touch the puncture wounds in her shoulder and upper chest. A little blood smeared the otherwise flawless skin but the injuries weren’t at all serious. Her eyes locked on to mine as I examined her.