Spawn of Man (6 page)

There was a hissing sound, like a moth sizzling on a heated coil, and then the lights blazed. Robert’s eyes narrowed as the huge arrays blinked on and revealed a stairway that sank into more deep shadow. Concrete steps ran away from Robert and as he began the descent he suddenly realized he had no torch to rely on should the aged lights fail. He hesitated, looking back up the stairway then down to where the steps disappeared into a recess. He decided there must be a separate generator powering this section of the institute and he continued slowly, until he entered the dimness.

Once again he was forced to grope in the dark for a light switch, this time on the wall, as it turned to his left to drop another flight of stairs. He found the second switch and flooded the next level with artificial light, standing transfixed like a small animal momentarily spellbound in the headlights of a car. The yellow radiance of the bulbs wrapped around him and it took some seconds for his vision to adapt. He stared around the room. The walls were carved out of rock that must have constituted the foundations of the institute, and they were wet and stained with green-brown moss. The low ceiling was deeply scarred and the floor was earthen and uneven. On each side of the galley-like room there was a row of three, iron-barred cells.

Robert could see the room terminated at the far end in another door; this one fashioned from heavy, dark wood. Although time had ravaged the black paint there was no fire damage either on the door or anywhere in the chamber. This room must have been locked from the outside before the fire had taken hold of the institute. Robert sensed an oppressive texture to the atmosphere that might slowly crush him if he lingered too long. It did not feel like this force was intrinsic to the chamber but rather the chamber housed it, imprisoned it, and just for a fleeting moment, Robert felt something very old was present, something clamoring to be set free.

As he alighted from the stairs and cautiously approached the first cell, he heard the noise again, the dull thump that pulsed through his body like a second heartbeat. Robert’s head collided with one of the lights that were slung from the low ceiling. The interiors of the cells were hidden from view, as there was no illumination in any of the six cubicles. But the fitting Robert had disturbed now swung back and forth, brightening the first cell on either side of the room with the sequence of a pendulum. Robert reeled as the grotesque contents of these cells were revealed to him. The stark light washed over the bones of two skeletons, one in each cell, bones bleached in the harsh glow from the bulb as it washed over them briefly, before plunging the cell back into darkness. In the lighted interludes Robert made out manacles secured to the anklebones of the skeletons, oversized and disproportionate now the corpses were stripped of flesh.

He wished he had brought a torch now, if the lights failed he did not relish being alone in the dark with these specimens. Robert assumed they were inmates of the asylum from around the time of the 1922 fire and he concluded with a shiver of revulsion that they had probably died of thirst after around a week of delirium. Was their death made more pitiful by their nature, or could it be judged more merciful because of it? Their death agonies would manifest in the same forms of madness as their “normal” behavior and that made it all the more macabre.

Robert noticed there were cables stretching from the cells, lying across the central passageway and converging to enter a small room at the end of the chamber. The door to that room was open and the trunks of cables ran through, to be tethered to what looked like a machine. Reaching up, Robert held the wire cage of the second light and shone it into the middle cell on the right, empty, the manacle open. Then the middle left cell, another skeleton in the dark interior, again chained to the far wall.

Robert almost crept passed these middle cells, apprehension lightening his steps as if his footfalls would rouse the wretched bundles of bones and re-animate them, still thirsting and still demented. He stopped at the last cell on the right. The lamp here was off centre due to the intrusion of a supporting ceiling beam and it spilled a cone shaped spotlight into that cell. Robert noticed a small table just outside the cell against the far wall. There was a bowl for washing, a shaving kit and a small drawer
built into the base. The drawer was open and glass debris was strewed around the feet of the table, reaching into the cell itself.

Because the ceiling light here was positioned off centre, the last cell on the left was in total darkness. Robert suppressed a shudder as he imagined eye-less dead sockets watching him from the inky blackness of that cell. The configuration of the lights also meant that the last cell on the right was fully illuminated and Robert saw the now familiar shackle on the far wall of the cell, restraining the bony foot. However, this skeletal specimen was not connected to a body as the bone was truncated just above the restraint and the procedure looked uneven and brutal.

As Robert peered harder into the cell, trying to decipher what this strange deviation indicated, his hand suddenly rested on something hard and nodular. He looked down and jolted, retracting his hand from the skeletal extremity jammed into the horizontal bar running across its vertical counterparts. The hand belonged to a skeleton that, unlike the others, was located at the front of the cell, its skull tilted up and looking at Robert from two empty, lifeless cavities. Robert then saw that the shin bone of this poor soul was cut short, matching the dismembered foot that was still held in the wall restraint.

‘What the hell happened here?’ whispered Robert.

Robert crouched to the level of the skeleton. He followed the cable that entered that cell with his fingers, up from the floor outside the bars and through a square purposely cut into the bars. Where the trunk of the cable ended, spider legs of wires flourished and then spliced into slightly thinner versions and these entered small holes bored into the side of the skull. Robert grimaced and removed his fingers from the cable, turning to view the jumble of conduits that wove across the stone floor into the small room.

‘What is this place?’

Standing, but still looking at the pitiful remains in the last cell, Robert pressed his thumb to his wrist again. A holographic menu, five inches by five inches, flashed into life before Robert’s right eye, projected from his CCI. Robert poked the air where the “record” icon flashed. The menu disappeared and a slender red line, similar to an infrared target beam, emanated from his eye and swept across the mutilated skull leaning against the bars of the cell. Robert then turned, filming the intertwining mass of cables as he picked his way amongst them and into the next room. There was no light in this room but the ceiling fittings in the cell chamber lit it adequately enough.

The ray from Robert’s eye felt its way around the room like a lighthouse beam cutting through fog. In the centre of the room stood a single chair. It was heavily embellished with gratuitous scenes of debauchery and butchery of every type and the wood seemed to squirm in the ecstasy and agony of the acts wrought upon its surface. Years of dust layered it and it was stained with a substance in blotches that covered a large portion of its surface. Connected to the chair through a series of crude receivers, thick wires entered a small but sturdy looking generator, which stood four feet away from the chair.

As Robert moved towards the chair he realized that the cables that left each cell, like the one he witnessed entering the skeleton’s skull, all meshed together into the generator. His foot kicked against a length of glass, obviously fragmented from the flakes in the chamber outside the last cell, and he knelt to examine the lethal looking sliver. It was covered with the same covering of dust as the chair and generator but when Robert blew some of this film away he saw a skin of darker matter that had dried onto the smooth surface and jagged edges. Robert placed the glass back into its own imprint in the dirt and stood to face the chair. Robert noticed the chair oddly faced a blank wall. He ran the red beam of his CCI over the design of the chair, puzzled as to why such a grotesque piece of furniture would have been produced.

Cautiously, although he could not understand why he should show caution, he touched the chair. Nothing happened. He put his other hand on the opposite armrest so that he stood bent forward and holding the armrests like he was restricting its movement. At first the sensation in his palms was almost imperceptible, a prickling, scratching feeling as though he held something with spines that pressed into his skin lightly, even pleasurably. Robert turned his head sideways and looked through the open door into the chamber. He thought he heard a laugh, hollow and cold. It was more of an echo of the past than an event from the present. Then there was a click and the faint emission of fumes as the generator’s motor rumbled into life.

Robert’s head clicked back to the generator, he still held the armrests as he watched a light blue shock of electricity travel sporadically along the wires that ran from the machine to the chair. Stupefied and as motionless as a mannequin, Robert observed the current dissipate when it hit the receivers in the chair and a charge jumped to both of his hands like small rodents leaping onto his flesh, claws hooking into the skin. The veins on the back of Robert’s hand become engorged and prominent and the membrane tightened to accommodate the swollen vessels. Beneath, raised tracks began to worm their way up over his wrist and into his forearm like tiny insects burrowing and weaving below the surface.

Robert’s head tilted backwards and his pupils dilated and rolled upwards as the veins in his arms rose further, as if he was being inflated through his fingertips. He began to shake violently and bubbling white foam appeared between his clenched teeth. His temples throbbed and the veins became like thick tubing, stretching the skin painfully. Then Robert dreamed.

He dreamed of a cloudless blue sky above a blue lake with a surface like porcelain. He lay on the shore of the lake alone, gazing lazily at the faultless sky. There was a child playing games in the sun. He could feel warmth on his face and smell the sweet, slightly pungent fragrances of flowers in the air. He turned on his side and touched a flower and its vibrant color smudged and came off on his fingers. Had the child painted these flowers? There was a call from the lake. It was Alex and Jake. They were in a small rowing boat, frantically pointing at something behind Robert and shouting. No, not shouting, screaming.

Robert turned. A huge, clumsy, amorphous black thing was approaching in the sky, contrasting against the blue, dark and blotting out the sun. Its odor was carried before it, rank and acrid. Robert choked on the fumes and his eyes smarted and wept from the effects of the rancid smell. Now the shape soared overhead and Robert strained his eyes against the fireball sun to follow the course of its flight. As Robert attempted to rise, vines crept towards him through the tall grass, like eels wriggling through the murky growths of a seabed. They pierced the skin of his forearms and squirmed in a serpentine path just below the surface, effectively tying him to the ground.

‘Alex, Jake, row to me, for God’s sake row to me!’ Robert screamed as he pulled feverishly at the stems holding him.

The vines continued to race up Robert’s arms, quickly reaching his shoulders. He appeared as if he was growing out of the Earth itself and he screamed again as the cloud-like thing began a descent, with a trajectory that brought it directly in line with the little rowing boat.

And now Alex was sobbing, ‘It wasn’t my fault Robert, it wasn’t my fault!’

Robert opened his mouth to call again but no sound issued. The shoots had arrived at his neck and had begun to push towards his skull, the skin on his throat bulging now like he was exposed to the vacuum of space and straining almost to the point of exploding. His face looked like a badly inked road map and the network of stems spread beneath his cheeks and forced his eyes to protrude. Alex gathered Jake into her arms and watched in terror as the black thing sailed through the air towards them. Then a jab of pain stabbed Robert in the right temple and he opened his eyes. He still held the chair but the swelling in his veins was reducing, swiftly returning them to their normal state and Robert released his grip on the chair, staggering backwards.

The jab of pain in his temple came again and he put his hand to it before realizing it was his CCI. The device’s neural connection had somehow interrupted whatever connection had been instituted by the chair and fed by the generator. Robert stepped back further, unsure still of where he was, then instinctively activated his CCI and spoke groggily.

‘Hello?’ As he did so he displayed the menu, noticing he had recorded twelve hours of footage, yet he had only estimated five minutes to have elapsed since he first touched the chair.

‘Mr. Douglas? Mr. Robert Douglas?’

‘Yes. Yes, who is this?’ Robert asked, still looking at the menu suspended in the air.

‘My name is Detective Andrews sir, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.’

Chapter Six

2036. October, Saturday. Dusk

Six miles from Babel, Alex stifled another yawn and looked at her wristwatch, 8.00 p.m. Only six miles left of their journey home. Jake was still drifting in and out of sleep and he broke his repose slightly with a long sigh. Alex felt fatigue applying heavy pressure on her eyelids and she gave another big, open-mouthed yawn. Jake responded with a less dramatic effort of his own and rolled his head to face Alex.

Four miles. Alex hunched and lowered her shoulders. It was dark now and the road was clouded and blurred by October rain and surface spray. Alex blinked hard and tried to concentrate. Jake was breathing deeply, completely lost in slumber, half-smiling to himself. Alex wondered what
he
was dreaming of at that moment and she was suddenly washed over by an intense, searing feeling of love for her child. She turned her attention away from the road momentarily to hold her child’s hand and look at his calm, half-smiling face.

A warm, consuming wave of emotion welled and spilled over Alex. The vision of Jake asleep in the car with his face slightly creased into a secret smile and his hair soft and velvety against the skin of the cheek was indelibly burned into her mind. Alex did not see the car driving towards her on the wrong side of the road, travelling too fast in an effort to overtake another car and hoping that Alex would slow to allow the maneuver.

Alex was catapulted forward on impact, her safety belt snapping tight and breaking her shoulder. The breath left her body as she jarred backwards and slammed hard against her seat. Her eyes were filled with intense lights bursting into her field of vision, myriads of colors, reds, whites, blues, greens and all competing to overwhelm her senses. Metallic tasting blood seeped from somewhere into her mouth and her left leg was smashed, the bone protruding from the thigh and glistening wetly like porcelain dipped in glaze.

She tried desperately to adjust her vision as panic bit at her brain and she fought for air. Crescendos of noise rose around her, twisting, grinding, and groaning metal violently collapsing in on itself. Glass imploding devastatingly. And the tumult
 
grew until it seemed it could not grow any more.

A sharp, bitter smell filled her nostrils, as if oil was seeping
into Alex’s nose, and she choked on the taste of it as it slid down her throat. The last thing she saw was a large, dark object approaching the windscreen. For a moment Alex thought it was a huge, clumsy bird flying straight at her, demonically intent on ripping her to pieces. Then the driver of the other vehicle exploded through
Alex’s windscreen, severing his head and crushing her chest. He had been thrown clean through his windscreen at the point of collision, as he had not worn a seatbelt. He covered the distance between the two cars in seconds, even though they had bounced apart again.

Alex managed a stifled cry as blood spurted from her mouth and splashed over the decapitated form now pinning her into the seat. Alex fought to stay awake, knowing it was the same fight as the one to stay alive. Shards of glass had sprayed over her face piercing her eyes. She didn’t know now if her eyes were open or shut but she knew she was blind. She could not feel her arms or legs but she could somehow feel the pressure of Jake’s hand in hers. Or did she only imagine that? She turned towards Jake and heard his breathing and she smiled. Her head felt crumpled and too low on her shoulders, like someone was trying to fold her into a suitcase. Through the rain-splattered window she thought she could see again and there was Robert lying in a field of bright, swaying, tall flowers.

He was asleep too and she heard herself whisper, ‘Everyone’s asleep now.’

But there was no sound
.
She felt like she and Jake were floating in a small wooden boat on a perfect lake, everything was serene and the sun beat down on her exposed skin. Then the warmth was no longer external and she was aware of a rapid, white-hot rush of pain travelling through her body. Then nothing. But she never let go of Jake’s hand.