Desmond Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten
1958
The fucking bitch had cheated on him. He'd known it all along, but had done nothing. And he hadn't done anything because he'd been under orders. Stand down, he'd been told, and, well, if there was one thing that Mitch Thompson was good at, it was following orders, and this case was no exception. And so he's been a good little soldier about it; he'd swallowed his pride and let it go, and every time he knew that Carolyne had sashayed her fine little ass across the street to have some fun with Captain Science Stud over there, every time he'd fucking known about it, he would go off to some out of town bar and sit on the stool by himself, just brooding and drinking and waiting for that one guy, that one guy who would do something wrong, anything at all really... And then he would take out his rage on that that poor hapless fool, and afterwards the Agency would swoop in and clean up the mess and pay off or threaten all of the witnesses and then everything would be back to normal, all nice and normal, the Thompson's they led a nice normal family life down here in the suburbs.
And now Mitch is lying next to his wife, the covers thrown back onto the floor, both of them lying naked on the sheets in the lowering light, Mitch on his back while Carolyne is sprawled flat on her stomach, and damn that was one hell of a fuck, wasn't it? Mitch glances over at her, face plastered onto the pillow, motionless. She almost looked dead, would have maybe even convinced him that she was dead, except for the light snoring wafting up from between her slack lips. She'd just dropped off like that as soon as he'd finished; just flopped forward onto her belly and Zonk! Down for the count. But it wasn't as though she hadn't been like a fucking banshee right up until that moment. Fucking wildwoman, she was these days.
Mitch reaches over and fishes a cigarette out of the pack sitting on the night table. Of course, he knows just why his beloved wife had turned pro on him lately. He'd seen her at the window when he'd pulled up in his car, had spotted the Roberts woman too, across the street, glaring over at their house. She certainly knew what was up, didn't she? Well, sort of. She knew enough to be suspicious, anyways.
She knew that things between them still weren't over. Not by a long shot.
With the cigarette clamped between his lips, Mitch reaches for the silver Death's Head lighter on the night table. He turns it over in his hand, admiring the way that it catches the light. A gift from an old girlfriend in Indochina. Ironically, that same woman was dead, now. Or maybe that wasn't irony; maybe it was more synchronicity.
Desmond Roberts had been a sort of death's head. More than anyone knew; more than Carolyne knew, even if that was the basis of her attraction to him. The man was a positive magnet of death.
Mitch pops the lighter and tips the flame to his cigarette. He watches the flame for a moment, then flips the light close and sets it back on the table. He lies back and draws deep, exhaling a broad plume of smoke rising in the bedroom heat.
He glances again over at his wife. Her snoring has risen slightly from a light whisper to something that closely resembled a proper snore. Normally he would find this annoying, but at this moment it has a soothing effect. The calm after the storm.
When he had come home he had stepped inside and sensed it- the way that she'd gotten herself all turned on over him, over the gimp across the street. Desmond. And so the fight had started right away, with him just coming out and saying it: that she was still attracted to him, even as a worthless fucking gimp she still wanted him. She wanted climb onto his wheelchair and fuck his retarded brains out, didn't she?
That hadn't gone over with her too good at all. She went from plaintive denial to shrieking rage in no time flat, and then it was just a free for all – smashing plates and overturning furniture, both of them nose to nose at full volume, and when he finally pinned her against the wall the heat rose in an instant and that was that. When he carried her into the bedroom he could hear a noise across the street; Wendy Roberts was yelling at her gimp husband. Pretty funny coincidence, that. He remembers wondering if she was as turned on as they both were then.
Anyways it had all worked out pretty fine, for the moment. Thank you, Desmond.
Mitch Thomas pulls again on the cigarette and lets out another thick cloud of smoke. He begins to settle into himself, feeling the first light stirrings of sleep drifting over him. Carolyne's snoring seems to get louder, but that's okay. He still kind of likes it, likes the way it sounds. The light of the bedroom deepens slowly around them. He stares at the ceiling and shuts off his mind.
A sudden stabbing pain pricks his chest. Mitch sits halfway up with a hissing breath, and immediately realizes that he had dropped the cigarette onto his chest, and that it has now rolled off and onto the sheets. He jumps up and runs his hands back and forth; after a second he finds it and quickly plucks it from the sheets and stubs it out in the ashtray on the night table. He lifts the sheet up and spots a burn hole, pokes his finger through the hole. The edges are still warm. Damn. He drops the sheet and gives it another quick check, finding no further damage.
Well, it could have been worse. At least they didn't both burn to death in their bed. Mitch chuckles to himself at the thought. Then he looks up and sees something.
There is a body lying in the hallway, just outside of the open bedroom door.
Mitch stares blankly. He blinks rapidly several times, sitting up straighter. The body is still there. It's someone lying on their back, their head pointed towards the bedroom. For a second Mitch thinks to himself, a symbol, but then the thought disappears and he slides himself out of the bed and onto his feet. Carolyne continues to snore obliviously.
He reaches over and quietly pulls open a small drawer in the night table. Reaching inside, he pulls out a Ruger pistol – a gift his dad had given him, after returning from the war. Slowly, with the pistol at his side, Mitch begins to approach the body on the floor.
It's a female, dressed in a plain single blue garment. She has short blond hair. As he approaches, he can't tell much else about her, being upside down to his position. She is completely motionless, possibly dead. No movement in the hallway beyond her.
Behind him Carolyne's snoring rises in volume. He wants to turn around and tell her to shut up, but he doesn't dare look away from the woman on the floor. Slowly, Mitch approaches the body to within a few feet, looking closer. He can see that her eyes are closed. She looks to be middle aged, and he's thinking that her hair is most likely a bleach job. The blue garment is like a sort of tunic that covers her to her knees. Her feet are bare. Her hands are laid folded across her chest.
The snoring sound seems to echo now, bouncing off the walls of the room. Mitch can feel a slightly dizzying sensation, accompanied by an unexpected sense of euphoria. And this is what frightens him the most, the fact that this current scenario should in any way make him feel good.
He's seen enough. He needs to get to a phone, call some people. Someone at the Agency will know what to do about this, at least they can send a scrub team. He's about to turn around and make for the bedside phone, when something catches his eye, something he hadn't noticed at first.
The woman on the floor is wearing a necklace, a very fine material that is almost invisible on her neck, and nestled in the space beneath her throat is some kind of pendant. There is something about the pendant that draws Mitch even closer. It's of a geometric shape that Mitch has never seen before, which is strange because it's such a simple shape. But he knows he's never seen this shape before. This thought triggers an increase in his attraction to the pendant. The shape, simple as it is, seems to form some sort of a rhythm in his mind. A sort of hypnotic lulling rhythm that co-mingles with the sound of Carolyne's snoring, ever louder by the second. The pendant is the shape of her sound, the sound is her shape, everything has a shape, everything vibrates. Every second louder and closer, he needs to get away, get the phone, but it feels so delightful doesn't it? Doesn't it feel good?
You like to feel good.
Like a reverse mousetrap the body springs up, feet first. It snaps into an upside down standing position directly in front of Mitch. He looks down and sees the woman's head at his feet, feels hot air rushing over his ankles. Her eyes are open and round and white. Then she rises up, bending her legs as she approaches the ceiling, until her face is directly in front of his own.
Carolyne is no longer snoring behind him. Everything is completely silent and still. The woman's eyes are aligned directly with Mitch's, and now she starts to blink, lids snapping open and shut like shutters, her eyes changing from white to black, back and forth with increasing speed. Mitch can feel nothing but a rushing pulse filling his head; his body seems to have disappeared beneath him and he is nothing more than a floating head now. Floating before this woman's checkerboard eyes. And the shutter speed merges into a film strip, her eyes open up into a terrible landscape that clamps the pulse in his head and twists it anew. His vision turns over on itself, forming shapes against this awful landscape; the shapes are looking at him while doing something to each other. They're – what are they doing to each other? They're... what he sees the shapes doing to each other causes a darkening cold rise up into the space all around him, dragging him down... He wants to scream but can't find his body, just his soul silently crying out as he senses a final end, a black blacker than black, a cold colder than cold...No more. No.
The North crosses her landscape eyes together into a single predatory egg of cyclopean intensifying gaze, rushing through Mitch's mind with exquisite terror. She unfolds her hands and lowers them around his head. With barely an effort she takes what she wants and then she crushes him completely out of this existence.
1946
“Your journey shall be difficult.”
The old woman's hands feel like brittle twigs wrapped in tissue paper. She runs her callused fingertips over the lines of Wendy's right palm, turning her hand over to examine the back. The woman's breathing is as light and papery as her hands. Wendy starts to feel a little nervous, turning her head slightly back to her friends. Everyone is staring intently at the two of them, huddled in a semi circle behind Wendy's chair. The room is filled with shadows that seem to expand and contract amongst the beads and hanging cloth. The old woman grunts lightly.
“Yes..” she whispers, “Very difficult. But if you persevere,” The woman raises her eyes to Wendy, “You shall make a most wonderful discovery...” The woman's eyes are wide and bright, like the eyes of a young girl, herself. The group shifts behind her, everyone leaning in closer.
When the woman says nothing more, Mary decides to speak up. “What sort of discovery?”
The woman releases Wendy's hands and settles back into her chair. She casts a long indeterminate stare at the group, then lowers her gaze back to Wendy. A gust of wind and snow pushes against the tiny window of the basement room. The woman stares into Wendy's eyes and seems to slow down her breathing.
“Within everyone's soul there exists two selves – the shadow and the mirror. Most people go through life as only the one, the shadow self. But you are different. You are destined to meet your mirror self. And when that happens...”
The old woman tilts her head slightly. To Wendy, everything seems to have slowed down now; her breathing, her heartbeat, her pulse... Even the very molecules of the air.
The old woman's voice trembles in a low vibrato that cuts through the lowering silence. “When that happens you shall enter into a different world.”
As the girls climb the steps, back up to the street, Mary drops a hand onto Wendy's shoulder.
“That was a real grade A performance in there, eh? Quite the slick operator.”
“Yeah...” Wendy responds listlessly, half stumbling onto the sidewalk between the towering rows of freshly shovelled snow. She stares down at her hands. Mary frowns slightly, then laughs and shrugs her shoulders.
The girls begin to lighten up as they climb towards St Catherine street, refreshed by the crisp winter air. The feeling of reckless adventure seems to have returned to the group, and as they round the corner on St Catherine everyone is laughing and making remarks about different aspects of the city. Except for Wendy, who just keeps looking at her hands.
“Wendy!” Lisa says, turning back to see Wendy's uncovered hands, “Where are your gloves? You'll catch frostbite!” She steps over and covers Wendy's hands in her own mittens. The group stops to wait.
“I don't know,” Wendy mumbles, “I guess...” She looks back towards the side street.
A large pane of glass hits the sidewalk five feet in front of the girls. Everyone spins around in shock, but no one makes a sound. The pane had struck the ground perfectly flat, and so the glass disintegrates into millions of tiny pieces that spread out across the sidewalk and dance across their shoes. Lisa and Sally jump away from the glass, while Mary holds her ground and Wendy freezes in place. After a moment, Wendy looks up. Above them a young couple is leaning out of a window, eyes wide in shock.
“Attention!” The man in the window shouts down at them, altogether too late. A few other people on the sidewalk begin to yell up at the window, and the couple respond with wild hand gestures and entreaties. Wendy looks at the glass on the ground. To her it seems to form some kind of a pattern.
“That's right where we would have been if we hadn't stopped,” Lisa breathes shakily. All of the girls turn to look at Wendy. She clenches her hands into fists and stuffs them into the pockets of her clothes, and without another word she brushes past everyone and begins to walk quickly down the sidewalk, making her way back to the class field trip from which they had all so foolishly escaped.
1958
The 401 is a moving line towards the car. In the driver's seat, something that looks to all appearances like a man stares and waits. This being, the driver, is trying not to think, but is having a hard time of it. Consciousness feels like a glaring mistake at times like this. To sit here and know the movement in space that pretends to be time. Time pretending to pass through the conscious mind.
But the driver knows that the sacrifice is worth the wait. No time, but waiting anyways. The driver breathes and drives, moving towards the Facility.
Strange snoring warbles from the back seat. The driver smiles through desiccated lips. One wife too many around here, but where's the fun in seeing it that way? The road needs it's entertainment.
And it has indeed been a very long road for the North.
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