Needles of light stabbed Danny’s eyes as he opened them. He blinked twice, trying to find his bearings. Strip lighting was passing above him. The thing he was lying on rattled, clattered and squeak squeak squeaked. It was pushed by Teena Rama.
Her chin’s underside faced straight ahead. ‘You’re conscious?’ she asked.
‘Am I?’ There was a pie on his chest.
‘I’ve never known anyone take so long to recover from a left hook,’ she said, ‘well delivered though it was.’
His head raised, straining to see his surroundings. ‘Where am I?’
‘In the broom cupboard.’
He gazed at the walls of a hospital-style corridor.
She pushed on. Gibbon’s Decline and Fall tucked beneath one arm. ‘I’m afraid my house has no brooms. My Man Who Does stores all his equipment at his own home, bringing it over only when I request its application.’
‘I’m tied to a table?’
‘No. You’re strapped to a trolley.’
‘Big difference,’ he grumbled.
‘There’s a world of difference, tables not being renowned for their manoeuvrability.’
‘Where are you taking me?’
Halting the trolley at a lift, she ordered, ‘Doors.’
Ping. The door rumbled open. She pushed the trolley inside. Rattling, it jolted over the join between lift and corridor.
Clunk. The door shut behind them.
Then: ‘My God!’ With renewed urgency Danny tried to break free, suddenly understanding. ‘This isn’t a trolley!’
‘No? Then what is it?’
‘It’s an altar!’
‘An altar?’ Rama gazed down at him as the lift descended through countless storeys. ‘You think I plan to marry you? I can assure you, Gary, the day I wed, I hope to do it with a little more style than this. Though I must say, being tied up does add a certain frisson to a man’s appeal.’
‘How can you joke about this?’
‘Who’s joking?’
‘You’re going to sacrifice me to Boggy Bill. That’s why you wanted me to live here. You think, by giving him Brian Yates’ brother, you’ll curry favour with your “master”.’ A trickle of sweat ran across his forehead.
‘Is this a colour thing?’ she asked wearily.
‘What’s colour got to do with it?’
‘Would you be talking this nonsense if I were white?’
‘Of course I would. If someone drugs you, beats you up, ties you to a mobile altar and cuts your heart out right in front of you, what difference does colour make?’
‘You don’t find this human sacrifice to a gorilla god thing redolent of 1930s Hollywood stereotyping?’
Race doesn’t come into it. Everyone’s ancestors made sacrifices to Boggy Bill.’
‘Mine didn’t.’
‘Yes, they did.’
‘No, they didn’t. My family are from Hampstead. Human sacrifice rarely goes down well in Hampstead.’
‘So you came here to do it.’
‘Well.’ She shrugged, now watching the lift doors. ‘Perhaps I did.’
His eyes narrowed accusingly. Now he was getting somewhere.
She said. Perhaps there were certain things I couldn’t do in Hampstead, so I came to Wheatley. After all, who can know what any of us would do if free of social constraints? Who, for instance, would have thought a seemingly harmless boy would be so underhand as to try to drug a woman into his bed?’
‘Doors said it’d be okay.’
‘Yes, well,’ she said icily. ‘Good old Doors.’
‘I should’ve guessed it all along,’ said Danny. ‘But maybe I did. Maybe I had you sussed and was going to report you to the medical authorities. That’s why you started drugging me, to make me forget. Maybe I’m really shrewd, the twenty-first century’s Herbolt Myson.’
‘Who?’
‘Herbolt Myson, Victorian super sleuth.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘That clown.’
‘Clown? He was the greatest mind of his age.’
‘It doesn’t say much for the rest.’
‘And that girl with the green hair, she’s my sidekick in sleuthery. And it’s only your drugs that’re making me seem stupid.’
‘I can assure you, Gary, your stupidity is purely natural.’
Straps refusing to budge, he stopped struggling. ‘My jaw hurts.’ He could still feel where her knuckles had impacted.
‘Yes. Well. Whose fault is that?’
‘Yours.’
‘No, Gary, it’s yours. You won’t eat my pies. You won’t keep your nose out of things that don’t concern you. Frankly, as a housemate, you’re not working out.’
‘And you are?’
‘I’ve been an excellent host, the best. You’ve forced me to do what I’m doing now, and don’t forget that. Anything that happens to you from now on is entirely your own fault. No wonder your last landlord kicked you out. I’m only surprised it took him so long.’
‘Will you let him eat me?’ he asked feebly.
‘Who? Your last landlord?’
‘Boggy Bill.’
‘If he insists.’
‘Alive?’
‘How could I stop him?’
He imagined himself tied struggling to the trolley, the creature consuming him, starting at his legs and working its way up. ‘How many?’
‘Many?’
‘How many lodgers have you sacrificed? Dozens?’
She said nothing.
‘Hundreds?’
She said nothing.
His jaw dropped. ‘Thousands?’
Ping. The lift stopped. His stomach regained its full weight.
The door rumbled open.
And, with a jolt and a rattle, Teena Rama wheeled him out.
‘What do you think of my masterpiece?’ Rama pushed the trolley round a white, circular room. At its hub hung, vertically, a huge, atom-smashing phallus of a gun, ten foot in diameter, oozing power, hubris and God-defying menace in equal measure. It was the work of a madwoman.
As Danny circled, his gaze climbed the gun – twenty storeys, thirty storeys, forty, more – having to give up exhausted before reaching anything like its apex.
‘Is this what you’ll use to sacrifice me?’ he asked, feebly.
‘If you like.’ She stopped the trolley on a ramp’s gentle rise and, slap, dropped Gibbon’s Decline and Fall to the floor. A bare foot wedged it beneath one wheel to ensure it stayed put.
Striding up the ramp, she approached a console with a blank screen on top. She donned Walkman headphones and plugged them into the console. Her back to him, she fiddled with controls. The screen hummed to life, images cascading as though on a maladjusted television.
‘That’ll summon Boggy Bill?’ Danny’s mouth dried as he spoke.
‘If you like.’ She manipulated a knob here, a mouse there, trying to draw a coherent image from the device.
‘You’ve probably convinced yourself you’re doing this for the good of humanity, haven’t you?’ he protested. ‘Well, let me tell you. Doctor Rama – and I can’t believe you’re a real doctor, real doctors have ethics and codes and oaths and give you lollipops to encourage you to come back; no one’d want to come back to your practice – when I’m a ghost, I’m going to get you, get you big time. And nothing’ll save you, not tame doors, not force fields, not hidden bunkers, not a pretty face, not a big gun, nothing.’
An image settled on screen, showing the house’s empty hallway. He didn’t know whether it was the hallway as it was now, as it had been, as it would be, or as it had never been.
‘Gary, if you want to get out of here in one piece, shut up. I have something to show you.’