MARK SAMUELS
My contention is that high-level sentience collapses in on itself near death in a manner akin to the demise of a massive star and that dying thoughts approach infinite duration. Postmortem, these thoughts, if driven by a will of sufficient power, can tumble over a synaptic event horizon and subsequently appear in another body with an almost exact genetic identity. Such “heirs” are subject to the invasion of their minds by ideas and emotions that originate with the dead. The living are simply vehicles for a series of disturbing and broken alien responses that we take to be our own personalities. I now believe that the majority of thoughts we think actually come from the “ghost shells” of ancestors in varying states of psychical decay. They are the products of disintegrating remains, frightful masks that have not been shed. Afterlife geography is seen in the UHF frequencies between TV channels, consisting of immense steppes of static. It is a projection in time, comprised of antimatter and populated by the dead.
—Julius Ghorla, Black Holes (1983)
The 9:35 A.M. bus approached Crawborough railway station. It was a wet, miserable morning in late October. The rain had not ceased for three days and the weather forecasts predicted another week more of it. All the holidaymakers were long gone from this stretch of the Yorkshire coast; no more backpackers, elderly couples, or dirty weekenders used the bus service to ferry them north. Most of the time, except during school-run hours, the bus was empty save for one or two lone shoppers ferrying their heavy bags back from the supermarket to home. Even they usually traveled only as far as four or five stops.
The driver of the bus, one Bill Jones, was confident he would not have to take on any passengers for this service from Crawborough to Banwick. The incessant rain seemed to have forced everyone off the streets. This pleased him quite a bit because it meant he could enjoy the luxury of smoking whilst he drove, instead of waiting until he reached the depot at Banwick, well over an hour away. There would be no one to comment, or worse—report—on his flouting the bus company’s regulations.
But as he pulled into the turn near the railway station, he was disgruntled to see a lone figure waiting underneath the bus shelter ahead. The prospective passenger had a large suitcase with him, two plastic carrier-bags, and a wicker basket for carrying a small dog or large cat.
When he pulled up alongside the shelter and opened the doors, Jones saw that the man was glancing accusingly at a fob watch he’d produced from the left pocket of his shabby beige mackintosh.
The man immediately struck Jones as being a difficult passenger. He tuttutted loudly as he put away his watch as if to insinuate that the bus was running late. Moreover, his appearance and demeanor gave the overall impression that he fancied himself an eccentric. This did not endear him to Jones, who regarded any person even remotely out of the ordinary as highly suspicious; perhaps even of having come up from London. The passenger wore a black porkpie hat and sported a polka-dotted bow tie. He looked to be in his middle fifties. His thin face was a network of worry lines, as if he had analyzed all the problems of the world and come to no solution for them. His complexion was sallow, like candlewax, particularly around his cheeks. He had a long, aquiline nose, beady little eyes, and a small chin as smooth as a billiard ball.
The passenger began to haul his luggage up into the bus and crammed it in the storage space just in front of the seats on the lefthand side of the aisle. Jones noticed that the two carrier bags were stuffed full of paperback books. They smelled musty with age. When the passenger turned back to collect the wicker basket, which had been left until last, Jones called out in a flash of spiteful inspiration:
“Hurry along there, you’re holding up the bus.”
The man glared back coolly and then, with an air of studied irony, began to look around him, making it perfectly aware that he knew he was the only passenger boarding at this stop.
“My good fellow,” he replied in a wearied tone, “kindly refrain from being objectionable.” His was the type of voice passed down by generations of BBC broadcasters until regional accents were finally ushered in.
After he’d paid his fare, the passenger, whose name was Arthur Staines, carried the wicker basket with him to a seat close to the back of the bus. He wanted to be as far away as possible from the oafish driver. From inside the basket there came a long meowing noise and Staines lifted the lid to allow his cat Edgar to examine their surroundings. The creature, a fat and bad-tempered beast with mangy black fur, poked its head out and looked around with evident distaste. The cat lay a paw against the edge of the basket and dug its claws into the side. Staines feared that it might, at any moment, waddle forward and attempt to attack the driver, so he persuaded Edgar to settle down again before it was too late.
Edgar was Staines’s sole companion. The two had been together for over ten years. Once the cat had reached maturity it decided not only that it preferred never to be left alone but also that it was no longer prepared to walk anywhere at all. Occasionally it would drag itself from one side of a room to another in order to eat or defecate, but its great bulk now meant that even this concession was haphazard.
Outside the rain lashed across the landscape of rolling fields and hills. Staines gazed absently at the deluge, more interested in the streams of water coursing down the glass of the bus windows than in the vistas cloaked by the low gray clouds. The vehicle crept along narrow roads between towns and along the sides of valleys, throwing up gigantic splashes as it motored through puddles and pools that had formed on the route.
He took a map from the breast pocket of his shabby mackintosh, unfolded it, and spread it out across his knees. His destination was an old fishing village called Scarsdale Bay, not far south from Banwick. Staines had carefully circled the coastal town on the map.
For some time he had been engaged upon research concerned with an obscure author who had made the village his home during his latter years. This writer, Julius Ghorla (1930–1985), had scraped a living writing pulp novels. Staines planned to make Ghorla the exclusive subject of the next installment (the third) of his limited-circulation periodical Proceedings of the Dead Authors’ Society.
Staines was one of those obsessive bibliophiles who are unable to take any interest in fiction unless its creator had long been in the tomb. Had Ghorla been alive and still writing it is certain that Staines would have thought his work insignificant. Moreover, Staines even ignored prestigious dead authors, reserving his praise for those sufficiently obscure to have escaped critical attention almost altogether. It was as if by championing those writers who had been unfairly overlooked, and who were safely dead, he might thereby obtain for himself some measure of the reputation they had been denied. Vanity had turned him into a ghoul of letters. Ghorla’s books had appeared only during the boom in cheap glue-bound paperbacks, never seeing print in hardcover, and issued solely by Eclipse Publications Ltd, an imprint of a disreputable firm whose catalog otherwise consisted of risqué or “spicy” novels.
Staines calculated that it could not be more than a forty-five-minute journey from Crawborough to Scarsdale Bay, despite the tortuous route that this particular local bus service followed. He had traveled all over the country in search of recondite literary discoveries, indulging his own predilections, although he made his actual, meager living from what little freelance journalism he could sell to local newspapers and the likes of specialist glossy monthly magazines such as Paranormal and UFO Times.
Julius Ghorla had been a favorite writer of his ever since he’d stumbled across a tattered paperback copy of the author’s best known (inasmuch as “best known” is applicable) and final work back in 1984. The book was Ghorla’s episodic novel Black Holes, a series of short stories joined together to form a reasonably lengthy opus of some 50,000 words. These stories were concerned with the interior experiences of the dying brains of several characters. Ghorla had come up with the intriguing idea that consciousness slows down at the point of death to a degree whereby interior time bears no relation to the passage of time in external reality.
Edgar began to meow again. The cat was in a state of agitation and showed his displeasure by rocking back and forth inside his wicker basket. Staines was momentarily at a loss to account for the cause, until he caught a faint whiff of what appeared to be cigarette smoke. He looked up toward the front of the bus and saw a wispy curl of blue tobacco vapor float out of the driver’s cabin.
Staines was not especially puritanical when it came to smoking, but the effect it had on Edgar was not to be ignored. He got up from his seat and wandered forward, hoping to catch the driver in the act. However, by the time he was staring through the glass partition at him, there was no trace of the offending cigarette. The driver’s window was slightly open and it looked as if he had managed to flick the butt outside moments before Staines’s investigation.
“Have you been smoking in here?” Staines said, whilst tapping on the partition.
“What?” he responded, as if he didn’t understand the question. There were telltale traces of ash on the sleeve of his uniform.
“I shall report you,” Staines continued, “you have greatly upset my cat with your thoughtlessness.”
“If you don’t get back in your seat and shut up,” the driver replied, raising his voice, “I’ll throw you and your bloody cat off the bus.”
Staines took a quick look at the still-raging downpour outside. It really would not do to have to walk the seven or so miles remaining before they reached Scarsdale Bay, especially in this foul weather. He doubted that Edgar would survive such a trauma. Loud caterwauling emanated from within the wicker basket. Doubtless Edgar wondered where Staines had gone.
At the top of Scarsdale Bay, Staines stepped down from the bus and joined the luggage he’d deposited on the pavement. He heard the driver mutter something obscene as the doors closed.
The rain had eased and was now no more than persistent drizzle. Staines looked back and forth along the deserted lane until he spotted a sign indicating that Scarsdale Bay town center was to his right, down a turning. As yet he could not see his destination but supposed it could only be a few minutes walk downhill. He tied the carrier bags of books around the outside of his suitcase. It had a retractable handle and little wheels at the base so that he could haul it along after him relatively easily. In his other hand he carried the basket containing Edgar. Mercifully the cat seemed to have fallen asleep after the excitement of the bus journey.
Once he’d turned the corner he had his first sight of Scarsdale Bay. It was situated on the side of a steep cliff and he saw a jumbled panorama of red-tiled rooftops and chimney stacks. Cottages jostled one another over the warren of tiny and narrow stairways and lanes. It had doubtless been a haven for smugglers a few centuries ago. Staines made his way down the central street, Ormsley Parade, passing a series of overhanging upper stories, dilapidated arches, and little flights of steps for pedestrians that were designed to break up the extremely steep gradient. Really, thought Staines, this curious little place might have been designed by an admirer of the artist Piranesi. It was certainly a fitting town for Julius Ghorla to have chosen as a retreat in order to pen his outré series of tales.
A sea wall had been erected in the 1950s near the bottom of the village to’ prevent any more of the fishermen’s cottages being washed away by waves during storms. Ormsley Parade wound all the way to the very bottom of the cliff. During high tide the waves lapped halfway up the cobbled and seaweed-coated steps leading to the beach. When the sea was rough Staines could easily imagine that it spilled over the steps and into the Parade in a foaming torrent.
The hotel in which Staines had booked a room loomed large to his left. It was the sole guest house in Scarsdale Bay. Although most, of the cottages here were let out to tourists during the summer season, such an expense was beyond his limited means. This hotel, called Shadwell Vistas, was very cheap, especially at this time of year, and he anticipated that he was unlikely to be bothered by any other guests. He paused outside the building, looking up at the timbered mock-Tudor structure with its bull’s-eye windows, and then made his way inside to the reception area via a set of paneled double doors.
He crossed a threadbare carpet. The room had a sofa, a few chairs, and some black and white photographs in frames by way of decoration. They depicted scenes of Scarsdale Bay taken during Victorian times. From another room close by he heard a discordant conversation punctuated by bursts of static that sounded as if it were coming from a television set. There was no one manning the reception desk and so Staines rang the bell to signal his presence. A miserable-looking man in his early sixties emerged from a back office. He’d doubtless been engrossed in watching the television that Staines had heard. He was bald with a thin Orwellian mustache, and wore an undone waistcoat with check trousers. Staines noticed that he wasn’t wearing any shoes, or even socks.
“Can I help you, Sir?” The man said without enthusiasm.
“I made a reservation by telephone. The name’s Arthur Staines.”
The man appeared to consult a list that he kept beneath the desk.
“Single room, staying for a week? Nonsmoking?”
“Yes, that’s it. Thirty-five pounds a night was the figure I was quoted.”
“I have the booking here, Mr. Staines. Quite correct. By the way, I’m Charles Browning, the acting manager here during the off-season. Anything I can do for you please don’t hesitate to ask.”
Staines signed the register, was told breakfast was served between 7:00 A.M. and 9:00 A.M., and then was given a key with the number seven tagged onto it. Just as he began to climb the stairs with his luggage, the man came around the desk and caught him up. “Forgot to tell you, Mr. Staines,” Browning said, “there’s a letter here for you. It was delivered yesterday.”
Staines looked bewildered. He wasn’t expecting any letter. Perhaps it was from a correspondent, one of those who shared his enthusiasm for Julius Ghorla’s work, with late information concerning the village. He stuffed the envelope into his pocket; nodded at Browning, and continued up the stairs. When he reached the landing on the first floor he noticed that all the doors had bolts on the outside in addition to the standard locks.
Edgar was peering out of the basket and refused to leave it; he seemed decidedly unhappy about his surroundings. The hotel room was shabby and tiny. The mattress on the bed had been thinned by the weight of hundreds of guests. Staines imagined that someone deranged had chosen the wallpaper; it was a confused jumble of red whorls and spirals on a garish yellow background. He was glad it was so old that the colors had faded. When new it would have driven anyone mad.
He’d unpacked his belongings and now turned his attention to the letter. His name and the address of the hotel had been typed on the envelope, so he had no clue as to the sender. Even the postmark was smudged, so its point of origin could not be determined.
He tore open the envelope and recognized the handwriting at once; a numbing sense of dread rose up from his guts as he read the abrupt missive:
Heard, about your good fortune in discovering that Ghorla’s hitherto unknown sister is living in Scarsdale Bay. Will join you as quickly as possible. Do nothing until my arrival.
Your friend
Eric
Staines crumpled the letter into a ball and threw it across the room. That blasted Eric Cooper! Always dogging his footsteps! Cooper, like Staines, was obsessed with Julius Ghorla and was conducting his own research into the writer’s life and work. By the weekend he, too, would be in Scarsdale Bay, pestering Staines to share what information he had gathered and then taking credit himself for what discoveries were previously made. Well, thought Staines, this particular act of treachery would not succeed. He had the head start and resolved to press his advantage. By tomorrow he was determined to find and interview Ghorla’s sister. Moreover, he would warn her in no, uncertain terms to have nothing to do with Eric Cooper. By the time his adversary arrived he would be too late.
Edgar purred from his basket. It seemed that he’d finally become accustomed to his surroundings and it was time to feed him his evening meal; three tins of Swedish meatballs in tomato sauce. He opened the cans with the Swiss Army knife that he always carried with him. The cat shied away at first sight of the implement, and became calm only when it was returned to Staines’s jacket pocket.
Breakfast at the hotel consisted of a plateful of fried sausages, bacon, mushrooms, eggs, and bread. Staines managed to eat around a quarter of it washed down with greasy tea, and fed the rest to Edgar who was lurking in his basket underneath the table.
The breakfast room was deserted except for Staines. He’d been right in assuming that there would be few, if any, other guests staying at the hotel. Mr. Browning appeared periodically to see whether Staines required anything further. Staines wondered whether the man did all the work in the hotel during the off-season. It seemed plausible.
When Browning returned to take away the crockery and cutlery, Staines asked him whether he knew anything of a “Miss Ghorla” and where she lived. The town was so small and had so few permanent residents that it seemed inconceivable he would not know of her.
“Oh yes.” Browning responded to Staines’s query with a wry smile, “I know about her. Everyone here does. She’s quite a local celebrity.”
He said nothing more on the subject, but wrote down her address and directions to the place on a table napkin. Her cottage was located about three-quarters of the way up the cliff in a cul-de-sac.
“One more thing,” Staines said, “why the bolts on the outside of the guest-room doors?”
“Oh that,” Browning replied, “just a mistake. We never use them. They should have been fitted on the inside. Cowboy locksmiths—you know how it is. We haven’t got around to changing them yet.”
Within twenty minutes of Staines finishing breakfast he was traversing the labyrinthine series of stairways, raised pavements, and house-to-house archways in search of the cottage. He finally found a cobbled little turning, terminating in a high brick wall, where her home was located.
Staines knocked on the door three times and waited. In one hand he had a carrier-bag of books by her late brother, to prove his credentials as a scholar of his work, and in the other he carried the ubiquitous basket containing his cat. He’d covered the top of the basket with a sheet of plastic so that Edgar didn’t get wet. The rain, though less ferocious at times than yesterday, was nevertheless still persistent.
The door finally swung open and the sight of one of the strangest women he had ever seen confronted Staines. The thing that struck him first was the uncanny Ghorla family resemblance. He recalled a photograph he’d once seen of Franz Kafka with his younger sister Ottla; the two might have been identical twins. The case of Julius and Claudia Ghorla was much the same. Yet the appearance of the woman was remarkable in itself; and this was the judgment of a man who prided himself on being regarded by others as an eccentric in his own dress. Claudia Ghorla wore a blond wig with a long fringe, a carefully sculpted coiffure in the 1950s beehive style. She could not have been any younger than seventy years of age. Her face was pinched and withered, and she wore an obscene amount of foundation, rouge, and lipstick. Her blue eyes, almost hooded by false lashes, peered at Staines with contemptuous disinterest. The woman was emaciated. The off-black velvet dress she wore hung from her skeletal body as if displayed on a clothes hanger in the window display of a rundown charity shop.
She looked him up and down.
“I don’t want to buy anything,” she said in a throaty voice, “now go away you awful little man.”
Staines was taken aback at the idea anyone might mistake him for a traveling salesman or hawker of any description.
“Madam,” he said, raising the cultivation of his accent several degrees by way of emphasis, “you misunderstand my motives in coming here.”
“Nor,” she replied, adopting a tone of hauteur even more cutting than her last effort, “do I wish to be bothered by—ugh—journalists.”
This second assault was harder to bear, since it possessed an element of truth. Nevertheless Staines tried to shrug it off. He had not come this far to fall at the last. Not with Eric Cooper coming up along the fails close behind him.
Edgar let out a loud meow from inside the basket. He had endured quite enough of being outside in the damp air, alerting Staines to the fact.
“What’s that you’ve got in there?” she said, her expression changing from one of stony hostility to one of interest.
“It’s my cat Edgar. I take him with me wherever I go.…”
“You drag a poor animal around in this foul weather? Bring him inside where it’s dry you wretched man, before you kill the helpless creature!”
Staines had been trying unsuccessfully for over three hours to elicit information from Claudia Ghorla about her brother. The sticklike woman fussed around Edgar, making the cat the center of her attention and practically ignoring whatever questions Staines asked that related directly to the author’s life and work. It was as if she’d forgotten all about the existence of her late brother.
Staines sat in an armchair in her small drawing room, sipping at a cup of lukewarm tea. On the carpet were piled the paperback editions of Julius Ghorla’s fiction. They failed to arouse any curiosity in her. When advised that Staines was planning a special issue of his little periodical, Proceedings of the Dead Authors’ Society, in her brother’s honor, she’d taken the news with no more than a noncommittal shrug. She was fanatically neutral about it all. He mentioned how unscrupulous his rival, Eric Cooper, could be, but she took the news calmly. Even Staines’s claim that Cooper would rifle through drawers and cupboards in search of papers the moment her back was turned was met with nothing more than raised eyebrows.
He’d managed, at least, to convince her that he was not a journalist in search of a story, simply an amateur scholar engaged on private research for a small group of devotees. If he had not achieved this immediate aim he had no doubt that Claudia Ghorla would have taken no notice of him at all, except perhaps to contact the nearest branch of the RSPCA and have him reported for possible cruelty to his cat.
It had finally stopped raining and Staines suggested by way of a diversion that they might take a short walk while the weather was good.
Although Staines was still anxious to turn the subject around to Claudia Ghorla’s brother, she persisted, instead, in discussing whatever came into her mind.
They sat upon an old bench overlooking the bay. It commanded a magnificent view of the jumbled house and cottage rooftops, the tangled alleyways and bridges. The turbulent waves crashed up against the sea wall far below. It was high tide now and no trace of the weed-choked beach below could be seen. Behind the bench was the former cemetery, overrun by the expanse of woodland, its boundary walls mere ruins where exposed roots and twisted trunks had pushed their way through. The wind swept up from the bay and whistled past them.
“Quite a pleasant spot. The beauty of nature errm … and all that sort of thing,” Staines remarked, looking behind and then in front of him, comparing the two aspects of the scene around them. He said it to be polite. Frankly he was very much of the view that the countryside was something green-colored that you traveled across in order to get from one city to another.
“The modern world …” Miss Ghorla responded “… I find its sentimentality for Nature pathetic. Mother Nature! As if it concerns itself with the welfare of human beings! Or, for that matter, with any other creatures. Nature is an idiot, a mindless force that fumbles across this black planet. And yet the stupid people worship it!”
“It’s very inconvenient sometimes. Perhaps a little too wild.…” Staines mumbled.
“When Nature acts in a way that is inimical to mankind, then we hear cries that hurricanes, floods, and droughts are somehow unnatural! During one decade society claims we are on the brink of a new ice age, during the next that global warming will finish us all off! All this is the consequence of our worshiping Nature! We think of it as a mother, and cannot bear the idea that it has no regard whatsoever for us. We fret and wail looking for signs of her displeasure, convincing ourselves that we have wronged her, as if she ever cared—or even noticed—our existence in the first place.”
“I wonder if your brother shared your …” Staines said, before he was cut off yet again.
“Plagues and cancer,” she spat, “aren’t these too a part of Nature? Yet we do not hesitate to try and eradicate them! Mother Nature is riddled with venereal disease!”
Edgar began to meow from inside the large wicker basket that Staines had put down carefully next to the bench. The cat had also reached through the grill at the front and was clawing at the air in order to catch Staines’s attention. The feline appeared to have had enough of Miss Ghorla’s theories on mankind’s attitude to the natural world.
The whole thing was a dead loss, thought Staines. The woman was useless to him. Let Eric Cooper see what he could do with her. Staines had endured enough of the old crone’s nonsense.
“I really must be getting back to my hotel,” he said. “They serve dinner at six and I’m famished.”
“For a journalist, you’ve been quite entertaining,” she replied. “Here, take this. Look it over and I’ll visit you this evening at your hotel around nine, once you’ve eaten. We can talk privately about my brother’s theories then. Perhaps even try some of them out in practice.”
The old lady took a loose-leaf notebook from her handbag and passed it to the astonished Staines. He rifled through it as she got up, spoke a few more words, and then turned away to vanish into the warren of streets below them.
“I’ve underlined some passages for your convenience that I think you’ll find of particular interest.”
The notes related to Julius Ghorla’s episodic novel, Black Holes.
Long after Claudia Ghorla had departed, Staines could still be found sitting on the bench. He was poring over the notebook in a state of total fascination. It was only once it had got dark and become difficult to read that he noticed night had come. Edgar had fallen asleep; he’d given up trying to attract Staines’s attention. Luckily the advent of a rising moon provided Staines with sufficient light to carry on reading the handwritten text without interruption. This might be his only chance to do so. The old lady was capricious and could well change her mind about providing him with further information later on.
Staines was surprised to find that Claudia Ghorla had added the following entries of her own toward the end of the notebook, having scored out her brother’s own pages with a black marker pen.
12th July 1985
Well, it’s done. Last night I followed the instructions left by my late brother and drilled a hole in the front of my skull. It was an incredibly messy business. I really had no idea that there would be so much blood. The thick strip of bandage that I had wrapped around my head (just above my eyebrows) was soon soaked lipstick red.
I had to cover the carpet in the bathroom with plastic sheeting. Mirrors were placed at precisely the correct angles around my head so that I could see the progress of the operation clearly. An injection of 2ccs of lidocaine in my forehead served as an anesthetic. I cut a V-shaped flap of skin, drew it back to expose the skull beneath, and proceeded to drill through bone and marrow. The noise and the vibration were terrible. The drilling went on for an hour. Often I had to stop in order to wash away the blood running down my face and into my eyes. I felt as if my head would split apart before I reached the surface of the brain and finally created the socket for my Third Eye.
I knew the consequences of the operation going wrong; possible brain damage causing paralysis, idiocy, or blindness. But I had sworn to carry out my brother’s last wishes. Even though his attempt to do the same thing had ended in his destruction.
My thighs are dotted with cigarette burns. Often, when I am smoking, I turn up my skirt and press the burning tip of my cigarette onto the cold white flesh there. The pain temporarily distracts me from the mental anguish I feel at my own helplessness. I am setting down this cheap autobiographical episode to prove to myself that any good liar can write convincingly. Now to await the changes that Julius predicted.
14th July 1985
What I still saw was the same thin, not unattractive woman with silvery, shoulder-length hair: a female version of my dead brother. Her body is almost emaciated and possessed of an awkward gait. Her skin is pale and unblemished, and her cheekbones elegantly distinct. Perhaps the lips are a trifle too thin, but the perfect regularity of the tiny teeth that they reveal more than makes up for any slight imperfection. Curved eyebrows arch above dazzling, glacial blue eyes.
This morning that face is almost the same, except for the ugly, sutured wound in the middle of my forehead. I am somewhat afraid of what lies beneath that stitched flap of skin. And of what it will be able to see if I remove that freshly made eyelid.
20th July 1985
Summertime in England: warm rain and leaden skies. A seaside town in the middle of July. Mercifully it is off the tourist routes and has nothing that would attract a holidaymaker. The beach is all shingles and pebbles, not sand, and miles from the nearest railway station or main road. The people here are unspeakably ordinary, and they blur into the background of the gray cliffs and the North Sea. There are no churches, piers, ancient monuments, or amusement arcades.
In the afternoon I walked along the beach in the uncomfortable humidity. I wore my green silk headscarf to cover the V-shaped wound, and a half-length mackintosh. I expect that I should have also taken an umbrella. The skies, as usual, threatened rain. Despite the rubber grip of my plimsolls I once or twice slipped on the stones underfoot. They were still slippery, for the tide had only just turned, leaving foam and kelp in its wake. Mother often told me that my feet were too small in relation to my height, so it was scarcely surprising that I was destined to stumble through life (metaphorically as well as literally) rather than advance boldly.
I wanted to find a deserted spot someway outside the town where the sea spray crashed up across the rocks, where I could be alone. Then and only then would I unveil my new Third Eye, gaze out across the ocean and see as I had never seen before.
Doubtless I must have been an odd sight to any observer; a grinning middle-aged woman with thin limbs, scrambling wildly along the shoreline. The fact is that I did not care. I was in the grip of a wild exultation. Part of me was unsure whether I was simply overcome with a sense of relief at having survived operating on myself.
There was a natural ledge set in the cliff face ahead of me. It was easily reached by clambering over some boulders and proved to be the perfect vantage point. I settled down on the rough surface, using my raincoat as a cushion on which to sit. I fairly tore the headscarf off me and my fingers worked on the sutures. I cut them away with tiny scissors and eagerly unpicked the strands with my long painted fingernails. Then I pulled back the V-shaped flap of skin. As I did so I closed my old eyes in order to see the world purely through my new one.
The light was so intense, so white, and yet so cold, that I screamed with shock. It seemed that the surface of my brain was freezing over.
A moment before, the sea was a foaming expanse of gently rolling waves. The next it was a solid white mass of ice stretching to the horizon, like that of the Arctic wastes or the surface of some frozen moon at the edge of the solar system. I now opened my old eyes too but my overall sight remained unaffected as if, with the dominant contribution of my Third Eye to the other two, I saw a new dimension for the first time. Only when I covered my forehead with my palm did the sea again become liquid and its waves break upon the shore beneath me.
And the sky! Before it had been dull, cloaked with low gray clouds, oppressive, and trapping the sticky heat beneath its leaden folds. Now it was crystalline blue, clear and vivid, a sheen of gaseous frost beneath abysmal outer space. Starlight shone straight through the chill and thin atmosphere, even now in the daytime.
Far away, at the limit of my vision, there was a great wall of ice. It looked like a frozen continent visible at the horizon’s edge. Was it just my imagination or did it advance closer, albeit almost imperceptibly, as I gazed across the expanse separating it from the shoreline? Its motion was like that of the minute hand of a clock; so gradual that it exists on the borderland of optical illusion and reality.
I pulled down the V-shaped flap of skin, closing my Third Eye, and covering the self-inflicted wound from view with my headscarf. The world was no longer encased in ice. It was once again a typical miserable English summer’s day. But I could feel the presence of my Third Eye in the socket I had created. The orb turned and rolled wildly beneath the thin layer of flesh on my forehead that covered it.
It was suddenly vital that I return to my dwelling and gather together my thoughts. They were racing through my brain with such rapidity as to be maddening. Ideas jostled for precedence in my mind, but I could scarcely make sense of them. They were haphazard and dreamlike, beyond the scope of my ability to render into words. These concepts were more like patterns or designs than a linear sequence of fictional events. In one of these flashes of inspiration I had the notion I might delineate the horror of an ice crystal in the decay of its symmetry or participate in the madness of a reflection produced by a shattered mirror.
Snowflakes continuously dance around me, like the static between TV channels. This is the beginning of a new Ice Age.
The dying sun casts shadows across the frozen beach as it sets behind the seafront trees and buildings. The ice is streaked with darkness. I think of the reflection of my own face I’d once seen in a shop window: an empty shell of a face, like that of a mannequin left out in the rain, cheap mascara dribbling from its lifeless eyes.
My Third Eye is invariably uncovered. I wonder if my two original eyes might atrophy in response to the dominance of my third eye. Perhaps they will begin to wither away, dissolving in the sockets, like mollusks that have had salt sprinkled on them. Eyes are the windows of the soul, but the Third Eye is a doorway, through which my brother’s thoughts come and go. It is his eye. It is green—mine are both blue. What other physical features possessed by Julius might transfer to me?
Staines looked up from the notes resting on his lap. He felt a sense of dull sickness in the pit of his stomach. The old woman must have gone mad immediately after the death of her brother. Their relationship seemed to have been abnormal, possibly even incestuous. He wondered if they’d made some bizarre suicide pact that Claudia had failed to honor.
The sea rolled back and forth in the near distance beyond the muddle of moon-drenched rooftops. Above the waves, across the night sky, thousands of stars stood out in the blackness. He wondered if he might see one of them suddenly blink out of existence as he watched, collapsing in itself like one of the dying minds Ghorla had described. He had no idea how long stars took to perish but suspected that their life span dwarfed that of a man’s into insignificance. The thought of time reminded him that he’d no idea how late it was now and he took his fob watch out of his mackintosh pocket. It was eight-thirty precisely.
He’d missed dinner at the hotel and realized he’d have to make a meal of Swedish meatballs from a can. But if it was good enough for Edgar it was good enough for him too. He picked up the basket (containing the still-slumbering cat) plus his bag of paperbacks and hurriedly made his way to the hotel through the crazily angled passageways of Scarsdale Bay. He didn’t wish to be late for his appointment with Claudia Ghorla at 9:00 P.M.
Only upon opening the basket when back in the hotel room did Staines discover that Edgar was dead. The cat was curled up; its body rigid and cold, its eyes open and staring sightlessly up at him. He couldn’t bear to remove the dead animal and sat down on the edge of the bed, trying to decide just what to do next. Eventually, Staines resolved to go downstairs into the hotel’s lounge bar and drink himself into a stupor. He could deal with the disposal of Edgar’s body in the morning. He had quite forgotten about his appointment with Miss Ghorla.
Just then someone knocked at the door to Staines’s room. He opened the door and standing on the threshold was Miss Ghorla. She was clad in a ratty blouse and skirt. Her face was solemn and, at this precise moment, she was the very last person Staines wanted to see. He was incapable of questioning her closely or paying much attention to her responses even should they reveal some insights into the life and work of her brother.
“Mr. Browning directed me to your room,” she said. “I thought it best if we talked in private rather than downstairs where we might be overheard.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Ghorla, but I’ve had a shock, it’s my cat you see …” Waving aside his faltering objections the old lady wandered into the room and cast a glance over at the basket containing Edgar’s corpse.
“I warned you to take better care of that poor creature,” she said in a low menacing voice.
Staines felt a wave of annoyance rising up inside him at the sheer bloody cheek and lack of tact that the woman displayed. He was about to let loose with a stream of abuse when he noticed a trickle of blood making its way down the center of her forehead from her beehive wig.
“I think you must have hit your head.…” Staines said.
She ignored his remark and picked up the notebook jointly written by her and Julius that Staines had left on the bed.
“Well,” she said, “now you know some of it. But not, as yet, of the process akin to hypnosis whereby a mind in a healthy body might also be induced to collapse in on itself … but I can show you. I’ve sometimes wondered whether transfer between radically dissimilar genetic material is possible.”
Another trickle of blood ran down her forehead and around her nose, dribbling along her right, foundation-caked cheek. She raised an attenuated, veined hand and dipped her long fingers into the coiled mass of hair covering her forehead, unpicked some sutures, and parted her fringe.
Eric Cooper set down his carpetbag in front of the reception desk in the Shadwell Vistas Hotel. He rang the bell in order to attract someone’s attention. Eventually the temporary manager saw fit to drag himself away from the static between channels that he’d been watching on television in the back room and attend to the visitor.
“Do you require a room, Sir?” Browning said. “We’ve plenty available.”
Eric Cooper looked around disdainfully at the sorry-looking foyer and curled his lip at the thought. After he’d caught up with Staines he intended to have a wash and brush up at the luxury cottage (with full mod-cons) that was to be his base during his visit to Scarsdale Bay. It might suit Staines to stay here in this godforsaken flea pit, but not Cooper.
“No,” he said, “I believe a friend—ah—colleague of mine is a guest here. His name’s Arthur Staines. I want to surprise him. Can you show me up to his room?”
Browning smiled at the well-dressed visitor. Cooper was a tall man with round eyeglasses, immaculately dressed in a navy double-breasted pinstripe suit with a striped tie done up in a Windsor knot. The only blemish in his appearance was an ill-fitting wig that was a slightly different shade of gray-brown to the natural hair left on his head.
“Very popular tonight,” said Browning, “is our Mr. Staines. He’s with a lady friend at this moment, one of our local celebrities.”
“What?” Cooper responded. He had a sinking feeling of dread at what might be coming next.
“Yes, Miss Ghorla. She went upstairs to see him about a half hour ago.” Cooper passed a ten-pound note across the desk.
“Can you show me up straightaway? I’d like to see them both if it’s possible. Presumably you have a passkey.”
If I can gain the element of surprise, thought Cooper, all might not yet be lost. Were he to arrive unannounced he might interrupt some conversation of import relating to Julius Ghorla that he might otherwise not hear.
Browning covered the bank note with the palm of his hand, slid it toward himself and nodded.
“Right away, Sir. Please follow me, It’s only on the first floor, not far.” When the two arrived at the door to Staines’s room, Browning knocked once perfunctorily and immediately unlocked it. He let Cooper enter by stepping aside and discreetly moving back just outside the doorway.
The shabby little room was in semidarkness. Moreover, it was like walking into a huge freezer. The temperature within was some twenty or so degrees below zero. Cooper saw a dingy bed that looked fit only for the rubbish dump and was appalled by the sight of the most garish wallpaper he’d seen since the mid-1970s. It could even have been an authentic relic from that era. Then his attention was drawn to an armchair in the corner of the room, back amongst the shadows. A peculiar gurgling noise came from its occupant. At first Cooper thought it was a life-size dummy dressed in charity clothes, something left over from a stage show.
But he realized it was actually a very old woman—or something much like one. For although it was clad in a blouse and skirt, the skirt was pulled back over its withered navel, its stockings and knickers were around its ankles, and it was stubbing out a cigarette on a burn-dotted left thigh. Just above the score of burns rested a flaccid penis. Its beehive wig was askew and in the center of its forehead was a bloody third eye that stared unblinkingly.
Just before Cooper backed away in shock, a hitherto unseen figure crept out from around the side of the bed. It was Arthur Staines and the demented man was crawling on all fours like an animal, his breath like steam in the frigid air. A grotesque mewing bubbled in his throat.
“Did the bad man hurt poor kitty? Now all’s well, now all’s made well again,” said the croaking voice of the figure in the chair.
Cooper took a long backwards stride in the direction of the door behind him, but Mr. Browning had already taken the opportunity to quietly close it and draw shut the bolt on the outside.
“We don’t like to see Miss Ghorla distressed, Sir,” said Browning, through the paneling, “so if you’d be kind enough to accommodate her it would be easier all round. It’s only what we’ve all had to get used to, here in Scarsdale Bay.”