“Please, run,” he sobbed weakly, but he couldn't even hear the words himself above the deluge. The child was a boy, that meant safety. Arty wiped the blood from his eyes and took a long melancholy look at the Mother, he knew her from somewhere, somewhere local, the sickness had probably seen her through Arty's eyes passing on the street one day and marked her for death. “I'm sorry,” he shouted across at her. “I'll try to fight it, I promise... But it always wins.”
The dream as always was just so damn vivid, it clung to his subconscious even now that he was wake. “Jesus,” Arty breathed and swung his legs out and sat on the edge of the bed, shaking like he had a fever. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” He ran a hand through his hair and it came away wet, he instantly tensed, his logic still half in half out of the dream and with his heart hammering, he squinted at his hand, but it was just sweat. Of course, what else would it be?
“Get a grip, Arty,” he told himself, but the fear was like a cancer in the pit of his stomach, he smacked his lips and tasted bile. His temples throbbed and he could only imagine how high is blood pressure was getting, he felt his face flush as the pressure in his stomach grew. The sickness was near, perhaps over his shoulder right now, grinning a razor blade gash of a smile at him. Arty instinctively glanced over his shoulder whilst absently rubbing his stomach, but he was alone. At least physically alone.
Arty dragged himself to his feet and the moment he did so his rebellious stomach cramped violently. “Fuck!” The word came out like a hoarse bestial grunt. Arty doubled up in pain, the pressure which had started (as it always did, like a dark mass in his gut) was pumping through his veins like a poison, working its way to his brain. And Arty knew what that meant. The dream, the feeling like he was decaying from the inside. All tell-tale signs the sickness was near. Arty tried to shake it off as he staggered through into the large en suite bathroom.
Once inside he lent against the chilly tiled wall and looked at himself in the full length mirror on the opposite wall. Firstly through narrowed eyes, so he could just make out his dark shape against the white walled room. Then gradually, hoping to lessen the impact of what he might see, Arty slowly opened his eyes wider. He let out a gasp of relief to see himself staring back. When the sickness took a hold, his face would twist out of shape, and that smile, like an open wound, would snake across that twisted face.
But it was just him, sure he looked like he was about to have a heart attack, his usually pale face was flushed to the point of being boiled lobster red. But at least it was Arty Willard, just. Arty winced as the fire in his veins intensified. “No!” he shouted at the mirror. It had been gone so long, the sickness. Why now? Why ever again? “It's not fair,” he cried. His head was hammering fit to burst, he had to act fast or the sickness that was building up would soon over power him completely.
The Mother from the dream street suddenly flashed into his mind’s eye. This spurred him on. He needed to relieve the pressure before it over took him completely.
Sobbing now, Arty rushed over to the bathroom cabinet on the wall above the sink to his right and opened the door. He fumbled though the usual toiletries, nothing unusual here to the casual observer, until he found what he was looking for; he took out a white plastic tooth brush holder and fumbled to open it, like an addict desperate to get to his syringe. Finally managing to get into it Arty took out his salvation. The only thing so far he had been able to find that could keep the sickness at bay, even if just for a short while.
Arty held the scalpel up and it glinted in the light like the wink from an old friend. He let out a sob of relief and then put the blunt end of the scalpel into his mouth so he had two free hands and then tore off his t-shirt and boxer shorts so that he was naked in front of the full length mirror.
Everyone has secrets. In that respect, Arty was no different to anyone else. He had read somewhere, or maybe it was the movie. That the infamous B movie director Ed Wood, who was a transvestite during the forties and fifties, used to wear a bra under his uniform when he fought in World War Two. And that when he was in combat, he didn't fear death, just the thought of being wounded and so he would have to be taken to a hospital and they would discover his secret. The man would rather have died than face the humiliation of discovery.
And so it was with Arty. While he longed to be uncovered as the killer he was, in those desolate hours directly after the sickness had finally left him, once it had satisfied its blood lust and he was left shamed and empty inside. In the times when he was just plain Arty Willard, he had his own secret and like Ed Wood, if he was ever unclothed his secret would be revealed, and with it would come a one way ticket to the insane asylum.
Arty took the scalpel out of his mouth and looked at himself in the mirror. His skin, from just below the neck to the wrists, any place that was hidden when he was clothed, was covered in hundreds of deep scars. Not long after the sickness had first taken hold, Arty had discovered the only way he could keep it at bay, when the dreams and the gnawing in his stomach came, was to cut himself. So the pressure that even now threatened to blow his veins right open, would be released like the turn of a pressure valve and so divert the explosion of murderous rage that lurked somewhere deep inside him.
The multitude of scars covering is body stood testament to his battle with the inner demon that dwelt in the darkness of his subconscious. To him it was a badge of honor, there was hardly an inch of his flesh that was untouched. And Arty bore the mutilation with pride. Each stroke of the blade was a victory against the sickness. Put simply, when he bled, others did not.
A sudden searing pain in his stomach brought Arty to his knees with a cry of anguish. The sickness, fighting back with a growing desperation. It knew if he could carve another network of scars into his skin before it could take a hold of him completely and release the black bile bubbling up inside him, when it would be lost once more in the darkest recesses of his psyche. Arty gritted his teeth and with great effort straighten up and got to his feet once more. “Fuck you,” he spat and gripped the scalpel tightly. He let the blade brush lightly over his skin, retracing over the scar tissue of some old wound. He relished his part most of all, that tantalizing moment before the cut. Anticipating the blades sting and the sweet relief that would flow out of his body with the blood a heartbeat later.
He winced as the razor sharp point pierced his skin, just above the back of his left wrist, then he slowly cut up his arm in a lazy spiral motion, up past his elbow only stopping when it reached the tender area just under his arm pit. Arty gasped in almost pleasure as the white hot pain followed the blade up his arm like an electrical shock. His head swam and for a second he almost passed out. Arty lent against the wall of the bathroom in a stupor, he was only vaguely aware of the scalpel clattering to the tiled floor.
Better. He could feel the rage dissipating with each shallow breath.
So much better.
He looked down as the blood poured down his arm, making rivulets of red as it ran through old wounds, snaking its way down until it was dripping from his fingers and onto the white tiled floor, violent clashes of color though the haze of the impending unconsciousness that was washing over him in waves now. Then slowly as the blood poured, the pressure in his head faded as did the acid in his stomach. He let out a breath and made a fist, lifting it up to his face and squeezed, forcing the blood to run through his closed fingers and with it final relief. The sickness was gone.
That was when Arty hit the floor and passed out cold.
Time seemed to jump cut and before he knew it, Arty was sitting on the toilet seat and he was now treating the new wound with iodine and applying a clean fresh bandage. He had done this so many times down through the years, that he could apparently literally do it in his sleep.
Arty finished by taped off the bandage with practiced efficiency, using his free hand and teeth to rip off a strip of adhesive medical tape and expertly sealed off the material in a tight dressing. He flexed his hand and nodded as a job well done and then touched his thumb with each finger in turn just to make sure the deep cut up his arm hadn't done damage to any of the tendons. All the digits still worked nicely. And so, content at a job well done, Arty set about cleaning the blood of the floor of the bathroom.
The blacking out was nothing new, but to not only black out but then to have nearly completed cleaning and dressing the wound before he was fully conscious again had never happened to Arty before. Still he mused, as he wiped up the blood off the floor with a dirty bath towel, his head was clear and his stomach no longer had that dreaded black knot in it, so he wasn't going to think too much about this new twist in his fight against the sickness and its consequences. It was gone, he was still here, and with a fresh new trophy scar to pick at as it healed over the coming days and weeks. And that was good enough.
Once he was satisfied the bathroom floor no longer resembled a slaughter house, Arty decided to go back to bed for another couple of hours of well-earned sleep, without the fear of anymore bad dreams. Then maybe when it was light, he would go into town and treat himself to a shopping trip, perhaps that new shirt (long sleeved, of course) he'd had his eye on. After all he deserved it. A hero shouldn't feel guilty for spoiling himself in celebration of a battle won, and the life of a Woman he did not know but had quietly, selflessly saved.
As Arty strode back into the bedroom, feeling like a million dollars, he caught a glimpse of several drops blood on the bedroom floor at his feet. Then before he could register what that meant he instantly fell to his knees and vomited violently all over the carpet. Gasping for breath he grabbed the side of the bed and pulled himself to his knees.
Laid out, quite neatly on the bed was that all too familiar butchers apron and next to it, the filthy canvas bundle containing half a dozen razor sharp knives and of course, the sickness' favorite weapon of choice. The meat cleaver.
“Jesus, no!” Arty screamed and ran back into the bathroom and closed the door behind him. He pressed his naked back against it as the door began to shake on its hinges as blow after blow hit it, as if someone (or something) on the other side was kicking hard at it, trying to get in, get to Arty. “Leave me alone!” Arty screamed and began to tear at the bandage on his arm in a desperate bid to re- open the wounds we had so carefully dressed minutes before.
Bang! Bang! On the door. Arty began to sob. Christ he was such a fucking idiot. The sickness had been here all along, hiding at the back of his mind. It had been the sickness that had dressed his wounds while he had blacked out and had laid out the butcher's apron on the bed as some sick joke, just when he thought he was safe.
When the sickness was this bad, it felt like a physical being, some heartless entity he was powerless to fight. Arty knew, even in this distraught state that this was all in his mind, but that didn't stop the door banging violently against his back all the same. Maybe he was doing it himself, flinging himself against it but somehow blocking out the motion. He would never know.
“I am a fucking lunatic,” he said quite calmly as a red mist descended over his vision. The banging at the door stopped. “Such, a fucking lunatic.” He was grinning now, the pain in his arm nothing more than dull far away sensation. It wasn't bleeding but that didn't matter anymore, there would be plenty of blood soon enough, and there was nothing that Arty fucking Willard could do about it. The sickness was back in all its terrible glory and no amount of self-mutilation could change that, until its blood lust had been sated once more.
The naked man turned to face the mirror once more to look at himself.
And it was not Arty Willard that stared back...
SIXTEEN
Even though the events of last night had drained all the energy out of her, Jenny found that once she got home, back to reality as Bromlyn had put it, sleep was impossible. It was nearly six in the morning when she finally slipped between the sheets after taking a long hot bath but although she was desperate to rest her aching limbs, her mind refused sleep. That silent promise she had made just a few short hours before weight heavy on her mind. She hadn’t made it lightly, far from it, and she fully intended to carry it out somehow. But now as she lay there safe and sound at home in her own bed. Studying the bedroom ceiling with the early morning sun filtering softly through the bedroom curtains, and the sounds of the world outside her window slowly waking to another day of normality, it began to dawn on Jenny that she had absolute no idea how she was going to fulfill that promise.
The key was that second tape, that much she did know, the dream tape and the subliminal message that lay deep within it. But how was she to unlock it? Would simply listening to it be enough? And if it was, another question; Did she really want those images running around inside her head?
After little more than two hours of fitful sleep populated once again by half-forgotten nightmares, Jenny had set about trying to find a suitable mini disk player that would accommodate the dream disk Bromlyn had made. It was well into the afternoon when she found herself in Leeds and she spent the rest of the day in a kind of waking dream, the memory of last night’s events never far from her mind. She was tired as hell but running on adrenalin and a never ending chain of takeout coffees. She was so spaced out that, when Reece called her on her mobile once the search for the Mini disk player had finally borne (very expensive) fruit. She wasn't the least bit surprised when he opened the conversation with:
“We are blowing shit up tonight,” he said enthusiastically.
It wasn't the strangest thing she'd heard over the last twenty four fours.
“Awesome,” she replied distractedly.
She sat her weary bones down on a bench next to the canal and sipped on her latest cup of coffee, it felt good to sit and she knew if it wasn't for the coffee she could quite easily nod right off mid-sentence to Reece.
“You sound dog tired kid,” Reece said. “You sleeping okay?”
Jenny nodded forgetting she was on the phone, she watched as the sunlight caught the canal water which rippled hypnotically and then managed, “Hum, yeah.”
The shopping trip to town should have been a relatively easy chore, or so she had thought, but her somnambulist state couple with just how far sound technology had moved on since she had been away from it had turned the search into a near mission impossible. Firstly she had made a fool of herself in Curry's, when the spotty sales assistant had told her in no uncertain terms that he had never even seen a disk like that before let alone something that might play it. But they did have a great line in MP3 players if she was interested. She wasn't.
Bromlyn had said the disk was state of the art and she had been right. It had taken Jenny all afternoon and a trip to every Audio visual and music equipment retailer in the city, of which there were quite a few, until out of desperation, she had tried and old friend from her student days, Brian, who thankfully still worked at Yorkshire Television which was based in Leeds.
After an awkward five minute verbal dance in which they caught up on what each had been doing since they had last worked together three years ago, throughout which Brian had heroically managed to skirt around her time at Bloomfield. He had suggested a small second hand amateur radio and recording studio supply shop, which was secreted just out of town near the Irish centre on York Road. Apparently the guy who owned the shop could lay his hands on practically anything, old or new. So Jenny had trudged up there and just caught the guy as he was shutting up for the day.
She was too tired and too desperate to put up much of a fight when the owner took one look at the disk, told her that yes he had exactly the player she needed, but it wouldn't be cheap. And Christ how he was right. Five hundred and Fifty pounds, and the player wasn't even close to being new or the latest model. On a better day, she would have told him where he could shove the thing and then gone home and hit ebay. But the voices couldn't wait and neither could she. And feeling like a crack addict in need of a fix, she charged the player to Reece's 'emergencies only' Credit card. A fact she declined to tell him now that he had called her.
“You ok, Hon?” Reece inquired pulling Jenny's thoughts away from the water and the days exertions, his voice sounded tinny through the phone and so far away.
“Yeah, just tired. So what are you blowing up?” She asked.
“Two, count 'em, two cars. Midnight shoot, should look amazing.” His boyish enthusiasm, which would have normally warmed her heart, just felt hollow now.
“Hmm,” was all she could muster in way of response, she put down her coffee and picked up the mini disk player, placing it on her lap. Tears came to her eyes out of nowhere as she got the sudden and acute realization that nothing, not her relationship with Reece, her new life of equilibrium, might ever be the same again after tonight. She suddenly knew with absolute clarity now that listening to the dream disk, especially in her own dream like waking state, was going to work. But then what? She had an over whelming urge to throw the player in the canal and beg Reece to come home.
A cool breeze off the canal water rose Goosebumps on Jenny’s arms and she half expected to see the mouth less Woman's watery figure appear from just under the rippling surface. We have no voice.
“And I have no choice...” she whispered. “Do I?” But the Woman wasn't there and she didn't drown the player. Jenny exhaled deeply with something akin to grief and bit back a sob.
“Oh, Jenny, love. Are you sure you're okay?” Reece asked.
No! She wanted to scream at him. I'm all alone. You left me, Bromlyn left me, Kapoor left me. No one knows what it's like here. No one knows what I know and what I have to do, all alone. Just like in my deepest darkest moments of despair. Shut away in my room at Bloomfield, doped up to the eye balls and screaming at the shadows all around me until my throat bled.
No one knows what it's like to live your life with the threat of a place like Bloomfield hanging over your head every waking moment. 'Be a good Girl Jenny, take your meds, Jenny. Say what we want you to say, feel what we want you to feel. Normal, that is. Even if it's just a mask of sanity, don't you let it slip, not even for a moment. Because if you do, we have a nice cozy room here for you Jenny Drayton, one with wall to ceiling padding so you can't do yourself any mischief. So tell me, how do you feel?'
“Jenny?”
Tears were streaming down her face now but she just let them come. “I am normal.” She said to the rippling water. I have a piece of paper that says so.
“Jenny? Of course you're normal. Come on,” Reece pleaded. “Talk to me. What's wrong?” There was a hint of panic in his voice now.
“When I was a kid,” Jenny began, she was vaguely aware that she was rambling, but somehow that seemed okay, so she just let the words come.
“When you were a kid, What? Reece prompted.
“When I was a kid, there was this guy, some old bloke who you would always see walking around town, every day he would be there, rain or shine. And he would always have this small transistor radio with him. If you were out and about shopping you could guarantee you would bump into him, three, four times in an afternoon. Anyway, he would always have his radio pressed up against his ear, and he would be chatting away to it, listening really intently, but it wasn't even turned on.
Once I actually saw the back of it, and you could see the part were the batteries should have been, the cover was missing and you could see there were no batteries in it. The thing wasn't working but he clearly thought he could hear something through it. And whatever he was hearing, he was talking to.”
She could see him now, in her mind’s eye, wandering about, but it wasn't until now that she realized he was always so smartly dressed, clean shaven, not your typical nutter about town. Jenny of all people knew one of the first things to go when you lose your mind is your personal hygiene, your self-esteem. But not 'Radio Man,” take away the radio and talking to yourself bit and he could have been anyone's Grand Dad. He was never distressed or abusive, certainly not drunk. Just a normal guy, who maybe knew something no one else did.
“Jenny, you still there?” Reece asked.
“Yeah,” she replied lost in thought.
“I'm not following what you're on about. You sure everything is okay?” Jenny could hear the concern in his voice, but it didn't really register.
“I haven't thought about that old guy for years...” She said. “Even when I was going through those bad times, where I thought I was hearing voices...”
“Jenny?”
“Thing is, we all knew he was a nutter. Thought he was, anyway.