Light Errant Read online

  His hands on my body, gently helping me up, resting me against what felt like a wall of rock, jagged and unaccommodating; his hands on my head, lifting off the hood and throwing it aside.

  His hands invisible to me even now, everything was black still though the cloth was gone.

  “It’s all right, Ben,” he murmured, his fingertips like feathers against my face, touching to reassure us both. His touch tingled, but little more than that. No pain now, nothing to measure against what had gone before. I thought maybe I would never feel pain again, now that I knew what true pain felt like. “Look, you’re fine, we both are.”

  I couldn’t look, and I didn’t feel fine. I breathed deeply as he had, though the cold air bit at my nose and the back of my throat, and tried my voice to see if I still had one. “What was that?”

  “CS gas, I guess. The police have had it for a year or two. Though, I dunno, no one ever said it was that bad. I don’t think it can be, the everyday stuff they carry on the streets. I reckon this was something extra. The four-star de luxe variety they keep for special occasions. But it just goes for the nerves, hurts like shit but it doesn’t leave a mark...”

  “So how come I can’t see, then?” I demanded fretfully.

  “Because there isn’t any light in here, moron.”

  Oh. “Where are we?”

  “Somewhere dark. Moron.” And then he kissed me on the cheek; and then he swore, and spat, and dragged the back of his hand across his mouth and swore again.

  “Christ! Don’t suck your thumb, Ben. Burns like fuck still.”

  Like chilli-juice, I guessed, it hung around longer than you’d think. Don’t rub your eyes, Ben.

  So I didn’t, though my hands were itching to. My hands were itching anyway, and it wasn’t all chemical reaction. I wanted to touch and press and worry at all the bits that had hurt most, to find where the pain was hiding; I wanted to see if squeezing my eyeballs would make them work better, or at all. Not sensible, but instinct doesn’t operate from a platform of sense, in any meaning.

  I wanted to probe my skull as well where it was aching, to find out if it was bleeding also. But I thought about CS-residues in an open wound and didn’t want to find out how that felt. So I just took Jamie’s word for it that the flesh wasn’t running off my face, and sat on my hands to stop their wandering independent of my brain.

  “Okay,” I said, softly, slowly, letting my lungs and voice-box take their time over the words and the breath needed to power them. “Where do you think we are?”

  “Haven’t a clue. Hang on, don’t you move...”

  Took him a little while to get moving himself, but I sat virtuously still and patient, no hurry anywhere in my soul, and when he did finally push himself to his feet I tracked him around our cell with ears and sensitised skin, feeling almost that I walked the walls with him.

  It wasn’t a long walk. He went off to my right and came back to my left, feeling his way; the only moment of interest in that brief peregrination was when his foot kicked against something that clanged and rolled.

  “What was that?”

  He stooped, groped for it, said, “Bucket.” I heard him set it upright, and then he added, “Honey-bucket, I guess.”

  “Sweet.”

  “Yeah. Still, better than not having one.”

  He went on, came back, slid down the wall to sit beside me, his leg and shoulder touching mine. And said, “The wall with the door is all wood, the rest is rock. Floor, walls and ceiling. Any ideas?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither.” We both dwelt on that, and then he added, “Did you know, the Eskimos empty out their honey-buckets for the huskies to eat? Lots of protein still, in human shit.”

  “I told you that, bro. Got it out of a book. But you’re supposed to call them Inuit, these days.”

  “Not in any book I ever read.”

  “You never read books.”

  “Don’t you start, I get enough of that from Laura,” and I could hear the grin in his voice and somehow managed to match it for a moment, before the enormity of the situation rose up to swamp my courage. Be bloody lucky if either of us ever saw Laura again. Lucky if we ever saw anything again, except perhaps the man who came to kill us.

  “What about that door, then, think we could batter our way out? With the bucket, maybe?” Before we filled it...

  “Doubt it. Feels rock-solid. Have a go, though?”

  “Sure...”

  I think we both knew it was futile, waste of effort; but hell, we had nothing else to do. He went first, banging and clattering, making noise just a couple of metres from me; his energy gave me the will to move, and I crawled slowly and methodically across the uneven floor, doing my best impression of a fingertip search and coming up with absolutely nothing. Wherever this was, whatever it was for, there was nix, nada, rien to be found inside it except the two of us and our bucket.

  Our bent bucket, as I discovered when at last I stood up, found him, took it from him. I found the door also, and the few gouges he’d made in it with the bucket’s base; I added a few more for form’s sake, then desisted before our only tool, our toilet was buckled beyond possibility of use.

  Jamie was sitting down again. I joined him again, pressing close, temporarily warm from the exercise but conscious of the extreme cold of our prison, walls and floor and air and all. If we were kept in here any length of time, it was going to be no fun.

  If we were kept in here any length of time it would be a miracle, something I was well past hoping for.

  “I’ve measured it from side to side,” I said, “’tis three of me long and two of me wide,” on a giggle that was only a little hysterical. Actually, I was suddenly on the up again, oddly cheerful; it seemed my courage could be swamped but not sunk, it would rise regardless. Stupid, but welcome. And I’d always said, I’d always known that despite everything, if I had to face death I’d sooner do it with family at my side. Barring Laura—and that after all was the point of this, to bar Laura from any closer acquaintance with death—then Jamie was as he had always been, closest and best of family. For Laura’s sake, perhaps I should have protected him also or tried to, given myself up alone; but if you can’t be selfish when you’re dying, even, what the hell is the point of it all? And I was sorry to be hurting her by taking him with me, but gladder to have him there at the end. Presumptive end. Not much we could do, but the baddies might yet cock this up. Though they’d shown precious little tendency to error, thus far...

  “Unh?” said Jamie.

  “Wordsworth. Early. Forgivable, some say; but I say he was older than us, he should’ve known better. We would’ve known better. Wouldn’t we?”

  “Ben... How’s your head?”

  “Sore.” I sighed, against his shoulder. “All right. You did the walls, I’ve done the floor. Inch by inch.”

  “What did you find?”

  “Naught for your comfort.”

  “Ben...”

  “All right. There ain’t nobody here but us chickens, and that there tin pail. They haven’t left us a hairgrip, even, to pick the lock with. Not that you’d expect to find a hairgrip, I guess, in a cave, but...”

  I’d only been rambling for my own amusement, maybe a little for his; but suddenly I was listening to myself, and this wasn’t funny any more.

  “Jamie, we’re in a cave!”

  “I know that. I told you that.”

  “Yes, but how many caves are there? In a, what, twenty minute drive? Half an hour, max?” Hard to tell, in our pain and isolation, but it certainly hadn’t been a long drive. Not long enough to take us out of the area we knew so intimately well.

  “A few,” he said slowly.

  “Caves that have been blocked off like this, turned into storerooms? They didn’t put that wall up for us, it’s been there years.”

  “Okay,” he said. “We’re on the Island. So what? It doesn’t change anything.”

  In the immediate external situation, us locked in and helpless, no, it
didn’t; but my internal landscape had shifted massively. Knowledge is power; I hated being in the dark.

  Closed my eyes, to forget how much I literally was in the dark, and sorted this through in my head. The police weren’t acting alone, they might be prime movers but there was a genuine conspiracy here, and the family that owned the Island must be major players also. They’d needed somewhere to hold us, that was dark and safe and private; so they’d cleared out a storeroom, a converted cave somewhere behind the bright tawdry face of the attractions. Nothing darker, nothing safer than a cave with no windows and one strong door. Nowhere more private, either. Just a few metres away, no further than a good shout, there must be hundreds of people milling; but no point in shouting, they’d never hear.

  So. This place had been specifically chosen, prepared for us, swept clean. But when they’d moved the girls out of the police station, they hadn’t had the same kind of notice. Would they have brought them here also? If we tunnelled—if we had a jackhammer, for example, and a compressor to power it and a generator to power that, and a good flow of air to keep us from choking ourselves to death and plenty of time above all, and endless strength and patience—maybe we’d come to another cave and find them, and tunnel on to safety, maybe...

  But maybe there wasn’t another, or it wouldn’t have been ready for them. Maybe they’d have been locked into a building somewhere, there were always attractions closing down, going bust or running foul of health and safety regs. Maybe someone would have seen half a dozen women being herded against their will, maybe the rumour would reach Uncle James, maybe we might have done some good after all. Sure, our own lives would be forfeit if he mounted a rescue bid for the other hostages; but that was so anyway, I thought we were already forfeited past redemption. My life for theirs, mine and Jamie’s both, that was a trade I’d make without hesitation.

  And maybe I was grasping at straws here, but they’d left us precious little else to grasp at, bar each other.

  o0o

  We did that too, the long dreary bitter time that we were in there. We hugged one another literally for warmth, metaphorically for reassurance. Even those periods where one of us would get a desperate rush on and have to walk it off—up and down, seven paces each way and don’t knock your head where the roof sinks at the back there—while the other only wanted to sit in semi-transcendent stillness, closest either of us had ever come to an isolation tank, there was still a mental hug going on. Better than two minds tracking as one, closer and more sharing, halfway to the telepathic link I’d shared with my late lamented sister and infinitely more comfortable, that I think was what kept us rooted to the world. If they’d split us up, if they’d had two handy caves to store us separately, God knows how either one of us would have coped. It was hard enough in any case: we might both jabber and grin, but there was a terrible tension underlying all, and a looming terror held back by thin, thin walls.

  We talked a lot, jabber-and-grin nonsense and easy nostalgia, telling old stories and old lies, nudging each other’s memories, branching into fantasy on a sudden whim. Our throats grew sore and our voices husky, an impossible drink of water became the thing we yearned for most, though we quickly put a ban on saying so. We both used the bucket when we had to, and something else I put my own private ban on was even a mention that Pandit Nehru used to drink a glass of his own urine first thing every morning.

  Time passed. We had to assume that, though we had no way of checking. We even dozed a little, though seldom at the same time, at intervals between the talking and the pacing and the mental drift. We couldn’t keep from speculating, was it still the middle of the night or had we talked and slept, paced and drifted enough, was it morning yet? And if so was this a good thing, a sunrise devoutly to be wished, or were we better trying to hold it back, hoping we weren’t there yet, did dawn spell dawning disaster?

  Something else I learned, as we slowly ran out of things to say: it would never have occurred to me until I’d lived it, but life on death row can be deadly, infinitely boring.

  o0o

  It had to come at last, of course, and we’d been waiting long enough or far too long, but still neither one of us was ready when it did come. Maybe no one ever is ready, or ever ought to be. Maybe that’s the unforgivable sin, to be prepared for an inevitable but useless death.

  It announced itself with the faintest possible murmur of voices through the wall, that we only heard or thought we heard because both of us had sunk at last into a dreadful, snaring silence. It confirmed its arrival with a clattering of metal against the wooden door, and then a pause, and then great wrenching, tugging sounds that shook the wall and us where we were leaning on it, finding it warmer than the rock if only barely.

  We jerked to our feet and backed away, seven paces and an automatic stop; his hand found mine and I was wired so tight I couldn’t even find the space to feel grateful.

  The door banged open, there was a fierce glare of light that all but blinded us after so long in the dark, we had to squint to see; and what we saw was a figure, a silhouette framed and shaped by light, tall and black and terrifying, doom made flesh...

  o0o

  Until a voice said, “Ben...?”

  The voice was female, young, bewildered and exultant both; faintly accented and surely familiar, but I didn’t have time to grope for any understanding before she’d run those seven paces in three strides and grabbed me, the momentum of her pushing me back one extra lethal step so that my head did crack against the cave’s roof and my skull sang once more with a dance of light.

  “Oh, God. I’m sorry...” Her hand rubbed my head, but she was laughing against my neck as she did it; and then she said, “What the hell are you two doing here, anyway?”

  “Being rescued, I think,” Jamie said quietly beside me. It was his hands that drew us apart, his eyes and mind that were seeing clear enough to name her. “Janice, what’s happened?”

  “Uh. We, we found a way out, and we were trying to get away only there were these, these blokes, they would have seen us and they had guns, so...”

  Her turn to slip into silence, as a heavy metal bar slipped from her hand and clattered to the ground, barking my ankle en passant. I looked down at it, she looked down at it, I don’t know what she saw but I saw how the end of it was darkly wet, staining the rock.

  I didn’t ask what had happened to the blokes, I thought I knew. Thought I knew how she was feeling, also. This time it was me who reached to hold her, she who didn’t resist. Jamie was twitching, skittering behind her shoulder, only one thing on his mind but afraid to ask for it, just in case. He was my bro; I did it for him.

  “Janice, Jan—where’s Laura?”

  “Outside,” she said, and her eyes gestured towards the door. It was easier to look that way now, our eyes were adjusting and besides there was a small crowd of people clustered there, cutting down the shine. I could still see more shadow than skin, but they were all women, that I was sure of, and all kin also. Even at this distance, even with women in indirect daylight, there were enough of them close enough together to raise a bit of a buzz.

  No Laura there: but not my job to enquire further, certainly not my job to go and find her. Jamie was gone already, pushing, almost elbowing through the press of pale family that stood between him and his beloved.

  Also between me and mine, of course. I stood there noble and self-sacrificial in my own mind at least, watching him go, letting him go, trying to let them both go; and I held on to Janice for comfort, for a substitute, for the most ignoble reasons I could imagine. If she knew, if she understood or guessed, if she saw where my eyes had gone and figured my mind was gone with them, she didn’t seem to mind.

  And she was doing pretty well, actually, at the substitution business. My attention wasn’t long gone, my imagination was only briefly focused on Jamie and Laura before she called it back to the here and now, to her. She leaned into me, a long slim body of contrasts: whippy and hard but soft and yielding also, so many textures c
ontained under not very much acreage of skin; trembling where I touched her but her own hands gripping tight and strong, both bringing and seeking reassurance, it’s okay now, tell me it’s okay... She smelled sour and her skin was greasy, a long day and a night of fear not washed away; but also she smelled as she had the night before, warmly female, smoky, all the scents of promise and welcome.

  And then she lifted her head a little, only a little, nice I thought that she didn’t have to stretch to kiss me; and I could tell how long it was since she’d had a cigarette, the tobacco-taste was stale and fading, and I thought, Bastards, they didn’t have to take her baccy...

  And giggled into the kiss, almost choking on it, weariness and relief combining to bring me to that bubble-touch of hysteria again. She pulled away, staring at me, “What?”

  “Nothing, nothing.” I drew her back, just to hold this time because it felt good just to hold, when I’d thought never again to hold anyone but Jamie, and him not for long at all. “So tell us, then, how come you busted in here? You weren’t looking for us.”

  “No. We didn’t know they’d got you. How did they get you?”

  “Later.” We gave ourselves up because they’d got you—romantic, perhaps, but not heroic. The girls were the heroes here. “You first.”

  “They were scared,” she said slowly, picking up the story just after the bit she didn’t want to think about, “and I was curious. They said there might be more men, they wanted to get out of sight, so they crowded into the big room outside. I thought that was stupid, we either got away or gave ourselves up again, but I did want to know how come they’d left us unwatched but they still had two men guarding this place. With rifles. So I left them jabbering in a corner,” and she was trying to control it for my sake but oh, she was undisguisably contemptuous of my relatives, and would never know how sweet that was to hear, “and I bust open the door to see what was inside. That’s all. I think I was hoping for more guns or something, though God knows why. We couldn’t really have a shoot-out, not with this crew.”