Then a word I would never in a hundred years have imagined my mother using.
“Cuntcuntcuntcunt…” Over and over.
At least it broke the spell. I’d backed off, over to the other side of the room, my startled eyes fixed on her as she dropped the strewn letters, picking up pieces and tearing them into even smaller pieces. What in God’s name had happened to Mother? Had my death driven her over the edge, finally broken through that old, cold reserve she had always worn like a self-protective mantle? Or was this the true Mother, the monster lurking behind the respectable and reserved woman she showed to the rest of the world? Abruptly, I realized I didn’t want to witness any more, and with this thought, I left my mother’s home…
… To find myself beside my own corpse.
It was a stark, miserable room, with off-white tiles from floor to ceiling and frosted-glass windows on two sides. There were work counters filled with bottles, jars, bowls and various kinds of metal instruments all around the walls, with cupboards and single drawers beneath them, glass-fronted cabinets above; these were crammed with more bottles and compounds, most of them brightly labelled and the only cheer in this gloomy place. When I say gloomy, I mean in aspect—two long fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling, but their brightness merely seemed to accentuate the unflinching drabness of the place.
Nearby was a round glass container of pinkish liquid standing on top of a cream-coloured box with dials and switches, two clear plastic tubes running from it. It resembled a drinking-fountain, the type you get in American offices, but because of the colour of the liquid inside I surmised that it was an embalming machine, because I knew I was in some kind of mortuary. Close to it on the counter was a tray filled with body plugs and eye caps, the latter obviously used to keep eyelids closed, and next to that an open jar with make-up brushes. Further along was a sink and swivel-headed tap, more jars and metal containers filling the worktops alongside and the shelves that ran round two sides of the room. A cushioned stool on wheels stood in one corner, while a small-wheeled utility trolley with two metal shelves, and a drawer beneath the lower shelf, was positioned next to a rectangular white porcelain table with raised lips around its edges and a drainage hole at one end. There was another table a few feet away from the first and both were identical and anchored to the tiled floor by broad central pillars; the only difference between them was that the former also held my cadaver. It was covered up to the hips by a green surgical drape, and my head was supported by a block behind the neck. Behind that was a water tap with a short hose attachment.
I shuddered when I looked down at my patched-up face.
I supposed they’d done as good a job as they were able, but it must have been impossible for the mortician to make me reasonably handsome again. I won’t dwell on it, but although an effort had been made to restructure my skull—in other words, to pull the nose and forehead out again (they had been totally bashed in, remember)—it still looked as if it had been hit by a ten-ton truck. God, it was gruesome. Quasimodo’s uglier brother. Frankenstein’s lesser-known creation. I was a monster, a dead, disfigured monster. No open casket for me then.
The deep cuts over my chest and upper arms had been expertly sewn up with coarse, unfussy stitches; the mauve-to-purplish-yellow discolorations of much of my skin resembled hideous body paint. Before I turned my head away in disgust, I noticed one other thing. In fact, I did a double-take. On my left-hand side at a point just below my ribcage was a slightly puckered wound the size of a small bead, a perfectly round puncture that was dark with dried blood.
I was leaning forward for closer inspection when a muted cough from somewhere behind distracted me. Still bent, I looked around and saw the figure of a man sitting at a desk in a small annexe room to the mortuary. He was wearing a plain white coat and was busy scribbling notes in a pad on the desk. I wondered if he was writing a post-mortem report on me, but quickly realized he was more likely to be a funeral director than a pathologist, for neither room was excessively large, nor were there any body cabinets. No, I was being prepared for my own funeral, and that realization sent shivers through me.
It made me feel really dead.
The third place I visited was the worst.
The first two had disturbed and frightened me, but number three—well, that totally freaked me out. I don’t know how I got there, it certainly wasn’t intentional, but one moment I was alone with myself in the funeral parlour’s drab laboratory, the next I was in a dark, shadowy place that was somehow familiar to me.
I looked around. Yes, I’d been here before, but when? I remembered. I was here the night I was murdered. In this very room. A creepy basement flat. I recognized the desk and the angle-poise lamp, the cupboard against a wall, the dreary curtains. I remembered the shadows.
But why had I come here again? As I asked myself that question, I saw the newspaper clippings on the desk. On the last occasion I’d watched a man—what was it about that man that made me tremble now?—cutting up a newspaper, taking the clippings and placing them neatly alongside others. Others whose headlines screamed of murder and mutilation! I knew now and I’m sure I must have known then, even if I hadn’t acknowledged it, that the hunched figure was the killer himself. Had to be. Why else would he be cutting out those particular news items if not for his own scrap-book? Why collect them if the stories were not about himself? Actually, this logic meant nothing to me because, you see, I just knew that the person who occupied this dingy flat was the killer the police were looking for. Call it instinct, or psychic recognition—call it what you like. I was certain, that’s all. I had no doubt whatsoever.
And, I reflected, I had come here because some innate awareness that had nothing to do with logic or calculation had brought me here. After all, I was no longer in the world of reason or normality; I was existing on some other plane where thought—or the psyche—was all. This man (and I wrongly supposed this is why I trembled) was my killer. He murdered and mutilated me!
The trembling ceased. Ceased because in my out-of-body state I had frozen. And I had frozen because I heard heavy footsteps on the stairs outside the window, the stairs that led down to the flat from street level. Then shuffling footsteps as they trod the short passageway.
And stopped outside the door.
20
I heard the key turning in the lock, nothing smooth about the sound. Then the door was pushed open with some effort, as though its edges were tight or out of skew with the frame. A dark figure shambled through, with hardly any light let into the room from behind him. It was still daylight outside, but it seemed to have difficulty reaching into this place below the street. The door closed with a short grinding noise, wood against perished wood, and once more the deep shadows consumed most of the interior.
A ceiling light flicked on, but its power was belittled by the general gloom, even though the dusty hanging bulb was without a shade.
The figure stood just inside the street door for a moment, as if alerted to my presence, and this gave me a chance to take a better look. I didn’t like what I saw, not one bit.
Other than by his strange attire, I don’t think his best friend would have recognized him (although I doubted this scruffy individual had a friend, let alone a best one: apart from his general shoddiness, he seemed to exude unpleasantness. Or maybe my own fragile imagination was doing him a disservice, I thought at the time). He wasn’t tall, just kind of bulky, and he wore a dark oversized raincoat that trailed almost to the floor. Covering his head was one of those old-fashioned trilby hats, with the wide brim snapped down in front, shadowing his eyes; and wrapped around his face—literally around his face, for it covered everything but his eyes—was a heavy, knitted navy scarf, whose ends were tucked into the breast of the raincoat.
He looked ready to rob a post office.
He didn’t move, just stood there inside the threshold, broad but sloping shoulders slouched, and I caught the glimmer of his eyes in their black pits, reflections of the lightbulb that moved from side to side as if they were searching for something. A couple of times they seemed to settle on me, but after a beat they’d move on, continuing to search. Could he feel my presence? If so, he seemed to be the only person who could. Even Primrose hadn’t sensed me, and I’d always thought kids were particularly susceptible where that kind of thing was concerned. Kids and animals. When he suddenly made a move in my direction, I hurriedly backed away. Dark eyes that were bulging and set wide seemed to stare directly at me from out of the umbra beneath his hat brim. But again, and to my relief, they passed on to stare into the gloom beyond me. This was one person I didn’t want to be seen by.
