reverse, pull the car back. Had it made a terrible noise? I didn’t care if my neighbours were roused from their comfortable slumber—so long as I got away first. Okay. Calm down, take it steady. Reverse. Where the fuck was reverse? Oh yeah, down, had to push the lever down. Whoops. That was second gear. I remembered. No, had to pull the lever out first, then down. That was reverse.
Following my recollection of column gearshifts and also relying on this body’s own instincts, I reversed the car back across the road until the rear wheels hit the kerb, swinging the steering wheel to my right as I did so. A light came on in a bedroom window opposite.
Gears grinding, I shifted to first, and put my right foot down hard. The Hillman shot forward and its wing scraped along the side of another vehicle parked at the opposite kerb, taking off a wing mirror as it went—
—a dark, lonely street, wet with rain, a man coming towards me, unwrapping my scarf, waiting for him to draw near before revealing all, the man hesitating, footsteps slowing, the first hint of concern on his handsome face, then the look of utter terror taking over as the scarf fell loose, turning to run, but not quickly enough, first a big hand spinning him back round, then the needle striking upwards, piercing material, skin, flesh, finding the heart, and pure glorious joy—
Uhhh! The memory was almost painful, the shock of it making me jerk the steering wheel so that the Hillman scraped along another car parked on the left-hand side of the road. God, can’t I control them? Can’t I hold back the memories and the perverted pleasure that came with them? Had to get a grip, had to push extraneous thoughts aside. But could I? After all, this was not my body and whatever recollection it held could not be tamed by me, the usurper. Had to make myself immune to them. I still had control over my own mind, didn’t I? Sure I did.
The roads were pretty empty, as was the main thoroughfare when I turned into it. I’d have to drive carefully, concentrating all the way, do my best not to get distracted—Oh God!—
—a cemetery, an old one with Gothic tombs and large angels, weather-worn slabs everywhere, and there was the woman, alone laying flowers on the grave of some departed loved one, and here was I, moving among the stained crosses and angels with spread wings and mausoleums with boarded doors, stalking the woman, who was turned out, attractive, long dark hair, getting closer to her, unwinding the two ends of the scarf, ready to pounce, bringing the murder tool from my pocket as she turns her head and sees me, and pure delight at the terror on her face, those beautifully startled eyes that already know she’s dead, then the exquisite delight as the needle sinks in, through the satin material of her blouse, just under the lower ribs, pushing—no, sliding, for very little effort is required—the long needle through the flesh, piercing then slipping right inside her heart, her scream muffled by a big hand, and she falls across the grave of the one she is there to grieve for, then the touching, the lifting of clothes, pulling down fine panties, pushing inside her with trembling, excited fingers…
The scene was so strong, so very lucid, filling my mind so that the car swerved across the road, mounted a pavement and almost crashed into a lamp post. I shook my head, trying to clear it of pictures, nasty, depraved images, and they swiftly faded so that only the road was before me now.
Guiding the car back on to it, I tried to control my own mind, to shield it from the other’s thoughts, and for a short while I was successful. I steered the old Hillman in as straight a line as possible along the broad, lonely road, my way lit by amber street lights, the shadowed windows of shops and houses on either side like eyes witnessing my progress. Flashing blue lights appeared in the distance, police cars or ambulances having turned into the main road from a junction, and I took no chances, pulling over to the kerbside, the rubber of the left-hand wheels squealing against the stone. I pulled up behind a white van.
I’d been wise to do so, for two police cars, sirens wailing, followed closely by an unmarked vehicle, shot past on the other side of the road. Heading for my place? I wondered. Surely not. They couldn’t have reacted so fast to a phone call from Andrea, could they? Police response to call-outs these days was unreliable to say the least, but maybe it was a quiet night for them. Maybe they were speeding to some other call, there was no way of knowing and I wasn’t about to go back and check.
Something else nagged me as I sat stiffly in the driver’s seat staring at the back of the van in front, blood drying around one of my eyes. Then it hit me. Just as well I’d pulled over before the police cars reached me—I’d forgotten to turn on the Hillman’s headlights. I leaned forward to do so, my hand—Moker’s hand—scrabbling around the dashboard, searching for the appropriate switch. I found a likely suspect, pressed and—
—a pitch black alleyway, somewhere in the city, a figure leaning back in a doorway, someone waiting there, waiting for someone, waiting for me, the short hatchet—a hatchet, not a butcher’s chopper—in my hand, taken from the oversized raincoat where a large, deep pocket had been sewn in to accommodate it, lifting it high as the body waited, already dead—and empty—standing there as stiff as a board, freakishly held up by the wall and legs that were locked in rigor mortis, lifting the hatchet, the thrill of bringing it down hard on the dead man’s head, continuing the chopping and the cutting as the body toppled and fell to the ground, and going down with it, smashing and slicing, cutting into the cold carcass, destroying it beyond recognition, leaving behind on the wet floor of the alleyway a mound of chopped meat and naked bloody bones—
Had I occupied my own body, I know I would have thrown up right there in the car so repugnant was the memory sustained within the tissues and cooling flesh of this monster, but even so, my own mind reeled with shock and it was not entirely due to these invasive visions alone; no, it was the glorification that went with them, the overflowing happiness as the hatchet had struck again and again, the lazy spurts and dribbling of thickening blood, the disassembling of the human structure—the complete destruction.
This time something lingered after the vision had dissolved to black, not a continuation but the isolated memory of Moker’s final act of desecration. No wonder the police had not seriously connected my murder with the other serial killings, because there was one more gross defilement that had not been evident in my case.
Moker always left his victims in quiet, concealed locations, places that he could return to as himself, inside his own body, to carry out the mutilations without being disturbed; lonely sites where he could squat over the demolished body and defecate into the bloody pit left by the removed heart.
It was just as well there was so little traffic about at that time of night, or else my erratic driving would probably have caused a serious accident. As it was, I struck parked vehicles along the way, knocked over a bollard on a pedestrian island and for a time, when my concentration was at its weakest, travelled for almost a mile on the wrong side of the road. It was the memories somehow detained by Moker’s entity, his being, released at irregular and uncontrolled intervals, finally shed only after they had been recalled one last time.
—working with cadavers in the morgue, washing them, cleansing them, so they were fit for burial, the private obscene moments with them—
—faces of men in expensive suits, wearing silk ties and crisp shirts, surgeons who hid their natural repugnance with professional aloofness (although not all succeeding too well) as they peered into the hole of my face, the shaking of their head because there was nothing they could do to rebuild, there was not enough there for reconstruction, the operations to re-form at least a workable orifice, the pain suffered, the hope denied—
—looking at myself in a mirror, but me as someone young, in jeans and baggy jumper, the anguish, the despair, the bitterness—the anger! The smashing of mirror, any mirrors, anything at all that reflected my image!—
—the maiming of small animals—
—the stares from people, the screams of children, the undisguised or ill-concealed disgust of women, of girls, boys—
—the misery, the emptiness—
—then glorious flight, freedom from this marked body, invisibility, the dreams that were not dreams but true escapes, the journeys away from myself that were a discovery that changed everything—
Here I was, Jim True—or the spirit of Jim True—inhabiting another person’s shell, remembering that person’s life, the pain, the wretched misery, the surprising and new joy, while driving towards my own destiny, or what I perceived to be my destiny.
—walking the streets, people glancing at me and freezing in their tracks or quickly looking away again, searching for a place, a particular house, finding it, knocking on the door, the wild-haired woman with the pinched features and ashen skin standing at the open door, looking out, seeing me, the mother who had abandoned me, screaming now at the sight of me, the disfigurement her only recognition, slamming the door, shrieking at me to go away, go away!—
Had to shut the thoughts out, had to fix my focus on the road ahead, concentrate on steering the car, hardly bothering with the gears once it was in third, the effort of using the stiff column shift too much.
—catching a bee in an empty jam jar, filling it with water through a small hole drilled into the lid—
