my own spirit struggling to free itself of the useless body, to discard it like an unnecessary layer. In a few short moments, Oliver would be thrown over the low balcony outside the windows and I shouldn’t—no, I honestly couldn’t, despite what he’d done to me—let that happen. He’d sold me out, stolen my wife, and had cheated me out of the daughter that should have been mine. But he hadn’t killed me. Sydney had done that. Greedy, resentful Sydney Presswell, mild-mannered, easy-going Sydney. Embezzler Sydney. Perverse Sydney. Killer Sydney! And I’d grown too weak to prevent him from killing someone else! Oh, Jesus God, please help me! Give me that last ounce of strength or willpower, whatever it takes to stop Sydney throwing Oliver out the window!
But it was no good—I had hardly anything left. Astonished, surprised, he might be, but there was no fear in Sydney’s eyes, and certainly no shock.
But it was that lack of shock that gave me the idea. And the idea was inspired by the real serial killer.
I had to make Sydney so afraid of me he’d be paralysed if only for a few seconds, like Moker’s victims. It might just give me enough time to stab him with the needle, but in the neck, an easier target than his awkward- to-get-at heart.
I tore at the scarf around my face—no, my arm was too dysfunctional to move swiftly; more accurate to say that I worked at the scarf with my free hand—to get it loose and reveal the deformity that Moker had borne all his life, the facial aberration that had frozen the people he was about to kill for a few crippling seconds.
And in a way, it worked, although in Sydney’s case, fear was not a factor. No, revulsion had replaced the astonishment, disgust at this deformed creature that, for the moment, was interfering with his grand plan. Then something else flickered behind those rimless glasses he wore. Was it recognition? His eyes had left my face to stare at the nasty-looking weapon I held towards him. The sharpened knitting needle. Had he made the connection?
And I think it was this also that sent a fresh pulsing through Moker’s corpse. I don’t know, I’m not absolutely sure about these things, but I thought that maybe whatever remnant of Moker’s psyche was left behind inside his battered brain, or even inside the flesh of his body as a whole, had stirred up memories of a lifetime’s rejection, years of being an outcast, because of normal people’s revulsion of him. The same revulsion that was behind the fear in Sydney’s eyes. Did flesh and blood absorb such soul-rending emotions? Was everything that happened to us throughout our lives recorded, somehow embedded into our very substance? I’ve no idea, but the angry surge now pouring through Moker’s body could not be denied.
Another thought: maybe the anger that brought strength with its flow naturally came from myself, my own spirit. Hadn’t I wept for Moker earlier? Hadn’t I experienced the emotional pain he had felt all his life? Was my sympathy for him, my empathy for him, my anger for him, empowering my own last reserves of willpower? Had Sydney’s undisguised revulsion at the grotesque who stood before him triggered a reaction shared between myself and whatever was left of Moker? I can only guess at the answer.
This returning vitality sent me rushing across the room at Sydney.
Oliver dropped to the floor when Sydney let him go and raised his hands to ward off my attack.
The knitting needle was held high in my hand and I brought it down just before I cannoned into Sydney, aiming for his plump neck but missing, the sharpened point piercing his cheek, an inch below his left eye, my clumsy but fierce momentum pushing him backwards, either the pain or the surprise provoking a shrill shriek, his fear and revulsion turning to horror as he pedalled back, my force and his own panic sending us towards the open windows.
I dug down with the needle, ripping his cheek, and now he screamed, a full-blooded sound, a frightened cry of conviction, this from a man I’d never known to show strong emotion. Blood spurted from his face to join the crusted blood on my forehead as I pushed with strength that was already waning once more, driving us both through the tall open windows onto the foot-wide false balcony outside.
An odd thing happened when we tottered there on the brink of the sixty-feet drop to the shiny wet street below. Sydney, with the back of his knees pressed against the stone balustrade, looked directly into my—into Moker’s—eyes. The moment froze, became meaningless as far as real time was concerned in the way such important moments often do.
Just for that ceaseless instant, his pale-grey eyes widened and I thought I saw recognition in them.
Maybe his guilt, with oblivion or hell a breath or two away, caused his mind to superimpose my real face onto one that was largely absent, because I’m sure his mouth and his voice started to shape my name, the fright in his eyes swapped briefly for a question.
“Ji—?” I’m certain he was about to say, but overbalance tore him away from me.
The half-formed query—if I’m correct in judging it so—swelled into a ferocious scream that withered to a self-pitying wail just before he hit the ground.
The soft mulchy—mushy—crunch that came back at me was awful to hear.
44
I swayed there on the phoney narrow balcony, any power I had left finally depleted, and the light drizzle soaking the head and hands of a body I’d borrowed for a while, one I’d never have liked to own full-time. A breeze flapped the lapel of the raincoat I was wearing, a breeze whose evidence I saw but couldn’t feel.
I felt empty, vacant, as bare as the shell I occupied. I thought that whatever memories Moker’s cooling flesh had sustained after his soul’s departure—or whatever chemicals in the brain that governed such things and which took just that little bit longer to expire after the body’s death—were finally spent. This shell, this vessel, this host, had no significance anymore, except to those who would view it later and recoil at its ugliness and injury.
It had no importance to me either. Nor had anything else in this world. Maybe.
I leaned forward, knees against the stone balustrade.
I had no further use for Moker. I wanted out. At least his carcass had helped prevent another murder. Pity Moker, himself, hadn’t earned that small redemption.
It was too cold inside this body now, too vacant. I could almost feel its flesh corrupting around me. I wanted my freedom.
I leaned even further out over the shiny deserted street, knees no longer hard against the balustrade then followed Sydney.
Falling in the dark. Body lazily tumbling over. Descent slow. So slow you’d believe that meeting the ground might not be so inevitable. But it is. Of course it is. It just takes longer than you would ever imagine.
And I’m suddenly afraid, even though I know I can’t be hurt at this journey’s conclusion. I’m already dead, so how can I feel pain? Besides, this isn’t even my body. Maybe it’s the shock I’m afraid of. Or maybe my mind is informing me that when you drop from a great height onto something hard and unyielding there’s going to be a lot of hurt. Probably only for an instant—depends on how far you fall—but, like the drop itself, that instant might last a very long time.
Also, something else awaits me in that moment before journey’s end. Moker’s final memory—and yet his first.
And I’ve been here before, but then I was interrupted by my own distress.
—chaos, images rushing through a freshly created mind—no order, no recognition, until everything slows, resolves itself, becomes calm and a clear recollection—
I understand. This is Moker’s original memory. His birth. I continue to fall, sailing down on my back, arms and legs splayed.
—darkness becoming lighter, redness and too much brightness, unformed shapes moving in front of me, floating, but not how I’ve floated before in the womb, huge rough hands beneath my slimed and bloody body, a separation, a snapping of something, the link that fed mi, the sudden awful feeling of loss, a sadness, my first, then sounds around me, not like the constant thud-up that had always comforted me, that had gone now, was replaced by these harsher noises I don’t like very much, and those blurred moving shapes, bright and white and pink, one looming larger than the others, warm stickiness being wiped from my body, unpleasant sounds, gasps, a sudden rigidity to the arms that hold me, an unhappy emotion that somehow transfers itself to me through that hardened grip, causing me unhappiness, more pink shapes, scarcely defined in my early unfocused vision—hands—reaching out to me—
—passed over to someone else, a wonderful feeling, a sense of comfort and safety, a pleasure that was common and continuous until a short time ago—wonderful to have it back, even though it’s not quite the same, not as secure as before—
