In his head the noises of his panic multiplied. The thumping of his bloody heart, the stutter of his mucus, the dry rasp of his palate. His palms, slick with sweat, were losing their grip. Gravity wanted him. It demanded its rights of his body's bulk: demanded that he fall. For a moment, glancing over his shoulder at the mouth that opened under him, he thought he saw monsters stirring below him. Ridiculous, loony things, crudely drawn, dark on dark. Vile graffiti leered up from his childhood and uncurled their claws to snatch at his legs.
'Mama,' he said, as his hands failed him, and he was delivered into dread.
'Mama.'
That was the word. Quaid heard it plainly, in all its banality.
'Mama!'
By the time Steve hit the bottom of the shaft, he was past judging how far he'd fallen. The moment his hands let go of the grid, and he knew the dark would have him, his mind snapped. The animal self survived to relax his body, saving him all but minor injury on impact. The rest of his life, all but the simplest responses, were shattered, the pieces flung into the recesses of his memory.
When the light came, at last, he looked up at the person in the Mickey Mouse mask at the door, and smiled at him. It was a child's smile, one of thankfulness for his comical rescuer. He let the man take him by the ankles and haul him out of the big round room in which he was lying. His pants were wet, and he knew he'd dirtied himself in his sleep. Still, the Funny Mouse would kiss him better.
His head lolled on his shoulders as he was dragged out of the torture-chamber. On the floor beside his head was a shoe. And seven or eight feet above him was the grid from which he had fallen.
It meant nothing at all.
He let the Mouse sit him down in a bright room. He let the Mouse give him his ears back, though he didn't really want them. It was funny watching the world without sound, it made him laugh.
He drank some water, and ate some sweet cake.
He was tired. He wanted to sleep. He wanted his Mama. But the Mouse didn't seem to understand, so he cried, and kicked the table and threw the plates and cups on the floor. Then he ran into the next room, and threw all the papers he could find in the air. It was nice watching them flutter up and flutter down. Some of them fell face down, some face up. Some were covered with writing. Some were pictures. Horrid pictures. Pictures that made him feel very strange.
They were all pictures of dead people, every one of them. Some of the pictures were of little children, others were of grown-up children. They were lying down, or half-sitting, and there were big cuts in their faces and their bodies, cuts that showed a mess underneath, a mish-mash of shiny bits and oozy bits. And all around the dead people: black paint. Not in neat puddles, but splashed all around, and finger-marked, and hand-printed and very messy.
In three or four of the pictures the thing that made the cuts was still there. He knew the word for it.
Axe.
There was an axe in a lady's face buried almost to the handle. There was an axe in a man's leg, and another lying on the floor of a kitchen beside a dead baby.
This man collected pictures of dead people and axes, which Steve thought was strange.
That was his last thought before the too-familiar scent of chloroform filled his head and he lost consciousness.
The sordid doorway smelt of old urine and fresh vomit. It was his own vomit; it was all over the front of his shirt. He tried to stand up, but his legs felt wobbly. It was very cold. His throat hurt.
Then he heard footsteps. It sounded like the Mouse was coming back. Maybe he'd take him home.
'Get up, son.'
It wasn't the Mouse. It was a policeman.
'What are you doing down there? I said get up.'
Bracing himself against the crumbling brick of the doorway Steve got to his feet. The policeman shone his torch at him.
'Jesus Christ,' said the policeman, disgust written over his face. 'You're in a right fucking state. Where do you live?'
Steve shook his head, staring down at his vomit-soaked shirt like a shamed schoolboy.
'What's your name?'
He couldn't quite remember.
'Name, lad?'
He was trying. If only the policeman wouldn't shout.
'Come on, take a hold of yourself.'
The words didn't make much sense. Steve could feel tears pricking the backs of his eyes.
'Home.'
Now he was blubbering, sniffing snot, feeling utterly forsaken. He wanted to die: he wanted to lie down and die.
The policeman shook him.
'You high on something?' he demanded, pulling Steve into the glare of the streetlights and staring at his tear-stained face.
'You'd better move on.'
'Mama,' said Steve, 'I want my Mama.'
The words changed the encounter entirely.
Suddenly the policeman found the spectacle more than disgusting; more than pitiful. This little bastard, with his bloodshot eyes and his dinner down his shirt was really getting on his nerves. Too much money, too much dirt in his veins, too little discipline.
'Mama' was the last straw. He punched Steve in the stomach, a neat, sharp, functional blow. Steve doubled up, whimpering.
'Shut up, son.'
Another blow finished the job of crippling the child, and then he took a fistful of Steve's hair and pulled the little druggy's face up to meet his.
'You want to be a derelict, is that it?'
'No. No.'
Steve didn't know what a derelict was; he just wanted to make the policeman like him.
'Please,' he said, tears coming again, 'take me home.' The policeman seemed confused. The kid hadn't started fighting back and calling for civil rights, the way most of them did. That was the way they usually ended up: on the ground, bloody-nosed, calling for a social worker. This one just wept. The policeman began to get a bad feeling about the kid. Like he was mental or something. And he'd beaten the shit out of the little snot. Fuck it. Now he felt responsible. He took hold of Steve by the arm and bundled him across the road to his car.
'Get in.'
'Take me —'
'I'll take you home, son. I'll take you home.'
At the Night Hostel they searched Steve's clothes for some kind of identification, found none, then scoured his body for fleas, his hair for nits. The policeman left him then, which Steve was relieved about. He hadn't liked the man. The people at the Hostel talked about him as though he wasn't in the room. Talked about how young he was; discussed his mental-age; his clothes; his appearance. Then they gave him a bar of soap and showed him the showers. He stood under the cold water for ten minutes and dried himself with a stained towel. He didn't shave, though they'd lent him a razor. He'd forgotten how to do it.
Then they gave him some old clothes, which he liked. They weren't such bad people, even if they did talk about him as though he wasn't there. One of them even smiled at him; a burly man with a grizzled beard. Smiled as he would at a dog.
They were odd clothes he was given. Either too big or too small. All colours: yellow socks, dirty white shirt, pin-stripe trousers that had been made for a glutton, a thread-bare sweater, heavy boots. He liked dressing up, putting on two vests and two pairs of socks when they weren't looking. He felt reassured with several thicknesses
