“In yet?” the voice called, a deep voice that was being peeled back to reveal a shrill centre.
“I’m coming,” Will said, and hurried up the stairs. On the landing he was greeted by an ecstasy of half-stuffed wildlife. He pushed by the still menagerie, with its glazed eyes and rictuses, and found the room in which the figure stood.
It was a man of around sixty years of age. He was naked. Will tried not to look, giving his attention instead to the framed maps on the walls. “My name is George,” the man said.
“Are you all right?” Will asked.
All bluster and bile, the other sputtered: “Of course I’m not all right, you blithering butterhead. What have you, a spatchcocked chicken for a brain? Can’t you see, I’m cut and bleeding and in a rare old state.”
Wishing he had carried on without stopping, Will said, “Do you have any bandages?”
“Do I look like a besodded pill-pusher? Great yawning twats, man. I should have called for help from that beetle over there.”
George had not yet turned around. Will’s eyes took in the heavily larded tectonic plates of his buttocks and thighs. One of this man’s calves could have stood in for Will’s chest. His back hung in layered scoops of fat that resembled a Christmas tree, the edges of which had been softened by snow. Slowly he turned, this shithouse, this pagoda of blubber, to fix Will with a niggardly eye like a currant pressed into pastry. Again the impact of recognition: there was something in the cast of these features that recalled those of Alice.
More of George was revealed. Will saw the manner of his injury and blushed. He had been winding his cock tight into a vice and had obviously caused some serious tearing at the moment of his climax. Will thought he was taking things very calmly, all things considered.
“Do you know Alice?” he asked, as much to deflect his study of the ruptured organ as anything. It jutted between the fat man’s thighs like a button mushroom. His abject expression might well have been displayed as a result of the wound, but it was for Will’s benefit.
“Shall we take tea and pikelets while we discuss such matters? Hmm?” George drew a podgy hand across his features and Will was struck with the horrifying certainty that the doughy mask would come off under his fingers. “I know of no Alice. All I know is that I am in pain, sir. The kind of pain that makes a man want to tear off his own head and cast it into the fire. Now, as you can see, I have damn-near castrated myself in a lunatic moment of self- absorption. Kindly fetch me something in which I might bind the old peashooter and help me get dressed. You might try that gallimaufry of men’s magazines over there. Under those.”
Will rooted around beneath the glossy, pink pages but only came up with a clean handkerchief folded into a neat square. He helped to jemmy George’s folds and flaps into his waistcoat and britches while they both wheezed with the effort. By the time Will had finished, the windows were steamed and George’s face was as ruddy as the blood on his hands.
“I’ll just buff the old wanking spanners, dear boy, then I’ll make you a bite. I apologise for the inconvenience, but not for my habits. I’m a lonely man who just happens to need extreme relief from time to time.”
In the kitchen, George pottered from larder to refrigerator to table, adding pickles and sausage and cheese to a large white plate. He handed this to Will and instructed him to cut some slices from a slab of bread. Will picked at the food, his appetite gone. George finished his food, then took on Will’s remains. His face in the trough, George became a personable companion, far removed from the objectionable bully Will had seen initially.
“Cakington-cakely?” George asked, when the last forkful of coleslaw had disappeared between his worming lips. Without waiting for an answer, he leaned across to the cupboard and extracted a huge Swiss roll.
It was something in the eyes, Will thought. Something that he and Alice shared. They must be related, he thought, regardless of George’s insistence that he did not know anyone of that name. He watched as George went at the cake with a spatula like a fencing expert showing off his best moves. Who was it that George and Alice reminded him of? He tried to push his mind beyond the young face and the black hole, the light, but he was not equal to it.
“My name’s Will, by the way,” he said, in the hope that offering his name might jolt some shred of recognition from his host.
“Short for?” George asked, working the question around a piece of Swiss roll that would have satisfied a family of four. Crumbs the size of ?2 coins were ejected, retrieved and pasted into submission by his fearsome jaw.
“Just Will,” Will said. He heard the fatigue in his voice at the same time that he noticed the black sky begin to boil with clouds.
“George isn’t short for anything either. Good, stout, monosyllabic names. You can’t beat them.”
Unable, and unwilling, to mask his tiredness, Will said, “Where am I, exactly? Where is this place?”
“This is Gloat Market, quite evidently. There are signs as you enter.”
“Yeah, I know it’s Gloat Market, but what is Gloat Market in?”
George frowned. “Don’t follow you, friend.”
“I’m lost. I’ve never heard of this village, or Howling Mile or wherever else we’re near. What’s going on? What is this place?”
“
“What about everyone else?” Will persisted. “Are they happy where they are?”
“I’m quite certain of it.”
“Then where are they? It’s deserted. You and Alice are the only people I’ve seen all day.”
George gave him a look that suggested his leg was being pulled. “You’re tired, sir. Have a nap and all your nonsense will be forgotten.”
“I’ve had enough of this,” Will spat, and rose from the table. George laid a hand on his arm.
“You might want to try to settle in here,” he said. “Sometimes it’s best not to look too hard for something, even if you don’t know what that something is.”
“What are you trying to say?”
George’s hands flew into the air and he smiled a shockingly toothy smile. “Nothing, dear man. Absolutely nothing whatsoever. Just sorry I couldn’t be of more help to you. As you were to me.”
Will said goodbye, and hiked up a short hill. The clouds gave up their attempt to hold on to the rain in their bellies and vomited a heavy, oily deluge that soaked Will to the skin in seconds. Cursing loudly, he ran to a cluster of trees and, once in their shelter, saw another house in their shade, its front door swinging merrily in the gusty blow of what was fast becoming a nasty little storm.
Will called a greeting as he entered the hallway and blinked hard as he saw a splash of motion – a woman carrying a tray – at the threshold to a dining room. There was nobody there. He hurried upstairs and flicked a light in the bathroom. There was nobody here either, despite the stroboscopic blip depicting a young woman soaping herself in a bath full of bubbles. He undressed and showered, leaning against the wall while the jet of water fizzed against his skin. When he finally stepped out of the cubicle and started drying himself in front of the mirror, he had to blink hard again, but not because he had seen the ghost of somebody sharing the bathroom with him. He reached out to the mirror and rubbed away the steamed surface. When it was clear, he was able to see the two patches of rot that were eating into his flesh: one on the side of his arm where George had touched him, the other on the back of his forearm: Alice.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: MARAUDER
PARDOE HAD SAID there were just three Inserts. Sean, Emma, and Naomi. But others, it seemed, had learned the secret. Crossing the bridge that spanned the river (known as the Timeless, according to an impatient tradesman on his way to buy calves at an auction), Sean had leaned for a moment on the parapet to watch the traffic below. A barge made its way to the north bank, farting black clouds of diesel smoke in its wake. At the bow, he caught a glimpse of Tim Enever. He was certain of it. By the time he’d nudged Emma to tell her, he was gone.
