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She fell to one knee again, and felt glad the pain made her wake, made her pay more attention.
The darks shapes with the rifles were around him again, more close this time, screaming obscenities and orders in equal measures. Yet his eyes were on the sky, on something unseen and unseeable.
The rucksack flew from his hand. The ugly black metal creatures burst into life in the arms of their owners and began to leap and squeal. She watched the young man she had spoken to on the Tube twitch and shriek at the impact, dancing to their rhythm as if performing some deadly tarantella.
His bag tumbled through the air, falling to the ground, the wire that linked device to owner flailing powerlessly like a snapped and useless tendon.
That part of the performance was over. It was the dance now, nothing but the dance.
Sergeant Kelly didn’t drag her at that moment. Like Melanie Darma he realized the bomb, or whatever it was, had refused to play its part. Like her, he could only watch in shock and terrified wonder.
She closed her eyes, gripping her stomach firmly, intent on ensuring everything there was normal, as it ought to be. As she half knelt there, feeling the policeman’s strong arms on her shoulder, she was aware of two thin lines of tears trickling slowly down her face. And something else…
“Melanie,” Sergeant Kelly murmured, looking scared.
She looked at him. There was worry, concern in his face, and it was more personal now, more direct than such a vague and ephemeral threat as explosives in a young man’s bag.
Following the line of his gaze she saw what he did. Blood on the pavement. Not that of the man from the Tube. Hers. A line of dark, thick liquid gathering around her grazed knee, pooling as it trickled down her leg.
The wailing of sirens grew louder. Vans and police cars seemed to be descending upon them from every direction. Men were shouting, screaming at one another. A couple were bent down over the broken body leaking onto the ground a few yards away.
Before she could say another thing he bent down, looked in her face, breathed deeply, then scooped her up in his strong, certain arms.
“There’s a nurse inside,” Sergeant Kelly muttered, a little short of breath, as he carried her through the security gate, past the door and the gawping, wide-eyed officers next to their untended machines, and on into the cool, dusty darkness of the Houses of Parliament.
She knew the medical room, could picture it as he half stumbled, half ran along the narrow corridors. In the very foot of the tower, a clean and windowless cubicle with a single medic in attendance, always. Twice, she’d stopped by, for advice, for support, only to be told to see her own doctor instead of troubling the private resources of the Palace of Westminster.
Except in emergencies.
Sergeant Kelly turned down the final passageway, one that led into the very core of the building. The stonework was so massive here it scared her. Trapped beneath several hundred feet and untold tons of grimy London stone, an insignificant creature, like some tiny insect in the bowels of a towering anthill, she felt herself carried into the brightly lit room, lifted onto a bed there, placed like a specimen to be examined.
It was the same nurse. Thickset, ugly, fierce. The place smelled of drugs and chemicals. The lights were too bright, the walls so thick she couldn’t hear a note of the chaos that must have ensued outside.
The nurse took one look at the drying stain on her ankle and asked, “When are you due?”
“Next week.”
Her flabby face contorted in a scowl.
“And you’re coming to work? Good God…Let’s take a look.”
She was reaching for a pair of scissors, casually, with no panic, no rush. It was as if life and death cohabited happily in this place, one passing responsibility to the other the way day faded into night.
He was still there as the woman came toward the hem of her dress with the sharp, shiny instrument, staring at the Palace of Westminster bag that she continued to clutch tight against the bump, as if it still needed protection.
“You don’t need that anymore,” Sergeant Kelly said, half-amused, reaching down for the carryall in her hands.
She let go and released it into his grip. The nurse advanced again with the scissors, aiming at her dress.
“Sergeant…?” Melanie Darma objected, suddenly anxious.
“I’m a London copper, love,” he answered, laughing a little. “There’s nothing I haven’t seen.”
“I don’t want you to see me,” she told him firmly.
The nurse gave him a fierce stare.
Sergeant Kelly sighed, held the bag up for her to see and said, “I’ll look after your things outside.”
As he opened the door, the faint wail of sirens scuttled inside, then died as he closed it again.
It wasn’t like an anthill, she thought. More akin to being in the foundations of a cathedral, feeling the weight of ages, the massive load of centuries of tradition, of a civilization that had, at one time, dominated the known world, bearing down on her remorselessly.
“The doctor might be a man, love,” the nurse said as she cut the fabric of the cheap dress in two, all the way up to the waist.
Then she stepped back, eyes wide with surprise, unable to speak.
It was all there. The plastic bag with the fake blood, and the telltale path it had left down the side of her leg after she burst it with her fingers. And the bulge. The hump. The being she had brought to life, day-by-day, out of stockings and underclothes, napkins and tea towels, until that very morning. The morning. When something else took its place.
She knew the wires, every one, because he’d told her about each as he placed them there, around the soft, fat wad of material they’d given him, the night before. There was, she wanted to tell the nurse, no other way to penetrate this old and well-protected inner sanctum of a world she had come to hate. No other means to escape the attention of the electric devices, the sniffers, the security people prying into everything that came and went in this great palace, a place that meant so much to so many.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, reaching for the band of yellow cable, taking the tail to the mouth, as she’d learned and practiced so many times in her small, fusty bedroom of the apartment she could barely afford.
The foreign phrase he taught her wouldn’t come. They were, in any case, his words, not hers, codes from a set of beliefs she did not share.
What she did know was the Circle. It seemed to have been with her forever, since the moment she first set foot in the dark world beneath the ground, hand in hand with her father, as he took the first step on the journey to his bleak, cruel end. By accident she had woken the slumbering beast one cold morning when she first met Ahmed on the stairs, a weak, impressionable creature, defined by nothing but his aimless anger. He was its slave, too, not that he ever knew.
Her mind could not dismiss the image of Ouroboros at that moment, the picture of the serpent devouring itself. Or the words of the book that was now in the hands of Sergeant Kelly who was, perhaps, a little way away, outside even, eyeing the shattered body in the street.
The living being had no need of eyes when there was nothing remaining outside him to be seen; nor of ears when there was nothing to be heard; and there was no surrounding atmosphere to be breathed. And all that he did or suffered took place in and by himself.
From nothing to nothing, round and round.
With unwavering hands Melanie Darma held the wires above her belly like a halo, bringing together the ends with a firm and deliberate motion, and as she did so she was filled with the deepest elation that this particular journey was at an end.
Chapter Eleven
R.L. Stine
R. L. Stine’s story “Roomful of Witnesses” clearly demonstrates that while truth isn’t always stranger than fiction, the strangest fiction always contains a kernel of truth. Based on a real place, this twisted tale could only have been written by R. L. Stine and reveals his wonderfully off-kilter look at the world. Best known for the nearly three hundred million children’s books sold, he has an uncanny ability to write pulse-pounding stories that keep you turning the pages without ever losing that childlike obsession with the gory details. Why do so many kids love everything this man writes? Turn the page and find out.
Chapter Twelve
Roomful of Witnesses
What happened to Leon is a dirty shame.
I never liked the guy. I’ll admit that. I thought he was lower than a squirrel beneath a truck tire.
Bad blood between us? Maybe.
But no one can pin this thing on me. No way. I didn’t do it—and I’ve got a roomful of witnesses.
You heard me right. A roomful of witnesses.
The day didn’t start too bad. Yeah, I woke up in the staff bungalow with the same joy, aches and pains in all the usual places, and a wet, hacking cough to remind me I was down to my last pack of smokes.
What else is new?
The sheets on my cot were damp from night sweat. I stood up and stretched. No bones cracking or creaking. Hell, I’m only thirty-eight.
I know my hair is a little thin in front and my cheeks have criss-cross lines in them. Charlene says I have old man’s eyes. Well, what do you expect? No one ever built a haven for Wayne Mullet.
The top dresser drawer stuck again, and I tugged it so hard, I pulled something in my right shoulder. Groan. The Louisiana humidity doesn’t agree with furniture, at least not the cheap, piney stuff they bought for our rooms.
I rubbed the soreness from my shoulder, coughed up something nasty and blew it out the window. Then I pulled on the uniform. Baggy, green cotton pants and lab coat, white rubber-soled shoes. Ha. They make the staff dress like doctors, which always gives me a chuckle.
Wayne, your momma would be so proud.
I crossed the back lawn to the kitchen. A promising day. Morning clouds shielding the sun, although the back of my neck was prickling by the time I reached the big house.
And what were those bugs? So many of them, swirling in such a tight circle, they formed a dark pillar reaching high above my head, and I’m six-three.
Leon Maloney is superstitious as all get-out. I hoped he didn’t see this bug thing. He’d probably say it was an omen. Leon is always running on and on about omens. Sometimes I have to show him the back of my hand to make him stop.
He told me his momma had some kind of fortune-teller booth at the back of a saloon in the French Quarter, and she taught him everything you need to know about omens and bad luck. He says she never taught him anything about good luck.
Yeah, Leon can be a bitter dude. Why can’t he just keep it to himself?
Okay. He’s had some real bad luck. I mean last year, for example, one of the old guys pulled out Leon’s left eye—and Leon was just trying to serve him some goddamn soup.
I had to slap a few bugs off my face as I pulled open the screen door and stepped into the kitchen. Some kinda swamp flies, I guess. Don’t know how they got way out here in the woods.
Think maybe they flew, Wayne?
I like to give myself a hard time. Keeps me sharp, you know. But don’t you try it. Yeah, you might say I’m a little touchy. Momma used to say I’d snap at a gator if I had more teeth.
Hey, I grew up on the bayous and I got swamp water in place of blood, and I saw a lot of things pulled up from the brown water a kid probably shouldn’t see.
Well, why get started on that? Speaking of brown water, the coffee smelled good, and they had egg sandwiches this morning on toasted English muffins and the bacon wasn’t burned as usual. So how bad could things be?
Leon was already finishing up. He raised his head from his grits bowl and flashed me a good-morning scowl.
Leon has long, wavy blond hair. He’s into metal music and I’ve seen him go nuts on air guitar, making his hair fly around ‘til he was red in the face. He says he could be an Allman brother if they’d let him in the family.
Some kinda joke, right? I never know with Leon. It’s hard to read a guy with only one eye.
What a loser.
Dr. Nell made him promise to stop blasting his music in the staff dorm because it got the old folks all riled. Leon nodded his head and agreed, but I saw that twitch in his stubbly cheek that meant he was angry.
I wouldn’t want to cross Leon. He’s quiet and goes about his business taking care of the retired folks here. But once when he had a big knife and was slicing up the fruit salad for lunch, he told me he cut someone once, cut them pretty good, and didn’t feel bad about it afterward.
He was holding the knife in front of him and had this weird smile on his face after he told me. And I think he meant it as some kind of warning or threat.
Leon and I had some run-ins back in the day when we were guests ourselves, guests of the Louisiana State prison system. That’s when I learned to keep an eye on him. I mean, two eyes, ha ha.
Anyway, I finished breakfast, drained the coffee cup and crushed it in my hand. Leon had a stain on the front of his lab coat, but I wasn’t gonna be the one to tell him about it. I followed him to the kitchen to start making the breakfast for our guests.
We got two hundred old guys living here, so that meant two hundred fruit smoothies just for starters. Leon and I are slicing and dicing the fruit and jamming it all into the smoothie machine. And I’m filling up glasses. We staff guys get paper cups, but the guests get glass, of course.
And Charlene Fowler comes in, all red lipstick and that bleach-blond hair glowing under the fluorescents, green eyes wrinkled into smiles. She’s not in uniform. Instead, a magenta midriff top and white short shorts, with enough skin showing to let everyone see her flower tattoos.
She breathes on me and rubs one long, purple fingernail down my cheek, all flirty, or you might say slutty, like the two of us are something, only we’re not.
I know she’s banged Leon. More than once, I’m sure. But she’s always coming on to me, too. Just to cause trouble and make things even more tense between us. I’ll give her this. She’s a sexy thing, especially for this place.
Leon told me to stay away from her once. But he didn’t want to fight me. He said it kinda quiet and didn’t look me in the eye.
We both know we gotta be careful. Dr. Nell always has her eye on us, and we want to keep these jobs.
Like I said, we both did time in the prison on the other side of the woods from here. Those stone walls poking up from the trees are a close reminder. We know we’ve got it good here at The Haven.
Charlene stays in my face. Her perfume smells like oranges. Or maybe it’s the fruit I’m putting in the smoothies. “Did you forget everyone is leaving this morning?” she says, all breathy, like she’s saying something dirty. “You two boys are on your own.”
I shrug. My shoulder still aches from the dresser drawer. “We can handle it, Charlene.”
Leon chuckles. You never know what’s gonna strike him funny.
“Dr. Nell says don’t forget Ida is still getting the antibiotics,” Charlene says. “And no snack bars for Wally. He’s put on some pounds. She says to keep your cells on. She’ll check in from town.”
Charlene gives us this devilish grin. It fits her face fine. “Guess Dr. Nell doesn’t trust you boys.”
Leon raises his eye from the bananas he’s slicing. “You trust me, don’t you, Char?”
“About as far as I can throw you.”
“Why don’t you stop rubbing your tits against him,” Leon says, his voice suddenly as hard as hickory. “Come over here and give me some sugar.”
Charlene sticks her head out, like she wants to get it chopped off, and the green eyes sparkle. “Why don’t you make me?”
Leon doesn’t give Charlene any warning. He grabs her by the neck, the way you’d choke a chicken, pulls her over to him and pushes his mouth against hers.
Charlene starts to struggle and spit.
And I don’t think. I mean, I shoulda just stood there and let ‘em work it out. Instead, I lose it. I grab Leon’s arm, lower my shoulder and bump him away from her.
That surprised even me. What did that mean? That I wanted Charlene? Or I just wanted an excuse to fight Leon?
