11
Consume
The water scattered itself, as if rushing to get away from this thing that moved towards me with ever increasing speed. Another memory surfaced as I backed away as quickly as I could, turning on my heel in the deluge and running towards the left side of the hospital building. It was the memory of a childhood fear: staring up at a giant model in some museum or other, terrified by the colossal jaws of a basking shark. The soothing words of a parent trying to convince me that it only ate plankton were nothing in the face of the that huge orifice, easily large enough to fit me inside. My mind had reeled with the image of it swallowing me whole, pressing down with the hundreds of tiny teeth that it possessed.
The exhaustion that had gripped me before and pushed away my fear was nothing in the face of this terror. I watched almost transfixed as Perdita threw herself forward onto the concrete before pushing up on her hands and following me on all fours, her legs thrust out at her sides at impossible angles. Perhaps it was the weight of the mouth that seems to be constantly growing that had dragged her downwards, pulling her prone. Her body seemed to extend as a counter balance, as her torso stretched and twisted as she changed before my eyes. I could hear the bones crack in her hips and knees as she crawled quickly towards me, her hands scrabbling across the car park.
“Here, look, I found it. A way in!” called Cato, his voice drifting shrilly from around the corner. I scrambled past the curb, over pebbles and weeds, onto grass and around the corner, until I saw the small man waving excitedly from half way along the wall. He was holding on to a soaked and blood stained sheet rope that led up to a third storey window. Without a further word he scrambled up the rope with lightning speed, disappearing over the windowsill. I grabbed on and tried to pull myself up but my shoulder and injured collarbone screamed with pain and my hands slipped on the slick cloth as I fell back down, my boots splashing uselessly back into the mud. As I turned I saw a white shoe move around the corner, twisting as it negotiated its way onto the grassy verge. The mouth was huge as is slid into view, lips stretched and tongue long gone into the depths, the orifice having distended to almost a metre across. The cracking, bloody lips closed once, slowly, as if tasting the air, turning towards me as the rest of the long body followed.
“Come on you wretch, get some fight in you,” grunted Marcus, grabbing my hands and throwing me on his back as he grasped the rope tightly, pulling me upwards slowly but surely, hand over hand. The rain was still falling, stinging my eyes as I gazed upwards into the darkening sky. I could hear the howls of the dead inside the hospital, waiting, just waiting to get their dead fingernails into my flesh. Was I running from one death just to be confronted by another, eaten alive by the trapped corpses? Would I ever learn the truth? Onwards, onwards he pulled me, Marcus, my violent and murderous saviour.
Just as we passed the second floor I felt the rope shift. I looked down to see Perdita pulling on the sheets, yanking them again and again with her hands as she started to crawl up the building towards us. I looked up to see the knots in the rope tightening, slipping...
“Faster!” said Cato, poking his head out of the window above. His eyes went wide as he looked past us. I glanced down to see the huge mouth wide below, ready to swallow us should we fall. Perdita's hands moved effortlessly up the rope, pulling her to less than five feet away. If I fell, I knew I would fall forever, deep into that somehow bottomless mouth, to be swallowed and consumed.
Marcus found a burst of strength from somewhere, pushing me over the lip of the window, where I tumbled forwards, awkwardly trying to halt my fall by grabbing on a radiator and succeeding only in twisting my hand, slamming down onto the rain soaked carpet inside.
As I was struggling to my feet, I heard Marcus give out a weak gasp. I pulled myself up to the windowsill in time to see the huge jaws clamped around his legs. His eyes were burning but it was a dwindling fire, the red of sunset. He struggled fitfully, not willing to give up, not willing to see that his life had reached its end.
Perdita's mouth flexed once, opening to let more of Marcus body fall in. There was no blood because there was no chewing... simply swallowing, slowly and painfully. The black vortices that had been Perdita's eyes span with a strange light, glowing red momentarily as she absorbed Marcus’ essence, his reason for being. Violence, rage and revenge flowed out of him, leaving him looking horribly, painfully small. All fight finally left him, and he weakly let go of the rope.
“Please, pull me out, save me... don't let her...” said Marcus as he wheezed, trying to scream the words but having the air squeezed out of his lungs as he slipped further into her mouth. I reached out instinctively but he was so far down now and his fingers were too far away. A further pull and only a small portion of his face was visible, along with one arm jerking pitifully with each contraction of her jaws. I could feel Cato tugging on my sleeve like an insistent child but I couldn't tear my eyes away from the scene.
With one last hungry swallow he was gone. In an instant the mouth was open again, the vast impossible depths now tinged with red at the edges, though whether this hue was the remains of Marcus' inherent rage or simply his life blood I had no way of knowing.
“Escape, escape, deeper, further,” babbled Cato, his little hands pawing at me. His insistent tone cut through me and I quickly pulled the window shut, pulling the handle down tightly. Perdita slid up the side of the building, still dry despite the thundering rain. She turned her head and I saw the side of her face, skin stretching so tightly that rips were starting to appear. Her empty eye sockets peered inside, fixed on me and Cato. The window had a thick frame and was double glazed, so it would resist her for a while, I hoped.
She raised a hand, her fingers rigid, though she did not plunge them into the glass as I had expected, instead climbing further up, scaling the building. It was a blessed moment of rest, allowing me to gather myself and check my surroundings.
The room was a waterlogged office, damaged from the several weeks of rainfall that had spattered through the previously open window. There were two desks covered in sodden papers and notes, filing cabinets, an overturned laundry cart spilling out sheets, along with shelf upon shelf of medical texts. My eye was somehow drawn to a small section at the end of one of the top shelves, which seemed out of place. There were books on languages from all over the world, the spines all well worn from regular reading and reference. One book in particular stood out, having been hastily shoved back into place, its cover crumpled and torn as it was pushed violently between the books either side.
As I reached up to pull it down, Cato grew to his full height and grabbed my face, tearing it around to face him in the most violent motion I had ever felt from the small man.
“Who are you? Who are you really?” he screamed.
I pushed him away, surprised by this sudden change in his character, this sudden backbone.
“What the hell?” I asked incredulous. “You're asking me? After all this time you're asking me?”
“It's important,” said Cato from the floor. “She's after you most of all. She hungers for you, I can see it...”
“She hungers for both of us, who I am doesn't really matter,” I said, pulling the crumpled book from its place and laying it on the desk. I craned my neck to glance outside but there was no sign of Perdita, for now at least, simply a cold and wet darkness that had made everything outside the hospital vanish.
There was brown, dried blood on the edge of the pages and as I flicked through them I found where the gore was thickest. It was a Latin dictionary and history treatise, with names picked out in red... Marcus... Cato... even Guy...
“What does this mean?” I asked Cato, throwing the book towards him where it landed with a thump on the sodden carpet.
“It's a secret...” Cato whispered, “that we don't know, we can't know...”
(Try to remember.)
My hand reached for something, I needed names, they needed names. Their deeds were manifest. I want, I want...
The flash of the bloody hand, my hand, was burned in front of my eyes. What had happened in this place?
The fading light was making it almost impossible to make out details now, so I pulled out the bottom drawer on the left and picked up my torch. I stopped before turning it on, self awareness flooding over me.
This was my office. That was my torch, exactly where I had left in case of emergencies. I had always been so careful, so prepared... hadn't I?
I was scraping at old cuts here, pulling up scabs like flagstones, exposing wounds as wide as the cosmos, delving into their blood. My mind was in turmoil, a mix of pain, realisation and such a profound regret that it almost brought me to my knees.
(Keep going. This is all part of the process.)
I had to keep going. Something was here, somewhere in this dead place, something that would reveal everything, a spotlight on my soul. I turned the torch on and swung it around. There were other signs of blood in the office, wiped across surfaces and papers. I followed the trail, arriving at a photograph. It was gold framed, in pride of place next to a desk lamp so it could be seen whenever work was undertaken.
The picture showed a woman, brimming with pride in her graduation hat and gown, skirted on one side by a young man with similar features, straw coloured hair and sparkling blue eyes, and on the other side by a small man with thinning hair, his wrinkled face creased with a wide smile.
Cato, Perdita and Marcus.
This was another piece, another slice of the truth, even though none of it fitted. Were they really a family? Were they my family? Where was I?
There was another picture, a scene from a fishing boat in a tortoiseshell effect frame. It showed Marcus standing holding a mackerel, freshly caught, with Cato inspecting it comically over his shoulder. The island in the distance was hard to make out but it was there. I knew it would be.
I looked for more blood. I found some on the floor, traced in smears across a road map that lay crumpled under the desk. A cigarette lay amongst the blood, stubbed out in the centre of the map, creating a small hole.
“We can't stay here, we need to get out, out, out...” muttered Cato, aggressively biting his fingernails.
“Out of where? This place is just things, all joined, all familiar but... mashed up in front of me as if somehow I'm expected to make sense of it all,” I said, looking around me as if answers would somehow materialise if I just looked hard enough.
(I can help you, if you'll let me.)
“Whose voice is that?” I asked, pulling myself out from under the desk and standing up, casting my torch around. I looked at Cato, yet now that I was seeing him as the old man in the picture I was seeing him in a new light. He had always tried to look out for me and Marcus, always keeping the huge man's strange desires in check as best he could. Cato was a good man.
“Maybe we have to find out,” he said, almost sobbing. “Maybe it's all we can do.”
(Focus on my voice, follow me back. I'll keep you safe.)
The corridor beyond the office was in complete darkness, with no windows along either side, just rows and rows of doors. The scent of death was strong. This was the centre of it all, all the chaos, all the horror.
“Which way?” I asked Cato, who was holding my arm protectively. He shrugged, looking around us with his tiny eyes flashing in the torchlight.
“We need to go down, yes. Look, see the blood, the trail...”
I shone the torch on the white lino of the hallway and spotted it, a few drops here and there, leading off to the left, towards a stair case. I had no way of knowing what kind of wound had caused the blood loss but it seemed to have bled profusely, the stains being quite big even though they had dried to a cracking brown crust.
“Where do you think that leads?” I asked, hoping Cato had more of an idea of what was happening than he seemed to.
He didn't have a chance to answer, as I spotted the white shoes at the far end of the corridor to the right, glowing ethereally in the darkness. I saw Perdita's mouth was now closed as she stepped around the corner looking almost normal, yet there was the hint of red at the edges of her lips that would have looked like lipstick if I hadn't known better. Her scrubs shone blue across the floor, walls and ceiling, the colour spreading down the corridor towards us quickly. I felt Cato stiffen as the hue touched him, his body freezing in place. I pulled my arm loose just in time before the colour touched me, scrambling away towards the other end of the corridor. I stopped by the stairs, looking back as I gasped for air, the oxygen seeming to have been pulled out of my lungs by that icy blue. I saw Cato collapsing to the ground as Perdita approached, holding his chest, his skin seeming to petrify and crack. Perdita crouched down near to his feet and opened her mouth just wide enough to fit his foot inside. I saw her throat work as she moved slowly up his body, swallowing him in stages as he stared at me, trying to mouth a single word, an easy word to work out even though I couldn't hear him... “Go.”
As Perdita reached his chest, I decided I didn't want to see any more. I turned towards the stairs, my torch picking out the sign on the wall. It was then that I spotted the bloody hand print marking the lowest floor, giving me my destination – the morgue.
The stairs seemed to go on forever. It should have only been four floors but I passed ten doors, twenty, as the stairs kept on and on, further and further down, showing no sign of reaching an end. I shone my torch upwards to see if I could spot Perdita but there was nothing in the dark, just the endless circling of the stair rail snaking upwards.
I stopped to catch my breath, trying to put everything I had experienced in some kind of order. I had lost Marcus and Cato, Perdita was waiting to consume me, my world had fallen from the dull monotony of the island to a nightmare of corpses, evil deeds, apparitions and madness. If I had no idea where I was supposed to be going, how would I know when I got there?
(I will show you the way.)
The light above the exit blinked and blossomed white, almost blinding me. I looked closer, seeing the smear of dried blood on the door frame of the slightly open door, and beyond it the blinking light inside illuminating the short corridor that led to the steel door of the morgue. I looked around me. I was at the bottom of the stairs, standing in a mass of rotting organs and flesh that twisted and trailed up the steps into the darkness. There was a lift, which was open but not powered, each of its walls stained crimson. The body parts were everywhere, thick against the walls; arms, legs, torsos and even heads surrounded me, some of which showed the signs of infection, working their jaws fitfully despite being severed from their former bodies. It was the scene of a massacre. I slipped as I pushed open the door, landing with my hands in the horrific sludge, cutting my hand on a broken ribcage. I hauled myself to my feet on the stair rail and staggered into the corridor, trying desperately not to retch. My clothes were covered in filth and yet it wasn't the grime that worried me but the likelihood of infection from the cut on my hand. I needed some water. The morgue would have a sink, I was sure, yet nevertheless I was paralysed with nerves as I raised my hand towards the door handle.
The door was pulled inwards suddenly, as light flooded past me.
At first all I could see was a white shape, which gradually grew in detail to show a female doctor in a long white coat, wearing delicate silver rimmed reading glasses and holding a dark burgundy file under one arm. Her face was familiar, very familiar. I tried to place her but that part of my mind was obviously still obscured in fog, even though I could see the badge bearing her name, Dr. Celia Perrin. She smiled warmly, somehow making me feel at ease despite the turmoil of the world around me, the dark illogical mess that sucked at my senses and was driving me to the brink of despair.
(Please, won't you take a seat? I'm glad you've finally returned.)
Her voice seemed to be coming from all around me, echoing throughout my brain. Her tone was warm, familiar. I had heard it before, many times. She gestured to a large reclined chair in the corner made of beautifully shining leather, next to a smaller wooden chair lined with plush red velvet. They were strange, out of place items in a room that was otherwise a sight of disarray.
Many of the refrigerated compartments were open, with the drawers pulled out. There was blood on the ground here but that was to be expected after the amount of blood that had been in the corridor. There were papers scattered across the floor, empty files, and I could just about spot the glint of a chisel lying stuck to the floor in a patch of blood near to a cupboard door.
(Please, take a seat.)
I looked down at the blood that was seeping out of the cut on my palm, before spotting a large steel sink to the right of the room.
“May I?” I asked, gesturing towards the tap.
(Certainly. I've waited this long, another minute or so won't make a difference. You need to be comfortable.)
I nodded, somehow fitting into my role seamlessly. This didn't seem out of place for me, after so much that did. That thought alone gave me a tremor of disquiet, giving what was playing out a strangely sinister edge.
After washing my hand as best I could and bandaging it using a nearby first aid kit, I walked back over to the leather chair and lowered myself onto it as Dr. Perrin waited patiently.
She was in her late thirties from what I could gather, with shoulder length chestnut hair pushed back behind her ears and light blue eyes that were watching me intently. Her face showed the kind of innate kindness that people hoped all doctors would possess but not all did. From her poise and general shape of her body it seemed clear that she was very physically strong, probably a fitness fanatic. Well, she would have to be to survive by herself during the plague, of course...
(And what plague would that be?)
I looked at her, stunned. Had I spoken those words? I didn't think so but then I was so tired that anything was possible.
“The dead, the world... I mean... you must have seen the stairway? It's an abattoir, from the amount of rot it must have been like that for weeks.”
She flicked through her notes, before finally finding what she was after.
(Ah yes, let me see... ‘a mass of rotting organs and flesh that twisted and trailed up the steps into the darkness. The body parts were everywhere, thick against the walls, arms, legs, torsos and even heads.’ Well it's all very gruesome. I don't think it's healthy for you to be fantasising about such sights any more, is it?)
“But it's there, it's just outside... if you look you can see it,” I said, starting to get up.
(Please sit down. We can check afterwards but we have a lot of work to do first. I want you to start at the beginning, as much as you can recall.)
I sat back, the leather creaking as I cast my eyes over her. She still seemed... real, except this situation was stilted, skewed. Surely this wasn't the proper location for a therapy session?
“Are you a psychiatrist? You look more general medical to me,” I said slowly, trying not to offend.
(You're right, I don’t have a background in psychiatry... but I have studied some psychology, enough to deal with this I should think. Anyway, I have a personal interest in this case, as you can imagine.)
I had no idea why this was personal for her, but her demeanour, though gentle, seemed to brook no argument. She was firmly in control of the situation.
“Where should I begin?”
(From the first thing that you can remember. Don’t leave out any details, I want to know everything so I can make a thorough analysis. We need you to recover. I think you know what the other option is...)
I nodded, took a deep breath and began.
As I started to speak, it became like a fountain, the words tumbling out one after another. She was writing furiously, her hand moving fast across her notes as I recounted waking up on the cold, sharp pebbles of the island, my time with the others there, travelling to the harbour, everything. The dead, the... for want of a better word “friends” I had made, the violence, the unrelenting rain, the struggles, and finally I recounted my journey through the hospital. With the last section in particular I was very careful to get every detail into my description, in the hope that Dr. Perrin could make some sense of it all.
The lights in the morgue were dimming as I continued to speak, each one starting to develop a colourful halo as if there were some sort of gas in the room, though I could smell nothing when I breathed in except for the rotting remains of flesh in the corridor and the blood that was splashed in claret fountains on the floor.
Dr. Perrin sat in contemplative silence for a few minutes after I had spoken, as the lights continued to diminish in their luminescence. The slowly encroaching darkness was putting me on edge. Dr. Perrin must have noticed, as she put her pen down onto the notes and leaned forwards, looking at me carefully over her reading glasses.
(Are you all right?)
“I'm fine, I just... it all seems to be getting darker,” I said carefully, trying to pinpoint exactly why I felt so nervous. The darkness was not the only reason but the others were muddled together and would take a lot of teasing out to separate.
(Darker... I see. Physically or thematically?)
“I don't understand...” My body felt a hundred times heavier than it should, as if I were rushing upwards and being pushed into the leather seat by inertia. It was becoming a little difficult to breath. I tried to lift my arm off the seat but it was now impossible.
A pause.
(I have a few observations, if you're ready to hear them.)
The light was almost gone, with the only thing now visible being the vague outline of Dr. Perrin.
(Marcus... brash, hungry, violent, angry, a being born of desire, a constant need... he clearly represents the Id, the most primitive form of the psyche.)
Dr. Perrin's eyes blazed, a fire within, hell-fire soul.
(Cato... rules, warnings, restraint, constantly putting all of your needs and survival first... he is the Ego, the means of controlling the desire, good judgement keeping urges in check to ensure the needs are properly met.)
She breathed out, her breath frosting to a blue haze.
(There remains the final part of the personality, the Superego. The link to society, holding its rules and retributions, the guilt and the pride, the guiding adult force...)
It could only be Eliza... but that was not possible. She was human... strong, alive, a vital energy.
(The journey has been handicapped by severe and unbalanced swings of personality, as the various aspects and elements fought, struggled and died, refusing to fall into a close harmony, as it should be. The thoughts are dark, the violence brutal, the death almost inevitable. All these signs point to a serious fragmentation of the personality...)
“You mean my personality,” I managed to gasp through the crushing pain of my ribcage.
(No, not yours. Mine.)
I tried to focus on the woman in front of me as she stood up. Her face was older but of course she had been ageing with every step. I had seen that before but had forgotten. I had been so foolish. It had to be her. There was no one else. As I looked now at the features, their familiarity pressed on my mind and pushed through, flooding my mind with her name... Perdita, Perdita, Perdita.
(Perdita is what was lost. I am now found. I am Celia Perrin, and you are my Superego.)
It was not just Perdita, there was something more, a stark realisation at the features I had barely scrutinised, only looking at once or twice before briefly in a mirror, rippling in a puddle, previously distorted but now so clear. When I had bathed at the brigadier's house, my body had been thin and wiry but unmistakeably female. I had felt everything: Marcus' hunger, Cato's control, my own constant analysis and comparisons, all because the Superego was the highest form. Sometimes when my control had faltered, as everyone's did from time to time, the Id or the Ego had taken over, yet I had always wrestled control back. Yet I could not survive alone, not without a sense of self, her sense of self.
(Guy, the guide.)
My face was hers.
She... I... the woman opened her mouth wide, the jaw muscles and tendons stretching and moving all around me, surrounding me, closing on me, pulling me back, swallowing me down, deeper down, falling down...