Feeding Frenzy #7
“Believe me, if it was my decision, I would,” Nigel said, then clapped his hands with enough force to expel a puff of skin particles. “Right, gang, let’s get to work. Beer and pizza at nine. Let’s see how much we can do before then.”
“Do you need a hand in Kids’?” Adam asked Jacinta as everyone filtered back to their designated sections.
“What about Gardening?” said Jacinta.
“Looking at all those book covers with flowers on them is giving me hay fever. I need a change of scene.”
The furthermost quarter of the basement was in the process of being transformed into Book Planet, an area which a welcoming arch stretching between the backs of two sets of shelves claimed was ‘Out Of This World!’ The uprights between the shelves were thin wooden cut-outs of space rockets, the carpet was an inky sky a-swirl with planets.
From the ceiling, three-dimensional counterparts of the exotic worlds underfoot dangled from wires like over-sized Christmas baubles.
For a while Adam worked almost silently alongside Jacinta, opening boxes, sorting books, labelling shelves, constructing displays.
To an outsider he might have looked diligent, absorbed in his work, but in fact he was in turmoil.
He wanted to tell Jacinta everything, but how could he without sounding like a lunatic?
He felt it building inside him, and with each second that passed came an increasingly greater pressure to unburden himself.
But paradoxically the longer it went on the harder it became to say anything at all.
He might have remained in an agony of silence all night if Jacinta hadn’t suddenly said, “Adam, are you okay?”
He looked at her wildly, and could only blurt, “Why?”
“It’s just that you look like a chicken trying to lay a bowling ball.”
Instead of matching her smile, he said quickly, before the opportunity could pass, “I have to tell you something.”
Immediately she looked wary. Pausing with a pile of Pullmans in her hands, she asked, “What is it?”
Now that he’d plunged in he had to maintain his impetus.
But he was equally aware that he should take his time, not start babbling like a mad man.
“Something’s been happening to me,” he said.
“Something which sounds really crazy, and which I don’t understand, but which I can’t keep to myself any longer. ”
“Go on.”
“Okay. But before I start, can I say that I’ve never had any mental problems, I’ve never had treatment for depression, I’ve never thought of myself as gullible or easily led, I don’t particularly believe in God or the Devil or ghosts or UFOs or any of that stuff.”
“Okay.”
“Oh, and I’m not on any sort of medication. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a bad time of it lately, what with my marriage breaking up and everything, but I’m getting by, I’m doing okay, I’ve not had to go into therapy or anything.”
“Just get on with it, Adam.”
“All right, I will. Sorry.” He paused briefly. “I suppose the best place to start would be with that book of mine - you know, the one that Oliver was waving around the first time we met?”
He took it from there, told it as simply and matter-of-factly as he could, re-building the events of the last two days incident by incident.
He fought to keep his voice steady, to clamp in the nervousness that made his limbs want to jitter and twitch.
When he had finished, Jacinta said, “So what do you think is making all these things happen?”
Adam spread his hands. “I don’t know. But it’s got to be something to do with me, hasn’t it?”
A little too calmly she said, “You don’t think you’re attacking these people without knowing it, do you?”
“No!”
She jumped as if he’d snapped at her like a dog, and instantly Adam raised a hand.
“Sorry. I have considered that possibility, believe me, but I’m sure it’s not the case.
I’ve had headaches, but I haven’t had blackouts.
There are no blank spots in the last few days. Everything I’ve done I can remember.”
“So what then?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know.” He turned to the shelf to slot in a couple of Alan Garners, and then said, “Everything I’ve thought of sounds as crazy as what’s happening.”
“Such as?”
“Such as the possibility that something is plundering my thoughts, taking what I’ve read and making it real.”
“What kind of something?”
“I don’t know. Some force. Some…some entity. I don’t know. I told you it sounded mad.”
“It sounds like a plot of one of the books you read.”
“Except much more horrible. The books I read are just escapism. They don’t try to be anything else. But this is the opposite. I want to escape, but I can’t.”
“Perhaps you’re not the person who’s supposed to escape.”
“What do you mean?”
Jacinta held up the books she was holding.
“I sometimes think, what if we’re just characters in someone else’s story?
We feel real to ourselves, but maybe that’s only because we’ve been given life by whoever’s reading about us.
And what if the stuff you’ve been reading about leaks into our story, and then the stuff in our story leaks into the story of whoever’s reading about us, and so on? ”
“Cosmic, man,” Adam said.
Jacinta grinned. “I know it sounds silly. But is it any more silly than what’s happening to you?”
Adam sighed. “I don’t know. I feel as if I don’t know anything any more. There must be a reasonable explanation for all this.”
“Why?”
“Because everything has a reasonable explanation.”
“Does it?”
“Yes. Or at least it should do.”
“Maybe it would be easier for you if you stopped looking for one.”
“But what if it just carries on? What if people keep dying?”
“You’ll have to think of a way to stop it.”
“But how do I do that?”
Jacinta shrugged. “Stop reading. Burn your books. If this whatever it is has got nothing to feed on, maybe it’ll die.”
Adam blinked, puffed out air, like a man emerging from a nightmare. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.” He reached out and gently squeezed her shoulder. “Thanks, Jacinta.”
“What for?”
“For listening to me. For not running away screaming.”
“I’m not a running away screaming kind of girl.”
“I feel better for having talked to you,” he said. “Even if nothing’s been resolved, it’s still a weight off my shoulders.”
They got back to work. Adam wondered whether the solution really was as simple as Jacinta had suggested.
If he stopped reading books would the killings stop?
But what if the thing that was plundering his mind didn’t limit itself solely to what he had read?
Should he also refrain from watching movies and TV programmes that might contain the kind of material it could imitate?
Did he have to spend the rest of his life starving his imagination?
How would he cope without his fix of harmless fantasy that had proved itself to be not quite so harmless, after all?
“This is the last of the boxes,” Jacinta said, ripping it open. “We need some more from the sort room.”
“I’ll get them,” said Adam. He grabbed a V-cart and dragged it on squeaky wheels to the lift.
After less than a minute of waiting, the lift opened with a sigh and raised Adam to the next floor.
The sort room was silent and deserted when he stepped out into it; evidently the onus tonight was on making the shop floor look as presentable as possible.
Adam dragged the V-cart, its wheels clanking over bits of cardboard and chunks of polystyrene, to the shelf containing the stock for Book Planet.
He was almost there when he heard a scurrying sound.
It made him think of rats in the walls; not one, but several, perhaps dozens. He twisted his head, half-expecting to see furry bodies flowing over and between the stacks of books, but as soon as his eyes focused on the place where the sound had come from, they stopped.
It was as abrupt as that; as though someone had pressed Mute on a TV remote control. “Hello?” he called. “Is someone there?” The only response was the papery echo of his voice, ebbing towards the high ceiling.
He hesitated a moment, then marched to the desk in the corner and picked up the phone. Pressing the intercom button, he said, “Could Jacinta call 312, please? That’s Jacinta, 312.”
Almost immediately the phone buzzed and he snatched it up. “Hi, Jacinta, would you mind coming to the sort room?”
“What for?”
“There’s something I want to check out. But I don’t want to do it on my own.”
“Is it something to do with what’s been happening?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure.”
She barely hesitated before saying, “Okay, I’ll be there in a minute.”
Adam put the phone down and waited. Less than a minute later the lift doors wheezed open and Jacinta stepped out. She looked round, a little warily, Adam thought, until she spotted him, whereupon she smiled. “So what is it you want me to see?”
“There’s something I didn’t tell you before,” he said. “It wasn’t deliberate. It’s just that it didn’t seem relevant.”
“And now it does?”
“I’m not sure.” Quickly he told her about the sounds he had heard, and about the trap door in the stone floor.
Jacinta hunched her shoulders. “So what do you want to do?”
“I want to get the trap door open, see what’s inside.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?”
“Probably not. But I don’t think I’ll rest until I know.”
Jacinta’s pale blue eyes stared into his for a moment, then she walked over to where Adam had told her the trap door was and gazed down at the pile of boxes covering it. Finally she said, “I must be mad, but…okay.”
“You’re sure?”
“No, I’m not bloody sure. But let’s just do it before I change my mind.”
Adam stepped forward and began to tug at the nearest box. “Help me with this then.”
A few minutes later the boxes had been hauled aside and the trap door uncovered. Panting, Jacinta said, “Doesn’t look as though it’s been opened for a long time. It’s probably fused solid with the floor.”
Adam palmed sweat from his forehead. “Let’s see, shall we?”