Chapter 30.
Nat realised that he must have fallen asleep when he felt Joshua shaking him. “Come on, we’re here.” He shook off the fogginess that comes with sleep, and the cold, dark feel of a hangover, and tried to get his bearings. It was dark and foggy outside, although the car’s headlights penetrated it deep enough to catch the edges of a stone wall. “Where’s here?” he asked, his voice still heavy with sleep.
“Come on” Joshua said again, getting out of the car, and, somewhat reluctantly, he followed, and stepped out into the chill of the night.
“Where are we going?” he asked, as he followed a silent Joshua into the fog. They walked along the edge of the wall for a few paces, holding on to it as the night became darker and darker. Through the dim light, he could see Joshua feeling the wall as they walked, as if he was looking for something.
“Ah!” he exclaimed eventually.
“What?”
“Shhh!” and Joshua moved his hands across the wall in a strange way, as if he was performing some kind of ritual. He repeated it a few times, seemingly getting more and more frustrated.
“What are you doing?” Nat asked.
“I said Shhh!” he shouted, “I’m concentrating, wait…”
“But…”
Joshua turned to him. “I said be quiet!” but Nat had stopped looking at him, but instead was staring past him, his mouth agape. Joshua turned in confusion and saw the opening that had appeared in the wall, leading to a dark tunnel beyond.
“Ah. I knew it was here somewhere. Come on” and they hurried in. “It’s a secret entrance, Terri told me about it, I don’t think her mum knew that she’d told me. I’m not even sure her mum knows it exists.”
Lights started to illuminate automatically as they headed inside, lighting up a few feet of the corridor ahead of them, showing, in stark contrast to the outside of the house, a modern clinical corridor in stark, brilliant white.
“So, we’re in...?” Nat started.
“Terri’s house, that’s right. Well, her mother’s mansion to be precise. Frost Palace, Terri used to call it. Kind of appropriate, don’t you think?”
“But what are we doing here? Don’t you want to keep away from Terri’s mum?”
“We need to get Terri back, and this is the only place we can do that. Come on.”
“But…” Nat sounded breathless as he tried to keep up with Joshua, “I don’t understand.”
“You never do.” Joshua stopped and looked at a small opening in the corridor. “Here we are.” He took a deep breath, and entered. Nat, for want of something better to do, followed him.
They entered a wide room. It wasn’t a room, per se – more a half sphere, illuminated a savagely brilliant white, with small windows cut out at regular intervals, radiating out from the top, and through which you could just catch a glimpse of the night sky outside. From the top of the sphere itself a large, white, metal cylinder descended, and stopped just above two chairs, separated by a small console; there was no other furniture in the room. Smaller cylinders connected the chairs to the large cylinders, and the chairs themselves were futuristic – white leather mixed with shiny metal. One had lots of dials, readouts and buttons on its armrests; the other had armrests moulded to receive a hand and arm in each, and nothing else.
“What is this place?”
“Here” Joshua answered “is where we get Terri back. I need you to…”
Nat shook his head. “You’ll have to explain.”
“We don’t have time. You’ll have to trust me.”
Nat swallowed. “I’ve got all the time in the world. I don’t need to find Terri again.”
“I think you’ll find that you do. They’ll still be after you, you know, for her. They’ll never give up. If you can prove she’s alive, then…” he held out his hands.
Nat closed his eyes. “Just explain to me what this is first, before I do anything.”
“Nathan, I’m telling you…”
Nat’s voice grew firm. “Joshua.”
Joshua looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “All right. What do you need to know?”
“Like, maybe the missing bits? From you wandering in to a party to ending up chopping someone’s finger off in my flat? And where the hell Terri is, and why you need to find her so badly. And…”
“Okay, okay. But we don’t have a lot of time. I can feel. They’re getting close.”
“Who?”
“I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you. Terri had some strange disease.”
“Yeah, I know, Moonshine or something?”
Joshua cocked his head. “Moondance. Her mum’s scientists developed this weird treatment. I don’t understand it. Moondance kind of, well, changed your DNA. And when they were investigating it – OK, this will sound weird, but it’s true. They stumbled onto some weird stuff. I mean, it was very weird, and I’m not going to explain it now. Even if I could, I mean. But the best way I can explain it, it was another dimension. A kind of parallel universe. Just behind ours. And they sent Terri there, and she got better. But when she came back, she started to get worse again. And so, they got into this weird cycle of sending her there, then bringing her back, waiting for her to deteriorate again, and sending her there again. And it was worse when she left the house, so her mum stopped her from leaving. But her mum didn’t realise that it was changing Terri, each time she came back, she was … developing these weird powers. Like, this ability to kind of, well, leapfrog across the dimension and travel miles in an instant. It was… well.
“Anyway, that’s when I found her. In the mansion that night. She was a virtual prisoner, was bored out of her mind and she was so grateful to have someone to talk to. To cut a long story short, I ended up doing this deal with her mum, spend some time with her and her mum would take care of the people who were after me. Keep them off my back. And she did, to be fair. Well, she almost did at least.
I mean, Terri was, well, you know. It wasn’t hard spending time with her. But then, you know, it all went to shit.
Nat stood looking at his friend. “I don’t know what to say” he tried.
“You don’t need to say anything.”
“No, I mean…” Nat started in frustration. “I mean, seriously? You expect me to honestly believe this shit. I mean, another fucking universe? I mean, Joshua… for God’s sake.”
Joshua smiled a soft, cold smile. “It is difficult to get your head round, I know. It took me a while. But they showed me.” He nodded at one of the chairs. “I saw… I saw Terri disappear from that chair. I saw it with my own eyes. I saw her shimmer and fade away. And then I saw her come back. And she came back better. I mean, she had to be lifted into the chair, she couldn’t walk, it was that bad. And when she came back, I mean, she was…” he lifted his hands up.
“But…” Nat started.
“And think about it” Joshua continued. “Think about how I got you out of jail. One minute we were there with those mad cops, the next we were outside. I mean, I inherited a bit of her power. It was the finger I think, I don’t know how exactly, and I can’t go into that place she goes to, but I could just about skirt round it. How else do you think that happened, Nathan? Think about it” his voice suppressed, nervous, anxious.
Nat shook his head, as if trying to make up his mind. “So… if I believe you” he started slowly.
“It’s true.”
“If I believe you” Nat continued, stressing the if, “why did it all go to shit?”
Joshua sighed. He glanced nervously around the room. “I told you. Someone found me. This, I mean, serious guy. He tracked me down, got past Ada. And he wasn’t willing to forego the debt.”
Nat nodded his head. “Mr. Marks.”
Joshua breathed in sharply. “How did you know?” but Nat just shrugged.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I got the message from him very quickly that he expected me to settle my debt. But…” and Joshua swallowed, “he didn’t want m
oney. He was willing to write all that off. He just wanted…” Joshua stopped and stared.
“He just wanted what?”
“Terri” he whispered. “He wanted Terri.”
Nat shook his head in confusion. “Why?”
Joshua rolled his eyes. “Think about it.” He sighed again. “I still feel bad about this. But what could I do? It was her or me.”
“I still don’t understand…”
Joshua held his hands out in supplication, his voice urgent and dramatic. “Okay, okay, I know, but please, Nat, you’ve got to help me now. He’s coming, I know it, I can feel it. We need to get Terri back, you’ve got to help me. Please.”
Nat took a deep breath. “What do you…”
He was interrupted by a huge crash, somewhere in the building. It reverberated through the walls, through the ceiling, and Nat felt the vibrations go through his bones. The silence that followed it was just as loud.
“What was that?” he whispered.
“It was him” whispered Joshua.
“But how…”
“It doesn’t matter how. He’s just here.” They both looked towards the small door through which they had entered the dome, they could both feel the approach, as the tiny, almost indistinguishable noise starter to grow louder and more impatient. The room seemed to groan in anticipation.
Joshua was breathing heavily. “No time. Come on.”
He grabbed Nat by the arm and shoved him into the left seat, the one without all the tech, and he felt his arms pulled down into the moulded armrests, as if they were magnetic. As that happened, the seat started to glow faintly, and a screen on the console between the chairs lit up. Joshua stepped over to it and started touching things on it, his brow furrowed with concentration. The room seemed to be pounding, waiting for something to enter, large, heavy steps reverberating through the floor, getting closer.
“What’s happening?” Nat asked, trying to lean over. He found that he couldn’t move, his arms, legs, his whole body, seemed glued to the chair he was sitting in. “What’s going on, Joshua? Why can’t I move?” Fear flooded through him. Joshua ignored him, concentrating on the screen, tapping urgently. A faint hum started in the room, gradually becoming louder, filling the room, filling Nat’s head, as his vision began to blur and he started to struggle to see where he was. “Joshua” he tried to say, but the words didn’t come out.
The whiteness of the room started to fade, red streaks cutting across Nat’s eyes, bleeding across the room, covering everything with a dark, rusty glow. He could see something, something there just in front of him, and through the red it started to take shape, the blurred edges gradually growing more distinct, forming a shadow, or a silhouette, and he wanted to reach out and touch it but he couldn’t move, he could just hear, over the pounding and the humming and the screeching, he could hear a whisper, please and
And then his head exploded.
The figure, the figure of a girl, what had she been doing, had just started to become distinct, and he knew who it was, and she had started to smile at him, when suddenly the smile dissolved and turned into a frown then a look of horror then a scream and she screamed and screamed and each scream was like a knife through his head and then when her head exploded it was as if the pain was all his, as if he could feel shards of skull and brain crashing together and he knew how it felt to die
But he had not died. He hadn't died because he was still sitting in the chair, head lolling forward weakly, sweat falling from him like rain, his arms still locked into the moulds of the chair clinging to them so tightly that his knuckles had turned red and his nails tore at the exposed leather, and although he was no longer attached to them he could let go even less.
He had not died, though he didn't know it, his eyes were still shut and his head screamed with such pain that he thought he must be at the gates of hell. The humming and the pounding had stopped and although he could vaguely hear voices he felt a silence so absolute that he knew he was going to fall into it and be consumed by it.
“Nat?”
The voice broke through whatever place he was in, small and tentative and inconsequential, on the edge of things, but there nonetheless, something to hold on to. He found himself swimming slowly upwards, towards the voices, towards the tiny light at the edge of the blackness.
“NAT?”
The voice louder, more urgent this time, and something else, he was being shaken, pushed around. He opened his eyes, it took a few seconds for him to readjust to the brightness of the light, and for the shapes to become distinct. There were three people in the room, all standing in front of him, kind of looking at him but mostly at each other, with undisguised hostility.
Joshua was on the left, standing close to Nat, his arm on the chair. There was something slightly different about him, Nat couldn’t see exactly what, but it was as if he had shrunk somehow; his cheeks were sunken and his eyes looked hollow.
Opposite him stood a man - young, and Joshua, with a start, recognised the man from the café earlier. Now he was different, dressed in a black suit, white shirt and black tie, wearing sunglasses hiding his eyes on his expressionless face.
Next to him was a woman. Something about her presence, an aura that magnified and projected around her, made him want to avert his eyes. She wasn’t particularly tall, she was almost slight, but she held herself with such commanding power and authority, the expression on her still beautiful face hard and unforgiving but tinged with an edge of humanity. The way she stood, her presence was almost physical, and Nat found himself holding his head in a strange, contorted position so that he could look at her whilst also looking away.
She regarded him with an air of detachment. “The patient wakes” she said, drily. And then, “Ada Frost-Jenkins. How do you do.”
Nat gulped. “Err… Nat. Nat Jones.” The words burned his scorched throat.
Joshua shrugged. “Seems I got the wrong enemy.”
Ada looked at Nat. “So, you are the man that Joshua here says took Teresa.”
Confused, Nat looked at Joshua, who was staring at Ada.
“So?” she said, her voice filling the space, her eyes on Nat.
Nat looked at her, then back at Joshua, then at her.
“Erm…”
She shut her eyes briefly. “Don’t make this difficult.”
“But…”
“What did you do to her?” she spat out.
“But… I didn’t do anything…” he turned to Joshua, confusion and surprise in his eyes, and back to her. “Please, I don’t…” he looked at the man in black, who was holding something in his left hand.
“Don’t play games with me.”
“But… honestly… Joshua, tell her, I didn’t…”
“Don’t look at your friend for comfort. You won’t find any there.”
Nat looked pleadingly at Joshua. “What does she mean? Why don’t you tell her?” but Joshua looked away.
Ada said quietly “Anything you want to tell me, Joshua?”
Nat, sitting close to his friend (his friend?) saw the sweat on his face. Joshua shook his head quickly but didn’t say anything.
She smiled. “I thought not.” She looked at Nat.
“Those idiots are convinced it’s you. Or at least, that’s what they tell me. I’m not convinced. I think they’re just bullies.”
“Which idiots?” he asked, his voice high and shrill from fear.
She waved her hands dismissively. “Those two imbeciles, what are they called, …”
“Maker and Dredd” the man in black said.
“That’s right, Maker and Dredd. They really are stupid. Money doesn’t just blind them, it removes any sense they ever had.”
“M-maker and Dredd?” Nat stammered. “But… they’re policemen”
“And?” she gave him a look of scorn. “They were working for me on this. None of it was official police business, of course. I may as well have kissed any hope of seeing her again goodbye if I’d
handed it over to the police.”
“But they took me to jail…”
She looked at him for a moment, with a look that almost seemed like pity in her eyes. “And your point is? Anyone can go to jail, as long as you pay enough. But then you disappeared.” She studied him a moment, then looked at Joshua. “Did Joshua elaborate on why he helped you escape?” she asked Nat.
“Erm, yeah, well, he felt bad, after everything that had happened. You know, he wanted to help me out.”
“Really?” she smiled. “Did you consider why he took you here, to my house, to find Teresa?”
“Well, he was trying to get Terri back…” he looked at Joshua in confusion.
She sighed. “Of course he was. But why did he need you?”
“Well... I guess…”
“Why couldn’t he have gone himself? Why did he strap you to that chair?”
She looked at Joshua. “Would you like to explain it to him?”
Joshua shrugged. “To run the machine.”
“I don’t understand?” Nat said.
Ada smiled a thin, unfriendly smile. “My machine enables access to the Moondance dimension, as we call it. I take it you know that Teresa has Moondance Syndrome. Her DNA is too unstable to survive in this world, however, in that space, it is stable and even improves. The machine enabled us to send her there, for short periods. Each time she went, she would return having improved significantly. But it took tremendous energy to send her there, and each time it weakened her. The only way that we were able to generate such energy was through displacing it from a human subject.”
“Suck them dry, as it were” the young man said.
“The subject would sit in the chair that you are occupying now” Ada continued. “Teresa would sit in the other, empty chair. The energy from the subject would be redirected into the field around Teresa, enabling her to access the parallel dimension for a period. Afterwards, we would have to dispose of the subject’s body.”
She stopped for a moment, waiting for Nat to respond. “You mean?” he started… “I was?” he looked at Joshua… “the…?”
Ada nodded. “When we entered, we found Joshua sitting in the other chair. No doubt waiting to be transported to the other dimension.”
Nat turned to Joshua. “So… you used me?”
Joshua turned to him and all the friendliness, all the compassion had gone from his face. “You thought what? I gave a shit about you? You were always a fucking loser, I remember even at school, you always used to hang round, like a… like a bad smell no one could get rid of…”
“Enough” Ada put her hand up suddenly suddenly and Joshua stopped talking. “This still doesn’t explain what you have done with Teresa?” she said, looking at Joshua.
“She was bored. She wanted to escape. From you.”
“Why would she want that? I looked after her. I cared for her. I protected her.”
“That’s bullshit” Joshua shouted. “You just wanted to control her.”
The man in black took a step forward, but Ada motioned him to stay still.
“No, he’s entitled to his opinion. Even though he is wrong. Joshua here” she waved a dismissive arm at him, talking to Nat, “was her house pet, something to keep her entertained when she was bored.”
“Bullshit! I found her, we hit it off, and…”
“He labours under the impression that he was able to sneak into my house under my very nose, and establish a connection with my daughter.”
“I did!”
“You are really so naïve” she addressed Joshua. “I needed someone to keep her amused. It was all arranged, darling, with your father. A shame about his untimely end, however it afforded me the opportunity to ensure that you felt it was your idea. A much more compelling proposition.”
“She loved me” he hissed.
She looked at Joshua for a long moment. “Yes, I do believe that is true. An unfortunate outcome, one that I hadn’t predicted.”
She took a deep breath. “Why didn’t you stay, Joshua? You had everything you wanted. You had her, you had money, you had my protection…”
Joshua rolled his eyes. “She wanted to escape. She wanted to escape from you, Ada” but she was shaking her head.
“I don’t believe you for a moment.”
“It’s true!” he shouted.
“That she wanted to escape, yes, I can believe that, of course. Who wouldn’t, at her age. I had to protect her.” She put a finger to her chin. “No, what I don’t believe is that you helped her because it was what she wanted. You’re far too selfish for that.”
Joshua sighed, and then his face broke into a smirk. “Clever you. Well done.” He gave a couple of weary claps. “He had found me. Your protection wasn’t as good as you thought.”
Ada stood, as if considering this, for a moment. “Go on.”
Joshua shook his head. “I didn’t mean to hurt her. I asked her, I asked her if she would meet him.”
“Meet who?” Ada asked.
“You know who!” he shouted in frustration. “Him! We all know him! The man you were supposed to protect me from.” He looked silently into Ada’s eyes. “I begged her to go. Just to meet him. That’s all I asked. But she refused.” Joshua shook his head sadly. “What could I do, he would have killed me otherwise. So I told her that we would meet my old friend Nathan.”
She glanced scornfully at Nat. “Escape the city, trap the girl.”
Joshua shifted uncomfortably. “Something like that” he muttered.
“What happened?” Nat asked.
Joshua sighed, and looked at Nat. “We sent you out to get some drink. I was just going to slip her something, make it easier. And…”
“And if things went wrong you could blame me.”
Joshua looked at him and shrugged. “Yeah, you were perfect. Stuck in some shitty little town somewhere, out of sight of everyone, no friends. And, even better, you kept forgetting things didn’t you, you had those blackouts. We used to have such fun with you at school, blaming you for things that you didn’t do. It was perfect. Tell you you’d forgotten what happened. How could it be easier?”
“But then what happened?”
“Well things did go wrong didn’t they. The pill seemed to have no effect on her, but she flew into a rage. We got into a fight. And…”
“And you cut her finger off. But why?”
Joshua threw his hands up into the air. “I didn’t! I didn’t cut off her finger! She was so strong, I hadn’t realised how strong she was. I tried to hold her down, but she threw me off. Then she stabbed me. Can you believe. She stabbed me in the shoulder.” He put his arm up to his left shoulder. “I mean, she could have just killed me, but she didn’t. It was like she was…forgiving me?” he asked the question to Nat, but Nat could only shrug.
“And her finger?” Ada asked.
Joshua looked at her and swallowed. “I was lying there, crumpled in the corner. I could only watch her. She cut off her own finger. I swear. It was weird, it was very deliberate. She cut it off and let it lie there. And she said to me, something like, I hope this will be enough. And then” he took a deep breath “she disappeared.”
“What do you mean, disappeared?” Ada asked sharply.
“What do you think?” Joshua shouted. “Like when she used to sit here. She just faded from view. She went there!”
Ada looked at him for a long moment. “How? How could she go there without the power source? Without the technology?”
That’s just it! I mean, you have no idea, you!” He looked at Ada with disgust. “She didn’t need the chair to go there, she could go there by herself. Her power developed, each time she went there. She had outgrown you, Ada!”
She slapped him in the face, suddenly, unexpectedly. “Never call me Ada again” she hissed.
Joshua held his cheek and laughed. “What’s the matter, Ada? Feeling out of control?”
The man in black stepped forward and punched Joshua in the face with his left
hand. Joshua screamed and fell to the floor, and Nat could see what was in the man’s left hand, some sort of knuckle duster, now covered in blood.
The man pulled his left foot back, readying a kick. “Enough” said Ada, “we need to hear what he says” and the man stepped back. Joshua pulled himself up, his right cheek bloody and torn. He held his hand against it, trying to keep the flap of skin from falling.
“She went there” he screamed, “she went there, by herself, and I was trying to get her back, and you stopped me, Ada! You stopped me get your daughter back. Think about that when you’re lying awake at night!”
It was a stony silence that followed. Joshua looked bloody and beaten yet somehow victorious, opposite Ada and her frosty silence, seemingly not knowing what to do next.
Nat spoke into the silence. “Why didn’t you take the finger?”
“What?” Ada asked.
“He left the finger there. He left it for me to find.” He pointed at Joshua.
Joshua wiped his bloody lip. “I panicked. I ran. When I thought about it, I was going to come back, but the police were already there with you.”
“What now?” Nat filled the silence.
They each looked at each other, one at the other, for a second they had a strange, common bond, that cut through the anger and the reproach. It lasted an instant.
“We try to find her” Ada said.
“I go back in there and look for her” Joshua said.
Ada studied him. “We need a power source.”
Joshua pushed Nat on the back. “I told you, I’ve already thought of that.”
Ada snorted. “He’s useless. He’s half drained already. He won’t work. And in any case, I have a better idea.” She tilted her head slightly and the man in black grabbed Joshua and pushed him roughly into the seat. Ada walked to the control panel and touched something, and Joshua’s chair lit up.
“No” whispered Joshua.
Ada smiled. “I think maybe yes.”
“Listen” Joshua talked quickly. “You’re not thinking. Who are you going to send in there, him?” he nodded at Nat. “Why would she come back for him. You? She hates you, Ada. You think she’d risk her life to escape here and then come back when you ask her? Him?” he looked at the man in black. “She’d destroy him.” He drew in a deep breath. “I’m the only chance you have to get her back. She may still just listen to me.”
He could see the uncertainty in Ada’s eyes and tried to press home his advantage. “Look. I know things haven’t been great between us. But let me try. Let me try and get her back. I was almost there when you interrupted me.” He glanced at Nat. “He’s got enough energy left in him. Look, try it, try to send me there. If there’s enough energy before he dies, I’ll try and get her back. If not, you can do what you want….”
Ada’s finger was hovering above the screen. “Come on Ada” Joshua carried out, “come on, you’ve got nothing to lose.”
Nat was edging slowly backwards, away from the machine. They were all focused on Joshua. The man still held him down, though his arms now seemed glued to the chair. Ada stood facing Joshua, with her back to Nat. Joshua was looking intently at Ada, willing her to make her mind up. Nat glanced back to the doorway, just a couple of feet away, and he stepped lightly towards it, conscious that he couldn’t afford to make a sound. He moved backwards, still facing them, feeling the edges of the wall, until his fingers found the doorway. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and ducked through, landing in the corridor through which they had entered. He took off, running as fast as he could the way they had come in. He had little strength left and his legs felt like lead, but he pushed on, through the gloom, the lights refusing to come on, the darkness swallowing him up. There was a shout behind him, they must have realised he had gone, and then the pounding of feet and he willed himself forward, concentrating on every step, imagining the young man, the man in black, getting closer and closer, ready to drag him back. The sound of feet running after him was getting louder and louder, so loud now it was like the crash of his heart beating in his ears, getting closer and closer, so close he could hear the hard breathing of the man, smell his sweat and if only he could push himself forward just a little bit more, there up ahead a spark of light, the outline of a doorway, if he could just get out
He crashed headfirst into the man without seeing him, being blind for everything except the exit, and the crash sent him sprawling across the floor, leaving him winded. He picked himself up, slowly, cursing, and dragged himself off his knees till he was standing. It took a few seconds for his vision to stabilize, and, breathing heavily, he tried to see what was happening. The man in black stood in front of him, but he wasn’t looking at him. Instead he was looking at someone else, a man, short and fat. The man turned and looked at Nat and smiled.
“Hello, Nathanial.”
“Fuck.”