Déjà Vu: A Technothriller by Hocking, Ian (red scrolls of magic .TXT) 📕

Bad Dreams

David dreamed.

It was a place full of dark, winding stairs, suits of armour and secret panels, flags of heraldry hanging high on walls and portraits of long-forgotten ancestors following him with dead eyes. Lightning struck nearby and illuminated a monstrous creature.

It moved towards him. The monster was short. It walked clumsily. It walked like a person balancing on their hands. Somebody said, “Look, isn’t he pleased to see you? Isn’t he pleased?”

The legs. They sagged in a way that suggested the skin was loose. He looked closer. The legs were prosthetic. It had a fat, distended belly and a small torso, all covered with a little summer dress. It was a little girl, perhaps built by aliens from the body parts of a girl, aliens who had never seen a whole one.

David was nearly sick. His stomach cramped and heaved. The creature was close now. It held out its arms to embrace him. It smelled of hospitals, plastic and unwashed bed clothes.

“Isn’t he pleased to see you. Isn’t he pleased.”

Statements, not questions.

Her eyes narrowed. She had waited too long for her hug and she knew it would never arrive. She sensed his disgust. The eyes turned, changed, became lifeless buttons. And David knew, the dreaming David knew, that she hated him. She would never have her love returned and so it was transmuted, coloured red, to became hate.

David knew he was dreaming, but he could not wake himself.

“Isn’t he pleased?” asked the voice.

“He isn’t pleased,” said the creature.

The dream raced on. He saw himself in a family. Always present, but never speaking, was the creature. She made sure that she sat next to him at meals. She entered his room at night and watched him breathe. In company, she said nothing. When they were alone, she produced a knife and showed it to him, her little secret. There was hate in her eyes. She wanted to kill him. She could wait.

David knew that nobody would believe his suspicions. One day, when he least expected it, that little stiletto would slip into his side and he would look down, gasping in surprise, to see the creature.

He rolled in his bed but there was nowhere to go.

And Saskia dreamed.

Her eyes opened on darkness. She took a step across the dusty floor. There was no light, and then, quite suddenly, there was a torch in her hand.

She was on a case. She had a team of co-workers. She had been in love with one of them. She couldn’t remember his name. It began with ‘u’. He had been murdered and hidden in her fridge. There had been a scrap of paper in his cold fist. The warehouse’s address.

Somebody said, “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.”

She took another step.

She replied, “The witches, the Fates: Clotho, she spins the thread of life. Lachesis, she determines its length. Atropos, she cuts it.”

The space was vast. Her shoes rapped to an echo.

Her torch caught something reflective. She approached and saw that it was a shop mannequin covered in a transparent sheet. It looked at her with dead eyes. She sighed with relief. She had thought, maybe, it was alive.

The mannequin moved.

She ran. She couldn’t hold the torch steady and she tumbled over barely-seen, shadowed objects, unidentifiable things, upturned chairs, tables. She fell through a door.

She was in a small office. There were bodies hanging on the wall. Her co-workers. They were all dead. There could be no rescue. They had been impaled on the wall with long pieces of metal that extended from their necks. Each of them wore an impression of absolute horror. At the end of the gallery was an empty skewer.

Behind her, she heard a single footstep.

She turned and saw the murderer in the doorway. It stood tall, languid, dressed in black. Its head was nothing more than a skullish silhouette. A bony finger reached and pointed towards the empty skewer at the end of the row of bodies. As she watched, the finger became darker, grew hairs of muscle, which knitted, smoothed and grew skin. It was like watching a time-lapse film. A fingernail sprouted from the end. It was red with varnish.

It pointed at the empty skewer. A greater darkness fell.

The Light of Day

On the Monday night, David was transferred to a small police station in a town called Whitburn, some miles to the east of the research centre. He was led to a cell and locked in. The police did not interview him. He saw no lawyer, no bail and no cigarettes. He wore orange paper overalls. His toilet folded from the wall. On the second night, he was given a mattress for good behaviour. He exercised for two hours a day: he watched the rain from the corner of a concrete forecourt without a cigarette.

Opposite his cell there was a man who screamed for his wife. Constantly. Elsewhere – left or right, he couldn’t tell – there were singers, drug addicts, and a darts player from Glasgow who had thrown his darts at the crowd. All the while, David sat on his mattress and drummed his fingers. He drummed prime numbers, re-invented Morse code and listened to perfect guitar concertos in his head.

They came for him on the morning of the third day.

The shutter opened. “Stand facing the back of the cell. Place your palms on the wall and cross your legs.”

David did so and felt the cold air on his slippered feet. He heard footsteps. His hands were locked in shackles that closed like stocks. From the middle of the cuffs, a chain was looped around his knees and tied to another set of cuffs around his ankles.

He turned around. There were only two people. One was a short, attractive WPC carrying a telescopic truncheon and CS gas. No gun. The other, who had spoken to him, wore a civilian version of the same uniform. He was a jailer. The only weapon on