Phyl-Undhu: Abstract Horror, Exterminator Read online

  Rising up, immediately behind the infantile giggle that then sought to emerge, was a dilating bubble of hysteria without obvious conclusion. Theories of cosmic expansion modeled it, mathematically. A dilation not in, but of space. Inflationary catastrophe so extreme it can be mistaken for the beginning of the universe. He still remembered, with sharp clarity, the moment – as a 15-year-old – when he had first truly understood that, grasped what it meant, what it said that space was, right here. Cosmology had possessed him then. Now he locked the virtual explosion behind a rigid, broken grin.

  Alison’s expression was unforgiving. “No. I don’t mean anything like that. At all,” she said stonily.

  Chastened, he swallowed the last of his wine, poured some more. This moment of idiocy would haunt him for the rest of his life, he realized sourly. The need for psychological insulation was now an explicit, urgent demand. “So it’s another ‘Phil’.”

  Her gaze softened, to become strangely pitying, as her voice dropped almost to a whisper. “You’re still thinking it all upside down.”

  He had begun to see something that he didn’t want to see, to a terrifying level of resolution. It was still no more than the shadow of a thought, but its contours were acutely defined. Upside down, yes. There was a cognitive rotation, he could sense it, precisely, like the dial on a safe. If twisted around, it would free the thought to come forth, from out of the dark, and it would bring the dark with it. It would unquestionably be too much to bear. She has to carry this for now, he thought, or they would both be finished. At the lucid acknowledgement of this despicable cowardice, self-loathing blossomed like a tropical flower, vivid in its captivating accusation. Still, it had to be her. It simply had to. She had passed already over the threshold. That was unmistakable. There would be no point in him joining her there – not yet. If he did, there would be nothing further he could do. His mind writhed in a hasty search for some more ego-compatible rationalization. That was good. The futile puzzle was a distraction. It was something else. Perhaps she even understood that she couldn’t let him know.

  “So what do you think it means?” he pretended to ask.

  “Don’t ask me that!” It wasn’t quite a shriek, but something was welling up that wanted to be one. If there could be nothing but noise, without sense, it would help. She wasn’t prepared to drown alone, sinking endlessly into some ocean trench of truth, to spare a rescuer who would never arrive in time, for anyone. Instead, she clung to his disintegrating raft of evasion, hands gripping the side of the table, veins and tendons outlined like hieroglyphics of stress.

  “You don’t get to hog the shelter of self-deception all to yourself, goddammit!”

  He forgot, sometimes, that she was a psychologist by training and inclination.

  They stared at each other, more distanced than they had ever been, and yet, simultaneously, complicit in a deliberate – desperate – unknowing. The congealing lie, nestled between them, was scarcely less real than a second child.

  §05. The client had understood. That was a discovery beyond all plausible uncertainty now. Wherever they were being drawn, it was a place that he had been – from which he could not exit. He had reached out to Alison in a desperate search for untruth. She had been useless to him, and merely professional, not knowing enough to be serious. Now, it had come to this.

  He had called it ‘TotAL’ and conversationally, of course, simply ‘Total’ – the Temple of the Absolute Limitation – it had other names, but that was the one they had used during counselling. This compact semiotic bundle was packed with occult clues, which she could have followed if doctrine and cultural genealogy had been the subject of interest, but they weren’t. She wasn’t trying to be serious about this strange little cult, but rather the opposite, for what had seemed perfectly good reasons. It had been all-too successful at being taken seriously, certainly as far as her client was concerned, or so it had seemed to her then. What had been needed, then, was something else.

  “As in ‘totalitarian?’” she had asked him. It had been intended as a light joke, and not all as a manipulative, psycho-social prompt. That had been clear from her tone – she’d thoughtlessly assumed – but he had reacted with awkward distress. She felt bad about it at once. Before he had even finished stammering a denial she hushed him with an apology. Looking back, that clumsy jest came to seem like a moment of disastrous breakage.

  The key to the therapy, in her experience, had always been bound to humor. There was a critical point of rupture, at which the client was induced to laugh at the cult’s mental chains. As the bonds of belief came to seem ridiculous, they fell away. That was the way out. It was a reliable route – the only one she knew – but on this occasion it had been lost recoverably, sacrificed to a failed witticism. The comedy was over. Somewhere off-stage, TotAL thickened, condensed in vindication. The therapeutic process was still underway, as a vacant formality, but it was limping nowhere.

  For the client (we can call him ‘Simon’, though this was not – of course – his real name) it was as if the final door had been slammed shut. He slumped back in his chair, struggling to dull the barbs of reproach, which were in any case rendered irrelevant by the ceremony of unconditional surrender, to the oppression of his own intelligence. No assistance would ever come. How could he ever have imagined it might?

  “The Temple asks nothing of me,” he said softly. “It told me something, when I asked it to. That’s all.”

  “It told you communication with the end of the universe was possible?”

  “That sounds absurd – because it’s badly formulated.”

  “So, formulate it better.” This was no longer extraction therapy, or anything like it. This was contagion.

  “We exist within a stream of signs – a torrent. Information flows through us, in overwhelming abundance, as a deluge. It is screened, sieved, filtered, and edited, trimmed, narrativized, delegated to mental sub-systems, dumped, so as not to drown us. Yet, if we can calm ourselves enough to think, it is clear that this flood of signal can have only one possible source: reality.”

  “Reality?”

  “So what is reality? That’s the question, yes? Don’t you see? It’s telling you. It’s The Flood. It’s total revelation. Every second, it pours in, through hundreds – thousands – of channels. ‘Don’t ask for a sign’ – I’m quoting Phyllis now. Perhaps I have been for a while. ‘You have a billion signs a minute that you don’t want. You’re already in The Flood.’”

  “Phyllis,” Alison muttered, with an irrepressible hint of bitterness. “Of course.”

  “You’ve read Ovid?”

  Alison strained to remember, to catch the reference. Nothing came.

  “The abandoned princess. ‘I gave many gifts, many that I was given …’ but you, false Demophon, fled. You blocked it out, forgot, shielded yourself with distance. You left me.”

  “You’re confusing me.”

  “Yes, it’s too much. I’m sorry.” He closed his eyes, resigned. “You didn’t ask for this.”

  §06. Alison Turner disliked Clifford Bagley within seconds of meeting him. It was not his fault, she recognized. Unfortunately, his manner recalled someone else, someone for whom she had felt intense aversion, and had in fact quite obsessively hated. The personal characteristics in question were not intrinsically loathsome (this admission took some psychological effort). They were no worse than neutral, although not less than pitiable. Signs of a barely-controlled anguish. A neurotic agitation of the hands. A darting, shiftiness of expression. A chronic apologetic cringe that veiled – like orbital dust – a hidden core of unfathomable, gravity-locked rage. It was an absolute defeatedness, perversely triumphant, and held at bay by some tortured parody of normality – as a kind of undeath. They had called … the previous man ‘Zombie’. A nervous adolescent giggle threatened to revive at the thought. Poor Mr. Bagley was probably a ‘Zombie’ too. It bonded the two men across time and space, with the absolute necessity due some shared Platonic essence.


  The other man, whose name still escaped her – had also been a teacher – and the man she had most detested during the entire course of her life to date. This was not based upon anything specific that he had done. It was a response to his overall attitude, which had been directed – she felt at the time – towards her absolute psychological annihilation. There was a way he had of speaking to her, seemingly without the slightest hint of deliberate malignancy, which reduced her immediately to nothing. That, at least, was the story she had told herself throughout two decades of adult life, but now – for no reason she could quickly identify – she felt this narrative slipping. There had been something else. Something more intrinsically obscure. Perhaps something much worse.

  None of this need have been relevant, were it not for the fact that civil interaction with Mr. Bagley was going to be important. He was Suzy’s class teacher, and quite probably a perfectly unobjectionable individual. The topic of discussion, however, was going to be fraught with tension. Bagley’s mysterious inner unity with his vile precursor would be a further hurdle to be cleared.

  Yet it began well. He removed his smart watch and placed it carefully in the desk drawer. The action was a little fussy, but it was undoubtedly considerate. Alison wondered vaguely whether he was following an institutional procedure, or a private one. In either case, she appreciated it.

  In her own work, it was even more important to project focus. She had no watch at all, but only a micro-tablet. It was flexible enough to run her life through, yet easily stowed in her shoulder-bag. Susie would roll her eyes at the archaism, on occasions …

  “… sorry, you were saying?” Focus. Could he have said that? No, that was from her own chain of thinking. But he had said something, hadn’t he?

  “Are you alright Ms. Turner?” His concern was understandable. The dark rings under her eyes had to be brutal.

  “I’m not at all sure what this is about,” she stated flatly, determined to keep the defensiveness from her voice. “This is an unusual meeting, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Yes it is,” he concurred, over-eagerly. “It’s about Susan, of course.” He had picked up a pencil, and was twisting it awkwardly between his fingers. He was not enjoying this. “It’s that, well – she’s upsetting the other children,” he blurted out. “I’m hoping you can help me understand why.”

  For a few seconds Alison was actually stunned. She was surprised and then – because her surprise made no real sense – thrown into confusion by her own unpreparedness. She had relapsed somehow. What had she been expecting, after all? Wasn’t it exactly this? Worse than this? She could no longer remember. “Upsetting?” she managed finally. “Upsetting them how?”

  “It’s actually quite complicated,” Bagley replied, quickly, assertion and apology messily tangled in his tone. “If it wasn’t, we could have perhaps done this over the phone.” His face underwent a subtle convulsion, as it lurched towards a smile and then – after urgent consideration – retreated back towards sympathetic gravitas.

  “She’s only eleven.” It was pointless, clumsy fencing. As if she had some use for time.

  “To be blunt, that is exactly the point. Eleven-year-old kids don’t talk about these type of things – not in my experience, at least.”

  “What ‘type of things’? I’m sorry, but this is all in code. I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  He ran his hands through his thinning hair and sighed. “Actually, I’m not really sure. I’ve tried to get Susan to explain her ideas to me, many times now, but they can be hard to follow. She’s frighteningly bright,” he winced noticeably at the adjective. “Her mind is fast and – I’d say – perhaps, daring, venturing into areas few want to follow, or can follow. What little I understand, it mostly comes from her classmates, and they’re usually confused, often upset. Sometimes very upset.” Without warning, he changed tack. “I have to ask: Do you talk about religion much at home? I know that your work …”

  She interrupted rudely, her fury barely contained. “My work has nothing to do with it!” Then, with a forced, brittle calm: “I’m very careful to insulate Susan from my work. I’d never dream of mentioning my cases to her. She’s a child – and I do understand what that means. My case files never enter the house. My computer is securely locked. Nothing I come across at work has anything to do with this. Nothing.”

  “But she knows what you do?”

  “Why are you asking this?”

  Her naked hostility had driven him even further into cryptic allusion. “Some of the – ah – themes of her thinking, they’re – how can I put this? – most unlikely to have reached her any other way. Your daughter has some very complicated, very unusual ideas of a religious nature. We had to suspect …”

  “I think I know where she got these ‘ideas’,” Alison said quietly, defeated by a flash of insight. The answer to this horrible riddle loomed into view, clad in the unmistakable livery of parental neglect. Guilt had now crystallized and become unprojectable. “She’s very deeply involved in a game.”

  “A game …” Bagley ruminated aloud, relieved by the ebb of tension, and struggling to convince himself of the new storyline – but it was impossible. “It’s an – um – interesting suggestion.” Then, with evident reluctance: “The trouble is, the system of belief we’re talking about seems to be far too sophisticated for that.”

  “You still haven’t told me very much,” Alison replied meekly, all fight gone.

  “‘Everything starts from the end.’”

  “I beg your pardon.” The words had escaped too soon. The last thing she wanted was an explanation, but Bagley was already providing one.

  “It’s something Suzy said. Not to me directly, but to the other children. Often, it seems. And there was a poem she wrote, with that title, for Mr. Foster, her English teacher. It wouldn’t have been a problem, of course, not at all, if it wasn’t part of something more. Something she was able to communicate to her classmates with – um – consequences.”

  He’s scared too, Alison thought, to block out a wave of other thoughts, which could be made to wait. There were too many connections to cope with now. They would have to be shelved, dealt with later, somewhere else. Jack would have to share this.

  “There was an attempted suicide,” Bagley continued, cheeks reddening, eyes wandering desperately. He couldn’t look at her.

  “Christ!”

  “The child survived,” he added quickly, and unnecessarily. “No lasting physical damage, but I’m sure you understand. The parents are incensed. Legal action has been threatened. It’s not the sort of thing the school can simply overlook. …”

  Her mind recoiled from situation, stumbling backwards into the hideous other, Bagley’s prototype – what had been his name? The question gnawed at her distractingly. She had always known it (surely?), and then – suddenly – it was there: Filkin. George Filkin (but the forename added nothing).

  “Are you feeling alright Mrs. Turner?”

  “I’m so sorry, but I feel sick,” she said, stinging pin-pricks swirling across her temples like particles of ice. “Is there a bathroom?” He pointed, and she ran, hand cupped over her mouth, down the corridor to the pink and blue gender signage. She skidded inside, reaching the bowl just in time. It smelt of disinfectant primarily, then of children, before anything worse. She vomited everything out in three increasingly-painful spasms. The cool of the porcelain against her cheek offered an iota of compensatory bliss. Consciousness receded into dot pattern and a continuous whine, then slithered back, clogged with self-disgust. Now he’ll think I’m on drugs, she thought miserably.

  §07. So, the game was on. They waited until Suzy disappeared upstairs to bed, then squatted down together beside the terminal. The neat set of little matt black boxes, leads, and attachments was such a familiar feature of the room that it had long edited itself out of attention, but they noticed it now. It was an unintelligible alien incursion (and a door).

  “There’s some material I printed of
f the Web,” Alison said. “It’s kind of what you’d expect, except – when you dig a little deeper – it’s not.”

  She extracted a thick sheaf of A4 pages from her bag. The archaic substantiality was comforting, in its determinacy and finitude. Some passages had been marked up in red ball-point pen.

  “The word that comes up a lot is ‘creative’,” she continued. “After a while, I began to wonder what that really meant. It’s complicated – and not only for the obvious reasons.”

  “Maybe we should start with ‘the obvious reasons’,” said Jack, uncertainly.

  “There’s no time. Actually, I don’t think there’s time for any of this. We just need to hack in there and find out what’s going on.”

  “Hack in?” His doubts had redoubled. “That might not be easy.”

  “I broke into her watch,” Alison said, pride and shame reciprocally neutralized.

  “You did?”

  “I watched her needling the password in, and could see it was a nine-letter code. Eventually I found it, written down in a notebook, badly hidden in a paragraph of scrambled text. ‘Phylsword’.”

  “What?”

  She wrote it down for him.

  “Phyl sword?”

  “I’d thought ‘Phyl’s word’, but who knows?”

  “And in the phone, find anything?” He tried to keep the tone non-judgmental.

  “No. Nothing,” she admitted. “Not even sure what I was looking for. Something to do with the damn game. Keys.”

  He activated the console. It took only a second to power-up. “We’ll need a username and a password. Two nine-figure codes this time, by the look of it.” He was pretending to think it was possible, for no real reason, but the act was evidently unconvincing.

  “You don’t believe we can do this, do you?” Weariness outweighed accusation.

  “Eighteen bytes of security isn’t a joke.”

  “Maybe she uses ‘Phyl’s word’ again?”

  “Then it’s just 72 bits. You know that story about grains of rice and a chessboard?”