David Nickle - Rasputin's Bastards

“Get out,” said Alexei. He willed it.

James/Gibson’s composure began to waver. The hands trembled — and suddenly, it was as though James’ strings had been cut. James stumbled back, the gun went down, and it slipped from his numb fingers and clattered down the stairs.

“Jesus.” James leaned against the wall staring at his empty hands, then up at the golden light now trickling down from aerie. By the time he looked down the stairs to the lighthouse’s main room, Alexei had already jumped down, retrieved the gun, and trained it on James’ chest.

“He’s gone from you now, isn’t he?”

James blinked down at him. “You.” He raised his hands over his head, and flinched.

“Relax,” said Alexei. “I’m not likely to shoot you if you keep still.”

James did relax a little.

“S-so,” he said. “You look… well. You get your memory back?”

“My memory — ?” Alexei stopped himself. Of course — for him, it was months ago that he’d told that peculiar lie on the deck of Gibson’s ship: A knock on the head had knocked memory out his ear like pool water after a swim. “I think I’m doing better now, thank you.” He paused, and stepped closer to the base of the stairs. “How about you?”

“Me?”

“Yes. How’s your memory doing, James?”

“Well…” The stairs creaked as James shifted his weight. “Do you — do you mind if I sit down? I’m kind of stiff for some reason.”

Alexei nodded. “Sure.” The poor kid was probably cramping, what with the amount of time Holden Gibson had kept him standing still. “Just keep your hands in sight.”

James lowered himself to the steps. Once he was seated, he extended first one leg and then the other. His joints cracked like an old man’s.

“You didn’t answer my question,” said Alexei. “How’s your memory? Do you remember, for instance, how you got here?”

James settled his left leg back to the steps. “I do not,” he said.

“You showed up here with this gun and a mind to shoot me.”

James shook his head in bafflement. “The last thing I remember was dreaming. I was back at school — Kindergarten. In Illinois. I was so small…”

Is that how it goes? Alexei wondered. When one of the bastards comes in and takes over your body, they send you back to school? Some memory like that? Alexei recalled many dreams such as that through his career — and (here, he shuddered) hadn’t he just spent the past two months or so remembering his school days in a vivid, unending nightmare?

James was still dwelling on his own. “—and at play time, the Barker twins took my Big Wheel and—”

“That’s bullshit,” said Alexei , and James’ eyes went wide.

“Don’t shoot me!”

Alexei noticed that at some point he’d raised the gun for emphasis, training it between James’ rounded eyes. He lowered it now.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’ve had enough grade school reminiscences to last me a while. Tell me the last thing you remember. Before coming here?”

“Well — I went to sleep last night. I was really tired — they’ve got us working in the scaling house most days… I just washed up and went to bed.”

“They have you scaling fish?”

“That’s my new job,” said James. “Part of my — re-education.”

“Too bad,” said Alexei. “So you went to bed. And the next thing you know—”

“Here I am.”

“Here you are.”

“Right.”

They regarded one another quietly for a moment.

“What’s Holden up to lately?”

James shrugged. “Don’t know, really. He seems to sleep a lot.”

“Of course he does.”

James must have read something into Alexei’s expression, because he squirmed uncomfortably. “Hey — you’re — you’re not going to beat me up again, are you?”

“Beat you up again?”

James gave him a worried look.

“I have no recollection of ever beating you up,” said Alexei. “Just,” he added, thinking it through, “as you have no recollection of coming here with a gun belonging to Holden Gibson to shoot me.” Alexei lowered the gun to his side. There really was no need — the puppet masters were gone for now. It was just Alexei and James. Alexei felt a tugging in his chest. He flipped on the safety and stuffed the gun barrel-first into the back of his pants.

“No, James. I’m not going to beat you up. Come on down. There’s some food here. Let’s eat and talk.”

James looked relieved. “Thanks,” he said. He winced as his cramping muscles pulled him to his feet.

When one has suffered a very bad trauma — a rape, a beating, a terrible childhood spent with cruel and demanding parents — there always comes a point at which it is good to talk about it. And not just with a psychotherapist, who can at best understand the trauma intellectually. The point comes where one must speak with someone who has gone through the same thing — or one so similar as to be indistinguishable. Even among men who are otherwise complete strangers. Such a conversation can lead all sorts of places — not the least of which is simple insight.

So it went with Alexei and James as they tore through the rest of the cold cuts, and got into the vodka. The talk they had ranged on for hours, until the light from the top of the tower dimmed and diminished into a cool blue, and the base became dark and cold.

James did most of the talking. The mind control stuff was new to him — or so he claimed. But the abuse he underwent at Holden Gibson’s hand was a lifetime’s worth. He’d been with Gibson since he was eight or so — he at this point only had vague memories of his life before that, and most of those memories centred on school, not his parents. Gibson, he said bitterly, had no doubt done a thorough job of erasing those memories, so he could use James for his own purposes.

“Did he—”

“Feel me up? What do you think?” James swallowed his vodka too quickly and coughed.

“Since you brought it up…”

“No. At least — I can’t remember.”

“So what did he do?”

“ Used us.”

Gibson had a succession of houses and ranches — or at least the use of them — dotted across the U.S. and Canada. Some of the places were quite nice — big estate homes on the edges of nice little college towns, or near defence contractors. There were a couple of farms — and boats. Gibson would move his “family” around for weeks at a time. Once there, he’d set up shop and start the business. The magazine sales racket that Alexei had stumbled across on board the yacht was just one enterprise of many, and they covered the whole range. One month, they’d be selling chocolates for fictitious school fundraisers; the next, running dope for one of Holden’s contacts in Seattle; three months later, picking pockets in train stations.

“There has to be an easier way for someone like Gibson to make a buck,” said Alexei.

“What do you mean?”

Alexei poured himself another mug of vodka. “I’m just saying — he can… get into your head, make you do what he wants… . Why make you pick pockets?”

“No no no,” said James, his voice slurring with the vodka. “I like pickin’ pockets. I don’ think he did that mind stuff too much — until lately.”

Alexei patted James’ arm. “Sure he didn’t.”

“But he was always a prick,” said James. “I remember he locked me in the trunk of his car — well, not his car — this stockbroker guy whose house we were using… .”

“That’s terrible,” said Alexei.

At length, Alexei began to talk about his own pain.

“The worst,” he said, “is not being able to remember anything.”

“Oh yeah — the amn-amen — amnesia.” James tapped his forehead.