Nicola Barker - Darkmans

The Goth stared at him, blankly, twiddling a stray strand of stiff, black hair around her little finger. He sighed and changed the channel, impatiently. ‘I miss mother, yes ? For her cook . Wonderful cook. When I is home she is say, “Gaffar eat, Gaffar eat” and is drive me mad . But now— Ay! Is…uh… unforgivable cliché , no? — now is I think of her and I go kitchen for to try make same smell or mother taste ,’ he shrugged, ‘but is crap. Is Gaffar taste. Is change. Not so good.’

Geraldine took the remote from him, flipped off the tv, and then casually slipped it into her deep coat pocket. She stared at him, sympathetically.

‘I think I see whole of world in this two black eyes,’ Gaffar boldly romanced her, leaning across her lap and fishing it straight back out again. She lowered her lashes, modestly.

Kane snored, then shifted, with a disconcerted grunt. He was now lying on his side with his hands tucked between his legs. His breathing grew deeper.

‘You are good for talk,’ Gaffar said. ‘Good for listen . Is easy for man to… to unburden. ’

Geraldine took his hand and gently stroked the back of it.

Gaffar stared at the impressive array of silver rings on her fingers. One of them in particular was neatly inlaid with a piece of blue-black oyster shell which momentarily reminded him of the shimmer of a peacock feather.

He shuddered. He inspected it more closely.

‘At sleep I dream of this…’ he said, ‘this bird. Big tail bird…’

He drew his hand away and described the fanning tail of a peacock.

’Peacock…?’

Geraldine nodded.

‘I keep on dream of this bird… I’m on a long journey, alone, in the desert and I’m tormented by this terrible thirst —need for drink, yes? — I’m searching for an oasis — a well — in the faint hope of quenching it, and then suddenly I see this bird — this magnificent peacock — standing on the horizon. And it’s strutting around, putting on a real show, raising and lowering and fanning its tail at me. I walk towards it, almost hypnotised, and as I draw closer I see that it’s standing by a well, a drinking well. I run to the well — delighted, obviously — to slake my thirst, but when I get there, there is no bucket or rope to lower down into it, so I lean over the wall of the well to peer inside — perhaps I might climb into it — I’m so desperate now — my thirst is so great…But hard as I try, l cannot see the bottom. So I grab a stone from the ground nearby and I throw it in. I wait, straining to hear the splash, but the pebble just keeps on falling. I hear it bouncing from the walls, reverberating, echoing, for many minutes and then finally nothing. So I turn — furious — to chastise the bird — this despicable bird — for leading me astray and …poof! It’s disappeared. Vanished. ’

Kane expelled a sudden gasp as he slept (almost as if in fascinated response to Gaffar’s story). Gaffar peered up at the Goth — perhaps hoping for some kind of intelligent reaction — but she seemed completely preoccupied by the slumbering Kane. He turned to look at Kane, frowning. His eyes widened. Kane’s head was thrown back, his mouth had fallen open, his breathing was sharp but deep and rhythmical. His eyes were blinking, rapidly. But his hands were the main thing. His hands — pressed between thighs — were twitching and jerking, involuntarily.

‘ Kane! ’ Gaffar called out, mortified, determined to awaken him. No reaction. He began to push himself up, intending to bound over and shake him, but before he could do so, Geraldine had grabbed his arm and had yanked him back down again. He opened his mouth to protest but she placed a firm finger upon his lips and smiled — just slightly — through her barbs of black string. Then she took his hand — with a salacious twitch of her finely sculpted brow — and pushed his fingers deep into her soft, warm lap, turning, simultaneously — very calmly and deliberately — to keep on watching.

It wasn’t like any other building he’d ever seen; it was almost a cartoon — a caricature —of what a building might be. A truly terrifying construction (the proud work — he had little doubt — of some of the world’s most warped and tyrannical imaginations).

The design itself was stark, impenetrable, peerlessly simple. The detailing was fastidious–

No …

Meticulous .

And the finish? Incomparable.

Kane felt a curious mix of emotions as he stood and he perused it: he was awed by its ambition–

Yes

— sickened by its barbarity–

Certainly

— humbled by its magnitude–

Absolutely

— and deeply–

No

— profoundly perplexed by the fact that this whole, titanic edifice — every damn inch of it — was built entirely (he reached out a questing hand)–

Uh…

Yup

— not from steel or aluminium or glass –

Nuh-uh

— but just basic, red brick . Hand-made, red brick–

More to the point

— thousands of them; millions , even–

Fuck…

Kane craned his neck–

Well that’s one helluva pointing job…

Although–

How odd…

— as he touched it with his hand the brick suddenly seemed to blur and then transmogrify into…

Into what, exactly?

— wood. Tiny chips of…slivers of…

Uh…

(Like one of those old-fashioned, ridged and laminated cards he’d been so fond of as a child where the image is cleverly split into two, so that when you stare at it, straight on, you see one thing, but then, when you angle it, you see…

Uh…

No .)

Kane shook his head, withdrew his hand and stepped back so that wood returned — as if by magic — to its former constituency–

That’s it –

Much better…

He was currently standing and gazing up at the East Entrance (he wasn’t sure how or why he knew it was the East, he just did). The East Entrance was actually still under construction (a chaotic mish-mash of scaffolding and ladders; a huge, gaping maw in what was otherwise a flawless facade).

Right…

Good.

Kane drew a long, slow, steady breath, steeled himself, glanced furtively around him, yanked his hood down low to obscure his face–

Eh?

Hood?

— and stealthily entered the building.

Once inside he observed (with a strange feeling of smugness) that the basilica was constructed under fairly traditional lines–

Basilica?

— an oblong hall with a double colonnade and apse–

Apse?!

Yet while the basic design of the interior was fairly uncontentious, the scale of it was anything but.

It was gigantic–

Stupendous!

— and there was this–

Wow!

— ow!

— ow!

— this quite astonishing echo –

— ho!

— ho!

— so as soon as his boots hit the floor–

Granite?

Marble?

— he observed another pair of boots — the same pair, to all intents and purposes — landing just a milli-second after; almost as if he were two people, two explorers, two dreamy, mid-light voyagers…