I enter the spiral, Raincoat and the big fella following close. The first gold and silver double helix is embedded in the wall immediately to my left as I pass through the door at the bottom of the stairs. The floor tiles have been removed, revealing concrete. The brass filament is visible, curving round with the corridor, growing marginally more distant from the wall. Dim halogen striplights fail to erase the subterranean gloom.
I step forward slowly and examine the walls. Dull blue paint dressed with geometric diagrams and pictographic symbols that I can’t possibly identify. There’s something in the shape of them that’s reminiscent of the writing in my father’s journals.
Each double helix we pass is larger, more ornate, Simple threads of gold and silver become chains, then braids, then workings too fine for me to make out in the dim light. I glance back to examine the third for a second longer and catch a glimpse of a blood-spattered trainer around the bend. May. She’s following us. I do my best to ensure that nothing shows on my face, no glimmer of hope among the waves of despair.
A hand on the shoulder forces me to stop. By my reckoning we’ve gone halfway around the circumference of the basement. To my left is a steel door secured with thick chains. To my right is a door emblazoned with a caduceus, the ancient Greek symbol for medicine consisting of two snakes around a winged rod, at the centre of a spiral with a series of eleven obscure sigils along its length.
‘In here,’ Raincoat says.
I reach for the door handle, stumble with the sheer weight of the deja vu that hits me. My father knew the room behind the door well.
The smell hits me first. Liquorice, cinnamon, blood. It’s overwhelming, takes me a moment to process. I adjust and look around the room. Less than a dozen candles provide light in a chamber twenty metres across. The spiral is barely visible on the ground, working its way towards some large device, something like an MRI machine. It’s not clean and plastic like those in modern hospitals, it’s brass and steel with a wooden bed engraved with those same geometric patterns and occult sigils I’d seen in my father’s journals and the corridors outside. There’s an upturned glass bottle full of a brownish liquid that’s fed by tube into something like an old first world war blood transfusion kit, attached to the side of what would be the scanner in a conventional MRI.
Something in me twists. I want to run. I don’t know what that machine is but I know I don’t want to be in it.
A man in black robes fiddles with dials on the machine with one hand, beckons me closer with the other. He wears an ornate headdress, a bulbous thing in blue with a livid red caduceus stitched into it and innumerable tendril-like strands falling down in every direction.
As I approach him I notice that, deep within the shadows at the edges of this room ten more robed figures stand, statue-like.
‘Where’s Martin?’ I say to the room.
The figure by the machine glances behind me. I turn and lock eyes with Raincoat.
‘He’s locked in a room upstairs,’ he says, silky smooth and slow, like he’s speaking to a dim child. ‘You can see him later, if you cooperate.’
Over his shoulder, nauseatingly close to the big guy, I can see the tip of May’s steel baton poke out from the hallway and give me a little wave.
I ignore this as much as I can and turn back to the machine and its operator.
The man removes his headdress and places it upon a steel work surface, next to a leather-bound book open to a page of diagrams much like those in my father’s journal. An older white man with a thin beard. Furtive eyes and hollow cheeks. He smiles at me and says, ‘I’m doctor Fry, you can call me Arthur. Do you understand the nature of the procedure today?’
I shake my head.
‘Good.’ He pats the wooden table and beckons me closer. I tentatively approach, glance at the cloaked figures at the perimeter. They’re stepping closer, closing me into a circle. Raincoat and the muscle step out and unlock the steel door opposite the entrance to this ritual chamber.
Behind the door is a well-lit little room, bright enough for me to see the contents clearly. An onyx surface, an altar really, six feet long and about five feet off the ground. Upon the altar a decaying human body.
My father’s body.
The doctor clears his throat. ‘I’ll need you to lay on this table here. Time is a factor, my boy.’
I tear my eyes away from the mouldering remains of the father I never wanted to know and eye the door. I know I should try and make a break for it, try to get out. But my body is not solely my own anymore. I lay on the table as instructed. Fry secures my feet and hands with leather straps, then begins to fasten my head into a brace.
‘How do I know Martin is still alive?’ I ask.
‘Well, quite simply we couldn’t take the risk of killing him until we had you here. There was the distinct possibility that the process you’ve been undergoing would provide you with some of your father’s more obscure skills. He’d be able to divine whether your partner was alive at a distance, which means that there’s every chance you could too.’ He fumbles with a strap he’s trying to secure across my forehead then says, ‘I have a question for you, actually. Your name. You were named for your father, and obviously think quite poorly of him, quite understandably, yet you never changed it. Why is that?’
I pause for a moment, order my thoughts. Then I say, ‘It’s my name. Mine. The fact that he has the same one is immaterial. I shouldn’t have to change my identity because of his behaviour.’
Fry raises an eyebrow. ‘Fascinating.’ He finishes preparing my confinement and stands tall. ‘Of course, you must now realise the power of names, due to your father’s studies.’
I do realise.
‘You’ve made our task quite a bit easier.’ He turns to the bottle of brownish liquid and taps it twice. His eyes follow the route it takes into the pumps and bottles of the odd contraption next to that large chamber which resembles an MRI scanner less and less the more I see of it.
I now notice that from the other end of the medley of rubber and glass there extends a fine, clear tube which terminates in a hypodermic needle. I clench my fists. They’re going to put that shit in me.
The doctor delicately grasps the needle and turns back to me. ‘I can’t promise this will be painless.’
‘Is this what you did to your daughter?’ I ask.
‘Not precisely, no. The same substance was used, but the machinery had not yet been developed and I had a different aim. Regardless, Carla seems quite alright now. I count it as a success, she’s so very useful to us. So obedient.’
The needle enters my forearm with vicious force. A static shock is closely followed by acidic maleficence entering my bloodstream, clawing its way towards my heart. He checks over my bindings one more time then nods towards the door. He dons his headdress and assumes a formal posture.
I strain to look around. The cloaked figures are closing in, forming a spiral with the machine, and me, at the centre.
The doctor begins singing, mindless glossolalia in a high pitch. He operates the machine’s controls with theatrical aplomb. The other cloaked figures join his meaningless garbling.
The machine whirs to life. The thick brown substance is pumped into me with increased vigour, burning and scratching as it enters. The scanner section begins to spin, and to glow a faint blue. The wooden table to which I’m fastened rises slightly and then approaches the scanner. I blink tears away, think of Martin and May, of Donald as well.
I’ve doomed them all.
My head enters the scanner. Blue lights flit around me. The hum of the electrical coils harmonise with the cultist’s chanting.
My heart rate slows. Whatever they’re putting in me doesn’t hurt anymore. Calm washes over me, calm and distance. The light transforms, the sound transforms, the smells transform. Everything changes. I think I do, too.