Then he looked forward and started the car, pulling out again into the narrow road. There was no traffic, so he should be back at the hotel in Battle within half an hour. Molly would probably not even wake during the journey, and the rest would do her some good. There was a long night ahead, and the demands upon her young body and mind might be immense. It was good she get some rest now, while she was able.
The image of Nathan Corbeau loomed large in Robert’s mind, and behind him stood the shadowy figure of Sergeant McMahon. Corbeau was a man—he had to be—but if that was the case, then what exactly was McMahon? He had acted odd from the start, the way one might expect a small-town policeman to act rather than how a real one would behave. It had taken a while for Robert to consciously register this, but it had niggled away at the back of his mind, taking small bites, shading things, from the very start.
But if the sergeant had never really existed, how could they have even met him? He had even taken them into the station and interviewed Robert in his boss’s office. He tried to remember exactly how things had happened. Sarah and the kids had certainly spoken with him, and Corbeau had used the sergeant’s name. He could not be a figment of Robert’s imagination because others had interacted with him…but that did not mean he wasn’t a figment of Corbeau’s diseased mind; a figment that had walked out into the world, moving among them to push along the sequence of events.
The idea shocked him in a way he could not pin down. He had earlier thought of McMahon as a fictional presence and himself as a reluctant protagonist in some mysterious plot. What, then, if that were true? What if this entire situation was a fiction, and they were all merely players? It was like that Shakespeare quote, the one about all life being a stage…
Robert tried to examine his life before they had arrived in Battle, but everything seemed shrouded in mist. Shapes loomed and retreated; events were partially glimpsed. Even the attack on Sarah felt like a story someone had once told him. He knew it had happened—he remembered it—but he felt no real connection to the event other than a sense of muted rage.
What did it all mean? There was no way of knowing; the human mind was like a faulty machine, rewriting its internal programming as it went along. For all Robert knew, he had been born only a minute ago, fully formed and with implanted memories. That did not necessarily mean any of this was real.
He was a writer; he created lies for a living, even when he was meant to be writing about the truth. What if all of creation was a lie? Robert had never believed in God or religion, and right now that seemed like an even more logical choice. Everything, he suddenly realized, was caught up in the act of creation. Everything was fluid, poised on the cusp of change.
He supposed that was the closest thing to a cogent theory he would ever achieve: the notion of a fluid reality constantly reshaping itself around those living it, a sort of improvised existence.
Molly moaned on the backseat, changing her position as she slept. She was real; she had to be. The love he felt, the pain at her discomfort…real, all of it. But now he was into the realm of emotion, of the inner world, and none of that was relevant to the world he could see outside the car windows. His head began to ache. It was all too large to take in, too slippery to grasp. It went against everything he knew about reality, and opened up too many questions to even consider. If none of this was real, if people could be ciphers who dipped in and out of the narrative of our lives, acknowledged only by ourselves, what did that say about the nature of reality itself?
He drove toward Battle with a chill in his hands, confusion in his mind, and sorrow in his heart. Above him, pale clouds scudded across a washed-out sun. But whose clouds where they; which author had created them; who or what had brought them into being?
“Nearly there,” he whispered, to Molly and to himself. “Nearly where?” The question was a valid one, but he doubted he would ever reach a conclusive answer.
The streets of Battle were, as always, quiet and restive: few people were outdoors, and the road traffic was characteristically light. Robert smiled as he climbed out of the car and went around to the back door. The scene was like a lightly sketched passage from a novel; the surroundings were not important to the plot, so detail was kept to a bare minimum. The scene seemed to fade away at the edges, like the visual limits of a video game.
He opened the rear door and took Molly in his arms, closing the door with his foot. He did not bother locking the car; he felt sure that car theft was not part of the story, and that the vehicle would still be there when they came out to collect it.
He took her through the back door and up the emergency stairs, not wanting to bring attention to the fact that she had to be carried. The last thing they needed right now was more police interest—even from real live policemen. He trod softly along the second-floor landing, slightly out of breath from the climb.
Sarah opened the door even before he reached it. Her face was dark, creased, and filled with an unexpected look of pity. “Is she okay?”
He nodded. “She’s just sleeping. She hasn’t been harmed, just shaken up a bit.”
Connor stood behind his mother, anxiously shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Put her on the bed,” he said.
Robert entered the room and laid Molly on the mattress, impressed once again by Connor’s concern for his sister. He turned to face the room—to face his wife—and opened his hands, as if showing her he was unarmed. It was a strange gesture to make, but for some reason it felt right.
He turned back to his daughter and stroked her hair, pushing it out of her face. She shifted onto her side, and he saw it there, on the back of her neck: a small, neat mark, an incision. It was in the shape of the letter C. They’d marked her, branded her like someone would do to cattle.
“They’ve cut her,” he said, trying to look away but unable to look anywhere else.
Sarah walked over and looked at Molly’s neck. She sucked in air through her teeth. “The bastards,” she said.
Connor let out a single sob. “The fucking cunts.” His language was blunt and to the point; Robert could see no point in is chastising him for it.
“This can’t go on,” he said, smoothing down Molly’s hair to hide the mark. “We have to stop them.”
Sarah nodded. Connor remained silent and moved to the other side of the room, started rummaging for his PSP.
“I assume you’ve seen the film clip.” There was no point in sidestepping the issue; confrontation was the only way now. He finally admitted to himself it always had been the way, and only now could he accept that.
“I’ve seen it. I can’t believe you were so stupid.” Her eyes were cold and hard, and Robert could see the hatred behind them. It stirred slowly and sinuously, like a serpent.
“I’m sorry.” It sounded pathetic, but what else could he say?
“I think we have more immediate problems than your tacky little blow job, Rob. I’m not falling into that fucker’s hands and going at you. That’s exactly what he wants, and I refuse to give it to him. I learned a lot when I was raped.”
Robert winced, as he always did when she mentioned the attack. He realized now that they had never properly confronted the issue, only ever approached it from the edges. Perhaps if they had been braver, and discussed it more openly a long time ago, things might be different now. Maybe they might still be the owners of their lives.