“Except that you were high. It didn’t really happen, you only thought it did.”
Dr. John looked straight at Martin, smiling that sly smile, and said, “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? You’re just a tourist, man. A day-tripper. You might have ventured onto the beach a couple of times, you might even have dipped a toe into the sea, but that’s as far as you’ve ever dared to go. Because as far as you’re concerned, drugs are recreational. Something you do for fun.”
Martin felt a sharp flare of anger. He’d seen something awful, he believed that he had risked his life to rescue Dr. John, and his only reward was scorn and derision. “If you want to fuck yourself up,” he said, “do a proper job and score some heroin from that guy who works for those gangsters who beat you up.”
“I found something better,” Dr. John said. “We all did. Something we didn’t know we needed until we found it. You don’t need it, man. That’s why she turned you down. Even if you got hold of some of her stuff and got off on it, you wouldn’t be able to take the next step. You wouldn’t be able to surrender yourself. But we knew where it would take us before we’d even seen it. We ached for it. It’s our Platonic ideal, man, the missing part we’ve been searching for all our lives.”
“One of your little gang killed himself last night. He threw himself off the suspension bridge, right in front of my eyes. He committed suicide. Is that what you want?”
“Suicide? Is that what you think you saw?”
Dr. John looked straight at Martin again. For a moment, Martin glimpsed the worm of self-loathing that writhed behind the mask of his fatuous smile and flippant manner. He looked away, no longer angry, but embarrassed at having glimpsed something more intimate than mere nakedness.
“Something wants our worship,” Dr. John said, “and we want oblivion. It isn’t hard to understand. It’s a very simple deal.”
“If you take another of those pills, you could be the next one off that bridge,” Martin said.
Dr. John stood up. “You have your nice little flat, man, and your nice little shop and your nice little gigs with loser pub rock bands. You have a nice little life, man. You’ve found your niche, and you cling to it like a limpet. Good for you. The only problem is, you can’t understand why other people don’t want to be like you.”
Martin stood up too. “Stay here. Crash out as long as you like. Get your head straight.”
Dr. John shook his head. “My friends are waiting for me.”
“Don’t go back to the river,” Martin said, but Dr. John was already out of the door and clumping away downstairs.
* * *
Martin shut up shop early that afternoon and took a walk up to the observatory. Children ran about in the sweltering heat, watched by indulgent parents. People were sunbathing on suncrisped grass. There was a queue at the ice-cream stall by the entrance to the observatory tower. Someone was flying a kite. It was all horribly normal, but Martin was possessed by a restless sense that something bad was going to happen. As if a thunderstorm hung just beyond the horizon, waiting for the right wind to blow it his way. As if the world was suddenly all an eggshell above a nightmare void. He drifted back through Clifton village and ended up in the Coronation Tap and drank five pints of Directors and ate one of the pub’s infamous mystery pies, and at closing time walked back to the suspension bridge and thrashed through bushes to the top of the rise.
There they were, leaning at the rail in the warm half-dark, staring into the abyss.
None of them so much as glanced at Martin as, his heart beating quickly and lightly, his whole skin tingling airily, he walked across the grass. They leaned at the rail and stared with intense impassivity at the gorge and the floodlit bow of the suspension bridge. The two women on either side of Dr. John didn’t even blink when Martin tried to pull him away, tugging one arm and then the other, trying to prise his grip from the rail, finally getting him in a bear-hug and hauling as hard as he could. As they staggered backwards, a gull skimmed out of the dusky air and bombed them with a pint of hot wet birdshit. It stank like thousand-year-old fish doused in ammonia, and stung like battery acid when it ran into Martin’s eyes. Half-blind, gasping, he let go of Dr. John and tried to wipe the stuff from his eyes and face, and another gull swooped past, spattering him with a fresh load, clipping him with the edge of a wing. Martin sat down hard, saw more gulls circling in the dark air, one of them much bigger than the rest. One dipped down and swooped towards him, its wings lifted in a V-shape. His nerve gave out then, and he scrambled to his feet and ran, had almost gained the shelter of the bushes when the bird hit him from behind, ripping its claws across his scalp and knocking him down. He was crawling towards the bushes, blinded by blood and birdshit, when another gull smashed into him, and the world swung around and flew away like a stone on the end of a string.
* * *
When Martin came to, the swollen disc of the full moon was setting beyond the trees on the other side of the gorge. Its cold light filled his eyes. The person standing over him was a shadow against it, reaching down, clasping his hand and helping him sit up.
“Christ,” Simon Cowley said. “They really worked you over.”
Martin’s face and hair were caked in blood and gullshit. His skin burned and his eyes were swollen half-shut. He gingerly touched the deep lacerations in his scalp, winced, and took his hand away.
“Gulls,” he said.
“Vicious little fuckers, aren’t they? Especially the big one.”
“What do you know about it? And what are you doing here?”
“I came here after your hippy friend spiked my beer. I woke up from a horrible dream and found myself standing at the rail over there, in the middle of a whole bunch of sleepwalkers. I’ve been coming back every night since. And every night someone has gone over the bridge into the river.” Simon’s long blond hair was unwashed and he stank of sweat and sickness. His eyes were black holes in his pale face. A khaki satchel—an old gas mask carrier—hung from his shoulder. He looked around and said in a hoarse whisper, “I think there’s something in the river. I think it swam in from the sea on the last high tide, it’s been trapped here ever since because the drought lowered the level of the river. It’s been living on what they give it.”
“They worship it,” Martin said, remembering Dr. John’s ravings.
“I think it draws them here and makes them jump off the suspension bridge. I think it eats them,” Simon said, “because no one has reported finding any bodies. You’d think, after at least three people jumped off the bridge in as many days, one of them would have washed up. I went down there yesterday in daylight, and took a good look around. Nothing. It devours them. Snaps them up whole.”
Martin got to his feet. Heavy black pain rolled inside his skull. His eyes were on fire and his lacerations felt like a crown of thorns. He said, “We should call the police.”
“You saw what was down there. I know you did because I saw you here last night.”
“I saw something. I don’t know what it was.”
“You think the police can do anything about something like this?” Simon cocked his head. “You hear that?”
“I hear it.”
People were chanting, somewhere below the edge of the gorge.
“It’s beginning,” Simon said.
“What’s beginning?”
“You can help me or stay here, I don’t care,” Simon said, and ran towards the path that led down the face of the gorge.