To Indigo, Tanith Lee [best ereader for comics .TXT] 📗

stared at the – to me alone? – incomprehensible film. I wondered confusedly and shakily if he simply wanted me to watch television with him. Then he said, “Shall I get rid of this, Roy?”

My voice, always astonishing me recently, replied quite steadily, “Of course, if you want.”

And he patted my shoulder, got up and crossed the room, and kicked in the screen.

A high hard bang sounded, less explosion than gunshot. The red room flashed purple, then white. Bits of the screen that seemed rather to be bits of solid light hailed through the air. A brief electric storm was born in a jet black hole ripped in the fabric of the room. Everything glittered, tinkled, then darkened, while from the TV plug in the wall a white ray, shaped like the classical lightning bolt awarded to the god Zeus, was flung to the ceiling and died. After this all was blackness.

Sej murmured, “You hardly watched anything, did you? I think you said the news gets on your nerves.”

He threw a kind of shadow, lighter than the dark, but he himself was now invisible to me.

“Yes,” I said. “I didn’t often watch.”

“Oh well, better get you back to bed.”

He led me up the stair. At the top he turned to me, and now I saw him in the vague orange light from the street-lamps.

“Didn’t scare you, did I – I mean, doing that?”

I gazed at him. I said, “What you do is your business, Sej.”

“Yes, Roy. And so are you. My business.”

He let me go through into the bedroom alone, and from the outside adjusted my door slightly, to permit me more ‘privacy’.

Through the pretended barrier he called after me softly, “You haven’t tried to get away. Or not properly. Why’s that, Roy?”

“Too tired, Sej. At my age, you get fed up, running about.”

His voice was now so soft I had to strain to catch it as I stood there, rigid, in the non-electrified dark.

“Do you, Roy? That’s a shame. Not sure I entirely believe you, you know. You’re not that old, either. Young as you feel. Sleep tight, old sport. Tomorrow is another day.”

I stood by my bed in the darkness for about another forty minutes after he had gone, or I thought he had. I didn’t sleep again that night. I thought what prisoners must often think, that to continue in this way was not bearable, and that I could only bear it, having no alternative. And I thought dispassionately of some callous miracle – George hammering on the door calling for assistance – Vita with chest pains – an ambulance – some logical development which might allow me to evade my captor in two or three freakish moments of unexpectedness. And I thought finally of the stupidity of my situation, and that I ought to be able to get free, there must be some solution. But I could conjure nothing.

Into darkness I stared, the memory of the explosion of the TV screen sometimes igniting in my brain before my inner eye, truly a flashback. I wished him dead. That was all I had that I could do. I wished him dead, but it was unreal to me. And I believed I’d reached the end of my road.

7

He went up the ladder first, and I reckoned I would leave it to him. But when somehow Mr C, standing on that ladder some fifty-five to sixty feet over the back gardens, both hands employed in screwdrivering access through the skylight, had raised the window and it was open, and he leaned inside, looked back down and spoke to me, I knew that I too wished very badly to see into the place above. I wore trainers. I put one foot on the lowest rung and hauled myself up quite efficiently, ignoring the idea of the distance to the ground. I felt different in my 666 role, shaven headed, in jeans and T-shirt and trainers. I felt unencumbered. I felt I too could climb the dangerous ladder. And climb it I had. When I got into the attic room above Sej’s flat, both Mr C and I paused, looking round. I was nonplussed, although I quickly saw he could not be. Given his wide experience surprise would be rare, and then no doubt only associated with types of extreme violence.

He had already informed me no one was in residence. He had checked every corner of the long, wide space, and opened the single door to reveal a long narrow bathroom.

“Well, it’s an eagle’s nest but he does himself proud,” said Mr C. He sounded more amused than intolerant. “Not like the lower quarters, is it?”

Decidedly it wasn’t.

The attic room, a sort of English loft apartment, began under the slope of the roof, where even I couldn’t stand upright. But after a few crouching steps someone of six and a half feet could have done so with ease. At the centre the spine of the roof allowed standing room of at least twelve feet. This area extended for maybe twenty feet square. Even where the tapering down began, the roof sloped gradually. Once one was fully inside there was no sense at all of constriction.

The beams and joists were on view, but clean and varnished. Above them, a high plasterboard ceiling. It was painted a pale creamy blue. The brickwork of the walls behind the wood was also closed in plasterboard and painted, this a very light apple green.

On the whole floor-space lay a blue carpet, immaculate and with a deep pile. Furniture was set here and there, armchairs, tables, two large couches that Mr C told me were what we used to call put-you-ups – able to be converted into large double beds. Everything not plain wood was upholstered, sky blue or light royal blue, or various greens.

Bookcases, six of them, ranged along the edges of the room, crammed with books. There were two wooden cabinets. One had cutlery and dark green plates and mugs, and long