Ritual

46

The interior of the Ford smelled stale, so Flea wound down the window as she drove to Kaiser's. It didn't take long. In less than half an hour the Mendips had her, with their dense forests and unexpected ravines, and she remembered how lonely the world could be. She came slowly up the drive, parked in the gravel bay, cut the engine and wound down the window. The sun was nearly at its zenith, with clouds flitting across it, the ground parched, the house uncared-for. A cat, asleep in the shade of a water butt, blinked and raised its head sleepily, but apart from that nothing moved. She looked up at the boarded-up windows, the curtains closed in all the others, and thought about the times she'd been here as a child. She tried to remember whether Kaiser's place had always seemed sinister or whether that feeling was new.

After a while, when no one came, she got out of the car and slammed the door. The noise echoed round the empty field and she hesitated, wondering if Kaiser had heard it inside. But when he didn't appear she took off her sunglasses and, stopping once or twice to pat one of the legion of dusty cats that came out of the weeds and rusting old machinery and butted her calves, went to the front porch and peered inside the plastic sheeting. When she couldn't hear anything she went round the side of the house. The back door was unlocked and Kaiser's car was there, the rusty old Beetle, but there was no sign of him, neither in the outbuildings nor in the greenhouses. She went into the kitchen and stood there.

The plastic sheeting leading from there to the hallway was flapping very gently into the room as if a window was open somewhere. There was a half-eaten sandwich on the table — a few flies buzzing round it — three halves of avocado on a wooden block, their cut stones leaking a thick, blood-like liquid, and everywhere else the usual chaos of Kaiser's life, piles of National Geographic on the sideboard, a guinea pig staring at her, huddled on the floor of a cage on the table. She took off its water bottle and refilled it, wedged it between the bars and watched the little animal fasten its pink mouth round the nozzle, sucking noisily. Then she picked up the board and shovelled the avocados, with their leaking hearts, into the bin.

In the living room there was a plate with a paper napkin and crumbs on it, and in the centre a lawnmower engine in pieces lay on newspaper. Flea shook the mouse on the computer at the desk, but the screen was dead so she went to sit on the sofa where she'd spent Saturday and tried to remember lying there for eighteen hours. She pressed her hands into the sofa, peering down at it, as if she might get a flashback from its fabric. She tried to recall getting up and going to the computer, but all she could think about were the hallucinations: her parents' skeletonized bodies in the swirling waters of Bushman's Hole. And her mother saying, This time they're going to find us…

She sat back, her arms folded. Arranged across the walls were the locked cabinets, the ones Mum used to say Kaiser kept his drugs in. Beyond that was the doorway where he'd stood yesterday, in his white shirt, his face in ruins. She thought of a picture she'd seen in his witchcraft book, the one in Dad's study. It showed a shaman dressed in a beaded shift, on his headdress a goat's skull, the eyes picked out with silver foil. She massaged her arms, and glanced over her shoulder, feeling momentarily cold, as if a draught had come in from the window behind her. Kaiser's African masks stared back at her. She'd seen them a million times. No reason to feel strange. Just that everything was weird now, with the way she'd spoken to the dead, the way she'd known her parents would be found.

She went into the hallway and called up the stairs. 'Kaiser? Are you there?'

No answer. She looked down the hallway, at the tattered walls, the paper hanging off in strips, the metal stepladder with a discarded plasterer's float tipped on its side. For all Kaiser's labours this house didn't get any more like a home. She understood why Mum and Thom were uncomfortable here — with the draught coming down the hall they'd never wanted to go further in.

She wondered if she should search the other rooms, check Kaiser wasn't lying somewhere with a broken leg, or the victim of a stroke maybe, and then, when there was absolute silence, just the distant clack-clack-clack of a loose window moving in the wind, she went back into the living room.

A red standby light shone on the television set and the video-player was whirring, the green numbers clicking by. She watched the numbers, she let her thoughts roll, and then, because she'd never known Kaiser watch videos before — in fact, she'd never known him watch television — she got the remote control and idly switched on the TV. It crackled reluctantly, then burst into life.

The sound was down, but before she could reach out for the remote control to turn it up an image came up on the screen. Shot in the slightly brown-stained colour of old film, it showed a man lying on a bed. What he was doing made her grip the remote tightly.

He was young, black and very thin. There were sweat stains on the plain khaki shirt he wore and his face and body were contorted with pain, his torso sprung up in the air like a bow, his jaw clenched. She couldn't see where the pain was coming from but it was real: sweat ran down his face. He stayed in that position, his face locked in agony, his body distorted, for about five seconds. Then something changed. The tension in him went. His eyes flew open as if he'd come back to consciousness. There was a breathless pause in which he remained bent up, away from the bed, eyes flicking backwards and forwards, unable to believe the pain had stopped. Then, in one shudder, he collapsed into a foetal shape, holding his knees. The screen flickered, then went blank.

Flea stared disbelievingly at the screen, not sure of what she had seen. She kept as still as she could for as long as she could, and then, when she couldn't think what else to do, she got up and ejected the videotape, dropping it on the little table, pulling her hand away as if she'd been burned. Her heart was thudding. Torture. That was what she'd watched. Torture. What the hell was Kaiser doing with a tape of torture in his house?

A noise from behind made her spin round, her mouth dry. Kaiser was in the doorway. He was wearing the same grass-stained white shirt as yesterday and was holding a pair of long-handled shears.

'Kaiser?' she said, her voice slow and suspicious. 'Kaiser — I don't get it…'

He didn't answer. Instead he gave a sad smile. It was the sort of smile that said he'd always hoped the world would never have brought him to this moment. It was the sort of smile that said this was one of those nasty necessities in life.

'Phoebe,' he said slowly. 'Phoebe. I think it's time we had a talk.'