Andy stood over Keith's punctured body. "Fuck him," he suggested. "That's what I say."
"Andy, don't be absurd," said Quentin. "Unless we can get him through this ourselves we'll—"
"We'll have to call the hospital. Or the police," said Celia, who had appeared from between the french windows. Behind her, in the more tranquil light, stood Lucy and Diana. "Let's just get him out of here, can't we?"
Andy stepped forward and booted Keith negligently in the ribs. The body accepted the blow as might a sack of half-dressed cement. "See? Poor little bastard. He's. he's all fucked up."
"Look, er. " Marvell knelt beside Keith on the paving stones. "Look, I can't have any law here." He felt Keith's pulse. "Best thing is, I drill him fulla emetics and aperients and stuff and we just leave him here for a time. Or" — he raised his voice—"or on the grass, huh, Cele? Don't want him exploding right here onna patio, yeah, am I wrong?"
Celia swirled back into the room.
"Chicks!" said Marvell indulgently, taking Keith's wrists
in his hands. "Try to be helpful and they— hey, Skip, haul his legs, willya? I know Rox'd blow her stack, any guy heaving on her— yeah, thassit, dump him onna lawn. Now here, my : Ifriend, we gotta problem. Lie him on his back, he'll gag on his own vomit. Lie him on his chest, he won't shit right. I don't know about you, kid, but I could use a Hine."
After a few minutes Keith was firmly roped to the still-blossoming apple tree; two grimed hypodermics hung from his bloated arms.
62: GHOSTLY PERIODS
Perspective was the next to go. As soon as they were back inside, all the corners in Appleseed Rectory came adrift, swam out of position, and folded back in new and unfamiliar conjunctions. Through its open doorway the kitchen was no more than a displaced rhomboid of light. The stairs concertinaed away in unaligned succession. The hall leaned back and forth like a seaborne doll's house. Everywhere they looked mad angles veered up at their eyes.
Giles lay shivering on his bed, a deep-river creature of his own sweat. His mouth was a hive, his teeth changing position like dancers. If he clenched his jaw they just wouldn't fit, wouldn't fit, crags, tors, ridges, beaks, grinding against each other like the rusty cogs of an old machine. He prayed for them to fly away, white birds escaping this sodden nest. Until then he would be locked deep in this house, this room, this mouth, this mouth, with its marshmallow teeth and its sweet-sherry gums.
He could hear the fridge juddering peacefully at him, but he knew he'd never get to it. There were so many things in the way and anyhow his mind kept slipping back, slipping back to… to gauzy skin and dying pillows oh baby please 1 enjoyed the swell of the land in ghostly periods with blood she kissed him gorily as saddening dreams the various sunshine off dusty glass and his teeth an old mother old mother and baby Giles.
"NO!"
Hiring every morsel of his strength, Giles cleared the bed and stormed the fridge. His hands were flapping so extravagantly that he had to refill the glass twice before any of the contents forced its way down his throat. When it did, Giles tried very hard to force it out again. No substance that toxic l(he felt certain) had ever entered his system before. He lowered his nose to the bottle. It was gin all right — but it smelled as harsh and alien as strong medicine to a delicate child.
"Glug glug glug," he said, and added in a voice suddenly panicky with comprehension, "goo goo goo!"
Within seconds he was out of the door. Behind him the darkness drummed with a thousand mothers.
This dwarf pleasureless and very mad dream girl nothing flash life has its holiday fair enough? terror and confusion for a four-foot box in a cartoon world of sugary tea crying with shame for each … It broke off.
Whitehead twitched, jolting the back of his skull painfully against a protrusion in the gnarled apple tree. He was alive and he was awake — he even struggled briefly with his bonds. Assuredly Keith was in great pain, but this stemmed from the beating he had received from his housemates rather than from the barbiturates intended for his suicide, which were at present doing him nothing but good, numbing both the retro-drug and the punishment his body had recently sustained. He still felt vastly better than he would, say, on an average morning, appreciably trimmer, more wholesome, less corporeal.
What, nevertheless, was he doing here? At the best of times little Keith's head was not the most maneuverable of units and it was only with great discomfort and travail that he managed to scrape his chins over the stinging ropes about his neck to get a glimpse of the left-hand quarter of the house. All was dark and worryingly quiet. Why, then, had they done this to him? Was he there for fun, for sex, for target practice? He sensed something flapping against his upper arm, something heavy and metallic. He squinted down and saw the needle point dangling from his right "bicep"; burning his neck, he turned to see its twin dangling from his left.
Then he felt his body start to come alive. The soft machinery stirred: winches creaked, pumps groaned, tubes opened, pipes rustled. Keith arched with the effort of containing himself as once again he became a blast furnace, a forest fire of frantic glands.
63: THE ANTIDOTE
And when the distances went the house was hell at last. Each minute the atmosphere changed radically, boiling up to gas and thinning out to nothing at all. Currents of sweating air slopped through the shrunken rooms. The corridors tapered off into palls of submarine mist. Appleseed Rectory was hell now, and its inhabitants crawled round it with borrowed faces and canceled eyes. If they kicked against the womb, they folded onto the floor and were sucked down into a hot, thudding sleep.
— Skip came across Andy sprawled face down on the stairs. In Andy's palm was a large red pill, half eroded by perspiration. Skip removed it and popped it into his mouth as he crawled over Andy's body.
— Diana knelt in an upstairs closet. She searched through old clothes for yesterday's dolls.
— Giles crouched beneath the kitchen table. If he heard a noise he would scurry behind the cooker. If he heard a noise he would scurry beneath the kitchen table.
— Lucy opened her eyes. Marvell was urinating on her legs. She tried to speak and she could not speak.
— Roxeanne was a starfish on the thick sitting-room cushions. She masturbated caressingly with a chipped hukah pipe beak.
— Celia stood upright on the baronial armchair. Through her tears came snatches of forgotten nursery rhymes.
Now Quentin awoke in the empty hall. He climbed to his knees, holding his head between clenched fists. When his eyes opened to the bruised light he needed all his will to focus them on the fast-escaping outlines. He reeled to the nearest wall and pressed his forehead hard against the cold stone. Inhaling deeply, he summoned his body and his mind.
Quentin found Marvell in the washroom, alone, giggling softly into a pile of soiled underclothes.
Quentin picked Marvell up by the hair and slammed him furiously against the door.
Marvell's eyes stared.
I go
"The antidote," said Quentin clearly. "The antidote. You've got five minutes. Do it, Marvell. Or I'll kill you."
64: HIGH TEA, OR HERE WE GO AGAIN
Enough? Have we had enough? Nothing would be easier, of course, than to give the Americans some food, some sleep even, and pack them off — that would appear to get rid of Johnny, and, why, they could even drop little Keith at the hospital on the way. Might be some bother there but, on the whole— yes — it would demand small ingenuity to restore peace to Appleseed Rectory. Unfortunately, though, there is no "going back" on things that in a sense were never meant, things that got started too long ago. These things go on. It isn't over. It hasn't begun.