Cages by David Mark (reading fiction TXT) 📗

shielding herself from the harsh sun with a parasol. A magnum of champagne is clutched like a club in her other hand. Behind her, a handful of stick figures work upon the grounds of her home: bare-chested, dirt-streaked men oversee the planting of a finger-straight poplar.

Rufus turns the page. Follows the development of the garden as it is transformed from wilderness to wonder. In each of the images, Procne serves as muse. The camera lingers upon her with a tenderness that speaks of true delight. She is smiling in only some of the photographs, but she looks upon the picture-taker with an intensity that causes the hairs on Rufus’s arms to rise. There’s a lustful edge to her gaze: a suggestion that the sun is lulling her into a state of torpid sensuality. And behind her, men in tight shorts, or floral trousers; men with moustaches and long hair, hefting spades, pickaxes, levering statues onto great granite plinths or raking perfect pebbles around the circumference of the water feature: three winged women holding trumpets and golden apples, captured barefoot; their robes bunched behind the knee to reveal young, shapely skin. Rufus has never before found carved stone so alluring. He looks for Griffin. Sees the boy in a handful of photos: a slim, pale boy, dressed like a Victorian: cloth cap, long cotton gowns, or dressed up as something from a Pagan festival: furry britches and fake wings, clutching a harp while topless women twist and writhe behind him, throwing their arms up to the glorious sun.

Rufus swallows. It pains him. He doesn’t want to feel these things; doesn’t want to think about the strange, sad life the little boy had who grew up to become what he became. He screws up his features, ready to slam the album closed and stomp from the room. Then he spies the peculiar object at the rear of the final photograph. It’s a simple snap: showing the finished gardens in all their glory. They are indeed a wonder, a perfect imitation of a late Renaissance palace garden: the paths lined with cypresses; the waterways paved with lilies; the steps leading to a wooded area where a romantic little grotto sits invitingly, guarded by a sentry of alabaster Roman gods. At the very rear of the picture, the water disappears into a large pool, partly concealed by the buttress of a little humpbacked bridge. It’s a dizzying image, as if the perspectives had been designed by Titian. The water seems to be flowing uphill in places and in others the steps seem to go up to an area that is below the level of the main paths. Rufus peers at it, trying to make sense. He fancies he can see a roof below the level of the footpath, rising from the water, but well below the level of the bridge.

Rufus raises the album until he is almost touching it with his nose. Slowly it swims into focus. There is a grotto: a strange little boat shed, almost completely submerged by the newly dug pool. The photo shows a blisteringly hot day – the water level no doubt lower than eventually intended.

He lowers the book, wondering at the significance. He knew already that Cox had grown up in a stately home – that his mother met her end in the glorious mock-Renaissance garden upon which she lavished her every moment’s joy.

Rufus begins to return the book to the shelf. Stops, as surely as if he had seen a predator, as his fingers touch the rear cover of the album. Beneath the crepe paper, he can feel something. There is a thickness to the crepe that feels somehow incongruous – as if it were quilted with something unyielding.

He glances back. Wilson still stares at nothing.

Slowly, deliberately, he slides his finger around the edge of the strange protuberance in the fine paper. Creates something approximating a square. Shakes the album, as carefully as he can, and a set of Polaroid images slide free and tumble down to the floor.

Rufus curses. Bends down to retrieve them, stops halfway to the carpet, as the images take shape.

Sees them all. All Griffin’s victims. Sees them bone white and naked: the only light in the dark, dark place where they have been mounted like statues. Sees youthful flesh turned the texture and colour of candle wax. Missing teens, taken, murdered, and metamorphosed into moon-bright figurines.

And then Rufus is falling forward, crashing down towards the photographs of the dead, plunging face-first into the scattered images of murdered girls.

Above him, Wilson Iveson: straight-backed, eyes wide, bringing down the oxygen canister on the back of Rufus’s skull: again, and again, and again.

THIRTY-SIX

Pain.

Pain that sings.

It’s the worst hangover he’s ever had. Every cell in Rufus’s body seems to be compacting at once: grinding against one another with saw-toothed edges. His head feels as though something hard and unyielding has been forcibly pushed into his skull. His back is pure cold agony: spinal cord taut as a guitar string, vertebrae bunched against one another like stones beneath the hull of a wooden boat.

He tries to raise his head. There is a moment’s resistance. He feels the electric charge of panic before he can unjumble his thoughts. For an instant he feels bewildered, ill-used: has somebody glued him to a rough cord carpet as he slept? Then the memories fall: a blizzard of torn images. He knows himself again. He is laid on the floor of Wilson Iveson’s room. Blood from a serious head wound has clotted beneath him, all but sticking him to the floor. He can hear something familiar: a noise like clucking birds in a farmyard, the dry rustle of a high wind through autumn leaves. He tries to swallow. Tastes blood. Lets red spit drool from his damp lips. Keeps his eyes closed. Lets the sounds arrange themselves until they become a voice. Words. The dry, perfectly enunciated timbre of an old man speaking softly into a telephone.

‘… don’t have to say