Weekend at Bernies
The room felt ten degrees colder when I entered it. Not that pleasant cool like walking into an air conditioned room from the warm poolside. No, this chill was sinister, like being in a cave, an underground lair.
My breath clouded in front of me as a shiver involuntarily ran up my spine. Lair was a good word to use, because this room was occupied by someone, something. Some buried primeval parts of my brain began to shake themselves awake. The old flight or fight instincts were starting to be reactivated. My years as a Formula One trouble-shooter had made me used to the pampered safe life of expensive hotel rooms and cast-off drivers’ model girlfriends. The baser instincts that I should have relied on to survive – the sense that warns the hunter of the unseen tiger – had lain dormant; and that they were stirring themselves now was reason enough to make me pause just inside the doorway.
The door closed with a soft click, leaving the room in almost inky darkness. I hadn’t felt this way since Cambodia, all those years back. Someday that story can be told, but for now, my nerves and senses screamed that I was in the presence of evil. Run, my body told me, but something kept me rooted to the spot. Under it all, was a chilling sense that this time I had gone too far.
Something stirred in the darkness in front of me. A weak slanting beam of light from a shuttered window, dancing with dust-motes, caught a fringe of grey hair, as a figure, hidden in a darkened alcove, leaned forward. The figure paused. All my straining eyes could see was that fringe of silver hair that reflected the light with a dull, oily sheen. A clawed hand appeared and reached downward, reappearing with a crudely made bowl. A second hand appeared in the beam of light, dipping into the bowl, returning cupped with water, the glittering drops falling through the light into the bowl, as the cupped hand moved upwards, to dribble the water over the man’s hunched, leaning head.
There was no sound in the room other than the trickle of water running from the silver head, back into the bowl, but my ears were filled with the drumming of blood through my temples. My mind’s eye presented me with another flash of my Cambodian nightmare – the jungle moving with the softest noises in the undergrowth as they stalked me in the dark, and the border so close. I’d made it through that night, but would I survive this?
"I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream. That's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor, and surviving." The man spoke, his soft English voice increasing the sinister chill in the room.
I said nothing, waiting.
“You have it with you?”
With a jolt I remembered the bag I was carrying in my right hand. I inhaled. “Yes. I have it with me.”
Lanquidly, the man clapped his hands. In the dark, a slight figure glided forward and a match flared, lighting a candle, before the figure withdrew. The candle guttered in the close air as the man spoke again.
“Was there any ….. unpleasantness?”
“A little”, I answered, “but nothing I couldn’t handle.” Unpleasantness. That’s one way to describe it. I remembered the crunch of bone under my hand and the hot breath in my face as the Customs man’s life had ebbed out. He’d eaten garlic for his last meal.
The man in the room made a satisfied sound before speaking again. “They’re getting too big for themselves. They want too much. Too much say. I will show them who is in charge.”
He stirred himself and stood, moving into the dim light from the candle. He was always shorter in the flesh than I imagined such a powerful man, and a shudder ran through me as the shadowed candlelight emphasised the cadaverous features of his face. His eyes were hidden in deep shadows cast by his brow and his lank grey hair fell over his face. I was always amazed that a man with such money could have such a bad haircut. I found myself thinking of pudding bowls as he moved closer to a low table that the candlelight revealed standing in front of me.
“Show me”, his English voice hissed. “Show me what will make them learn to hate and fear me again.”
“Yes Mr Ecclestone,” I said as I pulled it from the non-descript bag and placed it carefully on the table. “It does what you want it to do.” I said. “It will dismay them, control, them, remind them of their place. They will know that it comes from you….”
As the light fell on it, it gleamed darkly, malevolently, all straps and buckles, and I suppressed a sudden nausea as I knew what it could do, how it would cripple. The man staggered backwards as if he had been struck, his hands unconsciously lifting as if to protect him from the horror he saw on the table. “No”, he gasped, “It’s too much.”
He was shaken, horrified, but couldn’t take his eyes from the awfulness in front of him on the table. “It’s impossible”, he gasped, “You have gone too far….” He collapsed into a chair, burying his face in his hands, his shoulders working as quiet sobs escaped from between his fingers.
I straightened, placing my hand on the cool, hard device, seeing again the anguish of those I had tested it on. “I call it HANS,” I whispered.
The candle began to flicker as it burned down to its end. The pool of light it cast shrank and the temperature in the room began to fall further. As I turned to leave, I could hear his soft English voice repeating two words in a shattered, whispered litany.
“The horror, the horror.”
My breath clouded in front of me as a shiver involuntarily ran up my spine. Lair was a good word to use, because this room was occupied by someone, something. Some buried primeval parts of my brain began to shake themselves awake. The old flight or fight instincts were starting to be reactivated. My years as a Formula One trouble-shooter had made me used to the pampered safe life of expensive hotel rooms and cast-off drivers’ model girlfriends. The baser instincts that I should have relied on to survive – the sense that warns the hunter of the unseen tiger – had lain dormant; and that they were stirring themselves now was reason enough to make me pause just inside the doorway.
The door closed with a soft click, leaving the room in almost inky darkness. I hadn’t felt this way since Cambodia, all those years back. Someday that story can be told, but for now, my nerves and senses screamed that I was in the presence of evil. Run, my body told me, but something kept me rooted to the spot. Under it all, was a chilling sense that this time I had gone too far.
Something stirred in the darkness in front of me. A weak slanting beam of light from a shuttered window, dancing with dust-motes, caught a fringe of grey hair, as a figure, hidden in a darkened alcove, leaned forward. The figure paused. All my straining eyes could see was that fringe of silver hair that reflected the light with a dull, oily sheen. A clawed hand appeared and reached downward, reappearing with a crudely made bowl. A second hand appeared in the beam of light, dipping into the bowl, returning cupped with water, the glittering drops falling through the light into the bowl, as the cupped hand moved upwards, to dribble the water over the man’s hunched, leaning head.
There was no sound in the room other than the trickle of water running from the silver head, back into the bowl, but my ears were filled with the drumming of blood through my temples. My mind’s eye presented me with another flash of my Cambodian nightmare – the jungle moving with the softest noises in the undergrowth as they stalked me in the dark, and the border so close. I’d made it through that night, but would I survive this?
"I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream. That's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor, and surviving." The man spoke, his soft English voice increasing the sinister chill in the room.
I said nothing, waiting.
“You have it with you?”
With a jolt I remembered the bag I was carrying in my right hand. I inhaled. “Yes. I have it with me.”
Lanquidly, the man clapped his hands. In the dark, a slight figure glided forward and a match flared, lighting a candle, before the figure withdrew. The candle guttered in the close air as the man spoke again.
“Was there any ….. unpleasantness?”
“A little”, I answered, “but nothing I couldn’t handle.” Unpleasantness. That’s one way to describe it. I remembered the crunch of bone under my hand and the hot breath in my face as the Customs man’s life had ebbed out. He’d eaten garlic for his last meal.
The man in the room made a satisfied sound before speaking again. “They’re getting too big for themselves. They want too much. Too much say. I will show them who is in charge.”
He stirred himself and stood, moving into the dim light from the candle. He was always shorter in the flesh than I imagined such a powerful man, and a shudder ran through me as the shadowed candlelight emphasised the cadaverous features of his face. His eyes were hidden in deep shadows cast by his brow and his lank grey hair fell over his face. I was always amazed that a man with such money could have such a bad haircut. I found myself thinking of pudding bowls as he moved closer to a low table that the candlelight revealed standing in front of me.
“Show me”, his English voice hissed. “Show me what will make them learn to hate and fear me again.”
“Yes Mr Ecclestone,” I said as I pulled it from the non-descript bag and placed it carefully on the table. “It does what you want it to do.” I said. “It will dismay them, control, them, remind them of their place. They will know that it comes from you….”
As the light fell on it, it gleamed darkly, malevolently, all straps and buckles, and I suppressed a sudden nausea as I knew what it could do, how it would cripple. The man staggered backwards as if he had been struck, his hands unconsciously lifting as if to protect him from the horror he saw on the table. “No”, he gasped, “It’s too much.”
He was shaken, horrified, but couldn’t take his eyes from the awfulness in front of him on the table. “It’s impossible”, he gasped, “You have gone too far….” He collapsed into a chair, burying his face in his hands, his shoulders working as quiet sobs escaped from between his fingers.
I straightened, placing my hand on the cool, hard device, seeing again the anguish of those I had tested it on. “I call it HANS,” I whispered.
The candle began to flicker as it burned down to its end. The pool of light it cast shrank and the temperature in the room began to fall further. As I turned to leave, I could hear his soft English voice repeating two words in a shattered, whispered litany.
“The horror, the horror.”
posted by smith at 2:06 AM
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