The Malice Box Read online

  ‘It died. I hadn’t truly realized I had it, until it went away.’

  He tried to react kindly, without abandoning his scepticism. ‘Kat, I always had the idea it was empathy, or being highly aware of body language, or something similar. Intuition, or tapping the unconscious. You remember how you used to talk, at university.’

  ‘That’s what I said, I know. But it was much more than that. When I was a girl, I thought everyone could do what I did. But no one else heard what I heard. It was like music, like wonderful harmonies. It was as if everything resonated, and I could attune myself to people and things, and learn from them. I’d talk to people, or even just touch them, and words would form in my mind.’

  ‘You heard voices?’

  She sighed. ‘No, not voices. Or maybe inner voices. But the words that came would be exactly what people most needed to hear, or wanted to say. I’d find my lips forming the words even before we’d spoken. Words like lonely, or vulnerable, or…’ She stopped and smiled.

  ‘Randy?’

  ‘Quite often, Mr Reckliss.’

  ‘And you lost it all?’

  ‘I lost some of it, the night of the fire.’

  ‘Let’s not talk about that.’

  She looked at him in amusement. ‘You’re still terrified of that night. After all these years.’

  ‘It’s dead. It’s in the past. Go on.’

  ‘Then when I lost Tariq, it turned off completely.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Like creeping cotton wool. Over several days.’

  ‘Has it ever come back?’

  ‘I’m not sure I want it back. It was very useful, when I was doing that work. Now I associate it with loss. With betrayal. I’ve gone as far as I ever want to go down the danger road. I’m finished with it. The older I get, the more I realize I need solidity. A man who’ll always be there. A rock. Someone like you.’

  Robert kissed her.

  ‘Stay with me.’

  ‘I think I will.’

  New York, August 27, 2004

  Robert and Terri rode up to the sixth floor.

  The hotel-room doors were of heavy solid grey metal, like brushed steel. A little green magnetic sticker on their door said Yes, please.

  In the room, they stood facing each other. Terri filled the room with her presence. She was sexual gravity.

  ‘Robert. Time to talk. You think I’m going to have sex with you now?’

  ‘I was hoping you would want to. And I was hoping you wouldn’t want to.’

  ‘Understandable. You are married, after all.’

  ‘I haven’t been touched in six months. I could melt for a woman’s flesh on mine. But…’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I am your needs. From the Robert who is still a gauche horny fifteen-year-old, all the way through to the Robert who is a gauche, horny 42-year-old. All the Roberts are OK. All the Roberts who want to fuck me are good. There’s no need to feel bad about any of them. And all the Roberts who feel guilty about wanting to fuck me are OK too. You’re a good man.’

  She held her head with such self-possession. Yet she looked entirely vulnerable. He marvelled at her.

  ‘Robert, these next few hours are a sealed-off time and place. It’s all about us. It’s sacred, and it’s necessary, and no one will ever know. I need you to do some things for me, and to me… And you need me to do some things for you, and to you. It will make you feel good. It will make us bothwell. It will strip you of your fear and fill it with well-being. It will give you something you’ve never had, something everyone needs, that everyone should have.’

  ‘What is that?’

  She kept her tone light, almost playful. ‘Everyone is unique. No one responds in the same way, no one has the same psycho-sexual needs. But we all need the same outcome. It’s just a question of finding the right path for eachperson to get there.’

  ‘What is that place?’

  ‘It can’t be talked about. It can only be experienced. You’re afraid of the God in the sex. You’re afraid of what you’ll experience if you fully lose control, or fully take control. It scares you to be fully in the moment. Sex is like a spell or a charm, but you’ve never let it take you to the end of the line. You always pop back out and start observing yourself. If you fear the God in anything, it’s because you fear the God in yourself. You’ve locked something away so deeply behind a veil of fear that you can’t let it out any more, and it’s killing you. And we need to free it. Otherwise you’re no use to anyone. And certainly no use to me.’

  He should leave, he knew. But he also knew he wasn’t going to.

  ‘Sex is sex,’ he said. ‘It’s wonderful, but at the end of the day it’s just a physical spasm.’

  He remembered the night of the fire. Sex with Katherine. His first time, though he hadn’t told her. And ever since that night, the association of sex with destruction, with harming others, with starting the fire… ever since then, the disconnection from his own body as he let it pursue its own rhythms, the delightful but empty physical release…

  ‘It’s never too late to learn something new, Robert.’

  ‘Terri. Look me in the eyes.’

  ‘You’ve worked out my secret?’

  He saw himself reflected, distorted, in the silvered curves of her sunglasses. He hadn’t before, but now he did.

  ‘You’re blind.’

  ‘I am. And yet I see.’

  ‘How? What happened?’

  ‘I got hurt on the day of the Blackout. A lot of things went down that day.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I will. But we have something more pressing to take care of first.’

  She slowly unbuttoned her jacket, lingering over each button, and let it drop from her fingertip to the floor. The corset emphasized the grace of her neck, the full curve of her breasts.

  ‘Terri, you’re amazing.’

  ‘You have no idea. I love this hotel. Feel the sheets. To be honest, the thread-count alone is going to make me come at least once.’ She unzipped her skirt and let it fall, then stepped daintily out of it. ‘Make love to me, Robert.’

  A heartbeat rocked his body so hard he thought he’d fall. He was dizzy, his ears ringing, heat and heavy blood flushing through his body. Her sexual magnetism gripped him, pulling him towards her smiling lips, her mesmerizing perfume. The sight and smell of her body ignited purples and violets in his eyes, birdsong in his memory, aching lust in every fibre of his being.

  He stepped forward and lifted her clear off the ground, pushing her up against the wall as she wrapped her legs tightly around his waist. She moaned, arms around his neck, one hand pulling his hair, the stiff ribs of the corset pressing against his chest as he kissed her mouth, her face, her neck.

  He wheeled around and took two steps towards the bed before flinging them both down on it, landing with his elbows either side of her, then kneeling up to unbuckle his belt. He undid his shirt, then stopped for a moment, breathing hard, as she held up an open palm to him.

  ‘Take everything off,’ she said. ‘I’ll be here.’

  She slipped off her thong and leaned back, one hand behind her head and the other flitting over her body, over the stockings and black lace, to her neck, to her thighs. When he was naked, he leaped straight back on to her, beside himself, not knowing himself, thrusting deeply, thrilling to her cry of surprise and pleasure, lost in his own body and its sheer pounding weight as she pulled him into her.

  He was lost to himself, lost to the world, pushing and pushing. Time ceased to pass. Only when he had felt her peak twice, and was preparing to let go, did he notice her hands snaking up his back, from his tailbone to his shoulder blades and the base of his skull. He heard her intoning words softly, none he understood, as she breathed deeply under him, drawing him in, pulling him down.

  She cooed into his ear: ‘Slow down now, lover. Stop for a moment. Time to show you something new.’

  She held him tight inside
her, running her hands down again to the base of his spine, whispering calming words. He breathed deeply, staring down at her taut cheekbones, smiling lips, pale transparent skin.

  ‘Most people don’t understand,’ she said, ‘that orgasm is a full-body experience, and a full-mind experience, a full-soul experience, that has very little to do with ejaculation in the man. I won’t let you ejaculate. If I do, you’ll disperse all the energy we’ve been building up, and are going to build up in the next few hours. But I’ll show you something better.’

  He felt a shuddering heat ignite at the base of his spine, licking like flame along his back and out to the tips of his fingers and toes. She was holding her hands just over his tailbone, then weaving her fingers up and down above his back. His whole body began to rock as his mind filled with torrents of violet light. A deep growl began in the depths of his chest. And then he was consumed in a roaring, lung-emptying, body-racking howl of pleasure that lasted till he no longer knew who or where he was.

  When he recovered consciousness, he was still inside her, as erect as ever.

  ‘Good boy,’ she whispered. ‘Good boy.’

  They made love for hours.

  Every square millimetre, every tendon and joint and curve. Recounting and honouring and full attention given, full and loving care given and received. Naming and knowing each corner, each pore, each lash, each taste, each limb. Interconnecting of all. Knowing of all. Endless and without time. The tracing of the body of the lover is the tracing of the pattern of the city, and the honouring of each part of the body is the rebuilding of the mystical body, the building and remembering of the body of light.

  Eventually they rested, her head nestled on his chest. He reached to the bedside table for a bottle of water from the ice bucket. Her silver shades and necklace lay next to it, along with his wedding ring. Her eyes were a wild, piercing green. He watched her in the mirror.

  ‘You can’t see me.’

  ‘I can feel you. That’s all I need.’

  ‘You have great imagination.’

  ‘No, I have great perversity. It’s far more fun.’

  ‘I’ve never felt so alive.’

  ‘We’re not done yet, baby.’

  ‘I’ve no idea what time it is.’

  ‘That’s a good thing, Robert. Recover your power… with some sex in the shower.’

  ‘In a moment. Not quite yet.’

  ‘They have great showers here. They have jets of water that fire all the way along your spine. Or if you turn round… they just seem to hit all your erogenous zones at once.’

  He kissed her head. ‘So I think I’ve worked out the location of cache number two.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It’s you. Your body.’

  ‘Bravo.’

  ‘The cached object is on your person.’

  ‘It is. Or it was.’

  ‘Your necklace? The one that was nestling so happily between your breasts until I took it off?’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘If you know where the caches are and what’s in them, why do you need me to go and empty them?’

  ‘I don’t know where the rest are. But since this trial involved meeting you myself, I had to know where the waypoint was. And the Watchman sent me the original clue early enough for me to work out where the cache was. It was hidden on the roof of this hotel, actually. I knew this would work better if I could wear the key myself. So I took it and strung it on a chain.’

  ‘Who writes the clues? The ditties?’

  ‘I don’t know. But, as for the rest of the keys, you need to collect them all. It’s because of what you become each time you find one.’

  ‘What do I become?’

  ‘More powerful. More beautiful.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘More able to help Adam. To help all of us.’

  ‘Can I do it? Can anyone do it?’

  ‘You’ve made a good start. Don’t go thinking it’s all going to be like this, though. You need to build sexual energy on top of the fighting energy, the killing force, from yesterday. Then tomorrow is a different challenge. You won’t survive tomorrow without today.’

  He was silent for a moment. His body was glowing with relaxed heat, with the memory of her touch. Yet death was stalking them, somehow.

  ‘I understand now the second line of a letter I received. When I was eighteen. Give to receive. That’s just good advice on dealing with others, I guess, but good love advice too. Good sex advice. Then seed is not sensation. That’s what you showed me. I thought that was just a thing yogis did.’

  ‘There’s a core wisdom behind lots of practices and beliefs that might seem different,’ Terri said. ‘You are on the Path of that wisdom.’

  He reached over and picked up the necklace. The pendant was made of a light metal and was a reddish gold, like the Malice Box.

  ‘I recognize this shape,’ he said. ‘What’s it called, this fish shape?’

  ‘Vesica piscis.’

  ‘Is this the object? I need to take it.’

  ‘Take it. Guard it. Keep it safe.’

  ‘What kind of keys are these, Terri?’

  ‘To hell. If they are misused.’

  ‘To hell. So how does this all work? Who’s behind this impending attack? Horace said it was some kind of soul bomb, not just a truck of ammonium nitrate. Tell me.’

  ‘All I know is this. Adam was terrified about going to see the people he went to see on Wednesday. They are the ultimate bad guys in this. They need people to work through. They wait and wait, and then, when they see a chance, they attach themselves to someone in psycho-spiritual distress and slowly twist them to their ends. This Device, this Ma’rifat’, is built using very rare materials, impossible to find, and using very old knowledge, the kind of knowledge you find on the Path. It resonates to people’s souls. Amplifies what it finds there. There’s a reason that the true Path is not widely advertised. It’s too dangerous. It was built by someone whose pain and suffering attracted the Iwnw, and now it serves their purpose.’

  ‘What is their purpose?’

  ‘Well, the last time they got any traction in the world was in Bosnia. And they were able to influence some key Nazis in World War Two. People around Heinrich Himmler. They ride that kind of wave. Adam’s grandfather fought them, back then.’

  ‘The SS? The Nazis?’

  ‘These people. Adam called them the Brotherhood of Iwnw.’

  He stared at the ceiling. ‘I was nearly killed yesterday for the bullet casing. Was that them?’

  ‘I told you, you were protected.’

  ‘It damn well didn’t feel like it.’

  ‘If you hadn’t been, you would have been killed.’

  ‘I take it someone’s going to want to kill me for this one too?’

  ‘It’s already harder to kill you. You’re already stronger. Let’s hope not.’

  ‘Are you in danger too?’

  ‘I can look after myself. But there is danger for all of us. And somehow, it even involves your wife. I don’t know how.’

  He spoke sharply. ‘Why Katherine?’

  ‘Something to do with the Blackout. That’s all I understand. Everything’s to do with the Blackout.’

  ‘That’s the day our baby was conceived.’

  ‘I know. Something changed that day, for all of us. Adam and I have only been truly together since that day. Since… I can’t tell you some of this.’

  ‘I want to know everything.’

  ‘I’d had very deep intuition all my life, it was normal to me. But after that day my abilities increased – tenfold, more. It was as though I’d been kicked, slam. As though I’d expanded within myself, somehow, as though my inner body, the one I imagined being made of light, suddenly amped up and blew through my skin. It blew my eyes to hell, I don’t know how to describe it… Suddenly I couldn’t see, but I could start fires in people’s minds. Suddenly I could feel whatever it was that people were yearning for in their lives, what buttons to press. It
wasn’t all good, believe me. At all. I could make things happen, I could just know things about people, I could do things I’d only dreamed about… read people to their core… read their needs…’

  ‘How well can you read me? Stupid question?’

  ‘I can read you as though you were made of glass, my dear.’

  ‘Can you turn it off?’

  ‘I have to. I have to shield myself from it. The acuity of perception is too great. I’d die. At first it made me live way too much for other people. But I’ve found my centre now. When it’s worth while, I can turn it full on. You, Robert. You’re worth while. That’s why I can be your dream creature. I can see what you need. And I can give it to you.’

  ‘What do I need next?’

  ‘Actually let’s talk about what I need next.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  She handed him the cock ring. ‘Take a wild guess. This will help.’

  They made love again, ate, showered, made love, each exploration melding into the next. They were drunk on eachother, on pleasure. Terri seemed to live one perpetual orgasm. She gave him two more all-consuming, full-body climaxes that left him gasping, shattered, yet bursting with raw energy.

  As she floated between peaks at one point, nearing another, she handed him the nerve wheel. It was a rounded metal device with dull spikes that looked like spurs for a horse.

  ‘Very, very gently… very… run this over my skin,’ she said. ‘I can only take it when I’m this turned on.’

  She sighed and closed her eyes as he did so. She trembled at the sensations, cooing and moaning, ‘Softly… softly…’

  She reached a slow and intense peak, shaking against him, then took the wheel from his hand. After a few moments of deep breathing, she took his hand.

  ‘The path you are on is called the Path of Seth. It is based on the idea of dismembering the subject – that’s you – and building him up again. In a moment we’re going to do a kind of ritual around that. Something to help you on your way.’

  It was getting dark outside. He barely recognized himself.

  ‘Tell me more about Terri. Where are you from?’

  ‘New York. Brooklyn. The rough part.’

  ‘So what is identity management? You’re a computer whiz?’