The Price

by Peter Gifford

Justin dragged the heavy book out of his satchel as the train shuddered into motion. ‘Gray’s Anatomy’ read the cover, in large serif type. Crouching over it in his seat, he began to flip through the pages, wasting no time in reaching the chapter he was most interested in ... the hands. There in all their naked glory, stripped to muscle, and then again to bone, were the beautiful shapes of his obsession. How the finger joints worked in such exquisite harmony; how the muscles co-operated like dancers to bring the bones into motion; how the skin modestly covered the structure, concealing yet accentuating the muscles. What elegance. Around him grey suited office workers read newspapers and stared at advertising, but Justin was content in his own little world, mesmerised by the treasures within these pages.

Just like the ones in his collection.

An attractive woman in her thirties got on at Victoria. Justin watched how the eyes of the other men in the carriage looked at her as she entered, then back to their newspapers. He knew what they were thinking, looking at her body, her breasts. He was different. All he could see was her hands, and how they moved when she reached for the pole to keep her balance. He couldn’t stop himself staring at the tracery of veins, the reddish bumps of the knuckles, the soft mound below her thumb against the metal.

He gazed at their shape, their grace, the prefect blending of form and function. Burying his head back into the anatomy textbook he looked over the sketches and tried to identify the particular muscles or bone structures that thrilled him the most. The man next to him was trying to see what was so interesting, so Justin huddled forward some more and brought the book halves together in a ‘v’. Over the edge of the book he watched the woman’s hands as she sat opposite him — finely-tooled machines owned by an master craftsman.

Chris was on the cellular, sounding drunk. “It’s not going to work man, I’m telling you. Forget it. Fucking hell. I’m sweating here, shit, I’m sweating like a pig.”

“Chris, just relax. It’ll be fine.”

“Yeah right, that’s what you said last night, and then that chick comes up to us, and you’re still talking in fucking code, and then suddenly she turns out to be Lee’s fucking SISTER, for Christ’s sake! I mean, didn’t you even ever meet her fucking sister before? Christ, you spent ten years with her for Christ’s sake. FUCK!! Oh, fuck!”

“What’s happened.”

“Nothing, noth — fuck, just spilled my fucking drink. Hold on —”

James stared out the grimy window for a while. The blurry street outside was deserted.

“Right I’m back.”

“Eleven and a half years, Chris. Eleven and a half. And she’s her sister in law. Recently. And she lives in Prague.”

“Whatever. Listen, this job tomorrow. You’ve got me breaking into the fucking museum again haven’t you?”

“Shut up. We’ll talk tomorrow. Get some sleep. And lay off the booze will you? Tomorrow night. Bye”

“Just a min—” James cut him off and turned off his cellular phone. He knelt there for several minutes going over their conversation and the times they had met over the last week, examining and discarding each incident for flaws and finding everything as it should be. The years of study had taught him there was no room for the slightest error. Like the candles around him, the pattern in chalk on the floor, the book lying on his thighs, everything had to be exact, precise, all according to the ancient laws. He had even chosen this derelict church in Brixton because of the way its last pastor had died, and the day of the year the place had been deconsecrated. And of course tonight was Halloween. He had laughed when he had discovered that, the wonderful cliche of it. Revenge on Halloween. A revenge that had become a long and painstaking course of study leading to one supreme moment when he risked everything.

For a brief moment he wondered if Chris would do something unexpected, but then he smiled thinly. Chris would do what he was supposed to do, James was sure of that. It wasn’t like he would be a problem for a much longer.

Chris kept talking for a good three minutes before he realised there was no one on the other end. He slammed the phone down, missing the receiver and sending the whole unit clattering off the table in a confusing clatter of plastic and spilt scotch. After softly and intensely swearing he left it on the floor and went to top up his glass. While he’d been on the phone the early evening had turned to night and there were no lights on in his apartment. He liked it that way anyway, nice and dark. Light came in from the street outside, and he didn’t have much furniture to bump into.

After two more generous glasses Chris wasn’t feeling like sleeping. There was an restlessness inside him that didn’t come from the drink, an anticipation of action that was boiling up inside him. Why was he trusting him anyway? James was the kind of cool bastard who would help you up with one hand while he pulled away your chair with the other. Ever since they’d been at school James had been in control, helping him out occasionally only to pull in favours with the kind of cool confidence that made you feel like you were lucky to be asked. Damn it, this time he was risking everything just because he was being helped out with a few bucks, and if something went wrong you could be damn well sure that James would walk away with his pants uncreased while he, poor old Chris, would be left swimming in shit. Why wait? Why do it his way all the time? It had to be this time, this place, this way; he was sick of taking orders. What did it matter when the job was done, as long is it was done. Right now he wanted it over. His bag was by the door and everything he needed was in it. He thought of ringing James again but instead picked up his coat from the floor and headed for the Tube station.

When he boarded the train he had just enough time to see Lee sitting at the other end of the carriage before it all started.

Lee brushed an imaginary hair from her knee, her eyes following the trajectory of her hand and accidently meeting those of the man opposite her in the train. He was a thin, shabbily dressed man in his thirties with thin glasses, hunched over a big book as though absorbed, but over the book he was staring intently at her. Just another freak on the Tube, she thought. She looked up at the advertisements and dutifully read a little exchange between a married couple about car insurance. When she’d finished her eyes flitted back to the thin man, and he was still staring. She began to feel a little bit uncomfortable, and began wishing she hadn’t worn the loose blouse she chosen this morning, when it felt like it would be a warm day in London for a change. She tried to ignore him, her eyes resting on each person in the carriage for the socially acceptable length of time before coming back. He was still staring.

She hated being stared at. It was one of the few disadvantages of being single again. All the time she had been with James, all those interminable years, she’d felt like an old maid, immune from the attentions of strangers. But now she was alive again, and free, she attracted every weirdo in London. Sure, it had all ended messily, but it was all over now. And no weirdo was worse than James.

James was reliving the scene, and like he did every time, he felt like he was sitting in the corner of the room up by the ceiling watching it all play out. He looked down at Lee lying naked on their bed, at their old apartment in Hammersmith. She was glancing repeatedly at the clock by the bed, knowing at any moment the front door would open and he would come in, finding her there. It was their little game, their way of keeping the excitement in their relationship. He still pretended to act surprised and pleased for her, finding her there ready for him when he came home after work at his office, and though they only seemed to find the time to make love once a week these days instead of almost every evening like they used to, they somehow kept it exciting.

He heard the key in the lock, the door open. Lee shifted on the bed. Up by the ceiling James felt his gut ache with desire. The door to the bedroom opened. In walked his brother Chris.

James opened his eyes, back in the cobwebbed closeness of the church. He began reading, manipulating his larynx to form the strange syllables in his throat and pushing them over his tongue and out of his mouth as though he was vomiting up bile. In the musty ruins of the old church the shadows seemed to vibrate and deepen, and the thin circle of light in which he kneeled retreated before the darkness. Suddenly, without reaching a particularly important passage of the incantation, he felt the air thicken, and from nowhere a vile stench filled his nostrils, almost making him pause in his fevered whispering. The tenuous skin of blue shapes just beyond the circle of candles faded and he felt himself floating in a limitless space on a circle sharply defined by the chalk markings on the wooden floor. Beyond the circle was hate, horror, pain, a fate so unimaginably terrible he felt sickness well up in his stomach at the very proximity of it.

He spoke the last syllable. There was a moment’s utter silence, then a voice, a voice from the Pit, from the deepest depths of horror the mind could conjure, spoke beyond the circle of light:

“My price is two human hands.”

In the train people started screaming, as Justin felt his body begin to bulge, split, change, his skin expanding and erupting, horrible things happening to him, the book falling to the floor of the carriage, blood spraying the walls. Part of his new body smashed into the lights and the rumbling carriage became a strobe-lit carnival ride of screams and shouts and bodies thrown and crushed. Parts of what were once Justin grew their own teeth and lunged for the tumbling bodies, scoffing chunks of flesh, twisting up towards the ceiling carrying parts of the passengers with them. Chris was huddling in a corner as a thick tentacle, it’s questing end bristling with needle-like teeth, slammed with the force of a sledgehammer into the back of his head and burst out though his face. Lee never saw him there.

Inside the swirling mass of horror-made-flesh a tiny part of Justin’s consciousness remained, hardly enough to register what had happened to him. Through the red haze he saw the woman still sitting before him, looking up, her mouth hanging open, her arms held out before her in a pointless attempt to protect herself, and at the end of those arms, those two, perfect, flawless, pink, hands.