Ducie by Chris Freeman
Chapter 63. Back to the old house.
- You sure you’re not taking me on a goose chase Gaffney?
Kevin’s tone was jovial, but laced with the hint of a serious question. As the pair walked across the sludgy, un-mown grass of Pype Hayes Park towards the old house.
- You begged me to take you here, didn’t you?
- I guess.
- Well pipe down with your moaning then.
- So it’s exactly as Adam described it at the station? An Institution underneath the old house and all that.
- Yep. And when we get there, you just let me do the talking ok?
- Of course. I wouldn’t know where to start anyway.
Kate stopped as they reached the foot of the short gravel driveway. A green Ford Fiesta that looked like it hadn’t been road worthy this side of the turn of the millennium sat desolate and redundant in front of the house.
- So this is it?
- This is the house, yeah.
Shouts of young children could he heard from a nearby play area. Wholesome, uncorrupted little souls, living in the purity of the present moment. Kate had always envied that about children. A dog barked excitedly in the distance. A young couple walked past Kate and Kevin, their arms bound in a knot of affection.
- So, this is it? Right here? In the middle of a public park? Kids and dogs just milling about?
- Trust me, they would never suspect a thing. It’s gone unnoticed this long hasn’t it.
- So what do we do, knock on the door and wait?
- There’s nothing behind the door Kevin.
Under normal circumstances, this would have sounded like crackhead talk to Kevin, but he had primed himself for the wacky and unexpected.
- You mean the house is empty?
- More than just empty; it’s a shell.
Kevin tried to compute what he was hearing to formulate a response, but the stringy logic of the conversation caused his brain to short circuit and return nothing but mush. Kate continued.
- The inside of the house is just air. No roof, no floor. A tube going underground basically. Looks the part from the outside, but it’s just 4 high walls that look like the outside of a house.
- No floor?
- Nope. Just a void that leads down to the Institution. A direct line of fresh air and sunlight. The Institution’s smoking quad is at the bottom. Makes it a slightly more palatable experience being inside having somewhere you can be exposed to the elements and kill yourself with a cancer stick.
- So how do we get in?
Kate didn’t answer the question, but began walking beyond the house and into an open field. Kevin quickly followed.
- That’s it? You’re showing me the outside of the house and walking off?
Kate ignored Kevin once more and continued walking for a while and then stopped. She bent down and patted the grass with her hand.
For the first time since she’d brought him here, Kevin was starting to think his hunch was wrong. That he should never have believed Kate and Adam’s story. Perhaps they were just tripped-out druggies who had created a fantasy land in their heads, just like everyone back at the station had said.
- What the hell are you doing fondling the grass?
By now, Kate was reaching around, yanking at handfuls of grass. Pulling and straining to the point where the grass uprooted in her hand, then moving on to the next patch.
- Kate! What the fuck?
She ignored him and continued pulling up lumps of grass, before eventually giving up with a frustrated sigh, throwing the last clump of grass into the wind. She walked to the nearest tree and stood with her back flat against it, as Kevin looked on bemused and now resigned to her ignorance of him. After a moment’s pause, Kate took 8 large strides forward. She stopped. 6 large sideways strides. She stopped again and looked down.
- This has got to be it!
- Got to be what Kate? What the hell’s going on with you?
She ignored him for the umpteenth time and began to pull at the grass between her legs. Bingo! A square of the grass opened like a trapdoor. She looked around at Kevin.
- Welcome to the Institution!
- You’ve got to be joking me?
Kate began lowering herself into the hatch with a grace and smoothness that Kevin suspected owed to the fact that she’d done this before.
- Look, I’m going in to check there’s nobody kicking around down there. You wait here. Watch the hatch. When you’re clear to go, I’ll nudge it from the inside and you follow me, ok?
Kate heard no response from Kevin as she was preoccupied trying to find a foothold to complete her descent into the hatch.
- Kevin?
She hoisted herself back up, but there was no sign of Kevin. At that moment, Kate felt the rigid barrel of Kevin’s gun resting on the back of her head. She knew it was over. Her thoughts raced. How could she have been this naïve? She barely knew Kevin, yet she’d trusted him enough to lead him to the Institution. What did she think he wanted with the place? Did she really believe he was just satisfying his own curiosity? “Fuck, fuck, fuck….you idiot!”. She closed herself off to Adam for so long and yet she knew him so well, but here she was, strung up like a kipper for being too accommodating to some Kevin bloke she hardly knew….and a copper to make it worse!
- I’m sorry Kate.
Despite the fact that Kate knew that he wasn’t sorry, his words sounded surprisingly genuine.
- Do it!
- Look, it’s just business. It’s nothing personal. You did what you had to do. I’m just doing the same for myself here. You know how it is.
- Shut your mouth and just finish me, you prick! You got me. You win. I was stupid! Just do it!
Kevin scanned his surroundings nervously. They were in a public park and Kate’s raised voice was threatening to attract attention. The gun carried a silencing device, but he didn’t plan for noise from Kate. For now though there was nobody around.
- We’re gonna storm the place and catch them off guard Kate. I have a team over there waiting for the word.
Kevin signalled towards a collection of trees that was probably slightly too small to be labelled a forest.
- We just needed you to lead us here, but we couldn’t risk having you around to blow the cover. You understand, yeah?
What did it matter if she understood? In a few moments she wouldn’t exist any more.
- Do what you need to do Kevin. Do it!
A small part of Kate expected Kevin to bottle it. Something in his voice, a lack of authority, his need to explain himself, something told her he wouldn’t do it.
- Goodbye Kate!
A flash, a whir, silence, memories, calm, chaos. The whole universe in an instant, but over too quickly for any of it to register. A spectrum of emotions poured into a vacant mind that no longer housed a soul to appreciate them.
She was gone.
Chapter 64. Magnets
Coincidence.
Misfortune.
Ambition.
Curiosity.
Greed.
Compassion.
Destiny....
The list goes on.
The reasons that led people to become embroiled in this tale of tragedy were wide-ranging. Whether by choice or by chance; by hook or by crook, each of those involved was drawn into it by a powerful and relentless force. Their lives reluctantly woven into patterns they never intended to make. Some never to return, the rest with their soul and psychology disfigured forever.
Kate Gaffney, without whom the counterpart theory may never have been discovered, had perished along with Daniella Diaz, Lex McGivern, Eduardo and so many others. In whatever realm Kate’s soul now resided, it can’t have been any less at peace than it was in the material world.
Adam Trundle was neither dead nor alive. Having seemingly morphed into a formless existence, disappearing through some blemish in the fabric of reality that for now was unknown.
The Institution had been rumbled. Chaos would
The counterpart project. Such a feat in human discovery that was now in danger of being erased, having systematically disposed of most of those that knew its secret. But of all the unfathomable possibilities that lay ahead; of all the uncertainties, Steve vowed to make sure of just one thing: The death of his friend the Prime Minister and everyone else that fell with him would not be for nothing.
This was not the end of the counterpart project.
This was not the end of Ducie.
In the midst of progress a soldier falls,
And nobody flinches, a means to an end,
Nature persists and the cycle goes on,
Over and over, until everything’s gone.
Chris Freeman.