Christmas Special 2014

by KING FELIX

Gus Van Sant eat your heart out. At Christmas Time.

Christmas Special 2014.

'Teenagers are unwitting victims of their parents' good intentions - or passive agents to their insecurities, or anxieties, or limited imaginations. What purpose civilisation if those welcome to the best it can offer wrap themselves in selfishness and delusion? Send enough under-realised, over-indulged kids into civilisation, or what these days is passing for it, and it will collapse upon itself, too hollow for its weight'.

- David McCullough, 'You Are Not Special, and Other Encouragements'.

'Sorrow, piled on my pillow, what is your shape? Like waves in rivers and seas, you endlessly churn. How long the night, how dark the sky, when will it be light? Restless, I sat up, gown thrown over my shoulders, in the cold. When dawn came at last, only ashes remained of my hundred thoughts...'

- Mao Zedong, 1920.

Xx.

Packed roadside snow accumulating the exhaust smell, the tall lights of Unity City receding, and Marion drove home feeling trapped but content. The last time she'd felt excited over Christmas was probably when her parents were alive; still she switched on the radio in the hope of hearing some synonymous seasonal classic, as if it meant everything in the world. The Pogues were good, as was Brenda Lee. 'Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time' was the one that hit the spot exactly, though, making her wistful and at peace.

To be expected, as a kind of comedy routine with highs and lows, the traffic snarled up past the six-lane junction that snaked east. Not-exactly-going-home was a strangely pleasant feeling, at least for the moment. The plan of action, envisioned rapturously in her mind -draw up in the big car park to take advantage of the late night shopping at Regal Coxstall, whiz around, feel good-natured among the hat-wearing shopkeepers. The laziness at not yet having bought presents for Lila or Sam might still be avoided. What to buy Sam, though -a problem and a half. Their whole love affair was founded on side-stepping the usual relationship norms, and what was more clichéd than hurriedly buying someone a Christmas present in a chain store?

Because it was the same old emotional confusion: she desired from Christmas Day nothing more than she desired from their regular Saturday nights. Making love, and afterwards a visit to the all-night betting shop to demonstrate the hundreds of different tactics you could toy with. Only vaguely there was an idea that Christmas should be something more. Something -mysteriously colourful. And what to buy him? She curved past the purple lights of the Holiday Inn complex, tightly focused, happy she hadn't drunk so much at the works party that she couldn't face a few further chores.

'Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time' ebbed and lo-fi'd to an end, leading to a news jingle that was abrasive. Anyway, it perfectly highlighted why she wouldn't normally have listened to Flash FM in a thousand years.

'In his first address to the Parliamentary Special Response Unit, the Prime Minister has warned that any action taken against the Islamic Defence Front must be strong and all-encompassing. The meeting was called after the IDF gained new ground by taking a number of small villages north of Ayfarwaq. In attendance was the Minister for Strategy Alfie Fallow and the head of the British Army General Sir Marlon Jackson, who will be travelling to America for talks with President Blake early tomorrow. Professor Richard Upplemide, head of Terrorism Studies at Hule University, said that the task of defeating IDF will be complicated. 'You have to understand that what we're seeing in Ayfarwaq is a consolidation of a number of smaller factions, with a chain of command that stretches very broadly through whole townships, but also individuals, strangers, families-"

Thought Marion, 'Ah yes, Terrorism Studies at Hule University. That's next to the Home Economics Room isn't it?'

She detected her weird little anger and felt suitably ashamed, willing herself to become absorbed in the 'And Finally' story about a reindeer who'd escaped from an activity farm in Norwich. She checked her hair and make-up; blessedly tight and un-fuzzed respectively. Ahead, the message of deep patience spelled out in the slow-moving hazard lights of a Volvo C30 -as typical a Unity-to-Regal Coxstall runabout as you could get. She glanced rapidly at the misty-frozen trees which spread sparsely into ambient farmland, then into her rear-view, a semi-professional coach chomping away in low gear. A dumper whizzed past in the opposite lane, barely easing up in the circuitous M4 approach.

Into the tall hedgerows, a blackbird darted; he was unmindful of the traffic, the cold, the wickedly tangled twigs. He looked frantic anyway. Now, as the flow of Christmas traffic jerked into high speed without much warning, something in Marion's abdomen went from wrong to very wrong. The last day at work before the Christmas break, her mind had been like a PC server-log running in the background, observant of everything but also dismissive of everything unless there was a problem. She recalled the Christmas Barbecue in Conference Room One. The turkey burgers, when Mr Lowery had last taken a tong to them, looked frighteningly pale and undercooked. Still she'd eaten them.

Wincing through the spasms, she shifted gear and grimly told herself that the bad meat would surely pour from her body, as vomit or otherwise, just a few hours from now -maybe the next morning at best. Reaching the homely little roundabout in Regal Coxstall, however, there came a deep shaking just to keep the bilge down a few seconds more. How weird; the muscles in her guts with the same determination and power as an extra limb, fighting to flex. Clutching the steering wheel, a good enough brace for her cold-sweat shoulders, she struggled to find a pose that might help as the nauseous feeling took hold.

There was the familiar advertising diorama of a Jeep parked at a 120 degree angle. Clear and ice-cold air swathed across the left-turn towards Regal Coxstall High Street. Marion painfully eased the steering wheel, slowly, slowly -catching the monkey. Then, as surely as a nightmare begins to seem contrived, the need to vomit faded. The marauding in her bowels -similarly pinched and under control.

Flurried stops-and-starts in the traffic at first allowed her to stare unthinkingly at the miraculously demure housing estate, the two petrol stations in the space of fifty yards -where Aalmesbury had just one, in a nook, to serve a ten mile radius. Here, how the cars crawled loyally and without complaint between the commuter belts. It was all very tolerable. That recent report that told how the apocryphal average Briton would wait in a queue just five minutes before storming away. Marion thought; this is fair enough. Anything was preferable to actually thinking about it. In front and behind, the thick-set office women and salesmen concentrated intensely but weren't in the least hurried.

And as the line of icy hoods and hazard lights mounted in front, this angered Marion. That, of all those returning home or running Christmas chores, it was probably she alone who saw the dithering as something that was surplus to requirements. Why couldn't they just move, become co-ordinated? Her hand gravitated to the horn.

The built-up high street of Regal Coxstall was usually a fast-moving affair, even with the busy comings-and-goings of ma-and-pa shops, newsos, tiny chain stores. Possibly the tail-back could be explained if the top of town had been sealed off for the late-night shopping. Finally crawling through the tortuous jam, Marion saw this wasn't the case, not per se. Trudging around on the pavements were a dozen squaddies from the nearby military base. One of them casually held a giant chrome key in the style of a walking stick. A mayor's wife and mayor's-wife-types spun around on their dizzy housewife legs. It seemed the soldiers had just received the Freedom of the Town, though it was a blasted ridiculous time to have held the ceremony. Marion's anger still receded, though: at least she was in, finally.

The twisting lane that passed through to the car park was busy with flouncing loom-band-makers and West Country jive-men, drawn home with the dimming of the sky. Also, out of nowhere, a cluster of those Malaysian or Singaporean twenty-something Army-exchange students who regularly loafed around the military barracks, always carrying luxury electrical products that Marion would've automatically ruled out, even with her disposable income. In no way racist herself, she noted their reluctance to use even pigeon-English, the tangible contribution they were incapable of making beyond buying over-priced consumer products that shouldn't exist in a sane economy -as if the people who were racist missed one of the most blatant outrages of all. She wondered what would happen if she fell in with them and simply threw money at Sam's Christmas present. A feeling of bleakness followed; it was surely what she'd end up doing.

The mid-size car park had all the overflowing, space-searching tension she'd ever known. More even than that. A couple of heavy-set Chelseas chanced their luck by making jarring turns along the columns. Marion saw no option but to drive around, and around, with a delicate consideration to keep the cars behind her moving just as purposefully. Nobody worried about the slushy snow, there being no risk of sliding now, just the ridiculous debris of a childish drama soon finished. And wasn't it proof that the situation was truly ugly, the way all the spaces were taken, even in the tight right-angles which spread into waxy little cloisters. She drove back towards the entrance-side, still wildly hoping for a space, scanning the ranks with far more concentration than she flicked the gear stick, padded the throttle, turned the wheel with her delicate wrists.

A narrow-though-inviting gap was glimpsed between two hunched little runabouts; she approached with her heart in her mouth. Even at the last moment, she fully expected to see a micro or Smart car coyly nestled in. But the space was empty and she entered, feeling blessed -marginally.

Reaching to the back seat to snag up her Barguzin Sable, rather than opening the back door to give it the respect it deserved, Marion glimpsed inside her mind, the strange urgency. Alternating across the slushy paved rises and the dark asphalt, she moved to the shining arch of the shopping centre. The next obstacle came from a dry patch inside the entrance; a dagger-faced soldier wagging a collection bucket in the radius of her torso.

On the verge of a simple, 'No thank-you', she instead made the decision to clamp her mouth shut completely -perhaps silence was better in terms of not patronising him. Just be as brisk as the world itself.

Unfortunately, from an echoey place that had no knowledge of the world, "That's alright, love. Just thought you might like to give something back, that's all".

Marion moved on, while her astral self lingered beside the beret-wearing beef, frozen in the shock of utter indignation. A wisdom in self-knowledge goes nowhere, the truth that, hours from now, days, she'd be tossing around in the early hours, rehearsing in perfect elocution all the ways she could've made the man feel guilty.

That hideous danger -breeding affected-messiahs, for all anyone knew, provoking more terrorists into existence than there were in the first place. And always on an exagerrated-liberal agenda that had nothing to do with Britain.

But onwards, she told herself. The place gave the impression of being a covered shopping centre. Once through the blocky channel of the entrance, however, there was a renewed exposure to the sharp winter sky, the frosty paving slabs. Marion didn't think to decrease her speed-

And skidded, falling violently onto her leftside hip and hindquarters. Ironically, it was the right-side heel which had snapped. Two hundred pounds worth of designer shoe looking like something from a child's art show. Accompanying the heart-in-the-mouth, a deep-rooted pain spiked in her coccyx, though from the start she sensed it was no kind of permanent injury. Humiliation? A man in a football manager coat and tartan baseball cap half-heartedly tried to help her up. The lurking squaddie loafed away, jigging his collection bucket and smiling to himself.

But onwards, forever. The long striplights of the mid-to-high fashion store swept up her eyes with a unique-wintery buzz; presenting a fierce white light but also showing off every filament, every fuse, node, reflector, all in precise chromey detail. She picked out a random pair of plimsoles to see her through the commute home. Then -the search for a present for Lila, hurry. Not because she was easier to shop for than Sam, but maybe just -she'd be more forgiving, more awed at anything her eternally-upward-mobile sister might choose for her.

Marion stared at the lightweight spring-into-summer scarves. There were some eye-catching designs of deep-black-on-blue sericins, every bit as stylish as Lila deserved. Except -something elusive stopped her dead, from looking at the scarves, from anything except the truth that she was trapped beneath oppressively white ceiling plates, in an atmosphere that was truly the muggiest she'd ever known. Inexplicable humidity played at her brow. She felt nauseous, faint; the imploding-exploding agony in her bowels and stomach had returned in mind-bending force. Throughout, a romantic and overly optimistic idea of getting to the till and paying before all hell broke loose. She thumbed out her credit card, closed to within a few feet-

But it wasn't to be. The stomach spasms over-ruled her ability to think. Surrendering to the light-headed impulse, she vomited several mouthfuls into her handbag, the only possible avenue. There was also a strange and relaxed feeling around her camisole, a wetness. To add insult to injury, she'd soiled herself like a child.

She reeled. The till girl, hovering near the open desk, beheld her with hatefully pitying eyes. The few other shoppers, all of whom looked like the caricature female roles from a Tin-Tin book, were shocked, uncomprehending.

Saying, "Oh my god, are you alright?"

The look in Marion's eyes, as she came down from utter desperation, contained more irredeemable bitterness than any human could realistically be expected to deal with. Beyond doubt. Slowly there was just enough energy to proceed, the vomity handbag held delicately at hip level. Using her left hand she picked out the nearest female skirt and tights, not even perceiving the style or colour, then promptly paid for them. Her credit card, she noted, had been poised ready between her ghostlike fingers for some time.

"Do you need to sit down, or some water?"

The shopgirl's manner went beyond natural concern, into the realm of cloying, cultivated, jingo-fashionable-sensitivity. Really, all Marion wanted to do was find some way to growl out, 'I am more than this ugly incident that's happened to me. Why would you think otherwise?'

Instead, "No, thank-you".

She moved to leave. The nightmare rotated in turn. Through the polished windows, in the blue-wintery courtyard, she saw two squaddies laughing at her with huge gusto. One was a borderline fat man with a moustache. The other: chiseled handsomely but fake-expressive to the point of being a drowning male model, never more so than when he mimed the way she'd been sick. The most terrible thing was the way they continued to laugh and smile even when she'd made eye-contact, as if she was no more than a thoroughly-unrealistic character from a comedy film.

The sadness and the hatred were so profound as to be completely new emotions, to be temporarily put aside as she rushed around the corner to the public lavatories. Speeding along, she sniffed and sobbed a little, but why? Just accept it. The stale smell of urine was bizarrely strong, not just in the cubicles but seemingly ingrained in the plaster itself. As she delicately stood on a safe island of hand towels, cleaning herself with cistern water, changing into random clothes that didn't suit her, the tumbling thoughts in her mind proceeded; 'Regal Coxstall. Really, Your Majesty? And you're putting your name to this public toilet? Part of a car park which earns the council hundreds of pounds an hour, but apparently still not enough to have the place smell like something other than a giant slab of solidified urine?'

She hated the way she was thinking; the way it felt like a feverish surge at all points in her brain.

'Regal Coxstall. Perhaps, Your Majesty, your head has been turned purely by the military base? That's a very crass assumption, and I apologise, but-

'Yes, I apologise. War is an absolutely necessary action to prevent approaching evil. And sometimes you need to fawn and creep over things that are absolutely necessary, give them all sainthoods, and while you're at it, make them an industry. As if you're not all utter fools'.

Weakly, still quickly, she walked back to the car with the all the bitter arguments in full control.

Of course, there were soldiers present. Alongside her Civic, they'd spontaneously postponed driving away in order to throw snowballs at each other in the middle lane of the car park. Their Lexus hatchback was parked in such a way that the open back door was directly opposite Marion's driver's seat.

On the back seat -two large collection buckets brimming with cash.

A child, doing something mindless, wholly out of control - she lifted the collection buckets cleanly through to her passenger seat, threw her coat of them and quickly drove away.

Xx.

It was not a dream. She knew that now, very distinctly. Still there was no denying it had all the traits and the logic of a dream -her doing something very uncharacteristic, far from home, being chased, the need to keep moving or face some mysterious, unconscious oblivion. It was eerie; this was something that had never happened before, to anyone in the world. She was not the type of woman who stole, still less the type who went to prison. Marion wondered if it would ever really happen.

Low-set domestic cars bulked up and moved quickly, hypnotically. Flurries of dust mote snow came and went. Marion had no desire to listen to the radio. Still the radio played as a phantom in her mind, telling news from the terrible days to come. 'The search continues for an estimated thousand pounds worth of 'Friends with the Forces' donations which was stolen in Regal Coxstall yesterday by bank operative Marion Crane. Miss Crane, identified by CCTV at the scene, is believed to have fled the area in a silver Honda Civic, and is now the focus of a nation-wide police manhunt'.

Swirls and clouds of icy countryside followed her highly-conscious glances in the rearview.

'Earlier today, the Prime Minister himself spoke out on the crime, "Well, this is a callous, despicable crime. To have taken advantage of people's sense of charity at Christmas is particularly galling, and I know that the British people simply won't stand for it".

If there was the logic of a dream, it was the logic of an adventure dream, where even the most law-abiding citizen knows implicitly the cunning of a John Buchan or Geoffrey Household chase-story. In the twenty-first century? With a delicate draw of breath, she swished onto a slip road towards the first little town off the motorway, 'Edmonhall'. Onto the high street, she found a branch of her own bank and parked outside in the fragmenting slush. Security cameras? She saw nothing, but felt confident, anyway, that the manhunt couldn't be fully co-ordinated yet.

No going back and no going home; simply. She used a couple of tricks really only known to bank clerks to withdraw more than the standard daily limit of her bank account, mostly side-stepping insurance quotas and optional regulatory levies. Behind the glass was a business-like middle-aged woman, and looking at her, Marion felt sure she understood how Judas felt among the disciples. Maybe a shell-shocked fallen angel at the beginning of time.

Back in the cage, on the motorway, her strange, body-temperature-fever resumed. She tensely angled her head to change lane, tensely scanned the outside and oncoming lanes for glowering police wagons. By now, surely, the dragnet would be falling. Maybe twenty or thirty miles passed before the tension became an autonomous force in her limbs, impelling her to take another sliproad, and another, into a mad hinterland of B-roads set above marshland. Leading eventually to a nearby town, presumably -the solitary Christmas bauble wired to a floodlight high above the hastily-chosen layby suggested -outskirts.

Stepping out onto icy grit, she carefully moved to the crystalline verge and, glancing furtively, smothered her number plates with frost and snow. There was no distinct sound of approaching cars, only the far-off swishing from the motorway, which nonetheless brought fear. Back in driver seat, the coldness hadn't eased at all, with crisp little clouds rising from her sharp-sculpted mouth in the wing mirror.

"Mihiri", voice-activating the phone set high on her dash. "Give me the internet search results for the words, open-bracket, 'Friends with the Forces', close bracket, open-bracket, 'theft', 'stolen', close-bracket. Limit the results to the past three hours".

The chime rang after a tension-filled ten seconds. "There are no results in the past three hours for 'Friends with the Forces', 'theft', 'stolen'".

"Mihiri?", her eyes remained remarkably steady. She did her best to think only of the problem at hand. "Disconnect yourself from the sim-card, use wireless and bluetooth only while I'm addressing you with these questions. Turn off any output that might be detected by the police. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Marion. I understand".

"Tell me the area of Britain with the lowest coverage of police".

"The area of Britain with the lowest coverage of police is -Summerisle, Scotland".

"No. Tell me the area of Britain within-", she moved her eyes into the lowering winter sky, stared at her Archos, "-two hours driving distance of my current position".

"The area of Britain with the lowest coverage of police, within two hours driving distance of our current position is -Helmsley, Yorkshire".

Marion's heart moved bleakly. It was all so disconnected. Even the bright and open-hearted intonation in Mihiri's responses made her feel like a monster, henceforth a remorseless automaton.

"Mihiri, tell me the average jail term for-", she faltered.

From the very top of her lungs, she sobbed, then proceeded to cry as if she'd already been weeping for hours. Thru creased eyes, she saw herself being measured in coloured grids on the tiny screen, the face-recognition struggling to understand what was happening and give a response.

"Marion, the Samaritans live website is available twenty-four hours a day. Contact can-"

"How dare you?!", all at once the tearfulness vanished from her face. "How dare you suggest that I need that? How dare you? How dare you?"

She drove along the A65, then a fast-moving ratrun with no visible markings but a spectacular piney backdrop. Her furtive eyes concentrated on the surface details of mighty brown spruces, tough and deep even as they were facing down winter. They moved in an REM-reaction to the phantasmagorical voices making their breezy reports. The first soldier who'd assailed her with the collection bucket.

'She was just an unpleasant sort of character. I wouldn't say what she did was opportunistic. She was striding into that high street -and she was obviously a con-artist looking for a hit. The fancy coat she wore was something that cost about two weeks of my army wages. I hope she goes to prison and gets a taste of the real world'.

And the too-much-make-up housewife who'd glared at her as she'd vomited,

'I mean, I wonder if she was drunk? Not that it's an excuse for what she did. You know the way drink brings out the worst in people; she just had a really cold expression at everyone she looked at. She certainly didn't care about any of the people who'd given up their time for charity'.

The voices buzzed and chattered to saturation point. To a degree, she was learning well how to function in the world of guilt. Mechanical turns down Y-junctions and groomed bypasses became a matter of course. There was an idea, also, that her subconscious was seeking cover in the huge, sharp mountains, the grainy recesses. At some point she'd entered the Lake District proper; not just the huge peripheral of moor and marshland, but St. Johns-in-the-Vale, Castlerigg, Helvellyn. A next step in the hastily-formed plan of action, which already seemed to have been firmly embedded in her mind for a thousand years -pull in to a sizeable lakeside town, buy two outsized suitcases into which she'd transfer the collection money.

Marion believed in post-traumatic stress only vaguely, still there was a petrified jittering in her legs as she rushed from the housewares shop, replaying the escape from Regal Coxstall almost exactly. Eyes watched her from all angles, if not the police, the venomous general public, children, icy horror itself. She drove around the angular one-way system and sighted a burnt-out promenade in the park, already with a dozen rough teenagers lounging. As the evening got darker, the rough element would only get worse. Wondering, if she parked directly alongside their human zoo and walked away, invitingly leaving the keys in the door, would the stolen car be a time-buying decoy for the police to chase? She hesitated; the ever-elegant indents beneath her eyes creased as she dismissed the idea.

Clearly, there was more dark interplay to come between the fleeing mechanism and her subconscious. Increasingly she favoured the smaller roads, something in the bases of the huge mountains and lonely fields indicative of perfect seclusion. The blocking of the winter horizon by almost vertical foothills cast an aura of unashamedly mysterious, unearthly light, drawing her onwards into the dimness. She passed into one of the steepest valleys she'd ever seen, more striking even than the Rhineland and Alpine vistas she'd seen on her European holidays. On the right hand side was a sheer face comprising unyielding, hanging rocks and mushrooming trees. On the left was a series of mountains more akin to a colossal wall. And something around the Northern end of the mountain range, set against the empty green swells, intrigued her absolutely. Darting her eyes over the steering wheel, she realised: it was an exact geographical doppelganger of the luscious valley in Hawaii where they'd filmed LOST.

The sense of stark seclusion gave her courage. Any kind of concerted daylight was gone now, micro-specks of snow moving in the graininess like the calmest thing imaginable. A near-absence of streetlights was also strangely relaxing. She drove past a number of bed and breakfasts, hotels, motels, guessing that a conclusion to her fleeing would surely happen soon. In the meantime, on the far side of the lake, she made stern eyes through the black branches at the lapping water. Constant access by hardcore outdoor types meant that there were many straggly emergence-points to the pebbled lakeside -Marion opting for one of the semi-official pine tracks that moved in the general direction of wildlife-sanctuary marshland. For the final, daring push, she simply trundled and bumped the Civic to a choice section of the pebble waterline.

Marion shut off the engine, the passenger mini-light, now holding court in the supernatural dusk. Her lungs were consumed by the tangy, freezing air, "Mihiri, in the event of hitting open water, would this car float or sink?"

The chime rang on the tiny smartphone while the numerous data sources were collated. "Tests from the initial HSE design process for the Honda Civic tell that, doors sealed, front and rear airbags deployed and with a strong-to-moderate tide, the vehicle would float for around three minutes and then sink".

"Alright", said Marion the Warrior. "Is there any way I can activate the airbags without crashing?"

Another long pause to fit with the oblique questions. "Incidents of airbag deployment in the Honda Civic happen with the triggering of front and rear crumple-sensors by full stops of twenty MPH or above".

"Mihiri, how long would the Civic take to sink without the airbags deployed?"

"There is insufficient internet data to make an assessment".

Just a few sharp breaths was all Marion needed to get on with the terrible drama. She transferred the takings from the overflowing collection buckets into the two suitcases, her thin arms acquitting themselves well probably because of the pumping tension. Even in the profound dimness she saw five and ten pound notes being mangled in the sluice of pounds and silverwares; it was as though the people who put them there were specifically trying to reduce them to rags. And as for the high number of heptagonal coins -it reminded her of those early days at the bank when she'd been a simple cashier, the account holders bringing in deposit bags of twenty and fifty pence pieces. It reminded her of the metallic-wrapped sweets she and Sam ate as a matter of course on Christmas and Boxing Day. Except no; she put those thoughts from her head. Marion -be as likely to think about the deep night sky or the ultra-inhospitable woods, necessarily your new diorama.

Ideally, the car needed to float a short distance, out of sight of the shore, then sink cleanly to the bottom. She opened the boot and threw away the fire extinguisher, the mid-price wine she'd won in the raffle, the carton of de-icer -as far as lightening the load went, it was simply the best she could do. Probably it only counter-balanced the heavy rocks she wedged between the chassis and the accelerator, the accelerator and the clutch. Lunging quickly out of the door, once more freezing her hind quarters, she goggled as the silky sinking motion took ahold. Vast and primal, still faltering, down it went. The wheels continued to make progress even as the engine made sinewy flooding sounds. Submerged by a quarter. A half. The front tires, she guessed, were lifting free, and it was actually working. Willingly, the Civic moved completely offshore, down, the hood and boot becoming abstract pyramids. Three-quarters-and-a-fraction submerged -

The gleeful expression felt unusual on Marion's face; as the sinking stalled at three-quarters-and-a-fraction, it merged into an equally unusual cringe. The way the gulpy, billowing sounds had been so much like music now made their absence weird and hypnotic. She froze, but was still just short of full panic when blessedly-

The car was completely consumed beneath the crawling of the tiny waves. In an act of fierce imagination, she pictured this stretch of shingle on the brightest summer day, with the water at its most translucent, and still she guessed the car would look indistinct from the shoreline. Eventually it would be discovered by fishermen, or children in a dinghy, but by that time she'd be swallowed up in some sort of convoluted 'new life'. Or so the approximations of a plan suggested, pushing her on through the clumpy recesses of the forest edge.

Behind a perfectly anonymous tree far out in no man's land, she hid the two suitcases, wedging them down in a small ravine of badger rubs and tree roots. For the cover she chose two redwood branches that bordered on being full-size logs. The vibrant brown leaves would soon die while still providing a grimey shroud, perfect. Padding away, it occurred to her that maybe it was a bad strategy to leave the spot completely unidentifiable, and she returned to clip the shiney metal tag of her bank ID into a knothole.

It started to snow, dramatically.

The fast-moving main road, with its powerful headlights appearing so suddenly, scared Marion only slightly. She breathed, neatly forcing herself beyond any nerves, then tip-toed along the gritty rural footpath. Three big hotels lay ahead, on sharp curves in the road -so her short-term memory led her to believe. Anticipation of the huge floodlights and the linen-glowing balconies kept her mind busy.

Unfortunately, in the first hotel-

Over the old-fashioned tiles, Marion's stride felt fairly impotent without her United Nude heels. Confirmed, maybe, in the way the hostess scampered around behind the reception without acknowledging her. She waited a spell. Very unprofessionally, the receptionist stooped and concentrated deeply on which files needed to be fed into a shredder, which needed to be filed elsewhere.

"Hello, let me just finish this, then I'll be with you" -without eye-contact, showing such ill-advised confidence -based on an idea that if a tone of voice is brisk enough, it automatically denotes deep professional acumen.

Hateful. Marion turned on her heel and walked out, around a further sharp curve where the huge lake petered out to grey-glinting marshland. She paced forwards, head level. There was no moon, yet the thick atmosphere had made a pact with the small trees to cast film noir density, everywhere.

On steep rocks were ancient Viking symbols recreated by clever local artists. Like blithe demons, also, the helmet lights of rock climbers were visible, sprawling slowly just a quarter of a mile above her head. Why weren't they afraid of slipping and falling in the dank atmosphere? She hurried now, thinking of nothing really bar survival. Handbag shoulder strap caressed, handsome jaw clenched, simultaneously taking steady pulls of mist into her pointed nose -her strides grew a lot more powerful. Onto a stretch of road where there were no snaking bends, as ever no streetlights; a doubtful feeling caused her to feel lightheaded -what if there were no more hotels ahead, and she was forced to hurry backwards and forwards looking for sanctuary? That would indeed be a nightmare.

Then, from a coy position on the mountain-side recess, there it was -a huge board with an artistic purple floodlight.

BATES HIKING CABINS.

VACANCIES.

She made for it, into the natural indenture of rounded rock. A series of plywood bungalow cabins spread along in an 'L' shape. On the rise beyond, partially at home in the suddenly tall trees -one of the most gothic houses she'd ever seen. The delicate grey slats were husky, as were the windows. Signs of life didn't matter. Perhaps they never had. All of the general human bonhomie was summed up in the powerful Christmas bulbs tied between the porch struts, and on the fir tree in the reversing space of the small lane.

The snowfall didn't ease for a second. Marion struggled up the disintegrating landslide of black tarmac that was the main driveway. Goodness knew how a car was meant to cope, even a four-by-four. Stalling, dispersing, the snow faded to nothing. Regardless, the winter atmos was owned by the black woodland; it was enthused in the soil, far down in the impenetrable earth. Marion approached the cabins feeling stark. There was a slightly more fortified section at the tip of the 'L' shape -she guessed this was the book-in office, and prepared to knock. She snaked her wrist, braced her knuckles in a tense aura.

But no connection was ever made. A strikingly tall, slim man approached from around the corner. He smiled energetically, the black creases either side of his mouth indicative of some -pathological introversion overcompensating in torrents.

"Hello. I'm sorry to have arrived so late. Your board at the base of the drive said you've vacancies?"

The man made a probably-well-used-joke, "That fact is true. Twelve cabins, twelve vacancies".

"I'm glad I've missed the Christmas rush", Marion tried.

"There's no Christmas rush, really. Between the landslides and the winter weather, our little lodge is practically dead at this time of year".

She spread her velvet-covered palms, "I'm here to save the day!"

The man quickly absorbed this. His smile moved as if spring-operated. "Well, if you're alone, and ready to come in, you can follow me to the reception, if you'd like?"

"Thankyou".

They clumped their feet towards the most substantial cabin in fits and spurts, the awkwardness of Marion's new friend strangely becalming her. As calming as anything could be. She looked towards to furthest cabin of the 'L' formation, the way it was almost-almost integrated within the long branches of the woodland. Thinking, of the twelve, this might be the wisest choice. Because of the angle, it was the area best hidden from the road. Also - visions of the likely-inevitable police manhunt, a wince-browed constable making a systematic search along the row of buildings -while she surreptitiously slid through a window and away through the trees. It was a strange, melodramatic way to envision things. Then again, thinking, wasn't this exactly what her life had become?

Her host grappled with the office door knob, smiling at the strain. He was so bizarrely tall and thin, but not in the least bit gaunt. Maybe avuncular. There was only one real way Marion could classify him. He had the type of frame that collarless leather jackets were made for; at the same time, however, he could only ever be defined by the fact that he was exactly the sort of man who'd never wear a leather jacket. This was tragedy number one. No doubt there were others.

A corner was rounded. An old-fashioned light-switch flicked. By now, Marion felt supremely tired. There was one thing that woke her up instantly, though. Bounding around the office space was an adorable, sandy-coloured mongrel. Tail wagging, his strikingly short legs didn't prevent him from placing both front paws onto Marion's knees and going wild with excitement. After all the uniform hatred of the last few hours, the sudden burst of love made her want to cry. On his collar was a Christmas tree decoration.

"Juno! Leave our guest alone!"

"No, no!", Marion gulped. "He's wonderful!"

Except Juno's master continued to look pained. "No, Juno, get down! I'm afraid he has such sharp claws. I try to take him for long walks so they'll wear down, but it never seems to work. And the last thing you need on your naked knees -I mean, your", he blushed massively, "-stockings, are, uh, claw-marks".

The man was so awkward and un-conceited, she almost found it refreshing.

"I take it you're the owner of the lodge?"

He loosely shook her hand, after absent-mindedly wiping a palm across his trousers, a subconscious tick that he believed himself unworthy. "Yes, I'm Norman Bates. And this is Juno the Dog".

"Marli Samworth", made up on the spot.

Norman took a backwards step and rotated his shoulders, as if he found this to be such joyous progress. He bounded behind the waist-high desk and fished around in a cardboard box until he found the ledger.

"Do you know, you might just be the last guest ever to stay at the Bates Hiking Lodge? By the New Year, my little family -Juno, my Mother and I- will have emigrated to America, to Los Angeles. So you're really a very honoured guest".

Said Marion, "Los Angeles. 'The City of the Angels'. I'm jealous".

Confusion quickly ebbed into Bates' dry and narrow face. "The City of Angels? I've never heard that before. Why do they call it that?"

"I don't know!", smiling; she really didn't.

"Is it a religious thing?"

Continuing to smile, "I'm sure I don't know!"

Bates shook the confusion from his head. "Well, Mrs Samworth, let's get you booked in. Do you have a vehicle?"

"No, I actually came by coach".

Studiously, "Of course. And, do you have your credit card? I'll just make a print".

Once again flustered, she fished around in the strange new handbag. He purse was upside down and wedged fast. A combination of sharp concentration and exposure to the idyllic warmth of the office made her light-headed. "I should like to use -some of my Christmas raffle winnings- and pay by cash, if I may -I just need to-"

She detected the complete shut-down of her consciousness, though evidently, it was only a split-second affair. Amazingly, she didn't even drop from her feet, merely swooning so that Bates became rigid at her side.

"Mrs Samworth! I'm inconsiderate! Come through to the back room! There's an easy chair!"

Bowling-pin ankles moving scissor-like, she proceeded through the golden recesses, the sound of Mr Bates berating himself like some Greek God suddenly self-absorbed over mistreating mortals. Dominating the room was an easy chair, and her heavy limbs clung to it at once. Solid thoughts; your nightmare has made you like an old woman. And where there should be sexual tension, maybe that classic fear of rape, there's simply -nothing.

Continued Bates, "You've spent all day on your feet, travelling, trudging, and then I've kept you standing bolt upright!"

She lolled her head, stared into his eyes: illuminated orbs that were nervousness-incarnate but also -zest, optimism.

"It's alright, Mr Bates. It's not your fault, is it?"

It worried Marion, dimly, that he might start to believe she was a hustler. Alleviated by Juno jumping into her lap and allowing her to stroke his light fur. She continued, "I've had a traumatic day. You might say, the most traumatic day of my life. But I'll be alright".

"No one should feel that way at Christmas", said Bates darkly.

He brought her a glass of water. With the lifting of her head, she was brought in to the main focus of the small room; taxidermised birds, a dozen or more. She stared and stared. Such a polarising phenomenon. People either hated the idea, a few people might be ambivalent, most judged it to be morbid. But the first impression, for Marion -the visceral, transcendental impression- why are there real, woodland birds, frozen in time, staring in wonder from the top of filing cabinets and shipping crates? For goodness sake, it was less like the mildewy stately homes one would normally associate with taxidermy and more like a science-fictiony intermixing of realities, something like that.

She darted her eyes across the delicate brown-and-yellow wings of a starling-size bird and narrowly convinced herself it wasn't alive, not in the slightest degree.

"Do you feel better, Mrs Samworth?"

"Thankyou, Mr Bates. A little".

"Call me Norman", he beamed.

Marion nodded and caressed the brittle plastic cup. In her examination of the time-frozen birdhouse, she tried to move her head elegantly. Daydreams of some post-apocalyptic world abandoned by humans, inexplicably clean, enthralling to small birds.

"I see you've noticed my livelihood. I mean, what will be my livelihood. I always practiced taxidermy from the time I was young. And then, about six months ago, a gentleman and his pretty wife stayed here from America. They were impressed by my birds. You might say they were enthralled. Of course, I was very abashed by all the attention. But it payed off! The gentlemen was a big-name artist. Mr Ochreman. As of next year, he's paying for my Mother and I, and Juno, to emigrate to America. Already, apparently, my work is selling for -oh, I don't know. Thousands of dollars. Some are featured in the most exclusive art galleries".

Norman stood back to admire his work in a pose of lean, clichéd pride. Marion looked meekly to a corn bunting. Constantly she tried to keep her eyes and mouth in a state of numb interest. Perhaps she succeed, perhaps she failed. In any case, Norman perceived something wary in her face.

Awkward-trustworthy eyes flickering, he explained, "Oh, it's alright. I know what you're thinking. But it's taxidermy in name only. These were never living creatures, except in the sense that I modelled them on real birds which I observed in the woods. Some years ago, I started to sense modern society's opinion of taxidermy. That the mere act was -bloody and disgusting. I always thought, certainly it's bloody and disgusting, but the precision and the skill re-, reac- redeems all that. The ability to capture a spirit so well gives it its own meaning. Now that I've started making the birds from scratch, that only makes it more satisfying. Perhaps even how God feels, if that doesn't sound too crazy".

Marion, "I understand".

"Of course, it was hard at first. I had to research how industry makes synthetic fibers and adapt the process to make artificial feathers. I had to spend four thousand pounds of my savings on an allylic polyacrylate weaver, which upset my Mother very much. But now, at last, I've made the money back several times. But -am I boring you yet?"

"No", she smiled. He really wasn't.

Norman beamed in turn. "Mrs Samworth, you must be hungry -and thirsty for something more substantial than water. I wish I could suggest something other than going all the way back to Keswick by Taxi. Even then, there'll be nowhere to eat beside expensive restaurants, and our local supermarket Booths -maybe the most expensive in Britain besides Waitrose".

Admittedly, out of nowhere, she was hungry, the conclusion of her frantic and exhausted mind; 'Perhaps I'll eat some leaves from the wood'.

"I'll survive, Norman, I promise".

"But could I fix you a snack from my house?"

She looked at him warily. "I could devour a sandwich, if it's not too much trouble?"

"Please", he suavely dismissed any difficulty, "what would you like inside?"

"Just -Marmite or Bovril, if you have any".

Norman nodded as if this was perfect serendipity. "I like Bovril, too. People talk about having a sweet tooth. I think some people have a savory tooth, a salt-tooth. I'll only be a moment!"

Juno's quandary; remain and continue to be made a fuss of, or follow his master and the clearly-detected codewords, 'hungry', 'eat', 'snack'. Happy confusion turned to crazy confusion as the mongrel wagged his tail and swept back his ears. Ultimately, though, "Juno! Come here, boy!"

In the eye of the life-changing storm, Marion inevitably thought about Sam, but curiously, only for a moment. It would be hideously unfair to involve him in all this. On close inspection, it struck at the heart of everything that was wrong with their relationship. Sam -never satisfied, but always so noble and grounded, able to survive. Marion? Similarly dissatisfied, but slowly becoming bitter at her inherently rat-raced lifestyle.

He deserved better, and there was no other way to look at it than that.

Curiously, her eyes felt baggy and vulnerable, but rather than crying, they did something else. Passing up over the bench-style utility locker, they took in the sight of the gothic house, the Edgar Allan Poe tombstone curiously redeemed by vanilla fairy lights. In what was presumably the kitchen, there were subtle signs of scurrying activity. It made Marion feel lightheaded again, maybe existential, that the hypnotic movements revolved solely around delivering her a sandwich. There was a pause in the shadowy ripples, as if Norman, too, had become distracted by the existentialism. She sensed him frozen on the spot, shoulders like duct-tape over a coathanger. The silence seemed to roar at everyone. And then -

Prompted by a childlike burst of Christmassiness, the radio was switched to a local post-100 FM franchise. Muted though it was, the tone was still guess-that-tune-in-a-nanosecond. And evidently, his mother, wherever she was, must have been too old or good-natured to mind music at such a late hour. Could she be a bohemian? But no, her son was as modest and straight-laced as they come.

Marion sat back and ordered her racecar thoughts into some kind of meditation, watched from on high in the curve of space. As something from a minimalistic radio play, she heard the plywood door edge open to produce Norman, the intense concentration as he delivered a bone-china plate. He placed the sandwich before her, and fairly coy, a young boy presenting something to the Queen, fully aware he didn't know the correct protocol, hoping his unusual smile would endear him. Marion felt like telling him that, last vestiges notwithstanding, she was no longer a beautiful woman, and no special measures need be taken to impress her. It had been coming for a long time, looking in the mirror each morning, the tightness of her mouth and such tired-looking eyes. Admittedly she never imagined the final transition would be so sudden, but the devil loves his abruptness.

"I wasn't sure about the cheese", said Norman. "Marmite and cheese slices can be such a filling meal. At the same time, I wasn't sure if there's any credence -any credulity- in that idea that eating cheese so close to bedtime gives you nightmares. And so I decided to leave it in the wrap, for your discretion".

The sandwiches and cheese slices looked so crisp and angular that her exhausted mind equated them as yet another a state-of-the-art exhibition piece, like the birds. She ate slowly; they were real enough.

Norman watched her steadily. Clearly it was a Robinson Crusoe, Man Friday dynamic. Probably more profound even than that. The solidarity of disparate souls in a medieval execution block.

"So tell me how you started making models of wildlife", she messed with the napkin.

A huge shake of the head. "Well -it's a long story".

"Are there televisions in the cabins?"

Said Norman, "I'm afraid not. They're pretty basic in that respect. No television, no Wi-fi".

"Then tell me the long story; it'll take the place of watching a TV show before I go to sleep".

Sitting on a high-armed office chair, the long-limbed man braced himself and arched forward. Speaking abruptly, "It all started with primary school. As all things probably do. When I say I disliked it, you might not be able to understand. I mean, classy and successful people generally love their school days, and that's fine, of course-"

The smile on Marion's face -small and brutally honest. "I'm actually not that classy or successful. Thankyou for thinking I might be".

"But if you had to live your life again", countered Norman, "you'd still go to school, wouldn't you?"

"I suppose I would".

Her host shook his head slightly. Casual-if-terse, he leant forward again. "From the age when I was able to think, all the lessons of school seemed to be so -eerily, profoundly- irrelevant. I know it's a big cliché for people to complain that school doesn't have much relationship to real, practical life. But for me, it was like a spiritual thing, something closer to me than my own skin. Even as an infant, I somehow knew that life is short. For one thing, I loved my Mother. I knew that before much time had passed, my Mother would have died, and I'd be nothing. How could they abuse my time like this? Maybe the feeling came from my Father having died before I ever knew him, but all the same, it's strange, don't you think?"

Marion took a small mouthful of bread, as if to give the matter the un-sentimental air which Norman seemed to prefer. After a beat, "I don't think it's strange at all. Sometimes, being sensitive can be its own reward".

"I remember science and mathematics being as abstract and arbitrary as can be", he continued. "But I also remember history classes, about the Saxons, the Vikings, the Romans. In my twenties, I really grew to love history. But at primary school, it seemed so -cheap. As if all the past civilisations had been sketchily made-up by bad and uninspired children's authors. The First World War was just some men, in rough green clothes, in a field. Throughout the whole sorry business, I remember thinking, I may as well be here as School".

"The hiking lodge?"

"Yes. My Mother first bought it a year or so after I was born. I knew every floorboard and every brass pipe. I was hypnotised, along with the woods, the lake-"

Put in Marion, "But didn't you have any friends that made school worthwhile?"

"I remember children who spoke to me", he conceded. "But at no point did I figure I couldn't live without them. And then in the space of two or three days, it happened; I had the small child equivalent of a nervous breakdown. Or maybe it was a full nervous breakdown. I remember my Mother walking me down our driveway to the school bus stop. And from nowhere I started pleading with her, that life is too short. That perhaps life can just -change. Why couldn't I just stay at home all day and help her run the lodge? Naturally, she was deeply upset and tried to coo me. But I became hysterical. I-"

Norman froze for a second and stared intensely at the space between her chewing mouth and the crisp white bread. "Marmite sometimes gives you heartburn. Are you sure it won't upset your sleep patterns?"

"I'm sure I'll be fine", said Marion softly. "Please, you were talking about the one morning in particular that you didn't want to go to school?"

Now his face remained steady; only his eyes relived the trauma. "Yes. And so, I begged and begged. It was all so horrible, I barely remember it, only that it went on for a long time and was -strange, unpleasant. I guess inevitably, she allowed me to stay home. I polished some of the cabins for her. In the afternoon, we went in to Keswick together. I went to windowshop in Lakeland Toys, and browse the books in the Library, while she went about her business in town. I remember the sight of her as she came down the stairs from the Civic Center. It occurred to me that she'd been talking to someone about me the whole time, trying to resolve my psychological problem. But as she came down the stairs, she was so tall and beautiful. She looked -resolved.

"She told me that if I hated school all that much, she would set things in motion to home-educate me. It annoyed me that she thought I was prompted only by hatred, rather than a legitimate, spiritual dislike of school. But I was so relieved, I didn't say anything. She thought I might change my mind in a few days. I did not. Every now and then we'd argue, but the plan to home-educate me remained intact, more or less".

Marion finished her last sandwich, tongue-cleaned her teeth. "Did it go well? I would have liked the idea of getting taught by my mother. Probably all mothers have an in-built drive to teach their children anyway, something given us by evolution".

"This is precisely what I thought. And she did. There was still a lot of wrangling with the government. We were regularly visited by a horrible lady from the Council, who looked like a witch and had an attitude that was flouncy, unsympathetic. She checked the curriculum was being followed, and that the atmosphere was conducive. Both my Mother and I hated her. We made fun of her behind her back. But at the same time I felt guilty that all this fuss was because of me. You have to remember that she was a single woman running a busy hiking lodge, and educating me on top of that. The guilt, you might say, was always at my throat. Isn't it funny how all your bitter emotions rise and fall inside of you?"

"It certainly is", said Marion, in an empathetic voice she'd never heard before.

"Nowadays I know, intellectually, most of it is society's fault. Every problem this country has, an economy stalled around academic and managerial jobs, 99 percent of people a dozen points removed from the production of any tangible goods. Children don't have the laziness or the conseq, -the cons- the conceit, that adults do. They're all about obeying rules and being rewarded with whatsoever they can imagine from day to day. Don't you think it would solve a lot of problems if all children were given the choice I had? Imagine, you could say to the average six year old boy, so full of life, 'You have two choices. You can either learn the minimum of mathematics and English, a few hours a day at home, get a manual job at sixteen and be able to do and afford whatever you want. Or alternatively you can work slavishly at school, and delude yourself in higher education. The only difference is, if you drop out of the harsh regime of learning, you'll probably never be deep enough in the rat race to afford a sports car, or three hundred thousand pound house, more than two children. But really, what are these things when you weigh them against being able to do whatever you want? Don't you think it would work, Mrs Samworth?"

Marion thought, for a long time, despite the delicate prompting of Norman's black eyes.

Her head said probably, perhaps, maybe.

And her heart said probably, perhaps, maybe.

"I think it's an interesting idea. Don't you ever have regrets?"

"Regrets are part of life", he said wisely, exacerbated by a bitter smile. "I certainly formed a plan. In the eighties, there was a shooting shop at the top of town, and in the window, overseeing the shotguns and the green-quilt jackets, there were these big stuffed animals. A young pheasant and a grouse that looked more like some avenging griffin from a legend. I considered that I needed something that would be my own little economy, that would give my Mother the extra revenue she deserved. The woods behind the hiking lodge offered an unlimited supply of units. And so I chose taxidermy!"

"What did your mother think, when you first told her?"

Brightly, "Oh, we had a few rows on the matter. A few more measures of guilt put inside me. But it's my guilt, I created it, I am equal to it".

"At least your guilt led to something productive", said Marion, playing the gruff psychiatrist. "Was it a hard skill to learn?"

Norman cast his mind back, fiercely.

"I ordered books from the library and became a subscriber to Breakthrough, the UK, US and German editions. The equipment I received through mail-order. And my career as technician of eternal life began".

Said Marion, smiling, regarding the very impious crow above her, "'Technician of eternal life'. It's certainly very pain-staking. If there's one thing I hate it's lazy art".

"Thankyou for saying so. I don't consider myself an artist, though. I'm not sure art even has any value. Just another one of those stupid human conceits we convince ourselves exists. I'm expanding on the work of God, through a very real need to make things permanent". He assumed a deeply creased expression as he heard himself talking, excused himself with an impish smile, "If you understand what I mean".

"Of course", said Marion. "I wish I had your passion. I wish I was as insightful".

"Everyone is insightful in their own way. You can see it in the movement of their eyes".

"Don't look at my eyes. I'm sure my make-up is a mess".

He leant back in his chair. Tense-to-confident in a subtle beat of his heart, less than an inch inside that rough, black sweater. "Has your day really been as unpleasant as all that?"

There was no consciousness in the long pause as she tried to remember the full horror. A brick wall came up.

"It's OK", said Norman brightly, as though they were both children. "I won't react in any kind of a crazy way. I won't hype it by saying, 'Everything's going to be OK'. Though if it was up to me, it would be".

Wistfully, she said, "It's funny how you mentioned guilt. I was driving home from work -and a lot of things went wrong all at once. But it was as though it happened just to -prove how easily I should feel guilty. But that didn't stop everything from changing, and now I just feel like someone's fed me a bag full of metal, and I'll never digest it. I know I've got to face it, but I'm scared".

Insisted Norman, "Christmas was always the time when I felt the least guilt. I know Jesus was meant to give us an amnesty on our sins anyway, but as a baby -there's something beautiful about that. Clean. Like everyone's worshipping him just because He's an idea, a character in a story, as simple and profound as that".

Into Marion's head flitted ideas of visiting a priest tomorrow and having him act as an intermediary as she attempted to return the money to Friends with the Forces. It seemed a solid plan, but there were too many variables and she was too tired to balance them. She braced the arms of her chair and prepared to stand. Norman sprang upwards and leaned forward into the tension of his ankles.

"It's late. You'll be wanting to retire to your cabin. Let me fetch you a key".

Marion remembered her cabin of choice, the one secluded on the end with the best line of escape through the woods. "I was thinking of the last cabin, past the corner?"

Norman struggled. "That hardly makes sense. The heating system runs by vents from the boiler in the office here. They get progressively less warm. I couldn't let you stay in Cabin 12, it's an ice-box. Besides, that's where I spend the best part of the night. There's a huge tyrrel owl who rules over the trees above the cabin; I've been trying to make a study of him before I have to say goodbye forever. I suggest Cabin One. It's closest to the boiler and you'll be warm, all night long".

Marion guessed she'd have to be swayed. She allowed herself to be led, Juno the Dog wagging his tail and following them into the weird scattering of snow. Again, though there were tall trees everywhere, the gaping enormity of Lake Derwentwater and the valley beyond was an ominous vision. There were no lights on the ridge, despite a copious slicing of smooth, grey roads.

"Here we are", Norman exhaled, only partially confident at the quality of his cabins. "You have the sofa, radiator, expandable beds, dimmer switches. If you need to move anything around to be more comfortable, that's really OK with me. I can never get to sleep facing the window, or with my head facing the door -or anything like that".

"I'll try to be a worthy final guest".

Taking shallow breaths, Slowing her heart to a sleep-like pace, she tried to ease-down. Because of his tiny legs, Juno the Dog barely reached her knees, then had to crane his head dramatically in order to nuzzle her hands. Always she wanted to stroke him, get every last bit of affirmation that she was a good person -but resisted, bowing her head to Norman.

"I was thankful for our conversation", she said.

"Sometimes it helps to turn things over in your mind. Besides, I'm sure it really won't seem so bad in the morning".

"I don't know about that. But it's good to be reminded you're not the only one who's lived through troubles".

Norman said tentatively, "From one lost soul to another. As Reeva Steenkamp said to Oscar Pistorius, 'Wow, these big houses can be scary at night' -to which Pistorius says, 'You find it scary? I'll soon have to sleep here alone'".

Marion laughed quite a bit. The comedian himself was hesitant, explaining, "That may have been in bad taste".

"That's why I'm laughing".

Eventually, Norman chuckled too. "At least I told it right".

Xx.

There were nights where sleep seemed utterly incompatible; you were sure you wouldn't get any, then somehow got just enough. There were nights, the ones where you waited for news about a loved one in hospital, when sleep came, but only with the proviso that you turn your mind into an expression of oblivion, total.

Marion knew that tonight would be an entirely new kind of assault on sleep, that it would take a thousand years, and would fail all the same. But -try anyway? She drew the thin beige curtains and hunkered down beneath the single blanket. It wasn't as if the exhaustion could mount forever.

She tried and tried to reach omega point, to even approach it through a mesmerising kaleidoscope of memories. Certainly there were visions of her childhood, and stories people had told her, dinner dates, holidays, promotions at work. It was like her mind was a house with each room pleasingly full of mementoes. The only trouble, she knew there was a plaintive monster on the prowl.

The monster was her soul.

When first she opened her eyes, really just as something to do, she stared through the broad doorway to the shower unit and wondered if the sensation of hot or cold torrents might be enough to drive her out of herself. She decided against it. Closing her eyes again, it was almost funny, the way she was literally doing nothing -just as surely as if she'd paused at the top of an escalator to stare obstinately into thin air. At once, Marion intuited: a physical gesture must be made, a promise that the next day, life would at least be survivable. She sat upright and stared blankly at the wall. Perhaps writing a confession, on Bates Lodge writing paper no less?

Except no. To express her vast, neurotic guilt would only make them hate her more. Just then it was doubtful if her previous resolution to confess would even make it through the night. Perhaps it really would be easier to try and start a new life, strained and risky though it would be. Back to square one, hope it's not a trapdoor. But she needed variables.

Hauling on the strange clothes once more, she resolved to go outside and stare at the spot where her car had sunk, partly to gauge if ever it might rise, mainly just to face her demons. Beyond that, there was a weird little desire to look into the sky, see the steady running lights of a high-up jetplane -cosmopolitan dreams still existent. Walking at a delicate pace down the track, it was bizarre how strongly the air smelt of gorse, heather, sheep dung. The countryside was another world. Perfectly distinct, therefore protected always by fate. To Marion's conscious mind came visions of being condensed and swallowed up in the distant trees, maybe the bracken, the insidious thorns of the marsh basin. Sometimes she looked back towards the lights of farmhouses like a diminutive Christmas display.

She missed her co-workers at the bank. The sparky and smiling children whenever they came to visit at lunch breaks -would they ask what ever happened to Aunty Marion? At best, the boys, little Joe and Alex, might be intrigued that she'd taken up the adventurous life of a fugitive thief. The girls, like Olivia and Cassie, would merely be confused and dismayed. All of life, thought Marion, was like the Woody Allen joke -the man whose brother thinks he's a chicken, 'But I need the eggs'. In the film, it had been compared to the delusion of modern romance. Now she knew, equally, it could be applied to everything.

Entering the plank trail that moved along to the rugged lakeside; her footsteps on the dank wood sounded distant and lonely to the eeriest degree. And overhead, the ridgeway-cum-mountain-top, black, still with such a tactile quality, nothing ethereal, all to prove that the whole world was now a scrambling escape route.

She approached the lakeside wood. There was also something about the tall trees, the way there was such dense and murky foliage even between the naked trunks. It was the sort of place that would host deer or stags. In the gloom it was impossible to see them, of course. Could she even begin to approximate the area of shingle where she'd disposed of the Civic? It was doubtful; still Marion trawled on.

She followed the fuzzy-black cove. It was maddening to think that, surely, she was heading in the right direction, but where was the distinct dip that had allowed the car to slip low? Through the deep-black landscape she'd made too much of an arc, maybe. She hurried towards glimpses of the lapping and reflection-free lake.

What sprang up in front made Marion's breath whirr in her lungs. Several shrill screeches overlapped, accompanied by huge daggers of light stabbing wildly across the bay. She much desired to flee. Only as her legs staggered backwards did she understand. The frantic screeches were made by a complex winch system, just narrowly glimpsed through the trees and belonging to a huge flatbed. The daggers of light; the LED torch beams made by milling policemen.

The car was discovered, and being raised. Already. It was incomprehensible.

"Oh my god!" -it was intensely rare for Marion to exclaim under her breath. As an alternative to fainting, perhaps it was OK. She felt physically sick, and the quivering in her belly was matched by her desperate lunges, stumbling low and at speed the way she'd come. In the seconds that followed, in fact from the instant she'd first glimpsed them, the torch beams were devilishly perceptive in the nigh-pitch-black nightscape. They roved the air. They poised motionless like sniffer dog snouts. What had previously been a dagger-shaped beam filled the air around her shoulders in a satin-reflected cloud. A frighteningly near voice, frighteningly energised, "There's someone out there".

Marion had no idea why she didn't run outright. Because the world was such an unpredictable balance of guilt and innocence, and people, fate itself, just expressions of the strange toying. Entering the misty black, she moved foot-around-foot in accelerated cat-steps. Behind, there was no noise except the powerful winch. Nevertheless she anticipated the gliding footsteps behind her. Rough hands twisting her arms, gruff voices, handcuffs. There was a dim desperation to make it back to the cabins, but mostly the petrified tension removed any thoughts from her head. Combined with the exhaustion -delirium was falling. At the familiar bulging landslide, the entrance to Bates Lodge, there was no sign of any immediate pursuers, but if this was any reprieve, it did nothing to ease her fear. The panic was consuming everything. Ticking like fleas, twitching like an animal dreaming.

She could not stay at the lodge, this much she knew. Once again there came visions of running through the hilly crevices of the woodland, running onwards forever. Christmas. What had Christmas ever been except the strings of vanilla bulbs wound tightly around the porch of the Bates family home? Barely conscious through fear and fatigue, she splayed her forearms and rested her temple on the cabin door. Something strange happened when she inserted the key; it wouldn't make even a quarter rotation. Probably, she realised, in her tiredness, she hadn't locked up in the first place.

The interior was black-blue. An intuition prevented her from turning on the lights as she eased forward -breathing, far from under control, possibly even ravenous for oxygen like someone emerging from a dive.

From a particularly dark corner, the amorphous figure of man approached. She flung out her arms to drive him off before he could connect. Fairly innocent yelling came. It was nothing that would halt Marion's desperate struggle, since this was now a full-on an invasion of police, an invasion of guilt and horror from all angles. It could well be a last opportunity for escape. Amazingly, with her tired legs, she managed to drive the figure back through the outermost door to the shower unit. They both stumbled, the man more so than Marion. A sharp crack was heard within the base of the shower.

Adrenaline up, Marion felt liberated, only just. She moved foot-to-foot, left-to-right, but there were still no bearings to be taken. With a clear sense of the on-going fight, she slammed her forearm against the oversized light switch.

To see Norman Bates unconscious in the ceramic footwell, bleeding copiously from a broken skull.

Xx.

Yelling his name, once, twice, three times, brought nothing. She applied pressure, though she guessed that bringing the ooze under control meant very little about any damage that could've been wrought to his brain.

Just outside of her reach, Juno howl-barked and wagged his tail simultaneously. He smiled tentatively, the tiny translucent teeth, the cuteness making her feel damned -absolutely. She wondered whether to check for a pulse, decided that she had no idea what it would signify even if she did. Dynamic action was needed. The tall body had been hauled carefully across her knees and abdomen; now she prepared to strike away across the room. Likely, her astral self moved before she did. There was a tingle.

This, of course, was Cabin Twelve. In her fear and her tiredness, she'd become stupidly confused and entered the wrong door. Somewhere, in some infernal dimension, a connoisseur demon was laughing heartily. Not that Marion had time for irony herself. Among Norman's anatomical study tools on the table was a plastic knifette. Marion scrappily used it to tear the arm from her vest. Testing the stretchiness, she wielded it into a tourniquet. As feared, the blood came through in a knife-shape, but not quite dangerously, not quite dramatically. 'What are you doing?', Juno wagged his tail and tipped his head.

The blood held steady in a copper-leaf shape. She fingered the pulse at Norman's neck and it felt steady enough. Hurrying all the same, she arose like a relay athlete and swept along the broad, slanted porch that linked the cabins. On the bedside table of her own little cell, there was Mihiri.

A zen-like singlemindedness controlled her dialing hand. The very dark side of zen.

"Which service do you require -?"

"Ambulance".

"Can you tell me your address?"

Juno, who'd carefully followed her, barked loudly. The punchy little sound derailed her mind, just for a second.

"Hello? Can you tell me your address?"

Gravely, "Ambulance".

"Yes", the not-quite-Northern accent was kind beyond reason -but also insistent, like guilt. "We need your address, please".

On the wall-side counter, beside the kettle, was the rough paper receipt for her stay at the Bates Lodge. She stared at the old-worldly letter head. "This is the Bates Hiking Lodge, Lake Drive, Manesty, near Keswick, CA90 5HH. Please come, my friend Norman struck his head, and he's bleeding".

"Is he awake or unconscious?"

Marion kicked in to her pleasing telephone manner; after all, the bread-and-butter mode from all those years at the bank, "Just a moment, please".

Perhaps it was the post-midnight atmos that allowed her to shoulder past all the cabins so quickly, the tangy friction of the freezing air. Through the ominously wide door of Cabin Twelve, she discovered that Norman was still unconscious. Juno gave a partial howl in his wisdom of what was going on.

"He's completely out cold. What should I do?"

"OK -an ambulance has been dispatched from Keswick Station, so they'll be with you shortly. Can you tell me your name, please?"

Marion gave an inward shrug, followed by a sob. On the spot, "Olivia".

"Olivia, you might need to apply pressure. How badly is he bleeding?"

"I've wrapped a cloth around it. The blood's pooled out to the size of a cigarette box -but I think it's holding steady".

"Can you tell me if he's bleeding from his nose or his ears, or just his skull?"

"No", Marion inhaled sharply. "Just from the skull".

"Alright then, just try and keep him warm, put a blanket around him if you have one, and the paramedics will be with you shortly".

"Oh thankyou".

"Is it just you there?"

Marion stared daunted in the direction of the deep windows. "I think so".

"Listen carefully for the ambulance, you may have to wave them in".

A pause came, giddy even if it was well-earned. In her mind, there were dim warnings which she failed to pin down consciously. Listen for the ambulance. How would one know the sound of an ambulance? Listen for the siren. But if she was able hear the sound of the ambulance, wouldn't the police at the lakeside also hear it, and come to investigate?

Marion felt profoundly tired. Even the low-to-high howling of Juno didn't properly wake her. Even the fear of finally, deservedly being arrested. What little of her mind was active -dreamed. The sight of the multi-coloured klaxon-lights of the ambulance, set against the deep roadside canopy, the porch lights of the Bates household; as dark a mirror of Christmas activity as you could get. Juno gave throaty howls. The fresh shame in Marion was that she'd turned him from being an intelligent little companion to an unthinking animal. He was rigid and unheedful of just about everything. And worse -the howls of unthinking animals contain all the information anyone needs for this cursed world.

Her mind was collapsing, but she kept it together just enough to run down the curve of the lane and implore them, "He's here!"

The curly-haired driver nodded sternly and edged forward. If only they would kill the klaxon. She guessed even the sound of Juno howling would be enough to entice the distant police men to investigate. All the time it was the tension that was worst. Neither of the paramedics introduced themselves. As they hauled their gear, they bowed their heads to listen to any instructions she might give, but there were none beyond leading the way.

On seeing Norman, poor and intrigue-ridden at the best of times, they at last had a question. "How long has he been unconscious?"

Marion guessed, "Ten minutes".

"OK. Can you tell me if he's been unconscious the whole time, or was he awake at any point?"

"The whole time, I'm afraid".

The non-Rorschach pattern of blood marked a spot that was fairly easy to examine. One paramedic checked the extent of the crack while the other started work on a very sophisticated gurney.

"And what's his name, please?"

"Norman Bates".

"Are you his wife?"

As a reality-shifting proposition, it was enough to make her go numb and feel utterly lost. "I'm a guest here".

The more dominant paramedic, the one with the curly hair, stooped with his partner to lift Norman onto the stretcher. "Hopefully, his unconsciousness is just that -unconsciousness. But at the same time, the wound is quite deep. He'll need a handful of stitches. Do you know, is there anyone we need to contact, or anyone around here that needs to come along?"

Enter the terrible thoughts of Norman's mother. Marion wasn't strong enough by half to go up to the house and wake the old woman, explain to her what had happened.

It was a further descent into Hell. Even as the word passed through her throat, there was a traction to it, every part of it seeking an escape route, "No".

A plan came, probably the best she could formulate under the circumstances. Come the morning, then she'd go up to the house and speak with Mrs Bates. If the strength still eluded her, she would find it, somehow.

"When he comes around", she spoke faux-confidently to the paramedic, "would you ask someone to tell him that everything's fine, and he needn't worry about the lodge?"

"OK", promised the man at the head end.

She watched them loading the stretcher and sliding the door shut. An odd minute or two followed where not much happened. Perhaps they were doing paperwork. Perhaps they were reporting her to the police. Juno howled and whined; as she kept her eyes fixed on the tall, yellow-green ambulance, she automatically folded to her haunches to comfort him.

The monster drove away at a leisurely pace, illuminations going but with no siren. On the tight little road with its density of trees, it was probably standard practice to keep the penetrating lights alive. Along the lakeside, connecting scattered and rugged cliff-side inhabitants, rock-climbers, ghosts.

Marion stood tall.

It was best, she decided, to spend the remainder of the night in Cabin Twelve, ice-box though it was. The bed was alongside the window, and she could fall asleep while observing the house. As yet, no lights were on apart from the Christmas decorations. No doors were opening or closing. Mrs Bates had not yet started plaintively calling for her son. What would she be like? Pleasant like Norman? Or subtly weird, the way so many mothers-of-a-certain-age are?

Marion slid in under the rough blanket without changing her clothes. Juno was quick to leap up and snuggle at her side. She could sense he wasn't going to fall asleep easily. But as for herself, by now, there was really no choice.

Xx.

Bounding across open fields in shin-deep snow. It was the early eighties. Beyond the situation itself, falling asleep in such a perilous circumstance, it was the rarest of the rare that Marion ever dreamed about the past. Clearly, what did it: falling asleep in the midst of the raw winter air, flashing her mind back to that most distant of Christmas Days. She'd been due to start secondary school after the break; Lila had still been jaunting along in primary school. Life was easy. Life was curiously strained. It was an odd Christmas morning, unlike any other -the girls had opened their presents and been gratified, but still there was a curious length of time to wait before their parents would have finished cooking dinner. Marion had suggested the two of them get suited up in their thick winter clothes and go for a walk in the deep snow. It was probably a bad idea to allow (eight?) and (ten?) year old girls out into snow-consumed farmland, but something in the laid-back, climactic vibe had prompted their parents to say yes.

The fields at the Bristol end of Aalmesbury were vast, diminished only slightly by the twenty inch snow, in another way magnified by the uniform tone of unearthly white. They cleared their front door and immediately started bounding, gasp-laughing, falling and getting up again with no effort at all. In the near-distance, the bells of Aalmesbury Cathedral were going wild. On the far side of the valley, where in previous days the townsfolk had been sledging, today there was nothing as Christmas Day inactivity swallowed up everything.

And all the while, the girls headed for the frontier. From trips in the car, Marion knew that a little way to the North West was Tiquesbury, with its dominant church spire and funny troughs, around four miles distant. But what lay to the South was a mystery.

Now and then, Lila stopped to mess with the snow. She looked up at her sister and demanded to know, "What's out here?"

"Maybe another town", Marion bluff-laughed.

"Mum and Dad wouldn't want us to go too far".

Said Marion, reasonably, "I know".

Presently, they were at the furthest point they'd ever walked with their Father. On that occasion, in the summer, they'd observed a foreboding criss-cross of fields that was far too daunting to cross. But in the deep snow? No such psychological boundaries existed.

Marion guessed that people who grew up in the city had dream-landscapes where their metropolitan suburbs were stretched apart by tantalizing swathes of countryside. But if you grew up in a small, country town, the exact opposite was true. She'd often had dreams where, just a block or two away from their house, she'd been able to look across the fields to see the main business citadels of Bristol. The skating rink car park, Telecom Tower 2, Wills Memorial, the Cabot Monument overlooking the harbour. In fact, if this was a dream, they'd just about be entering that phantasmagorical Bristol now...

Freedom was the thing; out here, sunk in between the fields, the trees grew in some of the thickest mushrooming shapes she'd ever seen. Even decimated by winter they were unusually majestic, attention-grabbing. Out in the open fields, however, in what was normally grazing pastures, that was where their heads spun. Drawing in the stinging air, Lila said something like, "What's out here? It must be something".

Marion bounded forward. In control was a mad impulse to get as far as possible. The neat little question in her subconscious, what would it be like in this dream metropolis just a mile or two from home? What would the schools be like there? Certainly nothing like the schools in Aalmesbury, where the cosiness of a small town meant that all the classrooms were eerily similar to your front room, where the small number of pupils meant that teachers had to struggle to pretend not to hate all the rough children. Johnny Sutherland, Terry Higgs, Lizzy Gaston. If hatred was treated in such a weird way, what currency did actual respect or good will carry? In fact, what was the point of being a good girl at all?

There was a strange sort of subplot to the dream, barely recognised by her conscious mind. The phantasmagorical city would be discovered. Marion might then casually mention to her parents that it was out there, and it would turn out to be more convenient to send her there instead of Aalmesbury. Among the hundreds of undifferentiated children who came from the suburbs, all of whom wore sweaters instead of jackets, who lived for the football at the weekends, rather than helping out in their mothers' health food shops. It would be more challenging, but less conceited.

Unfortunately there was nothing out there across the fields, in reality. But it was always pleasant to dream.

The land was neither completely flat or swollen with valleys; there was always a clear look at the perspective-squashed fields and the distant horizon, while maintaining a sensation of being able to travel very far in just a quarter hour or so.

And so they walked quickly, enraptured.

"Wonder why there's no birds?", said Lila.

Perhaps that was odd. There was a line of willow trees that seemed so much like giant quills or bulrushes. The way the trunks were so regimented, and the whole line at a subtle angle, suggested they'd been planted on purpose, by mankind. Another landmark arose, though just barely because it was three-quarters consumed by a slant of snow: a long wooden fence. The girls bounded over, deeply satisfied that they were able to surmount the snow, always amazed by the crispness of it, the intangibility. Now the sudden accumulation of landmarks meant that there was a corner of sorts. They rounded the trees to a particularly flat section of fields.

And discovered a farmhouse, a thick, grey, rough-bricked affair. It was saved from looking so incredibly stark by a family playing in the adjacent field. Farmers? Except, farmers on the most luxurious day off; against the flatness of the horizon and a deep brown fence, they'd set a string of archery boards. The figures lowered their bows to stare at the girls in interest. The most prominent, a woman in a borderline-snazzy leather jacket over dungarees, shook her head in wonder.

Marion sidled in to stand beside a curved fence. It made no odds to be embarrassed or to run back across the expanse. In a way, their intrusion was offset by the activities of a lank young man who was filming the Christmas archery session with an oversized video camera. Periodically, he'd move a large six foot board around the standing figures. This, presumably, to stop the funny rasps of winter wind interfering with the huge mic' that was fixed above the camera like a bayonet. Combined with his careful footsteps, it was a highly skilled exercise -but Marion intuited, just a hobby, nothing professional.

He carefully framed the farm-lady as she addressed Marion and Lila, then picked out the girls themselves.

"Are you girls lost?"

Said Marion, defiantly, "Just out for a walk waiting for our Christmas dinner".

"But you've come all the way from Aalmesbury?"

"You can't see any fences or any hedges or anything, not in the snow".

The woman toyed with the end of her bow in a weird, casual, plucking motion. "I don't mean to tell you off. It's just there are ditches and troughs criss-crossing all the way back to Aalmesbury. How you didn't go up to your shoulders is amazing. You deserve a medal".

"We don't want one", Marion said silkily.

"So you just thought everything beyond Aalmesbury was a desert, or a prairie? You were just exploring?"

Marion tried to sound cool, intelligent. "We thought it was probably a prairie".

The farm-lady pointed out, "I guess it could be prairie. It could very easily have been prairie if our farm wasn't here. When my husband first brought us here, I looked at the way all the fields were tufted and grown together and I didn't believe we'd ever get it into shape".

Lila, who'd been impatiently listening to the borderline-uninteresting, borderline-grown-up conversation, jerked her sharp little face. "Can I fire one of your bows?"

The farm-lady laughed. The others, presumably all her sons, laughed right along. The camera-wielding son smiled as he adjusted the focus of his lens.

"Love, I think bows can be very dangerous, even for clever little girls. Your mum and dad would be angry with you if they knew you'd tried to fire one".

Lila glumly accepted this. The brightness of the snow brought out perfectly her unyielding little mouth. As meanwhile they gravitated inwards among the party of Christmas archers. The only person Marion just-and-just recognised, through the years; the older sister of one her toddler playgroup acquaintances. Toddler playgroup, such a naturally rich and cosmopolitan affair -it was odd to think that the confident and classy girl she'd looked up to as a tiny child had all along been part of utilitarian farmyard workforce. Lesson in social prejudice number one.

A teenage boy with a steady, expressive face knelt down and nodded for Lila to join him as he lined up an arrow on his sophisticated bow. Her face was profoundly selfless as she watched.

In a heartbeat, the oversized arrow hit the border between the red bullseye and the blue second place.

Said the teenager, "Eh? Eh? You like that?"

He maneuvered the bow across to Lila's grasp, the bulk but not the weight. She assumed an imperfect firing stance, and he hurriedly-unhurriedly corrected her. Now, in the quietness, with just a few Christmas party chuckles in the background, the crystals of snow seemed to be crackling.

"Do you see where you're aiming?", he asked her.

"Yes", said Lila honestly.

From behind them, the farm-lady was ever-jovial, "Just don't hit any of the cows".

The cows were milling a hundred yards away, and Lila couldn't have hit one if she tried, still the suggestion phased her for a second or two. Until she became steely-resolved - typical Lila. Marion wondered if she could feel the eyes on her.

The arrow mirrored the blue-red borderline of the bullseye, impressively, just like the boy's shot. As the motion was completed, one of the younger boys told Marion the name of everyone in their family, just casually, as if explaining the elements of a Christmas board game. It occurred to him suddenly that he should offer Marion the same opportunity Lila had, and angled his bow into her hands. She hardly hid her daunted expression. In the slow-aiming gait, it was hard to tell whether the stylised metal frame was particularly heavy or particularly light. It was funny though, the coldness of the snowy air helping mould her fingers into a grasp that was firm, secure. She pulled back the bow.

Among the farm workers was a man with a numb-looking face, who looked like he'd been through some kind of trauma in his life. Ray? He smiled softly as Marion aligned the tip of her arrow to the board. If even Ray was smiling, everything was right with the world.

She took her shot and missed spectacularly. The arrow flashed out into the snowscape, though no one rushed to retrieve it. The boy tried to think how she might have gone wrong.

"You've got power there, but it's just a reflex thing. You've gotta fool your hands into not giving you the jitters at the last minute. Sometimes it helps if you count down from ten, but then take the shot before you get to one".

Marion remembered scowling at this suggestion. She once again drew a firm, unassailable bead on the bullseye. She thought to herself, 'Ten...'

And took the shot. And made as precise a bullseye as any archer in history. Keeping her exhilarated expression under control, quite easily -she hurriedly took another arrow, made the shot, to arrive within half an inch of dislodging the last.

The dream, then, didn't end as dreams normally do. There was no flustered repositioning of time and location as her emotions reached a crescendo. The rest of that funny Christmas morning played out exactly as it always had, but now in timeless highlights. The happy-argument between the farm matriarch and one of her sons about whether eating some Swiss chocolates would spoil their dinner. Their quad-bike lift back across the white expanse, Aalmesbury Cathedral in the distance, oddly simple-looking. Then there was the shared secret around their dinner table as Lila and Marion remained quiet about where they'd been. It hardly even mattered, since their own parents were so joyfully absorbed in the cooking and the serving.

She idly gravitated to consciousness, not so much clinging to the warmth, rather basking in the knowledge her stressed mind had successfully managed to conjure a dream, against the odds. The warmth and the darkness secured her, then felt strangely jagged, just as jagged as folded limbs beneath a rough blanket.

Juno thumped his tail from the foot of the bed. Silver daylight had crept inside to make the cabin seem bigger, certainly less confined. Peering out along the various prefabricated kinks that gave the place the illusion of a normal domestic residence, it was eerie, the hope that Norman might return at any second. She rose tentatively, ironically bird-like, did not stretch or rub her face, though there was a desperate need to.

Through the smaller window beside her bed, there was still no sign of life in the big house. 08.10. She wondered when the old lady would wake and begin to wonder where her son was. Did she know he spent the night in Cabin Twelve, studying the night birds? Would she come looking, or merely grow horribly bewildered, all alone in the grand, gothic rooms?

A bizarrely cosmopolitan feature of the cabin architecture was that the house-side window and wood-side window were so close together, and probably this was a custom touch for the benefit of any hikers who demanded wilderness. Marion observed Norman's workspace set beneath the old fashioned glass. As well as two or three polaroid photos of the monster owl, mid-flight, there was a lead-heavy pencil study of the creature at rest, a comparative study of his wingspan -extended, a quarter-extended, closed. The huge wing feathers and fluffy chest were everything, leaving the head itself to be sketched in a far lighter shade of pencil. But the imperious, penetrating eyes? Yes, they were black enough.

In one sketch, which was obviously more a flight of fancy than something to be integrated into the final model, he'd made a close study of the driveway Christmas tree, with the huge owl gliding by in the background. There was an impression of the dark-glinting pine needles and the lights, tho the pencil was pure black-and-white...

Marion drifted, scowling and tense. Set on the thin carpet was a Linn CD-radio combo with a tall stack of albums. As with so many reclusive only-children, Norman's choice of music was film soundtracks. Intriguingly, though, the selection was not only gothic but the absolute epitome of gothic; 'House of Wax', 'From Hell', 'Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula'. 'Shutter Island'. The only exception was the top-most CD in the pile, 'All Time Christmas Classics'.

As once again there was a feeling of utter bleakness that she'd come into his life, at Christmas -obviously the one optimistic time he had- and disrupted everything. From her greatcoat pocket, she removed her smartphone and braved the dozen or so messages from Lila and Sam. Mihiri gave her the number for Keswick Accident and Emergency, and she dialed with a deftness that was quick and brave.

Unfortunately, the ward nurse couldn't give an exact description of Norman's condition, or indeed connect her, because even now Mr Bates was in treatment with a doctor. Could this be because he was on the verge of being discharged, or was he still in danger? Again, the nurse could only recite the visiting hours, which was probably a reasonable way to deal with her. Increasingly, Marion saw herself as a monster, every trace of her, plain to see.

Reference what she heard now on Norman's radio. To begin with, her attention barely fluttered over a feature about the personalised Christmas cards sent by the main political parties, the way they were all cynical points-winners for next year's general election. A cheesy family scene from the incumbents. Their traditional opponents, a snowscape walk, but with 'Christmas Wishes' typoed as 'Chrismas Wishes'. Similarly, as she woke up more and more, she only partly heard the main news stories of war, plague, Euro-hand-wringing. Then, what made her ears prick up altogether, the words 'theft', 'friends', 'forces'.

There was an interview with a Weltsbury Police Chief, "We know this money was stolen at approximately 7 PM, and very likely the thief took advantage of the large crowds to get away. We do have a suspect, whose car was found dumped almost 300 miles away in the Lake District, and we're working in close contact with the South Yorkshire Police Force to try and track this individual down. That this is such a callous, opportunistic crime, taking advantage of people's Christmas charity, is particularly unpleasant, and I want to reassure everyone that we're confident of making an arrest".

The radio was switched off as Marion numbly drifted free, down over the cabin boardwalks and across the grit of the main driveway. The frost, by now, was a funny kind of phenomenon, if anything making her footsteps more tactile and balanced. She crossed to within a few feet of the steep verge, thinking and doing nothing, mindful only that Juno was safe. Hope and foreboding cancelled each other out, she found, lost in the swishing of the small cars making their way to Keswick. If only these hypnotic little moments of freedom weren't so persistently deceptive: far out along the lakeside road, just inside her field of vision behind a scattery larch tree, an oversized Police van stubbornly waited.

Marion felt her brow raise, that was all. Something made her head swivel to the Manesty-side.

Where she saw two officers proceeding up the roadside path. Their closeness made her shoulders tingle with fear, while only the purest luck prevented the WPC and her everyman Constable from glancing upwards to see her. She fled.

Survival mode, spontaneous and one-hundred percent trustworthy, told it would be a big mistake to return to any of the cabins, since they'd probably be the first place the Police would scour. She took the biggest strides she could to move up the lightning-shape steps to the big house, the rough intention being to hide at the rear, perhaps make a continuous orbit to avoid the officer's line of sight. In the same way her nightmare-survival-mode made these suggestions, though, a wiser nightmare-mode gave an alternative idea.

She was a good person, beneath it all. If she went to the house and confessed all to Mrs Bates, the old woman couldn't help but understand and hide her. Christmas is the time for good people.

She rapped the door with the huge, japanned knocker, which for all its size, only made the tiniest echoes within the confines of the downstairs floor. It was fair enough, to have to wait through super-tense increments of five and ten seconds; the cruelest tension lay in the time measured by her petrified breaths. For some reason, the Police hadn't yet drawn level with the driveway. In desperation, Marion swished across to a small window and peered inside with the hope of seeing Mrs Bates hobbling for the door.

Nothing in the house was moving, not even hazes of dust on the groomed furnishments. Still struggling to make decisive choices, partly of their own volition, her hands caressed the deadlock - to find the door unlocked, and invitingly smooth on its hinges. In she slipped, Juno -reluctant to follow, only a big, smiling wave persuading him to hop across the threshold.

As a child, she'd always thought it was stupid, that part of the vampire myth that told how, for all their suaveness and power, a bloodsucker has to receive permission to pass through someone's front door. At this precise moment, though, she didn't think it was stupid at all. Transcendentally bitter and tragic? Maybe God gives us an exact allotment of dignified rights and it's only those who deviate with the weirdest sins who lose those rights. Probably in an equally weird manner.

Juno abandoned her, trotting away to some distant backroom that likely retained trace odors of food, or rodents, or both.

"Mrs Bates?"

The stillness, particularly on the broad-but-steep stairway, was troubling. For every square inch of purple-brown carpet, an ambience was carried -that some unutterably sophisticated horror was waiting. Marion took one step of ascent and paused. If anything, the old woman would turn out to be a perfect embodiment of extreme old age. Creased beyond any aesthetic justification, even anything found in harshest nature. Probably she'd be shockingly weak. Shockingly confused. Everything we fear and deny about old age, and everything that's inevitable.

More than three quarters of the way, just before a sharp turn into the narrow gantry, Marion paused once more. On the tip of her tongue, 'Mrs Bates, hello?'

Before she could open her mouth -two hi-visibility-obfuscated figures were seen to hover behind the swollen glass of the door, forcing her around a corner at speed. She hunched-up on the remainder of the staircase. A good few seconds passed while her face creased in panic. Then followed the knock, which made her crease and hand-wring all the more.

The vampire that doesn't get invited in, catching fire, or having their heart explode. And - 'going into shock'. Being in some kind of sudden accident where mere psychology makes you go into shock as a physical response. It was a silly phenomenon. How many times had she been on the verge of going into shock in the past twelve hours? As if every other second of your life is a dream, and suddenly this huge, disproportionate filter descends at the very time you need to be most aware.

Maybe the Police drifted away. Either way, Marion grew to an intriguing semblance of her full height and moved forward along the narrow landing. There were oldtime photos of glitzy American cities, maybe Chicago or Manhattan. There were one or two photos of Norman as a stately and bookish young man. His face was dramatically smooth, although he had the same otherworldly hope forever in his eyes.

"Mrs Bates", Marion solemnly called.

All the multitudinous doors were open in the style of a house being deliberately aired, each one giving a different glimpse of rich and colourful furnishings. Also, for a house so outwardly gothic, there was a surprising lack of antiques, only items that cleverly and frugally bordered on being antiques. Prominently, there were hampers and dressers that had so many plinthed edges they could only conjure visions of Anthony and Cleopatra's boudoir. Broad layers of gloss pastel paint guided the modest amounts of daylight up and down in sharp diagonals.

No one was present in the upstairs lounge. Marion crept beside a small door that led to an artistic blue study. Even from the inches-wide crack in the door, she could see the whole place was dominated by a folded bay window that overlooked the vast openess of the valley.

"Mrs Bates?"

The figure was seated in an intent pose. The old-fashioned wheelchair strangely monolithic. She was not sleeping -somehow, Marion knew this at once. The angle of the back of her head was appreciative of everything, probably just the thing meditative Buddhists aim for. There was even a little slant in the tilt of her skull, a thoughtfulness that was profound, exacerbating always the thinness and narrowness of her body.

Within ten feet, within five, there was a certainty that, motionless or not, she couldn't possibly be dead. After all that Marion had been through, no more contrivances of guilt or horror could be lined up. Surely. Yet -reaching out her hand to touch the plasticky wheelchair handle, a sixth sense refused to let her say 'Mrs Bates?' even one more time.

Because yes, it would be like talking to a corpse.

The motionless eyes stared through the tall window, beatifically, pragmatically. The just-parted lips perpetually whispered away some life-and-death truism, as the firm shoulders proved conclusively that every other part of her body was dramatically -lifeless.

Marion wondered why she didn't scream. Perhaps -she was screaming? There was a type of limitless energy piercing through her gasping breaths, her mind-

It manifested in cool, level-headed observations. A backwards step was taken. There was something artistic about the quality of the skin, particularly the soft, tactile eyelids, the way they enclosed those beautiful retinas so tenderly. Marion remembered looking at her own parent's bodies (just in case Lila had felt that one of them should, so saving her from the pressure). Just a day or two after death, their skin had looked subtly dry and sunken, even though the undertaker had no doubt done a conscientious job. Similarly, Marion had once seen some waxworks in the lobby of a luxurious hotel while repping for the bank.

This wasn't a waxwork, and regardless of the diorama prop of a photo album spread wide on her knees (noted, the closer-to-latterday Norman arm in arm with his living Mother beside a tinselled Christmas tree). No waxwork in the world had fingernails so well-observed, or the deeply idiosyncratic folds of skin around the joints of the wrists. But if the strange, lifeless doppelganger wasn't a waxwork, then what? Could he, Marion wondered as she inched backwards, have taxidermised his own mother?

Light years from home, and normal life, every piece of human solidarity has to be fought for. In this way, she furiously searched for ways to excuse or absolve Norman. But first -his vaunted, zeitgeisty method of making apparently taxidermised creatures completely from scratch. Could this be the ultimate example? She guessed it would make him slightly less insane. But how on Earth would she be able to tell?

God knew why her hands didn't shake, but unfaltering, Marion reached in to the figure's midriff and unbuttoned the cardigan. She unbuttoned the underlying blouse. When she traced the pseudo-skin, admittedly, her hands and shoulders quaked squeamishly. But soon the boldness was repayed; there was definitely no navel, and so Norman Bates was no body-harvesting killer after all. As suspected, the figure of the old woman was completely synthetic, albeit spinning round in a fresh whirlpool of bleak questions.

Romantic love existed, for better or worse. She dimly acknowledged that love for a conventional soulmate might drive someone so desperately insane -but craziness-inducing love between a child and parent? It just didn't happen. Something was as wrong as wrong can be.

'Leave', she decided. It became as simple as that. Buttoning up the clothes, avoiding contact with the profound glass eyes, she twirled and moved away. Getting a bearing in the rich, homely space between rooms was dizzying, a neat little path between the thick creme walls and pew-colour drapings. Seeing the oversized acorn at the top of the stair rail was like seeing the flag that marks a particularly steep ski slalom. And down she rushed. The sheer proximity of one of Mrs Bates' old-time photos at the kink in the stairs abruptly mesmerised her. Just the brown sepiotone shapes, the aged glass frame. Not that she stopped moving.

Superstition made it a matter of good decorum that she merely walked across the central hall, no matter how fiercely she wanted to run. It was hard to imagine what would happen next - minutes, seconds, a heartbeat away -

She reached the grand front door and hesitated. Winter sun filtered. Then, darting up behind the swollen glass -

Tall, clumpy, ever-recognisible in his black woolen jumper, Norman was all the more striking for the way he was consumed by nervous energy: he extended his arm to the top left of the door frame in a steep diagonal. There was probably no intention of actually trapping her -she hoped. They both moved for the knob, bringing a stinging sensation of give-and-take. In through the door he rushed. Interestingly, he looked less at Marion, more to the top of the stairs, travelling back through the agonising moments to when she'd discovered his dark secret.

No, that wasn't it. The secrecy of the thing was secondary. What struck such panic into Norman's soul was that, whatever was upstairs, whatever the old woman model represented -was profound. Living, technically? No. Living in spiritual terms? To a degree where the pseudo-Mrs Bates owned the air itself, and the land, all the way out to the murky woodland. But certainly their lives.

He advanced. His eyes slung around in their sockets and despairing. His puppet-arms flailed. "No! No, no, no! No one is meant to see her!"

Marion took a few steps backwards, on thighs so utterly rigid. There was nothing to do but stare at him, and did that make her brave or just overwhelmed? He ranged his body to the bottom of the stairs, curving up his spine as if in physical pain.

Thinking about Regal Coxstall and all that had gone before, there was a pattern. She had acted intuitively, stupidly -in taking the money, in thinking she could randomly sink a car in a lake. Perhaps this was an occasion to be counter-intuitive? Possibly, she thought. Something that would at least entertain the gods, win their favour. Perhaps it was even the right thing to do.

She attempted to lay a palm on Norman's shoulder. He clumsily and powerfully scrambled inside her arms, the final outcome being that they were both held steady, tingling in the pose of a hideous waltz.

"It's OK! It's just... you've just been alone too long! It's OK, Norman!"

He glared at her in frustration.

"You don't understand! You think it's just some kind of -of Oedipus thing! But it's not!"

Marion tried to draw back, in as much as she was darkly enthralled by what would likely be her death. She ceased struggling -and was soon enough released anyway. Under control now, her assailant -complete, she noted, with a head bandage that made him look like a Sufi mystic- moved back towards the grand, gothic stair case. He stared up, his voice now strangely academic.

"Mrs Samworth, you don't understand-"

"My real name is Ms. Crane. Marion".

"I'm pleased to meet you", Norman brought the ghost of affability. "But you think -you think I lived alone with my mother all these years, and I'm a prisoner of -Dr Freud, and psychology, and brain-washing. You think you might be able to save me. But none of that is true. Tell me, Marion, do you know anything about quantum physics?"

Xx.

"To start with, for no other reason than to entertain myself, I became interested in the close study of neurons and the patterns of energy created in our synapses. You see, our thoughts, and memories, and perceptions -they're a hybrid of physical structures and ever-moving patterns of energy, what's called the quanta-ionic axon tree. I suppose, like everyone else who's ever looked into the subject, I was fascinated by the way the actual physical structure of our brains are altered like a railtrack according to our emotional responses; neuropeptides forcing us into actions that reinforce our pavlovian fears, our pavlovian loves. Profound implications about our ability to think straight are pretty unavoidable. You can either choose to think about it, like you're a character in a harsh science fiction film, or you can put it out of your head altogether. It probably doesn't even matter either way, to most people".

Juno trotted from the house and wagged his tail. They drifted free from the porch, as soon as Norman had gently closed the front door. Tall trees admitted much brown-grey light now, along with a food-like smell from the densities of cracked leaves. The patrolling Police were gone, though their little van, she saw, was still stupidly parked-up in the far distance.

Hands roving carelessly; there was a simple, subconscious choice about the type of body language she could assume. Walking across the ruddy lane, she found that one of her hands decided to warm itself in her coat pocket while the other smoothed out the hind-quarters of her skirt. She didn't care about the Police. Fate-strange-fate would protect her as she conducted this most bizarre of conversations.

"I read up on advanced biological-physics, as a kind of second hobby besides my animal-building. It's surprising, really, how much time there was to myself, even as I had to look after my Mother and the lodge. Then, unfortunately, her health deteriorated sharply. She became bed-ridden, so I took the decision to close the lodge the better to attend her. Similarly, I was reluctant to start work on any new animals in case I was called away abruptly. And so I read, and read, and read. I mean, the internet can be a wonderful thing when it comes to absorbing raw information. I read about quantum entanglement, the fundamental and still-inexplicable way that reality is formed by the smallest energy units there are. Between nursing my mother and shopping, moving among all the ordinary people in the supermarket, I took in all the most advanced explorations about the nature of reality.

"I came upon the work of various scientists -Dr Barbara Pleiades, Stapp Von Locadour, Rick Pribram. All had much the same research, all made independently of one another and only just starting to be analysed by the scientific community. Like a zeitgeist, or a quantum leap, if you'll forgive the pun. They elaborated on a famous experiment called the Quantum Pin Hole, which has been around for decades, where units of quantum energy are projected through a network of subatomic slides. It illustrates how the final resting place can only be defined through an interaction with the mind of the observers. I mean, if it sounds uncanny, that's because it pretty much is. But it seems that just within the last few years, the experiment has been evolving.

"Dr Barbara Pleiades was the first to make a Quantum Zeno Accelerator. A closed environment mapped by a 3D photonoscope. A Quantum Particle Emitter was fired into a section of brain tissue, the ventromedial cortex, which is closely associated with consciousness. She wasn't prepared for what happened. She was actually astonished.

"It's important to say that the brain fragment was just a dead collection of cells, barely sustained in a container of aminiotics, no more than the size of your thumbnail. Yet when the Quantum Particle Emitter fired a beam into the core of neurotransmitters, the result was amazing.

"Showing up on the photonoscope monitor, the quantum blast refracted multitudinous times. What was happening was bizarre. And then the refracted beams diverged again in a coherent charge of 5-HT2, into a pattern that any doctor could recognise in a heartbeat. 167 millimetres long, always moving with correlative EEG spikes.

"The pattern of a living, thinking human brain.

"And the strangest thing is, when Dr Pleiades was bold enough to remove the physical fragment, the ambient brain continued to think, right up until the moment the firing of the pseudo-synapses became too subtle to be plotted by the photonoscope. It even became detached and moved, a few inches clear from the emitter.

"And if there can be a greater scientific discovery in the history of the world, who could ever say what it would be? Just think. Conclusive proof of -ghosts. The inevitability of the afterlife. Human consciousness able to exist independently of physical matter. If these experiments haven't yet appeared on the cover of every newspaper in the world, what editor would sanction such a story to be run, considering the basic understanding of our lives would change, so suddenly, so dramatically? Any kind of religious belief would be bolstered a hundredfold, from C of E to Jihadist. Any of the militaristic, neurotic-atheist governments, such as England's, would over-react as ever they have. Any one on the perpetual-verge of suicide...

"I was a case-in-point of how this truth would make things fall apart in pretty dramatic ways. I remember drifting around the house, and the cabins, thinking -this is it. This is the affirmation of what I've been waiting for my whole life. I imagined dying, with no more pain than the act of thinking itself, then waking up in some paradisal new dimension where guilt is a thing of the past. It's hard to say how long I drifted around the cabins thinking on what I'd just read, absent-mindedly picking up the broomstick, moving the solar-chargers, plumping pillows.

"It was around the time I'd usually go and check on Mother. I remember clearly, looking up the stairs and wondering if I should talk to her about Dr Pleiades' findings. I still hadn't reached a solid decision when I arrived at the top of the landing, though I was inclined to tell her. You know, bizarrely, for an old woman, she'd always had a keen understanding of science.

"But her room -her room was conspicuously silent, far beyond just being a room where an invalid is fast asleep. All achey and breathless, I opened the door to find, well-

"-that she had died in her sleep.

"She'd just -died!

"It's unpleasant to talk about, but I spent what must have been a very long time checking for a pulse. Which was silly because the body was cold. I cried, as you might imagine. Seemed like I might cry forever, but it actually finished in a pretty allotted period.

"And then, Marion, I heard a voice. It was as clear and as real as anything.

"'Norman.

"'Norman. I'm sorry this had to happen. And you have to believe me when I say everything is going to be alright'.

"I didn't have nearly enough courage or understanding to talk back, but I didn't need to. Mother explained everything.

"'You're a good son, and a good man, in an impossible situation. This country is dying. It has to be every man for himself, and you have to do what you must to survive. You cannot let people know that I have died. The bank loan to support the lodge is in my name. As the next recession comes, you will need my pension money, your carer allowance, everything, just in order to survive. And don't be afraid, I will be here with you'.

"'Don't be afraid', the spirit said. But obviously I was. I guess I could still operate, however. Brutally and unceremoniously, I buried her on the crest behind the house, and hauled across the big summerhouse to cover the disturbed soil. Sometimes I used Juno as a gauge of what was normal and what was troubling. He was just a pup at the time. If he wagged his tail, sat contentedly, everything was fine. If he looked upset or confused, I was upset and confused, too. It was a good way of training myself to act in a calm and measured way, ready for when I reopened the lodge.

"Time passed, and just as Mother's consciousness told me, the place barely made any profit at all. Even in peak times: no breaking even. Certainly, I did need the money which was necessitated by the world thinking she was still alive.

"Just like a cloistered child, I resumed my modelling of the animals. I couldn't bring myself to hate Dr Pleiades' research, even though it had made me into tantamount a psychopath. It gave me pleasure to think -animal spirits, so innocent, and I was able to bring them back to this gnostic dimension, just as a neat little gesture. Something gentle.

"Guests came and went. Families. French girls who were pretty, who would soon forget everything about their stay at the Bates Lodge, but how they shone in the sun. There were sparkly-eyed Americans. Proud, white-haired retirees who were all about hiking the distant mountains like Biblical nomads. It would have been a good enough life. My troubles stayed though, because often -I'd hear her voice from across an empty room.

"The pretty guests. The friendly local hikers who might just have become my personal friends, but were impossible to scan as a hundred percent trust-worthy. I heard her voice calling me, 'Norman, keep your distance!'

"And I valued my Mother's advice. Besides, mothers are over-protective. We all have to accept that. What troubled me: the guilt that I was preventing her from moving on. And so -what you saw in the house- I made it as a sort of living monument to contain her spirit. An intermediary between wishing her out of my life and being ungrateful. Because who has the right to be ungrateful, especially to someone you love?

"I spent most of the time in the cabins, and only visited the house when necessary. When guests arrived, I was jovial, charming, just as I was jovial and charming when I first met you.

"Then came that unbelievable day when Mr and Mrs Ochreman decided to take their holiday here. Like a picture of every jet-setting rich couple you ever read about in GQ or Tatler. They were speechless when they saw my animals, and if ever I was in danger of letting my skills go to my head, it was then. Did I have representation, they asked? Did I want it? Taxidermy is a vogue in LA, Mr Ochreman told me, let alone anything as progressive as bloodless taxidermy. He told me of an artist in Chicago who'd become a multi-millionaire just because Game of Thrones had made a rich market for his taxidermised crows. My own delicacy-of-touch, apparently, will make me rich.

"And living or dead, Mother was wrong to believe I couldn't survive on my own. Her spirit grew silent. As I made ready to emigrate, I could sense her receding from this place completely, making it totally empty like an ordinary house.

"And to be honest, though it may sound crazy, any problems I have left are of secondary concern. I suppose, my plan of what to do with the model of Mother -bury it on the crest beside her real, earthly remains. Perhaps it will be discovered by future owners, perhaps it won't. Perhaps the government computers will lose track of Mother's financial records, forget her existence, and they won't come after me in LA. But if they do? And I go to prison for not declaring her death, and continuing to claim her benefits?

"Obviously, it's only what I deserve".

Marion thought about this for a long time. It amazed her that she'd taken the strange story on board so easily, and didn't have to ask any questions. It was so much like the instant understanding of a complex storyline while dreaming.

Small birds darted from ruddy bolt-holes in the foliage. Behind, the months-dead winter leaves scurried in a flock across the drive, all wildly separate from the motionless trees. Marion walked, and wondered.

"What if there's a way we could both escape cleanly?"

Xx.

Amazing, if true, that the complexity of the human brain could be recreated from the ether, and at the same time such a simple thing as your life's course could not be predicted. This foisted kinship that was more compelling than anything she'd ever known.

Hatred of horror films, hatred of science fiction films, and through it all, Marion had always been acutely embarrassed by the ones that involved actors having to spend hours and hours in the make-up seat. Was it worth it, could it ever be worth it? But ah, if the process had as much intrigue as this.

As much bonhomie. They awaited the arrival of the stage-glue by express courier, almost peaceful as they meditated on whether the Christmas delivery rush would be trailing off or intensifying. When the Tuffnels lorry finally swished along the Keswick road it was a true mark of civilisation, the way such a city-centric courier just appeared in gaping wilderness. Because the wintery undergrowth and scattery mist were their allies, perhaps -when the time came to start work applying Marion's disguise, they were fearless enough to use the dinner table of Cabin One, curtains open. Christmas no time for fear, after all.

Marion had read the instructions just as well Norman. Still he warned her, coolly, with his hard-earned-suave, "They say it might burn, but it's only the bonding process, and you should only avoid it if you have eczema or dermatological conditions".

"It can't be harsher than some of the Max Factors I've used", she promised, and said nothing about the way her skin felt so pleasingly sunkissed whenever he angled her head. Those giant, distinguished hands in zen-like mindfulness.

He smiled and started the transformation, beginning with the exacerbation of her jowls. How could she say how fascinating the process felt -lately she'd been worried that her jawline was truly starting to mark her as over-the-hill. The application of Mrs Norma Bates' wrinkles and sags, the delicate, assured touch of Norman's fingers, reassured her that underneath she was still firm, and lean, and would remain so. It was all ironical enough to carry a ring of truth.

Because there was the strangest feeling, for all the climatic drama, that this might still be some kind of peaceful Christmas. Themes of homeliness would certainly be maintained; the coloured lights dangling on the great house would stay until the end, due to the fact that Norman was leaving the place fully furnished for the buyer. The small anecdotes they gave each other as he laid on the synthetic folds; they listened with just the same inexplicable concentration her parents always had for the Queen's Speech, or the fierce annual game of Trivial Pursuits. Isn't it amazing, he proposed, that an old woodsman had been found growing marijuana for gangsters, in one of the old orchards on the Threlkeld-side of Keswick? Or that a retired American Sheriff in Thirlmere had kept slaves in his fortified basement for months on end? It was profound that these dramatic things should actually happen.

The winter sky was low, and massive, with illusory shafts on white sun on the distant mountains. When Marion stood in the porch, she reflected on the quality of the greyed-out dimness, the way it scrutinised the ground like high-power bifocals. Making everything in the world so easy on the eye; it could almost be called optimistic.

Notwithstanding. It was time for Norman to icily proceed to the crest behind the house to bury the faux-Norma Bates alongside her real grave, then drag the wooden summerhouse en masse to conceal both graves. He insisted it would be less weird and troubling if he did it on his own, and Marion honoured this. She used the time test the durability of her old woman make-up, walking the three hundred yards along the woodland road to the nearest Royal Mail box. It seemed the crows and the blackbirds midway up in the trees all knew her secret, though their minds were too excited to be horrified.

Using Second Class stamps, she posted three letters. One to Mr Brian Heitman, Chairman of Friends with the Forces UK, revealing the approximate location of their stolen collection money and asking his forgiveness.

The other two letters were to Sam and Lila, and how the absolute necessity didn't alleviate her sadness at all.

As she walked around the inner confines of the Bates Lodge courtyard, there was a continued sense of their newly-pragmatic thinking. For all the physical labour he was about to embark on, Norman still wore his heavy black sweater. She knew he wouldn't sweat; the man was masterfully dry, psychologically-dark insouciance even on a biological level.

Of the two outhouses just across the gothic house, one was full of varnish tins and rakes. The other, to Marion's surprise, contained a first generation KA, Y-reg, grimey, but apparently still functional.

Norman joined her and clenched his jaw to show that the grim work was finished. They exchanged slight, meaningful smiles.

"I'll bet this is the strangest thing you've ever had to do", he suggested.

"Strange for me? You're talking to someone disguised to look like your dead mother. I can't begin to imagine how strange it must be for you".

As ever, the tall, black-fibred man was haunted-but-forthcoming when it came to discussing his inner life, "I know it's you in there. There's no way in the world I could see anything else. The question is, will it be enough to fool passport control?"

"If it goes wrong", declared Marion, "I should like it if we stayed in contact. I mean, in prison, as pen pals. I'm sure you write an engrossing letter, don't you? We could get to know each other properly".

Norman moved to speak, though his mouth stayed in a crack while he searched for the right words. They fled; he blushed, became emotional.

Marion diplomatically took a step forward and gestured into the small garage, "I didn't know you drove?"

"I loathe the idea of driving, I'm pretty useless. It's actually my Mother's car. Several years ago, the police suggested she stop driving when she hit another motorist in Booth's car park. I took to the wheel, under her supervision, to drive her wherever she wanted to go".

Marion nodded, "Maybe it would be wiser if we drove ourselves to the airport, rather than get a taxi. That way, you could touch up my disguise in some privacy, before we go to departures. I'm sure, near the airport, there's some random motor dealer who'd buy the thing".

"Very well", he said excitedly.

"You shouldn't-", it was Marion's turn to gulp, "-if at any point you change your mind..."

"I won't", he smiled.

"Won't you miss all this?", Marion gestured at the tranquil fir trees, the lake, the beautifully mysterious marshland.

"Marion, all my life I've dreamed of using my art to be useful. Now it's come true, and I'm being rewarded with a new home in the LA hills, apparently one of the most elegant places on Earth. But what about you? Won't you miss England?"

Marion? Hardly needed to think.

"I'll miss it quite a lot, I suppose. But I'm not the type of woman who goes to prison. I guess lots of snooty women like me think they're not the type of women who go to prison, and then they go anyway. But not me. I'd rather die".

Xx.

Rothersfield City Airport was a vast metropolitan affair, in that the motorway merged with the inner-slip-roads in a sudden wedge of service stations, motels, lighting pillars the shape of NASA machinery. There were no car dealerships in the immediate vicinity, forcing them to double back along the small, agricultural road towards Rothersfield's suburbs. This was only the first indication that they might be late. All the rest, purely psychic. Crows and blackbirds all seemed to be darting in the same direction, all too aware of the value of panic. At a small roundabout, the flow-of-traffic sign had a flickering bulb that flashed in exhausted jitters, liable to blow at any time.

Late in the day though it was, the car salesman and his attendant mechanic had enough vim to breeze through the car documentation and sign the deeds with efficiency. From her wheelchair, parked at the glass frontage of the sales office, Marion watched in a combination of buzzing mindfulness and reverie. In the plate glass reflection, she saw Norma Bates staring, the nobody's fool eyelids just as aware of a crime being committed as either herself or Norman. Actually, it was easy to understand the hold she'd had on Norman. The facial sinews of synthetic skin hardly synched up with the muscles of Marion's own face, even though they were applied directly over the top. And although the layer of specialised makeup felt ridiculously thick, still the old woman's face was expressive. Around the eyes and the millimeters-upturn of an otherwise flat mouth, an unusual amount of feminine candour-nee-venom showed. And in itself just a reserve. For when fate conspired against either herself or her boy, and all the cunning in the world would be released. All anyone could do was gasp.

Outside the car dealership, Norman pushed the wheelchair across the freezing concrete to a little area of fuseboxes and litter bins. It should probably feel either ridiculous or frightening. Marion felt only the nervous beating of Norman's heart, his springy, skinny arms, too.

They sighted a hatchback taxi in an ad-hoc holding position on a slip-road channel. Norman parked the wheelchair at angle, so that Marion was largely facing away from the vehicle. She wondered what the hell he was doing, then realised -he was trying to prevent the driver getting a close look at her, as an extra little precaution. It was maybe sensible. What made things interesting -Norman's own behaviour was like something from a suspense movie. Second to second, he alternated from being an unusually gifted liar to being obviously, perilously afraid. Just like the question of whether Marion's disguise would hold up through passport control, it was a matter of keen interest whether the taxi driver would ID them as suspicious. Even Norman himself stood at a slight angle, subconsciously trying to obscure his own face. Likely, the driver would think they were suspicious. But hopefully not suspicious enough to report to Big Brother.

"As I said, I'm sorry to be making such a complicated fuss about it, but we need to get to Terminal Two as quickly as possible, and as close as possible, if you could. I mean, we need you to. And money is no object, which is to say, if normally you'd make your money if we have to go slowly, we have a significant amount of cash to tip you with".

Marion heard a door clunk open and shut. She turned her sculpted face as broadly as she could to see a little business man had cheekily let himself onto the backseat of the taxi even as Norman talked with the driver. He casually and shamelessly leant forward to direct the man, "Terminal One, please, mate".

The old driver shrugged and winced as if it was all the same to him, and prepared to turn the ignition. Before the usurper could pull the door shut, however, Norman engaged him. "Sir, don't you realise I was just arranging my journey?"

Said the fat business man, trying not to enjoy himself too much, "You were standing three feet away, giving him your life story".

Norman said kindly, "I'm sorry, but I was telling him where I wanted to go when you interrupted".

"You were giving him your life story. He's a taxi-driver, not a case-worker for wierdos".

He rolled his eyes as Norman took a deep breath to respond. They argued some more, both gulping away to show that time was precious, the fat man, always, rolling his eyes to deny he was loving it. He blustered to the point where he simply didn't see the old woman carefully rising from the wheelchair. Crossing the cold ground. Pausing well inside the open car door.

Marion took a measured swipe and slapped him. It was luscious, like some arching bullwhip converted to a pure, concussive sting. With comparative slowness, she made a motion to seize his collar and eject him, but he crumpled free anyway, scurried across the shiny ground. What a calculated risk that he wouldn't scramble and dislodge her face.

She laid a palm at the edge of Norman's neck, in no way motherly.

Norman turned back to the driver. "Terminal Two -please". They grappled Juno's carrier, collapsed the wheelchair and made haste.

Xx.

Small shops, eerily clinical though they were, soon dwindled away as they made their way to the ultimate business end of the airport. Norman: moving slowly, always full of crime-thriller calculations. Marion with one last look at a stand of oversized sunglasses, and despite their need to make good time. A pair of Versaces would be a gamble too far. Also, the act of buying them would sap her bravery in weird, subtle ways. If the security officials made her take them off, then there'd be no guarantee her moulded disguise would stay in place, or that the overall fakeness of her eyes wouldn't then be emphasised.

They scanned the stark overhead queuing signs. They felt distrustful, double-thinking, the way everyone does when visiting such a sprawling airport. No Christmas decorations hung from the ceiling; this could be one last sign of approaching doom.

Beyond, the ticket-redemption desk was obscured by three or four smart-clothes-wearing bodies, the queue neither deep enough to be a good hiding place or short enough to keep them alert. Maybe as a blessing, there were no reflective surfaces for Marion to agonise over. Her bones felt rangy. Long arms held curiously steady on the wheelchair handles, Norman was clearly restless also.

And highly dramatic.

Attempting to play it light, Marion spoke from the heart, "Norman? You do know, everything's going to be alright? This is the time where you're finally in control, and the world starts to have faith in you. And everything's going to be fine".

"I know", darkly. Then, his sharp intake of breath like a blast, "I look at these people. Their so-called-civilisation. Go to school. Go to college and university, then travel the world like Old English Colonists. Merchant and Ivory blessing Indians. I never even wanted to leave Cumbria. They had nothing to fear from me. But they had to corral me and control me all the same with their insane little economy. And now I look at them, and feel like killing them all".

Disaster, utter disaster, came when the soft-skinned man two places in front swung around. He was petrified. Should she smile at him, softly, dismissively? Under ordinary circumstances, of course. But as an old lady, the youthful-innocent-subtle air was simply not available. She stared at the man in the queue with steely, sunken eyes, willed him not to make a fuss.

The man directly in front kept his back to them and his head relaxed. Perhaps he was hard-of-hearing. Perhaps he was too scared of Norman to even turn around. Either way Marion looked at his apparently-relaxed shoulders in the hope he represented a smooth ride through departures.

Spitefully, as the wait protracted, the tension took hold in weird new ways. She tried to convince herself they'd make it. As conscious thought surged free from her mind.

Two places clear from the boarding clerk. The man who'd been so afraid of Norman hurried away through the link, blessedly not stopping to talk to the machine-gun carrying policeman. The last man moved away, too.

Asked the clerk in a chirpy voice, "Mr and Mrs Bates, mother and son? Heading off to Los Angeles, on a Residential Emigration Visa?"

As ever, Norman with a smile, fascinatingly willing to play games with his dark self-insight, "That is correct".

"I see you have a dog accompanying you in the Pet Transport Hold. I believe at the LA end, the animal arrivals lounge is in the Blue Terminal, if my memory serves. But the people at LAX are very helpful, and they'll make sure you collect him in no time. I'll just make a note in your departure details, though. His name is Juno, a Silkese Terrier?"

"A real live dog", said Norman strangely. "What do you think of that?"

As a matter of course, the panic drew Marion's eyes in several directions at once. They froze on the far-left side of the departure link. Their friend who had seemed so blissfully unmindful of 'I look at them, and feel like killing them all' was pointedly conversing with the police-soldier. He pointed out The Bates, an off-duty schoolteacher describing the worst area of infestation to a pest-control operative prior to fumigation.

Approaching, with his hand merely cradling the machine gun, the police-soldier was oddly smooth in his strolling. It wouldn't have been more frightening if he'd brought the mightily-perforated barrel to bear directly on her head, started shouting -anything. Caught in the aura of Norman's charming grin, meanwhile, the clerk was calmly assuring them that the wheelchair would be safely stored at the end-cabin gangway aboard the plane. She spoke -and was cut-off by the zeroed-in soldier.

"Is everything alright, sir?

"Everything's alright here, I promise. Why on Earth wouldn't it be?"

Norman was the most carefree and trustworthy man in the world. Which obviously, for the soldier, was too good to be true. For Marion, the most carefree and trustworthy man in the world -ah, but he'd proven his credentials by having more than his share of darkness. More than her and more than anyone.

She realised she cared about him more than anything else in the world. Her thighs tingled as she prepared to jump from the chair. On the tip of her tongue, a self-sacrificing confession that she alone was the criminal, that she'd wound him into a tight little ball of duress. All of it was consumed by her horrified, terrified gasps at what was to come.

"You're acting suspiciously, sir; there's sweat on your top lip, and your manner is a little bit shakey. I need you to step to one side".

"I'm not acting suspiciously". Norman partially laughed the words. It was too measured to be good-humoured, too psychologically dense to even be traditional passive-aggressive. It was a building trigger of darkness, pulled all the way back as he abruptly looked into the officer's eyes. Reference all the directness in an x-rayed skull: Norman Bates. The Man of Life and Death.

The white ceiling lights scoured them all.

"Throughout my life I've had a persecution complex. But in the end, who'd be without it, Officer? Would you? If you manhandled me to the ground, would that make you feel like you've earned your place? Today we're flying to LA, to escape, and you know what the great part is, sir? I mean, you could put bullets in our physical bodies right now-

"And it still wouldn't stop us".

Xx.

The fortified police car made slow progress through the ornate farmland, sometimes, Marion half-suspected, to prove to the other road users who the boss was. Fine powder was raised. Then periodically the darkness filled with super-contrast, like a child's drawing, albeit white-on-black. After a time, also, it was fascinating that the vehicle went from moment to moment without surrendering to the boyish urge to have red-lights-a-flashing. Christmas was victorious; there was a sense of post-human peace having won the day. Counter. Intuitive.

Marion laughed, as small tears burned free from her eyes. She continued to laugh even when the Police cruiser turned off into a sub-valley and the irony faded.

Both Norman and the bearded American cab-driver looked at her in interest. Juno, half-out of his carrying case, looked side-to-side at the streaky slants of light accompanying their morning-twilight journey.

"Norman", she said wistfully. "Let's not go straight to the house. Providing you're not too jetlagged, this might be a time to savour. We should get breakfast".

Norman smiled at the cab-driver, then hesitantly at his friend in sheep's clothing. "It's funny you should mention that. Actually, I feel un-jetlagged! I'm sure Juno could eat a sausage somewhere".

The driver spoke up as if he was part of the family, "One of the good things about LA, and the States in general -we got food places that are open 24-7. Nice food places".

They discovered a mighty, metal-structured diner on a snaking pass. Alongside the buildings was a slip road which passed all the way over the crescent into jazzy civilisation. Instead of going straight in to eat, they moved up and to the left, to a little copse of black trees.

Norman stared at her profoundly as her hands ran across the heavy disguise. She shrugged a little, in much a cliché-womanly manner. "I can't sense what I'm doing, Norman, would you-"

Not immediately, he applied the medicated make-up remover to a single kitchen towel and started to ease away the ridges and fake facial muscles. Mission: possible. Afterwards, he stared at her as if she was neither his Mother or his Lover, or in any case, able to tell them apart at a wholly transcendental level. In his hands, the sections of face looked pathetically rigid and non-skin-coloured; unconvincing. People are too wrapped up in themselves to notice the small things.

"You look just perfect again", said Norman, and if ever there was a man less given to flirtation or bar-room-flattery, here he stood.

The driver had promised that LA-proper was just over the rise, and they'd probably be able to see Curtis Heights from the top. Marion believed it. "You know I'll be too excited to concentrate on eating until I've seen my new home. That is, if you'll still have me".

They strolled free from the copse, leaving the wheelchair and facial debris as arch-miscellaneous urban rubbish. The plan that she should pose as his PA, increasingly, was just socially-explicable cover to the idea that they might be falling in love. 'If you'll still have me', simply made Norman smile, a man buoyed steadily in an ocean of weird good luck.

Juno ran on ahead. Less a road than a track, there was little fear of any traffic. The deep blackness was a mark of Hollywood luxury as much as anything. Norman told of the mountains in the Lake District, almost every one of which had a 'phantom summit' where first-time hikers were sure they'd reached the top, only to have a further twenty-minute climb across low rocky increments. The valley top of Los Angeles was apparently the same. They stalked an area of grass beside a concrete bungalow, common ground but apparently still carefully mown by -someone. All buildings were futuristic and geometrically folded into the lay of the hills. They saw illuminated swimming pools, they saw spybase-style secret openings. Most tantilising of all, they often caught glimpses of the majestic city lights.

On a smooth curve they stopped to gasp at the full extent. Orange rather than white, the glittering freeway lights were crazily artistic. How they wound into the distance above peaceful night-cars, into the glitter-chip lights of distant neighbourhoods, skyscrapers that were mysteriously conventional in design, soul-shakingly beautiful with their reflective glass. Industrial buildings had an impression of sleeping and dreaming with their unassuming grain-lights twinkling. Red, green and vanilla lorry-docks could be picked out, always. Super-delicate chains of white-blue marked modest bridges and overpasses, plus the unique architecture of swish metropolitan walkways, near, distant, always ticking away with night-time-underpopulated mystery. Marion supposed she must have seen beautiful, elevated city-lights before in her life, though these were by far the most beautiful.

She clutched ahold of Norman's forearm and they drew together in the cold. It was clearly a Christmas light-show for all time.

X Epilogue X

Bellies full, they called a further taxi to deliver them to their new home at Curtis Heights. The latest driver shamelessly inputted the 'zip-code' into his sat-nav then proceeded to talk away in a fair-dynamic chatter. Their English accents were noticed and admired, and they were both welcomed as transatlantic rarities. None of the people around Curtis Heights would thank him for saying so, the driver explained, but if Marion and Norman kept their eyes peeled, they would see film-stars. Producers and actors had developed quite a village mentality, and it was only once he'd mentioned this that the driver winced at the immigrants and wondered if they were famous. Oh well, Norman explained. He was only the person who would be making Tom Cruise and John Travolta their pseudo-taxidermised animals.

The taxi-driver's words were so rich and engaging that they barely had time to psychically acknowledge the sight of their new home before he'd dropped them off and driven away. Truly, the house was spectacular, luxurious. The immediate thought could only be, 'Which film star lived here before?'

Sloping down to the small welcome hall was a Grecian-tile driveway, and strolling down it should have been exhilarating. For Marion, the experience was marred. Parked at the top of the porch was a black Chrysler, very business-like. Norman explained that it probably belonged to Mr Ochreman, that he'd phoned ahead and one of his business partners had probably turned out to cheer their arrival. Except something about the heavy-set car troubled Marion intensely.

Norman stared at the key in his hand, then marveled at the terracotta driveway door. He turned and smiled softly at Marion.

As abruptly, from a backyard gate, a black-suited man appeared. He reacted dourly, the mastered insouciance of a cop. Marion considered running. She considered wailing in despair that they'd come so far, only to be uncovered by Interpol or the like. For sure the wail would have come except for the strangest buzzing in her eyes. It felt like weeping, invisible tears, which proceeded to roll down her cheeks to smother her jaw -at least keeping it closed.

Norman, weirdly, was brave.

"Mr Bates?"

"Yes, sir!"

"I'm from the FBI, sir", he held out an ID just long enough for them to dwell on it, then returned it to his breast in the gesture of a thousand TV G-Men. "You're the new owners of this residence, is that correct?"

"The proud new owners", qualified the Englishman. "We're both just in awe of the place. What can I do for you, Agent?"

He narrowed his eyes at Marion. "Who is this?"

"This is Ms. Marli Samwise. I have personal assistant. I'm an artist. I mean, I was starting to suspect I might be a big-shot, but now here I am in LA, talking to a real-life American FBI agent".

'Real-lfe FBI agent'. There was something in that. The man before them was lean, with a dramatically taut face that ID'd him at once as a most traditional, hell-driven lawman. Marion wondered if his superiors only rolled him out when they needed to put the fear-of-god into a particularly stubborn dragnet.

"I'll try to take up as little of your time as possible, Mr Bates, Ms. Samwise. Is there somewhere we can talk?"

Indicating that the house was brilliantly new to him, Norman shrugged, "I don't know, is there anywhere we can talk?", then quickly opened the sophisticated deadlock in a swooping flourish. Calming sunlight spiked and pooled among cool shadows, between five or six inviting doors. Each led to a room that was opulent. Several even had floor-length windows facing onto hypnotic scatter-trees, luxury undreamt of except in Sunday supplements and the most hateful style magazines. The room that Norman finally decided to tip-toe inside, the meditative end of a huge kitchen.

"I suppose there's tea and coffee, but I don't know where", said Marion helplessly.

The FBI agent's manner was as dry as his skin. "That's not necessary. What I need to talk to you about is this house. I've looked into the realtor's financial records, and this place was brought for you legitimately. Even so, that doesn't alter the fact that for over thirty years, this was home to one of the biggest fraudsters the Bureau's seen this century, with ties to a dozen high-profile anarchist groups. We've been hunting her for years and always she evades us. So hence my meeting you good people today; we need to extend our feelers as far as possible".

"You mean", Marion feigned shock, as if anything the Agent said could possibly be as dramatic as their escape from England, "she could return to this house?"

The distinguished sinews and creases of the lawman's face barely changed. "There's no evidence to say so. However, just because she might have more sense to return here, doesn't mean that this place might not hold some secret appeal for the group. If one day, while gardening, you found something buried. Maybe something under the floorboards, in the walls...

"Besides, Sir, I understand from Mr Ochreman that you're quite the celebrity artist yourself. This particular group, call them counter-cultural, are not beyond recruiting anyone who's the least bit famous. Anyone who can carry their particular brand of anarchism to the masses".

Norman had sourced a faux-crystal punch bowl and filled it with water for a parched Juno. Quite the actor when he wanted to be, he continued to flick his eyes at the little dog as he moved to where Marion and the G-Man were playing detective. "Well, the water valves must already be switched on. Americans are considerate".

A small photo of a woman was slid across the table. "Have you ever seen this woman?"

Norman frowned and smiled. "No. I can't imagine any anarchists would be interested in anyone who's as mainstream as myself. I'm afraid Ms. Samworth and I, we're conformists through and through".

"I'm sure that's to your credit, Mr Bates", the Agent's sun-cracked crow's feet winced a little. "But it's gotta be said that these people are masters of lateral thinking, and they use the LA foothills as their own private recruiting ground".

By now, Marion was beginning to feel interested. "So who is this infamous anarchist leader who used to live here? You can't tell us to beware and not give us any names".

Except, perhaps he could. The glower in his thin lips spoke of Criminal X outfoxing him, again, and again -making him unaccountably surly. "She's gone under a lot of guises, a lot of pseudonyms. She claimed to be the grand-daughter of a nineteen-twenties film producer just to sell some pro-Communist movies that her group had made themselves on 35mil silver-chroma filmstock. Her name on that occasion was Carlita Allende. She's blackmailed, stolen, embezzled. Everything, like a one-woman Baader Meinhof, only ten times as smart. Lately she ingratiated herself into the theoretical science community -if you can believe that. We figure she had just enough grasp of genius physics in order to conduct a few experiments, get herself a name among geek scientists, all in order to fleece research grants and be some kind o' new celebrity. There's a cult aspect, too. Like an Eastern mystic, she claimed to have found the root of all coincidences. Claimed to have found scientific proof of life after death".

Norman stroked Juno's belly energetically, still keeping his black eyes steady. "What was her name during that period?"

Jeered the Agent, "Doctor Barbara Pleiades. Not that we can confirm she ever had a real doctorate".

Stroking, gazing down through the depths of some epoch-heavy drama, "Is there any reason this fearsome woman might try to recruit us? I mean, specifically?"

"There's an old-fashioned power-to-the-people vibe. Or that's what she purports. Add to that the cleverness, we're all in danger. Specifically you, though, Mr Bates? No, I doubt it".

The casual movements he used to conceal his guilt, as precise and soulful as any exhibition of ergonomic yoga. Marion finally saw it broken as Norman stood tall and folded his arms. He could never be a man's man. Only now, maybe, one better.

"I appreciate what you're saying. The more sensitive you are, the easier your head gets turned. I suppose that's the very last lesson anyone has to learn in life. My trade of taxidermy -it operates on the idea that seeing is believing. There's not really any spiritual equivalent to that, is there? Except the idea of belief itself. Faith. Growing and growing until you go insane".

The Agent cringed his neck, had no time for it. "So, on that note, I can tell you're going to keep your eyes open. My card?"

He left the business card on the table and moved to leave, shaking their hands in a casual, perfunctory jolt -reassuring.

When he'd gone, Marion drew alongside Norman. "Do you want to talk about it?"

White sunlight touched everything, at less than half power, spreading silence along the tempered glass surfaces, at odds with their winter clothes. It was a beautiful house in a beautiful city, no doubt about it.

Norman flounced. "What is there to say? I think we've already been recruited, whether we like it or not. What else could it mean?"

White and silver sunlight came, strong enough to give a proverbial outline to everything in eyeshot. Marion looked at the FBI taskforce card and pondered, before she tore it up, fed the slivers into a garbage disposal. "The Dr Pleiades connection might be a coincidence. But then again, she might be exactly the mystic she claims to be. She set in motion a sequence of events, forcing you to face up to your guilt -and certainly freeing me from my troubles. Who's to say the difference between a cult and a legitimate new religion? I think Special Agent Doggett could easily be working for the wrong side".

CONTINUED.