The Twisted Grain

By C.L. Spillard

He tried to destroy her mind.
Now she must face him again—when she believed him dead.

The day after arriving home from the terrifying internment camp whose prisoners she had been sent to interview Verity is confronted, in her home, by its chief interrogator, Reid—the man who subjected her to his memory-obliterating invention the Inverse Polygraph.

But something seems to have changed in him.
In an apparent gesture of reconciliation, he offers to work with her to rid the world of an environmental menace—one which, he found out at the Camp, she abhors.

She agrees.

But lurking in her mind is a suspicion: Reid’s plan is so tempting—so perfect—that she suspects it could only have been hatched by her long-term nemesis, Stan 'Satanic' Mills, in an attempt to subject humanity to a new peril and create more fear—the fear on which he feeds...

• Language: English
• Publisher: C.L. Spillard
• Release date: Dec 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215395530

C.L. Spillard

C.L. Spillard is a complex interplay of matter and energy in a pattern of waves whose probability cloud is densest in York, United Kingdom.Following the profound influence, in a mysterious process not yet fully understood by science, of the NASA moon landings on the young pattern’s quantum-based self-awareness mechanisms, C.L. Spillard developed an interest in Physics and the plight of life on our small, blue spheroid.A career in scientific research beckoned, including complex calculations of what happens to radio-waves being sent through the atmosphere by people who wish to talk to each other.This included studying the weather – which brings us right back to the plight of life. C.L. Spillard has among other things dropped dead in Downing Street for Greenpeace, sat in a flooded tent on Solsbury Hill in an attempt to fight off a motorway, and planted more trees – sometimes under cover of darkness – than you can shake a stick at.C.L. Spillard’s wave-pattern enjoys proximity to a second pattern originating in St Petersburg (Russia), and these two have since generated two younger ones who are now diffusing over the planet stuffing themselves with knowledge as if it were going out of fashion.

Book preview

Prologue

Silence.

Cold sunshine, red-brick duets; closed doors. No mail-boxes, he noticed. The Brits don’t have mail-boxes. Didn’t seem to have house-numbers either. Front yards crowded with colour heaped-up behind walls. As if Brits had to protect their front yards. What from? From him?

He glanced back to the corner, where the cab had dropped him off. Brought him all the way from another city because this one – York – had no airport. Like everyone else round here, the cab had quietly vanished out of sight. The only cars in the street, those parked at crazy angles on the sidewalk. Like they were an afterthought. The houses maybe so old that most folks didn’t yet even have cars when they were built.

A leaning signpost reassured him: Viking Street.

Silence – but not silence. Birdsong. Rustling blossom and spring birdsong. Sounded different. Chiff chaff chiff chaff – like music. Hell, even the birds had British accents.

He started walking.

Duets – she’d said they were called semis here. He found himself studying each – each window, each door. What stories were unfolding behind them, right now, in the quiet as he walked? What conflicts, what alliances; what goals?

What loves?

Why did he even maybe feel some of it, out here, without anybody knowing – anybody suspecting?

A white curtain flicked. The fleeting glimpse of a face behind flashed curiosity, then suspicion. Yet he hadn’t seen the features – how’d he known?

So much he could pick-up, in this street. His senses sharpened – why? Maybe he shouldn’t think too hard.

Sixty – number sixty.

I trust you’ve honest business here – the gravel front laid down, she’d told him, after a burglary, betrayed him with its understated talk. More reliable than an alarm, cheaper than a dog and less risky than a gun.

Unless the husband was armed. Russian. He’d seen it on her file.

But he had to do this.

He stepped up to the door.

No knock, no bell.

The solid, dark composite stung his knuckles. No sound came from within.

He tried again.

Faint but welcoming, though the words were indiscernible, the tone, three syllables, do-mi-do, of somebody calling, ‘Come i-in!’

Must be expecting someone. Someone, but not him – not the Interrogator. Not a man she believed dead. Sure, in a way the Interrogator was dead. Now he had a new goal. Now he was a man on a mission. Now he’d do whatever it took.

Mi-mi-do – ‘Come i-in!’ A little impatient now, like she’s saying, with that accent of hers, ‘are you thick or what?’.

He tried the door. It opened to his push.

Just come right through, she called, as if she’d known him all her life.

He followed the cheerful, sing-song voice, through a narrow hallway, then a door into sunshine.

She was kneeling, on the tiled floor by the table. Glass kit all over it, like an old-time chemistry laboratory, some even on the floor. Must be that home-brew wine the Prof had mentioned.

She didn’t even look up.

Chapter 1 ~ First buds

Verity knelt on the floor in a pool of spring morning sunshine – sunshine one shouldn’t let go to waste. A gallon jar stood on the big pine table, half of its crystal-clear pale wine having been syphoned into bottles, the remainder catching the light. Two empty bottles stood by it, waiting their turn, next to a row already filled, and a glass for sampling.

The wine had a name: Beltane, named like all her other home-mades, after its day of bottling. But its vintage was the year the fruit was picked – 2014, three years ago. She always wore the same apron – ‘Dig for Victory’ that Bernie had given her for Christmas ages ago – for this task.

Bernie had rung earlier with the offer of some spare tomato seedlings. That would be her now. The bottle having filled to the top, Verity got to her feet and turned to greet her—

The figure loomed in the doorway.

Her mind reeled.

She took a deep breath.

She screamed.

A wineglass shattered.

She picked up an empty bottle – rapped the end against the table. The bottle smashed, leaving only the neck in her hand.

She gripped what little weaponry remained – eyed the intruder from behind the table’s sturdy wooden defences.

Her hand shook.

Hi. I—

"How, are you even, bloody alive?"

The man – Reid – raised his hands as if she held a gun. I... pleaded for my life, after Byrnes... was... I...

Your life? You mean you... really are, alive?

He nodded. I had to find you. Here in England. The Inverse Polygraph. Have you any idea...? His words trailed off.

Yes. Yes, she whispered. I know what you’d have done with it.

He stepped aside, away from the hall doorway. Out of sight, it occurred to her, of anyone who might come in. The thought of it. Destroy a human mind...

His hands lowered. Heck, all of him, slowly and without a word lowered – slumped – down the wall and on to the tiled floor.

She gaped.

She’d never seen someone pass out before.

She approached, around the table, uncertain.

She stared at the weapon in her hand. As if it were someone else’s hand holding it. Should she wave the jagged edges near his face, like she’d once seen someone do in a film? To check he wasn’t feigning – lying?

Better safe than sorry.

He didn’t flinch.

What now? Should she call the Police? What would they see? A woman threatening a man with a broken glass bottle. But he might have killed me. Or destroyed my mind. No. What policeman would believe that? And even if they did, no court takes kindly to a woman who defends herself—

Hello.

Verity startled.

Bernie, in an old jacket over the bright floral top and skirt she’d bought on last month’s foray into the charity shop, bustled through the doorway holding two innocent trays of tomato seedlings.

Careful. There’s.... glass everywhere.

Bernie edged round the debris and set the trays of seedlings on the table. Her face turned into circles at the sight of the slumped figure. She said nothing.

I... think I need some duct tape. Verity stepped round Bernie to the cupboard near the door, fumbled with the piles of boxes on the shelves. When she returned, Bernie had knelt by Reid and pushed up his jacket sleeves to feel for a pulse.

Did you glass him?

No. No, I... he fainted. I think.

Did he threaten you?

No... Verity’s neck prickled. Oh God. He’s American. He’s probably got a gun.

Bernie had already felt under the tan-coloured field jacket. She shook her head. How d’ya know where he’s from?

Because... Verity picked at the stuck-down end of tape on the roll. She glanced at Reid’s face. What if he came round before she had the chance to fasten his hands? How did you even do that? What if he’d already come round and was ‘playing dead’ – waiting for his moment to overpower them? Two middle-aged women, one with a dodgy hip and one with a heart – she felt it – already missing beats...

Because he’s someone from that trip of yours?

Verity nodded.

Bernie took the reel of tape with its freed end, ripped a length of it and bound it around Reid’s bared, crossed wrists.

You’ve done this before, haven’t you?

Bernie said nothing. She pulled a chair towards her.

If we get him sat upright, he’ll breathe better. One arm each. Under the shoulder...

They heaved him on to the chair. A pang shot down Verity’s back. She watched, wide-eyed, as Bernie calmly pushed up Reid’s trouser hems and taped his bare ankles to the chair’s legs above the cross-bar. He wore no socks.

Bernie had done this before.

Reid’s eyes blinked open.

Verity glanced at Bernie.

"Er... this is Bernie. Bernie, this is John Reid. He’s, er was, head interrogator at the Camp."

Bernie raised her eyebrows. They were doing Milgram experiments at an internment camp?

Her accent blossomed on those last words. The rolling r; the long, poetic vowel. Grainy images from seventies Belfast came unbidden to Verity’s mind: back streets, grey children and soldiers. Internment. Without trial.

No – er, they... found something about me. Something they said no-one bar me knew how to do. While I was helping with the experiments.

She’d mentioned the experiments to Bernie – the ones she’d taken part in earlier in the year. She’d been the ‘learner’ receiving real electric shocks, with her bad heart, in a re-run of Milgram’s notorious experiment.

She glanced at Reid. He’d better not say—

The English Method.

Verity’s face burned. Why had they given it the same name? Same as the brutal methods used in— Not the one they used in Ireland, no. I don’t know why they call the new one that.

Probably because Mills – Stan ‘Satanic’ Mills, spirit of Fear – had given them the idea. Bastard.

This one is different. It’s... kind. Some military people came to find me in the Milgram lab. They said, I’ve got this way of talking. Listening. Musical. That people tell me everything. If I concentrate. It makes up for—

She mustn’t tell Reid. Mustn’t let him know...

Facial expressions. A whole palette – a whole language – to which she was blind. Bernie knew.

Bernie please don’t tell...

Makes up for, the things I can’t see. Perhaps that’d be enough. When I do this, it’s soothing. People tell me things. So they... sent me to the Camp. You know, the one that’s been on the news.

She didn’t want to admit she’d agreed to go. Or worse still, that Mills had been the one to utter the final words which had persuaded her. Bernie had advised her, last year, to get him out of her life. With no idea how difficult that was...

I... interviewed everybody. It seemed to work.

She glanced at Reid.

What now? If she carried on playing it down like this and voiced her suspicions – that Mills had spread, among America’s Intelligence community, false rumours that the British had a secret, the English Method, which they wouldn’t share – then all her interviews would count for nothing. Once America’s top brass believed the English Method a fiction, they’d have all the freed prisoners rounded up... That would be so like Mills, too – so like one of his evil schemes. To spread suspicion, spread fear: the dark, irrational fear on which he fed. Fear that enabled him to climb into people’s minds, know every wisp of thought...

But if she kept her suspicions quiet then he – Reid, whose livelihood her ‘skill’ made obsolete – would resume his attempts to destroy her. They’d tried to at the Camp, Reid and Byrnes, with the Inverse Polygraph. Almost succeeded.

A line came to mind – a line from a text she’d read, as part of her research before going out to the Camp and having to pose as a professional interrogator. A line about awkward choices.

Reid Technique, step 7: offer two choices for what happened; one more socially acceptable than the other. The suspect is expected to choose the easier option. But whichever one is chosen, guilt is admitted.

She’s just being modest. Understatement. It’s a Brit thing, huh? He smiled at her. He might have meant it. How could she ever know?

Vez, what’s he doing in your kitchen?

He...

Oh God...

He might kill her. Because of what she knew – might kill them both.

She needed to stop him.

An idea came.

The prisoners... weren’t the only people I talked with. I also asked the guards what they’d been up to. I kept copies of the AudioCards. All the interviews. I’ve... Her hands crackled. Lodged them in a safe place...

She eyed Reid. She shouldn’t lie. But as her Sacha had said, he’d had to hide things, back in the Soviet Union, when lives were at stake, and no-one counted that as lying...

With my statement.

Reid’s breathing changed.

She kept her voice level. I gave a statement. About the incident with Byrnes and the Inverse Polygraph.

Bernie raised her eyebrows.

Oh – er – it’s a machine. For... obliterating memories. I passed out. So the medical people at the Camp, er, needed to know.

To be fair, she hadn’t quite lied. The C.I.C., when he’d heard about the incident, had summoned a doctor from the sick-bay to check her over for any signs of damage. They’d even taken an E.C.G. She’d had to reassure them: sorry, my E.C.G. has always looked like that. Left Axis Deviation. Erratic rhythm. Extra waves.

Because of the electricity. Because of...

Did Reid know this? Well, too late now:

My heart.

Did he know – was it on a file somewhere – all the other stuff? Oxygen starvation, when her heart had been repaired, back in the sixties, when they had to freeze you right down... And the damage this had done to her. Subtle things: next-to-no visual memory. Remembered voices and music but never a face – no more than anyone bar those with the gift of perfect pitch can recall a Middle C. Couldn’t read them, either. So Mills’ face, which displayed his nature – pure fear – and struck terror into everyone else who saw it, left her unaffected. Her life was blessed – or cursed, depending on your point of view – because of that heart.

Its sudden loss of rhythm made her cough.

It... Bernie you couldn’t have come at a better time.

She slumped.

Bernie rose and took down olives, crisps and artichokes from the cupboards. She brought a third glass, and scissors to unfasten Reid’s wrists. Verity filled the glass. Reid’s thick hand clasped the stem as she would have grabbed a heavy club.

Who was Byrnes, then? Bernie asked.

Reid explained how the two of them, he and Byrnes, operated together. Byrnes would work on the physical side; Reid would operate on the detainees’ minds. Both would try to break them – sometimes succeed. Try and ‘get through’. But he didn’t seem to want to go into detail – as if he wanted to minimise his side of it.

His words fizzled out.

The window, ajar, sighed with a sudden draught.

And now he’s dead. Butchered.

Bernie raised her eyebrows. But she said nothing, just patted Reid’s arm. You miss him, don’t you? Your workmate, and with nothing but work in your life for all that time?

It had never occurred to Verity that Reid had it in him to miss someone.

He nodded. He did most of it. I just talked. I’m not sure they even understood half the time. I couldn’t have done any of it, without him.

Verity let the lie pass. For now.

But something’s changed in you since then, hasn’t it? Bernie should be a talk-show host. That soft Irish accent would have anyone spill the beans. That’s why you came here.

He put down his wineglass.

What happened, at the barbecue? Verity reached across for his arm. That, at least, had seemed to work with the prisoners. And using the present tense, to help with recall, she’d read before setting out there. Think back: you’re there, at the Observatory. You realise you’re... not going to get grilled. She glanced away. What happens now?

Strange to think that barbecue was less than three days ago – the day she left the Camp. It seemed like another life.

This guy... Reid flinched. The one who stopped Bai-Gul butchering me... Says there’s conditions. He’s got, what look like old-timers’ playing cards. He hesitated. And he says it’s up to Bai-Gul to choose what the conditions are.

Verity’s heart ran over points. Thank heaven Reid wasn’t a mind-reader.

Bai-Gul? Bernie glanced at her.

Oh, er, yes. Bai-Gul was a female detainee. She could speak English, so we drafted her in as an interpreter.

Bai-Gul had done so well that at the end of their stay Verity had offered her a reference for the job she’d applied for. Tactless to tell Bernie what sort of job, though.

She turned back to Reid. Please, you were saying.

By this time, I’m past caring who he is. Didn’t think about how weird he looked till later. Like I couldn’t see his face. How weird the whole set-up was – getting a man to watch while his life’s being gambled with. Like he’s the Grim Reaper or something.

Bernie raised her eyebrows.

Even dressed the part.

Wait! Reid, for all he’d talked about Mills at the Camp, must never have met him – not known what he looked like!

She said nothing.

O.K., so he gets Bai-Gul to hold these cards and repeat my name. Like my life was in the cards somehow. He takes the cards back, fans them out face-down and gets Bai-Gul to choose three. Looks at each as she chooses it.

Verity supressed a smile. Mills’ cards. ‘Mirror Tarot, lass. In Mortal Tarot, the protagonist’s fate influences the cards. Here, you choose the cards that play his fate.’

So, what’s the first card?

It’s a spade. I mean literally, not the suit like in regular cards. Like on your ‘Dig for Victory’ there. The second one is... it’s French. It’s a magazine cover, cartoon. Picture of Mohamed and some French, which he says means ‘All is...’ Yeah, I guess Pardoned. And the third, it’s a southern cross—

What’s a southern cross?

Verity explained – the nickname, at the Camp, for waterboarding.

"Now she has to choose one of those three.

"Bai-Gul, she ain’t no goddess of mercy: she goes straight for the cross. My heart sank. But there’s a twist. The guy explains the cards like this:

He says the French cartoon, when they published it, it caused an outrage. Folks rioted in the streets. It represented, not forgiveness like the French words said, but a grudge. Someone, I guess one of the detainees, Islamic, would find me and kill me. Then the spade: he said it represented hard work. I would have to work hard at something. Burying. Burying my past. I’d never finish burying my past.

Verity puzzled. Had Mills been able, for once, to utter the word ‘forgive’? He’d admitted to her once that he couldn’t. Forgiveness can’t exist where there’s still fear, after all.

The last card, the one Bai-Gul chose, meant agony all right, but not for me: someone else’s pain. I had to put a stop to the pain they were feeling. Destroy the southern cross. That was my job, my ‘condition’. And I had to come off Sleep-E-Z, to do it. It would help me with, kinda lateral thinking. Empathy, too, I’d need. I took my last dose of the meds a couple days ago.

Sleep-easy? Bernie raised her eyebrows.

Verity grinned. Oh, it’s not what you think. It’s the stuff they take so – they worked twenty-two hours a day in the lab. They took it at the Camp, too. It stops you from dreaming, though, or having any empathy. Or new ideas. You work, and that’s it.

Silence.

Birds chirped outside.

Verity kept her voice calm with difficulty.

You have a chance, then, don’t you? A chance to make up for the things that happened, at the Camp. Including the ones that happened to me—

Bernie dug at her arm.

It had taken Bernie to notice: Reid’s face had crumpled, his eyes red with pain.

Coming off Sleep-E-Z, and having Empathy; having to need proper sleep again after so many years... Who knew what that might do to a mind?

Verity gaped.

Reid Technique, step 6: The suspect will become quieter and listen. If the suspect cries at this point, infer guilt.

Reid whispered, When he told me who it was – who I had to help – I kinda wished I’d been lunch after all.

He glanced at Bernie.

After we’d heard what you’d done – all those soft interrogations – we figured on digging the Method outta your mind. With the Polygraph. But it didn’t work – didn’t make you talk like we’d expected. It regressed you. Looked like it destroyed your brain. Byrnes figured, if we’d lost the Method, outta your mind, might as well finish the job. He was going to...

He hesitated,

Use the southern cross. Make it look like an accident. He... everyone knew he got carried away at times.

What’s he talking about, Vez?

Verity whispered, they would have drowned me. On the southern cross.

God, Vez...

But... I came to, in the hut, with Bai-Gul. Someone must have stopped them. I...

Never thanked whoever that was.

Her face burned.

I think I... need a Nalivka. And some lunch. For strength. She rose, unsteady on her feet. Anyone else... fancy some?

Chapter 2 ~ Green shoots

What time is it, lass?

The cowled figure in dark robes – a deep, triangular shadow where the cheerful sunshine stopped – stood facing her across the kitchen table.

She hadn’t seen Mills materialise. He did this, wherever fear chilled a mind. Even if this meant travelling faster than light. He’d told her once: Fear slows down time...

Reid, sleepy after the pre-prandial wine and Nalivka and a fry-up lunch, had been shown a place to crash out: the four-poster in the spare room. It meant Verity couldn’t fire up the computer to chat with her friends on Face, renew her online donation to Earth Revolution, or write for her Party campaigns. Instead, she’d sat at the kitchen table to read about John Dee. Mills had talked of how Dee had helped Queen Elizabeth I develop the English Method.

It’s... ah, it’s not ten past ten. The wall clock must’ve stopped. She glanced at the sun splash on the floor. Must be about three.

Here. Mills took out his astronomical watch, the one Verity always referred to as The Gorgeous Timepiece. Ten to three. She’d been about to go for a siesta herself – three in the afternoon often found her drowsy.

And you’ve two questions owed.

She stiffened. What for? What dreadful things had he done, that the Referee had awarded her the chance to ask him questions?

She put aside her book.

Did you have any plans for today, lass?

"I’d been going to go and work on the plot but then John Reid turned up. Have you, er, done