The Ninth Circle Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  8th August

  12th August

  17th August

  19th August

  24th August

  29th August

  1st September

  2nd September

  3rd September

  5th September

  8th September

  15th September

  16th September

  19th September

  21st September

  3rd October

  4th October

  6th October

  9th October

  10th October

  11th October

  12th October

  16th October

  23rd October

  25th October

  30th October

  27th November

  30th November

  15th December

  25th December (Christmas Day)

  26th December (Boxing Day)

  th December

  29th December

  31st December (New Year’s Eve)

  1st January (New Year)

  Acknowledgements

  The Ninth Circle

  ALEX BELL

  Orion

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  A Gollancz ebook

  Copyright © Alex Bell 2008

  All rights reserved

  The right of Alex Bell to be identified as the author of

  this work has been asserted by her in accordance

  with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in Great Britain in 2008 by Gollancz

  An imprint of the Orion Publishing Group

  Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane,

  London WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette Livre UK Company

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

  from the British Library

  eISBN 978 0 5750 8604 3

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  This ebook produced by Jouve, France

  For Robert.

  ‘At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark

  from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep

  gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.’

  Albert Schweitzer

  8th August

  My name is Gabriel. There - I have a name. So there’s no need to be afraid. But I wish I could remember . . . something more. Seven days ago I opened my eyes and stared at the kitchen floorboards stretching out before me - worn old floorboards that were stained with someone else’s blood. And when I tried to lift my head, I found that my face was glued to the floor where the blood had dried there, sticking to my skin.

  I’m only writing this down now because I - ah - don’t want to forget it all again. If a man doesn’t know who he is, he might cease to be a person altogether. I mean, he might just sort of . . . fade . . . right out of existence. So I’m making a record here in this journal. It’s the sensible thing to do. I’m being rational; you see that I am being calm about this. I am not afraid. What good would fear be?

  When I at last managed to get to my feet, the room tilted and the air went thin. I staggered, almost fell back down again. My tongue felt like sandpaper in my mouth, my lips were dry and cracked and my head was throbbing. I stumbled from the kitchen, half in a daze, wandering from room to room trying to get my bearings.

  The apartment was small and shabby: just a kitchen, bathroom, lounge and small bedroom. The carpets were worn and drab and the wallpaper was threadbare and virtually peeling from the walls. But the furnishings and other possessions were clearly of high quality. The wine and clothes, the many books, the classical music collection, the fine artwork . . .

  I walked into the bedroom and sat down on the double bed. The sheets were crumpled as if they had been slept in, but the apartment was deserted. And completely silent. I sat there, staring at the wall, and it occurred to me that perhaps I was dead. It seemed a sensible explanation. This place couldn’t be real. Obviously, I wasn’t real either. Real people knew their names. This didn’t worry me at first. In fact, I felt I could sit there for ever on the bed, untroubled by this surreal experience, half expecting it to fade away like some vaguely worrying dream.

  But slowly noise began to filter through to me. The noise of traffic passing by outside somewhere. I got up and crossed to the window, drew up the blind and looked out, flinching instinctively at the brightness of the sun and shielding my eyes with my hand. I was about six floors up in a large apartment block. There was a main road not far away, and the noise from it had clearly been there all along. Now that I was listening, I could also hear people on the pavement below and the odd door opening and closing within the building. There was life, after all. This was not what came afterwards. Craning my head and squinting against the light, I could see that I was on the top floor. A city glinted dully below and around me. From my window I could see the Danube and the Chain Link Bridge. I think it must have been these landmarks that made a name suddenly come into my mind - Budapest.

  I turned, frowning, from the window. Was I Hungarian? What language did I speak? What language was I thinking in right now? I searched my empty mind desperately for memories that weren’t there, feeling more and more alarmed by the second.

  ‘I don’t know,’ someone said hoarsely, and I yelled in fright and spun around, looking for whoever else was in the room with me.

  I saw him at once, standing only a few paces away in a doorway that led to another room. About thirty years old - his hair was black, his face was hollow and his eyes were horribly sunken. There was at least a couple of days’ growth of stubble on his chin. But what immediately caught my attention was the black bruise on the side of his head, stretching halfway down his face. And the blood that had dried a rusty red-brown, crusted to his skin and in trickles down his neck, staining his creased white shirt. He was visibly shocked at the sight of me.

  ‘Who are you?’ I demanded, shakily, trying to conceal my fear.

  But he spoke at the exact same time, the exact same words, and I realised then that this was not another person and it was not a doorway. It was just my reflection in the full-length mirror. I stared, incredulous for a moment, amazed that the sight of him - me - did not cause even the faintest spark of recognition. It was like I had never seen that man before in my life. I crept cautiously closer to the mirror, tapping the glass with my fingertips to make sure.

  I turned my head to one side and then moved it sharply back as if half-expecting to catch the reflection out; but after peering into the mirror from every angle for some minutes, I had to admit that the stranger looking back at me really wasn’t a stranger at all. Or at least he shouldn’t have been.

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked again softly, but the reflection stared back at me, equally mystified.

  I was speaking English. Was I English, then? Yes, probably. This was good. I was getting more answers all the time. I would probably remember everything any second now. My reflection grinned at the thought, startling me into taking a hasty step back, for the smile made him look a little menacing. My eyes went back to the bruise on his temple, and for the first time I became aware of the blood beating painfully in my head, this incessant thumping . . . Jesus Christ, it was unbearable. How could I have failed to notice it before?

  I walked into the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet in there and found a bottle of aspirin. My shaking hands fumbled with the lid, but finally I managed to take two of the pills, wincing as they scratched painfully at my dry throat. Automatically, I turned on the rusty shower tap over the bath, and then stood underneath the hot water for
a while. But when I raised my hand to push my hair out of my eyes, my fingers came back into my field of vision with blood on them, and I yelled in alarm and somehow managed to slip over in the bath, jarring my already sore shoulders and back. It was only then I realised I’d forgotten to take off my clothes and that a soaking shirt was clinging to my back, and the trousers were equally ruined.

  Stiffly, I got back to my feet, stripped off my sodden clothes and dropped them into the bath. I turned off the shower, wiped the steamed up mirror with a towel and carefully examined my face. The water from the shower had knocked the scab on my temple, causing it to bleed a little, but already it seemed to have stopped.

  I opened the cabinet over the mirror once again and found a comb and a razor, which I grabbed at eagerly. Clean-shaven and with my wet hair combed back, I felt I was starting to look a little more normal. At least I could look at myself without feeling quite so alarmed. I was tall, and now that my clothes were gone I could see the toned muscles of my body. With my height, athletic build and dark hair I could be handsome. I should be handsome. And yet somehow I feel I’m not. There is something about my face - about the look in my eyes - that seems wrong even to me. I look ... cold, somehow.

  When I returned to the bedroom and examined the expensive clothes in the wardrobe and in the drawers, I found they were all my size and, for the first time, it occurred to me that - perhaps - this was where I lived. Perhaps these things all belonged to me. Perhaps this was home.

  Clean and freshly clothed, I walked back to the desk I had seen in the living room. There was a piece of paper folded on top of it, and when I picked it up I saw that it was a tenancy agreement leasing this apartment to a Mr Gabriel Antaeus. My first thought was that I must find some way of contacting him. He must know who I am; after all, I seemed to be in his home. But then I paused and it occurred to me that - perhaps - I myself was Gabriel Antaeus. This was my apartment. I was living here. I examined the signature on the document, picked up a nearby pen and decided to see if I could copy it. But as soon as I put pen to paper, the signature was curling out beneath my fist, an exact replica of the original, as if my hand instinctively remembered even if I did not.

  ‘Gabriel Antaeus,’ I muttered. The name was strange and unfamiliar in my mouth.

  I put the pen down and walked back to the kitchen. And that was when I noticed the cardboard box, carefully placed in the middle of the small kitchen table. It was full of money. There must have been at least a hundred thousand pounds’ worth of Hungarian forints wrapped up in a plastic bag inside the box. I sat staring at the money for a while, my fingers drumming on the tabletop. It was a lot of cash to be just left there ... on the kitchen table like that.

  This apartment looked like it was my home - but I couldn’t remember it. I couldn’t remember me. I got up and walked to the spot where I had been lying. There was a shelf on the ground nearby, one corner of which was stained with blood. And there was a chair positioned by the wall next to a row of already installed shelves. I had been trying to put up shelves. That must have been it. Somehow, I had lost my grip on this top shelf, it had swung forwards and hit me on the head, and I had fallen from the chair and knocked myself out. Yes! Yes, yes, yes! And now I was suffering from some kind of temporary amnesia. It was that simple. It was as gloriously simple as that. Just a stupid, stupid accident.

  ‘Gabriel Antaeus,’ I said again. It was definitely an English accent.

  I suppose I should have phoned someone. The police, or the British embassy, or a hospital . . . I wanted to. I wanted to find someone who could help me. But there was a hundred thousand pounds’ worth of Hungarian forints on my kitchen table. Would they believe that I couldn’t remember stealing it? For that seemed the most plausible explanation, even to me. And I did not want to go to prison.

  I found this journal in a drawer beside my bed. It was empty but for my name, which I’d written on the inside cover. I don’t know why I started writing everything down like this. I suppose I’m just scared of forgetting it all again. And I don’t know who else to tell.

  12th August

  It’s been four days and none of my memories have returned as I’d hoped they would. But what is worse is that I have been unable to find anyone who can tell me who I am. There is no wedding ring on my finger and not a single photograph of anyone in my apartment. There is no address book, no telephone book, no letters from anyone. When I turned on the computer, all I found was spam mail; and there were no messages on my phone’s answer machine. My mobile appears to be brand new, for there aren’t even any numbers stored on it. Where is everyone? Where are my family, my friends? Where are my acquaintances? Where have they all gone? I mean, they can’t all be on holiday, can they? I felt a thrill of panic at the thought. What if there was some big family reunion or something going on in some distant country, and I had volunteered to stay behind to water the plants and feed the fish? There could be dozens of fish slowly starving to death because of me! What would my family say when they got home and found their pets floating dead in their tanks because I hadn’t taken care of them like I’d promised?

  The thought filled me with panic, and it was this that finally overcame my fear of leaving the apartment. It took several abortive attempts, but I did at last manage to make it through the door. I seem to live in a fairly central, if somewhat rundown, area of the city; and after much searching I found a pet shop where I bought as much fish food as I could carry. Now I always have a box of fish food in my pocket so that the second I remember where my families’ homes are, I can go there to feed their fish straightaway. I can’t do any more than that, can I? I am sure my family will understand when they return.

  When I got back to the apartment I realised that, in my preoccupation with the fish food, I had forgotten to buy any supplies for myself. Until then I had been eating the food I’d found in the freezer and in the cupboards but it would run out soon. So I forced myself to go back out into the city once again.

  I realised, travelling around Budapest, that the city is familiar to me. The faded elegance of so many old buildings, with weathered statues on their roofs or crumbling balconies or grand, dilapidated pillars reaching right down to the ground. I must have lived here some time because I can speak Hungarian fluently.

  It occurred to me yesterday that if I’ve been here a while, then my neighbours must know who I am. Again, I had to gather my courage to leave my apartment. I felt safe there and vulnerable outside it. But at last I managed to step out and knock on the door opposite mine, pleased to think that I would find someone here who would remember me.

  After a few moments, a pregnant teenager opened the door. She had beautiful coffee-coloured skin and a series of delicate gold hoops in one ear. Black Celtic symbol tattoos adorned one of her upper arms and a silver nose stud pierced one nostril. Her hair was black and straight with irregular streaks of pink and electric blue. I waited for her to recognise me - I think I might have been grinning in anticipation - but after a few moments when I didn’t speak, she said in accented Hungarian, ‘Yes? Can I help you?’

  Can I help you? Can I help you? I stared at her, taken aback, the grin faltering uncertainly. It had simply never occurred to me that she wouldn’t recognise me.

  ‘Er . . . I live over there,’ I said stupidly, pointing at my apartment door.

  ‘Oh, you’re the new tenant,’ she said. ‘You moved in last week, didn’t you?’

  ‘Er—’

  ‘I’m Casey March,’ she said, holding out her hand.

  ‘My name is Gabriel,’ I began, taking her hand, but then I faltered. Gabriel . . . Gabriel what? What was my last name? What was it? I tried to picture the words in that notebook. It had been some French sounding name. ‘Gabriel, er—’

  ‘Are you all right?’ Casey asked, and I saw her gaze move to the still-ugly bruise on my temple.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I said quickly, dropping her hand and glancing over my shoulder at the beckoning safety of my apartment door. ‘Yes, I’m fin
e. I’m just . . . I just remembered there’s something . . . that I need to go and do . . . Right now. Sorry.’

  And I dropped her hand and rushed back to the safety of my apartment, aware that she was still staring at me. I had not been expecting that at all. She should have known me! She should have been a friend of mine, living right next door. How dare she just be a . . . a stranger? What use was that? What use was that? To have lived here only a week! Of course, that is why I must have been putting up shelves. People do that sort of thing when they have just moved in, don’t they?

  17th August

  I don’t seem to sleep very much. No matter how late I go to bed, I wake up on the dot of six. And however little sleep I get, I never seem to become that tired. Nor do I ever have huge amounts of excess energy. I just function. It’s the same with food. I never feel hungry. This unnerved me a little. I mean, it’s not normal, is it? So I decided not to eat until I became hungry, just to make sure. But it was okay because after four days of nothing but water, I was feeling light-headed and sick all the time, so I know that I need food like everybody else. That pleased me. I am normal. I am normal after all.