An Other Place Read online

  “Riplan,” I inform her, since I don’t seem to have a choice.

  “Stand up and let Mr Riplan out of his seat,” she says.

  The daughter – Jennifer – doesn’t move across but draws her legs up and says, “There’s plenty of room to pass.”

  The mother – I still don’t know her name and I’ve no wish to – tuts but smiles at me to show she thinks this is an adorable bit of childhood rebellion. If I was the brat’s father, I’d haul her out into the aisle and warn her not to be rude, but I know better than to tell other parents how to chastise their children, so I shuffle past, nod gruffly to the mother, and make a beeline for the toilets.

  I didn’t really need to go but since I’m here, I force out a few drops, then run the tap, splash water over my face and take deep breaths, forehead pressed to the mirror. I feel hot and bothered, the drugs still in my system, in need of several hours more sleep.

  I wonder about my destination. This has to be the craziest shit I’ve ever pulled, letting those two maniacs book me on a mystery holiday. I could be headed anywhere. I’m tempted to check my phone but decide against it. I’ve come this far in the dark — it’d be a shame to chicken out now.

  I splash more water over my face, use a bunch of paper towels to dry myself, then head back to my seat, breathing deep, trying to stay cool.

  There’s still lots of tea left and it’s nicely tepid by this stage, just the way I like it. I realise as I drink that my ears are buzzing. Must be the drugs — normally I never suffer when flying. I’m going to be in for the mother of all headaches later, when the drugs, drink and travel catch up with me. Just thinking about the grief is enough to bring on the first throbbing pains.

  “Excuse me, Mr Riplan?” It’s the mother again, smiling at me as if we’re old chums.

  “Yeah?” I reply sourly.

  “I was wondering… It’s not much fun for a child being stuck in the middle. I know it would be an imposition, but we’d be so grateful if…”

  “You want me to swap seats with your daughter,” I say flatly.

  “If you don’t mind.” She grins sweetly.

  I should let the kid have the window seat. It’s a big thing when you’re young, looking out, spotting other planes streaking past, studying the land below. Any other time, I’d be happy to offer up my place, but the mother’s grin pisses me off. She’s not really asking me to move — she expects me to vacate my seat. I can tell that she thinks her daughter has a right to sit wherever she wants, that I should oblige her any way I can, and it’s that sense of entitlement that inflames me.

  “She can’t have it,” I say softly.

  The woman blinks, her smile slipping. “I… well, of course, if there’s a reason why you need to be by the window…”

  “See this?” I growl, bouncing up and down a few times. “This is my chair. See that?” I slap the armrest of Jennifer’s seat. “That’s your daughter’s. Hers. Mine. Hers. Understand?”

  The poor woman stares at me, stunned, then grows indignant. “If that’s the way you feel,” she huffs.

  “It is,” I say obstinately, knowing I’m behaving like a five-year-old but too far into this to back out now.

  Jennifer’s lower lip is quivering and her eyes are filling with tears.

  “It’s alright,” the mother says, trying to calm the girl, “you can swap seats with me.”

  “But I don’t want to sit there,” Jennifer snivels. “I want to sit beside the window.”

  “I know,” comes the answer, “but you can’t. That’s Mr Riplan’s seat.”

  “Damn right, baby,” I chortle, figuring I might as well play the full pantomime villain.

  I get comfy as the mother convinces Jennifer to take her seat, telling her that the aisle is the best place to sit, that it gets cold by the window. I’m feeling lousy now that the heat of the moment has faded, and almost offer up the cherished throne, but the mother would probably refuse it and that would leave me looking sad and defeated. Better to maintain the front and act like a callous son of a bitch.

  “Is everything OK?” the stewardess who brought my tea and water asks, hearing Jennifer’s sniffles as she’s passing.

  “Yes, thank you,” the mother says icily.

  “I wanted –” Jennifer starts to explain but I cut her short, not wanting the nice stewardess to hear of my pettiness.

  “Any chance I could bother you for a bag of nuts?” I ask.

  “Of course,” the stewardess says and returns with a couple of small bags of mixed nuts and another bottle of water.

  “You’re a star,” I thank her and she smiles beautifully. “Want one?” I ask the mother as I open the first bag. She sniffs and buries her head in the in-flight magazine. I shrug, flick a nut past my lips and chew away happily as the world slips by tens of thousands of feet beneath.

  The mother and Jennifer haven’t said a word for twenty minutes. I’m still chewing nuts, watching a TV show on my seat-back screen, the blind down. I did think of leaving it up and making a show of gazing out the window and cooing – “Wow! Those are some wild cloud formations. I doubt I’ll ever see any like those again.” – but I’m not that infantile.

  I’ve come to the last few nuts at the bottom of the second bag. I upend it and let them slide into my mouth and bounce along my tongue. I’m thinking of asking the stewardess for a third bag – the salt seems to be helping me fight off the headache – when one of the nuts lodges in my windpipe. I begin choking and coughing.

  “Are you alright?” the mother asks, alarm getting the better of her indignation. “Can I help?”

  I shake my head and double forward, gasping for breath. I feel her hands on my back but I shrug them off. I’m not in serious trouble. I’ve had nuts go down the wrong way before. I’ll jolt out of this by myself.

  I gulp a few times, hoping my Adam’s apple will dislodge the pesky nut. I hear the mother calling the stewardess and sense heads turning to see what the commotion is. I sit up straight, bang on my chest with my hands, then double over again and try to retch. The buzzing in my ears strengthens and I become oblivious to all surrounding sights and sounds, even the roar of the engines. I’m focused on the nut and my diminishing supply of oxygen. I rock forwards and backwards, eyes squeezed shut, lungs straining, tongue lashing from one cheek to another like a trapped, dying eel, and finally, when I’m beginning to really worry, out shoots the nut like a bullet from a gun. It hits the back of my teeth and lands on my tongue. I spit it into the palm of my hand, wipe round my mouth, relax back into my seat and turn to assure the mother, the stewardess and the others that the crisis is over… only to discover that I appear to be the only living human left on the plane.

  THREE

  It must be the drugs. I’m tripping. I have to be. And yet… I’ve never experienced anything like this before. Never even heard about anything like this.

  The mother has turned into a plastic mannequin. So has Jennifer. So, it seems from a cursory look round, has everybody else.

  I study the figure beside me, far calmer than I should be, sure that this is a surreal trip, one that I’ll float out of any minute now. It looks like the mother – same build, similar facial contours – but there are differences. This woman’s naked for one thing, and devoid of hair, none on her head or pubic areas. Her breasts lack nipples and she has no fingernails. Her lips are shut tight and there’s a white, mucousy film covering her nostrils, ears and eyes.

  “Mrs?” I say stupidly, wishing I’d bothered to ask her name. “Jennifer?” They don’t answer or move. They’re sitting stiffly, facing ahead, expressionless, hairless, nippleless. I poke the woman with a finger, which sinks in alarmingly. The mannequin isn’t made of hardened plastic, as I assumed, but some sort of wax. It’s soft and malleable, like hot wax, except it’s cool as a winter morning pane of glass.

  I pull back my finger, sniff and lick.

  It tastes of candles.

  I leave my seat and stand in the aisle, gazing round, going
with the flow of the hallucination. The men have testicles and penises but they’re small and hairless. Everyone’s sitting in the same position, facing forward, still as corpses, hands neatly tucked in by their sides.

  I’m fully clothed, hair on my head. I prod my stomach and face and they feel the same as ever. I hurry back to the toilet and check in the mirror — no visible changes, except I’m flushed and sweating. I smile at my reflection and paddle my lower lip with my index finger. “Going loony, old boy,” I chuckle. “Father always said it would happen.”

  I sit on the toilet seat and take a few deep breaths, even deeper than those I took earlier. This is starting to get to me. I’m scared. The trouble is, I’m thinking too clearly. I should be bewildered and groggy but I’m not. My head’s in good shape. Even my headache’s vanished. I know what it’s like to trip and how my mind works when the wiring in my brain gets tangled, and this isn’t the way it should be. This is more than a bad reaction to coke. This is wrong.

  I wander up and down the plane like a lost little lamb. I’ve been prowling the same patch for… how long? An hour? Two? Three? Impossible to say, since my watch and phone have gone missing. They either disappeared when the people turned to dummies or were swiped from me unawares just prior to that.

  I continue telling myself that this is a bad trip and keep trying to snap myself out of it – pinching my arms, pulling my hair, slamming my head against things – but no luck so far. In truth, I don’t believe it is a trip. From the first moment I had a feeling this was something more. I don’t know what that more might be, but if I was a betting man, I’d wager a fair sum on full-blown madness.

  I’ve tried communicating with the mannequins but they react to nothing. I’ve hit them, screamed at them, jabbed pens into them, without response. I even cut the hand off one of them with a knife I found in the galley — there was just a whitish goo inside, no bones or blood.

  The door to the cockpit is closed. I’ve attacked it with my feet and hands, the knife, with arms I ripped off chairs, all to no avail — they started making those things pretty impenetrable in the wake of 9/11. I considered building a fire and trying to burn my way through but I didn’t think it would work, and what if the fire spread? I’d be all alone in the middle of a raging inferno, no help in sight. I bang on the door from time to time, in the hope there’s somebody alive up front, but if there is, they aren’t responding.

  There are the emergency doors of course but I haven’t been able to find any parachutes and jumping out of a plane while it’s in flight remains the most final of options.

  Although having said that, I’m not sure we’re actually in the air. I have the sensation of flight but the engines are dead as far as I can tell. The plane’s silent, except for my laboured breathing and the pounding of my heart and feet. And it’s pitch black outside. Not dark, like it is when flying at night, but black. No stars, no moon, no flashing wing-lights. Perhaps we’re gliding, closer to the ground than we should be, thick cloud cover overhead.

  I try the door to the cockpit again. “Can you hear me?” I scream, then try a Pink Floyd line. “Is there anybody out there?” Nothing. “Hello? I need help back here.” No answer. A wave of panic sweeps through me and I begin pressing the call buttons above the heads of the mannequins. I stagger back along the aisle, randomly pressing buttons, stamping on the floor, peering out the windows, shouting at the dummies in the vain hope that one of them will react.

  All to no avail.

  Back in my seat. The mannequins of Jennifer and her mother lie sprawled on the floor. I threw them down partly to see if it would provoke a reaction – it didn’t – but also to make some space. It’s creepy as hell being surrounded by these silent, expressionless things. I need room to breathe, move, think.

  I check my pulse, worried that my thrumming heart is about to burst, but I’m too agitated to take an accurate reading. Instead I get an idea to test the dummies. They’ve no pulse but if I press an ear to their chests, I detect a faint heartbeat. I contemplate cutting one of them open but decide against it. Not because I’m squeamish, but because it’s the sort of dumb thing a person would do in an episode of The Twilight Zone — slice open a mannequin, only for everyone to become human again, thus ending up on a murder rap. I’m doing nothing desperate until I’ve run clear out of options.

  (Sure. Like cutting off a hand isn’t desperate.)

  Could Hughie and Battles have had anything to do with this? Maybe I’m not on a real plane. Maybe we never left the ground. Perhaps this is a weird fairground ride, and any minute a door’s going to open and my friends will fall in, laughing themselves sick. “Got you, Riplan! Freaked the shit out of you, huh? Is that brown pants stew we smell?”

  The phrase clutching at straws races through my mind.

  I’m still in my seat, wondering what to do, when I sense the plane descending. I’m not sure what tips me off – it’s as silent as ever – but I know we’re coming down.

  I rush to the door of the cockpit and bang on it again. “Open up,” I scream. “Tell me what’s happening. Hey! Can you hear me? Are you…”

  I stop. What if the pilot and his crew have turned into mindless, directionless mannequins too? That would explain why the engines were dead. What if we’ve been gliding along, as I suspected, but with no hand on the steering wheel, only for gravity to finally exert its control? We could be plummeting to a shrieking, fiery end.

  I pound at the door, then hurry to the rear of the plane and settle down. I think this is the best place to be if we crash. I curl into a ball and say my prayers – I don’t believe in a god, but at times like this I’m open to renegotiation – and brace myself.

  The crash never comes. Instead the plane lands silently and smoothly. I hear no wheels being lowered or the squealing of rubber on tarmac. One second we’re in the air, descending, the next we’re on the ground, at a standstill. I can’t explain how I know that, but I do.

  We’re down.

  I hesitate, then shuffle over to the window, hoping to spot lights outside, but it’s still unnaturally black out there. I look for something to break the glass with – dangerous if I’m wrong and we’re in the air – when all of a sudden the door to the cockpit slams open. After so much silence, the sound is startling and I cringe, terrified.

  I stare at the open door, expecting a monster to come barrelling through, but I can’t see a thing up there. I’m a long way back but I’m pretty sure there’s nobody about. I take a step towards the front. Another. I make it about halfway up the cabin when, in perfect unison, the previously lifeless wax mannequins rise to their feet and start stepping out into the aisle.

  FOUR

  I panic when I find myself surrounded and lash out with my fists. The dummies don’t react, just stand there and stare blankly ahead. After a few mad seconds I come to my senses, calm down (relatively speaking) and push through those nearest me to the seats they’ve vacated. My heart’s still thumping wildly but I’m over the worst of the shock.

  I observe the mannequins carefully, wondering what they’ll do next. If they don’t start moving again shortly, I’ll continue my trek to the cockpit to find out if there’s –

  “Alright, you lot,” someone roars. “Let’s move it out.”

  Startled, I half-stand and peer over the top of the seat in front of me. In the mouth of the cockpit I spot two men standing to either side of the door. I call out to them but my voice is lost when the mannequins kick into life and march forward, blocking my view of the men and creating a din which I’d have to scream to be heard above.

  I cower back in my seat, awed by the sight of the dummies marching up the aisle. They move robotically, eerier and more menacing than a pack of shambling zombies in a horror film.

  I mean to get up and follow as the last mannequins pass by but my legs won’t work. I have a terrible image of the two men leaving with the dummies, shutting the door and locking me inside forever, but even that dark thought isn’t enough to jolt me into actio
n. For the moment I’m as immobile as the wax figures were during the final stages of the flight.

  The mannequins have disappeared, into the cockpit and out, I assume, through a door. The plane’s silent again and feels significantly cooler. After several long seconds, footsteps approach. I hear the two men talking.

  “A good crop,” one says. He has a deep, strangely accentless voice.

  “Best load we’ve had in a while,” the other man agrees. His voice is slightly higher than his companion’s and also impossible to place.

  “Everything looks clean,” the deep-voiced one says. “Why don’t we knock off early?”

  “No way,” the other replies with a laugh. “Your pre-decessor tried that, only for the Alchemist to pop up and…”

  He spots me and stops. I smile at him nervously, then stand and clear my throat. “H-hi,” I stutter, “I’m –”

  “This is why we don’t knock off early, Phil,” the man says, shooting a warning look at his partner.

  The deep-voiced man gawps at me. “Who is he, Bryan?” he asks, then follows it up with a bewildered, “What is he?”

  “A human,” Bryan replies, “just like us.”

  “How’d he get on the drone hold?” Phil asks. “I didn’t see anybody come in.”

  “He’s not from here,” Bryan says.

  “Not from the city?” Phil’s eyes widen. “But then where…?”

  Bryan shrugs. “Dunno. I asked the Alchemist once. He told me to mind my own business, so I did.”

  The two men are dressed in dark blue uniforms, boots up to their thighs, peaked caps, burly gloves. Phil is white-skinned, Bryan a light brown. They don’t look sinister or alien. They resemble a pair of jaded delivery men more than anything else.

  “Excuse me,” I say falteringly, “but what the hell’s going on? What happened to all those people? Who are you? Where am I?”

  “He doesn’t know where he is,” Phil giggles.