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“Some of you here think you’re so smart,” he purrs. “You think you’re such a quick study, that you know better than the experts here. A couple of days at my establishment and suddenly you think you’re smarter than the specialists who’ve devoted their lives to this fine Institute. Did you really think that the Institute I run would be so careless as to allow a heper to be on the loose, to roam unchecked through the grounds?” He studies his nails.
A pause, then he continues, his voice even softer now. “And did you really think a heper would be so stupid as to be caught outside the protection of the Dome after dusk?” He puts his right hand down. “They might be animals, but they’re not stupid. Like some of you here.”
It is deathly quiet. “There is arrogance and ignorance in spades here. Funny how often they go hand in hand. You need to remember who you are. You were selected by luck – not by merit, not by demonstrated ability, not by anything earned. Dumb luck. And now you saunter into my Institute and think you run the whole damn place.
“There is no heper. Yes, there is a discernible smell of heper that has blown in from the outside. It is more pungent than usual, yes. But there is no heper, not inside, not the way you think. You’ve all been victims of mass hysteria.”
Beefy, despite the Director’s words, suddenly shivers. With desire. He can’t hold back, he can’t deny the heper smell in his nose. Saliva from Phys Ed, hanging from the ceiling, drips down onto a chair. They can still smell me. They can’t help themselves.
“Ah,” continues the Director, observing these reactions, “the power of mass hysteria. Once you’ve been told there’s a face of a heper imprinted on a tree bark, you can’t unsee that image so easily, can you? No matter what we say, you’ll still see a heper. The conviction proves to be . . . sticky. Not so easy to unring a bell once it’s been rung. Look at you all. You’ve almost got me convinced.”
Something lands on my hair, sticky and slightly acidic. I glance up; Abs is up there, hanging upside down. She’s gazing at the Director, trying to control herself. More saliva drifts down, silvery and shiny like a spider’s thread.
“It’s understandable, your susceptibility to mass hysteria. You’re all heper virgins: you’ve never seen, smelled, or even heard a heper before, not a live one, anyway. So at the first hint of suggestion, you’re all gone, lemmings charging off a cliff. And there’s no breaking out of it now. We’ve seen this happen time and again here at the Institute, with the new hires. They come here, wet behind the ears. Some come to see a heper behind every shadow and lose their ability to function. Eventually, they lose the ability to perform even the simplest of tasks.”
His head revolves, looking at each of us in turn. “We are not without our options, however.” At this, he glides away into the peripheral darkness. Frilly Dress emerges moments later, her face beaming.
“It’s a programme I came up with. The new hires were getting too distracted, so we had to come up with a way to, well, desensitise them. The option of sniffing acidic powder to numb the smell nerves in the nostrils was considered, but not seriously. My plan was more humane.” She nods towards the back of the lecture hall.
A beam of mercuric light cuts through the lecture hall. An image lights up on a screen above her. We see a large room, like an indoor arena of sorts. Dotted around the perimeter are wooden posts sticking out of the ground like tree stumps. Thick, hardy leather straps are tethered to each post. Even on video, a palpably ominous air hangs over everything. A sense of sour dread seeps off the projected image. Nothing good happens in there, I think. My insides contract and chill, become lined with a film of frost.
The place looks strangely familiar. I search my memory banks, trying to—
And then I recall. The lottery pick. The old, emaciated heper picking out the numbers. It was filmed right from this arena.
Frilly Dress, sensing the rapt attention, pauses dramatically. She tugs on her earlobe. “This converted work space is now affectionately called the Introduction. The name says it all. It is where you will be introduced to your first live heper. In the flesh, in the blood, right before you.”
Crimson Lips lets rip a huge snarl. Beefy starts grunting. Drool streams down now from the ceiling in rivulets.
“Calm down. Nobody is going to be eating a heper. Not today, anyway. Not one fang, not one finger, will so much as touch heper flesh. The leather straps that bind you to the posts will ensure that.” She picks up a long ruler and uses it to indicate a circular trapdoor on the ground that looks very much like a manhole. “The heper will emerge from this door on the ground. It will come out, after you’ve all been secured to your posts, and for about five minutes, you will get to see and hear and smell the heper. The only senses you will not be using – for now – are touch and taste, obviously. But that heper will be sufficiently up close and personal. And you will be able to smell it – real heper, rather than your hysterical imaginings. It will set you straight. The Introduction has been incredibly successful with our new hires. After this exposure, they’re no longer heper virgins. Their ability to focus and not be distracted by faint heper odours is much improved. We think the programme will be just the ticket for you all.”
“So there is heper in this building!” Gaunt Man says, his voice loud and gruff. “That’s why heper smell is so strong!”
“There’s one heper. And you haven’t been smelling it. It stays in its quarters. And that door you see in the photo is steel-reinforced and locks from the inside. It is completely safe in there. Has been for the past three years. And the silly thing has enough food stored up in there to last a month.”
“But how do you get it to come out at the Introduction? How do we know it’s going to come out when we’re there?”
She scratches her wrist. “Let’s just say that we offer choice morsels it can’t refuse. Fruits, vegetables, sweet chocolate. Besides, it knows it’s in no danger. It’s done this a dozen times, knows that everyone is securely tethered to their posts. As long as it stays in the safe zone and doesn’t stray too close to a post, it’s fine. Nobody can touch it. It’s free to gather up the food to its heart’s content.”
“Is it the one who—”
“Now, really,” Frilly Dress interjects. “Do you really want to keep asking me questions, or would you rather move on down to the Introduction?”
Judging by the speed with which we zoom out, turns out it’s a rhetorical question.
We are as giddy as schoolchildren on a field trip to the amusement park. It takes us five minutes to get to the arena, or rather, to descend there. Turns out, the four floors above ground are just the tip of a very cold, black iceberg. Whole flotillas of floors exist beneath the ground. The farther we descend, the colder and darker it becomes. There is no sign that anyone lives or works or uses or visits these ghost floors anymore. We descend into the depths of the earth, the pull of claustrophobia closing in on me.
By the time we arrive at the bottom floor, I’m spent. My knees feel as if a jackhammer has done a number on them, and my head spins crazily from the spiralled descent. No one else is fatigued; if anything, the energy level has risen as anticipation draws to a climax. There’s a lot of chatter, a lot of teeth grinding.
“Are there enough posts for all of us?” Ashley June asks. Everyone is jostling for position in front of the closed double doors.
“Don’t you worry, any of you,” Frilly Dress answers. “There are ten posts inside. Only seven of you. The posts are equidistant from the centre, none has an advantage over another. A food item is placed near each post so all of you will get a chance to see the heper up close and personal.”
Despite her words, they’re still pushing. I separate myself inconspicuously to the side.
“What are we waiting for?”
“Just a bit longer. Paperwork needs to be processed upstairs. They’ll let us know when we’re good to go.”
“How?”
&n
bsp; Frilly Dress shakes her head. “You’ll see.”
“Is it really as great as she put it?” Phys Ed asks his escort.
“Better than advertised. So much better.”
“I can smell it!” Beefy says. “Stronger than ever!”
“Nonsense,” chides Frilly Dress. “The heper’s still in its chambers.” But she seems uncertain, her nostrils moistening and flaring.
“It’s the same smell! We’ve been smelling this heper all this time.”
I take two steps back, slowly moving away from them.
“Getting stronger by the second.” More drool and shivers.
I play along. But those doors had better open soon, because this is a small enclave we wait in, and in such tight, unventilated quarters, my odour is amplified.
Gaunt Man’s head flicks violently towards me. He’s not just hissing; he’s slobbering in his saliva. Foolishly, I meet his eyes. He is staring at me with a dawning realisation, his eyes blinking, blinking, blinking with a new—
At that very moment, the double doors swing open, an expulsion of steam and smoke enveloping us.
Shouts of excitement as we sweep into the room. The expanse, with its high arching ceiling (rounded and ballooned like an indoor sports stadium) and wide spread of the dusty ground beneath, catches me by surprise. The heper’s door is on the ground, in the very centre of the arena, shaped and sized like a manhole. Ten wooden posts are spaced evenly around it. We disperse quickly, each of us running like kids choosing horses on a carousel. As Frilly Dress said, there’s more than enough for all of us, but that doesn’t stop general bedlam from ensuing. It’s the morsels. Hunters are fighting over posts positioned before morsels deemed most attractive to the heper. Abs and Ashley June are having a feline fight over a post in front of a bunch of bananas.
