Christopher Fowler is the award-winning author of more than forty novels – including thirteen featuring the detectives Bryant and May and the Peculiar Crimes Unit – and short-story collections. The recipient of the coveted CWA ‘Dagger in the Library’ Award for 2015, Chris’s most recent books are the Ballard-esque thriller The Sand Men and Bryant & May – Strange Tide. His other work includes screenplays, video games, graphic novels, audio plays and two critically acclaimed memoirs, Paperboy and Film Freak. His weekly column ‘Invisible Ink’ was a highlight of the Independent on Sunday’s arts pages. He lives in King’s Cross, London, and Barcelona.
Visit www.christopherfowler.co.uk
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First published in Great Britain in 1998 by Serpent’s Tail
This edition published in 2017 by Transworld Digital
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Christopher Fowler 1998
Extract from Roofworld © Christopher Fowler 1988
Cover art/design: Martin Butterworth
Christopher Fowler has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference to copyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions in this respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in any future edition.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781473540118
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‘Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.’
W. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
Short stories of the fantastic are cowards’ deaths, explorations of what might yet be. They are premonitions written to disturb and ultimately comfort, because they present us with the results of our darkest dreams. They help us to deal with our fears and realise our fantasies.
Kenneth Tynan said ‘when the writer cares more about the audience’s reaction than the truth of the character or situation, they are writing for effect, they are writing melodrama.’ The problem is, many novels and short stories seem to exist for the sole purpose of producing a series of melodramatic effects. Editors often ask for a showy set-piece to be situated at the start of a novel. Anthologies look for shock-pieces. The ‘new lad’ school of writing precipitated by Irvine Welsh has nearly kicked everything else off the shelves. Writers of great power and subtlety are treated as creators of specialist literature because they choose to explore strange territory. Television has become the new home of a specialised form of SF, horror and fantasy, dumbed-down, safe, value-reaffirming.
Not long ago I was told that my material was ‘too quirky’ for mainstream America. Why didn’t I develop a single theme and stick to it in order to build reader loyalty? Stephen King is the most successful author in the world. Didn’t all horror and fantasy authors aspire to be like him?
Well, no.
True, some of his books have made terrific films because his stories are admirably rooted in character, and his ideas are simple, clear and strong, even if his prose is as elegant as an orthopaedic boot, but ultimately it’s a parochial style peculiar to one area of the USA, and I wanted to write specifically to my own English environment. In the eighties, American concepts of dumbing down horror provided grim new benchmarks, reaching ever lower. They constituted a sacrifice of all that disturbed, discomforted or encouraged thought, and the British followed suit. Virginia Woolf said that ‘the steps from brain to brain must be cut very shallow if thought is to mount them’. Some writers began providing wheelchair slopes. The genre has still not recovered, although I’m convinced that it will.
The best horror anthologies ever produced were two Panther volumes edited by an experimental psychologist, Dr Christopher Evans. In Mind At Bay he admits that he is primarily interested in exploring the mind’s ‘inner space’, and that his selected tales are ‘tricks to trap the brain into giving up some of its secrets’. In Mind In Chains he suggests the reader should use the stories ‘to see what they tell him about the structure and the denizens of his own internal landscape’. These are tales that look for contact points between the horrific and the normal, where logical events lurch into alarming disarray, and all the human mind can do is try to cope.
I wonder if such anthologies would be published today.
Certainly, Serpent’s Tail would be one of the few publishing houses who could perform the favour. I have to admit, I would write much darker books if I thought the market could take it. One develops a certain amount of pessimism as one grows older, not based on nostalgia for the past so much as disappointment for the future. I rarely write anything as dark as the real lives we lead; the strain, the anger, the sheer dull ache of life is not something I’d wish to catalogue. Instead, I am drawn to the exotic, and I think that is reflected in these stories.
These Personal Demons are linked by an interest in a perverse array of subjects, a desire to test out ideas, and a need to wander into unusual territories. I have consciously tried to avoid retreading old ground, and have presented the stories in the order in which they were written, so that you may follow a logical progression of thought, even if some of these processes appear oblique. The final story is unorthodox, but explanatory. Here you will find horror, fantasy, reality and humour; there’s hardly any blood, and only a few deaths. One of the stories is even optimistic. A frequently asked question is ‘What scares a horror writer?’ My answer is ‘the disfiguring blankness of a person with no imagination’. Anyone who has seen TV interviews with murderers and religious fanatics knows the dead-eyed look they share. These stories are in some sense about keeping the death of the imagination at bay.
So long as there is imagination, there is hope.
‘Can’t we go any faster?’ Dmitry turned around in the seat, punching at the driver’s fur-clad back. Behind him one of the wolves had almost caught up with the rear-runners of the sleigh and was snapping at the end of his flapping scarf.
‘This is new snow over old,’ the driver shouted. ‘The tracks have hardened and will turn us over.’
The horses were terrified, their heads twisting, their eyes rolling back in fear of the baying creatures behind the sleigh. Scarcely daring to look, Dmitry counted seven – now eight – of the wolves, swarming so close that he could feel their hot breath on the icy rushing air. He glanced down at the terrified child in his arms and pulled the bearskin more tightly around her deathly pale face.
‘We’ll never make it in time,’ cried Yusupov, ‘it will be dark before we reach Pokrovskoye.’
They could see the black outline of the town on the horizon, but already the sun was dropping below the tops of the trees. The sleigh clattered and crunched its way across deep-frozen cart tracks, swaying perilously, the wolves howling close behind, falling over each other in their efforts to keep up. One of the largest, a fearsome yellow-eyed beast the size of a Great Dane, suddenly threw itself forward and seized Dmitry’s scarf-end in its jaws. The wool pulled tight, choking him as he clawed at his throat. Yusupov yanked it away from his brother’s neck and pulled hard, feeling the weight of the animal on the other end. ‘See, Dmitry,’ he cried, ‘look in the eyes of our pursuer now!’
He released the scarf sharply and the creature fell back, tumbling over itself. But it had his scent, and would follow the sleigh into the darkness until its jaws were filled. Dmitry cradled the infant in his arms, protecting her from buffets as the sleigh hammered over a ridge of ice. They had taken her hostage to effect their escape from the private apartments of Rasputin himself, but now they no longer had need of her. After all, the casket was now in their possession, and its value was beyond calculation. He knew that Yusupov was thinking the same thing. Behind them, the wolves were becoming braver, jumping at the rear of the sledge, trying to gain a hold with their forepaws. Thick ribbons of spittle fell along the crimson velvet plush of the seat-back as the animals yelped and barked in frustrated relay.
‘They will not stop until they feed,’ he shouted. ‘We must use the child. She slows us down.’
‘But she is innocent!’
‘If we fail in our mission, many thousands of innocents will perish.’
‘Then do it and be damned!’
Dmitry slipped the wild-eyed girl from the bear-fur. In one scooping motion he raised her above his head, then threw her over the end of the sleigh. She had only just begun to scream as the wolves imploded over her, seizing her limbs in their muscular jaws. The two young Bolsheviks watched for a moment as the animals swarmed around their meal, the sleigh briefly forgotten. The child’s cries were quickly lost beneath the angry snarling of the feed. A sudden splash of blood darkened the evening snow. The driver huddled tighter over his reins, determined not to bear witness to such events. The next time he dared to look back, all he could see was a distant dark stain against the endless whiteness, and the sated wolves slinking away with their heads bowed between their shoulders, ashamed of their own appetites.
Yusupov studied the horizon once more, trying to discern the lights of the approaching town. He was twenty-three, and had already felt the hand of death close over him. He prayed that Casparov would be waiting at the bridge, that he had found a way of evading their pursuer. It was essential for them to find a hiding place for the casket in Pokrovskoye.
‘Perhaps we are safe now,’ said Dmitry as the sleigh turned toward the smoking chimneys of the town. ‘May we have the strength to do what must be done.’
‘Our story begins in the reign of Tsar Nicholas II, in the year 1908,’ said Dr Harold Masters, studying his disinterested students as they lolled in their seats. ‘Starving Bolsheviks fled across Russia with a precious cargo; a jewelled casket fashioned by Karl Fabergé and stolen from Rasputin himself, its contents unknown – and yet the men in the sleigh were willing to die to preserve it. Their flight from Rasputin’s secret shrine at St Petersburg was doomed, but before they were brutally murdered in mysterious circumstances, we know that the casket was passed on, to make its way in time to New York.
‘In the late 1920s a family of wealthy Franco-Russian emigrants who had escaped to America on the eve of the October revolution sailed on the SS Brittanique to Liverpool. The ship’s passenger inventory tells us that the jewel-box was in their possession then, listed as inherited family property. But following the tragedy on board their ship …’
The sun had set an hour ago, but the sea was still blacker than the sky. Alexandrovich Novikov stood watching the churning wake of the ship with his gloved left hand clasping the wooden railing. Powerful turbines throbbed far beneath his feet, and he rode the waves, balancing as the liner crested the rolling swell of the sea. Back in the state room his wife, his brother and his children chattered excitedly about their new life in England, trying to imagine what, for them, was quite unimaginable. They would have new names, he had decided, European names that others would be able to pronounce without difficulty. They were being given a second chance, and this time the family would prosper and grow. There remained but one task for him to accomplish; the removal of the final obstacle to their safety. He reached inside his coat and withdrew the Fabergé casket. The value of the jewelled casing meant nothing to him, for its loss was but a small price to pay for the safe-keeping of his family.
He weighed it in his hand, worried that the rising wind might catch and smash it against the side of the ship. He had drawn back his arm, ready to hurl it into the tumbling foam below, when someone snatched at his coat-tails, spinning him around and causing him to lose balance on the tilting wet deck. Before he could draw breath, the stars filled his vision and he saw the railing pass beneath his legs, then the great black steel side of the ship, as the sound of the monstrous churning propellers pounded up around him.
Sinking into the ocean, Alexandrovich Novikov was dragged under by the great spinning blades and cleft in two, the pieces of his body lost forever in the frothing white foam. On the deck he had left, the unthrown casket slid beneath a stairwell with the rolling of the ship and was retrieved by a passing steward, whereupon the alarm was raised and a frantic search begun for its missing owner.
‘And so we arrive in London,’ continued Dr Masters. ‘The bereaved Franco-Russian family who moved there from Liverpool in 1928 planned to build property in the city – but their assets were badly damaged in the financial crash of the following year. The headquarters of their empire, a magnificent building on the north bank of the Thames designed by the great Lubetkin, went unfinished. Here, the trail of Rasputin’s jewelled box finally goes cold. We have to presume that it was sold off to the owner of a private collection as the family fought debts and a series of appalling personal tragedies …’
The building beside the old Billingsgate Market had never been properly finished, and now its poorly set foundations had been pulled up to clear the site and make way for a new Japanese banking syndicate. It was during the third month of digging, just prior to the new concrete foundations being poured into their moulds that the little casket, wrapped in an oilskin cloth and several layers of mildewed woven straw, was unearthed. The find was briefly mentioned on the six o’clock news that night, and excited speculation from experts about what might be discovered inside.
Before the box could be opened, however, it was sent to the British Museum to be cleaned and X-rayed. From the ornamentation of an exposed corner section of the casing it was already assumed to have been manufactured by a Russian jeweller, possibly the great Fabergé himself, which made it extremely valuable and placed it in the ownership of the royal court of Tsar Nicholas. It was, perhaps, too early to hope that the box might contain documents pertaining to that fascinating, tragic family.
The casket was entrusted to an unlikely recipient, a twenty-seven-year-old woman named Amy Dale who worked at the museum. In usual circumstances such a high-profile find would have been offered for examination to one of the more experienced senior staff, but Amy was having an affair with a hypertense married man named Miles Bernardier who functioned as the present director of the excavation, and Miles was able to take a procedural short cut that allowed him to assign the find himself. This was not as dishonest as it sounds, for Amy was fast becoming recognised as a luminary in her field, and as her own department head was overseas for two months advising at an excavation in Saudi Arabia, the pleasurable task of uncovering the casket’s secrets fell to her.
The night before Amy was due to have the casket X-rayed, a supposedly psychic friend from the Mediterranean ceramics department seized her hands in the Museum Tavern and warned her that something strange was about to happen in her life. She pushed a hand through her frizzy blonde hair, laughing off his prediction, and ordered up another round of drinks. While they drank and chatted, the mud-encrusted casket, sealed in a large ziploc bag, sat in a basement vault of the British Museum waiting for its secrets to be exposed to the light.
The sun was scorching down in a sapphire sky the morning Spanky came back to town. The wind had changed direction, from the faintest breeze drifting down across the south to a fierce fresh blast that stippled the surface of the Thames and brushed against pedestrians in the Strand, ruffling them like hair being combed the wrong way.
Balancing delicately as he placed one patent black Church’s Oxford-toecapped shoe after the other, Spanky walked along the electrified third rail of the London, Chatham & Dover Railway, crossed the bridge over the river into Cannon Street station and carefully sniffed the air. Beneath the fumes of the choked city, behind the oil of machinery and ozone crackle of electricity, beyond the perfumes and deodorants and the smell of warm working flesh, he caught the faintest tang of enamel and oilskin, wolf urine and sea-brine and city soil. It was quite enough to tell him that the object of his search was within a five-mile radius.
On the station platform he almost melted into the crowd, just another devilishly handsome young man arriving in the teeming city with an unrevealed agenda. Spanky’s purpose, though, was single and specific; to locate the casket currently residing in the vault at Amy Dale’s department.
A smile teased those who caught his eye; he permitted himself that. He could afford to be happy, for the battle was already half-won. He had seen the girl on television, speaking nervously into a microphone, pointing back at a great hole in the ground. The network had even taken the trouble to label her for him, displaying her name and place of employment. It only remained for him to meet with the girl and explain, in calm and rational tones, that he needed her to give back what was rightfully his.
Nah, he thought, I’ll just take the casket and rip her guts into bloody shreds – to teach her a lesson.
Spanky was weary of walking the earth. He loathed gravity. If only he could shed his cloak of skin, free himself of his fleshy shackles and return to the skies. It was not possible yet; he could only operate in corporeal form. And he had been here too long, so long he had almost forgotten his true purpose, shifting from one body to the next, growing careless, even being cheated and forced to flee by an idiot mortal – the shame of it! How the mighty had fallen! He had hidden in two further bodies since that humiliating day. A balding, overweight ambulance attendant had provided him with a temporary home until he found someone more appropriate. This new body had belonged to one Chad Morrison, a none-too-bright twenty-seven-year-old male model with wavy black hair, shocking blue eyes and a jawline as sleek as the contours of a classic coupé. It would certainly last him until he had reclaimed the contents of the casket. After that, he would have no further reason to return to earth and live among these miserable mortals, not when paradise beckoned…
Out in the street, he listened to the sounds that lay hidden beneath the belching traffic and chattering offices. Spanky’s senses were attenuated far beyond mortal range. He had heard the girl speak on television. In the maelstrom of humanity he could find her voice again, as easily as plucking a single yellow flower in a forest of bluebells. Satisfied that his instincts were correct, he set off along the pavement at a brisk clip, a jaunty swagger in his step and a cheery whistle on his lips. This time he would cover his tracks as he went. A trip to the excavation was called for. Then on to the girl and the treasure.
From the Thames, the gap between the buildings was like a missing tooth. Square off-white office blocks rose on either side. Thundering drills and a pair of slender yellow cranes picked at the site like dentists’ utensils.
Miles Bernardier stood at the edge of the great earth-encrusted hole and peered down on the vast rusted mesh of iron rods that were about to be buried in concrete. Time had run out. He had requested a larger excavation window, and the request had been denied. Six lousy days, was that too much to ask? The wheels of commerce would not be halted, however. The DTI was worried that a historically significant find would be announced. Building would have to be stopped while the site was evaluated, and the Japanese might get cold feet. But who knew what else lay buried in the clay? The site had been repeatedly built upon for well over a thousand years. The casket had been discovered in a pocket of air created by some broken planks just eleven feet down. Beneath the rotted wood lay a brick lining from what appeared to be a far older building, but now, with the pouring of several thousand tons of concrete, it would remain undiscovered for yet another century.
Ahead of him, a pile-driver was rising slowly in the air to drop its weight on one of the upright iron posts marking out the building perimeter. Bernardier adjusted his yellow hard hat against the buffeting wind from the river, and carefully skirted the edge of the pit. He wanted to call Amy, to see if she had started work on the casket, but the noise was too great here. He was walking back to one of the foremen’s cabins when something pushed at the backs of his legs, and he slipped over on to the wet clay soil.
‘Damn!’ He rose awkwardly, inspected the damage, then looked about for someone to blame. There was no-one within five hundred yards, and no sound but the rising wind and the dull thud of the pile-driver. Bernardier was due to have lunch in the city today, and the knees of his suit were smeared with gobbets of mud. He wondered if there was time to go home and change. For a moment nothing moved on the construction site, save for a few scraps of birds fighting the thermals above the river. Earlier the area had been filled with workmen. Where was everyone now?
The second blow caught him hard in the small of the back, and sent him sprawling on to his face. Frightened now, he pulled himself free of the sucking mire and searched about wildly. Impossibly, the area was deserted. Clouds had momentarily darkened the sun and the site had taken on an eerie dimness, as if history had returned to an earlier time. He tried to rise from his knees, but his shoes would not grip on the slippery clay. An odd smell hung in the air, something ancient and musky. Something bad.
The third blow was to his face, and shattered both the lenses of his glasses. This time he slid straight over the edge of the hole, landing on his back at the bottom in time to see the downward arc of the pile-driver descending over him. It was too late to stop the fall of the massive steel rod, which was powered by an explosion of compressed air. The shaft slammed down, bursting his skull like a rock dropped on an Easter egg. By the time the accident siren sounded, Bernardier’s twitching body had settled so deeply into the sludge that it could have been mistaken for another historical find.
‘Very innocent,’ Gillian was saying, ‘but then you always were.’ Amy held the receiver away from her ear and waved a hand at her assistant. ‘The heat’s too high, turn it down, it’ll boil over,’ and into the receiver, ‘yes, mother, I know.’
‘And now this man you’re seeing, do you really think it’s such a good idea? I mean, he’s not only married, he’s your boss. Is he worth jeopardising your career for?’
‘I think I have to be the best judge of that, mother.’ In truth Miles’s continual philandering had almost persuaded her to end the affair, but she refused to launch on to this conversational track as it would mean hearing a new triumphant tone in her mother’s voice.
‘But I didn’t call for this, to criticise. Who am I, just a woman who spent eight agonising hours in labour with you. I called to say how wonderful you looked on the television. I was so proud.’
Someone had entered the room and was standing before her. Someone from outside – he didn’t smell of chemicals. There was something nice in the air, old-fashioned and comforting, from her childhood. Lavender-water?
‘Mother, I have to go now.’ She lowered the twittering receiver back to its cradle and raised her eyes to the visitor.
‘Can I help you?’
Her pulse stuttered. The man was a living angel. His pupils peered from beneath dark knitted eyebrows like twin cobalt lasers. He had a jawline you could design a car around. Navy jacket, grey T-shirt, faded blue jeans cut tight around the crotch, brown work-boots. Behind him, two secretaries were peering around the door in unembarrassed awe.
‘Yes, you can,’ said the vision, ‘I’m looking for Amy Dale.’
‘That’s me,’ she laughed, feeling as if she had won a prize. Her assistants melted away, afraid of interrupting something private.
It was here. He could smell it in the air, its history of viscera and madness. He could taste it on the tip of his tongue, the cuprous tang of blood and death and misery. So close, after all this time.
‘Excuse me, I was expecting someone far less attractive.’ He smiled and the heavens opened.
‘Now why would you expect that?’ she asked, flattered.
‘The way Miles Bernardier described you – ’ he trailed off. ‘Not like this.’
The bastard, she thought. How typical of him to denigrate her to a stranger, as though he had to frighten off potential rivals.
‘Chad Morrison.’ He proffered his manicured hand, and she shook it.
‘So, Mr Morrison,’ she smiled back, puzzled by his relaxed attitude – a rare thing in a world of obsessive academics, ‘what are you here for?’
‘The casket,’ he genially replied.
‘Oh?’ Her brow furrowed. Territories were jealously guarded at the museum. ‘What field are you in?’
‘Forgive me,’ he gave his head a little shake, ‘I thought Mr Bernardier had already spoken to you about this.’
‘No, he’s out at the excavation today.’ She unbuttoned her lab coat and pointed to a glass partitioned office. ‘We can talk in there.’
Seated before her, he explained. ‘I’m not attached to the museum, Miss Dale. I’m mainly an adviser to auction houses in my capacity as an authority on the works of Karl Fabergé. Your director called me in to help you verify the origin of your find.’
Miles had entrusted her with the investigation. Why did he have to interfere by sending her experts? Of course, she would have had to pull in her own independent specialists, which could be a time-consuming process, so perhaps he was trying to make her job easier. The museum staff comprised many brilliant, dedicated professionals, but she was not aware of anyone with expertise in this field. Better to accept the offer. He was awfully pretty.
‘Thank you, Mr Morrison. I’d be interested in your impressions of what you’ve heard so far, sight unseen.’
‘Well.’ He leaned forward a little and the scent he exuded changed. His aftershave was something spicy and musky, not at all what she expected. He looked the citrus type. ‘I can forgive the Russian revolution many things, Miss Dale, but not the destruction of Fabergé. He died in exile, you know, a broken man, his art reviled by men unable to tolerate luxury of any kind. But this find is fascinating. Its placement is correct. Fabergé knew England, and was partly educated here. Such a creation would date from the time he switched from producing jewellery and cigarette boxes to more fantastical items, say the early 1880s, before he began to produce the celebrated eggs.
‘A number of objects we know he personally produced have never been traced. There are catalogue numbers and full descriptions of the missing items, and one of them fits the casket’s specifications. Fabergé’s sons assisted him, and there was a workshop here in London, facts which would provide circumstantial evidence for the find. Of course, there were also many forgeries produced. I would have to see the piece to be more exact.’
‘I’ll have to verify your appointment with Mr Bernardier. Just a formality.’ She smiled and raised the telephone receiver.
He loved this part. Taking a chance. Out at the edge. He could not afford to let her find out about Bernardier, not at this stage of the game. He had no supernatural powers here, only natural ones in this earthbound body, but those would be enough. Enough to fog her senses and divert the call in her brain, to make her hear another voice.
Watching him, she mechanically punched out random digits and listened. Her mouth opened, but she did not speak. He concentrated harder. Searching her for details he found the usual human pain – aching loneliness and lack of fulfilment, but also – what was this? – Miles, not just a work colleague but a lover. Miles was sleeping with her. He probed deeper into her mind. She was not happy with the arrangement, not happy at all. He was married. Not much of a lover, either. She hadn’t lost very much, then. He released her. She swayed back a little, looked flustered, lowered the receiver, aware of a vague conversation in her head, unaware of the dead line. She smiled to cover her confusion.
‘That all seems to be in order, Mr Morrison. When would you like to examine the casket?’
‘How about right now?’ he suggested.
‘I’m sure you understand the need for strict security in this matter,’ she said, allowing a total stranger to follow her into the maze of basement corridors.
‘But of course,’ he agreed, sniffing the air and scenting the proximity of the treasure, barely able to contain his excitement, ‘we wouldn’t want just anyone walking in here.’
Amy led the way to a further green-walled passage separated from the main building by two sets of steel doors and an electronic swipe-code. ‘We have to bring items from this section up personally,’ she explained. ‘They can’t be trusted to assistants, and they’re not allowed to leave our sight until they’re returned.’
Beyond the doors, a series of white-walled rooms housed large square drawers with brass handles, like a morgue. Amy checked the reference number on her requisition sheet and searched the containers.
‘It’s over here,’ he said, lifting the index number from her mind and matching it to a nearby drawer.
Amy looked at him oddly. ‘How do you know?’ she asked, moving past him to check. It was the right drawer. She took a key from her pocket and slipped it into the lock. The moisture-pocked bag inside gave no clue to its contents. ‘You’re never sure what’s best with a find like this,’ she said, carefully removing the bag. ‘This plastic is supposed to “breathe” and sustain a natural moisture equilibrium. We could have placed it in a dry environment, but if the casket contains paper materials they could be ruined.’
He was barely listening to her. The presence of the casket had enveloped and overwhelmed his senses. It was less than three feet from him, but he could not take it from her here. There were other technicians in the secure area. He could hear their bodyweight shifting past him in the nearby rooms. Back in the corridor he had an insane thought, that he could snatch the thing from her and escape from the building with it beneath his arm. He would have to wait until he was beyond the secure area. Another problem; in this body, he could not run. Morrison had sustained a football injury that had left him with damaged tendons in his left leg. Besides, mere escape lacked dignity. He wanted them to see what they had found. Better to wait until he was alone with Amy in the lab, after the other assistants had gone for the night. It would be foolish to screw up now, for the sake of a few hours.
‘It’ll be some time before we reach the interior of the package,’ said Amy. ‘It might be rather boring for you, but you can stay and help me if you want.’
‘Just tell me what to do,’ smiled Spanky, removing his jacket.
By six o’clock they had succeeded in removing the outer straw wrappers and had sectioned them for dating. The oilskin, too, had been photographed at every stage, and the whole process documented. It was laborious, but necessary if mistakes were to be prevented. Amy’s chaotic blonde hair had fallen into her eyes so often that she had bunched it back with a rubber band. She was hunched so far over the brilliantly illuminated desktop that she had developed a crick in her neck. A hot wire of pain scratched across the top of her shoulder blades as she sat up.
‘Here, let me give you a massage. Tip your chair back.’ Spanky lowered broad hands to her neck and pressed his thumbs down in a smooth circular motion.
‘You read my mind. Thanks, that feels good.’ She sat further back and closed her eyes. Another assistant scuttled from the room. ‘At least we’ve only one layer to go, some kind of tissue.’
‘Cloth-papers from Rasputin’s apartment,’ he said absently. ‘He kept the casket out of the light and bound in calico.’
‘You must be a really big authority on this,’ she murmured, succumbing to the motion of his hands.
‘Oh, you have no idea how big.’
‘Pieces of hidden history …’
‘Crossing-points of the past. Everything holds something different within. The truth becomes fabulous, and fables hold truth.’ His voice had dropped to a sea-murmur. Fingers slipping over her throat.
‘You soon start to see the attraction …’
‘Attraction?’ His hands smoothed and smoothed. The nape of her neck tingled, a warm glow spreading to the top of her breasts. She forced herself to concentrate.
‘Of – archaeology.’
‘Ah, of course.’
They were alone in the laboratory. The last assistant had quietly closed the door behind her.
‘Right.’ He swiftly removed his hands and shifted her chairback to an upright position once more. ‘Let’s do it.’
She looked wide-eyed at him. ‘Here?’
He gestured at the table-top. ‘The last layer. Come on.’
Even with tweezers and generous smears of lubricant, the greased wrapping proved difficult to remove, and flapped back on to the casket lid. Amy peered through the illuminated magnifier. ‘I think I’ve got it this time.’ She gripped the tweezers more lightly.
Twined ribbons of inlaid gold surrounded an intricate frieze of dancing mythological figures. You could see no detail from studying the russet splodges on the lid, but Spanky knew that the ancient gods lay beneath a layer of grime, longing for the chance to shine again. There had been many containers across the centuries for the treasure held inside, but this was the best casket so far. Ten inches by six, and six deep, it sat on the formica-topped desk awaiting inspection, a spectacular relic from a forgotten world. They had removed soil from a tiny gold-rimmed keyhole with a water-pic. The rest of the wrapping was easier to remove. As it slid away, Amy cautiously wiped a finger across the lid, and the precious figures revealed themselves.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she whispered.
‘And we can unlock it.’ Spanky opened the top button of his shirt and removed a slender gold key from around his neck. He could feel his fingers trembling in anticipation. She stared at him, then at the filigreed key. What did he mean?
‘I can unlock the casket, Amy.’ He could not resist sounding boastful.
‘Where did you get that?’ She reached up to touch the key, then withdrew her hand, as if wary of being scalded.
‘It’s been in my possession for many, many years.’
The casket was behind her. She positioned herself before it protectively. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘I can’t let you open it.’
‘Why not?’
‘This find is of historical importance. A senior member of staff must be present.’
‘Then let’s send for Mr Bernardier.’ If you don’t mind summoning a mud-caked headless corpse, he thought, smiling grimly. The director had never known what hit him. A pity, that. Spanky enjoyed taking credit for his work.
‘You know exactly what’s inside the box, don’t you?’
‘Of course I do,’ he answered. She was a smart girl. There was no more need for subterfuge now that he was so close to his goal. ‘I’ve always known.’
‘Perhaps you’d like to tell me.’ She could feel her unease growing by the second. The museum was closed for the night. Only a few of the research departments scattered in the building’s cul-de-sac corridors would still be inhabited by lingering personnel.
‘All right. Have a seat.’ Outside, the warm weather had finally broken and it was starting to rain. ‘Listen carefully, and don’t question anything I have to say.’
Sensing the danger she was in, Amy dropped to the chair.
‘I am not like you. Not – human. I am Spancialosophus Lacrimosa. If you find it easier, you can call me Spanky. God had seven fallen angels. Seven daemons. Seven rogue creatures of inspiration and vengeance, banned from Heaven for refusing to worship Man. Damned to a watery limbo existence between earth and paradise. Only allowed to visit earth in the encumbrance of a mortal shell, to be entered upon the invitation of the owner. But I am not like my fellow daemons. I have little of their boundless patience. I am not content to wait forever, until God, in his infinite wisdom and mercy, sees fit to readmit us to his kingdom. And now there is a chance to do more than just return to grace. There is a chance to rule for all eternity. It’s all to do with the box.’
Amy snapped around to check that the casket was still there beside her in its nest of wet straw. What if this lunatic tried to snatch it? How would she ever stop him?
‘You want to see inside? Take a look.’ He unlooped the key from his neck and handed it to her, savouring the moment. ‘Do it,’ he commanded.
The key was so worn and delicate that she was frightened of breaking it in the lock. To her surprise it turned easily. The lubricant and the water-pic must have loosened the mechanism. And of course, it had been built by the master. With trembling fingers, she raised the lid. The interior was completely dry. Beneath several layers of fine grey silk were –
‘Iron rings. Seven of them. One for each of us. The rings of Cain. Forged by Adam’s first son. How is your knowledge of the Bible?’ He grinned at her, inching closer to the opened casket, holding out his hand for the return of the golden key.
‘Let me refresh your memory. Cain was a tiller of the ground, driven from the earth by God for slaying his brother Abel. Doomed to become a fugitive and a vagabond. Cain tried to atone for his sin by appealing to us, God’s other fallen children. He brought us gifts, the rings he forged from the ore beneath his feet. But just as we despised Adam, so we despised his offspring. We refused his offer, and Cain threw the rings back into the earth.
‘It took many centuries for us to truly understand the power of the rings. You see, if we had accepted them, we would have been restored to Paradise. That was Cain’s gift to us, and we turned it down. It was only by accident that I discovered the truth. But by then, the rings were lost. I’ve tracked them through time and across the world. Now I’ve been here too damned long. I can’t get back to my home without them. The others won’t let me in empty-handed.’
Obviously the man was crazy. Amy knew that the safest solution to her dilemma was to play along until she could find a way to summon help. ‘Is that what you want, to be restored to Paradise?’ she asked.
‘Of course. Wouldn’t you?’ Spanky drew a step nearer. ‘Only this time, we’ll have the element of surprise on our side.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, we wish to rule, obviously. God has had everything his way for far too long. You have no idea how boring He has made the celestial heavens. We’ll change all that. You wait, you’ll feel the effects all the way down here. It’ll be like having the worst neighbours in the universe living right overhead.’
‘You’re mad.’ She hadn’t meant to say it. The words had just slipped out. He laughed at her.
‘If you think what I want is so very illogical, good luck with the rest of the world. A little respect is all anyone wants.’ Amy made a grab for the casket, and was surprised when he made no attempt to stop her. Instead, he watched as she took it from the desk and clutched it protectively across her breasts, smearing mud and pieces of straw on her lab jacket.
‘We’d better get going,’ he said, checking his watch. ‘The others are expecting us.’
‘What do you mean?’ She looked frantically about for someone to help her. Why was it that the one time she would welcome an interruption, none came?
‘Cain protected the rings. They can only be returned to us by a mortal. Lucky you.’ He grinned mischievously as he grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the door. ‘You get to see where we live. You’ll be the first human being ever to meet my brothers and sisters. I’m sure Spancialosophus Dolorosa will take a shine to you.’
She pulled back from him. ‘Wait, I have to set the alarm system. I’m the last one out.’
‘You’re lying to me, Amy.’ He bared his teeth and yanked her arm hard. ‘Don’t try to trick me. I can see inside your head.’
They passed from the lab along a corridor, and on to a broad staircase. Miles should have come for her by now, but they passed no-one, not even Dr Harold Masters, who was usually making tea in the cubby-hole beside the staircase at this time of the evening.
Spanky’s gripping hand felt as though it was burning into her wrist. At the main entrance, the two security guards barely looked up from their desks to wish her goodnight. Couldn’t they see that she was in trouble?
The rain sizzled against Spanky’s back as he strode across the museum forecourt with her. Amy maintained her grip on the casket, frightened that she would be punished if she tried to fling it away. ‘Where are we going?’ she gasped, frantically trying to keep up with him.
‘To the departure point,’ he snapped, barely bothering with her. He crossed Museum Street, half dragging her upright as she slipped on the wet tarmac. He moved so quickly that she found herself being bodily lifted by him at moments when the traffic seemed about to crash into them. Onward they moved, through Holborn and down toward the Embankment.
They were standing in the centre of Waterloo Bridge with the great rain-swollen river sweeping beneath them, broadening out on its way to the sea. ‘Why here?’ she shouted, the roar of wind and traffic filling her ears.
‘I need a good run-up,’ he replied. ‘Got a tight grip on the casket?’
He checked the box pressed against her sodden breast, then produced an old-fashioned cut-throat razor from his coat and passed it to her with his free hand. ‘Hold this. I’m letting go of you for a moment. If you try to escape I will kill you, Amy, I think you know that.’ Spanky tore off his jacket and shirt, throwing them out into the Thames.
‘I want you to take the razor and run it along my spine.’ He pointed to his broad rain-spattered back. ‘Do it quickly.’ He snapped open the blade for her.
Shaking with cold and fear, she suppressed a shudder of horror as she touched the blade to the point he indicated between his shoulderblades.
‘You’ll have to push harder than that. Pull it straight down. As deep as you can.’
Wincing, she did as she was told, pushing on the blade and dragging it down. The edge sliced smoothly and cleanly as the skin of his back opened in a widening crimson slit. Spanky was drawing breath in low, guttural gasps, part in pain, part in the pleasure of release from his confinement. As the blade reached his trouser-belt he slapped it from her hand. The razor skittered across the pavement and slid into the gutter. Swathes of blood washed across his back, diluting in the downpour.
Spanky bent forward with an agonised shout and the epidermis split further apart across his back. From within the carapace of skin, two enormous black wings unfolded like opening umbrellas. As the joints clicked and cracked, the membranes between them flexed and stretched and grew. At first she thought they were made of black leather, but now she saw that they were composed of thousands of tiny interlocking black feathers. He seized her hand and climbed on to the balustrade of the bridge, dragging her up on the ledge with him. The fully opened wings spanned a distance of eighteen feet above them.
‘Hold on to your hat.’ He turned and gave her a mad grin. ‘Here we go.’
Amy’s stomach dropped as they launched from the bridge. Intoxicated with the terror of his unbreakable grip, she screamed and howled into the racing clouds above. They swooped down to the scudding grey water, almost touching their shadow, then up and along the path of the river, moving so fast that they outdistanced the falling rain. The pain in her clutched wrist was excruciating. He turned and brought his face close to hers, shouting as the great black wings beat powerfully above them.
‘You have the casket.’
‘Yes,’ she shouted back as they started to climb, ‘I have the casket.’
‘Then we can make the crossing.’ He pumped his membraneous wings faster, ever faster, so that they flexed and shook from humerus to metacarpal, and it seemed that they were moving beyond the speed of earth and sea and weather and light and time.
Something bright shone in her eyes. She forced herself to look up. Ahead in the clouds, a dazzling area of light had cleared the grey rain to send a mandelbrot set of fractal colours spiralling down toward them, like pieces of rainbow glass from an exploded kaleidoscope.
‘You see it?’ he bellowed. ‘You see it? That’s where we’re going. Inside there.’
‘No!’ she screamed, knowing instinctively that the experience would kill her instantly. This was not a sight for mortal eyes. But they were racing forward at such a velocity that nothing could stop them from reaching the area now. Piercing shards of diamond brilliance enveloped them as they left the earth behind forever and plunged into the heart of the world’s existence.
And just as they reached it – it was gone. Slammed shut, vanished, the colours all disappeared, nothing ahead except endless cold grey sky.
Spanky’s face was contorted in fury and terror.
‘The rings of Cain!’ he yelled at the heavens. ‘I am returning with the rings!’ Already his wings were parting with the impossible velocity, flesh and feathers tearing off in strips, revealing birdlike bloody bones beneath.
With nothing to propel them, their speed slowed. For a moment, it seemed that they were hanging in the air. ‘You have the rings,’ he screamed at her.
‘No, I told you – I have the casket.’ The box was still unlocked. She had emptied the rings out as they flew. He had not noticed. With all his energy and concentration centred elsewhere, he had not seen the seven iron bands scatter in the wind and fall back toward the river, and now the doorway home was closed once more.
A sharp crack resounded above them as the great wings bloodily shattered and folded, and with a sickening lurch they dropped back toward the earth. Spanky’s anguished howling filled her tortured ears every metre of the way.
Down and down.
The glutinous silt of the river formed undulations across the expanding estuary at Dartford. It trapped all manner of debris swept out with the heavy ebb tide. It cradled Amy’s unconscious body, rolling her gently against the shore until some kind old souls spotted her, and dragged her out to warmth and safety. Inside Amy’s jacket they found an old casket, gripped so tightly that the corners had bruised her flesh.