I had seen it leap, but I felt no touch, nor the drip of blood or breath. The thing had come no closer nor could it mount the raised terrace. It could neither approach me nor break through Vespasian’s barrier.
The voice was shrill yet relentless. “I can give you the power to avenge, to protect and to take whatever will increase your pleasure,” the thing now screeched at me. “Courage comes with power. You think I speak of sin or wickedness?” The thing attempted a smile, distorting its face. The tips of its teeth poked past its lips. “And think, human, what you would wish to see and do to another human creature which attacked your child. Would you attack in revenge? Think, female. This arm rams out from the figure, while your child lies at the feet of the same. It rushes forwards. So you rush forwards.”
“Rubbish. You speak gibberish.”
“You have a knife. It is a steel blade used for decapitating small creatures such as dogs and cats. You brandish this. You ram it hard into this human’s bulging chest. But he tries to hurt your son. You cut his skin with the knife. It peels off and you see the bleeding flesh beneath. It is raw. Uncooked. You point the knife into this human’s eyes. You blind him, first one eye and then the other. The blood is richly red. And so you are happy. I can give you that power.”
Staring back, I grunted, half sick but almost laughing. I swallowed hard and said, “You describe nonsense. And I’d never do anything like that. If anyone tried to hurt my son, I would phone the police.”
The spindly elongation which was a leg shadow I presumed, advanced, bending upwards. But the thing could not raise its foot to the veranda. Thrown backwards, it squawked and the black tunnel eyes began to bleed. It spurted blood from its mouth. The blood from the eyes rolled down to the mouth and joined the scarlet rivulets. “The police persons do not come. You are afraid for the little human’s life. You wish to kill the big human. The big point of your blade enters the nose and cuts deep. The human screams but you wish to hurt him more and more.”
I walked forwards, standing only a foot or two from the thing. Its stench made me sick, but I felt no scrap of fear now and wondered if this ridiculous conversation might help me understand, even help me when I travelled with Vespasian, and would face these things again. Then she lunged at me and her shadow seemed to thrash against me.
Her leap was startling, and I stumbled backwards. Solid warmth caught me.
The thing halted. It now seemed paralysed, mouth gaping, hands lifted with claws curled. The blood dripped from its teeth and fingers and continued to dribble while no other part of the thing moved. It had not mounted the terrace.
“A pointless mock attack,” said Vespasian, his voice so soft I could barely hear him. But the thing did. It trembled and crouched down, tucking its hands behind its shadow and snapping its gums shut.
Now the thing was snivelling. I turned, collapsing into Vespasian’s arms. “I didn’t walk through your barrier,” I assured him. “But when it jumped at me, I was so startled, I couldn’t think.”
Vespasian set me back against the wall, and walked away. I was freezing again and wished he’d just take me indoors. But I wouldn’t run away now, and needed to stay and see what happened. He approached the demon which stood still, watching with squinting distain.
“You cannot hurt me,” the thing said. “I am so strong I might crush a mountain.”
“A useful talent,” Vespasian murmured, “but one you do not have.” He walked to the edge of the slightly raised decking and looked down the two little steps at the shadowed thing. Then he reached out one hand and crossed the barrier which divided the safety of our home from the danger of the garden. His fingers closed tight around the narrow twist of shadow which separated head from body.
The thing screamed and struggled.
I heard a snap.
“With the power of all that is holy,” Vespasian stated, now speaking loudly, “I command the utter destruction of the thirteen demons here within. Fastoon, come out. Laquia, come out. Inbore, come out. And Highessa, release the demons within, and as you remain utterly empty, surrender to your destruction.” He had not released the thing as the other shadows swirled from the staggering shape. Vespasian forced his hand down to the grass, and the thing toppled, its darkness shrinking.
A squealing wail echoed from where the thing had been, some last leaking hatred. “You protect your home but not from The One nor The Other. Two there are – coming – coming – now here and can enter where they wish – here both here – ”
Then it was ant-sized, simply a grain of scuttling silence.
And because it was this thing’s destruction that absorbed me, and Vespasian’s actions that I wished to remember and perhaps copy, I took no notice of the thing’s words. It had wailed of furious nonsense, and I only cared for the end. Nor did Vespasian mention afterwards anything concerning the dying demon’s obscure threats. He was more involved even than I was, in the immediate destruction.
With the tiny grain of coloured grit, now thrown to the ground, Vespasian smiled and stood on it. I heard a hoarse release of breath and the squashed darkness lay still and tiny, as thin as a blade of grass. Picking this up between fingers and thumb, Vespasian blew on it, hot breath steaming in the cold. That minute grain disappeared.
The other released demons seemed drunk, falling, wobbling and crying out without words. Vespasian called each of them to him, and they seemed quite unable to disobey. As they came, so he strangled them in silence. Flailing then disintegrating, they shrank as the first had. Vespasian seemed to blow downwards, his breath like an exhalation of mist. Then each was crushed beneath Vespasian’s bare feet. He continued to blow until I saw that his breath was curled like squeezing fingers.
I said, “You should have worn shoes. You have bits of demon stuck to your heels.”
He laughed and lifted his feet, showing clean and unmarked soles. “A destroyed demon disappears, since it is a deed undone, and has no body. It appears, but is illusion.”
“Symbolic again?” I asked.
“No. the symbolism died with Lilith. It will be many years before she can rearrange her symbolic magnetism.”
“Then?”
“These putrid things are the instigation of intentions.” He took my hand again, and the reassurance of his touch was immense. Now I absolutely knew safety. “Until the act is done,” he continued, “these demons have no substance. You refused their control, their temptation and their open messages. That denial, my little one, has left them weaponless.”
In the house again, the warmth was a caress, and I could smell custard. Randle was still asleep on the sofa.
“Are they all so – pitiful?” I asked hopefully.
“Cruelty is always pitiful,” he murmured while pouring me a glass of Baileys. “Kindness is strength and so it can be hard to maintain resolution. Cruelty is the pitiful reaction of fear and stupidity. But,” and he handed me the glass, “now we have only thirteen creatures haunting us. Tomorrow night we will begin the voyage ending with the annihilation of three more. Then there will be ten. And each as easy to kill as this was.” He smiled, adding, “as long as they remain unattached. If they manage to band together, then I must still prove invincible. But it will be hard work and take some time and effort. If I fail, well, the failure will somehow need to be overcome.”
That seemed suddenly less convincing, but he was kissing the side of my ear while I gulped down the Baileys.
Chapter Five
The thirty first of December, and apart from the excitement beating holes in my stomach, it was a normal day.
I had already prepared the clothes we needed, indicated by Vespasian as he further explained our mission. As usual for a woman in the past, I would wear neither bra nor knickers.
I always felt uncomfortable without underpants but then I remembered back in my previous home, a little cottage in the Cotswolds, when Vespasian had swum through time, coming to me in the modern world which he would take many months to assimilate. It was only two days
later that Vespasian had abruptly turned towards me, hooking his hand up beneath my T-shirt. His fingers slipped easily into the cup of my bra, sliding so softly down to the nipple. He kissed my neck as his fingertips explored my breast.
“This clothing you call bra,” he said softly, “is so sadly defensive. The other items now fashionable amongst women are a contradictory collection of uncovering, purposefully exposing most parts of the anatomy. Skirts’ hems only across the high fulness of the thighs, and legs in black material so tight and so clinging that nothing is hidden and the arse covered only by the colour. Neither frivolous nor unattractive, I find your clothes deliciously alluring. Except for this one item – the bra, as you call it. The breast hiding so timidly beneath, it calls to be discovered.”
I still remembered that conversation as the sun created rainbows in his eyes, and his lips rubbed hard against me. I had gulped, and said, “Some women don’t bother wearing them,”
“But some women,” he murmured, his tongue on my nipple, “do not interest me, my love. A man feels only his groin when he sees his own beloved woman naked, as I have seen you only twice, and dream of seeing you again.”
I hadn’t told him at that time that I adored seeing him naked too, and thought him beautiful in every way. I remembered once telling Bertie, my first husband, “How can any fool of a man imagine there’s any such thing as Freud’s ridiculously conceited penis envy? No woman finds a scrotum gorgeous.”
And yet now I did.
“But you look,” I accused without frowning, “and see the allure of other women, or you wouldn’t know our fashions.” Personally, I wore neither skin-tight leggings nor skirts up to my arse
But he said, speaking between kisses, “The curve of the buttocks is unpredictable and exceedingly individual. Everything is of interest. But only the woman I love can ever stir the desire between my own legs.”
I kissed him back. “But I have to wear a bra,” I explained. “Or other men would stare and I don’t want that.”
And then Vespasian had said, “My beloved, I want to carry you outside and lay you on the grass in the soft morning dew as the stars flicker their last spangles before the dawn. There I shall undress you, piece by piece, with neither bra nor those female braise to hide my view. And then I shall open your erotic privacy, and know each particle of you, and finally take you to me as the sun leaks over the horizon.”
At that time my little garden offered no privacy, though when we’d moved here, Vespasian had led me into the mild summer nights to make love in the grass.
Being happy had grown to be a habit. This was the first time that the habit had shaken.
But now I tried to block memories, even those I adored. It was the future I needed to face, so I not only avoided memories, I also avoided windows. Our clothes were laid ready, and I bustled downstairs to make tea, coffee and hot milk for Randle. Vespasian had already dressed our son and carried him to the kitchen. But when he saw me, he pointed to the window. I saw nothing. Randle pointed, dripping the morning custard. “In our nice trees. Look, Mummy,” he informed me. “Nasty piggy face. Meany to the trees.”
I raised an eyebrow at Vespasian. “Crouching beneath the bare branches of the old oak tree,” Vespasian murmured, “are two entwined shadows. They feel no empathy towards each other, but they know that combined demons have greater power than one alone, and are therefore attempting to unite. A complicated process for the essences of cruelty. Before considering the absorption of one over the other, they must fight to discover whether one is already the stronger, while their natural inclination is to terrorise each other.”
Very gradually I could make out the twisting of shadows. Randle, disinterested in such nonsense, had returned to his breakfast. “Look, Mummy. I’snear finished all your lovely custids.”
“Good boy,” I said, distracted, turning to Vespasian. “If one eats the other, we’ll be down to nine?”
“Indeed, my love. The fewer the better, which is why we travel tonight. Yet it is easier when they are weaker. Destroying each tiny force of evil would take me an entire incarnation. If they are compliant enough to evolve into compilations, I’ll have less to fight.”
“One terrifyingly strong demon is preferable to several little ones?”
“As long as none discover a force greater than my own.”
And that was impossible since he had vanquished Lilith, although not entirely alone.
Now Vespasian and Randle were both staring out of the window, so I felt drawn to watch, and stood, spoon in one hand and coffee in the other.
The shapes were not equal yet they fought with equal malignancy. Not a fight in the sense of grappling, or wielding a knife. They blurred, limbs mingling, thin coloured wisps of shadow raised and fingers the length of the arms clicked and waved, forming signs and strange elongated signals. One was the taller, a thin twisting blue shadow which bent over the shorter. It was darker, like the oak tree. Their fight seemed almost a dance. Feet like bare branches leapt, then fastened together as they kicked upwards, becoming one branch as they merged with the arms. I was feeling both sick and fascinated. At least in the kitchen I couldn’t smell the vile reek I knew would be blowing around them.
“Mummy, ‘tis funny,” Randle said suddenly, down from the table and now grabbing at my skirt. “Let’s open this window.”
I said no, but I laughed. Then I felt sick again. The shorter and darker shadow was now drumming its misshapen fingers against its own head, and the round black cranium smashed open. It seemed to gulp, and the thin blue shape, wriggling as though desperate, disappeared inside. The dark head snapped shut. The blue demon was gone.
“And now there are twelve,” Vespasian said softly. “And when we return, then there will be nine.”
Collecting Randle, he deposited the child back on his chair at the table. I had made his morning porridge with custard, a thick gooey mess which had proved extremely popular. He had nearly wiped the bowl, but a little remained. Randle waved his porridge encrusted spoon, then tapping it with horrible repetition on the table top, he asked, “Will the demon stay outside, Daddy? Should we invite it in for lunch?” Managing to puzzle his father was a rare occurrence, so Randle continued, saying, “Thems done fightin now, yes, Daddy? Ortened we invite the black one wot was winned inside?”
Vespasian regarded his son. “No, little one,” he said. “That demon is a fool, and an unpleasant fool at that. We will pretend we haven’t seen it.”’ Vespasian returned to his third coffee, and Randle returned to his porridge caked spoon.
I took Randle’s spoon and wiped the mess from around his small eager mouth. “Good, Mummy,” he said. “And I’ve finished brekky now. Can I go and play? I won’t go outside.”
“Read a book,” Vespasian suggested, nodding.
“I want to play with Tigger and Pooh,” Randle objected.
Vespasian had learned to drive in only a few days. Television surprisingly bored him but he loved to drive, enjoying the versatility of vision from a speeding vehicle, and now we owned two cars.
Money seemed to fly from the heavens and I questioned this only once as I gazed at our two luxury cars sitting smug and clean in our equally spacious garage. He had raised an eyebrow. “You question an alchemist regarding his gold, my love?”
So – memories again. Pointless memories. I knew the overwhelming itch of excitement yet at the same moment, facing the future reminded me of the danger.
Vespasian bent over me, kissing the top of my head. “I’m taking Randle out for a short drive into the village,” he told me now. “I intend on buying us both torches, tiny enough to be hidden in our clothes but still bring light to a world without electricity. It will not take me long. Will you come?”
I had an idea which suddenly seemed important to me, so I shook my head.
“Not now, my love,” I said. “But please don’t be long. I’m making a pie for dinner.”
One eyebrow raised. “Rhubarb pie and custard?”
I laughe
d. “Steak pie in red wine.” And I watched him march out to the garage with Randle, smothered in warm coat, scarf, gloves and woolly hat, ran after him. Vespasian never seemed to feel the cold. Now he pulled on an unlined jacket and seemed to think it enough, even though he had prepared Randle for the greatest snowstorm that ever blew. The engine started, and the car reversed into the lane. I stopped watching, left the oven on so that I had to remember the time and limit my idiot intentions, and crossed to the back door.
Across the misted banks of the lake, the forest merged into glimmering hints of colour. Although the sun was unseen behind the darkening clouds, a blur of russet wavered as though it might have carried shape, but then had lost it. The oak tree, branches bare, blew in a wind which did not exist, and a birch, its slim trunk usually white smudged with black, now seemed to contain the flowing red shape of a woman within, her hands emerging from the bark, then disappearing. The entire tree bent, then straightened, then bent again. The birch tree was dancing although no music accompanied her, and the oak moved aside.
I stared, disgusted. The demons even though now fewer, were stronger and had taken over my garden. I could not count what seemed so elusive, but I could smell anger, and it wasn’t my own. Even the tall sycamore now seemed cruelly alive, its branches twisted and leaves scrunched as though squeezed by hands.
The destruction of these monsters was surely beyond me, but I had watched Vespasian and I remembered every action. Yet the one thing I still feared to do, and which I believed would be utterly foolish, would be to walk through the invisible barrier and approach those blustering trees, mine though they were, which I had loved so deeply when we chose to buy the property.
They were mine no longer.
So I stood on the terrace with a thick cardigan held tight around me, and stared out. I was turning away when the thing jumped, tiny legs bent like a gnome. Still on the terrace, I gazed back at the thing on the grass not far from me.
Dark Weather Page 4