The Mammoth Book of Dark Magic

by Mike Ashley

  And there was something else.

  Thick clouds of debris flew up against the window and rattled over the engine housing, clattering down its sides and back to the ground . . . building materials, furniture, cars, telegraph poles, streetlights . . . all of them fell beneath the careering engine and its maniac driver. And yet, when Abbott looked out of the window he saw that everything they had seemingly destroyed was still in place.

  “How do you do that?”

  “What?”

  Abbott nodded at a delivery truck which upended against the cab but which was in exactly the position it had started in as soon as they had passed by. “That.”

  The old man shrugged and span the wheel. “They’re just soul debris.”

  “Soul debris?” Great, Abbott thought. I’m having a conversation on metaphysics with an old fart driving a renegade train through the countryside. “Trucks and cars and buildings have souls?”

  “Everything has a soul, young feller,” the old man said. “Everything stays pretty much the way it was once I’ve passed through.”

  “What about the people?”

  “They don’t see me,” the old man snapped as he swerved to the right.

  “I saw you,” Abbott said.

  “Yep, you did that.”

  “So what does that mean in the great scheme of things?”

  “Maybe it’s just you got better eyesight than most,” the old man said. “And maybe it’s cos you got a job to do.”

  “Well, I do have a job to do,” Abbott said. “I have to write a whole series of articles on just how far the heartland of America is drifting from the overall corporate structure of the country in the new millennium.”

  “Sounds a whole lot of fun,” the old man said softly as he shifted a lever forwards and gave the wheel a sharp turn.

  Abbott watched as the scenery shifted yet again and the cab sliced through an apartment building. “It wasn’t that way back where you picked me up. In . . . Madrigal? The buildings sure took a pounding there.”

  “Yeah, well . . . that’s Madrigal. And, like I keep telling you, they’ll get fixed up. That old man . . . he’s—”

  “Yeah, I know . . . he’s an angel.”

  The old man nodded without turning around. “Now you’re getting it.”

  The train lurched to the left and Abbott bounced against the side. And he was supposed to jump from this? No way! Maybe when the guy got tired . . . maybe then he’d have to pull over.

  “When do you take a break?”

  “I don’t.”

  “You don’t take a break? Don’t you have a . . . an assistant?”

  “Uh uh.”

  “So when do you sleep?”

  “Don’t sleep.” The old man pulled a lever, held it and wound it to the side. “Don’t sleep, don’t eat. Don’t do no toilet neither.”

  Abbott blinked, assessing the information. Don’t do no toilet neither? If that were true, then the guy had to have a bowel as big as a zeppelin . . . and a bladder as big as the shed that housed it. He was obviously a complete fruitcake . . . but Abbott had dealt with fruitcakes before.

  But then there was the not-so-small matter of the fact that the train seemed to be smashing through everything apparently without causing any damage. Maybe there was some kind of closed-circuit playback fed into the windows . . . something showing lots of carnage, and with a hydraulic system patched into the undercarriage. Maybe they weren’t even moving at all. But then Abbott had seen what the train had done coming into town.

  yeah, well . . . that’s Madrigal

  The trick was humouring him.

  Managing to keep the incredulity out of his voice, he asked, “How long –” He pointed to the steering wheel and waved his arm around the driving compartment. “– how long you been driving this—”

  The man turned around and smiled again. “Long time,” he said. “I been driving all the time you been driving around writing your articles. I know everything. I know your name and your every breath . . . felt it in my circuits –” He laughed and thumped his chest. “– heard it from the engine.”

  Abbott listened.

  It was the sound of whispered voices, a multitude of accents and words, a sibilant rush of packed vowels and consonants, rising and falling, surging and retreating like waves on a beach. It was both a part of the engine noise and something else entirely, a complement as well as a distraction.

  “You know my name?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “So what is it?”

  “Abbott.” The old man shot him a fuck you smile and returned his attention to the wheel.

  “How’d you know my name?”

  “Oh, I know lots of stuff. Hear it all from here . . .” He patted the chimney breast. “Listen:”

  Abbott frowned, trying to discern coherence from the chaos. Here and there he thought he could hear phrases, questions, statements and pleas, some in English and others in other languages, other tongues.

  “What is it?” he asked the old man.

  “It’s the Sound.”

  “Which sound?”

  The old man spun one of the wheels and jammed a foot on the pedal. Spinning another wheel in a different direction, he pulled a lever and said, “It’s the Sound. Every sound that ever was . . . every cat’s fart and every baby’s cry . . . every lover’s promise and every corpse’s first and last breath . . . the breath that escapes in that wondrous fraction of a second when the body has ceased to function. It’s every murderer’s gasp of panic and the beat of every airborne wing as it flaps against and through the currents. It’s the drumbeat of every hoof and the swish of every fish’s tail. And it’s every word that has ever been said, some to other folks and a lot – more than you’d think – spoken only in the silence of mirrored rooms or against the feigned softness of lonely pillows, or into endless glasses whose promise of oblivion is always just another drink away.”

  Abbott was suddenly aware that he was nodding, caught up in the hypnotic meter of the old man’s words.

  “Those are the dreams. Once I throw them on the fire, they keep burning . . . cos dreams never end – anybody knows that, right?”

  “Right.”

  Hello, 911? Could you send a team around to someplace in Tennessee . . . there’s a train rampaging the countryside and an old man driving it has just flipped over into Never Never Land. And bring your nets!

  Abbott would have agreed with anything the old man said. “But if they keep burning, how come you have to keep adding more?”

  “They get smaller. They keep burning, and they get real small –” He held up his hand and made a pincer shape with the thumb and forefinger – the space between them was infinitestimal. “– but they never burn away. A dream is something lasts forever, yeah?”

  Yeah! Hell, why not right? Anybody knew that. Stuck in an out-of-control steam train chatting with the ghost of Carlos Casteneda while he threw dreams into the furnace . . . pretty much anything at all made perfect sense.

  “And they talk about me, these dreams? Call me names?”

  The old man laughed and stamped his foot. “Heh, they don’t call you names, they speak of you. And not all of them do even that,” he said as he slowly pitched the train to the left and then spun the uppermost wheel, the smallest, back to the right. The train pitched and tossed like a lost ship on a midnight ocean, screaming soundlessly to the stars and an uncaring night sky. “But a lot do . . . and not all of them ever knew you.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Nothing much does,” came the response. He waited a few seconds, staring intently at the chimney breast, and then said, “I listen to them all day every day.”

  “What do they say about me?”

  “Can’t say.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Won’t. Can’t. What does it matter?”

  “It matters to me.”

  “Tough titties, Sergeant. You don’t count diddly.” The man rested hi
s elbows on the wheels and tugged the handkerchief out of his back pocket. He wiped his face and looked closer at the chimney breast. “No . . . you . . . don’t –” he said and, taking the second-largest wheel, he twisted his arms around fast, like a martial arts punch, and swiped at the nest of levers. The train lurched. The old man looked back at the chimney breast. “That’s better,” he said, and spun the wheel again, but less frantically this time, managing to return the handkerchief to his pocket at the same time.

  Abbott got to his feet and sidled towards the wall in front of the man.

  “What is it that you keep looking at?”

  Without looking around, the old man said, “This?” He tapped what appeared to be a small screen set in the wall just above the column of steering wheels. “This is why I have to keep the train moving . . . and keep it moving in anything but a straight line.” He waved Abbott over. “Come see.”

  It was a television screen.

  “You’re watching TV?” He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “You’re watching television while you plough a couple hundred tons of metal through civilization?”

  “Uh uh,” the old man said. “Not TV. Watch with me a while.”

  Abbott watched.

  It was some kind of fight . . . a conflict between what appeared to be two huge and completely naked . . . figures: Abbott couldn’t decide whether they were men or women for, though they appeared to have no breasts, there was also an absence of any obvious genitalia or pubic hair. In fact, the creatures had no hair anywhere . . . be it on their heads, on their faces or beneath their arms., their bodies shiny and glistening with sweat. Just two sleek, enormous bodies that, at first glance, seemed to be bulbously fat. Closer examination, however, showed no rippling of flesh but only taut muscle.

  One of the creatures – there was no way to differentiate between them – had pulled itself away from the corner and was padding around the far wall of the large room while the other figure stood its ground in the centre. Both of them had their arms outstretched, their fingers folded over into a grasp, their knees bent as they strived to maintain their balance.

  “Hold on!” The old man spun the wheel to the left.

  Abbott shot his left arm out and grabbed a hold of a fluted rail that ran at head height across the chimney breast.

  At the same time, the figure in the centre of the room pictured on the screen toppled backwards and slid to the wall. The other figure pitched sideways in another direction.

  The old man turned the wheel again, this time to the right, while, with his other hand, he shifted one of the levers and then twisted one of the other wheels.

  One of the figures stayed against the wall while the one in the middle of the floor slid backwards. They were now at opposite sides of the room.

  Abbott looked up and looked behind him, half expecting to see the things fighting right behind him. “They . . . they’re here, aren’t they? Here on on the train.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Who are they? What are they doing?”

  “They’re altercating.”

  “They’re what?”

  “Altercating . . . disagreeing.”

  “What are they disagreeing about?”

  The man sniggered. “Everything!” he snapped. And he sniggered again.

  Abbott watched the figures on the screen pacing around each other menacingly while they were thrown first one way and then the other, bouncing across the floor and against the walls, seemingly with little or no adverse effect. No blood, no apparent pain or even discomfort. “And just who – or what – are they?”

  “Those, young fella, are Hope and Despair. And as for why they’re altercating, well . . . they’ve always done it. Nothing else matters to them. Why, I figure they wouldn’t want to take a break or get off of the train . . . even if they could.” He turned to face Abbott and added, “Which they can’t.” He turned back. “They’re natural enemies, each one a contradiction of the other. Can’t exist in harmony by the simple definition of what they’re about.”

  Abbott watched the old man’s profile as the man concentrated on spinning the wheels, jabbing a foot occasionally on to one or other of the large pedals, shifting one of the levers in an apparently random fashion and throwing another handful of dreams into the furnace . . . which, Abbott noted, threw no heat when the door was opened.

  “That’s their names? Hope and Despair?”

  The old man shook his head. “They don’t have names. Hope and Despair is what they are.” He straightened his back for a second and shot Abbott a smile before returning his attention to the wheels and the screen. “Been altercating forever. What I got to do is make sure neither of them wins. In fact, I got to make sure neither of them even gets hands on the other one.”

  “How do you know which one is which?” Abbott asked, ignoring a whole slew of other questions.

  “Don’t know that. It don’t matter.”

  “What happens if one of them does win?”

  “They won’t . . . leastways, not on my shift.”

  “When does your shift end?”

  The old man shrugged.

  “When did it begin?”

  Another shrug. “Don’t rightly recall. Long time ago. Been doing this ever since I can remember.”

  “You’ve always been driving a train around the countryside try—”

  “Uh uh. Not around the countryside. I been driving the train but hardly anybody’s seen it, and nobody’s ever been on it . . . ’cept me, of course. And –” He nodded to the screen. “– them two. But now . . . now that everything’s changing –” He emphasized the word. “– things aren’t the same. There’s a lot of things folks can see now they never saw before.” He turned and held Abbott’s eyes with his own. “These are bad times, Sergeant,” he said. “Bad times.”

  The old man turned back and spun a couple of wheels, sending the two figures on the screen somersaulting across the floor in different directions. “Hope wins, folks get complacent,” the old man said matter-of-factly. “They think everything’s gonna work out just fine and dandy. Ain’t nothing to get all perturbed about, nothing to strive for.

  “On the other hand, Despair wins and folks don’t think anything’s gonna work out . . . they lose that spirit of determination, that feeling of being positive. So what I gotta do is keep the two of them fit and healthy, the one inspiring the other – the despondency providing a healthy shadow for the complacency . . . and the optimism throwing just a little light on to all that negativity. Maintaining the balance, preserving the status quo.”

  “Ain’t nothing to get all perturbed about” and “. . . the despondency providing a healthy shadow for the complacency”?

  The man’s voice and words were a curious amalgam of tones, dialects and vernacular. Sometimes it was a down-home folksy drawl and others it sounded intelligent and laced with profundities. Abbott couldn’t decide which one was the man’s real voice and which one was the affected one . . . if either of them was affected.

  “Who are you?” He paused, thinking about what he was about to ask . . . and then went right ahead and asked it. “Are you God?”

  The old man’s laugh sounded more like a horse’s bray. “Hah . . . God? Me? No way, Sergeant. I’m just the driver.” He laughed some more. “Me . . . God! That’s a good one.”

  On the screen, one of the figures caught hold of the other’s arm and held fast.

  “Damn!” The man jammed a foot on the pedal, the sudden pitch of the train slamming Abbott against the chimney breast.

  Then he spun the wheel to the left. Abbott came away from the wall at an angle, pulling a piece of the rail with him. He was unable to stop himself from stumbling forward, his arms pin-wheeling, one hand still holding the piece of rail.

  The rail hit the old man across the side of his face and opened a gash down his cheek – which, to Abbott’s astonishment, drew no blood. But the old man’s eyes opened wide in surprise and then rolled back on themselves. He took a c
ouple of faltering steps, lifted one hand to his head . . . and then slid to the floor in a heap.

  Abbott quickly knelt down by the man and took hold of his shirt front. “Hey, you okay?” He threw the piece of rail to the floor and slapped the driver on the face. “Hey . . . talk to me . . . tell me some more of –” He stopped and stared at the gash in the old man’s cheek.

  “What?”

  Abbott didn’t respond. He lifted his hand and touched the man’s face. It was cold. And hard. He moved his hand up to the gash . . . up to where he saw the dark gray beneath the skin.

  “Your face . . .” Abbott began.

  “What’s the matter with it?”

  Abbott gently prodded a finger between the torn pieces of flesh and felt metal. He pulled the hand back and looked the old man square in the eyes.

  “What’s the matter with my face?”

  Maybe he had a steel plate in it . . . yes, that’s what it must be. Abbott nodded at the thought.

  “I said—”

  “You cut yourself,” Abbott said weakly.

  The man’s eyes opened. “I need . . . I need to repair myself,” he said, his voice sounding strange . . . like a record moving between speeds.

  “You got something metal there . . . there in your cheek.”

  “Metal in my cheek?” the old man said, pronouncing the words “mett-al” and “cheee-eeek”. “Hell, I’m metal everywhere, Sergeant. It’s what I’m made out of. You think I was flesh and blood like you?” He laughed raucously when he saw Abbott striving to answer. “Hell, how d’ya think I don’t need to sleep or to eat, or even to take a pee every once in a while?” He laughed again and Abbott thought he saw a brief flicker of sparks down the old man’s throat.

  “So all those stories—”

  “They’re not . . . stories.”

  Abbott looked up. On the screen, the two figures were now locked together. And the train was slowing.

  “The train’s slowing down!”

  “Hey, full marks, Sergeant,” the man said as he pulled himself to his feet. He nodded to the wall. “There . . . stomp your foot on the pedal.”

  Abbott looked at two pedals

  this isn’t going to work, this is not going to work