Friends of the Dusk

by Phil Rickman

  ‘That was a joke, right?’

  ‘It were said in a way where you could take it for a joke.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Merrily said.

  ‘What to do about Hereford,’ Huw said. ‘Do you appoint a deeply spiritual man – High Church, candle-burner, incense-swinger?’

  ‘Too medieval?’

  ‘Or do you go the other way? A low-church hard bastard. Happen there were long, private discussions in back rooms – discussions as never took place. See, wi’ nobody talking like this any more, it’s easy to forget nowadays what the Church were originally supposed to be about. Don’t you think?’

  ‘I think about it all the time. So what did this… working group… come up with?’

  Huw smiled.

  ‘Haven’t seen the report. If there was a report, which I doubt. But the result, of course, is Craig Innes. A bland and pragmatic man on the surface, steel frame underneath. A mixture of modernism and the Welsh Chapel mentality. Not so much a new broom as an industrial Hoover. Gets into the dark corners.’

  ‘Including mine.’

  ‘Especially yours. He’s been put in place to wipe out the last traces of Mick Hunter and all his works.’

  ‘I’m still seen as part of Hunter’s work and, as such, the Church wants me out?’

  ‘The Church is saying to Innes, Do what you need to, but don’t draw attention to it.’

  ‘Because I’m one of the last links with Hunter?’

  ‘Because, lass, you know as much of the truth as it’s possible for anybody to know.’

  ‘Well, yes, but which I don’t talk about because everybody would think I was crazy. Why have they left me alone for so long?’

  ‘Because the Church has always moved grindingly slowly. And of course you’ve done a good job, handled more hot potatoes in a couple of years than Dobbs stuck a fork into for his entire career. You’ve made mistakes and a few iffy friends, you’ve taken wrong turnings. But Dunmore always liked you, even when you made things hard for him. All right, occasionally, he’d be told to give you a prod, like making you work in a committee with that bloody shrink and Siân. But even Siân’s come round.’

  ‘I thought so, too.’

  Huw folded his arms.

  ‘I just don’t know, lass. It’s clear he can’t just get rid of you, he’s got to try and make you bugger off of your own free will.’

  ‘Rural dean…’

  ‘Promotion. A vote of confidence. That’s a good start. Go on. Play me the rest.’

  There were bits they could skip, business unrelated to deliverance. It was clear Innes hadn’t wanted to come on too heavy with Siân. The purpose of this meeting was to deal with human-recources issues, including whether the rural dean job should be offered to Merrily – Siân hardly in a position to say no to that.

  And Siân had been a barrister, a useful hard wall to bounce his ideas off.

  Slowly, Innes unwrapped his bundle, laid out his case against Merrily Watkins continuing to operate as deliverance consultant.

  He had everything. Either he’d researched it himself, with the help of unknown people within the diocese, or the putative Working Party had given him a file, which even included an interview Merrily had once done – with the full agreement of Bernie Dunmore – for a national magazine.

  ‘… where she says…’ Innes evidently consulting a tablet or something. ‘“It still amazes me when I meet a member of the clergy who purports to believe in a supernatural God but rejects the possibility of anything else.”’

  A baffled pause before Siân replied.

  ‘Is there something wrong with that?’

  ‘How many ghosts do you find in the Bible?’

  ‘It doesn’t do ghosts, but that—’

  ‘Surely the message from the Bible is that we should disregard the – probably mythological – byways which distract from our focus on God.’

  ‘And people who’ve become trapped in the byways… we don’t try to help them?’

  Thank you, Siân.

  But his answer was predictable and final.

  ‘There are people more qualified to help them.’

  And then, of course, he’d talked about the police. It seemed to Innes that she’d almost courted the controversial, becoming so involved with criminal investigators that they now regarded her almost as their consultant. Which meant that she was dealing with issues which would not normally come to the Church’s attention, with the inevitable neglect of her normal pastoral duties.

  He told Siân about his meeting with the chief constable of West Mercia and the head of Hereford CID.

  His information, he said, was that Detective Chief Inspector Howe was not well disposed towards Mrs Watkins, although she’d been unexpectedly reticent over lunch. He’d learned much more in a meeting with a group of prominent Herefordshire councillors which had included Howe’s father.

  ‘Bloody Charlie Howe,’ Merrily said to Huw. ‘Innes might’ve been told everything about me, but it looks like he knows nothing at all about Charlie.’

  Innes said it was County Councillor Howe who, in disclosing his discomfort over the relationship, had called Merrily, in a disparaging way, ‘a consultant’ to the police. Or rather to ‘one ambitious detective’. Unnamed.

  ‘All I’d say to that,’ Siân said, ‘is that the police deal with unacceptable behaviour which is often seen as evil, and there’re often moral and spiritual choices—’

  ‘Evil?’ The Bishop’s voice raised to pulpit level. ‘If you’re looking for evil, I’ll point you in yet another direction. There’s a—’

  Merrily froze it again.

  ‘I freely confess that this is not going to sound good.’

  42

  Swallow the pill

  AFTER A WHILE, Jane realized she might have made a mistake using her own name – easy to discount the kind of creeps you encountered up some of these online alleys. But then she’d had no reason to think that Aisha Malik was in that deep.

  It hadn’t taken long finding the kid through the Facebook search box. On the old iMac at her desk under the Mondrian walls, Jane had checked out five Aishas, but only one belonged to the Foxy Rowlestone Appreciation Society.

  Which had over thirty thousand members – seriously impressive with the series discontinued. Not that many of them accepted this.

  I dreamed last night that Foxy had finished two more books and one was coming out before Christmas. I’m just putting this down in case it happens. Cos it was a really vivid dream and I’ve had it twice.

  Evidently a heavy-duty mystic.

  Jane’s membership of FRAS had been approved within ten minutes. She’d looked up the books on Amazon, and they were still getting almost daily reader-reviews, more of them these days coming from adults for whom new editions seemed to have been issued as e-books with starkly monochrome covers. Probably OK for children, one reader said, but it scared the hell out of me.

  On the fan forum, it was only a short scroll to the weird stuff.

  Salli B

  I’ve been in psychic contact with Foxy for two years and she was as shattered as any of us when she found out at the end of Book 2 that Geraint had become one of the Undead but she says to think about it and it will make everything so much better. It’s true!

  The moderators had left it alone. It was a little late for spoilers. Still that was a gobsmacker. Geraint the blacksmith’s son had really emerged on the dark side? Or had his life been a necessary sacrifice to enable him to take on the Summoner on his own plane of existence? And if Catherine was still human that would pose some interesting challenges for the Book Three which never happened.

  There was a thread speculating on how this would change things. Like how could Geraint not be a good vampire?

  ‘There are no good vampires,’ Jane murmured.

  Gretel

  I keep hearing theres going to be a film of The Summoner but it never happens! Does anybody knows WHEN?????

  Salli B

  It doesn’t matte
r. You can make your own in your head and one night you will be there in your dreams and no going back.

  Jessica

  Did u all know that Geraint was REAL? I think I may have a chance to meet him. I am soooooooo excited and accept it will be very very frightening at first but that doesnt matter cos he is so gorgeous.

  Jane was shaking her head, although she could totally understand how vivid fantasies could form, and that fear was an essential part of it. A dark rite of passage. You had to go through the deepest fear to find the deepest love.

  Francesca

  I have read this book about six times. At first I had to stop reading at nite because of the dreams it gave me. Id wake up terror strikken all cold and trembling. But soon I was loving the terror. Theres a dark wood near us that I call the Nightlands and Ive spent hours there waiting for Geraint. My stupid parents thought I was out with my mates.

  Ha ha ha. I can lie in bed now and Im in the wood and he comes to me. Ooooh! Ooooo! Oooooooo!!!

  Not unexpectedly, there were posts from kids claiming to be Geraint, posting pictures of guys who were clearly not them. Some claimed to be friends of his, offering to set up meetings with him for Those Who Dare. There were even takers.

  I am going to meet Geraint AT LAST. I have sent him my token and I think we are going to Be Together. I have already met him in dreams.

  This was more than slightly scary. This was where the creep element came in. You could only hope the obsessive fans would run like hell when Geraint started sending them pictures of his cock.

  In another thread, several people were boasting about knowing exactly where the Nightlands were. None of them getting it right, as far as Jane could see.

  No word from Aisha. Evidently, she was just a lurker on FRAS. Her Facebook page suggested she wasn’t over-fussed about privacy settings, but there wasn’t much of her on show. Her friends were other girls of around the same age, her likes were unsurprising: kid bands, fantasy films and Foxy Rowlestone. She’d left many of the personal spaces blank, had posted some pictures of her family, Foxy book covers and fragments of landscape that Jane half recognized. But all fairly sketchy.

  The list of groups she belonged to flashed up different signals. Jane had hit the join buttons for all of them, thinking she could get out easily enough, although you could leave a trail.

  Too late now. Waiting for her memberships to be approved – it could take minutes or, for more obscure groups, days – Jane stood by the attic window looking down over the hedge, between the shedding trees, to the village, coolly lit by the late-autumnal sun, its painted walls white as freshly squeezed toothpaste between the timbers.

  Strange to think that Mum, of all people, had gone through a goth period, which she talked about occasionally, with entirely justified embarrassment: the black lipstick, the vintage albums by Siouxsie and the Banshees. Early teenage decadence. She must have been very young, younger than Aisha. And even more naive.

  Or maybe not. It had always been there, the sexuality of vampirism. The love bites that went deeper. It was only since Mum’s time that it had changed, becoming weirdly innocent. Those Twilight vamps who didn’t go all the way. Not for a long time, anyway. Not without true love.

  How naive was that.

  Jane felt tight inside.

  The Fang Forum accepted her within half an hour. It was mildly entertaining, with adverts for pointy dental caps and red contact lenses so you could see the whole world through bloodlight. It also seemed to have become some kind of goth dating agency, with images of vampire weddings and – less healthy – vampire babies in vintage black prams, with little skull mobiles dangling from their awnings, and vampire toddlers who, presumably, had grown blood teeth instead of milk teeth.

  Chances were that these kids would grow up entirely normal, taking the piss out of their sad old parents, people like…

  … well, like this. Image of a couple with red-rimmed lips, middle-aged infants at a face-painting party.

  Me and my fella been drinking each other’s blood for over 2 years now. It keeps us together. We are soul mates in every sense. We live in each other’s veins and will become one at death.

  Jane skipped instructions on how best to leak quantities of blood without severing a significant artery. Also the long discussion about the nutritional benefits of sanguinary exchange, blah, blah, yuk.

  And then, suddenly…

  Aisha

  I have heard Geraint of the Nightlands comes here. I live in his village near Catherine’s castle. Can anyone tell me how to meet him?

  Carmilla

  Anyone can say that.

  Aisha

  It’s true. I live where England and Wales meet. I live in the old house that is all that’s left of the deserted village under the ruins of the castle. I walk in the place where the Village once stood below what is left of the Castle where I can hear the roaring of the forge and sometimes see Geraint and his hammer but only faintly.

  Uh-oh.

  Jane scrolled deep into the site and there were several other references to Geraint and his hammer. Predictable. Close to the kind of crap she might have written years ago. Mystic Jane from the University of Middle Earth.

  After Aisha’s post, other people on the Fang Forum started posting about Foxy Rowlestone’s book, some of them claiming to have seen the Summoner. Jane remembered Lol talking once about the time he’d spent in psychiatric care and how easy it was to absorb other patients’ kinks, how easy to accept your own insanity and hold it close with medication. Easier than breaking out. Swallow the orange-coloured pill.

  She stood up and went back to the window, watched the village stretching itself into the cool, clear morning. Gus Staines, plump and comfy, was walking past the vicarage gate with her wife, the taller, narrower Amanda Rubens. Off to open the bookshop. They looked like extras from one of those old British films where the colours always seemed washed-out.

  Jane turned violently away from the window. Back at her desk, she found a reply to Aisha.

  Carmilla

  Wait. Wait for the dusk.

  And that was all there was. Maybe there was some take-up on one of the other groups that hadn’t got back to her. She was still waiting when her phone, over on the window ledge, made the tawny owl noise. Jane came slowly to her feet, walked over and found a text. Businesslike.

  Weekend dig in Wiltshire starting mid Nov.

  Place for you if you want it.

  love, Sam XXXXXX

  Jane looked down, between the trees, to Ledwardine square, the white walls brighter than neon between the black oak, but she could taste the sour autumnal air of Cwmarrow as the owl returned. New text. Not businesslike. This one was like poetry.

  No rules, Jane. New era. All barriers are down. We go where it’s fun. We don’t have long, take what pleasures we can. Live like the remote ancestors. Alive to the senses.

  43

  Get rid

  UNUSUALLY WITH HUW OWEN in the room, the air was flecked with unrest. It was far from reassuring that he’d sat, unmoved, through the part where Innes had called him mad. Past the age where he’d care. Content to be crazy, nothing he needed to prove to anyone. No evangelist, me, he’d said once. Let ’em find it for themselves, worth bugger-all otherwise.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s hear the rest.’

  Merrily leaned across the desk and tapped the touchpad, releasing the Bishop’s crisp tenor.

  ‘—an old people’s home at Hardwicke, down hear Hay. The proprietor’s a woman called Mrs Cardelow. Whose son-in-law is one Graeme Spring.’

  ‘You mean our…?’

  ‘Canon Graeme Spring.’

  ‘Spring’s a decent man,’ Merrily said sadly. ‘Not even ambitious. People trust him.’

  ‘His mother-in-law’s perpetual headache is a woman who was living there when she took over. A former Whitehall civil servant, more recently employed in some capacity at GCHQ in Cheltenham.’

  No reaction from Siân, although it was unlike
ly she hadn’t heard of this woman, even as a joke. Which she wasn’t.

  ‘Old but far from geriatric. A woman who could afford her own home but appears not to want one. Apart from a recently acquired artificial hip, she has no disabilities. No interest, apparently, in physical possessions – admirable really. Or would be under normal circumstances. She wants to be looked after. She has a suite of rooms, now, I’m told. Filled, floor to ceiling, with books. All her needs taken care of, so she can continue her studies.’

  Huw looked at Merrily.

  ‘Miss White,’ she said. ‘Anthea. Who prefers to be anagrammed. Athena.’

  ‘Amongst her studies,’ Innes said, ‘are the other guests in the home. Especially those close to… what you might call the end of their stay.’

  ‘The dying,’ Siân said.

  ‘That’s… not entirely fair,’ Merrily said. ‘She’s been quite a comfort to… some of them.’

  ‘Does tarot readings for the other old ladies in the home,’ Innes said. ‘Telling them when they can expect to die.’

  Siân tutted once.

  ‘How horrible of her.’

  ‘Plays tricks with people’s minds. To exercise her faculties. Also said to be working on her memoirs – not as a civil servant, about which she’s always been very discreet, but as an occultist.’

  ‘Perhaps I have heard of her,’ Siân said faintly. ‘Though never encountered her personally.’

  ‘Mrs Watkins certainly has. Visiting her countless times, according to Mrs Cardelow.’

  ‘Five, max,’ Merrily said. ‘Rarely parting on good terms.’

  ‘What one might call, Siân – and I really don’t wish to be melodramatic – a rather unholy alliance.’

  ‘I don’t think we should necessarily—’

  ‘What you don’t think doesn’t concern me greatly. I know. I see a possible unholy and certainly unhealthy association. To which my predecessor seems to have turned a blind eye. But I shall not. No such thing as white magic, Siân, only spiritual perversion.’