by Alan Moore
It was along here to the north, if scrambled Sam O’Day remembered rightly, that the wall of the St. Andrew’s Priory had once extended. Back upstream in the 1260s, King Henry the Third sent out a punitive platoon of mounted troops to quash unrest and insurrection here in this pugnacious little town, the army let in through a breach in the old priory wall by a French Cluniac prior who sympathised with the French monarchy. They’d pretty much destroyed the place, raped it and robbed it and set fire to it, marking this northwest corner of the Boroughs as the point of penetration. On the builder’s billiard table – or their trilliard table as it was more accurately called – this spot was represented by the pocket with the golden penis etched into the wood beside it. Regent’s Square in the northeast, conversely, that was the death corner where the severed heads of traitors were displayed once, and its corresponding snooker pocket was emblazoned with a golden skull.
They twirled above the traffic junction, looking out across the business premises just over Spencer Bridge, the new estates of Spencer and King’s Heath beyond. Spencer. Another local name, the devil noted, that had interesting repercussions up and down the track. Like figures circling on top of a dilapidated music-box, the devil and his passenger revolved unhurriedly to take in Jimmy’s End and then Victoria Park, pretty and melancholy as a jilted bride, arriving finally at the far lights of Castle Station where their orbit reached its end. Clanking and shunting in the dark, the railway terminus was at the Boroughs’ southwest corner, with a gilded turret scratched into the grain of the appropriate pocket on the builder’s table, representing stern authority. Fidgeting in the devil’s grip, the small boy at last found his voice.
“That’s it. That’s where I wiz. That’s where I live.”
One midget hand protruded from his dressing gown’s capacious sleeve to point towards the part-lit terrace on their left, a little further south along St. Andrew’s Road. The devil chuckled and corrected him.
“Not quite. That’s where you lived. Until you died, of course.”
The child considered this, and nodded.
“Oh. Yes. I’d forgotten that. Why has it all got dark so quick? It wiz all sunny earlier, and I’ve not been away for very long. It can’t be night already.”
Obviously, the fiend observed, his young friend needed setting straight on that one, too.
“Well, actually, it can. In fact, this isn’t even the same day as that of your departure. When we flew along the Attics of the Breath just now we must have passed three or four sunsets, which means that we’re presently at some point later on in that same week. From all the cars in Grafton Street, I’d say it looks like Friday night. Your family are probably right in the middle of their teatime about now. How would you like to see them?”
You could tell from the protracted silence that the kid was thinking about this before he answered. Naturally, he’d want to see his loved ones one more time, but seeing them in mourning for him must have been a daunting prospect. Finally, he piped up.
“Can you show them to me? And will they be shapes with lights in, like they were when we wiz back Upstairs?”
The devil issued a good-natured snort, so that wisps of blue smoke like car-exhaust leaked from his flaring nostrils.
“Well, of course I’ll show them to you. That’s the main part of Sam O’Day’s Flight, in fact. It’s what I’m famous for. And as for what they’ll look like, it won’t be the same as how they seemed from up above. Do you know what the word ‘dimension’ means?”
The infant shook his tousled head. This would, the devil thought, be a long night.
“Well, basically, it’s just another word for plane, as in the different planes a solid object has. If something has length, breadth and depth we say that it has three dimensions, that it’s three-dimensional. Now, in truth, all things in this universe have more than three dimensions, but there’s only three that human beings seem to notice. To be honest, there are ten, or at a pinch eleven, but there are just four of them that need concern you at the moment. These are the three planes that I just mentioned plus a fourth that is as solid as the others, but which mortal men perceive as passing time. This fourth dimension, viewed in its true light, is how we see it from Mansoul, the realm Upstairs, which is a higher-up dimension still. Looked down on from up there, there is no time. All change and movement are just represented by the snaking crystal forms with lights inside that you saw earlier, winding along their predetermined paths. That’s when you’re looking from up there, remember.”
“As for where we are now, we’re not up there anymore. We’re down in the three-sided world where time exists, but we’re still seeing it with higher eyes. That minor detail, by and large, is the whole basis of my fabled Flight, which, if you’ll now permit me, I shall demonstrate.”
The babe in arms, who’d listened to the devil’s monologue uncomprehendingly for the most part, made an ambiguous whining sound that had a slight upward inflection and could thus be taken as conditional assent. Taking his time so as not to alarm the child unnecessarily, and also to restrict their streaming image-trail, the fiend began to float towards the short and semi-darkened row of houses that the boy had indicated, opposite the coal-yard further up St. Andrew’s Road. They drifted over the converted slipper-baths, the devil’s emerald and ruby tatters crackling like a radio of evil, and across the unmowed triangle of meadow, moving south. Upon their left as they approached the corner of Spring Lane they passed the looming tannery, its tall brick chimney and its gated yards with dyed skin-shavings heaped in turquoise treasure-mounds, the bald white stumps of tails left on the cobbles and dissolving into soap and gristle. From this height, the puddles near the pulling-sheds were mother-of-pearl fragments, bright and flaking.
Michael Warren and the devil came to rest suspended up above the yard of the coal-merchant, facing east and looking down at a slight angle on the stretch of terraced houses opposite that ran between the bottom openings of Scarletwell Street and Spring Lane. Dipping his horned and auburn head, the devil whispered in the youngster’s ear.
“You know, whenever they describe this ride I can provide, they always get it wrong. They tell how the great devil slippery Sam O’Day, if asked, will bear you up above the world and let you see its homes and houses with their roofs gone, so that all the folk inside are visible. That’s true enough, for as far as it goes, but it misunderstands what’s really going on. Yes, I bear people up above the world, but only in the sense that I can lift them, if I choose, into a higher mathematical dimension such as those we’ve been discussing. As for my supposed ability to vanish all the rooftops so that sorcerers can spy upon their neighbours’ wives at bath-time, how am I expected to do that? And if I could, why would I bother to? This Flight is my most legendary attribute, apart from all the murders. Don’t they think I might have something to impart that’s rather more important than a glimpse of nipple? Here, you look down at the houses for yourself, and tell me what you think you’re looking at. Have I made all the rooftops disappear, or haven’t I?”
Of course, the devil knew that this was far from a straightforward question. That was largely why he’d asked it, just to watch the puzzled and conflicted look upon the child’s face when he tried to answer.
“No. All of the rooftops are still there and I can see them, but …”
The boy paused for a moment, as if inwardly debating something, then went on.
“… but I can see the people in the rooms inside as well. In Mrs. Ward’s house on the end I can see Mrs. Ward upstairs putting a stone hot-water bottle in the bed, and Mr. Ward’s downstairs. He’s sitting listening to the radio. How can I see them both when they’re on different floors? Shouldn’t there be a ceiling in the way? And how can I see either of them if the roof’s still there?”
The devil was, despite himself, impressed. Children could sometimes take you by surprise like that. You tended to forget amidst the chatter and inanity that their perceptions and their minds were working much, much harder than those of
their adult counterparts. This infant had just posed a more incisive question, with more honest curiosity, than mangled Sam O’Day’s last fifteen hell-bound necromancers put together. Thus, he did his best to furnish this intelligent enquiry with a suitable reply.
“Oh, I should think a bright young spark like you could answer that one for himself. You take a closer look. It isn’t that you’re looking through the roof and ceiling, is it?”
Michael Warren squinted dutifully.
“No. No, it’s more like I’m looking round the edge of them.”
The devil hugged the boy until he yelped.
“Good lad! Yes, that’s exactly what you’re doing, peeping into a sealed house around an edge you normally can’t see. It’s like if there were people who were flat, what they call two-dimensional, who lived on a flat sheet of paper. If you were to draw a box round one of them, then that flat person would be sealed off from the rest of the flat world and its inhabitants. They wouldn’t see him, since he would be out of sight behind the line-walls that you’d drawn around him, nor would he be able to see them, enclosed in his flat box.
“But you’re the one who drew the lines, and you have three dimensions. In comparison to all the little flat folk, you have one more whole dimension you can work with, which gives you a big advantage. You can look down through the open top side of the square you’ve drawn, look down through a dimension that the flat folk cannot see and do not know about. You can look down upon the flat chap in the box by looking at him from an angle that, to him, does not exist. Now do you understand how you can see your upstairs and your downstairs neighbours both at once, despite the roof and ceiling in the way? It’s just a matter of perspective. Doesn’t that make much more sense than me conspiring to hide all the rooftops in some unimaginable manner? What am I supposed to do with all the slates?”
The child was staring down towards the row of houses with a dazed expression, but was slowly nodding as if he had taken in at least the bare bones of what he had just been told. Kids had a flexibility and a resilience to their ideas about reality that grown-ups didn’t, in the main. In scrambled Sam O’Day’s opinion, trying to break the spirit or the sanity of children was more effort than the task was worth. Why bother with it? There were adults everywhere, and adults snapped like twigs. Warming reluctantly towards his sickeningly likeable and picture-postcard pretty passenger, the devil went on with his tour-guide’s monologue.
“In fact, if you were to look closer at your neighbours, you’d discover that you can see their internal organs and their skeletons around the edges of their skin. If you got closer still you could look round a hidden corner of their bones and see the marrow, though I wouldn’t recommend it. That’s the major reason why I keep my flight to up above the house-tops, if I’m honest. If we were much closer, you’d be too distracted by the blood and guts to properly take in the more important aspects of this educational experience. Would you like to look at the house that you once lived in?”
Michael Warren peered back up towards the fiend across one tartan shoulder. He looked eager, apprehensive, and quite sad. It was, the devil thought, a very adult, complicated look for such a youthful face.
“Yes please. Only, if everybody’s crying, can we go away again? That wizzle make me cry as well, if they’re unhappy.”
Shifty Sam O’Day refrained from pointing out that Michael’s family were hardly likely to be wearing party hats and blowing paper squeakers so soon after his demise, but simply carried the dead child a few doors further down the terrace, heading south. A breeze out of the west brought the perfume of iron and weeds from off the rail-yards where forgotten tenders peeled and rusted, and the white lights were a rationed, sparing sugar frosting on the blustery Boroughs dark. The devil halted over number 17.
“There, now. Let’s see what’s going on.”
The devil gasped at the same moment that the little boy did. What they could glimpse going on inside the house was, frankly, the last thing that either of them had foreseen. If anything the fiend was more astonished than the kid, being much less accustomed to surprises. This one was a shock and no mistake, like when they’d driven him from Persia all those centuries ago by burning fish livers and incense. He’d not been expecting that, and neither had he been expecting this.
The upstairs floor of number 17 was currently deserted, as were the front room and passageway. Only the living room and kitchen were lit-up and occupied, containing half a dozen people by the devil’s estimate. A thin old lady with her smoke-grey hair pinned up into a bun stood in the small back kitchen, waiting while a dented kettle on the gas stove reached the boil. Everyone else was loitering in the adjacent living room around a table set for tea. At one end, near the open kitchen door, a little girl of five or six was sitting in an infant’s high chair, which was much too small for her. An upturned pudding basin had been placed atop her head so that the man who stood behind her chair, a dark-haired fellow in his thirties, could cut round it as he trimmed her fringe. Another woman, also in her thirties, was positioned in between the table and the fireplace. She was in the act of moving a small plate of butter from the hearthside where it had been melting into golden oil and placing it towards the centre of the spread white tablecloth. As she did this she was glancing up towards the door that led out to the passage, which was opening as someone entered. This was a tall, solid-looking chap who had a red complexion and the leather-shouldered donkey-jacket of a labourer. In his arms he held …
“It’s me,” said Michael Warren in a startled tone of disbelief.
It was, as well. There was no getting round it, even in the fourth dimension.
Coming through the door into the living room with a broad grin across his rosy face, the burly working man was carrying a child, perhaps three years of age, a boy with elfin features and blonde curls that were quite unmistakeable. It was a slightly smaller version of the little spirit that the fiend was currently suspending up above the rooftops. It was Michael Warren, evidently very much alive and unaware that he was at that moment being studied by his own bewildered ghost.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” predicted screwed-up Sam O’Day with confidence.
How had the white-haired builder managed it, especially with a black eye and mild concussion? How had he escaped the snooker that his colleague and opponent had ensnared him in? The devil tried imagining a trick shot that would furnish the unprecedented outcome he was at that moment witnessing, but found to his embarrassment that he could not. The trilliard ball that represented Michael Warren must at some point have been knocked into the pocket that was decorated with a golden skull, the death-hole at the table’s northeast corner. Otherwise his soul would not have been careening round the Attics of the Breath in its pyjamas. Just as obviously, the ball had then somehow bounced out again, or in some other fashion been returned to play, returned to life. If not, who was the rascal with the white-gold ringlets being welcomed back into the bosom of his family, down below in the unfolded pop-up book of number 17, St. Andrew’s Road? This merited, the devil thought, closer investigation.
“This is certainly a turn-up for the books. Up here you’re dead, yet down there you’re alive again. I wonder why? Are you by any chance some kind of zombie from a voodoo film? Or, more remotely, I suppose you might be the messiah. What do you think? Were there any signs or omens coinciding with your birth, clouds shaped like crowns, rays of unearthly light or anything like that?”
The youngster shook his head, still gaping at the cheery scene being played out beneath him.
“No. We’re only ordinary. Everybody’s ordinary on Andrew’s Road. What does it mean, that I’m down there? Does it mean that I won’t be dead for very long?”
The devil shrugged.
“It certainly appears that way, though I confess that for the life of me I can’t see how. There’s something very complicated going on with you, young man, and I’m a devil for complexity. Perhaps your background might provide some sort of clue? Come, tell me who th
ose people are, the ones squealing with joy at your return and milling round the room down there. Who’s that old lady in the kitchen?”
Michael Warren sounded both cautiously proud and touchingly protective as he ventured his reply.
“That’s Clara Swan, and she’s my gran. She’s got the longest hair of anybody in the world, but it’s all tied up in a bun because when it hangs down it catches fire. She used to be a servant for some people in a great big house.”
The devil raised one bristling eyebrow thoughtfully. There were a number of big houses round these parts. It wasn’t likely that this toddler’s grandmother had served the Spencers out at Althorp, but you never knew. The boy continued his inventory.
“The other lady is my mum, who’s called Doreen. When she wiz just a little girl they had a war, and her and my aunt Emma watched a bomber crash in Gold Street from their bedroom window. That man carrying me, coming through the door, that’s my dad. He’s called Tommy, and he rolls big heavy barrels at the brewery. Everybody says he dresses very well, and that he’s good at dancing, but I’ve never seen him doing it. The other man’s my uncle Alf who drives a double-decker bus and rides a bicycle when he calls in to see our gran on his way home from work. He cuts our hair for us, the way he’s doing for my sister Alma. She’s the bossy girl in the high chair.”
Unseen by his small passenger, the devil’s irises turned black for several seconds with surprise, then faded back to their initial colours, red or green, the stains of war or else the stains of outdoor love. His young charge had a sister, and her name was Alma. Alma Warren. Reconstructed Sam O’Day had heard of Alma Warren. She’d grow up to be a moderately famous artist, doing paperback and record covers, who had intermittent visionary spasms. During one of these she would, in thirty years or so, attempt a portrait of the Fifth Infernal Duke in his full dress regalia, the reptile and arachnid image-wrap with the electric peacock-feather trim. The picture wouldn’t be much of a likeness, and she wouldn’t even bother trying to depict the lizard lining of his tailored aura, but the devil would feel vaguely flattered all the same. The artist clearly found her subject beautiful, and if he’d felt the same way about her it might have been his Persian passion all over again. Unfortunately, Alma Warren would grow up into a frightful dog, and switchback Sam O’Day was very picky when it came to women. Back in Persia, Raguel’s daughter Sara had been luscious. Even Lil his ex-wife, who had fornicated with abominations, hadn’t let herself go to the same extent that Alma Warren would do. Though the devil would admit that he quite liked the woman, he would also quickly point out that he didn’t like her in that way, just in case anybody got the wrong idea.