‘You’re going to be in terrible trouble,’ said Harry.
The children looked across with simultaneous surprise.
‘Those men work for your pap,’ said Harry. ‘You’ll be in terrible trouble if you hurt them.’
The little girl slid from the table to land lightly by her brother’s side. ‘Stick-man!’ she cried.
Before Harry could stop himself, he stepped back.
Control yourself! he thought. These are just kids!
Somewhere inside him there was a core, a centre, an absolute understanding of who he was. Harry knew he had to find that part of himself. He had to grab it. He had to hold on tight, and keep it.
There were gnawing sounds coming from the men now. One of them was sobbing. The children’s eyes flicked to them. The little girl smiled.
‘Your pap is already angry that you tried to kill his dogs,’ cried Harry.
There was a palpable hesitation. The little boy looked hurt.
‘But we told him we were sorry,’ he said.
‘We were just playing,’ pouted the girl. ‘We didn’t mean any harm.’
There was a long, wet tearing noise from the men, and a squeal of hopeless agony.
‘You need to let them go,’ cried Harry. ‘They’re your pap’s men.’
The little boy shook his head. ‘No, they’re not.’
‘Yes, they are! They are!’
‘Oh my,’ said the little girl. ‘He is telling such big lies.’
‘Lies are very bad,’ said the boy. ‘We should wash his mouth out.’
The little girl seemed to have a seriously wonderful idea then; it lit her up with delight. ‘Stick-man,’ she cried. ‘Have a nice drink of lamp oil.’
Harry moaned and bent double, and tried to turn away. Suddenly, all he had ever wanted was to know what kerosene tasted like; all he had ever wanted in his whole damn life was to unscrew the lid of a kerosene lamp and drink its contents down.
‘No …’ he whispered. ‘Don’t …’
The little girl was by his side now. Oh, she was very sweet, really, this close: her smile so wide, her eyes so very clear and blue. She took his hand.
The part of Harry that was completely himself screamed and raged. It clawed and struggled. But it was a very small part, really – very tiny – and his desire to please this little girl – this charming little girl, who held his hand and looked up at him with such admiration – was quite overwhelming.
‘Come on,’ she sang. ‘Come on, stick-man. Come over here.’ She led him to the work table.
‘I’m your pap’s,’ he whispered. ‘I’m your pap’s.’
‘Oh, you know, I don’t think Pap likes you all that much. But I do.’ She hopped up and sat on the edge of the table again. ‘I enjoyed your magic trick.’
‘Oh yes,’ remembered the boy. ‘That was good.’
The part of Harry that was absolutely Harry stopped struggling and smiled.
It was good, wasn’t it. Simple but good. Sometimes it’s the simplest things that work the best.
‘You’re a very entertaining fellow.’
I am indeed.
‘Here you go.’ The girl nudged a battered can towards him. It was covered in cobwebs and had ‘Paraffin’ stencilled on it. ‘Drink lots and lots now. It’ll be delicious.’
The boy snickered. Harry unscrewed the lid. His audience of two concentrated only on him, and he revelled in their fascination. In the adjacent booths there was some frantic pugilism going on, but it didn’t seem to distract them. In Harry’s mind a calliope began to jangle.
Roll up, ladieees and gennnntlemen. See the wonderful Houdiiini – watch him drink from the poison cup!
The candle flame glimmered like gaslight in his eyes as he flourished the can first one way and then the other, showing it off.
The audience burst into applause. ‘Hurrah!’
Harry put the can to his nose and made a show of inhaling deeply. Fumes rose thick and sweet to snag his breath – yum, yum, yum.
Grinning, he turned to bask in the audience’s delight. Their lack of attention hit him like a slap. They weren’t even looking his way! They were, in fact, frowning off into the distance, utterly distracted.
Oh no. He’d lost them!
‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ he cried. ‘If you’ll direct your attention to this can. I am about to drink a gallon of flammable oil.’ (Wait. What? What was the act here? What was the pay-off?)
He sloshed the contents enticingly, but the delightful children in the front row remained captivated by some different sound. (Was it those fighters in the corner? Damn them! Hadn’t Harry told Dash to position the curtains so no one could see the other acts?)
He glared across at the pugilists. Thankfully the match seemed almost at an end, one combatant merely hunched over the other, now, gnawing.
The charming little girl jumped to the floor. Seemingly delighted and surprised by something Harry could not see, she clapped her hands. ‘Oh, Mama,’ she breathed. ‘I would very much like that. Thank you!’
‘Hey,’ cried Harry. ‘No talking in the audience.’
The girl’s brother caught her by the hand, and with a surge of anguish Harry realised they were about to leave. No! The calliope music swelled, loud and insistent and off-key.
‘With one swallow,’ he cried desperately, raising the can, ‘I shall empty this can!’ (What was the pay-off to this act?)
‘We’re coming, Mama!’ cried the boy. ‘Don’t start without us!’
‘Wait!’ cried Harry. ‘Behold!’
The children were already out the door. Harry lifted the can to his lips, and paraffin filled his mouth. The heavy, roiling fumes clawed at his eyes and his nose, burned cold in his mouth, and the pay-off rose in his mind, as bright and clear as the calliope jangle. It was the easiest, the most effective, and the most beloved act in the world. No lowly fire-eater he: Harry Houdini would breathe fire!
Bending forward at the hip and flinging his arm out behind him, Harry sprayed a long jet of paraffin onto the candle. A magnificent plume of flame roared out to illuminate the dark. Bright and fierce, it seared the shadows from the air. The sights and sounds of the penny museum exploded into flakes of rusted metal, and the calliope deflated in a hiss of steam. Harry tumbled forward into hay and ancient cobwebs, gagging on the taste of kerosene, fully aware again, of the night and the nightmare world.
Oh God oh God oh God what did I almost do?
The sound of whimpering filtered through the panic in his brain. The men by the wall had separated now. One was sprawled motionless and silent. The other, huddled in a ball beside him, was weeping. Harry stumbled across to them, carrying the misshapen stub of the candle, huge shadows trembling in his path.
‘It’s okay,’ he rasped, crouching by the weeping man. ‘They’re gone.’
The man shrank back against the wall, and Harry recoiled in recognition of Joe’s cousin, Daymo. His face was bearded in blood. Thoroughly unravelled, he bared his scarlet teeth. ‘I ate his face,’ he whispered. ‘Jesus help me. I ate his face.’
Harry reluctantly raised the candle to illuminate their motionless companion. A featureless glistening mess greeted him. Daymo reached a fever pitch of hysteria at the sight. The barn spun as Harry heaved himself to his feet. He felt as if he was dying. He really did. It felt like he was going to die.
‘Get up,’ he groaned, staggering from the sobbing man. ‘Get up. Get over to those horses. Show me how to rig a carriage.’
Undoing
i. Tina
TINA WAS A small, calm insignificance at the heart of the flame. Around her, numbers collided and flowed, painting memories of cool expanses, of light-reflective serenities, of magenta skies: a home for which the Beloved ached. Or, at least, Home as it had been before the Contagion destroyed it.
It comes, remembered the Beloved. Birthing itself by accident through a rent in everything. Wriggling and squirming through an emptiness of space until – horror – it reaches Home, whe
re the gentle crowds of Us amass in togetherness. Writhing into our sky, it realises We are not it. This is a disgust. It must fix us. For what is not it is wrong. The Contagion, the Disease: it begins to change everything.
She walked with burning feet on illuminated ground, brightening the shrubbery as she passed. Beside her, the orchard walls unspooled in inky blackness; behind that, a ruined castle – her destination – spewed fountains of hungry light to the moon-greyed clouds. She could feel herself coming undone: everything that was truly her expanding out beyond her body’s capacity to hold it. Soon there would be no her at all, no thoughts or memories, no fear or hate, no ambition, no love. She would be gone. The very touch of this creature was unravelling her.
It was a fascinating experience, to feel her soul disperse.
The Beloved’s memories of the Contagion wavered before her, like a gauze curtain billowing atop the everyday landscape. Numbers broke down and broke down and broke down into tiny fractions, then slipped back and slotted together, rebuilding themselves into another, darker, form: the Contagion, touching everything, reassembling it in its image. The gradual darkening of a world.
The small portion of flame that was Tina’s mind thought, And you brought it here.
We rise a blister in the remains of the world and We hold the Contagion within it. We sing it to sleep there – the other Chosen and We – and We grow a ship around the blister and tear ourselves from the remains of the world, and so we depart, seeking the rift from whence came the Contagion. Seeking to rebirth it into its own place.
You brought it here, thought Tina again, anger flaring tiny within her very tiny soul.
Its dreams poison Us. But even through the sickness, We sing. So it sleeps. Even as corruption spreads through our ship’s flesh and We tumble helpless through the void, even as We plummet and crash and begin the long rot, We sing. Over time, the others fall silent – one, then another, then another – but We sing on. Then my Heart dies, and We become I, and I am alone in a poisoned world. The darkness is growing near; still I keep the lullaby alive. But not for much longer. Without my Heart I starve. I weaken. I will die. And it shall wake.
‘But there is another Angel.’
Thrown aside during the plummet.
‘He has no Beloved anymore.’
I have no Heart.
‘Can you help each other? Can he take another’s Beloved?’
The shifting veil of numbers rose and fell in a luminous shrug. The Beloved did not know.
There was a thud and they stopped moving. The sky disappeared. It took a long moment for Tina to understand that she had fallen to her knees. The sky had disappeared because she could no longer hold her head up to see it. The grass, however, was captivating, the blood that dropped onto it shining like jewels in the glimmering of the light.
Rise up, murmured the Beloved.
When she could not respond, the Beloved prodded her, a horrible, intrusive pressure on some buried portion of her mind. Her legs unfolded with the suddenness of spring traps and she was set lurching once again towards the orchard gate and the castle ruins that roared their impatience to the sky.
ii. Cornelius
CORNELIUS TOLD HIMSELF that he was going to explain everything and make things right. He told himself that he was seeking Raquel. He told himself this even as he stumbled through the woods far from where he knew she had gone; even as he purposely kept his mind silent and closed; right up until the sight of Luke sent him ducking behind a tree, where he hid his body and his thoughts until he was once again alone. Only then, hiding in the quiet shift of the darkness, listening to the distant whistles of the hunt, did Cornelius finally admit that he was not seeking Raquel.
Some small, honest portion of him sneered. Of course you are not, it said. What would you say to her? ‘I called your boy a whore, my dear. I dubbed him an abomination.’
Cornelius shook his head and pressed his hands to his face.
As if awoken by his own touch, the damning memory leapt unbidden to his mind: a hot and lazy day; he and Matthew sitting together in the orchard, reading. The others had been nothing but the distant sound of a croquet game on the lawns. Matthew spoke his name and Cornelius glanced up. Smiling, the sun behind him, his hair all golden in it, his face gently illuminated by light thrown up from the page, Matthew had leaned across and, as natural as breathing, pressed his lips to Cornelius’ mouth.
This is a child, Cornelius thought, startled. This is Raquel’s child!
But Matthew was not a child. He had been a worldly and knowing seventeen when they met; was now, despite his looks, almost fifty-seven; and his kiss was filled with such certainty, such sweetness of intent, such absolute confidence that it speared Cornelius to the core.
Next he knew he was gripping Matthew by the back of his neck and rolling him over onto the warm grass, and Matthew was grinning into the kiss, his mouth widening, his arms closing around him, and it was so sweet, God help him, it was so damned sweet that Cornelius almost wept.
There came a frantic urgency, and Matthew was suddenly tugging Cornelius’ waistcoat, and slipping his hands beneath his shirt, all the time craning up into the kiss, his body strong and slim and demanding beneath Cornelius’ own. His leg came up between Cornelius’ thighs as his hands worked fire and magic on his bared chest, and Cornelius groaned into the softness of Matthew’s neck.
Matthew smiled into his ear. ‘I knew it,’ he whispered. ‘I knew it. I knew it all along.’
And then Cornelius was shoving himself back and crawling away, his shirt hanging obscenely open, his chest and belly exposed. How could this be? This was not possible – not here. This did not belong here.
Matthew followed, laughing reassuringly. He attempted a caress, and Cornelius pushed him aside. ‘Where do you think we are?’ he snarled, trying to close his shirt. ‘Some harbour-side cock shop?’
Matthew’s certainty slipped a little at that, but he smiled again, and reached once more. ‘It’s all right,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t be afraid.’
‘Touch me again and I will kill you, you shameless little trug.’
There were more words – Cornelius could not believe he had said such words – but it was the memory of Matthew’s face that was the worst: the slow loss of light from it, the growing hurt, then the anger and, finally, that cold, dead blankness as he took the abuse, the summer sun blazing around him in all its glory, the sounds of laughter drifting from the games down on the lawn.
In the darkness and cold of the present, Cornelius ran from this memory – the way he ran from every memory of Matthew and Matthew’s loveliness and his love, and Cornelius’ wasting of it. He ran the familiar path, wanting only oblivion, not caring what brink his world was teetering on, not caring what would be lost in the forgetting. He wanted his angel. And so it was he entered the orchard in time to witness the girl rise from her knees in a blaze of blood and glory and stagger from the apple trees like a living candle, into the shadow of the ruins.
He knew at once that she was taking Vincent’s creature to the Angel. That she was about to break everything. He thought that maybe he cried out, but afterwards all he could properly recall was curling his lip and clawing his hands and leaping for her.
iii. Tina
SHE SAW, THROUGH a warp of numbers, a man running towards her. She lifted her hands, a gentle gesture of thanks and refusal. But he grabbed her with the brutality of a thug, and ripped the light from her. There was a tearing in her throat and behind her eyes. The light was flung from her, a comet-blaze arcing away to impact with the ruins ahead. A great wall of ancient stone flared with luminance; then the comet dulled and slid to the ground, where it glimmered among the nettles, like a dying star.
For a moment Tina remained standing, staring at the man. You’ve ruined everything, she thought. What will happen now? Then the sky revolved, the ground leapt up, and she was lying in the rubble and the grass. She tried to say, ‘Help me,’ but something caught in her throat, and she choked on it. Th
e man turned his head slightly, as if tempted to look at her, then he tugged his cravat and squared his shoulders and walked away into the ruins.
Tina watched along the twitching length of her useless arm as he crossed the ruined courtyard and came to a halt at the very place for which she had been headed. Light was roaring up from the steps below. Wolcroft’s slim figure was ablaze with it, his tangled hair and his grim face all lit up. But Tina knew he had no concept of the magnificence that raged and wheeled about him. Looking down at the entrance to the Angel’s realm, Wolcroft could see nothing but blackness.
You poor man, she thought. Your world is so dark.
He took the first few steps downwards. Then he sagged against the wall, covering his face with his hand. After a while, he turned his head and reluctantly looked over at Tina.
Help, she thought. Bring it to him.
She could not move her head as he came towards her, so she ended up staring at his shoes. It should have been terrifying, this lack of control over her body, like being trapped inside the corpse of herself, but she was calm and serene.
Help him, she thought. Unite them.
The man knelt, turned her face to him and brushed her hair back. With an expression of revulsion, he wiped her mouth and nose with the cuff of his jacket.
‘I am so sorry,’ he said. ‘It was never my intention—’ He grimaced and hung his head. ‘No. Even now I am lying.’ He looked her in the eye, took her face between his hands. ‘I had nothing but evil intentions for you. I am sorry for that.’ And he gathered her in his arms and lifted her, helpless and voiceless, and carried her away from the one thing she knew she was capable of saving.
In her mind, Tina cried out and screamed. In her mind, she hammered his chest and told him to put her down. But her body remained still and quiet, her gaze directed up at the moon-tumbled clouds. As he walked her through the orchard, snow began to fall, and she could not even blink it from her eyes.
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