by Kim Newman
A small, round man in a skin-tight moiré kaftan approached Zarana, pupils contracted to pinpricks, sweating profusely. He stuck out his tongue, which had a half-dissolved pill balanced on its end, and reached for Zarana with chubby, wriggly hands. Fred slapped him away and wagged a finger. He looked as if he was about to cry, then latched onto a passing black girl with a silver wig and matching lipstick and paddled along in her wake.
‘Business as bleedin’ usual,’ she said.
‘Ou se trouve mine host?’ asked Richard.
She scanned the room. ‘Not here. There’s a room upstairs, for his inner circle. Wood panels, ghastly pictures of satyrs and fat bints, hundred-year-old brandy, private screenin’ room. Popeye holds court there. Though most of his cronies are here. You can tell them because they look bloody worried.’
Dotted throughout the senseless crowd were furrowed faces.
Richard hummed. ‘The oases of desperation do stand out somewhat. Or, at least, sobriety.’
‘Ever seen that Vincent Price film about the fancy-dress ball?’
Fred knew what Zarana meant. ‘The Masque of the Red Death?’
‘This is that, isn’t it? Rich people makin’ animals of themselves tryin’ to have a good time, with the plague outside, ravagin’ the countryside.’
‘And the Red Death approaches the castle doors,’ said Richard.
‘It’s time Death knocked here like bleedin’ Avon callin’,’ said Zarana.
‘Let’s slide upstairs and try to see Prince Prospero,’ said Richard.
Fred turned to Zarana to tell her to find a loitering spot in the crowd and wait for them.
‘No fear, Freddy,’ she said. ‘You’re not leavin’ me behind. It’s not safe here.’
A couple of football players with enormous bouffant perms and mutton chops shaped like Roman helmet cheek-pieces caught sight of Zarana and began dribbling towards the goal area. They wore suits that flapped like flags.
‘Point taken,’ said Fred.
XI. COMING IN AT THE END
Without Zarana, they would never have found the inner sanctum. Schluderpacheru’s house was like a funfair maze: zigzag corridors that cheated perspective, flock wallpaper with an optical-illusion theme, floor-to-ceiling joke paintings of doors, set decoration left over from Gruesome Pictures, actual doors chameleoned into walls, burning bowls of heady incense. There were chalk-marks on the floor, recently scrawled runes.
‘Schluderpacheru has taken precautions,’ said Richard, toeing a symbol. ‘I suppose he learned in the old country.’
Zarana led them round a corner and they found themselves looking up at a nine-foot-tall man, with a distinguished rising wave of grey hair and a superbly cut, wide-lapelled suit. He was sleek, with shining, somehow wicked eyes, and wore a medieval armoured glove.
It was a lifelike portrait, painted directly onto a wood panel.
‘That’s Popeye,’ said Zarana. ‘Larger than life and twice as creepy.’
One of his eyes was brown and lazy-lidded, the other green and staring.
Voices came from behind the picture, raised but indistinct, arguing in a language Fred didn’t recognise.
‘There’s a trick to this,’ said Zarana, patting the portrait. She found studs on the metal glove, and twiddled them. ‘Boys and their bleedin’ toys.’
With a click and a whoosh, the painting split diagonally and disappeared into recesses.
Beyond was a room illuminated by a blazing fire in an open grate – in contravention of the Clean Air Act, Fred noted – and burning oil-lamps. Two men were outlined by flame-light, both wearing symbol-marked dressing gowns, locked in struggle, their argument turned physical. One was Schluderpacheru, under-sized in person, hair awry. Half his face was wrinkled with effort, but the left side was plastic surgery-smooth, with a fixed, glaring green eye. He had the upper hand, but Lord Leaves – for all his years – fought fiercely; his fingers sank deep into Schluderpacheru’s windpipe, incantations rattled in the back of his throat. In one corner shrank Lady Celia, holding a fold of habit over her face like an Arab wife, eyes startlingly bright and excited.
Swirling in the air before the fire were scraps of matter in the shape of a big man, struggling to cohere but tearing apart as much as he came together. Mr Sludge – Grek Cohen – had an invitation to the party, but wasn’t here yet.
Everyone froze to look at them. Even the phantasm.
‘We seem to have come in at the end of the story,’ said Richard.
Schluderpacheru and Lord Leaves spared them barely a glance, then got back to their grappling. The artificial side of the host’s face bulged. His eyeball popped, escaping its wet red socket. The egg-sized glass eye fell heavily, thumping Lord Leaves on the forehead. His Lordship, stunned, lost his grip and Schluderpacheru – who presumably couldn’t pull that trick twice – dropped him. The King of Blackmail passed a hand over his hair, prissily fixing its dove-grey wave in place, but didn’t seem concerned about his empty eye-socket.
‘I know who you are, magician,’ Schluderpacheru told Richard. ‘And I don’t need help. This war of witchery is about to end. To my satisfaction.’
He took a metal triangle from a stand, holding it like a trowel. It gleamed, two sides sharpened to razor-edges. Schluderpacheru dropped to one knee, raising the triangle high, then brought the killing point down heavily. Lord Leaves’s breast-bone snapped.
Lady Celia yelped, but her husband said nothing.
The wedge-knife was embedded in His Lordship’s chest. He kicked, leaked a little, and was still.
‘There,’ said Schluderpacheru. ‘That’s done. No more Festival. No more bother.’
Smug and suave, he considered the man-shaped cloud.
‘Go away, Grek,’ he said. ‘Your summoner’s dead. You’ve no place here, no toehold in this world. You should have stayed where you were.’
Matter swarmed thickly, lacing together. Embers from the fire were sucked up and clustered into a burning heart. Stuff came from somewhere, from all around, and knitted. Greyish liquid seeped out of the air, running into and around the big shape, slicking over. A big-browed face formed out of the darkness. It looked down on the one-eyed man.
For a moment, Schluderpacheru was puzzled. He glanced at Lord Leaves, to make sure he was dead, then – panic sparking in his remaining eye – around the room, fixing on each face in turn.
‘You—’ he blurted.
Grek Cohen was solid now, a colossal statue of sludge, boiling with ghost-life. He gave off a spent-match stink.
Huge hands clapped, catching Schluderpacheru’s head. The top of his skull popped and his one eye leaked blood as his face was ground to paste between rough, new-made palms.
Zarana shoved her face into Fred’s jacket, again. Richard whistled. Cohen lifted Schluderpacheru – his arms and legs flopped limp, his shoes dangled inches above the carpet. Cohen tossed the corpse into the fireplace. The robe flared at once, then fire began to eat into the flesh. Foul cooking smell filled the room.
‘That’s the last of them,’ Richard addressed the colossus. ‘The three who betrayed you, Mr Cohen. The three who did away with the girl you died for. And Lord Leaves, too. You have no master here. Your purpose is achieved. Yet you remain. Why, I wonder?’
Richard walked up to the golem, examining him as if he were thinking of buying. Grue dripped from its spade-sized hands. Fred held Zarana, and looked around the room.
Lady Celia was mad, poor love, tearing at her habit.
Richard made some experimental gestures. Cohen stood solid.
‘Hmmn, interesting. By all rights, you should evaporate. This is a rum do.’
Lady Celia’s wimple came apart, leaving her pale face framed by an Alice band. Her unconfined hair poured out – impossible lengths of it, blinding white-blond, shining in firelight.
In a flash, Fred put it together. It was dizzying, sickening.
‘Pony-Tail,’ he said.
Zarana dared to peep.
‘
So it bleedin’ is,’ she exclaimed. ‘Wonders never cease!’
Richard also directed his attention to Lord Leaves’s young widow.
Lady Celia stood up, shedding the remains of her habit as elegantly as she had ever undressed, slipping the band off her crown, shaking out her hair.
‘Now I see what they were talking about,’ said Richard.
The woman was nude, Godiva-curtained by her hair. It seemed alive, like Medusa-tendrils. She gathered the mane in her hands, and held it at the back of her neck, winding her band about it. She had her pony-tail again.
She couldn’t have been thirty yet; how young had she been when she was a striptease star? She hadn’t been legal, for certain.
‘Grek Cohen had no master, just a mistress.’
Lady Celia nodded to Richard. She formed a sly smile.
Fred felt it again, the warmth this woman projected. An icy warmth, to be sure, but persuasive. He saw the guile working on Richard too, on the thing that had been Grek Cohen. This was a woman a man wanted to shield – he would put himself between her and any horror, and think the prick of a blade-point in his spine was the first touch of a caress.
Pony-Tail stood over Lord Leaves.
‘Goodbye, Daddy,’ she said. She had a finishing-school accent, clear and sharp as crystal. She raised her bare foot to his face, stroked his slack cheek with her toes, then deftly scraped his eyes shut. ‘You were always my first.’
‘Clouds of mystery part,’ said Richard.
Pony-Tail giggled, and looked fifteen again. ‘Have I been naughty?’
‘Does he know what you did?’ Fred asked.
She looked at him, teasing and quizzical. Fred indicated Cohen.
‘Does he know it was you? Booth, Schluderpacheru and Gates didn’t kidnap you in 1963. I’ll bet it was your idea. His original body is under a foundation stone somewhere, isn’t it? Did you do it yourself, or just watch? Was he happy anyway, just that you smiled at him as the concrete poured in? What a mug! Ten years on, and he’s still your pet, isn’t he? This has all been cleaning house. Had they started blackmailing you – those idiots! – threatening to expose Lady Celia Leaves as the notorious Pony-Tail? That would be one for the News of the World. Scupper His Lordship’s Festival of Morality once and for all. Or was it just money they wanted?’
She smiled, enigmatically.
‘You know what they really wanted?’ she said, tilting her head to one side. ‘More than money, more than business as usual, more than power? They wanted me. They wanted me back.’
She did a few steps, hair alive around her shoulders.
‘Pony-Tail… returns,’ she said, presenting herself. ‘Pony-Tail… rides again!’
Fred fancied Cohen was smiling, appreciating her act. He had never really been fooled, but her act was just so damned good that it was impossible not to play along. Fred guessed Lord Leaves had been the same, opening his big book of spells just for a wink and a smile and a peek.
‘I suppose this is your final performance,’ said Richard.
‘Maybe not. What with everything, I’m Queen of Soho. No one in the way. The Festival will follow my lead. Can you imagine what I can make them do? It’ll be a twenty-four-hour riot. And I can buy or run everything else in sight. Maybe I will come back, do the shows and the films and the telly. Only this time, I’ll do it for me, not them, not men, not you.’
She laid her head against Cohen’s pebbled side, a girl petting her horse.
‘It’s the dancing, isn’t it?’ asked Richard, fascinated.
‘Very clever, Mr Magician,’ she said. She bent over double from a full-stand and touched her toes, then sprang back upright, hands on hips, perfectly balanced, perfectly supple. ‘Yes, it’s the dancing. Daddy started me off. He brought me up to be an initiate of Erzuli, Baphomet and Nyarlathotep. Ritual dance, steps along the paths of power. I had to go out into the world, break away from the Festival, find my own dance. Then I had to go back, for a while. It was part of the pattern. Now, I have new steps, new paths, new dances. I don’t need any of them any more.’
She was always in motion, dancing to the rhythm of her heartbeat. She was a white flame, endlessly mesmerising, lovely but deadly.
‘What about him?’ asked Fred.
Pony-Tail looked up at Cohen’s caricature of a face, almost fondly.
‘He’s my masterpiece,’ she said. ‘How many other strippers really can dance to raise the dead?’
‘You know a lot of dead people,’ Richard observed.
‘I’m afraid I shall know some more, soon.’
Zarana flashed anger at the woman.
‘You ain’t that special, you know.’
‘My friend would argue with you,’ said Pony-Tail, concentrating.
Cohen reacted to her change of mood, swelling into a more menacing aspect.
Richard muttered magics, which the dancing priestess dispelled with blown kisses.
‘She’s not your friend, Grekko,’ said Zarana. ‘She killed you, for a start.’
‘He knows, he doesn’t care. None of them would care. Because it was me. Next to me, you’re nothing, missy.’
Zarana faced up to Pony-Tail.
Cohen’s arm rose, ratcheting like a guillotine blade. Fred stepped forward, to pull Zarana out of the way.
The girl eluded him and bore down on Lady Celia. The Queen of the Nile versus the Queen of Soho. Pony-Tail meets Contessa de Undressa. No holds barred. One fatal fall for the crown.
Zarana punched Pony-Tail in the stomach. Cohen roared.
Lady Celia doubled, hair tenting around her, then recovered in an instant and flicked out with contemptuous fingers. She twisted a clasp off Zarana’s shoulder, and the dress came apart. Zarana held the scraps to her body, hobbled.
‘I can’t believe that rag is still kicking around. It was made for me.’
Fred helped Zarana stay on her feet. He looked from the cockney Egyptian, awkward in the too-loose gown, to the white goddess, sinuous and unashamed in the firelight. Like everyone else, he dreamed of Pony-Tail; the difference was he knew she wasn’t real.
‘After this, I suppose the big fella’s finished,’ said Fred. ‘All work done.’
Pony-Tail cocked her head, considering.
‘I might bring him out for special occasions. Summoning is an effort, but he’s worth it, don’t you think?’
‘You hear that, Immanuel?’ said Fred. ‘After this, you’re going back in the attic.’
Cohen was a statue, arm up.
‘Good work, Frederick,’ said Richard. ‘Keep at it.’
‘You did all this to be with her, and she’s shafted you. Again. Are you really as dim as they say? The cleverclogs – Burly Gates, Boot Boy Booth, Popeye Schluderpacheru – they all laughed at you, Grek. Know what I mean? The big ape doolally over the princess. Like King Sodding Kong, they said. When they decided to dump you, she leaped at the chance to help. It was how she bought her way out, got back into His Lordship’s house. Couldn’t get into the Royal Enclosure with a lovesick gorilla mooning about, could she?’
‘None of this matters,’ said Pony-Tail, bored. ‘Really.’
‘And now you’ve done for them all, and you still don’t get the girl! Mate, you have been fitted up for a proper set of cap and bells. You must be the biggest mug punter in Soho.’
The huge arm came down. The hand closed, on Pony-Tail’s rope of hair.
‘Ouch,’ she said, irritated.
Cohen held her by a leash.
Fred saw a glint of annoyance in her eye, an unattractive, petty expression. Then a sense of what was suddenly lost, a bulb of panic sprouting.
Thick arms hoisted Lady Celia Asquith-Leaves, the incomparable Pony-Tail, off the floor and hugged her to Cohen’s chest, her struggling body shoved into the muck and mud of its trunk. Her arms and feet stuck out, flapping and kicking. Her face sank under the surface. Grey mass surged around the screaming O of her mouth, then filled it, staunching her noise.
‘Final
ly,’ said Richard.
Now Grek Cohen had Pony-Tail, rather than the other way round, Richard’s gestures and incantations had an effect. The colossus, growing insubstantial, rose like a hot-air balloon, bumping the ceiling. On its excuse for a face was a last smile.
‘I think a withdrawal is in order,’ said Richard.
Fred and Zarana backed out of the inner sanctum. Richard followed, keeping up a stream of reverse conjurations.
‘Where’s his wand?’ asked Zarana.
‘It’s in the fingers,’ said Richard.
‘Magic.’
The colossus shrank to the size of a floating man, Grek Cohen superimposed upon Pony-Tail, her limbs encased in his, her face shrieking soundlessly through his battered mask, her electric eyes staring madness through his dull, dead lamps.
The carpet pulled up and spiralled around the phantasm, spilling flaming oil and rolling Leaves away. Cohen contracted to a dozen flaming points and whooshed into darkness.
The girl was gone with him, leaving only her hair. It drifted to the floor, strands crackling as they brushed flame. Swathes fell about like cast-off string.
The gorilla got the girl, which should count as a happy ending. Fred hoped never to see either again.
‘The socially conscious thing would be to put out that fire,’ said Richard, ‘before the house burns down around the guests.’
Zarana shifted a vase and disclosed a fire-extinguisher.
‘Just the ticket.’
As she tossed the extinguisher to Richard, her dress finally fell off.
Fred couldn’t look away. She noticed.
‘That’s better,’ she said. ‘I was worried. I thought that cow had you under her bloody spell, like she had all the other idiots.’
After long, brazen seconds, she gathered up the gown and fastened it.
Weirdly, the little fiddle she did to reassemble her costume and cover herself struck Fred as sexier than Pony-Tail getting her kit off.
‘There’s no comparison, luv,’ said Fred.
Richard unloosed a surge of white foam at the flames.
XII. SEXPLOITS OF A PSYCHIC INVESTIGATOR’S ASSISTANT
Near dawn, in the big bed in her tiny room in Falconberg Court, Fred finally drifted towards sleep.