The Domino Men v-2

by Jonathan Barnes

  At last, the door slid open.

  Boon gave me a wave. “Bye-bye, Mr. L.”

  “Toodle-oo, sir!”

  Tinkety-tonk!”

  They were still laughing when I staggered out into the corridor where Steerforth was waiting, into whose arms I practically collapsed as the door hissed shut.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, an uncharacteristic tenderness in his voice. “I’m so sorry.”

  The rain thrashed against the car as we were driven from Downing Street, the force of the downpour making it spray back into the air like steam. I sank down into my seat, finding, for once, the omnipresent smell of soggy dog almost welcoming.

  Barnaby was hunched forward, peering past the wipers into the storm, trying to see his way as the rain became torrential. Steerforth was slumped sideways, eyes half closed, hands clasped together. I wondered if he was praying.

  In the end, to my surprise, it was me who broke the silence.

  “They knew about my dad,” I said, feeling my fear begin to ebb away and be replaced with anger, with raw, burning rage at those Whitehall obscenities, those knuckle-kneed monsters who find nothing so unremittingly hilarious as human misery. “How did they know about Dad?”

  The pit bull did not reply but gazed solemnly at the floor as though in hope of absolution.

  The rain smashed down on the roof; there was a flash of lightning and the timpani growl of thunder, and as the storm illuminated Steerforth’s face I saw his features begin to convulse, saw them squeezed, tugged and contorted in something utterly impossible.

  For a second, I think I forgot to breathe.

  When Steerforth spoke I heard that his voice had once again become a parody of his master’s. “Good evening, Mr. Lamb.”

  “Dedlock?” I said softly.

  “Did you get it?” he asked. “Do we know the whereabouts of Estella?”

  “I couldn’t get them to talk. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry? You’ve let me down, Henry Lamb. You’ve let me down and as a result of that failure the city stands on the brink of catastrophe.”

  “They knew about my father,” I said. “They know everything. The smell in there… The way you feel when they look at you… like needles in your head.”

  “You have to see them again.”

  My stomach contracted at the thought of it. “I’m just a filing clerk.”

  “No objections. You see them again tomorrow.” I tried to protest but it was already too late.

  As Dedlock departed from his body, Steerforth fell back into his chair, frantically sucking in lungfuls of air. Struggling to breathe, he loosened his tie and flicked down the first few buttons at the top of his shirt.

  I caught a glimpse of the big man’s chest, and even now, I dearly wish I hadn’t. Poor Steerforth — zigzagged in maggot-white scars, scored with old stitches, furrows, grooves and crenellations, the skin repeatedly punctured with pinkish indentations.

  Steerforth must have realized what I’d seen, as he swiftly covered himself up, his face aflame with humiliation. “You don’t deserve this,” he murmured. “None of us deserve this.”

  Barnaby dropped me a street away from the flat and I had little choice but to make a dash for it through the rain. By the time I got home, my clothes were clinging to my body, my shoes felt squelchy and waterlogged and my hair was a bedraggled mop. The first thing I did was knock on Abbey’s bedroom door. There was no response, but rather than doing the sensible thing — take a hot shower and retire discreetly to bed — I knocked even harder. At last, I heard the click of her bedside lamp, the rustle of a duvet, somnolent steps toward the door.

  “Henry?”

  “It’s me.”

  The door opened a crack and my landlady peered out in her pajamas, yawning, blinking voleishly into the light. My spirits lifted, just a little, to be breathing the same air as her.

  “You’re drenched. Where the hell have you been?”

  “Never mind about that. I want to tell you how I feel.”

  The hint of a smile. “And how do you feel, Henry?”

  “I want to say that you’re really special.”

  “I think you’re special, too. But it’s late.”

  “Lunch tomorrow? My treat.”

  She sounded bemused. “Fine. Sounds nice.”

  “Fantastic,” I said as, pushing my luck just that crucial bit too far, I moved an inch closer to her. “I’d like to kiss you. But I’m rather damp.”

  “Good night, Henry,” she said (not unkindly) before — and there’s really no getting around this — slamming the door in my face.

  I stood there for a bit in the hope that she’d come back and offer to towel me down or something. But there was no such luck, and, getting tired of loitering and dripping all over the carpet, I had that hot shower and flopped into bed. It was past midnight and I was drifting off to sleep when I sat up with a start and began to wonder exactly when it was that the madness of my life had ceased to seem wondrous and bizarre and started instead to become a reality which I simply accepted with the same flint-faced fatalism as Jasper, Steerforth and all those other freaks and victims who had given themselves over, body and soul, to the Directorate.

  After the latest bout of mawkish reminiscence from Mr. Lamb, clotted with glutinous sentiment and rendered practically unreadable by the torpidity of his prose, you are doubtless aching to return to the more palatable meat of our narrative. We can scarcely blame you for good judgment. Welcome back, and count yourself lucky that once again you find yourself in the hands of those who understand how to tell a story with verisimilitude and conviction.

  As the storm screamed down the Mall and hurled itself against the walls of Clarence House, Arthur Windsor was receiving an unexpected education at the hands of Mr. Streater.

  “Get your laughing gear round this,” the blond man said, brandishing his teapot. “Wouldn’t want you getting thirsty, chief.”

  “Please don’t call me that.”

  Streater poured the prince more tea. “When I meet a bloke I like to call him ‘chief.’ And I like you. So tough titty.”

  Arthur’s brow wrinkled in distaste. “Tough what?”

  “Arthur,” Streater said, allowing his impatience to show. “We haven’t got long. Your mother’s sent me to tell you a secret.”

  “Secret? What secret?”

  “It’s the secret, Arthur. The big one. You’ve been lied to your whole life. You haven’t been ready until tonight. But now a whole lot of shit’s about to make a whole lot more sense.”

  Arthur took a jittery sip at his tea. He kept reminding himself that this was what his mother wanted (wasn’t that what Silverman had said?) and he had not disobeyed his mother since he was five or six years old and one of his nannies had found him in the great hall inking beards and moustaches onto portraits of his ancestors.

  “Arthur?” Suddenly, Streater was close to him — uncomfortably close — near enough for the prince to smell whatever hung on the man’s breath, something cloying, sickly and too sweet.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Thought we’d lost you there for a minute, chief.”

  “My apologies. I have a regrettable having of wandering alone in the foothills of my thoughts.”

  “Whatever.” The blond man clapped his hands and the old ballroom sank into darkness.

  “Streater? What’s happening?”

  The blond man stayed silent and invisible in the dark.

  Gradually, Arthur realized that the darkness was not total. At the far end of the room there was a tiny flicker of light.

  The prince moved toward it. To his surprise, as he drew closer, he realized that the light emanated from an old-fashioned oil lamp. Then — an even greater shock. There was someone else in the room. A middle-aged woman running to fat, folds of flesh coiled around her neck, her gray hair curled close to her scalp, a look of disapproval etched indelibly upon her face.

  “Hello?” said the prince, determined to act (at least fo
r the time being) as though her sudden materialization might possess some rational explanation. The woman gazed distantly ahead, and now that he was closer, Arthur saw that she seemed to ripple and shimmer, like a film projected onto heat haze. “Madam?” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  Outside, the storm was getting worse — rain beating at the windows, wind screeching past the stone walls, trying to find egress — but the woman appeared oblivious to it all.

  “Don’t you see the resemblance?” It was the blond man’s voice, maddeningly close.

  “Streater?” said the prince. “Switch on the lights.”

  “No can do.” He sound insufferably smug.

  “You caused this.”

  “A giggle in the dark.

  “Streater? Who is this individual?”

  “Oh, chief, don’t tell me you can’t recognize your own great-great-great- grandmother? Queen of England. Empress of India. Defender of the faith… Albert’s missus. Ring any bells?”

  Arthur swallowed hard. His instinct for rationalism was shrinking to a pinprick, but still he struggled to accept the truth of what he saw before him. “How is this possible?”

  “She’s an echo from the past, mate. Just a memory. Chillax. She can’t see us. And we can’t talk to her.”

  “What is this?” Arthur said, his voice laced with fear and panic. “What’s happening?”

  “This,” Streater hissed, “is 1857. The year the Indian Mutiny kicked off. Small wonder the old girl’s feeling a bit tender. Small wonder this was the year it made its move.”

  “What made its move?”

  There were three distinct knocks at the door.

  Streater hushed him. “Watch and learn.”

  The doors were flung open and a man — another stranger — strode into the room. Dressed every bit as anachronistically as the woman, he was not yet thirty, pleasant faced and athletic, his collar-length hair still boyishly tufty despite his efforts at lacquering it down. He shared the same quality of mirage and translucence as the woman, and Arthur could see that the stranger seemed half-asleep, aggravating his eyes by rubbing them, fiddling distractedly with his collar.

  “This is the man who founded the Directorate,” Streater explained. “This is Mr. Dedlock.”

  “Directorate?” Arthur said softly. “I’ve heard mother speak of them. Once, when she was in her cups-”

  Streater cut him short. “Chief? Just go with the flow.”

  The lady in the chair favored the new arrival with a frosty smile. “Mr. Dedlock. Thank you for coming so swiftly and at so unsociable an hour.”

  “No more than my duty, ma’am.”

  “What I have to tell you must go no further. Do you understand me? This is to remain a private matter, purely between the two of us. You are here in your capacity as my etheric advisor and I trust that you will honor the sanctity of that position.”

  Dedlock murmured something truckingly deferential and the lady went on.

  “Last night I had a dream. What is it the poet says? ‘I could count myself a king of infinite space and be bounded in a nutshell were it not that I have bad dreams…’ ”

  “I believe that is so, ma’am.”

  “You’re looking at me as though I am mad, Mr. Dedlock.”

  The man from the Directorate, his face a masterclass in discretion, showed not the slightest flicker of emotion. “Nothing could be further from the truth, ma’am.”

  “I do not think my dream was quite as other dreams. That is to say, I do not believe it to have been a product of too much cream at table or an undigested piece of beef. I believe it to have been absolutely real — as real and as solid as this conversation. You understand me? This was more than mere fancy.”

  Dedlock smoothly: “Of course, ma’am.”

  “Something spoke to me last night while I slept. Something completely outside the field of human experience. And I am bound to say that it was the most beautiful, the most astounding thing I have ever seen. Mr. Dedlock, I think that I have looked upon the face of a god.”

  A delicate cough which, to more cynical ears, might have sounded as though it was intended to mask a laugh.

  “I had been asleep for barely an hour when it happened. So as not to scare me by appearing in its true form, the god showed itself to me as a great, shining circle of color.”

  “A circle, ma’am?”

  “Dazzling, impossible shades wholly unlike those that I or any other human being have ever seen before. Colors that surely cannot exist upon the earthly plane. And then, Mr. Dedlock…”

  “Yes, ma’am? What happened then?”

  “Then it opened its eyes.” Her own eyes grew watery at the memory. “Hundreds of them, shimmering things as though on a peacock’s tail. I heard its voice in my head, deep and ancient, infinitely wise. It told me its name. It is called Leviathan.”

  “Leviathan, ma’am?”

  “That is the closest approximation in our tongue. Its true name, it told me, would resemble a mathematical formula of such length and complexity that it lies generations beyond even our most gifted logicians. To him, our little lives must seem as the scurryings of ants. But he told me that I had distinguished myself.” Two spots of color appeared on the Queen’s cheeks. “Leviathan has chosen my family for special attention. To him, affecting human life on earth is as simple as moving toy soldiers upon a board. He will guide us, keep us, protect us. Our empire will flourish. He will keep our borders safe and render us inviolate against invasion.”

  “It does sound a remarkable experience, ma’am.” Has the prince consort-”

  “He is with me in this completely. As he is in all things.”

  “Naturally, ma’am. Quite so.”

  The Queen looked annoyed at the interruption, at this presumptuous truncation of her zealotry. “From this day forth, my house has a new god and a new religion. Leviathan is the way, the truth and the life.” She broke off. “You look suspicious. Do you doubt my revelation?”

  Arthur was watching Dedlock as his ancestor was speaking and he thought he saw the young man bristle slightly at this. “Of course not, ma’am. But I would urge caution.”

  “Caution?”

  “The Directorate has dealt with such entities before, ma’am, and they are seldom exactly what they appear to be. Tell me, has this creature asked for anything?”

  The Queen wrinkled her nose. “Asked for anything?”

  “Such beings usually have some greater motive, ma’am. I doubt he proffers aid simply from the goodness of what passes for his heart.”

  “Leviathan is not some street waif accosting us for spare change. He is owed homage and sacrifice by right.”

  “Sacrifice?”

  “Dedlock, we have seen the way in which you have sneered and sighed. You may be certain that your grimaces of skepticism have gone far from unobserved. Do you not believe me?”

  “On the contrary, ma’am. I believe you absolutely. Now I strongly advise you to tell me what it is the creature has asked of you.”

  The Queen seemed far away. “There is to be a contract,” she said. “An agreement.”

  “A contract? What kind of god deals in contracts? Your Majesty, it is absolutely vital that you tell me what you’ve promised this creature.”

  The Queen smiled. “Do you really want to know? Leviathan is a god, after all, and must not be denied. What I have done is for the greater good, for the future glory of the house.”

  “Ma’am…” Dedlock was barely containing his rage. “What have you promised this monster?”

  “I have promised it London,” she said. “And all who dwell in her.”

  The lights came on; Arthur blinked in shock and when he looked again, the two strangers had vanished. Without them, the room seemed as bare and stark as a squash court.

  “What was that?” he gasped.

  “That?” Streater said. “That was the first part of your history lesson.”

  “Was it true? Was any of it true?”

&nb
sp; A grin. “Better run along now, chief. It is your birthday, after all.”

  Dizzy and disoriented, his imagination grown mutinous, the prince stumbled dumbly for the exit.

  “Many happy returns, chief.” Streater executed a sardonic salute. “And, Your Highness?”

  Arthur turned back.

  A final smirk, on the razor’s edge of cruelty and charm. “Be sure to have another cup of tea before you go.”

  Chapter 13

  So it’s happened again and once more I find myself the victim of a crime which surely has to be unique — narrative hijacking, story gazumping, a plot stick-up.

  I’ve no doubt his phenomenon will recur but I’m trying to pretend it isn’t happening. I’m doing the grown-up thing here and trying to rise above it. Although there’s nothing to stop me ripping out these offending pages, I think I’ll let the stand for now. If I allow this thing to run its course, it might buy me time, stave off the inevitable long enough for me to finish what I’ve started.

  So try to ignore it. Gloss over it. Carry on regardless. From now on, I certainly intend to do the same.

  I leave these interpolations in place only so that you may have a complete and accurate record of my final days.

  When I met Abbey for lunch the day after my first encounter with the Prefects, she suggested eating somewhere close to her office, at a place called Mister Meng’s Peking Restaurant. I fully intend never to return.

  Having unwisely spurned the waitress’s slightly condescending offer of an English knife and fork, I was still struggling twenty minutes later with a bowl which brimmed almost full. Needless to say, Abbey not only wielded her chopsticks with embarrassing ease but also, in some strange miracle, made the business of eating egg fried rice and a side order of prawn crackers seem close to sensual. She watched my gastronomic pratfalls with amusement as what little food I managed to pick up spattered down my shirt in Rorschach blots of greasy orange.

  Once we had finished chatting of trivial things, she said, apropos of nothing in particular: “I’m really worried about you.”