by Phil Rickman
‘Never!’
Dean cackled. ‘Er’d prob’ly been on the cider!’
‘Shut your fat face!’ Jane was out of her seat. But Dean went on as if he hadn’t heard her.
‘Well, what’s that but a sign of Satanism, see. A devil-worshipper, witch, whatever you wanner call ’em, they can’t go into a Christian church without they vomits. I seen it in a film. Ole black and white job. Mark o’ the Witch, some shit like that. Chucks her—’
‘Stop it!’ Jane screamed. ‘You bastard!’
‘You year some’ing then, Gittoes?’ Dean leaned back smugly. ‘Makes you think, though, dunnit? Why don’t Jane Watkins ever go to church of a Sunday? You ever see Jane in church?’
‘Don’t go, do I?’
‘Well me neither, but my gran does and ’er says to me the other day, ’er says, You never sees the vicar’s daughter at no services, do you? En’t right, that. En’t right at all!
‘She was there tonight,’ Danny Gittoes said. ‘I seen ’er goin’ in. School uniform an’ all.’
‘Ec ... sacly,’ Dean said. ‘Exacly, boy. Special occasion, so ‘er’d need to be there, bring down the forces of darkness, innit? Now ... No, listen, this is interestin’ ... You remember that night Jane threw up on us. Where’d that happen exacly? Right outside the bloody church! In fact ... in fact... it was up agin’ the ole church wall, right? So that’s holy ground, ennit? An’ we said, we said we was all gonner go in the church porch, open a coupler cans, and that was when she done it. You think about that, Gittoes ...’
‘Fuckin’ hell, Dean—’
Danny Gittoes broke off because the lights began to fade and the strobing began from the stage, Dr Samedi demonstrating something. Dean’s voice rose placidly out of the flashes.
‘She only got to think about goin’ in the church porch, see, an’ up it comes. Splat. Well, all right, Jane never threw up tonight, see, but her evil presence in that church was enough to—’
Jane threw herself at him, knocking the glass out of his hand, seeing alarm on his fat, porous face, but, because of the strobe, when she saw it again it was wearing a grin and he was on his feet, around her side of the table and his arms were around her.
‘Wanner dance with me, is it ... devil woman?’
‘Get your filthy—’
Dean gripped her tightly; she felt something hard against her stomach. She realized that in the strobe it might look as though they were actually snogging. She couldn’t kick him because of the chair legs in the way. She wondered where she could bite him without encountering great pools of sweat.
‘All right.’ Quentin was on his feet. ‘Now let’s stop this.’
‘Hey,’ Dean said over Jane’s shoulder. ‘It fuckin’ talks. I ‘ad it figured for one ‘o Doc Samedi’s zombies.’
‘You just ... just let her go,’ Quentin said uncertainly.
‘Let her geeeow! What you gonner do about it, sunshine? Phone up your dad on the mobile, is it?’
Through the flashes, Jane saw that Danny Gittoes had pushed his chair back but was still sitting on it. The third boy, Mark, however, had moved in from the door. His hands were out of his pockets, something gleaming in one of them.
Jane screamed, ‘He’s got a knife!’
And the room went quiet.
‘Lights,’ someone snapped. Dean Wall’s arms went slack and Jane stepped away as the strobe stopped and the main lights came up.
Barry, the manager, ex-SAS, came across the room like a small tank. Behind him, Lloyd Powell.
‘Who shouted?’ Barry demanded.
Jane looked across at Mark. He was a slight, quiet-looking, mousy-haired boy. You tended not to notice him. Both arms hung by his side, the hands empty. Could she have been mistaken?
She looked away from Mark and across at Barry. ‘Sorry. I thought someone had a knife.’
‘One of these boys?’ Lloyd Powell wandered over, hooked out a chair with his foot to see if anything had been kicked under it. Lloyd looked pretty cool in a timeless sort of way; he was the only guy here who could get away with wearing a patched tweed jacket over his jeans and denim workshirt.
‘I didn’t really see,’ Jane said. ‘There was just a sort of flash. But with the strobelights ... Sorry.’
‘All right,’ Barry said. ‘You.’ Stabbing a finger at Dean Wall then Danny Gittoes, then Mark. ‘Out.’
‘Aw, come on, man.’ Dean stepped away from Jane. ‘We was only havin’ a laugh. Tell ‘im, Lloyd.’
‘You’re outer line, boy,’ Lloyd said sternly. He folded his arms, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Barry.
‘Out,’ Barry said. ‘Now.’
Danny Gittoes stood up and edged towards the door. Some of the kids began to move back towards the walls. Dr Samedi stood protectively in front of his main console. Dean Wall didn’t move.
‘You’ve got five seconds,’ Barry said, like they were terrorists or something. ‘And that includes the door closing behind you.’
It was starting to look nasty. Then Colette was there.
‘Ease up, Barry.’
There was silence. Jane reckoned that every man in the room must be looking at Colette, including Barry and Lloyd. She looked like she’d stepped out of one of those moody, sexy, Sunday-supplement fashion spreads, one of the threadlike straps of her tight, black dress just parted from the shoulder, a perfect dab of perspiration in the little cleft over her top lip. She looked about twenty-seven and drop-dead gorgeous.
‘I’d be prepared to bet these lads are not on the guest list,’ Barry said stiffly. ‘You know your parents’ rules.’
‘One of my rules, Barry,’ Colette said, ‘was that the word parents would not be mentioned in here tonight, yeah?’
‘Sorry, Colette, but they pay my wages. We have a guest list, nobody comes in they’re not on it.’
‘These are local guys,’ Colette said. ‘We don’t want to be seen as snobbish, do we?’
Dean Wall leered at Colette. ‘Tell the bastard, darlin’. These ex-SAS guys, they en’t got it out their system, see. They’re jus’ lookin’ for innocent people to beat up.’
‘Shut it, lad.’ Barry’s lips barely moved.
‘What you gonner do? You got a Heckler and Koch down your trousers, is it?’
Danny Gittoes laughed feebly.
‘Don’t push it, boy,’ Lloyd Powell said.
Dean turned on him. ‘Shit, Powell, I thought you were a mate.’
‘You’re outer line, boy.’
‘Colette, look ...’ Barry lowered his voice. ‘It’s getting late.’
‘So it is ...’
Colette’s eyes were shining with a steady, steely light that didn’t seem quite natural to Jane. Had she taken something? Well, of course she had. The eyes turned on Barry.
‘I mean, I know you army guys like your early nights, but you’re in the catering trade now, Baz.’
‘Just there’s a little ceremony planned,’ Barry said uncomfortably.
Colette gave him a hard stare. ‘What did you say?’
‘It’s your birthday party.’ Barry blushed. ‘We’ve got this ... cake.’
‘For fuck’s sake!’ Colette looked appalled. ‘Who’s idea was that?’
‘Your mother’s.’
‘Jesus wept!’ Jane saw Colette’s fists clench. ‘How old they think I am? Six?’
‘Please,’ Barry said. ‘It was supposed to be a surprise.’
‘Jesus Christ?’ Colette’s whole body went rigid and Jane saw tears of outrage and betrayal spring into her eyes. ‘They’re not coming?’
Barry gritted his teeth. ‘Just for a few minutes.’
Colette began to breathe rapidly, her breasts rising half out of the shiny, black dress, bringing a half-suppressed whimper out of Dean Wall.
‘I’m sorry,’ Barry said.
‘You little toad, Barry,’ Colette spat. ‘You little fucking toad. You lied to me! They lied to me. What time?’
‘It’s after midnight.’
‘I mean what time are they coming, shifhead?’
‘Just before one,’ Barry said. ‘Look, Colette, you’re their daughter – you can’t blame them for wanting to share just a few minutes of your party.’
‘Balls. They just want to wind things up while the place is still intact and embarrass the piss out of me at the same time.’
‘Come on, love, you’d be winding up by then, anyway.’
‘Like fuck we would.’
Colette strode away, the tips of two fingers to her mouth, thinking hard, that cold light in her eyes. A rock slide of emotions came down on Jane, a giddying combination of nervousness and extreme excitement.
She watched Colette approach Dr Samedi, the whole room in a hush. Everybody looking for the first time tonight, Jane thought, like kids, unsure of how they were supposed to react to the hostess throwing a wobbly. Colette was speaking quickly to Dr Samedi, who started to back away, making sweeping motions with his hands, Colette pursuing him, her voice rising.
‘... getting half a fucking grand for this, Jeff, remember?’
Dr Samedi glanced wildly from side to side, at the spread of his equipment, and Colette carried on advancing and talking ferociously at him, until he had his back against one of the big speakers, his top hat fallen off, and he seemed to concede, submit, whatever, his head nodding wearily. Colette smiled grimly, walked back to the centre of the room.
‘All right. Everybody listen up. Seems some of you are not, like, considered suitable.’
Dean Wall whooped.
‘Yeah, yeah.’ Colette waved a dismissive hand. ‘Wall’s first taste of fame, very sad. OK ... So if some of us are not welcome, I think we should all go, yeah?’
‘Thank God for that,’ Quentin sighed. But Jane suspected he was being seriously premature.
‘It’s not a bad night out there, right?’ Colette said.
‘Could be better,’ a boy shouted bravely.
‘It will be. I reckon we get out of this shithole, take the action into the streets, yeah?’
There was half a second of hesitation before the roars of enthusiasm started gathering their meaningless momentum.
‘Struth.’ Barry rammed his hands into his jacket pockets, glared at the floor. Jane was standing quite close to him now and she heard him mutter to Lloyd Powell out of the side of his mouth, ‘You better tag along with them, mate. I’ll make an anonymous call to the police.’
Jane thought, Uh-oh.
25
Carnival
MERRILY MOVED INTO the dark kitchen, carrying the poker.
The Aga chuntered smugly in its insulated world. She laid a palm flat on one of its hotplate covers, held it there until it felt uncomfortably warm.
What else could she do? Pinch herself? Did that really work? In the event, as she pulled away, she tripped on the edge of the rug and ... ‘Oh shit?’ dropped the poker, bumped her knee violently on a hard corner of the Aga, sending a bullet of pain spinning to the top of her head.
She staggered to the switches, slammed on all the lights, bent down, rubbing hard at her knee. Apart from severe pain, what other proof could you give yourself that you were, in fact, fully awake, not dreaming?
No, it was all real. It was quiet up there now, but the noise she’d heard from the drawing room had been real. And it wasn’t a mouse, it wasn’t a squirrel, it wasn’t a bird in the eaves, it wasn’t ...
Real. What was real? Was a minister of the Church obliged to consult a psychiatrist these days to find out?
Another small bump.
Slowly, holding back her breath, Merrily picked up the poker.
Closer, this time. Certainly not at the top of the house. She looked at the scullery door, which was never opened. The so-called scullery was a narrow room, probably something connected with the dairy in centuries past. They’d found no use for it as yet, never went in.
She lifted the metal latch and went through, wrinkling her nose as her hair mingled with greasy cobwebs. At the far end, another door opened on to a small, square hall. She found a switch and a dangling economy bulb sputtered on, curled-up white tubes like some frozen bodily organ sending shadows up walls already going black with damp. The absence of oak beams in here suggested it was a Victorian addition. Opposite her was the second back door, still boarded up.
Except it wasn’t. The boards had been prised away; they were leaning against a wall, rusty nails sticking out of them. This was recent. Very recent. Jane. The separate door to the Apartment, soon to have an illuminated bell and a dinky little nameplate: Ms Jane Watkins. The door leading up, via the disused back stairs that you would forget were even here.
The stairs came out at a black, wooden door. Her fingers found a hole to lift the latch. Of course, she knew where the stairs came out, but it seemed strange seeing it from this angle, the dim, first-floor passage with all the doors, all of them locked now, since the Sean dream, and the keys taken out and thrown into an ashtray in the kitchen.
Padding past the locked doors, she arrived at the top of the main stairs, the oak-balustraded landing with its window full of pale, night sky. She stood at the foot of the second stairway to Jane’s apartment. Why was she doing this? Despite the unsealing of the second back door, she knew there was nobody up there. Nobody real. Why was she putting herself through this?
Because I’m a priest, and priests are not supposed to be scared because they know that the strength and certainty of their faith protects them from the evil that walks by night ... don’t they just?
Oh really ... Jane came up here all the time, for heaven’s sake. Jane skipped up here, never a thought, with books and boxes and cans of variously coloured paint and brushes and CDs, to be locked away in her secret study.
It’s me. It only happens to me.
I’m a sick woman.
She thought.
Before registering that one of the doors on the landing was already half-open and a shadow-figure was watching her from the threshold.
Jane knew it was going wrong when she saw Mark and this unknown older guy in the unlit doorway of the computer shop, Marches Media.
Or maybe wrong was the way it was supposed to go. A party ain’t a party without tension.
Maybe this party was going exactly the way Colette had planned ... the plan hardening up when she learned she was being double-crossed by her parents. Actually, Jane didn’t see what was so wrong with having a sixteenth birthday cake. And if the Cassidys wanted to share the moment – well, they had paid for everything. And let her use their precious restaurant.
Maybe Colette was going just a bit over the top.
Jane watched from the cobbles, leaning against one of the oaken uprights of the market cross. With a low-burning excitement, because it was obvious what was going on down there in the shadowed doorway of Marches Media: the mousy Mark and the older guy were busy dealing drugs.
And no shortage of customers. The nice boys from good families. Going in one after another, schoolkids at the tuck-shop. Not all the guests, but enough of them to put the market square well into orbit. This would be a good, safe pitch – rich kids at a posh party in a select restaurant in a picture-postcard village encircled by hills and woodland and with no resident police. Profitable, too. Most of these guys would have no idea of current street prices.
Not that Jane did. It was just cool to watch from the shadows and speculate about these things.
She was on her own now. The craven Quentin had made a swift escape, car keys in hand, a couple of other vehicles also puttering pusillanimously away from the square. She saw Dean Wall and Danny Gittoes watching Colette, keeping a respectful distance. A heavy chick.
She and Dr Samedi were at the back of his Transit van, one rear door open. Dr Samedi backing out, arms full of something black, the size and shape of a child’s coffin. ‘Oh yes!’ Colette cried. ‘Yes, yes yes!’
Dr Samedi was still unhappy and wouldn’t let go of whatever it was. But tonight you didn’t argue with Colette; she wrapped her
arms around the black thing, wrestling with poor Jeff, until they both sprang back and the black box was in Colette’s arms now.
Lloyd Powell was watching from the foot of the Black Swan steps. Mr Responsible, Jane thought. He might seem cool now, with that rangy Paul Weller look and his white pick-up truck, but Lloyd would turn, as the years went by, into his father, get elected on to the council. By which time Rod would have shrunken into Edgar, half-baked and not to be trusted with a shotgun. It was the depressing side of country life; they all seemed to know their place in the Pattern and the Pattern didn’t change.
People like Colette fascinated them because they were part of a different pattern, Jane thought. But there was no meaningful overlap. She was thinking what a really profound philosophical concept this was, when it all began.
‘All right!’
A voice crackling into the night. Dr Samedi had materialized under swathes of bunting put up for tomorrow’s festival launch. He held an old-fashioned trumpet loud hailer. His top hat was back on.
‘How you doin’? Sweatin’? Yeah!’
A few cheers. Dean Wall’s familiar whoop.
‘All right!’ Dr Samedi raised the white loud hailer up over his head. A signal, obviously. Because, at that moment, the perfectly preserved medieval market square of rural Ledwardine just ... well, just erupted.
The black thing, like a small coffin, had proclaimed itself, in the way it knew best, as a huge ghetto-blaster with about eight speakers. It was sitting on the roof of the van now, pumping tumultuous drum and bass into the square at this unbelievable volume, and Colette Cassidy was bouncing up and down beside the van and screaming, ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!’
A circle of people rapidly formed around her, everybody moving in a way it was hard not to when the big, black beat was everywhere and loud enough to pop up all the cobbles on the square. Oh my God, Jane thought, they’ll hear this in the centre of Hereford.
‘Welcome, ma friends ...’
Dr Samedi’s phoney West Indian drawl had been processed by the primitive megaphone into a deep and eerie croak.