‘Crossing-points of the past. Everything holds something different within. The truth becomes fabulous, and fables hold truth.’ His voice had dropped to a sea-murmur. Fingers slipping over her throat.
‘You soon start to see the attraction. ..’
‘Attraction?’ His hands smoothed and smoothed. The nape of her neck tingled, a warm glow spreading to the top of her breasts. She forced herself to concentrate.
‘Of - archaeology.’
‘Ah, of course.’
They were alone in the laboratory. The last assistant had quietly closed the door behind her.
‘Right.’ He swiftly removed his hands and shifted her chair-back to an upright position once more. ‘Let’s do it.’
She looked wide-eyed at him. ‘Here?’
He gestured at the table-top. ‘The last layer. Come on.’
Even with tweezers and generous smears of lubricant, the greased wrapping proved difficult to remove, and flapped back on to the casket lid. Amy peered through the illuminated magnifier. ‘I think I’ve got it this time.’ She gripped the tweezers more tightly.
Twined ribbons of inlaid gold surrounded an intricate frieze of dancing mythological figures. You could see no detail from studying the russet splodges on the lid, but Spanky knew that the ancient gods lay beneath a layer of grime, longing for the chance to shine again. There had been many containers across the centuries for the treasure held inside, but this was the best casket so far. Ten inches by six, and six deep, it sat on the formica-topped desk awaiting inspection, a spectacular relic from a forgotten world. They had removed soil from a tiny gold-rimmed keyhole with a water-pic. The rest of the wrapping was easier to remove. As it slid away, Amy cautiously wiped a finger across the lid, and the precious figures revealed themselves.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she whispered.
‘And we can open it.’ Spanky opened the top button of his shirt and removed a slender gold key from around his neck. He could feel his fingers trembling in anticipation. She stared at him, then at the filigreed key. What did he mean?
‘I can unlock the casket, Amy.’ He could not resist sounding boastful.
‘Where did you get that?’ She reached up to touch the key, then withdrew her hand, as if wary of being scalded.
‘It’s been in my possession for many, many years.’
The casket was behind her. She positioned herself before it protectively. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘I can’t let you open it.’
‘Why not?’
‘This is of historical importance. A senior member of staff must be present.’
‘Then let’s send for Mr Bernardier.’ If you don’t mind summoning a mud-caked headless corpse, he thought, smiling grimly. The director had never known what hit him. A pity, that. Spanky enjoyed taking credit for his work.
‘You know exactly what’s inside the box, don’t you?’
‘Of course I do,’ he answered. She was a smart girl. There was no more need for subterfuge now that he was so close to his goal. ‘I’ve always known.’
‘Perhaps you’d like to tell me.’ She could feel her unease growing by the second. The museum was closed for the night. Only a few of the research departments scattered in the building’s cul-de-sac corridors would still be inhabited by lingering personnel.
‘All right. Have a seat.’ Outside, the warm weather had finally broken and it was starting to rain. ‘Listen carefully, and don’t question anything I have to say.’
Sensing the danger she was in, Amy dropped to the chair.
‘I am not like you. Not - human. I am Spancialosophus Lacrimosa. If you find it easier, you can call me Spanky. God had seven fallen angels. Seven daemons. Seven rogue creatures of inspiration and vengeance, banned from Heaven for refusing to worship Man. Damned to a watery limbo existence between Earth and Paradise. Only allowed to visit Earth in the encumbrance of a mortal shell, to be entered upon the invitation of the owner. But I am not like my fellow daemons. I have little of their boundless patience. I am not content to wait for ever, until God, in his infinite wisdom and mercy, sees fit to readmit us to his Kingdom. And now there is a chance to do more than just return to grace. There is a chance to rule for all eternity. It’s all to do with the box.’
Amy snapped around to check that the casket was still there beside her in its nest of wet straw. What if this lunatic tried to snatch it? How would she ever stop him?
‘You want to see inside? Take a look.’ He unlooped the key from his neck and handed it to her, savouring the moment. ‘Do it,’ he commanded.
The key was so worn and delicate that she was frightened of breaking it in the lock. To her surprise it turned easily. The lubricant and the water-pic must have loosened the mechanism. And of course, it had been built by Fabergé. With trembling fingers, she raised the lid. The interior was completely dry. Beneath several layers of fine grey silk were—
‘Iron rings. Seven of them. One for each of us. The rings of Cain. Forged by Adam’s first son. How is your knowledge of the Bible?’ He grinned at her, inching closer to the opened casket, holding out his hand for the return of the golden key.
‘Let me refresh your memory. Cain was a tiller of the ground, driven from the Earth by God for slaying his brother Abel. Doomed to become a fugitive and a vagabond. Cain tried to atone for his sin by appealing to us, God’s other fallen children. He brought us gifts, the rings he forged from the ore beneath his feet. But just as we despised Adam, so we despised his offspring. We refused his offer, and Cain threw the rings back into the earth.
‘It took many centuries for us to truly understand the power of the rings. You see, if we had accepted them, we would have been restored to Paradise. That was Cain’s gift to us, and we turned it down. It was only by accident that I discovered the truth. But by then, the rings were lost. I’ve tracked them through time and across the world. Now I’ve been here too damned long. I can’t get back to my home without them. The others won’t let me in empty-handed.’
Obviously the man was crazy. Amy knew that the safest solution to her dilemma was to play along until she could find a way to summon help. ‘Is that what you want, to be restored to Paradise?’ she asked.
‘Of course. Wouldn’t you?’ Spanky drew a step nearer. ‘Only this time, we’ll have the element of surprise on our side.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, we wish to rule, obviously. God has had everything his way for far too long. You have no idea how boring he has made the celestial heavens. We’ll change all that. You wait, you’ll feel the effects all the way down here. It’ll be like having the worst neighbours in the universe living right overhead.’
‘You’re mad.’ She hadn’t meant to say it. The words had just slipped out. He laughed at her.
‘If you think what I want is so very illogical, good luck with the rest of the world. A little respect is all anyone wants.’
Amy made a grab for the casket, and was surprised when he made no attempt to stop her. Instead, he watched as she took it from the desk and clutched it protectively across her breasts, smearing mud and pieces of straw on her lab jacket.
‘We’d better get going,’ he said, checking his watch. ‘The others are expecting us.’
‘What do you mean?’ She looked frantically about for someone to help her. Why was it that the one time she would welcome an interruption, none came?
‘Cain protected the rings. They can only be returned to us by a mortal. Lucky you.’ He grinned mischievously as he grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the door. ‘You get to see where we live. You’ll be the first human being ever to meet my brothers and sisters. I’m sure Spancialosophus Dolorosa will take a shine to you.’
* * * *
4. The Denial of Icarus
She pulled back from him. ‘Wait, I have to set the alarm system. I’m the last one out.’
‘You’re lying to me, Amy.’ He bared his teeth and yanked her arm hard. �
��Don’t try to trick me. I can see inside your head.’
They passed from the lab along a corridor, and on to a broad staircase. Miles should have come for her by now, but they passed no one, not even Dr Harold Masters, who was usually making tea in the cubby-hole beside the staircase at this time of the evening.
Spanky’s gripping hand felt as though it was burning into her wrist. At the main entrance, the two security guards barely looked up from their desks to wish her goodnight. Couldn’t they see that she was in trouble?
The rain sizzled against Spanky’s back as he strode across the museum forecourt with her. Amy maintained her grip on the casket, frightened that she would be punished if she tried to fling it away. ‘Where are we going?’ she gasped, frantically trying to keep up with him.
‘To the departure point,’ he snapped, barely bothering with her. He crossed Museum Road, half-dragging her upright as she slipped on the wet tarmac. He moved so quickly that she found herself being bodily lifted by him at moments when the traffic seemed about to crash into them. Onwards they moved, through Holborn and down towards the Embankment.
They were standing in the centre of Waterloo Bridge with the great rain-swollen river sweeping beneath them, broadening out on its way to the sea. ‘Why here?’ she shouted, the roar of wind and traffic filling her ears.
‘I need a good run-up,’ he replied. ‘Got a tight grip on the casket?’
He checked the box pressed against her sodden breast, then produced an old-fashioned cut-throat razor from his coat and passed it to her with his free hand. ‘Hold this. I’m letting go of you for a moment. If you try to escape I will kill you, Amy, I think you know that.’ Spanky tore off his jacket and shirt, throwing them out into the Thames.
‘I want you to take the razor and run it along my spine.’ He pointed to his broad rain-spattered back. ‘Do it quickly.’ He snapped open the blade for her.
Shaking with cold and fear, she suppressed a shudder of horror as she touched the blade to the point he indicated between his shoulderblades.
‘You’ll have to push harder than that. Pull it straight down. As deep as you can.’
Wincing, she did as she was told, pushing on the blade and dragging it down. The edge sliced smoothly and cleanly as the skin of his back opened in a widening crimson slit. Spanky was drawing breath in low, guttural gasps, part in pain, part in the pleasure of release from his confinement. As the blade reached his trouser-belt he slapped it from her hand. The razor skittered across the pavement and slid into the gutter. Swathes of blood washed across his back, diluting in the downpour.
Spanky bent forward with an agonised shout and the epidermis split further apart across his back. From within the carapace of skin, two enormous black wings unfolded like opening umbrellas. As the joints clicked and cracked, the membranes between them flexed and stretched and grew. At first she thought they were made of black leather, but now she saw that they were composed of thousands of tiny interlocking black feathers. He seized her hand and climbed on to the balustrade of the bridge, dragging her up on the ledge with him. The fully opened wings spanned a distance of eighteen feet above them.
‘Hold on to your hat. Here we go.’
As they launched from the bridge, Amy screamed and howled into the racing clouds above. They swooped down to the scudding grey water, then up and along the path of the river, moving so fast that they outdistanced the falling rain. The pain in her clutched wrist was excruciating. He turned and brought his face close to hers, shouting as the great black wings beat powerfully above them.
‘You have the casket.’
‘Yes,’ she shouted back as they started to climb, ‘I have the casket.’
‘Then we can make the crossing.’ He pumped his membraneous wings faster, ever faster, so that they flexed and shook from humerus to metacarpal, and it seemed that they were moving beyond the speed of earth and weather and light and time.
Something bright shone in her eyes. She forced herself to look up. Ahead in the clouds, a dazzling area of light had cleared the grey rain to send a Mandelbrot set of fractal colours spiralling down towards them, like pieces of rainbow glass from an exploded kaleidoscope.
‘You see it?’ he bellowed, ‘you see it? That’s where we’re going. Inside there.’
‘No!’ she screamed, knowing instinctively that the experience would kill her instantly. This was not a sight for mortal eyes. But they were racing forward at such a velocity that nothing could stop them from reaching the area now. Piercing shards of diamond brilliance enveloped them as they left the Earth behind for ever.
And just as they reached it - it was gone. Slammed shut, vanished, the colours all disappeared, nothing ahead except endless cold grey sky.
Spanky’s face was contorted in fury and terror.
‘The rings of Cain!’ he yelled at the heavens. ‘I am returning with the rings!’ Already his wings were parting with the impossible velocity, flesh and feathers tearing off in strips, revealing birdlike bloody bones beneath.
With nothing to propel them, their speed slowed. For a moment, it seemed that they were hanging in the air. ‘You have the rings,’ he screamed at her.
‘No, I told you - I have the casket.’ The box was still unlocked. She had emptied the rings out as they flew. He had not noticed. With all his energy and concentration centred elsewhere, he had not seen the seven iron bands scatter in the wind and fall back towards the river, and now the doorway home was closed once more.
A sharp crack resounded above them as the great wings bloodily shattered and folded, and with a sickening lurch they dropped back towards the Earth. Spanky’s anguished howling filled her tortured ears every metre of the way.
Down and down.
The glutinous silt of the river formed undulations across the expanding estuary at Dartford. It trapped all manner of debris swept out with the heavy ebb tide. It cradled Amy’s unconscious body, rolling her gently against the shore until some kind old souls spotted her, and dragged her out to warmth and safety. Inside Amy’s jacket they found an old casket, gripped so tightly that the corners had bruised her flesh.
Spanky’s broken form had fallen more heavily and plunged much deeper, to be snagged by the twisted metal on the riverbed. Held firmly in place, Chad Morrison’s body undulated against the current. His earthly form was dead, from the fall, from the loss of blood, but the daemon was still alive and imprisoned within. There was nothing Spanky could do but stare out from his blanched shell in endless horror, gripped by his prison of bloating dead flesh, held in turn by the detritus of the river, beneath that great protector of the city.
He was aware of everything, and unable to do anything. He even thought he saw one of the precious rings float by, inches from his eyes. Eventually he allowed his senses to dull and close, lulled to a dreamless sleep by the lunar tides.
Somewhere inside the wide pulsing currents of the sea, the seven rings of Cain tumbled and drifted, lost to man and lost to angels.
* * * *
‘And that is how Karl Fabergé’s most magnificent casket, so beautifully restored by Amy Dale, came to be exhibited here at the British Museum,’ said Dr Harold Masters, eyeing his bored students as they sprawled and drifted in various states of semi-consciousness about the lecture room like dumped shop mannequins. Honestly, he thought, you try to bring history alive for the young, but you might as well not bloody bother.
* * * *
Christopher Fowler has written screenplays for two of his novels, Spanky and Psychoville, the latter at the request and as a vehicle for the new ‘Britpack’ stars. His latest novel is Disturbia, while earlier books include Roofworld, Rune and Red Bride. A new collection of stories, Personal Demons, was recently published and his next novel will be titled Sohodevil. He is also the author of a large graphic novel from DC Comics, Menz Insanza. The story featured here reprises the titular demon from one of the aforementioned novels, as the author explains: ‘I had wanted to write another Spanky tale for ages. I’ve had a lot
of mail from readers asking for more of the character, but I didn’t feel he could really sustain another novel and still keep his originality. I nearly put him in a woman’s body, then came up with “Spanky’s Back In Town”, sparked off by a stroll along the newly completed Thameside Walk, on which I read an article about the “lost” art of Fabergé. I figured that if Spanky returned, he’d need a damned good reason, and the casket in the tale seemed to provide one. I also wanted to write a story in which he could really make an entrance! It originally centred round Dr Harold Masters of the British Museum, but he has now become a character in my new novel, Disturbia. And to answer an often-asked question: the “real” Spanky on the cover of the novel is a gentleman named Fritz Kok(!), and he’s a graphic artist/singer currently living in Holland.’
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The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Dark Terrors 05] Page 32