by David Wood
'The new cinema complex out beyond Manors. The retail park below Scotswood. The motorway expansion. The city centre ring road. The housing development in Walkergate.’ He turned to me and smiled gently. ‘Between them, and others, they make up this health. Life is being pumped back into the city.'
I stared at the old man. I don't know whether he was being deliberately obtuse, but where he claimed life I saw pollution and ugly, cankerous architecture. I didn't rise to the bait. 'What were the colours?' I asked instead, offering no real explanation. Let him read my mind if he wanted more. This time though, I felt the touch of his mind, like the rustle of a snake at the back of my brain. From nothing, no feeling, I lashed out at it, throwing the thought of a substantial fist at the unaware presence. Felt the momentary emptiness after the eviction and then my mind swamped back to fill the void. He was gone.
Malachi's face twisted. I read what I thought was shock in his eyes. It wasn't. He knew what he was doing. The old bastard was manipulating me like the pedals on my old Bechstein and already I was dancing to his tune like a headless ballerina.
He held up an unsteady hand.
'Good, Declan. It does not do to be passive inside one's own thoughts. Would you believe me if I said the colours you saw were God's hand in all of this?'
'No,' I said, simply, not feeling the need to lie. 'I have no time for God and God has no time for me. We came to an arrangement a long time ago and it suits us just fine.'
'Then I will not tell you any more than this: there are more things on heaven and earth than I or any one of us can explain. The colours are energies, and not all of them are wholesome. The reds and darker stains have their own corruptive touch. Their taint is consuming. They feed and grow, and their appetite is immense. All encompassing, I fear. Think of a place, and I can promise you their canker is already taking root there.'
'How do you know all of this?'
Malachi spread his arms wide. 'I am the city, it is me.' His face wore a sadness that went beyond mere sorrow. 'The sickness is inside of me even as I stand here, eating away at my flesh. All that is wrong is inside me. You have seen my hands. The killer is inside me. The hatred is spreading within me and there is little I can do to prevent it. I am corrupt. The people within me are corrupt. Filth walks my streets. My children suffer. I will die, and the city with me. I cannot let that be. I have seen dead cities, Declan and I won't be a party to it happening again. I won't stand by without raising a hand in my defence.'
I looked at him and saw an old, tired man who despite his fighting words had lost the will to fight. He was right, he was dying. Maybe it was cancer. Surely it was cancer. 'Even if everything you say is true, I don't see what I can do,' I said to him, honestly.
He nodded. I expected him to object, but he didn't. He asked: 'What did you see when you found yourself within me?'
'Whiteness,' I said with a shrug, remembering all too vividly the descent into myself. I shuddered.
'And what is white, Declan, if it isn't the presence of all colours? If you can accept that the world is composed of these conflicting energies, can you also accept that you are somehow all of them, good and bad? Think before you give me your answer. When you looked, were you the only glimmer of whiteness, or were there many?'
I thought, though I knew the answer without thinking.
'I saw a single white light, and it was me.'
'I know. You are more than a pianist, Declan. You are my sword. You have to cut the cancer out of me.'
Nine
I turned my back on him, but I couldn't walk away. I felt cold, colder than I should. It was a symptom of my discomfort, I am sure. The sun was higher now, life slowly filtering back out onto the wet streets. A flock of seagulls had drifted inland. I was ashamed and confused. I didn't know what I was supposed to think. Malachi was talking, but his words sounded like a grim urban fairy tale. I wasn't a prince or a white knight. I had no skill outside music, and I had never heard of ragtime piano playing slaying dragons.
Looking at the last twenty four hours objectively, I had seen more than I could be expected to absorb, and I was frightened. That fear was at the root of it all, the great motivator.
'Why me?' It sounded lame, but it was the most honest reaction I could give. I didn't turn to face him, I didn't want to see his face because I had a fair idea what I would see. 'I don't want to be a hero. I want to go home to Aimee. Can't you find another white light to lead your crusade?'
'There are no others, Declan. You are the White and I am your protectorate. The task is yours… you were born for it. Let me inside your head. There are memories of our pasts together you should share.'
'And what if I say no? What if I start walking and keep on going until I am well away from here? What then?'
'We would die. You quickly, me more slowly.'
That was the betrayal he spoke of. Frustrated, I threw the stone staff into the gutter, wanting nothing to do with it. I felt the tentative touch of Malachi's mind on mine. Felt his presence. Sensed his discomfort at being inside a hostile place. I waited for his next party trick, wondering what he might show me or pull from my childhood that could bear some relation on this moment. There was no falling this time, only blackness and sounds; shouting. Battle cries, the clash of steel on steel on all sides. Frightened horses. A blood red sky. And amid it all, a figure in white, blazing like a child's impression of a glorious hero striving against evil. Streaming hair and battle frenzy, bodies at its feet, broken and bloodied. We shared much, our features close if not the same. But oureyes. . . He bore the scars of my blindness, vacant sockets filled with blood, crying red tears. . . I felt sick, spinning, felt the lure of his presence and the rising blood lust. I was feverish, my blade heavy in my tired arms. I swung again, bringing the sword to bear on a red face-painted foe. Without second thought, I dropped to one knee and plunged my blade into my enemy's groin, blood gouting as I pulled it free to face the melee, and had to react instantly to parry an overhead blow aimed at smashing my skull. I gutted the deliverer, but took a blow on the side of the head from an unseen foe and found myself spinning away. . . spinning… spinning until –
My hand moved to level the sword but I was holding a gun. A six shot Peacemaker. I was looking out of new eyes at a man clad in black leather, standing twenty paces distant. Tumbleweed chasing between us. I had never fired a gun, I knew, and I was going to die because I had no time to learn. I pulled the trigger and watched my bullet punch into the man in black's shoulder. It spun him, sending his own shot high and wide. I pulled the trigger again, punching a hole through his throat, and again, opening a third eye in his forehead before he hit the dirt. I felt the overwhelming flood of relief from the ground and the air around me.
I re-holstered my Peacemaker and saw my reflection in the begrimed window of the Saloon Bar. I saw my own face, older and craggier, but very much my own. I saw the hollows where there should have been eyes and they made me nauseous. I staggered and vomited onto the dusty street.
I saw more, but the memories were abhorrent. They touched chords, stirred emotions, traces of other personalities within me that weren't mine, drawing me ever deeper into Malachi's web. I bore them for as long as I was able, and then I could take no more. I imagined the sky above the burning town to be a membrane holding me into Malachi's memories. I saw my tramp weighed down with the bodies of birds flocking to him; I saw decay in everything about him; I saw the Oz Parasites and others like them tearing up the streets; I saw kids in gangs and adults with knives, the sickness killing Malachi, and I concentrated on ripping a tear through the fabric of that membrane, giving me air to breath and a chance to escape.
And then I was looking at myself and I knew it was me, not some trick. I reeled, putting out a hand to test the solidity of the world as much to steady myself. I hated him then. 'They weren't. . . They weren't. . . me, were they?'
'Others like you,' I heard Malachi say from a thousand miles distant and receding. 'Whites, but you are right, they weren't y
ou. This, here and now, is your time, not some past. The threat you witnessed is as real now as it ever was. I fear it is always the time of wickedness and there we falter because our season is not so long and good men are few.'
'I don't have a choice in this, do I?' I observed, second-guessing him. We both knew what the truth was, but I needed to hear Malachi say it out loud.
'There is always a choice, Declan. Never think that there isn't or we would be as corrupt as the Red. It is only that we may not wish to make our choice. That comes down to the individual. Let me show you yours so you might make it.'
He walked past me without looking back to see if I was following. I didn't know whether to. Kids in rags chased by us, spinning and throwing insults and garbage and broken glass. They looked at me and laughed. Jeered. All that I had been was denounced by their mocking laughter. As Malachi said, it was beyond me. I wanted to be alone to think, but I needed to know more, so I followed him as he walked to the HighLevelBridge.
I don't know if his choice of bridges was deliberate, but I suspect it was. Taking me back to where I fell made me think about what tomorrow ought to have held, not the way it was shaping up. He stood in the half-light waiting for me to catch up.
'You asked what would happen if you were to walk away?' I nodded. I felt twisted and chewed up, coming back here. The rain had washed my blood from the pavement, but it was there, indelibly marked into the stones. 'You can't walk away, Declan. You are part of this city now, tied to it. Your link is as strong and as permanent as mine has ever been. Your resurrection is dependent upon its health. Your life isn't permanent. You breathe as long as you are within the boundaries of my influence. If you were to walk across the river now, leaving the boundary of the city you would die. There is no going home, Declan. I wish there was. I do not expect your forgiveness now. I do not deserve it. I should have told you sooner, but I could not. I am sorry.'
'I can't believe you,' I said. It wasn't an objection. It was the truth. I couldn't believe him. I couldn't believe there was no going home. I couldn't believe I was his saviour. I couldn't believe I was to become some sort of killer. 'I can't. I won't kill for you, old man. I won't raise a hand.' I felt sick to the core.
Malachi nodded knowingly, smug. 'I wouldn't have it any other way, my son. You would not be you if it were otherwise.' He let me go, knowing I would return. Knowing I had no choice but to.
I started to walk, my freedom at stake. If I made it to the other side I was free. I determined to keep going and never look back. Early morning mist shrouded everything from twenty feet in, a netherworld of shades and ghosts that I had become a part of. Inky black shapes wavered like spectres in the fog. I felt a peculiar sense of longing. Longing to join those spectres in the inky black. Longing after the arms that could have been there to carry me home.
He was right. I saw it in my hands first. As I approached the mist the dissolution began. An intense white light blistered out of the cracks. I recognised the effect from Malachi's fingers. I wouldn't reach the fogbank, if I kept on going I would erupt into a brilliant white radiance that would only dissolve to become part of it and before the morning was through I would have dissipated with the wind.
Falling to my knees I screamed and clawed at my face, wanting those wretched eyes out of my head, wanting everything to be back the way it had been yesterday. Wanting to be a piano player again. I didn't have the guts to pick myself up and carry on walking into oblivion. I could only cry:
'What do you want me to do?'
My words came back to me on the wind. There was no easy answer. I could only pick myself up and start walking back to face down whatever monsters this tomorrow had in store.
I experienced a fleeting awareness of something very pure, charged, and yet quite empty; an uncomfortable adrenal exultation as I lost touch with all of the more individual aspects of self.
I had lied when I said I couldn't cry: I could. I cried tears of blood for myself and for everyone whose life I was about to touch.
Theme Two. . . In The City
For he who lives more lives than one,
More deaths than one must die.
Oscar Wilde,
The Ballad Of Reading Gaol.
I go amongst the buildings of a city and I see men hurrying along
To what?
The Creature has a purpose and his eyes are bright with it.
John Keats,
Letter, 1819.
The people are the city.
Shakespeare,
Coriolanus.
Lit Up Like The Deuce
One
And then a miracle.
I heard it first as a flutter; delicate, the tiny sound of wing beats no more than vibrations in the stagnant air, soft against my cheek like the touch of a gentling lover. I didn't open my eyes, not at first. I savoured the cool caress of the breeze as it laved the contours of my skin, laboured within thatsoupy tranquillity. I thought about anything except what horrors might be waiting for me to open my eyes and see them. Anything.
And I hated Malachi for that; for his gift. His double-edged sword. Already, I feared what I had so hungrily sought. How different a few hours could make the world. It made so little sense, but that was the cold reality of the lesson and I had no choice but to learn to accept it.
Then the sounds truly began to fill my ears; they started as a low, inconsistent thrum, whippourwilling like a reed caught in a rush, and built in vibrancy and pitch as weight of numbers added insistency to the tiny flutters.
I had no conception of what miracle or monstrosity I might see, and even had I had some inkling it would have paled against the reality; the truth being far stranger than any fiction I might have been capable of conjuring.
I opened my stolen eyes only for the world to explode into a full vibrant palette of colour that threatened to overwhelm me.
Butterflies, speckles of colour, wings churning minute ripples through the air, their number amplifying the bizarre effect so much so that I could feel the wind coming off them tangibly enough to make raising my head from my hands a genuine physical challenge. But I did it. And I looked up.
A golden syrup of spring light had broken over the arches of the bridge while I had hidden within myself. It tingled curiously as it brushed my skin, felt soothing, warm. I let myself bask in that warmth, feeling safe for the first time in as long as I could remember.
I wanted to laugh. Safe. What the hell was safe? And how could I possibly translate my current predicament into an image of an oasis, a haven? How could I mix things up so drastically?
A host of cabbage white butterflies settled on my head and shoulders, their tiny bodies weighing nothing. I stood, slowly, careful not to disturb the magic that kept the butterflies anchored to my body. The world was crazy, but then, I suspected, so was I. I lifted my hands above my head, then allowed them to float down until my arms were horizontal, forming a shaky perch. I let my head tilt back, took several deep breaths, and took a good long look at the sky… but instead of the sky I saw a funnel of darkness that streaked up through the light, and in that funnel I saw thousands upon thousands of butterflies spilling out of the darkness to swarm over my body and the bridge, their bodies a living plague of spinning motion.
In that light the plague might have been a million shards of glass breaking to shower over my head.
I felt the wing tips brush across my face, no edge to their abrasion, no cut to my skin, no blood, and I started to spin, thoughts erupting inside my brain to chase away the butterflies.
I began to scream; not a mad scream; not a frightened scream; I let my lungs empty to the sound of an alive scream.
I was flapping my arms and dancing through the blanket of butterflies that smothered the bridge, crushing thousands of the perfect insects beneath my clumsy feet. But I didn't care. Inside, I felt buoyant. I felt alive and it was the best, the most intense, feeling I have ever had to try to explain.
Of Malachi there was no sign. I was too caught up in the
freakishness of the scene to care, but I should have noticed a good deal sooner than I did. Instead, I was alive with a whole cacophony of unlikely thoughts, and not all of them about butterflies. I had stumbled into the middle of something, I knew that, but was I the cause? Was it my presence that triggered the insect congregation or would it have happened anyway? Was it some freakish ritual that welcomed spring each year? Something that set butterflies apart from the other winged brethren of winter and summer? I couldn't know, but part of me was scared by the thought that maybe I was the catalyst, that something about me had changed radically enough for my body to become a beacon a magnet for the entire butterfly kingdom so that I drew them as a corpse draws flies.
I stopped spinning. Stopped trying to chase them away, and looked around me for the first time since Malachi had left me. The bridge hadn't changed. The far side, the Gateshead side, was tauntingly close but I wasn't going any nearer, not after what I had seen. I turned my back on everything that waited over there and started to walk back through the butterflies, crushing their tiny bodies under my feet once more.
I was crying.
I am not certain why, but there were tears on my cheeks. I made no move to wipe them away. Instead, I trudged slowly back into the city, not caring who saw me or the state that they saw me in.
Two
I said it was a miracle, I know, but that's not strictly true.
It wasn't a miracle so much as it was a rebirth, my coming out of my own cocoon, emerging with my own wings, if you like. I like that image. I think it's apt.
Still, being born again wasn't easy, not like being born the first time when my mind was empty and I had no ideas of what I might expect. Second time around, I was torn between pillar and post, grief and joy. Grief for the life I had lost, joy for the life I had somehow found. It was a dream, like flying was a dream, like touching the stars and bringing them to my lips was a dream, but it was life as well. It was another chance to walk with my friends, another chance to catch that bus, another chance to be that brilliant shooting star, to blaze across the blue-black sky above the city. Another chance.