by Guy Adams
‘If God could sing,’ said Adrien, ‘she’d still beat Him I reckon.’
Erik wailed with pleasure, grabbed Adrien and swept him up into a hug. ‘You are delicious!’ he cried. ‘Hurry back with all your friends.’
We left as quickly as we could, waving and grinning and doing our best to appear very much like three people who could be completely and utterly trusted.
‘We’re not really coming back are we?’ Adrien asked.
‘Not a chance,’ I told him. ‘Once we get back to the tunnels I’m not leaving again.’
‘That’s mean,’ Gabi said. ‘It’ll make him really sad.’
‘It would make me really sad having to listen to any more of her noise,’ Adrien replied.
‘Horrible,’ Gabi said and I could sense a tantrum forthcoming.
‘We have to think of safety first,’ I told her, ‘and I’m sure he’ll get an audience really. The way she’s singing lots of people are bound to turn up aren’t they?’
‘You’re just saying that to make me shut up, you hated her too.’
She had me there.
Chapter Fifteen
WE CUT UP la Fayette and then towards la Victoire. As we emerged across from the synagogue, the air was once-more filled with noise. A chorus of frogs all croaking in the swamp-like world la Victoire had become. The buildings were covered in vines and thick moss, water dripped from the old stone, trickling down the street in a rubbish-filled river. Trees emerged from windows and split wounds in the tarmac of the road. The entire street was a jungle.
‘It’s beautiful,’ said Gabi, her bad mood vanishing at the sight.
Adrien ran ahead, splashing in the shallow water running down the street.
‘Be careful!’ I told him. It seemed like I was always telling him to be careful.
‘It’s fine,’ he said, chasing after a large grasshopper that had jumped from the leaves of a bush as he’d run towards it.
Fine? Not a word I associated with the city post-Change but I was tired of always telling him off and just kept watch as we walked down the street. He picked up a stick and began poking at the undergrowth as we passed, I hoped nothing lethal poked back.
Above us the frogs continued their music. They were sat on ledges and window sills, filling up every spare inch of horizontal space. It was beautiful and I told Gabi so, happy to show I agreed with her. She laughed as a brightly coloured bird burst from the branches of a cypress tree that had rooted itself in the bricks of a mobile-phone store.
‘Look at this!’ Adrien shouted.
I jogged over to join him. He was looking down at where a large, deep pool had formed in the road. In the water great schools of luminescent fish swirled around in arcs, bands of yellow and green lighting up the dark water.
As we watched, the fish stopped swimming and tilted up towards us. Panicking slightly, I pulled Adrien back as they rose to the surface.
‘They’re only fish,’ he said, pulling away.
‘That means nothing,’ I told him. ‘They could be killer fish.’
One by one, their bright, pointed faces emerged from the water, the surface broken by thirty or more as they stared at us in curiosity.
‘See?’ Adrien said, moving back to the edge of the water. ‘They just want to look at us.’
‘It’s funny,’ said Gabi as I moved back to stand next to Adrien. ‘We want to see them because we think they’re weird. But to them we’re the weird ones and they can’t stop staring.’
‘Everything’s weird,’ said Adrien. ‘You just have to think about it hard enough to notice sometimes.’
We stood there for a while then began to circle the water; as we moved so did the fish, turning so they continued to face us. Noticing this, Adrien couldn’t resist switching directions, then running around the edge so that the fish spun to keep up with him. I was just about to shout for him to be careful when I stopped myself. Just for once I decided to let him enjoy himself without me moaning about it.
Seeing him laugh, just like a normal kid, one that doesn’t have to think about monsters on every street, made me almost as happy as he was. After a moment I started running around in the opposite direction, Gabi giggling on my shoulders as she bounced up and down.
The fish separated out into two circles, each turning in an opposite direction so they could follow each of us. That made us laugh even more.
Three people in a stupid world, laughing at something beautiful and strange as, around us, a chorus of frogs grew louder and louder.
Eventually we ran away from the pool, jumping over the creepers and roots along the Rue la Victoire, still laughing, a moment of pure pleasure.
I’m glad of it. It means that, as awful as what happened was, at least they both died happy.
Chapter Sixteen
THE VEGETATION OF la Victoire thinned out as we walked. Once we’d reached Lorette it had vanished altogether.
‘One day,’ said Adrien, ‘the whole of Paris will be like that. All trees and stuff.’
‘Good,’ said Gabi, ‘that would be nice.’
I think she was right. The sooner the city stopped remembering what it was and got on with being what it is the better we’d all like it.
We’d reached the junction with Saint-Lazare when they attacked. The first we knew of them was the shadows suddenly sweeping across the ground in front of us. Looking up, silhouetted against the sun we saw what cast the shadows. There were two of them, gargoyles set free from their perches at the Notre Dame, their elongated snouts sniffing at the air, their stone mouths snapping open and closed at the prospect of food.
Before I had chance to even think, Gabi was snatched from my shoulders. She kicked out in panic, her heel smacking off the side of my head. For a moment I was disorientated, my vision blurred as I flailed around trying to snatch her back. I felt myself stumble and then I fell on my back in the road, the air knocked from me.
Adrien was screaming and suddenly he flashed past me, held fast in the jaws of the second gargoyle.
I shouted his name and jumped to my feet but the gargoyles were too quick, I ran down the street watching as they became smaller and smaller in the sky, black silhouettes then nothing.
After everything, all it had taken was a few seconds, a moment of shock and I was alone. Both of the kids taken from me.
Chapter Seventeen
I IMAGINE YOU find that funny? After everything I’d done to rescue Adrien and Gabi, after the things we’d faced. Then… BOOM! All over. In seconds. No warning, no foreshadowing, just two kids dead. It had all been a waste of time. A waste.
Two dead kids and me left stood in the middle of the city, alone.
What? You expected a happy ending? Life doesn’t do those anymore. Maybe it never did. In life, things are sudden, random, pointless and often heart-breaking.
Get over it.
Although I probably never will.
Chapter Eighteen
STANDING THERE ON Lorette I had no idea what to do. I wondered if it was worth trying to pursue Adrien and Gabi but, really, what would have been the point? There was no way they were still alive and, even if they were, they wouldn’t be by the time I got to Notre Dame.
So the only option left was to go home without them.
Except I couldn’t be bothered. I just didn’t care. The entire reason for the last twenty-four hours or so had just been snatched away. It left me feeling hollow. I think I stood there for about half an hour, just staring into the sky.
When I eventually turned around and carried on walking the way we had been going I was still on automatic, just moving for the sake of it.
Did I cry? I don’t remember. I don’t think so. I think that would have come once the numbness, the shock had passed. Of course I never had time, I’d only moved a few metres when there was the roar of a van engine and suddenly the air was filled with smoke and a popping like gunfire.
I dropped to my knees.
The smoke rolled down the street, thick, white and odou
rless. It settled around me until I could barely see.
There was another volley of the popping sound and something shot right past my face and imbedded itself with a hard cracking sound in the bricks of the building behind me. I reached out my fingers and felt a thin line of wire. As I moved, I became aware of others, a whole net of wires. A web.
The smoke was tasteless but had a sweet, nutty odour to it. It made me think of the fairground, of the sputter of theatrical dry ice from machines on the ghost train.
The van engine had stopped and, for a moment the street was utterly silent. Then there came a light, clicking sound, like castanets. As it grew louder, I saw shadows in the thinning smoke. It looked like a line of men marching. Then, as they reached the wires I assumed, they split off and began forming strange, irregular shadows as they ducked and danced around the web. The wires began pinging with a musical sound as they plucked them, drawing closer and closer.
I began to move in the opposite direction.
With every step the wire net seemed to become more complex. Forced to zig-zag my way along, feeling for gaps big enough to pull myself through. The men behind were quicker, their clicking getting louder at every moment.
I turned to look and suddenly a face loomed up out of the smoke. It was the painted, wooden face of a puppet, the clicking sound was its mouth opening and shutting like a decorative nutcracker.
It reached for me and I fell back into the wires, trying to fight it off—though not too hard, I had very little fight left in me. I punched it but all that did was bruise my knuckles. You can’t punch wood.
After a few seconds I was surrounded by them, all puppets, all with different designs and costumes. A pirate, a judge, a queen, a cave-woman. They held me down and there was a bright flash and the clicking sound of a camera going off. One of the puppets had a camera for its eye, the flash bursting from its open mouth.
As they dragged me behind them, their wooden fingers snipping the trapping wires as they passed, I heard the sound of whirring and the camera puppet began producing scrolls of paper from a slit in its belly.
We approached the van, the door was opened and I was thrown inside.
The last thing I saw before the door was closed was the camera puppet pasting one of the sheets he had produced onto the door of a shop. It was a picture of my face beneath a bold announcement: APPEARING SHORTLY AT THE THEATRE DU GRAND GUIGNOL.
Chapter Nineteen
WHICH ALMOST BRINGS us up to date doesn’t it? But I’ve started this story so I’ll finish it properly. After all, I know what happens to me when it ends. I’m ready for that. Maybe I’ll even welcome it but I’m not rushing this just for you. Out there. Taking pleasure in all this. You’ll listen until I finish, I may not have much power here but I still have that.
I lay on the floor of the van, surrounded by the puppets. they swayed as the van took the tight corners, their dead, painted eyes fixed on me.
It was only a couple of minutes before the van pulled up and the doors were opened. They carried me out and I saw the outside of this place, the old theatre, the horror palace, reborn at the centre of Rue Chaptal.
I’d never heard of it before. Why should I? It closed years ago, but as they carried me through the doors and into the dark, velvet-lined foyer I saw the posters on the walls. Severed heads sat in thick red paint, skeletons looming over terrified victims, bizarre creatures with crimson eyes looming towards the reader.
‘Ah!’ said a voice. ‘Perfect. We have our matinee.’
I tried to look but the puppets blocked my view and I was carried back stage and dumped in a threadbare dressing room. The carpet was bald and the cream paint turned bile yellow on the damp walls.
I stood up and saw myself in the dusty mirror fixed on one wall.
It was a face I hadn’t paid attention to for a long time, and I had the strange sensation of not quite recognising myself.
As I was staring, a small, elderly man entered. He was dressed in old-fashioned clothes, black britches and dirty stockings. A brown jacket, frayed around the edges just about concealed a shirt splattered with old blood stains. He peered at me over a pair of old, wire glasses. His scalp was flaking and he made a habit of scratching it, the gap beneath his nails crammed thick with wedges of yellow, dead skin.
‘Name?’ he asked preparing to write on a clipboard.
I didn’t bother to answer.
He sighed. ‘It’s not vitally important of course but it would be useful to have it. Monsieur DuChamp does like these things done properly.’
‘Monsieur DuChamp?’
‘Current owner of the theatre and international patron of the arts. It is thanks to his kind efforts that we are one more a thriving concern. After being dark for nearly sixty years, the Grand Guignol once more thrills its audiences with the most horrific, most taboo productions the stage has ever seen.’
‘Never heard of it.’ I enjoyed the appalled look on the old man’s face.
‘Never heard of it? We are a landmark! A blazing star in the history of theatre. From the last breath of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth we offered dismemberment nightly. Eyes plucked. Throats cut. Nobody ever knew our methods, the recipe for our stage blood a closely guarded secret. Of course, once the Nazis showed the world what real atrocity looked like we seemed tame by comparison but for thirty years there were no other nightmares as vital as ours. The audience used to pass out you know. Indeed, we used to gauge the success of our little stories by how many could make it out of the stalls on their own two legs!’
He laughed and the skin around his lips split with the effort, a thick, almost black juice seeping from the wound.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, mopping at the liquid with a stained handkerchief. ‘Like noble Paris herself, I am not quite what I used to be.’ He folded the handkerchief away. ‘Indeed, what is? Even our theatre has changed. I must confess I am not entirely sure what live streaming is but I am assured by Monsieur DuChamp that it is terribly successful. Some of the most noble and wealthy figures on the planet watch our little shows from afar. The magic of the Grand Guignol spreading out across the world.’
‘The world’s dead,’ I told him. ‘You might have noticed?’
‘Ah!’ He smiled, more carefully now, not wanting to split his wound again. ‘You are equating the world with its inhabitants. Worlds don’t die young man, at least, not so easily as all that. Yes, many died after the unusual events of a few months ago.’
‘The Change.’
‘Indeed, I believe that is what everyone is calling it. But just because some of the population died that it is not to say the world is empty. Clearly not, the two of us are here are we not?’ He scratched at his jacket. ‘Accepted, one of us is more “alive” in the scientific sense than the other but I feel we are beyond such shallow viewpoints now, are we not? And, just as there has always been those who rule and those who serve, Monsieur DuChamp and his fellow members of the Hellfire Club have risen to even greater positions of authority. They have divided the planet between them, with agents working in London, New York, Tokyo… and of course Monsieur DuChamp here in Europe.’
‘Authority over what?’ It seemed beyond stupid. There was nothing left to rule and I told him so.
‘Where there is a… now, what was the word Monsieur DuChamp used? Yes… “infrastructure”. I believe that was it. There will always be a society. You have electrical power, yes? You have food. You have weaponry. And you have… again the term is somewhat alien to me, “Internet”? You have a population. The world may have changed young man but there will always be those who lead. Monsieur DuChamp is one of those people and the audience, those highly respected souls who take pleasure in our little horror show are others. Put simply, even if the world’s population only consisted of two people and a stick, one of those people would be holding the stick and the other would be bowing before him. It is human nature, young man, and let us be thankful for it. Now, what is your name?’
I told h
im, there seemed little harm in it. I was still thinking of what he’d said. It seemed—seems—utterly ridiculous to me. The Change broke everything and yet there are still some of you out there who insist on trying to maintain the old ways. You think you’re superior. You think you’re rich. What’s rich? Having a full belly and a bed for the night. Anything else is disposable now and the sooner you all remember that the sooner we can get on, fix what’s broken and evolve.
But you don’t want to, do you? You’re happy sitting there in front of your screens, experiencing horror second-hand. Does it really excite you? Hearing my story? hearing about awful things you’ll never have to experience, walled away in your pretend homes, your isolated caves?
Who needs evolution when you have easy entertainment?
‘So what do I do?’ I asked the old man.
‘You just tell your story,’ he explained, ‘the things you saw out there. The monsters you’ve faced. I imagine you’ve lost loved ones?’
‘Yes,’ I said, a wave of anger rising up inside me to have this ghoul so much as mention it.
‘Excellent, they’ll love hearing about that.’
‘And then what?’
‘What? After your tale is done? Well, then we offer the final act but you don’t have to worry about that. We’re terribly skilled you know. Naturally it will be somewhat uncomfortable and protracted—our audience does love to hear the screams—but it won’t last forever and then you can rest.’
‘Rest? You mean die?’
‘Well, in a sense, though this place is filled with the souls of the dead. Nobody ever really dies in theatre after all, you’ll be up and about again in time for the evening performance. Our cast grows twice nightly.’
He stood up. ‘Now I shall leave you to prepare. Curtain up in an hour. Break a leg, as they say,’ he chuckled, ‘and if you don’t then rest assured, once your tale is done the cast of players will certainly break it for you.’