by Mark A. King
The car stopped. Iona rolled and tumbled, her back pressing against some metal tools. He’s left tools in the back—bloody amateur. She thought about rubbing her hands against what felt like a screwdriver and spanner, but neither would break what felt like cable-ties around her wrists. Grasping the spanner, tucking it into the back of her jeans, she feigned a sleeping posture.
Footsteps. Heavy and purposeful.
The boot flung open. Sunlight hit Iona like a stun-grenade.
“Rise and shine, Detective Stone,” boomed a voice in the ocean of white.
She grumbled and moaned. Then she opened her eyes wide, attempting to look surprised and terrified.
“Boss says you’re important. Wants to talk to you. Don’t give me no trouble.” The man was coming into focus. He looked like a bizarre experimental bulldog and rhino cross-breed. “I won’t have any problem in sorting you out if you give me hassle. Got it?”
Iona barely understood. His East-end accent was ridiculously exaggerated, the pitch of his voice only just in human auditory range and her mild concussion wasn’t helping either. She mumbled an affirmative sound.
He ripped the tape off her mouth and the stinking rag came with it. Iona gulped large lungfuls of clean air. “Mind taking the restraints off?” she asked. “It’s not like I pose you any threat, is it?”
He paused and looked her up and down. He retrieved a flick-knife from his jacket pocket and reached across, slicing through the home-made hand-cuffs.
“Give me a hand out?” Iona said.
He smiled at her. “Cheeky bitch. Don’t ask. Don’t get. Yeah, bollocks, why not?”
Now? No, he might fall inwards, trapping her.
She rubbed her wrists together, circulating the blood, easing the numbness. He leaned in and grabbed her arm. The muscle-freak dragged her roughly to the lip of the boot, where she sat upright. He moved back a few paces, giving her a chance to get out on her own.
Now!
She launched herself at him.
His eyes startled. Shock? Surprise? Disappointment? Iona didn’t care. He was wide and powerful, all that force squashed into a ground-hugging shape. Iona was a good six inches taller than him, and she used that height and reach to crack the spanner down hard on his skull.
A thud. Splattered blood. Her wrist stung as the spanner recoiled against the chunky bone.
It would have dropped a normal person.
“Bitch!”
He was a man of few words, and Iona didn’t think it was worth hearing more of them. She repeated the attack, this time smashing the metal into his collarbone. A crack. Probably not a full break, maybe a fracture.
He was incapacitated, but Iona suspected it would not be for long.
She took her opportunity and sprinted.
Cal
Exhausted, I struggled to stand. My feet slipped in the mud on the bank of the Serpentine.
My clothes clung to me heavily—they felt like they were subject to special localised gravity. I started to shiver. The harsh, cold rain appeared black in the brooding Serpentine light.
“I’m not being funny,” I said to the hat-wearing non-apparition. “But just who the hell are you?”
“I told you already,” the man replied, his voice urgent and clipped. I thought about pressing him, telling him that he’d better not give me any more bullshit.
He was fidgety—with a nervous energy that I’d sometimes see in the junkies and winos hanging around Tube stations and local parks. Glancing towards the middle of the lake, he said, “I’ll explain all, but not here. It is not safe. She will be with us shortly, and I’m not sure I can protect you.”
He grabbed my soaking sleeve and sprinted, dragging me behind him.
I was still trying to get my breath back and the running wasn’t helping. “Protect me? From what, exactly?”
He didn’t slow down; if anything he seemed to pick up momentum. Checking over his shoulder every few seconds. Without skipping a step, he said, “You’ve seen what she’s capable of. Save your energy. We’ll talk in a minute.”
Breathing was laborious. The icy rain stung my face. The oncoming wind causing tremors in my muscles. My clothes stuck to me like magnets. I feared if I asked him to stop he would keep going and leave me behind. I was less worried about an explanation and more worried about what might be chasing us. Whoever—or whatever—she was, hat-man didn’t seem keen on confrontation.
He ran through the park with ease. For an older man, he was lithe and spritely. The wind and rain didn’t seem to be clinging to him as it did to me. His cream suit didn’t have darkened patches near his ankles or even rain spots on his shoulders. I thought I saw a faint halo of steam rising from his sleek frame, but I brushed this off as more likely to be stinging rain in my eyes.
We zigzagged across the pathways. At one point, I was sure we’d doubled back on ourselves, but eventually we came to the east of the park. It was empty. The city was bathed in eerie, apocalyptic light.
We ran past the security walls and fences of the US Embassy. The guards were the first people we’d seen in ten minutes. They paid no attention to us; they seemed to be daydreaming, focused on some distant, other world. The giant sentinel eagle spread its wings high above them, its gaze, too, a cold blankness and eternal protectorate over the streets.
We scurried through the maze of waterlogged streets. Then, beside the formal gardens of Grosvenor Square, the bloke in the hat ran into an alleyway. He motioned for me to go behind him and instead of standing in the shadows out of the way, he stood in the middle of a security-light halo that must have come on in the gloom. He stared at the alleyway entrance like he expected the woman to come running after us at any moment.
After five or so minutes, the clouds eased and the rain turned to limp drizzle. Hat-man faced me. “I think we’re safe now. Come here.” He pulled me nearer to him. He felt warm.
My body was violently shivering and my teeth were chattering. “Look buddy,” I warned him, “you’re a nice-looking bloke and everything, and I’m flattered, but it’s just not my thing. I‘m—”
“Don’t be a dickhead,” Hat-man said, shaking his head. “Not everyone wants to jump your bones, you know. I’m trying to dry you a little.”
I stood near him and I swear I could feel heat. Not the furnace heat of stepping off an air-conditioned plane and into the holiday sun, but the sort of faint heat that radiates from open palms cradling a warm mug of coffee. Perhaps it was the extraction vents we were standing beside, but within moments, I felt warmer, even if my clothes were still soaked. I was no longer shaking and I no longer worried about hypothermia.
The drizzle turned to fine mist. We strolled slowly away from the stalking threat of whatever I’d seen on the lake and ended up on the fringes of Mayfair. I’d never really stopped to look at this place. The finesse of the architecture, the flourish of the garden design, the artwork of the street lights—all should have inspired me, but they only depressed me. They reminded me of board games, unrelenting greed in the face of poverty, and oppressive opulence of the privileged few.
Mayfair reflected a city that would allow oligarchs free reign, while humans slept in bins, innocent folk were killed in armed robberies, and desperate people were driven to throw themselves in front of trains.
“So—I’ll cut to the chase. You promised me answers! What’s going on?” I demanded.
“Ohhhh,” Hat-man replied. “That’s such an open question.” He raised his eyebrows in an expression I could only describe as mischievous. His body was far more relaxed than earlier. “Care to narrow it down for me? Why don’t you just ask me something direct. Something blunt. You might not like the answers. You might not even understand what I say. However, I promise I will be honest. I’ll tell you what, why don’t we grab a drink and on the way, you can think of the burning questions you want to ask me. You probably shouldn’t have alcohol, am I right?”
I said nothing, just nodded.
“Well, how about something
a bit stronger than alcohol then? I know this great boutique tea room just round the corner.”
We walked the glass boulevard of Oxford Street, the lights spilling out into the brightening day, the sun starting to take the upper hand once more. There seemed to be an increase in activity. The glossy black taxis. The red double-deckers. The grey movement of shoppers. Self-fulfilment. Excess.
“Glorious, isn’t it?” Hat-man asked. “Just look at the magnificence of the day, what the city can achieve, making people happy. This is what it’s all about. The streets of London are truly paved with opportunity. A place where dreams are made real.”
“The streets are paved with dog shit, mate,” I replied. “Chewing gum, cigarette butts, spit, puke and the desperate, the lonely, and the homeless.”
“You know what?” he asked. “You’re a funny bloke. Always looking at the ground, always seeing the darkness, the negativity. You’re missing the positivity that is all around you.”
I rubbed my day-old stubble. “You’re not the first person to say that. But it’s hard when the world works the way it does. When you’ve seen passengers of the Underground walking around defeated by life. When seeing a smile is a rare thing and hearing a laugh is unheard of.” I thought of all the stony-faced commuters only ever trudging from platform to platform or stampeding through the tunnels prepared to knock over old grannies or kids to get the next train. “Then there are the jumpers—”
“Oh, yes—I was wondering how long it would take you to get on to them,” Hat-man said, rather too enthusiastically. He was clearly taking the piss.
“I’m saying nothing more. It’s me asking the questions,” I reminded him.
He looked at me like a small child might look at a fax machine. “Yes, yes, of course. We shall say no more until we reach the tea house.”
We continued to walk along the shopper’s paradise. Beneath the whoosh and splash of the passing traffic in the surface water, beneath the hubbub of the returning pedestrians, I could hear the gutters gurgling, swallowing up the offerings from the sky. Further beneath that, I swear I could hear the surging storm drains as they flowed inevitably downwards; below that, the very rumble of trains.
I thought about the suicide. I wanted answers about it. That’s what I would ask him.
Tourists had started to venture out on the streets again. They looked at their maps and their phone apps, and thrust selfie-sticks skywards, oblivious to the possibility of distant lightning strikes.
“I worry about my sanity,” I complained.
“And if you’re unwell, you think talking to me will help?”
“Not really.”
He smiled. “Now you’re getting it, Cal. Just go with it. What other option do you have?”
We eventually ducked onto a side road, and the noise levels reduced. In the background, the static noise of London, in the foreground, just the rhythm of our steps and the frantic take-off flapping of obese pigeons.
We walked skinny, worn-cobble streets, the eroded bricks smooth underfoot. Down one of the many alleyways we found his tea house.
It certainly wasn’t a template high street franchise, but it was much more than a greasy trucker’s café. In keeping with the neighbourhood, the tea house was narrow and elongated backwards, so I could not see the back from the doorway. It flowed rearward and spilled downward, in tiers, like a canal through a series of locks.
“Hello, my good lady,” Mr. Winkle-picker said to the young woman behind the counter. “I’ll have my usual.”
“I’m not being funny, sir, but I don’t know what your usual is,” she replied.
She was about twenty. All multi-coloured hair and piercings.
“I’ll have a tea,” he replied. She went towards the shelf with the mugs on it. “No,” he stated. “If I wanted a mug with a plastic tasting tea-bag on the end of a bit of string, I’d have gone into a franchise or a low-rent pub. I would like a china cup, please. A saucer. The tea must be made with fresh leaves, filtered through a strainer, and I would like to pour it myself—from a warmed china teapot.”
Rather than seeming aggrieved at this request, she nodded and smiled. “Yes, of course, sir. It’s nice to have someone who appreciates the finer things in life. How about your watery friend?”
She looked in my direction, her smile slightly skewed.
“Him? Oh, he’ll have some of that stuff that stains your insides black and keeps you awake for days.”
She giggled. “Yes, sir. I have just the thing. Take a seat at the back and I’ll bring it over. If I might be so bold as to suggest that there are facilities in the back with hand dryers that could dry clothing in a matter of minutes.”
There was a lack of natural light, yet it did not seem gloomy. The place was empty. Just the two of us and the assistant who served us.
I ascended the cast-iron spiral stairway to the toilet facilities. The room had the aroma of garden herbs; sage, rosemary, and mint. Darkened Serpentine water filled the sink as I washed my hands. I watched the brown water swirl down the basin and I thought about this man—and what he’d previously told me.
Could it be true? Could he be some ancient deity, the embodiment of daytime London? Surely such things were the stuff of fiction, of childhood stories. But then, scientists could only explain about ten percent of the fabric of the universe. If the brightest minds knew next to nothing, then anything was possible.
Knowing there were no other customers downstairs in the shop, I stripped and ran my soggy jeans through the super-strength jet hand-driers, burning myself a couple of times on the zips and rivets. I changed quickly for fear someone might come in and think my semi-clothed body arched towards the drier indicated some kind of funky fetish.
Dry and warm, I bounded down the stairs. As I curved round the final segment of the spiral staircase, I saw Mr. Winkle-picker and the young woman passionately kissing.
Slightly dumfounded, I wanted to say something witty, something insightful or cutting, but all that came out was an embarrassed groan.
After I endured several more seconds of the awkwardness that children feel when their parents snog, she separated from him. Without saying anything, she smiled at me.
Hat-man wiped his mouth with the polka-dot handkerchief that was neatly folded in the breast pocket of his cream jacket. He pointed towards our drinks, which I’d completely forgotten about, “Shall we?”
“Wh—what the hell was that?” I stuttered.
“That?” He questioned. “Oh ... that? What of it?”
“What the hell! Seriously. She’s probably a quarter of your age. In some cultures, you’d be considered a dirty pervert. Come on, you should know better. I mean, I’ve seen you hanging out at the bingo hall. That’s more your sort of crowd isn’t it? I can always take you back there if you want.”
“Bit ageist, don’t you think? In some cultures, people wouldn’t judge. It’s not like I forced myself on her. It happens.”
“Doesn’t make it right.”
“Who are any of us to judge attractiveness in others? Age is no more an indicator than colour, religion, or gender. Maturity, confidence, and experience are admirable qualities to have.”
I shook my head, as much in disbelief at my own judgements as in my dissatisfaction with the circumstances. He was right. “I don’t really believe who you are. How can I? You need to tell me who you are. Who you really are. You need to tell me what you want with me.”
He seemed calm and unflustered. He readied his cup and gently poured the tea until the fine china cup was just over half full. Then he poured in the milk and added diabetes-inducing levels of sugar. He stirred and gently placed the spoon on the saucer. “Look, Cal, I’m not going to do you a magic trick or something. It doesn’t work like that. My name is Abna Neito. Like I mentioned to you before, I am the brightness. The hopes and dreams of the city and the people in it.”
“This is bullshit.”
“Who do you think I am then, Cal?”
“Some freak. Som
e weirdo,” I replied. He looked hurt at this. “Or, maybe I’m so ill, so broken, so mentally fragile that you don’t exist at all and I’m sitting here having a conversation with myself.”
“How do you explain the drinks?”
“Maybe I ordered two sets. Totally opposite to each other.”
“What about the kiss? While you were drying your clothes, I was down here. How do you explain that?”
“Maybe it happened at different times. Maybe I kissed her. Maybe she didn’t kiss anyone. Maybe she’s not here at all.”
“Holy shit, Cal. You might well be ill; I am not denying that. But listen to yourself. As unreal as my explanation seems, your attempts at rationalising it are worse.”
“Well, it’s far more plausible than what you’re saying.”
“What about the lake?”
“I dragged myself out after hallucinating out there. I’m on strong meds. There was nothing there. You’re not here. It’s like that film—Fight Club, where the main characters are simply the same person. You’re only in my mind. The events on the water were a dream. Panic. I need to adjust my therapy. Maybe think about a different treatment plan. Medication—“
“Is this you speaking? Or your therapist?” He sipped his tea and let out a gentle sigh of satisfaction. “The woman on the lake is real. I am real. But you have been conditioned to not see us. Thousands of years of acclimatising have masked the reality—we were the stories that that were passed down through legends and myths. These stories have been forgotten. Have you heard the term preternatural, Cal?”
“No, I can’t say that I have.”
“Preternatural was a word popular in the Medieval era. It described the events that happen between the natural and supernatural—the thread joining the mundane and the miraculous. They used it to describe the acts of mankind that were nearer to those of God. This, Cal, is the world which I influence. The woman—the entity—on the Serpentine would have been blamed for the devilment in people.”
“And you?”