Pantheon 00 - Age of Godpunk

by James Lovegrove

  He shoved the planchette over to the YES on the board.

  “Bingo,” he said. “The spirits never lie.”

  Molly thumped him in the chest. Pretty hard, too. “Guy Lucas, you do that again and you can get the fuck out of here right now and never come back. I mean it. This isn’t the time for goofing around.”

  “Okay, okay. I apologise. I’m British. We find it difficult to do anything solemn with a straight face. You always say I should learn to hang loose. Well, okay. This is me, hanging loose.” He rolled his shoulders, cricked his neck. “I’m ready now. Let’s try again. I swear I’ll do it properly.”

  They laid their fingertips back on the planchette.

  “Spirits, can you hear me?” Molly intoned. “Return to us. Share with us your wisdom and knowledge. Are you there?”

  Nothing happened.

  Then, to his surprise, Guy felt the planchette begin to move. He wasn’t pushing it. Was Molly?

  The heart-shaped piece of wood slid across the board on its three stubby legs. It came to rest with its tip pointing firmly at YES.

  “Wow,” said Molly. “Groovy.”

  “Yeah, groovy,” Guy echoed uncertainly.

  “Go on, ask them a question,” she urged. “A real one, this time.”

  “Okay. Ummm... Will I graduate with a first?”

  “That’s your question?”

  “It’s important to me.”

  “Kind of materialistic, though. Thinking about your own worldly progress.”

  “Well, I don’t know. How about this? Spirits, do Molly and I have a future together?”

  “You can’t expect ––”

  The planchette interrupted her by moving. It scuttled over from YES to NO.

  “Oh,” said Molly, and “Oh,” said Guy too. She was embarrassed. He was crestfallen.

  “Why?” Guy blurted out, before he could stop himself.

  The planchette headed for the letters of the alphabet, arranged in two rows across the middle of the board. Gliding from one to another, it spelled out a word.

  M-A-D-N-E-S-S.

  “‘Madness’?” said Molly. “I don’t get.”

  “This is daft. Let’s stop.”

  “No. What is it saying? I’m not mad. Okay, so I can get a little flaky from time to time, but...”

  The planchette was on the move again. The whole thing was just too eerie. Guy knew he had nothing to do with its activity, and was almost entirely convinced that Molly wasn’t responsible either. She looked genuinely baffled, verging on distressed. Some other force was guiding the planchette, something from elsewhere. Their hands were mere passengers.

  P-O-S-S-E-S-S-I-O-N, the planchette said.

  Neither Molly nor Guy spoke.

  Finally Molly stammered, “W–what’s that supposed to – ?”

  The planchette raced back and forth, visiting five letters in swift succession.

  D-E-V-I-L.

  “Oh, God,” she breathed.

  The planchette darted to the same five letters again.

  D-E-V-I-L.

  And again.

  And again.

  Until at last Guy, with a cry of “That’s enough!” snatched his fingers away.

  The planchette shot across the room, as though fired from a catapult. It rebounded off the wall and skidded under Molly’s desk. It was as though energy had been building up in the thing, and the moment Guy let go, the energy had been violently released.

  Guy sat trembling, his gaze fixed on the planchette where it lay poking out beside the desk leg. He was aware that his breath was coming in short bursts, as though he had been sprinting. He no longer felt lightheaded. He was as sober as he had ever been, his entire body seeming electrified, every sense and synapse on high alert.

  He turned to look at Molly.

  Molly’s eyes were rolled back inside their sockets. Only the whites showed. Her head was canted slightly backwards. Her chest heaved.

  Then came the voice.

  It was not Molly’s voice.

  It was barely even a human voice.

  “Guyyy,” it grated. “Guyyyy Luuuucassss.”

  Guy nearly pissed himself then and there.

  The voice continued, growl-hissing from Molly’s throat like an escape of steam from a broken pipe. It sounded like the voice of someone who had not spoken in a thousand years, whose tongue was dust and whose lips were sand.

  “You’re mine, Guyyy. We belong together, we two. We have a bond that none can break. Your fate is fused with mine.”

  “Stop this. Molly, stop this. It isn’t funny.”

  “Molly isn’t here. You know who I am.”

  “No, I don’t. Molly, stop taking the piss. You’re totally weirding me out.” He said this, not because he believed she was playing a trick on him, but because he wanted to believe it. So much.

  “We’re never going to be apart,” the voice that wasn’t Molly’s said. “How else can it be? You made a commitment to me. Did you think that that wouldn’t matter? Did you think I’d forget?”

  Guy slapped her face. It was all he could think of to do. He needed to snap Molly out of this trance she was in, or whatever it was. But there was repugnance behind the blow, too. He had to make the horror of what was happening go away. Somehow. Anyhow.

  Molly reeled. Her eyelids fluttered like those of a sleeper coming round. Her hand went to her cheek.

  “Ow,” she said, and then, louder, “Owww. What the – ? Guy, why the hell did you just hit me?”

  “Why the hell did you just talk to me in that creepy voice?”

  “What creepy voice? What do you mean?”

  “You know damn well what I mean. Like a Scooby-Doo monster.”

  “I have no fucking idea what you’re going on about.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Oh, yeah. But I can tell you this, buster. Nobody hits me. Especially no man. Get out. Get out of here, this instant, or I call the cops.”

  Guy stood. He grabbed his velvet jacket and his army-surplus overcoat. “I’m going, all right. That was a really nasty little stunt you just pulled, Molly. Hope you’re pleased with yourself. Know what? The Ouija board was right. Madness. There’s something profoundly wrong with you, you crazy bitch.” He tapped his temple. “Up here. You are one seriously fucked-up human being.”

  He stormed out of the room. Molly’s housemates were downstairs, watching Callan on a tiny black-and-white portable. They peered out through the living-room doorway as he raged past.

  “’Bye,” Guy said to them, meaningfully, and slammed the front door behind him.

  THERE WAS A note in his pigeonhole in the porters’ lodge the next morning. All it said was:

  We need to talk. The Bodleian. Catte Street entrance. 4pm.

  M

  He made sure not to turn up. He spent the whole of the next fortnight scrupulously steering clear of Molly’s known haunts and spent as little time as he could in his room at college in case she sought him out there. He buried himself in his studies. His Keynes essay was one of his best, earning him a rare “A,” and he also turned in a pretty good dissection of the Critique Of Pure Reason and Kant’s counterargument to Hume’s assertions about empiricism.

  A second note came from Molly. This one he didn’t read at all, just tore up and chucked in the bin.

  The rational part of him kept insisting that it had all been a sham. Molly had put on a fake voice and groaned out that stuff about them belonging together, their fates being fused, all the rest. What for? Maybe to contradict the Ouija board’s initial verdict about their relationship. Maybe to provoke a row, for her own perverse satisfaction. Maybe to get back at him for that blowjob wisecrack. Maybe simply to mess with his head. Who knew? Some barmy reason, at any rate.

  But a deeper, less rational part of him couldn’t help but ask: what if it had been no pretence? What if the séance had opened a portal to the netherworld and allowed something to enter Molly and take up residence inside her? What if she had become a m
outhpiece, a puppet, for some malign creature with designs on him?

  Guy’s nerves were jangled. He felt as anxious as he had in the days immediately following the half-baked ‘black mass’ in the pavilion. All at once he was a fretful schoolboy again, terrified at having transgressed against God’s will. He even attended a Sunday service at the college chapel. Religious observance had been compulsory at Scarsworth Hall; here at university it was optional, more or less an irrelevance. To sit in a pew and sing hymns and pray meant something. But he felt no better afterwards. His inner self didn’t feel lighter or unburdened or spring-cleaned, as he had hoped.

  So he went home for the weekend. To be away from Oxford. To get some distance from the place, some perspective. He took the train down to London.

  There he learned that his mother had followed his advice and found herself a boyfriend.

  THE MAN’S NAME was Alastor Wylie and he held a position high up in the civil service, although Guy’s mother was unclear exactly what. They had met via a mutual friend, someone in the FCO who had worked with Maurice Lucas a long time back and still kept in touch with his widow. The mutual friend had introduced them at a cocktail party last month. Since then they had been to the opera twice and also attended a preview of the Tutankhamun exhibition at the British Museum.

  She told Guy all this with a sly, shy air. “I felt you ought to know. As luck would have it, he’s popping round for sherry tonight, then taking me to Claridge’s. You two should meet.”

  Guy’s first impressions of Alastor Wylie were not entirely unfavourable. He was silver-haired and handsome, with an effortless suavity about him. He spoke in a languid purr, and his tailored suit, with its wide lapels and shoe-swamping flares, hung comfortably off his trim-but-ever-so-slightly-going-to-seed frame. He smiled a little too hard and a little too often, but all in all Guy was inclined to like him. He seemed genuinely smitten with Guy’s mother and treated her with courtesy and respect. Guy wondered if they had slept together yet, then did his best not to think about it. None of his business. His mother was a grown woman, still reasonably young, still good-looking. What she did with her body was up to her.

  “So, Politics, Philosophy and Economics, eh?” Wylie said over a glass of Harveys Bristol Cream. “A balanced portfolio of disciplines and, I might add, the degree choice of the ambitious. What do you plan on doing with it, Guy?”

  “No idea. It’s still early days. I’ve got two and a half years left to decide in.”

  “Considering following in your father’s footsteps? Something in politics or the corps diplomatique?”

  “I’ve not really thought about it.”

  “You should,” said Wylie. “I can see you in Whitehall, striding the corridors of power. You have that air about you. An intelligent young man, well-spoken, reasonably well-groomed – at least, nothing that a shave and haircut couldn’t fix. Someone like you could go places, Guy.”

  “Um, thanks. Really, I just don’t know. I want to enjoy life. I’m not sure about settling down into a job as soon as I graduate. Maybe I should get out there and see the world first.”

  Wylie nodded sympathetically. “Very laudable, but it’s vital in politics to get a foothold while you’re still young. I know the prevailing trend among your age group these days is to fool around and have fun. We’ve bred a generation of dilettantes. But for those who wish to get ahead in life, the sooner they knuckle down to it, the better.”

  “Well, I’ll certainly bear that in mind,” Guy said.

  “You do that, my boy. I’m just an old bore, giving my advice. Pay me no heed. I happen to see something in you, though, something I like. I could help you. I know people. I could give you a leg-up.”

  “That’s kind of you, Alastor,” said Guy’s mother. “Isn’t it, Guy? Very kind of him.”

  “And now, my dear Beatrice...” Wylie consulted his watch, a handsome gold-and-steel Rolex Oyster Perpetual. “Our table’s booked for eight, and my driver is waiting.”

  As Wylie draped Guy’s mother’s mink stole around her shoulders, he said to Guy, “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, young man. Don’t forget what I’ve said. I could be a useful ally, if you so choose. A friend in high places. Better the devil you know and all that, eh?”

  WYLIE’S PARTING WORDS would not have lodged so firmly in Guy’s brain if he hadn’t already been obsessing over Molly, the Ouija board, and her apparent possession by some otherworldly being. Better the devil you know.

  He realised that by running away from his problems, he was only making them worse. He needed to confront them instead, head-on.

  He returned to Oxford the next morning and went straight from the railway station to Molly’s digs. She wasn’t home, and neither of her housemates, Sophie and Tamsin, knew where she was.

  “How is she?” Guy asked.

  “No idea. Haven’t seen her in a couple of days, actually,” said Sophie.

  “But that row you had with her really screwed her up,” Tamsin added.

  “We did not have a row,” Guy protested.

  “Well, whatever it was. She’s been frantic ever since. She’s not as confident as she acts, you know. She comes across all brash and self-assured, but she’s delicate underneath.”

  “As you’d realise,” Sophie chipped in, “if you weren’t an insensitive bastard like all men are.”

  “Thanks, ladies,” Guy said, taking his leave. “I appreciate the lecture. Now go back to licking Germaine Greer’s fanny and fuck off.”

  “Chauvinist pig,” Tamsin called after him as he set off down the street.

  “Tosser,” added Sophie.

  Guy V-signed them over his shoulder.

  HE ARRIVED AT college to find a familiar bicycle leaning against the wall beside the entrance to his staircase: Molly’s. Its frame was festooned with stickers – the Stars and Stripes, the CND logo, Road Runner, a yellow Smiley. One of the college porters had taped a photocopied memo to the handlebars, asking the bike’s owner to move it as soon as possible, otherwise it would confiscated and sold. The memo had yesterday’s date scrawled across the top.

  Guy skipped up the two flights of spiral stone steps to his rooms. He was anxious but hopeful, anticipating a happy reconciliation with Molly. Why else would she have come here if not to bury the hatchet? They could put this whole stupid business behind them and move on. What had happened in her bedroom that night had happened, it was in the past, they were both adults, time to behave like it. In truth, he missed her. She brought a welcome element of anarchy to his life. She was bewitchingly lovely. She was, no question, a damn good lay. What they would do was, they would make up, make love, then perhaps head down to the Isis for a nice riverside walk. It was a bright, brisk day, the first of its kind this year, more like spring than winter. If they got as far as the Trout Inn at Godstow, a lunchtime pint might be in order.

  He opened the oak door.

  The smell hit him straight away, and he didn’t know what it was, but he knew that it wasn’t good. It was sweet and sewery, a bloated smell. It touched something deep and dark in his brain, something that made him instinctively want to turn and flee.

  He forced himself to stay put. His study was empty, no one there but him. He called out Molly’s name, tongue tripping over the word. No answer.

  The bedroom door stood ajar.

  He pushed it all the way open, stomach knotted with dread.

  Somehow he knew what he was going to find.

  He didn’t want to see it.

  He had to see it.

  So much blood.

  The bedcovers were sodden red. The body on the bedcovers was sodden red too. An arm hung down from the mattress, hand almost touching the floor. It had been slashed open longitudinally, from the wrist halfway to the elbow, on the underside. A razor blade lay below the fingertips on the carpet, an inch from their reach. The gash in the arm reminded him – oh, God – of a vagina. A ragged wet pussy, gaping, revealing a fleshy purple-pink interior.

  She stared ac
cusingly at him across the room. Her eyes were open but dulled, the irises pale, almost opaque. Her lips were slightly parted, as though she had something to tell him.

  Guy sank to his knees.

  He retched. Vomited.

  Molly.

  A POLICEMAN FOUND the suicide note. Guy, once he had managed to stumble outside and raise the alarm, hadn’t dared go back in. The constable who arrived first on the scene handed the envelope to him, saying, “I think this is for you.” It had Guy’s name on the front. It bore traces of Molly’s scent – lilies and clean laundry. Specks of her blood, also.

  The note inside read:

  Guy,

  I know you won’t believe me, but I had nothing to do with the thing you thought I did. I’ve been going half crazy thinking about it and worrying about it. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to have said to you. I guess I must have blacked out or something. It wasn’t me. I wasn’t there when I said it. You have to believe me on that.

  You’ve been avoiding me. I get it. But I’ve never needed you more than I have these past few days. I’ve never needed anyone as badly. But you don’t care. Fine.

  So I’ll show you. I’ll show you what you mean to me and what I should mean to you.

  Here’s the girl you turned your back on, Guy.

  Guess you won’t ever forget me now, huh?

  love,

  Molly xxx

  P.S. Hope you don’t mind me borrowing one of your razor blades!

  DAYS BLURRED. WEEKS passed.

  There was a nice large manor house with sweeping, well-kept lawns. Guy lived there. Doctors and nurses looked after him. They gave him pills and injections. They made him talk about himself. They were always pleasant and gentle, trying to get him to open up, to coax him out of his shell. But it was a nice shell. A solid shell. Cottony soft inside, like a cocoon. He wasn’t sure he ever wanted to leave.