Jago

by Kim Newman

  A boy from the car park crew pogoed too near the fire, his Bart Simpson T-shirt smouldering. He bopped harder, scraping at his burning chest with his hands, screeching lost in the music. He slam-danced into others, spreading fire. People danced in the flames now, shaking heads and hips like damned souls. The cassette player was burning too, its music snapped off. New music, new sounds, flooded in to fill the gap. There was a heavy-metal bass, overlaid with screaming and the crackle of flames.

  Lytton knew he wasn’t immune to the madness. Earlier, he’d screamed with the rest of them.

  ‘Gabba gabba, we accept em, one of us!’

  The crowd had taken up the cry from the Ramones song ‘Pinhead’, the chant from the movie Freaks. ‘Gabba gabba, we accept em, one of us, one of us!’ New freaks joined the dance every moment. The physical fire was petering out, but the spiritual flame was spreading. Kevin Conway and Beth Yatman were dancing close, jumping off the ground and colliding in the air, collapsing, scrambling up, and trying it again. Beth was laughing, long skirt in ribbons like a Polynesian princess’s. Kevin had smears of blood on his shirt from his flattened nose. The couple were jostled into the crowd, swallowed by a mass of unrecognizable people. Burned people, dead or unconscious, were kept upright by the press of bodies. Lytton stood at the edge of the throng, his back to a cottage wall.

  A wave of movement came through the crowd, stirred by something a hundred yards off. Maybe a thousand people pressed together, pushed to one side of the road. A wave of dancing, stumbling people came. He felt as if a hundred tons of mattress had just swatted him against a solid wall.

  The smell of people was overpowering, and there was pressure on every bone in his body. This was how people died in panicking crowds: by inches. Broken bones were painful, but mainly asphyxiation got you, breath slowly squeezing from you. Pain came alive in his chest as his lungs emptied and bodies squashed close around prevented him from filling them again. Faces were pressed close, silent pain exaggerating their features. As you suffocated, you didn’t even have the wind to scream. A dozen elbows dug into him wherever he was soft. Caught as tight as the centrepiece of a three-dimensional jigsaw, he didn’t know if his feet were on the ground. He couldn’t feel below his waist. His back ground against plastered wall. The straining of strangled voices was all around, like the creaking timbers of a wooden ship. There was the occasional pop of a snapped bone, followed by a short, crush-defying yelp.

  Slowly, his ribs constricted his lungs. It was as if he’d been mummified with strips of wet leather and left to dry in the sun, all-over wrappings shrinking around him. This, he realized, was how he was going to die. He thought of all the snake tricks he’d learned but never got to use: hot-wiring a car, killing a guard with his bare hands, disposing of a body, making a bomb out of everyday household articles. He thought how promising he had been as an undergraduate, and of how little he had actually done in the years—decades—since then. He thought of all the women he wished he’d gone to bed with, and they all came out Spook Susan.

  Then, like a miracle, he could breathe again.

  The human tide had broken against the row of cottages, lucky people spilling through gaps into back gardens. Now it was flowing back again, towards the other side of the road. Another crush of people, formerly at the back of the press, were being forced against another set of walls. There was a sudden gasp, and Lytton’s lungs were full. He was sliding down the wall. His back and hair were white from plaster dust. People all around him were coughing and choking. He had not been seriously injured, although his skin must be a bruise-mottled purple. He caught himself before he lost balance, and stood. Nearby, people who had not thought so fast were being trampled.

  Susan was right. It was time to shut up shop. He listed priorities. He should get his gun, then he should get word to the outside. The obvious thing would be to go to Checkpoint Charlie, wave accreditation at Sergeant Draper, then use the police radio to call in the IPSIT equivalent of an air strike. Garnett must have teams of jumpsuited snakes ready, probably at the Fleet Air Arm base in Yeovilton, to move in and clean up the mess. The country had had enough disasters and terrorist atrocities since Lockerbie and Hillsborough to give doctors and troops experience in damage limitation. Jago could simply be switched off with an injection.

  He fought through to the chrysanthemum-grower’s garden, and stepped over a pile of groaning victims. More than a few were unmoving, further casualties. There was a tiny alley beside the cottage, and he shoved himself into it. The half-nude gardener was still pottering about, ignoring her wounded guests. She applied a dainty watering can to a small nest of fire, dousing it with a sprinkle.

  Round the back, it was dark. The row of cottages shielded the fires. Lytton’s clothes were wet through. For a heart-stabbing moment, he thought he was bleeding from a hundred gashes, then realized he’d had all the sweat squeezed out of him. Someone, he hoped not himself, had pissed down his legs in the crush. He scrambled over a back-garden wall of chickenwire threaded with dry climbers, tumbling into a mushy ditch. There was a powerful smell of compost. The ground broke rancid under his hands. This end of the village was just two rows of buildings either side of the main road. Once you got out beyond back gardens you were either up the hill or, as he was, out on the moors.

  If he kept off the road, he could get to the Gate House. Trying to ignore the din, he crawled out of the ditch and, muscles protesting, began to run, crouched low, across fields. There was a scattering of people, even a few cattle, but they mainly got out of his way. Somewhere above a helicopter circled, and he hoped to God that meant this was tugging some bell cords, maybe even shaking the great web of the spook show to such an extent that Sir Kenneth would be hauled out of bed to make a decision.

  He circled through the fields and neared the festival site, hoping to rejoin the road just by the Gate House, a short hike away from Checkpoint Charlie. As he got nearer the site, the noise got louder, more boisterous. There was music again, and singing and laughter. It was easy to mistake this whole catastrophe for a carnival. He made it free and clear without incident, and barged his way through a scrubby hedge, hacking the bushes apart with his arms. Scratched and aching, fouled and filthy, he tumbled back into the road.

  ‘Fuck I, James,’ Gary Chilcot said, ‘youm been in the wars.’

  He lay on the verge a moment, struggling for breath again, feeling his bruises tingle. It was preparation for the siege of pain which would, he knew, set in within the hour. He should keep moving, outrun the agony. Faces loomed over him. Gary. And Pam, simpering like a black widow whose husband hasn’t quite escaped. Others he didn’t know.

  Gun, he thought. Get the gun.

  He stood shakily, Gary helping. Pam reached around his chest to hug, then flinched away with her whole body when she got a noseful. He stepped free of his support, and looked at the Gate House. The door was open, all the lights were blazing. His Astrud Gilberto tape was playing as loud as the system could be turned up. Bodies moved inside, clumsily crashing into things. He guessed he would be unable to have a quick shower in private and change his clothes before trying to save the world. That was a damned shame.

  In his front room, there was an orgy. Sharon Coram was pressed naked between four or five other bodies, mostly male. The group’s strenuous activities had displaced all his furniture, shoving desk, chairs and sofa against the walls, knocking over television and video, and bringing down most of the pictures on the wall. There was a litter of cast-off clothes and crushed cider cartons on the floor. Astrud, backed by Stan Getz, was intolerably loud, rattling his brains with ‘One-Note Samba’. The throaty, whining gasps of the cluster-fuck resounded, along with the thumping and squelching of their bodies, like the distorted soundtrack of a blue movie.

  An arm snaked around his neck and he was turned. Pam, overcoming her distaste, put her face to his. As she hugged, his pain went into overdrive. He was choking, ribs popping out of alignment. The girl’s hand slipped into his fly and groped for h
is penis. Pam licked his chin and playfully bit him. For an eternal second, he had the thrill of an incipient erection, and lost purpose. He wanted to join the blue movie, to lose himself in the scrambled flesh, to work his way towards a climax which would blow off the top of his head. He would join with Pam, Sharon, the others. They’d become a carnal pool, fucking for ever, squirting defiance in the dark. Perfume stung his nostrils, seeping in behind his eyes. Pam’s tongue touched his earlobe, warm and wet.

  A shot of agony from his wrenched back killed arousal, and a gulp of nausea rose in his throat. Finding a pressure point—a snake trick, at last—he gripped Pam and pushed the girl away from him. She looked at him, a blossom of fear in her eyes, and stepped back. He made a fist and clipped her on the chin, to put her out of it. He knew where the knockout button was and struck perfectly. But this was not an academic exercise, and she was not dropped immediately senseless. Sergeant Parry, his instructor, would have given him a Fail. Pam’s head lifted and banged against the door jamb and, groggy, she fell out of the Gate House, a puppet with half her wires snipped. She was on her knees, shaking her head, curling into a foetal ball. He would have preferred a clean stun, but that would have to do. ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  The desk was up on two legs against a wall, unlocked drawers spilled on to the floor, adding their contents—pens, pins and paperclips—to the mess. Part of the cluster began to scream in noisy orgasm. The pistol was in the one locked drawer. And the key was in the Mike Bleach teapot on the windowsill. Only the teapot, along with the potted cactus and the wind-up plastic alligator with which it had shared the sill, was broken in the ruin under the bodies. The carpet swirled like a giant water lily under the cluster, trailing bits and pieces in its folds.

  Lytton tried to find even the smashed pieces of ceramic, but couldn’t. The cluster rolled over, a new team in ascendance, and, like a group of wrestling amoebae, unstuck themselves, then reformed in a new alignment, to begin the sweat-, sperm- and saliva-slick churning all over again. A black girl, abnormally long tongue attached like an umbilical sucker to the belly-button of a bald man, was on top of the cluster. Stuck to her back was the key. It was pressed between her scything shoulderblades, stuck fast by gummy fluid. The bald man was Stan Budge, die-hard enemy of the ‘hippie invasion’. Budge was being penetrated by a blue-tattooed white youth, and his red penis was shoved into one mouth or another. The arrangement was generating an odorous heat that made the small front room a greenhouse.

  Lytton stepped close and leaned over. Sharon looked up at him from the bottom, teeth bared, but didn’t see anything. Her eyes were clouding over, and she was sucking in air through the ring of her mouth. Lytton plucked the key from the black girl’s back and backed away from the cluster. It rolled towards him like a juggernaut, legs kicking, arms flailing, genitalia pumping. Pulsing like a complicated organ, it tore itself apart and came together again. There was blood in with the other sticky stuff. He wondered if the cluster was literally fucking itself to death. Apart from Sharon, who was obviously the Queen of Dangerous Sex, none of the components were visibly enjoying themselves.

  He shoved the key into the drawer lock, twisting it so hard it bent as it worked. As he pulled the drawer open, the Browning slid down the sloping bottom. Picking up the gun, feeling its grip in his hand, Lytton felt whole again, as if he were drawing strength from the weapon. He relished its weight for a moment, then shoved it into his deep right hip pocket. Leaving the cluster to wear itself out, he left the Gate House.

  Pam, feeling her wonky chin, was sitting on the grass, skirt rode up until it was essentially a belt. She looked at him, hurt.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said again, and loped off towards Checkpoint Charlie. By his watch, it was just around midnight.

  2

  If the only thing that frightened Daddy was stupidity, the Evil Dwarf was Stupidity on two stubby legs, a bell-topped dunce’s cap on his scraggly head. Jeremy’s stitch stabbed his side like a broadsword. Without realizing, he had fallen, and could feel scratchy earth and grass under his knees. His shorts were warm and wet, bunched up and scraping between his legs. One way or another, he’d been running all day. It was well past his bedtime. Just once, he’d have been pleased to go up the stairs into his room in coal-black dark. If he hadn’t been afraid of the dark, perhaps things wouldn’t have come apart.

  He’d always known there was an Evil Dwarf, but never thought beyond the mere scariness of his being an actual thing. He knew Dopey would suck out his brain, but, with the tongue-dangling dwarf getting near, he couldn’t imagine what that would mean. Mummy and Daddy had told him Dopey was just a cartoon in a film so many times he’d almost forgotten what was actual and what was not. It was possible he’d made the Evil Dwarf actual by believing in him. That was how some monsters worked. A girl at school who was excused assembly because her parents didn’t believe in Jesus said that was how God worked too.

  The Evil Dwarf would play with him first. Dopey circled, dancing clumsily, cap-bell tinkling. Jeremy twisted to keep the dwarf in sight, to stop him latching on to the back of his neck, digging for his brain through his hackles. Dopey’s tongue—tipped with an orangy blob Jeremy supposed was poisonous—shot in and out like a toad’s. The dwarf wore heavy boots with curly, pointed toes. He whistled the dig-dig-dig song from Snow White. From his broad leather belt, he took a tiny miner’s pick, blade sharp, and licked its length with one slithery pass of his tongue. Jeremy knew Dopey would prise out his eye with the pick, and get that tongue into his skull. There was nothing more he could do. This was the moment he’d always known would come, when the Evil Dwarf got him.

  ‘Stupid,’ he said, meaning everything.

  The Evil Dwarf was shocked. His watery eyes shook, glints of meanness in blue depths. A single tooth scraped his lower lip. He pulled in his tongue, shoving the last of it into his mouth with fingers like burned-down candles.

  ‘Stupid,’ Jeremy said, meaning to hurt.

  The Evil Dwarf trembled with a rage he couldn’t put into words. His stupidity was like a plug in a boiling kettle, keeping steam in until it exploded. Red blotches emerged on his cheeks like splashes of paint, and his neck swelled until it was the thickness of his head.

  ‘Retardoid, moron, cretin, spastic,’ Jeremy said, the worst insults he could think of, the worst that had ever been used on him.

  The pick struck out, and sliced whistling past Jeremy’s nose. The Evil Dwarf backhanded, and Jeremy had to duck to avoid a triangular flange which would have scraped off his face.

  Dopey’s mouth worked hard as he tried to get words out.

  ‘… dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig dig…’

  With each ‘dig’, the Evil Dwarf jabbed, pickpoint dimpling Jeremy’s skin and clothes but not puncturing.

  Up close, the dwarf smelled horrible. His arms and legs didn’t work well, his fingers couldn’t even hold his pick properly. One hand was a stiff knot that reminded Jeremy of his sister’s barbarian doll, who could only hold the magic sword she came with if Hannah used Sellotape. This wasn’t what he had expected. Although as mean and cruel as Jeremy had imagined Dopey was a kid monster, unable to do anything properly, with moods and tantrums, not even capable of controlling his body. He flopped around like Nigel Harris on a trampoline, barely able to keep his balance, let alone get in the air.

  Boldly, Jeremy stood up to the Evil Dwarf, fisting his chest. He staggered, incensed at meeting resistance, and Jeremy jeered at him.

  ‘Thickie,’ he said, remembering kids at school who picked on him, but whom he left behind in class, his brain racing ahead of theirs. He was supposed to be ‘gifted’. That must give him power over this dope.

  ‘Dopey the dope, brains full of soap,’ he said, pleased with his rhyme. ‘Dopey the dope, dwarf without hope…’

  The Evil Dwarf began to thump the ground with a gnarly fist. Dwarves were stunted, growth stalled like a broken-down car. The Evil Dwarf was stunted in more tha
n just his body. Dopey was sulking, eyebrows jammed together in a hard ridge over mean eyes, great lumps of snot dangling from his nose. Jeremy wondered what would upset the Evil Dwarf more than being called stupid.

  ‘Shorty,’ he said.

  The Evil Dwarf howled. Jeremy could see through Dopey now, could see the ground through his smock.

  ‘Knee-high to an ant’s little brother.’

  Jeremy had got close, so as to dig deeper with his words. He’d forgotten the Evil Dwarf was still dangerous. The pick swung through the air, and jammed into his bare shin. Jeremy screamed, feeling the point grating bone. Instantly, the pain vanished and his entire leg was numb and tingly, as if he’d been sitting on it for a long time.

  ‘Stunted runt.’

  Dopey’s howl turned to a whine. He tried to pull the pick out of Jeremy’s leg, but couldn’t get a proper grip.

  ‘Two foot two, eyes like spew…’

  Jeremy kicked the dwarf, the pick coming out of Dopey’s hand as he moved his leg. The Evil Dwarf rolled into a ball like an overturned hedgehog, and Jeremy kicked him again.

  A way away, down on the road, there was an explosion, as when a spaceship blew up in a James Bond film, and lots of screaming. A plume of flame shot up in the dark like a firework. Jeremy, distracted, stopped kicking for a moment, and bent to pull the pick out of his leg. It came free easily, and felt good in his hand. As soon as the point was out of him, he felt pain again, and a dribble of blood ran down to his sock.

  Dopey’s hands pawed his neck, fingers not long enough to get a stranglehold. Jeremy was pulled off balance, and the two, locked together, rolled down the hill. The Evil Dwarf didn’t feel actual. His hands and knees were hard and hurting, but the rest of him wasn’t all there, as if he were a thin film over mushy stuff. Jeremy was more hurt by the stones they rolled over. When they came to a halt, back in the Pottery garden, the Evil Dwarf was on top. Jeremy still had the pick, and he stuck it deep into Dopey’s left side, jiggling the blade. There was a hiss, like a slow puncture, and Jeremy saw alarm in the dwarf’s eyes.