I hoped they hadn’t left the door open.
I grabbed the dips, and padded very softly and carefully over to the door, listened a while, then went out and down the stairs with my heart thudding in my ears. One creak and I’d be back up them like a rocket. Loonies, the lot of them; witchcraft loonies as well, by the look of it – one as easy as the other, probably. Ten to one they were vegans and anti-smoking as well. Total bloody flakes.
Come to think of it, that howling had probably been another of them out remoulding his masculine self-image by assuming a wolf-style role enhancement, or whatever. He was probably out there lifting his leg on the fence right now.
The thought didn’t stop me shivering, though. The floor below was almost empty, one large room from wall to wall with a couple of truckle beds in it, a few books piled up, and a trap to the floor below that. I peered carefully down that, and saw nothing but a crude table and benches on a beaten-earth floor, a wide fireplace with logs laid ready and a dangling stewpot. And the goddamn door was wide open! I almost expected to see a man-shaped hole in it. I hurried down the creaky steps and slammed it shut. The latch was broken; there were slots for a bar, but no bar. There had to be something I could jam through them—
I turned to look, and somebody tapped me lightly on the shoulder.
This, of course, is Nervous Trigger number 13, and I have the complete set. Somehow I wasn’t holding the candles any more, and anyhow they were out. The shrieking terrified me even though I knew it was me. I cannoned hard into the table, tipped it over, ran for where I thought the stairs were, connected with my forehead and sat down hard. Somebody, also shrieking, tripped over me and fell headlong. He was down, so I kicked out savagely, and he shrieked all the louder. Well, he was human, and resentment booted terror out of the way. Only one thing to do. I pounced before he could, landed on his back, put a hand on his head and ground it into the floor while I pulled his arm up behind his back.
‘Shrsh!’ he protested. ‘By’re lrve, gmtle shr!’
‘Move once,’ I snarled in his ear, ‘and I’ll slice out thy chitterlings to have carbonado’d for my nuncheon!’ Instant Elizabethan desperado talk; I was a bit proud of that, but maybe it left something to be desired. If anything, it seemed to reassure him. By the handful of hair I had, this was most likely the old fellow, so I relaxed a little and let him speak clearly.
‘I perceive by your graciousness, sir, and also by your grasp that you be not the daemon I – eh, ha ha, most unflatteringly thought you. That entirely innocent misprision, enhanced perhaps by your, shall we say, mode of entrance, leads me to ask if there is any fashion by which I may be of service to you? Preferably other than on this commodious floor?’
‘We’ll see!’ I felt for his waist. He’d been wearing some kind of belt or girdle – I found it, pulled it loose and began tying up his hands with it. God, I felt tough. ‘Just so there’re no tricks – and so I can get some straight answers!’
His voice shook more than this seemed to warrant. ‘I would earnestly desire of you, sir, that you not leave me bound, nor abandon me thus! We stand in the gravest danger, both!’
‘Danger? How so?’
He hesitated, so I tugged the girdle tighter. ‘Sir, we were engaged in – in an inquisition of a purely philosophical nature—’
‘An experiment?’
‘Experimentum, indeed, sir. To this remote and desolate corner of the earth we came, where ancient forces are reputed to be ever present, to conduct it. In a spirit of most innocent enquiry we sought to, ah, summon one of a wholly angelic nature. But around the purest such venture there are ever evil forces hovering, and we, ah …’
Pure; innocent. Protesting too much. I knew, I’d been there. ‘I just bet. Thought you’d got Someone Else, eh?’
‘Our mistake, sir, surely to be forgiven. Your irruption was to say the least unlooked for. But the conjuration was left incomplete, the circle broken! It but hangs fire, an you take my meaning. If not reversed, why, who knows what might—’
There was a sudden low groaning, and the whole house shook.
We both looked up. The boards above our head bowed and creaked. A rough-cut beam moaned and bent. There was a slight waft of a smell I couldn’t describe and wouldn’t dare, and a wind like a great inhalation lifted all the dust – and there was plenty in boiling clouds. The old fellow and I looked at one another. Then the beam cracked with a gunshot snap.
I was out that door in two leaps, and only when I collided with a holly bush did I remember I’d left the old bugger in there. Give me credit, I did at least look back, but I needn’t have worried. A half-second slower and he’d have left footprints up my back. Hands tied or not, he was out and past me with his robes flapping round his scrawny shins, and the 3.45 favourite should have gone like that. That was all a split second told me, that and the awful pale glare out of that upstairs window. OK, I didn’t believe in the supernatural, but I wasn’t about to stop and argue the point with that. As natural explanations go, it looked pretty vicious.
So here we were back at the ploughed field again and me running like a maniac, retracing my steps for all I knew. In other circumstances this could have been a bit boring, but just then that didn’t bother me at all. Especially when I heard another of those cries, only a lot louder this time, and it came not from the path where I’d left it but from the house. Which meant that whatever our two hairy citizens had been calling up could have been drifting nearer all the time, sort of, just about ready to drop in much as I had. Nice thought. A minute or two later and I might have met it on the doorstep – or the windowsill. But I kept on running. When it found nobody in, it might decide to go home the same way – that was my conscious reason, anyhow. I don’t think I could have stopped if I tried.
What brought me up was the fence rail, right across the chest, winding me; and I was flailing at it and sobbing for what felt like eternity, till I calmed down enough to realise what it was. I began to feel a bit stupid, then. After all – an old dump like that, half falling down, probably because nobody could afford to restore it …
I should have recognised the type. I’d been in enough of them when I worked in architectural salvage, otherwise known as lifting fireplaces, frames, handles and anything else not nailed down. A place like that, and a pair of superstitious loonies – a man could believe anything. The light? That brazier tipping again, probably. Could burn the place down. Shame, that.
I turned to peer into the dark. And that was when the roof flew off the grim little place, and the light boiled up from within. Out of the cavity, like a decayed tooth, the glare rose up. A mushroom cloud, almost, and for a moment I thought about green glows and silent, invisible death. There wasn’t any explosion, though, just a crash of timbers; and the sphere of light lifted long and slow, like a balloon, and hung against the blackness. Then I realised it was moving, forward across the fields. A pale globe of light, with something stirring at its heart. An outline – a figure, striding.
It walked, and the light advanced – but much faster. It strode weightily upon emptiness, maybe fifty feet above the ground; but not upon silence. I could feel every footfall pound through the iron-hard earth beneath, reverberate dully in my roaring ears. Smoke or steam wreathed lazily about it, twisting in the windless air. Did I mention it was coming straight at me?
Don’t they always?
I was over that fence in one bunny-hop, sending the rail flying. Then it was along the path, where the banks should be rising – they weren’t. Wrong way! But I barely managed to make myself turn around. Only the thought that something worse might lie ahead made me do it, that and the open ground. At least the banks were some shelter; but as I reached the crest the slope to my left suddenly glimmered a greasy green, and that smoky globe rose like a hellish moon over the other. I was past, then, chasing my own faint shadow in that pale light, but utterly unable to look around.
Now I ran like a cockroach runs, automatically, with no help from my brain at all. I was in a
gony, I thought my heart was going to give up and sit down for a breather on its own; but there was a bend in the path, and trees, and suddenly there were those cottages, with a few lights showing now, and the sign of the dear, sweet, lovely, hospitable inn. I hit the post hard enough to rattle the sign, clinging to it like a sanctuary-seeker to the church knocker and screaming.
Screaming for Poppy, or meaning to, and I think the police and Jesus Christ may have been in there somewhere too, which is pretty funny, considering. It felt great, here between the houses, with my arms around that wood, solid and real. I knew nothing was going to come here, nothing could get me here. I could hear doors banging somewhere; soon they’d carry me in and give me beer and make everything all right again somehow. Then I looked around.
The trees at the turn stood out like skeleton fingers against that frosty glare. Imagine a scummy, algae-streaked, polluted pond frozen solid on a grey afternoon and you have the colour, and you’re welcome. It was swelling as I watched. That did it. I hauled myself painfully up the post, wavering on my feet, barely aware that somewhere back there the sole had half come off one trainer and was flapping like an idiot mouth.
Where was I? Where do you think?
Half past running time – time to run again. Now, exhausted, I was swaying from side to side like a wino, bouncing off fences and bushes and tree trunks, but the path was level now beneath my feet, and the air was mild. I could hear the cornfield whispering in the night, or was that my breath rasping? Half of it was cut down, and I staggered over the stubble, yelping as it spiked my bare toes. And there in the distance, like a vision of heaven, gleamed the lights of the junction; there was the burned-out patch around the Ferrari, and I ran towards it with tears pouring down my face. If it had been surrounded by cops I think I would have kissed their great sweaty feet. At the far end of the strips, in the faint afterglow, I saw a figure stooped beneath the weight of a huge scythe plodding patiently off in the other direction.
‘That’s right!’ I shouted. ‘You’re not getting me this time! Not yet!’
It stopped, as if looking my way, but I was at the hedge now and scrabbling through the gap like a demented badger, down a gritty slope. There was a ditch, of course, and I fell in it, also of course, but it was fairly dry. I put my hand out to pull myself up – and cringed at the godawful roar and the sudden looming enormity.
I snatched it back with a crazy squeal, and the juggernaut rumbled by. A foot more, and he’d have been keeping me company in the ditch. It wasn’t as if there weren’t any signs of anything. No Hard Shoulder, couldn’t they read?
I was on the junction’s main outlet road, heading towards the big city. I looked over my shoulder nervously. There wasn’t a damn thing there except a ragged hedge with a big bite out of the top, about five feet up, too high for me to see through. No skid marks, nothing. The Ferrari hadn’t been touching ground when it came through. So the impact ought to have killed me, right enough. Maybe it had. But a truck stopped when I waved it down, and I had no trouble convincing him I’d had a crash.
‘Bugger and a half, too, by the look of yer! Sure you don’t want an ambulance?’
‘No. No thanks. I’m OK.’
‘Well, yer motor …’
‘Just an old banger.’
‘Ho. And not insured? Or taxed? So you’re just walkin’ away? I dunno, you young lads, think you’re bleedin’ indestructible. Well, you’ve had your lesson for today, I reckon. Hop in and I’ll drop you in town – Maybury Circus do yer?’
All the way back he gave me fatherly advice till I could have wrung his red neck so hard all his boils popped. He carefully put me down by a phone box. He had a point there. This one took money, not cards. I sorted slowly through my remaining change, swallowed deeply and went in to phone Ahwaz.
The handset practically jumped in my fingers. ‘Maxie! What sort of time do you call this! Where have you got to? Where’s the fucking motor?’
I swallowed again. ‘I … I haven’t got it, Ahwaz! I’m sorry—’
‘You blew it! I do not, I do not believe you are telling me this! The biggest job I ever set you up on, and you little bastard, you blew it!’
‘Look, it wasn’t my fault! The cops got on to me somehow, they were after me, they were boxing me in—’
‘Of course they got on to you, you fucking idiot, the way you were driving! They had a frigging helicopter on to you – I know, we were listening in to it right here! What do you think I give you that scanner for, huh? So where’s the red one – you just ditched it, huh, you crappy little coward?’
‘No! I crashed it! I was trying to get away – I was nearly killed, honest—’
‘You—’ The phone erupted, so loudly I had to hold it away from my ear. Half of it I couldn’t understand, but I didn’t need to. He was calling me every name under the sun and threatening to rip out my liver. At least he hadn’t put the phone down; that might have meant he really was going to rip it out.
The big A was not a gangster or anything of that sort. He was a car dealer, expensive and above, with pukka dealerships in London and Bradford and Manchester and suchlike places. He really did handle the odd legal Ferrari, now and then. He just liked the bigger profit margins on the free variety. Mind you, rumour had it he liked the margin on certain dodgy substances almost as much, and was moving into them in a big way. Certainly he kept some very large lads on the payroll; but I hadn’t heard of anyone actually being worked over, at least not too seriously. So didn’t I have a right to open my mouth here too?
‘Look! I said I was sorry, didn’t I? I mean, come off it, this isn’t a secure business, is it? Risks of the game, eh? Long odds! You win a few, you lose a few! And this was bloody difficult – I mean, a red Ferrari, you can’t exactly hide that in traffic, can you?’
‘Difficult? You said you wanted a difficult job, you little shit!’
‘I said I wanted a real job, a chance to earn some real money!’
‘And I gave you it, didn’t I? Didn’t I? Job I’ve been three weeks setting up, customer waiting – real money – I’m too bloody generous, me, I should have known—’
‘Oh yeah! Real money! A lousy two grand out of the two hundred you’re going to make!’
‘More than you’ll ever be worth! Me, I’m sorry for you, I take a risk—’
That did it. I’d been through too much. ‘You? Just for ringing the chassis numbers and sticking cars in a container? Some fucking risk! Getting ink on your suit duffing the papers?’
‘This is an open line, you stupid bastard!’
‘Yeah, isn’t it! Listen, I got hurt, I got burned, I got the shit scared out of me – you’re going to pay me for that, you hear?’
‘Pay you? Get this, I don’t know nothing about you, who you are, what you’re blabbing about – and if I so much as set eyes on you again, I’m going to have to scrape you off my fucking shoe, right? Right, you crappy, useless little pimp? Say it! I want to hear you say it, say I’m right, say you’re a lousy little pimp—’
I’ve never been a pimp. Unlike Ahwaz. And I hate pimps. I’d never treat a girl the way they do. I haven’t much left, but there’s that. I don’t know what I was about to do, scream at him down the line, maybe. I’d had too much, I was pretty near a breakdown. And maybe if I had said it, I might have woken up in a plastic sack on the local tip.
Something else happened instead. The whole phonebox lit up in a flare of crackling red light, blasting red that blazed in the veins of my eyeballs and drew lancing streaks of sparks across the glass. The phone itself glared red-hot; I could feel the heat. The handset blazed in my hand, I threw it up and it hung there stiff on its cord for an instant, held by the force of the energies coursing through it. There was the beginning of a startled screech from the earpiece, then only a fearful crackle. The electric chair might sound like that, maybe; from the inside.
But it was gone in the same instant, with a suddenness that left a hole in the air – that’s the only way to describe it. Sud
den silence on deafened ears, sudden cold on my scorched face. That was just the cool night air blowing around the booth. The handset dropped and swung, rattling against the glass. It was smoking a little. I could feel heat from the phone, but not enough for the colour it had just turned. Gingerly I reached out and touched it. It was about as hot as a dinner plate. But at my faint dab it sagged and fell limply away from the iron back.
A shower of hot coins vomited on to my aching feet.
CHAPTER THREE
Heavy Traffic
THE NEXT DAY I was pretty damn hesitant about going in to work, or anywhere else I’d be recognised. Well, anywhere at all, really.
What had happened on the phone? I didn’t know and I didn’t want to think about it. But I had hardly any money left, even after the jackpot from the phone. I’d spent most of that on a cab, because I was too shaken to get a bus or a train, and some more on a jacket and trainers. Pre-owned, by a macaque maybe, but Maxies can’t be choosers.
My jeans, washed hastily in my cracked little basin, weren’t quite dry, but I wriggled into them anyway, shuddering and trying not to strain the seams. It had been the grease holding them together, mostly.
I ought to decamp to Birmingham or somewhere else, fast – but then Birmingham, Alabama, probably wouldn’t be far enough, if Ahwaz was really mad.
I’d never heard of him actually bumping anyone off, true. But then maybe his boys were efficient enough so you didn’t hear; and I had heard he was not above breaking a few bones himself in his early days. Anyway, I’d need money, whatever I did. If I could just get through the day unscathed, maybe I could scarper with the takings or part thereof. So there I was, bright and early at ten o’clock, just as Chaddy was unlocking the ten or so separate locks on the steel-panelled door.
Maxie’s Demon Page 4