The Watchers

by Jon Steele

‘Like the proverbial blind man describing the elephant.’

  The room began to spin, Harper tried to focus his eyes.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The blind man and the elephant, missing the point and all. Though for a moment I thought you were coming around. Making the connection between the oil you found in Miss Taylor’s flat and the formula delivered to your office at the IOC and all.’

  Harper felt the floor giving way under his feet.

  ‘Formula?’

  ‘Yes. You see, it’s actually a breeding potion, as ancient as evil itself, used by those who already rule this world. Their mating rituals are as painful as they are cruel. The potion induces selected females into imagining they are experiencing intense pleasure. I’m sure you understand what all this means for Miss Taylor.’

  ‘You’re … you’re out of your bloody mind … I’m getting her out of this cesspit you call a country.’

  ‘You? Oh, do be serious, Mr Harper. You’re nothing but a drunkard who can’t even remember his London telephone number.’

  The room spinning faster. Harper dropped the cigarette in the ashtray, grabbed the bedpost.

  ‘Fuck …’

  ‘Are you feeling unwell, Mr Harper? You seem to be drifting. Perhaps you should take another sip of tea.’

  Harper looked down at his cup. Special house blend, you know … He looked up into the Inspector’s smiling face. Like the bloody Cheshire Cat.

  ‘You drugged me.’

  ‘Just a little potion of ours to enhance the cumulative effect of the cigarettes.’

  Harper saw the cigarette in the ashtray, still burning. He raised his blurring eyes to the Inspector.

  ‘The fags.’

  ‘Yes, hand-rolled in a little shop in Paris, just behind the Ritz.’

  Harper dropped his cup, stumbled across the room.

  ‘Bastard.’

  Mutt and Jeff jumped and pinned Harper to the wall. He saw the Inspector almost floating towards him, his voice coming from the way beyond.

  ‘I want you to listen to me very carefully, Mr Harper. This is what we call an intervention. You need to wake up and remember what you are and why you’re here.’

  ‘Who the hell are you?’

  ‘Me? I’m Inspector Jacques Gobet of the Swiss police. The question is: Who are you?’

  Feeling himself slip from his body, trying to hold on.

  Seeing himself coming to in a shabby London flat.

  Brit passport with a photo and name inside.

  ‘Harper, my name’s Jay Michael Harper.’

  ‘And where was Jay Michael Harper born?’

  ‘London … I was born in London.’

  ‘And what was your father’s name, your mother’s name?’

  ‘My mother, my mother was … her name was …’

  ‘Where did you attend school, your hobbies, the name of your first sweetheart, perhaps?’ The Inspector moved close to Harper’s face. ‘When was the last time you slept?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘No, you don’t remember. Curious, isn’t it? You know everything there is to know about this world. You speak its languages and quote its poets with no remembrance of where you learned such things. In fact, you don’t remember a single day of life before a telephone rang in a London flat with a call from Guardian Services Ltd.’

  Consciousness sinking.

  ‘I’m Harper, my name’s …’

  The Inspector slapped Harper’s face harder.

  ‘Stay with me, Mr Harper. You are not a creature of free will, you are one of our kind and you’ll tell me what I want to know.’

  ‘I won’t let you slaughter her. I won’t let you slaughter him.’

  ‘You cannot save the living from the time of their death, Mr Harper.’

  ‘Watch me, you fucking pig.’

  The Inspector slammed Harper into the wall.

  ‘I didn’t bring you to Lausanne to be a saviour of men, Mr Harper, I brought you here to kill.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The war, eternal and for ever. We’re losing badly and running out of time. We need you to wake up.’

  ‘Go to hell!’

  The Inspector rammed his iron fist into Harper’s guts. Harper crumpled over. The Inspector stepped back and adjusted his silk scarf.

  ‘There is no heaven, Mr Harper, there is no hell, there is only this place. And these are the days of slaughter and destruction. Wake up!’

  Mutt and Jeff tossed Harper to the bed. Numbness spreading through his limbs. He rolled on to his back. The Inspector hovered over him.

  ‘What the fuck have you done to me?’

  ‘I do hope you enjoyed your evening, Mr Harper, it’s about to come at you in spades.’

  Harper could barely speak.

  ‘No.’

  The drugs dragging him into a paralytic stupor.

  Watching the Inspector float out the room.

  Seeing Mutt tear a page from his notepad, hand it to Jeff.

  Jeff laying it on the desk and then the two of them drifting out of the door.

  ‘Bloody insane …’

  Searing light from the hall, burning his eyes.

  Officer Jannsen appearing in the doorway and eclipsing the light.

  ‘All of you … insane.’

  Smiling at him, pulling the door closed.

  Rest of the night, unable to move, unable to speak.

  Hands clawing at bed sheets.

  The night rolling through his mind again and again, as if he was trapped in a ripple in time till the sun rose over the Alps and set afire the ice-covered peaks above Évian. The fierce light reflected back across the lake straight into Harper’s eyes. Harper shook his head clear, saw the bottle of red on the table.

  ‘Hell with it. Can’t beat ’em, get pissed.’

  He poured a glass and looked out of the window. He watched the sun on Les Big Rocks across the lake.

  Crack.

  The crystal glass in pieces on the floor and the red liquid flowing through glass shards slow as molasses, bleeding into the carpet. Not remembering the glass falling, hand and fingers still formed in the crescent that held it, then seeing it again. Taking a sip of wine, watching the glass fall, watching it shatter, knowing where each piece of glass would lie before it touched the ground. Watching the wine seep deep into the carpet and taking the shape he had already seen. Then looking out of the windows and seeing the same sun crawling across the same bloody ice-covered rocks.

  … days of slaughter and destruction … days of slaughter and destruction …

  His eyes shot to the desk. Note from Mutt and Jeff, left atop the computer keyboard. He picked it up, focused his clearing eyes: ‘Book of Enoch chapter fifteen, verse nine’. Harper scoured the scraps of paper on the desk, stopped cold finding one: ‘The spirits of the giants shall be like clouds which shall oppress, corrupt, fall, content and bruise upon the earth … and they come forth during the days of slaughter and destruction.’

  ‘Christ, come to Lausanne, lose what’s left of your mind.’

  twenty-nine

  Monsieur Booty opened his eyes and watched the woman dry her hair with a towel. He sat up and yawned as the woman pulled on a woolly jumper. The beast then lay down to sleep as the woman leaned towards the small mirror on the wall and touched the reddish scar on her cheek.

  ‘Hey, fuzzface.’

  Monsieur Booty opened one eye.

  ‘Any facial moisturizer up here?’

  Mew.

  ‘No, didn’t think so.’

  Katherine prepared a bandage and raised it to her cheek. She looked at herself in the mirror remembering she was always the prettiest one. The one the boys wanted to kiss, the one the girls wanted to be. She rolled the bandage in a ball and tossed it to the floor.

  ‘Heck with it.’

  Monsieur Booty pounced without mercy and held the offending thing in his claws.

  Mrewww.

  ‘Yeah, me too.’

&
nbsp; Katherine slipped on a pair of heavy socks and rubber boots. She tossed the black cloak over her shoulders and stepped out on to the south balcony, squinting in the bright sun bouncing off the lake and sparkling on the limestone pillars of the belfry. She touched one pillar. The stone felt warm.

  ‘A girl could get a great tan up here. Turn this place into a spa, make a fortune.’

  ‘What’s a spa?’

  Katherine looked up and saw Rochat poking his head from the high south timbers, a few bird feathers entwined in his black hair.

  ‘Jesus, don’t do that, Marc.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Pop out from nowhere, I need a warning. What are you doing up there anyway?’

  ‘Brushing La Lombarde. Do you want to come up and see, or do you need to go to the toilet for another bath?’

  ‘No thanks, one freezing bath in a sink per day is fine. When do we eat?’

  ‘When the detectiveman comes. Are you going to have a nap? You haven’t slept all night.’

  ‘I’m not tired. When’s he coming?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Harper.’

  ‘I don’t know. Why didn’t you put a bandage on your face?’

  ‘I’m going for a grunge thing, goes with the outfit. How will we know when Harper comes?’

  ‘I’ll hear his footsteps on the esplanade. What’s a grunge thing?’

  ‘You’re looking at it.’

  ‘Oh. Do you want to come up and see the upstairs bells now?’

  Katherine smiled.

  ‘OK, why not?’

  She walked to the east balcony as the massive hammer outside Marie’s skirt cocked back and slammed down on the great bell’s bronze skirt … GONG … Katherine jumped and plugged her ears, watching the hammer cock and slam down nine times, feeling the sound penetrate her body and then fade away.

  ‘Man, that’s the loudest thing I’ve ever heard!’

  ‘What?’

  She looked up. Rochat was leaning out from the east timbers, holding on by his fingertips.

  ‘Marc, get back in there.’

  He jumped back into the carpentry. His face peeked over the edge.

  ‘I’m very good at climbing the timbers.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you could hurt yourself. And how come the timbers didn’t creak and groan that time?’

  ‘They did, you just didn’t hear them.’

  ‘I was standing right next to them.’

  ‘Then you weren’t listening.’

  ‘Gotcha.’ She wound her way up the northeast turret, ducked through the arch and stepped into the icy shade of the north balcony. ‘It’s freezing up here!’

  Rochat was crawling along the cross timbers above La Lombarde.

  ‘Because the sun never sees the north side of the belfry in winter. Come inside the carpentry where it’s warm.’

  She stepped up to the walkway, almost banging her head into a low-hanging bell. She ducked and moved to the centre of the tower. The warm sun flooded through the stone arches, chasing away the cold.

  ‘Oh, yeah. This is more my speed. Just like home.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh yeah, put a couple of surfers on the lake and you’d have it.’

  Rochat didn’t know what surfers were and decided not to ask.

  He slipped the scrubber broom down the back of his black overcoat, crawled to the edge of the timbers above La Lombarde and leaped through the air to the other side of the carpentry. He pulled out the scrubber broom and brushed the tops of two bells hanging in the west timbers.

  ‘Bonjour, mesdames. Aren’t we looking pretty today?’

  ‘Do these bells have names too?’

  ‘Oui, this is Bienheureuse and this is l’Aigrelette. They’re sisters, they came from Lombardy to live in the tower.’

  ‘And who’s this one, the one I almost banged my head into?’

  ‘La Voyageuse, she used to live in the church on Place Saint-François.’

  ‘So which one of these gals rings for lunch?’

  ‘La Lombarde. She used to live in the Dominican abbey, down there.’

  Katherine looked where Rochat pointed through the west arches and down to a parking lot.

  ‘What Dominican abbey?’

  ‘They tore it down in middles of ages and La Lombarde went to live in the church at Saint-François with La Voyageuse.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘La Lombarde and La Voyageuse lived in the church at Saint-François before they came to the cathedral.’

  Katherine could just see the small tower of Saint-François off the south balcony.

  ‘So how did they end up here?’

  ‘Because in nineteens of centuries a man from Italy heard the bells and said they were out of tune. So the Lausannois moved around all the bells in le Canton de Vaud, so they’d sound nice when they sang together.’

  ‘No kidding?’

  ‘Non, they do the same thing with bells on cows.’

  ‘They tune the cowbells in Switzerland?’

  ‘Oui, so it sounds nice when you walk through the country.’

  ‘Huh.’ Katherine looked at La Lombarde and La Voyageuse. ‘So they moved these bells from over there to here?’

  ‘But first, they had to move two bells from here to there.’

  ‘To Saint-François?’

  ‘I go visit them sometimes. They’re still very grumpy about the whole thing.’

  ‘You’re making this up.’

  He stopped scrubbing, he looked at Katherine.

  ‘La grande sonnerie times is tomorrow at six o’clock. You can hear how nice the bells sing before you go home.’

  Katherine settled against a wide timber and looked through the arches of the east balcony towards Pont Bessières.

  ‘Marc?’

  ‘Oui?’

  ‘Could you show me where I used to live?’

  Rochat stopped scrubbing, peeked out from behind Nancy.

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘D’accord.’ He balanced the broom on a timber, slid down a cross-beam, jumped on to the wood platform and stood in front of Katherine.

  ‘Wait a sec, let me do something about these feathers in your hair.’

  ‘I was cleaning the bells.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’ She reached up and picked them away one by one. She brushed the dust from his shoulders. ‘There, much better.’

  ‘Merci, I’ll be right back.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To get something to help you see things.’

  He shuffled to the northeast turret and down the corkscrewed steps. Katherine waited, listening to the quiet and feeling the warm winter sun on her face. She walked along the platform to Mademoiselle Couvre-feu. She reached up and took the clapper in her hands, gently touching it against the darkened silver skirt of the thousand-year-old bell. The bell chimed softly.

  ‘Hello, you. It’s me, Katherine. Remember me?’

  She listened to the sound as it floated through the belfry and faded away into the sky.

  ‘Hello.’

  Katherine jumped and turned around, saw Rochat.

  ‘Jeez, Marc! Don’t do that!’

  ‘Don’t say hello?’

  ‘No, popping up like that. Where’d you go?’

  Rochat held up the binoculars. ‘To get these.’

  ‘Ah ha, the famous binoculars for seeing things. Like girls through their bedroom windows.’

  ‘I wasn’t snooping.’

  ‘I know, Marc, it’s a joke.’

  ‘Oh. Do you want to see your house now?’ He turned and shuffled along the balcony. ‘Watch out for the ice on the steps and there’s still lots of snow on the roof.’

  He climbed up the corkscrew steps of the northeast turret. She chased after him, imitating the way he skipped up the steps two at a time then jumping through the arch at the top of the steps and sinking to her knees in powdery white snow. The whole blue sky opened above her head, the whole world lay at h
er feet.

  ‘Oh, wow! This is like being on top of the world!’

  She kicked through the snow and made her way along a balustrade of hollow crosses that ran between the four turrets of the tower, each turret peaked in wildly carved stone. A red-tiled hexagonal spire rose from the centre of the roof, twice higher than the turrets.

  ‘What’s this tower in the middle called?’

  Rochat thought about it.

  ‘The top of the cathedral.’

  ‘I know that, but what’s it called?’

  Rochat thought about it some more.

  ‘The top of the cathedral.’

  Katherine laughed.

  ‘God, you’re so funny. Hey, there’s a little door down here, almost buried in the snow. What’s in here?’

  ‘Old roof tiles. But I like to imagine it’s a very good place for hiding things.’

  ‘Good to know, in case I ever need a new hiding place.’

  The balustrade was almost as high as her shoulders. She jumped up, leaned over the edge. Her eyes following the lines and angles along the roof of the cathedral.

  ‘That’s the nave down there, where we went looking for lost angels, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oui.’

  ‘And what’s that tower over there, the pointy one at the far end of the cathedral?’

  ‘The lantern tower.’

  ‘That was above the altar, wasn’t it?’

  Rochat looked at the pointy tower, then back to Katherine.

  ‘It still is.’

  ‘I know that, what I mean is … Wait a minute. Why do they call that one the lantern tower if the guy with the lantern lives over here, in the tower with the bells?’

  Rochat looked down at the roof under his feet. Extending his arms this way and that way as if figuring the volume of a space. With arms fixed he faced the lantern tower and measured the squared space of the belfry against the conical shape of the lantern tower. He dropped his hands and looked at Katherine.

  ‘Because the bells won’t fit in the lantern tower.’

  Katherine smiled.

  ‘You really are very funny, Marc.’

  ‘There was an accident when I was born.’

  ‘I don’t mean funny odd. I mean funny funny.’

  ‘Merci. Do you want to see where you used to live now?’

  Katherine took a deep breath.

  ‘Yeah, let’s go for it.’

  Rochat handed her the binoculars. ‘You don’t have to go anywhere, just turn around and look.’