by Heide Goody
Ricky stood too.
“You’re telling me that the Venislarn, these transdimensional god-things, send their children to schools. Our schools.”
“Well, probably a grandkid or great grandkid. And only one transdimensional god-thing does it.” There was no signal on the phone. “I need to call Vivian.”
She clicked her fingers at the BT engineer.
“Hey, Broadband. Where’s the nearest ladder to the surface?”
The engineer looked backward and forward and then pointed.
“Let’s go,” said Nina.
Ten minutes and half a kilometre down the tunnel, the lights flickered and came back on. Morag turned her torch off. The lights went out. She turned her torch on again. The lights came back on once more. She kept her torch on.
The tunnel stretched away toward a distant corner. Ahead, Morag saw doors and recesses in the wall.
“What’s that?”
She looked at Colin. He was pale. A slag heap of people bits would probably shake most people.
“Colin,” she said. “What are these doors here?”
He looked, as though for the first time.
“Refuge areas. Sleeping quarters,” he said. He rapped his knuckles on a submarine-style bulkhead door as they passed through it. “Blast doors, little lady, in case part of the tunnel was compromised in a nuclear strike.”
Little lady, thought Morag. The colour had returned to Colin’s face along with the casual sexism. It hadn’t taken him long to bounce back. Maybe guys like Colin didn’t have the intelligence to stay shocked for long.
“So, what? You reckon immigrants did this or something?” he said.
“Immigrant spiders?” said Rod.
“I meant the…” He waved his hand toward the distant and invisible flesh pile. “You know, they let anyone in the country these days. And give them benefits.”
“And a free house?” said Morag.
“And a Rolls Royce as soon as they jump off the back of the lorry?” said Rod.
“I’m serious,” said Colin.
“Aye,” said Rod. “I can see that.”
Nina, two cops and a BT engineer who looked like he might never venture below ground level ever again had come up through a manhole near the law courts, giving the two uniformed cops guarding it a scare. While Ricky got on the radio and briefed his officers, and the BT engineer took deep cleansing breaths and eulogised to no one in particular about sunshine and fluffy clouds and loving each day like it was the last, Nina called Vivian.
Nina didn’t ask Vivian to come to the scene. Nina didn’t want Vivian to come to the scene. But Vivian came anyway because Vivian wanted to and because Nina, who wasn’t afraid of anything, was mildly terrified of Mrs Vivian Grey.
Vivian Grey was, in Nina’s estimation, approximately two hundred years old, had probably fought the Nazis in World War One and knew more about the individual Venislarn entities living in the city than anyone else. She wore her grey hair in a tight and functional ponytail, had a fine figure for an ancient, and with those cheekbones and that attitude could probably earn top dollar as a dominatrix. Nina was mildly terrified of Vivian and a little bit in love. Nina planned on dying young and leaving a ravaged corpse but, failing that, she hoped she grew up to be just a smidgeon like Vivian.
Vivian drew up beside the pavement in her modest and eminently sensible car. She didn’t get out. She just waited silently for Nina to get in.
“You didn’t have to come down,” Nina said to Vivian once she had gotten in.
“Seatbelt,” said Vivian.
Nina obliged. Vivian pulled away.
“We going to Dickens Heath?” said Nina.
“To speak to Mammonites,” said Vivian.
“I thought you were busy helping Vaughn with the job applications.”
“I was and then you interrupted me with your phone call.”
“I just wanted some advice on how to approach the Mammonites.”
Vivian indicated to get onto the slip road for the Aston Expressway. “And what did I say?”
“You said they’d eat me alive.”
“Indeed.”
“I’ve dealt with them before.”
“You’ve allocated them housing. You’ve not dealt with them.”
The morning rush hour was going in the other direction. Vivian pootled along at a fuel-efficient fifty-something miles per hour and briefed Nina on the Mammonites of Dickens Heath. Nina already knew ninety percent of it but wasn’t going to tell Vivian that.
Trying to understand the Venislarn was like trying to understand the earth. Most people dug down and found some rock and soil and considered that to be the earth. Others drilled boreholes and based their understanding on what they found there. But there were always deeper layers. Of the tiny fraction of humanity who knew anything of the Venislarn, the vast majority believed the coracle-paddling samakha or spindle-limbed presz’lings or unholy congregation of fyek-yah to be the Venislarn. They weren’t. Others, who thought they knew better, looked to their parent-gods – Daganau-Pysh, Khazpapalanaka, Zildrohar-Cqulu – and thought they were the Venislarn. They weren’t. Apparently paraphrasing some science dude Nina had never heard of, Vivian had told her, “If you think you understand the Venislarn, you don’t understand the Venislarn.” The true Venislarn were beyond all understanding and any attempt to do so would probably end with your brains leaking out of your nose.
Yoth Mammon, the corruptor, the defiler of souls, the dredger in the lake of desires, was about as deep a Venislarn as a human could have any chance of comprehending. She was universally regarded as a she, even though no one could ascribe any physical characteristics, sexuality or partners to her. She was the embodiment of greed and venality, had annexed a corner of the West Midlands for her unholy offspring and then, some years ago, had slipped sideways into the Kal Frexo leng-space and beyond human comprehension.
The Mammonites themselves were dangerous, for two principal reasons. Firstly, their mother-goddess loved them and had made them powerful. Secondly, they were quick learners and had decided that certain key elements of human behaviour were worth emulating. (Vivian was quite vocal in her opinion regarding the value of humans as role models.)
“Remember,” she told Nina, as they drove back in along the Stratford Road, having taken a great loop round the city from north to south on the motorway. “The Mammonites always remember. Anything you say, they will use against you. Any promises you make, they will hold you to.”
“Sounds fair,” said Nina.
“And exact an entirely justifiable punishment if you are not true to your word.”
“Less so,” said Nina.
Dickens Heath was notionally a village. It might once have been the site of a genuine village, nestled between the city and the Warwickshire countryside. If so, every remnant of indigenous architecture, and even the original street plan, had been replaced by what might better be described as a housing estate: street after curving street of narrow shoebox houses, all in the same rosy brick, no door distinguishable from any of its neighbours except by its brass numbers. In a picket-fenced green, four toddlers played solemnly on the swings and slides. At the village’s designated centre, at the entrance to the small delicatessen-cum-grocers and from the windows of the Italian brasserie next door, women silently watched Vivian’s car go by.
Vivian took a left.
“I always get lost in this place,” said Nina.
“Of course, you do,” said Vivian, taking a second left. “It’s based on Zhuge Liang’s stone sentinel maze and is designed to deflect the innocent traveller back out as soon as possible.”
“Huge Wang what?” said Nina.
“Zhuge Liang. He built a maze with just eight standing rocks. Some say eleven. And despite its simplicity, once inside it, the unwary could never find their way out. An inversion of the same was used in the planning of Dickens Heath to create –”
“Yeah, yeah. Mystic Chinese bullshit. I get it.”
Vivian took a third and fourth left and then a turning that Nina wasn’t sure was either left or right.
“Seventy-six Alderway Lane,” said Vivian. “The registered home of one Croesus Smith-Mammonson. I shall come to the door with you but will allow you to tell the Smith-Mammonsons that their little boy has been eaten, however improbably, by a Dinh’r.”
“Thanks,” said Nina tartly and got out.
She pressed the doorbell and then rapped the knocker.
“Is it necessary to do both?” said Vivian.
“They’ve got both,” said Nina.
A woman opened the door. Except, of course, it wasn’t a woman, not really. It was a Mammonite and, once you knew what you were looking for, the signs were impossible to miss. Greg Robinson, Nina’s first boss at the consular mission, had described Mammonites as being “like one of them Picasso paintings,” but that was an exaggeration. They didn’t have eyes on the sides of their heads or ears in the wrong places. The Mammonite look was subtler than that. Rod’s opinion was they looked like Hollywood types who’d had too much plastic surgery and resorted to further plastic surgery to fix it. Nina could see what he meant but that still didn’t convey the very wrongness of the Mammonite’s physical appearance. It took her a while to develop her own perspective on it and, when she did, she realised that the thing they most resembled were the Disney characters painted on the sides of children’s fairground rides.
Lots of fairground rides had Disney characters painted on them (and DreamWorks characters and Pixar characters). They weren’t authorised or licensed images. The magic of the fairground ride Disney character was threefold: firstly, no individual piece of the character was wrong (those were Pinocchio’s eyes, that was Simba’s jawline); secondly, there was never any doubting which Disney character each of them was meant to be; thirdly, but most confusingly, the renditions were nonetheless subtly but quite undeniably and even nightmare-inducingly wrong.
The Smith-Mammonson woman was tall and beautiful, part supermodel, part Californian babe, part reality TV media whore. Bleached teeth, sharp cheekbones, big hair and an uncannily effective skincare regime made her age utterly unguessable. And yet, her beauty was ever-so-slightly skewed. The eyes, well, they weren’t too far apart but it was just that they… they… Or maybe it was the mouth? Too wide? A bit wonky? No, not either of those but… It was as though the woman’s skin was a fancy dress costume and… No. Not that either.
“Good morning. How are you doing today? I hope you haven’t been waiting long. My name is Melanie. Can I take your names?”
The Mammonite spoke quickly, like a radio voice giving the terms and conditions for a high interest loan.
“Um. I’m Nina Seth. This is Vivian Grey.”
“Hello, Nina. Hello, Vivian. Can I call you Nina and Vivian?”
“Yes,” said Nina.
“No,” said Vivian.
“Are you lost?” smiled the Mammonite, flashing two rows of perfect (and perfectly sharp) incisors. “Do you want directions? You must come in. I’ve been baking and there are muffins fresh out of the oven. I haven’t eaten yet.” She glanced up and down the street to check it was empty and then returned her hungry gaze to the women. “It is just the two of you, isn’t it? I’m sure I can fit you in.”
Nina liked muffins and never knowingly turned one down. But this creature had ‘stranger danger’ stamped through her like a stick of rock.
“No, thank you,” said Vivian and showed the woman her consular mission identification. The smile shifted.
“Thank you, Mrs Grey,” she said. “Now, was that a ‘no’ to the coming in or a ‘no’ to the muffins? If you don’t like muffins, I can make you something else. Gluten-free options are available. You can eat in the back garden. We’ve got a lu’crik oyh in the pond that is simply the envy of the whole neighbourhood.”
Nina looked past the Mammonite, down an obscenely clean and bright hallway that was surely far too long for this suburban semi. At the far end, she glimpsed dark stone and an open fire. Chains clanked distantly.
“We’ve come about Croesus,” said Vivian, giving Nina a nudge in the ribs.
The Mammonite gripped the doorframe. Her fingernails were long and glossy.
“Is this a legal matter?” she said suspiciously.
“Are you his mom?” said Nina.
“I might need to refer you to someone else to answer that.”
“We just want to speak to his family.”
Fingernails beat a pattern on the doorframe.
“I am authorised to tell you that I am his mother.”
“And when did you see him last?”
“A few hours ago. When he went to school.”
“This morning?” said Nina, surprised.
“I could check my records, if you’d care to wait.”
Nina thought about the satchel and the rotting pile of meat it had been buried in and the time it had been found. She thought about the distance from here to the city centre. None of it really added up.
“We found your son’s bag, a brown leather satchel.”
The woman’s face became pinched, momentarily disgusted.
“Satchel? He has a Nike rucksack. Are you sure you have the correct information?”
“And he is definitely at school?” said Nina.
The Mammonite drew back a little, like a crocodile sliding back under its rock or wherever it was crocodiles lived. Nina wasn’t up to date on the habits of crocodiles.
“Is there anything else I can help you with today?” said the Mammonite.
“No,” said Vivian.
“But we’ve not had a muffin yet,” said Nina.
Chains clinked. The Mammonite’s eyes glittered like a carnivorous Kardashian and she stepped aside for Nina to enter.
“We are leaving,” said Vivian.
The Mammonite looked disappointed.
“Thank you for coming. I hope I’ve been able to answer your queries. On a scale of one to ten, with one being very dissatisfied and ten being very satisfied, how would you rate my helpfulness?”
“Oh, definitely a ten,” said Nina.
Vivian took hold of Nina’s elbow and steered her away, not turning her back on the woman-thing until there was respectable distance between them.
The door closed slowly.
“Muffin-denier,” Nina muttered.
“She would have eaten you,” said Vivian.
“YOLO,” said Nina. “To school then?”
“To the school,” said Vivian.
“And next the canteen.”
Morag followed Colin as he pushed the door open. The lights inside were already on.
It was, indeed, a canteen. Four rows of metal tables, chairs neatly tucked underneath. Stainless steel cabinets off against one wall, perhaps full of government issue plates and cups and crockery. Hooks on the wall on the other side. Three sets of plastic overalls. A clipboard on a hook, the sheet on it mouldered to an unreadable yellow.
“Cool,” said Rod, crossing to the hanging overalls. “These are actually fallout suits.”
“That’s what I got told,” said Colin.
“Amazing.”
“I’ll get you one for Christmas,” said Morag.
Rod scoffed. “You can try but, when you do, MI5 will ‘take an interest.’ Trust me.”
Morag didn’t touch anything. The place was like a museum piece and she’d been raised not to touch things in museums. It was affecting to think that there was a time, not so very long ago, that such a place had been necessary, that people had planned to hide down here and keep civilisation ticking over while the world burned above their heads.
She looked up.
“Ah,” she said.
The ceiling lights were suspended on chains and now Morag saw that the dark space above them was occupied. The Dinh’r didn’t look much like a spider. It looked like something growing on the base of a tree in a damp woodland, a huge fungoid sac, veiny and bloated. True, woodland fungi didn’t tend
to have four-piece mandibles, segmented legs and purple-silver eyes waving around like deely-boppers; but it sure didn’t look much like a spider.
“Rod,” she said. And then it dropped on her.
Thatcher Academy in Dickens Heath, two glass-fronted storeys of thrusting and shiny corporate-sponsored educational newness, was surrounded by sports fields, light woodland and high security fences to keep out humans. While Vivian and Nina waited in reception, a wall screen rotated through photographs of children going about the business of learning, which apparently consisted of exciting science experiments, looking thoughtfully at pieces of paper, and belittling others in sporting events.
The headteacher was a Mammonite woman whose movements were both expressive and efficient, like an uncannily human-like (but not quite human enough) robot that had taken up acting lessons.
“Mrs Grey,” she said, “So very nice to see you again.”
“Thank you for taking the time to see us, Miss Cook-Mammonson.”
The headteacher held up the tablet in her hand. “This is not a scheduled visit. How can we help you today?”
“We are conducting a missing persons inquiry.”
The headteacher nodded in acknowledgement. “And who is this?”
“My colleague, Nina Seth.”
The headteacher looked down at her. If she had worn glasses, she would have peered over the top of them.
“You’re very short, Nina,” she said.
“Petite,” said Nina.
“Which means much the same thing, Nina. I assume it’s due to poor diet or subpar genetic heritage.”
“I was raised on chip butties by a tribe of kick-ass pygmies,” said Nina.
“I assume that’s a joke,” said the headteacher.
“You assume a lot. Croesus Smith-Mammonson.”
“Yes?”
“Is he one of your students?”
“Is that a formal request for information, Nina?”
Nina looked at Vivian and then the headteacher. “Yes,” she said.