Chalk

by Paul Cornell

  ‘You said I’d be healed,’ I shouted.

  ‘After the sacrifice,’ said Waggoner.

  ‘Before,’ I said. ‘Now.’ I leapt forwards and grabbed the Cup from the hands of the ancient warrior who had raised it in the air, about to break it. I didn’t look to see if Waggoner was going to call to them to stop me, but he must have let it happen. I bent to fill the Cup with water from around the omphalos. I could hear Lang start to snigger with laughter, and then I heard the ancients all joining in. Maybe they thought I was blaspheming against Angie’s way of doing things by using her Cup to complete their plan. Or maybe they were just cruelly delighted at watching me trying to attend to my own desperate needs that had proved so incidental to theirs.

  I took a look at Drake, struggling and shouting as he was shown the stake they were going to impale him on. He was to be the pin that would fasten the two maps together. ‘Let her go!’ he was shouting. ‘Angie, you have to run, the baby, you have to run!’ Such impossible words from him. I still can’t hear his voice saying them, but I remember.

  The man with two sticks walked up to Drake, his face obscured by the fire that blazed between them, still hauling the sticks together, waiting for the moment when the Cup would be broken, the last sacrifice made, and he could slam his sticks and the two worlds into each other.

  As quick as I could I pulled off my trousers and pants and threw them on the ground. In the distance, ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’ started to play.

  I raised the Cup to pour the water over my wounded cock. I hesitated. I could do this and be healed.

  Here’s that line again. Here’s where you decide to step across it.

  With a yell, I ran from the pool right at the man with two sticks. I threw the water at his fire.

  * * *

  Water is being thrown onto my face.

  I ran as fast as I could along the ditches of the hill fort. I could hear Waggoner behind me, screaming at me as he pursued me. He held Drake’s knife high above his head. All around us, the two worlds were crashing together, rebounding, out of control. I rushed out the gate and down the hillside. I leapt the wooden stile. I rolled down the hill past the Red Barn in the mud. I burst past the badger sets and sent the pheasants flying. I hauled my way through the hooks of the blackberry bushes. I sprinted as I hit the gravel of the lane that led round the curve that led to my house. Waggoner kept after me. He was catching up. His cries echoed across the fields.

  I saw no lights on at my house as I ran desperately, trying to run better than I had ever run. I knew the front door would be locked and bolted many times. So I clambered over the garden wall and ran down the row of high trees and leapt at my bedroom window. I smashed through it and rolled, ready to face Waggoner as he followed. He jumped through the window straight at me, Drake’s knife point downwards. I managed to grab his arm. We spun, clockwise, him trying to force the turn back the other way, to force the knife into me. As we turned, I looked up at the downs through the broken window frame. I saw the man with two sticks fighting at the last second to make the worlds come together. I could see his features, just a normal face. He was just a person. With one last effort, he heaved his sticks together. It was too late. The fire had gone out. Everything he wanted vanished in a puff of smoke.

  I grabbed hold of Waggoner and thought of the riff from ‘Back on the Chain Gang,’ and that made me think of being connected to things I could never escape.

  I saw a look on Waggoner’s face, in that last second, as his features leapt in towards mine, a look of release. Then it was just me standing there, holding Drake’s knife. I dropped it. I was Andrew Waggoner. I put a hand to my face.

  Water was being thrown onto my face by Mr. Rushden.

  He’d gotten a lot of us out onto the playing field. Kids were lying on the frosty grass in the charred remains of costumes. I realised I was fully dressed. Angie was lying beside me, Drake beside her. I coughed and heaved in a breath, sat up and looked around. There was Louise, looking to help Netty and Jenn, looking around her as if she was waking from a nightmare. In front of us, the school was burning down. There were already fire engines on the scene. The first ambulances were rolling up, kids being led towards them. Mr. Rove was staring up at the blaze. Teachers were stumbling around him.

  The ambulancemen came for me and starting asking me urgent questions about how much I’d inhaled and what I’d eaten. I could still feel the awkward shape of my maimed cock under my trousers. I always would. They asked me if I was hurt.

  I almost laughed.

  Thirty-nine

  The school closed, forever. I went to John Bentley. It was fine.

  I saw Angie again a couple of years later. I’d left school, and was trying to get away from the area, from all the impossible memories. I ran into her in Chippenham. She was walking with a small child, her son. He looked like Drake. She saw me and stopped, looked shocked. I was afraid she’d run. I didn’t want to scare her, I walked carefully up to her.

  We couldn’t find any words about anything impossible. I asked about Drake. She hadn’t seen him since a couple of days after the fire. Everyone had wanted to know who the baby’s father was. She had never told. Drake hadn’t contacted her. She said she was sure he could change, would change, but it wasn’t up to her to make it happen. She was putting the child first now. She was still in touch with Jenn and Netty and Louise. Louise now regarded herself as having had some kind of breakdown and saw herself as recovering. We didn’t talk about the implications of that—that we knew better.

  The only thing I could find to ask her about those times was why that ornamental box she’d given me had been empty. She seemed puzzled by the question.

  ‘Of course it was empty,’ she said. ‘It was for you to put something in.’

  I said sorry I hadn’t called her. She said the same. We both knew we never would. She walked off, and looked once over her shoulder at me, and walked on. That was the last time I saw her.

  * * *

  Many years later, I made a deliberate effort to find Drake. I was still wounded. I still had a flaw at the heart of me. I had done some bad things. I had made things right but not in myself. I decided, in a moment of weakness, that seeing him might heal me.

  He was on Facebook. There was his face—older, which was somehow surprising. He’d never moved away. He ran what had been his parents’ farm. They were deceased. I friended him. I waited a couple of days. He friended me back. I sent him a message. He agreed to meet.

  I realised, as I walked into the coffee bar near Swindon bus station, that I’d come to this meeting wearing a geeky T-shirt, a joke most people wouldn’t get, the sort of T-shirt that requires an explanation. I’d put it on without thinking, or maybe it was my armour today. There he was. He stood up as I entered. I thought he was going to hold out his hand to me, but he didn’t. He looked nervous, anxious to start talking. We ordered. He’d already shown much more in the way of facial expression than I remembered. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, speaking so fast his words collided with each other. ‘I can’t say sorry enough. It’s not big enough. I’ve been an addict. I don’t know what’s true. I’m clean now; all that shit just gets in the way of what I did. What I did to you.’

  I didn’t want to hear this. I kept my own expression neutral. Everything he said was making me think of all that I myself had done.

  ‘My wife, she’s an angel. I’ve found the straight and narrow. I need to apologise to you. I will . . . I will do time if you want. I’ve decided that. I mean . . . what that’ll do to my wife and . . . but no, I can’t say that. I’ve decided.’

  I’d kept his knife; it was still in a drawer at home. I’d thought of bringing it, for some reason.

  ‘I’m a dad now. I don’t want my boy to get any of this from me. I’ve never laid a finger on him, I swear. He’s happy. He’s whole. He’s not like . . . we were. What was done to me when I was his age, it stops with me.’

  I wanted to be able to say the same. I stared at him, tryi
ng to find what I searched for whenever I looked in a mirror, but what was in front of me was all there was. It wasn’t enough, because nothing could be. I realised I couldn’t stand listening to him any longer. I got up. ‘I’m glad you’re a changed man,’ I said. ‘I’m glad that’s possible.’

  I left. He didn’t follow. That was the last I knew of him.

  * * *

  That evening, taking the opportunity to go and see my family, I asked Dad again about how he got his samurai sword. ‘We were coming out of the jungle,’ he said, leaning back in his chair, his eyes darting about as if he was still there, ‘and we heard the sounds of a battle ahead. So we slowed down. By the time we poked our heads out, there was nothing. Just a few bodies. Two patrols, the sergeant said, must have met each other, fought it out, and whoever survived had moved on.’ I listened, waiting for the tone of his voice to become self-mocking, but this time it didn’t. ‘There it was, stuck in the mud.’ He blinked at me. ‘I just pulled it out.’

  Walking back to my car, I looked up at the downs. I didn’t see anything.

  Acknowledgments

  Over many years, many people have helped with this book before my wonderful editor Lee Harris got his hands on it. I’d like to mention two in particular: Simon Kavanagh shepherded it from being an unreadable mess into something that worked. For that and so many other things, I owe him a great debt that I will possibly never be able to repay. Julie Crisp, working on other books with me, taught me a whole host of skills I then applied to Chalk. This misses so many people out, but over the years I’ve lost a lot of documentation, and a growing list of people I was supposed to mention here. If you think this book should be for you, believe me, it is.

  About the Author

  © Lou Abercrombie, 2015

  PAUL CORNELL is a writer of science fiction and fantasy in prose, comics and television, one of only two people to be Hugo Award nominated for all three media. A New York Times #1 bestselling author, he’s written Doctor Who for the BBC, Wolverine for Marvel and Batman and Robin for DC. He’s won the BSFA Award for his short fiction, an Eagle Award for his comics and shares in a Writers Guild Award for his TV work. His recent Tor.com novella Witches of Lychford has been nominated for the BSFA Award and the British Fantasy Award.

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  Also by Paul Cornell

  Witches of Lychford

  The Lost Child of Lychford

  British Summertime

  Something More

  A Better Way to Die (collection)

  THE SHADOW POLICE SERIES

  London Falling

  The Severed Streets

  Who Killed Sherlock Holmes?

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight

  Thirty-nine

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Paul Cornell

  Copyright Page

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  CHALK

  Copyright © 2017 by Paul Cornell

  Cover photographs © Getty Images

  Cover design by Peter Lutjen

  Edited by Lee Harris

  All rights reserved.

  A Tor.com Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates

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  New York, NY 10010

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  Tor® is a registered trademark ofMacmillan Publishing Company, LLC.

  ISBN 978-0-7653-9094-3 (ebook)

  ISBN 978-0-7653-9095-0 (trade paperback)

  First Edition: March 2017

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