Sixty-One Nails cotf-1

by Mike Shevdon

  I was about to tell him to piss off before I threw up over them when his words about straying from the path rang a faint bell. "Path?"

  "Yeah. You're in my stomping ground now, bumpkin, and you're not leavin' till you've paid the price." His companion nodded again. "What have ya got?"

  He sat down opposite me, sliding into the empty seat with animal grace, his shoulders rolled under the leather of his coat in a way that wasn't quite human.

  "I'm sorry, but I don't have any spare change. I'm clean out. So you'll be better off going and pestering someone else."

  "Ya hear that, Carris? He wants to buy us off with coins. Up in town to trade and he reckons he's got nothing, does he? He must take us for bumpkins like he is, eh?"

  I was beginning to suspect that this was not the average yob out to intimidate the tourists into making a "donation".

  "Look, mate. I don't have anything, so it's not worth your time, all right?" I tried to appear as uninteresting as possible.

  "Well, if you've got nothing to give then we'll have to see what there is to take, won't we?" He made to touch my hand, but I snatched it away.

  "Stay away from me," I growled.

  "Or what, bumpkin? What ya gonna do, eh?"

  "He's not the one you want to worry about." The familiar voice came from behind Carris. She spun around, stepping wide to brace herself for an attack, her movements lithe and graceful.

  Blackbird walked around her blind side, navigating around the table so she could slide in behind the table next to me. She placed a pint of black liquid in front of me, the head creamy.

  "Guinness. It'll help to clear your head." She explained it as though we weren't facing off with these thugs.

  She turned back to the youth, who still looked expectant.

  "You gonna pay up for him then?" he queried, hand out, making a grasping motion reminiscent of the gestures used by Gramawl. Blackbird made to touch him and it was his turn to snatch his hand away.

  "No, Fenlock, I'm not going to pay up for him and you're not going to ask him again. Instead, you're going to apologise to both of us for disturbing our drink then leave us alone."

  "And why would I do that?" His companion leaned forward over the table to add to the threat or simply to overhear the conversation.

  "Because if you don't, I'm going to shout your true name loud enough for every goblin and nixie for miles around to hear," Blackbird stated calmly.

  Fenlock hesitated, calculating, then recovered.

  "You don't know it, do ya? Ya can't," he leered at her.

  "Don't I? You need to be more careful who you tell it to then, don't you? Once a secret's told then you just know someone will find it out. Perhaps if you chose to mention it to someone who was more discreet…?" Blackbird arched an eyebrow and looked up at Carris, who was still leaning over us. Fenlock's expression darkened.

  He spun around, tipping the chair onto the floor and standing in one movement. Carris staggered backwards, caught by the sudden reversal.

  "Who did you tell?" His tone was quiet, but darkly threatening.

  "Me? I didn't tell her. She's lying, she is. She can't know it. I didn't tell her." Carris eased backwards slowly towards the door. The whiteness around her too-dark lips had paled further and she was suddenly sweating.

  "Who? Who was it?" He stalked towards her, accelerating.

  She turned and flung herself at the door, Fenlock only a second behind her. The door slammed open then banged shut, leaving the bar in deathly silence. The other customers in the bar watched us for a minute to see if we would deliver any more surprises, then went back to their drinks.

  "Drink up," said Blackbird, "We have to be long gone by the time he catches her." She lifted a glass of clear liquid and took a long swallow from it.

  I lifted the glass and took a sip through the creamy head. The combination of the strong taste and the cold soothing texture was therapeutic. I took a longer swallow and wiped the foam from my upper lip.

  "You don't know his true name, do you?" I called her bluff.

  "Oh, I do. But not because of Carris. And if I once revealed it I'd either have to finish him or he'd hunt down everyone who'd heard it and kill them, so it would be a good idea to drink up." She nodded towards the Guinness.

  "Doesn't that mean he'll come looking for you?" I spoke my thoughts aloud.

  "Not if he thinks I won't tell. When he eventually catches up with Carris he won't know whether I really know it or not, will he?"

  I had to admire her logic, though in my current state these mental games were too challenging. Instead I concentrated on drinking down the cold dark beer. I was beginning to feel a little better, though whether that was due to the beer or the respite, I wasn't sure.

  I tipped the glass up to finish it, finding it had gone down easier than I would have believed.

  Blackbird slid around the seat and stood up, so I followed her lead. My vision was steady and my knees weren't wobbly any more. I might drink Guinness more often if it did me that much good.

  Blackbird took the empty glasses to the bar and joined me at the door. We exited cautiously, turning back towards the crowds and mingling with the gathering groups around the tube station before passing along the opposite side of the road and heading back towards Leicester Square. I looked nervously around for signs of Fenlock or Carris. The glare spilled onto the pavement from the shops along Long Acre and we had to step around early theatregoers who were checking out menus and taking advantage of special rates as we made our way.

  "Are you going to explain what happened earlier?" I prompted.

  "With Fenlock?"

  "No, about what Kareesh said. What did she mean about my having another name?"

  "I don't know, Rabbit. I've never heard her volunteer anything like that before. It's not like her just to come out with things."

  Have you known her long?" I edged around the question of parentage as we crossed the junction with St Martin's Lane.

  "Most of my life."

  Only most of it? "You seem very close to her."

  "She brought me up; she's the closest thing I have to family."

  Close to family, but not family. What did that mean?

  "Did I choose correctly?" I shied away from the question I wanted to ask.

  "You did well, though I don't know if you chose correctly. Only time will tell us that."

  "It was all so confusing, so fast." It was ironic since we had spent half a day down there. "There was a hall, with a high vaulted roof, all in darkness and surrounded by water. In the middle there was this thing, like an altar, only caked in weeds and stuff. What does it mean?"

  "The visions are like that. They are fragments from your possible future. They are not precise. That was why I was so surprised when she said what she did, about your name I mean. It's just not like her."

  "You care about her, don't you?" It was impossible not to hear the worry in her voice.

  "She's very old. Each time I go to see her I wonder if it'll be the last. She was there for me when no one else was."

  "So you're not related?"

  "No. Whatever made you think…?" She paused. I tried to look interested in a watch shop we were passing but she had stopped and I had to stop too. I had no idea where we were going.

  There was a long silence while she just looked at me. I felt as if I was being punished for something out of my control, but at that moment my entire life was out of my control. I didn't know enough to be able to make judgements any more. I only knew how to ask questions.

  She sighed as if resigning herself to something, then gathered herself together and straightened her shoulders.

  "Tonight you need to clear out of your flat. Remove anything that identifies your daughter or anyone else you care for. Either arrange for your things to be sent somewhere safe and anonymous or else destroy them completely. Don't leave any link that could be taken as a clue. Not souvenirs, nor photographs, nor letters, understand? Nothing that will give you away."

&n
bsp; I nodded, feeling cold inside. I recognised the signs, I had been dumped before. She was cutting me loose.

  "Sever your ties with the flat and with your current existence. Settle your bills only if you can do it tonight and be out by morning. Take only what you can run with. Carry too much and it'll probably kill you. Take a little non-perishable food with you, you don't know where your next meal is coming from. Leave nothing. Understand?"

  "I am to leave nothing." But she was the one who was leaving.

  "Head back into central London tomorrow morning. You'll be harder to find in the city."

  "I understand." I wanted to say something that would persuade her to stay with me but her expression ruled out any appeal.

  "OK. Now go and do it."

  We stood there.

  "Well go on then," she said.

  "Where shall I meet you tomorrow?"

  "I'll find you," she said, but there was a hint of something else in her voice: not a lie, but not the truth either.

  "Promise?"

  "Just go. And watch your back." She was exasperated, impatient for me to leave.

  I waited a moment more but there was no sign of the promise I'd hoped for. She had become my mentor and my guide, but she'd indicated from the start that it wouldn't last. My curiosity had led me to push her that little bit too hard and now she was pushing me away.

  Reluctantly, I turned and walked towards the tube station. Like Orpheus, who was warned not to look back, I turned to see whether she was watching me go. There was no sign of her. I hadn't really expected there to be. I was on my own. Well, I could do alone when I had to. I had been there before.

  I walked past the open doorways threading my way through tourists and commuters until I made it to the tube station. The rush-hour was starting to build so that the noise in the ticket hall was a constant clamour of voices, barriers thumping closed and announcements that were barely intelligible over the general hubbub. I merged with the stream of people and stepped onto the escalator, letting it carry me down as people too impatient for its steady descent jostled past.

  Trying to keep aware of the people around me, I looked for signs of unusual behaviour in the crowds. It was like looking for a blade of grass in a hayfield. So many people in London looked strange, it was impossible to discriminate. I settled for trying to look anonymous.

  I took the first train heading south and west. Tired-looking commuters mixed with early evening socialites, packing themselves in until there was no room to breathe. If I was caught here there was no escape. Strangely though, pressed in with my fellows, I felt safer than I had on the backstreets. If someone wanted me then they would have to push past twelve other people to get to me, or at least that's what I told myself.

  As the stops got further out, the press thinned, allowing me to take a seat and look around. No one looked remarkable, but as I said, this was London. I found myself thinking back through the day looking for the flaw which would reveal the punch-line, the key to the joke I didn't get. Instead I was left with only a sense of lingering paranoia. At the same time, the day seemed unreal, as if it had happened to someone else. I had met Gramawl and Kareesh, but had I really? Did they really exist? The train rattled down the tracks, but I couldn't help feeling that somehow I was on the wrong line.

  A young woman was sitting across from me. She was browsing through one of those magazines filled with candid pictures of D-list celebs and their hangers-on. I found myself wondering if she was what she appeared to be. What if she was Fey too? She looked a little too glossy, a little too perfect to be natural. How many Fey were there? Were they all around us? She looked up. Her eyes were ice blue. Now that I looked closer, you could see that she was not a natural blonde.

  "What?" she mouthed at me over the clatter and rumble of the train. Her grimace broke the spell, as I realised I had been calmly examining her while she looked back. I found myself blushing deeply at my breech of tube etiquette.

  "I'm sorry, I was… never mind."

  "Weirdo!" she mouthed back. Rattling her magazine, she went back to browsing.

  I tried not to look at her for the rest of the journey.

  At my stop I disembarked and waited on the platform until the train departed and the platform cleared, looking suspiciously at anyone who lingered. I picked out my ticket, climbed the stairs to the barrier and exited into the empty street where late-opening shops tempted the newly arrived commuters to alcohol and convenience foods. Self-consciously I walked past, trying to act like everyone else, to be like them without ever having thought about what that meant. How did you walk? What did you look at? What thoughts were in your head? So many times I had walked this way and had never given a moment's thought as to whether it looked normal or not.

  The suburban streets were damp and the street lights did little but highlight the shadows. I followed the route to my flat scanning the gardens along the front of the houses without any notion of what I was looking for. She said that the thing hunting me might know where I would go. Did that mean it might know where my flat was? Could it be waiting for me?

  My front door was dark, as I had left it. I turned the key and pushed the door open, hearing only the distant rumble of traffic and the background city murmur. Stepping inside I closed the door behind me. I stood, silent at the bottom of the stairs leading up to my flat, not sure what I was listening for.

  Berating myself for making something out of nothing, I spurred myself into motion, stepping stealthily up, avoiding the stair that creaked and staying close to the wall, sliding up to eye-level where the stairway turned a right-angle at the top onto my hallway and checking that the doors were all shut and the flat was as I had left it.

  I went to the first door, throwing it open onto my L-shaped sitting room to reveal only the battered sofa and chair my parents had given me, my television and the stereo. The street lights through the window made shadows across the rug. Stomach tight with apprehension, I turned on the lights, then prodded behind the curtains and peered behind the sofa.

  Going back into the hall, I moved cautiously along to where the kitchen and bathroom were. I pushed open the kitchen door. Both chairs were still tucked under my self-assembly table so I could get to the kettle and the four-ring cooker. I stepped across the hall and into the bathroom where I threw back the shower curtain. My shaving things were undisturbed on the shelf by the sink.

  I had saved my bedroom until last as it backed onto the small garden. I threw open the door and stepped back, letting the light from the hall fall across my double bed. I could see the security locks on the French windows that overlooked the half-balcony were still secure. I clicked on the light and dropped cautiously to my knees to look under the bed. Isn't that where the monsters always hide? I checked inside my wardrobe just to be sure.

  The dressing mirror inside the wardrobe door revealed my worried expression. I forced a smile, now I had been all through the flat, and returned to the French window to draw the curtains closed on the tiny back garden. The small patio behind the house that I shared with my ground floor neighbours showed dimly in the lights from the rooms below. The row of evergreens at the end of the garden cast pointed shadows across the small lawn, reminding me somehow of Kareesh's smile. It had been a strange day.

  Back downstairs, I locked and bolted the front door, pressing my back against it. I made my way back up to the bedroom and took my suit off, inspecting the mess I had made of it then hanging it up out of habit. I changed into a pair of sweat pants and an old T-shirt, then cracked open a cold beer from the fridge and started packing.

  Not knowing how long I would have, I concentrated on putting my rucksack together first, setting aside underwear, shirts, slacks and casual boots, a sturdy belt and several pairs of thick socks. After half an hour I had all this and more packed into a rucksack that I left at the bottom of my bed. I found a long rainproof coat and a fleece in case it turned cold.

  In the kitchen, I put together an odd meal of left-over ham, grapes, plain biscuits
and fruit yoghurt. I smelled the yogurt as I opened it and consigned it straight to the bin. My stomach was sour enough already. The biscuits were soft, but tasted OK with the ham. I ate the grapes as I went through the fridge, dropping anything that wouldn't keep into the waste-bin.

  Then I began clearing rooms.

  It's funny, it's not until you start clearing stuff out that you begin to appreciate how much you have. I didn't have that much, having recently cleared myself out of the family home and leaving much more behind than mere possessions. Even so, I found postcards from my parents behind the clock and little gifts that Alex had given me in my chest of drawers.

  In the bathroom, Alex's hair-mousse was still in the cabinet from her last visit and there was a toothbrush she left with me for the occasional sleepover. I knew Alex's impromptu visits were more often driven by a need for some distance between her and her mother, but I treasured them nonetheless. I tried not to take sides, simply offering tea and sympathy and a place to stay where she was always welcome, always loved. Having her things in my flat was a reminder of her presence. Nevertheless, I binned the items ruthlessly. We could always buy more hair mousse.

  Methodically I cleaned each room, looking under the tables, inside tins and boxes and behind anything moveable. Everything specific to my family or myself, I stacked on the kitchen table. The rest I trashed, flushed or left.

  When I had finished I went back and cleared again, finding a novelty corkscrew in the kitchen drawer that Mum had bought me ages ago and a letter from Kath which had slipped down the back of the dresser. I put all of the things into padded envelopes on the kitchen table and stuck address labels onto the outside. The first note I wrote to my parents asking them to hold onto the items for me said far too much and I knew it would only worry them. The second told them that I was moving out of the flat unexpectedly and needed them to hold onto things until I found a new place. They would still worry, but it was better than before.

  I wrote a cheque to my landlord with enough money to cover three months rent and the outstanding bills, then added an apologetic note that a death in the family had meant I'd had to leave at short notice and wouldn't be back for some time. That much of the truth I could tell him. I asked him if he would mind keeping an eye on the place while I was gone.