‘I said, “I’m not a mushroom.”
‘“You look like mushroom.”
‘“And you look like you been left out in the rain for a hundred years. So what?”
‘“You a mushroom.”
‘“Shut it. Also – I know your game.”
‘She folds her arms, looks down at me all cocky. “What you talking about? What you want?”
‘“I’m on a mission.”
‘“Did you say ‘mushroom’?”
‘“No, mission. And it’s from the very, very top, you know what I’m saying? Or the very bottom, anyway.”
‘“No, mushy – what are you saying?”
‘By this point I’m getting seriously hacked off with the old bat, and so I did a thing; I know I’m not supposed to do it, above my grade, but my old man taught it me, and it comes in handy from time to time. So I made her legs stop working. She drops down behind the counter, splat. I hop over it, jump down on to her chest.
‘“Where is it?” I shout, and by now she’s got the message that I’m not mucking about. “Take me to it.”
‘She’s not happy about it, but she nods. I hop off on to the floor, and wait. She looks up at me, doesn’t move.
‘I put my fierce voice on. “Are you going to show me, or what?”
‘“My legs not working.”
‘“Oh yeah,” I say, “sorry.”
‘So I undo the thing and she gets up. She goes to the counter, yells at everyone, says she’s shutting up for the night, they all have to bugger off. They do. She locks up, then comes back behind the counter, flaps her hands at me, tells me to move. And under where I was standing, turns out there’s a trapdoor. She opens it and, oof, the smell’s terrible, but there’s a staircase leading down into darkness. She tells me to go down it. I tell her, “Ha ha, no – you go first.” I mean, I’m an idiot, granted, but not a total idiot.’
‘Yes, you are,’ said the Devil.
‘Yeah, fair enough. Anyway, the basement’s ghastly, and I speak as a long-term servant, vessel and connoisseur of all that is unholy and vile. Piled high with broken boxes and furniture. Rotting vegetables and fish everywhere. Slime. Any normal person comes down here, they’re going to turn around and run away and go stand in the shower for a week. But she lights a candle and leads me across to the opposite corner. Kicks aside a bunch of old, reeking crap, and underneath – there’s another trapdoor.
‘“You sure you want go down there?” she asks, sly, and to be honest with you, I’m not. I can feel it now. Really, really strong. I know I’m dealing with one of the Fallen. But I am your faithful servant, and to be honest I’m far more scared of you, cruel but fair though you have generally been to me personally, so I tell her “Yes”. And she opens the trapdoor.
‘We go down into the sub-basement. It’s huge. Must be twenty feet high, loads more candles in those things on the walls, ponces, whatever they’re called, and the space is so long I can’t even see the end of it. There’s stinking black water dripping down the walls. The old Chinese bint, she keeps well back, muttering prayers or incantations and whatnot. I go down the middle of the room until I could see something at the end. It’s in shadow. You could call it a throne if you wanted, but really it’s just a bunch of old fruit crates stacked together.’
The Devil was paying close attention now. ‘And what was sitting on the crates?’
‘A squirrel.’
Vaneclaw saw the Devil staring ominously at him and hurriedly held up his hands. ‘No, seriously, boss, a squirrel. One of those black ones. Little wispy bits on its ears.’
‘And who was it?’
‘Couldn’t tell, at first. I asked it to show its true form, but it just sat there looking like a squirrel. So I asked its name. It didn’t say anything. So then I told it that you had sent me, and I used that word you told me to use, or I tried to: it’s a bastard to pronounce. The squirrel just looked puzzled, so I gave it another go. Fifth or sixth attempt I must have said it right. The squirrel sighed, and … woo, I tell you, it was a big one. You could feel it rumbling through the walls, out under the streets and into the bay and then the ocean, rolling out to bounce back off Japan or somewhere. Going to be some monster waves at Maverick’s tomorrow. Then there’s silence, and after that it said, in a voice like distant, tragic thunder …
‘“I am called … Xjynthucx.”’
Vaneclaw stopped talking, somewhat out of breath, but looking very pleased with himself.
‘Good grief,’ the Devil muttered. ‘Of all the Fallen Angels, you had to find him.’
‘Oh,’ Vaneclaw said, looking crestfallen. ‘Is that not ideal?’
‘Xjynthucx and I were once close, but have not spoken in over seven thousand years.’
‘Bit of a spat, was there?’
‘The last I heard, he’d buried himself in a hidden cave in the Rocky Mountains. I visited the area five hundred years ago. He would not show himself.’
‘So what’s he in such a snit about?’
‘It is angel business, not yours.’
‘Fair enough, boss. But why’s he a squirrel now, then?’
‘I have no idea. Did you put my request to him?’
‘Yep.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Nothing, really. Just sat there repeating “My name is Xjynthucx”, over and over again, and something about destiny. What’s all that about?’
‘Weakness,’ the Devil said distantly. ‘I will not be the only one affected by the failure of the Sacrifice Machine. If need be, I may be able to strike a deal with Xjynthucx, whose sense of duty and loyalty was always greater than most others. Our disagreement was over a trivial matter. The cost may be releasing him from eternal bondage, however, so that can only be a last resort.’ He reached his large, pale hands up and rubbed his eyes, suddenly tired. ‘I hoped,’ he said eventually, ‘to avoid having to speak personally with the other Fallen. I am beginning to fear it is unavoidable.’
‘Your afternoon didn’t go well, then?’
‘I encountered … something perplexing.’
‘That’s a type of plastic, right?’
‘No, you fool. Something that didn’t make sense. Not then, at any rate. But I have thought further upon it since.’
‘What was it?’
‘I had gone looking for Hell a different way. Perhaps … perhaps I found it after all. It may have changed in my absence. Become more private and secular. People in themselves.’
‘Well, that bloke said that might happen, didn’t he? That French berk you never liked. “Hell is other people.”’
‘I suspect one form of Hell was having a long conversation with Jean-Paul Sartre. Did you ever meet him?’
‘No, boss. I’ve steered clear of France, in the main.’
‘Did you perform the other task I set you, at least?’
‘What? Oh yeah. Meant to say. Found a baby snackular in San Fran soon after I got there, not too creepy. Gave the job to her. She’s fetching it tonight. The Sacrifice Machine will be in the back garden of Hannah Green’s house by dawn, latest.’
The Devil stood. Had anyone glanced up from the street four storeys below, they might for a moment have glimpsed a spectral figure up on the roof, though the Devil was usually good at making sure that kind of sighting did not occur.
He stepped down on to the parapet, and the two of them climbed down the outer face of the building, head first.
‘So what now, boss?’
‘I’m hungry,’ the Devil said.
‘Me too. Could murder some fried chicken.’
‘Not for food.’
‘Oh, yeah. Right.’
They walked through the town to a dive bar down by the boardwalk. Their presence caused the almost immediate break-up of two long-term relationships and, half an hour later, a brief but spirited knife fight in the parking lot. Hardly a full meal, but enough to keep the wolf from the door.
Then, somewhat refreshed, the Devil, by dint of a short conversation, lit
a fuse under a gawky young man who, several years later, would be responsible for the strangulation murders of six young women, along with his own mother. Sometimes you had to play the long game, like laying down a fine wine.
On the other hand, the Devil left the car he’d stolen from near the Dragnet in the street outside the Rittenhouse, from where it was eventually towed. The city worker driving the tow truck happened to know the car’s owner, Luanne.
She paid the fine. She got her car back. She kept on top of things. She went on to live a full and decent life.
The Devil, had he known this, would have been disappointed. But you can’t win them all.
Chapter 25
Who comes and talks to you, in the long watches of the night? Whose voice do you hear as you lie brittle-eyed, oppressed by sheets and twisting in your skin? You assume it must be your own, because the voice knows so much about you – but this voice never soothes or celebrates. It needles and stirs. It speaks to you through twitches in your soul and a tightening in the guts, and it tells you that things are not OK, and it may be too late to fix them, or yourself.
You have to listen, though. It will be this voice that finally finds the words to get you to talk to the doctor about that lump, or call your father, or give up drinking. It may be this voice that levers up the endless coats of paint with which you have coated yourself, and reveals something rotting inside; or else convinces you that the interior is clean and true after all, and it is the work of others that has made you feel otherwise.
It was this voice that made Kristen realize that she really, really had to go home.
A call to the company travel office would have scored her a seat quickly and easily. She couldn’t do that. Appearing to jump the corporate ship wouldn’t play. So instead she spent the hour between 5 and 6 a.m. laboriously engineering a ticket through the airline’s own site, and then their helpline, by the end of which she had – silently – wished Very Bad Things upon more than one customer service representative. The time she spent on hold at least gave her the chance to round up her passport and phone charger and shove a few items into her carry-on, so when she was finally confirmed on the 11.20 out of Heathrow, she could leave the hotel immediately.
She’d spent a few nights of the last weeks in a house in Hampstead, home of the man with whom she ate at Bella Mare, but was glad that this morning she was in the hotel. Otherwise there would be a need for Discussion. Something to be said for a marriage, even one where the communication machine has stopped working, is the shorthand of friendship and shared years. If she’d got up one morning and told Steve she had to go somewhere, urgently, he would have said fine, asked what time she’d be back and if she could pick up some avocados. He would have trusted that she had a reason and that it would be good enough. Trust like this has to be earned. It can be lost, of course.
She didn’t inform reception she wouldn’t be returning that evening. They wouldn’t care: the company had the room booked for another five weeks. Not for the first time in recent months it felt as if she was undercover in her own life.
She went outside into the street and stuck up her hand for a cab. It was cold, and raining a little, of course. This was England. It was cold, and it rained. It was cosy and dark and old. You could hide here. From your past. From your future.
From everything.
A spell in Airportland, following its rituals and signs. Standing in line. Submitting to people in garish uniforms. The same questions as always, the same answers, and then a thin piece of cardboard that tells you where to go and when. Magazines and bottled water to take on board. A glazed wander around the kind of stores they have in airports, buying nothing. She didn’t need any more expensive scarves. Strangers milling to and fro like clouds. What seem like hours of dead time, and then a hurried hike down a mile of affectless corridor and you’re ready to go stand in another line, between people who are either making a big deal of how they do this every day, or otherwise are silent, and quite scared.
The plane. Dry air. A cursory nod at whomever you’ve been put next to, a sparkleless smile, wordless ways of saying I mean you no ill will but let’s keep our elbows under control – plus if you’re wondering if I want to talk (or listen), the answer is a big fat ‘no’.
Watch the video that pretends that, should this thing drop out of the sky, the big issue is whether you bring your handbag.
Take off.
Have a drink. Sink into the iPad, cut with sessions on the laptop. Get ahead of next week’s work, always.
Eat.
Restroom.
Laptop.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
Kristen had done years of hard time on planes, to England, Europe, the Far and Middle East, criss-crossing the United States. Never like this, though. Never having attempted to call her estranged husband twice more from the airport – trying once what had been her home, once his cell and getting voicemail, Steve’s message in his from-before voice, his ghost voice, the one recorded back when things were different and they told each other often that they loved one another with all their hearts. She didn’t for a moment believe what his kooky sister had told her on a previous call (he wasn’t in a meeting cycle at the moment, and even if he had been, he sure as hell wouldn’t have been taking one in Santa Cruz, where the nearest thing to a television industry was hippies putting up rants on the public access channel about aliens and recycling) but she didn’t know what else to think.
That wasn’t why she was going home.
Steve was a grown-up, more or less – and in adding that proviso she wasn’t falling into the cheap, patronizing habit of treating all men as if they were kids. She was old enough to get that everybody was half-child, herself included. Steve was functionally an adult. He could look after himself.
It was Hannah.
And what she had said, of course.
Kristen had finally confronted that conversation properly in her mind, and kicked herself black and blue. For asking Hannah if she knew what time it was. For Christ’s sake. Hannah was a kid. Even grown-ups have a hard time getting their heads around time zones. And then for going on about how cold it was there. To be fair, she’d thought her daughter might like that. Hannah was an avid snow bunny and, born and raised in California, saw precipitation of any kind as an interesting diversion and talking point, not business as usual, like the Brits did. Come rain or shine, Kristen always told her what it was like out of her hotel-room window, wherever she was. It helped Hannah picture the scene, brought them closer when her mother was away, or so she’d thought. Not this time.
I hate you.
Parents hear those words more often than anyone, and always from those they love the most. Families are the crucibles that temper the toughest of love’s swords. It gets intense in there sometimes. You know you’re going to get slapped with those words sooner or later, when the little person in your charge glares hot-eyed up at you and flexes their soul. You’ll joke about it with your partner before it happens, how someday this bundle of dependency will carve off sufficient autonomy to stab you with the cutting words. You figure it’ll be in their teens, but in fact it starts a lot earlier. Kids are leaving you from the day they’re born. They have their pens in their hands and start making marks on their own sheets of paper, their first words and sentences, their personal Chapter One. It’s shocking to have those words hurled at you, but you come to take them for the spasm of frustration or low blood sugar they usually are.
It hadn’t sounded that way this time, though. It sounded as if Hannah really meant it. That was what the voice had been telling Kristen in the night, telling her over and over, and try as she might, she hadn’t been able to get it to shut up.
I hate you.
Everything Kristen had done in the last months had been considered ahead of time. Though she now lived in a world of choppy swells and impulse – and, God, wasn’t it wonderful sometimes, after years of steady, even seas, to do whatever the heck your soul told you? – every decision had been
deliberated. She’d tried to do the right thing, even when a week spent analysing the issues from every angle spat out answers that made her wince. She was good at this shit, too – for other people, at least. She spent her life holding their hands and helping them make decisions, tough business calls that affected many lives.
She’d discovered, however, that you can’t hold your own hand. It was like wandering round some big department store, your paw safe and warm in your parent’s huge hand, and getting separated. If you’re a child and this happens you whirl about, before tearfully doing what you’ve been told a thousand times: going to find an adult in uniform and telling them you’re lost, and it will be scary for a while but they’ll give you a cookie and be super-nice and eventually your mother or father will come running, their face strange with fear and anger and guilt.
When you’re an adult, those options don’t exist. You do what you can, on your own, and sometimes you freeze. You block.
You get lost.
And everything falls apart.
Kristen closed her laptop. She flagged down the stewardess and got another glass of wine. She sat with it clasped in both hands, staring ahead, and willed the plane to fly faster.
I hate you.
Please don’t, Hannah.
Because I love you with all my heart, and if you did but know – and you must never know – I would do anything you asked. Especially as I personally have no idea what to do.
About anything, any more.
Chapter 26
Things did not start well in Santa Cruz.
Though the Devil and Granddad were in Hannah’s yard at dawn to receive the Sacrifice Machine, it did not arrive. Investigation eventually determined that Vaneclaw had given the baby snackular insufficiently precise instructions, and so instead of transporting the machine to Santa Cruz, California, it had moved it somewhere less convenient, namely to a town called Santa Cruz in Paraiba, a region in northeast Brazil.
The Devil, in discussions with Vaneclaw, was frank in his disappointment at this turn of events.
Further disenchantment was expressed by Hannah, Aunt Zo and Granddad, as the night had not seen the reappearance of Hannah’s dad, nor the returning of further emails or phone messages. They were keen to get on with heading down to Big Sur.
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