The Fetch

by Robert Holdstock

  Shocked, Richard stared at the bitter man for a moment, scarcely daring to believe what he had heard. ‘You told them? About apportation?’

  ‘I held out, Richard. I held out for a long time. Three, maybe four seconds. It suddenly seemed like a good idea to start being honest. They didn’t believe me at first, of course. But the idea of apportation was sufficiently interesting – or perhaps baffling, I think I saw a brow or two crease – that they thought they’d better tell their employers. So Michael will be getting a visit. And I suggest that you get home as fast as possible, and if possible, tell the boy to start dreaming, and dreaming hard. Of gold not stainless steel, and emeralds in preference to moonstones.’

  Richard’s awareness of the other man expanded and he realized how shocked, how utterly defeated Goodman suddenly was.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jack. I’m really sorry.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Thanks for coming. You could have called me by phone. Susan has the number here.’

  ‘I thought this would help convince you,’ Goodman said wearily, tapping his glasses. ‘Besides. This is my last stop in Britain. I fly out of Edinburgh tomorrow, and I shan’t be coming back for a while. Sorry to leave you to it, Richard. But I wouldn’t be any use to you. I’m too frightened.’

  ‘What about Françoise Jeury? Do they know that she knows? About Michael? Is she in danger?’

  ‘I imagine. I don’t know. I just want to get away, to recover my pride, to mend my wounds …’

  ‘I might need to talk to you.’

  ‘I’m not abandoning you in that way. I’ll call you often. I understand that you might need to know what else I’ve said, what else is happening.’

  Goodman buttoned his coat and walked stiffly from the hotel. Richard watched him limp to his car, then went upstairs and packed his bags in a hurry. He called Susan, unable to make the decision between panicking her or leaving her in ignorance. It seemed better just to warn her.

  ‘Don’t ask questions. Just get Michael away. Take him to your mother’s. Take him to the Hansons’. But get him out of the house.’

  ‘He’s at school.’

  ‘Then meet him. I’ll be home in eight or nine hours. Just trust me, Susan, for God’s sake! And get that boy into a safe house until I get there.’

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The telephone call shocked Susan. Richard’s voice had sounded … anguished. There was no other word for it. He had also sounded like the old Richard, all violence gone, the self-pitying, paranoid whine vanished. So she had been disturbed at first, but the simple implication of menace to the family had frightened her. She had been shocked.

  She rang Jenny at once, and received a second blow. Jenny sounded strained and unhappy about the idea of Michael and Carol lodging with them.

  ‘Why? They’ve been there before.’

  The edge in Jenny’s voice was transparent. ‘They’ve been dumped on us before, you mean.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh God. I’m sorry, Susan. I’m sorry. That was uncalled for …’

  ‘You called it, though. What do you mean? Dumped.’

  Jenny drew breath at the end of the phone and then – being Jenny – laid it on the line. She and Geoff felt they were being used, used as a depository for the Whitlock children, used as messengers, childminders, catch-alls, and – while they were always prepared to do favours for friends – for heaven’s sake: most of the time Carol was being left with them as a convenience to distracted parents. There was little or no thanks. Carol was unhappy about spending nights away from home. And there was such a degree of thoughtlessness in the way Susan treated her kids that perhaps it would be better … well, better to not put them out at night for a while.

  And anyway …

  ‘Anyway? Anyway? What other little lessons, Jenny?’

  ‘Were you aware that my boys beat up – to use an Americanism – beat up on your son?’

  Susan felt her head reel. ‘No. No, I wasn’t.’

  ‘Good God, Sue. Don’t you ever listen to what anybody tells you? My sons hate your son. I’m sorry, love. I’m just a “Mother”. I can’t do anything about the bullying at the heart of these young animals. Tony and Michael fight all the time. When Michael stays here he’s mostly in a state of apprehension. I try, with Tony. I tell him to behave. But after dark … well, what they get up to is nobody’s business. I know I should have said something to you before, but you’re so … inaccessible, Sue. Doesn’t Michael ever talk to you about this?’

  Susan shook her head, then said aloud, ‘No. No, he never does. I thought they were all friends. I thought they all got on.’

  ‘One day they will. When they’re men. But not at the moment. Listen, Sue, it really wouldn’t be a good idea to have Michael here. And for God’s sake, Sue – be a little more aware of your kids!’

  ‘Christ!’

  She slammed down the phone. It rang again, but she ignored it. She felt threatened. It was bright and sunny outside, although the rain that was lashing Scotland was moving south.

  ‘Michael …’

  She didn’t know what to do.

  The phone rang again, and this time Susan answered it. Jenny was concerned but unapologetic. Susan said, forget it. I’m sorry. I’ll not burden you. I’ve got a problem. No, you can’t help. Forget it.

  She locked the doors and windows. She put up the metal grilles that Richard had installed years ago, when mud had appeared in Michael’s room, mud from Michael’s birth-mother, they had thought … It made her smile to remember their confusion. How little they had realized what wealth, followed by what anguish, that mud-flinging would herald.

  She rang the school and insisted that neither Michael nor Carol be allowed out of class before she herself came to pick them up. This was agreed, and she felt more relaxed. Then, overwhelmed by a sense of unreality, of having let time pass without focusing, of just having drifted for so long, she went upstairs, picked the lock on Michael’s door (really just using her own key, since Michael insisted that his room was his sanctuary) and sat down on the bed, sobbing quietly for a while, staring at the ripped fragments of poster and picture on the walls.

  Michael’s room was an empty place, now. It was slept in, yes, but where once it had been lived in, now it was barren. It was shredded, shattered, partial. Fragments of a childhood were here, and shards of a life that had begun to grow but had been disturbed by the hardening of a power, a power that had made this room the source of riches. In tears, Susan picked the unread books from the shelves, leafed through them. There were crayons and pencils, papers and designs, but nothing ever changed … nothing had changed for a year. It was as if Michael came into this place and just died. No life possessed the room, just the sleeping body of a boy. To bed, to sleep, rising, leaving. In the interim, just a frozen body, staring into space.

  There was one change, she saw: a drawing by Carol, pinned on the wall above his bed where he might stare at it before switching off his lamp. It showed a small, thatched hut, surrounded by stones, with white chalk balls and a tethered dog. Funny, she had never noticed this before, but then, this was only the first time in ages that she had entered the sanctuary to feel for the boy, and not to search for artefacts.

  The drawing reminded Susan of the way Richard had described the dog-shrine, the remnants of the tomb that had been fetched in that almost devastating earthfall, years before. The drawing was unmistakably Carol’s. Peering more closely she could see that the odd shading by the hut – or shrine – was the shadow of a man. The shadow had no origin, it was just that: a touch of shade.

  She felt intrusive, then, and left the room, locking the door behind her and tapping a fist against her chest three times in the traditional pre-Christian manner of warding-off evil after having behaved in a way that might summon it. But later she returned to Michael’s room and searched the drawers, the cupboard, the secret places of the sanctuary, looking for a doll, or a piece of the past, something that might signal Michael’s continuing
relationship with his waning but still cherished power.

  Although she found nothing in the room, the smell of tomato-stalk, emanating from the creased ball of handkerchief, made her think about the garden, and the greenhouses that had been in Richard’s family for so many years. She unlocked the back door and walked slowly across to the humid environment. Nothing was growing here save for the tomatoes themselves. Trays of seedlings had been unattended and had wilted. The tomatoes were self-sustaining because of their connection with a steady water drip.

  There was dirt on the wooden slats by one of the plants, and the cane supports were at an angle. Puzzled, Susan peered more closely and realized that the pot had been disturbed. She tugged the whole plant from its container, and the glint of gold at its bottom made her heart miss a beat.

  When she lifted the disc she nearly died.

  Golden. Heavy. Beautiful. She recognized it at once as Babylonian, the shallow cuneiform being unmistakable. It had other symbols on it too, and radiating lines, like the sun.

  Mind whirling, she replaced the gold, burying it again below the plant that secured it. Guiltily she swept the potting compost from the table and the floor. When she left the greenhouse she stopped for a moment to breathe deeply, eyes closed. Her whole body was shaking. She was close to tears.

  ‘Oh Michael! Michael … Oh no …’

  She hardly dared think what this might mean in terms of a return of Michael’s true power. And she felt a confusion of emotion: wealth might still be promised, which would buy off the ‘businessmen’ and their enterprise in Essex. But Richard had clearly stated that trouble was already on its way, and she was frightened by that. Too much control might be passing from the family to the outsiders. And what would Michael do if that was to happen?

  ‘Don’t come back … Dear God, don’t come back, not now. Not ever. Just leave him alone.’

  She went back to the house where the phone was ringing. Thinking it might be Richard she ran into the sitting room, breathless, but it was the French psychic, Françoise Jeury, asking if she could come and visit. Susan put her off, then poured herself a large Southern Comfort.

  TWENTY-NINE

  The first thing she noticed was the cooling of the air in the room, a phenomenon so common that it no longer alarmed her. It was an atmospheric change that invariably accompanied a psychic event, and Françoise Jeury had a well-established routine whenever her extra senses, or one of the five ordinary senses, detected an unexpected change in the environment.

  She switched on a small tape-recorder, activated the corner video camera, put loops of coarse iron around her neck, wrists and ankles, then rang down to the main lobby of the Institute.

  ‘Room 4b. I have an AC positive, getting stronger.’

  That was all she needed to do. All the corridors in the Institute were monitored on a routine basis for the passage of ‘hard located’ or ‘moving’ presence – that state of alertness would now be increased to critical. A medical team would be on standby, and a psychologist ready to access Françoise’s unconscious mind, or dreams, if a phenomenon occurred and was transferred too deeply during the encounter.

  She quickly rang Lee, then, and was relieved when he answered. He had been intending to visit a new Roman site being excavated on the Thames embankment, near Fleet.

  ‘Do you want me there?’

  ‘Please!’ She spoke urgently, uneasy for reasons she couldn’t fathom. There was a sense of approach, of something coming closer, and it was making her pulse race. ‘As soon as you can.’

  ‘Get out of there if you think it’s going to be dangerous …’

  ‘Just come!’

  ‘Shall I bring a shield?’

  ‘Yes.’

  A shield was a simple defence against psychic attack, not always effective, but an enhancement to confidence. The Institute did not possess the sort of high-tech weaponry and monitoring equipment that had been romanced in a recent film. ‘Ghostbusting’ was still in the realm of fantasy, but she smiled to herself as she remembered occasions, not long past, when she could have done with a little more control of the psychic event that was occurring around her.

  The Atmosphere Cooling passed, but the hair on her neck – an invaluable sensor – was sharp and itching. (I have a positive on spine tingling …)

  She got on with her work, typing slowly, distracted now. Around her, on the shelves, the artefacts and natural materials that she had accumulated over the years were quiet, innocent.

  A minute later the temperature dropped dramatically, a shock of cold, and the air thickened around her. She pushed back from the desk, and tried to stand, but her legs felt suddenly sluggish. She forced herself up, rising as if through a soupy liquid—

  A nagging memory of a conversation … too distracted to remember clearly …

  There was something in the room with her. It filled the space by the door, then seeped away, but pulsed back a moment later. She could smell the sea! A sharp, salty tang, with the sweeter stench of rotting weed. It made her gag for a second, and she sat down again, eyes wide and alert, mind open but sensing nothing except this false ocean …

  The sea! The ocean! Michael Whitlock!

  Shimmering, then: a shimmering shape materializing before her, arms outstretched. It was taller than the room. She could see the vague outline of legs and arms, the head halfway through the ceiling. Then it stooped. Great fish eyes, dead and watery, glittered for a moment, then faded. Fingers flexed, stroking the air of the room, reaching towards the shelves.

  The dead face took on a momentary feature, and she saw Michael’s face, eyes closed, ginger hair flaring. Then again the dead thing, the drowned thing, then just the fingers of the left arm, swelling, flexing, becoming impossibly jointed, curling round a stone on the shelf, a spherical piece of black obsidian the size of a cricket ball.

  ‘Michael …’ Françoise shouted. ‘Michael, can you hear me?’

  The room pulsed, seemed to shrink, then expand again, and Françoise felt the air snatched from her lungs. She gasped and struggled for breath, but the air came back, and the round, dead face was close to hers. The fish eyes slowly closed, but the toothless mouth opened in a faint and echoing scream, that dissolved into weird, distant laughter.

  The shelf that held the stone was suddenly shattered. Fragments flew across the room and Françoise, acting on instinct only, flung herself to one side as the blast of air and pottery exploded towards her.

  And at once the room was silent, very still, settling. The presence had gone.

  Françoise picked herself up, brushed at her clothes. She surveyed the mayhem. Her desk was overturned, one corner broken off completely. The telephone was wrapped around the ceiling light, its cord trailing.

  Searching through the scattered objects on the floor she established that the heavy stone had gone. She remembered the video. It was running, but …

  ‘Damn!’

  It was pointing along the wall. It had been dislodged. It had a wide-angle lens, but at some point it had been thrown out of line. Hands shaking she removed the camera and ran the tape back, reviewing the film through the finder.

  There was a flash of shape, a clear visual image of the presence in the room, then the field of view shifted alarmingly, finally being flung to face the wall.

  The sound of the scream and laughter was on the tape recorder.

  Two technicians arrived in the room, flushed and breathless from running. First reports suggested that no other room had witnessed the phenomenon, nor had the monitors in the corridors. This didn’t surprise Françoise, although she said nothing for the moment. She was too shaken, and too excited.

  A minute later Lee Kline stepped cautiously into the room, smiled at Françoise, then looked around at the mayhem and the busy technicians. ‘Spring cleaning, I see.’

  His smile was thin, his concern showing. Françoise shrugged then held out her hands. Lee walked over to her, unbuttoning his leather jacket. He took her hands in his and asked two questions, whi
ch she answered. He pulled her close and kissed her on her open mouth, staring into her eyes, looking hard. All the time his fingers felt the deeper pulses in her wrists. Her taste flowed. Her response to the kiss would have been clear to him after the years of practice. Finally, she did the thing with her tongue that they’d agreed would signal at least the continued presence of Françoise’s memory, even though she might have been ‘inhabited’ after the encounter.

  As Lee pulled away, he pecked Françoise affectionately on the cheek.

  ‘You’re clear. At least, as far as I can tell.’

  She touched a finger disappointedly to the area of flesh and shook her head. ‘The romantic American – more passion in the “test” kiss than in the greeting.’

  Lee grinned, scratching his dark hair as he looked around at the scattered artefacts. ‘I notice you’ve had garlic for lunch.’

  ‘No entities would dare try to possess me.’

  ‘Well, there’s trying and trying …’

  She noticed Lee’s teasing laugh but ignored it, save for a smile, then described the apparition and outlined her idea as to its source.

  It had been Michael, disguised somehow, dressed in his Fisher King guise, or perhaps as the boy who haunted the primeval sea, his alter ego, his chalky imaginary friend. Perhaps he had reached through space and ‘fetched’ a tribal artefact from the culture of the Aztecs, a stone imbued with echoes of the lives it had taken as it had been used to smash the skulls of its victims.

  But something about the image of the ghost disturbed her … it was familiar to her … a familiar appearance … Had Michael drawn it for her? She couldn’t remember.

  She drank a cup of coffee and relaxed, but still struggled to recall the source of the ghostly image. After a while she abandoned the mental quest and phoned Susan Whitlock. The woman at the other end sounded subdued, quite defensive.

  ‘Susan? Is Michael there?’

  Susan’s voice was strained. ‘No. He’s at school. Why?’