The Mammoth Book of Dark Magic

by Mike Ashley

  Abbott hit the ground on his side, grunted loudly, rolled over, head over heels, bounced up and pistoned his legs with a gasp, winded, gulping for air. His feet touched the edge of the cornfield and he bounced again, flying forward, face down into the yellow stalks. His chest exploded in pain, his head gashed open on a protruding rock . . . and his eye felt as though someone had jabbed a long needle straight through the iris.

  But his momentum was slowing.

  He rolled over and over, sideways now, twisting his right shoulder and hearing – feeling – something twang in his side.

  And then he was still.

  Everything hurt . . . nothing hurt.

  A stillness was coming over him. Without moving, he regrouped inside of himself, consolidated . . . effected a damage report the way they did it on intergalactic spaceships after a meteor shower.

  He lifted one arm slowly from the ground, flexed his fingers. Seemed okay. Then the other. Then his left leg. His right.

  He blinked. One eye didn’t seem to be working too well but when he closed the other one, he could still see.

  He placed a hand on his chest and felt.

  His heart was hammering like a rock drummer.

  Forcing himself to breathe slowly, he pulled himself upright, grimacing at the flashes of pain that signalled from a hundred places. But, amazingly, nothing seemed to be broken.

  Or maybe it wasn’t so amazing. For beside him, amidst the crushed stalks of corn and flattened soil, lay the filthy baseball cap. It must have stayed on his head until he came to a stop.

  Abbott reached over to retrieve it but as his fingers touched the brim the thing crumbled to dust and blew away in the direction the train had gone.

  He looked over into the distance, shielding his eyes from the sun, and fancied he could see a column of smoke drifting and spiralling up into the sky like Pecos Bill’s tornado steed . . . fancied he could see, in his mind’s eye, the old man – like Pecos Bill himself – twisting and turning his steering wheels and pounding his pedals

  Yeeeh hahhhhh!

  grinding down anything that got in his way. While behind him, a few carriages back, the embodiments of Hope and Despair faced each other in their endless and bitter struggle during these strange days. Abbott wondered if the old man were wasting his time and his energy . . . wondered whether the die in this crap shoot had already been rolled.

  But maybe it hadn’t. Maybe everything was worth a fight.

  “God’s speed, old man!” Abbott shouted. And then, his voice softer, he added, “Whoever made you did a good job.”

  And way way off in the distance, a whistle blew.

  He twisted around until he was on his knees and then stood up. He was shaky but intact. Everything that should bend did bend, and everything that shouldn’t didn’t. He dusted down his coat and looked around.

  A pick-up honked at him from the road. He nodded and acknowledged the waving arm extended from the window.

  “That your car back there?” a voice shouted. “The Trans-Am?”

  “That it is,” Abbott said as he approached the pick-up.

  A young man leaned out of the window and nodded back up the road he’d just travelled. “Old fella back there said you might need help so I drove slow until I saw you. Taking a lie-down?”

  Abbott frowned. “Old fella?” He looked back along the road and saw only settling dust.

  “Yeah, real old guy – I mean real old . . . looked enough to be a hunnerd – he was sitting on the side of the road.” The man held his hand up and wiggled his fingers. “Didn’t have but a finger and thumb on his hand,” he added, shaking his head. “Damnedest thing . . . like a claw.”

  Abbott looked back through the shimmering heat but couldn’t see anything.

  “You know him?”

  Abbott patted the dust from his trousers. “Heard of him, I guess you could say.”

  “Yeah?” The man seemed to wait for more information. When Abbott didn’t provide any, the man said, “How’d he get his hand like that?” He held out his own hand, the fingers bunched up into a two-pronged claw, and tried to move them up and down.

  Abbott shrugged. “Making things,” he said. “I hear he used to be pretty good at it.”

  The man nodded, looked Abbott up and down before glancing back up the road. When he turned back to face Abbott he said, “Well, you want a lift into town?”

  Abbott nodded. “I need gas is all.”

  The man gestured Abbott to move around the cab. “Well hop in. There’s a filling station a mile or two ahead.”

  “In Madrigal,” Abbott said.

  “Pardon me?”

  He slipped alongside the man. “The town up ahead. Madrigal.”

  “No sir. Town up ahead is Hobbes Corner.” The man rubbed his chin and frowned as they moved off. “Can’t say I ever heard of anyplace around here name of Madrigal.”

  “Well, anywhere will do for me . . . so long as I can get some gas.”

  “Right enough there,” the man said. “It’s a fine day.”

  Abbott nodded. “A fine day,” he agreed.

  From somewhere far off out of sight, came a shrill call that sounded for all the world like a train’s whistle. Abbott looked across at the driver but the young man didn’t seem to have heard anything.

  He faced front again and listened, closing his eyes to concentrate. But there was only the throaty purr of the engine . . . and the wind . . . and the hum of the tyres eating up blacktop in the late afternoon.