by Tony Moyle
Ian opened his eyes to see that he was in the hands of his pursuer. Before realising the full extent of his injuries, his ‘flight’ instinct kicked in again. The attempt to take off with a broken left wing created a suicidal circular flight path that sent him careering into a dust wagon that was sweeping the opposite side of the street. The brushes sucked him under the vehicle with a crunch. John ran to the back of the wagon expecting the worst. No pale white bird floated out of the back with the black exhaust smoke. Instead, a small, electric-blue storm lit up the street as its crackling charge drew the attention of people nearby like a tractor beam. John remembered what he had to do, he just hoped he pronounced it correctly.
“Erior wit solsta trak. Erior wit solsta trak. Erior wit solsta trak.”
Ian’s soul froze and stopped emitting any kind of charge. It froze in the shape of a person for a fleeting second before it shot up into the air at an almost invisible speed. Moments later it was gone.
*****
Agent 15 stood at the door of Number 12, Blackhorse Way, one arm dripping with excrement and drenched up to the shoulder. He contemplated opening it, but decided to ring the bell. Another agent opened it for him.
“Why didn’t you just come in, sir?”
Agent 15 shot him a ‘do you really want to die?’-type of stare.
“Where is she?”
- CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE -
THE LIMPET SYNDROME
As morning broke over the rooftops of Gloucester Road, John knew they were in trouble a long time before Nash did. As Nash slept peacefully in his adopted bed on the second floor of Herb’s town house, dreaming about some sordid tryst with a group of scantily clad groupies, John was watching it all unfold. Unable to wake Nash from his slumbers, the best defence he offered was the occasional unconnected swing of a fist or shake of the head.
Yesterday had been a good day. In fact, John had to admit it had been the best day he’d experienced since before his own death. Half of the job was complete and he was finally starting to believe that this ludicrously impossible task was somehow possible. Ian had been accounted for without John having to do anything unpleasant other than watch Ian effectively commit suicide. With the determination of a kamikaze pilot, Ian had helped return his soul and in turn keep everyone else’s safe. All he had to do was find the last piece in the jigsaw, a job that was more than slightly hampered by the circumstances of a new sunrise.
It had been late when they’d returned to Herb’s place. The sort of time only known to milkmen and early morning delivery drivers. When they’d finally got in, the house had been empty and there were no signs that Herb was back from his first-class strop of two days earlier. John could safely say that he was back now, and he’d brought a friend. Through a slightly raised eyelid he saw Herb sitting uncomfortably on the chair at the bottom of the bed, drinking tea from an antique blue and white china cup. A musty smell of dense smoke filled John’s nostrils as another figure stood puffing on a pipe that he repeatedly relit with long, brown-tipped matches.
Now, when you’ve been to the places that John had, the one thing you couldn’t deny was the existence of a higher power in the Universe. Something out there shaping and guiding the fate of millions. Refuting it would be like trying to argue that Oliver Reed was teetotal. The sight of a priest prior to his death would have gone unnoticed. But now that John was uniquely informed, the sight of a man wearing a white dog collar around his neck scared him to his very core. Just such a man was currently looming above him, making tutting noises.
Nash attempted to rub his face but the nearest his hand got was the air halfway between the two. It must have been amusing to watch a semi-conscious man trying to work out why his arms wouldn’t go as far as normal. John knew why. All four of Nash’s limbs were now firmly tied to bedposts, a sight that would have sent Nash over the edge with excitement.
“Nash, wake up. WAKE UP. I think I’m in big trouble,” said John, placing as much of his concentration in Nash’s ear as possible.
“Go away, it’s too early,” mumbled Nash as he opened his eyes a fraction and tried unsuccessfully to turn over.
Herb rolled up the newspaper he was reading and moved to the bed on the opposite side to the priest. If John hadn’t been panicking so much he might have paid more attention to the way Herb had pulled off the manoeuvre with sobriety and grace. The Herb of a few days ago would have winced at the word ‘sober’. But there was no doubt from his clean-shaven face, suitably dressed appearance, and lack of the hallmarks that usually accompanied his life of excess, that he looked respectable.
“Nash, wake up,” urged Herb, shaking him by the arm more and more energetically.
“What?…Hey, it’s dark in here…where’s my friend gone?…the feathery one…you know the one.”
“WAKE UP!” shouted Herb, so close to the ear where John had taken up residence that it forced him out like a bullet. He found himself down in Nash’s abdomen, tingling like sherbet.
“I’m sorry, Nash, but this is for your own good. This man is Dr. Donovan King. He’s a friend of mine, who has come to help you,” said Herb, in a way that a parent might talk to a critically sick child.
“Nash, you don’t need a doctor,” thought John, crawling back into position. “Tell him to sod off.”
“I don’t need a doctor. I’m fine. Nice cup of coffee and a cigarette and I’ll be awake,” he said, trying to sit up, but being forced back by the ligatures around his wrists. “Hey, Herb, what’s going on here?”
“It would appear that you have either gone mad or been possessed.”
“Thanks for getting on-board, Herb. Tell me something I don’t know.”
“OK, I will. You’re in a bottomless pit of trouble, free-falling towards jail, or possibly the lunatic asylum and almost certainly musical obscurity.”
Herb opened up the newspaper to the front page. On the cover of one of the leading national newspapers was a half-page colour photo with the headline, ‘Off His Rocker’. The grainy picture showed Nash in the middle of a public park holding a pigeon in full flight.
“That’s not so bad, that could be anyone really, the picture’s all blurry,” replied Nash after a pause for thought.
As he continued to blather his defence, Herb flicked the paper over to page seven. This picture of Nash was much clearer. Hands raised in the air, Nash appeared bathed in an electric-blue cloud that swirled around the air above a cleaning wagon.
“Hey, that’s not fair, I could be doing anything. That blue stuff has been Photoshopped on, it’s a…” Nash stopped as Herb pointed to the bottom of the page where it read, ‘see the entire video on our website.’
“How many hits?” whispered Nash.
“Since it was uploaded last night at four o’clock in the morning?”
“Yeah.”
“So, you’re asking me how many hits there have been in just over six hours?”
Nash nodded sheepishly.
“One hundred and twelve,” answered Herb.
“That’s not too…”
“Thousand,” added Herb, “approximately of course.”
“Oh. I suppose there’s no such thing as bad…” Nash stopped when he saw Herb’s face turn from contempt to bewilderment.
“Dr. King is here to help understand what’s going on…” Herb pointed vaguely in the direction of Nash’s head, “…in there.”
“Tell him I’m not in ‘there’ anymore,” replied John, as he squeezed himself up through Nash’s throat. “Ask him what sort of doctor he is, Nash.”
“What sort of doctor are you?”
“I’m really two doctors, Nash. As well as being a doctor in theology and a practising priest in…um…ah…you know?” he looked at Herb for clarification.
“The Catholic Church,” Herb prompted slowly.
“The Republic of Ireland,” Dr. King corrected him after seeming to remember. “I’m also a doctor of psychiatry. I believe that our behaviour is partly defined by Our Father in Heaven and
by ourselves. The demons outside and the demons within, as it were.”
“So, what are you going to do?” said Nash.
“Well, we have to exorcise the demons within,” answered Herb, before Dr. King had a chance to stutter a reply.
Dr. King lifted a silver tray and placed it on the bedside table next to Nash who craned his neck to see that it contained a jug, several strings of beads, a book, a cross, a knife, a towel, a pair of plastic gloves and a pair of glasses. He was a little surprised and concerned by the knife. Dr. King placed his hands in the jug and removed fingers that dripped with blood. He wiped them on the towel and placed them inside the plastic gloves.
“Don’t look so worried, Nash, this shouldn’t be that…that…oh what’s the word?”
“That what?” screamed Nash.
“Long,” comforted Herb.
“Painful,” clarified King, remembering what he wanted to say.
“His memory’s not what it was, I’m afraid, but he’s in his late-seventies so no surprise really,” whispered Herb.
It was supposed to relax Nash. It failed miserably.
“Herb, tell this decrepit, dementia-riddled, Irish lunatic that if he puts so much as a finger on me, I’ll rip it from its socket,” shouted Nash, thrashing his body in a vain hope of loosening the ropes.
“You’re really not in a position to threaten that, are you? Anyway, I don’t have to… to…what’s it called?” Donovan waited unsuccessfully for divine intervention to rescue him.
“Touch you?” offered Herb.
“Yes, that’s right. Thank you, friend. Now I need you to let me talk to this John character. That is his name, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but I won’t let you talk to him. I need him. He’s made me a better person. I feel secure now that he’s with me, I won’t let you get to him.”
“We’ll see about that, son.”
“Nash, listen to me,” said Herb. “No one likes change, but this situation is not doing you any good at all.”
“I can’t change, Herb. I don’t have that choice,” replied Nash.
“We all have a choice, Nash, even me.”
“When have you ever bloody changed? You’ve been the same for as long as I can remember. You’re a bloody hypocrite, Herb.”
“Am I? Well, I’ve given up the booze for a start.”
“You’ve given up booze, I don’t believe it. What happened?”
“The night that I stormed out of here, when you were about to ruin your life again, I went out to the pub and got smashed. I didn’t want to come back because I knew that she would still be here, so I ended up sleeping in a skip. I woke up covered in other people’s junk. Filthy and broken, I sat there and I cried, I’m not ashamed to say that I wept uncontrollably. I realised in that moment that I was out of control. I wasn’t acting like me anymore, I was acting on behalf of the alcohol.”
“That’s how you live, Herb. I thought that was how you liked it?”
“It was, but there’s more to life than just what I want. Do you know what made me cry most when I was sitting there in other people’s garbage[PP5]?”
Nash shook his head.
“That I had failed you. Part of the reason for your behaviour is that I have acted as an appalling role model. I decided the only person who could change me, was me. You’re the same, Nash. The only person who can decide how you want to be is you. Not John, not the government, not the press, no one but you.”
Doctor King picked up the cross and held it directly above Nash’s head, swinging it back and forward, whilst mumbling some claptrap of an unrecognisable language in his broad Irish accent. Nash wasn’t sure if it was hypnotherapy, something more religious, or a combination of the two. But as he tried to block out the noise it crept back into his body like an infection. Somehow the words weren’t being spoken to Nash’s conscious self. They were being aimed somewhere deep within his subconscious, somewhere that Nash wasn’t even aware existed. It was penetrating deep into his cells, absorbed into him like a breath taken into his lungs.
It might have been indecipherable to Nash but John sure knew what it meant. He translated it as easily as he understood the Polish cleaners in the hotel back in Camden. As the noises formed meaning, suddenly Nash’s eyelids collapsed and his body fell limp.
“Nash, I need you to let me speak to him,” asked Dr. King in a softly spoken tone.
“No,” came a distant voice that was unmistakably Nash’s, even though his eyes and mouth seemed to be tightly closed.
“Nash, where is he inside you at the moment?”
“Throat.”
“Now, Nash, do you remember I had a knife on my tray?”
“Yes.”
“If you don’t let me talk to him, I’m going to…to…oh you know?” said King, gazing at Herb for help.
“Cut the cords and let you go,” said Herb, not sure of the ending and offering a wild guess.
“Cut your throat open and release him anyway,” King contradicted.
This seemed to have an instant reaction on Nash. Somewhere deep down, bubbling away, his natural instincts were telling his soul that it didn’t really fancy that one little bit. Either Nash willingly offered access to John, or his body was going to find a way of doing it for him. Like a body rejecting an organ donation, the answer came quickly.
“OK!” shouted Nash in uncontrolled reflex.
“Come forward, evil spirit and speak,” said Dr. King, affecting a tone that was more dark and menacing than the softly spoken Irish inflection that he’d used before.
“I’m here,” replied John calmly, as Nash’s mouth and eyes opened without concerted effort. There were no pupils evident in his eyes, which had been replaced by light red capillaries that chased each other across his white marbled eyeballs.
“Welcome, evil spirit.”
“You seem very sure of yourself, don’t you?” John answered.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s evil. Something that you don’t fully understand. It must be evil, mustn’t it? You have no idea how wrong you are.”
“You do not belong here, demon!”
“Demon, I take that as an insult. If you were facing one, as I have, you wouldn’t have got as far as an introduction. A demon is driven by a need to destroy. It’s only purpose is to feed on human spirit. Whilst I have been working hard to save them. Including yours, as it happens.”
“I demand that you leave this body and this world. Go back to the place whence you came.” Dr. King held his cross high above Nash’s head.
“Who uses the word ‘whence’ anymore? What are you, a Knight of the Round Table? No. I’m not going to do that, I’m afraid. I have a job to do and if you won’t accept that it affects you, then at least give the rest of mankind a chance to.”
“Are you…are you…oh damn it!” stuttered King, again looking at Herb for support.
“Um…kidding?” he offered with a hunch of his shoulders.
“Threatening me?” came King’s eventual response.
“No. But the truth is that if you go through with this you will be responsible for the consequences and you will be judged for it,” said John.
“If you do not leave willingly, then I will draw you from this body and eject you into the burning fires of damnation,” croaked King.
“You don’t know the half of it,” replied John, who had been nearer to damnation than any Pope, bishop or vicar was ever likely to.
John was starting to believe that the priest didn’t have the power to remove him, even if he’d wanted to. King’s religious beliefs appeared to be based on a naive collection of traditional views that John knew to be nowhere near reality. A combination of strong insults and cross waving wouldn’t be enough. As John waited for the next level of encouragement, ‘polite invitation’, it was clear that he had underestimated this peculiar preacher.
Dr. King delicately placed the beads in the sign of the cross over Nash’s body. Dipping the point of the knife in and out of
the jug with the finesse of an artist coating a paintbrush, he flicked blood over his patient. Eyes magnified through thick glasses, he thumbed the book open to the appropriate page and once again started his incoherent chanting. With each crescendo of the incantation his arms stretched forward in a pulling motion, beckoning to John with his hands. To John’s surprise he felt himself moving. When all you are is a very small ball of electric gas floating around in someone else’s body, there aren’t any easy ways of stopping yourself. He needed to think quickly.
Gathering speed at an alarming pace, it wouldn’t be long before he shot out of one of Nash’s orifices, and then what would happen to him? Could he die twice? Would he return to the Soul Catcher or maybe something worse? Whatever the consequences, he knew unequivocally he had to stay with Nash. In the whole of the Universe there was nothing more important than his utter desire to survive. As the light rushed through Nash’s jaws, inviting him out to play, an uncontrollable energy exploded all around him.
Although gradual at first, an intense blue fire burnt in Nash’s eyes before it eventually consumed the room with the intensity of a magnesium flame.
“I’m not sure if this is…this is…oh damn it?”
“Normal?” said Herb, his face etched with a sense of worry.
“Yeah,” agreed King, bewildered by this unexpected side effect.
John burst through Nash’s eyes like a comet, convinced that the next emotional memory would be the Earth rushing away from him, until it was merely a speck of dust in the distance. After a few seconds of unfamiliar calm, when nothing at all seemed to be flying past him, he glanced about. The bedroom, that John had so often seen through Nash’s eyes, was lacking in the level of commotion that he expected. Both Herb and Donovan stood frozen in position like town-centre statues keeping guard over bustling shopaholics. No tick nor tock pattered from the timepiece on Nash’s bedside table, all three of its hands having ceased movement. None of these revelations were nearly as exceptional as the discovery that John found closest of all.
