London Revenant
Page 30
He swung the chain suddenly, striking the wall so violently that sparks flew. Scars remained in the brickwork, like claw marks. ‘He died, of course. Clever boy, you’ll have picked up on that.’
Every plosive, every sibilant he uttered, went through me like a knife through cooked fish. He was suffering with each he pulled past that lipless mouth, but the pain seemed to fuel him, as did the rage. Each step closer to me was another half-turn on the standpipe of his emotions.
‘He died in 1887. There was an accident. He was working on what started out as the City of London and Southwark Subway. The City and South London line. The pins keeping a bunch of rails on a cart failed. Two iron rails fell forty feet into a shaft where he was working. His wife was sent a letter of condolence. I think she might have received some flowers too. But no blame was apportioned. No settlements were reached. She went into the poorhouse not long after that. And died within the year. The guy he was with saw it all. What he said has been passed down through the generations. He said one of the rails ripped his face clean off. He was eating a cob of bread at the time. Even after he was dead, he had hold of that cob, reflexes lifting it to a mouth that wasn’t there for a bite.’
‘You could let go,’ I said. ‘I mean, it was a long time ago.’
‘Water under the bridge, hey?’ he said. He was close enough now for me to smell the badness that was eating through his face. Lymph drenched one half of it like tears: a grotesque Pierrot clown. ‘Bygones. Sleeping dogs. Spilled milk.’
‘Something like that. It’s over, Blore. H. It’s over. There’s nothing, nobody left to rage against.’
‘There’s you,’ he said. He charged.
I stepped away and raised the knife, but I was too slow, too soft. Too many cans of lager in front of the TV. Too many curries and apple pies; late-nights and lie-ins. The chains flashed and a red mist filled the space where my hand had been. I heard the knife clatter away down the tunnel behind him. I backed off, what was left of my hand rammed under into my left armpit. I squeezed down hard against a pain that threatened to turn me inside out and fill all my spaces with darkness. I felt the heat and colour drop out of my face. He was roaring now, despite the warp of his face, the pain that was arrowing through it. He was acclaiming the moment of my death. So where was it? Come on, I thought, get it over with.
He had stopped. He wasn’t making any noise at all. Black lightning played across the ceiling. Black rain fell from the cracks. I herd the muffled thump of something hitting metal and then a grey shadow painted itself against the weakening walls. In the moment when I thought the brickwork was sweating, it parted, and a great torrent of water flashed into the room. The cupboard toppled forward and I twisted my body, trying to avoid its path. It caught my ear and heat flared across the side of my head. The cupboard smacked into Blore’s thigh and I thought I heard, felt, a deep, snapping sound, as you do when you pull apart the joints in a chicken. He opened his mouth to scream at the same time that about a ton of soil fell through the ceiling, burying him. Through it I saw him struggling to stand up, blood filling the leg of his jeans, turning the denim from blue to black. He was choking on dirt, his eyes collecting red. The wall to my back buckled like wet cardboard, but I was moving fast before it could help me on my way. I clambered over the hill of earth rising in the centre of the room, but Blore grabbed my foot and tipped me into it before I could hurl myself free. I felt him dragging himself clear of on to my back, pressing my face into the mud. He wrapped the chain around my neck and lights began to pop out all around me. My useless right hand was trapped under my body. I tried levering myself up with the left, but I couldn’t get it to support my weight: it just sank into the sodden earth. Another shockwave rippled through the tunnels, the tightness around my throat slackened as the floor tipped and all the water slid away. I went with it, but Blore was still trapped by the heavy furniture. The tightness returned as he tugged on the chain. But now my arms were free. The Fireglow plant fell into my hand. It was flowering. In the dark, gorgeous red blooms, like spots of red ink spreading on vellum. I mashed it hard into Blore’s face and he yelled as the sap spurted into his exposed tissues. He let go of the chain and I flipped myself over as the floor of the room separated and he jerked violently into it. I saw him bite the tip of his tongue clean off as the back of his head struck the edge of the hole. Then he went slack and slithered into the dark, his eyes on me all the while. I didn’t know if he was still conscious, or if he had simply resigned himself to death. As I turned and pelted along a tunnel that was trying to stop being a tunnel any more, I snatched up my knife, and in that instant heard music drifting into the chambers from the cathedral above, the impossible sound of a choir in full flow.
Yea, like as a father pitieth his own children; even so is the Lord merciful unto them that fear him.
For he knoweth whereof we are made; he remembereth that we are but dust.
And then Blore’s voice behind me, chasing me along with the cracks and the water and the thunder.
‘You did not die in vain! Si monumentum requiris, circumspice! Si monumentum requiris, circumspice!’
I stood outside the remnants of my flat and waited for Lucas. Cold air found the ruined meat of my hand and tore at it, like crows hungry for carrion. There were nasty lacerations in the fingers, and some of the nerves had been damaged because there was a numbness, a deep feeling of cold, but the nurses would put everything straight, I hoped.
The sky was dirty ochre, its lowest edge stained deep blue. I got a lurch in my chest when it hit me that I might never see it again. The plant pot, empty now, and stuffed inside my zipped up jacket, was uncomfortable, but I could live with that. I stroked it, glad of something to take with me. I was grateful to Cherry, she had saved my life. I was sure that she would do things with the flower stall that were up there with the best bouquet sellers in the land.
I got another little hitch in my chest when I thought of Dad and it dawned on me that he had foreseen this moment, even before I had. No matter. I could write to him. I was sure Coin could somehow smuggle letters to the Surface for me. And…
He wasn’t coming.
I kicked at a piece of brick and watched it bounce into the road. I left it another five minutes and then tip-toed through the rubble of the house that had stood next door to the building that contained my flat. The trench had been filled by the collapse of the front but it was still possible to forge a path to the front door.
Inside, the darkness fell about my shoulders like a cloak. I felt the pull of the Underground immediately, an insistent hand, the hand of a child, or a lover imploring me to come closer. I caught a whiff of something charred as I swung my foot into the shaft and on to the first rung of the ladder. Pay it no heed. Your mind spooking you.
I sank into the shaft but had to pause half way down to reposition the plant pot within my jacket. It was awkward, negotiating the ladder with only one working hand. Hanging there, I thought I could hear footsteps above me, gritting through the plaster and cement of the front hall.
My jaw clenched involuntarily. A dark shape filled the shaft at the top of the ladder. I clearly heard the clank of metal as something clouted the rungs.
I got to the bottom and began walking, allowing the tunnels to inspire me and draw me in. Nourishing me. I felt lit from within, radiant, and enjoyed the sensation of myself budding, emerging, as I strode deeper into the earth, towards the Face, towards Beneothan. I was looking forward to exploring the new city, sharing the surprises of its sprawl with Coin, proving myself a worthy servant to Odessa.
At the alcove that gave on to the cavern where our workers had tapped and drilled and scraped for so long at the Face, I slowed. As far as I was concerned, what was Topside now – the rebuilding, the rehousing, the recovery – all of it was as real as anything my sleep-scarred mind had created. All that mattered, that was real, that had to be real, was here, now, in front of me.
I could hear voices up ahead, and smell good food. There would be
friends willing to accept me here, where the city was as new as my expectations of it. Where I could develop as it developed. Where my future was bound up with the city’s and I might have as much influence on it as it had on me.
I thrust my hand into my jacket as the reek of petrol snaked over my shoulder. The haft of the knife slipped into my fingers eagerly, as if moving to meet my hand. Closing on the gates to the new city, I heard him bearing down on me, his breath labouring wetly in his chest. The smoke wreathing him.
It ended here. I could never again risk exposing Odessa and her family, our family, to outsiders again. It felt good. It felt right. It felt as if I was returning home.