Aphelion

by Andy Frankham-Allen

  Willem watched the old man continue his way into the cafe, and blinked. He turned his attention back to the phone call, and could hear Jake on the other end trying to speak to him. “Sorry, dude, some old guy almost collapsed into me. Anyway, rating Minority Report.”

  “Right, well I do, but what’s that got to do with Cruise? It was a good movie, but Cruise… Sorry, Will, but can’t be agreeing with you on that score. His wife on the other hand, she’s a babe!”

  “What? Nicole Kidman?” Jake’s whistle on the other end of the phone made Willem laugh. Even now he could see his mate subconsciously repositioning his bits. “You do know they split last year, right?”

  “Oh.” Silence, and then, “really? Proves my point, then. How can you rate Cruise when he divorced Kidman? He’s a fruitcake, obviously.”

  “Good logic, man,” Willem said with a laugh.

  Having just spent some time away from work to visit his father in Hackney, Willem was glad for the light relief Jake brought him. It wasn’t often that he visited his father, but now and then Willem felt obligated to visit, just to check in on the old goat. He was still a little concerned that his father was continuing his decline; first he’d turned to drink, which lasted a few years, and more recently he’d found religion. Willem still didn’t buy it, and it made his visits more sporadic than ever. He just couldn’t take seeing his dad turning into a pious old hermit, who spent most of his time quoting the Bible instead of asking how Willem’s life was going. Feeling a little down afterwards, Willem stopped en route home to treat himself to a new phone.

  It was the latest in phone design, a Nokia 7650; slide-open, and the first Nokia phone to feature a camera. Willem didn’t quite understand why you’d need a camera in your phone and he certainly didn’t see it catching on, but that didn’t matter, he had seen it last month in the film Minority Report and had wanted one. Ringing Jake to tell him about the new purchase was what had initiated the critique on Tom Cruise. And now, with his old Ericsson T66 resting between ear and shoulder, he sat outside the cafe playing around with his new phone.

  “So, when you back, guy?” Jake asked.

  Willem chewed his lip, wondering if they would mind him borrowing a socket inside the cafe so he could charge the phone, and said, “couple of hours, probably. Have to meet with Ste, then pop over to the old folks home.”

  Jake chuckled. “Don’t tell me, more drama with the teenager?”

  Willem rolled his eyes at that, placing the phone back in its box. “Wouldn’t mind so much if my sister was a teenager already, at least then she’d have a reason for being such a stroppy bitch. Ah well, you know how it is, man, wouldn’t be my sister and mother if they weren’t having some kind of drama. Of course, they’re probably giving Eon a headache, so swings and round-a-bouts.”

  “Yeah, always a plus. Anyway, guy, I’ll let you go.”

  “Right, okay, cool. See you on the flip side, yeah?” He put the phone in his jacket pocket and glanced back at the cafe. He could ask them to borrow a plug socket, but… Willem checked his watch. Getting to Fulham would take a while, and since he didn’t drive… He stood up and turned to leave, thinking that maybe it was time he sorted out some driving lessons. Couldn’t become a business executive and not drive, that would be just—

  He stopped and looked back at the shop. Just for a moment he had the distinct feeling that someone was watching him, very closely. But no one seemed to be paying him any undue attention, not even that old bloke, who was now immersed in his newspaper, mug of tea on the table before him. Willem shrugged. He had things to do.

  *

  The old man looked up from his paper once again, and slowly lifted his sunglasses. With eyes so transparent they showed the blood behind, he observed the young man with carrier bag walking away from the outside table, leaving the Pepsi behind.

  “At last,” Frederick said, “just as the Ancient promised.”

  *

  His work for the Three done, Frederick made his way slowly up Hawthorn Road. He didn’t mind Ashington too much, a largely urban town in the North East of England. He’d been sent to worse places in the centuries he’d served as the Three’s special envoy, and Ashington was…nice. He’d rather be in London, keeping an eye on Willem Townsend, but he had duties that did not allow him the luxury of such excesses. He had spent far too much time in London in the last few months, anyway, ever since he’d first spotted Willem outside that cafe, and Lady Isobel was beginning to get a little curious. If he continued it would only be a matter of time before Celeste found out, and he wasn’t ready to share yet.

  He needed to be absolutely sure first. If what the Book said was true, then a few more years had to pass before he could make his move, enough time for him to be certain of the ka he’d sensed when he stumbled into Willem. It was him, Frederick was so sure, but not absolutely. A few other things needed clarity first.

  That was why he now walked up Hawthorn Road, following the teen before him. A century had passed by so quickly, and now, once again, it was time.

  He’d been following Robin Turner for a few days now, delving into the human’s mind. Such a fragile thing, even the weakest mind trawler would have had no difficulty reading the surface thoughts of Robin. Frederick had learned what he needed, and knew that after work Robin always popped by his mother’s before going on to his girlfriend’s flat. And he knew that the path he took was always the same.

  On cue, Robin turned into Hirst Park, and Frederick quickened his pace. Robin reminded him of so many others he’d known over the years. Dead on six feet tall, thin but not slim, with dark hair and deep brown eyes. Just like with all the others, Robin had the kind of eyes that sucked a person right in.

  How could Frederick resist? Especially now.

  He turned into Hirst Park himself, and was surprised to see Robin standing there, his body tense, fists clenched. As Frederick had suspected, Robin knew he was being followed. Which is what Frederick liked; he never picked the weak ones. There was no fun in that at all.

  “What the fuck, man! What are you, some kind of nonce?”

  Frederick grinned, and shook his head. “No, children have no interest for me. Younger than nineteen and…”

  “You’re sick!” Robin stepped forward. “You’ve picked the wrong fucking man to stalk.”

  “No, you’re perfect.” Without warning, and faster than Robin could take another step, Frederick was right in Robin’s face, one hand clamped around his throat. “To be nineteen again,” Frederick whispered, and forced his mouth over Robin’s.

  *

  Central London, England, 2003.

  “Bro, that was just…wow!” Ste looked up at the glass-faced tower, unable to wipe the smile off his face. Only seconds ago both he and his mate were at the top of the Canary Wharf Tower and now they were both standing in the square below, surrounded by a cheering crowd who stood behind barriers some distance away.

  “Express elevator to hell, right?”

  “God yeah.” Ste laughed, and took a deep breath. “Shit. BASE jumping is just… Shit yeah! Can’t get much more crazy than that!”

  “That a challenge?”

  “Fuck yeah!” Ste said and held his hand out, which his mate grasped with equal fervour, their thumbs linking. That’s what Ste loved about Robin, always throwing out the next challenge, which he knew Ste would have to accept. Some called him an adrenalin junkie, and maybe they were right. Fact was Ste didn’t want to waste his life; he had to live on the edge. He’d almost died in a car accident when he was a kid, and since then it seemed foolish to waste his second chance.

  “Dude, we should probably clear up the parachutes,” Robin said. “Before our adoring fans want our autographs.” He nodded at the crowds.

  Ste looked over and laughed. “Yeah, extreme sports, extreme fans. Which reminds me, those twins from last night…erm, Karen and Anne? Did you get their numbers?”

  “Sorry, mate, forgot,” Robin said, as he started work on gathering the parachute
off the ground. “You know me, fuck ’em and leave ’em. No time for action replays.”

  “Not always true,” Ste said with a wink.

  Robin laughed at this, and playfully punched Ste’s shoulder. “But I’ve never fucked you.”

  “Everything but, though.”

  “Too extreme for you?” Robin asked, that old wicked glint in his brown eyes, one eyebrow raised.

  “You wish.”

  “So, tonight then, yeah?”

  Ste shook his head, laughing. “Yeah, you’re on.”

  *

  Ste swung his legs over, and with a painful sting in his groin he managed to sit on the edge of the roof next to Robin, who smiled at him, then looked out from the top of Michael Stewart House. From their vantage point on the roof they could see across Fulham and out past Charing Cross Hospital. It was a clear night, offering a good view, but it was chilly. Fortunately, due to their very own version of extreme indoor sports, and the subsequent climbing onto the roof, Ste didn’t feel much of that chill. His muscles were sore, his body warm, he was also in some pain. But it was a nice pain.

  “It’ll probably go septic by the morning,” he said.

  Robin shrugged. “Not necessarily. Depends on how well you heal.”

  “Well enough,” Ste said, gently pulling the crotch of his jeans away from his now very sensitive genitals. “Still, that was… Where did you learn that?”

  “Jassy, a small place in Moldavia.”

  “Right. You’ve travelled a lot,” Ste said, having forgotten the amount of places Robin had mentioned in a first-hand-experience kind of way. They’d only known each about four months, met in a pub off Oxford Street. Ste noticed something in Robin he’d found very familiar, and decided to introduce himself. Soon found out they had much in common, including a love for extreme sports. Of course, back in November Ste had no idea that Robin liked to take those extreme sports into the bedroom. But hey, Ste was up for trying anything once, and that first night when Robin had applied pressure there Ste had almost fallen to his knees. It had hurt at first, but then the adrenalin kicked in, the endorphins were released, and he found himself incredibly turned on by the pain.

  Now here they were. Ste would never call himself gay, nor Robin come to that, but they had developed a rather interesting friendship, one with very few boundaries. It wasn’t about sex, none of it was; it was about the rush, the high they both got. Be it with each other or with women involved, it didn’t much matter. What mattered was the end result; the high!

  “What if I told you that you’re still missing out on the biggest high of them all?” Robin asked, almost as if he had read Ste’s mind.

  “Then I’d say let’s do it, man!”

  Robin nodded his head slowly. “Right, okay, but I need to show you something first.”

  “What?”

  Robin looked at Ste and winked. Then, without preamble, he flung himself off the roof.

  For a second, unable to believe his eyes, Ste continued to look in the spot Robin had occupied, then he lowered his head, his heart beating faster than it had ever beaten before, and saw something that he just couldn’t accept.

  Several stories below, on the grass, Robin was clambering to his feet. At first he seemed to have little balance, but Ste figured that might have had something to do with the way Robin’s left leg was completely out of joint. He shook his head, wondering at the way he was viewing this. It was abstract, unreal. Yet…

  Robin popped his leg back into place and waved up at Ste. “Come down!” he shouted.

  Ste swallowed. BASE jumping was one thing, but to do it without a parachute… He was an adrenalin junkie, sure, but not insane. “I’m taking the stairs,” he mumbled, his throat suddenly dry.

  *

  In the time it took for him to walk to the ground floor, two things changed in Ste. One, his legs had decided to work properly again, the alternate stiffness (from the extreme exertion) and shakiness (from the shock of seeing one’s best mate commit a failed suicide) had subsided. Two, his mind had settled on anger. The shock, which probably hadn’t gone totally, had crystallised into anger.

  He found Robin still outside, now sitting on the bar that ran the length of the wall at the edge of the grass. He had his back to Ste, looking across at the Fulham Pools on the opposite side of Lillie Road.

  “What the fuck was that, man?” Ste wanted to know.

  Still Robin didn’t turn. Ste slowed his walk. Something was different about Robin, the way he sat. There was new strength to him, not to say that Robin had ever proven weak, but he sat like a different man. The kind of man you didn’t want to fuck with.

  “Listen, how did you do that?” Ste stopped a few feet away.

  “Come sit with me, and I’ll tell you.”

  Even Robin’s voice sounded different. He sounded like an older man, with an accent Ste had never heard before. He would have said German, but there was something not right about that guess. He took a deep breath. He couldn’t back away now, he had to know how Robin had managed to jump off that block of flats and survived. So he did as he was told. He climbed the wall and sat next to Robin. For a moment neither spoke, they both looked out to the empty road. Fortunate that it was half three in the morning, no spectators to witness Robin’s miracle BASE jump.

  Robin turned his face slightly, and the person Ste saw looking at him was not Robin. It had nothing to do with the cuts on his face, it was more to do with the way the face sat. The features seemed harder somehow, more serious, no trace of a smile at all. Ste didn’t know what to think, but he was sure he was not looking at the nineteen-year-old Northern lad he’d known for four months.

  “Do you still want the biggest high ever?”

  Again Ste swallowed. He really did want it. It’s what he lived for. All the hours he put in at work at the coffee shop, he hadn’t become a manager at twenty-two just because he loved his job. Will paid him a good wage, more than enough to pay for his extreme life style. And he’d done it all, every extreme sport that had been invented he’d given a go, found new ways to push, to make the rush even more intoxicating. Now Robin was offering him something else entirely…

  “What is it?”

  “My blood, Stephen. It’s special, keeps me alive. Forever.” At this Robin smiled, but it wasn’t the wide “here comes the rush” smile he usually had. This was more ironic. “That’s how I survived.”

  “And you…what? Want to give me your blood?” At this Ste laughed. “Come on, dude, this is the twenty-first century, I’m not taking your blood. I don’t know what you might have.”

  Robin raised an eyebrow, and for the first time, without the shadow of the brow covering it, Ste saw that Robin’s right eye was extremely bloodshot. Well, he had fallen from a great height, something was bound to be damaged. “If I had anything, don’t you think you would have caught it by now?”

  “Good point. But still…”

  “Then perhaps you’d like to sample the goods?”

  Ste wasn’t too sure about that, but before he could decide Robin moved. Fast. Faster than it took them both to jump from Canary Wharf. Ste’s eyes went wide as Robin forced his mouth open. Robin’s wrist was a gash of blood, torn open by an incredibly long thumbnail. No, not a nail, it was if a talon made of bone had sprouted from the tip of Robin’s thumb! Ste barely had time to take any of this in, before Robin’s blood poured down his throat.

  Robin whipped his arm away and Ste fell back onto the grass. He lay there for a while, feeling his heart beat so fast, the blood whizzing around his body, adrenalin kicking in. He jumped to his feet in one swift movement, eyes darting about. He espied the play house in the park outside the Pools, and before he knew it he was standing on top of it, balancing perfectly on the tiny roof.

  “Wow. This is the shit!” he said, his voice sounding loud in his ears. Robin leapt the fence and walked through the park.

  “Well?”

  “This is just…” Balance suddenly gone, Ste tumbled and landed on his
arse beside the play house. Robin was looking down at him; he offered a smile and his hand. For a brief second Ste was looking down at himself, looking up at Robin, eyes glassed over. Then he changed. It was not Ste he was looking at but an old man, incredibly old, wizened skin like bronze. He sniffed. Something was burning…

  “Come back to me, Stephen,” a voice said.

  The smell faded, and once again he was looking up at Robin, who effortlessly pulled him to his feet. “What was that? I was…”

  “In one of my memories. A long, long time ago…in Moldavia.”

  “Your memories?” Ste shook his head, trying to get that image out of his head. “Who was that man? How was I in your…”

  “His name was Wamukota, the oldest of my people. And it’s the blood, Stephen, it’s always the blood. Our life source.” Robin offered a smile. “The effect becomes more pronounced each time, the buzz better, and every time a different memory.” A beat. “Want more?”

  “God yes!” Ste replied without compunction.

  Robin nodded, the bemused expression slipping off his face like oil. “Then we trade. I will give you as much as you like, but I need you to do something important for me.”

  Ste shrugged. “Hey, Rob, there’s always a price, right?”

  “Quite so.” Robin took a step back, and for a moment the light from the lamp outside the park flashed on his face and Ste saw the truth. Robin’s right eye was not bloodshot, it was transparent, and he could see the blood flowing behind it. But the left, that was brown still… Robin blinked and reached for his eye. “Ah yes, I lost one of my contacts when I landed. Not too worry.” He removed the lens from his left eye, and looked directly at Ste. With matching transparent eyes. “Do we have a deal then? My blood for your help…?”

  Reserved.