The Machine (An Ethan Stone Thriller)

by Aston, Tom

  “How can it not be up for debate? I’d like to take it up with the Other Guy. Bring him along to back up this little kangaroo court you’ve got here.”

  There was a moment when the board seemed to glance at one another without actually moving, but it soon passed.

  “We’ll pass your request on, of course,” said Peter smoothly, “but don’t expect anything to change. This is a tried and tested process.”

  Satan turned on his heel and marched from the room, looking for something, anything to smash.

  Chapter 1 - Clovenhoof meets the locals

  Ben liked routine.

  He got twitchy when confronted with the unusual.

  He’d been extremely twitchy all morning.

  When he left his flat, a small but weighty package that had been propped up against the door fell in on the carpet with a slap. Wrapped in brown parcel paper, it had a pink post-it note attached to it which read:

  What do you think?

  Nerys (upstairs)

  X

  That was a little unusual, since Nerys Thomas, who lived in flat 3, along with her elderly aunt and a rat-like Yorkshire terrier called Twinkle hadn’t said more than a dozen words to him in the two years they had been neighbours.

  Ben put the parcel on his kitchen table next to a line of war-gaming miniatures and went out. As he locked up, he looked across to the door of flat 2a. It had now been unoccupied for over a year, since the unfortunate departure of Mr Dewsbury. The thought of Mr Dewsbury made Ben twitchy for entirely different reasons.

  Once out of the flats, which were all neatly contained within a large pre-war house, he headed towards Boldmere high street. He began to realise that he had seriously overdressed for the weather. Autumn was an unpredictable season with rain varying from violent torrents to half-hearted drizzle and wind that covered the spectrum from irritating gusts to full-on slap-a-wad-of-wet-leaves-in-your-face gales. But today was more like summer. Not that it was warm and sunny. Sutton Coldfield did a nice line in grey skies and rarely experimented with much else but there was a closeness in the air that was decidedly unseasonal and an indefinable electric crackle that spoke of a storm about to break.

  This was unusual too.

  And yet, though each of these things was unusual, none of these strange occurrences could quite compare to what happened shortly after eleven o’clock. Having restocked the shelves of the Thriller section with a newly arrived box of Deightons and Le Carrés and settled down to a mid-morning cup of tea, Ben heard a muffled roll of thunder, looked up and saw that a naked man had appeared on the pavement outside the shop.

  The naked man was turning on the spot, looking furiously in all directions and making theatrical and vulgar gestures with his hands. Ben did not have much experience of nudity, male or female, and was so mortified by the prospect of seeing naked men in public changing rooms that he had never learned to swim. However, with the window as a screen between them, a social divider, once it became reasonably clear that the man was probably not going to come into the shop for a browse, Ben found himself interested rather than worried and so had a sip of tea and watched to see what would happen next.

  What did happen was that two old ladies came along the pavement and stopped in front of the naked man. They were the kind of old ladies - puffy blue-rinses and thick knitted coats, one with a tartan shopping bag on wheels, one with a wooden-handled knitting bag in one hand and a brolly in the other - who were probably called something like Betty and Doris. They were also probably the kind who, having lived through a world war, weren’t going to be put off their shopping trip by a naked man.

  One of the old women used her brolly to point out the man’s hairy genitalia just in case her friend had failed to notice it. Apparently she had failed to notice it, because she now looked down and immediately burst out laughing. The naked man did not take well to this and began bellowing at the old dears.

  Ben had an underdeveloped social conscience and knew himself to be a physical coward but, fearing civil unrest and the bad press that might come from having old ladies assaulted outside his shop, he put down his cuppa and left the safety of Books ‘n’ Bobs to remonstrate with the man.

  The man, red in the face from shouting at the old ladies, wheeled on Ben instantly.

  “Kneel before me, human!” he commanded.

  Ben looked down and pictured where his face would end up if he complied.

  “Ah, It’s not that I’m not flattered by the offer,” he heard his own mouth say without any input from his brain. “And I’ve got nothing against that kind of thing. In the privacy of one’s home, you understand but, um...”

  His mouth having got so far by itself, ran out of steam and looked to his brain for instructions and found none forthcoming.

  The man’s face creased with bitter fury.

  “Don’t any of you worms know who I am? What I am?”

  Ben took in the man’s life-worn face, his neatly trimmed beard, his slight paunch, his precise but profane English and his general lack of care regarding his own nakedness.

  “Are you Swedish?”

  The man groaned and spun round, seemingly in search of someone or something else to latch onto.

  “What is this place?” he asked, straining as though the very thoughts in his head were excruciating pain.

  “Sutton Coldfield.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Birmingham. England.”

  “Earth?”

  Ah, thought Ben. And now he’ll ask us to take him to our leader.

  “Where are my halls?” the man wailed. “My flesh pots? My pleasure pits?”

  Ben’s thoughts shifted again. His suspicions had travelled from shameless nudist, to care in the community victim, to middle-aged hippy (perhaps one suffering an inconvenient acid flashback). But now he found himself wondering if the fellow was the victim of a stag-do prank and perhaps still inebriated from the night before. Admittedly, today was Monday and Sutton Coldfield was hardly a Mecca for hen and stag parties particularly on Sunday nights but maybe he had been wandering drunk, drugged and naked since the weekend. Yes, a man could walk out this far from Birmingham’s numerous ‘flesh pots’ in that time...

  “Do you need me to call someone?” said Ben.

  “Who are you going to call?” shrieked the man and with a bizarre cry of “Dung beetles!” ran off down the road in the vague direction of Birmingham city centre.

  Ben looked at the old ladies.

  “Are you two all right?”

  They both smiled at him but said nothing. He looked past them down the road.

  The naked guy was capering in the middle of the road outside the Greggs bakery. A post van had pipped its horn at him and now the man was doing his best to kick the van’s lights in and doing a surprisingly good job considering he had no shoes.

  Ben sighed and shook his head.

  “People, eh?” he said and then saw that the two old ladies had gone. Vanished without a trace.

  Shortly, after the naked man had attacked the post van, a number 66A bus and a lamppost, the police turned up and took him away.

  “People,” Ben said to himself again quietly and went back inside the shop.

  They put him in a cell, which was small and clean and too bright for his liking.

  The arresting officer, a lean moustachioed man, had given him a blanket to cover his nakedness and, after a length of time that suggested they had to root around in dusty cupboards or foetid lockers to find them, they gave him a pair of black police trousers, a white police shirt and a pair of heavy boots. He put on the trousers and the shirt but, of course, not the boots.

  Later still they brought him a cup of tea and a plate of baked beans. He put them on the cushioned bench next to him and ignored them.

  Much later, the cell door opened and the archangel Michael walked in.

  He looked up at Michael and said, “What are you wearing?”

  “Armani.”

  “And your wings?”

/>   “Would ruin the cut of the suit. Both fashion and faith have moved on since my last apparition.” He looked at his watch. “You’ve been on Earth for just over four hours. And already you’ve roused the ire of local law enforcement.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “I expected better.” He tapped his breast pocket. “Fortunately, I have a court order here demanding your immediate release.”

  “I’m not going out there!” He flung out his arms, knocking the polystyrene cup of tea off the bench. The cold tea splashed around the archangel’s expensively shoed feet but did not touch them. It was not a coincidence. “Earth. It’s an anthill. It’s a cess pit. It’s an anthill in a cess pit.”

  “Earth is lovely,” said Michael. “It is His perfect creation.”

  “Have you looked at it recently?”

  Michael smiled sympathetically.

  “It’s going to be your home.”

  “Balls it is!”

  “It was all clearly laid out in the terms of the final agreement.”

  “I’m not staying.”

  Michael shook his head gently, his beautiful blond curls shining like gold in the cell’s strip lighting, and produced a wallet from his pocket.

  “Your documents.”

  He handed them over and watched as each plastic card was inspected and discarded.

  “Who is Nicholas Clovenhoof?”

  “You,” said Michael. “It’s your nom de voyage. I think people might raise eyebrows at someone signing his name Satan or the Angel of the Bottomless Pit.”

  “Nicholas Clovenhoof.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Nicholas Clovenhoof?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nicholas... Clovenhoof?”

  “Yes? Something wrong with that?”

  “Are you kidding me? Isn’t this a blatant giveaway? You might as well call me Lou Cyphre or Mr DeVille. Nicholas Clovenhoof?”

  “You want to change it?” said Michael.

  “Yes, please.”

  “What to?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Bernard or Jeremy or Colin or something, a bit more, you know...”

  “Very well,” sighed the archangel and waved his hand as though driving a fly away.

  The words on a dozen cards writhed and shifted.

  The former Angel of the Bottomless Pit tried out his new name.

  “Jeremy Clovenhoof.”

  “Yes. Are you happy now?” asked Michael.

  “Of course I’m sodding not. Look at this.”

  Clovenhoof held up his driving licence.

  “What about it?” asked Michael.

  “The picture!”

  “I think it’s a good likeness.”

  “Exactly! Look at the horns. The red skin. No one’s said anything!”

  “They’re English. They’re probably just too polite.”

  Clovenhoof kicked at the police boots on the floor with his goaty hooves.

  “Look!” he squeaked. “Are they all morons?”

  “Would you rather they saw you as you really are?”

  “It might get me a bit of respect.”

  Michael sighed kindly and sat down on the bench, the plate of cold beans between them.

  “You are not here as conqueror, my friend. You are now a resident.”

  “No way.”

  Michael gathered Clovenhoof’s cards and paper and tucked them back into the wallet.

  “We’ve given you an identity. We will provide you a modest but favourable pension. This is an opportunity, Jeremy.”

  Clovenhoof sneered in wilful ignorance and disgust at the items in his hands. All little plastic rectangles and strings of numbers.

  “But what is this stuff? It’s all crap. I don’t know the first thing about life on Earth.”

  “Then learn,” said Michael. “And live.”

  The unusualness factor eased off through the afternoon. No more naked men appeared outside the shop and the peculiar pre-storm atmosphere had dissipated. Ben went home to a Pot Noodle for tea and an evening of wargaming miniature painting to look forward to with an option on polishing his replica Seleucid shield and a documentary about gladiators on the History Channel.

  And the parcel on his kitchen table.

  In all the nakedness-related excitement earlier he had completely forgotten about it. As he forked sweet and sour chicken noodles into his mouth, he opened the package with his free hand. It was a book, or at least a manuscript, printed on A4 but professionally bound.

  YOU Can Be My Perfect Man

  By

  Nerys Thomas

  A nugget of rehydrated chicken suddenly went down the wrong way and Ben coughed noodles across the table. He fetched a dishcloth and mopped up the mess before re-reading the title and discovering to his horror that he had read it correctly the first time.

  He reeled in panic.

  Him? The perfect man? He liked to think he was a little bit mysterious and definitely underrated, but he wasn’t comfortable with other people thinking the same.

  He tried to reflect on it rationally. He had many things going for him. He was young, single and disease-free. He had all his own teeth, his own flat and his own second hand bookshop.

  And, thought Ben, wading purposefully into the matter rather than panicking at its edges, Nerys was not an unattractive woman. She was young. At least he assumed so. She wore make-up as though it was war paint and that made proper age analysis difficult. But she was attractive. Well, more striking than beautiful. And she certainly wore clothing that showed off the best of her... attributes.

  She was quite clearly interested in men. He had heard her in company, giggling and stumbling past his door on more than one Saturday night. And she must have quite high standards because it was rare for her to invite the same man back more than once even though it was true that Ben was often woken on Sunday mornings by the words, “Call me!” shouted down the stairs or, less frequently, yelled out of an upstairs window.

  Yes, he decided, she was a fine specimen of a woman and, although he hadn’t even thought about her in those terms before, if she thought he could be her perfect man then he was willing to give it a go. It wasn’t as though he wasn’t interested in that world of romance, of intimacy, of sex. Of course he was. It was just that, in his reckoning, sex was a bit like skiing. It was something other people did, something that, in a perfect world, he would like to try but he hadn’t had the training and wasn’t even sure he had the correct equipment.

  Well, perhaps now was the time to hit the piste, metaphorically speaking.

  He opened the book and began to read.

  Clovenhoof woke up cold, damp and miserable.

  He had stormed away from Michael the moment they had stepped outside the police station and spent the afternoon and evening constantly walking, constantly fuming at his situation. He walked nowhere in particular. There was nowhere he wanted to go that could be reached by walking. He wanted to go up and punch the smug smiles off a few faces. He wanted to go down and do pretty much the same thing. But the signposts in this dump pointed to Lichfield and Birmingham and Kingstanding. The Celestial City and Pandemonium didn’t figure.

  The night was cold and lit by yellow sodium streetlights that merely made him homesick for the fiery orange glow of the Old Place. He found a real fire in a derelict warehouse behind the train station and two figures hunched over it. He approached and they didn’t turn him away and he warmed his hand by the fire. One of them offered him swigs from a bottle of something called Scrumpy Thunder and in that fizzy chemical concoction found his first pleasurable experience since his arrival.

  When Dan and Quentin had curled up amongst their sleeping bags and blankets to sleep, Clovenhoof sat close to the fire and stared into its heart. When the fire began to die down he looked around for something to burn. There wasn’t much to be found although there was a fat sheaf of papers in his wallet, red and purple portraits of some woman in a crown, and he burned most of those to keep the flam
es alive.

  The fire was a tiny thing. Pitiful. Nothing like the great roaring furnaces of the Old Place.

  He sighed as he remembered how his favourite vantage point high above the fires of Hell. When exactly was it that he began to see his kingdom slide away from him?

  Satan shook his head at the carnage on the Plains of Hell below him. Carnage was supposed to be part of the package in Hell, there was beauty in chaos, but this was just a mess.

  The entrance gate was clogged again. Built centuries ago for a more modest rate of influx, the constant press of humans coming through in the twenty first century was greater than anyone had ever anticipated. It was now the norm to see crushed bodies oozing through, like meat from a mincer. Other times, like now, the weight of traffic was just too much and blockages occurred. Demons wielded pitchforks and gouged at the writhing mass to try and dislodge the bodies.

  “Mulciber,” Satan sighed, “how did this ever get so bad?”

  “Who could have anticipated the numbers, my lord?” replied his chief architect defensively. “The number of deaths each day is higher than ever, nearly a hundred and fifty thousand. We could maybe cope with that if so many of them weren’t coming our way. Two thirds of them by my reckoning.”

  Satan nodded. “People are turning their backs on religion.”

  “It’s not so much that,” Mulciber said, “but it seems more acceptable than ever now to be religious and to treat people badly. You’ve got crazy fundamentalists in every religion. They hate gays, foreigners, women. You name it, they’ll find you a reason in the bible or whatever to hate it.”

  “Hmmm,” said Satan, indicating the wailing, gnashing wall of bodies, tangled in the agonising crush. “What worries me is that we might have a whole load of low-grade sinners being pulled apart by those pitchforks. We’d normally reserve that for the more serious offenders.”