by Phil Rickman
‘Please…’ Merrily put her hands up. ‘I’m getting it.’
There was a silence.
‘He had a breakdown,’ Miss White said.
‘Rector?’
‘When I say breakdown, you couldn’t begin to understand the profundity of it. I mean a severe psychic breakdown. Periods of days without sleep… vivid hallucinations causing bouts of inner self-mutilation. At its core, a conviction that he’d been the tool of the demonic. Crying out in the night for a cleansing death. If he hadn’t been among the right people he would have been dead, or spending the rest of his days in the psychiatric system.’
‘And this was… when?’
‘Around nineteen eighty, maybe a year or two earlier, I don’t keep a diary. No one spoke about it. The Centre puttered along in his absence. Frenzied activity behind the scenes to hold him together, to dispel what was seen as a psychic attack.’
‘By whom?’
‘Names would mean nothing to you, but he had enemies, as you can imagine, people who felt he was betraying them. When he returned, still shaky, he wound it all up very quickly, sold the property to some adventure holiday company, left the country for a while. Came back a year later. With a sense of mission.’
‘To Cusop?’
‘To Cusop. To throw himself into what he considered his last redemptive project.’
Merrily waited, felt the first spots of lukewarm rain.
‘And you really can’t say what that is.’
‘No. It was his magical baby, and he believed it was working. Spectacularly.’
‘His Cusop group – these were the people who’d helped him through his breakdown?’
‘Mainly.’
‘And nobody else knew he was here.’
‘He didn’t drive. Banked via the Internet. Changed his appearance. Walked the hills and along the brook and the Wye, but rarely went into Hay where he might just have been recognized.’
‘But everyone knows now.’
‘Yes.’
‘And they’ll know about you, Athena.’
Miss White smiled sadly into the midges.
‘I wonder if he even thought of that. He hadn’t seen me in years. I wouldn’t let him. I was off the map. Out of the picture. Just a voice on the phone. I realize he’d have an image of me as I was. Quite a bit younger than he was. Invulnerable.’
Merrily saw Aphrodite in a miniskirt. Pert, sharp, outrageously clever, consciously mysterious. Even now, that kittenish voice on the phone…
‘Are you… also inheriting whatever it is? His project?’
‘Not your business, Watkins.’
‘He’s not left you everything for old time’s sake, has he?’
No reply.
‘You don’t want it, do you?’
‘How do you know what I want?’
‘You’re afraid, I think,’ Merrily said.
‘I shall never…’ Miss White turning on her so quickly that her dyed black hair danced like a nest of snakes. ‘I shall never be as frightened as you are. In a state of constant terror that your whole life might be a sham. Clutching at delusions of pathetic poltergeists because if they don’t exist how can something as huge as God be more than a fabrication?’
‘Miss White!’
Merrily turned, grateful. A woman in an overall had appeared on the terrace behind them. Looked like Mrs Cardelow, proprietor of The Glades. Athena White ignored her. Mrs Cardelow cupped her hands either side of her mouth.
‘It’s going to rain! Do you need any help?’
Miss White rose up gripping her Zimmer. Held up one hand, displaying a contemptuous middle finger. The woman may have shrugged. She went back into the house.
‘I still don’t really know what you are,’ Merrily said. ‘I don’t know if your peculiar abilities, given the presumed, clandestine nature of your former occupation, amount to nothing more than advanced psychological, manipulative… tricks.’
‘And you never will,’ Miss White said.
She was calm again. The rain was falling in slow, deliberate blobs. The Radnorshire hills had vanished. Merrily didn’t move.
‘I thought it was his profligate imagination,’ Miss White said. ‘Succumbing at last to the pressure. I thought he was deluded, still bent on his rack of self-recrimination. Now I think he might have been right. I think there has been death. Killing.’
‘Where?’
‘Not far away.’
‘When?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘That isn’t much help, Athena.’
‘I don’t know, you silly bitch. I don’t know where or by whom, but I think someone died before the Centre was closed down, and I think he felt responsible for that. And I do not dismiss the possibility that Peter Rector was murdered the other night. Executed. They like to claim certain places, you see. As portals where the energies they’re seeking can be drawn down. Or up. Places of sacrifice.’
‘Do you know who they are?’
‘The Order of the Sun in Shadow? I knew who they were. The leaders, anyway. They weren’t difficult to trace. Virtually advertising for members at one stage. That’s why I can’t see them as involved. But you see it’s a virus. Its adherents are encouraged to seek recruits. Having broken their own barriers, they’re instructed to find others over whom they have dominion, until they too transcend the abhorrent. And so it goes on and on, like some noxious chain letter.’
‘In theory. In fantasy.’
‘Fantasy,’ Miss White said, ‘is a material. I prefer to spell it with a ph… as in phantasm. Phantasy is a material with which magic works. Ponder that, Watkins. Now go and tell your police friend.’
‘He’d think it was bollocks.’
‘Well then…’ Miss White smiled bleakly. ‘There you have the eternal dichotomy.’ She looked up into the rain. ‘We should go in.’
Merrily stood up. Held the Zimmer frame steady.
‘Get away!’
‘Sorry.’
Miss White looked up, her mascara starting to run.
‘That pool… has a reputation. Did you know that?’
‘Has it?’
Merrily zipped up her hoodie over the pectoral cross.
It’s got form, Bliss said in her head.
‘Watkins…’ Bluing knuckles gripping the handles of the Zimmer. ‘Never thought I’d say this, but keep me informed.’
‘Which of us would that help, Athena?’
‘I can’t tell you what you don’t know, but I may be able to confirm what you think you might.’
‘I think I see.’
‘Good,’ Miss White said.
23
Victims
STANDING ALONE IN the centre of his bookstore – his store, for Chrissakes – Robin had a panic attack so sudden it was like an altered state of consciousness. Spinning around on a terrifying carousel of half-filled, crooked shelves, his mouth dry, his brain turned into a wrung-out sponge.
Holy shit, what were they doing? They’d hired a hovel in which to sell their souls.
He looked around for a chair and there wasn’t one. He’d forgotten, once again, to bring a goddamn chair, and the only desk they had was too big, so they needed a new desk to sit at and take the money and discuss stuff with the customers. In two days there would be customers. Or not. Either way, in two days the sign would say open.
Robin pressed the tips of his fingers into his forehead, began to breathe very rapidly, each breath going like an old steam train starting up: fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…
Two days left. Too freaking days to get this place fit to open. No going back now. He’d designed small posters for The Most Mysterious Shop in Hay, taken them round to the newsagents and anyone with a noticeboard. They’d have a proper, formal opening when there were a whole lot more books, flag it up over a much wider area. Maybe even invite the King to perform the ceremony. Saturday – this was gonna be half-assed, but if they didn’t make some kind of start the holiday season would be over.
Al
l Betty’s fault. These days, he only suggested stuff so she could talk him out of it. Betty, who right now was back at the bungalow, showing people around so they could sell it at the bottom of the market again. If this failed they’d be trapped in the rural poverty band, and he was horrified by the speed it had happened. An easy rental agreement, Landlord and Tenant Act, 1954 and before it even went through they’d been given access to measure up, test the lights, the plumbing, and Robin had come over, day after day, each time hoping it would look different.
And it had. Each time, despite the starry ceiling, it had looked a whole lot worse.
Worst of all, he didn’t like being alone here, now that he couldn’t run any more. He stared at the wall, the doorway to the kitchen and the stairs. The wall was solid, the doorway a shallow open space with musty air, which his imagination at once filled with some black, Lovecraftian needle-toothed denizen of chaos. He could’ve painted it for you in gouache, his medium of choice back in the days when he was seducer of souls, guardian of the softly lit doorways. The days before graphic artists been driven out of business by tightwad publishers and Photoshop.
The flash of anger took him to the door. He’d bring in another box of books. More shelves in here than he’d figured. In his head, all the shelves had been bulging after three truckloads had gotten unloaded, but whole boxes of books seemed to fill no space at all. Even though it seemed so cramped in here, the books had gotten swallowed. All his beloved books. The books he hated to sell – what kind of a start was that?
The truck was wedged into the corner, where the top of Back Fold merged with the track to the Castle across the road from the big parking lot. Loading, right? He’d put a sign to that effect on the dash. It also said, SAD CRIPPLE AT WORK.
The rain was holding off, and he stood and gazed across the cars on the scenic parking lot, all laid out like shiny-back molluscs on a beach, over to the sweep of the hill which hardened into the Black Mountains. Not black at all, and the view made his spirit rise a tad. So much here to paint.
He tossed his stick into the truck’s box, let down the tailgate and hauled over one of the book bags, a black bin liner. They’d actually found more books than expected, close to a couple thousand, some rarities, kind of, but he wouldn’t bring these till Saturday morning. Dragging the bag of books until it tipped over the tailgate, Robin squatted down. If he could get underneath it…
‘Shit!’
The binsack had split. He tried to hold the books in, but the bastards were spilling over the road. Robin stumbled and the pain ripped into his hip. Oh fuck, fuck, fuck…
‘Hold on, boy…’
A man was under the sack, taking the weight. Robin leaned back against the cab, breathing hard. The guy had the sack back on the truck. Bent to pick up a few of the books and then gathered the whole mess into his arms.
‘You OK?’
‘’Cept for feeling like a dick.’
The guy who’d rescued him was much older, a tall, narrow man in a drooping tweedy jacket and a flat cap, hands behind his back, head tilted, peering.
‘Mr Thorogood, I think.’
Robin looked up, blankly at first, into a half-remembered, half-moon face. Then the past was around his shoulders like a greasy old coat.
‘Jeez,’ he said. ‘You shaved off your moustache.’
Dumb response, but despite all the hours the guy had spent by his hospital bed, he couldn’t recall the name. Pretty clear now, though, why the whole damn town had access to his and Betty’s history.
‘Jones,’ the guy said. ‘Gwyn Arthur. Former detective superintendent of this parish and others either side of Brecon, and now… after an undistinguished but sporadically interesting career… retired.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I live here. People do. Even old plods.’
‘Hell…’ Robin shaking his head. ‘My apologies. Only, anyone connected with that particular stage of my life…’
‘I can imagine you’d want to wipe us all from your memory. A bad time, boy. You caught the attention of a fanatic in need of a target. My greatest regret that we were unable to put him away for peculiar offences. But when no one will testify… hands are tied.’
Robin recalled Jones in the orthopaedic ward, murmuring questions in his mild, West Wales rumble. Recording all Robin could tell him – not enough, evidently – about the ordained minister who’d aroused hatred against Betty and him while abusing women in the name of God.
‘Where’s he now?’
‘Ellis?’ Jones followed him into the store, arms full of leaking bin liner. ‘Over in your homeland, last I heard.’
‘One good reason never to go back. So you’re out of it, now, huh?’
‘Should’ve gone abroad, boy. Retired to Spain like the criminals. My wife wouldn’t. Too much family. Well, hell, I said, they’ll visit. No good. So I bought a share in a bookshop. Just to feel useful.’
‘It working?’
‘Crime fiction. A popular misconception, it is, that policemen despise it. Why should that be, when the police always win? So… there we are. Serve in my shop two days a week, rest of the time prowl the streets, seeing too much. All very sad, Mr Thoro-good.’ He smiled, clapped Robin gently on the shoulder. ‘Should’ve seen the way things were going with that man, long before we did.’
‘Nobody saw,’ Robin said. ‘Nobody outside of the valley.’
‘In this area, the past is like the ditches… well overgrown and full of rusty old barbed wire.’ Jones was looking around the store. ‘Shop all right for you, is it?’
‘Yeah, it… it’s OK. Gets us started. Just dump them anyplace.’
Gwyn Arthur Jones let down the sack. Murry Hope’s Practical Celtic Magic and Myths and Legends of the North American Indians by Lewis Spence fell out onto the concrete floor.
‘Lot of paperbacks, Mr Thorogood. Unless it’s something like a vintage green Penguin, you can’t make much on paperbacks, I’m finding. Rarely collectors’ items, so people buy the e-books instead.’
‘Well, thanks for those encouraging words.’
‘No, no… you just need more hardbacks. And a reputation for collectors’ items at reasonable prices. Like the cricket boy next door.’
A wave of tiredness washed over Robin.
‘We’re haunting boot sales and charity outlets. Checking out dealers who might pick up books along with furniture in house-clearances.’
‘Well.’ Jones stood with his hands behind his back, looking up at the rubblestone wall above the main shelves. ‘Anytime I can help you, you let me know. All right? With the shop or… anything else?’
Glanced at Robin, like he was waiting for him to speak. Robin dug out a wry smile.
‘I’ve a police pension,’ Jones said, ‘so it’s no more than a diversion for me now, an escape. But I’m thinking it’s serious for you. And your good lady? She’s well?’
‘Sure. Um… I guess it was you told Kapoor. About me and Betty?’
‘When I heard you were taking that shop, I told him I knew you, yes. As well for people to know you were the victims, that’s what I thought. Was that wrong?’
‘No, that’s… thanks.’
‘Remember what I said.’
‘We’re gonna be OK,’ Robin said.
‘Of course,’ Jones said.
* * *
The retired couple from Coventry who came to view the bungalow this morning had been taciturn, appeared incurious. They clearly disliked all the fitted bookshelves, were quietly critical of the garden where Betty grew herbs and Robin struggled to keep the lawn down.
And yet… within an hour of them leaving, the agent was on the phone. They’d made an offer: three thousand less than the asking price. A glow spread through Betty like alcohol. Even Robin had expected to have to come down at least five K.
‘Perhaps you can tell them we’ll think about it,’ she said coolly.
Taciturn and incurious were no bad things, sometimes. Neither of them had asked why a
squat, green candle was burning in the window in full daylight.
‘If I’m honest…’ The agent sounding a bit resentful. ‘I doubt you’ll get a better offer.’
‘One of us will get back to you,’ Betty said.
Call it a feeling.
Betty looked over to the window, where the candle was burning low enough, now, to see the jagged end of the front door key embedded in the green wax.
He started to rearrange the shelves with more books face out: Natural Magic, The Book of English Magic, A Witch’s Bible.
If one in three books was face out, he reckoned he could fill all the shelves. Also, they needed to think about getting some of these signed by the authors. Famous pagans. Jeez, how many famous pagans were there these days? Gerald Gardner, Alex Sanders, Doreen Valiente – all dead.
Days ago, he’d brought his old Black and Decker and some wooden steps. He shook out some wall plugs into his hand, wondering if they’d be deep enough to plug the outside wall, take big enough screws to hold the sign up:
Thorogood Pagan Books
That seemed so feeble now. It needed a cooler name, more enigmatic.
Too late. Everything was too goddamn late.
Robin lugged the sign outside. Damn. Gonna need a second pair of steps, so he and Betty could hold it up from either side of the doorway. He went over to the cricket shop, see if Kapoor had any.
Kapoor looked suspicious.
‘You OK up a ladder?’
‘Sure.’
‘We could get some guys.’
‘I don’t know anybody.’
‘I’ll get Gore,’ Kapoor said.
‘Gore?’
‘Gwenda’s guy. You know Gwenda’s Bar?’
‘Not sure.’
‘Dead centre of town, opposite the clock. Actually, I was finking… you need to meet people, don’t’cha? Few of us fetch up there most nights. We meet up to bemoan our lot, as Connie Wilby likes to say.’
