The Job (Novella #10)

by William Meikle

  “How do you feel now, Mr. Wilson,” the soft voice spoke at my back, but I was in no mood, no state, to reply. Choking sobs filled my throat, hot tears ran down my cheeks, and although I waited for the cold, calm, salve of the Latin chant to make everything okay, it never came.

  Some demons you have to face alone.

  * * *

  “I am Robbins,” the man in the cassock said after a time. “And while I am sorry for your pain, I am afraid that guilt and responsibility are part of the price you pay for your service to the Just One. You are just paying earlier than most.”

  Again he stopped me before I formed the question.

  “I have no doubt there is much you have not been told; slaves only know slavery, after all. But before I enlighten you, there is one more thing that needs to be done; one more precaution to take on your road to salvation.”

  He nodded, and I sensed rather than saw two figures at my back, approaching fast. I was too broken, in body and in spirit, to do anything but sit there as they grabbed my left arm, tight, and pulled up my sleeve to expose my inner wrist.

  “This will hurt,” the cassocked man, Robbins, said. “But not, I suspect, for as long as the memories we have already unleashed.”

  He nodded again, and another man came forward out of the shadows. I couldn’t see his face, but I saw what was in his hand clear enough; the red glow from the branding iron was suddenly the brightest thing in the room, and I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I said. “I’ll tell you everything.”

  Robbins smiled thinly.

  “We already know everything, Mr. Wilson. That’s why we have to do this.”

  He was right about the pain. I felt heat first as the brand approached, then a searing white flare like lightning coursing through me, lifting off the top of my head and sending me flying away into a place where there was nothing but quiet dark.

  6

  I woke to the sound of rustling pages, and at first I thought I might be back in the house, back on the guard. But when I opened my eyes, I was still in the red brick cellar, still in the same chair. My left arm was bandaged tightly from wrist to elbow but I felt the memory of the brand’s heat, throbbing in time with every heartbeat.

  The guilt was still there too, raw memories of my butchery and murder; I suspected they were going to be with me for a lot longer to come. But I was feeling more like myself than I had in weeks, despite the lack of calm. And I realized something else too.

  “I’m gasping for a smoke here,” I said. “I don’t suppose you could oblige me?”

  Robbins looked up from the book he’d been reading, and motioned to someone at my back. I was passed a packet of cigarettes; they were American, but beggars can’t be choosers, and a lighter, and within seconds I was lit up and puffing smoke back at my captors.

  “Okay,” I said. “You’ve got me, you’ve marked me as yours. Now what?”

  “Now we do a little show and tell,” Robbins said. “And then I’ll make you an offer.”

  “One I can’t refuse?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. One you might not want to refuse might be more accurate. But first, a story.”

  I lit another cigarette as he closed the book in his lap.

  “Now that you have the mark, I can officially welcome you to the House of the Sigil,” he said.

  “Is that like the Masons?” I asked. I was definitely feeling more like myself, and I wasn’t in the mood to be taken as an easy mark. It got me another thin smile.

  Robbins leaned forward and pulled up his left sleeve. He’d been branded there, sometime long past, a livid, white scar, circular, with a line off center through it and extending half an inch or so out of each end.

  “Would a sharpie not have done the job just as well?” I asked.

  “Yes, it would actually,” Robbins said, not offended in the slightest. “But you don’t always have one handy when you need one. This is more in the way of a real permanent marker. And you’ll come to thank us for it in the days, months, years to come. Trust me on that.”

  “I’d trust you a tad more if I knew what the fuck was going on here,” I said.

  “I’m getting to that, if you’ll shut the fuck up and listen?”

  I waved my cigarette at him to tell him he had my attention. He paused, as if to collect his thoughts, and started again.

  * * *

  “I know that you are, or rather were, a guard in the house of Campbell of Stratheyre,” he said. “And what you don’t know is that it used to be the house of Robbins of Stratheyre. It used to be a House of Sigils, and it will be again, with your help.”

  He showed me the brand on his wrist again.

  “This means something. And it means even more in that house. It is a special place, a place of high, and low, magic. But you know that for yourself, Mr. Wilson. You have felt the insidious touch. The low is in charge for the moment, and sometimes, the Just One gets very low indeed. We have, shall we say, rescued you from its clutches. But do not think this was from any altruism on our part. I said we have a proposition for you. It is a simple matter, one suited to your particular skills and knowledge, and should you succeed, I can promise you a life that will be long and well lived.”

  “And if I fail?”

  He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

  “If you fail, I stay here in my dank cellar, the Just One stays lording it over my house, Campbell stays the manipulative evil bastard at the heart of the matter, and as for you? You’ll probably rot in hell for eternity. The Just One goes in for that kind of thing, in case you hadn’t noticed already.”

  I had no idea who or what, this Just One might be, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know any more.

  “And what if I refuse you? What if I refuse the whole fucking lot of you?”

  “And do what, Mr. Wilson? Go back to the dive above the bar, drink, play poker badly and sing sad songs until your liver gives out? That’s just another kind of eternal hell, and you already know that one intimately, do you not?”

  I had to admit that he had me there. And he also had me intrigued despite myself. There was money to be had here, I could smell it, almost taste it.

  “This job,” I asked, trying to remain as casual as I could muster. “I take it that it involves some thievery?”

  I got the smile again, full force this time.

  “Oh, it’s more than that,” he said. “I want what you didn’t get the first time you tried for it. I want what’s in the safe in the big house.”

  * * *

  He sat back and went quiet, letting the import of his statement sink in. As for myself, I had a cold sweat trickling down my spine.

  “You want me to go back in there? After you’ve just got me out? What’s to stop me just going in and reporting everything to Campbell? I’m sure he’d reward me well.”

  Robbins tapped at the brand on his wrist.

  “He will never again have a hold on you,” he said. “Not now you are of the House.”

  It took a second or two for the implications of that to sink in.

  “So, I won’t be able to go back in under cover of still being on his team?”

  Robbins shook his head.

  “The Just One would spot you as a ringer straight away.”

  “Then why does it have to be me? Why not get one of your own lads to do the job? I’ve seen them in action. They’re capable enough.”

  “They are not, how can I put it, attuned, in the way you are. The Just One knows you, but so does the house, and I am hoping that will give you a degree of protection, for long enough to get the job done at least.”

  “Hope? I need a wee bit more than fucking hope on my side,” I said, realizing even as I spoke that I had already decided to take the job, and not for money or glory or any of that bollocks. Campbell of Stratheyre had used me like a fucking puppet, and had me dancing to his whim. It was payback time.

  Robbins seemed to guess my intent.

 
“We’ll be helping you with everything we have at our disposal,” he said, and now the smile was gone and he looked grim. “The Just One is getting too strong to be left unchallenged. If we are to take back what’s ours, it has to be soon.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that much; I didn’t like the sound of any of it much. But all I had to do was close my eyes, and I’d see wee Carlson’s sad eyes looking up at me before I broke his neck. I needed something on the other side to balance that sight, otherwise I’d never get another wink of sleep in my life.

  7

  Once it was established that I wasn’t a prisoner, and that I was willing to undertake the job on offer, things thawed considerably between Robbins and myself.

  He led me up out of the red brick cellar and into what I discovered was a tall Glasgow townhouse out in Kelvinside. It would have been too rich for me most days, but it seemed I was somewhat of an honored guest now, for he plied me with a fine breakfast of cold meats, fresh bread and as much coffee as I could get down. It appeared that I had spent a whole evening and night down in the dark, and my body certainly felt it.

  My arm throbbed too where the brand had been burned into me, but strangely I felt no ill will toward my new host. I took what he’d told me at face value; my beef wasn’t with him, it was with Campbell. And now that my mind was made up, I was keen to get to my revenge.

  Robbins was more cautious.

  “We need to wait a few days. The brand has to heal, for if the scarring isn’t right, it might not work at all when we get you into the house. Trust me on this, please?”

  So yet again I was to be a guest in a house far richer than I was accustomed to.

  At least this time I wasn’t given a uniform.

  And there was none of that fucking Latin chanting.

  * * *

  I got to know Robbins pretty well over the next few days, and although he was pretty cagey on the subject of the Just One, he did fill me in more in what he said was the ‘true nature’ of Stratheyre house.

  “There are places all over the world where the veil between this world and the other is thin,” he said three nights after my ordeal in the cellar. We were sitting in his front room, sharing a bottle of fine scotch. My arm itched like buggery, but the booze helped, and so too did the man’s soft, almost soothing, voice. He fingered the amulet around his neck. I knew now it was the double of the brand on my arm, a scar that appeared to be healing when I’d removed the bandages to apply a clean dressing.

  “Our sigils give us access to that veil, if we are in the right place, with the right totems to hand.”

  “Totems?”

  “That’s a matter for later for you,” he said. “But you’ll know yours when, or rather if you find it. For now, all you have to know is that it is possible to be attuned to the very fabric of the house. You know that; you have felt it for yourself.”

  “The paper rustling, and the Latin chanting?”

  Robbins nodded.

  “That is part of it. But that is the Just One’s tune, not ours, and not yours. As we are attuned to the house, so too is that foul thing. The Just One is a demon that sits on the other side of the veil and covets our domain, a demon that Campbell has been feeding, hoping that he can bend it to his will. And it is one that must be stopped at all costs.”

  “And that’s where I come in? There’s something in the safe that will help you?”

  “There is indeed. Campbell told you about the Concordances.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “He told me the book is important.”

  “More than that. It is vital. That’s what’s in the safe, and that’s what we need to get away from Campbell for the next step to succeed. It is a Grimoire, a recipe book if you like, containing recipes for conjuring, and dismissing the likes of the Just One, among other things.”

  “And you want to do some baking?”

  “Precisely.”

  The next morning we started making preparations for the job.

  * * *

  Robbins had a detailed floor plan of the old house in his study, but I didn’t need that. I already had the whole layout straight in my head, having not only cased the place for days prior to our last, bungled, attempt at the safe, but I had lived there for several weeks, albeit in the drugged, not completely there, state brought on by the Latin chanting.

  “What I really need is some tech,” I said when he asked me. “I need a way in without setting off Campbell’s alarm system, and I need access to the code for the safe. Carlson had it coded into a handset the last time we went in. I need that box of tricks, or something like it.”

  “I’ve got men on the job,” Robbins said. “I think we’ve found Carson’s supplier, so when you’re ready, we should have what you need. How’s the wrist?”

  I rubbed at the wound. It was itching again under the bandage but I knew better than to scratch at it, despite the temptation.

  “Give it three more days, just to Sunday. That’s a quiet day in the house. A good day to be about some thieving.”

  8

  Robbins was as good as his word. On Sunday morning I went down to breakfast to find a cell phone beside my coffee.

  “If you switch it on up close to the safe’s keypad, it should show you the code,” he said. “At least it better do. It cost me enough.”

  “And the alarm?” I asked.

  “I’ve got that covered,” he replied, but wouldn’t elaborate.

  I guessed he was protecting someone, maybe an insider, maybe even the same man that Carlson said got us inside the last time, so I didn’t push it. Besides, I had more than enough to occupy my mind.

  I was getting nervous. I’d told Robbins that I would do the job on my own; after the last time I didn’t want to get anyone else killed. But it didn’t feel right somehow. Maybe it was because I had always worked jobs with a partner, or maybe I just didn’t want to walk back into that house all alone. I can’t rightly say. What I did know was that I needed to clear my head.

  By this time, Robbins trusted me enough to let me wander the grounds. I went out the back door for a smoke and walked up the length of the long garden, trying to find some of the calm I had found in the Latin chanting. But all sense of stillness was swept away when someone large and heavy moved in the shrubbery to my left. I steeled myself to meet an attack, and then heard the last voice I would have expected out there in a suburban garden.

  “Don’t make any sudden movements, Dave. It’s only me.”

  It was George, a long way from being behind the bar in The Twa Dugs.

  He emerged from hiding just enough so that I could see him, although he had chosen a spot where he would not be visible from any window of the house itself.

  “Are you in trouble here, son?” were his next words, and I was so astonished to see him that it took me a few seconds to find my voice to reply. “Because, if you are, just say the word and we’ll have you away and free in a minute.”

  “How the hell did you find me?” I finally managed to say.

  He tapped at his nose.

  “I’ve had people out looking for you since you did a runner. And I keep an eye on all the nutters in town, religious or otherwise,” he said. “You ken that already.”

  “Aye, but what the fuck are you doing here, hiding in the fucking hydrangeas?”

  “I thought you might need a hand. Rumor is that these mad fuckers have kidnapped you.”

  I laughed at that, for from some viewpoints, it might even be true.

  “You can get back to the Dugs,” I said. “I’m fine where I am, honest. Just keeping my head down after that business with Frank Kerr; I thought you might appreciate me keeping out of the way for a while.”

  It was only a little lie, but George was a better poker player than me, and saw through it.

  “Come on, Dave. I ken you better than that. What’s going on here?”

  I owed him the truth, or at least a bit of it.

  “It’s a job. A big job I think. I’m goi
ng back up to yon big house in Stratheyre to do it right this time.”

  George sucked at his teeth.

  “You know wee Carlson turned up, face-down in the Clyde with a broken neck a couple of weeks back?”

  I took a draw of my smoke and tried to keep my face straight.

  “Aye. I heard. But he was always going to fuck up something bad enough to get himself hurt. We both know that.”

  George sucked his teeth again.

  “And this job? You’re doing it with these nutters in the house here? It’s some kind of fucking cult, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care,” I said. “I’m doing it for them, not with them.”

  That seemed to placate George a bit.

  “Have you got enough backup?”

  “I won’t need it in the house. I can do that bit just fine on my own. It might be nice to have somebody watching my back in the garden though?”

  “I’ll be there,” George replied. “When do you need me?”

  “Tonight. Midnight or thereabouts,” I said.

  Somebody called my name from the house doorway. I looked round to see Robbins there, and when I looked back, George had gone into the shrubbery and away.

  But it looked like I had a partner after all.

  * * *

  I spent the rest of the afternoon going over details with Robbins, but in truth there wasn’t much to consider. And he still wouldn’t tell me how he intended to get me inside without tripping the alarm. He hadn’t seen me talking to George, and I didn’t tell him about it. So, we both had secrets, but that didn’t overly concern me. I had decided I was going in anyway, one way or another.

  After checking that I understood the operation of the code-breaking phone, it was just a matter of waiting for darkness to come round.

  * * *

  As the light was going out of the sky, I unwound the bandage on my left wrist. The swelling had gone down considerably, and although it looked raw, and was tender to the touch, the sigil looked to be an exact replica of the one Robbins wore around his neck.