Jago

by Kim Newman

  ‘Good morning,’ said a cheery voice. Feminine but faceless, like a machine. ‘Ministry of Defence, Ip-Sit.’

  ‘It’s pronounced “eyesight”,’ Susan said, impatient with silly games, ‘and put me through to David Cross.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Dr Cross is in a meeting.’

  ‘Interrupt. He’ll want to talk to me. I’m in a call box.’

  Pip pip pip pip.

  It was an old-fashioned pay phone. You couldn’t fill it with money and talk until your credit ran out. The glass was cracked, some squares missing. The directories were shredded and scribbled on, marked with old stains. There was graffiti magic-markered childishly into the list of exchanges, TEDDY 4 ALLISON. GARY IS A POOF. IRGUN ZVAI LEUMI. AGAPEMMONY GITS. BANNERMAN BURNS IN HELL.

  ‘Interrupt. This thing is eating my change.’

  ‘Dr Cross is in a meeting.’

  ‘Miss, please get him. My name is Susan Ames. Say Susan Rodway. He’ll want to talk to me.’

  Pip pip pip pip.

  She heard empty air, pencils tapping, muffled voices. Then a rattle as an extension was picked up.

  ‘Susie, what is it?’

  ‘David, I’m in a call box. Can you get back to me? The number is… shit, it’s been defaced.’

  She shoved another twenty pence in the slot. The booth smelled as if generations of customers staggering out of the pub had used it as a urinal. The one-man queue was fuming, reciting ‘bloody hippies’ over and over like a mantra. If the box was a public toilet, he was desperate to go.

  Pip pip pip pip.

  ‘I’ve fed this thing enough to call Singapore for an hour, but it keeps wanting more.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘It’s Jago and Alder. There seems to be a crisis coming. I’m observing an increase in phenomena. There’s some kind of spiral effect.’

  ‘I have a note on my desk about a fire last night.’

  ‘That may be connected. I’m not sure.’

  Pip pip pip pip.

  The waiting man knocked on the door and shook a fist. Susan turned her back to him, but he just stepped around the corner and knocked again. She let her hair fall over her face and kept her head down, bracing her back against the door, telephone cord half wrapped around her.

  ‘David, close this down.’

  ‘I’ve tried recommending that before, and got nowhere. This is Sir Kenneth’s favourite spook show.’

  ‘I think Jago is becoming more dangerous. There are a lot of people here. For the festival. I think we could be talking cataclysm. This thing goes back beyond Jago. I think it goes back centuries.’

  ‘Susan, you’re rambling. We’re parapsychologists, not ghostbusters. Are you well in yourself?’

  Pip pip pip pip.

  ‘Fires. They keep cropping up in the history of this hill. There’s a perennial ghost called the Burning Man, and a World War Two bomb story.’

  ‘Do you still have the headaches?’

  ‘David, this is not about me.’

  ‘When were you last looked at by our people? Have you had any unusual physical symptoms? Increased poltergeist activity during your periods? Apparitions? You may be throwing the experiment out by your presence.’

  ‘David…’

  Pip pip pip pip.

  Her last coin jammed.

  ‘David…’

  Pip pip pip pip… buzzzzzzz.

  9

  First, Wendy decided she just wouldn’t get out of bed. Badmouth Ben couldn’t get her if she stayed under the duvet. She could still feel where he had gripped her, hear his whispered words, smell his burned-out stench.

  Somehow, she’d got back to the Agapemone last night and, with medical help, gone to sleep. She wasn’t supposed to have pills, but she’d got some on her last shopping run to Bridgwater and hidden them from Brother Mick. Luckily Marie-Laure, her partner on the run, was only notionally aware of what went on outside her head. She’d bought first aid supplies, slipped the pills in on the tally, then spirited them to the room she shared with Derek, hiding them inside a tampax container to get through inspections. The bottle, evidence of her guilt, was half-empty on the bedside table. She could not remember how many she’d taken. Even with pills, she slept badly. The nightmare started before she got to bed, and it was not over now she was awake. Hard sunlight filtered through the gable window. Dust shapes formed and dispersed in the beams. Derek was long gone.

  The pills made her slow. She pulled the duvet tighter. The clock told her it was past eleven. She should have been up for hours. She’d missed the breakfast ceremony. Her sense of community was weak now. She’d come to the Agapemone for that safety, and it was slipping away. Safety, and Beloved. She tried to pray, but couldn’t. If Ben was back, she’d have to see Beloved, have to get His help. Only He could face the dead-alive monster. Only He could save her.

  ‘The good thing about a sheep,’ she remembered Ben saying, words twisting like little scalpels, ‘is that you can fuck her…’

  His teeth were sharp in the remains of his face. He had polished metal studs set into the burned leather of his forehead, cheeks and chin.

  ‘…kill her…’

  Bone showed through at his knuckles, but his fingers had been strong, painfully digging in, LOVE and HATE biro-etched blue on yellow into his knucklebones.

  ‘…eat her…’

  His eyes were glittering evil olives, horribly alive in his dead face.

  ‘…and wear her.’

  His hands had been all over her, tearing memories from her flesh, memories of Ben when he had been alive.

  ‘Sheep,’ he had said to her, ‘go baaa-baaaa!’

  It was too much. She gave up. Ben could come and have her. It was too late to fight. She lay back like a corpse, hands over her chest. She sucked in her stomach and looked up at the ceiling. The windows were tall and thin. Reflections played around the light fittings. She arranged her hair on the pillow, smoothed the duvet lightly over herself, and recomposed her hands. She was laid out, waiting for the funeral, waiting for Badmouth Ben.

  Time passed. The electric clock’s hands moved silently. She heard the small sounds of the house, traffic outside, far-off voices. She waited. Ben didn’t come for her. She shut her eyes and tried to imagine the worst. Then she thought of Beloved. She began to pray like a child, remembering everyone she knew and appealing for the Lord God’s mercy on them. She tried to find the Love in herself and dispense it. She tried to order her soul as she had done her body. She wanted to be a pure martyr, to go to the next world as a credit to her Saviour.

  Ben’s face faded and Beloved’s swelled, replacing him. Wendy might be giving in, accepting death, but Beloved would remain upon this earth until His task was accomplished. He was here to suffer and die for humanity. At any moment, she expected the monster to come for her. Nothing. By day, there was nothing.

  She got bored. Hot under the duvet, she was perspiring uncomfortably in her thick nightie. Sunlight lay on her hands, burning. She tried to concentrate on prayer, but her eyes kept creeping open. Nothing changed in the room. There were no shadows to shelter Badmouth Ben. Wendy realized she needed urgently to pee. She got up and tentatively stepped towards the door. No clawed hands shot out from the dark under the bed to grab her ankles. Not only did she have to pee, but her sunstruck wrists and hands were itchy. She had jaw-ache from gritting her teeth and an emptiness in her stomach from missed breakfast.

  Crossing herself, she went down the hallway to the bathroom, unsteady on her feet from the pills. She remembered the feeling from before. Before Beloved, before Ben even. Then, she’d washed down her pill ration with paper-cupfuls of vodka. She hadn’t drunk since she first met Him, in Brighton, in the Adullam. Beloved met all her hungers and thirsts. Still, a vodka—a small one—was about what she needed now.

  ‘Good morning, Sister,’ said someone.

  She looked, focused and smiled. It was Sister Jenny. Wendy bowed and returned the greeting.

  ‘We missed you at
breakfast.’

  ‘Up late.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Are you all right?’

  The girl was kindly, concerned, but her question annoyed Wendy. Her bladder was distending, growing heavier.

  ‘Of course I’m all right,’ she said, pain blooming in her skull, ‘why shouldn’t I be?’

  ‘The fire. You were there.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My prayers were with you.’

  It would take more than this yellow-haired child’s prayers to keep Ben at bay. Jenny was smiling, an impossibly pretty doll. She wore a white dress, laced at the neck, that shone. Nothing could touch her. Wendy’s legs threatened to give out. She had to get to the bathroom soon, or her bladder would burst, spattering the girl with pee, bile and blood. Jenny came forward, moving as fast as Badmouth Ben, and hugged her.

  ‘We share Love,’ the girl said.

  ‘Yes,’ Wendy agreed, gently escaping.

  She made it into the bathroom, locked the door behind her, hiked up her nightie and sat on the toilet, letting go. Then she looked at herself in the mirror. Her face was puffy, her eyes red, her hair a stringy mess. Shit, she thought, where did the years go?

  She had been with Derek since she was eighteen. Considerably longer than half her life. She didn’t understand how he could stay so untouched. He followed her lead with tolerable enthusiasm—from university to dropout, from flat to squat, from commune to community, from dope to pills, from politics to religion—but she didn’t know if he really shared her beliefs or went along because it was easier. Recently, he’d been eclipsed by the Beloved Presence, but he had not complained. Atrocity, murder, addiction, God in the flesh: there was nothing Derek could not, given a few joints and some records, deal with.

  Now, Badmouth Ben was back.

  In Wales, Ben had done terrible things to them all. Being raped was something you could never forget, not one detail. And she’d been raped a dozen times the long, hot summer. She remembered her face in the pillow, a wet fold of it jammed in her mouth as she bit, and Ben heavy on her, fucking her over and over, making her bleed. That hadn’t even been the worst.

  The worst was afterwards, when Ben took her into his confidence and explained how the world was arranged.

  Who’d suffer next and how. Ben had once threatened to snip off Derek’s cock with sheep-shears. Yet, Wendy didn’t think Derek would be upset to know the man he’d killed was back. He’d probably offer him a joint and ask how he’d been since 1976, what festivals he’d been to, whom of the old crowd he’d seen recently.

  She brushed her teeth, thoroughly sluicing her mouth, and washed her face. She soaked a brush and ran it through her hair. She was seeing to her surface self, leaving her depths troubled. Back in her room, she dressed slowly, carefully, deliberately putting arms and legs through holes. She picked her meeting clothes. She tied her hair with a ribbon.

  Wendy went downstairs and outside to another monotonously lovely day. From the steps of the Agapemone, she saw traffic pouring in. She saw the Brethren at work, setting up the festival. She saw the yellow stretches of the moors. She tried hard to Love everything.

  ‘Hello,’ said a voice, making her jump.

  Someone came up to the Agapemone, shading eyes against the sun. It was Hazel, the girl from the Pottery.

  ‘Wendy, hi.’

  ‘Uh, hi.’

  She didn’t know whether to shake hands or to hug. She did nothing.

  ‘I thought I’d come and say thanks.’

  They stood on the green lawn, out in the open. Jenny joined them, walking from the side garden with a basket of swollen apples.

  ‘Want one?’

  Wendy scarfed it down in a few bites. Hazel nibbled hers slowly. Wendy realized the two had never met, and introduced them. They smiled at each other, pretty girls not in competition. Hazel had tanned, but Jenny was milk-pale. She’d been indoors a lot recently, with Beloved.

  ‘Have you met Beloved?’ Jenny asked. ‘Mr Jago, Tony,’ making herself clear.

  ‘No,’ Hazel said, adding, ‘but Id like to. Some time.’

  ‘You must,’ said Wendy, scenting a possible convert. ‘He’ll make things clear.’

  ‘What things?’

  All things,’ said Jenny. ‘It’s hard to put in words. But you’ll know when you meet Him.’

  ‘I’ll look forward to it. Nothing has been clear lately.’

  Wendy knew what Hazel meant.

  ‘Have you noticed,’ Hazel said, ‘that it’s like Sunday afternoon? As if it’s all over, and there’s nothing in particular to do. People are busy, but nothing counts, nothing is happening…’

  ‘That’s the festival for you,’ said Jenny. ‘Everyone stops.’

  ‘Not everyone,’ said Wendy, looking up at the Manor House. ‘Look,’ she said.

  The attic window’s blackout curtain rolled up. Sunlight caught the window as it swung open, shooting a dazzling light at them. All three held hands up to their eyes.

  ‘Beloved,’ Wendy and Jenny said, in unison.

  10

  Lytton had made it home just after dawn, and drawn the curtains against the sun. In bed, he’d fallen asleep instantly, but woke up an hour later, at his usual time, jet-lagged. He needed a new adjective: brain-lagged, life-lagged, dream-lagged? He must rest, recoup. No matter how strange things got, he couldn’t let himself be worn out. He willed himself back to sleep, and dreamed of crossword puzzles in vast checkerboard plains, a maze of oxymorons, palindromes and rebuses. In mid-morning, he woke up again, unable to sleep any longer.

  Getting up late made it a special day. He should have been out doing more work at the stage areas. There was a note from Derek under his door, chillingly telling him everything was under control.

  About last night…

  He’d been briefed, by Dr Cross in scientific terms and by Garnett in blunter language. Belief was not a problem. He knew he wasn’t going mad, he knew what was happening. He couldn’t say he hadn’t been prepared for this. There were such things. Not things, phenomena. He’d seen things all along and stayed calm, sane, rational. Last night had just been an extension of what he’d known since he was assigned here. He wouldn’t allow himself the luxury of fear.

  They called him a spook, but Jago was a natural, explicable thing. Unexplored, barely known, but natural. Dr Cross would eventually write a serious book, and someone else would do a trashy best-seller. There would be articles, TV movies, commissions of inquiry. And Jago would be an accepted part of the changing world, like coelacanths, depletion of the ozone layer or compact discs. They’d find a concrete-and-lead bunker, prison and tomb. Research would go on with less showy subjects. Still, last night had been quietly spectacular. And the phenomena were just side effects.

  His Browning was on his desk, where he had unprofessionally left it last night. The door opened and, instinctively, Lytton picked up the gun, tugging the newspaper to cover it. Susan stepped in, and froze. She couldn’t see the gun, but she could see it.

  ‘Put that thing away.’

  He dropped the paper and wrapped the pistol in it.

  ‘Happy?’

  ‘Ugh.’

  ‘It’s just a tool.’

  The spook came into the small front room and sat down at his side table. Obviously the experiment had escalated enough for her to set aside their standing orders to keep away from each other. They could stop pretending to be strangers and work together. But they’d been pretending so long and had so little contact beforehand that they really were strangers. An intimacy was whipping up around them, and Lytton wasn’t sure about it. He’d got used to stasis, and change suggested things were out of hand.

  ‘I’ve just tried calling David,’ Susan said. ‘I’ve recommended shutting the programme down.’

  Lytton drank his coffee.

  Any luck?’

  ‘Weird shit. Just weird shit. For a start, the phone was playing up.’

  ‘Jago?’

  She put her elbows on the table and
her chin in her hands.

  ‘I don’t know. It’d be easy to blame everything on Jago. The weather, even.’

  She was sweating into her clothes, dark folds under her arms. Lytton found that faintly sexy.

  ‘Did Dr Cross issue a policy statement?’

  ‘Nothing like. He’s writing it off as observer error. You know, unstable Talent plus feminine hysteria. What do I know, I’m an anomaly.’

  He looked away from the spook.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘I’m not trying to read your mind. It’s not like that. I have some extra chemicals in my brain. That’s all.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. Usually, Susan was overcontrolled. Today, she was in a funny mood. Kittenish, scared, nervous, flirty, unpredictable.

  ‘I’m not Carrie,’ she said, eyes bugging. ‘I do tricks, though.’

  His Guardian unfolded and the gun slowly spun around, barrel pointing to him. Back at IPSIT, he’d seen videotapes of her playing similar games, spinning a top, remote-controlling a pencil, breaking china.

  ‘See.’

  The slide, untouched, shot back, chambering a round. Susan giggled.

  Lytton knew she could easily work the trigger, and wondered how the gun, without a human hand wrapped around its grip, would kick.

  ‘I used to bend spoons, too.’

  He took the gun and put it in its drawer. He felt a slight pull as it tugged away from her influence.

  ‘Have you reported anything?’

  ‘I haven’t had time. I can drop things at the police station in Achelzoy as usual. They get to Garnett.’

  ‘David knew about the fire.’

  ‘It’d have been on the local news, IPSIT are keeping an eye on the area for irregularities.’

  Sometimes unmarked vans prowled around the village, bland young men going from door to door doing ‘surveys’.

  ‘James,’ she said, face open, ‘are we on our own here?’

  He nodded. ‘If we need it, we can get backup, but I’d prefer to leave that as a last resort.’

  ‘It might not be enough anyway.’

  ‘What would be enough?’

  ‘An act of God? Maybe.’

  He thought she was overreacting. ‘Jago can’t be that dangerous. He’s been here over ten years—’