by Kim Newman
‘Mrs Critchley?’ Tony said. ‘Margaret, isn’t it?’ He shone his face at JoAnne’s mother. ‘I’m sure JoAnne meant no harm, really.’ JoAnne nodded.
Mrs Critchley held out for a moment, but crumpled. Tony’s magic had worked again. Her frown melted and reformed as a girlish smile. She looked a lot like her daughter when she smiled. She even still had the traces of freckles. Tony, JoAnne and Mrs Critchley stood up simultaneously. Mrs Critchley gulped the last of her sherry and mumbled goodbyes. Dragging her daughter, she left. JoAnne let herself be dragged, but looked at Tony with her big eyes until the door shut over her face.
‘Another conquest, eh?’ Boothe laughed.
The curate shook his head, a little sadly.
‘Think of it as a compliment, Tony. You’ve obviously got star quality.’
PART
V
1
‘Now what?’
Allison looked up from the broken doll-woman. Wendy was a sprawl on the floor, body a large beanbag, limbs pulled-out empty sleeves. Her eyes open but expressionless, she still poked out her tongue like a naughty child. Her exposed ribs, slabs of fat and barely buried muscles made her look like an abandoned anatomy specimen.
‘Allison?’
It was Mike Toad, hat in hands, picking loose straws in the brim.
‘Now what?’
She untied the arms of her jacket, which she’d been wearing around her waist, and pulled it on. Her face was sticky but she didn’t have too much red stuff on her. On the whole, it had been cleanly done.
Jazz was relaxed, awaiting further orders. Badmouth Ben stood by the balcony, back to them, shivering in his new pink waistcoat. Terry was licking his fingers, getting a long tongue into the webbing between them. Only the Toad was really agitated, on the point of panic.
Communion established, they didn’t immediately have to prove anything. Mike opened his mouth to whine again, and Allison gave the nod to Jazz, who hit him with an open palm. The slap sounded loud in the gallery. Mike instantly shut up. In this quiet, out-of-time pause, Allison heard only dimly sounds from outside. The rest of the world moved in slow motion, fighting through thick waters, talking in extended growls. She felt serene, grown-up.
‘Should we get rid of it?’ Jazz asked, prodding the dead woman with a pointed boot.
Allison didn’t know. She looked to Ben for an answer, and nothing came. Ben was between the open window-doors of the balcony, light behind him, faint around the edges. Her boyfriend was becoming see-through.
‘Ben?’
He stood, face away from them, rippling like a disturbed water surface. Wendy’s skin jerkin hung loosely on him, nipples like badges, blood smears a pattern on the back. Now it was over, Ben was fading. Wendy had called Ben to Alder. She’d been his beacon; now her light was out, his grasp was weakening.
Terry sat up on his haunches and draped one arm in his lap, rubbing his crotch with a hairy hand, extending the fingers of his other hand and prodding the dead face, making Wendy’s cheeks shake. He sniggered, and slapped the woman. Her face shuddered, but her eyes were still fixed.
‘Stop that,’ Allison said.
Terry bared teeth at her. Mike Toad, red handprint on his face, was smarting, fuming purple flashes in his aura. Jazz shrugged, bored, and pulled out a pocket mirror. She fixed her face, powdering over bloodstains, perfecting black lips. Wendy wasn’t bleeding any more, wasn’t hurting any more. She was a lump of nothing, an embarrassment.
‘Cover her,’ Allison said.
All three ignored her, each expecting one of the others to do the job. This was not what was meant to happen. They were supposed to have discipline, be united by what they had done. Allison repeated the order, looking at the Toad. He was the weakest. She fixed him with her eyes. Mike’s purple evaporated, and he sweated frightened yellow from his nostrils, mouth and eyes. Looking around the room, he found a canvas dustcloth, neatly folded, on a chair. It was about the size of a full-length portrait. Mike shook it out and let it settle over the dead thing.
Allison wished Ben would tell them what to do next. He was definitely a phantom now, dimly superimposed on the air, wavering in an unfelt breeze.
Terry, using his arms like a chimp, scuttled over to Jazz and touched her, slipping fingers up over one knee, smoothing her leotard over a long thigh, trying to get a good grip on her. All the rules had been repealed and he might as well do what he wanted. One hand still clam-clamped to one of Jazz’s arse-cheeks, he tried to open his fly with the other. His swollen fingers couldn’t work a zip fastener, and he grunted annoyance.
Jazz didn’t fancy Terry. That was obvious. She whirled around, foot darting out in a ballet movement, and connected with his chin. He swallowed a yowl, and was shoved back against a wall. He tried to stand up. Jazz backhanded him across the head and pinned his neck with her forearm, launching short, powerful punches into his stomach and groin.
They were losing control. Allison didn’t want to step in. If either Jazz or Terry thought they could take her on, she’d have to kill or cripple them. That would leave her with only Mike Toad, and they’d have to start all over again, from scratch.
‘Ben,’ she said, to herself as much as to him.
Jazz dropped Terry and kicked him. He was curled up, arms over his face. Jazz wasn’t angry. She was professionally hurting the boy. Allison had to admire that. It could be the London girl was more worthy of Ben. That wasn’t something she’d expected. She didn’t know how she’d handle it.
Allison took a few steps towards Ben. She tried to take his hand, her fingers sinking into cold, misty matter. She found a bony core, and held fast to it. An electric charge, sparking deep inside her body, shot through her into Ben.
Jazz stood back and examined the tips of her boots.
Allison kissed Ben where his lips should have been, tongue pressed past his exposed teeth. She came, violently, and bit her tongue. Her knees failed, but she was kept upright. Ben’s solid arm was around her waist. His hand in hers filled out, expanding her fist with muscly flesh. Allison was still coming, climax extended by several peaks, throbbing pain-pleasure exploding from her clit. She could hardly breathe.
Ben was sustaining himself from her. Her muscles twitched like galvanized froglegs. Her eyes fluttered shut, and she kept the darkness in. He held her, tighter. As his arms became substantial, his grip was more powerful. Pleasure like a knife slipped into her, and ripped upwards to her ribs. She was unable to scream, but an internal shriek built up inside her, ululating in gasps, echoing in the vault of her skull.
She opened her eyes, and saw Ben’s face fill in.
The others were fascinated, together again, under control. Terry was on his knees like a devoted dog, looking up. Jazz bowed her head in awe. Mike Toad smiled weakly, begging for approval, fear and delight mingling.
Ben let her go. He had to stand on his own. Allison almost staggered, a deep flush on her neck and between her breasts. She was standing on pins and needles. Stumbling, she turned and got her back against the wall.
Ben smiled quickly at her, the flesh around his mouth swarming like Plasticine.
He was still filling out, still growing.
‘Hello, bay-beuh,’ he said, in a deep, chuckling voice.
‘Fuck,’ she gasped.
He looked different. His face was redder, wetter, raw, mobile. His wounds were fresher, more a part of him. He was taller too, broader-shouldered. Allison was sure Ben had been shorter than her, now he was just the right size. They fit together perfectly. She leaped at him like a kid, and he whirled her around in his arms, laughing. He put her down, and crossed the room to look down at the sheeted bundle. He was loose-limbed now, lithe and athletic, fast as a snake, powerful as a big cat.
They were all around now, trying to get close, too nervous to touch Ben, but obviously hoping he’d touch them. He did, pecking Jazz on the cheek, tousling Terry’s hair, play-punching Mike Toad’s chin.
‘The world’s getting old,’ he said, b
oot resting on the dustsheet, mobile eyes momentarily downcast.
Jazz nodded. Her breath back, she felt strong. Her pleasure was a part of her, a suppleness in the limbs, a fire in her heart.
‘We have to clean house.’
Allison understood. It was like knocking down an old slum to make way for a new office building. Before you built, you had to wreck. That was what Ben was here for. That was what they, his army, were. The wreckers.
‘Go out,’ he said, pointing to the window. ‘Be fruitful and multiply.’
2
Old houses settle and shake, supports brittle as an old person’s bones, and gradually sink into their foundations, facades crumbling slowly, arterial corridors clogging with junk. Susan had been aware of the moods of houses all her life. Even the neat Guildford detached-with-garage where she was born and the temporary flats she’d passed through since had been aging perceptibly. The Agapemone was no different. It might seem like a further layer of Jago’s person—his physical form the brain within the larger body—but it was only a house. Much of her affinity with the personalities of houses was projection, her mental translation of unresonant estate-agent’s details into something human. Like most of her Talent, it had as much to do with herself as with the external world. Sometimes it was a mirror, throwing everything back.
She stepped into the empty TV lounge. Thick walls shielded her from the outside, but she was rattled by a nearby disturbance. There was nothing she could do but force herself to calm down. The programmes were being distributed by Sister Karen and her elves, so Susan’s job for the day was over. Rather, her duties in the Agapemone were concluded; her other job, her snake’s job, was a permanent thing, like breathing.
She exhaled slowly, trying to will pain out of her head. This wasn’t the traditional haunted house. Beyond the windows—dusty because the cleaning rota wasn’t as rigidly enforced as other formalities of the community, not through studied and despairing neglect—was bright sunshine and a large, undisciplined, commonplace garden. Some vegetation was withered, but not in an ominous, doom-laden way. Places are haunted, retaining snatches of their pasts, discharged emotions accruing in corners like dust devils. But this room was dead, beaten and drained. Jago tended to absorb natural residues into himself. Susan had the trick, too. She could moonlight as an exorcist.
In the window seat, back stiff against the padded rest, feet against the opposite sill, she twisted off a child-proof top. She popped a couple of aspirin into her mouth, chewing chalk to powder, salivating powder to paste, sucking paste down. She wondered if she should get something stronger. David occasionally prescribed sedatives to get her through the blinding crises her Talent threw at her when she was menstruating, when she was surrounded by psychic turmoil, when things were really shitty and the face in the mirror looked like Linda Blair. Slowly, the pills affected her, and, Talent dulled, she let her shields slide. The room really was empty. No ghosts. For Susan it wasn’t a matter of not believing in ghosts. She knew ghosts were just memories, like Wendy’s death-faced motorcycle boy, not survivors from an afterlife returned to pester the living. She did not know what came after death. The ghosts Susan sometimes saw were fading snapshots, carried around by people and places as keepsakes.
Above the mantel of the walk-in fireplace hung a portrait of Beloved, executed enthusiastically rather than skilfully by Brother Phillip, a housepainter with artistic ambitions. It wasn’t very good. The eyes were painted to shine but didn’t follow you around the room. Unlike truly great or even simply inspired pictures, it was just paint on canvas. Susan couldn’t pick up anything from it, not a residue of the painter nor a trace of the sitter. In some cases, these could last for centuries. Susan found Van Gogh originals as impossible to look at as the naked sun, and had been surprised by the wellbeing and serenity that underlay the triptychs of Hieronymus Bosch, terrors of Hell balanced by the prospect of Heaven.
Susan saw the painting as a palimpsest, Jago’s face superimposed on a portrait of Edwin Winthrop, now stowed away in the attic, that had hung there before. Edwin had believed in ghosts, table-tapping, theosophy, astral voyaging. Unlike David, he’d been intrigued by mysticism, and tainted his scientific approach with pompous nonsense. Born earlier, Jago might also have gravitated towards the lunatic fringe of psychic research rather than the Church. There were plenty of curious sects and secret cults in the Twenties. Jago could have made one around him, just as he’d fashioned the Agapemone.
Outside were as many people as on a tourist beach at the peak of the holidays. Emotion roiled off them in waves, breaking against the house. The crowd was mainly happy in a sunny late afternoon that had cooled enough to be tolerable. People looked forward to the festival, not too many drunk or stoned, everyone mingling and meeting. Life was fine. Susan gulped whole another aspirin, swallowing phlegm to keep it down. After a day of tightly shielding herself, she was drained. Whatever happened, she was nearly at the end of her rope. She’d have to open up or crack up, and take whatever Jago could unleash. Being near him so long had worn her reserves down. Susan Anonymous was coming apart like a jigsaw. Witch Susan would have to step up and protect herself.
All those years of drifting, of damping her Talent, of trying on and throwing away jobs and relationships as if shopping for a cardigan, of hoping it would all just go away. And two years here, with Jago. That had all been preparation. She knew she wasn’t imagining, projecting. This was the crux of her life. She’d be judged by how she measured up to the immediate future. Precognition. That was one of the things she didn’t have. David thought it was philosophically, physically and psychically impossible. She couldn’t know the future. But she knew that just beyond her sight, enormities waited.
For a while, hiding had been easy. She had found out about aspirin, and how it could quiet her down. At Lancaster University, her doctor put her on the pill to regulate her still-troublesome periods, and that helped too. Her Talent didn’t go away, but she learned how to suppress it, how to control it. Graduating in 1977 with a frankly mediocre 2.2, she moved to a succession of provincial towns—Poole, Eastbourne, Harpenden—and short-lived under-achieving jobs. Assistant librarian, typist for a medical publisher, receptionist at a local radio station. Filing, photocopying, making tea. She amused herself imagining ways to use the Talent to make a fortune. She could become a professional gambler and read her opponents’ cards from their minds or pop the roulette ball into the right hole. Or she could become a star conjurer, or dowse for gold and oil, or investigate large-scale insurance fraud. Or work as an invisible assassin, pulling triggers without leaving fingerprints. When David found her, she was in local government, processing social-security payments in Loughborough.
IPSIT had just been founded, and David, with ten years of committees and lab-rat tests behind him, was searching for Talents. He’d followed her career, even tracked her off and on through her Susan Anonymous phase. He approached her as she was getting fed up with pretending to be living a real life. She’d drifted away from her latest boyfriend. Men told her she was afraid of letting them get too close. Jobs were boring her and, the headaches becoming crippling, she had a reputation for malingering. David offered her a chance to be a star again, but not to go public. Unable to conceal his astonishment at the extent of her Talent, he called in sceptical colleagues—some from America and France—to assess her. She juggled objects and made plates spin, although her telekinesis had peaked in late adolescence and she was capable of far less spectacular trickery than she had been as a teenager.
Now, her Talent was intuitive rather than effective. She was a psychometrist, she could see things. After years of anonymity, the burst of activity was liberating, exciting. She had one or two almost satisfactory love affairs. She kept herself apart from the other Talents. She knew the names—Poulton, Kermode, Tunney—but didn’t want to get close. Bringing Talents together was like putting magnets on the desk: either they clanged tight and were hard to separate, or they found a soft, tough repulsion field
between them.
In the early 1980s, she was taken to a Sheffield police station and given a pile of women’s clothing to sort through. Skirts, blouses, shoes. Some were new, some were old and worn. Some were ripped, some had bloodstains. She was able to sort the pile into three smaller piles. The new-bought garments that had no resonances whatsoever. Clothes donated as control specimens by policewomen. And the victims’ leftovers. She didn’t see the murders like a movie flashback, but found the impressions—of violence, pain and hatred—overwhelming, and was suddenly able to give details, mostly trivial, about the dead women. David and the fatherly inspector encouraged her to think beyond the women and build an image of the man who killed them. He was a shadow, distorted by his victims’ pain, but there were things she could tell them. He was not ‘Jack’, the man who’d sent a tape to the police confessing in a Geordie accent. His name, she intuited, was Peter, and he’d already been ruled out as a suspect. The inspector, who obviously didn’t think that was much help, thanked her and she was taken away. Not long afterwards, by a fluke, they caught the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe.
Her bottle was empty. She had a finger in, scrabbling for a last pill she had already taken. She’d been eating them like Polo mints. Unbending out of the window seat and standing up, she felt woozy. How many had she taken? She had a huge tolerance, but, even so, there were dangers.
Her head didn’t ache. Then again, she could feel hardly anything. She couldn’t think how much, if any, time had passed.
The light changed. It had been getting dim in the unlit room, shadows expanding as the sun passed to the other side of the house. Now it was as if someone had drawn the curtains and turned on the lights. Not electric light, but the wavering glow of gas or fire. It was warm, but a different warmth, not the heat of the outside seeping through, but heat from a fire keeping out a cold beyond. There was a fire, and Edwin Winthrop hung over it. The furnishings were polished wood and new upholstery rather than jumble-sale acquisitions. There were ghosts, memories of people Susan recognized. Edwin, leaning against the mantel, fire cupped in his brandy glass. And others. The young Catriona Kaye, shorter than she’d imagined, in a pink dress with fringes. Irena Dubrovna, the medium, spilling out of a black evening gown, lifting a heavy veil with a dramatic gesture. This was quite common, although Susan had never experienced it at the Agapemone. A random snippet of the room’s past was being replayed. It would pass. Edwin and Catriona began to dance together. Someone played a piano that occupied the space where the television set would be. Susan was more comfortable with these ghosts than with the current occupants of their space. Long dead, or at least long gone, they couldn’t affect her, any more than a film on video cassette could touch her or a painting talk back. She was a spectator. The scene began to fade, and the present flooded back. Edwin and Catriona whirled together, coming apart. Susan saw Catriona’s face freeze, staring directly at her. Rather, at the place where she was. Knowing it impossible, she imagined Catriona Kaye, briefly and shockingly, could see her. Then the ghosts were gone.
