Jago

by Kim Newman

  The punk was standing next to the normal man, Jeremy in the middle. One or the other would do as an example. Maskell was a farmer. He raised crops, and cut them down. Giving death was as much a part of what he did as giving life. He’d sown his seed; now was the time to reap his harvest, to separate wheat from chaff.

  Chaff was kids with silly haircuts and torn clothes, snarly faces and scarred knuckles. Kids who knew their place, but never stayed in it. Kids from the cities who poured into the village and shat over the land.

  Maskell stood over the three and put his hands on them, pushing the normal man and the punk aside like curtains. He raised a foot and pressed Jeremy down with it, crushing his son to the earth. Jeremy screamed and struggled, but was held fast in his loving father’s grasp.

  ‘Now, Jerm,’ Maskell said, hand growing around the punk, ‘for a lesson. This is what happens to people who don’t know their place, to people who don’t respect the land.’

  His hand had grown completely around the boy’s head, leaving slitlike interstices for eyes, nose and mouth. The absurd coxcomb of red hair jutted out through the top of Maskell’s fist. The normal man backed away, Sue-Clare’s slender and sinewy arms wrapped around him to keep him out of this. The boy screamed, eyes wide. Maskell joined voice with the boy, taking up the scream, turning it into a yell of triumph, calling to the earth to accept sacrifice. Strength flowed down his arm, filling the cage his hand had become. Tubers twined around his head-sized fist, covering the boy’s eyes and mouth, leaves swarming thickly. The leaves puffed out where the boy was screaming. Tubers probed the boy’s skin, but didn’t dig in, didn’t burrow. They crept along close to the face, feelers spreading out to make a flesh-and-wood mask that enclosed the boy’s head perfectly.

  ‘Don’t!’ shouted the normal man.

  Outsiders were a menace, deadly as a blight, destroying crops and livestock. Danny Keough had been right about that. Each year, more and more outsiders poured into the village, spreading polluting shit, corrosive foolishness. It was only proper that an outsider feed the earth, help repair the damage done through the years.

  He held a complete life in his hand, and knew that was actual power, the power of life and death. Maskell’s hand grew tight, and his grip began to constrict.

  7

  Although the glass panels at either side were blown, the great door of the Agapemone was still locked, and Taine would have the keys. Fuck this for a game of toy soldiers, Susan thought, jamming her forefinger into the large keyhole, working the tumblers with a push. She overdid it, and pulled her fingers away quickly, avoiding the slow explosion of broken metal and wood that burst from the lock. Might as well finish the job, she thought, popping the hingepins and butting her head towards the door. It fell outwards and tobogganed down the steps. Cooler night air swept around her, and she felt a release from the pressure cooker of the Manor House. Jago was about unconsciously to expel her from his sphere of influence, a whale shrugging off a pilot fish. That suited her fine, and she felt the mindwind build up behind her, riffling her clothes against her back, streaming her hair around her cheeks.

  The garden of the Agapemone was pandemonium. Splits had opened in the earth and disgorged implike clouds of flies. The insects swarmed among the people, clustering on bodies like parasitical growths. Some were suffering the torments of the damned, some experienced the raptures of the blessed. Close to the house, Jago’s fantasies were the strongest, the most dangerous. Things were moving like moles under the ground.

  She turned back to the hallway. Karen stood by the stairs, staring at her and seeing a fallen angel. Earlier, the girl had doubted Jago, but Susan’s little display of third-degree psychokinesis and children’s-party prestidigitation had tipped her back towards belief in Beloved. Nobody loves you when you’re a witch.

  ‘Coming?’ Susan asked. ‘Going?’

  ‘Staying,’ the Sister said.

  ‘Your choice, Karen.’

  ‘Share Love.’

  Susan shrugged. ‘Look after yourself.’

  Walking away, Susan had to fight the compulsion to break into a jog, then a run. Then to hurl herself blindly into the night, until she collapsed from exhaustion, as far as possible away from Jago. What the Brethren had been saying was true. These were the Last Days, the cork was about to pop. The whole golden dream would go up in flames and either self-destruct or spread itself across the face of the earth.

  The garden pond was a stretch of glittering crystal. A girl Susan had never seen was lying by it, staring at her broken reflection, stroking the surface, tearing her hands on jagged edges. Ribbons of blood rolled along faults, clustering about the crushed pondweed. There was someone under the pond, trapped with the goldfish, one hand stuck out like that of the Lady in the Lake, fingers waving, sometimes making a straining fist.

  These were isolated cases, surrounded and outweighed by the tired, stoned, crazed and forgotten hordes. Many were sprawled asleep under blankets or sleeping bags, or stretched out, exchanging dope-fuelled rambles. Beside the noise of their conversation and the various muted strains of self-made music, she was picking up a whisper of mental static that washed around in her head, tickling away at her permanent migraine.

  She picked her way between bodies. No one had been hurt here, but she sensed pain in the village, black spots she knew meant death.

  A group of kids were chasing a ball of blue flame around the flower beds, sometimes catching it and tossing it like a frisbee. One of them had an ass’s tail dangling from a split in his jeans, and donkey ears.

  By the Gate House, she found James. He was with the boy he’d told to get out of the village. He hadn’t managed to save even one soul either.

  ‘Susan,’ he said, ‘thank God you’re okay.’

  ‘Am I?’

  She saw the flash of despair in his face, and read his thought that she had cracked on him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ve had too much to dream tonight, you know? Jago’s fucking everything in sight. I mean that most sincerely, folks.’

  ‘It’s chaos all over,’ James said. ‘There must be dozens dead.’

  Teddy coughed and bent over. He was badly hurt, nasty bruises on his face and hands.

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Ask a policeman,’ he said. ‘I’ve tried to get word to Garnett.’

  The blue fireball bounced in the rutted driveway, and the ass-boy leaped past them to catch it, dribbling it like a basketball and taking a shot at the face of one of his friends.

  ‘It’ll be dawn soon,’ James said.

  ‘You hope.’

  8

  Inside Ferg’s head, things were tight. The aliens barged into the school disco just as the smooch track started. Ferg was dancing with Jessica, getting a hand on her bum for the first time, when three of them sat at a table nearby. They had blank faces and zipless leather jackets, dark glasses like shields. As they passed the brown-paper-wrapped bottle between them, he saw their little fingers didn’t bend. Jessica’s hands were climbing his back as the number got worked up, and he was tongue-kissing her. Fourteen and thirteen and they were only on tongues. Ferg was getting desperate. Everyone he knew did it, or said they did. Jessica was already well covered. He felt the points of her breasts against the Sex Pistols T-shirt he’d got down the market. The aliens were making comments. Since he started having his hair in a mohican, he’d been getting a lot of comments. Use yer head for a loo brush? Big heap medicine, ugh! Think you’re hard, do you? Jessica didn’t notice the aliens. He wiped her hair back from one ear, and licked her neck. His tongue froze as he saw what he’d uncovered. She didn’t have an ear, just a round hole covered by thin, veined, vibrating membrane. Her hand pushed his face away, all her fingers bent but the little one. She shoved him, laughing like a back-masked message. The aliens caught him, pulling him off the dance floor, dragging him through the push-bar exit into the fish-and-old-newspapers-smelling alley by the club. Two of the aliens pinned him to a wall while the thi
rd punched him in the face, chest and belly. As the alien’s fists went in, his face started to slip, wax mask cracking, peeling away from his lizard skin. Gristle in Ferg’s nose broke, and he was wheezing through bloody snot, tasting blood trickle into his throat. While aliens beat the piss out of him, Jessica stood by the exit, watching, thoughtlessly picking patches of skin off her arms, rubbing her itching scales. The aliens holding his shoulders dropped him, and he slumped down hard, doubling up as he puked thin gruel through his ruined nose. The aliens had lead-weighted moon boots under their grey jeans, and they kicked him while he was down…

  In the pain swirl, he felt his cheekbones crushed, his jaw clamped tightly shut. He was cooped up in Dolar’s van, trying to drive, but the dope-smoke between his face and the windscreen was thick as the atmosphere on Venus. He’d been on beer and wine and gear for days, and his body wasn’t working properly. His tongue, too large in his mouth, flopped like wet leather. There was a vile taste leaking from his tongue, but his sense of smell was dead and gone. An ache in the small of his back clawed its way up his spine, boring under his shoulderblades, settling around his neck like a collar. He clung to the steering wheel as if it were the edge of a cliff, fingernails torn and bloody. Dolar sang, Jessica complained, Mike Toad told foul jokes, Syreeta criticized, Pam giggled, and Salim, usually quiet, shrieked in agony. Ferg leaned forwards, smoke parting before his face, and got close to the glass, trying to make out the road. The van rolled on, gobbling up white lines. Outside, the smoke was just as thick, although Ferg could see the taillights of the next car winking in the white-grey cloud. They were pressing the upper edge of the speed limit and the van’s capabilities, but, bumper to bumper with speeding vehicles, Ferg couldn’t slow down. The van was like the middle carriage between two belching steam engines, rushing along the rails towards a bridge that might or might not be standing over a chasm. The cassette player was broken, spewing out loops of brown tape and mangling the theme from Easy Rider. Tape was bunching around Ferg’s knees, writhing like a worm. Ferg had a bad nosebleed, blood streaming around his mouth. The pressure inside the van was building, and he heard the sea in his ears, pounding brutally against shingles. The sea sound rose, drowning out the others in the van. Ferg bit his tongue, trying to feel something as the breakers became a painful roar. The smoky atmosphere pressed on the sides of his head, and Ferg felt his inner ear inflate like a balloon. The speedometer ground to its fullest extent and broke. The van was bumped from behind, pushed into the car ahead. The pain in his ears was a constant explosion. Something burst, and silence flooded into his head. Liquid trickled down from his earholes…

  His ears and nose were clogged, as if plugged with gritty wax. Jessica sat cross-legged on the other side of their fire, mouth opening and closing silently like a goldfish’s. His paperback Dune was burning in with the scavenged firewood, cover shrinking, pages blackening one by one to ash. Jessica had a three-pointed fork stuck over the fire. Fat worms wriggled like live bait on each of the prongs, rudimentary faces tiny but bloated replicas of Jessica’s. Mouths screamed without noise as skins crisped to black, parting to reveal bulging pink fat. The trees around crowded over, and mechanical dinosaurs strode through them. An Iron Insect stood at the edge of the clearing, heavy head swivelling, burning searchlight raising hedges of fire among the tents. Jessica passed him the trident and made a sign with her hand, urging him to eat. He raised the forked food, still alive, to his mouth and could not smell the burned flesh. He bit off the head of the first sausage-worm. It was like taking in a mouthful of molten lead. The food burned, eating away his teeth and tongue in a moment, melding his jaw to his skull, flooding his throat. Jessica rolled up her sleeve, pushing her bracelets to her elbow, and thrust her porky forearm into the fire. As Ferg’s mouth cooled to deadness, the girl’s skin turned black in patches and parted, showing lumpy flesh and muscle underneath. The fat spit silently, and her meat cooked on the bone. Now the wax was over Ferg’s mouth too, solid like a welded-on mask…

  He was stumbling through the woods, fleeing the Iron Insect. He couldn’t hear it, but he could feel the ground shake as it took each deliberate, heavy step. Trees got in the way, and he slammed into them, jarring his already wounded head. He’d been hurt badly inside, bones cracked, his brain probably leaking into his broken nose and senseless mouth. There wasn’t even pain any more. The ground got steeper, and he had to use his hands to pull himself up. His shaven scalp itched where he’d once had hair. He was climbing now, an almost sheer rockface. The Iron Insect slowed, forced to crunch out holds for its clawed feet before it could lift its weight. Ferg hauled himself up, gripping a well-anchored bush, and lifted his head above the crest of the cliff, chinning the edge. He scrambled over and, exhausted, lay down, looking up at the night sky. A dart-shaped spaceship crossed the grinning face of the moon, tiny drones spurting from it, spiralling towards the earth. From his position, he saw fires all over Alder, hovering aliens hunting and exterminating humans. It was a rout, Earth was doomed. He wasn’t alone on the hillside. A boy sat on a rock, watching. Salim turned to Ferg, and moonlight showed a deep hole displacing his features, as if someone had sunk an iron into his face. He painfully hauled himself to his feet, arms extended. A mechanical device, like a spider with blinking lights, stuck to his neck, legs digging beneath his skin. The boy had been brought back from the dead by the aliens. Allison lurched out of the darkness, face chalk-white and gaunt, low-cut and wasp-waisted black shroud trailing behind her bare feet, arms extended too, black fingernails reaching. The zombies piled on to him, pressing him down, forcing his head into position, making him look up at the towering shape of the Iron Insect. The cobra-neck appendage bobbed and pointed at him. The zombies dug into his stomach, freeing his guts, pressing faces to his wounds. Allison held up his liver and took a bite out of it, red dribbling down her bone-white chin, eyes glowing enormous in her cavernous skull sockets. The Iron Insect’s antenna was directly in front of him, a few inches from his eyes. There was an aperture in the antenna. He’d seen these things spread fire with their death ray. He tried to close his eyes, but his eyelids were paralysed. A shutter within the aperture opened, and light flooded his vision. His face burned, and his eyes burst…

  In the dark, Ferg felt the tightening hood around his head. All other senses were gone. His head was getting smaller and coming loose from his neck. In the dark, the aliens swarmed, exulting in their triumph. The alien giant with the killing, crushing hand held fast. There were unseen shapes around him, unheard voices. He felt, but did not hear, the final snap.

  9

  ‘Where’d she go?’ Mike Toad asked, shaken.

  Allison stood up and brushed herself off. The ground where Jazz had been was finely dusted with chalk. There was a murder-victim outline, but no other trace of the girl.

  ‘Where?’

  Allison looked at the Toad, and he shut up.

  ‘Transported,’ she said, liking the sound of it. As us all shall be.’

  The Toad looked doubtful.

  ‘’Tis our reward,’ she reassured him. ‘Faithful will sit at His right hand.’

  Terry was on all fours, hairy back burst through his shirt, thick fur all over his face. He was fidgety, gouging the shingle with his claws.

  First Wendy, then Ben, now Jazz. With each passing, she was stronger. She was putting aside weights that anchored her to her old life. She was being purified, like the Sisters of the Agapemone. But she was stronger than they, fit to sit by the throne of the lion, not to bleat in the arms of the lamb. Her Beloved wasn’t meek and mild but the terrible scourge that swept all before Him away in flame.

  On the hillside it was quiet, but she heard the wailing from Alder, wafting up in the still night. The souls of the transported lingered like fireflies. The armies were assembled, and the first skirmishes had been fought. With Ben’s passing, she’d won a field promotion. She was now a general, second only to the Beloved.

  Mike Toad wanted to say something, but had nothing
to say. His aura was sickly, congealing yellow around his heart. He was coming to the end of his purpose. He was becoming one of the weights that must be set aside. Terry howled at the stars. The Toad cringed.

  The first pink of dawn showed. Their night on the mountain was nearly over. Soon, it would be time to go among the multitudes and spread the word. But first, she must lose another weight.

  ‘Mike Toad,’ she said, pulling him around by his chin to face her, ‘tell us a story, tell us a joke.’

  He shook his head, and she nodded slowly, contradicting him.

  ‘Youm a funny boy. Make I laugh.’

  He gulped. Terry stopped howling and cocked an ear to listen. Allison squeezed, thumb digging into Mike’s cheek, nail pressing a crescent of red under his eye.

  ‘Come on, boy.’

  She pulled her hand away. Mike swallowed. He knew she meant it.

  ‘No… wait… right…’

  She watched him collect himself.

  ‘My girlfriend, right, she’s so fat…’

  Allison folded her arms. Mike was having trouble getting his joke straight in his mind, let alone his mouth.

  ‘Fat, right? Yeah, really fat… anyway, she was going through customs at the airport…’

  Terry was bunching up his shoulders, muscles tense, head thrust forwards. Allison put a hand on his head, fur prickling under her palm.

  ‘…and they pull her aside... searching, no, looking... looking for drugs…’

  Terry growled in the back of his throat, almost below the range of human ears. Allison felt his readiness to pounce. He was like an Olympic runner on his marks, knees bent, thighs and calves ready to pound ground.

  ‘…so they strip-search her… they take down her knickers, and what do you think they find?’