Maxie’s Demon

by Michael Scott Rohan

  ‘Mercy, my lord! I’m no spy, but a man of honour! Strayed far from his homeland—’

  ‘Well, at least you get one out of two right, huh, Maxie?’

  I stared in horror at the ferocious grin that glittered down at me. That bloody Oriental type fitted in here about as well as a branch of McDonald’s, but nobody else seemed to notice, least of all the louts who’d grabbed me. They didn’t even blink when another mount swung around, and there in cap-a-pie sardine suit was the other woman, dark curls crammed untidily in around the visor. ‘You are not strayed, signor! Nor are you in any danger, if only you will throw in your lot with us. Where we are, you are lord and master, if you will only have us—’

  A pike prodded me in the ribs. ‘Why you kneel in de dirt? You like it?’ I really did gape then. There in the armour of the noncom type who’d nabbed me stood the Dutch thug or whatever he was. Only a second ago it had been somebody else’s face sticking out. ‘Get you nowhere fast. Dey fight a war here, holy war, any minute. Dere’s no time for tittle-tat trial stuff – if you lucky, they just string you up, if not – well, shit, you bedder pray we here to help, Maxie!’ I tried to jump up, and another pike caught me below the breastbone. The crowd screamed encouragement. From the next helmet along leered the Robert Newton clone.

  ‘If ‘tweren’t us here you’d be spitted by now, lad! An’ you may yet be, twixt one heartbeat and the next!’

  A holy war? I remembered reading about some of those round here, religion and nationalism mixed. It was the Middle East of its day, with some types called Hussites bashing and being bashed, the odd burning at the stake, that kind of thing. I could see how that would cast shadows in the Spiral. The crowd was a growling animal at my back. Maybe this was something that really had happened, some poor sod speaking German out of turn and getting lynched for it. These bandits, they’d injected themselves into the situation somehow, taking over whatever roles they needed. The moment they pulled back, the faces would change, the drama would play itself on out. All over me.

  ‘What – what d’you want me to do?’

  The hard-faced woman smiled very slowly. Her teeth looked long and sharp. ‘Anything that comes to mind, Maxie. Just like on the phone. One thought, and you could clean this whole shitheap up!’

  Somehow her voice didn’t sound quite the same, as if there was an echo to it, and less accent. I blinked, bewildered. This mob howling for my blood – I could bring fire and thunderbolts down on their heads. But did I want to? Maybe they had troubles enough. I could imagine Londoners in the Blitz acting a bit like that, if they thought they’d found a spy, or Brits in Napoleon’s time. All I had to do was think – that was the problem. I was fighting not to think. Ever tried that?

  The flowers will turn to gold at sunset, but only if you don’t think of a blue monkey.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ I wailed, trying not to suit the action to the word. Thought’s not just free, it’s about as hard to restrain as a cat in a dog pound. I was scared stiff, I wanted out, and any moment I was going to burn my way clear, I couldn’t help it. Burn through hundreds of people—

  They were all there now, even the other woman and the black guy, and he really did stick out. The locals didn’t seem to notice any of them. Their smiles were as cold as their armour, and they didn’t look that persuasive now.

  The high voice echoed over the spitting buzz of the onlookers. ‘Vzhuru! Vzhuru! Krizaci prebodili Vltava! ’ and then, in German, ‘Arise! The crusaders have crossed the Danube!’

  There was a sudden blaring trumpet, and then everything swirled into motion. If somebody had pulled a plug that square couldn’t have emptied faster. There was a massed furious roar, and the whole huge crowd surged away in a sort of human riptide, brandishing their weapons, with even the dogs barking at their heels. They forgot about me, but the brigands, in their armour, didn’t stand a chance. They were swept up and away in the flow of brotherhood, visible only for a second and then submerged. Voices died away, shouting, singing something harsh and thudding. There were just two figures left in that square, myself, and, at the inn door, Dr Dee.

  ‘History carries them away,’ he said, a little sadly, coming towards me. I backed off. ‘They go to rout the knights of the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, in the name of their prophet Jan Hus. They will. For a brief while.’

  I nodded. In his day Rudolph was back in the saddle. So much for revolutions. ‘History’s carrying me away, too. Thanks for bailing me out, but I just want to get away. These creatures, these bandits—’

  He looked troubled. ‘There is something amiss, clearly. But if you would only stand and seek explanation—’

  ‘Explanation? D’you know what they almost made me do?’

  ‘Perhaps they are but testing you – given your, ah, propensities—’

  ‘Balls! Who thought up that one – Brother Edward? Yeah, thought so!’

  ‘If you will but swallow your distrust of him—’

  ‘After what you’ve been swallowing—Look out! They’re coming back!’

  He swallowed that one too. I was past him and through the inn door while he was still casting about, and slamming the great bar across it. I heard him beating on it and bleating feebly, while I rummaged frantically for a light. Luckily some provident type had heaped the fireplace ashes for rekindling, and there were some sticks still glowing. I could hear Dee’s muffled pleas as I ducked back down through the trap, carefully shielding the stinking little lamp in my cupped hand.

  ‘Brother Maxie! Shall you open this door or must I grow sinfully wrathful?’

  I smiled, imagining an enraged sheep. Then there was a fearful bang, and I ducked down just in time as something whizzed by over my head and crashed against the wall. It was the door, bar, hinges and all. I scuttled down the ladder, ignoring the bolt. No point in having that door come after me as well. I remembered too late about charging rams; and Dee was certainly wearing horns. I’d have to be a bit more careful in future.

  The sewer scent – Canal No.5 – got up and hit me as I reached the door, but I steeled myself. At least I had some light now; without that I’d just been led, that was obvious, into suitably dangerous situations. Now I’d lead myself. Even if I could only make Vienna in 1946, that’d be something; if there was room for Harry Lime, there ought to be an opening for me. The Spiral wasn’t going to get me this time!

  Well, maybe it wasn’t. All I could do was flounder down one stinking tunnel after another, so turned around no memory would have got me out. The lamp was a comfort of sorts, though it kept sputtering and popping as it ignited little wisps of mephitic gas. And all it actually showed me was how much one lot of dodgy masonry looks like another, especially caked solid with nitre, lichen and worse. Now I could see what was flowing down the centre of the channel, too, I spent a lot of the time walking in a sort of wide-legged Chaplin waddle astride it, in case it ate my shoes.

  I had to admit I was getting nowhere, and not even that fast. Until, that was, I came across a tunnel mouth that looked like all the rest – except that its crumbling rim had been supported with a frame of new-looking steel, enamelled black and bolted together. Nuts and bolts and enamel – industrial products, so whatever was up there ought to be reasonably modern. OK, it might be the Nazis again, but this time I’d watch out.

  It wasn’t long before I found more modern metalwork, a proper ladder leading up to a very ordinary-looking manhole cover. Leaving the lamp on a ledge, I prodded the cover up gingerly – just in case it was in the middle of an intersection with the lights about to change, you understand. It wasn’t. It was concreted into cobbles, and it was about the only thing modern in a rickety little switchback of a street. It could have been the one outside the cistern – except that it was dark overhead, and there were nice bright streetlamps. The coal smell was stronger, too. Late evening, it felt like, with rain in the air. I could just make out the outline of the Hradcany Palace against the clouds, looking much the same as in Rudolph’s day. Bright coloured posters spa
ttered a billboard just above me. Now that looked modern enough.

  Nervously I scrambled out and peered around. Nobody in sight; no cars, either, but I could hear one or two in the distance. I slunk over to peer at the posters. They were mostly a sort of Art Deco, very nice. Thirties revival – or just Thirties? Sod it, you couldn’t tell. Not even from the products – Pilsener beer, cigarettes, an opera poster with a dishy-looking brunette in pseudo-Chinese rig, Emilia Marty na ‘Turandoe. Bet the prima donna didn’t really look like that – though I seemed to recognise this one from somewhere. Ah well, this wasn’t getting us anywhere. Wherever I was, I needed information, and food, and maybe a flashlight or two. There were some promising-looking windows nearby, so I tippytoed over to the nearest and had a good peer around. Aren’t historic buildings nice? So hard to fit proper locks, let alone real alarms. No sign of either here—

  A hand jerked my collar, violently. I was probably immune to heart attacks by now, but I did my best, A voice hissed in my ear.

  Czech again. I nearly garrotted myself trying to shake my head. The voice switched to German. ‘Was machen Sie da, Putz? ’

  ‘Nothing!’ I gurgled, or tried to. ‘Just – looking—’

  ‘O ja!’ agreed the voice sarcastically. ‘I’ll bet! And up out of a manhole, too. Come on, I know your kind of looking!’ He sounded young and cocky and cool. I twisted around, protesting feebly. That was what he was, all right – younger than me, maybe, but a lot taller and stronger, a lanky guy with a lean, intelligent face and intense, deepset eyes. Jewish, at a guess; he looked a lot like a lawyer I ran into once. Bent his BMW, in fact. And he didn’t look any easier to fool.

  That wasn’t my only problem, either, at least unless some kind of retro fashion had hit Prague. Oiled hair, wing collar, string tie, short bumfreezer jacket – late Twenties, early Thirties, maybe. He was looking at my clothes just as curiously. ‘So that’s what burglars’re wearing these days, is it? Well, I suppose it’s you little cockroaches that keep me in business – insurance, you know – but … Hej! Polizei her! Polizei! ’

  From somewhere maybe a street or two away came an answering shout, and the blast of a whistle. I hate insurance people. And I hate roaches, and people who call cop. ‘You’ve got a bloody nerve!’ I snarled. ‘Insurance? You’re the biggest bunch of cons unhung! Me a sodding cockroach? What about you?’

  There was a sort of nasty raspberry noise, and the streetlamps dimmed. Some other light flooded the street, a red meteoric flash that passed and left me tingling. Suddenly there wasn’t a hand on my collar any more. I looked down and let out a wail, but it got wedged in my throat. I hate roaches, and never more than the six-foot stinking monster that sprawled at my feet, waving its little legs in the air. I shrank back against the streetlamp, ready to climb it, hardly hearing the running feet on the cobbles.

  A hard hand with heavy uniform cuffs thumped down on my shoulder in the classic gesture.

  The skin was black. ‘Now that,’ said a high-pitched voice in the darkness, ‘is what I call neat, baby!’

  The uniform was greenish in the streetlights, semi-military, slightly old-fashioned – a bit comic opera, except for the huge revolver at his side.

  ‘Hey, sir agreed another voice from the darkness, just as familiar. ‘He surely learns, no?’

  ‘Boy, I bet dat was fun! Whatta say, Maxie? You like, huh?’

  Out of the shadows they came one by one, grinning. All in the same uniform. I didn’t know it, but I didn’t need to. A cop uniform anywhere makes me itch. Only there sure as hell weren’t cops in these ones.

  ‘What the fuck are you on about?’ I gibbered. ‘Christ, I didn’t do that! I don’t know how, I just—You did it! You!’

  Dark eyes sparkled, but so does broken glass. ‘Then, caro mio signor, surely we could remedy it, and none other. Yet you can, and shall if you but wish. If you do not, then we will not, either.’

  ‘’S’easy,’ giggled the black guy. ‘All yo’ gotta do is—’

  I was already stretching out my hand over the feeble kicking thing, struggling hard to keep my stomach down.

  Not a thing. A man, there was a man in there. A man—

  No denying it this time. I felt myself do it, as if my fingertips burst open and spurted blood. Light burned beneath my skin, blazed out red at the joints. Every bone in my wrist glowed like coals in a fire. Furnaces blazed up through my fingernails and spilled out on to the cobbles. Another sickly, slimy rasp, and a man grovelled on the cobbles, waving his long arms helplessly.

  He rolled over, gaped at me in blank horror, then at the ring of bandits in their uniforms, laughing hilariously. He hunched himself awkwardly to his feet, half cringing back as I tried to help him, and stood shakily. Then he let out a sort of thin, pressured shriek, like escaping steam, burst through the ring and ran wildly off, headlong down the road, skidding on cobbles, hitting walls, limbs flailing in crazy efforts not to fall, as if nothing could be more important.

  I found myself wondering vaguely what being a cockroach felt like. Then I stopped myself hastily. Too many thoughts were happening round here as it was.

  Oh well, he’d work it out somehow, I told myself. In fact I had this feeling I remembered – but I’d got troubles enough of my own. They were still laughing at me.

  ‘Big fun, huh? Big yocks! An’ you can do that any time you like!’

  ‘Dat or anyt’ing!’

  ‘Scatter yer foes, win yer friends, sweep aside all as stands in yer path!’

  The women whooped suddenly. ‘Oh! See! Here’s one you would be free of, would you not?’

  ‘A millstone! An ass!’

  ‘No, an ox with horns!’ She made the two-handed Latin gesture. ‘Make an ox of this one, senor!’

  The men laughed raucously and they stepped aside with mocking bows to show me Dee, skullcap askew, clambering laboriously out of the manhole. He blinked around at them, astonished. I didn’t blame him. They were sounding less and less like angels. And if they were false, then what else might be? But I could guess he wasn’t ready to face that, not yet – maybe never.

  And meanwhile he’d go on doing Kelley’s work for him, till it was just too late. Innocent he might be, but he was deadly dangerous. And for the first time I had a way to deal with dangers. And if he disappeared, and Kelley, there was Jane Dee …

  I raised my hands, palm out, and felt the light boil down my arms. Dee’s jaw dropped as a corona of fire leaped between them.

  ‘If I can do something like that,’ I grated, ‘then I can send you bastards hopping first!’ I swung round at the bandits, expecting some kind of counterblast. But the light blazed again in a shimmering film, like an iridescent soap bubble mirroring a fire, and they stepped back from me, one step, two. I gasped with relief and excitement, and poured out more power. Their green uniforms shone suddenly luminous, tingeing their faces with the colour. It grew into a misty, muddy green glow, and they threw their arms wide as if enjoying a shower.

  The dark women giggled. ‘Play with it as you will, caro mio Maxie! You do but return to us what is ours!’

  ‘What is ourselves! What can be you! What cannot hurt us!’

  The moustachioed man nodded. ‘Feels good, huh, Maxie? Go on – use it, enjoy it, get the feel of it!’

  ‘Get to like it!’

  ‘And when ye be a-ready, my lad—’

  ‘We’ll be there!’

  For a minute the red glow and the green seemed to meet and merge like whirling oil films, then blackness bulged up through them. The shadows were drained of presence. They’d buggered off.

  I felt – I didn’t know what. Uncomfortable. Itchy. Weak. For a minute there I’d been eight feet tall – no, twenty. And untouchable. God, it was just like dope, the best, the purest. And now the rush had set in. Only dope’s never much use for making you really do anything; you just think you’re doing it. That makes keeping off the stuff a lot easier, for me. A freaked-out hijack driver’s a self-solving problem. But this was some
thing else. Frightening when I couldn’t control it – but maybe now I was learning …

  I hadn’t needed Dee, this time, anyhow. There he stood, alone under the streetlamps, weirdly out of place against the made-up face looking down on him. And he was between me and the manhole.

  ‘Shift, Doc,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’

  ‘Why must you forever flee me?’ the old man demanded. He looked anxious but stern. ‘Ever and again you have agreed to let us assist you, and we mean you naught but good!’

  ‘Oh yeah. You mean, you mean! But who’s asking you?’

  He stepped back, affronted. ‘I know not what you say! But if you will not confide in me, at least respect the angelic forces that also pursue you! The hounds of Heaven in quest of a human soul!’

  ‘Hounds, yes! But Heaven’s?’

  He blinked. ‘But whose else?’

  ‘You tell me. Or go ask Brother Edward. If he isn’t half breaking somebody’s arm, the way he got me to agree to the ceremony. Ask him why the power they give me just let me turn a man into something horrible. Ask him why they stood around and laughed!’

  ‘Laughed? I find that hard to credit.’

  I sighed. ‘Yes, you do, don’t you? And that’s why I’m not sticking around with you. So stop tailing me, or … I raised my hands, and the red glare grew in them. It danced on the old man’s beard, but he didn’t move a step. Breathing hard, I forced them down again. I really didn’t like this. ‘See that? That’s the angelic power. That’s what Brother Edward wants to pick up at this ceremony. It scares me, it really fucking scares me. But what scares me most is the feeling that he’d be right at home—Are you going to move?’

  He just stood there, obstinately. I took a step towards him, ready to rush. He stood fast, lifted his staff slightly. Fear and anger bubbled up together. Red and green sparks crackled at my fingertips. Enough of this shit! I’d never need to run from anyone, ever again.