Maxie’s Demon

by Michael Scott Rohan

  I wasn’t hanging about to criticise. Religious I’m not, but that shape straight out of the universal subconscious struck directly down from eyes to legs, with the barest bypass to my brain. I was already running as its great arm reached out, racing the black waterfall of shadow the clawed hand sent sweeping ahead of it, down the hill to the crossroads.

  Run, or – no, not die. I’d guessed what I had to fear down there, and it wasn’t death, nor hell neither. But the terror of it sang down my legs and turned my tendons to red-hot wires, my lungs straining, my heart drumming. As I ran I felt a sullen tremor in the earth, one of those awful footfalls I remembered so clearly, and the sky flared green at my back. The crossroads opened out before me – and blackness swallowed them, the last spilled dregs of the sinking night. I screamed, I suppose; I took the crossing running, and as my foot touched it I leaped. It was like leaping an open freezer; a deadly chill breathed around me, sickening my stomach, riming my hair.

  Then the stony path slapped my worn shoe soles, and I was through. Shadow was all it was, the shadow of the reaching arm and not its substance. Vast and slow the thing itself reached out for me, cable sinews tautening one claw-tipped finger; but I was through, away and running for the Wheel. Running madly, screaming for Poppy, running like a man possessed – or one about to be.

  I fell, more than once, rolled in the dust and hardly felt it, springing up again and shrieking as the shadow touched the walls and trees around the sleeping houses. Once, twice the ground shuddered at one of those fearful footfalls, slower than before but massively weightier, a mass no obstacle could stop. It felt like about a century before I reached the pub wall and swung around it. I scrambled over the low fence without even breaking stride. The door was shut, locked and barred maybe, but I was damn near ready to run right through it, toon-style.

  I didn’t have to. It opened as I thrashed through the clawing rosebushes and on to the lawn. It opened, and there was Poppy herself in cap and shawl and long white nightgown, candleholder in one hand and a gnarly broom upheld in the other. I flung myself at her feet, unable to run another stride. Why, I didn’t know; what could she do or anyone, against that monstrosity? But this was all the safety I could think of. I babbled, I screamed, I don’t know what sense I made; but I didn’t need to.

  The arm of blackness lay all across the village now. The thing hung vast in the sky, its shell of ghastly green glare rippling against the greyness. The arm that cast the shadow reached down towards the straining thatches slowly, effortfully, as if the air was turning thick and sticky as syrup, but horribly unstoppable. Towards us it stretched, it strained; but it was so vast it would reach us all the same, and soon. The nearer it reached, though, the less clearly I saw it, somehow. I thought my eyes were going out of focus, but it was the thing itself, the fringes of its ratty fur blurring and shimmering, edged with prismatic rainbows as if I saw it through a cheap lens.

  I knelt at Poppy’s feet, my breath wheezing into tortured lungs, too weak even to clutch her legs, and she reached down and put a protective arm about my shoulders. Her very steadiness made me aware how I was shaking. I knew why. I understood only too well what that thing was.

  What had Loew guessed? Men who’d made themselves into the image of demons. He’d been right, up to a point. Not demons. A demon.

  A blend. A merging, a composite monster made up of its own victims, drawn in by the very strength it gave them. Until drawing on that strength made them more and more a part of it, until all but the shell of their individual selves was lost, dissolved in the greater self-image. An Arcimboldo portrait, Faust and Mephistopheles in one.

  Even from that vast height those narrow eyes were fixed on me, flaring red, piercing, hungry – a hunger I could feel, a hunger for the individuality I had and it hadn’t, for all its compounded power, the thirst of minds whose own lives had long ago been lost and dissolved, to live again through another. Not just the few I’d seen, the eight or so; those shadowy figures behind them had only been a glimpse, all that could be seen of the ones that had gone before. A symbol almost, of a vast queue of victims winding off into obscurity.

  And it would have me soon like all the rest, walk in my shape, but with all that vast, invisible crowd trailing along after me like the segmented body of some enormous worm. Like all the rest, only worse, because through me it could walk in the Core, in the world I knew, a wild possibility reaching in from the shifting chaos that was the Spiral, tearing open the gates of probability to let loose all hell. A demon unleashed, to violate every law there was, natural or otherwise – my demon, Maxie’s Demon.

  Through me, for as long as I lasted. Until I was hollowed out and burnt up, until I was so broken to the insanely fragmented wills behind me that I no longer had a will of my own. Until I joined the head of that queue, that horrendous body, and went snaking away with my fellow shadows to rope in some other poor wretch, on the hooks of his own weakness.

  The wolf jaws parted, and between the stained sabre teeth the long tongue lolled and slavered, dripping foam that boiled into nothingness. The reaching claw seemed to quiver with massive effort, as if it was hooking in the universe. The reek from the fell grew thicker. Even the grass around me seemed to be straining upward in answer to that summoning claw.

  Poppy’s wide lips set in a pout of obstinate defiance. ‘Oi! Shoo! Be off with you! Nasty great thing!’ She brandished the broom indignantly.

  The very sight of her started me laughing helplessly. I sprang up, and the slight effort seemed to float me right off the ground in that pull.

  ‘You get out of it!’ I shouted, though I could hardly breathe, and my lips slurred the words. ‘’S’not you it wants!’

  ‘It’s everybody, moi dear, in the end! Can’t be standing for that, now, can we?’

  She was right. Suddenly I felt very strange. I was still afraid, I was bloody terrified – but I was also icy calm.

  If it was going to get us anyway, suddenly it didn’t seem that important. If it was inevitable, it didn’t matter; what mattered was how. All the more reason not to take it lying down. Or whimpering, for that matter. Maybe something like that happens to soldiers in wars. I could almost believe the sergeants in the war movies shouting, ‘What d’you wanna do – live for ever?’ Because you don’t get brave when you think like that – but you do get angry.

  The monstrous finger stretched out to me. I stretched a couple back, and added a juicy Italian gesture for good measure. ‘You want me?’ I screamed. ‘You sure? I’ll give you bloody indigestion! A century’s worth! I’ll run you ragged!’

  It sounded even limper than that, believe me. A fart in a tornado would have had more effect. But it made me feel a bit better. It would have been nice if that claw had even faltered in its long, slow thrust, but it didn’t.

  ‘Get inside, Poppy!’ I repeated, hoarsely. ‘If it gets any nearer—’

  The girl actually giggled. ‘Never you fret, moi dear! This ol’ place ain’t so very easy overset, oi can tell you! There’s been worse than that hereabouts in moi time and before it—’

  ‘Worse than this?’

  ‘Oo yes, and never yet – oh, there you is! We was wonderin’ what was keepin’ you, wasn’t we, moi dear?’

  Fisher.

  Fisher, in a dapper green jacket and tan slacks that made me want to weep, because they were the first normal clothes I’d seen in what felt like a century, the first token of a world where things like this didn’t happen. Fisher, striding out of the door past me with only the swiftest glance, and not an ounce of fear or hesitation in his step.

  Fisher, not alone. Two women with him. Two awesome women, glowing with life, who almost made me forget the monstrous thing overhead. One dark, short-haired, sleek as an otter and as quick, with eyes that snapped and glittered in a strong-featured spearhead of a face. I knew her from the magazine, his wife, but wearing some kind of uniform now, grey, with chain mail at the shoulders, and swinging an awesome sword at her hip.

  The ot
her, taller yet, wore a sword too, a massive, basket-hilted thing. Her blonde hair foamed like a waterfall over broad shoulders and a blunter, more sensual face, just the heavy side of pretty, but with a wry half-smile that mirrored a glint of wisdom in the eyes. Her tight, dark T-shirt and leggings, in some kind of fuzzy midnight moleskin stuff, left a lot of tanned skin bare. Even in the shadow it glinted golden over her whipcord muscles, as if by the stored radiance of tropical suns.

  And if all this seems like funny things to be noticing with the end of everything coming in at zero feet – well, you haven’t seen them, that’s all.

  ‘Alison, Mall, stand by him!’ snapped Fisher, lounging out on to the lawn and standing, leaning on his stick, staring up at the living stormcloud above. The wind whistled about him, and the poplars bent low. The gate rattled and the sign swung and creaked within its frame, slowly and ponderously, as if the Wheel itself really was swaying in the balance of fate. I saw the vast eyes shift then, the red flares turn from me to him. He nodded quietly, as if acknowledging or accepting something.

  And this time the claw really did falter.

  Fisher moved almost faster than I could see. The stick in his hand sprang upwards with the suddenness of a fencer’s lunge, and stretched as it sprang, striking like a snake. It was a spear, a huge one, a white wood haft with a black tip glittering—

  The sky hammered. For an instant I thought Fisher was struck by lightning; but the lightning struck upwards, earth lashing fire at sky as if to revenge the centuries of natural punishment. The spear spat steely light into the black form above, and the light lanced out and branched, beating against the matted beast fur. The demon reared up, flailing, and howled like a hurricane. We all staggered, and clapped our hands over our ears.

  Except Fisher. He stood like a statue, with the cold light pouring from the thing in his upraised hand. Blue afterimages seared my sight. The black claw blazed like a welding torch. Snaking lines of sparking light raced spitting along the arm and burst in crackling fire across the gigantic body. The fur stiffened and bulged, and seams of actinic blue-white burst out. The thing shook violently, the wolf head jerked back and was suddenly enveloped in the awesome blinding blossom that welled out from within.

  From eyes, from throat, from nostrils the white beams shone against the smoke, utterly blotting out the green glare and the red. Then the agonised muzzle was enveloped in the fireflower, and the whole vast creature burst apart in midair. Light flooded the sky, and the landscape stood out stark and colourless as the glare leaped from horizon to horizon, as if to bleach the universe a uniform white.

  Then there was no monster, no dismembered fragments, only human bodies whirling in a pale tornado vortex that seemed to hurl them outward as they reached its margin. They were alive; they flailed their limbs frantically. But one by one they were gone in an instant, leaving one alone at the heart, one that hung in the air an instant and came plummeting down like the loser of a dogfight, smoky trail and all, right down on our heads. I ducked, but it went tumbling over and down into what must be the margins of Willum’s field.

  A hundred-foot fall, at least. I winced as I heard the thud.

  And suddenly there was the first trace of warmth in the grey sky, and all the birds were singing. Fisher lowered his walking stick and leaned on it with a satisfied air.

  ‘Well,’ I remember saying, though my own voice sounded tiny and hollow in my ears, ‘no wonder he’s made a few killings in business!’

  The women who flanked me snorted. ‘He did that first,’ said his wife. ‘The rest came later.’

  They were both looking at Fisher, and that suited me very well. I ducked down, and was one step away from scuttling off when two hard hands descended on my shoulders. ‘What, just slipping away, Master Maxie?’ enquired the blonde cheerfully.

  ‘We can’t have that, can we?’ purred the brunette. ‘Not the hero of the hour! Steve is simply dying for a word with you.’

  ‘Hero’ would have been more encouraging if I hadn’t been reminded of a cat dabbing at a mouse. If Steve was dying for anything to do with me, he didn’t show it. He strolled back, quite unnecessarily smoothing down his hair, and pecked the brunette’s cheek lightly. ‘Well, that’ll stop him laughing in church, eh?’

  It hadn’t been laughing the way I heard the expression, but Fisher was evidently the decorous type. It didn’t stop him giving Poppy a squeeze, dirty devil. ‘Sorry we had to get you up, Poppy, but if we’d shown ourselves sooner he’d have been away like spit off a hot stove. We had to lure him as close in as possible – thanks to our little bait here.’

  ‘Bait?’

  He gave me a cool look. ‘Afraid so. Since you were in the way, you might say.’

  I surged up, only to be thrust down again by those impossible hands. ‘You lousy bloody bastard! You set me up for this! Right from the start! You sent me up that bloody road, that night!’

  He scratched his immaculately shaven neck a moment. ‘If you remember, I did suggest you’d be a lot safer heading back to the junction. I knew It was trying to lure someone in, someone who would suit It – or Them, or whatever you like. Naturally It was drawn to Dee and Kelley’s little experiments. They opened a way for It, closer in to the Core; and that alerted me. That was why I’d been hanging around here lately, hoping I’d get a lead. That was why I warned you, that night.’

  ‘You could have been a bit bloody clearer!’

  ‘What, said a ninety-foot hairy demon was after your backside? You’d really have believed that on top of everything else, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘So you just let me walk out into … into …’

  ‘Oh, no. Nothing like that. Not unless I had to, anyhow. But you’re fast on your feet, Maxie my boy. I was on your tail that night, but I hung back too far. You got away from me, and blundered right on in. When It appeared, I was too concerned about you to deal with It immediately, and It backed off before I could reach It. Then you did a runner. Ever since then we’ve been searching. We almost got you with the cops, and back in Prague. We had a little trouble with the watchmen there, but Mall and Alison actually hove in sight of you—’

  I sank down, groaning. The women with swords – not the demon’s creatures at all, but these two Amazon bitches.

  ‘Yes,’ he said severely. ‘And you’d have saved everyone a lot of trouble if you’d only hung on. We’d have settled Kelley’s hash easily enough.’ He tapped his shoe with his stick, and I flinched.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ I muttered. I’d as soon see someone tap-dance on an A-bomb. Maybe I’d done Brother Edward another favour, at that.

  Fisher grinned. ‘Anyhow, by the time we tracked you down again you were on your way home, so it seemed simpler just to let the thing come after you. We needed to get It in really close. You were never in any real danger, though.’

  ‘Huh!’ was about the best I could manage. ‘Look, since you’re so bloody communicative, I suppose you wouldn’t mind just telling me who you really are – and why the hell you’re mucking about anyhow? What’s happened to that – to them—’

  ‘Me? Just another eccentric billionaire,’ he said, a little absently. ‘But on the Spiral you rarely stay just one thing long. And like you, I’ve got powerful contacts. As to what’s happened – to the people who made that thing up, you mean? Back where they came from, back to the moment in time where that thing first got its claws into them. As if none of this ever happened. Those were pretty desperate moments, though, mostly. They weren’t very nice people, any of them; they needed the demon’s power to become what they wanted to be, and you saw what that looked like. The last of them, anyhow, the ones still individual enough to take on any real shape. Thugs and no-goods writ large. They split up because they could push deeper back into the margins of the Core that way, and because they looked less alarming. But they were only really shells for that thing. The one you could never see clearly, the one who started the process, who began sucking others in.’

  ‘I suppo
se I felt that. That there was something really weird or inhuman about them, anyhow.’

  Fisher’s wife nodded. ‘You would. You’re bright, and you had strength enough to resist what they dangled in front of you. They hadn’t. Most of them are on their way back to the gutter or the gallows now.’

  ‘Not all,’ said the big blonde, shaking that mane of hers. ‘One there is I know does well by her vices, and dies rich and in good name none dare question, a pillar of Mother Church.’

  Fisher shrugged. ‘Well, it happens sometimes. I’ve no control over it, thankfully. My life’s complicated enough as it is.’

  ‘Jesus, you think you’ve got troubles?’ All this talk about gutters and gallows had brought everyday life back with a rush. ‘What about me? The cops still think I’m Mr MacManiac! And if they don’t get me Ahwaz will – and will anyway, if I end up in jail! I’m screwed!’

  Fisher shook his head. ‘No, no – that isn’t the case at all. Look, I need a drink and some breakfast, and I’m sure you do – but come along with me a moment. Let him go, Mall. Poppy, ladies, you’ll excuse us for a few minutes? And maybe scare up some bacon and eggs?’

  ‘I wish you hadn’t mentioned that drink,’ I grumbled, trotting along beside him and his infernal long legs. He swept around the pub and back along the path to the junction. ‘Couldn’t we have it first?’

  ‘This’ll only take a minute. You see there?’

  Oh God. He was pointing that stick over the gate into Willum’s field. And yes, I certainly did see, though God knows I didn’t want to. You couldn’t miss it, not with that smoke or that smell.

  I swallowed. ‘I don’t think I want any bacon. That was—’