The Watchers

by Jon Steele

‘What?’

  ‘It’s complicated.’

  ‘Jesus, what kind of detectiveman are you?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘That’s what Marc calls you, the detectiveman.’

  ‘Right, I remember. He said it the first night I met him on the esplanade.’

  ‘So just what kind of detectiveman are you, Harper?’

  ‘What do you think I am, Miss Taylor?’

  ‘I don’t give a flying fuck, I just want to know which side you’re on. Good guys or the bad guys?’

  Harper rubbed the back of his neck, felt the swelling where the half-breed goons rammed the needle.

  ‘When it all started, they told me I was one of the good guys. Turns out I was only following orders.’

  ‘So you’re some kind of soldier or a spy?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Katherine softly combed strands of black hair from Rochat’s brow.

  ‘Those names you said, Azazel and the other one …’

  ‘Samyaza.’

  ‘Yeah, him. Who are they?’

  ‘Fallen angels from the Book of Enoch.’

  ‘The book of what?’

  ‘Look, Miss Taylor, it’d take an eternity to explain and you still wouldn’t believe it.’

  ‘Try me.’

  Harper looked up at the dark stained glass holding the crucified Christ. Seeing long traces of rain running like shadows down the glass.

  ‘Everything out there, all of it, this isn’t the way it was supposed to be.’

  ‘OK, that makes sense, not.’

  Harper smiled.

  ‘No, I’m sure it doesn’t.’

  Katherine sat quietly, watching Harper sit just as quiet.

  ‘You know, you look like me the night I got here.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Like something Marc’s cat dragged in.’

  ‘The lad’s got a cat?’

  ‘Up in the belfry, and it talks.’

  ‘The cat talks.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I didn’t notice.’

  ‘That it talks?’

  ‘That the lad’s got a cat in the belfry.’

  ‘He was probably hiding behind the radio when you were there. You can be a scary piece of work, Harper. But you know that, don’t you?’

  Harper scooped a handful of unlit candles from the box, grabbed one more. He opened the door of the lantern and touched the wick to the flame. He rose slowly from the cot, the burning candle in his hand. He dropped the spares in his pockets. Katherine pulled Rochat closer to her body.

  ‘Are you leaving us?’

  ‘Leaving?’

  ‘Your orders, to abandon us in the cathedral.’

  Harper patted the pockets of his trousers, nothing but unlit candles.

  ‘You don’t happen to have a fag, do you?’

  ‘Smoked them all waiting for you to come back.’

  ‘Right. In that case let’s just say I’m through with following orders.’

  ‘Then where are you going?’

  ‘Down to the nave, check the perimeter.’ He turned one way, then the other. ‘Do … do you know which way’s down to the nave?’

  Katherine nodded to the wood door at the end of the balcony.

  ‘Over there, Sherlock, to the unfinished tower. Another door opens to stairs that wind down to the main floor.’

  ‘Unfinished tower, stairs winding down, got it.’

  She watched him walk away. She called after him.

  ‘You don’t think we’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of getting out of here alive, do you?’

  Harper stopped, looked back at her.

  ‘Actually, there’s got to be more than one miracle left in this lump of a cathedral.’

  ‘Gee, I must’ve missed the first miracle in all the excitement, especially the part where you tried to kill Marc.’

  Harper looked at the lad sleeping in her arms.

  Transit umbra, lux permanet … shadow passes, light remains.

  ‘That’s just it, Miss Taylor, I didn’t.’

  thirty-seven

  Seven bells rumbled through the belly of the nave as Rochat and Harper gathered the last of the wood chairs and carried them to the north transept doors. Harper climbed a ladder and Rochat handed up the chairs. Harper drove the last chair into the doors with a heavy bang. Rochat lifted his lantern from the floor and studied the barricade.

  ‘Will this keep out the bad shadows?’

  ‘No, but it’ll make a huge bang when they do come in. Let them know they’re on our ground. Which reminds me, you know where there’re any floor plans of the nave? I’d best get familiar with what our ground looks like.’

  Rochat thought about it.

  ‘When Papa was saving the cathedral from falling down he made a book with drawings of the cathedral from the belfry spire to under the cathedral.’

  ‘Just the thing.’

  ‘You can buy one in the gift shop for one hundred Swiss francs.’

  Harper felt his pocket where his wallet used to be. Nothing but a few coins.

  ‘Suppose we could borrow a copy, just to look at it?’

  ‘When she was alive, Sœur Fabienne told people who just looked at books in the gift shop that the cathedral wasn’t a lending library and all the books were for sale.’

  ‘I bet she did. Thing is, I’ve only got some pocket change at the moment.’

  Rochat reached in his trouser pocket and pulled out his own wallet.

  ‘I have money. I can leave one hundred francs and a note on the counter for Madame Buhlmann because Sœur Fabienne doesn’t work there any more and Madame Buhlmann can put it in the money box when she comes back from Unterwald with Monsieur Buhlmann. And I can push the big cabinets in front of the going-outside door of the gift shop, too. They’re metal and will make a lot of noise when they fall over like Tom and Jerry on Cartoon Network.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Tom’s a big stupid cat, Jerry’s a clever little mouse who always gets away.’

  ‘Cartoon Network, you watch it all the time?’

  ‘Oui, it’s funny.’

  ‘They had me watching a lot of History Channel.’

  ‘History Channel lives next door to Cartoon Network on my TV. That makes us neighbours.’

  Harper smiled.

  ‘It does at that.’

  ‘Should I move the cabinets now, monsieur?’

  ‘Sure. Need help?’

  ‘Non, I’m very strong from the legs up.’

  Rochat shuffled away with his lantern. Harper watched him almost floating through the dark and empty nave, remembering him that first night coming across the esplanade. Nice but dim lad who thought it was his duty to protect a lost angel. Turns out the lad’s the eighth wonder of the world, Harper thought. A half-breed of your own kind. Two and a half million years of rules and regs down the drain and for what? Enemy’s ready to crash through the doors of the cathedral and take down what’s left of paradise, no back-up in sight. Not even the little old nun in the bloody gift shop. Maybe that’s the Inspector’s wham-bang triple bluff. Maybe he’s the bloody traitor in the ranks, the whole Paris story another bluff. Maybe he’s already taken what Yuriev hid in the cathedral and he’s long gone. Leave the woman and the lad and the whole bloody world in one putrid pile of collateral damage. Not the first time innocents have been left behind, Mr Harper, won’t be the last.

  Christ, get a grip. Think it through.

  He rubbed the back of his neck, thinking the free will of men was tough going. Especially with the phantom of a dead man running through your form. Is it this way, is it that way? Drive yourself bloody mad every time you hit a fork in a road in the Wonderful Land of Now What? The rattle of keys and turning of a lock echoed through the nave. Harper watched the lad’s crooked form disappear into the gift shop.

  ‘Hey, Harper.’

  He saw Katherine, a good-sized cardboard box in her hands, step into the glow of a hundred candles alight and
scattered over the flagstones of the crossing square.

  ‘These are the last of Marc’s candles. Where do you want them?’

  ‘On the bench. Just have a seat, I’ll take care of it.’

  Katherine dropped the box, collapsed on the bench.

  ‘Where’d Marc go?’

  ‘Gift shop, looking for a book.’

  She could see Rochat through the glass doors at the back of the nave, dragging a huge cabinet across the room.

  ‘Of course he is. You know, he’s such a … I really wish …’

  ‘What do you wish?’

  ‘Forget it. I’m zoning out on fairytales again.’

  Harper stepped on to the crossing square and walked through the burning candles, watching the flickering flames.

  ‘Go ahead, tell me.’

  ‘What you said before, about finding miracles in the cathedral.’

  ‘Got one in mind?’

  ‘Yeah, that guardian angels were real. That they’d protect him.’

  Harper looked at her, nodded to the wool blankets on the bench.

  ‘You should wrap up, Miss Taylor, it’s getting cold.’

  ‘Yeah, it does feel cold. What do they say, it’s always coldest before the dawn?’

  ‘I think it’s darkest before the dawn.’

  ‘Whatever, it’s still cold.’

  She pulled the blankets over her shoulders, watched Harper set a hundred more candles about the flagstones, lighting them one by one from a single candle, then rearrange the glowing things as if marking positions on a chessboard.

  ‘What the heck are you doing?’

  ‘Lighting candles.’

  ‘I see that. Looks like something else.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.’

  Katherine watched the light swell and form at the edges of the crossing square like a lucent fortress. She tipped back her head and watched it rise into the lantern tower where it radiated against the still dark windows of leaded glass.

  ‘Once, in the belfry, I asked Marc why they called this one the lantern tower when the guy with the lantern was in the tower with the bells. You should’ve seen him. His hands were going back and forth like he was trying to figure it out. He said it was because the bells wouldn’t fit.’

  Harper leaned back and looked up into the lantern tower.

  ‘He’s right.’

  ‘Yeah, but just now I’m thinking with all these candles burning, the cathedral must look like a big lantern to anyone who might be watching.’

  Harper lit the last candle, leaned back and looked up into the lantern tower again.

  ‘You’re right.’

  ‘So is that what you’re doing, calling all angels in the coldest and darkest hour before the dawn?’

  Harper sat next to Katherine, offered her the burning candle in his hand.

  ‘You never can tell, Miss Taylor.’

  ‘About what, angels, or fairytales?’

  ‘How about both?’

  Katherine smiled, took the burning stub.

  ‘Those freaks must’ve really fried your brains on drugs, Harper. You’re talking like a nice guy. Not sure it suits you.’

  ‘Wouldn’t worry, I’m sure it’ll pass.’

  Katherine giggled, peeled bits of melting wax from the side of the candle.

  ‘You know, I think I’m going to turn over a new leaf, give up the game. I’ll learn to make candles, open a little shop. Somewhere really, really quiet.’

  ‘Sounds good.’

  She looked at Harper.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Komarovsky and his freaks, the ones Marc calls the bad shadows, what do you call them?’

  ‘The enemy.’

  ‘Yeah, because you’re some kind of sneaky-beaky soldier boy. So tell me, soldier boy, you know what Komarovsky and his freaks did to me and you know what’s going to happen to me if they get their hands on me, don’t you?’

  Harper stared into her eyes. He didn’t answer.

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I thought.’

  Shuffling sounds echoed through the nave. Katherine turned her head, saw Rochat’s crooked shape coming through the dark.

  ‘What’s he got in his hand?’

  ‘That would be his lantern.’

  ‘No, the other hand.’

  ‘That would be Lausanne Cathedral.’

  ‘No way.’

  Rochat stepped into the lucent fortress of the crossing square, a completed maquette of the cathedral balanced atop a book.

  ‘Bonsoir, it’s only me.’

  ‘I see that. Where’d you get the little cathedral?’

  ‘I made it.’

  ‘What, like now?’

  ‘I made it for Sœur Fabienne before she died three years ago. She said it was very good and she’d leave it in the gift shop for everyone to see. I remembered it when I was moving things and finding the book Papa made. I imagined it could help the detectiveman.’

  ‘This Sœur Fabienne, is she one of your beforetimes pals who drops by the cathedral now and then in the middle of the night to say hello?’

  ‘I haven’t seen her since she died but the detectiveman saw her in the gift shop.’

  Katherine looked at Harper.

  ‘You see dead people in the gift shop?’

  ‘Couple days ago. But I wouldn’t call her dead, not really.’

  ‘You know, the more you talk, the more you sound like Marc.’

  Harper rose slowly from the bench.

  ‘You should get some rest, Miss Taylor, you look tired.’

  ‘Yeah, I am. It just comes over me, you know.’

  Rochat shuffled towards her.

  ‘Do you want to go to the belfry and sleep with Monsieur Booty? It’s warm in the loge.’

  ‘No, Marc, I’ll stay here, keep an eye on you guys. But don’t go wandering off without me, OK?’

  Katherine stretched out on the wood bench and covered herself with the blankets. She watched Rochat and Harper walk up the steps to the main altar under the chancel dome. Rochat with his shuffling limp, Harper holding his beat-up sides. Rochat setting his lantern and the maquette next to the wrought-iron cross on the marble altar, then opening the book, the two of them huddling over the pages like a couple of … a couple of …

  ‘She sleeps a lot. Is it because of what the bad shadows did to her?’

  ‘Yes. She’s … she’s not well.’

  ‘Should I make her tea? She likes my tea.’

  Harper looked at Rochat, remembering him again from that first night on the esplanade. Seeing how much the lad wanted to do the right thing, and the lad clueless how horribly dead he’d end up doing it.

  ‘She needs more than a cup of tea. She needs a doctor.’

  ‘We can take her to the University Hospital. It’s very close to the cathedral.’

  ‘No, we need to get her to someone who can fix her, the way you fixed me.’

  ‘Because they broke her wings and she can’t fly any more.’

  ‘That’s right, mate, because they broke her wings.’

  ‘What can we do to help her?’

  Harper pulled the maquette between them.

  ‘Is there a way down from the belfry, besides the tower steps?’

  ‘Oui.’ Rochat tapped the north side of the belfry, just above the cathedral roof. ‘There’s a drainpipe here and you can climb down to the cathedral roof. I used to play hide and seek with Monsieur Buhlmann and he could never find me when I climbed down the pipe because I’d sneak through the roof.’

  ‘The roof?’

  Rochat tapped the gable above the main doors.

  ‘There’s a little door here and I sneak through and walk on the ceiling above the nave. It’s like walking through a field of giant turtles.’

  Harper looked up to the domes of the vaulted ceiling 50 metres above their heads.

  ‘It would at that. But this time you’re not playing h
ide and seek. You want to get to the ground fast as you can.’

  Rochat turned through the book, pointed to the drawings of high balconies running just under the vault.

  ‘You can go down to le coursier, then there’s lots of ways down to the floor of the nave.’

  ‘But you’re still inside the cathedral and we’ve barricaded all the doors. Is there a way outside, besides the doors?’

  Rochat turned to the next page.

  ‘There’s some stairs to the triforium and a passageway to the balcony here. It goes behind the organ. We can go outside, behind the big stained glass of Jesus to where the monks had a garden behind the gargoyles.’

  Harper watched Rochat’s face, knew the lad was giving it all he had.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Oh.’

  Rochat turned the maquette, the façade facing them, pointing to just above the statues at the cathedral doors.

  ‘There’s an old chain ladder from middles of ages, for when the monks had to run away from invadermen and fires. They could toss it down the façade and climb down to the esplanade by Monsieur Moses.’

  ‘Where?’

  Rochat pointed to one of the statues at the main doors of the cathedral. Harper traced his finger from the doors and over the cobblestones of the maquette.

  ‘And the wood stairs down to Place de la Palud …’

  ‘Escaliers du marché.’

  ‘… it’s what, fifteen metres away from the main doors?’

  ‘Five. I counted the steps with Papa and he said fifteen steps means five metres. Was he right?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Harper skimmed through the drawings of the belfry, the two levels for the bells, a roof position to serve as lookout.

  ‘Right. I need you to imagine something with me.’

  ‘I’m very good at imagining things.’

  ‘I know, that’s why you’ll understand. When they come, they’ll hide in the shadows. And they’ll come as a full killing squad this time. That’ll make it a total of their six against you and me.’

  ‘How do you know, monsieur?’

  ‘Dealing with the bad shadows is my job, mate. Look, they can manipulate physical things from the shadows, so they’ll be dangerous. But to take anything out of the cathedral, they must transmigrate into form.’

  ‘When they look like people.’

  ‘That’s right, when they look like people. And that’s when I can slaughter them.’