The Quorum

by Kim Newman

  Only the few remained, the loyal rump of the Forum. Mark was patient but superior, a parent. Mickey’s eyes burned: Michael might be at the end of his party tether, but Mickey was bottled up, ready to burst. Like the night he finally popped Jacqui Edwardes or the time he duffed up Keith Lanier. Michael’s stomach was settling but pain remained in his mind. Tears froze on his cheeks.

  Desmond drove off carefully. Falling snow danced in headlights.

  The others felt defeat less keenly. They’d started new lives. The disaster confirmed that they should let it go. Mark was so intent on being an adult and Mickey so committed to punk that everything they’d worked on together over seven years was receding into memory. Neil seemed almost middle-aged, as if he’d vaulted into an unimaginable future where he was a travel agent.

  A snowdrift accumulated about his shoes. Ice pellets hung in his trouser turn-ups. He was a living ghost, embarrassing friends as he dragged the dead past around on his chains. He wiped his face on his sleeve. Snow-speckles stuck to his eyelashes and nose. Focusing the power of his mighty brain, he made himself sober. He took out his car keys and held them in a fist, gripping cold metal tight enough to break the skin. Physical pain could dispel mental anguish, he had thought.

  ‘Let us depart,’ he said, standing carefully. Mark and Mickey followed him to the car.

  * * *

  ‘I’m perfectly capable of driving,’ he insisted. He’d regained his balance. In the cold, he was straight.

  Mark looked up at the sky, snow tumbling around him, and spread his hands in martyrdom. ‘I could have gone with...’

  ‘Let him be,’ Mickey said. ‘If the poison ain’t out of his system by now it never will be.’

  Michael bent into the front seat and belted up. Mickey slid in next to him and, resigned, Mark crawled into the back.

  Michael flicked a switch. ‘Wipers engaged.’

  The windscreen was iced like a cake, thick precipitate furring the lower two-thirds. The wipers cut squeaky slices.

  He turned the ignition.

  ‘Contact,’ he said.

  ‘Warp Factor Fuck,’ Mickey replied, seriously.

  The car lurched forwards and Michael manoeuvred out of the parking space. Open road lay ahead. He put on a cassette of the Tom Robinson Band and thumped the wheel to ‘2-4-6-8 Motorway’.

  As they drove out of town, he concentrated on the road. Knowing he was over the limit always made him infuriatingly careful. Mickey and Mark chatted about snow. There’d be a big freeze on the moors. Earth was hard as iron, water like a stone. Scotland was cut off from civilisation. Radio stations were issuing dire travel warnings: if in doubt stay home, go back now, don’t do it, abandon hope. No one mentioned Twelfth Night ’78, which was more depressing than a gloomy autopsy.

  ‘There’s one thing we’ve got to get, Hayes,’ Mickey said.

  ‘What’s that?’ Mark recited.

  ‘Out of this business,’ they said together, and laughed.

  * * *

  He’d been making the trip from town to Achelzoy ever since he could remember, first with his parents, then on his own.

  The more time his grandparents spent away, the more their house became a second home. He’d lived there for a solid week in November; hammering in frustration at the opening of Julie Bee. Alex stayed over three nights in a row. It was unnervingly like being married, or how he imagined being married. He noted the limitations of his fill-in girlfriend’s experience and intellect. Maybe it was impossible to follow Penny. He’d shared so much with so few people, it was hard for outsiders to crack the shell.

  The Achelzoy road was as familiar as his own house. Michael could make the drive blindfolded, dead drunk and fast asleep.

  ‘This doesn’t look right,’ Mark said.

  They were on a winding road across the moor, twisting from side to side. Slush clogged the wipers. Bowed trees, heavy with snow, lined the way. There was no other traffic.

  ‘We’re off the map,’ he said. ‘Look for signs.’

  Mark suggested turnings they might have mistaken. Michael was sure he’d kept the right route. If anything was skewed, it was the road. Proceeding deliberately, he felt the car’s grip weakening, and sensed the thin film of black ice beneath snow-frosting. He did not intend to put Gramma’s car in a ditch.

  A signpost was up ahead, leaning badly. Mickey craned to make it out.

  ‘Shepton Mallet,’ he said. ‘Two miles.’

  ‘That’s not remotely possible,’ Michael said. ‘We can’t be that far off course. We’d have had to motorvate for hours.’

  ‘It feels like fuckin’ hours,’ Mickey said. ‘Fuckin’ aeons.’

  ‘It’s only about fifteen minutes,’ Mark said. ‘We should be in Achelzoy.’

  ‘We’re out by Shepton Sodding Mallet, boyo,’ Mickey insisted. ‘We’re lost up our arseholes.’

  Visibility was terrible. Snow whipped down, hail mixed in, rattling against the car. He took the Shepton Mallet turn.

  ‘We don’t want Shepton Mallet,’ Mark said.

  ‘No,’ Michael said. ‘But we know the way to Achelzoy from Shepton Mallet. If lost, no point in getting loster.’

  Mark shrugged and slumped in his seat.

  ‘I shouldn’t be here,’ he said. ‘Neil should be here. I should be with Pippa at your Gramma’s, waiting for you clods to show up.’

  ‘Don’t trust your woman with Captain Makeout Martino?’ asked Mickey. ‘Neil the Love Machine?’

  Mark grunted a laugh. ‘Not a problem, I think,’ he said. ‘And don’t let Pippa hear you call her “my woman”. She’s an independent person.’

  Mickey made a face.

  ‘This doesn’t feel right,’ Michael admitted.

  The turn-off was a rutted single-track across moorland. They cut into virgin snow; no other traffic had been through recently. Shepton Mallet passed for a big town, the road to it should be a major artery.

  ‘I don’t like the sound of the engine,’ Mark commented.

  ‘It probably hates the sound of you,’ Mickey said.

  The car was coughing and straining. With the heating up full blast, it was almost uncomfortably warm inside. If the engine died, the interior would fridge instantly.

  ‘I spent Jubilee night in this machine,’ Mickey commented. ‘I don’t ever want to do that again.’

  That had been at another party, of historic interest: the night Neil fell into the sea while impersonating Sir Francis Drake.

  ‘We’ll be in Achelzoy soon,’ Michael insisted. ‘Trust me.’

  ‘We trusted you to put on a show,’ Mark said. ‘Look what happened.’

  Stabbed to the heart, Michael gripped the steering wheel. There was quiet in the car, only low music continuing. In a flash, he imagined halting, ordering Mark and Mickey out in the middle of an arctic nowhere, leaving them to the snow, clever student smugness frozen solid.

  ‘I’m solo from now,’ Mickey said. ‘Or maybe I’ll get a band together in Leeds.’

  ‘Zhour mother told mine zhou weren’t going back,’ Michael said, doling out spite. ‘Apparently, zhou haven’t done real work since zhou got into Art School.’

  Mickey, who’d edged around the subject for weeks, said ‘Even if I chuck school, I’m not sliming back to the Backwater. You don’t know what it’s like in fuckin’ reality, Dixon. It’s not a Beatles film. We can’t live down each other’s throats forever.’

  The car stalled, caught again, carried on. A huge place-sign was ahead, hanging over the road like a gibbet.

  WELCOME TO SUTTON MALLET.

  ‘Sutton Mallet,’ Mickey said. ‘Where the fuck is Sutton Mallet?’

  ‘Nowhere,’ Mark breathed. ‘We’re nowhere.’

  Michael had lived in Somerset all his life and never heard of Sutton Mallet.

  Dark buildings were around, roofs thick with snow, drifts sandbagged against stone walls. A single streetlamp was stranded at a road fork, its tiny light a candle in an over-arching canopy of dark. The car
died. He put on the handbrake. They sat in the middle of nowhere. For a moment, he was tempted to slump asleep against his safety belt, let snow pile up around the car. Eventually a burrow-like hump would form. The Quorum could be buried like Saxon chieftains in their chariot, and rediscovered by archaeologists of the future.

  * * *

  With the lights on, Mark went through all the maps in the car. Sutton Mallet wasn’t obvious on any of them. Michael sat, defeated. Mickey was getting angry, which made him unpredictable.

  ‘Neil should be here,’ Mark insisted, ‘not me.’

  ‘Fuckin’ Sutton Mallet,’ Mickey swore.

  ‘It’s very small,’ Michael said. ‘Look.’

  There were at most five houses around the junction. None showed a light.

  ‘And they all go to bed early.’

  Actually, the buildings, dead and impassive as sarsen stones, were more like barns than houses. Only a few windows, high up on walls. Under snow, the roofs might be thatch.

  ‘I hate Sutton Mallet,’ Mickey said, unreasonably. ‘All my life, Sutton Malleteers have picked on me, got in my way, stopped me doing things.’

  ‘I swear I’ve been here before,’ Mark said. ‘The shapes are familiar.’

  Michael tried the choke again. The engine didn’t catch. Its cough was drawn-out, asthmatic.

  ‘I don’t want to push it,’ he said.

  ‘It’s getting cold,’ Mark said, breath frosting. The lights were on a separate circuit, but it was impossible to keep the heater on if the engine wasn’t running.

  ‘Wee bit parky,’ Mickey snarled.

  Michael had run out of ideas. He watched snowflakes stick to the windscreen, each flake a pointillist dab added to an all-white abstract. It was almost restful.

  ‘Sodomise this for a game of soldiers,’ Mickey said, straining his seatbelt. ‘I’m going out to get directions. There must be some bloody one up in Nowhere City.’

  Mark wasn’t sure and began a protest, but Michael, suddenly very tired, didn’t intervene. Mickey opened the door and stepped out, hugging his cloak around his thin body.

  ‘Shivering shit,’ he said. ‘My balls just shrivelled to raisins. I may be some time.’

  He slammed the door after him and staggered off into the snow.

  ‘A very gallant gentleman,’ Michael said.

  ‘Bone-stupid.’

  ‘That too.’

  Mickey was gone instantly, vanished. Michael and Mark sat in growing cold.

  ‘What was that about Mickey dropping out?’ Mark asked.

  Michael shrugged. ‘Mum heard the story, I only had it second hand. He was scrapping again. Apparently, he’s lucky not to be up on a charge.’

  ‘You think he’d tell us,’ Mark said. ‘We’re his friends.’

  ‘Some things zhou don’t tell zhour friends.’

  Like how difficult it really was to write. He had no excuses, no distractions. Michael should be able to fill page after page. He had his outline. He knew what he wanted to say. But words wouldn’t come. The zh-curse had seeped into his brain, tripping his thoughts. Michael saw his friends disappearing into shining futures, leaving him stranded in the Backwater. He told them his Cambridge place was set, but actually he had to retake the entrance exam again in spring. Maybe he’d pass, maybe not. There was always Hull, he shuddered.

  ‘How long do zhou think we should give him?’

  ‘How long has it been?’

  ‘Forever.’

  ‘Zhust a few minutes, surely?’

  Michael hugged himself. His coat was padded, but cold crept in around his belly and extremities. His face was frozen.

  ‘I’m going after Mickey,’ Mark announced.

  ‘We shouldn’t leave the car.’

  ‘If you can’t move it, who could steal it?’

  Mark was right.

  ‘He’ll have left footprints. Easy to follow.’

  Michael undid his belt and got out into the blizzard. His knees hurt as he unbent his legs. He felt empty. He looked back at Mark, whose hands were deep in his coat pockets.

  ‘Turned out nice again?’ he said.

  * * *

  Mickey’s prints were fast filling with fresh snow. He’d trailed around the largest of the barn-structures (looking for a door?) and cut off into a field. Here his boots sank deep into unmarred snow, leaving obvious holes.

  ‘Why did he go away from the houses?’ Mark asked.

  Michael would have shrugged a don’t-know, but was shivering too much.

  ‘This is an “I don’t like the looks of this” moment,’ Mark said.

  ‘Neil should be here, not zhou.’

  Three months ago, Michael had been natural leader of the Forum. Now he’d pushed them into a disaster and got them lost and broken them up. He was tired of people asking him what to do. He didn’t know what he should do himself.

  For a moment, Michael was afraid it was a trick. Mark and Mickey had plotted to lure him out where he could be abandoned to silent snows.

  The lamplight was way behind them. Huffing and blundering, they stumped across the snow-carpeted field. There’d be thinly iced ditches buried here, waiting like elephant traps.

  ‘“Often in later life,”’ Michael said authorially, ‘“Neil Martin would remember that night and wonder what had become of his vanished friends...”’

  Mark laughed. At the dawn of recorded time, he’d been the first person to understand Michael’s humour.

  ‘What’s that?’ Mark asked.

  Ahead were three large lumps.

  ‘I don’t know about the one in the middle,’ he said, meaning the dark, angular shape, ‘but the other two look like snowmen.’

  One was a Christmas card Frosty, three bun-shapes on top of each other. When they got close, he saw a face made of a carrot and chips of coal. On the head was an exploded top hat, like his old Monopoly piece. The other was a slumped and half-melted pile, stones and sticks poking out. Hard to make it out as anything, it might be a snowsquid.

  ‘Cephalopod,’ Mark said. ‘At last.’

  The shape in the middle was a corrugated iron hut, about the size of a horsebox or an alderman’s family vault. Warmth spilled from it. Red light seeped through joints. Near the hut, snow melted.

  Mark stepped forward and tripped over something. It was not another snowman.

  ‘Mickey,’ he blurted.

  Michael and Mark knelt. Mickey was blue and chattering, rivers of snow in the folds of his cloak. They helped him up. He was almost conscious, his skin cold even to their chilled touch.

  ‘He might have the beginnings of exposure,’ Michael said.

  Mickey muttered, ‘Fuck a duck’.

  They struggled towards the hut. The iron sheets seemed to have an underglow, as if blowtorches played against them from the inside. Mark held Mickey while Michael fumbled a wire and cork latch with ungloved, senseless hands. The hut was simply sewn together with rings of wire and plumped in the field.

  With a nails-down-a-blackboard wrench, the door came open. A small fire burned inside the hut. Clouds of eye-stinging, sweet-smelling smoke billowed out and swept around. Michael coughed but relished the caress of hot air. After minutes of dark, flamelight hurt his eyes.

  Behind a smoky pile of burning logs, someone sat crosslegged. He wore dark trousers and shoes, but was naked from the waist up. Soot-streaks crossed his chest like war paint.

  Michael, smitten by heat and cold, sank to his knees outside, reaching for fire. He didn’t care if he burned his hands, just so long as he was warmed. Mark and Mickey stood behind him, leaning exhausted on each other. The man behind the fire looked at them, chewing. His eyes held fires.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘welcome.’

  * * *

  The air was different inside the hut. The smoke didn’t bother Michael any more. It wasn’t dope but it gave him a strange buzz. His head clear, he thought faster, as if he breathed pure electricity. He knew this was one of the key hours of his life.

&n
bsp; ‘Three of the Four,’ Leech said, mildly. ‘I believe we have a Quorum.’

  Mark didn’t say Neil should be here instead of him.

  ‘I am here to explain how the world works.’

  Michael nodded, understanding. Leech spoke like a careers counsellor, calm and measured, understanding and disinterested. Michael vaguely knew who the man was.

  ‘You have potential, promise,’ Leech admitted. ‘That is nothing to do with me. I can guarantee absolutely that you will all, even your Absent Friend, live long and healthy lives. None of you will die before the mid-point of the twenty-first century.’

  Leech raised a white hand. He spat something into the fire. It hissed like a live thing. The hut rattled with wind and snow. Michael wasn’t shivering any more.

  ‘Do you understand sacrifice?’ Leech asked.

  They all nodded.

  ‘Really understand? I doubt it. Nothing is accidental, nothing comes without suffering.’

  He lowered his hand into the fire. Flames licked around skin, darting up between outspread fingers. He smiled again, unconcerned.

  ‘You don’t have to burn,’ he explained. ‘Not if you don’t want to.’

  He took his unmarred hand out of the fire and laid it in his lap.

  ‘For some people, pain is an option.’

  If it were a trick, it was a good one.

  ‘First, think of all you want. Imagine a future and fill it.’

  Michael understood. It wasn’t just wealth and fame and achievement. It was something complete and perfect and eternal. It was as if he saw the first page of his biography, knowing the chapters were filled in every detail. His life was inevitable. Mark and Mickey wound in and out of it, heroes of their own lives. And Neil was intertwined too. He might be the missing corner, but everything would depend on him.

  ‘Here’s the Deal,’ Leech said. ‘You know who I am, you know what I represent...’

  In the firelight, his face was red. His teeth shone sharp.

  ‘You will each have the future you deserve but I require sacrifice. Perfect sacrifice.’

  ‘You want our souls?’ Mark asked, disbelieving.

  ‘I have no interest in intangible quantities. I do not claim to know what comes after this. My dominion is entirely of the world.’