The Quorum

by Kim Newman

  The gentle Goethe gets Faust out of the Deal - ‘if a man makes continuous efforts, we can save him’ - but the merciless Marlowe goes through with the bloody business of perdition.

  ‘O, help us, heaven! See, here are Faustus’s limbs, all torn asunder by the hand of death. The devils have torn him thus.’

  ‘Ugly Hell’ claims the scholar and ‘cut is the branch that might have grown full straight... Faustus is gone: regard his hellish fall, whose fiendish fortune may exhort the wise only to wonder at unlawful things whose deepness doth entice such forward wits to practice more than heavenly power permits.’

  It was necessary, Mark now believed, to come to terms with the concept of Damnation.

  * * *

  ‘I’d like to talk with a priest,’ he said.

  The kid slipped off his earphones - Tamsin tinnily sang ‘I Know Where I’m Going’ - and said, ‘I’m a priest.’

  The kid - well, he was younger than Mark, late twenties, maybe thirty, but in shape, face unlined - wore jeans, a rollneck jumper and a windbreaker. He’d been doing a subconscious shimmy as he raked twigs and crisp packets from a patch of grass.

  ‘I’m Father Menzies,’ the kid said. ‘Will I do, or would you like someone older?’

  He couldn’t let Menzies think he was prejudiced. Enough older people took Mark seriously when he was in his twenties. Why shouldn’t he be as open-minded? But he was so far from the church his only experience was with Bing Crosby or Max Von Sydow. If he was taking this seriously, he wanted the collar and the black suit.

  ‘You’ll do.’

  ‘Beezer,’ Menzies said. ‘Let’s get inside, where it’s warmer.’

  The church was modern, a local government office with stained-glass windows. It was in a quiet residential patch where Sunday seemed to last through the week.

  Menzies took Mark into a cluttered office. A framed poster for Saturday Night Fever hung behind his desk.

  ‘That changed my life,’ Menzies said.

  ‘You wanted to be a disco dancer?’

  ‘No, a priest. Travolta’s brother is a priest in the picture. He lapses...’

  Now he was here, Mark was embarrassed. He hoped nobody he knew would find out. He’d picked a church out of the Thomson Local Directory. He hadn’t telephoned ahead. He wasn’t having good fortune with phones.

  ‘Sit down,’ Menzies said, shifting box files off a wonky chair. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Thank you. Black with a swirl of cream.’

  ‘Top of the milk?’

  ‘That’s fine.’

  Menzies busied himself with a kettle.

  ‘Father...?’

  ‘Call me Kevin. And you’re...?’

  ‘Mark,’ he admitted. ‘Amphlett.’

  The worst that could have happened did. Menzies turned and looked at him again, eyes penetrating.

  ‘The Shape of the Now? That Mark Amphlett?’

  Mark nodded, ashamed.

  ‘I read that when I was in the seminary. We had some great arguments about it. I wasn’t always on your side. Brilliant stuff, though.’

  Menzies handed over a cup of instant with blobs of congealed milk floating in it.

  ‘Sorry about the vile brew. I wish Sister Chantal were here. She’s a fan of yours.’

  This wasn’t going to work. Perhaps he should ask for the sacrament of confession and give Father Menzies the whole Deal. No, that would take hours. And the shame might be too much. He remembered Sally’s eyes. One glance like that was enough for one life.

  ‘Are you writing another book?’

  Mark saw a way. ‘Yes. That’s why I’m here.’

  ‘You rather played down religion in The Shape of the Now,’ Menzies said, not meaning a reproach. ‘Though the chapter about style spirituality is dead-on. Some of the kids who come through here, with three-month crazes for saintliness, should be forced to memorise it like a catechism.’

  It was just his luck to get a chatty priest.

  ‘There are some concepts I’d like the Catholic viewpoint on, and I was wondering if you’d mind if I asked you some questions...’

  Menzies grinned. ‘It’d be an honour. I’m not exactly the Pope, though. I can’t speak for all of us.’

  ‘You’d get an acknowledgement.’

  ‘No need,’ he said, shrugging skyward. ‘By the way, were you born in the church?’

  ‘I didn’t realise it was obvious.’

  Menzies smiled, congratulating himself. ‘I can spot one from one hundred paces. Some people are the same about gays. Me, I used to think Liberace was just a bit overfond of his mother. But a Roman Candle, that’s unmistakable.’

  ‘I haven’t heard that since school.’

  ‘What, about Liberace being gay?’

  ‘No, Roman Candle. They used to call us that.’

  ‘It’s harmless. I did a sermon on it once. I like the implication. You know, a bright, burning, wonderful light.’

  ‘I’m interested in Salvation.’

  Menzies chuckled. ‘That’s what they all say.’

  ‘No, not like that...’

  ‘I’m sorry. Just my feeble wit. I use humour as a protective mechanism. Chan never lets me get away with it. She’s a real nun.’

  ‘The concept of Salvation. What does it mean? Today, what’s the church’s teaching?’

  ‘Salvation? Our reward in Heaven. A spiritual state. Not something you win - don’t trust people who shout “I am saved and you’re not” - but something you have to accept.’

  Mark thought Max Von Sydow would tear this kid apart. But he pressed on.

  ‘And Damnation?’

  Menzies wrestled with the idea, tried his best to be serious. He wasn’t comfortable. He probably didn’t know many good Damnation jokes.

  Mark persisted. ‘What do you think of Damnation in the nineties?’

  ‘We’re past the lake of burning fire and toasting forks and eternal agony, I hope. Now, we’re talking about Perdition, the state of being lost. When we say we’re lost, it’s literal. We’ve strayed beyond the Love of God. It’s not His fault. It’s ours.’

  ‘Denied the Love of God?’

  ‘They used to say the worst punishment of the Damned was knowing they’d never see the face of God.’

  Mark tried to think.

  ‘So Hell is a place we enter of our own will.’

  ‘That’s a good, concise description. Can I use that?’

  ‘Feel free.’

  Menzies continued. ‘The idea that’s hard to get your head around is that God made you and everything you are, then gave you free will. Which means you’re on your own. He wants to love you, but it’s up to you to return the calls.’

  Mark thought of Sally. There was no deceiving himself: she had hung up, set the answering machine to avoid him, cut the connection when he called the machine, left the phone off the hook. Whatever their relationship was, she did not want to continue it.

  ‘God made us and God loves us,’ Mark said, ‘but it’s not God’s fault if we’re damned?’

  ‘Certainly not. God still loves the Damned. It’s just that the Damned turn away. Love exists between two parties, a compact. It’s impossible for God not to love me, but I can, in my error, not love Him, which leaves me in the dark.’

  Mark tried to imagine, tried to picture the dark. It was disturbingly easy. It was disturbingly like an empty dialling tone.

  ‘So you don’t have to get an afterlife to be Damned?’

  ‘Strictly, you do. But now you mention it, there’s no reason why we can’t reap our reward, whatever it is, on Earth as in Heaven.’

  Mark focused. He didn’t think this had helped at all.

  ‘This is interesting,’ Menzies said. ‘I haven’t got into any of this since the seminary. Most of the faithful want to talk about their sciatica or whinge because they got pregnant before they could do their GCSEs. I spend more time playing ping-pong than taking confession.’

  ‘What about the Devil? Where does he fit in
?’

  ‘I’m not at all sure there’s an actual literal Satan with horns and a tail. Unless you count Derek Leech.’

  Cold terror sweated through Mark’s forehead.

  ‘Sorry,’ Menzies said, ‘another bad joke.’

  9

  13-14 JANUARY, 1993

  None of his cards were accepted, but he still had cold cash. His reserves dwindled quickly but he had gelt for a 42nd Street hell-hotel. He gave up and registered as M. Yo. It wasn’t like the Apex Suite. Someone had used the sink as a toilet bowl.

  On the second night, a white guy with a tattooed neck shoved in and stole Mickey’s jacket and boots. The thief stood over the bed and held a knife to Mickey’s throat, eyes jittering around the room, scoping for valuables. He snatched bills from the nightstand but most of the cash was safe, hidden in a sock jammed into a hollow bedpost.

  As a parting gesture, the guest took out his penis and masturbated at superspeed, ejaculating onto Mickey’s legs.

  * * *

  The Basildon Echo printed his faxes in full, inserting sarky little sic italics after words he’d supposedly misspelled. The paper ran an old, out-of-focus picture from I Scream along with his letters. In the still, Michael was fat, shouting and unhappy.

  ‘Gary Gaunt Replies: Don’t you think there’s something a wee bit obsessive about this, Mikey?’

  Pink-eyed bastard! If there was anything he hated more than being called Mike, it was being called Mikey. It made him sound like Mickey.

  He was composing a letter to finish the correspondence once and for all. He kept writing and rewriting. It had to be perfect, answering the upstart’s every pernicious point. He’d filled thirteen pages. His plan was to take out a full-page advertisement in the Echo. It was the only way to be sure his Open Letter to Gary Gaunt was run in full.

  A journo from the Argus telephoned to inquire about his ‘ongoing feud’ with Gary Gaunt. Discovering the reptile had talked with Gaunt first, Michael refused to comment. Treacherous vermin! They were all in league with the arch-conspirator. As he left another message on Ms Rhodes’s machine, it came to him that Gary Gaunt might have seduced her to his cause. After all, she’d actually talked with the milk-haired filth. He’d possibly wormed and squirmed around her, turning her against her masters. There was no loyalty any more.

  He should warn Mark. This could have repercussions.

  At night, he dreamed of boxing with Gary Gaunt, landing brutal blows in ultra-close-up, pummelling him into screaming submission. Ranks of howling literary critics bayed for blood. As the final bell sounded like an alarm, Michael strutted around the ring, gory gloves raised in triumph, accepting the justifiable applause. Then, a mantrap grip bit into his leg. He looked down. An albino alligator chewed on his leg, jaws clamped around his knee, teeth grinding bone.

  He awoke in terror. Ginny grumbled beside him and stuck her face deeper into a pillow. His heart hammered. He still felt dream pain in his real knee.

  * * *

  Guests were required to be out of the rooms in the day. Mickey figured the management rented the same beds, unchanged, to night workers. His legs were still warm where come had sprayed. But the rest of him was carved from ice. Without a jacket, he shivered uncontrollably. People mistook him for a crack addict.

  After a street odyssey, avoiding perilous pan-handlers and five-dollar sirens, he made it uptown to his real hotel. His thick-socked feet were grunge-grey and bleeding; he could no longer pretend this was some beyond-moccasin fashion statement.

  ‘Cut their feet off and make them walk home,’ he remembered.

  The broad steps up to the automatic glass doors were more agonising than the regular sidewalk. He stumped up, one step at a time, gritting his teeth against six-inch pain prongs that skewered his feet. Two Security Nazis (new faces, not the pair from nights ago) converged in front of him, firmly barring his way.

  In the exaggeratedly posh English voice that usually worked on Americans, he explained that the hotel had his passport in the safe and he was stranded without it. He didn’t mention his clothes, assuming they were a forlorn hope.

  They grinned at him outright.

  One said, ‘So you’d like to have a peek in our safe?’

  He casually prodded Mickey’s Wile E. Coyote T-shirt, flicking him back into the street.

  Brightly, the security thug said, ‘Have a shitty day, you hear.’

  * * *

  At the breakfast table, he picked the Basildon Echo apart page by page, combing car boot sales and school sport scores for snide references. He was sure there were coded messages from Gary Gaunt to his confederates.

  Ginny, her face a cold cream mask, trephined her egg with a Ninja implement.

  The Echo’s centre page pull-out ran complete TV listings for the upcoming weekend. In the Cloud 9 column for Friday, was a note by the entry for Dixon’s On. ‘Last of series. After this, Dixon’s Off!’ The alligator-grip came again, now around his heart. On Sunday evening, BBC 1, Colin Dale merited ‘Comedy-Drama, last of three’.

  ‘What’s up, doc?’ Ginny asked. ‘You’re grinding your teeth again.’

  He showed her.

  ‘So.’

  ‘Dixon’s off! Hah! They’re trying to get me, Zh-Gin. They’re saying I’ve gone off...’

  ‘You say “Dixon’s off” at the end of every show. Before you say “goodnight and get lost”. It’s your catchphrase.’

  ‘But I don’t mean it in the weasel way the ghastly Gaunt does. It’s in the intonation. This is life and death. They’re out to finish me.’

  Ginny’s face was blank.

  ‘Darling, I’m getting worried about this.’

  He snarled at his wife.

  ‘Zh-you too, Zh-Gin? What are zh-you being given to throw in with Gary Gaunt?’

  ‘I don’t have to listen to this.’

  She folded her napkin over her plate and stood up. She was in one of her grown-up moods.

  ‘Michael, get help.’

  ‘I don’t need help, I need zh-zhustice.’

  * * *

  The Effect had settled down. Coastal City was an occasional four-colour glimpse of a ravaged block or a darting cloak. Mostly, he inhabited a three-dimensional New York.

  He searched for himself. In used record stalls, in regular bookshops, in specialist comics stores. He saved his best hope for last: The Marching Morons. Barely three days earlier, he’d sat in the store - a queue of fans stretching into the street and around the block - and signed Choke Hold and The Nevergone Void until his fingers seized up. He had signed old comics, softcover collections, Mothers albums, City Hammer videos, biker jackets, girls’ cleavage.

  Now the store manager - a fat guy with a beard - scratched his head when Mickey asked if they had anything by Mickey Yeo. Last time Mickey was here, Buddy - Fat Guy’s secret identity - would have crawled over broken glass to kiss his arse. Now he scratched his beard amiably and got out a reference book.

  ‘Miki Yo, you say? Is that a Japanese name? We have a manga section upstairs.’

  Buddy Fat Guy at least didn’t reckon Mickey looked or smelled weirder than most MM customers. He made no comment about the mud-and-blood stiff socks and even let him look at the reference book. The page where there should have been an article on him, with a photograph, was blank.

  ‘Look at that, huh,’ Fat Guy said. ‘Printing error. Probably makes it valuable.’

  ‘If useless.’

  ‘Yeah, that too.’

  There was a queue of excited buyers for Amazon Queen: Born Anew.

  ‘Have you got into Farhad Z-Rowe’s stuff?’ Fat Guy asked. ‘He’s signing Saturday. It’ll be a bonanza.’

  Mickey imagined he was sinking fingers into Fat Guy’s gut and rooting around until he squished entrails. As he imagined, his hands reached out, and jabbed belly. A couple of staff members hauled him off the manager and ejected him into the street.

  * * *

  No one had written to the Echo in his defence, despite all the
messages he had left. Not even Melvyn Bragg. Michael decided to remedy the omission. He’d only write what others would have if Gary Gaunt hadn’t got to them first.

  Setting aside his own master-letter for the moment, he wrote a note from Tom Sharpe, commending Colin Dale as more important than anything in his own pitiful bibliography. The unworthy Sharpe was flattered by comparison with Dixon and hoped he could, in future, live up to the high standard his friendly rival had set.

  He printed out the note and signed Tom Sharpe’s name. He’d stamp and address it later. Then he wrote a letter from an eye specialist, pointing out that not only could ocular colouration spontaneously change but that the reference to eyes flashing green in Colin Dale was an obvious metaphor. As a humorous postscript, he offered Gary Gaunt a complimentary eye test in the hope it would improve his critical faculties.

  He laughed for a full half-hour before entrusting the letters to the post.

  * * *

  ‘Yo,’ someone shouted. ‘Yo, yo!’

  Instinctively, Mickey turned.

  ‘How yo’ hangin’,’ asked a black guy in a superfly hat. He was standing in a doorway, half-hidden by the door.

  Mickey shivered.

  ‘Chillin’, huh?’

  Mickey laughed bitterly.

  ‘Wanna jacket? Cheap? Fi’ dollar?’

  ‘Is it warm?’

  ‘Ain’t warm, homeboy. Is hot.’

  Superfly beckoned, opening the door more. He showed a ratty-looking padded jacket, patches of bare fluff leaking out. Whatever state it was in, it was better than freezing his nipples to stones.

  ‘That Coyote, man,’ Superfly said. ‘What a mofo.’

  Mickey looked down at his dirty Wile E. T-shirt.

  ‘Five dollars?’

  ‘Yo.’

  Mickey took the wad out of his side jeans pocket.

  ‘They’s a handlin’ charge,’ Superfly said.

  Wary, Mickey asked, ‘How much?’

  ‘Much you got?’

  Superfly whisked Mickey inside the doorway and shoved him onto the greasy linoleum floor. There was a flight of stairs going up. A grey-faced child sat on the landing, watching with huge eyes.

  Mickey lost his cash but Superfly insisted he take the jacket. With it wrapped around his shoulders like a waist-length cloak, he was pushed back onto the street.