Spanky

by Christopher Fowler

  The mind-reading number again. I couldn’t believe that this was simply a magic trick.

  ‘It would have been easy enough to lie to you once you believed in me,’ he continued, answering my unspoken thoughts, ‘but what would that have gained? I offered you my services and you were happy to accept.’

  ‘You never told me there was a price.’

  ‘Can you really be that naïve, Martyn? There’s one thing in lifetime upon lifetime of existence that never changes. Nothing is free. No free lunch, no free advice, no free peace of mind, no free happiness. Everything comes with a bill, Martyn. Everything. In your heart, you always knew it. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar.’

  He folded the sheet of paper, slipped it into the pocket of my robe and patted it flat.

  ‘Don’t worry about the piece of paper. It’s really not an invoice; I thought I’d present it in a form you’d recognize, that’s all.’

  He was reading my mind constantly now; I could sense it. I had no choice but to play along. I needed to find a way of handling the situation without revealing my thoughts.

  ‘If you’re not after money, how am I supposed to clear your bill?’ I asked. ‘What are the terms of payment?’

  Spanky scratched the side of his nose, thinking. He seemed to be on the verge of breaking into a grin. ‘Ah well, that’s the thing. I worked out the amount in units appropriate to your situation. Your currency means nothing to me, just paper and metal. Daemoniality is a matter of balance; charity with harm, kindness with cruelty, equality with subjugation. I have provided you with a considerable amount of good fortune, perhaps more than I should have. My wage should at least equal that debt.’

  ‘Cut the bullshit. Just tell me how I pay.’

  ‘Your payment is something you can afford, but whether you’ll want to part with it is another matter. Once an equilibrium is reached between us, the debt is cleared. Do you understand?’

  ‘You’re asking me to do something bad.’

  ‘Do you understand, Martyn?’ A steel chord this time.

  ‘Yes—’

  ‘I’m not asking you to do something bad. On the contrary, it might work out well for both of us. Just give me your life.’

  ‘You mean it’s a Faustian thing, like you want my soul—’

  ‘Stop being stupid. I told you, this has nothing to do with your so-called soul. This is real, flesh and blood. Besides, I value your friendship. I would never hurt you. The fact of the matter is, I need your body.’ He pulled himself up to the marble kitchen counter and sat, swinging his legs like a pendulum.

  ‘You once asked about my human form, and how I came by it. I’ll explain what happened, and then perhaps you’ll understand what I require from you.’

  He raised his arms and held his legs out straight, like a marionette. ‘These limbs, this torso, this face belongs to a man named William Beaumont. He was born in the mid-nineteen-twenties, as I believe I told you. His mother Edith was a famous stage actress and his father practiced civil law, and they lived harmoniously together in Wigmore Street.

  ‘William was a clerk for a firm of marine insurers. He didn’t enjoy the work, but it was considered a solid career for a young man. He was a Protestant and a dreamer and longed to be an artist, to wander the countryside with his easel and watercolours, but his parents wished him to make his own way in the world, and he needed an income. One day, at the age of twenty-five, he suffered a tragic accident while crossing the road just outside his house. One still saw horses on the streets in 1950, of course, trotting among the motor cars. One such creature, attached to a brewers’ dray, became frightened by the sound of a car horn and reared, kicking him in the back. He sustained a nasty bruise, but was well enough to rise from the road and walk home. A short while later he felt sick and was put to bed by the housemaid. That night, he nearly died of kidney failure.

  ‘During those feverish hours, William pleaded for an angel to enter his heart and heal his pain-wracked body. At this time, in your year of 1950, I was combing the city looking for a human form that I could take. For three long years I had searched, to no avail. Then I heard the boy’s call, inviting me in. You see, I have to be invited. I can’t take human possession by force. In the early hours of the morning I visited the gloomy sick-room and saw that William was ideal, so I accepted his offer and entered his body. He had invited me in to ease his suffering, and so we were able to help each other.

  ‘For a while there was just darkness and warmth, like a return to the womb. Then, with the passing of a dozen hours I came to strength, armed with the instinctive knowledge that I had changed. His body healed with my help, and I grew within him. I usurped the youth’s fleshly frame, and in its weakened state easily adopted his personality. I became William. That is how a daemon comes to earth, by inhabiting the body of a mortal.’

  ‘So who saw Lawrence dying in hospital?’

  ‘William, of course.

  ‘My new life quickly grew to seem natural and normal as I learned to exert my spiritual powers in a more discreet form. If the boy’s family noticed the change in his behaviour, they never mentioned it.’ He flicked up his eyebrows—stupid humans. ‘The arrangement worked out well for both of us. From the moment I took him, William ceased to age.’

  ‘But you stole his will.’

  ‘As I said, there was something in the arrangement for both of us. In 1962, at the age of thirty-seven, I left London behind and moved to the east coast of America, where no one knew me and I would not have to explain my continuing youthfulness. The life and energy of New York was the perfect antidote to the dreary eons I had passed alone and the dullness of those early years in London. Encased in my human body, time passed quickly. Too quickly. I haven’t achieved any of the tasks I once set myself.

  ‘Now, as you quite correctly pointed out, this body is approaching its seventieth birthday. And that’s the problem, you see. William’s time is almost up. Three score years and ten—that’s all your archaic biblical laws allow for a mortal carcass. I have to find another host, and this time spend my years more wisely. Oh, the havoc I could wreak! I tested a few others, but they didn’t perform to my satisfaction. That leaves you.’

  I could barely absorb what I was hearing. It felt as if I was slipping into some surreal alternate world. Was this what happened to murderers when they were arrested, shouting over their shoulders to the cameras that daemons had made them do it? I backed away from Spanky now, suddenly aware of his powers, alarmed by what he could do if I failed to obey him.

  ‘I’ll find some other method of payment,’ I said as firmly as I could. ‘There must be a way to work this out.’

  ‘There is no other way, Mar-tyn.’ He drew out my name in a teasing syllable, lightly walking forward on the balls of his feet. The absurdly handsome face took on a darker tone, as his brows lowered to his narrowing eyes. ‘My time in this body is running out. I’ll never find another host as suitable as you. You’re perfect. Healthy. Intelligent. Weak-willed.’

  ‘I need time to think about this.’

  It was the best I could come up with. He knew my every move.

  ‘Think as fast as you like. You have one working day to come to terms with your payment. Twenty-four hours in which to surrender your life to me. If you haven’t agreed to clear your debt by tomorrow night, I’m afraid you’re going to see a side of old Spanky that no one’s ever stayed sane enough to describe.’

  A moment later he was gone. I was alone in my apartment with a bill in my pocket and a price on my head.

  I had little time to consider the carefully laid trap that I had cheerfully wandered into. And no time to find a way out.

  Chapter 20

  Intimidation

  ‘Calm down, calm down. Let’s take this more slowly. We’ll never get anywhere if we panic.’

  This was me talking to Zack, who had pulled out every book on the shelf and was busy strewing them all over the floor. Debbie had gone to the clinic for a scan and Zack should really have go
ne with her, but instead he was trying to help me find a way out of my obligation.

  Zack was the only person I had told about the daemon, and the only one who was likely to believe me. For all I knew my butchered corpse could turn up on the steps of the store one morning, and everyone would simply wonder what the hell had happened. Since I had called Zack and told him about Spanky’s threat, he had fallen apart on me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he kept apologizing, ‘I only know the theory. I’m no good at practical application. I’ve never seen one of these creatures before.’

  ‘Stick around until tonight,’ I said, accepting another stack of magazines from him. These ones formed an old partwork entitled Man, Myth & Magic. As they mostly comprised charming old woodcuts and fat nude witches, I couldn’t imagine that we’d gain much enlightenment from them.

  Late last night I had described my recent meetings with Spanky in meticulous detail, hoping that something would spark an idea in Zack’s mind. Unfortunately, my former flatmate’s thinking was as woolly as his macramé mandala. He was unable to get to grips with the idea of me incurring supernatural vengeance. I had a tough enough time dealing with the concept myself, until I remembered the terrible playful look in Spanky’s eyes just before he left. It was the look of a man who would stand over you and watch you die. Whether a man or a myth he was real enough, and I passed the long hours of darkness after his visit pacing my bedroom with all the lights turned on.

  If he wanted to frighten me or hurt me, he could easily do so. He knew my hopes and fears. He’d been inside my head. He’d been inside my body.

  Surrender was out of the question—who wanted to live without their free will? But failure to do so was unthinkable. One good thing: I felt that I was finally learning to shield my thoughts from him. But I had no idea how to fight back. The trouble was, neither did Zack. Now that his secret hopes had been realized, now that he was being offered proof that the world existed on another plane, he didn’t know what to do, and didn’t want to be involved. I once saw a newspaper cartoon in which an imprisoned Gandalf summons all his faithful Lord of the Rings fans to come to his aid, only to find himself faced with a terrified group of quaking youths in anoraks. Zack was the same. All he could do was crawl about on the carpet throwing open magazine articles and pointing to carvings. This wasn’t going to help me.

  ‘Couldn’t you get a body from a morgue and give him that?’ he asked in apparent seriousness. ‘Or what about digging one up in a cemetery?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Zack, it’s not the nineteenth century. You can’t go marching into a graveyard with a shovel and a lantern. Face it, there’s nothing in any of these books to cope with a situation like this.’

  Spanky wasn’t covered by any traditional image. He was a modern man, and his needs matched all the present-day public fixations about youth culture. He liked smart clothes and good times. And he wanted to stay young.

  ‘It’s your fault,’ Zack moaned. ‘If you hadn’t been so dissatisfied with your life, if you hadn’t accepted his offer in the first place . . .’

  ‘I didn’t sign anything. He was a good salesman. And he did a good job. It’s just that I wasn’t ready for the price he’d placed on his services.’

  ‘If you don’t find a way to pay him, suppose he summons all the powers of eternal torment? You don’t want that coming down on you.’

  ‘No shit.’

  I turned to another stack of magazines and began sifting through them. Most of the articles were sensationalist filler-pieces, an excuse to run photographs of naked coven members. Since I wasn’t about to risk someone else’s life in order to clear my debt, I had to prepare to face my adversary alone. All I knew about him was what he’d elected to tell me. My first task was to understand the way he operated.

  ‘Don’t you have any serious works on the subject?’ I asked.

  ‘You could try the library,’ Zack replied. He didn’t volunteer to accompany me. I had to accept his point of view. He was building a new life for himself. His girlfriend was pregnant. He didn’t want anything to endanger that.

  So I tried the library.

  The problem with occult books, I quickly discovered, was that they all looked the same. I had this image of someone blowing the dust from obscure pigskin-covered tomes. Instead I found myself in the New Age section, thumbing through paperback reprints. Densely set in forgotten typefaces, couched in barely comprehensible English, there were endless transcriptions of possession, vampirism, necromancy, exorcism, superstition, hypnotism, palmistry, Gnosticism, freemasonry, Rosicrucianism and satanic apparitions, all in eye-straining, microscopic print. Despite the dramatic subject matter of these accounts, most were described in deadening, ponderous, unreadable prose.

  The book I finally found most helpful was a slim volume published by the Dover Press purporting to delineate the daemon world in relation to everyday life. I didn’t belong to the library and there was a two-day borrowing delay for new members, so I slipped the little book into my jacket, promising myself that I’d return it later if I was still alive.

  It was raining hard when I returned to my apartment. Water sluiced against the tall lounge windows from a blocked gutter, causing a steady stream to crackle on the sill. I poured myself coffee and played back the day’s telephone messages. A distant, buzzing call from my sister, having fun, wishing I was with them, why didn’t I come out for the week. A message from Max, where the hell was I, there had been an important meeting with the shopfitters first thing this morning, why had I missed it. Sarah calling from Roger’s, arranging dinner with me tomorrow night. I would deal with them all later. Right now, I had more important matters on my mind.

  I opened the book and began to read.

  My hopes grew dimmer with each fresh paragraph. The study of daemoniality was initially defined by intellectually curious clergymen, who investigated case histories in their parishes. Victims complained of repeated visitations from the devil’s agents. At first, tempting offers were made, riches promised, seductions and sexual enticements displayed. Sometimes the victims succumbed; sometimes they resisted. Either way, the outcome was the same. The daemon—whether succubus, incubus or shape-shifter—would wear the victim down, appearing in many forms, a winged pig, a skeleton, a serpent, a bird. Exhausted, the victim succumbed to unspeakable horrors. But what were the horrors to which they succumbed? The book failed to address the question. With growing apprehension I turned to the next chapter.

  Sometimes the daemon appeared in the guise of an angel, androgynous, charming, sincere. I knew that one. The arrival of a daemon could be sensed if concentrated upon; there was a faint smell of snuff, and brandy perfumed with musk. I remembered the slight odour Spanky carried with him. I’d always assumed it was his aftershave.

  The daemon had only one agenda: the misery and subjugation of the human host. He possessed the soul of a damned being. Although he bestowed great gifts, he could only introduce others to the torments of hell. There could be no respite in his calling. For this purpose he was allowed to return to earth, and for this purpose only. No mention of there being four of them. I only had his word for that.

  He could be tricked.

  For a moment my hopes flared, only to grow dim again as I read on. In order to avoid being tricked from his purpose, the daemon became intimate with his human host, so that he would comprehend the host’s reactions in any situation. Well, I thought, we’ll have to see about that.

  It was possible to hide objects from the daemon by sealing them in metal; an old alchemical practice. A quantity of frogspawn, if drunk down fresh, protected the imbiber from possession. The fur of a cat, if carefully skinned from its body and eaten while warm, could also . . .

  I decided I wouldn’t find the answer in a book.

  I went to the kitchen, carefully wrapped the volume in aluminium foil and placed it under my mattress. As my sole act of protection against an all-powerful enemy it seemed pitifully inadequate. But it represented my only positive move
.

  As hard as I tried, I could not think of a single practical act of protection. He needed no key to enter, no invitation to appear. He was as dangerous as he wanted to be, and if he decided that I should suddenly die in terrible agony, there was no doubt in my mind that he could make it happen.

  I had to stop my hands from shaking. Wasn’t that how witch-doctors worked, by making their intentions known to their victims and setting a time limit? I determined not to be scared, which was easier decided than done.

  Several times in the course of that strange afternoon, I thought I heard a noise in the apartment. A continuous tapping sound in the bedroom; water pipes expanding. A faint shuffling noise in the kitchen; mice, perhaps. Every tick and creak of the building was magnifying itself. I imagined Spanky moving silently across the floor behind me. Following my path as I passed from room to room. Waiting in the darkness for the moment when I finally turned out the lights.

  And then, sitting there with the incessant sound of rain filling my ears, I considered killing someone, substituting a life for my own. After all, death was with us every second of the day. Around the world, soldiers were doing it without pity or remorse, blinded by their faith. These authors of death and carnage remained unknown to their victims. In my mind’s eye I saw them; the weak, the lost, the innocent, caught between rival factions in wars no one could win. Bullets strayed from their targets. A child stepped on a landmine and was blown to pieces. Warriors still championed savage gods, killing for causes beyond reason, dying without understanding why. For a moment it seemed that the world contained far more pointless savagery than any spirit daemon.

  But I knew I couldn’t contribute to that cruelty. The dilemma was mine alone to solve.

  Just a few hours left.

  There was one course of action I hadn’t considered taking. I felt sure now that Spanky had been through this before. I wanted to see his handiwork. He had told me about another of his victims, the woman in West London whose ‘case’ he had felt was a lost cause. He had made a joke about her name, said it described her perfectly.