Spanky

by Christopher Fowler

  I wondered what Spanky would attempt next. I had been thinking about it distantly, as if these things were happening to someone else, a person with whom I was barely acquainted. That was when I knew something bad was happening to my mind. When a man stops caring about his existence, it’s time to take stock of the situation.

  I passed back through another dripping railway arch. Either the overhead line curved through the streets, or I had doubled around on myself. I sat down under the arch and rested my head against the wet bricks.

  I wanted so badly to sleep, but it seemed to me that if I shut my eyes right then, I would never wake again. I kept seeing Zack with his skinny arms outstretched, engulfed by tongues of blue flame, like some lurid biblical illustration.

  I concentrated on building a mental wall around myself to keep Spanky at bay. I was determined to make sure that he could not enter while I slept in such a weakened state, so I tried to weave a net of subconscious commands across my real thoughts. Visualization was the key, and I visualized Spanky shut out from the sealed steel fortress of my mind. I was shivering and hungry, but still in control. How that must have infuriated him. Nothing could frighten me while I knew he was being frustrated, not even—

  And right then, I made a dumb mistake.

  For the most fleeting of moments, I thought of what scared me.

  And a few seconds later imagination became reality, and I heard the fast pounding of boots in the alleyway ahead.

  It was a common fear, nothing exotic, just a simple terror of being beaten up, hurt by mindless hooligans, something I often thought about walking alone through the city streets at night—but I knew that Spanky had seized upon it.

  Here they came all right, half a dozen of them rounding the corner, five men and one girl, with razor-cut faces and cropped bullet heads. They were all dressed identically—Spanky was no longer bothering to maintain the deception of reality—in spotless white T-shirts, too-short jeans, heavy black lace-up DM boots and ringing steel toecaps.

  They had spread out across the pavement and were running hard, issuing guttural commands. Two of them were swinging iron bars in their fists. I shoved myself away from the wall and broke into a run, but the muscles in my legs were seizing up fast. There was no way of informing my mind that these people were apparitions, no way of overriding my soaring panic. I had seen their type too many times before in the streets.

  There was no chance that I could possibly outrun them. They were built for speed, truncated creatures of muscle and venom, born to hate and hurt. As I passed beneath the next railway arch I heard more of them jumping down from the embankment, swearing and shouting to me, daring me to stop and face them, the unfair odds never entering their minds.

  My lungs were scorching and felt as though they would split if I didn’t slow down, but the fear of pain drove me on. I could hear the boot-stamps of more than a dozen people now as the hysteria of the mob infected others. No, I tried to tell myself, not true, Spanky’s doubling up the numbers because he knows it’ll make me more scared. Ahead was a brightly lit main road. Even if there was anyone around at this time, I knew they wouldn’t dare to interfere.

  Spanky’s power was growing as my sanity disintegrated; there was no knowing how far his illusions had become realized in human form. I could no longer tell if the gang of thugs bearing down on me was composed of air and magic or flesh and blood. One of them had rushed ahead and was right behind me, grabbing at the wet sleeve of my jacket, shouting filth into my ear. I was a Jew, a Paki, a nigger, a queer, a hate figure that stood for anyone he couldn’t understand.

  He swung his iron bar and it glanced against my shoulder, real enough to hurt, punching me sideways into the road. Another of them seized on the back of my coat and pulled, so that I skidded around and slipped over. Swinging with the momentum, I rolled and landed in the middle of the road. I looked up into the ink-clouded sky and saw their dark forms appear around me, blotting out the little light that remained.

  The first boot landed in the centre of my back, and felt as if it had broken my spine. A fist smacked hard against my chin. As they all began to swing their boots at my face and chest and genitals I screamed, and the sound merged with the blast of a truck horn. I was in the middle of the road. There were shouts of confusion about me as the vehicle hit the first of my attackers. I remember the wall of chrome atop vast tyres, the stink of burning fuel, and a series of ear-splitting shrieks—then nothing but the welcoming sable cloak of night.

  Chapter 34

  Hospitalization

  Overwashed fresh linen lay beneath my body. A hard, brilliant light in my face. The sharp smell of disinfectant. A distant clatter of trolleys. I awoke in the public ward of a hospital, but had trouble opening my eyes to the bright day dawning through the windows. The left eyelid seemed to be gummed shut. I turned my head to one side, and the muscles in my neck flickered with burning intensity, warning me not to move.

  My back was the worst. When I tried to sit up it felt as if someone was throwing knives into my spine. I lay there staring at the ceiling for what seemed like an age, listening to the sounds of the rising ward.

  ‘So you’re awake and taking notice then,’ said a young Irish staff nurse. I could see her from the corner of my eye, but could not move my head to follow her as she passed around the bed to check my chart. ‘You’ve had a nice little sleep.’

  My first attempt at speech failed, but the nurse passed me a plastic water bottle with a clear flexible pipe attached, and I found myself able to sip from it.

  ‘How long?’ I managed to ask.

  ‘You were brought in early this morning.’

  ‘Tuesday?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘University College Hospital.’

  ‘Can’t see.’

  ‘No, you won’t see from the left eye for a little while yet. You have some stitches in there.’

  ‘—hurts, move.’

  ‘Well, you’re not going to be dancing the tango for a while, that’s certain. Open your mouth.’ She slipped a thermometer between my teeth. ‘You have a fracture in your right knee, three cracked ribs, some damage to your left wrist. And the little finger of your right hand is broken. That was quite a fight you got yourself into. However did you manage it?’

  ‘Gang—’

  ‘You lads can surely find better ways to spend your time than making work for us. You’re going to be in here for a day or so yet, then out as soon as you can walk because we need the bed for more deserving souls. The police would like to talk to you, and will be by in the afternoon.’

  She tapped me on the chin, withdrew the thermometer and checked it. ‘That’s normal enough. You’ll recover quickly. The bruises look worse than they are.’ She gave a brisk smile and was gone.

  I lay in bed thinking of Spanky, knowing that Laura must be worried by my lack of communication. The only way I could protect them all was by staying away.

  By carefully twisting my head back, I had been able to see the patient ID board beside my bed. There was no name written on it. Hadn’t they been able to discover my identity? I was no longer carrying a wallet. Perhaps it was for the best. They might start asking more questions about Zack’s death, or worse still, try to connect it with Paul’s murder and the fire at the furniture store.

  At 5.30 p.m. the boys in blue arrived, a uniformed duo, one thin, one fat. A comedy team, Laurel and Hardy without the laughs. The larger of the two had dandruff-covered shoulders and sat beside me asking stupid fucking questions while his partner laboriously wrote up my replies. I was finding it easier to speak now, which was just as well because the first thing they requested was a list of names.

  ‘You think I knew these people?’ I asked, incredulous.

  ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then why did they attack you?’

  ‘They just appeared from nowhere.’ That was certainly the truth.

  ‘What’s yo
ur name, son?’

  So they had no clue to my identity. I couldn’t afford to tell them the truth. I tried to think of another name, but nothing would come. I looked over at the man in the next bed. There was a bunch of mottled bananas in the bowl on his table. ‘Fyfe,’ I told them, ‘James Fyfe.’

  ‘And you’d never seen these others before?’

  ‘No. A truck hit us. What happened?’

  ‘The driver says he saw you, surrounded by some kind of a mob. It was dark and very wet, and he caught you in his lights too late to safely apply his brakes. To be honest, he was travelling too fast for a built-up area. He says he hit two or three people hard, but they’d all gone by the time he’d climbed down from the cab, so they couldn’t have been too badly hurt. He reckons he really ploughed into them, though, and there are tyre marks on the road.’

  ‘There must have been blood.’

  ‘No blood, and no marks on the vehicle, either. The rain may have helped to remove them, but I would have expected some sign of the collision to be left behind. It’s a bit of a mystery.’

  The driver had seen them.

  Spanky’s manifestations were becoming real. The news was both good and bad. Good for my mental state, as it meant I was no longer imagining everything. Bad for my health, because his illusions could now kill.

  According to Zack’s magazine article, Spanky needed to be near his designated host to create full-scale manifestations. His powers were increasing, and I was helping to make it happen. He was feeding from me, and I still had no way of stopping him.

  There was nothing more I could tell the police that would help them in any way. They left, disgusted with my lack of cooperation, and warned me that next time an innocent person could be left for dead. I just hoped it wouldn’t be me. But then, I no longer considered myself innocent.

  Later I lay on my back, listening to the sounds of quiet suffering that surrounded me. There in the darkness bodies were battling infection. Cell walls were being broken down by invading viral hordes, bloodstreams polluted, tissue corrupted, bone and viscera riddled with the alien venom of disease. The world didn’t need a creature like Spanky. It had already found a million other ways to destroy itself.

  But there he was at the end of the bed, tinged with his familiar blue glow, dressed in a leather Harley jacket and faded black jeans, whispering not because anyone else could hear him, but because it was expected in a hospital ward.

  ‘Good evening, Martyn. I’ll come right to the point. I think the time for pleasantries between us has passed, don’t you? You clearly have no intention of letting me in.’

  Why does it have to be me? I asked weakly. Why not someone else?

  ‘Because I don’t fail. I will not fail. I have never, ever failed. And I cannot do so now.’

  There must be someone else. What happened to Melanie Palmer, the woman you blinded?

  ‘She’d only ever been prepared as a back-up, in case my preliminaries with you fell through. As I told you at the time, she was too unstable to be ideal. When you asked me to help you, I had no further need of her.’

  I had never seen him like this before. He paced around the bed, passing a coin back and forth in his hands, tense and short-tempered. I wondered what would happen if he did fail. It made me want to hold out against him even more. I wanted to be there, to see for myself.

  ‘I’m aware that your own life doesn’t matter to you,’ he said, sensing my thoughts. ‘The taking of other lives hasn’t convinced you, either.’

  If you hurt my family in any way, I will kill myself and you will never have me. You know that.

  ‘I’ll be honest with you, Martyn.’ He was wagging his finger angrily at me. ‘I haven’t come across this—attitude—in a mortal before, and it’s making me very upset. So upset, in fact, that I feel a growing need to cause pain. I’m going out into the city without you, Martyn. If you’ve seen this evening’s newspaper, you’ll know that I’ve already started. I am no respecter of human life, and I’m going to start taking it in great quantities. Now, you can stop me. You have that power. Say the word and the killing will end. Injure yourself in any way, and I will bring violence of such terrible proportions, this city will have seen nothing like it since the Blitz, do you understand?’

  He stopped striding about and checked his watch. ‘Time to go and kill. Find me, Martyn. Find me and surrender. And you’d better do it quickly.’

  He marched from the ward with his usual speed, and didn’t even bother to leave behind one of his unpleasant hallucinations. The bedside clock read 9.55 p.m. He had a whole night of destruction ahead. I tried to raise myself out of the bed, but the muscles in my leg released spasms of pain in protest.

  I had a pretty good idea where I could find him. Spanky was fond of reminding me how easily he could read my mind. Now it was time for me to read his.

  My intention was to leave at once. On a nearby locker I found a late edition of the Evening Standard. The front page carried news of a death; refuse collectors had discovered the body of a teenage girl stuffed in a dustbin in an alleyway off Leicester Square. Mutilation was hinted at. Police were not yet prepared to release the identity of the corpse, nor details of its condition. There was a photograph of the alley, eerier in monochrome, and an arrow marked the site of the bin in order to render the scene more vividly in the reader’s imagination.

  I knew this was Spanky’s doing. I studied the picture and stretched my senses taut, searching for him in the back alleys of the city. He was out there now, preparing to haunt the kind of clubs where victims went unnoticed and unmourned.

  I planned to leave as the evening shift changed to night. I needed clothes and cash. More than that, I needed someone I could trust. Asking Debbie for help was out of the question, and Laura was too far away. My best bet was Lottie, but I didn’t want to put her at risk. Then I remembered Susan, her flatmate. She was a student here at UCH . . .

  My blood-soaked shirt had been thrown out, and the nurse had taken my trousers and shoes away. My locker contained the contents of the pockets: the princely sum of 35p. I hobbled to the payphone outside the patients’ day room and made the call.

  ‘I could get you some professional help,’ Lottie suggested unhelpfully, ‘someone who could explain what these—hallucinations—mean.’

  ‘I don’t need to see a doctor,’ I whispered, realizing how absurd that sounded from someone stuck in hospital. ‘You saw what happened when we were together. You sensed someone else in the room.’

  ‘You’re right, I did.’

  ‘So you believe me.’

  ‘Yes, but—your behaviour isn’t normal, Martyn, you must admit that.’

  ‘Of course it’s not normal! I explained to you exactly what had happened.’

  A sigh on the other end of the line. ‘So you don’t think there’s anything wrong with you?’

  ‘Lottie, you can think of me as Jack the Ripper if you want but right now I need your help. I’ll do a deal with you. If I haven’t been able to rid myself of Spanky by midnight tomorrow, I’ll come in, have counselling, get thrown in jail, whatever.’

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘Sure. You can personally walk me to the police station or if you prefer, the nuthouse.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that, Martyn. I believe you. Or at least, I believe that you believe. What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Come to the hospital right now. I don’t have any clothes.’

  ‘It’s late. Why don’t you get a decent night’s rest first?’

  ‘We’re both running out of time. It has to be now.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can—’

  ‘Lottie, if I fail now I’m dead. Please, help me this once. You don’t even have to see me.’

  She thought for a moment. ‘All right. Getting in won’t be a problem if Susan’s on call tonight. But what shall I tell the duty nurse?’

  ‘Say you’re my girlfriend and you just found out where I was. I’ve got to get out of here. I need some stuff, jeans, a s
weater, shoes and socks. And some money. Is that possible?’

  ‘Susan’s boyfriend is always leaving his clothes lying around. He’ll be pretty pissed off. You’ll have to take whatever I can find.’

  Lottie arrived in the ward just as one of the shift nurses was leaving, and although they spoke in a friendly enough fashion she was only allowed to look in on me from the door. She gave a little wave from the fingers of her left hand, and a small, uncertain smile, but I could tell she was shocked by my appearance.

  Like a bowler going for a strike, she slid a plastic M&S shopping bag across the tiled floor and beneath my bed.

  I waved her away, telling her to leave in case the incoming sister saw her and started asking questions. I was frightened that Spanky might sense her presence near me. She glanced briefly back at the ward’s swing doors, then placed two fingers over her heart and pointed them at me. I pushed down beneath the covers and waited for the night desk to settle.

  When the ward had once more subsided into total silence, I walked to the toilet with the bag inside my hospital-issue gown and changed into the clothes Lottie had found for me.

  Susan’s boyfriend presumably belonged to the World Wrestling Foundation, because the baggy black sweatshirt, jeans and black sneakers were all several sizes too large. They would get me out, though, and wouldn’t constrict the dressing on my ribs or my knee. There was a fair amount of money taped inside the back pocket of the jeans. She’d obviously been to a cashpoint on the way. In the other pocket was one of those red Swiss army penknives.

  Lottie was the last person I had expected to come through for me, but now she was my only lifeline to sanity.

  There was one more thing I had to do. Turning to the washroom mirror, I dug beneath the dressing on my face and binned the bloodstained tape. Then I carefully tugged the stitches from my left eye until I could open the lid. The ball beneath was bruised and bloodshot and stung like a son-of-a-bitch, but I needed full sight if I was to face Spanky again.

  I waited until the coast was clear and walked out of the hospital, squeaking along the empty corridor in the slippery sneakers, resisting the temptation to break into a run. Half an hour later I had made it back to the West End, and was ready to begin my search.