I watched the young labourer fade into a leaking, twisted corpse, its head in the gutter, its arms bent back like a sprinter breaking the tape. A bread van drove past without even slowing down. The driver must have seen the body. Nothing seemed real anymore.
‘A future in politics,’ I repeated.
Dawn was a gradient of grey, dim and pointless. The dull soaking streets began to fill as I walked on with folded arms and chattering teeth, doggedly accompanied by the daemon. I felt sure it was only the soaked iciness of the sweatshirt Lottie had brought for me that was keeping me alert.
I talked to him openly now, no longer caring what people thought. It had crossed my mind that I could arrange for myself to be arrested, but as Spanky pointed out, the ruse would not protect me from invasion.
When pedestrians approached I quickly crossed the road, fearful of Spanky’s murderous whims. I sat inside a green wooden shelter in a bedraggled little park, bought a ham baguette and a coffee from a breakfast bar, walked on in the renewed rainfall to force myself awake.
I was walking in broad circles now, tracking across the endless wet streets with Spanky talking constantly every step of the way, wheedling, persuading, threatening, cajoling, even telling jokes, and his voice formed a barrier of sound that precluded any clear thought. I knew he was doing it to wear me down, to catch me out, to keep battering at the wall and weaken my defences. He knew how to bide his time.
We descended a stone staircase to the canal which crossed the upper half of the city. As rain frosted the still green water we passed through tunnel after tunnel, moving ever forward. By midday, my leg was hurting so badly that I knew that I could not stay on my feet for more than a few more minutes. My soaking jeans had rubbed raw strips on my thighs. All I could think about now was rest and silence. I needed a chance to gather my strength.
And I knew that was the one thing he would never give me.
Chapter 37
Schadenfreude
Another damned speech from him, as if words mattered anymore.
‘Judge yourself, Martyn. Knowing that only one of us can live, who would you choose? There’s hardly anything to debate. You’ve consistently squandered every opportunity you’ve been given. Before we met, you failed to take advantage of anything life had to offer. Humans are like furred-up engines operating at one sixtieth of their capacity, but my mind is open to the possibilities of the world. I can single-handedly redress the balance.’
‘Then why didn’t you when you first invaded William Beaumont?’ I asked doggedly. He would start like this every few minutes, expecting me to listen in silence, and I would always argue the point, refusing to let him think I was retreating.
‘There were complications. During the war it appeared as if the world would be given to the night. Had that happened, we would have seen such sights! When I became William, Britain was busy rebuilding itself. It was hard for me to operate in such a grim atmosphere of hope and determination. What could one do, faced with all that appalling optimism?’
He was studying me all the time now, watching from the corners of his eyes. His shape seemed to have changed. His legs were slightly bent, his back arched so that a shadow had room to fall between chin and knee. As he breathed, his fingers opened and closed slightly, like anemones. The daemon within the human was coming to the fore.
I had no idea where we were, or where we had been. We were walking—always walking—but my pace was starting to falter badly. When I stumbled over a broken paving stone, he could see I was in trouble.
‘Having a problem with your leg?’ he asked, suddenly concerned. ‘Here, I can fix it.’ He reached out and grabbed my thigh, pinching the flesh hard. Hot pinpricks of energy ran over my skin, and the agony of my injuries slowly withdrew, burning away to nothing.
‘Once we’re united,’ he promised, ‘I’ll make sure that you never feel any pain again.’
Finally, we had reached a recognizable landmark. The gates of Regent’s Park, where Spanky had first shown me his illusions. His threats to carry out random acts of murder had ceased, perhaps because he knew that I would not be swayed by them. He couldn’t reach my family either, because he needed me with him and couldn’t get me to Twelvetrees. I couldn’t see how he would proceed now, what he could do to make me surrender.
My resolve was holding, but my body was giving out. Spanky had fixed my knee, but now my right foot was bloodily blossoming with each painful step. Earlier, after another argument, he had made me think I was crossing hot coals and I had jumped back, scraping the lower part of my ankle against some broken brickwork.
By now the hours had crawled nightmarishly to lunchtime, and a few hardy office workers had braved the inclement weather to sit in shelters unwrapping sandwiches and opening bags of crisps. I had decided that if Spanky didn’t kill me within the next few hours, pneumonia would.
I was no longer concerned for my own safety. All I cared about was seeing him hit midnight trapped outside my body. I had to make him believe that he would eventually win. It was the only way to stop him from searching for a temporary host. I would watch him shrivel and rot without achieving his aim to continue on in my corrupted flesh.
‘You’re thinking aloud,’ he said, turning aside and looking off along the misted green avenue of trees. ‘I taught you to guard your thoughts more carefully than that.’ As I followed his gaze, a figure emerged through the drizzle, walking uncertainly towards me.
As I saw who it was, I realized that Spanky had found a way into my soul. He could read things inside me that even I failed to understand.
Lottie was holding her handbag over her stomach like a shield. Her hair was plastered to her head, and the fur trim of her cheap winter coat was matted with rain. Her heels made it difficult to walk on the soft wet grass. She looked lost and in need of reassurance. Unable to tell if she should approach me, she remained at a distance and gave a faltering smile.
‘I’m sorry, Martyn. After you called, I didn’t know what to do,’ she said. ‘I had to come.’
‘I didn’t call you, Lottie.’
‘Yes, you did, you rang me an hour ago.’
‘No.’ I suddenly realized, and pointed to where Spanky stood. ‘He did.’
‘Martyn, it was you. Remember what you said? You warned me that you’d be like this. You were calling from the telephone boxes in the underground at Piccadilly Circus.’
A dim memory of being in the underground assailed me. Could I have called her?
‘You were cold and asked me to take you to a doctor, but you said you might become unpleasant when I reminded you. You said you were going out of your mind, that you hardly knew what you were doing anymore. You were frightened for your sanity, Martyn. You asked me to meet you here, near the park gate.’
‘He tricked you, Lottie. You shouldn’t have come. You’re not safe near me.’
I knew that Spanky had recognized something, an emotion he had never seen in me before. He could tell I had some kind of bond with her, even before I was fully aware of the fact.
‘No, Martyn. I wanted to see you, to make sure you were all right.’
‘Listen to her,’ said Spanky. ‘In everyone’s life there is one person for whom any sacrifice could be made. Guess who it is for you, Martyn? This wet little thing here.’
He was standing too close to her, looming over her right shoulder. I moved towards them but Lottie stepped back, glancing around to see if there was anyone in the park who might rescue her if I should become violent.
‘Funny how someone can suddenly care for a complete stranger, a plump-thighed young woman hanging washing in a courtyard, a golden boy glimpsed at the edge of a lake. Who knows where the heart leads? It’s an ugly truth, Martyn, but if you could save the life of just one person, you wouldn’t choose your mother. She wouldn’t appreciate the deed, and she’d fail to make use of the sacrifice. You wouldn’t choose your sister, either. You were never close, because there was always Joey between you. Your father? He barely exists for
you. No, it’s this skinny little bundle of bones, the girl you barely bothered to notice for two years.’ He prodded at her breasts and pulled her around by the arm.
‘What is that?’ Panicked, she turned and stared back at me, touching her face. ‘I felt—’
‘That’s him, Lottie. He wants me to save you.’
‘Oh my God, he’s really here, isn’t he?’
‘You must try to see him.’
She turned in panic. ‘I can’t, there’s nothing—’
‘You have to see him!’ I screamed.
‘Martyn, you must let me become mortal through you now,’ said the daemon. ‘If you don’t, I will kill your little lady.’
‘Martyn, come with me and we’ll see someone, talk to someone, try to sort this thing out. I don’t know, I wish—’ She stepped forward and back, alarmed by her indecision.
The daemon’s eyes filmed over as his thoughts drifted to anticipated pleasures. ‘I’m going to start eating her now, Martyn, and it will appear to her and the world that you are doing it. She will die with your image fixed upon her eyes. It’s time for you to choose.’ He grabbed her arms and pulled them behind her back. Lottie gave a fearful moan, her eyes catching mine.
‘Martyn, what are you doing? Stop it!’
I was three feet away from her.
What had Spanky done, clouded her senses or mine? Had he rendered me invisible and adopted my form? When I tried to pull him away from her, my hands passed through his arms as if he had been projected on to the air. Lottie was trying to scream, but the sound was stifling in her throat.
‘No—Martyn—’
She shook as he ripped her coat down around her shoulders, the buttons popping on to the wet gravel. With a flourish, he raised the back of his hand and studied his fingertips as the nails lengthened and silvered over. He ran the nail of his left index finger across her neck. The pale skin parted in a razor-thin line that welled thickly with blood.
‘Come on, Martyn, no more delays. Issue the invitation while you can. There’s still time.’
I wanted to save her, but I couldn’t allow him to win. I remained frozen to the spot, staring as she silently screamed, locked in his embrace, and he ran the index finger of his other hand across her white throat.
‘What kind of pathetic gutspawn are you?’ His face was contorted with fury, yellow spittle flecking his chin. ‘You’d let her die to save yourself!’
Not to save myself, I thought, but to damn you. I knew that if admitted, he would first destroy the remaining part of me, then kill her for the sport of it. She was in terrible agony, haemorrhaging badly now, straining to clutch at the spreading wound in her gullet. Her pain became my own and I cried out, gasping for breath as she fell to her knees on the flooded path.
I tried to touch her, to reach out to her, but he kept me away, in the same way that he was keeping the others in the park from seeing the truth.
Instead, I turned to Spanky and pushed my perceptive senses outward, as he had shown me, to see inside his mind. The nightmarish cacophony that resounded in my head sent me reeling. She was dying, and he was close to orgasm. I focused my concentration, and saw clearly.
‘Her life is fading, Martyn. It’s not too late to submit yourself.’ He watched me excitedly, then realized that I was not going to speak and thrust his fingertips back and forth across her face, opening a dozen wounds. The figure before me was losing consciousness.
‘She is bleeding to death and you do nothing. You really are more spineless than I imagined.’
‘She’s not bleeding.’
I had seen into his mind.
‘Lottie’s not even here. You called her and she didn’t answer. It’s a good likeness, though.’
He threw her bloodied body to one side, and it sank down into the sodden grass to disappear completely in the earth. ‘But you do love her, Martyn. At least I’ve made you see that.’
‘I don’t know.’ My knee-joints protested as I rose to my feet, gravel stuck to my sodden jeans.
‘And you would do anything for her. Even allow me a new lease of life.’
‘I told you, I don’t know.’
‘Then it’s time to find out.’
He gave a friendly smile as he brushed the creases from his jacket sleeves and straightened the collar of his black roll-neck. ‘You know, Martyn, with each compounding moment of your misery, my heart grows a little lighter. A final race, I think. You know the form by now. Let’s see who gets there first.’
‘I won’t do it. I won’t lead you to her.’
‘Then I will go alone.’
‘If you do, I’ll get away from here and you’ll never find me in this city before midnight.’
He shrugged and started to walk away. ‘I’ll take the chance.’
He had called my bluff.
I started to run.
Chapter 38
Phantasmagoria
My limbs had seized in the incessant rain, and my stomach was gripped with a constant nagging ache that spiked whenever I tried to move quickly. I couldn’t tell if Spanky was deliberately hindering my movement, twisting my intestines, or if it was the result of being in constant motion for twenty-four hours with a set of cracked ribs.
Pushing my way on to a crowded bus was easier than I had expected, as most passengers shied away when they caught sight of me. By now I was smeared with grass and mud, and probably smelled pretty bad. The gash over my eye had opened, and was wet with blood. I alighted back at King’s Cross, two roads from Lottie’s flat. I knew he would be there first. He always was.
There was no doubt in my mind that if I gave in, he would kill her for sport. But I could not stand by and watch her die.
I arrived to find the front door of the house ajar. A slat of yellow light printed on the bare front garden from the hall. There were wet footprints on the stairs leading up to the landing. Her apartment door was open, too. The lock was still intact, nothing was displaced, but a familiar fear grew in my stomach as I walked towards her bedroom at the end of the central corridor.
The curtains were still shut, but I could discern her form in the bed, the pale blue sheet across her chest rising lightly as she slept. I sensed him behind me and turned to find Spanky sitting in an armchair at the end of the bed. He placed his finger to his lips and inclined his head.
‘Funny time to be sleeping,’ he whispered. ‘You used to call her weird Lottie, but she seems downright ordinary to me. Still, she looks peaceful, doesn’t she?’ Lottie shifted slightly in her sleep, fingertips flicking at her hair, the movement uncomfortably reminiscent of her imagined torture in the park.
‘Would you like to see her look even more peaceful?’
He raised his eyes to a space above her head. I looked too, but at first could see nothing in the gloom. Then it appeared, breaking camouflage with the wallpaper behind. It was a small black spider, spinning a silvery line down from the ceiling. The creature had long tapering legs and a bulbous abdomen. I recognized it as a black widow.
As I made to swat the thing away, Spanky grabbed my arm and pulled me back to his chair.
‘This time it’s real, Martyn. You have seconds left.’ The spider had already lowered itself to her face and was tentatively feeling its way across her eyelid, on to her cheek, exploring the rim of her nostril, prying its legs between her lips.
This time my movement was so sudden that Spanky was caught unprepared as I dived for the figure on the bed, my hands raised to slap the tiny creature from her face. But it had scuttled away and I fell heavily on to her sleeping form—
—only to have the skin burst ripely beneath me, dissolving into a hundred thousand sticky webs that caught across my face and chest, gumming my eyes and filling my screaming mouth with the wet warmth of a million tiny crimson eggs that spilled from the incubating carcass on to the floor.
My eyes opened.
I was naked.
Hanging in darkness. Turning slowly on a thick nylon rope that had been knotted around my t
hroat. My neck was burning and broken. I could tell that much from the choking, disjointed sensation that consumed me. I floated in the filthy excremental air, suspended by the throttling strands.
I looked down. Hairless animals shifted over each other in brine and vomit, braying expectantly. Feeding time. Broad yellow snouts caught my scent. Bull-heads raised themselves. Jaws parted in slavering anticipation.
Above my skull, the rope was suddenly released and I fell sickeningly—
—to the moonlit alleyway with the running gang and the screams of violence, their crowbars banging and booming against the iron railings as they closed the gap behind me, spitting and screaming for blood as I turned the corner and found myself against the reeking concrete stairwell that led nowhere.
I turned back to face them as they attacked, and my head was punched and my heart split within the cage of my ribs and I grimaced in the agony of cardiac arrest, crunching up my eyes until I could open them again and find—
—that Spanky was leading me by the hand, guiding me over stars and coals and serpents to the only place of safety, the warming hearth of my shared soul. His pale, naked torso fluctuated beneath my caressing hands, randomly changing sex so that at first he had breasts and a pouting vagina, then a satyr’s protuberant erection. He was the fairest way, the surest path, the purest light. I welcomed him into me, enclosing his freezing form within my overheated body, longing for the icy cleansing fire of consumption, but as I did so something in my mind cried out in anger and refusal, and horrified I propelled him away to be free again—
—and to find myself strapped to a wooden table, naked, in an empty metal room, rusted iron plates riveted to the floor and walls. Outside, the universe was roaring by in a trail of stars, like the wake of a ship.
I was spread-eagled, my hands and feet bound to the wet red butcher’s block with ropes. If I strained I could lift my head from the overhang of the table. Above me I saw, fixed in the ceiling, densely packed darts of tapered steel, like an acoustic pattern in a concert hall roof.
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