The Ghosts of London

by Amy Cross

  "I think you might just have to live with it," Quix says with a faint smile.

  Robinson looks over at me. "What happened to you? Your heart's beating again, isn't it? I can almost hear it from here."

  "Her sister found a way to transfer the last of her life force to her," Quix replies.

  "Life force?" Robinson asks with a frown. "What the hell are you -"

  "Her sister brought her back," Quix says firmly, giving him a not-so-subtle kick. "We can't quite explain it, but when she went down to the riverbed to get her sister she was dead, and when she came back up she was alive. The only logical conclusion is that Rachel consciously, or maybe subconsciously, donated the last of her life force. I'm not saying it's a water-tight theory, but it kinda hangs together."

  Robinson stares at me for a moment. "I want to perform a series of tests on you," he says eventually, "starting with -"

  "No tests," Quix says.

  "But I -"

  "No tests!" she says again.

  He opens his mouth to argue with us both, but finally he seems to concede. "Welcome back to the land of the living," he says, with a hint of irritation as he squints at me. "However it happened, I'm sure you're very happy to have a beating heart again."

  In the distance, the sirens of police cars are getting closer. I guess someone noticed the entire river being re-flooded, and it doesn't take long before Robinson and Quix start hurrying away from the scene, taking me with them. There's a part of me that wants to stay and wait to see if there's even the slightest chance of Rachel coming back up from the depths of the river, but I guess she's long gone. As we run past the main gate and head to Robinson's car, I spot police cars and military vehicles heading this way. I'm exhausted, and my heart is pounding, but it feels good to be alive again.

  Chapter Eight

  Rachel

  By the time the sun comes up, the river has almost completely returned to its usual level.

  Crowds come to gawp, of course. Media reports had claimed that it would take at least a week to restore the Thames to its former glory, so there's more than a little confusion now that the river seems to have miraculously filled itself. Picking up on fragments of scattered conversations, I realize that no-one knows what really happened. Apparently, news shows and websites are reporting that the dam somehow managed to fix itself, and there are reports that at least two of the main investors behind the project are believed to have drowned at the site. The government, meanwhile, has pledged to dismantle the entire dam and hold an inquiry to determine how this whole mess was allowed to happen in the first place.

  No-one seems to know what really happened. No-one mentions the madman who tied himself to a gantry and blessed the river as it returned, and apparently no-one saw the thousands of glowing ghosts who lined the empty trench last night. There's no mention of the fact that Alexander Medion was a madman who believed he was acting on the orders of God, and no-one has any idea that a girl named Katie was brought back to life by her sister before climbing to safety with seconds to spare. I guess some 'official' version of the story will be accepted over time, omitting all the most interesting bits and focusing instead on the mechanics of the dam and the fact that billions of pounds were spent on a project that was nothing more than a colossal failure.

  Stopping by the edge of the river, I look down into the calm water, right by the spot where my body was first dumped all those months ago. I might be imagining it, but I swear the water seems cleaner and more inviting. The Thames always used to look so murky, but now the morning sunlight is reflecting from the surface and brightening the city. As people walk around and even through me, I let the light take me away.

  I've died so many times, but I think this time might be different.

  Chapter Nine

  Katie

  "God is angry," Robinson mutters, not for the first time since we got back to his office a little further downriver. "God... is angry."

  "You don't believe in God," Quix says, while using a tablet computer to check news reports of the night's events. "Even when you went off to become a priest in Spain, you admitted it was because the whole thing felt like a novelty. For as long as I've known you, you've written religion off as a kind of opiate that's used to keep the masses under control. The idea of you starting to believe is..." She pauses for a moment, as if the concept is almost too difficult to grasp. "Well, it's ludicrous. You're just not that kind of man."

  "I didn't say I was starting to believe in religion," Robinson replies. "I still despise religion. But God is another matter. I'm starting to think that maybe there's something to the whole thing after all."

  "You've always said -"

  "But what if I was wrong?" Robinson asks, interrupting her. "I've accessed Alexander Medion's personal files, and in his diary he repeats the phrase 'God is angry' over and over. He thought he was building the dam thanks to some kind of message from above, and he believed in his heart that he was acting on God's instructions. The man might have been a lunatic, but he might still have been right!"

  "Yes," Quix replies, with a slightly strained tone to her voice, as if she's having to explain things to a child, "but I'll remind you again, you don't believe in God, and neither do I." She glances over at me. "Do you?"

  I shrug. Sitting here in the corner of the office, I feel completely out of place. Robinson and Quix have been good to me in the hours since we left the dam. They gave me fresh clothes, they fed me, they even offered me a place to sleep. I'm too wired to rest, however, and all I can think about is the fact that I've lost my sister. No matter how bad things got, even when I was angry at her, I thought we'd somehow muddle through eventually. Now she's gone, and I have no-one left in the whole world.

  "Come on," Quix continues. "We're one-all right now, Katie. We need you to break the deadlock."

  "I have no idea," I say quietly.

  "What if I was wrong all along?" Robinson says after a moment, reaching over and picking up a bible from a nearby table. He flicks through the pages with a frown on his face. "Don't you remember what I said earlier? It was as if, behind everything that was happening, there was some unseen force pulling the strings. Someone wanted the river to be emptied so that the ghosts could rise up; Alexander Medion was manipulated by someone or something." He pauses. "There's no doubt that this other force was working behind the scenes, but what if that person..." He pauses again, before turning to me. "What if that person was God?"

  Quix laughs.

  "I'm serious!" he replies, looking a little hurt as he glances over at her.

  "There's no God," she says with a grin. "Trust me, Robinson. I'm dead, remember? I've been dead for a long time, and I'm pretty sure that if God existed, I'd know about it. When I died, there were no angels with trumpets. There was no blazing light, no great mysterious presence reaching out to tell me that everything would be okay." She waits for him to say something. "Seriously? After everything we've been through over the years, you're gonna have a religious conversion simply because of some random passages in the diary of a madman?"

  "Maybe he only appeared to be mad because we couldn't understand what he'd been through," Robinson points out. "I imagine that the appearance of an angel might be enough to send any man round the bend."

  "Sure," she continues, "but only if angels actually existed, which they don't."

  "But the existence of God would make everything fit together," he replies.

  "Only as a convenient fiction," Quix points out, "which is precisely the kind of lazy thinking you've always despised." She looks over at me. "What about you, Katie? Do you think Robinson's right?"

  I smile politely, but the truth is, I'm finding it hard to really focus on their argument. I keep trying to fight back the tears, but all I can think about is the fact that Rachel is gone. Wiping away a solitary tear from the corner of my left eye, I shrug before looking down at the floor. After a moment, I become aware of footsteps coming closer, and finally Quix sits next to me and puts an arm around my shoulders.
It doesn't make me feel any better, but I figure that I should at least accept her help for now, if only to make her feel a little better.

  "You've got nowhere to go, have you?" she asks.

  I don't reply. The truth is, I'm trying desperately to think of something that might help, but even though my mind is racing, I keep coming back to the fact that I'm all alone.

  "I get the feeling," she continues, "that returning to your parents isn't an option. You don't have to go into details, but I'm right, aren't I?"

  I nod.

  "Don't worry," she adds. "I'm sure we can work something out."

  "I don't need charity," I say firmly, managing to hold back the tears. "I can get by on my own. I've tried relying on strangers before, and it didn't work out too well, remember?"

  "Totally," she replies, "but why make things harder for yourself? At least let us help you for a while. As a bonus, things around here can get kind of interesting from time to time. If nothing else, you can work with us. If you became our official tea-maker and tidier, Robinson and I would both become much more productive." She smiles, as if she thinks I might start to see things in a better light. "I'm not making this sound very exciting," she adds. "Our work tends to lean toward the more unusual aspects of London life, and we often -"

  "Angels," Robinson says suddenly.

  "See?" Quix whispers.

  "We need to look for angels," he continues, turning to us. "If this idea about God being angry is correct, it stands to reason that he'll be sending messages to various people, and those messages will usually be delivered by angels." He pauses, as if he's waiting for us both to leap up and agree with him. "Angels are conspicuous," he adds. "I mean, they can't exactly slip around unnoticed. We can learn about them, we can study them, and then we can track them -"

  "You're forgetting one important thing," Quix says, interrupting him. "You don't believe in any of this God stuff. Neither do I."

  "Maybe I've been converted," he replies.

  "By the ravings of a madman?"

  "By what happened at that dam," he continues. "My whole life, I've railed against the mindless, thoughtless lessons of religion, and now, for the first time, I'm starting to think that I might have been completely wrong. If God exists, and if he's angry with the world, we need to make sure we're prepared."

  "To face God?" Quix asks. "You want to go face-to-face with God? Seriously?"

  "I need to read about angels," he replies, getting to his feet and heading to the door. "If I'm wrong, that's fine. I'll know one way or the other soon enough. Right now, though, I need to be prepared. These things might be around already, and we just haven't spotted them because we don't know what we're looking for. If that's the case, we might not be at the start of this whole mess; we might be at a much more advanced stage, and I for one don't want to be caught napping." He turns to me. "We're opposites, you know."

  I wait for him to continue. "Sorry?" I ask eventually.

  "It just occurred to me," he replies. "You and me, Katie, we're opposites. In every sense." He pauses, as if he's trying to understand something. "Huh," he adds finally. "That's going to be... unusual. Still, it's good to know. Stick around. I still want to run a few tests on you."

  "No experiments," Quix says firmly. "She's a guest!"

  "It'll be nothing invasive," he replies. "Well, not too invasive. Well, not by my usual standards. Well, it won't hurt. I need data, though."

  Once he's left the room, mumbling to himself about some grand new idea, Quix sighs before turning to me. "He's wrong about the God thing," she says after a moment. "It happens quite often. He goes off on some kind of tangent, and eventually he kind of veers back toward sanity and everything's okay again. I've known Robinson long enough to be absolutely certain that he's not going to suddenly become deeply religious." She pauses, before getting up and making her way to the door. "I'll go and find you some toiletries," she adds. "Don't worry, apart from anything else, I can assure you that you'll never be bored around this place."

  "How did you die?" I ask suddenly.

  She stops and looks back at me.

  "I asked you before," I continue, "and you said you'd tell me later. So... If you don't mind me being nosy... How did it happen?"

  She pauses, and it's immediately clear that she'd rather not have this conversation. "I was murdered," she says eventually. "It was a long time ago, before you were born. Hell, it was before Robinson was born. The man who killed me..." She pauses again, and finally a faint smile crosses her lips. "I didn't see his face," she adds. "I didn't even learn his name. Not his real name, anyway. He just came out of the darkness one night and took my life."

  "Do you think you'll ever catch him?" I ask.

  "He'd be pretty old by now," she replies. "It's water under the bridge, or over the dam, or however you want to describe it. I'd rather just keep looking to the future. I spent a long time trying to track him down, and I almost allowed myself to be consumed by rage. It wasn't until I met Robinson that I realized there was no point letting anger take control of my life."

  "Why not?" I ask. "Isn't it healthy to be angry with someone who killed you?"

  "Maybe," she says with a faint, sad smile, "but not forever. I chose to move on. There are other things out there that offer a more worthy fight."

  Once she's left the room, I wander over to the window and look out at the sparkling blue river in the distance. For the first time since I arrived in London, I actually feel kind of as if I belong here. Before, the city seemed dark and terrifying, as if its streets were filled with danger; I guess all those impressions were valid, but now I realize that there's some kind of order to the chaos, and the danger can be contained. I don't have a home anywhere else, so I guess this place will have to do. Besides, I've already died and come back to life, so I figure there's not much more that the world can throw at me.

  Epilogue

  "If I was an angel," Robinson mutters as he wanders along the dusty library aisle, "where would I hide?"

  Stopping at one of the shelves, he blows dust off a set of books before removing one volume and leafing through the pages. He looks at old images of angels descending from the heavens, seemingly blasting their messages to unsuspecting passersby. Most of the pictures are hundreds of years old, some even thousands, and at first Robinson can't get over the fact that everything seems so primitive. For a man who has based his entire life on the worship of rationality and logic, the idea of divining any kind of truth from a bunch of old religious drawings is somewhat horrifying. Finally, however, he begins to see the images for what they really are: the attempts of men to depict events that they couldn't possibly understand.

  As he continues to flick through the book, he finally comes to one particular image that grabs his attention. The forgotten artist drew a somewhat clumsy picture of a figure hovering above some worshipers, with heavenly glory bursting from the sky. Robinson's interest, however, is drawn to a legend at the bottom of the image:

  Iratus est Deus

  He stares at the words, reading them over and over until the meaning is firmly lodged in his mind:

  God is angry

  The image shows an angel with a pleasant, almost passive expression. It's certainly not some kind of avenging beast, and yet Robinson notes a certain touch of menace about the figure. The worshipers are all bowing down in the company of the heavenly messenger, and Robinson can't help but wonder what an angel might do if it was angered or tested, and how it might gain revenge if it felt it had been slighted.

  "Is it you?" he whispers. "Really? Again? After all these years?"

  Closing the book, he places it back on the shelf before turning to make his way out of the archive. He knows that while the situation with the dam and the river has been resolved, the identity of the force working behind the scenes remains unknown. His experience tells him that talk of God and heavenly forces is nonsense, but for the first time in his life, he's starting to feel as if maybe, just maybe, it's possible that he might be wrong.


  Once he's out of the archive, he heads to the balcony and looks out across London. The river is flowing freely, but storm clouds are gathering in the distance. With a moment of haunting reflection, Robinson realizes that after a lifetime of defiance, he has begun to believe in a power that he previously dismissed as superstitious nonsense; in his heart of hearts, he can feel that somewhere in the city, a creature of great anger is stirring.

  COMING SOON:

  ARCHANGEL

  (A Ghosts of London Novel)

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