by Pollock, Tom
‘Sssalutationss, Ssurvivor,’ it whispered. ‘Sssundered Sssisster and Insssubordinate Sservant. Misstress’ lasst host. Greetingssss.’
The voice paused. An amused note crept in. ‘Ssorrry to aressst your progresss sso sssuddenly. I shudder to inssinuate that your wisssdom might be ssusspect, but your sssupremely asstute sstrategy of running blind in a darkened chemical worksss was sstarting to sstray a little clossse to sssuicide.’
The voice sighed. ‘Lightsss, pleasse, Ssimeon.’
There was the clunk of a lever being thrown, and glare ruptured the darkness. Pen screwed up her eyes, then opened them gradually to make out a dark figure bending over her. He wore an immaculately tailored suit and had slicked-back hair and a broad, wicked grin. Every inch of him, eyeballs, fingernails and teeth included, was covered in smooth, black oil. A droplet fell from his forehead and splashed onto her lips.
Johnny Naphtha, unofficial voice of the Chemical Synod, London’s Brokers of Everything, snapped the lid shut on the cigarette lighter he was holding and gestured with it. Pen lifted her head to look past her own feet.
She lay on a narrow spur of concrete. The stainless steel vat it jutted over was as wide as a tractor wheel, and half-full of colourless liquid.
‘Well?’ he whispered.
‘Th-thank you,’ she managed. She knew what she had to say, but it was hard to speak. Her heart was galloping like a routed cavalry charge.
‘Yesss?’
‘I – I owe you.’
Johnny Naphtha’s grin grew even wider. He rummaged in one oil-soaked pocket and produced a shiny steel screw, which he flicked into the vat with his thumb. It entered the liquid with a tiny splash, at the exact same time as four other identical screws. Pen saw the other black figures standing on the metal gantries, leaning over her in poses that exactly mirrored Johnny’s.
There was a bubbling hiss and a strange tangy smell as all five screws were dissolved by whatever was in the tank.
‘We’ll work sssomething out. Can you sssstand?’
He led her up a spiralling iron staircase. The other four oil-drenched men converged on them with synchronised strides. They reached the top and ducked through a doorway in the eaves.
The walls of the room beyond were more hole than brick. Jagged gaps opened out onto the empty winter sky, and pigeons cooed and groomed themselves in the crevices. The birds were all soaked in oil, but that didn’t seem to impede them when they cleared their wings for take-off.
Pen looked down and her stomach plummeted. Most of the floor had crumbled away too. The room, or what was left of it, jutted from the back of the top of the factory, sitting on a spine of rusted iron pillars. Massive gaps yawned either side of her feet, and through them she could see the scrub grass and gravel of the factory yard a dizzying distance below. A narrow path wound between the gaps and the synod trod it together, their footsteps leaving the floor slick with oil. At the far end was a little island of concrete, with two black leather sofas and what looked like an old-fashioned drinks cabinet. The five symmetrical men turned expectantly as they reached this island, each with a hand on his lapel.
Pen swallowed hard and took a step. Her foot slid sickeningly under her and she threw out her arms, fighting for balance. She hissed between gritted teeth and took another step. Oil seeped into the fabric of her trainers. The black birds flapped and called to her.
‘Perhapsss it might go fassster if you didn’t look down?’ Johnny Naphtha suggested.
A derisive laugh burst from Pen’s lips, startling her almost as much as it seemed to surprise them. ‘Thanks, but since down’s where the path is, I’ll look where I like and take my own damn time.’ She looked down again and saw the gaping holes in the floor, the oiled slickness, the suicidal height. She took another step.
The synod didn’t move until she was on the island with them, then, in identical time, they unbuttoned their jackets. Three of them, with Johnny in the middle, sat on one of the sofas. The other two stood behind, hands clasped, as if for an official photograph.
‘Pleasssse,’ Johnny gestured, and Pen sat opposite. She felt the slick black surface of the sofa soaking into her jeans. They looked at her, and she stared back, wild-eyed. Now that it came to it, she had no idea how to start.
‘Ssstill in sshock,’ Johnny Naphtha muttered to his neighbour, and the other four nodded in identical agreement. ‘Hardly ssssurprising, ssince she burssst in on our experiment.’
‘Experiment?’ Pen said sharply.
‘Of courssse experiment. It’ss been a marvellousss morning. We’ve jusst sssuccesssfully ssynthesissed sssscotophobia. And then’ – he tutted – ‘a tardy tresspassser tainted it.’
They leaned forward, and suddenly there was something shark-like in their faces.
‘By rightss we sshould you make you brew the next batch.’
Pen gripped her knees until they hurt. Act tough, she thought, like B would.
‘Scotophobia,’ she said, her voice just about even. ‘Fear of the dark.’
The Chemical Synod smiled as one, and Johnny Naphtha said, ‘Of coursse – the factory floor isss flooded with it. Why do you sssuppose we excissed the light? The phobia wasss the product of the procedure, but to be perfect itss primer chemicalsss needed to be pure.’
Pen just stared at him. Beth had told her about the synod, but seeing them for real made everything feel off-kilter, like the little bones in her inner ear had come loose.
‘Perhapsss a resstorative would sssettle you,’ Johnny said, pointing to the floor. Pen glanced down to see a battered tin cup next to her foot, half full of a dark-red concoction.
Maybe, she told herself urgently, that’s been there all along, and I just didn’t notice it. Maybe they didn’t just conjure it there.
‘What’s in it?’ she asked.
Johnny pursed his lips. He rolled his black eyeballs as though consulting his memory. ‘A ssselection of ssaltss, kerosssene, cyanide, a little ssad, certain ressolutenesss and cherry juice,’ he said. ‘But only in medicinal quantitiess. I’m quite certain it’ss ssafe.’
Pen pushed the cup politely but firmly away with her trainer.
The synod sighed as one.
‘Sssuit yoursself,’ Johnny said. ‘Ass you ssso ssuccinctly sstated: take your own damn time.’
Pen watched the synod, and the synod, patient and inexorable as geological forces, watched her back.
‘I need your help,’ she said at last.
‘Why elssse would you come?’
‘So … How does this work?’
The five oil-soaked men shrugged, their shoulders rising and falling in an undulating symmetrical wave, starting with Johnny and rippling to the two taller figures on the flanks.
‘You sstate a desssire,’ Johnny said. ‘We sset a price. It’ss esssentially sshopping.’
There was a little pebble of tension in Pen’s throat. If they couldn’t help her, she had nothing. ‘I need to go behind the mirrors,’ she said. ‘I need to go to London-Under-Glass.’
There was silence, broken only by the ruffling of oily wings.
Johnny Naphtha hissed slowly through his teeth. He sounded like a bit like a plumber, just before telling you that the last guy was a total cowboy and that the cost of the parts would be roughly equal to the mortgage on a house in Hamp-stead and the price of a couple of kidneys.
‘We ssseldom ssee that sside of the glasss. The cossst will be sssignificant.’
Pen drew a deep breath. ‘I’ll pay.’
A thin smirk spread over five pairs of lips. ‘What makess you think you can afford usss?’ Johnny’s eyes were black on black, but there was a circular rainbow shimmer in the centre like an iris.
Pen focused on that patch of colour and straightened up. ‘You trade in anything, right?’ she said. ‘So there must be something I’ve got that you want – something about me that’s valuable, even if I don’t know it. You can have it, but get me through that mirror.’
Five heads tilted in intere
st, and Pen felt herself shrink a little. ‘Only I won’t hurt anyone,’ she added.
There was nothing cruel in Johnny Naphtha’s voice as he said, ‘Of courssse you will.’
The five men stood and buttoned their jackets. ‘Thiss way, Ssteel Insssurgent.’ Johnny reached out to Pen. ‘We have a propossition.’
Pen swallowed, hesitated and took his hand.
She felt the wrongness instantly. The pads of his fingers squeezed between hers and the oil spread over her skin, chill and viscous. She tried to jerk her hand back, but his arm just stretched, strung out like chewed gum.
‘What are—?’ she started, but her voice died in her throat. Johnny Naphtha’s face was melting, his features running in an oil slick off his neck. The others were doing likewise, their feet blending into an oily pool. Rivulets raced off the side of it and ran over the edge of the floor.
‘Wai—’ Pen tried to say, but her teeth felt as soft as candlewax against her tongue, and in front of her she could see her hand blending, emulsifying into what was left of Johnny’s.
She felt a drunken kind of falling and all the colours in the world ran together into black.
*
She gasped, and her lungs drew in dust and she choked and coughed. She couldn’t see, but there was brick, rough and solid under her knees and palms. She blinked and brought her free hand up to rub her eyes, but the blindness clung on.
There was a snap-click-hiss and five flames appeared, bobbing alarmingly over lighters in oil-soaked hands. The synod smiled down at her.
‘I—’ she managed at last. ‘I thought you’d …’ There was only one word that fitted the memory of the creep of oil over her skin. ‘I thought you’d eaten me.’
‘Why? When did we sssay we’d require payment in advance?’
The smiles remained the same; she couldn’t tell if he was joking.
‘Well then, next time d’you mind asking before you melt me?’ Pen demanded.
‘Excussse usss, Sssteel Inssurgent,’ Johnny whispered courteously, ‘we undersssstood you to be in hassste. It iss a sseven-hour desscent through the dark to where we sssstand by bipedal means. And ssome of the ssspaces you would need to traversssse would be, disssquieting.’
He offered her his hand, but Pen ignored it and pushed herself up. Vaulted brick tunnels stretched off in five directions. The walls were riddled with roughly shaped alcoves that gave off a sickly, variegated light, like the weird deep-ocean creatures she’d seen on the BBC nature documentaries her dad loved. She figured they must be in a sewer, but there was no dripping of leaking pipes, no scuttle of rodents. Instead, the tunnels were like the halls of a brick palace, long buried and forgotten. Their footsteps echoed as Johnny led down one of the halls, but that was the only sound. The whole place felt weirdly hermetic.
Johnny began to murmur, reciting nonsense in a terse, concentrated tone. He gestured vaguely to alcoves, as if naming them: ‘Horssefly, wanderlussst, ssweat and ssusspicion, loathesssome allegory, Pylon Venom, charge, charm, charred bisscuit, an old noble-lamp’ss tearsss …’
They swung left, then right, then right again. Pen thought she could hear tension creeping into his voice – or maybe it was excitement?
‘Pet’ss tooth, an old puzzle, comfortable bread …’ He hesitated where the tunnel branched.
Claustrophobia clung to Pen, heavy as an oil-soaked blanket. She wondered how far this warren must reach if it could confuse even its master. She’d completely lost track of the turns.
‘Falsssehood, falsssehood and hope – come on now, Naphtha, think, you ssubsssist on your recollectionsss – Falsssehood and hope, and … time, hah!’ He put one hand on the wall and swung himself with gusto down the right fork.
‘Falsssehood and hope and time leadss to memory.’
‘Oh.’ Pen said it in a small voice, but it echoed. A soft breeze fluttered a stray hair against her cheek. In front of her, the tunnel fed out into empty space. Opposite was a wall, perhaps only twenty feet from where the floor ended, but the depth of that gulf seemed immeasurable. The wall opposite was speckled unevenly with coloured lights. Pen nervously toed the edge of the precipice and craned her neck, but she could see no end to this ocean of bricks and gently glowing alcoves. It extended to vertical horizons on either side. It was like being up-close to the night sky. The sounds of wings echoed in the emptiness. Little flitting shapes crossed the wall, oil-soaked pigeons cooing as they tended the synod’s stores.
‘It’s beautiful,’ she murmured, in a stunned voice.
‘It … hass itsss momentsss,’ Johnny Naphtha admitted.
‘What is it?’
He raised his lighter as he answered, ‘Ssselfishnesss, greed, sssyrupy sssentiment, commemorationss of a few fumbling firsst romancess, an irrational love of peanut butter and an equally inssane loathing of arachnidss’ – he pointed at individual lights as he spoke, naming constellations on the wall. ‘Courage, compossure, a confection of courtesssy. Ssentiensse, or ass passsable a ssubbsstitute as we have thusss far ssuccceded in compossing. You are looking at our besst current sssynthessiss of a mind.’
‘A mind?’ Pen breathed. ‘What’s it for?’
‘To patch the perceptionss of a prissoner – a client whose cognition iss sso corroded by hisss long languisshing, he doess not yet know that he needss it.’ Johnny Naphtha grinned wickedly. ‘Bussinessss development. It iss almosst complete. Almossst.’ He looked at Pen with predatory appraisal. ‘But not quite.’
Pen felt her hands flinch upwards instinctively, as if she could protect herself from that look, that possessive intent, with her fists.
Johnny’s smile became almost pitying. ‘Sspare yourssself your anxiety,’ he said. ‘The ssupplementary ssubstancess we need are not in your psssyche. Ssstill, for what you asssk, we will accept nothing lesss.’
‘I won’t hurt anyone else,’ Pen insisted again.
Johnny inclined his head as if to say, You said that already.
Four other heads mirrored his.
‘We would not asssk you to. A long way behind ussss, at the intersssection of the sstoress of electromagnetissm and ephemerality there iss a ssubsstansse that might ssserve you, a compound fit to change sseeing into doing, a tincture to transsform a window to a door: a portal primer, if you will, or a doorway drug. It might even get you sssomewhere ass issolated as the mirrorsstocracy’s republic. Our price for ssuch a prize is sssimple—’
He flourished his empty oil-soaked hand. ‘A complete ssset of memoriess of a child, rendered from the mindss of her parentsss – not copiesss, you undersstand, but originalss.’ He snorted. ‘Even true memoriess degrade, copiess of them wassste like they’re diseassssed.’
For a long moment Pen didn’t understand, then something hot and painful sank slowly towards the bottom of her stomach as she realised what he was asking her for.
‘You want my folks’ memories … of me?’ she whispered. ‘You want them to forget me.’
‘Mosst assssuredly no.’ Johnny’s tone didn’t change. ‘We do not want them to forget you. That iss an irrelevant ssside effect.’
Pen gave a little tight shake of head. ‘Something else,’ she said. ‘Not them – not my parents. Something of mine—’
‘Nothing you posssesss iss sso potent ass a parent’ss memoriess of thosse they have born. Ssuch thingsss kindle conflictss and are the ssseeds of sscience. They are the well-springss of hope and obssesssions of even the sssanest of men,’ Johnny said gently. ‘We want nothing of yourss.’
‘I told you I wouldn’t hurt anyone!’ Pen’s cry echoed off the bricks. She stared back down the tunnel, but all she saw was a maze.
The flame from Johnny’s lighter danced in his liquid eyes, and his voice was sonorous in her ears. ‘Sssilly little pilgrim, that’sss precissely why we asssk thiss. We know your ssstory. You musst know, ass we know, that your mother and father blame themsselves for your pressent, parodic appearance. “If we’d only watched her better, or taught her better, or loved her bett
er or fed her better”.’ He spoke with a calm viciousness, eyeing the sharp jut of her cheeks. ‘“If only we” – that’ss the ssentiment that sstrangless your parentss’ sssleep. Would you like to know how poorly they sssleep now? How tenuousssly they are ssstitched to their happinesss? If you are sserious about not hurting them, your choice iss ssimple. Either sstay by their sside and ssacrifice whatever urgent quesst hass made you sseek uss out, or accept our price, and make ssure they won’t missss you when you’re gone.’
Pen felt the bricks of the wall in her back like the supporting hand of a friend, but rather than collapse against them she stayed stiffly upright.
Ssacrifice whatever urgent quessst …
She tried to imagine it. She tried to picture herself turning around and going home and hiding under the duvet. She tried really, really hard.
But she couldn’t. She didn’t recognise the girl in that picture. She wasn’t her, and she didn’t want to be. A strange kind of calm settled over her as she realised this wasn’t really a choice after all: it looked like one, but it wasn’t. She pictured the future where her folks had forgotten her, and it came clearly: her dad reading the paper, her mum engaged in her endless second-floor ballet with the Hoover. They’d be okay, they wouldn’t miss her. They couldn’t miss her. It was appalling, but it was true. That was the point. She wetted her lips to accept the inevitable. There wasn’t another option here …
Unless she made one.
‘You said you didn’t go behind the mirror.’ Pen’s voice came out hoarse, a little crackly, but strong. ‘Isn’t there something better behind there than a few sentimental memories of my first steps? You’re collectors, aren’t you? There must be something. What if I could bring it to you?’
Each of the five members of the synod took a step forward, hemming her behind a wall of petrol-soaked suit. They looked even more predatory when they were intrigued.
