Mantle remembered his bath and stood up sharply, knocking over his drink and bashing his knee into the underside of his desk. His foot skidded on the open pages of a magazine and he went down awkwardly, an arm outstretched to stabilize himself serving only to swipe a cairn of novels to the floor. Pages riffled across his line of sight, a skin of words in which to wrap his pain. They wouldn’t leave him alone, even after he had managed to wrestle a way into sleep.
His alarm didn’t so much wake him as rescue him from a desperate conviction that he was about to suffocate. He felt as though he were in the centre of a world of layers, and all of them were trying to iron him flat, as if he were some crease that was spoiling the uniformity of his dreamscape. He wore a tight jacket that was like a corset, pinning his gut back. The city was similarly constricted; he couldn’t see brick or stone for the weight of aluminium, slotted with mathematical precision into every available square metre of space. It caused him to feel sick at his own softness; he felt arbitrary, ill-fitting. The books he was carrying seemed to sense his otherness and kept trying to squirm from his grasp. Pages fluttered. He felt the bright sting of a paper cut in his finger. Blood sizzled across onionskin. He gazed at his hands and saw how the print from the books had transferred to his flesh, a backwards code tattooed on every inch. He was ushered into a series of ever-narrowing streets by faces smudged into nonsense by the speed he was moving at, or the lack of oxygen reaching his brain. A building up ahead stood out because of the presence of an open door, a black oblong of perfection among the confused angles. He was fed through it. Shapes, presumably people, gestured and shrugged and pointed. He was shown a gap in the heights, a section of hammer-beam that had rotted and was being prepared for repair. Ladders and platforms were arranged around the workstation like props in a play.
He was cajoled and prodded up the ladder until he reached the ceiling. He was manhandled into the slot, he screamed as his neck was twisted violently to accommodate the rest of his body. Great cranes positioned at either end of the hammerbeam slowly rotated a mechanized nut, the size of a dinner plate. The two ends of the hammerbeam were incrementally forced together. Pressure built in his body; he felt blood rush to his extremities. He bellowed uncontrollably, a nonsense noise, a plea. He felt bones pulverizing, unbearable tensions tearing the shiny tight skin of his suit, his stomach. At the last moment, as breath ceased, he saw himself burst open, everything wet in him raining to the floor. It looked like ink. It looked like a river of words.
Coffee. It burned his lip but he was grateful for anything that reminded him he was still alive. His fingers shook a little as he replaced the cup in its saucer. Heaton’s last text was burned into his thoughts, helpfully chasing away the remnants of the dream. He spread out a fan of notes on the table, sucking up the gen on this new quarry. Tucked away in a Stoke Newington studio flat was a Mint/ Mint of Bryce Tanner’s first novel, Noble Rot, published by Faber in 1982. According to Heaton, the studio had been abandoned by the occupant, some failed venture capitalist who had needed a temporary base while he searched for his Hoxton warehouse. Rumour was he’d drowned himself in one of the reservoirs in N16. The flat had been left as it was while his nearest and dearest were sought, a process taking longer than had been expected. Armed with a hammer, Mantle had cased the building an hour previously, and had been encouraged by the lack of humanity; the building seemed little more than a shell giving the come-on to the wrecking ball and the softstrip crews. The jitters Mantle was suffering on the back of his dream, and a need to be sure of what he was about to do, had driven him away in search of caffeine. Now, sitting on a hard metal chair outside a deli in Church Street, the call of the book too great to resist any longer. He tossed a handful of coins into his saucer and retraced his steps to the High Street. A block sitting back off that busy main drag contained more boards than glass in its window frames. Mantle negotiated the buckled front door and the inevitable climb up the stairs. Broken glass was scattered across every landing; dead insects provided a variety to the crunch under his shoes. The door he needed was padlocked – cheaply – and his hammer dealt with it after a couple of blows. Inside he paused in case his attack had brought any remaining residents to investigate, but either the building was deserted or apathy reigned. It didn’t matter – he wasn’t going to be disturbed.
The studio was well maintained, leaning towards minimalism but with enough books, CDs and DVDs to suggest that it was a life choice that wasn’t being taken seriously. There was nothing to suggest that its inhabitant was likely to take his own life, but Mantle was no psychologist. He didn’t care one jot. All that mattered to him was that couple of pounds of paper and board.
He located the book almost immediately. It seemed to call to him from among all the dog-eared paperbacks. It had presence, gravitas. He slid it clear from the shelf and hefted it reverentially.
The book turned to ash in his fingers.
He stood there for a while, as the air seemed to darken around him, his mouth open, trying to keep himself together. The notes in his pocket lost their insulating properties. He was in a cold room, bare but for a bucket filled with a dried meringue of shit.
The boards across the window had collapsed; wind flooded in. He moved towards it, the flakes in his hand rising up like angered insects. Scaffolding bit deep into the pebble-dashed skin of the block. Through the shapes it created he could almost imagine he could see the muscular City architecture, the Gherkin, the old Nat West tower and, further afield, Canary Wharf. The aircraft warning lights they pulsed might shine in the tubing outside this very window, but also, deep within him, matching the insistent thrum of his own heart. He heard the creak of the broken door behind him and he acted upon it, not wanting to turn to see what had followed him up here. Falteringly, he clambered out on to the platform and edged along it until he had reached the end. His hands, coated with the dust of a book he could still smell, clawed at the brackets that kept the entire structure married to the block. They were so cold they scorched his skin.
He heard something struggle out of the window frame and on to the duckboards. Whatever it was had no grace, no balance. Its weight sent stresses and strains along the planks to his own feet, lifting them a little. The song of the wood might have been the keening that played in his throat. He smelled the high, narcotic smell of burned plastic. There were no books. There were no notes. No text messages. No Heaton. No wallet filled with cash. No Mrs Greville. No Mick Bett. No Gherkin. No past, no future. No nothing. Mantle’s love of books was desperate, a wish never to be fulfilled. He reached up to his eyes and pressed his fingers against the dry membrane that filmed them. Pockets of interior colour exploded. He could never know what it meant to be able to read a story, no more than he would ever learn what colour his own eyes were.
The lie these books contained. The fictions. It had a face, it had a fury. They infected your life, it was a contagion. You built up your own monster from the deceptions you invented. And Mantle was all about deceit. He’d managed the most horrid of them all, tricking himself. It was second nature, now. The blind leading the blind. Fear unfolded in every pore of his being. Nevertheless, he turned to confront what had chased him all this way, all these years. Not being able to see him gave Mantle a Pyrrhic victory of sorts. He was able to smile, his mouth finding an unusual cast even as the sum of his trickery leaned in close. The hand over his mouth was little more than crisped talons. He felt as if he were becoming infected by that alien flesh, growing desiccated, so sucked dry of moisture that his face might disintegrate. His chest muscles ruptured with the strain of trying to draw a breath. Millions of capillaries burst, flooding his inner sight with red. He heard the stutter and gargle of his own breath, or of the thing silencing him. White noise. Explosions of crumpled paper. In extremis, he managed to kiss the hand, to reach out and hold tight, to imagine that this was the hug he had craved for so long.
KIM NEWMAN
Cold Snap
AS KIM NEWMAN EXPLAINS: “I wrote ‘Cold S
nap’ for my recent collection Secret Files of the Diogenes Club, published by Chris Roberson’s MonkeyBrain Books as a follow-up to The Man from the Diogenes Club. The earlier collection assembles a run of stories I’ve been doing about Richard Jeperson – mostly set in the 1970s, and featuring Richard and his supporting cast coping with various supernatural or extranormal troubles.
“Secret Files dips back further into the history of the Diogenes Club, which I depict in this series as a long-standing British institution, and collects stories about men and women who worked with the Club before Richard came along.
“My initial plan for ‘Cold Snap’ was simply to have Richard Jeperson at least represented in the new book to provide continuity with The Man from the Diogenes Club. However, as it turned out, I also saw an opportunity to draw together threads from other stories in the Secret Files, thus converting a linked series of stories into something vaguely like a novel by revealing that elements of this plot have been percolating for over a century.
“Given that my fictions all tend to be interrelated in some way, I also cast around fairly widely for characters to take part in a large-scale crisis. Naturally, you’re encouraged to seek out the other books and stories to learn more about the various folks who crop up here – though I’ve cross-referenced a few things that are (as of writing this) not yet published or finished, so it might take a while to follow every lead.
“For the later lives of some of these folks, see Life’s Lottery (Keith Marion), Jago (Susan Rodway, Anthony Jago), Seven Stars (Geneviève, Maureen Mountmain), ‘Mother Hen’ (Mr & Mrs Karabatsos), Bad Dreams (Ariadne), The Quorum (Derek Leech), ‘Going to Series’ (Myra Lark), ‘Organ Donors’ (Constant Drache), ‘Swellhead’ (Sewell Head). For an alternative encounter with the Cold, see Doctor Who: Time and Relative. I will eventually reveal more about the Chambers family and Louise Teazle (though, for now, you can find one of her children’s books online).
“However, that’s all in the future for the people you meet here. Again, you’re best off having read the earlier stories in the series, but the following ‘Prologue’ (original to this printing) should stand as the equivalent of those ‘previously . . .’ montages they use on TV shows when the ongoing plots get tangled . . .”
PROLOGUE
IN THE MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY, Mycroft Holmes and others as yet unidentified found the Diogenes Club, ostensibly a club for the most unsociable men in London. It is actually a cover for a body charged with handling delicate and often supernatural matters of state. Among its most notable operatives are Charles Beauregard, who succeeds Mycroft as Chair of the Club’s Ruling Cabal, and Geneviéve Dieudonné, a long-lived vampire lady; in another continuum (the Anno Dracula series), they are lovers – here, they are unaware of each other until the 1930s (for that story, see “Sorcerer Conjurer Wizard Witch” in Marvin Kaye’s forthcoming A Book of Wizards).
The Club serves Britain’s interests – and, often, humanity’s – in a series of crises kept out of the history books: including an incursion from faerie in the 1890s (“The Gypsies in the Wood”), a rise of the Deep Ones in the 1940s (“The Big Fish”), a railway disaster which threatens the world in the 1950s (“The Man Who Got Off the Ghost Train”), a timeslip on the South Coast caused by the psychic dreamer Paulette Michaelsmith in the 1970s (“End of the Pier Show”) and the centuries-spanning “Duel of the Seven Stars” (Seven Stars).
In 1903, an ab-human entity comes close to committing the most colossal crime ever contemplated – the murder of space and time. No fewer than fifteen of the world’s premier magicians, occult detectives, psychic adventurers, criminal geniuses and visionary scientists set aside profound differences and work under Mycroft’s direction to avert the rending-asunder of the universe. Yet the only allusion to the affair in the public record is an aside by the biographer of Mycroft’s more-famous, frankly less perspicacious brother, concerning the “duellist and journalist” Isidore Persano, found “stark staring mad with a match box in front of him which contained a remarkable worm said to be unknown to science.”
In the 1920s, Diogenes Club members Edwin Winthrop and Catriona Kaye encounter a shape-shifting creature who takes the default form of Rose Farrar, a long-missing little girl. It is taken into custody by the Undertaking, a rival organization to the Club who maintain the Mausoleum, a prison/storehouse for unique and dangerous individuals and objects. (See: “Angel Down, Sussex”.)
Later, Catriona conducts a murder investigation, which prompts Charles Beauregard, the Chair of the Ruling Cabal of the Diogenes Club, to take covert steps to end the careers of the Splendid Six, a collection of arrogant and self-involved aristocratic adventurers whose number includes Richard Cleaver (aka “Clever Dick”), a child prodigy. (See: “Clubland Heroes”.)
In the 1960s, the position of Great Enchanter – loosely, the commander of forces arrayed against goodness and decency – passes from Colonel Zenf, who had succeeded Isidore Persano, to Derek Leech, an entrepreneurial, Mephistophelean fellow who springs out of the mud of Swinging London and amasses a great deal of temporal power. Leech’s history can be found, between the lines, in “Sorcerer Conjurer Wizard Witch”, “Another Fish Story”, “Organ Donors” and The Quorum.
A foundling of the World War II, Richard Jeperson is raised by the men and women of the Diogenes Club to become the successor to Charles Beauregard and Edwin Winthrop. With his allies Fred Regent, a former policeman, and Vanessa, a mystery woman, he has fought evil and investigated strangenesses throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. Their adventures are recounted in The Man from the Diogenes Club.
A legacy is passed down among the Chambers family – who have certain abilities after nightfall, and have waged their own nighttime wars. From the 1920s to the 1960s, Jonathan Chambers wore goggles and a slouch hat and operated as the scientific vigilante “Dr Shade” in partnership with the ladylike “Kentish Glory”, while his sister Jennifer practised unorthodox medicine. Jonathan’s son Jamie is, as yet, unsure of his inheritance.
Now, it’s the summer of 1976. Great Britain swelters under the Heat Wave of the Century . . .
I
“Nice motor,” said Richard Jeperson, casting an appreciative eye over Derek Leech’s Rolls Royce ShadowShark.
“I could say the same of yours,” responded Leech, gloved fingertips lightly polishing his red-eyed Spirit of Ecstasy. Richard’s car was almost identical, though his bonnet ornament didn’t have the inset rubies.
“I’ve kept the old girl in good nick,” said Richard.
“Mine has a horn which plays the theme horn Jaws,” said Leech.
“Mine, I’m glad to say, doesn’t.”
That was the pleasantries over.
It was the longest, hottest, driest summer of the 1970s. Thanks to a strict hosepipe ban, lawns turned to desert. Neighbours informed on each other over suspiciously verdant patches. Bored regional television crews shot fillers about eggs frying on dustbin lids and sunburn specialists earning consultancy fees in naturist colonies. If they’d been allowed anywhere near here, a considerably more unusual summer weather story was to be had. A news blackout was in effect, and discreet roadblocks limited traffic onto this stretch of the Somerset Levels.
The near-twin cars were parked in a lay-by, equidistant from the seemingly Mediterranean beaches of Burnham-on-Sea and Lyme Regis. While the nation sweltered in bermuda shorts and flip-flops, Richard and Leech shivered in arctic survival gear. Richard wore layers of bearskin, furry knee-length boots with claw-toes, and a lime green balaclava surmounted by a scarlet Andean bobble hat with chinchilla earmuffs – plus the wraparound anti-glare visor recommended by Jean-Claude Killy. Leech wore a snow-white, fur-hooded parka and baggy leggings, ready to lead an Alpine covert assault troop. If not for his black Foster Grants, he could stand against a whitewashed wall and impersonate the Invisible Man.
Around them was a landscape from a malicious Christmas card. They stood in a Cold Spot. Technically, a patch of permafrost, four miles acro
ss. From the air, it looked like a rough circle of white stitched onto a brown quilt. Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone . . . snow had fallen, snow had fallen, snow on snow. The epicentre was Sutton Mallet, a hamlet consisting of a few farm-houses, New Chapel (which replaced the old one in 1829) and the Derek Leech International weather research facility.
Leech professed innocence, but this was his fault. Most bad things were.
Bernard Levin said on Late Night Line-Up that Leech papers had turned Fleet Street into a Circle of Hell by boasting fewer words and more semi-naked girls than anything else on the news-stands. Charles Shaar Murray insisted in IT that the multi-media tycoon was revealed as the Devil Incarnate when he invented the “folk rock cantata” triple LP. The Diogenes Club had seen Derek Leech coming for a long time, and Richard knew exactly what he was dealing with.
Their wonderful cars could go no further, so they had to walk.
After several inconclusive, remote engagements, this was their first face-to-face (or visor-to-sunglasses) meeting. The Most Valued Member of the Diogenes Club and the Great Enchanter were expected to be the antagonists of the age, but the titles meant less than they had in the days of Mycroft Holmes, Charles Beauregard and Edwin Winthrop or Leo Dare, Isidore Persano and Colonel Zenf. Lately, both camps had other things to worry about.
From two official world wars, great nations had learned to conduct their vast duels without all-out armed conflict. Similarly, the Weird Wars of 1903 and 1932 had changed the shadow strategies of the Diogenes Club and its opponents. In the Worm War, there had almost been battle-lines. It had only been won when a significant number of Persano’s allies and acolytes switched sides, appalled at the scope of the crime (“the murder of time and space”) planned by the wriggling mastermind (“a worm unknown to science”) the Great Enchanter kept in a match-box in his waistcoat pocket. The Wizard War, when Beauregard faced Zenf, was a more traditional game of good and evil, though nipped in the bud by stealth, leaving the Club to cope with the ab-human threat of the Deep Ones (“the Water War”) and the mundane business of “licking Hitler”. Now, in what secret historians were already calling the Winter War, no one knew who to fight.
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