Strangeness and Charm cotf-3

by Mike Shevdon

  She let herself in, she didn't need a key. Where was the smell of boiled potatoes? Wasn't Mum supposed to be cooking supper? Raised voices came from the sitting room. She moved carefully into the hall.

  "I'm telling you I saw her. She was right there!"

  Barry was trying to calm her mother down. "Could it have been another girl, the same age perhaps?"

  "It was her! She looked older, yes, but I know my own daughter, for God's sake!"

  "I never said you didn't'"

  "You never believe me. You always try and second guess everything I say. I'm telling you she was there and you're telling me I can't believe my own eyes. I'm not mad!"

  It was kicking off, no mistake. They could be at it a while. When her mother got going there was no stopping her. No wonder there wasn't any supper. Alex turned away from the living room and quietly mounted the stairs, much as she'd done a hundred times when her mother and father had been arguing. She went straight to the room at the back of the house — her room, her sanctuary.

  She stood in the doorway and looked around. There was a desk with a new computer on it that hadn't been there before. Where was her bed? Where was her homework table? What had happened to her dresser, her make-up, her hair clips, her clothes? Where was her posters, God! They'd even changed the wallpaper!

  She went to the wardrobe and wrenched it open. Inside empty hangers clinked slowly against one another. All her clothes, gone. She went to the desk opening the drawers, looking for her pants, her tights, her bras, anything that might vaguely have been hers. The room had been stripped, cleansed, disinfected like the changing rooms at the school. Every trace had been removed.

  The only remnant she could find was a small silver ring her father had given her for her birthday. She wasn't allowed rings at school, so she'd left it on a hook inside the wardrobe. They must have missed it when they took everything else she had and tipped it into the bin.

  She grabbed the ring from the hook and pressed it into her palm. She looked around at the empty room, her eyes welling, the sharp edges of the ring pressing into her hand. The room had been stripped, cleansed, purged of all trace.

  She ran out, taking the stairs two at a time, burst through the kitchen, slammed through the kitchen door, banging it wide. She veered around, blinded by tears, fumbling with the lock on the back gate until her numb fingers flicked it open. Running into the street, a car blared its horn noisily as she ran into the road. Behind her she could hear them, questioning, searching. She blundered across the road, then cut down a shortcut, smudging tears from her eyes as she ran.

  Far behind her she could hear them calling, "Alex! Alex! Come back!"

  There was no going back. You couldn't go back. You could only go on. The world erased you until there was nothing left. You left no mark, no sign of your passing. They pasted you over, just like wallpaper.

  Until there was nothing left.

  I followed Amber through a run-down estate in London, somewhere off the North Circular. Litter accumulated in the gutters and discarded takeaways overflowed the bins. Groups of youths in hoodies watched with resentful eyes as we passed, probably wondering whether we were bailiffs.

  We went through an underpass below the railway and emerged into a deserted industrial estate. Half-demolished offices were open to the elements, ragged edges of floors jutting out into space, demolition left unfinished as demand evaporated in the teeth of recession. From the buddleia and elderberry growing in the exposed concrete, it had been like that for some time.

  "You take me to the nicest places," I said to Amber. She ignored me.

  Our path wound around piles of rubble and oil cans used for long-cold fires. If there had been watchmen, they were made redundant when it became apparent there was nothing worth protecting. Panel after panel of cracked glass looked down on us, as if someone had carefully cracked each pane, individually, as an art-installation statement. There was no one to appreciate their care.

  I stopped. "The place is deserted."

  Amber paused and turned. "That's what you're meant to think."

  She walked on until she reached a long building at the end of the row, surrounded by verdant saplings and nettles. It had been a factory; the ducting for the heat extraction and where the cables for heavy-duty power had been stripped for their copper could still be seen. Floor upon floor of machinery, all gone — presumably sold for scrap or exported to the third world.

  We circled round the end of the building and pushed through a door that had been kicked in until it collapsed inward. Inside corroded pipework networked the ceilings but the floor was bare, apart from the occasional rusty bolts sticking up, or a fragment of discarded mangled ironwork.

  Light permeated through the crazed glass, showing distorted outlines of the outside world and intensifying the shadows at the rear. We moved along the building to the far end where concrete stairs led to the next floor. Above was the same, another gallery of despair, the machinery removed, the wiring stripped. We wandered that floor then went back to the stairway.

  "Do you know what you're looking for?" I was beginning to suspect that we were on a wild goose chase.

  She mounted the next set of stairs quickly, and I followed. The floor above had sacks and old tarps hung against the windows. The shadows were deeper, but the story was the same. Everything had been stripped away.

  "Bring them down." Amber gestured towards the tarps draped over the windows.

  I went down the gallery, pulling down plastic sheeting and old tarpaulins, spilling light across the floor. As I reached the far end, something stirred in the shadows at the back.

  "Now what did you wanna do that for?" The voice came from a figure outlined against the dark, moving forward from the deeper shadows.

  "Upstairs, Dogstar. I will handle this."

  I moved back along towards the stairs only to be intercepted by others moving out from the shadows. They moved in across the gallery, converging on us — four of them, all male, wearing the much-vaunted hoodies. They had crude weapons, an iron bar, a piece of piping. One of them had a piece of wood with nails spiked through the end. My hand moved down to my weapon.

  "Where you going, bro?" one of them taunted. "This party just startin'."

  "Upstairs, Dogstar," Amber ordered. "Or we'll lose them."

  The one nearest the stairs moved into my path, blocking my exit. "You outta luck. There's nothing here but us, and we ain't leaving," he said.

  "Neither are they," the one closest to me chuckled, slapping the pipe into his open hand.

  "This is not your lucky day," said the third.

  "If you got any money, it'd be wise to hand it over now. It'll save us searching the bodies later," said the fourth.

  Amber stood easily in the centre. I knew better than to move closer to her; that would restrict our opportunities for movement. Instead I moved apart slightly, forcing them to split their attention in two directions and spread out when they would have closed in. Their attempt to bunch us together faltered.

  Amber stood, head bowed, waiting.

  "Got nothing to say, little girlie?" the first one taunted.

  Amber lifted her head. "How are you," she asked quietly, "on nursery rhymes?"

  The one who'd spoken first laughed. "You're a long way from the nursery now, bitch. You're out in the wild woods is where you are."

  "How about this one," she said. "One upon a time there were four little piggies…"

  I blinked. Amber had gone. There was a whine from the one who'd spoken last. Amber was behind him, the bright slash of her blade held across his throat. He dropped the iron bar.

  "This little piggy went to market," she said into the silence. I blinked.

  The first guy was on his knees, holding his neck, the second fell to his knees, Amber's blade under his right ear.

  "This little piggy," she said, "should have stayed home." I blinked again.

  The third was staring about him warily, brandishing the nailed club. There was a flash as her bla
de swept up from behind, up the inside of his thigh, holding him on tiptoe.

  "This little piggy was roast meat," she said.

  "Don't you cut me, bitch!" His voice squeaked like the piglet in the rhyme.

  I blinked.

  The guy with the pipe stood there, swinging it back and forth. Suddenly his legs were kicked out from under him and he crashed backwards, the pipe bouncing out of his hand to ring noisily on the concrete.

  "And this piggy's blood, will run and run and run…" The tip of Amber's blade was half an inch from his eye.

  I blinked. She was in the middle of the circle again.

  "Shall we try again?" She said quietly, "this time with real piggies?"

  She paused. For one second they stared at each other. Then she smiled.

  "Once upon a time there were four little piggies…"

  They scrambled to their feet, abandoning their weapons and running for the stairs. They collided with each other in their haste to get down and away from the crazy woman and her nursery rhymes. I could hear the clatter as they went down the floors, the thud as they burst through the ruined door.

  Her smile faded as the noise died away. The only problem was that I was left with the crazy woman.

  "I said, upstairs," said Amber, sheathing her sword.

  "They blocked my way," I protested.

  "No wonder you have problems if you let their kind come between you and your quarry." Amber went to the staircase leading upwards and listened.

  "Do you think there's more of them?" I asked.

  "No. They were just the alarm system. The real quarry is upstairs."

  She vanished upwards and I followed after her. When I reached the floor above I saw her standing at an open fire door, looking down a rusty fire escape.

  "They've gone," she said.

  "We could follow them?"

  "And play cat and mouse when they know all the bolt holes and we're not sure which of us is the cat?" What she didn't say is that if I'd been quicker getting past the watchmen then we would have had them bottled in up here. As it was they were long gone.

  The upper floor had been kitted out as a grand open living space. There were multiple sofas, old metal cupboards, bookshelves and mattresses. They'd found a generator and wired up an Xbox to a flat-screen perched on top of a metal file drawer. The furniture was an odd mix of discarded seconds and the spoils of skip-diving.

  "Expensive taste," she said, picking up a cashmere scarf carelessly draped over a tired sofa.

  "You think they've got money?" I looked sceptically at the holes in the nearest sofa.

  "No, I think they have light fingers. Anything too big to steal is second hand. All the small stuff is new." She walked through and around piles of CDs, DVDs, games and books. "There are a lot of books for teenagers."

  "Some teenagers like books," I replied. "Mine does."

  "Alfred Watkins, The Old Straight Track, and Do What Thou Wilt: A Life of Aleister Crowley." She tossed the books back onto the pile. "Dangerous rubbish."

  "Sounds a bit New Age to me."

  "We'll need to watch the cults and the nutcases," said Amber. "If they get a foothold with one of the extreme groups then we'll have a problem. The last thing we want is them setting up a new religion."

  "How many are they?"

  "Four, maybe six? They have beds for four but they could be sleeping together."

  "Four could be difficult. They are fey," I pointed out.

  "And we're Warders," she said. "Sounds like the odds are in our favour. Besides," she looked back at the fire escape, "the first sign of trouble, they abandon everything and scarper. They're not looking for a fight."

  "They might come back."

  "If they do they'll know we're here long before we see them, so there's no point waiting. They'll make a mistake eventually, and then we'll see."

  "What does that mean?"

  "We'll know the answer to that question when it happens." She turned towards the stairs.

  "You know, sometimes your accent slips and you sound quite the Londoner."

  "You know," she said, "Sometimes you poke your nose in where it's not wanted."

  "You could have killed them," I called after her. "Why didn't you?"

  "Because then we'd have to dispose of the bodies, and I don't particularly feel like digging. Do you?" She glanced back and then headed back down the stairs.

  I had hoped for a better answer, something about the nobility of human life, or at least of saving killing until the last resort. Instead I got cold practical Amber. Then again, if she had killed them I was sure it wouldn't be her doing the digging. I was grateful for that much at least.

  I sighed and looked around. The factory was chaotic and squalid. I wondered what they used for toilets, or washing. They probably smelled to high heaven living like this. A life in the courts would seem like luxury, if only I could find a way to persuade them before someone like Amber shoved a blade through their hearts.

  I picked out a book that had slipped down the side of the sofa. The title emblazoned upon the cover was The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites amp; Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order.

  Amber was right. Someone was filling their heads with dangerous rubbish and the sooner we found them, the better.

  I tossed the book aside and followed Amber downstairs. She was waiting, leaning against the concrete.

  "Amber?"

  She lifted her chin slightly, indicating that she had heard me.

  "Why are you always such a hard-arse? You could be really nice if you wanted to be."

  The faintest of smiles touched her lips, and she shook her head.

  Alex wasn't sure how long she'd been there. She'd done what she'd always done at the worst moments, the really bad times. She'd run to Kayleigh's house. Now she was standing across the road, waiting for something to happen.

  It was getting late. Kayleigh's dad was putting on the lights and drawing the curtains, but still Alex hesitated.

  Kayleigh's mum had always been great. She never asked too many questions about Alex turning up at odd hours and with no warning. She just let her in and left her to sort it out with Kayleigh. She'd even wait for a bit before calling Alex's mum and letting her know she was safe.

  This was different. Alex wasn't safe. She was dead.

  She watched Kayleigh moving around her bedroom upstairs, putting things away, tidying things up. Alex smiled. Kayleigh had always been tidier and more organised. Why can't you be more like her, Mum had demanded. Why can't you be tidy like Kayleigh?

  Even from the road she could see the pop star posters on the wall, the trinkets and keepsakes arranged along the window sill. Alex tried to imagine herself with keepsakes, with a family, with a bedroom and a routine. Perhaps that was the answer. She could be Kayleigh's long-lost sister, or her cousin, come back from abroad. She could even look like Kayleigh, it wasn't that hard. Or she could be adopted, a late decision, not wanting Kayleigh to grow up an only child.

  Except none of it rang true. She could imagine herself, using her new name, telling stories about places she'd never been. She could be someone else, a nice girl, Kayleigh's second cousin, except for the lies.

  Blackbird had warned her it would get harder. She'd told her that the more she used her power, the harder it would be to lie. Alex had sniffed and ignored her, but now she could feel it — the tongue-twisted, wrong-fisted, numbness of saying something that wasn't true. If Blackbird were here, she'd be smug.

  The phone rang inside the house and she heard Kayleigh's dad answer it. There was a pause, then he appeared outlined against the light from the front door. Looking up and down the road. Was Mum on the phone, asking vague questions? Just some light query, nothing that would make it sound like she was looking for Alex. Had he seen so-and-so? Was there anyone wandering around outside?

  But no one saw Alex if she didn't want to be seen, not since Porton Down. They would pump stuff through the air ducts that made your stomach cramp and your
joints ache, just to stop you using glamour, but not any more. Now she was free.

  He went back inside. No sign of anyone. Who were you looking for? What would her mum say? Would she blurt it out? No, she would draw a line under it all and pretend it never happened. We can't be an embarrassment in front of the neighbours, can we?

  She looked up again at the girl in the window. Poor Kayleigh. No one else would befriend her, no one else had the same ideas, the same loves and hates, crushes and crashes. As far as Kayleigh knew, Alex was dead, killed in a nasty accident. She'd been there when it happened, seen for herself. She'd had to cope with losing her friend.

  And that was the trouble. Alex was still lost.

  The girl who was Kayleigh's friend died in the changing rooms, drowned in sewage. The girl she was now had seen and done things that Kayleigh couldn't even imagine, let alone understand. How could she tell Kayleigh about being held under water, about being drugged, beaten and starved. How could she explain that she was poisoned, stripped and left naked for all to see? Nothing in Kayleigh's world came close. Kayleigh could never feel the exhilaration of surfing down the Ways, or understand the intricacies of glamour. She was and always would be the way she was — kind, noble, straight-forward Kayleigh.

  The hole in Kayleigh's life was the same shape it had always been, but Alex no longer fitted it. The Alex she'd been had wanted to be blonde and bubbly, and fun to be with. That Alex had been consumed, eaten away, leaving someone else in her place.

  Alex looked down. Around her arms, strange vines and coloured leaves emerged in patterns on her flesh, winding down to emerge in coiled tangles around her wrists. There strange buds emerged, dark and shiny. They were a lot cooler than butterflies. She shook her head and her hair was long and wavy where it had been softly curled. It was tinted the deepest black, almost blue. She lifted her chin and felt her eyelashes darkened, her lips stained with raspberry tint. It would do for now.

  Turning away, she shoved the silver ring on her finger, the last vestige of a life she couldn't have. She would keep it to remind her that there was no going back — only onwards. Walking away from Kayleigh's house, she headed back towards the tube station. She would have to find somewhere safe to stay, and that would be easier in town.