by Kim Newman
But…
At the next stop, Goodge Street, a young couple and an old man got on. The girl wore tiny earphones, and had a Sony walkman slung in a holster from her belt. Anne heard the tinny thrash of muted music. A demon drum solo was turned into the nagging p'tum-chk p'tum-chk of a dripping tap. The two kids stayed by the doors, necking. The boy stroked the girl's side, twisting the walkman lead around his fingers in a one-handed cat's cradle.
The old man, shabby and bearded, sat one seat away from her. He stank of paint-stripper. She knew she was about to be hassled.
'Excuse me…'
She was too tired. She ignored him.
' 'scuse me!'
She really did not need this. She looked up at the advertisements above the windows. A faded bra ad was dotted with circular orange 'this poster degrades women' stickers. Right on. This city degrades women. The old man touched her sleeve. He had spider-shaped scabs on his knuckles, and several beercan tab-pulls bunched on his ring finger.
'Miss?'
She gave up, and turned to him. He smiled. His beard was grey-white, but discoloured yellow around his mouth as if he had been drooling thin custard. He had ill-fitting false teeth like the Civil War issue dentures Walter Brennan used to wear in Westerns where he was the feisty old-timer.
Walter Brennan never pissed in his pants, though. Walter Brennan never gargled with methylated spirits, or wore the same ragged T-shirts for months on end, or slept in a cardboard cocoon in a condemned house, or bothered young women on the subway.
'Miss?'
'Yes,' she said, non-commitally.
'Miss, do you have…'
His voice did not quite work properly. His beard and teeth got in the way. He hawked phlegm, and started again.
'Do you have a sister at home… just like you?'
She did not understand. 'I'm sorry?'
'A sister.'
She tried to make out an expression on his creased face. There were lines of dirt embedded in his skin. His nose was red. He was a clown, a bum. But there was something almost intelligent in him somewhere, something deliberate and malicious.
She had to get rid of him.
'Fuck off, creep!'
'Ssssssisster!'
The train stopped again, Warren Street. There was a pause, the automatic doors unclenched. More people got on. The wino looked away from her. There was quite a crowd.
Please, she thought, let someone sit between me and him, let someone sit next to me.
Someone did, but it was no relief.
The new man was young and huge. He smelled of stale faeces and tomato sauce. He wore an army greatcoat, not big enough to cover his blubbery belly although it was buttoned across his chest. He was a skinhead, and had a line of swastikas tattooed around his neck. His hand was deep in a damp newspaper parcel.
'Want one, darling?' He said, shoving a bundle of vinegary chips up to her face. The stodgy strands were long and thick and twisted, spotted with mobile gobbets of ketchup. Looking at the food was like staring into an abdominal incision.
'No thanks.'
'Go on. You could do with some building up.'
'It's okay, thanks.'
'You'll need all your strength.'
She had heard that the British ate fish and chips out of old newspapers, had seen it in films about the blitz. But that was a long time ago. Now, fish and chips came in plain white paper. But the skinhead's food was wrapped up old-style.
The wino leaned and leered at her from behind the cover of the chip man's mighty stomach. The rails were bumpier than usual this evening. She was being shaken thoroughly. The strap-hangers were swaying unsteadily, as if the metal floor were running in wavelets. The wino chuckled silently. She realised that the strange thing about him was that he was not drunk.
Anne looked away. The carriage was pretty much full now. Almost every seat was taken, and there were plenty of standees. The necking kids had gone. Most of the passengers looked down-and-out, or rowdy, or indefinably depraved.
By the doors, where the couple had been, three teenage boys were scuffling and messing around. One swung from a chromed pole like an ape. They had rosettes and long tartan scarves. One wore an oversize silk jockey's cap with a little teddy bear pinned to it. She thought they were Scots.
Football fans, she supposed. Football hooligans, they called them over here. Dear old staid, conservative, non-violent Britain. Soccer fans were its contribution to the global tradition of random violence. Back home in the States, sports followers were fanatics, exercising an insane competitiveness on the stands, pouring out aggression through their team's performance. But outside the stadium, the hostility evaporated. Over here, 'what team do you support?' was tantamount to a declaration of war. This sceptre'd isle, this happy breed, this bunch of foul-mouthed assholes…
One of the kids started winding his scarf around his head, mummifying himself. His mates laughed, and helped him tie the topknot. The teenage monster lurched and bounced a beercan off his head. One of his mates took the dented tube away from him and opened it, splashing froth over a window. The mummy staggered stiff-kneed down the aisle, arms outstretched in a drunken monster impression. He was laughing.
The man opposite woke up suddenly. His cap fell off. The mummy tripped over his legs, and only saved himself from falling by grabbing one of the row of dangling blackjacks above the seats.
'Mind my bloody chips,' shouted the NF paratrooper, hugging his food. The man opposite was holding on tight to his groceries. His bag was ripped, and tins fell out.
The mummy clawed blindly with his free hand, groping for the chip man's voice. He clutched air in front of Anne's face. She tried to recede into her seat, to keep out of it.
'You a fucking bloody Nazi boy, Jummie?' burped the mummy in an unmistakable Glaswegian accent. 'You a pansy for Hitler, Jummie?'
'He bends over for the SS,' said the mummy's cap-wearing friend, making an obscene fist, 'you can tell. He's a glove puppet. It's official.'
The mummy tottered over her. His scarf was loose at the chin. He took the flapping, tasselled end and slowly unwound. Anne looked up to see his face. The scarf came away and fell on the floor, twisted in a multiple S.
His face was dead. He was a noseless, lipless, leather-cheeked horror-comic-from-the-'50s dead person. Eyes like red poached eggs rolled in their hollows. A pink, healthy tongue stuck out between the exposed teeth.
'Hey, you, Jummie,' he said to her. 'Gissa kiss, love.'
Anne knew she was back on the Nightmare Express.
She tried to stand up, but the chip man held her arm, pinning it to the seat rest. He had the face of a potato now, coarsely vegetable with pitted depressions instead of features. Something pressed her right shoulder down. She was completely stuck.
She looked, and found that the shoulder-holder was Jeane Russell from Amelia's party. She had a belted trench coat over her fairy queen outfit. Her face was full and red now, almost bursting. She was evenly speckled with silver glitter.
The zombie hooligan leaned over her.
'Gissssa kissss!'
The tongue was impossibly extended, pointed and wet and more alive than the rest of the thing. It poked out and wriggled like a slug. He bent to kiss her. She squirmed.
The trained stopped again. Mornington Crescent. The doors opened and closed impersonally.
The hooligan froze, and withdrew. The holds on her arm and shoulder eased.
'Gissa kiss?' It was whining now, pathetic.
'Uh-huh,' she said, 'not on a first date.'
From now on, she had decided, she would fight back. She did not like being a victim. She was going to take back the night. At least, she was going to try.
The station was not Mornington Crescent. As the train pulled out, she saw gleaming white, bare walls slide past the windows. No movie posters, no multi-lingual Telecom ads, no London Transport signs.
More passengers had got on. Her travelling companions had quietened, as if someone in authority had arrived. A
nne knew that she was the only live person in the carriage. She recognised a few faces from Amelia's party, but most of the dead people were strangers. One startling apparition a few seats away was masked, and got up like a Chinese mandarin, with clacking claws for hands emerging from generous silk sleeves.
There were plenty of vile smells, and the train was colder than it ought to be.
The wino pulled his clothes apart, exposing old wounds.
'See,' he said, 'stigmata!'
The chip man kept lifting handfuls of soggy potato to his head, but instead of shoving them into a mouth he was plastering them onto the featureless mass, sculpting himself a parrot nose, acromegalic brows and a Kirk Douglas chin.
But it was still a tube train, grubby and battered. Those advertisements were still there, plugging temp agencies, breath fresheners, computer dating, a lurid paperback about anthropophagous slugs, holiday firms…
'Okay,' she said, looking about at the others, 'what comes next?'
At the other end of the carriage someone started moving, coming towards her, weaving past the standing dead, eyes fixed on her. It was a girl, in a better state than the others. She could almost pass for human. Almost.
Anne stood up.
'Judi?'
THREE
ANNE STARTED forwards, to hug her sister. She thought better of it, and held back. She felt awkward. Judi smiled.
'I know what you mean, Annie.'
Judi looked better than she had in the morgue. Actually, she looked better than the last time Anne had seen her alive. She had been on drugs then. Now, she did not need them.
'The only thing I shoot into my veins these days is formaldehyde, Annie,' she said.
Anne stepped backwards, the train rocking under her feet, making her unsteady. Judi had always tended to know what she was thinking, but now she knew her sister really could read her mind.
'You don't know the half of it, Annie,'Judi said. Her ironic smile and quizzically raised eyebrows excluded the rest of the dead people. The sisters had instantly re-established their old understanding and intimacy. 'It's weirder than you think.'
Anne could have laughed, but did not.
'I don't fucking believe it, Ju.'
'You'd fucking better try, because there's a lot more coming your way. I'd hate to spoil it for you.'
'Skinner?'
'Yeah, Skinner. It all comes down to him really, but I guess you knew that already.'
'I suppose so. How…'
'… did I get into this? Don't ask, Annie, don't ask. It's a shitty story.'
Judi had her young face back again, and it looked good. Her punk/kabuki make-up was professionally applied and striking; her black short hairstyle was stylish and street chic.
She was ready for a dusk-to-dawn party, self-possessed and poised enough to appear in a hairspray commercial.
'I had your bag,' Anne said, but I left it somewhere. At that club, or at Nina's flat. I don't remember.'
'That's okay. I don't need those things any more.'
She was perfectly turned out: patterned black tights, black pointed ballet shoes, snug black mini dress, and an expensive Marlon Brando black leather jacket with the arms hacked off to turn it into a waistcoat. Her arms looked pink and strong. She wasn't feeling the cold.
'It's a shame about Nina,' Judi said. 'She was a good kid. Dumb as hell, but a good kid.'
The waistcoat was slashed with unnecessary zips that glistened like moist scars. The shoulders were padded like a flak jacket, with fringed epaulettes. Useless straps hung undone. Peace signs and Anarchy symbols were picked out in steel studs. Judi's hands were in Kangaroo pouch pockets over her stomach. Her fists pushed the leather out. Anne could make out the ridges of her sister's knuckles.
'Annie, did we have a good childhood?'
Anne looked away exasperated. Only Judi could get to her so quickly, and only this discussion could push her over the edge. It always came up at the very worst of times. They had last gone through the pointless business in the visitors' room of a police station. Now they were practically in the afterlife, and here it all was again…
'On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate our parents? Individually and as a combination? With regards to each other, to us as a combination, to us as individuals, and to society as a whole? Could they have been any worse, do you think?'
'Ju,' Anne realised they were back to their little kid names now, 'Ju, I don't really think it matters any more.'
'Maybe not, but it's interesting. Do you think we would have been better off if Dad had been a small-time failure. As opposed to that special big-time type of failure who looks like a success until the last reel and then turns yellow and runs?'
It was embarrassing, having this talk again, and in public. The dead were listening intently, enjoying the psychodrama. Any moment now, Judi would be turning them into a jury, appealing for their verdict on the Nielsen family. What a ridiculous way to behave.
'Ju, I'm sorry.'
'What for?'
'All of it. Dad, Cam, me, Vicky. I'm sorry. We should've…'
'It's too late for should've, Annie. Should've, could've, would've. It was all so complicated, you know. Even before Skinner. We came into it all too late to make any difference. Dad could never write it out, you could never think it out…'
Anne was crying now; not just politely staining her cheeks, but leaking profusely from her eyes and nose. She got a handkerchief from somewhere, and wiped herself, but it did little good.
'You know who we should have had as a father, Annie. I thought it out once. Ibsen. Old Henryk wouldn't have fallen apart in front of Farnham's Witchfinders, Annie. Or screwed up his kids like we were screwed up. Or written that fucking awful Graveyard Shift thing.'
Judi was crying too. Little, disciplined tears that ran beautifully over her make-up mask without ruining it. The death-faced hooligan had his arm around her now, comforting her, consoling her. He looked reproachfully at Anne, huge eyes moving in their orbits.
'We should stick with our own kind, Annie. Stick to your own kind.' Judi accepted the hooligan's chaste cheek-touch of a kiss. 'And you can see what my own kind is these days…'
Jeane Russell also cuddled up to Judi, patting a shoulder with a diaphanously gloved hand. The whole carriage was behind Judi. Anne was alone.
'Ju…'
Judi gently shrugged free of her attendants, and came towards her. Anne realised that she had backed against the end of the carriage, against the door to the driver's cabin. Judi came to her, smiling with closed lips.
'Annie,' she breathed, 'let's give up and go with it. Get it over with.'
Judi took her hands out of her pockets, and brushed her fingers up and down the front of her waistcoat. She tugged at her zips, opening little pouches in the leather. Some of the zips crept open by themselves, tooth by tooth. Silver-edged lips twisted slightly, and opened. Things were moving inside the waistcoat, pushing outwards, distending the leather, reaching for the air.
The first one came out of a mouth just under the right epaulette. It was a tongue, then it was a crooked finger, then a snake-headed tentacle. The lump at the end was shaped, but featureless. The tentacles were blind and probing. They were not part of Judi, but they came from her. Judi diminished, as her substance flowed into the protuberances. Anne could see the blobs of unformed flesh moving down the tentacles through peristalsis.
'You have to go with it, Annie.'
Judi's face was shrinking again. She was starting to look as she had done in death. Old and unidentifiable. The bulbs were swollen now, turning a fleshy red. Trails of yellowish fluid dribbled from the pockets, and ran down the waistcoat. Judi was leaking badly.
'Come on, Annie. Let's make up.'
Judi was feeble now, unsteady. She was not up to coping with the motion of the train. Tentacles from the region of her waist wrapped around poles, and she stayed upright. The new growth looked strong. They had the power of constriction, and Anne guessed they would be sticky to t
he touch.
A tentacle waved towards her. It was like a bloated anemone frond. The train was slowing down, coming to a station.
Anne grabbed the tentacle, and yanked hard. It was warm and unpleasant in her grip, but it did not slide free. She felt a mild nettle sting. Judi gasped, and bent double. The tentacle came out of her body as easily and unendingly as a roll tape measure. Anne swallowed the gulp of hot bile that came up in the back of her mouth.
Judi was coming apart inside her waistcoat. Anne pushed the thing that had been her sister away. It went into the crowd, deflated and insubstantial, and was caught as they surged forwards.
'Annie!'
The shout died as Judi's emptying clothes fell on the floor. Rivulets of yellow filled the grooves in the floor.
The dead were coming for her. She kicked out in imitation of martial arts movies, putting her hip behind the blow and landing her foot sideways into the hooligan's stomach. It did not give, but bones broke like sticks somewhere inside him. He was in the way of the rest of them.
The train was in a station. The single door beside her slid open, and she pushed herself out of the carriage. She stumbled on the steady stone of the platform, and put a hand out to stop herself slamming into the curved wall. She took the impact on her wrist.
'Mind the gap,' said an automated voice, 'mind the gap.'
The train moved out, its doors still open. She saw hateful faces pressed to the windows. Judi looked lost among so many dead people. Sparks flashed under the wheels. The noise of the train receded and went away.
She had stopped crying.
FOUR
IN THE DARKNESS of the Dream, he floated. His feeding frenzy exhausted, he was torpid, unable to pay attention to the rat in her maze. For the moment, he was the shaper of her world, the worker of her destinies; but he was too tired, too caught up in his own changes, to follow her progress as conscientiously as he should have done.
