by Kim Newman
The samurai in Wardour Street was not so timid, and his sword was definitely nor ornamental. He waved the three-foot razor within an inch of her face, slicing loudly through the cold-thickened air. He yelled, and made a series of dazzling passes in front of her, like Sergeant Troy in Far from the Madding Crowd. She had no doubt that he could have chopped her thin like salami if he had been allowed to. She stood still as a mannequin, flinching only when the flashing light from the sword got in her eyes. He was a dirty, pockmarked man with bad teeth and an elaborate topknot. Like the other ghosts, he was a bit faint; not see-through exactly, but a little lighter than a living person ought to be.
'Tell me, Toshiro, how much of your life can you call your own?'
He seized up in mid-slice, stared into her face as if pondering the question, and relaxed out of his stance. His sword drooped, and became a bow handle as its point pressed the ground. In a fluid move, he sheathed his weapon, saluted her, and was running off. His sandals flapped against the sidewalk. He turned right at the end of the passage, and was gone. Behind him, he had left a perfect white camellia. She picked it up and found that it was a paper thing that came apart in her hands. He really had looked like Toshiro Mifune.
'I suppose that was supposed to be a warning, old man,' she said aloud, as if addressing a God who was hard-of-hearing. 'Go no further, right? Well, I think you're bluffing. I figure all this shit is putting a strain on you. I reckon you're slipping.
She walked Southwards, deeper into Soho, towards the lights.
'… those last couple were pathetic, Skinner. Not your standard at all. If you watch too many old movies, you cripple your imagination. Yours is gone, old man, atrophied. You're hobbling right now…'
A sign above a closed sex shop on the other side of the street came on: YOU WISH, ANNE, YOU WISH.
She turned to the storefront - a modest expanse of crushed red velvet littered with lacy corsets and studded leather - and talked back to the sign.
'… and wishing makes it so, right? Piss on that, old man. This is my dream too, and I can wish you out of it.'
The bulbs darked and came on again in a different pattern, in different colours. I WON'T BE A BEDPOST FOR YOU, ANNE.
She got it at once.
'Very seasonal, old man. But that doesn't win you any gold stars. Even I've read A Christmas Carol. Here's one for you: you're nothing but a piece of undigested beef!'
A pause, then: ANGELA, WHERE'S JOHNNY?
'You still playing that game? I'm out of that forever, and you know it. You haven't got one tenth the creativity my Dad has, you can't do a sequel to On the Graveyard Shift. That's like Harold Robbins writing The Brothers Karamazov Ride Again.'
ANGELA.
'There is no Angela any more. Just me, Anne…'
ANGELA, SAM'S DEAD.
'Dead and in a play, Skinner. That doesn't count.'
ANNE, YOUR FATHER IS DEAD.
She did not let him hear the sob in the back of her throat. She swallowed it, and went on. 'I know. I suppose you want the credit, old man. It wasn't you. It was just old age. You ought to know something about that. How are the arteries, then? Hardening nicely? How many more skins can you get rid of before there's nothing left of you?'
ANNE, I'M FOREVER.
'Like Hell…'
YES, LIKE HELL.
He took her from behind, like they had trained him to take North Korean soldiers. Armlock around the neck, punch to the kidney. She turned in his grip, so the blow thumped into her spine. It hurt, but did not make her crumple like a Raggedy Ann doll. She tried to get a knee round to slam into his groin, but she could not turn that far. Hot breath condensed on the back of her neck and in her hair.
It was Johnny, of course. He did not look like the Martin Landau of On the Graveyard Shift. This was a post-Mission: Impossible caricature, with an overemphasized satanic cast to its features. Landau was made up as Johnny turning into a demon. He had reptile eyes, several rows of tiny teeth and a lashing adder's fork. He nuzzled her, licking her cheek with the wet, sandpapery tongue.
'Angel, Angel,' he slobbered, 'never leave me again…'
She pincered her elbows behind her, as if doing the Turkey Trot, and slammed into his ribs. It did not do much good. He did not have a proper hold on her anymore, but she was not free either. He let go her neck and grabbed her elbows.
'Angel, let's get back together…'
'No way, Skinner. That's all over!'
She knew what to do now. She brought her knee up towards her stomach, tensed her thigh and belly, and smashed her heel down on the thing's instep. It yowled in agony and let go of her. She whirled away from him, turning to face him. The rubbery thing was hopping comically, holding its throbbing foot like Deputy Dawg ('oh my toe bone!') and spitting wildly. Maliciously, she stepped forwards and stamped on the other foot. It took a few tries, as the thing dodged her shoes, but she got it in the end. It screamed again, and went down on its knees. Johnny was a liquid image for a moment, held together by a soap-bubble skin. Then, it collapsed on the pavement, and ran through the cracks between the paving stones. Not even clothes were left. Only a set of Korean War issue US Army dogtags.
Breathless, laughing, hurting inside, Anne shouted, 'Hah! That wasn't even a nice try, Skinner. Give up and go home!'
The next one was just sick. It was Clive, dead, hanging in an old-fashioned red telephone box. Up close, she realised he was not suspended, he was floating. The box was full of something as thick as milk, but as transparent as water. An eerie light filtered down through the liquid. The body gently shifted. The jacket was spread out like folds of skin and muscle during open-heart surgery. By Clive's ankles, the telephone receiver floated like a too-light anchor.
His neck was ripped open, as it had been the last time she saw him alive, and there was a dark stain on his torn shirt. The liquid and the distilled light rendered him in black and white, but she could tell it was blood on Clive's shirt. His face had shrunken onto his skull, and then been bloated by the water. The result was not normality.
Clive opened his dead-as-coins eyes, and tried to outstare her. Like Johnny, he was horribly funny. She would have left him to pickle, but she wanted to see what came next. After all, in his position, what could he do to hurt her? He was moving now. It must have been an effort to bring those arms down, fighting against the thick liquid and clogged clothes, especially considering that he was dead in the first place. His mouth was like a goldfish's, opening and closing. The wound in his neck pulsed like a sphincter. It was either a makeshift gill or a revolutionary new design for an asshole.
His swollen palms flattened against glass panels, and his back wedged against the other side of the box. He looked angry, although his lips had been soaked too long to be able to recede over his teeth in a snarl. It was not funny any more. A shoe scrabbled against one of the lower panels. Then, he started to exert some pressure, bending and straightening his body as best he could. He was still quite strong.
She got out of the way. The door came open. For an instant, the mass of liquid retained the shape of the telephone box. Surface tension or something, she supposed. But even in this world, there was no miniscus that could do the job of a plate glass fishtank. The level of water fell, and a torrent emerged from the lower quarter of the box. It spread into the street. The Clive Thing came out in a sitting position, and landed on his ass. He did not flap like a fish. Words and water spouted from his mouth and neck.
'You cunt, you cunt, you cunt, you're going to die, you…'
He pushed against the paving stones and launched himself upright, then stumbled for her, arms outstretched. His sleeves were splitting at the seams as his arms pulsed and grew. She backed away from him. His fingers were winding together, making a point, the nails fusing into a needle-barb. His hands were becoming obscene organic syringes.
'You cunt, you cuntface bitch, you know you want it, you know you neeeeed it…'
His jacket burst at the armpits, and swelling sacs, rough
-skinned with sparse hairs, descended. His arms were transparent now, a spiral tracery of clear plastic veins laid around the white bones, bunching together at the wrists.
He was frothing purple at the mouth. His underarm testicles pulsated, spurting fluid into his arm-tubes.
Anne knew what it would be. Nina had shot him fully of it. It would probably be high-grade, unpolluted heroin. The best death money could buy.
'The first jab,' he said, his words distorted by his misshapen mouth, 'is free.'
A pearl of smoky white liquid grew at the tip of his right syringe, and dribbled down the glans-like swelling that had been his hand.
'The rest, you have to pay for.'
She ducked under his thrust, and punched away his second, left-handed, attack.
'Hey, cunt, want to go to a club,' he said, 'and see some damage done…'
He was awkward, finding it difficult to move. He was full of heroin now, bursting to get rid of it. He shot a jet in an arc, and it splattered against the window of a stylish fashion shop, dripping like soapy water. The veins in his neck were throbbing purple, and water was still pouring out of his clothes.
She wrenched a wastebin off a lamp-post, and held it in front of her, blocking his darting syringe stabs.
She threw the bin at him, and dented his forehead. He slipped, his heels working against the wet sidewalk, making scuffmarks. Overbalanced, he went down again. His left arm shattered like a dropped glass, and he screamed as brown-streaked fluid exploded out of him.
She took a careful, malicious, aim and kicked the sac under his right arm, feeling the satisfying give of weak flesh under her toepoint. The Clive Thing's screech cut through the cold night and filled her ears with his pain. He writhed, falling apart in the slippery mess. She got her foot under the thing, and easily rolled it over onto its stomach. He moved as if attempting the breast stroke, his ruined left arm flapping. She brought one of her killer feet down on his spine, snapping it in several places. The crack was like a rifle shot.
She walked away. The Clive Thing tried to swim/crawl after her, dragging its sodden lower limbs. It gave up quickly. When she looked back, it was just a man-shaped smear on the road, kicking feebly.
She was in Old Compton Street now, but not the Old Compton Street she had been in that afternoon. And she knew she was hurting him.
The city was less realistic now. The sky above was solid black, like a tent canopy, and the street was closed off at either end like a film set. Most of the buildings were probably false fronts or backdrops. Patisserie Valerie was painted on loose-hanging canvas, not very well, as if it were supposed to register as realistic from the back of the Royal Circle rather than up close. It had been painted for the daytime, with frozen patrons clogging the place and white and red pastries in the windows, and looked wrong in this night scene. The dream was fraying around the edges.
She brushed by a pillar box, and stopped to examine it. The thing had not felt right. The slot for letters was a strip of black pasted onto the red. There was a poster for a rock gig slapped on the side of the box, but it did not have real writing on it, just a series of squiggles. The whole thing was as soft as a pencil eraser. Soon it would be foam rubber, then gelatine, then ice cream, then candyfloss. Then, just a smudge.
'I think you're spread too thin, Skinner. You're rushing things, getting careless. It's time to turn in, old man, time to go to sleep…'
Another set of lights came on, above an amusement arcade this time.
I'LL GET YOU YET, MY PRETTY.
'Uh huh? You wish, old man, you wish!'
FOURTEEN
IN HER DREAM, Judi was being neglected.
She did not know where she was exactly, but it looked mainly like her father's house in New Hampshire, although her room was like the bedroom of the flat she shared with Coral in the Elephant and Castle. Looking at the walls, covered with pinned-up pictures and news items from magazines and papers, she saw a collage of her entire life. There were a few posters from her brief infatuation - now a shameful, much-suppressed memory - with John Travolta in the era of Saturday Night Fever, and an overlapping series of book-covers, neatly torn from paperbacks like hunter's trophies, marking her absorption of the matter that had been in the volume. Then, there were magazine illustrations that had caught her fancy at some time in her life - the craggy face of W.H. Auden in black and white, socialites in bow ties grinning in nightclubs, a Spitting Image Ronald Reagan as Rambo, a pleasure boat sunk in the Thames, a poster for Blue Velvet. There was Cam at a concert, Clive shaking hands with the Prime Minister, Anne trying to get an answer out of a police constable who did not want to be interviewed, her mother and William Conrad in a TV movie, her father in Stockholm accepting his damned prize.
There were other people in the house, but they did not see it as she did. They had their own Dreams. Some of the other ghosts she had known in life. Jeane Russell, who had been a professional swimmer, came in wearing a navy blue one-piece bathing suit, her dark hair dripping. She was friendly, but offhand, refusing to acknowledge that this was not normal. She had a gymnasium somewhere, and was obsessively working on her body. In her father's study, among the comforting books and signed photographs, she found Coral, one arm stiff at her side, her free hand clamped over her eyes. Judi could not communicate with her either. In the music room, she found Cam, whistling tunelessly. Clive had drifted past once or twice, and tried to catch her attention, but he was strangely shrunken - perfectly-proportioned but only three feet tall, wearing a miniature version of one of his usual smart suits. She was tempted to hit him, but let it go.
On the front lawn, where the children had been allowed to play croquet only if they promised not to argue and always ended up in tearful fights, Judi found Amelia Dorf, a used-up husk in a line of similar remains, some of them dressed in the style of remote historical periods.
There was one ghost who frightened Judi, and who would occasionally loiter around. She was called Giselle and seemed to be a lost little girl, but her face was ancient. She could usually be found on the lawn, playing with the remnants, crooning madly to herself. She was spiteful, and could pinch and nip if she got close enough. Feelings were deadened in the Dream, but there was still pain.
The Dream did not extend far beyond the boundaries of the Nielson property. Judi would sometimes sit in the driveway and look out into the white mists that hung immobile just a few yards down the drive. The road disappeared into them, and the hedges just faded out. Nothing came out of the limbo, and no one ever ventured into it. But Judi knew that, just beyond sight, there was someone. A woman, young and strong, with nearly white hair. She was not in the Dream, but she could tune into the dead channel if she chose. A name formed in her mind: Ariadne. It was a seductive name. She rolled its syllables around her mouth, imagining the name's owner.
Judi tried to remember the village as it had been when she had been living at home. She and Anne, blessed and cursed with the sophistication due to the offspring of the smart and famous, had never had much to do with the local kids. They had had a private name for them, the stupids.
There had been a point in her life when Judi would have done anything to be a stupid. But you cannot unlearn anything, cannot regurgitate knowledge, experience and aptitudes like an undigested meal. Still, she had tried hard.
She wondered what had happened to Trey, the 19-year-old bar-helper she had gone with when she was fourteen. He had been a major stupid. His idea of success was becoming a cop or a rock singer. His first ambition had been out because of his string of juvie beefs, and he had dumped her, after a beating, when she had told him he could never make it in music because he was too white.
Most of the time, it was just boring. She tried the television and the radio, but could only get dead static. The appliances all worked, but the records in their perfect sleeves were all smooth and uncut. She realised that she had read all the books in the house, and wondered if this was hell…
Sometimes, she was let out. Skinner put her
to sleep and woke her up somewhere else, to have her appear to someone…
She could still remember the subway train, and Anne.
But most of the time she was left on her own, to her own devices. She lay in her bed, and tried to practise total recall, seeing how much of her life she could put together in perspective.
She thought a lot about Anne. She wished she had tried harder to get on with her sister, had tried harder not to disrupt the already shaky peace of the family. With a father who was a walking open wound, a mother who flitted by on occasional whims and a half-brother who wandered about like an army officer in a POW camp, thinking only of his hidden escape tunnel and an eventual release, the Nielsons had not been anything like the families she remembered on television, The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, The Waltons…
She had never had a chance with Cam, but she could have had a real relationship with Anne. But now, it was too late…
At first, she had been sure she was dead. Now, she knew better. Her body was dead, but she was still around, as part of the Dream. The Dream was somewhere out of space and time, carried around in Skinner and yet immeasurably vaster than him. It was possible to die out of the Dream - Amelia and the corpses proved that - and she sometimes wondered whether she should try to finish herself off and get it over with.
There were already enough zombies in her family.
She could not do it, though. Even at her lowest, she had never wanted just to die.
Remembering, she found more lows than she would have liked. There was a temptation to dwell only on the better moments, but the lows were as much a part of the pattern, and she felt obliged to summon them up.
She did not know whether she had been conscious when Skinner killed Coral, but she saw it replayed over and again as if she had been. Of course, Coral had been there, and Amelia and Clive had been involved. Perhaps Judi could now sample the memories of everyone in the Dream. It had been upstairs in Amelia's house, in one of the old bedrooms, with the two-way mirror on the wall. Even Amelia had been shocked, and had run for her cocaine stash as a way of handling it. After Coral, came Judi. She remembered the Monster feeding off her, remembered the bursting of her own heart, remembered the struggle that had come afterwards. Skinner had called in Clive to handle the bodies, and from him Judi could see herself propped up in a Soho alley in the early hours, swiftly dumped like a bundle of newspapers for collection. Coral was buried deeper, on a rubbish dump in some to-be-redeveloped wasteland.
