by Paul Meloy
“About an hour,” Jon Index says. He is the oldest of them all. He has never been reborn, never beaten, never died. He has led them all this far. He reassembled the Night Clock and holds them all together.
Doctor Mocking is about to speak but then his eyes widen and he cries out. His eyes close tight with pain. He presses a hand to his chest.
The man comes off his chair and is by the bed in an instant.
Doctor Mocking shakes his head. Tears run from the corners of his eyes. He is struggling for breath.
“Not… me,” he manages to say. He looks up at Jon Index, his expression imploring.
“The girls?”
“Lesley.”
Index touches Doctor Mocking on the shoulder.
“I’ll take care of it,” he says.
DARK TIME, THAT flux above the linear.
Jon Index feels it move around him, the interconnectedness between which he drives his Gantry.
He calculates quantum equations, reckons the paradoxes; allows the Night Clock to chime. He calls his Firmament Surgeons to combat.
AND THEY STEP from their Gantries, on the green where the carnival rots, and go to battle for Lesley.
PHIL HEARS SOMETHING shatter and looks up from the pool table. He is about to take on a tricky black.
There is a broken Martini glass on the floor over by his table.
Bismuth has gone again.
Phil misses his black by a country mile and the white goes in.
“Bollocks,” he says and laughs.
“Rack ’em up again, Phil,” says his new mate, Lenny.
RAINSCISSOR SNIPS AT the air in front of Lesley’s face with his birdskull fists. Its face looms long and blue, the smoky lenses of its huge unblinking eyes peer down at her. Lesley can see her face reflected in the pearly film that coats them. She draws back her arm, wanting to get in a shot, a blow to one of those gawping dead-squid-eyes.
And something holds her, is pulling her backwards. Her chest explodes with pain and she screams but the pressure is unyielding and she almost greys out. She bites down on her bottom lip and twists against the pressure encompassing her chest but she can do nothing. She looks up. Rainscissor is not advancing. Its head switches about. It appears double-minded. It steps forward. Stops. Steps back. It raises its arms and clicks its fists. It whistles.
Lesley is placed on the ground. She looks up.
“Index!” she says.
The man has grown, glorified. He stands blazing by her side. He is angelic, a form of pressure and temperature contained in a field. He has tusks of blinding white glass. He drops his head and charges the monster.
Index hits Rainscissor beneath the throat and tosses it back against the tent. The frame gives beneath it and bows inwards, wrapping it in folds of greasy material. Index continues his charge and stands over the thrashing beast. He gores at it, tearing chunks from it, rips it apart. Its arms fall by its sides and the bird skulls open and do not close.
Bronze John trots over and Lesley embraces him. She examines the wound in his side, but it is superficial. The tough flesh of the scar has borne the brunt of it.
Lesley leans against the tiger’s flank, her vision blurring.
Bronze John supports her until the light-headedness passes.
She looks across the green. There is Bismuth, stomping on the remains of a couple of Toyceivers over by the bear’s cage. And John is back. Bix comes running around the corner of the hospital, sees him and barks. He races over, tail thrashing and leaps onto the back of the Toyceiver John is wrestling with. It is a big thing, more grey than white, and swings huge clubbed fists around John’s head. He ducks out of the way and as Bix hits the thing low in the back, he steps in and kicks its stumpy legs away from under it. It flops to the ground and John drives something small and sharp into the back of its head.
Lesley can see the others moving through the wreckage. Eliot looks up and waves. He and Alex are in their late teens now and are both fine young men. She can’t see Chloe or Anna, but her sister is probably tending to their father, and Chloe is different to them all. She doesn’t fight like they do. She is only seven, but what she can do is far more powerful.
Alex and Eliot come over.
“You ok?” Eliot asks. He strokes Bronze John under the chin.
Lesley nods. “I think that bastard just broke my breast bone. Feels like a horse has kicked me. I’ll live. What you got there?”
The lads hold up rectangular petrol cans.
“Found them in the cricket pavilion,” Alex says.
“Nice work,” says Lesley.
The boys laugh and head off to the edge of the green where they begin dousing everything with fuel. They slop it over the sides and in through the doors of the trailers and spew it over the filthy straw matting inside the bear’s cage.
Jon Index comes over. He is just a man again. Lesley thinks he is incredibly handsome. He smiles and his blue eyes sparkle. Lesley reddens and smiles back. She doesn’t see Jon Index very often. None of them do. But he is there with them nonetheless, in the background, running the Night Clock. Always.
“How you doing, Lesley?” He asks. He touches her arm and Lesley thrills. She wants to hug him but the pain in her chest won’t let her. Shame.
“Thanks, Jon,” she says. “I thought I’d had it there.”
Jon reaches out and ruffles her hair. A curl drops over her eyes and she flicks it out of the way. The feel of his strong fingers in her hair and across the top of her head makes her knees feel weak but it makes her feel childlike, too, and oddly conflicted. She isn’t much older than Alex and Eliot after all.
They gather in the middle of the green in preparation to go back. Daniel has remained at the pub with Phil. They have decided one of them should always be with him while things are as they are. The rest of them will go and be with Doctor Mocking. They need to make plans with him and ascertain his wishes. Before gathering they had scouted the entire carnival to ensure they had killed everything. Rainscissor is dead and already starting to rot in its shroud of tent fabric but there is no sign of the other Autoscope it travels with. Morgoder is gone, if it had been here at all.
“I don’t sense it,” Index says as he gazes up at the front of the asylum.
“It’s not here,” Bismuth states. “You’d smell it.”
Index pulls out a silver Zippo lighter and flips open the lid. They can all smell the petrol as it soaks into the remains of the carnival. He thumbs the wheel and a wide yellow flame flutters in the breeze.
He tosses the lighter beneath the bear’s cage and they watch as the flames spread, igniting the caravans and trailers and half-constructed Uproar Contraptions. A thick runnel of fire races across the green and engulfs the remains of the tent and the monster tangled up in it. It stinks.
Index nods at Bismuth. The bearded giant takes a lever from his belt and spears it into the earth. He compresses the handle.
A Gantry opens in the middle of the ring of fire and they all go through.
NURSE MELT WATCHES the carnival burn.
She waits in the shelter of a juniper bush, her shredded knees planted in the earth beneath her bulk. She watches the Firmament Surgeons leave and waits for the Gantry to close. When she is certain they have gone she crawls out from beneath the bush and pulls herself across the road to the edge of the green. The tendons in her knees are gashed to ribbons and her lower legs drag and flop, insensible as bags of sand. One of her buckled shoes is gone.
Nurse Melt grits what remain of her rotten teeth and pulls herself up onto the green. Fire bakes at her and she feels her matted fringe crisp and burn off in acrid wisps. She reaches a fat, trembling hand into the blaze and pulls at something sheltered from the worst of it between two trailers. She yanks at it and it slides towards her through the mud.
Melt pulls herself up by the handles and throws a thigh over the crossbar. She fumbles with a cord beneath the seat and tugs it in her fist. The engine coughs, fires, and dies. Melt pulls the cord a
gain and it chops into life. The casing is hot and Melt wonders, in a deep recess where a nub of reason still remains, whether the small fuel tank will blow up beneath her, blasting shards of blazing metal up her fish-white mouldering arsehole. She wrenches the accelerator. The cloudbike shoots forward, the wooden frames of its wings catching against the sides of the trailers. Melt looks round. The wood and scabrous fabric covering the frames are starting to turn brown. If they catch fire that’s the end of her dear old bike.
Melt twists the throttle again and leans forward. The bike judders and lifts off the ground. Melt hoots.
Screaming, trailing smoke like a missile, Nurse Melt spirals up into the sky.
"I HAVEN’T WON a game since you came in,” Phil says.
Lenny smiles and salutes with the tip of his cue.
Daniel comes over. He has been outside, sitting with Les and his family in the sun. “Time to go, Phil,” he says.
Phil puts his cue on the table.
“Okay,” he says equably. He is starting to feel drowsy and fancies a lie down. Daniel takes his elbow and guides him around the pool table and out through the back of the pub. They go into the garden and cross the tidy square of lawn, past the still smoking barbecue, and stand at Les’s table. Les looks up.
“You off?” he says.
“Yes,” says Daniel. “It’s finished there.”
“Everyone okay?”
“Fine.”
“Great! Phil, you haven’t met my family. This is Charlotte, my lady.”
Phil smiles and holds out his hand. Charlotte shakes it. She is pretty, with long red hair and shrewd green eyes.
“Thank you for everything you do for Les,” she says.
Phil shrugs. He has no idea what she is talking about. He is starting to feel very tired. Charlotte laughs.
Two boys run up. “Our two,” Les says. He puts an arm around Charlotte’s waist and she puts her head on his shoulder. The boys have been back to the barbecue. Their mouths are salty and their fingers are sticky and their shirts bear the evidence of all manner of relishes. Phil thinks they are adorable. He would like to have sons like them one day.
“Hi, fellas,” he says. The boys hug him, a quick squeeze each, and run off to play.
“Great kids, Les,” Phil says.
Les stands up and comes around the bench. He takes both of Phil’s hands in his.
“I lost them all once,” he says in a quiet voice so that no one else will hear. “My illness. The voices. You helped give them back to me, Phil. I will always love you for that.” He surprises Phil by kissing him on the cheek, dry and fatherly, a take- care-on-your-journey kind of peck. Phil sees that Les has tears in his eyes.
“No problem,” he says. He turns to Daniel, eyebrows raised.
Daniel says, “Close your eyes, Phil.”
Les lets go of his hands and Phil closes his eyes.
He hears Daniel say, “You’ll always remember some of this, Phil. It’ll be like a dream you had as a boy. It’ll help when we need you. When the time comes. It’ll help you survive.”
Phil feels himself drifting and he puts his arms out to stop himself falling over.
THE ASYLUM WAS quiet. No one was about much before an early shift. The office workers and medical staff didn’t get in until around nine.
Phil strolled past the green and up to the main door. He could see the Christmas tree winking away in the foyer. It had been hard leaving Carol in bed this morning, curled up warm and naked beneath the duvet, but it had been wonderful waking up next to her and he was hopeful of more of the same later tonight. He had no idea where the relationship was heading but why worry about that now? Early days. He entered the foyer and headed down towards the wards, past the patients’ shop, which was locked up with its steel shutter. He turned right, walked past the dance hall and then went left beneath the sign for Kestrel ward.
This was going to be a long shift he thought, and yawned. He took hold of the heavy brass handle that let onto the ward and stopped. He felt light-headed. He closed his eyes and experienced a brief flashback to the dream he had had that night. He took his hand from the handle and glanced further along the corridor. It was still dark and the corrugated roof was a low, rippling slope into shadows. He remembered a door opening down there. There had been a man, calling him. And a pub, with heavenly ale. Phil licked his lips. Crusader.
He blinked and shook his head. He took the handle again, opened the door and walked onto Kestrel ward.
“Phil!” shouted Jase. Get your arse in here. Have you heard the news?”
Phil saw Jase standing in the nursing office. He was putting down the phone. He looked overjoyed, with the kind of prurient excitement only scandalous institutionalised gossip could induce.
“What?” said Phil as he crossed the day room and went into the office. A couple of the old boys were up already, smoking and drinking cups of tea. He shrugged off his jacket and put it on the top of a filing cabinet.
“One of the cleaners just found Mr Chard dead. Someone did him in last night. Bashed his head in with a tankard. And one of his boys, Lenny, is missing off Chase ward. What a fucking drama. Police’ll be all over this place in a minute.”
Phil was stunned. Hadn’t he seen the old shoe mender sitting at the bar in the social club last night? “What about you and Griff?” Phil asked. “You caught him good and proper.”
Jase shrugged. “Haven’t seen him,” he said. “And he don’t want to see me.” He flexed his hand, made a huge fist. Phil could see where the knuckles were raw.
“Anyway, go help Charlie with meds. We need to get these boys up. It’s Fun Day! Whoo-hoo.”
Phil laughed and went off to find Charlie.
Part Three
Roasting the Stymphalian Bird
"HOW’S THAT MATE of yours?” asked Dean Brazil.
Mickey Mitre stopped shovelling shit and leaned on his spade.
“Who, Barwise?” he said.
“Yeah. That Barwise.”
Mickey shook his head. “Terrible,” he said. He shook a Richmond from a battered pack and offered one to Dean.
“Cheers.” They lit their cigarettes from Mickey’s non-refillable Bic and stood puffing by the low stone wall of the pigsty.
“Terrible?”
“Yeah. Fuckin’ awful.”
Dean gazed down at the shit around his boots. It was garnished with half a pack’s worth of cigarette butts. He really couldn’t be arsed with this job Mickey had got for him. He wanted to get back to delivery work, but wouldn’t get his licence back for another year. He missed the fry-ups, the shop birds, the lunchtime pints.
“What’s wrong with the bloke?” Dean asked. “Ain’t he pleased to be out?”
“When I see him last night,” Mickey said, “he’s just sitting in his flat sayin’ he wishes he was dead. I mean, I know he’s done his time but they shouldn’t’ve just let him out like that. He’s a liability.”
“Seven years for doing his bird and that bloke in,” Dean reflected. “Should’ve got life. Don’t know how lucky he is. Couldn’t get him on it though, could they? Beak give him diminished whatsisname.”
“Responsibilities,” supplied Mickey.
“Yeah. That diminished responsibilities.”
“Reckoned he’d had some sort of breakdown. He’s never copped for it though. Denies it. He says it was a suicide pack. Trish just couldn’t live without him.”
“She left ’im.”
Mickey nodded, flicking his fag into the mud.
“And why would her bloke top ’imself? It’s not like he couldn’t live without Barwise, is it?”
“You should’ve been a lawyer, Dean.”
“I know,” said Dean, and resumed ploughing pigshit about until it was time to stop.
TREVENA SPENT THE afternoon writing up Chapel’s assessment. There was still a lot to go over with the man, mostly more recent history, but he wanted to get the gist of it down while it was still fresh in his mind.
It
wasn’t Trevena’s job to diagnose, but he was experienced enough to take a stab anyway, for his own amusement. Chapel had schizoid personality traits and co- morbid depression and anxiety. It was possible he was on the brink of something worse but it had a pseudo-psychotic feel, a personality-driven cover for his failures. There was a grandiosity about it that was less to do with illness and more to do with subconscious awareness of his frailty as a human being. His description of his childhood had been cold, aloof, and there had been no mention of significant relationships, apart from the almost dispassionate mention of a child. Still, Trevena wasn’t going to put that in his assessment. The shrinks got paid the big money to label people. It would help him dig in the right direction, though, when he spoke to Chapel again.
His phone rang.
“Phil Trevena.”
“Hi Phil. It’s Miles from Occupational Therapy.”
“Miles.”
“Just letting you know, that fella Andrew Chapel. He’s absconded.”
“What?”
“We were doing the Art Group and he just excused himself and walked off.”
“You didn’t try and stop him? There weren’t any nurses there?”
“He’s not on a Section, Phil. He came in voluntarily. He asked to attend the group and the ward let him. He’s an artist.” Miles was getting shirty.
“Yeah, but, what about a five four? One of the nurses could have detained him. He’s a massive risk.”
There was silence for a moment and then Miles said. “We were outside, Phil. Off the premises. Can’t detain someone if they’re off the ward.”
This time it was Trevena who paused. He leaned forward on his desk and squeezed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.
“What was he doing outside, Miles?”
Miles drew a breath. Trevena could hear it whistle through his lips.
“He wanted to look at the sculptures in the Relaxation Area. I thought it—”
