The last time she had been in London, the tubes had terrified her, with their crowds and labyrinthine lines. Now, she marched directly to the escalator for the Northern Line, ignoring the people who pushed past her in needless hurry. Some part of her seemed to know already exactly where she was heading.
The streets were empty around Catchurch Hill. No raucous crowds, no brightly lit bars. It was a quiet little corner of London, a place where it was easy to forget you were in the heart of a sleepless city. It was a cul-de-sac, used mainly by vehicles belonging to the residents. At the end of the street, beyond some black and gold painted iron bollards, the bulk of a gas-works rose ghost-like in the non-dark of the city night. Naked lime trees reared before it, promising that in warmer seasons, the power plant would not seem so imposing. The street did have a slight rise to it, but could hardly be termed a hill. Its lights were ornamental, and the four storey houses, which ran down the right side of the road, had an almost continental appearance: wrought iron balconies girdled it on every floor and it was plastered a pale pink. Ivy seethed up the walls, gripping the curlicues of the balconies, where lanterns burned softly. On the other side of the street, bare magnolia trees in bud murmured of spring. Sheila thought of summer evenings, and what it would be like to own one of these apartments, to sit outside in the warm air among sighing trees, sipping icy wine, with music drifting out into the perfumed dusk. She could almost see herself in that situation, as if she’d already experienced it, or would.
All of the residences were apartments, but which one was Francesca’s? Sheila became aware of her throbbing feet, and also the fact that she hadn’t felt or seen any spirit presences since she’d boarded the train back home. Her vision had been wholly focused on the search, eclipsing all other thoughts and impressions. She stared up at the curtained windows. Too close now. Hard to tell. She dug into her coat pocket and took out the tissue and with one hand, flung it up into the air. It seemed the scrap of crumpled paper would fall immediately back to earth, but then a breeze took hold of it, and it was swinging up and up, spread out like a white leaf, until it came to rest among the dead twigs of an ornamental shrub that stood in a pot, decorated with dragons, on a balcony of the third floor.
There must be security locks, Sheila thought, and sure enough a dimly-lit intercom system was placed next to each front door. She went to examine the list of residents of the building she was interested in. Most were listed only by their surnames, without even an initial to give a clue. Green, Chevalier, Elstone, Buckingham. None of them seemed to fit Francesca. But she could be wrong? A disorientating moment of panic spun through her. What if she was in the wrong place entirely? The list of names blurred before her, and then she saw it. Flat 7. On the third floor. Sancha. That was it. She just knew it.
Sheila reached out and touched the plastic covering the name, then pressed her finger against the buzzer button. When Francesca answered, what would she say? Now, her adventure was real. She would have to explain herself.
There was no response at first. Perhaps Francesca wasn’t at home. She pressed the button again. After a few seconds, she heard the intercom click into life, but there was no voice at the other end, just the rushing of empty wires. ‘Hello,’ Sheila said. ‘Ms Sancha?’
There was still no response. Sheila leaned forward and pressed her cheek against the intercom, willing her intention into the mechanism. Answer me, answer me… There was nothing but the hiss, and a sense of waiting, of observation. Then, the front door clicked too, and Sheila realised its lock was open.
Quickly, she went through it, afraid she was being offered only a fragment of time during which to enter the building. She found herself in a plain hallway of dark grey stone. Two black doors clearly led to ground floor flats. Against one of the walls, a large dead yucca plant listed in an earthenware pot, but otherwise the hall-way was unadorned, disappointing. The steps leading up to the next floors were concrete with a functional metal hand-rail. Sheila began her climb. Her heels clicked dryly against the stone.
On the third floor landing, the ceiling lights were set into the plaster and covered with metal grilles. A corridor yawned before her, disappearing into darkness, because a couple of the bulbs had blown. Sheila did not like the atmosphere. It seemed polluted somehow, or perhaps essentially unclean. There was an emptiness to it; loneliness too. She couldn’t hear a single sound of human habitation. Shivering, she made her way to the door of flat 7. The tap of her heels seemed dull against the bare floor. The building seemed like a representation of Francesca herself: decorative on the outside but bare and cold within.
There was a small spy-hole in the centre of the door. Sheila approached it cautiously. Was Francesca looking out at her now? She placed her hand against the door, then knocked. She could hear nothing, aware only of an air of desolation. She knocked again, and again, then tried the handle. It was unlocked. Sheila froze, afraid of opening the door. What might she find beyond? Someone was in there, because someone had activated the intercom and the door mechanism downstairs. That someone might not be Francesca. Francesca might be…
Sheila opened the door and flung it wide. It took a moment for her senses to register what she saw. The door opened directly onto a large living room. The windows must be open, for it seemed to be full of a whirling wind that had sucked up tatters of paper and scraps of cloth, creating a tornado of debris. But the room was derelict. Sheila could see that through the maelstrom. The plaster had fallen from the walls in places, revealing a skeleton of wooden slats. There was no furniture, just bare brown drabness. No-one lived here. No-one had lived here for a long time.
She felt compelled to step over the threshold. What did this mean? Was she seeing reality now, or something else? She had lived with strange phenomena all her life. This was no different. She just had to interpret it. The wind snatched at her hair and flapped the skirt of her coat. The air smelled acrid, and it was very cold.
How dark the room was. Shadows swirled and spun amid the litter circling in the wind. As Sheila observed, the shadows coagulated to form a figure in the centre of the room. At once the scene before her became flooded with brightness, bleaching out like an over-exposed photograph. The figure was its dark core. Francesca. Her body was erect and rigid; the eye of the storm. Her hair was a writhing halo around her head and she was wrapped in a black cloak or sheet. One white hand was visible where she clutched the cloth at her throat and her face was startlingly pale. The red gash of her mouth seemed painted onto the black and white image. Her eyes were black holes, open wide.
Sheila stared at this vision, involuntarily holding her breath. Francesca’s full lips opened up. It looked as if she was screaming, but there was no sound. There could be no doubt now. This was not the image of a living woman. As the red mouth worked noiselessly, the lips became engorged, their colour bleeding from red to blue. A series of bright flares dazzled Sheila’s eyes, like the acidic splash of a camera flash. She glimpsed broken images, in black and white, what she assumed were freeze frames of the past. A hotel room. A man. Francesca’s wide eyes. Furniture falling. A struggle. But when? In the past? Recently? Soon?
Sheila felt as if the images were crowding in upon her, until she would be crushed beneath their weight. She had to take a step backwards into the hallway, and the door slammed shut immediately in her face. She was held in a caul of silence; there was no hint of the chaos beyond the door. For a few moments, she stood motionless in shock, then began to back slowly away down the corridor. She heard a sound of a woman’s voice, speaking low and quickly. It came through the walls of the flat opposite Francesca’s. A domestic dispute or a heated debate. She passed the door to flat 8, which hung open. It too was derelict. There was no-one there.
Sheila fled the building, out into the night. The stars wheeled crazily over-head and the gas-works pumped like a bellows. Spirits fled in scraps of mist through the branches of the trees, wailing in torment. Litter pursued her out of Catchurch Hill into the main street beyond. Traffic fl
ashed past too fast; she could see only the coloured blurs of their tail and head lights. She knew where she had to go, what she must do.
As she marched back to the nearest tube station, her feet were bleeding in their high, spiky heels. Her mouth was bleeding red lipstick. All she could see in her mind was the wide expanse of mirror in the ladies’ rest room of Euston Station. She was compelled to return there, hoping that by going back to the beginning, she would somehow acquire more information, answers.
By the time she reached Euston, Sheila was surprised at how late it was. Perhaps she had stood, transfixed, in the strange apartment for longer than she’d thought. Had that really been Francesca’s home? The experience was blurred in her mind now. It didn’t seem real.
Two women came out of the rest room as she pushed her way through the turn-stile. Inside, she was relieved to find it empty. This time, there were no shadows to distract her.
Before she turned to face the mirror, Sheila experienced a moment of pure fear. She could turn back now, abandon this ridiculous obsession. Her life waited for her - grey, temperate and safe - at the end of a line. If she followed this through, there would be no going back.
Sheila turned round. The room in the mirror looked larger than reality, an endless tiled corridor, a clinical representation of Hell. The first thing she saw in her reflection was the red of her lips, then she realised the face was not hers, and that it was Francesca looking back at her. Her eyes were steady, full of knowledge, yet hooded. The mirror was a veil between the worlds of the dead and the living, and the realm of the dead lay beyond the glass.
With business-like economy of movement, Sheila delved into her pocket and removed the lipstick. Thoughtfully, almost reverently, she removed its cap.
It was then she became aware that someone else had come out of a cubicle behind her. Another woman stood next to her, dragging a brush through her drab hair. The woman caught Sheila’s eye in the mirror. Sheila’s hand froze half-way to her face, her fingers curled around the bullet of brilliant red lip-stick. Tightly, she smiled. Pity. A moment of it. The other woman withered in its beam. Then, Sheila focused in upon herself and pressed the waxy colour against her mouth. When she had finished, she took the old tissue from her pocket, and pressed it to her mouth, then she dropped the kissed paper onto the floor, didn’t even look at it. For a moment, she pouted at herself, then frowned and applied another layer of colour.
Francesca smiled back at her from the mirror. Sheila leaned forward to press her mouth against the glass and it seemed as if Francesca dipped towards her to accept the kiss. When Sheila drew away, she saw only her own reflection looking back at her, the mark of her lips and also the surprised expression of the woman beside her. I was her, once, Sheila thought.
Perhaps the other woman might have lingered, waited to pick up the tissue, kiss the glass, but she hurriedly stuffed her hair-brush into a shoulder bag and almost ran from the room. Sheila smiled to herself. She saw, in the mirror, a woman of medium height, with soft, fair hair, whose square face was not pretty, but strong and striking. She looked as if she’d escaped from a ‘Thirties film with her raincoat collar up around her ears.
Sheila now had all of Francesca’s knowledge. It no longer mattered whether she had lived in the past or very recently, or whether she had lived at all.
The woman in the mirror. She is a ghost of life, like clothes hanging in a wardrobe, devoid of feeling or essence. The body, the feelings, the depth, stand before her in the world of the living. Now they are one. She is on her way somewhere, urgently. She might not come back.
Sheila had business to finish. She put her lipstick back into her pocket and walked out of the station to an assignation. Her feet would lead her there, in their high, spiky shoes. The future in the lip-stick print had been hers, but now she had kissed another future over it, and the outcome would be different. Her hands were strong and steady, deep in her raincoat pockets
Story History
The stories in this collection have a very loose angelic theme. Some are set in the worlds of my novels – Wraeththu, Magravandias, and the Grigori. Most were inspired by the legends of angels and fallen angels and associated mythology.
Paragenesis
I was asked to contribute a story to James O’Barr’s anthology, ‘The Crow: Shattered Lives and Broken Dreams’, published by Del Ray in 1998. The main theme had to be based around vengeance. The story didn’t have to be set in the Crow universe, so I decided to write the Creation Myth of Wraeththu. This is the story of how Thiede was created and his unwitting inception of the new androgynous race. The Wraeththu themselves were originally inspired by angelic legends, specifically the idea that angels could be either or both genders. This was mixed with alchemical ideas and eventually, brewed in the alembic of my imagination, gave rise to the world of Wraeththu.
The Law of Being
This piece originally appeared in the ‘Euro Temps’ collection (Roc 1992), edited by Neil Gaiman and Alex Stewart. This anthology was a follow up to ‘Temps’ for which I wrote ‘The College Spirit’. ‘The Law of Being’, however, is far darker in mood than the previous story.
There are certain motifs and archetypes that appear regularly in my writing, and the doomed prophet is one of them. Emory Patrick is also Resenence Jeopardy (from Sign for the Sacred). The story explores the concept of celebrity, in this case both a religious and a musical one. I’ve noticed that people often elevate musicians to a kind of quasi-spiritual status, when their words are treated like the outpourings of a guru-sage. But what of the person behind the words and the flamboyant act? Are they real or not? Or can we somehow make them real? Is Emory Patrick a paranorm, a charismatic charlatan or a messiah? These were the concepts behind this story, and as usual the characters took over and had their own tale to tell.
The Green Calling
I seem to run into trouble with my gender politics, because ‘The Green Calling’ was another example of a fairly feminist editor being offended by the content. This story, in one way, examines the concept of ageing and what people feel about it, women in particular. The editor who read this story didn’t like it at all and said that no women would ever think or talk that way. This amused me immensely because a lot of the lines in this story had been taken from real life conversations with friends, when we’d been discussing the subject. So I know for a fact that women do think and talk this way! The discussions had actually inspired me to write the story. As in another similar case, with the story ‘Priest of Hands’ (that eventually developed into the novel Sign for the Sacred), ‘Interzone’ magazine came to the rescue and accepted it for publication.
Reading this piece again now, when I am more sanguine about the ravages of time, I do think the piece is quite savage and brutal. It’s like a rant against the temporary nature of the human vehicle. It was written when I – and my friends - first began the notice the changes that had begun to take place in our bodies as the years advanced. As women, we’re supposed to accept this situation gracefully and quietly, but none of us felt like that. We were, to put it mildly, resentful. ‘The Green Calling’ is a female snarl against the tyranny of time.
Angel of the Hate Wind
This story first appeared in ‘Destination Unknown’, edited by Pete Crowther, published by White Wolf, in 1997. Sometimes, when I begin to write a story the narrator will just spring to life with a strong voice of their own, speaking authoritatively about their world, as if it has existed for eternity. Such was the case with this piece – similar in fact to ‘The Time She Became’, which will appear in another collection. As with many of my stories, I felt that here was a world ready and waiting to be visited time and again, and which I could go back to in the future when further stories would await me. As yet, I haven’t had the time or the specific inspiration to return to this particular world, but the story does remain one of my favourite pieces and I think one of my strongest.
The Feet, They Dance
Again written in 1997, this was a stor
y that was originally written for a gay themed fantasy anthology, but didn’t make the final selection. Eventually it appeared in my story collection, ‘The Oracle Lips’, published by Stark House in 1999. The piece was inspired by all the research I’d been doing for the Grigori trilogy. The story involves a rogue Nephilim deity called Sin-na’el – wholly fictional. I came across so much intriguing material during my research, and a lot of it didn’t make it into the Grigori novels, so several of my stories written during this period include the unused ideas.
One thing about this story, which I acknowledge is rather unlikely, is that a physical anthropologist attached to a museum might have mystical leanings, or be affected by an exhibit in the way I describe. In my experience, those who study ancient cultures academically have the least romantic notions about them. I discovered this quite painfully when approaching Egyptologists for information while researching a book on Egyptian magic. So perhaps Grigor in this story is wishful thinking on my part.
A Change of Season
This story was written for the Midnight Rose anthology ‘The Weerde’ (1992). The Weerde were a race of shape-shifters, hidden among humanity. Later, in a much reworked form, this piece became the opening chapters of the first Grigori novel, ‘Stalking Tender Prey’. As I was writing the story, I knew there was more to it than the constraints of the short form allowed. I can see novels in many of the short pieces I write, but in this case, the ideas became reality and I was able to expand upon the original version. I’d always wanted to write a novel about the fallen angels in a modern setting, and ‘A Change of Season’ was perfect for the beginning of the book. Again, this was published in ‘The Oracle Lips’ collection.
How Enlightenment Came to the Tower
This story was originally written with a male protagonist, but one of my writing advisors at the time suggested I should change it to female in order to try and sell it. This was the mid 80s when publications were less open to the idea of shifting or ambiguous sexuality. It did eventually appear in print in ‘Scheherazade’ magazine, quite a few years after it had been written, and later appeared in Meisha Merlin’s ‘Three Heralds of the Storm’. I’ve since re-edited the story, restoring the protagonist to his original gender. This piece was written during the time I was writing the first Wraeththu trilogy.
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