The Forever Man

by Eoin Colfer

  ‘What are you?’ Riley shouted at him. And then again: ‘ What are you?’

  Garrick cleared his throat. ‘I am death, son. Weren’t you always proclaiming it to any lawman that would give the time of day to a ragamuffin like yourself? Funny that, because I am the law here, sent from God to weed out witches and their familiars.’

  Riley righted himself an inch and heard a cable sing. ‘What class of a being are you, is what I mean.’

  Garrick, ever the showman, took his sweet time answering, rising silently like a shadow drawn on a string and sashaying into the light. He was a macabre sight to behold: all bones and marble flesh, like a famished statue of his previous self. He turned side-on and performed a casual side shuffle to the altar, then executed a low bow from the waist, his knuckles scraping the floor.

  ‘I told you, my boy,’ he said, projecting his voice in his best West End posh. ‘I am the Forever Man.’

  It was impressive and it was ridiculous and it was pure theatre, and Riley found that the whole performance stirred a pot of feelings in him that he’d just this minute been thinking was empty.

  I am terrified.

  Garrick saw this and it pleased him, for this entire situation was a new wrinkle in his time. He plonked the length of himself down on the front pew.

  ‘Don’t be flinching, son,’ he advised. ‘For the Cat’s Collar is on a hair trigger, so she is. Two hair triggers, to be precise. I suppose it really should be round the neck of your Injun princess; after all, she is the one with cat’s eyes.’

  Garrick leaned forward and plucked one of the collar’s strings so that it twanged, then laughed. ‘That, my son, is a G. The fake triggers are tuned as a violin. I would force the captives to play the Alleluia. If they reached the end, then the collar would spring open and God had liberated them. One false note and they would end their own lives and prove themselves Satan’s spawn. Now there, Riley, is entertainment at its purest.’

  Cat’s Collar.

  Riley didn’t need an explanation that witches’ familiars were often cats and believed to be capable of taking human form – and so they would be held in restraints like this one and then forced to fiddle till they died. He also did not need to be told that, in all likelihood, none of the accused had ever survived the device.

  The latest in a series of horrors visited by Albert Garrick on humanity.

  ‘It should amuse you to know that I designed the Cat’s Collar for you. Not for you in specific, you understand. But with you in mind, for you were the best, most natural escapologist I ever saw, apart from myself. So, thinks I to myself, Albert Garrick, you’d best be coming up with something that even the boy Riley could not wriggle from. For that would be the height of embarrassment, would it not? To have a familiar slip the noose, as it were.’

  This did not amuse Riley one jot. For it made his predicament all the more hopeless.

  ‘I should elucidate,’ said Garrick. ‘Fill you in on things. For you are no doubt puzzled as to –’ the illusionist flapped his hands – ‘all of this. Everything that has transpired.’

  Riley was happy to let Garrick talk while he studied this Cat’s Collar and determined for himself whether it was as escape-proof as Garrick claimed. Maybe he should even charm the devil a little.

  ‘Please, master,’ he said, slipping easily into his old supplicant’s tone. ‘Explain these miracles.’

  Garrick laughed again, having himself a fine old time. ‘Oho! Master now, is it? And miracles with it. None of your weaselling, my boy. I talk to hear myself talk. For the pleasure of my own voice. So none of your slippery ways, if you please, or I might play for myself a tune on that there collar.’

  ‘Tell me then, devil,’ spat Riley. ‘Hear your own voice ring out.’

  Garrick clapped his hands. ‘Excellent. The rat shows his true colours.’

  He patted his waistcoat pockets for cigarettes and matches. Finding both, he fiddled with a silver box until a certain cigarette took his fancy above the others and he extracted it. ‘These made the trip with me. The wormhole giveth and taketh.’

  Garrick struck his match and drew in smoke, exhaled to the ceiling and then told his tale – and all the while Riley plotted his escape, as he generally had whenever his master waxed.

  ‘It was something of a turn-up when you and that American slip of a girl turfed me into the wormhole without so much as a bullseye to light my way and little hope of ever feeling the sun on my face again.’ Garrick’s lips drooped, a clownish grimace. ‘How desolate I was. But then says I to meself: Buck up, Alby. You ain’t dead yet, so there is hope. And I remembered a quote from an old Chinaman, which ran something like Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. And, having not a friend in the universe, I kept the wormhole close, until it became a part of me, but not so as I would dissolve entirely and become a part of it, if you catch my drift. I held on to my soul, if that’s what you want to call it. Bound it up in a skin of hatred.’

  He pointed the cigarette at Riley. ‘Hatred for you, my boy, if you want to hear the harsh truth of the matter. For it was you, my own squire, who betrayed his benefactor. After an age, or a moment – for there is no actual time in the wormhole – I happened upon a rift that did not close with the same speed as Charles Smart’s manufactured portals, and so out I shoots into this godforsaken, blighted land without a decent playhouse for miles. Albert Garrick in the blooming countryside, how’s about that? Without so much as a seel-voo-play or howjadoo. And I arrived just in time to take a pork-sticker in the heart. Right through the ticker. And that was it for Mister Garrick, thinks I. Lying there in the mud, a sword in my chest, dying in dank ignorance.’

  Garrick took advantage of this natural dramatic break to stand and squash his cigarette beneath his boot heel. ‘But no. It weren’t so. Albert Garrick lived.’

  You don’t say, thought Riley but did not say it, for now he was convinced that it was the devil himself who recounted this tale and his terror had amplified to some never previously experienced level.

  ‘And, what ho, if Albert Garrick did not hop to his feet, sprightly as a Russian tumbler, and pull that blade out of his own chest and stick it into his attacker’s. Tit for tat, says I, but he heard me not for he was stone dead.’

  Riley had often declared that Garrick could not be killed, but it was hyperbole, for what he really meant was that Albert Garrick with his particular skills would be extremely difficult to kill; now it seemed he had been literally correct.

  Garrick is immortal now. Truly. And seems in better humour. Somehow sane.

  ‘I hardly blame the bumpkin for having a go, for had I not appeared from the air in a jumble of sparks? And his companion had informed me, before I rolled him into the marsh to lie with his friend, that they had mistaken me for a witch, as the town was blighted with the creatures and they had been dispatched to fetch the Witchfinder General. How delightful, thinks Alby to himself. What a novel way to make use of my talents. And so I lodged here for a spell as Witchfinder.’

  He winked at Riley to show his use of the word ‘spell’ had been intended as a little joke. ‘Quite the hit I was, my lad. Standing ovations every night, as it were. Rid the world of a few creatures into the bargain, as more had slipped from the rift than just myself. Horrible things. You wouldn’t believe it. And I was happy for a while. However, my boy, the rift’s call grew stronger every day and I knew it would have me back, but I would sooner dwell in the rookeries and slums of London town than go back in there where my very being would be forfeit. So, Albert Garrick moved on for himself and travelled the world.’

  Garrick paused in his telling. ‘On I lived and continued to live,’ he said after a moment. ‘Slings and arrows had a go at my person. Not to mention pestilence and plague, but I shrugged ’em all off. And time too. That weren’t nothing to me, for I am as the tunnel itself, without end. Oh, the things I’ve seen and done. The Americas, my boy. I was over there cutting a broad patch through Chevron Savano’s ancestors, wishing every
one was her. And China too, bringing out opium by the ton. Fortunes I made and lost, and not a fig did I care.’

  Garrick stooped to stroke Riley’s hair. ‘For shall I tell you something, son? It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Everything is life and death and blood and pestilence. All a fellow can do is take his amusement where he can. And for me, once I realized the tunnel would not let me pass on, I decided to dedicate myself to taking vengeance on you, boy, as a distraction. I will have my little games, you know.’

  Riley needed confirmation. ‘So, you can never be put six feet under?’

  Garrick’s expression might have darkened had his complexion allowed it; as it was, his features twisted. ‘Six feet under? Six feet? In Sicily I was buried in a crypt for decades by a band of Mafiosi. They took me for some class of ghoul when their musket shot failed to kill me. Grave robbers dug me up not a month ago. Can you imagine my frustration? My rage? I lay there howling at the stone, gnashing my teeth. After all that time and I almost missed my appointment. Not to mention that I missed witnessing my own marvellosity onstage. You might have died in some trivial manner without me there to have a hand in it.

  ‘But I lived just the same in spite of the appearance of my skin, which is brought about by a reaction between the wormhole’s particles and the silver I must constantly wear. And now fate has brought us here where all fear me, and my revenge can be more –’ Garrick paused now to choose his words – ‘more leisurely. And then I will move on once again, far away from the damned wormhole.’

  The entire rigmarole was so twisted and violent that it was somehow worthy of Albert Garrick, and Riley never doubted the story for a moment.

  The magician sat again on the low bench, crossing his booted legs at the ankles. ‘My first scheme failed to an extent because it grew too elaborate. I was caught up in the mechanics and failed to plan for audience interference, as it were. Little Miss Savano –’ Garrick wagged a finger at Riley and leered knowingly – ‘I saw it, you know. The gleam in your beadies. Puppy love, ain’t it? Forged in the fire of adventure and brought to bloom by the wormhole. You can thank Albert Garrick for that, for who was it if not me who brung you two together?’

  For this was the depth and breadth of Garrick’s hubris and pomposity – that he congratulated himself for introducing two friends whom he had plotted to murder for centuries.

  ‘But this new infatuation of yours will serve me well, son. For now, instead of forcing you to witness your so-called brother perish at my hands, I will force you to watch your Injun princess burn as a witch, before we see whether or not you can pluck your way out of the Cat’s Collar.’

  Garrick stretched creakily to his full height, slapping his knees on the way up. ‘Simple, ain’t it? Simple as jam.’

  Riley had enough steel in him for one little barb. ‘Simple as jam, less you touch Chevie. You touch her and yer gone into the wormhole, ain’t that so, master?’

  As soon as he said it, Riley realized that he should have kept his trap latched.

  ‘Right you are,’ said Garrick, instinctively rubbing a thick silver cuff bracelet on his wrist, where it was almost invisible against his skin. ‘By times the wormhole calls to me, loves me and hates me all at once, but the silver kept her at bay till now. But that accursed Timekey could have me swimming in foam, right enough.’

  He tapped Riley’s head. ‘My thanks to you for the reminder. It seems my very proximity is enough to light up that accursed device. So I will not lay a hand on your beloved. I will have my acolytes lash her to the pyre and the accursed Timekey can melt and run like tallow down the stake along with the meat on her bones.’

  With that, Garrick spun on his heel and left whistling a merry tune, which it took Riley a few bars to recognize as a music-hall favourite: ‘The Mad Butcher’.

  Fairbrother Isles. Geddit?

  Constable Godfrey Cryer was watching over the prisoner in the town jail, which was reserved for troublesome reprobates who could not be trusted in the House of Unfortunates; it was little more than a woodshed with a stout door and a single-barred window overlooking the square’s gibbet and stocks. The jail was situated within stumbling distance of the Huntings Tavern, which historically supplied most of its occupants, who, though Puritan, were not against a tankard or two of a hot afternoon – or a cold one for that matter. Indeed it was said among Mandrake’s locals that the jail’s wooden bench had absorbed enough beer dribblings over the years that any prisoners who went in sober came out drunk from the vapours.

  Since Cryer’s guard duty had commenced not one hour ago, three times already the constable had nipped round the back of the jail hut, where none could see him but the birds perched atop the town wall, for what could be described as either a gibbering weep or perhaps a gnashing series of sobs. Godfrey Cryer was enveloped in a whip-storm of emotions. Witchfinder Garrick had returned after a year-long absence, and this was what Cryer had wished for, had prayed for nightly, but now he felt that he was not worthy to serve Albert Garrick. Indeed, was not his lace collar being laundered this day? The very day that Master Garrick returns, his constable is found without a trimmed collar and with only his stout hat to proclaim him constable. What must Master Garrick think?

  I am crying, thought Cryer. Cryer the crier is crying. It is enough to make a man weep. Oh, they would laugh now; how they would guffaw. Jeronimo Woulfe and all the rest who secretly scoffed at the very existence of witchcraft.

  But now …

  But now there was a witch barricaded in the jail and none could deny it, for she had the eyes of a cat, and all had witnessed them flash gold.

  A demon dragged hissing from hell she was, without a doubt. Cryer’s chest swelled with a fierce pride in his master’s unprecedented accomplishment, but in that moment he felt the witch reach out to him, trying to exploit his sin, and Cryer’s very skin crawled.

  ‘Witch,’ he shouted, pounding on the wall behind him. ‘Begone. Leave my mind!’ Though, of course, the only thing stirring in Cryer’s mind was his own imagination.

  ‘I think you already left your mind, Crybaby,’ said a voice behind him. Godfrey Cryer whirled round with such speed that his hat spun a quarter revolution further than his person.

  ‘Nice look, Crybaby,’ said Fairbrother Isles, for it was he who had spoken then and now. ‘Hat all askew and such. Very constable-like.’

  Cryer straightened himself, his tunic and his hat. Then he scowled that he should be so compromised by such a fool as the African man, Isles, with his weirdness of speech and softness of head.

  It was true that Fairbrother Isles’s shaggy appearance did nothing to dispel the general opinion that he was indeed an arch-dolt and slave to the grog. For as long as Cryer could remember, the man had made his home in a shack in the fens. Though Cryer had never cared about the man enough to brave the abomination-infested bogs, he had no doubt that the shack reeked even more than Isles, which was a considerable amount.

  The duffer in question stood, or rather leaned insolently on the jail wall, with his customary smug grin skulking behind a spade of beard, which remained as dark as his own skin in spite of the rampant grey in the unkempt hair that was brushed back from his forehead. His boozy habits had set his frame running slightly to fat but he was a broad man nonetheless and Godfrey Cryer had often given secret thanks that Isles put up no resistance when thrown in the jail or stocks. He was a maudlin drunkard, given to rambling and fantastical weepy stories about ships that could fly or paintings that moved, or how much he missed creatures that he named hot dogs.

  ‘Isles,’ snapped Godfrey Cryer, ‘begone from here. Important matters are unfolding. Witchfinder Garrick has called an assembly and you’d best be attending.’

  Isles made no move to leave. ‘Witchfinder, whatever. I have a bone to pick with you, Cryer.’

  Godfrey Cryer cared for the man’s brazen tone not one bit nor his bone comment for that matter – Cryer was well aware that his skin’s tone and sheen lent him a bone-like quality.

&n
bsp; ‘Bone, is it? You have a bone to pick with me? That is not the way of things, Isles. A sot-pot does not pick bones with the town constable.’

  Cryer attempted to loom over Isles, but the man seemed of greater heft somehow on this day and even greater uncontriteness than was normal.

  ‘Yeah, well, this sot-pot is supposed to be spending the night in that jail, right? That was the deal. I was disorderly, so I spend a day in the stocks and a night in jail. You pronounced that, Cryer. You cried it loud and clear.’

  Another mocking of his name in a day overflowing with mockery was too much for the constable and he lashed out with the back of his hand, the very boniness of which he was sure would raise a pleasing welt on Isles’s cheek. But the blow did not strike flesh, only the wooden wall of the jail as Isles’s head moved sharply out of reach.

  Cryer cried out, which drew a chuckle from Isles even as he chopped the constable’s neck with the side of his hand in a move that would be known as the brachial stun by US marines in several hundred years. Cryer dropped like a falling log.

  Fairbrother Isles chuckled again and thought how long he had been waiting to knock Godfrey Cryer on his backside and how it had been well worth the wait.

  ‘Crybaby,’ he said, and stepped over the fallen constable to the jail door.

  Isles checked for any eyes that might be pointed his way, but the street was deserted.

  ‘All packed into the House of Unfortunates,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Attending the great weirdo Albert Garrick’s magic meeting.’ Isles did a little spooky face here that would have earned him a lashing had Cryer been conscious to witness it, but Cryer would not awaken for several minutes and it would be several more minutes before he had gathered the courage to admit to Witchfinder Garrick that he had failed in his duty. While it was true that the Witchfinder had no official authority in Mandrake, being a mere freelancer, Godfrey Cryer had witnessed Master Garrick perform such feats that he revered the self-proclaimed Witchfinder as he would Saint Peter himself.