by Neil Gaiman
But Newt had stuck with it the past few weeks because, well, horrified fascination had turned into horrified pity and then a sort of horrified affection. Shadwell had turned out to be about five feet high and wore clothes which, no matter what they actually were, always turned up even in your short-term memory as an old mackintosh. The old man may have had all his own teeth, but only because no one else could possibly have wanted them; just one of them, placed under the pillow, would have made the Tooth Fairy hand in its wand.
He appeared to live entirely on sweet tea, condensed milk, hand-rolled cigarettes, and a sort of sullen internal energy. Shadwell had a Cause, which he followed with the full resources of his soul and his Pensioner’s Concessionary Travel Pass. He believed in it. It powered him like a turbine.
Newton Pulsifer had never had a cause in his life. Nor had he, as far as he knew, ever believed in anything. It had been embarrassing, because he quite wanted to believe in something, since he recognized that belief was the lifebelt that got most people through the choppy waters of Life. He’d have liked to believe in a supreme God, although he’d have preferred a half-hour’s chat with Him before committing himself, to clear up one or two points. He’d sat in all sorts of churches, waiting for that single flash of blue light, and it hadn’t come. And then he’d tried to become an official Atheist and hadn’t got the rock-hard, self-satisfied strength of belief even for that. And every single political party had seemed to him equally dishonest. And he’d given up on ecology when the ecology magazine he’d been subscribing to had shown its readers a plan of a self-sufficient garden, and had drawn the ecological goat tethered within three feet of the ecological beehive. Newt had spent a lot of time at his grandmother’s house in the country and thought he knew something about the habits of both goats and bees, and concluded therefore that the magazine was run by a bunch of bib-overalled maniacs. Besides, it used the word “community” too often; Newt had always suspected that people who regularly used the word “community” were using it in a very specific sense that excluded him and everyone he knew.
Then he’d tried believing in the Universe, which seemed sound enough until he’d innocently started reading new books with words like Chaos and Time and Quantum in the titles. He’d found that even the people whose job of work was, so to speak, the Universe, didn’t really believe in it and were actually quite proud of not knowing what it really was or even if it could theoretically exist.
To Newt’s straightforward mind this was intolerable.
Newt had not believed in the Cub Scouts and then, when he was old enough, not in the Scouts either.
He was prepared to believe, though, that the job of wages clerk at United Holdings [Holdings] PLC, was possibly the most boring in the world.
This is how Newton Pulsifer looked as a man: if he went into a phone booth and changed, he might manage to come out looking like Clark Kent.
But he found he rather liked Shadwell. People often did, much to Shadwell’s annoyance. The Rajits liked him because he always eventually paid his rent and didn’t cause any trouble, and was racist in such a glowering, undirected way that it was quite inoffensive; it was simply that Shadwell hated everyone in the world, regardless of caste, color, or creed, and wasn’t going to make any exceptions for anyone.
Madame Tracy liked him. Newt had been amazed to find that the tenant of the other flat was a middle-aged, motherly soul, whose gentlemen callers called as much for a cup of tea and a nice chat as for what little discipline she was still able to exact. Sometimes, when he’d nursed a half pint of Guinness on a Saturday night, Shadwell would stand in the corridor between their rooms and shout things like “Hoor of Babylon!” but she told Newt privately that she’d always felt rather gratified about this even though the closest she’d been to Babylon was Torremolinos. It was like free advertising, she said.
She said she didn’t mind him banging on the wall and swearing during her seance afternoons, either. Her knees had been giving her gyp and she wasn’t always up to operating the table rapper, she said, so a bit of muffled thumping came in useful.
On Sundays she’d leave him a bit of dinner on his doorstep, with another plate over the top of it to keep it warm.
You couldn’t help liking Shadwell, she said. For all the good it did, though, she might as well be flicking bread pellets into a black hole.
Newt remembered the other cuttings. He pushed them across the stained desk.
“What are these?” said Shadwell, suspiciously.
“Phenomena,” said Newt. “You said to look for phenomena. There’s more phenomena than witches these days, I’m afraid.”
“Anyone bin shootin’ hares wi’ a silver bullet and next day an old crone in the village is walkin’ wi’ a limp?” Shadwell said hopefully.
“I’m afraid not.”
“Any cows droppin’ dead after some woman has looked at ’em?”
“No.”
“What is it, then?” said Shadwell. He shuffled across to the sticky brown cupboard and pulled out a tin of condensed milk.
“Odd things happening,” said Newt.
He’d spent weeks on this. Shadwell had really let the papers pile up. Some of them went back for years. Newt had quite a good memory, perhaps because in his twenty-three years very little had happened to fill it up, and he had become quite expert on some very esoteric subjects.
“Seems to be something new every day,” said Newt, flicking through the rectangles of newsprint. “Something weird has been happening to nuclear power stations, and no one seems to know what it is. And some people are claiming that the Lost Continent of Atlantis has risen.” He looked proud of his efforts.
Shadwell’s penknife punctured the condensed milk tin. There was the distant sound of a telephone ringing. Both men instinctively ignored it. All the calls were for Madame Tracy anyway and some of them were not intended for the ear of man; Newt had conscientiously answered the phone on his first day, listened carefully to the question, said “Marks and Spencer’s 100% Cotton Y-fronts, actually,” and had been left with a dead receiver.
Shadwell sucked deeply. “Ach, that’s no’ proper phenomena,” he said. “Can’t see any witches doing that. They’re more for the sinking o’ things, ye ken.”
Newt’s mouth opened and shut a few times.
“If we’re strong in the fight against witchery we can’t afford to be sidetracked by this style o’ thing,” Shadwell went on. “Haven’t ye got anything more witchcrafty?”
“But American troops have landed on it to protect it from things,” moaned Newt. “A nonexistent continent … ”
“Any witches on it?” said Shadwell, showing a spark of interest for the first time.
“It doesn’t say,” said Newt.
“Ach, then it’s just politics and geography,” said Shadwell dismissively.
Madame Tracy poked her head around the door. “Coo-ee, Mr. Shadwell,” she said, giving Newt a friendly little wave. “A gentleman on the telephone for you. Hallo, Mr. Newton.”
“Awa’ wi’ ye, harlot,” said Shadwell, automatically.
“He sounds ever so refined,” said Madame Tracy, taking no notice. “And I’ll be getting us a nice bit of liver for Sunday.”
“I’d sooner sup wi’ the De’el, wumman.”
“So if you’d let me have the plates back from last week it’d be a help, there’s a love,” said Madame Tracy, and tottered unsteadily back on three-inch heels to her flat and whatever it was that had been interrupted.
Newt looked despondently at his cuttings as Shadwell went out, grumbling, to the phone. There was one about the stones of Stonehenge moving out of position, as though they were iron filings in a magnetic field.
He was vaguely aware of one side of a telephone conversation.
“Who? Ah. Aye. Aye. Ye say? Wha’ class o’ thing wud that be? Aye. Just as you say, sor. And where is this place, then—?”
But mysteriously moving stones wasn’t Shadwell’s cup of tea or, rather, tin of milk
.
“Fine, fine,” Shadwell reassured the caller. “We’ll get onto it right awa’. I’ll put my best squad on it and report success to ye any minute, I ha’ no doubt. Goodbye to you, sor. And bless you too, sor.” There was the ting of a receiver going back on the hook, and then Shadwell’s voice, no longer metaphorically crouched in deference, said, “‘Dear boy’! Ye great Southern pansy.”27
He shuffled back into the room, and then stared at Newt as if he had forgotten why he was there.
“What was it ye was goin’ on about?” he said.
“All these things that are happening—” Newt began.
“Aye.” Shadwell continued to look through him while thoughtfully tapping the empty tin against his teeth.
“Well, there’s this little town which has been having some amazing weather for the last few years,” Newt went on helplessly.
“What? Rainin’ frogs and similar?” said Shadwell, brightening up a bit.
“No. It just has normal weather for the time of year.”
“Call that a phenomena?” said Shadwell. “I’ve seen phenomenas that’d make your hair curl, laddie.” He started tapping again.
“When do you remember normal weather for the time of year?” said Newt, slightly annoyed. “Normal weather for the time of year isn’t normal, Sergeant. It has snow at Christmas. When did you last see snow at Christmas? And long hot Augusts? Every year? And crisp autumns? The kind of weather you used to dream of as a kid? It never rained on November the Fifth and always snowed on Christmas Eve?”
Shadwell’s eyes looked unfocused. He paused with the condensed milk tin halfway to his lips.
“I never used to dream when I was a kid,” he said quietly.
Newt was aware of skidding around the lip of some deep, unpleasant pit. He mentally backed away.
“It’s just very odd,” he said. “There’s a weatherman here talking about averages and norms and microclimates and things like that.”
“What’s that mean?” said Shadwell.
“Means he doesn’t know why,” said Newt, who hadn’t spent years on the littoral of business without picking up a thing or two. He looked sidelong at the Witchfinder Sergeant.
“Witches are well known for affecting the weather,” he prompted. “I looked it up in the Discouverie.”
Oh God, he thought, or other suitable entity, don’t let me spend another evening cutting newspapers to bits in this ashtray of a room. Let me get out in the fresh air. Let me do whatever is the WA’s equivalent of going waterskiing in Germany.
“It’s only forty miles away,” he said tentatively. “I thought I could just sort of nip over there tomorrow. And have a look around, you know. I’ll pay my own petrol,” he added.
Shadwell wiped his upper lip thoughtfully.
“This place,” he said, “it wouldna be called Tadfield, would it?”
“That’s right, Mr. Shadwell,” said Newt. “How did you know that?”
“Wonder what the Southerners is playing at noo?” said Shadwell under his breath.
“Weeell,” he said, out loud. “And why not?”
“Who’ll be playing, Sergeant?” said Newt.
Shadwell ignored him. “Aye. I suppose it can’t do any harm. Ye’ll pay yer ane petrol, ye say?”
Newt nodded.
“Then ye’ll come here at nine o’ the clock in the morning,” he said, “afore ye go.”
“What for?” said Newt.
“Yer armor o’ righteousness.”
JUST AFTER NEWT HAD LEFT the phone rang again. This time it was Crowley, who gave approximately the same instructions as Aziraphale. Shadwell took them down again for form’s sake, while Madame Tracy hovered delightedly behind him.
“Two calls in one day, Mr. Shadwell,” she said. “Your little army must be marching away like anything!”
“Ach, awa’ wi’ ye, ye murrain plashed berrizene,” muttered Shadwell, and slammed the door. Tadfield, he thought. Och, weel. So long as they paid up on time …
Neither Aziraphale or Crowley ran the Witchfinder Army, but they both approved of it, or at least knew that it would be approved of by their superiors. So it appeared on the list of Aziraphale’s agencies because it was, well, a Witchfinder Army, and you had to support anyone calling themselves witchfinders in the same way that the U.S.A. had to support anyone calling themselves anti-communist. And it appeared on Crowley’s list for the slightly more sophisticated reason that people like Shadwell did the cause of Hell no harm at all. Quite the reverse, it was felt.
Strictly speaking, Shadwell didn’t run the WA either. According to Shadwell’s pay ledgers it was run by Witchfinder General Smith. Under him were Witchfinder Colonels Green and Jones, and Witchfinder Majors Jackson, Robinson, and Smith (no relation). Then there were Witchfinder Majors Saucepan, Tin, Milk, and Cupboard, because Shadwell’s limited imagination had been beginning to struggle at this point. And Witchfinder Captains Smith, Smith, Smith, and Smythe and Ditto. And five hundred Witchfinder Privates and Corporals and Sergeants. Many of them were called Smith, but this didn’t matter because neither Crowley nor Aziraphale had ever bothered to read that far. They simply handed over the pay.
After all, both lots put together only came to around £60 a year.
Shadwell didn’t consider this in any way criminal. The army was a sacred trust, and a man had to do something. The old ninepences weren’t coming in like they used to.
Saturday
IT WAS VERY EARLY on Saturday morning, on the last day of the world, and the sky was redder than blood.
The International Express delivery man rounded the corner at a careful thirty-five miles an hour, shifted down to second, and pulled up on the grass verge.
He got out of the van, and immediately threw himself into a ditch to avoid an oncoming lorry that had barreled around the bend at something well in excess of eighty miles an hour.
He got up, picked up his glasses, put them back on, retrieved his parcel and clipboard, brushed the grass and mud from his uniform, and, as an afterthought, shook his fist at the rapidly diminishing lorry.
“Shouldn’t be allowed, bloody lorries, no respect for other road users, what I always say, what I always say, is remember that without a car, son, you’re just a pedestrian too … ”
He climbed down the grassy verge, clambered over a low fence, and found himself beside the river Uck.
The International Express delivery man walked along the banks of the river, holding the parcel.
Farther down the riverbank sat a young man dressed all in white. He was the only person in sight. His hair was white, his skin chalk pale, and he sat and stared up and down the river, as if he were admiring the view. He looked like how Victorian Romantic poets looked just before the consumption and drug abuse really started to cut it.
The International Express man couldn’t understand it. I mean, in the old days, and it wasn’t that long ago really, there had been an angler every dozen yards along the bank; children had played there; courting couples had come to listen to the splish and gurgle of the river, and to hold hands, and to get all lovey-dovey in the Sussex sunset. He’d done that with Maud, his missus, before they were married. They’d come here to spoon and, on one memorable occasion, fork.
Times changed, reflected the delivery man.
Now white and brown sculptures of foam and sludge drifted serenely down the river, often covering it for yards at a stretch. And where the surface of the water was visible it was covered with a molecules-thin petrochemical sheen.
There was a loud whirring as a couple of geese, thankful to be back in England again after the long, exhausting flight across the Northern Atlantic, landed on the rainbow-slicked water, and sank without trace.
Funny old world, thought the delivery man. Here’s the Uck, used to be the prettiest river in this part of the world, and now it’s just a glorified industrial sewer. The swans sink to the bottom, and the fishes float on the top.
Well, that’s progress for you. You can�
��t stop progress.
He had reached the man in white.
“’Scuse me, sir. Party name of Chalky?”
The man in white nodded, said nothing. He continued to gaze out at the river, following an impressive sludge and foam sculpture with his eyes.
“So beautiful,” he whispered. “It’s all so damn beautiful.”
The delivery man found himself temporarily devoid of words. Then his automatic systems cut in. “Funny old world isn’t it and no mistake I mean you go all over the world delivering and then here you are practically in your own home so to speak, I mean I was born and bred ’round here, sir, and I’ve been to the Mediterranean, and to Des O’ Moines, and that’s in America, sir, and now here I am, and here’s your parcel, sir.”
Party name of Chalky took the parcel, and took the clipboard, and signed for the parcel. The pen developed a leak as he did so, and his signature obliterated itself as it was written. It was a long word, and it began with a P, and then there was a splodge, and then it ended in something that might have been—ence and might have been—ution.
“Much obliged, sir,” said the delivery man.
He walked back along the river, back toward the busy road where he had left his van, trying not to look at the river as he went.
Behind him the man in white opened the parcel. In it was a crown—a circlet of white metal, set with diamonds. He gazed at it for some seconds, with satisfaction, then put it on. It glinted in the light of the rising sun. Then the tarnish, which had begun to suffuse its silver surface when his fingers touched it, spread to cover it completely; and the crown went black.
White stood up. There’s one thing you can say for air pollution, you get utterly amazing sunrises. It looked like someone had set fire to the sky.
And a careless match would have set fire to the river, but, alas, there was no time for that now. In his mind he knew where the Four Of Them would be meeting, and when, and he was going to have to hurry to be there by this afternoon.
Perhaps we will set fire to the sky, he thought. And he left that place, almost imperceptibly.
