Authors: Kim Newman
Everything was given a pale blue illumination by the street lighting. A few Christmas displays winked. It all looked real, but Anne knew better by now.
She looked up at the building, trying to read an expression on its long tall face. She thought she could make out a gameshow host grin, barracuda-toothed and insincere. Skinner’s eyes were somewhere up there. She smiled herself as she backed away, realizing the mistake. Somehow, Centre Point had wound up with the Empire State Building’s dirigible mooring mast.
‘When does the gorilla show up, old man?’
A venomous frost had spread like lichen across many of the upper windows. A sheet of ice the size of a large Vermeer detached itself and slid free. Anne’s heart clutched like a fist as the glassy mass shattered ten feet away from her. Cracked ice spread towards her shoes like a flood of marbles. Skinner was reminding her to keep running.
She hit the steps and got off the plaza. The usually impossible intersection was easy to cross against the lights. The car, a boxy ’30s model, had gone. There were no people at all in sight, which proved she was still in Skinner’s wonderland. Even in the deadest of the dead hours, this place was populated. Not as thickly as nearby Soho or the West End clubland, perhaps, but these were still 24-hour streets.
So, what next?
Running had done her no good so far, but she was getting the idea that it was expected of her. Putting up a stiff resistance might not help her win, but it got her a few bonus points. However, she also knew that nothing was going to persuade Skinner to let her off the forfeits. She even got the feeling that the more she inconvenienced him in the short term, the more he would get out of feeding off her in the end.
Feeding off her? What exactly did that mean? Doubtless, something unbelievably nasty.
Of the four main avenues, she chose Oxford Street. She started to walk towards Marble Arch, then turned left, heading back into Soho. The place seemed to be in the middle of this business. It was like Skinner’s secret lair. Somewhere in the vice heart of town, the Monster was waiting for her.
She had no crucifix or wooden stake or pistol-load of silver bullets or flaming torch or hammer and sickle or bell, book and candle. That stuff would have comforted her less than an M-16, or one of those skeleton-handled Uzi sub-machine guns, or an anti-personnel rocket launcher. Preferably, she would like the Air Force to lay down some pretty heavy napalm around Skinner, then send in the Green Berets led by John Wayne, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Incredible Hulk and Godzilla. After that, and only after that, she would ask the President to fall back on their country’s thermonuclear resources. Even then, she figured her chances at about twenty-eighty against. All she was going into Hell with was her mind. Christ, that had better be enough…
Gradually, she became aware of the ghosts. Not used to them, exactly, but alert to their presence. She had them pegged as a sideshow, and did not want to expend any energy worrying about that sort of thing. She would need everything for the Main Event. They were in shadows, behind shop windows, in pedestrian subways, congregated in car parks. She did not want to look too closely, half-aware that concentrating on them would give them more substance. Then, they might get in her way. So far, they were not bothering her like the things on the train had, but they could easily be provoked.
In a lamp halo, standing at a shelterless bus stop, she found a man from the past, dressed in a white tropical suit and panama hat out of
A Night in Casablanca.
He had spats, and a wing collar, knife-edge trouser pleats, and no face. The cigarette in his holder was burning to ash without any help from him. He had no mouth, so there was no point to his habit. Otherwise, he was placid and unfrightening.
Likewise, the gaggle of gypsies in Soho Square, huddled under the eaves of the gardener’s hut, nursing their wind-whipped fires, quaking with superstitious fear. Their horses whinnied and shifted between the shafts of their gingerbread-decorated caravans. They made signs at her like Transylvanian peasants in a Dracula movie, warning her not to go to Borgo Pass on Walpurgis Night. Were they trying to help her? Grandfather Nastase, dead long before her birth, had been from the Carpathians. Or was she being misled? She waved to them, trying to be jaunty, and kept on walking.
The next apparitions, which she encountered in a passage between Dean Street and Wardour Street, were a little more hostile. She was only a few doors away from the place where Nina’s flat had been when two men in vaguely piratical costumes stepped out. Had they been visiting Tina – Teenage Model One Flight Up – or just waiting to ambush her? They had headscarves, baggy pants and cutlasses. One of them touched a cigarette lighter’s flame to the oiled and pleated ends of his beard and moustache, setting them to burn slowly. They snarled and showed their claws like threatened cats, but stayed away from her.
The samurai in Wardour Street was not so timid, and his sword was definitely not 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 darkened 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 any more, 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 forward 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 realized 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.