—27—
Some things sucked at my tear ducts. Some things were crawling up my legs. Some things were crawling into my nos—
I must have screamed, because I felt a hand take mine, and a voice tickled my ear.
'Angela, my dear.' A warm hand brushed hair off my forehead. 'Wakey Wakey.'
I turned my head to the voice, and opened my eyes. It was Brett. He was smiling at me, and had bags under his eyes and a face covered with crawling flies.
I screamed, so he clasped me to his chest. Flies were everywhere. I brushed them away from my face, and gently pushed him away. He didn't seem to mind the flies, but they were so bad that it was impossible for me to stop waving my hand in front of my face.
'Where are we?' I asked, and peeked out for myself.
He was perched and I was lying on what seemed to be a wool-classing table, about the same dimensions as my medieval bed in Prague, but the mattress here was smooth wood slats, stinking with lanolin. I looked behind Brett and, yes. This was a shearing shed. No sheep were in sight, but a clump of men and women dressed in white coats stood quietly off to one side. As with the shed at home, the walls were half-planked, up to the waist, and then open to the same hard, relentless sky. As I spat a fly away from the corner of my mouth, I tasted dust. Forever dust.
Remembering something, I raised my free hand to my body, explored, and jerked upright. No wonder I felt every slat and every fly. I was stark naked.
And those people!
'No worries, Anj,' Brett hastened to reassure me, shoving me down. 'They don't care about you.'
His conversational tone in no way excluded those people from hearing, though from their tight-packed mass, they did remind me of sheep.
'Please,' I said. Pushing his hands away, I sat up again and looked down at myself.
The body that Kevin had loved as his mannequin was back, lusher than ever. I felt my flesh all over—firm as a weather balloon.
I suddenly remembered my centre of beauty, the pain.
Brett must have been watching. In a hand flicker, he presented me with the same mirror I'd used once before.
He looked away while I examined. Aside from a faint white hairline scar running halfway up to my belly button, everything looked as it had—how long ago?
'Brett, how long has it been?'
His expression would have been adorable if it weren't hideous, the way he didn't seem to notice those flies. He smiled shyly. 'This is our anniversary.'
'Anna what?'
'In your years, allowing for time zone differentials, we met two years ago today.'
'Years!?'
'You needed a lot of work, and much recupera—'
Underneath the floor, a furious banging and barking and howling drowned his speech.
He tossed an 'Excuse,' at me, and flashed a kick against the slats of the floor.
Another assault of scratching and banging and howling shook the floor, and he waved his hand.
The trapdoors fell open under the white-coated people. They tumbled into what sounded like a pack of—what? I couldn't see down into that darkness under the shed. But I heard. I heard human screams. I heard inhuman sounds of joy. I heard what sounded like the contented chomps dogs make when they are tossed sheeptails, and I heard what sounded like kangaroos—their slow, snide three-legged slink—and I
heard more
. Amongst the screeching down below I distinctly heard mastication. This was metal sliding against metal, slicing and popping squishy stuff. It couldn't be. I used to have nightmares about these things. Kangaroos with teeth like sheep shears. They open their mouths wide, and close them on you. Their teeth—dozens of tiny shark-teeth-shaped blades—slice into you as they slide back and forth, and the kangaroo opens and closes his mouth and booms in pleasure as he bites ... I heard these monsters now. They were just as I remembered them from when I woke screaming, at five years old.
'I've got you,' Brett murmured in my ear. And he did. His arms were around me, holding me tight. He had placed my head against his chest so that I looked away from that trapdoor, but what I now saw was the woolpress, and—my other nightmare—its base
oozed
blood.
Maybe I screamed. Surprisingly, I didn't shit. Brett held on tight, cooing into my ear. 'Nothing can hurt you,' he repeated, over and over, sweet as a turtle dove's call, till the noise below died down, and I disengaged myself, looked into his eyes and believed him.
'This isn't Prague, is it?' I asked.
We chuckled together, but I had to know.
'Why did you bring me here?'
'You would have died.'
From the examination of my scar, the cut had been a long one.
'You were bleeding, Angela.'
'Did you try getting an ambulance?'
Why had I asked? Ambulance. Treatment. Public health. I could have died waiting.
Brett full-on blushed. It was a revelation that he could. His face turned red, then green.
Then he mumbled, 'I couldn't let you go.'
He took my right hand in both of his. 'You've had the best of care, my dear.'
'Doctors?'
'We have an outstanding medical staff.'
I could just imagine.
'They were completely supervised at all times, by me.'
A giggle escaped. 'What would you do if they misbehave?'
His eyes twinkled.
'The same as I just did.'
I saw one of them falling, and the eyes were those of a fur seal pup. 'Who were those?'
'Your medical staff.'
'But they didn't look evil.'
'Who said they were?'
'All doctors, you say,' I reminded him. 'All Caligaris?'
'Don't demean yourself, my dear. One Caligari and the rest, how do you say? Shit happens?'
I was shocked. 'That's so ugly, Brett.'
'Yes. But blame has always been apportioned wrongly in the mortal world.'
I had meant the crude expression. The more I had to do with him, the more I hated modern expression.
A sigh came out of him. 'Poor blamed altruists.'
He pitied them!
'But you dumped them, regardless.'
'A kindness, Angela. Believe me.'
Not something to dwell on. A horrible thought struck me.
'So this is hell, isn't it?'
He was visibly taken aback. 'But, of course ... Does the fact pain you?'
'Am I dead?'
'No!'
He pulled my hand toward him, in a jerk of a reaction. 'My word, no!'
'Am I alive?'
'Of course!' His red irises showed as thin red lines around huge pulsing pupils.
There was something he was holding back, as the frankness of his expression belied
something
.
'How's the book?'
'I'm not reading now,' he said, scratching that itchy place between his horns. 'I haven't the time.'
Reading? I hadn't asked him about his reading. '
My
book,' I said.
If I had stuck a cattle prod up his bum, I couldn't have gotten a quicker response. His whole body jerked.
'You never intended to write my book!'
No answer.
'What did you want with me?'
No answer.
'What did you want with me!'
Me—naked on a classing table, a-crawl with flies, the trap door just a jump away, those terror-roos sharpening their teeth. That wool-press over there, sweating blood ... And the Devil himself holding my hand with the grip of a leach to an udder.
Suddenly, a wind blew grit into the shed. A strong wind that momentarily banished the flies from my face.
Then I heard yapping, and a mob of people came running into the shed.
'Push 'em up!' I heard. From outside the shed. And with a clatter of boots and shoes and bare feet—and screams, pushes, curses, and thuds—the group expanded to fill most of the shed's 100-sheep space. The woolpress of course disappeared behind the press of human bodies. Who were these people? There wasn't any consistency.
They
didn't look classed. Were they just
anybodies
?
'Just a minute,' Brett sighed.
Before I could yell, trapdoors opened everywhere ... and those
sounds
...!
A prickle of chill rushed from the top of my eyebrows over the back of my head and down to the soles of my feet—an overwhelming, shiver-inducing homesickness.
This travelling companion, who I'd shared living quarters with longer than any other fellow traveller—was a stranger. A stranger who had used me, and had fattened me for
what?
I had never believed in hell as Hell, or as Brett as a devil's Devil. He with his wizard tricks, his Victorian-era vapours. But where we were now sure wasn't Olde Sydney Towne.
And he'd had a private agenda all along.
He'd used me! And now he had some final purpose.
Knowing without asking, I asked nevertheless, 'Will I ever see Earth again?'
With insistent hands, Brett pushed me flat on the table.
He put his mouth to my ear. His mouth that had liked drinking warm blood, eating body-warm raw chopped heart.
I fought with all I could fight with. Being eaten from my ear down, held absolutely no appeal.
It was no fight, of course. He was by far, my wrestling superior.
'Angela.' The sound of the word in my ear was a rustle of dry leaves.
It was hopeless to fight, so I called upon all the bullshit from the Higher Light that I could remember in a second.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Withdraw from the self. It had never worked before.
'Do your thing,' I told him, and hoped it was fast—faster than what I had heard from below when those people had fallen to their never-never.
Good pun. Grimly, I smiled to myself. Dad would have liked the pun and approved the smile.
'Angela,' Brett interrupted, just when I was coming to grips with coping with the end.
He put his mouth around my ear entirely.
My whole body stiffened stiffer than a dead dog.
His tongue forks tickled the inside of my ear.
'Dear Angela,' whispered the Devil. 'Save me.'
—28—
I sniffed—a cautiously shallow sniff. Even with my hand waving across my face, flies clustered around my nostrils. Louder than the rancid pong of lanolin screamed the nauseating reek of asafoetida. That is the closest name I could put to this hot, dunghill stench.
Brett had pulled away from me. He stood, jaw rigid, at tin-soldier attention, emanating this repugnancy.
From his body odour and the expression in his eyes, it didn't take a genius to reckon. His very pores expressed themselves—pure, unearthly fear.
~
'Two always Tango,' the Devil said, after we had whispered for an hour. His smells had calmed considerably.
He was full of new clichés and gahky chumminess—had been working hard to learn language to aid his assimilation. If he got the chance.
He meant by that garbled tango thing, a backhand compliment.
We both, he had observed, reached for the impossible. I, because of a general lack of talent in the area I had wished to be talented in.
He, because of a lack of opportunity.
He told me he had yearned for many years. Many,
many
mortal years. This yearning had become the driving force of his existence.
It was not his fault that he was the Devil. At one time, he had been resigned to his position, but now it was unbearable—it was hell for him, too. Would I want to live in this? He had absolutely no control now. While I was in recuperation, for example, he had listened to many services for the dead on earth, and it was too hard to keep up with the blessed and the damned.
'Everybody's claiming, worse than a gold rush. More chaotic.'
The claim-jumping was to the point that the only solution he could put to the problem was to sink the whole gold mine. To disappear. 'To speed up the chaos that is the modern hell', as he put it.
To what end, I asked.
He shrugged.
Brett—a Trot!
His plan was fuzzy, but mine had been, too.
To Be Famous. That had been my goal, with no plan. I had wanted to be Loved as a Writer with a Book that is Loved. That was what I wanted. I never had a story to tell. The story part of my book was only a means to my end. I had a want but no plan, till Brett.
His idea for himself: He wanted to dissolve the chaos that was now this hell, spiralling fast out of control. Earth's mortal knowers and doers and condemners were now so interconnected. The damned and the blessed had turned hell into Hell for the Devil himself, who had no control, no purpose, no meaning in life any more as Master of the Underworld. He wanted to escape this hell, 'and thereby aid its spin—his ultimate aim to do good in some vague way. An excuse I had heard from other anarchists.
At one point, he pounded his knees in exclamation. 'It can all go to the blazes.'
How could I blame him for wanting to escape. But how could he?
'What about those futures traders? What do they say?'
A bitter snort of a cackle. 'Melted. All melted.'
Hmm.
And that mother of all flies in the soup? 'And what does your Om—'
'Shhhh!'
The mouth to ear communication became intimate again. 'Don't be too loose with your words.'
I whispered into his, 'What does your Omniscient think of all this chaos?'
'He is in his firmament.'
Cryptic.
'Need I dumb it down?'
No, I did. 'He's on an ego trip?'
'How delightfully trenchant. Would you like a tour?'
'Out there?'
'I would hold you.'
'Thanks awfully,' I said, 'but I'll take your word for it.'
Escape. That was his crazy, impractical, fantastical plan.
To disappear—his goal.
His end?
He didn't know.
Did he care?
No. Not any more.
It all came down in the end, to our simple goals.
I had wanted to be loved and famed.
He had wanted quiet retirement, and now, after a taste of life, he wanted more. Retirement, with me to help him by serving as his cover and his aide de camp in the mortal world. And now that he'd learned the pleasure to be had in books, he wanted to collect and fondle his books, and read.
Why had he picked me?
Spontaneous decision.
That wasn't good enough. I forced him to say more. To
whisper
more, dammit.
'Your lack of respect for the Omniscient.'
'You didn't know that.'
'I learned.'
That earned him my most sceptical pursed-lip glance.
'I guessed, and I learned,' he corrected.
'That was not enough.'
'And your lack of respect for me.'
That was a surprise, but upon reflection, he was almost right. 'Respect is the wrong word. But you don't strike me as all that scary, or even evil.'
'See?'
'Is that the reason for your sicknesses?'
'...Partly, my dear.'
By not being terrified, I complicated matters.
His low chuckle broke into my speculation. 'No worries, mate.'
'Brett,' I said. 'Continue to talk like that, and you can press the trapdoor button for me.'
He winced. 'You don't like it?'
'I like the old fuddy-duddy you. The you who rued the omnium-gatherum of disorder, the hugger-mugger of change. The old language of yours has more...' Damned if I could think of the word.
'Resonance?'
What
hadn't
he been reading while I slept?
But back to his plan.
~
He had muddled along without a plan, until my accident. He had hidden me in this last peaceful corner of hell (I protested at this peacefulness, but he insisted upon its relativity). His last remaining sanctum, he called this, while flies explored his eyes. He reckoned he didn't have much time left before these shaky walls were blown down, 'as my power is diminished as this chaos grows'. That fact gave him his sense of urgency.
'And the Omniscient?' I asked, my mouth to his ear.
He switched our positions. His tongue tips tickled my ear. 'If God is on our side, who is against us?'
My laugh bounced against the boards. 'Sometimes, Brett, you're an absolute card.'
He shushed me, but smiled. 'It wasn't me, and I don't know why you laughed, though it was a breath of fresh air.'
'Who said that?'
'The Duke of Edinburgh.'
'He's known for talking without thinking. But I never knew he could be so witty.'
'Say again?'
'Was it off the cuff? Since when did he become a war protester?'
'I don't think.'
The problems with culture in translation. 'Well, what? Reading doesn't do you any good, you know, if you miss context.'
Another mob of people, most of whom looked like poor bastards, was pushed into the shed. He excused himself and processed them. These took more time. I closed my eyes, but that just opened my ears more. Soon he was back, but the sounds hadn't stopped.
'You were saying, my dear,' he prompted.
'Brett, I can understand you not understanding irony, or wit.'
'It was St Paul's Cathedral,' he said. 'A
lesson
, as you call it, in a service for those killed in the war in Iraq. Back in oh-'
'I get the idea, Brett.' This was becoming like the time with the newspapers again. 'Just stick to the comedy.'
'If God is on our side,' he breathed, 'who is against us? Your bible. Romans eight point something or other.'
Yuk!
There was one thing that this Devil in front of me, who wanted so much to be a plain old Brett— there was one thing we needed to get very,
very
straight.
I hissed so hard into his ear, my spit rebounded: 'The bible isn't
mine
.'
'Not yours
personally
—'
'Wanna know what we called it at home? Percy's pile.'
His eyebrows wiggled. 'Your uncle, the Reverend Percy Lily?'
'And as for your Omniscient, this God who's claimed by all—'
A silent puff of raw fear choked me with its stench. The only way to fight it was to ignore it.
'Disgust.' I had to stop. Breathing in caused me to cough, but I smiled and patted his hand.
The air cleared slowly, and all the while, the eerie silence—even below the shed—before what I knew would come again was so nerve-wracking that fear concentrated my mind.
'All those newspapers, Brett. They rubbed disgust for the Omniscient right into my pores.'
And something needed to be shoved up his nose—shoved so hard, it
hurt
.
'He's
your
Omniscient, Brett. And make no mistake about it.'
He felt that. Even his nostrils twitched, but he didn't answer.
'According to your perception,' I added. 'Yours, Brett. Not mine.'
He leaned forward, at the same time somehow managing to retract his neck. It was a strange position for us—me leaning forward, cross-legged on the table—he standing and bent so that his mouth could be suckered on to my ear or vice versa. Our whispers were now so low, they were barely audible. He stayed in the listening position, wanting more from me.
'You think he knows all?' I asked.
He didn't answer.
'You think you can escape?'
An evasive caul shrouded his eyes, but I had torn cauls off lambs as a child.
I yelled into the silence. 'You would be escaping this ... and him ... wouldn't you?'
He put his hand to my ear, but I shoved it aside.
'I have ideas!' he yelled.
But not, it seemed, for airing now.
~
Three more mobs arrived in quick succession. Brett dealt with the lot.
I saw their faces. I saw lots of bloody ankles, and one big bloke with his nostrils torn out. I heard language I didn't know existed, human and beast. I saw a baby in swaddling that wobble-rolled into the shed like a fumbled rugby kick. I saw a grandmother with a wooden spoon, a man with a cleaver, a man and woman who dropped together as vertical as sunshine at noon, kissing. I saw a man try to climb air.
~
'Will you help me?' Brett asked again.
The skin on his face—jade grey.
I sniffed, and yes, he had begun emitting again.
The bags under his eyes had aged him at least ten mortal years.
What choice was there?
I punched him in the shoulder.
'Oh, frabjous day!' When he smiled like that, he reminded me of Simone. She hadn't managed to bed him, but when he was happy, from his smells to his smiles, he was, even with the bags under his eyes, by modern mortal standards, devilishly attractive.
'Oh, that's
so much
better,' I declared. 'Now let's get going.'
He took me by the hand, but I pulled away. 'Where are we going first?'
'Sydney.'
Odd. 'I thought you were bored with Sydney.'
He bent to his laces. And yes—he wore the same outfit as ever, down to the boots that pinched. When he straightened, his face was a badly closed book. 'I have a surprise for you.'
I love surprises! 'What time is it in Sydney?'
It took him only a moment. 'Eight in the evening.'
Fine with me. But ... 'I will not go naked into that dark night.'
Jesus-statue style, he raised both hands
'And no more commercial airlines,' I added.
His teeth gleamed. 'Methinks thee protesteth too much.'
His hands swept down and he stepped back—a perfect pantomime of laying out a sumptuous train of ermine.