Vurt (14 page)

"Well say it."

"Scribble. . . I. . . I want to. . . just to. . ." The Beetle looked around then, all nervous and fearful, and this was rare enough to cause me to stare back hard at him. He couldn't give my stare back

He couldn't give it back! Beetle couldn't look at me! Not without flinching.

Wonders of the world!

"Just say it." My voice was hard, not caring. Told you I was losing it.

He forced his eyes to mine, and then said, "I've got something for you." He pulled his baccy box from his pocket and place it in my hands.

"Can't take it," I whispered. "Can't. . ." "It's for you."

Beetle had carried his drugs in this old Black Cherry Rough Shag tin box, from the days of our time at Droylsden State, high school for unachievers. Within its closed- up darkness he had carried Jammers and Vaz, Fluff and Shadows, Feathers and Haze, all the things he could lay his hands upon. Contained within, all of his dreams. His treasure box.

"I can't take this, Bee." "Open it up,"he said.

Box opened with a satisfying click, and a nice feel in the hands, and I expected to find a real mess in there, a jungle of dark drugs. Instead a single feather lay on a bed of cotton wool.

"Bee!"

Feather was a deep blue-black, with a sheen of pink. I picked it up with shaking fingers, loving the way it fluttered in my hands, like the dream-bird was still using it, flying the Vurt waves.

"Bee!"

I turned it over to read the white label. Tapewormer.

"Bee!"

I realised I was just saying his name; saying nothing, too shocked to think. "You know I can't go back, Bee."

"I've been up to my eyes in it, lately," he said. "Couldn't stop using it." "What's it like?"

I was crumbling under those hints of yesterday.

"It's a jewel Vurt, Scribble. But I was getting hooked. Just couldn't stop reworming that tape. Makes everything beautiful. But you know me, I can't stand getting hooked, well, not to single pleasures."

"I don't know if I. . ."

"Des is in there," he said, pointing to the feather. "Well, you know, kind of." "And here's me trying to give up."

"It's just for. . . just for. . ." Guy couldn't say it.

"I know," I said."Old times. Stash Riders." "Right."

And he turned away, back to his old self. He made his way back to the food bench, telling Barnie the Chef he was a cool genius, in the kitchen of the gods.

Forgiveness.

It was forgiveness the Beetle was asking for, and my heart melted. "You don't need that," said the brogue voice.

"I do," I answered, to the shadow that was forming. "You just don't know why." "I know the secrets," said the Gentleman, back again.

"I need this!"

yes?"

"You don't need feathers. You could tune in. Direct. This has happened already,

"Yes."

Don't know why I said that!

"You've been there. Slipping in and out," he said.

"It's getting worse," I told him, again not knowing why, except that things had

been going strange for me lately; lots of little slips, in and out of states. So that I didn't know what people were saying to me. And this feeling inside, like the world wasn't solid, it was an edge. It felt just the same when I was getting the Haunting. This isn't all there is. The edge was scary and I was living on it. No, not living on the edge, I was living inside the edge!

"Young man, the edge is real, and you don't know how close you are." "To what?"

"To the step. It's not getting worse; it's getting better." "You think so?"

"To where you lie. Your place, your proper place. The dream world, featherless." "I like it here on Earth."

"Desdemona is waiting for you."

"What?"
Oh Jesus!

"She's waiting. Take a look."

And the Gentleman led me gently to the balcony, where I gazed down upon the crowd, and there was Desdemona, waiting there, in the middle of the crush, perfectly still, her yellow blouse flecked with blood, and her face scarred and cracked. Sister was beckoning to me, from the dance floor, her two arms outstretched, urging.

"Desdemona," I said.

"That's her," said the Gentleman. "She's waiting."

I turned back to him, but already he was shivering, dissolving. "Tell me who you are?" I demanded.

"Don't let the Viper get you," he replied. "Be careful. Be very, very careful. Keep it clean. Right under the rim. You know I never lie."

"Just wait. . ."

But his eyes were over my shoulder once again, and I turned around to see Beetle and Suze hugging each other, but Tristan just looking, straight on, right into the eyes of the Gentleman. It was the look of love, that kind of doomed love that never leaves you alone.

"Tristan will tell you who I am," the stranger said.

"Cat? Game Cat?" I said, turning back to the voice, but the voice was gone. Cat was gone.

That feeling again, that emptiness.

I peered over the balcony, searching for Desdemona. There she was, covered in smoke and blood, drifting away, into the smoke and the blood. And I couldn't help her. I couldn't fucking help her! Her scarred face misting over, dissolving, like the dreams of love, into the crowd, into the Vurt.

Losing her. Losing.

Things we want the most, things that slip away.

And then I was taking the stairs, three at a time, dodging the rung-dancers, heading down to the floor and the fading sister. I was pushing into the crush, but they were welded tight by now. I think I threw some poor wraith aside as I squeezed through. The world was closing up and I ran straight into the arms of Bridget.

Bridget!

That smoky shape I had seen on the outskirts, from above; now she was in my hands and the smoke was rising from her skin, way beyond what I was used to, and her

eyes were shadow-flecked and knowledgeable. She pushed away from me, back into the arms of her dancing partner, a handsome boy with curly brown hair.

"Bridget!" I called out.

"No," the shadowgirl answered, and maybe it wasn't her. Maybe I was dreaming. "You're just dreaming," the voice in my head was saying. But it was Bridget's

voice in there. She was thinking to me, through the Shadow waves, looking like the ghost of yesterday. I caught just a glimpse of recognition in her eyes, and then she was gone, fading away in a wave of smoke.

And a new face of scars taking her place, amongst the crush. Face of Murdoch.

Shecop. Dog-torn. Penetrating. Real.

Moving through the crowd, like a demon.

Where do you run, when the bad girl comes? Maybe you run home to Mummy. Maybe you run towards your lover. Or maybe, like me, you've got a Beetle in your life; somebody powerful, even if he was just this moment thick-bodied from the overuse of cheap Tapewormer feathers.

I took the stairs, three at a time, not caring about the cries of the crush, running into the arms of the main Rider. The Vurtglaze slipped from the Beetle's eyes, as I screamed the bad news at him. It was a sunblind being opened to a bright day, wonderful to watch, and he popped a couple of Jammers, already on the move. He pushed me through the crush, kicking some dancers over, just to make a way.

"Beetle! What about Mandy?" I said in the rush.

But his mind was on another trip, the jam was kicking in, and his eyes were scanning the pack for a way out.

"We can't leave her, Beetle!"

"Kid can hack it." A quick breath, and then, "There's gotta be a back way." We were cutting through the pack, as they made way under the threat of the

Beetle's curse and the jammed-up energy in his fists. I heard a shout from below -- "Out of the way! Police!" Some such. You ever seen a cop trying to cut through a dancing crush of semi-legals? I guess that Murdoch was having some problems down there. So suck on it, shecop! I was right up against the food tables now, and Barnie the Chef was giving me a bright stare. "You liked my food, didn't you, Crew?" I told him that he was the King of the Feast, and that the angels were dining out on his takeaways. He pointed

us to a back door. "This way, Crew-cut," he answered. "Relish it."

And we were clattering down a shining steel ladder of hard rungs, a fire-escape to heaven. Me and the Beetle, on a ride together, old-days style. Felt like flying, and I guess I still had some Thunderwings in me. Then we were down on the back streets and running for sweet life.

I'm not telling this very well. I'm asking for your trust on this one. Here I am, surrounded by wine bottles and mannequins, salt cellars and golf clubs, car engines and pub signs. There are a thousand things in this room, and I am just one of them, the light is shining through my windows, stuttered by bars of iron, and I'm trying to get this down with a cracked-up genuine antique word processor, the kind they just don't make any more, trying to find the words.

Sometimes we get the words wrong.

Sometimes we get the words wrong!

Believe me on this one. And trust me, if you can. I'm doing my best to tell it true.

It just gets real hard sometimes. . .

The very strangest thing about that night of running was this: that I could picture the Beetle better than myself. I didn't know where I was. But the Beetle was always, all of the time, very clear to me. I was following his movements through a clear-sighted glass, watching him burn a way down the darkness.

Me, myself, I was the Beetle's shadow, just hanging on to his flame, running through a black alley, back of the Slithy Tove restaurant. Something weighty and hard was banging around inside my jacket pocket but I didn't connect to that just then. I could feel a crowd running with me, but I didn't know who they were. Maybe I was still on Thunderwings, but that thin tickle should have long dissolved, into the blood stream. So what was I on?

What was I on?

Felt like the night was surrendering to me, filling me up with its pictures. I was getting glimpses of everything.

I was Vurt-high, running through a dark space, with some crowd behind me, with nothing in my mouth, no feather in my mouth.

Cop sirens were sounding off, making bad music.

Whistles blowing.

The howling of a generator, as it pumped hard power to a set of arc lights. Shadowcops shining down.

Feet clattering. Real human feet clattering over concrete.

Didn't know where I was.

Coming up hard against a brick wall, and turning away, and there was the Murdoch, scarred-up face glaring at me.

Dancers, former dancers, panicking behind me, in a crush, in a little crush, and then scattering. And me left there alone, facing the Murdoch's scars.

"I've got you." The shecop's voice was hard from the chase, and the gun in her hand was crackling with shiny new life, like it had living bullets in the chambers.

I reached into my pocket without thinking, my fingers closing on Murdoch's old gun, the one I had stolen from the pad floor. But I had little knowledge of such things, and when Murdoch told me to drop it, I dropped it. It made a dead sound as it fell to the concrete, like I'd cut myself off from release but Murdoch's gun was well aimed and true. "What's it gonna be, kid?" she offered. "Dirty or clean?"

Murdoch's gun was the only thing in my life, the only thing worth living for. It gets like that sometimes, with instruments of death.

"What's it gonna be?"

Murdoch's gun was a raging hard-on, pointing straight at me, straight to the heart. There was just a glint of sun coming up, over a rooftop, and a dark mist forming to her right. Other cops were moving into position. I could hear screams and cheers as people were brought down, or people were escaping. I could feel the Beetle's presence, way up close, but I couldn't see him anywhere.

"Best to come clean," Murdoch said. The mist behind her right shoulder solidified into a twisting shape.

I knew that face, that shape.

Shaka! The blown apart shadowcop.

His smoking body was a mess of fumes, and his face was a grimace of smoke. He was waving in and out of existence, as his new-fangled box of tricks struggled to shine his broken body into the real world, so that it could lick there, feeding on secrets. They'd patched him up somewhat, but his beams were still strong and hot, and he fired them at me, somewhere towards me; I could feel them burning the brickwork just to one side of my head. "He's mine, Shaka!" shouted Murdoch.

And wasn't it just my fate, to be the prize in a shooting contest, between the real and its shadow.

Murdoch asked her gun barrel to focus, and I could hear the whirring, as it found my centre, fixing hot bullets upon the heart, that soft target.

"Turn around slowly," Murdoch said. "Towards the wall. No surprises. I don't like surprises."

Sure.

So I'm turning to the wall, just in the very act of turning, when I sense Beetle nearby. That's how it was. I could just sense him!

The Beetle steps out of the shadows, holding his gun aloft, like an offering.

Murdoch had seen that gun before and now here she was, once again, on the dirty end. You could tell she wasn't too keen on it. Same with the Shaka. He'd taken punishment from it; now here he was, once again, on the dirty end.

Made me feel good; just to be free, for once, of the dirty end.

Shaka was flickering on and off, his shot memory banks struggling against his mechanisms. His box of tricks was being held by some new dumbfuck partner, who was obviously way out of cool; he was shaking, and the aerial box was shaking with him.

Shaka was doing his best to keep his beams in line. You could tell from his half-lit face that humans left him kind of cold at this precise moment.

Murdoch was sweating; fluid was running down the claw marks in her face.

At the junction of Wilbraham Road and some poor bugger's driveway, rested the mobile kennel van of Dingo Tush and his pack of canine players. Hey, hey, we're the Warewolves, painted on the side. Next to it I could see Tristan and Suze, their hair a strong river flowing with moonlight Suze had the two robo-hounds on a double leash.