A Madness of Angels: Or the Resurrection of Matthew Swift (50 page)

 

I settled on a minor spirit, who I felt might be equipped to my purpose and, sitting cross-legged in front of my little bowl with its single human hair, smashed the topmost CD on the table end, took the largest piece from the remnants and with the sharpened point drew a doorway in the air in front of me. Then, in my most commanding voice, I invoked the demon of the lonely night, of the travellers on the midnight train, the lord of the lost parking space, by all the names I could think of, including the shrieking noise of brakes, made at the back of the throat, to call him forth, and by the red light of the “STOP” traffic light that I twined between my fingers and poured into the shard of broken CD until it glowed the colour of newly spilled blood.

 

The doorway I’d drawn in the air shimmered, wobbled like a mirage. I felt a breath of warmth from it on my face, heard a sound like the swish of tyres through a puddle in an empty road, and the distant rattle of a train heard far off, when the wind is in the right direction. I looked up to the doorway as it started to leach from the colour of the red traffic signal down to an emerald green and just as I thought I saw a figure take shape inside it, there was a knock on my bedroom door.

 

The bubble of colour winked out in front of me. I swore, the noise snapping out of earshot in an instant, scrambled up and hurried to the door. I left the chain on, and opened it an inch. There was no one outside.

 

Realisation struck. I turned, raising the shard of broken CD in front of me, but he was already there, emerging out of the darkness in the centre of the room and right in front of me, the fingers of one hand twining round my throat while the other smacked my head back against the door hard enough to knock it shut behind me with a loud
bang.
His eyes were the amber of traffic lights, his breath the swish of traffic passing on a wet night; his skin had the colour of old chewing gum. A dry warmth rolled off it as he tilted my head back, pressed his fingers into my throat and hissed, over a tongue the shade of uncooked chicken, “A devotee of the lonely traveller, or a fool?”

 

“Shouldn’t you have come through the
other
doorway?” I croaked.

 

His eyes glowed. His clothes were shifting black shadows that, as he adjusted his weight, parted for a moment to reveal nothing but dull orange neon glow underneath, as if his whole body was little more than a collection of trapped lights compressed behind the darkness of his coat. “I am the lord of the lonely traveller, I am the last passenger on the train, I am the shadow when you close the garden gate, the stranger in the dark, the…”

 

“As far as I’m aware,” I said sharply, “I summoned you knowing all this, spirit. So, please” – I closed one hand around his wrist and with the other I levelled the gleaming shard of broken CD against his throat – “give it a break.”

 

A smile. His teeth weren’t even solid, but lumps of pale, half-chewed bubble gum that formed sticky fibres between his thin blue lips. A wisp of breath that rattled like train wheels across shining new rails, a creak in his bones as he shifted his weight like the sound of a rusted gate banging in the wind. “You threaten me?”

 

“Ah, well, this isn’t any ordinary bit of broken plastic,” I said quickly. “This is a piece of broken
reflective
plastic.” I held it up quickly before he could shy away, pressing it in front of his eyes. There was a flash of orange-pink neon so bright and so sharp it hurt as it went into my head, and burst the light bulb in the middle of the room with its force. From the creature’s lips came a wail like the horn of a lorry just before it’s about to crash. He curled back, instantly cowed, crouching animal-like and raising his hands to shield himself from the sight in the broken shard. His whimpers were the nagging sound of a distant car alarm in the night. If there was one thing this spirit could not abide, it was his own reflection, showing him for what he was – nothing at all. You cannot be the lord of the lonely travellers and be in the company of your own reflection.

 

He whispered in a voice like a pigeon’s feather on the wind, “What do you wish, master?” He squatted by the end of the bed. Through the loose shadowy folds of his huge coat, the dull glow of orange-pink neon poured out of any opening like the shimmer of lamplight under a doorway – bright enough in the dark to see everything in black and white, except for the light itself, which shone with chemical colours.

 

I crouched down in front of him. As spirits went, I could feel a certain sympathy for this one, a reluctant affinity for the magics that had spawned it. They were much the same powers that had created the Bag Lady, the Beggar King and, perhaps to an extent, the angels of the wire, the forgotten lives left in the telephone. Where there was life, there was magic, and even in the lonely tread of the commuter, and the fearful breath of the traveller by himself in an unknown place, there was a very special kind of life; and from that life, there was the spirit.

 

“I’m looking for someone.”

 

“Does he travel alone?”

 

“Who doesn’t?” I answered with a smile.

 

His eyes glanced up to me, and in the dark they glowed with the dull red illumination of a traffic light. “You know me,” he whispered. “I hear your footstep in my belly; you have offered me your prayers.”

 

“Everyone has offered you a prayer at some point or another. When they’re alone, in the dark, even the SAS probably jump at the sound of a stranger, or the unexplained door slamming in the empty house, or the tinkling of glass somewhere near by; and when they do, their thoughts are with you.”

 

His lips curled in what might have been a smile, but came out a sticky, gummy sneer. “Who do you wish to find?”

 

“The man who owns that hair,” I said, pointing at the soap dish in the middle of the floor.

 

The lord of the lonely traveller – whose name could only be pronounced properly in the shriek of brakes or the last rumble of the train engine before it’s turned off at the final stop, but who was known to everyone through the swish of distant traffic in the rain, or the sigh of a breath condensing in a lonely night – leant forward, eyes narrowing as he studied the hair. He pinched it between two fingertips, then licked it slowly, and carefully, his saliva hanging off it in a thick yellowish goo. His eyes half closed, and he whispered, “A traveller, so many travellers…”

 

“Where is he?”

 

“He runs, his footstep is sweet, a
tumtetumtetumtetumte
… he is chased! So afraid of the dark, and a man who used not to fear; but now he runs, he runs from the monster in the night.”

 

“Where does he run to?”

 

“He is praying.”

 

“To you?”

 

“They all pray to me, when they are alone and afraid,” he whispered, eyes flashing. “Even those who think they are brave.”

 

“What does he say?”

 

His tongue rippled across the thin blue edge of his lips, and he let out a sigh of contentment, shoulders relaxing to let more neon light spill through his clothes. “The monster is close, his feet on the tarmac and it sings to the time of his rhythm … he prays for life; so sorry, so sorry, he says, so sorry that it went like this, forgive me in the night, forgive me the past, forgive me time and forgive me… forgive me… oh, his fear is so bright! He fears the blue-eyes!”

 

“None of this is helping me,” I declared. “I’d be happier with points on a compass or GPS coordinates, please.”

 

“He fears you,” whispered the creature, curious as he studied me. “He fears the blue-eyes, and prays… so sorry… so sorry …”

 

“Where?!” I shouted.

 

“On the sea. He is at sea.”

 

“A boat?”

 

“Salt and endless dark falling, and the smell of petrol from the engine towers pumping out heat into the cold wind.”

 

“A ferry?”

 

“Would you like to hear his prayer, blue-eyes?”

 

“Why, what does he say?”

 

“He says… we be light, we be life, we be fire! We sing electric flame, we rumble underground wind, we dance heaven! Come be we and be free! Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me and have mercy in the night, make me a shadow on the wall but do not let him eat my heart, forgive me…”

 

“He prays to the blue electric angels?” we said, incredulous.

 

“And to me,” he murmured.

 

“And he’s on a boat?”

 

“Crossing the seas. Oh” – a look of sadness moved across the creature’s face – “but he’s not alone. How sad, how sad not to be alone on a night of such cold winds and hidden thoughts…”

 

“Who is with him?”

 

“It runs silently across the water’s edge…”

 

“Enough of this crap!” I raised the reflective edge of the plastic in warning. “Here’s me, sorcerer, pissed off and blue-eyed and not in the mood; so you tell me who is with him like you had a grasp of concise necessity; otherwise I’ll bind you to a bloody hall of bloody mirrors!”

 

“He doesn’t have a name that I can hear.”

 

“Give me your best shot at a description.”

 

The creature thought about it, tilting its head up towards the roof to find inspiration, while cracks of pinkish light crawled up round the edge of its neck, running through its skin. “The one who travels with him… he is hungry,” he said. “He is so very, very hungry.” A quizzical tone entered his voice. “He knows I’m here. He wonders why I watch, since he does not travel alone. He reaches out and says, what are you? Why have you come? He smiles. He says, I see blue fire in your strings, and stretches a wing and…”

 

“Leave!” I shouted.

 

“So hungry…”

 

“Leave right now! Piss off, be dismissed, get your arse banished out of here,
get out
!”

 

A tightening of shadows around the edge of the creature’s face? A sunken quality to the eyes, a twisting of the pinkish light around its limbs? I wasn’t about to take the risk. I picked up my stack of blank CDs, and threw them at the spirit. The orange-neon glow split and reflected off the spinning disks as they fell around it, and the lord of the lonely travellers screamed with the sound of a plane crashing from the sky, of brakes snapping on a speeding bike, of the emergency cord being pulled on the train. It raised its arms above its face while cracks of burning light spread through its skin and blazed the colour of sodium street lamps, so bright I couldn’t look, so loud the windows shook, and, its face a mask of surprise and light, it shattered into drifting pinkish shadows that skittered across the wall, oozed out under the door, and were gone.

 

I grabbed up my belongings, and left that hotel without looking back; and didn’t sleep until the comfort of daybreak.

 

 

In the afternoon I phoned Charlie. He said Sinclair was sleeping and wasn’t about to be woken. I said I thought Simmons had left the country and was on a ferry. He said he’d look into it. I didn’t mention the shadow. Nor did I mention the folded piece of yellow paper and the note
For Matthew
that I’d found at Simmons’s house. I didn’t see any need to let him know.

 

The yellow piece of paper advertised a play; and at this play, I assumed, would be Bakker. I took only one precaution before going: I went to Bond Street to find a jeweller.

 

 

His name was Mr Izor, he was American, but, he assured me, despite this he still had perfect taste. We wondered whether something as subjective as taste could be “perfect”, but decided not to ask further and let our eyes drift over the sparkling mass of diamonds, gold and silver watches, necklaces, rings, earrings and miscellaneous pins that were on display in a dozen cases around the plush, red-carpeted room. Even the door handles looked like they were gold, but Mr Izor assured us when he saw our stare, “Oh, Jesus, no; manager’s way too cheap.”

 

I told him what I wanted. He said, “OK, different, who’s the lucky girl? Or is it a lucky guy?”

 

I said, “I want it to sacrifice to the spirits of the wishing-water in the direst of emergencies; but should I ever meet the lucky girl or the lucky guy, I’ll be sure to come back to your shop for advice.”

 

“Don’t go with the diamonds; tasteless, totally common.”

 

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

 

“Guys like silver.”

 

“Thanks. What about my current needs?”

 

He found it for me, eventually. It was about the size of a two-pound coin and cost a figure that made me shudder. Sums that large, I decided, shouldn’t be paid using a credit card, let alone one that wasn’t real. For the first time since my resurrection, I felt a pang of guilt at my lifestyle, and the credit card/prostitute ad that I was using to steal the things I now loosely called my belongings. The attraction of a home to call my own was suddenly a hunger, like the need for fish and chips when hungry and having just smelt vinegar. It stuck in my mind and in my belly, a sense of emptiness.

 

I bought the thing anyway. We told ourself that our need out-weighed the damage, if any, to the jeweller’s business. We told ourself that all the way to the theatre.

 

 

The show was by Waterloo Bridge.

 

I bought a ticket for Ł10 from the returns queue and was assigned a seat in a box-like black theatre, two floors up beside a large red button with the alluring notice “THIS BUTTON DOES NOTHING” stuck up next to it, a label that troubled and confused us throughout almost the entire performance. I was wedged into a seat between a polite couple from Cambridge wearing a business suit and pearls respectively, and a pair of old ladies in huge padded jackets who didn’t once meet my eye and looked disapproving at every irreligious reference in the play, of which there were plenty. The play was full of torture and swearing and stories, in roughly even measures, creating a strange mixture as it floated from physical violence to battles of grammatical wit to renditions of things that should have been for children, if you took out some of the decapitation; so that by the interval we were thoroughly befuddled, and strangely entranced. We bought a chocolate ice cream then, despite the pain it caused me to pay so much for it, because it seemed to be the