December (88 page)

      
She can almost hear it. She's becoming excited. Whatever Eddie
and Simon have said about the monk, Walden, the power of the place can't be
denied. The stonework glitters in the lamplight, the rime of frost tinted a delicate
strawberry hue.

      
I'm back.

      
Rolling down the aisle, Isabel experiences an illusion of speed,
as though the chair is feeding from natural electricity, the battery boosted,
the wheels going round faster and faster. And the nave is a magic runway and,
at the end, the chair will take off, retracting its wheels and soaring blissfully,
to the pealing of bells, into the night sky, above the mist, above the pain and
the misery, above ...

      
The pealing bells become a jarring snarl of metal and she is
hurled out of heaven with her neck twisted round.

      
The chair has collided with a big stone, projecting about two
feet from the frozen grass.

      
The engine whines helplessly.

      
Isabel's head has been thrown back into the leather. Far above
her, the arches seem to lean together as though about to collapse from the
impact of a flimsy little electric wheelchair crashing into a big stone which
the occupant hasn't seen, due to flashing her little lamp into the sky and
fantasising about … flying.

      
She knows the stone must also have smashed into a foot or an
ankle. Guesses the skin is broken, probably bleeding - she's always slightly
surprised to find that her unfeeling legs, which have to be bent like dolls'
legs, still have actual blood running through them.
      
But the possibility of abrasions
and whiplash injuries are
passed
over as Isabel tries to
reverse the chair and fails, slams back into the leather, drags with her hands
at the chair arms and screams,

      
'YOU STUPID FUCKING
BITCH! '

      
And feels even more furious and even more helpless when,
instead of the massive shriek of rage which will cause the stone to disintegrate,
the words emerge like a batsqueak and are swallowed by the mist.
      
Isabel closes her eyes and breathes
in and out a couple of times before attempting, calmly, to assess the situation.
      
This doesn't take very long.

      
For all the illusion of speed and vastness, the stone is not much
more than half-way along the aisle, which itself can't be more than forty or
fifty yards long.

      
The stone seems to be the stub of a broken pillar. Whether it
was here originally or been recently dumped here it's a bloody stupid place to
put a stone, like a bollard in the middle of a motorway.

      
Isabel has another go at reversing the chair, heaving her shoulders
back. The motor dies in mid-whine.
      
Shit, shit,
shit!

      
At the far end of the nave, where the mist is darkest, a yellow
light glimmers dimly. It's probably in the south-west tower where the studio
is. As distinct from the north-west tower where the lower part of Isabel's body
died in orgasm.

      
Not much life left in the bicycle lamp, either. She gives it a
shake and directs what's left of the beam at the point of impact to see what
can be done, if anything, to extricate the chair.

      
When the bleary beam touches the spot, Isabel nearly faints with
shock and, jerking her hand away, smashes the lamp against the stone and it
goes out.

      
'Simon!
' she wants to shriek, with
such force that it will penetrate the stone walls and the inner soundproofing
and bring him rushing from his studio.

      
But again, her voice is faint and feeble with fear.

      
It
can't be. It can't be!

      
She shakes the lamp and hears the thin tinkle of the glass and
the bulb falling into her lap. She takes off her mittens and runs both shaking
hands under her cape and down her thighs and the hands come out soaked from wrists
to fingertips.

      
No!

      
Plunges the hands down again, exploring what she can't see, can't
feel
- her hands are like a doctor's
hands probing someone else's broken body. There is no pain at all, except in
her mind.

      
Which is still vividly filled with what it was shown in the lamp's
last faltering beam: the jeans ripped way and the knees and shins sheeted with
thick, dark blood, which wells and bubbles up through her fingers as she clasps
the legs she hasn't felt, except in dreams, since December 1973.

Nails? Crucifixion?

      
This is not a recording studio, this is an asylum. The recording
booth down there is a padded cell and the patient is displaying all the classic
symptoms of advanced paranoid schizophrenia.

      
Two minutes, Prof assures himself for maybe the fourth time.
Two minutes, and then I'm out of here.

      
His eyes flit along level-meters along the top of the panel
lit up like the windows of a distant train. Two needles keep running over to
the red, the way you normally get only with sharp, hard chords, quickly muted.

      
Or hammer blows.

      
Don't even
imagine
...

      
While all the other needles are hard over on the red.

      
Which is - think about this, think technical - just about impossible.
To get that, all twenty-four tracks would need to be recording simultaneously and
there's just one guy in one booth with one guitar, and it's ...
      
'fucking
freezing in here
!'

      
'I know.' Moira hugging herself; Prof can feel her swaying from
side to side. 'Come on, Davey ...' She sniffs, crying. 'Please let go, darlin'.
Please let
go
.'

      
'Can't stand this.' Prof covers his ears, but he can still see
the illuminated meters;
pop, pop, pop,
go the little black needles.

      
He turns away, turns his back on the mixing desk - first time he's
ever done
that
- and leans with both hands
on the back wall.

      
'Uuuuuuuh ...'

      
'Prof...' Simon spins round. 'You OK?'
      
It's … it's like the wall's been
newly painted. It's slick and sticky and stinks: an acrid body-stench, bitter and
metallic.
      
A scream falls from the speakers, a
long scream like a trail of fire.

      
'Lights!' Moira's shrieking.
'Lights!'

      
as Tom's shattering, squealing solo -
out, spirits, out
- explodes from the control-room speakers and out
of the amplifier in the furthest booth, filling the stone vault with white-hot,
blind fury ...

      
and the lights go on ...

      
(for one appalling second, to reveal the whitewashed walls
bubbling butcher's red, and big globules dripping from the carved, vaulted
ceiling like glistening scarlet stalactites.)

      
... and then go out, leaving whorls and firework-trails in the
clouding air, and the wild blue flash ...
      
'DAVEY!!!!!'

      
... would be just like another light-effect, if it weren't for
the crackling and the extinguishing of all the lights on the panel and all the
meters .

      
and the new smell of cooking flesh.

      
In the absolute darkness, 'Nobody move,' Prof croaks. 'Simon,
you there?'

      
'Yes. But Moira's ...
Moira
!'

      
Prof stumbles to the door, leans out over the studio. 'Don't
touch him, Moira. Whatever you do, don't
touch
him!'
      
It might be that all the power's
gone, but take no chances, it could be a blip, could come racing back. Prof
locates the master switch on the wall, hits it with the heel of his palm.
      
'OK,' he says. 'It's OK.'
      
Knowing full well that it isn't.

V

The Abbey's Children

It is not a word that Superintendent
Gwyn Arthur Jones has encountered before.
      
He writes it down on a beermat.
      
TELEPORTATION

      
'Through time,' Eddie Edwards adds tentatively.

      
TIME, Gwyn writes, but he writes this word very slowly.
      
It's the one he's having the most
difficulty with.

      
They've been in the pub over an hour, and Eddie has given up
all hope of taking Meryl and Vanessa the back way to the Abbey. And perhaps, he
concludes, this is just as well.

      
Gwyn lays down his pen. 'I like to think I am, shall we say, more
open-minded than the average copper.'

      
More's the pity, Eddie thinks. An average copper would long
ago have given this up as a waste of his time.

      
'Inasmuch,' Gwyn says, 'as I was born and bred in a rural community
and remain very much
of
that
community and its belief-system. For instance, my father, a minister of the
chapel, would never have dared deny the existence of the
cannwyl gorff
, the corpse candle, which floats through the air to
herald a death. And, indeed, I myself have more than once encountered that which
cannot be satisfactorily explained on a statement form; This is my position.'

      
Gwyn leans forward on the threadbare bench. 'And so - let me
get this right - you are telling me that this man St John is capable of
teleporting - across time
- certain
household wares of the twelfth century.'

      
'Gwyn,' Eddie says, 'I am not telling you he is doing this, nor
even that it's happening to him. I am telling you what he
believes
is happening to him.'

      
'Or what he says he believes is happening to him.'
      
'No, I believe that he believes
it.'

      
'And if I believe that you believe that he believes, et
cetera.'
      
Gwyn throws up his hands in impatience.
'Where does that leave any of us?'

      
Eddie feels stupid. 'Perhaps it solves your mystery of the appearing
candle.'

      
'Meaning that it has' - Gwyn spits out the unwieldy word in
segments, 'de ... material ... ised. And has returned, presumably, to the
twelfth century. Very good. But what about the non-vegetable constituent?'

      
'The fat.'

      
'The fat. Which, don't forget, was certified by experts as being
- how can I put this delicately?
- not so
long off the bone
. Certainly not eight centuries or more.'

      
'Right.' Eddie assembles his thoughts like a gambler rearranging
the cards in his hand, not the best hand he's ever been dealt. 'Now, this is
not from me, OK? This is from what I have read over the past few days in
certain dubious publications discovered among the theological tomes in the
vicar's library.'

      
'Go on.'

      
'If what we have is an object - say a candle - directly teleported,
by some molecular process on the very fringe of physics, from, let us say, the
year 1175, then, if that candle was only a few months old when it was, er, sent,
then ... Christ, Gwyn, do you think this is any easier for me, as a
professional educator?'

      
'I think ...' Gwyn Arthur closes his eyes '... that my humble
police brain is becoming over-fatigued. I'd like to deal with something
possibly more concrete. The arrival of the handicapped child. You're not, I
trust, suggesting she has been …'

      
'Teleported, I think not. But there's something odd.'

      
'Indeed.' Gwyn Arthur finishes the half-pint which has lasted
him for a good forty-five minutes, in spite of Eddie's repeated offers to buy
him a replacement. It suggests to Eddie that the policeman's claim to be 'off
duty' was somewhat relative.

      
'Let's move on.' Gwyn stands up, pipe between his teeth. He has
the demeanour, Eddie thinks, of a policeman
teleported
directly from the 1930s or before.