Stray Souls (Magicals Anonymous) (16 page)

unlock the strip club behind the curry house, because some truths are true even in this place.

She pressed her hands against her head but it was there, just beneath the surface the

               
crunch of wasabi beans god I hate this stuff gotta be healthy

coffee stinks!

      
pop! champagne

(pop! paracetamol)

      
gotta get high gotta get high gotta get high so much–but it’s not a problem

Hi there!

stink of armpit on the train

         
I wasn’t jumping the fare I just didn’t notice

Hi there!

Her head hurt, God but her head hurt, look too deep and all you could do was look, see the things you weren’t meant to see, hear the things that weren’t meant to be heard, and the world was buzzing, heaving, churning, roaring, the glass melting off the walls, the leaves falling off the trees to reveal the bare truth underneath, the mists parting between what was, what is, what will be and through the mists she saw

fake suntan?

All that could be and had been: the swaying of masts in the dock the roaring of exhaust from the engine of the van the
snap snap
of leather shoes on freshly laid earth the swinging of girders on the end of the crane and

“Hello, there!”

No, but really, fake suntan?

“Welcome back from the break, everybody!”

She looked up and there he was, brighter than the decaying silver surroundings, standing out in the uncertain, changing world like an iceberg at the equator. He clapped his vivid orange hands together, straightened the oversized lapels of his bright white suit, slicked his dyed black hair back from his carrot-coloured face, flashed his brilliant grin and proclaimed, “Welcome, Sharon Li, to the lowest depths of your spirit walk, where all that is and all that may be become one with each other! I’m Dez Cliff Junior and I will be your spirit guide for today!”

She stood in a fake rock garden as, all around her, the shadows of past and future swung through the empty air, and exclaimed, “You’re my
what?”

Dez Cliff Junior, resplendent in the finest garb forty-five pounds could buy, flashed another brilliant smile. “You, Sharon Li, are the lucky winner of today’s prize draw for not just any ordinary spirit guide, not just some knock-off ghostly replacement, but me! Your very own manifestation of the subconscious, guardian angel ghost of everything you’ve always known but never been able to handle! So tell me, Sharon…” an oversized red microphone appeared out of nowhere in Dez’s hand and was thrust towards Sharon’s face “… how are you feeling about becoming a fully fledged shaman?”

She stared from the microphone to Dez, and back to the microphone. “What?”

“Come on, Sharon,” urged Dez, “for all the viewers at home.”

“What viewers at home?”

“It’s a phrase.”

“No, but really, what viewers at home?”

A flicker of frustration passed over Dez’s face. “Just say something profound, okay; we’ll edit it at Judgement Day.”

“Who the fuck are you again?”

The microphone vanished from whence it had come and Dez stuck his hands on his hips like someone, Sharon couldn’t help feeling, she kept meeting in the mirror. “Now look,” he exclaimed, “I didn’t ask to be manifested like this; it’s your fault for watching too much daytime TV. But I’m here now, and you summoned me, so why don’t you just—”

“I summoned you?”

“I merely follow viewer demand!” he protested.

“I didn’t summon you.”

“Uh–sorry, but you did. You thought, ‘I feel crap and I need direction,’ and what do you know, you flick over to spirit guide Channel 101 and here I am, so you really should start playing ball.” The microphone reappeared and, with a more optimistic expression, Dez thrust it once again at Sharon. “So,” he suggested, “how’s saving the city going?”

“Shouldn’t you be a rabbit?” Sharon’s disappointed voice dripped scepticism.

“Why should I be a rabbit?”

“Sammy said—”

“You think your brain would manufacture rabbits as a spirit guide?”

“Okay, okay,” she conceded. “So maybe not a rabbit, but how about something else? Something… I don’t know, spiritual or something? Like maybe a giant deer or unicorn? Why do I have to get a cheap chat show host?”

“Cheap!” fumed Dez. “Cheap! Do I look cheap to you? Do you think this skin just
happens?
Do you think my hair is spray-on? I’ve had to fight long and hard to get where I am in this industry, and you know how I’ve succeeded where others failed? I’ll tell you! It’s my charming smile–” a charming smile was duly rendered “–and the willingness to crush the testicles of my enemies in my fists like garlic in a fucking press!”

Sharon realised her mouth was hanging open. “Okay then,” she mumbled. “I guess this is a revelation into my psyche which I should be grateful for.”

Dez still stood poised, microphone thrust towards her, waiting for the quote of the day. She turned away from his gleaming features and forced herself to look at her surroundings.

Still here, still Canary Wharf, but not Canary Wharf. The real world was a mirage: the people moving through it were shadows, and each shadow left an ever thinner echo of itself trailing in the air, and each
echo was slightly distorted: here a shadow that wept, here a shadow that laughed. To look too long at anything was to see straight through it, around it: the sculpted rocks of the garden grew liquid and unstable as they were poured into their mould; the water surged back and forth like blood through a living body as an underground pump laboured to keep its silver surface trickling; the air from the vents politely tucked away in the bushes was soot-black and smelt of the tunnels. And look harder, deeper, longer, and there was still more to see, an infinity of layers peeling back before her eyes, if she only dared to stare, and…

And a white suit interposed itself, jolting her with its brightness against that shadow-tangled world.

“Uh, so, this is me putting myself between you and the camera, which I know is highly unprofessional,” exclaimed Dez. “But as your spirit guide it’s my job to stop you making a fool of yourself on the silver screen and getting lost in the oneness of the universe. Now…” He took a step back, opening his arms wide to the world. “Remember at all times this great truth! You are
beautiful!
You are wonderful! You have a secret! The secret is—”

“How the hell do you know that?” snapped Sharon.

“I am you!”

“I’m nothing like you! I’ve got bloody fashion sense, for a start.”

“I am your subconscious given manifest form by your being at one with creation!”

“I am not at fucking one with fucking creation!”

“Sharon,” chided Dez, “we are not looking for a 10 p.m. broadcast slot here. Of course you’re at one with creation; you’re just not handling it very well. But that’s all right, because…” He swelled again with pride and vocal projection and claimed, “Here, tonight, I am going to take you on a journey of discovery, joy, tragedy, jubilation—”

“Tragedy?”

“Well, maybe not tragedy; not on purpose.”

“What are you doing here?”

Dez folded his arms. “I’m here to encourage, to provoke, to inspire—”

“Cut the crap, what are
you
doing
here?”

“You’ve got to go back into Burns and Stoke.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know why–how should I know? I’m just a psychological manifestation of your own subconscious!” wailed Dez. “You know you have to go back in there, so you’re telling yourself to do it the only way you know.”

“I don’t need some… some… some orange dude to tell me what to do!”

Dez raised his eyebrows and said nothing.

“Fine,” she said. “I get that you’re only a manifestation of my subconscious mind, which, by the way, sucks, because I think spirit guides really ought to be bigger on the wonders of creation, but okay. So I totally get that you’re only telling me something I already know, and in that sense I guess I really should listen to you because, in my experience, my instincts are usually right and thinking about things too hard is usually wrong, but none of this changes the fact that I’ve had a really bad couple of days and getting cheap advice from an over-tanned corner of my inner psyche is totally uncalled for. So you can just… just puff off or whatever it is spirit guides do.”

“Back after this commercial break!” sang out Dez, and, indeed, with the slightest crackle of static, he vanished.

Sharon turned and marched straight back towards Burns and Stoke, her face scrunched up in wilful determination. She walked straight through the wall this time, not bothering to slow down for that slight pressure of the world parting around her, and all eyes kept impossibly, but firmly, turned away.

The tiles beneath her feet had been scrubbed to the point where they were almost frictionless; women in high-heeled shoes strode across them, but gingerly. Security men in navy-blue trousers and smart ties scrutinised anyone whose suit was less than 100 per cent silk with a professional eye grown used to a certain standard. Sharon considered the lifts, then rejected them. To take the lift was to stand still and, though she’d seen Sammy do it, she wasn’t sure she herself could stop moving and remain unseen. Instead she passed straight through the glass barriers between her and the nearest emergency stairs and headed up.

Burns and Stoke was on the eleventh floor.

By the sixth she was gasping for breath.

At the ninth floor she looked for the nearest CCTV camera, then
paused underneath, out of its line of sight, to bend over and catch a little air. It wasn’t, she reflected, that she was unfit. It was merely that her fitness didn’t extend all the way to her knees. Several self-help books had suggested that a healthy body led to a healthy mind, but as none of them had offered any advice on what to do if both mind and body kept on slipping into the nether reaches of perceived reality, she’d taken any recommendation towards thirty minutes a day of “muscle training” with a heavy pinch of salt. After all, what did these people really know?

She thought:

this is so stupid this is so stupid this is so so stupid why the hell would anyone do this so stupid

And what the hell kind of stupid name was Dez? Why couldn’t her spirit guide wear long flowing robes and say things like “Ah, though confused you are, yet comfort you will find” or other more… spirity things? She’d been exposed for less than two days to the idea of being a shaman and already she was unimpressed.

As if to add to the moment, her phone rang in her pocket. She grabbed it faster than she had ever moved in her life and slammed it against her ear, not pausing to check the number.

“Hello?” she whispered.

“Hello?” roared a voice back. “Hello, are you there?”

She flinched, certain that the CCTV camera would perceive the vibration in the air of the voice on the other end of the line. “Who is this?” she murmured.

“Hello?
Hello?!”

“Hi?” she queried, a little louder.

“Oh, you are there,” exclaimed the voice. Then, suspicious, “Why are you whispering?”

“I’m uh… in a library.”

If the caller believed her, he clearly didn’t care. “Okay, yeah, so, basically I’m wondering if you, like, know a late-night solicitor or something?”

“What?”

“A late-night solicitor? Like, a twenty-four-hour Citizens Advice Bureau?”

“Who is this?” demanded Sharon, instinctively straightening up.

“It’s Kevin,” explained the caller, countering her with his own, less certain indignation. “Remember, like, Magicals Anonymous?”

A mental picture. A pasty-faced vampire with complex dietary requirements. Sharon pinched the skin between her eyebrows, trying to block one pain with another. “Kevin, yes, sure. Hi. I don’t remember giving you this number…”

“Uh… Facebook, duh?”

Oh yes. Some part of Sharon’s mind, the part that still knew that it knew everything there was to know and, more importantly, that everything was out to get it, made a note to start hiding personal details.

If Kevin had had any idea of feasting on shaman blood, at the moment he was clearly too indignant to consider it. “So listen, I went to see my dentist and he was all like ‘Man, I can’t be treating you’ and I was all like ‘Why the fuck not?’ and he was like ‘Honestly, you scare the shit out of me’ and I’m like ‘That’s discrimination’ and he’s like ‘Dude, I’m scared you’re going to drink my blood’ and I’m like ‘Darling, I’ve seen what you eat for lunch and I’m telling you, I wouldn’t drink your blood if it was the last pint on the planet’ and he was—”

“You want to sue your dentist?” whimpered Sharon.

“Totally!”

“You don’t think that might be a little… aggressive?”

“I’m being discriminated against!”

“On the grounds of your fangs.”

“Fangs is such a judgemental word—”

“I’m just saying—”

“Until attitudes in this country change,” Kevin barked, “there can be no social progress!”

“And you’re calling me because…?”

“You’re the shaman, right? Like, the one in charge?”

“Okay, so now I think that sounds like discrimination too. Since when did ‘shaman’ mean ‘one in charge’?”

“Uh, so,” she could almost hear Kevin’s wrists flick with each word, “only like, for ever.”

A door opened somewhere beneath her; there were voices on the stairs. “Look, Kevin,” she said, scurrying upwards, the air twisting around her as again she began to fade from sight, “I like, get the community support thing here and I’m really sorry you had a problem with
your dentist and I’m sure we can work something out and that Magicals Anonymous is completely behind you on this one but I’ve got this really important thing I need to do now.”

“Hey, like, you okay? You sound kind of… I dunno… breathy.”

“How about I call you back?”

“Hey, I don’t wanna kick up a fuss, but I’m like ‘What the fuck?’ with this guy and teeth are really important so—”

“Bye!” she sang out, flicking her phone off and rounding the corner onto the tenth floor.