Stray Souls (Magicals Anonymous) (2 page)

“Tell you what,” he said. “Throw in an extra packet of Jammie Dodgers and we’ll call it a tenner.”

That was five weeks ago.

She’d had to wait two weeks for Gospel Singing (Level 2) to finish their rehearsal period in the hall, and also, Power Dance (Dance Your Way to the New You!) had got in first to the slot she’d wanted, forcing her to push things back another three weeks. Following her posting of time and place on Facebook and Twitter, the feedback was generally good, though some people did ask if there was a discreet way in.

It had of course been one of the things she’d checked in advance.

She arrived early, while the hall was still occupied by Youth Judo (Discipline, Fitness and Safety for Your Children), and waited outside until the mums had collected their small robed warriors. The instructor was the last to leave. He was a short man with dreads down to his hip and a white duelling shirt that warped under pressure from within. His face was the brown of soil after rain, and his smile was dazzling.

“Dan,” he said, gripping Sharon’s hand with fingers that could have squashed coconuts like a wet sponge. “You must be… What do you guys do?”

“Support group,” Sharon explained.

“First time here, yeah? Where were you before?”

“Nowhere. This is our first meeting ever.”

“Wow, that’s great. Hope it goes well for you.” Another flash of teeth, brilliant in the fading light of evening. “Have a good one, yeah?”

And he too left.

For a moment Sharon stood alone in the hall.

Outside, the sky was a cloud-scudded grey-blue, sliced with falling autumn leaves. From the pub on the corner she could hear students
from the local hall of residence discovering just what the deal was with cider and, importantly, what happened after. The smell of paprika drifted in from the restaurant two doors down. Someone dinged their bell as they cycled by. In Exmouth Market, lined with cafés, bars and boutiques, darkness was an invitation to raise the volume. The church and its community hall was a box of silence against the rising sounds of laughter and the clatter of glasses.

She put down her plastic bags on the table. They contained five packets of custard creams, six of Jammie Dodgers, two of chocolate fingers (milk) and two of chocolate fingers (white). A bag of apples to make up for the sweetness of all that had gone before and a bunch of bananas for those who didn’t like apples because, frankly, who didn’t like bananas? A large box of builder’s teabags, a smaller box of Earl Grey. Another small box–of herbal teas (mixed) for those who didn’t like tea–a litre of milk, a box of white sugar, a packet of plastic teaspoons, a packet of plastic cups, a packet of foam cups (heat resistant) and a bundle of paper plates. Two packs of bright red napkins because you never knew, one bottle of instant coffee in case no one drank tea, two litres of orange juice from concentrate, one litre of apple. A kettle. Small, white, plastic. Just in case.

Turned out, the hall had its own kettle. After all, the leaflet did say “amenities provided”.

Approximately half a mile from St Christopher’s Hall, and Gavin McGafferty is about to die.

He doesn’t know it right now; in fact, right now he’s having a hard time thinking of anything through the red haze of contempt clouding his better judgement. He walks, and doesn’t fully grasp where he’s walking, and under his breath he mutters, “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fucking…”

A bus sweeps by. It’s his bus. He was waiting for it at the stop outside the chemist, but when it didn’t come fast enough, he started walking to the next, and now there it is, passing by at that perfect point where he’s too far to run, and he knows, he just
knows,
that it, like everything else, is out to get him.

“Fuck fuck fuck SHIT…”

It is perhaps unfortunate, in a strictly humanitarian sense, that in less than fifty yards Gavin McGafferty will have his throat torn out with a single swipe of a fist-sized claw, his left ear ripped from the side of his face and his pelvis fractured by the sheer weight of creature bowling him to the ground. Nevertheless, his co-workers, when informed of the unfortunate event some twenty-two hours later, will pause a fraction too long as they consider his departure. There may even be some who, going to the bathroom afterwards to compose their faces in an
appropriate mask of grief, find themselves looking in the mirror and breathing out a slow sigh of guilty relief. Gavin McGafferty is not a man who endears himself to the universe, and it is in this vein that he understands that the driver of the 159 bus that overtook him on the corner has waited–absolutely waited–just outside his line of sight for the right moment to screw him, personally, over.

The world has been conspiring against Gavin McGafferty from the start. He knows his co-workers talk about him behind his back; he knows that his work–which is fucking good fucking work, FUCK!–has been made to look shit by the apathy and personal hatred of his peers. He knows that no man can achieve perfection against such a world of inadequacy, but most of all he knows, more than anything else, that he is right and everyone else is wrong, and if he looks shit it’s only because the rest of them are out to get him.

“Fucking stupid fucking arsehole…”

He turns onto St John Street and sees the bus stop. The 159 is pulling away, two kids visible in the back seat, framed by the bus’s internal white lights, laughing, probably at him. There’s no one at the bus stop, no one on the road. They’re all on the bus, or inside the last fucking taxi in EC fucking 1, not that they even need it, lazy pricks, because they’re probably not going far, to a wine bar or something, whereas Gavin is going–
Gavin
is going to—

A motorbike grumbles into life behind him, distracting him from his train of thought. Its engine rumbles, a low throaty growl, then keeps turning over. He crosses the quiet street. The bike is still revving, but now there is something wrong with the sound: a potency, a thickness, a thing within it that…

“Fucking stupid fuck fuck fuck…”

… that pauses for breath?

He hesitates on the edge of the yellow light that frames the empty bus shelter. Something soft presses on a loose cobble stone, which sings a hollow note as it bumps against its neighbours. Other men might have looked back. Other men might have wondered. Gavin McGafferty knows better than to look. Only an idiot looks.

He steps up to the shelter and looks at the timetable. At this time of night, the 159 runs every twenty to twenty-five minutes, which he knows means at least half an hour. And it’ll be full of weirdo druggies
and stupid kids, and he’ll be late, which is fucking fine because they can all fucking wait for him anyway but shit shit shit shit…

A ripple in the sound behind him, and it’s louder, and it’s closer, and that ripple–for that is the word–could almost be defined as the sound a soft leathery lip might make as it rubs its way across protruding fanged teeth, while a deep rumble inside a ribcage pressed within a hundred pounds of taut black flesh might yet prove the source of this persistent grumbling.

Idiots look.

Idiots look.

He’s not an idiot. Jesus, he’s Gavin McGafferty, he’s the shit, he’s the stuff, he’s the guy on the up, and all those fucking idiots around him who talk behind his back and try to bring him down because of their envy, their
envy
for Christ’s sake, they don’t understand. They’ll never get it, they’re the kind of guys who’d look, they’d look and he wouldn’t he wouldn’t he…

Looks.

The start of the scream doesn’t make it all the way to his voice box before it finds itself some three feet away from the air that should have supplied it. The teeth that remove his left ear dig deep enough to crack the solid sphere of his skull like a pistachio. Arguably, it’s the combined weight of Gavin and his attacker hitting the ground that causes the fractured pelvis. But frankly, given the time the paramedics spend trying to identify the body afterwards, no one really bothers to check.

The first one arrived on time, at 9.05 p.m. exactly.

The next at 9.07. There was a lull at 9.08 and then, as if an infrequent and much-denounced train had finally pulled up, at 9.11 they all started to tumble through the door of St Christopher’s Hall, with sideways glances as if to say, and you are who? Some smiled nervously and offered to shake hands–or whatever limb seemed suitable. Others kept their eyes on the floor, or clasped the shoulder of a more approachable companion come along to give support. One or two sneaked in under the mantle of their own very special disguises or glamours: there was the ever-reliable yellow fluorescent jacket that nearly guaranteed invisibility to all who wore it, through to a full-blown burka, rather let down by the hint of talon protruding beneath as the wearer folded herself uncomfortably into a plastic chair.

“Tea, coffee?” Sharon asked the gathering assembly as they shuffled their seats into place. A chorus of grunted affirmations came back, no one wanting to acknowledge that they were so difficult as to
need
tea or coffee but, that said, if someone else was having one anyway, they didn’t see the harm…

One or two braver guests tried talking to each other, stop-start conversations that fell into a lull as they gathered into a communal circle. Watching from the corner of her eye, by the time the door to the alley
finished banging shut Sharon had counted fourteen individuals of various shapes and sizes.

Not a bad number, she decided as steam began spouting from the kettle. And considering how limited her biscuit budget was, it was probably for the best. Not that anyone was going for the biscuits, though many eyes were upon them. Sensing this might be just the incentive to socialise that everyone needed, she grabbed two from a paper plate and munched loudly.

A voice said, “I’ve got ginger nuts.”

Sharon looked round. A freckled face peeked from beneath spear-straight hair that his mother probably told him was rich auburn but which no one else could deny was carrot from its pudding-bowl line up to its thick roots. The accent was Welsh, tinged with an apology for same, the height was average with an inclination towards short, the frame needed an extra ration of chicken soup, and the clothes were pure nerd. From the ends of the battered leather jacket one size too large, black fading to green where time had done its damage, to the ends of his never-run-in running shoes; from the beige trousers that sagged around the middle to the unironed tartan-pattern shirt with its mismatched buttons, this was a man who understood that he should care about fashion, but couldn’t quite make fashion care back.

She must have stared, because he swallowed, Adam’s apple rising and falling hugely, and said, “I suppose some people might be allergic to ginger nuts? I’m sorry, I didn’t really know what kind of thing you were supposed to bring to this sort of meeting, see?” He tried a grin, dazzling as a squally shower on an overcast day. “I suppose next time I’ll bring some fruit salad.”

“What?”

“Fruit salad? Although some people don’t like pineapple, which I don’t understand because I really like pineapple but everyone is different aren’t they? I mean of course they are that’s why we’re here I suppose, even though actually,” a laugh designed to be rich found itself on hard times, “we’re not really!”

He pushed the packet of biscuits among the rest, and mumbled, “Would you like a hand with the tea?”

Sharon said, “Uh, thanks, I mean… yeah. That’d be great, cheers.”

“I’m Rhys,” the man explained brightly, occupying himself over the
tea with the dedication of the truly relieved. “Rhys Ellis.” Then, in a lower, conspiratorial voice, “I’m a druid.”

“Really?” exclaimed Sharon, and now she too found that the mugs of tea were the most interesting things she’d ever handled. “That’s very uh… that’s very…”

“Welsh?”

“Kind of, yeah.”

“I learned druiding in Birmingham.”

“That’s less Welsh.”

“Yes, but my second teacher was from Swansea. Actually, my first was from Bangkok and he smoked these nasty cigarettes all the time. At first I thought they were some kind of herbal thing, see, to enhance his communing with the primal forces of the city, but in fact they were just cheap.” He laughed, so Sharon dutifully laughed as well. Before the laughter could end and words could muscle back in with disastrous consequence, she grabbed a handful of mugs and turned to the other people there.

“Tea!” she shrilled. “Who’d like a nice cuppa?”

So my name’s Rhys, and I’m a druid, see?

Well, I suppose I’m a druid, I don’t know, it all depends. According to the exam board I’m not actually a druid yet, I’m still an apprentice, but I was only one paper away from passing and if they won’t let me try again then I don’t see how they can be so… well… Anyway, yes. What else should you know about me? I work in IT–actually in IT support so it’s like when your system goes down at the office then I get called up and I go in and fix it and tell your people how to fix it see and that’s really interesting because I meet lots of people and every day is different and I quite like it. I mean, I like being a druid too, but it’s not like there’s much money in being a druid these days. Druid magic is all slow magic, all about being patient and letting the city’s rhythms take their natural course at a proper pace and everyone is all “No, we want it now” and they go to sorcerers and wizards and people like that even though actually sometimes the quick fix isn’t the right one, see?

Anyway, the problem… I mean, I wouldn’t say it’s like a massive problem, I mean, it’s not like I’ve got a disease, see, and it’s nothing criminal or anything like that! It’s more how… how everyone said I was going to be a druid and I was going to be the leader of my circle and all the lads in Birmingham were very excited and I was very excited
too, but then when the season comes I just can’t… And also if I get nervous then sometimes it comes out too, and the doctor says it’s just psychosomatic now as how there’s actually nothing in the environment to set it off but it really does get in the way when you’re trying to summon a pipe dragonling or something, and so you see I don’t really want to I don’t exactly like to and it’s not a problem but it’s… well, it’s rather ruined my life, actually. There. I said it. I was supposed to be… and now I can’t. And I don’t know what anyone can do to make it better.