Stray Souls (Magicals Anonymous) (21 page)

“Then there are the things that lurk just beneath perception, a thing that is neither seen nor perceived, but is sensed in the deepest part of the soul. They are the shadows at the ends of alleys, the urge to run down an empty street in the middle of the night, the fear of the thing that falls on the floor upstairs when the house should be sleeping, the creak of a door that should not be open–the thing, if you like, in the cupboard, the nightmare that has no name.

“Everyone knows it’s superstition, that none of it is real, and for the most part it isn’t. But there are some truths, some buried truths, that lurk just the other side of the dark, in the place where the dream walkers go, in the corners where the darkness is a little too thick; and they are always watching, looking for a way to crawl from the night into the day. Shadows and ghosts, spectres and wendigos, the death of cities and the memory of a blackout, they probe continually, looking for weaknesses. Greydawn keeps them at bay. She is the Keeper of the Gate, the One Who Walks Beside. She keeps the unreal things unreal. And now, you say, she is missing, and the Midnight Mayor is talking to the shamans, and you want my help.”

In the silence that followed Rhys even stopped sneezing.

Then Sharon said, “Mr Roding, may I shake your hand?”

Surprise flickered over the necromancer’s face. He examined his own hand curiously, just in case he’d misremembered the decaying nails and the shedding skin. Then, to make sure Sharon wasn’t just embarking on a joke too rude to be borne, he held it out to her, and she clasped it in her own and warmly shook the clammy flesh. “That,” she explained, “is exactly the kinda thing people should just straight up tell me. What the hell is it with this cryptic crap?”

“It’s curious,” added Mr Roding, reclaiming his hand and turning it over a few times in surprise, “that the Midnight Mayor should make mention of a dog.”

“It is?”

“In traditional images of Our Lady of 4 a.m. she is sometimes depicted as having a dog at her side. But if you really want to know about Greydawn,” offered Mr Roding, “I’d try talking to the Friendlies.”

“Who are they?”

“They’re her followers. Worshippers, if you will.”

“Um… do you mind if I ask my standard questions when someone tells me something like that?”

“Your standard questions?”

On her fingers Sharon ticked off the by-now regular list of enquiries. “No nudity? No drumming? No animal sacrifice?”

“Not when I last enquired. Why, is that something you’ve encountered a lot in your work?”

“Just playing safe. What about this ward?”

Mr Roding examined his crooked flaking fingernails. Then, “You think that this… Burns and Stoke is connected to Greydawn’s disappearance?”

“I think they’re connected to all the other spirits going missing. And Greydawn sounds like a spirit, and she’s missing. So, yeah, you know what, as I’m a shaman and supposed to just know shit, then yeah, I’d say it’s probably not gonna be a coincidence.”

“In that case, if you can get me into Burns and Stoke without causing any unwanted questions, I will dismantle their wards for you.”

“Seriously?”

“Necromancers have an unjustifiably bad reputation,” complained Mr Roding. “And,” he turned to Rhys, “do you really think lavender oil will work?”

Rhys brightened. “Oh yes. All I need is some lavender, a saucepan, some polenta, a tub of half-fat yoghurt, three cinnamon sticks and some water from the stagnant puddle that grows above a three-days-blocked drain, and I can do marvellous things for your skin!” He hesitated. “And maybe some rubber gloves.”

Mr Roding, in as much as his facial muscles were animated, looked almost pleased.

“These Friendlies,” asked Sharon, putting down her cup of tea. “You got their number?”

“No,” he admitted. “But you can probably find them in the Yellow Pages.”

Oi oi.

Name’s Sammy.

Sammy the Elbow.

Only gonna say this once so you get it.

Head of the tribe is the head, council is neck, warriors is arms, scavengers is belly, hunters is feet, and me–I’m elbow. Cos I’m sharp and pointy and you don’t wanna get me mad.

One other thing we gotta get clear here, while we’re at it.

Second
greatest shaman ever!
Second!
Not third, not bloody third, because Blistering Steve was a bloody moron and it was bloody spontaneous combustion what he did, not transcending to a higher plane or that! There were scorch marks on the ceiling! There was a carbonised shoe on the floor. I’m seriously pissed that you wankers would think that Blistering Steve, that incompetent prat who wouldn’t know a subduction spell if it went off under his frickin’ bed, is remotely on the same level as me! I’m good at my job! It’s not just me being modest or anything, I
am
that good and that’s the truth of it and I don’t see why I should say anything other.

The problem–the only problem I have, because when you’re as on it as me there ain’t many things what can drag you down–the problem is people. Human people, as you’re asking. They just don’t get me.
I can walk up to your average Joe and tell him everything about his life, because I’ve seen it, I’ve seen all the echoes and all the stories you people carry around with you in your shadow, and I’ll be right, and what’ll Joe do? He’ll scream and point and go “Goblin, goblin!” and call pest control and a wizard and I’ll be like, “Oi, bozo! I’m frickin” telling you a frickin’ smart thing here so don’t give me this goblin crap because I am on it like mussels on the side of a polluted pier!”

Everyone’s all like “It’s not discrimination; you’re a goblin” and I’m like “That is discriminatory whatsit or whatever” but they don’t listen because, like they said, I’m a goblin! It is so frustrating having to deal with all these morons!

I’m not how you’d say a people person.

They are the Friendlies.

Technically, they are the Association of Friendly Members and Concerned Interests but, since none of their members really remember that and “afmaci” sounds like a dangerous Italian drink, they are, by unspoken consent, the Friendlies.

They are the union of late-night workers, of lonely beggars and the widows who sit alone looking out of darkened windows into the lost hours of the night. Their members are the cleaners who leave work at 5 a.m., the men with dirty faces slipping through the midnight tunnels beneath the city streets when the trains have stopped. Night bus drivers and street cleaners whose beat is five square miles of untended turf where the rubbish collects faster than they can clear it; security men who sit in cabins by closed gates watching TV that is meant only for gamblers and the lonely.

The Friendlies is where the lonely may be lonely together and, perhaps more importantly, where they may be told that for all the streets may be empty and the skies may be dark, no one who walks by themself in the dead of night is truly alone.

They have many shrines around the city. Usually these are discreet things at the back of community halls or tokens tied to park railings. A message scratched into the bark of a plane tree; the bicycle wheel left
chained to a fence, though all other parts have been removed; the lifeless string of fairy lights that hang from a lamp post, though no one can quite work out why. But they only have one temple and it is…

“Here?” exclaimed Sharon, as they looked up at the sign Sellotaped to the door. “What kind of lame crappy temple is this?”

The sign taped to the glass front read,
Association of Friendlies–no flyers please.

A much larger sign remained, faded and cracked, on the hoarding overhead. Its original orange letters had long since been pulled off, with only their pale outline still visible on a black background. This read,
EDNA’S TANNING AND BEAUTY SALON.

“How about pinnacles?” demanded Sharon. “How about red carpets, the smell of incense, chanting and all that? I’ve only been doing this magic thing for a while, but no one has chanted at me once! What the hell is that about?”

Rhys hoped his shrug had a degree of consolation about it.

Sharon scowled. She glared around the street they’d come to and her scowl deepened. Since leaving Walthamstow they’d gone from full daylight to darkness, but then, in urban terms, they’d gone from the end of the earth in one direction to the end of the earth in the other.

“Tooting,” she growled. “What kind of stupid religion builds its temple in Tooting?”

“There’s a Hindu
mandir
in Neasden,” offered Rhys.

“Yeah, but there’s an Ikea near Neasden!”

“Is there a connection between Brahma and Ikea?”

“What I’m saying,” grumbled Sharon, “is you can sort of get Neasden. It’s a dump, stuck between more dumps on the end of a dumpy line which people only use to go from London Bridge to the Dome anyway, but! Even if there’s nothing else about Neasden, at least you know that there you can always find a flat-pack table and an air cooler in the shape of a sunflower. But…” her face fell further yet as she surveyed the entrance to the temple “… Tooting?”

Rhys found he had no comfort to offer. Sharon rolled her eyes, strode forward and knocked on the door, grumbling under her breath, “Tanning salon my arse.”

Whatever the Friendlies had done to Edna’s Tanning and Beauty Salon, it wasn’t for public display. Thick brown blinds hung in the
former shop window and, as they waited, a single weak bulb came on over the door.

A woman opened the door. She was… Sharon and Rhys each took a moment to consider exactly what she was. She wore purple. Back in her early fifties this woman had considered her approaching old age, read up the available literature, studied peers and older colleagues, and resolved that not only would she not take being pensioned lying down, she wasn’t going to take it at all. A giant purple cardigan sank almost to her knees; her legs were encased in huge pale blue trousers like a pair of spinnakers; a giant mess of gold and bead necklaces hung intertwined down her chest, while her silver-white hair had been crafted into a balloon style inviting the eye to soar upwards. Her throat was framed by a pair of dewlaps, and her earlobes, aided over time by the clunky gold and shell jewellery pricked into them, had grown so low they nearly flapped against her jaw. Above a superb set of false teeth, a radiant smile fixed itself on Sharon like a searchlight at a prison camp. She was…

“Sorry, sweetie, we’re closed.”

Magnificent?

Was that the word?

Whatever she was, she began at once to close the door. Sharon opened her mouth to say, “Oh no, but wait there’s a—” and the door thudded shut as the woman retreated into the gloom beyond. Behind her the light went off.

Sharon looked at Rhys, who shrugged. Behind them traffic crawled through the blinking traffic lights of Tooting, little farting cars seeking a better place in the narrow backstreets.

“Rhys,” she said, then paused, groping for the right words. “I’m just wondering–and I’d like you to be kind of honest on this one, because it’s gonna be important–do I look…
spiritual
to you?”

“Spiritual?”

“Do I look…” she ventured, “sagely? When you see me, do you think ‘There is a woman replete with the mystic wisdom of the ages’ and stuff? Do you get a mental picture of ancestors who did drumming, and men who went ‘Aaaah’ whenever asked a question, and not in a sore-throat way? Do I give off… an aura of enlightenment?”

“Um.” Rhys had meant to say this as the opening of something good. Somehow, the rest of the sentence didn’t follow.

Sharon sighed. “No,” she murmured, deflating. “Didn’t think so.”

“Maybe we should try later?”

“I am not trekking all the way to Tooting, to fucking
Tooting,
to try again later! Do I look like I’m made of Travelcard? Besides!” An angry flap of her arms demonstrated just how besides this besides would be. “Fate of the city, remember? Come on.”

Before Rhys could protest that, actually, he wasn’t a walking-through-walls kinda guy, Sharon grabbed him by the sleeve and pulled him after her.

There was a moment of doubt, a sensation of being sucked on like the human equivalent of a boiled sweet, and when Rhys opened his eyes, he and Sharon stood in the one-time Edna’s Tanning Salon, with the woman in purple turning to face them with an expression of horror and dismay.

“How did you…?”

“It’s okay, we’re here to save the city. Nobody panic!” replied Sharon. “You’re… saving the city?”

Sharon hesitated for no more than a second, then proclaimed, “Yep! That’s me, totally on it, saving the city. Me, a goblin, a necromancer and a bloke called Rhys.”

“Hello,” offered Rhys.

“You just walked through my wall!” exclaimed the woman. Not in anger, but in a tone of social embarrassment, as if years of good breeding and experience hadn’t quite informed her of an appropriate response.

“I do that,” explained Sharon. “I was worried about it for a while–I really thought there’d be implications. I mean, not just with my health, but maybe with God and Satan and that, because, actually, how’s a girl to know? But everyone seems to say it’s okay and I’m thinking I should just go with it.”

“Well, dear,” exclaimed the white-haired woman, “that’s all very well, but we really are closed.”

Sharon looked around the room. All apparatus from its previous, commercial life had been removed save for two reclining chairs and a wall of grubby mirrors. The floor had been cleared and re-covered with dirty mattresses, battered cushions and stained pillows. Bits of cardboard were lined up in what might have been pews to face a table converted to what could only be an altar.

It wasn’t just the £1.99 aromatic candles lining the table’s back edge, nor the bunting of cheap plastic flowers Sellotaped around its top. It wasn’t only the neatness of the offerings assembled on its surface, laid out as votives to some god, nor yet the locked donations box tucked away below. All of these were suggestive of themselves. But what clinched it was the sign stuck up with Blu-tack on the wall beyond. In blue felt-tip pen someone had attempted to draw an open hand reaching out to an eager congregation. With the same instrument they had also inscribed the words She Is With You.