A Madness of Angels: Or the Resurrection of Matthew Swift (62 page)

 

We bit back on anger and nausea.

 

I wondered why I was still alive, and looked down further. My feet were bare. I wiggled my toes in an attempt to distract myself from the sudden grip of fear in my stomach. Where had they taken my shoes? More importantly, perhaps,
when
had they taken my shoes? I had no way of telling and for a moment we almost considered lashing out with what strength we could feel inside ourself and incinerating everything that came within the radius of our limited perceptions, so that at least if all things had to end, they could end with a bit of glory.

 

I resisted, forcing us to breathe in and out with a slow, steady rhythm and consider our situation. By rubbing my chin against my shoulder I got the impression of a few days’ growth of beard. By my light-headed state after even that small excursion, I guessed that they’d taken several pints of blood from me during this time; the administration now of type-O blood was for no better purpose than to keep us alive a bit longer, for their own benefit, rather than ours. By the fact that all our internal organs were where they should have been and our heart rate steady, we guessed that they still needed us, and felt for a moment a thrill of optimistic heat in our skin.

 

There was no hurry.

 

I could wait.

 

I lay back and closed my eyes, and let the blood fill my veins again.

 

 

“Matthew?”

 

I said nothing.

 

“Oh, Matthew. How did things ever come to this?”

 

“You know,” I replied, “I’m only two restraints, a cramp and a cocktail of drugs away from shrugging contemptuously in answer to that one.”

 

The squeak of a wheelchair on rubber flooring; a sigh. “Matthew,” chided the voice, “this is for the best.”

 

“Uh-huh.”

 

“I still don’t understand how you ended up like this! How it became so… rooted… in you. I know they drove you to do the things you did, and I promise you, I will free you from their curse.”

 

We opened our eyes. “Our what?”

 

Bakker leant forward in his chair, hands clasped together in front of him, face concerned. “I understand that… despite the terrible things you’ve done… it was for them. The angels hunger for life; of course they do; what wouldn’t? They feed on it, long for it, for experience, sense, freedom – it only makes sense that they would… well. Enough of what they would. It’s too late now for San and Guy and Harris and all those other poor souls who I’m sure they’ve dragged down, while wearing your body. I am sorry for it, and for the things that you will feel, if I should ever manage to free you from the angels’ snare.”

 

I stared at him, his pale, ageing face made more so by the gaunt contrasts of the room. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but can I just clarify this? You think
I
killed San Khay and Harris Simmons? You think that Guy Lee was even capable of dying? You think the angels have possessed me? Are you really that lost?”

 

He shook his head in dismay; began to turn the chair.

 

“Mr Bakker!” I called out after him. “I do not believe you can’t in your heart of hearts sense the things that have been done, guess at the crimes committed in your name! Look in the mirror and tell me where your shadow goes when you are so happily dreaming of good deeds; look at your own reflection and tell me why, in a bright light, the darkness we all cast isn’t lying at your feet!” He gave no response. I screamed after him, “You can’t be so blind as to not know! A part of you
must
know!”

 

He didn’t answer, and wheeled his way out of the room without once looking back.

 

 

No more dreams.

 

We wanted no more dreams.

 

Make me a shadow on the wall
…

 

           
can you keep control?

 

a few pearls of wisdom

 

                      …
you’re kinda stuffed, sorcerer!

 

come be me

 

we be light, we be life, we be fire

 

make me a shadow on the wall

 

burn for ever

 

                      …
not worth paying much attention to

 

You’re a nit when not them, aren’t you?

 

we sing electric flame, we rumble underground wind, we dance heaven!

 

come be me and be free

 

 

we be
…

 

I be
…

 

be free

 

I’m sorry there’s no one to take your call right now, please leave your message after the dialling tone!

 

Beeeeeeeeee
…

 

…
me
…

 

And be free.

 

.-.-.

 

No more dreams.

 

We couldn’t stand them any more.

 

 

 

 

A tickle in our nose?

 

A rumble somewhere far off, like the hot sigh of underground wind coming up from the tube.

 

I opened my eyes, since we were too afraid to, and looked around. Somewhere in the distance, there was a deep, polite
whumph
.

 

A tickle in my nose.

 

A trickle of mortar dust drifted down from the ceiling. We licked it off our lips, curious. It made our dry tongue, if possible, drier, and tasted of nothing much, with a hint of salt.

 

I croaked, “Dana?”

 

From the corner behind my head, out of my line of sight, she said, “That’s a spooky thing you’ve got going there.”

 

“What is?”

 

“The way you knew I was here.”

 

“I was faking being asleep.”

 

“Then the blue eyes are spooky instead.”

 

“We can’t really do anything about that.”

 

“Another spooky thing.”

 

“What is?”

 

“The way you sound human when you speak.”

 

“That’s got a better explanation, all things considered. What’s going on?”

 

She shrugged. “There’s an underground line beneath us.”

 

“Which one?”

 

“Northern.”

 

“Oh. That’s what the rumbling is.”

 

“Perhaps.”

 

“You don’t sound convinced.”

 

“I’m not buying into any new faith systems.”

 

“I wasn’t asking for you to…”

 

“I think we’re going to die,” she said quietly.

 

We thought about this, then smiled. “All things must end,” we said. “So, in the long-term perspective, you may be right. But what’s the point of living, unless you have an end to live for?”

 

She grunted. I heard the sound of her shoes plodding flatly on the carpet, of something moving on a table beyond my vision. The needles in my arm were gone, the pinpricks covered with small plasters, but I didn’t feel any better for it. Her hand brushed the back of our head, tilted it up carefully. She put a plastic cup next to our lips and said, “Go on. Have some.”

 

We hesitated, and looked up into her face. She looked pale, thin, but her eyes were still alert, if no longer bright. I sipped. The touch of the water was absolute balm; it rolled across our tongue as if the muscles in our mouth had cracked and dried like a desert, so solidly baked it was almost incapable of absorbing the moisture. When I’d drunk, she said, “I read somewhere that it just goes straight through you, if you’re too dehydrated, like a brick.”

 

“Cheering,” I said.

 

“Would you like some more?”

 

I licked my lips and nodded. She disappeared somewhere behind me. Water ran. She reappeared and helped me drink. Then she said, “You haven’t asked me to help you yet.”

 

“I didn’t want to rush things.”

 

“They say you’re possessed.”

 

“Who ‘they’?”

 

“Mr Bakker.” The same tone of respect was in her voice that still, even now, instinctively filled mine.

 

“I’m not.”

 

“But you’re not quite yourself, are you?”

 

“No. Not entirely.”

 

“He said you killed Khay, Lee, Simmons.”

 

“I didn’t.”

 

“But you did see my mother.”

 

I looked up and she was right there, staring down at me, face impassive, voice so cold and empty I half-imagined she hadn’t spoken at all. I licked the last drops of water off my lips, and she didn’t offer to get any more. “I saw Mrs Mikeda. She’s worried about you.”

 

“Did you do anything to her?”

 

“You know I didn’t.”

 

She nodded slowly. Then, “If I help you, promise me you’ll leave. Just get up and go, run. Just run and don’t stop running and move east faster than the night-time and keep going. I know you can do that. I know you know how. Just…” She stopped. I waited. She took a deep breath, steadied herself. “He watches me, all the time,” she murmured. “He’ll find out.”

 

“Bakker?” I asked.

 

She shook her head. “He is kind. He tried to help me.”

 

“Hunger?” I said.

 

Her eyes turned to me, uncertainty giving them a certain light, for a moment. “You…” she began, a question trailing off in her voice.

 

“Tall, dark, wears Mr Bakker’s face?” I asked. “He who watches you?”

 

She nodded.

 

“Wears my old coat?”

 

Slowly, nodding.

 

“What does he want?”

 

“He said he’d let me live if I helped him.”

 

“Help him do…?”

 

“Summon the angels. He said…”

 

Realisation dawned slowly. “You called us back,” we murmured. “You brought us here!”

 

There it was, a spasm of fear on her face. “Yes,” she said.

 

“You brought us back!” we repeated, louder. “It was you, you dragged us out of the lines because we’ve always spoken to you, always known you, always been there for you and you knew where we would hide and you brought us back! We have loved you your whole life, we have whispered to you of freedom and the brightness of life and you,
you
brought us back! You summoned us!”

 

“Yes,” emotion now in her voice, trembling on the edges.

 

“Why?” we asked.

 

“So many dead,” she replied. “He killed them – Akute, Pensley, Foster, all the sorcerers who you told me to run to if things got bad – he killed them all! Not just because they were his enemies, but because they were
your
friends! To have his revenge on you even once you were dead because
you
wouldn’t help him; wherever I went he killed! And you left me!”

 

Talking to me, I guessed, not us; we had never entirely left her.

 

“You left me half-trained, unprepared, what was I supposed to do when you were dead?” Her voice was rising in anger and fear and, perhaps, something else. “He said he’d kill everyone I knew, everyone I touched, everyone I… but I’d be alive because they’d never found your body, because he saw you the night you died, he saw you breathe your life into the telephone lines, saw your flesh eaten away in a second by a mountain of blue electric maggots that fed on you until there was nothing but blood left, and I hoped, I thought, that perhaps…
what was I meant to do?
”

 

We stared at her, and there were the beginnings of tears in her eyes, although she was fighting with all her pride to hold them back, daring me to disagree. We said, “We’re sorry.”

 

She grunted, half-turned away from us to wipe her eyes with her sleeve, snuffled and turned back, as if somehow we hadn’t noticed the gesture.

 

I said, “I’m sorry. Dana – I’m sorry.”

 

She swallowed and nodded. “Run away,” she said. “You can’t stop him. Please. Run away.”

 

“It may be a bit too late for that,” we answered. “Dana?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“What did your mother have to say?”

 

Dana half-laughed, a choked-off, failed sound. “She said you were an arrogant bastard and probably in league with the Devil.”

 

“Really?” I asked, not too surprised.

 

“She said you told her everything. She said you apologised.”

 

“That’s true.”

 

“In all the years since you’ve been gone, with all the things that have happened,” murmured Dana, “Bakker has never apologised. He doesn’t know that he needs to.”

 

A distant thud, another trickle of mortar dust from the ceiling. I said, “That’s not the Northern line.”

 

A flash of a grin on her face, wry and familiar. “Central line around here too.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Sure.”

 

I thought about it, then started to laugh.

 

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

 

“I know where we are. Christ, the guy’s got some cheek,” I muttered. “Dana?”

 

“Yes, Matthew?”

 

“Will you help me?”

 

“He’ll kill us.”

 

“I can handle Bakker.”

 

“It’s not him I’m talking about.”

 

“We know. We can handle him.”

 

“Mum said you were possessed. Mr Bakker said you were possessed too.”

 

“It’s too short a word for the relationship,” I murmured. “Please, Dana. You wouldn’t be here at all if you weren’t going to help me. So I’m sorry to rush this, but please,
please
do what you had to, sooner rather than later?”

 

“Why’d you see my mum?”

 

“I was worried!”

 

“About me?”

 

“Of course about you!”

 

“But you thought she might call me. Say you came by. You counting on me to help you out? You were dead until a few weeks ago. You’ve got the wrong colour eyes.”

 

“Please,” I said. “Please, you know that this is still me. Help me.”

 

She thought about it. “Maybe we should talk,” she said.

 

 

We talked.

 

She told me about being Mr Bakker’s apprentice. That he had shown her the wonders of the city, taught her to find beauty in all the brightest things, taught her that everything was alive, and bright and full of potential and wonder if you just bothered to see, and that this was good, this was how sorcery felt it should be.

 

Then she told me that he’d told her that magic was life. That there would be no life if there wasn’t magic, that the study of magic, the pursuit of it, the analysis of it, the understanding of it, all these things were key to understanding life.