December (24 page)

      
She was aware that the ceiling light had gone out and behind
her, in the darkness of the faded bedroom, the steam was playing games; it had
made its own pallid light and within this light it wreathed and spun like
skeins of grey wool.

      
Please
, she thought,
but could not speak, forced into accepting ownership of the stricken face in
the glass.
Please, no.

      
And even as the thought escaped, the swirling steam became, as
she knew it would, the dead face of the Duchess, long white hair uncoiling,
eyelids sprung back ... the Duchess rising in the greyness of her shroud, thin
fingers splayed above the shoulders of the reflected image of her daughter in
the mirror.

      
And in the condensation on the mirror, in a stricken, spidery hand,
the Duchess's thin forefinger began to inscribe

In the glass, Moira saw her
own mouth form into an O of explicit revulsion, and she threw herself around,
hauling on the damp flex so hard that the wires were jerked out of the plug and
she and the Duchess were suddenly wrapped together inside a wildly crackling
electric sheet of glorious delphinium blue

VIII

Predator

'Open up, please, sir.'
      
'Who is it?'
      
'It's the police, sir. We've had
reports of a disturbance, if you wouldn't mind ...'

      
He struggled with the top bolt, jammed it back, which sounded
like a car-crash in his head. One of the coppers was right up against the door;
he was in the flat faster than the hard night air.

      
'Dunno what this is about, officer, but I think you got the wrong
place.'

      
'Won't mind if we take a look around then, sir.'

      
'Why the f—? No. No, sure. Go ahead.'

      
The two of them were in by now, young blokes, dead keen. One
stayed between him and the door, the other searched the flat; took about a minute,
came back, quickly shook his head.
      
What were they expecting, bodies?

      
'You had the TV on, sir?'

      
'I was in
bed
, son.
Asleep. And ... and dreaming.' Yeah.

      
This time the first one stayed with him while the other had a
look around.
      
'According to our information, Mr—'

      
'Levin.'

      
'According to our information, Mr Levin, someone was screaming
and yelling in here shortly before five a.m. You're saying you've been here
alone for ...'
      
'Several years, officer.'
      
'Tonight, sir.'
      
'Since about eleven.'
      
'Where were you before that?'

      
I... went for a drink.'
      
'Which pub?'

      
'A couple. The Sheridan, that was the last.'
      
'A couple. I see. Did you hear
anything suspicious in the last hour?'

      
'I was asleep. No. I didn't. Only you two trying to batter my
bloody door down.'

      
'You live alone here?'

      
'I live alone. I'm happily divorced.'

      
'You don't look very well, sir.'

      
'Yeah, I lied about being happy too.'

      
'You're covered with sweat, if you don't mind me commenting.'

      
'Course I mind, you cheeky bastard. Maybe you made me nervous.
It ever occurred to you you might make somebody nervous beating the crap of
their door at five in the morning?' .
      
'Have a
lot
to drink, did we, sir?'
      
'And that's a crime in itself now,
is it?'
      
'You're sure nobody came back with
you, spent the night here?'

      
'If only.'

      
'I should put something on, sir, the way you're shivering.
Harry?'

      
'Nothing.'

      
'Right then, sir. Let's hope we don't have to come back. I'd
start having a little more consideration for the neighbours if I were you.
Never know when you might need them, neighbours.'

      
'Yes. No. Sorry you were dragged out, son.'

      
'Goodnight, sir. What's left of it.'

      
Too much, Prof thought. Too much darkness.

      
When they'd gone, he poured himself three inches of Scotch and
swallowed half of it. He sat in the living-room in his dressing-gown. He didn't
even try to go back to bed. When he felt himself falling asleep he got up and
went to the kitchen tap and splashed cold water on his face.

      
He stood there, water streaming down his face, the way the
blood had run down Barney Gwilliam's face when Barney had slapped both dripping
hands on his cheeks in his agony.

      
God help me, that I
should ever have a night of dreams like this again.

      
Prof plunged his face into a tea-towel and scrubbed until it
hurt. He went back into his living-room, dug out a copy of
Time Out
. Ran his fingernail repeatedly down the folk/rock/jazz
pages but couldn't find what he was after. Could have sworn he'd seen a poster
somewhere ... Dave Kite, he was calling himself, as in
For the Benefit of...
      
Kite, Kite... nothing.

      
Just before dawn, he started to weep with fatigue and sought
strength once again in the sodding bottle. Yeah, yeah, bad idea, but the drink
was a safer option.

      
Thus emboldened, Prof lurched to the window and screamed over
the rooftops, at the sky, 'Get light, you bastard!'
      
Darkness left you prey.

      
Prey to what? To a recording? Was this realistic?

      
Yeah. Even the cheapest kind of pop music was like chewing-gum
for the mind. You'd be doing a session, committing to tape some really
innocuous piece of crap and next morning you'd wake up and your mind was
singing it over and over, and wouldn't let go. You'd be in the bathroom,
shaving, or on the bog, and you couldn't flush it out of your head.

      
Music was a predator.

      
Prof tried to read a feature in
Time Out
about Joanna Lumley, whom he'd fancied for more years than
she'd care to have it known. It seemed irrelevant to where he was now.

      
Had that been him screaming? It was the young woman, surely,
rushing through the ruins until her lungs were bursting, reaching for the night
sky, the arches above and around her like dinosaur bones framing the cold,
white moon. The young woman desperate to fly.

      
And the derisive singing, Gregorian chant gone sour.

      
And over all this, the death agony of poor, bloody Barney
Gwilliam.

      
Prof had awoken maybe five times in the night, rolling in his
solitary bed, the sheet sweating to his back like clingfilm on cheese.

      
He needed somebody to talk to. A woman. Every time since the
divorce he'd had a woman here for more than two nights, he'd told himself, this
is it, last time, never again, don't ever get tempted, Kenny boy. Because two
nights was enough to demonstrate the way women liked to place you into a bloody
structure
, and he was too old for
that.

      
Yet structures, however flimsy, stopped your life breaking up
into anarchy and chaos, and he hadn't realised before how close at hand it was,
the bloody chasm. Just as close as sleep. You spent a third of your life
sleeping, out of control, and when chaos started to take over your sleep ...

      
Hold it ...

      
By accident, he'd found what he was looking for. Dave Kite. It
was listed under 'comedy'. Two pages, now, of bloody comedy clubs, everybody
suddenly wanting to escape into laughter.

      
The relevant gig was tomorrow night. No, shit... tonight, this
was
tomorrow.

      
The sky acquired light. Soon after seven. Prof lit the gas
fire, opened the curtains wide to the dawn and bedded down on the sofa, knowing
he'd awake unrefreshed but, if his subconscious had any mercy, without music in
his mind.

      
The kind of music that could swallow your sanity.

First thing, Eddie Edwards
was ready with his parcel, a shoebox begged from Mrs Edwards, with straw inside
... and a candle.

      
He took it to the shop at the Dragon, which was not an actual
post office but sold stamps and had mail picked up there by special
arrangement.

      
The parcel was addressed to an old friend of his, Ivor Speed,
a chemist at the University of Wales, Swansea. When he arrived home he
telephoned Ivor, told him about it.

      
'A candle? What am I supposed to do with a candle?'

      
'A candle such as you have never seen before, I'll bet,' Mr
Edwards said. 'Playing detectives, I am. I want an analysis.'
      
'Even if I can arrange to do it
here, it'll take time. Couple of days, maybe more.'

      
'Quick as you can, Ivor, quick as you can.'

      
'And what do you expect me to find?'

      
'Probably nothing. Just a feeling I have.'

      
And that ought to have been that, until Ivor got back to him.
But he couldn't get it out of his mind.

      
He took Zap for his walk, along the path curving up into the
cleft of the rock. The path was steep; it occurred to him he might be too old
for it before the dog was, which was a depressing thought.

      
It was a cold, colourless morning with a haze on the horizon,
over which the Skirrid was printed like a patch of damp on a napkin.

      
From the other side, it was nothing to speak of, just another
hill with a rocky bump, like a scab, near the summit. Even from here, it was
not, in truth, so remarkable, its main peak like the keel of an upturned boat.
It was inspiring, mystical,
because
it was the Skirrid, because you never looked at it without being aware of the
most significant, terrible moment in the history of mankind. The power of
legend. Which made the little Skirrid, in its way, more dramatic than the
Matterhorn, or the Taj Mahal. And touched this undulating border landscape, and
its ruins of abbeys and castles, with magic.

      
And this made Mr Edwards think of
black
magic. They had not been black candles, not quite, but there
was about them ...

      
'An evil,' Mr Edwards whispered aloud to the Skirrid, seven
miles away.

      
There. He'd said it.

      
How strange to be using that word in a place like this, where
there was no malice in the people, only an occasional - how could he put this?
-
leadenness
of spirit.

      
But he had seen dread on the face of the vicar when he'd been
shown those candles. The vicar knew what it meant, all right. And if he would
not tell, Mr Edwards was honour-bound, in this place, to find out for himself.

Four p.m.

      
Hunched over the gas fire, Prof had three attempts at tapping
out the TMM main number on the cordless before he got it right. Nerves?
Fatigue? The booze?