Fire Spirit (14 page)

‘We need to perform an
ex
-orcism,' said the laughing man.

‘Say
what
?'

‘An exorcism. You know what an exorcism is, don't you, Rastus? You must have seen the movie. Linda Blair's head rotating around and around, and jabbing herself in the muff with that crucifix.'

‘You're nuts,' said Neville. ‘Why don't you get out of here before you do something you are seriously going to regret.'

‘Too late for regrets,' said the laughing man. ‘Much too late for
any
regrets, serious or otherwise. Now, why don't you climb back on to your bus and announce to your geriatric flock that we intend to come aboard, and whatever we ask them to do, they had better cooperate, without any argument, or else it's going to be very much the worse for them.'

‘I can't do that,' Neville retorted. ‘I'm responsible for these people's welfare, and if you think I'm going to allow you anywhere near them, then you're a whole lot crazier than you look.'

‘Well, that's very noble,' said the laughing man. He turned to the expressionless man and then to the scowling man. ‘Don't you think that's very noble?'

The two of them nodded in agreement, and the scowling man said, ‘Very,
very
noble,' and let out a high-pitched snort of amusement.

The laughing man took another step closer to Neville, and Neville took another step back, until he was standing with his back pressed against the bus.

The laughing man's voice was barely audible above the drumming of the rain on the bus's roof. ‘You have one chance of survival, Rastus, and that is to do what we tell you, no questions asked. You got that?'

Neville swung at him, one of the southpaw punches that had won him the Indiana Golden Gloves Junior Championship. But he had been seventeen then, and now he was fifty-four, and nearly four decades slower. The laughing man whipped up his right forearm and deflected the blow before it was even halfway to hitting him.

Without hesitation, the laughing man punched Neville in the stomach, hard, just below his breastbone, and Neville let out a ‘
dah
!' of pain, colliding with the bus behind him and then dropping on one knee to the asphalt.

‘Do I have to repeat myself?' said the laughing man. He coughed, and coughed again, and it was several seconds before he was able to continue. Neville was gasping, too, desperately trying to get his breath back.

Eventually, the laughing man said, ‘If you don't do what I tell you, Rastus, then believe me I will make you wish on your mother's grave that you had.'

The scowling man came forward and shoved Neville's shoulder with the heel of his hand. ‘You need to listen up, feller,' he put in. ‘You wouldn't want to be wishing that wish in a falsetto voice, now, would you? Because that's what you'd be doing.'

‘Now, up on your feet,' the laughing man ordered him. ‘We need to get this exorcism started.'

A white panel van approached them, driving southward with its headlights on and its windshield wipers flapping at full speed. It slowed down as it came nearer, and the driver put down his window. Neville saw the words
Eli's Electrics
stenciled in red on the side. The driver looked as if he were about to call out to them and ask them if they needed any help, but then the scowling man and the expressionless man turned around and confronted him, and he obviously thought better of it, and accelerated away. Neville tried to shout out, ‘Call the cops!', but he was too winded to get the words out, and all he could manage was an aspirate wheeze.

The scowling man and the expressionless man came up on either side of him and took hold of his arms. They dragged him up on to his feet, and then forced him up the steps into the bus. His eight elderly passengers all stared up at him anxiously, and Mrs Lutz said, ‘What is it, Neville? Who are these men? What's happening? Are you all right?'

Mr Kaminsky said, ‘Is this a stick-up?'

‘No, sir,' said the laughing man. ‘This isn't a stick-up.'

‘Oh, no? If this isn't a stick-up, why are you wearing masks?'

‘Neville, what's going on?' asked Miss Elwood, peering at him through her half-glasses. She reached into her purse and held up her cellphone. ‘Do you want me to dial 911?'

‘Nobody's going to dial nothing,' said the laughing man. He jerked his head at the scowling man, and the scowling man made his way down the bus and tugged Miss Elwood's cellphone out of her hand.

‘
Hey
!' she protested, but the scowling man slapped her hard on the side of the head.

‘You leave her alone, you goddamned coward!' quavered Mr Kaminsky, rising from his seat, but the scowling man slapped him, too, and he fell backward and hit his head against the window, knocking one lens out of his spectacles.

‘Give me your cells, all of them!' the scowling man demanded.

‘I most certainly will
not
!' Mrs Tiplady retorted. Mrs Tiplady had been head teacher of a private girls' school, and although she wore a pink eyepatch on her right eye and her upper lip was whiskery, she still cut an imperious figure.

The scowling man punched her in the face, breaking the bridge of her nose with an audible crack. Blood spurted out of her nostrils and down her chin, spattering on to her raincoat. Mrs Tiplady cupped her hand over her nose, whimpering, while the scowling man wrenched open her pocketbook and tipped out the contents on to the seat next to her.

‘Give me your cells, you dried-up bunch of old coots!' he barked. ‘And I mean
now
!' The remaining passengers all fumbled in their pockets and their purses and brought out their phones. The scowling man snatched them one by one and then dropped them on to the floor of the bus with a clatter and stamped on them.

‘You
pigs
!' cried Miss Elwood. ‘You total
pigs
!'

The scowling man went back along the bus and slapped her again, twice. Miss Elwood started to weep.

The laughing man said, ‘Anybody else have anything to say? If you have, you can say it, but it's going to make your life expectancy a whole lot shorter than it is already. You hear?'

He turned to Neville and said, ‘Sit down, Rastus, and get this bus started. Drive us into the park.'

Neville was trembling with anger at his own impotence. He was supposed to take care of these old folks, supposed to protect them, but he couldn't.

‘I'm not doing it, man,' he said. ‘There is absolutely no way.'

‘
Knife
,' said the laughing man. The expressionless man produced a large clasp knife from his raincoat pocket and passed it over. The laughing man pried it open, coughing as he did so. He held it up in front of Neville's face and said, ‘If you defy me one more time, Rastus, I'm going to put out one of your eyes and I'm going to stick it on the end of this shank so that you can see it with your other eye. Then I'm going to put out that eye, too. And then I'm going to cut off your floppy black dick and I'm going to make you eat it. And if you don't think I'm deadly serious, here's a taster.'

With that, he turned the knife around, lifted his fist, and stabbed Neville right in the middle of his forehead. Neville shouted out, ‘
Ah
!' and clamped his hand to his head, and as he did so the laughing man stabbed him through the back of his hand, too.

‘
Now
do you think I'm kidding?' asked the laughing man, in his thick, asthmatic voice.

‘Go on, Neville!' called out Mr Kaminsky. ‘Do like he says!
Please
! We don't want to see you getting hurt!'

The laughing man turned around and said, ‘I thought I told you all to shut the fuck up! But that's good advice, grandpa. Wouldn't like to see this poor guy eyeless and dickless, would we, just on account of some misguided point of honor?'

The scowling man got off the bus and went over to the Buick. Meanwhile, Neville sat down in the driver's seat, with a runnel of blood dripping down the middle of his nose. He started up the bus's engine and closed the doors. It was raining even harder now, and he had to switch the windshield wipers on at full speed.

The scowling man started up the Buick, too, and drove it slowly over the curb, across the sidewalk, and on to the grass of Bon Air Park. Neville looked around, hoping that some passer-by would notice that something very unusual was going on, but there was nobody in sight.

‘What are you waiting for, Rastus?' said the laughing man. ‘Follow him, and stay real close.'

Neville steered the bus over the sidewalk and across the grass. His passengers were jostled from side to side as he drove over the curb, but none of them said a word. Mrs Tiplady was dabbing at her nose with a blood-soaked tissue and Miss Elwood was still quietly sobbing, while Mr Kaminsky was trying in vain to fit the right lens back into his spectacles.

The Buick slowly made its way between the trees, and Neville followed, making sure that he kept no more than ten feet behind it. The rain continued to drum on the roof of the bus, with occasional syncopated patters as they drove beneath the branches.

After a few minutes, when they were out of sight of the road, the Buick stopped, and Neville stopped the bus, too. Through the ribs of rain that were running down the windshield, Neville saw the scowling man climb out of the Buick, open its trunk, and take out a large gray laundry bag. He came up to the side of the bus and the laughing man said to Neville, ‘Open the door, Rastus.'

The scowling man climbed up into the bus. He tugged open the cord of the laundry bag and tipped its contents on to the floor: a crumpled assortment of hospital gowns, with pale green patterns on them. They were all filthy, stained with what looked like dried blood and excrement, and they smelled sweaty and sour.

The laughing man leaned down and picked one up. He held it up so that everybody on the bus could see it, and said, ‘We're going to perform our ceremony now and these are your ceremonial robes.'

‘What?' said Mr Carradine. ‘You don't expect us to put those on? They're disgusting!'

‘Hey, grandpa, did I give you permission to speak?' the laughing man snapped at him. ‘Did I say you could question what we're doing here? No, I did not. So shut up and do as you're told. You don't even deserve an explanation, but I'm going to be good enough to give you one.'

The bus passengers turned and looked at each other and all of their faces were drawn with fear. Even Mr Kaminsky's eyes were filled with tears, and he hadn't cried since his wife died five years ago.

‘Now then,' said the laughing man, ‘this is what you old coots are going to do for me. You're going to pretend that you're dementia patients, those of you who aren't half-demented already. You're going to dress the part and you're going to act the part. Any one of you who doesn't is going to be sorry.'

Neville said, ‘Man, you can't do this! These people, they're completely defenseless!'

The laughing man laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘That's the point, Rastus. That's entirely the point.'

TEN

A
melia stood at the window of Doctor Feldstein's consulting room, staring out at the rain. The thunder was further away now, rumbling in the distance, but it still appeared to unsettle her. She repeatedly twisted the pink ribbon in her hair, around and around, and whenever it thundered she started to pant, as if she were panicking.

Doctor Feldstein leaned forward in his chair and picked up Amelia's notes. ‘I'll tell you, Ruth, I don't honestly think that these anxiety attacks are triggered by Amelia's meds. The benzothiazepine seems to be keeping her vascular dilation in check, without upsetting her digestion, and the dicycloverine has been working a treat for her colic. Is she still taking telcagepant capsules for her migraines?'

Ruth nodded. ‘They're fine. They don't make her sick like that Zomig. But if it's not her meds, I can't think what else could have started this off.'

Doctor Feldstein stood up. He was very tall, over six-two, with wild black hair, thick horn-rimmed spectacles and a nose like a predatory hawk. He had taken an unfailing interest in Amelia's progress ever since she was born, and he had followed every development in the treatment of William's Syndrome so closely that he had become something of an expert on it.

He laid his large hairy hand on Amelia's shoulder, and looked down at her with a benevolent smile. ‘It could be that you're simply growing up, Amelia. Lots of young women suffer from anxiety attacks when their hormones are out of whack, and you're more sensitive to any changes in your body chemistry than most.

‘All the same,' he said, ‘why don't you talk to Doctor Beech? She may be able to suggest a way in which you can handle this anxiety – put it in perspective for you.'

‘Doctor Beech is a psychiatrist,' said Ruth. ‘You don't really think that Ammy needs a
shrink
?'

‘I don't know. Considering her condition, she seems to be in excellent health, so apart from a hormonal imbalance I can't see any
physical
cause for her anxiety. There's no harm in her talking to Doctor Beech, is there? And there might be some genuine benefit.'

The thunder grumbled again, out to the north-east, over the airport. It seemed to be prowling around the city like a junkyard dog. Amelia looked up at Doctor Feldstein wide-eyed, and her breathing quickened. ‘Don't you worry, young lady,' he told her. ‘We'll get to the bottom of this, and before long you'll be laughing about it, believe me.'

He went back to his desk, pressed his intercom and said, ‘Zelda? Are you free right now? That's great. There's somebody I'd very much like you to meet.'