Frost (8 page)

What she felt then was like taking every trip of her life at once, like being turned inside out and put through the spin cycle of an industrial washing machine. The world dropped away, replaced by darkness, eternal darkness. She flew, hurtling over a carpet of screaming, filthy, writhing bodies—and she was cold, so cold she knew she must be dead.

And those eyes, hanging in front of her, told tales without form, without a single word or image, but altogether changing, whittling, maddening.

Kitty’s retinas screamed as the subway lights came crashing back, and she uttered a bile laced
urgh
as though winded by a punch to the gut.

Oh God. Oh God, he’s going to kill us all
.

The terrible knowledge. The undeniable visceral truth. It was coming—the end of the freaking world. And right in front of her was the demon sent to bring it upon them.

Mammon, the devil incarnate.

A tiny, insane smile crept into the corners of his mouth, and she heard his voice inside her head, whispering, “Kill? No… no… not that. Death is nothingness.” A pause, and she once again flew over the screaming, stinking, naked things. “Look at them. Look at your fate. Do they look dead to you?”

Kitty tried to scream and fight her way back to her body, but all she managed was internal thrashing. The subway could have been the most distant memory of another life.

That voice continued slithering in her head, an ugly, oily slick upon her mind. “I want at least one of you to know what’s coming. Congratulations, Katherine Genie Bates. You have a choice nobody else has: how to spend your last hours on earth.”

“Dear Lord in heaven, hallowed is thy name,” Kitty muttered, drooling with the horror of it, the nauseating fear and cold—so cold.

He knows my name. I pray thee, Lord, save me.

The subway car crashed back into place around her, but those eyes remained. In desperation she searched her alcohol-obliterated Sunday school memories for more scripture, but came up blank.

She spat, “Christ, help me!”

That voice again, a sigh that brought her out in goose-flesh: “
What do you know of God?
”

The demon held out his hand. For a moment she glimpsed foot-long claws protruding from the wrist that would have put Freddy Kruger to shame. He waved a hundred dollar bill in the air. “How fast can a person drink themselves to death, I wonder?”

Kitty swayed on her feet, gurgled, and turned to grapple with the door to the next car. Crashing through into the midst of a fresh cigar-tube of marks, she tripped and stumbled her way along until she hit the next car, and the next, and the next, until at last she hit the end of the train, where she pressed herself against the rear door, hyperventilating.

“Dear god, god, god. Help. Help.”

He’s on his way to do it right now. Going to end it all.

The train pulled into a station and she lurched out onto the platform, sucking lungs of air in an attempt to stay conscious. As the train pulled away, she couldn’t help glancing through the glass, and screamed aloud at the sight of
him
, splayed claws outlined in red tendrils of unearthly light. He waggled his fingers in farewell, and then the train pulled out and vanished into the dark tunnel, heading south towards Queens.

But she knew where he was heading. Somehow she knew. In her mind’s eye she saw something, a long dark hole in the earth that led… somewhere else.

When the tunnel behind her brightened, heralding the arrival of the next train, she stepped up to the platform edge and shook her head. “I’m not going there. Not to that place.”

They were all going to be taken to that frozen darkness to work, to
labour
, to carry the weight of—what?

Somewhere on the edge of her perception, a swinging shadow, a rhythmic tick-tock. A bob on a string, beyond any scale imaginable. They were being taken to carry the weight of that swinging behemoth, and free something terrible. The source of all the pain, cold and fear ever felt. A winged, shining whiteness, wide eyed and holy and beautiful, underneath all tar and blood and wailing agony.

She tittered as the lights ahead resolved into two headlights, and she bobbed on the balls of her feet.

The vanguard on the train, the demon, had been her saviour. He had given her a choice, an escape.

Oblivion.

“I choose,” she muttered, and cried a silent thank you as she threw herself forwards. She fell towards the tracks amidst wailing horns, screeching brakes, and all consuming, rancorous, black laughter.

All the while she smiled, covered head to toe in flakes of ice.

“You’re pretty spry for a guy full of holes,” Jack said.

Barry spared him a glance. “A man with a plan always looks that way… even if he’s blagging every step of the way.”

“What?”

“Keep up, we’re almost there.”

Jack didn’t bother asking where. There seemed to be no reason to Barry’s rapid twisting and turning, between blocks and through underpasses, none he would ever understand.

However, he
felt
they were going the right way. Somehow they were going forwards despite roundabout turns and re-crossing their own tracks over and over. His inner divining rod flipped and turned in synch with Barry’s ducking and diving.

He hadn’t felt the clawed man’s ugliness for a while. He might have been out of range… or whatever the equivalent limit was on the secret mojo.

Barry stopped so suddenly that Jack collided with him at full speed, receiving a mouthful of oxblood leather. Scowling as he rebounded, he clocked Barry’s grunt of triumph. His divining rod span in circles.

There’s something funky about this spot
, whispered a hidden part of his mind.

They stood outside a turn-of-the-century apartment block, cracked and blackened by long years of low maintenance and the rigours of housing generations of tenants. The ground floor, however, was a pleasant and frilly affair, entirely at odds with the grubbiness above, as though it had popped into existence from the ether, spliced into place by some clumsy supernatural craftsman.

It was a teashop, twee and bright, and ramshackle.

The sign read:
Laurent’s
.

“Well…” Jack couldn’t think of anything pithy to add, and so gestured for Barry to lead on.

Together they passed a row of rickety floral-legged tables outside, at which a dishevelled man in a clichéd Hollywood-bad-guy khaki trench coat nodded to them, adjusting a pair of sunglasses on the bridge of his nose.

“He in?” Barry said over his shoulder.

The man riffled a newspaper up in front of his face, clicking his tongue. His teeth were the colour of stained sandalwood. He picked his nose, looked as though he meant not to answer, but then said under his breath, “Be fast. You shouldn’t be here.”

Barry grunted and pushed his way inside. “There’s a lot of that going around today.”

A high pitched, delicate bell tinkled above their heads, and they left Manhattan behind. Jack followed, feeling a heavy weight press down on him, like a small child being led into an alley meant for scoundrels. Yet what met his eyes was somewhere between fairy tale and middle-class bliss.

Laurent’s
was a large oblong room that extended away from him towards a glass-topped delicatessen counter, in which there lay not meats or cheeses, but tea-leaves and cakes and scones, breakfast rolls and buns. There was such a selection of each that they vied for space, stitching a rich patchwork rainbow across the back of the large room.

The air heaved with aroma, laden and weighed down with soupy citrus and spicy undertones, on top of which sat delicate transient whiffs of lavender, coconut, and vanilla. Between the door and the counter lay a spew of the same character of table as those outside, topped with red and white checked tablecloths, made treacherous by heavy compliments of eccentric cutlery and bone china.

Only a few customers were seated, murmuring amongst themselves, their faces hidden in private, hunched repose. As one they presented a humble hubbub that, accompanied by the steady tinkling of forks on plates and cups upon saucers, both terrified and charmed.

Jack’s eyes told him it was a delightful scene.

His mind, meanwhile, rang like a bell to a single tone:
Fuuuuuccc—

He had seen
Chucky
once. This was like that, but a thousand times worse: something dressed up as cute and cuddly that, quite simply, wasn’t and would never be; was in fact dripping with something that set the heart racing, and the skin prickling with fear. Things breathing and hungry lurked behind hidden corners, just out of sight.

Barry leaned towards him and spoke from the corner of his mouth. “Keep yer wits about you in here. All’s not as it seems.” He made a noise of satisfaction, and Jack knew he had looked into his mind. “Keep thinking that way. It’ll do you good. Now stay close.”

“The guy out there was right, wasn’t he?” Jack said, grabbing at Barry’s sleeve. “We’re not supposed to be here.”

Barry looked back at him, stony faced. “People don’t usually come to this place, they’re brought here. We’re about to toe a line I’m bound not to cross, so be ready.”

“For what?”

Barry headed away towards the counter.

Jack huddled so close on his heels that he was sure he might rob Barry of a shoe. He tried to keep watch about himself, but the room seemed to loom over him and press his gaze to the tiled floor, as though sensing that it was not for his eyes; an organism rejecting a foreign body.

Barry strode a little too purposefully, like a man whistling in the dark, and pulled out a chair at a table close to the counter. He sat with a deliberate air and pressed Jack down into a seat beside him, folding his hands and looking at the menu.

Suddenly he seemed very interested in the selection of tea. “Get reading,” he said. “And choose well.”

He silenced Jack’s retort before it could start forming in his head with a sharp look, and they both fell to reading.

Good god, it’s endless
, Jack thought, perusing dense palette descriptions and serving suggestions of myriad artfully-named teas.

The gentle tinkling became the screech of claws on a blackboard to his tortured ears. It was hard to see straight, let alone read. Yet amongst the menu’s items, his eyes fixed on one close to the bottom, leaping out from the blur to grab him by the lapels.

Autumn Jasmine: a charming infusion of Jasmine and Ginger, with adventurous notes of sarsaparilla, white chocolate cookies, and a hint of spring-time Minnesota.

Jasmine and Ginger… his grandmother’s house had always smelled like that. Sarsaparilla: the thought of it brought flashes of his father cracking open a few beer cans in their darkened living room, his flabby face illuminated by the blue glow of the TV. Those flashes gave way to the sight of half a white chocolate cookie in his lunch box one spring… back then, they had lived in Minnesota.

There had been a post-it stuck to the cookie:
Don’t get beat up again. Love Mom x

Guess I know what I’m having. At least, what I’m meant to have. Christ, I sound like a loon.

Jack shivered as a rush of something cold passed by. The primal sense that told somebody they weren’t alone piqued, and cloth rustled close over his right shoulder.

“Does anything catch your eye, perchance?” sighed a smooth and musical voice.

Jack caught a squawk of surprise between his lips, just.

A tall man dressed in an extravagant purple coat stood over them, lurking between their shoulders and peering at the menu with a critical aloofness. He turned his eye on Jack, revealing an aquiline face studded with enormous bushy, grey eyebrows that extended up in rigid shafts almost to his hairline. “
Ginger? Sarsaparilla?
Strange, wouldn’t you say? Almost like it was made for you.”

His eyes twinkled, not encouraging nor frightening, somewhere lost between friend and foe. Jack started as, for an instant, his irises might have illuminated in a flash of violet. The Man in Purple winked.

Barry’s rumble struck up from the other side of the man’s head. “Stop being an arse and sit down.”

The Man in Purple’s eyes narrowed in an instant. “You should not be here, Kaard,” he said, staring blankly.

“Well we’re here.” His voice was rough cut as ever, but the slightest edge of uncertainty—almost pleading—crept into it. “I need your help.”

“I talk with whomever I must. I council those who are meant for it. You are not among them.”

The Man in Purple straightened, once again loomed at their backs. Jack could sense his hand resting upon the back of his chair, delicate yet enormous, radiating waves of weirdery that threw Jack’s divining rod into another retarded spiral. He fought dizziness, watching Barry closely.

“I’m not leaving until I get answers. This world is on the bloody knife-edge.”

“That is not my concern.” The Man in Purple’s voice throbbed with unearthly bass. “I swore neutrality long ago. The Web takes no sides.”

“Don’t give me that horseshit! Highcourt is hanging by a thread. You can swear all the oaths you like, you’ll always be one of us.

“Anyway, nobody can find this place unless they need to, so don’t look at me like I snuck in the back door with the cat. I need your help, and you’re bloody well going to give it. I’m not leaving until I get what I need, even if I have to smash every teeny weeny cup and saucer in this joint.”

Jack sensed the slightest shift, and risked turning his head.

The Man in Purple stared at Barry with the remnant of that harrowed gaze. Slowly, the light crept back into his eyes. Perhaps they flashed violet once more—trying to see straight in here was like trying to hold onto a wet bar of soap; Jack couldn’t quite grasp any single moment, fluid and undulating, as though everything might suddenly melt and reform.

The Man in Purple flickered his eyelids and gave the slightest bow of acquiescence, then lifted a hand and signalled to the counter, pointing to the table.

Jack leaned across to Barry and whispered, “Kaard?”

“It’s his name,” the Man in Purple said airily, straightening his jacket and stepping around the table.