T I D E O F E N D I N G S
CHAPTER 1
A Mockery of Devils
1
THERE WAS A FEELING OF WEIGHTLESSNESS, of falling upwards. In his mouth
the sharp and chemical tang of whiskey and ginger ale. Cheap aftershave
and delicious perfume mingled in the air. The air around him took on a
tangible quality, resonant with the steady throbbing bass that came
pounding from the nightclub amps. Then the sound clouded over as the
air passed by his ears with a rush. He landed on his face on the
nightclub floor.
'Come on, give me a hand. That's right, get him to his feet!'
It was a voice he recognised, even through the drunken muffle.
'Finch, are you okay?'
A warm sensation spread across his tongue and the roof of his mouth,
along with the taste of new steel. Blood. He swallowed, then
spoke.
'Max. M'okay. Jus' got to... sit down.' Solomon Finch stumbled over to
a pair of identical stools nearby and leaned into the nearest with all
his weight. He hit the floor again, the phantom furniture
disintegrating back into the ether.
'W-where'd it go.'
'My God, Solomon. You are so wasted - and you're bleeding.' Maxine
hoisted him up onto the stool with the help of another man.
'I think I bit my tongue,' Finch drawled. 'I'll be okay.'
He stared at the face that swam before him, the image melding and
replicating like cells on a laboratory slide.
'Hey! That's Paulie. Hello Paulie.' He leaned into his friend and with
an idiotic grin smeared across his features he whispered, 'Listen,
Paulie. Jus' b'tween you and me... I think I'm a little bit
tipsy.'
'Dude, you're shit-faced.' said Paulson. 'We're taking you home.' He
nodded to Maxine who stood on hand, ready to jump in if Finch took
another spill.
Finch waved his arms around, almost losing his balance again. 'No, I'm
not ready yet!' He cocked his head onto one side.
'Hey! You like this song? I love this song. Come on, let's dance.
Everybody dance!'
'Come on, Solomon. Stop jumping about like that, you're going to make
yourself ill.' Maxine was exasperated. It was a good job they had met
up with Toby Paulson, an old college friend of hers and Finch's, at the
beginning of the evening. After months of promising, but never
accomplishing, the trio had at last hit the clubs together at mid-week,
purely for the merriment and to let off steam. Now it seemed not to be
such a good idea after all.
Finch paled all of a sudden and stopped bouncing on his stool. 'I don't
feel at all well' he moaned.
Paulson hooked Finch beneath his arms and lifted him to stand
unsteadily on his feet. 'Come on, Sollie. I'm taking you to the little
boy's room.'
Finch became alarmed and thrashed around. 'Hey! Whaddya mean? What the
hell kinda person d'ya think I am?'
But Paulson held him fast. 'Sollie! Sollie! S'okay man, it's nothing
like that! I just don't want you spewing all over the dance floor,
dude. Or over me for that matter.'
Finch grinned again. 'Then are we going home?'
'Yeah, we're going home.'
'Good,' said Finch. 'I think I want to have a sleep anyhow.'
Paulson backed into the washroom door, dragging Finch's heavy bulk
through into the brightly-lit facility. He propped Finch up against the
large, hi-fidelity mirror hanging over the sink units, opened a cubicle
door and helped his drunken friend inside. He forced Finch into a
kneeling position and leaned him over the the toilet bowl.
'I'll be right here if you need me,' said Paulson, closing the cubicle
door. 'Let me know when you're done. Try to throw something up, mate.
You'll feel a lot better if you do.'
He didn't have to worry as the groaning started soon enough. After the
brief but memorable carcophany of nausea, all went quiet and still.
Paulson checked once more on his intoxicated pal. He knocked softly
upon the cubicle door.
'Sollie? You done yet?'
A low moan emanated from within, and the sound of spitting. 'Yeah,
least I think so.'
A hearty belch followed by more spitting. 'Okay, I'm done. Just let me
sit here for a while, okay?'
Paulson laughed fondly. 'Okay buddy, you just get yourself together.
We'll have to be going soon though. How do you think you'll be in five
minutes?'
'Right as rain, Paulie. No problemo.'
Paulson rested with his back against the cubicle door. It concerned him
that Finch couldn't handle his drink. The guy had eaten well enough
before the three of them had entered the night-club, he was pretty much
fit and healthy, and enjoyed a drink with fair regularity. Yet it would
only take an hour of casual drinking before Finch's cool sobriety would
degenerate into an abnormal and embarrassing disposition. Different
people had different constitutions, he supposed, and therefore
different tolerance levels to toxins such as drink and drugs. Not that
Finch ever harnessed that particular bull. If his intolerance to
alcohol were anything to go by, it would probably gore him if he
did.
Another minute went by. The cubicle remained quiet. Paulson imagined
that Finch had fallen asleep slumped unceremoniously over the toilet
bowl. He pressed his ear to the door and listened for faint sounds of
slumber. Nothing.
'Hey, Solomon. Are you alright, man?' He banged on the door with his
fist. 'Sollie, wake up! It's time to go.'
Still there was nothing.
Oh shit, what if he's choked, he thought.
Paulson hammered hard on the door with both hands.
'Sollie! Sollie! - Open up, you drunken fool!'
He hurled aside the door of the adjoining cubicle and climbed up onto
the toilet seat. Grabbing hold of the top edge of the dividing wall he
pulled himself up until he was able to peer down into the cubicle on
the other side.
The stall next door was empty.
2
SUNLIGHT FILTERED THROUGH the lush Amazonian canopy, bathing the banks
of a shallow, lazy river with its holy light. A swarm of flying insects
milled in the air above a clearing, tracing their dance of geometric
choreography in the heavy air; a stark contrast against the constant,
drifting swell that tugged gently at the shoreline of fallen branches
and fertile river-mud.
The dreamy hum of insects and the burbling chorus of river water
lapping at the bank was accompanied by a rustling as the moist foliage
spread open at the end of the clearing. A dark-faced male hunter of an
indigenous tribe poked his head out from the safety of the dense
undergrowth. His quick, bright eyes scanned the banks of the river for
danger. All was still, all was safe. He overstepped a fallen limb
stripped bare of bark by rot and herbaceous jungle-life, uttering as he
did so, a few soft notes, and holding aside the greenery for the man
who followed him close behind.
The second man was of a larger frame than the small, compact hunter.
He was taller and thicker-muscled, and sported the flamboyant
decoration, markings and spiritual charms of the Saman; a Tungus term
for the ritualistic tribal healer, referred to in the Western
Hemisphere as the Shaman.
The hunter stepped out into the clearing, his bare feet leaving
shallow prints upon the soft earth of the Amazon Basin. The Saman
followed closely, loosening the tie of a hide pouch slung around his
neck. The two walked side by side to the edge of the river, where the
insects hovered over a body; a third tribesman - the man they had come
to find.
The hunter spoke in his native tongue and gestured back at the route
they had taken; the Saman flapped his hand dismissing the guide and,
saying nothing, he bent over the slumped body. The man had been alive
when the Saman had first received news from one of the other tribe
members. It was said that he had been possessed by spirits,
unresponsive to sight, sound or touch; in other words catatonic but
alive nonetheless. But it had taken time to get here from the village,
and it was time neither the Saman nor the dying man had. Now it was too
late for this one, that much was clear. The jungle had already tried to
claim the body back - the facial features were torn and the tip of the
nose was missing, probably having become a tasty morsel for scavenging
birds or the many beasts that patrolled shady regions beneath the
immense canopy of green. One foot was dangling in the water and was in
danger of becoming piranha-brand Guppy-chow.
The hunter padded back across the clearing into the cool shadow of the
trees, and stood there for a while, gazing back upon the body, lying
limp against the trunk of a tree like a stringless puppet.
The Saman waved the hunter away for a second time and watched as the
tribesman made his way towards the dense cover of leafy ferns, before
preparing the body for burial. He would do this alone, just as the
ritual demanded. Removing a pinch of silver ash from the pouch hanging
at his breast, the Saman daubed a smeared cross on his own forehead.
This he repeated for the corpse. He then took a wooden handled knife
with a wicked curved blade and opened the back of the dead mans hand
letting the dark blood fall into a small guano bowl, which he had set
on the rich South American soil. He proceeded to finger-paint tribal
markings in blood upon the semi-naked body, covering the torso in
swirls, spots and sweeping strokes of deep crimson. The hunter slipped
into the foliage with little more than a rustle, leaving the Saman
alone to carry out the sacred ritual. The healer cast about the
clearing and, once satisfied he was alone, he tossed the bowl and its
coagulating contents into the river.
'Goddammit! Talk about not taking the hint!' he said as he stood up
rubbing the ash from his brow with the back of one hand and flicking
the cold, dead blood from his fingers. He tutted. 'Another one lost.
Damned primitive cultures, would it not hurt to have some form of
transport. Four-by-four? Even a raft would have done.'
He let the air out from between his pursed lips in a serpentine hiss,
and began to drag the body into the river where the water had started
to boil with the activity of unseen flesh-eating fish, eager for more
than a little blood and a bowl made from bat-shit.
On second thoughts, he concluded, maybe going by river wouldn't have
been such a good idea.
The muffled jangle of a cellular telephone emanated from somewhere on
his person - not that there were many places he could conceal it, such
as all he wore consisted of an animal hide wrap which barely covered
his loins and a collection of charms and spiritual effects manufactured
primarily from animal remains. He pulled a small bundle of thick-furred
skin from somewhere beneath his loin-cloth and unwrapped it. The
musical tone increased in volume. He unfolded the phone and checked the
caller ID before answering.
'I thought I told you not to call me here... No, no. We were too late.
Okay, if you want to split hairs, I got held up back there. You have to
form a trust with these people, y'know - they're very suspicious of new
faces, even people masquerading as one of their own.'
He listened to the voice and interrupted, rolling his eyes. 'I'm
sorry, but what can you do? I'm here in the middle of Eden's backlot,
with nothing but a cell-phone and a free-swinging cock. Look, this
one's gone all stiff 'n' stinky. No, not my - of course I mean the
body! Yeah, whatever - listen, I may be going out on a limb here, but I
say he's fertiliser, in which case I'm outta here.'
The voice broke through loud and sharp, crackling through the small
handset.
The man replied, 'What? Another one? So where is it now, the frozen
wastelands of Antarctica, or maybe you'd prefer the body-ridden
shit-hole suburbs of Detroit City?'
He smacked the palm of one hand against his forehead theatrically. 'Oh
no, wait, we've done that already haven't we? So where then?'
He raised his eyebrows and nodded, the phone still pressed against his
ear. 'Well, doesn't that sound nice. Of course, I'll set off first
thing tomorrow.'
He folded the device back together and clipped it to the waistband of
his dignity.
Looks like Lady Luck is finally coming round to my way of thinking.
One day soon I might actually find out what it is exactly she's having
me look for.
'Well, my friend,' he said gazing at the body lying before him. 'It
looks like this is goodbye. Civilisation beckons with all its miracles
and wonders.'
The man hunkered down and grabbed the deceased's bottom jaw, with his
forefinger circling the chin and his thumb pressed against the wattle.
He rattled it up and down, in a morose parody of a ventriloquist's
dummy, its teeth clicking together as the head lolled on its narrow
trunk of a neck.
Me glad you gooin'. Me not lik you anyways. Me jus' 'appy to sit 'ere
and catch some rays.
'Your choice, ugly.'
The sunlight, weaving through the forest canopy, caught something
embedded in the ravaged face of the dead tribesman as it flopped around
like a balloon on a stick. The dark man bent closer to the raw mess,
which had taken on the visage of a skull; noseless, eyes rolled back,
the remains of the lips were shrivelled and dry. He covered his nose
and mouth with one hand.
Phew! He's certainly ripened in the heat, and he been here for less
than a day.
Again there was a glint of silver from the farthest reaches of the
nasal cavity. He tilted back the dead weight of the man's head and
located the source. It was small and held the appearance of a bright
silver sequin, but was slightly convex like the lens of a magnifying
glass.
Hurriedly the man thrust his hand into the pouch of ash he wore around
his neck, causing the fine powder to spill out and patter to the ground
like milky rain. He pulled forth a brass-handled pocket-knife that was
concealed there, sealed within a polythene baggie, buried within the
ash. He unfolded the long slender blade from its handle and it locked
with a click. The man wiped the perspiration from his eyes and began to
remove the object from the man's skull. The small slippery stud seemed
stuck firmly in place within the heat shrivelled flesh, but with
perseverance and a barrage of expletives, it came away with a loud
snap, dragging with it a trailing loop of bloody mucus. Triumphant, he
held the prize aloft, examining it in the sunlight. 'Amen', he muttered
to himself and flicked the goop from the silver pellet with his
forefinger before sealing the item in the plastic bag together with the
bloodied and folded blade, concealing them once again inside the pouch
with a scattering of 'sacred' ash.
Today wasn't a total loss after all, he mused, at least I've got
something to work with now. And a cushy assignment to look forward
to.
The man grunted as he dragged the body down the bank and into the
shallows, and used a stout branch torn from the undergrowth to push the
body out into deeper waters; a gift to the Amazon. A pink indefinable
shape spread out like bat wings from the dark smudge of the body, as
the finned scavengers tore at their free meal. Daniel Lamond smiled to
himself as he watched the body sink into the reddening river.
See ya. Would'n wanna be ya.
He made his way back into the dark, humid confines of the rain
forest.
This could be the lead I need. Finally, things are looking up. I just
hope the next unfortunate soul is somewhat more, well, alive. It makes
things a lot less complicated when they're alive.
He was tired of trail walking, the heat and moisture drained him, as
did the constant fa?ade that he was forced to perform in order to gain
the trust of the natives. It definitely put the sham in Shaman. He felt
glad to be returning to civilisation, along with its many forms of
underwear. All this running around without testicular support really
tugged at his balls.
I'll be glad to get rid of these damned trinkets as well.
He yanked hard at the string of charms which he wore around his right
arm, and in doing so it broke, releasing the small bone carvings and
animal teeth in a shower of ivory upon the forest floor. One tiny
effigy remained in his hand, its fanged maw grinning inanely from a
distinctly feline face.
Ah yes, the jaguar. The alter ego of the Shaman, he recollected, It
is, in many ways, a little like myself. Cunning, smart, an
opportunist.
He paused, a smile slowly spreading across his features. Yet unlike
you, my inanimate friend, I'm no bone idol pussy. This next one will
not slip through my fingers, I'll make sure of that.
He forced his way through the wet and leafy ferns whistling a pretty
accurate rendition of Bad, Bad Leroy Brown. The forest swallowed up the
man, then as the river water calmed once more to lap gently at the bank
and the drowsy insects resumed their avionics, his tuneful epitaph
faded out to become one with the whisperings of the Amazon Basin.
3
NEW DENTON CITY, EUROPEAN COASTLINE 08.42 AM
A soft and robotic chime eased Solomon Finch from his heavy slumber.
Propping himself up on one elbow, he shook the remnants of dreams from
his head and winced as his aching brain spasmed into life. Finch
struggled to separate his conscious from his subconscious. Yolk from
white.
The throb in his skull transformed into a stabbing white-hot needle as
he pried open his sleep-sticky eyes and squinted past the shaft of
sunlight that streamed in from between the curtains. The infernal
compulsive tone continued to vibrate from somewhere within the room. He
traced the irritating noise to a red plastic telephone that was rigged
to the wall by a single carpenter's nail. The ache in his head he put
down to being so hung-over he could hardly keep his eyes focussed. He
stared for a few seconds at his alarm clock trying to outmanoeuvre the
floating bacterium image swimming lazily across the surface of his
eyes.
'Uh? Wah? Shid nuh!'
Eight forty-two. How the hell did that happen? McConaughy's going to
have my skin for a hammock!
Finch rolled out of the inflatable armchair in which he found himself,
and landed on his hands and knees amongst a necropolis of crumpled beer
cans. He picked himself up from the floor and stumbled with leaden feet
across the threadbare carpet to the telephone. He coughed, clearing his
throat, ran his waxen tongue over lips that felt as if they had once
belonged to a professional street-fighter, and picked up.
'Yeah, hello?' There was no answer. In his drowsy state it took him a
moment before he realised that the telephone kept on ringing. Finch
hung up and still it continued to sound. He picked the receiver up
again, and again no difference.
Darned thing must be busted, he thought. Sod it. I haven't the time
nor the energy to deal with shit like this, right now. He reset the
receiver and stumbled out of the bedroom doorway.
4
'PICK UP, FINCH.'
Toby Paulson drummed his fingers on the steering wheel of the shiny
new BMW coupe he had hired for the job interview that morning. He
figured that image was everything in the stockbroker's market; the more
expensive the car was, the more shrewd a businessman the driver had to
be. Credentials meant nothing to a financial war machine fueled by
consumerism, lubricated by the assumption of its own tenacity. A
six-thousand employee's in twelve cities across the country, and half
of them had started their first day of work parking up in a car
inferior than that which they were first seen driving. Consumerism.
That invisible cancer that gnaws into the gut of the planet, sending
out little nervous shocks in the form of trends. Fashion, music,
entertainment, the high-life made affordable to the low-lifes, the low
made fashionable for the high. Heroin-chic. The current trend of sexual
abstenance. The Sixties trend of free-love. Derms of Novocaine for
people who don't like needles, acupuncture for those who do. Adopt your
very own star. Give a powerful multinational corporation a home this
Christmas. A rugged man standing thirty feet tall on a city billboard
can do so with pride because he wears one-hundred percent pure
unbleached cotton briefs. Blistered thumbs for the Playstation
Generation. Ribbed for all our pleasures. Consumerism.
He cancelled the call and switched off his phone. It was possible that
Finch may have left for work already, but somehow he doubted it, from
the state he was in the night before.
It was a miracle that they found him when they did, slumped against
the railings of the club's rear fire escape. There had been spots of
fresh blood on his collar and caked around his nose, probably from when
he fell in the club. How the Finch got out there without him noticing,
Paulson would never even hazard a guess.
Both himself and Maxine were just glad to have found him at the time,
having lost their drunken friend for almost three-quarters of an
hour.
Paulson carried him out of the club, and caught a taxi cab back to the
small house Finch had inherited from his late grandfather. Paulson
wished that he had stayed with him now, but the interview...
Still, no use is worrying now. He would have to get hold of Maxine
after his appointment. If by lunchtime neither of them had heard from
Finch, then they could worry. The trouble was, by that time it could
take something stronger than some time-proven malodorous hangover
remedy to wake him. A defibrillator may even have as liitle
success.
He looked at his watch. It was precisely eight-fifty. Showtime. He got
out of the car, noticing with relish that, as he did so, the slatted
blinds of several of the building's windows opened a little. Spy holes
for inquisitive eyes. The Beemer was working a treat.
How do you do? My name is Paulson, Tobias Paulson. I'm here for the
nine-o'clock with Mr Bradley Lovemeet. If he could get through the
interview without breaking into a smirk every time he heard the name
'Lovemeet' it wouold be a miracle indeed.
Lovemeet, Love-meat, love-meat. Get it out of your system, dude.
That's right, positive attitude. Check posture. Firm handshake. Okay.
Ready? Let's do it...
5
FINCH STARED AT THE GHASTLY REFLECTION in the bathroom mirror. Once he
had gathered enough courage, he plunged his head into the sink of
freezing cold water, washing away the groggy intoxicant of sleep. The
sink overflowed splashing the front of his creased shirt and trousers,
which hadn't left his body in over twenty-four hours. The experience
refreshed him more than he could ever have hoped for.
I'm going to have to be sharp this morning, if I want to keep my job.
Two minutes wash, Five breakfast. Let's say ten Total. Eight fifty-two.
Shit, it still doesn't give me enough time. I'm gonna have to run every
red light between here and work. No, no. It's still too late, damn it!
- and it's Carnival Day! I'm going to catch the traffic no matter what
I do.
Finch drained the sink and loaded up a toothbrush with paste. He
popped the brush into his stagnant mouth and chewed upon the bristles
while he towel dried his wet hair. He knew that he must have slept
through the alarm - it had been set to go off at the same time every
morning for as long as he had owned it - and admonished himself,
regarding his lateness as a product of his own retarded state of
self-discipline. Finch finished brushing his teeth, rinsed and spat,
and headed to the end of the landing.
He ran downstairs two at a time, and used the balustrade to swing
himself around the corner toward the kitchen where he strode over to
the inside corner of the breakfast bar and flicked the electric kettle
on with a well-practised tap of the thumb. Reaching up, Finch pulled a
jar of strong instant coffee down from the knotted pine shelf above his
head, and wrenched the stopper from the jar with delirious fervour. He
spooned the rich powder into a mug. The kettle clicked off. He filled
his mug half way and topped it up with milk from the refrigerator. The
aroma of the strong blend of Asian and Caribbean coffees induced a
geyser of saliva, expelled from the ducts behind his tongue, and a
colourless starfish asleep behind his eyes stirred into life,
unfurling, crackling with narcotic energy. He gulped the coffee down as
fast as he could without scalding his throat.
Two refills later, Finch left the kitchen and, with the first mug of
coffee already kicking in, headed for the front door. He unlocked the
door and grabbed his coat from its hook, pausing only to glance up at
the clock on the lobby wall. One minute past nine. Not bad, but he was
already late.
Finch opened the door and stepped out into the amber morning sun,
pulling the door behind him. He tugged on his coat as he hurried down
the path. He didn't really need it for it was a beautiful morning, but
his coat was more a vast receptacle for the various wallets,
cardholders, keys and general flotsam that he carried around with him.
He patted his right breast pocket, and stopped in his tracks.
Keys, keys, where're my keys - shit!
It was too late. The door-lock had already clicked firmly into its
housing. Finch shut his eyes and sighed. Driving to work was now out of
the question since the time it would take him to break into his own
house, find his keys and repair any damage that he'd have to create -
if it is possible to create damage, since damage is the destruction of
creation - would be greater than if he travelled to work by alternate
means.
He patted his trouser pockets; change jangled in the right. Finch
pulled it forth and counted it, sifting out buds of lint, receipts for
milk and chocolate, and a semi-straightened paper clip he had used to
dislodge a rattle in his ear. It could be enough for a train, but not
enough for a taxi. It was, however, more than enough for a bus, but he
had not nearly enough time for the bus to load and offload at every
stop between here and the far side of town where he worked. He decided
the train would be the best possible chance he'd have of making it to
work within, to him at least, a reasonable enough timescale.
He also decided that he would tackle breaking into his own house after
work, which was priority at the moment, and that reminded him how late
he was. Fifteen minutes into his day, his nerves ablaze with stress and
the peppery hit of caffeine, Solomon Finch swept his way down the path
that led from his house to meet the spruce-lined cul-de-sac in which he
lived.
6
THE TWO MEN met in an alley backing onto a small delicatessen situated
at the southern edge of New Denton. The odour of raw pork seemed
delightful in comparison to the putrid fruity smell of week old chicken
blood that emanated from a nearby refuse bin.
'It's been quite a while,' said the blonde-haired man, offering his
hand to the other.
'An age indeed,' the other man grinned. 'So how'd you find me?'
'It wasn't exactly difficult, Maz. You don't cover your trail too
well.' The blonde spied the fuel can in the other's hand. 'You run
dry?'
The older man grinned and set the can down on the ground and offered
his hand to the other. 'Oh, this? Nah, it's for a job. No biggy.'
'It's your job to light the fires, and mine to put 'em out, so to
speak.'
'Doesn't that always seem the way?'
The two shook hands then, and stepped back to take in each other's
appearance.
Both were tall and were dressed in drab shirts, slacks and long coats.
The younger man seemed alive and healthy, averaging in his thirties.
The other was visually two decades his senior, with bands of chestnut
creeping a path through his otherwise silver hair. It was the blonde
who broke the ice, examining his acquaintance with piercing aluminium
eyes.
'You're looking tired, Maz. How are things going with your side?
'As well as can be expected. Kinda regret leaving you guys, but you
know, rules are rules. I've got to stick with my decision at the end of
the day. But how are you? I must say you're looking fine.'
'Thanks. Yes, things are good, generally speaking.'
'Generally speaking? I take it that's why we're here?'
'We have been given an assignment,' he said.
Although his diction was soft and his manner calm, Malzekiel thought
he detected an unnerving quaver in the younger's voice that he really
did not care for. 'Sounds important, Gabe' he said.
'You wouldn't believe.'
Malzekiel shrugged his sloping shoulders. 'Try me,' he said.
7
THE SUMMER SUN was riding its trajectory through the morning haze. It
was still fairly cool, but the steady jog to the underground station
brought a sheen of perspiration to Solomon's face and neck. He wiped
the dampness from the nape of his neck and turned the corner into
Adelaide Avenue.
The roads were crawling with Carnival Day traffic, but the pavements
were considerably worse. An ocean of heads, bobbing and rippling like
one great organic carpet. Ulcer ridden businessmen flit like bewildered
moths, zigzagging across his path in the relentless stream of nameless
faces and novelty ties. The female equivalent, mantis-faced, painted
and dressed to empower, stalked them with calculated finesse. The
kerbstones served as walls, their purpose to contain the gnawing worry
and misguided sexual tension exuded from the countless passing bodies
in swirls and eddies like some poisonous creeping pheromone. The street
was essentially a killing jar. Merciless. Subtle. Final.
Finch ejected himself from the flow and ducked into the stairwell
leading to the echoing subway, the metallic rasp of the station
intercom complemented the rumbling bass tones of the carriages, and
reminded him of a junk band rendition of Flight of the Bumble Bee. He
wiped his eyes on the bend of his wrist and descended the gum-spotted
steps into the humming subterranean sprawl of the station.
The clutter of the station was a pale reflection of the heaving
traffic that dominated the streets above, but without the endless
gridlock, the impatient revving of motors and the greasy aftertaste of
carbon-monoxide and sweat. The station existed as a single platform
that supported the daily hustle and bustle of commuters, but by night
it was sanctuary to the infernal; the tramp whose only solace was the
pain in his stomach - the only thing upon which he could always rely;
the whore, stalked by her all-seeing pimp, and the lone midnight
thinker, pondering whether to catch the horizon-bound dawn train,
forever to leave behind his decaying life, or to fall prey to the lure
of the tracks, beckoning siren-like from their bed of loose
stones.
Finch strode up to the glass-fronted ticket booth, behind which sat a
man of well-defined features and a flawless composure. He regarded
Finch with darting blue eyes when he tapped on the glass.
'One return to Oakland's, please.' Finch asked in the politest tone
and least stressed tone he could muster.
Oakland's Depot? Two-ninety. Thank y'sir.'
A mechanical scream heralded the imprinting of the ticket, and the
booth operator tore the stub from the machine, where it emerged as a
paper tongue. Finch palmed it. The train he had heard as he entered the
station was docked at the platform and people clamoured around the
carriages; some eager to enter and others glad to exit. Finch glanced
down at the ticket; this was his train. He joined the masses on the
platform of the Adelaide Avenue Underground and boarded the
carriage.
8
SEATED COMFORTABLY beside a window, Finch allowed himself to relax, at
least for the moment, as the journey to work would now be in the hands
of the train driver. He let his head fall back against the foam
headrest and let a breath disperse slowly out between his pursed lips.
The train moved off and gained momentum. Even in his state of forced
relaxation, he could feel his heart pounding sorely against his ribs.
The Caribbean Black was still in his bloodstream; he was twitching like
road-kill.
Finch adjusted his position so that he could look out of the window by
letting his head loll against the headrest. There wasn't much to see
yet, as the train was only just pulling out of the station and into the
floodlit tunnels. Then the light show started. As the train gained
speed and rattled down the underground tubes, it passed beneath the
tunnel's fluorescent lights, illuminating the carriages in flashes of
anaemic ice blue. Always in three's. Flashflashflash.
Finch shivered. An unsettling feeling scuttled insect-like across the
back of his neck. It occurred to him that in the intermittent darkness,
he was being observed. Finch cast about the carriage. A man sat across
the aisle from him, diagonally opposite, and wore a mask of silver
painted by the oppressed light. He looked a little like an extra from a
string-and-matchbox science fiction film; face powdered with glittering
moon-dust.
Flashflashflash.
An old woman appeared dead in her seat two rows down. The colour and
life has apparently been drained from her with the expulsion of the
warm spectrum. However dead she might have first appeared, dead she was
not. A blink was followed by a tightening of her hands upon her purse,
as she flinched under scrutiny.
Flashflashflash.
Finch caught a glimpse of something moving at the edge of his vision;
coasting in spasmodic stop-motion, away from the blue-flash, as the
tunnel lighting sped down the length of the train. He jerked his head
up. It was gone, lost in the shadows and kinetic brilliance. Yet, there
it was again, at the top of the aisle, moving with liquid grace. And
again it was gone. Finch frowned and stepped into the aisle; he looked
up and down the length of the carriage. Nothing, except the cargo of
commuters and luggage, lit in cold blue, silver and black. Finch picked
his way up the aisle, negotiating ill-placed luggage and straying legs,
towards the door that led to the next compartment. He looked back down
the length of the carriage. No, whoever it was had definitely come this
way. He turned back and peered through the pane in the carriage door.
And a porcelain face stared back at him.
He jumped back, drawing a sharp intake of breath, gagging on his own
tongue for an instant, then recovering quickly he dared himself to open
the door. His head had started to thump again, echoing every second
thud of his quickening heart. He depressed the button and the door slid
aside. Light flooded in from the next carriage in a blinding golden
cascade. Finch averted his eyes away from the brightness, waiting for
them to adjust, and it was with the return of his sight that he noticed
a figure, a silhouette standing just beyond the doorway. Finch aged
what felt like years in only a few seconds.
The figure was unmoving, standing patiently in front of him. Waiting.
Expectant. It was through a medium of gradual understanding, rather
than through the gift of hearing that Finch realised that a response
was expected of him.
'Wh- I'm s-sorry, what?'
'Are yer gettin' off here?' the train staff repeated his question,
'Oakland's Depot. In't that's what's on yer ticket.'
Finch looked around. Both the carriage he had just left and the one he
could see past the uniformed man were deserted. The docking lights were
lit, and through the hand-smudged window to his left he could see the
ceramic-tiled pillars of Oakland's Station, with its colourful gallery
of bill posters and graffiti.
'Eh, oh&;#8230; yes. Thank you.' Finch stammered as his mind
attempted to search for the reason why he hadn't heard the man speak,
why it had only seemed like minutes since he had stepped on board the
train. And yet the carriage had returned to the amber of station
lighting and was deserted. Stranger still why, when he had peered
through the pane of glass in the partitioning door, had there been
darkness cloaking the pale face, obscuring the feminine doll-like
features from absolute definition, and none of the blinding fluorescent
light that now illuminated the entire train.
The train had arrived at the station and all the passengers had
already disembarked, leaving the impression that the train had in fact
been stationed for several minutes. But how could he not have noticed?
There were no discernible announcements or the judder of deceleration,
and he had even gazed from the train window at the speeding tunnel
walls only moments before.
Finch struggled to make sense of the unease that gripped him as he
stepped from the carriage to the desolate platform. Had he experimented
with hallucinogens he could expect these kind of blackouts. All the
while his former friends had been magically tracing each others elastic
faces across the walls of the University Library, he had managed to
cast off their efforts to include him in their foolishness and had
turned his attention to other things. His work, as far as he was
concerned, would provide him with all the stimulation he would ever
need, and could pay for more chemicals than his friends could ever
dream of.
Finch had by this time wandered, numb and shaken, over to the foot of
the exit stairwell when movement from the shadows caught his eye. In an
instant, the uneasy recognition of what he had witnessed finally hit
home with all the subtlety of a nail-bomb. That face! The one he had
stared into just moments ago - it resembled Maxine. And that same face
now studied him from the shadows beneath the stairwell, with dark
ringed eyes and a predatory smile.
Maxine was a long-time friend and one of Solomon's work colleagues.
She was pretty, although not beautiful; teenage acne scars speckled her
jaw line and her complexion was far too rugged to be feminine. She had
a very earthy look about her, as if she had spent half her life
sleeping under the stars, and the other half travelling the world's
oceans. Yet the sum of the many unpretty things that contributed to her
unique appearance, Finch thought, produced a quality in her that was at
least best described as attractive.
'Maxine? What are you doing here, we should both be in work. I-'
She emerged from beneath the stairwell. Now it was not Maxine. The
whore in a raven coat stepped out into the flickering yellow light of
the stations fluorescent tubes. She looked him up and down and smiled a
painted charade.
'Weelll, I kind of AM at work, hunnybun.' she crowed.
'I-I'm sorry. I thought you were somebody else.'
Finch hurried up the steps towards the glare of natural light, laying
her echoing laughter to rest in the empty subway. Minutes later, as he
strode along Oakland's Boulevard, something bothered him much more than
the whore and her empty laugh, and that was the fact that he still
could not fathom what had happened back in the train carriage. It was
Maxine he had seen, he was sure of it now. Even before the whore has
stepped out from the shadow of the steps, he would have put money on it
being Maxine that peered out from between the treads. Yes, it was, but
then it wasn't. And when he closed his eyes and tried to replay the
train journey, to locate amongst the madness some shred of
understanding, there was blackness. Blackness; and within it glowed the
tiniest point of shimmering white like a distant star, beckoning for
him to gaze upon it, but when he did, it too was swallowed up by the
velvet dark. And then, in the void between sight and thought, he was
alone.
9
MAXINE DRANK with deep and thirsty gulps from a clear plastic bottle
of distilled water. The heat of the first quarter was nibbling away at
her concentration, and the numbers on-screen made little sense any
more. She let her gaze drift across the spacious office to the clock on
the far wall. It read 10.17. She glanced back at the computer; the
yellow corporate logo, CERBERUS BUSINESS SOLUTIONS, throbbed at her
from behind a screen filter. Screw it. Solomon would be able to make
sense of the Aston-Kline account - nonsensical piece of shit. She saved
up, logged out and dialled an extension on the internal line. Ominous
tones pulsed through the telephone speaker.
'C'mon Solomon. Pick up.'
Silence followed tone, followed silence, followed tone. Maxine hung
up, and walked out of the office and into the corridor.
The elevator was at her level, and she managed to slip between the
doors as they closed. She pushed the button for the floor below and the
apparatus sank slowly earthward. Moments later she stepped out onto the
emerald green carpet of the third floor, and made her way with quick
steps to office 17h. Peering through the glass before trying the
handle, she saw the unoccupied desk and dormant computer terminal of
Solomon Finch. Maxine pushed the door and poked her head in, scanning
the busy office; the copier, fax, and stationary rack. He was nowhere
to be seen.
'Hey,' she called to an office junior, who was competently laminating
an important-looking document, 'Has Mr. Finch been in at all
today?'
'Not that I know of. I haven't seen him all morning.'
'Okay, not to worry. If you see him can you get him to ring extension
31? Thanks.'
Maxine pulled the door behind her, not waiting for a reply, and
strolled back to the lift. It had risen, having been summoned two
floors up. She took the stairs and climbed them slowly, uneasy about
her friend's failure to turn up for work. How bad a hangover can one
man get from just an hour of drinking? And where the hell had he been
for that last elusive forty minutes of the evening?
As for this morning, maybe Finch had just overslept, and if he was
late - which was not unusual for Finch - she might be making things
considerably worse for him by enquiring into his whereabouts. No, she
would drop by his house if he hadn't shown up by lunchtime, just to
quiet her concern.
Muffled fanfare and the hazy compositions of a brass band, drifted on
the breeze along with the city dust, and the indistinct tones barely
reached the edge of Maxine's hearing. She cocked her head to one side,
listening, and strode up the remaining steps to the floor above.
'It's here!' she announced to a room of blank faces, as she entered
the office and made her way back to her terminal.
'Carnival Day?' she explained to those who really did not have a clue
what she was on about.
'And on Carnival Day,' she continued, 'it's not uncommon for the
carnival to come to town. Look.'
She opened a tilt-action window. The vapour of music wafted in with an
accompanying smell of diesel. In the distance she could see the
procession snaking a winding path down the middle of the street, flying
their flags and waving banners. Large paper-mache heads in the image of
clowns, Mr. Punch and the stereotypical mockery of devils, bobbed and
turned and soaked in the attention of the people lining the
streets.
Carnival Day came around every year and every year the public fell for
the merchandise, double-priced consumables and over-priced junk.
Children raced and played in the streets with painted faces, and sticky
hands that grasped silver balloons and cheap plastic windmills - the
fruits of their constant tugging on the sleeves of their parents,
grandparents or weekend fathers.
It was a different world out there. A world that - at least for
Maxine, who was stuck in a stuffy office, looking down upon the streets
of colour, music and magical lure - she resented with illogical envy.
She didn't even enjoy Carnival Day that much; it was more of a kids
thing. But the feeling of exclusion was something that festered within
her, releasing spores of resentment for her employers and those who
embraced the freedom to enjoy the event.
Maxine cast the thought aside, her mind turning once more to her
friend and colleague, Solomon Finch. She glanced again at the clock.
She had by this time been logged out for twelve minutes, and really
needed to get back to the account. Solomon was over an hour late. It
troubled her deeply - he had never been this tardy before - so it was a
given that she call by his house at the earliest opportunity.
With an effort, both begrudging and resolute, Maxine turned her
attention to her computer terminal and tapped in her password.
10
FINCH DREW A DEEP BREATH, forced himself into a cheap simulacrum of
composure and stepped out of the elevator onto the third floor of the
building where he worked. His heart rate, while still high, was
slowing. The stresses and strains of trying to get to work on time had
pumped the caffeine through his system much quicker than usual and the
resultant caffeine-enhanced migraine was expected, though not welcome.
En-route to the open-plan office where his desk stood unoccupied, was
the Occupational Nurse's office; he opted to take a pit stop for the
sake of keeping his head from exploding.
Finch paused momentarily in front of the patterned glass door. Beside
it hung a notice posting board upon which an over-duplicated photocopy
had been pinned. Bad Day At The Office? it read, and underneath the
words Come And Tell Us All About It invited the stressed out employees
to offload their worries onto the shoulders of the companies trained
therapists. It brought to mind a story his grandfather once told him
about a man who had many monkeys sitting on his back. Every day the man
went to his Boss and gave him a monkey, until one day the man was
ape-free, and it was his Boss who was laden down with simian baggage.
It was a poor story that offered little in the way of moralistic gain,
but it somehow managed to stick in his mind.
He knocked softly on the glass, an act that caused his bones to
conduct every minute vibration all the way up to his twinging
eyeballs.
The door opened silently and a petite woman with a bird-like face
peered out from within. Finch said nothing, but made a gesture of a
pulsating pumpkin-head to indicate his ailment. Any way to communicate
without speaking was preferable.
The exaggerated charade seemed to work as the nurse nodded and
disappeared from view inside her office. A moment later she returned,
eyes transfixed on the rampant vein in Solomon's temple. It was bulging
like a pregnant viper. She dropped a pair of small white capsules into
his open palm and instructed him to take a drink from the water cooler,
down the corridor. Finch mouthed his silent thanks and walked towards
the cooler.
The water was indeed cool and very refreshing if you discounted the
acrid taste of polythene. He swallowed the capsules without hesitation
and immediately felt all the better for it. Finch wondered how much of
the pain was physical and how much psychological, then he decided that
it wasn't important as he was now forty minutes late for work.
His desk beckoned with the promise of another day of VDU glare.
11
THE HIGH-BACK SWIVEL CHAIR received Solomon's exhausted form with a
series of loud creaks, a sound that was picked up by the well-trained
ears of the sections Duty Manager.
The DM cast his gaze towards Solomon's desk and, with the pretence
that he hadn't noticed the late arrival of Account Enquiries Officer
Finch, he turned his attention to a large crimson book, bound in
imitation leather. Finch groaned. The DM was logging his time-keeping
statistics, in particular, Solomon's catalogue of late arrivals. He
must have his own volume by now.
Finch tried to shake the apprehension, and adjusted his computer
terminal. There was a small self-adhesive posting note attached to the
screen, and upon it the words, software problems, please DO NOT log on
until 0915. Finch glanced at the clock on the far wall. He was clear of
that time by almost half an hour, so he plucked the note from the VDU
and powered up the terminal. The machine whistled into life as the hard
drive booted up and soon the familiar LOGIN window materialised in a
hail of pixels. Finch TAB'ed across the screen and entered his name,
login code and password into the respective entry boxes. He thumbed
'ENTER'.
The CPU spewed a constantly renewing stream of random characters and
symbols across the screen while the sound chip released a quiet but
ear-piercing static whistle. Finch winced, and tried to cancel out of
the screen, but the whole system had collapsed into digital chaos. And
not just his system, looking around the room for help he realised with
growing horror that every single active terminal in the room had
experienced the same fate. Bewildered faces looked to the DM's desk for
help, and then all heads turned towards Solomon Finch. He faced his
screen once again; there was a pair of lobster-red hands gripping the
top of the monitor. The painfully tanned skin disappeared into stark
white cotton cuffs and reappeared again, encasing the gnarled neck that
protruded from the shirt collar. Atop that neck sat the enraged face of
Duty Manager McConaughy.
'FIIINCH!' he grated, through teeth that grew like weeds from bright
fleshy gums.
Despite the adequate air-conditioning, the room suddenly became
uncomfortably warm. The man who towered over him was larger than life
in every conceivable way. Even his colouring was exaggerated, much of
it was the result of regular visits to the solarium, but that which was
impossible to tan, like his eyes and gums, were painted in hues of
unimaginable clarity and depth. Almost everything about him was red; it
was as if he contained the blood of half a dozen people. The man was a
walking leech.
The big red man leaned over the top of the monitor and pressed his
face close to Solomon's. Without looking he picked up the note from the
desk and stuck it to the perspiring forehead of Solomon Finch.
'Come back in the morning,' he hissed. 'Five a.m. If you don't come in
tomorrow, don't come in at all, EVER!'
The prospect of losing his job caused Finch to perspire more freely
and the note dropped from his moist brow to land on the desk, face
down. He turned it over.
Network problems, please DO NOT log on after 0915, until further
notice.
Finch stared at the small scrap of paper for almost a minute until he
began to doubt himself, but no, it had been different. Maybe McConaughy
had switched notes somehow, to make him look a fool perhaps.
'But&;#8230;' Finch started, holding up the note.
'Go.' McConaughy said, with final searing glare.
That was that. He was forced to take the remainder of the day off,
unpaid, and with the prospect of coming in on the early-worm shift, or
not at all. Well, at least he had the rest of the day at leisure, to do
with what he wished. However, it seemed that the dark cloud that
followed him around so far this morning was pregnant with bad luck that
could rain down upon him at any given moment.
So far, for Finch, the day had sucked.
He shuffled down the stark corridor with the echoes of resentment
dancing on the brink of his subconscious. Tomorrow he would once again
walk these halls and abuse his sleep-heavy eyes with the false light of
the VDU screen. But that was tomorrow, and it seemed a week away. Finch
felt a little better for this and successfully shrugged off the shroud
of doom that had settled across his shoulders. He continued down the
corridor and his step even picked up a little bounce.
The distant murmur of music tickled his ears as he approached the
impressive glass doors that led out onto the great paved forecourt that
graced the front of the building. The carnival was underway, and Finch
had nothing better to do for the moment. What had at first seemed a
curse had manifested into a blessing. The sun was shining warm and
bright upon his face as he walked across the paving, where dappled
pigeons danced on the warm flagstones, pecking at scraps that had
fallen into the cracks between. The breeze was soft and cool, and
carried the dreamy song of distant trumpets.
Finch skipped down the steps at the end of the courtyard; the ornate
railings seemed to catch the sunlight, despite the dull matte
paintwork. They were expertly constructed from wrought iron in an
intricate web-work of heavenly swells that surrounded a central
depiction of the Archangel Michael battling against a great dragon. The
irony was not lost on Finch; the path leading to the Cerberus building
was itself guarded by an icon of the Holy Order of Angels.
The angelic design caught Finch's attention for a moment; maybe it was
the way that the sunlight accentuated the curves of the ironwork, or
maybe it was one of those corner-of-the-eye illusions, but he thought
that for a split second it had moved. Not in an obvious way like a
writhing of the dragon's tail or a thrust of the Angel's fiery sword,
but in a subtle and indistinct fashion. Finch felt the image had become
more three-dimensional. He felt sure that somehow it had filled out,
rounded off and sharpened in definition. Finch paused for a second and
glanced at it - it was a biblical image cast into an everyday ornate
handrail. His eyes were playing tricks on him. Maybe that was what
happened earlier at the station.
Maybe it was the result of too much coffee. Caffeine trip.
Finch removed his coat and slung it over his shoulder - the garment
was too close-knit for the stifling heat and he wished that he had left
it at home. Home, in fact, was where he planned to go, and if he failed
to succeed in a spot of forced entry, the locksmiths would be next on
the agenda.
12
'THIS IS INCREDIBLE,' Lamond spoke softly to himself, peering down the
eyepiece of a high powered portable microscope. He was sat at a
makeshift bench in a rundown one-room shack, located in a backwoods
South American Township. The structure that barely qualified as a
building was known by the locals as Plaza Roach, and was used by
outlanders for various nefarious dealings that spanned everything from
gunrunning to filming snuff movies. In places the torn floorboards were
stained with a hue as dark as its history.
Lamond had arrived back in good time, and as instructed, the fourteen
year old local boy had been waiting for him at the appointed location;
a foot-track, no more than a ravaged patch of land where the forest
thinned out to scrub and grasses. He had been carrying a change of
clothes and a canteen half-filled with warm, stale water meant for
drinking. Lamond had paid the boy what he had promised, and stayed to
watch him rattle his way out of sight along the uneven trail, upon a
bicycle that had seen better days. The water he fed to the
vegetation.
Since arriving back at the shack Lamond had washed and dressed, ate a
little and quenched his thirst with safe bottled water, straight from
the cooler. That taken care of, he set himself to work on more
important issues.
The thing was held in place beneath the magnifier lens with a small
piece of chewing gum; just like the local boy, in a place like this you
had to make do and mend.
It was about the size of a popcorn kernel, shaped like an oyster, with
a polished chromium finish. But beyond the human eye it was much, much
more. Through the magnificence of technology the degree of
craftsmanship became majestically apparent. Even when viewed under the
highest magnification setting, the surface was perfectly smooth. It
wasn't chromium. Nor was it any other material of the same properties,
as all would have shown up as peaks and valleys under the microscope's
uncompromising eye. There were no seams, joins, fastenings or evidence
of cast moulding. The only marked features were two small openings at
the 'hinge-end' of the oyster-shaped device. If it was a device.
The openings were tiny apertures set within twin chutes cut
(immaculately) into the mirrored shell.
Lamond was intrigued, but infuriatingly he did not currently possess
the time or the technology to investigate the object further. For the
moment it would remain a conundrum, its purpose elusive and yet right
within his grasp. It was only a matter of time.
He removed the device from the slide and dropped it into a portable
icebox, packing the crystallised water around it. On top of this he
placed a rack of corked vials containing various coloured liquids. The
microscope he dismantled with expertise and stored in a polystyrene
packing crate.
He glanced at his watch. His flight would be leaving in two hours, to
a location Lamond was sure he had some connection with. Whether by
time, event or person, the coastal metropolis was a postcard from his
colourful past. He remembered. Time enough to make some additional
arrangements; to call in a favour. Namely from one Canadian-born
chemist of Hispanic blood, William Charles Rodriguez, who operated a
chain of small pharmaceutical stores scattered throughout Europe, one
of which was in New Denton. Lamond had done him favours in the past,
and now the time had come to call them in.
He dialled the number from memory.
'Billy? Yes, it's Daniel Lamond. You remember that hit-and-run back in
'92? We took care of her prints with a little sulphuric back at yours,
didn't we? Don't tell me you've forgotten.' A slight pause.
'Good. Okay, you still got that place on the coast?' Another
pause.
'Well, I need it for a few days. I got some tests to run on things and
I need a place to bed down as well. I'll be arriving in about, say,
eighteen hours. That should be an hour before midday tomorrow. You'll
be there? Great.'
Lamond paused thoughtfully.
'Oh. And Billy? I don't have to tell you to keep this to yourself.
Good. I'll see you then.'
He hung up. For Lamond, tomorrow couldn't come around soon enough,
though he knew that Rodriguez would have put it off indefinitely, had
he not been mortally afraid of losing the thumb of his other hand.
Failing to return a favour often carried a severe penalty. Especially
where Daniel Lamond was concerned.
A vehicle horn sounded outside, splitting the air with its rusty
herald. His ride was here.
Lamond gathered together his belongings and carried them out to the
waiting cattle truck. A much more comfortable climate awaited
him.
The city was called New Denton.
13
FINCH SLOWLY NEGOTIATED the thickening crowd, making gradual progress
by way of graceful strategy in favour of physical force; side step,
give-way, proceed into the space. An intermittent push and shove and
whispered apology was occasionally necessary. Half the city's
population, it seemed, were out enjoying the rising heat of summer,
watching the brightly coloured floats drift slowly past, with their
dancers, jugglers or people in exceptional fancy dress.
Looking back over his shoulder, from his vantage point at the peak of
a long slight incline, Finch could see the brilliant image of the sun
reflected in the polished silvery exterior of the CBS building. He
returned his attention to the direction he was heading, but between
Oakland's Station and the breach in the crowd through which he slipped,
was a seemingly impassable expanse of sluggish human traffic that
followed the procession like rats to the hypnotic tune of the fabled
Hamlin piper.
The opposite side of the street was less densely packed, so Finch
decided to cross over. He waited for an approaching float to pass
before he made his short dash. The float was well constructed and much
thought had gone into the design; stark white fibreboard gave shape to
the base and formed the basis of the scenery that appeared to be an
interpretation of the Pearly Gates. Tinsel, paper-shapes and white lace
hung like frosted vines and a huge hand-painted banner spanned the
length of the platform, and sported the words, The New Denton Women's
Guild Choral Club in a letter-style that was roughly derived from
Zapfchancery.
The choir stood in neat formation atop the float, in rows of staggered
heights. They were inanimate except for their lips and singing more
from memory than from their song sheets. In stark comparison, the
children of the NDWG "Tackers" aged between six and twelve danced upon
the rolling stage that followed, dressed in white shorts and
tee-shirts, and wheeling silver ribbons through the air in watery arcs.
They span and dipped and leapt about in the manner befitting junior
cheerleaders, or auditioners for Pans People, and all the while the
choir sang on, almost scenery themselves, yet they empowered the
dancers with their charismatic acapello of traditional Christian
folksong.
'I am the Lord of the Dance, said He,' the choir sang and the children
whirled past like miniature ice storms. Finch seized his chance and
pushed his way through a gap in the crowd and darted, low and quick,
across the road towards the other side. He passed the far rear corner
of the Fellowship float and spotted an oscillating space between an
ancient couple whose hair was far richer in colour than their senior
years would have naturally decreed.
Finch stepped out and glanced quickly left-right for traffic as an
afterthought. The road was closed to civilian vehicles, with both lanes
having been reserved for the single flow of the carnival. A small van,
with speakers evenly mounted in a row above the windshield, travelled
quickly up the road, slipping easily past the floats in order to take
its place at the head of the procession. The speakers honked their
distorted message of promotion for Edgar Blake, a local entrepreneur
who was running for Mayor for the second term in a row. The small
bespectacled man, who had a string of failed relationships and
successful businesses (and one might speculate that each was
responsible for the other), was seated in the passenger seat and
speaking numbly into a microphone.
Too late, Finch discovered that he'd taken one step more than he'd
planned. He tried to back up but his weight had already shifted to his
leading leg and so his fate was sealed. That single step put Finch
directly in the path of Blake's van, and when the bumper contacted with
him he turned into it, the impact forcing him to lie spread-eagled on
the freshly waxed bonnet. A dreamy realisation - a comprehension of the
incomprehensible given form by the crushing pressure of impact -
penetrated the cobwebs of disbelief, as inertia flung him from the
bonnet.
Then, as the angelic blue framed with the skyline of buildings
scrolled slowly across his field of vision, a peace unlike anything he
had ever felt flowed gel-like through him, inducing a state of surreal
lethargy. The body of Solomon Finch crashed to earth twenty feet from
point of impact, and there he lay, silently staring up into the lure of
the blue. As he descended into the desensitising nausea of shock, he
became abnormally concerned for his own welfare.
Oh dear God, he thought as the summer sun radiated hot and heavy upon
his forehead, I'm going to sun-burn. Please don't let them leave me
here to burn.
Then, spellbound with shock-logic, he thought of peeling, a vague
memory of irritable itching. And then nothing.
14
FINCH LAY in the street for some time before the clouds that inhibited
his fluidity of thought dispelled. He suffered no pain, and thankfully
no numbness, and it gradually dawned on him that he felt relatively
normal. Cautiously he attempted to move; contrary to the little
information he could recall that had even the most vague bearing on
first aid procedure. Finch curled his toes, then moved his fingers. He
felt the familiar sensation of motion.
Okay, that's good, he told himself, and rolled his eyes
downwards.
He could see - by the straining of his vision - down the front of his
body; his hips obscured and stomach his legs but he could still see the
toes of his shoes and, further down the road, the vehicle that had hit
him.
Evidently the procession had stopped in view of what had happened.
What HE had caused. Finch cringed at the thought of being the centre of
so much resentful attention; lying in the street with the many, many
onlookers glaring at him from either side, and him having caused the
procession to grind to a halt.
He turned his head and gazed at the crowd - no pain in his neck or
back. Good. He recognised the two old-timers towards who he had been
heading. Had he been able to reach the gap, it would have allowed him
to proceed, to get ahead of the procession and to get to home. He had
no idea how long he had been lying there in a suppressed state of
consciousness. He frowned. The couple wasn't apparently concerned about
the incident. In fact they weren't even looking at him - instead, they
stood side by side, ludicrous grinning mannequins pointing toward the
motionless floats.
Finch turned his head to the other side. The impact had thrown him up
the street in the direction of travel of the church float, so now he
lay next to the float a little past its centre point. The choir, lips
parted and the glistening tips of tongues just visible beyond, were
frozen in the same inanimate fashion.
Finch pushed himself up into a sitting position, the weight of his
body supported by one arm while he checked for lumps or blood on the
back of his head with the other hand. He was fine, unscathed, and not
even so much as sore from the accident. It was almost as if he had
walked into the centre of the road and lay down. But he was not at all
concerned about this, in fact, the abnormality of the situation was
obscured by a unseen air of misgiving, a dark forewarning of some
strangeness that seem to scream at senses that Finch did not know he
had. He stared about him in utter disbelief. The entire procession -
the floats, performers and even the onlookers were all frozen in
exactly the same manner. All, it seemed, except him. And he was once
again wearing his coat.
Panic gripped him and forced its way into his bones with icy
fingers.
'Oh, this is very bad,' he murmured, 'What have I done?' He floundered
away on trembling legs, stumbling this way and that among the
motionless floats and city folk. Not one person or vehicle was moving
and, amongst the frigid cityscape, Finch caught the occasional glimpse
of the horrific; that which was normally benign and did not raise
question or defy expectation. The small things, usually taken for
granted, or those that fell beneath our self-determined parameters for
warranted attention. Everything that was normally indistinct, and
subsequently noted and verified as acceptable, now stuck out like a
sore thumb; alien, unnerving and coarsely apparent.
A small girl in a pretty white dress, face transfixed in reverent awe,
had gripped in her hand the ribbon of a helium-filled balloon. The
silver bubble hung on a fixed point in time and space and the yellow
ribbon, slackened slightly in mid-bob, and bridged the space with a
golden arc. Her hair, richly red in the sunshine, had been blown across
her features by a breeze, which had now disappeared, and formed a rusty
claw that threatened to rake the innocence from her face.
Two floats further up, a juggler, her face a mask of concentration and
siphoned dry of intelligence, was fixed in an unnatural poise somewhere
between calculation and manipulation of the torches she tossed.
Two of the torches marked the air with luminous trails that flowed
from their amber crowns; one on an ascension to glory while the other
embraced the fate of Icarus, trailing behind it a wake of flame, not
feathers, as it reached for the plotted junction of hand and
shaft.
The flames streamed from the fuel-soaked torch-heads in static,
convoluted sheets of light. Fire-children played in the torch's wake
but never strayed far from the parent flame, and tiny sparks rested on
the air like catatonic fireflies.
A third torch levitated in the near-grip of the juggler's right hand.
Any second the flesh would close around its shaft and that torches
cycle would be complete but would that elusive second ever come?
Finch approached the performer, mesmerised by the beauty of the static
tongues of flame, and circled her, staring up at the fire-show in a
kind of wonder-fear that one experiences during a spectacular
thunderstorm, or a solar eclipse. He had almost completed his circuit,
returning to the spot directly in front of her when he let out a yelp
of pain; he withdrew his hand sharply and located the injury. A small
score-line marked the blade of his hand, across the fleshy part between
palm and smallest finger. A cauterised channel approximately a
millimetre wide and equal in depth ran for the majority of two
centimetres across the soft flesh, and had the appearance of a wire
burn.
Finch looked around seeking out the source of the injury. One of the
larger embers, fixed as if on an invisible backdrop, glowed
consistently in the air near his hip. Under normal circumstances such
contact with the skin would have instantly absorbed the heat energy
before it could cause damage, but all this was hardly normal.
Finch held his hand near the trail of flame stretching upwards from
the torch which the juggler was forever about to catch. He could feel
its heat and, as nature decrees, the closer he put his hand to it, the
hotter it felt. At least that was normal. Finch moved his hand quickly
through the air, designing to pass through the flame but the fire
seemed to expel a gravity - a repellence like the negative field of two
magnets - and his hand stopped upon contact with the non-substance of
the flame. The fine hairs on his hand singed in the heat and he drew
his arm back at once cursing, blowing to cool his injured flesh.
It was as if the conflict of natural law and this unnatural occurrence
of stasis had spawned a fail-safe to substitute an overlap of the two
opposing laws. Had the flame not been hot and the repulsion less
intense, could he have not passed his hand through the flame? And if so
would the static flame have parted giving passage to his hand, or would
the flame have passed through his hand instantly replacing his flesh
and bone with its own destructive energy, consuming matter
indiscriminately? Flame or flesh; something would have to give and
perhaps this was the reason behind the anomaly. But if that were true,
what was behind the reason? Chaos had to have some linear ruling
supporting it otherwise the whole chaotic fabric would collapse and it
would cease to be. Why was it that everything moveable could not be
moved and yet he himself could move freely?
Everything here was lifeless except for him. Or maybe that was a
matter of perspective.
Finch jarred in sudden comprehension, as a discomforting thought
spearheaded through the multitudinous others.
The van, the profound sense of peace, the disjointed laws of
between-time. He was the physical representation of his own self-image,
coat and all, despite having shed the garment beforehand. Residual
image, he had heard it called. Either this world was not the real world
or...
'Oh my God,' muttered Finch in quiet revelation, 'I'm dead. I've been
Casperised. A goddam, true-to-death ghost!'
For a moment he contemplated on whether questionable words, thoughts
or actions would seal his fate to one afterlife or another, then in
spontaneous defiance he concluded the process with all his feelings and
emotions compressed into a single climactic outburst.
'Bugger!'
