I’m dreaming, he thought; I fell from the wall and I’ve been dreaming ever since. The world isn’t like this. The world is the tea-pot and the cup, it isn’t raptures and tornadoes.
In that instant of hesitation, the dream became a nightmare. Through the gusting dirt he saw the Rake.
It hung on the wind for a moment, its form caught in a sliver of sun.
‘Done for,’ said Freddy.
The words stung Cal into moving. He was through the back door and out into the garden before the Rake could fall upon the pitiful figures below.
The beast drew Cal’s astonished eyes. He saw the morbid fashioning of its skin, which made it billow and swell, and heard again the howl that he’d thought was simply the wind. It was nothing so natural; the sound came out of this phantasm from a dozen places, either the din or the breath it rose on drawing most of the garden’s contents out of the ground and throwing them into the air.
A rain of plants and stones came down on the occupants of the garden. Cal covered his head with his hands, and ran blindly towards the spot where he’d last seen his father. Brendan was flat on the ground, shielding himself. Nimrod was not with him.
Cal knew the route the garden path took like the back of his hand. Spitting out mud as he went, he headed away from the house.
Somewhere above, now mercifully hidden, the Rake howled again, and Cal heard Lilia cry out. He did not look behind him, for ahead he now saw Nimrod, who had reached the back fence and was attempting to tear at the rotted timbers. He was having some success too, despite his size. Cal ducked his head down as another rain of earth fell, and ran past the pigeon loft towards the fence.
The howls had stopped, but the wind was far from spent. To judge by the din from the other side of the house it was tearing Chariot Street apart. As he reached the fence, Cal turned round. The sun stabbed the veil of dirt, and he saw blue sky for an instant – then a form blocked the sight, and Cal threw himself at the fence and started to scramble over, as the creature moved towards him. At the top, his belt snagged on a nail. He reached to release it, certain that the Rake was at his neck, but Mad Mooney must have been pushing from behind, for as he pulled his belt from its mooring he fell over the far side of the fence, life and limb intact.
He stood up, and saw why. The boneless beast was hovering beside the loft, its head weaving back and forth as it listened to the pigeons within. Silently blessing the birds, Cal ducked down and tore another plank of the fence away, sufficient to pull Nimrod through.
As a child he’d had the dangers of this no-man’s land between fence and railway track beaten into him. Now such dangers seemed negligible beside whatever it was that loitered at the loft. Picking Nimrod up in his arms, Cal climbed the gravel embankment towards the rails.
‘Run,’ said Nimrod. ‘It’s just behind us. Run!’
Cal looked North and South. The wind had reduced visibility to ten or fifteen yards in both directions. Heart in mouth he stepped over the first rail and onto the oil-slicked space between the sleepers. There were four tracks altogether, two in each direction. He was stepping towards the second when he heard Nimrod say:
‘Shit.’
Cal turned, heels grinding in the gravel, to see that their pursuer had forsaken bird-fancying and was rising over the fence.
Behind the beast, he saw Lilia Pellicia. She was standing in the ruins of the Mooney garden, her mouth open as if to shout. But no sound emerged. Or at least none that Cal could hear. The beast was not so insensitive however. It halted in its advance, turning back towards the garden and the woman in it.
What happened next was confused both by the wind and Nimrod, who, forseeing his sister’s slaughter, began to struggle in Cal’s arms. All Cal saw was the billowing form of their pursuer suddenly flicker, and the next moment he heard Lilia’s voice swoop into an audible register. It was a cry of anguish she let loose, echoed by Nimrod. Then the wind blew up again, shrouding the garden, just as Cal glimpsed Lilia’s form swathed in white fire. The cry stopped abruptly.
As it did so, a tingling in the soles of his feet announced the approach of a train. Which direction was it coming from, and on which track? The murder of Lilia had further excited the wind. He could now see less than ten yards down the line in either direction.
Knowing there was no safety the way they’d come, he turned from the garden as the beast let out another scalp-crawling commotion.
Think, he told himself. In moments it would be after them again.
He wrenched his arm around Nimrod, and looked at his watch. It read twelve thirty-eight.
Where would the train be heading at twelve thirty-eight? To Lime Street Station, or from it?
Think.
Nimrod had begun to cry. Not an infantile bawling, but a deep, heart-felt sob of loss.
Cal glanced over his shoulder as the trembling in the gravel grew more insistent. Again, a tear in the veil of dust gave him a glimpse of the garden. Lilia’s body had disappeared, but Cal could see his father standing in the devastation, as Lilia’s killer rose above him. Brendan’s face was slack. Either he failed to comprehend his danger, or didn’t care. He moved not a muscle.
‘The shout!’ said Cal to Nimrod, lifting the child up so that they were face to snotty face. ‘The shout she made –’
Nimrod just sobbed.
‘Can you make that shout?’
The beast was almost upon Brendan.
Make it!’ Cal yelled at Nimrod, shaking him ‘til his gums rattled. ‘Make it or I’ll fucking kill you!’
Nimrod believed him.
‘Go on!’ Cal said, and Nimrod opened his mouth.
The beast heard the sound. It swung its ballooning head around, and began to come at them again.
All this had taken seconds only, but seconds in which the reverberations had deepened. How far away was the train now? A mile? A quarter of a mile?
Nimrod had ceased the shout, and was fighting to be free of Cal.
‘Christ, man!’ he was yelling, eyes on the terror approaching through the smoke, it’s going to kill us!’
Cal tried to ignore Nimrod’s cries, and dug for access to that cool region of memory where the dates and destinations of the trains lay.
Which line was it on, and from which direction? His mind flipped through the numbers like a station announcement board, looking for a train six or seven minutes from departure or arrival at Liverpool Lime Street.
The beast was climbing the gravel embankment. The wind gave it skirts of dust, and danced in and out of its lacerated frame, moaning as it went.
The percussion of the train’s approach was enough to make Cal’s belly tremble. And still the numbers flipped over.
Where to? Where from? Fast train or slow?
Think, damn you.
The beast was almost upon them
Think.
He took a step backwards. Behind him the furthest track began to whine.
And with the whine came the answer. It was the Stafford train, via Runcorn. Its rhythm rose through his feet as it thundered to its destination.
‘Twelve forty-six from Stafford,’ he said, and stepped onto the humming line.
‘What are you doing?’ Nimrod demanded.
‘Twelve forty-six,’ he murmured; it was a prayer by numbers.
The slaughterer was crossing the first of the Northbound lines. It had nothing but death to give. No curse, no sentence-only death.
‘Come and get us,’ Cal yelled at it.
‘Are you insane?’ Nimrod said.
By way of reply Cal lifted the bait a little higher. Nimrod bawled. The pursuer’s head grew vast with hunger.
‘Come on!’
It had crossed both the Northbound lines; now it stepped onto the first of those headed South.
Cal took another stumbling step backwards, his heel hitting the furthest rail, the voice of the beast and the roar in the ground shaking the fillings loose in his teeth.
The last thing he heard as the creature came
to fetch him was Nimrod running through a celestial checklist in search of a Redeemer.
And suddenly, as if in answer to his call, the veil of dirty air divided, and the train was upon them. Cal felt his foot catch on the rail, and raised it an inch higher to step back, then fell away from the track.
What followed was over in seconds. One moment the creature was on the line, its maw vast, its appetite for death vaster still. The next, the train hit it.
There was no cry. No moment of triumph, seeing the monster undone. Just a foul stench, as if every dead man in the vicinity had sat up and expelled a breath, then the train was rushing by, smeared faces peering from the windows.
And just as suddenly as it had appeared, it was away through the curtain on its way South. The whine in the rails receded to a sibilant whisper. Then even that was gone.
Cal shook Nimrod from his roll-call of deities.
it’s over …” he said.
It took Nimrod a little while to accept the fact. He peered through the smoke, expecting the Rake to come at them again.
‘It’s gone,’ said Cal. ‘I killed it.’
‘The train killed it,’ said Nimrod. ‘Put me down.’
Cal did so, and without looking right or left Nimrod started back across the tracks towards the garden where his sister had perished. Cal followed.
The wind that had come with the boneless creature, or borne it, had dropped completely. As there was not even a light breeze to keep the dirt it had swept up aloft, a deluge now descended. Small stones, fragments of garden furniture and fencing, even the remains of several household pets who’d been snatched away. A rain of blood and earth the like of which the good people of Chariot Street had not expected to see this side of Judgment Day.
VII
THE AFTERMATH
1
nce the dust had begun to settle, it was possible to assess the extent of the devastation. The garden had been turned upside down, of course, as had all the other gardens along the row; there were dozens of slates missing from the roof, and the chimney stack looked less than secure. The wind had been equally lethal at the front of the house. All along the street havoc had been wreaked: lamps toppled, walls demolished, car windows smashed by flying trash. Mercifully there seemed to be no serious casualties; just cuts, bruises and shock. Lilia – of whom no sign remained – was the only fatality.
‘That was Immacolata’s creature,’ Nimrod said. ‘I’ll kill her for that. I swear I will.’
The threat sounded doubly hollow coming from his diminutive body.
‘What’s the use?’ said Cal despondently. He was watching through the front window as the occupants of Chariot Street wandered around in a daze, some staring at the wreckage, others squinting up at the sky as if expecting some explanation to be written there.
‘We won a substantial victory this afternoon, Mr Mooney –’ said Frederick. ‘Don’t you understand that? And it was your doing.’
‘Some victory,’ said Cal, bitterly. ‘My Dad sitting next door not saying a word; Lilia dead, half the street torn apart –’
‘We’ll light again.’ said Freddy, ‘until the Fugue’s safe.’
‘Fight, will we?’ said Nimrod. ‘And where were you when the shit was flying?’
Cammell was about to protest, then thought better of it, letting silence confess his cowardice.
Two ambulances and several police cars had arrived at the far end of Chariot Street. Hearing the sirens, Nimrod joined Cal at the window.
‘Uniforms,’ he muttered. ‘They always mean trouble.’
As he spoke the door of the lead police car swung open, and a sober-suited man stepped out, smoothing his thinning hair back with the palm of his hand. Cal knew the fellow’s face – his eyes so ringed with shadow he seemed not to have slept in years – but, as ever, he could put no name to it.
‘We should get gone,’ said Nimrod. ‘They’ll want to talk with us –’
Already a dozen uniformed police were fanning out amongst the houses to begin their enquiries. What would his fellow Charioteers have to report, Cal wondered. Had they glimpsed anything of the creature that had killed Lilia, and if so, would they admit to it?
‘I can’t go,’ said Cal. ‘I can’t leave Dad.’
‘You think they won’t sniff a rat if they speak to you?’ said Nimrod. ‘Don’t be an imbecile. Let your father tell them all he has to tell. They won’t believe it.’
Cal saw the sense in this, but he was still reluctant to leave Brendan alone.
‘What happened to Suzanna and the others?’ asked Cammell, as Cal turned the problem over.
‘They went back to the warehouse to see if they could trace Shadwell from there,’ said Freddy.
‘Isn’t likely, is it?’ said Cal.
‘It worked for Lilia,’ said Freddy.
‘You mean you know where the carpet is?’
‘Almost. She and I went back to the Laschenski house, you see, to take bearings from there. She said the echoes were very strong.’
‘Echoes?’
‘Back from where the carpet now is, to where it had been.’
Freddy fished in his pocket and brought out three shiny new paperbacks, one of which was a Liverpool and District Alias. The others were murder mysteries. ‘I borrowed these from a confectioner’s,’ he said, ‘to trace the carpet.’
‘But you didn’t succeed,’ said Cal.
‘As I said, almost. We were interrupted when she felt the presence of that thing that killed her.’
‘She was always acute,’ said Nimrod.
‘That she was,’ Freddy replied. ‘As soon as she sniffed the beast on the wind she forgot about the carpet. Demanded we came to warn you. That was our error. We should have stayed put.’
‘Then it would have picked us off one by one,’ said Nimrod.
‘I hope to God it didn’t go after the others first,’ said Cal.
‘No. They’re alive,’ said Freddy. ‘We’d feel it if they weren’t.’
‘He’s right,’ said Nimrod. ‘We can pick up their trail easily. But we have to go now. Once the uniforms get here we’re trapped.’
‘All right, I heard you first time,’ said Cal. ‘Let me just say goodbye to Dad.’
He went next door. Brendan hadn’t moved since Cal had settled him in the chair.
‘Dad … can you hear me?’
Brendan looked up from his sorrows.
‘Haven’t seen a wind like that since the war,’ he said. ‘Out in Malaya. Saw whole houses blown down. Didn’t think to see it here.’
He spoke distractedly, his gaze on the empty wall.
‘The police are in the street,’ said Cal.
‘At least the loft’s still standing, eh,’ Brendan said. ‘A wind like that …’ his voice faded. Then he said: ‘Will they come here? The police?’
‘I would think so, Dad. Are you all right to speak to them? I have to go.’
‘Of course you do,’ Brendan murmured. ‘You go on.’
‘Do you mind if I take the car?’
‘Take it. I can tell them –’ Again, he halted, before picking up his thoughts. ‘Haven’t seen a wind like that since … oh, since the war.’
2
The trio left by the back door, climbing the fence and making their way along the embankment to the footbridge at the end of Chariot Street. From there they could see the size of the crowd that had already gathered from neighbouring streets, eager to view the spectacle.
Part of Cal itched to go down and tell them what he’d seen. To say: the world isn’t just the tea-cup and the pot. I know, because I’ve seen. But he held onto his words, knowing how they’d look at him.
There’d maybe come a time to be proud, to tell his tribe about the terrors and miracles they shared with the world. But this wasn’t it.
VIII
NECESSARY EVILS
he name of the man with the dark suit, whom Cal had seen getting out of the police-car, was Inspector Hobart. He had been in the forc
e for eighteen of his forty-six years, but it was only recently – with the riots that had erupted in the city during the late spring and summer of the previous year – that his star had come into the ascendant.
The origins of those riots were still the subject of both Public Enquiry and private argument, but Hobart had no time for either. It was the Law and how to keep it that obsessed him, and in that year of civil disturbance his obsession had made him the man of the moment.
Not for him the niceties of the sociologist or the civic planner. His sacred task was to preserve the peace, and his methods – which his apologists described as uncompromising – found sympathy with his civic masters. He rose in the ranks within weeks, and behind closed doors he was offered carte blanche to deal with the anarchy that had already cost the city millions.
He was not blind to the politics of this manœuvre. No doubt the higher echelons, for whom he had utter but unspoken contempt, were fearful of the backlash should they wield too strong a whip themselves. No doubt too he would be the first to be sacrificed to the ferocity of public indignation should the techniques he brought to bear fail.
But they did not fail. The elite he formed – men chosen from the Divisions for their sympathy with Hobart’s methods – was quickly successful. While the conventional forces kept the blue line unbroken on the streets, Hobart’s Special Force, known – to those who knew of it at all – as the Fire Brigade, was acting behind the scenes to terrorize any suspected of fuelling the agitation, either by word or deed. Within weeks the riots died down, and James Hobart was suddenly a force to be reckoned with.
There had followed several months of inactivity, and the Brigade languished. It had not escaped Hobart that being the man of the hour was of little consequence once that hour had passed; and through the spring and early summer of this, the following year, that seemed to be the case.
Until now. Today he dared hope he still had a fight on his hands. There’d been chaos, and here, in front of him, the gratifying evidence.
‘What’s the situation?’