The Lunatic Messiah

  As I switch on the light, Evan moans and sits up, rubbing one of his eyes with a knuckle. He looks at me, standing by the door.

  'What? What do you want now?' he says irritably, just as Ada begins to stir.

  'We have to go. The Furies are coming.'

  Ada is awake now as well, her hair flattened on one side as she also sits up.

  'What?'

  'Lucy knows you're here, therefore so does Gavrilo. We don't have much time,' I say calmly, something which Evan picks up on immediately.

  'What? Well you don't seem too concerned about it.'

  'I'm not. They can't hurt you, but you have to come with me now.'

  They both seem uncertain, but soon enough they're on their feet and starting to get dressed. I look around the room, especially at the brown patch outside the bathroom door. It seems so recent that Joe was here with Judith, but the stain on the carpet looks years old. It's dried into a sort of crust. I poke my head into the bathroom, where splatter marks adorn the walls like bad art, dried into that same sickening brown. A part of Joe's essence, now nothing more than decor.

  'Quickly.'

  They're both dressed, but Lucy is pulling on a pair of sneakers with no socks. She stands up smartly, like a soldier ready for inspection.

  'So where are we going?' she asks.

  'We're going to where this all started. Back to where it should have begun before Grey polluted everything with his cancer.'

  I lead them from the room and we trot down the stairs in single file. At the bottom, behind a wire mesh, sits the fat figure of Tony. He glances up disinterested as we pass, but then pauses and looks at his watch. Joe's watch.

  'You've still got another five hours. You don't get no refunds for leaving early, you know,' he says.

  We're about to leave anyway when I stop and walk over to the booth. Tony is reading a newspaper that seems solely devoted to nudity and alien abductions and he looks at me nervously as I approach. I stare at him. Not just at his body, but at his mind.

  'What? Waddya looking at?' he says, folding his paper aggressively, but with eyes so fearful they look ready to burst.

  'Hold out your left hand, Tony.'

  'What? No. Hold out your own hand, freak.'

  'What are you doing? You said we had to go!' Evan says from the red door, which he is holding open with his foot.

  'Hold out your left hand, Tony,' I repeat.

  He's starting to sweat. He can see that my eyes are not quite human, but he's not sure what they are. With an incremental slowness, he extends his left arm towards the small hole in the booth.

  'I believe this is mine,' I say, and I unclip the watch from his wrist and slide it onto my own in a single movement. 'It's not a real Rolex, by the way.'

  He seems paralysed and he just looks at me as I follow Evan and Ada out of the door and onto the streets of King's Cross.

  'Who are you?' he calls after me, once I have moved far enough away to break the spell.

  I turn and smile at him. He knows who I am. With that, I follow the Meakes out onto the street and we leave the Valhalla behind.

  The streets are crowded, it seems like it must be a Friday or Saturday night. It's hard for me to tell. My time spent in the Underworld is so fleeting that whilst over a month has passed in the Overworld, only a few days have passed here. We move through the crowds, with me leading the way, and Evan and Ada trail in my wake. People part before us as I approach. None of them is aware that they're doing it, but there is a definite path forming for us and soon we are away from the noisy crowds of the Cross and heading down a dark alleyway towards Hyde Park. I am fully aware of what happens when one goes down a dark alleyway, in fact I'm counting on it, but it is at this point that Ada chooses to discuss things.

  'Wait. Stop. Will you tell us where the hell we are going?'

  She grabs my arm and forces me to stop. She looks scared and confused, but angry as well. She reminds me of Mary and I put my hand on hers comfortingly.

  'You have to trust me, Ada.'

  Unlike most of the people in the Underworld, Ada does not seem so easily soothed. It's one of the reasons I like her. Most of them are nothing but mindless automatons, here only for window dressing to make the world seem less dark. Ada, being closer to the source, is a fully formed personality.

  'It's not possible for me to explain myself to you. I can tell you that Grey is dead.'

  'Grey is dead? How?'

  I shrug.

  'He was never really alive in the first place. He never had a true form. He was nothing more than an idea, and ideas are easily forgotten. But before he died he unleashed the Furies on you, and they will not rest until you are dead. They cannot be called off and they cannot be bargained with. The only thing that can stop them is me.'

  They're both looking at me strangely now, possibly because I'm talking pseudo-mythological bullshit, or possibly because I have a piece of spinach stuck in my teeth. Either way, I'm not really getting through to them.

  'Why are we listening to you anyway? You're nothing but a narrative device,' argues Evan.

  I shake my head.

  'Oh no, Evan. I am so much more than that. I'm the beginning and the end. I'm the substance and the form. I'm the way and the light. I'm the question and the answer.'

  'Well I'm the sick and the tired of your bull and your shit,' Ada snaps. 'Why do you insist on talking riddles all the time when all I'm asking for is a straight answer? We don't know who or what you are. Why should we follow you anywhere?'

  Gavrilo pulled the car to a halt on the curb just outside the hotel. He looks up at the red door at the top of its crooked stairs. Rotten teeth beneath a blind eye.

  'This is it?'

  Lucy nodded, but Gavrilo was in bad mood.

  'Well don't think this makes up for it. You know, Lucy, of all the employers of mine that you've killed, this one annoys me the most.'

  Lucy looks at him caustically.

  'Well of all the mothers you've killed, killing my mother annoyed me the most,' she replied.

  Gavrilo thought about this for a moment and then seemed to decide that it was a fair point.

  'We'll call it even, shall we? Here, just wait a second,' he said, jumping out and starting out across the street.

  'Where are you going?' Lucy called out after him.

  'I'm just getting a ham and cheese bagel. I don't know how long this is going to take and I haven't eaten today.'

  He walked into the convenience store, lit with fifteen fluorescent lights that seemed designed solely to highlight flaws in people's skin. There was a teenager behind the counter, who was particularly unfortunate to be standing underneath those particular lights. Gavrilo waved at him dismissively as he strutted past.

  'Hey, get me a bagel, would you? You got a toilet?'

  The teenager pointed to the back of the store, barely looking up from his magazine that was declaring that some unknown young actor was the new slightly-better-known young actor. Engrossed as he was, he half-heartedly took some greasy tongs and tried to fish a bagel out of the countertop bacteria corral. Gavrilo pushed the door open, strutting in with his usual affected swagger, but cursing as his suede shoes sluiced through the urine of fifty different men.

  'Doesn't anyone know how to aim?' he said, stepping gingerly towards the urinal.

  As it turned out, his aim was quite precise, as one would expect from a mercenary killer and when he emerged from the bathroom, his bagel was sitting on the counter, working hard on making its white paper bag transparent with grease. The teenager looked up as he approached.

  'That's three fifty,' he said.

  Gavrilo picked it up without slowing down.

  'Well my shoes cost three hundred dollars, so we'll call it even, shall we?'

  As the automated door of the shop trundled open the teenager came around from behind the counter at a run.

  'You can't just...' he began, but Gavrilo was in no mood.

  He pulled out his pistol and swung around, f
iring instantly. The bullet sped past the teenager and exploded into a pyramid of soup tins, knocking them down like skittles. The teenager had dropped to floor at the sound of the gun and lay there shivering as Gavrilo left the store.

  'Get a mop to that bathroom, you little pus factory.'

  Outside, people had heard the shot and began to scream as Gavrilo strode out, gun in one hand, savoury bagel in the other. Lucy, who had been watching from the car, was shaking her head in disbelief.

  'You can't do anything right, can you?' she said wearily as he came up alongside the open window.

  Gavrilo held up a shoe, which was dark with urine, as if this was all the explanation that was necessary. Lucy got out of the car, ignoring the people who were either fleeing in terror, or backing away from the man with the gun, who by now was halfway through what was turning out to be the worst gastronomical decision of his life. As Lucy hopped eagerly up the steps, two at a time, he threw it in the gutter and spat out what was in his mouth.

  'Three fifty!' he muttered, as he followed her up.

  Tony was not having a good night. He had just received a phone call from the local police department telling him that he was to report to the station "at his next earliest convenience" in regards to a body found in a nearby alley with his hotel's card in its pocket. Tony had replied that as far as talking to a bunch of pigs was concerned, no time was particularly convenient. This in turn had led to a demand that he report to the station the following morning at nine sharp, with the implied threat that two officers would be giving him a good working over with telephone directories before his interview began. Soon after, some psychopath with eyes of dancing fire had stolen his watch. Then, not five minutes later, a man in a long leather jacket kicked his door in and pointed an oversized revolver at his head.

  'Where are they?' demanded Gavrilo, now angrier and hungrier than ever.

  'Who?'

  'The couple and the old man,' said a voice that sounded like the distant buzzing of a hornet's nest.

  Tony looked over the counter and saw a sweet little girl looking up at him, smiling.

  'The crazy old man? Got a big scar on his hand that kind of looks like a vagina?'

  Lucy nodded.

  'That sounds like the one.'

  Tony shrugged, trying to appear calm as the dark black eye of the gun barrel followed his head.

  'They just left. Seemed in a bit of a hurry.'

  'Which direction?'

  'I dunno. Into the fucking street. I didn't have my compass handy, so sue me.'

  It was a trait of Tony's to antagonise those people that he really shouldn't. It was a trait of Gavrilo's that he shot people who antagonised him. Lucy, who knew both of these facts, had already worked out the equation in her head and she was delighted when her answer proved to be correct and Tony's bad day ended abruptly. She clapped her hands together but Gavrilo wasn't so amused.

  'Just a moment ago you were telling me off for firing my gun.'

  Lucy shrugged.

  'Just a moment ago, you missed.'

  'Fine. Well they can't have gone far. They're probably sticking to back streets.'

  'I know where they're going,' Lucy replied. 'I can feel Him.'

  'Why should we follow you anywhere?' Ada snaps, and I point behind her.

  Lucy and Gavrilo have just come around the corner and they seem as surprised to see us as Ada and Evan are to see them.

  'Stop!' Gavrilo yells, somewhat optimistically.

  We don't stop. We begin to run and I can hear them behind us, breathing down our necks like a creepy homeless man on a crowded train.

  'Keep going,' I say to Evan. 'Follow this road straight to the park. I'll meet you there.'

  Evan's eyes bulge with fear when he realises I'm abandoning them, but he's too scared to stop or argue and I slow down as they pull ahead of me. I wait a moment and then fall into step with Gavrilo.

  'You again,' he says, 'I don't suppose there's any point in shooting you, is there?'

  I shrug, a hard thing to do whilst jogging but, being God, I manage it without much difficulty.

  'If it'll make you feel better,' I reply, but he just spits on the ground and keeps running.

  Lucy is slower, and I drop back to talk to her as well. She smiles at me in her disconcerting way.

  'I told you we would not be on the same side,' she says.

  'Lucy, we are on the same side. You just don't know it yet.'

  'I will kill your vehicle.'

  I shake my head.

  'No you won't. If you do that then I can't cross. This world can't exist without me. You damn yourself to oblivion if my vehicle dies.'

  She's breathing heavily now. The effort of running is starting to show on her face and finally she slows to a fast walk.

  'Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,' she says, watching her father as he tears away from us after the Meakes.

  I pity her, this twisted child. What Grey did to her was horrific, but there's no reasoning with her now. My words to her are as redundant as putting the phrase "I speak fluent French" in a French phrase book. Instead, I decide to be at the park, and so I am, just as Ada and Evan arrive.

  'Where were you?' says Ada, red-faced and panting for breath.

  I point to the station entrance, a sandstone set of stairs leading down underneath the park. A sign, "St James", is illuminated above it.

  'Down there. Now,' I say, but Evan protests.

  'We can't go down there. We'll be trapped. There's nowhere to go.'

  I look back up the street and in the distance we can all see Gavrilo running at full speed; a vision of murderous terror. I know that if I appeal to Ada, Evan will follow.

  'Trust me, Ada,' I say.

  She looks at me once, but I can tell she doesn't. After a moment's hesitation she flees down the stairs anyway.

  It is not trust that drives her, but fear. It doesn't matter. Methods are made redundant when the result is the same.

  'Go,' I say to Evan, and he glances back at Gavrilo and then follows her.

  27