Creed and Sammy were spun around, bumped this way and that, flashlights blinding them, yells and screams of panic almost deafening them. But they were free, and Creed shut his eyes and whooped with delight. He kissed his startled son and rumpled his hair, then from sheer elation he whipped off the mask of the nearest person to him, turning swiftly to do the same to the fleeing masquerader on his other side.
‘Get ’em, boys!’ he shouted to the busy paparazzi, laughing as he was carried along. ‘Get the fuckers!’
The crowds thinned as people headed for their cars, others among them sprinting across the lawns and into the darkness.
‘Joe! Joe!’
Creed paused at the sound of his name. He looked around, steadying himself against the knocks and shoves. Someone was running across the drive towards him and he held up a hand against the popping lights, squinting to see who it was.
‘Joe, what’s happening here?’
Prunella threw herself at him, knocking him back a step or two. Sammy, who had been watching the house and the lovely orange glow that was spreading along its lower windows, twisted in his father’s arms to see what had hit them. He returned his attention to the house when he realized it was only a girl.
‘You did it!’ Creed shouted at Prunella, holding her tight and making a sandwich of the boy.
‘But I still don’t understand what’s going on here, Joe. You didn’t explain when you rang this afternoon, so tell me now. What kind of party was this and who are the big names you said would be here? One of the paps told me Lily Neverless was inside, but that’s impossible, isn’t it, Joe?’
‘Yeah, it’s impossible. But they got the shots.’
‘I don’t understand. Why did you want me to spread the word that something big was happening here tonight? Didn’t you want it just for yourself? I don’t get it, Joe, I don’t understand! Tell me why!’
‘Insurance,’ he said, still grinning from ear to ear. He kissed her and Sammy said, ‘Yuk.’
‘Insurance,’ Creed repeated.
37
That’s it, more or less.
Creed, our not-so-lovable hero, has come through. He’s saved his son from a fate as bad as death and, as he’s soon to find out, discouraged a great evil from rearing its ugly head once more – for the time being, anyway. He has managed this without much mettle, with very few scruples (if any at all), and a great deal of self-interest. That might be a lesson to us all.
Having fought the great fight (fought it by running away mostly) and won, Creed has shown that it’s not only the bold, the brave, and the noble, who can achieve a result; sometimes a little rottenness can too.
The future for Joe Creed? Well the present isn’t quite over for him just yet. The finale is still to come . . .
Another day, another dollar, he thought as he wearily turned the front-door key.
A rooftop bird trilled in the dawn and Creed peered up at the sky, grateful for the creeping greyness. He’d had enough of the night.
He stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him, then sat on the bottom step, giving himself a moment of quiet contemplation, a catching up of his thoughts.
Sammy was back home with his mother and Creed expected the phone to start ringing at any second. Evelyn had probably been phoning since their son’s return, and he pictured her at that moment, fast asleep, receiver still in hand, exhausted by her own persistence. Well, she’d have to wait for the full story.
It had taken over two hours to get Sammy back to his mother’s house, and the boy had slept all the way, his eyes closing as soon as Creed had laid him in the Suzuki’s passenger seat and wrapped him in a rug. Creed had stopped the jeep just around the corner from home and had woken him, anxious to find out what the boy understood of his big adventure. Thankfully it turned out to be not too much. Sammy remembered sort of waking up in a big house, then sleeping again, then seeing all the funny dressed-up people, then being chased by a lot of other funny people, and that was about it, and was it tea-time, because he was starving and thirsty too and could we go home now, Dad?
Relieved, Creed had started up the jeep again and driven round to Evelyn’s house. The boy might remember more later when the effects of the drugs they’d kept him on wore off, but half of it would still seem like a dream, and thank Christ for that. The worst Evelyn would hear of was a short-term kidnapping.
He parked the jeep, then carried Sammy up the short garden path to stand him on the doorstep. After ringing the bell, Creed bent down and kissed his son on the forehead. Sammy didn’t respond, he didn’t throw his arms around his father and tell him he was the best dad in the world and he wanted to be just like him when he grew up and when could he visit again? Sammy yawned.
The hall light came on and Creed was back down the garden path and climbing into the Suzuki even as his ex-wife’s voice came complaining through the letterbox. He heard Sammy reply and waited only for the sound of the door being unlocked before gunning the engine and burning rubber. No way could he face Evelyn tonight.
Besides, there was still too much to do.
When he got back to London the word had spread for, although the Fleet Street ghetto was no longer in existence, the telepathy between newspapers still flourished. The buzz was on about the great fire at the country mansion and the paps were busy selling shots to the various journals and syndicates of a dancing woman who bore a remarkable resemblance to the recently departed actress, Lily Neverless. Some of them even had snaps of the woman being savaged by what appeared to be a very large dog in fancy dress, but none of these had turned out very well. Unfortunately the whole place – it was later discovered to be some kind of upmarket old folks’ home – had gone up in smoke, apparently taking the old girl and many others with it. To make matters worse, there had been a grand masked ball that night and the guests had been involved in the fire too; just how many had been burned alive had not yet been ascertained. Still, there were good pictures of masqueraders – with some well-known faces among them – fleeing in wonderful costumes. Great stuff for the breakfast table.
When Creed arrived at the Dispatch, he refused to make any comment until he had developed the film from his damaged camera himself. The shots taken at the Mountjoy Retreat were okay, not a frame lost. In fact, the shots were terrific. He had evidence on film of the awful things going on at the so-called rest home: the dungeons, poor Henry Pink, the operating theatre with Antony Blythe’s mutilated body lying on the metal slab, the storeroom full of spare body parts. It was sensational and Creed knew he had finally made the big one.
But of course when he went to the night editor with the story he kept the unbelievable bits – the ones about demons and resurrections and monsters and shape-changers – to himself. No way was he going to kill his story (and its value) with such supernatural nonsense. No way.
Kidnap, murder, illegal transplants, cruelty, arson and lunatics taking over the asylum – plus the suggestion that a notorious child-murderer had escaped the hangman’s noose before the last World War with full knowledge of the authorities concerned – was good enough. Who could want anything more? Not he, oh no.
He insisted, being in the bargaining seat for the first time in his life, that Prunella, who had been waiting for him at the Dispatch, write the whole story (so, not such a bad guy after all and besides, he’d enjoyed the afternoon romp with her and hoped to repeat it in the near future).
It took time to tell and to answer the thousand-and-one questions afterwards, which was why it was dawn when Creed finally reached home.
He might well have fallen asleep right there on the stairs had not a sound from above (oh God, how he’d grown used to that over the past few days) roused him.
He was aware of who it was with him in the house and he didn’t bolt for the door. No, he was too tired for that and besides, most of his fear had been drained by now. Perhaps instinctively he knew the worst was over; perhaps the atmosphere itself held no hint of danger. Or it could simply have been that th
ere had to be a conclusion to this whole bizarre affair and he knew it was waiting for him up there somewhere.
The slightest aroma of musk on the stairs had already hinted at her presence.
With heavy legs, Creed climbed the stairs. He found Cally in the bedroom.
38
She was wrapped in deep red, a cloak or cape of some kind that covered most of her body, and she sat on the bed, her knees drawn up, back against the wall. The early dawn light through the partially drawn curtains offered shadows rather than brightness.
‘No point in asking how you got in,’ he said from the doorway.
She said nothing.
‘I thought not. You can come and go as you please, right?’ He loitered by the door, no longer afraid of her, but not so foolish as to lessen the chance of a quick exit.
‘I had to talk to you,’ she said, her voice heavy with tiredness, as if she were as exhausted as Creed himself. ‘I wanted to . . . explain.’ The last word was spoken limply, as if it were inadequate.
‘Why? What do you care?’
He heard her sigh, a rough-edged sound.
‘I want it to end here, Joe. If you keep wondering you’ll never be content, you’ll try to find out more for yourself, and that might upset things again.’
‘You think I’m that interested? Listen, I’ve had enough, I want to forget the whole thing.’
‘Perhaps you feel that way now. But eventually you’ll get curious again, you’ll start delving into matters that could be harmful to you and to those around you. Unanswered questions never quite go away, do they?’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe you’re right. Too many unbelievable things have happened to me to think straight.’
‘Yet you did begin to believe. Finally you lost your scepticism.’
‘Wasn’t that the idea?’
A pause, then: ‘You’re not always so dumb as you appear, are you? You knew we were breaking you down, showing you things that no normal person would ever accept, priming you for the time we needed you to believe in everything we presented to you.’
‘No, I didn’t know. It occurred to me driving back here this morning. You could have dealt with me easily enough right at the beginning. Christ, he had the power to do that.’
‘Belial?’
‘Nicholas Mallik.’
‘The same.’
‘Whatever. So I figured you terrorized me for a specific purpose. Sure, the original idea was to get the shots I took of Mallik at Lily’s funeral, but then it became more than that. It developed into a kind of game, didn’t it?’
‘In a way. He had the notion that if you, a true cynic of this sceptical age, could be convinced that the Fallen Angels existed and were not merely figments of mythology or fable, then it would help them regain their dwindling powers.’
‘Wonderful thing, faith.’
‘It works for God.’
‘I still don’t understand why me.’
‘You happened along.’
‘No, I mean there were plenty of believers at the masquerade last night.’
‘They had good cause to believe. Every one of them has gained from their homage to Belial. You were an outsider, a materialistic non-believer, and as such you became the test.’
‘Lucky me.’
‘I tried to warn you.’
‘That I couldn’t figure.’
She remained silent for a while. ‘Will you come closer?’ she said at last.
‘Uh, I don’t think so.’
‘You’re safe, Joe, I won’t harm you.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Sit at the end of the bed while I tell you more.’
What the hell, he thought. He could be through the door and down the stairs before she raised a hand or started a shimmer. He sat on the corner of the bed, poised to take flight at the slightest provocation.
‘So why did you try to warn me?’ he asked.
‘I’m not one of them, part of me is different. There’s a conflict inside me that as yet has not been resolved. It’s possible to become tired of evil, you know.’
‘Too much of anything can become tedious.’
‘Yes, I suppose even for them.’
‘Tell me who “they” really are, Cally.’
‘I already have. The Fallen Angels, cohorts of the Archangel who fell from grace. You saw some of them for yourself last night – Abraxas, Hel, Fomors, Adramelech, Loki, and others. They manifest themselves when the faith is strong.’
‘Wait a minute. You mean those moth-eaten freaks with snake tails and peacock feathers and God-knows-what-else were these Angels?’
‘You would rather call them demons. But no, that isn’t how they are, it’s how mankind sees them or, I should say, imagines them. They appear as they are perceived.’
‘I saw Mallik become one of them.’
‘You saw Belial, but only as a concept. Very few have the potential to observe the real demon of lies, and the sight has always taken their sanity, if not their life.’
‘Mallik and Aleister Crowley . . .’
‘Crowley had both the ability and the yearning to see. Belial revealed himself to the master magician and his son in Paris many years ago. Crowley was driven mad and his son died from the trauma of what they witnessed.’
She noticed Creed’s thin smile. ‘Ah, your doubt is returning so soon. For you, that’s good. It’ll help you cope.’
Her hair had no lustre in the weak dawn light and her eyes seemed heavy, her shoulders slumped. He thought she might fall asleep at any moment. ‘Tell me about the Mountjoy Retreat,’ he prompted. ‘What was it used for?’
‘I think Belial meant it to be destroyed when its purpose had been fulfilled. It was a place to rest, Joe, a place to recuperate. A refuge, you might say, as well as a treasure house for all the possessions he had gathered through the centuries.’
‘It was more than that. It was a bloody asylum.’
‘And even more than that. A home for rejuvenation.’
‘For resurrection, you mean.’
‘That too.’
‘Lily Neverless . . .’
‘She didn’t turn out too well, did she? The new organs they gave her failed to help in the end. And her brain had deteriorated too much. Belial blamed you for interrupting the ritual at the cemetery.’
‘When I photographed Mallik?’
‘As he spilt his seed into the earth for the rebirth.’
‘And I thought he was just a dirty old pervert.’
‘Joke if you want, Joe. It’s probably better that you do.’
‘No, none of it’s funny.’ He gave a shake of his head. ‘That’s the pity of it. Lily wasn’t the only one, was she? You kept your own supply of goodies down in the basement for instant use. Mallik was doing it back in the ’thirties.’
‘They’ve always . . . collected.’
He leaned forward, one hand resting by her foot. ‘Tell me, what would have happened to old Lil afterwards? You know, if things hadn’t turned out so badly last night. What would they – you – have done with her?’
‘She would have continued to live at the Retreat, that was her bargain with Belial. She would have lived on, like so many others.’
‘Other failures?’
‘The failures are few, and the worst of those were kept in the lower chambers.’
‘The dungeons, you mean. I thought they were for loonies like Henry Pink, a place to torment anyone who had ever upset Mallik in the past.’
‘Certain people had to be punished.’
‘Pink was a professional hangman, for Christ’s sake. He didn’t get any pleasure out of it.’
‘You think not? And you the cynic.’
That silenced Creed for a moment. ‘Who else was kept down there?’
‘The experimentals, and others who had been kept alive too long.’
‘I saw someone covered from head to foot – one foot, anyway – in bandages.’
‘He was centuries old. There was hardly anything left of him
.’
‘He was like a . . . like a mummified thing.’
‘Where do you think your own legends spring from? Do you honestly believe in vampires, mummies . . .’
‘Werewolves? And the other goon who looked like Frankenstein . . .’
‘Frankenstein’s monster. Prometheus, to be precise. And, of course, the walking dead. All these imaginations created by yourselves from rumours, even subconscious knowledge, of our ways, exaggerations realized to abate your deeper fears.’
‘Are you saying that Nos – Bliss – wasn’t a vampire?’
‘Of course he wasn’t, but eventually even he wasn’t too certain. You might say Bliss had begun to believe his own publicity.’
‘But he did things, he floated outside my window . . .’
‘An illusion, as you originally suspected. We wanted you to believe these things, we helped you to.’
‘He stabbed me with his finger. He drew blood. I didn’t imagine that.’
‘Show me the wound.’
Without hesitation, Creed opened his coat. ‘There, look, bloodstains.’
‘Show me the wound,’ she repeated.
He pulled at his shirt and stared at his own chest. He touched his skin, then turned towards the light from the window. ‘It’s gone. Not a mark.’
‘Already you’re beginning to distrust what you know.’
‘It’s only genuine if you believe?’
‘No. It’s real enough. But if you don’t accept it, the effect is minimal. And it works both ways, Joe – the powers of Light are as diminished as the powers of Darkness if they’re not accepted.’
‘A coupla days ago I’d be rolling on the floor listening to this. Even now I’m telling myself I should at least be chuckling.’
‘Tomorrow you might. You’ll start to ask yourself if you didn’t dream half the things you witnessed. You’ll be protecting yourself.’