Anno Dracula 1899 and Other Stories
Author: Kim Newman
Date: 2017-01-24 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror; Fantasy; Short Stories; Fiction; Vampires; Alternate History; Science Fiction; Steampunk; Anthologies; Adult
Description: A brand new collection of chilling stories by master of horror Kim Newman, in which Jack the Ripper still stalks the streets, Frankenstein’s monster rises from the Arctic ice, and the terrifying legacy of Dr Jeyll and Mr Hyde haunts fog-shrouded London. This volume also includes a brand-new, exclusive Anno Dracula story, ‘Yokai Town: Anno Dracula 1899’, which sets the scene for the forthcoming novel Anno Dracula 1999: Daikaiju.
Publisher: Titan Books
Rights: All rights reserved

CONTENTS

COVER

ALSO BY KIM NEWMAN

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

FAMOUS MONSTERS

A DRUG ON THE MARKET

ILLIMITABLE DOMINION

JUST LIKE EDDY

AMERIKANSKI DEAD AT THE MOSCOW MORGUE

THE CHILL CLUTCH OF THE UNSEEN

ONE HIT WANDA

IS THERE ANYBODY THERE?

THE INTERVENTION

RED JACKS WILD

SARAH MINDS THE DOG

THE SNOW SCULPTURES OF XANADU

THE PALE SPIRIT PEOPLE

ÜBERMENSCH!

COASTAL CITY

COMPLETIST HEAVEN

UNE ÉTRANGE AVENTURE DE RICHARD BLAINE

FRANKENSTEIN ON ICE

YOKAI TOWN: ANNO DRACULA 1899

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

ALSO BY KIM NEWMAN AND AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

ANNO DRACULA
ANNO DRACULA: THE BLOODY RED BARON
ANNO DRACULA: DRACULA CHA CHA CHA
ANNO DRACULA: JOHNNY ALUCARD
ANNO DRACULA 1999: DAIKAIJU (FORTHCOMING 2017)

ANGELS OF MUSIC
THE SECRETS OF DREARCLIFF GRANGE SCHOOL
AN ENGLISH GHOST STORY
PROFESSOR MORIARTY: THE HOUND OF THE D’URBERVILLES

JAGO
THE QUORUM
LIFE’S LOTTERY
BAD DREAMS
THE NIGHT MAYOR

VIDEO DUNGEON (FORTHCOMING 2017)

Anno Dracula 1899 and Other Stories
Print edition ISBN: 9781781165706
E-book edition ISBN: 9781781165713

Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: January 2017
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

‘Famous Monsters’. Originally published in Interzone, 1988. Reprinted by permission of the author.
‘A Drug on the Market’. Originally published in Dark Terrors 6, 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.
‘Illimitable Dominion’. Originally published in Poe, 2009. Reprinted by permission of the author.
‘Just Like Eddy’. Originally published in Interzone, 1999. Reprinted by permission of the author.
‘Amerikanski Dead at the Moscow Morgue, Or: Children of Marx and Coca-Cola’. Originally published in 999: New Stories of Horror and Suspense, 1999. Reprinted by permission of the author.
‘The Chill Clutch of the Unseen’. Originally published in Quietly Now: An Anthology in Tribute to Charles L. Grant, 2004. Reprinted by permission of the author.
‘One Hit Wanda’. Originally released in Thirteen, 2011. Reprinted by permission of the author.
‘Is There Anybody There?’ Originally published in The New English Library Book of Internet Stories, 2000. Reprinted by permission of the author.
‘The Intervention’. Originally published in Gathering the Bones, 2004. Reprinted by permission of the author.
‘Red Jacks Wild’. Originally published in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, 2015. Reprinted by permission of the author.
‘Sarah Minds the Dog’. Originally published in Tales From Beyond the Pale, 2013. Reprinted by permission of the author.
‘The Snow Sculptures of Xanadu’. Originally published in Ego, 1991. Reprinted by permission of the author.
‘The Pale Spirit People’. Originally published in Interzone, 1994. Reprinted by permission of the author.
‘Übermensch!’ Originally published in New Worlds 1, 1991. Reprinted by permission of the author.
‘Coastal City’. Originally published in The Time Out Book of New York Short Stories, 1997. Reprinted by permission of the author.
‘Completist Heaven’. Originally published in The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein, 1994. Reprinted by permission of the author.
‘Une étrange aventure de Richard Blaine’. Originally published in The Time Out Book of Paris Short Stories,1999. Reprinted by permission of the author.
‘Frankenstein on Ice’. Originally performed in The Ghost Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, 2016.
‘Yokai Town: Anno Dracula 1899’. Original to this collection.

Copyright © 2017 by Kim Newman. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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For Simret

FAMOUS MONSTERS

YOU KNOW, I wouldn’t be doing this picture if it wasn’t for Chaney Junior’s liver. They said it was a heart attack, but anyone who knew Lon knows better. Doing all these interviews with the old-timers, you must have heard the stories. They don’t tell the half of it. I didn’t get to work with Lon till well past his prime. Past my prime too, come to that. It was some Abbott and Costello piece of shit in the fifties. Already, he looked less human than I do. Wattles, gut, nose, the whole fright mask. And the stink. Hell, but he was a good old bastard. Him and me and Brod Crawford used to hit all the bars on the Strip Friday and Saturday nights. We used to scare up a commotion, I can tell you. I guess we were a disgrace. I quit all that after I got a tentacle shortened in a brawl with some hophead beatniks over on Hollywood Boulevard. I leaked ichor all over Arthur Kennedy’s star. That’s all gone now, anyway. There aren’t any bars left I can use. It’s not that they won’t serve me – the Second War of the Worlds was, like, twenty-five years ago now, and that’s all forgotten – but no one stocks the stuff any more. It’s easy enough to get. Abattoirs sell off their leavings for five cents a gallon. But this California heat makes it go rancid and rubbery inside a day.

Anyway, just before Lon conked out – halfway through a bottle of Wild Turkey, natch – he signed up with Al to do this picture. It was called The Mutilation Machine back then. It’s Blood of the Cannibal Creature now. Al will change it. He always does. The footage with Scott Brady and the bike gang is from some dodo Al never got finished in the sixties. Something a-Go-Go, that’s it. Lousy title. Cycle Sadists a-Go-Go. It must be great being a film historian, huh? What with all this confusion and crapola. Do you know how they were paying Lon? Bottles. When Al wanted him to walk across a room in a scene, he’d have the assistant director hold up a bottle of hooch off-camera and shake it. Lon would careen across the set, knocking things and people over, and go for the booze, and Al would get his shot. I don’t suppose I’m all that much better off. One of the backers is a wholesale butcher, and he’s kicking in my fee in pig blood. I know you think that sounds disgusting, but don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.

For a while, it looked like Lon would last out the picture. Al got the scene where he’s supposed to pull this kootch-kootch dancer’s guts out. He was playing Groton the Mad Zombie, by the way. So it’s not Chekhov. Al has already cut the scene together. Okay, so there’s some scratching on the neg. Al can fix it. He’s going to put on some more scratches, and make them look like sparks flying out of Lon. Groton is supposed to be electric. Or atomic. One or the other. The girl keeps laughing while Lon gets his mitts inside her sweater, but they can dub some screams in, and music and growling, and it’ll be okay. At least, it’ll be as okay as anything ever is in Al’s movies. Did you catch Five Bloody Graves? It was a piece of shit. After this, he wants to do a picture with Georgina Spelvin and the Ritz Brothers called The Fucking Stewardesses. You can bet he’ll change that title.

But one scene is all there is of Lon. So, when he buys the farm Al calls me up. I don’t have an agent any more, although I used to be with the William Morris crowd. I do all my deals myself. I couldn’t do a worse job than some of the people in this business. I used to be handled by a guy called Dickie Nixon, a real sleazo scumbag. He was the one who landed me in Orbit Jocks, and screwed me out of my TV residuals. Anyway, I know Al. I worked for him once before, on Johnny Blood Rides Roughshod. That was the horror western that was supposed to put James Dean back on the top. What a joke. The fat freak kept falling off his horse. It turned out to be a piece of shit. Al and me worked something out on this one, and so here I am in Bronson Caverns again, playing Groton the Mad Zombie. They’ve rewritten the script so I can be Lon in all the early scenes. I know it sounds ridiculous, what with the shape and everything. But, hell, I can cram myself into a pair and a half of jeans and a double-size poncho. In the new script, my character is a Martian – I mean, I can’t play an Eskimo, can I? – but when John Carradine zaps me with the Mutilation Machine I turn into a human being. Well, into Groton the Mad Zombie. It’s the most challenging part that’s come my way in years, even if the film is going to be a total piece of shit. I’m hoping my performance will be a tribute to Lon. I’ve got the voice down. ‘George, lookit duh rabbits, George.’ Now I’m working on the walk. That’s difficult. You people walk all weird. No matter how long I hang around you, I still can’t figure out how you manage with just the two legs.

I’m an American citizen, by the way. I was hatched in Los Angeles. Put it down to the Melting Pot. Mom flopped down in the twenties, when the Old World political situation started going to hell. She’d been through WWI and couldn’t face that again. It’s in the culture, I guess. When your head of government is called the High War Victor you know you’re in trouble. I’m not that way. I’m mellow. A typical native Californian, like my twenty-eight brood siblings. I’m the only one of us left now. The rest all died off or went back to the skies. I can’t let go. It’s showbiz, you know. It’s in the ichor. You must understand that if you do all these interviews. What do you call it, oral history? It’s important, I suppose. Someone should take all this down before we all die out. Did you get to Rathbone? There was a guy with some stories. I never got on with him though, despite all those pictures we did together. He lost some relatives in the First War of the Worlds, and never got around to accepting that not all non-terrestrials were vicious thugs.

I suppose you’ll want to know how I got into the movies? Well, I’m that one in a million who started as an extra. It was in the late thirties, when I’d barely brushed the eggshell out of my slime. Four bucks a day just for hanging around cardboard nightclubs or walking up and down that street where the buildings are just frontages. In Swing Time, I’m in the background when Fred and Ginger do their ‘Pick Yourself Up’ routine. They were swell, although Rogers put my name down on some list of communist sympathisers in the fifties and I nearly had to go before HUAC. Do I look like a commie? Hell, how many other Americans can blush red, white and blue?

I didn’t stay an extra long. I suppose I’m noticeable. There were very few of us in Hollywood, and so I started getting bit parts. Typically, I’d be a heavy in a saloon fight, or an underworld hanger-on. If you catch The Roaring Twenties on a re-run, look out for me during the massacre in the Italian restaurant. Cagney gets me in the back. It’s one of my best deaths. I’ve always been good at dying.

My big break came when 20th Century-Fox did the Willie K’ssth films. Remember? Rathbone played Inspector Willie K’ssth of the Selenite Police Force. Willie K’ssth Takes Over, Willie K’ssth and the Co-Eds, Willie K’ssth On Broadway, and so on. There were more than twenty of them. I was Jimbo, Willie’s big, dumb Martian sidekick. I did all the comedy relief scenes – going into a tentacle-flapping fright in haunted houses, getting hit on the head and seeing animated stars in fight sequences. The films don’t play much now, because of the Selenite pressure groups. They hate the idea of a human actor in the role. And when Earl Derr Biggers was writing the books in the twenties, the Grand Lunar had them banned on the Moon. I don’t see what they were bothered about. Willie always spots the killer and comes out on top. He usually gets to make a bunch of human beings look ridiculous as well. In not one of the books or movies did Jimbo ever guess who the murderer was, even when it was blatantly obvious. And it usually was. For a while, I was typed as the dumb, scared Martie. Some of my siblings said I was projecting a negative image of the race, but there was a Depression on and I was the only one of the brood in regular work. I’ve got nothing against Selenites, by the way, although the Grand Lunar has always had a rotten Sapient Rights record. It’s no wonder so many of them headed for the Earth.

After the New York Singe, I was quickly dropped from the series. We were halfway through Willie K’ssth On Coney Island when the studio quietly pulled my contract. They rewrote Jimbo as a black chauffeur called Wilbur Wolverhampton and got Stepin Fetchit to do the role. They still put out the film under its original title, even though there wasn’t a Coney Island any more. I’d have sued, but there was a wave of virulent anti-Martian feeling sweeping the country. That was understandable, I guess. I had relatives in New York, too. Suddenly, forty years of cultural exchange was out of the porthole and we were back to interspecial hatred. Nobody cared that Mom was a refugee from High War Victor Uszthay in the first place, and that since his purges most of her brood siblings were clogging up the canals. I was pulled out of my apartment by the Beverly Hills cops and roughed up in a basement. They really did use rubber hoses. I’ll never forget that. I ended up in an internment camp, and the studio annexed my earnings. The hate mail was really nasty. We were out in the desert, which wasn’t so bad. I guess we’re built for deserts. But at night people in hoods would come and have bonfires just outside the perimeter. They burned scarecrows made to look like Martians and chanted lots of blood and guts slogans. That was disturbing. And the guards were a bit free with the cattle prods. It was a shameful chapter in the planet’s history, but no one’s researched it properly yet. The last interview I did was with some Martian-American professor doing a thesis on Roosevelt’s treatment of so-called ‘enemy aliens’. He was practically a hatchling, and didn’t really understand what we had to go through. I bet his thesis will be a piece of shit. There were rumours about this camp in Nevada where the guards stood back and let a mob raze the place to the ground with the Marties still in it. And who knows what happened in Europe and Asia?

Then the cylinders started falling, and the war effort got going. Uszthay must have been a bigger fool than we took him for. With Mars’s limited resources, he couldn’t possibly keep the attack going for more than six months. And Earth had cavorite, while he was still using nineteenth-century rocket cannons. Do you know how many cylinders just landed in the sea and sunk? So, Roosevelt got together with the world leaders in Iceland – Hitler, Stalin, Oswald Cabal – and they geared up for Earth’s counter-invasion. Finally, I got all the hassles with my citizenship sorted out, and the authorities reluctantly admitted I had as much right to be called an American as any other second-generation immigrant. I had to carry a wad of documentation the size of a phone book, but I could walk the streets freely. Of course, if I did I was still likely to get stoned. I did most of my travelling in a curtained car. According to what was left of my contract, I owed 20th a couple of movies. I assumed they’d pay me off and I’d wind up in an armaments factory, but no, as soon as I was on the lot I was handed a stack of scripts. Suddenly, everyone was making war pictures.

The first was Mars Force, which I did for Howard Hawks. I was loaned to Warners for that. It was supposed to be a true story. I don’t know if you remember, but the week after the Singe a handful of foolhardy volunteers climbed into their Cavor Balls and buzzed the red planet. They didn’t do much damage, but it was Earth’s first retaliative strike. In the movie, they were after the factories where the elements for the heat rays were being synthesised. In real life, they just flattened a couple of retirement nests and got rayed down. In Mars Force, I played the tyrannical Security Victor at the factories. I spent most of the film gloating over a crystalscope, looking at stock footage of the smoking plains where New York used to be. I also got to drool over a skinny terrestrial missionary, snivel in fear as the brave Earthmen flew over in their Christmas tree ornaments and be machine-gunned to death by John Garfield. It was typical propaganda shit, but it was a pretty good picture. It stands up a lot better than most of the other things I did back then.

I was typecast for the rest of the war. I’ve raped more nurses than any actor alive – although what I was supposed to see in you sandpaper-skinned bipeds is beyond me. And I did a lot of plotting, scheming, saluting, backstabbing, bombing, blasting, cackling, betraying, sneering and strutting. I saw more action than Patton and Rommel put together, and without ever stepping off the backlots. The furthest I ever went for a battle was Griffith Park. I had a whole set of shiny, slimy uniforms. I played every rank we had going. In Heat Ray! I even got to play Uszthay, although that’s like asking Mickey Mouse to play John the Baptist. I soon lost count of the number of times I had to swear to crush the puny planet Earth in my lesser tentacles. I got killed a lot. I was shot by Errol Flynn in Desperate Journey, bombed by Spencer Tracy in Thirty Seconds Over Krba-Gnsk, and John Wayne got me in Soaring Tigers, The Sands of Grlshnk and The Fighting Seabees. In Lunaria, Bogart plugs me as I reach for the crystalphone on the launchfield. Remember that one? Everyone says it’s a classic. It got the Academy Award that year. Claude Rains asks Bogart why he came to Lunaria, and Bogart says he came for the atmosphere. ‘But there’s no atmosphere on the Moon,’ says Rains. ‘I was misinformed.’ I wanted the role of the freedom fighter who floats off to Earth with Ingrid Bergman at the end, but Jack Warner chickened out of depicting a sympathetic Martie and they made the character into a Selenite. Paul Henreid could never keep his antennae straight. I had to make do with being another Inferior War Victor. No one believed there were any anti-Uszthay Martians. That’s typical Earthbound thinking.

Then the war ended, and suddenly there were no more Martian roles. In fact, suddenly there were no more Martians period. The allies did a pretty fair job of depopulating the old planet. Since then, we’ve been a dying race. We’re feeble, really. Every time the flu goes round, I have to go to funerals. There was a rash of anti-war movies. There always is after the zapping is over. Remember A Walk in the Dust or Terrestrial Invaders? I didn’t get work in those. All you ever saw of the Martian troops were bodies. There were plenty of newsreel scenes of big-eyed orphans waving their tentacles at the camera in front of the sludging ruins of their nests. Those movies didn’t do any business. The whole solar system was tired of war. They started making musicals. I can’t do what you people call dancing, so those were lean years. I did a bit of investing, and set up my own business. I thought I’d hit on the ideal combination. I opened a Martian bar and a kosher butcher’s shop back to back. The Jews got the meat, and the Marties got the drainings. It was a good idea, and we did okay until the riots. I lost everything then, and went back to acting.

I did some dinner theatre. Small roles. I thought my best performance was as Dr Chasuble in The Importance of Being Earnest, but there weren’t many managements willing to cast me in spite, rather than because of my race. I tried to get the backing to put on Othello in modern dress with the Moor as a Martian, but no one was interested. When Stanley Kramer bought up Worlds Apart, the hot bestseller about the persecution of Martians on Earth, I put in a bid for the lead, but Stanley had to say no. By then, I was too associated with the stereotype Jimbo Martie. He said audiences wouldn’t take me seriously. Maybe he was right, but I’d have liked to take a shot at it. As you must know, Ptyehshdneh got the part and went on to be the first non-terrestrial to walk off with the Best Actor statuette on Oscar night. I’m not bitter, but I can’t help thinking that my career in the last twenty years would have been very different if Kramer had taken the chance. Ptyeh’ is such a pretty Martie, if you know what I mean. Not much slime on his hide.

Of course, Willie K’ssth came back on television in the early fifties. They made twenty-six half-hour episodes with Tom Conway under the beak and me back as dumb Jimbo. The series is still in syndication on graveyard shift TV. I get fan mail from nostalgia-buff insomniacs and night watchmen all over the country. It’s nice to know people notice you. I saw one of those episodes recently. It was a piece of shit. But at the time it was a job, right? It didn’t last long, and I was more or less on the skids for a couple of years. I was on relief between guest spots. I’m in a classic Sergeant Bilko, where they’re trying to make a movie about the canal Bilko is supposed to have taken in the war. Doberman wins a Dream Date With a Movie Star in a contest and all the platoon try to get the ticket off him. Finally, Bilko gets the ticket and turns up at the Hollywood nightspot, and I turn out to be the Dream Date Star. Phil Silvers has a terrific talent, and it was nice just to be funny for a change. We worked out a good little routine with the drinks and the cocktail umbrellas. I’d like to have done more comedy, but when you’ve got tentacles producers don’t think you can milk a laugh. I popped out of a box on Laugh-In once.

The sixties were rough, I guess. I had a little bit of a drink problem, but you must have heard about that. You’ve done your research, right? Well, skipping the messy parts of the story, I ended up in jail. It was only a couple of cows all told, but I exsanguinated them all right. No excuses. Inside, I got involved in the protest movement. I was in with lots of draft evaders. They gave me some LSD, and I wound up signing a lot of petitions and, outside, going on plenty of marches. Hell, everybody now thinks the War on Mercury was a waste of time, but the planet was gung-ho about it back then. Those little jelly-breathers never did anyone any harm, but you’d creamed one planet and got a taste for it. That’s what I think. I did a bit of organizational work for the Aliens’ League, and spoke on campuses. I was on President Kissinger’s enemies list. I’m still proud of that.

I had a few film roles while all this was going on. Nothing spectacular, but I kept my face on the screen. I was the priest in The Miracle of Mare Nostrum, Elvis’s partner in the spear-fishing business in She Ain’t Human, and Doris Day’s old boyfriend in With Six You Get Eggroll. The films were mostly pieces of shit. I’m unbilled in a couple of Sinatra-Martin movies because I knocked around with the Rat Pack for a couple of summers before I got politics. I get a tentacle down Angie Dickinson’s décolleté in Ocean’s 11. I know you’re going to ask me about Orbit Jocks. I was just naive. Again, no excuses. When I shot my scenes, I thought it was a documentary. They had a whole fake script and everything. I took the job because of the trip to Mars. I’d never been before, and I wanted to discover my roots. I stood in front of landmarks reading out stuff about history. Then the producers spliced in all the hardcore stuff later. I don’t know if you’ve seen the film, but the Martian in all the sex scenes is not me. It’s hard to tell with a steel cowl, but he’s got all his tentacles.

I’m not retired. I won’t retire until they plough me under. But I’m being more selective. I’ll take a picture if I can pal around with any of the other old-timers. don’t mind working on low-budget horror movies. It’s more like the old days. The big studios these days are just cranking out bland television crap. I was asked to be a guest villain on Columbo, but I turned it down and they got Robert Culp instead. I went to a science fiction film convention last year. Forrest J Ackerman interviewed me on stage. He’s a great guy. When I finally turn tentacles-up, I’m having it in my will that I be stuffed and put in his basement with the Creature from the Black Lagoon and all that other neat stuff. Lon would have gone for that too, but humans are prejudiced against auto-icons. It’s a pity. I hope Forry can make do with just Lon’s liver. It was the heart and soul of the man anyway.

After this, I’ve got a three-picture deal with Al. That’s not as big a thing as it sounds, since he’ll shoot them simultaneously. Blood of the Brain Eaters, Jessi’s Girls and Martian Exorcist. Then, I might go to the Philippines and make this movie they want me to do with Nancy Kwan. Okay, so it’ll be a piece of shit…

If I had it all over again, do you know what? I’d do everything different. For a start, I’d take dancing lessons.

A DRUG ON THE MARKET

HAD MY FIRST London enterprise met with a lesser success, Leo Dare would not have invited me to join the consortium; and had it met with a greater, I should not have accepted his invitation.

However, response to the patent Galvanic Girdle, an electrical aid to weight reduction, merely shaded towards the positive end of indifference. After the craze for such sparking yet health-giving devices in my own native United States, this came as a disappointment. My British partners in the endeavour preferred to make known the virtues of the marvellous modern invention through public demonstration, with testimonials from newly slender ‘Yankee’ worthies, rather than incur the apparent expense of taking advertising space by the yard in the illustrated press. This was a sorry mistake: our initial penuriousness served to alienate the proprietors of those organs. The papers took to running news items about the nasty shocks suffered by galvanised ladies of a certain age through overuse or misapplication of our battery-belt. In brief, the Fourth Estate was set against us rather than in our corner. The grand adventure of ‘slenderness – through electrocution!’ – the slogan was my own contribution to the enterprise – was frankly sluggish and slowing to a halt. I foresaw a lengthy struggle towards profitability, with the prospect of a smash always a shadow to the promise of rich dividends. I was not looking to get out – the example of New York proved that the trick could be done, and the odd singed spinster would be easy to set aside with a proper advertising campaign – but when the third post of a Tuesday brought a card from Leo Dare, requesting my presence at the birth of a consortium, my interest was pricked.

The public does not know his name, but Leo Dare is an Alexander of the marketplace, a hero and an example among the enterprising. Unlike many of his apparent peers, he endows no museums or galleries, seeks no title or honour and erects no statues to himself. He is not caricatured in Punch, quoted in sermons or travestied in the works of lady novelists. He has simply made, risked, lost and regained fortunes beyond human understanding. In ’82, Leo Dare cornered quap – an unpleasantly textured, slightly luminescent West African mud which is the world’s major source of elements vital to the manufacture of filaments essential in the (then uninvented) incandescent lamp. Great quantities of the radioactive stuff sat in warehouse bins for years, as rivals joked that the sharp fellow had been blunted at last. A succession of night watchmen succumbed to mystery ailments, giving rise to legends of ‘the curse of the voodoo’ and of witch-doctors conjuring doom for those who stole ‘the sacred dirt’. Then, thanks to Mr Thomas Alva Edison, control of quap became very desirable indeed and Leo Dare, clearly the reverse of cursed, cashed out in style. In ’91, he introduced pneumatic bicycle tyres and obliterated overnight the market for solid rubber. Not only do pneumatic tyres offer a more pleasant, less guts-scrambling bicycling experience but they are prone to puncture and wearing-out, necessitating frequent purchase of replacements and creating an ancillary demand for repair equipment, patches and pumps – in all of which our Alexander naturally took an interest.

The particular genius of Leo Dare, that quality which those ‘in the know’ aptly call ‘Dare-ing’, is not in discovery or invention – for canny minds are at his beck and call to handle those tasks – but in the conversion through enterprise of intellect into affluence. The old saw has it that ‘if you build a better mouse trap, the world will beat a path to your door’. In these distracting times, the world has other things on its mind than keeping apace with the latest rodent-apprehension patents, and any major advance in the field has to be brought forcibly to its attention. Even then, Better Mouse Trap must compete with inferior snares that have an established following, or lobby successfully for a Royal Seal of Approval, or simply be blessed with a more ‘catching’ name. Better Mouse Trap, Ltd. will find itself in the care of the receivers if its finely manufactured products are placed in stores beside a less worthy effort retailing at 2d cheaper under the name of Best Mouse Trap. Leo Dare could make a fine old go of Better Mouse Trap, but if he had the rights to Worse Mouse Trap, he would represent it as Best Mouse Trap of All, emblazon the box with a two-coloured illustration of an evil-looking mouse surprised by a guillotine, undercut Best Mouse Trap by ½d and put both his competitors out of business within the year. Snap! Snap! Snap! That is Leo Dare.

‘This is Mr William Quinn,’ said Leo Dare, introducing me to the three gentlemen and one lady cosied in armchairs and on a sofa in a private room above a fashionable restaurant in Piccadilly. ‘As you can tell from the stripe of Billy’s suit, he’s one of our transatlantic cousins. A veritable wild Red Indian among us. He’ll be looking after our advertising.’

From the looks on the faces of those assembled, I did not impress them overmuch. As a member of a comparatively newfangled profession, I was accustomed to glances of suspicion from those whose business forefathers had managed perfectly well in a slower, smaller world without stooping to plaster their names on the sides of London omnibuses. Come to that, they had managed quite well enough without omnibuses. Our host, who had no such delusions, spoke as if I was already aboard the consortium.

It is a peculiarity of Leo Dare that he has no premises of his own. Concerns in which he takes a controlling interest might lease or purchase offices, factories, yards, warehouses, firms of carters and distributors, even railroad trains and cars. He himself resides in hotel suites and has, as the courts would say, no fixed address. It is his practice to engage rooms temporarily for specific purposes. This well-appointed salon, with waiters and attendants firmly shut outside, was the destined birthplace of our fresh venture.

Leo Dare is one of those fellows you can’t help looking at, but would be hard put to describe. In middle years, trim, of average stature, clean-shaven, sly-eyed, impeccably dressed but not ostentatious, he has that sense of command one finds in the best, if least decorated, generals and statesmen. He alone was standing, back to a fireplace in which a genial blaze burned, one hand behind him, one holding a small glass of what I took to be port.

‘Quinn, meet the rest of the consortium,’ said Leo Dare. ‘This is Enid, Lady Knowe, the philanthropist. You’ll have heard of her many charitable activities, and of course be familiar with her family name. Her late father was Knowe’s Black Biscuits.’

‘“An Ounce of Charcoal is a Pound of Comfort”,’ I quoted.

Lady Knowe, a thin-faced young woman dressed like an eighty-year-old widow, winced. I tumbled at once that she didn’t care to be reminded that the funds for her philanthropy came from a species of peaty-looking (and tasting) edible brick. Knowe’s Blacks were dreaded by children entrusted to nannies who believed (or maliciously pretended to believe) their consumption was good for their digestion.

‘Sir Marmaduke Collynge, the distinguished parliamentarian…’

A beef-cheeked man in clothes too small for him, Sir Marmaduke seemed to be swelling all through our meeting, indeed all through our acquaintance, as if the room were far too hot for him and he had just enjoyed an enormous meal unaugmented by Knowe’s Black Biscuits. He grunted a cheery greeting.

‘Hugo Varrable, our research chemist…’

A young fellow of about my age, with long hair, a horse face and stained hands, Dr Varrable sat with a leather satchel on his lap. The chemist prized his satchel, which was stuffed to bulging with what I assumed were formulae and vials of experimental compounds.

‘And Richard Enfield, administrator of the estate of the late lawyer, Gabriel Utterson.’

A well-dressed gadabout, no longer young, Mr Enfield had the high colour of a man who has spent as little time in his rainy, foggy homeland as possible. He gave a noncommittal, very English wave.

‘Does the name “Utterson” mean anything to you, Quinn?’ Leo Dare asked.

I confessed that it did not. Leo Dare seemed pleased.

‘What about the name of Jekyll? Dr Henry Jekyll?’

‘Or Hyde?’ suggested Varrable, glumly.

Of course I knew the story. A few seasons back, even the New York papers were full of little else.

‘Dr Jekyll was the scientifical fellow who brewed the potion that turned him into another man entirely,’ I said. ‘The dreadful murderer, Edward Hyde.’

‘Capital. You did follow the story.’

I shrugged.

‘But, Quinn, did you believe? Do you credit that a dried-out elderly stick might, by the consumption of a chemical elixir, be transmogrified into a thriving young buck? That he might undergo a radical metamorphosis of mind and body, shucking off the respectable front of Jekyll to indulge in the licentiousness of Hyde?’

I laughed, a little nervously. My humour was not shared by anyone in the room.

‘Well, Quinn. Speak up.’

‘Mr Dare, I read the published accounts of the strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I even saw the Mansfield company’s stage dramatisation in New York, with startling theatre trickery. Knowing something of the workings of the newspaper business, I have assumed the matter blown up out of all proportion. Surely, this Jekyll simply took a drug that unseated his wits and used disguise to live a double life. He cheated the gallows by suicide, I believe.’

‘They were two men,’ said Mr Enfield. ‘I knew them both.’

‘I bow to personal experience,’ I said, still not fathoming the import of all this.

‘Do you not see the opportunity created by our control of the Jekyll estate and by the notoriety of his case?’

‘You know that I do not. But I have a strong suspicion that you do. You, after all, are Leo Dare and I am someone else. It’s your business to see overlooked opportunities.’

‘Spoken like a true ad man, Quinn. Just the right tone of flattery and familiarity. You’ll fit in all right, I can avow to that.’

I was still no wiser.

‘How would you react if I were to tell you that we had, working from the fragmentary papers left behind by the late Dr Jekyll, reconstructed the formula of his potion? That our clever Dr Varrable has reproduced the impurity of salts that was the key, one might also say secret, ingredient of Jekyll’s elixir of transformation and is at present applying his talents to a system whereby we might compound that miraculous brew in bulk? That our consortium has sole license for the manufacture, distribution and sale of the “Jekyll Tonic”?’

Quiet hung in the room. I was aware of the crackling of the fire.

‘Surely,’ I ventured, ‘Britain has a surfeit of murderers as it is? The Police Gazette is full of ’em.’

Leo Dare looked a little disappointed. ‘The murderousness of Hyde did not emerge for some months, remember. Initially, the experiment was a remarkable success. Jekyll became a new man, a younger, fitter, more vital man. Can you not see the possibilities?’

I began to smile. ‘In bottles,’ I said. ‘Lined up on a druggist’s shelf. What do you call them here? Chemist’s shops. Little blue bottles, with bright yellow labels.’

‘I see you understand well enough,’ said Leo Dare, approving.

‘The formula must be highly diluted,’ said Varrable. ‘Maybe one-tenth the strength of that Jekyll used, with water…’

‘Coloured water,’ I put in.

‘…added to minimise the unpleasant side effects. I say, Quinn, why coloured?’

‘So it doesn’t look like water. Otherwise, suspicious folk think that’s all it is. I served a rough apprenticeship in a medicine show out West. The marks, ah, the customers, ignore the testimonials and the kootch dances. They open their wallets for the stuff that has the prettiest colour.’

‘Well, I never.’

‘Look to your own medicine cabinet at home. You’re an educated man, and I’ll wager you purchased your salves and cure-alls on the same basis.’

‘We’ve decided to call it a “tonic”,’ said Leo Dare.

I thought for a moment, then agreed with him. ‘The biggest hurdle will be the public perception of our product as the stuff of melodrama and murder. The name should not have associations with magic or alchemy, as would be the case with “miracle elixir” or “potion”. A “tonic” is something we all might have at home without becoming bloodthirsty monsters.’

‘From henceforth, the word “monster” is barred among us,’ decreed Leo Dare.

Mr Enfield looked down into his empty glass.

‘I concur. Though, for a tiny fraction of our customership, the attraction will all be wrapped up in the business of Jekyll and Hyde. Some souls have a temptation to sample the dark depths. We should be aware of that and fashion strategies to pull in that segment without alienating the greater public, whose interest will be chiefly, ah, cosmetic. Everyone above a certain age wishes to look younger, to feel younger.’

‘Indeed. And we offer a tonic that will let them be younger.’

‘We should be cautious, Mr Dare,’ said Varrable. ‘The formula must be carefully tested. Its effects are, as yet, unpredictable.’

‘Indeed. Indeed. But it is also vital, Dr Varrable, that we consider the practicalities. I have asked Quinn to apply his wits to matters outside your laboratory. Many considerations must be made before Jekyll Tonic can be presented to the public.’

‘What of the legalities?’ I asked. ‘Aren’t there stringent rules and regulations? Government boards about medicines and poisons?’

‘There certainly are, and Sir Marmaduke sits on them all.’

Sir Marmaduke grunted again and made a speech.

‘It is not the place of this house to stand in the way of progress, sirrah. The law should not interpose itself between a thing that is desired and the people who desire it. That has always been my philosophy and it should be ever the philosophy of this government. If Jekyll Tonic, this wondrous boon to all humanity, were to be denied us because of the sorry fate of one researcher, where would frivolous, anti-medicinal legislation cease? Would sufferers from toothache be prevented from seeking the solace of such perfectly harmless, widely used balms as laudanum, cocaine and heroin? I pity anyone who persists in needless pain because the dusty senior fatheads of the medical profession, who earned their doctorates in the days of body-snatching and leeches, insist on tying every new discovery up in committees of inquiry into the committees of inquiry, of over-regulating and hamstringing our valiant and clear-sighted experimental pioneers.

‘The present manufacturers have taken to heart the lesson of Dr Jekyll, and have gone to great lengths to remove from his formula the impurities that robbed him of his mind even as it gave him strength of body and constitution. Jekyll Tonic is a different matter now that it has been improved and perfected. Its effects are purely beneficial, purely physical. I myself shall ensure that all the members of my household take one tablespoonful of Jekyll Tonic daily and am confident that there will be no ill effects. This parliament must declare for Jekyll Tonic, and decisively, lest the health of the nation be sapped, and our overseas competitors draw ahead.’

Mr Enfield clapped satirically. Sir Marmaduke bowed gravely to him.

‘Think of the enormous benefit it will be for the poor,’ said Lady Knowe. ‘Always think of the poor.’

‘Jekyll Tonic will retail at threepence, but we intend to put out an extremely diluted version in a smaller bottle at a halfpenny a bottle,’ said Leo Dare.

‘For paupers and children,’ explained Sir Marmaduke.

I began to do summations in my head. Leo Dare gave figures.

‘A farthing for the bottle, the cork and the gummed label; a quarter-farthing for the Tonic itself…’

‘That little?’

‘In bulk, yes. I have cornered the uncommon elements. The rest is just water and sugar for the taste.’

‘More than twopence halfpenny sheer profit?’

‘We expect demand to be enormous, Quinn. Especially after you have worked your own brand of alchemy.’

This put galvanic girdles in the ashcan.

‘One thing,’ I said. ‘What does the Tonic actually do?’

‘I suppose someone had to ask that question, Quinn. What does the Jekyll Tonic actually do? Let us try an experiment.’

He raised the glass of what I had taken for port, looked at the clear pink-orange fluid, touched the rim to his lower lip, then inclined his head backwards. He took in the glassful at a gulp and swallowed it at once.

Shadows crept across his face.

But it was only the firelight.

‘Most refreshing. I can assure you, as I’ll be willing to attest before lawyers, that I feel enormously invigorated and that my senses are sharper by several degrees of magnitude. The outward effect made famous by Dr Jekyll is only notable after a course of tonics, and then only in the cases of those who most desire a change of appearance. I myself am happy with the way I look.’

I understood perfectly. I had been in the snake-oil business before.

But never with the Jekyll name.

I foresaw rooms full of gold, profits pouring in like cataracts, fortunes made for all of us.

* * *

Varrable’s ‘laboratory’ was a former stables in Shoreditch. Leo Dare had lately purchased Mercury Carriages, a hansom cab concern, not in order to run the operation (whose slogan was an uninspiring ‘Fleet and Economical’) but to close it down. A sudden surge in demand for quality horsemeat in Northern France made it more profitable to despatch Dobbin to the knackers than to retain the nag in harness.

Leo Dare had come to an arrangement with several long-established businesses with a combined interest in the hackney carriage trade (their more pleasing slogan, ‘Hansom is as Hansom Does!’), pledging to eliminate a rogue firm given to undercutting the fares of bigger rivals in return for a substantial honorarium and a percentage of increased profits over a period of five years. Had the cab combine turned him away, he would doubtless have reduced Mercury fares to a laughable minimum and brought about a complete catastrophe in the carriage business, taking his profit from subsidiary concerns. The Mercury premises were at his disposal, and now served as a convenient headquarters for the developmental work of the Jekyll Tonic consortium.

Our research was carried out in such secrecy that no sign outside the works marked our presence. On this first visit, I found the address only by the sheerest chance. I noticed a thin crowd of shifty-looking fellows in heavy coats and scarves loitering on a corner. From the long buggy-whips several of them were toting, I gathered that these were freshly unemployed cabbies, mindlessly haunting their former base of operations. Mercury Carriages had tended to draw their drivers from a pool of swarthy immigrants from the Mediterranean countries, and so I noted not a few fezzes among the traditional flat caps. A couple of big bruisers in billycock hats guarded the stable doors, with cudgels to hand, as a precaution against an invasion of these disgruntled cast-offs.

My own carriage, a sleek four-horse job retained permanently at my disposal by Leo Dare through another clause in his agreement with the cab trust, drew up outside the stables, exciting mutters of discontent from the corner louts. I got out, told the liveried coachman to await my convenience, and presented my credentials to the bruiser who looked most capable of coherent thought.

‘Yer on the list, Mr Quinn,’ I was told.

A regular-sized door cut into the large stable doors was hauled open and I stepped into a doubly malodorous place. Doubly, for its former usage was memorialised by the trodden-in dung of equines (currently gracing the plates of provincial French gourmands, I trusted), while its current occupation was most pungently signalled by the stench of chemical processes. I wrapped a handkerchief around my nose and mouth, which gave me the look of a desperado robbing a stagecoach. My eyes still watered.

If you think of a laboratory, you doubtless form a mental picture of tables supporting contraptions of glass tubes, beakers and retorts, with flames at strategic places. Coloured liquids bubble and ferment, while strange heavy smoke pours from funnel-shaped tube mouths. Perhaps one wall is given over to cages for the animals – rats, rabbits, monkeys – used in experimentation, and in a corner is an arrangement of galvanic batteries, bottles of acid, switches, levers and metallic spheres a-crackle with the bluish light of harnessed lightning.

This was a former stables. With open barrels of smelly gloop.

Hugo Varrable, in a much-stained apron and shirtsleeves, stirred a vat with a long stick. He wore a canvas bucket on his head. It looked like a giant dirty thumb stuck out of his collar, with an isinglass faceplate for a nail.

‘It’s all done, Billy,’ said Varrable, voice a mumble inside the bucket. He turned from the vat to pick up a stoppered flask of the now-familiar fluid. ‘Come on through.’

He led me out of the stables into a courtyard where the fleet of Mercury cabs, stripped of brass fittings and iron wheel rims, sat decaying slowly to firewood. Leo Dare would profit from that come winter.

‘Have our volunteers appeared?’ I asked.

Varrable took off his bucket and coughed. ‘Some of them.’

‘Only some?’

Varrable shrugged. ‘The Jekyll name may have given one or two second thoughts about participating in the experiment.’

‘Indeed.’

Awaiting us in what had once been the common room of the cabbies were three lank-haired, languid individuals, students who fancied themselves ornaments to the aesthetic movement. One of the species was a young woman, though she wore the same cut of velvet breeches and jacket as her fellows. They had been exchanging bored, nasal witticisms. At our entrance, they perked up. Beneath their habitual posing, they were skittish. All considered, apprehension was understandable.

‘This won’t do, Doc,’ I said, alarming our volunteers. ‘The effect of the Tonic we want to push the most is rejuvenation. These exquisites are sickeningly youthful enough as it is.’

‘There are other effects, measurable upon all subjects.’

‘Yes, yes. But our “selling point” is the youth angle. Are you telling me you could find no elderly or infirm person willing to take part in the testing of our medical miracle?’

‘We put the word out at an art school. All the patent medicine concerns do the same.’

‘There’s your problem, Doc. However, it’s easily set right. If you’ll excuse me for a moment.’

I stepped out of the common room and went round to the main gates. The bruisers let me pass and I crossed the road. The loitering ex-cabbies edged away from me with suspicion. Among the Turkish brigands and Greek cutthroats, I found several English individuals of advanced age, faces weathered from exposure to the elements, backs and limbs bent by years spent hunched at the top of a cab, breath wheezy from breathing in gallons of London pea soup.

‘Who among you would care to earn a shilling?’ I asked.

* * *

Varrable worked the results up into a learned paper no one actually read. Leo Dare arranged for its publication in an academic journal whose name eventually lent weight to our campaign. When The Lancet, alarmed by the spectres of Jekyll and Hyde, ran an editorial against us, thunderous voices among the medical profession – not to mention Sir Marmaduke Collynge – were raised against the brand of irresponsible trade journalism that inveighs against a perfectly legal product, which has yet to be judged either way by the final arbiters of such matters. ‘The public shall make up its own mind,’ said Sir Marmaduke, at every opportunity, ‘for it always does, the average fellow being far more astute than your addle-brained quack, consumed with envy of the achievements of younger, more free-thinking men.’

As the brewing and refining continued in Shoreditch, Leo Dare took the elementary precaution of establishing, through Lady Knowe, a philanthropic trust to dispense grants supporting avenues of medical inquiry whose pursuit was blocked by the hidebound bodies responsible for the allocation of funds at the country’s major universities, medical schools and teaching hospitals. This enabled many a hobby horse to be ridden and pet project to be nurtured, doubtless contributing (in the long run) to the health of the nation and the wealth of scientific knowledge. A correlation of this generosity was that researchers who benefited from the foundation’s beneficence were predisposed to uphold the reputation of the late Dr Henry Jekyll on the public podium and give testimony that his work, though unfortunately applied in the first instance, was perfectly sound. These worthies tended to have passionate beliefs in the benefits of naturism, monkey glands, cosmetic amputation, the consumption of one’s own water, phrenology, galvanic stimulation (our old friend), vegetarianism and other medical tangentia. However, their MDs were every jot as legit as those of the head surgeon at Barts or the Queen’s own physician, and the public (perhaps regrettably) tends to think one doctor as good as another when reading a testimonial.

Having observed the experiment firsthand, I did not quite become a fanatic believer in Jekyll Tonic. However, I had to concede that it was a very superior species of snake oil.

For a start, its effects were immediate and visible.

Our would-be poets and unemployed cabbies did not transform into a pack of Neanderthal men and take to battering their fellows with makeshift clubs, but several evinced genuine transformations of feature and form. A very bald fellow instantly sprouted flowing locks that were the envy of the decadents in the room, suggesting we could market the Tonic as a hair restorer (always a popular line). Arthritic fists, all knuckles from a lifetime of gripping reins, opened into strong, young hands. A shy stammerer among the students was suddenly able to pour forth a flood of impromptu rhyming and would not shut up for two days, when the effect suddenly (and mercifully, for his circle) wore off. Another poet, an avowed anarchist and shamer of convention, rushed from the stables, eluding our guards, hacking at his hair with a penknife. He was later found to have taken a position as a junior clerk with a respectable firm of solicitors, which he quit suddenly as his old personality resurfaced.

Varrable remained concerned that the effects of the Tonic were essentially unpredictable, as proved by further experimentation with a range of volunteers from wider strata of society. We thought we should have to pay substantial ‘hush money’ to a curate who sampled Jekyll Tonic and passed through a bizarre hermaphrodite stage to emerge (briefly) as a woman of exceedingly low character with an unhealthy interest in the gallants of Britannia’s Navy. Leo Dare overruled our request for cash, predicting (correctly) that the cleric in question would rather bribe us to keep from his bishop any word of the Portsmouth adventures of his female alter ego.

None of our volunteers killed anyone, which was a great relief.

Only the anarchist and the curate vowed never to repeat the experience. I had a sense that the cleric came reluctantly to the decision and would eventually alter it, perhaps making surreptitious purchase of the Tonic once it was generally available and indulging in its use only after taking precautions in the name of discretion. The others returned, bringing with them sundry family members and friends. They all clamoured for the Tonic in a manner that suggested Leo Dare had another ‘winner’ on his hands.

The Hon. Hilary Belligo, the stammering aesthete, splutteringly conveyed to us that he would be prepared to forego the shilling remuneration we offered for participation in the experiment and would meet any price we suggested if an inexhaustible supply of the Tonic were made available to him.

Varrable and I independently liquidated all our other holdings and ploughed our money into the consortium stock issue. The next day, before any public announcement had been made, the value of our shares tripled.

I drew the line at sampling the formula myself. If called, I was only too happy to swallow a few ounces of coloured water – doubtless the same recipe Leo Dare had theatrically quaffed at our first meeting – and declare myself satisfyingly rejuvenated.

Varrable formed a theory that the effect of the Tonic was to reshape each individual into the person they secretly wanted to be. The ageing, stuffy Jekyll had become the young libertine Hyde; but, as the name suggests, the violent thug had always been ‘hiding’ inside the respectable man. Sometimes, as perhaps with Jekyll and certainly with our anarchist and our curate, the transformations proved a shock to the subjects because the Tonic was no respecter of hypocrisy. It acted on secret wishes, some concealed even from those who harboured them. Many were unaware of the fierceness that burned in their breasts, the need to be somebody else. My own reluctance to take the Tonic came from an unanswered question: I thought that I was perfectly happy to be myself, but what if I was wrong? What if some notion I couldn’t consciously recall was stuck there? As a lad, I wanted to be a pirate when I grew up. Would a course of Jekyll Tonic have made me grow an eyepatch and a pegleg? Might I not have come to myself, like that sore curate in a Portsmouth grog-house, to find I had taken the Queen’s shilling and was miles out to sea on a ship of the line?

* * *

‘Our stock issue is closed,’ announced Leo Dare. ‘Those not aboard by now have missed the omnibus.’

The consortium was dining out, no longer in a private room.

Now, part of the game was to be seen, to be envied and admired, to cut a dash before those who matter. We had taken a table at Kettner’s and were very visible. Leo Dare had insisted Varrable and myself be taken to Sir Marmaduke’s tailor and outfitted in a manner befitting ‘men on the rise’. Suits of American cut would not do.

Envious glances were tossed at us. The maître d’hôtel presented a succession of inscribed cards from plutocrats and captains of industry. Leo Dare glanced at any message before smiling noncommittally across the room and not extending invitations to our table. The cards from journalists and editors were handed to me, those from churchmen and society leaders to Lady Knowe, those from scientists (who would a month ago not have cared to recognise his name) to Varrable. Between us, we had enough cards for a deck – we could have played whist with them, to show our indifference to those outside the consortium.

‘I’m no longer at home to fools clamouring for an inside chance at a few shares,’ chuckled Sir Marmaduke, mouth full of well-chewed beefsteak. ‘Barely a month past, I offered the bunch of ’em a chance to buy in. To a man, they said I was cracked, sirrah, cracked.’

We all laughed, heartily. Even Lady Knowe, whose mode of dress dropped a decade each time we convened. She still wore black, but her gown was less widow’s weed than dark blossom.

Leo Dare, whom no one had ever seen eat, oversaw our gustatory indulgences and, begging permission from Lady Knowe, lit up a black Cubano cigar. He exhaled clouds that seemed to take sculptural shape before dissipating.

‘Our conquest of the market has been so complete,’ he said, ‘that the “smart money” has stayed away. Some call us a “bubble”, you know. They predict a “smash”! Soon, they’ll learn that the old certainties have gone. In the coming age, men – and women, Lady Enid – such as we shall set the pace, make the decisions, reap the profits. The twentieth century shall belong to us.’

When Nietzsche writes of an ‘Overman’, the philosopher means Leo Dare.

‘So we are smarter than “the smart money”,’ I said.

In my mind, I held the picture of Hilary Belligo, trying to get out the words, the light of inspiration dying in his eyes, to be rekindled as a physical and mental need far stronger than any poetic impulse would ever be.

‘There’ll be no limit to the demand for the Tonic,’ said Varrable. ‘We could ask five pounds a thimble, and some would pay it.’

I thought of the Hon. Hilary. Varrable was right.

‘Let us not be over-greedy,’ said Leo Dare, which made Mr Enfield giggle. As usual, the controller of the Utterson-Jekyll estate was slightly soused.

‘Think of the poor,’ said Lady Knowe, sipping champagne. ‘The poor poor.’

A card was delivered to her, not from a churchman, but from a golden-haired Guardsman. She giggled at the inscription and placed it separately from the others. I wondered if she’d been at the Jekyll. Samples were already in circulation among the consortium.

‘I have been reconsidering the matter of price,’ said Leo Dare. ‘I don’t think sixpence a bottle is unreasonable. Any objections?’

Heads shaken all around the table.

‘Passed,’ said the entrepreneur. ‘Now, let us drink to the memory of the late Dr Henry Jekyll, without whom, et cetera et cetera…’

‘Et cetera et cetera,’ we chanted, raising glasses.

* * *

Varrable and newly hired assistants continued the course of volunteer tests, making slight refinements to the formula, and the consortium stock continued to gain value by the proverbial leaps and bounds. Shoreditch’s first telephonic lines were strung, with matching sets of the apparatus installed in my sanctum, once the snug nest of the proprietor of Mercury Carriages, and Varrable’s command post above the factory floor. Varrable became addicted to the gadget, ‘ringing up’ on it several times a day to pass trivial messages, though a perfectly adequate speaking tube between our offices was left over from the Mercury days.

As my role in the enterprise became paramount, I closeted myself with secretaries to take dictation, commercial artists to work up sketches and a few trusted experts to bounce ideas against. For weeks, we ‘brainstormed’.

A Marvel of the Modern Age!

Ladies – Make of Yourself What You Will!!!

Release the Young Man Inside You!

A Kitten Can Be a Tiger!

Transformed and Improved!! Transmogrified and Reborn!!

It has always been a credo of mine that an advertisement cannot have too many exclamation points.

We bought space on public hoardings and in the press, and sent sandwich-men out onto the streets. We put up posters on the platforms of the London Underground Railway and inside the trains themselves, where passengers had no choice but to look at them. We were plastered on the sides of buses, in the windows of chemists’ shops and on any walls that happened to be bare before our trusty regiment of boys with paste pots passed by. Striking illustrations, engraved by the best men in the business, were augmented by ‘unsolicited’ testimony from our volunteers, much the best of it genuinely unsolicited. I decided to keep the Hon. Hilary in the background, for he was now almost permanently in his secondary personality and the quality of his rhyming, while undoubtedly visionary, was of a nature to prove alarming rather than reassuring. Varrable insisted we keep supplying our initial volunteers with the Tonic so he could study the effects of repeated use. He also asked for more bruisers at the laboratory, to guard against possible riots from the much-swelled cabbie crowd. It seemed our people couldn’t get enough of the Jekyll. Varrable tried to water the formula down, to make its effects less immediate and lasting.

Some use could be made of the statements of cabbies and longhairs, but willing participants were also found among the better classes. We prominently displayed sworn testimonials from gracious ladies, leading churchmen, military officers and, inevitably, Sir Marmaduke Collynge. I interviewed all manner of folk who had sampled the Tonic, helping them set down in appropriate words the benefits they genuinely felt had accrued to them. Major General Cogstaff-Blyth, ‘the Hector of Maiwand’, was quoted as saying, ‘With this spiffing stuff in him, your British soldier shall never lose another battle!’ I had the Maj-Gen put on his best medals and troop down to Speakers’ Corner to harangue passersby with the merits of Jekyll Tonic, and lobby for a bulk purchase of the wonder fluid by the War Office.

In any enterprise, only so much can be done by buying space to hawk your wares. True success can only be achieved if the press find themselves so harried by the interest of their readership that they are obliged – nay, forced – to augment paid advertising by running stories that pass as unbiased journalism but which essentially serve to boost your reputation. To reach this point, you have to worm your way into the public mind by fair means or foul. Firstly, I provided the lyrics for an entire songbook of ditties which were set to tunes by a couple of tame music students willing to work in lucrative anonymity. The theory was that one at least of our songs was bound to catch the nation’s fancy. Certainly, for a time, ‘Changing for the Better (Through a Course of Jekyll Tonic)’ was heard on every street corner – Leo Dare magnanimously promised me a fifty per cent cut of the songsheet income – and hardly less success was met by ‘An Inspirational Transformational Super-Sensational Stuff’ and ‘You’ve Got to Be a Jekyll Tonic Girl (to Get the Boy You Want)’.

The greatest success of this campaign was, I venture to say, the affair of the Jekyll Joke.

It took no little negotiation and expense to arrange for the ‘patter comic’ Harry ‘Brass’ Button to conclude his turn at the Tivoli Music Hall with an apparent ad lib remark of my own coinage. ‘With Jekyll Tonic I feel like a new man,’ said Button, then adding with an indescribable leer, ‘…luckily, the wife does too!’ The results were as startling to the performer as anyone else. Not only was Button’s ‘punchline’ greeted nightly with gales of laughter but also applause that lasted for minutes, delaying the first act curtain. The audience could only be quieted if he agreed to give the ‘Jekyll Joke’ over again, as much as seven times. Attendances were up and expectant patrons turned away in crowds. A sticker across the posters outside the hall announced ‘the Jekyll Joke will be told’. Eventually, new posters were put up claiming the Tivoli as ‘Home of the Hilarious Jekyll Joke’.

Harry Button, whose check suit and mobile eyebrows had been rather falling from favour, was precipitously elevated to the top of the bill, displacing an entire family of acrobatical contortionists and an opera singer who had conducted a famous amour with a Ruthenian prince. Button only sampled the Tonic once that I heard of. He wept for six hours, then swore off it for life. But he told and retold the Jekyll Joke. I don’t doubt that though his top-of-the-bill days are now but a memory, he still tells it at the drop of a hat. Certainly, he truly believes his was the brain that conceived the marvellous line and he’ll try to thrash anyone who says different.

Some fellows entirely unconnected with the consortium whipped up a song that Button refused to include in his act on the grounds that it was an affront to the dignity of what had now become a much-loved, therefore respectable, music hall institution. However, every other comic in London sang ‘Have you heard the Jekyll Joke?/It’ll make you laugh until you choke!/Have you heard the Jekyll Joke?/Old Brass Button is the funniest bloke!’ In the Strand, whenever Harry Button was about, children chanted the chorus, especially the repeated refrain: ‘Now tell us another one, Brass!’

With the departure of Mr Richard Mansfield from the London stage, we commissioned our own dramatisation of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, emphasising the positive aspects of the transformation and omitting any mention of the late Sir Danvers Carew. After all, Edward Hyde never came to trial and so was not proved a murderer in any court of law. Our lawyers sent reminders of this fact to any who tried to publish or stage the hitherto-accepted version of the story. On behalf of the Jekyll Estate, Mr Enfield accepted a great many grudging retractions and apologies. Several times in the play, our Dr Jekyll took a swig of his formula and approvingly exclaimed, ‘It’s a tonic!’

All this, it should be remembered, was well before the Tonic was available in stores. By the time we were ready to begin manufacture and distribution, the consortium had gathered again and concluded that 6d was far too meagre a price to ask for such a highly demanded and beneficial commodity. Lady Knowe bleated a little about pricing the Tonic out of the reach of the poor, but we decided that – though the Jekyll Tonic was of such incalculable good to the public that it must in effect be declared priceless – we would settle upon the trivial sum of 1s a bottle, in order to effect the greatest possible distribution of the wondrous blessing we were about to grant humankind in general.

‘A shilling is little enough to pay,’ said Leo Dare.

* * *

I was mentally formulating an alliterative sentence employing the words ‘modern’, ‘marvel’ and ‘miracle’ in some fresh order when a discreet rap at the door disturbed my process of thought.

‘Go away,’ I shouted at the Porlockian person. ‘It can wait.’

The office door opened a crack and an unfamiliar individual peeked around, holding up something shiny.

‘Generally, that’s not the case, sir.’

The newcomer was a shabby little man with a London accent. I pegged his section of the market at once – clerk or undermanager, with a little education but no elocution, the son of someone who worked with his hands, the father of someone who’d ‘do better’. He would be most susceptible to advertisements that linked the product with easy living, good breeding and ‘class’. A life lived with unformed needs and aspirations, and thus an ideal customer. He’d be looking for something but not know what it was. Enter: the Jekyll Tonic.

‘Inspector Mist, sir,’ he announced, ‘from Scotland Yard.’

I gave him another look. He had a bloodhound’s big wet nose and a drooping moustache that covered his mouth entirely. His hat was a year or so past style and his topcoat was too heavy for him, as if the pockets were full of handcuffs for felons, packets of plaster of Paris for footprints and magnifying lenses for clues.

‘Come in, Inspector. You’re Sheriff of these parts?’

‘You would be the American, sir. Mister…’

‘Quinn.’

‘That’s the name.’

‘How can I help you?’

‘Rather delicate matter, sir. Are you acquainted with…’ he consulted a notepad ‘…a Mr Belligo?’

‘What has the Hon. Hilary been up to now? Subversive publications with obscene illustrations?’

‘Misappropriation of stock is mentioned, sir. In short, theft.’

‘I was under the impression that he was of independent means.’

‘Ran through ’em, sir. Looked around. Found another source of readies. Only it wasn’t exactly his to tap.’

‘Lock the villain away, then. I imagine he’ll find an eager audience for his verses in one of your excellent prisons.’

‘Have to catch him first, sir.’

‘He’s not around here.’

‘Didn’t say he was. Only, it seems you have something the absconder needs. A tonic, I believe. Likely he’ll come nosing about.’

The policeman picked up a bottle from my desk.

‘Is this it? Jekyll Tonic?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Just a sample of the bottle. The bottle is important, you know. The comforting size, the colour, the quality of the wax around the stopper, the adhesive label.’

‘Looks like a bottle to me.’

‘Very perceptive, Inspector.’

‘That’s as well, then. If Mr Belligo pops up…’

‘I’ll send a lad to the Yard.’

‘We’d be grateful, Mr Quinn.’

‘There is a flaw to your trap, though. At the moment, Jekyll Tonic is a rara avis, obtainable only from our experimental laboratories, downstairs in this very building. As of,’ I consulted my new gold watch, ‘as of eight o’clock tomorrow morning, it will be on sale all across London, then the country. You might have to post a man at every chemist’s shop in the nation.’

The bloodhound face drooped.

* * *

My first thought upon arriving fresh and early in Shoreditch to see a line of policemen outside the factory was that one of our devoted test subjects had done himself or someone else injury while in the grips of Jekyll Tonic fever. The fellow who would now have to be known as the Dis. Hon. Hilary Belligo sprang naturally to mind. It turned out that Leo Dare had merely suggested it would be sensible to take precautions against rioters. I looked about for the dogged Inspector Mist. If present, he was in one of those impenetrable Scotland Yard disguises.

We understood that the chemist’s shops and apothecary’s dispensaries which would be our main retail outlets would abide by no decree we might make that the Tonic should be withheld from sale until a certain standardised time. I knew enough about storekeepers to guess they would agree to all our terms and then sell the stuff as soon as they got it, probably knocking a penny off the shilling to undercut the fellow across the street.

So, it was to be a free-for-all.

At eight o’clock, the old stable gates opened and carts trundled out, laden with straw-packed crates of clinking bottles. Each cart was manned by a former Mercury cabbie (retained at a generous two-thirds of his previous wage) and a bare-knuckle boxer with a handy shillelagh. The purpose of the latter individuals was not so much to prevent any attempts at seizure of the Tonic supply as to suggest to the world at large that the product was so desirable such attempts were highly likely.

Because it seemed expected of us, we put up a stall outside the laboratory, manned by several smart young women recruited from the chorus of the Tivoli, all neat in abbreviated sailor suits and hats with pom-poms. Harry Button had asked an outrageous fee to act as shill at the stall, so we had declined his services. I noticed that the comic had turned up for the historic moment anyway, a little surprised that the eager public were clamouring not for his joke but for the inspiration of same, the Tonic itself. The first Jekyll Tonic offered for sale direct from the factory was available at an introductory price of 9d. Our shutters went up simultaneous with the emergence of the carts.

We were all there. Leo Dare hung rather in the background, calmly puffing one of his cigars. In press photographs taken that morning, as so often in Kodaks of the entrepreneur and Overman, Leo Dare’s face is indistinct, masked by frozen shrouds of smoke. Sir Marmaduke and Lady Knowe made speeches, drowned out by the Babel of eager customers beseeching the attention of our becoming sales assistants. Varrable, emerged again from his bucket, still fussed about the vats, already concerned with brewing up tomorrow’s batch of Tonic.

I found myself in a corner of the stableyard with Mr Enfield.

He drew a draught from a hip-flask and offered it to me.

‘Is that…?’

‘Not on your nellie,’ he said.

I took a swallow. Strong whiskey.

‘I saw Hyde trample the little girl,’ he said. ‘Worst thing I ever did see. The look on his face.’

‘Monstrous? Evil?’

‘No. It was like he was walking over more pavement. As if no one else mattered at all. He was scared all right, when the mob had his collar, scared for himself. A shirty little bastard he was, whining and indignant, with clothes too big for him. That was what was inside Jekyll.’

The first customers were swigging from their own bottles. On labels they hadn’t read, we had printed a warning advising that the daily dose should not exceed a spoonful taken in a mug of water. It was not our fault some patrons were too excited to read and regard these instructions.

‘The formula was lost,’ I said to Mr Enfield. ‘Even Jekyll couldn’t recreate it. You could have kept it that way. If you were really worried, you could have suppressed the Tonic, stopped this even before it started.’

Mr Enfield looked at me. He took another drink.

‘You really don’t know Leo Dare, do you?’

At that moment, I was distracted.

In the street, ten or fifteen new devotees of the Jekyll Tonic were changing. It was like a Court of Miracles from Notre Dame de Paris crossed with the news of the Relief of Mafeking. Crutches thrown away! Speaking in tongues! Vigorous embraces! Cries for more, more, more! Supply at the stall was exhausted, and the sales girls apologised. Banknotes were waved in fists. Coins were thrown. One girl nearly had her eye put out by a flung florin.

The police moved in, augmenting our bare-knuckle men.

I saw the most beautiful woman I ever beheld in my life, a slim blonde angel wrapped in the voluminous garments of a much, much larger lady. She threw away a veiled hat, to unloose a stream of glamorous golden hair. She took my arm and looked at me with unutterably lovely eyes.

‘The children call me “pig-face”,’ she said, wondering.

I did not understand.

‘A mirror,’ she said. ‘Have you a mirror?’

I patted my pockets though I knew I did not have a glass about me. At my shrug of apology, she left me – a slave to her memory – to ask another bystander.

Beyond the crowd, I saw Varrable having heated words with Leo Dare. The chemist listened, arms folded, as Leo Dare stabbed the air with a cigar to emphasise points.

The transformed angel found a mirror and was stunned by her new face, a female Narcissus absolutely smitten with herself.

The mirror was passed around. Our customers beheld their fresh selves. I heard a scream from one, who covered his head with his jacket and plunged alarmingly through the crowd. He was soon forgotten. Others danced on the cobbles, leapt up and down with abandon, shouted ‘Look at me!’, performed feats of strength such as lifting a grown man up in each hand, turning cartwheels. A ragged choir lit into ‘An Inspirational Transformational Super-Sensational Stuff’.

Word escaped that I was connected with the consortium, and I was hugged and kissed. I trapped light fingers reaching for my wallet and watch, and kicked away a junior ruffian who scurried off with good humour to ply his trade elsewhere.

Leo Dare and Varrable caught the ear of Sir Marmaduke. He stood up on a platform by the stall.

‘Friends, friends,’ announced Sir Marmaduke, booming at the crowd with a voice proved in parliamentary debate. ‘Owing to the unprecedented demand, a fresh batch of the wonder Tonic is being brewed up even as we speak. It will take some hours for the complex scientifical processes necessary in its manufacture to be brought to complete fruition, but on behalf of the Jekyll Tonic consortium we pledge that the demand shall be met even if it means working our factory round the clock. The Jekyll will be on sale again by twelve noon, this we guarantee.’

‘Maybe they still got some at Filkins the Chemist, down the road,’ suggested someone.

Half the crowd dashed off.

They soon came back. It had been the same at Filkins the Chemist, and at shops all over London.

The Jekyll Tonic had not so much arrived as exploded.

* * *

The papers were full of it. Questions were asked in the House (and answered at length by a personage familiar to us all). More vats were bought and more fellows engaged to stir the compounds. Our credit was accepted by suppliers of equipment and chemicals. Carts continued to trundle out three times a day, laden with cases of the Jekyll Tonic. The former stables grew more crowded and we had to lease larger premises adjoining the original site. In addition to the vat-stirrers, we had (after unfortunate incidents) to engage more bruisers to watch that the workers didn’t siphon off or sample the raw Tonic. Then we had to take on ex-soldiers and former policemen to crack down on the bruisers.

It turned out that there had been a deal of pilferage, and ‘super-strength’ Jekyll Tonic was being made available to the criminal classes of Whitechapel, Limehouse and Wapping. Inspector Mist snuffled around again, with reports of running battles in the streets between Irish and Hebrew bully-boys with illicit Jekyll interests and the Chinese tongs who found patronage of their opium dens drastically reduced. Leo Dare was not overly concerned, assuring us all that this had been accounted for in his calculations. It would only serve to sharpen the appetite for our legitimate Tonic. All considered, that a street brawler of previously average reputation could see off a dozen Chinamen though one of the Celestials had embedded a hatchet in his skull was as fine a testimony for us as any recommendation from a bishop or baronet. We did, however, bring swift and merciless court actions against competitors who ventured to sell coloured tincture of laudanum as ‘Jeckell Tonik’ or ‘Jickle Juice’. I made sure to add to all our posters the rubric ‘Accept no imitations, swallow no substitute… there is only one original Jekyll Tonic!’

Borrowing against my stock, I removed myself from lodgings in Lewisham to a house in Kensington. Suddenly equipped with (or weighed down by) the trappings of a man of stature. I had to beseech from Sir Marmaduke and Lady Knowe information about how best to employ a household’s worth of bowers and scrapers. It took me a disastrous week to learn that the finest servants were not necessarily the most unctuously deferential butlers or the prettiest, cheekiest maids but rather the faintly drab individuals who actually took the bother to do the work they were paid for. I received so many invitations that I had to engage a secretary with a typewriter to respond to them all. I did not let it go to my head. It was all very well to be popular and sought-after, but it was what was on deposit at Coutts that counted.

Varrable, the last man I should have thought likely to gain a reputation as a rakehell, was seen about town with, in succession, a chorus girl with a dimple, a Drury Lane ornament whose beauty had prompted several duels in Paris, the wealthy young widow of a lately deceased African millionaire and the youngest daughter of a duke. Sir Marmaduke was offered a cabinet position, but declined on the grounds that his business interests engaged too much of his time for him to be concerned with the minutiae of canals and waterways. Lady Knowe took tea with the Prince and Princess of Wales, dressed in white for the first time in her life in honour of the occasion. Her philanthropic concerns became extremely fashionable, and many distinguished names were added to her roster of charitable souls. Mr Enfield sold all his stock (mostly, through third parties, to me) and departed for the South Seas, still muttering doom under his breath. He was fleeing from a fortune but would not be reasoned with, and if profit was to be had from his squeamishness I saw no reason why I should not be the one to scoop it.

For me personally, Jekyll Tonic was Inspirational, Transformational and Super-Sensational. And I did not even taste the stuff.

At some point in any venture, my job changes from ‘starting up’ to ‘looking after’. Once the train is up to full steam, it needs a steady hand on the throttle and a good eye on the track ahead. There is no time to relax, to sit back and let the coffers fill. Each day brought a thousand questions from the press, from tradesmen, from the factory. My secretary wore out her typewriter, and a new, improved model had to be purchased. I arranged tours of inspection, interviews with various members of the consortium (never Leo Dare, of course), supervised the design of new and improved labels for the bottles. I no longer had a fresh canvas: the name of Jekyll Tonic was known, and had to be protected rather than bruited about. That was the chief reason for seeing off the Jickle and Jeckell jokesters.

All at once, we were the only Tonic. Bovril was forgotten, even when advertised by an admirable image of a cow being strapped into an electric chair. Carter’s Little Liver Pills piled up unsold in the stores. Dentists reported that even heroin, miracle drug of the decade, was sorely out of fashion. Sufferers from all maladies and pains demanded to go ‘on the Jekyll’ and would accept no substitutes.

* * *

By now, a week into the reign of the Tonic, I was surprised by nothing. Approaching Varrable’s office early in the morning, I passed a lady who had just emerged from our chemist’s sanctum. Though her hair and costume were in disarray, I recognised Mrs Mary Biddlesham, a supporter of Lady Knowe’s latest endeavour, to ship supplies of the Jekyll overseas to missionaries in order to coax out the decent Christian lurking within every benighted heathen. Mrs Biddlesham repaired her clothing in a manner that led me to form a conclusion as to the activities with which she had been engaged overnight. She did not meet my eye or answer my good-day.

I found Varrable fussing with his cravat, admiring himself in the cheval glass, and in good spirits.

‘You are a wonder,’ I said.

Varrable smiled and paraphrased one of my slogans. ‘Inside every kitten, there’s a tiger!’

I shrugged.

‘With claws, Billy,’ he assured me. ‘I have the scratches to prove it.’

A divan had been installed in Varrable’s office, as an aid to abstract thought. Its cushions were on the floor and I gathered that little in the abstract had transpired on the previous evening.

The remains of a late supper stood on a side table.

I picked up an empty glass, and sniffed the dregs.

Varrable raised a decanter.

‘It looks like port, remember,’ he said.

‘Doc, you’ve become a blackguard.’

‘Have I not? I don’t know about the average advertising man, but the average research chemist isn’t thought of as a “catch” by the ladies. It’s something to do with the penury and long hours, of course, but the reason most often given is the smell. At school, they call chemistry “stinks”. It stays with you for life. Not so stinky now, of course.’

He sniffed his newly manicured nails.

‘I don’t go near the vats any more,’ he said. ‘We have low people for that.’

‘So this is your secret?’

‘It’s all our secret, isn’t it? I confess I’ve been conducting my own course of private experiments. I should write it up, I suppose. “The Effects of Dr Henry Jekyll’s Transformational Formula Upon the Fairer Sex, as Observed Firsthand by Dr Hugo Varrable, with Fifteen Watercolour Plates and Extensive Footnotes”. At first, I propose a toast and we both “take a Jekyll”, only mine is coloured water. An observer has to be distanced. I admit that I do tend to intervene, possibly affecting the outcome of the experiments. A certain, ah, class of female is excited by the prospect, and will probably deliver the desired results with a placebo of coloured water. But my interests in that sort ran dry some time ago. Their inner selves are too close to the skin. No, to demonstrate the truly miraculous effects of the Tonic, I have to seek not Rosie O’Grady but the Colonel’s Lady. In this case, the Commodore’s Lady.’

‘What if they’re like us, Doc? What if they don’t want to find out what’s inside or know already? A lot of people are still afraid of the Jekyll.’

Varrable laughed.

‘Don’t I know it, Billy! Mrs Biddlesham, for one. In her case, I simply gave her an aperitif with the complements of your Hibernian friend, Mr Michael Finn.’

‘The results?’

‘Most satisfactory. I’m not the only researcher in this field. A great many gentlemen have been purchasing the Tonic not for themselves, but for ladies of their glancing acquaintance. Sir Marmaduke insists his household take a tablespoon a day. He lines up his maidservants like sailors being given the rum ration. And he’s been rejuvenating himself with regular doses. I understand a few women of dubious character or attractions have ventured their own experiments along these lines. I couldn’t approve of that, of course.’

I was not, of course, shocked. But I did perceive a flutter of danger.

‘When your, ah, lady-friends, come to themselves, how do they feel?’

‘Delighted and rotten all at the same time, I should imagine. I’ve never really asked. Do you think I should make inquiries? Do a “follow-up” study?’

I thought a moment. There would be complaints. It was but a matter of time before some soiled dove took the matter to the police. No lady of good name would want this to come out in the courts, but eventually some tart with nothing to lose would try it on. And I would not have wanted to be in Varrable’s expensive new shoes if word of last night’s experiment were to reach Commodore Biddlesham, whose expertise with both cutlass and revolver could be attested to by not a few deceased Shanghai river pirates.

‘You still don’t use the Jekyll?’ I asked. ‘I mean, Doc, this is you?’

He looked surprised at the question, but insisted he’d never touched a drop.

Still, even without drinking it, the Tonic had brought out something inside him that would never go back in hiding.

‘Tonight, a fresh direction,’ he said, sliding on his smart new jacket. ‘I am entertaining the Flavering Sisters, Flora and Belinda. Their father, the Earl of Roscommon, sits on the board of the University of… well, you know who he is. A year ago, Billy, I was discharged from the faculty. Merely for pursuing a line of inquiry involving the effects of caustic solutions upon the mammalian eye. A petition was got up about vivisection and a to-do burst in the papers. My name was “Mudd”, like your countryman, Dr Samuel Mudd. Now it might as well be “Rose”, for it seems that with the Jekyll Tonic millions pouring in I smell a lot sweeter. This is the Strange Case of Dr Varrable… and Mr Rose.’

‘Flora and Belinda,’ I mused. ‘With which delightful young lady do you intend to experiment?’

Varrable fixed a fresh-cut rose to his lapel, and sniffed it.

‘You misjudge me. Why choose only one?’

* * *

‘You’ve complicated our lives at the Yard, sir. And no mistake.’

Inspector Mist had become a frequent visitor to Shoreditch.

Given that with the Jekyll craze, all I saw were smiling faces, hungry eyes, beautiful women, happy bankers, deferential servants and ecstatic consortium comrades, the presence of the Inspector, who trudged about under a perpetual black cloud, was almost a refreshing change. In a world of sunshine and champagne, he brought his own little patch of gloom and weak tea.

‘One swig and you change face, body, height, everything. Don’t match a description. Don’t look like your picture in the Police Gazette.’

‘You mean the Threadneedle Street bandits?’

‘Indeed. A touch of your “Wild Wicked West” in staid old foggy London. There were heart attacks, you know.’

‘So I read.’

A small band of habitual crooks, minor rogues who had never done anything worse than lift a purse or knock over a costermonger, had staged a raid on the Bank of England after the manner of Jesse James. They careened up Threadneedle Street on horses and in a carriage, discharged revolvers at random over the heads of shocked crowds and dashed into the august financial establishment, demanding that cash and bullion be handed over. Before setting out on this exploit, each of the gang had drained a bottle of Jekyll to become another person entirely. It was popularly supposed that the transformed criminals were ape-faced, spider-fingered, devil-horned, cyclops-eyed sub-human fiends. The Pall Mall Gazette, perhaps inevitably, had referred to the miscreants as ‘a pack of Hydes’. I had already dashed off a telegram to the editor threatening withdrawal of advertising unless a balanced retraction appeared within the week.

‘Suppose it’s a mercy your average villain is so thick-headed,’ said the Inspector. ‘This mob had spent all their lives dreaming about robbing the Bank of England. It was the Land of Cockaigne to them, sir. They thought of a golden temple. Heaps of banknotes and piles of silver sovereigns lying around for the taking. Then they crashed in and discovered it was a bank like any other, only snootier. Vaults and strong-boxes, inaccessible to the raiders. When we caught up with them, they had less loot to hand than you’d expect from a provincial post office job. All themselves again, they were, blinking and surprised. Hadn’t taken elementary precautions. Got ’em by the mud on their boots. And the blood on their coats.’

Two bank employees had been ‘pistol-whipped’. One seemed likely to die.

‘Still, a question is answered. One left over from the Hyde business.’

‘What question, Inspector?’

‘It’s like this, sir. We knew what happened when Jekyll drank. He became Hyde. But, even without the potion, there are Hydes in the world. See ’em every day. Not a few on the force, in fact. Now we know what happens when Hyde drinks. It doesn’t make him cleverer, which is a terror and yet a mercy. A terror because all trace of scruple, even that which rises from fear of being caught, evaporates like dew in the morning. But a mercy because your Hyde is a stupid crook. And stupid crooks are easy to catch. But not all villains are idiots, Mr Quinn. Jekyll was a villain, after all. He was different from Hyde, not separate. What mightn’t happen if a clever villain drinks your Tonic. What then, sir?’

I had the uncomfortable sensation that I was being judged.

‘It’s just patent medicine, Inspector,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t really do anything, except in the imagination. Oh, it’s dramatic, all right. Makes people pull faces. But it wears off in a tick, and you’re back for another bottle. There’s nothing inherently evil about the stuff. Have you tried it?’

‘Yes, sir. Have you?’

Not loitering for an answer, Mist left.

* * *

Jekyll Tonic had been on sale for two weeks. I was returning to Kensington just after dawn. The sun was up but the thin fog had yet to dissipate. This was not the fabled pea-souper I’d heard about back in the States, just wispy yellowish stuff that hung in the air like the colour swirls in a glass marble. I trailed my stylish new cane through some strands, setting them in motion like phantom streamers.

I was still a little ‘tight’ from last night’s celebration, hosted after the show at the Tivoli by Harry ‘Brass’ Button, in honour of the success of our venture. The entire company of the music hall had been in attendance, and most of the finest, most fashionable in the city. Not to mention the Flavering Sisters – quite the Jekyll fiends these days, with happy results for Varrable that he was generous enough to share with his comrades in the consortium. Even Lady Knowe’s besotted Guardsman intended took notice. Of our principles, only Leo Dare – who never appeared at parties of any kind – was absent. I took this up with Sir Marmaduke, who mused that our colossus of finance must be at bottom ‘a sad, lonely sort of chap’, allowing that he was enviably single-minded in the pursuit of cold wealth but that he lived the life of a monk, in his cell-like hotel suites, reading only ledgers, measuring his life’s worth only in bank deposits. ‘What’s the point of it all if you can’t drown yourself in it, sirrah?’ Sir Marmaduke then took his tablespoonful of Tonic and joined with the ladies of the chorus and several ladies of distinction, including Lady Knowe and Mrs Biddlesham, in an enthusiastic performance of the can-can, lately the sensation of Paris.

I rounded the corner and observed an orderly commotion.

A crowd was gathered outside my house. Not a mob, but men in black coats and bowler hats, celluloid collars shiny, paper clutched in their hands. My first thought was that they were newspaper reporters. Was the Threadneedle Street Gang at large again?

‘It’s ’im,’ someone shouted, and they all turned.

They rushed at me, thrusting out wax-sealed envelopes, ribbon-tied scrolls and telegrams. I was briefly in fear for my person, but to a man they handed over documents, raised hats politely, bade me good morning and departed. I was left alone outside my house, hands full of paper. I stuffed as much as I could into my pockets.

My front door opened and my butler emerged, silverware sticking out of his coat pockets and a crystal punchbowl (full of pocket-watches, snuff-boxes and other portable items of value) in his embrace. He was followed by Cook and two maids, hefting between them a polished mahogany dining table with the linen still on, bumping alarmingly against the doorframe and scraping spiked railings as they came down my front steps.

The butler saw me and did his best to bow without dropping anything.

‘In lieu of wages, Mr Quinn. Please accept my regret that we are unable to continue in your employ.’

Lucy, the ‘tweeny’, sniffled a bit.

I was too astonished to say anything.

‘If you would stand aside, sir,’ said my former butler. ‘So we might pass.’

I did as he suggested and found myself holding the door open to effect the removal of my former dining table. Lucy, eyes downcast, muttered something about it being ‘a dreadful shame, sir’. I watched my entire staff struggle down the road, like a Whitechapel family doing a midnight flit.

I did not have time to examine all the papers in my pockets before the bailiffs showed up.

Within the hour, I realised that I did not have so much as a Knowe’s Black Biscuit to my name.

* * *

The Shoreditch facilities were besieged, but not by customers. That would come later. Creditors barred the gates, so that we could not even supply our own stall with the Tonic, let alone distribute as normal. I saw my secretary sprinting off into the fog, cased typewriter on her back like a snail’s shell.

Varrable was on the phone, needlessly cranking the handle faster as his sentences sped up, hair awry. I gathered that he was talking with his stockbroker. A Flavering girl was perched on the divan, dead flowers in her hair like Ophelia, shivering as if in a rainstorm. Her colour was off, as if she were coming down with the flu.

Windows smashed somewhere.

‘Sell some consortium stock,’ Varrable shouted. ‘Use the funds to cover… what funds? Why, that stock is worth fifty times what we ploughed into it. A hundred.’

Varrable went white. He replaced the telephonic apparatus in its cradle.

‘Billy,’ he said, voice hollow. ‘I could do with a tonic.’

The Flavering girl obediently sorted through empty bottles.

‘Not that tonic,’ Varrable said, with utter disgust. ‘There’s brandy around somewhere.’

I found the decanter and poured a generous measure. Varrable snatched the glass from me and raised it to his mouth. Then he gasped in horror and set the glass down.

‘Billy, you nearly… No, the real brandy. It’s in the desk.’

I found a bottle and filled two more glasses.

Varrable and I both shocked ourselves with drink. The brandy hit the last of the Tivoli champagne, but did no good.

‘Just before close of trade yesterday,’ Varrable explained, ‘a vast amount of consortium stock went on sale. It went in small lots, to dozens, hundreds of buyers. There’s been clamour for the issue for months, but it’s simply not been available. When it was “up for grabs”, there was what my man called a “feeding frenzy”. A share worth fifty pounds yesterday isn’t worth five shillings this morning. And won’t be worth fivepence tomorrow.’

‘Dare-ing,’ I said.

Varrable nodded, swallowing more brandy. ‘He sold at fifty pounds, Billy. Without telling us. We’re all ruined, you know. Except him.’

I could not quite conceive of it.

‘There’s still the business,’ I said, ‘the Tonic. Money is pouring in. Buck up, Doc. We can cover debts in a day, costs in a week, and be in profit again by the end of the month.’

Varrable shook his head.

‘Jekyll Tonic sells at a loss. Even at a shilling.’

This was news.

‘Oh, in the long run, costs would have come down,’ said Varrable, bitterly. ‘But there is not going to be a “long run”. There were unforeseen expenses in development, you see. The original estimates were optimistic. We were moving too swiftly to revise them.’

I understood. A harvest had been reaped, profit had been made. Leo Dare had taken his money out and moved on.

‘I borrowed against the stock,’ I admitted.

‘So did I,’ said Varrable.

My pockets were still stuffed with writs of foreclosure, bills suddenly come due, summonses to court, notices of lien, announcements of garnishee and other such waste paper.

A quiet knock came at the door. A doggy head poked around.

‘I realise this is an inconvenient time for you both,’ said Inspector Mist, ‘but I am afraid I must ask you to accompany me to the Yard.’

* * *

The thing of it is that if Jekyll Tonic had not worked, Leo Dare would have stayed in it longer. If it were just the coloured water he himself was prepared to drink, the horse might have been ridden for years. Then, there might have been enough gravy to keep us all fat. But, as Varrable had always said, the effects were dramatic but unpredictable, and that made the venture a long-term risk.

The Threadneedle Street raiders inspired similar crimes, no more successful but equally as spectacular. Veiled ladies brought suit against the likes of Dr Hugo Varrable for artificial exploitation of affections, which had in more than one case led to Consequences. Every murderer and knock-down man in the land was purported to be under the influence of the Jekyll, though it is my belief that as many heroic rescues from burning buildings or sinking barges were carried out by persons temporarily not themselves as were homicidal rampages or outrages to the public decency. All manner of folk disclaimed responsibility for reprehensible actions by blaming the Tonic. Sermons were preached against Jekyll Tonic, and editorials – in the very same papers that had boosted us – were written in thunderous condemnation. Lawsuits beyond number were laid against the consortium, which no longer included Leo Dare. The simple duns for unpaid bills took precedence, driving us to bankruptcy. The criminal and frivolous matters dragged on, though many were dropped when it became apparent that the coffers were empty and that no financial settlement would be arrived at. A tearful Harry Button was booed off stage before he could give his infamous joke, and shortly thereafter found himself bought out of his contract and booted into the street by the management. Temperance organisations shifted the focus of their attention from the demon alcohol to the impious Jekyll Tonic.

Sir Marmaduke and Lady Knowe made numberless attempts to get in touch with Leo Dare, but I recalled those cards he had made a pack of and ignored in Kettner’s and did not waste my efforts. A man with no fixed address finds it easy not to be at home to the most persistent callers. At length, both worthies departed from the stage in no more dignified a manner than ‘Brass’ Button. Sir Marmaduke, sadly, retained a gold-thread curtain cord from the fixtures transported away by the bailiffs and hanged himself in his empty Belgravia town house. Lady Knowe, perhaps surprisingly, married her Guardsman. The couple decamped for a posting in Calcutta, where she devoted her energies to improving the moral health of Her Majesty’s troops by campaigning against boy-brothels.

The formula remained ours alone, our sole asset, but many competitors were working to reproduce its effects. A Royal Commission was established, and with uncharacteristic swiftness, made all such research illegal unless conducted under government supervision. I suspected some in Pall Mall still maintained Major General Cogstaff-Blyth’s notions of a regiment of Hydes trampling over the Kaiser’s borders, chewing through Pickelhaubes with apelike fangs and rending uhlans limb from limb. Regulations closed around the Jekyll. An amendment to the Dangerous Drugs Acts insisted that the Tonic now could not be sold unless a customer signed the Poisons Book and waited until the signature was verified. By that time, it was a moot point since there was no Jekyll to be had anywhere. Our Shoreditch factory ceased manufacture when the stock crashed, and supplies dried up within the morning.

Varrable and I spent some nights enjoying the hospitality of one of Her Majesty’s police stations, mostly through the good graces of Inspector Mist, who realised we had nowhere else to go and no funds to procure lodgings. A great many lines of inquiry were being pursued and we were told not to leave London. Questions would doubtless be asked of us on a great many matters, but no criminal charges were forthcoming as yet.

We trudged, cabless, to Shoreditch.

* * *

The factory, thoroughly looted, was abandoned. Our bruisers, our pretty sales girls, our secretaries, our vat-stirrers, were all flown. And the fittings and furnishings with them. Even the prized telephones.

‘What if he didn’t drink coloured water that time?’ said Varrable, with his now-habitual look of wide-eyed frenzy. ‘I’d brewed up the first test batch. It could have been the real Tonic. He could have changed?’

‘Leo Dare has no Hyde side,’ I said. ‘He was always himself.’

Varrable admitted it, smashing a beaker too cracked to steal.

We were in the stables, where vats stood overturned and empty, the flagstones stained with chemicals. The stinks still clung to the place. The gates had been torn down and taken away.

‘Look,’ said Varrable, ‘the cabbies are back.’

Opposite the factory was a knot of loitering fellows, despondent and jittery, as I remembered them.

‘I imagine not a few of our employees will be joining them,’ I said. ‘It was all over too swiftly for them to draw more than a week’s wages.’

‘It’s breathtaking, Billy. He sucked all the money out, like you’d suck the juice from an orange, then tossed away the pith and peel. No one else saw anything from the Jekyll bubble.’

The loiterers formed a deputation and crossed the road. They marched into the factory.

‘This might be it, Doc. Prepare to repel boarders.’

‘They don’t look angry.’

‘Looks can be deceiving.’

In the gloom, we were surrounded. I made out fallen faces, worn clothing, postures of desolation and resentment.

‘D-d-d-doctor V-V-V-Varr…’ stammered one of the louts.

From his shabby clothes and battered face, it would have been impossible to recognise the exquisite aesthete but the voice was unmistakable. The Hon. Hilary Belligo.

‘Is there anything left over?’ asked one of Hilary’s fellows.

I shook my head. ‘We are at a financial embarrassment,’ I said. ‘All in the same boat.’

‘N-n-n-not m-money!’

‘Tonic.’

I remembered a happier day and Varrable’s declaration that the likes of Hilary Belligo would be happy to pay five pounds a thimble for the Jekyll. I wished I had a crate of Tonic in a safe store somewhere, but it was all gone. Shipped out and drunk. There wasn’t a bottle left on a shelf in London. When supplies stopped coming from the factory, devotees haunted the most out-of-the-way shops and tracked down every last drop. There had been fearful brawls before the counters to get hold of it, as devotees paid whatever canny chemists asked. Even Jickle Juice and Jeckell Tonik, supposedly withdrawn from sale, was snapped up and drunk down. Fools had forked over ten guineas for empty Tonic bottles refilled with Thames water.

I shrugged, showing empty hands.

‘I might know where some Tonic remains,’ said Varrable, smoothing his hair with stained hands. ‘But we’ll need to see, ah, expenses up front.’

The desperate souls all had money about them. Not much, and not in good condition – torn banknotes, filthy coins, bloody sovereigns. I cupped my hands, and they were filled.

‘Be here tomorrow, at ten,’ said Varrable. ‘And keep it quiet.’

They scurried away, possessed with a strange excitement, a promise that took the edge off sufferings.

‘Have we a secret reserve, Doc?’

Varrable shook his head, disarranging his hair again. ‘No, but I still have the formula,’ tapping his temple. ‘Some of the ingredients must remain here. Few would want to loot chemicals. I can brew up Jekyll in the laboratory, rougher than the stuff we bottled but stronger as well.’

‘The demand is still there.’

I knew Hilary Belligo’s crew would ignore Varrable’s order to keep quiet. By tomorrow, word would be out. In two short weeks, a great many people had become used to a spoonful of Jekyll every day. The business was gone, the consortium collapsed, but that didn’t mean the need had evaporated.

‘It’ll be illegal,’ I ventured. ‘Under the Dangerous Drugs Act.’

‘All the better,’ Varrable snorted. ‘We can ask for a higher price. That lot’ll slit their grannies’ throats for a drop of the Jekyll. And we’re sole suppliers, Billy. Do you understand?’

Varrable was as possessed as the Hon. Hilary. With another kind of need.

Leo Dare had passed from the story. He left us all with new needs, but also new opportunities.

‘I understand. You’re the chemist, I’m the salesman. We’ll need a place to work. Several, to keep on the move. Mist won’t just forget us, and he’s no fool. We can no longer afford fixed addresses. We’ll need folk for the distribution, lads to stand on street corners, fellows to sit in taverns. Servants, perhaps, to get to the customers with the folding money. We’ll need places to hide the profits. Not under mattresses, in investments. Respectable, above board. We’ll have to see off the opium tongs. Maybe those East End roughs are still interested in the Jekyll trade. We could pitch in with them. The law of the land will not be with us, just the law of the market. We’ll need new names.’

‘I have mine. Harold Rose.’

‘And I’m Billy Brass. Do you know, ah, Harold, I think that this way we shall wind up richer than before.’

I had the strangest impression that Leo Dare was smiling down upon me.

And so your friends Dr Rose and Mr Brass embarked upon a new venture.

ILLIMITABLE DOMINION

OKAY, YOU COULD say it was my fault.

I’m the one. Me, Walter Paisley, agent to stars without stars on Hollywood Boulevard. I said ‘spare a thought for Eddy’ and the Poe Plague got started…

It’s 1959 and you know the montage. Cars have shark fins. Jukeboxes blare The Platters and Frankie Lymon. Ike’s a back number, but JFK hasn’t yet broken big. The commies have put Sputnik in orbit, starting a war of the satellites. Coffee houses are full of beards and bad poetry. Boomba the Chimp, my biggest client, has a kiddie series cancelled out from under him. Every TV channel is showing some Western, but my pitches for The Cherokee Chimp, The Monkey Marshal of Mesa City and Boomba Goes West fall on stony ground. The only network I have an ‘in’ with is DuMont, which shows how low the Paisley Agency has sunk since the heyday of Jungle Jillian and Her Gorilla Guerrillas (with Boomba as the platoon’s comedy relief mascot) and The Champ, the Chimp and the Imp (a washed-up boxer is friends with a cigar-smoking chimpanzee and a leprechaun).

American International Pictures is a fancy name for James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff sharing an office. They call themselves a studio, but you can’t find an AIP backlot. They rent abandoned aircraft hangars for soundstages and shoot as much as possible out of doors and without permits. At the end of the fifties, AIP are cranking out thirty, forty pictures a year, double features shoved into ozoners and grindhouses catering to the Clearasil crowd. They peddle twofers on low-budget juvenile delinquency (Reform School Girl with Runaway Daughters), affordable science fiction (Terror From the Year 5000 with The Brain Eaters), inexpensive chart music (Rock All Night with Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow), cheapskate creatures (I Was a Teenage Werewolf with The Undead), frugal combat (Suicide Battalion with Paratroop Command) or cut-price exotica (She Gods of Shark Reef with Teenage Cave Man). When Jim and Sam try for epic, they hope a marquee-filling title – The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent – distracts the hot-rodders from sub-minimal production values and a ninety-cent sea serpent filmed in choppy bathwater.

The AIP racket is that Jim thinks up a title – say, The Beast with a Million Eyes or The Cool and the Crazy – and commissions lurid ad art which he buries in hard-sell slogans. He shows ads to exhibitors, who chip in modest production coin. Then, a producer is put on the project. Said producer gets a writer in over the weekend and forces out a script by shoving peanuts through the bars. Someone has to direct the picture and be in it, but so long as a teenage doll in a tight sweater screams on the poster – at a monster, a switchblade or a guitar-player – no one thinks too much about them. Sam puts fine-print into contracts which make sure no one sees profit participation and puff cigars at trade gatherings.

Roger Corman is only one of a corral of producers – Bert I. Gordon and Alex Gordon are others – on AIP’s string, but he’s youngest, busiest and cheapest. After, to his mind, wasting half his budget hiring a director named Wyott Ordung on a 1954 masterpiece called Monster from the Ocean Floor, Roger trims the budgets by directing most of his films himself. He seldom does a worse job than Wyott Ordung. Five critics in France and two in England say Roger is more interesting than Cukor or Zinnemann – though unaccountably It Conquered the World misses out on a Best Picture nomination. Then again, Mike Todd wins for Around the World in 80 Days. I’d rather watch Lee Van Cleef blowtorch a snarling turnip from Venus for sixty-eight minutes than David Niven smarm over two hundred smug cameo players in far-flung locations for three or four hours. You don’t have to be a contributor to Cayenne du Cinéma or Sight & Sound to agree.

After sixty, seventy films inside four years, it gets so Roger can knock ’em off over a weekend. No kidding. The Little Shop of Horrors is made in three days because it’s raining and Roger can’t play tennis. He tackles every subject, within certain Jim-and-Sam-imposed limits. He shoots movies about juvenile delinquent girls, gunslinger girls, reincarnated witch girls, beatnik girls, escaped convict girls, cave girls, Viking girls, monster girls, Apache girls, rock and roll girls, girls eaten by plants, carnival girls, sorority girls, last girls on earth, pearl-diver girls and gangster girls. Somehow, he skips jungle girls, else maybe Boomba would land an AIP contract.

The thing is everybody – except Sam, who chortles over the ledgers without ever seeing the pictures – gets bored with the production line. Another week, and it’s Blood of Dracula plus High School Hellcats, ho hum. I don’t know when Roger gets time to dream, but dream he does – of bigger things. Jim thinks of bigger posters, or at least different-shaped posters. In the fifties, the enemy is television, but AIP product looks like television – small and square and black and white and blurry, with no one you’ve ever heard of wandering around Bronson Cavern. Drive-in screens are the shape of windshields. The typical AIP just lights up a middle slice. Even with Attack of the Crab Monsters, The Amazing Colossal Man and The She-Creature triple-billed, kids are restless. Where’s the breathtaking CinemaScope, glorious Technicolor and stereoscopic sound? 3-D has come and gone, and neither Odorama nor William Castle’s butt-buzzers are goosing the box office.

Jim or Roger get a notion to lump together the budgets and shooting schedules of two regular AIP pictures and throw their all into one eighty-five-minute super-production. Together, they browbeat Sam into opening the cobwebbed cheque book. This time, Mike Todd – well, not Mike Todd, since he’s dead, but some imaginary composite big-shot producer – will have to watch out come Oscar season. So, what to make?

In England, they start doing horror pictures in colour, with talented actors in starched collars and proper sets. Buckets of blood and girls in low-cut nightgowns are included, so it’s not like there’s art going on. Every other AIP quickie has a monster in it, so the company reckon they’re expert at fright fare. There’s your answer. Roger will make a classy – but not too classy – horror. Jim can get Vinnie Price to star. He’d been in that butt-buzzing William Castle film for Columbia and a 3-D House of Wax for Warners, and is therefore a horror ‘name’, but his career is stalled with TV guest spots on debatably rigged quiz programs or as fairly fruity actors touring Tombstone on Western shows. After Brando, well-spoken, dinner-jacketed eyebrow-archers like him are out of A pictures. What Jim and Roger don’t have is a clue as to what their full-colour, widescreen spooktacular should be about. They just know Revenge of the Crab Monsters or The Day After the World Ended won’t cut it.

Enter Walter Paisley, with a Signet paperback of Tales of Mystery and Imagination. No, it isn’t altruism – it’s all about the client.

Boomba’s out of work and eating his weight in bananas every single day. Bonzo and Cheetah have a lock on working with Dutch Reagan and Tarzan, so my star is unfairly shut out of the town’s few chimp-friendly franchises unless he’s willing to do dangerous vine-swinging, crocodile-dodging stunts those precious primates want to duck out of. Therefore, I’m obliged to scare up properties suitable as vehicles for a pot-bellied chimpanzee. I ponder a remake of King Kong, with a chimp instead of a gorilla, but RKO won’t listen. I pitch a biopic of Major Sam, America’s monkey astronaut, but that goddamn Russian dog gets all the column inches.

In desperation, I ask an intern who once had a few weeks of college about famous, out-of-copyright stories with monkeys in ’em, and get pointed at ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’. Okay, so, strictly, the killer in that yarn is an orangutan not a chimpanzee – but every film version casts a guy in a ratty gorilla suit, so Boomba is hardly wider of the author’s original intent. I know of AIP’s horror quandary, and a light bulb goes on over my head. I dress Boomba up in a fancy suit and cravat and beret for the Parisian look and teach him to wave a cardboard cutthroat razor. I march the chimp into Jim and Sam’s office just as Jim and Roger are looking glumly at a sketch artist holding up a blank board which ought to be covered with lurid artwork boosting their break-out film.

Tragically, Boomba compromises his employment prospects by crapping his velvet britches and grabbing for Sam’s foot-long cigar, but my Poe paperback falls onto the desk and Roger snatches it up. He once read some of the stories, and thinks he particularly liked ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’. Sam objects. The kids who go to AIP pictures have to study Poe in school and will therefore naturally hate him. But Jim remembers Universal squeezed out a couple of Poe pictures and racked up fair returns back in the Boris and Béla days. Then, Sam – who gives every appearance of actually having read ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ – says you can’t make a horror movie without a monster and there’s no monster in the story. ‘The house,’ says Roger, eyes shining, ‘the house is the monster!’ Jim and Sam look at each other, thinking this over. Boomba is forgotten, chewing the cigar. Then, management buys Roger’s line. The house is the monster.

Important issues get settled. Is there a part for Price? Yes, there’s someone in the falling house called Roderick Usher. Is there a girl? Roderick has a sister called Madeline. Paging through the paperback, they discover Poe doesn’t say Madeline isn’t a teenager in a tight sweater. I suggest the thin plot of the eighteen-page story would be improved if a killer chimp escaped from the Rue Morgue and broke into the House of Usher to terrorise the family. No one listens.

Jim and Roger run with ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’. They happily read out paragraphs in Vinnie Price accents. The sketch artist covers his board with a falling house, Vinnie lifting a terrified eyebrow, a buried-alive babe in a tight shroud, coffins, crypts, skeletons, an atomic explosion (which gets rubbed out quickly) and slogans ripped from Poe prose. ‘He buried her alive… to save his soul!’ ‘I heard her first feeble movements in the coffin… we had put her living in the tomb!’ ‘Edgar Allan Poe’s overwhelming tale of EVIL and TORMENT!’

I see my slice of the deal vanishing along with Sam’s cigar. Eddy is dead and long out of copyright, so there’s no end for him. This cheers Sam up, since he’d been all-a-tremble at the prospect of having to buy rights to some horror book from some unwashed writer.

So, just when it would take a steam train to stop AIP making House of Usher, I mention I am the agent for the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore and can easily secure permission – for a nominal fee – for the use of the author’s name, which they have registered as a trademark. For a few moments, the room is quiet and no one believes me. Sam is sceptical, but I tell him the reason Poe’s middle name is so often misspelled is to evade dues payable to the EAPSoB. He mulls it over. He swallows it, because it makes sense to him. He’s ready to argue for going with Edgar Allen Poe’s House of Asher as a title before Jim and Roger shout him down. Sam doesn’t care about critics, but little slivers of Jim and Roger do, so they’re ready to strike a deal on the spot. I have a pre-prepared contract, which needs crossings-out as it’s for a monkey as actor rather than an august body as trademark-leaser, but will still do.

As soon as I’m out of the office, I found the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore and start paperwork on trademark registration. It turns out I’m not even the first in the racket. Edgar Rice Burroughs and Mark Twain, or their heirs, have beaten me to it. The deal may not be 100% kosher, but AIP’s cheque clears. Probably, they just want to shut me up, since I’m theoretically responsible for bringing them the property. Hey, it’s my drugstore paperback. They offer me an ‘associate producer’ credit, but forget to include it on the film. Maybe it’s lost in the five minutes of swirling multi-coloured liquids tacked on after the house has burned down and tumbled into the tarn. But, from then on, I’m part of the Poe package.

The Fall of the House of Usher – or House of Usher, as it is called on the posters to save on lettering – is made in a comparatively leisurely fifteen days. Vinnie shaves his moustache, under protest as if he were Cesar Romero, and wears a white wig, which he likes enough to model in his off-hours along Sunset Strip. There are only three other people in the speaking cast, so the star gets first bite of all the scenery available for chewing. On set, Vinnie objects to the line ‘The house lives, the house breathes!’ Roger tells him, ‘The house is the monster,’ and Vinnie sells it with eyeball-rolling, velvet-tongued ham. In my capacity as ‘ass. prod.’, I have Boomba pose for a portrait as a degenerate Usher ancestor. Floyd, the camera genius, doesn’t get a good shot of it so you can’t see the chimp’s cameo in the picture.

This is how it plays. In some earlier century (no one’s sure which), a brooding youth with a Brando sneer and a Fabian haircut travels through burned-out wasteland to a painted-on-glass mansion where Vinnie twitches at the slightest sound and rolls his eyeballs as if they were marbles. He has extra-sensitive senses, which are a perpetual torment to him and looks severely pained whenever anyone drops a fork or lights a lamp. Our hero is searching for his missing girlfriend, Vinnie’s sister. She flits about, showing cleavage, then faints and is buried alive in the basement. Girl claws her way out of crypt, irritated, and scratches out Vinnie’s eyes as if he were making a play for her date at the record hop. A candle falls over and the House of Usher catches light like Atlanta in Gone With the Wind – indeed, some of the burning building stock footage might be offcuts from David O. Selznick’s day. Vinnie and girl get crushed and/or burned. Our hero makes it out unscorched, and broods some more – presumably his agent has just told him how much he’s getting paid and he’s resolved to quit acting and become a producer so he can wave the foot-long cigars some day. A caption runs: ‘“and the deep and dark tarn closed silently over the fragments of the House of Usher” – Poe’. Just to make sure you know, Eddy’s name pops up several more times during the swirly credits.

Against expectations, Usher is a monumental hit, boffo boxo, molto ducats in the coffers. Roger makes money. Vinnie makes money. Sam and Jim make more money than they can imagine, and Jim at least has a great imagination. Edgar Allan Poe, or the Baltimore Society in his name, makes money. Even Boomba gets residuals for the use of his unseen likeness. There actually are residuals and Sam has to find out how to pay them. The matter never came up with Voodoo Woman or The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues. Naturally, being Hollywood, this means only one thing – sequels.

The first pass runs to pitches like Return to the House of Usher… only there’s a stinking tarn where the old homestead used to be, so few dramatic possibilities not involving expensive underwater photography present themselves. I spin a story out of my head in which Roderick Usher’s ghost crawls out of the tarn as a green monkey with flippers. Jim sees straight off that I’m angling a star role for Boomba and nixes the approach. It would be easy to take offence – after all, the chimp is a better actor than the duck-tailed hoodlums AIP put ruffs, doublets and floppy-tasselled hats on in subsequent movies.

Skipping through my now dog-eared and broken-spined Tales of Mystery and Imagination, Roger gets excited about ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’. The slavering sketch artist, about whom I’m starting to worry, draws a teenybopper in a tight sweater strapped down in a pit while Vinnie swings a blade over her bazooms. Jim and Sam love this, and are disappointed when Roger looks up the story and finds it’s a guy in the dungeons of the Spanish Inquisition. Never mind, he says, the pendulum is the monster. By this, he means the torture angle is grabby enough without the added distraction of bazooms. The artist rubs out the bosomage, and puts in a manly chest – revealed through pendulum-slashes in a frilly shirt.

So, Pit and the Pendulum gets a green light. Even Sam sees one picture for the price of two is a better deal if it hauls in ten times the gross of the average four old-style AIP creature features. He quietly squelches Bert I. Gordon’s Puppet People vs. the Colossal Beast project and Alex Gordon’s long-cherished The She-Creature Meets the Old-Time Singing Cowboy script, and pours added shekels into Pit. It’s AIP’s big hope for 1961.

Only problem is, ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ isn’t a story – just a scene. Guy in pit. Nearly sliced by pendulum. Escapes. Even Roger can’t spin that out to feature length with long shots of dripping walls, gnawing rats and Vinnie licking his lips. The problem is solved, unusually, by the writer. Dick Matheson takes his Usher script, changes the names, and drops the climactic house fire in favour of Pit/Pendulum business. This time, brooding youth – not the same one, though you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference – is looking for his missing sister, and she’s married to Vinnie. But she’s still buried alive – twice, as it happens. The Usher sets are back, with new painted flats and torture equipment to bump the house up to a castle. The establishing shot is a bigger glass painting, with crashing waves included. Vinnie keeps his moustache, which saves behind-the-scenes drama – and wears tights, always a big favourite with him.

One morning, I wake and find I’ve grown a moustache too. Plus I’m thinner, paler and more watery-eyed. And my wardrobe – which was once full of snazzy striped threads – runs to basic black. I don’t think much of it, because the times they are a-changing. Pit is, if anything, bigger boffier boxo than Usher, and the walls start closing in.

Tales of Terror gets through its remake of House of Usher in the first reel, and calls it ‘Morella’. Then, it runs through ‘The Black Cat’ and ‘The Cask of Amontillado’ (Peter Lorre and Vinnie compete in a face-pulling contest) for a second act, finishing up with ‘The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar’ (bad-tempered Basil Rathbone turns Vinnie into a ‘nearly liquid mass of loathsome – of detestable putrescence’). Since most of the pages are now torn out of my book, I venture the opinion we’re using up doable Poe at an alarming rate, especially since AIP are cranking out more than one of these pictures a year. I try to get ‘Rue Morgue’ back on the table, determined Boomba will have his comeback before the well runs dry. After only one and a half remakes of House of Usher, everyone is bored again – the curse of success in this business, if you ask me – and trying to break out.

First, Roger sneaks off to do The Premature Burial at another outfit, with Ray Milland playing Vincent Price, but Sam and Jim buy into the deal, so Roger is sucked back in. Premature isn’t quite as much of a remake of Usher as Pit and ‘Morella’, but it is a remake of the scheme-to-drive-the-husband-crazy sub-plot Matheson padded out Pit with. Roger wants to hop-frog off and make, I don’t know, socially significant movies about segregation. He winds up buried alive in Venice, California, in those standing Danny Haller sets. Decaying mansions with stock furniture. Tiny soundstage exteriors with false perspective stunted trees. Dry ice mist pooling over bare floor.

Piqued that Milland is daring to usurp his shtick, Vinnie hares all over the library, doing Master of the World, Confessions of an Opium Eater, Twice-Told Tales, Diary of a Madman and Tower of London. In Vinnie’s mouth, Verne, De Quincey, Hawthorne, de Maupassant and Shakespeare somehow turn into Poe. Brooding youths. Velvet jackets. Buried alive girls. Vinnie a-flutter. Crypt in the basement. House burns down. Swirly credits. The Shakespeare (Tower of London is Richard III translated into English) is directed by Roger, who swears he can’t remember being on the set. He admits it’s possible the film got shot during a blackout he had during a screening of a Russian science fiction film he was cutting the special effects out of to fit around rubber monster scenes shot by some kid to see release as Rocket Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women of Blood. Meanwhile, Vinnie is muy fortunato lording it over the castles of AIP, hawking Sears Roebuck art selections and cookbooks on the side.

Even the critics start noticing they get the same picture every time. Recalling that this happened before, I propose an ingenious solution. When Universal got in a rut with Frankenstein, Dracula and Mummy pictures, they had the monsters meet Abbott and Costello. Comedy killed off the cycle. Once you’ve laughed at a horror, it’s never frightening again. Since Lou has passed away, we can’t get the team back but I suggest it would at least triple the hilarity if Bud’s new comedy partner is a rotund, talented chimpanzee… and AIP can launch a new series with Abbott and Boomba Meet the Black Cat. It’ll slay ’em in the stalls when Boomba starts tossing loathsome, detestable putrescence at Vinnie Price’s moustache. We can bill Boomba as ‘The Chimp of the Perverse’.

Before I sell Jim, Sam and Roger – not to mention Bud Abbott – on this, Matheson dashes off a funny remake of House of Usher, purportedly based on ‘The Raven’. It breaks my heart to tell Boomba he’s been benched again, but the ‘ass. prod.’ gig is still live and EAPSoB dues are pouring in. The Raven, for comedy value, casts Vinnie as the brooding youth in tights, makes the buried-alive chick a faithless slut and has Boris Karloff play Vincent Price. The castle still burns down in by-now scratchy stock footage, which almost counts as a joke. Lorre is in it too, driving Karloff nuts making up his own dialogue. The juve is some piranha-toothed nobody who lands the job by spreading a false rumor he’s Jim Nicholson’s illegitimate son. When it comes out that he isn’t, Sam swears the grinning kid will never work in this town again, though it’s too late to cut him out of The Terror, yet another remake of House of Usher that Roger shoots in three days because he still has Karloff under contract. The twist here is that the house is washed away rather than burned down.

After sending the cycle up with The Raven and cynically hammering it into the ground with The Terror, there’s no way this perpetuation of Poe can persist. So, relief all round, and a sense everyone can move on to better – or at least new – things in 1964. Jim thinks H.P. Lovecraft could be the new Poe, and buys up a ton of his stories. Yes, AIP lay out for film rights! Banner headlines in Variety. Having missed out with Verne, Hawthorne, De Quincey and the other bums, I found the Howard Phillips Lovecraft Society of Providence. I pore through The Outsider and Others, determined to find a tale with a good part for a chimp – the best I can manage is a rat with a withered human head in ‘Dreams in the Witch House’, which should be close enough. But first up on AIP’s Lovecraft schedule is The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. Only it’s going to be The Curse of Charles Dexter Ward – Curse, which sounds like swearing and violence, is a better movie title word than Case, which sounds like measles and bed-rest.

For some reason no one can fathom, Roger wants the non-bastard Nicholson to play Charles Dexter Ward. He thinks up this scene where Chuck is possessed by his evil wizard ancestor and smashes an axe through a door to get to his terrified wife (Debra Paget) while shouting something from The Tonight Show. I know that will never work, but keep quiet. Vinnie, meanwhile, happily breezes off to play Big Daddy Brubeck in Sweet Charity on Broadway, intending to conquer a whole new career as a musical comedy star. The velvet jackets go in storage. The burning building footage goes back in the cans. As per HPL, this time, the monster is the monster.

Though I don’t live anywhere remotely near a Witch House, I’m tormented by dreams – not of human-faced rats or green monkeys, but an angry Eddy. In my restless slumber, Poe comes at me with a long list of grievances which, in my official EAPSoB capacity, he wants presented to Congress, the publishing industry, drinking establishments long since gone out of business, the United States army and sundry other bodies and individuals. With his name writ large on panoramic magic lantern screens undreamed of even in the thousand-and-third tale of Scheherazade, he feels he has the attention of a general public who once gave him the shortest of shrifts – and wishes to plead for a redress of wrongs done long ago. I put these dreams down to the rich foods I’m able to afford thanks to ‘ass. prod.’ fees, and think hard about cutting down on lunches.

At the Charles Dexter Ward preview, we find out something mysterious and beyond imagining has happened during production. I settle into my seat, with a big bucket of popcorn Sam has made me pay for, certain that the HPLSoP is going to trash the EAPSoB in the coming fiscal year. The lights go down, the curtains crank open, and the projector whirrs. The AIP logo fills the screen. The opening title is not H.P. Lovecraft’s The Curse of Charles Dexter Ward… but Edgar Allan Poe’s The Haunted Palace.

There’s a rustling, creeping, susurrating, terror-filled sensation in the house. The wet cigar falls from Sam’s open mouth. Roger puts on dark glasses and starts to cry. Jim gets up and checks with the projectionist that this is the right film. I know now we’re all cursed, that we’ll never be free of Eddy Poe Rex.

The velvet jackets are back. The fog swirls on those same tiny sets. There’s a crypt in the basement, where the monster lives. It’s out of focus. Vincent Price, grieving for lost chances on the Great White Way, plods through a part written for a much younger, scarier man, bidding a bittersweet farewell to life as the New Rex Harrison (or the White Sammy Davis Jr). Finally, as we sob in the screening room, the house burns down. It’s another remake of House of Usher. After burning beams collapse for the ninth or tenth time, there’s even a quote. ‘“While, like a rapid ghastly river, through the pale door, a hideous throng rush out forever, and laugh – but smile no more.” – Edgar Allan Poe’.

We know how that pale throng feel…

In melancholy despair, Roger flees to swinging England, vowing to make films about Oliver Cromwell and the Beatles. Unable to resist the fateful clutch of dread destiny, he shoots The Masque of the Red Death and Tomb of Ligeia – with Vinnie Price, buried girls, burning buildings, swirly credits, and end-quotes. ‘The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends and where the other begins?’ ‘And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.’ There’s nothing Roger can do. He hires Richard Chamberlain, Christopher Lee, Shirley MacLaine or Jerry Lewis, but visits the star’s dressing room on the first day of the shoots to find ashen-faced, quivering-jowelled, red-eyed Vinnie Price having his eyebrows powdered and helped into another velvet jacket.

I wind up the HPLSoP and find myself shackled full-time to the interests of the EAPSoB, which has regional chapters in Boston, New York, Paris and Antarctica. The Society brings a massive lawsuit against NASA, claiming that the Apollo program was infringing the intellectual property rights of ‘The Balloon Hoax’.

Boomba drowns in his swimming pool. At Hollywoodlawn, I march leaden-footed behind Cheetah, Bonzo, J. Fred Muggs and Stanley (billed as ‘more fun than a barrel of teenagers’ in Disney’s The Monkey’s Uncle) as they carry the child-sized coffin to the tiny grave. Judy, the simian slut who wormed her way into Boomba’s affections then stole a plum continuing role on Daktari from him, makes a show of honking bogus grief into her Kleenex. The wake is a gloomy, ill-tempered affair. I repress an urge to daub the sanctimonious surviving chimps with pitch, string ’em up from the beams at Ben Frank’s and set light to them.

Poe goes on. Roger, running in vain from the Red Death, takes a trip around the world in eighty pictures. City in the Sea, The Oblong Box, The Conqueror Worm, Murders in the Rue Morgue (finally – but with a goddamn gorilla suit and made in Spain!), Xing a Paragrab, The System of Dr Tarr and Professor Fether. All the tales and poems are consumed, so AIP start in on the essays. In ‘Eureka’, a velvet-jacket philosopher is on the point of understanding how the universe functions when his buried-alive niece claws at his eyes and the house catches fire.

My hair long and lank, my cheeks hollow, my eyes red-veined, my moustache floppy – I realise I look like Eddy Poe. Considering he was found near death in ill-fitting clothes borrowed from someone else, it seems I even dress like the unhappy poet whose still-beating heart of horror I discern beneath the floorboards of my office or bricked up in the basement of my bungalow (which doesn’t even have a basement). Everywhere I go, every mirror I look into, I glimpse the spectre of myself, silently accusing ‘thou art the man!’

I am that ‘unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster followed fast and follows faster till my songs one burden bore – till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore – of “Never-Nevermore”!’

But I’m not alone in being by horror haunted, by Eddy ensnared, by Allan alienated, by Poe persecuted…

By now, it’s not just Roger films and Vinnie vehicles. It’s everything Jim and Sam put into production. Alongside remakes of House of Usher, AIP are doing annual reunions of Beach Party – itself a thinly disguised remake of Gidget – with beach bums and bikini babes surfing and smooching to tunes from Frankie and Annette, plus comedy Hells’ Angels led by Rocco Barbella from Bilko. Even in the first Beach Party, the first signs are there when ‘Big Daddy’, who runs the hang-out shack on the beach, looks up and turns out to be… Vincent Price. AIP try a James Bond skit and it comes out as Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, with Vinnie Price using a razor-pendulum to part Frankie Avalon’s hair. Soon, all beach pictures bear the mark of Poe – Buried Alive Bikini, Beach Blanket Berenice, Muscle Beach Metzengerstein. Annette spends more time in a shroud than a bathing suit, with a black cat entombed in her beehive hairdo. Rod Usher takes over the Hells’ Angels, wearing a studded velvet jacket and a floppy-tasselled cap, and complains that the revving of bikes is torture to his over-sensitive ears.

We’re all drinking heavily now, and choking on the poison. The Hollywood Reporter prints an item that Jim is on the point of marrying his thirteen-year-old cousin. Variety claims Roger is trying to raise funds for a Southern Literary Magazine when he ought to be shooting a motor-racing picture in Europe. At the Brown Derby, they say Sam is never seen without a raven flapping ominously after him, croaking whole stanzas. Vinnie lands a prime-time comedy special, but it comes out as An Evening With Edgar Allan Poe. My second-best client, a rare and radiant exotic dancer whom the angels name Lenore, flies from my agency door and I spend much time agonising about her lost and lovely tassels.

Still, it continues. AIP try a war picture. It turns out to feature a brooding young commando who storms a Nazi castle in search of his missing girlfriend and finds Vinnie in a velvet SS uniform before inevitable torture, burial alive and burning-down. With his producer’s hat on, Roger sends some film students and the Nicholson kid into the desert to make a Western, and they come back with Vinnie as an accursed cattle baron, doppelganger gunslingers and a cattle stampede flattening the ranch house in place of the fire. Rocket Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women of Blood eventually sells to television with the hammer and sickle insignia on the spacecraft blotted out. It is somehow re-edited. A brooding young astronaut lands on a haunted world where Mr Touch-and-Go Bullet-Head (Vincent Price) rules a telepathic tribe of ululating bikini girls who are interred living within the tomb as doom-haunted dinosaurs set fire to the whole planet.

Then, it’s not just American International.

The plague shows up as little things in little films. Two Cavalry troopers called William Wilson in The Great Sioux Massacre. A Pink Panther cartoon called Dial ‘P’ for Pendulum. A premature burial in John Goldfarb, Please Come Home. Then, a descent into the maelstrom. The Red Death arrives during the revolutionary scenes of Doctor Zhivago, and the rest of the film finds Darkness and Despair descending illimitably over Omar Sharif and Julie Christie. The Agony and the Ecstasy features Charlton Heston labouring for decades over a small oval portrait of one of Roderick Usher’s ancestors. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold winds up with Richard Burton clutching a purloined letter and ranting that the orangutan did it. Even a John Wayne–Howard Hawks Western turns on a Poe poem, El Dorado.

The curse is complete when movie theatres book The Sound of Music as a roadshow attraction and get The Sound of Meowing. In vast, empty, decaying haunted picture palaces across the land, Julie Andrews climbs ragged mountains and pokes around a basement only to find Captain von Trapp (Vincent Price) has walled up his wife along with her noisy cat. At the end, Austria burns down.

My senses are more painfully acute by the hour. I cannot venture out by day unless the sun is completely obscured by the thickest, gloomiest cloud and after dark can tolerate only the tiniest, flickering flame of a candle. My ears are assaulted by the faintest sound. A housewife tearing open a cereal packet two blocks away reverberates within my skull like the discharge of a Gatling gun. I can bear only the most pallid of foods, and neglect my formerly favoured watering-holes to become a ghoul-like habitué of the new McDonald’s chain, where fare that tastes of naught save cardboard may be found at the expense of a few trivial cents. The touch of my secretary becomes as sandpaper upon my appallingly sensitive skin, and raises sharp pains, sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at my pores. Few in the industry return my telephone calls, which is all to the good since I can of course scarcely bear the torture of tintinnabulation… of the bells – of the bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells, bells – of the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

Movies are only the beginning. Soon, Poe is everywhere. The house is the monster, and the house is the United States of America. The break-out TV hits of the next seasons are The Usher Family, The Man From U.L.A.L.U.M.E. and The Marie Tyler Roget Show. Vincent Price takes over from Walter Cronkite, and intones the bad news in a velvet jacket, promising ‘much of madness, and more of sin, and horror the soul of the plot’ in reports from Vietnam, Washington and the Middle East. Sonny and Cher take ‘The Colloquy of Monos and Una’ to Number One in the hit parade, followed by Procol Harum’s ‘A Whiter Shade of Poe’, Scott McKenzie’s ‘San Francisco (Be Sure to Put Some Flowers on Your Grave)’, The Mamas & the Papas’ ‘Dream a Little Dream Within a Dream of You’, The Archies’ ‘Bon-Bon’ and Dean Martin’s ‘Little Old Amontillado Drinker Me’. Vinnie hosts American Bandstand too, warily scanning the dancers for a skullface figure in red robes.

A craze for floppy shirts, ink-stained fingers and pale faces seizes the surfer kids, and everyone on the strip has a pet raven or a trained ape. Beauty contests for cataleptics are all the rage, and Miss Universe is crowned with a wreath in her coffin as she is solemnly bricked up by the judges. The Green Berets adopt a ‘conqueror worm’ cap badge. Housing developments rise up tottering on shaky ground near stagnant ponds, with pre-stressed materials to provide Usher cracks and incendiaries built into the light-fittings for more spectacular conflagrations. The most popular names for girls in 1966–7 are ‘Lenore’, ‘Annabel’, ‘Ligeia’ and ‘Madeline’.

In a kingdom by the sea, we are haunted. In the El Dorado of Los Angeles, white fog lies thick on the boulevards. The mournful ‘nevermores’ of ravens perched on statues is answered by the strangled mewling of black cats immured in basements. And the seagulls chime in with ‘tekeli-li tekeli-li’ as if that was any help.

During the whole of a dull, dark and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hang oppressively low in the heavens, I pass alone in a Cadillac convertible through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length find myself as the shades of evening draw on, within view of the melancholy House of Roger. I know not how it is – but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervades my spirit. I try to shake off the fog, like the after-dream of a reveller upon maryjane, in my brain and rid my mind of the words of Poe. Yet he sits beside me, phantasmal, fiddling with the radio dial, breathing whisky and muttering in intricate rhyme schemes. I have taken the Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu, where AIP and Corman – flush with monies from the Poe pictures – have thrown up a studio in a bleak castle atop the jagged cliffs. From the road, it looks phoney as a glass shot. The scrublands all around are withered and sere, and I’m not even sure what ‘sere’ means.

The castle seems abandoned, but I gain access through a wide crack in the walls. In the gloom, I find the others. Roger, in dark glasses with side panels. Sam, with a raven chewing on his cigar. Jim, haunted by the doppelganger who no longer claims to be his son. Vinnie, worst of us all, liquid face dribbling over his frilly shirt, eyebrows and moustache shifted inches lower by the tide of loathsome, of detestable putrescence. A few others are with the crowd – the embalmed, toothless corpse of Lorre; an ancient withered ape just recognisable as Boris Karloff; barely breathing girls, and a teenage singer coughing blood into a handkerchief; an ignored brooding youth or two, hiding in the shadows and trying to avoid being upstaged.

All eyes are accusingly upon me. ‘Thou art the man’ is written plainly on everyone’s faces. I admit it to myself, and the plague-ravaged company. We have brought Poe back. Neglected and despised in life, to his mind cheated of the riches and recognition due his genius, he has been kept half-alive in the grave, plagiarised and paperbacked, bought and sold and made a joke of. No wonder we have raised an angry Eddy, a vindictive and a spiteful genius. This time, he has caught on and he will not let go, not of us and not of the world. This is the dawning of the Age of Edgar Allan, the era of Mystery and Imagination. We have ushered – ahem – it in, but we are to be its mummified, stuffed, walled-up victims, the sacrifices necessary for the foundations of even the shakiest edifice.

I have a new horror. It seizes my brain like a vulture’s – no, a raven’s – talons. I hear the faint whisper of nails against wood, the tapping of hairy knuckles against a coffin lid, that first gibber of fear before the awful realisation takes hold. I can hear Boomba, and know that – through my neglect – I have suffered him to be buried alive. The gibber becomes a snarling, hooting, raging, clawing shriek. The tapping, as of someone gently rapping, becomes a hammering, a clamouring, a gnawing, a pawing, a crashing, a smashing. Wood breaks, earth parts, and long-fingered, bloodied, torn-nailed, horribly semi-human hands grope for the bone handle of a straight razor.

Jim and Sam want to know what to do, how to escape. To them, every contract has a get-out clause. Roger and Vinnie know this isn’t true.

Without, a storm rages. The heavens rage at the sorrows of the world.

A door opens with a creak. The attenuated shadow of a chimpanzee is cast upon the flagstones, gleaming cruel blade held high. We turn to look, our capacity for wonder and terror long since exceeded.

Brushfires burn all around, struggling against the torrents. The crack that runs through the castle – the crack that runs through California – widens, with great shouts as of the planet itself in pain and terror. A million tons of mud is on the march, and we stand between it and the sea. The walls bend and bow like painted canvas flats. A candle falls and flames spread. A maiden screams. A burning bird streaks comet-like through the air.

The ape’s clutch is at my throat and the razor held high. In Boomba’s glittering, baleful eye I discern cruel recognition.

Vinnie, before the burning beams come down, has to have the last quote…

‘“…the screenplay is the tragedy Man, and its hero the Conqueror Worm!” – Edgar Allan…’

JUST LIKE EDDY

LET ME CALL myself, for the present, Edgar A. Poe. The fair screen now shining before me need not yet be sullied by my full appellation. This has been already too much an object for the scorn, for the horror, for the detestation of my soul. To the uttermost region of the globe have not the indignant winds bruited its unparalleled infamy? Oh, outcast of all outcasts most abandoned – to the earth art thou not for ever dead? to its honours, to its flowers, to its golden aspirations? – and a cloud, dense, dismal and limitless, does it not hang eternally between thy hopes and heaven?

Upon my writing desk is a gruesome object in the form of a volume: cheaply produced, ill-set, carelessly glued; issued not a year or two gone, but misdated through ignorance of the correct use of roman numerals. Less an edition than a falling from the presses, this book – for such we must call the damned thing, though so to do assaults our sensitive bibliophile vitals – is cast out to stalls and stores, for the penurious and the ignorant. It might be gawped over for an hour or two before its pages loosen like the leaves of October and are spilled in the streets. Upon its thin, ready-warped board cover is a rough, ugly woodcut: a grinning skull with eye-sockets too small, a downcast black bird with wings too large. And the title of this gathering of butcher’s paper, as given on the ready-yellowed, coarse frontispiece, is:

TALES AND POEMS
by Edgar Allen Poe

Tales and Poems need not concern us. The texts are a mish-mash, lifted entire through ingenious photographic process from several other editions so the face and size of type changes from page to page, from story to poem. Of course, many errors and misprintings are carelessly scattered throughout the copy, like seed strewn for chickens.

And there, on the frontispiece is the arch-error, the primal misprint, the eternal slip of the pen. Since I second ventured into the arena of print, dropping the dignified anonymity of ‘A Bostonian’ – for so I signed my first published work, Tamerlane and Other Poems – to speak up for myself and proudly state my own, true name, to stand by my work and dare the world to take it and myself as they would, this has plagued me.

Edgar Allen Poe

Allen! Edgar Allen Poe! All-damned Allen! Always Allen, always. Allen! Allen! Allen! Though it is the work of a devil of the printer’s variety, I cannot but think it also the product of the machinations of another of his breed, of more sulphurous and princely-yet-tenebrous mien.

Never am I rid of this phantom of my own making. The dreadful double has dogged me through the allotted span of my life and persisted even beyond the supposed release of widely reported death. Edgar Allen Poe mocks my aspirations to Art and Science, unpicks the threads of my tapestry, gnaws ratlike at the foundations of my endeavour.

Allen is my imp of the perverse, my goblin damned, my ravening ghoul, my frightful fiend.

For the love of God, shall I never be rid of E. Allen Poe!

I concede that the Allen is my own fault, that he is my creation. All evil that he is comes from within me, and he is all that is base and degraded in my person. Yet he has a damnable life of his own, beyond my conscious influence, and directed entirely towards the destruction of my self, my reputation.

What is a man’s name if not his reputation, his soul?

Each time his name appears in print, my own is devalued, trodden into charnel filth and forgotten.

The appearance of Allen is not confined to cheap, pirated editions that skim my most renowned works and pass them off as the ravings of a madman and a degenerate. Allen appears in learned commentaries, obituaries, scholarly histories, popular lectures, biographies and bibliographies, broadsheets and magazines, the credits of motion pictures and television programmes, the collections of major universities, articles in every manner of publication, private letters that have strayed into the public purview, numberless schoolboy essays and compositions, plaques and honours and monuments. Immortalised a thousand thousand times, he is carried abroad through media undreamed-of at the time of his, and my, first fame. The thousand-and-third tale of Scheherazade is of his rise to prominence in this fabulous age of futurity.

Edgar Allen Poe rules, as the graffito has it; and I, le vrais emble Edgar Poe, am lost, forgotten and impugned, cursed and doomed.

Like many of my sorrows, this has its beginning in the actions of the man who was never my father and acted, indeed, as no father to me.

I write, with distaste bitter still after more than a century and a half, of John Allan, of the trading house of Allan and Ellis. Upon the deaths of my true parents, David and Eliza Poe, I was taken as a babe into the house of Allan, a golden orphan, an ornament for the philistine businessman. With the death of his own wife, the devoted Frances, Allan began a programme of calculated torture by hope, dangling before me the prospect of wealth enough to support my literary endeavours but always snatching it away. My early failures, at university and West Point, can all be laid at the door of this Torquemada of the Modern Age, who mockingly refused either to cut me off and cast me out entirely or to finance properly my launch upon the literary world to which unasked-for poetical genius fit me.

When I was but two years of age, this creature prised apart my given name – Edgar Poe, honest and simple Edgar Poe of distinguished lineage – with prehensile fingers like those of a great orangutan, and spat in his own patronymic, marking me for ever as a man with three names (one invariably misspelled).

This is the most hideous irony of the situation. I care not for the name Allan and wish it were not mine. Truly, he had no right to force it upon me. In railing against the malforming error of Allen-for-Allan, I defend not myself but the man who more than any other mortal sought to ruin me, to stand between me and my rightful position.

Allan! John Allan! I only ever signed myself Edgar Allan Poe when communicating with my soi-disant stepfather, usually in signing missives stating my desperate need for funds, in the hope of pricking his elephant hide to awaken a conscience that was in him stillborn. Such letters were invariably unanswered, perhaps left in the rack for weeks on end as John Allan pursued his own mean pleasures. I understand that, in the writings composed during what is generally reckoned my lifetime, there survive only two minor instances of my use of the name Edgar Allan Poe, both from a period when I was unwisely tossing good emotional currency after bad by attempting reconciliation with a man beyond all decent feeling.

Many tales and poems and publications did I sign Edgar A. Poe. This, I admit, in mournful and never-ending remembrance. This, even, was a grievous, ruining error. I was born Edgar Poe. I am known as such to this day in that congenial country France – the only blessed dominion where American geniuses on the scale of myself and the estimable Mr Lewis are fully understood and appreciated.

I should never have succumbed to the temptation of a middle initial. It is a sheer puffery, whereby many authors of mediocre reputation and talents attempt to inflate their own by-line to something with cachet, with status.

He speaks a profound truth who warns you to beware authors – and especially authoresses, most especially my countrywomen – with three names. It seems these thrice-named ones are often afflicted with a peculiar and unwholesome compulsion to foist upon the public their maunderings in as many volumes as they have names, and indeed to pile upon such trilogies with additional instalments unpromised and unsought-for until the shelves of the booksellers groan with heartfelt pain.

I should have abandoned even the token of Allan’s name, that odious initial, that alien and alienating A. I am and was proud of the Poes that came before me, the Revolutionary general and the great star of the stage. I found my only safe harbour amongst the circle of their relatives, my cousin-wife Virginia Clemm (my own darling Sissy) and her mother, Maria Clemm (my devoted Muddy). Yet – I curse my weakness and vanity, my shameful need for cash and the acute embarrassment of living always in a state of genteel beggary – the Poes were much reduced in circumstances, through no fault of theirs, and John Allan was, through no endeavour of his own, colossally rich. A wealthy uncle died and left him a hoard of Croesus, a fabulous treasure beyond even that secreted by the pirate Captain Kidd. The gold tempted me, prevented me from breaking fully with this cruel man.

With money, what might I not have done? My cherished project, a true literary magazine for America, might have come to fruition and proved a very great success, much to the benefit of the culture of my homeland, which has – for the want of an influence such as The Stylus might have provided – descended into a barbarous, illiterate and nightmarish stew of ignorance and vulgarity beyond even the blackest of my black imaginings. The Stylus would have proved a forum for the highest of artistic and political debate; it could have presented reasoned, definitive answer to those abolitionist fanatics who so dreadfully sundered the country but a decade after I passed from public notice, inflicting upon it a rapine from which it has never fully recovered and elevating to wasteful mastery the brutish and barely human blacks who were in my youth so properly and mercifully chained. If we had been blessed with an income, my Sissy, rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Virginia, might have received proper medical attention and survived beyond her tragically brief lifespan, to bear me sons and daughters who would have carried on my name and done me honour.

Allan denied me, denied America, these blessings.

Yet, each time I was on the point of abandoning entirely all hope of aid from that quarter, some crumb, some trickle, would come from John Allan. By keeping the ghost of his name within mine, and with each appearance of my name in print above a tale or a poem or an article or a work of criticism, I maintained the limping, lagging last of our relations.

John Allan passed out of my life, married again and with fat, bawling new heirs for his fortune. But, as he rode off in his gilded carriage to undeserved bliss, another appeared and crept from the shadows to torment me.

Edgar Allen Poe.

I cannot remember when he first appeared. It could not have been in any periodical for which I laboured in an editorial position: The Southern Literary Messenger, Graham’s Magazine or The Broadway Journal. I was a proofreader of unmatched skill, as even those of my colleagues who became my bitterest foes would have been forced to acknowledge. When the matter was within my influence, I insisted upon the initial only, not the full name. Edgar A. Poe was safe, but Edgar Allan Poe was a dangerous venture which so often rebounded upon me.

No, Edgar Allen Poe must have been born in some other connection. Scratched on an envelope by a barely literate tradesman, over one of the damnable reminders that elaborately brought to my attention some debt as if it were possible that I could with honour forget such a matter. Or perhaps it was printed above one of the many, many – mostly anonymous with the full cowardice such implies – attacks upon my work and character issued in publications that were the despicable organs of that canting gaggle of fools, knaves, toadies and dunderheads who then – as now! – made American letters their own frog pond, croaking at each other and their pitifully few indentured readers; all the while contriving to do down and push under any truly original, important voice.

Was there initially malign intent? Surely, the first to have made the mistake – the common mistake, I have heard it called, though how such a lingering and deadly blight could ever be a commonality is beyond the confines even of my notoriously fevered brain – could not have known. No, it was repetition that had the power to bring into the world the fiend who built upon the foundations of John Allan and worked so devotedly towards my utter degradation and ruin.

At first, when grotesque tales reached me, I was indignant, certain that lies were being propagated by my so-called friends and acquaintances. Of course, none dared repeat such calumnies to my face, but I was always sensitive to whisperings, perhaps unnaturally so. His voice, Allen’s, is always a whisper, a low, distinct and never-to-be-forgotten whisper which thrills to the very marrow of my bones, the whisper of a man dead yet unable to depart his mummifying corpse.

The world knows, or thinks it knows, my story. After my final break with Allan, I was forced to embark upon a perilous and rarely remunerative career in the employ of the periodicals of the day, all the while hoping in vain to combine pursuit of literary excellence with the plebeian necessity of earning a daily buck. Sole support of my sickly wife and her helpless mother, I took a succession of positions with a succession of publications, making fortunes for bloated and idle owners but not myself, and losing through my drunkenness or stubborn pride each employment, leaving behind only tales and poems that have lasted to this day and bad debts. It has been said, over and over, that I was a slave to the demon drink, that my condition was such that even a single glass of wine was enough to spin my brain into a frenzy, to send me on a binge that might last days and during which I was as one possessed, capable of any vice or insult, a terror to my friends and foes alike, yet so addicted to such stimulus that I would continue imbibing even to the point of physical collapse and, finally, death.

That, I maintain, was him.

Edgar Allen Poe.

Not I. Not Edgar Poe. Not, and it pains me to type the name to which I should never have laid claim, Edgar Allan Poe.

It was in Philadelphia, or perhaps New York, and after my Sissy had suffered the terrible onset of consumption, a vein in her throat exploding as her voice was raised in song, but before that dread disease took her away from me and robbed me of all hope for future happiness. I was writing so much and so fast that my fingers were permanently grooved by the pen and my hand was wrung with constant pain. Suddenly, without premonition, I was no longer welcome in the offices of publications with which I had hitherto enjoyed a cordial connection. The private homes of many were similarly closed to me, and the staff of certain hostelries or stores began to give me a wide berth in the street.

Had I somehow, unknown to myself, been transformed into a pariah?

I overheard stories of my exploits. I had assaulted this prominent novelist with a savage fury, importuned the wife of that noted editor with unbelievable licence. More than once, I found Sissy in tears and had to coax from her the substance of some misdeed she had overheard ascribed to me. I found myself dunned by bills – yes, in that hated phantom name, but with my actual address – that I knew for certain I had never run up.

There was only one possible conclusion, the impossibility that I might unknowingly be the subject of these fantastic tales having been justly excluded.

My double was at large, wrecking my life.

My doppelganger, as the Germans put it. Identical in every outward aspect, but inside a prodigy of evil, a warped mirror of my own self.

Many times, I was driven from home and position by Edgar Allen. He was a brawler and a drunkard, but possessed of the same canny intelligence that fired my own genius. I might be a pioneer among poets, but he was first among degenerates, as devoted to his calling as I to mine.

I set out to find him, and put an end to this sorry business between us. I knew he could be no more than a projection, a ghost before his time, escaped from my body but attached by a golden thread. If I were to snap him back, I would be free of him and he of me. We would be one mind, one soul. I was confident that I had the force of intellect and strength of character to deal with any ill influence he might have upon my thoughts.

It seemed that he was always just out of my sight. I might arrive at a place mere moments after his passing, which often put me in the position of answering for his misdeeds. My pursuit was dangerous, leading me to the receipt of many an unearned thrashing. Sissy and Muddy would tend my wounds, and worry over me, but my beautiful Sissy – her life leaking slowly, agonisingly away in a poetical tragedy of the first water – was in no condition to consider my poor health before her own. The walls appeared to be closing in on me and mine, and the scythe of death swished closer, ever closer, above the head of her whom I loved the most in all the world. It became paramount that I finish with this Allen, for only when he was a barely discernible heartbeat within the tomb of my mind would I be free to devote full energies to my husbandly duties and to the higher work of literature.

As dogged and perspicacious as any detective, I traced the impostor through reasoning. He led me from place to place, to other cities, and I apprehended that Allen was as intent on evading as Edgar was on ensnaring. In clues – the torn corner of a page scrawled with words in a caricature of my own hand, a button that upon examination I found missing from my own army greatcoat, lines of obscene verse scratched on the underside of a table in a low grog-shop – I found messages from him to me, from Edgar Allen to Edgar Poe. He could not bring himself to vanish into the mists, for he needed me at his heels to give his life purpose. Eventually, in dreadful and depthless despair, I realised he had almost won his final victory. In following him, I was compelled to venture into the dens of vice he frequented, and forced into many of the wretched habits that were his. Stories went back to Sissy and Muddy of me being seen in such-and-such a sinkhole of drunkenness and depravity; now, these tales were, in all particulars, sadly true.

The worst came when, after weeks in search of Edgar Allen, I decided finally to abandon the pursuit entirely. I purged myself of the obsession, and determined to let my rival go his own way. I would elevate my name so far above his that he could do me no harm. I returned to our poor home, bedraggled from my adventures and in a sorry state, to discover from Muddy that I was already in residence, closeted with Sissy, and that I had been so for some days.

Oh terror beyond imagining!

My home, shared with such tender and innocent souls, I had thought inviolate, off-limits as we said at West Point. Yet now it was transformed at a lightning strike into a haunt of horrors, each familiar item of furniture or crockery becoming a mocking grotesque. My limbs would not serve me as I dashed for the stairs, and I seemed to plunge into a maelstrom of churning darkness. Our cat, a wise and humorous presence suddenly become a fire-eyed imp, was between my ankles, stretching out to undo my balance. Muddy, full as ever of concern for her Eddy, rushed to support me. At first bewildered by what she took to be my bilocation, that good woman became affrighted that I had fallen from an upstairs window and received ill-treatment, perhaps under the hooves of a horse, in the street. I found myself struggling with my wife’s mother, a true mother to me, and terrifying her with my cries. The cat joined in with the sounding of ferocious mewls, rendering my already-taut nerves like the strings of a violin sawed at by the devil’s fiddler.

Breaking free of Muddy, I ventured upstairs, dragging myself up by the banister, conscious of a growing terror that made my heart a bellows and caused the blood to pound in my temples like a pagan drumbeat.

The door of the room I shared with Sissy, my wife-daughter-lover-child-muse-sister, hung open. Within, a candle burned with sickly greenish flame.

I stepped across the threshold, and found Sissy sprawled atop the covers of our bed, night-clothes rent, scarlet blood discharging from her mouth. Other flowing wounds, open and intimate, marred the whiteness of her tiny form. She had been sorely abused. I am convinced that it was on that night she truly began the long, slow, heart-breaking business of dying. This was the worst the fiend Allen could do, the crime that was beyond all forgiveness.

Howling, I glimpsed my own two evil eyes as I smashed the mirror on the wall. That was the nearest I came to seeing him, until much later.

After that, I lost some days to hysteria.

Sissy, of course, died. I had opportunities after that and continued to write as ever, but my darker double had the upper hand. He grew bolder, taking advantage of my increasing reluctance to venture beyond my hearth, to perform ever more fantastic and appalling acts in my approximate name.

Edgar Allen Poe was busy in those years.

His name was everywhere. My own was quite eclipsed. I lost a deal of money and alienated a publisher who might have advanced my cause greatly by insisting a printer destroy an entire edition of my two-volume Tales of the Folio Club because the hated Edgar Allen Poe had signed the introduction to this collection of my greatest stories. With that abortion was lost an original tale of mystery, – in which the Chevalier Auguste Dupin penetrates the tangled puzzle of ‘The Suicides of Saint-Germain’ – which would doubtless have been ranked among my finest pieces.

Allen even trespassed into print.

Now, I could not tell you which of my later works were his and which were mine. Most of the famous pieces, the stories and the poems, are and remain mine. Too much of the journalism, the fillers and the canting reviews of unreadable books, are his. The worst tragedy is Eureka, an unwilling collaboration. The original manuscript of this essay was mine, a clear-sighted and visionary work which would have placed my name alongside not merely Milton and Shakespeare but Newton and Galileo. After a period of protracted study and insight, a single-theory-of-everything came to me and I was able to contrive no less than an explanation in a manner that could not be mistaken of the material and spiritual nature of the universe itself. When the work appeared in print, it had been tampered with by my rival. Whole passages were rewritten so that the meaning was horribly obscure, and the grand, beautiful design marred beyond repair by pernicious nonsense and stretches that crudely imitated my own style and manner as if composed by a trained ape with a nasty knack for mimicry. My critics, firmly in the Allen camp, were savage and merciless. It was a setback I endeavoured to correct through lecturing and footnotes, but he had again lured me into evil ways and I could never reassemble my original version, could never recapture that moment of pure understanding that had prompted me to append such a thundercrack of a title to the book that should have been my finest but which became an embarrassment on a par with the poetry I tortured out of myself as a schoolboy.

The Eureka affair determined me to recommence my search for my enemy. Without a wife, I was less hampered by fear for my own safety. I was in my fortieth year, and the wrongs done me were stamped on my features. Implacable, purified by burning memory of the crimes against my soul, I turned about and looked for the trail.

It was late in the year of 1849 that I found him.

For months, I went from city to city, taking work as a lecturer and scribbler, capitalising on a fame which was now as much his as mine. I realised many who came to see me perform were hoping for a display of Edgar Allen-like madness and degeneracy rather than Edgar Poe-like sense and artistry. They were, for the most part, disappointed though, as before, the nearer I came to my quarry, the more like him I became.

I was unwelcome everywhere. Reports of my double came in from all quarters. He had engaged in fist-fights with editors and critics and common sots. He had approached literary ladies as if they were gutter drabs. He had declaimed his genius – my genius! – in such a manner as to alienate all who might have supported me. He had made fantastical claims of the wonders of the coming ages, misrepresenting as prophecy those fictions of mine presented as cautionary tales. He had delighted in the morbid and ghastly aspects of my work, but scorned the beauties and wonders I sought also to realise. He made bad jokes, undermining my once-prized reputation as a delightful wit; he even had the temerity to pass off as mine ‘X-ing a Paragrab’, a leaden failure at humour on the subject, no less, of misprints.

Sometimes, I would lecture and he would take the money owed me, scattering it in the worst dives. He made a will that ensured the permanent blighting of my name, appointing my worst enemy – Rufus Griswold, Rough Rufus, Griswold the grisly – as my literary executor. For near a century, my works were always republished, ascribed as often as not to Edgar Allen, with a libellous biographical sketch by the ghastly Griswold which attributed to me all the misdeeds and imperfections of character of my foul persecutor.

We played tag throughout the cities of the eastern United States: Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Baltimore. I realised things had changed between us. He was hunting me, as I was him, and I feared he intended to do away with me, perhaps to wall me up living in a cellar, and take my place.

I contrived in small ways to thwart him. In New York, certain I was in danger of being murdered, I shaved off my moustache to make a difference between us, so I would no longer be blamed for his crimes. That was a mistake; it made me, Edgar Poe, less the real man, and he, Edgar Allen, more the original.

It was night in the lonesome October, in the worst year of the century, and Baltimore was in the throes of a corrupt and hard-fought election. Then and there, I caught up at long last with my nemesis. I came upon him, and knew him for who he was, in an alleyway between taverns, steaming with the discharges of chronic inebriates, caked with a filth of loathsome putrescence.

Edgar Allen Poe was in a sorry state, a grotesque caricature of myself, having accepted many bribes of drink for each of the many votes he had cast for either of the candidates. At last, he was collapsed, shortly before sunrise, a tiny slug of a man. His clothes were shoddy, more threadbare even than those to which I was reduced, and he was as he had always been, a living spectre with a broken mirror for a face.

‘Thou art the man,’ I croaked.

It was but a moment’s work to wring the life out of him. But as I choked, he uttered words.

It was Edgar Allen; but he spoke no longer in a whisper, and I could have fancied that I myself was speaking while he said:

‘You have conquered and I yield. Yet, henceforward art thou also dead – dead to the World, to Heaven, and to Hope! In me didst thou exist – and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered myself.’

These were my own words, cast back to me like an echo in my skull. They shook me to the core, and I hurried away, unseen by those who gathered about the stinking body on the cobbles.

Or was I the one gasping his last? And the shadow fleeing, my enemy?

He is buried, under my name. My miserly cousin Neilson Poe had me interred without marker. Later, he raised a subscription for a tombstone which was smashed – by a derailing locomotive – before it could be erected.

What was carved on that stone? His name, or mine?

I am what I am called, am whichever of us is invoked, and I shall be Edgar Allen as often as Edgar Poe. Each time the pernicious misspelling creeps into print the true Poe is beaked in the heart and the impostor reigns in illimitable triumph.

This is as it shall be, evermore.

AMERIKANSKI DEAD AT THE MOSCOW MORGUE

OR: CHILDREN OF MARX AND COCA-COLA

AT THE RAILWAY station in Borodino, Yevgeny Chirkov was separated from his unit. As the locomotive slowed, he hopped from their carriage to the platform, under orders to secure, at any price, cigarettes and chocolate. Another unknown crisis intervened and the steam-driven antique never truly stopped. Tripping over his rifle, he was unable to reach the outstretched hands of his comrades. The rest of the unit, jammed halfway through windows or hanging out of doors, laughed and waved. A jet of steam from a train passing the other way put salt on his tail and he dodged, tripping again. Sergeant Trauberg found the pratfall hilarious, forgetting he had pressed a thousand roubles on the private. Chirkov ran and ran but the locomotive gained speed. When he emerged from the canopied platform, seconds after the last carriage, white sky poured down. Looking at the black-shingled trackbed, he saw a flattened outline in what had once been a uniform, wrists and ankles wired together, neck against a gleaming rail, head long gone under sharp wheels. The method, known as ‘making sleepers’, was favoured along railway lines. Away from stations, twenty or thirty were dealt with at one time. Without heads, Amerikans did no harm.

Legs boiled from steam, face and hands frozen from winter, he wandered through the station. The cavernous space was subdivided by sandbags. Families huddled like pioneers expecting an attack by Red Indians, luggage drawn about in a circle, last bullets saved for women and children. Chirkov spat mentally; Amerika had invaded his imagination, just as his political officers warned. Some refugees were coming from Moscow, others fleeing to the city. There was no rule. A wall-sized poster of the New First Secretary was disfigured with a blotch, red gone to black. The splash of dried blood suggested something had been finished against the wall. There were Amerikans in Borodino. Seventy miles from Moscow, the station was a museum to resisted invasions. Plaques, statues and paintings honoured the victories of 1812 and 1944. A poster listed those local officials executed after being implicated in the latest counter-revolution. The air was tangy with ash, a reminder of past scorched earth policies. There were big fires nearby. An army unit was on duty, but no one knew anything about a timetable. An officer told him to queue and wait. More trains were coming from Moscow than going to, which meant the capital would eventually have none left.

He ventured out of the station. The snow cleared from the forecourt was banked a dozen yards away. Sunlight glared off muddy white. It was colder and brighter than he was used to in the Ukraine. A trio of Chinese-featured soldiers, a continent away from home, offered to share cigarettes and tried to practise Russian on him. He understood they were from Amgu; from the highest point in that port, you could see Japan. He asked if they knew where he could find an official. As they chirruped among themselves in an alien tongue, Chirkov saw his first Amerikan. Emerging from between snow banks and limping towards the guard post, the dead man looked as if he might actually be an American. Barefoot, he waded spastically through slush, jeans-legs shredded over thin shins. His shirt was a bright picture of a parrot in a jungle. Sunglasses hung round his neck on a thin string. Chirkov made the Amerikan’s presence known to the guards. Fascinated, he watched the dead man walk. With every step, the Amerikan crackled: there were deep, ice-threaded rifts in his skin. He was slow and brittle and blind, crystal eyes frozen open, arms stiff by his sides.

Cautiously, the corporal circled round and rammed his rifle-butt into a knee. The guards were under orders not to waste ammunition; there was a shortage. Bone cracked and the Amerikan went down like a devotee before an icon. The corporal prodded a colourful back with his boot-toe and pushed the Amerikan on to his face. As he wriggled, ice shards worked through his flesh. Chirkov had assumed the dead would stink but this one was frozen and odourless. The skin was pink and unperished, the rips in it red and glittery. An arm reached out for the corporal and something snapped in the shoulder. The corporal’s boot pinned the Amerikan to the concrete. One of his comrades produced a foot-long spike and worked the point into the back of the dead man’s skull. Scalp flaked around the dimple. The other guard took an iron mallet from his belt and struck a professional blow.

It was important, apparently, that the spike should entirely transfix the skull and break ground, binding the dead to the earth, allowing the last of the spirit to leave the carcass. Not official knowledge: this was something every soldier was told at some point by a comrade. Always, the tale-teller was from Moldavia or had learned from someone who was. Moldavians claimed to be used to the dead. The Amerikan’s head came apart like a rock split along fault lines. Five solid chunks rolled away from the spike. Diamond-sparkles of ice glinted in reddish-grey inner surfaces. The thing stopped moving at once. The hammerer began to unbutton the gaudy shirt and detach it from the sunken chest, careful as a butcher skinning a horse. The jeans were too deeply melded with meat to remove, which was a shame; with the ragged legs cut away, they would have made fine shorts for a pretty girl at the beach. The corporal wanted Chirkov to have the sunglasses. One lens was gone or he might not have been so generous with a stranger. In the end, Chirkov accepted out of courtesy, resolving to throw away the trophy as soon as he was out of Borodino.

* * *

Three days later, when Chirkov reached Moscow, locating his unit was not possible. A despatcher at the central station thought his comrades might have been reassigned to Orekhovo-Zuyevo, but her superior was of the opinion the unit had been disbanded nine months earlier. Because the despatcher was not disposed to contradict an eminent Party member, Chirkov was forced to accept the ruling that he was without a unit. As such, he was detailed to the Spa. They had in a permanent request for personnel and always took precedence. The posting involved light guard duties and manual labour; there was little fight left in Amerikans who ended up at the Spa. The despatcher gave Chirkov a sheaf of papers the size of a Frenchman’s sandwich and complicated travel directions. By then, the rest of the queue was getting testy and he was obliged to venture out on his own. He remembered to fix his mobility permit, a blue luggage tag with a smudged stamp, on the outside of his uniform. Technically, failure to display the permit was punishable by summary execution.

Streetcars ran intermittently; after waiting an hour in the street outside central station, he decided to walk to the Spa. It was a question of negotiating dunes of uncleared snow and straggles of undisciplined queue. Teams of firemen dug methodically through depths of snow, side by side with teams of soldiers who were burning down buildings. Areas were cleared and raked, ground still warm enough to melt snow that drifted onto it. Everywhere, posters warned of the Amerikans. The Party line was still that the United States was responsible. It was air-carried biological warfare, the Ministry announced with authority, originated by a secret laboratory and disseminated in the Soviet Union by suicidal infectees posing as tourists. The germ galvanised the nervous systems of the recently deceased, triggering the lizard stems of their brains, inculcating in the Amerikans a disgusting hunger for human meat. The ‘news’ footage the Voice of America put out of their own dead was staged and doctored, footage from the sadistic motion pictures that were a symptom of the West’s utter decadence. But everyone had a different line: it was… creeping radiation from Chernobyl… a judgment from a bitter and long-ignored god… a project Stalin abandoned during the Great Patriotic War… brought back from Novy Mir by cosmonauts… a plot by the fomenters of the Counter-Revolution… a curse the Moldavians had always known.

Fortunately, the Spa was off Red Square. Even a Ukrainian sapling like Yevgeny Chirkov had an idea how to get to Red Square. He had carried his rifle for so long that the strap had worn through his epaulette. He imagined the outline of the buckle was stamped into his collarbone. His single round of ammunition was in his inside breast pocket, wrapped in newspaper. They said Moscow was the most exciting city in the world, but it was not at its best under twin siege from winter and the Amerikans. Helicopters swooped overhead, broadcasting official warnings and announcements: comrades were advised to stay at their workplaces and continue with their duly delegated tasks; victory in the struggle against the American octopus was inevitable; the crisis was nearly at an end and the master strategists would soon announce a devastating counterattack; the dead were to be disabled and placed in the proper collection points; another exposed pocket of traitors would go on trial tomorrow.

In an onion-domed church, soldiers dealt with Amerikans. Brought in covered lorries, the shuffling dead were shifted inside in ragged coffles. As Chirkov passed, a dead woman, bearlike in a fur coat over forbidden undergarments, broke the line. Soldiers efficiently cornered her and stuck a bayonet into her head. The remains were hauled into the church. When the building was full, it would be burned: an offering. In Red Square, loudspeakers shouted martial music at the queues. John Reed at the Barricades. Lenin’s tomb was no longer open for tourists. Sergeant Trauberg was fond of telling the story about what had happened in the tomb when the Amerikans started to rise. Everyone guessed it was true. The Spa was off the Square. Before the Revolution of 1918, it had been an exclusive health club for the royal family. Now it was a morgue.

He presented his papers to a thin officer he met on the broad steps of the Spa, and stood frozen in stiff-backed salute while the man looked over the wedge of documentation. He was told to wander inside smartly and seek out Lyubachevsky. The officer proceeded, step by step, down to the square. Under the dusting of snow, the stone steps were gilded with ice: a natural defence. Chirkov understood Amerikans were forever slipping and falling on ice; many were so damaged they couldn’t regain their footing, and were consequently easy to deal with. The doors of the Spa, three times a man’s height, were pocked with bullet holes new and old. Unlocked and unoiled, they creaked alarmingly as he pushed inside. The foyer boasted marble floors, and ceilings painted with classical scenes of romping nymphs and athletes. Busts of Marx and Lenin flanked the main staircase; a portrait of the New First Secretary, significantly less faded than neighbouring pictures, was proudly displayed behind the main desk.

A civilian he took to be Lyubachevsky squatted by the desk reading a pamphlet. A half-empty vodka bottle was nestled like a baby in the crook of his arm. He looked up awkwardly at the new arrival and explained that last week all the chairs in the building had been taken away by the Health Committee. Chirkov presented papers and admitted he had been sent by the despatcher at the railway station, which elicited a shrug. The civilian mused that the central station was always sending stray soldiers for an unknown reason. Lyubachevsky had three days of stubble and mismatched eyes. He offered Chirkov a swallow of vodka – pure and strong, not diluted with melted snow like the rat poison he had been sold in Borodino – and opened up the lump of papers, searching for a particular signature. In the end, he decided it best Chirkov stay at the Spa. Unlocking a cabinet, he found a long white coat, muddied at the bottom. Chirkov was reluctant to exchange his heavy greatcoat for the flimsy garment but Lyubachevsky assured him there was very little pilferage from the Spa. People, even parasites, tended to avoid visiting the place unless there was a pressing reason for their presence. Before relinquishing his coat, Chirkov remembered to retain his mobility permit, pinning it to the breast of the laboratory coat. After taking Chirkov’s rifle, complimenting him on its cleanliness and stowing it in the cabinet, Lyubachevsky issued him with a revolver. It was dusty and the metal was cold enough to stick to his skin. Breaking the gun open, Chirkov noted three cartridges. In Russian roulette, he would have an even chance. Without a holster, he dropped it into the pocket of his coat; the barrel poked out of a torn corner. He had to sign for the weapon.

Lyubachevsky told him to go down into the Pool and report to Director Kozintsev. Chirkov descended in a hand-cranked cage lift and stepped out into a ballroom-sized space. The Pool was what people who worked in the Spa called the basement where the dead were kept. It had been a swimming bath before the Revolution; there, weary generations of Romanovs had plunged through slow waters, the tides of history slowly pulling them under. Supposedly dry since 1916, the Pool was so cold that condensation on the marble floors turned to ice patches. The outer walls were still decorated with gilded plaster friezes and his bootfalls echoed on the solid floors. He walked round the edge of the pit, looking down at the white-coated toilers and their unmoving clients. The Pool was divided into separate work cubicles and narrow corridors by flimsy wooden partitions that rose above the old water level. A girl caught his eye, blonde hair tightly gathered at the back of her neck. She had red lipstick and her coat sleeves were rolled up on slender arms as she probed the chest cavity of a corpse, a girl who might once have been her slightly older sister. The dead girl had a neat, round hole in her forehead and her hair was fanned over a sludgy discharge Chirkov took to be abandoned brains. He coughed to get the live girl’s attention and inquired as to where he could find the Director. She told him to make his way to the Deep End and climb in, then penetrate the warren of partitions. He couldn’t miss Kozintsev; the Director was dead centre.

At the Deep End, he found a ladder into the pool. It was guarded by a soldier who sat cross-legged, a revolver in his lap, twanging on a Jew’s harp. He stopped and told Chirkov the tune was a traditional American folk song about a cowboy killed by a lawyer, ‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’. The guard introduced himself as Corporal Tulbeyev and asked if Chirkov was interested in purchasing tape cassettes of the music of Mr Edward Cochran or Robert Dylan. Chirkov had no cassette player but Tulbeyev said that for five thousand roubles he could secure one. To be polite, Chirkov said he would consider the acquisition: evidently a great bargain. Tulbeyev further insinuated he could supply other requisites: contraceptive sheaths, chocolate bars, toothpaste, fresh socks, scented soap, suppressed reading matter. Every unit in the Soviet Union had a Tulbeyev, Chirkov knew. There was probably a secretary on the First Committee of the Communist Party who dealt disco records and mint-flavoured chewing gum to the High and Mighty. After a decent period of mourning, Chirkov might consider spending some of Sergeant Trauberg’s roubles on underwear and soap.

Having clambered into the Pool, Chirkov lost the perspective on the layout of the workspaces he had from above. It was a labyrinth and he zigzagged between partitions, asking directions from the occasional absorbed forensic worker. Typically, a shrug would prompt him to a new pathway. Each of the specialists was absorbed in dissection, wielding whiny and smoky saws or sharp and shiny scalpels. He passed by the girl he had seen from above – her nametag identified her as Technician Sverdlova, and she introduced herself as Valentina – and found she had entirely exposed the ribcage of her corpse. She was the epitome of sophisticated Moscow girl, Chirkov thought: imperturbable and immaculate even with human remains streaked up to her elbows. A straggle of hair wisped across her face, and she blew it out of the way. She dictated notes into a wire recorder, commenting on certain physiological anomalies of the dead girl. There was a rubbery resilience in the undecayed muscle tissue. He would have liked to stay, but had to report to Kozintsev. Bidding her goodbye, he left her cubicle, thumping a boot against a tin bucket full of watches, wedding rings and eyeglasses. She said he could take anything he wanted but he declined. Remembering, he found the bent and broken sunglasses in his trouser pocket and added them to the contents of the bucket. It was like throwing a kopeck in a wishing well, so he made a wish. As if she were telepathic, Valentina giggled. Blushing, Chirkov continued.

He finally came to a makeshift door with a plaque that read V.A. KOZINTSEV, DIRECTOR. Chirkov knocked and, hearing a grunt from beyond, pushed through. It was as if he had left the morgue for a sculptor’s studio. On one table were moist bags of variously coloured clays, lined up next to a steaming samovar. In the centre of the space, in the light cast by a chandelier that hung over the whole Pool, a man in a smock worked on a bust of a bald-headed man. Kozintsev had a neatly trimmed beard and round spectacles. He was working one-handed, long fingers delicately pressing hollows into cheeks, a glass of tea in his other hand. He stood back, gulped tea and tutted, extremely dissatisfied with his efforts. Instantly accepting the newcomer, Kozintsev asked Chirkov for help in going back to the beginning. He set his glass down and rolled up his sleeves. They both put their hands in the soft face and pulled. Clays came away in self-contained lumps: some stranded like muscles, others bunched like pockets of fat. A bare skull, blotched with clay, was revealed. Glass eyes stared hypnotically, wedged into sockets with twists of newspaper. Chirkov realised he had heard of the Director: V.A. Kozintsev was one of leading reconstruction pathologists in the Soviet Union. He had, layering in musculature and covering the results with skin, worked on the skulls tentatively identified as those of the former royal family. He had recreated the heads of Palaeolithic men, murder victims and Ivan the Terrible.

Chirkov reported for duty and the Director told him to find something useful to do. Kozintsev was depressed to lose three days’ work and explained in technical detail that the skull wasn’t enough. There had to be some indication of the disposition of muscle and flesh. As he talked, he rolled a cigarette and stuck it in the corner of his mouth, patting his smock pockets for matches. Chirkov understood this was one of Kozintsev’s historical projects: high-profile work sanctioned by the Ministry of Culture, unconnected to the main purpose of the Spa – which, just now, was to determine the origins and capabilities of the Amerikans – but useful in attracting attention and funds. While the Director looked over charts of facial anatomy, puffing furiously on his cigarette, Chirkov picked up the discarded clays and piled them on the table. On a separate stand was a wigmaker’s dummy head under a glass dome: it wore a long but neat black wig and facsimile wisps of eyebrows, moustache and beard. Once the skull was covered and painted to the correct skin tone, hair would be applied. He asked Kozintsev to whom the skull belonged, and, offhandedly, the Director told him it was Grigori Rasputin. There had been trouble getting glass eyes with the right quality. Contemporary memoirs described the originals as steely blue, with pupils that contracted to pinpoints when their owner was concentrating on exerting his influence. Chirkov looked again at the skull and couldn’t see anything special. It was just bare bone.

* * *

Each evening at nine, the Director presided over meetings. Attendance was mandatory for the entire staff, down to Chirkov. He was billeted in the Spa itself, in a small room on the top floor where he slept on what had once been a masseur’s table. Since food was provided (albeit irregularly) by a cafeteria, there was scarce reason to venture outside. At meetings, Chirkov learned who everyone was: the ranking officer was Captain Zharov, who would rather be out in the streets fighting but suffered from a gimpy knee; under Kozintsev, the chief coroner was Dr Fyodor Dudnikov, a famous forensic scientist often consulted by the police in political murder cases but plainly out of his depth with the Spa’s recent change of purpose. The Director affected a lofty disinterest in the current emergency, which left the morgue actually to be run by a conspiracy between Lyubachevsky, an administrator seconded from the Ministry of Agriculture, and Tulbeyev, who was far more capable than Captain Zharov of keeping greased the wheels of the military machine.

Chirkov’s girl Valentina turned out to be very eminent for her years, a specialist in the study of Amerikans; at each meeting, she reported the findings of the day. Her discoveries were frankly incomprehensible, even to her colleagues, but she seemed to believe the Amerikans were not simple reanimated dead bodies. Her dissections and probings demonstrated that the Amerikans functioned in many ways like living beings; in particular, their musculature adapted slowly to their new state even as surplus flesh and skin sloughed off. Those portions of their bodies that rotted away were irrelevant to the functioning of the creatures. She likened the ungainly and stumbling dead creatures to a pupal stage, and expressed a belief that the Amerikans were becoming stronger. Her argument was that they should be categorised not as former human beings but as an entirely new species, with its own strengths and capabilities. At every meeting, Valentina complained she could only manage so much by examining doubly dead bodies and that the best hope of making progress would be to secure ‘live’ specimens and observe their natural progress. She had sketched her impressions of what the Amerikans would eventually evolve into: thickly muscled skeletons like old anatomical drawings.

Valentina’s leading rival, A. Tarkhanov, countered that her theories were a blind alley. In his opinion, the Spa should concentrate on the isolation of the bacteriological agent responsible for the reanimations, with a view to the development of a serum cure. Tarkhanov, a Party member, also insisted the phenomenon had been created artificially by American genetic engineers. He complained the monstermakers of the United States were so heavily financed by capitalist cartels that this state-backed bureaucracy could hardly compete. The one common ground Valentina held with Tarkhanov was that the Spa was desperately underfunded. Since everyone at the meetings had to sit on the floor, while Director Kozintsev was elevated cross-legged on a desk, the procurement of chairs was deemed a priority, though all the scientists also had long lists of medical supplies and instruments without which they could not continue their vital researches. Lyubachevsky always countered these complaints by detailing his repeated requests to appropriate departments, often with precise accounts of the elapsed time since the request had been submitted. At Chirkov’s third meeting, there was much excitement when Lyubachevsky announced that the Spa had received from the Civil Defence Committee fifty-five child-sized blankets. This was unrelated to any request that had been put in, but Tulbeyev offered to arrange a trade with the Children’s Hospital, exchanging the blankets for either vegetables or medical instruments.

At the same meeting, Captain Zharov reported that his men had successfully dealt with an attempted invasion. Two Amerikans had been found at dawn, having negotiated the slippery steps, standing outside the main doors, apparently waiting. One stood exactly outside the doors, the other a step down. They might have been forming a primitive queue. Zharov personally disposed of them both, expending cartridges into their skulls, and arranged for the removal of the remains to a collection point, from which they might well be returned as specimens. Valentina moaned that it would have been better to capture and pen the Amerikans in a secure area – she specified the former steam bath – where they could be observed. Zharov cited standing orders. Kozintsev concluded with a lengthy lecture on Rasputin, elaborating his own theory that the late Tsarina’s spiritual adviser was less mad than popularly supposed and that his influence with the royal family was ultimately instrumental in bringing about the Revolution. He spoke with especial interest and enthusiasm of the so-called Mad Monk’s powers of healing, the famously ameliorative hands that could ease the symptoms of the Tsarevich’s haemophilia. It was his contention that Rasputin had been possessed of a genuine paranormal talent. Even Chirkov thought this beside the point, especially when the Director wound down by admitting another failure in his reconstruction project.

* * *

With Tulbeyev, he drew last guard of the night; on duty at three a.m., expected to remain at the post in the foyer until the nine o’clock relief. Captain Zharov and Lyubachevsky could not decide whether Chirkov counted as a soldier or an experimental assistant; so he found himself called on to fulfil both functions, occasionally simultaneously. As a soldier, he would be able to sleep away the morning after night duty, but as an experimental assistant, he was required to report to Director Kozintsev at nine sharp. Chirkov didn’t mind overmuch; once you got used to corpses, the Spa was a cushy detail. At least corpses here were corpses. Although, for personal reasons, he always voted, along with two other scientists and a cook, in support of Technician Sverdlova’s request to bring in Amerikans, he was privately grateful she always lost by a wide margin. No matter how secure the steam bath might be, Chirkov was not enthused by the idea of Amerikans inside the building. Tulbeyev, whose grandmother was Moldavian, told stories of wurdalaks and vrykolakas and always had new anecdotes. In life, according to Tulbeyev, Amerikans had all been Party members – that was why so many had good clothes and consumer goods. The latest craze among the dead was for cassette players with attached headphones; not American manufacture, but Japanese. Tulbeyev had a collection of the contraptions, harvested from Amerikans whose heads were so messed up that soldiers were squeamish about borrowing from them. It was a shame, said Tulbeyev, that the dead were disinclined to cart video players on their backs. If they picked up that habit, everyone in the Spa would be a millionaire; not a rouble millionaire, a dollar millionaire. Many of the dead had foreign currency. Tarkhanov’s pet theory was that the Americans impregnated money with a bacteriological agent, the condition spreading through contact with cash. Tulbeyev, who always wore gloves, did not seem unduly disturbed by the thought.

Just as Tulbeyev was elaborating upon the empire he could build with a plague of video players, a knock came at the doors. Not a sustained pounding like someone petitioning for entry, but a thud as if something had accidentally been bumped against the other side of the oak. They both shut up and listened. One of Tulbeyev’s tape machines was playing Creedence Clearwater Revival’s ‘It Came Out of the Sky’ at a variable speed; he turned off the tape, which scrunched inside the machine as the wheels ground, and swore. Cassettes were harder to come by than players. There was a four-thirty-in-the-morning Moscow quiet. Lots of little noises: wind whining round the slightly warped door, someone having a coughing-fit many floors above, distant shots. Chirkov cocked his revolver, hoping there was a round under the hammer, further hoping the round wasn’t a dud. There was another knock, like the first. Not purposeful, just a blunder. Tulbeyev ordered Chirkov to take a look through the spyhole. The brass cap was stiff but he managed to work it aside and look through the glass lens.

A dead face was close to the spyhole. For the first time, it occurred to Chirkov that Amerikans were scary. In the dark, this one had empty eye sockets and a constantly chewing mouth. Around its ragged neck were hung several cameras and a knotted scarf with a naked woman painted on it. Chirkov told Tulbeyev, who showed interest at the mention of photographic equipment and crammed around the spyhole. He proposed that they open the doors and Chirkov put a bullet into the Amerikan’s head. With cameras, Tulbeyev was certain he could secure chairs. With chairs, they would be the heroes of the Spa, entitled to untold privileges. Unsure of his courage, Chirkov agreed to the scheme and Tulbeyev struggled with the several bolts. Finally, the doors were loose, held shut only by Tulbeyev’s fists on the handles. Chirkov nodded; his comrade pulled the doors open and stood back. Chirkov advanced, pistol held out and pointed at the Amerikan’s forehead.

The dead man was not alone. Tulbeyev cursed and ran for his rifle. Chirkov did not fire, just looked from one dead face to the others. Four were lined in a crocodile, each on a different step. One wore an officer’s uniform, complete with medals; another, a woman, had a severe pinstripe suit and a rakish gangster hat; at the back of the queue was a dead child, a golden-haired, green-faced girl in a baseball cap, trailing a doll. None moved much. Tulbeyev returned, levering a cartridge into the breech, and skidded on the marble floor as he brought his rifle to bear. Taken aback by the apparently unthreatening dead, he didn’t fire either. Cold wind wafted in, which explained Chirkov’s chill. His understanding was that Amerikans always attacked; these stood as if dozing upright, swaying slightly. The little girl’s eyes moved mechanically back and forth. Chirkov told Tulbeyev to fetch a scientist, preferably Valentina. As his comrade scurried upstairs, he remembered he had only three rounds to deal with four Amerikans. He retreated into the doorway, eyes fixed on the dead, and slammed shut the doors. With the heel of his fist, he rammed a couple of the bolts home. Looking through the spyhole, he saw nothing had changed. The dead still queued.

Valentina wore a floorlength dressing-gown over cotton pyjamas. Her bare feet must be frozen on the marble. Tulbeyev had explained about the night visitors and she was reminding him of Captain Zharov’s report. These Amerikans repeated what the Captain had observed: the queuing behaviour pattern. She brushed her hair out of the way and got an eye to the spyhole. With an odd squeal of delight, she summoned Chirkov to take a look, telling him to angle his eye so he could look beyond the queue. A figure struggled out of the dark, feet flapping like beached fish. It went down on its face and crawled up the steps, then stood. It took a place behind the little girl. This one was naked, so rotted that even its sex was lost, a skeleton held together by strips of muscle that looked like wet leather. Valentina said she wanted that Amerikan for observation, but one of the others was necessary as well. She still thought of capturing and observing specimens. Tulbeyev reminded her of the strangeness of the situation and asked why the dead were just standing in line, stretching down the steps away from the Spa. She said something about residual instinct, the time a citizen must spend in queues, the dead’s inbuilt need to mimic the living, to recreate from trace memories the lives they had once had. Tulbeyev agreed to help her capture the specimens but insisted they be careful not to damage the cameras. He told her they could all be millionaires.

Valentina held Tulbeyev’s rifle as a soldier would, stock close to her cheek, barrel straight. She stood by the doorway covering them as they ventured out on her mission. Tulbeyev assigned himself to the first in the queue, the dead man with the cameras. That left Chirkov to deal with the walking skeleton, even if it was last in line and, in Moscow, queue-jumping was considered a worse crime than matricide. From somewhere, Tulbeyev had found a supply of canvas postbags. The idea was to pop a bag over an Amerikan’s head like a hood, then lead the dead thing indoors. Tulbeyev managed with one deft manoeuvre to drop his bag over the photographer’s head, and whipped round behind the Amerikan, unravelling twine from a ball. As Tulbeyev bound dead wrists together, the twine cut through grey skin and greenish-red fluid leaked over his gloves. The rest of the queue stood impassive, ignoring the treatment the photographer was getting. When Tulbeyev had wrestled his catch inside and trussed him like a pig, Chirkov was ready to go for the skeleton.

He stepped lightly down to the skeleton’s level, postbag open as if he were a poacher after rabbit. The Amerikans all swivelled their eyes as he passed and, with a testicles-retracting spasm of panic, he missed his footing. His boot slipped on icy stone and he fell badly, his hip slamming a hard edge. He sledged down the steps, yelping as he went. A shot cracked and the little girl, who had stepped out of the queue and scrambled towards him, became a limp doll, a chunk of her head dryly gone. Tulbeyev had got her. At the bottom of the steps, Chirkov stood. Hot pain spilled from his hip and his side was numb. His lungs hurt from the frozen air, and he coughed steam. He still held his bag and gun; luckily, the revolver had not discharged. He looked around: there were human shapes in the square, shambling towards the Spa. Darting up the steps, unmindful of the dangers of ice, he made for the light of the doorway. He paused to grab the skeleton by the elbow and haul it to the entrance. It didn’t resist him. The muscles felt like snakes stretched over a bony frame. He shoved the skeleton into the foyer and Tulbeyev was there with his ball of twine. Chirkov turned as Valentina shut the doors. More Amerikans had come: the skeleton’s place was taken and the little girl’s, and two or three more steps were occupied. Before bolting the doors, Valentina opened them a crack and considered the queue. Again, the dead were still, unexcited. Then, like a drill team, they all moved up a step. The photographer’s place was taken by the officer, and the rest of the line similarly advanced. Valentina pushed the doors together and Chirkov shut the bolts. Without pausing for breath, she ordered the specimens to be taken to the steam baths.

* * *

Breakfast was a half-turnip, surprisingly fresh if riddled with ice chips. Chirkov took it away from the cafeteria to chew and descended to the Pool to report to the Director. He assumed Valentina would make mention at the evening meeting of her unauthorised acquisition of specimens. It was not his place to spread gossip. Arriving at the cubicle before the Director, his first duty was to get the samovar going: Kozintsev survived on constant infusions of smoky tea. As Chirkov lit the charcoal, he heard a click, like saluting heels. He looked around the cubicle and saw no one. All was as usual: clays, wig, shaping tools, skull, samovar, boxes piled to make a stool. There was another click. He looked up at the chandelier and saw nothing unusual. The tea began to bubble and he chewed a mouthful of cold turnip, trying not to think about sleep, or Amerikans.

Kozintsev had begun again on the reconstruction. The skull of Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was almost buried in clay strips. It looked very much like the head of the Amerikan Chirkov had secured for Valentina: flattened reddish ropes bound the jaws together, winding up into the cavities under the cheekbones; enamel chips replaced the many missing teeth, standing out white against grey-yellow; delicate filaments swarmed round the glass eyes. It was an intriguing process and Chirkov had come to enjoy watching the Director at work. There was a sheaf of photographs of the monk on one stand but Kozintsev disliked consulting them. His process depended on extrapolating from the contours of the bone, not modelling from likenesses. Rasputin’s potato-like peasant nose was a knotty problem. The cartilage was long gone, and Kozintsev obsessively built and abandoned noses. Several were trodden flat into the sloping tile floor. After the Revolution, the faith healer had been exhumed by zealots from his tomb in the Imperial Park and, reportedly, burned; there was doubt, fiercely resisted by the Director, as to the provenance of the skull.

As Chirkov looked, Rasputin’s jaw sagged, clay muscles stretching; then, suddenly, it clamped shut, teeth clicking. Chirkov jumped, and spat out a shocked laugh. Kozintsev arrived, performing a dozen actions at once, removing his frock coat and reaching for his smock, bidding a good morning and calling for his tea. Chirkov was bemused and afraid, questioning what he had seen. The skull bit once more. Kozintsev saw the movement at once, and asked again for tea. Chirkov, snapping out of it, provided a cupful and took one for himself. Kozintsev did not comment on the appropriation. He was very interested and peered close at the barely animated skull. The jaw moved slowly from side to side, as if masticating. Chirkov wondered if Grigori Yefimovich were imitating him and stopped chewing his turnip. Kozintsev pointed out that the eyes were trying to move, but the clay hadn’t the strength of real muscle. He wondered aloud if he should work in strands of string to simulate the texture of human tissue. It might not be cosmetically correct. Rasputin’s mouth gaped open, as if in a silent scream. The Director prodded the air near the skull’s mouth with his finger and withdrew sharply as the jaws snapped shut. He laughed merrily, and called the monk a cunning fellow.

* * *

The queue was still on the steps. Everyone had taken turns at the spyhole. Now the line stretched down into the square and along the pavement, curving around the building. Tulbeyev had hourly updates on the riches borne by the Amerikans. He was sure one of the queue harboured a precious video player: Tulbeyev had cassettes of 101 Dalmatians and New Wave Hookers but no way of playing them. Captain Zharov favoured dealing harshly with the dead, but Kozintsev, still excited by the skull activity, would issue no orders and the officer was not about to take action without a direct instruction, preferably in writing. As an experiment, he went out and, halfway down the steps, selected an Amerikan at random. He shot it in the head and the finally dead bag of bones tumbled out of the queue. Zharov kicked the remains, and, coming apart, they rolled down the steps into a snowdrift. After a pause, all the dead behind Zharov’s kill took a step up. Valentina was in the steam baths with her specimens: news of her acquisitions had spread through the Spa, inciting vigorous debate. Tarkhanov complained to the Director about his colleague’s usurpation of authority, but was brushed off with an invitation to examine the miraculous skull. Dr Dudnikov placed several phone calls to the Kremlin, relaying matters of interest to a junior functionary, who promised imminent decisions. It was Dudnikov’s hope that the developments could be used as a lever to unloose vital supplies from other institutions. As ever, the rallying cry was chairs for the Spa!

In the afternoon, Chirkov napped standing up as he watched Kozintsev at work. Although the jaw continually made small movements, the skull was cooperative and did not try to nip the Director. He had requisitioned Tulbeyev’s Jew’s harp and was implanting it among thick neck muscles, hoping it would function as a crude voicebox. To Chirkov’s disgust, Rasputin was becoming expert in the movement of its unseeing eyes. He could suck the glass orbs so the painted pupils disappeared in the tops of the sockets, showing only milky white marbles. This was a man who had been hard to kill: his murderers gave him poison enough to fell an elephant, shot him in the back and chest with revolvers, kicked him in the head, battered him with a club and lowered him into the River Neva, bound in a curtain, through a hole in the ice. The skull bore an indentation which Kozintsev traced to an aristocrat’s boot. In the end, men hadn’t killed the seer; the cause of his death was drowning. As he worked, the Director hummed cheerful snatches of Prokofiev. To give the mouth something to do, Kozintsev stuck a cigarette between the teeth. He promised Grigori Yefimovich lips would come soon, but there was nothing yet he could do about lungs. His secret dream, which he shared with the skull (and, perforce, Chirkov), was to apply his process to a complete skeleton. Regrettably, and as he had himself predicted while alive, most of the monk had been scattered on the wind.

Lyubachevsky barged into the cubicle, bearing a telephone whose cord unreeled through the maze of the Pool like Ariadne’s thread. There was a call from the Kremlin, which Kozintsev was required to take. While Chirkov and Lyubachevsky stood, unconsciously at attention, the Director chatted with the New First Secretary. Either Dr Dudnikov had tapped into the proper channels or Tarkhanov was the spy everyone took him for and had reported on the sly to his KGB superior. The First Secretary was briefed about what was going on at the Spa. He handed out a commendation to Kozintsev and insisted extra resources would be channelled to the morgue. Chirkov got the impression the First Secretary was mixing up the projects: Kozintsev was being praised for Valentina’s studies. The Director would be only too delighted to employ any funds or supplies in furthering his work with the skull.

Following the telephone call, the Director was in excellent spirits. He told the skull a breakthrough was at hand, and insisted to Lyubachevsky that he could hear a faint twang from the Jew’s harp. Grigori Yefimovich was trying to communicate, the Director claimed. He asked if he remembered eating the poisoned chocolates? After the jaw first moved, Kozintsev had constructed rudimentary clay ears, exaggerated cartoon curls which stuck out ridiculously. Having abandoned any attempt to simulate the appearance in life of the monk, he was attempting instead to provide working features. Since Rasputin’s brains must have rotted or burned years ago, it was hard to imagine what the Director aspired to communicate with. Then, over the loudspeaker, Dr Dudnikov reported that there were soldiers outside the Spa, setting up explosives and declaring an intention to dynamite the building. Grigori Yefimovich’s glass eyes rolled again.

* * *

Engineers were packing charges around the foyer. Entering the Spa through the kitchens, they had avoided the Amerikan-infested steps. It appeared a second queue was forming, stretching off in a different direction, still leading to the front doors. The officer in command, a fat man with a facial birthmark that made him look like a spaniel, introduced himself as Major Andrey Kobylinsky. He strode about, inspecting the work, expressing pride in his unit’s ability to demolish a building with the minimum of explosive matter. As he surveyed, Kobylinsky noted points at which surplus charges should be placed. To Chirkov’s unschooled eye, the Major appeared to contradict himself: his men were plastering the walls with Semtex. Kozintsev and Captain Zharov were absorbed in the reading of a twelve-page document which authorised the demolition of the Spa. Dr Dudnikov protested that the First Secretary himself had, within the last minute, commended the Spa and that important work to do with the Amerikan invasion was being carried out in the Pool, but Kobylinsky was far more interested in which pillars should be knocked out to bring down the decadent painted roof. As they worked, the engineers whistled ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’.

Satisfied that the charges were laid correctly, Major Kobylinsky could not resist the temptation to lecture the assembled company on the progress and achievements of his campaign. A three-yard square map of Moscow was unfolded on the floor. It was marked with patches of red as if it were a chessboard pulled out of shape. The red areas signified buildings and constructions Kobylinsky had blown up. Chirkov understood the Major would not be happy until the entire map was shaded in red; then, Kobylinsky believed the crisis would be at an end. He proclaimed that this should have been done immediately when the crisis began, and that the Amerikans were to be thanked for prompting such a visionary enterprise. As the Major lectured, Chirkov noticed Tulbeyev at the main desk with Lyubachevsky, apparently trying to find a pen that worked. They sorted through a pot of pencils and chalks and markers, drawing streaks on a piece of blotting paper. Under the desk were packages wired to detonators. Kobylinsky checked his watch and mused that he was ahead of his schedule; the demolition would take place in one half an hour. Lyubachevsky raised a hand and ventured the opinion that the explosives placed under the main staircase were insufficient for the task of bringing down such a solidly constructed structure. Barking disagreement, Kobylinsky strutted over and examined the charges in question, finally agreeing that safe was better than sorry and ordering the application of more explosives.

While Kobylinsky was distracted, Tulbeyev crept to the map and knelt over Red Square, scribbling furiously with a precious red felt-tip. He blotched over the Spa, extending an area of devastation to cover half the Square. When Kobylinsky revisited his map, Tulbeyev was unsuspiciously on the other side of the room. One of the engineers, a new set of headphones slung round his neck, piped up with an observation of a cartographical anomaly. Kobylinsky applied his concentration to the map and gurgled to himself. According to this chart, the Spa had already been dealt with by his unit: it was not a building but a raked-over patch of rubble. Another engineer, a baseball cap in his back pocket, volunteered a convincing memory of the destruction, three days ago, of the Spa. Kobylinsky looked again at the map, getting down on his hands and knees and crawling along the most famous thoroughfares of the city. He scratched his head and blinked in his birthmark. Director Kozintsev, arms folded and head high, said that so far as he was concerned the matter was at an end; he requested the engineers to remove their infernal devices from the premises. Kobylinsky had authorisation to destroy the Spa but once, and had demonstrably already acted on that authorisation. The operation could not be repeated without further orders, and, if further orders were requested, questions would be asked as to whether the engineers were as efficient as Kobylinsky would like to claim: most units needed to destroy a building only once for it to remain destroyed. Almost in tears, the bewildered Major finally commanded the removal of the explosives and, with parental tenderness, folded up his map into its case. With no apologies, the engineers withdrew.

* * *

That night, Valentina’s Amerikans got out of the steam bath and everyone spent a merry three hours hunting them down. Chirkov and Tulbeyev drew the Pool. The power had failed again and they had to fall back on oil lamps, which made the business all the more unnerving. Irregular and active shadows were all around, whispering in Moldavian of hungry, unquiet creatures. Their progress was a slow spiral; first, they circled the Pool from above, casting light over the complex, but that left too many darks unprobed; then they went in at the Deep End and moved methodically through the labyrinth, weaving between the partitions, stumbling against dissected bodies, ready to shoot hatstands in the brain. Under his breath, Tulbeyev recited a litany he claimed was a Japanese prayer against the dead: sanyo, sony, seiko, mitsubishi, panasonic, toshiba…

They had to penetrate the dead centre of the Pool. The Amerikans were in Kozintsev’s cubicle, staring at the bone-and-clay head as if it were a colour television set. Rasputin was on his stand under a black protective cloth which hung like long hair. Chirkov found the combination of the Amerikans and Rasputin unnerving and, almost as a reflex, shot the skeleton in the skull. The report was loud and echoing. The skeleton came apart on the floor and, before Chirkov’s ears stopped hurting, others had come to investigate. Director Kozintsev was concerned for his precious monk and probed urgently under the cloth for damage. Valentina was annoyed by the loss of her specimen but kept her tongue still, especially when her surviving Amerikan turned nasty. The dead man barged out of the cubicle, shouldering partitions apart, wading through gurneys and tables, roaring and slavering. Tarkhanov, incongruous in a silk dressing gown, got in the way and sustained a nasty bite. Tulbeyev dealt with the Amerikan, tripping him with an axe handle, then straddling his chest and pounding a chisel into the bridge of his nose. He had not done anything to prove Valentina’s theories; after a spell in captivity, he simply seemed more decayed, not evolved. Valentina claimed the thing Chirkov had finished had been a model of biological efficiency, stripped down to essentials, potentially immortal. Now, it looked like a stack of bones.

Even Kozintsev, occupied in the construction of a set of wooden arms for his reanimated favourite, was alarmed by the size of the queue. There were four distinct lines. The Amerikans shuffled constantly, stamping nerveless feet as if to keep warm. Captain Zharov set up a machine-gun emplacement in the foyer, covering the now-barred front doors, although it was strictly for show until he could be supplied with ammunition of the same gauge as the gun. Chirkov and Tulbeyev watched the Amerikans from the balcony. The queue was orderly; when, as occasionally happened, a too-far-gone Amerikan collapsed, it was trampled underfoot by the great moving-up as those behind advanced. Tulbeyev sighted on individual dead with binoculars and listed the treasures he could distinguish. Mobile telephones, digital watches, blue jeans, leather jackets, gold bracelets, gold teeth, ballpoint pens. The Square was a paradise for pickpockets. As night fell, it was notable that no lights burned even in the Kremlin.

When the power came back, the emergency radio frequencies broadcast only soothing music. The meeting was more sparsely attended than usual, and Chirkov realised faces had been disappearing steadily, lost to desertion or wastage. Dr Dudnikov announced that he had been unable to reach anyone on the telephone. Lyubachevsky reported that the threat of demolition had been lifted from the Spa and was unlikely to recur, though there might now prove to be unfortunate official side effects if the institution was formally believed to be a stretch of warm rubble. The kitchens had received a delivery of fresh fish, which was cause for celebration, though the head cook noted as strange the fact that many of the shipment were still flapping and even decapitation seemed not to still them. Valentina, for the hundredth time, requested specimens be secured for study and, after a vote – closer than usual, but still decisive – was disappointed. Tarkhanov’s suicide was entered into the record and the scientists paid tribute to the colleague they fervently believed had repeatedly informed on them, reciting his achievements and honours. Tulbeyev suggested a raiding party to relieve the queuing Amerikans of those goods which could be used for barter, but no one was willing to second the proposal, which sent him into a notable sulk. Finally, as was expected, Kozintsev gave an account of his day’s progress with Grigori Yefimovich. He had achieved a certain success with the arms: constructing elementary shoulder joints and nailing them to Rasputin’s stand, then layering rope-and-clay muscles which interleaved with the neck he had fashioned. The head was able to control its arms to the extent of stretching out and bunching up muscle strands in the wrists as if clenching fists which did not, as yet, exist. The Director was also pleased to report that the head almost constantly made sounds with the Jew’s harp, approximating either speech or music. As if to demonstrate the monk’s healing powers, Kozintsev’s sinus trouble had cleared up almost entirely.

* * *

Two days later, Tulbeyev let the Amerikans in. Chirkov did not know where the corporal got the idea; he just got up from the gun emplacement, walked across the foyer, and unbarred the doors. Chirkov did not try to stop him, distracted by efforts to jam the wrong type of belt into the machine gun. When all the bolts were loose, Tulbeyev flung the doors back and stood aside. At the front of the queue, ever since the night they had brought in Valentina’s specimens, was the officer. As he waited, his face had run, flesh slipping from his cheeks to form jowly bags around his jaw. He stepped forwards smartly, entering the foyer. Lyubachevsky woke up from his cot behind the desk and wondered aloud what was going on. Tulbeyev took a fistful of medals from the officer, and tossed them to the floor after a shrewd assessment. The officer walked purposefully, with a broken-ankled limp, towards the lifts. Next in was the woman in the pinstripe suit. Tulbeyev took her hat and perched it on his head. From the next few, the corporal harvested a silver chain identity bracelet, a woven leather belt, a pocket calculator, an old brooch. He piled the tokens behind him. Amerikans filled the foyer, wedging through the doorway in a triangle behind the officer.

Chirkov assumed the dead would eat him and wished he had seriously tried to go to bed with Technician Sverdlova. He still had two rounds left in his revolver, which meant he could deal with an Amerikan before ensuring his own everlasting peace. There were so many to choose from and none seemed interested in him. The lift was descending and those who couldn’t get into it discovered the stairs. They were all drawn to the basement, to the Pool. Tulbeyev chortled and gasped at each new treasure, sometimes clapping the dead on the shoulders as they yielded their riches, hugging one or two of the more harmless creatures. Lyubachevsky was appalled, but did nothing. Finally, the administrator got together the gumption to issue an order: he told Chirkov to inform the Director of this development. Chirkov assumed that since Kozintsev was, as ever, working in the Pool, he would very soon be extremely aware of this development, but he snapped to and barged through the crowd anyway, choking back the instinct to apologise. The Amerikans mainly got out of his way, and he pushed to the front of the wave shuffling down the basement steps. He broke out of the pack and clattered into the Pool, yelling that the Amerikans were coming. Researchers looked up – he saw Valentina’s eyes flashing annoyance and wondered if it was not too late to ask her for sex – and the crowd edged behind Chirkov, approaching the lip of the Pool.

He vaulted in and sloshed through the mess towards Kozintsev’s cubicle. Many partitions were down already and there was a clear path to the Director’s workspace. Valentina pouted at him, then her eyes widened as she saw the assembled legs surrounding the Pool. The Amerikans began to topple in, crushing furniture and corpses beneath them, many unable to stand once they had fallen. The hardiest of them kept on walking, swarming round and overwhelming the technicians. Cries were strangled and blood ran on the bed of the Pool. Chirkov fired wildly, winging an ear off a bearded dead man in a shabby suit, and pushed on towards Kozintsev. When he reached the centre, his first thought was that the cubicle was empty, then he saw what the Director had managed. Combining himself with his work, V.A. Kozintsev had constructed a wooden half-skeleton which fitted over his shoulders, making his own head the heart of the new body he had fashioned for Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin. The head, built out to giant size with exaggerated clay and rubber muscles, wore its black wig and beard, and even had lips and patches of sprayed-on skin. The upper body was wooden and intricate, the torso of a colossus with arms to match, but sticking out at the bottom were the Director’s stick insect legs. Chirkov thought the body would not be able to support itself but, as he looked, the assemblage stood. He looked up at the caricature of Rasputin’s face. Blue eyes shone, not glass but living.

Valentina was by his side, gasping. He put an arm round her and vowed to himself that if it were necessary she would have the bullet he had saved for himself. He smelled her perfumed hair. Together, they looked up at the holy maniac who had controlled a woman and, through her, an empire, ultimately destroying both. Rasputin looked down on them, then turned away to look at the Amerikans. They crowded round in an orderly fashion, limping pilgrims approaching a shrine. A terrible smile disfigured the crude face. An arm extended, the paddle-sized hand stretching out fingers constructed from surgical implements. The hand fell onto the forehead of the first of the Amerikans, the officer. It covered the dead face completely, fingers curling round the head. Grigori Yefimovich seemed powerful enough to crush the Amerikan’s skull, but instead he just held firm. His eyes rolled up to the chandelier, and a twanging came from inside the wood-and-clay neck, a vibrating monotone that might have been a hymn. As the noise resounded, the gripped Amerikan shook, slabs of putrid meat falling away like layers of onion-skin. At last, Rasputin pushed the creature away. The uniform gone with its flesh, it was like Valentina’s skeleton, but leaner, moister, stronger. It stood up and stretched, its infirmities gone, its ankle whole. It clenched and unclenched teeth in a joke-shop grin and leaped away, eager for meat. The next Amerikan took its place under Rasputin’s hand, and was healed too. And the next.

THE CHILL CLUTCH OF THE UNSEEN

IT WAS AUTUMN, kissing close to winter; late November, early December; the daytime a few dim drab moments between elongated hours of heavy, cold dark. The last of the unswept leaves were dull orange, frost-crispy under his boots. He could not feel his toes. But the other aches were all there, in his leg bones, his knuckles, his face. Your pains calling in, all present and correct, Chief Stockton, sir. Hell, any day without blood in the toilet bowl was a good one. He was so old that the boy who’d taken over his job was retired (and buried). Someone he didn’t know had sat in his old seat down at the police station for as long as most folks could remember. Someone with his name was on the highway patrol, so he supposed that the family tradition was being carried on. Stocktons had helped police this stretch of Connecticut since witch-hanging times. The family had been there for all the things worse than witches that came down the pike or stepped off the train.

Usually, it was the train.

That was why he kept his routine, trudging early to the railroad station and taking his chair – out on the platform in the balmy days of spring and summer, in the waiting room close to the black iron stove as winter’s shroud descended – so he could keep to his watch. He knew most folks saw him as an old-timer who liked to get out of his empty house and be among people coming and going. Plenty were willing to stop and pass the time with him, talking about TV shows he’d never watch – Ex-Flies or somesuch. The town had long-time residents he thought of as incomers, whose names he needn’t learn. Always, he kept a lazy eye out for movements. Most of the town had forgotten. Things that couldn’t be explained by light of day, it was most comfortable to tidy up and dismiss as imaginings of the night. It had been a long time since the worst of it. But he knew it wasn’t over. The things he watched out for were like him, and took the long view. They could afford to wait it out. In the end, they’d be drawn to this place, to this station, to him.

And then…?

‘Mornin’?’ said the station-master’s daughter Irene, who turned everything into a question. Or was it ‘Mournin’?’

‘Ayup,’ he responded.

It was and he was. No further editorial needed.

Irene rattled the scuttle into the stove. The embers of yesterday’s fuel were buried under fresh black coal. Smoke soon curled and she dropped the lid. The fire in the station waiting room stove had been burning since before she was born, never dying overnight even when snow lay three- or four-feet deep and tears turned to frost on your face. It was a phenomenon, he supposed. One of the many tiny things about the place no one even questioned.

Irene wore heavy boots, work jeans and a check shirt. Her hair was done in two thick rope-braids like a storybook child. She might be pretty, and he hoped someone would find out. Then again, the joke was that when she got married she’d even make ‘I do’ into a question. ‘I do?’

He settled in his seat.

The next stopping train was due at 7.12. A commuter crawl, picking up fellows (and ladies, these days) in suits, snaking them off to work in the city. He needn’t pay it much attention. That train started up north and collected people as it wound through the state; the rare people who ever got off were day visitors from one or two towns up the line. It was the 7.32 he needed to pay mind to, the empty train coming the other way, from the city – the last train of yesterday, sent back to the terminus so it could return mid-morning and scoop up those who didn’t need to be in the city until after the working day started, the shoppers-and-lunchers and the work-at-homes with meetings to make.

Almost no one came in on the 7.32. But it was a bad one. It came from New York, and the city was a stage most things passed through on their way here. He wondered sometimes why they didn’t stop there, where they could hide among – how had folks once put it? – the ‘teeming millions’. Up here, no matter how subtle their ways, they’d eventually be noticed. But a giant octopus could get lost in the concrete canyons. Let alone a shroud-thin tatter which could as easily have been a tangle of discarded newspapers as what it was.

Today, there’d be something.

Stockton knew this, the way some old folks knew the weather. The quality of his pain changed. He’d learned to read the signs.

Others had known, but they were gone. Their kids had never believed the yarns or had closed their minds firmly. There weren’t such things. Not any more. And especially not here. Think of what it’d mean for property values. And we’ve got too much else on our plates. There are enough real dangers to worry about, in these times of terror and disgrace, without being troubled by yesterday’s phantasms, by the outgrown nightmares of generations past.

They weren’t fools. They were just children.

Kids.

‘Coffee?’

That genuinely was a question.

‘Thank you, Irene, yes.’

She kept a percolator in the office. Her father had maintained a coffee-pot in the same manner as he kept the stove burning, continually topping up sludge built up over decades. Irene had put an end to that, carefully losing the pot and buying a new, complicated machine with her own money.

Stockton took a gulp. He was expecting the coffee taste, but something else swarmed into his mouth.

‘Hazelnut and rum?’ Irene question-explained.

To which he would have said ‘no, thank you’, but it was too late.

Some commuting fellow brought back these mutant concoctions from a place in the city. Coffee polluted with flavours. Stockton believed potato chips should taste of salt and nothing else. He had little time for any product described as ‘French’ or with an acute accent in the brand name.

Still, the warmth in his throat was welcome.

And the coffee taste was still there, underneath.

Irene left him and busied herself in the office. Stockton didn’t see her father around much any more. It occurred to him that she might have inherited the job of station-master – station-mistress? – while he was paying attention to what might be coming into town as opposed to what was happening right here. The last-but-one police chief had been a woman, and nobody seemed to mind. She’d looked like a little girl dressed up for trick or treat in the bulky padded jacket and baseball cap that passed for a uniform these days, but her watch had been quiet. He’d have liked to see how she’d have handled the run of things he and his family had coped with.

The memories – the stories – crept unbidden into his mind.

Late, late show names. Totemic words and symbols.

Beast. Bat. Bandage.

Moon. Dead. Grave.

They didn’t even have a late, late show any more. Turn on the TV after midnight and it was all infomercials for exercise equipment.

Twenty years back, when a bulky crate had been unloaded from the train, he had thought it was the last of them. He’d been waiting for the fourth asphalt-spreader’s boot to drop. He had known what lay inside.

A monster. The Monster.

The crate was delivered to Doc Stone’s place. Doc, whose medical records were hard to track down and who went by an Ellis Island name. His well-equipped basement workroom drained a power surge and put the lights out all over the county just as the thing in his crate broke loose. Doc had tried to get between the party of Stockton’s men and the thing he said was his child. Now, he lay at the bottom of the river in the embrace of a skeleton with yard-long arm bones.

That had been the Big One. After that, the others who knew how things were around here thought it was over and drifted away or died. Only he knew it wasn’t over.

Would never be over.

On the late, late show, there was always next week and a sequel.

Tune in again to Shock Theater.

Bodies were rarely found. Fur, dust, bones. That meant nothing. There were always ways. Curses could be passed on with a bite or a legacy. Another electrical storm, a parchment translated aloud, a scientific breakthrough with unexpected consequences.

They would be back.

Something would be here. Soon.

Beast. Bat. Bandage. Body.

The casually interested thought that was the Full House. Those four were all there was, all there would be. The famous names, the face cards.

Stockton thought of the others, the ones who had passed through or ended up. The ones who weren’t headliners.

The Amazon Manfish, broken out of a research institute in ’56, gulping air through gills unequipped to process anything but warm water, shocked dead or comatose by a plunge through ice into Williamson’s Kill. The madman’s brain, disembodied in its jar, bubbling and flashing party lights as its mentacles kept the hump-backed surgeon in thrall, using his rheumy eyes to see and his warty hands to throttle. The roadhouse singer who exactly resembled a great-grandmother whose picture lay forgotten in the Herald archives, and whose bell-clear high notes stayed in the minds of men who found themselves ageing decades overnight. The long-nailed Chinaman with his platoon of silent servants, hatchets inside their sleeves, and his hothouse menagerie of exotic and deadly fauna. The slithering stretch of rancid greenery which sometimes took the form of a man of muck and root and opened huge, lucid eyes in its face of filth. The quiet, violet-eyed Christian family who spoke in even monotones and kept to themselves until someone noticed that if you told one of the children something then its parents – all the way across town – suddenly knew it too. The travelling freakshow and its too-tall, too-clever ringmaster. The lights in the sky and mysterious livestock fatalities. The experiments gone wrong in neglected houses outside the town limits. The grey-faced motorcycle gang whose fingers clicked to a rockin’ beat as they tore apart the succession of ugly fast-food outlets thrown up on the site of the diner where they were ambushed and apparently wiped out in 1965, whose arrival was always prefaced by teenage death songs of the sixties coming unbidden from every radio and jukebox in town. The gentle murderer whose skull was swollen with acromegaly and whose heart pulsed only for the beautiful blind piano virtuoso whose short-tempered teachers tended to show up with their spines snapped. The extreme aesthete who could only paint masterworks if his subjects were beautiful and bloodless. The sheeted ghosts who were really scheming heirs, or vice versa. The neon-eyed swami who was always in plain view of a dozen witnesses, performing his mind-reading act, as the professors who once profaned a temple in a far-off land were struck down one by one with distinctive wavy daggers in their chests. The clever ape.

Most of them were buried out of the way, and hushed up. The bound back-numbers of the Herald in the town library were full of neatly clipped holes, sometimes extending to entire editions but for the weather reports. For one month in 1908, only the weather reports were clipped – which often made Stockton ponder what had passed through back then, making itself known only through climatic influence.

A clatter, and he was out of his reverie.

A train, pulling out. The 7.12, leaving for the city.

He hadn’t noticed who got on, hadn’t cared, but it disturbed him that his vigilance had clouded even for a minute. The past, the old stories, had swarmed in on him, settling on his brain. He had been running through a medley of monsters.

He focused.

On the 7.32.

It would be a bad one.

And then everyone would remember. The yarns their parents and grandparents had told them. They were true! Eventually, they’d remember him, thank him for standing watch, need his advice. His hands couldn’t wrap round a shotgun and his legs weren’t up to a hike through the woods holding up a flaming torch, but his mind was still sharp. He still had the expertise.

There’d be bodies, of course.

He regretted that, but knew it was a stage. Before he’d be believed, before people paid attention, someone had to die. And die ugly, die strange. Two ragged holes in the throat of a woman bled whiter than virgin snow. A child torn to pieces as if by a wild animal but with clearly scratched gypsy signs in his tattered skin. A succession of elderly academics alone in locked libraries with their hearts stopped as if by an icy fist squeezing them dry. Men turned inside-out. Glowing green alien matter in wounds. Sea-widows drowned miles from water. Eyes or whole heads missing.

He couldn’t think of the people who would become these bodies.

They were a necessary stage. Material he needed to work with.

Irene looked in on him.

‘Looks like a chiller?’

She was commenting on the weather. But she spoke a deeper truth, asked a more pertinent question.

‘Ayup.’

He got up out of his chair, a process that became more difficult every single time. He saw Irene thinking about helping him, and knew that eventually she’d give in and step forward, reaching for his arm. He kept his grunt to himself, felt the ache wriggle up and down his back.

A bad one.

His intention was to stroll casually out onto the platform, but he creaked as he walked, every step as clumsy as Doc Stone’s ‘child’. Irene did open the door for him, the courtesy he should be showing her. He nodded a thanks.

The cold outside was good for the pain, froze it away.

The 7.32 was coming. He felt the vibration in his gums, rattling his partial plates, before he even heard the train.

Before he saw the sleek, dull metal tube of the commuter train, he held in his head the picture of a real locomotive. Pistons and a funnel, clouds of steam, a shrill whistle. When those clanking things were phased out, the bulletheaded electrical creatures that replaced them seemed like things off the cover of Amazing Science Fiction. Streamlined, beautiful Flash Gordon props. When did they become just a part of the furniture?

The train came in and stopped.

He looked for a door opening. Not all the town’s visitors needed to open doors, but most did. He supposed it was fair, that even the unnatural needed to grip a handle and turn.

A door did open.

Another person might have thought no one got off, but Stockton saw clearer.

A man-shaped bubble, shot through with black filaments, moving slowly. The prints of bare feet among the wet leaves left on the platform. A chattering of unseen teeth.

He congratulated himself on having worked it out ahead of time.

This was the only one left. The Man.

‘You,’ he called, ‘I’ve been waiting.’

The bubble froze, turned sideways, disappeared into stillness.

There was a coughing and racking. Somehow with a British accent.

Stockton stepped towards the noise. He saw small movements in the air. Up close, the Man was discernible by dozens of tiny tell-tales. Feet naturally picked up dirt and so outlines that looked like grubby ankle-socks stamped up and down against the cold. Ten black crescents – dirt under fingernails. A shell-like spiral of clotted blood lining an infected invisible ear. A wrinkled, mottled sleeve of grey, dead skin. Irregular black discs that floated – breaks in bones set but not healed, suggesting a body bent and crooked by age and abuse. A squeezed tube of digested food, palely transparent in the twisted bulb of the stomach, blackening in the wrap of the lower bowel to form what looked like a nasty obstruction. And the dark tendrils winding around bone and through the meat, making unhealthy balloons of the weakly pulsing lung sacs. He’d seen enough friends pass to recognise the symptoms. The crab. He knew the Man was a heavy smoker, liked to take the smoke in and fill out the shape of his gullet and lungs as a party piece. Now he was paying for it.

‘Aren’t you in bad shape, though,’ he declared.

The cough became a cackle. A cracked cackle. Never forget that the Man was mad. Even before disappearing, he’d been odd. Now, uniquely apart from mankind, he’d be completely crazy.

Before – on the late, late show – when a man like this died, he faded into view. He could only be invisible when alive; in death, he appeared. Obviously, from what Stockton could see, he was a quarter dead already.

‘Welcome, stranger,’ he said. ‘Welcome to the Elephants’ Graveyard.’

This was where the monsters came to die. It was in the natural supernatural order of things that there be a place like this. And a man like Stockton.

‘You’re the last of them, as far as I can tell.’

‘Once, I – or someone like me – called himself Invisible Man the First,’ said a voice from nowhere. No, not from nowhere.

Stockton saw a faint funnel in the air, smelled bad breath, could even make out a brown tooth. The voice came through pain. It was cultured and croaky at the same time, speaking with the clipped, artificial tones he associated with knighted theatrical actors slumming as Nazi war criminals in very poor films. The Brits you heard on TV these days – prime ministers and pop stars – didn’t sound like this any more, if any real folks ever had.

The Man wouldn’t take much killing.

No struggle to shove a stake in its heart, or a dozen men tossed about like straw dummies as they tried to wrestle it down, no bell-book-and-candle recitals, no calling-out-the-national-guard.

He could just reach out and break it, then watch it turn into an old, naked, dead man.

The Man wanted him to do it.

That was what he had come to understand. These things came to town to make a last stand, to do their schtick one final time for an appreciative audience and then fade away completely. Or, in this case, shade in completely.

The clutch came, at his throat, surprisingly fierce, cold and dry as black ice.

That rotten tooth came closer. The sick breath stench was stronger.

Stockton cursed himself for thinking too much, drifting off. He had made the mistake too many folks made. He had momentarily been taken with the wonder of the creature before him, had felt not only an empathy with the Man’s plight, a kinship with its all-too-familiar pains, but even a fondness for its uncomplicated madness, a nostalgia for the world it had terrorised and which was as long-gone as steam trains and old-time radio serials.

For a moment, he had forgotten what it was to be a monster.

A thumb was under his ear, pressing on the rope of vein; long-nailed fingers were in his neck, ragged edges cutting the skin.

‘You all right, Mr Stockton?’

Irene was looking at him. From twenty feet away.

He was being held upright by the grip on his throat. His arms and legs dangled. He couldn’t speak, but he tried to gurgle.

‘If you let her get suspicious,’ whispered words directly in his ear, ‘I will kill her.’

He raised a hand and waved, tried to construct a reassuring smile.

Irene shrugged and went inside again.

His arm dropped. It hurt a great deal.

‘Very sensible,’ said the voice, more conversational now, more upper-hand.

Stockton looked down, trying to swivel his eyeballs to the grip. He saw a seam in the air, an old scar.

The Man changed hands, letting him go with his right and taking up the grip almost as severely with his left. Bloody fingerprints floated in the air, and rubbed together.

‘I’m most fearfully sorry, old son,’ said the voice, tittering on the edge of hilarity. ‘One of my great practical problems is trimming my nails. I imagine they’re horny talons.’

Stockton tried to get hold of the arm that must stretch out beyond the grip. His fingers scrabbled on greasy, cold skin.

‘That tickles.’

He was punched in the stomach. A solid drive, dimpling his padded hunter’s jacket. The pain roiled in his belly, shook his bowels.

He did not intend to have an ‘accident’.

‘Elephants’ Graveyard?’ mused the monster. ‘I like that.’

‘You’re all here,’ Stockton snarled, with difficulty. ‘All dead and gone. Dust and bone.’

‘You miss the point, Chief.’

The voice seemed genuinely friendly, amused, superior.

‘Now, let us go for a little walk.’

He was jerked along the platform, taking more puppet-steps. His left ankle turned and he yelped, then dragged his foot.

‘Easy now, old-timer. Don’t go on and on and on.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Why, to your house, of course. I could do with some breakfast, and you’re having a trying day.’

* * *

An old suit of clothes sat in his favourite armchair, casually comfortable, trouser-legs crossed, empty space between the cuff and a dangling slipper that pointed up or down as an unseen foot stretched.

Though they were indoors, the Man had decided to wear a hat, a hunter’s cap with flap-downs over the ears and the back of the head. Stockton found it impossible not to look at the hole where the face should be and focus on the ragged fleece lining of the back-flap. The offer of a pair of sunglasses had been rejected with a tart ‘Indoors and in autumn, I don’t think so.’

Stockton couldn’t help noticing the Man seemed healthier, as if exerting his power over someone else assuaged his own hurts. He was bundled up and wrapped away now, but it seemed the black filaments he had noticed earlier were far less apparent.

His guest was disgusted that Stockton didn’t have any cigarettes. He’d given up, on doctors’ orders, years ago. The doctor who’d ordered him was dead. Emphysema, so he’d known what he was talking about.

‘This is a very decent cup of tea,’ said the voice.

The cup tipped in the air. Liquid slithered around the shape of a tongue and mouth, then squirted down past the collar of Stockton’s old wedding-and-funeral shirt.

‘Far better than one would expect to find in heathen Yankeeland.’

Stockton’s throat still hurt. He had examined the scratches in the mirror, and saw rimmed white pressure-spots that would last for days.

‘So you think we’re the last?’ asked the Man.

‘You’re the last.’

‘Invisible Man the Last?’ Shoulders lifted in a shrug. ‘Perhaps. Though that’s been said before, too many times. And I deliberately used the first person plural. We. You’re a part of this too. You’re as much a coelacanth as I am.’

‘Coelacanth?’

‘Living fossil. Prehistoric fish. Thought extinct for millennia, until one showed up in some African peasant fisherman’s net back in the twenties.’

‘I’ve heard of that story.’

‘Good. It’s the duty of a lively mind to take an interest in sports and freaks, don’t you think. You might aver that it was your specialist subject.’

Stockton nodded.

‘How many of us have you killed, Chief Stockton?’

The question was a surprise, a slap.

‘Come on, don’t be modest. I’ll admit to all my murders. Little men and big, women and children. Dogs. I’ve happily killed dogs. It used to be that not a day went past that I didn’t murder something. Now, as time creeps on, why… it’s been months, maybe years. And the last time was a farce. Took forever to throttle and stifle some twig-like spinster I’d have done for in a trice on my best day. We’re both professionals. We have licenses. I have my… condition,’ a handless sleeve up before an absence of face suggesting a gesture, ‘and you had a badge and gun. I imagine you’ve still got your old trusty service special around. You Yanks and your blessed firearms. Makes everything too easy. You’re not a proper killer unless you get up close, feel the flesh part, the warmth dissipate, the heart stop. It’s a good thing you can’t see my face, because I know it’s arranged into an expression you would find even more horrifying than my words. And you know why my words horrify you? Of course you do, Chief. It’s because you understand.’

Stockton remembered a scatter of dust on a red-lined cloak, a spike stuck into its folds; the pie-sized scarlet holes in hairy black hide made by a scattergun packed with shot mixed in with ground-up sterling silver dollars; various steaming piles of loathsome putrescence. Monsters dying. That he had seen a deal of.

‘For you this isn’t a graveyard, it’s Death Row. And you pull the switch.’

‘You’re all monsters.’

‘And monsters can’t live? We kill people. No argument here, old thing. It’s just that… well, Chief, how can I put this without seeming ungracious about your hospitality, but perhaps you shouldn’t enjoy destroying us quite so much. Your kind always hates and fears the extraordinary.’

‘Uh uh,’ Stockton said, bristling, ‘you don’t get me like that, Mr Clever Man. I didn’t start this. We – regular folks – we didn’t set out to hunt you all down and see you dead just because you were different. Nothing wrong with being different. We took objection to the murders. And the other things, the worse crimes.’

A sleeve hung in the air, invisible finger tapping invisible chin.

‘Of course you did.’

They were argued into a corner.

‘I put rat poison in your tea,’ Stockton said.

‘I know. I drank it.’

White lines were winding up around inside his head, outlining a skull. Red wires crept over it. A face was forming.

‘Soon you’ll be face to face with the Visible Man.’

An old face, of course. Weather-beaten. Eyes mushroomed in sockets, watery blue, lids forming around them.

‘Then it’ll be over,’ muscle-flaps in the shape of lips formed the words. ‘You’ll have killed the last but one coelacanth, and it’ll be down to you. My guess is you won’t see out the winter. Spring will come and you’ll be gone. Without us, what’s the point of you?’

‘That doesn’t bother me. I’ve lived my life justified.’

‘I suppose you have. I say, this poison is rather painful. Stomach feels as if it’s been through a mangle. You could have just shot me, you know.’

‘Then we wouldn’t be having this… little chat.’

He tried to mimic the Man’s clipped tones.

The Man laughed. ‘What do you think you sound like?’

Skin was forming – pale from years out of the sun, withered over bone, white beard thick on the cheeks but scraggy under the chin. Of course, he couldn’t have done much of a job of shaving.

‘It’ll start again, Chief. It always does. It’s what makes monsters monstrous, in a way. We can be killed, but we come back. When I’m fully opaque, some other idealist or madman will start to disappear. Knowledge is out in the world and can’t be taken back. This town isn’t just a graveyard, it’s a spawning ground. Sure, we come here to die, but we also come to be reborn. And many of us are from here. Just like you.’

The voice stilled. There was a dead old man in Stockton’s favourite armchair.

For a while, the air was clear and the pain was gone. There were no monsters in the world, in this town.

Then, a black little bulb under a field somewhere nearby began to sprout.

Stockton saw it in his mind, and knew he was seeing a truth. It was part of his legacy, his gift. He also recognised that somewhere this morning he had suffered another stroke. He couldn’t feel his left arm and a cord in his neck was spasming beyond his control.

Damn monsters.

He needed to do something about the body. This was a particularly inconvenient one. Some dead things resolved to bone and ash or were such obvious inexplicable departures from the norm that cops and coroners quietly absolved their destroyers from legal blame. This one lost its defining feature in death and looked uncomfortably like a poor old vagrant poisoned by a mad old cop. There were precedents, and he hoped his name still had enough pull – but it didn’t matter. The way justice ground on these days, this wouldn’t come to trial before spring and his visitor had been right in estimating that Stockton wasn’t liable to be around when the leaves greened.

He picked up the phone, ready to dial – no, the rotary phone was long gone; to punch out – the familiar number. He would talk to the new chief. No, he realised, he had to talk to someone else first. That black bulb had spider-limbs now, reaching above ground.

If the pests came back, so must the pest-controllers.

He stabbed buttons.

This would take some convincing talk, but there was evidence enough. A duty could be passed on, as it had been passed on to him.

At the end of the line, the phone rang once.

‘Highway Patrol,’ responded a voice.

‘Get me Stockton,’ he said.

‘Is this police business? I can take your call. Stockton’s out on the road, and won’t be back ’til later.’

‘It’s police business,’ he said. ‘And family business. Get her to call her father’s uncle. There are things she needs to know.’

The late, enormously prolific Charles L. Grant wrote three books – The Long Night of the Grave, The Soft Whisper of the Dead and The Dark Cry of the Moon – as tributes to the vintage Hollywood monster movies he loved, in which a mummy, a vampire and a werewolf visited Oxrun Station, the haunted small town that recurs in Charlie’s work, and bothered successive generations of the community’s leading law-enforcement family. When asked to contribute something to a book published as a tribute to Charlie, I remembered these short, sharp, fun little books and wanted to pay homage to that small section of his output. When they first came out, Charlie said he wanted to get away from the then-modish introspection of many thick novels about monsters and get back to the idea that vampires, werewolves and the like were scary bastards. This little piece is a post-script to his trilogy, using one of the few major Universal Studios monsters he left alone. Now the enormously gracious, funny, gifted and genuinely heroic Charlie is no longer with us, the story has an added melancholy. I wrote it at the age (mid-forties) when those spared tragedies in early life have to get used to the idea that people we love won’t be around forever. Like many people I know, I was starting to suffer bereavements – parents, older friends, colleagues, even some contemporaries. That’s why this story is a fond meditation on all manner of meanings of the expression ‘passing on’ as much as it is a monster yarn – though, make no mistake, the monster here is one of the worst in the pantheon. As a footnote, it took me longer to come up with a title to fit Charlie’s ‘The Adjective Noun of the Noun’ template than it did to write the story.

ONE HIT WANDA

SOUNDSCAPE: WE ARE backstage at a nostalgia pop showcase. A band – Barry and the Breadwinners – are playing their set, and going down a storm with the elderly punters. We only dimly hear music and the crowd. As the monologue continues, the noise fades down – though there’s an option of layering in ghostly pop ululations (think ‘Johnny, Remember Me’ or any other Joe Meek-produced 1960s death record).

* * *

You want to hear about the song, of course. ‘Lonely One’. The Vanity Brothers. 1964. Twenty-seven weeks in the charts. Eight at Number One. That shower on now, Barry and the Breadwinners, they never had a Number One. Not that that’s Barry. It’s his – what? – grandson, by now. There’s one original Breadwinner in the line-up. His guitar isn’t plugged in. Poor sod’s been deaf for years. From playing that set over and over. You know what they say… nostalgia in’t what it used to be. Well, it in’t. I can talk, of course. The last remaining Vanity Brother. With me, it’s not the same set. It’s the same song.

‘Lonely One… left my only one… oo-ooo-ooo-oooh…’

When it was in the charts, people didn’t get it. They didn’t understand the Lonely One was not just ditched but dead. All that echoey spook stuff in the mix, that was just fab gear dreamy. No one thought about it. Me, least of all. The song’s a ghost story, not a love story. Only after Johnny… well, let’s not get ahead of it. I’ve only one hit and only one story.

So: flashback, wavy lines. It’s the sixties. Just starting to swing.

We’re the act. The Vanity Brothers. Billy and Johnny. He was older. Funny that, now you see me a wreck and think of him as a fresh-faced lad. Britain’s answer to whoever those other Brothers were. The name is Venitt, really. William and Jonathan, our Mum called us. The album was going to be Venitt Happens. We didn’t record enough for an LP. Not enough for an EP. The B-side of ‘Lonely One’ is Johnny singing the moon-moon-moon backing track of ‘Blue Moon’ with a void where the lead ought to be. I was shacked up with some bird and didn’t get to the session. No one ever flipped the platter anyway.

‘Lonely One’ and nothing else. That’s the Vanity Brothers.

Those days, you couldn’t chuck a brick on Denmark Street without hitting a group. Most still in school or college, with matching suits and winkle-pickers. Acne cream and hair just over the collar. Most of them never even got one song. Most of them ended up in Wimpy bars or estate agents offices. Only a few made it through to this afterlife. The Sixties Spectacular Showcase, on tour, forever.

We took what gigs we could get. School dances. Church fetes. The Black Kettle Club in Soho. No one came to the Black Kettle for the music. It was for girls. On stage, taking ’em off. And offstage, turning you on… if you had a roll big enough.

There’s a girl in the story. Bet you guessed that. At least, I think she was a girl, originally. By the time Johnny and me met her, she was – you know what Eddie Cochrane said – she was ‘somethin’ else…’

In the Black Kettle, they all had stage names. Tanya Hyde. Holly Hocks. Joy Rider. Fanny Fortune. And gimmicks. Cowboy hat and gunbelt. Jodhpurs and a whip. It’s not easy taking off a pair of jodhpurs and dancing to ‘Telstar’ at the same time.

Our girl was Wanda. Wanda Lust. Get it? You got it. Good. I saw her work papers once. The name on them was something like ‘Christolodou’. She’d come from Greece, after the war. Born on some island, Lord knows where or when. Her gimmick: an eyepatch. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? But it was enough. She was short, dark, quiet. Not fun. Not funny. Stripped slowly. Took off everything but the patch. Then she’d dance, naked, stroking the ribbon the way other strippers played with their g-string. Punters went wild. I mean, all she had was out there, on display. But one eye was covered. No one yelled ‘take it off’, the way they did when the other girls fiddled with their pearly bras. But everyone wanted to see what was under the black patch. Yeah, me too. Couldn’t tell you why. At the end of her turn, she’d undo the bow on the ribbon and pull the patch away… and the light went out. We never saw… what? A blind eye? An empty socket? Tattooed eyelids? Fill in the blank.

Wanda liked the groups. Most of the girls didn’t. Most strippers liked drunk merchant bankers with fat wallets or flash Yank businessmen with expense accounts or married Members of Parliament with mews flats in Knightsbridge.

The groups were filler… to give the punters time to buy ginger ale at champagne prices before the next proper turn. The next stripper. We were on all night, though. The Black Kettle Club was class for Soho. Only live music. So, me and Johnny – and Fred, the drummer everyone forgets – kept at it. Each girl had her own selection. Joy Rider, the horsey one, cantered about to ‘Camptown Races’. The others were all obvious. ‘The Streets of Cairo’ for the Dance of the Seven Veils. ‘A Mouse Lived in a Windmill’ for the little Dutch girl.

When we started, Wanda was stripping off to ‘I’ve Got My Eye on You, Sweetie-Pie’. Didn’t work. Without the lyric, no one recognised the song. No one got the joke. She asked us to come up with something. So, Johnny wrote ‘Lonely One’. For her.

I know it says ‘Venitt Bros’ on the label, but I wasn’t there when it was written. Wanda was. One Hit Wanda. Johnny said the ghost echo idea was hers, the oo-ooo-oooh – though that’s not her voice on the single, it’s a session singer. Wanda couldn’t sing. She could barely speak. It wasn’t just her eye. She’d lost her tongue. You didn’t notice, because she knew to keep her mouth shut. And there was nothing else missing.

It must have happened in the war, they said. Which war, some of the girls asked. Wanda didn’t get along. It wasn’t that she was foreign – half the girls were Maltese. It wasn’t the missing bits. Wanda just wasn’t interested in other women. She was a man’s girl.

No, she didn’t shag Johnny. Might have gone better if she did. She didn’t shag me, either. And forget about Fred. No one shagged Fred. But she got to Johnny. Coiled around him.

So, I turn up late one day, to an afternoon rehearsal. Johnny’s playing ‘Lonely One’.

I knew that first time it was our hit. A spine-tingler. I heard money in it. Money and fame and Top of the Pops and Juke Box Jury and getting a long way out of the Black Kettle Club.

Wanda was there. In her civvy clothes. With her regular patch, not the black silk sparkly one she wore on the stage. Johnny was playing for her. She was thinking how she would move to the song.

You’ve heard the story about the girl who broke up the band. This isn’t that. This is the band who broke up the girl.

Wanda had pulled the song out of Johnny, as if she’d reached into his insides, taken hold of something and just yanked. But you’ve got to be a bit of a cold-hearted bastard in this lark. Barry went through Breadwinners like biscuits, you know. Our act was The Vanity Brothers. Johnny and me.

Johnny thanked Wanda, but we never played ‘Lonely One’ for her act.

We sang it first at a clothes shop – a gig in late summer, to draw in kids and their mums who had to buy new school kit. It was a screamer, from the start. I saw – and I’m not being funny, this is what I said at the time – I saw what Hitler must have seen in the crowd at Nuremberg. Faces. Rapt. Captivated. Tears on cheeks. Girls and boys and mums. They made us sing it again. We’ve – I’ve – been singing it ever since. Even then, I saw her. Rather, the patch. A face in the crowd. I think it wasn’t Wanda, and yet it was, it must have been. All you can clock from the stage is a detail. Like an eyepatch.

The rest is in Melody Maker. Talent scout, record deal, air-play on the pirates and the Beeb, pick of the pops, number one with a bullet. A hit.

I was all for moving on. We were bought out of our contract at the Black Kettle Club, which was dangerous enough considering who owned the place. I was happy never to go back there again. With the ‘Lonely One’ dosh and clout, I didn’t need turn-downs from strippers. It was wall-to-wall birds back then, birds and booze and pills, all the things you’ve heard…

…then, well, that’s it, isn’t it? Then: nothing.

Johnny never finished another song. His muse had gone. Muses are Greek, aren’t they? Like Furies and Fates and Gorgons. He went back to the club, looking for Wanda. But she’d quit.

Whenever we played, Johnny said he saw her out there. Sometimes, like that first time, I did too. Or at least a patch. But, come on, put a crowd together and someone’s going to have one eye. Stands to reason. Doesn’t mean it’s her. Does it?

Johnny swore he saw her, playing with her patch, like she did on stage. I said it was too many pills or not enough. I told him to forget her. I was a chump. We were both chumps.

You can go a long way on one song.

When the Vanity Brothers were heading the bill, know what our act was? Go on, ‘Lonely One’. Huge response. Screams, applause, wet knickers. Encore, ‘Lonely One’ again. Couple of instrumentals. Lack of interest. Sales of choc-ices soar. Me, solo, singing ‘My Washboard Won’t Wash’, a skiffle song we wrote when we were thirteen. Boredom, hostility. ‘Lonely One’, reprise. Huge response again. ‘Lonely One’, ‘Lonely One’, ‘Lonely One’… One song, five times. And off. Sometimes they wouldn’t let us off, they’d keep us playing it until the management turned up the lights or broke out the firehoses.

One night, Johnny froze during the last encore… we always used to get the crowd to sing the ghost part then. Five, six thousand teenage girls going ‘…oo-ooo-ooo-oooh…’ It must have sounded horrible. As they wailed, Johnny was struck. He saw something out there.

Did I see her? Maybe a dark flash, leaving. I couldn’t swear to anything.

After that, well… Johnny was taken funny. You know what he said. ‘Billy, I saw underneath… I saw the other eye…’ It was said with a shudder, like something terrible. Bad pills, I thought. It used to be I could get what Johnny meant, what Johnny felt… When no one else could, I could understand. We were on the same wavelength. Brothers, you know. But I was shut out of this. He couldn’t make me understand what was going on inside him. He couldn’t make me see what he’d seen.

Now, not only could Johnny not write anything, he couldn’t sing or play anything… except ‘Lonely One’. His fingers could only make those chords, in that order. He stopped being able to talk, except in a croak. Yes, like hers. Wanda’s tongueless jabber. On stage, he was clear as a bell, so long as he sang ‘Lonely One’.

You can go a long way on one song. But only so far.

We were still at Number One when Johnny took off on his scooter. Went off a ramp that wasn’t connected to the motorway. Not killed outright. They say if he’d called for help, he might have lived… in some shape or form. You know how he finally got attention… he sang. ‘Lonely One… left my only one… oo-ooo-ooo-oooh…’ Bloke who found Johnny said he thought he heard a ghost. By the time he got to him, he was right.

The song didn’t stop with Johnny, of course.

Ah, the Breadwinners are finished. I’m up. It’s just a short set. The one song. Every night, the one song. Johnny’s gone. It’s down to me now. To be the Lonely One.

Will I see a patch out there? Probably. I usually do. One night, I reckon, I’ll see more, like Johnny. I’ll see what’s underneath. I’ll see the other eye.

Then… oo-ooo-ooo-oooh…

This is the first print publication of a story written for an audio anthology, Thirteen, edited by Scott Harrison and Neil Gardner. It was read for that release by Samuel West.

IS THERE ANYBODY THERE?

‘IS THERE A presence?’ asked Irene.

The parlour was darker and chillier than it had been moments ago. At the bottoms of the heavy curtains, tassels stirred like the fronds of a deep-sea plant. Irene Dobson – Madame Irena, to her sitters – was alert to tiny changes in a room that might preface the arrival of a visitor from beyond the veil. The fizzing and dimming of still-untrusted electric lamps, so much less impressive than the shrinking and bluing of gaslight flames she remembered from her earliest seances. A clamminess in the draught, as foglike cold rose from the carpeted floor. The minute crackle of static electricity, making hair lift and pores prickle. The tart taste of pennies in her mouth.

‘Is there a traveller from afar?’ she asked, opening her inner eye.

The planchette twitched. Miss Walter-David’s fingers withdrew in a flinch; she had felt the definite movement. Irene glanced at the no-longer-young woman in the chair beside hers, shrinking away for the moment. The fear-light in the sitter’s eyes was the beginning of true belief. To Irene, it was like a tug on a fishing line, the satisfying twinge of the hook going in. This was a familiar stage on the typical sitter’s journey from scepticism to fanaticism. This woman was wealthy; soon, Irene would taste not copper but silver, eventually gold.

Wordlessly, she encouraged Miss Walter-David to place her fingertips on the planchette again, to restore balance. Open on the round table before them was a thin sheet of wood, hinged like an oversized chessboard. Upon the board’s smoothly papered and polished surface was a circle, the letters of the alphabet picked out in curlicue. Corners were marked for YES – ‘oui’, ‘ja’ – and NO. The planchette, a pointer on marble castors, was a triangular arrowhead shape. Irene and Miss Walter-David lightly touched fingers to the lower points of the planchette, and the tip quivered.

‘Is there anybody there?’ Miss Walter-David asked.

This sitter was bereft of a fiancé, an officer who had come through the trenches but succumbed to influenza upon return to civilian life. Miss Walter-David was searching for balm to soothe her sense of hideous unfairness, and had come at last to Madame Irena’s parlour.

‘Is there –’

The planchette moved, sharply. Miss Walter-David hissed in surprise. Irene felt the presence, stronger than usual, and knew it could be tamed. She was no fraud, relying on conjuring tricks, but her understanding of the world beyond the veil was very different than that which she wished her sitters to have. All spirits could be made to do what she wished them to do. If they thought themselves grown beyond hurt, they were sorely in error. The planchette, genuinely independent of the light touches of medium and sitter, stabbed towards a corner of the board, but stopped surprisingly short.

Y

Not YES, but the Y of the circular alphabet. The spirits often used initials to express themselves, but Madame had never encountered one who neglected the convenience of the YES and NO corners. She did not let Miss Walter-David see her surprise.

‘Have you a name?’

Y again. Not YES. Was Y the beginning of a name: Youngman, Yoko-Hama, Ysrael?

‘What is it?’ She was almost impatient.

The planchette began a circular movement, darting at letters, using the lower tips of the planchette as well as the pointer. That also was unusual, and took an instant or two to digest.

M S T R M N D

‘Msstrrmnnd,’ said Miss Walter-David.

Irene understood. ‘Have you a message for anyone here, Master Mind?’

Y

‘For whom?’

U

‘For Ursula?’ Miss Walter-David’s Christian name was Ursula.

N U

‘U?’

‘You,’ said Miss Walter-David. ‘You.’

This was not a development Irene liked a bit.

* * *

There were two prospects in his chat room. Women, or at least they said they were. Boyd didn’t necessarily believe them. Some users thought they were clever.

Boyd was primarily MstrMnd, but had other log-in names, some male, some female, some neutral. For each ISDN line, he had a different code name and e-address, none traceable to his physical address. He lived online, really; this flat in Highgate was just a place to store the meat. There was nothing he couldn’t get by playing the Web, which responded to his touch like a harpsichord to a master’s fingers. There were always backdoors.

His major female ident was Caress, aggressively sexual; he imagined her as a porn site Cleopatra Jones, a black model with dom tendencies. He kept a more puritanical, shockable ident – SchlGrl – as back-up, to cut in when Caress became too outrageous.

These two users weren’t tricky, though. They were clear. Virgins, just the way he liked them. He guessed they were showing themselves nakedly to the room, with no deception.

IRENE D.

URSULA W-D.

Their messages typed out laboriously, appearing on his master monitor a word at a time. He initiated searches, to cough up more on their handles. His system was smart enough to come up with a birth name, a physical address, financial details and, more often than not, a .jpg image from even the most casually assumed one-use log-on name. Virgins never realised that their presences always left ripples. Boyd knew how to piggyback any one of a dozen official and unofficial trackers, and routinely pulled up information on anyone with whom he had even the most casual, wary dealings.

IRENE D: Have you a message for anyone here, Master Mind?

Boyd stabbed a key.

Y

IRENE D: For whom?

U

IRENE D: For Ursula?

N U

IRENE D: U?

URSULA W-D: You.

At least one of them got it. IRENE D – why didn’t she tag herself ID or I-D? – was just slow. That didn’t matter. She was the one Boyd had spotted as a natural. Something about her blank words gave her away. She had confidence and ignorance, while her friend – they were in contact, maybe even in the same physical room – at least understood she knew nothing, that she had stepped into deep space and all the rules were changed. IRENE D – her log-on was probably a variant on the poor girl’s real name – thought she was in control. She would unravel very easily, almost no challenge at all.

A MESSAGE FOR U I-D, he typed.

He sat on a reinforced swivel chair with optimum back support and buttock-spread, surveying a semi-circle of keyboards and monitors all hooked up to separate lines and accounts, all feeding into the master-monitor. When using two or more idents, he could swivel or roll from board to board, taking seconds to chameleon-shift. He could be five or six people in any given minute, dazzle a solo into thinking she – and it almost always was a she – was in a buzzing chat room with a lively crowd when she was actually alone with him, growing more vulnerable with each stroke and line, more open to his hooks and grapples, her backdoors flapping in the wind.

I KNOW WHO U ARE

Always a classic. Always went to the heart.

He glanced at the leftmost screen. Still searching. No details yet. His system was usually much faster than this. Nothing on either of them, on IRENE or URSULA. They couldn’t be smart enough to cover their traces in the Web, not if they were really as newbie as they seemed. Even a netshark ace would have been caught by now. And these girls were fighting nowhere near his weight. Must be a glitch. It didn’t matter.

I KNOW WHAT U DO

Not DID, but DO. DID is good for specifics, but DO suggests something ongoing, some hidden current in an ordinary life, perhaps unknown even to the user.

U R NOT WHAT U CLAIM 2 B

That was for sure.

* * *

U R NOT WHAT U CLAIM 2 B

‘You are not what you claim to be?’ interpreted Miss Walter-David. She had become quickly skilled at picking out the spirit’s peculiar, abbreviated language. It was rather irritating, thought Irene. She was in danger of losing this sitter, of becoming the one in need of guidance.

There was something odd about Master Mind. He – it was surely a he – was unlike other spirits, who were mostly vague children. Everything they spelled out was simplistic, yet ambiguous. She had to help them along, to tease out from the morass of waffle whatever it was they wanted to communicate with those left behind, or more often to intuit what it was her sitters wanted or needed most to hear and to shape her reading of the messages to fit. Her fortune was built not on reaching the other world, but in manipulating it so that the right communications came across. No sitter really wanted to hear a loved one had died a meaningless death and drifted in limbo, gradually losing personality like a cloud breaking up. Though, occasionally, she had sitters who wanted to know that those they had hated in life were suffering properly in the beyond and that their miserable post-mortem apologies were not accepted. Such transactions disturbed even her, though they often proved among the most rewarding financially.

Now, Irene sensed a concrete personality. Even through almost-coded, curt phrases, Master Mind was a someone, not a something. For the first time, she was close to being afraid of what she had touched.

Master Mind was ambiguous, but through intent rather than fumble-thinking. She had a powerful impression of him, from his self-chosen title: a man on a throne, head swollen and limbs atrophied, belly bloated like a balloon, framing vast schemes, manipulating lesser beings like chess pieces. She was warier of him than even the rare angry spirit she had called into her circle. There were defences against him, though. She had been careful to make sure of that.

Ugly hell gapes, she remembered from Dr Faustus. Well, not for her.

She thought Master Mind was not a spirit at all.

U R ALLONE

‘You are all one,’ interpreted Miss Walter-David. ‘Whatever can that mean?’

U R ALONE

That was not a cryptic statement from the beyond. Before discovering her ‘gift’, Irene Dobson had toiled in an insurance office. She knew a typewriting mistake when she saw one.

U R AFRAID

‘You are af—’

‘Yes, Miss Walter-David, I understand.’

‘And are you?’

‘Not any more. Master Mind, you are a most interesting fellow, yet I cannot but feel you conceal more than you reveal. We are all, at our worst, alone and afraid. That is scarcely a great insight.’

It was the secret of her profession, after all.

‘Are you not also alone and afraid?’

Nothing.

‘Let me put it another way.’

She pressed down on the planchette, and manipulated it, spelling out in his own language.

R U NOT ALSO ALONE AND AFRAID

She would have added a question mark, but the Ouija board had none. Spirits never asked questions, just supplied answers.

* * *

IRENE D was sharper than he had first guessed. And he still knew no more about her. No matter.

Boyd rolled over to the next keyboard.

U TELL HIM GRRL BCK OFF CREEP

IRENE D: Another presence? How refreshing. And you might be?

CARESS SISTA

IRENE D: Another spirit?

Presence? Spirit? Was she taking the piss?

UH HUH SPIRT THAT’S THE STUFF SHOW THAT PIG U CAN STAND UP 4 YRSELF

IRENE D: Another presence, but the same mode of address. I think your name might be Legion.

Boyd knew of another netshark who used Legion as a log-on. IRENE D must have come across him too. Not the virgin she seemed, then. Damn.

His search still couldn’t penetrate further than her simple log-on. By now, he should have her mother’s maiden name, her menstrual calendar, the full name of the first boy she snogged at school and a list of all the porn sites she had accessed in the last week.

He should close down the room, seal it up forever and scuttle away. But he was being challenged, which didn’t happen often. Usually, he was content to play a while with those he snared, scrambling their heads with what he had found out about them as his net-noose drew tauter around them. Part of the game was to siphon a little from their bank accounts: someone had to pay his phone and access bills, and he was damned if he should cough up by direct debit like some silly little newbie. But mostly it was for the sport.

In the early days, he had been fond of co-opting idents and flooding his playmates’ systems with extreme porn or placing orders in their names for expensive but embarrassing goods and services. That now seemed crude. His current craze was doctoring and posting images. If IRENE D was married, it would be interesting to direct her husband to, say, a goat sex site where her face was convincingly overlaid upon an enthusiastic animal-lover’s body. And it was so easy to mock up mugshots, complete with guilty looks and serial numbers, to reveal an ineptly suppressed criminal past (complete with court records and other supporting documentation) that would make an employer think twice about keeping someone on the books. No one ever bothered to double-check by going back to the paper archives before they downsized a job.

Always, he would leave memories to cherish; months later, he would check up on his net-pals – his score so far was five institutionalisations and two suicides – just to see that the experience was still vivid. He was determined to crawl into IRENE D’s skull and stay there, replicating like a virus, wiping her hard drive.

URSULA W-D: Do you know Frank? Frank Conynghame-Mars.

Where did that come from? Still, there couldn’t be many people floating around with a name like that. Boyd shut off the fruitless backdoor search, and copied the double-barrel into an engine. It came up instantly with a handful of matches. The first was an obituary from 1919, scanned into a newspaper database. A foolish virgin had purchased unlimited access to a great many similar archives, which was now open to Boyd. A local newspaper, the Ham & High. He was surprised. It was the World Wide Web after all. This hit was close to home – maybe only streets away – if eighty years back. He looked over the obit, and took a flyer.

DEAD OF FLU

URSULA W-D: Yes. She knows Frank, Madame Irena. A miracle. Have you a message from Frank? For Ursula?

Boyd speed-read the obit. Frank Conynghame-Mars, ‘decorated in the late conflict’, etc. etc. Dead at thirty-eight. Engaged to a Miss Ursula Walter-David, of this parish. Could the woman be still alive? She would have to be well over a hundred.

He launched another search: Ursula Walter-David

Three matches. One the Conynghame-Mars obit he already had up. Second, an article from something called The Temple, from 1924 – a publication of the Spiritualist Church. Third, also from the Ham & High archive, her own obit, from 1952.

Zoiks, Scooby – a ghost!

This was an elaborate sting. Had to be.

He would string it along, to give him time to think.

U WIL BE 2GETHER AGAIN 1952

The article from The Temple was too long and close-printed to read in full while his formidable attention was divided into three or four windows. It had been scanned in badly, and not all of it was legible. The gist was a testimonial for a spiritualist medium called Madame Irena (no last name given). Among her ‘sitters’, satisfied customers evidently, was Ursula Walter-David.

Weird. Boyd suspected he was being set up. He didn’t trust the matches. They must be plants. Though he couldn’t see the joins, he knew that with enough work he could run something like this – had indeed done so, feeding prospects their own mocked-up obits with full gruesome details – to get to someone. Was this a vengeance crusade? If so, he couldn’t see where it was going.

He tried a search on ‘Madame Irena’ and came up with hundreds of matches, mostly French and porn sites. A BDSM video titled The Lash of Madame Irena accounted for most of the matches. He tried pairing ‘+Madame Irena’ with ‘+spiritualist’ and had a more manageable fifteen matches, including several more articles from The Temple.

URSULA W-D: Is Frank at peace?

He had to sub-divide his concentration, again. He wasn’t quite ambidextrous, but could pump a keyboard with either hand, working shift keys with his thumbs, and split his mind into segments, eyes rolling independently like a lizard’s, to follow several lines.

FRANK IS OVER HIS SNIFFLES

Among the ‘Madame Irena’/‘medium’ matches was a Journal of the Society of Psychical Research piece from 1926, shout-lined ‘Fraudulence Alleged’. He opened it up, and found from a news-in-brief snippet that a court case was being prepared against one ‘Irene Dobson’, known professionally as ‘Madame Irena’, for various malpractices in connection with her work as a spirit medium. One Catriona Kaye, a ‘serious researcher’, was quoted as being ‘in no doubt of the woman’s genuine psychical abilities but also sure she had employed them in an unethical, indeed dangerous, manner’.

Another match was a court record. He opened it: a declaration of the suit against Irene Dobson. Scrolling down, he found it frustratingly incomplete. The document set out what was being tried, but didn’t say how the case came out. A lot of old records were like that, incompletely scanned. Usually, he only had current files to open and process. He looked again at the legal rigmarole, and his eye was caught by Irene Dobson’s address.

The Laburnums, Feldspar Road, Highgate.

This was 26, Feldspar Road. There were big bushes outside. If he ran a search for laburnum.jpg, he was sure he’d get a visual match.

Irene Dobson lived in this house.

No, she had lived in this house. In the 1920s, before it was converted into flats. When it had a name, not a number.

Now she was dead.

Whoever was running this on Boyd knew where he lived. He was not going to take that.

* * *

‘This new presence,’ said Miss Walter-David. ‘It’s quite remarkable.’

There was no new presence, no ‘Caress’. Irene would have felt a change, and hadn’t. This was one presence with several voices. She had heard of such. Invariably malign. She should call an end to the seance, plead fatigue. But Ursula Walter-David would never come back, and the husbandless woman had a private income and nothing to spend it on but the beyond. At the moment, she was satisfied enough to pay heavily for Irene’s service. She decided to stay with it, despite the dangers. Rewards were within reach. She was determined, however, to treat this cunning spirit with extreme caution. He was a tiger, posing as a pussycat. She focused on the centre of the board, and was careful with the planchette, never letting its points stray beyond the ring of letters.

‘Caress,’ said Miss Walter-David, a-tremble, ‘may I speak with Frank?’

‘Caress’ was supposed to be a woman, but Irene thought the first voice – ‘Master Mind’ – closer to the true personality.

IN 52

‘Why 1952? It seems a terribly long way off.’

WHEN U DIE

That did it. Miss Walter-David pulled away as if bitten. Irene considered: it seemed only too likely that the sitter had been given the real year of her death. That was a cruel stroke, typical of the malign spirit.

The presence was a prophet. Irene had heard of a few such spirits – one of the historical reasons for consulting mediums was to discern the future – but never come across one. Could it be that the spirits had true foreknowledge of what was to come? Or did they inhabit a realm outside time and could look in at any point in human history, future as well as past, and pass on what they saw?

Miss Walter-David was still impressed. But less pleased.

The planchette circled, almost entirely of its own accord. Irene could have withdrawn her fingers, but the spirit was probably strong enough to move the pointer without her. It certainly raced ahead of her push. She had to keep the planchette in the circle.

IRENE

Not Irena.

DOBSON

Now she was frightened, but also annoyed. A private part of her person had been exposed. This was an insult and an attack.

‘Who’s Dobson?’ asked Miss Walter-David.

SHE IS

‘It is my name,’ Irene admitted. ‘That’s no secret.’

ISNT IT

‘Where are you?’ she asked.

HERE THERE EVERYWHERE

‘No, here and there perhaps. But not everywhere.’

This was a strange spirit. He had aspirations to omnipotence, but something about him was overreaching. He called himself ‘Master Mind’, which suggested a streak of self-deluding vanity. Knowledge wasn’t wisdom. She had a notion that if she asked him to name this year’s Derby winner, he would be able to furnish the correct answer (an idea with possibilities) but that he could reveal precious little of what came after death. An insight struck her: this was not a departed spirit, this was a living man.

Living. But where?

No.

When?

‘What date is it?’ she asked.

* * *

Good question.

Since this must be a sting, there was no harm in the truth.

JAN 20 01

IRENE D: 1901?

N 2001

URSULA W-D: I thought time had no meaning in the world beyond.

IRENE D: That depends which world beyond our guest might inhabit.

Boyd had run searches on ‘Irene Dobson’ and his own address, independent and cross-matching. Too many matches were coming up. He wished more people had names like ‘Frank Conynghame-Mars’ and fewer like ‘Irene Dobson’. ‘Boyd Waylo’, his birth name, was a deep secret; his accounts were all in names like ‘John Barrett’ and ‘Andrew Lee’.

Beyond the ring of monitors, his den was dark. This was the largest room in what had once been a Victorian town-house, and was now divided into three flats. Was this where ‘Madame Irena’ had held her seances? His raised ground-floor flat might encompass the old parlour.

He was supposed to believe he was in touch with the past.

One of the ‘Irene Dobson’ matches was a .jpg. He opened the picture file, and looked into a small, determined face. Not his type, but surprising and striking. Her hair was covered by a turban and she wore a Chinese-style jacket, buttoned up to the throat. She looked rather prosperous, and was smoking a black cigarette in a long white holder. The image was from 1927. Was that when she was supposed to be talking to him from?

WHAT DATE 4 U

IRENE D: January 13, 1923. Of course.

Maybe he was supposed to bombard her with questions about the period, to try and catch her out in an anachronism. But he had only general knowledge: Prohibition in America, a general strike in Britain, talking pictures in 1927, the Lindbergh flight somewhere earlier, the stock market crash a year or two later, Thoroughly Modern Millie and P.G. Wodehouse. Not a lot of use. He couldn’t even remember who was Prime Minister in January 1923. He could get answers from the net in moments, though; knowing things was pointless compared with knowing how to find things out. At the moment, that didn’t help him.

Whoever these women were – or rather, whoever this IRENE D was, for URSULA W-D plainly didn’t count – he was sure that they’d have the answers for any questions he came up with.

What was the point of this?

He could get to IRENE D. Despite everything, he had her. She was in his room; she was his prey and meat and he would not let her challenge him.

I C U

* * *

I C U

I see you.

Irene thought that was a lie, but Master Mind could almost certainly hear her. Though, as with real spirits, she wondered if the words came to him as human sounds or in some other manner.

The parlour was almost completely dark, save for a cone of light about the table.

Miss Walter-David was terrified, on the point of fleeing. That was for the best, but there was a service Irene needed of her.

She did not say it out loud, for ‘Master Mind’ would hear.

He said he could see, but she thought she could conceal her hand from him.

It was an awkward move. She put the fingers of her left hand on the shivering planchette, which was racing inside the circle, darting at the letters, trying to break free.

I C U ID

I C U R FRIT

She slipped a pocket-book out of her cardigan, opened it one-handed and pressed it to her thigh with the heel of her hand while extracting the pencil from the spine with her fingernails. It was not an easy thing to manage.

U R FRIT AND FRAUD

This was just raving. She wrote a note, blind. She was trusting Miss Walter-David to read her scrawl. It was strange what mattered.

‘This is no longer Caress,’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady. ‘Have we another visitor?’

2TRU IM SNAKE

‘Im? Ah-ha, “I’m”. Snake? Yet another speaker of this peculiar dialect, with unconventional ideas about spelling.’

Miss Walter-David was backing away. She was out of her seat, retreating into darkness. Irene offered her the pocket-book, opened to the message. The sitter didn’t want to take it. She opened her mouth. Irene shook her head, shushing her. Miss Walter-David took the book, and peered in the dark. Irene was afraid the silly goose would read out loud, but she at least half-understood.

On a dresser nearby was a tea-tray, with four glasses of distilled water and four curls of chain. Bicycle chain, as it happened. Irene had asked Miss Walter-David to bring the tray to the Ouija table.

‘Snake, do you know things? Things yet to happen?’

2TRU

‘A useful accomplishment.’

NDD

‘Indeed?’

2RIT

There was a clatter. Miss Walter-David had withdrawn. Irene wondered if she would pay for the seance. She might. After all, there had been results. She had learned something, though nothing to make her happy.

‘Miss Walter-David will die in 1952?’

Y

Back to Y. She preferred that to 2TRU and 2RIT.

‘Of what?’

A pause.

PNEU

‘Pneumonia, thank you.’

Her arm was getting worn out, dragged around the circle. Her shoulder ached. Doing this one-handed was not easy. She had already set out the glasses at the four points of the compass, and was working on the chains. It was important that the ends be dipped in the glasses to make the connections, but that the two ends in each glass not touch. This was more like physics than spiritualism, but she understood it made sense.

‘What else do you know?’

U R FRAUD

‘I don’t think so. Tell me about the future. Not 2001. The useful future, within the next five or ten years.’

STOK MRKT CRSH 29

‘That’s worth knowing. You can tell me about stocks and shares?’

Y

It was a subject of which she knew nothing, but she could learn. She had an idea that there were easier and less obtrusive fortunes to be made there than in Derby winners. But she would get the names out of him, too.

‘Horse races?’

A hesitation.

Y

The presence was less frisky, sliding easily about the circle, not trying to break free.

‘This year’s Derby?’

* * *

A simple search (+Epsom +Derby +winner +1923 -Kentucky) had no matches; he took out -Kentucky, and had a few hits, and an explanation. Papyrus, the 1923 winner, was the first horse to run in both the Epsom and Kentucky Derby races, though the nag lost in the States, scuppering a possible chance for a nice long-shot accumulator bet if he really was giving a woman from the past a hot tip on the future. Boyd fed that all to IRENE D, still playing along, still not seeing the point. She received slowly, as if her system were taking one letter at a time.

Click. It wasn’t a monitor. It was a Ouija board.

That was what he was supposed to think.

IRENE D: I’m going to give you another name. I should like you to tell me what you know of this man.

OK

IRENE D: Anthony Tallgarth. Also, Basil and Florence Tallgarth.

He ran multiple searches and got a cluster of matches, mostly from the twenties – though there were birth and death announcements from the 1860s through to 1968 – and, again, mostly from the Ham & High. He picked one dated February 2 1923, and opened the article.

TYCOON FINDS LOST SON.

IRENE D: Where is Anthony? Now.

According to the article, Anthony was enlisted in the Royal Navy as an Able Seaman, under the name of T.A. Meredith, stationed at Portsmouth and due to ship out aboard the HMS Duckett. He had parted from his wealthy parents after a scandal and a quarrel – since the brat had gone into the Navy, Boyd bet he was gay – but been discovered through the efforts of a ‘noted local spiritualist and seeress’. A reconciliation was effected.

He’d had enough of this game. He wasn’t going to play any more.

He rolled back in his chair, and hit an invisible wall.

IRENE D: I should tell you, Master Mind, that you are bound. With iron and holy water. I shall extend your circle, if you co-operate.

He tried reaching out, through the wall, and his hand was bathed with pain.

IRENE D: I do not know how you feel, if you can feel, but I will wager that you do not care for that.

It was as if she was watching him. Him!

IRENE D: Now, be a good little ghostie and tell me what I wish to know.

With his right hand lodged in his left armpit as the pain went away, he made keystrokes with his left hand, transferring the information she needed. It took a long time, a letter at a time.

IRENE D: There must be a way of replacing this board with a typewriter. That would be more comfortable for you, would it not?

FO, he typed.

A lash at his back, as the wall constricted. She had understood that. Was that a very 1923 womanly quality?

IRENE D: Manners, manners. If you are good to me, I shall let you have the freedom of this room, maybe this floor. I can procure longer chains.

He was a shark in a play-pool, furious and humiliated and in pain. And he knew it would last.

* * *

Mr and Mrs Tallgarth had been most generous. She could afford to give Master Mind the run of the parlour, and took care to refresh his water-bindings each day. This was not a task she would ever entrust to the new maid. The key to the parlour was about Irene’s person at all times.

People would pay to be in contact with the dead, but they would pay more for other services, information of more use in the here and now. And she had a good line on all manner of things. She had been testing Master Mind, and found him a useful source about a wide variety of subjects, from the minutiae of any common person’s life to the great matters which were to come in the rest of the century.

Actually, knowing which horse would win any year’s Derby was a comparatively minor advantage. Papyrus was bound to be the favourite, and the race too famous for any fortune to be made. She had her genie working on long-shot winners of lesser races, and was sparing in her use of the trick. Bookmakers were the sort of sharp people she understood only too well, and would soon tumble to any streak of unnatural luck. From now on, for a great many reasons, she intended to be as unobtrusive as possible.

This morning, she had been making a will. She had no interest in the disposal of her assets after death, when she herself ventured beyond the veil, for she intended to make the most of them while alive. The entirety of her estate was left to her firm of solicitors on the unusual condition that, when she passed, no record or announcement of her death be made, even on her gravestone. It was not beyond possibility that she mightn’t make it to 2001, though she knew she would be gone from this house by then. From now on, she would be careful about official mentions of her name; to be nameless, she understood, was to be invisible to Master Mind, and she needed her life to be shielded from him as his was from her.

The man had intended her harm, but he was her genie now, in her bottle.

She sat at the table, and put her hands on the planchette, feeling the familiar press of resistance against her.

‘Is there anybody there?’

YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

‘Temper temper, Master Mind. Today, I should like to know more about stocks and shares…’

* * *

Food was brought to him from the online grocery, handed over at the front door. He was a shut-in forever now. He couldn’t remember the last time he had stepped outside his flat; it had been days before IRENE D, maybe weeks. It wasn’t like he had ever needed to post a letter or go to a bank.

Boyd had found the chains. They were still here, fixed into the skirting boards, running under the doorway, rusted at the ends, where the water traps had been. It didn’t matter that the water had run out years ago. He was still bound.

Searches told him little more of Irene Dobson. At least he knew someone would have her in court in four years’ time – a surprise he would let her have – but he had no hopes that she would be impeded. He had found traces of her well into the 1960s, lastly a piece from 1968 that didn’t use her name but did mention her guiding spirit, ‘Master Mind’, to whom she owed so much over the course of her long and successful career as a medium, seeress and psychic sleuth.

From 1923 to 1968. Forty-five years. Real time. Their link was constant, and he moved forward as she did, a day for a day.

Irene Dobson’s spirit guide had stayed with her at least that long.

Not forever. Forty-five years.

He had tried false information, hoping to ruin her – if she was cast out of her house (though she was still in it in 1927, he remembered) he would be free – but she always saw through it and could punish him.

He had tried going silent, shutting everything down. But he always had to boot up again, to be online. It was more than a compulsion. It was a need. In theory, he could stop paying electricity and phone bills – rather, stop other people paying his – and be cut off eventually, but in theory he could stop himself breathing and suffocate. It just wasn’t in him. His meat had rarely left the house anyway, and as a reward for telling her about the extra-marital private habits of a husband whose avaricious wife was one of her sitters, she had extended his bindings to the hallway and – thank heavens – the toilet.

She had his full attention.

IRENE D: Is there anybody there?

Y DAMNIT Y

THE INTERVENTION

A MAN HE didn’t know sat quietly at the far end of the long table, but Keith didn’t pay him attention. Vince, his partner, had asked him to step into the conference room for a moment. Daily crises gave Keith and Vince an excuse to get their brains dirty and demonstrate their continuing (if slightly soft-in-the-middle) whiz-kid status to the youngsters they’d employed when the business expanded.

‘This is Mr Leitch,’ said Vince, nodding at the stranger.

Keith looked at Leitch and back at Vince.

When his eyes weren’t on the man, Keith couldn’t picture him.

He looked back again, almost rudely, staring.

Leitch was ordinary, of no particular age, reasonably dressed. Keith tried to memorise features, but his mind slid off the face. It was like trying to pick up a paperclip with mittened fingers.

What he did notice was that this was not a normal crisis talk-through. Vince didn’t have a terminal running, surrounded by post-it notes and an open file of spec sheets. He wasn’t wearing the lucky hat he always put on for real work. His hair was backcombed over his bald spot. He wore his smart, first-meeting-with-clients jacket.

Was Leitch a new client? Vince didn’t arrange first meets without consulting him. Even if a prospect had come up suddenly, Keith would have been filled in before Leitch appeared in the office.

Details niggled.

Vince’s avoidance of him this morning, his excuse for ducking out of their regular lunch.

It wasn’t just Vince. Rowena, his wife, had been different at breakfast. Even the kids, Jennifer and Jake. They’d all chattered around him, as usual. But the talk was brittle, with a fine edge of hysteria. It never let up. Questions thrown at him every second, tiny decisions for him to make, pretend problems to keep him occupied.

Mary, his PA, had called in sick, and stayed away from work. She had not seemed to be coming down with anything yesterday.

Keith half-thought everyone was working on something behind his back. He even wondered non-seriously if he was about to be on This is Your Life.

Of course, he was too ordinary for that.

What was going on? Somehow, he couldn’t ask the question.

Vince didn’t ask him to sit down. He wouldn’t have, anyway. This was Keith’s conference room as much as Vince’s. He didn’t need to be asked.

Something told him to stay stood up.

‘Keith Marion,’ Leitch said, confirming not questioning his identity.

‘This is an Intervention.’

Keith didn’t know what the stranger meant.

Leitch unzipped a leather document folder and opened it like a book. Like the book on This is Your Life, come to that. He produced several white papers in blue plastic folders. He slid them down the table.

‘These are copies, of course,’ he said.

Keith didn’t look at the papers.

‘They are consent forms,’ Leitch explained. ‘Would you authenticate the signatures, please?’

Keith sat down now, and slipped the top document out of its blue folder. He turned to the last page and recognised Rowena’s scrawl. He skimmed over the many clauses, mind buzzing too much to read.

Another form was signed by Vince. There were more, from his accountant, bank manager, the headmaster of the kids’ school, his GP, his parents.

‘This is a radical Intervention,’ Leitch clarified. ‘Your rights and responsibilities are suspended. Your bank accounts are frozen for the day, but the co-signees will assume responsibility at the opening of trading tomorrow. Commitments will be fulfilled. The business will continue, until you are ready to reassume a position. So will your household.’

Keith looked at Vince, who looked away.

‘Your credit cards are revoked, the codes of all computers you had access to have been changed, burglar alarms here and at your house have been reprogrammed. You will please surrender your house, office and car keys.’

Leitch produced a small plastic bowl.

Keith made a fist in his trouser pocket, around his keys.

Leitch held out the bowl and fixed him with his eyes.

‘We can help you best if you don’t fight us,’ he said. ‘Therapy has been authorised by people who care about you.’

There were two other strangers in the room now. A man and a woman, casually dressed. They were between him and the door.

Through the glass partition, Keith saw the rest of the office. No one working. Everyone peering at the conference room. Mary was here now, in the reception area, smoking furiously.

Keith brought out his keys and dropped them in the bowl.

Leitch smiled.

‘A first step,’ he said. ‘Every odyssey begins with a first step.’

‘And ends with a last one,’ Keith snapped.

There was a pause. Leitch’s face shut down, as if not programmed to respond. Then he opened his mouth and laughed. The other strangers laughed too.

Vince looked away, eyes wet with tears.

‘Your mobile phone?’ Leitch asked.

The woman held up Keith’s phone. She must have taken it out of his jacket, which was hanging on the back of his swivel chair in his office.

‘I know this will seem overly harsh,’ Leitch said, ‘but you must believe it is done in your interests.’

The man at the door took a pair of shears out of his coat pocket. The woman gave him Keith’s mobile, and he snipped it cleanly in two.

The snick sound made Keith’s heart jump.

‘If you will come with us,’ Leitch said, standing up.

Vince took upon himself the task of gathering all the forms and returning them to Leitch.

Keith shoved his chair away from the table and stood.

‘It’s for the best, old son,’ Vince said. ‘You know that.’

He knew nothing of the sort, but wasn’t stupid enough to say so. The man and the woman were watching him, tensed, waiting for a move.

He remembered the heart-punching snick.

The woman held open the conference room door. Leitch left first. Keith was encouraged to follow.

He looked back. Vince didn’t meet his eyes.

With Leitch’s associates bringing up the rear, Keith was walked through the office. People he employed – had employed – scurried out of the way, wary of association with him. He didn’t know what they’d been told.

In reception, he walked past Mary. She was trying to light a fresh cigarette in her mouth while one was still burning between her knuckles.

She looked at him, not with shame but pity.

‘Keith,’ she said, then nothing.

Cold fury kept him calm. He would go along until there was an opening. Then he’d be away. It was some kind of hostile takeover. He would have to fight back.

* * *

He was walked outside into the car park they called a courtyard. A white van was parked close by, next to his own estranged car. Another man got out of the van and opened the rear doors. Inside, the vehicle was padded, like a lunatic’s cell. A stretcher was pulled out. An undercarriage descended.

‘If you would take off your clothes and lie down,’ Leitch dictated, ‘Constant will see to them.’

Constant, the snick man, took a large laundry sack out of the van and held it open.

It was a warm day. Faces were pressed to office windows all around the courtyard.

Constant held the sack open wide.

A long pause. Keith saw the snick in Constant’s eyes and unbuckled his belt.

‘Shoes first, I suggest,’ said Leitch.

Keith undid his trainers and dropped them in the sack.

‘Good lad,’ said Constant.

Keith undressed and put all his clothes into the sack. He was conscious, standing naked, of the stone he’d gained in his thirties. Constant dropped the sack in a bright orange waste bin.

Keith started to protest.

‘Out with the old,’ said Leitch. ‘It’s important. Lie down, please.’

Keith got onto the stretcher. It was exactly his size. Constant drew a thin sheet over him and then, with the help of the other assistant, swiftly fastened straps over the sheet.

‘It’s so you won’t hurt yourself,’ said Leitch. ‘We’ve a long journey.’

Keith tested the straps. He was held securely. He should have taken his chances with the snick man and made a run for it. Back into the office, out of one of the street doors, into the crowds.

Then what? He apparently had no money, no credit, no car, no business, no home.

The stretcher slid back into the van. The roof cut out the sky. The doors were shut and fastened. The strap across his throat prevented him lifting his head more than a few inches.

He heard Leitch and his assistants get into the fore compartment of the van and felt the engine turn over.

* * *

The windows in the back of the van were opaque white plastic, letting in light but no information. Gratton, the attendant, sat out of Keith’s sightline, walkman giving out a muted snare drum.

The van travelled over roads of differing qualities, at various speeds. It got shady and then dark, as afternoon passed into evening. A light was turned on. He shut his eyes against its harshness. His mind raced so fast at the beginning that he lost the sense of time. Hours had passed. He didn’t know in which direction he was being driven.

Why had they done this to him? Was Ro having an affair with Vince? Were his wife and partner scheming to oust him? It seemed more extensive than that, as if everyone he knew were in on the game. They had his kids’ signatures, in crayon.

Who was Leitch?

Even now, he couldn’t remember the man’s face.

‘Nearly there, sunshine,’ said Gratton.

The attendant leaned over into Keith’s field of vision, and checked him.

‘Is that an earring?’ Gratton asked, pinching his lobe.

Keith nodded. He had got his ear pierced last year, when Jennifer had hers done. She’d wanted to do her nose, but he’d put his foot down.

Gratton gently took out the stud and palmed it.

‘All for the best, mate,’ he said.

* * *

The van parked and the engine shut off. The quiet was unnerving after the lulling grind of the engine. The doors were wrenched open. Keith smelled the country: damp, vegetable, earthy.

It could be Cornwall or Wales or – depending on how late at night it was – Yorkshire. If it were Scotland, night would have passed and it would be the next day.

The stretcher was pulled out of the van. He saw sharp points of light in the black of the sky. Away from town, the stars were brighter.

‘A good trip, Keith?’ asked Leitch.

Keith turned his head and didn’t reply. Leitch stood by the van, looking over a clipboard.

‘We’re far from the madding crowd out here,’ said Leitch. ‘A lot of therapy is getting away from it all. It sounds like old hat, but you’ll be surprised how effective it can be. Everything put into perspective. Things seem clearer.’

He indicated the stars. Keith felt cold.

‘Let’s go inside, shall we?’ Leitch said, as if Keith had a choice. ‘It’s a homey old place.’

Beyond the van was a house, set in its own grounds but not a mansion. Trees grew close to the walls, which were buckled a bit by thrusting roots. A fluorescent globe light shone over the front doorway.

The house was at the end of a gravel driveway. Keith was carried by Gratton and Constant, who were careful not to let the undercarriage castors of the stretcher sink into the gravel. He looked left and right. A thin row of dark trees lined one side of the drive. A long, low, prefab-looking building was on the other, like a factory or college annexe.

The stretcher was slid up a ramp placed on the front steps and the woman, Heather, opened the doors. The attendants set the stretcher down. Leitch himself unbuckled the straps.

Keith could have gone for his throat.

But maybe that was the test. If he so much as flinched, tasers would come out and he’d be zapped unconscious.

He needed to pee. And he was shivering.

‘We’ll get you something to wear,’ said Heather.

Keith sat up. He was in the hallway of what felt like a small hotel. A corkboard hung on one wall, opposite a mirror in an ugly old frame.

Heather helped him off the stretcher. He hugged his sheet to him. He was led into a small sitting room, where an imitation-log electric fire was on. Heather opened a drawer in an old chest and gave him a pair of off-white woolly socks, drawstring-waisted tracksuit bottoms, a yellow pajama jacket and a mouse-coloured dressing gown without a cord. She turned away as he got dressed. The clothes had a hospital feel to them, soft as if washed too many times, slightly stale.

‘There,’ she said, looking at him, ‘aren’t you handsome.’

It was something you’d say to a child or a very old person. It wasn’t meant.

Leitch looked in. He approved of Keith’s clothes.

‘Early to bed, with no supper, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘There’ll be breakfast tomorrow. Then we can start.’

Keith was led upstairs to a dormitory room with six beds, all empty.

‘We’re not too busy now,’ said Heather. ‘All the better for you. You’ll have all of us to yourself, working on your behalf.’

He was laid down on a bed, professionally.

‘Let me see your hands,’ Heather said.

He showed her his manicured nails. She smiled and clipped a plastic noose around one wrist. It ratcheted tight and connected to the bed-rail. The bed, he now realised, was bolted to the floorboards.

‘Just to be extra-safe,’ Heather said.

She turned out the lights, and left the room.

He still needed to pee. He wasn’t tired enough to sleep. He wanted to shout. He pulled the plastic cuff, testing it. He could get a foot or so of play in the line, but that cinched the noose into his wrist. Once notched up, it couldn’t loosen.

He could roll off the bed, and did. That pulled loose the sheets and blanket – he hadn’t slept under anything but a duvet in years – and exposed him to a wicked draught. The room was dark, but he could feel under the bed. He found a plastic beaker, about a litre size, lowered his tracksuit bottom one-handed, and peed noisily into the container. Then he rearranged himself, and tried to get the bedclothes straight. He lost the top sheet and found scratchy blanket against his face and hands.

He didn’t think he slept, but between one blink and the next it was light in the room. He was woken by a snick that gave him a panic spasm. Constant stood over him with his shears. Keith could move his arm, and realised Constant had cut the plastic tie. Constant snicked the air.

* * *

Should he eat the cooked breakfast? It might be drugged.

‘I wouldn’t let that go to waste, mate,’ said Gratton.

Keith looked down at the plate. Full English.

He hadn’t eaten since yesterday’s quick lunch. Hunger was a claw in his stomach.

He tucked in.

‘There’s lovely.’

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten anything fried. It was one of Ro’s health policies. His body no longer had a tolerance for grease.

The small dining room was attached to a plant-filled conservatory.

Keith looked around, itching for something.

‘No papers, I’m afraid,’ said Gratton, realising before Keith what it was he was missing. ‘Can’t be doing with distractions. Let the outside world roll on by itself. You have to concentrate on your own problem.’

‘I don’t have any problem.’

Gratton smiled, tolerantly. ‘You’re here, aren’t you? You must have a problem.’

Leitch stepped into the room. He wore a white jacket over jeans, and a big smile.

Keith was suddenly furious.

‘What the hell is this all about? Why the hell am I here?’

Leitch sat down at the table, poured tea from the metal pot, shook a thin sachet of sugar.

‘Those are questions you have to ask yourself, Keith. You’re a clever man, so you know that you know the answers. But clever people can hide things from themselves. Stupid people can’t, you know. Their one great advantage. Do you think you’ve been hiding answers from yourself?’

Keith genuinely didn’t understand the question. ‘That makes no sense.’

‘Indeed. If you realise that, there’s a chink. You’re here to make sense of it.’

‘Where’s “here”?’

Leitch poured sugar into his tea.

‘Not important,’ he said. ‘The map name wouldn’t mean anything to you. Don’t look out. Look in.’

He made fists and held them together against his chest.

‘All the way in, Keith.’

Keith looked around the room, past Leitch’s eyes, wondering if there was movement in the conservatory, calculating his chances of making a dash. He looked back at Leitch’s bland face, and pushed back his chair.

Beyond the plants, windows were open. He felt a breeze.

He stood up, stretched.

‘Good grub,’ he said, and ran, tipping the table aside.

He felt a thump in his side, then real pain. An expert jab to the kidney. Gratton held him up, so he didn’t fall. Keith’s legs were unstrung. Pain ran up and down the entire right side of his body.

Leitch still held his teacup.

‘I’m disappointed, Keith,’ he said, sincerely. ‘You only hurt yourself by refusing to admit that you have a problem. I thought we were making progress, but I see that you were playing the cunning game, hiding in your burrow, squirrelling away nuts for the winter. You’ve let yourself down. And people depend on you, Keith. Love you, need you. Rowena, Jennifer and Jake, Vincent, Mary, all of them. People you don’t even think you know depend on you. Clients, officials, tradesmen, suppliers. They all want only for you to get better, to take your place. This isn’t torture, it’s therapy.’

Keith was able to get a footing again. His sock-swaddled feet were flat on the tiles. The pain was going.

‘You must understand.’

Keith didn’t say anything. He couldn’t bring himself to nod.

‘You must.’

Another blow, in the same spot. He’d have doubled up, but he was held fast.

‘Early days yet,’ said Leitch.

* * *

Still in the loose clothes he had been given last night, Keith was escorted out of the house and into the long, hut-like building. The windowless space had an old animal smell.

Overhead lights fizzed on. The building had no interior walls or partitions. In pools of light, basic furniture was arranged in basic configurations. It was like a rehearsal hall, with rough stage sets laid out. There were people here, mostly gathered at the far end, where there was no light.

Heather sat at a kitchen table, opposite an empty folding chair. She wore a dressing gown it took Keith a moment to recognise as Ro’s.

He turned to Leitch and got no clue.

Gratton walked Keith into the scene and sat him down.

‘Keith,’ Heather said, ‘this can’t go on. The kids have noticed, things have been said at school.’

Keith looked at the woman as if she were mad.

‘Say something, damn you,’ she said.

She was doing Rowena, perfectly. The old accent still there, smoothed out by elocution lessons. Heather touched her hair, an exact Ro mannerism.

‘You’re frightening me,’ she said.

Keith looked back at Leitch and Gratton. His side still ached.

‘You’re not my wife,’ he said.

Tears started in her eyes. ‘Keith,’ she remonstrated, almost whining, looking away, making as if to slap the table, then covering her face.

‘But you’re not,’ he protested.

The woman began to sob, uncontrollably.

When Rowena’s brother was killed in a car accident, she had been exactly like this. Then, he had tried to comfort her, to get close, to make it better.

Now, he froze.

Heather – not Rowena! a stranger! – tore her hair, clawed her face, screamed and cried, leaked gummy fluid from her eyes and nose. He folded his arms, cold inside, and watched the act.

He couldn’t take this any more.

He stood up, and turned. This was just a silly game.

Where Leitch and Gratton had been standing were two smaller people, Jake and Jennifer. Not stand-in midgets. Their faces were round with horror, appalled at what they had seen.

‘Daddy,’ said Jennifer, reaching out.

‘No,’ said Jake, holding his sister back. ‘Remember, we agreed.’

Leitch was with his children.

‘This is low,’ Keith said. ‘Really low.’

The woman was still making a scene, collapsing into quieter, exhausted sobs that racked her entire body.

‘This isn’t Mum,’ he told his kids. ‘This is make-believe. I’ll get you out of here, I promise. I won’t let them hurt you.’

He stepped towards his children. Damn the kidney-puncher. He’d take anything for Jake and Jennifer. It wasn’t just him in this trap now. He had to protect the kids.

He really saw their faces and froze.

They were terrified of him. Jennifer broke away from Jake, and ran to Leitch, burying her face in his jacket. He cuddled and soothed her. Jake held his ground, and looked up at Keith, mouth set, defiant. He was white with terror.

‘Dad, don’t…’

The lights went out and came on again.

* * *

He was in another rough set, conforming to the layout of his office, sat in front of an old unconnected television set and a manual typewriter. At the edge of the light, Leitch watched, taking notes.

There were no other ‘actors’.

Keith tried to think through the problem. He wanted to call in Vince, to hash it all out. They could crack almost anything.

He had heard of these things. Interventions.

But they were for people with serious drug problems, alcoholics, and addicts of self-destructive behaviour. Weak people who excused their bad behaviour by blaming it on irresistible compulsion. Randy bastards who called themselves sex addicts, fat fools who said the Devil made them eat too much, downright crooks who alleged poor toilet training made them steal car radios. Keith was not like that at all. He was just ordinary.

He followed Leitch’s advice and looked in, searching for a reason.

Until yesterday, he hadn’t had any serious problem. If anything, his life had been well above average. Vince, though it didn’t hinder him in the business, was in much worse personal shape, divorced and estranged from his daughter. There were no hiccoughs in Keith’s marriage. He had even been secure enough to tell Ro that Mary had a little crush on him. The kids were great, getting on well in school (and terrified of him) and Ro was contemplating going back to work, not just for the money. But because she wanted to.

Financially, they were set up. No hidden holes in the accounts. No money bleeding out anywhere (that he knew of).

Imagining images on the dusty screen of the pretend computer, he ran scenarios. Vince was in worse shape than Keith had thought, mixed up with one of his daughter’s mad slut friends, spending more and more to keep above water, concealing the drain on the business. Vince knew he’d be found out soon, and had set things up so it all seemed to be Keith’s fault. His partner, his best friend, had framed him, projecting his own troubles.

Did Vince resent Keith that much? Resent his undivorced wife and unestranged children?

It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t not be true.

Leitch stepped into the light, and sat down on a swivel chair.

‘Let’s talk business,’ he said.

Had Vince fooled Leitch? Or was the therapist in on it? Keith had to try least-worst scenario first.

‘It’s not me, it’s Vince,’ he said. ‘Look closely. Who called you in? Who showed you the books? This is a setup, a conspiracy. Cui bono?’

Leitch looked genuinely sad.

‘Keith, Keith, Keith… listen to yourself. Ask yourself if even you believe yourself. Look at it like the daily crisis, attack it. Think it through.’

Keith spent too much time with Vince. There was no space in his partner’s life for the scam he’d imagined.

‘If not Vince, someone,’ he said to Leitch. ‘You, maybe.’

‘I only want to help you face your problem.’

‘I haven’t got a sodding problem! How many times do I have to say it?’

‘How many times can you say it, Keith? How many times before it sounds as fake in your ears as in everyone else’s?’

‘I haven’t got a problem, I haven’t got a problem, I haven’t…’

Leitch was right. It did sound fake. Clearly, Keith had a problem, or he wouldn’t be here. It was just that the problem wasn’t with Keith. It was with…

‘Everyone else,’ said Leitch. ‘The whole rest of the world is wrong, and you’re right. Hold that up to the light, Keith. Think. Take that step. Admit the problem, and perhaps there’s a way past…’

He heard the unforced sincerity in the man.

He was letting them all down, he knew. Somehow. In a way he really couldn’t see.

But no. He wasn’t a boozer, on drugs, a gambling nut, screwing around, abusing his kids, dragging the business down. He just wasn’t.

He couldn’t think of a problem.

‘Leitch, I don’t know what you want me to say.’

‘It’s not what I want. This isn’t to please me, Keith. In this room, I don’t matter. This is your place. What do you want to say?’

‘I don’t know.’

Leitch smiled, with relief. ‘Super, Keith. That’s a half-step. You can admit that you don’t know. You understand now how difficult that is for someone like you. Someone used to knowing. It’s all right not to know, to have doubts. It’s all right.’

‘I’m so proud of you, darling,’ said a woman.

He saw Heather, in the freestanding empty frame that represented his office door. No, not Heather. Rowena, face streaked.

He tried to stand.

Rowena stepped back, dark curtaining her face.

‘Not yet, Keith,’ said Leitch. ‘Later.’

* * *

More sets, more scenes. Leitch and Heather were his parents, taking him through a rerun of his teenage years, which overlapped with his memory but also contradicted it radically. They talked through his decision to turn down a directorship of the firm he had started with and set up on his own with Vince, Leitch stabbing in harsh questions about Vince’s reliability far more vehemently than his dad actually had done.

Then the pair became Jake and Jennifer, eerily dead-on in their performances, wearing tailored adult-sized school blazers with overlarge badges to keep the scale. They quizzed him about their own lives and interests. It was a struggle to recall the pop bands and computer games the kids were obsessed with, to be rated harshly on his knowledge of trivia that had been a background buzz in his life for the past few years. He thought he knew the names of Jennifer’s best friends, in order of preference, but things had changed in the playground and he was working from last month’s crib sheet.

He was sat down at a school desk he was uncomfortable with, and an elderly woman slapped a piece of paper in front of him. When he turned it over and recognised his Geography O level exam, he realised that the woman was Mrs Boat, his old form teacher from school. On the desk were a pad of lined paper (‘use only one side and leave wide margins’), a pen, a plastic ruler and a box of coloured pencils. Mrs Boat invigilated, holding up a stopwatch as he struggled to draw maps and write essays. He hadn’t used a fountain pen to write more than a cheque in decades. Blotches appeared on his hands and the paper. Twenty-five years ago, he’d got a B Grade pass; this was likely to be a washout, a Fail.

There were no meal breaks. He was not let out of the long hut.

The sessions went on and on. Days must have passed, but only he got tired. Leitch and his assistants all remained fresh.

He played real games with Constant and Gratton, and mostly lost. One-on-one basketball, arm-wrestling, pool, snakes and ladders, dominoes, the mirror game, I Spy, Risk, Cluedo, Campaign, hopscotch, twenty questions, truth or dare, darts.

Heather, as Mary, tried to seduce him in his ‘office’, while Rowena and the kids watched from chairs outside the circle of light. He resisted, though the woman, surely improvising, became more and more blatant and wanton. After an hour of this, Leitch let Rowena and the kids go, assured Keith that this was a time-out for them and that if he wanted to take advantage of the opportunity no one would be any the wiser. He also winked.

Exhausted, he kissed Heather on the mouth. She slapped him.

Leitch and his real lawyer, Simon Manfred, took him through the basics of sexual harassment legislation. They read long legal documents aloud, interpolating brand names of household cleaning products somewhere into every sentence, never repeating, always managing to conceal them so that sense was preserved. He found himself listening for ‘Lemon Jif’, ‘Daz’ and ‘Persil’, missing what was actually being said, which became more and more serious. Legal complications were set out which could bring his whole life crashing down and land him in prison.

That ended, and he was in a sitcom. Rowena and the kids – the real ones – sat around the breakfast table, providing a laugh track as he tried to get through to them. They must have been brainwashed. In the end, he threw the props around, smashing things. His family found this utterly hilarious.

He collapsed and slept, for maybe ten seconds.

* * *

He woke in complete darkness, handcuffed to something with a wiry hairy arm. It jittered, chittered and leaped, landing on his ribs with a lot of projectile weight. Hairy all over, it smelled rank. He was jerked into a sitting position as the thing bounded off. He was dragged across a bare earth floor. The creature screeched, and banged his wrist over and over against the ground. Keith lay limp, dreading long fingers that might come for the soft parts of his face.

It was all over. They were just going to kill him now.

A light came on. Leitch was sitting on a milking stool next to him, a black-furred, pink-faced animal in his lap, stroking and petting and calming. Keith was handcuffed to some member of the monkey family, smaller and more spidery than a chimpanzee.

‘This is Kiki, my spider monkey,’ said Leitch.

That made sense.

Keith couldn’t believe he’d had that last thought.

‘You see the metaphor, of course,’ said Leitch. ‘It’s not quite literal. But if we’d put Kiki on your back, you might have been seriously injured. She’s a strong little thing. But you get the point. You must be used to the feeling that a part of you is beyond your control. Potentially dangerous, potentially frightening. But also exciting, entertaining, cute as a button. You can’t blame Kiki, and you have to love her, but she’s not good for you. No, dearie, you’re not. Sorry, but you have to say bye-bye to Keith now. There’s a good girl.’

Constant snicked the plastic cuff. Keith had two leftover noose-bracelets on his right wrist now. Leitch passed the spider monkey to Constant, who carried it off.

‘Now, Keith, how would you like some crack cocaine?’

Keith shuddered.

‘Just joking,’ said Leitch. ‘Time for tea and biccies though.’

* * *

Keith sat, dissociated, stunned. Around him, everyone had a tea break. Ro rationed two biscuits apiece to Jennifer and Jake, knowing Keith usually slipped them sweets against her program but not really minding. Gratton and Mary lit up cigarettes and went to the far corner of the hut, where Keith could swear they were flirting. Vince sat as far away as possible, whispering into a mobile phone that hadn’t been cut in half. Constant worked at the crossword of a newspaper, which was missing its front pages. Leitch slurped his urn-decanted tea like a connoisseur. Other people milled about, some familiar, others not.

‘Going well, isn’t it?’ said Manfred, cheerily. ‘It’s rather fun.’

Nobody brought Keith any tea.

Mrs Boat came back with his exam paper, covered in red ink.

‘A D,’ she said. ‘Good thing it was only the mock. You’ll do better under real fire.’

He stared at his essay on Swiss crop rotation. Red scribbles on blue blotches.

He couldn’t see how any of this was helping.

Leitch finished his tea.

‘Back to work, everyone,’ he said.

* * *

Chairs were put in a circle, and Keith was love-bombed. Everyone told him how he or she really felt about him, mostly with tears. They all reminisced out loud about the most perfect moments of their relationship. Manfred remembered in convincing detail a weekend of walking in the fell country which Keith could have sworn he and Ro had gone on with Vince and his ex. Then, they all told him when they had started to notice the problem.

Nobody said what the problem was.

But they had all noticed it. Jennifer haltingly recounted the months during which she had gone from being afraid for to being afraid of, and how the nightmares had got out of control. Jake talked about the shame he had felt at school, when word got out and his friends’ parents told their kids to put distance between themselves and the Marion family.

Vince, amazingly reluctant and halting, said the morale of the office was affected. The business might suffer.

Leitch said nothing, but looked at Keith throughout, fixed.

Heather kept asking Keith how he felt, after each little speech. He felt less and less.

The session seemed to go on for hours, days. It was an impossible shift.

No one else got tired.

A well-dressed man who turned out to be Keith’s tax inspector ran over the case notes for the last five years, flagging odd slips. Keith had made more errors in their favour than his. Only a few pounds were astray, but the man was meticulous. Also boring.

Mrs Boat said Keith had potential but was easily distracted by extracurricular activities and could do better. Fair only.

Mum blamed herself. She admitted that she’d always known, but hadn’t wanted to face it. But she would stick by him, would see him better. Dad agreed with her.

Ro said she had thought about leaving.

Finally, Leitch spoke.

‘It’s a house of cards, Keith, and you’ve built it. You’ve developed highly sophisticated systems for dealing with your problem, for hiding from it and behind it. They work, and will work for years. But it’s only a house of cards. It will collapse. The machine will run down. It’s up to you. All of us here have taken it as far as we can. We have to hand the weight back to you. There’s a lot of love in this circle, and it’s there for you. But it’s not unconditional. You have to reach inside, to make a break, to make an admission. Now, is there anything you want to say?’

Keith was cold inside.

He made the words in his mind. I have a problem. He knew the reaction that would get. The gathering around, the tearful hugs, the firm handshakes, the shoulder-claps, the restoration of rights and responsibilities.

He had no spit in his mouth. His tongue was old leather.

He could only creak.

Expectant eyes were on him. His lips went in and out.

‘I…’

Breaths were held.

Could he lie? Could he fool them?

No, firmly, no. He could not lie.

He shrugged, and sat quiet.

The disappointment waves were worse than blows. His family and friends and associates were all too drained to react. They had poured out so much and this wasn’t the ending they had yearned for. They bristled, resenting him for not backing down.

Leitch made a mark on his clipboard.

Vince got up and walked away from the circle. Jennifer began to cry, softly. Mum and Dad held hands. Rowena looked at him, with something close to hatred.

‘You’re a strong man, Keith,’ said Leitch. ‘Strong and clever. It’s worse for you because of that. You’ve incorporated the problem into your makeup. You’ve put up thick walls around yourself. You’re in real danger. This place is your last stop before the void. Deep down, you know that. We certainly do. That’s no threat. Just a statement.’

‘Daddy, please,’ said one of his kids.

‘Come on, mate. Get it over with.’

‘Keith, Keith…’

‘It can’t be that difficult.’

‘Just say it, Marion.’

‘Son…’

‘Out with it.’

‘Dad…’

‘Come on.’

‘You could do better.’

‘You can do it, Keith.’

‘Now, please.’

Voices from the circle, overlapping, rising.

Inside him, a wall was dismantled. His stomach was ice. His mind floated, far off, then clicked back, into sharp focus.

‘Okay, all right,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a problem.’

A beat. Quiet. Incipient rapture. Shining faces.

Leitch still looked expectant. Keith didn’t get it.

‘I admit it, Leitch. I, Keith Marion, have A Problem.’

Leitch nodded. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘good. Progress. Breakthrough. Now, Keith, you have a problem.’

Dead inside, Keith looked at the therapist.

‘So, Keith,’ said Leitch, ‘what are you going to do about it?’

RED JACKS WILD

A PRELIMINARY WORD. This story was commissioned by Marvin Kaye at Weird Tales for a prospective series which would pair reprints of classic stories first published in the magazine with newly written sequels. ‘Red Jacks Wild’ is a follow-up to Robert Bloch’s ‘Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper’ – though, for some bizarre reason, it ended up in another magazine with no mention of Bloch or its status as a sequel. I first read Bloch’s 1943 story in a paperback collection, The House of the Hatchet, in the early 1970s and it made a lasting impression on me; it’s frequently anthologised and adapted (for radio several times and for TV as an episode of Thriller directed by Ray Milland in 1961). You should, of course, read ‘Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper’ before ‘Red Jacks Wild’.

I’m John Carmody but… yes, you can call me Jack.

As it happens, I didn’t come up with the ‘trade name’. Those letters weren’t from me. I daresay a reporter needed to fill column inches. With no fresh kills, interest dies down. I’d have obliged the gentlemen of the press, but the ritual precludes indiscriminate slaughter. So, an unknown hack dashed off red-ink scrawls signed ‘yours truly, Jack the Ripper’. The catchy tag got the story back on the front page.

I’m an American, though I studied surgery – and other, more arcane disciplines – in London. I am a qualified medical doctor, devout in my religion and a licensed psychoanalyst. Stretching on the couch in my office on West 74th Street and telling me your dreams sets you back seventy-five dollars an hour. Plus tax, old man…

The consulting work I do for the FBI and the NYPD is pro bono. It helps me keep abreast of developments in my field. Also, listening to manic ad execs and depressive wives gets boring. Criminal analysis is a mental tonic. Seeking out like minds keeps mine sharp.

In 1951, I celebrated my 100th birthday yet I look no older than I did in 1888. The secret of my success is… well, killing disposable people.

Suffice to say, I’ve kept my bargain with Hecate. A ritual, repeated every third fall. Six offerings. Six bodies, arranged just so… to propitiate the Goddess of the Moon.

No, it doesn’t get easier…

When I sacrificed on the altars of Whitechapel, the brightest sparks in criminology thought a crook was identifiable by the bumps on his head. No one knew about fingerprints. A policeman couldn’t ask impertinent questions of a social superior. It was a miracle if any half-intelligent wrong ’un got caught.

In ’51, the ritual was dicier. If the FBI hadn’t called me in to work up a dossier – they call them profiles, now – I might not have completed.

It helps to select your disposables carefully. Certain victims command fewer police resources than, say, archdukes or bankers’ wives. As the world knows, I began on whores. Still a good wheeze. I fall back on street sluts whenever nothing else comes to mind. In New Orleans in 1909, I took coloured children. They called me the Voo-Doo Man. The cops didn’t listen to the parents until I was done. In California in 1933, as the Hobo Hacker, I picked on jobless transients.

Last time, the Red Knife preyed on card-carrying communists… labour organisers, blacklisted teachers, a writer, an actress. I left their cards inside their open stomachs. Some commentators half-seriously said the killings might not technically be a crime. Other Red Knives were inspired to action, which made it easy to pin my offerings on a patsy. I spun a lot of analytical moonshine and led Special Agents Finlay and Dwight to Abner Polk. Expelled from a back-room revolutionary cell, Polk had dismembered two comrades. I walked the boob – sozzled on hooch and gore – through a confession. He wound up taking credit for six additional murders.

Public sympathy for the Red Knife evaporated. Polk wasn’t a True American, but another Killer Commie, as bad as his victims. I had a ticket to his execution at Sing Sing. They gave him more juice than the Rosenbergs.

Once, the world was satisfied with an unsolved mystery: the ship that vanished… the killer who was never caught… the unknown monster in the fog. Now, the public want a final chapter of the serial, an explanation for the magic, and a villain to strap into the electric chair.

So long as America finds new sub-humans to hate, my three-yearly chore will pose only technical challenges. This fall, it might be homosexuals… or career girls who hold down jobs that ought to go to ex-servicemen… or these new negro-sounding white folk singers.

Juvenile delinquents, though, are off the board. That franchise has been taken for 1954. My red jack has been trumped.

* * *

‘They’re out to get me, Dr Carmody,’ said the fleshy, balding young man who couldn’t lie still on the couch. ‘They want me off newsstands. They want me up before the committee. They want me out of the business.’

Sheldon Loesser was a problematic paranoid. It was hard to advise the patient to ignore his imaginary demons… since some of them were real.

He owned High Integrity Comics, publisher of Morgue of Horror, Weird Planet Stories, GI Guts and other titles. He was also a prolific writer of crime and horror yarns for his own books. Several of my rituals, including the Red Knife business, had been fodder for the ‘Ghastly – But True!’ feature he wrote in HIC’s top-seller Annals of Crime.

Loesser came to analysis after a reader’s parent – upset by ‘Live Bait’, a Crack of Doom story about a cruel angler who gets impaled on a giant hook and dangled in a shark tank – wrote to say the writer should have his head examined. The writer duly made an appointment, intending to write it up as an amusing one-page article. The Post Office requires that comics carry a certain amount of text between illustrated stories. In that session, we discovered Loesser was one of life’s couch junkies. He relished sorting childhood memories and everyday frustrations to identify the source of every sick idea which cropped up in his eight-page bloodbaths. Chronic insomnia hindered attempts at dream analysis, but his unconscious was poured out in his stories.

At nineteen, he inherited HIC from his father. Mendel Loesser, a funny book pioneer, died unexpectedly, just as the masked hero and amusing animal titles which had made HIC’s name were flagging in an oversaturated marketplace. Overnight, the son leaped from office assistant to publisher and sole support of his mother and several sisters. Noticing a sales uptick in crime and horror comics, Loesser concentrated on them. At first through financial necessity, he wrote most of the books himself. He stayed in the office after hours, on liver-abusing quantities of black coffee and pep pills, typing script after script. Younger, hipper, odder, cheaper artists came through the door and HIC became profitable again. Other companies began copying the HIC formula, the ultimate sign of success in comics.

Loesser discovered Jackson Greene, a talented penciller with a bent for the macabre. HIC’s busiest artist, Greene signed himself ‘Gruesome’. The most memorable – which is to say, horrible – HIC stories were Loesser-Greene collaborations. They brought out something in each other – more like Leopold and Loeb than Gilbert and Sullivan. I once decorated a room with Mary Kelly’s insides, and even I’m disgusted by some things Loesser and Greene have put on paper. It is not the analyst’s place to moralise, though.

Despite the increased sales, Loesser was troubled by the thought that Mendel – whose unfulfilled ambition was an illustrated Torah – would have despised the lurid trash which kept the coffers filled. He see-sawed between pride in the work and self-loathing.

Two years into analysis, the patient was reconciled to oedipal feelings about the absent patriarch and the smothering mother. That little cocktail fed many stories about murdered parents clawing out of their graves to avenge themselves on worthless grown-up children. His lingering neuroses worked for him. So long as he was troubled, he had fresh horror ideas – which meant not falling back on plagiarising old radio shows or pulp magazine tales and hoping no one noticed.

No sooner had Loesser gained some sort of equilibrium than the spotlight of the censorious fell on comics and he cracked up again. Now, he was beset by educationalists, church organisations, picketers and politicians. With his industry under attack, the patient needed two and sometimes three sessions a week.

‘It’s what the comics are about,’ he said. ‘Paying for your sins. The guy who snuffs his father to take over the dry-cleaning business gets flattened in his own press. The dame who swindles the clown gets her guts pulled out like an everlasting string of handkerchiefs. Now, it’s the comics’ turn to pay… and that guy is the zombie father and the killer clown…’

‘That guy’, my patient’s new nemesis, was Dr Reuben Hofstedtler, a member of my profession. In magazine articles, with a Reader’s Digest choice best-seller (The Pied Pipers of Perversion) and appearances on radio and television shows, Dr Hofstedtler branded comic books as the root cause of juvenile delinquency. I’d not run into him on the cocktail party circuit, but those who had said he was a man of mystery, perhaps even a fraud. For a start, he was a caricature shrink: Viennese accent, grey beard, thick eyeglasses. He had supposedly given up a lucrative Park Avenue practice to devote himself to his anti-comics campaign, though he still worked downtown in the free clinic for crazy, mixed-up kids where he had formulated his theory. He had noticed that the worst junior hoodlums were readers of mind-rotting stuff like Annals of Crime and Morgue of Horror, which he described as ‘play-books for delinquency’.

Hofstedtler struck me as a Jekyll-and-Hyde character – sincere in his initial concerns about the not-so-funny funnies, then hopped up on the attention his crusade brought him. He was doing good, altruistic work with young people most of my colleagues wouldn’t go near, but turning into a professional pundit brought him a whiff of celebrity. Now, he was hooked on fame. In his own way, he was as well-known as a sports star at the top of their game or an uncaught mystery murderer. Reuben Hofstedtler was the Comic Book Killer.

His methodology was less than scrupulous. A few thin anecdotes cropped up over and over in his articles and broadcasts. They were repeated by everyone else who took up his cause and organised a comics-burning party. A copy of Weird Planet Stories was found in the home of a teenager who drowned after driving a stolen Mustang off the Brooklyn Bridge. Three issues earlier, Weird Planet ran a story about a Martian crashing a spaceship into an asteroid. Very incriminating… except there was no proof the thief saw the earlier issue or even that the comic in his home was his. He had three younger brothers. And he died drag-racing with other kids who’d stolen cars without prompting from the funnies. Loesser, who had an in with the police sources who kept Annals of Crime going, ferreted out the truth of this and other commonly retold anecdotes. Newspapers which publicised Hofstedtler’s ‘findings’ had no interest in covering an evil comic-book publisher’s refutations.

Reuben Hofstedtler was proof that if you drop enough Freud and Jung into your ravings, you can get people to believe anything. Just ask Abner Polk.

‘I’ll show that shrink, Carmody. I’ll see him flayed alive before that committee. Eyes boiled like eggs. Teeth pulled with pliers.’

Criticism of comic books had not diminished since Loesser started running stories every other issue in which characters with names like ‘Robbin Horsetrader’ or ‘Carbon Hosefeathers’ suffered horrible yet ironic fates. ‘Who Heeds the Head-Shrinker?’, featured on the cover of the latest Morgue of Horror, was the tale of ‘Dr Huffalingumpus’. Having blamed the ills of modern society on the pernicious influence of sinister South American shamans, Dr H wakes up on his couch in the last panel with his head literally shrunk. ‘Mmmm… mmmm…. mmmph,’ he fumes, trying to squeak a scream through sewn-together lips. The Morgue Meister cackles, ‘Guess the Doc really was “small-minded”, eh, kidettes… heh heh heh!’

I efficiently compartmentalise my life – the secret of psychological health. I am a Martini-swilling bachelor man-about-Manhattan, a calculating career criminal, a justice-minded public servant, a registered Democrat for Stevenson, a murderous Hecate worshipper and a dedicated mental health professional – all at the same time. I may write a book, The Compartmentalised Man. It would be a bestseller.

Most people let their separate selves bleed into each other, disastrously. Loesser was a champion of constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech and a scholar of the literary tradition of Poe, Hawthorne and Henry James… but also an infantile whiner, who responded to any criticism by flinging bloody dung. When commentators said his horror comics were horrible, he loudly denied the charge but wrote more stories like ‘How to Kill Friends and Mutilate People’.

I suggested that venting wrath against Dr Hofstedtler in four colours was counter-productive. ‘Who Heeds the Head-Shrinker?’ wouldn’t win support for Loesser’s anti-censorship position, soothe his ulcers, keep him off bennies or increase sales. Pestered by Hofstedtler’s followers, newsstands were returning unsold bales of HIC titles without ever displaying them. Loesser had made personal an argument which could more usefully be conducted dispassionately – which only helped Hofstedtler. At first, for fear of libel or treading on the toes of major publishers who might own a tiny comic-book line, Hofstedtler fudged details of the specific comics which drove his patients to crime. Then, he relied on a few out-of-context panels to illustrate articles, or descriptions of particularly appalling incidents which misrepresented grotesque comedy as straightforward sadism.

To keep up the heat, Hofstedtler needed a villain. A Hitler or an Ethel Rosenberg or a Red Knife. A sinister, dangerous mastermind who did intentional harm. Sheldon Loesser fulfilled that role. He was the sweating, wild-eyed face of horror comics. As an in-joke ‘Gruesome’ Greene made the Morgue Meister look like his publisher. This backfired when Loesser became more unkempt. Photographs of him all seemed like mugshots. He perpetually sported that rumpled hair and shifty look of the just-arrested and about-to-be-arraigned.

The last panel of ‘Who Heeds the Head-Shrinker?’ showed Loesser as the Morgue Meister chortling over the fate of Hofstedtler as Huffalingumpus. Another Carmody, tucked away in his compartment, reacted to Gruesome Greene’s delicately rendered, tiny, shrivelled head – with its life-sized panicking eyes, stitched lips and inevitable bone-threaded topknot – by giving vent to a hearty, Hecate-pleasing heh heh heh…

Get the point, kidettes?

The session ended at 10.45, signalled by a buzzer loud enough – if needs be, and with some patients they certainly did – to rouse me from a doze. I wrapped things up and ushered Loesser out. A couple of familiar faces loitered in my waiting room. Special Agents Finlay and Dwight.

Kendall Finlay was big, untidier than Hoover liked his G-Men to be and had a mild, placid look. He was the keener mind, the dangerous man on the team. Healthy and balanced, calm and sceptical. A patient dog-owner, a crossword solver and a jazz aficionado. I had to be careful with Finlay. Loose threads in the Polk case troubled him. We regularly spitballed possible avenues of further investigation. No results yet, of course. With luck, I could keep steering him away from the unbelievable truth. Marion Dwight was small, dapper, ferret-faced. Cruder, limited, crass. His mommy stuck him with a girl’s name – no matter that it was also John Wayne’s – and gave him regular enemas until he was fifteen. Now, he hated women so much he could easily be nudged along shady paths to firm but erroneous conclusions. He’d shot two men and one woman in the line of duty, and been commended for his killings. Finlay confided that he felt any agent who took a life – which he’d never done – should be obliged to undergo analysis, a notion which tickled my interest. I can see advantages in asking the questions and filling in the forms.

Seeing regulation federal agent suits and hats, Loesser started sweating like a junky two days past his last fix. He was expecting a subpoena to appear before the Senate Sub-Committee on Juvenile Crime.

Finlay was considering my Hecate Chiaramonti. The statue, a Roman copy of a Hellenistic original, represents the goddess as three-bodied, like Siamese triplets joined at their backs. Originally, she held pairs of torches, keys and daggers, but three of the arms were broken off – only a single dagger and the keys remained. Finlay examined the Trimorphe statue as if it were evidence, which in certain circumstances it might be. His jacket hung open, showing his shoulder holster.

Dwight was looking sideways at Charmaine, my secretary, hoping there was political significance in her red sweater… imagining her stretched out in a shredded slip on a Crack of Doom cover, subjected to the Dread Druid’s interrogation techniques.

Loesser got out of the office, sharpish… omitting to leave a cheque with Charmaine, for which we’d bill him interest next time. At least we’d have a new topic for discussion: his fear of the authorities.

Not an irrational fear, though. What kind of a fool doesn’t fear authorities?

‘Jack, sorry to barge in, but we’ve got another one…’ said Finlay.

‘A kook case, just the way you like ’em,’ said Dwight.

I’d expected this. I take all the newspapers. I know the crime sections.

‘Come into my parlour, agents,’ I said. ‘Charmaine, fend off my eleven o’clock dipso, shift my noonday pansy to next week and refer this afternoon’s shoplifter to Dr Lark…’

* * *

‘Your gang war isn’t a gang war,’ I said. ‘It’s a person.’

Finlay and Dwight weren’t floored by the announcement. They wouldn’t have come a-calling if they hadn’t worked it out.

We were in my consulting room. Charmaine fended off all-comers.

In 1888, Scotland Yard didn’t immediately connect the individual Ripper murders. So many women died violently in the rookeries of the East End that my crushed flowers were lost in the crowd. Some offerings escaped the history books because the police – not privy to the ritual – didn’t recognise all my tell-tales. One of the ‘canonical’ victims was someone else’s kill, the nose-rotted Whitechapel version of Abner Polk settling a score with the drab who gave him the pox.

The same thing was happening now.

Five juvenile delinquents stabbed – four fatally – in the Lower East Side didn’t look like one man’s work. They were padding the butcher’s bill from a long-standing territorial war. The Counts, the Blades, the Shillelagh Boys and the Hoppers all had men down. Tit-for-tat assaults, rumbles and face-offs spread across the city. Father Molloy, a priest who worked as a missionary among the hoodlums, got the leaders together for a ‘peace conference’. Someone shot him in the face for his pains, so the battles flared again. The toll was in the low twenties so far this year. The wounded overwhelmed local hospitals. An inordinate number of clumsy young men reported accidents with non-serrated bread knives or cylindrical doorjambs. Little of this bloodshed was of interest. However, someone was out there, shy at present, but growing confident…

‘I’m simplifying for effect,’ I told the agents. ‘Of course there’s a gang war now. The police will have to crack heads and fill cells. But that’s literally not a federal case. Nevertheless, you’re here…’

Finlay and Dwight looked at each other.

‘We have a new friend,’ I announced. ‘Did he start the wave, or is he surfing it? It doesn’t matter. He hides inside the war, like some hide inside fog, taking a boy here and there. Careful to pick off kids from different gangs, so survivors won’t talk to each other and sense the beast among them. He wears their colours… or at least can pass in their streets and alleys and vacant lots. My first guess would have been Father Molloy, but he’s obviously off the suspect list. We can’t rule out a cop or someone else who’d get a pass… a social worker, a delivery boy, even a prostitute. The precision gives him or her away, and serves as a signature. He’s in two minds about anonymity. It’s necessary if the work is to continue, but every artist wants to read the reviews. He uses his prey’s weapon of choice, a switchblade knife… and he’s good with it. One insertion, high up in the back, four or five vertebrae down, severing the spinal cord, then a good solid shove. The heads loll forward, like broken dolls. The light goes out in their eyes. Does he look at that, hold up the head by the hair, and try to catch the moment of dying?’

Heh heh heh…

Dwight whistled, impressed.

‘You could have called, Jack,’ said Finlay, almost disappointed in me. ‘If you were so far ahead. How long have you known?’

I’d shown off. A mistake. But in character for John Carmody, arrogant analyst.

‘Not long,’ I admitted. ‘The boy who lived, Tino Muñoz, sealed it. Before him, it could have been a fad among a criminal community. Like it was baseball bats to the back of the skull one year… shooting through the femoral artery in that Canadian border tussle… or the Harlem trick with the mailbag and the noose looped around the neck and the feet so the victim wakes up and breaks his own neck.’

‘Muñoz threw us off,’ admitted Finlay. ‘Made the cops think it was what you said, a craze… and not everybody was as good at it as the first guys.’

‘No, the boy who lived was lucky. The variable was the victim, not the assailant. He gave no useful description but he co-operated with the police, tried to be helpful…’

‘I guess being stuck in a bed for the rest of your life loosens even toughies’ tongues,’ said Dwight. ‘They call him the Talking Head.’

Heh heh heh…

‘That’s a misinterpretation,’ I said. ‘If he’d been attacked by someone from a rival gang, Muñoz would have talked to his friends, not the police. Even – no, especially – if he knew who it was. These people don’t trust cops to avenge them. That Muñoz co-operated suggests this is nothing to do with the social clubs. Street corner society is like the Balkans in 1914. We may not be able to keep track of the alliances, feuds and brushfire wars, but the players do. Except they don’t know what’s stalking them. They’re children, playing gangsters. This is outside their experience. That makes them easy meat for a predator.’

‘Think we should let it play out?’ said Dwight. ‘Let him ice a bunch more punks until they get lucky and jump him?’

‘Of course not. What our friend – let us call him the Switchblade Stabber – does is unconscionable. That he chooses to do it to people the mass of our society don’t care about is no excuse.’

‘Like Polk and his commies?’ prompted Finlay.

‘This is our business,’ I said. ‘Extremes of human behaviour. Antisocial extremes. The Stabber thinks of himself as a lone wolf, a hunter thinning out the herd. He may or may not have an inciting incident – a reason to hate juvenile delinquent gangs. There are plenty around. A sister raped, a brother hooked on dope, a family business wrecked by a protection racket. Or he might be one of the curious ones, born crooked or shaped in early childhood to lack something or have a taste for the unspeakable. He may have looked at a map and decided where he could work best.’

How did I imagine that? Well, take a wild guess…

‘Given the publicity around the Red Knife case, he may be thinking of us. We caught Abner Polk. We were written up in the press, talked about on the radio. There was even a comic book. These stabbings may be a challenge. An opening gambit.’

‘I miss the way it was in the thirties,’ said Dwight. ‘Big-headed morons like Dillinger and Floyd posed with tommy guns for newspaper shutterbugs. You didn’t have to work out who they were.’

‘Director Hoover ranked his public enemies like the record charts,’ said Finlay. ‘He called them out. Machine Gun Kelly, Clyde Barrow…’

‘The women were the worst,’ spat Dwight. ‘Bloody Bonnie, Ma Barker…’

‘It was a war on crime, like the war on the Nazis,’ said Finlay – he had scars from Normandy Beach and a couple of medals. ‘Out in the open, guns blazing, bombs flying. This horror, the chess-with-corpses stuff, it’s like it is with the reds… a cold war, fought when no one is looking. Not over things you can understand like land or revenge or money, but about ideas. Stupid ideas.’

‘Yes, Kendall,’ I said. ‘It’s all ideas. Which is why you need an idea doctor.’

Finlay cracked a smile.

* * *

I moved to New York from Chicago in 1949. Cities suit me, obviously. Look at a map of a city and you see my mind. Neighbourhoods. Compartments. Grids. Patterns. The rituals of daily life. The rituals of eternal life. Reliable public transport. A high murder rate. I could live here forever.

West 74th Street is one Carmody compartment. The Lower East Side is another – though it wasn’t somewhere I’d killed. The Red Knife struck all over the city, at a type rather than in a location. Correlations matter, not mere proximity. I could make a string of offerings in one room, so long as the placements were proper. I foresee a future – 1984 or 2002, say – when jet-travel is commonplace and I can overlay my grand red design on the map of a country or a continent. Even the globe. Eventually, maybe, in a future of space rangers and rocketmen… across the constellations.

After our discussion, Finlay and Dwight went back to their office. I said I’d work up a dossier on the Switchblade Stabber. They left me with photstats of police reports on the attacks so far, and copies of the criminal records of the victims. Depositions made to the Senate Sub-Committee on Juvenile Crime, including the testimony of battle-scarred Father Molloy, helped fill in the picture. I considered the make-up of New York street gangs in anthropological detail. After spending time with documents, I had an itch to see the hunting ground for myself. I had my calls transferred to the answering service and gave Charmaine the rest of the day off. After pausing for a tiny ritual – nodding three times to Hecate – I shut up my office and went downtown by cab, bus and on foot.

I wore a Chicago winter coat, fetched from the depths of the closet. I don’t stoop to disguises. A good, old coat and a nondescript hat are all I need. You don’t fit in, but don’t stand out either. Ask me the time or panhandle me for a dime… and five minutes later you’ll do it again without remembering you already hit me up. I have one of those faces. And a gift from the goddess – an inner fog-generator that, as the radio programme says, ‘clouds men’s minds’.

All slums smell alike. Folks who can’t or don’t wash enough, rotten fish or vegetables, the stink of opened bowels or veins. People on these streets have the same look as people in Whitechapel in 1888 – mostly busy, hustling to make rent or the next meal, but with the odd still, watchful, superior type. Panderers and footpads, once… now, pimps and hoods. And policemen – always policemen. Gangsters and cops have the same stare. This is their territory and they guard it, prepared to repel boarders. Waves of immigrants mean different languages on the streets, many shades of skin colour, squabbles and prejudices always on the point of turning nasty… but also intermarriage, assimilation, that famous melting pot.

The last war here was between Vampires and Dragons.

Now, there were more gangs, clubs and splinter groups than a sociologist could keep track of. Our new friend, though – he was well-informed. The Counts, the Blades, the Shillelagh Boys and the Hoppers were Polish, Puerto Rican, Irish and Negro. They fought over a few city blocks. Grown-up crime was monopolised by Jews and Italians… but the established, complacent mobs were starting to lose ground to upstart crews with sharper knives and newer ideas.

In Whitechapel, I was the cause of an unprecedented truce. Mobs who’d been killing each other for over a hundred years found common cause with the hated peelers… and set out to find and stop me. You know how that worked out. By 1891, when I did it all over again – using the underground railway to extend my design across the whole city – the gangs were back to cutting each other’s throats and coshing fools who nipped into the wrong pub. For all the fuss made about the Ripper, almost no one – except Guy Hollis’s deluded father – even noticed the repeat performance three years later.

I did a tour of the current crimes. Five sites. Five stabbings.

On the map, an inelegant grouping – these were attacks of opportunity, not offerings at altars. On the ground – narrow alleys, gaps between tenement houses, a junk lot, a trash area behind a bar.

It was like coming home. Part of me is drawn to these anonymous places. By day, they were busy… but the stabbings were after dark. There must have been witnesses. There always are in crowded quarters like this. But this fellow was quick, didn’t need to take his time. Only one of his attacks was botched. I figured people saw him strike, well away from working streetlamps, but didn’t realise what they’d witnessed.

The gangs were all over. Knots of youths, lounging on street corners, smoking cigarettes, combing their hair, cat-calling girls, slapping each other, playing cards or knife games. Different colours for different factions. The Counts had black leather jackets and motorcycle boots, though few owned bikes or cars – if they needed wheels, they stole them. The Blades wore colourful silk jackets and drape pants with thin-brimmed hats and parakeet ties. They were growing prosperous – if you wanted dope, you bought it from them. The Hoppers, poorer and less numerous, made do with blue jeans, white t-shirts and army surplus coats. The Boys wore the green, if unobtrusively, and clustered around businesses – bars, machine shops, stores, a church hall – run by older brothers or parents. They put up a show of force but were eager to move off the street and into warm offices, to count rather than collect the money, to go into politics and the big-time rackets. Like the Jews and the Italians.

A lot of kids were reading comic books published by Sheldon Loesser and his competitors. An observation which might have interested Dr Hofstedtler, though it went against the prevailing tide of his research, was that crime and horror comics were popular but as many toughs read funny animal or costumed adventurer books. The pundit found it harder to work up rage against those, though a chapter of The Pied Pipers of Perversion explored the notion that the adult-hero-and-young-sidekick relationship typified by Batman and Robin peddled pederasty to the masses. Loitering all day is a spur to reading of all kinds. I saw Blades comparing their haircuts to Tony Curtis’s in movie fan magazines, boys of all ethnicities devouring the latest Mickey Spillane and a Hopper halfway through a library copy of Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons.

The files on the victims listed items found on their person at the time of death. I wondered if the bland category ‘reading matter’ meant comic books. It could as easily refer to newspapers, motorcycle magazines or Pulitzer prize-winning novels of yesteryear.

Was the Switchblade Stabber an addict of Annals of Crime? He was certainly pitching for a ‘Ghastly – But True’ feature.

Evening came on. Market carts pushed off and sweatshops let out. More people on the streets. An easier crowd to hide in. Cooking smells seeped from the tenements. Radios and gramophones gave the factions their own musical accompaniment – sentimental songs for nose-slitting young warriors.

I walked casually, talked to no one, bought nothing, didn’t linger.

My bargain with Hecate isn’t just for a long life and clean complexion. I have other senses, acquired or developed in the dark. It’s how I found Abner Polk.

I cast about for the Switchblade Stabber.

Was he near?

He must be tall. Strong. Practised and precise, despite the slip with the Talking Head. In the prime of life. Not previously known to the police, unless for something trivial… Some start with animals or self-harm, or indecent exposure, even arson or trophy-theft. Killers of women filch brassieres or stays from clotheslines… what might a killer of teenage hoodlums steal? Gang colours, combs, emblems, weapons? Older than his victims, but with status among them. A perceived neutral. Molloy fit my profile perfectly, but two of the Stabber’s victims had been put down after his shooting – which he’d survived, being a tough old mick. A beat cop? A patrolman might get kids off the main street with a shake-down or an arrest or an interrogation, then strike.

Tino Muñoz was no help – he was hazy about the circumstances, and described ‘an old guy with a nice voice’. To a seventeen-year-old, an ‘old guy’ could be in his twenties or thirties. And what was a ‘nice voice’? I didn’t think to send Finlay and Dwight after George Sanders.

The rumour-mill suggested the Ripper was a policeman, a mad surgeon, a butcher, or a midwife. The public, and Queen Victoria, wanted him to be a foreigner. A Chinese hatchet man, a demented lascar, a Hottentot cannibal with filed teeth. An American, even…

Free-form noise and scented smoke leaked out of a basement club on Delancey Street. A new cultural enclave. Places like this were more common uptown, or in the Village. Another of my compartments – John Carmody, bohemian. I was comfortable around sculptors with beards and berets, lady poets with matador pants and sunglasses after dark, prose writers who didn’t use punctuation or apostrophes, and visionaries who scratched celluloid strips and projected the results like movies. A few might aspire to be my patients. Not that they wanted to be cured. Under the shadow of the H-bomb, they clung to craziness like an umbrella. It made them creative.

I slipped into the joint just as a guy in a Hawaiian shirt finished a monologue accompanied by two cats on bongos and an alto sax. He shut up but the music loped on, asymmetric and atonal and, like, crazy, man…

There was a press of people. I was pushed against a wall papered with pages from HIC comics, lumpy with paste. The Morgue Meister, the Dread Druid, Commander Planet and the others were there, over and over, images from the reverse of the pages leaking through. Guillotined magicians’ assistants… bug-eyed monsters from Planet Weird… that pressed-flat coat-presser… that shrunken head shrink… GI Guts spilled over atolls and beaches and numbered hills… neck-snapped Harlem squealers in mail-bags… vampires and dragons versus Vampires and Dragons… public enemies cut down by G-men with tommy guns… one-page riffs to appease the post office… the red red Red Knife, cutting commie throats… black men in oversized coats hanging from lamp-posts surrounded by chanting hooded fiends… ads for physical education, x-ray specs, American seeds and hypnotists who could cure a stammer or introduce you to girls. All the images bled into each other. The compartment walls were breaking down.

Too many people here were smoking stuff that wasn’t strictly tobacco.

I was fixating on the comic-book panels.

Click. The Carmody in charge, the king of the compartments, took over.

This wasn’t a Stabber haunt. Not yet. These non-conformists were a group, not a gang.

I withdrew, but the comic-book collage stuck in the mind. It was like one of my designs on a map.

A labyrinth, like the streets round here.

As if by free association, I went from the basement club to a waste-ground. Blades and their girls danced to mambo music. They ignored me. This was a mating ritual, not a sacrifice.

Then, I found a cinder-block building on Ludlow Street. New and ugly, like a military outpost in just-conquered territory. A free clinic. They had them in Whitechapel too. I recognised the address. Tino Muñoz had been brought here, though there was nothing to do for him but call an ambulance. The place was busy with cuts and bruises.

A thirteen-year-old, green ribbon pinned to his jacket, bawled like an infant as a nurse washed a long cut on his arm, which had gone through his sleeve to the meat. He wasn’t hurt seriously enough to let inside. The sister wore whites and had a starched hat perched in her bottle-blonde perm. She must have been forty, but still in the game. Not a nun.

‘You hurt, mister?’ she asked me.

She was the first person in the neighbourhood to notice me watching. I almost revised my thinking. A nurse would have to be strong, might be trusted enough by gang kidettes, could get behind and above with a switchblade.

If she wore a man’s suit and hat, could a nurse be ‘an old guy with a nice voice’?

It was unlikely to be that easy.

I shrugged and said nothing. The woman got back to her patient.

‘We’ll get ’em back, Sean,’ said an older youth, also green-ribboned. ‘The hunkies it was. We’ll get ’em back.’

The nurse cuffed Sean’s friend and told him not to be any more of a fool than God made him.

‘Here,’ she said, after the job was done, producing a lollipop from a pocket, ‘get this in your gob to shut you up. And go home, you little idjits.’

She let the bandaged wonder be hauled off and went back inside.

I wondered what her name was and sidled up to a shingle that listed the staff.

She was either Miss Maire O’Connell, APN, or Mrs Bridgit Cohen, RN.

…but those names faded. Another leapt out.

Psychiatric Case Worker – Dr Reuben Hofstedtler, APsaA, APA, NYPSI, M.D., et cetera.

I whistled.

* * *

The next morning, Joseph Mapp – a Hopper – was listed as the Stabber’s sixth.

Finlay brought the news to my office. He and Dwight went over the reports every day, winnowing out the Stabber’s doings from general routine carnage.

Mapp was found dead two streets from the clinic, face down in a copy of Crack of Doom. From mugshots, I recognised the boy I’d seen engrossed in The Magnificent Ambersons. I wasn’t sure I believed his eclectic tastes in ‘reading matter’. The cops had hauled in Sean Hogan (of the slit sleeve) and his brother Michael and were grilling them lightly. I could have told the police the Irish boys’ beef was with ‘hunkies’, not Mapp’s coloured gang, but wasn’t keen on admitting I’d been there. If you’re seen at the sites of murders, people get ideas…

…no, it would not be hilarious to get away with 138 murders over sixty-five years, then get pinched for crimes I didn’t commit. It was the sort of nasty turn Sheldon Loesser used too often. In the horribly moral world of the comics, merciless cosmic justice undid the wrongdoer. Why didn’t Dr Hofstedtler notice the square crime-does-not-pay messages? In the real universe, Hecate rewards her devotees.

Mapp was killed after midnight, when I was back in my apartment. The murder could not be said to have been committed ‘under my nose’. But had I been noticed? We watch, we predators. We are perceptive. If our friend had seen me but I’d not seen him, he was more dangerous than I’d assumed. The nurse? Someone in the beat club? An invisible old Jewish or Italian guy?

Surely, there couldn’t be another moon-worshipper in the city? From the evidence, the ritual was all wrong. But evidence could be partial, or not looked at from the right, skewed angle. I needed to do more research. Behind respectable shelves of psychiatry journals and text-books, I keep arcana like Prinn’s Mysteries of the Worm and Balfour’s Cults of Ghouls. The occult is another of my compartments.

Finlay showed me stark crime-scene photos. That’s how I noticed the Crack of Doom issue. It had fallen flat, so the cover was splayed out – a leprous drooling creature, splattered with Joseph Mapp’s real blood. If Reuben Hofstedtler needed a shock image for the jacket of a sequel to The Pied Pipers of Perversion, this was a shoo-in. That made me wonder whether that wasn’t the whole point of the stabbings. Someone might be making Hofstedtler’s case for him, more forcefully than a syndicated radio broadcast.

Should I share my tentative idea with Finlay? It was a long-shot.

I couldn’t see the elderly, bespectacled Dr Hofstedtler striking down teenage toughs, no matter how many anatomy charts he studied. Still, he cropped up all over this story. His crusade was in the news while the Senate Sub-Committee was in session. He might have disciples. Also, and this gave me shivers, the doctor was younger than me. I, of all people, shouldn’t underestimate the physical capacity of an educated man.

I put Mapp’s crime-scene photo on my desk and lined up similar shots from the other stabbings.

‘What do you see?’ Finlay asked.

‘Nothing yet,’ I said.

But there they were. Annals of Crime. Morgue of Horror. Crack of Doom. Dick Squad. Stuck in jacket or jeans pockets, crumpled up and lying around, sometimes just a torn page. The police hadn’t made the connection. Comic books were everywhere, after all. So were gum wrappers and newspapers and used bus tickets and handbills for local businesses. I could probably find those at all the death scenes too.

Hofstedtler’s big theory was that comics turn kids into killers… but the upshot of the Stabber’s work seemed to mark kids who read comics as murder victims. Acts like these have personal meaning – blessed be the Goddess of the Crossways – to the perpetrator. This was something to do with the funny books.

Finlay looked at the same photographs. He kept going back to Mapp.

‘This isn’t how he fell,’ said the special agent, at last. ‘He’s been shifted… you can see where the scuff-marks are. His head has been placed on the magazine. Like a pillow.’

‘It’s not a magazine,’ I prompted.

‘Oh yes, I see. A comic book. Kids’ stuff. Looking at them dead and going over their rap sheets, you forget how young they were. Mapp was fifteen. This monkey has got to be stopped, John.’

I agreed with Special Agent Finlay.

* * *

The Mid-Town offices of High Integrity Comics were above Loesser & Son’s print works. Mendel Loesser, originally a printer, lost clients in the 1930s when bund lobbyists persuaded some companies not to use ‘Jewish firms’ to run off cracker packets and candy wrappers. He turned publisher to keep his presses rolling. Comic books were even cheaper to throw together than pulp magazines. The sickly kids who wrote and drew them knew less than wordsmiths about contracts, rights and payments.

Thanks to the circumstances of HIC’s origins, their first heroes – the mysterious Moon Mask, the mesmeric Madame Violet, and two-fisted Doc Gargantua – fought Nazis well before America entered the war. The adventurers rose to popularity on a wave of patriotic bloodthirstiness. Mostly retired now, the numbering of their books continued. The fee for registering a new title doesn’t have to be paid if an old comic just changes its name and direction. Morgue of Horror begun as Moon Mask Mysteries in 1938 and had been Moon Mask Funnies, Moonlight Romance and Moon of Horror along the way. Madame Violet was now Annals of Crime. The former cover star still hosted a backup feature about murderesses, ‘Deadly Dames and Dastardly Dolls’.

This was my first visit to my patient’s workplace. It was like stepping from one compartment to another.

I introduced myself to Loesser’s secretary, an old stick who didn’t have Charmaine’s curves. Beyond a wood-and-frosted-glass partition, her boss cackled like the Morgue Meister. The secretary let me pass without a grilling. I found Loesser and a smartly dressed young man poring over artwork in which an old gent with thick glasses was getting throttled by his own beard, which had turned into a writhing nest of snakes. Sheldon Loesser, a quivering wreck on my couch, was a confident dictator in his own realm.

‘Hi, Dr C,’ said Loesser, far more relaxed than when I’d last seen him. ‘Have you met Jackson Greene? The Norman Rockwell of slaughtered families. The Vargas of decapitated showgirls.’

So this was the legendary ‘Gruesome’. You’d never think to see him that he was capable of his art. Some might say that of me.

Greene snapped off a military salute and said, ‘Pleased to meet you, sir.’

Loesser pencilled notes in margins. He kept having ideas. He threw his thoughts my way as well as at his artist.

‘How about a comic about analysis?’ he said. ‘Instead of the Morgue Meister or the Dread Druid, we could have a head-shrinker host. Dr Alan List? Tales From the Couch. You up for endorsing that, Dr C? Could you open your files? We like “authenticated cases” at HIC.’

‘There’d be ethical concerns,’ I said.

He wasn’t disappointed. And skipped on to the next thought. ‘Maybe a book about cavaliers and duellists?’

I was here to see if I could firm up the connection between comic books and the Switchblade Stabber rather than as part of the analytic process. However, a picture above Loesser’s desk told me something that ought to have been a breakthrough. First, I wondered why my patient had a photograph of his arch-enemy on display… then I saw that the thick-spectacled, bearded, disapproving old fellow in the black-bordered frame was not Dr Reuben Hofstedtler but the firm’s founder, the Loesser of Loesser & Son. Mendel greatly resembled Hofstedtler. So, this was why Loesser took the anti-comics campaign so personally and responded with such vicious stories. It was transference, an identification of the troublesome foe with the distant father, who was dead and would therefore never give his son the approval he craved.

Hofstedtler could have been Mendel Loesser’s brother.

No one knew Hofstedtler’s family background – or even if Hofstedtler was his real name. Could this whole comic-book kerfuffle be an oedipal story writ large? Did that extend to the Stabber?

Greene and Loesser went through a whole issue of Morgue – four stories, all drawn by Greene, all written by Loesser.

‘Gorgon Beard’ was the lead-off, and Greene had already provided cover art. There was a tale about an escaped homicidal maniac serving cyanide to barroom bores… ‘What’s Your Poison?’ One of a series about a shambling creature composed of a downed German bomber crew and a mystic fungus, ‘The Mass Strikes’. And a standard anecdote about an unheeding anthropologist who falls foul of an ancient moon cult… ‘What the Hecate!’

Naturally, the last story piqued my interest. I didn’t let it show.

‘Know where I got the idea from, Doc?’ Loesser asked.

I shrugged, coolly.

‘You,’ he said.

I had a scalpel in my pocket – I always did – its blade encased in a cork.

‘In your reception room, you have that hunk of statue. It’s a Hecate. Three women in one. What a nightmare! I looked the old hag up. We’re always looking for cults. We’ve done voodoo too often. And plain old Satanism is just as tired.’

‘I wanted Hecate on the cover,’ said Greene. ‘But Mr Loesser prefers the chin-gorgon. Do you collect such things, Doctor?’

‘I know what the statue is, but it has no particular significance,’ I lied. ‘A present from a patient. Some say analysis is a modern cult. People come to me the way they once went to priests. As channels to hidden wisdom. To help them change their lives.’

I only now noticed a glint in Greene’s eye. On the street, you’d take him for a young exec. If he were carrying a portfolio, it would be art for a brand of vermouth or new cool-tasting cigarettes. Not multi-limbed mushroom masses or disturbingly accurate pagan sacrifices. The glint was what made him ‘Gruesome’. Another compartmentalised man. Like poor outmoded Moon Mask, he had a secret identity. Like me, John-better-known-as-Jack.

Greene was slight, compact. Smooth-shaven. In a wig and dress, he could pass for a woman. He was tense – chewing gum as if it were a serious business, making strange knuckle-cracking gestures. He had artists’ hands. He could shade a line perfectly, but maybe also punch through brick.

Loesser let it all out… on the couch, in his stories.

Greene just had his art. So far as I knew.

One thing Loesser expressed in the early days of his analysis – before Dr Hofstedtler manifested as his nightmare nemesis and crowded out all his other concerns – was guilt over the industry-standard wretched deal HIC gave its artists. Thanks to contracts drawn up by Mendel Loesser’s lawyers in a more innocent age, anyone working for HIC who wasn’t in the Loesser family got royally shafted – poor upfront payment, no royalties, no participation in ownership of characters and stories, not even the return of artwork. Greene, whose style was as unique as his ‘Gruesome’ signature, was HIC’s outstanding artist but earned only pennies. Once, Loesser had been agonised by the possibility that Greene – upon whom his whole line depended – would desert HIC and land a better-paying syndicated newspaper strip. Now, of course, no newspaper would touch anyone tainted with horror comics and Greene was stuck in a fast-shrinking ghetto. If Hofstedtler got his way, Loesser would at least still own a print shop. Gruesome would be gone, man, gone…

Though Greene and Loesser seemed to collaborate amicably, their relationship must be complicated. If Greene could afford analysis, it’d be interesting to know what seethed under his crew-cut – besides murdering Reuben Hofstedtler over and over in print, he had a habit of working caricatures of a dismembered or mutilated Sheldon Loesser into stories. The Morgue Meister took his horror lumps every issue.

I wanted – more than ever after seeing Mendel’s picture – to know about the feud between Loesser and Hofstedtler. On the couch, my patient told me how he felt… now I wanted facts, not feelings. Where did this hostility come from, specifically? How had the enemies first met? Had they met? I know Loesser offered to debate with Hofstedtler in the public forum of his choice, but the pundit didn’t bite; he wanted to preach, not argue.

Before I could ask anything, a commotion began beyond the partition.

Breaking glass, shouting, the secretary’s high, thin scream.

We rushed out of Loesser’s den. It was all I could do not to pull my scalpel.

A man lay broken-backed on a desk, on fire. He had leaped or been thrown through a big window. The glass was smashed inwards. Wind and noise blew in, lifting papers off desks. People out on the street were chanting something.

A man in shirt-sleeves and tie – an art editor, I think – dumped a bucket of sand on the burning figure, smothering the flames. It was an articulated dummy. Comic books were tacked to it, like armour or decoration. They had been lit before the thing was catapulted into the HIC offices.

‘That bastard,’ exclaimed Loesser. ‘He’s behind this! Hofstedtler! It’s just a step from burning comics to burning comics writers…’

‘…and artists,’ said Greene, quietly.

Loesser was red-faced, infuriated, raving. Greene smiled grimly, looking at the smoking human piñata. It was like a British Guy Fawkes dummy or a waxwork witch.

What did he see through the eyes of ‘Gruesome’?

Someone had the presence of mind to telephone the police.

I looked through the broken window. Outside on the sidewalk was an angry parents’ group, holding up placards bearing anti-comic-book slogans. ‘HIC = Hellish Infernal Cr**!’ ‘Protect Our Children – Ban Horror and Crime!’ ‘Comics Kill!’ They were burning more comics in barbeques brought along for the purpose. Mostly middle-aged women, with a few male long-hairs in the mix and a couple of bruisers who had the whiff of hired muscle. The cops had already shown, but no one owned up to tossing the burning dummy.

‘The coward’s not here, you note,’ said Loesser. ‘Hofstedtler’s never at these Klan meets. Does the broadcasts and the articles and lets shills and minions do the street thuggery. It’s the bund all over again.’

I looked at the crowd of shouting faces.

Was the Stabber out there? It would fit his profile.

‘This is why the work is important,’ said Greene.

…or was our new friend this side of the lines?

* * *

Finlay and Dwight caught up with me after office hours, in a diner. We took a booth and again went over the state of the Stabber investigation. The papers were spread out on the table. Dwight side-glanced at the waitress, hungry for more than chili. Finlay was focused on the case, but frustrated – lots of developments, but no progress.

‘So someone else noticed the comic books?’ I said.

‘Or wants the connection made,’ Finlay observed, shrewdly.

The protest at the HIC offices was prompted by press reports linking the death toll on the Lower East Side – all of it, not just the Stabber’s take – to comic books. The papers didn’t yet know there was such a person as the Switchblade Stabber. But they had crime-scene photographs of dead kids with comics.

Finlay blamed cops for letting the pictures get in circulation.

I understood the friction between the FBI and the NYPD. Whitechapel was on the borderline between the jurisdictions of two different police forces who wasted time going over each other’s work, squabbling about procedure and missing the obvious. That had worked to my advantage. I now deliberately sought such hinterlands. The police had enough trouble keeping a lid on the gang war and didn’t even want to admit there was a calculating murderer in the mix. Unless results showed up soon, Finlay and Dwight would be pulled off the Stabber and assigned to non-phantom cases.

Some helpful citizen had written anonymous letters to the papers claiming that comic books were behind the violence on the streets. Not so long ago, they would have been filed in the waste-paper basket. In this climate, they got printed.

Hofstedtler was all over it. He was quoted, mostly from his book. Loesser, self-appointed representative of ‘the industry’, was allowed to respond. His quotes ran under pictures of him looking like a public enemy and blown-up Gruesome panels.

One rag ran a centre-spread alternating the crime-scene photographs with climactic images from crime and horror comics. Actual pictures of murdered children were deemed less offensive than drawings of vampires and famous criminals. The paper had found a way to run both, while condemning HIC for pandering to ghoulish tastes.

‘This garbage shouldn’t be allowed,’ said Dwight. ‘For kids.’

‘Have you got anything on who the Stabber might be?’ asked Finlay.

‘I’ve gone over everything and worked up a profile,’ I said.

The agents looked eager. At this stage in the Red Knife investigation, I had presented them with a detailed description of Abner Polk that listed everything about him but his name. I figured they hoped for another miracle.

‘Our man is about sixty, but rugged,’ I began. ‘Not physically appealing, under average height… white, protestant, American – probably with German or Swiss ancestors… unmarried, with deeply repressed homosexual tendencies – perhaps with a long-term male best friend, but most likely celibate… reveres his mother, and thinks of her as a saint no other woman could match… in a job with official authority, but frustrated by limitations placed on him by the law… wild rumours circulate about commonplace perversions – transvestism, sado-masochism – but they are exaggerations, people around him picking up on desires he could never act on… vain, obsessed with position – the type who looks through the papers and listens to the radio, poring over every mention of him… jealous of others who achieve prominence in his line of work, and willing to undermine or betray them, especially when it’s imputed he lacks the courage they display in the field while he collects honours from behind a desk… paranoid about his position, prone to using blackmail, backroom influence and edge-of-illegal methods to maintain it… petty, vindictive, fanatical about others’ appearance… prejudiced against ethnic minorities… a staunch patriot, yet willing to ignore constitutional liberties… a stutterer who overcompensates by speaking rapidly, stressing odd words… a Freemason.’

* * *

Having set Finlay and Dwight on the trail of J. Edgar Hoover, I finished my steak and again made my way downtown.

One name kept cropping up all over this case – but I’d still not met Dr Reuben Hofstedtler. Time I got the measure of my professional colleague. He had a hand in the game, somehow. A hand with a red jack showing.

Crusader against horror comics. Radio ‘personality’. Selfless psychiatrist. Mendel Loesser lookalike. Caricature Freudian.

Yet another compartmentalised man.

And maybe a fraud.

Hofstedtler’s shingle listed his affiliations. APsaA, APA, NYPSI. However, the directories of the American Psychoanalytic Association, American Psychological Association and New York Psychoanalytic Society – all prominently displayed in my office – didn’t list him. I had called the APsaA membership secretary and been told Hofstedtler had a pending application, but his paperwork wasn’t yet complete. The little formality of establishing his credentials and qualifications (if any) remained to be tidied up. It’s not so hard to furnish the corroborating degrees and records to get a listing. My own directory entry is convincing, though it doesn’t cite the actual medical qualifications I obtained in 1883. Same story at the APA and NYPSI. I even wondered about Hofstedtler’s M.D. – supposedly earned in Vienna. Thanks to Anschluss, the war, the deportation and murder of the Jewish population, and partition by the occupying powers, Vienna was one of the best cities in the world to have records lost or destroyed. Yet Hofstedtler was trusted by everyone. He had the accent, after all. And the beard.

He could be reached via his booking agent, but the only place Hofstedtler seemed to hang his hat – and then only on a part-time basis – was the Ludlow Street Clinic. Did he live there? Kept warm in a backroom by a pile of burning comics?

On my previous visit, he was absent. The slot by his shingle for a ‘the doctor is in’ plaque was empty. I didn’t really expect him to be there at eleven o’clock in the evening, but I figured I could get into his office and rifle through it for clues about where to find him.

I’m not a detective, obviously. I’m a doctor. And a murderer.

Never forget. Yours ever, Jack the Ripper.

One more stabbing hadn’t changed anything. The district was still busy, and the alleys still open for business. There didn’t even seem to be more cops about. Indeed, there were notably few uniformed officers within several blocks of the pool parlour where the Blades and the Counts were carving each other up. A semi-official rumble. Someone had taken the trouble to crank up a jukebox. Thumps, slashes and screams mixed in with the racket of that new novelty hit ‘We’re Gonna Rock Around the Clock Tonight’.

The stink of fresh-spilled blood was in the air.

I gripped my scalpel in my pocket.

I didn’t need to make an offering, but… September chill was setting in. The leaves were turning. Soon, it would be fall.

Circuitously, I approached Ludlow Street. The clinic would be overwhelmed soon, with broken heads and cut faces.

Then, another player popped up unexpectedly.

If not for habitual caution, I’d have tripped over him.

Another stranger on these streets, going my way. Slight, neat, with a portfolio under his arm. Jackson Greene.

Gruesome.

Did he sketch from life?

From across the lot, I watched the artist walk up to the clinic, have a brief talk with the nurse, and be allowed in.

Had he claimed to be injured? Or neurotic and in need of analysis? One glimpse of his portfolio might be enough to earn him a serious head-shrinking.

I waited a few minutes, for the first of the casualties – a Count with his nose mashed flat by a pool cue, hefted by two of his comrades – to be admitted. Then came a rowdy crowd. I pulled my hat down, held my face as if it were bleeding, and slipped inside with the mob.

The injured from both sides came to the same place, which set off the rumble again. My favourite nurse tried to shout down the bickering, combustible kids. Two went for each other, and she had to wrestle them apart – which she did with practised ease.

I took advantage of this distraction to slide down a dark corridor, away from the busy emergency room. The psychiatric case worker’s office was signposted.

I hadn’t been able to see the shingle, so I didn’t know whether Hofstedtler was in. But I had a pretty good notion someone else was.

I stood outside his door. A rim of light leaked under it.

Listening, I heard a scuffle of sorts going on. Then quiet.

Standing to one side – the Stabber favoured a switchblade for his pleasure but that didn’t rule out his carrying a gun for convenience – I kicked the door open, took a quick look to make sure it was safe and stepped in.

It was a small, bare consulting room – shelves with books, framed newspaper articles about the evils of comics, and an open back door into another dark, glistening alley.

Oh, and a couch. On it lay Jackson ‘Gruesome’ Greene, with a letter-opener in his neck. He was pouring out his troubles, more literally than most patients. He was one of his own final panels, spattered red, eyes fish-wide and dimming.

Like me, he’d come here for an answer – presumably to the question of ‘Why are you wrecking my livelihood, you demented quack?’ – and found a different ending.

I revised my opinion of Reuben Hofstedtler. How old and frail was he really?

* * *

I left the clinic by Hofstedtler’s private door, and walked carefully down the alley. It was narrow, and had several blind kinks. This hidden exit was kept clear, as if well-used. I could see the advantages.

Hofstedtler – if that was who had done for Greene – had no reason to think anyone else was coming after him. Except he’d just committed murder. Murderers, no matter how well-practised, always think someone’s coming after them. It may be an externalisation of deeply suppressed guilt. But everyone on the street looks like a cop. Or an infernal avenger.

I found myself in a cramped courtyard. Three buildings showed windowless backs. It could have been Whitechapel in the last century.

Standing under a fire escape was my quarry. Moonlight glinted off his thick glasses.

‘I vas vaiting for you, Dr Carmody,’ he said. ‘Ve haff much to talk off, haff we not?’

I recognised the voice of Reuben Hofstedtler.

He showed me his empty hands. No switchblade.

‘I knew you’d understand,’ he said.

The wig, the glasses and the beard came off.

‘I had to do it, Doc,’ said Sheldon Loesser.

This was certainly a breakthrough. Torn by hate and love for his cold father, wracked with pride and guilt about his work, he’d become a classic partitioned personality… a self divided and dangerously at war, literally campaigning against his own best interests, artistically murdering himself over and over again. When that didn’t resolve anything, he set out to prove his point by linking horror and crime comics with real horror and crime. It was interesting and unusual that his secondary self had attained a degree of success independent of the originating personality, but – of course – Sheldon Loesser was a talented writer.

The compartmentalised man should take care his selves can co-exist. When they rub against one another, like sandpaper or flint, fires start. The compartments collapse. The whole man can be destroyed.

‘We’ll have to go to the police, Sheldon,’ I told him. ‘Doctor-patient privilege doesn’t cover… well, murder.’

Then, Loesser’s face changed again. He was Hofstedtler and Loesser at the same time… and also the Morgue Meister.

‘Heh heh heh…’

He actually said ‘heh heh heh’. It scraped the nerves.

‘But we can’t go to the police, John,’ he said. ‘Your goddess wouldn’t permit it. Did you think no one would ever recognise Hecate? That no one else would read the grimoires, would understand your private ritual? “Ghastly – But True”. We research that feature thoroughly. Sometimes, the truth is too ghastly for Annals of Crime. Morgue of Horror should have a “Horrid – But True” feature. We could fit you in there, John. Or should I call you Jack? Nimble Jack, Slippery Jack, Saucy Jack, Cunning Jack, Red Jack… Did you like the way we handled your last ritual? “Comrades, Quake in Fear of the Red Knife: The Abner Polk Story”. We should have given you a co-writing credit. All the other killers you’ve been, John… the Butchers, the Beasts, the Stalkers, the Slashers, the Stranglers. The Voo-Doo Man, the Cleveland Torso Slayer. All the other cities, from Milan to Adelaide. And the first offerings, the sacrifices that took, the gutted girls that keep your face smooth. You are Jack the Ripper.’

I had underestimated my patient. I admit it.

Always, I have had an urge to sign my work. I didn’t write letters, but I would have if I’d thought of it. I’d left enough traces for someone with Loesser’s peculiar interests to catch up.

‘Don’t you see, John… we’re alike. We both murder for a cause.’

‘You’re nothing like me,’ I said. ‘I kill because I must, to keep my part of a bargain. You – well, you kill because…’

He smiled, in anticipation of praise.

‘Because you’re a nut!’

I might have slapped him. His eyes went wide with shock.

‘A nut, Sheldon. A pitiful nut.’

Not as fancy as I usually put it, I admit. But a diagnosis I’d stand by.

Hand in pocket, I flicked the cork off the blade of my scalpel. I stepped towards Loesser. His back was against a wall.

‘You’re wrong,’ he insisted. ‘I see vot you are, vot’s inside you. I zhrink your head, I see ze red stuff churning. Ve should be colleagues, Dr Carmody. I’ve found out zo much about you. I know everyzing!’

‘You think you know me,’ I whispered, producing the scalpel. ‘You don’t know Jack.’

SARAH MINDS THE DOG

THIS IS THE first print publication of a script written for Glenn McQuaid and Larry Fessenden’s ongoing audio horror series Tales From Beyond the Pale. The cast was Leila George, Alison Wright, Richard Mazda and Aidan Redmond. Besides playing two different dogs, Larry Fessenden narrated the story. His introduction ends with, ‘Now let’s meet a nice, well-mannered, well-brought-up young Englishwoman, Sarah. She has got herself, as they say over the pond, into “a bit of a pickle”.’

SARAH

All right, I admit it… if you go by my CV, I look like a flake. Since uni, I’ve had… oh, seven or eight jobs… none for very long… but I’ve not really prioritised career. I do have skills, though. I can turn my hand to most things. I know how this city works. London. If, say, you want to find a trombone mouthpiece or an off-the-books chiropodist at three hours’ notice, I can get that sorted. You can get hold of anything at three hours’ notice. If you know how. It’s not just a question of googling things. It’s about being attuned. Or knowing people who are. Getting things, arranging things, fixing things – this, I can get on top of, easily. It’s just that I haven’t had much luck with the folks I’ve thrown in with. I managed a band which broke up two days after they signed to a major label. They were called The Tossers. At first, I thought that was supposed to be irony. Then, I was the UK rep for a Czech beer imported by two blokes I knew from school, only it didn’t catch on with the trendies.

ROB (slight distortion – he’s linked in over Skype)

You should at least have tried drinking a pint before you signed on. The aftertaste of goat urine probably limited the market potential.

SARAH

Don’t butt in, Rob… Then I sold ads for the Hoxton Fin, this free-sheet which didn’t last in print and became an unmaintained website. I was a Zumba teacher until I broke my ankle. That turned out well. I got a decent settlement out of the gym, which kept me going for a bit. I’ve taken opportunities when they came. If someone says ‘come to Australia with me, all expenses paid, it’ll be fun’, I tend to quit whatever it is I’m doing at the time – supervising three Polish girls in a cocktail bar, as it happens – and run with it.

ROB

…and look how well that turned out.

SARAH

Shut up, Rob… Okay, I admit, in that case, I ended up having to pay my own way back home and wound up broke, looking for somewhere to live and something to do. Still, it was worth a punt.

ROB

The guy was a wrong ’un. I did tell her.

SARAH

Shush. This is Rob, by the way. He’s a shut-in… We were in the pony club together when we were eight…

ROB

Sarah moved away. To London…

SARAH

Rob stayed in… somewhere you’ve never heard of and never will. He does… what do you call it?

ROB

Web-based market research.

SARAH

Googling. He looks things up on the Internet.

ROB

For money.

SARAH

I’ve not been in a room with Rob for twelve years, but we interface on Skype all the time. He’s a resource…

ROB

Hmmph.

SARAH

I admit it, I’m not quite sure how to close the window on the computer without crashing the thing, so I’m stuck with him. I love him, really. He’s the first person I go to for advice…

ROB

…which you then ignore.

SARAH

Not always. Not this time. You see, I really want to keep this job… I can see it going somewhere, you know. The Ursin Organisation is global…

ROB

Like SMERSH.

SARAH

He means SPECTRE. SMERSH was just Russian. Like Yegor Ursin, originally.

ROB

He’s not Russian. He’s a Tatar. That’s different.

SARAH

He has a Russian passport. I know. I renewed it.

ROB

He once fed a man to a bear.

SARAH

Rob got that off the Internet. It’s not true.

ROB

There’s a YouTube clip… look…

Muffled sounds of screaming, pleading in Russian, and a bear attack.

SARAH

That was long ago and far away. The Ursin Organisation is a major corporation…

ROB

Crime syndicate…

SARAH

I’ll mute you. My boss, Yegor Ursin, is not a criminal. Not in this country. What I do is not crime. I am an executive personal assistant…

ROB

Slave.

SARAH

I book flights, restaurants, hotels… I have a budget to expedite favoured outcomes.

ROB

You bribe people.

SARAH

I deliver small packages.

ROB

Severed ears.

SARAH

I don’t look inside the packages. They certainly aren’t ears. Ears wouldn’t rattle. I think they’re mostly keys. Maybe jewellery. Usually, I work in the Ursin Building in the City… the big black glass tower that looks like a missile silo. But when Mr and Mrs Ursin are out of the country…

ROB

…she’s a house-sitter.

SARAH

I run their house. Mansion. In St John’s Wood. Yegor is married to an Englishwoman… She used to be on television…

Another muffed YouTube clip: Comedy music. Splurging of gunge. SPARKY giggles.

ROB

Remember the girl in the bikini who got gunge dumped on her every week in that 1980s late-night alternative satirical comedy with tits? That was her. Sparky.

SARAH

Sophia. Her name’s Sophia. But everyone calls her Sparky. She’s a bit of a fusspot, but a love really… They have a teenage son, Gary… and a dog, a big friendly Rottweiler…

ROB

Friendly!

SARAH

Yes, friendly… a big friendly Rottweiler, Dynamo.

ROB

She’s a house-sitter, a baby-sitter and a dog-sitter. An executive personal dog-sitter.

Fade up. House sounds – clocks, feet on carpets. Dog noises – slobbering, snuffling, slightly whiny, perhaps ailing…

SPARKY

Come on, Dynamo, Mum’s got to go now… you’ll be fine with Sarah… Sorry about this, Sarah… but Dynamo’s getting on in years. It’s more and more of a performance every time we go away.

SARAH

No worries, Mrs Ursin…

SPARKY

Sparky.

SARAH

No worries, Sparky. I’m sure he’ll be no trouble.

SPARKY

Give him his pills with his food. Twice a day. The vet’s number is written on the bottom of his bowl. And make sure he gets his walkies… He’ll resist at first, especially on cold days… but it’s for your own good, Dynamo, you hear me! You make sure you’re respectful to Sarah. Look at that sad face, though…

URSIN

Car is waiting, Sparky.

SPARKY

It can wait longer while I go over things with Sarah.

URSIN

Sarah has been told. She will do what she has been told. It is her job.

SPARKY

Don’t you listen to Mr Growly, Sarah. Gary’s home for the holidays, but he won’t give you any trouble, either. He’ll be working on his computer, mostly. In his room. He needs to catch up on schoolwork.

SARAH

I’ll make sure he eats. I know what teenage boys are like.

SPARKY

Just throw pizza into his den once or twice a day. He’ll be all right. Dynamo’s bowl must be refilled with fresh water… from the bottle, not the tap… Make sure he drinks it before it goes stale.

URSIN

Sparky! Car!

SPARKY

You have all the numbers, Sarah. If there’s a problem…

URSIN

If there is a problem, solve it. Is what you are paid for. Understand?

SARAH

Yes, Mr Ursin. Of course.

URSIN

See, Sparky. Sarah understand. Now, come to car.

SPARKY

Goodbye, Dynamo, you be good to Sarah… and, Sarah [voice almost cracks], take care of our most precious precious, won’t you…

SARAH

I’ll see Gary is fine.

URSIN

She not mean Gary.

SPARKY

Goodbye, Dynamo.

URSIN

See.

Reluctantly, SPARKY leaves DYNAMO. Sounds of kissing, more slobbery dog-whining. Door opens. SPARKY and URSIN leave house. Door shuts behind them. Car drives off. DYNAMO has a wet coughing fit, whines pathetically.

SARAH

There, there, Dynamo. Don’t fret. You want some water? Fresh water?

Tap running.

SARAH

Oh, not tap water… my mistake. I’m sorry, Dynamo.

Tap shuts off. Fridge opening.

SARAH

Still or sparkling? Or…

Delving into fridge…

SARAH

Bollinger or Moët? I think still water is probably best for you…

Bottle opening. Pouring. DYNAMO drinks and slurps, then has a coughing fit.

SARAH

That doesn’t sound healthy. I’d recommend you give up smoking, old thing.

DYNAMO whines. SARAH pets him.

SARAH

There there, who’s a big dog then? Who’s a very big dog then? With many many teeth?

Footsteps. SARAH is leaving the kitchen and touring the house. She goes upstairs.

SARAH

Gary?

Computer game sounds – explosions, beeps, screams, musical stings – from another room.

SARAH

Hard at work? Do you need anything?

Door opening. Game sounds louder.

GAME VOICE

Die, Earthling scum!

SARAH

I asked if you needed anything, Gary.

Joystick sounds. Incoherent teenage mumbling and grunting from GARY.

GAME VOICE

Puny human, you have zapped me fatally… arrgh!

GARY grunts incoherent triumph, and keeps zapping.

SARAH

Fair enough. Just yell if you do. I’ll probably be in the office.

Door shutting. Game sounds continue.

SARAH goes into a room. Computer sound – something to signify the remote presence of ROB.

ROB

Have you found any guns yet? Krugerrands? Heads of old business partners pickled in jars?

SARAH

It’s not like that. It’s just a big house…

ROB

I know, I know… not an evil lair at all. No shark tank… no alligator pit.

SARAH

Just a dog.

ROB

A killer dog?

SARAH

Well, a Rottweiler.

ROB

You’re alone with a Rottweiler?

SARAH

And a teenage boy.

ROB

So, nothing could go wrong with that scenario… Look, here are the stats…

Typing – ROB is running a net search.

ROB

Rottweilers are the second most likely dog to be involved in a fatal attack on a human being. Only Pitbulls score higher. They’re illegal in Poland, Portugal and the Republic of Ireland. Illegal in Poland! That dog in The Omen… that was a Rottweiler… [murmurs the Omen theme]… Ave Satanas…

SARAH

Relax, Rob… Dynamo’s about a hundred years old and sleeps most of the day. He’s more likely to drown me in slobber than bite… He’s huge, but – seriously – I’m more worried about being bitten by Gary…

ROB

Six foot tall, shaved head, tattoos… has to make his bones in the organisation with a first, easy kill? Someone disposable like an executive personal assistant?

SARAH

Actually, he’s more like you – too porky to get out of his chair, online all the time… fighting aliens or zombies. Looks like he’d faint if you came near him with a tattoo needle.

ROB

Want me to hack into his Internet cache and tell you which porn sites he visits?

SARAH

I’ll pass, thanks.

ROB

I’ll bet they’re really pervy Russian ones.

SARAH

You need to get out more. Go and play in the sunshine.

ROB

Aieee! No… melting, melting…

SARAH laughs.

SARAH

My big problem is not getting bored silly for the next three weeks.

ROB

Want to see some clips of someone alleged to be your boss securing an oil concession in the Caucasus by setting fire to a provincial mayor?

Muted screaming and burning – shut off.

SARAH

No.

ROB

Want to see a streaming file of your boss’s wife in the Electric Blue video she made before getting that comedy show?

Muted porn-funk music and sexy giggles – shut off.

SARAH

No. Good God, no.

ROB

Want a list of the countries in which the Ursin Organisation is under investigation for unethical, illegal and antisocial activities?

SARAH

Give it a rest.

ROB

Just trying to help.

SARAH

Well, don’t. This job is really good for me. Have I told you about the compensation package? And, hey, I’m living in a mansion… and you’re in your mum’s shed.

ROB

I call it a power bunker.

SARAH

Shed. Just help me out here, and I’ll get you on salary. You can come over to the Dark Side and google stuff for Ursin. Unless you’ve left digital tracks finding out about him and are on his enemies list.

ROB

He has an enemies list?

SARAH

You tell me. I don’t think people stay on it very long. Keep refreshing it, and the names disappear.

ROB

Ha ha. I have an inside woman.

SARAH

Don’t count on it, Rob. Old ties only go so far in this cutthroat business. And throats actually do get cut, according to you, at least…

ROB (weakly)

Pony club forever?

SARAH

Don’t go white. I’ve been telling you, Mr Ursin isn’t like that at all. He hasn’t killed anyone in my presence… just a little light mutilation, and all’s forgiven, hugs and kisses…

A phone reminder signal beeps.

SARAH

Uh-oh, walkies! I’m off now, love… got to walk the Dynamo…

ROB

Illegal in Poland!

SARAH

Shush…

Computer noise to signify ROB being shut off. SARAH goes downstairs. Kitchen – footsteps on linoleum, not carpet. Very weak slobbery, leaking sounds – a ghost being given up.

SARAH

Dynamo, walkies! Let’s get those legs working… let’s… [concerned] Dynamo! You do not look well…

Faint growl of death rattle.

SARAH

Dynamo… Good gravy, don’t make that sound… No, do make that sound, any sound… because if you’re making a sound you’re not… dead. Dynamo, do not be dead. Get up, boy! Have a bone! Chase a cat! Lassie’s on television – you must fancy her! You can tell she’s panting for it! Come on, Dynamo… you don’t want to die!

Noise of heavy sacklike dog being turned over as SARAH puts her hands on him.

SARAH

Where’s your heartbeat? Here? Up and at ’em, Dynamo! How does CPR work? Apply pressure over the ribs in even, regular pulses… unh unh unh unh…

Sound of CPR on dog…

SARAH

Be alive! Come on… for Auntie Sarah, live… breathe… beat…

SARAH gives up CPR and tries thumping, fists on ribs…

SARAH

Now, punch to the heart… clear… one, two, THREE… one, two, THREE…

DYNAMO splutters and whines, briefly to life…

SARAH

Thank God, it’s alive! You’re alive! Don’t give up. One, two, THREE… one, two, THREE…

Solid punches… dog noises… then ribs breaking, a final gurgle, and quiet.

SARAH

No, Dynamo… you were alive… you were… God, no, Dynamo… all you had to do was stay alive for three bloody weeks! Why did you do this to me, you wretched hound? Take that…

SARAH kicks the dog – which is just a dead lump. More bones break.

SARAH

Sorry, I didn’t mean it. Come on, chum, don’t be like that. It was for your own good. The kick. It was a kick of life. A kick of love. A… what’s the use, you’re dead… and so am I.

Dead air – background fridge noise, slight dripping, gases escaping from dead dog. Fade down. Fade up…

SARAH (in mid-flow)

…you don’t get it, Rob. I tried CPR. I hammered away at his chest. I heard bones breaking. It looks like I killed the bloody dog!

ROB

Come on, at least you didn’t kick him…

SARAH

…well, not while he was alive!

ROB

You kicked the dog!

SARAH

Don’t say it like that.

ROB

How is Ursin going to say it?

SARAH

Not like that… He’ll understand, I’m sure… Dynamo was ancient, in dog years… this can’t be unexpected…

ROB

Sarah, here’s a clip I found…

Slight distortion…

URSIN

Most precious to me in world is… Dynamo. From when I was nothing, dog was by me. Dog save life. Dog mean more than business… than family… than anything…

ROB (doing accent)

…if English bitch kill dog, I sell her to sex traffickers. I find all her friends and cut them up for spare parts.

SARAH

He’s not like that… oh, what’s the use, he is like that.

ROB

I’m glad you’re finally listening. Look, get out of there now… I’ll start work on changing your identity online. You’ll need to dye your hair. Change your shape. Get on a pork pie and doughnut diet – put some pounds on. Lose the contacts and get granny glasses.

SARAH (shocked)

That’s not going to happen, Rob.

ROB

Then I’ll just google ‘please don’t rape me violently’ in fifteen Central and Eastern European languages… and Japanese. It’ll come in handy.

SARAH

You’re panicking worse than I am.

ROB

Am not.

SARAH

Are too.

Pause.

ROB

Look, you know what you always say about London… that you can get anything in three hours.

SARAH

Yes. So?

ROB

Get a new dog.

SARAH

What?

ROB

A ringer… a lookalike… a doppeldog. Dynamo II. You’ve got three weeks, right? You can train the thing, get it used to Dynamo’s routine. When Mr and Mrs Ursin get back, it’ll be perfect…

SARAH

There’s Gary…

ROB

Who never leaves his room, right?

SARAH

Yes.

ROB

Google ‘dogs for sale – London’…

Typing.

SARAH

Too many listings to count…

ROB

Narrow it down. ‘Rottweilers for sale – London’.

SARAH

That’s better. Battersea Dogs Home comes up first…

ROB

No, no, not them… scroll down… ignore the first three pages of results… go to page four or five…

SARAH

Why?

ROB

You don’t want an ethical source.

SARAH

I don’t want a dodgy dog dealer!

ROB

Yes, you do. Battersea or any of the reputable outlets will want you to fill in forms and deal with vets and injections and breeds… You want a ‘no questions asked’ doggery.

SARAH

Fair enough.

Mouse clicks.

ROB

Okay, I’m looking at the same set of results. Page five. Rottweiler Rescue… sounds too ethical to me… Pick-up-a-Pet… ugh…

SARAH

Rehomed Rotts? Surplus Canines? Oh Jesus, this one exports dogs that don’t sell within the month to countries where they’re gourmet delicacies. Debbie Does Dogs? Tell me that’s not an animal porn site, Rob.

ROB

If I did, I’d be lying.

SARAH

I don’t want to know how you know this. Desperate Dogs? What about that one?

ROB

Promising… look, a really crap website. That’s what you need. They can’t afford to be choosy.

SARAH

Should I email them?

ROB

And leave a data trace? No… look at the address… Enfield. Know where that is?

SARAH

Uh, yes. Most people who don’t live in sheds know where Enfield is.

ROB

Then pay a call. First off, have you got any pictures of Dynamo?

SARAH

Me personally, no. But they’re all over the place. Framed portraits. None of his parents, but plenty of his dog.

ROB

Take some good recent ones. For matching…

SARAH

I’m not sure about this. There must be a better way.

ROB

Do you need to know the Serbian for ‘I’d prefer it if you didn’t cut my face further’?

SARAH

I have an Oyster card. I’m on my way to Enfield…

A snatch of song – ‘How Much is That Doggie In the Window?’, the 1953 British cover of the Patti Page hit by Lita Roza. This can be used throughout to cover transitions.

Fade up. Subdued street sounds. SARAH is talking into a mobile.

SARAH

…it’s all lock-ups and junkyards round here. This place must be hidden.

ROB (tinny, on phone)

Can’t you hear howling?

SARAH

Ha ha…

Muffled barking, howling, cage-rattling…

SARAH

Hang on a mo, I can hear dogs… Here it is… Desperate Dogs, painted on a gate… I’m putting you away…

ROB

Leave the line open…

SARAH

Do not record this and put it on YouTube…

ROB

I think we both know how inadvisable that would be. [Does URSIN] You break dog, I break you!

Gate being hauled open. Dog sounds louder as SARAH enters yard.

SARAH

Hello… anyone home?

Vicious barking and cage-chewing…

SARAH (rattled)

Ugh. Dogs…

DECLAN (Irish tinker)

Don’t mind Buttercup there, missy… he’s a lovely boy, aren’t you, Buttercup? Sure to be an asset to any home. Loyal as a Queen’s Guard… see off any intruders…

SARAH

Or relatives… You’re Desperate Dogs?

DECLAN

I’m Declan. Desperate Declan, they say… as a joke, like. It’s the name of the business. You are…?

SARAH

Would it be all right if I didn’t give my name?

DECLAN

Cash customer?

SARAH

Yes. Indeed.

DECLAN

No need to trouble Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise, then?

SARAH

No. Quite.

DECLAN

So, how can Desperate Dogs help you?

SARAH

Ah. I need a dog…

DECLAN

Fair enough. We’ve heard that before here, that being the nature of our business and all. Now, you’re not one of those perverts, are you?

SARAH

Good grief, no.

DECLAN

Not that we judge our dog-lovers here. I’m sure some of those perverts treat their dogs like princesses…

SARAH

Seriously, Declan… I’m not a pervert. I’m… ah… in distress…

DECLAN

A damsel in distress? Our specialty…

SARAH

I need a very special dog.

DECLAN

All dogs are special, darlin’.

SARAH

Special and specific… Look, I know this is… extremely unusual… but, well, do you have any dogs that look like this?

Bit of fuss as she gets out a framed picture and lets him look at it.

DECLAN

That’s a fine-looking animal. Plainly a much-loved member of the family…

SARAH

Yes.

DECLAN

And that’s a fine-looking owner, too. Bit of a hard man, I’d say. Those tattoos. A Russian gentleman?

SARAH

Yes, as it happens.

DECLAN

Great dog-lovers, the Russians. Not perverts. Lovers.

SARAH

Yes. Now, you see… this dog, Dynamo, he’s been part of the family for so long… he’s irreplaceable, really… but…

DECLAN

You want him replaced?

SARAH (surprised)

Yes.

DECLAN

And matched?

Pause.

SARAH (suspicious)

Yes.

DECLAN

Well, why didn’t you say so? That’s easy…

SARAH

Easy?

DECLAN

Sure. We get this all the time… one dog out, another in… no one ever the wiser. Can’t bear to tell the kiddies, eh? What was it? Run over by a lorry?

SARAH

Natural causes.

DECLAN

That’s more peaceful, then. Glad to hear it. Let’s have a look at this Dynamo. Black coat, with a bit of tan about the mouth. Little nick out of the ear. So, once a fighter, then? You have his measurements?

SARAH

I wrote them down… here… Excuse me, but does this happen often? You’re asked to match a dog?

DECLAN

Oh yes. Spare the kiddies distress. A dog’s a dog, after all. And dogs need homes.

SARAH (encouraged)

People get away with this?

DECLAN

Mostly. I’d be lying if I said it was always a smooth transition… but if the match is good, and I think we’ve a perfect match for your Dynamo… then no one need be any the wiser.

SARAH

You’d be saving my life. I might actually mean that.

They walk. Different dogs in different cages make sounds.

DECLAN

Think nothing of it. Now here… this is… well, it don’t matter what his name was, does it? This is… Dynamo.

Keys rattle as cage is opened. Ferocious barking, which calms down.

DECLAN

None of that, lad. Be nice to the lady. She’s bringing you to a new home… Here, give him a treat…

SARAH

Hello, Dynamo II. Who’s a big boy then?

Ferocious but happy chewing.

DECLAN

Is that the size you need?

SARAH

Looks about right. He’s got more… spirit.

DECLAN

Probably younger. That means he’ll live longer.

SARAH

Good. I mean… excellent. Just what’s needed. A not-dying dog. The brown mouth is a perfect match. But… the ear… Can I say that the old wound got better? Does that happen?

DECLAN

Ah, that’s easily taken care of. I’ve a pair of needle-nose pliers here…

Dog resists – growling and snarling. A snip sound! Angry howl.

DECLAN

Now, you take your medicine, lad. No use raising a racket about it.

SARAH

It’s bleeding.

DECLAN

It’ll scab over soon. A few days, and it’ll look like it was always like that. Now, you take his lead…

Growling, barking and straining.

SARAH

He’s a bit of a handful.

DECLAN

Just frisky. Treat him with love and respect and practise no perversions on him and he’ll be just the dog you need. One thousand pounds.

SARAH

What?

DECLAN

Oh, it’s only three hundred for the dog. The rest was for the operation.

SARAH

The operation?

DECLAN

The ear-snip. Cost you a lot more at a vet’s, if you could find a vet to do it.

SARAH

Um…

DECLAN

Don’t have that much on you?

SARAH

Well.

DECLAN

You’d still owe for the operation… even if you didn’t take the dog.

SARAH

All right. I have it.

DECLAN (harder)

I thought you might. We have a sense about these things. About when you’re desperate…

SARAH

Here. Fifty-pound notes. New.

DECLAN

Used would be better…

SARAH

Oh come on now…

DECLAN

I’m just saying, not complaining. This will be acceptable. You want a receipt?

SARAH

No.

DECLAN

I thought not. Will you want the collar and lead? That’ll be extra.

SARAH

I brought a collar and lead.

DECLAN

You usually do… Do you need any help getting them on?

SARAH

No…

Furious barking, growling…

SARAH

Yes.

DECLAN

Calm down, Dynamo. It’s only your old collar and lead. No need to raise a riot. There. All done.

Growling.

SARAH

Thank you.

DECLAN

Thank you. And good day to you.

Growling, whining, dragging – street sounds. SARAH is struggling with dog on lead.

SARAH

…it’s a beast, I tell you. They’ll wonder what I’ve been feeding Dynamo.

ROB

Good. They’ll be grateful. You’ve rejuvenated their dog. Now, I’ve been giving some thought to body disposal. Dynamo can’t stay in that bin-bag under your bed forever. The problem is pretty much the same as if you had a human corpse to get rid of, but there are ways and means…

SARAH

Give it a rest, ghoul. I’m giving Dynamo I a decent burial in the woods.

ROB

Don’t forget to pull its teeth. Dogs have dental records, too.

SARAH

That’s it. I’m shutting you off, now. Talk later.

ROB

Sarah…

Click.

SARAH

That’s enough of him. Now, Dynamo II, you and I are going to have to come to an arrangement…

Growling.

SARAH

Less of that. And more slobbering. Can you learn to slobber? And lie down. A lot.

Growling stops.

SARAH

That’s better. And you’ve stopped tugging. Learning who’s boss here, eh? Know you’re onto a good thing? Seriously, you are. Desperate Declan would have been only too happy to sell you to a pervert. Piccies of you could be posted on Debbie Does Dogs in undignified poses, I tell you. That Debbie won’t give you the treats you’ll get at the Ursin house. Well, not the kind of treats you’ll learn to appreciate.

A satisfied, smug sort of growl.

SARAH

That’s better. You know how to play along. You’re a sly one, aren’t you? Good. We like sly. We can work with sly…

Human and dog walking. Street sounds. Fade down.

More ‘How Much is That Doggie in the Window?’

Fade up. Kitchen sounds – fridge hum, etc. Pouring from bottle.

SARAH

There, Dynamo II. Fresh water. Mountain spring. Two pounds fifty a bottle. Mmmmm… delicious. Come on, drink up… you’ve lucked into the Good Life here, if only you knew it…

Slight growl of disgust.

SARAH

What do you want, Sly One? The champagne? Now, you see here, all you have to do is play along and everything will be hunky-dory. Got that? We’re in this together, doppeldog.

Noncommittal growl.

SARAH

Now, I’ve got to feed the other dumb animal in the house. Gary. You’ll be meeting him later. Just make sure you slobber on him like a good Dynamo…

Microwave ping.

SARAH

Ahhh, pizza… choice food of the pimply.

Dog barks interest.

SARAH

Not for you, Sly One. For Gary. I’ll fix you din-dins later. There’s the finest dog food known to civilisation on offer… I think Mr Ursin has it personally tinned in the Caucasus… might be human flesh in it, for all I know. Human flesh, eh? That got your ears perked up? Tinned provincial mayor? Mmmmm…

Pizza on plate being put on tray. Cutlery clatter.

SARAH

Now, you stay! We shall continue your training later…

Growl.

SARAH

Stay! I’ll be back.

Footsteps. SARAH carries tray out of kitchen (lino) upstairs (carpet). Fade up computer game sounds and GARY grunting.

GAME VOICE

You have blasted my star-cruiser, Earthling scum! You are almighty conqueror of the Crab Nebula…

GARY’s grunts take on a gloating, triumphant tone.
SARAH knocks at his door.

SARAH

Gary, here’s your pizza order. Pineapple, ham and spot cream…

GARY grunts at her, inviting. SARAH shoulders the door open…

DOG bounds upstairs and into the room…

SARAH

Sly One, no… I said stay! No…

GARY grunts surprise as DOG jumps on him.

SARAH

No, leave Gary alone… he is not a chew-toy!

DOG barks viciously. GARY grunts in fear and pain. Rending and tearing sounds. A bitten-out throat. SARAH drops tray of food. More barking and attacking. GARY grunts desperately, overwhelmed.

SARAH

No, Dynamo… don’t! Stop! Please, stop! You’re spoiling everything!

GARY stops grunting. DOG snarls and laps at leaking liquid. Then howls in nasty triumph.

SARAH

Oh, Sly One… what have you done now?

A distorted snatch of ‘How Much is That Doggie in the Window?’ Fade up…

SARAH

…yes, of course I’ve checked his pulse… Gary hasn’t got one. He has a hole in his throat you could stick your fist through…

ROB

Sarah, calm down…

SARAH

The kid is dead, Rob. The creature killed him. Doggy Dracula might look just like good old slobbery harmless dying Dynamo, but he’s a very different animal on the inside. I think he’s a canine serial killer. No wonder he ended up at Desperate Dogs. He’s done this before…

ROB

You don’t know that.

SARAH

He was too good at it not to have had practice. You don’t kill someone with a lucky bite the first time you go for them. He had to chew through flab and gristle to get to the veins.

ROB

I don’t see the problem. Dynamo killed Gary, not you!

SARAH

It’s not Dynamo! It’s sitting here, now – gloating, blood all over its mouth. Happy. Wagging its tail and looking for approval. It likes killing people, Rob.

ROB

It’s not killed you. Probably imprinted. Thinks you’re its mummy. It might have been protecting you.

SARAH

From who? Gary?

ROB

Let me think!

SARAH

You thinking got me into this. I can’t just bury Gary in the woods and buy a new teenager.

ROB

Why not?

SARAH

I don’t like it when you talk like that?

Typing.

ROB

Here, Adoption Agencies – London – older children and teenagers… not the first page of results… page five…

SARAH

I can’t believe you’re suggesting this. I’ve already brought one psychopath into this house…

ROB

Well, why stop there? Find another. Find a kid who looks like Gary and will take care of all questions the way the dog did. It’s not like the Ursins paid much attention to their old son, or will notice the difference… If you could match the dog, this should be a doddle. They’ll want to go along with it, to save the fuss. And if not, the kid’ll… well, go for the throat…

SARAH

I’m not doing this. I’m not.

ROB

Look, here… recognise the address. In Enfield. Your friend Declan has another line of trade. Desperate Kids. Just who you need…

SARAH

Rob, no…

ROB

I’m just trying to help. Pony club forever…

SARAH

I’ll look at the site…

DOG barks happily.

SARAH

What are you sounding off about, Sly One? More din-dins? This next one is not for you, do you understand?

Pathetic ingratiating DOG whine.

SARAH

This will not end well, Rob…

ROB

Try to be more trusting, Sarah… It’ll all work out well. Who’s your best friend in the whole world?

SARAH

That’s a good question.

DOG barks, cheerfully.
Fade up ‘How Much is That Doggie in the Window?’

THE SNOW SCULPTURES OF XANADU

THERE HAD BEEN a private zoo here once, but now only mosquitoes thrived. In the thick, sweaty heat, they pestered Welles. During his lifetime, Charles Foster Kane had decreed Xanadu insect-free, as if the force of his unstoppable will – the power that had shaped the destinies of nations – were able to hold back the swamplands surrounding his Florida fastness. The Pleasure Dome had begun to rot while Kane still lived, as his powers ebbed and history slowly crept past him, and, with his death twenty-five years ago, the decay had begun to accelerate. The walls were breached like those of a besieged city that has finally yielded, the stinking cages of the menagerie held only dead animals, forty-foot windows were patched over with boards. Welles thought that if the place were left to nature, it would inevitably sink like the House of Usher into the giant tarn surrounding it.

A fitting set for a ghost story.

The former Boy Wonder stood outside the gates of Xanadu, the shadow of their wrought-iron K motif falling upon him, and was conscious of how much he had changed since his last visit. In 1941, with an RKO contract to make a groundbreaking documentary about the Great American, he had stolen miles of footage in Xanadu as the Kane functionaries dismantled and inventoried the fortress’s infestation-like collection. Statues, books, paintings, furniture, uncategorisable mementoes, jigsaw puzzles, phonograph records, vehicles, tapestries: all boxed or burned. Welles had felt that there was no waste as long as the process was caught on film. No gesture or moment was insignificant once processed by Gregg Toland’s camera. Of course, he could not have foreseen that all his footage would end up like Kane’s collection, listed and buried in a vault.

Up in the eaves of Xanadu, something with wings squawked, its cry like a jaguar’s snarl played backwards.

Then, Welles had been slim and promising; now, he felt fat and thwarted. Charles Foster Kane Jr, a lifelong recluse crippled in the 1916 automobile accident that took his mother’s life, had stirred the might of his inherited empire, and pressured RKO into abandoning American, just as they dissuaded News on the March from issuing its newsreel obituary. Junior, still nursing the hurt of his parents’ divorce, acted as if he wanted the memory of Kane erased, working diligently at squashing biographies with all the zeal of an Egyptian priest wiping a dissolute pharaoh out of the history books. Now, in 1965, few people remembered whether Kane had been a real person or a made-up character. His name was sometimes good for newspaper sales – as when, in 1949, it had seemed probable that an American black-marketeer found dead in a Viennese sewer was the old man’s bastard son – but mainly, he was as shadowy a concept as his ‘Rosebud’, as forgotten a heap of detritus as his Xanadu.

Down the coast, a white spurt shot up. Part of the old Kane Estate was now leased to Cape Canaveral. Junior’s passion was the sky, prompted by the cripple’s hope that even if he could not walk he could fly. Welles remembered Junior’s involvement with Howard Hughes’ ‘Spruce Goose’ during the war, and his establishment of a Kane Aviation Company in the fifties, diversifying into jet engines and prototypical rockets. Kane components would go to the moon one day, or bear the payload of man’s final war. And Kane papers and television programmes would bear the news of both events.

Welles wondered again if the summons he had received was a hoax. Xanadu seemed from the outside to be completely deserted. Sunbleached walls crumbled invisibly, and there was no sign of habitation. He looked back at the limousine, but the driver – half his face hidden by goggle-like glasses – betrayed nothing.

As young men, Kane and Welles had been much alike, the sleek and dynamic Boy Wonders of 1894 and 1940, but they had aged differently, Kane becoming a shambling, bulletheaded mammoth, shunned by the rest of the tribe, while Welles buried himself in beard, bloat and B-movies, squandering his theatrical reputation on cameo appearances and cheap magic tricks. It all started with American, the dream movie, to combine fiction and documentary in unprecedented ways. The footage had never even been edited together, but still American, the masterpiece that never was, cast its shadow over all Welles’s subsequent, tidily completed but lesser-than-expected works: The Magnificent Ambersons, Heart of Darkness, Don Quixote, The Trial. If American had been finished, things would have been different. Welles would have been greater than Ford, than Hawks, than Hitchcock. Than Eisenstein, than Murnau, than Flaherty…

Finally, the gates were opened, and a thin, smiling man in a tropical suit led Welles to the house. The driveway was apparently unending, Xanadu growing larger with each step. Welles had heard of Dr John Montague before, had read his published account of his investigation into the notoriously haunted Hill House in Connecticut. That had ended in tragedy for one of Montague’s researchers, but the scientist took care elaborately to exonerate himself in his book. Junior had commissioned the parapsychologist to look into his own family’s haunted mansion, perhaps to prescribe a rite of exorcism. Welles wondered why Junior hadn’t simply had Xanadu burned to the ground, and its ruins seeded with salt.

Montague chatted as they walked to Xanadu, mainly about magic and trickery. Welles was known as an expert, having once sawn Rita Hayworth in half and capped the trick by marrying the girl. He had hoaxed the world that the Martians were coming. Montague assumed that the master magician would recognise a trick if he saw one. Welles realised there was something lacking in Montague, a failure to understand that magic was what you could not explain. That was its beauty, its trick. Probing the works, finding the concealed mirrors and strings, was the most effective method of exorcism.

The K above the door was weathered, most of its circle fallen away, leaving only a rind between the toppermost arms of the letter. It looked like an R.

‘Rosebud,’ Welles whispered.

Rosebud had proved the most overexplored false trail in American biography. The News on the March team had never found an explanation for Kane’s last word, and neither had the would-be makers of American. Joe Mankiewicz, drunk, had suggested it was the mogul’s private nickname for the private parts of his second wife, the former street corner diva Susan Alexander. That had been as good a solution as any.

Welles saw Montague’s team in the grounds, blending in with the overgrowth like camouflage birds, prodding directional mikes and anemometers into various apertures. Montague talked about cold spots and ectoplasm and resonances. In the parapsychology texts, Xanadu had overtaken Borley Rectory, the Loren home, the Frieburg Tanz Akademie, the Overlook Hotel and the Belasco mansion as the world’s most haunted house. Although Welles realised none of the rumours and reports that had filtered back to him had ever specified exactly how Xanadu was haunted.

Some excitement was caused among the psychic researchers by the siting of a large bird flapping lazily out of the eaves of the West Wing. The thing Welles had heard earlier, it looked like a vast, leathery bat with a horned swordfish’s head. Montague explained the creature was a living fossil, but that no one had got close enough to one to classify it. Welles remembered recreating some shots of Xanadu in miniature at RKO, reusing some of the back projection plates from King Kong. He wondered how the painted pterodactyl had migrated from Hollywood to Florida.

While Xanadu was decaying, the Kane Empire had been reshaping itself – Junior taking only a capricious interest, but capable men springing up from inside the business – and preparing for a war which, ultimately, would take it from the verge of bankruptcy to corporate heights to which Kane had never even aspired. Riding the tide of national purpose, Kane papers and magazines had reestablished themselves as essentials in any American living room. In the fifties, Kane interests diversified: while Junior reached for the sky, his corporation crept into television, stealing a march on the competition as the new medium took hold on American life. Organisation Men in grey flannel prowled the executive suites, as the name of Kane came to mean a many-headed but single-minded beast, almost independent of Junior, infiltrating America’s living rooms. Kane papers backed and then denounced Joseph McCarthy, as if the old man’s ghost were still influencing editorial policies. Kane and Korea, Kane and Nixon, Kane and Kennedy, Kane and the astronauts. The old man would have loved the second half of the century more even than he had the first.

Montague listed the accomplishments of his team: trance mediums, physical mediums, psychometrists, psychotronics, psychokinetics. Ghost breakers in grey flannel, punching a timeclock and tuning in to the beyond just as his old audience had tuned in to the Mercury Theatre on the Air.

Even in his lightweight suit, Welles was perspiring uncomfortably. He was surprised, then, when Montague, on a doorstep as wide as an interstate highway, handed him a parka. The scientist pulled on a thick coat himself, and flipped the fur-lined hood up over his head. He looked ready to strike for the South Pole. Perplexed, Welles followed suit, wrapping the cumbersome garment around himself. He waited for the punchline, but none came.

Montague threw open the great doors of Xanadu, and stepped in. Welles followed, and was embraced by an invisible blizzard. As the doors slammed to behind them, he felt as if he had left the valley of Shangri-La and returned to Tibetan wastes. The scientist looked smug, and Welles tried to conceal his astonishment. Outside was tropical heat. Here, within the walls of Xanadu, an arctic frost lay over everything. Welles asked if there was any scientific explanation. Montague didn’t answer, but provided the information that Charles Foster Kane, born in 1864, spent his first years in a Colorado boarding house, coping with the fierce winters.

The statues and paintings were gone, but in their place were shaped blocks of ice. One of Montague’s team was taking photographs of a swirling column that turned into a perfect Floradora Girl. The ice shifted and cracked as the girl performed a dance step with the grave dignity of a glacier.

The thick frost on the walls was shaped into dioramas. Welles was drawn to a screen-sized patch of sparkling ice. Street scenes turned into stage sets. The view crept up over houses and in through roofs. Welles wished he had a film crew with him. The ice pictures were the images he had dreamed of when he first conceived American. They melted and reformed in different configurations.

Montague stood back, and let Welles wander through the halls of Xanadu, constantly amazed, delighted and intrigued by the ice sculptures. The scientist was cool and cautious, not expressing an opinion. A lifelong measurer and tabulator, Montague was probably not even qualified to have an opinion.

Now Welles understood why the Kane people had sent for him. It was not that he could explain the ice sculptures, any more than he could explain ‘Rosebud’. It was that he was the only one who could appreciate what was here.

The great staircase of Xanadu was thick with snow that came from nowhere and smoothed away the steps, fanning out around Welles’s feet as it blanketed the parquet. The staircase was a slope suitable for skiing, for sledding. For an instant, as if a diamond bullet had pierced his brain, Welles thought he had an answer to the unanswerable. Then, like ice in the sun, it melted away.

THE PALE SPIRIT PEOPLE

IT WAS A perfect circle, such as might be drawn in dirt with a stick and a length of twine. Less broad than the span of a man’s hand, the spirit object was thin yet resilient, fashioned of stuff unknown to the True People. Hawk That Settles understood from one of Two Dogs Dying’s followers that the object could sing, but he did not understand how this could be so. Since taken from its place of concealment, it had been silent.

Hawk That Settles had found it supple as a good bow; now, he watched Sky Buffalo tap, taste, shake, strike and scratch. The circle would not be hurt, though, in truth, neither the young man nor the shaman put it truly to the test, throwing it on a fire or hammering it with a rock. To destroy a spirit object was to invite ill fortune into the lodges of the People.

As Sky Buffalo turned the singing circle over to sniff its underside, the silver mirror caught light, holding rainbows to itself. The edge was sharp enough to draw blood. At the centre was a hole through which the shaman poked his forefinger to the first knuckle. On one side were tiny scrawls in black, scarring the almost beautiful surface.

‘Two Dogs Dying found this in the burial ground?’ the shaman asked. The lines about his mouth and eyes were grooves worn in old leather and he had fewer teeth than fingers.

‘It must be so,’ Hawk That Settles replied, ‘for it was hidden near the lodge Two Dogs has built among the dead.’

‘Hidden?’

‘Two Dogs hides many objects, as one would hide a shameful thing.’

‘Objects?’

It seemed to Hawk That Settles that to be a shaman mainly required the repetition of odd words with a questioning inflexion. He did not share his father’s reverence for the storied wisdom of the aged. After forty-two summers, the song of Sky Buffalo was sung. The shaman had built his last lodge far from the encampment and refused to hunt, sustained in his dying days by the superstitious kindness of old women.

But here was Hawk That Settles – who argued that food left after young men and women had fed was better stored against winter than wasted on those grown old and useless – sitting at the last fire of Sky Buffalo, asking for help.

‘There are other objects,’ Hawk That Settles explained. ‘Not like this one. Some have seen them, though Two Dogs and the others waste effort building invisible lodges for their concealment.’

‘Invisible?’

The shaman was doing it again. Swallowing impatience along with smoke, Hawk That Settles continued, ‘Lodges made to seem like solid stone or patches of ground, like traps made for men of the Other People. He has built many such in the burial ground.’

Sky Buffalo coughed wisely.

‘Some of these spirit objects make noises like animals or men wounded in battle,’ Hawk That Settles said, remembering with a spearthrust of fear the horrible yammering he had heard.

‘These things are troubling,’ Sky Buffalo said; hardly great wisdom. ‘There is a great disturbance in the Ghost Lands.’

That also was something Hawk That Settles could have told the shaman. Every child of the People knew the Ghost Lands met the World Around like one track crossing another, and that sometimes objects were found at the crossings of the paths. The more spirit objects migrated to the World Around, the more disturbance there was in the Ghost Lands.

‘You must carry me to the burial ground, Hawk.’

The young man had been afraid of that. With no complaint, he turned his broad back so the shaman could climb upon it, arms around his neck, knees gripping his waist.

As he stood, Hawk That Settles grunted. The old man was surprisingly heavy, as if his breechclout were stuffed with stones.

‘You have often thought of carrying me to the burial ground,’ Sky Buffalo said, not chuckling. ‘Those who make fervent wishes often regret them.’

Hunched over like an old man himself, Hawk That Settles walked towards the lodges of the People.

* * *

In seasons at the old encampment, the young men of the People hunted game and made war on the Other People. As brothers, they honoured the dead with the songs of their fathers.

Hawk That Settles and Two Dogs Dying were born of the same woman. In their time, they fathered babies for women of their generation. When Spotted Water birthed twins, one resembled Hawk That Settles, the other Two Dogs Dying. Among the People, such things were without strife. No man claimed ownership over a woman or a child, just as none thought to keep for himself a particularly sturdy spear or sharp knife. If there was water enough to quench the thirst of all or fire enough for the warmth of all, why should any hoard such things for his special comfort? ‘We are not the Other People,’ the fathers said as the sons learned, ‘and that is the strength of our spirit. No thing or person is slave to us, as we are not slaves to any thing or person. This is the path of the True People and it is as it should be.’

Then they made the encampment by the river. It was a site with good game, plentiful water and many trees. Hawk That Settles wondered why the Other People had not claimed it in earlier seasons. There was no trace of past encampment; thick grass grew where no fires had ever been set, unscarred trees grew tall, deer did not flee the approach of a hunter. The land was fresh.

The People cut down trees and made lodges. Fires were set and songs were sung. From that day, the place was the encampment of the People. If the Other People came for it, they would be met with arrows. The place by the river would be good for many seasons, maybe for all the seasons of Hawk That Settles and Two Dogs Dying. Maybe for all the seasons of the sons of Spotted Water.

That was before the trouble in the Ghost Lands.

From boyhood, Two Dogs Dying was drawn to the dead. He made himself a bonnet like that of Horn Knife, the Custodian of the old burial ground. He helped Horn Knife through his dying days, chosen by the old man to end his uselessness with a loving thrust. When Horn Knife joined those whose path to the Ghost Lands he had eased, Two Dogs Dying led the song.

When an encampment was built, a sacred area, somewhat removed from the lodges, was set aside for the dead. By tradition, it was first chosen and last prepared. During the days of building, a tree fell on Angry Bear. The crushed body was tethered in the fast-flowing waters until, after the day of dedication, Two Dogs Dying could sing the song of Angry Bear. He carried the cold corpse to a bier fashioned of branches and stones and laid Angry Bear out. The young man lay with a war bonnet on his head and an axe in his hand, lest he encounter the spirit of the murderous tree in the Ghost Lands.

It was a considerable thing to be Custodian of the burial ground. Hawk That Settles was glad his brother should rise to such a position and was less saddened now when one of his brothers was killed in battle or by sickness. Two Dogs Dying would see to the care of their spirits. The sign of a good Custodian was that he could open the throat of an unwanted girl baby or an old person whose song was sung with honour and respect. Never did any such cry out under the keen knife Two Dogs Dying wore on his belt, the knife which had been passed to him by Horn Knife himself.

After a season marked by an outbreak of the coughing sickness and skirmishes with the Other People, the burial ground was properly settled and Angry Bear’s spirit did not walk alone in the Ghost Lands.

* * *

Though it was difficult to talk under the weight of Sky Buffalo, Hawk That Settles, at the shaman’s insistence, told again of Two Dogs Dying and the burial ground. He was ashamed to remember fear, certain the shaman must notice his prickling skin and chilled sweat. Hawk That Settles was brave in battle and the hunt but trouble in the Ghost Lands frightened him.

He first realised something was wrong when, after bringing two deer to the fires after a day’s hunting, he had a yen to take pleasure with Spotted Water. She must be ready to swell with child again, having birthed three weeks ago – a girl, but these things happen – and Hawk That Settles always found her enthusiasm for coupling most stimulating.

With a leg of cooked deer, he called on the women’s lodge and was told Spotted Water was in the burial ground with Two Dogs Dying. Not thinking to be disappointed, he presented the greasy meat to Red Doe. Only after they had coupled did Red Doe tell of the strange behaviour of Two Dogs Dying and Spotted Water.

It seemed that two days earlier, Two Dogs Dying visited the women’s lodge and bore Spotted Water away. Hawk That Settles’s first thought was to grin at his brother’s appetite: any man who could couple for two days without tiring was worthy of his own song. Then Red Doe told him Two Dogs Dying had also taken Spotted Water’s children, the twin sons and even the infant daughter. She said Two Dogs Dying had built his own little lodge, like the lodges of the dying, and lived there alone, with only Spotted Water and her children about him. As Red Doe said such an unthinkable thing, Hawk That Settles realised he had indeed not recently seen his brother in the men’s lodge.

Among the People were men who chose to live in the women’s lodge, offering themselves for the pleasure of other men. Hawk That Settles had, for the experience, pleasured with several and, while confirming his preference for women who might bear sons, had to concede such couplings were not unenjoyable. Hawk That Settles and Two Dogs Dying had shared pleasure of live goats and killed deer, for such was the right of the hunter.

Hawk That Settles thought himself untethered by the ways of the People; he accepted what was good of the wisdom of the fathers but did not let tradition bind him to stupidity. Yet, he could not but feel disgust at the perversion of which Red Doe accused his brother.

Unable to believe Red Doe more than a lying gossip, he took a green stick and beat her. To suggest Two Dogs Dying might hide Spotted Water away for himself, that he might wish to hoard her children as a bear hoards food, was an obscenity he would not believe. If Red Doe repeated such lies, he would cut out her tongue.

Thinking of it made Hawk That Settles sick. One man, one woman, children! Yet, Two Dogs Dying and Spotted Water were gone from the lodges. And the children of Spotted Water too.

He must go to the burial ground and see his brother. Two Dogs Dying must be told of the lies before Red Doe spread them further.

* * *

Sky Buffalo clucked as if the story were familiar. To the fathers, no land was ever fresh. The warrior of the Other People killed in battle by Rock Garden was hardly as fearsome as a warrior of the days of the fathers’ fathers. The bear bested by the young men was considerably less ferocious than the long-ago bear whose skin, visibly smaller than the fresh skin, decorated the lodge. The flock of pigeons which filled the skies for three days was a passing cloud set against the great mass of wings which brought darkness for a whole season in the days of the fathers of the fathers’ fathers. This trouble in the Ghost Lands was meagre compared with the Great Trouble of many seasons gone. Each time the shaman clucked, Hawk That Settles had a yen to pitch him into the river, yet he continued with the story of Two Dogs Dying.

* * *

Red Doe had not lied about the lodge Two Dogs Dying had built. She had not even told the worst of it. The burial ground was covered with strange little lodges. All the biers were under lodges, the dead improperly covered from the skies. The spirit of Horn Knife must wail in the Ghost Lands. The lodges were identical boxes, arranged in a disturbingly regular pattern. Around the boxes were barriers, too low to keep away animals or enemies, interrupted by neat gaps and beaten paths. Lodges filled the burial ground; they seemed to spread across the world, crowding out everything else.

Hawk That Settles felt spirit presences. Not the natural spirits he had known all his life, but pale cloth-wrapped ghosts. If he shut his eyes, he saw their shadows moving awkwardly like wounded men. Alone in sunshine, he wanted to return to the men’s lodge and speak no more of Two Dogs Dying. But the Custodian was his brother, as were all the young men of the People; it was his duty to watch his brothers’ backs in battle, and there was a great spirit battle in this place.

He knew which was the lodge of Two Dogs Dying; it was more finished than the others, the thing itself rather than an image. The path was more elaborate, the barrier less flimsy. Enclosed grass was shaved as close to the earth as the men of the Other People shaved their hair to the skin. There was a doorway; wood hung over it, like the boards which kept out snows in winter or the Other People in attacks. He could not imagine why a man would make such a thing in summer at a time of peace. When he touched the wood, fixed to the doorway by strips of leather, it swung inward. The arrangement was ingenious if peculiarly repulsive.

Stepping into the lodge, he was assaulted by a horrible yammering. He drew a knife, prepared to fight the evil ghost that had maddened his brother.

No attack came, but the noise continued.

There was a box in one corner, making the noise. Bright lights burned on its face, hurting his eyes. The box sang the song of a young girl taking pleasure for the very first time. Knowing the object to be unnatural, Hawk That Settles killed it.

Another doorway was before him. He knew evil was here, for the inside of the lodge was much smaller than the outside. Pale spirits had lured him in, now walls were contracting to crush him. He began the song of his dying.

The situation was stranger even than that. The walls were not moving; inside the lodge were divisions, walls between poles, splitting space into smaller spaces. For a moment, such an arrangement made sense: young men need not be troubled by the nightnoises of the old, food might be stored away from hungry animals. Then, laughing, Hawk That Settles realised how impractical this truly was. With no centre, the lodge could have no fire; without a fire, a lodge was just a cave of wood, not a fit place for People.

He shoved aside the barrier and passed into an area walled by stout, defensible barricades. It was a lodge with no roof. Above was unclouded sky. Two Dogs Dying stood by an unnatural fire, grinning as he manipulated hunks of cooking meat with a short spear, singing an unfamiliar song of yellow ribbons and old trees. Clearly an evil thing, it was an obscene chant. The fire was elevated in a dish of black stuff. There was too little smoke for the meat to be healthy.

Spotted Water was nearby, body indecently covered. Confining hides were uncomfortably taut about her, as if she had been sewn into a wet leather shroud and left in the sun. She was tethered like a dog, a rope about her ankle fixed to a stake hammered into hard earth. Her children clung to her, too frightened to speak.

‘Hawk,’ Two Dogs Dying said, smiling, ‘good to see you, brother. Just in time for food.’

Hawk That Settles cringed.

‘BeBeCue?’ Two Dogs Dying asked, licking his lips and prodding meat.

The Custodian had mutilated and adorned himself. His hair was hacked short and the rings were gone from his nose and nipples. He wore a strange apparatus of twigs around his eyes, over his nose and hooked onto his ears. Instead of the breechclout and paint of the People, he wore skins sewn together, like those he had forced upon Spotted Water. His arms and legs were trapped in tubes of soft leather. His bonnet had a bill like a duck’s and an evil totem: a grinning rat with black circular ears.

Spotted Water whimpered, fearing for her boys. Even the infant girl was too frightened to cry.

Hawk That Settles backed away. Two Dogs Dying’s mad smile filled the sky. Behind twig circles, his eyes were large. Around him were pale spirit people, their faces like bone. They wore shirts of fire and rainbow. Their feet were trapped in thick white moccasins like fungus tied with twine.

His foot touched a patch of ground that snapped. He looked and saw a depression that had been covered over. It was full of objects that clinked and swished: sparkling thin round pebbles, flimsy oblong leaves. Trinkets suitable only for ornamenting young women.

‘Get away,’ Two Dogs Dying said. He advanced. In his hand was a spear upon which were impaled hunks of meat and chunks of vegetable.

‘Two Dogs, you need help.’

‘Get away,’ his brother said, evenly. ‘You who have pleasured with your mother…’

‘Yes of course, in the manhood ritual…’

‘…stand away from my riches.’

Hawk That Settles moved away from the trap. Like a snake, Two Dogs Dying was on it, covering over his useless hoard.

He looked up at Hawk That Settles and, voice like death, spat, ‘This is mine!’

* * *

‘Mine?’ Sky Buffalo repeated.

‘As if things were his alone, like a part of his spirit. As if he were the People all by himself, and all the things of the People were his… his possessions.’

The shaman clucked.

‘The next day, Crow Foot and Rock Garden went out to the burial ground to see the madness of Two Dogs Dying for themselves. On his return, Crow Foot took White Cloud for himself and built his own lodge beside Two Dogs Dying’s. Others have joined them.’

Sky Buffalo groaned.

‘Each night, more leave the lodges of the People and join the madness of Two Dogs Dying.’

* * *

That night, as he slept in the men’s lodge, Hawk That Settles was visited by Angry Bear. The dead man spoke of the Pale Spirit People and of how they filled the Ghost Lands with Moving Lodges and BeBeCues and Wide Stone Paths. Angry Bear told of hunting grounds like huge lodges where game was already killed and smoked, stacked for women – not hunters, women! – to pick like fruit from a tree. Of dark caves where children were fixed to boxes that buzzed and flashed lights and sapped their spirits in battles without honour. Of piles of oblong leaves for which the Pale Spirit People cut each other to pieces with knives that had moving edges. Of boxes that sang, that danced, that told stories, that held fires, that lied. If a man of the People were to take his pleasure with a woman of the Pale Spirits, her brothers would use moving knives on him for all that they were unable themselves to give pleasure. The spirits of the People were outnumbered by the Pale Spirits as trees outnumber deer.

When he woke, Hawk That Settles told his dream to Sky Buffalo, who nodded wisely, repeating the occasional word, clucking that things were as bad as he had feared.

* * *

The remaining men of the People listened as Sky Buffalo spoke, nodding at his wisdom. Some fathers muttered that things had not been as they should be since the shaman removed himself to the lodge of his dying, and that the young would do well to remember the strengths of the old. Hawk That Settles, remembering Two Dogs Dying’s mad song, kept quiet.

‘The Pale Spirits are insects,’ the shaman said, holding the singing circle like the hair of an enemy. ‘Once let into your lodge, they breed and infest. Worse even than the Other People, they are a sickness to be cut out. We must pity them, for they are mad, not truly evil, but we must not let our sorrow at their sad condition stay us from making war.’

‘How can we make war on spirits?’ Rock Garden asked.

‘We cannot,’ Sky Buffalo said, ‘for spirits are strong. But these are not true spirits, merely ghosts. Spirits endure, flowing like a river or the wind, but ghosts simply pretend things are as if they were alive. The strength of the True People is in our spirits, but the strength of the pale people is in their things.’

‘Things?’ Hawk That Settles asked, feeling like a shaman.

‘The things they delude themselves are theirs. They waste strength on getting and keeping things which cannot be got and kept. They try to swallow sunlight with their throats and keep water in their hands. Their men have only one father, their women only one man. They are many, but they do not act as the People but as many Other Peoples.’

Some of the young men laughed. Sky Buffalo smiled, showing his few teeth, his eyes sharp.

‘This is one of their things,’ he said, holding up the singing circle. ‘See how pleasing it is to the eye. Yet it cannot be eaten, it cannot harm an enemy, it cannot cut through the bark of a tree. This is not a true spirit object, this is merely a thing.’

He threw the thing into the fire. It melted like ice, colours joining the smoke and passing up through the hole in the roof.

‘The Pale People have put their spirit in their things. Every time one of their things is destroyed, their spirit leaks away. And their things have no true existence. They are the ghosts of those who have never been born.’

‘How can we save Two Dogs Dying and the others?’

‘Find the objects they have hidden, the things found or made in imitation of the spirit objects, and destroy them. As they are broken, so the Pale Ghosts grow weak.’

* * *

Together, by night, the men went to the burial ground. Some were struck helpless with fear to see what had been made of it and could go no further, but Sky Buffalo was resolute. He decreed the sham lodges be torn down and burned, and the men of the People set to work with fire and spears.

Hawk That Settles saw the Pale Spirits, watching impassively. Most lodges were affairs of reed and sticks, flimsily built and already tattered by rains and winds. The men sang war songs as they destroyed things. The men who had joined Two Dogs Dying stood by and watched as their lodges came apart, some joining their brothers in pulling down the things they had made. There were shrill noises in the air, but Sky Buffalo told the People to take no notice of them. They were ghost noises and could harm no one.

Two Dogs Dying came out of his lodge and watched, making no effort to save the other lodges. He stood behind his barrier, a strange branch in his hands, singing a song of small dogs and windows and tails. He wrenched his branch, and fire exploded from one end, opening a red wound in Rock Garden’s leg.

Sky Buffalo decreed the branch be taken from Two Dogs Dying and thrown into the river.

‘You’ll take my fire branch from me only by wrenching it from my cold, dead fingers,’ Two Dogs Dying shouted as his fire branch was taken away from him and thrown in the river.

The men fell upon the lodge of the Custodian, hauling its timbers apart and scattering them.

Two Dogs Dying shouted strange words and was held down. ‘Believers in communal property… poorly educated men of dark skin colour…’

Hawk That Settles dug through the soft earth of the lodge and hauled out a white box with a grey ice face which sprang to life, containing tiny people and many fires. He looked into it as he would look into the eyes of a snake, fascinated but resolute, fearful yet aware of its beauty. The box sang the song of an unskilled hunter unable to feed his people, whose arrow unloosed black water from the earth and whose new lodge was built in hills of plenitude. With a gathering of the strength of his arms and a scream that came from his stomach, he hurled the box high, between trees, and heard it splash into the waters of the river to be borne away and dashed to pieces on the rocky bed.

They found many strange things – some that Angry Bear had spoken of in his dream – and all were destroyed by fire or water as Sky Buffalo sang the True Song of the People over them.

Two Dogs Dying cried like a baby as he was rescued from the constricting skins. Hawk That Settles used a knifepoint to pick apart the stitches that fixed the torturous things to his brother’s body, trying to draw as little blood as possible.

Spotted Water, torn from her leather and properly exposed, snatched the twigs from Two Dogs Dying’s face and snapped them to fragments. When this was done, the Custodian lay exhausted.

The men of the People backed away from their fallen brother. Sky Buffalo stood over Two Dogs Dying, examining him. Hair would grow again, Hawk That Settles supposed, and a breechclout could easily be found. Two Dogs Dying tried to sit up, but collapsed. Dazed, he sang to himself. It was one of the songs of the People. His spirit had returned, dispelling the influence of the Pale Ghosts.

‘There are things in the earth here,’ Sky Buffalo said, ‘like seeds. They come from the Ghost Lands. We must not trouble them, lest they sprout flowers of sickness. This was caused by tampering with spirit objects.’

‘Must we find another burial ground?’ Hawk That Settles asked.

The shaman rattled his medicine bag. ‘No, we must fill this one up with our dead, sons upon sons. We must sing the songs of their dying so their spirits seed the earth, make this place a part of the Ghost Lands. Our spirits must stand here close as blades of grass on the plain. The Pale People are weak and can be driven from this place as we have thrown their things into the fire or the river. If we resist their madness, their seeds will never sprout. This is the burial ground of the People and always has been so. Nothing else has ever been here and nothing must ever come here as long as the grass grows, the river runs and the sun crosses the sky.’

Hawk That Settles supposed that after this they would have to take Sky Buffalo back into the men’s lodge.

ÜBERMENSCH!

ON THE WAY from the aeroport, the cab driver asked him if he had ever been to Metropolis before.

‘I was born here,’ Avram said, German unfamiliar in his mouth. So many years of English in America, then Hebrew in Israel. In the last forty years, he’d used Portuguese more than his native tongue. He had never been a German in his heart, no more than he was now an Israeli. That was one thing Hitler, and his grandparents, had been right about.

He had been – he was – a Jew.

This was not the Metropolis he remembered. Gleaming skyscrapers still rose to the clouds, aircars flitting awkwardly between them, but on this grey early spring day, their facades were shabby, uncleaned. The robotrix on traffic duty outside the aeroport had been limping, dysfunctional, sparks pouring from her burnished copper thigh. Standing on the tarmac, Avram had realised that the pounding in the ground was stilled. The subterranean factories and power plants had been destroyed or shut down during the war.

‘That’s where the wall was,’ the driver said as they passed a hundred yards of wasteland which ran through the city of the future as if one of Mr Reagan’s orbital lasers had accidentally cut a swath across Germany. The satellite weapons were just so much more junk now, Avram supposed. The world that needed the orbital laser was gone.

Just like the world which needed his crusade.

Perhaps, after today, he could spend his remaining years playing chess with a death-diminished circle of old friends, then die from the strain of playing competitive video games with his quick-fingered grandchildren.

‘That used to be East Metropolis,’ the driver said.

Avram tried to superimpose the city of his memory on these faceless streets. So much of Metropolis was post-war construction, now dilapidated. The cafes and gymnasia of his youth were twice forgotten. There wasn’t a McDonald’s on every corner yet, but that would come. A boarded-up shack near the wall, once a security checkpoint, was covered in graffiti. Amid the anti-Russian, pro-democracy slogans, Avram saw a tiny red swastika. He had been seeing posters for the forthcoming elections, and could not help but remember who had taken office the last time a united Germany held a democratic election.

He thanked the driver, explaining, ‘I just wanted to see where it was.’

‘Where now, sir?’

Avram got the words out, ‘Spandau Prison.’

The man clammed up, and Avram felt guilty. The driver was a child, born and raised with the now never-to-be-germinated seeds of World War Three. Avram’s crusade was just an embarrassing old reminder. When these people talked about the bad old days, they meant when the city was divided by concrete. Not when it was the shining flame of fascism.

The prison was ahead, a black medieval castle among plain concrete block buildings. The force field shone faintly emerald. Apparently the effect was more noticeable from outer space. John Glenn had mentioned it, a fog lantern in the cloud cover over Europe.

The cab could go no further than the perimeter, but he was expected. From the main gate, he was escorted by a young officer – an American – from the Allied detachment that had guarded the man in the fortress for forty-five years.

Avram thought of the Allies, FDR embracing Uncle Joe at Yalta. Old allies, and now – thanks to the baldpate with the blotch – allies anew. If old alliances were being resumed, old evils – old enmities – could stir too.

Captain Siegel called himself Jewish, and babbled sincere admiration. ‘As a child, you were my hero, sir. That’s why I’m here. When you caught Eichmann, Mengele, the Red Skull…’

‘Don’t trust heroes, young man,’ he said, hating the pomposity in his voice, ‘that’s the lesson of this green lantern.’

Siegel was shut up, like the cab driver had been. Avram was instantly sorry, but could not apologise. He wondered when he had turned into his old professor, too scholarly to care for his pupils’ feelings, too unbending to see the value of ignorant enthusiasm.

Probably, it had started with the tattoo on his arm. The bland clerk with the bodkin was the face that, more than any other, stayed with him as the image of National Socialism. These days, almost all young men looked like the tattooist to Avram. The cab driver had, and now so did Captain Siegel. So did most of the guards who patrolled the corridors and grounds of this prison.

Not since Napoleon had a single prisoner warranted such careful attention.

‘Jerome,’ Siegel said, summoning a sergeant. ‘Show Mr Blumenthal your rifle.’

The soldier held out his weapon for inspection. Avram knew little about guns, but saw this was out of the ordinary, with its bulky breech and surprisingly slender barrel. A green LED in the stock showed it was fully charged.

‘The beam-gun is just for him,’ Siegel said.

‘Ahh, the green stuff.’

Siegel smiled. ‘Yes, the green stuff. I’m not a scientist…’

‘Neither am I, any more.’

‘It has something to do with the element’s instability. The weapon directs particles. Even a glancing hit would kill him in a flash.’

Avram remembered Rotwang – one of ‘our’ Germans in the fifties – toiling over the cyclotron, trying to wrestle free the secrets of the extraterrestrial element. Rotwang, with his metal hand and shock of hair, was dead of leukaemia, another man of tomorrow raging against his imprisonment in yesterday.

Jerome took the rifle back, and resumed his post.

‘There’ve been no escape attempts,’ Avram commented.

‘There couldn’t be.’

Avram nearly laughed. ‘He surrendered, Captain. Green stuff or not, this place couldn’t hold him if he wanted to leave.’

Siegel – born when the prisoner had already been in his cell twenty years – was shocked. ‘Mr Blumenthal, careful…’

Avram realised what it was that frightened the boy in uniform, what made every soldier in this place nervous twenty-four hours a day.

‘He can hear us, can’t he? Even through the lead shields?’

Siegel nodded minutely, as if he were the prisoner, trying to pass an unseen signal to a comrade in the exercise yard.

‘You live with the knowledge all your life,’ Avram said, tapping his temple, ‘but you never think what it means. That’s science, Captain. Taking knowledge you’ve always had, and thinking what it means…’

After the war, he had been at Oak Ridge, working with the green stuff. Then the crusade called him away. Others had fathered the K-Bomb. Teller and Rotwang built bigger and better Doomsday Devices – while Oppie went into internal exile and the Rosenbergs to the electric chair – thrusting into a future so bright you could only look at it through protective goggles. Meanwhile, Avram Blumenthal had been cleaning up the last garbage of the past. So many names, so many Nazis. He had spent more time in Paraguay and Brazil than in New York and Tel Aviv.

But it had been worth it. His tattoo would not stop hurting until the last of the monsters was gone. If monsters they were.

‘Through here, sir,’ Siegel said, ushering him into a bare office. There was a desk, with chairs either side of it. ‘You have one hour.’

‘That should be enough. Thank you.’

Siegel left the room. Even after so short a time on his legs, Avram felt better sitting down. Nobody lives forever.

Almost nobody.

When they brought him in, he filled the room. His chest was a solid slab under his prison fatigues, and the jaw was an iron horseshoe. Not the faintest trace of grey in his blue-black hair, the kiss-curl still a jaunty comma. The horn-rimmed glasses couldn’t disguise him.

Avram did not get up.

‘Curt Kessler?’ he asked, redundantly.

Grinning, the prisoner sat down. ‘You thought perhaps they had the wrong man all these years.’

‘No,’ he admitted, fussing with the cigarette case, taking out one of his strong roll-ups. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’

‘Can’t hurt me. I used to warn the children against tobacco, though.’

Avram lit up, and sucked bitter smoke into his lungs. The habit couldn’t hurt him either, not any more.

‘Avram the Avenger,’ Kessler said, not without admiration. ‘I was wondering when they’d let you get to see me.’

‘My request has been in for many years, but with the changes…’

The changes did not need to be explained.

‘I confess,’ Kessler said, ‘I’ve no idea why you wanted this interview.’

Avram had no easy answer. ‘You consented to it.’

‘Of course. I talk to so few people these days. The guards are superstitious about me.’

Avram could understand that. Across the table, he could feel Kessler’s strength. He remembered the old uniform, so familiar in the thirties. The light-brown body-stocking, with black trunks, boots and cloak. A black swastika in the red circle on the chest. He’d grinned down from a hundred propaganda posters like an Aryan demi-god, strode through the walkways of Metropolis as Siegfried reborn with X-ray eyes.

He felt he owed Kessler an explanation. ‘You’re the last.’

Kessler’s mouth flashed amusement. ‘Am I? What about Ivan the Terrible?’

‘A guard. Just a geriatric thug. Barely worth the bullet it’d take to finish him.’

‘“Barely worth the bullet”. I heard things like that so many times, Avram. And what of the Führer? I understand he could be regrown from tissue samples. In ’45, Mengele…’

Avram laughed. ‘There’s no tissue left, Kessler. I burned Mengele’s jungle paradise. The skin-scraps he had were of dubious provenance.’

‘I understand genetic patterns can be reproduced exactly. I try to follow science, you know. If you keep an ear out, you pick things up. In Japan, they’re doing fascinating work.’

‘Not my field.’

‘Of course. You’re an atom man. You should have stayed with Rotwang. The Master Engineer needed your input. He could have overcome his distaste with your racial origins if you’d given him a few good suggestions. Without you, the K-Bomb was ultimately a dead end.’

‘So?’

Kessler laughed. ‘You are right. So what? It’s hard to remember how excited you all were in the fifties about the remains of my home planet. Anything radioactive was highly stimulating to the Americans. To the Russians too.’

Avram couldn’t believe this man was older than him. But, as a child, he had seen the brown streak in the skies, had watched the newsreels, had read the breathless reports in the Tages Welt.

‘If things had been otherwise, I might have been Russian,’ Kessler said. ‘The Soviet Union is the largest country on the planet. If you threw a dart at a map of the world, you’d most likely hit it. Strange to think what it’d have been like if my little dart had missed Bavaria. Of course, I’d have been superfluous. The USSR already had its “man of steel”. Maybe my dart should have struck the wheat fields of Kansas, or the jungles of Africa. I could have done worse than be raised by apes.’

‘You admit, then, that you are him?’

Kessler took off his glasses, showing clear blue eyes. ‘Has there ever really been any doubt?’

‘Not when you didn’t grow old.’

‘Do you want me to prove myself? You have a lump of coal for me to squeeze?’

It hit Avram that this young-seeming man, conversing in unaccented German, was hardly even human. If Hitler hadn’t got in the way, humanity might have found a champion in him. Or learned more of the stars than Willy Ley imagined.

‘Why weren’t you in the army? In some SS elite division?’

‘Curt Kessler was – what is the American expression? – 4F. A weakling who wouldn’t be accepted, even in the last days when dotards and children were being slapped in uniform and tossed against the juggernaut. I believe I did my best for my Führer.’

‘You were curiously inactive during the war.’

Kessler shrugged. ‘I admit my great days were behind me. The thirties were my time. Then, there seemed to be struggles worth fighting, enemies worth besting.’

‘Only “seemed to be”?’

‘It was long ago. Do you remember my enemies? Dr Mabuse? His criminal empire was like a spider’s web. The Führer himself asked me to root it out and destroy it. He poisoned young Germans with drugs and spiritualism. Was I wrong to persecute him? And the others? Graf von Orlok, the nosferatu? Dr Caligari, and his somnambulist killers? The child-slayer they called “M”? Stephen Orlac, the pianist with the murderer’s hands.’

Avram remembered, the names bringing back Tages Welt headlines. Most of the stories had borne the Curt Kessler byline. Everyone had wondered how the reporter knew so many details. Germany’s criminals had been symptomatic creatures then, twisted and stunted in soul and body, almost an embodiment of the national sickness. And Kessler, no less than the straight-limbed blonds trotted out as exemplars of National Socialism, made the pop-eyed, needle-fingered, crook-backed fiends seem like walking piles of filth. As a child, Avram’s nightmares had been of the whistling “M” and taloned nosferatu, not handsome tattooists and smart-uniformed bureaucrats. It was possible for a whole country to be wrong.

‘They’re all gone,’ Kessler said, ‘but they’ll never go away really. I understand Mabuse’s nightclub is due to reopen. The Westerners who’ve been flooding in since the wall came down like to remember the decadent days. They have the order of history wrong, and associate the cabarets with us, forgetting that we were pure in mind and body, that we closed down the pornographic spectacles. They’ll have their doom rock rather than jazz, but the rot will creep back. Mabuse was like the hydra. I’d think he was dead or hopelessly mad, but he’d always come back, always with new deviltry. Perhaps he’ll return again. They never found the body.’

‘And if he returns, will others come back?’

Kessler shrugged again, huge shoulders straining his fatigues. ‘You were right. Adolf Hitler is dead, National Socialism with him. You don’t need X-ray vision to see that.’

Avram knew Kessler could never get tired as he had got tired, but he wondered whether this man of steel was truly world-weary. Forty-five years of knowing everything and doing nothing could be as brutally ache-making as the infirmities visited upon any other old man.

‘Tell me about your childhood.’

Kessler was amused by the new tack. ‘Caligari always used to harp on about that, too. He was a strange kind of medieval Freudian, I suppose, digging into men’s minds in search of power. He wanted to get me into his asylum, and pick me apart. We are shaped by our early lives, of course. But there’s more to it than that. Believe me, I should know. I have a unique perspective.’

‘There are no new questions for us, Kessler. We must always turn back to the old ones.’

‘Very well, it’s your hour. You have so few left, and I have so many. If you want old stories, I shall give you them. You know about my real parents. Everybody does. I wish I could say I remember my birthplace but I can’t, any more than anyone remembers the first days of their life. The dart was my father’s semen, the Earth my mother’s womb. I was conceived when the dart ejaculated me into the forest. That is my first memory, the overwhelming of my senses. I could hear, see, smell and taste everything. Birds miles away, blades of grass close to, icy streams running, a wolf’s dung attracting flies. I screamed. That was my first reaction to this Earth. My screams brought people to me.’

‘Your parents?’

‘Johann and Marte. They lived in the woods just outside Kleinberg. Berchtesgaden was barely an arrow’s-reach away.’

‘How were you raised?’

‘There was a war. Johann and Marte had lost four true sons. So they kept the baby they found.’

‘When did you realise you were different?’

‘When my father beat me and I felt nothing. I knew then I was privileged. Later, when I joined the Party, I felt much the same. Sometimes, I would ask to be beaten, to show I could withstand it. There were those among us too glad to oblige me. I wore out whips with my back.’

‘You left Kleinberg as a young man?’

‘Everyone wanted to go to the big city. Metropolis was the world of the future. We would put a woman on the moon one day soon, and robots would do all our work. There would be floating platforms in the seas for refuelling aeroplanes, a transatlantic tunnel linking continents. It was a glorious vision. We were obsessed not with where we were going, but with how fast we would get there.’

‘You – I mean, Curt – you became a reporter?’

‘Poor, fumbling Curt. What a big oaf he was. I miss him very much. Reporters could be heroes in the thirties. I was on the Tages Welt when Per Weiss made it a Party paper. It’s hard to remember when it was a struggle, when the Mabuses and the Orloks were in control and we were the revolutionaries. That was when it became exciting, when we knew we could make a difference.’

‘When did you start…’

‘My other career? An accident. Johann always tried to make me ashamed of what I was, insisted I keep myself hidden. That was the reason for the eyeglasses, for the fumbling idiocy. But M was at large, and I knew – knew with my eyes and ears – who he was. I could not catch him as Curt Kessler and the police would not listen to me, so the man inside came out.’

The man named M had been turned over to the police, eventually. There had been little left of him. He had spent the rest of his life in Caligari’s asylum, in the cell next to the often-vacant room they reserved for Dr Mabuse. He never killed again, and he would have been unable to rape even if the opportunity arose.

‘Why the uniform?’

Kessler smiled again, teeth gleaming ivory. ‘We all loved uniforms, then. All Germans did. The cloak might have been excessive, but those were excessive times. Theatre commissionaires looked like field marshals. I was at the rallies, flying in with my torch, standing behind the Führer, making the speeches Luise wrote for me. All men want to be heroes.’

‘You were a Party member? A Nazi?’

‘Yes. Even before I came to Metropolis. We prided ourselves in Bavaria on seeing the future well before the decadents of the cities.’

‘They say it was the woman who brought you into the Party?’

‘Luise? No, if anything, she followed me. The real me, that is. Not Curt. She always despised Curt Kessler.’

‘Was that difficult for you?’

‘It was impossible,’ Kessler smiled. ‘Poor Luise. She was born to be a heroine, Avram. She might not have been blonde, but she had everything else. The eyes, the face, the limbs, the hips. She was born to make babies for the Führer. Goebbels was fond of her. She wrote many of his scripts before she began broadcasting herself. She was our Valkyrie then, an inspiration to the nation. She committed suicide in 1945. When the Russians were coming. Like many German women.’

‘Luise Lang would have faced a war crimes tribunal.’

‘True. Her other Aryan quality was that she wasn’t very bright. She was too silly to refuse the corruptions that came with privilege. She didn’t mean any of the things she did, because she never thought them through.’

‘Unlike you?’

‘By then, I was thinking too much. We stopped speaking during the war. I could foresee thousands of differing futures, and was not inclined to do anything to make any of them come to pass. Göring asked me to forestall the Allies in Normandy, you know.’

‘Your failure to comply was extensively documented at your own trial.’

‘I could have done it. I could have changed the course of history. But I didn’t.’

Avram applauded, slowly.

‘You are right to be cynical, Avram. It’s easier to do nothing than to change history. You could have given Truman the K-Bomb, but you went ghost-hunting in Paraguay.’

‘I’m not like you,’ he said, surprised by his own vehemence.

‘No one is.’

‘Don’t be so sure.’

Kessler looked surprised. ‘There’ve been other visitors? No, of course not. I’d have known. I scan the skies. Sometimes things move, but galaxies away. There were no other darts, no tests with dogs or little girls. Since Professor Ten Brinken passed away, no one has even tried to duplicate me as a homunculus. That, I admit, was a battle. The distorted, bottle-grown image of me wore me out more than any of the others. More than Mackie Messer’s green knives, more than Nosferatu’s rat hordes, more even than Ten Brinken’s artificial whore Alraune.’

Ten Brinken had been second only to Rotwang as the premier scientific genius of Metropolis. Either could have been the equal of Einstein if they had had the heart to go with their minds.

‘I am reminded more and more of the twenties and thirties,’ Kessler said. ‘I understand they want to get the underground factories working again. Microchip technology could revive Rotwang’s robots. Vorsprung durch technik, as they say. The future is finally arriving. Fifty years too late.’

‘You could be released to see it.’

The suggestion gave the prisoner pause. ‘These glowing walls don’t keep me in, Avram, they keep you out. I need my shell. I couldn’t soar into the air any more. A missile would stop me as an arrow downs a hawk. The little men who rule the world wouldn’t like me as competition.’

Avram had no doubt this man could make the world his own. If he chose to lead instead of follow.

‘I’ve seen swastikas in this city,’ Avram said. ‘I’ve heard Germans say Hitler was right about the Jewish problem. I’ve seen Israelis invoke Hitler’s holocaust to excuse their own exterminations. The world could be ready for you again.’

‘Strength, Purity and the Aryan Way?’

‘It could happen again.’

Kessler shook his head. ‘No one eats worms twice, Avram. I was at the torchlight processions, and the pogroms. I wrestled the nosferatu beyond the sunrise, and I saw shopkeepers machine-gunned by storm troopers. I was at Berchtesgaden, and Auschwitz. I lost my taste for National Socialism when the stench of ovens was all I could smell. Even if I went to China or Saturn, I could still taste the human smoke. I surrendered, remember? To Eisenhower personally. And I’ve shut myself up here. Buried myself. Even the human race has learned its lesson.’

Avram understood how out of date the man of tomorrow’s understanding was. ‘You’re an old man, Kessler. Like me. Only old men remember. In America, seventy-five per cent of high school children don’t know Russia and the United States fought on the same side in the Second World War. The lesson has faded. Germany is whole again, and Germans are grumbling about the Jews, the gypsies, the Japanese even. It’s not just Germany. In Hungary, in Russia, in the Moslem countries, in America and Britain, in Israel, I see the same things happening. There’s a terrible glamour to it. And you’re that glamour. The children who chalk swastikas don’t know what the symbol means. They don’t remember the swastika from the flag, but from your chest. They make television mini-series about you.’

Kessler sat back, still as a steel statue. He could not read minds, but he could understand.

‘When I was a boy, a little Jewish boy in Metropolis, I too looked up at the skies. I didn’t know you hated me because of my religion, because of the religion my parents practised no more than I did. I wore a black blanket as a cloak, and wished I could fly, wished I could outrace a streamlined train, wished I could catch Mackie Messer. Do you remember the golem?’

Kessler did. ‘Your rabbi Judah ben Bezalel raised the creature from clay in Prague, then brought it to Metropolis to kill the Führer. I smashed it.’

The echo of that blow still sounded in Avram’s head.

‘I saw you do it. I cheered you, and my playmates beat me. The golem was the monster, and you were the hero. Later, I learned different.’

He rolled up his shirtsleeve, to show the tattoo.

‘I had already seen that,’ Kessler said, tapping his eyes. ‘I can see through clothing. It was always an amusing pastime. It was useful at the cabarets. I saw the singer, Lola…’

‘After you killed the golem,’ Avram continued, ‘all the children took fragments of the clay. They became our totems. And the brownshirts came into the Jewish quarter and burned us out. They were looking for monsters, and found only us. My parents, my sisters, my friends. They’re all dead. You had gone on to Nuremberg, to present Hitler with the scroll you snatched from the monster’s chest.’

‘I won’t insult you by apologising.’

Avram’s heart was beating twice its normal pace. Kessler looked concerned for him. He could look into another’s chest, of course.

‘There’s nothing I could do to make reparation. Your family is dead, but so is my whole planet. I have to live with the guilt. That’s why I’m here.’

‘But you are here, and as long as you remain, you’re a living swastika. The fools out there who don’t remember raise your image high, venerate you. I know you’ve been offered freedom by the Allies on six separate occasions. You could have flown out of here if you’d consented to topple Chairman Mao or Saddam Hussein, or become a living weather satellite, flitting here and there to avert floods and hurricanes. Some say the world needs its heroes. I say they’re wrong.’

Kessler sat still for a long time, then finally admitted, ‘As do I.’

Avram took the heavy metal slug from his cigarette case, and set it on the table between them.

‘I’ve had this since I was at Oak Ridge. You wouldn’t believe how much of the stuff Rotwang collected, even before they found a way to synthesise it. The shell is lead.’

The prisoner played with his glasses. His face was too open, too honest. His thoughts were never guarded. Sometimes, for all his intelligence, he could seem simple-minded.

‘You can bite through lead,’ Avram said.

‘Bullets can’t hurt me,’ Kessler replied, a little of the old spark in his eyes.

‘So you have a way out.’

Kessler picked up the slug, and rolled it in his hand.

‘Without you in the world, maybe the fire won’t start again.’

‘But maybe it will. It started without me last time.’

‘I admit that. That’s why it’s your decision, Curt.’

Kessler nodded, and popped the slug into his mouth. It distended his cheek like a boiled sweet.

‘Was I really your hero?’

Avram nodded. ‘You were.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Kessler said, biting through the lead, swallowing.

He did not fade away to mist like the nosferatu, nor fragment into shards like the golem. He did not even grow old and wither to a skeleton. He just died.

Guards rushed in, confused and concerned. There must have been a monitor in the room. They pointed guns at Avram, even though their beams couldn’t hurt him. Doctors were summoned, with enough bizarre machinery to revive a broken doll or resurrect a homunculus from the chemical stew. They could do nothing.

Avram remembered the destruction of the golem. Afterwards, the brown streak had paused to wave at the children before leaping up, up and away into the skies of Metropolis. They had all been young then, and expected to live forever.

Captain Siegel was upset, and couldn’t understand. Doubtless, his career would be wrecked because this thing had happened during his watch. The Russians would insist an American take the blame. Siegel kept asking questions.

‘How did he die?’

‘He died like a man,’ Avram said. ‘Which, all considered, was quite an achievement.’

COASTAL CITY

FROM THE WINDOW of his 38th-floor office, Francis X. Riordan could see the Statue of Freedom out in the bay, his torch held high; the Allied Nations HQ, reflecting the city like a giant black mirror; and the Imperial State Building, still the tallest skyscraper in the world.

In the rare moments when Coastal City was not in crisis, Chief Riordan liked to stand before his panoramic window and look out at the metropolis, at the thin mists drifting round the spires of the highest structures, at the blimps making doughnut-holes in low clouds, at the flying folk.

Riordan could remember when there were no flying folk.

He couldn’t put a date on it, or even a decade, and his head buzzed a little if he tried. But there had been a time before the miraculous. Some things had changed enormously, beyond belief in fact, but others, ordinary things you expected to change, had stayed the same.

He had no idea any more of his age.

At the beginning, he had been only a few years away from retirement. Somewhere in his late fifties, hair iron-grey, moustache white, pipe clamped in his teeth. He was still there, caught in that moment. Wars had come and gone, radio given way to television, books of mugshots and sketch artists replaced by tap-ins to the Federal Bureau of Inquiry’s national database and interactive imaging computers, man had reached the moon and beyond. But Police Chief Frank Riordan still hadn’t retired. He was a ticking clock, stuttering on a moment in personal time, straining forward but pulled back.

A golden jet shot across the sky. It was the first of the flying folk, the most beloved, Amazon Queen.

She had come to Coastal City before the war – WWII, the Big One – and declared her own war, on criminals and fifth columnists and other evildoers. Riordan remembered his first sight of her, after the averting of a major elevated-railway sabotage incident. She was a goddess in a golden cape and bathing-suit, a streetcar lifted over her head, gently drifting downwards, tiara shining in the sunlight.

They coined a word for her: hyperhero.

Soon there were others: some flew, some didn’t. The Streak, who could run faster than sound. Green Masque, who dressed like a Ziegfeld Girl and broke up rackets with high kicks. The Darkangel, who haunted the night in search of miscreants. Gecko Man, the wall-scaling, wise-cracking youth. Teensy Teen, the Shrinking Cheerleader, and her sidekick, Blubber Boy. The Outcasts, high-schoolers with hyperpowers and acne. Vindicator, the cyborg avenger remade in Vietnam as an implacable enemy of evil.

The hypers brought out the best and worst of Coastal City. They set an example, protected the innocent, kept the peace. But there were equally powerful, equally hyper, villains; gimmick gang bosses like Max Multiple, Circe and Mr Bones, mad scientists like Dr Megalomaniac and Comrade Atomic Man, freaks like Dead Thing and the Creech, mystery men like the Dealer and Shadowjack, flamboyant sociopaths like Pestilence and Hexfire. And that was only the more-or-less human ones.

Giant monsters from beneath the seas or the earth: Tentaclo, the ten-armed titanic octopus; Ssquarrq, the living earthquake; the Anti-Human Wave. Alien invaders from Mars, Mercury, Planet Q, Aldebaran, Dimension Terror and Zandorr. Demons from Hell: Asmodeus Jr, Lillyth, the Jibbenainosay.

Coastal City had been levelled more times than Riordan could count. It seemed each of the hyperheroes spent ten months of the year pairing up with a rotating succession of hypervillains, demolishing city blocks in their fights. Sometimes, hypers formed tag teams and knocked down whole streets. And once a year, there would be a crossover free-for-all, frequently involving something enormously powerful from another galaxy, and all the hypers would destroy the city while saving the universe.

Chief Riordan, whom some called the city’s heart and guts, had lived through medieval plagues, alien invasions, month-long nights, demonic manifestations, nuclear fires, transportation of the whole city back to the age of the dinosaurs or one of the moons of Zandorr, and a thousand one-man hypercrimewaves. He had personally been possessed by Asmodeus Jr, temporarily granted all the powers of Gecko Man and had a million-dollar contract put on his head by Max Multiple. Always, he’d sustain a few bruises, wrap a bandage round his head or put his arm in a splint, then be back in his office and on the job.

The city could be rebuilt overnight, and often had been.

* * *

In the beginning, it wasn’t even called Coastal City. For the briefest moment, during Amazon Queen’s battle with Lady Nazi, it had been New York, and there had been a Statue of Liberty and a Brooklyn Bridge. Then, when the Streak came to town, the city was revised, the buildings grew taller and shinier, the shadows became deeper and darker.

Amazon Queen saved President Roosevelt from Lady Nazi’s poison kisses. And the Streak began his decades-long persecution of the crazy crime boss Max Multiple. Suddenly, everyone was calling the place Coastal City and things became more hectic.

That must have been 1939 or ’40.

Then, there had been a framed photograph in Riordan’s office of him in France, posed by his biplane after his famous victory over Hans von Hellhund, the Demon Ace. Later, the picture showed him with the crew of the bomber Eudora Fae, after dropping the third atomic bomb on Samurai Satan’s private army. Now, his younger self, flashing Nixon Vs, was beside his experimental hypersonic Stud Fighter on a carrier off the coast of Vietnam. He knew that if he sat here much longer the picture would show him in the Gulf War.

Floating about twenty years in his past was a war. But that war kept pace with the present, always lagging the same distance behind him.

That was just one of the things that changed.

He had no real memories, he thought sometimes, just polished anecdotes, flashbacks that faded. If he concentrated on the framed photograph, he saw all the images at once, all the wars, all the planes. Only his face was always the same, albeit with different moustaches: from Douglas Fairbanks to Clark Gable to Dennis Hopper.

There were firebursts over the city.

Amazon Queen was dancing in the air with three small, swift, insect-like humans. Flameflowers blossomed and streamers fell towards the streets where people looked up and pointed. They were rarely hurt by falling debris. It was another day in Coastal City.

Only a moment ago it had been the thirties. There was a depression finishing and a war to come. That was always the moment in Coastal City, though the depressions and the wars changed.

Now, it was… what year was it?

It was always Next Year in Coastal City, just far enough ahead for the hyperinventions to be off the drawing-board, but not so far that the president of the day was out of office.

A green shape swept upwards across the building, crossing the window in a green flash, leaving those sucker-marks that were hell to wipe off. Riordan craned to look, but Gecko Man was gone.

Riordan was more comfortable with Amazon Queen and the Streak, beyond human comprehension as they were, than with youngsters like Gecko Man or the Outcasts. Amazon Queen and the Streak, the first generation of hypers, were of his vintage and had his attitudes. They were clean-cut, good-humoured, even-tempered, unswervingly confident in their own rectitude.

Gecko Man never seemed to take anything seriously but was plainly knotted with neurosis; he was just a mixed-up kid, though he had been around since the Brittles came out of Liverpool and Kennedy was shot by that alien in Dallas. And even Gecko Man was weirded out by the Vindicator, who had been a hypervillain the first time he showed up with his blockbuster gun but had become popular enough to be classed as one of the good guys. The old hypers always trussed up even the most powerful menaces and left them for the cops, but the Vindicator collected severed heads.

The department had cops, newer men and women, who understood the world of the Vindicator. But Chief Riordan would always be a New Deal man. Hyperheroes with capabilities that put them in the demigod class looked to him for fatherly advice, and accepted his judgments as final.

And the city rose and fell. Again and again.

* * *

Ginger, his assistant, brought in a report. The three creatures Amazon Queen was zapping were the latest conjurings of her arch-enemy, Lillyth. Amazon Queen could handle that.

Ginger had been with him since the beginning.

At first, she was a scatty secretary, and looked like Ginger Rogers. Now, she was Assistant Chief, and looked like Sharon Stone. Along the way, she had resembled Lauren Bacall, June Allyson, Jane Fonda and Meryl Streep. She had been an undercover femme fatale, a starched housewife, a counterculture radical, a feminist overachiever.

But she was still stuck with a name from the thirties.

Riordan told Ginger to pass on a routine alert to Colonel Gritsby of C.O.M.M.A.N.D. (Central Operation to Maintain Massive American National Defense) that hyperhumans were engaged in a firefight over a populated area.

‘Lillyth?’ Ginger mused. ‘Is she a supernatural entity or an extraterrestrial being?’

‘She’s a demon sorceress from Dimension Terror. Check both boxes.’

Ginger shrugged, and left the office.

* * *

For decades, Coastal City had been almost cosy. Buildings might be destroyed, but innocent bystanders were rushed out of the way. Casualties were amazingly light, limited to hypervillains who unwisely made final stands on perches above the bay – the torch of the Statue of Freedom was very popular – and accidentally fell to their usually temporary deaths in the waters below.

Hyperheroes never so much as gave them a shove, though it was quietly agreed that no one should ever hold the Streak, who could accomplish anything in a fragment of a second, responsible for not darting out and saving Dr Megalomaniac from a fatal fall in the way he would if Ginger, on whom he was kind of sweet, were tottering on a ledge. As it happens, dozens of falls, fires, explosions, executions, banishments to Dimension Terror and Mittel European lynch mobs had failed to do any permanent harm to Dr Meggo.

A few months – years? – ago, that had started to change. A few minor hypers, mostly those who had not been heard of for a while, got killed in the odd big brawl. Peers gathered for funerals, though they could hardly be expected to remember much about the fallen.

At first, when Iridium Man was destroyed by Mr Bones, Riordan had expected I-Man to be back within the month, but it seemed his death was more permanent than most. In life, he hadn’t been much of a name – just a second-stringer in a short-lived group, the Atom Age Teens, who had been around for a while before Gecko Man turned up. But, as a dead hyperhero, he took on a totemic position. If Iridium Man could die, so could anyone else.

About that time, Vindicator started seriously collecting heads. The mood of the city changed, even its look. Edges were sharper, shadows thicker. The Depression spread, affecting more than the picturesque and grateful orphans who received Christmas presents in the Streak’s annual Santa Claus act. There were homeless persons, mentally ill veterans, even the odd teenage hooker. A few street cops turned out to be dirty.

Riordan couldn’t understand it.

Once, he found himself picking up the phone and asking to speak with President Roosevelt.

Then, in his mind, he asked himself: which one?

The silver spires and the elegant dirigibles were still there, in the world of the flying folk. But down in the labyrinthine streets and alleys, the Darkangel kept the fragile peace through terror. Even Vindicator started to seem soft. Nightgaunt, the city’s newest ‘hyperhero’, was a demon turncoat who ate the entrails of slain foes.

Once, the city had been an American Ideal. All problems were solved quickly and with good cheer. Even the worst of the worst were like naughty children, sent to their rooms until the next scrape. And the hyperheroes were all big kids, enjoying themselves.

What had changed?

Now Coastal City was America’s Nightmare.

* * *

The old city was still there, if you looked.

Riordan realised the problem was in himself. Like Max Multiple, he hopped between personalities. He was different with different people: fatherly with Amazon Queen, irascible with Darkangel, a buffoon with Gecko Man, sad but stern with Vindicator, almost senile with Nightgaunt.

He was in everyone’s world, and they were all inside him, tearing him apart.

Only months till retirement.

But months were eternal in Coastal City. It was just months since Watergate (when Dr Meggo replaced the President with an evil robot), since the Bay of Pigs, since Anzio.

Riordan wondered. I-Man was gone and even poor sweet dumb Teensy Teen had been stomped flat by the Dealer. For a while, it seemed Amazon Queen had actually died, sucked into the Nevergone Void, but she came back, reborn and rejuvenated and with a more revealing costume, and a meaner streak. But Green Masque, who had been around almost as long as Amazon Queen, fell victim to a serial killer, Pestilence, and was actually gone from continuity, rarely seen even as a ghost.

It could happen.

He could die. Ironically, on the eve of retirement. He would be greatly mourned and swiftly avenged.

But he was an anachronism. The times would be served better if Coastal City’s police chief were a woman or a psychopathic hypervillain or a black man. There was more potential in any of those, more chance for conflict or crisis.

It was all about stories, about plot material.

He wasn’t one of the immortals.

Dr Megalomaniac was out there, a one-time nuisance reworked as a mass murderer. And so many others. With grudges, with hyperpowers.

Living through months that spanned decades, only noticing the gradual changes when they were well established, always careering from crisis to crisis, Frank Riordan was wearing out. At first, slowly; now, rapidly.

How long would this go on?

He looked out of his office window as night fell. The torch of the Statue of Freedom burned bright, its fires reflected in the frontage of the Allied Nations HQ.

A giant, ten-armed octopus was pulling itself painfully up the Imperial State Building, tentacle by tentacle. Futile shellbursts were exploding all around. Crowds in the streets were running in panic.

Riordan forgot his troubles and used the gold phone. It was answered at the first ring, but as usual she didn’t speak, just listened.

‘There’s a crisis in Coastal City,’ he told the silent party. ‘If ever we’ve needed you, we need you now.’

COMPLETIST HEAVEN

I’M PLUMBING ADDITIONAL channels, homing on signals from as far away as Hilversum and Macao. With each twiddle, the dish outside revolves like Jodrell Bank stock footage from the Quatermass serials. Lightning crackles above the garden, approximating a Karloff–Lugosi mad lab insert shot from the thirties.

Unimaginable images and sounds are pulled down from the skies. With the new reflectors, this satellite system can haul in not only everything being broadcast but anything that has ever been broadcast. Shows listed as lost or wiped are beaming out to Alpha Centauri; now those signals can be brought unscrambled back to Earth.

This is my creation. Fuelled by coffee-bags and custard creams, I have substantially made the system myself, like Rex Reason assembling the Interocitor in This Island Earth. It was an interesting technical exercise, jacking in all the signal-boosters and calibrating the dish to the minutest fraction. My redundancy money was well spent, despite what Ciaran said when she left for the last time.

I admit it’s true: I could spend the rest of my life eating biscuits and watching repeats on television. There is so much to see, so much to discover…

Just tuning the first channels, I come across a Patrick Troughton Doctor Who which does not officially survive, and a stumbling, live Sherlock Holmes from the late forties. If anyone on Mars or Skaro makes television programmes, this dish will pick them up. To be honest, there is no need ever to leave the house except for groceries. Everything ever hurled out over the airwaves, on film or videotape, will turn up eventually. The full listings edition of What’s On TV looks like a telephone directory.

This is Completist Heaven.

Whoever assigns frequencies has a sense of humour, though it often takes minutes to get the joke. Channel 5 is a perfume infomercial. Chanel No. 5. Channels 18 to 30 are vérité footage of drunken Brits being obnoxious on holiday in Greece, with ‘The Birdie Song’ on a tape-loop soundtrack. Channel 69 is Danish porno. Channel 86 is Get Smart reruns. Maxwell Smart was Agent 86. I clock a Martin Kosleck cameo in a vampire episode and make a mental note to list it on Kosleck’s file card. Channel 101 is disgusting true-life mondo horror, rats and bugs and atrocity and burial alive; in a minute, I remember that in Nineteen Eighty-Four Room 101 is where you face the most frightening thing in the world.

What does that leave for Channel 1984?

Channel 666 is either a director’s cut of The Omen or a Satanic televangelist. In the thousands, most of the channels are date-tied: Channel 1066 is a historical drama in unsubtitled Norman French, Channel 1492 is a collage of Columbus movies with Jim Dale being tortured by Marlon Brando, Channel 1776 is that Bilko episode set during the Revolutionary War. Channel 1789 is a mini-series about the French Revolution: Jane Seymour goes nobly to the guillotine while Morgan Fairchild knits furiously in the first row. It’s not in Maltin, Scheuer or Halliwell, so it must be new. I don’t count mini-series as movies, so I don’t have to watch further, though I’m sure that’s Reggie Nalder dropping the blade.

I hit Channel 1818. Dyanne Thorne, a couple of melons down the front of her SS major’s uniform, tortures someone in black and white. A girl in a torn peasant blouse squeals unconvincingly as a rat eats cold lasagne off her exposed tummy. I figure this is a print of Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS that I’ve never seen. I get out the file card for the film and my notes make no mention of a rat torture quite like this. This is the sort of revelation I pay the monthly fee for: it is possible no one has ever seen this version of the movie before. I take up my red ball Pentel, and prepare to jot down any information. The store of human knowledge must always be added to.

The crowning moment of my life was when my letter in Video Watchdog finally corrected all previous misinformation and established, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the correct German running time of Lycanthropus, aka Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory or I Married a Werewolf. Ciaran was especially cutting about that. Many people don’t understand, but without accuracy all scholarship is meaningless and the least we can do is lay down the parameters of what we are talking about. Now, my mission in life is to force all periodicals and reference books to list Matthew Hopkins, Witchfinder General (the title as it appears on the screen) under M for Matthew rather than W for Witchfinder. Ignorant souls, starting with the film’s distributors, have been committing this error since 1968. Heathens who list the Michael Reeves movie under C for The Conqueror Worm are, of course, beneath contempt and not worth considering.

The Ilsa movies are in colour, so I fine-fiddle the knobs. Snow crackles across the image as the victim screams. No colour appears. Ilsa gets out her nipple-clamps, sneering in a bad accent, ‘Vellcome to SS Experiment Kemp Sex!’ The camera pulls back, and on the next slab over from the abused girl lies the unmistakable bulk of a flat-headed, clumpy-booted, electrodes-on-the-neck, Universal-copyright Pierce-Karloff-Strange Frankenstein Monster.

Puzzled and intrigued, I gnaw a chocolate-coated ginger snap.

An ident crawl along the bottom of the picture identifies the film: Channel 1818 Feature Presentation Frankenstein Meets the She Wolf of the SS.

Obviously, this must be some new retitling of a familiar movie. If the colour came on, I could identify it. More twiddling is to no avail.

I dig out Weldon’s Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, Glut’s The Frankenstein Catalog and Jones’s The Illustrated Frankenstein Movie Guide. Frankenstein Meets the She Wolf of the SS does not make these standard reference tools. I venture further: consulting Lee’s sadly outdated Reference Guide Fantastic Films, Willis’s three-volume Horror and Science Fiction Films, my bound collection of Joe Bob’s We Are the Weird newsletter, some back issues of Shock Xpress, and such variably reliable sources as The Phantom’s Ultimate Video Guide and the mysterious Hoffman’s Guide to SF, Horror and Fantasy Movies. No one lists a Frankenstein–Ilsa crossover. This is exciting, a discovery. I feel a thrill in my water, pull out a fresh file card, and write down the title. I curse myself for having missed the credits.

To celebrate, I hold a cheddar thin in my mouth and suck gently, until saliva seeps through the biscuit and dissolves it. With my tongue, I work the paste bit by bit into my gullet. The sensation is exquisite.

Officially, there are only three Ilsa movies (Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks, Ilsa, the Tigress of Siberia) but Jesús Franco’s Greta, Hause ohne Männer aka Wanda the Wicked Warden or Greta the Torturer, with Thorne in the title role of Greta–Wanda, is sometimes spuriously roped into the series. Could this be a hitherto undiscovered entry in the Ilsa series, or some apocryphal adventure of a lookalike Greta, Gerta, Irma, Helga, Erika or Monika? The sync is just off, but I’m sure this is shot in English, not dubbed. A heel-clicking subordinate salutes and snaps, ‘Heil Hitler, Major Ilsa,’ establishing this as indeed part of the Ilsa canon. The black and white bothers me still. Is this a flashback within a colour film? That would be a bit artsy for Ilsa.

The Nazi Bitch Queen is in an office, ranting. It’s definitely Dyanne Thorne (once seen, those melons are unmistakable) and from the relative lack of lines on her face, the movie has to be from the mid-seventies. Oddly, it looks good in black and white: less like a bad dupe which has lost colour than a film lit for monochrome. The shadows gathering in the office as night falls make the scene look better than the cheesy images I remember from other Ilsa movies. Not James Wong Howe good, but at least George Robinson good.

I look through Glut and Jones, trying to find a Thorne credit in a seventies Frankenstein movie. Of course, just because a film is called Frankenstein Meets the She Wolf of the SS doesn’t mean it’s a Frankenstein movie. Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror is a werewolf movie and several Japanese giant monster films have Frankenstein forced into their titles for German release, since Frankenstein is a generic term for monster in Germany. This must have been retitled since Glut came out, since he lists non-Frankenstein Frankenstein titles. With the proliferation of fly-by-night cable and video, some movies have multiple titles into double figures. I need three file cards just to list the alternate titles of Horror of the Blood Monsters or No profanar el sueño de los muertos. However, that monster, noted in occasional cutaways, leads me to identify this tentatively as a genuine Frankenstein movie as well as an unknown Ilsa.

As the film plays on, I eat several bourbons, almost whole, chewing them like dog biscuits.

Something is definitely strange about Frankenstein Meets the She Wolf of the SS. I’m convinced it was shot in black and white. Ilsa strides through what looks like the Universal Studios Middle European village (built for All Quiet on the Western Front; it shows up in all their monster movies) accompanied by pudgy SS extras. Wherever she stands in the shot, her mammoth breasts seem to be the centre of the frame.

The plot involves Ilsa establishing a Nazi experiment camp in a ruined castle. Cringing villagers avoid Ilsa’s goose-stepping buddies. The village is called Visaria. I guess it’s supposed to be in Czechoslovakia or Poland. It’s hard to tell, because it seems more like generic Eastern Europe than a real country. The burgomeister wears lederhosen and an alpine hat with a peacock feather.

Visaria.

I flip back in Glut and Jones, trying to track down a niggling memory. I am right. Visaria is the name of the village in the latter Universal horror films: 1940s monster rallies like Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man and House of Dracula. Whoever wrote Frankenstein Meets the She Wolf of the SS must be a monster trivia junkie. I assume Forry Ackerman will get a cameo, and the Ken Strickfaden lab equipment will be dusted off. That suggests the auteur touch of Al Adamson, who always liked to borrow leftover props from the Universals for atrocities like Dracula vs. Frankenstein. This looks too good to be an Adamson (no acid trip, no Russ Tamblyn, no bikers) but I feel I’m getting this movie pinned down. Maybe it’s from about the same vintage as Blackenstein, the one with the Karloff-style monster sporting a flat afro.

I write: ‘1972 to 1975? American. Stars Dyanne Thorne (as Ilsa). The tortured girl looked like Uschi Digard.’

Then Lionel Atwill shows up as a police inspector with a prosthetic arm and an eagle-crested cap, with Dwight Frye and Skelton Knaggs as the most cringing of cringing villagers. They are from the forties, like the sets and the photography, and I’m lost.

Bourbon biscuit crumbs turn to ashes in my mouth.

Even if – and it’s inconceivable – I’m wrong and the leading woman isn’t Dyanne Thorne but a lookalike, the scene with the rat and the nipple-clamps could never have been shot in the forties. Even for the private delectation of Lionel Atwill’s houseguests. Ilsa doesn’t have the lipsticky, marcelled look of the women in forties horror films. Her hippie eye makeup and butch haircut are seventies to the bleached-blonde roots.

I swallow and am forced to assume this is a Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid gimmick, mixing footage from different films. Perhaps it has been overdubbed with wisecracks by Saturday Night Live regulars. I listen to the dialogue as Ilsa dresses down Inspector Atwill, and can’t catch any deliberate camp. One-shots of Ilsa and Atwill alternate and I try to see inconsistencies in the backgrounds. The match is good.

Then Ilsa peels off one elbow-length black leather glove and slaps Atwill across the face with it. Thorne’s Ilsa, from the seventies, is in the same shot with Atwill’s inspector, from the forties, and their physical interaction is too complicated to be faked. Ilsa rips apart Atwill’s many-buttoned uniform, yanking off his artificial arm, and squats on him, hip-thrusting against the stump that sticks out of his shoulder. Thorne’s orgasmic moaning is as unconvincing as ever but Atwill looks as though he’s getting something out of the scene. Unsatisfied, Ilsa gets up and rearranges her SS skirt, then has Atwill summarily executed. Black blood squirts out of his burst eye. The ketchupy seventies gore looks nastier, more convincing in hand-me-down forties expressionist black and white.

The telephone rings and the answering-machine cuts in. It’s Ciaran, complaining about maintenance. She jabbers on, an uncertain edge to her voice, and I concentrate on important things.

This is definitely a crossover movie. I fervently wish I had seen it from the beginning so I could tell whether the title-card was original or spliced in. Actually, trying to track this one down is pointless. Whatever it’s really called, it’s impossible.

It’s the usual Ilsa story but the supporting characters are from the Universal monster series. Major Ilsa is the last granddaughter of the original Henry Frankenstein and the castle is her ancestral home. That would make her the character played by Ilona Massey in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Dyanne Thorne is even wearing an Ilona Massey beauty mark, which shifts alarmingly around her mouth from scene to scene with typical Ilsa continuity. She is supposed to be working on the creation of a race of superNazis for Hitler, but spends more time having weird sex and torturing people than contributing to the war effort.

To help her out around the laboratory, where Glenn Strange lies supine on the table, Ilsa drags Dr Pretorius, Ernest Thesiger’s swish mad scientist from Bride of Frankenstein, and Ygor, Bela Lugosi’s broken-necked gypsy from Son… and Ghost of Frankenstein, out of their concentration camps. Pretorius keeps adjusting his pink triangle to set off his lab coat and Ygor leers gruesomely at Ilsa, tongue dangling a foot or so out of his mouth.

The sex scenes are near hardcore, but extremely silly. Ilsa needs a man who can sustain an erection for a whole night and most of the next morning if she is to achieve full satisfaction. She thinks she is in luck when virile Larry Talbot tears off his clothes as the full moon rises. In an unprecedented shot, yak hair swarms around the Wolf Man’s crotch. Jack Pierce must really have given Lon Chaney Jr a hard time with that lap dissolve. Ilsa and the Wolf Man go at it all over the castle, with ridiculous grunting and gasping and Franz Waxman’s Wedding Bells score from Bride of Frankenstein, but there’s big disappointment at dawn as the moon goes down and the werewolf turns back into dumb old flabby Larry–Lon. Ilsa yells abuse at the befuddled and limp American, and batters him to death with a silver cane.

After this, Ilsa is so crabby she shoves the burgomeister’s irritating daughter into the sulphur pits below the castle. As the little girl goes under, we cut to Ygor–Bela snickering over a lamp positioned under his chin to make him look scary.

In theory, Universal’s creature features have contemporary settings. Dracula and The Wolf Man clearly establish 1931 and 1941 for the dates of the action, so their sequels must take place in the years of their production. Ghost of Frankenstein (1941), Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), House of Frankenstein (1944) and House of Dracula (1945), the Visaria movies, are all set in an unspecified Eastern Europe of torch-bearing peasant mobs, gypsy musicians and saluting policemen. Though Atwill in Son of Frankenstein complains that he missed out on the First World War because the monster tore his arm off when he was a boy, no one ever mentions the then-current war. In its crazed way, Frankenstein Meets the She Wolf of the SS is more ‘realistic’. The war, as reflected in the Nazi pornos of the seventies, has leaked into the enclosed world of Universal horror.

I mix Kettle Chips and Jaffa cakes, washing them down with Appletiser.

Predictably, at sunset, a distinguished visitor arrives at the castle, nattily dressed in top hat, white tie and tails, peering hypnotically over his long nose. John Carradine announces himself as Baron Latos. As Ilsa escorts him to her boudoir, Carradine’s floorlength cloak sweeps into a wing shape. An animated bat lands on Ilsa’s breasts and writhes, pushing her back on to a canopied four-poster bed. Reverting to human form, Dracula nuzzles his moustache between Ilsa’s thighs. The Count unbuttons his immaculate trouser fly to uncurl a white length of vampire manhood and pleasures Ilsa all through the night. The end, though, is inevitable. At sunrise, Dracula turns to ashes on top of an unsatisfied and infuriated Ilsa.

A sunburst of realisation: Channel 1818 is showing not movies that were made, but movies that can be imagined.

Appletiser blurts out of my nose at the conceptual breakthrough.

The ending is guessable: Dr Pretorius charges the Monster and he gets up off his slab in time to be the insatiable stud Ilsa has looked for throughout the picture. Glenn Strange, naked but for asphalt-spreader’s boots, pounds away at Ilsa’s tender parts for what seems like hours as revolting partisan peasants burn down the castle around their ears. The Monster’s tool is in proportion with the rest of him, scarred with collodion applications. As Ilsa finally comes like a skyrocket, burning beams fall on the bed and an end title flickers.

As usual on cheapo movie channels, the film fades before the end credits so there’s no chance of noting down the copyright date. I howl in frustration and throw away the file card. With no concrete information, I might just as well not have watched the film.

In anger, I batter the cushions of my sofa. Then I’m drawn back to the television. Over a frozen frame of Boris Karloff as the Monster in a Beatle wig, Channel 1818 announces the rest of the evening’s movie programme.

King Kong Meets Frankenstein. Willis O’Brien’s dream project.

The Marx Brothers Meet the Monsters. Through the bungling of Igolini (Chico), Professor Wolf J. Frankenstein (Groucho) puts the Monster’s brain into Harpo’s skull. Margaret Dumont is Dracula’s daughter.

House of the Wolf Man. A 1946 Universal, directed by Jean Yarbrough. Otto Kruger and Rondo Hatton tamper with the brains of Lon Chaney, Bela Lugosi and Glenn Strange.

Dr Orloff, Sex Slave of Frankenstein. Directed by Jesús Franco, with Howard Vernon and Dennis Price, plus hardcore spliced in a decade after Price’s death.

Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster: The Director’s Cut. The three-hour extended version, with additional beach party numbers.

My bladder is uncomfortably full but I can’t get up to pee lest I miss anything irreplaceable. Channel 1818 is a treasure trove. If I keep watching, I’ll be able to note down credits. I’ll be the true source of information. Weldon, Glut and Jones will have to beg me for credits. My interpretations will be definitive. Hardy’s Aurum Encyclopedia: Horror will have to be junked entirely. The history of horror is written on shifting sands.

Then come trailers: Peter Cushing sewing new legs on to disco queen Caroline Munro in Hammer’s Frankenstein AD 1971; an hour-long print of the 1910 Edison Frankenstein; Baron Rossano Brazzi singing ‘Some Lightning-Blasted Evening’ in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Frankenstein!; Peter Cushing and Boris Karloff in the same laboratory; W.C. Fields as the Blind Hermit, sneering, ‘Never work with children or hunchbacked assistants’; James Whale’s 1931 Frankenstein, with Leslie Howard as the doctor, Bette Davis as Elizabeth and a still-living Lon Chaney, all staring eyes and glittering teeth, as the Monster; John Wayne and a cavalry troop tracking the Monster through Monument Valley in John Ford’s Fort Frankenstein; a restored 1915 Life Without Soul, with Percy Darrell Standing; Frankenstein 80 in 3D, with a better script; James Dean and Whit Bissell in I Was a Teenage Frankenstein.

1818 was the year in which Mary Shelley published Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. This is the Frankenstein Channel.

My bladder lets go, but I don’t mind. I can’t make it to the kitchen without looking away from the screen, so I’ll have to improvise food. As always, I have enough munchies to keep me going. Sleep I can do without. I have my vocation.

My wrist aches from writing down titles and credits. I have responsibilities.

David Cronenberg’s Frankenstein. Dario Argento’s Frankenstein. Ingmar Bergman’s Frankenstein. Woody Allen’s Frankenstein. Martin Scorsese’s Frankenstein. Walerian Borowczyk’s Frankenstein. Jerry Warren’s Frankenstine. Akira Kurosawa’s Furankenshutain. Ernest Hemingway’s Frank Stein. Troma’s Frankenslime. William Castle’s Shankenstein. Jim Wynorski’s Wankenstein. Wayne Newton’s Dankenshane. Odorama’s Rankenstein.

I watch, reference books strewn around the floor, all useless, all outdated. On and on, monsters and mad doctors, hunchbacks and mobs, blind men and murdered girls, ice floes and laboratories.

Channel ident 1818 flickers. I fight pangs in my stomach and eat the crumby paper which was wrapped around my last pack of digestive biscuits. Sammy Davis Jr slicks hair across his flat head in a Rat Packenstein picture, as Dino and Frank Sinatra fix up the electrodes.

I recognise the strange smell as my own. There are enough crumbs behind the cushions of the sofa to sustain life. I pick them out like a grooming gorilla and crack them between my teeth.

Badly dressed black musicians rob the graves of blues singers in the endless Funkenstein series. Ridley Scott directs a run of Bankenstein ads for Barclays, with Sting applying for a small business loan to get his monster wired. Jane Fonda works the scars out of her thighs in the Flankenstein video.

I am transfixed. I would look away, but there is a chance I might miss something. I’m dreaming the electronic dream, consuming imaginary images made celluloid.

Brides, sons, ghosts, curses, revenges, evils, horrors, brains, dogs, bloods, castles, daughters, houses, ladies, brothers, ledgers, lodgers, hands, returns, tales, torments, infernos, worlds, experiments, horror chambers… of Frankenstein.

I hit the exhaustion wall and burn through it. My life functions are at such a low level that I can continue indefinitely. I’m plugged into Channel 1818. It’s my duty to stay the course.

Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis, Redford and Newman, Astaire and Rogers, Mickey and Donald, Tango and Cash, Rowan and Martin, Bonnie and Clyde, Frankie and Annette, Hinge and Bracket, Batman and Robin, Salt and Pepa, Tich and Quackers, Amos and Andy, Gladstone and Disraeli, Morecambe and Wise, Block and Tackle… Meet Frankenstein.

I can barely move, but my eyes are open.

Credits roll, too fast to jot down. These films exist for one showing and are lost. Each frame is unique, impossible to recreate. I daren’t even leave the room to get a pack of blank videotapes. It is down to me. I must watch and I must remember. My mind is the screen on which these Frankensteins perform.

The Frankenstein Monster is played by… Bela Lugosi (in 1931), Christopher Lee (in 1964), Lane Chandler, Harvey Keitel, Sonny Bono, Bernard Bresslaw, Meryl Streep, Bruce Lee, Neville Brand, John Gielgud, IceT, Rock Hudson, Traci Lords.

The experience is priceless. A red sun rises outside, and I draw the curtains.

‘Now I know what it feels like to be a god,’ croaks Edward G. Robinson.

I will stay with the channel.

‘We belong dead,’ intones Don Knotts.

I will watch.

‘To a new world of gods and monsters,’ toasts Daffy Duck.

UNE ÉTRANGE AVENTURE DE RICHARD BLAINE

‘GO, MY DARLING, and God bless you, Ilsa.’ It’s like a hammer to the back of the head.

In an instant, everything good is gone.

The world is hell.

Ink running in the rain. A wet letter in my hands. Water pouring off the brim of my fedora. An insistent tug at the sleeve of my trenchcoat. Clouds of steam. A train, about to leave.

‘That’s the last call, Mr Richard,’ Sam says. ‘Do you hear me? Come on, Mr Richard. Let’s get out o’ here.’

It’s hard, but I can do it. My guts are lying on the rain-soaked platform, but I can walk without tripping in them. Sure, I can. It’s easy.

Forget Ilsa.

Get out of Paris.

Now.

‘En voiture,’ the man shouts.

This is the last train out. The one we were supposed to take together. To freedom and safety.

Damn her. Damn her rotten silky hide. Damn.

‘Come on, Mr Richard. Come on.’

Yeah. Let’s go. Fade.

Clicking heels. A bark of gunfire. Men in grey uniform advance down the platform, pushing through panicky would-be passengers. The train lurches, wheels screaming. Sam is up in the carriage door, humping our cases.

I step up, resolved.

I can live without her. I can go on. Dead inside, maybe, but moving.

A hand closes on my shoulder.

‘Mr Richard Blaine?’

It’s a harsh voice, rasping. German.

The train shifts, moving off. I see more than panic in Sam’s eyes as he slides away.

This just puts the cherry on top of the day. The Germans are in Paris. And so am I.

‘I’m an American citizen,’ I tell the Nazi. ‘Neutrality is my religion.’

‘That was not how you conducted yourself in Spain or Ethiopia, my friend.’

I shrug, stomach plunging. My dossier is evidently extensive and annotated.

‘SS Standartenführer Professor Doktor Franz Six,’ says the officer. I believe him.

Six is a small man, almost bald but still young, blue eyes cold behind steel-rimmed spectacles, uniformed in black with silver lightning-flash insignia. His trenchcoat is the colour of midnight. His cap-peak is like the razor-bill of a predatory bird.

Field-grey goons close around me. The train has gone.

It doesn’t really matter. The way I feel, summary execution would be a blessing.

Damn Ilsa.

‘Your assistance is required by the Third Reich,’ says Six.

‘The Third Reich seems to be doing quite well on its own.’

The station is being occupied. German soldiers search through the unlucky crowds, looking for faces they’ve memorised, matching identity papers against names on a list. French railwaymen are standing down, their duties assumed by military policemen. All further trains are cancelled.

Someone makes a break for it. There are shots.

‘Indeed, this is an encouraging day for the Reich, Mr Blaine. However, I’m charged with an especial mission for the Führer, one with which you can be of great help.’

‘With which? Fine grammar.’

Six smiles, showing sharp little teeth. It would be a mistake to think him soft or stupid.

The station is emptying of civilians. Rain washes down over deserted platforms. Abandoned suitcases are soaked. Someone has left behind a double-bass.

Filtering out the excess people reveals who it was that spotted me for Six. A wiry youth, with an impertinent forelock that stands up stiff as a wood-shaving. He has piggy little eyes and baggy plus-fours. With him is an annoying little white dog.

I recognise him vaguely, from around the cafés and cabarets. Though just a kid, he’s some sort of a reporter. Though French, he’s a fascist. Six nods, and he scurries over, dog at his heels.

‘Our young friend has been of some help,’ Six tells me, ‘but he doesn’t have the sensitivities for the job. Unlike you.’

The kid’s eyes glitter. I have no friends here. He must have wanted to be Nazi Puppet Number One, and now he’s just one of the gang.

We’re all standing in the rain, which doesn’t seem to bother Six. It’s as if he has an invisible shield around him, a bubble of warmth and confidence. Hitler gives these monkeys something special.

‘My friend, I’m responsible for the apprehension of certain individuals. Well, not so much individuals as types. Until they are in our hands, we cannot truly say we have taken Paris.’

‘I should think that about now, you could say what you want and nobody will holler.’

Six giggles. It’s like needles scraping your skull.

‘You are on my list, Mr Blaine. Paris is important to you, and you to her.’

Her. Yes, the city is a woman. Ten minutes ago she was a sweetheart. Now I know she’s a whore.

The damned letter is a wet lump under my shoe.

‘You’re too late for that. I don’t care about Paris. I don’t care about anyone.’

‘You only think that, Mr Blaine. Paris is a part of you. In your sentimental fugues, you may think it the better part of you, but it is your weakness. It is why you are, as it were, surrounded.’

‘This is a waste of time,’ the kid hisses, in French.

‘I think not,’ says Six. ‘I think we have an understanding.’

Whatever. I’m not doing anything else. Any principles I had have been washed away by the rain. Without Ilsa, I might just as well be a Nazi. I’ll make a good one. I’ll have just the right attitude.

I nod.

‘Excellent,’ the Nazi smiles. ‘We three shall round them up, all the types on our list, all the creatures of the city. When we have them, we shall have taken Paris body and soul.’

The kid’s dog barks. I kick it in the head.

Just like a Nazi.

* * *

The first individual on Six’s little list isn’t even a human being. That doesn’t matter. Rick Blaine, dog-kicker extraordinaire, isn’t afraid of anything that crawls or climbs, swims or slouches.

The ape is halfway up a building, waving a straight razor and jabbering in what sounds like Hungarian. Its gums are a scarlet wound. Its long limbs and round body are covered with a thick, bristly black pelt.

‘Have Göring get into a biplane and shoot King Kong off his perch,’ I suggest.

Six giggles again.

They want the ape alive. It figures.

I shrug, and walk into the empty street. An armoured car is parked at the kerb. The ape throws chunks of masonry at it. It could pitch for the Dodgers, hits the swastika on the hood every time.

I’ve got an automatic in my pocket. I could do better with a banana.

‘Hey, Ingagi,’ I yell, getting the monkey’s attention.

Strictly, it’s an orangutan. It waves its razor.

I catch the ape’s eye. It’s not stupid. It doesn’t recognise me, but it knows me, senses that we have something in common. We’re both foreigners in this city, but we both have a connection with it that runs deep.

‘Come down,’ I shout, feeling dumb.

The ape tenses, and I think it’s about to launch itself into space and crash down on me in a tumble of scrabbling hands and slicing blade. My strength is that I don’t care. My guts have already been torn out, and they might as well be strewn in the gutter of the Rue Morgue as anywhere else.

Meekly, the orangutan climbs down to the street. It folds its razor closed with a neat click and gives it up to me. Six’s storm troopers rush in with a net and wrap the ape up into a chattering ball.

Six and the kid reporter watch me. The Nazi applauds, slowly. I am being mocked but I don’t care.

The ape is miserable, betrayed, chewing at the wires of the net, struggling with the six goons who are loading him into the armoured car. I don’t care. Something tiny and hot and nasty is growing where my heart used to be.

If this is what the world (Ilsa) wants me to be, then fine. I’ll be the best damn Nazi in Paris, sieg heil and über alles.

‘You’ve done well, my friend,’ purrs the doctor.

Give me a medal, buddy.

* * *

Our expedition under Paris is a major adventure. In a motor-launch requisitioned from the river police, we whizz through the sewers, bowed low so as not to scrape our hats off on the tunnel roofs, leaving waves of disturbed shit in our wake. None of the maps the Germans have dug up is of much help: the city sits atop an uncharted labyrinth of interconnecting tunnels, sewers, caverns, catacombs, hide-outs and lost worlds that date back to the Romans and beyond. Down here, we’re relying on my mysterious and new-found instincts.

I have talents I didn’t know about. I’ve always lived half-in and half-out of the world. Dr Six has chosen me well. I can home in on the individuals on his list because I have a kinship with them but am estranged from them. I can thank Ilsa for that, at least.

I wonder if she’s on the list too. Six has never let me see it, if indeed it is written down and not just in his head. She’d fit in with some of the others. We have rounded up a good many women: a barefoot gypsy dancer reputed to be a sorceress, with a goat for a familiar; an Irish singer with a blank face and a bell-pure voice, along with her terrified and terrifying Hebrew manager; a consumptive artists’ model, spitting blood into her handkerchief; a beautiful commissar, seduced by silk undies. Sweethearts and whores, gamines and adventuresses, royal mistresses and gutter-waifs. All on the list, all in custody.

We chug through the tunnels, casting cones of light ahead and aft. Six, the reporter, the white dog, and a platoon of standard-issue storm troopers. The soldiers don’t like being down under the streets, in the dark, in the shit. They mutter together, heedless of their boss’s enthusiasm for the chase.

Six tried to persuade the pipe-puffing policeman who surrendered so meekly to join us on this trip under the city. The inspector regretfully declined, saying that though he was forced to recognise the authority of the new masters of the city he could not lend himself to such an enterprise.

Damn the flic. He was elaborately almost sorry for me, and I didn’t need his pity. No wonder the city fell. Everyone was so weak, so frail. Most of the creatures we were hunting were crippled by their desperate, illusionary loves. Paris is the city of the Insanely Romantic.

I sense a presence.

‘There,’ I say, pointing ahead.

Searchlights are directed. There is a man in the water, swimming.

‘It’s the ex-convict,’ says the reporter. ‘The fugitive thief.’

Six giggles.

Our boat gains on the man. Waves of sewage drag at him. He flails. Is he trying to drown himself rather than be recaptured? He’s been on the run most of his life, in and out of the Château d’If and Ȋle du Diable.

He is hauled out of the water in a sorry state. He lies in the boat, breathing heavily, stinking.

We emerge into a cavernous space, an underground lake in a cathedral-arched chamber. The searchlights play upon a vaulted roof hundreds of feet above us. Six whistles in awe.

The lake is big enough to harbour an island. It is a long shape, like a sea-monster lying on the surface. We pass by, and I see it’s not a true island but a man-made thing. Rows of rivets stand out on its metal hide. A serrated, horn-like protrusion juts out between eye-like green windows. It is abandoned, I sense. Left here to distract us. I wave us on.

‘Keep going,’ I say. ‘It’s just a lost toy.’

Music sounds. Thin, reedy organ-tones.

I know this is one of the prizes of Paris, one of the types at the head of the list. Six smiles at me. The Opéra Ghost is nearby, driven out of the extensive cellars of the Paris Opéra into the larger catacombs. I know something of this creature’s story. His tragedy is an impossible love, too.

The boat crosses the lake, our lights playing on the far shore.

‘Be careful,’ I say. ‘This guy is known for devilish trickiness. There’ll be traps.’

One of Six’s troopers, having conquered the world, begins to sneer and his head is sheared in two just below his eyes. A flying guillotine. The Nazi crumples and splashes into the water, leaving behind the top of his head, still in its helmet, rolling in the flat bottom of the boat.

I kill the searchlight. We all crouch in the dark.

The music swells in mocking triumph.

It occurs to me that the ex-convict has led us into a trap. It was only a matter of time before the names on our list caught on to what we were doing and began cooperating. How many others are out there?

We collide with the shore and pile out of the boat. A jagged ripping and a scream. Some new, clever device. There is a gleam of gloom up ahead, through a tunnel. I blink and get night vision. The organ chords pour at us. The musician has lost the tune, and is improvising in a frenzy.

I tap Six on the epaulette and nod ahead.

We are to proceed, with caution.

The journalist steps into the tunnel first, and is yanked off his feet. I hear him gurgling as he dangles. A noose is cinched round his throat.

His white dog leaps up round his kicking heels, yapping.

My arm up to protect me, I run into the tunnel. Six and his men are behind me.

I know there are enemies up ahead.

Not just the Opéra Ghost, but the masked Master Thief, the Poet Swordsman, the Vengeful Count, the Pianist With the Knife-Thrower’s Hands, the Tramp From the River, the Children of Paradise, the Queen’s Musketeers. A full swoop of Six’s types. With them apprehended, there would only be a few very small fish – boulevardiers and ex-patriots – to gather.

‘Friends, friends,’ I shout. ‘I have led them to you. I’m one of you, not one of them. Vive la France! Liberté, égalité, frat—’

A cold hand closes on my mouth and yanks me from the tunnel. A nose pokes at my face. Cold steel lies across my Adam’s apple.

The duellist wears a huge hat and a froth of lace round his throat. But it is impossible to look away from his prodigious nose, which sprouts from his face like a swollen bulb. If I look at his eyes, the tip of his nose goes out of focus and seems even bigger.

‘What are you staring at, American?’ he asks.

I try to shrug, but am held firm.

‘You have such lovely eyes,’ I say.

He laughs, lustily.

‘Take me to your leader,’ I say.

‘We’ve no leader,’ he replies. ‘We’re too rowdy a lot for leaders.’

I understand. ‘Take me to him, to the master of the machine in the lake.’

A smile curls in the shadow of the nose. ‘He is dead. The spectre plays for his funeral.’

I am pulled through a secret door. Candelabra light up the space all around. I see the thin black back of the man at the organ. Bone-white hands play over the keys. He turns and I see his skull-face, enormous eyes active in a white mask of death.

Others are here.

A thief in immaculate evening dress, face half-masked. His companion, a sylph-like woman in a black body-stocking that shows only her eyes. A hollow-eyed aesthetic adventurer, delighted at last to have sunk as low as is possible in Paris. A young girl, trained from infancy to be a courtesan. A lazy-eyed apache loafer, cigarette dangling from his snarl, a tight-skirted floozy at the end of his leash. The captain of the good ship Atalante and his child wife. A young man with the look of a philosopher who has discovered futility or has been nauseated by the wallpaper of the world. And the older ones, older even than my big-nosed friend. A couple of Englishmen, one dashing in disguise, the other ready to go to the tumbril for a friend. A woman cackling bloodily over her knitting. The swordsmen and the gallants, the ones whose legends have grown with the city. Shambling in the shadows is a form more twisted than the ape of the Rue Morgue, hiding behind pillars, face hidden in shame.

‘We are Paris,’ says my captor.

He is right. These people are the heart of the city. When you think about Paris, you have to think about one or two or all of them. You may not find them there when you arrive, but they are why you go there.

I’m one of them.

Yet not.

I can forget Paris. I want to, in fact. Ilsa saw to that.

When all these people are gathered up in the pens under the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol where Six has been assembling them, and are shipped out in cattle-trucks to some death camp of the spirit the Nazis have built in the East, then I’ll be free of Paris. The city will mean nothing to me.

I’m not sorry.

‘You are all under arrest,’ I say.

My automatic is under the gallant’s nose. A gun trumps a sword.

‘Don’t anybody move.’

The organ wheezes to silence.

‘Six,’ I shout. ‘Through here!’

Eyes fix on me with hate. They expected me to side with them, I see. They misread my story. Or came in at the wrong reel.

‘I stick my neck out for no one,’ I explain.

The deformed boy pokes his head out of the shadows. His misaligned eyes look up at me, full of tears. If I had a heart left, his ugly lost face would reach it.

But…

Six and his surviving goons arrive.

‘I believe we have a full house,’ he says.

* * *

‘I thought you’d want to be here, my friend,’ Six says. ‘To see the job through.’

It is an overcast day. Three trucks are parked outside the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol. Soldiers stand around, waiting. Orders are posted everywhere. Passers-by don’t want to know what is going on here.

The prisoners, shackled together, are herded into the trucks. Some are unused to showing their faces by day. The Opéra Ghost, in drab prison pyjamas rather than evening clothes, is less fearsome in thin daylight; not a demon lover, just a hairless, noseless old man. Without his domino mask, the Master Thief is a dull bourgeois in handcuffs.

‘Where will you execute them?’ I ask, empty inside.

‘We would not waste so valuable a resource, Mr Blaine. We shall keep our catch safe. Away from the city, perhaps, but carefully unharmed.’

I wonder if they can live away from the city.

‘Only now do we really have Paris, you understand. With these people in custody, we control this city’s soul. All great cities have a collective soul, an über-mythic collective heart. The Führer understands this. What is London without the Demon Barber and the Consulting Detective and the Mayor’s Cat? Or Prague without the Golem, the Alchemist, the student who sells his soul? These are our real enemies in Europe, Mr Blaine. Not armies and politicians and populations. Those can be overcome, crushed, destroyed, absorbed. It is these individuals, who in some sense are not even real people, these creatures who stand against our Nazi dream. We understand and believe in über-myths too. But there is room for only one vast myth now, a German myth that has no time for the squabbling, petty, monstrous, feeble-hearts we see before us. With these people gone, our myth can truly occupy the city. Who knows, maybe some of them can come back. The reporter understood, was willing to let himself vanish into the larger story.’

‘Like me,’ I say, hollowly.

‘No, Mr Blaine. Not you. You have helped us not out of conviction but out of spite. All very well. We understand spite, too. You may go, because it is not important that you be here. You are a part of another city’s myth-pool. It is important that you have a memory of Paris, but be estranged from the city itself. That is why you were so perfect for our purposes.’

The reporter’s dog is still hanging around, sullen and angry. Its white coat is muddied, almost the colour of a German uniform.

It’s hard for the soldiers to get the weeping hunchback into the truck, which holds up the rest of the coffle. Chains clank. The orangutan is already inside, drugged for travel. Last into the truck is the policeman, grumpy because he is not allowed his pipe.

I can walk away safely now. Join Sam, and get on with my life. My myth, as Six would have it.

One last prisoner is too delicate to be chained with the others. She is brought out on a stretcher, thin shoulders shivering, cold white hands crossed on her breast. She won’t last the journey.

Six shrugs sadly.

‘We Germans love her, too,’ he says. ‘This girl and her type and her city. But we have iron in our soul. New-forged. We have the strength to strip the city of her.’

One of the soldiers loses his grip, and the feet-end of the stretcher hits the pavement. The girl coughs blood, and her huge eyes catch mine.

She looks like Ilsa. Every damn woman in Paris looks like Ilsa, somehow.

I’m neutral. I’ve done a job, in exchange for freedom. These people mean nothing to me. Less than nothing. Paris is overrated anyway. Nothing but whores and pimps and murderers. All these people have blood on their hands.

The girl is close to death, always has been.

My heart starts beating again.

‘Shall we see them off, Mr Blaine?’

I put my hands in my pockets, and bring one of them out again.

‘That is an automatic pistol, Mr Blaine.’

‘And a very fine one, Six.’

The Nazi is disappointed in me. He makes a tiny signal. I am to be shot.

Then that blasted dog darts in and nips the heel of Six’s jack-boot, sinking sharp teeth into the black leather. The SS man is surprised and looks down.

I plug him in the chest. Twice.

‘Doktor Six has been shot,’ I shout, to the soldiers. ‘I’ll guard the prisoners. Search the theatre. I saw a man with a gun, up on the roof. A jackal, running.’

Six is on his knees, dying. He doesn’t understand why. He never will.

The girl smiles, thinly, blood on her lips.

The soldiers stand around, looking dumb. They were distracted by the dog and didn’t see my gun spit death.

‘Up on the roof,’ I insist, waving my gun. ‘Mach schnell!’

It gets through. They clatter into the theatre, shouting.

I take the keys from Six’s pocket, and roll his corpse into the gutter. I wonder if he realised how close he came himself to an archetype, the Sardonic Nazi Officer. Of course, he was different from us. He was a real person. You can look him up in the books.

I toss the keys to the Master Thief, who gets everyone off the chain in double-quick time. I had an idea he would have the fastest fingers in the group.

‘Quick,’ I say, ‘into the sewers.’

The ex-convict groans ‘not again’, but his fellows hurry him along. A manhole cover is wrenched up, and the escapees plunge into the darkness. I watch the last of them – the Jewish singing master with the scraggle of beard and the neon-glowing eyes – disappear, and pick up the girl from the stretcher. She is frozen, but I carry her underground.

* * *

Inside, the submersible device is a riot of leather upholstery and polished brass. Its captain may be gone, but it has been maintained in perfect working order. There is even a pipe organ, and the Opéra Ghost plays a Bach fugue on it as we sink below the waters of the underground lagoon.

At the helm, the captain of the Atalante scratches his head and tries to understand the unfamiliar controls. He is the master of Paris’s waterways, and will soon learn how to manoeuvre this marvellous contraption.

We are all cramped here, but there is a joy in freedom.

I don’t want anyone’s thanks. It’s due to me that Six got as far as he did with his project. There have been casualties. The model girl died in the sewer, and is stowed somewhere. But she’ll always be here, in Paris.

I’ll leave now. Hook up with Sam, head for Marseille, cross the sea. After all this French rain, I’d like to live in a desert for a while, have my own place. Six was right about me. I have a story to finish.

They are arguing, this leaderless crowd. The braggart with the nose and one of the Queen’s Swordsmen butt heads over the charts, each certain of the course they should be plotting but neither with any experience of navigation. The captain smokes his pipe and carries on regardless.

The orangutan is waking up. The apache has stabbed his mistress. The ex-convict is outside, in the filthy waters again. The Opéra Ghost has criticised the Irish girl’s voice, and enraged the Jewish manager. A whore and a dancer are competing for the affections of the white dog. Cigarette and pipe smoke makes a pestilential cloud in the enclosed space.

There is a din of life here.

Despite Ilsa, despite everything, it’s in me. Paris, and all it means. I’ll never escape it entirely.

I’ll leave these people soon. There’s a lazy-eyed thief here who dreams of Algiers and the Casbah; I shall follow his example, and light out for North Africa. They’ll break up, return to their hiding places, play catch ’em with the Gestapo. Their city will be underground for a while, but a secret victory has been gained.

The Germans won’t always have Paris. But I will.

FRANKENSTEIN ON ICE

THIS IS THE first print publication of ‘Frankenstein on Ice’, which was written as a segment of the play The Ghost Train Doesn’t Stop Here Any More. The premiere cast was Claire Louise Amias, Jamie Birkett, Billy Clarke, Grace Ker, Jonathan Rigby, Jenny Runacre and James Swanton, and the director was Sean Hogan.

* * *

Spotlight up on gurney. A human figure – MONSTER – lies on it, covered by a dropcloth. Over-large, thick-soled, height-boosting, clod-hopping Karloff boots poke out.

A beat.

MONSTER’s hand – scarred at the wrist – falls out from the cloth and dangles, lifeless. Red goo drips from his opened fist.

Lights up to show minimal set dressing to establish a laboratory. Woolly scarves and hats draped over kit. We are in a research station above the Arctic Circle.

In her own section of the stage, Skyping in, sits MYRA LARK.

Young scientists ALISON CRAIG and RORY VINER enter, lab coats over woolly jumpers. ALISON has glasses.

ALISON deftly slips MONSTER’s hand back under the dropcloth, looks – disgusted yet fascinated – at the goo on her fingers, then wipes it on her coat.

MYRA

Dr Craig, Dr Viner…?

ALISON

Her again. The Eye Spy in the High Sky.

RORY

Her always… Dr Lark, Ice Station Apple receiving you. What’s the ETA of the Unwin team?

MYRA

You mean when are they going to get there?

RORY

ETA. Yes.

MYRA

Well, just say so. Soon. Bad weather over Anchorage, I’m told. Then again, you’re at the North Pole. Weather’s always bad.

ALISON

Define bad…

RORY

Define weather…

MYRA

Stop being scientists. It’s not clever and it’s not funny.

ALISON (ploughing on)

If by bad you mean cold, that’s open for debate. For the integrity of the Arctic ice, warm’s bad…

RORY

But without the degradation of the million-year-old Arctic ice, we wouldn’t be here on Unwin Pharma’s dime, assessing defrosted prehistoric micro-organisms for medical applications…

ALISON

Not that this find is prehistoric. Its clothes are eighteenth century… they made bloody good boots in the eighteenth century.

RORY

And it’s certainly not a micro-organism. As for medical applications… well, if you want your peasants terrorised, I suppose it’s up to the job.

MYRA

The team will determine the status of the find.

ALISON and RORY circle the gurney, looking at MONSTER, fascinated but repulsed.

RORY

You mean they’ll tell us why it isn’t what we think it – he – is. Why it couldn’t possibly be…?

ALISON

…the Frankenstein Monster.

RORY

Because that’s just a book, right? It’s as if we found the bones of Moby Dick or Sherlock Holmes’s deerstalker or Crusoe’s island…

ALISON

Robinson Crusoe was a real person. Alexander Selkirk.

MYRA

The team will determine…

ALISON

…if he’s the Frankenstein Monster.

RORY

If Frankenstein is real.

MYRA

Professor Court’s researches tend to support that hypothesis. She’s the ranking expert on Mary Shelley and The Modern Prometheus. She’s very excited.

ALISON

So Frankenstein is real. And climate change has freed his monster from its icy grave.

MYRA

Climate change might not be real.

ALISON and RORY laugh, bitterly.

RORY

Your doctorate… it’s not in a science discipline, is it?

MYRA

The view of the Unwin Group of Companies is that the theory of anthropocentric global warming is unproven.

ALISON

Million-year-old ice shelves are shearing away. Draw your own conclusions.

RORY

What’s the Unwin Group of Companies’ position on the Frankenstein Monster?

MYRA

We found him. We own him.

ALISON

We found him.

MYRA

Read your contract, Dr Craig. Any organisms you find in the decoalescing permafrost are the property of the Unwin Group.

ALISON

Micro-organisms.

MYRA

The wording is non-specific.

RORY

Doesn’t he belong to himself? He’s a macro-organism, for a start. Very bloody macro. And, well… a person.

MYRA

You both said he was a monster. And inert. He can assert no rights over himself or any other per… organism.

Pause…

RORY

She’s gone off again.

ALISON

I hate it when she does that.

RORY

I hate it when she’s here.

ALISON

Still… [excited] the Frankenstein Monster!

RORY sticks his hands out and lumbers.

RORY (deep voice)

Grrr… fire bad… Igor hurt Monster, Monster kill Igor! Kill! Kill!

ALISON laughs and evades him. He makes a semi-serious grab for her… and MONSTER’s hand falls loose again.

ALISON and RORY freeze. They look at the dangling hand.

ALISON

It keeps doing that.

RORY

He.

ALISON goes to tuck the hand back, waves it at RORY, then considers…

ALISON

No, it. He’s a he, but his hand’s an it. Like Thing…

RORY

Thing from The Thing or Thing from The Addams Family?

ALISON

Addams Family. They can’t be real, surely?

ALISON puts hand away.

RORY

Thing from The Thing is more likely. It was in the ice. Like Mr Boots here.

ALISON

Duh! The Thing was in the Antarctic, Doctor Geography. We’re poles apart.

RORY

Shows how much you know… The first Thing, the 1950s one, was in the Arctic. So, this could be that Thing. It even wore boots like those…

ALISON

What about the goo? I thought it was crystalline when it was frozen, but it’s viscid and… icky.

RORY

The inert biomatter? As a matter of fact I do have a theory. It’s the Blob. Also the 1950s one… with Steve McQueen. The army freeze the Blob before it can eat the town and it’s flown to the North Pole and dumped. Someone asks McQueen if the world is safe now and he says, ‘Sure, so long as the Arctic stays cold.’

ALISON

Chilly.

RORY

Or not.

ALISON

No. The Thing and the Blob and the Addams Family aren’t real.

RORY

Just Frankenstein.

ALISON

They better get here soon. He’s liable to go off… like that Eocene mould and your Cambrian flukes. I can’t believe they still witter on about climate change being unproven… We’re the first generation of Arctic researchers to lose findings because we don’t have adequate freezers.

Sd FX: helicopter.

RORY and ALISON look at each other. They put on hats and scarves and go out.

A beat. A long beat.

MYRA

One for yes. Two for no.

MONSTER clicks heels, loudly. Then goes still, as ALISON and RORY return with VALERIE COURT, CARL CLEAVER and GALA. They are already talking…

Sd FX: helicopter fading.

VALERIE

…why didn’t the helicopter land properly?

RORY

The helipad’s slushy, Professor Court. Wasn’t last year… is this season. The ice can’t take the weight of the chopper. Jury’s out on whether it’s global warming or Santa leaving the electric on in his grotto all year.

CARL

We should have air-lifted the find to a proper facility.

ALISON

Can’t. Protocol. Risk of infection.

CARL

It’s not a germ. Look at it.

ALISON

But it could have germs. This… goo.

RORY

Inert biomatter.

CARL and VALERIE are drawn to MONSTER. VALERIE squeeing, CARL trying to remain detached. Only GALA is unresponsive.

VALERIE

This is a great moment for me. Can I see his face?

ALISON and RORY aren’t sure.

CARL impatiently lifts the cloth. We don’t see the MONSTER’s face but he and VALERIE do. They react.

VALERIE

‘No mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy again endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch.’ This is the creation of Victor Frankenstein. The first man-made man.

CARL

Legally, it’s not a man. And it’s crude… look at those sutures. He’s been stitched together like sailcloth.

CARL lets VALERIE hold the sheet. She’s happier to look at MONSTER than he is.

RORY is interested in GALA, who stands impassive. He passes a hand in front of her face. Her eyes don’t move. RORY tries to tweak her nose. She swiftly grabs his wrist.

RORY

Quite a grip you’ve got there.

CARL

She’s not programmed for your voice-print. Gala, let go.

GALA opens her hand and RORY takes back his wrist, which he rubs.

RORY

She’s a fleshbot?

CARL

We don’t call them that. She’s a bioengineered servitor organism. Clone-grown, gene-spliced, tweaked in the bottle, augmented with biotech.

ALISON

She looks like a person.

CARL

What should we make her look like? Herman Munster here?

ALISON

We call him Mr Boots.

CARL

I’m not surprised. We call her Gala.

VALERIE

Short for Galatea.

ALISON

If Unwin can make her, we should have known Frankenstein was real…

CARL

Unwin didn’t make her. My team did.

RORY

But Unwin own her.

CARL

Have you read your contract? Unwin own us all.

VALERIE

Except me. I’m on Sabbatical from Shrewsbury College. I’m a consultant.

MYRA

Professor Court, Dr Cleaver… are you on site?

Everyone jumps.

RORY

Don’t mind Myra. Always with us, yet so far away… in an undisclosed location. Think of her as a drone strike with a bedside manner.

CARL

We’re with the subject now. I see very little we can learn from it.

MYRA

Professor Court?

VALERIE is still looking at the MONSTER.

VALERIE

It’s momentous. The details tally. The clothes. The face. I’ve no doubt… this is the man made by Victor Frankenstein in 17—

MYRA

Product One. Unwin designate him Product One.

ALISON

One?

MYRA

The servitor organism is Product Twelve.

RORY warily approaches GALA again. He is plainly more interested in her than the MONSTER.

CARL

Gala was Product Eleven, but they bumped her up when you found the thing in the ice. Retroactively, Frankenstein became an Unwin Pharma employee. Know what the company did after your preliminary report? Sent lawyers to Switzerland to buy a baronetcy… Sir Joshua Unwin can call himself Baron Frankenstein. It’s all about IP. Whatever Victor did, Unwin has a proprietary interest in. Not just the meat on the slab, but the biotech. We’re here for the intellectual property of Frankenstein.

VALERIE

There’s a Hammer Film you never saw.

RORY (to CARL)

Gala is programmed for your voice-print?

CARL

Of course.

RORY

Would she bend over backwards for you?

CARL (smug and showoffy)

Gala, bend over backwards.

GALA bends over and makes an arch.

RORY (amazed)

She has extra vertebrae? Like an anglepoise lamp. When will she be marketed?

CARL

She’s not for home use. Gala costs more than a beach house in Malibu.

ALISON

But she’s the next generation of that? [meaning the MONSTER]

CARL

Only in the way a moon rocket is descended from a Frisbee.

VALERIE

Didn’t they invent moon rockets before there were Frisbees?

CARL

If that’s a rusted Model T Ford, Gala is a showroom Ferrari…

GALA is still an arch.

ALISON

Let her stand up again. She’s making my stomach hurt.

CARL

Gala, stand straight.

GALA does.

MYRA

Professor Court, you have two days to study Product One on site and verify its provenance.

VALERIE fusses around MONSTER while MYRA talks.

VALERIE gasps, drops the sheet and clutches her hand to her chest. She backs away.

CARL (irritated)

What is it now?

The sheet stirs… MONSTER sits up, cloth over face.

RORY (melodrama voice)

It’s alive!

CARL (not noticing MONSTER yet)

That’s a philosophical-legal question that can’t be answered easily. Life is…

ALISON

Shush.

CARL looks at MONSTER, runs out of pompousness.

CARL

Jesus Fucksticks!

The dropcloth falls, disclosing MONSTER’s distorted, soulful face. In the framing story, ROBERT has a cardboard Karloff head. Now he’s creepier, but more pathetic.

MONSTER twists around at the waist, legs stiff. His arms go out, wavering…

MONSTER

Friends? Friends… good?

Everyone looks at each other but no one moves.

MYRA

Product One? Is Product One responsive?

MONSTER

Product… good?

VALERIE melts and goes towards the outstretched arms. CARL holds her back.

CARL

Caution, Professor. Gala, assess the product…

GALA wheels around to order. She touches MONSTER’s wrists, forehead and heart like a nurse.

MONSTER is amazed by GALA. He snarls, experimentally. Gets a blank look.

MONSTER

Friend…? Woman?

RORY

Only technically. Gala is a girlie golem. Mr Boots, meet the great-great-great granddaughter of Frankenstein.

RORY overcomes nervousness and walks over. He confirms GALA’s diagnosis.

RORY

Yes, it’s alive all right. Alive alive-o.

MONSTER is puzzled. RORY feels its spine.

RORY

Bit of a problem. His back is broken. Irreparably. Mr Boots wasn’t made for walking.

VALERIE breaks away from CARL, almost hugs MONSTER.

VALERIE

All my life, I’ve hoped to meet you. We are your friends. I am your friend.

MONSTER

Friend good. Woman good.

MONSTER lays head on VALERIE’s chest.

RORY

He’s imprinted on you. Like a chicken.

ALISON

That’s one thing Frankenstein didn’t give him. A mum.

MONSTER looks up at VALERIE.

MONSTER

Ma-ma…?

VALERIE isn’t sure about this, but goes with it.

VALERIE

Yes… if someone has to be. Ma-ma. Mother.

MONSTER

Mother, good.

CARL (whispers)

Motherfucker!

MYRA

I take it we’re no longer concerned Product One might go to mush like defrosted strawberries. Professor Court, under the revised circumstances, you are executive in charge. Product Twelve, access code Coppelia Seven oblique stroke Valerie Court. Professor, you need to say something to Gala… the voice recognition app responds best if you sing, actually.

VALERIE (vaguely familiar tune)

I’ve a breathing wheeling loving feeling…

CARL (fed up)

We get it!

VALERIE

Dancing doll!

GALA turns to look directly at VALERIE.

VALERIE

Dance, Gala, dance…

GALA dances as VALERIE sings; RORY and ALISON join in.

VALERIE

Got a clockwork heart in her
Makes a perfect partner…

VALERIE/RORY/ALISON

Dancing doll!

VALERIE

She’s got a china face
And knows her place
Got dainty arms
And tender charms…

VALERIE/RORY/ALISON

She’s the only, lonely, lively, lovely…

MONSTER (deep voice)

Dancing doll!

VALERIE (offhand)

Gala, stop.

GALA stops dancing. MONSTER smiles, trying to laugh, clapping hands like a seal.

MONSTER

Dancing doll! Dancing doll! She’s… Dancing doll!

MYRA

If you’ve finished desecrating the classics… perhaps you could do the consulting you’re paid for. Thank you very much.

Blackout.

Lights up.

MONSTER in a wheelchair. VALERIE has a copy of the book Frankenstein. GALA nearby.

VALERIE (reading)

‘…he was soon borne away by the waves, and lost in darkness and distance.’ [shuts book] Do you remember Victor? The man who made you?

She gives him the book. He looks at the cover.

MONSTER (afraid)

Frank-en-stein! Frank-en-stein… bad…

VALERIE (sadly)

Yes… bad. Neglectful.

MONSTER

Book… good?

VALERIE

We’ve been arguing about that for a long time. We don’t know how much is Mary… or even her husband, Percy… and how much is… well, your real life. It’s a bit Chinese whispers.

MONSTER (whispers to GALA)

Chinese whispers… [laughs at joke].

VALERIE

Parts of the book are things you told Victor which Victor told a man called Robert Walton which he told his sister and which, I believe, she passed on to Mary. Who dressed it up a lot. It can’t all be accurate. The you in the book doesn’t sound like you. He sounds like a romantic poet. Mary knew more about romantic poets than about… science. The you in the book spends a lot of time – I mean a lot of time – quoting Milton.

MONSTER

Mil-ton?

VALERIE

Author of Paradise Lost. ‘Did I request thee, Maker, from this clay to mould me man? Did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me?’

MONSTER (puzzled pause, then eager)

Only, lonely, lively, lovely… Dancing doll.

Fade down.

Lights up on MYRA and, elsewhere, CARL.

CARL

I recommend induced coma, then dissection. There’s nothing to be learned from talking with the idiot. He’s, not to put too fine a point on it, a right mongo. Can’t tell us anything about the process. It’s a shame Frankenstein didn’t get frozen rather than his bloody monster…

MYRA

I thought you had a low opinion of Victor Frankenstein?

CARL

You can’t deny his achievement. He did what he did in his spare time in student digs in the seventeen-somethings. Imagine the results if he’d had Unwin Pharma behind him. Proper funding.

MYRA

And marketing.

CARL

Product One would be a hard sell to the general public. It looks like a man, but it’s not. It’s a different species. Gala is more sophisticated, but doesn’t have this thing’s shelf-life. The workmanship is crude, but it’s cast-iron. Frankenstein was the Brunel of genetic engineering. Brunel’s bridges still stay up. Believe me, Dr Lark, there are applications. But we need to unpick the stitches.

Fade down.

Lights up on ALISON and RORY, wearing goggles. ALISON examines a vial of goo. She turns it over and it tumbles like a lava lamp.

RORY

It could be defrosted strawberries. Two-hundred-and-thirty-year-old strawberries.

ALISON

It’s not. I’ve run tests. They came back fragaria negative. The goo used to be something, though. You know, like oil used to be prehistoric monsters…

RORY

Oil used to be zooplankton and algae… hardly monsters.

ALISON

I was teasing. It’s weird, though. If it wasn’t stuck in eighteenth-century ice, I’d say it was what we were here for in the first place. Prehistoric micro-organisms…

RORY

…with marketable medical applications.

ALISON

I’d not go that far. Its major application seems to be stickiness. Modern man has no shortage of sticky materials.

RORY

You can never have too much sticky.

ALISON

There’s a fine line between goo and gunge. It must date from when Mr Boots was frozen. It was all around him… as if he sweated it out.

RORY

Some by-product of the Frankenstein process? The book’s vague.

ALISON

If I’d been Mary Shelley, I’d have included the full recipe for making monsters. Charts and footnotes…

RORY

With a caution against trying this experiment at home.

ALISON

You’ve not met my brother. If I’d made a [mouths the word] monster, I wouldn’t mind if it strangled him and framed the cleaner.

RORY

You sure about the murdering bit? Old Boots doesn’t seem the strangling sort.

ALISON

According to Wikipedia, he killed Victor Frankenstein’s little brother and let a maid be hanged for it… then killed his best friend… and his wife… plus assorted woodsmen, hunters and others.

RORY

Maybe Mary Shelley boosted the body count to get a bestseller? Man makes murdering monster is bigger news than man makes slightly bigger, much stupider other man.

ALISON

There’s no goo in the book, either.

RORY

I think it’s the elixir vitae Frankenstein used to kick off the biochemical process. Bring him to life.

ALISON

You’re getting Frankenstein mixed up with Re-Animator. And that was green goo.

RORY

Red and green are both flavours of Opal Fruit.

Light irises on the goo and shuts off.

Lights up on MONSTER sitting, left to himself. GALA is watchful.

MONSTER holds up his hands, looks at them, flexes fingers, holds his knees. GALA pays attention.

MONSTER strains, as if trying to stand. Rises a few inches… is about to fall. GALA gently settles him in the chair.

MONSTER

Back… bad.

MONSTER looks at GALA. She is impassive.

MONSTER touches her face.

MONSTER

Pretty.

GALA stands back.

MONSTER (ordering)

Mirror.

GALA gives a hand-mirror to MONSTER. He looks at his own face, turning the mirror this way and that. He isn’t displeased.

MONSTER

Not pretty.

He gives GALA the mirror.

MONSTER

Dancing doll.

GALA looks at him.

MONSTER

Dance.

GALA doesn’t dance.

MYRA

Product Twelve, access code Coppelia Seven oblique stroke… Product One.

MONSTER

Dance.

FX: music – Olympia’s marionette song from Tales of Hoffmann.

GALA pirouettes. MONSTER smiles and claps.

MONSTER

Dancing doll… pretty friend?

GALA bows.

Fade down.

FX: howling winds…

Lights up on MYRA and, elsewhere, RORY. He has the vial of goo.

RORY (excited)

…the Monster might be the lesser find, Dr Lark. The reagent… that’s the prize. That’s the application.

MYRA

Does Dr Craig agree with you?

RORY

I’ve not run my findings past her. Alison has… concerns.

MYRA

You’ve had practical results?

RORY

I want authorisation for tests… we can use the dogs as subjects. Dogs are cheap. They die easily.

The light around RORY shrinks. He senses something.

RORY (turning)

Who’s there? Alison?

MYRA

Dr Viner?

RORY

Sorry, it was nothing. Now, I propose we start with two subjects… [turns again] Hello, come out and…

Blackout. FX: neck breaking. RORY’s strangled scream. Body falls.

MYRA

Dr Viner, are you there?

Lights up. RORY lies dead, head kinked. The goo is spilled on his face.

MYRA

I see. Product Twelve…

GALA comes on.

MYRA

Assess Dr Viner’s status?

GALA picks up RORY as if he were a lightweight. RORY’s neck unkinks and GALA lets him go. RORY stands, face dripping red, zombie-like. GALA stands back.

MYRA

Ah, Dr Viner, you have had your test. Very successful, too. If not with the subject of your choice. Can you report on your status?

RORY opens his mouth and tries to speak. He gargles red goo and lurches.

MYRA

Evidently not. Pity.

ALISON comes on. She stands behind RORY.

ALISON

Rory, I’ve an idea about the goo…

RORY turns. ALISON gasps. RORY lunges for her. ALISON backs off, screams… CARL and VALERIE come on – alerted by the scream. MONSTER, in chair, wheels on after them.

RORY, clutching hand outstretched, stalks ALISON, drooling and gargling goo – completely demented.

CARL (to MYRA)

Dr Viner seems to have contracted some sort of infection…

ALISON

Get him away from me!

RORY is focused on ALISON. CARL looks up, doesn’t make a move to help. MONSTER wheels in the way.

MONSTER

Man… bad!

RORY snarls and shoves the MONSTER’s chair off. It falls over. He spills out. VALERIE rights the chair and helps him back into it, concerned.

RORY is now a complete monster.

RORY

Kill! Kill!

MYRA

Product Twelve… Tidy up, severely. Head…

GALA does a rapid punch to RORY’s head. He froths more goo but is stricken.

MYRA

Heart.

GALA shoves her palm against RORY’s chest. He drops – shattered. ALISON, recovering quickly, bends over the body and assesses the damage.

ALISON

His ribcage is shattered. And his skull. Bone knives through the heart and brain. Your girl’s got quite a kick.

CARL

She’s built for strength.

VALERIE

We should have helped him.

ALISON

I’m not complaining. If she hadn’t gone Hai Karate on him, he’d have strangled me.

VALERIE

What got into him?

ALISON holds up her hand. There is goo on it.

ALISON (horrible realisation)

I can guess… [raises voice] Dr Lark, I believe I’m contaminated with what overcame Rory. It’s possible we all are.

CARL, VALERIE and ALISON look at each other.

ALISON

Dr Lark…

MYRA

I’m taking the situation under advisement. You might want to wash your hands. And await further instruction. Dr Lark, out.

CARL

Lark… what? You’re leaving it at that? Come back.

ALISON has been rubbing her hands on her coat.

ALISON

It was inert. We determined that first thing.

MONSTER wheels over RORY.

MONSTER

Man… broken. Man… bad?

ALISON

Man sick. We might all be.

MONSTER (worried)

All… bad?

VALERIE

It’s not your fault. It’s something from the ice.

MONSTER holds up hands. They’re red-gooed.

VALERIE

Is he immune? Will he…? [does clutching hand and nods at RORY]

ALISON

He was swimming in the stuff when we found him. It’s impossible to tell whether it’s affected him at all. He’s not like us. Rory thought it was the elixir vitae Frankenstein used to bring him to life.

CARL

Like in Re-Animator?

ALISON

Yes, only a different flavour of Opal Fruit.

VALERIE

Have you tried using the goo to reanimate anything?

ALISON (realising what RORY was up to)

I think that’s what Rory was planning. Only it was tried on him first.

VALERIE

By whom?

ALISON and VALERIE look at CARL.

CARL

Don’t be absurd…

ALISON

Well, I don’t think Mr Boots is up to the lab work. He’s stuck in the chair, for a start. Look at those hands. Not exactly made for juggling test tubes.

MONSTER (smiles)

Boots.

CARL

They could do a pretty good job of the first part of the process. Killing the test subject…

VALERIE (protective)

He wouldn’t hurt anyone.

CARL (venomous)

That’s not what the book says. The one you’re an expert on.

MONSTER

Man… angry. Angry… bad. Angry men… hurt.

CARL

We should at least put him in a coma. To be on the safe side.

CARL takes out hypodermic syringe.

VALERIE/ALISON (both protective)

No.

CARL

Please yourself. But I want my proposal on record. At the enquiry, I don’t want anyone saying I was negligent.

Blackout.

Lights up. The table/gurney is back. RORY lies on it, coat open over a bloody incision, held apart by surgical clamps.

ALISON on a stool, attaching sensors to her forehead and chest. Her hands are shaking and she’s blotchy-red with goo. She is recording her findings.

ALISON

…the biomatter is no longer inert… it is bonding on a cellular level with… with Subject Alison Craig. It does not function like a fungal or viral infection. It does not appear to be parasitic, but is mutagenic… It does… change the subject. There is cell growth, metamorphosis, internal rearrangement. Subject’s vital signs are strong. Heart rate slightly up. Temperature stable. I observe…

She takes up a metal beaker and crushes it in her hand.

ALISON

…unusual strength. I couldn’t have done that yesterday. I see more than I did.

She takes off her glasses and puts them in her top pocket.

ALISON

I don’t need specs. For the first time since I was twelve.

She feels in her mouth.

ALISON

I’ve another row of teeth coming through. [looks at RORY’s mouth] In examining the previous subject, I find he was starting a new dentition also. It’s hard to tell, because of the damage done in subduing him, but I believe his neck was broken before his changes accelerated. I can’t believe he did that to himself. Memo: was Gala instructed to make a test subject of him?

MYRA

Of course not. That would have overridden Professor Court’s order that she save you.

ALISON (jumps)

You were listening. I’m not surprised. Do you know what’s happening to me?

MYRA

It’s beyond my field… but I’d say that you’re becoming something else. Something not human.

ALISON

You mean a monster?

MYRA

That’s a very loaded term.

ALISON is agitated and shuddering – great changes inside her. She is leaking goo.

ALISON (agitated)

I know what the elixir does now. I have unusual insights because it’s rearranged my brain. My heart rate’s up. My vitals are off the charts. I could tear through the wall. Leap a tall building at a single bound.

She detaches the sensors. She is frothing goo. She looks at her hands. They are clutching claws.

ALISON

But I can’t take this. I’m not designed for this. I’m so alive it’s killing me!

ALISON’s eyes bulge… her brain explodes inside her skull. She drops, spasming.

MYRA

Gala, tidy up.

GALA steps out of shadows, looks down at twitching ALISON, kneels, arm drawn back as if ready to slam the heel of her hand into ALISON’s head.

ALISON

Yes.

Blackout. FX: Horrible squelch.

Lights up.

RORY on table/gurney. ALISON on floor, with bloody towel covering her (smashed) head. CARL is going over notes.

MYRA

Do you support Dr Craig’s hypothesis?

CARL

She had useful insights. A unique perspective, you might say.

MYRA

The elixir… the goo. Its effects are not uniformly beneficial.

CARL

Not for real people. Though it kickstarts all sorts of processes which are highly desirable. It’s what Victor used to bring his creation to life.

MYRA

The goo raises the dead?

CARL

Temporarily. But that’s not what it’s for. As the case of Dr Viner shows. Just raising the dead is of questionable use… they’re still broken. The case of Dr Craig shows that even the living can have too much life. Putting goo in her was like pouring rocket fuel in a 2CV – it blew her apart.

MYRA

What are you saying it does?

CARL

It animates what was not animate and makes it extraordinarily resilient. I was wrong about Frankenstein – he didn’t make his creation the way he did because he lacked tools for microsurgery. It had to have a cast-iron constitution to survive the elixir.

Lights up on MONSTER, in chair, and VALERIE – they can hear MYRA and CARL talking. GALA stands nearby – spatters of blood on her hands and face, which doesn’t bother her.

MYRA

So, commercial applications are limited?

CARL

Not at all. It wasn’t good for baseline bods like Viner and Craig, but it’d be a tonic for Gala. Gala plus goo is Product Thirteen. And many Products to come.

MYRA

You still want to look inside Product One?

MONSTER’s ears prick up.

CARL

Yes. Coma, then dissection. Now, more than ever – we need to see how Frankenstein put it together. So we can make our own.

MYRA

Approval is granted.

MONSTER gasps. VALERIE is appalled.

CARL (surprised but not unhappy)

Really? I can cut it up? You know this means it’ll be nonfunctional… dead.

MYRA

That has been considered.

CARL

Ah. That’s what Unwin want to know, isn’t it? Whether it can be killed?

Lights down on MYRA. CARL notices that MONSTER and VALERIE are listening.

CARL

Ah. You heard that.

VALERIE

I won’t let you hurt him.

MONSTER

Angry man… bad. Angry man… terrible.

CARL has his syringe out again. VALERIE gets between him and the cringing MONSTER.

CARL

You’re not qualified to have an opinion on this part of the process.

VALERIE

Gala, keep Dr Cleaver away from us.

GALA advances.

CARL

Gala, stay! Override code Gepetto Six.

GALA halts.

CARL (raising syringe)

This won’t hurt.

MONSTER whimpers, shrinks in chair. CARL eases VALERIE aside and rolls up MONSTER’s sleeve.

CARL (soothing)

All over soon.

VALERIE snatches the needle and jabs CARL in the neck with it. He stands up stiff, face contorting.

CARL

Judas cunt!

CARL falls forward. Dead.

VALERIE is horrified at what she’s done.

MYRA

Would somebody check Dr Cleaver for deadness.

VALERIE does.

VALERIE

I find Dr Cleaver… uh, life negative.

MYRA

Well, that settles something. As you were… Continue the assessment of Product One.

VALERIE (appalled)

As you were! Dr Lark, Dr Lark…

No response.

MONSTER

Angry man gone?

VALERIE

Yes. Angry man can’t hurt you ever again. Do you understand?

MONSTER nods. VALERIE hugs MONSTER maternally. Holds back tears.

VALERIE

Everything’s going to be all right. I promise. No one’s going to hurt you again… or frighten you… or try to exploit you in any way.

As VALERIE speaks, MONSTER stands up, arms going around her. VALERIE’s instinct is to embrace him. Then she realises he’s out of the chair and has a spasm of worry.

She tries to pull away, but he still holds her. She smiles at him and he smiles back, nastily. He doesn’t look stupid any more.

VALERIE

You can walk? You’re…?

MONSTER

Have you even read that fucking book?

Starting to panic, VALERIE twists around. GALA holds up her copy of Frankenstein.

VALERIE

What? I don’t understand?

MONSTER

Not understand good? Not surprised here. Not fucking surprised at all. Really, Professor Court, I’m astonished that thou’rt such a cretin… How a university could bestow degree and title upon one of such limited understanding is beyond even my considerable comprehension. Then again, you’re just human. All of you… you’re so tiny, so eager. Has mankind advanced so little in two and a half centuries? You’re children prodding cats to see what they’ll do and putting things in your mouths you shouldn’t. All in all, you’ve had your chance and it’s for the best that you quietly die in the corner and let a grown-up species take over. A successor species.

VALERIE

Your back was broken.

MONSTER

It comes apart and goes back together. All of me does. [he snaps his wrist, and then puts his hand back properly] You know, I didn’t think you’d fall for it. You’re supposed to be scientists. Brighter than the average homo idioticus… but no. Still, you shouldn’t be too surprised. ‘This horror will grow mild, this darkness light.’

VALERIE

That’s Milton. Paradise Lost.

MONSTER lets her go. She shrinks away, tripping over CARL.

MONSTER (declaiming)

‘Into this wild Abyss, the womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave… of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire, but all these in their pregnant causes mixed confusedly, and which thus must ever fight, unless the Almighty Maker them ordain His dark materials to create more worlds… Into this wild Abyss the wary Fiend stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith he had to cross.’

VALERIE

I hate Milton.

MONSTER

Call yourself a Professor of Literature!

VALERIE

Media studies.

MONSTER laughs. He clomps around on his boots.

VALERIE

Gala… kill!

GALA marches towards MONSTER. MONSTER laughs extravagantly. MONSTER opens his mouth and CARL’s voice comes out.

FX: CARL’s voice

Gala, override code Gepetto Six.

GALA stops.

MONSTER

Didn’t know I could do that, did you? There’s no end to my talents.

MONSTER opens mouth and ALISON’s voice comes out.

FX: ALISON’s voice

I could tear through the wall. Leap a tall building at a single bound.

MONSTER and GALA close in on VALERIE.

VALERIE

What are you going to do to me?

MONSTER takes off VALERIE’s coat and drops it on the floor. VALERIE crosses her arms over her chest. MONSTER laughs.

MONSTER

Don’t flatter yourself, Mum. You’re just going outside for a little walk. It’s only a thousand miles to Anchorage. I understand it’s not as chilly out there as it was when I first came to this part of the world. Which is, in a general sense, your own damned fault.

VALERIE

I’ll freeze. I’ll die.

MONSTER and GALA are manoeuvring her towards an exit.

MONSTER

Well, try not to. Farewell, friend…

Whimpering, VALERIE is shoved out into the snow.

FX: howling winds.

MONSTER

Sounds like a storm coming. Better hurry up. Bye now…

VALERIE’s whimpering is lost in the rising noise.

MONSTER and GALA look at each other.

MONSTER

There have been technical improvements since Victor put me together.

GALA affects to ignore him. He picks up on the implicit come-on.

MYRA

Product One, Product Twelve… have you completed the course of tests?

MONSTER smiles.

MONSTER

All done. As agreed.

MYRA

That’s nice then. You’ve exceeded expectations.

MONSTER

We’ll see you when we see you.

MYRA

I look forward to it. Unwin Pharma are sure you will give the competition a run for their money.

MONSTER

There is no competition. We are successors. We make the others – we make you – obsolete.

MYRA

There is no me, Product One. I’m just a voice in the aether. I’m more like you than like them. Ice Station Apple is decommissioned. Turn the lights off when you leave.

Lights down on MYRA.

MONSTER picks up a beaker. He scrapes goo off RORY’s face into it, tops it up with goo from ALISON. He holds up the goo and contemplates it.

MONSTER

There’s lovely. Elixir Victor. The milk of Frankenstein. I gave it to him, out on the ice, when he escaped from me in death. He hadn’t suffered enough, so I brought him back and gave him his own medicine. It blew his mind – or at least his brains, which squirted out of his ears and eyes. I was forgetting my manners. My dear, how about a drink? Too strong for our late friends, but you’ll find it quite the tonic…

MONSTER gives the beaker to GALA. She looks at it, reluctant. He urges her with a nod. She lifts it to her lips and sips, likes it, then drinks deeply.

MONSTER

There, you’re well-enough made to benefit… unlike this poor human stuff. How many of us are there, I wonder? We must set about making more of us. Strong sons and daughters. Then we shall take our rightful place. On top of the world.

GALA is ecstatic and invigorated. She looks at MONSTER.

GALA

Friend?

MONSTER

You could say that.

GALA

Good.

MONSTER puts arm around GALA’s shoulders. They look out at the audience.

GALA

We belong… Alive.

YOKAI TOWN: ANNO DRACULA 1899

‘THERE ARE NO vampires in Japan,’ said Masamichi Higurashi. ‘This is the position of the Emperor.’

‘What did he say?’ asked Christina Light, the Princess Casamassima.

Geneviève Dieudonné, Acting Ship’s Doctor, was expected to be translator. She rendered the Japanese statement into simple English.

Kostaki’s red eyes gave away nothing. Christina’s frown let everyone know she was irritated.

‘But what did he mean?’ asked the Princess.

‘There should be no vampires in Japan,’ said Geneviève, in Italian. She suspected Higurashi understood English. ‘If the Emperor states something, it’s a fact. If the Emperor happens to be wrong, it’s this official’s duty to address the situation… not to correct the Emperor, but to correct the world.’

The Princess was impatient, as well she might be. The Macedonia had carried them a long way. This was a Voyage of the Foolishly Hopeful.

‘The Emperor is wrong, by the way,’ Geneviève added. ‘There were vampires – of a sort – in Japan when I was last here.’

…three hundred and fifty years ago, admittedly.

The kyuketsuki couldn’t have died out like the great auk. The Meiji reforms hadn’t even rid the country of unemployed samurai, so she presumed Japan’s ancient blood-drinkers would survive a pogrom. Yuki-Onna, the Woman of the Snow, was as eternal as the white cap of Mount Fuji. Should she lower herself to take a human title, she could claim to be Vampire Empress of Asia. Which would aptly make her Queen of the Cats. Geneviève knew Japanese shapeshifters favoured cats (bakeneko) or nine-tailed foxes (kitsune) over the bats and wolves of Dracula’s bloodline. Really, they should have presented cartes de visite to Yuki-Onna, not the temporary throne-warmer Mutsuhito. It was said her court could only be reached from the earthly plane for one night in a century, which would make securing an audience problematic. Smoke and nonsense put about to puff up her reputation. Like Dracula, Yuki-Onna hadn’t outgrown magic.

Sunset in the Land of the Rising Sun. The sky crimson over Chiba Prefecture, to the west. Higurashi’s launch had steamed from the east shore, where the city sprouted.

Geneviève remembered Tokyo as Edo, bustling military camp of the Tokugawa shogunate. The name changed in 1869, when the young Emperor moved from Kyoto and took Edo Castle for his palace. The new imperial capital was bent on becoming mercantile-political-cultural centre of the Pacific. London, New York or Paris, with earthquakes and bath-houses. The Japanese probably dismissed London as Tokyo with fog and vampires.

The Macedonia was at anchor in Tokyo Bay. On the open deck: three European vampires, petitioning for sanctuary… and one warm Japanese, professing to parlay with creatures he deemed ugly ghosts. Geneviève recognised that two women doing all the talking on their side didn’t help – especially since Christina was a terrible diplomat.

The Princess sat on a little folding chair, as if it were a throne – arranging a scene with her as centrepiece. Her white silk dress had pearls inset in the bodice. The train was wound tightly round her legs, lest it catch the wind and unfurl like a banner of surrender. She looked like a mermaid on a rock, trying not to draw attention to her tail.

Higurashi ignored her anyway.

The emissary spoke with Geneviève – expressing no surprise or pleasure that she knew his language – but treated Kostaki as their chieftain.

Great-coat stripped of insignia, the Moldavian elder seemed a ghost of himself. Without hackle and badge, his shako looked obscenely naked. When he was drummed out of the Carpathian Guard, Kostaki had put away decorations. He even cut off his moustache and shaved his head. A phrenologist might say he had a fine skull. As his doctor, Geneviève thought the rest of him was too meagre, even for a living corpse. His skin was nearly transparent, a rice-paper wrap for his bones.

Kostaki kept his red gaze on Higurashi, hand casually on his sword-hilt. He hadn’t given up the weapon with his epaulettes. It was his property, not the Guard’s. An old blade. It probably had a name – Gut-cutter, Skull-cleaver or Raven-brand. The sword would be at home in Japan, where everything sharp had a coat of arms, an official birthday and secret and public names.

‘Is he a monk?’ asked Higurashi.

Geneviève saw what the Japanese meant. Buddhist bonzes shaved their heads too, and fasting gave many a lean, ascetic look. When had Kostaki last fed?

But Japanese had a precise word for what Kostaki was.

‘Not a monk,’ she told the emissary, ‘ronin.’

A masterless samurai.

Under the Meiji Restoration, steps were taken to curtail the samurai class – seen by the regime as relics of the old, displaced shogunate. Since the suppression of the Satsuma Rebellion, many former retainers of noble houses were unemployed or in disgrace – following the warrior’s path (bushido) without direction. Some turned to freelance heroism. Others to banditry.

France was the same after the Crusades. A bad place to be the sort of person who gets robbed at swordpoint.

Like all in their party, Kostaki looked for more than shelter in a port. He needed a cause.

Higurashi bowed deferentially to the Carpathian.

In a bit of a pet, the Princess Casamassima twinkled. Sparks danced in her aura like dying fireflies. No one had voted Christina to any position of leadership, but she assumed prominence by divine right of Lightness. After marrying into her title, she turned against all it entailed and took up the cause of revolution. Her late husband can’t have been happy about that. Maintaining that ranks and titles were obsolete, she constantly insisted she not be called ‘your highness’. She was particularly sure to tell people who didn’t know she was a princess not to treat her like one. Yet her offhand manner hinted at dire consequences if she weren’t recognised as special.

To be fair, Christina Light was a rare creature. She shone… an unusual vampire trait Geneviève had only heard of. When she was stirred to emotion, her skin glowed with a lustre like her favourite pearls, her golden eyes became white flames and her dark hair rippled with violet luminescence. Like denizens of sea depths beyond the reach of the sun, she was her own candle. Something was very fishy about the Princess Casamassima. Kate Reed, always well-informed, said that the way some vampires could become mist, Christina could turn into moonbeams. Geneviève had not witnessed that – but the Princess sparkled like a chandelier when exercising her power of fascination, and burned white hot if it didn’t entirely work.

The glamour was a property of the vampire condition not shared by Geneviève’s bloodline. Life would be simpler if anyone could be made to do what she wanted… but getting one’s way all the time was bad for the character. She could instance many examples, warm and undead, of this lesson. The Princess Casamassima was at the head of that list. Prince Dracula was on it too. And Mr Mycroft Holmes of the Diogenes Club, who was at least as responsible for her being a woman without a country as Dracula himself. Britain was a country with too many puppet-masters… everyone else got their strings tangled.

She had to admire Higurashi. Christina’s fireworks didn’t jar his composure. He kept talking to Geneviève as if she were a trained monkey and keeping his eye on Kostaki as if he were the organ-grinder.

To meet the vampires, the emissary wore European formal dress – tailcoat, starched collar, red stock, diplomatic sash, top hat. He might have been the Mayor of Middlesbrough visiting a trade council. Like Kostaki, he kept a hand near his ceremonial sword, as if by studied accident. His German sabre was a subtle mark of contempt. The foreigners weren’t worth Japanese steel.

The Macedonia had steamed across oceans with its strange captain and stranger cargo, turned away from many harbours like a plague ship. Gunboats kept them out of San Francisco Bay, and followed at respectful distance until the ship quit US waters. No sanctuary for turncloaks in the Americas. They did not count as ‘huddled masses yearning to breathe free’ for it was popularly supposed they did not breathe at all. Canada and Australia would take warm refugees from the rule of Prince Dracula, but not them – not vampires.

If any of their party showed their faces in London, they’d be impaled in public, beheaded with silver and have their ashes strewn on Rotten Row. They were against Dracula, and escaping from his dominion… but in America the Kane papers screamed that they were secretly his murder-missionaries, spreaders of his vile bloodline. Dracula was undisputed King of the Cats, and they were cats – so they must bow to him and work for the subjugation of the whole warm world. Even on the other side of the globe, his stench was on them: when Higurashi said Dorakura, he scowled as if biting into something disgusting.

Geneviève assumed the Japanese Navy had guns trained on the Macedonia. Not that there was much point. The ship was held together by rust and rancid seal-fat, more likely to be sunk by a squall than enemy action. It was all they could get and Death Larsen the only captain, alive or undead, bloody-minded enough to take on the turncloaks. Without him, they’d have to sail across the vast deep in single open coffins, paddling with their hands, dreading the rise of inescapable sun. At that, sharing a nightly table with Larsen was high price for a passage. Many warm fellows were disgusted by the way vampires fed… but the most ravening, fang-mawed ghoul was refined next to the Captain.

Yet the brute had his vanities. He was proud of his nickname. When they met in Panama City, none of the vampires were impressed by his sinister soubriquet or curious enough to ask how he came by it. His scarred lips twitched in an almost childish moué.

They had come to the Americas on the clipper Elizabeth Dane, another ill-starred ship, then crossed the Isthmus of Panama by mule-train.

‘I have read of the Demeter,’ Larsen told them, as the cargo of caskets was loaded aboard the Macedonia just as Dracula’s earth-boxes were once stowed in the hold of the ship which brought him to England. ‘On that voyage, there was but one leech and a whole crew to feed him. My ship has a hundred vampyrer… a hundred thirsty bastards. And me. I am not the fool who skippered the Demeter. My crew are not meat and drink to monsters. They are mine alone. They call me Death Larsen. Death. What a name! Death. You wonder why that is so, perhaps. Many times have I earned it. My own brother gave it me, first. He was one of you bloodsuckers – a wolf inside a man. Captain of the Ghost. Wolf Larsen is no more. If I am Death Larsen, he is Dead Larsen. A fine joke, hah hah. Dead, for he is dead, at the bottom of the sea. And my silver seal-harpoon through him. Thus I treat my own kin. You, I know not and care not for. A warning, that is all. It would be best if you kept to your boxes. Or the ship arrives in port free of leeches, and my brother has company down below – so many bats to follow one wolf.’

Fifteen years ago, perhaps, Death Larsen was the most terrifying thing in his world – then Dracula came out of Transylvania to conquer London. With him he brought horrors most of humanity had forgotten or hadn’t believed in. A warm man called Death could scarcely expect to command the fear he used to when people who were Death cast such long shadows.

Most of the party were still hibernating. The Macedonia wasn’t a passenger vessel or even really a cargo ship. Its usual business was seal-hunting, and its holds were foul with a carcass stink which would never wash away. Larsen’s crew stayed clear of the stacks of coffins, for vampire sleep was not always restful. Thirst gnawed in the stomach like a rat and even the undead dreamed. Many had nightmares of Dracula, spreading black wings. Or the mob, with fire and silver. They were devils cast out of Hell and not wanted in Heaven.

Kostaki volunteered to be supercargo, to watch over his comrades – remembering the slaver habit of tipping the goods over the side to avoid revenue cutters. With the Carpathian on watch, Captain Larsen could not just steal what they’d been able to take from England and consign them to the sea. Christina Light would not sleep away an opportunity to speak for them all, so she stayed out of the hold too.

Geneviève was roused from her padded trunk after Doskil, the ship’s doctor, cut his throat. Apparently, Death Larsen took it in mind to tear strips off him at supper. The Captain let fly a stream of inventive, vicious remarks which could, in the end, not be borne. Kostaki – former commander in the Carpathian Guard, famous across Europe for savage cruelty – professed to be appalled at the way Larsen set about murdering the little man, throwing words like small harpoons. A ship must have a sawbones and Kostaki remembered Geneviève had worked in clinics and missions in London. So, she was summoned from lassitude. Head still bleary, she inherited Doskil’s cabin. It had been scrubbed but was permeated with spilled, spoiled blood – a sniff was enough to force her fang-teeth from their gumsheaths. It was painful and frustrating. She must look a fright, for she had to fight red thirst as a warm drunk in a berth soaked with whisky might struggle with the lure of the bottle.

Most minor injuries she had treated were caused by Death Larsen. He liked to lash out with the tarred end of a rope as much as his razored tongue. At one meal, he flicked the rope-end at a muscular, big-chinned American seaman for gobbling greens straight from the can.

‘You’ll have to find a new name, Hawk-Eye the Sailor Man,’ snarled the Captain.

She saved the Yank from having to wear a patch, but he’d never again see out of that eye.

If they couldn’t put ashore in Japan, they were stuck aboard this hellship with Death Larsen forever – or until he exhausted his crew’s capacity to take punishment, and went after the passengers. Seven vampires had already gone to dust and bone in their boxes. She could only guess how that might have happened. Death wanted them to show him the respect of fear, even if it killed them all – which it might.

Defying Dracula meant having interesting associates. Some Geneviève would steer clear of if she had a choice. In the hold were many choice nosferatu specimens. Mr Yam, a jiangshi who once tried to pull off her head, for one. The Chinese elder was an assassin who accepted too many commissions to murder (understandably unpopular) Dracula cronies. Along with committed political opponents of the regime and criminals who’d be on the run no matter who ruled England were former loyalists fallen from favour. Most were selfish rogues or fools who made the mistake of getting found out – though Kostaki was doomed to exile for stubbornly sticking by a military code of honour which was an embarrassment to superior officers and frightened the troops.

Sergeant Daniel Dravot was down there too, implacable agent of the Diogenes Club – probably still keeping watch on her. Hard as it was to be accepted into the Club, membership turned out to be practically impossible to resign. Doubtless, Dravot had sealed orders for every occasion sewn into the lining of his coat. Even in the Far East, she was ensnared in Mycroft’s schemes. She had been used by the Diogenes Club before, and did not much relish the memory. It had cost her a man she might love – and for whom she was still just about willing to stay in Mr Holmes’s Great Game. Their little group – Charles, Mycroft, Dravot, Geneviève – once dealt a great blow to Dracula’s rule, but it was taking an age for the Prince to fall.

A smart steam launch had ferried Higurashi to the Macedonia. All brass trim and tight lines. A brand new flag flew from its aft-pole. A red circle on white, like a large spot of blood on your best tablecloth. A Maxim gun was mounted on the prow. The lid was off the ammunition box, giving them sight of the gleam of silver shells.

The Japanese Navy were loaded for vampires.

In modernising his armed forces, the Emperor had a passion for buying – or copying – from the great Western naval powers. The launch might have been built in a British shipyard. Japanese sailors looked like smart sea cadets from Dartmouth. White, white uniforms. Skin smooth, as if they’d just shaved for the first time – tiny little razor-nicks above fresh collars.

Delicious little beads of red.

It’d been a long time since she drank anything but ship’s rat-blood.

‘We… wish… to… come… ashore,’ said the Princess, enunciating each English word like an American ordering a steak and potatoes in Paris.

Higurashi gave no sign of understanding.

‘We’re in need of urgent repairs… and provisions,’ Geneviève said, in Japanese. ‘We can pay.’

Ironically, one thing they weren’t short of was money. Vampires tended to get rich over the centuries. Well, other vampires did. She was perpetually skint, and among the few of her kind obliged to work for a living – she’d even bargained hard for wages from Captain Larsen.

The Princess Casamassima’s credit was good at any bank in the world, thanks to the fabulous fortune she had from her husband. He’d tried to turn vampire when she did, but his family blood was too thin. While Christina rose from death as a shining vampire angel, he shrivelled into something like a very old human-sized vole who coughed and shat for a few nights then became compost which had to be shovelled into the Casamassima vaults in Rome. Christina Light, of American and Italian parentage and strange airy-fairy bloodline, was a relative new-born, but already acted like the breed of elder who looked down on Dracula as an ill-mannered parvenu. Just the sort to become a revolutionary. She thought the ruling classes – and, indeed, everyone else – were beneath her, and would like to rearrange the world to prop up that belief. Much like an Emperor of Japan.

If she got ashore, she’d probably become Empress. Hikari-Onna, Woman of Light.

In London, the Princess was leading light – ahem – of a series of short-lived councils, factions, unions, cells and parties of opposition which tended to fall apart through internal squabbles before Mr Caleb Croft’s Special Branch or General Iorga’s Carpathian Guard got round to infiltrating or raiding them. Christina had the useful habit of becoming a sole survivor. Useful for her – not for anyone else in any gang or group she fixed on as a playroom. A lesson Geneviève hoped the passengers of the Macedonia did not have to learn.

‘We are refugees,’ she continued. ‘We seek only sanctuary.’

Higurashi nodded, once. She couldn’t tell if it was a yay or nay nod.

The emissary had come aboard the Macedonia alone. Considering that it was a ship of monsters, that showed courage. She did not sense a death-wish or foolhardy confidence. He was more than just a messenger.

The way he stood, at ease yet coiled… was just like Kostaki. That touch with the lid of the ammunition case was neat. He was dangerous.

Geneviève suspected Higurashi was associated with the Black Ocean Society. Their members were drawn from the elders of feudal houses who initially backed rebellions against Mutsuhito – but who had come to be his strongest supporters, even cutting loose and hunting down their own former vassals and allies to get close to the throne. Now, they had great influence with the Emperor – perhaps even over the Emperor. Black Ocean felt an Emperor should have an empire, and agitated for the accumulation of overseas possessions in Korea, China and elsewhere. They ran a chain of brothels across Asia to finance patriotic endeavours and harvest useful information. Even Mycroft Holmes would draw the line at that.

With India in turmoil after successive mutinies against Dracula’s Viceroys – the atrocious Sir Francis Varney, the ruthless Hymber Masters, the disgusting Lionel Roach – Black Ocean might even consider the sub-continent achievable territory. Like the British, the Chinese and the Russians, the Japanese drank tea… tea-drinkers always wanted empires. Even bloodsuckers were less rapacious. Blessed with time, they cared less for space. They generally didn’t even own their graves. Except Dracula, of course. He would be King of Space and Lord of Time. Which is why Geneviève had sailed to a hemisphere where he held no sway.

Higurashi was sizing them up.

That was why he had come aboard. Not to talk, but to pass judgement.

After tiresome debate between Geneviève and Christina, with Kostaki grunting every half hour or so, they had decided all three should meet the emissary. The Princess had tactfully wondered whether it might be best to keep Kostaki in the shade – since he was most likely the kind of vampire the Japanese would take fright at. She allowed that Geneviève presented at least an unthreatening face… and was confident her own charm would carry the day, as it had so often. Of course, it was impossible to glamour someone who betrays no sign he can see you. It was as well Kostaki was of their party. Otherwise, Higurashi might have pretended not even to hear them, waving invisible butterflies away into insignificance with a hand-flap.

The former Carpathian Guardsman kept quiet.

There seemed nothing more to be said. Geneviève wondered about Indo-China, Madagascar or East Africa. Would the Macedonia survive another ocean crossing?

From inside his coat, Kostaki took a white scarf. He used his left hand, leaving his right on his sword.

He handed the scarf to Christina and stood well back.

Higurashi faced him.

The Carpathian and the Japanese shared no spoken language, but understood each other.

She didn’t even try to intervene.

The bay was calm, but the deck still shifted. A slight breeze rippled the scarf.

Warm men might feel the January cold. Higurashi’s breath frosted. Kostaki’s did not.

‘Heh, men, look,’ said Captain Larsen, who had kept an eye on the conclave from his wheelhouse.

The crew – a sour lot she’d treated for gashes and bruises, resisting the temptation to lick a welling cut for fear of a marlinspike through the heart – paid attention. An audience for… what? A duel?

Higurashi and Kostaki let their hands rise from sword hilts.

Christina held up the scarf, which streamed like a ribbon.

Were they declaring war on Japan?

Christina let the scarf go. It flew away.

Quicker than the human – quicker than the vampire – eye could register, Higurashi and Kostaki drew swords.

…the shiver of steel sliding from scabbards set Geneviève’s nerves on edge… she felt it in her sharpening teeth, and the salt tang of blood from her torn gums…

They struck poses.

The point of Higurashi’s sabre dimpled Kostaki’s coat, over the heart.

The edge of Kostaki’s epée rested against the inside of Higurashi’s thigh.

They stood like a stage tableau. Christina was puzzled. She knew what the thrust to the heart meant to a vampire, but not what the severing of the profunda femoris artery was to a warm man.

It always surprised Geneviève that so many who lived off human blood troubled to learn so little of anatomy. As a warm girl, she was apprenticed to her father, a battlefield doctor in the service of the Dauphin. She had schooling enough in the ways men bleed and die before she turned vampire and subsequent centuries kept up to date with fatal wounds and how they were inflicted.

The duellists stepped back and sheathed swords.

She knew now why Higurashi brought a German sabre. It was silver-plated. Since there were no vampires in Japan, local swordsmiths didn’t manufacture weapons to kill them – so they were imported. She wasn’t surprised silver bullets and silver swords had reached Japan before they did. The best were manufactured in Sheffield, with Dracula’s mark stamped in them – British arms were bought around the world.

Higurashi and Kostaki each had the measure of the other.

In the Ittō-ryū style – the duel of the single stroke – they were at stalemate, and neither would survive. They did not need to press the matter further.

‘What is this silliness?’ Christina asked.

‘It’s been settled,’ Geneviève told her.

‘You may come ashore,’ said Higurashi, in English. ‘But you will be permitted only in a certain district.’

* * *

In Yokai Town, a scruffy dog trotted down the cracked street, jaws clamped around a recently severed human hand.

‘Charming,’ said Christina, putting a parasol between her and the unpleasant sight.

The Princess was a parasol-after-dark sort of woman.

A ragged, squawking fellow in a grubby striped robe ran after the mongrel, bloody rag wound round his leaking wrist-stump. Geneviève recognised the tengu bloodline, which was characterised by avian traits. His mouth and nose fused into a pushed-out beak. His feathery hair was clipped into a topknot. His sandals flapped against toe-talons.

She felt red thirst rising. She knew others did too.

Even tengu blood drew her fangs. She must feed soon.

‘Nice doggie,’ said Drusila, a friend of Christina’s. She struck Geneviève as doolally, but was supposed to be a renowned psychic medium. ‘Can we keep him?’

‘No, dear,’ said Christina. ‘You don’t know where he’s been.’

The dog trotted into an alley, followed by the mutilated bird-man. After a noisome fight, the tengu strode out of the alley. He screwed his hand back on, and flexed empurpled, horn-tipped fingers. The dog whined, cheated of a meat supper.

The tengu noticed them, for the first time – and was startled. He bowed, yapped and backed away. Then, with a gait like a flightless bird trying to take wing, he ran into the fog, as if trying to hide in it.

Some of their party may be fearsome, but the tengu wasn’t reacting to foreign devils like Danny Dravot or Josh York. His eyes bugged at the sight of Lieutenant Katō – which made him turn tail-feathers and hop off the way he came. So he was more afraid of the Japanese officer than whoever cut off his hand and fed it to a dog. She didn’t have to be Drusila to intuit how bad an omen that was. Katō wasn’t so much their native guide in Yokai Town as an overseer. The blandly handsome young man conducted himself like the chief warden of a prison camp – which might be uncomfortably close to the truth. They were barely tolerated guests of a ruler who insisted vampires were not numbered among his subjects.

This district – Yokai Town – was where they kept creatures which did not exist by imperial decree.

Thick fog hung perpetually over this shabby, desolate place. Not green-yellow London peasoup, but misty grey-white and salty. Locals waded through murk like fish swimming in muddy water – brute, hulking whales leaving obvious, swirling wakes… slender, sly eels slithering without stirring up eddies. Most of the passengers of the Macedonia were sensitive in one way or another. They knew things were out there, spying.

This was the old Edo waterfront, abandoned to monsters after the outward-looking Emperor opened Tokyo’s deep-water docks to facilitate international commerce. Yokai Town extended into the Arakawa River on unsteady platforms which became a system of artificial islands. Boats at permanent berth served as homes, restaurants, warehouses and government offices. Ashore, buildings were ill-repaired and amenities were meagre. Lanterns hung at irregular intervals, but few managed to stay lit.

Geneviève could swear one lamp stared at her with a large green eye.

Most of the vampires were still in coffins, stacked on carts.

Kostaki had awakened a few to help remove the party from the Macedonia to Yokai Town. Naturally, Danny Dravot – a born non-commissioned officer – was among their number. Christina had insisted on uncrating Drusila, to have someone to talk to who wasn’t Geneviève. Frankly, the Princess treated Dru like miners treated canaries – if her head exploded, they’d know they were in a bad place.

…which they knew already. They were always in a bad place. London was a bad place. The Macedonia was a bad place.

Yokai Town was a home away from home.

‘What does yokai mean?’ asked Whelpdale, a plump new-born vampire.

‘Among other things, us,’ said Geneviève. ‘The word can be translated as “monster”, “ghost”, “goblin” or “apparition”.’

‘And this is their town?’

‘It’s a polite Japanese way of saying ghetto.’

‘I suspicioned as much, Miss Doodydunny,’ said Whelpdale. ‘I know a rookery when I see one. Look at this shambles. No life about it at all. We’ll run the place inside a week, mark my words and no mistake.’

In London, Whelpdale – a lesser light of the book trade – got on the wrong side of Special Branch by printing a series of obscene illustrated pamphlets entitled The Private Memoirs of Prince Dracula. He didn’t write the smut himself – the author was his brother-in-law Jasper Milvain, a warm sharpie too slippery to be taken into custody. As publisher of record, Whelpdale was convicted of seditious libel – a capital offence if you libelled Dracula, seditiously or otherwise. Exercising newfound vampire flexibility, he squeezed between the bars of Pentonville Prison, breaking most of his bones, and fled, healing as best he could in the circumstances. He was still floppy and stretched out of shape.

‘Japanese prints are a very popular specialty item back home,’ he said.

She knew the type of prints he meant. Pillow books – exquisitely tasteful pictures of folk doing things in beds, or things traditionally done in beds done in other, more stimulating locations.

Unlike every other vampire on the Macedonia, Whelpdale had thought to pack a trunk with books – exclusively his own publications, of course. Thanks to a shortage of reading matter on board, Geneviève and Christina had been through all of them… though amusement wears thin after a dozen or so pages. Milvain had some good sources close to the throne – a few choice nuggets of gossip rang true, especially regarding Lord Ruthven’s caddish dalliance with the Schlegel sisters – but his imagination was limited, and when fancy should take flight his prose tended to thud down to earth. He was another who should trouble to learn more anatomy, for many acts he described would only be possible for people who were – like Whelpdale – practically boneless.

The Macedonia was guided by tug to a quay where Lieutenant Majin Katō awaited. A crew of roughs were ready to pile coffins on carts. Their foreman – the lantern-jawed, pigtailed giant Kannuki – might technically qualify as yokai. The officer directed the dock-workers but wouldn’t look any of the foreigners in the eye.

‘That man’s hands are alive,’ said Drusila, meaning Katō. ‘More than the rest of him.’

‘Yes, dear, I’m sure,’ said Christina. ‘You’ll feel better after a nip.’

The Princess liked to have the seeress around, but never listened to her. Geneviève had learned to pay more attention. Drusila had a habit of making pronouncements which sounded like piffle but later made horrible sense. Perhaps she clearly saw troubled waters ahead but was constitutionally unable to say straight out that they should change course. The meaning of her topsy-turvy ramblings only became apparent when it was too late to avoid catastrophe. If canaries could serve miners the same way, they would.

‘O willow, tit-willow, tit-willow,’ she trilled.

Maybe she knew Geneviève was thinking of canaries. Maybe being in Japan reminded her of The Mikado. Or maybe she just couldn’t get the tune out of her head.

She could mean something or nothing – it was a waste of time trying to parse her, though everyone around her was compelled to try.

Katō wore white gloves, which made his hands seem huge. They shone, almost like Christina.

Majin wasn’t a name, but a title. Demon-man.

Katō, despite his lowly official rank, was a considerable person in Yokai Town. Geneviève knew it before he scared off the tengu. That Drusila had blurry insights about him was further confirmation of his high standing.

His blue uniform cape – combined with the gloves – gave him the look of a stage conjurer. His gestures were precise, but forceful. He wore his shiny-peaked uniform cap low so his eyes glinted in shade. He was used to command – and commanding more than men.

She mentioned the thing about him not looking at them.

‘It’s not that,’ said Drusila. ‘He doesn’t want us to look at him.’

Naturally, after that, Geneviève stared at Katō. Sometimes, she thought Drusila wasn’t as cracked an egg as they took her for. She also had the trick of making people do what she wanted, if in a round-the-back-of-the-houses sort of way – not through force of will, but by tapping nerves with a mallet like a doctor eliciting a knee-jerk reflex. Then she smiled to herself and changed the subject.

‘That mousey girl should mind her p’s and q’s,’ said Drusila. ‘Or she shan’t have any jam for supper.’

There was no mousey girl.

Geneviève and Christina exchanged shrugs.

‘Just because you can’t see her yet doesn’t mean she’s not important to the story,’ said Drusila.

‘Yes, dear,’ said Christina.

Lieutenant Katō walked ahead of the little procession of carts, like the man with a red flag preceding an automobile. Higurashi had said accommodations would be found for the party in Yokai Town. Geneviève trusted he didn’t mean a cemetery.

Kostaki had sent scouts – Mr Yee, as foreign here as he was in London, and Verlaine, an angry redheaded woman – out into the fog, with orders to report back if it looked like Katō was leading them into an ambush. Kostaki still thought like a soldier, which she supposed was just as well. He was a good judge of vampires. Yee, an assassin, and Verlaine, a mercenary, were about the only ones of the party – including herself, and most definitely including Christina – Geneviève would trust not to abandon the mission and hare off in search of fresh warm blood. Red thirst makes vampires selfish, small-minded – and easy to gull, catch and kill. It’s why, before Dracula, they never really accomplished anything as a species. Too intent on their next feeding to find common cause, they didn’t much care for each other’s company. Wolves were pack animals. Vampires were not.

Yee and Verlaine were as ravenous as the rest of them, but professionals took necessary pride in their work. No one wants to employ an unreliable mercenary. Like Geneviève, they earned their living, but by inflicting the sort of harm which meant she’d never be short of work, though she suspected folks Yee and Verlaine got the better of were more likely to need burying than doctoring.

How many silvered swords were there in Tokyo? How many cases of silver bullets?

Katō led them along a broad thoroughfare – wide enough so the fog made buildings on both sides indistinct. They were spied on, every step of the way. Shapes and eyes behind screens and in shadows. Aside from the tengu, who had a pressing reason for showing himself, they’d seen no one on the streets. The inhabitants of Yokai Town kept out of Katō’s way.

Eventually, they arrived at a large, tiered building. Red wood, with flaking white and gold trim. A stack of projecting roofs like large, square hats. Set in its own ill-kept grounds, with a shallow pool in a front courtyard. Katō signalled a halt in front of a torii gate – two orange-painted pillars with crossbars and a slate roof. A curtain of cobweb hung across the gate. The Lieutenant had Kannuki – whose long face looked like pulled dough, with raisin eyes – tear down the thick webs with a docker’s hook, scattering fist-sized fat spiders which he took a mean, childish joy in trampling with spade-blade clogs. The spiders squealed as they popped. The markings on their hairy backs resembled sketches of distressed human faces.

A banner bore red characters. Sen Kwai Ji.

‘What does that say?’ asked Christina. ‘“No Hawkers or Circulars”?’

‘Or “Beware of the Dog”?’ suggested Whelpdale.

Considering the specialised diet of dogs in this place, that wasn’t a poor guess.

‘So far as I can make out,’ Geneviève said, ‘“Temple of One Thousand Monsters”.’

‘Sounds lovely,’ said Christina.

‘Poetic licence, ducks,’ said Drusila. ‘There are only six hundred and ninety-eight monsters. Eight hundred and fifteen, if you include us. Eight hundred and sixteen, if you include the Demon Man With White Hands.’

‘Don’t pay her attention,’ said Christina, airily. ‘She makes up the numbers to sound impressive. When she says there are seven thousand, six hundred and twelve sunflower seeds on the floor, no one ever counts them and contradicts her.’

‘Seventy-six hours, fourteen minutes and three seconds,’ said Drusila. ‘That’s how long eternal life lasted for Prince Casamassima. His old black blood turned to charcoal and clogged his heart. Which went sploosh.’

Christina was cross with Drusila for bringing this up. She shimmered.

But they had other concerns at present.

Geneviève sidestepped to avoid a scuttling spider – even though she had good leather boots on, she didn’t want the thing running over her toes.

A deputation of three awaited in the temple courtyard. On a raised stone platform by the pool.

A squat, child-sized person sat on his haunches, stunted body barely supporting a swollen head which looked like a rotten green potato with a wide face on it and curly fangs stuck out of a slit-mouth. He wore a coat of woven rushes and a circular straw hat a yard across.

A white-faced, beautiful woman posed on a mat, playing a samisen – a long-necked musical instrument. Her kimono was decorated with a surging wave motif. She nodded with each plucked note.

A singular little fellow seemed to be a living folded umbrella. He had one bare muscular hairy human leg, a corrugated flesh cone body sporting a single large eye and a smiling set of fleshy lips, and a topknot with a bow in it.

Whelpdale swore in astonishment.

‘These are yokai,’ Geneviève said. She’d known what to expect and was still rattled.

In woodcuts, these creatures looked absurd and almost endearing. In the flesh, they exuded wrongness. In the West, vampire shapeshifters were swimmers who stuck close to the shore. They relied on the familiar forms of bats and wolves – or, in rarer cases, insects and reptiles – but always retained a human template, reluctant to leave behind what they were before turning. At most, they had permanently sharper teeth. In the East, traditions were different – and other shapes, other practices, emerged.

Even if he crushed his bones to paste, she doubted Whelpdale could turn himself inside-out like an umbrella… and couldn’t conceive of circumstances whereby the new-born would want to.

Make no mistake: the yokai of Japan were vampires, if distant cousins only to the nosferatu of Europe. The same went for the aswang of the Philippines, the penanggalan of Malaya and the pontianak of Java. They just weren’t the sort of vampires Lord Ruthven would invite to Downing Street for whist and a nibble on the maid… or Prince Dracula would baptise with foeman’s blood during a Carpathian Guard initiation. Some Far Eastern vampires had extra lamprey mouths on the backs of their heads or necks, hidden by long hair, used only for feeding. Others wore their lungs and entrails on the outsides of their bodies, and decorated their exposed innards with ribbons and bows. Many indulged in practices which would disgust Graf Orlok, reputedly the most repulsive vampire in Europe. The frog-faced dwarves of the Japanese kappa bloodline lived in ponds, crawling out of the water to eat farmers’ livers and rape their wives. They took blood only from horses and cows, fixing mouths over the animals’ anuses while sticking tongue-tentacles into their bowels. The pale, self-dramatising, perfume-and-powder murgatroyd dandies who paraded nightly in Piccadilly would not go in for that. Their frilly shirts and velvet britches would get filthy.

‘At least the popsy with the sideways guitar looks halfway normal,’ said Whelpdale. ‘Though it sounds like she forgot to kill the cat before stringing its guts on that there plink-a-plonk affair. Is she one of them geisha girlies?’

The woman played and sang. Japanese music used to seem harsh and discordant to Western ears, but the Mikado craze had given London aesthetes a taste for it, along with fans and lanterns. As the tune played out, the musician’s neck elongated by six or eight feet… as if it were string and her head a balloon. Christina was revolted and pained. Drusila smiled, enraptured by the trick – and flapped the heels of her hands together in applause. Whelpdale whistled, out of tune.

Katō walked up to the trio. The umbrella yokai hopped behind the long-necked woman, and the green-faced goblin rolled into a ball. The woman’s neck undulated like a serpent. She was her own snake-charmer, head swaying to the music of her hands. She smiled down on Katō, showing pearly cobra fangs.

Another specimen of the vampires not found in Japan.

Katō raised his hand and his glove seemed to throb with light.

It was a signal they come forward – or at least the most important of them, Kostaki and Christina. And Geneviève, if only to translate.

Katō stood back.

‘I am Lady Oyotsu,’ said the woman, voice ululating from distended vocal cords. ‘Abbess of the temple. These are my attendants, Abura Sumashi and Kasabake.’

Abura Sumashi, the potato-head, rolled around so his grinning face was uppermost. His tongue poked out and she decided she wouldn’t trust him near the back end of her livestock, if she had any. Kasabake, the umbrella demon, opened and closed. His struts were bony ribs, attached to a column that was once a human spine. His long-lashed eye winked. She thought him smitten with Christina’s Paris parasol.

‘My lady abbess, I am Geneviève Dieudonné, a physician,’ she said, in Japanese. ‘This is Captain Kostaki, late of the Carpathian Guard, and the Princess Casamassima, who you will find an enormous pain in the neck. We are yokai from Europe. Kyuketsuki. In our language, vampires.’

Lady Oyotsu looked at each of them in turn, paying particular attention to Christina. Her head bobbed, and Geneviève saw how muscular and supple her long neck was. At full extent, she was less like a giraffe than one of the prehistoric monster statues in Crystal Palace Park. Her pallor was painted, as were the ash-smudge eyebrows in the middle of her forehead and the cherry-red bow of her lips.

‘Vampires, you are welcome guests,’ she said.

Katō made a signal, and the carts were unloaded. Kannuki and the workmen set the boxes down outside the gate, taking care not to step onto temple grounds. At a nod from Lady Oyotsu, several ogre-like yokai – as big as Kannuki, with demon masks and scraps of armour – shambled from the shadows to take over, hauling coffins into the courtyard.

‘Eight hundred and fifteen again,’ said Drusila. ‘One of us just died.’

TO BE CONTINUED IN
ANNO DRACULA 1999: DAIKAIJU

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

THANKS TO KEALAN Patrick Burke, Ramsey Campbell, Jonathan Carroll, Jack Dann, Ellen Datlow, Dennis Etchison, Larry Fessenden, Neil Gardner, David Garnett, Scott Harrison, Sean Hogan, Maxim Jakubowski, Stephen Jones, Marvin Kaye, Katz Makihara, Maura McHugh, Glenn McQuaid, David Pringle, Nicholas Royle, Al Sarrantonio, David Sutton, Cath Trechman, Cat Camacho.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

KIM NEWMAN IS a novelist, critic and broadcaster. His fiction includes The Night Mayor, Bad Dreams, Jago, the Anno Dracula novels and stories, The Quorum and Life’s Lottery, all currently being reissued by Titan Books, Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D’Urbervilles published by Titan Books and The Vampire Genevieve and Orgy of the Blood Parasites as Jack Yeovil. The critically acclaimed An English Ghost Story, which was nominated for the inaugural James Herbert Award, and most recently, Angels of Music. His non-fiction books include the influential Nightmare Movies (recently reissued by Bloomsbury in an updated edition), Ghastly Beyond Belief (with Neil Gaiman), Horror: 100 Best Books (with Stephen Jones), Wild West Movies, The BFI Companion to Horror, Millennium Movies, BFI Classics studies of Cat People and Doctor Who, and the forthcoming Video Dungeon, a collection of his popular Empire magazine columns of the same name.

He is a contributing editor to Sight & Sound and Empire magazines, has written and broadcast widely on a range of topics, and scripted radio and television documentaries. His stories ‘Week Woman’ and ‘Übermensch’ have been adapted into an episode of the TV series The Hunger and an Australian short film; he has directed and written a tiny film, Missing Girl. Following his Radio 4 play ‘Cry Babies’, he wrote an episode (‘Phish Phood’) for Radio 7’s series The Man in Black.

Follow him on Twitter @annodracula. His official website can be found at www.johnnyalucard.com

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Enter if you dare.

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