The Murdstone Trilogy (12 page)

For much of the rest of the day, Philip’s relief at having evaded blindness and castration kept his other worries at bay.

After Pocket Wellfair’s involuntary resyphoning into the Realm, he smoked a couple of cigarettes while waiting for his jumpy nerves to settle. Then he returned to his computer and tightened the belt around the Amulet. Nothing happened. No visuals, voice, or text. He was not dismayed; not even surprised. After what had happened there was bound to be a hiatus.

He went downstairs and drank a large malt while microwaving a frozen Green Thai Chicken Curry. He was thinking that, on reflection, risking one’s eyes and testicles for a million pounds hadn’t really been sensible. He already had a million – more, in fact – in a Swiss bank and it wasn’t really that much money. It was far less than it used to be.

He ate the curry, which was like a bath additive with lumps in it, then watched the early evening television news without taking it in. He took the whisky bottle to
his study. After a while he decided to change his screensaver. Minerva and her cherry no longer seemed … appropriate.

He clicked through the rest of My Pictures, but of the few that didn’t feature her there were none that took his fancy. There was a fairly good one of the neon riot that was Times Square, but you couldn’t make out the icons against it. In the end he chose a pre-installed Microsoft sample of the Taj Mahal because the
Murdstone 2
folder looked nice in the blue Indian sky. Then he went to bed.

He awoke to the early sounds of bird-chirp and tractorsnarl because something like a dream had startled him. But no, it was only memory. He blinked at the blank ceiling then turned his head and saw the usual. He checked the contents of his scrotum and found everything still present and more or less correct. He spent the morning doing housework, occasionally diddling himself through the lining of his trouser pockets, sometimes looking out at the world’s wintry things in a chuckly appreciative sort of a way.

This smug interlude, this honeymoon with himself, didn’t last long, however. By the time the vague sun had leached into the dim of the Dartmoor afternoon the mantra
I got away with it
had lost its power.

Because there was still the book.

The unfinished book.

And all the shit that went with that.

He went to his study and tried to think in sentences.

He had, what, a quarter of it?

Well, nearly a quarter of what
Dark Entropy
had turned out as.

Bloody good too. Dark, yes, but …

Pocket would definitely try again to get hold of the Amulet. For sure. Had to. So he would be back.

Get yourself ready for that, Murdstone. Stay away from the Wringers. Keep your eye on the lav.

Or maybe he wouldn’t. Because the Amulet had, obviously, turned against him – Pocket – because, obviously, it wanted (could inanimate things
want
?) to be with him. Me.

Yes.

Because it had a story to tell him. Neither here nor there, all that bollocks of Pocket’s about it not having happened yet. Gorgon wouldn’t give a toss. Imagine saying to them, ‘Sorry, I can’t give you the new book because the things in it haven’t happened yet.’ They’d have him dragged off in a straitjacket to the agony dungeon of some corporate lawyer.

Or—

There wouldn’t be any more. It was over.

No. Don’t Go There.

There is the dark bourne.

There is the windowless room where the spiders live.

In which Minerva would rip him apart.

He couldn’t take the Amulet off, of course. It might restart transmission at any time.

Was it safe to go out of doors with it on, though, with livestock roaming about? Come to that, it wasn’t entirely unlikely that the Amulet might mistake the inhabitants
of Flemworthy for Gremes. Indeed not. There would be very tricky repercussions if he popped into Kwik Mart for a bit of Stilton and inadvertently blasted a brace of locals through the freezer cabinets. Best not to risk it. He was fairly well stocked up. He could do without milk and the
Daily Telegraph.

Time passed, days that left no traces.

Then one morning or afternoon he lifted his eyes from the Taj Mahal and saw that the small window of his study was also joyously blue. He went downstairs and opened the front door upon a new season. The grey old skull of the world had been aerosolled pale green and the air was full of birds talking about it.

He touched the Amulet through his pyjama top and silently told it
I am not your slave.

He got dressed. He put on his Barbour and buckled green wellies.

He took the familiar route down the zigzag path of red mud and mottled stones through the sloping pasture. Here and there he caught the coconut whiff of gorse blossom. At his approach, new lambs ran on awkward legs to suckle reassurance from their mothers. At the bottom of the coombe, where Parson’s Cleft emptied its trickle into the main stream, he paused on the little wooden bridge and gazed about him. Catkins, soft greenish worms, dangled against the flawless sky. The tea-coloured water burbled. Those yellow flowers that he could never remember the name of (they weren’t buttercups, he knew that) blazed in
patches of sunlight. A bird with a wagging tail (a wagtail, possibly?) alighted briefly on a watersmoothed stone and then flickered away. From high above, the kittenish mew of a buzzard.

He inhaled deeply, twice, and went on. He followed the old lepers’ track that wound its way towards St Pessary. Three hundred metres later, he emerged from dappled shade into pure light. At the small group of tilted rocks known as Three Fingers he stopped. Far enough. Leaning his back against warm and lichen-mottled granite, he lifted his face to the sun like a willing Inca sacrifice. He closed his eyes and something resembling a soft collapse, an intense mellowing, took place within him. For the first time in, oh, who knows how long, he felt as though he was living in his body, that the lively coursing of his blood and juices were for his benefit alone. Yet, simultaneously, he felt on the verge of departure from himself; that at any moment he might be wonderfully, weightlessly, distant.

His face grew warm. His torso absorbed heat; heat like warm fingers reaching into his core. A tingling web of heat, centred on …

Oh, shit.

The Amulet.

Was it? Christ!

He fumbled at his clothing, thrust his hand up inside his shirt. The Amulet was trembling.

No, that was his hand.

No, it wasn’t.

Shit, oh shit!

Now the hot spider occupied the centre of its hot web; he could feel the pulsing of its legs against his chest.

He ran, awkward in the unfamiliar boots, sobbing for breath. As he lurched across the Cleft, a sudden gust of wind set the trees rustling. Or was that nibscratch?

‘Wait,’ he cried, stumbling onto the bridge. ‘Please wait!’

Beyond the edge of his normal vision there was something shimmering, or vibrating.

By the time he’d reached the top of the track he could no longer draw in air; panic alone powered his legs onto the lane. At the cottage he wasted precious seconds searching for his keys before he tried the door and found that he’d left it unlocked. Up the stairs, bugger the mud. Chest burning inside and out now. Stabbed the space-bar. Couldn’t see properly. Sweat stinging his eyes. Forced his fingers to steady on the keys.

And – of course – there was nothing.

It was, had been, just a warning.

Half an hour later, Philip pulled up his sweater and looked at the cold Amulet. The squat little hieroglyph was there again, and this time he understood what it was. Knew its strange familiarity. It appeared every time he turned his computer on. Telling him to wait. It was an hourglass. But now the dot in the upper chamber had sunk closer to the narrow neck that connected it to the lower, the chamber of time already trickled away.

He had fifty-two days left to deadline. He knew that because he had been counting.

Evelyn Dent was arranging ten quid’s worth of daffodils in the blue spherical vase when she heard and saw her employer arrive. The kitchenette looked down onto the small parking bay at the rear of their Camden office. The BMW came to a halt slantwise, blocking in Evelyn’s Clio.

As soon as she saw Minerva unfurl from the car Evelyn knew it was going to be a rough start to the week. Minerva was wearing a severely elegant black suit over a blouse the colour of blackcurrant sorbet. Extra bounce in the hair. Conspicuous jewellery. When Minerva looked like this on a Tuesday, Evelyn knew there had been a rough weekend. The visit to Devon had not gone well. No surprise there, then.

Evelyn abandoned the daffs and hurriedly stoked the coffee machine with extra-strength Monsoon Malibar. She peeled the stubborn cellophane from the pack of Marlboro Lights that she’d bought Just In Case.

‘Just don’t say anything, darling,’ Minerva said, ‘unless it’s to ask whether I want it black, in which case
the answer is yes, or if I want sugar, in which case the answer is two. Please. Got any fags?’

When Evelyn brought in the tray Minerva was reclining on her sofa gazing blankly at the toes of her Jimmy Choo shoes. Evelyn served the coffee, lit two cigarettes and passed one over, along with the ashtray they’d nicked from the Groucho Club.

After the first coffee, and half the first cigarette, Minerva said, ‘He’s having a nervous breakdown. At least, I hope that’s what it is. I prefer to think he’s not gone permanently bloody mental. Have Gorgon phoned yet?’

‘Once at eight thirty-two and again at five to nine. Plus two emails.’

‘What did you tell them?’

‘That you were still consulting on the draft and wouldn’t be back until mid-afternoon. Was that OK?’

‘That bloody
place
,’ Minerva said flatly. ‘I said to him, Philip,
darling
, we went to all that trouble getting you that gorgeous little pied-a-terre, against tax, in the nice bit of Paddington, just two minutes from the station, OK, you can be back in Devon in two and a bit hours. Big, big windows, lots of lovely light, places to go when the day’s labour is ended. Why, I said to him,
why
must you insist on working in this ghastly hobbity little hovel? It’s no wonder you get depressed.’

Evelyn said, ‘And he told you it’s because he has to be there because that’s where he gets
inspired
.’

By way of response, Minerva smoked the rest of her Marlboro. ‘Guess what he was wearing when I turned up.’

‘The skin of a rare beast and a studded leather codpiece.’

‘Don’t. Wait, I’ve just remembered something. I parked about a mile or something from his place, which is, OK, the nearest place you
can
bloody park. I’m walking down the road, lane, whatever, and just as I get there I see these two weird creatures standing there watching Philip’s cottage.’

‘Gremes?’

‘Good as. Bent-over little creatures wearing those transparent things, like macs with hoods, you know? They looked like bags of fog. On closer inspection they seemed to be female, except that they had moustaches. So I said hi, or whatever. And they didn’t bloody speak. Just looked at me, you know? And you know what? They had their thumbs in their mouths.’

‘Never.’

‘I swear.’

‘Hell’s teeth,’ Evelyn said. She refilled the cups. ‘So what
was
he wearing?’

‘Well, just clothes. But,
but
, OK, he had this belt from a dressing gown knotted around his chest.’

‘Why?’

‘Ah. Well.’ Minerva turned to look at Evelyn. ‘I’m not in the mood for kiss and tell, OK? Let’s just say that the whole weekend I couldn’t get him to take it off.’

‘Not for anything?’

‘No.’

Evelyn’s phone rang. She and Minerva waited in silence
until Val Sneed had completed her tetchy message.

‘So, why? I mean, why not?’

Minerva drew in a deep breath. ‘He’s got that Nutwell thing lashed to his bloody chest, that’s why. You know, that thing that Arora Lynton gave him. I thought at first that it was about her, you know? Like some pervy fetishistic thing he had going. But it wasn’t that.’

‘So what was it, then?’

‘I dunno. I really don’t know. He said, once, something about coordinates. Didn’t make any sense. Another time he went on about it being his lucky charm. Said something about his four orbs, whatever they might be. Mind you, he was pissed. Knocking back the Glen Moronic like there was no tomorrow. And he was
most
peculiar about the loo. Hated me going in there. And when I did, he skulked outside the door. Awful. I mean, you know how hard it is to
go
when you’re with a bloke, even at the best of times. But to sit there knowing he’s on the other side of the door, going, “Are you all right? Will you be much longer?” Dear
God
. I’m still seized up. If I ever take it into my head to go down there again, handcuff me to my desk and lock me in. I mean it. Make a note of that and date it, OK?’

‘Like I did last time? Sure.’

The two women shared silence for a while.

‘So,’ Evelyn said. ‘Dare I ask?’

‘He says he’s done a hundred pages.’

‘And has he?’

‘Christ knows. He wouldn’t let me read anything. Not
until late Sunday afternoon, after a session in that grisly pub.’

‘Ah.’

‘Ah, indeed. God, the things I do for literature. I got him to print out the first ten pages, and it was like pulling teeth. Worse, in fact.’

‘And?’

‘Brilliant, Evie. Extraordinary. Like nothing I’ve ever read.
Loads
better than
Dark Entropy
.’

‘Can I read it?’

‘Nope. He grabbed it back as soon as I’d finished it. Like it was MI6’s address book or something.’

‘And now he’s stopped?’

‘Yes, he’s fucking stopped. Give us another fag. Please.’

Twenty-three days to deadline and Philip had grown a beard, although he was scarcely aware of it. He was conscious of the fact that his hand brushed against something hairy when he lowered his hand from his forehead to press the Amulet harder into his chest, but it had been a very long time since he had looked into a mirror.

It was hot in the little room, and it suddenly occurred to him that he ought to have air. With some difficulty he forced the window open. He was surprised that it made little difference. Outside was hot as well. And the physical effort of rising from his chair and opening the window made him dizzy. That was because he had run out of food some time ago. The emergency supplies that Minerva had bought in the village during that terribly awkward weekend had long since gone. The only thing left in the freezer was a thin plastic wallet of something that might once have been smoked salmon. He’d looked at it the night before and seen the date 2001 on it.

Both tea and coffee had become distant memories. He
missed them sometimes – in the morning, usually – but only in that mistily regretful way that old people remembered sex. He did not really miss food; it seemed to him that he burned more brightly, concentrated more fiercely, without it. And not eating eased the toilet paper problem. When he’d run out of old newspapers, he had been forced to use books. He’d gone through
The Rainbow
in short order, but he was working far more slowly through
Sons and Lovers.
In a week he’d reached only the third chapter. And if he ran out of Lawrence, there was always Kingsley Amis. None of that was a problem. But he had run out of alcohol, and that was.

There had been two further warnings since his abortive springtime stroll, one in the Gelder’s during the Minerva weekend, and another when he’d tried to reach the village after finishing the bottle of curdled Irish Cream Liqueur. On both occasions, that sensation of hot crab claws moving under the skin of his chest, that electrical vibration, had sent him scuttling home. False alarms, of course, but frightening (or did he mean reassuring?) proof that the Amulet was still … active. And wanted, needed, him to be on station. He was pretty certain that if he tried to make another dash to Kwik Mart the same thing would happen again. If he ignored it, defied the Amulet’s power, it was entirely possible that it would transmit in his absence in order to punish him. Yes, that was a reasonable assumption. That was just the kind of thing that Amulets might do.

On the other hand, there was the insuperable,
monolithic, non-negotiable fact that he could not go on,
could not
go on, without a bloody drink.

Then he remembered something, something wonderful. He wobbled down the stairs and into the kitchen, yanked open the cupboard under the sink, hauled out and scattered detergenty things; and there it was: most of a gallon of Ratt’s Farmhouse Scrumpy in its plastic container. He sat it on the draining board and wiped the greasy cap with a dishcloth, and as he was doing so he noticed that there seemed to be something in the container that should not be there. Holding his dismay in check, he unscrewed the cap and was forced to pull back from the incredibly astringent gas he had released.

When the water had cleared from his eyes he saw that just below the surface of the cider there floated a thick gelatinous mass. He cautiously inserted the handle of a wooden spoon and some of this stuff clung to it. It was like the caul of some grotesque alien birth.

Bitter rage flared within him. It was not much of a flare, no more than a match struck on a windy night, but it was enough. He howled a single obscenity and then moved through the house incanting some sort of checklist.

‘Money? Wallet. Where? Jacket pocket. Yes. Notes, several big ones, good. Shoes, yes, shoes. Keys? No, sod it. Wait. Walk or drive? Drive. Can I? Shit, will it start? Stood there ages. Shit. Try it, must be quick. Oh please,
please
let me, you bastard.’

Then he was gone. On the draining board, inside the cider, the slimy bacterial matrix reformed itself with a faint gulp.

At twenty-six minutes past one Merilee let herself into the library and leaned back against the door in a pose that belonged in a silent movie. Francine looked up from her lunch-time task – deciding whether to catalogue Anaïs Nin’s
The Delta of Venus
under Geography or Astrology – and gasped.

‘Law, Merilee, you looks white as a scalt pig. Whatever is it? Don’t say they was out of curry pasties.’

‘Oh, Francine, Francine. Never you mind about they pasties. Less us go on through to Children’s. I need to subsidize onto a beanbag afore I can talk. I never seen anythun like it.’

‘What?’

‘Murdsten. Down the supermarket.’

‘No.’

‘Yes. An bring that Malibu and the Pepsi.’

When the sisters were settled and looking, in their orange corduroy nests, like failed desserts, Merilee twitched her nose and said, ‘Have someone pissed in here agen?’

‘Not as I noticed. Come on, don’ keep me in suspension. Tell us about Murdsten.’

Merilee took a pull on her cocktail as an aid to recollection. ‘Well, I didun reckernize him at first. I thought it wuz Raspitoon the Mad Monk, or that homeless plays
the widgerydoo outside a Boots. Hair downta here, big ole beard …’

‘Never a beard!’

‘A beard, Francine, and lissun – shoes an no socks.’

‘Oh, no. You’m maken that up, Merilee.’

‘I swear. My blood run cold when I noticed.’

‘So what you’m sane, then? He’ve gone maze?’

By way of reply Merilee raised and tapped her glass of Malibu and Pepsi while treating her sister to a significant look.

‘Ah,’ Francine said.

‘Which I reduce from what wuz in his trolley. Loads a they pricey whiskies come in cardboard tubes, you know, left over from Chrismuss, an two bottles a Bailey’s, wine, all sorts. We come face to face at cakes and biscuits …’

‘Aisle Three.’

‘Aisle Three, and when I works out who it is, I says, “Well, Mister Murdsten! Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes” or somesuch. And he just stand there starin at me like he never saw me afore in his life. Well, it wuz proper awkward, Francine.’

‘My law, Merilee. I can’t hardly pitcher it. Whatever did you do?’

‘Well, it wuz either stand there like a rabbit at a stoat’s picnic or say somethun, so I looks down at his trolley and says, “Havin a party, Mister Murdsten? Got a new book to cerebrate?”’

Francine squeezed her legs together. ‘You wuz doin just a bit a fishin there, Merilee. Naughty.’

‘True. I didun get a bite, though. You know what he done? He done that thing Basil Fawlty do, like wakun up from sleepwalkun, and run off.’

‘What, out?’

‘No, just down the aisle, then back he come with a harmload of bags of coffee and sugar. Dumps em in his trolley and off he go. So of course I sets off after un, and blieve me, Francine, tas none too easy cos he’s goin like the clappers. People gettin out a the way of un, more or less climbing up the ready meals case he runs over um.’

‘He musta had that bit a rumpy a his from Lunnen waiting outside on the yeller lines.’

‘Thas ezackly what I thought.
Ezackly
. Can’t fault you there, Francine. But no.’

‘No?’

‘No, as it did turn out. But you’m getting ahead a me. So he scream down through dairy produce …’

‘Aisle Six.’

‘Five.’

‘Six.’

‘Bleddy hell, Francine. Five, Six, who give a crusty fuck? Us’s losing the bleddy narrative flow here.’

‘Sorry, Merilee. I’s just tryin to get the pitcher straight. Five is cleanin products an dog food. It might make a diffrunce.’

Merilee steadied her breathing and softened her glare. She took a drink. ‘Well, you’m right, as it turn up. Cos Denzil wouldn’t have been in Aisle Five.’

‘Who?’

‘Denzil Gadder. Like to come in of a Tuesday to comb his hair in fronta the cheese?’

‘Oh, yeah. That Denzil.’

‘Well, Murdsten’s goin hell fur leather down to the checkouts, and Denzil don’t see him comin and go arse over tip inta the cabinet. Murdsten stop then. Denzil’s got his legs up in the air an his comb in his hand, goin
What
? Murdsten just look at him like there’s nothun peculiar about findin a sex offender sittin in the yoghurts an grabs up lumps a cheese an a big milk an set off agen. So us gets to the checkouts and whichun do he choose? Seein as how he’s in a hurry?’

‘Not Sigourney Hookway.’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Oh no.’

‘Ho yes.’

And here the Weird Sisters lean towards each other and press their foreheads together and harshly draw in noisy breaths. (This is their mode of hysterical laughter, a bonding ritual. It is one of the things that persuaded their parents, twenty years earlier, to depart without them in the middle of the night and move to Shetland.)

‘Cos,’ Merilee continued breathlessly, ‘Murdsten dunno no one go to Sigourney’s till cos she don know a bar code from a dead zebra. So there she be, fumblin away with his stuff, four or five goes, random like, before the bleddy thing go beep, and there’s I, right behind un, seein he’s like a man with a stag beetle up his chuff, which Miss Special Needs Hookway don’t notice at all. So’s to
detract him I says … Did I mention he had a belt round his chest looked like from a dressun gown?’

Francine looked blank for a moment. ‘No, you didn. Why did he?’

‘
I
dunno. Bleddy hell, Francine. Anyway, he’s grabbin all the bottles offa Sigourney soon as she put them through and stuffin ’em in the bags, an I’m standin there tryun a make conversation about his beard an what all, and he’s jiggin about going
Ahhh
an
Hmmm
with his eyes rollin about in his haid like a steer lookin in a butcher’s winder, an then’s when things got peculiar. You wunt believe what happened next.’

Here, for dramatic purposes, Merilee paused to take a further draught of Malibu and Pepsi. Francine, expecting it, did likewise.

‘So,’ Merilee said, daintily wiping her moustache with the back of her hand, ‘Sigourney’s somehow managed to put about halfa Murdsten’s stuff through when he clutch both his hands to his chest, right where he’ve got the belt knotted, an he stagger back and let out this horrible groan. No, that don’t do’n justice. More like a
wail
, it was. Made the hair on the backa my legs stand on end, Francine, I swear to God. Then he start sayin things like
No
an
Wait
an
Please, not yet
. Sweat standin out on his forrid like the lumps on a toad. Well, everyone shrunk back, a course. An you know what I thought?’

‘Heart attack.’

‘Heart attack is
ezackly
what I thought, Francine. Specially when he start goin,
Pocket! Please, pocket
!’

Francine looked puzzled.

‘
Pocket
, Francine.
Pills
. Quick as a flash, I thought, He’ve got a heart contrition, an he’ve got the pills for it in his pocket. But he’s holding onta his chest so hard he dusn’t go for em. So I says, “Which pocket, Mister Murdsten?” Cos I was all set to put my hand in there if needs be, an don’t you look at me like that, Francine. But I’ve got my hand only halfway to his trousers when he whirls round and stare at me like … well, I can’t say as I’ve ever seen a face like it, not in real life. An he yell,
No, get back! Get away from me! All a you!
He’ve still got his hands clammed onta his chest, and then somethen horrible flash through my mind.’

‘That filum.
Alien
One.’

‘
Alien
One, Francine, you’m right on the money there agen. I had a vision of it. A gret long slimy thing like a donkey’s todger with teeth at the enda it burstin outa Murdsten’s chest an scuttlin along the floor.’

‘An did it, Merilee?’

‘As it happen, no. Might as well a done, though, cos by now there’s pandominion breakin out. That thick mare Lesley on Cigarettes and Lotto start screamin
Tas a sewerside bomber! Us’s all gorna die!
An a course that start everyone off.’

‘Was you scared, Merilee? I’d a wet maself, I think I honestly would.’

‘Acourse I wasn scared, Francine. Well, not
that
way. Cos I knew it was Murdsten not Al Kyder, beard or no beard. Mind you, I did back off on account a how he’s
carryin on. Lookin up at the ceiling shoutin,
Don’t! Don’t! They’re not creams! They’re not creams!
’

‘Creams, Merilee? Whatever did he mean?’

‘Buggered if I know. He wasn on about biscuits, though, cos he hadn bought any biscuits. Nor choclates. Anyway, then he sort of hunch up and let go a his chest with one hand and fish about in his pocket …’

‘For them pills, Merilee.’

‘Thas what I thought, but no, he brung out his wallet and fumble about with it, going
Fuckfuckfuck
, which is somethun I never thought to hear a novelist of his statue say aloud, and then he just chuck a buncha money down in fronta Sigourney who’s sittin there with her mouth open wide enough to get a bucket in, then he grab up the bags with the bottles and that in and take off down the street like a dog with its arse afire. An thas it.’

‘The End?’

‘The End. Then I jus run back here on legs like jelly a tell you.’

The sisters stared at each other for quite some time. The only sound was of polystyrene granules shifting rhythmically inside the beanbags beneath them.

Then Francine said, ‘So, did you get them curry pasties?’