customers, and neither was there any staff, but the fridge showed enough gaps in its display to suggest that this was just a mid-afternoon lull, rather than a symptom of terminal decline. I leant on the glass counter above the bowls of chicken, and tuna, and sweetcorn salad and waited.
There was a buzzing from the glass-fronted fridge, a nasty, unhealthy electric sound like a wasp trapped in a bottle, or the crack of flies hitting an electric lamp. I watched as sparks snapped out of the cabling at its back and the lights faltered along the displays of neatly packed sandwiches. Then, with a hiss, the fridge died. The bulb above my head flickered on and off a few times, and the power points in the corners of the walls spat angry electric sparks from behind the switches. After a few minutes, this too died. During this time I heard a raised voice from somewhere behind a bead curtain: the incoherent sound of a woman shouting at someone whose response was too quiet for me to hear.
My curiosity now completely engaged, I stepped round the counter, and through the bead curtain. Beyond it was a stainless-steel kitchen, and it was a mess. Pots and pans were strewn across the floor, remnants of viscous liquids were splashed up the walls, glass from shattered bulbs crunched underfoot. On the knife rack, the blades were all twisted out of shape.
I moved carefully through the wreckage towards a door at the back; as I did, the voices became louder. The woman’s, shrill and frightened, babbled in a language I didn’t understand but which, by its thick quality and the richness of the sound, I guessed to be eastern European. Another voice answered in the same language: male, quieter, but no less scared. I pushed open the door, onto a crooked flight of stairs. Climbing them, I emerged into a narrow corridor of scuffed paint on cracked plaster. At the far end, outside a closed door with a poster of some anonymous boy band and a sign saying “KEEP OUT!!!” in big red pen, were the owners of the voices: a short woman who seemed far too large for the space she stood in, and a man in the dark shapeless clothes of a priest, with a big black beard. In one limp hand, the priest held a crucifix; and by his gestures he was trying to pacify the woman, and failing. The place buzzed with a sparking, yellow-golden sheen that hissed like fizzy drink on my tongue as I drew it in; wild, rich, and dangerous power, emanating, I guessed, from behind the closed door.
I said, “Excuse me?”
The woman paused, looked at me, said, “We’re shut,” and in an instant was back to shouting at the man.
I waited a few moments; then, since she didn’t seem to have any further interest in talking to me, I raised my voice and bellowed, “
They both fell silent, more caught by surprise, I suspected, than ready to listen. “Thank you,” I said quickly. “Now, may I have a black coffee, strong, no sugar, and is a member of your family or your household acting peculiar bordering on mystical?”
In the kitchen, with trembling hands the woman gave me a plastic cup of vodka. She watched me down it while she clung to her own drink and said, “You police?”
“This isn’t your business…” began the man in priest’s clothes.
“Stuff you,” I replied, and for her benefit I added, “No, I’m not. My name’s Matthew Swift.”
Mrs Mikeda introduced herself.
“A pleasure to meet you,” I responded. “And this gentleman with the beard is…?”
“What do you want here?” he snapped.
“A priest,” replied Mrs Mikeda in a cowed voice.
“More than a priest, I’m guessing,” I said, looking him over and finding myself unimpressed. “Exorcist, yes? Demonic possession, Satanic vibes, all that kind of thing?”
“Who are you?” asked Mrs Mikeda.
“You can just call me Matthew. Now, let’s throw out the beardy, and why don’t you tell me about your daughter?”
“How do you know about my daughter?” she demanded, her knuckles turning white around the plastic cup.
“It’s the choice of boy band poster on her bedroom door,” I replied. “That tells me that she’s a girl. The presence of the exorcist guy tells me you haven’t got a clue what’s going on, and the sense of uncontrolled and raging magic tells me it’s more than just hormones that gives your daughter bad period pains. So why don’t you tell me what’s happening here?”
Mrs Mikeda downed the vodka, scrunched up the plastic cup without thinking and dropped it in the sink. She looked from me to the priest and back again and said, “Mr Swift, I don’t know why I should trust you.”
“My honest face, my charming, open expression, and the fact that in the end, I’m just so damn
“Can you help her?”
I thought about it. “Yes,” I replied, feeling as I said it that this was absolutely the correct answer. “I think I can.”
When I knocked on her door there was no answer. I called out, “Dana? You all right in there?”
No reply.
I tried the handle. The door was locked.
“Key?” I said to Mrs Mikeda.
She gave me a small brass key. I turned it in the lock and opened the door. Filthy didn’t begin to cover the room beyond. It had served as bedroom, living room, kitchen and bathroom for what smelt like weeks; the heat and intensity of it slammed into my face and left no room for compromise or forgiveness. The curtains were half drawn, and at the base of the window were pigeon feathers strewn in dirty heaps. Dana Mikeda lay on the bed, her back turned to me, breathing slowly and steadily. I went over and reached out to touch her. But before I did, the hairs on the back of my hands stood up, at the same time that Mrs Mikeda gave a warning gasp.
I pulled a plug from the wall with a popping of sparks, and cut it at the top and the bottom with my penknife, exposing the metal strands beneath. Holding it by the rubber insulation I touched one end of the wire to the floor, and let the other drop onto the girl’s shoulder. A white spark crawled into the carpet. When I moved my hand again over Dana, there was no longer that feel of buzzing static in the air.
I took hold of her shoulder, and rolled her over. Her eyes were shut, but when I lifted the lids they glowed underneath with the bright orange of a pigeon’s iris; and as she exhaled, every breath carried with it a snort of thick black smoke and the smell of car exhaust, rattling over her lungs like a loose engine on the back of an old truck. Her skin burnt to the touch, and when I lifted up her fingers, they trailed neon scars through the air, like her nails were about to dig a hole in space itself.
“Can you do something?” whispered Mrs Mikeda.
“Maybe,” I replied. “How long has she been like this?”
“A few days. But it’s never been this bad before!”
“Do you own a car?”
“No.”
“Have you got a friend who’ll lend you one?”
Mrs Mikeda drove. I sat in the back, Dana’s head in my lap. Her hair when I touched it felt like fuse wire. To escape the feelings that must have been attacking her every day and night, she’d sunk herself deep into some form of magical trance or stupor. So lost in it was she that when the pistons of the hydraulic brakes exhaled, she did too, in the same breath and tone as the car itself.
We drove west, inching past Marylebone, speeding down the Westway, and jinking about through grungy Shepherd’s Bush and the genteel streets of Chiswick in the cheerful spring sun. In Chiswick High Street, the schools were emptying, and the cafés had put seats out on the pavement under the big old plane trees to serve coffee and cakes to the locals. By the time we reached Kew Bridge, the rush hour had started; Dana’s heart rate was up, so fast and strong I could see the veins moving in her neck as she responded, her blood moving at the speed of the city as its people switched direction from work to pleasure. We parked the car just beyond Kew Bridge and carried her down, each supporting her by an arm, onto the tidal mud of the Thames. Water seeped out around our feet like we were walking on a sponge, saturated so that water ran off it like oil. I pulled off my shoes, socks and jacket, and Mrs Mikeda did the same for Dana.
