A Madness of Angels

noises and eventually said something along the lines of ‘Why?’ and ‘It’s dangerous!’ and other empty sounds.

“He said, ‘The doctors tell me that I am dying. I have not had just one stroke, I am at risk of several, they said. They tell me that over the next few days, weeks, months, years, they can’t be sure, I will have more minor strokes, one on the other, perhaps so small I don’t even notice, perhaps large enough to leave me without feeling in my fingers, and that they will eventually eat away my brain, my mind, my memory, and my feelings until I am just a gibbering shell. I want to summon the angels.’

“‘What good will they do?’ I asked.

“‘You’ve heard them, think about it,’ he replied – he was never one for a straight answer, always liked you to work it out for yourself, said if you could understand by yourself why a thing was true, you would believe it more than just having it told to you by a teacher.

“‘Why do you need me? Surely they’re still there, in the dialling tone…’

“‘I can’t hear them.’ He held up the receiver towards me and, for the first time, looked me straight in the eye. ‘I want you to listen, tell me if they’re there.’

“I took the receiver – I was trained not to disobey him; such things when you are a learning sorcerer are dangerous. I listened.

“He hadn’t dialled any particular number, but with the angels you don’t need to; an open line is what they always enjoyed. And eventually, through the dialling tone, I heard them.

“They started with just the beeeeeep of the tone. Then, when you listened, it was more than a beeeeep it was a voice, saying beeeeee at exactly the same pitch and tone as the dialling tone, but still a voice.

“It said, beeeeee meeeeeee…

“And then, when you realised that those were the words it was saying, it said more.

“Beeee meeeee beeeee freeeeee…

“And by increments, aware that they had an audience, the angels came, and they said at the tone of the telephones, We be…

… to see…

set free…

We be light, we be life, we be fire!

We sing electric flame, we rumble underground wind, we dance heaven!

Come be me……

and be free…

… we be blue electric angels…

“Bakker said, ‘Can you hear them?’

“I said yes.

“‘What do they say?’

“‘What they always do.’

“‘Tell me!’

“I told him; I confess, I was hypnotised by their sound. When the angels spoke, it was more than voices, it was with a presence that wormed its way into the mind and filled the senses with burning, fiery blueness. They whispered that they were the creatures of the wire, that their playground was the world, that they danced at the speed of light and rippled faster than sound, spread their wings across every wire, voice, mind, sense, sight in the world and when they had bounced from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back again through every telephone and computer and radio transmitter on earth, they would bounce into the radio waves in the sky, and spin away into space, circle the moon and then fly on, to see what sights they could see. They asked you to come be me, to be free – to let go of life and join them for ever, playing in the wires.

“It was a dangerous song – all sorcerers knew of the angels. They had a reputation, that of a young, reckless power that travelled as interference in the system, unexplained spots of static, moved too fast to catch, stop, or begin to understand. They had grown out from the wires only in recent years, but that shouldn’t really surprise us. Where life is, there is always magic, and over the years we pour so much of ourselves, of our lives, into the phone lines – our hearts, dreams, desires, hopes, friends, enemies, hates and loves, tipped into the wire. The angels started off as just a rogue piece of static but, over the years, fed on all that life being thrown at them – telephone conversations, radio broadcasts, internet, email – that unique magic altered them, made them growinto the form that you currently understand as blue electric angels.

“They relish life, rejoice in it; their whole lives are learning, understanding, a composite of other people’s existences, an idea plucked from Jane merged into a word from Bob and a sigh from Joe; an entire personality can be formed from the throwaway bits of conversation we leave trapped in the wire. They are so proud! So bright and brilliant, the world’s knowledge at their fingertips, the whole of humanity pouring itself into their soul. So beautiful, so bright, they delight in all that is new, feast and feed on it, for it was what made them. They are a child, and a god. All sorcerers love and fear them, for they are very much like the sorcerers are – feasting on all things that they see. Life is magic. And as I have said, too much life … too much of too much… mortals cannot sustain it.

“They are everywhere at once, thinly spread across the world like flurries of snow; but they can, sometimes, coalesce into one place for a special purpose. In that hospital, that strange night that had been like any other night, Bakker wanted to provoke such an event; he wanted to bring the angels together, and force them out of the phone.

“I asked why.

“He didn’t smile, or sigh, or show any sign of emotion when he answered. He simply said, ‘Because they are alive; because they will not die.’

“I wanted to know how he thought he could get them out of the phone lines that had spawned them.

“He just laughed and said he was sure that they, if he had judged their character right, would be all too willing to come, for the right incentive. He knew how I had first fallen into sorcery. He knew that as a child, I had loved to listen to the phones, and they had loved to talk to me.

“What then, I asked? When you have somehow dragged the angels out of the phone line, their natural place, what do you do then?

“‘Life,’ he said. ‘Just life.’

“I only understood slowly. Even when he had explained it, I did not wish to comprehend. His plan was to draw the angels out of their natural territory, force them to take a human, physical form with his spells and, once they had achieved such a state, to steal that which made them alive.

“You must understand – the angels are created from the life that others leave behind in the phones: words thrown out into darkness, ideas left half unsaid. Their whole existence is speed and freedom and wild electric power and magic and life; they feed off humanity’s forgotten thoughts. He said, ‘Their blood is life, Matthew. Their souls are fire.’

“I finally – too slowly – understood. Bakker didn’t just want to summon the angels. He wanted to become the angels, to be like them, no longer physical, restrained by the bonds of his own crippled body. He wanted to feast on their bright burning blood, become pure electricity and fire in human form, burning his way across the planet – a human consciousness in the form of the angels themselves. But he needed my help.

“I asked why.

“He said, ‘I can’t hear them. Things are different, I can’t hear them. I need a sorcerer who can make them come out of the phone lines. I need your help.’

“I said no. I didn’t even know why I said it; I was so appalled, I just spoke on instinct. I said that his plan would make him inhuman, a deity of blue light rather than a sorcerer, that I knew he must be frightened and in pain, but that what he proposed was nothing short of a bond with an electric devil.

“He wanted to know why I said no.

“I couldn’t think of an answer. I couldn’t say what I really thought – that the angels’ whole nature was wild and reckless, and that in his flesh they would only be more so; that I did not trust him with that kind of power.

“We quarrelled. I think that part was well established after my death. I left there too angry to speak. I felt betrayed. As a child, I had put nothing but faith in Mr Bakker, who had come to my mum’s front door and saved me from the nuthouse. I guess these childish things were suddenly going away.