A Madness of Angels

thought and where it might have led you. More to the point, someone had taken immense trouble to remove all personal traces that might be turned to a more magical form of pursuit.

On the other hand, not for nothing had I spent nine months as a cleaner for Lambeth Borough Council.

I tried the bathroom. The shower was immaculate, the bath glowed with polished white pristine hygiene. If it was possible for a toilet to smell of lemons, his managed it – even the ventilation shaft had been dusted to shining silver perfection.

Some things, however, never change. I squatted underneath the sink and, grunting at the stiffness of the stainless steel bit, unscrewed the bottom of the waste pipe. As I pulled the part free, a splash of turgid, smelly water spilled out. A pool of water lay at the bottom of the pipe-end, but it too smelt of bleach, and the edges were largely free of the thick, muddy dirt you might usually find. I ran a finger round the rubber seal at the top, and came away with a layer of slime. I slid my nail under the seal and pulled it away from the metal of the pipe and, as I did, something so thin it was almost imperceptible moved, catching the light for a moment. I peered closer, the smell of the pipe enough to make my eyes water, and turned the pipe until the thing flashed again with a dull, dark gleam. Pinching it between thumb and forefinger, I lifted it away. It was short, might once have been almost blond, was stained with dirt and withered from the bleach, but was, despite it all, still very much a single human hair.

That was all I needed.

Back at my hotel, I washed the hair under the hot water tap until it glowed a dull browny-yellow; and, with the tweezers from my penknife, I put it carefully by itself in the middle of the soap bowl. I then put the soap bowl down in the middle of the bedroom floor and went in search of the ingredients for the spell that I needed. I pulled the telephone out of the wall and the telephone wire out of the telephone, and wrapped the wire a few times round the soap bowl to create my protective circle. I bought a packet of ten blank CDs from the local general store and took the top one for my mirror, idly spinning it round on my finger as I considered what power might be most useful.

I settled on a minor spirit, who I felt might be equipped to my purpose and, sitting cross-legged in front of my little bowl with its single human hair, smashed the topmost CD on the table end, took the largest piece from the remnants and with the sharpened point drew a doorway in the air in front of me. Then, in my most commanding voice, I invoked the demon of the lonely night, of the travellers on the midnight train, the lord of the lost parking space, by all the names I could think of, including the shrieking noise of brakes, made at the back of the throat, to call him forth, and by the red light of the “STOP” traffic light that I twined between my fingers and poured into the shard of broken CD until it glowed the colour of newly spilled blood.

The doorway I’d drawn in the air shimmered, wobbled like a mirage. I felt a breath of warmth from it on my face, heard a sound like the swish of tyres through a puddle in an empty road, and the distant rattle of a train heard far off, when the wind is in the right direction. I looked up to the doorway as it started to leach from the colour of the red traffic signal down to an emerald green and just as I thought I saw a figure take shape inside it, there was a knock on my bedroom door.

The bubble of colour winked out in front of me. I swore, the noise snapping out of earshot in an instant, scrambled up and hurried to the door. I left the chain on, and opened it an inch. There was no one outside.

Realisation struck. I turned, raising the shard of broken CD in front of me, but he was already there, emerging out of the darkness in the centre of the room and right in front of me, the fingers of one hand twining round my throat while the other smacked my head back against the door hard enough to knock it shut behind me with a loud bang. His eyes were the amber of traffic lights, his breath the swish of traffic passing on a wet night; his skin had the colour of old chewing gum. A dry warmth rolled off it as he tilted my head back, pressed his fingers into my throat and hissed, over a tongue the shade of uncooked chicken, “A devotee of the lonely traveller, or a fool?”

“Shouldn’t you have come through the other doorway?” I croaked.

His eyes glowed. His clothes were shifting black shadows that, as he adjusted his weight, parted for a moment to reveal nothing but dull orange neon glow underneath, as if his whole body was little more than a collection of trapped lights compressed behind the darkness of his coat. “I am the lord of the lonely traveller, I am the last passenger on the train, I am the shadow when you close the garden gate, the stranger in the dark, the…”

“As far as I’m aware,” I said sharply, “I summoned you knowing all this, spirit. So, please” – I closed one hand around his wrist and with the other I levelled the gleaming shard of broken CD against his throat – “give it a break.”

A smile. His teeth weren’t even solid, but lumps of pale, half-chewed bubble gum that formed sticky fibres between his thin blue lips. A wisp of breath that rattled like train wheels across shining new rails, a creak in his bones as he shifted his weight like the sound of a rusted gate banging in the wind. “You threaten me?”

“Ah, well, this isn’t any ordinary bit of broken plastic,” I said quickly. “This is a piece of broken reflective plastic.” I held it up quickly before he could shy away, pressing it in front of his eyes. There was a flash of orange-pink neon so bright and so sharp it hurt as it went into my head, and burst the light bulb in the middle of the room with its force. From the creature’s lips came a wail like the horn of a lorry just before it’s about to crash. He curled back, instantly cowed, crouching animal-like and raising his hands to shield himself from the sight in the broken shard. His whimpers were the nagging sound of a distant car alarm in the night. If there was one thing this spirit could not abide, it was his own reflection, showing him for what he was – nothing at all. You cannot be the lord of the lonely travellers and be in the company of your own reflection.

He whispered in a voice like a pigeon’s feather on the wind, “What do you wish, master?” He squatted by the end of the bed. Through the loose shadowy folds of his huge coat, the dull glow of orange-pink neon poured out of any opening like the shimmer of lamplight under a doorway – bright enough in the dark to see everything in black and white, except for the light itself, which shone with chemical colours.

I crouched down in front of him. As spirits went, I could feel a certain sympathy for this one, a reluctant affinity for the magics that had spawned it. They were much the same powers that had created the Bag Lady, the Beggar King and, perhaps to an extent, the angels of the wire, the forgotten lives left in the telephone. Where there was life, there was magic, and even in the lonely tread of the commuter, and the fearful breath of the traveller by himself in an unknown place, there was a very special kind of life; and from that life, there was the spirit.

“I’m looking for someone.”

“Does he travel alone?”

“Who doesn’t?” I answered with a smile.

His eyes glanced up to me, and in the dark they glowed with the dull red illumination of a traffic light. “You know me,” he whispered. “I hear your footstep in my belly; you have offered me your prayers.”

“Everyone has offered you a prayer at some point or another. When they’re alone, in the dark, even the SAS probably jump at the sound of a stranger, or the unexplained door slamming in the empty house, or the tinkling of glass somewhere near by; and when they do, their thoughts are with you.”

His lips curled in what might have been a smile, but came out a sticky, gummy sneer. “Who do you wish to find?”

“The man who owns that hair,” I said, pointing at the soap dish in the middle of the floor.

The lord of the lonely traveller – whose name could only be pronounced properly in the shriek of brakes or the last rumble of the train engine before it’s turned off at the final stop, but who was known to everyone through the swish of distant traffic in the rain, or the sigh of a breath condensing in a lonely night – leant forward, eyes narrowing as he studied the hair. He pinched it between two fingertips, then licked it slowly, and carefully, his saliva hanging off it in a thick yellowish goo. His eyes half closed, and he whispered, “A traveller, so many travellers…”

“Where is he?”

“He runs, his footstep is sweet, a tumtetumtetumtetumte… he is chased! So afraid of the dark, and a man who used not to fear; but now he runs, he runs from the monster in the night.”

“Where does he run to?”

“He is praying.”

“To you?”

“They all pray to me, when they are alone and afraid,” he whispered, eyes flashing. “Even those who think they are brave.”