A bell rang, a tiny bell jang-jang-janging. Everyone turned to watch as the sit-up-and-beg bicycle wobbled through the throng. The man on the seat flapped his hands at people to get out of the way. His hair flew out behind him in grey streamers. His tongue lolled and dribbled against his cheek. When people recognised de Fleche, they cringed and sank into the shadows.
“Will, this simply won’t do,” he said. His tone was that of a prissy director at an am-dram rehearsal. He rode the bicycle round and around Will, rubbing his chin, while Fidget asked for a croissant, a pot of Muller Rice, shit mate,
De Fleche clenched the brakes and skidded to a halt. He touched the little girl on the forehead with his thumb and she imploded. All that was left of her was a scrap of her skirt and the plastic doll, black, molten, and disfigured.
“Well that was fucking charming,” Will said, and pushed de Fleche off his bike. He was sickened that his ability to be shocked by anything had been closed down, as neatly and as finally as the switch on a life-support machine. A groan rose from the thin men behind him. De Fleche stood up and brushed himself off. He was laughing, but there was something unpleasant about the laugh. An edge.
“I haven’t the time for this, Will. What is it, do you think you’re too precious to be part of this revolution?”
“I don’t want a part of this. I want to be left alone.”
“You signed up.”
“You tricked me. You used Catriona as bait.”
“I did nothing of the sort.” He smiled and clapped Will on the shoulder. Will flinched, thinking of the way the girl had winked out of existence. “Some tatty little book I came across and you went all Bambi-eyed over it. I could have spread you on my toast at that moment. It was all rather sweet.”
Will said again, “You tricked me.”
De Fleche sighed and looked around him. “This is going on all over the shop, you know. Pretty small potatoes for the time being, but there’s some big King Edwards waiting to be pulled out. It’s in these places, Warrington and the like, where the grand changes, the new dawning will come into its own. Not London or Paris or Sydney. Warrington. Landevant. Beecroft. Places I know, but you’d be hard-pushed to find on a map. Out of acorns, and all that flim-flam.”
“Jesus,” Will said, and pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes until he saw ideograms of colour dancing there. Not a bad trick, he considered, for a dead man. “Why?” he asked.
“Will, I’m not prepared to build a little campfire and have all you owl-faced cub scouts sit around listening to Uncle Peter telling stories while–”
“You said something about revenge,” Will cut in. “Revenge for what?”
De Fleche nodded, gravely. “Okay,” he said. “All right.” He put a fatherly arm around Will and led him away from the impasse. He said, “Three is the magic number. Three wise men. Three stooges. Three coins in a fountain. Three for the price of two at Boots. The
“I don’t want anything to do with you, or your sick fantasies.”
“You will, once your dead brain kicks in. Once the maggots down south have reamed out your Willishness. Once you’ve become a puppet for me, like these other gawps.”
Will could hear something else nagging him above de Fleche’s hubristic spiel. Something clunkingly mechanical approaching from the end of the street where de Fleche himself had appeared.
“I worked with those two men for maybe ten years. They were attracted to me for my natural beauty, my collection of Japanese stamps, and, I suppose, my ability to sniff out the odd Negstream. They were impressed that I could track down ways into this place. They paid me to do research into it. We thought we could make a fortune by using the doorways into different levels of consciousness for all kinds of stuff. Sponsors might want to use it to advertise. Imagine. Go to sleep, we switch on, and people all over the world wake up wanting a bag of KP nuts, or a tub of Ben and Jerry’s. It was naughty, but who was going to stop us? Bollocks to the standards agencies. How are they going to find out? How do you control something that you can’t touch? We were going to talk to film and TV bigwigs. Get people to pay us a subscription so that they could have films shown straight into their heads. Or football matches. Or porn. Or 24/7 news.”
It was a black cab, turning into the street. De Fleche was too caught up in his own reverie to notice.
De Fleche said, “Problem was, I couldn’t get in. Because once you get in, you can’t get out the same way. So we were a bit stuck. But those pricks, they were small-time idiots. They picked up some measly five-figure financial package from a company who were interested in backing them as long as they were guaranteed front-end mentions once the system was up and running. What did they do? Filled their nappies that they had so much money for the sweet shop that they pushed me through a Negstream and fucked off with the dosh.”
“Trapping you in here?”
“Only for the past twenty years. As I say, a Negstream is like a condom. You only use it once. You have to find your own way back. I couldn’t.”
“So what makes you think you can get back now?”
“You know the answer to that, Will. You, the great, white disaster hunter. Chasing tragedy all over the country when you could have done what I’m doing, and create your own. I’ve worked hard to get some influence. It’s here, in front of you, the fruits of all that labour. Enough deaths and I’ll have a Negstream of my own to step through. And then we’ll see what kind of influence I really have. Soon now. So soon that I probably wouldn’t have the time to soft-boil an egg. I can taste it. Life, that is,” he said with a grin, “not the egg.”
“This isn’t just about Lousher and Butterby, is it?”
“I suppose not. Golly, they might even be dead already. This travelling circus of mine know their scent well. It’s just a matter of time for them. But the bigger picture, I never lost sight of the bigger picture like they did. I am a master of dreams and nightmares, hopes and fears. Control. It’s what it’s all about, whether you’re a rat trying to build a nest in a sewer, or a president slapping wrists in the Middle East. I am in control. I am big in control. Do you know, Will, that in some places on this planet, that just about secures god status for me?”
The taxi pulled up about fifty metres down the street. When Sean slipped out of the driver’s side door, Will almost shouted out his name. He had missed him dearly. Emma too. He wanted de Fleche to disappear in a flash of light back to his little laboratory where he could make his alchemy all he liked. Will just wanted his friends back, at least for a few minutes. Just to say thank you, goodbye, remember me. Seeing Sean empowered him.
“You’re insane, Peter,” he said. “What are you going to be? A living king with a country of dead subjects? How deeply, utterly satisfying. I won’t be a part of it.”
“Then you’ll be dust. I’ll use your soul for a money bag. I’ll have your eye sockets for pencil holders.”
“You don’t scare me.”
“I will, believe me.”
“Yeah, right. What is it, by the way, that scares
De Fleche smiled at him. He reached out a finger and pressed it against Will’s forehead. He felt a strange buzzing there, not unpleasant, like a time as a child when he had pressed his face against a jar in which he had captured a wasp. Then he stepped away, his face changing, flooding with colour. “Christ, yes,” he said, the words jerking out of him rather than being impelled by his breath. “Christ. Yes!”
He looked down at the dust and moved. Footprints ate into the ground. De Fleche said, “Isn’t that the prettiest thing you ever saw?”
“He asked you a question,” called Sean. To Will, the voice came from somewhere distant and muggy. He watched Sean lift something to his mouth and blow long and hard.
Sean didn’t hear anything, but the effect it had on the thin men was shocking. As one, they howled and scarpered, hands to their ears. Will dropped to the ground and was writhing in the dust, trying to beat from his ears whatever woeful sound Vernon’s whistle had made.
De Fleche ignored Will and turned to stare at Sean. Sean’s breath wavered, but only for an instant. De Fleche
