Previously…
“Where are we going?” he asks, loathe to
leave his place at the gate – his home.
“To the Silvern Sanctuary,” says the rider.
“But that is many, many miles away. Too long
a journey for such a small boy,” pleads the old woman.
“Nevertheless. We must go. It is the only
safe place for him. I will accompany him.”
“I will come too,” she says, with a slight
twinge of regret for her brittle old bones. Worse than that, she knows that
this will probably be the last journey she ever makes, for it is a long way and
often travellers do not reach their destination.
“As you wish. But if you slow us down the
boy will suffer.”
The boy looks at the old woman, not quite
understanding what is going on.
“Who is this man? Do you know him?”
“Yes I know him. He is The Messenger. And he
brings bad news.”
“He said ‘she is coming’. Who is she, and
what does she want?”
“She is the demon huntress – the soul
searcher – and she is looking for you.”
And now...
There stood Alice. Skin the colour of
moonlight, green eyes glittering in the dark; jagged cut, multicoloured hair,
one side shaven bare. A coffin with a cross tattooed on one arm, on the other a
bloody five-pointed star. Deaths-head rings on every finger, probably on her
toes; safety pins through her ears, and blood-black lips that gleamed in the
porch light.
To be invited back to their home, especially
after the last time, was like winning the jackpot. She stood on the doorstep
with a bemused smile on her face as Samuel opened he door. Alice wore a
deep-plunge red blouse with a long black skirt and jackboots.
“Hello handsome,” she said with a wink, her
breasts wiggling with anticipation. “Can I come in?”
Samuel, for once in his life, big strong man
that he was, could feel a faint coming on. He had such mixed feelings about
Alice…to say the least. But he was an old fashioned man and many of those
feelings never saw the light of day. They just rattled round uncomfortably in
his body while his mind kept up a curtain of denial. The little town of Mercia
had never seen her likes before. Sure, there was the lady from the sweet shop who
wore so much make-up that she more closely resembled one of her own marzipan
delights that lined the window of her shop, but all in all it was a
conservative little town, and the Mitkes were conservative people.
The Mitke house lay, as did the rest of the
town, in the shadow of, and in between, the canning factory on one side, and
the Havealot high–rise tower on the other. The town’s wealth lay between these
two institutions. The enormous canning factory squatted in the southern swamp
like a dark toad, a grimy cloud of soot and smoke forever drifting over it,
obscuring one part or another as if it lay in a poisonous fen. The sun never
shone beneath those polluted clouds, blighting the lives and lungs of the
workers beneath.
In contrast, on a hill in the northern end
of the town, rose a building made of gold and glass that glittered in the sky,
a thousand suns reflected from its all seeing eyes. Up it went into the clouds
of misty white and blue, an aerial on the top, balancing the finances and
broadcasting its stocks and shares to its shareholders.
The factory frog gobbled up the working
people every morning and regurgitated them in the afternoon into their buses
and jalopies.
The bankers and the brokers drove in their
sports cars and limousines to their gold and silver tower to count their money
and handle the profits. Their life, and what they did there, was mostly a
mystery to the workers. A few townspeople complained about the inequality of
wealth, but mostly it was accepted as necessary, and no one really believed
they were any happier. To the contrary, it was often seen that the stress of
these high-rise positions were so overwhelming that it often caused them to
simply jump out of their high-rise windows. Fresh air can be a killer too.
Nobody won at this game.
The canning complex was a giant old building
with assembly lines and warehouses, sheds and offices sprawling out in all
directions. The central building housed the massive canning machine; a great
automated monstrosity with its pneumatic arms and conveyor belts, moving
walkways and runways that swirled around, whooshing high into the sky one
minute and plunging to the depths in the next. There were cages and lifts,
platforms and escalators, unfolding arms and retracting claws, all dancing
together, turning and moving and lifting and separating in unison. There were
different levels and stages for food preparation: cutting, cooking, cleaning,
labelling; filling and closing, sealing and seaming sections; huge chromium
vats with steam valves and whistles; machines that stamped and turned and
poured and scraped, clicked and buzzed and squeaked and thumped and pushed
45,000 cans per day out of its arse-end into neatly stamped cardboard boxes which
were labelled, stacked, paletted, packed on railway trucks, and shipped out to
the rest of the world.
This is where Clara worked alongside her
other hair-netted colleagues in quality control.
The whole plant covered more than 500 acres
of land and consumed more electricity in a day than the entire town in a year.
This is also where Clara and Samuel had met.
He’d been there investigating a break-in by some kids who liked to ride on the
various attractions and do assorted naughty things in its many hidden nooks and
crannies. They didn’t do any damage…it was just dangerous for them. But try as
they may, the police could not discourage these under-age lawbreakers. They
hardly ever caught any of them because of all the hiding places. Generations of
children had been coming here for their evening and weekend entertainment.
Samuel strutted around with his shield and
notebook for a while, looking important in his newly pressed policeman’s
uniform, before his attentions fell on Clara. That seemed to set the theme for
their relationship. After that things were always falling on Clara: his desire,
his wrath, his opinions, his corrections.
Perhaps it was his inability to apprehend
these young evil-doers that precluded his rise in the ranks, but after plodding
the beat for far too long, he resigned and took a more lucrative, and more upwardly
mobile post as a warden at the local prison. Clara however continued to work at
the factory.
In front of the factory stood a statue of a
woman holding a can, smiling in benign satisfaction as if she was the
beneficent all-giving provider and mother of the town. And indeed she was, for
most of the townsfolk worked in this factory. It was at her great mechanical
breasts that they fed and took succour, and provided for their loved ones. It
was from her steel and chrome womb that the fruits of their labours were born.
And speaking of labour, the Mitke house also
lay some ten minutes walk from the hospital, where most of its citizens had
been born. Just behind the hospital was the church: the short distance between
the labour ward and the graveyard an apt metaphor for the blink of an eye
between life and death.
Death was something much on Clara’s mind at
the moment. The possible death of her son and the hoped for demise of her arch
nemesis who now stood in all her gory gothic glory, framed in the light
spilling from the open door, suitcase at her feet. Clara stood in the doorway
just behind Samuel, with Beulah straining her neck just behind her. Then came
the dog, pushing his way forward between their legs and shoving his long
snuffly snout into Alice’s
crotch, nudging it fervently.
“Here boy. Stop it,” said Samuel, grabbing
the dog’s collar and trying to drag him away. How embarrassing. The dog just
loved Aunt Alice. Perhaps because she too wore a studded dog collar.
“Oooo,” said Alice, completely unfazed by
the dog’s attentions. “Now that’s what I call a greeting.”
Beulah giggled in the background and Clara’s
head swivelled in the Exorcist fashion to deliver her daughter the blackest of
looks. Samuel knew he had to take things in hand before he had a bloodbath on
the doorstep.
“Alice,” he reprimanded her with his tone.
“Sorry.”
Silence.
“Hello Clara.”
“Alice.”
“Sorry to hear about….” She waved her hand
dismissively.
“Joshua.”
“Joshua.” Pause. “Samuel phoned.”
“So he says.”
“Could I come in? I’d like to unpack – maybe
take a shower?”
“Of course,” said Samuel, backing into Clara
and causing a log-jam in the doorway. Eventually they sorted themselves out and
shuffled into the kitchen, where Clara, for all her dislike for Alice, had put
the kettle on. Samuel carried in her suitcase.
“Thanks.”
“Hi,” said Beulah, and gave a little wave of
her hand.
“Hi there. You’ve grown a bit.”
“Sit,” said Clara, sounding harsher than
she’d intended. Alice sat.
“Coffee?” Clara slopped some coffee into a
cup without waiting for a reply and stood back against the sink, her arms
folded over her chest.
“Thanks for coming at such short notice,”
said Samuel.
“That’s okay.”
Everyone stood around watching her. Samuel
tried to think of something to say but he had depleted his store of
conversations. Alice sipped slowly, smiling under her breath.
“Cold out?” asked Samuel.
“Not really.”
Pause.
“How is……?” asked Alice. Clara couldn’t work
out whether she had really forgotten his name or whether she was just winding
her up. She just had to keep remembering that she was there to look after
Beulah, which freed up her conscience and allowed her to stay at Joshua’s side.
This was the only reason she tolerated her.
“Joshua.”
“Joshua.”
“He is unconscious,” said Clara with a
sarcastic edge.
“There’s been no change as yet,” said Samuel
nicely, as if trying to make up for his wife’s bad manners. “But the doctors
seem very hopeful.”
“Oh.” Alice kept her face deadpan. She and
Joshua had a bit of history which no one knew about. When they had been younger,
Alice would often persuade him to play certain games with her (mostly with sexual-satanic
overtones). But eventually she went a bit too far in one of her games and
Joshua had freaked out. He threatened to tell his mother, and Alice, to keep
him quiet, had scared him half to death by saying that if he did, she would
wait until he was asleep then creep into his room and suck out all his blood.
She was only joking, but Joshua saw no reason to disbelieve her. She looked
every inch the vampire with her pentagrams and piercings. Joshua wet his bed
for six months after that visit, but at least Alice was deterred from playing
with him.
“Thank you for the coffee,” she smiled at
Clara. “But now I would like to go and unpack and have a bath. If that’s okay?”
She smiled sweetly at Clara. Clara didn’t answer.
“Sure. You can have Joshua’s room,” said
Samuel, looking at Clara to see if this was okay. Clara shrugged nonchalantly
as if she couldn’t give a stuff.
“Okay then,” he said, picking up her
suitcase. I’ll show you.” He led them out the kitchen and up the stairs,
Alice’s leathers and chains clinking as she walked, the dog following close
behind, sniffing at her bum.
