Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

‘Yeah, I… I think so. But I didn’t really have time to, because I couldn’t breathe, you know? I was choking. There was suddenly this awful pressure on my throat.’

‘What kind of pressure, Zoe?’ Huw said. ‘What did you actually feel?’

Zoe rubbed her arms. ‘I couldn’t exactly say it was hands. I couldn’t say it felt like hands. But I thought of hands. I thought of these rough – what’s the word? – callused, kind of hands. And dirty . And what I heard – this was the very worst moment, I can tell you – I actually heard Martin’s voice. He was going, like, “What’s up with you? What you doing?” And his voice was like a long way away. I mean, what – five, six metres? And I’m trying to shout, scream… and all I could make were these little rattly noises, like snorting. And I was… absolutely… bloody terrified.’

‘I bet,’ Merrily said.

‘I thought I was gonner die. I thought I was gonner die there and then. You believe me?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re, like, a vicar, too, yeah?’

‘Mmm.’

‘And I’ll tell you something else. Martin, he en’t got hands like that. He works in a bank.’ Zoe nodded towards the door, lowered her voice. ‘ They still don’t believe me. Not really. Sometimes I think I dreamed it. You know, that we fell asleep in there or something. But I can’t have. I wasn’t comfortable in there, you know, not from the start.’

‘What happened in the end, Zoe?’ Merrily asked.

‘Martin put the lights on and there was nothing there.’

‘How far were you from the lights?’

‘’Bout four metres.’

‘Could you still feel the pressure as he was putting the lights on?’

‘When the lights went on, I could breathe. It wasn’t Martin. It definitely wasn’t Martin. And there was nobody else in there, I swear to God.’

‘Did you have any marks on your neck, Zoe?’ Huw asked.

‘No. Well, redness maybe. But no bruises like you’d expect. Listen, can you tell me what happened? I’ve heard some of this stuff Mr Hall talks about, and I’m doing physics at A level, so… I mean, I’ve been trying to tell myself this was all caused by electromagnetism and radio waves on my brain. That maybe, like he says, there is some problem caused by like intersection of electrics from the power lines and signals from the TV booster and the mobile-phone transmitters…’

Merrily looked at Huw.

‘Aye,’ he said, ‘it’s possible.’

‘Then what are you doing here?’ Zoe said.

An old Land Rover was parked outside the house; its lights flashed once and a rear door opened for them.

Ingrid Sollars was at the wheel, Sam Hall next to her. ‘If this was daylight,’ he said, ‘you’d see the goddam pylon right at the back of the house, and you’d see the TV booster across the valley. The existing mobile-phone transmitter’s in the wood across there, and the big new one—’

Ingrid switched on the engine, creating foundry sounds. ‘This is the Reverend Owen, Sam, and I really don’t think he believes this begins and ends with electricity.’

‘More sick people on this estate than you could otherwise account for – how d’ya do, Reverend Owen? – and Melanie Pullman lived right over there, end of the turning circle.’

The turning circle was jammed with cars, so Ingrid Sollars had to reverse off the estate. She drove them back into the centre of the village, where a few people still hung around and the placard saying KEEP SATAN OUT! was propped against a lamp-post.

Sam leaned over the back of his seat. ‘Ingrid, of course, would actually prefer this whole thing to be down to Satan.’

Ingrid pulled in behind Merrily’s Volvo. ‘What he means is that Ingrid would prefer it not to have been caused by something the removal of which would damage the progress of this village out of the Dark Ages. We need communications, and we need all those computers, and we need the power to make them work. At the moment, a child as bright as Zoe Franklin is the exception in her age group. In ten years’ time she’ll be the norm.’

‘It’s the main source of argument between us,’ Sam said. ‘I don’t believe this is progress if it’s gonna kill off half the people and give the rest waking nightmares.’

‘That’s a ridiculous exaggeration.’

‘Sure it is – at present.’

Huw said, ‘You talk to the spring-water people, Ingrid?’

Ingrid switched off the engine. It subsided with noises like the collapsing of metal plates. ‘Yes, I did. I said the Development Committee had limited funds and would very much like to know the name of the contractors they employed in the original conversion.’

‘And?’

‘They said they didn’t have a phone number but they were pretty sure this particular contractor was… no longer available.’

‘I bet they couldn’t remember his name, either.’

Ingrid said, ‘What do you propose to do about this, Mr Owen?’

‘I intend to discuss it with my colleague here, who I hope will allow me to be involved in tomorrow’s funeral.’

‘ Tomorrow? ’

‘Don’t spread it around, eh?’

‘You’re a bastard, Huw.’ Merrily realized she was driving too fast and her foot stabbed the brake. The rain had stopped, but the night clouds hung low and sombre as the lights of Ross began to flower around them.

‘Me mam never tried to hide it,’ Huw said placidly.

‘For a start, you knew what Zoe was going to tell us.’

‘Ingrid told me about it while you were messing with the TV people. She didn’t give me the name then, though.’

‘But you had to make the kid go through it again.’

‘Cathartic, lass. Anyroad, I wanted you to hear it. You might not’ve believed me. A few tools disappearing and a bloke punched off a ladder doesn’t amount to much. I wanted you to feel that sense of being watched. And the rest of it.’

‘It doesn’t prove anything.’

‘Nothing’s ever proven.’

Merrily drove slowly through the medieval centre of Ross, behind the ancient sandstone market house, the church rising on her left, roofs glistening.

‘You even knew who the contractor was.’

‘The good Mumford and his contacts,’ Huw said. ‘Ear to the ground, that lad. A respectable spring-water firm would hardly like it broadcast. Nobody wants to be known as having employed him, having been to the pub with him a time or two, and certainly not—’

‘You wasted Ingrid’s time.’

I wanted her to hear it, and I wanted you to hear it from her.’ ‘Because you didn’t want me to think it was all down to you.’

Huw said nothing.

‘Which it is, of course.’

‘Who else cared enough?’ Huw said.

Consider, Huw said.

Consider Cromwell Street, Gloucester: a street full of flats and bedsits and therefore young people in need of cheap accommodation, coming and going, moving out and moving in. And the top rooms in number twenty-five were the cheapest of the lot. Police had actually traced about a hundred and fifty former tenants, some of whom had paid no more than a fiver a week.

So it was a haven for itinerant kids, some of whom might otherwise be sleeping in cardboard boxes in shop doorways. Some actually said it was the happiest, safest time of their adult lives, being in Cromwell Street, being part of Fred and Rose’s big family, with all that this involved. Looked back on it with real nostalgia.

Strange. And yet not so strange.

Because it was an organism , was 25 Cromwell Street, Huw said, and Fred loved it for that. It was end-of-terrace, tall and narrow – three storeys, plus cellars, plus attics – built like a person. And Fred knew all its private parts: where the wires went, where the pipes went.