Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

‘So how’s wossername, the Welsh boy, Irene?’ Calling back over his shoulder as he drives. ‘You still goin’ with him? You know what they says about the Welsh? That true, Jane, you found out yet? I bet you bloody ’ave, girl, I seen the look in your eyes. You all right back there? Sorry about the state. Tell you what, I’ll move that ole…’

The van stops.

Jane notices he’s pulled off the road and driven through an open field gate and, looking between the front seats, through the windscreen, she can see that there’s a thick hedge now between the van and the road, and she’s thinking, Why are we… ? What’s he stopping for? They haven’t been on the road five minutes. Then the rear doors creak open and Fred climbs in with her. He’s wearing his old overalls; the smell of sweat is very strong now.

He’s holding a roll of wide, brown tape that he’s pulled from the tool bag.

He isn’t smiling any more. He’s got this intent look on his face, like when he was sizing up the bathroom wall, working things out. There are little points of light so far back in his bulblike eyes, it’s as if they’re actually shining from somewhere inside his brain.

‘What are you… ?’ An amazed fear shoots up through Jane’s body.

And with that first lilt of it in her voice, she sees that something has happened. The little lights have filled up Fred’s eyes, making them glow as if they’re veined with filaments, and his teeth are bared. The whole atmosphere in the van has changed, become charged, Fred and Rose connecting now like jump leads on a battery, sparks bouncing between them.

Then this great big bunched fist, knuckles like ball-bearings, thrusts up like a greased piston on a machine and smacks Jane thunderously in the mouth. She can feel the blow echoing in her skull.

Then there’s this kind of time-lapse and the next thing she’s on her back tasting salty blood, smelling this overwhelming sweat smell – Fred on top of her taping her wrists together, his lips drawn back, teeth set in concentration, breath coming in efficient little spurts.

And then, satisfied with his wrist-taping, he’s saying , ‘You di’n’t ’ave no dad to show you what’s what, did you, Jane? Me and Rose gonner help you out now, look. Be thankin’ us, you will, you and that Welsh boy, wossername, Irene. Show you what’s what, where the bits goes, you little smart bitch…’

Merrily spasmed and jerked up in bed. The light was still on, and Happy like Murderers was spread spine-up on the duvet.

It was ten past two in the morning, and the experience had been so shatteringly vivid that she had to get out of bed and go rushing up to Jane’s apartment, to stand panting in the doorway, listening to the kid’s breathing.

Afterwards, at the top of the stairs, she felt so faint that she had to go down on her knees, head in her hands. Her hair was matted, her skin felt like latex, and she’d have to have a shower, even if it sent the pipes into a strangled symphony.

Under the water, she relived the unspeakable, through the split consciousness in the dream that had been scripted by her reading – the absolute insanity of reading that stuff until sleep had blurred the filth.

In the dream, part of her had been Jane, and yet she was there, too, invisible and helpless, as Jane’s mum.

Knowing what Jane could not know – knowing what was going to happen. What had happened, over and over again: Fred and Rose feeding off fear.

Sexual vampires.

Merrily thought about the mothers of the known victims, all the stricken mothers who had to read about it, had to know, had to be there with their daughters, at least once, in the greasy, blood-smelling, semen-smelling darkness.

In Fred and Rose’s cellar, which was not there any more.

A one-man definition of the term ‘earthbound’.

Was it conceivable that whatever had been inside Fred, whatever had ignited the bilious filaments of evil in those eyes, could be passed on, could jump – the way the electricity had jumped into Roddy Lodge from live coils around the insulators on the pylon – into someone receptive?

And was it – as some deeply troubled part of Huw might need it to be – something beyond the human?

Wearing a clean white T-shirt under her towelling robe, Merrily crept up the stairs to check on Jane again.

The kid had seemed to be genuinely asleep when she and Huw had arrived back at the vicarage just after midnight. Behind the front door, they’d found a brown paper bag containing a white, hardbacked notebook labelled The Magickal Diary of Lynsey Davies , and a note from Lol that said: It’s all here. You don’t even need to read between the lines.

When she’d shown Huw to his room, he’d taken the diary with him. She wondered what his nightmares had been like.

As she stood looking down at Jane she thought the kid’s eyes opened briefly. But then they closed again and she turned over onto her side, and Merrily slipped out.

She stopped by the top landing window with its view through the trees to the village square and the all-night lantern on the front of the Black Swan. And then she knelt, in her long white T-shirt, and prayed for guidance, slow and intense, from far inside herself, inside her heart-centre, in the emotional silences back there.

IT WAS DOWN at the bottom of Ross town centre, among a cluster of antique shops, and still hard to find. It had a door with no glass and one narrow window with no actual books in it, just a small sign on a greying card.

Piers Connor-Crewe Bookseller

Frannie Bliss found the discretion interesting. ‘Porn. Gorra be. How else is he gonna make any kind of a living?’

‘Word of mouth,’ Merrily said. ‘The Internet. You can turn over a week’s income on about four books, if you know what you’re doing – so I’m told.’

‘We’re not talking John Grisham here, are we?’ Bliss pushed at the door; it didn’t give.

‘Try the bell, Frannie.’

‘Hard porn – mark my words.’ Bliss pressed a black button in the white door. ‘I’ve been summoned, by the way.’

‘Fleming?’ Merrily looked up the hill towards the Market House, where clouds were massing like bonfire smoke. It was not yet eleven a.m.

‘It was only a matter of time. He knew I was still around – well, obviously. Wants to see me in Hereford at four this afternoon, which is ominous – anything heavy, you say it late afternoon. Limits the victim’s options. He thinks, Aw, sod it, I’ll go and get pissed instead. I’m guessing formal suspension this time.’

‘What sort of case have they got for that?’

‘He’s been heard to say, “If Bliss wants to be a private eye, I’m not going to hold him back any longer.” And he’ll have stuff going way back. I never claimed to be the divisional Mr Popular.’