Michael Marshall - The Straw Men

'Ward — you couldn't give the guy a parking ticket on that argument.'

'Maybe not. But we need help. Nina is the only person I can think of. These fucks killed my parents. I don't care what I have to say to get her on side.'

Bobby looked at me, and eventually nodded. 'Make the call.'

28

Some of the time it was like being dead. Some of the time it was like being something else, like a fish or a tree or a cloud or a dog, a damn dog. Dogs are manic and preach in the streets but it's better being a damn dog than dead. Most of the time it was like being nothing at all, just a small bundle of sweet nothing floating down a river under a sky in which no birds sang.

Sarah was very ill by now. Very occasionally she would remember where and who she was. Her stomach had ceased to cramp. She had stopped registering its sensations. She believed it was still a part of her, and that she also retained her arms and legs. Sometimes there would be a horrible proof of this, an appalling pain that shot up from her toes all the way through her body. It was like a kind of pins and needles, except that the needles and pins were red-hot and a foot long and someone slid them under her skin and then pushed with all their might and left them there. The pain eventually faded, but Sarah was never present for that part. By the time that happened, she would be back on the river, floating downstream again.

Sometimes people would talk to her as she floated. She heard voices, anyhow. She would hear her friends, her grandmother and sister occasionally, but most often she would hear her mom and dad. Usually they were talking about inconsequential things, as if she was sitting at the table in the living room and doing her homework, and they were just next door and chatting the way you do. You couldn't hear all of what was being said, not usually. It was half-sentences, snatches here and there. 'Charles thinks Jeff's going to fly with this version.' 'Brunch, but this one could be worth it.' 'It's just a third-act thing.' Her mother would say things about her day, where she had been and who she had seen: 'You can do what you like with your face, but you can't hide the back of your hands.' But then her father would say something that had just come into his head, and she would hear all of it, like: 'You know what I'd do if I was famous? Stalk people. I'd find some nobody and just keep popping up in their lives. Who's going to believe them? 'Hey, Mr Policeman — Cameron Diaz keeps bothering me.' Or… 'Look, I've got all these letters from Tom Cruise. No, I have. He's pestering me. That's his handwriting. It really is.' You could send someone completely over the edge. Pretty quickly, too.'

Sarah didn't know whether she'd ever heard him say these things in the time before her life had become a drifting thing. She didn't think so. She thought it was something just for her, something to keep her company as she floated. He'd always said words for her, the things that came into his head. Mom didn't always realize they were jokes, and didn't often find them funny. Sarah usually did.

After a while the voices would fade.

At other times she would hear footsteps, and know that it was them come to save her. She would hear them getting closer and closer, until her mouth began to move, ready to say something when the panel was lifted and her father's face appeared. They would stand right above her, their feet shuffling on the boards that covered her body. But they never found her. The footsteps would fade, and then she would be floating again.

Occasionally something would rise up in her body, most often after Nokkon had come. Heaves, which cut across her stomach like a knife dipped in ice, until she felt sure she was going to split in two. There was nothing to come up, not even the water, because her body absorbed that as quickly as it could. Her body had got with the program. Sometimes it talked to her now, ticking her off. It was doing its best to hold steady, but it was really very unhappy with the situation. It couldn't be expected to deal with this. Her body had a voice like Gillian Anderson's. It was very reasonable and spoke in long sentences that it must have thought out very clearly ahead of time. But it wasn't happy, and it had stopped believing that things were going to get better. Sarah listened to what it said, and tried to take an interest, but she didn't think there was anything she could do to help.

Nokkon was her only real friend, and even he didn't come very often any more. Sarah got the feeling he was disappointed in her. He still talked, and gave her water, and told her things, but she sensed it was mainly for his own benefit. He pretended that he was a real person, that when he had been younger he had met people made of hay. That they had found him, or he them. That he had learned from them, and they now learned from him. Nokkon sometimes had those people with him now. That's what he said, anyway, though Sarah couldn't understand why he was bothering to lie. She knew what they were. They were his goblins. They did his bidding and ranged far and wide, watching out for those who were foolish enough to believe themselves lucky, as Sarah once had. They kept tabs on people with microphones and listening bats flying over every house in the world. Some of the goblins were very big, and could stomp hard enough to shake the ground into earthquakes and volcanoes. Others were very, very small and flew through the air and went in through people's pores so they could stir cells around and make black things grow in their lungs and hearts and liver. The big goblins had voices like thunder. The little ones sounded as if they were Welsh. When Sarah coughed she kept her mouth shut so that none of them could fly into her. A few of the goblins were normal sized. They were quite rare. She never saw any of them, but she knew they were there. She banged her head against the wood above her head, trying to make them go away.

Then everyone would fade out and it would get darker again and she would be floating on and on. At first when she'd floated, it had been like lying with her back on the water, borne along on the surface. It had actually been quite nice. But now she seemed to float lower and lower in the water, as if she was sinking. Her ears were already below the surface, and before long it would be her eyes.

When the tip of her nose was under, she knew she wouldn't be floating any more.

29

Zandt stood outside a door in Dale Lawns. When his first ring on the buzzer elicited no response, he pressed it again, leaning on it with all of his weight until he saw a figure through the mottled glass in the door's upper portion, coming toward him out of the white light beyond.

Gloria Neiden was dressed in top-to-bottom designer, for an evening at home. Yet from her first words it was evident she was drunk. Not benign, cheerful drunk, or even falling-down drunk. Opaquely drunk. Drunk to be alone.

'Who the hell are you?'

'My name is John Zandt,' he said. 'We met two years ago.'

'I'm afraid I don't recall. I certainly don't remember making any arrangements to renew our

acquaintance.' This was delivered well, with only one minor slur.

She started to close the door. Zandt stopped it with his hand.

'I was one of the policemen who worked the disappearance of Annette Mattison,' he said.

Mrs Neiden blinked, and it was as if the movement caused a grey chemical to spread down through

her face, something that imperfectly embalmed it.

'Yes,' she said, folding her arms. 'I remember you now. Good work. All nicely tidied away, right?'

'No. Which is why I'm here now.'

'My daughter is out with friends. And even if she wasn't, I would insist that she didn't speak to you. It

has taken us all a long time to try to come to terms with what happened.'

'I'm sure,' Zandt said. 'And has it worked?'