Kate Griffin: The Midnight Mayor

Behind, a hiss-swipe through the air and the smell of burning plastic announced that the second spectre was doing the same with its knife. Coming out of a corner by the refuse bins was a third, heading towards me with a casual swagger. I knew it didn’t need to run.

I dug my fingers deeper into the tarmac. It bent beneath them with the cold, crinkly texture of dry cereal, resisted, then parted. I pushed in my fingers, my wrist, then the lower arm, then in as far as my elbow, straining to delve through the mass of the earth. Still not deep enough. I cursed and bent lower, pressing my cheek to the ground and pushing my shoulder into the tarmac. It was faint and a long way off, but close enough now for my fingers to tingle with it, and most of all, I could smell it. Gas mains have always been built down deep; it’s a sensible enough precaution.

I dragged my fingers out of the pavement, trailing loose chips of black tarmac. Wet dirt, grey, the colour of clay, clung to the length of my arm as I pulled myself free. When my fingertips finally came away, there was a broad tear in the earth, and the air above it wriggled like a desert mirage. The smell of gas is artificially pumped into it at the factory, a dry stink that makes itself known in every part of the nostrils and tickles at the back of the throat. I scrambled to my feet and let it rise around me, watched it spill out around my feet and ankles and, raising my hands, dragged more of it higher even as the red paint I had sprayed onto the ground began to melt, dribble, lose its shape. As the shimmering on the air spread around me, bringing tears to my eyes and making my lungs hurt, I reached into my satchel, digging deep for a much-used lighter that had never lit a cigarette. I slotted it into my bandaged right hand, drawing my coat up around my face and hunching my shoulders to present as small a target as possible.

When the ward broke, it did so fast. The third spectre, Mr Boom boom boom boom-te-boom , was still a few yards away. The paint bubbling at my feet gave way, turned black and peeled like dead skin off a corpse. Chi-chichi chi-chichi chi-chichi put his full weight on his blade, making it jerk forwards and down in an arc meant for my neck. I closed my eyes, and spun the wheel of the cigarette lighter.

I was aware of pain in the vicinity of my left collarbone, but it wasn’t the moment to care. Though my eyes were pressed tight, the flash from the ignition burnt to the back of my retinas like a full summer’s sun. Even with my coat wrapped around me and all the will I could spare focused on keeping the flames away, the heat dried up every inch of my lungs, burnt the inside of my nose, turned my tongue to leather, singed my eyebrows and caused black smoke to dribble from my hair. It was the thump-hiss of all igniting gas stoves, and it spread out around from me in a pool of shimmering leakage from deep below the streets, a bright blue centre spitting out a circle of yellow flame. Those windows close by that hadn’t been broken by the spectre’s cry were now blasted inwards, shredding curtains, and embedding glass in every wall. The bins lined up at the recycling point were blasted open and their contents set instantly alight.

It faded quickly, leaving just a hiss-whine as the gas still trickling up from the pavement burnt at my feet like a candle, smothered to a tiny core by the falling rain. Every sound I still heard had to seep through a background whumph in my ears; every sight seemed dimmer, full of spinning whiteness that followed the movement of my eyeballs. Steam rose in tropical illusion from my hair and coat. The soles of my shoes, their laces charred, ripped away from the tarmac, leaving their impression on the hot earth.

The spectres had been thrown back from the blast, and two of them were still aflame. They staggered in the rain, trying to douse the fires eating through their clothing, revealing the nothingness beneath shreds of sleeve and blackened baggy trousers. Their headphones were still playing the relentless rhythms that marked out each one. A blast that would have stopped an angry mammoth had barely singed these creatures, and bought me not nearly as much time as I’d wanted. I cursed from the bottom of my soul. Feet hissing as my hot soles met the cold, rain-soaked tarmac, I ran.

I was two streets away before breathlessness and a burning in every muscle forced me to slow to an uneasy lope. My mind caught up with the rest of me, and reported another, new sensation — a hot, itchy dribble from just below my left shoulder. I kept walking, tugging my scarf and coat aside to see the problem, and found my shirt stained pink from a mixture of rainwater and blood. A spectre’s knife, though wide of its target, had certainly found something. The bloody gash ran from just below my collarbone to deep beneath my left armpit. With each step I took it opened and shut like it was telling some obscene joke. Turning our face away, we pressed our bandaged hand over the injury, and smothered it from sight. Not too far behind, we heard the spectres’ screams again and the crack of fractured glass. We tried to run, but only managed a few undignified paces before the pain throughout our limbs announced that death was preferable to haste.

A street corner brought me to a road lined with shops, the kind above which sat the owner’s home, lights dimmed and curtains drawn. These were the strange, unlikely businesses driven from the centre of town years ago: discount stores selling nothing but plastic boxes and drying racks, hairdressers specialising in dreadlocks, wholesalers of Jamaican spice, cobblers who cut keys and sold raincoats as well, suspicious computer shops offering 5p-per-minute calls to Zambia. Strange, anorexic mannequins, creatures with waists as thick as my neck, stared out from bargain clothes shops, with scornful eyes. Inside a darkened pub, the bingo machine rippled all the colours of the rainbow, promising a £20 jackpot on only a £1 investment and the spinning of three cherries. From overflowing council bins spilt free newspapers, and takeaway boxes, their contents snuffled out by a prowling, falafel-addicted fox. Cars were only one a minute, and the traffic lights phased red-amber-green-amber-red at nothing except me and the rain.

I could hear . . .

. . . still a long way behind, but no denying what I could hear, I was past the point where imagination lied . . .

Dumdumdumdumdumdumdum

Chi-chichi chi-chichi chi-chichi

Boom boom boom boom-te-boom boom

Shhhshhhshhhshhha shhhshhhshhhshhha shhhshhhshhhshhha

Spectres always hunted in packs. Four or five was the average, but I’d read an article that reported as many as twelve in some cities.

I staggered down the street, snatching hot neon light from the streetlamps as I went, and bundling it into my clenched fists, bringing its comforting sodium glow close to my face and chest to wash away the fear and the cold, until my skin shone with orange-pink illumination. To my right, a primary school, gates locked, wall high and covered with anti-climb paint. A mosaic by the children, demonstrating that drugs were bad and superheroes were about family. A doctor’s clinic, set back beyond sodden grass turned to mud, blinds drawn, a padlock sealed over the entrance. Launderette on my left, orange plastic chairs set in front of great, sleeping machines; vinyl store, rare enough now to be guaranteed a nerdy audience; locked metal door down to a snooker club; locked wooden door up to a discreet acupuncture clinic; shut post office selling kids’ toys and birthday cards; pharmacy promising YOU a better body; billboards, advertising action movies with strutting heroes, and perfumes worn by women with an elegant naked back.

My own back might end up with a knife in it before the evening was out.