Paul Cornell - The Severed Streets

Yes, in the last few days he’d made up his mind about this. He was going to act, and he was going to do it soon. He found his hand going to the inside pocket of his jacket, as it reflexively did when he needed to be reassured about what he had there. He stopped it. He knew what he had. Now he had to act on it.

They had turned left and were now heading slowly along a backstreet: residential, nice window boxes. That smell was getting stronger, and now he could hear something in the distance: drums and rhythmic shouting. They passed a crowd outside a pub with people in suits enjoying the sunshine, all looking in one direction — the direction they were headed, towards where the sound and the smell were coming from. They weren’t looking nervous, but interested, laughing, raising their glasses. Here it comes, say the British, we love a comfy disaster, spices things up, doesn’t it? The fuckers. Why was it so hard to get any of them to believe in anything positive?

‘Brian?’

‘We’re heading towards the demo now, but we’re going to turn off down Horseferry in a second.’

‘Okay.’

How would it be if he told Tunstall to stop and open the door, and if he got out and followed the sound of the drums and the smell of the smoke and went and joined in with the protest? Or he could find a box and stand on it and orate to the crowd and say, We’re actually you, we’re the opposition and the government at the same time! Can’t you see that?

The car moved forwards again. Suddenly, the volume of noise from ahead grew, as if a mass of people had turned a corner. Oh, here came — God, was this them? There were people moving back down the street. Ordinary people, not protestors, trotting out of the way. Then the first of the kids in those costumes, running hard, not after them, but away from something.

The main body of the protest had presumably run into police efforts to contain it somewhere up ahead.

‘What the hell, Brian?’

‘Sorry.’ Tunstall looked over his shoulder, wondering about reversing, but they were stuck among cars that were all frantically honking their horns.

Spatley looked round. Protestors were running the other way up the street now too, appearing behind them, meeting up with those from the other direction, all desperately looking around. Oh, don’t say that the police had kettled them in here, right in this street! In moments the car was surrounded: kids dressed in that Toff costume; kids with placards; kids just looking excited and sweaty, bare chested in shorts, sunburned from the day out, sparkling with factor fifty, scarves ready to be wrapped around their faces, those masks and capes and hats scattered among them.

A placard slammed against the side window, then the window opposite, then bodies swiftly started to surround the car. His view became obscured as more and more of the kids started thumping against the side of the vehicle. Those masked faces loomed as they tried to peer in, rather intimidating, especially when up close. Those things were such a mistake on their part. They should be trying to make people love them, not be scared of them. They couldn’t see in through the darkened windows. They were just assuming someone important or rich was in here, probably a ‘banker’. Some of them would know what a banker was: Mummy or Daddy. That was maybe why they hated them so much. Tunstall was muttering at them, annoyed. He hit the horn, held onto it. ‘I’ve called for backup; we should have you out of here in a bit. Don’t worry, it’s not as if they can get in.’

The car started to rock from the weight of bodies against both sides. Then the protestors must have felt the movement, and a cheer went up, and they started to synchronize, to do it deliberately. The ends of placards started to hammer against the windows. There was one of those canes thumping at the glass beside his head. But Spatley knew the glass would hold.

‘Little shites,’ called Tunstall. ‘Wish I could reverse into ’em.’

‘We can’t, I’m afraid.’ Just for the record. ‘How long until that backup gets here?’ He glanced at the window beside him and didn’t hear Tunstall’s reply, because suddenly his attention was caught by what he saw there.

It was another of those masks, but shoved right up against the glass. Even like that, you still couldn’t see anything behind the eye slits. Was someone just holding it there? No, there was clearly a body out there too. Spatley leaned closer to examine it. They sold these outfits online; some of them were the proper ones, so called, and some of them were cheap knock-offs. The Chinese were shipping them over. Capitalism in action, on the back of the anti-capitalist movement, straight from the Communists. Anything could mean anything nowadays. The top hat this figure wore was pushed up against the window too. Whoever wore it was almost acting as if he could push his way into the car.

No, wait, was that…? This wasn’t possible. Was he dreaming again?

The mask was somehow … forcing the glass inwards around it, the brow of the hat pushing ahead of it, bending only slightly with the pressure, the window becoming a viscous liquid. Was it some sort of chemical?

There might be genuine danger here. Spatley looked quickly to Tunstall, but he was oblivious, hitting the horn again. ‘Brian!’

The man looked over his shoulder, looked right at the face slowly pushing through the glass, and it was suddenly, horribly evident to Spatley that the driver couldn’t see anything unusual. ‘They’ll get bored. You hold on.’ He sounded less certain now, nervous even.

‘But…’ Spatley looked between the two faces. He didn’t know how to say that he could see something that Tunstall couldn’t.

Oh. This must be what having a stress hallucination was like.

He turned back, trying to control himself, to watch as the face shoved itself through the glass, the head almost completely here now. He was thinking about Ann giving birth to Jocelyn, he realized. Was this some sort of dream sign, that he should accept this protest movement or whatever it was into his … his car …? No, no. That was weakness.

Below the head, something was pushing through the material of the door itself. Of course. If glass could do that, so could metal. Spatley watched it form. It was going to become a hand, he saw. It was holding something, metal flowing all around it. Then the object heaved its way right through the door and into clear view.

The hand was holding a cut-throat razor.

Spatley yelled and ripped off his seatbelt. He shoved himself across the seats, scrambling to get his back to the far door. ‘Brian!’ I’m awake, he wanted to yell, I’m awake! ‘Let me out!’

‘What is it?’ The driver had turned to look again. He was looking right at where a second hand had pushed its way through the door. The thing’s upper body was now joining the head as it snaked into the car.

‘Can’t you see it?! You have to let me out! They’re … they’re getting in!’

‘What are you talking about?’

Spatley closed his eyes tightly, opened them again, and the figure was still there. It slowly and carefully pulled its knees out of the door to kneel on the seat; that mask of a face was looking at him, the razor raised so that the blade was a line in his gaze, the other hand resting on the upholstery. Its meniscus method of entry sealed behind it and now it was entirely in the car with him. Its posture was that of a dancer, of someone playing a part in a mime show. Spatley grasped that feeling desperately to himself — that whatever else this was, there must be a person inside there. He still couldn’t make himself demand that Tunstall see it. ‘I … I…’ Even trying to talk to it felt terrible, as if he was making it real by acknowledging it. ‘What do you want?’ he asked, as quietly as he could. ‘Who are-?’