Alex Bell - The Ninth circle

But all this nonsense about angels fighting each other… that can’t be right. Surely Stephomi isn’t still lying to me? Am I being paranoid now? Truth be told, I think I am predisposed towards paranoia. But as the saying goes, even the paranoid man has enemies.

I did not like the idea that a demon had invaded my home and my dreams. Stephomi had said that dreams themselves were a place of the In Between, neither truly one reality nor the other, a merging of the possible and the impossible. And I had seen the demon in mirrors too, I remembered. I had seen him and the mystery woman in the mirror of the bathroom, both of them in flames… I started, appalled as I thought back on it. At the time I had dismissed it as a semi-waking dream, a nightmare, a hallucination. But now… I realised what this must mean. The woman, the lost woman of Budapest had indeed been found. By a devil! A devil who had taken her straight to Hell! Fuck!

Horrified, I picked up the telephone and dialled Stephomi’s number, very much relieved when he answered. I proceeded to tell him what I had surmised. And then noticed that he was very quiet on the other end of the phone and another truth burst savagely into my mind. ‘You already know, don’t you?’

‘Yes, Gabriel, I know. I’ve seen her too.’

‘What can we do?’

Stephomi sighed down the phone. ‘We can do nothing, Gabriel. You must get this into your head. You can’t fight angels and devils. It’s not a question of taking kung fu classes — this isn’t Buffy, you know. Look, lost souls have always been rich pickings for hunting demons, that’s just the way it is. Have you seen the morning paper?’

I replied that I hadn’t had the chance yet.

‘Then I suggest you go and look at it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I really must go-’

‘Wait!’ I said. ‘I’ve been thinking about it and that day I came to see you in the morning at the hotel… Your room was a mess and so were you. You’d had a demon in there, hadn’t you?’

Stephomi hesitated. ‘A demon, yes.’

‘Well? What happened? Did you kill it?’

‘No, Gabriel, I didn’t kill it,’ he said, patiently. ‘That would have been a very foolish thing to do indeed’

‘But… why the hell did you have a demon in your hotel room anyway?’ I demanded.

‘Look, as I’ve already said, there aren’t many people who can see them. Demons and angels know who we are and I think it unnerves them to have humans who can see into their own worlds. They don’t like it. They preferred it when people like us were burned at the stake. But sometimes they need a human agent here on Earth, and that’s when they come to us.’

I paused for a moment, a grimace of distaste twisting my mouth. ‘You’ve served the whims of demons?’

‘Angels too, Gabriel,’ Stephomi said, an amused tone in his voice. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve done nothing I should be ashamed of.’

‘But… but, they’re devils! They’ll have ulterior motives!’

‘Everyone has those, my friend. Even angels. Anyway, sometimes we mortal men have little choice in the matter. The world belongs to them, really. God gave it to them to squabble and fight over. That’s why everything’s such a mess. Anyway, I really have to go. I suggest you go and read the paper. Page six. And I assure you I had nothing to do with it.’

Nothing to do with it? Those ominous words still ringing in my ears, I hung up the phone, walked back to the kitchen table, sat down and spread the newspaper out at page six. And then my heart missed a beat and my breath caught in my throat as I looked at the photo and the caption on top of the small article. As I sat and stared, growing more horrified by the moment, there was a soft, slicing sound from just behind me and the page was suddenly covered with splattered drops of blood, blotting and soaking into the page, mixing and swirling with the black ink used to print the dreadful story.

In horror, I leaped from my chair and whipped round to stare behind me, half expecting to see some devil with a dripping carving knife. But there was nothing. The kitchen was completely deserted. I raised a hand to my face, wondering if a spontaneous nosebleed had caused the newspaper to become spotted with blood. But it wasn’t me who was bleeding. At a loss, I turned back to gaze at the newspaper but, to my astonishment, the page was quite unmarked. There were no longer any swollen beads of blood staining the article. Cautiously, I picked up the paper and ran my hand over the surface. It was bone dry. Once again, I felt that terrible tugging sensation from within — as if laughing, mocking devils were tugging at my sanity, madly determined to have it from me.

With an effort, I sat back down at the table and re-read the article. The mystery woman now had a name. And she was also now dead. Her body had been found yesterday morning in a seaweed- and barnacle-covered crate left beneath the Holocaust Memorial during the night… ‘ Neville Chamberlain’s Weeping Willow is weeping still ’ …

When people had noticed the box yesterday, bomb diffusers had been called for in the fear that the box contained explosives. But as soon as the crate had been prised open, a mass of water had rushed out and with it, the body of a woman. Her name was Anna Sovanak and she was a scientist working on developing new medicines in Budapest. She had disappeared a few months ago, back in June, while holidaying with her family in Italy. There had simply been no trace of her, not a single clue for the authorities to build a case upon. She had just gone for a walk on the coast after storming out of the villa, having argued with her husband, and had not been seen again. Eventually, it was assumed that she must have decided to go swimming and had been overcome by savage currents that had swept her out to sea.

The paper confirmed that the water from the crate had indeed been salt water and that the unfortunate woman had most likely been in this crate at the bottom of the ocean since her death, which was estimated to have taken place in June soon after her disappearance. She had died from a precisely applied stab wound to the neck, which would have killed her virtually instantly. Anna Sovanak was from a long line of Jews and, together with the fact that her body had been left beneath the Holocaust Memorial, police had officially concluded that this was a simple anti-Semitism inspired killing. An isolated incident of prejudice and hatred. They were following several leads and were sure to catch those responsible soon… very soon… How very comforting…

I gazed at the article incredulously for some time. Why would anyone go to the trouble of concealing the body in the Mediterranean, only to bring it up months later and somehow transport it to Hungary, without anybody noticing, to leave it beneath the Holocaust Memorial? How could this even remotely be classed as a straightforward, isolated incident? Were the police utterly incompetent? And what of the journalists? Why was such a story toiling away on page six with no more than three or four paragraphs? Surely this was front-page news? Was I in the middle of some huge conspiracy that everyone else was in on?

And it was horrifying that she had been dead since June, for I had seen her just last month in Budapest. Was I truly losing my mind? I thought back over it all and realised triumphantly that I was not the only one to have seen her. We had both been attacked by muggers that night… But had they seen her or had they just seen a man running through the streets on his own? I had seen men step out behind her. But I had not seen them touch her, or speak to her, or step towards her, or acknowledge her presence in any way. When it was all over, she had been gone, faded softly from the alley like some wandering ghost.

But, no, there had been one other. The boy at the Basilica. The dying boy, I realised with a sinking heart. The child whose body was disease-ridden, causing his hair to fall out and his skin to turn grey. A pale shadow like me, not even really here. A person of the In Between himself.