Stray Souls (Magicals Anonymous) (13 page)

“Why?”

“Cos now you’ve bloody met me!” Sammy threw up his arms in exultant affirmation.

Sharon hesitated. Somehow, it seemed, she was on the brink of being told about all those unnamed things of which she’d known so little, but up to now she couldn’t have asked the right questions.

“But…” she said, struggling, “and… I mean, I can totally see how I’m not gonna like the answer here, but I’ll be really pissed if I don’t ask… why can’t you just fix it?”

Sammy raised his eyes in despair. “I may be the second best shaman ever to walk the earth,” he explained, “but people just don’t respect my height.”

“Your—”

“And I… I kinda have differences with a few of the powers that be, you know, which isn’t my fucking fault because the Beggar King had it coming and the Bag Lady shouldn’t have said what she said and the Seven Sisters did look stupid in that dress so what I’m saying is I’m just completely fine, I’m totally great at fixing this shit but there might be a few tossers what get in my way.”

“And… they won’t get in mine?”

“Stupid, innit?”

“I gotta say, if the fate of the city is on the line, then I kinda figured you’d be a bit more on it, Beggar Lady and that besides.”

“It’s… There’s things, okay? Stuff that I did that was… Besides, this is human shit and you’re never gonna learn nothing if you just sit on your arse, so can it, okay!”

“But what am I supposed to do?” wailed Sharon. “I don’t know nothing about anything; I work in a coffee shop! If you’re all so shaman special then you should fix it despite being… a minority group. Or get this Midnight Mayor bloke to deal with it, because all I can do is walk through walls and turn invisible, and from everything you’ve said, that doesn’t sound like it’s gonna be any use to anyone.”

“Ain’t you listening?” demanded Sammy. “You’re a shaman! You can do the shadow walk sure–I say
do;
it’s kinda like watching a shark trying to swim backwards up a waterfall, but at least you’ve got the idea–but you’ve got the dream walk and the spirit walk and you can see the city and it can see you and that makes you… it makes you almost kinda…” Sammy’s hands flapped as he sought to express an idea. “It makes you almost kinda okay!”

Sharon put her head in her hands. Sammy hesitated, then waddled to his feet and padded over to her. He patted her uncertainly on her knee, that being the easiest part to reach without standing on tiptoe and embarrassing himself, and added, “Chin up, squishy-skin. What’s the worst that can happen?”

There is, in accordance with the universal law of balances, a worst that can indeed happen. Currently the worst that can happen is sat on the steps of St Christopher’s Hall in the darkest part of the night and considering its next move. There is a hint of overweight belly within the sensible shirt, a suggestion of buttock peering out behind the drooping blue jeans, a protrusion of sensible boot and, of course, the ubiquitous yellow fluorescent jacket. The worst that the world has to offer, the greatest killers that man has ever seen, sit and drink builder’s tea from polystyrene cups, and the night is silent in their presence.

One says, “Hey!”

One says, “Whatcha?”

One says, “You smell that?”

One says, “Heard it barking.”

One says, “Knockers!”

One says, “Lovely pair…”

One says, “She was here… but then she went.”

One says, “If the Friendlies don’t know…”

One says, “Is she hot?”

One says, “Great arse.”

One says, “What kind of name is that?”

One says, “Wankers.”

One says, and there is a certain relish in his voice as he reaches this conclusion, “Bloody stupid name.”

One says, “What’s she do?”

One says, “ ‘Divides the night from the day’, whatever the hell that bloody means.”

“Keeper of the Gate.”

“Our Lady of 4 a.m.”

“She Who Walks Beside.”

All four pause, and consider these words, and find in them nothing that impresses.

One says, “Let’s get her.”

One says, “Bacon fucking sarnie!”

One says, “Greydawn shit.”

And they smile.

Four faces–but all the same smile.

It was three in the morning.

Sharon walked home.

Sammy had muttered something about him staying late into the night. She’d thought she’d heard a dog bark in the distance, and when she looked again Sammy was, briefly, afraid. Gotta go, he’d said. Gotta feed the imps yesterday’s recycling. This whole city shit–you fix it for your homework, okay?

Then he was gone.

She walked and had never felt so alone.

She walked the shadow walk, the walk just-out-of-seeing, and sometimes, when her mind wandered, she thought she walked the spirit walk too, and the forgotten things came crawling out between the cracks in the paving stones, and pawed at her, and asked her to remember them.

She collapsed on her bed in the silent house, where once

family of five rowing–go on hit me do it then do it–how dare you talk to me like that I am your mother–I hate you! I hate you I’m not your brother!

had argued, voices singing in the pipes out of the creaking boiler cupboard, and she pressed her head into the pillow where once

a mother rolled over in her sleep, dreaming of flying above the sea, before the memory faded with waking

and swore and cursed and finally, fully dressed, she slept.

Even in her sleep, she walked.

She walked in a place where there was no light, and no need for light, seeing without sight, hearing without sound.

She walked through a city, and it was bright, and burning, and behind every light there were faces watching and beneath her feet was the place where other steps had fallen, and then between it all there were a few places, just a few but growing more, where the light had gone out. An emptiness where something else should have been. Here a girder turned to rust, there a bulb that could not be replaced, or a water main cracked beneath the street, gushing up silent and unplugged.

She walked the dream walk, passing through the thoughts of the child who lived two doors over and who dreamed of

you’re never on time never on time never on time for class

while below the old woman slumbered, her mind giddy on blood thinners, who dreamed of

smell of paper in a place forgotten long ago.

She walked, and the dreams and half-dreams and downright nightmares of the city scattered before her, the half-heard thoughts of the slumbering streets, and as she walked she felt tiny, and alone, and heard the silence all the more when she passed by the building with the boarded-up door coated in dreamtime mists.

She thought she heard the rustling of spiders crawling into open mouths, chitinous legs on soft lips.

She wondered if she was naked on her first day at work, and decided she probably wasn’t but that it would be best not to look.

She heard the crackle of electric wings, far off.

She wanted to go home, and couldn’t quite remember where home was. She was in the street, and it was familiar and unknown, the physical reality lost behind the dream walk, her body one place, her mind another, and all around behind the darkened windows the dreamers dreamed of

         
flying glorious free! wonder of wonders up and up and up and nothing I ever dream will ever be so ecstatic

her lips on my neck

              
paper drowning in paper did I did I did I do it did I get it done?
email email writing email in my sleep email to him and email to her tap tap tap dancing on the screen and it’s still not right!

Sharon put her head in her hands, burdened by all the sound, and still it came, the rising whisper of a thousand dreaming minds, a million dreaming minds, the city dreaming, united in sleep, all of it rising up around her and

there were footsteps on the earth.

No, not quite right.

Not feet.

Paws.

Each the size of a woman’s shoe, splayed out into three points with a sharp claw at each end. The creature’s, every stride was longer than Sharon’s reach, and where its paws pressed down, whether on the thin floor of reality or the fiction of a dream, they burned the earth.

…
didn’t mean to make it happen didn’t mean to leave…

      
falling out of the bunk falling out of the bed falling so far so far so long so fast but I tried I tried so hard sir

something under the sheets oh god don’t let it be a snake please god not a snake in the bed a snake crawling up my leg I can’t move I can’t move god please

She threw her head back, opening her mouth to scream, silent screaming in the silent, roaring night. And there was a voice, louder, more real than anything which had come before and it said, to the sound of scampering feet:

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to tonight’s episode of–
Dream Walking!
I am your spirit guide for tonight, Dez Cliff Junior, as today we ask ourselves, Shamans? What are they like?”

Sharon thought she saw a figure. He was stepping through a grey-blue mist. There was a flash of white teeth, a suggestion of curly blond hair, a flare of orange-tanned skin, and a voice that whispered:

I am with you.

Then nothing.

Hello, my name is Sally, I am a banshee. Forgive me not shaking your hand, but my touch turns the blood of mortals to ice within their veins, and at the sound of my voice men writhe and scream. I prefer letter-writing. Email is useful too, but I spent so long learning how to hold a fountain pen in my talons and I struggle with keyboards. I also believe that the art of letter-writing is one which should be preserved, as it creates a more personal, thoughtful missive than many of these modern communication media.

I do not believe I have a problem as such. I am a banshee and being a banshee is all I know, so to suggest that I struggle with this identity is to imply that I either do not know myself or that I have awareness of another way of being, neither of which I believe to be the case. Problem is therefore a negative understanding; rather I am attending Magicals Anonymous for its opportunities and positive effects.

I wish to broaden my mind. Specifically, I am looking for evening classes that are friendly to my particular situation. I considered t’ai chi, but my wings get in the way. Cooking seems very interesting, but there are very few cuisines which cater for the pigeon lover. I would love to do pottery, but my talons ruin the clay on the wheel. But I think now I have found what I want to do, what I
really want. I sleep, you see, in the cooling tower at Tate Modern. A lot of banshees use these sorts of perches–good view, decent air flow and the food tends to come to you, although the family of peregrine falcons I have to share my lair with does rather put off the average seagull. But I digress. A few months ago I was having a dream, and in my dream there was a howling and a screaming and a falling, and I woke and I too was falling, and in my confusion, by mischance, I fell through a window and into the gallery itself. (I’m most terribly sorry for the damage.) The gallery was empty, deserted, but I had never been inside before, and as I tried to sweep up the worst of the glass and remove any shards from between my claws, I saw for the first time the wonders that it held. I don’t understand art. I have never been introduced to it, never inducted fully, as you might say. And at first this made the experience the more frightening for, looking at the paintings on the walls, the sculptures on their plinths, the installations and the films inside that empty place, I felt feelings that I could not explain. Why should some splashes of oil on canvas induce fear, or grief? Why would a tin can make one smile? What is it in a jagged shard of metal that cries danger, or of a daub of colour on the wall that expresses longing? I do not know, and neither the peregrine falcons nor the banshees of my kin seemed to understand my concern.

So you see I am not here so much to express a problem, as to enquire into the possibilities of evening classes in Impressionist panting.

She woke at 11.26 a.m. to find her alarm clock had finished wailing four hours ago, and there were three missed calls on her mobile phone.

She fell back asleep for another ten minutes, then woke with a jolt that sent every capillary in her body into overdrive.

11.39 a.m.

And her shift had begun at eight.

Sharon fell out of bed, her bright blue hair sticking upright, yesterday’s clothes hot against her skin. She crawled across the floor, grabbed her phone and recognised with horror Mike Pentlace’s number, then Gina’s number, then Pentlace’s again. The house was empty, Trish and Ayesha having both gone out. As she staggered towards the bathroom and pulled back the shower curtain with its images of yellow ducks, her mobile played back its dirge of messages.

“Hi, Sharon, it’s Mike. Yeah, but I know we talked yesterday, but you’re late again and, yeah, but I want to be nice about this but actually, yeah, this is getting unacceptable. Call me, okay?”

“Hi, Sharon, it’s Gina here. Just calling to make sure you’re okay. So uh… give me a call, okay, babes?”

“Sharon, it’s Mike. You haven’t called. Call me now.”

Toothpaste foaming in her mouth, Sharon’s gaze cleared enough for her to look blearily up at the mirror. The toothbrush stopped moving.

A stranger looked back at her. Sure, the eyes were brown and the skin was almond, the hair was black streaked with blue, but the backcombed look of dull-eyed exhaustion that stared out from the dirty glass belonged to some other woman, some older, possibly mushroom-munching woman who had seen such things as no words could recreate. The events of the night replayed slowly through her mind. Sammy the Elbow, the walk through Covent Garden, the empty shop with its too-quiet corners,
EVERYTHING MUST GO,
learning the names of the walks–the shadow walk, the spirit walk, the dream walk and of course somewhere just on the edge of recollection a merry male voice proclaiming, “I am your spirit guide for tonight!”