Creed (31 page)

‘I can only tell you some of it, Joe.’

‘No, I want to know everything.’

She pulled away and walked from the room.

Creed caught up with her in the hallway and grabbed her by the shoulder, spinning her round. He clenched his fist and held it only inches from her face, the muscles of his arm quivering with tension. She appraised him coolly.

‘Not the macho bit again,’ she said.

He felt utterly drained once more, his spirits as well as his strength taking a sudden dive, his body sagging so that he almost collapsed against her. ‘Please, Cally,’ he said in a low, miserable voice. ‘Help me. Please . . .’

She held on to him, her arms encircling his waist and hugging him close. He could smell her hair, feel the softness of her body against his own; he could sense her regret.

Cally took him by the hand and led him into the lounge. ‘Sit down, Joe, and listen. Try not to interrupt . . .’

He opened his mouth to say something, but she put a hand to his lips. ‘Just listen.’

Creed sat, feeling old and beaten, his anger still there, but contained by hopelessness. There was nothing more he could do: Sammy’s life was in their hands. He watched Cally walk over to the window.

She gazed out, but saw nothing. How much could she tell him, how much would he believe? Did he accept what he’d witnessed that day, or did he believe he’d hallucinated, been drugged, been hypnotized – been duped? The cold light of day invariably produced its own logic. How to begin?

‘You’ve upset them, Joe.’

‘I think you told me that before. Who have I upset?’ There wasn’t much energy in his words.

‘A certain group of people. One of them is the man you photographed at the cemetery.’

‘The creep who looks like Nicholas Mallik?’

She continued to look out the window. ‘He
is
Nicholas Mallik.’

‘You know, I was afraid you were going to say that. I need the rest of that brandy.’

Now she turned. ‘I’ll get it for you.’

He waited there, too exhausted to move anyway. He ached in odd parts and his cuts stung with the disinfectant Cally had used. Even the bruise on his forehead, the one he’d got falling downstairs days ago, was throbbing again. But the worst was the confused state of his mind; that was the most wearying thing of all.

Cally returned and handed him the glass, which Creed held up to the light before taking a sip.

‘It isn’t laced with anything,’ she promised.

He shrugged. ‘At this stage, I don’t give a monkey’s. For all I know, you’ve had me dosed up for a coupla days. How else could what I’ve seen be explained?’ He lifted the glass again and took a deeper swallow. ‘Go ahead,’ he insisted. ‘I won’t interrupt.’

‘You believe me – about Mallik?’

‘I said I won’t interrupt.’

She sat on the edge of the sofa, at the opposite end to him. ‘Nobody must know he’s still alive.’

‘Yeah, that’s understandable. After all, he was supposed to have been hanged half a century ago. So what happened – they topped the wrong guy?’

She shook her head just once.

‘Ah shit . . . I’m calling the police, Cally. I’ve had enough of this runaround.’ He made as if to rise from the sofa, but she leaned across and placed a restraining hand on his arm.

‘You said you’d listen.’

‘You said you’d explain.’

‘I’m trying to. It isn’t easy.’

‘Damn right. Try the truth.’

‘Whatever I say you won’t believe me.’

‘That’s possible. I don’t like being taken for a fool.’ He jerked his arm away from her. ‘If I didn’t need you to get Sammy back I’d kick the hell out of you right here and now. I want you to tell me who these people are and what they want from me.’

Hesitation, a closing of her eyes, a decision made. She looked straight at him. ‘They call themselves the Fallen . . .’

‘Oh Christ, I knew it!’ He banged the sofa with his hand. ‘Some crazy religious sect! What are they? Devil-worshippers? Scientologists? Seventh-Day Adventists? Moonies? Trekkies? Tell me what they are!’

‘The Fallen Angels.’

‘The Fallen . . .? Don’t
do
this to me.’ He drained the glass and banged it down on the coffee table in front of him. ‘I knew this guy Mallik was involved with that devil-loving maniac Aleister Crowley when he was alive, but Fallen Angels? What’d he do – start a new cult when he fell out with Crowley? Is it still going strong, is . . . my God, they mutilated children! Sammy—’

‘Calm down, Joe,’ Cally snapped. ‘Just calm down and listen to me. Your son is okay. These people are old—’

‘That woman I saw today wasn’t old.’

‘Laura?’ Cally offered no other comment. Instead she reached over and touched Creed’s forehead. ‘You’re so tired, Joe.’

He slapped her hand away and leapt to his feet. ‘Don’t start with that. You knocked me out last night with that shit, so don’t try it again.’

‘You were exhausted.’

‘Yeah, you convinced me of that.’ He backed away to the other side of the room. ‘No more of it, don’t even look at me! All I want you to do is tell me about these Fallen fucking Angels.’

‘All right.’ She raised a placating hand. ‘But to understand what I’m about to tell you, you have to accept what
they
believe.’

‘And what exactly is that?’

‘The interrelation of all things spiritual and physical.’ She paused, waiting for a reaction. Creed didn’t oblige, but she proceeded as if he had raised an objection. ‘Look, our normal senses don’t permit us to perceive certain things, certain forces. We can’t see ultraviolet light, for instance, but we now have instruments that reveal it to us. It’s the same with extreme sound frequencies. Just because we don’t see or hear these things, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Unfortunately, we don’t have the scientific means to prove different levels of existence at present.’ She leaned even further forward in the seat as though to emphasize the point. ‘Yet millions believe in a Supreme but incorporeal Being they call their God.’

He could hardly disagree with that.

‘So why not spiritual sub-beings?’

He raised his eyebrows.

‘Demons,’ she said.

A low groan from Creed.

‘Hear me out,’ she said quickly. ‘Open your mind and listen to me. Remember what I told you – this is what
they
believe.’

He made a resigned gesture for her to continue.

‘There are all kinds of such beings – demons, devils, evil spirits, call them what you will. Some are nothing more than ethereal vapours, others are more powerful, more evident. And there are many,
many
divisions, but I won’t go into that – I know I’m straining credibility enough as far as you’re concerned. But I will say these divisions are based on the hierarchies of angels; or to be more specific, the hierarchies of the Fallen Angels.’

It was at that point that Creed returned to his seat.

‘The mediaeval and Renaissance Europeans developed the conjuring of demons to a fine art – probably because they assumed the Church itself would bail them out if they got in too deep, or the powers they unleashed got beyond their control. Unfortunately, the Church of those times tended to be as corrupt as they were themselves and left them helpless; what followed was famine, pestilence, disease, wars. In a word, destruction.’

The phone outside the room rang, but Creed made no move to answer it; another two rings, then the answerphone in the office downstairs picked it up.

‘Nicholas Mallik knew how to control those unearthly powers,’ Cally went on. ‘It was a secret that he revealed to Aleister Crowley in Paris in the 1920s.’

At last Creed spoke. ‘Is that when they fell out?’

‘You know about that?’

‘I know they fell out.’

‘It was a little more than that. Crowley and Mallik took over a small hotel on the Left Bank for a weekend. They emptied a large room at the top of the building of furniture, ornaments, anything that could be moved, and locked themselves in. MacAleister, Crowley’s son and principal disciple, was with them, while the others of their cult remained downstairs, forbidden to enter the room until the following day, no matter what they heard.

‘They heard plenty, but obeyed their orders. When morning came, nobody in that room upstairs would answer their calls, so they were forced to break in. They found Crowley’s son dead, but with no external marks on his body, and Crowley himself a gibbering wreck lying naked on the floor. There was no sign of Nicholas Mallik.

‘Aleister Crowley spent four months in an asylum after that and he was never the same man again. And he always refused to speak of what had happened that night.’

‘And Mallik? What happened to him?’

‘He turned up in London a year later. He and Crowley never met again, and Mallik also declined to tell anyone what had happened in Paris.’

The phone rang and once more Creed left it to the answerphone.

‘As you were aware of his association with Aleister Crowley, can I also assume you know something of Mallik’s activities in London?’

‘I know he and his happy little troupe murdered and dismembered people – mostly kids. I also know he was caught and hanged in 1939. But now you’re telling me different, you’re telling me he wasn’t hanged at all, that he’s still walking around as large as life and twice as ugly. What d’you take me for, Cally? A complete fool?’ He gave a snort of disgust. ‘Even if he did by some miracle escape the gallows and the newspapers at the time were persuaded to print lies, or had been duped themselves, even if the wrong man had been arrested – a double who didn’t even speak up with a noose around his neck – even if any of those things were true, Mallik would be too old to wipe his own arse by now, let alone commit indecent acts in cemeteries or run around parks in the dead of night. The man I saw wasn’t that old.’

‘Oh, but he is. And he had friends in high places in those days.’

‘High enough to prevent his execution? Even the king couldn’t have arranged the release of the Beast of Belgravia. You must think I’m stupid.’

‘You have to believe me – he and his kind have incredible powers.’

‘They’re great illusionists.’

There, Creed’s own logic was already suggesting he hadn’t seen what he’d seen.

‘They’re much more than that. They can change shape, Joe. They can become grotesque things, they can grow in size, they can shrink themselves. They can create phantoms from menstrual blood, or from semen . . .’

She appeared not to notice that Creed had suddenly paled (paled even more, that is).

‘. . . These people can sap your will, weaken your spirit, by drawing off your aura . . .’

Breathing
, Creed realized.
Breathing his aura, weakening his spirit. That was what the woman, Laura, had been doing.
Wait a minute! He was falling for it. Like some bloody simpleton he was being drawn in. But the room and the black nothingness that had been inside it . . . the wind that had torn through the doorway like a gale force, strong enough to lift a desk . . . the lift that had plummeted and stopped as though it had a mind of its own . . . Incredible, but it had happened. It
had
happened, hadn’t it?

‘. . . They’re old, Joe, and not so strong any more. Now you’ve roused them, and I think they’re suddenly enjoying themselves once again. After so much time, so many years, they’re starting to revive . . . But they’ll grow weary of it soon, and then perhaps frustration will make them even more dangerous.’

‘Was Lily Neverless one of them?’ Creed gripped the edge of the armchair. ‘Was she part of the cult? Is that what this is all about? Are they frightened I’m going to expose them as some satanic group who go about performing obscene ceremonies over the graves of their departed? If it hadn’t got out of hand, it would be laughable. You hear me, Cally? A bloody big fat joke!’ Something nagged at the back of his mind. ‘What are they? A hyped-up bunch of extremist Freemasons? Or are they
really
devil-worshippers who dance naked around fires in the dead of night, calling on Old Nick to do their dirty deeds for them? You know, you nearly had me . . . wait, what was it you said last night just before I crashed out?’ It came back to him in a rush. ‘You told me you were Lily’s granddaughter! Oh boy, that’s it, that’s the connection.’

Her voice was steady, unlike his. ‘You mustn’t meddle any more.’

The doorbell sounded and Cally quickly stood. ‘Who is it?’ she said.

‘How the hell should I know? Ignore it – they’ll soon go away.’

Someone pounded on the door. The bell rang again. A familiar voice called Samuel’s name from the street below.

‘Oh no . . .’ said Creed.

‘Who is it?’ Cally repeated.

Creed closed his eyes for a moment. ‘It’s my ex-wife, the hellhag. Sammy’s mother.’