Fade to Black (24 page)

There was another pause. “Allie, I am worried. No, I’m terrified. We didn’t know you were the one. If we’d known, Robert would—”

“Robert? What’s he got to do with this? Is he alright?” She glanced again at Michael who seemed not to be listening.

Her mother laughed. “Alright? Robert? You know he’s not
alright
, Allison! Let me tell what he’s been doing today—sitting in his wheelchair in front of that bloody computer writing his music ‘blog’… the same thing he does for twelve hours
every
goddamn day!”

Allie and Michael had reached her front door and she was rummaging in her bag for the keys. “No, Mum, I meant, nothing has happened to him, has it?” She was concerned, but tiring of this angst.

“Not since that time, no. He’s the same.”

“Look, Mum, I’ve got to go. Can I phone you or see you tomorrow night perhaps? Will Dad be around then?”

“Oh yes, he’ll be here I expect. He’s been waiting to hear from you for days I gather.”

Allie let that go. “Say, seven o’clock then? I’ll come straight around from the office if I can.”

Suzie Whiteman simply said, “Dinner will be ready,” and hung up.

They walked into the tiny kitchen and Allie reached for the Jack Daniels. Michael ducked his head to avoid the doorframe. She was sure he hadn’t had to do that before.

She looked questioningly at him. “Drink?”

“Never.”

“Not allowed?”

“Clouds my perception.”

“Mine too, hopefully.”

“Don’t have more than one, Allie.”

“Why?” she asked, putting the ice cube tray back in the freezer.

“You’re phone’s going to ring and you know why.”

“My mother again?” she asked flippantly.

“No.” He was looking serious.

“It’s going to be even rougher tonight, isn’t it?”

“Sorry, but yes, it is.” Allie thought he looked very tired and said so. He shrugged as they walked into the living room, sitting opposite each other.

“There are problems elsewhere—big problems.” He rubbed his face with both hands.

She waved her drink at him. "Elsewhere
being?
”

“Everywhere, really. It’s all a bit much.”

A bit much? For him? Isn't he invincible and indestructible?

“I wish,” he said, reading her thoughts. He smiled for the first time that evening. She gulped more of the JD and coke.

“Thank you, by the way,” she said, raising her glass to him. “I might have been in trouble back there under the bridge, for a moment.”

“
Might
have?” he snorted. “I’d be fishing pieces of you out of the river by now.”

“I can handle myself,” she said, lifting her chin a little higher.

“Yeah? How long since you went to karate class? Hmmm?”

“A while, but I have a black belt.”

“Against those little turds, a black gun would be handier.”

She took a clinking sip of her scotch. “Ok then, what exactly are they, apart from some kind of weird rats, that is?”

He thought for a moment. “Let’s just call them Black Santa’s little helpers.”

“Helpers as in...?”

“Not well-intentioned individuals, shall we say. Their aims run counter to those in society would consider to be in line with accepted norms.”

“Evil little insurrectionists, perhaps?”

“Your education has not been wasted.”

She studied him for a moment—his tired eyes with a smudge of blue-grey under them, the weary tilt of his shoulders.

“Do you ever sleep, Michael?”

“Only when I’m here; otherwise, it’s irrelevant.”

“Here, meaning on Earth?” It sounded bizarre to her even as she said it.

“In a sense, yes. But in a way, I never leave either. My life, my
realm
if you like, centers on this place, but not always as you might perceive it.”

Allie sat the glass, which now only contained half-melted ice cubes, on the long coffee table. “You mean like another dimension? I loved
Twilight Zone,
you know.”

“Exactly like that. You know I can’t say much, Allie.”

“Ah yes,” she nodded. “The
rules
, right?”

This elicited a thin smile from him. “The ever-present rules, yes.”

“They frustrate you a bit, don’t they?”

He stood and stretched, his flat palms resting on the pressed-tin ceiling. “You know it!”

“I’m having another drink,” she said, swirling the cubes in the glass. “Don’t care what you say.”

She sprang off the couch and walked down the narrow hall. But that’s as far as she got. Her feet would not move her into the kitchen.

She slumped against the doorframe. “Are you doing that?”

“Nope. You are. That funny little thing you have is taking over.”

“What funny little thing?”

“Your conscience.”

“Cute.”

“No. Very true. I’m really hungry by the way.”

She came back to the living room and waved her hands expansively toward the ceiling.

“It surprises me that you eat, given that you move between
realms
.”

“It takes a lot of calories to do that you know.”

She laughed. “Well, I guess it does. Do you eat in
other places
?”

“Like restaurants you mean? Sure.”

Allie clamped her hands on her hips. “
Other realms,
you know what I meant!”

Michael put his hands to his lips, the cosmic sign for ‘shut-up’.

Allie froze. They stood there looking at each other, but his concentration was clearly elsewhere. After a minute, he relaxed.

“That was close,” he said, settling back into his chair. He caught her questioning look. “He was looking for us.”

“Us? Not just me?" Allie asked. He reached over and pulled a roller blind shut, then two others.

“Us. He’s trying to avoid me and engage with you. Anyway, food. C’mon now, are we going to eat?”

Chapter Fifteen

Checking the theatre between sessions was a pain, but Robbie Davies did it anyway. Show business was in his veins, and if starting work as a ticket collector/usher gave him an opportunity to brush with real actors and maybe even get a part in a production, then that was just fine. Only last week he’d made a cup of tea for Ben Elton. Ben Elton! The man was a comic genius full of nervous energy and chatter. He’d nearly asked for his autograph, but shyness had overcome him—again.

He worked his way back from the front of the theatre, putting sticky chocolate wrappers and wet plastic cups into the canvas gunnysack he dragged behind him. He looked towards the back of the theatre and cursed. Two people were still sitting at the back. It was hard to see—the light was always dim up there. Nearly every session, somebody tried to stay on to see the next show or worse, engage in clandestine sex before they went back to their workplace and pretended not to know each other.

The two just seemed to be sitting there looking at the stage as if they expected a personal encore from the cast.
Nutters
. Striding toward them, he clicked on the big black torch he always carried on his belt clip. It wasn’t that dark, but hang it, it reinforced his authority; it put the plebs off a bit as well. He walked to within twenty feet of the couple. There was no acknowledgement from them.

“I’m sorry, folks, but you’ll—” He stopped in mid-step and mid-sentence. He slowly sank to the floor. A sickly, sweet smell wafted his way. His throat closed up as he tried to yell for help. But like in a nightmare, all he could do was squeak. He bashed the torch against the floor repeatedly, not looking anywhere near the couple seated three rows from him. Finally, his voice came back. He made a sound like a wounded animal at first, but he kept trying. Tears rained down his face. Finally, he heard a scream erupt, then another, then another.

*****

The JD and coke relaxed Allie enough for her to let her thoughts drift. She ran a bath. Michael had gone to get fish and chips for them. She smiled and then shuddered at two disparate thoughts. The Lord Protector of the Universe was buying her fish and chips, even though he admitted he didn’t like eating fish. If her life hadn’t recently turned into a carnival of the occult, she could have convinced herself that there was some normalcy here and they were just two friends messing about. On the other hand, he was a
being
from God knew where and had just crushed the life out of two evil vampire-bat things right in front of her. Maybe this was all a complete delusion and she was actually strapped down in a padded cell for the insane in a brick building far away.

Even though the new fish-and-chip shop was only a few hundred yards from her house, she knew it would take him a while. The last time she’d walked past The Plaice on a Thursday night, there had been a line stretching out the door and down the road. He’d be forty-five minutes at least. Turning off the bath taps, she remembered the book her father had asked her to read and about which her mother had been so upset earlier. She did a crouching, nudie run into the living room and grabbed it off the corner of the dining table. She locked the bathroom door, frothed up the pink bubble-bath liquid in to the almost-too-hot water and sank gingerly into it. Heaven. She reached for the small book and noticed a white feather sandwiched between two pages. Was Michael telling her to read that page in particular? She suspected he was.

Forty minutes later, the bliss of the soothing, hot bath had been obliterated by the revelations contained in the book. She pulled on her dressing gown to the rattle of the key in the front door, the fiddling with the lock in the second door, then heavy footsteps on the stairs. She was seated at the dining table as Michael thumped onto the landing.

“They are making a fortune in that joint!” he exclaimed. “There must have been thirty people...”

She looked at him through red-rimmed eyes. He sat the food on the table and pulled up a chair across from her.

“The world just changed for you, didn’t it?” he asked softly.

She nodded and pushed the book at him. “Tell me this is not true.”

He picked it up and thumbed a couple of pages. “It’s true, Allie. I won’t say sorry, because that’s just the way it is.”

“Bloody hell,” was all she could say. “My life thus far has just been a prelude to
this
?”

He threw open the big parcel of food. “Have some chips.”

“Screw the chips, Michael!” she yelled, slapping her hand on the table.

“Have some chips,” he said again, in exactly the same tone.

“What on earth is wrong with you?” she shouted.

“Shut up, Allie!” he seethed. “
He
will see you if you carry on like this. Deal with it! You have no choice, so let’s eat and we’ll talk later.”

She almost had to pinch herself to make sure this was not a dream. They were eating fish and chips and the world was caving in—unbelievable.

“It won’t cave in,” he said in answer to her thoughts, shoving a huge piece of cod into his mouth. “Not if we get it right.”

“I see. Oh, right then. Pass some chips would you?” she said, with a sweet smile.

She took a limp, greasy handful and threw it at him. He didn’t react, just poked another chip into his mouth.

“Try throwing the cod,” he said. "It’s heavier and will stain my coat.”

She pushed back in her chair, huffing and puffing.

“You mean to say,” she said deliberately, “that everything in that crappy little book is right? That
The Promise of Maewyn Succat
actually chronicles the story of St. Patrick, whose real name was Maewyn Succat? And that I am directly descended from him and my name, St. Clair, is a corruption of Succat?

“Cool, huh?”

She stood, then just as quickly, sat again. “And what’s more, you
knew
him?”

“Yes. He was a brave and clever man—more than a man really—which you’re discovering.”

“How old
are you
Michael?”

“In human years or dog years?”

Again, despite the serious nature of the conversation, he was flippant. She couldn’t help but smile slightly. “Aardvark years, if you prefer. C’mon, how old?”

“About ten thousand years, as you would understand it. Not as ‘old as time’ and all that garbage. We were asked to look after you lot after you had developed to a certain stage. Actually, maybe it’s fifteen thousand years—I can’t quite remember. It’s an age thing.”

“Amazing. What moisturizer do you use?”

Michael roared with laughter. It was a sight to behold. Allie smiled broadly. Two could play this warped space-time game.

She waited a moment for him to compose himself. “Dad wrote ‘Vinculum infinitas’ in the preface to the book. ‘Infinitas’ I get, but 'Vinculum'?”

“That’s the crux of it,” he said, throwing the fish and chip wrapper into the small bin by the table. “'Vinculum infinitas' is why I am here and part of the reason you have no choice but to participate.”

“Well, what does—”

“Hold on,” he said, pushing his chair back and standing. He brushed himself down and looked steadily at the mirror before sitting again on the brown, leather dining chair.

“It represents the commitment Maewyn made to me in 461 and that your family, that is, his descendants, have continued to uphold since that time. We needed someone we could trust implicitly here and your family has provided that resource without break for more than sixteen hundred years. You’re not the only St. Clair family, but you are the one with whom we deal exclusively.”

“We?”

“It’s not just me—the problems are bigger than that and I can’t be everywhere, although I give it a shot.”

“You can be in more than one place at a time?”

“Not physically, but mentally, definitely. I have no choice, either.”

It was Allie’s turn to stand, if only to break the tension. She hugged her dressing gown to her and moved to the center of the small room. “Let’s go back a step,” she said, her hand up like a traffic policeman, which she once had been, on and off, for about six weeks. “Why does a bargain you made with just one man bind his family for so long? Sainthood is merely a religious artifice—eventual Saint or not, he was just a man, surely.”