Jago (35 page)

‘His dad’s dick tastes different,’ the Toad cackled, raising only stunned silence.

His aura was thick and smoky, phantom tendrils wrapped around his head like a scarf. Pam had none, and didn’t sense the community shared by the others. Pam thought she was pretty, and didn’t notice much. Mike Toad was a fool, but he had potential.

‘How do you save a coon from drowning?’ Mike asked. ‘Take your foot off his head.’

Pam was uncomfortable. Her boyfriend was some sort of nigger. Mike Toad might do very well indeed. He had a hipflask which he passed around. Terry choked on the stinging whisky, but Allison took a burning gulp and let it settle. Handing the flask back, she saw the fog sleeve around her own arm. It was black with silent discharges of violet lightning.

‘We’re waiting for my sister,’ Pam explained. ‘She’s bloody late.’

Terry was looking at Pam, and there were yellow-green squiggles in his aura. He clenched and unclenched hairy fists, and didn’t say anything. Sooner or later, Allison would have to let him cut loose a bit, before teaching him another lesson. He’d already had a dose of the stick; it was time he got a whiff of the carrot.

Pam scratched her short, red hair. Her make-up was perfect, even in this heat, a white mask with a blood-heart of lipstick, eyebrows distinct as a Japanese doll’s, black-lined eyes. Her clothes might not look like much, but they were expensive. City girl in the country. Pam would learn. And Allison would be her teacher. She felt like extending one of her fingernails and scraping through the white powder, drawing an X across Pam’s face. Then scraping through the skin and flesh, baring a cross of bone and muscle.

Pam shuddered and said, ‘Someone walked over my grave.’

‘His brother was looking for you earlier,’ the Toad said, jerking a thumb at Terry, who grunted.

‘They don’t get on,’ Allison explained.

She remembered Teddy’s face from last night, drawn and white and scared. Last night had been weirder than she expected, but a thrill. She was looking forward to nightfall, to more of the same.

‘Look at that,’ Mike Toad said, spitting, ‘the Gestapo have moved in.’

A police constable was sauntering up the road towards the Gate House. He wore a short-sleeved shirt and had a radio clipped to his top pocket. A truncheon shifted like a displaced dick in a thigh pocket as he walked. The copper had a short brush of fair hair.

‘Bloody Barry,’ Terry grunted, recognizing the man.

Barry Erskine had a reputation for coming down hard on juveniles. Terry claimed he’d been roughed up by PC Erskine outside a disco in Langport. If it was true, Allison reckoned Terry was bound to have deserved the knocks. He was an extreme arsehole when he had a few pints in him.

‘I thought they weren’t allowed at the festival,’ Pam said.

‘They aren’t,’ Allison agreed. ‘But the festival is past that gate. This is the approach road.’

‘Good afternoon, Master Gilpin,’ Erskine said, smiling with his even teeth but not with his blue eyes. ‘Still a music lover, I see.’

Terry grinned. He thought he had something that gave him a shot at Erskine. He was wrong.

‘Afternoon, constable,’ Allison said, a neat and nasty thrill in her water.

Erskine tapped his helmet brim. ‘Good afternoon, miss.’

Allison looked him in the face and saw swirls of black radiating from his clear eyes. His aura was like a dark, ragged cloak.

‘Just making sure things are nice and quiet,’ he said.

Allison and Erskine looked at each other, understanding.

‘No trouble here,’ she said.

‘So I see,’ he replied. ‘Catch you later.’

He turned and walked away, aura trailing. She should have expected it. Badmouth Ben didn’t just want kids and thugs. Allison knew the army would surprise a lot of people.

‘Heavy shit,’ said Mike Toad. ‘Back to the panzer car, PC Plod.’ The London boy laughed nervously, impressing no one with his brave show of out-of-earshot defiance. ‘What has four legs and a cunt halfway up its back? A police horse.’ Mike snorted at his own joke.

‘Terry,’ Allison said, ‘take hold of Mike’s ear.’

Terry did. Mike yelped.

‘Now, stand up.’

Terry yanked Mike upright, and lifted. The ear went red, and Mike’s hat fell off. He made sounds like a patient during an inept dental drilling. Allison was warmed as Mike’s pain gulped out of him. Pam raised a perfectly outlined eyebrow.

‘That’s enough.’

Terry let Mike go.

‘Show respect for the law, Toad,’ Allison said. ‘Everyone needs laws’

‘I think that’s Jazz,’ Pam said, pointing at a blue car. The door opened, and a girl with a foot-tall black cockatoo perm and a wispy shroud stepped out, upside-down crucifixes and dagger brooches clacking.

Pam whistled. ‘Over here.’

Allison looked at the girl and felt warm again. The clouds around Pam’s sister were feathery but thick. Another recruit.

‘Good trip?’ Pam asked.

‘Pamela.’ The new girl sighed wearily. ‘You are a fucking moron.’

Pam laughed.

‘Three hours to get to Alder,’ Jazz said, accent posh and cruel, ‘and two more in a fucking car getting from one end of the village to another.’

Violet flashes danced in front of Jazz’s eyes. Under her shroud, she wore a tight leotard. Her face was made-up white like Pam’s, with black lipstick and eyeshadow.

‘This is Mike Toad,’ Pam said, introducing the boy, who was trying to look cool.

‘Toad, eh?’ She looked him over, unimpressed. ‘Why doesn’t he hop off and croak?’

The Toad grinned, nervously.

‘This is Terry and Allison. They’re local.’

Jazz took a cursory look at Terry, then looked right into Allison’s eyes. Erskine had seen something, but Jazz got the whole message at once.

‘Allison?’ she said.

‘My sister, Jazzbeaux,’ Pam explained.

‘Call me Jazz.’

They shook hands. Jazz wore half-gloves and had black-painted fingernails like sharp little shovels.

‘Welcome to the West,’ Allison said.

‘Charmed.’

It was as if Pam wasn’t there: they’d ditch her soon, anyway. Her purpose had been to bring her sister into the army. Jazz was like Erskine, like Badmouth Ben. A kindred soul.

S
usan had minions folding the four-page programme leaflets, and gophers came regularly to handle distribution. The system was working. One year, they’d farmed the job out and had the programmes professionally printed a month before the festival. Last-minute schedule changes meant the whole thing had been worthless, and the only way information could be disseminated was by chalking it up on boards all over the site.

‘Lots of helicopters passing over,’ Karen said.

Susan had noticed that too. She assumed David was having her panic checked out.

‘Probably government spies,’ the Sister remarked.

Karen Gillard was a left-behind. She’d come to the festival last year, and broken up with her boyfriend when he got off with another girl. Her lift home lost, she’d hung around the Agapemone afterwards. If she had any other life, she never mentioned it. The kind of blonde they had used to call ‘bubbly’, Karen tried to fit in, but wasn’t quite Sister of the Agapemone material. She’d been disciplined for odd trespasses—keeping a radio, holding back money and going to the pub, persistent lateness—and Susan thought she’d probably get it together to leave if she found someone at this year’s festival to latch on to. Jago hadn’t taken to her the way he did to some of the other Sisters.

The photocopier shook as it retched out programmes. Karen gathered an armful from the tray and passed them to the folding crew. Susan sensed flare-ups at the periphery, and knew things were happening. There was a hotspot out on the moors, perhaps in one of the farms, and the Manor House itself was as vibrant as always, but, despite the thronging crowds, she felt no major agitation. She thought things would speed up after dark. Beloved was gathering his energies, and all things conscious or unconscious around here followed his lead. Another lot of programmes went out, a runner prepared to scatter them to the winds.

‘Susan,’ Karen said, ‘out of paper.’

The photocopier was protesting.

‘I’ll see to it.’

Changing the paper was a job that defeated Karen, but Susan was supposed to be able to handle it. She scalpelled open a wrapped ream of copier paper and slipped it free. Then she shoved it into the feed tray and jostled, hoping it would settle. She printed an experimental programme. The machine tore the sheet of paper and spat it out in scrambled pieces. Susan swore and slammed the tray again, hoping to settle the paper. This time, it wouldn’t even take one sheet. Susan kicked the machine.

‘That won’t help,’ a folder said.

‘It helps me,’ Susan replied.

Besides Jago, she was the greatest Talent
IPSIT
had ever assessed. She was the most powerful psychokinetic in captivity. But she couldn’t get a photocopier to work.

‘Let it cool off,’ she said.

Kate Caudle came into the printshop. She wore ceremonial blue and radiated excitement. Susan found her easy to read, like most of the more enthusiastic Sisters. It had a lot to do with sex. She carried Jago around in her heart like schoolgirls carry pictures of their boyfriends.

‘Tonight there will be a Great Manifestation,’ she announced. ‘We have a new Sister.’

Susan did not need to ask who the lucky girl was. Hazel. Karen clapped her hands, and Susan tried to smile.

‘Wonderful news,’ Karen said.

H
e hadn’t been able to leave the village. With almost three hundred pounds in his pocket, Teddy could go to London, find a hostel, try out for one of those comedy clubs, wait for everything to finish. If he stayed, he expected to get hurt. Terry had hurt him before, and things were changed for the worse. If his brother got to him now, he’d be hurt more than any of the other times. Last night, Terry had started changing, become a thing in the woods that howled. It hadn’t even been a full moon.

He’d walked the length of the village, from the Agapemone down past the Valiant Soldier, past the garage. Walking against the tide of traffic and pedestrians streaming towards the festival, it had been slow going. But he still should have got further than the village sign. He’d left the Gate House, talked to Pam and Mike Toad, some time in the morning, and now it was nearly evening. What was it? Half a mile, less? It had been five or six hours. He wasn’t sure of the time, and his crappy Christmas-present watch was always unreliable. It told him three o’clock, but he knew it must be past four or five.

He put one foot in front of the other, but didn’t go anywhere. People jostled him as they passed. Cars crawled by. It had been hot earlier, and he’d developed a bad headache. Now it was cooling. The insects were out, nipping his face and hands.

He must have stopped and taken rests for hours at a time, but he thought he’d been walking solidly. He’d passed people he recognized, people who recognized him. Gary Chilcot called him over and tried to scrounge some cigarettes, but he didn’t have any. Old Man Maskell’s funny-in-the-head kid was dashing in and out of places, playing hide-and-seek with the Invisible Man. Jeremy wasn’t so bad; last year, in the crèche, he’d liked Teddy’s funnies and got on with the festival-goers’ kids. It was only local brats who picked on him. Sharon was up on a gate, dress around her thighs, french-kissing a darkie. Jenny’s dad was on the garage forecourt, helping Steve Scovelle with the pumps. The guy from the Pottery, Hazel’s boyfriend, was wandering around in a daze.

Teddy’s feet chafed inside his daps, toes blistering, ankles aching, insteps unsteady. His sweated-through shirt was damp on his back as the temperature dropped. The traffic flow carried him back, like a real wave, back past Mr Keough’s cottage and the building site next door, back past the Pottery and the garage, back past the Cardigans’, almost back to the pub. It was as if he were walking up a down escalator and had stopped for a rest, finding himself automatically carried downwards again. He’d have tried hitching a ride, but all the cars were going the wrong way, coming in to Alder, not leaving.

His ears were popping. The pain inside his head swelled, pushing at the backs of his eyeballs, throbbing inside his nose, jarring his teeth. The more he walked, the more it hurt. He stopped and rested, slumping cross-legged on the verge. He was out of breath and had a bad stitch. His mouth and throat were dry. He’d missed his dinner. Get up, he told himself, and walk. The greasy grass of the verge was populated. His legs were covered with crawling red ants. He scratched his thighs and brushed insects away.

He got up, knees popping, and felt as if someone had taken a hammer to his head, fetching him a blow under the eye, smashing a cheekbone, lifting him off his feet. This was what he imagined being shot in the head was like. He looked at the dusty wall, and didn’t see his own brains and blood dripping from a yard-wide splash. He stumbled a few steps in the gutter. Someone beeped a car horn and yelled, ‘Piss-head!’

He stopped stumbling and, very carefully, started walking again. He focused on the backside of the sign that marked the start of the village. Once he was beyond the sign, he was out of Alder, on the open road. It was only a few miles to Achelzoy, and he could catch a bus to somewhere with a railway station.

The front of the sign was fresh-painted, black lettering against a brilliant cream-white background. The backside was dirt-clogged, rusty around the plugs that held the letters on. The sign stayed where it was. Teddy walked towards it but didn’t seem to get nearer. The sign should get larger, but it stayed the same size, shrank a little, even. He passed houses, driveways, people. The sign was fixed.

He put his hands into his pockets, feeling the crushed-up notes, and leaned forwards, as if walking into a gale-force wind. He passed the garage and the Pottery again. The sign lurched larger, nearer.

His whole face was throbbing as if it had been pounded against his skull with a meat tenderizer. He ignored the pain. He reached the building site. There were cats in the works, mewling and hissing threats at each other. Pain slipped down his throat, swelling his neck, sliding into his whole body. His leg muscles were stretched, sharp jabs of agony where they promised to snap.