May Contain Traces of Magic (14 page)

Chris pulled himself together with a snap. It was, of course, possible that the Ordnance Survey was part of a vast murky conspiracy to drive him out of his mind, but he was inclined to doubt it, all things considered.

‘We're going to be so late,' Angela said mournfully. ‘We were supposed to go over there right away, Mr Burnoz said.'

Hardly what he needed to hear, lost in the urban jungle. ‘Fine,' he said. ‘Soon as you can pull over, we'll look at the map and find out where we are.'

Pulling over, however, wasn't that easy; not on a dual carriageway with lorries surging around them like a school of giant dolphins; and every minute was taking them further in the wrong direction. Then he saw a signpost: they were only half a mile from the Ettingate Retail Park, one of those out-of-town shopping developments; two dozen megastores and, it went without saying, ample parking facilities. ‘Next left,' he ordered gratefully.

The main cark park was huge, about twice the size of medieval London. It was also full. They'd driven round it twice before Chris noticed a single solitary space, far out on the eastern spiral arm. ‘There,' he said urgently, pointing. ‘Quick, before some other bugger—'

Angela might have been female, but she could park; secretly and grudgingly, Chris was impressed. Maybe it'd be too much to expect her to be able to read maps as well, but he doubted she could make a worse job of it than he'd just done. She backed in - dead level, equidistant from the white lines on either side, a small miracle of offhand precision - put on the handbrake and killed the engine.

‘Now,' Chris said, pointing at the map, ‘if we're here, then that must be the main A6674—' Suddenly everything went dark, like an eclipse. He looked up, but Angela wasn't in the driver's seat any more. It was light inside the car, but it was as though someone had pasted black crêpe paper on all the windows. He swore and tried to open his door; the lock operated, but the door was jammed and wouldn't move, as though he'd parked too close to the garage wall. It was also getting very, very cold. Not right, he told himself, this is something bad, quite probably not in Kansas any more, and he hadn't got the faintest idea what he should do about it.

The car began to rock gently from side to side. Chris tried the door handle again, and yelped with pain as his fingers touched it: burning hot, presumably a hint. He whimpered, but a small part of his mind was telling him,
where there's a hint, there's a hinter. If someone's trying to tell you something, then this is deliberate, not just some random natural disaster
. Fair point, but he wasn't reassured. Quite the reverse, in fact.

‘Hello?' he said, in a funny little quavery voice. ‘Who's there? Excuse me.'

The car stopped rocking, which was good, because the movement was doing things to his bladder. But that wasn't all. Everything around him, the car door, the dashboard, the roof, was gradually beginning to
fade
; the colour was leaching out of them, making them look like pencil outlines that hadn't been coloured in yet. He stared at the gear lever and realised he could see through it. Also, there was a distinctive smell that he was fairly sure he recognised. Not good at all.

Chris held up his hand and looked at it; at rather than through, which was something. At this rate, though, pretty soon the car was going to evaporate completely. He wriggled, realised he was still wearing his seat belt, tried to press the release button and squealed with terror as his thumb passed straight through it without touching anything; the belt, however, still held him firmly in the seat, which continued to bear his weight even though it was now little more than a water-colour smudge. He jerked his head round to stare at the back window, but there was nothing to see, just black.

The car went on fading, and Chris imagined what it'd be like once it had gone completely, leaving him sitting in a box full of nothing, with empty black walls. Somehow he didn't fancy that at all. He'd always been a bit nervous about confined spaces, even at the best of times, of which this wasn't one. The hell with this, he told himself, got to get out of here. Even the darkness outside the absence-of-windows had to be better than this. But the seat belt, though now to all intents and purposes invisible, wouldn't let him go - he could feel it even though he couldn't see it, and he really wished he had a knife or a pair of scissors—

Hang on, Chris thought, I can do better than that. The tapemeasure, the pantacopt: it could cut through anything, so the
Book
had said. Seat-belt webbing, invisible car doors, maybe it could even slice a way through the solid black darkness outside. Worth a try, at any rate. He dug his fingers into his pocket, but it was empty, and with a pang of deep sorrow he remembered: earlier that morning, he'd fished the tapemeasure out of his jacket pocket, just after Jill had rung and he'd been getting himself into a state about being stalked by the SatNav monster. What he couldn't remember was putting it back again. In which case, it was still at home, in his dressing-gown pocket, maybe, or sitting on the table in the kitchen. Marvellous, he thought. Just the fucking job.

The light inside the car, or the space where the car had been, was beginning to fade, and suddenly Chris thought hang on, I know what's happening, I must be dead; no, listen, it all fits, that's why Angela suddenly vanished, and why I can't move, also the sudden cold and everything fading away. So stupid of me not to have realised before: I died. Heart attack, or a stroke, or maybe there was a demon hiding in the back somewhere, and when we stopped the car it jumped me and pulled my head off. He caught himself adding,
so that's all right, then
; because it would be all right, wouldn't it? There was nothing bad or scary about death when you stopped and thought about it; it's perfectly natural, happens to us all, and once you're dead it's over, and nothing bad can ever happen to you again. Compared to the other alternative explanations - the weirdness, the implications of the world outside turning black and the car just melting away - it was positively reassuring—

‘No, you're not,' said a voice.

Chris jumped in his seat, as far as the invisible seat belt would let him.

‘You're not dead,' the voice said. ‘You should be so lucky.'

It wasn't a nice voice; it was high and thin and scratchy, not a human voice, though he noted that it spoke flawless received-pronunciation English, accentless, like a Radio 4 announcer. It wasn't a voice that came out on the air expelled from lungs past vocal cords, regulated by the movement of lips; it was a synthesised voice, a talking thing, and he was hearing it with his mind rather than his ears.

‘Keep perfectly still,' the voice said. ‘We'll get to you as soon as it stabilises.'

As soon as what does what? The feeling of calm, even euphoria, that had spread over Chris when he'd thought he'd died had dissipated like damp off a windscreen when you turn on the blower. Instead he felt bitterly cold and totally vulnerable, as though all his skin had fallen off and he was just one great big open wound. Also, it'd be very nice if he could get to a toilet very soon.

‘Won't take long,' the voice said, and if it was trying to sound soothing it was making a real hash of it. ‘Then you're coming with us.'

‘I'd rather not,' Chris said aloud, which made the voice laugh so much that his head shook.

‘Not up to you,' the voice said. ‘Right, that's about it.'

There was nothing left of the car, or the seat he'd been sitting on. He was sitting on nothing at all; he couldn't feel it, even, but he was sitting rather than lying, because his back was bent and his knees were at right angles to his spine. He couldn't feel the seat belt either, but something, some force was operating on his chest, keeping him from moving.

‘Now I'll give you three guesses,' the voice said, ‘and you've got to tell me what I am. Ready?'

Chris tried to open his mouth, but it wouldn't.

‘Something beginning,' said the voice, ‘with D.'

Death? he thought hopefully.

‘No. Second guess?'

Something that pins you to a chair and tortures you. Dentist?

‘Warmer, but no.'

Oh, he thought.

‘Yes.'

So, Chris thought, this is it, then. This time I'm really in the shit.

‘No. Being in shit really isn't that bad. It's squishy and smelly, but you survive. Your living soul isn't ripped out of your body and shredded into mush. We recommend that you select a more pertinent metaphor.'

At the end of all things, after fear and panic and false hope and despair, comes irritation, and an unwillingness to be mucked around with by someone who thinks he's really smart. What do you want? Chris thought. Get it over with and then please go away. I really don't like you very much.

‘All right,' said the voice. ‘Just tell me where she is, and then I'll kill you. Can't say fairer than that.'

Where she is? I don't understand.

Inside his mind, a tongue clicked impatiently; probably scaly and forked, but to him it wasn't scary, just annoying. I don't know who you mean, he thought.

‘Loyalty,' said the voice. ‘Courage. Heroism, even. It says in here that you don't believe in heroism.'

In here?

‘In your mind.'

Well, it's perfectly true, I don't.

‘Well, then. Tell us where she is, and then it'll all be over.'

And then Chris thought, hold on; if you can read my mind, why are you asking me questions?

He was briefly aware of a feeling of discomfort; not his own. ‘There's bits we can't reach,' the voice said, ‘not unless you open them for us. Which you're strongly advised to do, by the way, because the bits of your mind we can reach include - well, let's see, this bit here. Wonder what happens if I do
that
?'

It was a kind of pain Chris had never felt before, bearing the same relation to the worst pain he'd ever felt that concentrated orange juice straight from the bottle bears to the diluted stuff you actually drink. It wasn't localised anywhere, like toothache or a crushed toe; it was everywhere, in everything.

‘So that's what it does,' said the voice. ‘Fancy that.'

The curious thing about it, though, was that although it was agonising and excruciating and turned his brain to mush, it didn't
really
hurt because—

‘And if you think that was bad,' he heard the voice say.

- Because he didn't believe in it; because it wasn't real, precisely because it wasn't in any one place, it didn't relate to anything; it was virtual pain, and he was feeling it not because he was suffering genuine physical damage but because some evil little grey bugger was prodding a nerve centre in his brain with a pointy fingernail.

You really don't need to do that, Chris thought irritably. If I knew who you were on about, I'd tell you.

‘You know perfectly well,' said the voice.

No, I
don't
, he snapped back, and you're too busy being cruel and merciless and all that rubbish to tell me, which is just
stupid
. The trouble with you is, you enjoy your work too much.

More pain, much more intense, but Chris ignored it and thought, you can do that till the cows come home but it's not going to get you anywhere. But if you'll just tell me—

No reply, just more pain; and he thought, oh for crying out loud. It was, he reflected, a bit like those long, dreary rows with Karen, where she wouldn't tell him what the matter was, he was supposed to figure it out, or guess, or use telepathy; and it was bad enough when she did it, but he was prepared to put up with it from her because she was his girlfriend, and apparently that was part of the deal. But the owner of the voice had no such claim on him, so he was rapidly running out of patience—

The pain stopped, but not because the owner of the voice wanted it to. ‘Oh,' it said; and then, ‘How are you doing that?'

I can't be bothered with it, Chris thought back. Now, will you answer the question?

‘You know perfectly well—'

No, I don't, he thought; and then he realised, you can't say the name, right? It's some stupid rule. You can't say the name unless I say it first.

‘Something like that,' the voice replied grumpily. ‘But you do know, you're just being difficult.'

Chris was feeling very tired and fed up now. All right, he decided, let's think. So he thought; and somehow he knew he'd gone into the part of his mind where the demon couldn't get in, and it was so nice to get away from it for a moment, not because of the pain or the fear but because the demon was so obnoxiously boring and stupid. Now then, he thought, what was the question? Ah yes. Where is she?

He scanned the list of possibilities: females of his acquaintance who'd disappeared. It wasn't a long list; just one, in fact. Angela the trainee, who'd been sitting next to him and had then just vanished . . .

Hello, he thought, I'm back.

‘Well?'

I think I know who you're on about, Chris thought, but I'm afraid the answer's still the same. I don't know.

‘Yes, you
do
,' the voice screamed at him; rather childishly, in his opinion. ‘She was with you, in the car - her smell was all over the seat.'

Yes, that's right, he thought wearily, she was with me but now she's gone, you can see that for yourself. She just vanished, and I haven't got a clue where she's gone to. Surely you can tell if I'm lying to you or not. Well?

A long pause. Then the voice said, ‘Shit.'

So you agree. I'm telling the truth.