Vicious Circle

But at some point in the night, someone must have torn away the sides of the box, because light started to filter in under my eyelids. Only a little, at first, but those first splinters broadened into crowbars, prying their way in, twisting me open to a day I didn’t want to have anything to do with. There was a tapping sound, too, of chisels working their way into the cracks and crevices of my consciousness.

I tried to turn to get away from the light and the intrusive noise, but it seemed to be coming in from all sides. And movement was difficult in any case, because my muscles were cramped and screaming.

I opened my eyes, which felt as though they’d been sealed shut with a silicon gun. I was in a car—Matt’s car, I realized when I saw the pine tree air freshener hanging over my head like mistletoe. What the hell was I doing there? I’d parked the car at Pen’s and then Coldwood and his little friends had bushwhacked me and spirited me away to Hendon. And since I’d gotten a police escort home . . . No, the details wouldn’t coalesce. The fever had been raging by then: I must have crawled back into the car under some vague impression that I still had to drive home, and then fallen asleep at the wheel instead. Good job. If I’d actually gotten the thing out onto the road, I’d be waking up in a morgue somewhere and finding out firsthand what out-of-body experiences are like.

The tapping came again, louder, from right behind my head. With difficulty, I levered myself around in the seat without turning my neck, which felt like it would snap rather than pivot. Pen was standing beside the car, looking in at me with an expression of puzzled concern on her face.

I unlocked the door and climbed out, almost losing my balance. Pen jumped in to catch me and keep me upright.

“Thanks,” I mumbled. “Not feeling too clever, to be honest.”

She winced as the smell of my breath hit her unsuspecting airways: judging by the taste in my mouth, I could sympathize.

“Fix,” she admonished me, but a lot more gently than I’d have expected, “have you been drinking?” I could understand the question. I was trying to lock the car and failing to get the key into the lock. Pen took the keys from me and locked it with the beeper on the fob.

“No,” I said. “No more than usual. This is—something else. I’m coming down with some kind of bug.”

She steered me toward the house. “What did you do to the car?” she asked, sounding concerned.

“The car?” I echoed stupidly. My mind was a sprawl of flabby fingers that wouldn’t make a fist. Then I remembered the sideswipe on the Hammersmith overpass. “Oh, yeah. That wasn’t me. That was Catholic werewolves.”

There are only five steps up to Pen’s front door. Somehow, they seemed to take a long time to negotiate, and we had a near disaster at the top when I lost my balance and Pen had to shove me forward into the hall to avoid me going back down again on my arse.

“I’m calling a doctor,” Pen muttered as she hauled me into the living room and dumped me without ceremony onto the sofa.

“I think,” I said, “I just need to lie down. Had a hell of a day yesterday. Got into a fight at White City, then the cops hauled me in to help them with their inquiries.”

“Jesus, Fix!” Pen was looking down at me with troubled eyes. “What do they think you did?”

“Murder.” I stared at the ground, trying to shut out the memory of the crusted spatter of blood and the terse plastic tag—like the tag you’d get from a cloakroom attendant—that marked the place where Abbie Torrington died. Wasted effort: it wouldn’t go away. “They think I murdered someone.”

There was a silence, which seemed to expand like white light until it filled the room. Light-headed, I almost floated away on that white tide back into unconsciousness. I had too much still to do. I fought against my own body, and the room came back into focus. I didn’t think that silent tussle had taken any time at all, but when I raised my head again, Pen was gone.

Saturday, May the sixth, I thought. Something went down on that night—something whose shape I could just barely make out through the many and disparate things it had touched. On Saturday, Stephen and Melanie Torrington are beaten and then shot in their own home. They don’t struggle. They don’t run. They just die. Later on, so does Abbie—sacrificial lamb in someone’s satanic knees-up. Then after they’ve killed her someone else walks into the room and breaks up the party with an assault rifle, aiming not at the Satanists—at least, not after the first few exhilarating moments—but at the magic circle where Abbie’s body is still lying. Was that other someone Dennis Peace? Was this where he acquired Abbie’s spirit, assuming he really had it? And if he did, was it a kidnapping or a rescue?