Part 24 (2/2)

Boyfriend, then?' Letiel continued quickly.

Daniel thought it was significant she hadn't asked if he was with Owen. No, there was someone, but...' He smiled fiercely, the dressing over pain, he wasn't sure what he was into. It was a bit.. difficult.'

Poor you.'

It's OK now.'

Letiel put a hand on his arm, smiled at him. He could feel her empathy. She too had been let down by men. How odd to find this affinity. He hadn't thought of that.

He wasn't bored with you,' Daniel said. He didn't know why he said it, the words just came out.

Letiel looked at him. Pardon?'

Daniel shrugged, about to dismiss what he'd said, but there was more. He was just a shallow, stupid f.u.c.ker who fancied everything that moved. Also, he took money from you. You didn't lose the twenty, like you thought, like he said. He took it.'

Who?' Letiel's voice was almost inaudible.

Con... Connor? Was it Connor?'

Letiel nodded. Then she narrowed her eyes. Who told you?'

No-one,' Daniel said. Apparently, I'm psychic.'

Later in the evening, Daniel found himself sitting with Letiel and a couple of her friends in the shadows at the edge of the dance floor. Thick beams of coloured light roved across the gyrating bodies bewitched by the rhythm of the music. Daniel couldn't remember how he'd moved there from the bar, even though he'd stopped drinking. Letiel dragged him to up dance a couple of times, though his heart wasn't in it tonight. He saw Owen dancing with Cressida. She shook her head, so that her long red plaits whipped through the air. She grinned in pleasure as she twisted her slim, agile body around to the music. Owen was caught in a spotlight of red rays, his hair looked pink. He seemed to be dancing alone, Cressida a mere elemental shadow around him. How beautiful he looked. Painfully, Daniel decided he needed another drink; anything to numb the agony which was growing inside him like an infection. He didn't want to ask Owen for money again, and managed to sc.r.a.pe together enough change from his pockets to buy another Jack Daniels. When he returned to his seat, Cressida came sidling up to him. He could smell her perfume and her sweat. She shuddered like a race-horse who'd just won a race. She was, he realised, stunning to look at. This did not help his mood.

Letty told me,' she shouted in Daniel's ear, which under the circ.u.mstances might as well have been a whisper.

Daniel raised his hands to indicate he couldn't hear her properly over the din of the music.

Cressida screwed up her face, made a vexed gesture, and then dragged him to the ladies' toilets, where the pound and thud of the music was muted. The small room, with its inadequate couple of cubicles and cracked mirror was infested with hot, perfumed bodies, both male and female, who were squeezing around the mirror to adjust their war-paint and shriek gossip at one another. Apart from a cursory glance as Daniel and Cressida pushed themselves through the noisy gathering, n.o.body paid them any attention. Cressida squashed Daniel up against the back wall.

You have to help me,' she hissed in an undertone.

How?' Daniel dreaded some awful confidence concerning Owen was about to be revealed.

Letty told me about you being psychic. It was incredible what you said to her.' Cressida had raised her voice a little.

It doesn't happen very often,' said Daniel. It's not a party trick.' He could sense he was being off-hand and short with the girl, but it didn't seem to deter her.

There's something I need to know.' A few people left the room, and briefly a fist of music punched through the door.

Daniel sighed impatiently. I don't think I can help you.' The few people left around the mirror were now suspiciously quiet, listening.

It's about a friend of mine,' Cressida persisted. Serafina. Perhaps you read about it?'

Daniel shrugged, said nothing.

She was murdered,' Cressida said. It was in the papers a few weeks ago, on the news, everything. They found her body in a car park at night. You must have heard about it!'

There was no emotional crescendo behind her words. She looked, Daniel thought, sick rather than ghoulishly fascinated. He rarely took any notice of the news, although a dim memory of the TV coverage surfaced in his mind. A picture of a white-faced girl, an image retained because it belonged to his own sub-culture What do you want me to do about it?'

Can't you look into it?' Cressida said. Can't you help find out what happened to her?'

Daniel held up his hands, backed towards the door. No, no.' He found he was laughing. You're crazy.'

But you're psychic!' Cressida insisted. You could help, couldn't you?' She pulled a silver bangle from her left wrist. Here, this was hers. She gave it to me. I always wear it now.'

Daniel looked at the offered object as if it was a poisonous insect. He didn't want to touch it. I'm not psychic in that way,' he said. I'm sorry...'

Cressida, who was not wholly sober, grabbed Daniel's arm and forced the bangle over his hand. Take it! Please!'

The silver burned his skin, cold even though Cressida had just taken it from her own wrist. With a wordless cry of disgust, he pulled it from his arm and threw it onto the floor. Everyone had gone very still. Bile rose in Daniel's throat. He pushed a horde of insistent images and sensations from his mind, a sweet, sickly smell, powdery dark shadows, moving shapes, an ache behind the eyes.

He is in the hallway of a house and everything is tilting before his eyes, as if he's watching a badly filmed video. He is the camera, and can only see in the direction in which his tunnel vision is pointed. Daniel looks around himself; he has never had a waking vision as clear as this. There are paintings on the wall, huge Pre-Raphaelite prints, but he cannot pause to look at them. Something is drawing him onwards. Stumbling, Daniel progresses down a corridor. He knows he is getting closer to the thing he's been brought here to see. A vibration is building up - within himself and within the walls of the house. The light is strange; no colour at all.

He comes upon a dark room. There is a sweet, sickly smell and a sense of dark shapes writhing around in a warm fog. Daniel's eyes hurt so much, it feels as if all his tears have evaporated, the ducts withered, and no matter how much he tries to blink, he can't make the bathing fluid flow. His eyeb.a.l.l.s are searing. Fear grips his body and his mind. His senses are aware of something too hideous to be borne. Unable to prevent himself, he looks up and sees it: a swirling, lightless void churning above the heads of everyone present. From this black hole emanates the most inexpressible evil and hunger. Daniel cannot bear to look at it for long, and forces his camera vision downwards. Before him, he sees the white body of a girl, naked upon some kind of table. A huge black figure leans over her - a man, who is familiar yet a stranger. As Daniel watches, he can see the etheric body of the girl rising up out of her flesh. Her soul is being drawn up into the void. In the moment before she is engulfed, she seems to become aware of Daniel as another astral form. For one terrible moment, she looks at him. She cannot speak, but her eyes are crying, Help me!' He can do nothing. She is drawn up, devoured. An unearthly roar pervades the room and Daniel's mind. He knows that the void is consuming everyone around him. He cannot see for the smoke, cannot hear for the screaming. Terror is a real presence around him. From his own throat comes a long, desperate wail...

Daniel realised he was kneeling on the floor of the ladies' room, in a night club in Cresterfield, his arms clutching his stomach. Cressida and some of the others were leaning over him, their arms a hesitant feathery protection around his shoulders. Are you all right?' Do you want anything?'

She wanted him to do it,' Daniel said, searching for Cressida's eyes in the throng. He could not recognise faces at that point, only eyes. He found her exotic make-up, her cats' eyes, staring wildly at him.

What?'

It's true. It was part of it, the power, the... I don't know, can't interpret. She knew him. She loved him. He was a G.o.d, a man... no. I don't know.' He felt very weak, reality settled around him, everything becoming normal once more. He wanted Owen. He needed to tell him about this.

You saw them?' Cressida murmured, coaxing.

He nodded, then shook his head. Part of the strangeness of what had happened was that there were no words in any human language to describe what he'd felt, seen, smelled and heard. It was impossible to articulate, for it was beyond this reality, beyond life. An otherness. There is something else,' he said to Cressida. Something else in this world. Here all the time. Here now.' He had begun to s.h.i.+ver.

I don't understand,' Cressida answered. What something?'

I can't tell you. No words. They don't exist.'

Cressida helped him to his feet. I'm sorry, Daniel. I'm a complete cow! I'm really sorry.' She hugged him to her, to her salty-musk animal scent of races won.

Everyone stared at the silver bangle on the floor, but no-one would pick it up. Daniel said, I have a name. Shem... Shem-yah-zah.'

Who? The murderer?'

Daniel shuddered violently. He thought he was going to vomit, but the feeling pa.s.sed abruptly. A name. That's all.'

It could be a place, or anything,' someone suggested.

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