The Severed Streets

TWENTY-SEVEN

EARLIER ON THE EVENING THAT QUILL RETURNED TO LIFE

Costain drove the van into the car park of St Gertrude’s Church in the part of Enfield known as World’s End and parked. He composed himself for a moment. Then he got out.

The facade of the church was bathed in spotlights on this still not very cold night. They threw deep shadows across the porch. As he approached the building, Costain saw a figure standing there, then stepping out to meet him. It was a young woman in clerical dress, a worried look on her face.

‘Reverend Pierce?’

‘You must be Sergeant Costain. Okay, let’s not waste any time.’ She sounded like an Oxbridge graduate, calm and professional. She was somehow more modern than Costain had expected her to be.

‘I was surprised when I read you did this.’

‘I don’t like the fact that one can do this. Very few people know. Priests who apply to be the vicar of this parish are warned off it, and only if they persist are they told the nature of the geography here, and only if they then still persist are they trained to make use of it. Turns out I’m rather pig-headed. We’re told it’s for the health of London. There used to be some sort of body overseeing it, but for some reason no one now seems to know how to contact them. I’m quite interested to see whether it still works.’

‘Me too.’

She led him not inside the church, as he’d been expecting, but around it, to a side of the churchyard where there were no spotlights and the shadow of the building cut a straight line between light and absolute darkness. There they stopped. ‘Here we are.’

‘Have you done this before?’

‘Twice. My predecessor only did it once. Demand seems to be on the increase.’

He showed her the Bridge of Spikes. ‘I thought this was unique, or at least just once a century.’

‘It might be. I don’t know what it is.’ He quickly explained to her, and she raised an eyebrow. ‘In every previous case I’ve dealt with, and in all I’ve read, these are only visits. You think that this object offers … a permanent solution?’ She sounded not only dubious, but worried at the implications.

Costain found he was suddenly angry. But not at her. He could only hope he hadn’t sacrificed so much for something brief and terrible. ‘Whatever. Come on. Let’s do it.’

‘All right.’ She closed her eyes, said some prayers under her breath and made the sign of the cross. ‘If you know what to do with that thing, do it now.’

Costain took a deep breath. He only had a feeling for what had to be done. The sphere seemed to be telling him. If he was to use it on himself, this is what he’d have had to do at any point before he died. He supposed you could even do it way in advance. He put the sphere in the palm of his left hand, and then, decisively, crushed it in his grasp. For a moment, nothing happened, and then-

He stared in shock as he saw the spikes burst through his flesh. It was as if his hand had turned into a golden sea urchin, every spike dripping with blood.

Then the obvious agony of that hit him, and he had to fall to his knees. He grabbed his left wrist with his right hand, staring at it. Blood was gushing around the spikes now, surely from some major artery! He was panting. The meth both amplified the shock and deadened it, let him see past it. But … it was … only pain. He somehow knew he hadn’t been horribly wounded, that the Bridge had prevented that.

He managed to open his hand … the Bridge had vanished. He was sure, though, because it was telling him, that it had done its work.

The reverend was crouched beside him, he realized, looking desperately at him, wondering how she could help. ‘Do it!’ he bellowed.

‘It’s done,’ she said. ‘Can I get a dressing for-?’

‘Not until I know!’ Costain forced himself to look up from his own blood splattering onto the gravel of the church path. He looked into the darkness. He could see something moving there.

‘The Maori of New Zealand believe their dead leave a pohutukawa tree at Cape Reinga at the tip of the North Island for a journey back to Polynesia — actually back to where they came from, historically,’ said the vicar, staring into the void as Costain was, now fascinated. ‘There’s a river in Japan which is also, physically, the border between this world and the next, so they say…’

Costain watched as the vague shape resolved itself into a figure. He wasn’t sure now if the uncertainty about it was in the world or in his head. He’d lost a lot of blood to get him to the point of being able to see this. The figure wasn’t stumbling. It was walking quite purposefully, marching, even. It was familiar.

With a determined look on her face, Pierce went to the edge of the light and held out her hand.

* * *

Quill didn’t know if he could trust this. He had found, standing in the head of that statue, that he was being forced to close his eyes, and when he’d opened them he was elsewhere, looking at a strange figure. The ferryman was, depending on which side you saw him from, either a cloaked figure with skeletal hands or an Asian cabbie with tobacco stains on his fingers. He was pushing the boat forward across the river of silver which warped under and around them, his staff of many wrapped dimensions made out of the pink flatness of the Hammersmith and City line as seen on a tube map. Or he was driving across a bridge that didn’t exist, going north across the Thames, the road lined with a million spikes, the tarmac ahead red with blood that was flowing down to meet them. ‘I don’t normally go south of the river,’ he said.

* * *

Costain watched as the figure reached Pierce and grabbed her hand. He willed its features into being those he wanted to see. He hoped he had given enough.

* * *

James Quill woke up. He was in darkness. He was gasping for air. He sucked in a great breath of it. He didn’t know where he was. He … okay, he knew who he was. But there were gaps. He was naked. Was he…? He panicked for a moment, his limbs shot out and hit the sides of a container all around him. He cried out. He found that his throat hurt desperately. He bellowed again. He made himself concentrate and reached out … the sides he was touching were made of metal. He pulled back his legs as far as they could go, and slammed them forward again-

Suddenly, he was rushed forward, and was being hauled out into a light too blinding for him to see anything, amongst shouting people. He tried to lash out, fell, howling, onto a freezing floor. He was in a room. More and more people were rushing into it and they looked as astonished as he felt. He looked down at his body. His familiar flesh startled him. It was … as if he’d been gone from this house. For so long. There had been changes. Swathes of new pink skin across his chest and abdomen, younger than his own, smooth. Between his legs … new there too. The people were asking him all sorts of questions. They put water to his lips.

A morgue, he was in a morgue.

He took their hands and helped them haul him to his feet. He knew something terrible … but that didn’t matter now. Dear God, that didn’t matter now! He grabbed the glass and threw back the water. He moved his tongue, croaked and licked his lips until he was sure he could use this … unfamiliar … body again. Until he was certain he could form words. He knew exactly the words he wanted to form.

‘I know where Russell Vincent is,’ he said.