on his face, now did the same.
In the dirt a few yards from Cal the child was already standing up. It was the size of a chimpanzee, and shared with its siblings the appearance of something traumatically wounded. Portions of its inner workings were teased out through its skin, leaving its torso to collapse upon itself in places and in others sport ludicrous appendages of gut. Twin rows of dwarf limbs hung from its belly, and between its legs a sizeable scrotum depended, smoking like a censer, uncompanioned by any organ to discharge what boiled within.
The child knew its business from its first breath: to terrorize.
Though its face was still wreathed with afterbirth, its gummy eyes found Cal, and it began to shamble towards him.
‘Oh Jesus …’
Cal began looking for the Salesman, but the man had vanished.
‘I told you,’ he yelled into the darkness, ‘I don’t know where the fucking carpet is.’
Shadwell didn’t respond. Cal shouted again. Mama Pus’ bastard was almost upon him.
‘Jesus, Shadwell, listen to me, will you?’
Then, the by-blow spoke.
‘Cal …’ it said.
He stopped struggling against his restraints a moment, and looked at it in disbelief.
It spoke again. The same syllable.
‘Cal …’
Even as it pronounced his name its fingers pulled at the muck about its head. The face that appeared from beneath lacked a complete skull, but it was recognizably that of its father: Elroy. Seeing familiar features in the midst of such deformity was the crowning horror. As Elroy’s child reached to touch him Cal started yelling again, scarcely aware of what he was saying, only begging Shadwell to keep the thing from touching him.
The only reply was his own voice, echoing back and forth until it died. The child’s arms jerked forward, and its long fingers latched onto Cal’s face. He tried to fight it off, but it drew closer to him, its sticky body embracing him. The more he struggled the more he was caught.
The rest of the by-blows loosed their hold on him now, leaving him to the new child. It was only minutes old, but its strength was phenomenal, the vestigial hands on its belly raking Cal’s skin, its grip so tight his lungs laboured for breath.
With its face inches from Cal’s, it spoke again, but the voice that came from the ruined mouth was not its father’s this time, but that of Immacolata.
‘Confess.’ she demanded. ‘Confess what you know.’
‘I just saw a place –’ he said, trying to avoid the trail of spittle that was about to fall from the beast’s chin. He failed. It hit his cheek, and burned like hot fat.
‘Do you know what place?’ the Incantatrix demanded.
‘No …’ he said. ‘No, I don’t –’
‘But you’ve dreamt it, haven’t you? Wept for it …’
Yes, was the answer; of course he’d dreamt it. Who hadn’t dreamt of paradise?
Momentarily his thoughts leapt from present terror to past joy. To his floating over the Fugue. The sight of that Wonderland kindled a sudden will to resist in him. The glories he saw in his mind’s eye had to be preserved from the foulness that embraced him, from its makers and masters, and in such a struggle his life was not so hard to forfeit. Though he knew nothing about the carpet’s present whereabouts he was ready to perish rather than risk letting anything slip that Shadwell might profit by. And while he had breath, he’d do all in his power to confound them.
Elroy’s child seemed to read this new-found resolution. It drew its arms more tightly about him.
‘I’ll confess!’ he yelled in its face. ‘I’ll tell you everything you want to know.’
Immediately, he began to talk.
The substance of his confession was not, however, what they wanted to hear. Instead he began to recite the train timetable out of Lime Street, which he knew by heart. He’d first started learning it at the age of eleven, having seen a Memory Man on television who’d demonstrated his skills by recalling the details of randomly chosen football matches – teams, scores, scorers – back to the 1930s. It was a perfectly useless endeavour, but its heroic scale had impressed Cal mightily, and he’d spent the next few weeks committing to memory any and every piece of information he could find, until it struck him that his magnum opus was passing to and fro at the bottom of the garden: the trains. He’d begun that day, with the local lines, his ambition elevated each time he successfully remembered a day’s times faultlessly. He’d kept his information up to date for several years, as services were cancelled or stations closed. And his mind, which had difficulty putting names to faces, could still spew this perfectly redundant information out upon request.
That’s what he gave them now. The services to Manchester, Crewe, Stafford, Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Coventry, Cheltenham Spa, Reading, Bristol, Exeter, Salisbury, London, Colchester; all the times of arrival and departure, and footnotes as to which services only operated on Saturdays, and which never ran on Bank Holidays.
I’m Mad Mooney, he thought, as he delivered this filibuster, listing the services with a bright, clear voice, as if to an imbecile. The trick confounded the monster utterly. It stared at Cal while he talked, unable to understand why the prisoner had forsaken fear.
Immacolata cursed Cal through her nephew’s mouth, and offered up new threats, but he scarcely heard them. The timetables had their own rhythm, and he was soon carried along by it. The beast’s embrace grew tighter; it could not be long before Cal’s bones began to break. But he just went on talking, drawing in gulps of breath to start each day, and letting his tongue do the rest.
It’s poetry, my boy, said Mad Mooney. Never heard its like. Pure poetry.
And maybe it was. Verses of days, and lines of hours, transmuted into the stuff of poets because it was all spat into the face of death.
They’d kill him for this defiance, he knew, when they finally realized that he’d never exchange another meaningful word with them. But Wonderland would have a gate for ghosts.
He had just begun the Scottish services – to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Perth, Inverness, Aberdeen and Dundee – when he caught sight of Shadwell from the corner of his eye. The Salesman was shaking his head, and now exchanged some words with Immacolata – something about having to ask the old woman. Then he turned, and walked into the darkness. They’d given up on their prisoner. The coup de grace could only be seconds away.
He felt the grip relax. His recitation faltered for an instant, in anticipation of the fatal blow. It didn’t come. Instead, the creature withdrew its arms from around him, and followed behind Shadwell, leaving Cal lying on the ground. Though released, he could scarcely move; his bruised limbs were rigid with cramp after being held fast for so long.
And now he realized that his troubles were not over. He felt the sweat on his face turning cold, as the mother of Elroy’s terrible infant drew herself towards him. He could not escape her. She straddled his body, then reached down and drew his face up towards her breasts. His muscles
