“There’s no need to be frit of me, my dear. Now, did that brute do anything to hurt you when he had you in his claws? What was that business that he mentioned about how you had a deal with him? I hope you’ve not made any promises to a rough chap like that.”
The freshly dead child moved his weight from one plaid slipper to the other, fiddling with the sash cord of his dressing gown uneasily.
“He tolled me he wiz glowing to snake me four a raid, and shed that I could prey him back by dooming him a fever.”
Her Bill guffawed rudely at the boy’s derailed pronunciation, which revealed him as a new arrival in Mansoul as surely as a country twang would have betrayed him in a city. Phyllis noticed that the Warren kid’s ability to make sense when he talked had taken a step backwards since she’d seen him last. When she’d escorted him across the Attics to the jitty where they were now standing, he’d appeared to be finding his Lucy-lips and was beginning to speak clearly without mangling every phrase as it was born. From his performance now, however, it seemed as though witnessing the giant fiend’s extraordinary fit of pique had set him back a bit. His sentences went everywhere, like matchsticks from a box that had been opened upside-down. Luckily, Mrs. Gibbs, by virtue of her work on either side of death’s sharp corner, was conversant with the diction of the recently deceased and could take Michael Warren’s gibberish in her stride.
“I see. And did he take you for this outing that he’d promised you, my dear? Where did he fly you to, if I might ask?”
At this the nipper’s face lit up, as though a grown-up had just asked him to describe which ride he’d liked best at a funfair that he’d visited.
“He shook me down into nixed Fraidy night, to where my hours wiz instant Andrew’s Road. Eyesore myself, and I wiz back true life again!”
Now everyone was staring in bewilderment at Michael Warren, and not on account of his exploding elocution. Everybody was too startled by what he’d just said to take much notice of the way he’d said it. Could it possibly be true? Could the arch-devil have transported the boy into the immediate future, where he’d glimpsed himself restored to life? Barring a miracle this made no sense at all, and Phyllis tried to find a more feasible explanation for the child’s unlikely story. Possibly the fiend had carried him into the past and not into next Friday night, as the lad obviously believed. The devil had cold-bloodedly deceived the kid by giving him a glimpse of himself back within the bosom of his family, then had told him this was something that would happen in a few days time, rather than something which had already occurred, a week or two before the toddler had choked to death. It was a cruel and spiteful hoax, intended to crush Michael Warren’s infant soul by offering false hope. While Phyllis much preferred her cynical interpretation to the more miraculous alternative, something about it didn’t ring entirely true.
For one thing, Phyllis and her gang had seen the demon streaking off with Michael into the red west with their own eyes, the same direction that they’d just seen him returned from. West is future, East is past, all things linger, all things last. Not only that, but it was well known that a devil had no more capacity to lie than did a page of hard statistics. Like statistics, they could only seriously mislead. Moreover, although Phyllis hated demons generally, she had to grudgingly admit that they were seldom petty. Playing heartless tricks on three-year-olds was probably beneath them, or at least beneath the more high-ranking fiends, such as the one who’d stolen Michael Warren had appeared to be. Of course, this line of reasoning led to the plainly unacceptable conclusion that the boy was right, and that within a day or two he’d be alive again, back with his family in St. Andrew’s Road. Phyllis regarded Mrs. Gibbs and saw from the deathmonger’s manner as she scrutinised the little chap that the old girl had independently arrived at the same impasse in her thinking.
“Well, now, there’s a fine kettle of fish. And why, I wonder, did that old snake take an interest in you in the first place? You think hard, my dear, and tell me if there’s anything he said as might give me a clue.”
The child in nightclothes, who was evidently unaware of the tremendous import of what he was blithering about, tried to look thoughtful for a moment and then beamed up helpfully at Mrs. Gibbs.
“He tolled me that hide claused sum trouble here Upscares.”
The deathmonger looked blank at first, then slowly corrugated her age-spotted brow as if with dawning comprehension.
“Oh, my dear. You’re not the little boy who’s caused the falling-out between the builders? Someone told me earlier as they was having a big scrap up at the Mayorhold, on account of one of ’em had cheated in their trilliard game, but I’d not dreamed as it was you was at the bottom of it.”
What was this? A fight between the builders? Phyllis gaped incredulously, and to judge by the sharp gasps that came from her Bill and Drowned Marjorie, it was the first they’d heard of it as well. Wouldn’t a fight between the builders mean that the whole world would fall in half, or something terrible like that? Sounding excited by the prospect, Bill relayed his obvious enthusiasm to the deathmonger.
“Cor! Whenabouts are they having it, the angles’ punch-up? I’d like to be there for that.”
Not for the first time, Phyllis felt embarrassed that her kid was such an unapologetic little ruffian. Mrs. Gibbs clucked at young Bill disapprovingly.
“It’s not a game, my dear, and if the builders are at odds it would seem disrespectful to be stood there goggling at them. And of course it would be very dangerous, and not a place for little children, so you put that idea right out of your head.”
Though Phyllis knew he hadn’t put the idea from his thoughts at all, Bill pulled
his glum and reprimanded face to make the deathmonger think that he had. Mrs. Gibbs turned away from him and carried on with her appraisal of the hapless Michael Warren.
“Well, my dear, it sounds to me as if you’re at the middle of some funny goings-on. I’m not surprised, given the things I know about your people and the family you come from. Even so, I’ve never heard the like of this. You’ve drawn attention from a fiend … the thirty-second devil, who’s a bad un … and done something that has made the builders have a falling-out. On top of that, you’re dead one minute and alive the next, if you’re to be believed.
“Now, as regards that devil, when it said it wanted you to do a favour for it in return for giving you a ride, did it say what the favour wiz, at all?”
The little boy stopped beaming and turned pale enough to stand out in the present company of ghosts.
“He said I’d got to help him kill somebody.”
Phyllis thought it was a measure of how shaken-up the thought made Michael Warren, that he’d managed to get through a sentence without garbling any words. Mind you, it was a dreadful thought, one frightening enough to cure a stutter. Bill said “fucking hell” and Phyllis slapped him hard on his bare lower leg where it stuck from under his short trousers, before Mrs. Gibbs did. With a withering sideways glance at Bill, the deathmonger turned her attention back to the suddenly worried-looking younger lad.
“Then that was very wrong of it, my dear. If it wants someone killed, then it can do it by itself. From what I hear about it, it’s had more than enough practice. Frankly, I’m surprised it was allowed to snatch you up and say such awful things to you …”
The deathmonger broke off, and cocked her head upon one side. It looked to Phyllis as though Mrs. Gibbs had just been struck by the full implications of the words that she had said, which prompted Phyllis to consider them herself. Allowed: that was the word on which the matter rested. Why had all of these outlandish breaches of the normal regulations, in the first place, been allowed? As Phyllis had observed when she was helping Michael Warren up into the Attics of the Breath, nothing in Mansoul was by accident, neither the issue of there being no one there to greet the child, nor Phyllis happening upon the scene while she was skipping homeward from a scrumping expedition. Phyllis felt the soft touch of a larger hand in these affairs, so that the memory of her flesh crawled briefly in response. From Mrs. Gibbs’s face, it looked as though the deathmonger were having many of the same considerations. Finally, she spoke again.
“To be quite honest, dear, I don’t know what to make of you. I have a feeling there’s a lot more to all this than meets the eye, but if the builders are involved then it’s too much for me to puzzle out all on my own.”
At this point Handsome John and Reggie Bowler sauntered back along the jitty, brushing off their hands as they re-joined the gang, having responsibly disposed of the dream-brazier somewhere in the alley’s depths. Mrs. Gibbs noted their return with a curt nod, then carried on with what she had been saying.
“As I say, my dear, I’m out my depth. What I suggest is that you don’t go running off all by yourself again, or who knows what could happen? You stick with these older children, and I’m sure they’ll see you don’t get into any mischief. In the meantime, I intend to have a word with someone higher up than me, who knows what’s going on. I think I’ll call on Mr. Doddridge, and see what he’s got to say. You do as you’ve been told, and keep safe with these boys and girls. I’ll see you later on, when I’ve found out what’s what, so you be good until I do.”