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By Root 938 0

but he could tell they were formed inside his head. She commanded Jeryd to walk around the room. She asked him to look down into the glass box. She instructed him to put his hand up against the side of the box. She urged him to perform a whole series of actions that seemed to go on forever, frustrating in execution, and even foolish at times. Again, her words working inside his skull. Childhood memories flickered into his consciousness once or twice: his mother standing terrified on a chair in the kitchen as a big spider scuttled across the room, his father shambling in drunk to swat it with a book.

Jeryd did what he was told and was surprised to find that by the end he was not experiencing the same degree of paralysis as before. It helped, of course, to know that it wasn’t real, that it was an image imprisoned in a false world. All through the ritual, Bellis continued explaining her secret theories about the nature of fear – things, she said, that he would forget as soon as he was removed from this setting, yet would remain lodged deep inside his mind. Jeryd didn’t know what to make of any of it and suddenly—

J

e

r

y

d

was back in the same cafe, clutching the box as if it was for real with the spider right up against his face – and there was now minimal panic, no quiver or heart murmurs, and he was totally astounded. Bellis merely sat there sipping her cup of tea, with a satisfied grin on her face. ‘The mind’, she announced, ‘is a powerful thing. Fear is just a mental state, but it can make people behave quite oddly.’

A girl with a mop passed their table, and suddenly shrieked. ‘Get that bloody creature out of here. This instant, d’you hear me? Get it out!’

She began to wave the mop in their faces till they slid their chairs back in haste. Bellis scooped up her orb, and the box suddenly vanished. The two of them hurried out of the bistro.

‘See what I mean?’ Bellis chuckled dryly, once they were safely outside.

As the snow drifted down around them, Jeryd had to laugh too.

THIRTY-FIVE

‘I can’t stay, Malum. I’m sorry. No matter how much money you throw at me, I want to go.’ Beami was standing with her back to the window, daylight hazing around her, a few bags heaped at her feet. Her emotions were evident in her pained expression.

A morning snowstorm rattled outside, as the city was becoming smothered yet again with white. Now and then people would walk by the window behind her, but they seemed completely unreal. He was utterly detached from this moment. Surely this was no way to start the day, was it, with the smell of bacon hanging in the air being ruined for him by his wife walking out.

‘Fine.’ Malum glanced down at the table, clutching his mask, playing with the red ribbons. Seething.

‘I’m sorry.’ Beami picked up her bags and began moving towards the door for the final time. ‘I haven’t taken much. I’ve got so many precious relics but I can’t carry too many of them. It might be easier for me to fetch the rest when there’s only one of us in the house . . . Malum, I really am sorry.’

‘Fuck you are,’ he breathed, unable to face her – this woman daring to stand up to him.

Beami closed the front door gently behind her, leaving him alone amidst a remarkable stillness.

Her departure from his life was as simple as that.

Shortly after she left, he put on his mask again in an effort to contain the emotions that overwhelmed him.

When you can have anything you want, it’s the things you don’t have that will get to you.

A trilobite lurched awkwardly into his path, so Malum kicked it. The creature screeched, collapsed awkwardly into a bank of snow, then eventually scampered away towards the docks, antennae bristling in the air. Malum was feeling bellicose, and in no mood to step around anyone or anything, let alone a giant fucking insect. He had spent much of that day in the company of expensive whores who were under his protection. He had ordered them to kiss and fondle each other, wearing corsets and thigh-length boots, while he watched, waiting for something to happen inside himself. But nothing did. Later