#crawleigh

William the Antichrist

  It was a dark and stormy night.

  Do not let that lull you into a false sense of security. Just because it was the kind of night on which evil things have always been known to walk the earth, the kind of night on which one’s car breaks down in front of the old dark house, while dramatic lightning bolts fork through tarmac-black skies does not mean that this was not a night on which the forces of darkness were not abroad. They were abroad. They were everywhere. They always are. That’s the whole point.

  Two of them lurked in the ruined graveyard. Two shadowy figures, one hunched and squat, the other lean and menacing: both of them star-quality lurkers. If Bruce Springsteen had ever recorded Born to Lurk, these two would have been on the album cover, no problem. They had been lurking in the rain by a particularly ruined tomb for over an hour now, and they looked like they could carry on all night. Neither of them had spoken a word since arriving, although their body language was a stream of sullen invective. The shorter of them carried a bundle.

  There was a splash and a muffled curse as someone trod in a particularly deep puddle. A third figure joined them.

  “Sorry I’m late,” it said. “The car broke down, and you wouldn’t believe what I had to go through to get someone out on a night like this. Then I got lost. Got here eventually though. Been waiting long?”

  The hunched, squat lurker spat in the mud. “We are all here then,” he hissed, in a voice like fingernails clawing through a blackboard. “We can begin. Hastur?”

  Hastur, the thin one, nodded. “Great deeds have I done in the service of Our Master. I have poisoned reservoirs and given dogs venomous bones. I have tossed red-hot coins to buskers and strychnine sweets to small children. I have sold cars with carefully defective brakes; given sure tips to small investors, guaranteed to lose them the savings accumulated through their pitiful lives. I have corrupted youths and virgins. I have forced many to madness and beyond. I have written books that drove those who read them to suicide; and I have written songs that made those who heard them wish that they were dead. You could fill Wembley Stadium with those lives I have ruined, those souls I have twisted to Our Master’s cause. And you?”

  The squat one cleared his throat, the sound was not unlike slivers of blackboard being driven under someone’s fingernails, and began his litany: “I have burned down orphanages and hospitals. I have altered bus timetables

  and pushed people in front of subway trains. I have stolen candy from babies and hope from the despairing, swindled poor old women and returned to swindle them again. I have placed ground glass in soup intended for the poor, and ground diamonds in soup for the rich. I have removed warning signs, and made my own Diversion signs, and laughed as cars and lorries tumbled over cliffs. Thousands have I corrupted, thousands more have I destroyed utterly. I might also mention VAT form 10A/VB/003.1. And you, Crawleigh?”

  The latecomer shuffled from foot to foot, squelching slightly. They were staring at him.

  “Well...I really meant to get around to that sort of stuff. I mean I really meant to. But. I’ve been so busy recently, and I just didn’t, um, you know how it is...” He trailed off.

  There was a pause. Then the hunched figure hissed, in a voice that sounded like nails being dragged across an entire language laboratory full of advanced teaching aids, “You’ve been…busy?”

  “Uh, yes. I mean, for example, Tuesday. Yes. I really was going to go out and um, well, deprave somebody or something. Only there was this note saying the gas board would finally be sending someone over to fix the boiler, so I stayed in all day specially. Well, that was Tuesday gone. Of course, I phoned and they said he’d be round Wednesday, and so Wednesday I’m in all day, except I popped out for five minutes to get some ciggies, and I get back and there’s

  a note on the door saying they’d been and I was out and could I get back to them? Five minutes!”

  “It‘s not as if,” he added, warming to his theme, “It’s not as if they give you a time they’ll be coming round. Oh no! ‘Be in all day,’ they say, as if you haven’t got better things to do with your time, so there am I...”

  “You haven’t done...anything?”

  “Erm, I suppose if you want to put it like that...”

  “Nothing?”

  “Well I was rude to a few people...”

  The hunched figure glared hopefully. “You cursed them with dread maledictions and dark and forbidden imprecations, did you?”

  “No. Not exactly. Not as such. Mostly I just gave them one of my looks. But, I mean, they could tell I wasn’t pleased. I’m fairly sure about that.”

  The lean man, Hastur, spoke. “This is getting us nowhere,” he said. “What news of the parents?” There was something deeply unpleasant in the way he used the word. A raindrop which had begun to trickle down the back of his neck got the message and tried desperately to drip upwards.

  Crawleigh seemed marginally less uncomfortable. “All set. A-OK. She goes into labour tonight. We make the swap after everyone’s asleep, and she goes back home with Him next week. The hospital staff are all ours, and when she gets

 Him back to St. James’s all her nurses, nannies, governesses and so forth will be our people. Everything’s set.”

  “Good."

  A clap of thunder smashed the skies, and the rain, innocent of what it was about to fall onto, attempted the impossible and tried to fall even harder. Where it hit the small, squat figure it seemed to be turning into steam.

  “There must be no mistakes, Crawleigh.”

  “Oh, no. Gosh, of course not. I’ll be making the swap tonight myself what could possibly go wrong?”

  There was no answer. Possibly there was a sigh.

  The small, squat figure leaned down and picked up the bundle. It was bulky and well wrapped against the rain. “Here. Take good care of it. It is the most important thing there is, Crawleigh. Our Master’s own.”

  Crawleigh took the bundle from him. “Right. Well, I’d better be off then. Going to be a busy night. Lovely seeing both of you again. Listen, if you’re ever down my way, give me a bell, love to see you, mustn’t drift out of touch. We could pick up some curries, watch a video back at my place...” He trailed off, realising that he was alone in the graveyard.