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A Glass of Shadow

Liz Williams

Published by NewCon Press at Smashwords

What the critics have to say about

Liz Williams:

“Williams has mastered the art of writing clearly and believably about weird, alien worlds.” The Times

“Williams weaves a rich, complicated tapestry that merges life with afterlife, otherworldly with worldly and human with inhuman.” Publishers Weekly

“Williams' forte is her depiction of driven characters in richly realised settings.” The Guardian

“Williams is one of the most original and distinctive voices in British SF.” SFX

“A cocktail of styles, flavoured by the fruits of an astounding imagination.” SFCrowsnest

“Adventurous, thought-provoking science fiction.” The Times

“An author who continually produces intelligent, creative and entertaining stories.” Green Man Review

“Williams' unique cross-genre voice is a reinvigorating one for SF, fantasy and horror.” Publishers Weekly

Liz Williams

NewCon Press

England

Also available as

NCP 037 (hardback), NCP 038 (softback)

All stories copyright by Liz Williams

Cover art by Anne Sudworth

Cover design by Andy Bigwood

Minimal editorial interference by Ian Whates

Text layout by Storm Constantine

e-Book design by Tim C Taylor

This collection is dedicated to:

Trevor Jones BA (Hons)

The author would also like to thank:

Ian Whates (my lovely editor), The Milford Writers’ Workshop, which whipped several of these stories into shape, and Tanith Lee: for being an inspiration.

Introduction by Tanith Lee

Mr De Quincy and the Daughters of Madness

Mr Animation and the Wu Zhiang Zombies

Necrochip

The Flower of Tekheli

Tycho and the Stargazer

Indicating the Awakening of Persons Buried Alive

Blackthorn and Nettles

An Introduction

by Tanith Lee

If Liz Williams has a motto, it may well be: Have Mind, Will Travel. From the moment you open this collection, you leave the Known behind and enter the brighter, darker, more actual possibility that lies just through that door, over that hill, behind the sky.

The ableness of Williams' expeditions to otherwheres is by now well-established. I was lucky enough to learn of her work early in the 2000's, and began with her tremendous Empire of Bones (whose organic space-craft, to my mind, have never been rivalled, let alone bettered). She became instantly for me part of that newer, (much) younger battalion of writers who, collectively or individually, give me such glad hopes for the future of speculative, and all imaginative, writing.

Since then, it goes without saying, she has stayed constant to her very high standard, maturing a little, as we all prefer to do, but losing nothing of her flare and immediacy. She also possesses, evidently, a wide library of personal knowledge, not only about peoples and countries to be found on the globe, but the alchemic arts, antique science and astronomy, and the practices and strata of operational Magic, history and its sociologies, humankind et al. Or at least, judging by the authority and logistics of her work, I can only assume so! And she is versatile too, something else I personally value very highly – she ventures into all areas of the so-called “Fantastic”. Other planets, ancient landscapes – of mind as well as terrain – the far future, the parallel future or past, the delicious, the horrible, the enlightened, and the bitterly sad. Williams is ready to cross genres whenever her material calls for it. As in Empire of Bones, where deistic India, and beings from farthest space, meet and mingle like jewels of many colours in a cleverly made casket.

For she is a writer who can encompass both SF and Fantasy, combine knife-edge cool with the sensually romantic, bardic lament with clinical inquiry, the Outside with the In, the insider and the outlawed inside-out. In other words, she is what the genuinely addicted reader prays for: a free-flying innovator still grounded in the roots of a world from which we all derive, whether imaginatively or ancestrally.

To read these stories is to be taken on many journeys. Each is, in its own way – and often geographically – a travelogue through other places, times and parallel Earths so close that their changes, subtle or astonishing, fit like gloves. Williams would seem, physically, to have been everywhere, not excluding the pre-Christian Celtic West, Mars, and Hell. And she has approached every civilisation and culture, earthly or otherwise, with a razor keen eye, yet too with the respect and wonder suitable to all pilgrims. Her discoveries she sets out with the lightest, clearest touch. Her prose, despite the several different voices that speak in these pages, is always spare and concise, though it never lacks exquisitely essential details, nor evocative highlights – red the colour of a still-beating heart – snow that falls like owl feathers... An understated, innate poetry often infuses the fast-running narratives. These phrases remain with you, just as the plights and triumphs of her characters come back for brooding re-examination.

Williams understands psychology, human or non. They all ring true: ghosts, were-things, heroes and villains, the wise-maiden, the Victorian pragmatist, Goth-girl, hunter, lover, spy. This writer can take a reading from her source as effortlessly it seems, and as accurately – as legibly – as any of the cunning machines she has coined. No corners are cut. And though never gratuitous or gross, no hard facts are smoothed over. These people and beings live, they have brains, hearts – and souls. An exact blend of the mathematical and the spiritual seems to tailor Williams' outlook on worlds. If her supernaturals frequently have their claws firmly on the ground, her science, sometimes, has seen God. I must add too that there is something of the philosopher in Liz Williams. And nor is black humour absent.

But for those of us who like otherwheres, what is paramount here is the fascinating scope of her ideas.

Amongst other exotica you will visit the remains of a drowned London, where a clouded young girl uneasily tends her child, and a future-past Singapore as the latest in hot bands finds access to demons only too simple. You can witness an Eastern Europe lying in the melancholy debt of a sort of mythic Chernobyl or, cast out far from anywhere, discover the real secret of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Why not join the quest after spiteful fey-like spirits on Blackheath, or forbidden desire on the ice, or, within the core of Venice, the outcome of a cure for betrayal-of-the-heart. As for Dracula – let Williams take you to Whitby. You may never think of his kind in quite the same way again.

Best of all, you can trust your guide. Not only marvellous story-telling, but an underplayed and non-judgemental compassion run through the collection. Not every dilemma is solvable. Not every wrong can be righted. And that being the case, an echoing, even beautiful sense of anomaly (reminiscent of Russian literature) lingers across the sequence. A kind of glowing dusk of thought, that stays in the mind long after the last page is turned. A shadow that, like a good wine, provides a haunting second taste, once the contents of the glass have been consumed.

Tanith Lee

February 2011

Outside the walls of the cottage, winter snaps at the heels of the fells. The last dose of the drug lies bitter on my tongue, but in a very few moments, this will change. The drug will spread its dark honey through my veins and summer will come. Already, the door is opening with a stealthy caution to let in the night wind. It should be cold, bearing snow on its breath, but instead it warms me: a spice wind, out of the east and the morning, dragon-coiling around the room and sending sparks up the chimney. Beneath it, lies the familiar smell of ancient flesh. I can sense her presence as she comes to stand behind me. I remember the deaths that she has caused, which lie so heavily upon my conscience, and for the first time in years I am able to smile.

“Leave the door open,” I say, and without turning round, I tell her “I won’t be long. I have a few amendments to make to my manuscript.”

She does not answer, but I know that I can rely upon her agreement. Even though it has been many years since we stood in the same room together, our compact was forged in blood and pain and loss. Yet not even those threads are unbreakable: she violated her word many years ago, and there is no reason for me to keep mine. Still, there is a little time, and I have changes to make to my most famous work.

I hope that these amendments will explain matters to you with a sufficient degree of clarity, and that they might perhaps help you to understand the nature of my long and shameful addiction as well as the reasons for it. For the sake of our friendship, I owe you the truth. I do not, you understand, entreat you to publish these alterations. History may judge me as it will; it’s of no concern to me now. Let the old manuscript stand as it was originally published.

I first encountered my mistress when I was no more than a youth. As you know, I was obliged to abandon both my studies and what remained of my family as a result of the cruel treatment meted out to me by my guardian. Having either more spirit or a greater gift for folly than my fellows, I resolved to exchange my place of learning for the lessons of London and of life.

My early days in that great city were marked, you will recall, by hunger, cold and the lack of a roof. The latter, at least, was remedied by my move into the house of the person whom I have referred to elsewhere as my benefactor. I have implied that this gentleman was anxious to keep his affairs secret in the eyes of the population at large. I have not, however, said why.

Mr ------- was in truth a friend of my late father. They had been at school together, but had kept in erratic contact once Mr ------- began to travel abroad. I still had the address, however, and it seemed the greatest good fortune that my first visit there coincided with Mr -------’s return to his native shores after many years. My resemblance to my parent was evident, and Mr ------- greeted me with the greatest enthusiasm and expansively invited me to treat the house as my own. This was not quite, perhaps, the munificent gesture which it initially appeared. As I have recounted elsewhere, the house had been abandoned for some considerable time and was inhabited largely by rats and spiders.

It was also the dwelling of a girl even more ragged and forlorn than myself. I have spoken of her in my memoirs, although I fear that I have somewhat rearranged the sequence of events and personalities in order to conceal the true facts of her unhappy fate. She was one of those unfortunates whom society describes as fallen, preferring as ever to blame the victim rather than those who have aided her in her descent. Her name was Ann. Hardship and horror very rarely manifest themselves in generosity of spirit among such women, contrary to the general myth, but Ann was young enough to feel a genuine human kindness towards those as unfortunate as herself. Nothing of a professional nature passed between us, but we became friends. I resolved that, as soon as my fortunes were regained, I would rescue her from the inevitabilities of her life and take her north with me, where we could live out our days in peace and relative prosperity. Needless to say, despite all the romantic impulses of youth, I had no idea how this could be accomplished.

Mr ------- was, ostensibly, a practitioner of law. I have told of how he used one of the rooms of the neglected house as a study. He slept elsewhere, however, leaving the house at nightfall and returning around ten in the morning on the following day. At first, I was of the opinion that his legal practices were conducted principally around the margins of society; his manner was habitually nervous and, on the infrequent occasions when he had a visitor, he would request either myself or Ann to ascertain the guest’s identity before admitting them. The room in which he worked was an untidy rat’s nest of papers, old law manuals and letters; Ann swore that it was haunted, and would not enter. At first, I assumed that this was no more than a girl’s fancy, or some fable told to her by Mr --------- to ensure that no curious fingers interfered with his legal paraphernalia, since he said nothing of the matter to me. Whatever the truth of the matter, Ann would not go near the study after the fall of dusk. Her agitation was such that we were obliged to abandon the floor of the house on which the study lay, and took to sleeping up in one of the attics beneath an old horsehair blanket, our heads pillowed on a mouldering pile of legal manuscripts.

Despite my natural youth and resilience, my health at that time was very poor – a result of starvation and fatigue – and my sleep was habitually interrupted by pain. On one particular night at the beginning of spring it was especially bad, and I was compelled to rise from my makeshift bed and wander around the room. It was a cold night, with the glitter of late frost riming the roofs of the city, but very clear. Standing at the window, wrapped in an ancient blanket, my eyes strayed across the heavens, seeking the stars. The frost imposed a veil of silence over the city: I could, I thought fancifully, hear the stars themselves as they wheeled in their endless course across the sky. And as I listened, I did indeed hear a sound. It came from downstairs: a stealthy, uneasy rustling.

Despite (or perhaps as a result of) the hardships I had suffered, I still retained the confidence of youth, which greets danger without thought to the consequences. I went to the door, peered out into the darkness of the landing, and made my way silently down the stairs. I could still hear the sound, which was coming from the study. It occurred to me that if this was indeed some inimical intruder, I might need something more than my hands and a mouldy blanket with which to meet it. Searching hastily about, I could see nothing which might serve my purpose, so with belated prudence I decided to see what manner of enemy I was dealing with. I put my eye to the crack of the study door, and peered in.

At first, I could see nothing, but gradually a shadow separated itself from the surrounding darkness, gliding silently across the room. Its movement was too regular to be that of an ordinary person, and I felt a prickle of fear shiver down my spine. I also became aware of a peculiar odour: something separate from the usual musty dampness of the house, like an underlay of ancient spice. I remembered uneasily how it was said that the cooks of Turkey and the Indies employed powerful condiments to mask the taste of rotten meat: this was that sort of smell. I must have drawn a breath of revulsion, for the presence halted and turned. A voice whispered something that I did not understand, and my unwilling feet were compelled into the room.

My memories of what next took place are hazed with a sensation uncannily similar to that produced by the drug to which I would later become enslaved. It was as though I lay upon the edge of sleep, and experienced that sense of falling which often occurs before one succumbs to the arms of Morpheus. The dim form standing in the middle of the room was that of a woman. She was dressed in a long shift: pale as bone and dappled with blue shadows. As she turned her head, her hair rippled like rain. Silently, she held out her arms. Had it not been for that pungent odour and its undernote of decay, I’m afraid my natural inclination would have been to rush into them: I was, you must remember, only seventeen, and thus lacked a certain caution that comes – if it comes at all – only in later years. My hesitation did not, however, prove a barrier. I blinked, and found her standing only inches away from me. Reaching up, she put her arms around my neck. It would have seemed a little churlish to force her away. She was shorter than I, and her face seemed to change in the moonlight, becoming first reminiscent of my mother’s countenance, then of girls whom I had known in earlier years and who had taken my fancy. I ran my hands down her sides; I felt as though I was drowning.

What should have been a pleasant experience, however, soon turned into something else entirely. To my eyes, the girl still possessed the same slight and elegant form, but my hands told me otherwise. Beneath the soft, pulpiness of her breasts was an arching hollow of bone, as though she had an excessively narrow waist. With an unpleasant sense of fascinated revulsion I ran my fingers along her sides and discovered innumerable ridges of a sinewy substance, which were wet as though slimed with moss. This seemed to please her: she moaned and twisted in my arms, and I felt a sharp tongue run the length of my throat. There was the sudden reek of fresh blood. Someone was calling out the name of the Lord in a loud, hoarse voice: with some surprise, I recognised it as my own. It did no good whatsoever. My seductress was clearly intent upon her purpose, and unlikely to be distracted by the summoning of opposite powers. With a rush of strength that, in my currently debilitated state, amazed me, I twisted a foot around her fragile ankle and we crashed to the floor. Struggling to gain my feet, I heard someone calling my name.

“Tom! Tom! Oh, dear God!”

It was Ann. Overcoming her natural terror, her affection for me had drawn her down the stairs and into the study. My seductress lay beneath me, her head thrown back and her face as devoid of expression as an abandoned doll. It was as though the upper half of her body was nothing more than a disguise: akin to those moths which bear the semblance of an eye upon their wings. A ribbon of steaming flesh ran along my skin; a pocket of gristle encircled a part of my anatomy that, at that particular point, I would rather have left undisturbed. With a dim sense of shame, and more pain than pleasure, I felt myself compelled to discharge within it. Having done so, I was immediately released, with as much finesse as someone ejected from the door of a whorehouse. I found myself standing by the door, in a considerable state of disarray.

Ann’s ragged gasps of horror echoed in my ears. My attacker sat up, her head lolling backwards as though her neck was broken. Leaping forward, I seized Ann by the hand and tried to drag her free, but it was too late. A razor-edged flap of flesh seared my wrist and I let her go. With the greatest shame I have ever felt, I confess that I turned and ran. I did not look back until I was standing outside the house, with the sweet spring wind blowing and the dawn coming up over London.

After this, it would be hardly remarkable that I sought the oblivion of opium. Yet my reason for doing so was more than mere fear, as I shall shortly relate. I spent the next night sleeping rough on the streets of the city. The wind from the river seemed laden with ice, and the ground was hard with frost, but it was still preferable to my recent lodgings and after my abandonment of the girl, no more than I deserved. My guilt gnawed at me like rats at the flesh of the damned; eventually, I resolved to return to the house.

With the greatest trepidation, overcome only by my concern, I made my way back to the place that had made so unsettled a home. I am afraid that I took care to visit it in broad daylight. The house was gloomy, silent, and empty. Motes of dust spun in the shafts of sunlight from the grimy windows, and the mice scuttled in the woodwork, but otherwise there was no sign of movement or life. Swallowing my fear, I looked into the study. Papers littered the desk and floor, and tossed into a corner was a fragment of a scarf, which I immediately recognised. I do not need to tell you to whom it had belonged. Heavy hearted, I walked out of the house and with my last remaining coins caught a stagecoach north.

My life followed an erratic pattern over the years. I befriended many individuals, my chosen companions being artists and poets, since it seemed to me that they had seen something of the realms that lie beyond the world, and might therefore be called upon to advise me when the hour came. For I was certain that it would come; the knowledge that the creature in Mr --------’s study had not finished with me seemed to have sunk deep within my bones. When I heard, through an old friend of the family in London, that Mr ------- had been found dead in the most peculiar circumstances (never fully explained to me) I knew that it would not be long before the demon disgraced me with her presence.

At this time, I lived close to the home of someone whose name has passed into history as one of the leading poets of the age. He and his sister inhabited a cottage high in the Lake District, and we became good friends. There were, I know, hopes that I would one day marry Dorothy Wordsworth, but I knew that this could never be the case. She was an imaginative, fragile soul; such people see too clearly into the edges of the world and it appalled me to think that she might catch a glimpse of what lay there. As soon as I realised what the Wordsworths’ expectations were, I took care to disabuse them. I am sure that I hurt her, but I could hardly tell her the truth. Instead, I set up house in a neighbouring valley, attended by a local girl whose powers of imagination extended only to the most material things of life. At length, in an attempt to provide her with the security which my lost Ann would never know, I married her. It was not long, however, before I acquired another, less corporeal, mistress.

It had been a stuffy, muggy summer, and the air lay heavily in the folds of the fells. Though no longer the frail, starving boy I had been, I still suffered from sleepless nights, and on this occasion I relapsed into a kind of fitful doze. My dreams were filled with shifting, queasy colours, and eventually I awoke with the immediate knowledge that there was someone else in the room. My mortal paramour was away, visiting her mother. I knew exactly who my guest was.

She was standing at the end of the bed, grave and still. As soon as she saw that I was awake, she smiled. Soft light seemed to play across her face; she was very lovely, but I could only remember the horror of her beneath my hands.

“Get away from me,” I said. To my own ears, my voice sounded thin and old.

Lithely, she stepped around the end of the bed and sat beside me on the covers. Reaching out, she touched my face with a hand that felt damp and dead. I am not ashamed to say that I tried to scream, but found myself abruptly incapable of uttering a sound. She was murmuring to me in some unknown language, and the sounds she was making did not seem to emerge from any human throat. Then she said simply

“Do you want your wife to die?”

She spoke in perfectly good English, but I noticed that the movement of her lips did not match the words. I shook my head.

“Then understand this. It is your choice. In order to live, I need one of two human substances: a woman’s blood, or a man’s seed. I will not come to you every night, or even often. I will not harm you,” her voice changed, to become thick and soft and fond. “How could I?”

I thought of Ann, and of the other girls whose lives had doubtless gone to feed this monster. I thought of my long shame, that I had been too cowardly to save the girl who had been my friend. The demon filled me with revulsion, but I could not face the thought of being the cause of my own wife’s death. I made my choice, resolving as I did so that I would endeavour to find a means of ridding myself of the demon.

It was shortly after this that I paid a visit to the local chemist and procured a bottle of laudanum. With the aid of this narcotic, I found that I could dull the senses to such an extent that the visits of my succubus were rendered, if not pleasant, at least bearable. She visited me monthly, during the dark of the moon, and I used the excuse of the drug to sleep alone during those nights. Our arrangement wreaked havoc upon my nerves, however, and I began increasingly to rely upon the drug.

I have made the best of my addiction to opium. Its legacy has been the work that has kept my name in the public eye during the course of this century, and I suppose that I have had much for which to be grateful. I had my friends, throughout the Lakes and beyond, and once I had taken pains to repair the breach between myself and William’s family, little Kate Wordsworth became as dear to me as if she had been my own.

During the years, too, I became almost accustomed to my demonic mistress’ nocturnal visits; grew almost used to the sensation of changing, unearthly flesh against my own. I grew to regard her as a creature more pitiful than horrifying: trapped within the dictates of her own nature, striving for survival. She kept her promise, and stayed away from my wife.

I used to talk with the demon, and as long as I did not touch her, the illusion of the young and beautiful girl lying by my side served to a certain degree as compensation, especially through the merciful veil of the drug. She would not tell me her name, perhaps because she did not know. She was very old; she remembered nothing of her creation nor her origins, but she came out of the east and it is my belief that she was perhaps generated by some oriental alchemist: an experiment that had failed. She tried to describe where she went to when she was not with me, but here words failed her. I gained the impression of a chaotic place, filled with moving lights.

And then she broke her word. The Wordsworths were staying with me at the time. Slyly, I had told them that I would be journeying to London on the day that my mistress was due to visit, ensuring that they would be away from the house; but when they were due to leave, the child Kate fell ill. It was, very probably, no more than some childish complaint: a fever brought on by the exertions of the day, but William insisted that she should be allowed to rest. Throwing them out of the house was unthinkable; not without trepidation, I pretended to cancel my imaginary journey and let them stay.

That night, I waited for the approach of my mistress, but nothing happened. My nerves were on edge, and I had taken a larger dose of laudanum than usual in order to quiet them. I give this as explanation, not excuse. Gradually, over the course of the next hour or so, it dawned on me that she was not going to manifest, and as irritated as if I had been neglected by a cherished human lover I rose from my bed. It will not come as any surprise as to where I found her.

She was sitting on the edge of Kate’s bed, holding the child’s hand in her own. Kate was smiling, but the fever burned brightly in her eyes and in the gaze of my unearthly lover I saw an uneasy mingling of guilt and desire.

“We’ve been talking all night,” the child whispered proudly. “All about China, and India, and all sorts of places.”

“I’m sure it’s been very interesting,” I said. “But you really should try and get some rest now,” and I held out my hand to the thing sitting on the bed. And as she rose, I saw there was blood on her mouth.

She came with me quietly. I led her into the bedroom and closed the door, but when I turned back, she was gone. In the morning, Kate began to languish further, and that evening she died. The Wordsworths were, of course, distraught, but I was little better. I blamed myself and the drug in equal measure. Memories of Ann returned to haunt me anew, and these two lost children blurred into one another to become one and the same. A month after Kate’s death, I lay waiting for the demon to return, but she did not come. One might have thought that I would have been relieved, but on the contrary, I was distraught. Now that our bargain had been broken, the demon was loose in the world, presumably preying on whomsoever she pleased, and it was at this point that I resolved to do all I could to determine how she might be found and slain.

I undertook my spiritual enquiries with renewed vigour, travelling to London to search the libraries for information, but none of the practices I surreptitiously tried had any effect whatsoever. I confided in priests and conjurors and poets, but no one could enlighten me as to where the demon might be found. I even went back to my benefactor’s house in London, only to discover that it had been ravaged by fire shortly after his death. Each avenue of exploration seemed to lead nowhere, but I did not yet relinquish hope.

Since it appeared that I had been released from the demon’s influence, there was no longer any need to rely upon the illusions of opium. Moreover, the pleasure it brought me was matched by my revulsion at what it had caused me to do. If I had not drugged myself, Kate might still be alive. I resolved to rid myself of the habit, and then I discovered that I could not. My demon lover may have been one of the daughters of madness, but so was opium. In seeking to protect myself, I had merely exchanged one demon for another, and now the drug began to bring new visions, fuelled by guilt and shame and loss.

My quest consumed the remaining years of my life, and at last I was convinced that I had found the way to summon the demon back. I had been studying the practices of Quabbalism for some time, and I made my preparations with considerable care, my aim being to bind our souls together and take the demon from the world in death. It seems that these preparations have worked, for she is here. I find that I cannot hate her, despite all that she has done. Age has brought me a greater understanding of what it means to be alone, and unloved, and to live on the edges of the world, always looking in at the lighted window of other people’s lives. Yet she has preyed on this world for too long, and I, too, feel the need to atone for my sins. And now, before we become entirely lost in the long dream of the drug and death, I reach out to take her hand and though she now looks like nothing I could ever have imagined, her fingers in mine feel as human as those of the girl I left to die, so many years ago.

In Singapore Three, séances are always a risky business. Hell lies too close for comfort, and the gods don’t protect fools. So I had deep misgivings when Xu Lu Han said that the best way to promote Chainsaw Killa would be to summon a spirit at the wetdisc launch. It would make the disc a hit, he said; put the band on the map and ensure that the Zombies would be in demand in every club in town.

I should have protested at the time, but I didn’t. The main reason for this was that I was secretly terrified of Xu Lu. True, I thought he was a moron, but I also considered him to be a dangerous one. This was partly a result of his appearance. Xu Lu was bad enough in a good light and the open air, but in the smoky darkness of the Shanxi Club or Juna’s, he was nothing short of horrifying. Someone had once told me that he’d been separated at birth from a twin, and at the time I believed this without question since it seemed to explain such a lot, but I later discovered that he’d had his face razored up in a schoolyard fight, and had gone straight to the local skin sculptor to have it remoulded. He was thirteen at the time, from a dirt-poor family, and the results of the remoulding made Xu Lu look as though someone had held him over a flame like a toy soldier, until the flesh had dripped and run. He flaunted his scars in conjunction with a thin mohican that ran like black oil down the centre of his scalp, and a dead-eyed bloodshot stare. He liked to tell people that he’d actually died and been resuscitated, hence the nickname: Mr Animation. No one ever called him Xu Lu except me, and then only in the privacy of my own head. It made him a little less like an animé cartoon and a little more like a human being. A little more, but not very much.

It was a shame, really, that I couldn’t bring myself to think more highly of Chainsaw Killa either, because my younger brother Jhun had written it and it was the first song – indeed, the first thing – that he’d ever managed to achieve. I suppose Jhun and I are polar opposites, in a way. I’ve always been the studious type (nice retro spectacles, bookpad, NuGap trousers) whereas Jhun was the one to rebel against what he perceived to be maternal strictures. Dad’s no longer with us, having skipped up the coast to Hong Kong in search of a fortune. I take after my mum.

Anyway, after the fights and the drug deals (happily nothing more serious than nitromite and soma ore), Jhun’s announcement that he was auditioning as a drummer with the Wu Zhiang Zombies seemed like a comparatively positive move. And once he’d actually joined the band, it seemed sensible for me to tag along and keep an eye on him. Heaven knows, I was hardly the archetypal New Century punk, but I did have an exhaustive knowledge of late twentieth century animé and anarchy hardcore house, and this was enough to win me a grudging place on the sidelines of the band. Since the twentieth century was now six years away, Jhun tended to regard my knowledge in the light of ancient history. Xu Lu himself didn’t like me, but he’d have lost face in acknowledging my presence, and so he simply ignored me. This suited both of us. My brother Jhun ignored me as well, but I think he was actually rather pleased to have me hanging around. He was, after all, only fifteen, whereas both Xu Lu and myself were twenty, and Jhun knew I’d back him up if things turned nasty. I might wear NuGap clothes, but I still had a black belt under them, metaphorically speaking. Moreover, I lent Jhun a certain amount of credibility as a result of my musical knowledge, and as the irredeemably straight sibling, I made my brother look almost hip. So by the time that Jhun had got it together to write Chainsaw Killa, things had attained a certain degree of equilibrium. And then Xu Lu announced that it was time to hold a séance.

I suppose I’d been expecting something like this for some time. Xu Lu had recently split up from his latest girlfriend, which I think had a lot to do with his mood. He’d started shooting a lot of cendra, and his conversation had that unmistakable amphetamine edge. Even when he was quiet you could hear his teeth; grinding on relentlessly like some engine deep in the bowels of the city. The girlfriend had been a dancer at Juna’s; a theoretically lovely girl with a permanent collagenic sneer and eyelid tucks. From a distance, she could have passed as a Westerner, and eventually she’d slept with a sufficiently large number of the US Embassy staff to get a visa for the States. I like to think that Xu Lu, despite his psychotic demeanour, was actually secretly something of a romantic; the break-up seemed to hit him hard. He wrote a number of obsessive songs, in which American bitches featured with worrying prominence. Eventually, however, something inside Xu Lu seemed to snap. He called the band together. I wasn’t invited, but I went anyway.

The Wu Zhiang Zombies, Xu Lu announced between grinding molars, were losing their edge. If they wanted to promote Chainsaw Killa properly, they were going to have to reclaim that darkness of spirit that had got them where they were today. And the way to do that, Xu Lu announced without a trace of irony, would be to summon the hungry ghost of Acid Razor; greatest of all anarchy hardcore rockers, who had been decapitated by his own brother in 2003 as a result of a deal gone wrong. The day on which the séance would be held was the third anniversary of his death.

As soon as Xu Lu made this lunatic proposal, there was a sudden strained silence. I could see Jhun shifting in his seat, trying to look tough, but something was flickering behind his eyes. He was afraid, and I wasn’t surprised. The very mention of Hell seemed to bring it closer: shimmering darkly just beyond the edge of vision, as though someone or something was starting to tune in an antique radio. The bass guitarist, a guy named Ho who rarely spoke, shifted in his seat.

“Do you think that’s wise, man?”

Xu Lu peeled off his shades and gave Ho an old, cold stare. “Wise? Who the fuck knows what’s wise these days? Wisdom’s over, man. Dead concept. There are risks, and there are successful risks, is all.” He reached into the pocket of his laminated combats and pulled out an ancient digital watch. “We now have seventy seven hours and falling before Hour Zero. Count down, people, and load up.”

With that he stalked out of the room, leaving us with the sick realisation that he’d stage-managed the whole thing.

“What do you think I should do?” Jhun asked, as we walked along the waterfront. I was a bit pleased. It was the first time he’d ever asked my advice and I took it as a sign of increasing maturity. I think I had some idea of helping him walk his own path, so to speak, accompanied by my sage guidance. Some kind of Shaolin trip. With this in mind, I said, “What do you think you should do?”

“I dunno,” Jhun said helplessly, shifting his narc-O-gum from one cheek to another and booting a dead rat into the oily waters of the dock.

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