Fisher And The Bears Read online

“Does it involve any kind of flame, fire, or explosion?” I asked.

  “Well, kind of.” He admitted. “But only in controlled circumstances.”

  “You do remember why we no longer celebrate Guy Fawkes Night?” Mrs Sussex said calmly.

  I looked around. “You all want to me to surf on the car and somehow make a magic circle. While moving. Don't you?” I saw their looks. “No.” I said. “No.”

  “A few more seconds,” Ted said, “and Mabel could have been hurt.” This caused mumbling from the bears. “And,” Ted added, “there will be a lot of children wanting to go to town at the weekend. Or to school on Monday morning.” More and more mumbles. “So we can't let this risk stay on the road can we?”

  “We?” I said. “How many of you will do the exorcising of the thing?” They did not answer. “Or drive?” An awful lot of hands went up for that one. “So how comes I always have to drive the van?”

  The bears did not answer. That should have explained everything. Ted however gave an excited cry of “dibs!” He ran off, only to return in a few seconds with a sailors cap that said “CAPTAIN” a pair of yellow lensed glasses, a pair of canary yellow driving gloves and carrying a very heavy brass compass.

  I walked to the cupboard, found a hoola-hoop of the clear plastic variety, a drill, a funnel and a few kilos of salt to make a magic circle that would not break apart at twenty miles an hour. A dog of glue sealed the hole. Then I looked at Dad. “So when you used to do the wall of death at the theatre.” I said. He nodded.

  “The crash suit is in your cellar.” He said. A few bears went scampering off. When they came back they had the protective leathers, neck brace and helmet that was designed to protect a man as best they could from things going horribly wrong during incredibly stupid motorcycle stunts. These days even bears were dubious about doing anything quite so risky. People blame 'health and safety' as though they are a bad thing. Which is funny, in my experience, when they are gone, I tend to miss them pretty much. The suit was a bit baggy on me, but it felt okay.

  I looked at the bears. They were arguing over who got to ride shotgun. Or rather they were arguing about who had to sit in the front and see where they were going. Ted needed a few aids to drive as you might expect, a booster seat, pedal extenders, such things. But he had a nasty habit of shouting nautical terms before every adjustment or manoeuvre which had worryingly little to do with his actions. There were few jolts and bumps that I had no explanation for.

  We waited by the police block at the entrance to the duel carriageway. Soon the Kitten was rolling past us. We lurched forwards, got ahead of it, pulled into the same lane and slowed.

  “Now you have to very carefully try and match their speed.” I instructed Ted.

  “Prepare for boarding action!” He yelled, as the brakes suddenly sang and we lurched sharply into a crunch of out towing bar onto his bumper. There was the strangled cry of metal against metal. I swung the back doors of the van open and found myself looking out at the tea stained windscreen with the ghoulish driver. I had only a few miles to act. I grasped the sat filled hoop in one hand and I half stepped and half jumped onto the Kitten.

  The metal was cold and there was an air of static electricity in the air. The driver did not react. I lay the hoop on the roof and wedged my foot on the bonnet before I could drag myself into the circle and activate it. It took a few attempts to get the rite out. Once the words were finally out of my lips the strange stillness of the circle descended. It was more powerful than I had anticipated. There was a slowness to time in the circle and the resonance of magic touching magic.

  The car did not contain a ghost. The car was part of it. The whole thing was very Other Worldly.

  I looked up at the van. The bears had sensed it too. As soon as I had powered up the circle their fur had fluffed out, standing on end. I squinted. There was a girl in the back of the van. No. Not a girl. A young woman, maybe she was the same age as me but had lived a hard life. Maybe she was a few years older but had aged well. She had raven hair and coffee skin. The hair was tied back into a tail and she wore a a number layers under a slightly battered charcoal coloured coat with brass buttons. The uniform of a shop, or a ticket office, in generations past.

  “Doreen?” I mouthed.

  She nodded.

  I grinned like an idiot. Then I remembered I had a job to do. I started to feel my around the magic that imbued the car. Almost instantly it reached out to me too. Something jabbed a splinter into the back of my minds eye and I got a flood of thoughts that were not my own.

  I was sat in the pub, cigarette twitching nervously in my fingers as the others talked. Jim had taken offence. The self righteous little worm always took offence. He always had to try and be better than us all. Better than me.

  “Nope. Sorry. No.” Jim was saying. “That is not on. You don't get to say those girls deserved to have this guy, whoever he is, try and drag them into his car, because they dressed in any way.”

  “Hey.” I said, agreeing with Rob. “If a girl dresses like she wants to have fun, then you know what? Some guys are going to want to have fun too.”

  “Oh?” Jim shook his head. “And so when your daughter wears her school uniform nice and short, that means I should be taking it as invitation?” He put a finger up to silence Rob. “Of course not. No matter what your daughter wears, no matter how she acts, if she says she doesn't want to know, she doesn't want to know. And frankly anybody who asked her would get their knees broken. Because it is wrong. Because each and every sixth former you ogle is a daughter.”

  “Yeah?” I laughed. “But not a mates daughter. I wouldn't ogle Jane.”

  “No.” Jim agreed. “But if it is okay for you to ogle any girl who does not happen to be the daughter of a mate, then maybe, just maybe, there are few million guys in the world who don't happen to be mates with Rob. Who would not consider Jane the daughter of a mate, so are apparently, by your own logic, would be fine to ogle her. Maybe even try to get lucky. Maybe get angry when she says no. Or maybe decide that it didn't matter what her mouth happens to say because her clothes are speaking for her.”

  Rob swore. He didn't like the idea that anybody in the world would see his Jane as just another girl.

  I swore too. “If a Girl is old enough to dress like that, to dance like that,” I said pointing across the bar, “to be like that. Then they are old enough to know what they are telling the world they want.”

  “So just for future reference,” Doug said laconically, reminding us all he was there, “how few clothes do your victims have to wear for it to be their fault when you try and get them in your car?”

  Everybody seemed to find that hilarious. They started to laugh. At the joke. At me. I reached across the table and grabbed Doug by that army coat of his.

  “My victims? Mine? You want me to sue you son? You want to hear from my,” I swore, a lot, “Solicitor about slurring my name and defaming my character? Libel? Slander? Do you princess?”

  “Well, you do drive a Kitten.” Rob said, with a near toothless grin. “There can't be that many.”

  Almost instantly I regretted walking away in a storm. Maybe, just maybe they would think I had come to understand the line my little jokes about the missing girls had crossed. Maybe they would think Jim had actually got his bloody high horse message through to me and I was ceding defeat. But what had me worried was the cogs that might be ticking. I did drive a Kitten. I did leer a little at the girls in the pubs. Only in harmless ways, but you know how some girls can get. I was far too quick and far to loud to protest.

  I was sure they would know. They would all know what I had done. I probably should have sat there and laughed it off. But I felt a noose tightening around my head and adrenaline in my veins and I needed to be away. To be anywhere else but in the pub.

  I drove, but not towards home. I drove in circles around the town, out into the country and back down the main road, just trying to calm myself. To clear all the horrors of my being discovered from my
head. Trying to find a way I could appease their fears.

  I would tell them that the words struck too close to home. That I realised how close my habits brought me to those of a monster and it had sickened me. I would let them think it was self loathing. I would spin such a tale nobody would question it. Dare question it. I would turn this all back on Jim, somehow.

  Then suddenly there was a man in the road and no time to stop.

  I jerked back out of the memory. Shaking my head and muttering under my breath. The idiot driving the car had just seen a man in the road. He did see the shape of the man. The tallness, the breadth across the shoulders, the stocky build, the crown of very tight pale curls, the theatrical glare in the large violet eyes.

  He had seen a man. I had seen a prince of the Other World. I had seen the stupendous superiority on the arrogant brow, the mocking smile, the needle thin teeth. What he had assumed was some kind of fancy dress I recognised as the pantomime dress of the Elfin.

  I hit him and kept driving. I did not look back. I did not stop. I dared not acknowledge the accident. I had to keep moving.

  I have to keep driving.

  I don't know what else to do.

  And of course the Other Worlders had given him a punishment to fit their sense irony. They had given him what he had wanted. A trip to a world of endless roads in eternal forest where he would never be able to, never need to, stop. I shook my head. This was not a ghost. This was not a demon. It was something else. The remnants of a shade that had been eroded away to almost nothing during a long time over There. On the other side of the divide.

  It was too far gone to be brought back. At least over There it would fade away like a shadow faded as the light changed. No pain. No suffering. An end. I was not sure how it had slipped back here, but it was far beyond any point it belonged here. But it had to be an accident. I muttered the rites on the circle and tried not to think about what would happen if the exorcism worked. Now I understood the car itself was part of the spirit, not driven by the spirit.

  We were coming off the dual carriageway. We were heading towards the level crossing. The barriers were down. A train was coming. I had no time to think. I completed the exorcism and hoped that the car would vanish and I would tumble to the floor, trusting my life to a crash suit.

  But as I muttered the last word, the world around me vanished and a wave of air sent my flying. I landed on mossy ground, staring up at a sky with a broken moon and all the wrong stars. I was There.

  I sat up with a bolt and looked around me. The hoop had landed nearby. I reached for it and tried to create a circle. It did nothing. It was a plastic hoop with salt in. I quickly patted myself down to make sure I had no broken bones and tried desperately to remember the lore and the stories I had been told as a child.

  “Don't eat or drink anything. Don't accept a bed for the night. Don't fall in love with a stranger or play a game of chance. Don't get naked. Don't stray from the path.” I looked around. The moss covered ground was nowhere near a path. Behind me was the dark forest into which the Kitten had driven in a hurry. Before me was an endless moor of heather, rocks, moss and scrub.

  On the moor stood a single figure in the distance. It was too far away to see clearly, but it looked to be a suit of armour, draped in robes the colour of cobwebs and with something on its back that looked for all the world like a pair of giant wings hewn from some silt covered stone. It was all the colour of rust and dirt, ash and dried blood.

  I don't know why but I had the sudden feeling that figure, what ever it was, considered me to be something evil. I could sense a terrible wrath that held towards me in its gaze. I stumbled back. Around me sounds were echoing. Sounds that were familiar. They resonated inside of my head. A name. My name.

  Fisher John King.

  I felt the hairs on my arm stand as I recognised the sensation of a magic circle. Another figure swirled into reality close by. A figure in a dark coat, many layers of thin dresses and slips. A shirt buttoned all the way to her throat. A rich olive brown face broke into a broad smile as her eyes fell on me.

  “Doreen?” I asked.

  “I can think.” She said quietly. “I am me.” She sucked in a deep breath. “The air tastes so good!” Her voice was husky and throaty, but full of joy and life. “I can feel.”

  “Yes.” I agreed with a laugh. “This is the world you should have been allowed to come to so long ago. Everything here is made of the stuff of dreams.” I stopped. “How did you...?”

  “The bears made a circle. They were trying to summon you through a séance, calling out to you. I thought that if I stepped into their circle maybe I could find you. Bring you back.” She said. “It worked!”

  “Thank you.” I said. “But...”

  “But?” She narrowed her eyes at me.

  “But it may be difficult for you to go back. You will be a far more physical presence if you get back to our world. But really, I think this is your world. You would need to be tied to something to anchor you there. Like how objects and places can be haunted.”

  She looked past me at the figure on the hill and staunchly refused to scream.

  “What ever realm this is,” she whispered, “I dare say it is not the part of the afterlife I would like to spend eternity in.”

  “No.” I agreed. “The guy in the car was kind of banished here as a punishment. I don't think it is where anybody would choose to be.”

  “So what do you have that I can haunt?” She demanded. I glanced over my shoulder. The armoured figure was nearer. The world seemed darker and the shadows more obvious when he was near. I felt the same waves of anger and hatred that had contaminated the car. “A pocket watch? A ring? I don't know, a crystal skull?”

  “It isn't so simple.” I explained. “It has to be something you can have a connection with. A bond.” I rubbed the back of my head. “I mean, you did come across here to help me, so there is already a bit of a connection.”

  “You saved me.” She said. “Was I meant to do any less for a friend?”

  “You think I am a friend?”

  “You saved my life. Or afterlife. And you have been kind to me. And welcomed me into your home. And I am fairly sure I-” She stopped herself saying something. “Go save yourself.”

  “Haunt me.”

  “What?”

  “I'm an object. You have a connection to me. Haunt me. When my time comes we can find the right part of the Other World together.” I took her hand. “If you want.”

  She looked at the winged, decaying knight. She nodded.

  “Do it.” She said.

  “You realise you will be tied to me, and the bears for pretty much the rest of my life? I mean if you want me to exorcise you some time I-”

  “Do it now.” She screamed.

  I pushed her into the circle, gripped her hands and recited the most basic binding spell I knew. I felt a tingle of magic touching my core. Her hands suddenly felt warm. Soft. She met my gaze. I clung to the circle in the Other World as long as I could, binding her to me. The Knight loomed over us. Burning red eyes blazed in its visor and breaths of black smoke and small insects rasped from the grill of the helmet.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  Doreen pressed her lips to mine.

  “In case it didn't work.” She said. “Though A Thousand And One Arabian Nights did somewhat over sell that.” She blushed. “I thought it would be more...”

  “Sorry.” I said.

  I let myself be drawn through the circle into the gap between worlds. It was like hitting another wall of air. I was suddenly laying on my back in the road. I was aware of having a lot of bruises, all over my back, from head to heel. I was also aware of a weight pressing down on me. A head and some arms. Doreen was there. A little see through. A little less substantial than she might have been, but there nonetheless. She lifted herself up and touched a hand to my cheek. She became all too aware of the bears who surrounded us.

  “It's Fish!” Ted declared.

  “Are
you sure?” Tiger leant over and put her nose close to mine. “What is the password for the desktop computer?”

  “Password123poop.” I said. “Ginger chose it.”

  “It's Fish!” Ted declared again.

  For a second. Less than a second, while I was still confused, I could have sworn my shadow was the wrong shape. I blinked and it was gone. Yet my discomfort remained. I looked around for signs of the winged knight.

  “Cleanse it with fire!” Ginger yelled. “I mean...er...” He hid at the back of the crowd.

  They broke the magic circle. I looked around. Doreen was still holding my hand. I looked past her to the shadows. Was the knight there? I could not see him. I could not feel him.

  “Am I alone?” I asked.

  The bears looked at each other.

  “Did Doreen come back?” Ted asked. “We think she went looking for you. We saw her in the circle.”

  “She came back.” Tiger said, her head tilted to one side. “A little stronger now. Bound.”

  “She's fine.” I agreed. “But can any of you see her?”

  “No.” Most the bears said.

  “No.” Tiger lied, giving me a fist bump.

  “But nothing else. Nothing with armour. Or wings. Or...” I tried to think again but my head was full of bruises. The pain drove the thoughts away. It didn't matter. The circle was closed. “I hope it didn't find its way here.”

  “What ever it was.” Doreen agreed. “What was it?”

  “I don't know.” I said. “Which is a little scary.”

  “We have to go celebrate.” Tiger suggested. The other bears all seemed to agree.

  *

  It happened at the Golden Raj. A number of tables had been pushed together to make one that we could all fit around. We almost didn't notice as it seemed so natural, but there was the right number of chairs. Not just for the bears, dad, Mrs Sussex and myself, but another. When we all sat down Doreen sat beside me. There was no place set for her, not cutlery or glass and neither Dad nor Mrs Sussex had spoken to her. Until the menus were handed out.

  “I'm sorry.” The waiter said as he gave one to Doreen. “We will find you a glass and some silverware.”