Dancing Jax. Robin Jarvis

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      Taking the cigarette, he leaned beside her and stared intently up at the great, unlovely house.

      “We could live off this dump for a year or more,” he said. “Must be all sorts in there. Might even be stuff left in the attics – or the cellars, and the odd stick of furniture too. You did good, Shee.”

      “Wish I’d never said anything about it,” she said softly.

      “I might just keep you around a while longer,” he chuckled with a wink, but she knew he probably meant that veiled threat.

      Suddenly, inside the house, a man’s voice screamed.

      Jezza sprang forward like a cat and rushed back to the porch. Shiela lit another cigarette and waited.

       Chapter 2

      Bonded to the Ismus, though by no means his only dalliance, is the fair Labella, the High Priestess. She outranks the other damsels of the Court, yea — even the proud queens of the four Under Kings and see how their eyes flash at her when she parades by. Coeval with her are the Harlequin Priests — that silent pair arrayed so bright and yet so grim and grave of face. Let not they point to the dark colours of their motley — dance on and dance by quick, my sprightly love.

      RICHARD MILLER WAS sitting on the stairs. He was sweating and shaken and seemed to have shrunken into his shabby camouflage jacket, like a tortoise in its shell. Tommo stood in front of him, looking completely bemused and wondering if he could risk laughing and not receive a thump or a kick in return.

      “What’s gone on?” demanded Jezza when he came rushing in.

      Tommo put one hand over his heart. “Nothing to do with me!” he explained hurriedly. “Pongo here had a fit going up the stairs.”

      “Sounded like you’d fell through them!” Jezza said.

      Miller lifted his face and looked warily over his shoulder. “There was something up there,” he said in a hoarse whisper.

      “What?” Jezza snapped.

      “Dunno… just something.”

      “Like what?”

      “Like nothing I ever felt before,” the big man answered slowly.

      “Where?”

      It was Tommo who answered that one. “Just up on that little landing there,” he said, with a definite chuckle in his voice. “Stopped dead in his tracks he did and then, wham – he bawls his head off and leaps about, like he had jump leads clamped to his bits.”

      Jezza looked up to where the staircase turned at a right angle to the wall before continuing to the first floor. There was nothing to see in the gloom, except a tall, boarded window and a particularly large patch of black mould that seemed to bleed down from the upper shadows.

      “Go on then,” Jezza said impatiently. “What was it, a floating face or a demonic monkey or something?”

      “Nah,” Tommo sniggered. “Evil monkeys live in closets.”

      “I’m sick of this ghost garbage, man,” Jezza said. “First Shee, now you.”

      Miller wasn’t listening. He was tentatively sniffing the back of one hand. Then he pushed his sleeve up to the elbow to inspect his heavily tattooed forearm.

      “What you doing?” Tommo hooted. “You madpot!”

      Miller looked up at them. “There was a terrible stink,” he said.

      “Always is with you!” Tommo agreed.

      Miller shook his head. “A stink of damp!” he said. “Terrible stink of damp – like rotting leaves – or worse. Decayed and rotten and rank and death, cold death.”

      “Just normal damp and wet rot,” Jezza told him. “What d’you expect in a rancid dump like this, Chanel No 5 potpourri?”

      Miller wiped his hand on his clothes. “No,” he breathed. “No, it wasn’t normal. There was something else. When I touched…”

      He jumped up, almost knocking Tommo over, and glared back at the staircase.

      “That wall!” he cried. “When I put my hand on it. The bloody stuff moved! Ran over my bloody hand and up my arm! I had to shake it off!”

      “What stuff?” asked Jezza sternly.

      Miller turned a bewildered, fearful face to him. “The mould!” he said. “The black bloody mould! I felt it on my skin – it’s alive!”

      He gave the stairs one last look, then blundered towards the front door, only to find Shiela standing there.

      “Jezza,” she called. “Let’s ditch this place. I want to go – right now.”

      The man looked at her and placed his hand on the banister. “Just cos Miller puts his great mitt in a web and feels a spider run over him?” he said. “Don’t be a stupider cow than normal, Shee.”

      “It wasn’t no spider!” Miller shouted.

      “Roaches or woodlice then,” Jezza said, not caring either way. “Get real. There’s no way I’m leaving this gold mine. It belongs to me now. I’m going to strip it right down and flog even the bricks, if they’re worth anything.”

      “Listen to Miller!” she told him.

      Jezza ignored her and jumped nimbly on to the first stair.

      “Jezza!” Shiela said urgently as he began to ascend. “Don’t! It’s a bad place.”

      “Don’t go up there!” Miller joined in.

      “Oh, Mr Ghostman…” Jezza sang out as he climbed slowly, step by step. “I’m so going to kick your see-through arse and evict you off my property. This is my gaff now, you hear me? And unless you can pay rent, in living cash, you aren’t welcome.”

      “Ha!” Tommo laughed. “You tell him. Who we gonna call? Umm… just Jezza – he ain’t afraid of no ghost!”

      “Belief in the supernatural is cut from the same twisted psychology as the need for religion,” Jezza began propounding. “It’s a man-made hang-up, yet another method of controlling the gullible proletariat by the fat cats at the top to keep us down and scared and not dare to ask real questions of the real people. Instead they made us kneel and pray against the terrors in the night that they invented. It’s always been about control; there is no evil substance to darkness – it’s just an absence of light.

      “Like I always say, you should only be afraid of realness. It’s not some vampire that’ll get you along the lonely midnight lane, but the paranoid schizophrenic who prefers junk to his meds and believes his Ricicles are telling him to collect human livers in a blue bucket. Be scared of that poor sod, and the NHS trusts who turf him into the community expecting him to function without proper care because it’s cheaper and they can afford some extra salmon on the СКАЧАТЬ