Mythfits Read online

“You wish to toboggan?” asked Michael.

  “Not me. I wish to watch. And maybe harvest a few souls in the process.”

  Michael pulled his suit collar up against the cold. “Sad to say, there aren’t any real hills. Not unless the kids try to sledge down the motorway embankments.”

  Samael seemed cheered by the idea. “That could be good.”

  “Before you go, I want to show you something,” said Michael. “This way.”

  He led them towards the pedestrianised shopping precinct. The doors of a pub flew open and a stream of people tumbled out into the snow, laughing and giggling. A woman in a cocktail dress grabbed a double handful of snow and slammed it into another’s face. She retaliated without much aim. A snowball fight erupted.

  “Have those young ladies lost their clothes?” Gabriel asked Michael.

  “No. That counts as ‘dressing up’ in these parts.”

  “They’ll catch their death,” sighed Raphael.

  “Here’s hoping.” Samael passed a tightly compacted snowball to one young man. “Remember son, if you put some stones or ice in there, it will fly much better.”

  “Thanks, mate.” He let loose.

  Two men ran past them, barging Michael and Gabriel roughly aside. Michael caught the other archangel’s elbow, holding him back from a fall.

  “You all right?”

  “Only my wounded pride,” said Gabriel. “I’m not used to people not knowing how important I— Wait! My horn! Someone’s taken my horn!”

  He stared furiously in the direction the two men had fled, but they were lost in the blur of snow and the silhouettes of revellers.

  “Damn it all!” shouted Gabriel and stamped his foot like a bad actor.

  Raphael put a consoling hand on his shoulder.

  Michael looked around. “There’s never a police officer close by when you need one.”

  As if to disprove him, two police cars and a police van marked Bomb Disposal Unit raced past in the direction from which they had just come.

  “Tell me,” asked Samael, “do you blow the horn when there’s a birth, or do you cause births by blowing the horn?”

  “What?” said Gabriel.

  “Just curious. I’m thinking this would be an ideal opportunity to give it a rest and let me catch up a bit.” He tapped out a rapid finger-breaking beat on a shop window to illustrate his point.

  “Your horn will turn up eventually, brother,” said Raphael.

  Gabriel sighed. Michael followed his gaze to the blue lights of the police vehicles as they pulled up close to Sebastian’s.

  “Did I ever tell you,” said Gabriel, “that I spent a week working in an emergency call centre?”

  “Perhaps,” said Michael.

  “Part of a fact-finding mission while we were modernising the Non-Specific Prayer Assessment Unit in the Celestial City. Of course, no call centre on earth handles anywhere near as many customers as the NSPAU. You cannot appreciate the sheer volume of prayers which we handle on a daily basis.”

  “That’s the spirit,” said Michael. “Come on. Up this way.”

  They trudged on through the snow, along the high street and towards the Gracechurch shopping centre. They had to step aside as a Land Rover with what appeared to be a wooden reindeer head stuck on the front raced past, trailing behind it a trailer masquerading as Father Christmas’ sleigh. Weirder still, there was a very angry man in a Hi-Vis top and what looked like one of Santa’s elves clinging to the rear bumper.

  Samael clicked his fingers. The trailer bounced off something hidden beneath the snow. Both the angry man and the elf went flying; screaming their way to bone-snapping doom.

  “Samael,” Raphael reproached him, also clicking his fingers. From holes driven deep in the snow came the groans of two men. Unhappy, but very much alive.

  Gabriel shook his head. “The snow has made them mad. These people seem hell-bent on either causing offence to each other or killing themselves. How can you withstand living among them, Michael?”

  For an answer, Michael pointed.

  Ahead was a Christmas tree which the council had erected in the town centre: thirty feet high, its green boughs heavy with snow. The rainbow of lights draped around it still shone through the thickening layer.

  “I love Christmas lights,” said Michael.

  Gabriel sniffed. “I’ve seen better.”

  “You’re missing the point,” said Michael. “This is what Christmas is about: light in the darkness. Yes, there is death and danger and horridness, but there’s also beauty and goodness and kindness.”

  “The Celestial City is nothing but goodness and kindness,” Gabriel pointed out.

  “Ah, but the people on Earth aren’t good because they have to be; they’re good because they choose to be. That’s what Christmas means to them: reminding themselves that there is good in the world.”

  “I do like the lights,” said Raphael.

  Samael sighed the sigh of an archangel who also agreed but would never admit to it.

  Michael leaned towards him. “So, that suspicious package of yours. Was there anything actually dangerous in it?”

  “Socks,” said Samael.

  “Socks?”

  “Eleven people are killed each year, and over six hundred injured, just putting on their socks.”

  “Wow.” Michael was impressed.

  Down the street, there was an enormous flash and bang. Gabriel turned in surprised, slipped on the snow and fell on his backside.

  A passing woman held out a hand to help him up. “Here.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Controlled explosion,” she commented. “Bomb squad were outside some place down the way.”

  “Oh,” said Michael.

  Gabriel dusted himself off.

  The woman held up Gabriel’s horn. “I don’t suppose any of you gents have lost this thing? Some idiots just tossed it in the snow.”

  “It’s mine, actually,” said Gabriel.

  “Oh,” smiled the woman. “Merry Christmas, then.” She placed it in his hands and with a cheery mittened wave, went on her way.

  Gabriel turned the horn over and over, checking for damage.

  “See?” said Michael. “There’s good in the world.”

  “This proves nothing,” said Gabriel without much conviction.

  CLOVENHOOF AND THE PHONE BOX

  “I’m moving out,” said Jeremy Clovenhoof.

  “What?” said Ben.

  “Yay,” cheered Nerys.

  Ben looked at her.

  “What?” she said. “Aren’t you glad that he’s leaving?”

  “He’s our friend,” said Ben.

  “Friend,” said Nerys, savouring the word. “Is he a friend? He annoys us with his bizarre music – and with those mysterious smells. He frequently sponges off us – by which I mean that he regularly breaks into our flats to steal supplies—”

  “And underwear,” said Clovenhoof helpfully. “But I’m not leaving.”

  “But you said…”

  “I’m just moving out,” he said. “For a while.”

  Nerys sighed and shifted on the sofa. “Go on. Why?”

  Clovenhoof pulled a face. “Won’t bore you with the details but, in short, I need to be dead for a bit. I’ll move out, we’ll let the flat stand empty, and when anyone comes round – particularly two scary men called Masher and Shiv – you just need to cry a bit and say how upset you are.”

  “What did you die of?” said Ben.

  “He’s not dead,” Nerys pointed out.

  “I’m trying to get into character. If it’s something prolonged and terminal then I might have already managed to come to terms with it. If he was—”

  “Smothered by a fat lass who really knows how to party,” said Clovenhoof.

  “Something more sensible than that,” said Ben.

  “No, no,” said Clovenhoof. “That’s the story. I’ve convinced Keeley down the chippy to be my alibi.”

  “She’s
agreed to say she killed you by—” Ben grimaced. “—sitting on you?”

  “Tell me any woman who wouldn’t be excited by the idea of a man dying between her thighs.”

  “That’s disgusting,” said Ben. He looked at Nerys for confirmation.

  She jiggled her head from side to side in contemplation. “Give me a moment to think about it.”

  *

  It was, Ben and Nerys readily agreed, the quietest two months they had ever known in the flats on Chester Road. There were no fires in the flats for eight whole weeks. Neither of them were woken by late night karaoke sessions. For two months no exotic animals, exotic dancers or exotic diseases entered their homes. It was astonishing. It was tranquil. It was…

  “A bit boring,” said Nerys one day.

  “Boring can be good,” said Ben.

  Nerys looked her neighbour up and down. He wore faded jeans, a faded shirt and a haircut that was probably a carefully calculated average of every man’s hairstyle from the past fifty years. “Boring is like oxygen to you.”

  “Jeremy isn’t the kind of excitement you necessarily want in your life though,” countered Ben.

  “I’ve got no excitement in my life right now. I’m at that difficult age.”

  “What age?”

  “All the hunks my age are now married and we’re still a couple of years off them all getting divorced. Everyone’s blissfully partnered up except me.”

  “You could play outside your age range. Never stopped you before.”

  “That silver-haired George Clooney thing is so last year,” said Nerys. And young men – ugh! They’re hard work.”

  “Hard to get?”

  Nerys slapped him. “Hard to train. Jeremy, he was … he was fun, wasn’t he?”

  “He was unpredictable, for certain.”

  “And he was always up for going places.”

  “And getting thrown out of them.”

  “And he enjoyed a drink.”

  “Both going down and coming back up.”

  “Can you honestly say you don’t miss him?”

  Ben thought about it. The past few weeks had certainly seemed … empty. “But we don’t know where he is.”

  Nerys shook her head and went to the corner of her lounge and the untidy shelf which acted as her filing cabinet. “He left me a phone number, in case of emergencies.”

  “What kind of emergency?”

  Nerys passed him a yellow Post-It note. Below an eleven digit number it said:

  Call in case of emergency.*

  *Archangels are never emergencies.

  “So what, you think needing a drink is an emergency?” asked Ben.

  They looked at each other for a long moment before Nerys pulled out her phone.

  *

  Nerys drove for around twenty five minutes. The leafy suburbs of Sutton Coldfield gave way to vast fields full of yellow flowers. Ben complained they were bringing on his hay fever, even though the windows were shut. The roads grew narrower, and the only other vehicles were enormous tractors throwing up chunks of mud.

  “What sort of a place do you think he’s stopping in?” wondered Ben.

  “Not sure. He’s got his own phone: that was a landline we called him on.”

  “At least he’s not living in a cow shed, then. I haven’t seen a human for miles.”

  “According to the satnav we’re nearly there. In fact, this pub is in about the right place. Could he be staying there?”

  They pulled into the car park and looked around. There was a large circular pond in front of the pub, a bright red phone box, and a set of wooden picnic benches. Behind the pub stood a digger and crane, paused in the act of burying a huge tank in the garden.

  “Are they installing a nuclear bunker?” said Ben. “Do these country folk know something we don’t?”

  Nerys rolled her eyes at the city boy. “It’s a septic tank, numpty.”

  “Maybe Jeremy’s in there.”

  Nerys was about to chide Ben but stopped herself. Jeremy, connoisseur of the foul and pungent, would probably regard a septic tank as a delightful country retreat.

  “I think I’ll call him again,” she said, and pulled out her phone. As the phone rang in her ear, she thought there was an echo of the sound, nearby.

  “Jeremy, we’re here,” she said when he picked up. “Where are you?”

  “Over here!” Clovenhoof’s voice hit Nerys in stereo: from her phone and the phone box across the carpark. He was leaning out, wearing an enormous grin. “Welcome to Chez Clovenhoof!”

  “What?” said Nerys.

  “Where?” said Ben.

  Clovenhoof dropped the phone and waved his hands about in front of the box: a conjurer before his magic cabinet. “Go on, you’ve got to admit that you’re impressed.”

  “A phone box?” said Ben.

  “But it’s not just a phone box,” said Clovenhoof.

  “Is it bigger on the inside than the outside?” asked Nerys.

  “Like the TARDIS,” added Ben.

  Clovenhoof stroked his chin. “Well, I did invite Caroline inside the other night.”

  “Caroline?”

  “And, even if I do say so myself, I think I transported her to new and magical places.”

  “You are disgusting,” muttered Nerys.

  “And there was a lot of wheezing and groaning and whatsits going up and down,” said Clovenhoof. He did his best vocal TARDIS impression, with accompanying groin thrusts.

  “Shut up or I will be forced to kill you,” said Nerys.

  “It’s handy for the pub, I’ll give you that,” said Ben.

  Clovenhoof stood aside and swept his arm in a grand gesture of welcome. “Let me give you the tour.”

  It was an old phone box, with a door just as stiff and heavy as the ones Nerys remembered from her childhood. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d seen a phone box, let alone one of the old red jobbies. There was the usual contraption for coins, with a heavy duty handset, but the rest of the box appeared to be non-standard.

  “You’ve got a chair in here,” she observed.

  “Man’s got to sit somewhere,” said Clovenhoof.

  “And some carpet.”

  “Just making it homey.”

  “Looks pretty comfy, actually,” said Ben. “What are the comedy breasts on the wall for?”

  “I can show you,” said Clovenhoof. He sat on the chair and leaned back, nestling comfortably in generous, rubbery cleavage. He closed his eyes. “Perfect for sleeping. I only brought the bare essentials, but who’d have realised these babies could double up as a pillow?” He shrugged at his own question. “Apart from everyone, I suppose.”

  Ben looked about the enclosed space: at the bag of clothes hung above the door, the small shelf that held an empty bottle of Lambrini, an open pack of pitta breads, a bottle of chilli sauce, a screwed up bag of jelly babies and…

  “There’s tin foil on the ceiling,” said Ben.

  “Special feature. I’ll show you later.”

  “Jeremy, you can’t possibly expect us to believe you’ve been living in here for eight weeks,” said Nerys.

  “Why?”

  “Well, apart from the basics, like food and, you know, toilet stuff,” said Ben, “people just wouldn’t stand for it. What about when they want to use the phone?”

  Clovenhoof nodded sagely. “Let me explain. First of all, do you want to have a guess at how many times this phone box was used before my occupancy?”

  There were shrugs all round.

  “Four times in two years. Apparently this is a problem. The phone people said that the phone obviously wasn’t needed and they were going to take it away.”

  “I can believe that,” said Ben. “People use their mobiles all the time. What I can’t believe is that people have failed to notice you in here.”

  “Oh, they have noticed.”

  “And they called the police?”

  “No, they love that I’m in here. Before I came there were meeti
ngs and such to try and work out how to keep the phone box, and what they might use it for. Everyone loves having it here, see?”

  “Well I suppose it’s quite pretty,” said Nerys, who was taking in the view.

  “Yes, and they all think I’m doing a great job of keeping it in use. They bring me stuff.” Clovenhoof nodded down the road. Nerys saw a woman coming towards them, carrying a covered tray. Middle-aged, with a round body and rosy cheeks, she looked like she was on her way to audition for the part of ‘stereotypical farmer’s wife.’

  “Brought your supper, Jeremy!” she called. She whisked off the tray’s cover and presented him with a plate of crispy pancakes.

  “You’re the best, Caroline,” said Clovenhoof. He tucked into them while she stood and watched.

  “This is Caroline?” said Nerys.

  The woman gave Nerys a querying look.

  Nerys shuffled her feet. “Um, Jeremy was saying how you’d been … taking care of him.”

  “We’re all very fond of Jeremy here. And I do like a man with a healthy appetite!” She smiled at Nerys and Ben before turning back to Clovenhoof. “You just let me know if you want a hot water bottle this evening. We don’t want you getting cold.” She left as Jeremy finished the last of his meal.

  Nerys folded her arms and glared at him. “So what do you do for drink? Although I suppose when the pub’s open that’s not too much of a worry.”

  “I don’t need the pub to be open,” he said. “I haven’t finished giving you the tour yet. Step aside for a moment.”

  Clovenhoof pulled a head torch from a pocket in his smoking jacket and strapped it around his forehead. He shooed them just outside the phone box, door ajar. Pulling back the carpet and a piece of plywood underneath it revealed a deep hole. With a grin, he backed into the hole and started climbing down a ladder.

  “Come on,” he called.

  “You have got to be kidding,” said Nerys.

  “Do you want a drink or not?” echoed Clovenhoof’s voice from below ground.

  Nerys sighed. “Ben, you go first. If I fall, I want something soft to land on.”

  *

  By the time they stumbled into the brick cellar Ben had decided that his eyes were adjusted to the dark. Clovenhoof had led the way with his head torch, but now Ben was able to tell that they had emerged from the roughly excavated tunnel into a more permanent structure. A large empty rack masked the tunnel mouth.