“I caught one. They know that I know how. Spectres aren’t stupid.”
“You ‘caught’ a spectre?”
I suppose I should have been flattered by the flat disbelief in Vera’s voice. It wasn’t that she thought I was a liar. She just knew enough about spectres.
“In a beer bottle,” I added for technical clarification.
“Really. Can I see this beer bottle?”
“It’s in my bag.”
She vanished into the bedroom and reappeared a second later with my satchel held out at the end of her arm as if it might start to tick. She put it at my feet. I opened it up and pulled out the beer bottle. The cigarette still burnt sullen inside.
Vera took the bottle gingerly between her fingertips.
I said, “Listen to it.”
She obeyed, holding it up to her ear. I saw her eyes widen. “Christ,” she muttered. “You captured a ghost that’s into heavy metal.”
I took it back from her, put it reverentially on the table between us. “Yeah - don’t open it in a hurry,” I said. “Spectres aren’t known for their humour.”
“Why a beer bottle?”
“Why put a genie in a lamp?” I asked.
“Don’t give me the whole metaphor bollocks. I asked a simple technical question.”
“And got a simple technical answer. You use the container most appropriate. A lamp is a precious thing that grants illumination. A beer bottle is . . . well . . . not. I hate to get all sociopolitical on you . . .”
“Please don’t.”
“. . . but there’s something to the theory that you can drown anything at the bottom of a beer bottle. Even if there isn’t something to the theory, enough people believe it so that there is.”
“Deep.”
“You asked.”
“I was being funny and sarcastic. I can do both.” She sighed, eyes not leaving the bottle. “Spectres aren’t stupid,” she said at length. “And they don’t go around attacking without reason either. You think they went after you specifically?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t believe in coincidence. The telephone rang and . . .”
“Yeah, what’s up with you and the telephone? I would have thought, what with, you know, you being you . . . blue electric angels, gods of the telephone, song in the wire, fire, light, life, static interference with knobs on made flesh, Swift and the angels and so on and so forth - and now you’re scowling?”
“It was a trap,” we muttered; and saying it, we realised we were angry. “It was a trap designed specifically for us. We hear a telephone ring on an empty road in the middle of the night and we’ll answer it, we’d always answer it, and it would always find us. We are . . . it’s part of what we are. Someone used the telephone to target us. The telephone rang and of course we answered. Then they attacked us down the telephone, and sent spectres to finish us off.”
“Who ‘they’?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Which you?” Her voice didn’t change as she asked the question. Nor did her eyes leave the bottle to observe our face, which was full of surprise.
“I suppose . . .” I mumbled. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter to you,” she corrected. “You’ll end up dead regardless of which you ‘they’ were after. But it might matter to ‘them’. Some guy wants to blaze electric fire across the sky, then there’s no point just attacking Matthew Swift, but there’d sure be some credit to the notion of going after the blue electric angels. On the other hand, if some girl is pissed off that Matthew Swift ditched her at a party, then, sure, she might try and hurt him, and the blue electric angels will get caught in the crossfire. Just because you happen to be both entities inhabiting the same brain and the same body, it doesn’t mean other people are going to respect the difference. So the question is . . . did whoever sent the spectres and dialled the telephone want to hurt Matthew Swift, or the electric angels? Or both at once, since you are now, technically, the same?”
“A question we’ll ask,” we replied, “when we meet ‘them’.”
Silence. Then Vera said, “Why are your shoes too big?”
“It’s complicated. I was looking for someone.”
“And that meant you had to wear big shoes?”
“This pair helped, yes.”
“Who were you looking for?”
“Just a kid.”
“You think he attacked you?”
“No. He wouldn’t know how. Summoning spectres, attacking through a telephone, these things are complicated.”
“Yeah,” sighed Vera. “That’s the thing, isn’t it? We’re not talking any nitwit doing these things to you. If you’d asked