Death And The Art Of Pyramid Selling

by Rossi

Chapter One: When Push Comes to Shove.

***

"Now, Alice, I want you to look after your little sister. Mummy's just going for a walk."

Alice remembered the words as she clutched at Carrie's hand. The six-year-old whined and tugged, trying to follow their mother's route down the rail embankment, but Alice held fast, remembering her mother's instruction, remembering the way her voice had seemed to come from a long way away, somewhere dark and cold and difficult to find your way back from. She was the oldest, and she took the responsibility of her ten years seriously. So she stood her ground, holding onto her little sister's hand and watching as her mother turned to look at the train bearing down upon her with a small smile upon her face.

The train's horn obliterated all other sound - the birds, Carrie's demanding wail, the words that were shaped by her mother's mouth as she gave them one final glance. Then she was gone, trampled beneath wheels of steel, the train travelling too fast to stop. Alice caught a brief glance of a shoe, her mother's shoe, her mother's severed foot still sticking out of it, cast aside like any old bit of rubbish. She pulled at Carrie's hand.

"Let's go back to the car, Carrie."

"I want Mummy!" her little sister protested, tugging back. Alice's grip didn't waver.

"Mummy's not there," she said, and it was true: the pulped, red mess that had been left in the train's path wasn't her mother.

Not any more.

***

English countryside flashed past, green, undulating and as boring as all fuck. Hills cut into sections by dry stone walls, fields dotted with sheep and the occasional excitement of a cow. John Constantine rested his head against the window with a sigh, cursing the track work that had extended a two-hour trip into something the wrong side of Eternity. He extended his internal griping to include Margaret Thatcher's dismantling of the integrated rail system, the bloodsucking leeches of the Great North Eastern Railway, the plonker across from him with the overly-long legs and the shin-barking luggage, the cost of a tiny plastic cup of beer and something that called itself a Provencale Ciabatta Roll (in reality a soggy chunk of stale bread with a sliver of anaemic ham), but most of all, his old mate Phil Kingston, for choosing Yorkshire, of all places, to retire to. And who had the sheer bastardry to book him a seat in the non-smoking compartment on an overcrowded train. Oh yes, Phil might seem like a good bloke, a decent chap, but he had a more diabolic sense of humour than Lucifer himself.

He pushed the rolled-up coat more firmly under his head, and accidentally on purpose gave the git across from him a kick in the ankle so it moved a grudging few inches. True, there wasn't far to go, but a bit of kip wouldn't hurt - it had been a typically late night nicely punctuated by Phil's call early the next morning. Constantine frowned briefly, thinking of that call. There had been something odd about Phil's manner, something almost paranoid. He'd refused to explain things on the phone, telling him only that it was vitally important that John come and see him. In Yorkshire. That day. Admittedly the fall-out of the Raguel business would have been enough to make anyone start checking for phone taps and coded messages on the TV, but Phil wasn't the sort to scare easy. And that was how he'd sounded, scared and angry. The last time Constantine had heard that tone in Phil's voice, it had been on the trail of an avenging demon-childe. No, not a good omen at all.

He closed his eyes and let the motion of the train rock him to sleep.

***

She was Going Places.

That was the important thing to remember. She was an Up-And-Comer. A Mover and Shaker. The Next Big Thing. True, she was only selling cosmetics _now_, but within a few short years she would have made her stake and would be well on her way to The Top.

Deborah shifted the awkwardly-sized cosmetics case under her arm and sighed impatiently. Bloody buses. They were always late. This last sales party, the one in Cheswick, had been profitable enough, which meant the case was almost empty, but it did mean she would have a lot of processing work to do. Accounts to settle, orders to make, restocking to be done of her samples. And bloody Cheswick was miles from anywhere and since she didn't have a car - yet - here she was stuck catching the bus with a damn awkward sample case tucked under her arm. Still, once she'd made her first million, she could look back on this and laugh. It would make a good story for interviews, those "the way we were" type things the women's magazines did. 'Multi-Millionaire's Public Transport Hell'. The mental headline made her smile.

A grinding rumble above the traffic, a flash of red. About bloody time -Time was Money. Deborah took a few steps forward, set the case and her handbag carefully down, and then walked briskly off the footpath and into the path of the oncoming bus.

***

The air was so crisp and fresh it made his lungs ache for the bitter smogs of London. Constantine took a long drag of the cigarette that had appeared almost magically in his hand the second he'd stepped off the train, trying to reduce the shock. The town - they probably called it a village - was postcard-perfect and just as lively. No sign of Phil, or of a cab, either. Nothing for it but to follow his nose through quaint cobbled streets and past carefully-tended gardens. 'The Stepford Wives' set in rural Yorkshire - bit of a tautology that, was there any part of Yorkshire that wasn't rural? He snorted, sending cigarette smoke streaming into the clean air. What a place for Phil Kingston to wind up in. No wonder he'd sounded so peculiar on the phone, living here would be enough to drive anyone balmy, but especially someone like Phil, who seemed as much a part of London's underside as Constantine himself. Must have been the wife's doing, Phil would never have agreed to it otherwise...

It was part of Constantine's peculiar magic - peculiar in the sense that it worked for him especially - that coincidence followed him around like a royal corgi. So he wasn't especially surprised when his path took him across an ancient stone bridge over the railway line, or by the bunch of faded flowers left on the rough wall. They were garden and meadow flowers, picked by childish hands and tied with something that looked like a hair ribbon in a careless bow. Not worth a second glance really, until he realised there was a purpose behind them, a small but potent working of magic.

When he was young he'd spent a less-than-memorable spring bonking a would-be druidess in a leaky tent pitched in a muddy field near Stonehenge. She'd been a better fuck than a witch, but he'd learned some herb craft from her, enough to recognise the elements at work here -rosemary for remembrance; fern for magic and shelter; the purple tuft of garlic flower to ward off evil; white heather for protection and to make wishes come true; marigold for sorrow; witch hazel to bind the spell. Simple magic, but there was such feeling behind it, something that gave it potency beyond the gathering of weeds.

An eerie prickle stirred the hair on the back of his neck, the feeling of eyes upon him, and he glanced around with the wariness of a man who has been the butt of Dame Fortune's sense of humour once too often. There was nothing on the road, but a flicker of colour at the edge of his vision drew his glance down to the tracks below the bridge, gleaming dully in the creeping evening. On the verge beside stood a small figure, the red of her anorak echoing the red of her short, straight hair. She wasn't playing, as he'd first thought she might be, she was standing stock-still a waxen reproduction of a child, and she was staring, dark eyes huge in a small pointed pale face. Staring. At him.

Constantine frowned. He knew he was in Bronte country, but this was altogether too Gothic for him. Eldritch children, cottage-industry witchcraft... He looked down momentarily at the small bouquet, noting again the childishly clumsy knot in the ribbon. Of course, when he looked back, the child was gone.

"If I find Phil living in a haunted manor with a spooky housekeeper, I'm for the first train back to London," he muttered, and continued down the road.

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